Had another one of those long, grueling over two hour interviews with whole different groups of people yesterday.  It was at that place I wrote about a week ago, the one in which the initial phone interview went so well I thought I was in but was starting to worry as I hadn't heard anything back yet.  Obviously, I did.

Here's another thing about those interviews-- each one is with a different person so each interview goes completely differently than the other one's depending on the chemistry or the other person's personality or the questions they ask meaning that it's a bit of a roller coaster ride.  The first interview I did was alright, the second one was great, the third was somewhere along the lines of a flail, and the fourth was just meh.  Somehow, I have to hope that the one person I did really well with is somehow able to convince the others that I should have the job and win them over to my cause.  

This interview was for yet another position that hadn't been created yet but they just knew they had to have somebody in this role, whatever that role may be.  Which is why I got four different interpretations of what the job was from four different people.  I did, however, get the feeling that they wanted something completely different than what I was originally told the job would be or had applied to and there is nothing quite realizing all of this right in the middle of the interview.  

So, yeah, okay, I did watch part of the convention, at least Michelle Obama's speech (I did, however, quickly change the channel the moment a talking head started talking).  I have to say while watching it, and other parts of the night, the reality of it all hit me-- Jesus Frickin' Christ, we're actually nominating a black guy.  And all these people out there cheering for and celebrating a black guy?  What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here?

Admit it-- it was just a little weird with a twinge of feeling that we're in some sort of bizarro/through the looking glass kind of world.  

But while I also think this just an awesome thing for all sorts of reasons, I'm worried that a whole bunch of people tuned in, drew the same conclusion I did, but didn't quite see it in such a positive light.

I'll also add some sort of paraphrase that I read somewhere this morning, about how cool it'll be to actually have classy, sophisticated, intelligent people in the White House.  For once.  And I'll also add another sort of paraphrase that I read somewhere else, about how all of that automatically makes them out of touch with most Americans.

I repeat something I've said before-- if you're a big corporation and the only way to apply for a job there is to enter a whole bunch of information on their web site, don't make it so complicated that the only way to enter your information is to have the latest browser and to be enabled in the latest web 2.0 flimflammery.  Because it's friggin impossible to apply for a job there when it's friggin impossible to get into the web site.

Because I'm a political junkie, I usually watch the conventions and all the hyperventilation from the pundits.  While I occasionally glance at the Republican convention, or at least watch it until my blood pressure approaches heart-attack levels, I do like to watch the Democratic convention.  It is my team, after all, and it helps to affirm why I am a Democrat, like actual minorities in the audience.  This year, however, I'm probably going to stay away from most of it.  I want to catch Obama's speech, of course, because he's friggin amazing when he's one (his speech at the 2004 convention almost made me cry) and because the fate of the world rests on his shoulders (seriously).

I am, however, not going to watch the pundits analyze and dissect the thing because political reporters and pundits make baby Jesus cry.  For example, before Obama went on his vacation, Cokie Roberts said on one of those Sunday morning gab-fests that she thinks Obama's vacation choice was a mistake because it was too easy for Republicans to brand him as an elitist with vaguely foreign ties.  This despite the fact he's from there.  Or despite the fact he has family there.  Or despite the fact that Hawaii is a state in the union and many people go there on vacations and/or honeymoons, including John McCain.  One of my fondest desires is that whenever a pundit says something like that, either another pundit or a politician will turn to that pundit and say something like "that's the most stupidest thing I've ever heard.  You're an  idiot."

I'm still waiting.

Actually, not watching the news is a pretty smart strategy in handling the election because I have yet to throw anything at the tv.  I'm surviving mainly on left-ish leaning web sites, like Talking Points Memo, because they seem to be handled and run by sane people.  There's still enough things out there that gets reported to make me want to ram my head against the table, but at least those people share the same outrage about it all.

This election, I'm surviving mainly because of Wonkette, which is where I spend most of my time during the day, trolling the comment sections and occasionally adding my two cents.  I like to go there because the site makes fun of all things that need to be made fun of and because it and most of the commentors share most of my views-- that Obama is the One; that McCain is a doddering opportunist who wants nothing more to do than start bombing someone, and that the press mainly consists of a bunch of retards.

Wonkette works this time around because while occasionally funny, the Daily Show hasn't been that with-it during the election.  Things happen too fast these days for the latest news to make it onto the show and so they are usually behind the news.  I also think that deep down, everyone on the show loves both Obama and McCain and as a result, they're having trouble mocking either of them-- there's no outrage to fuel the humor.  One of these days, they're going to fall out of love with McCain but I'm still waiting for it to happen.

PS- yes, there's Olberman, but Olberman has somehow turned himself into just as much of a blowhard as O'Reilly.  Rachel Maddow is the new hotness.

Just got back from getting a massage and I have to say it wasn't the best one I've gotten.  

We went to the Kabuki Springs which we've gone to a few times and has rocked both of our worlds when we went.  The previous times we went, however,  we got the full spa treatment, the kind that includes a bath and all sorts of fun stuff.  This time it was just a massage.

Usually when I've gotten a massage, I've gotten a special room for it.  At the kabuki, the rooms I've been in where beautiful.  But at Kabuki, the regular old massages weren't done in those special rooms, but in a much bigger room, one in which all the massages were done and one in which each "booth" was divided just by huge drapings.  So instead of getting this nice, private room with incense and all that, I got this small little section in which I could hear my neighbor whispering to his masseuse.  It made the place look like a massage chop shop-- bring 'em in and bring 'em out.  At one point, some guy got his back pounded on and I could hear the "thwap Thwap thwap" coming from nearby.

Even worse, mine was at the end and there was this glass partition between my booth and the hallway outside.  When I got in there, there were two women standing in the hallway and I could pretty much see them.  First, hello distraction.  Second, you kinda have to get naked before  getting a massage and I was so not getting naked when standing in front of glass.  I didn't get naked until my masseuse reassured me several times that you could not see in from the hallway.

As I was sitting there, I realized a few other things for which I was disappointed. My masseuse was some white guy with a receding hairline who looked older than me.  I don't like the idea of getting a massage from some guy who looks like a consultant.  I want my massages to be done by the usual type of person I get them from, some hippy chick with a weird name who does massages to earn some extra money to go to Burning Man and have some fake weird name that they've given themselves despite the fact they grew up in West Chester New York.

See, the thing is for whatever reason massages are seen as something kind of exotic.  All eastern and shit.  That's why I like getting massages from some buddhist wanna be named "India" and not some guy named Bob.

Which is also why I don't like the kind of massage I got, a Swedish massage.  There's nothing wrong with a swedish per se, but I usually go for something like shiatsu or reiki or some other weird sounding massage.  It sounds like the kind of thing they do in far-away places with far-away belief systems.  There's nothing exotic about Sweden.  

Friday night, we went to the Outside Lands festival mainly to see Radiohead. I used to see a lot of concerts back in the day but, like everyone else seemingly in existence, the older I got, the less shows I saw. I also used to go to those big, festival shows a lot, either things like Lollapalooza (btw-- it turns out that spell check is aware of the word "Lollapalooza" as it is not warning me I'm spelling something incorrectly) or shows by a certain hippie-ish band that I refuse to acknowledge ever being into. Now the thing about the concert is that I kinda skewed old. Like really skewed old. Yes, I was the old guy at the concert hanging out with people almost half my age and pretending that I was still "hip".

The thing is I didn't really feel old. I looked at the crowd and said to myself "these are my people" and felt transported back in time. Like I could go casually strike up a conversation with anyone in the crowd as if they were my peers. Except, of course, I wasn't. Which made me feel both young and old at the same time.

At the concert my friends and I were really concerned about being as close to the stage as possible. So we got there pretty much when the doors opened and spread out all of our blankets so as to make sure we had claimed our territory, much like settlers traveling out west. We were so concerned about being close to the stage that we bailed on seeing any other acts at the festival lest we lose our spot, and that includes some band (Black Mountain) which was described as being a psychadelic 70's rock-styled band and that's the kind of musical write-up that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. We also bailed on Beck, who I really wanted to see as I have yet to see him, because Beck ended about ten minutes before Radiohead came on and as the thing was a complete cluster fuck, there was no way to see both without missing part of each other's acts and/or be trampled to death in the rush of people going from one act to the other.

Well, we got our positions up close to the stage as we wanted but as the band came on and the crowd rushed to the front, we were pretty well crushed in our positions. Whatever room we had carved out for ourselves no longer belonged to us as everyone pretty much just trampled all over us.  Because of all this, we also couldn't really see the stage (which is the whole point of being close to the stage) nor the video screens that were set up because they were too many people in front of us to really see. I could kinda see but Harlan couldn't as she's a bit shorter than me.

For various reasons that I wont' get into, at the beginning of the third song (and right after an awesome version of Reckoner), we had to leave our spot and head towards a spot where we had room and a place to sit, somewhere considerably not near the front of the stage. So we found our spot, a nice spot where we could sit, have elbow room, and not feel trapped and quickly realized that by not being as close to the stage as possible, we actually had better positions. No, we couldn't see the the stage but neither could we see it before. Instead, we had a clear view of the stupendously awesome light show and the video screen. No, it wasn't like seeing the band but more like watching a laser show.  As one of the reasons why I love Radiohead is because they tend to be the kind of band that works well as a laser show, this made me quite content.

One more thing about the show-- somehow Radiohead has become almost a stadium rock band, as evidence by nearly 60,000 people paying $80 mainly to see them. People sang along to songs and one couple even did a nice, romantic dance to "Fake Plastic Trees." The fact that they have achieved such stature is quite remarkable considering they've intentionally done everything possible to not achieve that stature, doing the standard stunts like refusing to do interviews and releasing albums with the complete intention of pissing off all the people who liked the previous album. Yet, still, despite all this, they've somehow become a band that plays to huge crowds, crowds that hold up cell phones during ballads, sing along, and dance.

The amazing thing about it all, other than what was previously mentioned, is that they are not the type of band that lends itself to sing alongs as their lyrics are either completely non-sensical or so drenched in alienation and isolation that singing the lyrics in a crowd feels wrong.  Like it's completely not the point of the song. You cannot disappear completely or feel trapped in a body that you can't get out of if you are surrounded by 60,000 people all saying the same thing.

I've been applying for writing jobs as well as the jobs I normally apply for and this morning, I got an email about an editing position for a web site that's all about dogs. The email I got asked me if I have a dog or not. I, of course, told him that I do not have a dog and then went on a long bit about how much I love dogs, that I had a dog, and that I'm a dog person. I also mentioned that Harland and I would love to get a dog but it's friggin impossible to do so in the city (which is true).

Naturally, I haven't heard back from him yet.

So, for those keeping score at home, I've now not gotten jobs because I don't play enough video games and because I don't have a dog. I've read a lot of those "How to Get a Job" type books and none of them mention playing video games and owning a dog.

On Monday I had a phone interview with a pretty big company. So big I never thought I'd hear back from them. Anyways, the interview was one of the best interviews I've ever had, mainly because for whatever reason, the person on the other end of the line, a HR type, really liked me. So much so that was supposed to be a half an hour interview lasted over an hour.

Now, it was the "gateway" type interview, the kind in which someone from HR first contacts you to make sure if you're even worth presenting to somebody in the actual department. So you have to be extra diligent in these because you're not even close to getting to the real interview. But this one, this one went well. At one point, she repeated back to me a totally rambling answer to a question I wasn't quite prepared for but did redid it in a way that made me sound completely passionate and articulate about the position. At another point, I admitted I didn't know the answer to something and she suggested to me that while it's fine for me to not own up to it now, she'd recommend me studying up for it for my next interview. And, yes, she said she thought I'd have another interview, even saying she'd cross her fingers for me.

Naturally, I haven't heard back

I was at the store today and saw a headline on one of the tabloids about the recent death of Bernie Mac. The headline, if I remember correctly, read "Bernie Mac's Brave Last Days." Now I have no idea how brave Bernie Mac was but whenever somebody is either in serious condition or dead, you always hear that they are handling/did handle things with bravery. So, just once, I'd like to see a headline along the lines of "Celebrity X Faced Death Like a Whiny Bitch."

I'm getting a bad-- a really bad-- a really, really bad feeling about the election. It's starting to have that feel of almost every election I've seen since I've been alive-- once again, a weaker Republican candidate is outmanuevering, outthinking, and outflanking the Democrat in almost every way shape or form and in the face of the attack, the Democrat seems passive at worst, utterly outclassed at best. Except in the case of this election, it's not through incompetence as much as it is as overconfidence. And, as usual, it's one of those situations where somebody not in the campaign but watching from the sidelines, like, say, me, could come up with at least five tv ads and five speeches that would do a better job defending the candidate's positions and destroying the opponent's positions better than what's being seen out there. I mean, at this point, Obama should just run an ad of McCain saying "I'm not an expert on economics" followed with clips of Phil Graham saying American's are whimps and just show it over and over and over and over again. Hell, he should just run an ad pointing out the fact that as per usual, the Republicans have absolutely no ideas about health care and don't even seem to care.

And, as usual, an election that should be bringing forth serious, substantive debates on huge, tremendous, important issues (like, say, the obviously apparent decline and fall of the American Empire) is being lost in the haze of tv ads, counter attacks, and the Unbearable Lameness of the Media. Let's look at foreign policy, for example. It's obvious McCain takes uses whatever mobility he has left in his arm, pops some viagra, and whacks off every night to the thought of fighting war upon war upon war. Yet there doesn't seem to be much in the way of concern over this. Somehow, the neo-con's haven't been totally killed off yet and it's mainly because it's much easier screaming "Russia is evil!!!!!!" on tv than saying "well, yes, but Georgia fucked up, we kind of baited Russia, and let's not get into too much of a tizzy about this." Sadly, it's hard to run on a foreign policy of "let's not lose our heads here" which is actually probably the most important component of running a foreign policy.

Which brings up the final bit. That, as usual, an American populace that tells pollster after pollster that they want certain things will completely vote against them because of various reasons. The fact that we are completely tired of war or that Russia and China is doing what they are because we're mired in too many wars would lend towards one thinking that maybe blowing shit up isn't necessarily the best policy, but darn, doesn't McCain look experienced when he's popping a vein and talking about how we're all Georgians? I'm not, btw. Sorry to say this, but fuck 'em.

And I'm not even going to get into economic matters. Suffice it to say, that if you complain about lack of work, lack of healthcare, lack of pretty much anything, and yet vote against somebody who supports all that because of, say, an insufficient love of fetuses, you kinda get what you deserve. Except that they drag me down with them.

All of which means is that I'm kind of dreading the actual election day. Because now, at least, I can still think that there's a hope. After election day, it'll be just more heartbreak, disillusionment, and the crushing knowledge that for the most part, my fellow Americans are a bunch of idiots.

I haven't really been paying too much to the Olympics and part of me wishes I was because it's actually a lot of fun and completely engrossing. However, the little things that I've caught has reminded me just what I don't like about watching the Olympics. It seems that everytime I turn it on, it's either the American women's softball team or those American beach volleyball players. Both of them tend to kill their opponents meaning it's barely competitive. And beach volleyball is kind of a dumb, made up sport, and softball is a sport in which we should be kicking everyone's butts because it's our game and we're probably the only country that produces women who really care about playing softball. So, basically, what you got is a lot of events featuring American's kicking other countries butts in silly sports. Now, I'm sure other people get off on watching American's kick people's butts in not very important sporting events (U-S-A! U-S-A!) but I don't. I actually like watching us being competitive, even occasionally losing, in sports that seem a bit more traditional.

Either that or team handball.

Earlier, I had mentioned that I wasn't so sure cats were meant to be house pets. The idea being that they might not be so ideal of a domesticated animal because they don't appear to really care if they are or not. One thing I've learned, though, is that the they do have an incredible value just for their ability to entertain you for minutes on in by not doing much of anything. As a friend pointed out, cats are perfect animals for stoners not just because they're low maintenance but because they're kind of stoney themselves.

It's all about that aura of self-possession that they have. A cat will suddenly get up, go over to another place, then lie down again as if it perfectly makes sense to get up from one spot to another. Same thing with say suddenly jumping up on top of a bookcase. They just get up from where they are and move over to another place for reasons unknown only to them. This is especially true, when like my cat, they decide to go chasing imaginary mice. Of course, chasing imaginary rice is ridiculous and often extremely silly to watch, but when a cat goes about doing it, they make it look like there is totally a mouse right there and if you don't see it, that's not their problem.

Basically, what makes a cat so entertaining is that you find yourself spending hours just trying to figure out what the hell they are doing.

And, ick--- it appears I am now turning this into a blog about my cat. My have some things changed.

I've been reading my posts from seven years ago (Christ, it's been that long?) and it's kinda scary to read through. Some of it even painful. In doing so, I've discovered that:

-I'm not nearly as good as a writer as I thought I was
-I can't believe I revealed as much as I did
-I forgot about my unhealthy obsession with the Real World and the Real World/Road Rules competitions.
-I wrote way too much about politics
-Buffy too
-I wrote good reviews of not just "Signs" but "Attack of the Clones"
-I really came off as one depressed, angry, angst-ridden person who couldn't sleep and subsisted entirely on coffee and alcohol. As a result, the writing make me come off like one big, huge raw nerve, exposed pretty much everyone to read.

Good stuff.

Still, most of it comes off as the kind of thing one writes in their journal with all the encompassing embarrassment that comes with it.

The thing I'm realizing too is that there's a lot of stuff I let out and a lot of things I never got to write about and how that time was really much, much worse than I wrote about.

Oh, one more thing-- I started this here blog in October 2011, a few weeks after 9/11. During the time I was writing it, we went through umpteen terror alerts, two wars, all sorts of craziness. The blog is actually interesting in that it's a somewhat interesting time-capsule-- Life in post 9/11 America. Those were some weird and whacky times.

For those of you wondering just what I am doing with my unemployed ass all day, here's what I got going on today. Basically, my cat has worms and when I called the vet, I was told that I should bring a stool sample over to the vet so they could send it out to the labs to determine what medicine to give him. Unfortunately, there's not really any stool samples available right now so I'm basically sitting around in my pajamas waiting for my cat to take a shit.

More looking for a job stuff. This'll be it for awhile-- I swear.

-Three hour interviews suck. SUCK. And not exactly fair. Because while I'm sitting there getting more and more exhausted and mentally fried and while my vocal chords and being ripped apart, the people I'm meeting with aren't because they're only meeting me in 20-30 gaps. So they have a lot of energy. I could also say that I should probably get some extra-bonus points for having to deal with an HR person who didn't give me any details and told me I was interviewing for the wrong job, plus having to drive to and from Palo Alto but you never get extra credit for anything.

-And speaking of which, I've been getting a lot of "why do you want to work for this company" type of questions lately. Well, because it's a job and I'se gotta be paid. Actually, for some companies (video game company or home electronic companies) that's easy to answer. Not so easy if it's for, say an architectural firm ("I always wanted to be an architect") or a company that makes medical equipment ("why, I've always been fascinated by x-rays").

-Going back to that place where I interviewed last week, the one that told me I was both too qualified and not qualified enough for the job, I went back and re-read posts about the time I interviewed there years ago and discovered that the same thing happened-- first they said my resume had too much experience and then they said I didn't have enough experience. In other words, that company is fucked up, yo. Also, what was weird about that interview is that the first person I met with thought enough of me that she left the interview and ran to her desk to hand me her business card. Somebody who doesn't want to hire another person would not do that, right? Which means the decision went down to the last person I met with who, apparently, told my recruiter that I was too "low energy." Whatever that means. Funny thing is that the dude who interviewed me looked like the kind of person who like nothing better than to kick back in his cabin in Tahoe and popping open a Sierra Nevada while listening to the rocking sounds of Dave Mathews after a full day of skiing. In other words, I don't exactly see that guy as being very high energy himself. So, whatever.

Most places that I've lived in the city have been pretty quiet, or at least in terms of hearing your neighbors. My last apartment, in the Mission, was almost sound-proof in that I almost never heard my neighbor and only occasionally heard the people downstairs.

This isn't true of my new apartment, which is why it was a little disconcerting to have to spend the night hearing my upstairs neighbors get into a loud argument and then a loud bout of make-up sex.

So for those in the know, the big song out there, well one of the big songs out there is this song "I kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry. Unlike the pervious "I Kissed a Girl" song that came out in the late 90's which was kinda Lillith Fair and written from the perspective of somebody who was most definately bi, this song is not. It's more "OMG! I was drunk and made out with Becky! I'm so cool"

The thing about the song it shows the complete mainstreaming of the idea of girl on girl action. It might even be the tipping point into Shark Jumpage (how's that for mixed cultural referential cliches?). How can girl on girl action be considered outre if there's a friggin' Top 10 hit about it?

Which brings us with two points

1)If I were a parent, it's yet another reason to fear for my kids
2)Something tells me this song gets played at a lot of frat parties. A LOT.

Okay, here's todays job fun.

I finally got the information about the interview late yesterday evening (around 9). But there was still no information about exactly what the interview was for. Remember, I didn't know how they got my resume and there was two job postings on the companies' web site that were completely different but for which I both could have applied for (one was project managing, the other one content management on the website).

This morning, before the interview, I wanted to make absolutely positively sure I knew which job I was to interview for and so called the guy up just to confirm. He told me it was definitely the web related job. With that, I printed out the relevant resume, studied the job description, and worked on my responses and headed all the way down to Palo Alto to do the interview.

Funny little thing happened when I got there-- he told me the wrong job. It was the project management position.

Luckily, I found out early on when I met the first person I had to meet with and said enough things to make me realize the guy was an idiot and quickly made adjustments. But because I studied for the wrong job, I was kind of shooting blind in that I wasn't sure what the details of the job were. But whatever.

Okay, onto the interview. The whole thing started at 11 and I was supposed to meet with 6 people over the space of three hours. At 11, which meant it was right in the middle of lunchtime. Hello yummy, greasy egg brunch. Anyways, if you haven't done one of those three hour interview jobbers with six different people, let me tell you-- they're fun. Really fun. I told the same stories at least three times, answered the question "what are your strengths" at least four times and answered the question "tell me a little about yourself" four times. After awhile, that story you tell and that response you have gets kind of boring and it's hard to be exciting and show energy when you've told the same story again and again and again.

But wouldn't you do better answering the question since you had to do it so many times? Well, you'd think so except for the fact it's friggin exhausting talking to all that people throughout the experience. First you have energy, then you lose energy,k then you get your second wind, then you get tired, and then you get your third wind and so on and so forth. And somewhere close to hour 1, my brain went from clear to completely muddled and English often became problematic.

Oh, and my poor, poor throat. I talked straight for pretty much three hours and have you ever gotten to the point where there's no spit in your mouth and your throat is starting to hurt and everytime you speak, you could literally feel each individual strand of your vocal chords shredding? That was me today. Luckily, everytime I hit the point where I was absolutely unable to speak anymore, somebody piped in and gave me a reprieve for a few minutes.

And finally, I leave you with this. For the very first time in all the interviewing I've done, I asked to go to the bathroom in the middle of the interview.

Good times.

Yes, it's a busy day...

On Monday I got a call from somebody about a job. Now the thing is that when companies post their job on craigslist, most of them use an anonymous email address and often don't mention the company. As a result, it's often hard to tell who the company is that you're applying to so when you get a call about a job, oftentimes you don't know what the job is. You just have to hope that the person who calls you mentions it when they call or you can figure it out what the job is by playing detective online.

This time around, I couldn't figure it out.

I went to the companies web site and looked at the job postings. On the site, I found two somewhat different jobs, both of which I could have applied to. So now I'm even more confused as to what the job is I'm interviewing for as it could be either one.

The guy who I talked to on Monday said he wanted me to come in on Thursday and Friday and would let me know as soon as he can coordinate with the people who would meet with me. As of 4 this afternoon, I hadn't heard from him so I called. When I reached him, he told me that I had an interview at 11 AM tomorrow morning (that being Thursday). Well, good thing they told me that as some people might find that information useful. Luckily I had nothing planned so there I go.

He then told me that he'd email me the information about the interview, things like where to go and whom I'm meeting with and the schedule. As of 7:30 this evening, I haven't gotten that email.

So, all I know is that tomorrow I have an interview somewhere in Palo Alto for some unknown job with a bunch of unknown people for an unknown amount of time. Other than that, I'm golden.

Make mad.

Alright, so I'm posting a lot today. What can I say, I'm bored, have a lot to get out, and feeling the need to start writing again.

Anyways, I have a phone interview in about an hour. Since I think one of my problems with interviews is that I get too nervous, I realize that I have to find ways of not coming off as nervous and more loose. And since I'm home and there's some beer and some Jameson's lying around......

Hey, it's an idea. Much better than my career councelors idea, mainly to get myself in an interview frame of mind by dressing up like I'm having an in-person interview.

Remember that job in which two recruiters tried to get me in? The one in which the first recruiter took their sweet time and the other one didn't? And remember how the company that took their sweet time to get me in couldn't because they did such a good job hyping me up that the company thought I had too much experience for the job?

Funny thing-- I had the interview yesterday with said company and already heard back. Apparently, they thought I had too little experience for the job. So, to sum up-- I didn't get the job because I somehow had both too much experience for it and not enough experience for it.

I guess this is my fault because after being told that I didn't have enough experience, I tried to play down my experience in the interview because of the previous feedback and was afraid they'd go back to their original assessment of me. I was so sure they'd ask me why I wanted that job because of that problem that I even had a pat response for it.

Now this might seem like a mistake in my part but I was pretty sure it was the right angle to play because....

-the first agency told me that the job description I got was wrong and that job pretty basic
-because the company that let me go two months into my contract let me go because they they only needed somebody who could do the basic stuff and they thought I had too much experience to do the basic stuff
-the position was listed as Jr. to Mid
-The salary was way (way) below the standard hourly rate of somebody with the kind of experience they appear to be looking for, so much so I was ambivalent about the job because it would have been a huge pay cut. On the application form I had to fill out for the job, I even left the question "what was your previous salary" blank. Stupidly, I thought low hourly rate = not that much experience needed.

Oh, one more thing- it was a job that was supposed to last for 3-6 months and that, apparently, was it. In the interview, they mentioned that they were having problems filling the position because everybody they hired left before their contract was up. I guess they haven't quite figured out yet that a short-term position with low salary might not be enticing enough to keep their contractors from staying there. Go figure.

Fear the surprise phone interview. There you are, in your pjs, playing on Facebook while reading about John McCain entering his wife into a wet t-shirt contest and the next thing you know you're answering questions about "what are your strengths?" It's hard to answer said question when you're not quite mentally prepared to answer those questions and you're mind is still wrapping your head around the idea that John McCain spoke at a biker rally and somehow that's considered a good thing in politics.

Fear it too because you have no idea who the hell you are talking to about who the hell knows what job and you just have to guess on what they want to hear.

The other day I was at the gym and worked out behind some woman wearing one of those tribute type t-shirts that one wears at some sort of walk to honor a friend. The front had the type of walk it was for-- either for lung cancer or breast cancer-- and the back had a list of the friends who were walking in that person's name. But as I kept on watching her, I started to wonder just how much of a tribute it is to their friend that the tshirt used to honor that person was now being as gym tshirt

As I stumbled upon new promos for the revised and revamped 90210, promos consisting of the famous guitar riff and "hey, bro" handshakes, I finally figured out why the remake is such a dumb idea. Besides the fact it's a remake, of course. The thing is that the promo shows that the people behind the show are doing the remake with the idea that the people who watched it back then watched it because it was good. The show was not good--not good at all. In fact, most people watched it because it was bad and the very definition of cheesy, that being something that was done with just enough serious intent and earnestness to make the awfulness entertaining. Just look at the infamous guitar riff and hand-slapping credit sequence of the original show-- it consisted of an over-the-top guitar hook that was done to sound rocking but was definitely not combined with images of people trying to look cool who were most definitely not.

So the promo has the same sort of look and feel of the original show, which is good, right, because it'll mean the same fun, right? Well no, because in doing the promo that way, it comes off like they actually think the entire title sequence was cool. And if they thought the opening sequence was cool, then they probably thought the rest of the show was cool and that people watched it because it was cool when they most definitely watched it because it was definitely not cool. In other words, they're redoing something people watched ironically unironically.

But wait-- if they're doing is just like the original, wouldn't it be the same amount of cheesy fun? No. It makes it a stupid idea.

So let's see, in the past two weeks Obama went overseas to find that everybody loves him, the Iraqis back his withdrawl plan, the Bush administration is now doing what Obama said he'd do and talk to the Iranians, and John McCain sorta begrudgingly said he kinda agrees with Obama's plan. In that week, McCain rode around on a golf cart with Papa Bush, showed up at a bunch of sausage houses, and had part of his cheek removed.

This week, McCain released a series of incredibly juvenile commercials which said a whole bunch of things that were so wrong even the press called him out on it and a reporter for the Washington Post got a quote wrong and despite the fact that everybody said he got the quote wrong, the quote is now considered fact. End result, of course, is that despite everything-- and I mean everything-- McCain and Obama are now tired.

So what have we learned from these past couple of weeks

-The Republicans excel at really nasty, awful, dispiriting campaigns
-Which work
-Because the American people are idiots
-And I need to stop paying attention to politics as much as I do.

Still....all of this makes me want to cry. Not to mention drink heavily til november.

I know I've fucking bitched about this before, but I'm in the process of trying to apply for a job with a big company. Like most big companies, I have to go online to their site to do it. Fine.

But first I have to set up my account which means creating a name and password and I have to choose a certain password and then have a question set up in case I can't remember my password. While I'm glad for internet security, I'm applying for a job, not entering in my bank information. Just fucking set me up-- I really doubt somebody's going to go into the system and play with my resume for shits and giggles.

Now this is where the real fun starts. First I have to upload my resume. Fine. Then I have to fill in my contact information (which is on my resume, but whatever). This is always great fun because sometimes your allowed parenthesis in phone numbers, sometimes not but they don't tell you so you have to guess then re-enter and re-enter again to figure out what form they want phone numbers in. Same thing with salary-- do you include a $ or not and how do you hours if they don't accept hours? But then you always miss something but instead of giving you a list of what you've missed, it tells you one thing at a time so if you miss a few things or get something wrong, you have to keep on re-entering and re-entering again. Kiss ten minutes of your life goodbye.

But here comes the fun part- these sites usually try and gleam things from the resume and fill out things in the online form. Which is what this site requested of me. Thing is, I already uploaded my resume so why do I now have to fill these things out. After all, they asked for my resume so they should have all that information. But if they wanted me to fill it out by hand, they didn't really need to ask me for my resume, now did they?

Now sometimes when you do this, the system figures it out correctly and the jobs are all listed in order. This was not the case of this site which somehow managed to miss the first two jobs on my resume. So after reading through the instructions (again, I've already uploaded my resume) I figured out how to add those two jobs, move them up to the cue. And, naturally, they ask for all the information I've already provided on my resume so I have to enter all that stuff again. But even the jobs that they got right, just in different order still missed all the pertinent information so I have to enter all of that information by hand.

So what's the fucking point of asking me to upload my resume if they want me to enter all that information anyways on the site? And if they were going to do it, or at least try and pull things from my resume, couldn't they have at least made sure it was correct instead of incorrect so I'd have to waste another fifteen minutes just filling out information I've already provided.

I finally got past that point, then filled out some more boxes and information and then went through another round of security. Half an hour (!!) later, I had finally officially applied for that.

Half an hour of my life wasted just because of their stupid, lame, web site. For a job, I'll probably never hear back from. Unless, of course, everyone else applying gave up halfway through like I almost did and I was the only person to have gone through the whole awful thing.