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 Well, no because the HR person, the one who sent me that nice email, is out on maternity leave right now and has been replaced by another HR person, one who doesn't know me or know of me.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.

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.

Stupid CareerBuilder

So having finally figured out a correct password to create an account with CareerBuilder, my resume is now featured predominately on yet another job board. This, of course, means that I'm now bombarded with even more emails about fake jobs. Sadly, due to certain circumstances, I always have to read through each and everyone of them to make sure they are scams, because, well, you never know and I have to make money somehow.

Just a note-- if you are pulling off some scam by saying you're from a large-ish corporation or company, sending it from a gmail or msn account is probably a give-away that you're not legit.

There is Unrest in the Forest, there is Trouble With the Trees

In an effort to close the huge budget deficit facing the state of California, Governor Schwarzenegger has announced a plan to sell off 220 state parks. This raises the question of how the hell do you sell a state park, who the hell would buy it, and what the hell would they do with it? Since the giant fear is that they'll sell the land to some real estate developer who'll then cut down the trees to build more strip malls, here are some ideas of who to sell it to so they can remain parks:

-Corporations. The easy and obvious answer as they can buy the naming rights for the various parks and use the parks for advertising, like Oracle Presents Humboldt State Park or Bank of America Mountain.

-Disneyland. They'll cut down all the parks, of course, but then they'll go ahead and build amazing replicas of the parks with animatronic animals that sing and forest-themed rides, like the John Muir Forest Adventure or the Sierra SUV Rollercoaster.

-Donald Trump. He has just enough of an ego to buy a park or two just so he could name it after himself. Yeah, it'll probably involve some development but how could he not jump at a chance to have his name associated with some of the most beautiful places in the world, like Lake Tahoe's Donald Trump Bay or Trump Redwoods State Park? It’s not easy having a park named after yourself, after all, as it usually involves being some sort of environmentalist and who wants to be that?

-Google: They have the money and I'm sure the genius’s there will be able to figure out something nifty to do with it. Besides, it'll make them that much closer to world domination.

-China: They’ll just eventually own it anyways

-Local Native Tribe: Who wouldn’t want to go to a casino located in a beautiful state park?

-Offer the trees shares in the national park so they could be gain ownership of the parks and be the very first tree-owned forest.

(reposted from here)

Summer Time Blues

I just sat and watched an entire hour travel special about the best Waterslide parks in the country which made me think of one thing which led me to this:



I'm trying to do the same thing with Harlan but so far it's not working

I'm a Wondering

I keep on seeing the same editorial job posted on Monster.com and it makes me wonder about it. I've actually even written about the job because I could only apply to it through Monster.com but Monster.com made it impossible for me to apply to it.

Anyways, since they keep on posting the job I wonder if I should just keep on sending in my resume, or at least different versions of it. Since obviously the resume I sent earlier didn't work, if I spruce it up or maybe send another version (like a chronological resume as opposed to skill set based resume) would anybody notice? My guess is HR goes through so many resumes they probably don't remember one from the other so why not? Since they're being so particular about whom they want to hire (seriously, how hard is it to find somebody to do an editing job considering the Chronicle laid off half their staff and there's probably several people out there looking for work who at one point of their lives was editing foreign reports from Pakistan) if I keep on sending out slightly different versions of resumes, maybe I can finally send one that will work?

Brangelinaston

Not that I read a lot of celebrity tabloids (really, I don't) but since I am the House Husband and do all the shopping, I can't but not see all the covers for the tabloids. Also, for whatever reason, US Weekly has decided to up their circulation numbers by sending copies of the magazine to people who didn't want to subscribe to them and so we now get US Weekly. And for those saying "a-ha," he does read them! the truth is that I've been ordered by a Higher Powers to throw them instantly away.

The interesting thing to me about the tabloids is that it seems like every week their is at least one story involving Brad/Angelina and/or Jennifer Aniston. Either Brand & Angelina are breaking up or she's sick or he's still pining over Jen or Jen is pining over Brad or she killed their pet rabbit. It actually makes me feel a tad sorry for them in that every week there's some story detailing something going on in their life. How would you feel if every time you go to the store, you see some tabloid with you on their cover with either some sort of made up tale or real tale? Like "Hooray For Anything Wears Pajamas All Day" or "Girl Who Bailed on Going to the Prom with Hooray for Anything Regrets Decision" or "Hooray for Anything's secret Affair with Jennifer Aniston." Okay, like there's any chance Brad, Jen, or Angelina actually go to a super market, but work with me here.

The amazing thing about it is that they have, for all intents and purposes, become sort of iconic romantic triangle for the ages and will forever be talked about and discussed. Like Arthur, Guenivere and Lancelot. Or Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragorn, Anne Bolyen, or Buffy Spike/Angel. They're intertwined now and will be forever to the point that when one of the three dies, the other two will be mentioned within the first couple of sentences in their obituary. Angelina Jolie could personally adopt every African orphan but she'll probably be known more for being the one who stole Brad from Jen.

But to me, the most interesting thing about all this is how the tabloids manage to churn out one story after another about the three of them. I can only imagine the editorial meetings in which all the editors and writers sit around trying to come up with yet another fresh angle on something for which no new angle exists. I'd imagine that at this point, working for US Weekly about the three of them is pretty much like how you'd imagine the writers at the Weekly World News try and come up with latest stories about Bat Boy.

Gackk!!!!!!!!!

I appreciate the fact that web sites are cracking down on security by making it so people have to come up with increasingly complicated passwords to sign up for a site, but is it really necessary for JobBuilder.com to constantly forbid me to sign up for the site because my assortment of passwords is deemed not secure enough for the site? It is, after all, merely a site that one posts resumes on, not one that people use to move slush funds through Cayman Island banks.

When Amazing Doesn't Happen

I'm kind of enjoying the fact that the NBA finals is looking more and more like it won't be a Kobe/LeBron matchup but a Magic/Nuggets final. The NBA's great strength and it's great weakness is that it's star driven. We don't really root for teams as much as we root for players, most of whom we refer to in first person and treat as one would any celebrity. This is good for the NBA because the stars become mega-stars and because it adds a sort of soap-opera quality to it as people examine and analyze each stars every move and every game as if they're characters in a book. Does Kobe still hate his teammates? Is this start of the LeBron ascendancy and if he loses, will this mean that he's not as good as Jordan and will it mean that he'll move to New York or anywhere that isn't Cleveland? Is Dwight Howard too nice and is his bruising style in the playoffs a reaction to all the criticism? All of this is great fun and it's why the NBA often has the best storylines, but it leaves out the main fact that sports essentially isn't about one player but a team as it's not the player that wins but the team that does.

Case in point, what we're seeing now. Kobe and LeBron get all the attention because they're the best players in the league but it's become apparent that they're not on the best teams in the league. Oops. Now you would hope that at the end, you'd get a finals between the two best teams (that's what everyone says they want) but what everyone really wants is to see the two best stars. Which is fine. But if it's really what the NBA wants, then maybe they should just forgo the whole basketball part of the season and just have LeBron and Kobe play H-O-R-S-E for the finals. If nobody watches a Magic/Nuggets series, then the NBA has nobody to blame but themselves.

And just for the heck of it, it's the same problem that baseball has in that everyone has decided that the Yankees and the Red Sox are the only two teams that matter so when the playoffs come and neither team is that involved, nobody cares.

You know what they say about cities with small airports....

One more story about 'Tana...

If anyone's done a lot flying, they'd know that it's the small airports out of small cities that have the worst security. Not worst as in totally lapse but worst as in ridiculously absurd. So far, I've never had anything happen to me while going through security in SFO, Oakland, Dulles, Washington, Philly, Baltimore or Newark but have had trouble going through Reno, Billings, and now, Great Falls.

Great Falls is a tiny airport, so tiny that there's no concession stands after security and since you can't actually bring any sort of liquid with you past security, the only way to get something to drink before the flight is to buy something from a vending machine.

The day Harlan and I flew home, there was one flight departing at that time, a flight consisting of 14 people, two of which were yours truly and yours truly's SO. This, of course, meant getting the full force of the Department of Homeland Security Law.

Like most airports, you have to show your ID and boarding pass the moment you get in line. You then have to show it again as you are about to make your way through security. In Great Falls, they still do that despite the fact the two people checking security stand not more than ten feet away from each other. Or that with nobody else in line, there'd be no way I could possibly not be who made it through line unless I somehow managed to change into a cleverly disguised member of Al Queda in the few seconds the security guy yawned.


Then, my backpack was suddenly deemed worthy of extra investigating through the x-ray machine despite the fact there was nothing in there that had pretty much changed since I took off from SFO. Not that they didn't really know that, but I'm not sure what sort of possibly evil contraptions they'd discover in a backup consisting of several books, magazines, and an iPod. But I really have nothing to complain about considering Harlan was brought over to the Security table and had her purse taken apart several times by some gruff fat lady with a bad haircut. She apparently had some issues with the few items Harlan put in her purse but was nice not to berate her for not putting them in a plastic baggie but just put them in a plastic bag. Then to make sure there was nothing else of danger in there, she went through her purse again, something I think might have been caused by the growing look of anger and annoyance emanating from Harlan's face. She looked so pissed off by the whole episode I was pretty sure she would be dragged away and given a full cavity search just to show her who the boss was.

Luckily, the nice angry security lady let Harlan through and then quickly joined the other security folks in what was probably a highly enlightening discussion of the upcoming hunting season.

Now Here's Something You Don't See Every Day

Had two, count them two! phone interviews today. When it rains, it drizzles I guess. Does this mean things are getting better, that dawn is slowly rising, or is it some weird sort of astral anamoly that the Mayans listed somewhere on their calendar?

I Can't Quit Cable

In an effort to cut costs to ride out the Great whatever it is we're going through, I keep on focusing on our cable bill as a way to save money. After all, we have two dvrs, all the movie channels, HiDef channels, and a LAN line as part of our package and there's gotta be some way there to cut costs. Plus, I feel guilty for not sacrificing more because as I'm unemployed and as there's suffering everywhere, I feel like I should be suffering much more than I already am and getting rid of HBO is one way of suffering. The thing is, though, Comcast won't let me quit.

First I called to see what would happen if I got rid of our LAN line as we don't use it at all- I don't even know what the number is. But to do that, we'd have to give up our special "Bundle Package" and getting rid of it would somehow increase our bill. Then they upped our bill because our original Comcast deal expired and our bill got raised about $50 but when I called to inquire as to how to cut costs, they put me in touch with some sales guy who magically "discovered" another package deal and offered us that and by "discover" I mean pull a package out of his ass to make me happy. Somehow this package deal also saved us money.

Today I called to cancel all of our movie channels because we don't actually watch any movies on cable and any show on the channels we like watching, like "True Blood" or "Weeds", we can either download our watch online. Except that didn't work either as it would save us only about $30 and that comes out to about $15 each and what's $15 in the grand scheme of things? Even getting rid of the 2nd DVR (we have another one for our second bedroom) would only save us $15 and if we got rid of both, we'd save only about $25 each at the most. Again, what's $25 in the grand scheme of things?

In other words, as of this moment, we still have two dvrs, every movie channel, the hi-def channels, and a LAN line. We could get rid of cable or go with the bare bones, 80 channels only package but, Jesus, do we have to suffer that much?

Big Sky II

There's a Starbucks in a strip mall near where Harlan's family lives which includes a drive-thru window. We went one afternoon and got in line behind some gi-normous pickup truck and quickly noticed that while the truck was parked at the entrance, it was just sitting there, not moving, and there was a huge gap in the line between the truck and the person picking up their order. After a minute or so, we looked around and noticed that the dude who owned the truck was standing outside, yakking away to one of his friends who was sitting outside at some tables outside. This despite the fact he was blocking the way into the drive thru. Or could have easily just parked right next to the guy and gotten out to talk to him that way.

Seeing this, we maneuvered around the pickup truck, something that wasn't easy owing to it's size, and made our order, giving the guy a little stink eye as we passed him. He of course, saw our stankeye and gave us the look that he could care less. When we drove away, we saw about three cars in line, all behind the truck and all trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

So I'm reading a story in last week's New Yorker about how Rwanda is doing after last decade's civil war and genocidal rampage. In the story, the writer mentions that Rwanda is improving quickly considering how dire and awful things were years ago. In a laundry list of things Rwanda has now that they didn't have back then, the author mentions that Rwanda has nationalized health care.

I repeat: RWANDA HAS NATIONALIZED HEALTH CARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unlike, say, us.

Got to Know When to Fold Them

In another thing right out of the Red State playbook, Montana has no sales tax and takes pride in their ability to keep taxes low. So faced with budget shortfalls and an inability to pay for a lot of services, the state did what any anti-tax, freedom loving state would do-- legalize gambling. There's Keno tables and video poker machines everywhere-- in restaurants, in bars, in coffee shops, in gas stations. Even worse, there's big signs saying "Casino" everywhere. You can't go more than a block on one of the main drags without at least four or five signs for a casino.

Now, part of me, the libertarian side, says if people want to go to casinos and gamble, go nuts. I don't care. Like most libertarian ideas, though, the idea is better in concept. I don't, for instance, begrudge Native American's rights to build casinos on their tribal lands, Lord knows they need any money they can get, but there's something sad and desperate about it. Which, pretty much sums up their existence anyways.

But here in Great Falls, it's different. The city is more working class/poor than middle class and except for a few nice neighborhoods and the old portion of the town, just one long series of chain stores and malls all off of main drags when it's not a series of dirt roads into RV parks. Here, the casinos are not some exciting, thrilling place to be, but just one more thing that makes the area ugly, not just ugly in aesthetics, but ugly to the soul. Not, "soul" in a religious sense, but "soul" as in the part of your mind/body that soars when listening to good music or good food or what have you. The casinos blend in with all of the pawn shops, quick loan stores, and Check N' Go stores into one stew of desperation. It's as if society and the government long since stopped caring about the people here, the people here did too.

Few things about Montana

-Over the weekend, the Governor announced that the American flag was to be lowered all day in honor of a serviceman from Montana was killed. Not in Iraq but at some training facility in North Carolina where he died of a heart attack while in training. Sad, I know, but is that worth a memorial service? Will his name be put on the War Memorial List? It's kind of like that episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" where one of Larry's friend kept on getting sympathy from people because he had a friend who died on 9/11 only for it to turn out to be that he died while in New York on 9/11 but for reasons totally not having to do with 9/11.

-I've been to two bars that have one tv on sports, the other on Fox News. Okay, welcome to a "Red State" although Montana is currently purple and has a Democratic Governor and two Democratic Senators. The thing is, though, is how much can you get out of watching Fox News in a bar if the sound is turned off?

Taco, Taco, Taco

In a hunt for quick and cheap dinner last night, we went to a chain called "Taco John's," a place that bills itself as "Authentic West Mex." It's about as authentic as a Mexican place can be that makes a burrito that features what is essentially tater tots. I, of course, got myself the Taco Bravo which was a hard-shell taco wrapped in a soft-shell taco. Because, hell yeah I'm going to eat a hard-shell taco wrapped in a soft shell taco. It wasn't half-bad if you consider Taco Bell not half-bad.

We were served by some tattooed dude named Odell. Odell spoke very slowly, wore his cap sideways, and was covered in tattoos. Harlan noticed that Odell had tattoos on his knuckles too-- on one hand was the word "Less" and the other one "More." When our order was finished, Odell asked for our names so he could call us when the order was ready, this despite the fact we were the only people in the place. Later on, we had to change our order and was served by one of Odell's coworkers, a pimply-faced, cheerful 18 year old or so girl who was very visibly pregnant.

I'm in Great Falls Montana now and to get here, we had a stop-over in Salt Lake City. I was kind of excited being there because between watching "Big Love" and rereading "Under the Banner of Heaven" recently, I've been kinda into Mormonism lately. Mainly because it's a pretty weird little religion made up of some really weird people. Being in Salt Lake City, well, the airport at least, had a feel of being in some unique, foreign land-- "oh, look! Mormons!"

This made me really curious to check things out and see what kinds of things I could find in the airport that would reflect it's presence in Mormonville. This, of course, meant airport bar hopping to see if one could even find a bar, but I couldn't necessarily determine it due to the fact it was 8 in the morning and whatever bar type thingys there were weren't open. I don't know what I was expecting to see, actually, in that an airport is an airport is an airport, no matter where you are, but it wasn't until we hit the bookstore that we saw some things that weren't typical of your typical airport.

There were no nudie magazines, to be found, which isn't that unusual, but the magazines that featured partially clad women (Cosmo, GQ) all had some sort of black paper put over it lest any wholesome Mormon boy see cleavage. There was also-- and this part was pretty cool-- an entire Mormon section of books. There we found the actual Book of Mormon (a quick scan through determined that it was not the highest quality of literature, but what would you expect from something supposedly written by some dude looking into a hat) as well as testaments written by lesser Mormon lights. There was also a whole series of inspirational Mormon novels, usually featuring stalwart Mormon frontiersmen and frontiersmen trying to make their way through America while holding onto their faith. I'm pretty sure none of those brave Mormon lads in the books had more than one Mormon lass to which he was passionately devout with ("As Jedediah made his way through the plains of a great nation, will he reunite with his true love Mary, and will his Second Wife Lizbeth be able to fight off attacks by noble Indians and keep her and his 13 year old child-bride survive?") And speaking of which, another book that was there contained the love letters that Joseph Smith wrote to his wife. I'm also pretty sure none of those letters mentioned his marriage to another wife. Or another one after that. Or another one after that. In fact, I'm pretty sure it will probably skip over any mention of a "divine revelation" that allows him to marry wives #2, 3, 4, 15, 16, or even 23. There was also a devotional book to Mormon women written by the 120 year old Prophet of the Church. Watch out Oprah!

The last book we found, the one I found most interesting, was a coffee table book of photos of ancient Mayan temples throughout Mexico and Central America. The pictures were indeed beautiful and of high-quality, but what were they doing in the Mormon section, you might ask? Because each temple shown was scenes of where the Nephites hung out with Meso-American tribes and you can get a glimpse of what life was like back then. Kind of like how the Roman Coliseum ruins gives us a glimpse into life in the Roman Empire except completely and totally not true. Or at least according to anthropology and what does anthropology know?

Oh, and yes, you could buy "Under the Banner of Heaven" in the airport which surprised me. Somehow, I don't think they sell "the Davinci Code" at the Vatican.

Oom Paa Loom Pa

I already talked about how hidef TV makes hair pieces and botox more noticeable but there's another thing I'm noticing too, even on non-hidef channels, and that is the amazing prevalence of both shiny bleached teeth and fake tans. Everywhere I go, I'm seeing white teeth that glow and orange skin that glows. Even on a lot of people who you'd least expect to (Stephen Colbert, as much as I love him, totally not only dies his hair but has sand blasted his teeth). This is especially noteworthy on the cable news channels because while you kind of expect, say, the stars of Desperate Housewives to be brith and orange, you don't quite expect it with "news journalists" or at least hope they'd show enough for their profession not to go fake. But no.

I'm watching CNN right now and everyone on that show is orange. Gloria Borger looks like a carrot. As much as Anderson Cooper tries to play serious journalist and not a pretty boy, has pearly white teeth and a bit of a tint. And, yes, so does Wolf. Even scarier, Bill Bennett, you know the guy who likes to scold everyone for moral infalability looks like he dropped a bucket of orange paint over him. It's even true of people who you wouldn't expect. Rachel Maddow's pearly whites are particularly pearly and Keith Oberlmann, someone who's schtick I grew tired of years ago, hits the trifecta of hair piece, shinhy teeth, and orange skin.

Naturally, of course, know that I'm aware of all of this, I can't stop noticing it. Everywhere I go, it's shiny teeth and orange skin. Between the fake tans, hair pieces, and botox, watching tv or movies can often seem like watching a whole other species.

It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp

I just got my second call about some scam job. Which means that scammers are either

1)More desperate
2)More saavy

and not just sending spam mails out, but getting somebody to call you. This particular scam was for one of those part-time, work-from-home inside sales type jobs and I knew it was scam pretty quickly. Unfortunately, this didn't stop the guy from yabbering on for a few minutes.

I also got a call about an "opportunity" or something to that effect but I can't tell because the person who called had such a thick Chinese accent, I couldn't tell what she was calling about. It's also obvious from listening to her that she's using some sort of script while leaving a message.

Your April Job Status

For those wondering how things are going for the unemployed these days, in the three months since I've been out of work, I average about 2-3 resumes sent out a day. This has gotten me two phone interviews although as they were for the same position, that only counts as one. I've had the potential for three more, but two of them were for jobs that I discovered paid ridiculously low amounts of wages (one of them by a major hi-tech company that should know better) and the other was cancelled the day before the interview because they found somebody. Which sucks because if I didn't even get the chance to screw up an interview. And that's it.

I've also sent resumes out to about 10 employment agencies and have only gone in to talk to three of them. The thing about them is that I should be temping but as I earn more on unemployment, it's not really worth it to me to take super-crappy jobs. Which means that I don't have to take super crappy jobs (yay me!) but probably can't find a job that'll pay more as those jobs only exist to people who made a career out of doing admin work as opposed to those of us who made a career out of doing admin work whenever they were laid off.

The good news that I've discovered is that California will actually give grants out if you need money for some sort of career retraining, which is good because all things considering, I need a new career. Hopefully whenever you do such a thing, they don't do that hard of a job checking on what you do with it because plane fair to Australia is ridiculously cheap these days.

The Impending Pandemic

Really?

Like we don't have enough to worry about these days.

Why I'm a Failure

It appears that Bill Kristol is going to win some $250,000 award for "his outstanding achievements in a wide range of activities affecting the development of public policy from national and international perspectives," this despite the fact he's not only wrong about everything, but a smug, arrogant prick. This is further proof that the bigger the failure you are and the bigger the thing you fail at, the better chance you have at becoming successful. Which means that the problem in my life is not that I’m a failure, it’s just that I haven’t failed enough and at too many unimportant things.

Actually it appears that my biggest mistake in life was not being born into a rich, political family as “helped start major land war against Middle Eastern country with insufficient amount of troops and total lack of planning” does not work as well on a resume as it would for others.

Alas.

I'm a Welfare Queen

I've done some calculating and have figured out that I actually make more money on unemployment than I would if I took a temp job of $15 or less. Most temp jobs (and some full time jobs I've encountered) fall in that range. What this means is that it's actually better for me not to temp or go work at Safeway or something. First of all, bravo for the state of California for giving decent unemployment benefits as not every state (Souther states, I'm looking at you) does so. The other thing, of course, is that this means that I am proving Conservatives right-- thanks to the Government's largesse, I am not going to find a job. I am going to be a Welfare Queen.

So, in order to appease those conservatives out there, I will also do like most of them do-- go protest taxes and benefits to the poor.

Those Were the Days

I'm back.....

I saw "Adventureland" last night and it was a really sweet and wonderful little movie but it made me feel something weird, mainly nostalgic. Normally, I tend to avoid anything remotely nostalgic because because the reality was that I hated the '80's and hated a large part of my adolescence. Why should I feel nostalgic for things of that period when I didn't really like things from that period? Okay, I can get feeling nostalgic for youth long gone, but I can't get feeling nostalgic for anything from the '80's because I thought the '80's kinda sucked.

Yet, "Adventureland" made me feel nostalgic. Specifically, it made feel nostalgic for that time I spent a summer working at an amusement park and met this beautiful if extremely broody Jewish girl who listened to Husker Du and the Replacements and we hooked up and started dating towards the end of that summer.

Oh wait-- that didn't really happen to me-- it happened in the movie.

I guess that's the thing about "Adventureland," it made me nostalgic for things that didn't actually happen to me but felt like it could have (and probably would have been cool if it did). Which, I guess, is proof that it's a really good movie.

Sometimes, I Hate This Country

The closest liquor store to our apartment is owned by a family of Pakistanis. Up against the wall in the back they have a tv that is constantly on and they usually have some sort of digital feed that relays news from Pakistan, usually involving cricket, on but this time the guy who usually works there had CNN on. The story they were discussing was Obama's big speech in Turkey today in which he tried to make the point that America isn't going to bomb the shit out of every Arab land and they were taking calls from people watching CNN about their opinions on his speech. As I got up to the counter to make my purchase, a caller was put on the air and the moment I heard his scratchy, cigarette-scarred, Southern voice I knew this wasn't going to end well and I was right--I didn't hear exactly what he was saying but whenever you hear the words "Muslim Sleeper Cells in America" you know it ain't exactly I Heart Moslems. When he was done I felt like apologizing to the guy at the counter on behalf of my countrymen.

Your Recession Update

This came from a temp agency I sent my resume to:

Dear Job Seeker,

We wish to sincerely thank you for your interest in our staffing service. However, we feel it is our duty and strong obligation to inform our valued candidates that the downturn in our economy has impacted our industry.

We have seen a decline in the number of jobs and a significant slowdown in the actual hiring of our candidates. The good news is that recessions come and go.

We are happy to keep your resume in our database and contact you if our client company selects your background and skill set.
Please keep your spirits up during this difficult time - we are committed to riding this out until we see signs of a recovery.
Our best to you and yours,

The Truth is Out There

I watched one of those History Channel Docs this week about "Ancient Aliens" and the belief that aliens came down from outer space and gave people from mainly ancient civilizations some form of highly-advanced technology, technology that seemed to serve no other purpose but to allow those ancient civilizations to build monuments to said aliens. They didn't give them information on how to cure disease or how to build flying devices or computers even, but mainly information on how to build giant heads made out of rocks.

Needless to say, it was awesome. Basically, for every sort of mystery out there in the ancient world, the proponents of the theory came to the conclusion that the obvious answer was aliens. Pyramids? Aliens. Ancient Mayan calendars? Aliens. Easter Island? Aliens. But what made it so much fun is that they said it with such certainty, like how could anyone believe anything but. They legitimately thought that they had a scientific explanation for certain mysteries and were baffled how scientists didn't take them seriously. And, of course, they did so using the completely obvious point that while there is no conclusive proof that aliens did come down and visit Egyptians, there is no conclusive proof that they didn't.

How could you argue?

This got me thinking, though, about what to do with my life. Obviously, cable tv has led to an explosion of shows dealing with the paranormal and other sort of unexplained mysteries. There's plenty of shows about ghosts, demons, aliens, monsters, the Republican Party and there seems to be no end to them. So, I'm thinking that for my next career, I'm going to be some sort of paranormal investigator. How hard could it be? I just need to buy some fancy sort of equipment that sounds really cool (like an EMF indicator or an InfaRed sensor) and say that something you see or hear is definite proof that there's something going on. After all, could anybody see inconclusively that it's not what you say it is?

Weird whispers in an attic? Ghosts. Furniture occasionally moves? Ghosts. Strange light in the sky? Aliens.

Just spent about fifteen minutes doing one of my favorite things in the world, one of those online job applications, the kind where you have to create an account, enter in a whole bunch of information, and then upload a resume with all of the information that you've just entered into the computer. Total waste of my life? About fifteen minutes.

This one was fun too as after every screen, I was told to go to the next screen where I was told that I hadn't filled out my form completely and had to add something to my application to which I was not asked. I was also told that I needed to upload my resume, a cover letter, a supporting document, and an additional supporting document. Huh?

The only good I can see in doing something like this is the hope that I'm the only one stubborn enough to waste fifteen minutes and the pool of candidates is rather small.

28 Weeks Later

Actually, I was thinking about the whole economic meltdown and I realized that the best analogy to this whole thing is a zombie attack. Some zombie bug broke out in the housing market which, in turn, infected the financial sector which, in turn, infected people throughout the world and now there's zombies loose everywhere. Some people are safe and secure in their homestead and don't have to really worry about zombies, some people are safe but lost a lot anyways, and then there are some of us in zombie land in survival mode hoping that we don't turn into a zombie or run out of supplies or lose a loved one. Right now, I'm in Zombie land, barricading the doors and stocking up on canned foods.

And, what the heck-- to take the analogy further, Obama is the young, brilliant scientist put in charge of the zombie infection but nobody knows if what he's doing will work and when it will work and every day and thousands and millions of people keep on screaming at him "Save us from the zombies!" and then whining when he doesn't. Conservatives, when they're not denying the existence of zombies, are busy complaining that any attempt at fighting the zombies is some sort of combination of socialism and facism (facialism). Their solution to the zombie hordes-- cut taxes. As for Obama's fellow Zombie Eradication Team, they're either still trying to figure out how to profit from all of this, screaming that Obama should also try and fend off vampires and werewolves while trying to fight zombies, or thinking that eradicating Zombies is great but it would be best if we didn't spend that much money doing so.

There's No Way Out of Here

I had a phone interview today. Not just a phone interview, but two separate interviews with the same company, something that I've never experienced before. That could be considered a somewhat good sign but this isn't normal times and it probably means absolutely nothing.

For those of you wondering what it's like being unemployed, I keep on thinking of the Fall of Saigon. It's like we're living in this world of utter chaos that's falling quickly falling apart in the seams and there's only one way out-- an airlift as it were-- and we're all banging and screaming to get into the embassy to be let in and escape. Get on the airlift and you're saved, miss out on an airlift and it's eating top ramen for lunch and dinner and blogging in candlelight. Having an actual interview is being told by somebody that they might be able to get you onto one and getting a second interview is like being actually let throw the howling masses into the embassy. But, in order to make it through, I still have to my papers in order, be given a number to see if my number is called, hope that there's enough helicopters to take you out that day and if there is enough, that it either doesn't get shot down trying to land or trying to leave. Except getting a job in today's environment is harder than that.

I'm a Creep

Apparently, former Chicago Governor and noted felon Rod Blagoivech somehow got himself a job as a morning DJ. Throw in the apparent financial success of Octomom and the bonuses thrown at hundreds of financial heavyweights who lost billions of dollars and it appears that my major problem in my life is not that I'm a bit of a screwup but that I didn't screw up enough

Back to the Future

Today I started the process of doing something I had long feared-- dealing with temp agencies. Remember the scene in "Empire Strikes Back" where Yoda sends Luke into that tree to face his darkest fears? I just went into the tree.

I went to a place where I was signed up years ago, a place that actually did me right and got me one of those golden temp jobs-- not too bad and long-term (it was doing data entry for months at a time). As much as I hate temping, it's worked out somewhat reasonably well in that I'm still here so had somewhat high hopes-- I still have mad-typing skills and I boned up Excel and Word before I went in. But this, however, is a different time and a different place than when I last temped and things are different now. The office that I went to was bigger than I remembered, but it was also kind of run down looking. Even more noticeable was that the large office was primarily empty, with tables everywhere and absolutely nobody working at the tables-- there weren't even computers at the table. When I walked in, I didn't see anyone who looked at all like a recruiter and didn't even see the receptionist. The waiting room, or whatever it is they called it, was full however. It looked like a doctor's office in there. Finally the receptionist/recruiter assistant came running in to check me in, or at least acknowledge my presence, and told me to go wait with everybody else. For the next few hours as I sat in the room-- waiting and filling out forms and a whole host of other fun things-- I saw her run around at light speed, answering phones, handing out forms, setting up people's computer accounts. For the longest time, I wasn't sure if there was anybody else in the office.

Unfortunately, the company was supposed to send out an automatic email with the forms you were supposed to fill out, but the email never got sent out so everybody who was in there had to go to the computer and fill it out themselves. Thus, I guess, part of the reason why there was a wait. While I was waiting to get started, I also noticed a few other people just sitting there waiting for the receptionist to come by and give them instructions (one guy even sat there and did nothing but check his blackberry) but she was too busy to handle everyone.

Finally, it was my turn and was set up at the obviously ancient computer to enter in my information. I stumbled right out of the gate in that I was asked why I was there, what kind of job I was looking for, and what skills I have that would make me a great candidate for a position. Somehow, I don't think the answer of "I just need a fucking job right now" as well as the listed skill set of "not an idiot" was what they were looking for. So I filled it out, question by question by question. Once that was done, I was given about twenty pages of forms I had to sign asking me to agree to all sorts of things that I've never had to agree to (credit reports?) and when I filled out all that stuff and was able to hand it into the receptionist (she was busy handling several people who had just basically walked in from the street with a resume in hand) and up came my next, very important step-- the instructional safety video.

I was set up at one of the computers, given head phones and the receptionist hit a couple of buttons so I could watch the video. For twenty minutes, I sat there, being instructed to not do things like stick a knife into a busted photocopier machine but to make sure I hold onto a hand rail when I walk down the steps. If I had to add it up in my head, I have now seen something like this video at least ten times, although some of them were shown somewhere for the express purpose of having people laugh at them.

After the twenty minute video, I was given a test-- yes, a test-- to see how much of the safety information I had absorbed. I had about twenty questions about stuff like how I should pick boxes up or whether or not I should leave a file cabinet open. The test was multiple choice too so I'd have to choose from four different answers and select the best one. For example, here's the one for what you should do to make sure you don't fall down the stairs:

1)Wear comfortable shoes and hold onto the guardrail
2)Carry boxes down the stairs that impede your visibility
3)Step in every wet spot seen on the stairs
4)Jump down several steps at a time.

And this one-- what to do in case of a paper jam at the photocopying/printer machine:

1)Tell your immediate supervisor to let them know what the problem is
2)Walk away and forget about it
3)Grab a knife or letter opener and shove it into the printer to see if you can fix the problem
4)Use another photocopier

This is actually a difficult question because as anybody who's worked in an office knows, if the photocopier/printer machine breaks, the first thing anybody ever does is go to another one. Of course, you're supposed to tell somebody but if you told somebody, you'd be known as the idiot who busted the printer. Also, why tell somebody something when you can just go down the hall?

Anyways, you'll be glad to know I got 19 out of 20 questions right.

Finally, about two hours after I got to the agency, I finally met up with a recruiter. I guess a recruiter actually did work there. Now, the agency is known for sending out admin people. Admin type jobs are, well, not the most difficult in the world but apparently you still need to have something on your resume that shows you can do admin jobs. So, the fact that I'm 40 and have close to twenty years of professional experience does nothing to prove the fact that I can answer the phone. Nor does it prove I can do filing or basic accounting. The recruiter and I kept on going around and around the fact that I claimed to be able to do something (ie answer phones) yet did not have it listed on my resume as I just automatically assumed "having some sort of desk job" would imply that I was, at one point, able to handle the phone. For some reason, the argument "Jesus, lady, I'm 40. I think I can fucking do admin work. My cat can do admin work" doesn't quite cut it. The end result to all of this is that I have to redo my resume to make it look more admin-y and less non-remedial like. In other words, stretch things out a whole bunch. Like the fact that I punched the numbers into a phone to set up a conference call is now going to be featured prominently on my resume, much more than running an online store or being an editor of a blog.

With that being done, I was asked for a list of references for them to call to check up on me. And not just check up on me-- typically all people can ask is if I really worked there when I said-- but to ask them all sorts of things about me. They even wanted to call my previous supervisors at my contract gigs, something I'm not sure they're allowed to do and something I'm not sure I want them to do for various reasons, not the least of which is everyone is way too fucking busy to tell somebody at a temp agency that I'm not a fuck up. And they want more people to call than just every boss and coworker I've had over the past four years. They even want to call a friend. Again, all this for an admin job. All told, they're going to do more background checks on me than places that actually wanted to hire me.

During the interview, I stalled. I'm not quite sure I want them to call everyone I worked with because I'm not sure I want it broadcast out to the people who I've worked with, hired me, or wanted to hire me that I'm now laid low enough to ask them for references for temp work. I know...recession....depression...what have you...I just don't know if I'm feeling desperate enough to go through all of that just yet.

Slainte

I may be unemployed but I'm still living rather well right now. I still go out to dinner on the weekends, for instance, and I still have cable with every movie channel available that I watch in hidef and record on my dvr. Of course, I'm living with somebody now so I'm actually paying less for cable than I did before and my package is bundled in such a way that it's actually more expensive to get less channels, but still. I hear and read all these horrible stories about people these days and I feel guilty that I'm not suffering more. Shouldn't I be eating only ramen these days or working at Safeway 60 hours a week to get by like everyone else? Instead, I spend my days surfing the web and watching History Channel documentaries (I'm making my way through the Barbarians right now).

Since I really do need to cut down on some spending, I decided that maybe I should cut back on happy hour and/or drinking related activities. I've done enough of them in my life (seriously) to not feel the need that I need to do more of them and I know as well as anyone that just one beer inevitably turns into another beer which turns into another beer which turns into a late night dinner and very often an expensive cab ride. So when plans were made to go out for St. Pattie's Day, I decided I was going to stay in and not spend the money.

That morning, a friend called to say she had called in sick and that she, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's friend from Ireland were going to a pub to grab a pint and watch a soccer match. Naturally, of course, I ran out the door as fast as possible to meet up with them.

Drinking at night is bad, of course, because it's an activity that's done frequently enough and doesn't necessarily need to be done at all. Drinking during the day, however, is okay because it gets me out of the house. Plus drinking at night is no big deal while drinking all day is always fun.

And, yes, one beer led to another beer which led to another beer followed by expensive (but amazingly yummy) dinner).

Make This For What You Will

But I was emailing back and forth with a recruiter about a temp job last night between 10 & 11. Somehow I have a feeling that in normal times, recruiters usually spend their late nights either asleep or watching tv.

Dying Celebrities and Career Advancement

As I'm sure y'all know Natasha Richardson, mainly known for being blonde, hot, and Mrs. Liam Neeson, was in an accident over the weekend and is pretty much a vegetable today. This, of course, means that WE MUST CARE ABOUT HER. Already, the news of her accident is all over the internet and a bunch of celebrity rags are putting her on their cover. This, again, despite the fact I'm guessing nobody really knew who she was until all of this.

Just further proof that if you're a relatively unknown or untalented celebrity, death is your best career move.

I've always hated the fact that whenever some celebrity is either crippled or killed, their lives are suddenly magnified into something much bigger than their lives really were. Christopher Reeve, for instance, was famous mainly for playing "Superman" and not very much else as he wasn't all that talented. He gets paralyzed (doing equestrian events, I might add) and all of a sudden he is a true, American Hero. That dude the crocodile hunter from Australia gets killed and his death is made to be a tragedy on par of the Kennedy Brothers. And I'm not even going to bring up Anna Nicole Smith.

I guess what I'm saying is I could really give a fuck about Natasha Richardson and I don't see any reason why I should feel any differently.

Fuck You Monster.com

Earlier I mentioned the difficulty I was having in applying for an actual job through Monster.com, something that doesn't come that frequently because rarely does one actually find a decent job through Monster.com. The problem was that I couldn't log into the site to send my resume despite the fact I was already logged in. I finally figured that one out, something which unfortunately was my doing in that after using the same password for six years I had to change it a month ago and forgot that I had a new password, and then went through the rigamorale of actually sending out the resume. I posted a revised resume, wrote out a carefully thought out cover letter, hit apply and was sent to another screen asking for more information, information which I pretty much already had filled out. Fine. I'll fill it out.

At the end of it, though, they ask me for my email address and my password again. This despite the fact I WAS ALREADY LOGGED IN. So I re-re-entered my information and was told that I can't proceed because....ahem...my account information was already in use and that I need to create a new user name and password to proceed. This despite the fact I WAS ALREADY LOGGED IN. To sum up: I can't send out a resume because I have to create a whole new account even though I'M ALREADY LOGGED IN.

This, of course, pissed me the fuck off, especially as I spent about half and hour or so trying to figure out what was going on. After much cursing and pillow throwing, I decided to call Monster.com customer support mainly because I really wanted to use the words "retarded," "bullshit," and "you fucking suck" to somebody who was not my cat. After talking to the person and using all those words I wanted to say, plus lots more, I was told that basically, they couldn't figure out what the problem was either so they'll have to contact their tech support people to find out why I can't apply for a job though a site for which it's main purpose is to HELP PEOPLE APPLY FOR A JOB.