Here’s a detail of my professional life that has been bothering me for a while. I suppose I could summarize it by saying this: the levels to which people within our society’s various echelons of corporate structure fail to grasp even the most obvious and obtuse details of said structure is pure madness. Let me explain.

If you’ve never worked in big business, you may be surprised and somewhat disheartened to find out that no CEO, VP, or other such high-ranking officer within a company writes, speaks, or really thinks for him/herself. When you receive a letter, a phone call, a greeting card from a person of this nature, you’re actually receiving the product of a team of assistants, analysts, and other sundry staffers. Hell, s/he probably didn’t even sign it her/himself. Them’s the breaks, and you might as well get over it. I don’t really have a problem with this, per se, though I find it pretty amusing. The simple truth is that the success and endurance of the American corporate structure rests heavily on the elaborate system of buffers that surround The Powers That Be. It’s pretty reasonable, really—if we allowed anyone and everyone access, both incoming and outgoing, to TPTB, the bullshit levels would really get to be intolerable. The teams of buffer staff would instead spend their time cleaning up all the messes created therein rather than maintain what actually shakes out to be a pretty efficient buffer system.

Anyway, so the buffers are real. What really rattles me is the levels to which people from other equally corporate structures seem completely oblivious to and often indignant about the existence of such buffers in my organization. What the hell? The number of people who call here and ask to speak to our SVP (asking for him, of course, by FIRST NAME) and proceed to identify themselves only by their first name and refuse to state their company or purpose for calling is really staggering. Seriously. They try everything, too. They’ll get all shirty and demand to speak to him, then they’ll name-drop for a minute, assuming we’ve never heard of these people but will be really impressed that the caller has a battery of names to vomit on command. I have to admit, the snarkier people get with us, the more resistant we are to let them through the buffer.

Oh, and don’t believe it, ever, when anyone tells you so-and-so is in a meeting/just stepped away/is behind closed doors if you’ve already told them your name and reason for calling. You’ve just been defeated by the buffer, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

So I recently made reference to a list of People I'd Like to Kick in the Teeth, and it wasn't an idle tease. This list will be ever-evolving, as it would be really difficult to ever shut the editorial door on such a broad and dynamic category. Anyway, here it is in its current form.

***The Welch's Grape Juice Girl. Not the reasonably cute one of indistinguishable Asian decent--the blond freak from a few years ago. She actually started her career in commercials (okay, I first noticed her) with a dishwasher ad for Sears. She was pretty insufferable then, but nothing like the mass of despicability she became during her tenure with Welch's. Gag.

***The Dell Kid. I have no idea what affliction has stricken him such that his face must contort and spasm apparently independent of the rest of his body, but gawd. If he could dial down the crazy about 6 notches, I could probably tolerate him, but at this point I'm about at my limit. Dude, I'm getting my sledgehammer.

***The Yes-I-can-freaking-hear-you-now Guy. In the beginning, I actually thought this was mildly amusing, and sometimes even a little clever (such as the spot that appeared during the season premiere of Dawson's Creek where he stood in that boat in that creek). At this point, however, I'm over it. Not just in the I'm-over-the-mild-humor-that-once-was way, but the I'd-rather-weave-a-slinky-through-my-nasal-passages-than-see-this-dead-horse-beaten-again way. Seriously, let's give the poor corpse a rest.

***The Mazda Zoom-Zoom Kid. I never thought this child was appealing. Ever. His little voice actually creeps me out beyond words. I shudder every time I hear the music for a Mazda commercial beginning to vamp because I know it's coming....'zoom zoom.' Yick.

***Nicole Kidman. Way too much color going on here, and a consistently in-your-face display of an inordinately high self-confidence, given her rather blah career. I normally steer far and wide from any celebrity gossip and whatnot, but I'm going to have to agree that Tom definitely traded up with Penelope Cruz. Kidman never ceases to find new ways to squick me out. For exmaple, there's a scene in Eyes Wide Shut (a totally worthless movie, btw) where she stands up to wipe after going to the bathroom. I mean, she was once seated, and then advances to a fully erect, fully vertical standing position at which point she commences with the wipe and deposits the used TP behind her in the toilet. What. The. Hell.

***The aforementioned Texas car dealers and furniture fellas.

Like I said, stay tuned for updates.

If you've never been to Texas, you'll probably never understand me when I say it's like a whole 'nother country here. I experience frequent, though fleeting, moments of utter paralysis when a little voice in my head reminds me that I LIVE here. It's usually followed by another voice that whines "Nuh-uh!" and thus the paralysis starts, since the first voice has the bonus of reality to make its case and therefore inevitably wins.

It will never be home, for many reasons. A large many of those reasons can be captured in the weather category, because the meteorological happenings of this place are just plain batshit crazy, and resemble nothing that comes close to my frame of, say, normal. I'll come back to this much more in the future, but for now let's just say I don't get it. How in the name of all that is holy can it rain so damned much with absolutely no warning? And the humidity....yeesh. I recently conceded defeat in the three-year battle with my hair in which I have languished dispiritedly while attempting to grow it long. Given the number of days wherein the air quality outside bears frightening similarity to a giant post-hot-shower bathroom, the ongoing quest for straight, non-frizzy, non-bushy hair seems a ridiculous exercise in wasting time and ending up with merely a set of tired arms to show for my labor. So it's all gone, end of battle.

But this isn't the moment in which I feel like waging my fullout disapproval of the weather in this place. No, right now I'd like to attack the insidious beast that is Texas car dealership ads. I'm serious, if you want to completely overdose on your class-A good ole' boy Texas expectorant, spend a Sunday afternoon with Texas cable stations and you'll be good to go. The market is so large that the budget for most dealerships is actually high enough to produce decent-looking local commercials--a far cry from the locally-produced pieces of crap I know from home. However, if I'm going to put Texas car dealership commercials up against the local business wastes of airspace from back home, I'll go ahead and say the Texas ads lose overall, regardless of higher quality. Don't get me wrong, those ads from home are nauseating as all hell, but I'm pretty sure it's a uniquely Texas thing to watch local ads and actually feel less smart. While we're at it, go ahead and lump local furniture store ads in that category. Though certainly not as well-produced, they equal (if not surpass) the stupidity levels of the dealership ads. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and pencil in the primary purveyors of said local ads to my list of People I'd Like to Kick in the Teeth (publication forthcoming).