Nun Of The Above

I was talking to Chris Locke yesterday which is surely one of life's big thrilling rollercoasters and I was talking to him about ... OH CHRIST ... yes, Orkut. I just remembered. I thought it was about something else and I did not want to write about stupid idiot poopy pants Orkut again, but here I go.

Anyway he was yanking my chain about how Orkut and I were MADE FOR EACH OTHER. That it's really fun like a party and what with me being so much the social director type, I was being sorely missed over there and why the heck was I being such a curmudgeon and not joining it.

And then I was telling him about a occupational analysis thing-a-bob test I took after college when I was flopping about trying to figure out what to do with myself and this weird test and it was apparently a serious test -- I took it at Columbia University's Vocational Guidance Center or some such esteemed institution. It came up with two occupations it said I would be extremely successful in. Here's the two jobs:

-- A cruise ship social director

and

-- A nun

This is the unfortunate kind of thing Chris Locke extracts from those willing to have telephonic intercourse with him, strange and unusual, often unspoken weird information, deep from the depths of some subterranean neural town dump of neural activity, way under both the conscious and the unconscious and you just have to go with it. I still have never figured out what set of traits I possess that BOTH these jobs require. I suppose they are all about rounding people up and getting them to smile while they play shuffleboard or say the rosary. One rounds up bodies, one rounds up souls.

This of course proved HIS point that I should join Orkut -- which was just where I did NOT want to lead the conversation. Then we were kidding around about other jobs I might have had and of course he said something about "nun of the above" and I said, "Wait, aren't all nun's literally of the above?" A discussion of nuns followed. I've always gotten off on nuns wearing wedding rings saying they are married to Jesus. Is there a point where Jesus becomes kind of a deadbeat husband and stops bringing flowers and you can't get him to put down the Wall Street Journal and actually talk to you at breakfast anymore?

Anyway, I was thinking about these professions and how I had once tried to join Club Med to be a "gentile organisatrice" or "G.O." which are their gung-ho camp counselors but that didn't happen and then I was thinking about being a nun. Not being Catholic proves to be a stumbling block for attaining job satisfaction down that path as well. So I am neither, the tests were just not helpful at all.

Instead I seem to be a writer, and Chris was right, I've turned into none of the above. But then this morning on email I was also chatting with Jerry who pointed out that my writing was obviously my strong suit and I should ditch my Superbowl Party today and stay home to write and it occurred to me from his comment that in fact, the reason my writing is any good at all is that it's part cruise ship social director in tone and part nun and it weirdly goes in both places. If you drop in here, you honestly never know if you'll find me wearing a wimple or a bikini. Or both.

And then one more email arrived from Euan, asking me ... you guessed it ... to join Orkut! Yikes!