Art, wires and Pizza Hut

A large peperoni pizza. Hey, just because I didn't like managing a Pizza Hut doesn't mean I loathe the best of all comfort foods. TO BE EATEN WITH HANDS ONLY. NO KNIFE AND FORK ALLOWED. THE NATIVE NEW YORKER HAS SPOKEN! (Wiki commons photo)

This is not amusing. BT has placed its internet boxes on busy corners. Last Friday morning, about 1 a.m., a drunk decided to decorate the bonnet of his car with the backside of the BT box.

Since that moment, we have been paying BT for nothing. For a while, Simon and I used the single wireless dongle we possess to connect, running the thing up and down the stairs as needed. OK, it was exercise. But I can think of better ways.

Finally, with a long siege in view, Simon strung wires from his main computer, down the staircase from the top floor of the house to the middle floor, where my studio/office is, and to my computer so we could both use the dongle at the same time. Of course, we both have to be careful of using too much bandwidth. But still, much better than a constant chorus of "Are you finished with it yet?"

Now then, to tidy up before I go on.

In the US, the ground floor is the first floor, the next one up is the second floor, the third is the third. Simple. In the UK, the ground floor is the ground floor, the next one up is the first floor, and the third floor is the second floor. Confusing. Because I've inhabited both worlds, I use whichever is appropriate to the audience. Problem: This blog has UK and US readers.

A right mess an' all

Anyway, the result of all this interfloor wire stringing is that the house looks like it was jerry-built. This does not please my design-oriented soul. At all. I will admit that my office/studio is not the neatest thing on earth, but the rest of my living space is pretty darn neat, always is, always was. Clutter upsets me. Bad design upsets me. Things out of place upset me. No, I am not all chilled properly out as an artist ought, I suppose, to be. But remember, please, that I was a journalist for 30 years, which meant I really had to know where things were--like my notebook, my car keys, my next meal--and that has sort of been the substrate of my life.

I expect I will, just for fun, send BT a bill for my lost time. Or maybe I should just thank the goddess of communication that the dumbshit who lost it on the curve didn't knacker the telephone service as well.

All this at the precise time I need to be online A LOT to promote my artwork. Sigh. Not that I like doing that social networking thing. But I suppose it beats some of the jobs I've had in the past, including:

Deli clerk. I took the job before college, left it when I sliced my thumb down to the bone on the rotary slicer while cleaning same. That wasn't the bad part, though. The bad part was that I always smelled like chubs, the name by which horrid, rancid-looking dried fish bought by old farts were called.

Waitress/short order cook at a diner near a New York State mental health hospital. OK. Yes, there were releasees who came in, but you could hardly tell them from the staff, frankly. I did it for about three days, but after cooking fried eggs while trying to serve customers including the ubiquitous cops who had come in for their daily freebies...enough already.

Typist in dean's office at the university I went to. Did I mention I never took typing and got through 14 papers a semester for four years with two-finger typing? Lots of wite-out. When I took the typing job, I needed money for an end-of-term trip to Montreal with friends. The dean's office needed envelopes typed and didn't care what they looked like. Finite gig. Thankfully.

Editor of insurance industry magazine. Oy vay. OK. I needed the money. Bush had been elected and the economy began to shut down the minute he opened the White House door, really. The publisher was a fat jackass who demanded I watch Jerry Springer with him in his office any day I hadn't managed an appointment out of the office. He fired me. Thank goodness. It meant I got unemployment payments for months and months, so I rebuilt my freelance business.

Assistant manager, Pizza Hut. No kidding. Really. I did that, as recently as nine years ago. There was another freelance slump, so it seemed tempting. Managers could earn 100 grand. And I love pizza. It was nasty, though. Every night, the till had to balance to the penny, which simply isn't possible in retail, and it was crazy-making to grill every server and hostess to see who might have tucked 17 cents in their pocket, or dropped it on the floor. I got a job as an editor of a dental magazine (not really better, money was worse and the people were slimeballs...but at least I wasn't chasing small change until midnight in the stench of rancid grease.)

Yup, going on line to promote my artwork looks pretty darn good.