Career advice from my mom #1

[This may or may not be a series, but it should be, because there's about as much good career advice coming from my mom as from the Columbia Career Center, and that's no lie.]

Mom: "David, why don't you think about working for a generic corporation?"

Me [in the middle of spooning broccoli into my mouth]: "Huh?"

Mom: Like an insurance company. You can be a policy underwriter!

-FIN!-

A night at the Emmystifying reason why people give a fuck about this shit

This subject has been the source of embittered rants time and again, and I'm not bringing anything new to the subject, but it frustrates me that so much attention is lavished UPON WHAT GODDAMN EUROTRASH PIECES OF CLOTH CELEBRITIES COVER THEIR OVERLY PLASTIC SURGIFIED BODIES WITH at every awards ceremony! It's not that people take a casual interest in it; that's fine. It's a harmful diversion from daily life. But some people, and namely some people in the media, take it too far, with an overabundance of coverage which wouldn't be a problem if there weren't 50 million other subjects more deserving of commentary (even empty-minded commentary!), including a whole litany of social and political problems in our country and the world of which people are either unaware or indifferent because the media barely gives them a sidelong glance before racing over to drool over George Clooney's shoes or whatever. And, to be perfectly blunt, it seems to be less educated, more lower-class people who care about red carpet fashion, which is a shame, because they of all people should repudiate the worship of ultrarich celebrities who, frankly, couldn't care less about them, and start demonstrating more pride and self-interest in their own class.

When I'm finally invited to the Emmys, I'm going to wear a fly-ass shirt that is ubersexy and has the power to kill Joan Rivers.

Hallo, David. Dies ist die Start-Seite.

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Hallo, David. Dies ist die Start-Seite. Hier siehst du im Überblick, wenn es etwas Neues für dich gibt. Du kommst immer zu dieser Seite zurück, wenn du links im Menü auf Start klickst. Was möchtest du jetzt machen?

One of my more inanely fond memories of college was rampaging through facebook at the end of a drunken night, or actually often at the beginning of the night, and maybe on one or two occasions that was the whole night, just vodka and orange juice and a lot of clicking. Actually that never happened, thankfully.

The novelty of this wore off long ago, but this afternoon Rumit, who even though he lives in South Bend, Indiana now still won't leave me the fuck alone (just kidding Rumit), introduced me to Studenvereichins, which is European facebook, whose interface is an exact replica of our own, only with more racism, and tighter pants. Also it's written in German.

For anyone who can stumble blindly through the German language well enough to sign up, I highly recommend it. I have an unusual fascination with visiting and experiencing other schools. There is a unique kind of freedom and unaccountability I'm drawn to, in addition to the curiosity of peering into a world that's very similar to yours, but obviously different down to every person who occupies it.

Euro Facebook, as geographically and socially removed but nevertheless uncannily identical to our version as it is, is therefore a perfect outlet, or at least a perfect 20-minute distraction from job applications. (Sometimes I feel like this entire summer has been a perpetual distraction from job applications, even the going-to-NY-for-interviews part).

So we'll see where the following statement, under "Über sich selbst" (About Me), leads:

So it's like this. I get drunk and wake up and I'm on German facebook. Stuck in the vortex with all its incomprehensible spellings and alien characters like that B-looking thing, that makes me think of chocolate. The only way I can find my way back home to America is through a randomly plotted spasm of anonymous friending - I mean FREUNDing - until by some insidious miracle of 'social networking' I find a connection back home.

It's the ultimate test of whether this kind of technology isolates or unifies us. Now where's my fucking chocolate Germany.

The beauty of it all is that the same annoying social/sexual politics and other bullshit (based on a cursory glance of unknown people and an incomprehensible languag) carries over to the European version, along with all the details that really characterize Facebook. There's the self-conscious self-exhibition (like Phil Braatz here) designed to communicate either 1) one's high-octane party-hopping lifetstyle, 2) one's awe-inducing artsiness, or 3) one's recent trip to some place way cooler than you'll ever go (except on Euro facebook they just take a snapshot in the backyard). (And if you're really a douche you'll put a photo of yourself playing a drum on a Moroccan roof, hitting the trifecta without actually realizing that before writing this.)

Phil Braatz, Uni Konstantz, Germany, international hustla

Not being able to read German (90% of the registered users are apparently German) obviously impedes my ability to peer into this world, but in a way it's more interesting, to see the signs without the language. Back and forth wall postings, with their forced attempts at humor, they're cautious flirting, they're light-hearted inside joke-peddling. I didn't really look but I'm sure there are Gruppen like ours too: "I went to public ecole, PUTE!", "Examen ist fast so schlimm wie GW Bush," some Portuguese kids who hate Uggs and popped collars with the same fervent passion as we once did, and probably a "I'm from Oslo PROPER, not the suburbs!" group or two.

Still, there's something unsettling about this level of voyeurism, to think that some random American several thousand miles away can look so intimately at so many students in their own supposedly private university network. Of course, you only see what they want you to see, but between lists of friends, photo albums, wall postings (somewhere in Berlin or Leipzig or someplace right now there's a German Lynne commanding her boyfriend to schreibe on her Pinnwand....Pinnwand means wall, jerks), one can construct a pretty extensive character sketch of this stranger on the screen, imagined enough to be real. And upon perusing all these lives a feeling came back to me that I once experienced one evening at dusk, lost, for all intents and purposes, at some random technical college tucked away at the end of a bus line in Ostrava, Czech Republic, came back to me, as I stood in a place I would never have heard of much less set foot in if not for an unplanned 6-hour train layover on the way to Krakow, a feeling of distance and lonely curiosity and innocent intrusion, standing outside their dorm, hearing the murmurs of early Friday night escape through every open window, seeing unknown faces and silhouettes of strangers brush by the windows.


It prompts me to wonder (and of course these are unanswerable questions) whether people around the world are fundamentally the same or essentially different, and whether this kind of Internet voyeurism and manic social networking brings those people closer, or divides, compartmentalizes, categorizes, and isolates them.

I composed a song on the guitar today which, if you could expand its 4 mellifluous notes to three or four minutes somehow, may or may not be some kind of masterpiece.

I will not share it in written form here, for fear that someone may attempt to play it, and God will hear it, and be so touched by its beauty that, so moved by the idea of something greater than He, will unmake existence.

Sorry, I'm just trying to be responsible.

(Hint: its sound is similar to the Fanta jingle)

Craigslist Adventures: Blame Brian Drew

Earlier this summer, when I began working the front desk at an office downtown, I began the habit of perusing DC Craigslist, purely out of boredom, and only because whoever worked there before me had bookmarked the website along with all the ones I had to visit for actual job-related stuff.

However, since my pseudo-job did actually, in one way or another, revolve around finding similar ways to pass 8.5 hours, I spent a fair amount of time on the site and eventually developed the idea of writing a Craigslist-focused blog, inspired by the steady stream of weirdos and lost souls writing No, wait, actually the idea came to mind at the end of one Saturday night and the dawn of Sunday morning when I, drunk, lay sprawled over the scuffed leather armchair in my basement with an afghan over my face and Brian Drew, significantly drunker, rampaged through Craigslist mercilessly putting up posts of the most subversive quality.

So, this experiment will serve to navigate the terra incognita of anonymous Internet social networking and curiously exploit the lonely, the inarticulate, the trite, the exceedingly horny, the buyers and sellers of junk, and all types in between who have been drawn together by force that is Washington DC Craigslist.

Carpet vs. rug

The rug is naturally subservient to the carpet, though it may lay on top. This is a merely cosmetic show of dominance, as the carpet is structurally and in some cases aesthetically superior to the rug, which often comes from godawful places like Pier 1, or Morocco, not glamorous carpet stores. Carpets standing on end are like the majestic redwood forest. A carpet standing on end is like the ancient Colossus, reborn in, um....carpet form.

This evening, my mom and aunt, in a rare bout of spontaneity, decided to get the wrinkles out of the dining room carpet that has sat unmoved for like 8 years. It was "all kabuchied up," according to my mom. The neighbors will talk. So we fixed it.

We had mahi mahi with an improvised mango chutney for dinner, my aunt asked me if her new hairpiece looked real and whether it blended with her natural color and I looked down at my fish and mumbled "I'm not sure, I don't really know about those things," and then again when they started recounting my grandmother's experiences with menopause.

"Data entry" not as sexy as phrase implies

Apparently one of the last of my peers to secure a full-time job, I have spent innumerable hours this summer temping, whereby I join the legions of so-called casual workers helping to build America - and the world - one alphabetically organized file at a time. Actually, that's a narrow conception of a globally insidious phenomenon - the casualization of labor, bad for pretty much everyone except - in which office temp work is probably the least threatening aspect of it. But if I occupy one end of the spectrum, on the other is, I don't know, I'm making an educated guess here, "independent contractor" sweatshop laborers paid by the piece. Or some such thing. The point is that a casual workforce is an expendable one. I, personally, have been expendabled twice (and am working on a third): once, in a puzzling Kafkaesque fashion, for "unfinished tasks" which I supposedly materialized on an empty desk after I left for the afternoon, once by a scary woman named Jackie who claimed I took too many breaks, which isn't true at all, because if you never do any work in the first place, and your whole day is a break, well that's not "too many breaks now is it." Math = Jesus, Jackie.

I enjoy the rare privilege of being fire-able and not having it impact me in any significant way, except by extending my inconquerable credit card debt which just keeps holding no matter how many times I show up in a cheap suit and mismatched tie to some faceless office on L Street where I will pretend to care about meeting the CEO or like the Office Manager or Regional Districtal Analyzalicious Specialists, whose names I will promptly forget, along with my verbal data entry instructions, which don't stand a chance in my alcohol and lack of sleep-addled memory after my regimen of nytimes.com, e-mail, washingtonpost.com, onion.com, yahoo.com News, Facebook, current ebay auctions if any, craigslist goings-on for the day, credit card bill, bank statement, and by that point, eagerly anticipating a fresh breaking news story about how it's been too hot for JonBenet Ramsey to sneak snakes on a plane hidden in mascara, I go back to the NY Times to read about it, then The Onion to read the satirical version - and the beautiful cycle of life begins again.

At which point I'll enter half of one record of a 50-page stack, then go back to meandering in a stupor through the Internet. I could read a book, I could write in this useless depository of unwanted thoughts, I could chat-room argue with Christian fundamentalists which would at least be a mild exercise in expository writing, but instead I waste the time.

I could write in such detail about Bonnaroo, about two rather eventful trips to New York, about weekends with Lynne, about my friends here and there, about the glamour of the Olney pub crawl, the socioeconomic paradox that is our town, my impending trial, how many angels can fit on a pinhead...But no....

For the record, it's been a fantastic summer of which answering phones (once I actually picked up the home phone and said "W.H. Rental! This is David!" which was apparently so disorienting to my 80-year-old grandmother that before I could correct myself, she hung up and never called back. And we never heard from her again. For two days. Ever.), data entry, and other menial tasks, have been a small part. I think in total I've worked about 20 days.

But because I've spent 8 hours of the last four days computing personal information for dialysis patients, the subject happens to be on my mind.

V for kick George Bush in the face

I just finished watching V for Vendetta, a movie that, for all its faults, still has something valuable to say about the appropriateness of sabotage and property destruction for political aims. I'm not going to launch into my take on that subject with all its Kantian vs. utilitarian dilemmas and its philosophical intricacies. (Nor do I really think that the U.S. is now, or will resemble, the kind of world in which the movie is set.)

If I directed the film - (the sequel is MINE!!) - I would spend more time developing an atmosphere of complacency and expounding on that theme, which would make it much more relevant to our present circumstance and therefore more powerful and worthwhile. The movies (or books, or whatever) I enjoy most are often those that make me question my sense of reality, and in presenting the population more explicitly as controlled by complacency rather than fear - and I mean really evoking the numbess and the ignorant indifference to extremism - then it would lead American viewers to pause and say, "Damn, that shit is happening NOW to US!". Of course it has that effect anyway (I think): by presenting a thoroughly dramatized, overembellished dystopian mirror of our society, in truth SO different from how we live, we more clearly consider our own state, and wonder "Is this going to be it?"

People should leave the theaters, or in my case, Chris Huntemann's basement, having felt shocked out of their complacent acceptance and harshly confronted with the utter seriousness of what is going on now in America - not just mildly pleased that they got to see someone use computer graphics to blow up Parliament to the music of Tchaikovsky.

Manu Chao vs. Gavin Kua-unpronounceable last name

Manu Chao. Jesus. Give us a break. The man doesn't quit. Any time the rhythm dips into that languid reggae one-drop for a moment, he springs back to that infectious 4/4, rapid-fire ska beat, the one that gets everyone jumping in sync and waving their arms and dancing awkwardly (or maybe that's just me)....

It's exhausting.

Goddamnit Manu Chao. Go back to Spain/France/Brazil/America/all the other places you grew up in.

In other news, Gavin Kuangparichat is my sworn enemy, and I vow to destroy him in my sleep, not with my bare hands, but with my mental powers. ZZZZZAP!!!!!!!