The Lewis and Clark Quasi-Weekly, currently running bi-weekly at isgreaterthan.net.

The Accountant live at Sweat Records, Feb. 7 2009.

Your one-stop shot for all the latest financial news: http://vangloriamusic.blogspot.com/

Special Alert to Team Atomisk: if you come Saturday, be apprised that Sweat Records still has no air conditioning. We recommend either bringing any personal oscillating fans you can get your hands on (as well as extension cords/power strips), or erotically rubbing ice cubes all over your bare skin for the duration of the show. Whichever seems most appropriate.

Whoever can spot all the Atomisk artists featured in this video wins a bust of noted orator William Jennings Bryan made out of semi-dark chocolate.

Interview #11.

Three months of handshakes, corporate parks, ergonomic chairs, fluorescent lighting, and white men in suits informing me I should hear back from them in seven to ten business days, and I’m no closer to the promised land of meaningful full-time employment. More specifically, I am in the office of a short, squat, balding man who, ever since introductorily shaking my hand, has not once taken his eyes off his desktop computer screen, his right index finger periodically clicking a wireless mouse and his face set in a humorless, joyless, impenetrable expression that says: Business is being conducted. The man, Mr. Eldridge Heathcote-Kenneford, my interviewer, wears a Bluetooth earset, and has problem skin, and, if I had to guess, is likely one of the roughly thirteen percent of US adult males whose viewing of online pornography causes him to worry that he might not satisfy his partner’s sexual needs. A man who, according to LoveCorp’s primary research data, belongs firmly within the target demographic for the Don Johnson Miracle Cream, the Hydraulic Love Elongator, The Lonely Man’s Pocket Guide to Avoiding Sexual Dysfunction. Mr. H-K clicks his wireless mouse, and squints at his screen, and I wait in respectful silence, settling into the sweet spot of my state-of-the art ergonomic chair. In terms of height, Mr. Heathcote-Kenneford is the third shortest interviewer I have encountered in my quest for meaningful employment, thus far. In terms of paleness, he is a tie for fourth palest. In terms of squatness, he is the second most squat. In terms of baldness, he is, without question, the baldest.

“It says here that you graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University,” says Mr. H-K. “And that you pursued a joint major in statistics and economics.”

“No,” I say. “I graduated from the University of Wisconsin. In Madison. I have a bachelor’s in business administration in marketing.”

Mr. Heathcote-Kenneford, my interviewer, ignores me.

“It says you earned an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” he continues, reverently, still squinting at his desktop computer. “Very impressive. I’m an MIT man myself. Mens et manus. Mind and hand. How do you like Cambridge in the autumn?”

“I think you have the wrong résumé,” I say, but Eldridge’s eyes stay glued to his screen.

“It says you earned a 3.97 GPA at Columbia,” he says, his voice betraying snowballing excitement. “That you completed your bachelor’s degree in three years. That you were a permanent fixture on the Dean’s List. That you studied abroad in China. Wā! Hǎojíle! Hěn yǒu yìsi! Hěn pèifu nǐ!”

“I’m sorry,” I reply, helplessly. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

Times were lean, my baby’s daddy left me for the girl who processed our application for food stamps, so I got a job with the Human Lotto. I produced the necessary photo identification, the proof of employment eligibility; provided my Social Security Number; filled out the W-4 form; and they tattooed the twelve numbers on my skin, shellacked me toes-to-neck with opaque metallic foil, and dropped me off in front of the E-Z Mart to hustle for customers with the other scratch-off girls.

At the E-Z Mart there were fifteen of us: shiny, grey, and metallic. Some were young, some were old; some thin, some heavy; some black, white, brown, yellow—but beneath our necks all of us were grey.

One of the girls had been doing this for years. She had been scratched off hundreds of times. She said usually it was done in motel rooms, the scratching, by lonely men: bald, paunchy, sweating, pale. But other times it was cocktail lounges, executive suites, employees-only restrooms, the Admiral’s Club of an airport terminal. You really never knew. I asked her did it hurt, and she said, “Some more than others.” She said last night it was a suburban living room—leather furniture, decorative fireplace, portraits of children on the walls—a divorced father of four watching television’s John Stamos announce the winning numbers as he (the father of four) frantically clawed her naked.

The girl took those of us new to the profession under her wing. She taught us how to solicit, how to hustle, what salves and creams to use when the metallic foil and men’s fingernails irritated our skin. Sometimes we got worse than scratches, hideous men in motels leaving us with deep punctures, incisions, lacerations; and the girl sutured us herself, with a cigarette lighter-sterilized sewing needle and fishing line, in the out-of-order ladies’ restroom of the E-Z Mart. When we went to get re-shellacked, our employers, if they noticed the sutures at all, said nothing. We were paid by the hour, plus commission. All state and federal withholding was automatically deducted from our paychecks. 

We learned about statistical probability, economies of scale, expected payoff. We learned every subtlety and nuance of the speech cadence of John Stamos, reading someone’s lucky twelve-digit number off of plastic white balls on television. We learned what men would do, if they had ten million dollars, telling us how they’d buy Corvettes and bed foxy, gold-digging broads and tell their bosses to go screw themselves with tungsten/titanium sand wedges; while denuding us, grimly, with their foil-flecked fingernails. 

“Luck be a lady,” they said, pallid, paunchy, sweating, bald; and we learned to stare at our naked selves, reflected palely, in the dark sectors of the television, as John Stamos read the day’s twelve lucky numbers; to see if we had made anyone a winner.

van*gloria are proud to announce the birth of their second album, Bluebird, born December 1st, 2008 at 10:30 AM weighing 15 grams and measuring 5.5 inches wide by 5.75 inches long after an interminable two year pregnancy.