I usually go to the gym somewhere between 4 and 5 and there's always this woman there who I've seen around for the past year or so. She's easy to spot because she's neither elderly nor Asian and that puts her way on the minority side of the people who workout there. She's also noticeable because she's one of those people who hit the cardio equipment for half an hour, another apparatus for another half an hour, then lifts weights, and then hits the treadmill. And, yes, she is kinda attractive in a way, especially if you like woman who look like they do triathalons during their lunch breaks and goes rock climbing before they even have brunch on the weekends.

Anyways, we've been pretty much working out together at the gym at the same time day after day after day after day and yesterday, she finally got on an actual piece of exercise equipment that was next to me. As I was working out next to her, I kept on having this strange feeling like I should say "hi" or something. Not because I necessarily want to (frankly, I don't like saying "hi" to anyone) but more like I was obligated to because I knew who she was, I'm sure she knew who I was and we were all part of the 4-5 Workout at the Y Shift and as members of that shift, were all somehow connected to each other, more so than say, somebody who normally works out at 3 but goes in at 4 or the people who do the 5-6 shift.

I, of course, did nothing. Partly because she was on her blackberry the whole time.

Job Stuff

Yesterday I got an email for a contract position doing something for which I have a tiny, tiny bit of experience in but not a whole lot. Normally, I'd get back to the person who sent me the email and lie through my teeth but I just don't feel like lying through my teeth about this job in particular. Maybe it's just because I'm tired or have been going on interviews for stuff I do have experience in. Or maybe it's because the job involves some level of technical expertise and I don't want to actually be in a position where I'm hired and on Day 1 somebody goes "okay, now I need you to upload this" and I'd have to go hide in the corner reading "Uploading for Dummies" in order to figure it out.

Speaking of job interviews, as many times as I've been going on interviews, I still hate when they say "we're going to talk to a few more people and..." just because when you interview with somebody at some place, it's just you and you alone and for an hour or so it's like "tell me about yourself" and if it's a good interview, you think "why wouldn't they hire me? I'm cooking!" but, then, the reality of the situation hits and you realize that it doesn't really matter, that it's not really all about you, and that there's still somebody out there who might just be better or do better in an interview.

In yesterday's interview, I was smoking. One of the best interviews I've ever been one with a not drop, hint, or whiff of nervousness (taking a lot of tranquilizers probably helped). After talking to two people, I was told I was going to meet with one of the Higher Ups but after a few minutes of nobody coming into the conference room to meet with me, the first person with whom I interviewed with came back into the conference room to tell me that she had been running around looking for the Higher Up only to realize that they were in a meeting all afternoon. So, thanks for coming by, we're going to talk to other people, and we'll let you know.

Now, not meeting with the Higher Up because they were in a meeting could, naturally, mean that they were in a meeting. Or, it could mean that despite it all, the two people with whom you met with said "nope" and decided not to bother with dragging the Higher Up into meeting with me. On the one hand, why would they schedule an interview with me if they knew the Higher Up was in an interview? On the other hand, stuff happens and the person who set it all up didn't really come off as being that dialed in. Because I've been through this a hundred million times, I'm going with "ehhh...fuck it...why was the Higher Up's time?"

The other thing about it was that, as I said, I was kicking ass (I think) during the interview but if so requested, have to go in and do it again. The fact that I was all wired up and ready to go and being told halfway through the process that they'd have to reschedule was a bit of a let-down. I kind of felt the way a starting pitcher would feel if they were throwing a really good game, one of their best, and told they wouldn't go back out there because they needed to use a pinch hitter. "But I could go three more innings...let me finish the game!"

Ugh

I am trying, so far unsuccessfully, to ween myself away from news blogs. I have been totally wrapped up in the health care debate to probably the detriment of my mental health and sanity. As I wrote earlier (I think), how this thing plays out is in some ways, a test case to see if we, as a country, are able to actually achieve some serious, progressive reform and as such, is a test to see whether our political system at this time is actually able to see that change happen. All of this, of course, was brought forth in the '08 election when somehow, We the People actually voted in a smart, earnest, thoughtful man who wanted to fix a lot of things that needed fixing. His election, or so I thought, was a sign that We the People were ready to have somebody smart, earnest, and thoughtful to fix the country.

So how's that going?

Like a lot of people who were really pumped by that election, I am pretty much all riled up and in several stages of despair now. The system in DC is terribly and horribly broken (why the constant use of the anti-majority filibuster is considered a normal things these days and the so called "political press" doesn't seem to think anything about it is beyond me) but even worse it appears that we, as a country, actually don't really deserve any sort of change. This shouldn't have come as any sort of surprise but we are not a very serious country. Somehow a lot of us got suckered by Obama's election to believe that we were about to become one but as one blogger put it, we are still a "pre-enlightment" country. As evidence I provide the Tea Baggers, the Birthers, and all those "Town Hellers" screaming about taking the country back or how government should get out of medicare or that they believe in the constitution. Death Panels should have been seen by any reasonably intelligent person to be a complete and total BS thing but that hasn't stopped anyone from screaming it. Nor has that stopped any number of people who would probably need health care reform from going to those rallies and screaming about government takeovers. Healthcare reform is a huge and important issue that even a huge majority of voters believe in, yet nobody seems to be terribly upset that the issue has become more farce than anything else.

Last night Harlan and I watched a documentary about the evils of WalMart. The documentary didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know but in light of the health care debate I pretty much watched it at full boil, occasionally yelling out "you're a fucking idiot" to the occasional John Q Public shown in the documentary who is or was in the process of getting screwed by WalMart. It was all out of the book "Deer Hunting with Jesus" in which a huge amount of Red State conservative types got bent over in all sorts of ways yet never quite made the leap of faith to realize that maybe those Red State conservative views made the being bent over possible. Like they showed the story of a family that ran a very successful small town hardware store somewhere in Nowheresville that went bankrupt thanks to WalMart. One of the guys kept on saying "well, I believe in freedom and the constitution and I don't want to be no Communist country" but then went on saying how he wished the Government would come in and do something about what WalMart does. One of the owners of the store mentioned several times that he was a conservative Republican (even flashing to a picture that he owned of Ronald Reagan) but, like the other guy, was completely unable to make the conclusion that a political belief that worshipped at the altar of "free markets" and that business should be supported and not regulated could cause one to fall victim to the free market and a political system that supports big business and fails to regulate them.

Then there was the guy trying to organize the union and all the stories about how hard WalMart tries to fight unionization (like very), even going to take the effort to show employees instructional videos on the horrors of unions. All of those people's lives they showed in the documentary who worked there could be in better situations if they were unionized, but.... And then, of course, was all the people complaining about not having health care or not being able to afford health care. I wanted to send them all a letter asking them what they think about health care reform just to see how many of them send something back about how they support the constitution and all that.

But finally, my take away was this-- at one point in the documentary they went to a WalMart that was just recently opened in Germany. The employees there made decent money and had a generous vacation plan. It goes without saying they all had decent health care. Oh, and they were able to be members of a union, something that goes a long way to explaining their generous benefits. At the end of an interview with one of the German WalMart workers, the lady they were talking to said something like "I don't know why they don't have all this stuff in America?"

Well, to whomever you are who said that, here is your answer "because we, as a nation, are a bunch of fucking idiots."

Chili

I love chili but the most recent can of the chili that I bought has been sitting in the cabinet for several weeks now. The reason why I haven't opened that sucker up and gone at it is because chili is one of those foods that can never be taken lately-- you need to pay attention to when and when not to eat it-- and I haven't had that moment yet.

What I mean is that I would never eat a can of chili on a weekday night because I'd have to deal with it at work the next morning not to mention an often long commute (those long rides on the 38 Geary can be HELL). Now, of course, it's easier for me to deal with since I don't have to work but I still have to pick and choose my spots. I had a doctor's appt today so I couldn't have had it yesterday and I have an interview on Tuesday so can't even think about going for it until then. As for all the days in between, well, I just wasn't quite willing to make that commitment. I'm having enough problems figuring out what I'm going to do all day without even throwing chili into that mix.

I'm not saying that I've been paying too much attention to the healthcare debate, but....

When I was walking around the neighborhood yesterday there were old people everywhere and I felt like beating up a bunch of them for being gullible enough to believe that Obama wants to kill them.

Anyways, I live on the middle apartment of a complex that's right over a somewhat major street. This makes things loud. The neighbors above won't let us listen to music or watch tv too loudly and the neighbors below us start talking really loudly late at night while coked up. But whatever, the main thing that gets to me is the street noise. Watching TV is really difficult as it seems like anytime I watch something, just at the moment something important is about to be said, a car always drive by. It'll be like this:

"Hi, how are you?"
"Great, how are you?"
"I'm fine, how's your mother?"
"My mother is doing fine, except for the fact that yesterday an alien came down and...VROOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I have to often watch things three times just to make sense of what's going on. It's especially tricky with shows like "Mad Men" or "BSG" that are all moody and try to go out of their way to not have people talk loudly.

Worst of all are the neighbors down the street from us, the neighbors we call our White Trash neighbors, a name given to them due to their hobby of taking old junker cars and fixing them up on their drive way. They will then rev the engine of said car to test it around 11 at night. They also have exceedingly noisy dirt bikes that they like riding around and around and around, usually whenever I'm trying to watch something on TV.

They are not my favorite people.

It says a lot about the current state of my job search...

...that the highlight so far of my job search was an interview for a crappy job in Livermore. I knew it was a crappy job at the time but since Livermore was over an hour away, involved the taking of lots of highways I have rarely if ever been on, and had only been to Livermore once in my entire life, thought it was a bit of an adventure-- a road trip if you will.

Today I have an interview with a company in Larkspur, a place much, much prettier than Livermore with a much prettier drive. Also a much better job. When I got the email saying they'd like to talk to me, I was excited because it would mean a fun little trip over the Golden Gate Bridge. But when I found it was only to be a phone interview, I was a little disappointed. While I don't think the job would be a good enough fit for me to be hired, I at least want to make it to the second round just so I'll have an excuse to go on another road trip, maybe a make a day of it-- like instead of driving there, I'll drive to the Embarcadero and take the ferry over. Or drive but grab some lunch by the water front.

So you're a member of the Washington Press and one side of a political party is saying that the Democrats' proposed health care reform will lead to a "Death Panel" that will euthanize old folks. Do you

1)Say that's complete and total bullshit and attack those spreading the disgraceful lies

or do you

2)Say "some people say Democrats want to single-handily kill your grandmother where she sleeps while others say that isn't true" and then tut-tut Obama for not doing a good job in getting his message out

And if a bunch of people are screaming that they don't want government to interfere with their medicare, do you, as a member of the press

1)Write that this is completely ridiculous as Medicare IS a government program and these people are fucking idiots

or do you

2)Say that it shows that the American people distrust Government interference in anything and that it's proof of how difficult it would be to pass health care reform-- not because the average American voter is an idiot but because, once again, Obama isn't doing a good enough job of getting his message out.

When a supposed leader of the Republican Party goes on a Sunday show and repeats the claim that the Democrats want to pull the plug on everyone person over the age of 70, as host of the show, do you

1)Say straight out that it's ridiculous, a big fat lie, the worst kind of demagoguery imaginable, and that you'll never have them on their show again because they're a big fat fucking lying weasel whose poisoning the political discourse in the country

Or do you

2)Say that's not correct, give them the fact, have them respond to it with another big fat lie and then move onto the next topic and then revel in the fact all the reporters replay it over and over again in recaps of the Sunday shows because it's a good sound bite and the person is a supposed and valued leader of the Republican Party. You will, of course, have them back as much as possible because they give you good ratings and are considered a valued and important voice in politics.

All of this kind of reminds me of the start to the Iraq War when like an overwhelming percentage of people still believed that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. Did the press think that it was just an issue that the opponents of the war (most of whom were never given much in the way of an audience) not getting their message through, that as there was no note or email from Sadaam saying "Dear Bin Laden, please don't blow up those towers" that you never know and if Dick Cheney says it's true then we shouldn't really say one way or the other, or that it was a HUGE failure on their part and they should look deep into their conscious and ask themselves whether or not they're a failure at their job?

Got an email last night entitled "This is Not Spam Mail: Reply" and as the email said that it wasn't spam, I decided to open it, even if it was sent by a Mr. Ginibunwa Esaaba.

Now, you'll never believe this, but it turns out it WAS spam mail. I know! He was trying to raise money for some sort of great financial scheme he was cooking up in Africa. Sadly, I realized this a few hours after I sent him 100 dollars via Paypal but you live, you learn. Hopefully nothing bad will come of it.

Sent out a resume yesterday and quickly got an email back from the company saying that they'd like to bring me in for an interview and asked me what day next week would work. I got back to them as fast as I could and let them know that any day next week would work.

Haven't heard back yet.

I was at a bus stop on Geary waiting for the 38, drinking a bottle of Minutemaid Lemonade and listening to my iPhone when it appeared that somebody in the middle lane of the road-- a twenty-something somewhat crunchy girl-- had just rolled down their window to talk to someone in my general direct direction. Naturally, I thought it couldn't be me because I didn't know the person who was saying something but when I realized that there really was nobody else she could be talking to as I was the only at the bus stop, I turned down my music to see just what the hell she could be talking to me about.

The answer? Minutemaid Lemonande. Apparently she's a big fan, especially if you add lots of sugar to it, something I told her was kind of silly considering the drink pretty much consists of sugar. I responded to a few things she said and then got a little freaked out about the whole thing and made the universal facial sign of "kay, thanks, bye" and put my headphones back on. The light finally changed to green and with that, she drove on off, probably thinking about drinking some lemonade as soon as she was to get to wherever she was to get to.

And so my question is-- what the fuck was that all about?

Illegal Sucking

As you get older, the list of songs that have entered and exited your life increases exponentially. Some of them you still remember, some of them have disappeared in time-- sometimes by choice. On Saturday, I heard maybe one of the most random songs that I had lost through the sands of time

-- Genesis' "Illegal Alien."

Wiped that from your memory too, didn't you? I think music wants to wipe it from it's memory

Now, first of all, that song sucks. S-U-C-K-S. Just awful, especially when you consider that at one point Genesis was known for being an art-rock band that often played eight minute song "suites" while dressed as forest animals. The song is basically a cutesy song about illegally crossing the border into the US complete with veiled references of the offering a sister up for sexual favors. Who the hell thought that would be a good idea for a song? I mean, the song sucks enough as it is-- it could have lyrics written by Shakespeare himself and it would still suck-- but making it about illegal immigrants. The video even has Phil Collins dressed like a Mexican with a bad moustache and sombrero. Seriously, who the hell thought ANY OF IT would be a good idea.

Can you imagine somebody writing that song now, or at least releasing a song like it-- a cutesey song about illegal immigrants. Can you imagine the ruckus? Lou Dobbs' head would explode.

Just amazingly awful.

The Velocity of Travel

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

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

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

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

One more thing.....

Going back to that happiness bit...

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

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

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

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

I'm Pretty Sure This Could be a Scam

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

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

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

Happiness is Anyone and Anything at All

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

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

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

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

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

We Interrupt Your Health Care Coverage For....

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

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

More Health Care Fun

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

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

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

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

C'mon Get Healthy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I am.

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

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

There goes that job

Warning, Cat Post

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

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

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

My Next Billion Dollar Idea

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

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

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

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

What I Want to Do When I Grow Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Billion Dollar Web Idea

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

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

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

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

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

Puppy Death- Death metal music. See Slayer.

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

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

When Do You Know You're in San Francisco?

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

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

Today's Unemployment Update

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

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

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.