Something I’ve heard in every job I’ve ever had is “you should be in sales.”  This usually follows me spinning some ultra-convincing lie in which I spew effusive praise about something I don’t really care about in one way or another but somehow describe in a way that is totally cool.  Seriously.  I don’t know how I do it but I do.  This coupled with my inability to feel embarrassed by my own misbehavior always prompts people to tell me I’d be great at sales, and don’t I know I could make a ton of money doing that?

I guess.  A few of my friends have banked in sales, enough to buy themselves homes and stay afloat during periods of unemployment.  That’s great for them because I’m all about not being a hobo, but sales just seems so skeezy to me.  Marketing is one thing; it’s a steady paycheck fueled by the manipulation of data and psychology.  The sociopath in me can do the hell out of marketing.  But knowing that my income is dependent on gambling on another person’s whims, on basically putting myself out there like some sort of goods prostitute on a desperation binge?  Yuuuuuuuuck.

Besides, I know I sound like I’d be good at sales, but I’m so fucking lazy at it.  Remember back in grade school when we had to sell candy bars for something or another?  I sold them.  I went door-to-door in my crappy neighborhood, asking people if they wanted to buy wildly overpriced chocolate for no other reason than I was a child and they should do it if they wanted to be decent human beings.  Same with Girl Scout cookies.  Traipsing around the block with my Brownie sash and an order spreadsheet, essentially asking everyone to support one of the largest gender organizations in the country, and even then I understood the point of Girl Scouts, but I still thought it was stupid because all my troop leader ever let us do was shitty arts n’ crafts projects.  And I am terrible at arts n’ crafts.

Anyway, while other kids got off on putting up some serious numbers for crappy prizes, I was pretty much whatever.  I refused to debate the merits of my dessert items with my potential “customers,” preferring instead to shrug and be like, “you can buy them if you want…or not…can I go home now?”

Which is actually a pretty effective method of marketing, now that I’m older and I know better.  Acting cool enough to not care about someone else’s money is a gangbusters way to make people want something.  It’s how I sell $20 bottles of beer at Job 2.  Sure, they could buy the La Fleur Misseur, but they could also enjoy a $15 house-brewed pitcher.  Whatevs.  Less people can handle the La Fleur, but…oh, you want the bottle?  Okay.  That’s cool.

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Speaking of cool, I started watching The L Word last night.  Aside from a couple of annoyances (Pam Grier seems like kind of an idiot, and do women always have to talk about everything?), it’s okay for a soap opera about lesbians.  Especially Katherine Moennig as Shane, who reminds me of all the coolest boys I ever dated.

I’ve said before that vaginas just creep me out, but I’m fascinated by the way this woman inhabits her character.  Everything she does, from the way she moves to the way she speaks to the way her face reacts, is so engrossing to watch.  If you can stand needlessly dramatic pauses and fucking acres of girl conversation, I highly recommend Netflixing this to check her out.

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In case you saw the new masthead and are like, whaaaaa?,  I’ve given up on how this place looks.  I tried one measly edit – the masthead picture, because it’s of my dining room table, extremely typical of how this oft-used part of my house looks on any given day, and I plan on using it on my WordPress once the export is available from Blog City – and it wound up looking like someone’s Geocities page.  I like and will miss a lot of things about Blog City, but the wonky whims of their CSS Wizard leave something to be desired.

A few people have asked me which blog they’re supposed to be reading.  For now, it’s Blog City.  My subscription will be extended until October or whenever the WP export is available.  Thankfully, my friend Mike said he’d help with moving everything over, although when the export status wasn’t clear, he Googled “Blog City WordPress” and the first result was Ephemera Etc.  I am the most popular person who doesn’t know what they’re doing!