Mining Insomnia for Gold

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[. . . ]But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Back in the day, when the late great Tommy Evatt suffered even the most trivial of disappointments, he would ironically assume a woebegone expression and sigh aloud, “I’m no stranger to heartache.”

Well, brother or sister, allow me the indulgence to channel Tommy, to assume that same sad-sack expression, and announce that “I’m no stranger to insomnia.”

Not only am I no stranger, I’ve been sleeping with Insomnia – check that – lying with her almost nightly for the past 28 years. The times I have awakened in the fell clutch of dark outnumber the kisses politicians of both parties have bestowed upon the ass of the Reverend Billy Graham, the number of recorded malapropisms uttered by former President George W Bush, the combined number of times the Atlanta Braves and South Carolina Gamecocks have broken my heart.

In other words, even Pieter Bruegel the Elder couldn’t cram the personified nights of my insomnia onto one of his grotesque canvases.

BRUEGHEL, Pieter the Younger3

 

Virtually every weekday morning between 2:54 and 3:57, a circuit breaker trips in the fuse box of my mind, and – zap – I’m wide awake and know immediately there’s no use trying to reenter the dream that has abandoned me, that counting sheep would be the adult equivalent of a letter to Santa, and that I have at least an hour (sometimes two) of wakefulness to endure.

Now, if I were a Northern European, I might very well go all existentialist and project my disability onto the cosmos, but, goddamn it, I’m an American, and Americans are optimists, can-doers, money makers, so, of course, I’ve transformed the water-boarding my mind suffers in the wee hours into something positive. I have alchemized the belladonna of my brain chemistry into an elixir that can cure any disease short of – well, insomnia.

However, even though I haven’t yet found a way to free myself from insomnia’s web-like entanglements, I have developed techniques to transform the excruciatingly slow crawl of minutes into a space where you can do some heavy duty psychic lifting and develop plans for self-improvement.

In other words, I’ve written a self-help book for insomniacs, and because you who are reading this cri de coeur have not abandoned me up to now, I’m going to provide you this sneak preview absolutely free of charge.

mining insomnia bookcover

Click here for Dealing with Yankees for Dummies.

This self-help bible begins with a personality test to pinpoint the chapters that are going to be most immediately beneficial to you. You know the tests I’m talking about, those fill-in the bubble surveys high school seniors take to determine if they’re better suited for engaging in armed combat or opening an antiques shop.

Here’s an example from the book:

Which one of the following activities is most likely to provide you with the most satisfaction?

1. Taking a long walk with that special someone on a pristine South Sea beach beneath a full moon.

2.Flying in your private Lear jet to address an auditorium teeming with adoring followers.

3. Enjoying a couple of lines of uncut Columbian cocaine.

4. Reorganizing your hopelessly disorganized friend’s lifestyle habits.

5. Reading and correcting reams of inexact writing from entitled adolescents prone to magical thinking.

Just for fun, let’s see if you can match those choices with the chapters most likely to benefit the chooser.

A. Starting up a Televangelism Empire

B. Careers in Pharmaceuticals

C. Overcoming Abusive Diaper Training

D. You, Too, Can Write Romance Novels

E. What If You Had Majored in Business Instead
Answers: 1. D 2. A 3. B 4. C 5. E

Each chapter provides a series of progressive mental exercises that are at once simultaneously mind-numbing but provide a foundation for steps up a staircase that leads to success.

For example, the first step in each of the chapters is “Writing Your Own Obituary.”

The next time you awaken in the middle of the night and realize that sleep, like the proverbial father who goes out for a pack of cigarettes, isn’t coming back, rather than flailing around fruitlessly cataloguing the mundane tasks that must be completed tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, compose in your head your own obituary. This positive exercise not only helps put those mundane tasks in perspective, but it also offers hints as to how you ended so fucked-up that now, even though you possess the godlike power to conjure on a whim whatever movie you want to watch at any moment, you’re so maladjusted that you can’t sleep six hours in a row.

Of course, I provide, an outline for an obituary:

Name

[euphemism for dying]*

cause of death [optional]

spouse if any

date of death

parents

short bio

  • DOB
  • education
  • career and/or marriage
  • accomplishments

survivors

preferred memorials

and also a model:

After a cowardly skirmish with cancer, Wesley “Rusty” Moore, husband of Judy Birdsong, entered the godless realm of oblivion on Thursday April 1 2023.

A son of the late Wesley E Moore, Jr. and Sue Blanton Moore, Wesley/Rusty was born 25 December 1950 in Summerville, where he attended public schools.  Upon earning his BA from the University of South Carolina, unable to find gainful employment, he immediately entered graduate school where he met his future wife Judy Birdsong at a bar where they both worked.  It was, as “Rusley” liked saying, “a marriage made in Milwaukee.”

After the wedding, the Moores relocated to Charleston, South Carolina.  Although a graduate school dropout with a checkered transcript, “Rusley” was able to secure employment at Porter-Gaud School, thanks in part to his hobby of hypnotism.  At Porter-Gaud he spent 30 years reading and correcting reams of inexact writing from entitled adolescents prone to magical thinking.

Wesley never met a stranger he wasn’t leery of and always had something cynical to share with the few friends he cultivated during his life.

Surviving in addition to his wife of Folly Beach are two sons, Harrison Moore of Washington, DC, and Ned Moore of the Khovsgol Province of Inner Mongolia.

In Lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Communist Party, 44 Ginsberg Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11209.

Each specific chapter offers exercises that could possibly lull curable insomniacs to sleep but also provides incurables with a chance to turn a typical time of anguish into something positive. For example, an early mind numbing exercise for aspiring romance novelists involves cataloging chronologically people they’ve kissed. One later visualization exercise guides the initiate to imagining cinematically the first kiss of her catalogue blooming into the 52nd shade of gray.

The general idea is to transform wasted hours into time well spent.

Let me seal the deal. This very blog post is the fruit of last night’s insomnia, and, presto, already, I’m climbing that stairway to stardom.

Photo on 10-31-13 at 2.40 PM

Chico Feo, TS Eliot, Joseph Conrad, Lost Souls, & I-and-I

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For whatever perverse reason, I prefer dives to tony bars and restaurants. The same goes for neighborhoods. You couldn’t pay me to live on Kiawah or Daniel Island. The manicured bicycle paths, the antiseptic standards of what is allowed architecturally, the non-diversity of income and outlook, and the bland, vowel-less intonations of their residents and tourists would produce in me fogbanks of despair.

Nor would I want to live in an upstate mill village where all the small clapboard houses have the same floor plan and everyone twangs vocally the verbal equivalent of out-of-tune banjo strings.

No, what I like is diversity, the mixed neighborhoods of the Upper Peninsula and the non-gated barrier islands. So I’m very happy here on Folly where a million dollar house might stand next to quaint cottage or a ramshackle two-story paint-peeling survivor of Hurricane Hugo, happy to live in a community where trick-or-treating is forbidden because the poorly lighted streets have no sidewalks and vehicular traffic can be, well, unsteady.

Like the various options in housing on Folly, the island also offers a variety of drinking and eating establishments, and since the closing of the Brew Pub on Center Street, my favorite hangout is Chico Feo, an outdoor Caribbean “restaurant” whose limited menu consists of curried goat, Dominican beans, or shark or pork tacos. In the unlikely case you’re an old-time Charlestonian, think Captain Harry’s without walls or a roof. Like Captain Harry’s, beers are sold out of coolers and the seats are not very comfortable.

Click the arrow in the frame above for a panoramic pan of Chico Feo

Counting the left turn onto Second Street, Chico Feo lies a mere six blocks from my house, so I ride my bike there, weaving my way through the clogged cars of day trippers to enjoy a brew or two beneath the overarching trees – and maybe, just, maybe, to knock off six or so essays.

Yesterday, however, I left my stack of essays at home [‘”Argue that Conrad’s Heart of Darkness can be read as the debunking of stereotypes found in Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The White Man’s Burden”‘] and carried with me instead Hugh Kenner’s 1964 book TS Eliot: The Invisible Poet, my journal, and a trusty pen.

Chico Feo attracts locals – a homeless man named Greg, surfers in their late twenties and beyond, musicians, C of C alums/dropouts who never left (damn them), and Folly residents like me – and, yes, many of us are indeed “ugly boys” in keeping with the English translation of the bar’s Spanish name.

After the bartender Charlie provided me with my Bell’s IPA, I found an empty table with a view of Second Street where I could watch locomotive skateboarders with backpacks glide past the mural of Bert the Pirate that graces his iconic market, or I could cast my critical eyes on the never ending parade of pedestrians headed either to or from the beach.

images-2

Yesterday, inside the friendly confines – and Chico Feo is incredibly friendly – the bar was occupied with an eclectic group of imbibers: a limping, bearded 50-something sporting a straw cowboy hat, a slender long haired surfer dude, and a group of already-over-the-hill 20-somethings with expanding hips and incipient beer bellies.

On the large picnic table a tableaux of young, middle class hedonists bowed down looking at their cell phones in the attitude of prayer. The temperature was perfect, and the onshore breeze provided a bit of respite from the gnats.

So I opened Kenner’s book and began a chapter devoted to the philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley’s influence on Eliot’s thought and came upon this passage:

My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts and feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside, and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it [. . .] In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.

I looked up from that passage and caught sight of one of the most grotesque human beings I’ve ever encountered.

Where to begin?

The words “obese” and “corpulent” don’t begin to do justice to this shambling Rabelaisian, Falstaffian 400-pound 25-year-old. All he wore was a pair of board shorts that clung precariously an inch or two below the broad expanse of the Brobdingnagian belly that sagged and quivered with every painful, bare-footed step he took on sun-blistered feet and legs. I’ll forego a description of his breasts – let it suffice to say they drooped the way you might imagine Mae West’s drooping in her Myra Breckinridge era. I could see from where I was sitting that he was stoned or tripping or worse.

I returned to Kenner ‘s take on TS when I heard, “Hey, man, how’s it going?”

My deafness has gotten so bad that I didn’t even notice that the giant had pulled up at my table.

I looked up, and there he was sitting, his blue eyes as vacant as a Detroit warehouse, glazed, abnormal.

He commenced a monologue of his surreal misadventures of the previous 24 hours, which I’ll summarize as briefly as possible.

Someone had offered him an LSD-laced drink because they wanted to kill him because he had come here from Kentucky to make and sell art, i.e., sun hats made out of palmetto fronds. They had drugged him, and he had passed out on the beach. He was supposed right now to be with some “sweet honey” from Summerville [I’m ashamed to admit I tried to imagine what contortions must take place to achieve heterosexual intercourse with this man], but now he’s lost her forever, and he remembers the night before gaining consciousness in a restroom downtown washing his hands and screaming, “The water is scalding my hands!”

I patiently listened as I sipped my beer, nodded my head sympathetically, muttered an occasional, “wow-that-sucks.” Finally, when the beer was done, I bid him good-bye and wished him better luck.

Alienation – the great theme of 20th century literature – “every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it” – or as Marlow puts it in Heart of Darkness, “No it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation in any given epoch of one’s existence – that which makes the truth, its meaning – its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream – alone.”

Or as Eliot himself puts it in “The Waste Land” :

I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

We think of the key, each in his prison

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison . .

The image that stays with me is that of those friends around the picnic table together but apart, prayerfully bowing their heads as they stared into their cell phones – an image of our times.

 

Follow on Twitter @ragwatercat

Nassau Street Dub

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Here’s the dub version of “Nassau Street Song,” copyrighted in 1987 by University of South Carolina Press

Click the arrow above for sound.

 

Mad Luke went down to the shanty town

To find the mon dat stole he wife.

With whiskey on he pantin’ breath

And wit he brother switch blade knife.

 

He be so mad he blood do scald

And tears gush out he bloodshot eyes.

He curse de two dat cause de strife

Still hoping’ dat it be a lie.

 

But in he heart he know it true –

He seen de looks dat she be given’.

He see dat mon a-hangin’ round.

He heard the wimmins whispering.

 

So he run down the street a-wailin’

Swearin’ he gwine put den underground.

De other folk look out dey door

To see what make dat devil sound.

 

When he get back to he own house

He kick de lock door open wide.

And there in bed be he own wife

With another mon by her side.

 

They rumble in dat shanty house.

Luke cut de mon, den cut he wife.

Dat bedroom be all colored red

Dat just last month been painted white.

 

De police siren scream through town

and lights was flashing everywhere.

And when the police squad show up,

Dey shocked to find that Luke still there.

 

Dey put den two under de ground.

They took mad Luke to the prison farm,

And now them two can’t cause no strife,

And now mad Luke can’t cause no harm.

Osmond Watson, "City Life"

Osmond Watson, “City Life”

Representative Trey Gowdy: The Thin White Prude

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Although I rather regret turning my attention from the arts to politics, I can’t let this Benghazi show trial the Republican-led House is conducting proceed without a bit of acidic commentary chased with a shot or two of ad homnium bile.

I say “show trial,” because if anyone expected the “fair and balanced”  investigation Boehner promised, the committee’s chairman, South Carolina’s own Trey Gowdy, shattered that misconception Thursday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe when he announced,”If an administration is slow-walking document production, I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.” [emphasis mine]

Trial? I thought it was supposed to be an investigation (even though there have already been two investigations on Benghazi, one led by Republicans. Well, if you first don’t succeed (see failed ad nauseum attempts to repeal Affordable Care Act . . ).

In googling Gowdy, I have discovered that he graduated from a Baptist university (Baylor), and then USC Law, worked as a pugnacious prosecutor, challenged and defeated Rep Bob Inglis, who had scandalized his constituents by stating that climate change was exacerbated by human activity.  On issues, Rep. Gowdy despises affordable health care, voted against Boehner to have the US default on its debts, and believes simultaneously in the sanctity of life and the death penalty. In fact, he would like the Court to revisit Roe versus Wade. In other words, he represents well the God-fearing crackers of his neon red district.

Yet, for all these so-called conservative (my adjective would be reactionary) viewpoints, Gowdy seems to suffer from a strange obsession that drives him radically to change his hair style every couple of weeks. I mean, in his three years in Congress, he has changed his do more often than Madonna has in her career, which, if you think of it, is the antithesis of conservatism.

For example, check out these two photos of Ronald Reagan:

Reagan in 1938

Reagan in 1938

Reagan in 1981

Reagan in 1981

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gowdy, on the other hand, makes David Bowie seem consistent. I’m too lazy to figure out the chronology of his coifs to present the following photos in chronological order, except for the last one, so I have arranged them according to the decades they remind me of.

traditional Reaganesque whipped back '40s look

traditional Reaganesque whipped back ’40s

 

 

1950s Conservative modified marine buzz cut

1950s Conservative modified marine buzz cut

 

 

 

 

Late '60's/Early '70s Robert Redford boyish look

Late ’60’s/Early ’70s Robert Redford boyish look

Early 80s surfer dude

Early 80s surfer dude

New Millennium Semi-punk Spike

New Millennium Semi-punk Spike

 

 

Pee Wee Herman Meets Conan O'Brien Meets Howdy Doody

Pee Wee Herman Meets Conan O’Brien Meets Howdy Doody

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lindsey Graham could never get away with this!

 

Senator Hutto Versus the Baphoons

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Bravo to Senator Brad Hutton D-Orangeburg who filibustered the baphoons who want to punish the College of Charleston for choosing Fun Home for summer reading.

Senator, this dub poem is dedicated to you.

Click arrow for sound (a must)

South Carolina legislature ain’t got no culture

State legislature ain’t got no culture

Bunch of baphoons, mon

fools, mon

Hutto sat upon de rock

and watch baphhon go by

sat upon de rock

and watch de babhoon go by

He say,

“Gwine fillabuster

them ignorant bible-thumpers

gwine say over and over

till my throat gone sore:

gwine say

“‘Hey, Senator Fair,

Senator Grooms,

Listen, you cracker ass baphoon,

you sanctimonious

psalm-singing

son of a bitch

burner of de witch

arse-belching vulagarian,

self-anointed librarian            –

Hey, you, leave de the College alone!”‘

Wes Moore, dub poet/sun god

Wes Moore, dub poet/sun god

Follow on Twitter @ragwatercat

On The Road to Kiawah

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Click great arrow for sound

 

Pick pocketed, mon

lot by lot,

field by field.

 

Pappy dirt gone forever, now,

sold for

dat ready cash, you know,

back in the day,

cash dat dwindle away

bit by bit,

drop by drop,

dollar by dollar

 

disappearing

like water from a leaky

bucket

 

a-plunk

plunk

plunk

 

No, not a drop left, now, no.

So dat is dat,

De bucket dry,

Me pockets empty

here in the shade of a shed

across from a field of condo

on the road to Kiawah.

il_fullxfull.115055579

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shakespeare-on-Speed: Titus Andronicus

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Hello, college student. I can’t believe that slave-driver of a professor of yours has assigned Titus Andronicus. Smart move coming here. Believe me, after reading this summary of the plot, you’ll be praising Jesus you didn’t give the text a try. In fact, the plot is so conjunkificated with murder and mayhem, you might not even get through this easy-to-read amped up version.

Note, I’ve modernized and shortened the names of the characters. Before taking a test or writing a paper, you gotta check out Wikipedia for the real deal on what these fools actually went by back in the day.

Okay, let’s get this over with.

Protagonist Titus sacrifices the eldest son of Tammy, Queen of the Goths, to avenge the deaths of his own sons killed during a 10-year campaign against her people. Titus turns down offer of becoming emperor (bad, if not tragic mistake) and supports the previous emperor’s son Satch’s claim to the throne, much to Satch’s younger brother’s Bass’s chagrin. Satch promises to marry Titus’s daughter, Lavinia, even though she’s engaged to aforementioned younger brother Bass.

You following? Bass done been double-dissed.

Titus’s surviving (but not for long) sons Quinn, Martin and Matt point out to stubborn daddy that Roman Law sez Bass gots first dibs on Lavina, but Titus don’t dig backtalk from offspring and accuses the boys of treason. In the subsequent ensuing scuffle, Titus slays his own boy Matt, which prompts Satch to denounce the crazy-ass Andronicus clan.  So he marries Tammy, whose lover, the moor Aaron makes Iago look like Al Roper in evil comparison.

12-titus-andronicus-lavinia-mutilated-shakespeares-gloves-titus-andronicus-2006-dir-lucy-baileyAnyway, Tammy talks new hubby-to-be to pardon little brother Bass and the entire Andronicus family.  You’ll see why shortly.

Next day, on a royal hunt Aaron convinces Tammy’s sons Demmy and Ron to kill Bass so they can rape Lavinia. “Sho nuff,” they say, do the deed, dump poor Bass’s body in a pit, drag Lavinia into the woods, rape her, then lop off her tongue and hands so she can’t squeal orally or in writing. Aaron then forges a letter that frames two-thirds of Titus’s surviving sons, Martin and Quinn, for Bass’s murder, so of course, Satch arrests their asses.

Got it?

Okay, Titus’s brother Marcus finds mutilated Lavinia and takes her to Titus, who’s still reeling from the accusations leveled at Martin and Quinn. Enter Aaron the Moor with an alleged message from Satch saying that he’ll spare M & Q if Titus or brother Marcus or remaining son Luke cuts of one of their hands and sends it to Satch. Titus volunteers and lets Aaron hack off his left hand.

What was he thinking? Who knows?

Aaron hacking off Titus's hand

Aaron hacking off Titus’s hand

Is this making sense? You see, it’s all about vengeance.

Guess what?  Aaron double crosses Titus. A messenger delivers to Titus the severed heads of his sons Martin and Quinn along with his own severed left hand.

Finally, Titus has had enough, time for revenge. He sends last son Luke off to raise and army among their previous enemies the Goths.

Resourceful Lavinia picks up a stick with her mouth and using that orifice and her two stumps writes the names of assailants Demmy and Ron in the dirt.

Tammy (who seems as adept as Sarah Palin in hiding pregnancies) gives birth to a bi-racial child. Aaron kills the midwife and nurse (after all, cutting off tongues and hands is no guarantee of silence) and flees with his baby, only to get nabbed by Luke with his Goth army in tow.  Luke threatens to hang the baby unless Aaron sings, which he does, like a canary magpie, tells all of the above in blank verse.

Aaron and his newborn baby

Aaron and his newborn baby

Meanwhile, back in the Imperial City, Titus pulls a Hamlet and feigns insanity, sort of.

Thinking Titus is insane and might buy a staged visitation of spirits, Tammy, Ron, and Demmy dress up like allegorical manifestations of Revenge, Murder, and Rape and tell Titus they’ll grant him revenge if he talks son Luke out of attacking Rome. Tammy splits, but Titus talks Demmy and Ron into hanging around.

Bad move, boys.

He slits their throats, grinds their bones, and bakes their heads into a cake.

Okay, ready?

Next day Titus throws a feast and asks Satch if a father should kill her daughter if she has been raped. “Of course,” Satch says, so Titus kills what’s left of Lavinia.

When Satch calls for Ron and Demmy, Titus informs him that they’re in the cake mother Tammy’s munching on.

Titus kills Tammy, Satch kills Titus, Luke kills Satch, is crowned emperor, orders Tammy’s body to be thrown to the wild beasts that hang out outside Rome’s city limits, and sentences unrepentant Aaron to be buried up to chest to starve and/or die of thirst.

Aaron rues not being able to live longer because he feels as if he hasn’t done enough evil in his life.

Theme:  bad karma breeds bad karma/violence sells.

Serving Tammy sons baked in a soufflé

Serving Tammy sons baked in a soufflé

4.5 Rules for English Teachers Seeking Interviews in Today’s Ridiculously Overcrowded Market

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I don’t know if you’ve ever paid attention to films that feature English teachers, but in the movies, English teachers tend to be charismatic intellectuals. Through their Hollywood good looks, dedication, and eloquence, they mesmerize intellectually engaged students who actually enjoy the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

In the movies, English teachers never divide classes into pairs for group work, nor do we get to see them destroying their eyesight trying to disentangle Bennington’s Arabic-looking scrawl, as they visually transliterate groups of words to see if sentences are complete, syntactically clear, correctly punctuated, and on topic.

Parents of students in the movies tend to be worse than in real life. Generally, soulless egotists, they drive their progeny to suicide by demanding they adhere to the parents’ Waspish ways. Never do I see the more typical parent, overbearing, yes, but bearing down on the teacher to make an exception for little Sam who deserves to be AP despite abysmal PSAT scores.

Oh, yeah. I’m forgetting the movie teachers who work at inner city schools, teachers cut from Anne Sullivan/Helen Keller mold, miracle workers who somehow burrow through acres of emotional scars to rescue and then resuscitate the golden child trapped within.

Perhaps movies share some of the blame for so many of our young people going off to college and majoring in English hoping one day to find themselves teaching in idealized English classrooms.

Image

It’s really hard getting a job as an English teacher at a prestigious school because, unlike science and math majors, who can make real money in the real world, English majors generally lack marketable skills and therefore are a dime a dozen (cliché not adjusted for inflation).

Where I teach, we get approximately 300 applications for every opening. Since one of my jobs as an English department chair is to screen resumes, I thought I’d offer some advice for English teachers seeking employment, especially given the success of my previous foray into self-help, Mining Insomnia for Gold. Click here for free copy.

Image

Who knows, these 4.5 simple rules might rescue your CV from trash icon and land it in the interview folder.

Rule 1: Break into the front of the line

Okay, if you want a job, especially if you’re seeking a local gig, you need to target certain schools and check their websites daily. Have your CV and cover letter ready to go with Xs marking the name of the school so you can edit the letter quickly for whatever opportunity arises.

Believe me, the first twenty applicants are going to get much more attention that the last 280.

Rule 2: Create a Good First Impression

Nowadays, emails bearing attachments are the first thing hirers see. At our school, they go to the Headmaster’s Assistant who shovels them my way. Although not a deal breaker by any means, it makes a better impression if you include the Headmaster’s name in the salutation (even though he or she won’t see it) than using the cold, vaguely 1984-ish “To whom it may concern.” Knowing the headmaster’s name demonstrates familiarity with the school.

Also, this communication bears the first impression of you as a writer. You want here efficient, active prose that briskly establishes your interest.

Bad: To whom to may concern: Need a job. Would love to work at your school. By the way, I can teach history as well.

Okay-ish: To whom it may concern: I saw on your website that there’s a job opening for a 6th grade teacher and am therefore applying. Please see my attached resume. I look forward to meeting with you to discuss in person my qualifications.

Much better: Hello, Dr. Grandgrind: I’m interested in the 6th grade position posted on your website. I’ve attached my CV and cover letter. Thanks for your consideration.

Now, although the English major reading these emails might not consciously notice the deft alliteration/assonance of the po-sounds in “position” and “posted” and even less likely to notice the medial consonance of the t sounds of that pairing, sonorous sentences might register unconsciously.

Rule 2.5: Cut the “look-forward-to-meeting-with-you-to-discuss-in-person-my-qualifications” pushy salesperson shit.

Rule 3.5: Compose a brilliant, well-honed yet soulful cover letter that incorporates the job qualifications of the posting with an engaging bio.

I actually read cover letters before I even look at CVs. Even if your candidate graduated summa cum laude from Stanford that doesn’t mean she knows how to write. Academic prose generally sucks.

Rule 4.5: Make your CV aesthetically attractive but not cutsey.

Make the goddamned thing easy to read.

So there you have it, wretched reader, and by the way, if you don’t get an interview, don’t feel discouraged, keep plugging away, and if you do get an interview and not the job, you should still feel proud of yourself – you’ve demonstrated you got the credentials. Generally, life is a crapshoot. All types of contingencies arise. It’s very likely you’re superior to whoever is interviewing you.

The irony is there’s no way I would hire me-back-then if I applied for a job at my school.

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Take Time to Know Her

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[Cue Percy Sledge]: a funereal organ, drums tapping out a rhythm befitting a march to the gallows:

I found a woman I felt I truly loved.
She was everything I had ever been dreaming of.
But she was bad; I didn’t know it.
Her pretty smile never did show it.
All I knew is what I could see,
And I knew I wanted her for me.

Accountant Nikki Haley doing arithmetic

Accountant Nikki Haley doing arithmetic

Too bad McMaster, Bauer, or Sheehan didn’t tap Percy’s “Take Time to Know Her” for his campaign theme song when running against our mathematically/ truth-challenged Governor. Perhaps the righteous gospel undertones of Percy’s dirge might have infiltrated the ideological fortresses of the heavily garrisoned but ultimately impoverished minds of hourly employees who want to see estate taxes abolished, those folks who like to hear their prejudices echoed with panache.

If played often enough, Mama’s wise words – it’s not an overnight thang/take time to know her/please don’t rush into this thang – might have infiltrated the unconscious to tap into some not-quite-yet desiccated pool of ancestral wisdom.

Those losing campaigns should have played Percy Sledge’s soulful warning over and over and over again while campaign workers waved signs brandishing the late Ann Landers’ warning to ‘60s adolescents who might be considering sex: Don’t Flunk Your Chemistry Test! Don’t Flunk Your Chemistry Test! Don’t Flunk Your Chemistry Test! 

Michael "Tammy Wynette" Haley Stands by His Woman as She Counts to 5 Outloud.

Michael “Tammy Wynette” Haley Stands by His Woman as She Counts to 5 Outloud.

A modicum of caution might have been in order: after all, Nikki was, as they say, an unknown, untested: a degreed but uncertified non-public accountant doing books in her daddy’s business, a woman married to an under-employed husband, the two bearing a $300,000 mortgage on a $40,000 income.

With her political office comes a sudden spike in prosperity – a 6-figure salary with Lexington Hospital for a 50K job, a cushy National Guard gig for her seemingly non-officer-grade husband. (Elsewhere, I’ve written about those pesky extra-martial rumors). But hey, South Carolinians weren’t the only ones to go gaga. That permanently constipated pundit George Will un-pursed his lips for some praise:

 The political class and its parasitic lobbyists preferred government conducted in private.  Haley, whose early campaign strategy was exuberantly indiscriminate (“go anywhere and talk to anybody”) won the gubernatorial nomination by defeating the state’s lieutenant governor, its attorney general, and a congressman.

[snip]

That, in turn, is evidence of this: If the question is which state has changed the most in the last half century, the answer might be California. But if the question is which state has changed most for the better, the answer might be South Carolina.

What has South Carolina done to earn such accolades? What have we done that signifies we’ve changed most for the better? Because we now elect immigrants/people-of-color who vow to fight illegal immigration, taxes, and government handouts for the poor rather than electing jowly bald white bigots who vow to fight illegal immigration, taxes, and government handouts to the poor.

Ah, but I digress. My point, dear citizens, to quote the great Tom Waits, is that “the large print giveth, but the small print taketh away.” [Warning: oncoming barrage of mixed metaphors]: Before dumping your spouse for a sexpot. do the following: kick the tires, pour over those background checks, draw up an ironclad prenup.

Take time to know her.

In short, don’t spasmodically fall in lust and marry some tawdry tea party gal who runs with flashy frontier women, or you might end up with a kinghell case of buyer’s remorse.

nikki-haley-sarah-palin-427vm-060910

Come to think of it, George Will might be on to something about one aspect of change in South Carolina. At least no one during the campaign except Jake Knotts was overtly racist/xenophobic. It’s not hard to imagine the Late Lee Atwater would have done if he were running the McMaster campaign. I suspect flashing the pix below as a stentorian basso wonders ad nauseum if she really is one of us?

Haley Family

Randhawa Family

That hair-do in the held snapshot looks more Pentecostal than Sikh to me. No, Nikki is one of us. In fact she’s old school, a practitioner of cronyism, and you have to admit that she’s certainly been transparent when it comes to that.

What type of person makes this type of mistake:

From the State Newspaper 16 March 2011:

Then state Rep. Nikki Haley’s application for a job at Lexington Medical Center reported she earned $125,000 a year – more than five times the amount that Haley, now SC Governor, said she earned on her federal tax returns.

That application also said Haley expected to be paid the same amount – $125,000, a year, according to hospital documents obtained in a public records request by the State.

Haley’s federal tax returns show she was paid $22,000 by her parents’ clothing store, Exotica International, during 2007.

A careless person? A dishonest person? Her spokesman points out that such a discrepancy is illogical, so Haley couldn’t have done it, and that anyway, whoever had filled out that particular page hadn’t signed it and that the page also lacked the official stamp that embossed the other pages of the rest of the application. Maybe some Democratic hacker stole her pin number and social security number and fabricated the form and sneaked into the hospital offices and slipped it into Haley’s application file Mission Impossible style.

Or, but this seems so much less likely. Maybe she lied about her salary, intentionally didn’t sign or stamp the form (in case something like this ever came up).

On the same day that the State published the salary discrepancy story, they also informed us that Haley had removed the most generous benefactor in the state’s history (Darla Moore who donated 70 million gift to the Business School at USC) from the board because she “wanted a new set of eyes,” so she replaces Moore (for whom the Business Department is named) with a Columbia lawyer who just happens to be one of Haley’s biggest campaign contributors.

-1 set of old eyes + 1 set of new eyes – $70 million = idiocy.

I mean, this woman is a piece of work.