But my resume is complete and I’m emailing like crazy.  I’ve even impressed myself with my proficiency at jazzing up past work experience.  Making copies for my d-bag boss - I’m a “collator specialist.”  Lifeguard at the community center – “aquatic coordinator.”  I wonder if prospective employers get fed up with this whole charade.  Wouldn’t they rather hear the truth: “Ambitionless dishrag seeking full-time position to escape domestic misery.”    

I wanted to post pics from last week’s Pride Festival – it was our bud’s birthday and we had ventured to the park for a much anticipated game of Ultimate Frisbee.  Alas, our camera broke when the celebrating young lad was plucked from the air by a rather burly gal and her tag-team partner as he went for a catch – they tore him asunder in a scene reminiscent of Discovery Channel’s ‘Shark Week.’  We tried to intervene but the onslaught was too swift - we were lucky to escape with our lives (and the Frisbee) intact.  Happy Birthday, indeed!          

access denied

This is an especially effective tool of embarrassment when, say, you’ve been listening to your Ipod at work and speakers are turned up to full listening volume.  Nothing breaks eerie morning office silences quite like the sound of you being reprimanded by someone’s mother.  It alerts cubicle neighbors and passer-by’s to your current activities, and probably confirms any suspicions they have about your personal indiscretions and character flaws.  At this point, I can only conclude that Gillian in Accounting thinks I split my workday between terrorist recruitment and Asian fetish websites.

Of course you don’t know what sites are blocked or not.  And the parameters seem to change daily so you are always on your toes.  A carefree stroll over to Wikipedia can quickly become a sleazy outing to GoatBlow.com in the eyes of your colleagues. 

The next step down from outright rejection is:  

Access to http://www.cnn.com has been blocked by WebMarshal™

Now you must choose your fate.  What happens if you click OK?  Who is watching?  Will you see that hilarious video of a Dalmatian peeing on an infant?  Or will a squadron of jungle commandos crash through the adjacent hallway window and drag you to your death?  And will Chuck Norris be leading that team of commandos?  If so, you may have seconds to live (less if he isn’t wearing sunglasses, thereby activating the laser cannons that shoot from his retinas).  This Orwellian approach to internet security is very effective – like house pets we gobble up the scraps our master’s throw us and fear the retribution that awaits our disobedience.      

I’ve already said too much - tell my story if I disappear.  Tell of the glorious roundhouse kick that cut short my life.      

Access to http://www.thesandinista.com/ has been blocked by WebMarshal™

This is the screen that greets me when I try to access my website at work.  This is what my office thinks of my blogging.  Pornography!  My own enlightened thoughts and reflections – mere obscenity, exploitation..  Smut to be stuffed into some hidden drawer on the internet never to breathe liberty’s bracing air.
Before these proles pass judgment upon this humble blogger, methinks they should turn the mirror upon themselves.  Something is being exploited here but all is not what it seems.  Watching my coworkers fumble through their days, tripping upon their own hypocrisies.  That is the real pornography.  My writings are indeed ghastly – I reveal in all its terrible horror these peoples’ chronic shortcomings, their pieties, their moral immolations.  

Know this. My pen shall gather dust no longer.  I will slog on in my quest.  I will lay bare everything I know to be unjust and untenable.     

Update: 12:34PM
I checked with my IT administrator.  Turns out my writing wasn’t the problem; it was the ‘Boys of Summer Camp Calendar Extravaganza’ in the Fun Zone section of The Sandinista!  I would especially like to apologize to the students and parents of Kelley Day Elementary School.  I never meant to cause a scene and sincerely regret how events unfolded before and after the wardrobe malfunction at recess.    
But seriously guys.  Lock the gates next time.   

Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the
     workmen are beginning the fence.
The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that
     can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.
As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble
     and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering
     children looking for a place to play.
Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go
     nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrow.

This Carl Sandburg piece resonates with me today as I make the long and tortuous commute to work from my parent’s home in south-central suburbia. The poem hints at some of the causes of suburban growth in general and the proliferation of urban sprawl. According to a recent census, over 50% of the US population now lives in suburbs. All of this sprawling has engendered a myriad of complications, from the irritating problems of traffic and pollution to more sinister ones like neighborhood Applebee’s, which metastasize across our land like a vicious, Southwest-flavored cancer. Many issues are intertwined here and the whole process is clearly tinged with class and race. My town is no exception - one has but to look at the vehement outcry of suburbanites to expansion proposals for Atlanta’s transit system (MARTA) to understand the kinds of fear in play here. Even the oft-whispered colloquial meaning of the MARTA acronym “Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta,” speaks volumes. More than anything else, the rise of suburbia is driven by fear - the fear of some impalpable predator, whether it’s is a shade of skin or shade of prayer book. Suburbs function as a bulwark for family values (and family stereotypes), though the question must be asked whether any value is worth defending three hundred yards from a Super Wal-Mart.

A recent US Census shows that poverty is on the rise in the ‘burbs; 39% of the nation’s poor now live there, a figure nearly identical to urban locales. And as the poor move into our neighborhoods, to the remote counties we flee yet again. Into cluster home communities – guard gates, community patrols. Ostensibly there’s nothing wrong with seeking a safe neighborhood, and poverty undoubtedly brings with it levels of violence and crime not amenable to family-raising. Yet surely something is lost in the hermetic existence of the suburb; can human perspective ever truly change behind a plate-glass window? And besides, if minorities are better athletes, then we can’t outrun them forever. […cue rim-shot] So in conclusion: My commute sucks! Stay in your suburbs and off my roads! Hey, maybe there’s a sale at TJ Maxx.

Pretty sweet, right?  The office has a sort of police interrogation theme going on.  One wall is colored distinctly from the rest - an ”accent wall” in the common vernacular.  

Years ago, as the story goes, the company offered employees the chance to “express themselves” through color.  A few restrictions were levied – one wall and one wall only is painted (how much excitement can you really take, after all).  Also, only solid hues (the polka dot is a proven enemy of company profits).  The former occupant of my office chose vomit-green as the color that best represented his existence - clearly a reference to a dying possum crossing a suburban access road.  Today, ill-slept and slightly hungover, I look at the wall and feel the way a wild field of lilacs and clover must feel when the first icy gusts of winter creep upon it beneath a darkening sky. 

My scheme to increase worker productivity is in the suggestion box in the break room: “a wall in every office cube has mural of a giant bulldozer barreling down upon you.”  Surely this instills that sense of urgency in our daily work performance so trumpeted in the monthly staff memos.  No feedback from the office manager yet…