RIP

It is with great sadness that I must announce the death of a dear and treasured member of the Plooble family, the Job Search Theme. For those of you who have come to know and love it, I share in your grief. It has been a major part – perhaps the heart and soul – of Fistful of Plooble since the beginning, and it will be missed.

In other words, I am no longer unemployed. Starting Wednesday, I will be a Vision Guidance Leader at Huhcorp.

Okay, not really (although I’ve applied at companies that seem to share the same ethos). I will be working as an editor for a company that publishes a wide variety of newsletters on topics including health care, finance and the law. Someone will once again be paying me to write, and to write things that don’t require the use of the words “extensible” or “functionality.” As you can imagine, I’m pretty happy about that (although I am sure there are unexplored countries of jargon I am yet to visit).

It looks like a pretty cool place with a lot of creative people, and I’m very excited about working for a company that values writing above all. Everyone I’ve met seems to like each other and like being there, and last Friday night in Hell I ran into a group of my soon-to-be fellow editors, including the managing editor who interviewed me. It’s not every day that I get to list “having a drink named after me” as a relevant job qualification. I’m sure it sealed the deal.

Job Search is survived by Found Absurdity, Fun With Words, Car Geekery, and the twins, Bitchin’ & Moanin’, who ask that you send wrinkle-resistant khakis in lieu of flowers.

80 Percent Chance of Weird

Do any of you know someone from say, San Diego who has moved to North Carolina? Does the weather make them completely nuts? I’ve heard people from less capricious climes say things like, “It’s nice to have four distinct seasons.” Yeah, but three in one week?

Chapel Hill is once again in Severe Winter Weather Frenzy. The DJ on WXYC, the UNC campus station, has been reading a forecast that calls for snow, sleet, and six to 12 inches of accumulation through Friday (but his forecast calls for highs in the 70s on Saturday). Once again the grocery stores are full of bundled-up soccer moms preparing for the siege of Stalingrad.

It’s weather like this (or at least the threat of weather like this) that makes SUV drivers feel superior and justified, but I saw something stuck under the wiper of an Expedition or Excursion or Canyonero in the parking lot of Weaver Street Market that might bring the driver down a peg or two. It’s from an organization called Earth on Empty.

L-Word Jackson

I like words, you like words, we all like words. Sure. But not all of them. Some words I hate, and I don’t mean “intolerance” or “can’t” or anything like that. For years I’ve had a list in mind of words I cannot stand. I’ve recently discovered I’m not the only person.

One good friend told me that she hates the word “brouhaha,” which disappoints me a bit, since that’s one of my favorites (along with “squeegee”). But yeah, it is kind of stupid. Her ex-husband hated the words “mighty” and “tender.” Naturally, she sometimes found it necessary to describe her meal as “mighty tender.”

Jean has three words that make her shudder: “smock,” “slacks” and “subpoena.” It’s hard to use all three in a sentence, but I’ve done it.

As for me, there are several words I don’t like – “delicious” for one, and I would never, ever use it, but it’s not enough to put me off my food. I also could live without “lush,” and you’ll never hear me express my longing for a lush lawn, or describe any of my friends as a lush, no matter how appropriate it might be.

So, lush and delicious. I cringe just writing them down. But there’s another word that’s even worse, and it’s basically a combination of the two. I can barely watch HGTV for fear of hearing the word used to describe a soufflé or an upholstery color. I managed to type it in my online quiz, and I’m far too traumatized to do it again.

Any words you have strong feelings about?

Lois Lane

Every now and then I pick up “Homes & Land” magazine, which lists properties for sale in the area. In addition to some terrifying and/or laughable portraits of real estate agents (one guy included a photo of himself doing a split on railroad tracks, because as we all know thigh strength directly correlates to house hunting acumen), I often find my teeth set on edge by the street names chosen by developers. I saw a listing for a condo in Durham on Candytuff Lane. I don’t care if it’s 3000 square feet with solid gold toilets and a restaurant kitchen and costs $25,000, I could not tell people I lived on Candytuff Lane. There’s also a Buggaboo Trail out in Orange County somewhere, and a street in Chapel Hill called Tinkerbell. Nope, sorry. Can’t do it. And we have a new apartment complex in the area called The Verge. The verge of what? Insanity? As far as I can tell, the only thing it’s on the verge of is a high-traffic road.

Raleigh has its fair share as well, including an apartment complex called The Landings at Mallard Pond. Every time I pass it I think, “No landings, no mallards, no pond.” Not far away is a street called Havershire, which amuses me to no end, since “haver” is Scottish dialect for “talk total nonsense.” Britain is lousy with shires. Why make one up?

My parents live a few miles from Mine Shaft Road, which isn’t too bad, but sounds like it should be the title of Hitler’s unexpurgated biography. (Give it a minute.)

Continue a few miles from Mine Shaft and you will come to a development called Maisons en Mer. I drove by there last week with Joe, whose French is much better than mine. He confirmed that rather than the obviously intended translation “houses by the sea” (which is stupid enough because they’re in North Raleigh), it’s more like “houses in the sea.” We also determined that ten seconds with a can of spray paint could easily change it to mean either “houses in hell” or “houses in shit.” Check the police blotter for reports of my vandalism arrest.

Of course, most developments are named for whatever was destroyed to put them there. After clear cutting several acres of pines in Raleigh, the developer put up a sign reading, “Coming soon – Bent Tree Plaza.” Someone quickly changed it to “Dead Tree Plaza.” The Independent once ran a three-column housing development name generator which allowed you to pick from the standard offerings and create your own combination. My favorite was Deer Run Down.

One of my fondest fantasies is to become an upscale property developer and build a neighborhood of attractively-priced McMansions for the nouveau riche, and give the streets names like Slug Trail, Phlegm Road, Poop Chute, Two Guys Named Ted Avenue and Marx-Lenin-Engels Boulevard.

Me Me Me Meme

Surely you have something better to do than this.

I Can Hardly Wait for Bath Night

Today while killing time before an interview I went to the Indian market in Research Triangle Park. (I think it’s called “Indian Market.”) Man, I love that place. Walking in there is like stepping into another country (say, perhaps, India), and it reinforces my naïve belief that I might one day be able to satisfy my chicken tikka masala jones in my own home. Every time I shop there I buy bizarre things in jars the intended use of which I have only the vaguest idea. (Whenever I eat in an Indian restaurant, I worry that the waiters are looking at my condiment distribution the way we might look at a foreign visitor who is putting ketchup on his ice cream.) Still, thanks to this store I have the essential ingredients for the World’s Weirdest Tuna Salad. Don’t worry, the chunks are pickled mango rind.

In addition to selecting a package of tea based solely on the beauty of the label, I bought a bar of sandalwood soap. Imagine my glee when I opened it up at home and saw the inscription on the bar itself, making it without a doubt the coolest soap ever. It costs a dollar, which is twice as much as my previous favorite, Bee & Flower Brand Sandalwood Soap from China. But at least now I don’t have to worry that my soap is made by (or from) imprisoned political dissidents.

Thank You for Calling Fistful of Plooble

I called Toys R Us last Thursday, trying to find a pair of Hulk Hands for the only person on the face of the Earth above the age of ten who would think this was the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. When I finally got through the menu tree, the phone was answered by a woman who rattled out, “Thank you for calling Toys R Us, where the magic begins.” Imagine if you had to say that every time you answered the phone. Diane made it clear through her delivery that she would rather not have to say that.

I worked at the Crabtree Valley Pizza Hut my senior year in high school. In addition to being forced to wear the world’s most uncomfortable garment (a red-and-black zippered polyester smock that looked like something a Yugoslav hairdresser might wear to a disco), I was instructed to answer the phone with, “Thank you for calling Crabtree Pizza Hut. This is Dave speaking. How may I help you?” I always felt as though I was making people wait, rather than being polite. I’m sure most people would have been fine with, “Pizza Hut. Shoot.”

That particular Pizza Hut was owned by a tubby guy in his 40s with curly blonde hair who showed up at the restaurant early one Saturday evening sporting a pink track suit with a thick gold chain around his neck, and smoking a cigar. He and his besuited flunkies looked into our coolers and declared the pizza dough hadn’t risen enough, and directed us to throw it out and start over. Knowing that if we did so, we would find ourselves in the difficult position of being unable to serve any pizzas that night, (“Try to push the cavatini,”) we smiled and nodded and ignored him. When he and his posse returned from dinner at the adjacent Steak & Ale, they looked in the coolers again, at the same dough they had rejected an hour earlier, and grunted their approval, certain that their managerial intervention had averted a crisis. I can hardly express how often I have relearned that same lesson in one way or another since.

I left that job just before I graduated, and when I gave my notice the manager made a concerted effort to talk me out of going to college, offered me an assistant manager’s job, and assured me that I would be manager within a year. I declined, and the job went to Steve, who worked there 80 hours a week and also spent his nights off at the restaurant, wearing a brown suede shirt that had laces instead of buttons, drinking pitchers of beer and playing the Ms. Pac Man game by the front door. Clearly he wanted it more than I did.

I had gotten a similar offer a year before when I left Golden Corral for the Pizza Hut job. (Twenty years later I can’t remember why I left one crappy restaurant job in favor of the other one, but there must have been a reason. Maybe I thought it would be better to come home stinking of pepperoni instead of steak. Or maybe I got tired of referring to the waitresses as “Steerettes.”) In retrospect I realize that the manager of the Golden Corral, thanks to that corporation’s practice of giving managers a stake (no pun intended) in the profits, was almost certainly a millionaire by the age of 35 (he was already driving a Porsche 928 at 27), and probably retired at 40. Thank God I dodged that bullet.

Soft/Fluffy vs. Hard/Shiny

Compared to our last severe winter weather event, which turned the Triangle into a hard and shiny place and left even the spryest 20-year old shuffling apprehensively about like an octogenarian on the waiting list for a second hip replacement, I have to say our latest snowstorm was pretty near perfect. It happened on a Sunday, reinforcing my inclination to stay on the couch and generally act like <a href=”this, and made everything <a href=”all purty. This morning my neighbor’s five-year old daughter came out in her pink snowsuit and gleefully exclaimed, “It’s soft!” Plus, the roads magically cleared themselves, and now we’re left with beautiful vistas and the slightly wistful sight of powdery snow floating from pine branches. And my house now looks even more like a <a href=”ski lodge than usual.

The last winter storm <a href=”wasn’t very photogenic, but I took full advantage this time. (I’m hoping my neighbors knew that I was crouched in the bushes behind their deck with a camera for purely aesthetic purposes.) Jean gave me a fantastic book of Japanese graphic design for Valentine’s Day, which inspired me to spend several hours today fiddling with the pictures in my Fauxtoshop program. Because as we all know, that’s the best way to find a job. I’ve put the results in the Snow photo gallery.

More Car Geekery

When I was 16 I had one of these, but not one of those

I’ve been reading car magazines almost as long as I’ve been able to read. Those of you who don’t care about cars probably think that car prose consists of nothing but limited slip difs and caster and camber and whatnot. Yeah, there’s a lot of that, but the best automotive journalism can be pretty damn good. For instance, long before I knew him as a Republican Limbaugh-apologist, I eagerly awaited each new article P.J. O’Rourke published in Car & Driver. His piece entitled “High Speed Performance Characteristics of Pickup Trucks” is a classic.

“What happens to an unloaded pickup truck in a curve is that the rear end has nothing to do – is unemployed, metaphorically speaking – so it comes around to ask you for work, up there in the front of the truck where all the weight is. And the result is exactly like one of those revolving restaurants that they have on hotels except it’s on four bald snow tires instead of a hotel, and it’s in the middle of the highway, and it tips over.”

Plus, he once wrote a piece about driving in England that taught me the most valuable piece of information one could have when trying to navigate the wrong side of the road. Think of yourself as a well-dressed socialist, he advised, and say to yourself, “Keep left, look right.” I’m barely exaggerating when I say P.J. O’Rourke may have saved my life.

My current favorite automotive magazine is Car, published in England. In addition to great photos and great writing and columns by comedian Alexei Sayle, they have capsule reviews and specs of every car for sale in the UK, which I’m sure is incredibly useful for settling pub arguments and planning your next purchase. But some of them are also extremely funny. Here are a few of my favorites:

BMW 7-Series
For – Clever
Against – Too clever by half
Sum up – Cyborg killer limo, feels neither pity nor remorse

Hyundai Tiburon
For – Nice to drive, cheap, great V6 engine
Against – Crappy cabin
Sum up – Greatest Korean car. Ever.

Jeep Grand Cherokee
For – Big, solid, well-equipped
Against – Slightly overspecced for shopping in Twickenham
Sum up – Ironic not iconic

Kia Rio
For – She dances in the sand
Against – Like a river twisting through a dusty land
Sum up – And when she shines…

Land Rover Defender
For – Still unparalleled in the bog
Against – Panel gaps visible from space
Sum up – A true British icon

Peugeot 807
For – It takes the whole family
Against – They won’t want to be seen in it
Sum up – It’s a bus

Seat Arosa
For – Sounds like a sex toy
Against – Vibrates like a sex toy
Sum up – Avoid the 1.0 litre

Volkswagen Beetle
For – It’s a joke
Against – It’s on you
Sum up – Fashion is a fickle thing