A Case of the Mondays

As you readers may recall, earlier this month I had a tête-à-tête with mon amie Stephanie about how my life would be different if I were a nice white lady. I had considered doing an experiment to prove my point. But after today, no need. This morning I learned that one of my college classmates--same year, same School of Film and Television--is now three rungs higher than I am on the entertainment industry ladder. She left a company that won't even interview me, and moved to a new company where she got a promotion to a position that I should have been working in two years ago. The differences between myself and my classmate? I graduated with Honors, multiple academic and extracurricular awards, and a business minor, whereas she is tiny, white and (dyed) blonde.

You know where to send my (nonalcoholic) wine and roses, Stephanie.

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In other news that made me frown, this article greeted me this morning on the Yahoo! front page: Ten New Etiquette Tips for the Workplace, by Penelope Trunk. Yes, that Penelope Trunk. I agreed with Number 4, "Say no to video résumés." The rest of them were...ludicrous. I have excerpted the following for brevity and humor; for the complete article, you can click on the link above.

2. Don't ask for time off, just take it.

When you need to leave work for a few hours or a few days, you don't need to ask for permission -- you're an adult, after all...

3. Keep your headphones on at work.

If you use social media tools, you're probably good at connecting with people and navigating office politics -- good enough that spending all day at work with headphones on won't hinder you...

5. Invite your CEO to be a friend on Facebook.

...there's a good chance that your CEO is registered, and it's likely that she'll really want to hear from you about what to do on Facebook, since she surely has no clue.

9. Call people on the weekend for work.

...The people who grew up being super-connected don't differentiate between the workweek and the weekend, so they don't mind working over the weekend on bits and pieces leftover from the week...

...If your coworkers don't like being called on the weekend, they can tell you. But remind them that a flexible work schedule lets you put relationships first all the time, and a work schedule that cordons off five days a week for work and two days a week for a personal life means that the personal life takes a backseat every week of the year.

The best way to get a life is to stop being so rigid about the distinction between time for work and time for life.

For more unintentional humor, Ms. Trunk also wrote Why We Should Be Grateful for Gen Y earlier this month. As usual, my jollies came from the comments (ellipses and misspellings theirs):

from hatesstupidarticles:

"Who is this lady? Does she write these articles because she has a hard time at work or does she really go around calling people gen x and gen y. News flash... 15 year olds call each other gen x.... I got a great idea, why dont people just go to work, do what they need to do, then go home and in return you get a paycheck.. I just summed up this ladies article in a few sentences. Can her yahoo...."

from Kharlo T:

"Obviously, this article must be a joke. Don't ask for time off, just take it...Invite you're CEO to be a friend on Facebook...Call people on the weekend to work. What was smoked before writing here? I would clearly not hire the author as a consultant to improve employee SAT. The organization would loose billions and loss productivity of just trying to figure out where all the employees have gone. Oh yeah, I must have missed out because I haven't included them on my Facebook. DUH!"

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Happier news. After the comments that I wrote on Friday at this post about Mad Men at the TIME magazine Tuned In blog never appeared, I thought that the Time Warner family had it in for me. Apparently it wasn't personal, and James Poniewozik does not have a vendetta against me and my kind; some bug on the website registered my comments as spam. Also, Mr. P then responded to what I had written about the show. This experience has taught me that it does pay to ask about what happened when you were wronged. A similar situation happened to me with Dan and the Willamette Weekly. I got all paranoid then, too. But it turned out okay. Now I get to add a new site I like. Welcome, Tuned In!

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Next happy. Things I Had to Try Really Hard Not to Say When I Found Myself Standing Next To Jenna Fischer at a Bookstore, by pamie on pamie.com.

1. "Oh, my gosh! You're Pam! And I'm Pam! I mean, I'm really Pam, and you're playing Pam, but your Pam is awesome and I'm not fictional."...

...3. "Hey! My name is Pam and I write on a TV show and you play Pam on a TV show...

I tried to explain this meta concept to my friend Chrissy a few months ago. She either didn't get understand what I saying, or she wasn't that impressed by the realization that every other TWoPer had already come to when The Office premiered in 2005.

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More happy. Man Band, man! by Irwin Handleman on From Studio Twelve A.

...I did not see the commercial for "Mission: Man Band" until last night, but boy am I glad I finally did. I could not be more excited about this show...

...It's Rich Cronin. Who is Rich Cronin? Let me give you a hint: "I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch, I'd take her if I had one wish". Or who could forget the classic couplet: "When you take a sip you buzz like a hornet, Billy Shakespeare wrote a bunch of sonnets!"

That's right, it's the lead "singer" of LFO. They were most likely the low point of the boy band movement. That song was just horrific. It's like "Transformers" is to me now, it makes you question the country you live in. As someone on youtube posted under the "Summer Girls" video, "this is why the world hates white people. I am so ashamed"...

Here's the Television Without Pity take on VH1's latest masterpiece: Mancasting.

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That was my day. How was yours?

That's My Funday

Stories I liked today:

w00t Team Brown! We're not fugly!, from Sepia Mutiny, which is a commentary on Obama Shocker:Long-Haired Barry Is American Idol, from Wonkette:

There’s growing evidence that American Idol sensation Sanjaya Malakar and Decision 2008 sensation Barry Hussein Obama are the same person.

I wonder what Mr. Macaca Goldstein, who thankfully lost his his Senate seat in Virginia last year, would have to say about that.

The story that's still going strong: Imus called women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos", from Media Matters, which has quite a collection of articles on Don Imus. And the latest from Yahoo! News, CBS radio, MSNBC to suspend Imus 2 weeks.

How The Gawker Stalker Map Works: A Guide for Dummies, Outraged Famous People And Old Folk, from Gawker. It's a response to last Friday's Larry King Live, where the host of The Man Show (Jimmy Kimmel), Michael Jackson's attorney (Mark Geragos) and Isaiah Washington's publicist (Howard Bragman) ganged up on Gawker editor Emily Gould to lecture her about the evils of gossiping about celebrities, i.e. the same people they interview and represent for a living, respectively. You can watch the video here, courtesy of Jossip.

For some reason, I thought I would revisit Penelope Trunk's blog since I hadn't read it in a few months. Yes, that Penelope Trunk. I scrolled down and found a post called This is a replacement for the post that used to be here. I read the comments that followed, but I couldn't figure out what had happened exactly to warrant such a retraction. So I did a Google search and found these articles: Tories sack woman for having breast cancer, from the f-word (scroll down for relevant topic); When Career Expert Rivalries Turn Ugly, from mediabistro.com; and Jennifer Weiner's latest post on her blog, SnarkSpot. I then came to the conclusion that in her orginal post, Ms. Trunk had called Leslie Bennetts, author of The Feminine Mistake, "SO INCREDIBLY FAT!!!", capital letters and exclamation points by Ms. Trunk. She also linked to a picture of Ms. Bennetts to emphasize her assertion. Ms. Trunk then dismissed the thrust of Ms. Bennetts' novel--that mothers and other women should have careers and take care of themselves, instead of depending on a man for financial security--based on the assumption that Ms. Bennetts is not following her own advice and taking care of herself...because she is "fat."

Hmm.

After reading that, you know I had to find that original post. I'm no expert on the interwebs. (Obviously. I still can't figure out how to change my blog's color from pink to purple.) But I knew that if Pajiba could rebuild its entire website from cached searches after the Department of Homeland Security snatched their server, I could find one embarrassing blog post. And I did.

Wow. I'm not posting it or linking to it here, but I'm sure you clever readers can Google cache the horror for yourselves.

Look out, Don Imus. If only there were an Al Sharpton of fat people that Penelope could apologize to.

Speaking of which, who elected Mr. Sharpton as the spokesperson for the "nappy-headed hos," "hardcore hos," "rough girls," Rutgers basketball players, or for the black population in general? I don't listen to Al's radio show. I don't know any black people who do. And even if I did, who said that Al Sharpton represents all of us? I know Al does not speak for me as a black person, nor as a woman who grows nappy hair.

Don needs to get himself over to Oprah. Two birds, one stone. Maybe have Sheryl Swoopes on the show at the same time to cover the basketball angle.

What a Nut Job...I Mean, Succesful Career Woman.

Today I discovered Penelope Trunk, a columnist at the Boston Globe, among other things. What a piece of work. You can read her pearls of wisdom at blog.penelopetrunk.com. I commented on one of her Popular Posts: "Women who are not my role models." Now I'm reading through the rest of her blog. She has some jokey ideas, but I have stumbled a few actual useful truths, too. Well, one. She cleverly cited Donald Trump's replacing Carolyn and George with his two less qualified children as an argument for affirmative action.

The article of hers that struck me was "How to Buy Happiness," posted last November on the Yahoo! Finance page. The title alone should have tipped me off, but I read it anyway. Here's her take on finding that special someone:

"3. Hire a headhunter to find you a mate.

The single most important factor in how happy you are is how much sex you have. Twice a week is optimal. Less frequent forays mean you won't reach the highest levels of happiness.

Warning to overachievers -- more sex will not give you more happiness. Warning to bottom-feeders -- sorry to disappoint you, but it's got to be with the same person every time.

This explains why married people are happier than unmarried people and why you should do everything you can to find a mate. If you have a lot of money, hire a headhunter to find you a mate.

And stop being so picky. Arranged marriages do as well as marriages for love, so give the headhunter a lot of leeway.

If you don't have a lot of money, ask a friend who her favorite ex is and date him. Research shows that if someone else liked their date then you'll like that date, too."

Okay, first? If I'm dating someone (like that will ever happen), and we're at the point in our relationship where we've started having sex? I would hope we would be having it more than twice a week. I'd imagine we'd both be busy, working individuals, but I do have my weekends free. :(

Second, I am an overachiever, and having daily orgasms would give me more happiness.

Third, married MEN are generally happier than unmarried men, mostly because they have someone taking care of them. Note to readers: That will not be me; my husband will be a grown man who can take care of himself. Additionally, married WOMEN are somewhat less happy than their single counterparts. I read it in some incomplete study somewhere. It was incomplete because it didn't take into account committed, long-term unmarried couples, or same-sex couples. And I don't remember what the name of the study was, or when it came out. You all will have to google it yourselves.

Fourth, I don't have a lot of money, so I guess I won't be happy until I can save up enough to buy me a headhunter.

Fifth, I'm so glad we live in a country in which arranged marriage is not only acceptable, but encouraged by financial advice columnists. If only I weren't so picky. Then surely I'd be happily married to one of the old, crazy men that I seem to attract like the plague.

Sixth, since I don't have a lot of money, as I mentioned before, I'm sure one of my friends' exes will fit me like worn-in pair of jeans. Except none of my friends wear my size. (See "Musings from Fatty McButterpants.") And my friends don't have many exes to choose from, much less a favorite one in the LA area. And, if my friends liked those guys so much, why aren't they still WITH them?

What a maroon.