Category: Other People

Well, I’m a year older today. Getting older reminds me of the song sixteen tons, with the line “another day older and deeper in debt,” etc. It’s a song about the travails and poverty of miners. Searching for the song also pulled up a note that sixteen tons is equal to 14,514.9558 kilograms. That’s a lot of rock.

The song is a reminder to me that I am incredibly fortunate, and that for all your problems, if you are not working in a mine, you are probably lucky (although the NYT pointed out this week that taxi drivers also face a lot of on-the-job deaths and job-related illnesses, so take what you will from that.)

At any rate, I am thankful today that I am not driving a taxi in New York on the night shift. I am thankful that I am neither a miner nor a minor. I am thankful to have friends to eat dinner with, and another year gone past without tragedy striking me directly.

As Bleeding Gums Murphy might say, I play the blues pretty good for someone with no real problems.

Via Follow Me Here:

It’s unlikely that the president conceived the idea of inaugurating widespread illegal eavesdropping all on his own. He’s not that detail oriented. But there’s obviously no doubt at all that he embraced the idea, or that the notion is as deeply agreeable to him as is being The War President.

You can have health insurance if you work. You can work if you’re healthy. If you need that health insurance…

Stay healthy, kids!

Rule one of job interviews: no farting. It’s been a hard day, but now I can finally relax.

I was wrong about the recruiter. She wrote me back and was very nice. She said that the position she had in mind required someone who had been in charge of product marketing… I asked her about graduate school and she said an MBA never hurts your career prospects.

Being a recruiter means being nice to everyone, because everyone knows someone who might be a customer. The commission might not be as good for me as for an executive, but then again, I might send an executive candidate her way…

I went and saw Sarah Silverman’s movie Saturday night. It was, of course, filthy and hilarious. Sadly, a lot of the best jokes were given away by the reviews and commentary I read beforehand. They were still funny, but they were not surprising.

I also got to try the Vya Vermouth that my friend Peter T. recommends so highly. I thought it was just OK, and that was a real relief, because it’s expensive and hard to find, and I’d just as soon not develop a taste for some fabulously expensive new beverage right now. It’s bad enough that Bookdwarf is getting me hooked on Law and Order.

Later, my opinions of Blink.

Governor Mitt Romney has announced that he won’t be announcing his decision about whether to run for re-election until later this year, so as not to cloud the various legislative issues currently under discussion.

On the other hand, his comments that the US will become like France if it doesn’t improve its schools (if I’m not mistaken, they’re already worse than French schools) and that legalizing syringe ownership sends a bad message to kids (the message he wants to send is apparently that addicts in this state are just not sick enough and deserve to get AIDS) indicate to me that he’s going to skip the gubenatorial election and go straight for the White House in ’08. He certainly can’t win another state election if he keeps treating Boston like it’s Salt Lake City.

The Morning News tells me that this is National Beard Month. Fortunately, it also coincides with me becoming unemployed and searching for misguided, wacky dollar-stretching and penny-pinching techniques, such as not shaving!

Plus if it gets long enough, it’ll keep me warm and I can save on the heat bill too!

I missed the pre-release viewing of Sarah Silverman’s movie Jesus is Magic at the Coolidge Corner Theater last night (part of the Boston Jewish Film Festival), because it was sold out. But I saw her on Comedy Central in the Hugh Hefner roast, and in the Pam Anderson roast, and of course I saw her in the movie The Aristocrats. She was brilliant in all of them. Steve Almond gives “Jesus Is Magic” a very positive review and although I did not like his most recent book (The Evil B. B. Chow) as much as I liked his first (My Life in Heavy Metal) I trust that review. And not just because it agrees with my preconceptions. Because it agrees with my preconceptions, and Steve Almond is funny. So I plan to see “Jesus is Magic” when it comes out in general release, or on DVD.

Anyone who is intrigued should definitely read the revealing and funny New Yorker profile of her, now available online. I highly recommend her work to anyone who doesn’t mind filthy, filthy humor coming from such a pretty, pretty mouth.

Note that this is almost a week after I hit my face on the bedside table at the hotel. The original bruise extended pretty far up the forehead and was swollen to occlude my eye.