Frantik Girl
Thursday, November 27, 2003
My Goddamn Train
I guess it must be two years ago now, I was hired by the Bon Marché (aka BonMacy*s) to schlep office furniture and banquet tables from one end of this god forsaken building to the other. That didn’t last long. Not because I’m a dilettante who’s unused to hard work, but because they found a better use for me painting and building fashion show sets. That lasted a great deal longer then they’d originally intended, as things tend to do in the Department Store of the Damned; and eventually Summer morphed into Fall. Then the CEO gave my boss a simple task. Build a new train set to go into the corner window. My boss, gave that simple task to me.
There are sets on Lord of the Rings smaller than this fucking window, yet for several months I worked mostly alone (me and the store carpenter, John who had the IQ lower than his t-square and a pathological liar to boot… still, he could build a solid miniature bridge, by gum). Using highly toxic, yet sticky fun materials, I built the ground, the mountains, a house, the track layout, the tunnels, and so on. Once I got some actual temp underlings to push around and direct in the mayhem, I was the happiest geek in Wonderland. It didn’t come out perfect, there were some problems moving the thing from the basement to the window (you mean the pieces are too big to fit through the door? Who knew?), but it was beautiful.
Two years later, they’re putting it up again. Knowing this time that it took more than a day to get it in the window, they started a week early and they rewired the trains and lights as they went. It’s a bit knocked around… chips of pink and blue insulation foam are showing through the snow and rock. The mountains don’t travel well, but the trains have this dirty, grey snowy look which is wonderfully gritty and wholly un-Christmas.
I miss my train. I wanted to climb all over it again and touch up the nicks, but that spray snow crap sticks to your clothes and I’m dressed for the office. I want to run the trains just a little bit and see if the switch tracks are finally working like they’re supposed to. But most of all, I want my fucking name put back on it. The first year, all of our names were on a small plaque in the corner of the set… now that plaque is gone. My credit is gone, and for an artist, that’s truly and completely fucked. Fucking bunch of corporate fucking whores taking MY TRAIN… MINE! I BUILT IT, IT’S MINE I TELL YOU YOU SHIT SUCKING, COCK TONGUED TWITS!
Perhaps I should speak with someone at the Bon about this oversight.
Proud Member of the American American-American Association
Cartographically, America is divided into North and South: two separate continents among the world’s big seven, despite the fact that they are contiguous, or were so before Teddy Roosevelt cut the umbilical through Panama. Linguistically, we divide America into three units: North, Central and South America. Ideologically, the people of the United States divide it four ways: AMERICA… in all caps with the letters alternating red, white and blue; Canada; Mexico; and All Those Drug Dealers South of Mexico. We are Americans, all those other people living in the Americas, are entitled to any other cultural identity they wish; but we and we alone are Americans.
The rest of the Americas seem to be content to allow us this bold, simple declaration. After all, we need something cool to call ourselves; we don’t have the advantage of a creative, descriptive name for our country. Panamanians, Canadians, Brazilians, Peruvians, Venezuelans, Mexicans have taken pity on our appellatively impoverished nation and granted us ‘Americans…’ A name with a touch of Latin-esque class, and something that rolls off the tongue infinitely better than: United Statelings, USAers, or United American State Dwellers.
The rest of the Western Hemisphere has been generous indeed; but we Statelings have taken that generosity for granted. For instance, how many times have you seen a nine-toed, crimson-naped, Republican staking out the employee entrance at a Wal-Mart waving a sign reading, “America for Americans,” and spitting tobacco juice at hard working, undocumented Guatemalans? Or perhaps you’ve heard of a little spat called The Mexican-American War? For that matter, a Mexican-born naturalized citizen of the United States was an American before ever setting foot in the land of the free, so for the sake of clarity, shouldn’t we refer to him or her as a newly minted ‘Mexican Central American American?’
Then there’s Canada. If Canada were to ever truly piss us off by turning into a third world nation, we’d have to find a way to make them not North Americans anymore. North America is reserved for American people; which is why, despite the utter lack of any geographic or topographic distinction between the South of Texas and the North of Mexico, Central America begins at the Rio Grande. I suppose if Canada’s liberal drug policy, national heathcare and gay marriage cause it to slip into third world status, we could start calling it Norther America. More likely however, the President would declare that Canada was exclusively North America; Mexico was Central America; all that other stuff down there was South America. While The United States became Simply America… a new continent for, by and of The Simple.
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Why I Want to be a Life Coach
Apparently, there are people in the world… they work at Microsoft most of them… who make six figures and yet feel dissatisfaction. Who knew? Maybe they can’t get their teeth that extra shade of white, or worse, they didn’t even know that their teeth aren’t white enough. A Life Coach tells them that they need their teeth whitened. A Life Coach takes them shopping for clothes and cars and encourages them to Carpe Diem and take that trip to Aruba. A Life Coach listens to people with too much money, tells them to do the things that they already want to do, then holds their hands while they do it. A Life Coach tells people how to be happier.
Whether or not rich people are satisfied with their bourgeois lives doesn’t interest me. What does interest me is getting paid hundreds of dollars an hour for this “work.” That, my friends, interests me.
“But Kat,” you say, “I’ve read your online journal and I know for a fact that you are a screwed up, neurotic person who hasn’t the slightest idea how to make herself happy, let alone someone else…”
Let the Reverend Kat ease your fears. One thing my Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology (Graduated with Honors) taught me is that people with psychology degrees, from the lowly BA to the PhD, are all fucked up in the head… that’s why they study psychology in the first place. But a Helping Professional doesn’t talk about themselves, ever. Instead, they secretly use their clients as paper dolls, dressing the clients in the clothes of their own neurosis and then pushing the client into taking actions that the psychologist is too afraid to take themselves. Life Coaching is the same, only with fewer years of postgraduate work and more shopping.
But how does one break into this morally corrupt, yet lucrative field? I have some ideas. First, I need a business license, because when the inevitable lawsuits start rolling in, I want to have everything look legal. Then I need to put out an ad in the newspapers… or some magazine that rich people read… maybe hand out fliers at the Jean Juarez Salon. Once I get a client, I have to draw up a waiver that absolves me of any and all responsibility for: moneys spent, credit debt, crushed dreams, paternity suits, addiction problems or illegal activities incurred by the client… “This contract is for YOUR protection, Mr. Client…”
I’m gonna do this. Just see if I don’t.
