The Protestant Work Demon

For the past week, Griff has stationed himself in a hotel somewhat close to the Red Mosque. He sleeps and writes and writes and writes to the low thunderclaps of artillery fire, which have come to be white noise. In the Post and on NPR, he has expertly documented, through copious submissions, the standoff between the Pakistani government and a group of radical fundamentalists. (No, he is not in the line of fire. On your behalf, I am abstaining from my favorite past time: crafting hyperbolic, if not fallacious, imagery. Please note that I have not written that he is the next blond Bond, sprouting gills that allow him to breath tear gas or shimmying down elevator shaft cables or sneering at rattling window panes before cannonballing through them.)

Meanwhile, I am no patient, waiting, doting Penelope. I need a job. Very. Badly. Lest I go crazy and resort to a blog dedicated to dyspepsia and boredom. At first, I tried to quell my Lutheran (both Germanic and Protestant!) work demon, Franz, by suggesting he apply for jobs with Goldman Sachs or a relief agency in Darfur or the White House public relations office. He discovered, however, that I had not gotten him a multiple entry visa, and so he instead opted to oversee me in a slavish search for purpose. In case you wanted some factual information (yawn) from this blog, thanks to Franz's prodding, I have arranged to teach two university courses in the fall, one on the American short story and the other on the American news media. Our blond Bond will be a guest speaker for the latter, of course. I am supposed to spend the next six weeks doing consultative assessment work for a national NGO that runs schools for street children, though since I haven't yet started and since I am in Pakistan, it would be presumptuous to put this in anything but a conditional future tense. I am also taking an art class, which is incredibly fun. If you would like a picture of a lopsided and poorly shaded pot, please let me know, as I'm lousy with them.