When I Grow Up (Part 1)

I've been spending the past week in an out of the local Unemployment Offices trying to get job counseling and hoping for some job training bucks (free money!) and let's just say that I've been in two meetings about all of this and I've skewed towards the median in those meetings. There were plenty of people much older than me, a few younger than me, and a few who are probably around the same age. There was one person there, a woman, who was noticeably younger than everyone else (I'd say in her early 30's) and I wanted to ask her what she was doing asking for job training as she looked to young to have her hopes and dreams crushed. From her application form (which I stole a glance at) it looks like she does a lot of Graphic Design and that probably explains that.

Today, I went to the Goodwill Center on Mission because it was also the city's main unemployment office and they have all sorts of computers set up. One of the things you can do there is run through a long, long program that helps you assess just what the hell you should be doing with your life.

Just as I finished (I won't get the results until next Tuesday), a very dignified woman in her late 50's also finished up and asked for help. So I'm thinking, why would somebody that old still need help figuring out what they need to do with their life? Shouldn't they have figured that out by now? I still don't but I'm not that old yet and I'm just a screw up. Her? She looked like she's had it figured out for awhile.

Then I started thinking about just what brought her to the Goodwill Center looking for career help because not only does she apparently need help but she is in the process of looking for this help so she could also do job training.

Remember those great Monster.com ads, the one's with a bunch of kids saying things like "I want to grow up to be in middle management?" Well, they should do that again except have one kid say;

"I want to have a long and successful career only to lose it because a bunch of assholes trash the economy so a bunch of 30 year old VPs use it as an excuse to lay me off because they can hire some 25 year old twerp for a lot less money than I make and also because they 'tweet' and I want to have to wind up in some Goodwill Center in some crappy section of San Francisco having to fill out a bunch of questions about what I want to do with my life because I'm told I have too much experience in my chosen field to be hired by anyone."

About that Other Thing that Happened

It took us about five hours to get from San Francisco to the Boardwalk due to traffic, getting lost, and the need to stop for food and a margarita. One of the major bits of traffic was created because the lane we were in, the one on the left-hand side, crawled to a complete stop for no explicable reason. As we were sitting there, we saw cars drive right past us on the shoulder of the road and squeeze themselves in near where the traffic choke hold was. It wasn't until we got to the traffic choke hold that we realized that the cause of the choke hold was all the cars driving on the shoulder trying to weasel their way through past the choke hold. In other words, there would have been no choke hold if it weren't for all the assholes trying to get around the chokehold.

Also, when we were driving home at night on 17 (not a very fun road to drive at night and extremely tired as it's a curvy mountain ride), the car behind me either had some crazy-ass normal lights or super crazy-ass high-beams because the light from his car was so bright that I could not only not see in my rear view window because of the reflected light but I couldn't see my left-rear view window either because of the reflected light. Harlan said it looked like I had a glow while driving. Unfortunately, this meant that while I needed to get out of the line to get out of their shining, bright light, the shining bright light was preventing me from doing so because it was too fucking shiny and too fucking bright.

Roller Coaster of Love

Saturday we had free passes to go the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and after a horrendous time getting there (which I'll get to in a minute) I just have to say that one of the things I noticed was that going to the boardwalk in Santa Cruz today really isn't that much different from when I went to the Boardwalk at the Shore (for those of you not familiar with Jersey accents, it's pronounced Sho-aw) when I was in High School. Same types of teenagers, same types of occasional drunken dirtbag (you know, overly tan with a mullet, moustache, and Oakleys), and same type of families. The rides are a little bit more advanced but most of the key rides are still the same (ferris wheel, roller coaster). But the most noticeable thing was that the music hasn't really changed-- it's still a mixture of 60's stuff and 80's tunes. I heard while at the Boardwalk, Huey Lewis, Madonna, Rick Springfield, Kool & the Gang and a whole host of tunes that were played when I went their in High School. Why those tunes, who knows? Because the music of the 80's was the last time pop music didn't try for some sort of edge? Because it's all run by Gen X'ers trying to relive their youth? Who knows.

I also always hated roller coasters, or at least was too afraid to get on one. Slowly, I learned that most of them aren't that bad and if they are, they're over so fast you won't even notice that you're hating being on them. Which is why most of the times I ride them, it's only until 3/4s of the way through that I realize I'm having fun. The good thing about having free passes and sticking around til the park closes is that you can ride the roller coaster as many times as you want to so that you can realize you're actually enjoying it while you're on it. Thus, not being able to get enough of the Great Dipper Coaster despite riding it around 10 times.

There's another ride there to, the Double Shooter, which is one of those one's where they strap you in with other people and the contraption shoots up a tall tower and then drops you the moment you get up to the top of that tall tower. Once you get shot down, you get shot back up and so on and so forth. Normally this is something that I avoid at all costs because it involves two things I'm deathly afraid of-- heights and falling from said heights. But after much cajoling, I finally went on it and had pretty much the experience mentioned above concerning roller coasters. I shot up once, shot back down and then shot back up and midway through the second round I realized that I was not going to die of either horror or a heart attack.

Lessons learned
-Roller coasters are fun
-the Great Dipper at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk might be the most perfect roller coaster ever
-don't be afraid of rides. Except for the one's that spin you around while at great heights
-go to amusement parks late and stay til the very end as you'll miss most of the crush of people and your bulk time there will be spent without much in the way of lines or annoying children.

More Republican Sexy Time

Got a gig writing elsewhere and here's my post on the Republicans love of knocking boots:

By now, you've all heard that Mark Sanford, the Republican Governor of South Carolina (well he's a Democrat, according to Fox) had a little press conference today where he tearfully admitted that his mysterious disappearance was to Argentina and to visit somebody with whom he was having an affair with. For those keeping score at home, this is your second sex scandal involving a Republican this month as earlier, Nevada Senator John Ensign also admitted to having an affair. Considering that last year's Republican sex scandals involved congressional pages, anonymous sex in a bathroom stall, and wearing diapers with hookers, these two recent scandals are rather boring and almost mundane.

Sanford seems to fit the same bill as all the others who've gotten into trouble recently. He is very conservative-- so conservative he led the fight against the rejection of all that free stimulus money-- talks a lot about family values, and isn't a big friend of the gays. Like several others, he was also a huge proponent of the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton way back when he was caught doing not very wholesome things to someone with whom he wasn’t married to. The lesson learned is that the more conservative a Republican tries to be, the more they talk about "traditional families, and the more they like to bash gay people, the bigger the chance they will either be gay, having an affair, or the parent of a knocked up teenager. Sometimes all three at once.

Like Ensign, Sanford was considered to be a possible contender for the Presidency in 2012. Like Ensign, he could probably forget about that. Also in the category of "there goes that" includes Texas Governor Rick Perry, who talked about Texas seceding from the Union, and Bobby Jindal, who flamed out big time after his first big appearance on the national stage. This means that at this point, your two leading contenders for the Presidential Nomination are Sarah Palin, the fact of which shows the depths of Republican delusion, and Mitt Romney, the fact of which shows the depths of Romney's delusion. Actually, Romney has tried so hard to pretend he has conservative bona fides that it wouldn't be a surprise if he has an affair too just because everyone else is doing it.

And One More Thing

Here's the thing about celebrity deaths, that for whatever reason, I'm supposed to care that Farrah Fawcett died. I do not. Not at all. Yet, I'm supposed to think that I do. What exactly has Farrah done? She was on an iconic poster (true) and was on a hit tv show for like a year until she thought she was too big for the show and got replaced by somebody hotter (that would be Cheryl Ladd and, yes, I said it). After that, she did zilch. Nothing. Basically lived off of her fame and her attachment to somebody who also had a certain amount of fame.

Don't care.

So with that being said, here's my Michael Jackson story....

I went to Malaysia like twelve years ago and while I was there, Michael Jackson was in Malaysia to play a concert in Kuala Lumpur. This was when Michael still toured but could only tour in places like Asia or Eastern Europe because nobody toured there and they were so excited he came there, they forgot about the whole sleeping with boys thing. Michael's presence in Malaysia was a huge frickin' deal and was all over the news and papers for like a week or so. When we were at Kuala Lumpur, my friends and I were driving around looking for something to do and drove past one of their biggest, fanciest hotels and saw a huge line of mainly kids out in front of the hotel holding up signs for Michael Jackson. No word on whether or not they were invited in for some Jesus Juice. On my way to Kuala Lumpur, I was on a bus and sat next to an Indonesian family that had flown up from Indonesia just to see Michael. They were all very nice and friendly and were wearing Michael Jackson shirts and hats and couldn't wait to see him. That story isn't so exciting to you, I guess, but it is for me because how many times have you been on some random bus in Malaysia talking to some Indonesians wearing Michael Jackson baseball hats?

Your Prerequisite Michael Jackson Post

In case you were wondering, I found out at Safeway. Got a txt from Harlan, then another friend, then, once I stopped listening to the podcast that I was listening to, heard everyone at Safeway talk about it. Which might be the first time I ever indulged in a conversation or feign any interest with people bagging food at Safeway (otherwise known as my new career).

So, yeah.

Here's the thing. Certain celebrities live way past the point of when they should. Sad, but true. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, James Dean, etc. all died at the right moment, when they were on top of the world and will forever remain so. If they had lived, Jim Morrison would have been nothing but a bad poet playing in a bad band and James Dean would have been just another good-looking movie actor from the '50's. Michael Jackson should have gone down like that but didn't. Like Elvis. Actually, almost exactly like Elvis. If he would have died in 1987 or so, he'd be the biggest thing in music history. But he didn't. Now he's known as a musical genius who like to hang out with chimps and had a fake nose and a kid named Blanket and wanted to be white and probably diddled little boys.

Here's the other thing, I never really like him, although that's partly due to being a child of the '80's more than anything. Got sick of seeing his videos all the time, got sick of everyone buying Thriller, got sick of him being everywhere in pop culture, got sick of people wearing that awful red plastic jacket. And here's the other thing, his death is going to be the biggest media circus since Princess Di's funeral. Meaning the happiest person on the face of the planet is Mark Sanford. Also meaning that everyone can go back to pretending to care about Iran (sucks to be you protesters).


And that's my post

Another Sign of the Times

In the past few months, whenever I called the Unemployment Office, they'd start with a message telling people what to do if they're about to run out of their unemployment and need an extension. When I called today, they started with a message telling people who are about to run out of their first extension how to get their second extension.

Today's Great Email Scam Sender's Name

Adolphus Bethune.

Anyways, here's a few things to tide you over until I find something to write about

-I find it rather ironic that the health food store across the corner from me is selling items that has expiration dates that have expired. After all, eating processed frozen pizza is still relatively healthier than moldy, spoiled yet organic hummus.

-If you watch a lot of bands playing either on videos or on TV, you should pretty much notice that how "rock star" the backup band looks is usually in inverse proportion to how much the song/band rocks. Which is why the guys in say Kelly Clarkson's backup band or the guys in Fall Out Boy all have tattoos and faux-hawks while most actual bands that rock these days don't seem to make much of an effort to show any sort of rocking.

More Fun with Online Job Forms

Just sayin, but if you want people to fill out their online job forms, it shouldn't take half an hour. Also, you shouldn't design it so that if you say that you're not a veteran, you should not then have to answer questions about whether or not you're a disabled veteran or a recently separated veteran or even a decorated veteran because I'm pretty sure that if you are not a veteran, you are not a disabled or decorated one. Unless, of course, you're George W. Bush.

And Today's Bad Job Scam Email Is....

Good Morning, Hooray For Anything

We analyzed your resume and see you as a potential candidate of our ((company,firm,organization))).
You may learn about ((company,firm,organization))) business activity on our site. We'd like to offer you the Financial Manager job.

You may also hold a job in a different ((company,firm,organization))) as our vacancy won't occupy a lot of time.

Also, if you're sending out spam mail, you probably shouldn't send it from an email address of the_plantation@hotmail.com

I Can Chalk Another Thing of My Bucket List

A letter to Andrew Sullivan actually got published on his blog:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/the-msm-again.html#more

I wish it was written better than it was, but it was late and I was all riled up. BTW, for those of you who work for the press or once did (cough) this weekend and the lack of attention or even interest in what's been going on in Iran is yet one more final nail in the coffin of old media. I don't know how you can justify being involved in a news channel or even running it if you consciously decide not to cover the news.

They're Here

I was watching the "Colbert Report" last night, the last one from Iraq, and right in the middle of the opening monologue, Colbert introduced a video message and on came that face, that smirk, the creaky Texas twang-- George W Bush, reappearing from his well-deserved exile to Texas. Just seeing him for a second made me want to throw up in my mouth.

Between him and the strange constant appearances of Dick Cheney, the whole thing feels like the end of "Poltergeist," the bit where after the munchkin declares the house cleansed and just as everybody starts relaxing, the evil spirits start up again. Picture W as the clown, the Republican Party as the skeletons in the pool, Cheney that huge vortex in the closet that sucks everything into it, and us as Carol Anne.

I'm Just Saying, Part II

Okay, it's been about two years since I last saw the dentist, but other than a cavity, everything was fine and dandy. Then I saw a dentist last week and was told I needed to get a filling. Okay, fine. But ever since then, my mouth has been killing me. Everything's soar and swollen and inflamed and has been ever since last week's appointment.

The lesson here: never see a dentist.

Fucking ow.

Just Sayin'

That if somebody is a known member of the Neo-Nazi Party and posts anti-semitic, racist paranoid screeds, maybe they shouldn't be allowed to buy a gun. Yeah, I know "background check" blah...blah...blah...but background checks on guys like that should be fairly easy to do as there's this thing called Google that allows you to do a quick search and discover all those anti-semitic, racist screeds on neo-Nazi web sites.

Today's Unemployment Update

Have that interview today with that agency that works with a certain hi-tech company for which I love. The good thing about the interview is that I have lots of connections to people who work there, at least that's what LinkedIn says.

Now, thanks to social networking, there's plenty of ways to get in contact with your contacts. The big question is just what is the best way of contacting somebody about something like this. I could, for instance, send them an email as provided on their LinkedIn account or use LinkedIn in general. That would make sense except that lots of people use their spam mail email address for LinkedIn and they might never actually check that email account, which is also why using the email account provided isn't such a smart idea.

Luckily, there's also Facebook as the one particular person I was going to use as a contact is one of my Facebook friends. One problem with that, however-- she just DEFRIENDED ME.

So now I have two things I have to concern myself with:
1)Would she actually be a decent reference considering she no longer values me as a person who would be interested in the latest antics of her dog

And more importantly

2)What the hell did I do to merit such a thing.

This makes things even more complicated because if I do get in contact with her, it'll mean I know what she did and she'll know I know what she did and suddenly guilt enters the equation and nobody wants to deal with that.

When Do You Know It's Time to Reevaluate Your Career Choices

When you dream about being laid off.

Or more like you're a contractor and either your contract ends or they just decide they don't need you anymore and the dream mainly consists of you packing up your cubicle and saying goodbye to a long stream of coworkers, something, I should add, I've been through three times in the past year.

Today's Unemployment Update

Thanks to a real live, still-employed recruiter, I'm supposed to have a phone interview with an actual company that needs actual help working for an actual client that makes computer products for which I am hopelessly fanatical about. I don't want to name them, but they are known for putting a small case "i" in front of half their products. Even better, the recruiter told me that one of the things they're looking for is somebody who is passionate about said company and I told her that wouldn't be much of a problem.

Thing is that the company in question said they'd get around to calling me sometime this week. Or maybe next week. Maybe. They'll get around to calling me whenever they get around to calling me. Which basically means that for most of this week and maybe possibly a large portion of next week, I'm jumping every time the phone rings thinking it might be them. I am also worried that having already prepped myself for this interview and practiced all of my pat responses, I will have forgotten all of my prep work by then. Even worse, since I won't be expecting their phone call, I'm worried that it will be very hard to shift from lying in bed, surfing the web in my pajamas mode into serious, professional, hire the fuck out of me mode. This is not as easy as it seems.

Be a Dentist

I went to the dentist today which is always fun because no matter what goes on, there is still going to be a bit of pain involved. Then there's always the part where your teeth get checked out and you sit there hoping and praying that they don't announce something like "well, all of your teeth are rotted so we're going to have to give you dentures" or "the entire right side of your mouth is one big cavity so we're going to have to do some 4 hour surgery or something to fix it all up but you're going to have to wait for us to order an extra shipment of novacaine to handle it before we do it."

What a strange job being a dentist is. Every day, you basically have somebody open up their germ-infested, smelly mouth and poke your head and hand into said germ-infested, smelly mouth. You also have the satisfaction of knowing that NOBODY looks forward to seeing you and that no matter what you do or how hard you try, at some point you'll be inflicting some measure of pain on the person with whom you've stuck your face into. That just sounds like an awesome job.

One more job related note for the day

One of the agencies I was signed up with has a job posting that I'd like to apply to but is a little different than the types of jobs I've signed up for in the past. I searched through my emails looking for the two contacts I had with the agency and then, just to make sure, I went into Linked In to see if they were still there. Neither were-- both were unemployed.

And today's wacky job posting is....

For a bloggy position with a company that is "the global leader in the collection and preservation of newborn stem cells from umbilical cord blood." Okay, fine enough. But then when it gets to the part where it lists what they're looking for, they list this: "Interest in fashion – no direct experience required."

Which, of course, raises the question of why would a company that is involved with stem cells need a blogger that is interested in fashion?

Oh, and if that's not enough, they also say that to get the job, you should write up a quick blog post about some new internet music site that would "be written as if the author is an expecting mom-to-be."

Once again, I'm wondering what all this has to do with each other, especially as the idea that umbilical cords, fashions, and expectant mothers are somehow interrelated makes me go ick.