Longer delay than I intended, mostly because I was getting sick of talking about myself. In a bit I'll post my thoughts on the finale of 24 and Buffy (in the mean time, you can read Charley Taylor's hysterically overwrought piece on 24.

Anyway, on Monday, which already seems like a million years ago, I stepped into it again. My friend Veg, whose blog I'd link to if she hadn't taken it down a couple months ago, e-mailed me at work to tell me that my name was misspelled on the company website. Also she pointed out that the site was unintentionally hilarious in its windy mangling of the English language. I decided it would be good to forward a polite version of Veg's criticism over our office manager, who I'll call Brent. I knew that the person who wrote and designed our website, a grumpy but fundamentally hard working guy in the art department who, like a good portion of our company, does not understand the fundamentals of English, might take offense, but I figured it would be short lived. I also suggested in the e-mail that we hire a freelance editor to rewrite the site. That appealed to me for a number of reasons, the main one being that I used to work at the web division of a publishing house and I've found myself missing the atmosphere that the freelancers provided. Even though they were doing mind numbingly dull work for peanuts, they seemed livelier than anyone else at the company, because they had lives outside of the office. One was a rabbi in training, another an actress, someone else a bassist who went on tour with a band opening for Jewel one summer. Here, no one seems to have a life outside of the office, and I work at a company that manufactures the dullest stuff you could possibly imagine. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I imagined the downtown hip freelancer blowing into our office, and bringing with them the cool, insouciant wind of freedom.

Anyway, I'm sure you've guessed the twist already. Cajun Christ (new name for C), brought it to my attention that actually Brent wrote the text for the website himself. Brent is very proud of his skill with the English language and he makes a great show of giving every new employee a grammar test and mentioning how he used to teach English to immigrants. At this point, like Veg, you may consider my e-mail a faux pas, but not terribly bad. After all, he's an office manager. "Aren't they the people who requisition pens?" Veg asked. However, here the Office Manager is more like a COO and takes joy in micromanaging every department he can. He is also known for holding grudges. So I spent a few hours pondering how Brent would make life unpleasant for me, and finally decided to see him to explain that I meant no offense. He said he took none, and used the opportunity to lecture me that true maturity meant "being able to see yourself not as you would like to be perceived, but as you actually are perceived. And that is what differentiates me from you people." Yes, he actually talks that way. I'm told to expect the other shoe to drop in a few weeks or so.