Brains! Amy Doesn't Have Any!

I’m going to attempt to center this blog entry around a patched together metaphor, but it may very well suck, so bear with me.

God is like…a zombie from Return of the Living Dead . Desperately pursuing a relationship with you so He can eat your brains. KIDDING! Now see, anything else I come up with is gonna rock, isn’t it.

(That movie, by the way, is craptastic fabulous. I watched it again last night, since I’m kicking around a zombie movie idea, and needed to do research. Winifred, Dinah and myself used to watch that movie on our summers off from high school, and it was bad then, it’s bad now. But I was stunned to see that I still could recite this particular exchange between Ernie the mortuary owner, and the ½ woman corpse zombie lashed to an examining table, whose spine twitches and lashes around in a way that only mid 80s era animatronics can.

Ernie: You can hear me?
½ Woman Corpse: Yes.
Ernie: Why do you eat people?
½ Woman Corpse: Not people. Brains.
Ernie: Brains only?
½ Woman Corpse: Yes.
Ernie: Why?
½ Woman Corpse: The PAIN!
Ernie: What about the pain?
½ Woman Corpse: The pain of being DEAD!
Ernie: [laughing in surprise to his friends] It hurts... to be dead.
½ Woman Corpse: I can feel myself rotting.
Ernie: Eating brains... How does that make you feel?
½ Woman Corpse: It makes the pain go away.

And then she starts chanting “BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS!” through the rest of the scene. It’s comedy gold, my friend.

So. After the strum and angst and drama of the last post, and all the wonderful posts of support and emails and such, we can conclude that I am a big fat coward.

Yeah, I caved. I’m a dumbass.

See, if two weeks ago was hell, this past week has been bliss. There’s been NOTHING to do. Sure, there’s random awards dinners that are coming up for the WGA, the PGA, the Costume Designer’s Guild, etc,, but we can practically give those table seats away, there’s no bickering, no politics, nothing. And who walks away from a cakewalk job?

I did have a talk with my boss that started with, “My last day is supposed to be Friday.” And oh, did the fear leap up in her eyes. I asked her if she could tell me what to reasonably expect after Oscar nominations are announced, and is the Unnamed Movie Studio going to throw another party, even though we’ve thrown gazillions upon gaboodles already. She said she honestly didn’t know, she’s only a consultant, she’s been here as long as I have. So I said that if I did stay, regardless of what happens with Maybe A Party, Maybe Not, I HAVE to leave work at 6pm every day, I can’t do 12 to 14 hour days, because I’m getting home at 9 or 10pm at night and I have no energy to write (or research zombie movies) and this job isn’t my life, writing is my life. She said she understood (by repeating everything back to me) and said she gets it, so at least I have that to point to should the atmosphere get crazy again. “It’s not like I didn’t tell you I had to leave at 6pm every day.”

Nobody can tell me what to expect in the next few days (Nominations announcing on Tuesday.) I couldn’t figure out if it was more honorable to leave before I knew (possibilities for change be damned), or after I knew (I warned you people, now I’m taking my toys and going home.) Just like I can’t figure out if maybe someone’s deliberately not telling me the truth to keep me around. Which I wouldn’t put past them, as they can do desperate things like that (like extending my tenure with the temp agency without asking me.)

So I feel stupid. I feel like a hypocrite. I feel like the guy crying BRAINS, no WOLF, my job sucks and I’m gonna leave! Wait, it’s okay now. Never mind. False alarm. Until it happens again, and then I’m all I’M REALLY LEAVING NOW!

I think it’s called courage of my convictions, which I’ve never been good at. This week proved my conviction of My Job SUCKS wrong. And frankly, I’m wrong about a shitload of stuff a bunch of the time. If I were you, I wouldn’t be listening to anything I say. Seriously. Return of the Living Dead blows big chunks, honestly. I’m not the least bit credible.

But what I can say with certainty (or what passes for certainty in my hazy ambiguous world.) is that I’m not staying for the reasons that Mr. Purple Puffy Pants said: “I think you need to stay there. That there’s work there that God wants you to do.” Unless the work was to set up my boss’s email to autocheck every 2 minutes. ‘Cause I did that, no problem. Maybe NOW I can go, ha ha ha. I’m staying because right now, it’s an easy job. The second it gets stressful again, I’m outta there. Seriously. Yeah, right.

Okay, so the patched together craptastic metaphor. When I’m housesitting, I take Basil the Diva Dog and Ginger Puppy on walks up to Griffith Observatory. Our usual route is quite scenic, as we all slip through the crack in the chained gate (I’m sure it’s chained up for a reason, but we pay no attention to it, and we’ve never been busted, and we see other people with their dogs all the time), hike up the canyon, touch the gate that surrounds the Observatory during the renovation, and come back down.

Except when we went yesterday morning, there was no gate. THE GATE WAS GONE. The renovation is DONE! We walked right up to the Observatory, walked around the Promenade Walkway, took a few pictures, and headed back.

All of which is to say...when you think the gate (your job) is up (sucks ass), you get there one day (get to the next week) and it’s GONE! (a cakewalk.)

Hmmm, maybe I should’ve stuck with the zombie metaphor? Okay, here’s Ginger Puppy, merrily chomping away at Mr. Purple Puffypants.

BRAINS BRAINS BRAINS!