Howling like a hypocrite at an auto-da-fe

Sometimes I am so filled with dread that I am actually sad. Today I am going to a meeting where I anticipate being yelled at, not because I've done something wrong, but because...because things are the way they are and there is nothing right in this godforsaken shitsucking world. (I would love to elaborate, but self-interest and my love of dental insurance prevents me from doing so.) Dealing with difficult clients (and the farcical use of "client" is something I am obliged to do based on my job description) makes me sometimes wish that by "clients" I actually meant "johns" because if I am going to get fucked I'd rather be paid $300/hour for the duty. As my gentleman's agreement stands now, I'm lucky if we're served spiritless apricot danish.

Speaking of getting fucked, see this? These are all iMacs, just like the one I work on, except the difference is that mine is sitting on my desk and it doesn't have a yellow "AUTHORIZED FOR DISPOSAL" sticker on it. Wanna know why I'm the only person in the office who is working on a five-year-old computer? Yeah, me too.

And although N and I have confirmed our extended trip to Italy (starting in less than two weeks, Thanks God for blessing our expat friend J with a legitimate visa so that we may frolic with her and The Great Leader on beaches where banana hammocks are considered Puritanical) I can't help but feel that vacation time is not coming soon enough. Maybe partying will help.

I am so itching for a vacation that I'm feeling increasingly homesick for Hollywood, Florida, a town I haven't visited in 15 years, but which was my childhood home every year during the winter months. Things I miss about Hollywood: Walking with my grandfather every morning to get the paper and stopping to look at the jewelry in the windows of the pawnshops--singing the Mulligan Guard the whole way; eating chicharrones at the dog track flea market; stealing grapefruits with my grandmother from the neighboring yard; swimming in the not-very-warm Atlantic, dodging Man O' Wars and giant globs of tar that floated in on the tide; 3 o'clock Sunday spaghetti dinners; hanging laundry in the back yard near-overwhelmed by the stink of bleach and rotting sapodillas; my great aunt Chi Chi's ropa vieja and flan (a dessert I truthfully didn't like at the time, but now of course I'd give my left arm for her recipe).

Of course, Hollywood then was famous for two things: the largest French(-Candadian)- speaking population in the USA (and its attendant and impressive assortment of distended-beer-belly-Speedo-overhangs) and the Hollywood Mall, where Adam Walsh was abducted by Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole. Yay Hollywood!

(Hm. There was jai alai, too, I guess.)

The fact is that Hollywood was sort of the Edith Bouvier Beale of South Florida. It had the most gorgeous Art Deco-to-'40s architecture, and a lovely, if slightly decrepit, downtown circle where you could buy espadrilles and girdles and Floridian (emphasis on the "florid") shirts. Since I've been gone though there's been a renaissance of sorts and now you can get Thai food but probably not a reasonably priced, pre-owned three-finger gold ring that reads Raphael. As is the case with all festive rehabbing, you can thank the gays for this.

What was my point? Right. As we watched Big Love last night, I even began thinking, You know, Utah is kind of pretty. I wonder how far that compound is from the SLC airport?

Oh, and by the way, we missed the season finale of The Sopranos, so woe betide he who mentions any of the plot points to me today.