Go-go-go-go-shawteh

It's mah birfday,

I'm gonna party like it's mah birfday

I'm gonna sip Bacardi like it's mah birfday,

And you know I don't give a shit cause it's my birfday!



You know where you can find me....




What do I want for my birthday?

How about a signed picture of Yor...




-- <3, DV

Ask Li'l Mama Pt. 2

Well, another session of America's Best Dance Crew saw the group ASIID eliminated--pretty shocking, really, considering they had been at the top most of the show and this was  the first time they'd been in the bottom two.  I'm not a judge, obviously, but I'm also not really seeing where they come up with some of their opinions.  Last night's theme was about Janet Jackson's work and the crews' interpretations of it.  It would've been nice to see Janet Jackson maybe come out and guest judge.  It's not like she's above those things--she's been on the Tyra Banks show after all.  Oh well.  It's still entertaining.  

So, let's ask Li'l Mama for her take on things from this last round of dance crews, shall we?  

In explaining to one group about how she really understood where they were coming from:

"You come from that lifestyle of tin-tin-tin-tin-tin-shabow."  (Maybe that's where the Dance Chicken lives, and we can stab his heart there?)

When telling a group how impressed she was by them on a regular basis:

"You cease to amaze me every week." (Similar to when she warned Sassx7 that if they weren't careful, they'd get "pigeonheld.")

Most of the crews still seem confused.  They're probably still hunting for the Dance Chicken.  Or maybe what's-er-name will cruise by the comments again and explain it all to us.

-- Virgil

A-Z meme. Because I'm bored.

I decided to take Meg up on her meme offer. Because I can't come up with better subjects and/or I don't feel like writing down the good stuff.

Accent: Sigh. Yes. I know I have one. What amuses me is that you don't think you have one. Everyone asks me this. I've been asked about this during high level presentations and standing in line at McDonald's. The next time someone asks where it's from (as if they didn't know), I'm going to tell them it's French. Actually, I spent a few years trying to kill my accent. El Hijo and I still joke about going into "white person's business voice" depending on the situation. Then I realized I was more likely to spontaneously burst into flame than not talk like I do. So I embraced it.

Breakfast or no breakfast: I can barely manage more than a cup or two of tea or coffee in the morning. I have to have a lot of time before I'm ready to eat. So if I have to be somewhere in the morning (which is most mornings), I usually don't eat breakfast proper. I make up for it all throughout the day, though.

Chore I don’t care for: Doing things other people claimed they'd do. It gives me anger management problems.

Dog or Cat: A kitteh. Although, soon, maybe it will be two kittehs...we'll have to see.

Essential Electronics: Computer, Ipod; I haven't had a cell in a long time, and I don't miss it.

Favorite Cologne: Versace's Baby Rose Jeans

Gold or Silver: Silver

Handbag I carry most often: What's a handbag? I have carry-alls for teaching, maybe that counts.

Insomnia: yup. It sucks. It's not so much insomnia as it is hypersensitivity. It would probably pay not to try to break into my house. I would hear you from three blocks away. I wish you could sneak up on me.

Job Title: You know, I don't know. I'm technically allowed to call myself "Professor." Some people in this business bitch that you can only do that if you're in a tenure track job. That's not actually true. It refers to anyone who holds a Masters or above who is teaching in the university. But to keep people from getting their panties twisted, I'll probably go by "Senior Lecturer."

Kids: One. No more. I like the one I got, and he's way too complex for me to take on another. Funny, the older he gets the more I like him. My Mom always said she liked a specific age, ironically, the period where the kid is still very young and malleable with no real way of asserting her own will. I expected to be nostalgic for the toddler years, or something, but that hasn't happened. Instead, I like the person Dante continues to become more and more with each year. I think he's got a great sense of humor, he's generous to a fault, and he is so incredibly kind, especially with smaller kids. I'm so proud of that. I think his attempts to develop "swag" are cute. I'm also thankful that his genetics threw a few shy bones in his body, or else he'd be too, too bad. (ht Andre 3000).

Living Arrangements: At this point? My way or the highway. I'm not even ready to comment on that yet.

Most Admirable Trait: Not backing down. It's also my worst trait.

Naughtiest Childhood Behavior: Not believing in God or the Jehovah's Witness principles and doing what I wanted to do. Aren't I bad? Of course, their elders would tell you my naughtiest behavior was being "too unrepentant" and "too influential". Tomato, tomahto.

Overnight hospital stays: Once when a drunk driver creamed my car, I went in later for a few tests, but I didn't stay overnight. I walked out, actually. The only time I stayed over was for Dante's birth.

Phobias: Um, fear of drowning that I'm better able to control now. I hate taking off and landing in planes. I'm afraid I'll swallow a battery.

Quote: “You've got to be shitting me” or “for fuck's sake”

Reason to smile: Dante's voice mails. God, they're funny. My favorite ones are still where he acts like I must have no clue who he is. "Um, Mom? It's Dante. Dante XXXXX. Your son." Like I have 37 kids. Or his exasperated ones: "Mo-ooom! Where ARE you?!" :D

Siblings: One sister. I love her dearly. I'm still planning her ex-husband's slow and excruciating death. Get the shit done that you were supposed to do, fucker.

Time I wake up: When I have to.

Unusual Talent or Skill: You know, I can't come up with one. I'm sure I have talent and skill, but I'm not sure what I do that's unusual.

Vegetable I Refuse to Eat: Peas. I've hated them since food was capable of being shoved in my mouth. Pretty much for my whole born existence.

Worst Habit: Arrogance. I'm so arrogant I don't even care that it's a bad habit. :p

X-rays: Other than teeth, I'm not sure. I don't go to the doctor much. I need to go more often.

Yummy Stuff: I like food in general. I like pickles. I like Lebanese bologna (yes, I know it's weird). I like beer of all kinds. Cheese. I'm a pretty good cook. I love a big ol' rare steak. With A-1. :p...

Zoo Animal I Like Most: Big cats. All kinds of them.

Let me know if you choose to do the meme.

--DV

This Job Opportunity is the Bomb!

Scouting around in The Economist, I found what has to be the best covertly worded ad for a job yet. JP, if you're looking for work this may well be for you. Although we'll have to play off some of its requirements. I love The Economist, by the way. While I was in grad school, I had to do without it because there just wasn't any time to read a weekly on top of everything else. But you have to love a weekly mag that's been around since 1843 for the sole purpose of "taking part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress." Woot! One of the best parts of The Economist is the number of job ads in the magazine for jobs that are WAY over most people's capabilities. It's amusing to me to see how such jobs get described and what their requirements are.

But this has to be the best job posting I've seen in a while. Pay close attention to the beauty of how this thing is written:

Palestinian National Authority

The PNA seeks to employ a small number of consultants to assist in the implementation of its action plan. These consultants will be hired on a short-term contract basis for one year and will be required to work full-time in Ramallah, Palestine.
Experience
Candidates must have specific experience and proven expertise in one or more of the following areas.
--International Relations and Protocol --Communications, Media and Public Relations --Social Policy --Economic Policy --International Development Policy --Project and Change Management --Executive Office Administration and Executive Assistance

Qualifications
Candidates must possess the follow ing qualifications:
--Bachelors Degree or higher --Minimum of 3-10 years experience working in a professional capacity in the public or private sector --Comfortable working with senior executives in a challenging and time-pressured environment --Excellent written and oral communi cation skills in Arabic and English.

OK, I know this is, well, wrong on many fronts, but the only thing I could think of the whole time I was reading this ad was: suicide bomber. After all, it's a short term contract on site. Explosions definitely affect social, economic and and international development policy. And they cause quite the stir in the media and with communications. You have to understand protocol to even get to blow yourself up somewhere for the biggest impact. Change management -- huh. I think that one goes without saying. Nothing says "time pressured environment" like a ticking bomb. And everything certainly comes down from the senior executives. You can actually find this listed on Monster.com.

Oh, come on. What were you expecting the PNA to consult with you about?

-- DV

Ruminations about Jobs and the Numbnuts Who Apply For Them

So, we've been on a mission to hire the new Literacy Dante's Virgil around the office. It's harder than it seems. For my job we got nearly 30 applications. That's tremendous for how small we are. I think it's a telling sign about the economy. But just like that saying "all that glitters isn't gold," all who apply are not interview worthy. Or even better, "some that apply are complete numbnuts."

I don't even know where to begin with the crazy. The best application we got looked like this. No cover letter, of course.

Dear Sir, (there are only women who work here)
I want the job. (Obviously not implied when you are APPLYING for it)

Computer repairman, Navy 6 years (and the rest of your work life??!?)
Clean driving record (Wtf?? We don't do literacy deliveries in this job.)

49 years old (can't ask, against the law!), single (wtf?), white (!!!!), male, 6 feet tall (literacy has a height requirement now??)

Bill Numbnuts
Address listed actually doesn't work (we got mail returned to us from the P.O.)

If only I had known that I didn't have the right dangly bits and I was too short to do the job when I first applied. That explains why this job was so frustrating. Wow. I'm pretty sure this guy did a stint in prison and is applying to things since his release. The hilarious icing on the cake to this application was today when the return letter we sent came back to us in the mail because his address was already invalid. He never bothered to leave a phone number. I'm sure he's never even heard of email, despite having supposedly repaired computers.

The rest of the applicants ran the gamut from day care workers to a woman with a Masters in Public Administration--it's basically the MBA of the nonprofit world. The top candidates weeded themselves out of the running after we told them a little more about the job. Which is sad, because if they were smart enough to figure out how overwhelming it was, we needed their brains to do the job! It's a rock and a hard place. So we went with the first three people on the list for interviews. There was a rocket scientist (seriously), a retired teacher, and a Harley-Davidson spokesgirl. Nonprofit attracts some weird people. We finally interviewed the rocket scientist today, but she was hard to pin down for the first two weeks. She's lucky D/B gave into me telling her she needed to keep interviewing people. The retired teacher seemed like a good catch--the question was whether she'd put up with our monkey business or not. And the Harley-Davidson spokesgirl drove all the way out to the office in her jeep, saw that we were working out of a trailer and immediately turned around and went home. Screw you too.

So we needed a second round of people, to make sure we did due diligence in the search process. After rescheduling the rocket scientist, I went to the "clutch" people--the second stringers, if you will. They included two university students. I called both of them, and they seemed a little surprised they would need to come in and interview during the summer and that training also took place during the summer. Would it be possible to do this later, you know, when school starts back in the middle of August? You have got to be shitting me. Why the hell did you apply for a job in the summer when you knew you couldn't do anything about it until the fall? Excuse me for disrupting your suntan lotion application. Meh. (Just for Meg's kids, a double Meh.) Obviously they have no clue about the state of the workforce right now, or they would've gotten off their blistering buns and made a way to come in for an interview. I spent about five minutes snorting and stomping around about that for a while and then I made a well placed call to the person in charge of keeping track of WVU students and the jobs they take in the community. I told her in a sticky sweet voice that I would have loved to have interviewed them, but they couldn't be assed to wash off the sunscreen. I said it much more professionally than that, of course. Sigh. How do you teach work ethic? Anyhoo.

So we went to the third stringers--the people we didn't really want to sign, but wanted to at least vet before we passed. The MPA woman came in and a preacher who was looking for part time work. I already knew that the preacher wouldn't really be a good fit for the office, but maybe that's because D/B isn't a good fit for a professional atmosphere. But the preacher was even extra weird; actually, she seemed like she was on some kind of downer--totally mellow to the point of not saying much at all. We were creeped out. The MPA woman looks good on paper, but she's a serious flight risk. I mean, if you went to school to get the nonprofit version of an MBA, why would you not jump at the chance to be an executive director? Why would you settle for assistant to the director unless you viewed it as a stepping stone? Everybody has to get experience somehow, but this woman seemed like she would jump at the first chance. And there are a lot of first chances in nonprofit. I'd been on the job for three months before a very powerful person started cajoling me about taking a directorship that had just come open. I finally had to say, look, lady, I've been in nonprofit a whopping three months now, I don't even have a social work degree and I'm still figuring out this geographic area. If a board did hire me, I'd think they were nuts and wouldn't want to work for them! And I meant it. It's hard work for below average compensation. Why make it worse for yourself? But this woman is essentially grooming for this position. And sure enough, when it came to the interview, it seemed to me like it was an immediate pissing contest. She has no clue how to work as a subordinate.

That may sound bad, but that's really what makes most jobs run smoothly--figuring out how to improve and grow and change things while keeping in mind who is in charge. Everybody wants to be their own boss, but that's not really practical. She didn't seem like the kind who could figure out how to work within a set of orders, but that's what makes the work world go 'round. That's not to say there is no room for creativity, because there certainly is. But without a chain of command, you get people doing the same work, doubling the job, leaving other parts undone, wasting time on territorial disputes, it just doesn't work. And D/B isn't the world's best boss, but she also knows a lot about what she's doing. It takes somebody who is sure of themselves to be the "assistant" person, somebody who doesn't need to define themselves by job power. Or somebody bright enough to see that the position has its own sort of job power. Do people really imagine they're going to get most things by D/B if I don't agree with them first? Who do they think she runs things by? One of the most important lessons I learned in the university very early on was that the secretaries are the ones with the real power. They hold the ultimate power: knowledge about your files and how the system works. I was always polite and nice to them, and they are good to me. When there was an administrative misfire with my degree, they stepped in and fixed it all on their own. It pays to be good to them. They give me things without making me go through the rigmarole other people have to, because I'm respectful of their power. When I applied for the job I currently have, they were so in my favor that they kept my direct deposit pay set up the way it was and had the paperwork literally completely ready to go before I had even been officially offered the job. All I had to do was sign on the line--that they had highlighted and X'd. Be good to the support staff. They know where the cookies and coffee (oh, and your personnel file) are.

So, to end this lengthy rumination on the job itself, we picked the retired school teacher. I like her. I think she can handle the job. When I told her we wanted her, she said "I'll put my affairs in order." I laughed a long time. That's basically the attitude to have--get your will together, because we're going skydiving tomorrow. She'll train with me for the next couple of weeks.

I have two and a half weeks left, which is kind of a melancholy thought. But I think a light weight just came off my shoulders when she said "yes." Let somebody else be the Grand Poobah of Literacy for a while.

-- DV

My Friend, the Pill

"Your little friend is a big pill!!"

That's what the Director of the Intensive English Program told me the other day about my new buddy, Z. My first reaction was to have my hackles raised. And to flip her off. I'm a little protective like that. I still regret that I didn't somehow greatly endanger the numbnut who bothered BatMite! while he was still around to be endangered. But it seemed like it would make the situation worse, and it seemed like BatMite! was really uncomfortable with me doing anything, so I forbore from making things worse. It didn't prevent me from menacing one of the other numbnuts involved, and he goes out of his way to avoid me. I don't really threaten people exactly, I just, I don't know, hold them accountable, I guess. Not standing for stuff is frightening enough in itself, I suppose. Incidentally, the girls at work are getting me a giant wooden spoon as a going away present--for stirring shit with. They think I don't know.

So when the woman called Z a pill, it pissed me off. But really, she's right. My friend is a pill. I met Z because I'm supposed to be tutoring her in English speaking. She's from Turkey. She makes me all this great food, which I'm not officially supposed to be eating, because I'm not officially supposed to be in her house. I'm supposed to be in a public place. Whatever. Her English isn't that hot, especially her comprehension when people are speaking to her. I helped enroll her in the IEP program at the university I work at, and so she's had an intensive two weeks or so with it. And she's been a total pill about it.

I took her over when we first registered her, and the director was trying to get her to sign up for two classes. We could only afford one--actually, she couldn't afford any, I was footing the bill as a loan for the first one. I kept explaining that. The director told us to see her the next day. So back we came (mind you, I'm switching around my work hours to get this done), and the director out of her generosity offers her the second class for free. f-r-e-e-. So we take it, and it only took about 45 minutes later when I was sitting at my office for greed to kick in. She and her husband called and said "Three?" I tried to explain to Z that this way she didn't have to take out a loan; that if the director thought she really could've paid for the class this whole time that it looks like we were tricking the director; that it looks really fucking ingrateful. I explained the same thing to her husband, who speaks much better English. They chose to ignore me and approach the director about it anyway. And to approach the director about switching Z to another class at a higher speaking level--even though Z couldn't ask for these things on her own. They were in the office probably half a dozen times in the first couple of days.

So when I went in to pay for Z's class (loan, really), I got the "Your little friend is a big pill" diatribe.

I tried to explain to Z and her husband that they were annoying the piss out of the director. In typical immigrant fashion (I know what that looks like, I worked it for a while so keep your pc comment to yourself), they went w-a-y overboard and decided that instead of just, you know, staying out of the damned office and doing your work, that Z should totally float under the radar and they should quit the free class. I tried to explain to them that in American culture, to throw a gift back in the giver's face, especially one that involves a break on money or cost, was incredibly insulting, probably moreso than insulting the giver's mother, and that they would only make matters worse. Z got a stiff neck about taking "charity," and she kept on in that stubborn vein until I reminded her that she was taking charity--my loan for the other class. Then she shut up about it and dropped it.

Goddamn, she's hard to work with sometimes.

There was something about her that I liked a lot from the very beginning. Then I found out her story. She was an engineer in her home country, Turkey. She's also conservative Muslim, although her husband is more of a cultural Muslim. She was prevented from getting her PhD in Turkey, because they made it illegal for veiled women to go to the university. She being the stubborn little coot she is, she of course chose her right to wear whatever the hell she wanted over beaurocracy. She has been in the US for a couple of years and is bored silly. She was one of ten women in Turkey specifically trained for her field by European Union scientists and engineers on an exchange program. She was the only one of those women who was veiled. Her field? Nanotechnology.

It blew me away to imagine somebody so talented, so driven who was held back and was basically a housefrau because she couldn't speak the language well enough to do anything else. It's like the English language is between her and her destiny (or, one could say the idiotic Turkish government, who "tolerates" until they think it politically expedient to brown nose Europe--yeah, I'm a little biased--is between her and her destiny). Her tutoring became Important. As big a pill as she can be, this woman needs to get back to the business of her life. Her dream is to finish her graduate education so she can use nanotechnology to fight cancer. That's the stuff I remember going over in basic Chemistry when I was a damned undergraduate over a decade ago as part of a "what we hope we can do in the future" lecture. Seems like it was the same lecture as the buckminsterfullerene "bucky balls" lecture (who, incidentally, has an awesome inventor). And Z could actually do it. She lives in a little rundown three room apartment that is part of a converted old house; she makes the most awesome grape leaves (anything, really) and chai (tea). She's taught me half a dozen Turkish words. She begins all conversations about Turkey with "Now, when you come to Turkey..." as though it's simply a given that we'll go there sooner rather than later. She's got sparkly eyes and a wicked sense of humor that comes out even though she has a really limited vocabulary. She led the women's student group who protested the imposing of the headscarf ban at her university in Turkey when it happened. I have no idea what her general attitude gave off about her, because I normally don't take on ESL students while I'm working (there's just no time) and I certainly didn't know any of her story before I took her on as an English "project". There was just something about her. And damn, I like her.

She told me something at the last meeting we had after she had read the paragraphs she'd composed for class to me and I had really praised her for her work--she's a quick learner. She smiled and said "Senin sayende." I think that's right. I work in phonics when she tells me stuff, and I know "one, two and three" as "beersch, icky, ooch". I'm sure they're spelled much differently. Anyway, "senin sayende" is an idiomatic expression that apparently means something like "I am what I am because of you." It was beautiful, and it touched my heart.

So, yeah, she's my little friend. And she's a big pill.

-- DV

Meh

It's too hot to blog.