In which the business community of eastern Oklahoma relents and provides our hero with a job.

This is a slightly retouched photo of the building that houses my new office. I've taken the logo off the crown of the building to preserve a modicum of corporate anonymity. You can't see in this picture, but I'm on the ground floor under the cupola down in front. I have one very busy window I can look out of. There's a good deal of coming and going outside.

It's a hotel, if you couldn't tell, and I'm one of the new sales managers. This means I sell the meeting space, and I also sell blocks of rooms to groups who are passing through town. If I can combine the two things, then so much the better. I wear a tie, sometimes even a suit, though things here are generally much more casual than at some of the bigger hotels and in some of the bigger cities, and I can get away with much more. The occasional open collared shirt, for instance. Perhaps khakis.

I was hired on Monday of last week, and started on Wednesday. It's a salaried job, rather than based on a commission (thank sweet jesus), and comes with amenities like a 401k, insurances of various stripes, the requisite vacation days, and free food in the restaurant. I get to order, tip, and just sign my name on the final bill. This is -- almost as much as the regular salary part -- the best part of the job to date. I'm expected to treat clients to lunch, if possible. They expect me to do this.

Now that I've landed on a relatively steady island of employment here in Oklahoma, I can look back and actually count the days I was adrift. Considering that the last day of my job in Chicago was October 19, 2007, and I was given the offer here in OK last Monday February 25, that adds up to four months and one week of sporadic employment. The "sporadic" designation comes solely from the generosity of my former employer, who payed me to do consulting work on the web for them in dribs and drabs.

I think you can agree, though, that 4 months+ is a fuck of a long time. It sure felt like it from here. It wasn't for lack of trying, though there were times that I'll admit that sometimes a day or two would limp past and I couldn't even begin to think about tweaking or retweaking my poorly functioning resume. Or overwriting my letter of introduction --again -- into something either far too formal or insultingly familiar, just for variety's sake. Or shuffling through the local paper's appalling job database and hoping against hope that my queries would bring back something less depressing than "call center representative."

I'd had so little success here that I was beginning to think that the proverbial job market was telling me that I wasn't marketable at all. Or rather, that my rather rarified set of skills (independent film producer? check. long-time barkeep? check. Client Services Manager at a . . . whatkindofplaceisthat? check.) was, in the end, unexplainable to anyone who didn't already know me. Which is the entirety of our new fair city. I'd begun to get this sick feeling that my worth as a worker had been grossly inflated in Chicago, and here I was getting a sense of my true value, which was essentially bupkiss.

But someone at my hotel made an obviously rash decision and took me on. From their point of view, anyway, it looks rash and risky. From my point of view, they gave me a hell of a break, and hence well get my sustained best efforts. That is, until I can be convinced that I'm a touch more marketable here than when I started out.

Mashup Candidate

My wife found another one. A piece of viral weirdness out there in the Netiverse about Obama. I have no idea where it came from but it's jaw-droppingly weird, and strangely uplifting at the same time. Take a look.


On one level, it's really not much more than your standard web artifact. It could be any DJ playing around with Garage Band and Final Cut Pro, sharing via the newest app for sharing, and getting some feedback. The pallette is pretty familiar.

Of course, we'd seen another mashup not more than a week or two ago, this one from Will. I. Am. It was such a strong web meme that it spawned a sharp satire of the McCain candidacy by a poster called John. He. Is.


There're other images out there, too. For instance, the one done up by the OBEY GIANT people:





Here's a poster that I saw several times in Chicago, one that I've started to mentally call "The African School Teacher."





More cribbed from around the web:




There's even ObamaofDreams.com which has come up with some compelling sportswear for the Obama-supporting baseball fan.



Of course, it's a Presidential election. Image controls the country at this point, and it's certainly no surprise that Team Obama has piles and piles of media out there for consumption. Hillary and McCain are also undoubtedly right there with him, their own printing presses going full steam to churn out the message, minute by minute.

What's becoming apparent, though, is that Obama has achieved meme-hood. He's a presidential candidate, of course, and the reality of his candidacy is its own thing and exists in its own political world. But his branding is so strong and his core message is so solid, that he's now not simply political, he's societal. He and his candidacy are a thing in themselves within our culture, separate from the race for the White House.

What this means is that his image is free to be mashed up. He's deconstructable, reinterpretable. Illustrate him as Che Guevara, illustrate him as Steven Biko; illustrate him as FDR, illustrate him as Malcom X. Do a little spoken word song with his speech in North Carolina. Put him in his own Bollywood video and chop up videos of his speech so he's singing in Hindi.

While there's no straight political line from Bollywood to FDR, the conclusion might be that Obama is already so deeply embedded in our culture that he signifies something else as well besides the next 4 or 8 years. That there's a Platonic ideal forming out there, The Candidate Obama, that we can refer to going forward, and to which the actual real life individual, Senator Barack Obama, and his historical trajectory might not always compare favorably to.

A stretch? Perhaps so. He's not been around long -- I know, I know, no need to remind me -- and on a cultural scale, not to say political scale, he's been around even less. He's got "phenomenon" written all over him, and we all know that that can lead to nowhere but eventual disappointment (cf. Bill Clinton). But looking at the things that people are creating around him -- and because of him -- makes me really wonder whether he's hitting a vein of something for which he alone among the candidates seems to have the correct shovel.

You're not dead if you're still receiving mail

My remote blog-island has been finally discovered by the marauding boats of the Interwebs, in one of the truest and most official ways there is: I've been tagged. Streak was the one who finally did the honors, and instead of bringing poxy blankets he gifted me with this little ditty:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five other people.

Fuck. One, I don't know five other people to tag, and two, I was going to let this blog die, slowly, off in the dusty corner of the web, of starvation and neglect. A stealthy retreat of sorts, under radio silence, and while the Greater Internet looks the other way.

It seems, however, that while I may be done with the blog, the blog may not be done with me.

Here's the answer to my tag. The United States Secret Service in the Late War, by General LA Fayette C. Baker. The book is a gem, rescued from one of the forgotten shelves of my late Grandmother's library. My edition is from 1890. The sixth through eighth sentences read:

I now beg to say a few words in regard to the gentlemen who have been elected by the disunionists to serve in the Legislature. They have publicly said they owe no allegiance to the Government, and they further say they are not citizens of the United States, and also say they had rather see the Government sink to hell , than to see the Southern Confederacy lose the slightest victory.
These, sir, are the men elected as our guardians in the two branches of the Legislature.

The next paragraphs are more endless talk of the South and the North and the despicable disunionists. Within the next ten pages or so is an excellent color plate of Union men disinterring a pine box from a potter's field, an embarrased padre standing there, looking at the sky. The caption reads: "The Coffin Contained Fifty Six Sharp's Rifles." It's a great book, and almost exclusively because it's more than a century old.

Like I said, I don't know enough bloggers to make this truly worthwhile, but I poke Tallasi and You're Being Ridiculous just to prove I'm giving this a sporting try.

Portraiture with Daisy
Originally uploaded by annus mirabilis

It's a hard day. We had to let D go this morning.

She was old and ill, of course, and life had been more difficult for awhile. Overnight, her breathing became labored and by this morning she was mostly unresponsive. We had to carry her to the vet on her sleeping bag, used like a stretcher.

She went painlessly, helped along by an excellent and compassionate vet -- nearly in tears herself -- and us sitting on the floor with her, giving her pats. George, one of the vet hospital's adopted cats, snuck into the room and made a nest in my duffle coat to watch the proceedings. It was strangely comforting. He seemed to know precisely why he was there, which was to help Daisy along.

A proper eulogy is impossible. It would be a eulogy for my 20's, for most of my adult life; for my relationship with my wife, for my marriage. She's been a crucial party to all the action. It's funny that a pet could hold such an esteemed position but ask around, and everyone who knew her knows it.

Anyhow. Raise your glasses, everyone. It's early on a Monday morning, and a perfect time for a toast.