Free State Observer

I think I owe an apology to everyone I’ve ever pulled a high-and-mighty on for working for the government, or a government contractor, or a less-than-savory private organization. I’ve spent much of the last three days working for a nonprofit thinktank. A thinktank that provides services to the Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. I’ve leapt through various mental hoops, coming up with creative ways to justify this. *I’m* not killing anybody. *I’m* not building things that will kill anybody. I’m just helping people who, more than likely, tell the government how to more efficiently kill somebody. That’s not so bad, right? It’s like peeling potatoes in a Nazi kitchen. Potatoes don’t hurt anybody! And everybody’s got to eat. Right? Ummm… Anyway, at least it’s only going to be two weeks worth of Nazi potato peeling.

I’m reminded of a job I had, back in my mid-20’s, working graveyard shift one week for the IRS in a tax check processing center. Politics aside, it was probably the worst job I ever had. I was half psychotic by the end of the week. Wrote a song about it. Wanna hear it? Here it is.

****
Punch it in, early morning, coffee crash low
Slam another cup and you’re ready to go
Got your smile frozen on
And a gleam in your eye
Multinaticorporate cutie-pie
Information matron on the 20th floor
21st century whore.

Sit right down, turn the terminal on,
And become a good, dutiful automaton.
Keep your eyes on the screen
And your hands on the keys
‘Til your head starts to pound
And you’re stiff in the knees
Not even sure what you’re doing it for
21st century whore.

Milling and shuffling with the rest of the herd
Every day get a little more inured
Run and hide in a stall
Ten minutes of relief
You’re an overtrained, underpaid slab o’ beef
Time’s almost up, then it’s back for more
21st century whore.

It makes perfect sense
Submission to co-option is the best defense
Cut out the middleman, sell yourself for more!

[guitar wailing here]

Struttin’ your stuff, lookin’ cool and mean
In a suit of silk and gabardine
You’ve got all the moves
You’re smokin’ now
Climbing through the ranks to be number one cow
Shake it for me, baby, sexy corporate boor
21st century whore.

21st century,
Living’ lap o’ luxury,
Upwardly mobile,
travellin’ in style….

Whore.

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I used to think that it didn’t get any better than springtime in the San Francisco Bay Area; given a choice, why would anyone live anywhere else? Having broadened my horizons since then, I realize that springtime is beautiful in lots of places, including southern New Hampshire. The color green is practically a visual assault, and there are so many baby birds and fuzzy woodland creatures scampering around, it looks like a Disney movie. Unfortunately, the State of New Hampshire seems to have decided to stop cleaning up roadkill as a way to lower expenses, so the highways have become a grizzly scene of blood-splattered carnage. Scamper FASTER, fuzzy woodland creatures!!

Last night my cousin treated me to a baseball game. Now, this is what “baseball game” means to me, in terms of going to see the A’s at the Oakland Coliseum: either you take BART (public commuter rail), sitting elbow to elbow with someone who may or may not be insane, a gangster, or come from another country where standards of personal hygiene and deodorant application vary from one’s hopes and expectations, then walk 20 minutes over a pedestrian bridge, over one of the most congested highways in the country, breathing an odiferous medley of carcinogenic fragrances, while repeatedly harangued by scalpers trying to either buy or sell tickets, depending on your proximity to the stadium. OR, you drive on the aforementioned congested highway, through one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of a dangerous city, and pay $15 (no bills larger than $20 accepted) to park. If, like my cousin, you’re bringing your wife, three kids and one weird cousin, you then spend half a month’s rent/mortgage on tickets and food. Your view is blocked by several drunk and belligerent fellows who shout obscenities non-stop for 3 hours in front of your 4-year-old. Security guards search your wife’s duffel bag of baby supplies, and don’t you dare try to save money by bringing in your own beverages.

Now, this is what a baseball game is like in Nashua, New Hampshire, twice rated “Best Place to Live in America” by Money magazine. You cruise into the parking lot of Holman Stadium with no traffic jams to speak of. You find a parking spot easily… and it’s FREE (I’m still feeling vaguely guilty about that, as if I somehow snuck in the service driveway and avoided the fee collectors). You pay a hefty $5 to get in, and that’s not a bleacher seat, that’s reserved. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, it’s an idyllic 74 degrees, there are multiple concession stands, none of which has a line. No one pats you down or searches your bags. There were a couple of city cops “patrolling” the premises, but the only actual work I saw either of them do through the entire course of the game was to help a guy find the bathroom. Children are everywhere; if there’s one thing Granite Staters know how to do, it’s BREED. Many of the children seem unsupervised and run around in little shrieking packs. No one seems concerned that they’ll be snatched off the street. The local mascot runs around acting silly and high-fiving people, while the local cheer leader? (not sure what the correct term is) leads the crowd in a series of inane but oddly amusing games such as spin around in a circle ten times and then try to run across the field (result: half the participants fell on their faces); play air guitar; walk around the field blind-folded trying to locate a $10 bill. The highlight was “Tag the Mascot”, where a scrum of at least 200 children chased the mascot across the outfield like some shrieking horde of miniature Huns. The national anthem was sung by kids from the local Catholic school. It was all so disgustingly wholesome and cute, I felt like the Grinch in Whoville.

There’s always been an aura of jingoism around professional baseball games, and I see it’s only gotten worse. There’s still the obligatory standing and saluting the Stars and Stripes while the national anthem is sung. There are the obligatory admonishments from the announcer to “thank the troops” and “God bless America”. But I must say that naming the local team the “American Defenders” and dressing them in camo, with a big USA splashed across their chests, is going a bit far. Alas, the Defenders failed to defend, losing to the Worcester (for the non-Yankees, that’s pronounced “WUH-stuh”) Tornadoes.

My cousin is a hardcore, obsessive baseball fan (he’d be BFF with Billy Crystal’s character in “City Slickers”). When he discovered I know less about the rules than his 7-year-old daughter, he looked at me with incredulous disgust and asked, in full seriousness, “What do you DO if you don’t watch baseball?” His wife mentioned that she’d like to get Netflix, but there’s really no point, since there’s a 3-hour baseball game on TV almost every day. Their kids are being indoctrinated in the Church of the Mets almost as seriously as they are in the other kind of Church (see finding jesus in greenland for more on that). The 4-year-old has already had baseball lessons with a pro minor league pitcher. Despite all of this, *I* am somehow perceived as the oddball and receive the obligatory razzing for my political beliefs, which somehow seem to be conflated with survivalism, not quite sure why. “Is your new house going to have an arsenal? We won’t bring the kids over if it’s TOO big.” (I assured them it will be buried.) “Gonna have a 2-year supply of freeze-dried food on hand?” (I demurely declined to answer that one.)

There were fireworks after the game, but oddly, two of my cousin’s three kids are terrified of them. “We’re raising seriously neurotic children” his wife commented. So they took off early and missed out on the colorful and noisy glorification of war, replete with soundtrack of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” and some odious country song that I think was called “Fight for Freedom”. In true Live Free or Die fashion, the stadium lights weren’t turned back on afterwards, meaning everyone had to make their way down lethal concrete steps in darkness.

Total game day attendance: 2245. Similarity to the movie “Bull Durham“: strong (alas, neither Kevin Costner nor Tim Robbins showed up to vie for my attention). Junk food consumed: Italian sausage heaped with grilled peppers and onions, served up by “the Sausage King of Nashua”; fried dough (flung by baby, powdered sugar everywhere). Cute kid proximity alert: Code Red.

At least I didn’t have to listen to “Proud to be an American”.

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Wow, it’s hard to believe it’s been over a year since my red pill post. For those who care (yeah, right), here’s an update on my current opinion of politics:

– still fundamentally immoral? check

– still OK to vote, as a potential means of self-defense? check

– still unclear what an effective alternative is? check

– thoughts on the fact that some people are actually hoping Ron Paul will run for President again, cuz this time he’s really gonna save us? oh god, surely you can’t be serious

Speaking of being serious, I read an excellent article earlier today by the fine folks at Downsize D.C.. They seem most of the way towards swallowing the red pill themselves. Sadly, they’re not all the way there yet. They still think that if they can just get a couple of new laws passed, specifically, the Read the Bills Act and the One Subject at a Time Act, that things’ll be DIFFERENT, goshdarnit. Nevermind the fact that politicians routinely break existing laws all the freakin’ time, so why should anyone expect that they’d follow new ones?

Anyway, I thought I’d share the part of their almost-daily dispatch that makes sense to me (leaving out the part about how things would be ever so much different if we just get some new laws passed). Here ya go, and don’t forget to, at some point this Memorial Day Weekend, bow your head in memory of the millions of people who have lost their lives in various wars for the health of the state; their decomposing remains thank you.

I hear it all the time, in the emails that flood my In-Box and on the radio shows I do. Everyone thinks we need to replace our current Congress with better people. I always have the same reaction — “Are you serious?”

What would it take to get even ONE “good person” elected? You’d need . . .

* A good candidate
* A great campaign
* A ton of money

And you’d still probably lose because incumbents have powerful natural advantages. But even if you did win, one politician can’t pass or repeal laws. You’d need . . .

* Hundreds of great candidates
* Hundreds of great campaigns
* And hundreds of millions of dollars to get them all elected

But before you could even begin to acquire these things you’d have to build a HUGE list of supporters from which to recruit your supposedly good candidates, and from which to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars you’d need. But there’s a problem. Several problems actually . . .

* If you’re trying to do this through a political party many people won’t want to join you because they don’t like the partisan label you’ve chosen
* Many more people won’t like some of your supposedly good candidates as much as you do
* And many more won’t want to join you because either you or your candidates favor some position that’s a deal breaker

But it gets worse . . .

* The campaign finance laws limit how much you can raise from your list of donors
* You must report your contributors to the government, thereby intimidating some large donors who will fear retaliation against their business interests by the incumbents you’re trying to unseat

So, even with a huge army of donors you’ll have a hard time raising the money you need. It will be like trying to fill a swimming pool with a teaspoon. But let’s say you overcome these obstacles, after decades of hard work (because that’s how long it will take). You’re still going to be frustrated . . .

Most of the supposedly good candidates you elect will turn out to be bums. They’ll get to Congress and start behaving like the old gang you worked so hard to replace. This is almost inevitable, because . . .

The system is designed to work that way!

All politicians, even YOUR politicians, have huge incentives to say yes to special interests, to trample your rights, and to give away your money. After all . . .

* They get an ego-boost from saying yes to special interests
* They also grow more powerful by saying yes, NOT by saying no
* They’re spending you’re [sic] money, not their own, so saying yes is easy
* Their new special interest friends can replace you as their source of funding and votes
* And now that they’re in office they know it will be hard for you to fire them

This means you’ll have to start the process all over again, finding new supposedly good candidates to replace the people you thought were good before. Either that, or . . .

You’ll have to find a way to control the people you worked so hard to elect. But, assuming that’s possible, why didn’t you just do that in the first place? Why didn’t you just skip all the time, pain, effort and expense of electing a new set of bums to replace the old set of bums?

Given these realities, why don’t you take the road less traveled, by doing things in reverse?

Instead of recruiting a huge army to replace the existing Congress, recruit that army so you can PRESSURE CONGRESS to do what you want. After all, public pressure brought down the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, as well as forced Red China to change its ways. It ought to be even more effective here in the United States. . . .

http://www.downsizedc.org/blog/are-you-serious

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Roses are red,
Violets are purple;
Sugar’s sweet,
and so is maple syrple
– Roger Miller, “Dang Me”

About a week ago, I finally crossed one of those stereotypical New Englandy things off my lifetime to-do list: I went to a maple syrup manufactory, otherwise known as a “sugar shack”. I think I first heard about this from reading the Little House on the Prairie books as a child, and it sounded like so much fun (certainly better than making a balloon out of a freshly slaughtered pig’s bladder, which was another childhood treat enjoyed by Laura Ingalls Wilder). Random aside, in case you don’t already know this: LIW, the author and main character of the Little House books, which were made into a popular TV series in the 70’s, was the mother of acclaimed libertarian writer Rose Wilder Lane. So where was I? Oh yeah, maple syrup.

The weekend of March 28/29 was a statewide open house for sugar shacks in New Hampshire. I met up with several other Free State Project Porcupines in the charming town of New Boston in search of liquid amber sticky sweetness. Another random aside: New Boston used to host the Gravity Research Foundation; it was selected because it sat just outside what was considered the 60-mile radius danger zone if Boston (the old one) were to get nuked.

Requiring somewhere safe from the effect of a potential nuclear war, Babson chose New Boston as the ideal locale just beyond his required 60-mile distance from Boston, which was presumed to be a high-profile target. New Boston would be perfect for research and annual conferences – The Gravity Center of the World!
Roger Babson wanted to erect a sign proclaiming New Boston to be the safest place in North America if World War III occurred, but the Town Selectmen at that time did not agree.
http://www2.new-boston.nh.us/Pages/NewBostonNH_About/gravity

Ah, Cold War trivia. Party-pooper town selectmen! Where was I again? Maple syrup, yes.

My spiffy new GPS unit with the soothing voice which, sadly, cannot compete with the volume of my car radio, led me right past the sugar shack. You’d think that seeing a wooden building with smoking pouring out of the chimney, and lots of kids running around, would have tipped me off, but what can I say; I’m slow. I parked my car about 1/4 mile up the road and walked back to the shack, which was packed to capacity with adults, kids, the random dog, and a huge, noisy contraption belching steam, filled with a clear liquid. Presumably that was tree sap; it was way too noisy to hear what the man who worked there was saying. I concentrated on not stepping on kids and dogs and wondered when I was going to get some sugar. It wasn’t a long wait; a girl with a friendly smile soon started handing out popsicle sticks with what looked like maple taffy stuck to the end. Muttering a brief prayer to the gods of dental work, I dug into it. If muz good mmfff!!

A teenager who worked there then lead a group of us on a walk into the woods to see how the trees were tapped. I had an image in my mind of something like a beer keg spigot and a big wooden bucket hanging on a tree, but that’s not how they do it these days. They use purple-colored plastic tubing linking a number of tapped trees, which are referred to collectively as a “sugar bush”, then rely on the force of gravity to draw the sap down to a large plastic tank. How do they know which trees to tap? Beats me; they all look the same to me. Fortunately for my pancakes, some people can apparently tell the difference.

One of the people in my group found a 10-inch garter snake, and tried unsuccessfully to get it to stick its tongue out on cue for pictures. It seemed to like her; after she played with it for a while and then put it back on the ground, it made a beeline straight back for her.

We trekked back to the sugar shack, where I enjoyed a cup of warm maple syrup. A rooster was running around outside crowing and doing silly rooster things to amuse the children. Since that day, I’ve spotted treetap purple tubing in the woods twice already. I would have had no idea what it was if not for the tour of the sugar shack. Good times. Good sticky, teeth-rotting times.

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I tried to kill this blog the other day. I swear I did. It resurrected itself.

First, I deleted the index file. I didn’t delete the others because I wanted to export the content, and due to something buggy in the blog software, I couldn’t actually access the export button. A couple of days later, someone emailed me that something was weird with my blog. What blog, I mused? Why, the one that came back from the dead. Not only that, it locked me out of the server control panel so I couldn’t stab at its electronic innards.

So I posted something about cylon technology, then went through the hassle of upgrading the blog software, just so I could enable the export functionality, so I could try again to kill it.

While I slept, it rolled back the upgrade, cleverly removing the export button (as well as the last couple of posts and comments).

Clearly, there are cybernetic and/or astral forces more powerful than myself at work here. I will make no further attempts to kill it, but rather will attempt to live with it in peace and harmony, forging a whole that is greater than the sum of its fleshy and digital parts. Or something.

Frakkin’ toasters.

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I’ve been half-heartedly househunting for several months now, and seriously looking for a couple of months. About a week ago, I finally went to visit the one house I’ve had bookmarked for a long, long time (its initial listing was out of my price range, but the price has dropped twice since then)… and it was practically perfect. Trying as hard as my critical little mind could, I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Visions of Friday’s Freehold danced in my head. I tried to imagine myself actually living there.

But first, I had to find out if I was going to be living anywhere.

As either of my readers may recall, I turned 40 last year. Forty is the recommended age for American women to start having annual mammograms. I could have had one a couple of years ago; my physician wrote me a referral. But first I procrastinated. Then I dawdled. After that, I dragged my foot for a bit. Before you knew it, I’d been 40 for a while, and still hadn’t actually done it. Of course, the stories I’d heard from other women didn’t exactly make me eager to go and get my knockers nuked. That, and the knowledge that I am at above-average risk in a few different ways, combined with a reliable tendency to see the cloud in any silver lining, made me hesitant to go. But I finally bit the bullet (gee, if mammograms had existed in pioneer times, do you think they really would have given women bullets to bite on?) and scheduled it.

It really wasn’t all that bad, when it finally came down to it. Of course, the nurse who told me she expected me to be “delighted” by the experience was clearly high and under no circumstances should have been operating radioactive machinery.

Two days later, I got a call at work. “Um, yeah, there’s an “irregularity”. We’d like you to come back. Are you available in… two weeks?”

Two WEEKS?!! I have to wait that long to find out whether I’m going to live or die? Well, obviously I’m going to die, sometime, but… two weeks??

Thus began two of the longest weeks of my life. Since I have no sisters, my mother hasn’t called me yet this year, and my inability to maintain cordial relations with, well, anyone, is fairly well-documented, I discussed this with no one. I only even mentioned it to two people, in both cases because it sort of randomly came up in conversation, and they have kind hearts. They both had received similar phone calls, and in both cases it had turned out to be nothing, and they both told me not to worry. So I didn’t. NOT.

Finally the fateful day came. The nurse (a different one) nuked me. Then I had to wait, with my heart pounding in my probably cancer-riddled chest. Then she nuked me again. And I waited some more. I could feel the onset of metastatis. Then she took me to another room, where a different nurse lubed me up and then ran one of those things they use to take photos of fetuses around for a really, really, really long time, while silently staring intently at a video monitor. Then I was left alone to wait some more. At this point, I was trying to decide to which charitable organization to leave all my worldly possessions. Then a doctor and another nurse came in, applied more lube, did more ultrasonic stuff, and declared me…… fine. <.......exhale.......>

So, um, yeah. I’m gonna live! In New Hampshire! The next day, I told my realtor I wanted to make an offer on that house.

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Quiet around here, huh?

It’s not that I have nothing to say. Au contraire… I’ve got LOTS to say. Not so much about politics, political movements, the Free State Project (whose recent convention, the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, was excellent and if you missed it, you missed out), etc; been there, done that, got several T-shirts. I’ve got lots to say (or think, anyway) about human nature, and community, and the incredible lightness of being. But I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s counterproductive to say it. It will only piss people off and make them resent me, not change anything, or convince anyone (actually, I once had a fellow Free Stater tell me that my impassioned plea for a particular course of action only made him more resolved to take the opposite tack; thanks, buddy!).

Spring has arrived in New Hampshire, which makes all of us who live here giddy with joy. I’ve been working a lot, and saving money. Gonna buy a house soon. Maybe buy another gun before Obama bans them all. I’d say I’m going to clean up my act and get back in shape, but I’ve blown that promise so many times I’m not even going to bother. I’m glad that, during the last few years of the “good times” in the U.S., I worked hard, and smart. The good times are over, and (inevitable Firefly quote oh stop you KNEW it was coming) things are going to get much, much worse. Actually, one of the people mentioned in my last blog entry was laid off yesterday. As for those who failed to make hay while the sun was shining (if we’re going to insist on maintaining daylight savings time, I’m going to continue to use that hackneyed agricultural era expression), not to mention keeping their promises, seeing the laughably foreseeable consequences of various actions barreling towards them like a freight train, and doing the bare minimum things that any able-bodied, self-respecting adult should do, irregardless of their professed sociopolitical philosophy, all I can say is, AAAAUUUGGGHHH!! Sorry, I seem to be having a serious Holden Caulfield moment and am having difficulty wrapping my head around what utter hypocripocronical fuckwits some people are. Anywho…

Keep the faith. I’ve already lost mine.

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Suddenly, my schadenfreude-laced voyeurism of the nosediving U.S. economy has taken a turn for the uncomfortably close to home. (Did that sentence make sense?)

Wait, let me back up. And let me parse this carefully so that it winds up neither on Fucked Company nor my COO’s desk.

I work for a company that provides consulting services for businesses that use OdiousTM
software. It’s a little company with a big client list, many of which, I assure you, you’ve heard of. A couple of weeks ago, I successfully steered Phase 3 of a project for Media-Company-Not-to-be-Named, which acquired Television-Company-Household-Name, to completion. Didn’t get a word of praise or thanks, as everyone else was either out enjoying the holidays or drowning in their own projects. Oh well, Whitney Houston told me the greatest love is inside of me or something.

Uncertain of what to do with myself with the sudden and shocking lack of stress beating down on me and keeping me awake (shoutout to Jim’s Big Ego for writing my theme song), and aware that some of my coworkers were suffering with a gnarly project of their own for Video-Game-Company-Yes-You-Know-Them, which was, how shall I put this…. having “issues”…. I spunkily/proactively/idiotically happened to mention that, hey, I’m not that busy at the moment, anybody need some help? Insert creepy theremin mood music foreshadowing here.

So I worked on the VideoGameCYYKT project the day after Christmas, since it wasn’t a company holiday and hey, I didn’t have anything else to do; every other business in the U.S. was CLOSED that day in heartwarming Christian observance of the birth of baby whatshisface.

The next week, which would be, oh let’s see, after Christmas comes, yes, that’s right, New Year’s, my office husband (hey, it’s a cultural phenomenon, look it up) was supposed to be on vacation with his other wife and kid. I’m guessing it was the worst vacation of his life, because La Jefe (Cuban-American manager of my department and *not* to be trifled with) had no intention of letting the festering VideoGameCo project sit for a week. She called him several times a day, every day. She called him while he was driving the fam to NYC in a snowstorm. She called him in the Holland Tunnel. She called him when he was getting his car worked on, taking his kid to the movies, and a couple hundred other times. My reward for having finished my project on time and with a happy client was to be immediately drafted onto the festering VG project, so I even called my buddy on his vacation a couple of times myself, although I hate that kind of thing.

New Year’s Eve rolls around; stinky VG project has big deadline of some sort. I only know this from overhearing bits and pieces of conversations that drift over cubicle walls. Young coworker is charged with leading part of time sensitive deadline. Young coworker, who clearly has much better work-life balance than I do, doesn’t give a shit and leaves the office at noon to enjoy NYE in Boston with boyfriend and, I feel certain, an unhealthy but highly entertaining quantity of alcohol. Young coworker doesn’t answer company-paid cell phone when La Jefe calls her… repeatedly…

Yours truly picks up where Young Coworker left off. YT works late on New Year’s Eve. YT works all day New Year’s Day. And the day after, which isn’t a company holiday (if company shafts the birth of baby whatshisface, you think it’s gonna curtail the billable hours for a lousy end-of-solar-cycle?). And the day after that (Saturday, in case you’ve lost count). YT writes management summary of festering VideoGame project on behalf of project managers A, B, and C, because… wait, why *was* I the one to write that? Anyway, they liked it.

Which brings us to today. YT is looking forward to 3-day weekend, to make up for working all day last Saturday (still owed for New Year’s Day, and the day I went into the office on my vacation to put out fire on MediaCompanyNTBN project and then lost the vacation hours at the end of the year but that’s another story). Festering VideoGame project has another big deadline. Young coworker has no excuse to leave early today, so at least we’ll be sharing the burden.

Receive bounced email from internal software system that was addressed to Chick-Out-On-Maternity-Leave. Third email this week. Although it’s no longer my responsibility to deal with stuff like that, having pawned it off on The Kid months previously, The Kid is far more interested in band practice than showing up in the office at 9 (or 10, or 11, for that matter), so I figure I’ll just deal with it myself. Figure COOML’s mailbox is probably maxed out. Check company directory to confirm she’s still listed. Send her a test email, and it is returned to me saying “Name does not exist”. Curious…

Remove COOML’s email address from internal software system. IM The Kid to let him know I did his job for him. He says he was just about to do that. Also mentions that COOML is “no longer with us”. Says she was scheduled to come back from maternity leave on Monday, but La Jefe told her not to bother as her position has been “eliminated”. Says La Jefe is rumored to have said “there will be others”. Ask from whom The Kid got this information. The Kid says from COOML.

Suddenly have crisis of faith in COO, who sends out weekly “reports to the troops” in which he has repeatedly stated that company is doing better than ever. Suddenly see various things I’ve noticed around the office in recent weeks in a whole new and disturbingly murky light.

Meanwhile, receive email from La Jefe, forwarded from VGCYYKT, saying that tomorrow’s deadline must be met. Failure is not an option! VPN (for the non-geeks among you, this is a way of remotely connecting to another company’s computer network) connection to VGCYYKT is down all morning; entire team is dead in water.

VPN is restored mid-day; team works furiously to meet unreasonable deadline that Project Manager knew about weeks ago but “forgot” until earlier this week. YT works through lunch, barely pausing to notice team member who leaves office for several hours during the day for an “appointment” and comes back with a new hairstyle. Around 6:00PM, YT, who sits close enough to La Jefe’s office to hear parts of conference calls, overhears call in which Project Manager tells La Jefe something about “refuse to pay” and “stop all work”. YT is aware that VGCYYKT already owes company large sum of money, and company has been doing the business equivalent of kneeling down and opening wide for weeks, if not months, in hopes of enticing VGCYYKT to pay up. Smell death on the breeze. Wonder whose heads will roll.

Young Coworker stops by to provide update on her tasks. Whisper to YC equivalent of “we’re screwed” and suggest she not bother starting any new tasks until La Jefe gets off phone. YC is unperturbed; Thursday is bar night.

Gallows humor spreads like wildfire amongst teammembers. “Well, at least we’ll sleep well tonight!” “Won’t have to work *this* weekend, Ha Ha!” Ask La Jefe how this rates in the list of company’s Unfortunate Incidents. “Number 1″ is her prompt response.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

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