Happy birthday to you,

You live with my zoo,

You look like Vaughn from Alias

And you smell like him too!

Dee dee chu, love, Kris.

Another election come and gone. I console you Bush haters with this thought: America can survive this. We survived the Reagan years, after all. (Though much of Central America, tragically, did not.) Just be sure that for the next four years you are careful not to be gay, poor, a woman, or of color. And if you are all of those things, well, clearly you have bigger things to worry about than who’s president.

Speaking as a member of one of the four prohibited groups, I, too, feel the pain of this election. I haven’t been this upset since Oz left Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By the time we get a new president, I will be 29, which as you know is almost 30, which as you know is the end of life as we know it. So basically I will be living with this president until I die. I will continue to write term papers and take vacations and work on this heady, difficult thing the poets call true love, but fundamentally my life will be…well, the same life it’s been for the past four years.

In all seriousness, I hate that my tax dollars will continue to be used to piss off part of the world and slaughter the other part. But you know this too shall pass. All I can suggest for the interim is this: use your money. No one is going to listen to your voices, or pay attention to your bodies blocking traffic on pre-arranged Sunday marches. These things are tools of the past. But find a group or a person you can believe in and give them your money. Your time too, if you have any: most places can use volunteers. But the most effective megaphone in America is cash, and that is what you have to give.

Tens, twenties, fifties. Ulysses S. Grant is my only president now.

“What most people don’t realize,” I said, “is that Strawberry Shortcake is the modern version of an ancient Roman fertility goddess to whom strawberries were sacred.”

“I thought it was a doll named after a dessert?” said whoever I was talking to.

“Sure, they had to mainstream her,” I said, “but think about it: dessert? Baking? Bun in the oven? Fertility. Do you think it’s a coincidence?”

“Uh…”

“And consider the significance of the strawberry,” I said, warming up. “If this were a body part, what would it be? Small, red? What body part has been compared to rosebuds and cherries and so on? I’ll give you a hint: Eve Ensler would know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“So, Strawberry Shortcake is…”

“A cunt goddess. That’s right.”

“So what about My Little Ponies? What’s the story there?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked…”

This guy just walked into my office. He was about student age, dressed in student clothes, and clutching some student-type documentation, but was not actually a student. “Do you know where I can get help with Microsoft Access?” he asked.

“Next door,” I said. Our office is right next to the computer guys, so we get these queries a lot from students who aren’t hip to things like numbers on doors.

“I talked to them already,” he said. “They don’t even have it installed on their machines.”

“Well…what kind of help do you need?” I asked, well aware that I knew nothing about Access and was letting myself in for a world of customer service pain.

“I’m trying to design some forms,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, we’re all pretty computer illiterate around here, which is why we have those guys next door…I don’t think we’d be able to help you.”

“Ok, well can I talk to the department head?”

“You want to ask the department head of EECS how to create forms with Microsoft Access?” I said, for the sheer pleasure of hearing the idea aloud again. Those of you who don’t work in a bureaucracy or massive corporation might not get why this is such a hilarious, beautiful idea. Lucky you. To me, it is comic gold.

“Yeah,” he said, “why not? This department teaches a course about it.”

“You could go talk to the professor of that course, maybe,” I suggested.

“I tried. He’s out or something.”

“Ok, well…they’re having a big ceremony down the street a little ways that a lot of professors went to. Maybe you could just try tapping people on the shoulder and asking them?” I was actually trying to be helpful here; it seemed no stranger to me than the idea of going to the feared gazillionaire department head and asking him a software question from MS ACCESS 101. He did not seem thrilled with this suggestion. “Sorry,” I said. “You’re caught in the cogs of a Brobdignagian bureaucracy, and we just live here.” I was hoping he would take a little pity on me, but he just rolled his eyes and slunk out through the posterior entrance of the House of Pride. (If I may mix my lit a little.)

So that was my entertaining job experience. My frustrating one was this: I could not in any sense be considered poor, because I have a three person financial safety net which will catch me whenever I need it. However, with only $88 remaining in my checking account for the month, I don’t think that a professor who pulls down seven figures a year should be asking me to spend $35 of my own money on someone else’s birthday cake. (And where was my birthday cake, I wonder?) Sure, I’ll be reimbursed for it eventually, but what if I wanted to buy a $54 drink on Halloween or something? I’d have to sell a kidney. In conclusion, pumpkins.