silly white blog

for the second day in a row, there is a chimpanzee in front of my house. my only guess is that my neighbor is using it for some kind of movie he is doing. when i drove past him yesterday, i did one of those extreme double takes that you only see in low budget comedies. my amazement was quickly replaced by fear, however, as i noticed a car barreling toward me down our narrow street (as in, too narrow for 2 cars to fit at the same time). the guy didn’t even slow down as he narrowly missed hitting me head on. i have no conceivable idea how i am not in the hospital right now with a massive head injury, muttering something about a chimpanzee in an oversized t-shirt.

for a radical change in subject, i start my new job on thursday. a few weeks back i had written a heart wrenching tale about how i really wanted this job i didn’t get. turns out the person that was hired didn’t work out and i am the runner up. one’s pride must take a second seat to good design.

other events this week include a decades-overdue call by the black community for a ban on rap artists using the n-word. seriously, why has it taken so long for the universe to realize that no one should be allowed to use it? this comes right on the heels of an altercation my brother had at a target store in princeton, nj, in which a black woman called him a “honky” . if i were there, and i weren’t too scared, i would have said to her, “hey weezy, 1972 called and they want their derogatory word for white people back,” and then pause for laughter. she also called him a “cracker,” prompting me to finally make an effort to find out exactly what is up with that term, and whether or not i should find it more offensive than i do (which is not really offensive at all).

according to slangcity.com:

“Back in the 1700s, cracker was a derogatory term used by American whites to describe poor Southerners of their own race. Since then, its meaning has become more generalized and it is often used by blacks to describe whites, especially racist whites.

You can find the word as far back as Shakespeare, when cracker referred to a loudmouth and boastful person.

Other colorful ideas about the roots of this word include cracking whips, and white people’s resemblance to Saltine crackers.”

so now you can go out and educate the world with your cracker knowledge, cracker. or you can just come over here and check out this chimp and see how every one of us came from the same place, and how crap like this just really shouldn’t matter.

over the past few years, i swear i have made a solid attempt to do good things. when i was in seattle, first i tried to volunteer to walk dogs that were being held in a local shelter, waiting for adoption. i was so pumped for this one. this would definitely make me feel useful.

sadly enough, however, i arrived to the training meeting approximately six minutes late and they wouldn’t let me in. this really blindsided me, because where i was from, in los angeles, being only six minutes late actually made you early.

turns out their next training session was 8 months away.

for my next attempt, i signed up for a training session to be a mentor to an at-risk child. this required two full days of sitting in a small room with about ten other potential mentors. i was puzzled that they all made it through the screening process, since most of them were freaks; one of them sneezed and coughed all over everyone for 16 hours instead of going to the hospital where she belonged, and another was an old guy who was definitely crazy. the latter kept interrupting the training to tell us all stories of his life, and/or how he felt about a particular subject being discussed. my guess is that he tacked on an extra 2 hours to the training. i learned more about his life than i did about mentoring.

the only saving grace was that i was able to blow off some steam by exchanging eye-rolls and heavy sighs with the girl sitting across from me. and at breaks we got together and bitched about crazy old guy. you know, just like jesus would do if he were in that situation.

at the end of the two days of my life they stole, they told the 95% female crowd that there was a shortage of little girls who were at-risk, and what they really needed were adult males to mentor boys. and i never heard from any of them again.

this brings me to today. after months of being interviewed by strange interior designers and/or getting shot down for jobs i really wanted, i decided to respond to an ad on craig’s list to work part time as a type of therapist to children with special needs. there is a small, nagging voice in the back of my head that occasionally tells me that this is the type of work i really should be doing.

my interview was for noon today. i showed up five minutes early, and waited for 35 minutes before i left without being interviewed. during the 35 minutes i sat there like a damned fool, no one said anything like, “she will be with you soon” or “thank you for waiting,” or ‘i’m so sorry about this,” or “can i get you a glass of wine while you wait?”

what they did do about 15 minutes after i left, however, was call me and ask if i was still in the building, as they were ready to interview me…as if i were still hanging around, waiting for a shot at working for this fantastic company that treats their candidates so well.

so i have been thinking all day about how odd it is that i have had yet another ‘door of good deeds’ slammed in my face. and wondering if perhaps my time would be better spent pursuing evil for a change.

i had an interview last week for the first job i have wanted since my kwid internship two years ago. it was for a home-based design firm, and involved helping out this tremendously cool young designer. this was the first time i was asked to bring some of my drawings to an interview. i am proud of my drawings, i think they are beautiful. i worked tremendously hard on them.

we seemed to really hit it off, and i loved the samples she showed me of her work. she has only been in the business for two years and she has already been published in elle decor. although the interview seemed to go very well, as we were saying goodbye, i knew that she had already decided not to hire me. i didn’t know why, but the evil voice in my head says that its because i fall just a bit shy of her coolness threshold. maybe not much, but enough that she decided pretty quickly that i wasn’t the one. although i already knew the answer, the news, as politely as it was delivered, hit me really hard. as i said, this was the first time i had shown anyone my work.

so today, i staged a protest. i laid in bed all day and watched movies instead of working on a huge drafting project that is due tomorrow. i guess i will just have to deal with my instructors disappointment. he probably didnt have high hopes for me anyway. and i just don’t care right now, because i am still a child. and when a child dresses up in grown up clothes to come over for a play date and show you the pretty drawings she did, she will cry when you reject her. and protest. and kick things. and watch garden state for the umpteenth time and order in thai food. and maybe have a nip of champagne to celebrate the agony of defeat. elle decor is kind of pretentious, anyway.