Bittersweetheart

It is days like today that makes me remember why I made the switch to Mac lo those many years ago. Today I visited the old place of employ, mostly to pick up some software that I need to write tutorials and ended up walking out with a whiteboard, some printer paper, and a new laptop. Oh, and they fed me lunch. Sweet.

I got Big Betty home and immediately went to work getting her set up. Only, because she runs Windows, it takes me about 300 years to get the proper drivers and blah blah blah and setting up the wireless and some more blah blah. Basically I've spent a majority of the past six hours trying to get this machine up and running.

But I did it. I feel like the smartest person on the earth because Windows is not easy. I remember when I brought Jed home all I had to do was plug him in and type in my wireless password.

Of course, I shouldn't complain too much because now I have an extra laptop that Jaycie, Max, and The Tibbles can play on when they're here, that my guests can use to check their e-mail and that my assistant (when that person is hired) can use to keep track of all my affairs.

So yay free laptops!

Dear People of the Internet,

Hi, how are you? Things are going pretty well here at Supergenius HQ. I spent a lot of time working on a writing project, it involved notecards and the sinking suspicion that I had lost one of my stories. No worries though, I found it.

Anyway People of the Internet, I hate to be a bitch, but we need to talk. It’s about your use of the word douche. It has become the adjective du jour for everything from Bill O’Reilly to rock and roll bands. Enough. It’s time to put the douche out to pasture. I just finished catching up with the y’all by clearing out my Google Reader and I counted no less than 32 uses of douche or douchebag or doucherocket or douchey, and a bunch of other conjugations I have wiped from my mind.

Come on people of the Internet you’re better than this. You’re smart, creative people with a big vocabulary. You can come up with a new way to describe the things and people you don’t like. Bust out the thesaurus and show the world what you’re made of, and when all else fails don’t be afraid to fallback on those time-honored stalwarts like bastard, jackass, bitch — they’re classics for a reason.

Just say no to douche.

Love and kisses,
Jodi

One of the readers on I Will Dare asked me to list some 'good humor' books.

So here’s a list of books that I found funny. I am only covering fiction here, which is hard because I find that not a lot of books are funny, at least not funny on purpose. As for nonfiction if you can’t find the funny in David Sedaris or Sarah Vowell or (as much as it pains me to say it) some of Chuck Klosterman’s stuff, well I can’t help you.

Syrup and Jennifer Government by Max Barry
It’s been a long, long, long time since I read Syrup, maybe 10 or so years. I know that I have it in hardcover and it might have come out in the mid to late nineties. However, I do remember that it’s a funny as hell look at marketing and the absurdity behind the advertising and marketing world. Which brings me to Jennifer Government which takes the marketing-crazy world of Syrup a step further where the entire planet is run by marketers. It’s hilarious.

Microserfs and JPod by Douglas Coupland
I’ve been a Coupland fan since my early 20s. In fact, I named my computer Jed because Dan, the narrator of Microserfs, uses it as a password. I think over the years Microserfs has gotten even funnier than it was originally. Why? Because it’s so dated now and it’s funny to read what characters think about “the information superhighway.”

Jpod was often dubbed as a follow-up or sequel to Microserfs, I am not sure why. Maybe because it also takes place in a software company. But that’s where the similarity ends. Jpod is a weird, funny exercise in absurdity with only a little bit in common with reality. Probably one of my top four favorite Coupland books.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
This book often makes my top ten list of favorite books of all time. Why? Because it has that delicious combination of funny and moving that is so rare in a lot of the books I read. I mean, come on a couple who purposely breeds their kids to be circus freaks is hilarious. Learning that even circus freaks are complex people, moving. It’s like a double-plus win win here.

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
I’ve written about Ella Minnow Pea before, you can read about it here.

Happiness by Will Ferguson
A self-help books cures unhappiness, depression, cynicism, calamity ensues, and it’s really quite funny.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
A 15-year-old autistic boy decides to solve the murder of Wellington, his neighbor’s poodle. While it could have been really easy for Haddon to fall into the trap of being sentimental or condescending towards his autistic narrator, he manages to avoid both and in the process creates a complex character whose view of the world is unflinching in its honesty, and when done right honesty is quite humorous.

The Hotel New Hampshire and The World According to Garp by John Irving
If you haven’t read either of these books I pity you and the empty spot in your soul where these books would go. No amount of words can even begin to explain the beauty, complexity, and humor found in these Irving novels.

On Book TV right this very second, they're airing a tribute to Philip Roth in honor of his 75th birthday. On the fiction panel? Charles D'Ambrosio, Nathan Englander, and Jonathan Lethem. I am seriously spoojing with great delight at the moment. If you have CSPAN2 turn the channel RIGHT NOW.

So I have come to the decision after watching a whole 20 minutes of this panel that if I don't become a world-famous writer, it's going to be all my parents' fault because we didn't have Philip Roth books on the book shelf. Nope, our shelves were stocked with World Book Encyclopedias and VC Andrews novels. Curse you parents!

In September of 1999 I started working at Jasc Software. It was a little company that made digital photography software. I landed at Jasc as a Customer Service temp. I had two options from the temp agency. I could work at some publishing firm in St. Louis Park or work at a software company in Eden Prairie. I chose the software company for two reasons: free pop and you could wear jeans. Little did I know that I would survive three rounds of layoffs, one acquisition, and stay there for over eight years. Along the way I picked up a career (copywriting) and the skills to create a Web site (iwilldare.com).

As many of you know in November the Canadian company that bought Jasc back in 2004 decided it was going to close the Minneapolis office, which is why I lost my job. Last night we had one last hooha to say thank you and goodbye to the office that housed so many of our working hours for nearly a decade.

It was like journeying back to 1999 all over again. The turnout for the get-together was amazing. I think, at one point, there were eighty people there. This is astounding because Jasc was a company that employed about 120 people at its largest. By the time the office closing was announced in November I think the Minneapolis office had dwindled down to fifty or so.

The party was fun and odd, and all the things you look for in a party. Since I am currently unemployed and this copywriting gig has been my only real grown-up job, I learned a lot from my former coworkers last night. For instance, I found out that it’s unusual for people to have such a sentimental attachment to their former place of employment. Especially to have such a fond memory of the place that you go back to say goodbye even though you haven’t worked there for six or more years.

They also told me that the mix of chemistry, that combination of passion and talent is highly unique and it’s not something you find very often at work. If I had a dollar for each time someone said “oh god, I miss working with you” to me or someone near me, I’d be able to take the Internet out for lunch.

I also found out that when you get a group of people together that worked together for so long that you automatically fall back into the old roles you had the last time you were together. It’s like a family, kind of. It was funny because the software developers hung together, like they always do. Marketing sat around and made fun of everyone and each other, like they always do, and IT sat around and gave us disdainful looks, like they always do. It’s as though nothing had changed, though everything had.

At one point last night, Al, the cutest girl on Earth™, Pepper Blue, Michelle, and I were seated around a table eating like we had on about 1000 free-lunch Fridays back when we all worked in Customer Service. I looked at them and said, “I keep waiting for Jodie to come over and tell us to hurry it up because there’s a five-minute hold time on the phones.”

It was a party that was so fun that even during the middle of it, I’d lean over to whomever I was sitting next to and say, “This is so awesome.” And really the whole evening was one of those quintessential ‘you had to be there’ type of things. It was good though and it was nice to get a pretty ribbon to put on what will probably become known in Supergenius lexicon as the software years.

I went to an awesome party tonight where I drank a margarita and one beer. I was going to tell you all about the party but now I have the kind of headache where I am pretty sure that my left eye is going to burst from my skull, and I kind of want it to because then I'd feel better.

Whose memoirs would you most like to read?

Probably mine. After leading this life who wouldn't want to read my memoirs?

1. The song “Carrie Ann” was written about Marianne Faithful.
2. “Do You Believe in Magic” came out in like 1965 and not in about 1985 like I had always assumed, also the band who sings it, The Lovin’ Spoonful toured with The Supremes.
3. Though written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Marianne Faithful originally sang “As Tears Go By”, and it still sounds like a Stones song.
4. David Crosby was in The Byrds
6. “At that point we weren’t writing sons, and if it weren’t for The Beatles we probably wouldn’t have,” Keith Richards.
7. I love Pete Townshend. This is news to me. I love him because when talking about the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Mama Cass, and Janis Joplin he sort of flipped his wig, got all teary eyed and said, “They might be your fucking icons, but they’re my fucking friends and they’re dead.”
8. “Don’t be nice, it’s the kiss of death,” Johnny Rotten

(I mostly stopped paying attention when they got to Woodstock and all that blah blah because really it was like 983 parts and my attention span is not that long)