A few random things

-As I never watched Conan or thought from what I saw that he was that particularly funny, I was sort of a passive observer through all this Late Night nonsense. In fact, I'm one of the few people who doesn't think Leno is Satan on earth and isn't to blame for all this (everyone's like "well why can't he just retire? as if Jay's being a dick for not wanting to). Considering Conan got $40 million as a severance package, it's too hard to feel bad about the whole thing. I'm also guessing that most of the people who are upset with him leaving either never really watched him or watched his 12:30 show as by all accounts, his 11:30 show kinda sucked. The reason I'm wondering if all the people who were doing some sort of protest had actually watched the show, the show would not be canceled. It also shows that as much as people like to think that everybody's online and uses Facebook and twitter, most people don't.

-I watched a few minutes of the first episode of Jersey Shore because I felt like I had to and thought it was kind of meh. Not because of the set up or the characters but because I've watched enough "Real World" to basically know everything that would help. In other words, I've already seen it even if the it did not involve crazy Italians from Jersey/New York. Yep, I've become jaded about reality shows.

-Worked on two post-interview thank you notes yesterday and spent about an hour/hour and a half on them. As I said about a hundred times elsewhere in this blog, I hate doing them because it's such a small thing to do yet one misspelled word or grammatical mistake and you could kiss the job goodbye. When I write them, I always think that it'll put me one step ahead of everyone else because I am the only one taking the time to write one of these things. I have a feeling that everybody else writes one and everybody else thinks the exact same thing. Because why else would anybody take the time to write those stupid things?

I suppose it could be said that being a Democrat is a lot like being a Cubs fan in that the team you root for always loses and will always be doomed to lose but no matter what they do, you still root for them anyways. And sometimes...sometimes... it looks like they've really put a good team together and you get really excited and think this year could be the year and the season starts going and the team looks as good as advertised and then things get going and it's all looking good and then...boom! the team does what they always do, chokes and falls apart and your stuck rooting for a loser yet again.

If being a Democrat is like being a Cubs fan, the election on Tuesday was the equivalent of the Bartman game. Not necessarily because everything all changed due to a fluke occurrence (special election on a weird January date that everybody forgot about, really crappy Democratic candidate, winning candidate appeared in Cosmo), but because of the total choke job that followed the play.

God damnit

Up in the Air

I saw "Up in the Air" last week and thought it was...interesting.

Here's the thing, on the one hand it might be one of the most devastating critiques of American Corporate/Economic culture in a recent movie, maybe the best since "Office Space." It's almost Marxian in it's takedown.

Here's what you get-- a bunch of corporations are going to lay a bunch of people off but are so lame about doing it, they hire "consultants" to do the work for them and lay all the people off. The "consultants" are shown not to be terribly concerned about what they're doing and it's implied that after the package they present to the person laid off is handed over with information and advice, they don't really want people to respond back and don't really care if they do.

Of course the corporation that lays people off would also like to make more profits, despite the fact they are said to be doing great what with the economic downturn and all, so decide that they need to cut their expenses. This means no more flying around laying people off and instead, they bring in Anna Kendrick's character to introduce a way to lay people off via video. Therefore, in an attempt to squeeze more profits than they already do, the company decides to do something that will only depersonalize the one service they do provide, a service that should in no way be done in any way that could be seen as impersonal. Later, it is shown that even though both Anna's character and George's character have disagreement's about the whole video thing, the company still sets it up and hires a bunch of youngish looking employees to lay people off while sitting in their cubicles.

And there you have it, everything that's wrong with our economic system excluding anything financial related-- downsizing, consultants (sorry certain readers), and increasing depersonalization in the name of increasing profits.

Now, this movie could be seen as a brutal takedown, and something more illuminating and entertaining than Michael Moore's last masturbation movie, but the movie isn't really about that. It's also part romantic comedy part character study of a man finding himself. As a result, the comment that the movie is trying to make doesn't last very long and becomes more part of the background then the story. And that's the problematic part of it.

Because it's a character study and a romantic comedy and because the main character is played by George Clooney we like the character. We root for him. Despite the fact he GOES AROUND THE COUNTRY FIRING PEOPLE. Not only that, he doesn't seem at all worry about the ramifications of what he does or care about what he's doing to other people. When you do see him let people go, he doesn't really come off as that good at it. The only time he expresses any issues with what he does is when they bring up the idea of video conferencing the layoffs and he brings up the issue of how it's always better to do it in person but he didn't do it as much for concern with the other person but because it would mean less time on the road. Now compare this with Kendrick's character who eventually can't take it and quits. In other words, she decided to save her soul-- Clooney's character doesn't. Yet we're still supposed to like him and wish for good things to happen to his character at the end of the movie. But this is not how we should feel. Instead, we should be hoping (as I was) that the movie should end with him being disembowled by one of the people he laid off.

Sent in a resume to a place and got an email back wondering what I was doing since the last time I worked. Which was awhile ago.

Now this is always a bit of a sticky wicket because if you haven't worked in a long time, you could come off looking like a loser. This despite it being the worst economic crisis since the '30's. Or despite the fact there are also millions and millions of people who would therefore be classified as losers too.

So you have to spin it a bit to make it seem like you did more than sit on your ass and watch every Law & Order and Law & Order spinoff episode ever made. Or spent that time playing World of Warcraft, hanging out on Lost message boards, and seeing "Avatar" thirty times. Which is the kind of thing some of us did (especially since it's not like there's a lot of jobs out there). So, you have to come up with something positive sounding to make it seem like you were productive. For instance, things like this:

-Took a bunch of classes to enhance my knowledge of blah blah blah
-Decided to make lemonade out of a lemon and so decided to take up life long dream of writing the Great American Novel/training for a Triathalon event in Nepal
- Went to India to help give aid to lepers
-Read all of Tolstoy's masterworks
-Spent time working on relationship with Jesus

And there you have it-- each answer has it's advantages (it all looks like you did something to make either you or the world better) and disadvantages (who wants to go deal with lepers?) but either way nobody can look at that and say "wow, this guy is not a loser. I should hire them immediately!"

It is often said that one of the best tools you have in order to look for jobs/switch jobs is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is, of course, like Facebook but for "professionals" which means it's like Facebook but without any of the fun parts.

The point of LinkedIn, we are told, is that it's really good for networking in that if you want to work at a place, you can go on LinkedIn and find which friend of a friend of a friend of a friend knows somebody who works at that company so that friend of a friend of a friend can get in contact with that person and ask them to spend some of their precious time and talk to that person's friend of a friend of a friend so that they're aware enough of that person to help them get a job at that company. Now, besides the fact it's often hard to rely on getting all of those friends of a friends of a friend to hook you up, all of this is important if you know of a place for which you want to work. If you want to just work and don't particularly care, this isn't that much of a help.

The other way this is supposed to help one get a job by having all those networks of connections somehow get a recommendation up to somebody involved in the place who is close enough to the job so that it could possibly help them. Which hasn't really worked for some of us yet.

This brings up another big thing about it which is the people you add to your connection list. Naturally, the bigger the network, the easier it is to use those connections to help get a job. That means that a lot of people just add you to their connection list no matter how tenuous the connection. As a result, I have a lot of people on my connection list who

-Worked at the same company but maybe emailed with once or twice while I was there
-People I worked with but whose main interaction largely consisted of saying hello to while on the way to the bathroom
-People I worked with who I thought were dicks
-People who I worked with and liked but subsequently realized were dicks.

So, yes, I have them as a potential "connection" to use as part of my network but how much help could somebody with whom the extent of my relationship was saying to them "hey, how are you" and "did you see the game last night?"

Of course, there's your profile and you could puff up your profile in case somebody is looking through profiles to see if they could find somebody to hire or any sort of thing like that. So people get "recommendations" put up on their site or write mission profiles or any sort of thing, all of which is important to a profile I guess but not nearly as being able to post pictures of your cat or a list of movies that you've seen over the past few months. I also noticed that you can't not recommend somebody or even diss that person in any way shape or form (like if you interviewed with them and they jerked you around or carried on a secret inter-office affair with and they dumped you because they were having another secret inter-office affair with their boss). What's the point of that, then? You're only going to ask somebody for a recommendation who would give you a nice recommendation. I guess somebody out there cares about the stuff and maybe recruiters care about that stuff but if I were a recruiter, I wouldn't even give much notice to Steve Jobs recommendation. I mean, sure, his products are what Angels would make if they built computers and mp3 music players but not even Steve would ask for recommendations from people who wouldn't give him one.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that out of all my years of being unemployed, LinkedIn's done shit for me.

I realize that all things considering this sounds kind of lame, but I'm kinda sick of it being cold. And yes, it's only in the low 50's in SF.

The problem is that nobody in California thinks the weather is going to be anything but perfect so the place isn't really built for handling any sorts of non-perfect weather. As a result, with the exception of people who ski, nobody really has any winter clothes. And most places that aren't brand new aren't really built for cold weather so apartments are really drafty. I'm in my fifth apartment in this city and all of them got butt cold at night and none of them had great central heating. So basically, you're stuck in a cold apartment until you go out into some cold weather wearing clothes that aren't thick enough to go to a place that's either over-heated (the bus) or perfectly heated (office building/stores).

Which, again, doesn't sound bad but when you're home all day in a cold, draft apartment and then go out and take a walk in cold weather, it's not so fun.

If you read through yesterday's unemployment numbers, you'll find some pretty depressing numbers. The numbers are even worse if you add what they call "discouraged workers" into the mix who are somehow dropped from the official totals because, well, you know..."quitters!"

But I think "discouraged workers" is an unfair term to call these folks because of the above reasons, that they don't count. By not counting them, it's sort of implying that they're "living on the dole" or just taking welfare money because they've lost their pluck. Therefore, I propose these titles as a way of maybe putting a better light on things-

-"Crawled on a couch in their pajamas softly crying into their whiskey glasses"
-"Busy packing to move back in with their parents well into their adult hood"
-"Taking a mental health break and catching up on all the previous seasons of 'Lost' before the new season begins."
-"Working on detailed and complicated revenge fantasies involving previous employers/bosses"
-"Contemplating ways to dumb down resume in order to get retail/admin type positions."
-"Trying to start revolution by posting on political blogs about impending takeover by Socialist/Corporatist forces."
-"Working on career change by thinking of all the professions that sound 'cool' only to realize they are completely nonviable and so start the process again to think about more completely nonviable career options."

While I was away, I got an email about setting up a time to do a phone interview. I emailed them back and let them know when I'd be around but have yet to hear back about when they'd actually call me. This happens sometimes and it could often lead to one of those mystifying deals in which a job is blown due to the fact I was not able to do the phone interview when they actually called about the phone interview. Or in this case, because I was unable to do a phone interview during the Holidays in part because I was in Montana. Actually, it could be something else. See the person who contacted me had a Korean name that could either be one word or two words and as I don't know Korean names all that well, I didn't know just how many words it was supposed to be. I looked throughout her email to see what it was and responded back to her making her name just one word. I later realized it's supposed to be two words. So now I'm wondering if I totally screwed the pooch on that one just because I didn't get her somewhat exotic first name correct. I mean, if she was a Sue or a Jane I could be interviewing with them right now

Also, had an interview last week and while taking the bus, had somebody reeking of booze and cigarettes sit next to me. Luckily, he didn't sit next to me long enough to be one of those awful MUNI moments, but I still wonder whether he was next to me long enough that the stench he emanated somehow got on my suit which meant that I conducted my interview with a bit of his stench on me. Not good.

As for the interview, the place I talked to looked like it had been recently bombed out. There was no receptionist when you entered the office and when you did, you saw what should have been a very large reception/waiting room now completely empty except for a few chairs, a couch, a coffee table, and a massage chair (?). There was also four TVs hanging from the ceiling but none of them were on at the time and the file cabinets that were to each side of the room were completely empty. When I walked through the office to get to the bathroom, I saw aisle after aisle after aisle of completely empty cubicles and offices and it felt like to get to the bathroom, you had to make your way through a graveyard. There was, I noticed, maybe ten employees at the most in the actual office at that time. I should mention too that the whole thing was eerily like a 2000 dot-com crash office in that they had a massage chair, TVs in the reception area, and a primo real estate state featuring a primo view of North Beach but had nobody working there.

Not that I've been pondering this that much, but... one point of debate is which job at Safeway would be better (meaning not suck as much) as other jobs. For instance, there's Stock Boy. They go around and fill aisles with food or put new items of food in the aisles. It would also (I'm guessing) involve going to the stockroom and meeting up with the delivery trucks to move the food items. The plus to this is that for the most part, you don't have to deal with the public or even maybe seen by the public as working there. On the other hand, you have to do a lot of heavy lifting and who wants to do that? Then there's the cashiers. These positions are probably the most visible of the positions and also the one where you get to engage the public the most. On the other hand, you are basically lifting up one item, waving them over some electronic device, and then putting them elsewhere. For hours. Upon hours. Upon hours.

Could it be any more boring? And unlock stocking where you could occasionally slack off or go slowly or people watch, you don't have a choice to do any of those things lest you get yelled out by some woman shopping while dragging her two precious kids along with her.

Then, of course, there are the baggers who I guess also sometimes work as cashiers. Anyways, they go from cashier to cashier helping out whomever needs help bagging a customers aisle. Now I can imagine this might be actually sorta fun because bagging has some element of thinking involved in that you have to figure out how to get which produce in which bag without destroying something. On the other hand, you have to do it quickly lest you delay somebody and if you slack on bagging items, you can throw the whole register aisle out of whack. That's bad. Plus, while it does take some sort of intellectual thought into putting items into a bag, it does not take that much of it.

So, the lesson in all this? Don't work at Safeway.

My New Career?

Found this job posting on Craigslist (parenthesis mine):

Cannabis Dispensary Seeks Purchasing Agent


California’s most professional and legitimate medical cannabis dispensary is seeking a qualified Purchasing Agent.

We are a rapidly growing medical cannabis dispensary. We offer a fast-paced yet congenial and warm work environment, competitive rate of pay & benefits(!).

This position requires extensive experience and an intense passion for cannabis (meaning, a stoner). The ideal candidate spends numerous hours on weedtracker, THCFarmer, and ICMag. This candidate anxiously awaits each new Cannabis Culture and High Times magazine (and a bag of Doritos). If this sounds like you, please read our requirements below.

Applicants must possess:

- Extensive knowledge of medical cannabis strains and applications (dude, this is some kind green)
- Extensive knowledge of different types of molds, mildews, pesticides, additives, and any other contaminants (dude, this is some kind green)
- Excellent communication skills (ever heard a pot head try to talk?)
- Emotional stability and maturity (ever met a stoner?)
- The ability to remain calm under pressure or in intense situations (isn't that one of the points of smoking dope?)
- Tact and respect for others under pressure (dude, mellow out, man)
- Medical cannabis production experience (had a hydroponic grower in the back of their closet in college)
- Complex negotiation experience (dude, you'd reduce the price of the bag for an extra slice of pizza? NO WAY)
- College Degree or Equivalent Life Experience (isn't having an equivalent life experience and going to college the same thing?)
- 3 years of prior experience in customer relations or retail (dealt pot in college to earn money to go to Phis shows)
- A passion to serve the medical cannabis community

Please do not respond if you do not meet all of the above minimum qualifications.


If you think you can meet our requirements, please send an email with:

1. The subject line “Purchasing Agent – [Insert Your Name]”
2. A cover letter summarizing
a. Why you want to work in a medical cannabis dispensary
b. Your previous experience as a Purchasing Agent
3. Your resume

What a strange profession dentistry is. Your basic function in life is to not only look into the mouth of other people but to poke and prod in there as well. Even worse, nobody enjoys the idea of visiting you and the actual experience of visiting you. People go years without seeing you just because they hate the experience of what you do to them. For it really isn't a great experience or a pleasant one. Even the less painful visit is still uncomfortable at best and slightly painful at worse. The cleaning device they use to clean your teeth, for instance, occasionally scoots up into painful places and makes a nasty, shrill sound like a saw cutting through metal and even if it doesn't hurt when it's being used, it feels like it should hurt.

One kind of interesting thing about being the dentist, however, is being able to watch people while they're being worked on. Because the dentist and dental assistant are basically hovering over you the entire time your teeth are being worked on they get to see how everyone reacts to things. I'm sure everybody is a little nervous when the whole thing starts but then you get to watch people's expressions as they go from nervous to calm or calm to uncomfortable or uncomfortable to really, really unhappy or sometimes from uncomfortable to clam to in pain all within a matter of secconds. And I'm sure sometimes most people go the full range of emotions, from calm to nervous to "get me the fuck out of here right the fuck now!" And you get to watch it all.

Which brings up another reason why people hate going to visit the dentist, between being forced to open wide, have things inserted and moved around the mouth, and letting your naked emotion show through, it's kind of an intimate thing.

If you go to any ethnic restaurant in San Francisco-- hell, probably most of the country-- you'll find that whatever type of restaurant, be it Japanese or French or Middle Eastern, that the people doing the grimy, dirty jobs like dishwashers are all Hispanic. Over the weekend, Harlan and I went to a really good Mexican restaurant and halfway through dinner I began to wonder who does all the grimy work at a non-divey Mexican Restaurant? Poorer Mexicans? Guatemalans? Ethiopians? Laid off dot-commers?

Okay, so I've mentioned that company that I interviewed with that went really well but had not heard a decision as of yet. It is now about a month since I first had my phone interview and two weeks from when I was sorta told I'd get an answer.

Since I really need a job and since the interview went really, really well and since it was a good job, I really wanted to know and so I tried to find out what the deal was from the person who conducted the interview process. Last week I sent an email on Tuesday asking him what's up and got nothing. On Thursday I emailed him and the other person I met with and not only asked what was up but mentioned that I had another possible opportunity but wanted to hear something from them before deciding what to do. Normally, this would make the person responsible want to let that person know what was going on because, you know, the inference that whatever information is to be had could be of importance. He never got back to me.

So I kept on trying. This Tuesday I tried to call him and did so six times without him ever picking up. On Wednesday, I left him a message and reiterated that while I was still interested in the job, I'd kinda like to know what's up because of this other opportunity, in a nice way of course. Nothing. Today I emailed the other person, who has been nothing but helpful and nice this whole time, and once again asked her what was going on and mentioned that her boss had yet to get in touch with me. This was done on purpose because I thought it would really get both of their attention if she had to go into the guy's office and get on his case about his inability to get in touch with me. Which is what she did- I quickly got an email from her saying that she talked to the guy and told him to get in touch with me. There was even a hint of "Geez, that guy's been a bit of a slacker" tone to the email.

Once again, nothing.

Now, to make some sort of decision about a job and then not letting other people know is a dick move. To continue to do so after one of those people sends a couple of emails and leaves a voice mail message is being even more of a dick. To even do so when a coworker tells you to do it is beyond being a dick into some sort of other realm of dickitude. You know, like beyond dickitude and somewhere into horrible, horrible person land.

Still, I need a job. And still, it's a good job and I have not officially been told they hired somebody else. And if they haven't hired somebody else, all these attempts to get through has to be a point in my favor. And even if I didn't get the job which is very well and most probably possible and a good thing considering his dickitude, I am still going to try. Because I think I deserve to know. Because it's job to let me know too. And because I'm going to get the fucker to do it, even if it involves me hanging outside their office all afternoon waiting for him to go and get a bag of Kettle Chips so I can ambush him.

It's on, motherfucker.

Jesus, your Joe Lieberman or Olympia Snowe or Ben Nelson and the Senate has 58 or 59 votes to get what's supposedly a pretty decent (for our political system) health care bill and you're sitting there saying "no...nope....don't like that....maybe next time...not going to happen" over things that pretty much the most of the Senate and the House and the President think are okay.

How big of a dick are you? I mean, if this thing falls apart, maybe they should name people who die of some health care related issue caused by a lack of insurance "Death by Lieberman" or when they go bankrupt paying trying to pay off bills, you can say they've been "Snowed."

Had a job interview that didn't go very well. I kinda flailed at the beginning of the thing and never really recovered until it was well past the point I could save myself. I've actually gotten really good at interviews these days and have my answers down pat and was feeling pretty good going in there but I just choked. I think it all went wrong when at the beginning, I tried to make a light-hearted joke, you know to show some personality and lighten up the mood, but the person who I was interviewing with didn't respond. I mean didn't even notice or do anything at all to make that made me aware of the fact I had made a joke. Nope, the person I was having a meeting with was one of those no-nonsense, serious types with little to none sense of humor and I pretty much started flailing the moment I realized I was playing to a rough crowd.

Okay, so in this whole Tiger Woods thing we do have your usual assortment of skanks-- 10 at least so far. We even have your reality star and porn star to add to the list of the usual suspects of ex-models, cocktail waitresses, and "nightclub publicists."

So does this make this story exciting yet and Tiger less boring?

Nope. He's still as boring as ever, despite the rumors there was drugs (ambien) involved or he liked going "gloveless" or what have you. In fact, the sheer amount of the usual assortment of skanks makes it less boring as it's the same sort of people you'd expect a celebrity to have affairs with. Now, maybe if Chelsea Clinton or Emma Watson were involved...

Actually, the only thing that's not boring about this thing is that one of the tabloids is reporting that one of the woman was told by Tiger that his marriage to the Swedish model/nanny was done mainly for publicity reasons and wasn't really a marriage of love (other than love of money, of course). Why is this interesting? Because it confirms the theory that a huge percentage of athletes and the occasional singer/celebrity aren't actually real human beings as much as concoctions whipped up by their publicist/manager.

Which is what Tiger was. Which is why he's boring.

Why do I love the internet? Because while trolling message boards on certain tv shows you can not only discover that the half-Italian half-Jewish more-cute-than-hot 24 year old lead actress in a TV show has done something you didn't expect to see of them, mainly nudity in a sex scene. And not only that, it's from a totally random thing and as such, impossible to find by conventional methods (ie-- going into Google and typing the words "actress" and "boobs"). Needless to say, thanks to the magic of YouTube, said clip is available to watch.

I, of course, watched

Now here's the thing. Part of the reason why it's obscure and hard to find is because it happened in the Broadway Play that made her famous and the idea of nudity in a play isn't something you hear of that often. And that the title of the play was "Spring Awakening" which sounds like it's one of those frothy musicals we all know and love. Turns out, however, it's not. It's a play that's been banned several times in several places and is more like something out of that movie "Kids" or "Bully" than the "Sound of Music" as it involves messed up kids doing messed up things to other people all in the name of trying/having/not having sex.

Still, yay boobies!

Except for the fact that the sex scene, which takes place on a bed hanging from the ceiling in the center of the stage, is not quite like sex and more quite like rape and she spends most of the scene fearfully and somewhat tearfully pleading that she's not sure about all of this. And to add to the fun, there's a choir kneeling around the bed singing a chipper sounding song that's actually kinda disturbing considering what's going on. The only thing I felt after watching the scene was creeped out. Also majorly awed by the major balls of said actress to not only perform the scene but do so surrounded by about fifteen people singing, in front of an audience of hundreds, day after day after day. And thanks to the internet, now it'll be hard to watch said actress in said show without thinking about said boobs being fondled while in the act of being raped.

Yay boobies?

Even worse,

Living on a Prayer

And so my big dream a couple of days ago sorta came true and sorta didn't. Sorta did because I found out something about the job (no decision yet) but sorta not because I had to bug two people at the office for information, even lying about something, in order to get it what little information I did get. Actually, considering the person who appeared in my dream is still being a pud and hasn't responded to me, I guess the answer is sorta not more than sorta did.

Despite this, I have to say that for the most part, I've been treated rather well this unemployment go around. Other than the lame-ass HR person who made me think I got the job and this place, most of the people with whom I met with sent me emails giving me updates and were really polite about everything.

That doesn't mean I haven't had a few weird interviews, although nothing as bad as some of the one's I've been on. There was that one weird job, the one that could have involved travel to China, in which the job description was so vague that the recruiter and I spent a long time trying to figure out just what to put on my resume and to say. Turns out there was a reason for the vagueness because the person whom I met with admitted at the end of the interview that she didn't know what she was looking for exactly but just wanted to meet with people to see if a light bulb went off in her head while talking to them and realize what she wanted. When I told all of this to the recruiter, I could hear her eyes roll over the phone (I've actually gained a lot more respect for recruiters these days because I have a serious feeling that half of their jobs is dealing with employers who don't know what they're looking for but know they need somebody or employers who reject candidates for being exactly what they said they wanted because they decided they didn't really want that).

Then there was another job I interviewed for, a two to three month gig. The job was kinda low paying and beneath my skill set but whatever-- it was a job and it was doing some weird, nichey thing that I had plenty of experience in doing. Which became evident when they asked me a bunch of questions about how to do it and not only did I tell them exactly what to do but threw in some technical talk just to show them I really knew my shit. I met with two people and the second person with whom I met asked me what my process is doing this thing and when I talked about what and how I did things, he kept on saying "wow, that's exactly how we do it!" or "you use the exact same process that we do!" Turns out, however, I didn't because when I called the recruiter a few hours after the interview to check in (after driving home from Oakland in a nasty, nasty rain storm and driving over the Bay Bridge in pouring rain is NOT fun) the recruiter told me that they turned me down because they didn't think I knew how to do things and could "communicate the process." Or something like that-- the recruiter said he didn't really know what they meant as it was all kind of vague (see comments above about recruiters having to deal with flaky HR types).

The only thing I could think that happened on that interview, other than the fact they sucked, is that halfway through the interview I had a complete and total energy crash. The interview was on a Friday morning and it was my second interview of the week and fourth in two weeks. I also spent a lot of time at the Unemployment Office getting job help that week and had found out over the week that I had lost out on three jobs. In other words, I was pretty burned the fuck out. I also had to drive into the East Bay in crappy weather and apparently didn't drink nearly enough coffee. So I totally and completely crashed. I thought I hid it well but I also know that I wasn't as effusive and energetic as the interview went on. And sadly, in an interview, you have to perfect enough in the interview that the obvious appearance that you need a nap doesn't go over well.

Or, they could have just sucked.

A couple of weeks ago I had an interview with some marketing company. It was one of the more unusual interviews that I've had in which they told me halfway through the prescreening phone call that they loved my resume so much they didn't really need to do a prescreening phone call and then during the interview, was told several times by the person in charge that the whole thing was a "great interview."

I know-- there's no way I'm going to get this job.

Anyways, this was a couple of weeks before and when I asked what the next steps were, I was told I'd hear something this week. It seemed rather a long wait at the time (about two weeks) but when you factor in Thanksgiving it made some sense. They didn't say when this week, however, which puts me in a bit of a crappy situation in that I don't know when I'd expect to hear anything and so this big, huge decision affecting my life is one in which I could hear about early Monday morning or late Friday afternoon or anywhere in between. This is a little on the stressful side, to say the least as now everytime I check my email or hear the phone go off, I wonder if it's it.

To head things off, I sent the guy an email yesterday asking him what was up. As of right now-- almost a day later-- I have yet to hear from him making me that more anxious and a little bit concerned that the guy is actually kind of a dick.

This morning, when I was in that half-awake/half-asleep state, I had a vivid dream where I was sitting at the desk of the guy in question who was telling me not to be so freaked out and that I'll find out on Thursday. He even told me that I'll either get an email saying I didn't get the job or that I should come in and meet more people and to once again, not stress over it.

Okay, yes, it's a dream, but where did the Thursday part come in? Did I just randomly pull it out of my subconscious ass or am I actually having some sort of premonition? The dream was pretty vivid too which it made all that stranger especially in light of the fact that unlike most weird dreams fraught with meaning, there were no midgets involved.

So, maybe tomorrow it is. If not, I'm thinking the Fatal Attraction scenario where I stalk him about the job to the point he might find a dead rabbit in his bed.

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright

I've been kind of enjoying the Tiger Woods "scandal" due to the fact I find Tiger to be possibly the most boring person on the planet. Well, that's not fair as I don't really know him so let's just say he might be the most boring athlete in the world. It's one of the reasons why I could care less about anything he accomplishes in his sport or anything that he does. The fact that I could care less about golf makes it even easier to not care about him.

The thing about Tiger is that he presents a totally bland, corporate, Nikefied persona. He's been so trained to say nothing but completely bland, innocuous and inoffensive things lest he get in trouble with a corporate sponsor, possible shoe buyer, and journalist that he's been completely wiped of a personality. Some stars out there who have been Nikefied still somehow show a dint of personality-- whether it's actually part of their personality is something we'll never know-- and come off a bit more likeable. LeBron has a good sense of humor and appears to really care about winning one for his hometown. Peyton Manning is mayonaise white, kinda goofy and dorky, and seems completely self-aware of just that fact (which is why he's great in all of his commercials). And some athletes strive to be completely Nikefied but either show too much of their personalities to have it work (Kobe), have too exciting of a personal life for people to get away with being seen as boring (Derek Jeter), or have a little too much edge showing through (Michael Jordan, who pretty much defined the Nikefied athlete, could somewhat get away with it because people always felt that he would bet away his mother to some sort of Saudi Opium Den if he liked the odds well enough).

Which leaves us with Tiger who had none of those things-- he never appeared to be "ha ha" funny, he didn't present any sort of personality, and he was completely scrubbed clean of anything possibly interesting. He was just one bland, corporate whoring, golf wizard. When that sportscaster made that quote about Tiger being lynched he just gave a press conference, smiled a whole lot, and said he didn't get offended at all. Nope, wouldn't want say something involving race that could piss somebody off and lose my deal with Buick.

Now that he's in a bit of a controversy, I'm feeling more disposed to Tiger because for the very first time in his public career, he actually let the mask drop a bit and show that he's actually a human being, albeit a super-rich one with a better class of mistresses to choose from. Yes, Tiger actually likes having sex and likes having sex with more than one person. How about that? And Tiger actually screwed something up big time. In fact, Tiger was caught doing pretty much what ever rich celebrity thinks they can do-- have lots of sex and get away with it not just from their wives but the press and police.

Yet still, I'm not impressed. It's only supposedly with one woman, a woman whose threatening to sue over it so it might not even be that woman. And maybe it was just a little fight between husband & wife, albeit one with lots of face scratching. So I'm not there yet. Let me see who the exactly was the Other Woman and what her story is (the sluttier, of course, the better). And let's see what other shoes drop. More women? Sex tape? D Level reality stars? Bisexuality? Coke addiction? Cause the more he shows acting like a human being, the more I'll like the fact that Tiger is a human being.

And if you don't think any of this matters and that it does nothing but harm for the athlete involved, two words: Alex Rodriguez.