Wing Flapping

My new job gave me my own office with my own door that I can close on my own. I have a view out my window. I have a phone I can turn off. I have one of those pencil-thin flat screen monitors. I have two desks and a couch. I have my own coffee maker in my office. Aside from when I meet certain people, I can wear jeans and t-shirts to work.

I’m taking over a project mid-stream from someone who had to leave unexpectedly. This person, according to everyone I’ve talked to, was perfection herself, an individual of perfect, detailed-oriented, angelic beauty. Those are some pretty tough wings to fill. Luckily, I am Superman.

My training involved reading a stack of files as tall as I am (over two metres tall), and coming up with a work plan by the end of the day. Since when I walked into the office with the sketchiest idea of what the project is and left with a very set idea of what I would do – with new boss’ approval, I’d say I did it right. This is not bad for someone who has spent the past two years scraping together a very modest existence with freelance contracts out of his living room.

I have to give frequent presentations and speeches. Luckily I’m rock star manqué and I love the attention. I can do them in jeans and t-shirts.

I am most definitely in a cultural minority in this office. At lunchtime, a new colleague practically demanded a logic explanation for the Pesakh (Passover) dietary laws, which are in effect until the weekend for me. Assuming that one can ever find an explanation for anything in religion that doesn’t defy logic, I couldn’t come up with anything as I watched enviously while he munched on delicious fefalel, crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, and hearty qebbe. I nibbled glumly on my rabbit food spread on on crumbly, constipation-causing baked air and couldn’t wait for real food again.

I can arrive when I want, leave when I want, set up meetings with people outside the office as much as I want, and I have a budget for meetings I set up in the office.

My new job gave me my own office with my own door that I can close on my own.

Love is Like a Bottle of Gin

It makes you blind, it does you in
It makes you think you’re pretty tough
It makes you prone to crime and sin
It makes you say thing off the cuff
It’s very small and made of glass
and grossly over-advertised
It turns a genius into an ass
and makes a fool think he is wise
It could make you regret your birth
or turn cartwheels in your best suit
It costs a lot more than it’s worth
and yet there is no substitute
They keep it on a higher shelf
the older and more pure it grows
It has no color in itself
but it can make you see rainbows
You can find it at the Bowery
or you can find it at Elaine’s
It makes your words more flowery
It makes the sun shine, makes it rain
You just get what they put in
and they never put in enough
Love is like a bottle of gin
but a bottle of gin is not like love

“Love is Like a Bottle of Gin” by the Magnetic Fields

Fairy Godperson

Suddenly I have a new job and an accompanying higher wage. This morning I had my old job. Poof! Now I have a new job without even applying or interviewing or, for that matter, any knowledge of an opening previous to this morning. I’m just that good at what I do, whatever that is.

I wish I could say the same about things like noses or furniture. This morning I had my old nose but poof! now I have a new, elegant and sexy shnoz. Or this morning I woke up on my old lumpy mattress but poof! now I have a comfy king-size bed with tiny heated or cooled contouring air pockets, depending on the season.

Or even, this morning I woke up with the old world full of hatred, violence, and cruelty but poof! now everyone sings “Kumbaya” and “If I Had a Hammer” for a living (although that would get a little grating after about fifteen minutes, but it’s still better than reality).

But getting back the important me-centred universe, I wish I could say that this morning I had my old bank account but poof! now I have a new bank account with no service fees, a super-high interest rate, and an automatically self-replenishing balance so I won’t have to beg my parents to lend me money for May rent. That’s what I really wish right now. I suppose the new job will give me a hand with that for June. And maybe with the shnoz, even.

Update: I cut a big gash across my face while shaving, my knck-em-dead-on-the-first-day-of-new-job Versace tie needs ironing but my iron’s broken, I can’t find my take-away coffee mug, and there’s a solid layer of cat fur sediment on every stitch of good clothing I own. It’s a typical first morning of a new job.

The Colours of Bahrain

Chan’ad Bahraini prepares for Mawlid al-Rasool.

Sometimes I Miss TV

Matt Groening explains how and why, after sixteen years, The Simpsons are only halfway through their run. Sometimes I wish I had my TV set back.

Mile-High Size Queen

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been fascinated by passenger jets (spare me the jokes about loving long, tapered, cylinders – it’s already boring). My parents and I lived under an airport route and I used to run to the window to see what kind of plane was screaming over our house. Since at that time I lived in a medium sized city, it was usually only a boring DC-9 or 727. Sometimes it would be an enormous L-1011 or a 747 and I would jump up and down and be all happy in a way only children seem to get excited.

There’s a new crop now, and although they all look basically the same to me, I like to newest ones. There’s the double-decker Airbus A380 due out next year that claims to be big enough for cocktail lounges and gyms.

The Boeing 777 (already out) and 787 (out in a couple of years) look very graceful. I wish I had enough money to travel.

Very Pretty

Swedish footballer, Olof Mellberg.

I Dance Like a Putz

I took this racism test and was told that, although – or maybe because – I am white, I am nevertheless slightly prejudiced against white folk. I knew it!

G-d Smites Angel of Death

(Disclaimer: You gotta be Jewish to get most of this)

In an act that stunned Satan worshippers everywhere, The Almighty axed the Angel of Death by freezing over Gehinom, causing an unusually cold winter for everyone on Earth, or at least everyone in the New York Metropolitan area.

Smoke in My Eyes

Alert: World apprently watches chimney with baited breath for white smoke while millions die of AIDS in Africa because the condom is a sin and gays and lesbians continue to be branded “dirty” and “evil” for no reason other than that we’re slightly different.

As the white smoke billows from the Sistine Chapel and the bells peal from St. Peter’s Basilica, will the Church move into the new world or continue to try to keep all of us, Catholic or not, in the old one? Congrats on your new perfect dude, Church. Please come join is us in the 3rd Millennium.

Update: Sadly, instead of joining us in the 3rd Millenium, the new Pope has a reputation for wanting to drag us all back to the last time there was a German Pope before this one, the 11th Century. I guess I’ll go and make myself gayer.