oselle | Dispatch from Shitsville (Reply)

It's been a rather shitty week. To sum up:

On Monday, I had a a very bizarre encounter with a co-worker. We've worked together for seven years and are friends outside of work as well. We've always gotten along very well but then on Monday out of the blue she went psycho on me. She was doing a layout for me and I had written her a note asking her to change the color of some headline type, suggesting "maybe use a contrasting color like one from the logo below" (the logo was bright oranges and reds). She only changed it from one shade of pale blue to another, almost identical. Because she only works part-time I had left her another note last Friday night asking, "Can we try another color, plz?" (Note that this was the fifth version of this layout and I still wasn't getting what I asked for). On Monday morning she came into my office literally bellowing and slamming the damn thing on my desk, yelling at me "You said maybe! Maybe try another color!" and calling me all kinds of horrible shit that all boiled down to "Who the fuck do you think you are?" I sat there speechless under this barrage of abuse and then she stormed out of my office. We've barely spoken to each other since.

I know her well enough to be really concerned about this. She has a weird little mean streak that occasionally puts her on the warpath against certain people. I've seen her try to "take down" other people at work, usually under the guise of being some sort of "truth teller" who's trying to expose what she views as their incompetence. I don't think she's going to be able to do that with me -- my eight-year record there speaks for itself -- but I have no desire to spend my scant energy on fending off the onslaught of jibes, goads, insinuations and closed-door meetings that are part of her arsenal. I don't know if she's going to go this route with me but at the very least she owes me an apology. I've known her for seven fucking years She's one of the few people I've ever invited to my house. I've read Frog and Toad to her daughter. So I don't know what the fuck happened to her, if she needs help or what, but it was an unsettling experience and one that makes my already dreadful work situation that much worse.

And yes, work is dreadful. On Tuesday I got a first-thing-in-the-morning phone call from my publisher who was about to go into a meeting in Mississippi and wanted to know where the Powerpoint presentation was. Now, I had asked him THREE TIMES, more than a month ago, if he needed the presentation deck I'd prepared in a Powerpoint format. He said "no" each time. Half an hour before the big meeting he's looking for the non-existent Powerpoint. Am I supposed to be a fucking mind-reader? "No" means "yes?" I've seldom come so close to blowing a blood vessel in my head. I could feel it pulsing.

And yes, I still regret turning down that job in May. I regret it every minute of the day and quite a few of the night. This was a colossal fuckup on my part and there's no amount of rationalization that will make it go away. They're laying people off and cutting back on our health insurance and I could have been out of there. I've had it with myself. Honestly. It's amazing I can dress myself, I'm so stupid.

Speaking of stupid, I'll confess that I'm a little surprised by the apparent lack of interest in Lazarus Came Forth. I mean, I know it's no masterpiece but it's not that bad, is it? Golly. Should I just stick to posting filtered J2 porn or what?

I've also been battling a horrendous infection whose details are too grisly to divulge. It looks like that's finally coming under control, but only after spending several hundred bucks on assorted doctor's appointments and prescriptions. And don't even get me started on my appalling and out-of-nowhere chronic acne problem, on which I have also spent several hundred dollars, to no avail. There's nothing quite as much fun as having pus on your face all the time, is there?

What else? Well, my sister got kicked out of her apartment because the house was sold and she's moving into a different and much shabbier apartment tomorrow and needs me to send her some of my anti-anxiety meds because she's too stressed out and depressed to sleep. I think my parents' building, where they've lived for almost fifty years, has been bought out by a slumlord and my dad wants to move but my demented mother doesn't and where the hell would they go, anyway? Oh, and no less a journalistic authority than The Wall Street Journal is suggesting that Barack Obama may just be too darn thin to be president. Gee, Rupert Murdoch buying that paper sure didn't change its editorial slant, huh?

I just missed the first half hour of the Doctor Who season finale. Is this show getting nuttier or am I just getting too dumb to follow it?

*scratches head*

In other news, I have a strange desire to see this new movie Death Race. Anything with Joan Allen playing a badass is fine with me and I'm happy to see any middle-aged actress getting to play something other than someone's mother or a district attorney. And if "Welcome to the Jungle" is actually on the soundtrack like in the commercial? Even better.

Saw the first billboard for HBO's True Blood the show Raelle Tucker left Supernatural for. I'm just so sick of vampires, but I'm relieved to find out that the True Blood beverage ads that are pasted up all over the city were just part of a viral marketing campaign and not some sort of blood-red beer for weirdos.

I don't think Daleks are all that scary. And you know...Billie Piper can sometimes look spectacularly ugly. I do love Donna Noble, however.