Wednesday, March 30, 2005

The post that requires Ritalin

Alright, I moved into a new apartment yesterday, having gotten about five hours of sleep before getting up to go to a job interview in New Jersey and only really got five hours of sleep last night, so this post will have shades of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder.
Random thoughts:
1. To get from Philadelphia to New Jersey, you have to pay a toll leaving Pennsylvania, but not returning. I hate to sound like a cliche, but I think people would be willing to pay a much higher price to get the hell out of New Jersey than to enter it.
2. Why would you walk into a company, request a job application, and then pick that particular time to ask what the company does? What if, when people asked me that, I said, "Oh, we're a slaughterhouse." Wouldn't that be something you would want to know before you applied there? Maybe that's just my crazy sense of convention, but I personally don't apply for jobs at companies unless I'm well aware of what they do. If you're not careful, you could end up working for a bunch of damn Republicans that way.
3. I suck at negotiating a salary for myself. After going to a job interview yesterday and knowing when I went in what I wanted to make, I put that exact amount on this application they gave me at the company. Granted, I had gotten lost and was disoriented by being in New Jersey, but I could kick myself in the ass after putting down that amount now. I have consistently, since college, found myself in the worst-paying jobs that one with a college degree can acquire, and I have never, ever deciphered the effective speech to use to get more money. I know that I'm worth more money than I'm making, I just don't know how to get it.
4. There are some truly, heinously weird people in this world. Last night, a parking issue occurred at my new apartment. Parking spaces in Philadelphia are kind of like lap dances at a strip club. There's a fair amount of teasing involved. Sometimes, you can see a space, and you think it's a space that's close and good, and then, bam, it's a handicapped space or there's a fire hydrant there, or for no good reason at all, it just says "no parking." So, a free and clear space is kind of like the Champagne Room in a strip club, since there's no sex involved with the spaces either, but you get to touch them..I digress..I think I've lost my thought..
Anyway, so there are 4 people; there are 4 spaces. Seems fairly simple, right? No, Mr. Basement-Apartment-the-Sixties-are-Over-Let-them-Go informed me, that everyone liked to park in the same place, and when I asked him what difference it made, as the parking lot is directly next to the apartment and is a matter of walking 10 feet or 35 feet, his response was, "Well, people are just weird about parking." I think he could've left off "about parking." Freak. Plus, he told me that he did some work in archaeology, and now "I'm a tree surgeon, so it all comes together." Yeah, cos' those two things are similar.
I got to use the attitude I used to aim at idiots at Mardi Gras, which was one of my favorite Mardi Gras activities--you could be a total bitch to these drunken idiots and you would never have to see them again..Although, with a neighbor, I should probably just ignore him, and he'll stop talking to me.
5. I'm becoming more conservative as I get older, and I'm not as concerned by that realization as I once thought I would be. However, for me to become more conservative is a far stretch from what most people view as conservative. In my basest estimation, it means that I don't accept the Democratic Party line without question anymore, I do think that NPR is liberally biased and sometimes, there (gulp) are some Republicans who make sense to me.
That is not to say that I will ever foreseeably vote for a Republican, anyone whose name involves the word Bush is still dead to me as a politician, but if a genuinely moderate candidate ran, maybe I would consider it more strongly than I ever have before. The problem is that, I'm not as liberal as certain arms of the Democratic Party, and I'm getting annoyed with how those outlying aspects of the party are keeping things from getting done. Maybe I'm an Independent.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

i thought the conversation with the parking guy was funny. it's not often we get to see the democratic party base in it's full glory. and i totally get the tree surgeon, bring it all together comment. well, not really. i was just nodding my head in agreement hoping he would just go away. but you know, it just goes to show that no matter where you live you are bound to have some type of freak living around your house. just keep an eye on your trees and keep an ear for chain saws in the night.

Dorothy Parker-lite said...

You're not funny..I bet you $10 that guy voted for Nader.

Anonymous said...

he's a tree surgeon! no way he voted for a tree hugger. he had kerry written all over him. the strong smell of hemph is a good indication. and besides that, he admitted to driving one of those gas drinking trucks...remember the warning?

Dorothy Parker-lite said...

The strong smell of hemp is a Nader quality, and no, I don't remember the warning..