Just some random thoughts

I'm at work. No one's here-they're all on vacation for the holiday. Because no one's here to give me work, I have no work to do. I asked the Main Boss if I could leave, since I have no work to do. He says no, I have to stay until quitting time. ...Does that make sense to anyone else? Because I don't get it. They'd rather me stay here and use their electricity and be absolutely unproductive than send me home to use my own electricity?

So I've been reading online about - what else? - Katrina and the chaos in New Orleans. It's surreal, isn't it? For those of us who wake up normally, take our showers, eat our breakfast, don't have to worry about anything, it's surreal to think that just a few states away, a city - one of our cities! - is in anarchy. And there's no food, no water, everything's contaminated, looted, destroyed. I want to yell, "I HAVE FRESH WATER! TAKE MINE!" But there's nothing I can do. No- I can pray.

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A man after my own heart.

Have you ever seen Joe Vs. the Volcano, that movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan? (If you haven't, you should. It's great.) There's that first scene where he's plodding into his factory job with all the other identical workers, through the high chain gates and across the gray cement lot into a gray cement building. The soundtrack plays "Sixteen Tons": Saint Peter, dontcha call me cause I can't go- I owe my soul to the company store. My job isn't as thankless as Joe's, and I certainly don't owe my soul to the DoD, but every time I get off the metro and shuffle along with the hundreds of other people bottlenecking up the multiple escalators, all wearing identical badges and sensible dark shoes, I think of that scene. (Especially when they make me stay despite the fact that I have no work to do...but I mentioned that already.)

Try this. I don't know if it's authentic, but it's yummy.