Pajiba

If only I could watch videos at work! I extoll the virtues of the New Pornographers far more than people appreciate. This has me more excited than usual for 5pm.

I read the whole Tina Fey New Yorker piece this weekend and I have to say that she definitely has developed a serious case of the Gwynneths. I hope there's a cure because she's a funny lady but she has completely lost touch with what it's really like to be a working mother who cannot call the shots or afford multiple nannies or even the wealth that would allow the consideration of opting not to work in order to have a second child.

Oh.My.Prisco. That made my Monday. Long live the internet!

Joanna, you've outdone yourself today - your link descriptions are superb.

I remember when I actually looked forward to this column.

Does anyone know if there will be Eloquent Eloquence this week? It helps me with my pining for Kballs.

I was waiting for Prisco to throw a sucker punch and run away cackling.
You know, Pajiba Fidelis...

Pajiba has shown up in an AP-carried Washington Post article on Timothy Olyphant. Some Eloquent gets quoted.

Click my name to link to the version in the SF Chronicle. Call-out and quote on page 2.

Gee, guess I need to read first.

Is it time to quote my brother? Here we go:

It's almost as though different people like different things.

Your commentary begs to differ.

It's always best to read Pajiba Love without your pants on.

I wouldn't want to get any love spackle on them.

Oh my lord, Prisco.

Love it. Favorite-ing it.

"I hope there's a cure because she's a funny lady but she has completely lost touch with what it's really like to be a working mother who cannot call the shots or afford multiple nannies or even the wealth that would allow the consideration of opting not to work in order to have a second child."

Paddydog, I actually had to reread your comment: Fey has plenty of dough, presumably has a supportive husband, likely has a host of people helping her, and she and her husband can't handle ONE able-bodied, able-minded child? Get a grip, woman!

(I'm being totally serious. I love me some Priscopants)

Don't feed the [people who only have negative things to say]. Please. If you wanna see some amazing throwdown talk, check Senor Chuck's blistering indictment of my life choices on Joanna's article on the highest paid actresses. It really made me rethink some things.

I too pine for the old days, when I could ignore this column. Now I find it humorous, and end up following many of the links, eating up my valuable time. But I'll get through it.

what theothergreg said, that's exactly it--i used to skip pajibalove. now the internet swallows another gulp of my time, if in entertaining fashion.

And sounds like Marcel the Shell.

I swear I'll never understand this about the internet: people complaining that a page they're not forced to visit, on a site they don't have to pay for, is not to their taste.

Geez, no-one is forcing you to stay if you're not enjoying yourselves. Life is short! Go somewhere you do like and have some fun.

COX communication? Small world.

COX was (& still is) the biggest customer of a one-product company I worked for a while back. They / we make an obscure piece of network gear COX uses deep in their proto-skynet. (The gizmo frammizles ploorts across the network fabric. Can't run a network with un-frammizled ploorts.)

So, um, that makes Prisco & I like brothers, or something. (Also, I am such a nerd.)

Hallie and Jessie OHMYFUCKINGGOD I TOTALLY SEE IT!!! That is too cute.

Ahem.

With regard to the teacher on FB;
As many of you know I've been working at a school for six months.
I work in an office with older women,( who are all very maternal and with whom I've grown close), but all of them have facebook and are active in social networking.

I haven't added them. I haven't added any of the people I work with. I never do, as a standing rule.

Especially not now I work at a school. Dont get me wrong, the women know me very well, they know I can be dramatic and intentionally overwrought and silly(once again, my FBJiban friends know exactly what I mean) as a way of staving off stress and fatigue. They know my personality, which is very much the personality I reflect on FB.

Plus, we work at a school which, weirdly, brings a mostly(though occasionally, very very grim) jovial atmosphere to proceedings.
We routinely talk to one another as if we're the kids at the school and generally joke around. They wouldn't have any reason to take issue with my FB page.
But, still...

I, personally,am very private with my FB. Most of my friends on FB and Pajiba know a shit ton about my life, and most of my work colleagues do too, but like I say...

I don't even use my real name on FB and have changed my name in my account settings so you cant even search me. You'd have to find a sibling to add me but even then, you have to already be a friend of a friend to be able to add me and my friends and family are the same as me.

HAVING SAID THAT, I do not believe any employer has any right to make a decision about someone's entire career based on their private social life(unless, OF COURSE, that social life involves like, fucking 11 year olds or mutilating pets, but then if you're public about that shit you deserve all of the bad things).

See, people seem to have forgotten that job applications are designed to be anonymous. You get the name, the qualifications and skills, and you make an informed decision.
THEN you get to interview them, and based on their resume and interview, you make an informed decision.

You're not supposed to go and google that person. This is why employers cant ask questions about race, religion, sexual preference, even the potential for or liklihood of a pregnancy.

You take what you get, first on paper, then in person. If you're worried that person might not be the right fit, might be a talent, but an obnoxious douche, you dont spend five minutes in Chrome, you INTERVIEW THEM BETTER.

If you don't want to hire staff who like a drink now and again, you make it clear that you hold employees to a certain moral standard. If you can find a sap dumb enough to sign any such contract, well, I fear for your students.

There was an incident I recall from school; When my sister and her friends where sort of 17-18, the age UK kids can, and do, go out to drink(you need ID saying you're 18 but this was just before ID checking got so rigorous) one of her make friends Joseph was out over the weekend.

It was a saturday night, he was in casual clothes, and he saw a teacher from school. A little drunk, he called out hello to the teacher.

On monday, the teacher had him suspended.

Now, at the time, I'm pretty sure the guy was of age.
Either way, our school DID have a strict code of conduct that included being seen in your uniform. Our uniform was distinctive as our school was a bit posh, and the rules said that if a student got into trouble outside of school, no matter what form the trouble took, if that kid was wearing their uniform at the time, the punishment was infinitely worse.

Boys escaped suspensions for fighting by leaving their blazers and ties at home before returning to a school adjacent area to go at it. The simple idea was, in your uniform you represent the school and if you harm the image of the school, GOD HELP YOUR SOUL.

In this incident, though, NOTHING about Joseph tied him to the school. He just, in a bit of a giggly state, said hi to a teacher.

We as students were outraged (this was before FB, by the by) that a kid could be punished for his social life despite the total nothing that was 'the event'
We all agreed if Joseph had say, gotten in a fight and been arrested, the school would have had grounds, and would have had to, suspended him temporarily.

These days, that sort of ruination comes from FB. It makes me sad, actually, that people have missed the fact that basic human rights to privacy have been...not so much eroded as simply forgotten. The rights still exist, we just never seem to want to invoke them.

I'm pretty sure that some of these people who get fired for an FB event must sue. Not the guys who call the boss a dickweasel immediately after adding him as a friend, but the people who get sacked after someone sees a picture of them from college with a weed leaf poster on the wall.

If they dont, then we are as a species, fucking dumber than mud.

Thanks PaddyDog.
I'm in agreement with you about the previous incumbent of the PL Chair. He never really posted stuff I was interested in either, but I certainly didn't sit here and bemoan the absence of Litely Salted.

As for the current "link wrench", well, I hope she keeps on eruditing us.

Paddy, did you read the Lawrence Wright Scientology piece too? It is currently blowing my tiny mind. I know it's naive to be surprised by Scientology Shenanigans. . .but I am.

I did read the Scientology piece. I had no idea about the half of that stuff. The child labor piece in particular really disturbed me.

Let's just all be grateful that we are receiving links at all. There are inhabitants of third world countries who don't get any, and instead have to worry about real problems besides liking links.

As for the current P.L., I do enjoy it Joanna and encourage you to continue your commentary. I don't necessarily enjoy every link, but then again: this site wasn't designed solely for ME.

If it was, I'm sure readership would go down based on lack of posts caused by the absence of a story that involves ALL of the following: time machines, the scenic backdrop of the Zion National Park, baby foxes, bubble-wrap, space travel, waterfalls flowing with cranberry juice, alligator-wrestling, sword fights, fireworks that don't fade, elephants painted in a psychedelic manner, silent pencil-sharpeners, people wearing scuba-suits even though they're not in water, and that "Dance Magic Dance" song from Labyrinth. Oh and Jeremy Renner. Man, that guy's a talented actor.

So now if ^that^ story does come along, and you neglect post it, well, then there IS a very good reason for me to speak out against you. I'm holding you to it.

Good day ma'am.

Oh and YEAH! When we would go on school trips, stay over ones and that, if there was a pub or bar or any booze nearby, our teachers would get shit faced drunk and leave us to run riot.

I stand by what I said about Timothy Olyphant last year. I want to have sex with his posture - is that so wrong?

No Melissa. No. It'd beautiful.

Well done, Melissa.

i am shocked -- nay!! -- yeah, shocked that you didn't make the eisenberg connection.

somehow this makes me feel a certain way.

It's insane that a teacher can lose her job over posting a picture on FB of her doing a perfectly legal thing. Our principal has warned us not to friend any students or post any questionable material, but the schools don't have a whole lot of legal recourse when it comes to something like this. That teacher wasn't breaking any laws or the Georgia Code of Ethics for Educators (I get to watch a neat-o video every year reminding me of these), but she made a HUGE mistake when she chose to resign. Once you resign, you really can't get your job back. Never, never resign, even under threat from administration.

Sarahcat - I, too, was surprised by the resignation. Always best to hold onto the job, awkward though it may be, as it's easier to avoid getting fired than to get reinstated.