From the shallow end of the job pool

So I was at Wal-Mart today buying paper and envelopes so I could mail resumes and clips. More on that later. I was in the express checkout lane behind an elderly couple buying an economy brick of toilet paper. The couple was having a discussion with the equally senior checkout woman about poop. I walked to the counter hearing this: "Well I say if you don't want to go home and poop, then you don't have to!" It was too later to turn around and leave; I had made eye contact with the He-Pooper. They proceeded to talk about how their bowels don't work as they used to. The Check-out Pooper talked about how she had a big, juicy hamburger patty for lunch yesterday and she just couldn't finish it! She had to cut it in half and eat it for lunch today because she just can't handle food like she used to. I heard the word "poop" FAR too many times in that short conversation. Thank god Bill wasn't there, because we would have giggled like ADD-ridden schoolchildren. I've never tried so hard to pretend to ignore a conversation. And mind you, I spent multiple semesters in the newsroom with Too-much-info-Burhenn and -Atkinson.

I should have known better than to venture out in Junction City during the day. The only people creeping about town are the aged and the unemployed. Guess which category I am in? You may have heard about the recent government budget cuts. The pot of money that funded my job was eradicated with the swish of G.W.'s pen. So, for the second time in 9 months, I am without a job. I didn't get shit-canned like the last one, but this time hurts just as much because I have -- had, rather -- the coolest job ... EVER. My bosses are appealing to the important people on post and those people are appealing to even more important government people, I'm told. We'll see what happens. They need to hurry because I don't have cable and I've watched every episode of Buffy, King of the Hill and The Office I have. My sanity comes in the form of four kitties. I adopted a pregnant street kitty more than three weeks ago and she had her babies the day I covered the appeal request in that murder court martial I covered a year ago. Wow, a year ago. A year ago I was working for that other newspaper, covering a murder trial, thinking that I, journalistically, had it made for the rest of my life. Funny how things turn out. Funny how they don't.

Right now I am at the public library, listening to a screaming baby who is clearly not enjoying the children's reading hour. I am also watching a paperboy, maybe young junior-high age, rolling and banding copies of the paper I worked at a year ago. This nice kid (I've decided he's a nice kid despite his employer) and the crack head banding papers at the table behind me have careers in journalism whereas I do not.

One mumu away from becoming Crazy Cat Lady,

AKS

Obituaries are the devil

The other day, the executive editor walked into the news meeting to relay an outrageous story about our obits. At my paper, our obits are paid, which means people can write as much as they want to about their dead relatives, including every boring hobby, trip or interest in their lives as well as list every person they ever met as surviors.

Anyway, as a result of them being paid, we do very limited editing to them, which drives some of us on the copy desk nuts. There are only so many times one can read an obit that uses three different abbreviations for Wisconsin in a single paragraph. We usually just change things like obious misspellings, PM to p.m. and the like.

So we had this obit for some woman and her husband was in the military. Being in the military, he wrote all the dates in military style: 10 June 1967, 5 December 1989, etc. Since this is unusual, the copy editor doing obits changed it to a standard style: June 10, 1967, December 5, 1989, you know, the way average people in America write dates.

After the obit ran, the funeral home called and said that it shouldn't have to pay the $60 for the obit because it wasn't published correctly. So now, we don't change anything in obits, which is really the funeral home's loss seeing as how one funeral home continually misspells its own name in the obits it submits.

I don't know how the payment issue was resolved, but at least I don't have to read poorly written, over long, boring obits anymore.

A Letter From The Land Of The Beaver

Hello Kansan crew.

Well, I've been here in Klamath Falls, Ore. for almost two weeks now and I have to say, this place is the shit. I have beautiful scenery, an apartment close to downtown, a cool job that lets me write about parasitic worms found in pet water bowls and no humidity whatsoever.

That's right, I don't even have an air conditioner. Yay for high desert climate.

Seriously, though, I'm in quite happy here. I've been working for about a week now. They're shuffling beats so I don't have one yet, but I've covered a crazy German cross-country biker, a city council meeting, the visit of a gubernatorial candidate and the abovesaid parasitic worms.

In essence, life is sweet.

Hope all is well with everyone, whether they be preparing for another semester in Lawrence or another day at their job.

Beav out.