Tuesday, January 25, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Career in

Radio

So you want a career in radio… well, I think you should know a few things about it first. Oh, you’ve got experience on the school’s lunchtime “radio” show that broadcasts on the p.a. system, do you? Maybe you don’t need me to… oh, you think so? Good—then listen up.

You’ll go to one of those colleges that prepare you for “an exciting career in broadcasting”—funny how that ad hasn’t changed in so many decades, yet nobody’s bothered to shoot or sue enough to stop it. You’ll learn how to run the sound equipment and record commercials and all the stuff that will keep you in a stuffy little room that smells like the last guy’s b.o. and onion-filled sandwiches. When you “graduate”—not that there’s any cap and gown ceremony from this institution, you’ll take your “certificate of completion” and the list of radio stations they gave you from some internet site, and you’ll cold call your way to depression and low self-esteem.

After a long time living in your parents' basement delivering sales fliers and phone books, some hick town station hires you to work in their run-down 1000 watt station broadcasting live from the cattle fair and the tractor shows, and you’ll pretend that you’re not embarassed when you cash your tiny paycheques at the only bank in town. After six-months of rejection letters you’ll begin to fictionalize your resume, paying an acquiantance to pose as all manner of former employers should someone actually call to check your references.

Eventually, after two years of learning more about alfafa then you ever cared to, you manage to score a job in a larger community, where you get to cover the local special events, like beer league baseball tournaments and the annual shriner’s fair. As you become better known, you continue to hone your skills. You learn that smoking a pack a day and drinking whisky late at night help give you the deep resonant tones that eventually command you the coveted morning slot on a station that still only pays you what the night manager at Mcdonalds earns.

After 10 years of moving from one market to another slightly larger market, you finally catch a break. You get afternoon drive-time in a metropolitan market, where they disregard your proud Polish heritage and christen you “Ace Daniels” or “Rocking Rick Shepherd” or some other generic handle that all the other afternoon personalities go by in all their other major market stations. Everything is dictated to you—your jokes, your personality, even the clothes you wear when “on location”.

Of course, moving from town to town while earning poverty-level wages has helped keep you poor and single. With the new job, you aren’t getting rich, but at least you can afford to ditch the bike and get your old MG back on the road. As for relationships—well, the girls who are impressed by your radio “fame” are all a half-dozen years too young to join you in the bar that is your second home. Still, your voice can charm the occasional bitter, drunken divorcee into thinking she’s getting close to some sort of pseudo-celebrity, and who knows, maybe Suzie the traffic girl will dump her drug-dealing boyfriend if the cops can finally make this one stick... You can always hope.

Previous Cynical Career Counsellor Advice Here

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

R.I.P.

car
They go by the book value of cars when they write them off. Sadly, that won't do justice in this case--this pic was taken back in June, and there's no way I'd have sold it for less than 2200 or so--yet I'll be offered probably less than half that. Grrr.... I just put new speakers in it two weeks ago, and the stereo is about six months old.

And don't laugh, but I think, as much as I have griped about driving an old car at times, there's the sentimental value. I've had this car longer than I've known my wife or worked for my current school district. I bought it in Vancouver when I still lived up in Prince Rupert.

At least the rental I get to drive for a few days is nice, though.

J.

Monday, January 17, 2005

I thought 2004 was over...

That biotch of a year, I was glad to see it done. What's going on here--looks like my little adventure this morning is going to cost me my car. Despite my complaints, it's served me well for the past 16 years--yes, I bought it before I even met my wife, moved to this town, etc.

Sadly, its loyal service, efficient performance and overall reliability aren't figured into the formula, so I'll get bugger all for it. The details, 'cause I know a couple of my regulars will have heard and want to know:

Just driving to work this morning, stopped because the cars in front of me were stopped, and a large van pushed me along until I was accordian-ized between it and an SUV. Seems the driver behind me was hitting the gas and the brake at the same time, and so the harder he pushed down to stop, the more his vehicle pushed my little car forward. Not fun. Busted my driver's seat in the impact, so i guess that's partly why my neck hurts. I feel like such a stereotypical "accident victim" crying whiplash.... but it's damned annoying and hurts, so I guess maybe there's something to it.

Can't afford to be out of action right now either. grrrr...

At least the guy who hit me was a class act about the whole thing, which helps.

J.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Spy

Oh, hey kid, I didn't know you were there. Yeah, I guess you're pretty stealthy. A spy, eh? Well, I think you'd better forget about all the Bond movies, because your career path is going to be a little different...

First of all, because you indicate that you want to work for them, you'll immediately come under suspicion. You've probably figured out you have to work for some sort of other security force or agency first, maybe military police or mall security, I'm not sure, but when they finally finish vetting you--at first they won't believe that you haven't had any real girlfriends or boyfriends by age 23 that they can investigate--it will be clear that you're simply a pathetic loner, and therefore a prime candidate to work with them.

They'll send you to be trained in things more mundane than jumping out of helicoptors or dodging ninja throwing stars--looking at sales records of fertilizer companies to catch potential bomb makers or figuring out which motorcade route will lessen the chance of eggs being tossed at a visiting despot's vehicle will be the puzzles that challenge your sedentary ass.

No "Q" will design deadly pens for you, nor will any Pussy Galore challenge your libidinal limits--in fact, you will eventually yearn for some eastern block siren to try charming you out of the building parking code--but alas, your chances of romance in this job are slim--the few naive girls you could charm with your title as "spy" can never be told because of the limits described in the 30-page security agreement you swore to uphold.

Eventually you settle into a comfortable routine with the I.T. girl--you don't comment on her overbite, and she doesn't tell your superiors about the web sites you visit after hours--and at the end of a torturously boring day, the two of you enjoy role playing with others from the office the imagined exploits of real spies.

After 15 undistinguished years of service, you get a commendation when your followup of a routine email alert helps avert a potentially embarassing exposure of photos revealing the youthful indiscretions of a certain high-level political figure--of course you never know how the person with the photos is actually dealt with, but suffice to say he never gets the five thousand you promise him in your undercover role as the online representative of a tabloid newsmagazine. Your reward for this small coup is to be given a minor bump in pay, and a chance to finally get out of the office and try some field work, something you requested years earlier but had long since given up on.

You are finally given a firearm--not because they expect you to use it, but you need at least one gun to fit in with the right wing survivalist nuts you are sent to infiltrate out in a wilderness commune. Their zealot prophet-leader is suspected of a variety of terroristic intentions, and your task is to win his trust.

Unfortunately, his words cut to the very depths of your jaded soul, and his free-spirited daughter wins your heart. Soon you confess all to them, and they use you to feed your masters a wide range of misinformation. You are happier and more alive for those three months than anytime in your previously pathetic existence. You won't quite know when the government realizes you've been trying to mislead them, but their discovery will move forward the date when they raid the compound, and you will have had no warning that anything is coming.

You will either die in a hail of bullets or trapped in a burning barn. At least that part will be exciting.


Previous Cynical Career Counsellor Advice Here

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

The Kid Who Sits Behind You Explains

Oliver Twist

So there's this kid, Oliver, and his mom is unwed and she dies and he goes to an orphanage and asks for more gruel and gets sold and coulda been an undertaker maybe but then he got all buddies with this guy who was like some sorta batboy for the L.A. Dodgers and... crap--this book goes on like forever on account of Dickens got paid by how long it was.

It got printed a few chapters at a time in the newspaper, so like you'd read a bit and then be all "now what?" so it was kinda like a soap opera except without the babes. Anway, Dickens was all "kids' lives suck unless they're rich" but I don't think Oliver Twist had it so bad--I mean, my dad is all on my case about cleaning up the garage and most of the stuff in there is his...oh, yeah, sorry.

So Oliver gets all hooked up with these criminals, then he gets rescued by a family then he gets kidnapped and hooked up with the criminals again, then he gets shot, then he gets back with the rich people and he keeps on being little mister goody-goody and then his enemies get offed.

But Dickens, he needs like, hundreds of pages to tell you all this. I guess I get that whole "what the dickens are you talking about" now. If they'd had x-boxes back then, or even cable, Dickens woulda been history. Don't even get me started on Nicholas Nickelby...


Sunday, January 09, 2005

The Kid Who Sits Behind You Explains

Romeo and Juliet

So there's this Romeo dude--he's a Montague--and he's all "I love Rosalind" and his friends are all "Dude, you got it bad; come and party with us" and he's all "Life sucks" but he goes to the party at the house of the Capulets. By the way, if you're like, all confused about the names, remember that Juliet and Capulet end with the "et" thing.

So he goes to this party, and they're all like, masked, but this guy Tybalt, who's kinda like some hired bodyguard/protection guy for the Capulets, he sees Romeo and he wants to take him out right there, but the Old Capulet guy says back off cause Romeo's a good guy and besides, a party sucks after someone is offed in the middle of the dance floor. So Romeo stays and sees Juliet and he's all "Rosalind who?" and then he's all makkin' on her even though she's like 13 and he's like one of those creepy sophmores that the middle school phones up our principal about and says they're gonna get the cops after them if they keep going over there at lunch.

So Romeo arranges to marry Juliet--cause on account of in Shakespeare's time by 25 a chick had already lost her teeth and gotten all haglike from raising 8 kids and then she probably dies giving birth to number 9, so it was like "party when you're 13 cause life will suck when you're 20" and this Friar guy who's like some church dude is going to help them but then Romeo runs into Tybalt and he's all "step up" and Romeo's all whipped and then Mercutio says "Damn, Romeo if you're going to wuss out I'll step up" and then Romeo tries to go all hockey linesman and stop it but then when Romeo's in the way holding Mercutio back Tybalt kills Mercutio, but it's like one of those long cartoon deaths where the guy talks for like half an hour and twitches and stuff and then says "a plague on both your houses" which I think means he wanted a bunch of grasshopper/locust things to come and eat them. Now that woulda been a cool way to end it--like these bitchin' killer grasshoppers come in and start chomping on everyone and Romeo has to steal a horse and go rescue Juliet...

Well, anyway, it hits the fan pretty bad on account of how the Prince said there was a truce between the Montagues and the Capulets and now Romeo went and killed Tybalt after Tybalt killed Mercutio, so the Prince says that Romeo has to get out of town. Meanwhile, Juliet's family decides she should marry this Paris dude before she becomes some old maid at 14, and it's gonna happen right away. So this Friar dude makes a plan with some fakey poison that makes Juliet all zombie-like and then sends some dude to tell Romeo it's all a trick, but this plague thing happens--but not with the killer grasshoppers--and so the messenger dude can't go, so Romeo hears she's dead and he's all upset and gets poison and heads back to go see her tomb.

So this Paris dude is already at the tomb when he gets there, and he's all "she's my dead chick" and Romeo's all "no, she's my dead chick" and then Romeo kills him and then he offs himself and then Juliet wakes up and she's all "damn--this sucks" and she offs herself and then the grownups all say "wow, we all suck and now they're dead" and so they all make up and that's pretty much it. Oh, and there was this stalker balcony scene when Romeo was all trying to peeping tom it outside Juliet's house, but it's not important.


More Literary Summaries here...

Sunday, January 02, 2005

The Kid Who Sits Behind You Explains

The Great Gatsby

So there's this dude, Nick, and he's all "I live in a crappy house between the rich people" and there's these two eggs, and he lives on the one that's kind of a dump--so that's where the whole "bad egg" thing probably came from, and he's got this ditzy cousin named Daisy and she's all "I'm bored", and he likes this chick named Jordan, and she's all "I'm bored" and all they ever do is party and buy stuff. (Kinda like Paris Hilton, I think.) Nick sees Jordan and parties with her at his rich neighbor--the "Great" Gatsby (but the "great" part is kind of all sarcastic, like my teacher when she reads my essays sometimes) and he goes to visit his cousin in her fancy house on the good egg.

Anyway, his cousin's husband, Tom is all "Shut up" to his girlfriend on the side and he breaks her nose, and later she gets run over and so things pretty much sucked for her, and then she died. But Gatsby was all "I love Daisy" and Daisy was all "Whatever" and then they partied some more and then Myrtle's husband (the broken nose roadkill chick) shot Gatsby at the end and then killed himself, and no one came to the funeral, and Nick was all "You people all suck" and went back to the midwest, but little did he know that the depression was coming and being on a farm would soon be a bad career move.

But there were lots of cool cars.