Looking for work in the age of the Internet is different than what it was twenty-seven years ago, the last time I really had to look for employment opportunities. Back then I would sit in McDonald's, look through the classifieds, and then go into an office building and sit in one of those old-fashioned phone booths with the bending doors. I would smoke a cigarette in the booth, screw up my courage, and call a few ads.

Now, I sit in my apartment, write emails to prospective clients, schmooze up old acquaintances, look at listings on craigslist, do the remaining freelance work that I have, and then invariably get distracted by something on the Internet that seems far more interesting than scraping together a job. Actually, though, this week is dedicated to "networking" and I'm doing it...I actually turned down a freelance job that I knew would consume all my attention and energy which I need simply to do this gosh-darned networking...

Anyhow, for some reason or other I found myself doing a Google search on the gorgeous actress Rita Moreno, and I found a cool site called Starlet Showcase that has a great headshot of her. Just thought I'd put a link here so you could enjoy it, too, and get distracted from whatever YOU'RE trying to focus YOUR mind on.

StarletShowcase

Things picked up a just a mite this week when I got some new freelance work from some of the other people at the company where I've been working but where I lost a significant amount of future income. Not out of the woods yet by a long shot, but as a friend of mine said last night, "We have to be ingenious in these tougher times." Meaning, getting on the hustle is the name of the game. Things were comfortable for a long time but damn, those times seem to be gone.

I don't mean to depress anyone but this is what's going on with me.

I was grateful to have some work that absorbed my mind and will mean I can pay some bills.

But damn, living like this was easier at twenty-eight than it is at almost fifty-seven.

I can't believe I'm going to be fifty-seven. And avoiding the stripclubs to save money, while good monetarily, has aged me both physically and mentally...no joke. It's been my fountain of youth...

Listening to the news, combined with my own situation, just combines to make me feel numb and a little befuddled about what to do next.

Still, I must maintain my spirit of adventure. It's time to watch a few Errol Flynn movies and get into the "ha-ha-ha!" swashbuckling mode...and to stock up on some more ramen noodles and Chef Boyardee. I do like the chef's overstuffed ravioli, nicely priced at Rite-Aid drugstores.

Darn, now that I've gone and said that, there will be a run on the ravioli, since tens of thousands of people read my blog daily (I wish)...although once upon a time a couple of years ago, I did get a huge amount of people reading it in one day when it was mentioned on the big media site Gawker...

I heard yesterday on the news that there is a New York club where the strippers are giving THOUSAND DOLLAR lapdances! And who is buying such lapdances? I heard that for the thousand dollars, the customer gets the dance and then gets to keep the dancer's g-string. Since no lapdance ever lapped is worth more than twenty dollars (I mean, come on, it's just a girl rubbing on you for three-to-four minutes), that means $980 of that dough goes for the g-string! Talk about the little head ruling the big head...

Hey, we gotta be ingenious these days...so I would take a job washing strippers' g-strings! I could be an itinerant g-string washer...traveling from town to town, offering my services for a meal and a place to sleep...

Hey, I guess I'm babbling. I better get back to my work now.

P.S. A few hours later:

According to the New York Times, the lapdance customers get a bottle of Dom Perignon, a twenty-minute lapdance in a private room, and the g-string gets autographed too. Still not worth a grand...

Had a good dinner last night with my writer/bodybuilder friend Rexx at one of the Korean barbecue restaurants that line 32nd Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. Just to let you tourists know, that's a nice little pocket of the exotic just one block away from the Empire State Building. Some nice looking Korean gals at some of the other tables, too. One girl's black dress kept slipping off her shoulder in a very seductive way. My eyes kept straying in her direction as I tried to eat my cellophane noodles with slabs of rib eye steak, prompting Rexx to turn around and see what I kept gawking at. I didn't mean to be rude, but man's eyes gotta do what they gotta do.

Earlier we'd seen Appaloosa, the new western starring Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, and Renee Zellweger. Fine film, full of lines of, yes, the "man's gotta do what he's gotta do" variety, which I like. A straightforward and unpretentious story about two men who restore law and order in a New Mexico town named Appaloosa, which is under siege from a villain well-played by British actor Jeremy Irons. The story reminded me a little of one of my favorite old westerns, 1959's Warlock, starring Henry Fonda, Anthony Queen and Dorothy Malone, another town-taming epic, but then went off in its own directions. Renee looks good in her highly-corseted costumes and plays one of her patented twisty characters, a modest yet uncontrollably horny gal whose antics demonstrate yet more proof why women are both attractive and infuriating to us men folk. I wonder if that was really Renee in a skinny-dipping scene, or a stunt double...the camera was a good ways off.

After dinner Rexx and I walked over to Grand Central station so he could show me a place that has good 99 cent pizza, and another place that serves up especially good Chinese food on the cheap. I don't get over to that neighborhood around Grand Central station much,but as I walked around there last night, looking up at all the huge office towers, I began to remember the period when I DID spend time around there--back in the days before I got the work I've been doing for the last twenty-seven years, and which is now winding down for me because of budget cuts. I used to work around Grand Central in the days when I did temporary office work to pick up the financial slack I experienced as a freelancer. Of course, twenty-seven years ago, money went a lot further than it does now, and I don't think I could get by properly om 2008 just trying to pick up temporary work--if I could find it in this terrible financial climate. No, I have to find something solid and well-paying in the next few weeks to replace the work I've suddenly lost, or things are going to get very bad for me. Since I get offered the senior discount for coffee at McDonald's without even asking for it, I guess my prospects for fast green as a male prostitute are probably nil, so I'll have to find something else.

I feel in limbo today...my mind not especially focusing on anything until suddenly an image begins to emerge from the mental fog as I sit down here to write...

Big breasts.

Feeling so listless, tired of worrying about stuff in my life that bears worrying about nonetheless, I was tempted to go to the stripclub this afternoon, to enjoy the two-for-one beers before four o'clock and observe some big breasts, but I'm meeting my writer/bodybuilder friend Rexx for a movie at 4:30, and I didn't want to have to get up in the middle of the film and go to the bathroom, which would be inevitable if I drank two beers before showtime...

I wonder if it's normal for big breasts to start popping into your mind when you're facing an employment crisis, as I am right now. (See my previous posts "Welcome to your nightmare, Sir Cranky" and "Mind versus body.") The symbolism of the nurturing, comforting bosom is so obvious...

I wasn't especially a "breast-man" until about eleven years ago, when I got a lap dance from a friendly, extraordinarily endowed dancer in a club in San Francisco...her natural breasts were so large, and so firm, that it was as if a little light went on in my bald head: "Why haven't I been obsessing about wonders like these?" Before that I was more focused on a woman's derriere, or legs and feet...

But breasts are not going to help me get more freelance work. Two big tits are not going to ride to the rescue, like Zorro.

Although I wish they would.

So instead of drinking beer and passing tips to strippers, I'm sitting at my computer in the middle of the afternoon, drinking coffee, and writing about tits. One of our fellow Blogstreamers, Valley Girl, responded to my recent post "Why do non-slutty women show off their cleavage?" and maybe that's what got my mind on the topic...

I have other stuff to be anxious about. I have to go to the dentist too...I've been procrastinating about this for way too long. I don't know why I procrastinate in the dental realm...sometimes I go for appointments on a fairly regular basis, and then I lapse and wait two years...what a fool I can be.

Also have to get my eyes checked. And get new glasses, especially if I'm going to have to meet with new clients; my current specs look a little battered, and I probably need a new prescription...

I could use a new suit, in case I need one for a job-related meeting.

You see why I'm daydreaming about knockers? They're infinitely more pleasant to contemplate than a lecture from my dentist, or the cost of a decent suit...

Say...I could go to one of those places that advertise three suits for $129, and they throw six ties, four shirts, two belts, and one condom into the bargain.

Or maybe I will just drag myself to a stripclub again one of these days, and get some chesty girl to cram her front shelf into my phiz (that's old slang for "face"--from the word "physiognomy").

Yeah, I'm a bright boy with big words...

Thinking about big boobs!

The last few days have been unsettling as I accustom myself to the fact that I have to look for more freelance work, that the company I've been with for fifteen years may now have limited opportunities to offer me. I still have some work from them, but not enough to take care of all my monthly bills. But I was able to work out an arrangement to finish some assignments earlier than usual and get paid, which will take care of the next few weeks so I don't have to sweat just yet...unfortunately, over the last year or so, I've been living paycheck to paycheck.

I'm trying to listen to my body instead of my mind as I approach this situation. My mind says, "Panic! Do something now!" But my body says, "Chill, scope out the terrain, then make your moves." Since I'm so cerebral in most things, it's hard to listen to my body, which seems to have slowed down in tension rather than spiraling up, but I'm going with my instincts, with my body.

I think I want to make some changes anyway, so this is the time for it.

Meanwhile, I got the first heartening response from an agent on the queries I've been sending out about my novel. It wasn't an acceptance, but a personal note that said my book sounded like it had much to recommend it although the agent didn't feel it was right for her to handle. This came from a very prestigious agency, so it made me feel at least that I'm not completely deluding myself about the possible quality of my work. Like many writers, I do have a problem with self-confidence about my fiction.

Anyway, after getting the note, which I found in my mailbox after I had just finished emailing an editor at a paperback house directly with a query about my novel, I felt so good I went for a walk in the crowded streets of midtown, amidst the throngs of all the theatergoers leaving the Wednesday matinees. I stopped in a store that has sprung up near Eighth Avenue to sell Halloween items and costumes, and briefly browsed through the pirate and ancient Roman outfits. I contemplated buying a little rubber turtle, but for what purpose, I can't recall.

Once my good feeling about the note from the agent wore off, I felt in limbo again...so I hope I can make things crystallize in a positive way very soon.