07.11.01 - 7:01 p.m.

If I wrote a cover letter the way my thought processes are going, it would go something like this:

Dear Important Magazine Hiring Person,

I need a job. I�m good at designing, shopping, randomly spouting out useless pieces of knowledge and anything involving pop culture, especially teenybopper bands. I like travel, scrawny pale guys playing guitars and cheese.

I would be great for your magazine because I can stare at a computer for hours, especially when you allow me to check E! Online at least once an hour, in case there is a breaking entertainment story such as Michael Skupin being pepper-sprayed by an angry animal-rights activist or the Tara Reid/Carson Daly meltdown.

Please hire me. But only if you are based in New York, Chicago, San Francisco or Boston. Otherwise, I have no need for you, small-town America!

Best,
CLB

Dear lord, I wish I could really send that letter. If nothing, maybe the HR people will laugh so hard they�d hire me for comic relief. Alas, what are the chances?

I was caught napping in the newsroom today by Absent-Minded Professor Uncle. Does it matter? No, because I was waiting there for THREE BLOODY HOURS for Miss Fanny Pack to edit my story. Fucking sodding mess. Plus, he walks around with TOILET PAPER hanging out of his pants!

The more I get scared or nervous about something, the more I freeze and deny and sublimate my fear into mad cash spending. The cover letter yet unwritten, the contacts yet uncontacted, I instead sit in my technology transit meeting and think about buying a hat at Burberry on the way home. Why, why? Bad, bad! Blockage to the system, brain malfunction.

And I know it comes from Padre and his stupid habits and compulsions of always taking us to the Gap on Tuesday and Thursday custody visit nights, and calling me up from the J.Crew outlets to see if I need anything and fucking shopping vacation weekends in NYC and calling me up now and asking me how the goddamn job search is going, well, not that great, Dad, because I can�t put my fingers on the keys and type, I still can�t bring myself to make it a reality. Yet.

At least I get to listen to a tape with "Ho" and "Jump" on it. The one by Kriss Kross, not by Van Halen.