Follow the Money

So my home state has a new slogan: "New Jersey, Come See For Yourself"

Eh, okay.

For the past 20 odd years, governor after governor has filmed ads that end with him or her standing on one of our famous beaches intoning, “New Jersey and You, Perfect Together,” suddenly that’s just not good enough. A few months ago, the current acting governor decided to have a contest to choose a new slogan. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, the one we had was pretty good by PR standards: succinct, fairly memorable and pretty inoffensive. So why do we need a new state slogan? There are those who say that the Democrats have been itching to change it so they can leave another indelible mark on the state. (“New Jersey and you….” Was rolled out during the administration of Republican Thomas Kane, of 9/11 Commission renown. He was one of the most popular and well liked govs this state had and is still highly respected in political circles.)

So aside from personal pride, why would the outgoing governor tinker with what’s been a winning slogan? Follow the money.

Politicians in this state are very adept at creating income streams, especially for their friends and family. A new slogan means that all of the marketing material produced by the state will have to be redesigned and reprinted. Web pages and advertising will have to be redone. I’m not sure if the slogan appears on any state stationary or anything like that but if it does, that will have to be reprinted as well. In addition to annoying some people, this could translate into sweet little bump in profits for some company.

New Jersey, you’ve just got to love it.

My Belated End of Year Post

I got an A in my class, an A for my internship and I end my undergrad career with a GPA of 2.992. That's right, Rutgers couldn't spot me the round up to 3.0 I'm sure there's some perfectly good mathematical explanation for this but being a Theater Arts major I'll be damned if I know (or care) what it is. Overall, I'm feeling pretty good these days. Still procrastinating on a couple of big decisions but I'll have to "defecate or vacate the commode" very, very soon. EEK!

The following is the 15 cent tour of my holiday season.

I generally don't do the New Year's Resolution thing, however since I'm going through such a big transition this year, I wanted to set some little goals around making my Post M life look and feel different from my LIfe with M. I need to do things to bring back my joy. I will be making a point to get out of the house and do something at least once a month. My therapist would like to see me up it to once a week but that's too much of a challenge for me right now. I went to the movies last week and will go to tactisle and shirleym's Game Night tomorrow if they have it. I'm already ahead of my goal for the year, 'bitter little lol'.

I've picked out some movies I want to see that are part of that film festival they have at Rutgers. If I can get someone to go with me, great. If not, I'll go anyway. If I weren't so neurotic, I'd probably look forward to this a lot more.

Now for the doom and gloom portion of our show.

I cried on Christmas Day....a lot. I didn't want to get out of bed, didn't want to see or be with anyone but made the trip trip to be with family anyway. I pulled over to the side of the road twice because I got too emotional to drive. (Damn you Kenny Loggins!! Damn you 'Celebrate Me Home'!!) Lots of money and spending talk made me even more depressed. I cried more when I got home. It's not that I regret getting a divorce so much as I realized that over the past decade so much of the rituals associated with the holidays grew up around things that had meaning to us as a couple. From getting the tree on December 23 so we could put it up on Christmas Eve to reciting the history of each ornament as it was hung on the tree to a million little things that came back to me in a rush of emotion. It's not the man I miss as much as the rituals that provided the consistency and stability in my life that I love so much. There will be noe rituals to build and someday a new person to build them with but I had to feel the pain of a dream that died to have a strong foundation for the new ones.

So I spent much of the next week in bed (alone); miserable.

Took my GREs on 12/28. Got a combined score of 1260; 590 on the Quantitative(Math) and 670 Verbal. The results of the Analytical part (The essays) will be reported to me later. Rutgers wants a combined score of 100 and Sand Diego State wants to see 600 on each part and 4.5 on the Analytical. I think I did OK considering how I did more moping then studying. Those scores are very decent, this is cool (the score part, not the moping part.)

Was bummed on NYE but had chinese food from Jade Dynasty, mmmmmm, my favorite. I'm sure this is emotionally unhealthy on some level, but WTF, it's my life. Saw Dick Clark and thought how much it sucked that a man who made his life as a glib disc jockey could have his speech impacted so much by a stroke.

Situational Depression is a bitch in black high heels but it's making me appreciate the sunshine all the more. Then evening came; then morning came; the next day. I'm back, it's all good.