I'm Mr. Bright-side
Tuesdays are generally dull, according-to-script days, exactly the kinds of days I revel in. People generally tend to leave me alone and the day more or less takes care of itself. The biggest deal on a Tuesday is generally the publishing of a new edition of the Onion (last week's top headline was "U.S. Finishes A 'Strong Second' In Iraq War", which is still funny one week on).

But oh no, not this Tuesday. This Tuesday is a swirling torrent of unresolved/unresolvable shit all at once. For my high school and college age readers, I admit you have more melodrama on a day to day basis. As you are tossed into actual real life afterward, much of the melodrama subsides and is revealed as hopelessly shallow and insignificant (this revelation can only be achieved in hindsight, sorry). Your life becomes a long series of More Of The Same which is either fantastic (if The Same is good, as mine is) or Excruciating (if you're a Sad Miserable Bastard).

Either way you will from time to time encounter a cluster of events to navigate every once in a while just to keep you alert. I heard someone describe a soldier's life once as (I'm paraphrasing) hours and hours of sheer boredom punctuated by moments of terror and panic.

That sounds about right.

The minefield:

1. Layoffs are coming at Mrs. Pops' work. This is a company that has never turned a profit since being spun off, just to give you an idea the kind of financial geniuses we're dealing with. Layoffs start today and will end by Friday. Why they can't get it all done in less time just goes to show you that corporate America, usually described as coldly, ruthlessly bureaucratic, does have a sense of humor. A cruel, sadistic sense of humor.

So we twist in the wind for a few days. The really great news was that the entire product line my wife has just transferred over to work on is being cancelled. As in cancelled. We don't know if that means they're going to kill it all immediately or they will finish up the products already in development and simply suspend all future endeavors. If it's the latter she might have work in this area for the next 12-18 months. If not... um... it was nice knowin' y'all.

She's taking Friday off for a function at my kid's school, so we should know by Thursday. Ideally. It's 9 am on Tuesday and I haven't heard anything yet, so so far so good.

2. Speaking of school, we have our first ever parent-teacher conference this afternoon. I'm concerned by the possibility that my child may be the devil. They send weekly status reports, very short numerical reports in a series of categories. Last week he got a drop of one point and a little tiny note in the Plays Well With Others box. The note said "kicking".

And that was all. Kicking. The mind reels. Is he indiscriminately kicking other kids? Kicking holes in walls and/or furniture? Kicking holes in other kids? No, if it were the last one I'm sure I would have heard more about it by now. Probably on the news.

A tangential point related to this is the realization that I am officially, at the tender age of 30, past it. I can no longer pass myself as young. Not only have I slipped completely out of the 18-25 demographic to the point that I can no longer even see it in my rear-view mirror, but now I'm the type of a person who goes to parent-teacher meetings. I'm (and it sickens me to say this) a member of the community. The only consolation I take is in knowing that I am not a respected member of the community. I am confident that once the community gets to know me I can put off "respected" almost indefinitely. That's the sort of thing they put in obituaries.

3. Lastly for today, it is exactly one week to the day until Election 2004.

Aaaaaand... cue bin Laden!

We have the option of voting early out here and probably will do today. I was totally going to vote for Bush until this whole 400 tons of missing explosives thing. Well, that and the fact that he is arguably the worst president in the last 75 years, if not the history of the United States. That kind of dampened my enthusiasm for the man.

The good news is after the election, we'll have the equivalent of four or five Florida 2000s to keep us all in good blog material for months and months to come.

Well, the rest of you will anyway. Me, I'm probably going to have to get a job or something in order to pay for the extra expense of internet access. Apparently there are people who actually have to pay for this stuff. The time I spend working (important stuff... french fries do not make themselves, people) will, of course, cut into my blog time so I'll have internet access, but no time to write anything. O Cruel Irony!

If this is my last post, I leave you all in the capable, freakishly large hands of my close personal friend MPH. Sure he's funnier than me, but you'll have to do with posts that are concise and easy to follow and without the paragraphs and paragraphs of wasted set-up material.

Do the best you can.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.8


Pops

- posted by Pops @ 9:21 AM