The new gig looks to be similar to the old gig. I'll probably be working a little bit more and blogging a little bit less at work, but otherwise I think it will be about the same. Relatively mindless work, a goodly amount of free time, and a relatively nice environment for a McJob. I'm not looking forward to answering the phones, but I'll finally fulfill my lifelong goal of getting to wear one of those headset thingamabobs.

In other news, I finally finished reading another book, Barrel Fever by David Sedaris. I have now read three of his books in the last 3-4 months. I recommend them all, but I recommend this one somewhat less than Naked or Me Talk Pretty One Day. In Barrel Fever you can literally watch the evolution of a writer's style and also the epiphany that pushed him to his astronomical success. The first two-thirds of the book consist of short stories that have really funny moments but tend to fall somewhat flat. All the protagonists are a bit over the top, and seem to be one-note extrapolations of the more bizarre elements of Sedaris' personality.

Then at the end of the book are three short pieces and one longer one in which the familiar Sedaris style emerges, the first-person essay with Sedaris himself as the protagonist. These stories are nominally non-fictional, and I have no doubt that they are somewhat exaggerated; actually that's not true, I have no doubt that some of the stories in the later two books are exaggerations of real events in Sedaris' life, but the four essays in Barrel Fever may be more straightforward reportage of a latter-day gonzo variety. The final story, "The SantaLand Diaries", is by far the best thing in the book; it is Sedaris' cynical take (but I repeat myself) on his job one holiday season as an elf in Macy's SantaLand in New York. This is the story where the voice he developed in the later books really emerges. That voice is urbane (though always hearkening to his Raleigh roots), flamboyant (in every sense), biting, and very cynical. What I take from the best of these stories is not just cynicism that breaks people and things down (though there's plenty of that), but a way of seeing the world that is alternately very different from or very similar to my own, yet which boldly asserts that perspective as a cosmopolitan alternative to what I'll call for lack of a better term "good ol' American family values".

Oh yeah, one more thing: in Civic news, the car is back at the body shop for the fourth and hopefully final time; by tomorrow I should theoretically have a car back in one piece.