Whoa! Didja get the numbers off that truck?!?

August 31, 2001 - 8:39 a.m.

Woo hoo

It's Friday. Yeah. Three day weekend coming up. Uh huh. I can't wait for five o'clock, and I'm outta here.

These are all things that unemployed and retired people don't say. I know it's Friday, but really� Saturday comes tomorrow, and then Sunday and then Labor Day and then another week begins. I'm trying to map out a schedule so that the days don't become the same and run together. I always used to say that the vacation was long enough when you forgot what day it was.

Well this ain't no damn vacation.

I can feel my father close to me. I'm glad he's here, I feel a real strong sense of work ethic and "what have you done to look for a job today" and that's a good thing, people. Hi dad. These are my readers.

I remember when I was in high school, and my dad had had enough of being self-employed. The world he was in was changing and the need for "manufacturers representatives" was drying up. I was a kid and wasn't privy to all the details, but the bottom line was: he started looking for a job. Now this was the 1970's and we didn't have faxes or email or cell phones (and we LIKED it.) And no severance pay either. I really don't know how he did it. It was strange having him around all the time, since his traveling took him away two or three nights a week. I remember scrambling around as a little kid trying to un-do all the things that would piss him off before he got home, but sometimes I would miss a thing or two. He did find a job, but after several months looking. He got strange offers on lines to rep. Pole buildings? Church furniture, like pews and stuff? Not MY dad!

The Jerry Lewis telethon is on this weekend. I hate that guy. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that I bet that a lot of people hate that guy. He seems like he's a real prick and he's very insincere. Now, how can I hate someone I don't know? I try. I hate the telethon too. I'm thinking that so many hated Jerry Lewis that he got into this telethon thing to show the Jerry Lewis Haters Club that he really was a nice guy. See? I'm hugging this ugly sick kid in a wheelchair. I have a big bag of money for him.

I hate the telethon because it reminds me of a bad time long ago. I was about to enter high school and I really really didn't want to go. I was a neurotic teenager and I had a fear of new things. It was Labor Day and I was so depressed I couldn't get myself out of the living room. The Telethon sucked me in because it was one long TV show that never ends. If it's a regular show it has an end time and you can say to yourself "okay when this show is over I'll get out of this chair and try to go do something." But the Jerry Lewis Telethon had none of that to break the suction. I couldn't move. And there was Jerry, my nemesis, smoking and sweating and in control. He used to stay up all night. He must have been speeding like a mofo. I'm sure he had his own Dr. Nick with the finest amphetamines available. They would have these cutaways to local air, and these talentless people would give it up (y'all) for the Jer-Man and his heartwarming telethon. Ick. It sickens me to write about it.

Hi ho, hi ho. It's off to looking for work I go.

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