Category: Life

“The future [is] dead; long live the aimless present.“

If you’re not reading Lileks every day, you should. Bird is the werd.

MSN’s running a list of five tips for an effective first date. It looks like a pretty good list, undoubtedly compiled by a trained therapist or whatnot (all right, I did not Google “Jim Sulski” to find out, dear reader; I leave the in-depth show prep to Rush Limbaugh).

Instead, dear reader, I offer my tips for a first date. I think I am qualified, since my last first date worked out okay. So here’s the StLBrianJ tips:

• When meeting your Internet pen pal for the first time in person, select a neutral, out of the way spot to meet.
  
  We met at a commuter lot off of Interstate 70. Somewhere out of sight will comfort your date, ensuring her that no one will see you and her together in case you’re a dweeb.

• Be patient while waiting for your date.
  When you’re anticipating a single woman with auburn hair in a white Ford Tempo, do not peel out of your parking spot in reverse when a white sedan bearing a woman with auburn hair and THREE CHILDREN parks in the spot RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. Instead, gallantly remain patient and think of all the ways you can end the date very early. That way, if it turns out that this family were really meeting some guy in a monster SUV, you have not sacrificed your chance to snare a hot conservative chick on a bicycle.

• Dress appropriately.
  Remember, a black fedora is the way to say “creepy,” and the added touch of a 1-inch stump of a ponytail says “but dorky.”

• Listen to what she has to say.
  By “Listen to what she has to say,” I mean don’t say a freaking word. She’ll think you’re interested in her, and you don’t volunteer that you’re a geek who thinks a good Saturday night involves sitting around playing Ataris, drinking beer, and passing around laddie magazines.

• Show no emotion.
  Don’t smile at all. Lead her to wonder why you’re so mysterious, even though you’re just really afraid you’re going to blow it.

• She doesn’t drink coffee or like cigarette smoke? Take her to the Grind!
  Nothing shows your sophistication like a European-style coffeehouse where all the au pairs have nicotine breath and the coffee is expensive.

In other words, I had no idea what I was doing or why it went so swimmingly.

Ever wondered what goes on at an Atari Party? Here are the blackmail photos I will be using for my extra income this year.

Today was my last day at my current job, and the end of a personal era. Let me explain.

I entered the work force in 1990 when I moved from a forsaken Marcellus (that is, not a town, not a village, not even a Hamlet, but rather a minor character therein) to Milwaukee to attend the prestigious (to those in Milwaukee) Marquette University. I worked my way through college since I screwed off my way through scholarships (quickly), so I held that first job for the four years it took me to complete Writing Intensive English (WINE–who could ask for a better degree?) and Social Philosophy degrees.

After that, though, I graduated with degrees that “prepare you for anything” but give you little in terms of an actual job path. As such, I held a number of positions, many in retail and many part time overlapping with other positions.

I’ve often told stories of my varied resume for the amusement of my co-workers. However, the allusions to my resume can fail to capture the nature and breadth of the job bouncing I’ve done, so I provide the following accounting for their reckoning and your amusement:

Company	Title	Duration
Gold’s/Sheridan’s Shop Rite	Bagger/Checker/Produce Clerk	47 months
Blue Horseshoe Productions	Telemarketing Fund Raiser	1 months
Price Chopper	Utility Clerk	3 months
National Systems, Inc.	Marketing Research Assistant	1 months
Better Business World	Guy Friday/Computer Assembler	3 months
Artmart	Shipping/Receiving Clerk	8 months
Sappington Farmers Market	Produce Clerk	15 months
The Paint Dealer	Assistant Editor	4 months
Drug Package, Inc.	Class II Web Printing Press Operator	24 months
TALX Corporation	Documentation Specialist	8 months
Data Research Associates, Inc.	Technical Writer/Automated Tester	21 months
MetaMatrix, Incorporated	Technical Writer	35 months
Tripos, Incorporated	Quality Assurance Engineer I	?

It’s a lot of job bouncing, undoubtedly, but a lot of it took place in the early part of my “career,” when an extra fifty cents an hour meant a ten percent pay raise.

Overall, within my employment history, jobs have been fluid, plentiful, and easily changed. In today’s economy, it’s important to keep this in mind. I’ve never felt that a single job’s going to provide for my retirement (nor will a single government system like Socialism Security). I’ve also been comfortable moving forward as well as backward or side-to-side to find something new, and I’ve worked at crummy jobs enough to realize that you can always find something if you’re willing to be honest and to work earnestly.

It’s a big step, though, leaving a place I’ve worked for almost three years. Don’t laugh; these have been three important, formative years in my life. They represent years 2-4 in my marriage and 1-3 in home ownership. I wrote my best novel manuscript yet, John Donnelly’s Gold, while at this last job.

So I’m moving on, and as I reflect on my job history, several things clarify:

• I’ll always need to attach an extra sheet as necessary when filling out those foolish job applications for advanced positions which demand your complete job history from the time you were a “sonographic model.”
• Every job is a McJob now, no matter what its rank or salary.
• My latest novel manuscript, John Donnelly’s Gold, has not yet made me independently wealthy to the point wherein I can sleep until ten o’clock, putter until two o’clock, nap until four o’clock, and write about the fictional human condition until one or two in the morning.
• The position into which I am going is my thirteenth job, and I should resign now before the dire consequences occur.

I heard on the radio today a commercial for the newest and bestest Lasik eye surgery techniques, which explained that whatever new gimcrackatron they’ve devised certainly beats the traditional Lasik methods.

Undoubtedly, Dr. McCoy would agree that those old, traditional means of Lasik surgery (such as those deployed against Virginia Postrel) were medieval butchers and that they were only one step above using leeches to suck that astigmatism right out of the eyeball.

Pardon me, but my family doesn’t have a generations-long tradition for opening the front of the eyeball like a can of french-cut green beans and firing a computer-guided thing-we-used-to-call-a-“laser” against the retina until it scorched enough of the cones and rods to make things better, as though it was a military expedition to win over the hearts and minds of my optic nerve with napalm. Oh, yeah, and then they close it back up, and it either works or you’re blind, oops.

Pardon me, but I have done too much QA with computers to trust them with anything like the impressionist-themed remainder of my vision, thankyouverymuch. Sure, I realize that the chances of failure are slim, but I buy lottery tickets with slimmer odds.

So my traditional Lasik surgery technique is mocking the very prospect. And as a conservative, remember, I demonstrate:

• Fear and aggression of losing what remains of my sight.
• Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity in adhering to my gruesome description of the procedure.
• Uncertainty avoidance because new technology bad.
• Need for cognitive closure so let’s just drop the subject.
• Terror management by thinking happy thoughts instead of Lasik procedures as I go to sleep to keep away the nightmares.

So thanks, but no schnucking way thanks.

This sentiment guaranteed only until next midlife crisis.

My darling wife has discovered that people get fat from cleaning the plates put down in front of them in restaurants.

Pardon my french fry-induced coronary, but come on. Parents throughout the country made their little boomers clean their plates, and the boomers tried to enforce this dictum on Generation X. So when restaurants started putting pounds of high-margin plate fillers in front of paying customers to make the customers feel like they were getting four RBIs’ in their Grand Slams, the customers would have made their parents proud. And they got four bags, all right, sagging upon their bods.

People have been conditioned to eat what’s in front of them, but hey! You’re Pavlovian pooches. Stop drooling when you hear the dinner bell, and push it away. You can still have your after-dinner Guinness. The waitress won’t think less of you than she does already, you hard-to-please pinhead at table 42.

How about you only cook half the box of Taquitos, muchacho, or put half of them into the refrigerator for tomorrow. You’ll still get all that good yummy Xanthan, Guar, and Carob Bean Gums and annatto colorant, but because you spread it over two servings, you’ll get a better chance to savor them.

I understand thinking about what you’re eating doesn’t burn as many calories as just indiscriminately shoveling crap into your gaping maw, but sometimes it works better.

If you ever wanted to fully understand what I am saying, you need to visit this guide to Wisconsin slang.

This page also affirms the existence of cannibal sandwiches, a staple of my diet when growing up.

Honey, I see you’ve linked to a CNN Story about how hometown cable television maven Charter Communications has introduced a sooper cable box that plays DVDs and MP3s. Soon, cable boxes will also play video games, vacuum our entertainment rooms, and from then it goes down hill into drinking all our Guinness Draught and tying up the phone line all night.

You lament that we gave up cable before this became available. Honey, we were existing customers.
They wouldn’t have given us this box without charging us extra anyway.

I was listening to Weber and Dolan this morning and they were going on about the business practices of cable companies. Bob Dolan went off on that cable companies have packages that are less expensive than their basic packages and that the customer has to specifically request that package; sales people will never bring it up on their own. Cable companies, and many of their counterparts in high tech services, want to squeeze you for as much as you can when you sign up, and if you’re an existing customer, you get nothing until you complain or cancel.

Anecdotally, it’s why AOL customers get cheap rates only when they try to cancel. Or why all of our equipment said AT&T for years after Charter took over AT&T’s territory here in Casinoport, Missouri, and why the menus were all in middle English and the transmission was in pre-Arabic numerals (1 and who cares, which lead to snow in our reception).

Of course, were we to come crawling back (I mean, try to get the best deal as consumers), they’d throw us all sorts of bones. Want a cheaper rate for 6 months? Want a new box? Maybe some clear reception worthy of the nomer “digital”?

Part of our rebellion in ending the cable tyranny was our response to this sort of business plan which takes advantage of loyal customers and just milks them like old Holsteins already in the barn. Sure, we rebelled against the fact that suddenly our cable bill was double our electricity bill for much less use, but we also rebelled against the Business Plan wherein the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Customers who pay their bills for years without fail should get the latest and greatest automatically to reward their loyalties, but that’s not the contemporary way, and we, in our own small way, tried to assure that this erroneous contemporary way of doing business is overthrown.

Did you think we only gave up our cable content, and hence our television, to save money? Where’s your crusading spirit?

No, not me. This piece takes X-Treme marketing to task for its ALL CAPS HYPE THAT STAID PRODUCTS ARE NOW EXTREME!!!!!

Obviously, the author of this piece is too old to get it. Get out of the way, fogey, and just give Gen AA (the 1-3 year olds) your credit card.

(As seen on The Weigh In.)

Don’t act like a piñata unless you want to take some whacks.

As some of you know, my beautiful wife has a bike now, a biking team of which she is a part, and an urge to ride 150 miles in two days to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

I urge you to visit her personal MS 150 page and sponsor her for a couple of dollars.

The more you all sponsor her, the less we have to dip into beer money to meet her goal.

Thank you, that is all.

New technology offers bountiful rewards as Arkon TL 129 His ‘n Her Motion Activated Toilet Night Light will automatically glow red if the toilet seat is up or green if the toilet seat is down, preventing those middle-of-the-night accidents that have caused many marriages to fail or combust in a blaze of murder/suicide glory. However, before this product became available, our marriage was guaranteed safe from this hazard by obsessive compulsive behavior.

You see, we always put the toilet lid down in our bathroom to prevent a flush from spraying germs in festive patterns across the fixtures and paraphernalia in the bathroom and to establish a certain procedure for toilet usage. You always lift the lid and/or toilet seat and then replace it/them when you’re finished. By resetting the Toilet User Interface to a common starting point, we assure that it’s in a known state each time we want to use it.

Our marriage is safe, and we’re not out $30 plus shipping and handling.

Perhaps I should patent the business process of obsessive compulsive behaviors and then make a mint from people who cannot help doing them! Sounds like a better retirement strategy than how my 401k plans have done the last few quarters.

I know we had thought that in the movie of our lives, Lolita Davidovich would be perfect to play Heather, but after some persuasive arguments inadvertently provided by Kim du Toit, I heartily agree we should go with Angie Everhart.

By the way, Everhart, pistols or no pistols, rates A Good Deal Of That And Some Cheese Popcorn.

I, of course, could only be portrayed by Paul Bettany.

Who would be you?

Business 2.0 (who has helpfully decided sometime today to put much of its content behind a subscription, thanks, guys) has a brief (briefer now with everything but the lead hidden away, thanks, guys) piece on trick interview questions.

The article, and the lead (which you can yet see) describes them as “sadistic” and “puzzling” attempts to see how the interviewee fares with “sadistic” and “tricky” and potentially “unanswerable” questions, because obviously that’s the nature of the corporate environment.

As a service to my readers, I have put together this handy list of answers you can use in case the sadistic HR nutbar whips this out (the technical interview guys would never entertain such a fad, right?):

Question: Why are manhole covers round?

Because the manholes are round.

Question: Why are Coke cans tapered?

Before you answer this, challenge the interviewer to prove they are, in fact, tapered.

Bonus alternate answer: To use the mystical powers of the pyramid to preserve the soda’s tooth-dissolving power.

Question: How would you weigh the world’s fattest man without using a scale?

You cannot. The definition of weigh implies putting on a scale to determine the impact of gravity on an object.

Bonus alternate answer: “I wouldn’t.”

Question: How many tennis balls are in the air in New Zealand right now?

New Zealand is 15.5 hours ahead of the United States. Odds are, none right now unless they’ve started middle-of-the-night tennis leagues.

Bonus alternate answer: 1,472 American tennis balls (2,447.62 New Zealand tennis balls). Answer right away, and let the interviewer prove differently.

These answers will prove to your interviewer that you’re decisive when it comes to selecting a plausible lie, which is only reinforcing the impression he or she has gotten from your resume and the interview this far.

As one of the finishing touches of preparing my home office, I am replacing the little scrips of paper and index cards with inspirational quotes upon them to their rightful positions around my desk. For lack of a better topic this afternoon, I shall publish the quotes here, so you can be inspired, too, perhaps even to “ride a century,” which contrary to what it sounds, is not sitting in the passenger seat of a Buick on a beer run.

“Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare current.” (Those who cross an ocean change their sky, but not their soul.)
Horace

“It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out where the strong man stumbled, or where a doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, and who comes up short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. The man who at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold timid souls who never knew victory or defeat.”
Teddy Roosevelt (thanks to dropbears.com for the cut-and-paste opportunity

“Fortune knows
We scorn her most when most she offers blows
William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra Act III, Scene XI

Power is only Pain–
Stranded, thro’ Discipline
Emily Dickinson, “252“

“love to wyde y-blowe
Yelt bittre fruyt, though swete seed be sowe.” (Love too widely blown yields bitter fruit, though sweet seed was sown)
Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (384-385)

“An error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith.”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Unlucky the hero born
In this province of the stuck record”
Syliva Plath, “The Times Are Tidy”

My goodness, I feel inspired and motivated to get up out of this chair and go get another beer!

Business 2.0 lists some interesting industrialist and capitalist tours available.

The piece lists some cool factories that offer public tours, but don’t expect free samples like you get in brewery tours from companies like Boeing.