Notes From The Kennel

I do appreciate the comments on the blog of late. I'd like to welcome the Dysfunctional Diabetic and Pacifica Rim to the World Wide Web, thanks for your contributions, please keep them coming.

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We have another library meeting tomorrow night. Promises to be a good one. I'll be sure to keep you posted on any insane comments or potential "hearing problems" that may or may not come to be. It looks as if none of the interior work will take place -- instead the renovations will be focused on refurbishing the exterior of the building. I'll be sure to keep you posted, but if this goes through, I guess the teens in the Village will have to find other places to have sex.

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Haven't seen the Alpha Dog in going on more than 2+ weeks now. No joke! Saw Gertrude today for the first time in over a week. Voodoo's been running the ship -- which is always scary. There is some talk in the Kennel about her potentially running for office. The funny thing is nobody can really tell if this a realistic possibilty. Currently it stands as a sort of joke ... nobody, including her, knows if she is really going to run, so it's one of these ongoing things that people are uncomfortable about talking about because they don't want to say some offensive, but they can't imagine it's really going to happen. Imagine if I told you I was going to join the Marines. (Okay, maybe that's a bad example!)

Well, I've been really enjoying this potential campaing. I can't wait. I'm drooling over the press releases and community newsletters that I would be able to write. Currently, Voodoo has already promised me the opportunity to be her Chief of Staff. Which would be a great career move for me ... I think ... at least the blog wouldn't suffer.

Gertrude

One of the things that I've neglected, (besides my office responsibilities) while writing this blog, is a better description of my colleagues. Most of you may have a sense of the Igloo and Bossman/Alpha Dog, perhaps Rocket -- but the rest of the Kennel is probably just a scattered bunch of pseudonyms and anecdotes. My bad -- I hope to correct that.

Let's start with Gertrude: (names have been changed to protect my ass)

Gertrude has been at the Kennel almost as long as I have. She's my direct boss and the person that I'm supposed to go to when I have an issue, need a day off, can't figure out something etc...

Well she doesn't really do much of that anymore. She usually arrives about two hours late and takes a long lunch break. The woman is remarkably deflated, she spends most of her day in her little cubby of an office and reads. Honestly, I'm shocked when I see her in the office before noon -- it happens around once a week. She lives alone in one of the outer boroughs and has seen her glory days pass her by, I wouldn't be surprised if she was clinically depressed -- there is no doubt in my mind that she is remarkably lonely. Her two closest friends are the Elizabeth Cady Stanton biography and the Oxygen network. She complains constantly about the bossman (which is an easy thing to do) and says -- I just don't care anymore.

She's a southern, middle aged, single lesbian. Let's pause. She's one of these spectacular feminists (and I mean spectacular in both a good and bad way) who really has devoted her life to the advancement of woman's rights. She's been arrested, organized demonstrations, sponsored conferences, filed lawsuits, on behalf of advancing woman's rights. All of which is very noble, the problem is, she can be very standoffish and is impossible to work with.

Gertrude gets something stuck in her head and nothing else matters. If she was working on a tiny little issue, let's say getting the entire office to sign a greeting card, and I approached her saying I had figured out who assassinated Kennedy, she'd yell at me for not focusing on the greeting card.

Gertrude and the Collar hate each other. The animosity between the two of them is sharper than the knife a butcher uses to slice pastrami. (Where did that come from). In the six months they have both been at the Kennel they have said not a word to one another. They will not attend a meeting the other is at, they compete for the support/approval of other office members and they make everybody remarkably uncomfortable. Two aging gays -- destined to be lonely. It is very sad.

I once told Voodoo that they needed to hate fuck each other, she laughed for an hour.

I do like Gertrude, I think she'll be leaving the Kennel in January. Less fodder for the blogger.

Vaccines

In the past, I’ve discussed the numerous crazies that I deal with in the office on a daily basis. Many of them have legitimate concerns – but every once in a while they reach an extreme. For instance: I received a letter today that read exactly this:

Dear Mr. Yak:

Attached is the information I talked to you about yesterday reference (sic) a new, antimicrobial material and bandage design that may help the lateral trransmission (sic) of the vaccinia (sic) virus so that smallpox inoculation may be safely administered.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Saul Greenbaum (name fabricated, but you get the idea)

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure this is worthy. But, …… WHAT??? Am I really the person to talk to? How am I supposed to help this guy out? He included letters he had written (and in some cases other communication) to a United States Senator from Florida, The Mayor of New York, Senator Hillary Clinton, the CDC in Atlanta and other stuff.

Evidently Saul thinks that I can snap my fingers and give him the go ahead to stop the the lateral trransmission of the vaccinia. Trust me Saul, I’m really not very important.

So if anyone out there knows of a good way to help Saul (maybe you work for the Health Department) let me know and I’ll get back to him, as soon as possible.

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Gertrude has gone off the deep end. I’m no doctor (see above) but this woman is truly crazy. She sits in her office most of the day and reads a book. Every once in a while she’ll scream something at the people working in the office.

Today she screamed:

“Let’s not guess at our answers.”

She also has developed a penchant for blatantly disagreeing with the Bossman – so she’ll change things for the sake of changing things. It’s very hard because you have to balance your work but you are consistently getting conflicting messages. I usually ignore both of them

Working in this office can be very tricky.

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Good news, supplies came in today. I’m ready to hit the subway with Glue Sticks. Sure, I can’t get a fucking tape dispenser, but if you need a glue stick – you know who to talk to.

Oops

Apologies for my lack of posting in recent time. I wish I could tell you I was off fighting barbarians in a remote desert or that I had discovered the cure to hiccups, but I cannot – I chalk up my lack of posting to low energy and computer problems. Believe me there hasn’t been any dearth of items to blog about.

I want to discuss the fate of Rocket in my office – she’s probably my closest friend in the Kennel and one that I have, on occasion, spent some time with “not on the clock.” (What the fuck does “on the clock” mean anyhow. I haven’t seen the bossman in over a week – but you can bet your ass he’s still getting paid) Well Rocket is fed up with life at the Kennel, and let’s be honest, so would you. Yesterday, she sent the following email to her friends with the subject line NEED OUT BAD:

I am too young for my soul to die!!!!
If anyone knows of jobs available in your
wonderful, joyous workplaces, please let me
know. I would prefer a job where I can implement
my writing and editing skills and not in the
neofacist way that I'm doing now (I work for a
politician). Help is appreciated!

I think the straw the broke the camel’s back (lot of clichés today) was when she was trying to get the bossman’s attention about some letter or testimony a few weeks ago and said something to the extent of “Rocket needs you to look at this” and he replied “You tell that bitch to wait!” Sure he was joking and it was kind of lighthearted – but hardly a professional way to treat your underpaid employees.

Will try and post for often in the near future – nice that you missed me.

Frank

Hearing Problem

I've been meaning to tell my favorite story of the past couple of weeks and for some reason when I sit down to blog, I forget.

As I reported not too long ago, we are working with a library in Greenwich Village that is trying to upgrade (add a teen area, improve wheelchair access, etc...). However, in Greenwich Village nothing is easy and there is a sect of radical senior citizens that is violently opposed to any changes in their library. (In fairness, they are worried about it being closed for a while during construction, but these people would be opposed to replacing one of those library "learn to read posters" with a Rembrandt.)

So, I headed down to this community meetings filled with septuagenarians acting like coyotes. The minute the library staff introduced the plan the seniors pounced. Screaming, swearing, interrupting -- it felt like one of those scenes from Asian parliament that eventually break down into an all out brawl. Check your civility and your walker at the door.

The library staff and the others that were leading the meeting didn't have a chance. Unfortunately they engaged the seniors in screaming back and threatened to cancel the meeting all together. Perhaps I'm a bad person, but I was loving every minute of this -- if I only had a bowl of popcorn.

There were a couple of quotes from the night that I really loved.

After the library announced that they would have to close the library in phases for the construction an old woman stood up and screamed out:
"There goes the Village"

In response to the potential teen area, one woman proclaimed:
"Teens are going to be having sex in the library"

and my favorite ---

There was a person who is deaf sitting in the front of the room and lip reading, the library staff announced that they were going to repeat an announcement
"Because a person with a hearing problem didn't catch it the first time around" after that, an old man screamed out, and I do mean screamed.
"He deaf, he doesn't have a hearing problem, he's deaf"

I don't know about you, but to me that seems like quite a hearing problem.