Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Decadence of the Masses

The semi-new reporter and I got called into the "meeting room" by the Boss today...which is fine. Except we were the only two called in. And on "meeting day", when the whole editorial staff (all 6 of us) crams in together, it's a little intimidating and potentially career threatening.

So I crossed myself, asked the Staff to pray for me and headed into this top-secret journalistic mission. Turns out we're re-organizing our beats. How fucking great is that? Now, after almost a year of faking smiles and offering insincere handshakes, I have to say goodbye to all the assholes that I've conned into liking me and begin the process all over again. Fuck me.

I really don't even think it would be that bad except for my new beat now includes a town that's a good 45 mintues from home. I'm putting enough miles on my car for not enough reimbursement as it is already without having to drive even farther to fraternize with a bunch of stuffed-shirt, small-town, bullshit politicians.

Oh well. As I said before, it's been almost a year, which means that I'll soon be considered experienced enough to proceed further along in my chosen field, a.k.a get a better job and get the fuck off the sinking ship that the paper is becoming.

On a somewhat sad thought: my chosen field, should I had known what I was getting into four or five years ago when I took all those classes in college, might have been something else. I've dedicated my entire education, which really wasn't all that educating in the first place, to a craft that 1.Stresses me out; 2.Pisses me off; 3.Doesn't really interest me that much; and 4.Has a shitty pay scale.

Don't get me wrong though, I love writing. Poetry, fiction, blogging and just writing for fun is really great. I do enjoy it. But journalism is a different thing. All the big stories have to be about death or destruction or upheaval of some sort. The common pages are left for the feel-good pieces; the ones that give people hope or pride or happiness in general. There's already enough bad news in the world without a small weekly newspaper focusing on the decadence of the masses.

Word to your mother.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Nobody's Perfect

"...But I've come to believe that errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angles of personality, the riddle of a soul." -House of Leaves

Welcome

Welcome to the Smoker's Lounge...not sure what's going to take place here. If it winds up resembling my life in any way, shape or form it more than likely will not have a focus.
Word to your mother.