Weak week:

Not having a good day.
I am currently starring in my own personal zombie film.

I am just exhausted. I have been all week. All two days of this week – which is really the ten-day stretch to broke-as-a-joke (three left). If I did not have the loss of a job to contend with I might actually be concerned about my physical health. That is, if I didn’t have a reason to feel like shit then I might suspect the presence of some scary health monster under my bed. I have been eating like crap on the empty coffer front. I am not a picture of radiant health and am treating my staff to an unshaven Sherlock wishing he was Ho(l)me(s).

Staff:

An angry staff member called me at home last night at eight p.m. to bitch about the November schedule. Two of the staffers are fighting over the Friday night five to nine shift, the worst shift of the week and they both want it. “I hear what you are saying. I hear your concerns. This is no longer my decision. I’ll pass your concerns along tomorrow when I meet with Deby.” SEP, no, scratch that… SEFP – somebody else’s fucking problem.

Managing other people blows big chunks, every unforced error is yours not theirs. If only you had trained them better, been there to hold their hands. Shit flows both directions in the middle kingdom.

This level of exhaustion seems unnatural, ah the toehold of depression and self-doubt caused by the Chinese water torture of my last days in office.

I reread my blog for the last few months. I did that before I went to work this morning. It seems like every other work related post begins with, “I had another exhausting day.” I am crispy fried burnt out. “I feel like I could get fired at any moment.” Good call there, K. Last week I had the energy to be angry and involved. This week I’ve got nothing. I’m over.

I need about a week to rest and recover from the toll that this lame duck presidency is taking on me. Maybe I should have just walked last week when I was feeling strong. Need the cash, as principles don’t pay. Today, as I watch the Cardinals tank, as I fear for the coming election, I feel like I am perpetually on a losing team. It has ever been thus. The things I value are not generally valued by the culture in which I find myself and I watch commercial after commercial wondering, “who are these people?” The zombie film: they are stalking us and they want our brains. You better be careful or they’ll turn you into one of them. Gulliver in the land of the white bread SUV. Consumer America, consumed and digested, life force leveraged for litter.

I have that, “can’t get ahead” feeling of personal and financial quicksand – I need to master the fire swamp of unplanned retreats. Confucius recommends flight. Get liquid and get gone ASAP.

There are many things planned for this weekend… we do this thing in poker sometimes when we are playing night baseball, you’ve got a blind hand and you turn over cards until you beat the last best hand, if you run out of cards before you beat the best hand you are forced to fold and any other player who is still in the game can, if they choose to, bet your death to build the pot. It’s a moment in the game to cheer failure.

In night baseball, the pot building game that it is, an early death on weak cards can save you big in the long run. This weekend I was hoping that my friends would bet my death and celebrate the end to all this exhausting servitude to the servile, however, I may be too tired to enjoy said festivities. This week of the World Series there is plenty of night baseball to go.

Funster Follies:

Friday night – party at Erica’s to celebrate her birthday.
Saturday – family time am, poker game pm
Sunday – family time and then the house warming at Hannah’s
Monday – Jobless Joe goes job hunting and files for unemployment online – Ebay launch
Tuesday – voter fraud
Wednesday – jubilance or the weeping and gnashing of teeth

I think we’ve lost some readership here over the partisan posting. Ah well, the journalist’s illusion of objectivity does not mirage in these here hills. Many noted historians have weighed in on Bush II as clearly the worst presidency in American history, as intrinsically evil and corrupt as they come. I guess you get it or you don’t. What’s the phrase? Scared stupid. All the numbers are bad except the polls; bear markets and body counts (it must have been all those references to Poland in the debates).

Come on America, shine for me. Tap that ketchup bottle in the sweet spot and cover my burnt burger, with all the current police state paranoia and oil slick greed, in a flavor I can at least pretend is good for me. Can I get a side of civil liberties and some health care with that? Let’s rejoin the global community and stop letting our least common denominator guide the show.

I have three days from yesterday to make a bid on the ghostwriting contract. Here is my initial intended offer: upfront two party contract, fifty dollars an hour research & writing time plus any travel expenses to interview etc. – total ghost no personal credit or presence in the book – no residuals – 1,000 retainer – 25,000 cap for initial draft – six month schedule. Thoughts?

Can I really take this job when I am utterly convinced that the new age movement is an ethical quagmire of shimmering charlatans? My boy is selling special pens on his web page – special new age pens. Wouldn’t I be better off in a south side dive slinging Budweiser to the union boys? I gots me some perpetual internal class warfare folks, right here in Carlo city. It’s all chutes and ladders and I am worn of climbing, it might be time for a little south side slide.