Awkward Hairdresser Conversations

I used to be of the "cheapest is best" style of hair person. I would go to whatever CostClips I could find every four months or so and have them cut the shit out of my hair.

That changed with wife.

"You're an adult now, you should have an adult haircut."

Fair point, I figure. I have a weird shaped head with a bald spot on one temple and a knob of a skull in back, so it was always a crapshoot weather the latest haircut would accommodate these things or just make me look bad for a month while my hair grew out. Like I said, I didn't care for more than 30 years about this. If I could get my hair cut for 10 bucks or less, I didn't care if it looked like it was done by machete.

Now I go to Aveda every three months to wife's hairdresser. They wash my hair as well, which feel really nice on an early Friday morning before work. I still feel like shit for having to spend 40 bucks plus tip on a haircut, but I will admit it looks good every time rather than about half the time. I agree that part of working in the professional world is having a decent haircut. Although the engineers i work with haven't all caught on to this.

I do not have the gift of gab. At gatherings, I sit and listen, sometimes I have a fun anecdote to add, but I dont' know how to barge my way into a conversation and the moment passes onto new topics I know nothing about. With hairdressers, my life has been silent. After the "what do you do" conversation and the "where are you from" bundle of fun, the conversation dies.

Sometimes I just listen to other people talk - about their kids, their lake home renovations, and other things that just make me bored.

Yesterday though, I had the longest conversation ever with the stylist. But we still spent the last 30 minutes in silence.

Here's how it went:

Her: Any plans for the weekend?

Me: Well, we're going to the new Star Trek movie tonight, but that's about it.

Her: I have never seen any of the Star Trek or Star Wars movies or shows.

Me: Wow, I bet you get yelled at all the time when you tell people that.

Her: Yup. People get really angry about it.

Me: People get angry at wife and I when they find out we've never been to the MN state fair.

Her: Are you kidding? You haven't been?

Me: Nope.

Her: That's crazy. You need to go. I go a few times a year.

Me: Well, we have only lived here for one of them, and it was super hot last year.

Her: Doesn't matter. If you are in a five state area, you are obligated.

Me: Well, maybe we'll go. We are going to a lot of craft fairs this summer. I hate craft fairs, but I want to write about them.

Her: I hate craft fairs too. Tree stumps, felt mittens, wind chimes, ugh.

Me: I know.

We shared our mutual loathing of crafts for another couple minutes. And then all was silence.

I thought it was great that she got mad at me for something trivial immediately after implying how weird it was for others to get mad at her for something trivial. Maybe that's why I don't do small talk - I like the clashes sometimes too much.

I ain't got time to re-run, death's a-comin'

Yesterday I took my VHS collection to a donation center along with my VHS player. I know that even 2 years ago, pawn shops stopped paying for tapes. Even DVDs were only a buck a piece. I took that price then because I needed to get food that month and sold 50 DVDs for 50 bucks. I’d probably spent about $750 amassing that collection. There was regret at the time, but not a lot. I had gone through my collection, and they were DVDs that I wasn’t planning to watch again.

Yesterday, though, I got rid of my VHS collection, with tapes that I’ve had for 20 years, without batting an eye. This included the last copies of the original Star Wars movies before Lucas THXed the shit out of em. The Godfather movies, and a whole bunch more. Wife told me to make sure to write down the ones we should get DVDs of. My response, what’s the point, we’ll have to move to BluRay eventually and DVDs will be useless.

But beyond that is a huge difference in life.

As I’m approaching 35, I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on the main differences between my 20s and my 30s.

Back in my 20s, I thought nothing of watching Reservoir Dogs 30 times. Likewise for Star Wars, Being John Malkovich, Three Kings, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and the list goes on. I spent a lot of time with the movies I loved. I would fall asleep to movies as a regular part of my sleeping habits.

Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s just the proliferation of Internet services like Netflix and Hulu. I’ve had cable for about 1 year of my adult life, so videos were a pretty big staple of entertainment until technology caught up. But I think it’s more than that. I loved watching movies again and again. I read books a few times even though I wasn’t teaching them.

These days, I can’t stomach the thought of watching something again unless I’m also watching with Wife who has not seen it (like Doctor Who). There is simply too much good, awesome stuff out there now to be spending time re-running things. And the phrase “holds up to second viewings” is just insane to me. Why does that matter when there is so much more to read, view, see? I did break this twice. I watched Battlestar Galactica twice. It was not as good second time around even though I consider it one of the best Iraq commentaries via sci-fi ever devised. I also watched the last season of Lost again – It got better once I knew why I should care about the secondary lives of the characters.

Is this an age thing or is it that so much more is available than there is time to watch it. It seems that there wasn’t much TV worth watching in my 20s except for 24 (first five seasons anyway). Now I’m trying to keep up with a ton of shows that are all really really good.

The other big thing that changed between my 20s and 30s? Naps. Oh my God, I have fallen deep in love with good naps. 

Sallie Mae Can Suck My Balls Clean

Life lately:

Enjoying the hell out of working with wife. She is contracting with my company, and making such a good impression that the president the other day was like "Get ____ to help you with that project" to one of the sales head dudes. We eat lunch together every day. We're kindof sickeningly in love :)

Working on weekly goals, some we reach. Others not. This week, to only eat out twice, both times because of work reasons.

Met with a lawyer and found out we are in too much debt for chapter 13, and make too much money for chapter 7. (last year, I would have qualified for a chapter 7, but couldn't find the $1600 that it would have taken to file it since I had no job, so go figure). We literally can't declare bankruptcy even though we have multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans between us and will NEVER be able to work it all off. Our loan debts take all my paychecks per month leaving not quite enough for rent. So we rely on wife to make money for us to live on. There's something rather freeing about the fact we cannot discharge student loans (because Sallie Mae in 2005 lobbied congress to pass a law making that impossible), yet they are so large due to predatory lending that we cannot possibly keep up the payments. Something freeing about looking at indentured servitude for the rest of our natural lives. In fact, it's weird because even indentured servants got off after 7 years. Fannie Mae has us for life without parole, and it's all perfectly legal for them to do so.

It's easy to denigrate us for taking on so much debt. But we aren't alone. Student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion this year. There's no question it's the next bubble, higher ed. As more and more of us, fed the lie that higher education is the key to a better life, take on debt, then find no jobs for us on the other side, we are not going to be able to pay back the promise/lie you fed us, America. But hey, don't take my word for it. Other bloggers have said it far better than me.

We keep on truckin on. Sallie Mae suicide is certainly something we discuss on an intellectual level, since being in this position sucks so much balls, and no one gives a shit because you took out the loans willingly to chase the dream that we are fed about education being worth the cost. But in the end, I keep saying, we don't have a house, we don't have cars worth more than 300 bucks. we really have nothing to our names, so what the hell would they take? They can garnish wages, sure, but would any sane judge garnish so much that I can't afford rent let alone food or gas to get to work to pay the wages they garnish? It's hard to say, since this insane system has been upheld by judges so far.

Maybe once enough people are out of work and in life-debt to Sallie Mae - and given the exponential costs of higher ed, that won't take long - things might start to change. Until then, will keep going to work, keep paying the interest only payments that are more than i made in a month at my first professional job 10 years ago.

Sigh.

Cell Phones will KILL us all

I have this theory. Not supported by facts. Just a gut feeling

Cell phones will kill us all.

Dead.

It’s not as if they haven’t warned us about them for years. Notice how a cell phone has helped to make this woman completely oblivious to violent horrors. This one starts so sexy you worry about your mother walking in, but trust me, stick around and you'll see what I mean.

Not only are they distracting us. They will start to kill us.

They might rain death from the sky:

Be used as weapons to kill each other while Britney Spears sings in the background.

Or, hell, they might just start shooting though the atmosphere and kill left and right in what is not even the most ridiculously violent cell phone commercial I’ve seen. Considering the events of the last few weeks, I'm betting people at Motorola wish they'd never done this one. In fact, I have trouble believing it's a real ad or someone's spoof. It's got to be a spoof, right? Right? I'm too lazy to find out.

This observation was prompted by seeing an ad a few weeks ago where the guy’s heart was replaced by a cell phone or something. It's called Droid DNA, and if this shit doesn't scare you, I don't know what will




Now, there's a fucking reason that this shit did not fly in the Matrix universe. Yet here it is presented as some sort of "bonus" to your cell phone prowess. What the shit sort of universe do we live in now where we are meant to identify with the smug guys who share shit between their phones like video of santa falling off a stair banister and really messing his internal organs so bad his mother wouldn't recognize them (sidenote: Little known fact, we are all just little organ farms for our parents, so they are very familiar with them)





 I’ve always wondered what the hell is up with uber violent ads for cell phones, or creepy ads where computer arms interact with the phones. I don’t know what the hell these ads are trying to say that’s positive. They seem more like a warning.

I avoided cell phones until I had to get one for a job. Then I’ve kept it low tech. I have a dumb phone. I don’t use it to go online. I use it to call and text. Sometimes I take really crappy pics with it, but beyond that, nothing. I enjoy having a cell phone, but don’t care about the high tech ones.

I was at lunch with coworkers and one of the more tech saavy guys saw me pull out my phone to check the time, and made a comment about being old school. Yes. And when your phones start to kill you or the rest of humanity, I will be here, hiding. 

The Target Clerk Dipshit Conundrum

I don’t know what it is with me and clerks. Maybe it’s just that I have more contact with them in usual life. I have another short anecdote about a clerk. It may not be as embarrassing as the “I love you” incident, or as fascinating as the “trapped in the car wash” scene, but its up in my top five cause it happened a week ago and I still can’t shake it.

So wife got this lovely shirt for me for my birthday. The T-shirt is run of the mill screen print with this design on the front:

And that’s it. I love it and wear it on weekends. What’s really nice is I get compliments on it from fellow fans of the Doctor. That’s right, random strangers stop me and tell me, Nice shirt! One of my coworkers squealed in delight when I wore it on casual Friday, the other two had no idea what the big deal was or really heard of the show.

That’s all preamble to the following conversation had at Target last week. I was wearing the shirt. I was with the Wife, and we were checking out with a small hand cart full of items. The line below is when I slip between what was actually said, and what happened subsequently in my head. Enjoy.

Clerk: What’s with the shirt?

Me: Hmm?

Clerk: What’s the deal with the shirt?

Me: Oh, it’s just a show.

Clerk: I get that, the Daleks and all, but what’s the deal with it?

Me: Um, it’s just the Daleks crossing Abbey Road.

Clerk: Yeah, so, is there a point to it?

Me: Um, well, I think it’s just mashing two well known British icons together into one image.

Clerk: Huh. Whatever. I don’t see redfoot. Where’s redfoot?

Me: Um, I don’t know.

Me: Listen here you dickwad. I love that we live in this new internet age where you don’t have to feel bad for having a hobby and apparently feel that no one can love something as much as you. You remind me of  a hipster version of simpsons comic book guy, and you need to take down the superiority a notch. Really, it’s a show, I like it, I wear a shirt to display that appreciation, which is the only shirt I own with anything, not even a logo, on it (besides the subsequently bought tshirt with a Sherlock design). Just because someone doesn’t go through the trouble of learning every fuckiing nuance of a decades old tv show doesn’t make them less than you in whatever fucked up version of reality you live in. There’s no mystery to the shirt, it’s a mashup of two images. That’s it. No mystery to solve. No clever little Easter eggs for only the “true” fan to appreciate. What you see is what you get. Now go choke on a fucking adipose  you twat.

Me: have a good night.

Clerk: (shrugs and turns to next customer)

Slight Reboot for Less Bitchin'

You may have noticed a few changes in the ol blog lately. Guess word of my blog had spread a bit to people I was not comfortable having know of it, namely wife’s employer. So after some panicked deleting and whatnot, I calmed the hell down and managed to save most of it. However, I lost most of the summer’s updates, but as they were mostly about how wife’s job took a turn for crazyville, an office she shares with mice, lice and a couple bats (really, REALLY), it was hard not to let my anger about the whole situation bleed into every piece of the writing here.

The place is horrible, and worth all the anger, particularly the many ways they circumvent things like employment laws and health codes. She had a day-long meeting of the kind they do to pretend that they listen and respond to concerns, but really don’t. However, after 30 minutes of people complaining that they don’t have access to filtered water or a fridge, wife stands up and says “Filtered water would be nice, but I would really appreciate not having to work with five mice and two bats. My students have now named them. If one of them falls out of the ceiling on me, I'm gone. No notice, I'm gone. I guess it's hard to for me to care about filtered water because of that.”  That kind of shut up all the other complaints for seeming frivolous by comparison.

But, I didn’t start this whole endeavor to become a repository for gripes about my wife’s work, and I think she feels bad when it takes over my blog. So, in a way, this is a good little partial reboot.

Time to take a breath and note the things that are going right:

I’m married to the woman of my dreams.

Phone calls from creditors has gone from 12 a day to 0.

Last week, we got to do a day trip to Red Wing. This weekend, we will be going to Prairie Home Companion for the first time. Next weekend, we will go to Duluth and the North Shore for a mini vacation.

I have a great job, and it’s only a matter of time before wife does too.

I get to be creative and write for a living.

I’ve got an amazing group of coworkers.

I get to carpool with wife nearly every day.

We have enough money to cover food, gas, bills, and rent.

I can do cute jigs for the wife, and make up new lyrics for songs on the fly as I serenade her.

Octoberfest season

Things like this Cowboy Pumpkin Duck in a Hula Skirt exist.

Sports deconstructed

I’ve never been big on sports, but my wife is. She looks forward to each year’s Twins game with the Red Sox like a good kid looks forward to Christmas (a lazy simile, but I'm tired). She wears a Red Sox jersey, hoodie, hat and scarf. She forces me into a Red Sox sweater and I wander around the game with anxiety that some drunk fan will start accosting me about a team I support vicariously through my wife. But I enjoy the games in my own way.

It was in support that I accompanied the wife to the Sports Show at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. We walked around the icons, past sports legends and gods. In some distant room, we could hear a crowd chanting, to the point that it was getting obnoxious.

We neared Paul Pfeiffer’s installation, “The Saints.” The noise was coming from speakers hanging high around the perimeter of a large, nearly empty room. “The Saints Go Marching In” was chanted by what I assumed was a soccer crowd. The sound was overwhelming. Near the middle of the back wall, there was a tiny screen, the size of a couple postage stamps. On it, a lone soccer player ran around a field. The other players and the ball had been erased from the video. So it was just one guy, and every few seconds, the screen would change to another part of the field, but the guy stayed in the same position on the screen as he ran, as if the field behind him were a giant green screen.

(note: first section of the video of the stadium was not at this exhibit)

Through some sliding doors was a dark room with two videos playing silent footage. One in color of a modern soccer crowd of Filipinos. The other was footage from the 1966 soccer final between England and West Germany. More than 400 million people watched this game.

This game, England’s equivalent of our Miracle on Ice game with the Soviet Union, has been divided into its constituent parts. A deconstructed match that mixes in audio from an entirely new crowd of fans from another country altogether.

The effect was disconcerting for my wife, who enjoys immersion into the sports she loves. She gets lost in a game in a way I never can. And because of that, I found this piece fascinating. Sports are so often deconstructed down to numbers – at bats, runs, games won, bases stolen, time left in the game. Here the visual and aural experience has been separated out so that all that’s left is a lone guy running aimlessly around a field. When I’m at a game, I, too, start deconstructing things. I separate out the morning DJ quality of the announcer’s voice, the next food purchase, the sounds of the people around me, the guy standing out in right field who comes into play only a few times a game. I wonder how he doesn’t get bored out there.

It’s this installation that sticks with me days later as we decide which Twins game to go to later in the season. 

Things sticking in my craw lately

If you are going to have me fill out a job form that takes 2 hours to give you the exact same information that's on my resume and cover letter, please don't be a dick and send a form rejection letter.

I should not get antibiotics right away for an ear infection and then watch as my wife is told she has to wait a week to get antibiotics for an illness she got from me.  Watching her suffer for a week while I got better was horrible. Then she finally got a prescription on the THIRD visit to the doctor.

I got a call from a job that I did a phone interview for two weeks ago. They were going ahead with other people, but it was certainly nice to have a human being call to let me know. I appreciated that.

One of my wife's friends is helping me with my query letter, which is absolutely wonderful since he used to be in the agent business. He's also forwarded my name to contacts that might need some freelance work done from time to time. He is now my hero. 

While I will not use my name in this blog, since people who hire in this day and age do searches, and this is not a professional outlet that I want to advertise myself, I did get a thing published today by Walker Blogs. They were looking for writers of 300-word quickies called viewfinders. Wife encouraged me to send one in about a piece we saw last month at the Walker. The few readers of this blog will find out who I am, but I'm OK with that as long as you don't use my name in this space. The nice thing is that it will lead to some freelancing work so I can write about art events in the cities that wife drags me to.   

So between the contract editing work and this Walker thing, I might actually have some money trickling in. Not enough to live on, but I like that both things are doable even after I get a full time job. Once that happens, these part time things can go entirely to paying off debts and bills that have piled up during unemployment. It's just getting that full time job that's eluding me.

Our house is in the middle of selling. So that's nice!  I stopped paying for it in November, and I won't see any money whatsoever from the sale, but I think once it's done, it will be off the plate of worries I've had resting on my shoulders.

Wife is feeling the pressure of keeping things afloat by working full time while I struggle along looking for a full time job myself. It's a daily struggle. Tears. Stomach pits. IBS. Judging by the shit that's coming out of me now, by the time I'm in a home, I will be a nursing assistant's worst nightmare. (I said this wasn't professional. You were warned.) I love my wife and wish I could pull through soon to just get us both on some kind of solid ground. Once that happens, Watch Out Twin Cities.

The incredibly demeaning, pointless, soul sucking mindfuck that is job hunting

So it's been about 6 months now of job hunting. 250 jobs applied to, 2 job fairs, 2 networking events, and about 30 phone and in person interviews. That's 1 out of every ten applications that gets an interview. When you figure that most jobs have 90-200 applicants, I think those are pretty good numbers, yet I still have not converted into a job. The frustration is aggravating, demoralizing, and highly depressing. I've been sooooo close, and usually get told that I did absolutely nothing wrong. Wife says it's a miracle that I don't just lie in bed all day under the covers.

Three weeks ago, I was in the running for a position at the MNCPA for basically the same job I've been doing for the past 5 years, even less demanding, in fact. I did something I hadn't done before, I was more myself than usual, rather than formulating answers based on advice learned from interview books and websites. I briefly hinted at this previously, but want to go into this more. At one point I mentioned how my last job writing and editing newsletters was everything I loved about journalism with nothing I hated. I usually don't use the hate word, and books would say this is a big no no. And when asked what I hated about the job, I answered with my heart rather than my head.

"Well, that's a big question with a rather complicated answer, but I think it comes down to honesty. Newspapers pretend to be objective, but, particularly in small towns, the newspaper is essentially a promotional tool for how wonderful the community is no matter what the story. I found that to be a sort of dishonesty that can eat at you over time. Newsletters, however, are up front about their purpose. Everyone involved is in on the production process. You write stories about people, and they have a chance to see it before it goes to print. I like that collaboration."

Ordinarily, I would follow advice and address such a question with this. It usually doesn't come up since I don't talk like that about former jobs to begin with.

Anyway, I came in second for the job. The interviewer was super nice and left a message for me that was hands down the best rejection I have ever received. She seemed very sad that she couldn't hire me, that they didn't have two jobs. "You did everything absolutely right," she said. If anything didn't work out with the other person, or if she heard of anything, she would let me know. It made me feel pretty good and hopeful for the future. Perhaps I had latched onto something.

Then, on Tuesday last week, the same MNCPA job was posted online. Perhaps it was a mistake? I emailed. No response. I called, no answer. I called again, and she picked up. It was a pleasant conversation. I asked about the position, indicated that I was still available and willing. She said they were starting the search from scratch, and that I would be in the mix, that the other person didn't work out for some vague reason, and they were going another direction (with the same exact job description). She didn't know how long the process would take, but I should call back to check in at some point. I wanted to throw up a bit. Was everything she said before a lie? Was I grasping on to such hopeful words after a long, brutal search for jobs, for nothing? I was on lunch at my temp job, so there were no blankets to crawl under.

Life goes on. More jobs applied to. I'm waiting to hear about one editing position after interviewing 10 days ago. I should hear in the next day or two. I have a phone interview on Wednesday for a proofreading job and an in-person interview on Thursday evening for a job at Sears that would be a desperate return to retail. Next week I have an interview to work for the state in a caretaking position.

All I have ever wanted to do was write, to work on the craft, to meet people and talk to them until I find out why they are incredible and to share their stories with others. I moved to the cities thinking 8 years of doing just that and doing it well -- and earning a master's degree -- would be enough to land any number of communications jobs only asking for 2-3 years of experience and a bachelor's degree. Turns out that it isn't.

After almost 6 months, I did manage to get a temp job last week entering data from an adobe document to a CMS system. It continues this week. Although there were two aggravating hiccups with the temp service.   On Wednesday, when the world was covered in ice, I woke in time to give myself an hour and a half to drive ten miles to work. What I didn't account for was the extra 30 miles that would be added to the trip when my wife needed me to drive her to work as well. I notified the temp service of this. When I got a call from them, she asked "did you leave early?" Like I was some lazy roustabout barely able to figure out this whole "work" thing. I let it slide. Much like my car on the way to work. Then, I found out about a potential full-time job interview that wanted to see me. I emailed the temp service to ask: "I have received a call about an interview on Friday. I have not asked about how you work around interviews for permanent positions. I have not returned the call for the interview yet, so don't know how flexible they are on time, but she requested a 2 p.m. interview. Let me know." The answer was illuminating.

"As for an interview on Friday – this is only a week to 2 week assignment so it does not look good to have an interview during this period.  I would think the company would accommodate you if they know you are working on contract and will schedule after hours."

First, thanks for assuming that anyone would stay late at their job to interview a potential employee. Second, thanks for putting my temporary position above a potential permanent placement.

Anyway, that's a lot of ranting for one blog post. It may not be exciting to read, but this one was more therapy than anything.

Take your job advice and shove it

It’s been one of those weeks where I’ve been disoriented a lot because I can’t hear out of one ear. I get ear infections from time to time, and I’ve had so many at this point, the only way I know is I can’t hear. So now I’ve been on an antibiotic for 12 days and it still isn’t better but I have to wait until Tuesday to go in for something else. Antibiotics make pooping horrible, and it used to be a favorite past time of mine.

The main focal point of this entry, though, is to address those of you out there who like to cast aspersions on people who by hook and crook can’t land a job.

Back when wife was unemployed for 9 months, she started volunteering her time as she searched for jobs. She worked the phone bank for the Fargo Flood people and worked for the Red Cross. They got her out of the house, talking to people besides me, and put something fresh on the resume. She was applying for any and everything in Fargo Moorhead. She applied to work reception at an acupuncture place, teaching at any of the public, private and for profit colleges, student advising, libraries – basically anything that she had some degree of aptitude and experience to do.

While volunteering at the phone lines, she worked alongside middle-aged women who were married to well off people and didn’t need regular jobs. They would give her advice that always came off horribly. One said she should apply to teach high school, which you need a teaching license for which she doesn’t have. The person said she obviously didn’t have a job yet because she was being too picky.

Flash forward. I’ve been applying to about 20 jobs a week for several months now. I’ve become a wizard at filling out my job history, including phone numbers and addresses, from memory. I’ve had a couple dozen interviews, which means I’m in the top 5-10 out of 100 candidates usually. Last week I came in second for a job that would have been perfect. It was gut wrenching, but the interviewer said I did every single thing right, that I was obviously a great candidate, and she wished she had two jobs open. It was a spirit lifting message, since often times they don’t go that far and you are left wondering what happened.

I’m applying mostly to communications positions that fit me between 80-100 percent. That alone keeps me busy, but I’ve also been applying to stop-gap jobs that I have experience in – retail, home health care, admin work. That hasn’t worked either. Side note, menial jobs are much more likely to have to take hour-long ethical quizzes than jobs higher up the chain – seems to me this is backward.

I’ve got two temp-agencies working with me, one creative, one office staffing. Still nothing. I’ve been to job fairs and networking events. I’ve had people in various organizations put in a good word for me. I’ve listed my resume on a half-dozen sites. Still nothing.

Surely there must be something wrong with me, the common thinking goes. Anyone who wants a job can get one in this country. That’s what politicians like to say, and people believe it. They believe that they got a job because of their exemplary skills. I admit I had this too. When wife got a job in the cities, I figured with my strong background, awards, and crazy work ethic, it wouldn’t take long to land a job. I haven't been jobless more than 2 months since I was 15, and even then I usually had two jobs going on at any given time for a 50-60 hour work week. Sometimes, though, life just doesn’t work out that way no matter what you try, no matter how many different types of jobs you apply for.

I’m still getting interviews on a weekly basis with a resume one guy said was the worst he’d ever seen. After so many interviews, it starts to be like acting in a play. You wait for your queue and recite your well-rehearsed answers. For the last interview, I was a little more myself than usual. Rather than follow the advice from books and blogs about how to answer questions in an interview, I opened up a little bit and said what I actually thought when it came to the “what didn’t you like about your job” question. It got me closer to a job than I have before. So sometimes, you just have to chuck all the sage advice out the window and try something else.

Crappy Superpowers

I've always been a fan of superheroes. Supernatural powers rock, no matter if you get them from a mutation or from cosmic rays, or are just born in Xanth. Side note, I've always wondered why the X-men and other mutants are  hated so, while others who get their superpowers through other means are loved.

Anyway, with all these kick ass powers going around: Flight, healing, strength, lazer vision, there have to be some really crap powers out there as well that we never hear about. Powers that wouldn't really be a big help in any situation. Yes, I spend some time during my day thinking about this shit.

Crappy superpowers:

You poop rainbow colors.

Can turn a gecko into a gerbil.

Get shocked anytime you are 3 feet from an outlet.

Can hear things backward.

Elbows bend opposite direction.

Can seal your eyes shut at will.

Hair grows 50 percent faster than normal.

Can turn gold into lead with power of your mind.

Power to not get annoyed by traffic (this might be useful).

Can teleport your foot anywhere, but you bleed out when you do.

Farts taste like candy.