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So things haven’t been peachy at work because I find that I am caught in the middle of drama that didn’t involve me to begin with. I’ll admit that I probably made things worse by trying to engage the opposite party in a mature conversation so that we might air out our issues with each other. I was hoping against all hope, and expecting the best out of them despite seeing that these people would be at my throat the first chance they get. Clearly my naive optimism is not yet dead, because had I been more jaded about this I would have known that it’s pointless to try to reason with the irrational. Of course I realized all this way too late. At some point during the confrontation that wasn’t supposed to be a confrontation, I stopped talking, which made me look like a coward. But if they only knew…I was staying so still and so silent because the next words to come out of my mouth would have been a string of incoherent war shrieks and if I had moved a muscle, it would be to push them into the swimming pool and drown them.

I AM SO SICK AND TIRED OF THIS STUPID STUPID SHIT. Not even in the most dramatic of my college moments did things get this STUPID. I say terrible things when I’m angry, but I know when to apologize for it, I know when to lie low, and I don’t aggravate situations by making off-tangent personal attacks. And my friends are mature enough to do the same. I thought that upon graduating from college the same thing would happen should I find myself in a conflict with someone. Looks like I got violently bitchslapped to reality again. Wake the fuck up Lauren! The real world is NOT the nice, rational place you thought it would be!

You know what I find incredibly frustrating about this whole thing? It’s the fact that I have to deal with this like an adult, stay quiet, and lie low. I know that the best thing to do is to ignore ignore ignore, but do you have any idea how difficult that is when they keep rolling their eyes at you or mimicking the way you speak? If I do nothing I’m a coward, but if I stand up for myself I’m a bitch. They’re acting like such children, and I don’t know why I insist on being an adult about this. Why can’t we all just step outside the office and claw at each other with our fingernails until we’re all bruised, bleeding, missing chunks of hair, and too exhausted to fight? Why be a peacemaker when everyone around you is starting a war you didn’t know you were even a part of to begin with?

The shit that’s happening in the office is something I try not to think about because I know if I do, I’m just going to get into a really nasty mood, much like the mood I’m in right now, and write lengthy blog entries filled with run-on sentences. But there are times when I have to confront the issue and now that I’m confronting it, it just makes me feel so fucking helpless. How much more of this stupidity can I take? These days I can’t even take a cigarette break or go to the goddamn restroom without having someone with me, simply because I’d like to have some back-up should I run into the other party. Because chances are, if they see me alone, they’ll probably start shit. And I hate that, I hate that I get paranoid about running into them, I hate that I don’t know if I should back down or step up if they do start something. I hate that I have to deal with this in the workplace because I am there to goddamn WORK and not deal with this stupid drama THAT DIDN’T EVEN INVOLVE ME IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I am so angry and so goddamn tired. I suppose the only good thing about all this is that I’m angry and tired now, so in the morning I can deal with all of this with a clear head and come up with a logical solution. Would it be too much to hope that tomorrow will be quiet, normal, and drama-free?

As I approach my third month as a member of the white-collar working class, I realized something very important: Yahoo Messenger has been an invaluable tool in keeping my soul and sanity together. My mom once chided me for being so un-hip in my devotion to YM. Apparently, anyone who’s l33t enough to know anything uses Google Talk these days and thinks that YM sucks. I don’t care what instant messaging system I use; if everyone I know uses it, I’ll use it. Okay, that very conformist statement just made me lose my street cred but come on. What’s the point of using a l33t IM system if you’re the only one you know who uses it? I don’t need to type out my thoughts to myself through a chat window; I can do that silently, in my head.

I feel so bad for my friends who for some ungodly reason don’t have YM in their workplace; I would die without it. I can only look at so many shemale tushies and strap-on lesbians without going completely nutters. I need people to bother on YM when my friends at work are too busy to take prolonged cigarette breaks with me. Aside from relieving the boredom and serving as live entertainment, YM also functions as an extension of my social life. That little yellow smiley helped me rediscover old friends and befriend a couple of oddballs. In the past two weeks alone, I’ve had a couple of rather curious conversations with all sorts of interesting characters. Here are some of them:

The High School Almost-Girlfriend

Every girl, if not almost every girl, who has gone to an all-girls high school has also probably developed an attraction or at least a curiosity about the members of their gender. After four years of no communication, I recently got in touch with a girl from high school who I had a rather deadly crush on. I won’t go into the details of who did what and why and when, but if things had gone differently I think she definitely would have been my first girlfriend.

She’s currently based on the East Coast and I let her know about my plans to take a long vacation in the States sometime next summer. As soon as I mentioned that, she immediately offered to let me crash at her house where she lives with her parents.

Almost-Girlfriend: I share a room with my sister. She won’t mind if you stay there. Or we could fix up the den and make it the guest room.
Me: I don’t really mind as long as I have a soft surface to sleep on, really.
Almost-Girlfriend: I’d rather have you in my room though.
Me: …

Is it just me or did that just come off as really wrong? Do I care if it does?

Ulrich the Invisible Boyfriend

Our invisible romance began when he added me up on Twitter and asked me for my YM. I don’t know who he is, where he lives, whether he trims his fingernails or not. I know nothing about him except that he graduated from the same university that I did and euthanizes old people with existential questions via the internet for a living. His refusal to divulge personal information gave me the creative license to make him whoever I want him to be. I have therefore decided that he is Ulrich the Invisible Boyfriend, a 48-year old obese Indian man who can make the most wicked curry and who has yet to take me to India and meet his invisible parents.

I gave him Kristel’s YM because he asked for it and because I figured she’d get a huge kick out of meeting my Invisible Boyfriend. Two minutes later he messages me saying that she’s more cuckoo than I am. He suggests that she should be on medication. Hourly. I informed him that he was already speaking to Kristel heavily medicated on painkillers.

The Emo Fanboy

Our exchanges actually happen through text instead of YM because he doesn’t have YM at work. Actually, it’s more of a one-sided thing; he texts me but I don’t text back because my thumb is too lazy to type down a response. I don’t really hate him or anything but there’s something about him that’s kind of off. For one thing, he told me that he slept with 120 women in the span of 8 years. Who the hell does that? Unless he’s a porn star, and he definitely does not look like a porn star to me. He also likes to brag about how he breaks girls’ hearts by breaking their hymens. Whatta guy.

When I really have nothing to do I usually play along with his game, whatever his game is. But there are times when he gets so mentally taxing that I’d rather sit still and veg out. Which usually happens more often than not.

Perhaps if I tell him to get a Twitter account he’ll stop texting just to say how bored he is at work.

The College Lecturer

I haven’t seen or spoken to this guy since we first met around this time last year. Last time I saw him, we were drinking Red Horse and having a really good conversation on books, writing, literature, and love that lasted til about 6 or 7 am. He recently messaged me to ask me how I’ve been doing and to give me an update on his life.

College Lecturer: Hey, have I told you the news already?
Me: No no what???
College Lecturer: I’m pregnant.
Me: Are you drunk?
College Lecturer: No. Just exhausted from a day of teaching.
Me: NO WAY!!!!
College Lecturer: YES WAY!!!!
Me: You teach in La Salle now? What do you teach?
College Lecturer: Yes. Industrial Electronics. And Digital Communications Lab.
Me: Woooow! Damn. Before I graduated I thought I’d become a teacher. My job now is soooo far from that.
College Lecturer: And you are?
Me: A writer. But it’s not what you think.
*silence*
Me: I write reviews for porn websites. And sleazy blurbs for porn galleries.
*silence*
College Lecturer: Oh.

After that conversation I started to see that maybe my job isn’t as cool as I first thought it was.

So how bored do YOU get at work? Feel free to poke and tell me all about it through YM (xlaurgyx). I’m probably zombifying in my cubicle just like you are. Besides, I’m a loser who does nothing but waste brain cells on the internet all day so I’ll probably talk to you if you’re not creepier than I am.

It’s funny how things fall into place right when you least expect them to. Lately I’ve been considering the idea of getting transferred to another account or perhaps looking for another job. You see, my job involves developing an active subculture which takes a particular albeit alternative non-dogmatic focus on how the human body and their consequent faculties are deployed for individual pleasure.

In other words, I review adult websites.

My job only sounds cool when you’re trying to impress someone, but it hasn’t been two months yet and I can feel my brain cells atrophying because I’m not learning anything new. (The knowledge that there is a thriving, underground adult community engaged in deviant sex practices in the Tampa Bay area does not count as “learning something new.”) Last night I met up with some of my college buddies from my org, KATIPUNAN magazine, and I felt slightly embarrassed about being the only professional porn critic amidst college lecturers, grad school students, and news writers. Oddly enough, I didn’t feel as insecure as I did when I was in college. I used to feel this huge inferiority complex every time I was around them because everyone is either an honor student, award-winning campus journalist, or both. And there I was, a B-student mucking around school, putting off my thesis til the last minute, trying to put my personal life together and failing miserably. I used to angst a lot about being a porn writer when I first started but now I view it as a true test of creativity. Do you realize how many synonyms there are for the human reproductive organs? (Not many.) Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make freaky sexual fetishes sound remotely enticing? (Very difficult.) Oh wells. Everyone’s gotta start somewhere and at least I’m getting a damn interesting, out-of-the-box welcome into the real world.

From left to right: MA student in journ, English professor at AdMU,
freelance graphic designer, porn critic

Anyway. So the porn’s been killing my brain and just when I thought bad smut is the only thing I’ll be doing for the next six months, a writing gig practically fell on my lap. You are looking at the newest blogger of pmptoday.com. I wrote my first post today and it took me almost two hours to figure out what to write about, and then another hour to actually write it. I may have been around the internet for a while, but I’m more technologically-impaired than I seem. I don’t know anything about gadgets, and I wasn’t aware that there was an iPhone until just this afternoon. If it were up to me I’d rather have a typewriter than a Macbook. (But if I were given a Macbook I wouldn’t exactly complain.) I don’t understand why people these days have this overwhelming need to bury themselves in debt to fill up their lives with nanotechnology convenience and glittering gizmos that will surely impress their yuppie friends and that cellphone thief lurking ’round the corner. How lazy and materialistic have we all become? Is this what our generation is made of? Are we nothing but wage slaves to technology?

(Before you start calling me a hypocrite for challenging The System like a pseudo-hippie-lovechild, let me just say that those are just rhetorical questions that I’m pulling out of my ass because my brain is on overdrive for some weird reason.)

So, back to the new writing gig. I was told that I would be the site’s “female gadgeteer”, a job description that offended me just a little bit. I don’t like it when people make exceptions for me or choose me to do something just because I’m a girl. I’d like to think that my gender has nothing to do with the fact that any new, paper-thin contraption with more than two buttons makes me feel nervous. That this nostalgia for the “old-fashioned” and the “manual” is a weird personality quirk of Lauren Dado and not a genetically-inherited romantic trait of Lauren Dado from the Female Gender. I didn’t get too upset though. I was mostly worried I’d have a byline that would give off the impression that, “Hey, I got chosen to write for this tech blog because I’m a chick! Who likes gadgets! Date meee!”

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

In other news, I finally finished reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. I’m still in the process of digesting the ideas and the themes but stylistically speaking, Pessl’s writing has to be one of the most unique that I’ve ever come across. (For instance, each chapter’s title is a book from the English canon.) It’s a story in term paper form written in less academic language, without the arrogance of the erudite. The trade paperback copy costs only three hundred pesos; if I have extra cash I think I’ll buy copies for a few friends who I know will appreciate it. But I won’t say who.