Found Goddess: The Computer Goddesses Part 8 By Barbara Ardinger

Note. The term Found Goddess was created by Morgan Grey and Julia Penelope for their wonderful book, Found Goddesses: Asphalta to Viscera (New Victoria Publishers, 1980). I started Finding goddesses—Nerdix, Compuquia, Hostilia, and Whizziwig—when I was working on a Y2K project for a major corporation. I Found the other goddesses described here when I was writing a book on the subject, Finding New Goddesses (ECW Press, 2003). The newest goddesses are Fubar-Ma and Linker Bell, who have just now appeared. Well, maybe they’ve been standing around and/or hovering; I just got them down on paper.

Daymentia

(Day-MEN-sha)

Goddess of the Temp Job

It is said that Daymentia has sixty-four hands. She needs that many. It takes eight to work at the computer with the efficiency expected of temporary workers: one to hold the mouse, two to type, one to hold program disks, one to hold application disks, one to hold Windows for Dummies, and two to load and empty the printer.

In Her remaining fifty-six hands, She holds Her coffee cup, herbal tea bags, change for the Coke machine, a large bottle of water, Her brown-bag lunch, a stapler, a staple remover, the telephone receiver, the phone message pad, a red ball-point pen, a blue ball-point pen, a black ball-point pen, a #2 pencil, an eraser, a bottle of Liquid Paper, a box of little paperclips, a box of jumbo paperclips, a box of binder clips, a steno pad, a fax cover sheet, big Post-Its, little Post-Its, priority tags, transparent tape, masking tape, duct tape, #10 envelopes, window envelopes, brown catalog envelopes, a letter opener, a pair of broken scissors, a photo-blue pencil, a paperback dictionary, a paperback speller, Strunk & White’s Elements of Style, a twelve-inch C-thru plastic ruler, an eighteen-inch C-thru plastic ruler, a wooden straightedge, an X-acto knife, a box of Avery labels, a box of five-cut file folders, a box of Pendaflex folders, a ream of letterhead, a ream of copier paper, the gizmo that runs the copy machine, Her photo-ID badge, a Sort-o-Graph, the company phone directory, take-out menus from eleven neighborhood restaurants, the keys to the desk She’s using, the watering can for the philodendron on the filing cabinet, the company procedures manual (Vols. 1-10, in separate three-ring binders), a giant bottle of aspirins, a ragged bottle with a few Tylenol-threes rattling around in it, Her car keys, and two pairs of spare pantyhose.

Why do we do it? Simple. We enjoy paying the rent.

If you have any energy left after a day like this, invoke Daymentia with these words:

                        Hail, Daymentia, bold and true,

                        Have I got a job for you.

                        Either show a way to make me love it,

                                    Or take this job and kindly shove it.

Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. (www.barbaraardinger.com), is the author of Pagan Every Day: Finding the Extraordinary in Our Ordinary Lives (RedWheel/Weiser, 2006), a unique daybook of daily meditations, stories, and activities. Her earlier books are Finding New Goddesses, Quicksilver Moon, Goddess Meditations, and Practicing the Presence of the Goddess. Her day job is freelance editing for people who don't want to embarrass themselves in print. Barbara lives in southern California. To purchase a signed copy of Finding New Goddesses, just send Barbara an email at bawriting@earthlink.net.