Charismatic Megafauna by Quiconque

Cliff’s Notes for the social sciences!

http://davidharvey.org/

If there already exists a multipart miniseries that is widely considered to be the DEFINITIVELY EXCELLENT  (or excellently definitive) film version of a book, please do not bother making a flimsy 2 hour movie about the same book.  It didn’t work for Pride and Prejudice and it’s not going to work for Brideshead Revisited.

I love Emma Thomspon, but for me, Claire Bloom is the only Lady Marchmain.

Who the hell cares?  What’s important is that, despite the scenario that played over and over in my head, I did not kill a bunch of motherfucking morons.

Today’s Dinosaur Comic sums it up.

I’ve been back at work for almost 3 weeks now and every day it sucks a little more.  My lack of patience with these people might have increased from the disappointment of not getting the other job I wanted.  But, still, there is ample evidence that these people are incompetent, evil, plotting, and dangerous, as contradictory as those qualities might be.

Consider this: for the past 2 years I have been the point person for a series of courses we offer to the general public.  When I first started working here, the college made some decisions that adversely affected enrollment in this program.  I fought for our own catalogue, mastered the registration software, worked with our publicity department in researching new markets, and basically busted my ass to pull the program out of the hole.  By the end of my first year, it was a major money-maker for the college.  The higher-ups noticed the work I did, praised me, and gave me a merit raise.

Since she arrived, the Hateful Boss has been chipping away at my involvement in this program (as long as it doesn’t mean she has to do more work, of course.  So, no, she won’t learn the software).  This recent decision to eliminate online registration means more work for me, but of course I have absolutely no say in this decision.  Fine, she’s a chest thumper and has been throwing her meagre, brittle weight around for a year now.   She wants me to do what I’m told and nothing more.

For three weeks I’ve been asking for a copy of the catalogue draft so I can create the spreasdheets we’ll be using for registration, reserve the rooms, and answer phone and email inquiries about the fall session.  Each time I asked my assistant for a copy, I was told that there were NO COPIES.  “Oh, we just sent it to the printer.”  “Oh, Hateful Boss is working on it.”   Lots of excuses, but no copies of the draft, even when the publicity people brought over the final proof. 

Recall that I work on a different floor, remote from my department because of my broken foot.  I am dependent upon my assistant to act as a liaison between me and my own job!  My assistant is an ass*, foisted upon me by the Hateful Boss in punishment for my decision last year to teach.  She is incapable of thinking on her own; so I know these denials of my request are not coming from her.  They have to be coming from the Hateful Boss.

Finally, yesterday, I emailed the assistant again, and told her that it is essential that I get a copy of the catalogue.   I don’t care if it’s a draft.  I don’t care if it hasn’t been proofread.  Hours later, my assistant comes downstairs with a smudgy copy she retreived from Hateful Boss’s GARBAGE CAN. 

In case you don’t immediately see how fucked up this is, let me explain.  I have been asking for weeks for a document essential to my job.  Each time I ask, my Hateful Boss, through her mouthpiece, the Incompetant Assistant, has told me that the document is unavailable.  And then, THE DAY AFTER the Hateful Boss leaves for vacation, a copy of the document is found in her garbage can.

*Please note that this assistant is NOT The Assistant from earlier posts such as the one about my birthday last year.  That Assistant was awesome and I miss her terribly.

The renovations of my elevator are imminent and everyone but I seems to be horrified at the idea of me crawling on my hands and knees or scooting down the stairs on my backside.  My mom tried to show me some tough love last night by parking the car far from the handicapped ramp outside my physical therapy.  The object was to force me to hop over a high curb onto the sidewalk.

Not using my right leg for three months has had profound effects on mobility.  No duh.  What I mean here is that I’ve lost the automaticity of walking.  I have to think, and think hard, about my next step, and what my other limbs will have to do to make that step possible.   And, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, if the terrain is sketchy, or I’m feeling tired, or the path seems particularly complicated, I actually find it easier to take the weak leg out of the equation all together and hop with the crutches and the good leg.

So, encouraged by my mother, I walked to the edge of the curb.  And stopped.  And looked at the curb.  And gripped my crutches.  I tried to wrap my brain around getting up onto the sidewalk.  Nothing came to me.  I put the crutches on the curb, but couldn’t get enough purchase to lift myself up.  I stood there for about 2 minutes, just looking at the ground, trying to figure out what I had to do.  And I couldn’t. 

My mother suggested holding onto the hood of the car for support.  Which SEEMED like a good idea but it was, in fact, really dumb.  But that’s what I did.  And I hurled myself onto the sidewalk and flailed my arms and lost my balance and landed on the injured foot and bashed the hell out of my wrist on the side of the crutch while my mother hovered next to me but did nothing really to save me.  I was livid.  And I yelled out, “god-fucking-dammit!”  My mother didn’t even admonish me; she knew she was wrong.

My pain and the obvious flaws in her plan did not stop her from nagging me: “You have to learn how to walk up stairs.  What’s going to happen when the elevator goes out?”

At the close of my physical therapy session, my therapist took me to the office staircase to demonstrate the sideways method of ascending the stairs.  It seemed simple when he did it, of course, because he has two working, fit feet attached to working, fit legs.  When it was my turn, things didn’t progress as well.  When I put my weight on my bad foot, it was like there was no leg in between the foot and my hip.  I was able to drag myself up one step, but it took all the strength of my arms and most of the strength of his to keep me from tumbling backwards.

So, no upright stair navigation for me, which, again, other people seem to have a problem with. TragicCrusade often says that dignity is a luxury he cannot afford.  And while he and I don’t always see eye to eye on what “dignity” means (I believe there are ways to be craven that have nothing whatsoever to do with one’s physical circumstances), I am beginning to understand a little of what he is trying to say. 

My mother (and to some extent my therapist) doesn’t like the IDEA of me crawling or scooting around on the floor, even though, to me, falling and hurting myself are far more serious concerns.  My mother worries about my clothes getting dirty.  (”Make sure you tell the super to keep the staircase clean!”–as if such a thing is possible when the entire building will be trudging up the same flights throughout the day.  How many times is the man supposed to mop?)  I told her that I just won’t wear white while the elevator’s broken.

I bought knee pads and rubber gloves.  I have moist towelettes in my bag.  I have many pairs of grey and brown pants.  I’ll be all right.

According to this story, the most popular baby names in the US have changed dramatically from the traditional and staid names that topped the list in 1950. The author, Jeanna Bryner, cites Nicole Kidman’s new daughter, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban*, as evidence of a new trend of babynaming which, in Bryner’s view, reflects an “ever-increasing diversity of names for which the inspirations range from the calendar to languages from afar.”

So, how do the names compare? Well, take a gander at the top American boy/girl names from 1950:

1. James / Linda
2. Robert / Mary
3. John / Patricia
4. Michael / Barbara
5. David / Susan
6. William / Nancy
7. Richard / Deborah
8. Thomas / Sandra
9. Charles / Carol
10. Gary / Kathleen

Perfectly “normal” Anglo names, with a few Latinate (Linda, Charles) and Hebrew (Deborah, David, Michael) names thrown in. Compare this to the new diversity of last year:

1. Jacob / Emily
2. Michael / Isabella
3. Ethan / Emma
4. Joshua / Ava
5. Daniel / Madison
6. Christopher / Sophia
7. Anthony / Olivia
8. William / Abigail
9. Matthew / Hannah
10. Andrew / Elizabeth

Whoah! Emma? Abigail? Matthew? ELIZABETH? That’s downright CRAZY! So diverse and unusual! What are most Americans thinking, naming their kids such exotic monikers as Anthony and William? My god, those kids are going to be teased right out of the schoolyard!

*Mind you, Nicole Kidman is Australian and Keith Urban is a New Zealander. But whatever, they speak English and they’re famous; so they count as American, right?

From http://anthro.palomar.edu/abnormal/abnormal_5.htm

Metafemales, or triple-X females, inherit three X chromosomes–their genotype is XXX or more rarely XXXX or XXXXX.  As adults, these “super-females” are usually an inch or so taller than average with unusually long legs and slender torsos, but otherwise appear normal.  They have normal development of sexual characteristics and are fertile.  They may have slight learning difficulties and are usually in the low range of normal intelligence (especially the XXXX and XXXXX individuals).  They tend to be emotionally immature for their size during childhood.  This sometimes results in teachers and other adults labeling them as troublemakers.  None of these traits prevent them from being socially accepted as ordinary adult women.  This type of chromosomal abnormality is less rare than Turner syndrome, but little is known about it.  The frequency is approximately 1 in 1,000 female infants and it occurs more commonly when the mother is older. (Emphasis mine).

Sounds a lot like a fashion model, doesn’t it?

I received the results of the promising interview I went on a few weeks ago.  A slim envelope arrived Thursday containing a three-sentence letter informing me that, despite my undeniable fabulousness and perfection, the college has decided not to fill the post for which I interviewed.  Fuckers.

Just got back from the doctor with promising news.  The foot, despite being swollen to the point that it resembles a scarred calzone, is healing well.  So far there are no problems with the little bones that the screws couldn’t catch.  The incision is closing up.  Range of motion has increased.

In three weeks I will be fitted with a new apparatus, one that will allow me to DRIVE.  Until then, I have been instructed to put as much weight on the foot as I can tolerate.  Still no stairs, but that will be reassessed in three weeks.

Social life, here I come!