Friday, December 29, 2006
(8:42 AM) | Brad:
Friday Morning Confessional
I confess that I unnecessarily lie to my employer and that these lies are getting more extravagant and exhausting, requiring more and more preparation and perpetuation. Two examples. (1) A few months ago I needed a day off to finish a writing project, but instead of simply asking for the day off, as any normal person would do, especially in light of my employer's generosity in such matters, I made up a story about my car breaking down the previous evening on a highway somewhere outside a major Midwestern metropolitan area some 110 miles away. I had unknowingly (at the time) laid the groundwork for this lie by going into detail for several weeks previous about how rickety and crippled my car is, and have since had to remember this particular horror story in all subsequent reports on the status of my car and its repairs. (Postscript: To insure the "truthiness" of this lie, after finishing my writing project that afternoon, I drove around the outer loop of my metropolitan area for about 100 miles, in hopes that the car might break down.) (2) A couple of weeks ago the wife & I decided our Christmas gift to one another would be a weekend away in a wilderness cabin. Again, I had plenty of time to simply ask for the two days off. But, again, no. Instead, I said that I had a job interview five hundred miles away. My boss, being very supportive of the fact that I have actual professional aspirations, was more excited than I'd anticipated -- even visiting the prospective employer's website to check the place out, wishing me luck for four consecutive days before I "hit the road," and providing a bottle of wine as consolation for "not getting the job." "They're loss," he said so sympathetically I wanted to cry. Nevertheless, unswayed by the guilt (until now), and upon further inquiry about the position I did not receive, I then said that I know the woman who got the job, and that while she deserves the job more than I because of her publication record, her work is very uninspired and teaching atrocious. In the week that followed, this woman has taken on a nearly mythical quality. (Postscript: To be fair, I had a particular woman in mind when I sexed my opponent, so, you know, no symbolism or sexism intended. Though, now that I think of it, the woman I had in mind is also still without a job, so perhaps I should I am not so much a sexist as am I just a dick.)Unrelatedly, as I finish season three of The Wire, I can confess pretty that, despite critical opinion, neither Bubbles nor Omar Little are the most interesting characters in the show (up to this point -- I've not seen season four yet). It has to be Stringer Bell. Supportive or contrary arguments are of course welcomed. (Postscript: this particular confession is unrelated, I think, to the one above, except for the fact that Stringer Bell is also an ambitious liar whose lies, even though many were done with the best of intentions, at least from the perspective of a criminal mastermind intent on safely selling copious amounts of heroin, inevitably catch up to him. My lies, I should point out, have very little to do with heroin.)
