Almostgotit.com

As my two readers know perfectly well, Almostgotit tends to get a little worked up about things.

Nor does it help that Dante, one of my weird medievalist friends, has been spreading heinous rumors about me:  namely, that I stole a fossil from a certain riverbed full of them, despite there being some sort of giant sign saying people shouldn’t. 

As if it would even be wrong to pocket the tiniest little disintegrating fossil that already had broken loose from the massive 200 ACRES of them and was therefore in imminent danger of being ground to dust under someone’s careless foot.

Nevertheless, no unemployed person in her right mind would ever allow the slightest crime of this sort to blemish her record.  Certainly I would never, and Dante’s claims are a total fabrication and utter rot, of course.  

Dante, however, is the sort who might even call it “stealing” if one were simply to borrow his phrase “Chigger Woode” at some time in the very near future.

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Knoville News-Sentinel photo by Adam Brimer

This is Debbie Ramsay. 

She was on U.S. Airways Flight 1549 when it crashed in the Hudson river last January.  Debbie was on the plane on business, returning from a buying trip for a local clothing and accessory store, New York New York.

Like many of the flight’s survivors, she took a little time off immediately after the crash, then returned to her job.  However, the nightmares continued, and her doctor suggested she take some more time off.

Two weeks later, she got an email from her boss: she had been replaced.

Excuse me?  She was fired?  By email?  And from the job that had put her on that plane in the first place? 

Knoxville’s News-Sentinel published Ramsay’s story in this morning’s paper, but they left out some very important information.     I did a little digging and here is the rest of the story.

Feel like making a little phone call, writing a letter, or sending an email today?

New York New York store is in Sevierville’s Tanger Outlet Center.
Mailing Address: 1645 Parkway, Ste 940, Sevierville, TN 37862
Phone:(865) 429-5330

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Tanger Outlet Center’s  contact:
Patti Ross, Director of Administration
Phone: 336-292-3010
Email: use link on Tanger Outlets Company page

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Corporate Headquarters
Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, Inc.
3200 Northline Avenue
Suite 360
Greensboro, NC 27408
Phone 336-292-3010
Fax 336-852-2096

Martha Stewart I am not, but for weeks I’ve been occupied with rearranging or throwing out everything in my house that isn’t bolted down.  Pathological or no, it has been an empowering experience.

We’ve been exploring power a lot in our house lately.  My 12-year-old was tickled to no end to discover a website that proves how lame her parents are.  First it was the reading glasses, and now she knows I’m losing my hearing, too. 

Mr. Almostgotit and I have been discussing and rearranging the household chores, too, in light of his increasing hours, my decreasing ones, and certain, less-measurable feelings about who has to wear the apron in the family vs. who gets to wear the pants.

Even the dog is getting in on the action, having suddenly decided that his beloved minion, Wubby, no longer deserved to have either a nose or eyes.  Wubby intends to sue. 

Ever feel like this guy?

I am tired. Tired of my life and tired of my mind. I am an intelligent guy; I have a degree and should be making more of life. But, to be honest, I don’t have a clue what I want. In fact, I almost feel like I don’t want anything.

Last month, some of my friends participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) — including Korrektiv’s Rufus McCain, who recently quoted one of the little “pep-talk emails [he] received from famous writers encouraging [him] to finish [his] novel, which is stuck on page 2.”

The letter Rufus reprinted in his Nov 20th post is from Janet Fitch, who wrote about hitting a creative wall while writing White Oleander.

Luckily I was seeing an amazing therapist at the time. I explained I was afraid that if I chose route 6, then I would be eliminating all the other possible routes. What if route 15 was better? Or 3 1/2 ? So I hedged. I couldn’t commit. I was stuck. And she gave me the piece of advice which has saved my writing life over and over again, and I will give it to you, absolutely free of charge. She said, ‘I know it feels like you have all these options and when you make a decision, you lose a world of possibilities. But the reality is, until you make a decision, you have nothing at all.‘

Ah yes, the Amazing Therapist.  The butt-kicking amazing therapist, who saves people’s lives even, by giving the same sensible advice that Every Wise Person you ever met also gives you, advice which you know perfectly well already but which, sadly, hasn’t helped you at all.

Because you’ve made a lot of decisions already, and too many of them have been wrong.

Enter Cary Tennis, who addresses our Poor Tired Guy quite differently:

To me you simply sound like the philosophical rebel — what we term these days a slacker.

Ah now.  Here it comes –  more butt-kicking.  Right?  But no…

Do you not realize that you are a member of the cultural opposition? … Perhaps that makes you the true misfit — one who does not even recognize it and would disavow it if asked.

… You are the solitary man without a country, without a home, wondering what’s wrong with you — because your protest is yet an inchoate thing, innate and unfocused. Your plight is thickened because your context is so thin — today you’re a rebel without a context! Is there still a Greenwich Village to flee to? Is there still a San Francisco where one can rent a cheap room above a bookstore without becoming a real estate agent or a software change agent or an FBI agent?

This is entirely wrong, Mr. Tennis.  Celebrating the Slacker?  What kind of crazy American work ethic is this?!? 

What should be you doing if you are not on the job and have nowhere to be? Should you pick your toenails or eat some lasagna? Should you read an edifying book or stroll through the park? What should you do? …  You live within this matrix [of who works, who doesn't, who gets paid a lot, who doesn't] and may wish for it to mean something, and indeed rules can be deduced …but at times, to the individual man caught in the tornado, the only thing it seems to be is random and insane.

That is why the philosophical rebel is so dear to us — because he alone has the courage to say, “I have no clue what this shit is.”

Good heavens.  Is that courage or laziness?  What possible value to society is such a stance?

Of what value to society is such a stance? … Most important, he is anathema to hoo-ha — he does not swallow the Kool-Aid or follow the company line; he does not jump when the Man says jump — he scarcely moves; he hardly hears the Man; he can hardly even see him; he has to squint. It’s his constitution to be cautious and to ask the relevant question Why? Which in our current situation we could use more of — if we in the West had been more skeptical, if there were among us more bantams in pine woods, we might not be so deep in shit as we are. …

Could it be that the voice of what you want is God’s voice? Could it be that what you want is what God wants? Could it be that you are eating and sleeping and fucking for God?

Erm, beg pardon… eating and WHAT?

Give yourself a break, my man. If you are depressed and have a drug problem or have a metabolic imbalance, then that’s some serious stuff and you need medical care. But if you simply lack ambition, I take my hat off to you. The world is way too full already of overly ambitious fucks elbowing us out of the way on the streetcar.

Oops! Let me just get something to clean up the milk coming out of my nose. 

Almostgotit honestly doesn’t know what to make of this, and can’t say she’s quite as lacking in ambition as all of that.  But she loves a good iconoclast and wonders if Cary Tennis might be on to something.  What do you think, readers?

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I’m Scattered and Have No Ambition By Cary Tennis (Salon.com)

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Very few of us will do the right thing, economically, unless we have to do it.

Doing the right thing because we have to do it still can be a positive experience.

Both Republicans (situationally) and Democrats (legislatively) believe in forcing people to do the right thing.

Republicans and Democrats take turns being right — and catastrophically wrong.

Maybe there are few definitive solutions at all.

Maybe there are more solutions than we can imagine.

Maybe most of us are getting poorer.

Maybe that doesn’t matter as much as we think it does.

Maybe we can’t make money doing the things that we love.

Maybe that will break our hearts.

Or maybe that will force us to discover how to love what we do, instead.

Maybe we’ll do everything right and still  fail.

Maybe we’ll make one mistake after another and turn out just fine.

Maybe life eventually will confound us all.

My 12 year old made this collage. It is captioned thus: “If we cut down the forests, where will we put the elephants?”

Today I’m trying to organize a lot of elephants myself.  After a weekend with gas hitting $5 a gallon, followed by yesterday’s stock market crash, it occurs to me that I need to do a better job at saving money *and* retaining the few clients I currently have.  Nor is feeling like a limp noodle for a week or so any excuse (though yes, thank you, I’m feeling much better.)

So:  I started off the morning with several car-less errands to save gas*and* get my sloggy old elephant blood going.  Trotted to the vet for some flea meds, then to the drug store, then to the housewares outlet store, and finally to the market for dinner makings.  The chicken from the market went into the crockpot when I got home, and that’s to save some money. 

Cutting up and pulling the skin off a dead chicken — eww.  I’d forgotten about that part of cooking.   Usually I just buy skinless chicken breasts, and *that’s* when I actually cook anymore.  Why aren’t we all vegetarians, again? 

And for this afternoon:  phone calls, emails, and hunkering down with my word processor. 

How about you?  How are you responding to the economic news of late?