msbelle, sending all possible good thoughts your way and mac's.

We petitioned our Dean of Students asking for typing and other clerical subjects to be taught, plus personal accounting and budgeting classes, just to prepare us for survival while we searched for performing work. He and the board firmly vetoed the idea. The School of the Arts was training artists, and we were not to distract ourselves with thoughts of failure, needing to support ourselves other than by our chosen field of art.

Once in an evaluation he also told me the school was not training teachers, they were training artists. And if I was even considering teaching rather than performing myself, I was in the wrong school. Ass. He was most undoubtedly a frustrated performer wannabe, but his job boiled down to bean counter.

Wouldn't you hate if if you were required to stand every time your boss entered the room?

All rise for Liu, the prima donna!

What, no brass band performing "Hail to the Comptroller"?

New York City's new comptroller, John Liu, has ordered his staff to rise whenever he enters the room and to address him as "Mr. Comptroller."

The new presidential-like formalities were laid out during a series of meetings last week that had veteran denizens of the Municipal Building snickering behind his back, sources said.

"I am making the adjustment myself. I'm used to calling him J.L.," said his press secretary, Sharon Lee. "This is universal, for people who have known him for years or people who are meeting him for the first time."

It WOULD be fun to make people say "comptroller" as much as possible...

I love the site Hack a Day, but can people see what's wrong with this paragraph?

[Sean_Carney] build this clock that tells the weather instead of the time. The two hands display the current conditions and the temperature. Forty below zero seems amazingly cold if you’re on the Fahrenheit scale but [Sean's] from Winnipeg so he’s operating on the Celsius side of things.

Weather clock

eta: Possibly intentionally wrong....

I don't get how -40°C isn't devastatingly cold--isn't it about the same as Fahrenheit?

Yeah. -40 is the one temp that's exactly the same for F and C.

Liu, she said, typically tells them to retake their seats and to call him John after the first formal greeting each day.

That's even more bonkers. Every day he tells people they can call him John??

And msbelle, I said my prior comment so maybe you don't have to have that as an added to-do item, unless there's something distinctly wrong with the afterschool place.

Holy crap, that's narcissistic!

Oh, I forgot to mention the Very Buffista Book I got for Christmas -- it's called Literally, the Best Language Book Ever. It's about pet peeves.

This is a guy that shows up at more unnecessary photo ops than Chuck Schumer and always tried to have a hand in political things that didn't involve his district or constituency. Liu transparently wants to be mayor. Nice start on that, Mr. Comptroller!