2003-10-20

Today was my first day of training. I�m still anticipating this new job with deep and profound misgiving, but my personal vortex of gloom was alleviated somewhat by the sight of my new office. I still don�t have a door (oh! a door! Such stuff as dreams are made on!), but I do have a rather large cubicle with a television and two huge windows. Inspecting my view, I said �Hey! I can see my house from here!� and I wasn�t even joking. (Exaggerating slightly, perhaps � I can�t see my apartment building as such, but I could were it not for the big cluster of trees right behind it.) At least I�ll be able to look at my home as I while away my waking hours further enraging irate journalists with my dubious French.

I also noticed subtle differences between the world of the average slouching government underling and the rarified air of the Minister�s office. For one thing, people up in the Penthouse of Power dress like professionals, and not like premenstrual trailer moms or five-dollar hookers: nary a sweatpant nor a stiletto heel did I see. And when I sat in on a meeting today, the participants actually a) had legitimate points to make and b) fucking got to them, which was a noticeable difference from the usual gathering of public servants, who tend to gossip and gripe ad infinitum while seasons pass, civilizations rise and fall and the universe ceases its outward expansion and begins its final slow inward collapse. So that was a nice change.

I�m still pessimistic, but it would take some pretty aggressively fortuitous circumstances to change my fundamental state of being; and too much good luck makes me nervous anyway.