Googling people can be bad for your mental health. I kind of already knew that, but the point was hammered home to me yesterday when the simple act of looking up an old friend from grad school sent me into a downward spiral of self-loathing and despair.

Before that, though, several months ago, some insane curiosity mixed with boredom got the better of me and I went to Google and typed in the name of a particularly soul-sucking, self-absorbed former friend. She has a blog (you would never find this blog by typing my real name in, but privacy on the internets is not the topic for the day). It's a very bad blog, filled with hysterical spelling and grammar errors (though she's since switched to livejournal and seems to be taking advantage of the spell-check feature) and pointless self-indulgent crap (unlike my blog, which makes the world better through its very existence). But the part of it that bothers me is the picture she's using in her profile. It's a photo I took of her, way back in 1999. It's a very good picture, black and white, composed nicely, all that shit. She's easy to photograph; she has very dramatic features (just ask her, although she'll probably change "dramatic" to "stunning"). It's beyond a simple snapshot, though--I developed it and printed it myself. So whereas if I had just taken it on a little Minolta, I wouldn't care if it was up there without credit, I'm a little piqued that she's plastering it all over the web (it's currently on three separate pages that I know of) without even a mention of the photographer. I'll get over it, but copyright is important, people!

And so we move to yesterday's fiasco. I'd been thinking of this friend a bit lately, wondering what she was doing with herself. Laura might remember her--a nice girl named Jen, another redhead. She was at all of the fabulous parties we threw at the apartment on Spring Park Ave. Anyway, I looked her up, only to find that after obtaining the exact same degree as me, she went on to be hired as a political science professor at a small university in New York. Seeing this news fifteen minutes after I had finished wiping milk off the face of a child, a significant part of my job description, didn't do wonders for my self-esteem. You might say it made me feel like a very small turd. A turd who nobody wants to hire for anything more challenging than diaper-changing or alphabetizing personnel files. She was a lovely girl and I'm sure she's a great professor, I'm happy for her, but I'd be happier if I had a job teaching college classes (without having to get a PhD) and giving speeches on preserving Chinese antiquities at UNESCO conventions.

Em and I are going to Chicago next weekend and we're buying ourselves some Important Lady work clothes. She'll definitely need them this summer. I'm hoping I will.