I got a call from a company I gave my resume to at the Career Fair in February. They didn’t want to set up an interview - they have some need of data-entry done over the week and thought I might like to earn $10 an hour for it (”as many hours as you want!”). If my schedule wasn’t full of school and papers and work, I would’ve jumped on it.

But even though I can’t take advantage of the situation, I’m happy that people are noticing my resume - even if it is only for a $10 an hour data entry position.

Anyway. I’ve got to get back to work on my Love Actually paper.

Yesterday, Marilyn said “I swear the phone answering person still doesn’t give him the message though. How on earth am I supposed to explain about our door if I can’t leave a message?”

Marilyn, the truth is, that unless the directions you’re trying to give are something bone-numbingly simple, (like, “it’s the house with the neon green door”) the idiot taking your order doesn’t care a whit about writing down the directions - after all, unless he’s a driver who happens to be answering the phone, it doesn’t matter to him how long it might take your pizza to get to the door. I would recommend asking the phone idiot (if they’re girls, we call them “phone bitches”) to write on the ticket or put into the computer for the driver to call you before they leave. Make sure you provide a phone number that you’ll answer, and remember that if the driver is calling you from the road, it won’t show up as a pizza company number.

Today, Evil Spock said “I never know what to tip you guys.”

Evil Spock - you can always tip too little, but you can never tip too much. My average tip is four bucks, but I work in an area with a high capita income, so, tone down my suggestions since the average income in your neck of the woods is like five hundred bucks a year or something. I’d suggest 20% or $4, whichever is more. Believe me - word gets around at pizza shops about who is and who isn’t a good tipper. Once you get a reputation as a good tipper, you should notice an upswing in service.

**

Who am I kidding? The inside idiots, guy or gal, pizza makers or phone answerers, are all called “phone bitches.” You know why? Because they’re a collective cabal of retarded bitches who call in their efforts rather than putting forth any, y’know, effort. Phone Bitches! All of ‘em!

No, no, I’m just joking — but I bet the guy was a lousy tipper or something.

Immediately after calling defendant DCT Enterprises, plaintiff’s phone rang and plaintiff’s caller ID indicated that it was the first Papa John’s store. Plaintiff answered the phone and was immediately confronted by the first store employee plaintiff had spoken with earlier. The store employee, among other things, said:

a. He knew of plaintiff’s address and where plaintiff lived;

b.He also lived in plaintiff’s neighborhood;

c. He was a gang member belonging to the “Blood’s” gang;

d. He was going to “shoot up” the plaintiff’s house in a “drive by” shooting; and

e. He was going to kill everyone in plaintiff’s house.

Four (4) days later, on Saturday, April 21, 2007, a drive by shooting occured at plaintiff’s home at approximately 11:30 p.m. At least four (4) bullets were fired at plaintiff’s house. Plaintiff’s car was struck by bullet, as was the car owned by plaintiff’s brother. Plaintiff, his minor children and plaintiff’s adult brother were all home at the time. Plaintiff immediately contacted the police who responded quickly. Four (4) bullet casings and one bullet were recovered from the scene.

Remember, kids: never order pizza from gang members.

HT: Aniwarp.

I know probably what everyone does about Anastasia: during the Russian Revolution, Bolsheviks siezed the Czar and his family and held them captive. As the White Russians, loyal to the Czar, closed on their location, the Czar and his family and their few servants were taken into a basement and executed. There were no survivors, but popular myth is filled with the notion that one person did make it out, somehow, alive: the Grand Duchess Anastasia. It’s sort of a romantic notion, that the daughter of the Czar escaped her own death, and would somehow, sometime, return to rally the loyalist Russian forces and drive out the Communists. But whatever happened to Anastasia, if there was indeed some bare, small kernel of truth to that myth, she never showed up, and the Communist collapse in the Soviet Union had nothing to do with her.

I started reading City of Shadows over the weekend, and finished it yesterday. It’s a highly fictionalized account of the life of Anna Anderson, a woman who claimed to be Anastasia. DNA testing in the mid-1990s proved Anna’s claim false, and the book, a thriller, doesn’t disagree: here, she’s dragged out of an asylum by a Russian nightclub owner, Prince Nick, with a plan to stake a claim to the Czar’s wealth. Another refugee living in Berlin, Esther Solomonova, is tasked with Anna’s care until Nick is ready to make her public — a task that becomes complicated when a series of murders begin littering Anna’s wake.

It isn’t a great book — the first half is puzzling: sometimes slow, sometimes exciting. If I’d had anything else to read with me, I probably would’ve given up on it. The characters seem too British, some of their attitudes too American, certainly too modern. But I’m very glad I stuck with it — the book heats up in the second half, which jumps forward ten years to Hitler becoming Chancellor of Germany. Here, the mystery comes to a head in a Germany propelled towards its own self-annihiliation by the vengeful victors of the Great War who gave no thought to how a destroyed economy would cause a battered and downtrodden people to rush to the person who made them feel proud again, a person who would attempt a genocide, conquor a continent, and provide a lesson for anyone who ever questions the truism “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat their ancestors’ mistakes.”

And I don’t mind telling you that the surprise ending took me completely by surprise: in retrospect, I should’ve seen the clues and shouldn’t have been surprised, but I don’t mind, because it made it all the more enjoyable.