I'm a couple of days away from employment freedom and financial slavery. Work has dried up nicely, most of my work has been farmed out to people around the globe, or just forgotten entirely. I have about a day and a half of official workday left, and then on Friday I have to come in to dump all my office gear and then I fly the coop.

I just picked up my own cell phone to replace the Blackberry they let me use for the past year. I'm gonna miss it, especially the whole not-paying for anything on it. I decided to go with a pay-as-you-go plan from Virgin, as my calculations put it at the absolute cheapest for the best service. So far that has been sort of true.

I am on my 2nd phone so far, the first one had a defective camera, so they just gave me another. This one seems to be having trouble running its applications, giving me lovely Java errors when I try to access the Email program. Yes, I'm getting a bunch of non-phone related stuff on this, if only because I would like to continue to appear to be a "with it" with my "finger" on the "pulse" of something. Which is hard when the damn thing won't work.

So it looks like it's back again to Radio Shack for me! It has dawned on me that perhaps the root of the problem is that I shouldn't have gone in that godforsaken store in the first place. Radio Shack has been in decline since kids stopped building crystal radio sets, and in their death rattle they decided to become glorified cell phone stores. And yet, they can't even seem to get that right. Why is it still so hard to get things that just work when you purchase them? Everything has to be riddled with issues and no one knows how to fix them.

They will invariably just give me another phone, which probably has something wrong with it as well. I have 1.5 days to get a working phone (the Radio Shack is right across the street from my office). After that, god help us all.

I'm going out for drinks with the ladies of my office today, though, that should be pretty interesting.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Job, Phones

"Do you sell bags of gum?"

The question was pointed towards me, standing in the 'gum' aisle at Walgreen's, trying to decide what bizarre flavor of sugarless gum I would most desired (today it's "Mango Surf"). I turned to the woman and replied, "Um ... I don't work here ..." She apologized, adding how annoying it must be to be mistaken for a drugstore employee. But considering my situation these days, is it really?

I was wearing a tie, as I am forced to do in the office, and I was standing next to a cart full of candy meant for restocking the shelves, so maybe I looked like an earnest go-getter from a previous era. The astute casual anthropologist will note the staff at Walgreen's wears drab polo-style shirts with the company name on it; I was wearing a dark green shirt and a skinny tie I bought in 1993. Maybe I just look like the kind of guy who should be working in a Walgreen's.

I thought of retorting something witty to the woman, like "Well I may not work at Walgreen's but boy, can I market to the older, ultra-affluent set. And their wealthy, layabout children." But I held my tongue. What skills have I gained from my time at this office, what will I take with me to a potential new employer?

I was talking with my coworkers (also soon-to-be laid off) and we determined that all the people we hate in the office are those who do the least, foisting their rightful work onto our more capable shoulders, simply because they outrank us. And as that Dilbert guy noted years ago, the stupidest people really do seem to be the ones who are pushed to the top of the management chain, where as Scott Adams says "they can do the least harm." People with true skills stay mired at the bottom, where they prop up the company's infrastructure. I fear I've been getting pushed into dumbening for several years now.

I've been at this job, in one form or another for over 9 years now. I have the word "director" in my job title. I, as previously noted, wear a tie to work. But what skills do I have? When I first got here I was semi-skilled, with a knowledge of hand-coding HTML and such, which at the time was still something in demand. Now my skillset has atrophied, as I spent valuable programming time on conference calls, flying back and forth to Asia to have pointless meetings with people who would later fire me only because I live in New York and they found this somehow distasteful.

Legions of nerds have come since; they have learned many programming languages as well as the other skills at which I was sort of adept at once, like Photoshop and Quark Xpress (I mean 'InDesign,' apparently no one uses Quark anymore!) Meanwhile I was filling out a Business Requirements Document and sending pestering emails to the regional marketing contacts asking them to update their office list for the website. I can think of ways to render this on a resume, but it fills me with shame to do so.

Plus I'm not even sure I want to continue down this path. Ironically, a fairly well-paid position as a Project Manager might be easier for me to get at this point than the modest remuneration of the semi-skilled 'web grunt' jobs of yore. Maybe I should shoot for that Walgreen's job!

Note: I have 8 days left at this job!

Labels: Bad Stuff, Job

Along with all the usual stuff going on, a cat we had recently trapped for TNR gave birth on Tuesday. We knew she had been pregnant but didn't know how far along she was. The two kittens she produced were clearly premature, I'm not sure by how much. One was stillborn, but the other was still alive. However, the mother cat wasn't being motherly at all, preferring to get as far from the kitten as possible.

We moved them into a room to try to lessen the cat's stress level (stress is probably what mad her give birth early, so we thought stress may have been keeping her from taking care of her kitten. Well, the mom cat didn't change her tune, she just hid behind a futon. I don't know when the kitten was actually born but the situation was getting dire. We set up a box with a heating pad under a towel and tucked him in. I ran off to get kitten formula. When I got back I got him to consume a syringe full (the kitten bottle was way too big). Newborns need formula every couple of hours so I started setting my alarm. The first few feedings went well; he was eating 2 or 3 syringes full (it was difficult to tell when he was full, but he would sort of turn his nose up to let me know). I tried 'burping' him but who knows if I got that right. Finally I had to rub his genitals with a damp cotton ball to get him to 'eliminate.' Nothing really came out, but he also had been hours born without food, so I figured I would let it slide.

At around 4am I got up to feed him. He felt warm but I knew something was wrong, as he wasn't squirmy and he felt limp. His warmth had come from the heating pad; he had died. It was pretty clear he hadn't made it, but honestly it's hard to tell with such a young kitten. I've seen newborn kittens, and this guy was probably a week away from even that level. He had no fur and could barely move by himself. The thought of him managing to find his mother's nipple to latch onto, even if she had been accommodating, seemed impossible. So maybe it wasn't all that surprising. But it's still kind of sad, the little fella didn't have much of a chance.

It's possible the mother cat rejected him because she knew this; it's also possible the mother cat still has more kittens inside her, that will be born at the right time. I'm not sure what this means as she is scheduled to be spayed on Friday. This is always a touchy area for TNR advocates. We want to improve the quality of life for cats that are here now; part of this involves sterilizing cats to prevent future cats further crowding their environment. But what do you do when a cat is so far along that her kittens can survive? This makes me imagine all manner of gross surgical situations with kittens, but I'll leave that to the real vets.

Anyway, it's still disappointing we were able to save the kitten, but we have so many other cats to take care of it would have been insurmountable to do it all. Still, if we encounter any more rejected kittens, we now have a big supply of kitten formula and a little know-how which we may put to good use.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Cats, kittens

It always feels weird working on September 11. I know stuff is going on, and the President probably had a moment of silence or something. But I dunno, shouldn't we have the day off or something? I guess we didn't get Pearl Harbor Day off, but I sometimes feel like there is a palpable push against making today into something 'special,' as though acknowledging what happened too much makes it look like we're actually still bothered by it. It's like Canada would lean down and say "Come on, you're still whining about that? Get over it."

Labels: Bad Stuff, Holidays

I am back from vacation and finally settling in enough to blog and do things people normally do. We were in St. Thomas again, which was the last place we went for a 'real' vacation almost 2 years ago. We did go to Cleveland last summer, but hey, it's Cleveland. Anyway, as you know, St. Thomas is nothing but beach-lounging and relative-mooching for a week. Jeannie's sister took care of the cats while we were gone, guaranteeing her eventual canonization. People covered for me at work for the first time in recorded history, so this trip did not involve driving halfway across the island to an Internet cafe to do 'urgent' job crap. It was very relaxing; and a good thing it was.

Getting back to work was rough, none of these emails made sense, nor did I remember why I cared about it all. My boss' boss was in town, which should have been a sign. She hadn't been to this office for over a year (she's based in the UK). But she took us out to a fancy lunch and said many nice things about our dept's work. Then like a drunken one-night-stand, the next morning brought with it long faces and muttered apologies.

"This has absolutely no bearing on the quality of your work," she assured us repeatedly. As it turned out, she had come to tell us that our group will be eliminated by the end of October. The work we have been doing will be distributed among the staff who are lucky enough to live in the UK and Asia. Despite the fact that we are a global business and are all well-versed in conference calling and asynchronous group work, management apparently has never been comfortable having the marketing people in the US. So they've quietly hired more marketing people abroad and finally threw the switch.

Reaction was a stunned silence, although later everyone said they had seen it coming. Still it's hard to be told that you're losing your job. I felt a strange sense of relief, like the billion emails I was still catching up with suddenly just don't matter anymore. Unfortunately, they still do sort of matter, I have 3 more months to slog through before emancipation. So how do you ramp up the faux-enthusiasm for work you've been barely maintaining when you know you're getting canned anyway?

I guess I can stop thinking up ways to distinguish myself in the field. No more favors! Troubleshoot your OWN printer difficulties! Create your own PDF files, dammit! I have to figure out what my job has been for the past 3 years so I can update my resume (circa 1999)!

I'm getting a severance "package" which is some money and near as I can figure, not much else. I have the option of paying for my own health insurance and receiving $405 a week from unemployment. I'd be fine with all of this but I'll be out of work going into November, not known as a great time to find a new job. I might get a new job before the deadline, but then I don't get the severance dough, right. Screw that! I wanna get paid!

So now I am faced with the notion of finding a new career, mid-30s style. I sure hope I don't have to work in the same industry as I have for the past decade. I would like to think I won't have to do web-related work, but what else is there? I have a master's degree in poetry; my main skill still is a knowledge of Microsoft Office slightly above that of a novice. I gotta find a way to work in an industry I actually care about, like music or art or cats.

Cursory job searches are demonstrating little so far. I could get a job driving the ASPCA's mobile adoption van, that would be pretty sweet. But maybe I have some other skill I could apply in the service of a discipline I admire, yet to be revealed. I dunno. All I know is I can't believe I have to stay here 3 more months before I can get outta here! Do they really think I'm gonna give 110% anymore? No! I shall give no more than 65% at any time until Halloween.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Job, Vacation

I've spent all morning downloading applications of dubious utility to my company-owned Blackberry. The reason: the company has seen fit to start blocking all manner of websites AGAIN. They did this before, blocking nearly every site that one might find entertaining or distracting. But then they relaxed the restriction and allowed some site, like Gmail (though they blocked the gChat feature). Then a few months ago, restrictions seemed to really relax, and we had unfettered access to all but the most offensive and evil sites (ie, hotrepublicansex.com, etc.) But over the last few days, they have been systematically clamping down again. I have a theory that you can gauge how well a company is doing by how much leeway they allow their employees online. So I guess the company is hitting the skids again. Oh well.

I now have Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Flickr and the Opera Mini Browser installed. It's not as easy to use as their Web counterparts, but at least I don't have to feel marooned at the office. Honestly without these distractions (plus selected blogs), how could I be expected to survive a day at this Mediocrity Factory? Well, I could probably live without Twitter but maybe I'm just not following enough interesting people. Story of my life.

P.S. Don't forget! See SPIKE the Angora cat at the North Shore Adoption Van this SUNDAY in Park Slope, outside NYC Pet, 5th Ave @Union/President, Brooklyn.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Gadgets, Job, Tedium

I don't have much to add to this story but I wanted to note it on my blog, if only so I could look back in the future and note the moment in history when the Port Authority decided it had the right to round up a bunch of animals that had done absolutely nothing wrong and kill them. This goose thing is amazingly stupid. It is proven the birds most often getting caught in jet engines are migratory geese, not this bunch that live here (sure a few may be from the 'dangerous' group but come on). Even if every goose killed could somehow be guaranteed to get sucked into a plane's rotors, it still isn't a long-term solution, unless they plan on killing every single goose, gull, pelican and egret in the country. They're going to kill a bunch now, but of course, more will come to take their place. That's an ECOSYSTEM; gassing a bunch of geese isn't policy, it's distraction.

Yet somehow with almost everyone (except the NY Post) against them, they have already begun the mass slaughter. I don't care what you think about geese, but this should be at least mildly annoying to all of us.

Labels: Animals, Bad Stuff

Pepper is a Portuguese Water Dog. She was rescued from a kill shelter and is hoping to find a permanent home. She lives in DC. Too bad no one in the DC area was interested in bringing a Portuguese Water Dog into their home.

UPDATE: Pepper has an adoption pending! But without groups like K-9 Lifesavers, every purebred dog produced on spec just pushes one more dog (purebred or not) into the euthanasia room.

Labels: Adoption, Animals, Bad Stuff

I keep forgetting to blog, or ramble on at length, as the case may be. Now that I can't access blogger from work I rarely post, since when I'm at home I am fulfilled with litterbox-scooping and cat-medicating. Our newest foster cat is actually with the vet right now, we suspect he swallowed something indigestible or he has some kind of virus. I really hope they figure out the situation fast, not only because I hate to think of him stuck at the vet's but also because they charge an ungodly 'boarding' fee for overnight stays. Not to belittle the industry but damn, vets have it made! They can basically charge whatever they want and almost never get called on malpractice. That, and the fact that their charges can't complain about their bedside manor. I'm selling them way short, and if I wasn't so squeamish about guts I'd probably be one, but again, damn!

Anyway, back to blogging, the increased filtration by my company's network finally forced me to learn about aggregators, so now I happily use Google Reader to read most sites; this allows me to read all the blogspot blogs I like, nicely circumventing the ban. Of course it makes your blogroll look like a bunch of spammy emails and you realize that once you strip away the photos and fancy layouts, most blogs are kind of boring. Especially when you can't read the snarky comments, that's where the real action is most of the time. Lucky for me, Brownstoner is still unhindered by my network's prejudices, those guys crack me up.

I should take my site off Blogger anyhow, since they've been deleting people's music posts without telling them. But again, why would I use up my free time doing computer stuff better suited to my hours on the clock? Anyhow, I think I might be able to blog this site directly through Flickr ... there may be a lot more pictures on this site soon!

Labels: Bad Stuff, Cats, Job, Web

This morning our neighbor cautioned us that tonight the Bloods gang will be conducting initiation rites, and are singling out women for attack. Her concern was nice, but immediately I started thinking, this sounds familiar ...

A quick Google later, and we find that this rumor has been around since at least 1993, and before that it was attributed to the Hell's Angels. The Web is alive with chatter, mostly school kids fanning the flames of paranoia, as post after post confirms the validity of the warning. Their claims are 'backed up' by mentions of girls already killed in Newark (with no further citation needed apparently). One girl mentioned that she has friends in the NYPD and they've confirmed the validity of female targeting by Bloods' pledges, although her claim seems a bit suspect when she mentions that each person must kill 31 women each. Hmmm.

This sucks, if only because it makes people worry needlessly. Worse, there is the outside possibility that some dickhead kid will see the rumor and take it upon himself to make his bones. But I guess there's no point in blaming the urban legend. We're all spooked by everything these days, and ready to believe the absolute worst. Think about it, I know gangs are scum, but what would it prove to anyone to specifically attack women? I know standards have dropped a lot over the years, but the whole thing smacks of fabrication designed to elicit the greatest hysterical reaction.

Meanwhile, parents will be searching their kids' candy for nonexistent razor blades, and cat adopters will be refraining from adopting out any black cats. Frankly people, if you were gonna adopt out "Midnight" to the kind of person who's going to crucify him, you probably shouldn't be adopting out anything to anybody; you're a lousy judge of character.

A friend of mine got mugged last night, but his attackers made no mention of gangs or initiations. They took his iPod and his phone, then returned his phone "because it was so shitty." Now that's something to worry about.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Holidays

The other day I heard the whining of a cat. This is obviously not that unusual around my house, but it was coming from outside. Which okay is also not all that unusual. But anyway this whining was more pained or forlorn or whatever, so it got my attention. I looked out and saw a black and white cat on a stoop across the street, crying at the door. The cat looked suspiciously like Marbles, who also used to sit on various stoops before we took her inside. It seemed pretty clear it lived in the house and wanted back in.

As I watched the cat, the neighbor next door to the cat emerged with their enormous Rottweiler. The dog is a fairly docile female, obviously not one of the 'bad' Rotts. But still, she's a big, big dog. The guy brought her down and started walking her down the sidewalk, oblivious to the cat. The dog immediately snapped to attention, pulling on the leash to try to get closer to the cat. The guy, skinny and generally unhealthy-looking, was having a lot of trouble controlling her; he pulled with all his strength and still the dog inched forward.

I don't even think the dog had an malicious intent, she just wanted to get up closer. It yanked the guy right over to the stoop, within a few feet of the cat. Now here's the funny part, the cat stood its ground and fought back!

You shoulda seen this little cat, all arched-back and puffed-out tail, hissing and growling at this enormous dog, rearing up and spitting. This was either one tough cookie or one stupid feline. The dog still leaned on the leash, the guy still struggled to pull her back to the sidewalk. Eventually he got the dog to walk further down the street. I figured the encounter was over, but a minute later they were heading back, but now the guy had a tree branch in his hand.

The cat was still on the stoop, and so the dog was still straining to get at it. So with one hand trying to hold back the dog, the guy starts swatting at the cat with the stick! The cat growls at him but doesn't run away, it just stays out of arm's (stick's) reach. The guy keeps swinging the stick, forcing the cat over to the areaway. Now he's trying to hit the cat by sticking the stick through the bars of the fence. The cat is hiding under some patio furniture, but keeps coming out as if to taunt the doofus. It would have been hilarious if he hadn't been serious.

By this point he's really trying to hurt the cat. At first I thought he was trying to shoo it away so the dog wouldn't be distracted, but now it's pretty obvious he's locked in a battle of wits, and he's unarmed. Except for that stick. He's swearing at the cat as his blows hit nothing but the neighbor's grill; the cat may actually think this is all a game. This guy is the same brain surgeon who got into an argument with the mailman a couple weeks before, resulting in a block-long shouting match as he questioned the mailman's manhood the further he got down the street.

So I'm trying to figure what to do. I want to go out and hit the guy in the head with a brick. I decide to try a passive method, then escalate if necessary. I go out on my stoop with a broom and start sweeping up the leaves (needed to be done anyhow). The Brave One shuts up right quick, drops the stick and disappears inside with the dog. What a douchebag. Did it even occur to him that his neighbors might not like it if he were to bash in the head of their pet? It's assholes like this that give the neighborhood a bad name. The guy's on my shitlist from now on; I've got a tree branch with his name on it.

I'm pretty sure everybody on the block knows about me and our cats, so I'm sure the guy got the message just from me coming outside. I went to check on the cat, it turned out to be a female kitten about 6 months old! What a little sparkplug! She kept on whining, so I brought her over to my stoop and gave her some food. She sunned herself for a while and then left. I didn't see, but I'm hoping she got back in her house. If not, she at least knows where to go if she gets locked out again.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Bushwick, Cats, kittens

A couple of months ago, somebody stole my credit card info and charged a bunch of stuff with it. It was only because I obsessively check my online statement that I noticed it, and at first it didn't even register. This was about the time we booked our tickets to lovely sunny Cleveland, and I noticed there were charges that looked like airfare; at first I didn't think anything of it. But then I saw there were 3 charges, not two. Plus, each was for in excess of $500, way more than one should spend to go to The Heart of It All. There was also a charge for some stupid VoIP company, but that $20 charge paled in comparison. I canceled the card and was refunded the fraudulent charges.

Now, this is what irks me: a few weeks before this happened, my creidt card company had shut my card down; it discovered suspicious charges and stopped my account from working pending my approval. What sort of charges tip off the credit industry? For me it was Century 21, Netflix and cat food ... stuff I buy all the time. So I buy some stuff form stores I have bought from for many years, alarms go off and the security details suspends my account until I call into their lame automated call center. I verbally approve every charge and my account is back.

Cut to a month later: I notice airfare charges (from a company based in ROME, no less) and now it's up to me to convince them I didn't make these charges. What, are hackers so talented nowadays they can make stolen work seem more legit than the real stuff? Anyway, I will say the credit card company was rapidly compliant, closing the account and getting me a new card quickly. Among other things, we went out to Ikea with the new card and spent tons of dough on some new furniture and other crap we may regret in a couple of months. Then I tried to buy something with the card and it says it's not working again. Here we go again ...

I call in to find out what's up and they lame automated system tells me they have reason to believe (again) that fraudulent activity has taken place. They recite the list of suspicious charges, all legitimate, all mine, all for companies I buy stuff from all the time. But in all of this, they didn't mention the Ikea purchase at all; I asked about it and they said it wasn't suspicious. So my 20-dollar charge to a pet supply company I buy from almost every other month is more suspect that the enormous purchase from Ikea, from whom I've never bought from before? I just don't get it.

Anyway, it's all settled now at least and as far as I can tell, my account is safe for now. But one ironic outcome: I checked with the VoIP company to find out who used my card and they gave me the email address associated with the charge. It was my email with my first and last name reversed. Clever! So I emailed it:

From: jimmylegs
To: legsjimmy
Subject: having a good time

hey
are you using my credit card?

I didn't expect a reply, but the other day I got one:

From: legsjimmy
To: jimmylegs
Subject: RE:having a good time

yes. i have ur info when i hacked one shop. im sorry

I wanted to find out how he got it, so I wrote

From: jimmylegs
To: legsjimmy
Subject: RE:having a good time

ha! wow i didn't expect a reply. can you tell me what shop you hacked? i'm trying to figure out where it got out.

From: legsjimmy
To: jimmylegs
Subject: RE:having a good time

becos im úing thí mail for búyome thing :D that reply u man hehe i dont remember shop was hacked i have many many

I'm not sure why his spelling got so bad at the end there, but it momentarily spooked me that he still uses the email address to buy stuff. But he doesn't have my card info any more, and as his email is a gmail account, there doesn't seem to be anything to do about it. It feels like that episode of Seinfeld when Jerry's car gets stolen and he calls the thief on the car phone:

JERRY: can I have it back?

CAR THIEF: Mmmm, nah, I'm gonna keep it.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Funny to Me, Identity Theft, Money

Today's office phrase I would most like to ban for the rest of the century: "Quick Question"

Offense: It is always a lie, and an impudent lie at that, since in its two-word phrasing it defines the shortest possible time spent reasoning and responding. Yet, the questions and the people who utter this forbidden phrase always end up taking forever.

A true quick question would be, "Should I get out of your face?"

YES.

Or, "Am I annoying you?"

YES.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Job

Here's a nice half-assed post! I'm totally busy with my stupid job, full of stupid people asking stupid questions for jerks. It may get better at the end of the month, or way worse. It remains to be seen.

We had a bunch of relatives over the house for a week. It just so happened they showed up for exactly the same duration as the horrible heat wave, and I didn't remember until the last day that we do in fact have an air conditioner that sort of works. Oops! But it was fun anyway, they brought duty free liquor from the Virgin Islands, we went to Brighton Beach, and they availed themselves of the local fish market, the little diner down the street, and Lincoln Chicken and Pizza, all places we never patronize. It made me realize if we were non-vegetarians, this little corner of the neighborhood does all right food-wise, assuming you're not that interested in being healthy. The diner sounded really good, too bad they're closed by 6pm every day. And Lincoln got all-around good marks, except for the fish. But for wings and pizza, you could do worse.

Despite our macho claims that we had neutered every cat on the street, we found a few more. We've trapped one so far and gotten him fixed (he has his own interesting story). There's at least one more out there, not to mention the local Gawker cat who is pretty clearly Marbles' daughter! Cat adoption is rolling on, very, very slowly, but we did get Shaolin a new home. Four more to go! Frankly I just want to get this batch moved out before the next charity case shows up!

Meanwhile, I hemmed and hawwed about joining the Bushwick CSA for so long that when I finally decided to do it, it was too late and they were all filled up for the season. This is why I'm a bad vegetarian, you'd think I would have been first on the list, but fear of too many vegetables spooked me into reticence.

I doubt anything interesting will happen here until the end of June, when my workload will lighten a smidge. Unless you all wanna hear about how the tech team returned us a sizing for a project fully 10x what they initially estimated, and have the chutzpah to think we will agree to fund the project at this level, when everyone knows there's a perfectly-functional javascript workaround that would take nearly no effort to implement. Suckahhhhhs!

Labels: Bad Stuff, Cat Fixin', Job, Tedium, Visitors, Weather

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

6/10/2008
Brooklyn, NY

MR BONES, of Brooklyn, NY, died on Monday from an unspecified illness. Long considered one of the most photographed cats in the 'blogosphere, MR BONES was admired for his wide girth and human-like social skills. Though shunning the companionship of fellow members of his species, he demonstrated an uncanny ability to cultivate human companions and to extract from them expressions of admiration, if not awe.

MR BONES was born in the vicinity of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in either September or October of 2001, still a question of some debate. After a hardscrabble early life in the streets, delis and parking lots along the western edge of the BQE, he found his way to the humble storefront abode of one Buzz McKinnon, inviting himself in and using his charm and charisma to extort food, shelter and water from the tenant. Inexplicably, and in short order, he was able to convince McKinnon to offer him permanent asylum, in spite of McKinnon's cat allergy and lack of competence. MR BONES' first litter box, assembled from household materials, was a cardboard box lined with a garbage bag. After the bag was shredded, McKinnon finally realized that a trip to the pet store was required, and soon caught on.

From Williamsburg, MR BONES traveled to residences in Clinton Hill, Bushwick, and finally to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Featured on countless photoblogs, MR BONES gradually came to renown. Cat owners, upon seeing his likeness on the Internet, began feeding their own cats double doses of fatty foods in an effort to remake their own pets in his image. Ironically, MR BONES himself was on a special diet, dubbed the "Lance Armstrong Diet" by McKinnon, a reference to the cyclist who famously measured his food consumption down to the millimeter. Attempts at reducing the big cat's weight were for the most part fruitless, leaving veterinarians all over the borough stumped.

Collecting many friends and admirers, MR BONES settled into a life of luxury. In 2007, he quickly adopted McKinnon's wife Sylvia, and extended his sphere of influence.

A photo memorial is being organized, to be posted on the web at a soon-to-be-named location. "Thank you all for your generosity to MR BONES over the past six years," said McKinnon through a spokesman. "If you have some photos of him, please send your favorite one to buzz (at) motico (dot com). I'd be much obliged."

"You should think of MR BONES as an angel," McKinnon continued. "Just picture a big white cat angel with tiny wings and you're in the ballpark."

_________________________________

By the way, I didn't write the obit, but it sums up a lot of what I'll miss about Monsieur Bones. He could be grumpy and obstinate but his singleminded personality was a balm for a world that throws so much crap at us all the time. I am pretty sure I'll never meet another cat like Mr Bones.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Cats

Damn. I knew they'd catch up with us sooner or later. For years, New York State has tried to get us to pony up nonexistent sales tax for stuff we buy online. There's a line in the tax return that asks you to estimate the total amount of "unpaid" sales tax for anything and everything you've bought out of state that you have in your possession here. From the first year they put this in the tax form, I momentarily fretted over it, before chuckling and ignoring it, which I've done every year since. Chuckling to oneself is good for you!

So now comes the news that the State has passed a law forcing online retailers to charge sales tax on every NY-based purchase, even if they don't have a physical presence here. This totally defeats the purpose of buying stuff online, except for the fact that stuff gets delivered right to your house/office. The whole driving factor behind mail-order has always been getting the best possible price. At a certain price break, it's usually worth it to buy online, even if you pay for shipping.

Anyway, the Times says that only 2 of the most popular retailers have not already registered in New York to charge this "use tax" (WTF?) One is Amazon.com, as we all know they don't have any brick and mortar stores here. Duh. Although some of their Marketplace sellers probably do. Whatever, I guess it's back to the used book store for me.

More disturbing for me is the news that the only other unregistered retailer in the Top 10 is Newegg.com. This is a fine electronics vendor from which I have purchased pretty much every computer-related tool in the past few years. Part of their appeal is that they have very good customer reviews/ratings of every product. Also their prices were routinely the lowest around. Best of all, they're based in Jersey, so I would get stuff in like a day.

Now everything will suck. Buying from Amazon or Newegg will be like buying stuff in a regular store, but with shipping costs on top. Yay. Something about this whole thing strikes me as unjust. Why should New York state get to benefit from these sales? I don't know much about interstate commerce, but I'm not fully confident in New York's sovereignty in this arena. They can't even get the damn subways to run right fer chrissakes!

Oh well, I just hope the Calypso Discount Store down the street from me has a good price on USB flash drives.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Politics, Taxes, The City, The State

So we finally got some real snow! I wonder how long it will last this time, the afternoon forecast is for "Wintry Mix" which always makes me think of "Winter Blend," the combo of cauliflower and broccoli sold in the Key Food frozen food section. So it never sounds as bad as it actually is.

This morning I got to take a barometer reading of how Bushwick is affected when Old Man Winter descend upon us. As you know, I've been trapping feral cats and getting them fixed at BARC through a new program. I was planning on bringing in a cat this morning, but had to give up because everybody was using up all the car services.

I've done this before, call up a car service around 8, jam up to BARC to drop off the cat(s), then hop on the L train to go to work. But every single number I called was either busy or giving me that interminable 'hold' recording ("Your call is very important to us"). I did get one answer from a poor soul who seems to have received the phone number of what I'm guessing is a now-defunct livery company ("why people call all the time this number?!')

What I can't figure out is, who's taking these cars? When it snows a lot, isn't mass transit still the preferred mode of travel? The streets weren't too bad, at least there wasn't much traffic when I headed out later, the cat back in its room to wait until tomorrow to go in. But what few cars were out were moving slow; I can't imagine anybody was getting anywhere faster this way.

So who is it taking up all the cars on these days? Is it people taking their kids to school? Somehow that seems to be the only possible justifiable reason, even though that too doesn't make a lot of sense. Don't people know that those cars are needed to cart stray cats around town?

I suppose I could just take the cat on the train, though the prospect of walking with my poorly-designed cat carrier from the Marcy station to BARC is fairly daunting. So maybe I'm just a wimp, but at least I won't annoy people on the train with a yowling space-taking-up box.

If I win the lottery, I'm buying BARC a helicopter just for pet transport.

Labels: Bad Stuff, BARC, Bushwick, Cars, Cat Fixin', Mass Transit, Weather

Somehow in all my years living in this city, I don't think I've ever gotten coffee served to me in one of those "We are happy to serve you," Greek-Styley paper coffee cups. I am of course familiar with them, as an icon of New York City, and have been known to buy coffee on the go from time to time. But somehow I never happen upon a vendor who uses the famous design.

I read up on the cup, it was designed by a Leslie Buck in 1963, who named it "The Anthora." This was an apparent misspelling of the Greek word, "Amphora," which refers to a vessel meant for carrying wine or oil (note such vessel on the cup, nice!). Though a Czech immigrant himself, Buck's inspiration for the design was in the fact that most diners in those days were owned and operated by folks of Greek descent. A research topic for another day: Why did so many Greeks open diners in America and where did they all go?

Anyway, cool cup; I never get one. Until the other day! Or so I thought. On my way to work, I stopped off at a coffee cart, mostly because the coffee in my office sucks and I was hankering for something at least diner-quality. The guy handed me my coffee, I saw a flash of navy blue and beige lettering and got excited. Finally! I got one!

Not so much:
Now, there have been several variations on the original theme, but this is pretty lame. It's just sad, isn't it? Not only is the design a pale pretender to the original, with its pitiful grouped squares, 'sketch-style' coffee cups, and mirthless sans-serif font, but these guys aren't even happy to serve me, merely "pleased." And frankly, I don't think I even buy that.

To their credit, they do give you coffee and a bagel for one dollar, not bad for 2007, I guess.

And now, for Al, the Propaganda Cup:

Labels: Bad Stuff, Coffee, Funny to Me

For some stupid reason they have been keeping the air conditioning on full blast here, even though it's October (albeit, a rather warm October). This has something to do either with our LAN room (sort of makes sense) or the building renovation next door (makes no sense), depending on who you talk to. Whatever it is, it's totally annoying. I'm cold.

So I've been drinking lots of hot beverages, which is not unusual. But for the past week, I swear every single time I go to get coffee from our sub-par coffeemaker, there is barely any left. So not only do I have to drink the burned, sludgy dregs of the carafe, I gotta make another pot.

This wouldn't bother me but I know by the time I get back, it'll be back down to almost nothing again. I have made 3 pots of coffee today, and benefited from none of them. This is why communism doesn't work.

I hope our new parent company has Flavia.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Office, Weather

If you read The New Yorker, you may have seen this full-page ad with a cute kitten, drawing your attention to the hypocrisy of The Humane Society of the United States. It discusses how HSUS puts none of its money into animal shelters, nor does it run any kind of spay/neuter program or pet adoption programs. At first, I admit I was all like, "Son of a bitch, those thievin' bastards! " Then it occurred to me, the Humane Society has NEVER been an animal-shelter level organization. They focus mostly on industrial animal welfare, like cows going to slaughter or chinchillas being raised for fur. They work for broad, sweeping changes to animal cruelty laws in general; other groups handle things like shelters and adoptions. So why would the posters of this no-doubt expensive ad be trying to rile us up over a non-existent issue?

Turns out the people behind the ad, ActivistCash.com, is the "Center for Consumer Freedom," itself a front of the restaurant, tobacco and alcohol industries. Their web site is full of lurid allegations about other "anti-consumer" groups (like the fairly unimpeachable Center for Science in the Public Interest), very little of which is actually damning. ActivistCash divides its time making pointless accusations, such as those against the Humane Society's lack of animal shelters (which is sort of like attacking the American Lung Association for not combating skin cancer). The rest of the time they try to draw connections between these groups and their supposedly 'radical' ties, such as people who at one time were members of PETA who now work at HSUS. Oh, the conspiracy!

But they probably know that very few people will bother reading the fine print on their site. The majority of people will see the ad in a magazine, note it briefly and move on. The only message they will walk away with is "The Humane Society is bad." Maybe the HSUS isn't a perfect organization, but they're decidedly not the evil, two-faced liars they're made out to be by this site. This kind of thing really pisses me off, probably because I'm ready to believe anything that has a fuzzy kitten attached to it.

To be sure, I have nothing against, restaurants, tobacco or alcohol itself. But these lobbyists whose paycheck depends on the profits of these industries are pretty scummy for trying to build up their clients through specious attacks. Whatever the failings of the Humane Society, at least they're doing something to make the world a better place. The Center for Consumer Freedom (what a shitty name) is just hoping to continue this country's long tradition of political obfuscation, since people are too stupid to make up their own minds about pretty much anything. Don't believe the kitten, folks.

Labels: Advertising, Animals, Bad Stuff, Politics

My cat for the past 11 years, Hubcap, died last night at the Animal Clinic in Ridgewood. I don't know how old he was, but estimates put him around 15, so kidney failure is not perhaps that much of a surprise. I guess I'm glad I took him to the vet, but I wish that hadn't been his last stop.

I don't know what time he died exactly, but I woke up abruptly at 2:40 this morning to the sounds of plastic rustling: it was the sound of cat paws touching a bag of cat food. Every time I brought home a new bag, Hubcap would immediately start pawing at it, trying to get at what surely was superior food to what he already had in his bowl. He did it every time.

Of course, the sound was probably just one of the other cats rubbing up on the bag of Tidy Cat I left on the kitchen table (a souvenir from the kittens), but I like believing it was Hubcap, doing what he loved most: eating and annoying the hell out of me.

Maybe we'll be haunted by his ghost.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Cats, Ghosts, Pets

It's after 10AM and none of my coworkers are here! Then again, they often don't show up, choosing rather to work from home while I toil away as the public face of my company. Not that anybody sees me here. In fact, one could argue that more than ever I should be a full-time telecommuter. But one won't, because somebody's gotta be in the office.

Usually, the Admin is here, but even she hasn't made it in yet. Subways were effed up today! I checked the MTA site before leaving and was astounded to see that it said there was no 4-5-6 service between Borough Hall and 149th Street! That is so insane, considering it's the line that regularly runs at 103% capacity. Where did all those people go?

I normally take the 4 & 6 to work, but given the conditions we opted for the F train today. This wasn't great, but it did eventually arrive and we shoved on uptown. I planned to take the V train at 47-50th Streets, but it stopped running so I walked. Which would have been lovely, as it takes me through Rockefeller Center (hey, they have a greenmarket on Wednesdays!) and St. Patrick's. But it was already getting pretty damn sultry out. Still I'm sure my commute wasn't as horrible as a lot of people's; at least I had the Internet to tell me where to go. In Kensington, it appears there may have been a tornado (or possibly Lindsay Lohan) that swept down the streets, uprooting huge trees and upsetting the delicate balance of gentrification south of Prospect Park.

Anyway, it's all downhill from here, now I've got nothing to do but my job. Blah.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Gentrification, Mass Transit, The City, Weather

It's the end of another frustrating week! I guess it wasn't all bad, but I'm building a new web site for my job and I have to use the most irritating content management system software ever created. This CMS replaces the old one, which previously held that title. Before they rolled out the new system, they promised it would alleviate the issues of the old system and generally make life as effortless as sipping a mojito under a palm tree at dusk.

However, the opposite is true.

The system is incredibly convoluted and completely useless, except as a means to drive me insane. It could only have been designed by back-end programmers. No offense, but you how when new products come out, ie Apple Computers, they use words like "elegant," "intuitive," and "robust"? These are the three words that absolutely do NOT describe the system I am working with now. I can't even get into what's wrong with it here, because it would take so long to explain how Rube-Golbergesquely insanely overcomplicated it is. So let's talk about cats!

Three of the four kittens are eating solid food, and I think somebody used the litterbox (something's in it, I dunno what). Walking into the room now is akin to stepping into a racquetball court while somebody shoots ping pong balls at your ankles with a potato gun. Well, it's not that bad, but it probably will be.

Meanwhile, Marbles wasn't seen for a couple of days, then she showed up last night looking slimmer with decidedly mauled udders. We had hoped to get her to have her kittens inside the house, but I think she didn't dig all the other cats around. So her kittens are out there somewhere. After she loaded upon food, she dashed across the street. I followed her a bit to try to figure out where she nested. But instead of darting into the parking lot, she hopped up the stoop across the street, where a man sat smoking. He petted her, and Marbles looked completely at home. Jesus, does she live there? Has she been playing the homeless cat routine in an effort to get two feeding stations in the neighborhood? And is she doing this at more locations around the neighborhood?

Of course my main questions is, if somebody owns her, why the hell isn't she fixed? But I've learned this question falls on largely deaf ears in the neighborhood. I just hope plans are being made for the kittens, and they won't just end up rooting through the garbage in a couple of months. I'll be very interested to see how many people show up at the mobile spay unit on the 30th. Which reminds me, I should put up some flyers for it soon.

Which brings me to another pet-related irritant: pet stores that sell puppies and kittens. the pet store on Broadway off the Kosciusko stop on the J has some of each. They don't really have much space to move around in, and who knows if they ever get taken out of them before getting sold. Besides the less-than-great conditions they live in, the puppies may well be the products of disreputable breeders, aka 'puppy mills,' grinding out as many dogs as possible, health and safety sacrificed for profit (how much money do these places make anyway?)

The Prospect Heights Message Board has a huge thread on a new pet store on Flatbush that reportedly is selling such puppies. Although I feel they may have immediately jumped to worst conclusion (that the owner is trafficking in unhealthy puppy mill dogs, keeping them in unsafe conditions in the store, and indirectly adding to the crisis of the homeless pet population), but so far most of their suspicions seem to be true, although I have not been there myself and am admittedly getting all my info here from a message board. It's the Wikipedia Effect, I guess, but just because anybody can claim anything they want as fact ... doesn't necessarily mean it's NOT true, right? Isn't living in the modern age a blast?

In any case, it's a depressing situation to me even if the puppies are registered or whatever they do to prove a dog isn't the result of a mother and son dog gettin' it on. It just goes back to the irrefutable fact that there are so many animals in shelters, why in the hell would anybody buy a retail dog or cat? Frankly, I didn't need to see Best in Show to suspect that people who are into dog breeding are not operating on the same wavelength as most of us.

Anyway, I guess the simplest way to handle these pet stores is just not to shop there. That's easy enough for the one in Prospect Heights: I don't live anywhere near there, and if I did, I'd go to Acme Pet Supplies. In my neighborhood, there's Pets Ahoy, the aforementioned pet store, and the Pigeon store near my house, which may or may not have cat supplies (their hours seem to be something like 'Noon to Noon-thirty, weekdays'). Given the schedules that most New Yorkers maintain, how possible is it to avoid a pet store if it's convenient? For my part, I don't go by Pets Ahoy on a regular basis, I work near a Petland Discounts (they sell rodents and birds, the latter I'm beginning to think shouldn't be there either), its only real failure is that Science Diet cat food is $20 for an 8.5lb bag!

Labels: Bad Stuff, Cats, Feral, Job, kittens, Pets, Strays, The City

I don't talk about my job much because it's boring. If it's any indication, it's less exciting than both cats and back yard gardens, given how much I post on these latter topics vs. my job. Tomorrow, as per my 'development plan' I must attend a day-long training session in my old office building downtown. The only problem is, I don't know where in the building.

There are any number of floors in this building that belong to my company; the training could be on any one of them, or none at all (some trainings are held in nearby hotel conference rooms). When I confirmed my attendance, I received an email detailing the training. Under 'Location' it read only "3B/C."

What the hell is 3B/C? Somebody tell me, is this some standard nomenclature I don't know about? The building has some 60 floors, and who-knows how many rooms on each. So I emailed them back to clarify.

hi,
I will be in your class on Thursday, but i'm not sure where exactly it will be located (i work in the midtown office). can you let me know the floor and room number?

thanks,
jimmy

I thought this was pretty straightforward, just tell me the floor and room and I'll be there. The response:

We have a midtown office? I did not know that. We are at [123 Office Street], E Train to Chambers/WTC. Use the entrance marked [123], go up the escalator. Do you know if we have to clear you through security?

Um, okay. I now know the building, but they've only got me up to the security desk. I asked simply for floor and room number, the info they've given me only narrows it down to a city block. But, they don't know I used to work there so I'm familiar with its location and already have an ID card. So I reply,

hi,
yes there's a small office in midtown for [our department]. i used to work in the tower so i have access, but what floor and room number will the training be in?

thanks,

Again I try to simply specify I need to know what floor and what room this training will be in. I feel like a dork for having to ask the exact same question again, but I know what I need to know, I'm just at a loss as to why they aren't giving me a straight answer.

Sounds great thanks for clarifying. The training will be held in 3B/C. We look forward to your attendance.

Huh? Wait, did they just give me this 3B/C shit again? Oh no she didn't! I still don't know what that means, despite several emails back and forth. I send a final, pathetic message:

i'm sorry, i don't know what 3b/c means. is it the 3rd floor? i guess there will be signs to direct me when i arrive.

Frankly, I'm hoping there aren't signs. I don't want to go to this training anyway. And if I remember correctly, the 3rd floor is the cafeteria, and there are no conference rooms there. But hey, I tried. We'll see, maybe there will be a marching band waiting in the lobby to take me up to the magical 3B/C room.

Oh, did I mention this is a training in marketing communication. Can't wait!

UPDATE: Just received this mass email to all participants:

Good Day-

Tomorrow's session begins promptly at 9am on the 3rd floor (cafeteria floor) in Rooms B and C. Continental Breakfast will be available at 8:30am. We look forward to your participation. Thank you and have a great day.

Whaddya know, there ARE conference rooms on the cafeteria floor. So am I a moron for not figuring this out? Still shouldn't have taken them so long to clear it up. Stupid babies need the most attention!

That continental breakfast still isn't enough to get me in there before 9.

Labels: Bad Stuff, Office

Ugh, the last few days have been miserable, and not just because of the rain. Sometime on Friday night, Decatur slipped out an open front window. We didn't realize it until the next afternoon. We started searching around the area, trying to apply some form of feline logic to the situation. It seemed to me she would have dashed across the street into the vacant lot/parking lot as it is easy to get into and hide. But the more we looked around, the more we realized how many places there are for a small animal to hide. Not the least of these is the church yard behind our house.

At this point we didn't know what window she went through, so we looked out in the back as well. The church has been out of commission for years and the lot (which contains both church, rectory house and driveway) is totally grown over and full of trash. So it's basically a stray cat's amusement park. I searched through it several times, rousting many other cats, but not the one I was looking for.

The circumstances surrounding Decatur's disappearance may shed some light on all this: see, on Friday night we let some cats into the house. One was that Russian Blue cat I spoke of earlier, the other was the Kool-Aid Kitten, who has an even better 'in' to our home: she's pregnant.

Last time Decatur was around a cat with kittens, she bolted and I didn't see much of her for over a month. I didn't know if this was the same situation or if she was really lost; she had never been out front before, and this weekend had been fraught with stuff to scare both cats and humans. Friday night there was some huge to-do down at the far end of the block; we heard what may have been shotgun blasts and soon the street was full of people, cops, ambulance, fire trucks. Not sure what the story was there but it was a bit unsettling. Saturday night as we were entertaining friends with discussions of how Bushwick is really much nicer than its reputation suggests, some dipshit started shooting a gun right outside our house. I'm still not sure what that one was about, I checked outside afterwards but saw no one in evidence, shooter or shootee (the next day the cops came and placed tiny orange cones next to each bullet casing; the bullets had shot out the rear window of an SUV).

So I thought Decatur might have been so spooked by the commotion that she had gotten herself really lost. Anyway, we kept up the searching and the fretting, I made flyers and posted to lost-pet web sites. But things wrapped up pretty much 20 minutes after I put up the flyers.

I noticed the parking lot gate was open, a guy from Luis Refrigeration was changing the tire of his company van, so I went in and asked if it would be okay to look around for the cat. I went to the back of the lot, which was covered with that bamboo-like stuff I so detested from my old back yard, shook a jar of cat treats and called her name. Like it was nothing, Decatur emerged from the underbrush. Just like that.

She was no worse for the wear, despite having been outdoors for all the huge storms of late. the tire-changing guy said that he had seen her sleeping in the cab of one of the trucks that park there. I brought her back inside and she seemed nonplussed to be home. In short, my sympathy levels dropped at light speed. Damn these cats!

Anyway, she's back home and she's being sweet again, so all is well. We have the house on lockdown so nobody's coming in or out for once. We're not sure what to do about the pregnant cat, I'm hoping to relocate her to the backyard, but she seems to be fine with living in the lot across the street. That may be the most ironic aspect of Decatur's sojourn: if she left because she didn't want to share space with the pregnant cat, why then did she move herself to that lot, where the very same cat spends most of her time? This is the logic you get from an animal with a brain the size of a walnut.

I'll have more stuff on the stray population, we have some real characters around here!

Labels: Bad Stuff, Brooklyn, Bushwick, Cats, Good Stuff, Pets, The Yard