laborious.

when i first found myself jobless, i also found myself collecting unemployment for the first time. which was great, a tremendous relief. what they fail to tell you about unemployment, however, is that in order to continue collecting it for more than five weeks, you have to report to the department of labor downtown to experience what is loosely referred to as "orientation."

now, i don't know if you've ever visited the department of labor headquarters in your town; should the mood strike you to do so, however, it's likely to be easy to find. just look for the most depressing building in the downtown area. in brooklyn, ours is located smack in the middle of a very cute, charming neighborhood, the only deeply unattractive building for miles. and we're talking unattractive in the extreme. significantly less attractive than the DMV. millions of pounds of unattractiveness.

the building itself seems to be trapped inside a misguided bauhaus fever dream; it's all dull planes and angles, defined against the skyline by taupe colored cinderblocks and smudged, flat windows. inside is not much better, with brown linoleum floors and sand-colored walls, complete with elevators that make you feel like you've been miraculously transported into a bizarro version of Dark City, where the counterbalancing beauty has gone on strike.

the orientation took place in a prison camp style interpretation of my 10th grade english classroom, with a soupcon of the community center where i took driver's ed. you could almost hear the sounds of red asphalt IV. which, quite frankly, would have been absolutely preferable to the presentation (and i use the term loosely) to which we were subject. to call it dull wouldn't do it justice; fortunately, i was distracted from the terminal boredom by the seething frustration born of the terrible transition between powerpoint slides. the slow paced diamond dissolve should never be used in anything geared towards the terminally bored or the functionally illiterate. either camp is bound to be bored to the point of clawing out their eyeballs, or wishing to. i am proof. i and my short attention span.

suffice it to say, i suddenly count myself terrifically lucky that i've landed myself a temporary dayjob to augment my freelancing (i love filing; no,really); in being no longer dependent upon the department of labor to send me unemployment money, i am also no longer beholden to their rules, their hoops. specifically, i am not going to have to go to that building for a while, one would hope.

and i confess i lost the thread of this narrative about two paragraphs ago; the dangers of not posting for weeks and weeks and weeks. i THINK the moral of the story is buy american. or do unto others. or, actually, most likely, Stay In School, it's the best.

something like that.