(Sorry this is late, plane landed after 11:00pm last night.)

I was thirty and working as a temp in the military industrial complex. I was the office help for a huge lawsuit, working sixty or more hours a week. The company had taken on a project for the government—that’s what defense contractors do, of course—and in those innocent days before Halliburton, they had accepted specs that were beyond the capabilities of any company to produce. The government knew that. But the idea was to make the goals impossible with the hope that the company would come up with unexpected ways to fulfill some of them. Then the political wind shifted and suddenly those specs became not goals, but hard and fast specifications. Much nastiness.

Me, I typed. Like I said, I was an office temp. I worked with a manager and two lawyers from a bit Washington DC law firm. One of the guys billed at $210 and hour. (I billed at $7.50 an hour.) One day, he took one of my floppy discs that contained all of the latest versions of the incredibly huge legal document I was typing. He said he didn’t have it. And I got mad.

My nervous system lit up like a Christmas tree and all the tiredness from the crazy hours I was working burned out of me and I explained to the $210 an hour guy just exactly how I felt. I felt empowered. I felt pretty good. I liked being angry. It was a lot better than a lot of other ways I normally felt—like anxious. Righteous anger. Adrenaline.
I went back to my desk and half an hour later found the disc.

I went crawling back to the lawyer and apologized. (He, of course, had forgotten it. You don’t make partner in a powerful Washington DC law firm if having somebody yell at you bothers you.) But I didn’t forget. Read More »

UNCA BUZZKILL SEZ . . .

I got your Envy right here. Too bad YOU don’t get any.

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Hi, kids, and welcome to this week’s edition of “Unca Buzzkill Sez.” Your boy Denton was supposed to occupy this space with a few words about the Deadly Sin of Envy – but he’s off washing the feet of impoverished former Enron executives or petting fluffy bunnies or something. The guy claims to have no experience with Envy, and instead swears that he’s grateful for everything in his life and rejoices in all good things that come to others.*

Yeah, it sounds like a load to Unca Buzzkill, too. But don’t worry. Unca B. has plans to fix Mr. HappyPants’s little red tent-show wagon soon enough. In the meantime, it falls to Unca to help the rest of you explore this nasty little spot of pustulence eating away at your hearts.

To be honest, Unca Buzzkill wishes he could explicate Despair for you instead. You see, Unca knows all about Despair, having socked away his entire 401(k) in Zeppelin stocks on May 5, 1937.

Besides, Despair is usually described (as Joyce Carol Oates explains) as the only sin God CANNOT forgive. So even though it isn’t one of the traditional Seven Deadlies (except on a few Orthodox lists), there’s actually far more juicy badness to be found in simple Despair than in any of those splashy (yet forgivable) sins like fornication or taking-the-name-of-the-Lord-in-vain. Seriously. F*** me. I mean, Jesus.

Read More »