I have now rejoined the ranks of the gainfully employed. Yeehaw! Not only did I get a job, I got TWO jobs. I'll be your friendly waitperson at Bella Luna, and the person who aids and abets you in your caffeine addiction at Torrefazione.

It's been awhile since I've done the customer service thing, and I think it's going to take me a few more days to readjust, but so far I like it a lot. And service jobs are definitely more conducive to meeting people than temping in an office somewhere; I already heart my coworkers. So yeah, I'm a happy kitty.

And the $2 beers at the Milky Way don't hurt, either.

Oh yeah, and I get to go back to Santa Cruz for a few days. My excitement is boundless. Kathy is my goddess. Kathy, if you're reading this, you are my goddess. God. Dess. Those of you at the Rush Inn...be forewarned. I'm coming back. Mwah ha ha ha ha!!!

I'm doing my best not to let the thrills of unemployment get the best of me. I'm putting up a semi-decent fight. I think.

I just started an internship at Beacon Press, and this internship was one of the things that I had high hopes about before I even got out to Boston, so that's a good thing. It's one day a week, unpaid, but even after only one day I feel like I've learned new things. I'm excited just to be there. And I just hope I meet all those important people I could potentially meet who could potentially find me a real, live job some day. I'll just have to brush up on my networking skills. Or something. Yeah.

And I'm pretty sure I got a job at this coffee shop down on Newbury Street, Torrefazione. The manager told me that I was basically hired, but that, due the changing student schedules and all that other fun, end of school year stuff, he doesn't yet know when or how often he's going to need me. So I just have to sit tight for a week or two (hopefully only for a week or two) and then I'll be back behind the counter, your friendly espresso queen once again. I'm actually kind of excited about the prospect of working in a coffee shop again. I really miss it.

I'm heading down to the bookstore this afternoon to beg for a job. Wish me luck.

God all this job search stuff is boring. Sorry. I promise to be more entertaining next time.

So, the company I interviewed with didn't hire me. And the temp place kicked my arse the curb. Apparently my distaste for the job was more apparent than I thought. So I have joined the ranks of the unemployed. I actually just found out that said company didn't hire me, so I'm still in the early stages of disappointment and I'm feeling more than a little deflated.

Good thing we have Spinal Tap to watch tonight.

I moved all the way across the country because I wanted to work in one specific industry. I want to be an editor, it's the only thing I really want to do in the world. I know I'm qualified, and I know I'd be damn good at it. I don't want to waste the hours of my day being an Administrative Assistant for some company I don't care about, or serving eggs to a bunch of snarky people who probably look down on me because they have great jobs and they assume I'm uneducated. I want to be an editor, and I wouldn't even mind starting out in the freakin mail room, or serving the boss coffee, as long as I was doing it in a publishing house. I'm not in college anymore and I don't want to the kinds of jobs I had when I was in college. And I'm pissed that I live in a time when people have to spend their whole lives working the kinds of jobs they had in college because there is nothing else out there.

Oy, I'm just venting because I'm frustrated. I'm trying to be optimistic, and even to look on the bright side of working in a restaurant or coffee shop- at least I'd be able to meet people, and possibly have some kind of social life again.

I'm not always this grumpy. I just want a job.

Oy. I wish I had something interesting to say, but I don't. I just need to kill time. I'm struggling to stay sane. The last 15 minutes of work sometimes seem to be the worst. They were obviously invented by the Axis of Evil. I don't know what I'm going to do if this company I interviewed with doesn't hire me. I haven't had any other prospects return my call for gainful employment, and this temp thing is the worst thing I've ever done.

In other news, I'm getting kind of addicted to this.

This might be one of the funniest articles I've ever read. These people can't be real. They are characters from some wacky novel. I swear.

Whoo-hoo! Updates!!! It's like a miracle or stuff. I actually wrote something. And let's just say that from now on, you can expect updates weekly. Riiiight.

My friend put this song on a mix tape she made for me, but she neglected to write who it is on the case. Jeorb. It sounds a little like Pinback. But I can't tell. It's driving me mad.

As is this temp job.

This sounds like a great idea.

I'm trying to convince myself the living in the US is not becoming a nauseating endeavor, but my convinction wanes a little more everyday.

"Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of ground forces in Iraq, issued a proclamation putting Iraq's politicians on notice, saying, 'The coalition alone retains absolute authority within Iraq.' He warned that anyone challenging the American-led authority would be subject to arrest."

But we aren't there to run the country for them. We're fully committed to an Iraqi government for Iraqis, made up of Iraqis, and under Iraqi control. Obviously.

You can read the article from which the above quote comes here.

"We've made clear to Iran that we would oppose any outside interference in Iraq's road to democracy." -Ari Fleisher, White House spokesman

Right. Because the US obviously doesn't constitute outside influence. This must be a new game, the "Let's See How Arrogant We Can Get" foreign policy game.

You can read all about it here.

Wow. I'm on some kind of roll - another new review up today.

If I don't find a decent job soon, I'm going to go completely batty. This place is starting to make me feel all full of rage and impotence or something. I hate doing busy work just for the sake of being kept busy. Especially when you know that what you're doing really isn't useful to anyone. I really don't want to complain too much. I'm just tired. I kept dreaming that our cat was breaking into my room and trying to eat my hand. Plus, I think I heard mice scuttling around upstairs, which made it nearly impossible to sleep. Jeorb.

In much more exciting news - my housemate and I went to see The Postal Service on Sunday night, and they were so badass. It might be the best show I've seen so far. The actually covered Phil Collins. HA! It was phenomenal. I have a new love.

I'm hoping to convince my good friend, the Empress Crystal, to write some words of wisdom for the Smarmy Gator, so you might actually have something interesting to look forward to.

That's all for today. Bye now.

Real, live updates! Can you believe it? So, they're not as extensive as I had planned. Yet. But it's something, right?

For the second time in a week, I've seen the phrase "betwixt and between" in print. Perhaps the word does not mean what I think it means. Either that or redudancy is coming into journalistic fashion.

I got a second interview with the promising company I mentioned last week. I guess the first interview went better than I thought. Maybe queen laura will have a real, live job soon and will be able to extract herself from temp purgatory. It's an Editorial Assistant position, and getting an Editorial Assistant position was the whole reason I moved to Boston. I'm well on my way to world domination.

The weather is fantastic. So of course it's supposed to snow later this week. Bastards.

Yeah, my life is boring. If I could write about my secret agent undercover life, this website would be much more interesting.

It appears our grassroots campaign for the re-emergence of the word "betwixt" is beginning to show results. And even though the word is, well, superfluous in this particular sentence, one small step for "betwixt," one giant step for...oh nevermind.

I promised I would have new and improved smarmy content elsewhere at the site about 2 weeks ago, and as you've likely noticed, no such thing has occurred at this juncture. That's because I'm a lazy bum. I'd like to blame it on some kind of writer's block and lack of inspiration, because that excuse at least appears to have some heft and substance to it. But no. I'm just a lazy bum.

Our party was rad. I saw Spoon the band last night and they were Spoonirific. I have a very promising job interview tomorrow. I've been reading some very excellent books. I haven't been getting nearly enough sleep. I've been trying to continue my recent venture into the world of linoleum printmaking. This is my life. There isn't very much writing in it these days.

But there will be. I should stop making promises, but I can very nearly almost guarantee that in the next few weeks you will find on the Smarmy Alligator:
-A review of the splendid Spoon show
-A review of "Leaving Atlanta," and quite possibly an interview with the author, Tayari Jones
-An article on temping and the current working environment
-More advice from Wilson Phillips and other pop stars past their moment of glory
-Probably some other stuff

So I got in trouble for "using the internet for personal reasons" here at work. Hence, updates are going to be even more infrequent until I can figure out how to get myself a computer at home.

This temp job is crap.

But it's April 1, meaning it's almost spring (even though it snowed yesterday), and we're having a party this weekend. So I'm trying not to care about how much crap this job is.

Yeah.

Last night my housemates both concocted emergency plans with their folks in case of, well, emergency. Now that we've actually started dropping the bombs, everyone's guessing that it's only a matter of time before some kind of holy hell is dropped on us. My mom was worried when I talked to her on the phone. Being in Boston, I'm apparently much closer to the "danger zone" than I was in Santa Cruz (the only reason one would attack Santa Cruz would be a strong hatred of patchouli stink), but I politely scoffed at my mom's concern, and told her I didn't think there was really much of anythng to worry about.

So I was pretty surprised when one of my housemates told me her family's emergency plan was to meet at the family farm in Texas. I mean, I was thinking emergency plan of the duck and cover variety, not Stephen's King's The Stand variety. Suddenly I'm having mental pictures of travelling across a country of burnt rubble, searching for any other form of human life. Am I naive in thinking that's really not bloody likely?

Alright, so maybe a lot of people would say I'm naive as hell, and that that naivete is what makes Americans so stupid, provincial, and hated by pretty much everyone in the world. (And don't think that because some nations are 'supporting' us in this war means they don't hate our stinking guts. They're just smart enough to know that if they don't have a lot of global clout, they should keep their hatred to themselves.) But am I the only one who thinks our Department of Homeland Security protection measures are a fucking joke? I mean really. A color-coded alert level chart seems more suited to Sesame Street than to domestic security. Duct tape and plastic sheeting? I want to know how shifting a bunch of bureaucratic departments around in Washington to create a big new department with a pathetic sounding name is going to protect anyone.

I said it a year and a half ago, and I'm going to say it again. The only way we can prevent terrorism against us is to stop terrorizing other people. We still have yet to take a good, long look at our foreign policy, and our history of international interference. Maybe, just maybe, talking to people about their grievances, and about our own, instead of running around like a bunch of belligerant 14 year old boys, would be a much more efficient and intelligent first step in the "war on terror." But I suppose that would require intelligent people in charge of this country, and god forbid we allow that to happen.

Oy vey.

There's only one good thing that can come of this - maybe people will start to realize that Bushie is a moron, and we'll get a new and improved president in 2 years. Although I'm not sure that would really make much of a difference.

So it's completely pathetic that I haven't written anything new in over a month. I keep telling myself that I'm still adjusting to the move, and that once I'm settled I'll get back to writing, but that's really just a half-arsed excuse because I'm lazy. And I've been spending too much time watching the first season of Six Feet Under on DVD. My housemates and are obsessed. I mean, I've been obsessed for a year now, but I made sure they became obsessed, too. I'm serious. Once you start watching it, it's like a drug. And having the season on DVD means you can just keep watching. I'm glad we didn't rent every episode at once, or I probably wouldn't have had any sleep in the past week. I am usually much too attention deprived to watch tv for more than an hour. That's how good this show is. But I digress.

I really want to write something. There are crazy things going on in the world, and I feel like I should have something to say about them. I just moved across country, to a strange and foreign land (if you're from California, everywhere else is a strange and foreign land), and I feel like I should have something to say about that, too. I've been reading a lot of excellent books, and seeing a lot of great movies, so I should probably have something to say about those. My brain just doesn't want to function in any way that would allow me to write a cohesive, polished narrative about anything at all. The most I can manage to pull out of my arse are brief sentences, maybe even a whole paragraph. Anything more just feels repetitive and pointless.

Hm.

I'll have updates by Monday. Real ones. I promise.

Hm. This is very strange. Today was my first day at a very thrilling I'm sure new temp assignment. I arrived at the office of the Worker's Comp Research Institute at 8.45 am, ready to begin very thrilling I'm sure tasks like data entry and filing and what have you. Well. I've been here for over 3 hours now and have yet to speak to my immediate supervisor, or be given anything resembling work to do. This is unusual. In all my years of working for temp agencies, and being sent on assignment to all manner of strange places of business, I have never been left to sit alone for 3+ HOURS on my very first day. I already read the news (which I haven't really been able to do for a few weeks, so that was great) and caught up on all my email, even writing to people to whom I nothing of interest to say. I'm feeling paranoid that I'm going to get caught fucking around on the job, but there is no job to speak of! And they specifically wanted me to come in today instead of Monday for why?

In other news, it is damned cold today. I'm not just saying this because I'm a wimpy little California girl, oh no. Even the natives are shocked and dismayed at the extent of the evil cold today. I thought my head was going to freeze and fall off on my short walk from the train station to the office. The wind was intent on hurling little particle of icy badness into my eyes, and I think some very crucial part of my brain is now frostbitten.

Is it time to take a lunch break yet? I mean jeez, I've been working so hard.

So here I am in Boston. It snowed yesterday. A lot. Alright, it probably wasn't a lot to the natives, but to me, it was a lot. Today it's all melting and muddy, but I still think it's pretty.

A funny thing I read and an interesting, in a scary, thought-provoking kind of way, thing I read:

-People have apparently taken to calling the French "cheese eating surrender monkeys." I think that is one of the funniest things I've ever heard.

-As reported in the Washington Post: Nearly half of all the duct tape sold in America is manufactured by Henkel Consumer Adhesives in Avon, Ohio. Henkel founder Jack Kahl gave more than $100,000 to Republicans in the 2000 elections.

I still don't have very consistent internet access, so the Smarmy Alligator will be relatively silent for awhile as I search for gainful employment. Wish me luck.

Yesterday we went to the new Salt Lake City Library. For some reason, I really didn't expect such an amazing library in Salt Lake City, Utah. And I thought the library in Boston was neat.

So I left Santa Cruz and am on my way to Boston, with a pitstop in Salt Lake City (which is where I am right now). Today we're going to go look at the mormons.

I won't be updating too much for awhile, but be patient. I will return shortly.