The Hag's Mouth

This Blog Is Dead

2010-01-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

And the Hag is moving on. If things work out as she hopes, she'll eventually create a web page under her author's name/real name and talk about the current work-in-progress and all that writer stuff.

It's been an interesting year, trying to morph from a librarian into a writer. She's not quite there yet, but every time she uses the word 'writer' it sounds a little more familiar and less pretentious. And it's been odd, going to Cons and feeling at home as she never ever felt in thirty years of ghastly librarian meetings.

This blog was a place to vent and spew and experiment. It has served its purpose.

To the few of you who read, and the fewer of you who commented, thanks for listening. The Hag has a little list, and if any of you want to be notified of the new url (whenever or if ever it appears) email the Hag and she'll let you know.

Onward!

Coffee, Tea, or Vaseline?

2009-07-12T20:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader, how many times have you walked down an airplane aisle? Comfy? The Hag is a size 6, (Okay, Full Disclosure, since she has been home within grabbing distance of her refrigerator, a tight size 6) and she has never been able to walk down an airplane aisle without bumping into seat arms or people arms. Her rollie luggage is 13 inches wide and must be positioned exactly to roll down the aisle.

Now, Delta Airlines is being beaten up by the flight attendants for not offering a uniform dress OVER a SIZE 18. They want at least up to SIZE 28. Here's the article. How the hell can someone a size 18, not to mention a size 28, walk down the damn aisle on the airplane, let alone maneuver a drinks cart or, heaven forbid, help the passengers evacuate the plane?

"The passenger evacuation was halted after the stewardess wedged in the aisle." Wouldn't that be a great lead-in to the evening news?

Another familiar maneuver in airplanes is the 'aisle pass' where two people must pass each other. Usually, each person turns sideways and crab walks past, trying not to brush inappropriately against each other or shove their buttocks in a seated passenger's face. Airline attendants will step into a seat row, which is generally tolerated by passengers as long as they aren't actually being stepped on. How the devil can flight attendant Size 28 manage any of this? They will need three aisles for themselves, and the hell with the passengers.

Now, Dear Reader, visualize the last airplane bathroom you were in. Let your mind wander.

The planes are supposed to be Jumbo. Not the attendants. The Hag has always found the description of an airplane as 'wide-bodied' strange. Now she knows why.

Delta, last the Hag checked, is large in the South, home of the overweight, the fat, and the clinically obese. The flight attendants seem to think these sizes are NORMAL, which, in the South, they may be. Perhaps their reality is a little inflated?

Mantra

2009-06-26T20:24:00.000-07:00

Any day without Engineer Obsessive and Powerpoint is a Good Day.

Many many good days lately, so the Hag hasn't been too bent about the landslide of paperwork pouring in the door. She has forms from her former employer, where she promises not to sue them or bad mouth them (O ha ha), at least not in print, forms about benefits she is losing, benefits she is getting, unemployment forms, Medicare part A B C D and the rest of the alphabet forms for Mr. Hag, medical insurance forms in several flavors, and a stack of brochures, print outs, folders and fliers explaining all the above. The stack is four inches high and growing.

Apparently being laid off is a full time job, judging by the paperwork.

As an antidote to all this bureaucracy, the Hag has taken over the yard work - or Mr. Hag is attempting to supervise the Hag as she does the yard work. He's not bad as a boss: he doesn't show Powerpoint on the weed eater and when she flips him the bird he doesn't clutch his chest and yell for a lawyer.

Faint and far away, the Hag has heard things are not well with Former Employer. Tsk, tsk. Also that certain functions are being missed. Awwww. Good.

Any day without Engineer Obsessive and Powerpoint ...

Don't Worry, Be Happy

2009-05-05T09:55:00.000-07:00

The Hag is out of practice at happy. Also way out of practice at relaxed. She has post-doctoral degrees in worry, fear, paranoia, stress, anger, and the terminal boredom caused by Powerpoint.

Today she said to Mr. Hag, "I'm sleeping too much." "So what?" he said.

Indeed.

Time will get you through times with little money better than big money will get you through losing time. Or, the Hag prefers having the time to sit and think, over the tense craziness of earning corporate dollars.

Mr. Hag: "How many years did you work for them?"
Hag: "Thirty years, over three jobs."
Mr. Hag: "Relax. You've earned it."

Thank you, dear.

The Hag is Not Dead

2009-04-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

But you all thought she was, didn't you. Fess up now. Oh, you've all given up (all two of you) and gone away. Them's the breaks.

So what has the Hag been doing? Well ... having a nervous breakdown, actually. Seriously. The Hag does not recommend it. Work stress broke her down, and she had to go back into therapy and take serious meds. That was October and November and December. Between the pharmaceuticals and the blabbing things started to clear up in January.

Not that work or Engineer Obsessive got any better. The Hag was able to cope with them without falling apart, crying on vice-presidents, or going postal. Options one and two had already happened and things were under control before she got to option three.

With the economy making economists out of us all, the Hag's employer fell back on their default strategy: off with their heads. They laid off a quarter of the company, including the Hag.

The Hag isn't sure whether it's the meds or having done her grieving last fall, but it was almost painless. Engineer Obsessive was a great help. Reliably, he spurted insane comment after clueless statement, followed by impossible orders, so the Hag spent the final month shrieking with laughter and doing verbatim reports to an appreciative audience.

And so, the Hag is home, and oh so happy to be there. The first Monday she carried her coffee out to the deck, sat there, and listened to the birds. With luck she will never have to see any of those management jerks ever again, and this gives her a little warm glow all over. Of course, that could just be a hot flash.

What will the Hag do now? No idea. Sleep. Tease cats. Tease Mr. Hag. Read. Write. Eventually, she may have to seek paid employment. Feh. But not for a good long time.

Your Phased

2008-10-10T09:16:00.000-07:00

Considering all the current madness, the Hag wishes to return to her roots. There's nothing more heartening than a good rant about trivia, and grammatical trivia at that.

People, please. 'Your' is a possessive. For example, your idiocy, your lack of education, your lack of grammar, or your lack of ability to pay attention to whatever the hell you post. The Hag assumes you are posting because you are (or you're, see next paragraph) interested in the subject, or have a critical or funny comment to make on the passing scene. But she will discount, ignore, or stop reading any post or page using 'your' as a synonym for 'you're'.

You're is a contraction of 'you are'. As in, you're an idiot, you're uneducated, you're not going to get a job if the hiring manager has the literacy level of a high school graduate. Perhaps the Hag should modify that to a high school graduate from a competent school, and even that might be pushing it.

Read your sentence aloud. If you can use 'you are' and the sentence sounds meaningful, then the correct spelling is 'you're'. If that makes no sense, use the possessive 'your'. If neither one makes sense when read aloud, delete the sentence and think about what you are (you're) doing.

Next rant: Fazed and Phased are different words and they mean different things. There is a term for this in English, but the Hag will not bother your (possessive) little head with it. Fazed means disconcerted, or to be driven back by opposition. It's commonly used in the negative: She was not fazed by the criticism but continued to argue her point. (Yes, it's a cliche, but at this level who cares?) Phased means to introduce in stages, for example, they phased in a series of unpleasant and unwelcome changes. For some reason the Zeitgeist (look it up) uses phased for both, leading to gobbledygook like 'my wife and I are not phased by the current financial situation'. Well, let us hope the pair of you communicate via cell phone only.

What a Relief It Isn't

2008-09-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

The Hag is still employed, she is surprised to report, although this may be due to incompetence on the part of EO. He's not happy with her, but his preferred methodology seems to be avoidance (maybe she'll go away on her own) rather than confrontation.

In other news, -- work is boring -- Cat One is very ill and may not be with us long. Kidneys. She's still eating and yowling and cleaning herself, napping and shedding, all the cat stuff, but her blood tests are awful and she's losing weight like crazy, despite the Hag and Mr. Hag pushing pills down her nonstop.

Mr. Hag is not handling this well. He's worrying himself to bits right alongside the cat, although he refuses to consider euthanasia. For the cat, not for him. Although ... never mind.

The Hag isn't happy either, and it's not easy dealing with hysterical husband, dying cat, idiotic boss, and other life events all at the same time. She wishes she hadn't given up hard liquor in quantities, because she needs a break. She just returned to work from a two week vacation spent taking the cat to the vet and wondering if she would have a job to return to, and things aren't getting any better.

In fact, the only bright spot is the new book draft, which was read by the Deadline Club and approved. This is good, because the first chapter of the second half was extremely difficult to write and hearing that it made sense and was coherent and interesting was a big boost. She's about 2/3 through the first draft. With luck, she can get some more done this weekend.

Okay, booze is out. How about a nice iced coffee?

Over The Edge

2008-08-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

True, the Hag has not posted in a while. The Hag's boss, Engineer Obsessive, has been going through a particularly irritating phase for the last several months, and frankly the Hag has been very depressed.

The past few days, EO has reached new depths of idiocy, and the Hag finally, finally, started fighting back. Reasoning with the moron wasn't working, so the Hag did what EO has been telling her to do for two years.

She's talking to her customers.

Now, the Hag talks to her customers all the time, but on this particular issue EO had said, 'o, this is a management decision, and we won't discuss it with them.'

Translation: They won't like it so we'll do it and then it will be too late for them to fix it.

The Hag had had enough, so she mentioned it to several customers, who were predictably very very unhappy with the idea, and said, 'mention it to a few people, will you?'

O Baby. A senior manager WHO THE HAG HAD NEVER MET marched up to her desk and said, 'What is this I hear?' And he's organizing a meeting of other senior research people and IT IS NOW A MOVEMENT. The Hag could not stop this if she wanted to. And she doesn't want to.

Oh and one other thing: in the course of this battle, the Hag went over EO's head to his manager and said, 'Stop with the death-of-a-thousand-cuts already. Lay me off.'

The Hag can tell you, from personal experience, that finally putting it all on the line is very freeing. Very. Whatever happens, she actually did the right thing.

At Random

2008-05-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

Some random thoughts wandering around the pinball machine inside the Hag's skull:

Westminster chimes are an insomniac's water torture. So why did the Hag get a stupid presentation clock with Westminster chimes? Also, why did it take her 6 months to turn it off and 4 years to throw it away?

Pets and small children learn bad habits instantly. Feed a cat a forbidden treat once and ten years later the cat will still be demanding the treat. Can bad habits be a survival tool while good habits lead to the grave? Therefore, will eating a jelly donut cause the Hag to live longer?

Why is every generation convinced it invented sex? How the hell do you think we all got here? And, not in the missionary position. Also, why does everyone assume all elderly people led completely staid and boring lives? Can't mention things in front of them: might shock. While the truth is, they're laughing at you.

Passive-aggressive behavior is a tool for the powerless. It works. That's why it's so rife in corporations, particularly in corporations where disagreement or argument or indeed any discussion of alternatives at all is forbidden. No, it's not positive behavior but that is not the point. When it's all you have, it's all you use.

Well, That's A First

2008-04-25T19:29:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this in the first person because I'm totally flummoxed.

Today at work, I was offered a bribe.

Yes, you read that correctly. Me, a librarian without power, was offered a bribe. What have we come to? As I understand the bribery mechanics from many years of reading mystery stories and watching network television, the briber offers the bribee a consideration of value in return for illegal services rendered.

Well, the first part happened all right. The object of value was offered. The second part didn't happen because I declined. It wasn't a difficult moral choice and I didn't have to waste time wrestling with temptation. I don't have the power to do what the briber wanted. He knew this. So why the devil did he try to bribe me?

Several reasons present themselves, all somewhat loopy:

1. He thinks I have great influence with my boss. (He's wrong.)

2. He thinks I DO have the power to do what he wants. (In which case he's crazy)

3. He wants me to shut up and not mention certain issues to all and sundry. (Possible, but why should he think anyone cares what I say?)

For those of you who are trying to figure out what the devil I'm talking about, here we go:

Two of my co-workers are very hot to purchase an expensive piece of software. I happen to think it's a big boondoggle but it's not my project or my responsibility so let them dig their own hole. Yesterday, our mutual boss ordered me to attend the salesman's presentation on the software. Both co-workers were very unhappy to see me there and actually asked me to leave. I pointed out that I was only obeying direct orders and could not leave, and the presentation (to my boss) went forward.

I was polite and non-confrontational, but I did notice a certain issue with the software. Installing it would violate a Legal Department fiat. I asked about this (politely) and was told it wasn't a big deal. Well, it is, but it again is not my project. My boss is not software-savvy, nor legal-savvy, and he noted the issue but he seemed more concerned about the outrageous price. But after the meeting he privately asked me to send him feedback.

This morning one of my co-workers schmoozed over to me and said he had some extra money in his budget and would I like a new laptop for my department? Now, since this person has been hired he hasn't been either supportive or friendly so I said thank you but we don't need one and eventually he got around to trying to persuade me to support the software. He said it would solve a big company problem. I told him it might indeed and the best of luck to him, but that he had to convince the Legal Dept. to back off. He explained to me how wrong they were. I told him I agreed with him but could do nothing about it. So he finally left. And since then his buddy has been inundating me with persuasive emails about how the legal position is wrong and about how wonderful the software is and on and on. In the meantime I sent an email to my boss with my feedback, without mentioning miraculously appearing laptops or either of my co-workers.

Obviously, we have a disconnect. Someone somewhere thinks I have a great deal of power. Someone somewhere is too stupid to pull up his own pants.

Oh, at the end of the laptop discussion, my co-worker says to me, "You know, the salesman told us to keep two groups of people out of the meeting: librarians and lawyers."

Wow, now that's ethical. And it tells me a great deal about these bozos that they can't wait to give this salesman money. But it's all on a par with offering a bribe to someone who can't help you.

Oh, and the laptop? We have a policy for purchasing those also, and it would violate it. As I said, no temptation.

Lay Down Dates

2008-04-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

The Hag follows about ten authors, and tracks their new book publication dates. She buys the books in hardcopy on the first day. (Really, she's a publisher's dream.)

Oh, but getting these books on the day is a hassle. Book store staff are under paid and underwhelmed by the concept of getting the stock out on the day promised. Why should they care? So the Hag will call before trekking over there because 9 times out of 10, the book isn't out yet. Or not unpacked yet. Or not received yet.

Or there and not-there simultaneously: "Well, the system says we have six copies and they should be here but they're not and I've checked the back room and nothing so would you like to order it?"

Certainly you jackass. The Hag came all the way down here to order a book you say you have so she can wait a week for a phone call.

Amazon isn't much better. Guaranteed next-day delivery means the next day. Or mostly the day after that. Good enough, right?

No. The Hag wants the book on the day. As promised.

Sometimes, the Hag can fool the system. Or, more accurately, scope out the non-systematic, because if the bookstore staff can't get the lay down day right, they err on the other side and put the title out early. Ursula Le Guin's new book, Lavinia, had a lay down date of April 21, which apparently meant 'sometime in April' because the Hag found it on April 3rd, just in time to take on a plane. Too bad the book didn't live up to her hopes, but that's the breaks.

Right now the Hag is waiting for the third volume of Bujold's Sharing Knife: Passages, which has a lay down date of April 22. If all else fails, (i.e., Barnes and Noble and Borders) there's an independent bookseller up the road who had Bujold in for a reading last year. That book will be there on the day. So will the Hag.

Nevah Nevah

2008-04-09T20:42:00.000-07:00

Things the Hag has never done and will never do:

Watched an entire episode of Seinfeld. (ten minutes, not funny, turned it off)

Had a child.

Shopped at Target.

Dyed her hair.

Shopped at Wal-mart.

Voted for a Republican.

Watched American Idol.

Been to a prom.

Bought Tupperware.

Saved green stamps.

Watched Little House on the Prairie.

Watched the Brady Bunch.

Gotten a bikini wax.

Susan B. Died For Nothing

2008-03-18T16:30:00.000-07:00

From time to time, the Hag is interviewed by young librarian-wannabes. They're either contemplating library school or in library school and must interview a real working librarian for some dire paper. Having been an instructor, the Hag has sympathy for both sides of this problem and she answers the (dumb but sincere) questions as best she can. It's not a big deal.

The problem comes with the setup. The librarian-to-be is always female. The requester is always male and the husband. "My wife is in library school and has to do a paper and she wondered whether ... "

So the Hag says, "Have your wife call me and set up a time." Ambiguous? No. Does it happen? No. The husband sets up the time. The wife never calls. Then he brings her in, she asks her questions, she leaves with him.

They always ask about job prospects, both general (Are there any?) and specific (Do you have any?). The answer to both is NO, not that anyone pays attention. But what they don't pick up on - and the Hag is not subtle - is the Hag would never ever hire someone who CAN'T ARRANGE HER OWN INTERVIEW. Come on, people. You want the Hag to believe you are capable of holding down a job when you cannot pick up a telephone (or send an email) when the person at the other end is expecting you to call?

A distressing number of these wimps have told the Hag their husbands felt a librarian job was suitable for them: female, submissive, obedient. The Hag would have survived about one day in her job if she hadn't been meaner than a snake and able to defend her turf from all comers.

When the Hag took over this job she had one of these idiots as a librarian. The woman could not attend a meeting alone. She had a driver's license but was driven everywhere by her husband, who dropped her off and picked her up. She once roomed with a fellow librarian at a conference and insisted she didn't need her own room key since she intended to follow her roommate everywhere: breakfast, lunch, dinner, meetings, bars...it was a shambles. The Hag found herself telling an adult, older than herself: you will attend the conference sessions ALONE. You will not hang on to other employees. How embarrassing. So the woman found another clinger and they walked around together. Eventually, her husband died and the woman moved in with her niece and her husband and never left them alone, expected to be chauffeured everywhere, and did her best to find another host. The Hag had fired her long before all that, so she never found out what happened. Not that she cared.

The only justification for this is age and culture. But the young women the Hag sees now are in their twenties and not wearing burkas. So we are going backwards?

Wordwooze

2008-03-08T18:50:00.000-08:00

Heaven forfend, the Hag just read a post by a new writer who described her about-to-be-published book as a "steamy urban paranormal".

Pardon the Hag while she throws up.

The Hag didn't bother to read the rest of the post, nor did she note down the name of the writer. Life on this earth is too brief to waste.

True, the Hag has not landed an agent nor has she been published. But to paraphrase Groucho Marx, if that particular club would have her as a member, she wouldn't join. Not if that's how you describe the output.

It takes the Hag about a year to write 100,000 words, and that assumes she puts them in a rational order. That's a long time for a story to hold her interest, so there has to be something there, some nugget for her to work with and with luck the same nugget will interest the reader. But churning out glop is boring to write and boring to read.

The Hag loves genre fiction. There's more good plot development and characterization in genre fiction than in mainstream literary fiction and the Hag has a bet with herself that two hundred years from now the famous authors from the 20th and 21st centuries will be genre writers and the hell with the literary critics. She wishes she could be around to see it. However, writing "steamy urban paranormal" is just masturbating in an alleyway with a vampire and why anyone would admit they read it, let alone write it, she hasn't a clue.

Fritz Leiber, in his marvelous book The Silver Eggheads, called it 'wordwooze'. There certainly is a lot of it about. Be careful where you step.

The Mud In The Gene Pool

2008-02-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since the Hag ran away from home. A very long time, and some of the horror has faded. Also, many of the perpetrators are dead and a very good thing too. The younger generation hasn't come much in the Hag's way, and she confesses to a diffuse feeling of benevolence when she thinks about them.

Until last weekend. There, in the Hag's email, was a forwarded racist spew about Barack Obama. The Hag assumed her spam filter was out to lunch, until she realized the sender was a first cousin, someone who has been at her house, and she was forwarding this from her sister. Obviously, they wanted to alert their entire mailing list to the awfulness of a presidential candidate being a Muslim.

The Hag requested removal from the email-list-of-stupidity and asked for future communications to be confined to family news. Hopefully, death notices, although she didn't point that out. Her email was polite and she admitted their right to their political views. But, she's under no obligation to look at this crap.

The Hag has one other cousin she corresponds with, and she is aware this cousin is a Republican and has some other unpleasant social views. But this one is smart enough not to spew them at the Hag and with luck she will continue her restraint. Otherwise, ugliness will ensue.

Whether you believe in nature or nurture, the Hag is doomed.

OOOoo Scary

2008-02-07T12:24:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that there isn't a picture of the Hag on this blog. There's a reason, and it's related to the title of the blog.

During the initial setup of her shiny new MacBook, a dreadful, ugly image appeared on the screen. The Hag recoiled.

Unfortunately, so did the image.

The MacBook was trying, in its innocence, to take a picture of the Hag. So she could iChat with her friends.

Frankly, the Hag can't think of a better way to scare off what friends she has, which probably accounts for all the communication-via-email she does. Say what you will about email (Friend of Hag: Email is for OLD people!) at least it doesn't remind you constantly that youth has fled, taking your skin tone with it. Not to mention what has happened to your neck.

Honestly, it's hard to be ugly. Some sociologist reported that the ugly take, on average, 20 seconds longer to get served at Starbucks. So true. Also, being old is not a good way to get a fast latte, so the Hag has a double whammy.

With all of us Boomers wrinkling and graying away, you would think the general public, i.e. the young, would get used to it. But their eyes are not adjusting as fast as we are deteriorating, apparently.

As part of her job, the Hag speaks in front of many groups. She is quite proud of ignoring her appearance and speaking despite it: it takes a certain courage, and the ability to get over the first, dreadful, impression and make them listen to the content. Even, at times, make them laugh with her - not, as on several dreadful occasions, at her.

When the Hag entered her freshman year at her college, the admissions committee was requiring photos with all applications. (This was before affirmative action and lawsuits - they'd never get away with this now.) Some genius published all the photos in what was known as the 'Pig Book' and the Hag arrived at college with her social fate sealed. The first Saturday night, the phone rang for all the girls around her, boys asking them out. One by one, they left the dorm, in a cruel version of a playground pick, and the Hag was left alone. This memory hurt for years, until the Hag realized those boys were the losers, not her. The Hag is intelligent, funny, creative, very solvent, and loyal. They missed out.

January, You Bitch

2008-01-26T21:47:00.000-08:00

January, you two-faced bitch, will you kindly leave the room? Enough, already!

Not a good month in the Hag household. Not good at all. The Hag was going to post when things calmed down, but since that seems unlikely...

We started the month with a six day power outage. We do have a generator, and contrary to the wishes of our local power company, we have the thing wired into the power box. So the power goes off, we flip a switch, turn a key, and the power goes on. Power to the People, ahem. The utility company hates this, because if we forget to flip the switch, we could fry a utility worker on the pole outside the house. Since that was the one thing we never saw (SIX DAYS. SIX FRIGGING DAYS.) there wasn't much danger. Our new neighbors had edged away when the Hag begged them to buy their own generator, Hag = Crazy Old Lady, but guess what was delivered last week? They had to move out to a motel since the inside of their house was 52 degrees. You live here, you learn, or you leave.

By the way, AT&T hates it when you report a landline outage using your Verizon cell phone. Truly, they want you to use your landline to report your landline isn't working because the fucking phone line is laying in the road. Also, whoever recorded their voice prompts lisps: "Iss there a problemth with your servith?"

Once the power came on, we had two days of peace, and Mr. Hag headed for the hills to donate money to the Nevada economy. The Hag stocked up on chick flicks and forbidden food, and settled down for some indulgence.

That's when the stray kitten showed up.

A day later, the kitten and its 500 friendly fleas were in the local adoption shelter, the Hag was suffering major guilt, and Cat One started projectile vomiting. Then she stopped eating and drinking, hunching in front of the heater in extreme pain. Watching an animal suffer, not responding to any medicine, the Hag would rather stick needles into her own eyeballs. We really thought we were losing her. 24 hours of this, and she finally came out of it. She is now on baby food and extremely expensive cat food, but at least she is eating and acting normally. Normal for a spoiled bitch who has learned that wailing in the middle of night means a human will rise up and heat baby food for her, that is.

While all the above has been going on, the Hag has been trying to go to work. Or at least fake it. Two days ago she gave a presentation at a company site and drove home through a major rainstorm. Four hours with the wipers on high, and you would not believe the number of morons in silver SUVs who don't bother to turn on their headlights. The road was barely visible, let alone these cars.

She arrived home to find the power ON, the cat eating and bitching, and Mr. Hag had cooked her a lovely dinner. (Now you understand why the Hag keeps him around. Besides the cuteness of his butt.) And there was her new laptop, a reward for being a good girl.

Now, the Hag is a Mac girl, and she wanted a nice new Macbook, with a big honkin' hard drive and she got one. But oh lordy, the horror of transferring 3 years worth of files when the operating system has changed and the helpful Migration Assistant puts all the files under a mystery identity which doesn't show up until you reboot. Who knew? So the new laptop has an identity crisis (oh, ha ha) and the Hag has been reduced to Reading the Fucking Manual.

Oh, and it's still raining.

With Four Days Remaining, It's Not Over Yet: MacLinda has broken her ankle, the other staff member is out with an ailment, and guess who's on first? The MacAnkle isn't simply broken either, they are talking surgery. February, here we come.

Year Redux

2007-12-30T12:41:00.000-08:00

The Hag just read through the last year's posts. The more things change, the more they repeat, apparently.

Anyway, to tie up several loose ends, and to close out the themes of 2007:

Comcast/TiVo/and Audio Hell

Completely to the Hag's surprise, TiVo fixed the mysterious audio problem on channel 37 and the Hag and Mr. Hag now have sound on all channels. Naturally, this happened without notice or announcement and the Hag household discovered it by mistake. The Comcast cablecards are working most of the time, except when they don't, and so far (SO FAR) the Hag has been able to fix them by brutally rebooting the Series 3. For reasons best known to them, no TiVo box has an on/off switch so the only way to effectively reboot is to yank the power cord. For some reason this works better than going through the menus. The Hag has plans to upgrade the Airport hub and some of the computers in 2008, which should wreak havoc with the TiVo programming updates, but whatever.

THE BOOK

The Hag is very proud that this is now known as THE FIRST BOOK. It has been rejected by every literary agent of its genre and the Hag has a lovely collection of postcards which all say 'we are sorry, but...' The exciting thing is they all start out 'Dear Author'. Gives the Hag a little zip. The SECOND book is now up to chapter 6. Never say die, Hag.

Harry Potter

The Hag still mourns the end of the series, but she did have a wonderful year with it and is still keeping up with current developments. Did you know that George married Angelina? Cool. The Hag wishes she could have kept eye contact with Jo Rowling longer in Carnegie Hall, but oh well. It was still amazing.

Work

Feh.

Mr. Hag

Mr. Hag is truly in fine shape. As usual, his doctors continue prophesying doom and the yawning of the grave, but he is still driving and walking and eating and -- right at the moment -- out in the garage disemboweling his car to discover what the mystery sound could be. He cheered right up when the last doctor told him solemnly that the latest treatment would only be effective for the next 15 years. Poor thing.

Cats

Yes, we have three. Yes, they do cute and adorable things. But the Hag will spare you.

Mental State

Heavens, who knows? Still here, anyway. Happy New Year to us all.

To The Nasty Fall The Spoils

2007-11-21T15:38:00.000-08:00

The Hag reads the Annoyed Librarian, although AL is an academic librarian and her focus is the horrors of ALA. The Hag doesn't belong to ALA but it's fun reading about it: it's a mess but it's not her mess. AL frequently posts about the horrors of library schools and the poor salaries of librarians. Many librarians respond to these posts with horror stories of their own.

The Hag runs a corporate library. Her patrons are, on the whole, reasonably well educated, literate, and very clean. Also adult. She doesn't have to work nights. All the DVDs are here for training purposes. Our latest popular title is a training session on calculus. We have a library website but we don't do myspace or facebook or even twitter; these are blocked by corporate IS.

The Hag is paid a very very good salary to run the joint. Before reading the last blast of posts on AL's site, she would have had just one 'very'. She's way out on the end of the librarian salary bell curve for sure.

Now, the Hag obtained her library degree in 1979. She had over 10 years of library experience before that. She's been managing this library for 20 years. She negotiates licenses, deals with copyright, does collection development, budgets, supervision and general management. It's a small staff, so everyone does a little bit of everything, but the responsibility is hers.

After over ten years in a basement, the library finally, finally moved to a lovely location with huge windows. Trees and fountains. The Hag's attitude, which had been depressed and gloomy, took an immediate upturn. Everything else is the same, but the venue made a difference - you would not believe.

So the Hag is lucky. Does she deserve this? Well, the point of luck is it comes to the deserving and the undeserving. That's why it's called luck. From one point of view, the Hag fought her way out of many dead end jobs, survived graduate school and the associated debt, uncounted layoffs, restructures, idiot bosses, poor management, corporate downturns, upturns, and her own mistakes to achieve what she has. From another point of view she just sat here while everything changed around her and ended up in a good place through inertia.

The Hag complains about her job. She could be laid off tomorrow for no reason or for whatever reason management wants to make up. It's been that way for over 20 years and it will never change. She is sick of Powerpoint. She is tired of corporate-speak, and even more tired of people who cannot seem to speak any other way. Sometimes the salary isn't enough to put up with arrogant patronizing assholes.

Reading the AL comments, the Hag is indeed thankful that the worst part of her job is Dealing With Assholes, not Low Paid And Dealing With Assholes. Every librarian in the country should be in this position, since humanity is not going to cease producing assholes. They could, however, pay librarians a living wage. We certainly add more value than B. Spears or B. Bonds. Both of those people went out and asked for the money, which librarians generally don't, being ladylike, humble, and grateful for the crumbs from the economic table. The Hag, to her mother's despair, has never been ladylike, doesn't do a good humble, and has always considered gratitude a most untrustworthy emotion. And that's why she is getting a good salary, in her opinion.

Shooting Premarin

2007-11-14T09:22:00.000-08:00

The Hag just went around and around with her dear HMO, entering the way she came in: confused.

Called for annual checkup in Oct.: received appointment at the end of January.
Called for remaining renewal on her Premarin prescription: was told prescription has 'expired'. Told to call doctor for new prescription.
Calls doctor. Doctor's nurse hears the word 'prescription' and punts phone call back to pharmacy.
Speak to pharmacy. Pharmacy says they will email doctor for renewal. No problem. And they will charge credit card when it comes through.
Notice pending charge on credit card.
Receive call from pharmacy: Doctor refuses to renew unless Hag comes in for exam and mammogram. Prescription canceled.
Call doctor again. Speak to doctor's nurse and insist that doctor wants to see Hag NOW. Bully nurse into appointment in 2 days.
See doctor. Have intensely interesting conversation: Doctor never received any emails or notices from pharmacy. Doctor always renews Premarin prescription and Premarin does not 'expire'. Doctor rants about pharmacy practicing medicine without a license. Doctor schedules mammogram (oh, joy), cancels January appointment, and inputs new prescription.
Arrive home. Last renewal of old prescription has arrived.

So now the Hag has been charged $60 for the old prescription and $60 for the new. She will have enough Premarin to sink a battleship, assuming a battleship has hot flashes. However, since the pharmacy seems to have Premarin confused with heroin, she isn't planning on giving anything back.

In a side rant, the medical receptionist weighed over 300 lbs. So this woman checks you in, and your doctor tells you to lose weight?

Boobies

2007-10-30T11:54:00.000-07:00

The Hag has been fairly benevolent lately, due no doubt to the sweepstakes effect. It's time for a good, non-politically-correct rant.

The Hag manages a library, and the library has many vendors, and the vendors have 'customer service representatives', whatever the hell that means. The Hag gives a great deal of her work budget to these vendors and in return services are provided.

In theory. Sometimes, many times, the services are not provided and then the Hag gets on her little broom and, well, you get the idea.

Now, one of these vendors is behaving badly, and the Hag has been phoning and emailing up a storm, trying to fix the situation before it gets worse.

However, the customer service representative has breast cancer. She is still working. But, apparently, no one can complain about anything for any reason because SHE HAS BREAST CANCER.

Now the Hag shouldn't have to say this, but for the record, she will say it anyway: she is sorry the woman has breast cancer. She hopes the treatment works and she wishes the woman a long life.

However, in the Hag's opinion, either the woman is responsible for the services and should be held accountable if they are not provided, or she should be on medical leave and someone else should be doing her job in the interim. Instead, we have breast cancer as passive-aggressive behavior. If the Hag complains, she is being mean to the poor sick sister with breast cancer. If the Hag does not complain, the Hag's company does not get the $50,000 of services they are paying for.

The choice seems to be between being a bitch or being a poor manager. This, of course, is no choice at all for the Hag.

Libraries are prone to these situations, because many libraries are staffed by morons, up to and especially including the managers. So-and-so is incompetent but has a hard life or a loser son or an aged mother which means everyone else must do their job for them. No other institution would put up with this idiocy, but the Hag cannot count the times she has been passed some lemon and been told to make lemonade out of them. But don't suggest their job performance is sub in any way, because heaven forfend their feelings might be hurt. No, far better if you reorganize the workflow or better still, find someone to do their job for them.

Once, the Finance Dept called her up and told her they were laying off an employee. Would the Hag like to hire him? Why were they laying him off? Oh, he's incompetent, but his wife is sick. We can't keep him but we thought he'd do very well in the library.

Give her bitchery every time.

Well, Of Course He Is

2007-10-20T21:22:00.000-07:00

Yes, the Hag was present at the Dumbledore-Is-Gay announcement. An iconic moment in the HP fandom for sure.

Many thoughts:

Lovely that the audience cheered and applauded. Wonderful that Jo announced it in this 'well, isn't it obvious' matter-of-fact voice, while still enjoying the humor of it.

Predictable post-announcement thrashing about from the idiots who believe children should be protected from the world in all its aspects (except the violence, that's okay).

Anyone who didn't like the books won't change their mind. Anyone who does, it's another piece of canon detail.

As she pointed out, strong themes in the books are questioning authority, fighting prejudice, and independent thinking. No wonder the bigots hate her. They won't hate her any less and they can't hate her more.

What a great lady. Too bad the question about Aberforth's inappropriate goat charms came from an eight year old. The answer to that one would have been worth hearing.

And while the Hag spent far too much time in airplanes and airports, she wouldn't have missed the opportunity for the world.

Fandongle

2007-10-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

After the Hag's embarrassing eight-step with Fandango (age showing much, dearie?), she must report seeing Viggo's new movie, in which he is wonderful. She dragged Mr. Hag to the theater and, just as the steam bath scene began, Mr. Hag whispered, "This looks like a quiet scene, so I'll be right back."

Someone needs to read more movie reviews, is all the Hag can say.

Anyway, he stayed ("Are you crazy? Sit DOWN.") and he thought it was a great scene.

The film editor should get an Oscar. Not once, as Viggo in all his glory is flying across the camera lens, did one pixel of his penis show. Not once. Not even a sliver of ball.

We can show multiple throat cuttings in slow-mo, we can show rape, heads exploding with various calibers of bullets, fingers being cut off, dead and decomposed bodies fished out of the river, in other words violence in all forms is just fine. It's American. And the Hag isn't carrying on about one movie. CSI Miami, on network tv in primetime, shows far more than this R rated movie. But that's okay.

But we cannot show a penis. O the horror. Why, it would shock people.

This movie is released in Europe where people are slightly, just slightly, more civilized. And if it's this version the Hag would lose the safest bet she ever made.

Thank you, Hollywood, for protecting the Hag from the awfulness of seeing Viggo Mortenson's penis. She feels so safe now.

Fandamngo

2007-09-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

The Hag hates Fandango. Does anyone else hate this "service"? It is fuck near useless. She writes after spending 30 minutes trying to find the TIME of a movie at a particular theater. Thirty freaking minutes. Can we say 'usability' here?

The only, only reason the Hag persevered: Viggo Mortenson. Yes, that movie.

Of course, the Hag lives in the woods, far far away from le cinema. She barely has a zip code. At least, according to Fandango.

Backing up, in the dim and manual past, theaters would list movie times in the newspaper. With a phone number of the actual theater that would be answered by a live human person. Quaint but, you will notice, functional. Then we went to recordings, which the Hag thought was an improvement, since frequently the human person would be so dysfunctional, not to say stoned, as to not have the slightest idea what time anything was playing, or indeed that they were working in a theater.

Now all this information is on the web. Except it isn't. The Hag knows to input 'movies zip code' into Google. Google will list all the theaters over 35 miles away first, and then the theaters 20 miles away, which simply requires scrolling. Except, this theater is not on the list. And it is owned by a national chain. Searching by the theater name gives no joy.

Now the newspaper (remember print?) has an ad for the movie at this theater, but gives no times. The only phone number is 800/Fandango. Which, by the way, does not work and the Hag tried it 8 times in different ways. (Including with and without the leading 1. Don't email.) She has no idea why.

(Update: The number is now working. So either the Hag punched it in wrong for eight times running, or the phone company was in on the plot to drive the Hag crazy. She'd love to vote for Option B, but Option A does seem more likely. But eight times?)

So the Hag goes back to the web and goes to fandango.com. She enters her zip code, which gets her all the theaters 35 miles away. Nothing in the closest town. She tries the theater name. No joy. She tries by the movie name. Same far away list.

In fury, the Hag goes to the phone book and finds the zip code for the town. She tries that in Fandango. At last, there is the theater. With the movie times.

Thirty minutes.

Just for laughs, the Hag (who has bought tickets for events on Fandango before) looked up the instructions for ticket purchases. It is a multi-step process. It is neither simple nor straightforwards. As far as the Hag can tell, this system only works for people who live right around the corner from a theater. In which case, they can walk out their door and hand the money to a human. Such a concept.

How the hell do people who are not computer literate or simple newbies deal with this? And the theaters are bemoaning the drop in attendance. People don't want to go to the movies anymore, they cry. Well, morons, get a clue.

Gimme A Walker

2007-09-14T21:54:00.000-07:00

Ha, ha, the Hag just creeped out the entire Harry Potter fandom by admitting her age. All over the country, fifteen year olds are recoiling in horror.

Some naive 40-something was trumpeting herself as 'the oldest HP fan'. The Hag ground her into the dust.

Actually, there's a 70-something rabid fan out there, the Hag knows. So in the interests of accuracy, she didn't say SHE was the oldest fan, just that Ms. 40+ wasn't.

Anyway, we all have Harry in common. And HP fans are more civil than, say, World of Warcraft fans. So we'll all be in New York together and who gives a rat's ass if the Hag has gray hair and can remember skate keys.

I Won

2007-09-12T15:43:00.000-07:00

Damn all, I just won two tickets to hear J.K.Rowling read at Carnegie Hall in New York in October.

I never win anything, so if I have to win ONE THING in my life, this is just fine with me.

And! And, I don't have to reschedule any of the multiple trips, business meetings, conferences and other junk that come my way each October. It falls neatly after one and before another.

I cannot believe this. I cannot believe this.

Logistics later, joy now.

Fertile Croissant

2007-09-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

No, the Hag hasn't a clue what the post title means, but she thinks it's funny, so it stays.

The Hag is moved to post by poor Happy Villain, who is suffering a massive bleed-out due to an ovarian cyst. Happy Villain is facing surgery, and while she hasn't said exactly WHAT they plan to remove, the Hag hopes it's a grand slam: two ovaries, one uterus.

The Hag had a complete hysterectomy over 20 years ago. It was the best decision she ever made. There is more bullshit tossed at suffering women over this. And it doesn't sound as if things have gotten easier in the meantime. Women with a medical problem have to wade chin deep in everyone else's preconceptions (not a joke) and prejudices, and that includes doctors and all medical personnel. Everybody has an opinion about your reproductive organs, whether or not you ever intend to use them.

A doctor told the Hag she seemed like a 'nice, decent girl' and that it was her duty to have decent children. The Hag told this dimwit that decency was not genetic.

After a 'therapeutic' D&C to correct continuous bleeding, a nurse berated the Hag for having an abortion. When the Hag protested she hadn't been pregnant, the nurse informed her she was delusional. The Hag asked her to read the chart, and the nurse was escorted from the room.

The Hag went through 15 day menstrual periods EVERY MONTH with blood clots, depression, diarrhea, hysterical fits of rage, uncontrolled weeping, cramps that bent her over double, bloating and the constant stench of menstrual blood. She was told this was a celebration of her womanhood.

And of course, the ovarian cyst that bled into the body cavity, mimicking a tubal pregnancy. That one was fun, especially since the Hag was between boyfriends. However the doctors didn't believe her and informed her all the symptoms said she was pregnant. Except the pregnancy test was negative and the Hag was denying sexual congress with anything: fauna or flora. But, the doctors knew she was pregnant, and they were all set for major surgery until someone said, well, she's just a woman and it's only her body, but she might be right. They were only planning to remove one ovary and tube, because THEY MUST PRESERVE HER SACRED FERTILITY. If the Hag had been thinking clearly she would have told them to take it all out and shut the hell up, but unfortunately internal bleeding is very painful and she wasn't.

Every time she brought up the idea of a complete hysterectomy (or even just getting her tubes tied, for gods sake) she would be told:

a) She wasn't married (because god forbid a woman should make this decision without a MAN).
b) She'd change her mind and want to have children, despite having said from the age of 13 that she was not going to have any offspring.
c) It was all in her head. (What, they had her confused with Stephen King?)

In her mid-thirties, the Hag married Mr. Hag. Mr. Hag, bless his heart, had had a vasectomy. The Hag mentioned this to her doctor when they were having the annual discussion about curative options and the doctor said, "OH, WELL, IF YOUR HUSBAND HAS HAD A VASECTOMY I GUESS YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO HAVE CHILDREN SO WE WILL SCHEDULE YOUR HYSTERECTOMY."

The Hag did not murder the doctor. She considered it, because the jackass deserved it, the sexist dunderhead. However, she was by this time well aware how difficult it was to find a doctor who would even consider the option. So the operation was scheduled.

All the nurses in the state went out on strike. No elective surgery.

So the Hag had a good long time, over six months, to think about this decision. All her feminist, organic, wicca and points south friends buried her in literature on womanliness. Tomes written by women who'd had the surgery and bitterly regretted it: 'I miss my womb.' Say what? You can't miss what you have never seen, lady. Songs of praise for natural menopause. A sad note on this one: the friend who pushed natural menopause died nine years ago of ovarian cancer.

Anyway, the nurses went back to work and the Hag had the surgery. Her second to last period was so vicious, the Hag truly thought she was going to die. Her last period was meek, mild, hardly even there. Uterus to Hag: really, I'll be good now.

Hag to Uterus: Die, bitch!

Three months after the surgery, the Hag said to Mr. Hag: "Do you notice any difference in me?"

"You must be joking. It's like night and day."

So go ahead, Happy Villain. The Hag predicts you won't be sorry.

The Doom At The End Of Time

2007-08-06T16:19:00.000-07:00

The Hag has now read Book 7 at least eight times. She is listening to the audio book to the point of being weeks behind on all podcasts - she does not care.

If you, the Reader, do not know what she is talking about, clean the wax out of your ears and go somewhere else.

Unfortunately, it is now OVER. Life. Anticipation. Theories. Over Over Over. Depression is an understatement for the feelings du jour.

So what's left? Cats. Eh. Husband. Eh. Work. Retch. The Hag is so over work.

Writing. Well. The new book is slowly and slowly and S.L.O.W.L.Y coming together. She has a premise. She has a bunch of characters wandering around. Occasionally they trip over the plot. So that's going forward, and if it weren't for that, she'd be up on a higher ledge than she is.

But damn she is sorry July 21st has come and gone.

Everybody Out Of The Pool

2007-07-10T19:53:00.000-07:00

No one should be forced to socialize with people they work with. No one should be forced to socialize with people they work with ON A SATURDAY. Surely five days out of seven is enough?

And no one should be forced to socialized with people they work with when their husband, that sneaky rotter, got out of it.

The Hag knew doom was approaching when Engineer Obsessive joyously announced he and SuperWife were giving a 'pool party' for all their friends at work and we should bring our families. He gave a 45 minute (no shit) rant on how much their house cost, the size and scope of his wine cellar, the house decorating done by SuperWife, the landscaping done by SuperWife, the incredible cuisine to be cooked and served by SuperWife, the band he was hiring (apparently SuperWife does not play the marimbas, how sad) and how lucky we all were to be invited. He finished by saying that he was sure none of the adults would want to swim in their extensive, super duper pool, but 'the children would enjoy it.'

Say what? It's stinking hot, it's a Saturday, it's a pool party, but don't swim? Wow, now there is an invitation. (Please come for dinner, but we know you won't want to actually eat food.)

Okay, so the Hag has been married to Mr. Hag for lo these many years (yes, cliche, get over it) and she accurately predicted his response to this gracious invitation. The Hag knew she would have to go, so she broke it to Engineer Obsessive that she would be attending without husband.

He was not pleased. He demanded a reason. The Hag murmured about medical conditions. Now, when someone tells you their spouse is too ill to attend a social event, what do you do? You say 'so sorry to hear that, we'll miss him' that's what you say. But this is Engineer Obsessive, and what he did was ask for details.

Heart condition, says the Hag.
No problem says EO.
Too exhausting, too far, too long a day, says the Hag.
No, no, says EO. He can sit. Or take a nap in our luxury bedroom. SuperWife is a trained nurse. (Of course she is. She can do the bypass while she's grating carrots.)

Engineer Obsessive was about one second away from asking for a note from Mr. Hag's doctor. For a social event. On personal time. The Hag decided to toss Mr. Hag overboard, because if he refuses to go to these ghastly events, he can't complain about her tactics.

Mr. Hag, she informed Engineer Obsessive, is VERY OLD. Much older than the Hag. He has many medical conditions including heart disease, lung disease, and CANCER. This is because he is VERY VERY OLD. That, finally, did it.

So the Hag went to this dreadful event, which was just as advertised, and Mr. Hag laughed his elderly ass off. However, karma caught up with him. His dreadful relative arrived in town. The Hag answered the phone. She informed DR that she, the Hag, was extremely busy at work but Mr. Hag would be delighted to meet him for an extended lunch. She did not consult Mr. Hag before saying any of this and just handed him the phone and walked off. Gotcha!

Silent TNT

2007-07-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

The Hag tries to have a normal life. Truly, she does. So either everyone has abnormal crap happen to them all the time or she is just cursed. Reader, you decide.

Mr. and Mrs. Hag decided to add an audio system to their lovely LCD tv, since they have two TiVos attached to the thing, a wireless network so the TiVos can call the mother ship, and multiple computers and peripherals plugged in all over the house. Just what the house needs, more wires. But Mr. Hag pointed out, with a certain amount of truth, that the tv sound was dismal and the unit was made to have a 'home theater system' attached. The Hag wanted to toss out the couch and put in a popcorn stand, but no, she had to go deal with people who talked about subwoofers and tweeters.

She took the coward's way out and called Crutchfield. She described what she had, told them premium audio would be wasted in the Hag household, and ordered a receiver, a woofie thingie and a bunch of speakers. It duly arrived and Mr. and Mrs. Hag played with all the little colored wires and cables.

Now, at this point we enter (cue ominous music) the netherworld of Audio Hell. We lost all sound on the tv channel 37, which is TNT. But only from the HD TiVo. The channel sounds just fine on the old TiVo. So the Hag uncabled everything and put it back the way it was.

There is still no sound on channel 37 via the new TiVo.

Crutchfield says it isn't the audio system since it would be either no sound from anything, or all sound. Since we still have the problem now with the audio system not connected, the Hag believes them.

So, it's the cablecards. Comcast (yes, she knows) replaced the cablecards with the Hag doing the install with the TiVo person on the other end of the phone line. This took a week to set up, and the Hag only agreed to it after trying everything else. The Hag now knows all about HDMI, digital audio optical vs. composite cables and how to swap everything around in under 45 seconds. Everything works fine, except no sound on channel 37.

TiVo says, and the Hag has to give them credit, that it is their problem but they have no idea what it is and it might be fixed by 'firmware' at some later date. Meaning, Lady, you are on your own.

Picture the Hag Household: Mr. Hag loves Law and Order. (sigh) He likes it on the widescreen, so he's watching it via the new TiVo, and running the sound through the old TiVo. This is fine until he forgets and hits the hold button, when the picture stops and the sound continues. He's extremely stubborn, so he keeps watching with the sound totally out of synch. The Hag leaves the room.

Questions for an Uncaring Universe:

If the audio system was blameless, why would the sound fail on just one channel immediately after the audio system was plugged in? If the audio system was the culprit, why wouldn't the sound return when the system was returned to base?

O, and just make 'bang head on wall' an attractive option: Channel 5 lost all sound at the beginning of this process, but it is now back. WTF?

Rocks in the Hag

2007-06-30T21:22:00.001-07:00

Happy Villain, that clever girl, has tagged the Hag with a meme. The Hag has been reading Happy Villain for a long time, primarily so she can say, 'Well, things may be bad here but at least the Hag does not work at THAT library.' It's not a case of the grass being greener here; it's a case of the poop being browner there. Or there's more of it. The Hag hasn't been a girl for a considerable time, but she has, in her day, rocked. O, you children have no idea. Heh.

Apparently, the Hag is now to name five further Rockin' Girl Bloggers. This is difficult, since Happy Villain already named several of the Hag's favorites. And some of the Hag's picks may be so well known that they have already been tagged. Plus (to continue whining) the Hag has been incredibly busy with, like, LIFE, and hasn't been reading too many blogs lately.

However:

The Random Muse is Martha Kimes blog, and the Hag feels free to pass around her name because Martha just published her first book and you should all rush out and buy Ivy Briefs. Whether or not you have ever considered law school. The book is One L with boobs and snark. The Hag even forgives Martha for her ability to wear stilettos. Enjoy it while you can, honey.

Before Martha published her book and had to out herself, she was variously one third or one fourth of Snarkywood. This blog or site or whatever has been retired, but the archives are worth a visit. Do not have a mouthful of anything while reading since getting sprayed food out of keyboards is tedious.

Miss Doxie What is it with the Hag and lawyers? Miss Doxie is an attorney in the South with three dachshunds, and the world's funniest blog. Also, what is it with the Hag and poop? You must meet Bo, who engages in revenge pooping, not to mention the rest of the cast of her life. Miss Doxie has been known to have an occasional drinkie, which leads us to the...

Annoyed Librarian The dear woman needs regular martinis while dealing with the wackos who pretend to speak for the library world. The Hag has never been a joiner, but she supposes someone has to do it.

It was a sad day in blogdom when Miss Snark shut down. The Hag had just located her, and was working through the archives, screeching with laughter, when she hung up her stilettos to concentrate on her day job. Please, the Hag begs you, whether or not you ever want to find a literary agent, read the snarkives. Be sure to check out the Crap-O-Meter.

This post appears to have several themes: stilettos, poop, lawyers, librarians, snark and drink. Perhaps it is a picture of the inside of the Hag's head?

Apostrophe Karma

2007-06-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

Where has the Hag been, my reader asks? Well, she's been locked in the vise of revisions. She knew Draft 1 was, well, a draft. Draft 2 was better. In fact, it was somewhat optimistically called the Final Draft, and we all drank a toast at the Deadline Club. "Don't fiddle with it," they said. It's done, they said.

But.

Those middle of the night thoughts. Chapter nine = weak. The Hag gritted her teeth and ignored them. Finally, Mr. Hag said, "It's your book. If you want to rewrite, do it."

So back into the hack, hack, hack of rewrite. Eventually, the nagging voice shut the hell up, and it's truly done. Whew! She ended up rewriting 3 chapters and then rechecking the whole bloody thing for plot holes. And fixed 500 more typos that got past everyone.

So then she went into the query letter/synopsis thing, which took forever, but she did get something halfway usable. And today, she sent out her first query to an agent. Via email.

Trust her, that text was checked and rechecked. Tonight, for some goddamn reason, she opened the query copy in the SentMail file.

There's a typo in the first sentence. A missing apostrophe.

Curse the thing to the seven devils in hell. GODDAMMIT!!!

Oh, well. Karma. On to the next one. Hardcopy for sure.

Goalie

2007-05-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

Spring is here, the little birdies are twittering in the trees, the weather is lovely, and that means only one thing: it's time to write performance goals for the next year!

Goals are, apparently, necessary and inescapable to corporate life and oh how the Hag wishes she were done with corporate life. But she isn't and here we go again.

Now you would think that a performance goal would be related to the job the worker is doing. Ha ha ha. Noooooo. These are goals over and above one's job. Let the Hag say that another way: Goals have no relation to the job. So you write the goals and you say, this goal is 30% and this one is 25% and they all add up to 100% of your time, and none of them have anything to do with your actual job. And you are rated on how well you complete your goals. Not do your job, the job you are supposedly getting paid for.

So in theory, you can score 100% on your goals and not do your job at all and everyone will be just fine with that. In practice, this means that everyone has two jobs (at a minimum) the job they are supposed to be doing and the job they get rated on. Guess where the energy goes.

This does, however, explain why customer service at companies is so horrible. These people are hire to answer the phone and the customer questions but they are probably getting graded on how many afghans they can crochet. Or spitballs they can throw. Or, realistically, how many team meetings they can attend. Score!

General Bitchery and Formless Ranting (Click)

2007-05-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

No, the Hag has not gotten another ticket from the Sheriff from Hell. That's about the only good thing that's happened recently, if you think driving in utter fear twice a day to be a good thing. Also, three days out of five, as the Hag crawls through the danger zone, irritated fellow commuters pass her on blind curves. There's no place to pull over, or the Hag would, so she's waiting for a head-on collision caused by obeying the speed limit.

Mr. Hag is a mass of doom and gloom, because they want to remove a benign polyp from a part of his anatomy that rarely sees the light of day. Benign means nothing to him. He simply sees this as further evidence of deterioration leading to the grave.

Speaking of deterioration (perhaps this post should be relabeled 'Organ Recital') the Hag's jaw is clicking. Eating is such fun. The dentist says it's deterioration leading to the grave, or, he can't fix it, and it happens as 'we age', but despite this he is charging her $450 for a mouth guard. And take ibuprofen. Well, the Hag would, but she's off ibuprofen for the duration of a disgusting test to be performed at home with popsicle sticks. So she'll click until that's done, and probably for the rest of her life.

The Hag signed up for one week of vacation in August. One lousy week. Mr. Hag made reservations. The Hag's boss, Engineer Obsessive, insists on all planned leave being posted on the office calendar so he can 'schedule'. Well, he scheduled the next big meeting when? Yes.

You may remember that the Hag was having some tiny issues with her cablecards in her lovely TiVo and the Nameless Cable Provider. A message popped up on TiVo, telling her that the NCP had noticed that some cablecards were incorrectly paired and to contact them. The Hag screamed in vindication, because for FOUR MONTHS she has been telling them the same thing. However, after calling the NCP and talking to the usual clueless customer rep (there must be a special farm where they grow these people) she was told they want to replace her cablecards because the NCP was fearful she might be MAKING COPIES OF PROGRAMS. Now the cablecards go in the TiVo Series 3, which does not have the ability to write DVDs. Aha, the rep says, but we don't want you recording a premium cable show, deleting it from the DVR, and then (The Horror!) recording it again! No, No! He informs the Hag that it is a violation of copyright and that the FCC (at this point he told the Hag what the letters stood for, how nice of him) was 'really coming down on the NCP'.

Oh, right. The Hag called TiVo and informed them that their entire business model was now in the crosshairs of the mighty FCC cannon. Unsurprisingly, this was news to them, since it was total bullshit.

The Hag (and the lovely TiVo rep) are sure that the NCP (Oh, fuck it, Comcast!) noticed that they'd been installing cablecards incorrectly and now have to go back and do them again. It is possible that the premium channels are going to pull an Unbox on TiVo, where you can copy stuff but not write to a DVD, in which case they will have a big public relations hassle. Oh, joy. Anyway, the Comcast 'technician' is coming this Saturday and the Hag will do the install herself. Mr. Hag has announced he is leaving the house for the duration.

Click.

Thrashing Around In Chapter Three

2007-04-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

As the Hag suspected, the second draft of the OPUS is not as much fun as the first draft. For one thing, there's all those pesky words in the way and sometimes she wants to get her little chainsaw and edit the hard way. Take it from her, a blank page is much less intimidating than a chapter that almost works but not quite and she can't figure out what to keep and what to toss and it wasn't right before and now it's worse.

Run-on sentences are she.

In other news: there is no other news. Neither the Hag nor Mr. Hag has renewed their acquaintance with the sheriff; Mr. Hag because he detours around the entire Town of Infamy and the Hag because she crawls through at five miles under the speed limit every morning. Work is normally nuts and boring and the cats are, as of this writing, healthy.

Hooks and Cherries

2007-04-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

It's far, far too early to be sending out query letters on this opus, but the Hag did enter a 'hook contest' on a writer's site. She couldn't resist.

To kill suspense: she didn't win. She didn't even get close.

However, she did learn a few things. All the information the Hag has on hooks says SHORT. As in one sentence, or maximum of two. This contest limited the hooks to 300 words. Writers are a gabby bunch in this genre, apparently. But it seemed to the Hag that at 300 words, it's not a hook, it's a query or a synopsis or a summary.

Which is what people turned in. Which is one reason why, with her hook at 95 words, she's not in the running anymore. However, she did get some useful input on what needed to be added and she can use that when she does a real query.

Also, doesn't this count as her first real rejection as a writer? So she's popped her cherry.

Drafty

2007-04-13T21:27:00.000-07:00

The Hag has completed the first draft of her novel. Reality is different from anticipation; she thought she would be shrieking with joy but instead there's just an enormous feeling of satisfaction. And accomplishment. She did it. She did the whole thing: plot arc, character development, major theme, minor themes, crisis, conflict, resolution.

The Hag has been noodling around writing for years. This is the first time she finished something. And it's a whole freaking novel, 100,000 words. Damn.

The next step is, of course, the second draft. But she doesn't start chipping away at that mountain until she's done a little celebrating. She deserves it.

Mr. Hag Hates The Sheriff

2007-04-06T10:44:00.000-07:00

Ha Ha Ha

Hired Still and Forever

2007-03-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

The Hag has been receiving a paycheck from her current employer for over 20 years. Many, many people have come and gone (mostly gone) from this company, but there are an astonishing number of employees who've been here longer than she. Retirements after 40 years are not uncommon.

The first day of her employment was spent in a deadly boring orientation, and the Hag had plenty of time to do a head count. There were 34 people who started that day, including one fireball who went on to become a vice president and subsequently quit in an upper management snit. People have been laid off, died, quit, were fired, and there aren't very many of the cohort left.

Unfortunately, one woman is still around. She must be technologically skilled and heavily engineering qualified, because her human skills are considerably worse than the Hag's, which is saying a lot. In fact, she's a lot like a male engineering geek who lives in his mother's basement and demands to have his underwear ironed each week.

She's dealt with the pesky human interaction problem by tagging each person she meets with one conversational token. She trots it out each time and proceeds to have the same conversation no matter whether she's talked to you last week or last year. The Hag's token is We Were Hired On The Same Day. She has been telling the Hag this piece of information for twenty years. It is not news.

Yesterday, the Hag made the mistake of trying to move the conversation onwards. After twenty years, we could break new ground. She mentioned retirement -- in the hope that Hired would take the hint. The following conversation is accurate:

Hired: My husband and I are very well-to-do. Very.
Hag: Is that so?
Hired: Yes. We have three houses. Two are completely paid off, and we have no plans to pay off the third because we need the mortgage deduction.
Hag: Ummm.
Hired: Our two children are through college and graduate school. We paid all the tuition ourselves because there are no scholarships available. All the tuition.
Hag: Really?
Hired: Yes. One went to Harvard and did graduate work at Stanford. She's a lawyer and she married a lawyer. They are very well-off.
Hag: Umm.
Hired: The second one is through medical school and is now an intern. We paid for everything.
Hag: Is that so?
Hired: So I've thought about retiring but I stayed home one day and ate breakfast and read the papers and then it was eleven o'clock and the day was half gone. So I didn't know what to do and I talked to another person who used to work here...

Mercifully, another employee came up to us and she dropped the Hag like a hot rock. She didn't smile and say 'talk to you later' or disengage gracefully; no, she just stopped in mid-sentence, turned and walked away. The Hag was not heartbroken.

The Hag supposes this is Conversation as One Up, or How to Bludgeon People With Your Superiority, or just playing I Have More Money Than You, neener neener. The Hag has a vivid memory of another Hired conversation, in which she was told that she looked very young for her age and that was surprising since she wasn't Chinese and only the Chinese aged well. Hired had a suspicious expression on her face, as though the Hag was trying to pass as a member of an ethnic group to which she wasn't entitled, or she was hiding wrinkles in her back pocket.

I Hate The Sheriff

2007-03-09T15:31:00.000-08:00

Three weeks ago the Hag received a speeding ticket. Yes, she was speeding, no argument. However, she is positive that this particular road is posted and arranged to create a nice little income for the particular municipality through which it passes.

It's a long, downhill grade.

It's remote. There are no houses.

There are no stoplights or cross-streets.

It's a major commuter route.

It's posted at 35 mph. Those fuckers.

Anyway, the Hag is aware that the sheriff likes to hang out at the bottom of the hill with his little radar gun. She was on the way to work and she just zoned out. Bang!

The Hag behaved like an adult. She was courteous to the minion of the law. She did not do or say any of the things she was thinking. She accepted that a large honking amount of her checking account was going to disappear, and that the wonderful world of traffic school was in her future.

Today she was pulled over again. Same place. Same cop. This means a point on her license, and an evil conversation with the insurance company. After 15 years of commuting on this road, twice in one month seems like a nasty joke on the part of the universe.

Was the Hag courteous and did she behave in an adult manner? Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.

(Goddammit, where is that ledge?)

Stuck In The Middle

2007-03-03T19:23:00.000-08:00

Okay. The Hag will confess. She's writing a book. AAAAArrrrrrrgggghhhh. The pain!

No, not the writing, doofus. The Telling. Oh, the pretentiousness of it all. Sixty million people in this country are writing a book, and they all go to parties and talk about it. Or blog about it.

The Hag swears, on the cat, that this blog will not turn into a literary shitfest. For one thing, her taste in fiction is pretty generic, and modern litcrit is just like jazz: being all middle and no beginning or end. The Hag likes old things, such as plot, and endings that if not happy, are at least satisfactory.

As a side rant, the Hag still remembers her outrage after slogging through a 150,000 word novel to reach the last page and -- the hero dies. The End. SAY WHAT? True, life is pointless and we all must die yadda yadda, but in a fracking novel? And we aren't talking Frodo getting on a ship here, we are talking the villain shoots the hero. Why bother writing it and, as a reader, why bother reading?

The Hag doesn't like to give plot details, so she won't. She thinks it kills off her ideas before she has a chance to get them down. Too much talking, not enough writing. But she will say that she has been working on this book for over a year. It's social science fiction, a what-if we had a human colony on another planet and they build a society around a harmless, helpful artifact they find. And that's all the detail she's prepared to divulge.

Normally, the Hag has the attention span of a gnat. She's interrupted at work constantly, so she does everything in ten minute bursts, even reading authors she loves. She knew writing was the next big thing in her life when she was working on a chapter and realized she'd lost two hours. And now, she has the perfect justification for all the time she spends daydreaming. Please. She's recharging her creative batteries, not spacing out.

In other news, this blog has been declared a Comcast-free zone.

Go find your own ledge

2007-02-26T16:58:00.000-08:00

The Hag was feeling guilty about not updating this blog. This is, parenthetically, a complete waste of guilt, since who cares? The Blog Police? "We arrest you for rampant non-bloggery! Pervert!"

Anyway, she reread the last post and discovered that her life hasn't moved on in any way.

Comcast and TiVo and the cablecards are not speaking.

The Hag's boss is still an idiot and still has depressing meetings. To give you a sense of the scope here, there is more hope for Comcast than for him. And if that doesn't push you out onto a ledge, nothing will.

Friday Fucking Night, Thank God

2007-02-02T20:05:00.000-08:00

And so, the Hag bids farewell to another wretched week, filled with meetings, brain-dead bosses, and the bizarre evil monster corporate entity Comcast.

Quote of the week: Comcast Customer 'Service' person: "We can come out to your house Monday to Friday, between 8-5. Surely you don't work all the time?"

Well, no, honey, the Hag doesn't. However, she does work a FULL TIME JOB which strangely takes place, 8-5, Monday to Friday. Not counting the commute.

You fucking moron.

The Hag would have been more charitable if this hadn't been the SECOND goddamn service call within 4 days. That Comcast 'repairman' explained that he knew nothing about cablecards installed in TiVos and he just had no clue why the Hag could only get one station on her TiVo. Adding insult to insult, the station was the USA channel, so when the Hag thought she was recording Battlestar Galactica she got a Steven Seagal movie. Blasphemy. Also, Steven Seagal is not aging well and his jowls are droopy.

So now the Hag has learned how to reset her own cablecards and re-initialize her TiVo. She better be able to do this, since the megacorporation charging her for 'service' has no idea whatsoever.

Into The Closet

2006-12-31T22:19:00.000-08:00

Every year the Hag has a week or so off at Christmas. Every year, the Hag makes a big Hag vow to CLEAN OUT THE GODDAMN CLOSET in the bedroom. All that extra time, surely she could manage to do this one chore.

The Hag and Mr. Hag have been in this house for fourteen years. Mr. Hag owns the garage; he owns every square inch of precious space out there and community property does not apply. Ditto the closet in the office aka the cat room. So extra stuff, all the extra stuff, ends up in the bedroom closet. This is also where the Hag keeps the few miserable rags she uses to cover her body. Her entire goddamn wardrobe. Okay, this is a double closet, and it's a big double closet. But it has the Christmas decorations including the tree stand and the rolls of ... wait, here is a list:

Top shelf left side:

Portfolio of large photographs from when the Hag was doing photography
Box of cameras and camera junk
Big honking metal tripod for cameras
Another box of darkroom stuff for darkroom long gone
Box of Mr. Hag's family silver
Another carton of Hag family silver (if we leave it out we have to clean it)
An enormous footlocker, dating from 1945, last used by Mr. Hag to attend military prep school (this explains a great deal, but that's another post)
4 repulsive coffee mugs with tacky poems on their sides, highly valued by Mr. Hag
Luggage wheels
Three canvas carryalls
A folding rack with net for drying sweaters
2 hats
4 leather belts
A japanese kimono in a special bag

Top shelf right side:

Six rolls of Christmas wrap
A carton of Christmas tree lights and miscellaneous ornaments
Another carton of ornaments, Christmas cards, etc.
The Christmas tree stand
A very large down comforter
A very large duvet
A small electric blanket
A homemade quilt, queen size

Clothes are hanging on both sides of the closet, going from left to right we have coats, blazers, work slacks, skirts, vests, over shirts, tops and blouses. There are no dresses anymore and those skirts never get worn, but what the hey.

Underneath the hanging clothes, left side:

Mr. Hag's suitcase (why is this here?)
The Hag's suitcase, containing smaller carryalls and travel stuff
One very large cat carrier, sans cats
A carton of family photographs, framed
A carton of legal papers, photographs and miscellanous small photo albums
A carton of all the snapshots and loose photographs not in albums
The Hag's mother's wedding album which does not fit in any carton
2 five pound weights
2 eight pound weights
2 ten pound weights
A throw rug hooked by the Hag's grandmother
A decorative tray, non-useful but which might come in handy some day

Between the doors, the ironing board is hanging.

Under the hanging clothes, right side:

The steam iron
Fourteen pairs of the Hag's shoes (absolute necesssities)
Two huge cartons of record albums, none of which have been played in 20 years
A small cat carrier, sans cat

Complicating the issue, there are stacks of photographs lying around the house that should be in these boxes but aren't, silver objects ditto, and Mr. Hag purchased a big plastic Christmas tree which has to come down and be stored SOMEWHERE.

So today, the Hag brewed some strong coffee and started yanking boxes. In a foolhardy act of senseless bravery (or stupidity) she started sorted through all the photographs. This was an impossible task. Mr. Hag discovered all the wedding snapshots and decided to create an album on the spot. This seriously impeded progress since many of the wedding guests are now dead, divorced, or in jail and intense non-nostalgic discussion ensued. When the Hag inspected his album she found it touching that he had included a photo of her former boyfriend, who had the bad taste to show up at the reception. He'd included the photo under the impression it was an old friend of his. This cheered the Hag up.

As revenge for this, and that damn suitcase, not to mention his fucking family silver, she unearthed a tatty box of HIS family photos and dumped the entire mess on the kitchen table with orders to sort through and box for storage or shredding the evidence.

The record albums are loaded in the wagon, ready for the county dump, along with about half the closet contents, including the footlocker (Yes!) but not the stupid mugs. They will have to wait until after the funeral.

Tomorrow, the linen closet. She's on a roll. Now, where was that old boyfriend's picture...

Shifting Gears, Or This Is Scary

2006-12-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

The Hag is finishing up the class, the last class, the last semester of teaching. This was interesting to do, and she did it for two years, and she's soooo glad it's over. Now everyone in graduate school can go merrily on their illiterate way, without the Hag carping in the corner. And good luck to them or bad cess or whatever they deserve.

It was an enormous time sink. Four times a semester, the Hag would be either preparing for a lecture or grading an assignment, and while that was going on she didn't have much spare time or energy for much else. Besides keeping a full time job going, commuting over 2 hours a day, breaking in new boss after new boss (du jour), coping with cars, hostile fauna attacking cars, house foundations, contractors (more bad cess), and cats. So she won't miss it at all, and right now she's wondering how the hell she ever wedged it in in the first place.

However, onward! The Hag has another overwhelming project she's committed to, and it's scary. Very scary. But fun. And it does not involve teaching or dealing with organizations or other people or externals at all. So it should remain fun far longer than the last six or seven projects, she hopes.

Avast, matey! Full speed ahead. O shit, o dear.

Frogs On Our Ears

2006-11-29T11:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, the Hag is sartorially-challenged. She knows this. On a good day, she achieves neat and clean. At least in public. What she wears at home while watching 'Survivor' remains between her, Mr. Hag and the cats, all of whom know better than to comment.

The Hag's Rules for Female Dress:

Females under 30 can get away with revealing.
Females under 20 can get away with revealing and extreme.
Females under 10 can get away with cute.

Cute on a female over 60 is nauseating.

Which leads us to the Hag's encounter with the Frog Lady. The Hag went to jury duty. She wrote a blog entry about jury duty but it was so boring, both the duty and the entry, that she decided to spare her reader the pain. However, when she walked into the courthouse, there, in the jury holding tank, was a woman over 60. With her graying hair in two pigtails framing her face. You've seen these on children, when they do their own hair and the part in the back isn't straight? So fine, it's her face and her hair after all. What set this one apart (god, please let this be the only one in the universe) was the pigtail holders. Not rubber bands or hair bands or scrunchies.

Frogs.

Green, stuffed frogs, about six inches long, were twisted around the pigtails, and set so the frog's head peeked out over each ear. Adorable.

The Hag was spared the ultimate horror of being on a jury with this woman. She has a suspicion, unprovable, that the court clerk took one look at the Frog Lady and dropped her jury form in the round file. The clerk should get a medal.

The Rub

2006-11-11T12:56:00.000-08:00

The Hag went to a live concert, where the lead singer was back with the band after a cancer treatment. They didn't rub the audience's nose in it, since this band has a nice blend of upbeat cynicism, but they did do the Life Is Short, Only Do Things You Love speech.

Well, it's a nice idea, and the Hag is all for it. And if she was smarter, or perhaps luckier, she would figure out how to do that. Unfortunately, she has never been able to figure out how to get paid for petting cats and reading genre fiction. And if the Hag doesn't get paid, the Hag doesn't eat, not to mention the cats and Mr. Hag.

Right now, the Hag's house is up on jacks, thwarting its desire to leave the property and seek its fortune in the wide world. Thwarting is expensive, as is cat food, visits to the cat vet, and buying concert tickets to hear bands tell you to follow your dream.

The Hag doesn't plan to get to the end of her life and discover that she hasn't done The Thing She Loves. She's working on it as best she can, and it was very nice, last night, looking at those talented, alive people on stage, to realize that because she is working on it, she wasn't envious of them at all.

Rolling, rolling, rolling

2006-10-31T14:48:00.000-08:00

Ack! Keep them catastrophes coming!

It is, the Hag is happy to note, the last day of The Month From Hell. Update:

1. Still no boss, who cares.

2. Car totalled by insurance company, big fat check arrived, new(ish) car purchased.

3. Survived, barely, two librarian conferences, although permanent mental scarring has occured.

4. Mr. Hag survived colonoscopy, results benign. Thank god for sarcasm.

5. Students turned in 27 papers, for a total of 550 pages, all of which the Hag has read 3 times, for a total that requires too much math. Lots, anyway. The Hag is posting in this blog to avoid posting grades.

6. The Hag received a summons for jury duty. Next week. God hates her.

7. Mr. Hag likes the new(ish) car so much he is probably going to sell his perfectly good car and get one just like it. Since even he cannot drive two cars at the same time, this means the Hag will be pressed into service as a driver, which will be a good trick if she is on jury duty.

8. Deck contractor? Still no show.

9. Mysterious insect infestation in house thwarted by serious chemicals. Mercifully, no one in the Hag household is worried about their fertility. If they were, too bad.

And November is supposed to be the easy month? The Hag can't wait.

Hermitude

2006-10-19T14:01:00.000-07:00

After five full days locked in a hotel with other librarians, the Hag is ready to bite and snap at the next bipedal mammal who tries to foist togetherness on her. Go Away!

The Hag doesn't like other humans, mostly. Locking her up with 35 middle-aged paunchy boring earnest well-meaning self-congratulatory righteous librarians is a recipe for disaster and it's a tribute to her monumental self-control that a mass murder didn't happen in the upper Midwest last week.

These people have an inexhaustable appetite for platitudes and each other's company. They kept telling the Hag how they loved to get together, loved to socialize with each other, and how the networking was the most important, wonderful part of the whole thing. For five days. All the comments on day one were repeated on days two through five, with no originality and, the Hag must comment, no relation to reality.

If this was the most exciting event of their year (as several people bleated) the Hag shudders to think what their lives are normally.

"I just heated up the leftover oatmeal! I'm so excited!"

Of course, they wanted the Hag to say how wonderful it was and how she loved it and how she thought they were wonderful and how much she had learned and how she was so honored to be a part of the group and how she couldn't wait to come back.

It ain't gonna happen. The Hag may be committing professional suicide here, but can't bring herself to care. And she's gotten along without this particular love-in for 30 years and hasn't missed a meal.

So either the Hag is incredibly stupid and is missing the boat, or these people are delusional, self-important, and social jackasses. The nice thing about being the Hag, finally, is that it doesn't matter what the truth of the matter is. The Hag picks her own.

Fat is fat

2006-10-08T19:16:00.000-07:00

Sorry, the Hag is giving in to the prompting of her worser self. Actually, this self looks remarkably like her usual self, so never mind.

Anyway, the Hag was reading Ann Landers. A woman wrote in all upset because she was being seated in a restaurant and the hostess was very reluctant to seat her in a booth. Turns out she was 'overweight' but 'not obese' and the hostess was worried she wouldn't be able to get out of the booth.

Ann told her it was poor customer service. Lots of readers in the Midwest and South, right Ann?

The Hag thinks it was remarkably intelligent of the hostess, who should get a medal for truth in the restaurant industry. Why seat a customer who is probably going to call for the jaws of life to exit the table? And the Hag is willing to bet this woman is obese. She's just delusional. Obese is a medical definition of poundage per height, not the illusionary world of being surrounded by other fatties who all tell each other they are large-boned.

If you are obese and all your friends are obese, obese looks normal. The Hag weighs the same as she did when she was 21, and back then she was a size 10. Now she is a size 6. It's a miracle! Or vanity sizing by the clothing industry, take your pick.

The Hag has to work very hard to keep her weight down. It's hard day by day by day, not some magic trick of genes or small bones (ha!) or extreme moral worth or sterling character. The Hag has none of those, and her bones are the same damn size as everyone else's. She tries to hold the calories down to 1200 a day (that is not a typo) and she jogs and lifts weights. She does this when she wants to, and she does it when she doesn't want to, when she's happy, or depressed, or after the cat died. Her vanity will not let her turn into a fat old lady.

And she has no patience or tolerance for delusional fools who bend reality around their large bones. You're fat, lady. Face it, live with it, or change it. And shut up about it.

Fuck Bambi

2006-10-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

The Hag has been running around screaming that October would be The Month From Hell. Obviously, this was a bid to fool fate into easing up, so that on November 1st the Hag could say, 'well, that wasn't so bad.'

Okay, no fucking fooling with Fate. It is now the 5th of the month; we are five days into this sucker and look what has happened so far:

The Hag's boss has taken another job. Here we go again. The Hag and her tiny department have had 8 bosses in 11 years. This last one actually stayed for 2 years. So much for stability.

The Hag was driving to work yesterday, braked to avoid hitting a deer, and her lovely car was rear-ended by a goddamn Toyota Landcruiser. The Hag has whiplash and the insurance company is making ominous totalling noises.

Upcoming Exciting Events:

Mr. Hag is having a colonoscopy next week. It's his first and he is ordering the coffin.

The Hag has to go to Minneapolis for a five day meeting with librarians. Starting on a Saturday. O the horror. And the following week is another librarian conference. Far too many librarians, not to mention vendors.

It is raining and the deck contractor is due to tear the old deck off of the house and, in the process, check why the foundation appears to be sinking.

The dreaded second assignment is due from her students at the end of the month.

Too much. The Hag is going to bed. For about 10 years. Please wake her when it's over.

The Game of Five

2006-10-01T13:31:00.000-07:00

Pulling into the parking lot for the Saturday extension class, the Hag played the 'Which of These People Will Be In My Class?' game. This is depressingly related to the 'Which One is a Librarian?' game she plays at conference hotels. The clues are the same:

1. Female.
2. Over 40.
3. Fat.
4. Frumpy.
5. Eager, puppylike, and clueless.

It's sad to see these women, and excruciating to be locked in a workshop with them. They need everyone in the room to love them, to validate them, to hear their story, to accept them. It's the class as group therapy, and while that's ostensibly not why we are there, they are so insecure, so frightened, that a good instructor has to encourage and validate and sympathize and listen, so all these classes can be depressingly alike.

The Hag is 1 and 2, because biology and time are givens, and there's a case to be made for 4, although double-knit polyester pants, bead earrings, and crocheted ponchos will never touch her body. (Especially ones in vomit yellow and dried blood maroon. With tassles.) But the Hag tries never to use her work as an excuse for personal validation and so she discussed other people's without giving more than a three word summary of her own. It's not ready for summer stock, let alone prime time. And not with that audience.

Mercy on us, there must be millions of these women. They all have an air of desperation about them. The worst ones are those who followed the rules, who were good girls, who believed. Now the world has moved on, leaving them at the bad end of bad choices. Their husbands have divorced them, their children batten on them, the jobs they can get are dead end and low paid, and they have no idea what to do. So they take classes, and write bad poetry and worse prose, because someone somewhere will hear them and say "Yes! You are the Avatar of the Goddess!"

The Student As Martyr

2006-09-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

One of the Hag's students failed the assignment. The Hag thinks, after three emails, that the student finally understands not following instructions is a big No-No. However, the student has just suggested that the Hag put up a 'model' of a successful assignment. In other words, Give Her Something To Copy.

What part of graduate school doesn't she get?

This student cut more from her budget assignment than required. Over 60K. Her reasoning (the Hag has run out of apostrophes, supply your own) was that if more cuts were required the administration would see how good she had been and spare her from doing them. This student, during the class exercise, laid herself off to save others. According to her bio, she has done this in real life, but does not understand why she is having problems holding a job.

The Hag has worked with martyrs before. The problem is not that they sacrifice themselves, good riddance, but that they expect constant luuuuuv because of it. They give you something you didn't ask for, don't need, don't want, and demand appreciation and gratitude.

This woman is divorced, what a shock. Also, re-entry, no surprise. She needs either a good shrink or a smart rap on the head or both. No one is going to take care of you honey, no matter how much abuse you give yourself.

Makes the Hag queasy just getting these emails. Only three months and two more assignments to go, and the Hag is out of it. Can't happen too soon.

Exhibit Your Stupidity Nationwide

2006-09-21T21:25:00.000-07:00

The Hag is sure that a considerable number of tv viewers (read: thousands) have TiVo and watch Survivor. So all over America tonight, every single watcher yelled 'SAY WHAT?', grabbed their remotes and replayed certain crucial moments just to make sure they heard what they thought they heard and that Billy had dropped right over the edge. On prime time. Even Jeff Probst, master of the leading-question-when-I-already-know-the-answer, looked poleaxed.

The Hag replayed the relevant moments: Billy telling the valley girls, plural, that he was next on the block, one says "We love you'", Billy says deeply and meaningfully, "I love you,", and somehow he parlays this into 'Candace loves me and I love her -- we told each other that we love each other.' Damn, Candace is going to get a shock, no shit. And it was, unmistakeably, 'We', not 'I'.

The Survivor Forum won't even load. Smoke is probably coming out the back of their servers.

Let's see here. Suppose I am a grotesquely fat male into heavy metal, lazy, uneducated, and stupid. I am on this island with some hot chicks in bathing suits, who are well-meaning airheads. One of them says, 'We love you' because she doesn't want anyone to feel bad, and because to her the phrase has the emotional charge of a kleenex. And it wasn't 'I love you' (two kleenex), it was 'we'. She'd say as much to a passing tortoise.

That's the most incredible case of self-delusion and wishful thinking, not to mention personal blindness, that the Hag has seen in years. Heaven knows men's egos are incredible. Short, fat, bald, bad-breath, none of that matters. They know they are Brad Pitt. A woman can be the most gorgeous thing in the world and the Hag bets she's worried her ankles are too thick. A man can be so revolting a hyena would gag and he's convinced you must be a lesbian because you turned him down.

Wow, reality tv. Get on a show and exhibit your stupidity to the nation. Step right up and never live it down.

Priceless.

Humans are silly

2006-09-16T08:11:00.000-07:00

As soon as google beta gets their act together to admit the Hag exists, she's going to add a post category called Unclear On the Concept. (Or she could just learn how to do this in the old blogger, but that's yet another post...)

The Hag found a new restaurant to try. They encourage web reservations, so that's what she did. Hey, she may be old, but she's literate!

She received an email thanking her for signing on to the system and selling various services.

She received an email acknowledging her reservation, with a control number, etc.

The day of the dinner she received a reminder email. No reply was necessary unless she wanted to cancel.

She received a telephone call from the restaurant asking her to call them back to confirm the reservation. She did so, but the restaurant doesn't take live phone calls and requires you to leave a message. So she did.

Obviously, we have reached new heights of Silly. The Hag will bet this happened: the restaurant owners were sold this marvelous website with updated food menus, fancy graphics, and see, a web reservation system! Less employees to pay! Save money on the peasants, efficient, trendy, so completely valley! No need to pay someone answer the phone! But the employees have noticed, because they are the ones who have to run the joint night after night, that the customers who make the web reservations don't show up all the time. So they print off the list and someone calls each person to confirm. But the owners don't know, because they don't bother with the details.

The food was delicious.

GLOAT

2006-09-14T13:13:00.000-07:00

The Hag would have to be a lot more saintly than she is not to post this: a student in her class told her how useful, practical, and educational her class assignments were. And asked her what other classes she taught. He's upset about the useless theory he's run into in other classes.

Now, granted, this could be a massive case of kissy-butt. The tone wasn't like that; the Hag could be wrong. It was lovely to hear anyway, particularly since these are the assignments the school wants her to change.

Library school as an intellectual joke, as the wonderful Annoyed Librarian puts it.

Yesterday, the Hag checked the faculty news for an update on the curriculum plans. It was a clear case of GLOAT, since it doesn't apply this semester and next semester is someone else's problem. Looks like the new Director will be picking the textbook, the readings, the assignments, the grading criteria, and the methodology. Too bad he can't just clone himself: must be really awkward not being able to teach all six sections himself. Why bother hiring faculty at all, especially pesky faculty with their own ideas? He could save money and have the janitors just turn on a tape recorder, or just make it all virtual and have his bot run it.

O, the wonderfulness of having other employment (Knock Wood hard enough to break knuckles!) so the Hag can, politely, tell them where to put their curriculum.

The Black Cloud Passes or, RTFM

2006-09-05T16:11:00.000-07:00

Wowie. The Hag is back, after three weeks of technological hell, or why-you-should-never-go-beta-without-a-compass-a-map-and-a-slug-of-gin. True, the Hag caused some of her own problems, but not all.

Item The First: The Hag deleted her Yahoo Mail account. The Hag decided for purely emotional reasons she didn't like Yahoo anymore, so she switched to Google Mail. However, she left the blog email setting the same. Hey, she could change that later.

Item The Second: Oooo, Blogger Beta! With post categories! Using her new gmail account, she signed up! And she used the same password! Wowie, processprocessprocess...oops, where is the blog? Aaarrgggh! Google ate the blog! Oh, they say not to worry, they will send all the instructions and help stuff to...the email on the blog. Which no longer exists. Oh, shit. Three weeks and many frantic, not to say panic-stricken, emails to Google support, we back. Not on the beta. We may never be on the beta. Right now we don't care.

Item The Third: Take it from the Hag, it is not a good idea to put a blank DVD with the little plastic separator into the TiVo disk drive. Evil things happen. However, now the Hag and Mr. Hag know how to swap drives out of TiVo! We have new skills! (Thank you, MacLinda!) And in the Hag's defense, she didn't do this deliberately, unlike previous items.

Continuing the Downward Trend, we have Item The Fourth: While attempting to fix Item 3, car dies in Fry's parking lot. Triple-A is not thrilled about towing the car over the mountain, so three hours later, the Hag finally gets home. And item fix does not work. Disk cleaner is not up to cleaning melted plastic from laser writer, but of course it's not a common problem.

Item The Fifth: Dead battery. Same car, different problem. No towing required as car, aware it is on blacklist, does this in driveway. Smart car.

At this point, the Hag figured she had a new career as a Curse. Friends, neighbors, and Mr. Hag were asking her to move AWAY from any equipment more complicated than a #2 pencil. But now the blog is back, TiVo is working, the car is working, and she hopes the black cloud has passed on.

Oh and she taught her class, and broke the news to the school that this is her last semester. But that's another post.

Fangirl

2006-08-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

Oh dear. Heat and humidity and expense, waiting in lines with the sweat dripping--the Hag drank two quarts of water in four hours and peed nary a drop--going to New York to hear the book reading was still worth it.

Scholastic, which has floated to the top of the publishing world on Harry Potter, still does not get it. Twelve thousand tickets and 75% of the fans are ADULTS. So they aim and sell to children? Granted, it would be hard to make yet more money on this, but everyone in the marketing and sales departments should be fired, or perhaps shot. They are wasting their employer's time and money marketing to the smallest section of the audience. Ditto MGM, and what a waste that is, with the exception of Alfonso Cuaron.

Still, a day of tremendous fun at the podcast and a magic night. That wonderful feeling of joy when it all works out and not only is it as good as you hoped, it's better yet.

Worth every dime.

The Great War

2006-07-26T09:33:00.000-07:00

This post is actually about the Great War. World War I, that is. Well, really it's about the inadequate education the Hag received in the public schools of our great nation. And how she was saved by cheap fiction.

The Hag is pretty sure anyone under thirty has no clue what the devil she's talking about but, as usual, she does not care. The world was ripped apart in 1914 and in many instances has never recovered. Millions died, in horrible conditions, and the survivors were maimed both physically and emotionally. PTSD wasn't acceptable then, or even known, although this was the war that gave us shell shock, and men traded limbs for trips home. The social structure of western society was wrenched onto a different track.

In the Hag's grammar school in the 1950's she received a new, shiny history book every September. History started in colonial America (really, this is so embarrassing) and proceeded, lesson by lesson, through the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, dropped the non-war years, and finished up in June with the Civil War. Some years we didn't make it that far. But in September, with a new grade and a new teacher, we started all over again with the Mayflower.

Now, the Hag knew all about World War II, since it was the defining event of her parent's generation. And she knew all about the trials of the Great Depression, because the Hag's grandfather was a coal miner in Appalachia with seven children. But she certainly didn't learn about them in school, because the lessons never got that far.

Thinking back, did none of the teachers ever TALK to each other? Apparently not, and there must have been some sort of assumption that some other teacher somewhere had filled in the gaps. Or more likely, no one cared that from 1865 to 1929 nothing happened in this country. If the Hag hadn't stumbled on an old girls trashy novel, she wouldn't know to this day.

The series was called The Outdoor Girls and was very strange to read. All the references were bizarre. They drove funny cars which had to be cranked to start and which had 'side curtains'. The lack of chaperons was very exciting, the clothes were funny, and there were reproving comments on using slang such as 'okay', and the Hag couldn't see what the fuss was about. Also, the point of the title was how these girls went camping and traveling together, and how disproving their elders were. But the oddest bits were the references to the war and how none of it matched with the Hag's parent's stories. Finally, light dawned: there had been another war. The Hag still remembers the funny look on her mother's face when she asked her, and her comment, "Oh you must have learned about that in school."

Well, no. Not one lesson on World War I, never a mention. The Hag was in junior high school before she found out about it, and she's sure some of her classmates never did. So the Hag went out and started reading and there it was.

The awful thing, from the Hag's point of view, is the public schools back then were a quantum leap better than the public schools now. The Hag isn't sure what they are teaching but she's sure what they aren't teaching: literacy, history, and critical thinking. Not to mention math or science. Of course, the students have great team skills and high self-esteem, which should come in handy slinging fries at Mickey D's.

O, for the balmy days of the Great War!

Prissed off

2006-07-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

What, in the name of heaven, hell and all the little saints, makes people believe that librarians are under some prissy fiat to not use curse words? And not in the workplace or the classroom or a church but on a goddamn blog?

The Hag, by the way, has said many curse words in all the above venues, and guess what? They are still standing! And so is the Hag.

The Hag didn't pick her blog's name lightly. So please, self-righteous readers, go someplace else. Read the tag line. Whoops, sorry, read the FUCKING tag line.

Horse Outcomes

2006-07-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, busy, eh, little Hag?

Preparation for the fall semester has started, with more than the usual amount of bureaucratic bullshit and 'oversight' because the school has a new Director and he is making his presence FELT. The Hag received a gnomic email ordering her to explain electronic portfolios to her class. This will be a good trick, since the Hag has no idea what in frigging hell they are or may be. She has certainly never seen one. But now instead of a 'culminating experience' (or orgasm) the student must prepare an ep to graduate. The Hag believes this will solve the literacy problem, since it will cut back on the amount of correct syntax, spelling, or grammar the normal graduate student must have and which most lack.

Also, the school no longer has goals. Whoops, well, yes they do have goals but we are no longer referencing them on the syllabi. So we have goals but we don't care about them, which at least has the virtue of honesty. What we have instead, god help us, is Student Learning Outcomes. The Hag was not aware until now that Outcomes was a word. There is absolutely nothing like Leading by Example, since exposure to such terminology will help prepare the student to create an electronic portfolio and put it up on YouTube.

Also in this email, the Director coyly mentioned standardizing the class section curriculum and asked for our input. The Hag has avoided this fate before, but she can see the handwriting (misspelled) on the wall. She does not want to teach management theory, strategic planning, and how to work in teams. She thinks all of these are complete and total Equine and Bovine Outcomes. She did point out to the Director that it is less than a month to the start of the semester, and to ask for a complete revision of the class in such a short time was very difficult. She received a cranky reply granting her a stay of revision for the Fall, but no further.

So the Hag's last class will be this Fall. She will take great pleasure in turning down the Spring contract, assuming she is offered one. This gets her off the hook on creating new assignments and new and better class materials. Who the hell cares?

Laps

2006-07-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

A cat post. Non-cat people kindly fuck off.

Our old male cat, sadly deceased after a long and happy life, enjoyed sitting in our laps. So does our current Siamese, although 'enjoy' isn't the correct term for her. Demands immediate emotional reassurance! Must suck human neck now! Anyway, we are used to being sat on by felines. Mr. and Mrs. Hag enjoy it, although some scientist should do a research study on how cats always know when the human bladder is full and the coffee cup is empty, since that's the prime time to settle down for a long cat nap. There's a doctoral dissertation in there somewhere.

Cat Three spent his first year in the house living in total terror. The Hag had never seen a cat with completely round eyes before, all the time, every minute, and finally decided the cat was just made that way. But now we are in our second year with this little guy, and his eyes have finally relaxed. So the round eye thing was, as the Hag had thought at the beginning, fear. He was afraid of everything, all the time, poor little cat. Of course, he was living under Siamese Death Threat, but even when SHE was not in the room, he never relaxed. And lap sitting was out. Somewhere in his tiny past, either something bad happened on a lap or he just didn't feel secure up there.

Now he and the Siamese have a love affair in progress, and it's a big moment (squeak Squeak SQUEAK!) when she walks into a room. He also has devoted time to training the Hag and Mr. Hag to get down on the floor and rub his tummy. He dashes in front of them, lays down on the floor, and rolls over, SQUEAK. The Hag has too much pride to do this more than twice a day, but unfortunately Mr. Hag is a complete sucker and will demean himself on command. Sometimes the cat rolls away from him, but he crawls after it on his hands and knees, the scum, and keeps rubbing. The Hag Family have discussed their degradation, and considered counseling (Cat Anon? Floor Anon?) but have settled for lifting the little monster into their laps, where he belongs, and petting him there despite his feverish attempts at escape when he grows extra flailing legs and whistles like a teakettle.

Slowly, he is coming around, and today: Breakthrough! He marched up to the Hag (who was just about to take a shower, natch) and sat in her lap for twenty minutes! He got petted, and he demanded more more more! Excellent! We have progress. Now we just have to retrain Mr. Hag and we're there.

Reversion

2006-06-29T10:05:00.000-07:00

The Hag has made several positive -- or at least not totally negative -- comments about her current employer over the last few months. The Hag thought she might have been mistaken about the moronic short-sighted illiterate ignorant money-hungry self-important assholes she works for. The Hag was worried she might have to admit an error in judgement.

Luckily, there is no danger of that.

Instead of worrying about the severe drop in the company stock price, the senior management of our multi-billion dollar company are worried about THE LIBRARY SIGN. No matter that every employee who either walks in the door or talks to the library staff mentions the sign as a wonderful, creative advertisement. No matter that these same senior managers approved the sign as a great idea. No, it is now 'tacky'. This comment, from an executive who drives an enormous dark blue Hummer, led the Hag to respond, "well, he certainly knows tacky when he sees it."

Now, the sign has been moved to the Hag's cube. Customers walk in, and ask why it has been moved. The Hag tells them. Way to win the the hearts and minds of your employees, guys!

Capitalism

2006-06-25T17:14:00.000-07:00

For the sake of completion, and to register her astonishment, the Hag wishes to report: the tickets sold. Heavens. There certainly is a lot of discretionary cash out there.

PayPal has subtracted its pound of the Hag's flesh, and now the Hag must mail them off to the buyer, who wanted to know if the Hag had any MORE tickets to sell. Get real, Jack.

The Idiot Car Buyer managed to get within 20 miles of the house, and has been connected with his purchase. He drove it off into the sunset. That's the wrong direction for his destination, but if he makes a hard left once he hits the ocean, he should eventually get home.

Idiot

2006-06-23T16:31:00.000-07:00

The Hag truly does want to think well of people. Really. However, empirical evidence seems to indicate that most people are idiots. And quite a few are in the running for Idiot of the Month.

Mr. Hag (no, no, not him) did sell a car via an ad placed on a website. For the last several weeks, the purchaser of the car has been attempting to get the car picked up by a trucking service and shipped down to him in San Diego. With our recent dreadful Ebay experience fresh (not to say raw) in our minds, the Hag and Mr. Hag expected him to have problems. Indeed, that has been the case. The delivery services are eager to take his money and reluctant to pick up the car. Especially when they find out where it is.

Now, there have been many, many telephone calls on the subject from the buyer. In EACH CALL, Mr. Hag has attempted to explain our physical location. In EACH CALL the buyer cannot comprehend where we are. We suggest in EACH CALL that he get a map. He agrees. Then he calls back: are you near Sacramento? Are you near 101? Get a map, buddy. This is not rocket science. Type the location into Yahoo Maps for heaven's sake. Purchase a map from a gas station. Look, they have map racks and everything!

The buyer gave up on the delivery services and announced he was driving up today to pick up the car himself. He called Mr. Hag mid-day and announced he would be there in another hour. At 3 pm he called back and said, "Are you near Livermore?"

He has no map.
He has no clue where we are.
He is across the state, with the world's worse traffic between us and him.
He is an idiot.

How in the world can anyone try to find an unknown location without a map? Why would anyone try? The Hag is trying to fit herself into the mind of someone who could get in a car, drive up from San Diego, and have no idea where he was going, and EXPECT TO GET THERE. She can't. Her brain hurts.

Gimme a T

2006-06-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

The Hag thinks The Universe is Unfair. Unfair to Hags, that is. It is simply NOT FAIR that after all the agonizing and whining and soul-searching the Hag went through about these fucking tickets that after she finally, finally made up her mind to sell them on Ebay that she was blindsided by a goddamn keyboard.

Several issues in play here:

The Hag has never sold anything via Ebay. The Hag has lots of extra stuff, and when it gets too much, she throws it out. The thought of navigating the Ebay how-to-sell and filling out the forms and linking it up to PayPal and shipping it -- just too much. However, the Hag has an Ebay account, since she has purchased items via Ebay. Notably, the notorious Ebay car, aka six weeks of pain and suffering. So Ebay equals Hassle to the Hag, and after what happened yesterday, will probably always equal Hassle.

The Hag doesn't really want to sell these tickets. She wants to give them away to someone who would really, really enjoy them. However, they were very expensive, so prudence won. (The Hag will spare her reading audience -- all one of you -- the hours and hours of serious dithering that went into this decision. But trust her, big emotional charge here.)

So, Ebay. The Hag signed up to sell. She linked up the PayPal. She filled out the form, rechecked the form, edited the form. She pressed 'Submit'. Server Error. She re-did the form. Pressed 'Submit'. Server Error.

So, there's a Live Chat button. Up comes the session. The Hag starts to type. Now, this is where we move into the alternative universe of Whacko.

THE T KEY ON HER KEYBOARD DID NOT REGISTER.

The Hag closes the Live Chat session. (Do you know how many words use a T? Lo s. Especially when you are rying o sell icke 's.) She cleans her keyboard. She goes into textedit to check the keyboard. It works fine. She goes back into Ebay and re-opens Live Chat. The T key does not register.

The only way the Hag was able to use Live Chat was to type the T into textedit, copy it and paste it into each word as she was typing. And the Hag wishes to thank MacLinda, who responded to the Hag's screams of frustration, for that little work-around, insane as it was.

Anyway, the ad is up on Ebay, via the Hag's work pc, and if the tickets sell, well and good. If not, the hell with it.

Strange

2006-06-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

An extremely strange thing happened at work yesterday. Bizarre. Freaky.

Remember the Hag has been at this company for over TWENTY years. It is not, has never been, and makes no pretense at being a warm, fuzzy employer, full of sweet concern for the employees. One of the Hag's chronic rants concerns managers who pretend otherwise, usually so they can sneak around behind you and sink in the knife. (They lay you off so you can 'grow'.) But Upper Management, blood-suckers to a man, are generous with their own compensation and mingy with ours. About two years ago the company was not doing well, and had laid off a thousand employees. Our CEO received a five million dollar bonus for his exemplary leadership. That gives you the tone.

So yesterday we had the usual end of the fiscal employee meeting, full of graphs, charts, and posturing vice presidents. We'd heard there was to be a 'surprise' for the employees announced. Cautious and experienced, you can imagine the kind of questions we asked. No, no, they said. It's a GOOD surprise.

So there's the meeting, and it's winding up, and they announce a raffle for a video iPod giveaway. Five of them. Well, whoopdedo. So they call out the numbers, employees walk up, applause, and then the management team goes into this obvious scripted dialogue: I want to give out more, well you can't we budgeted for five, I'm going to give out more, yadda yadda. Then he says, I want to give out video iPods to everyone. So the vp of Human Resources says, in a piece of extremely bad acting: You want to give out iPods to 8,000 employees? Why, they'd have to walk over to the other building and show their badges!

So we did. Video iPods for all. That was great, completely unexpected, and lot of fun.

The bizarre stuff happened in the afternoon. Everyone was smiling and happy and bouncy. We were working for a company that had done something COOL NICE and FUN. It was very strange.

Blue and bored

2006-06-06T13:37:00.000-07:00

Twenty years from now, teachers will be using G.Bush videos as Horrible Examples of what can, and does, go wrong with government. As students now watch grainy footage of McCarthy ranting in the Senate. The Hag doesn't watch G.Bush, because the Hag doesn't watch boring stuff on television, including American Idol, team sports, or Republicans telling the Hag who can fuck whom.

What kind of people LIKE a country where the government refuses to pay for health care, restricts birth control, bans abortions, reads your emails, blocks immigration, taps your phone, and tells you which flavor of adult you can fuck? And in what position?

The Hag has this vision where, one morning, we all just...leave. We go away, and the Republicans say, "Hey! Where did everybody go?"

Good deeds and guns

2006-05-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the universe slaps you along side the head to remind you that you aren't in control. In the continuing saga of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:

At work, the Hag and the Hag's co-workers wished to reward this support person who responded to our complaints year after year. For sixteen year after years, to be exact. We felt really good about this. So the Hag filled out the byzantine rewards request, which has a diagramed approval loop Escher would be proud of, and the award for $500 went through. (Hey, it's not the Hag's money.) We did the presentation ceremony and he was duly flabbergasted, since no one bothers to thank these people.

So, the Hag ran into him in the hall yesterday, and asked him what his wife said about the award. He admitted he hadn't told her, because he wanted the money for himself. So fine, no biggie. It's his money after all.

Then he says: "I'm going to buy a gun."

Challenging

2006-05-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

The Hag loves Mr. Hag very much, but that does not stop her from finding him very, very funny. In fact, it probably helps.

Mr. Hag, having survived the Ebay car purchase, is now trying to SELL a car via the web. He is still suspiciously circling 'round Ebay, like a cat trying to decide if the new chair is a good nap spot or a cat-eating monster. It looks good, but can we be sure? So he has placed, with a certain amount of pain and suffering on the Hag's part, an ad on his favorite car website.

It hadn't occurred to him this meant people would send him emails. (This is the part where the Hag had to restrain herself from hitting him with a brick.) Why, he asks suspiciously, are these strangers sending him emails? Didn't he put his phone number in the ad? Why would these people in Canada be interested in his car? Did he have to type all this stuff out again? Mr. Hag is somewhat keyboard-challenged, since he dates from the days when men were men and women used IBM Selectrics, but he took to web surfing like a labrador pup. Point and click are him. Typing is another story, or another post, about the time he announced his keyboard didn't have a $, and the Hag managed to keep a straight face. Marriage gives you these skills.

Anyway, the Hag has patiently pointed out that people do not wish to call, since it is rude, and are sending him email because the ad is ON THE WEB. And that he should respond. After a few minutes of whining (his), the Hag gave up and typed the responses in. She's also training him to use the digital camera, including loading the shots on his computer. Attaching them to the response emails is graduate work, and mercifully there is a three day weekend coming up.

Wanna buy a ticket, little girl?

2006-05-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

The Hag is recovering from a mini-psychotic break, caused by her inability to do the simplest thing without self-examination, not to mention self-flagellation.

The Hag wanted to go to the J.K.Rowling reading in New York. Badly enough to consider getting on an airplane, and spending a great deal of money. And the Hag wanted the signed copy of a Harry Potter book, because she is a HP nutter, and also collects signed editions.

However, questions arose:

Was the Hag crazy to consider this?
Should she be spending this amount of money on herself?
If she bought the package that included the signed books, she would have 3 extra tickets. Should she give these away, as her instincts suggested?
Was she trying to buy love by giving them away?
Was it selfish to try to sell them to recoup some expense money?

After spending a good part of a sleepness night going around and around this merry-go-round, the Hag woke up determined NOT to buy the tickets, which led to a feeling of exclusion, plus nobody-loves-me-I'm-going-out-and-eat-worms. Why, the Hag asked herself, why was she working? What was the point of making money if she couldn't go out and spend it on something insane?

So the minute hand hit the 12, and the Hag managed to buy the tickets. The expensive package. However, a decision about those 3 extra tickets has been officially postponed by Upper MisManagement.

More later.

Fear of flying ever again

2006-05-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

The Hag has just survived five airplane trips and three encounters with airport security. Casting her mind back, back into the misty past, the Hag remembers when travel was exciting and even, in some cases, fun.

Now that everyone seems to be channeling their Inner Fascist, not to mention teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, the airlines and the Dept. of Punishing the Citizens have created a perfect little hell of endurance. You arrive a minimum of two hours before the departure time, to an extremely ugly noisy venue with no chairs, surly staff, and overpriced 'services'.

No one checks their luggage anymore, because the airlines have given up pretending to deliver it with you. Past days, a woman could have a wheelie, a carryall, and a purse. Now you are limited to, best case, a wheelie and a carryall. If you attempt to fly a shuttle, the wheelie is checked over your protests and ripped from your hands.

Food. There is none. The Hag completed a six hour flight on a glass of diet coke and a box of crackers. A small box of crackers for $4, with 'cheese spread' which of course had no organic edible items on the ingredients list. You can, of course, purchase food to bring on, but it must fit inside the carryall, which is already stuffed. Unlike the Hag.

Seats. The Hag is thin, thank heavens, but flights have been cut, so all planes are now leaving full full full and the Hag completed the flight looking forward with anticipation to her nice roomy coffin, which will have the added virtue of privacy, plus no need for a bathroom.

Now, we could blame all this on Osama bin Laden, but the Hag feels the enthusiasm with which the airport staff and the airlines have embraced the new regimen says it all. They never liked the customers in the old days, and now they can show it without fear of retaliation.

Yammering in spades

2006-04-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

The Hag has done it again. She went to a vendor workshop and gave her opinions. Now, the vendors have these little get-togethers to stroke the customers, test the waters for new products, and see if they can guesstimate how much the customers are willing to pay for the product. Of course, they tell the customers they want feedback on the old products, and on their service levels, neither of which is true, but which they get anyway because that's what the customers want to talk about.

Fine. All well and good. However, no one at these meetings ever says: I don't like this. Or, this sucks. Or, your entire pricing scheme, not to mention your business model is based on an old premise that is not working in this millenium.

Except the Hag.

Once again, the Hag opened her mouth and told the truth. This blog's name is there for several reasons and they were all in evidence yesterday:

The Hag is old.
The Hag is has opinions.
The Hag's opinions may not be politically correct.
The Hag has no tact. And she does not care.

Because of all this, if the Hag should lose her current day job, she is completely unemployable as a librarian, not to mention as a library manager. So she opened her appropriately named mouth and said what she thought.

Uneasy silence. When asked, several other brave souls said they agreed with her. However, they had to be nudged. Then the vendor graciously thanked the Hag for her opinions and wall-papered the whole thing over.

Of course, the vendor will not change until the economic consequences of their choices force them to change. And the changes may not be in the direction the Hag would prefer.

But, why, why, is it always the Hag who points out the disconnects? Why does the Hag bother? Well, there are several choices:

The Hag is a fool.
The Hag is brave.
The Hag is stupid, because the vendors already know everything she said, and the meeting was to float new products and validate the existing business model. Everything else is a sham, everyone knows it's a sham, and we're all supposed to pretend.

Frankly, the Hag doesn't want to waste what remaining hours of life she has sitting a room kissing vendor ass.

There's another one of these litte soirees next week. The Hag is getting a free trip to the East Coast out of it, but it may not be worth it. And some of the same players will be there. The Hag just bets that they let out a heartfelt groan when they saw her name on the participant list.

We have 3

2006-04-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

Cats, that is. You have been warned.

Cat One: Siamese, World Ruler and most beautiful cat in entire world. Also, smartest, cleverest, and so on. Did the Hag mention she is a Siamese, so all this goes without saying? This one, who isn't anywhere near as smart as she thinks she is, alternates between extreme emotional neediness requiring face-nuzzling and neck-licking, with extreme aloofness. Who are you, human? She's also practically mute, unless things are completely below her standards.

The silliest thing Cat One has ever done (before witnesses) was stalk some baby wild turkeys. She didn't notice Mama Turkey, probably because Mama Turkey was three feet high and Cat One's world had never included a bird that big. Mama Turkey lit out after her and Cat One panicked and ran under the deck. No one had told Mama Turkey that this was a safe spot so she barreled in there after her. Cat One completely freaked, ran for the house door and literally beat on it with her fists. Stop laughing, humans, and save me!

Cat Two: Is an Orange Marmalade female, genetically one in a thousand. She fooled the the Hag in the pet shop by relaxing against her when she was held, but once in the house she was extremely independent and marked territory everywhere. She doesn't like sharing with other cats, sitting on laps, or being inside at all. She's now an outside cat and sleeps in her heated kitty condo in the garage at night. She's easily the most intelligent of the three, and likes human company as long as we don't touch her or try to play. She bites, just enough, as a warning.

Cat Three: is the boy cat, and is a replacement for our much loved and much missed old male cat. He's the original scaredy cat, completely black with yellow eyes, and came to us from the Humane Society in very bad shape, sick and terrified. We nursed him through many ailments and gradually he grew to almost normal size. Once he learned to stand up for himself with Cat One, who is a great bully, he rallied and started to play and enjoy life. He's the talker, chattering away to Mr. Hag and the birds and the walls and thin air. Cat Three never goes out, since he defaults to TERROR in any strange situation, and he seems quite happy with that. Watching Cat Two outside on the deck is so exciting! Tell the world!

Parenthetically pathetic

2006-04-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

For the sake of completeness, the Hag feels she should note: the library is moved and the research papers were graded. It's over, thank whatever gods there be. Now the Hag is trying to pick up the shards of her life: chapter writing (who are these people and why are they on my computer?), Mr. Hag (who?), the house (where the hell is the damn planner?), and normal (Ha!) work.

The Hag is just plain exhausted. She's wandering around picking up objects and putting them down again. The cats really object to this. (Ick, a pun!)

In the late afternoons the light just floods through the windows in the new library. The Hag's cubie is filled with cool white light -- it feels like floating on a bubble.

Apples, oranges, and assholes

2006-04-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

The Hag's company has a 401K plan, and they have offered a 'financial consulting service' at half-price. The Hag has been trying, for six weeks, to get the supportive materials for this plan.

The first day, the first of the calendar month, she called the 800 number and was disconnected. Twice. Then she called the main plan customer support number, was referred to the service number, and was disconnected again. So she managed to speak to a person, and reported the problem. Profuse apologies.

She ordered the materials through the website -- they aren't available in pdf. They didn't arrive.

She called the 800 number -- which was now working -- after two weeks and was told they had a record of the request, could not submit another one, and that the materials would be sent to her. The person she spoke to wanted to know if she had any questions about the financial service; the Hag pointed out that she wanted to see the materials before she could formulate a question.

After a month, she called again, was told that the materials had been delayed by the printer, but had been sent out on the 21st of the month.

Yesterday, which was six weeks into this, she called again and was told the materials should have been mailed on the 28th of the month. This time the Hag pointed out that none of this was inspiring any confidence in her. The man on the other end of the line said that the Hag shouldn't make generalizations about the quality of the service because the mailing service and the financial service were two separate functions. Then he said, unprompted, that the Hag was XX years old, her 401K was overinvested in stocks, and that 'at her age' she needed to be more conservative, unless (attempt at humor) she had a million dollars in a CD.

The Hag courteously terminated the phone call, dialed her company rep, and reported this conversation. More profuse apologies.

Okay, the guy is a jerk. Now, the issue is: does the Hag want a company that cannot manage to mail a brochure, and one that employs an asshole, managing her 401K? The service agreement turns the management over to them and they can make trades on her behalf, over and above the normal fund movement. Is the incompetency in one a reflection of the competency of the other? The asshole employment is neither here nor there, since both here and there are a lot of assholes and the Hag would have to keep the money in a sack under the mattress to avoid them. But the competency is another matter. The Hag has done a little research on this, and surprise, surprise: there's a ton of stuff out there on making the customer perceive the services as competent, but nothing about whether the customer's perceptions reflect reality. So, you can (easily) hire a consultant to make you look competent, but none to make you competent if you aren't already.

Customers see the company as a whole, and companies have been fighting against this for years. As a matter of fact, all organizations fight against this. Look at the government. They want the voters to believe that mismanaging the Hurricane Katrina response has nothing, nothing to do with their ability to manage the country, and in the case of this administration, any other country they decide to invade. An astonishing number of voters appear buy this story. The Hag doesn't. This isn't a case of apples and oranges, this is one damn fruitbasket.

We'll see if the brochure ever arrives.

Mr. Hag leaves town

2006-03-27T21:56:00.000-08:00

Every time Mr. Hag buys another car, he has a brief hot affair with it. Alas, these cars are fickle and they drop him. The romance ends. Then he glooms around the house prophesizing the end of the world as we know it, pulls himself out of the pit, fixes the car, and returns to normal. These manic-depressive cycles only happen post-automotive, as it were, and are well known to the Hag. She had hoped, with the Ebay car, that the honeymoon would continue. Alas yet again, it was not to be. This was a really rough ride, and was hard on Mr. Hag, but also hard on the Hag.

Frankly, the Hag has a lot of crap happening in her life right now and having a husband creating a catastrophe out of a corroded transmission was a little much. Particularly when the Hag has been around this track many times and knew perfectly well that Mr. Hag was capable of fixing the transmission (or anything else on the fucking vehicle) with complete competence. He just couldn't bear it that his beloved had a flaw.

To the Hag's surprise, once Mr. Hag had pulled himself out of the Valley of Corrosion, he apologized for the fuss, and announced he was taking himself out of town for two days not only to give himself a breather, but to give the Hag some time alone in the house. What a guy! The Hag beat back her own guilts, signed up for some time off, and has had two absolutely wonderful days to herself. She has worked on the book outline and had the time to pick it up, drop it, wander off, come back, work some more, drop it again, and persist, persist. She's outlining the evil middle of the book, the hard bit. She got stuff accomplished!

She's also eaten an entire box of cookies, half a jar of peanut butter -- the bad kind, and a box and a half of saltines. Plus enough ice tea to hydrate the Sahara. Hey, whatever works.

Thank you, Mr. Hag. And the next time you buy a car, the Hag is going to Tahiti for a month.

Clusterfuck

2006-03-23T13:57:00.000-08:00

The Hag now believes the library move is reality. We have reached the clusterfuck stage, where everyone is yelling at everyone else.

The door into the new building will be blocked by construction. The ineffable Facilities Dept., who knew perfectly well this was going to happen, omitted to mention it. It's going to be a trifle difficult to move the collection in, let alone the shelving.

All the contractors have failed the security screening. Are they hiring at San Quentin?

The shelving must be constructed to seismic standards. This involves drilling a hole in the concrete flooring and installing a bolt. Many bolts. Many very noisy bolts. Facilities has requested: 1)the contractors only work during normal business hours such as 8-5, and 2)they do all the drilling before 7 am.

The collection will be shifted onto carts, which must be stored in a 'staging area'. There are many such areas available, all of them unacceptable to Facilities for one reason or another. Not In Their Back Yard, apparently. How they think the Hag is going to get 100,000 items from one building to another without stacking them on carts, deconstructing the shelving, moving the carts, reconstructing the shelving, and reloading, she has no idea. And neither do they. They just want the whole thing to go AWAY.

So, it's really going to happen! The Hag is so excited!

Bankrupt but cool

2006-03-18T14:12:00.000-08:00

The Hag's employer is not perfect, far from it, and many sins have been committed in its name. Nevertheless, the company has been around for a long time and is currently making a profit, and has a healthy stock price. Many former employees, lured away by the boom sirens, are returning for the joys of a guaranteed paycheck and a little stability.

These people are easy to spot. In any meeting, they are ones who say, "well, at my former employer, BANKRUPT BUT COOL, we did it this way." With an assumption of extreme superiority. It is so kind of them to give the peasants the benefit of their wisdom and knowledge. We must all grovel for the crumbs they impart.

If these methods are so wonderful, why didn't they work? Why aren't you still employed at BANKRUPT BUT COOL? Because the company is in the tank, dummy, and they either laid you off or you left as they turned out the lights. So we are supposed to listen to your suggestions with respect?

Maybe, just maybe, those practices contributed to the demise of BANKRUPT BUT COOL? Did you ever think of that? And, perhaps, advertising that you had piss poor judgement in going there is not to your best advantage.

Smug. That's the word the Hag has been trying to remember. They throw in the name with extreme smugness, so there, and that's an end to that argument. We have been put in our place by a superior being. The Hag is just waiting until someone says, with complete seriousness, "Well, when I was at Enron, we had this marvelous accounting practice..."

Go gently, Wacko

2006-03-16T09:32:00.000-08:00

The Hag has an interesting month in front of her. That's 'interesting' in the same way as 'challenging'. 'Wacko' would be a more accurate term.

The library move will start on April 10. The new library will open on April 17.

The major class assignment will be turned in on April 7.

Yes, the scheduling is mad. The class schedule was set months ago; the move schedule was a screaming negotiation with the Facilities Dept. of Ill Fame, and was the best compromise available between them and the various sub-contractors. The Hag decided to take the move date because the other alternatives were worse, and control the private life factors such as sleep, energy level, and sanity. After all, that's all she can control, right?

Oh, and the Hag continues the Deadline Club, trying to get a little ahead to compensate for losing about three weeks to overload. Mercifully, Mr. Hag's car did arrive, and he's happy with it, i.e., he's taking it apart and replacing this framish with that diddlepoop, etc. Whatever. We've found a planner to draw house plans, and his price is reasonable. Suspicious, that.

Life, in short, goes on. The Hag will attempt to keep up, since it would be a shame to be abandoned by the side of the road.

Fatwah

2006-03-08T10:06:00.000-08:00

The Hag has completed a day and a half offsite meeting with Human Resources. Yesterday she was ready to issue a fatwah on the inventor of Powerpoint, similiar to suing Smith and Wesson for murder, but seven hours of sleep later she has reconsidered. Powerpoint is ugly but not inherently stupid. Unfortunately, she cannot say the same for HR people, who spend inordinate amounts of time inflating their own importance and trying to jargon everyone to death.

Fantasy: 'Business Partners'are vital to the business.
Reality: Every company needs grunts to process hiring paperwork and benefits.
Fantasy: HR is a 'microcosm' of the company.
Reality: HR is a separate world, a topsy-turvy universe where piles of 'programs' and 'initiatives' are generated, impeding employess from completing real, actual, work.

People, please. The rest of the company could care less about HR, whom they correctly regard as self-important idiots who spout psycho-babble. The miserable fact that the library reports to them is the Hag's cross to bear. HR has no idea what she does, because they are illiterate and non-technical.

So, perhaps a fatwah on Human Resources?

Christians need not apply

2006-03-02T15:18:00.000-08:00

The Hag was nominally raised Christian, although religious instruction was given in a language other than English, which might be why it didn't take, the Hag being mono-lingual.

The Hag doesn't make the slightest claim to being a Christian, since it seems that a prerequisite would be a belief in the divinity of Christ. No, sorry. The Hag doesn't believe God was the father of any baby (Oh come ON, people), and feels the immaculate conception was quick thinking on Mary's part to cover an inconvenient pregnancy.

"Joseph, this dove came down and the next thing I knew..."

Seriously, the Hag doesn't feel the universe is that interested in humans. Humans just love to think everything revolves around them, without any proof at all. And there is a great need to deny the fact of death; as in 'how can wonderful us just stop?' Well, we'll all see who's right eventually. The Hag hopes her main emotion at the point of death will be ravening curiosity. Not a hope of salvation.

The Curse lifts

2006-03-01T15:13:00.000-08:00

In case anyone besides the Hag cares, and the Hag doesn't care if anyone does, she did get to watch the Amazing Race last night. The power came back, TiVo did the little TiVo dance, and it was an extremely good episode. They have returned to the old format! Yes!

So, so much for the Curse of the Poor White Christians.

Hah!

Whining

2006-02-28T15:10:00.000-08:00

This entire post is a big sorry-for-herself whine. No cheese.

The Hag whipped herself (metaphorically) through grading papers and writing chapters, doing evil paid work, with the carrot at the end of the stick: watching the new season of the Amazing Race. She is shamefully addicted, and she even watched the Family Episode. Christ, she hates Christians, especially poor white hypocritical Christians.

It stormed last night. The house is out of power. No cable, no TiVo. The first two hour episode is tonight. And the backup TiVo person may not be able to receive the signal through the storm. Wah! The Hag is a big baby! And she doesn't care!

Why, why is it that evil events take place hot and on time, while rewards and fun stuff just disappear? Is this the revenge of the Christians?

Oh, and the roof is leaking and the goddamn car is somewhere in Indiana. Shit.

Below 35

2006-02-21T10:56:00.000-08:00

The Hag finally sent in her professional association dues form, about two months late. Even though the Hag's employer pays for this, the Hag has been totally underwhelmed by this association for years. The local chapter has an in group of about twelve people, and an out group of several hundred. The Hag is a charter member of the out group, having fired (let's not have a layoff ephemism here) two members of the in group for incompetence and general craziness. So attendence is not high on the Hag's list.

Anyway, the association secretary called. The Hag had put the wrong expiration date on the credit card charge - calling Dr. Freud - and straightened that out. She then mentioned that the dues had gone up, and would the Hag agree to the new charge. So the Hag asked what it was, and received the following information: It's one price if you make over 35K a year, and another if you make under $35K. Did the Hag make over $35K a year?

Well, yes. However, the Hag was totally flummoxed by being in a profession where you can have full-time employment requiring a master's degree and still make under $35K. Please note this wasn't for students or retired people. It's a price for working professionals. It's such a sad, sick commentary on status.

People tell the Hag it's a respectable profession, being a librarian. Actually, it's not. People patronize you, they belittle you, they condescend. They just stop short of patting you on the head and telling you to go play. This isn't respect. Respect is when you tell them you are a librarian and they rear back and say, "Whoa. That is awesome!"

The way we give respect in this country = $$$$$. More than a pitiful $35K.

Moon in incompetence

2006-02-15T09:47:00.000-08:00

What's the astrological sign for incompetence? Taurus, symbolizing bullshit? Gemini, for double-breasted liars? Capricorn, for goat-like stupidity? Whatever it is, the moon is in it, no doubt retrograde, and the Hag can only hope it backs out soon.

Our tax person insisted we make an appointment early and we obediently had all the papers to him on Feb. 1st. He's taken off for his daughter's wedding in Hawaii, and the person who was supposed to be returning his voicemails never bothered. It took a week of constant phoning to find out this much.

Mr. Hag bought a car on eBay. A month ago. Everyone, solo and chorus, has told us how easy this is. Well, that's true. However, getting the car shipped is a complete nightmare. We are on our THIRD shipping company, with faint hope that this one will actually pickup the car, instead of just picking up the deposit and ignoring us.

Ah, the library move. Now here, the Hag expected incompetence, having had experience with this before. And she has not been disappointed. The Great Book Drop controversy continues; it's just not possible to cut a hole in a wall. We can manufacture parts to nanometer specifications but we cannot cut a one foot square hole in wallboard.

And the widdle students, bless their stubborn heads, are turning in their first assignments this Friday. Some have been turned in early. The Hag told them they could not, Not, NOT cut one item out of the sample budget. The Hag is almost too exhausted to finish this paragraph; disgust has rendered her fingers numb. Two out of seven have cut the item: they don't think it's fair to make them include it. What part of YOU CAN'T DO THAT YOU MORON didn't they understand?

Move, moon. Move soon.

Moving the goddamn library

2006-02-01T16:09:00.000-08:00

The Hag has been trying to move her library out of the basement for sixteen years. Sixteen fucking years of water dripping down the walls when it rains, sprinkers breaking and pouring water on the stacks, drains flooding from the labs next door, and joy of joys, the leaky toilet pipe from the lobby upstairs. There is nothing like conducting a reference interview while ignoring flushing noises, and that's not a skill taught in graduate school. Obviously, the library venue from hell.

The Hag has tried reason, persuasion, blackmail, and anger, not to mention humor, politics and whining. Nothing worked and the Hag decided last summer that she was fated to work in this pit until she retired, got fired or laid off, or the building collapsed on top of her. Then outside forces intervened. A customer asked our CEO why the headquarters building was so empty. Of course the real reason was "we laid off all the employees" so christ knows what he said, but someone up on the third floor in management heaven did a walk-through of every building on the campus.

It's the Big Move. We are, just about all the employees, moving. They are filling up headquarters with every group that can't fight back -- no one wants to go there voluntarily, too many vice presidents, and some buildings are being vacated completely. And as a totally unplanned benefit, the library gets to move to a main floor location with real windows, the kind you look out of, and we will be able to see green grass. And trees!

The Hag has had her fingers crossed for two months that this is actually going to happen, and so far, so far, it hasn't been cancelled. We have now reached the Quarrel with Facilities stage in the move, where the helpful Facilites Department nixes everything that might cause them any problem. To wit, the library book drop. What does the library need a book drop for? (The Hag hasn't literally banged her head on the desk each time she gets asked that question, but it's been a close thing.) So because cutting a hole in an actual wall is conceptually beyond them, she has been talking to vendors and carpenters and fire marshals and security people, all of whom have been extremely helpful, and all of whom have asked her one question:

Why isn't the Facilities Department helping you?

Why indeed?

Interesting so far

2006-01-31T13:11:00.000-08:00

The Hag feels she must note a rack of completions, seeing it's the last day of January. Done:

The class lecture (not perfect, but done)
The first assigment files (ditto)
Three gym sessions per week, plus
Chapter 2!
Mr. Hag's eye surgery
Taxes, ready to go

Still in the works:

Moving the library
Arguing about the house improvements
Reading trashy novels, watching Lost and Battlestar Galactica

O, the Hag has been such a good girl!

Survivor guilt, survivor fear

2006-01-18T12:20:00.000-08:00

A very good friend just got laid off from her job of seventeen years. The good news is she's almost old enough for Social Security, and has enough (just enough) money to make it, and the bad news is it's a plain bummer.

Working in industry, this is always hanging over your head, always. The Hag is younger, but not by much, and the Hag's employer is doing reasonably well now, although this is no guarantee of anything. So it could happen to the Hag at anytime, and the worst thing is the human response to the news: Thank God It's Not Me. Not nice but honest.

Drat this society, drat this government, drat all the fat cats. Damn them all.

Over-committed to the madhouse

2006-01-13T10:39:00.000-08:00

Just to keep track, right now the Hag has the following items all at top priority between now and the end of January:

Recreate the first assignment for the Spring class
Finalize the goddamn powerpoint for the class
Finish chapter 2
Work a full time job, including planning to move a library this spring
Do weight training 3 times a week, jog 4 times a week

And, of course, there's the fun stuff:

The first season of Lost
The first season of Battlestar Galactica
(Mr. and Mrs. Hag are late to the party, again.)
Reading junky novels
Playing Sudoku

Not to mention:

Taxes
Arguing with Mr. Hag about house improvements
Mr. Hag's eye surgery

This will all be fine, assuming the Hag doesn't get sick. Crossed fingers, here.

Responding to stimuli

2006-01-11T09:18:00.000-08:00

Well, Mr. and Mrs. Hag made it through the great storm, being out of power for four days. The Hag's frustration level with the local utility provider reached its usual height of fury. Follow instructions = get ignored seems to be the latest mantra.

In other news, because that's old and boring, the Great Chapter Review went off well, and the Hag is now working on Chapter 2, in the intervals of class prep panic. After swearing off revising everything yet again, the Hag is revising everything yet again, proving that some of us don't learn very quickly. Guess we can add that to Does Not Play Well With Others. Damn straight.

Back at the paying job, coping with software and servers and hoping to move out of the basement. The Hag had a blast of gratitude for the job and being alive this morning, with stuff going on and the rain coming down. So, Happy New Year to us all.

Grading the Highly Entitled

2005-12-18T13:03:00.000-08:00

The Hag is the proud recipient of an email from a student where she is accused of 'punishing' the student by not giving her a higher grade. This Highly Entitled Intellectual Giant (HEIG) waited past all three assignments to gunny-sack all her complaints, including complaining about the assignment in which she received an A+. It wasn't a perfect score. O, the Hag is such a bitch! Cruelly, the poor student only received an A- for the class, practically guaranteeing a blight on the rest of her life.

Well, the Hag can only hope.

In other news, today is Deadline Day, and the chapter is finished! The Deadline Club meets for the first time tonight. Should be interesting.

The Hag had no idea she had all that stuff in her head. Plotting, once you get over the panic, is a great game. Poor little heroine, such a rough life in front of her. Not highly entitled at all, so there is hope.

Does not end in zero

2005-12-14T09:18:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday to the Hag, Happy Birthday to meeeee! I love my birthdays, just because they are birthdays. The Hag is now another year closer to retirement. Assuming about 50 different disasters don't happen. All that, however, is completely out of the Hag's control, so we try not to worry about it.

The Hag received a lovely set of new eShure earbuds for her iPod from Mr. Hag, and will be taken out to dinner this weekend at the expensive restaurant of her choice. Also, the Hag is declaring a moratorium on abusive student emails for today - they can wait until tomorrow for their grades.

Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday!

When a weekend is not

2005-12-07T10:01:00.000-08:00

This weekend will be spent grading the final papers for the class. Then I get to post the grades, get abusive emails (my favorite part), and then post the final grades. Then the fall semester is over.

Alas, spring is already with us. Something strange is happening between the university and the grad school, and the registration system can't create any wait lists. So, the instructors can maintain their own wait lists = recipe for madness, or the students can just keep checking back to see if space is available. I'm going with option B, but I expect to get yet more abusive emails.

Anyway, just out of curiosity I checked the spring roster. Goddamn. My class is completely full. 35 people. What the hell is going on?

The power of deadlines

2005-12-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

The Hag is lazy. Given a choice between sitting on the couch rereading an old mystery story and doing some original writing, some Long Involved Original Writing, well, shove over cats.

However, the Hag has an agreement with a neighbor lady who has much the same problem with inertia. We've agreed to a deadline and we are each producing an Original Work for review. In the Hag's case, Chapter One.

So far, it seems to be working. The Hag is sure part of this is the novelty of the novel, as it were. New stuff is always easier than the long long slog. Anyway, the first deadline is Dec. 18 and assuming the Hag is a good girl, she might make it.

The last class assignment and the final grades have to be dealt with before then, but it's always something, isn't it? Always the great excuse. So lame.

Barbecue again

2005-11-30T10:16:00.000-08:00

The latest tsk, tsk in our local paper: a young, single mother was getting childcare from another young single mother. So mother A went to her job and left the two children with single mother B. Mother B turned them over to yet another single mother (C) who walked them across the railroad tracks. One of the children was hit by a train.

Mother C is now facing 10 years in jail. Between them, they have five or six children, including one that C abandoned before she had her second child. Not one of these girls is over 25. Most seem to have started baby production at 16. All of them, by the way, are white.

This is in a state where, in theory, birth control is legally available. As is abortion. However, it never seems to occur to anyone to USE either of these options. No, it's far better to work junk jobs and roll out child after child.

I suppose, in their lives, the horizon of possibilities is so limited they never considered any other option than having the child. It's a great sadness, looking at their lives -- it's as if there is no free will at all.

Murky

2005-11-23T17:44:00.000-08:00

The student's appeal was denied. Gratified though the Hag is, (backward ran sentences, etc.) there are some suspicious circumstances here. First, it was reviewed by two faculty members, not one as originally stated. Both found very little merit, but one gave it a C and the other an F. Therefore, the Hag's given grade stands.

However, why two? Perhaps, let us say, one faculty member gave it a C, but the Director, who also teaches a section of this class, reviewed it himself and decided to weigh in with an F. Since the student, stupidly, sent him an incoherent ill-spelt email, perhaps he's taking the opportunity to do a little culling.

And perhaps the Hag wasn't the only faculty member under the microscope? We have all been exhorted to grade strictly, and this was NOT a C paper. Perhaps the Hag came out looking academically rigorous and severe?

Well, the Hag will never know. But interesting.

Yep

2005-11-22T09:48:00.000-08:00

Yep, she had the nerve to appeal her grade. The Hag finds this hard to believe. But she's doing it.

Of course, on the one day the Hag had taken off sick and not picked up her voicemail, there's this charming message from the new Director about the appeal. So we connect, finally, and he's charming charming charming but there is no way around it: she will forever be associated with this hassle in his mind. If there is one thing bureaucrats hate, it's hassle.

So the paper and supportive emails are sent to a Tenured Faculty Member for review, and of course, guess who? The TFM the Hag had that little encounter-of-the-hate kind back in the summer. Perfect. Irony is not dead.

This should be interesting. It's a money-where-your-mouth-is thing, since the Hag has been exhorted from Day 1 to grade strictly, to follow guidelines, and not to coddle students. Now, let's see if they live up to it.

That's one

2005-11-04T15:06:00.000-08:00

So the Hag received the class assignment submissions for the formal research paper. As a pleasant surprise, most were competent, some were very good. Also, they followed the APA format. Screaming works! Let's see, that's about one lecture, two webpages, and two emails reminding these ADULT GRADUATE STUDENTS to use APA format. Which is the standard for both the undergraduate and graduate school, by the way.

However, there's always one. The Hag supposes she should be grateful it's only one. No title page, six lousy references, and three citations in the paper. Oh, and it's not on the assigned topic. As a capper, it's not even a good treatment of the unassigned topic. So the Hag gave her an F.

Well, how could the Hag be so unfair? She's going to appeal. It was SO on the topic and she'd never used the APA format before and it's so UNFAIR. Also, the Hag didn't give assigned readings so how was she supposed to know what to include?

Can you say research? Can you say graduate school? Can you say, read the assignment you stupid bint?

Needless to say, (but the Hag will say it anyway) all the above was in a misspelled, ungrammatical email that makes the Hag wonder if this idiot qualifies as literate, not to mention having an IQ above a piece of toast. If the Hag was going to send an email to an instructor who had the power to fail her, she would try to at least spell 'assinfment' correctly. That's a great way to convince someone to reconsider.

Barbecue

2005-10-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

Some poor woman dumped her three children, aged 1, 3, and 6, into San Francisco Bay. She carefully removed their clothes before tossing them in.

The media will have a full barbecue on this, the columnists will column, and all the talking heads will go 'tsk, tsk, tsk.'

Okay, she's crazy. She's hearing voices. She was also living in a homeless shelter with three small children, and if the Hag were in that situation she would be hearing voices too.

Before we barbecue the woman, we should barbecue the society that idolizes motherhood, restricts access and knowledge of birth control, encourages people with no money to get pregnant, keep their babies, makes childcare impossible to get or pay for, and tosses people out of the educational system with no job skills. First we cook all that and eat it. Then, and only then, do we cook her.