All right: all week I�ve been telling myself that I would write here as soon as I had a definitive answer to an intriguing question that came up during a Tuesday morning meeting, specifically whether the system could be gamed in favor of my not only staying on past these new projects (n = 3, no word yet on the security gig) but becoming a beneficiary of actual benefits, via one of those longer-term contracts I�ve been drooling over. My dignity smarts when I remember how I acted last summer with the editrix gig that should have been mine, how I pined in print and then how I eventually got felled. So naturally I wanted either to be able to hey-hey-hey as I reported a fait accompli or not even to have to mention that the possibility had arisen like the self-interest-protecting anonymous coward I am. Status: holding. Now you know. Also, I used basic algebra today to determine what the maximum amount of money to be spent was that after tax would not exceed a given figure. Kids, stay in school.

This morning I accepted my first-ever invitation to a bachelorette party. On the eVite, the hostess noted that if we guests planned to bring any kind of habiliment for the bride-to-be we should send her (hostess) mail so as to avoid that oh so embarrassing "I have 15 penis necklaces and not a single condom earring to wear" moment. Um, what? If there is something about bachelorette parties that everyone else knows and I don�t, I would be grateful to the reader who could clue me in. I am serious.

Last night, Ponys: Steve and I made comparisons to Echo & the Bunnymen. (Discuss.) This morning, first song I hear when I turn on the radio: "Bring On the Dancing Horses."

I�m writing little piddly stuff, eating at my desk, because at any moment I could get e-mail or a summons from one of the people I report to on the Homeland Security stuff asking me to come by and ruminate. My deliverable, pending their input, is due this afternoon, so I must remain on what passes in government for a hair trigger. Apologies in advance if I have to cut this short. But why do I resist the piddly stuff? All week as I�ve chafed against this self-imposed media blackout, it�s not like I�ve had anything big and deep (shutup) going on � I�ve just missed my channel for chatter, I�ve wanted to say something about the Bill Clinton book or about Tully�s vs. Starbucks, blah blah blah. If I had to say one reason why I don�t go over to the blog side it would be my lack of confidence in my ability to maintain a relatively even tone of reportorial-yet-snarky-yet-sufficiently-provocative-that-people-aren�t-bored-by-it and also to commit to some requisite number of postings per day. But I fool myself, I flatter myself, that my di is qualitatively different than any other chatty newsy one with names and pictures in it. I hold it to both sets of standards so that it meets neither and therefore I am comfortably doomed to failure. (Note to self: save for chapter title in autobiography). And sometimes I honestly don�t know whether this constant hyperevaluation is a product of a real sense of discontentment, ye olde Nagging Feeling, or whether the crypto-point is never to resolve, never to commit to change, never to measure up. What is it about the no-name no-schedule that seems necessary to me? Why it is necessary?

I read an article in the Wash Post a few days ago about the rising prices of liquor drinks and how this is due in part to consumers� increasing preference to specify a brand of booze. Note that I do not say "preference for more expensive brands," because the sense I got from the article is that people may in fact not prefer the taste of top-shelf-liquor, may never have arrived at the point of conscious comparison and decision; however, they like to feel a part of some cocktailing experience, I�d maybe capitalize but I�m already at quota for this entry, and that the way to do that is simply to act like you know what you�re doing. (And note that this essentially draws an equals sign between the faking and the being.) I�m like three exponential removes from paraphrase here, I know. One of the bar managers or bartenders quoted in the article seemed to endorse this reading, comparing a ten-dollar martini to a cup of Starbucks: you are not just some sot buying ten-dollar martinis, you are someone who *can* buy ten-dollar martinis; you are not a patsy waiting in line to spend four dollars on flavored coffee with milk, you are someone who enjoys the lifestyle common to those who routinely spend four dollars on flavored coffee with milk. Now I feel self conscious and probably everyone who is reading this made similar observations way back when they were still in Huggies, or else, freshman-comp-like, I am belaboring what should be expressed in a sentence or two. (I still don�t get the concept of a housing bubble either, I keep trying to get people to explain it to me in terms of what would happen: if it popped what would be the first thing that happens and why, what would be the second thing, etc. MBAs, well-informed trust-fund kids, and stoned botanists have all been powerless against my miraculous mental density.) In the office building across the street where I go with my Kwik Trip mug for coffee most days, there is both a Starbucks and a Tully�s. I favor the latter, though back in the bad old wintertime of executive assisting, I sometimes had cause to go to Starbucks and requisition something for my master and keeper. The tip jar at Tully�s is sad to behold. Most of the time, coins don�t cover the bottom, and I�ve never seen more than about five ones in there. At Starbucks, on the other hand, the tip jars were always like overflowing Easter baskets, and I know that it wasn�t just due to the employees� savvy seeding of them, because waiting in line I�d see four people in a row tip a dollar or the better part of one in change. The office building is very large, and it doesn�t make statistical sense that its population would self-sort on the basis of either disposable income or tipping largesse and that one group prefers one brand of coffee and one goes for the other. So this too comes back to experience � Starbucks is selling you not just an experience, but an experience of yourself. Wouldn�t it be dope to test the hypothesis, go to a Starbucks and give people quickie little sliding-scale surveys, on a scale of 1 to 7 where 1 is the worst and 7 is the best how do you feel about fill in the blank right now, you�d ask about five or six things but what�s germane is something along the lines of "your personal financial situation" and then somehow you could find out what the respondents� p.f.s.�s really were and run the crosstabs and compare the results to those of a Tully�s control group? Somebody call Steven Levitt.

Piddle piddle piddle. How would this be any different with my name on it and a link to "Comments"? It�s not rocket science. Do I think I�m that stupid? Do I think I deserve to be marginalized? These are and are not rhetorical questions.

I now have one of the two sign-offs I need on the Homeland Security piece. Hooray. As you know, I feel like I often don�t have enough to do for what they�re paying me, I feel like I have been put in the position of being a chiseler. But everyone has seemed happy with what I�ve done, although I often feel like I haven�t done much at all. Maybe it�s implicit and I�m the only one who doesn�t get it that the role I fulfill is in large part that of she who hurries up and waits, and that this is a place or an economic sector where, weirdly, some status accrues to that role. Yesterday I went to a long meeting where the big report I wrote was on the slab. Turns out that it�s going to be gutted, rearranged, and rewritten, and the distress I feel at having my work messed with is much less than my anger and irritation that, I learned yesterday, my report was to have followed a format and outline with which I was never provided, that the big cheese had made specific requests as to content that were never communicated to me, etc. This place is a self-perpetuating busywork machine in which these endemic inefficiencies don�t seem to bother anyone � not even, in this case, the big cheese, which to me is madness � because they are part of the system design. Remember The purpose of this office is to justify the purpose of this office? What am I going to do, go break rocks for eight hours a day at eight bucks an hour because that would be more ethical? Ha ha, that is a funny one. Right. So why can�t I quit feeling so lousy about it, like it�s my fault?

Whine whine whine. At least my fingernails are still looking good. I predict $30 million for "Fahrenheit 9/11," and if I�m wrong you can call me credulous on Monday.