Friday, September 28, 2007

How your mood affects other things

Does this ever happen to you?

You're annoyed or in a bad mood and you just start getting annoyed with every other thing or person that you encounter.

That's me right now. Or maybe I'm just annoyed with someone who's just annoying. It's my secretary. She talks, and talks, and talks. She never shuts up. She tells me all about Charlie Sheen and how she loves his TV show, and tells me that in real life he's just like the character she plays on the show. Wow, I had no idea she was personal friends with Charlie Sheen. Amazing.

The, she'll complain that she has no work to do. So, I give her work to do and it just sits there while she cruises the internet for information to confirm her suspicions that George Clooney is gay.

Once my boss, Cockface, comes into the office and gives her things to do, she wants to quit her job because she hates doing work, I think. And, her cell phone rings 5 times a day, and of course the ringer is on the loudest setting. And when it rings, she is so annoyed that people are calling and bothering her. My suggestion would be to turn down the ringer, so as not to bother people who are attempting to work, and not answer the phone until after work, like most professionals do. Now I know she's not a professional, but I am sick of hearing her conversations every day about:

how she's turning 50

how much she loves her dog

all the unnecessary crap she buys from HSN and QVC

how she never leaves the house because she loves her dog so much

how her dog has a haircut like Rod Stewart

how she doesn't talk to her mother

how rich her parents are

how rich her ex-husband is

that she still talks to her ex-husband even though he used to beat the crap out of her

how so many men want to go out with her

how she won't go out with anyone because she needs to lose 15 pounds

how much clothing she has in her closet

that she's starting a new business on ebay.

Ok, that list is pretty exhaustive. If a new topic emerges, I will be sure and let everyone know because I'm sure I will hear about it 15 times.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Something's Fishy

A boat is chartered to go to Bimini. The clients are a 19 year-old Cuban boy and a 35 year-old Southerner. They pay $4000 cash for the trip. The boat leaves for Bimini Saturday morning with the two clients and four crew members. The authorities are contacted on Sunday when the boat doesn't return on time and family hasn't heard from the crew members.

Monday--the boat is found adrift and the Coast Guard stated the contents of the boat were left in a complete mess. The two clients were found in the boat's only life raft. The crew has not been found yet. The Boat's GPS system shows the boat never made it to Bimini.

I have a feeling there is some connection to drugs. And if that's the case, you can rent a boat without a captain for less than $4000. Was there really a need to involve 4 other people? Or kill 4 other people? Come one? The 19 year old and 35 year old are criminals, but how many crimes does someone want to get charged with? It's called mitigating your damages, look into it.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Wish me luck!

I have my second interview with a Miami firm today. Maybe I'll get the job and can quit my crappy one.

But also, this idea of moving to Denver hasn't gone away. I applied to be a law professor at the University of Denver. What am I doing?

My thought was that if I'm going to be an eternal pessimist, at least I should do it somewhere pretty and less stressful than nasty south Florida. Looking at mountains every day might have a calming effect. I even feel better when I think of looking at mountains every day. Sigh......

Silly things to get mad about

So listen, my secretary, while she can be great sometimes, most of the time she is just plain annoying. I know she just complains for attention, and I normally ignore it. Sometimes it gets so bad that I close my door because the whining is just too much for me. But today while making photocopies I got cornered, and was forced to listen to the latest complaint. Ready?

She was fuming because someone put a six-pack of soda in the refrigerator without removing the plastic holding the six-pack together!

How dare someone do that! Outrageous! They should be shot!

I think I'll bring a six-pack to work tomorrow:)

Monday, September 24, 2007

You know what is so annoying?

When you have to dial a 1-800 number and the 1-800 is followed by words like:

INFO CTR

or any other 7 letter combination. [I was going to list more, but I just can't think of any right now.] Isn't it easier for the caller to just dial a number? Figuring out which letter corresponds to which number is annoying and takes much longer than just simply dialing the NUMBER.

I have so many other things to waste my time being annoyed at, please stop 1-800-LETTERS, people don't like it. Thank you.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Dan Rather, what took so long?


You'd be smiling like this too if you're chances of winning 70 Million were as good as his. Dan, your employer used you as the fall guy in the botched reporting of President Bush's National Guard service. They embarrassed you worldwide, pretty much ended your career that's lasted decades, and then fired your ass. Someone at CBS really did not like you. They could have chosen to fire an executive producer (like CBS did with Katie Couric's ratings so low--I still love Katie, though). If that happened me, I would have filed suit as soon as my hangover subsided. But you waited 2.5 years! What the heck took you so long man? Maybe we can blame it on your age. Let's not mince words, you're old. You might have forgotten. But, that is being VERY generous to you.
You used to be a tenacious, aggressive journalist who wasn't afraid of asking tough questions and basically pissing people off to uncover the real story. Acting like that takes balls. What happened to yours when you got fucked by CBS? Ok, we'll use old age as the reason again. I guess old age really shrinks your balls and by 75, there's really nothing left. I'd have to guess that at this point, since it took you so long to pull the trigger on suing CBS, your balls have to be no bigger than pencil erasers. Sorry, but someone had to say it.
After all of my insults and name calling, Mr. Rather, I wish you the best of luck in your revenge suit. If you'd like to read more on this, please see the New York Times article posted below.
_________________________________________________________________
CBS Is Sued by Rather Over Ouster


Published: September 20, 2007
Dan Rather, whose career at CBS News ground to an inglorious end 15 months ago over his role in an unsubstantiated report questioning President Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard service, filed a lawsuit yesterday against the network, its corporate parent and three of his former superiors, including Sumner M. Redstone, the executive chairman of CBS.

Mr. Rather, 75, asserts that the network violated his contract by giving him insufficient airtime on “60 Minutes” after forcing him to step down as anchor of the “CBS Evening News” in March 2005.
He also contends that the network committed fraud by commissioning a “biased” and incomplete investigation of the flawed National Guard broadcast in order to “pacify the White House.”
Asked yesterday in his lawyer’s office why he was taking such action now, Mr. Rather said he had been unable to let go of numerous lingering questions about the Guard report and CBS’s handling of its fallout. In recent months, he said he had even assembled “a team” of associates at his own expense — he declined to say whether it included private investigators — that had turned up new information. Among his findings, he said, was that a private investigator hired by CBS after the report’s broadcast had unearthed evidence that might exonerate him, at least in part.
“I’d like to know what really happened,” he said, his eyes red and watering. “Let’s get under oath. Let’s get e-mails. Let’s get who said what to whom, when and for what purpose.”
The suit, which seeks $70 million in damages, names as defendants CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves; Viacom and its executive chairman, Mr. Redstone; and Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News. In a statement CBS said, “These complaints are old news and this lawsuit is without merit.” Mr. Heyward said he would not comment beyond the CBS statement. A Viacom spokesman said he had no comment.
In the suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Rather charges that CBS and its executives made him “a scapegoat” in an attempt placate the Bush administration, though the formal complaint presents virtually no direct evidence to that effect.
To buttress this claim, Mr. Rather quotes the executive who oversaw his regular segment on CBS Radio as telling Mr. Rather in November 2004 that he was losing that slot, effective immediately, because of “pressure from ‘the right wing.’ ” Mr. Rather also continues to take vehement issue with the appointment by CBS of Richard Thornburgh, an attorney general in the administration of the elder President Bush, as one of the two outside panelists given the job of reviewing how the disputed broadcast had been prepared.
For both Mr. Rather and CBS, the filing of the suit threatens to once again focus attention on one of the darker chapters in the history of the network and its storied news division, at a moment when its flagship evening news program continues to lag. Mr. Rather’s permanent successor as evening news anchor, Katie Couric, has remained stuck in third place in the network news ratings since taking over the broadcast a year ago. She has not only attracted fewer viewers than Charles Gibson of ABC and Brian Williams of NBC, but has thus far failed to bring in the new viewers that were part of her mandate.
The portrait of Mr. Rather that emerges from the 32-page filing bears little resemblance to his image as a hard-charging newsman.
By his own rendering, Mr. Rather was little more than a narrator of the disputed broadcast, which was shown on Sept. 8, 2004, on the midweek edition of “60 Minutes” and which purported to offer new evidence of preferential treatment given to Mr. Bush when he was a lieutenant in the Air National Guard.
Instead of directly vetting the script he would read for the Guard segment, Mr. Rather says, he acceded to pressure from Mr. Heyward to focus instead on his reporting from Florida on Hurricane Frances, and on Bill Clinton’s heart surgery.
Mr. Rather says in the filing that he allowed himself to be reduced to little more than a patsy in the furor that followed, after CBS concluded that the report had been based on documents that could not be authenticated. Under pressure, Mr. Rather says, he delivered a public apology on his newscast on Sept. 20, 2004 — written not by him but by a CBS corporate publicist — “despite his own personal feelings that no public apology from him was warranted.”
The panel led by Mr. Thornburgh, as well as Louis Boccardi, a former chief executive of The Associated Press, did not single out Mr. Rather for the broadcast’s failures, but did fault several producers and executives for rushing the report to broadcast without sufficient vetting. Mr. Rather now leads a weekly news program on HDNet, an obscure cable channel in which he is seen by a small fraction of the millions of viewers who once turned to him in his heyday.
Mr. Rather’s suit seeks $20 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages. Among the pivotal points of contention in his complaint are the definitions of the words “full-time” and “regular.” As quoted in the filing, Mr. Rather’s contract — which he signed in 2002, and which stipulated he be paid a base salary of $6 million a year as anchor — entitled him to a job as a “full-time correspondent” with “first billing” on the midweek edition of “60 Minutes,” should he leave the anchor chair before March 2006.
As it turned out, Mr. Rather did leave the anchor chair a year early, and was indeed reassigned to “60 Minutes II.” When that broadcast was canceled a few months later, Mr. Rather’s contract called for him to move to the main “60 Minutes” broadcast on Sunday evening, where he would “perform services on a regular basis as a correspondent.”
During the 2005-6 television season, Mr. Rather had eight segments broadcast on the main “60 Minutes,” half that of other correspondents.
“He was provided with very little staff support, very few of his suggested stories were approved, editing services were denied to him, and the broadcast of the few stories he was permitted to do was delayed and then played on carefully selected evenings, when low viewership was anticipated,” the filing contends.
Theodore O. Rogers, the head of the labor and employment group for the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, said that this could be the strongest of Mr. Rather’s arguments.
“Potentially, if he could point to evidence that when they negotiated, there was an established meaning of ‘regular’ that was breached, there could be a claim,” said Mr. Rogers, who is not involved in the case. Among the most egregious indignities he suffered, Mr. Rather says, was the network’s response to his request to be sent as a correspondent to the scene of Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005.
“Mr. Rather is the most experienced reporter in the United States in covering hurricanes,” his lawyers write in the suit. “CBS refused to send him,” thus “furthering its desire to keep Mr. Rather off the air.”

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

History repeats itself


Is this the infamous "hole" of Alcatraz prison, or my office?






This is what nicer offices look like.


HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

Whoever came up with that phrase was a very observant person, because it's so true. I don't know why I have such a selective memory sometimes, but my nice friends are there to remind me. Specifically, they remind me how much I disliked working for my boss (Cockface) and his wife in law school.


Then, I stupidly accepted a PERMANENT position at this horrid firm as an attorney. I knew from the beginning that I would regret the decision, but I needed the money and had no other job offers. And now I really regret the decision as my boss has taken to treating me as his law slave instead of his associate. Both positions have similar duties. The only thing that makes the difference is the level of respect with which you are treated.


For example, if you are the law slave you get to work around 8:30 in the morning, just because you're afraid your boss might call for you to fax a motion to opposing counsel, give him a very important phone number, or run to the courthouse to announce he's going to be late for court. The the law slave will sit around most of the day doing very unimportant things and dreaming about not working here anymore. Around 5:50 or 6, the law slave will start to get excited because she thinks she may be able to escape from hell for the day at a normal time. But then Cockface walks into her office to continue revision of a Motion that has been hanging around for 10 days and has yet to be filed. So, instead of giving her work during the day when she doesn't have much to do, Cockface gives her work at the end of the day when it's convenient for him. Then he will cheerily say goodnight, leaving the law slave to finish the work and stay until 7:30 or 8, which is way later than she needed to stay. Basically Cockface has no respect for the law slave's time, thinking that she is only there to wait on him and serve his every command. I don't think he realizes that when he rolls into the office at Noon or 1pm, the law slave has already been here for HOURS. Asshole.


An associate would get to the office around 8:30 and leave around 6. She would be busy doing important work all day and not feel like the back-up secretary.





I'm the law slave.


PS--after Cockface was such a jerk a couple of weeks ago and threatened to fire me (a tactic that encourages maximum productivity), I am now totally paranoid that he is going behind my back interviewing other people. Of course, I am interviewing at other firms, but I want to dump him not the other way around.


I'm forgetting what it's like to be happy. I used to like to socialize, go to the gym, smile. Now I like to sit at home alone and be sad. This is the worst possible place for me to work. EVER.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Yom kippur

Yom kippur begins Friday at sundown. This is one of the "High Holy days" in the Jewish religion. It is considered one of the holiest and most solemn days of the year. While I am not the most religious of Jews, I usually observe Yom Kippur.

I was thinking about possibly not fasting this year, because I haven't been that "bad" this year. But considering my last post and many recent bad thoughts and comments about my boss I'm going to fast because maybe I need to be kinder and more understanding of people even if they aren't that way to me. I need to stop treating people how they treat me.

I should just try to be a good person and maybe things will pay off at some point. Ok, there's a goal for the next Judaic year, try to be a better person. If you are a Jew, you get 2 chances for new year's resolutions. Nice.

Good morning sunshine!

Hi All. Hope everyone had a good weekend. I did too, thanks for asking.

I was getting ready for work this morning around 8:30 when my lovely boss called to wish me a good morning.

"Where are you?" He asks.

"I'm just about to leave my house." I say.

"How far away from the courthouse are you?" He asks. I begin to wonder where this conversation will lead.

"It will take about 40 minutes for me to get there." I say.

He then says "A truck just hit my car [he just got into a car accident a few months ago that was a result of his bad driving.] I'll just have to call the Judge's JA and tell her and explain what happened."

I say "OK, bye." And don't ask how he's doing, what he wanted me to do at the courthouse, or anything else relating to him or the accident. You know, because I really could care less.

The first thing I think after hanging up the phone: I know my boss is a huge baby and will leave early from work because he's sooooo exhausted from getting up early and he will also want to take his car into the shop be cause he just CANNOT drive his car with a scratch on it. I then think, "YES! I can leave work early or at a normal hour because he won't be looking over my shoulder and threatening to fire me."

Then I think, "What the fuck did Cockface expect me to do at the courthouse?"

Idea #1: Me: "Good morning Judge, Cockface has a hearing scheduled for this morning, but he's a bad driver, got in a car accident, and he's going to be a little late." What is the point of that? You don't score extra points by treating your associate like a slave and having them personally announce that you will be late.

Idea #2: Me: "Good morning Judge's JA, Cockface has a hearing scheduled for this morning, but he's a bad driver, got in a car accident, and he's going to be a little late." See comment following Idea #1.

Idea #3: Just call the Judge's JA and explain the situation. This is something that our secretary should do. I have the following degrees: J.D., M.M.C., B.A. I am not a secretary and this is not something I should have to do. Oh wait, our secretary didn't come to work today because she's "sick."

In any event he did not ask me to do any of the above-referenced possibilities. However if he had I probably would have gotten yelled at for not getting to the courthouse fast enough or for not calling the JA fast enough. Although most lawyers know that the JAs never answer the phones because annoying attorneys are always calling to bother them, it still would have been my fault. And had I been asked to physically go to the courthouse and announce that Cockface was going to be late, I would not have been moving as fast as a result of my insane workouts this weekend that have left every muscle in my body sore.

And also. our annoying, negative, complaining, pessimist secretary called out sick this morning and that's the only reason why Cockface called me in the first place. Maybe I should add hypochondriac to the list of adjectives I used to describe my secretary, because I know she's not sick, she just wants attention.

Oh how I love being the back-up secretary/law slave of this office.

*Note to self--Dear Curlatini, if you are ever fortunate to get another job and leave this God-forsaken office, make sure the new job is a place that cares a little bit about it's employees instead of not at all, and make sure you're not treated like a slave. If you are ever lucky enough to find that, thank God every day and don't take it for granted because you will no longer be employed by Cockface, and for that you should be grateful.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Ironic

For those of you who don't know, I've been having a little trouble at work lately. Mainly, my boss is a total asshole who likes to hide behind his computer and call me names and insult me instead of speaking to me in person. Let's face is, he's a pussy and could never say those things to my face. Anyway, because of this recent exchange between he and I, I've been working my ass off, staying really late every night and working all weekend. Oh, and I've seriously started looking for a new job.

So, in the elevator this morning another attorney says to me "you must be a glutton for punishment, I leave at 6:30 or 7 every night and your car is always still here." Well, it's nice that at least someone noticed.

I'm really looking forward to leaving this job. For many reasons: I've been really depressed ever since I started working here, it is way more stressful than it should be, it has driven me to drink and avoid doing things I used to enjoy (the gym, socializing, being happy), and I've gained weight because of it all too. So, I'll try to have a good attitude when I come in here every day because I know that I will eventually be able to leave this place and try to be happy again. But then I worry every day that when I come in he's going to fire me. So, I'm trying to leave him before he dumps me. Wow this is starting to sound like a "relationship." Gross

I'm still considering posting the e-mail exchange between me and the cockface I work for, maybe then you all will see what it's like to work in such a nurturing, warm, collegial environment (the preceding phrase should be read in a sarcastic manner).

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Stupid people that we have to share oxygen with






Carlos Manuel Fuentes, 27, charged with aggravated child abuse.



Upset at his wife because she cut her hair without his permission, Carlos Manuel Fuentes got drunk and hit her 6-week-old child over the head with a beer bottle, Homestead police said.
Fuentes, 27, of 225 NE 13th St., was charged over the weekend with aggravated child abuse. He is being held at Miami-Dade County Jail with no bond.
According to a police report, the child's mother called police. The child suffered a cut to the top of the head and was treated by paramedics before being taken to the hospital.
Homestead police found broken glass from the beer bottle inside the child's room. Fuentes was ''severely drunk'' and his breath and body reeked of a ``strong odor of alcohol.''
Fuentes ''spontaneously uttered that he didn't mean to do it but he was just upset at his wife for cutting her hair without his permission,'' the arrest report says.
The arrest was made by Homestead Officer Juan Senabre. It was not clear from the report that Fuentes is the child's father.


__________________________________________________________________


The above article is another example of a moron that lives in South Florida. This is not an example of my experiments with fiction that I sometimes like to experiment with. This guy actually got mad at his wife because she cut her hair without his permission. Um, Senora Fuentes, get some confidence and leave this burracho loser. From his behavior, this isn't probably the first time there's been violence in your household.


To the drunk: Did you really say you didn't mean to do it, but you were mad at your wife because of the whole hair thing? That's what we call an incriminating statement. You didn't mean to hit a 6 week old baby over the head with a beer bottle? Excuse me, but you hit the kid hard enough to break the bottle. So, can't really argue it was an accident. In Florida we call it child abuse. And I call you a worthless waste of sperm and egg.