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My mail account has a spam blocking feature, but I can view the offending emails that get ditched by the screeners. Out of curiosity, I looked at them today. This was quite original, or at least it was new to me: Hello, Sincerely, This was followed by links to several porn sites. Sleazy, but interesting way to drum up porn business. * Friday, January 18, 2002
I spent the last day and a half moving into my new office. Promotions have been banned in my agency, so my only upward mobility will be in the form of improved geography. I now have a larger office with a very large window. No extra money, clout. prestige, or vacation time. Just square footage and a view of the fruit stand across the street. But that's more than I had last week. *
Before the play Wednesday night, we killed time in a pet supply superstore. Janice only buys the finest food for the cats, and the supply was diminishing. We had gotten what we came for, when Janice spotted little plastic nursery pots of grass. Yes. grass in a pet store. People who don't have cats don't realize that they love to eat grass. The pet store owners know this. Our male cats especially seem to seek it out whenever they go outdoors. Marvin's first order of business is to chew a few blades as soon as he's released from the house. Despite the fact that we have over an acre of grass at our disposal, for which we are already well mortgaged, Janice decided that these little pots of the exact same grass were must-have items for the cats. So for $2 we bought a 3X3" pot of grass. Usually cats tend to reject any noveties you bring them from the store, but the grass investment was a wise one. All four of the cats went ga ga for the tiny plot of turf. We pluck three or four blades and hold them in front of a cat's face, then hope we don't lose our fingers. Smudge is especially enthusiastic over the green treat. So when you see grass in the pet store, now you know why it's there. * Thursday, January 17, 2002
As promised, I am reporting back on our evening of theater. Janice met me at my office yesterday for dinner and a show. We first ate at The Blue Dog Café, which you may have guessed, is owned by George Rodrigue, our local folk artist who became an international pop artist when he stumbled onto the blue dog idea. I doubt that he paints at all anymore. The blue dog art on the walls looked like they had been produced by a graphics firm hired by the artist. He makes millions with those things. You never know what will be a hit with the public. I won't review the food, since I am no connoisseur, but Janice and I agreed that it was exactly like all the other food at every other Cajun restaurant in Louisiana. If you tourist here, and think you've had real Cajun cooking, you are very much mistaken. For the genuine article, you have to be invited into someone's home. I'm sure this applies to all cultures. Off to the theater. As I predicted, Frank Gorshin was the real talent of the show. He's aged quite a bit, but he still gives a good performance. His character, Willie Clark, was an old Jewish Vaudevillian who was being pressured to do his old act one more time with his old partner, played by Van Patten. The set was a dilapidated New York hotel room, which was impressively built. Gorshin's character had become a shut-in curmudgeon who's main contact with the outside world was his nephew, a theatrical agent. The nephew sets up the reunion with Van Patten's character. Honestly, Van Patten could have been substituted with any aging actor, or even someone from the audience. He added little to the part, but he did seem to remember all of his lines, so let me not be too picky. The part of the nephew was played by James Van Patten, presumably Dick's son. You didn't have to be Isaac Newton to predict the apple's trajectory squarely at the base of the tree. The Sunshine Boys is a Neil Simon play, with all the witty one-liners you would expect. There were plenty of laughs, and I didn't find the humor to be predictable. What always amazes me about plays is the way they seem to pass so quickly. A 2 ˝ hour movie seems to last forever, but on stage, two people have a simple conversation and next thing you know, the play is over. I felt like I had sat through a 45 minute production as the curtain fell. Now that I think about it, our evening demonstrated the whims of public taste. The Blue Dog... Van Patten. By all rights, Frank Gorshin should have been the more successful of the two actors, and Malcolm Liepke should be a household name over George Rodrigue. But I have never been one to understand taste. * Tuesday, January 15, 2002
I guess this will be our season of old-fashioned entertainment. Tomorrow we're going to see Frank Gorshin and Dick Van Patten do "The Sunshine Boys", and next month we're seeing a live performance of A Prairie Home Companion. "The Sunshine Boys" tickets were purchased at a fund-raising auction at the yacht club. I think we were the only ones who bid on them. No reflection on the act -- the bidding was dreadfully slow that night. No one was interested in bidding on much of anything. Janice warned me not to back out as the performance drew near. That's what happened last time we bought tickets at a benefit auction. That time was for the Harlem Boys' Choir. Janice ended up taking a friend because I wasn't really interested. If memory serves, that was also the night of Shane's birthday party in 2000, so I had an excuse to beg off. Janice returned from the theater claiming that it was one of the best performances she'd ever seen. She says that every time I back out of a date. To this day she raves about the Russian ballet that I missed. For years we had season tickets to Community Concerts, but a person, especially a man, can only take so much culture before he's compelled to unfasten his pants and make inappropriate bodily noises. I think I needed to look at paintings or go to a play to keep me interested. The concerts all started to sound the same after a while. I'm actually interested in seeing Frank Gorshin. If you're my age you remember him as The Riddler from the Batman TV show. If you're younger, that's probably all you know about him. He was actually the Jim Carrey of his time, ironically enough, but without the success. He was very talented at things that just don't make you rich. We loved him back in the 60's, but he just seemed to fizzle quickly. Dick Van Patten... eh. He's as successful as he really needs to be. I'll let you know how the performance came off. * Monday, January 14, 2002
Archives are back! I don't know what I did to lose them, but if you're new to this site, you might be interested in past posts. I still don't think I've topped my very first post. Things like that just don't happen every day. *
We had another interminable staff meeting last Friday. It went kind of like this: The staff slowly dragged into the meeting room, clutching cups of coffee. The Program Specialist, Denetria Hawkins, was the facilitator today. She was immaculately dressed, a tell-tale sign that she no longer had to frequent the projects and trailer parks. She had a maroon zippered day planner, which never left her side. She'd be lost without it. A larger binder, which followed her to important meetings, contained the contents of every policy manual in the foster care system. This was her own creation. She condensed a bookshelf full of manuals into one binder by miniaturizing four pages at a time on the copy machine set at maximum reduction. In recent years, she has had to lay a plastic magnifying sheet over each page to make it readable. It was 8:15 a.m. Time to start the meeting. She never waited for stragglers. "I‘ve got good news. Something that will reduce paperwork a little bit." No one showed any enthusiasm. This was one of the most common of empty promises. "Starting immediately, it is no longer mandatory to submit form 38 part 2 to the Social Security Office for kids who meet DIFSA criteria." This nugget of good news was met by a room full of puzzled faces. "We've never filed anything with Social Security on DIFSA kids." Mary Wilkerson said, hoping it was true. "Well you can stop as of today." "I've never even heard of this. We don't even have form 38 part 2 in stock." "Well, last Fall we got a directive mandating that we report all DIFSA kids and any MIFSA kids born after July first, 1996 to Social Security. The Legal department at State Office postponed implementation until we could get a clearance on whether it was a violation of confidentiality. They decided that it is a violation and we are to stop immediately." "But we weren't doing it to begin with." Denetria let out an exaggerated sigh that seemed to say Why do I have to work with these halfwits? "People, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth. This is a time saver. Just enjoy it." Around the room, everyone's eyes rolled in sequence as though they were doing the wave. "I've got a question." Pepper Benoit spoke up. Famous beater of dead horses. "If a kid meets DIFSA requirements, but not MIFSA, do we still submit the form." Another wave of eyes rolled. Denetria stifled another sigh. Her voice took on the tone of a kindergarten teacher. "All DIFSA kids are automatically MIFSA eligible. But, as I said, we can now stop sending the form." "But we've never sent the form in the first place." Mary said, speaking to thin air, not to Denetria. There was no point stating the obvious at unit meetings, but human nature is hard to resist. "Let's move on to the next agenda item. State Office Policy Memo 17-436 now forbids using state vehicles to transport clients to pay their utility bills. The sole exception will be during times of extreme hot or cold weather when children would be at risk. Under such circumstances, your Program Specialist's approval is required." Pepper couldn't resist. "If we're transporting a client for some other reason, and we're passing the utility company anyway, can we stop and let them pay their bill?" "I'll have to get a clearance on that from State Office." Denetria jotted a note in her day planner. This one question could cause a ripple of email that could last for weeks. Mary wanted in on the fun. "What if you're transporting two clients in the same van. One of them is approved to go to the utility company and the other isn't. Do we force the other one to stay in the van?" Denetria ignored the question. Pepper attacked from another angle. "Can't we use our own vehicle to take them to the utility company?" Everyone knew that Pepper would never allow a client to ride in her car. "I'll need to get a clearance on that." Denetria wrote another note to herself in the planner. "But can we use our own vehicles while we're waiting for the clearance?" "I'm not sure." Denetria was starting to lose the match. "I'll request clearance on that too." The system would soon be choked with email. Pepper was responsible for the bulk of bandwidth waste on the agency's network, though she never once used a computer. (Just kidding. This is actually a bit of my own fiction. But believe me, that's what my job is like.)
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