quasify

You have a job. You enjoy the getting paid part of that arrangement. The work isn’t terribly satisfying but you’d rather the money coming part didn’t stop.

ENTIRELY HYPOTHETICALLY, say your boss, or some senior staff member says something that rubs you wrong, puts you in a bad light. You are bad at making widgets, they roar. A totally unjust assessment. Or worse, maybe it’s partially just (f’n-a these particular widgets are boring anyway) but you were hoping that your failing would slide. But today, it doesn’t.

Step 1) Don’t respond in anger. Answer any substantive points as dispassionately as possible, but avoid the temptation to lash back, particularly on email. This part is where it helps to have work friends you can trust.

Step 2) Redouble your work efforts. If the original criticism had elements of truth, address them. This step has a 1.4% chance of working.

Step 3) Completely out of character, start wearing a tie even though it sometimes makes you want to throw up. From now on out, become one with the drone. This way they’ll know you’re serious, or at least put them on notice you’re either a) a friggin’ professional already or b) up to no good.

Step 4) Clean up resume and start looking at non-academic positions. If you’re going to be dealing with this sort of widget obsessive disorder, you could move on to business-land where it’s an understood part of the package but the salaries are (one deludes himself into thinking) a little more decent. Try not to think about the lingering recession & nationwide unemployment rates.

Step 5) Don’t go all complaining about your really mostly decent life on a semi-autobiographical blog with google linkage to your real name. Play with your puppy. Sleep well, you can try again tomorrow. Tomorrow, I have faith you’ll conjure up a masterful widget-fu.

I’ve been away from here for a while and while I do intended to retro-blog some things that have happened in the interim I have to post briefly about this. Brief recap: The New Pornographers were scheduled to perform at Calvin College but the show was canceled, due to community perceptions about their name. As someone who spent a (fairly disastrous) year at Calvin in the mid-90s, I find this infinitely amusing.

Let’s go to the tape.

The band’s name, to some, is mistakenly associated with pornography. Consequently, Calvin, to some, was mistakenly associated with pornography. Neither the college nor the band endorses pornography. The Student Activities Office regrets the way this has happened.

Three points:
1) While I was at Calvin, The Barenaked Ladies came to perform*. There was considerable self-congratulatory back-patting regarding our own progressiveness for tolerating a band with such an incendiary name. It looks like we were ahead of our time.

2) At some point in high school, my mom pulled me aside to ask me about this why I was into this “Porno for Pyros” (based on something she found that I had left on our dot matrix printer). I’m only glad she didn’t find the actually pornographic/pyrotastic/siamese twin fetishistic cover art for Nothing’s Shocking. Who is this “Jane” friend of yours and what exactly is her Addiction anyway?

3) I myself have gotten caught in the spell of Neko Case on more than one occasion. This condition can last for weeks and there’s no assurance you’re coming back. She can single-handedly destroy your enjoyment of other female vocalists. So yes, The New Pornographers are a dangerous band.

*Also, Hootie & the Blowfish. Which of those is the greater crime?