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Wednesday, 19 September 2001 (perfect sense, part ii) 6:30am My last day, I should point out, isn't until a week from Friday. And if I'm able to find another position within the company (presumably the ones listed in the job openings still exist, unlike mine) then it'll be more like transferring. I'm going to try, but I'm not holding my breath.
Or I could pretend to send a message, to just walk away (severance package in hand, natch)
and say to hell with 'em all. But I'm not that brave. I don't want to be unemployed.
I don't know if that makes me too proud, or not proud enough.
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Tuesday, 18 September 2001 (perfect sense) 10:00am We just had the big departmental meeting which was originally scheduled for last Tuesday regarding "staff reduction and restructuring." I don't know much more than I did before, except that the axe is still there. The Den Mother's replacement is having individual meetings with everybody today, presumably presumably to let us know if it's fallen or not. Mine's at noon. And then the rest of my life, whatever direction it takes. 1:27pm *THWUNK!* thud-thud-thud 8:27pm The Den Mother's replacement is clearly an amateur at this sort of thing, since she didn't have a box of Kleenex on her desk. As anyone who's read Downsize This! knows, you should always have tissue at the ready when you lay off an employee. So when I started to tear up—or, more accurately, when I was no longer able to hold it in—all she could offer was some napkins from her drawer. That, and some sympathetic tears of her own, which I believe were genuine. She was not enjoying it at all. And though a representative from HR was there to explain the severance package, none of the legendary 12 Very Large Security Guards were to be found. Maybe they've all been sent to New York. (There's an irony which hasn't escaped me: that this all certainly would have happened last Tuesday were it not for The Great Overshadowing. For me, life was fated to change dramatically no matter what.) I'd managed to regain my composure by the time the meeting was over, and thankfully I didn't cross paths with anyone on the way back to my office, though I did find myself wishing I still habitually wore sunglasses inside. (I don't do it anymore, since I'm trying not to hide quite so much, plus there's this certain guy who also wears sunglasses all the time, and I don't like him because he's hassled Maddy about her musical tastes, plus he's a dink, so...well, it's not like it matters now, huh?) I went back to my office, locked the door behind me, turned off the desk lamp—it was suddenly too bright, even by the cavelike standards of my soon-to-be-vacated office—sat down on the floor next to my desk and let out the burst of tears which I'd managed to mostly keep inside earlier. I then called Maddy, who immediately left work and picked me up. Not sure what else to do, we went home. It was about half past one, and it became very obviously very quickly that staying home wasn't going to do either of us any good so we left again and went to our favorite sushi buffet in Japantown. After that comfort gorge we indulged in a bit of retail therapy at the Goodwill across the street (wherever I end up, I still need new work clothes) then saw Ghost World at the AMC Kabuki. As we were watching the credits, a woman came up and asked us what we thought of the ending; I explained what I thought it meant, and she saw it as being much darker, saying that she was a glass half-empty type. It was hard not to laugh. Lady, my glass has just been emptied entirely, and even I don't think the characters committed suicide. We got back home to find a message on the voicemail from Maddy's boss's boss (or her boss's boss's boss, something like that), the head of IS, chewing her out for leaving early. He's a self-hating fag who has demonstrably had it in for Maddy since the first day on the job; he's no fan of me, either, as before Maddy interviewed with him, Trevor warned her not to make any reference to being in a relationship with or even knowing me. It's bad enough that we clashed over Outlook, and the fact that I'm femmey or I think I'm a girl or whatever the hell my problem is just makes it worse. Bottom line is, he's an asshole and made a bad day which we'd just about been able to redeem spiral right back down. So I join the ranks of unemployed webmonkeys. There's a whole hell of a lot of us out there, many of which I know to be much more qualified than myself. I'm given the option of first dibs on jobs within the company, but the pickin's are scarce at best. The severance package is fairly decent, particularly since I've been with the company for over two and a half years, plus there's unemployment... I'm just not ready for this. Not now. I haven't finished electro (though I believe I'm very very very close), my voice still needs work, and...I guess I have to seriously ramp up the business of changing my name. I don't want to go into a new job without being fulltime. It was scary enough with a company I'd been with for so long, and I need the slate to be clean. Not that they won't be able to tell, but at least nobody'll know my birth name so they won't be constantly correcting themselves. No doubt the scare quotes around "Sherilyn" will be obvious, but... Did I wait too long? Have I blown it? And I still have a couple of my student loans to pay off, and the car, and...and...I'm not a big spender, but perhaps if I'd been more responsible with my income while it was steady those things would be done with now, but I wasn't, and they aren't...and now it's too late...what's most annoying is that I liked my job. I wasn't among those secretly (and not so secretly) wishing to get laid off. Ignoring for the moment how much more tight it would make things for us financially, if Maddy lost her job it would be like a mercy killing. Yeah, I know. Boo fucking hoo. There are other people with bigger, real problems. But I'm not them. And I'm sure I'll get over this.
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Monday, 17 September 2001 (what god wants) 11:37am The appointment with the speech therapist went well. She seems happy with my progress, or at least my potential for progress. At the very least, I don't have nearly as far to go as many of her clients. I heard the ghost of a past client; since her computer's down we worked mostly with her tape recorder (as well my own for future reference), and she was reusing an old tape. As we listened to our recordings, an old one was occasionally audible in between. It was most definitely male and mine wasn't, not really. Not definitely. Not like it used to be, at least. It's so hard for me to judge these things, just like it's difficult for me to tell what my face really looks like. Regarding which, she said she figured I'll have a much easier time of it than most because my face is quite feminine, plus I make good eye contact.
She's suggested that I see her again soon, before the Vegas trip and the move
into the new building—that is to say, before I go fulltime for real. A very good
idea, although scheduling in the next few weeks is going to be tricky at best...
After being out for the last few days of last week, Maddy got to work to discover a flag had been hung in the office. There's really no way to object to that sort of thing without opening a huge, endless can of worms. (Just like there's no way to wage war against an unseen enemy without opening a...oh, never mind.) I'm very surprised that anti-flag burning legislation hasn't been pushed through yet. It's only a matter of time. I haven't been forced to give the pledge of allegiance for many, many years. Again, I fear it's only a matter of time.
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Sunday, 16 September 2001 (even in silence) 6:08pm The first thing I'm going to do when I see Phil tomorrow afternoon is tell him that I don't want to talk about what's going on. With any luck, that'll keep me from having to be polite when he inevitably recounts the Nostradamus urban legend. It's quite sad how many otherwise very intelligent people give that sort of thing the slightest credence. We went shopping in the Haight yesterday. A few stores had flag/patriotic stuff prominent, but otherwise there didn't seem to be any hint of current events. I don't know what I thought I'd see. Maybe some evidence of a pro-peace movement, however low-key. Nothing, though. Now's not the time, I suppose. Or maybe it is, and nobody realizes it.
"Support Our Troops" stickers have started popping up. Is it wrong of me to ask
what troops? Leftovers from Desert Storm, presumably. And it makes a sick
kind of sense considering a $40 billion war is about to be waged against an enemy
which is amorphous at best. A war on terrorism? Here's hoping it fares better than
the war on drugs. Or maybe I'm just a "clueless liberal" like my new hero Barbara Lee of Oakland,
the lone member
of Congress who voted against granting Bush war powers.
Makes me want to move across the Bay so she can represent me.
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Saturday, 15 September 2001 (folded flags) 7:43am At least we still have Noam Chomsky. |
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Friday, 14 September 2001 (towers of faith) 5:35am From sfgate:
Everyone from Bush on down (up?) says we aren't going to be living in fear, but then the entertainment industry cripples itself just in case. But just in case of what? Yes, we're all quite weary this week from these sorts of images and the reality behind them, a reality which had been abstract at best to most Americans. (Myself certainly included. I've never been to New York, so in a lot of ways it's all still theoretical.) So now we're just going to pretend they don't exist? That they can't be represented in art, even art which was created prior to the incident? Is the American psyche so fragile? Both the trailer and poster for Spider-Man have been pulled because they feature the WTC towers, and they'll also be removed from the film itself. The towers don't get damaged in any way , but it's been decided that simply depicting them at all is disrespectful. (I wonder if future editions of the 1976 King Kong will have a different cover.) Mind you, the movie itself means nothing to me, beyond a curiousity it being a return to form for Sam Raimi. I don't even give a damn about organic webshooters. Is this our new strategy, to defeat the enemy by pretending the targets never existed in the first place? Seems a far cry from "Remember the Alamo," or more recently, "Remember Pearl Harbor". Yes, I do realize the primary differences: both still stand, they were military targets, and the public wasn't bombarded with images of the destruction everywhere they turned. This is far from unprecendented, of course; O was shelved for almost two years because its subject matter was deemed too close to recent school shootings. Every time it was about to be released, shots were heard again and the movie got held back. Mind you, everyone who's seen the film agrees that it's a strong statement against school , but the studios are acting under pressure from politicians—i.e., Viagra spokesman and wannabe cradlerobber Bob Dole—who don't care about details, the kind who declared the violent, misogynistic and (how ironic) Arab-bashing True Lies to be friendly to the family since it starred a Republican. (Dole shortly thereafter admitted he'd never seen the film and recanted the statement.) In that respect, this all makes perfect sense. Finally, a violent domestic tragedy which can't possibly be traced back to the entertainment industry in any way (not even Doom or Marilyn Manson), so it's no wonder they're to do whatever they can to seem supportive. Something very similar happened during World War II, the difference being that Hollywood devoted itself to pro-war propaganda, movies with square-jawed Americans roundly kicking the asses of weaselly Japs. Mind you, the Japs were played by Chinese actors, seeing as how the Japanese-Americans were in concentration camps. Now that's good ol' fashioned American resourcefulness. Nowadays it would probably be CGI. Conspiracies are a no-no? While I'd all but given up on The X-Files, now I'm damn curious to see how Carter works around this new taboo. (Then there's the Annabeth Gish thing.) But how is "anti-American sentiment" defined? What defines America? The people, or its government? If I'm opposed to the actions of the government but don't have anything against the people, does that make me anti-American? Yes, probably, if the Gulf War is any indication, and this could be much, much worse. And if there end up being troops to support... I'll bet you anything that if Three Kings hadn't already come out, it would be shelved for being critical of American foreign policies (the same policies which, if you don't tow the party line, may have been partially responsible for provoking the attacks) and showing some Arabs in a positive light. And not even Arab-Americans, but genuine AY-rabs.
I may be thinking about this too much.
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Thursday, 13 September 2001 (flaming red) 5:41am The departmental meetings about staff reductions have been postponed until at least next week. (I can only hope that it's for Monday, when I'm gone. Whether or not I'm present for the meeting won't affect my employment status.) What I find curious is that up until now, that the meetings were about the layoffs hadn't actually been said outright. I guess they figure there's no point in pretending anymore. I still haven't folded my hands together and implored gawd to give us a fucking break, but I've donated money to the red cross. I wonder if I still qualify as insensitive. So Congress spent most of yesterday condemning the attacks. My, there's an original sentiment. Still, I don't doubt that if anyone missed that particular day, they'd get slammed for it in the next election: "The current congressman didn't condemn the brutal, barbaric attacks on our country...do you really want him representing you?" The prevailing theme was bombing Osama bin Laden and/or Afghanistan into submission. A few did point out that we still didn't know for sure who was responsible, but I'll bet they get slammed in the next election. "The current congressman opposed swift retaliation against the barbarians who attacked our country..."
KPFA has been keeping me going, though, a reminder
that I'm not the only one who suspects that working for peace is more important that vengeance.
It was an unpopular point of view during the Gulf War, and I suspect it'll be even moreso now.
These may be difficult times for those who are Different. But at least I'm a real American and
not a towelhead, huh?
Because so many Americans seem to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are responsible.
It pains me how familiar this all seems.
Changes, both subtle and gross: after almost a year of irrelevance, The Big Boss has finally moved out of his office. It's mostly just been a place for his stuff lately, and the only reason he was kept on the payroll was an ostensible role in the design of the new building. Now that the move is imminent, his time is up.
As if to provide final proof of just what a dickweed he is, he took his refrigerator with him. It's one of those tiny
models with an ugly woodgrain front, and he brought it in when he started six years ago. He never even kept it in his
office, but near Summer's desk. It had become the official refrigerator for our department, but it was his to begin
with so he took it. Because he could, you understand. Its absence is more of an annoyance than anything else—there's
a regular fridge in the kitchen on the other end of the floor from us—but I'm sure he thought he really stuck it to us.
Lay me off, huh? I'll show them...I'll show them all...
In the train station this evening, I saw something relatively new: the guy in the booth demanding to
actually look at someone's transfer to make sure it's valid. Usually all they have to do is see
that you have one, and that's plenty. I assume it's some kind of security precaution, though it
strikes me as a bit silly. A terrorist will pay for a yay-hundred dollar plane ticket, but try
to avoid a $1 train fare? Whatever it takes to feel secure, I suppose.
I kid, of course. (Is it to soon to be making jokes like this?) (Yes, probably.) Tonight was TGSF's mid-month event, at a SOMA bar called The Holy Cow. I'd met Fallon a few weeks back at the last event and was looking forward to talking with her more, but because of the snafu at the door she was only able to come in long enough to say she had to leave. Figures. Other than that, the evening went well. In a sentiment others echoed, I wasn't sure whether I was up for going out, considering the circumstances; as a strong depression was gripping me on the way home, I realized that after a while, these circumstances demand it. You can only watch teevee (or listen to the radio) for so long; eventually reflection on the horror of it all gets to be too much, and you simply need to get away and live just a little. To face the music and dance, as it were. Look at it this way: if the mysterious they we're hunting down is trying to destroy our way of life (I hate talking like this because it's so damn jingoistic, but there you go), then isn't the best way to show them they haven't won is to continue on with that way of life? To take advantage of our civil liberties before those claim to be protecting us have a chance to take them away? Okay, enough justification. I got a few incredulous looks over the course of the evening as I said that I'm not quite full-time yet, at least not at work. I was informed that it's hard to believe, since to look at me—well, even at my most made up I'm not that made up, so I can't look all that different when I'm in boi mode. I suppose they're right. (Soon, honest, real soon...) I was also asked, quite seriously, if I have a straight boyfriend. I replied that, no, I have a queer girlfriend and am very happy with her. At home later when I mentioned it to her, said queer girlfriend pointed out that if I was with a boy he couldn't be considered straight. I'm not so sure I agree with that, since if being with me would mean he wasn't straight (ergo I should be considered male), wouldn't that mean that she herself is straight? Of course, it was a very sleepy comment made under the influence of a migraine, and I'm racking up the original question as a compliment. |
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Wednesday, 12 September 2001 (astral disaster) 9:08am Already, very stupid people are claiming that Nostradamus predicted yesterday's events. (He didn't, not this or anything else. Did I mention that they're utter fucking morons?) Not surprisingly, one of the same people also expressed the desire to see "some Rag Head ass Fried," followed quickly by "Sorry not to be so PC." Racism justified by nationalism—Desert Storm II, here we come! I realize I'm supposed to be filled with anger at the evil foreigners whom we're assuming attacked our innocent country, but it's fellow-by-coincidental-birth Americans like that who really piss me off. But we all react to this kind of stress in different ways. I don't feel patriotic right now. I don't buy into the description of this as good versus evil. Was the attack evil? Sure. Will the promised retaliation be any less evil? Nope. For all the innocent Americans who were killed yesterday, how many more innocent Afghanis will be killed in the retaliation? If the number is lower, will that be justified? Are Afghan citizens by definition the enemy? Or all the Iraqi citizens who have been killed by American bombings in the last ten years? And if they are, then why aren't American citizens? Are the others expenendable because they're not us? There are no good guys. I don't mean amongst the citizenry; I mean the people running this country. They're ultimately no better, no more "good" nor any less "evil" than whoever's responsible for the attacks. It's not good versus evil. It's just human behavior, same as it ever was. The American government does share a great deal of the blame for what happened yesterday, more than they'd ever admit. And if Osama Bin-Laden's responsible, it just goes to show how well we trained him. Remember when our national enemies weren't people we'd previously financed? Those were the days. Almost every leader and every commentator, even some banner ads, have mentioned prayer. I haven't prayed, because I don't pray. I don't believe in prayer, because I don't believe there's a recipient for said prayer. And even if I tried, even if I took a classic leap of faith and prayed just in case, I'd probably do it wrong. ("Listen, you stupid fuck, you've screwed up everything else, but...") Instead, I'm going to donate blood. At least that's real. That'll make a difference. I've never worn a yellow ribbon, nor will I wear a flag, or whatever symbol is developed to show that I'm of the body. I wonder if that's going to get me into trouble in the near future like it did ten years ago.
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Tuesday, 11 September 2001 (epoch shift) 9:04am Where were you when the world changed? 4:11pm Even though I didn't realize it at the time, I first got a hint that something was happening when I was on the train waiting to enter West Portal. I was listening to my discman, and a woman sitting across the aisle closed her cellphone and asked if my player had a radio. I told her that it didn't. She looked at me as if the answer wasn't acceptable, then asked again to confirm. I confirmed that, yes, I have no radio. She seemed disappointed, but decided I was probably telling the truth. I went on blissfully about my business. I was approaching the building when I ran into Lew, one of the senior designer types and my quasi-manager in Pike's absence. (Pike's now postponed absence, as his flight was supposed to leave today.) He asked me if I'd heard the news. At that moment in time to me the only "news" he could have for me would be regarding the layoffs. In fact, there was a big meeting scheduled for that morning regarding the future of the department, so I couldn't help but think that certain decisions had already been leaked out. Instead, he told me that planes had crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers, and that the latter had collapsed. While I don't distrust Lew, the more extravagant a word-of-mouth claim, the less inclined I am to believe it. This was a doozy, so I didn't believe it. Making a joke of it, I replied, "So I haven't been laid off?" Lew looked very confused. I assured him that I was joking. Of course, it's all too true. I was barely at work for half an hour before I went back home. I wasn't sent home, per se; rather, we were told to "use our discretion" regarding whether to come to work, and Lew was cool with me leaving. Besides, Maddy was at home with a migraine, and I didn't feel quite right leaving her alone with everything going on. Problem was, it involved getting back home from downtown San Francisco right as security was tightening. It was exactly the sort of situation which kept me away from work on the last few days of December 1999. (Well, I ended up getting ill, but pick pick.) Fortunately, the trip home on the bus went smoothly. And we've been glued to the screen ever since... |
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