Item: Economy=crappy; jobs=in toilet. Just got an email containing the word "sorry" about six times canceling one of my upcoming interviews. Know I should be really disappointed but am finding it difficult to muster the strength, because last night I got offered another interview. So still have two interviews, but now they are earlier. Two weeks. Is not very long. Fortunately I have another 18 months here and next year I will go out for jobs for real, and perhaps in between I will have some time to do work and/or sleep.
Item: Have just given myself a haircut. Not the metaphorical haircut everyone is talking about vis a vis the economy, but an actual cutting of my hairs. I was getting a bit scraggly, and I noticed last week, in a hotel with opposing mirrors, that there was an alarming differential between different parts of my hair. This is due, I think, to my last haircut, which was quite expensive and which I did not, actually, like. I understand that I am probably not the best person to be cutting my own hair, but so far I have found nobody who can do it (a) quicker, (b) cheaper, or (c) with less probability of failure (I have only given myself one haircut that I thought was actively bad, and have received many from other people). Perhaps haircuts that professionals give are not meant to last for seven or eight months? But I do not like for my hair to be as short as professionals insist on cutting it. Anyway, right now it is about 20% from the short end of my preferred length range (before it had been about 10% from the long end - I cut it because it was scraggly, not b/c it was too long, and I didn't want to go too short in case I had to correct it later) and, while I'm sure it looks terrible, I am pretty sure it cannot be as bad as it was (seriously - there were spots in the back that were multiple inches longer than the spots right next to them).
Item: they are trying to poison us. I am convinced that the air in my office is full of mold or evil chemicals. I have noticed that very frequently I start to feel sick in the middle of the afternoon, and it always clears up when I go home. On weekends or when I work from home, this doesn't happen. Also, I don't usually get watery eyes when I am actually ill.
Item: speaking of the economy, I totally fail to understand.
part a) Bonuses. Boni? This is what everyone is talking about now TSTM gave me a long explanation of how the bonus is actually a part of their pay, just deferred to the next year for tax purposes (which seems like it should be illegal for companies to do), and to not get any bonus at all would be like taking a major pay cut. Except (a) lots of people have taken pay cuts, and perhaps people in bankrupt companies or industries would normally be among them, and (b) I am having a hard time feeling sympathy for people who need, like, 1/3 of their income so little that they can get it all at once. Would it work for my employer to give me $50,000 in February and the rest of my salary over the rest of they year? No, because I would be paying them money most of the time, and I would die. I understand that my skills are not as valuable as those of the people who destroy the economy for a living, but still.
(This should not be construed as saying TSTM should not get a bonus. He is not one of the evil ones; he just works there. And obviously he should get a very big bonus, and also he should get at least half of his boss's bonus for saving his ass pretty much constantly over the last few months, and also he should not have to attend 9 a.m. meetings on Sunday mornings, particularly when I want to sleep in, and somebody should make him leave work at a reasonable hour every day and occasionally take a vacation, or at the very least raise his salary by about 50% because he is brilliant and hardworking and clearly they do not appreciate him enough. I am talking about the big fish and the brokers and so forth, the people who are getting as bonuses more than normal people make in their entire lives, financed by taxpayers like you and me.)
(Also, I do not really resent my … petite… earning potential. It is just, I have never known people who made more money than me until now, because I have only known other academics, and if they made more money it was because they were further along. Nor have I ever really known people who made less. It is sad seeing people I know who are brilliant and hardworking but, because they are grad students and are trying to support spouses and small offsprings, cannot afford to do things like eat lunch. I try to help such people when I can, in ways that are not too obvious. But it does not escape me that monies I consider trivial - $5 for lunch from the cart - are out of their reach. Nor does it escape me that monies I consider too large to disburse - $250 for a nice, feminine, leather case to hold my laptop on interviews - are considered trivially small by some people, and that I am considered cheap for not wanting to spend them. I am in fact cheap. But living here has made me aware of all the pleasant things money can buy and how many people take them for granted and how they can actually be quite nice. For the first time ever, my cheapness is eclipsed by the fact that I do not actually make all that much. There are actually things I would like, that don't strike me as unreasonably expensive, that I cannot afford. It has never happened before, and it is very strange.)
b) (of the economy) What, really, is the problem? I mean, I know what the problem is, I have read about it, derivatives built on the back of subprime mortgages that failed, leveraged banks, massive panic. But I do not, on an intuitive level, understand. All of these numbers that used to be very big and now are very small (or are very big, but negative) - they are just numbers. The actual stuff has not changed. All the houses are still there. All the pieces of paper with promises written on them are still just promises. Any money owed by one company or person is owed to another company or person. All of the physical stuff that people have been buying and selling - it still exists, and its fundamental usefulness to people hasn't changed. It is still just as nice to have a new laptop or purse or house as it was two years ago. So I am not sure why the problem isn't in everyone's collective heads.
Moreover, it seems like nothing bad has really happened. I mean, there were a bunch of worthless pieces of paper being passed around, and some rich people were making themselves richer by being paid 5% or whatever of every worthless-paper transaction. And now it has been exposed that the pieces of paper are worthless and a lot of people are very upset. But so what? Nothing of value has been destroyed because nothing of value ever existed. The worthless-paper boom was illusory, and the wealth everyone in the worthless-paper business thought they had never existed, so nobody really lost anything; they only realized that they never had anything to begin with.
c) Increasingly I think people should not be allowed to graduate high school without being taught basic financial management or at least subtraction.
