The Velocity of Travel

I should also add that Iceland has always been one of those countries that I've kinda wanted to go to. Why? Why not-- you never hear anything about it, you never hear people wanting to travel there, and nobody knows that much about it other than it's kind of weird and beautiful and funky.

I have other places I'd like to go to that fit into that category. Like Yemen-- I'm kind of curious about going to Yemen. Nobody hears about it, nobody sets out to go there, and it's about as Arab as you could want without having to deal with third world poverty or terrorism-- lots of sand and deserts and palm trees and people dressed in those white, flowing robes. Okay, turns out Yemen actually now has a terrorist problem so maybe not Yemen. How's about Oman? Yeah, I want to go to Oman now-- again, who goes there? And why not go there?

Also on my list are those random, tiny European countries that nobody ever really hears about or thinks about, like Lichenstein or Andorra.

The other weird, totally random place I want to go to is here in the US-- I want to go to either Omaha or Lincoln Nebraska. Why Omaha or Lincoln Nebraska? Because they seem about as perfectly, non-descript in that Norman Rockwell, mundane All-American Way. Could there be anything to those cities that makes them exciting enough to justify being a city? Is there an art scene? An indie music scene? Or is just just a bunch of big air-conditioned buildings full of people who think the most exciting thing to happen is a Nebraska Football Game? I've been to Paris and I've been to Tokyo and Jerusalem and Prague and Dublin and in some way, Omaha seems more exotic than those places.

One more thing.....

Going back to that happiness bit...

The book has a great chapter about my new favorite country Iceland. In it, the author says that Iceland is rich enough and laid back enough that culturally, their ideal isn't to become incredibly successful doing one particular thing but to be moderately successful in a variety of things. So most Icelandic people are like bankers for a couple of years and then suddenly decide to become fishermen for a couple of years and after that doing that, well, what the fuck, let's be a poet? Why do just one thing when you can do many things-- variety is the spice of life, right? And since they have huge generous government benefits (probably too much considering how expensive the country is), people have all the freedom to go off and be a medieval literature professor/banker/computer engineer. This idea is such a part of their culture, in fact, that they, in some ways, respect people who fail, or at least fail in the right kind of way, more than they do people who succeed. Better to try something and make an effort at it than not try something-- after all, who knows what kind of poet you'll be until you actually make a go of being a poet.

So, hmmm.....belief that being super successful at one thing isn't that important...generous social benefits that allow you to play around in life...respect of the nobility of failure....I want to move to Iceland!

I saw a job posting for a job that keeps on getting posted over and over and over and over again. It's a job I mentioned before (several times) in that it's the one where I was unable to send a resume in due to Monster.com's intensely frustrating web site and the one where I kept on wondering if I should just resend them my resume in different forms to see if I could finally get through.

The thing is that they keep on posting the job even though we're currently in the worst economy since the '30's and as it's an online/editorial position and considering how the Chronicle has like five writers still on staff, there's plenty of writers out there, but yet they keep on posting the same job. What the hell do they want? Or is it more like the job sucks so hard that even in this economy, people quite or they're such assholes they keep on firing everybody no matter what they do.

I'm Pretty Sure This Could be a Scam

I got an email from a Katrine Fabricius Torfing, a name that sounds like something out of a Harry Potter book.

The email's subject header is "Acknowledge The Receipt Of This Email!‏" and then goes on to tell me that I won a whole bunch of money (in British pounds no less) and that if I respond to the email and then call a number (a British phone number), I can pick up my money.

I also got an email from a Sabine Brandewie which sounds like it could be a legit name except for the fact the email says it's from somebody named Jeff.

Happiness is Anyone and Anything at All

I've been reading this book about Happiness lately, "The Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner in which the author travels the globe to individual countries that "happiness scientists" say are really happy and one country (Moldova) that isn't happy at all.

I'm not done with it but halfway through the book, one of the big takeaways I’m getting is that the countries (so far it's been Switzerland, Bhutan, and Iceland) that have the happiest people are the one's whose cultures don’t preach having high expectations about life. What I mean is here in America, we have THE AMERICAN DREAM which preaches that if you work hard, you too can own several SUVs, a huge flat screen tv, and a McMansion but still be unhappy because your neighbor owns an even bigger SUV and an even bigger flat screen tv so you work harder and for more hours at a job you don’t really like so you can buy a better SUV and a better flat screen tv and you still can’t get a good enough one so you charge it on your credit card and by constantly trying to one-up your neighbor, you’re buying more and more consumer goods which builds the economy so that a bunch of executives can make millions of dollars a month in options that are rewarded to them by the stock holders for cleverly cutting costs of their products by outsourcing the production of the materials to China. And thus, you have the #1 economy in the world that makes it the #1 richest country in the world and thus making us the #1 country in the world. This makes us happy because God personally slaughtered millions of Native Americans so as to create the greatest, most perfect country in the history of not only mankind, but alien kind too. This doesn’t, however, make us happy, at least on a personal level.

The countries in the book that are happy are mainly happy because nobody who lives there has any illusion as to who they are and what their country is. There was a story on “60 Minutes” about Denmark, which is supposedly the happiest place on earth that doesn’t involve mouse ears, and the story said that Danes were happy because they had no illusion that Denmark was a world power in the past and won’t be a world power in the future and are quite okay with it and quite okay with being okay about it. So they have their little socialized country with their socialized free education and socialized free health care and socialized welfare benefits and live quite contently just, you know, living. Having a bigger SUV than your neighbor doesn’t really matter to them because it’s not part of their country’s culture to really care one way or the other. Of course, they wouldn’t want an SUV because they’re into being environmentally conscious and don’t want to do anything to destroy the world.

What does this mean? That my theory about the best thing a parent can do is to crush their children's spirits at an early age is probably the best thing one can do to them. "Oh, no, you can't really become President because unless you go to Harvard or Yale from an exclusive Private School and yes, Obama becamse President without coming from a privileged background but he's one smart motherfucker and even he can't save the country because we're fucked." Or "yes, you can become a world famous reporter but you'd have to spend years making no money for some small, local paper and then when you finally make it big, you'll get laid off because the industry is dying and you'll have to go back to making peanuts at some blog where you'll have to spend half your time twittering." Or even "yes, you can be a famous actress and no, you don't have to have any talent, but you'll have to work very very hard before hand to make enough money to pay for a boob job and to puff up your lips and you better do it soon because no actress can get a decent job after 35. Or you could just release sex tape. What's a sex tape? Well, when two people love each other, they sometimes film themselves showing how much they love each other and when they need more publicity, have somebody ‘accidently’ leak that tape of those two people showing their love to each other because people love watching two people showing their love, especially if one of them is a celebrity."

It also means that I really want to move to Denmark. Or Holland. Or Iceland.

We Interrupt Your Health Care Coverage For....

About a month ago I had an interview with a pretty nice ad agency that was working on the kickassingest of kick ass campaigns. I didn't get the job but did good enough during the interview process that the HR person said in her "sorry, you didn't get the job, kthxbye" email that everyone still really liked me and that she and I should stay in touch in case something pops up.

Well, something did pop up-- another job there. Great, right? Well, no because the HR person, the one who sent me that nice email, is out on maternity leave right now and has been replaced by another HR person, one who doesn't know me or know of me. Which means, very possibly, there goes that. Which also means that her "let's stay in touch," while really nice, is also kind of useless considering she's going to be out for an unspecified amount of time to pump out a kid.

More Health Care Fun

The polls from THE AMERICAN PUBLIC came out today and the poll numbers are dropping about the health care plan and Obama's handling of such. Some of this is expected as the information out there is confusing (which is all parts of the anti-health care forces plan) and there's a lot of people screaming ridiculously over-the-top stupid things without any sort of pushback by those who are supposed to supply the push back (memo to the press-- we DO NOT have the greatest Health Care in the world, we are actually well below all those countries that have that thing people call "socialized medicine" so if somebody says that, can you please call them out for being an idiot at least once?). Still, at this point, polls about health care should basically be thrown out because this is where the silliness of THE AMERICAN PUBLIC gets fully revealed.

Everytime a poll is taken, the American Public says that health care reform is one of their biggest issues. Then they go on to whine and complain about all of their health care issues and all the horror stories they have. But when an actual bill gets introduced and pollsters start asking them about the particular bill, all you hear from them is stuff like "no, don’t support that…", "nope," "that sounds scary," "the nice man on the TV says that'll mean I'll have to ration the care that I don't have," "goodness, all this government programs sound expensive," "that sounds like what they have in Canada and I hear every Canadian dies at the doctor's office because their health care is so bad," and the ever popular “you know, come to think of it, I like my health care.”

Thus, the health care plan falls apart due the public losing support in it but once it does fall apart, THE AMERICAN PUBLIC will then proceed to whine to pollsters how disillusioned they are about politics because they are unable to do something about health care and how health care is one of the biggest issues they have.

So, in other words, my fellow members of THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, just sit down and STFU.

C'mon Get Healthy

I've been completely exhumed in the big health care debate going on in DC. I read posts about it every day, I read commentary on it, and I root for the good guys and boo the bad guys whenever it needs to be done. Obviously, we really need health care reform in our country but I'm not really rooting for the actual bill per se but more like rooting for just the fact that a good bill passes.

The thing is that in order to get a health care bill, somebody is going to have lose out on something-- an industry will have to get less profits, taxes will be increased, people will have to lose some of their options-- and that's something Congress really isn't that good at doing. The bill will also be huge and encompass every facet of our life and change a lot of things in the country and doing all this another thing Congress isn't really good at. So, in order for the bill to pass, Congress is basically going to have to man up, take a chance, and make a leap of faith that the bill will either work or work well enough that a tweak here or there will fix it.

Chances are iffy that Congress will be able to do any of that.

Which is why I'm so into what happens to health care. It should be pretty obvious right now that this country is in a huge mess. Like there's shards of us lying all over the floor kind of mess. In order to fix the country and make things right, we have to man up and do it. Industries will have to lose some of their profits, people will have to pay more taxes, and people will have less options in some things. If we can do the health care bill, it'll show that we have the ability to make those changes. If we can't even do that, we're pretty much fucked.

It's either "Yes we can" or "Eh, not really."

I have another interview on Monday for a bloggy type position, or at least I think I do as the person who emailed me about setting up a time for a phone interview never got back to me to confirm the time. It's writing for the company blog and with the express purpose of using the blog to "driver conversions" to the company and they want somebody who can do so by increasing the visibility of the company's blog (somewhat easy) and through the use "social networking."

To prepare for the interview, I went to the company's site to figure out who they are and what do they do. They are, according to the site, "the Leading Provider of Mobility Management Solutions." Okay, and what else? "By focusing on end-user experiences, we’ve become the leading enabler of enterprise mobility management solutions." Still not clear on what they do, I looked around their site and came up with the fact they do a lot of something called "mobility metrics." In other words, I have no fucking clue what they do. The best thing I can make it is something that they mention in their job posting in that they "take control of their (companies) mobility budget and inventory." By that, I think they mean that the software keeps track of how many cell phones are out there being used by employers and how much money they're spending but I'm not sure as that would be too easy of a thing to say.

The question, obviously, is do I even want to do this? I don't even really know what the company does. I also never, ever, ever, ever want to be in a situation where I have to write things like "management solutions" in an unironic way. Actually, I don't think they'd hire me because I have no experience writing stuff like "mobility metrics," something that I think is actually a plus in my favor.

As for the "social networking" stuff, I know this is all trendy and everytime you look at a marketing post, there's all sorts of references towards building presence on social network sites (mainly Facebook) and Twitter, but it's all a load of crap. Now the thing is that while I'm no marketing expert, I do use the computer a lot (A LOT) and am pretty convinced that there is actually no real point in trying to market through Twitter and Facebook and Reddit or what have you. There are people who can market things through those things, but not companies- "Oh, boy, I can check out Envisioneering Enterprise Solutions' twitter page!". The only reason why people are talking about them as a way to marketing things is because they're new, they're trendy, and everybody else is doing it, so every company thinks they HAVE to do it. And since I want these jobs, I have to say "well, oh yeah, we can definitely use Facebook and as I'm an expert in taking photos of my friends and I drunk and posting them, I know exactly how to do this." My guess is that saying "I think marketing through Twitter is a waste of time and money and Twitter fucking sucks anyways" won't get me a job. Even if I'm right.

And I am.

My latest big pet peeve when it comes to looking for work is formatting, mainly how formatting works in email. At one point in history, you could cut and paste something into an email and have it look exactly like the thing you cut and paste. That, of course, is way too simple of a thing to have happen and so the people who build Yahoo and Hotmail decided that people who send out emails would want their emails to be all pretty and nice and so they added all sorts of bells and whistles to it. As a result, if you cut and paste something, it won't necessarily look like the thing you cut and paste. Sometimes it does, sometimes the spacing is all weird, and sometimes there's line breaks in places that there shouldn't be.

I had the thing wired last year but I guess Hotmail decided to make their site more complicated so that my emails are no longer as dead on as they were before. What would happen is I'd spend about twenty minutes working on a resume and then I'd hit send and when I got the bcc in my inbox, I'd notice that the email got totally butchered. Twenty minutes or so of work would then go completely out the door as no matter how good the resume was, nobody would look more than a few seconds at something that looks like a piece of shit.

There goes that job

Warning, Cat Post

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Over dinner, I was talking about how when dogs do something, you can often figure out a reason for why they're doing it. Scientists study it and dog behaviorists, like the Dog Whisperer, knows all that stuff in depth. Then I wondered if one could learn any of that from cats and Harlan and I weren't very sure that was possible. In fact, we decided that if a cat behaviorist was to be asked a question about why a cat was doing a certain thing in a certain way, the cat behaviorist would say something along the lines of "I dunno, he's a cat."

Which means, of course, that being a cat behaviorist would be a perfect job because for every question, all you can really say is "I don't know, he's a cat."

My Next Billion Dollar Idea

We were playing around with On Demand the other night and found this section called "Screen Savers." Basically, the section consisted of about ten twenty-minute videos that showed nothing but things like fish swimming in an aquarium, clouds floating over an ocean beach, a cascading waterfall, and other things. In other words, it's like watching the yule log at Christmas except prettier. This, of course, gave me an idea for a new digital cable channel-- Stoner TV, a tv channel for Stoners (of course).

The station would air old tv shows (like Star Trek, Twin Peaks, and cartoons), movies (like "Harold & Kumar go to White Castle," "Dazed and Confused," "Pink Floyd's 'the Wall'), music videos, and at night, several hours of nothing but clouds over the ocean or cascading waterfalls. You could also expand upon that and have cooking shows ("the best ways of making pot browies!" or "'Shroom Pizza, Chicago style"), travel shows (like best places to smoke hash or "countries you should never smuggle drugs into if you ever want to see your loved ones again"), some sort of show like "the Deadliest Catch" except about pot harvesters in Humboldt, a reality show about a coffee house in Amsterdam, and maybe even a Real World type show featuring seven stoners picked to live in a house with all sorts of exciting episodes like one where they decide who gets to clean the dishes after it's been piling up for a week or the episode where they get invited to a big party but don't make it out because TNT was showing a "Lord of the Rings" marathon.

Needless to say, there will also be a gardening show.

And, finally, you might be wondering just how this channel would be make any money, well that's easy-- junk food companies. Just imagine how many pizzas dominoes could sell just by running a few ads

What I Want to Do When I Grow Up

As mentioned before, I went to the EDD office to take a long, four hour computer test to see what the computer says I should do with my life. And, yep-- four hours. It was actually kind of stressful in a few ways, not least of which was the fact that I was kind of afraid I'd spend four hours working on it and the thing would spit out that my ideal career would be something like "the world needs ditch diggers and you're a ditch digger" or "you'll be sporadically employed for the rest of your life until you die while stocking campbell's soup at Safeway" or even "?"

It started off with this long section where they showed photos of various jobs and I was supposed to say whether I have interest in it, I've done it before and don't mind it, and am completely uninterested. The thing about the program, though, is that it was done about fifteen years ago so when there was a picture of a "computer technician" the picture showed somebody looking over some sort of washing machine size computer. The thing also asked questions like "a clown" or "a farmer" but did not ask anything like "world famous blogger" or "international man of mystery." To add to my aforementioned fears, I pretty much said "not interested" to everything ("except clown). Well, actually, since I've done a lot of admin type stuff before, I said "I've done it and don't mind it" thinking I was at least being honest. This didn't work out so well as I'll get to in a minute.

The rest of the test consisted of simple tasks (alphabetizing, basic vocabulary, numerical) but there was a huge section on math where they asked things I haven't even though of in years, like geometry and math problems. At one point, they busted out an isosceles triangle and asked me to figure out one of the sides and somewhere in my head I remembered the Pythagorean Theorem, something I hadn't even contemplated since High School and somehow figured it out. Got it right too.

There were a couple of weird bits, like they showed a circle of color and then gave you four circles that were of similar color and asked you to find the circle that best corresponds to the given color. Not easy considering how close the colors were. They also did it with geometric figures and even one where they gave you a 2d geometric image and then asked you to point out which form would be it's 3d counterpoint. Can't say I did well on those questions.

The thing finished up with an "ethics" section where they asked you a bunch of questions about what you should and should not do on the job. Things like "you should never show up late for work" or "if coworkers criticize your work, you should shoot buy a gun and shoot them," all with a Mary Worth style cartoon illustrating the particular situation. Now, this test is kind of like a driving test in that there are "rules" and then there are how things really are. Because I'm an idiot, I said things that really are. Like to the question "is your work so valuable that you cannot take a day off," I said I disagreed because sometimes there's nothing going on and sometimes you need to take a "mental health" day. To the question of whether a boss who criticizes an employee is always doing it because that worker is doing something incorrectly" I said I disagreed because we all have known bosses who just don't like somebody and take out all of their life's frustrations out on them. And as for the question of whether or not it's okay to have alcohol at work I said not so brightly that I disagreed but sadly did not have room to add that drinking on the job in your cubicle is wrong but if the bosses bring in a keg, then let's party. And, yes, I've had plenty of jobs where some sort of booze was brought in to celebrate one sort of thing or another.

All of this honesty, I'm pretty sure, will make the unemployment people scratch me off their list of people they should help out.

So what did the test say I should do? Admin work! Because I said I didn't mind admin work in the first part of the test. And also because I kicked butt in the alphabetizing, numerical, and proofing part of the test. So, in other words, all those jobs I've done while looking for work have actually given me enough experience to do the jobs I've done while looking for work instead of the actual jobs for which I've been looking for work.

In checking out a company for which I have an interview, I saw this listed as a description of what they do:

"XXXXXXX is the world's premier experience marketing agency, working with leading companies who are looking for innovative marketing solutions that motivate their audiences and activate their brands through live experiences."

If you put this through a marketing/English translator, you will come up with this- "eh, we just do events for companies."

The sad thing about all of this is that I actually kinda understood the above quote as I'm half fluent in marketing. Hey, now there's an idea-- I could hire myself out as a marketing translator and go around helping people who aren't fluent in marketing gibberish understand the gibberish for which they here.

My Billion Dollar Web Idea

Over the weekend I was at a party and somehow in the middle of a conversation (I think it was about politics. Or Masterpiece Theater, I can't remember what), I said the name Free Puppy Proposal. This was immediately deemed a great name for a band and with that came the idea that for all those people out there in bands who are stumped by what they should call their band, I should come up with a web site that works like a band name generator, except in this case, you take a phrase or a word and then the computer program would spit out how to make that name sound like the kind of band you're in.

It works like this, you take the phrase "Free Puppy Proposal" and you get-

Free Puppy Proposal-- art rock band featuring lots of looping, weird instrumentation, and nonsensical lyrics. Usually associated either with the taking of lots of drugs or too much postmodern musical theory, sometimes a little of both. See Super Furry Animals or Animal Collective.

Free Puppy- cutesy, twee indie rock group consisting of beard wearing liberal art college grads who all have crushes on Zoey Deschanel. See Grizzly Bear

Puppy Abortion- obviously a punk rock band, an old skool type punk band that is more concerned with subverting something or other than dating either porn stars or teen pop stars and doing concerts sponsored by either car manufacturers or shoe companies.

Puppy Death- Death metal music. See Slayer.

Puppy Farm- a Phish/Grateful Dead inspired jam band.

The Puppies- Garage Band/Neo New Wave band from either Detroit or Brooklyn that still wishes it were 2002, ala the Strokes.

When Do You Know You're in San Francisco?

When you go fill out forms at the EDD office and for sex, they include these boxes:

-Male
-Female
-Transgender
-Male to Female
-Female to Male

Today's Unemployment Update

I'll get back to that career assessment thing in a bit but I've spent all day working on another job related thing that's taking up all my time. Basically, some company sent me (!) an email about a job and instead of talking to me on a phone or bringing me in for an interview, sent me about three pages of questions and want me to respond to the questions. Some of this is difficult because what are you supposed to say about "tell me about your experience/knowledge about Microsoft Word?" Some of this is difficult because it's not apparently clear as to how much I'm supposed to answer. Should I provide an essay for each question? Should I just give a sentence or two? And should I write it like it's a response to a questionnaire sent via email or write it like it's a full on fucking job interview and carefully craft each answer to each question, even if it is a question about Microsoft Word.

In other words, you could understand why it's taken me all day to answer about half of of it.