Sunday, May 29, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As A

Professional Baseball Player

Crap--You want to be a professional ball player? I HATE baseball. Oh right, you're the kid that got kicked off the school team when your dad beat up that umpire in the exhibition game against the special needs school--Hmm--I guess I can come up with something...

You obviously won't want to waste your time playing ball for some nothing college in the middle of nowhere when you can wander from town to town trying out for semipro ball teams in the middle of nowhere. You've got a decent bat, and you can cover some ground in the outfield, so you'll get picked up on a ten day contract by some podunk town in the midwest somewhere. That's where you'll meet Sparky--the old has-been manager who claims he once worked as a base coach for the Oakland A's in the mid-70s. When your team has a layover in a town which actually has a library with internet access, you'll check out his story and confirm that he's full of crap. Still, he'll teach you some important lessons.

First he'll show you how to wear baggy shirts to increase your chance of getting hit by a pitch--then he'll teach you the art of spitting your chewing tobacco juice on rival teams' mascots. You'll be kind of sad to lose his folksy wisdom when you get picked up by a semi-respectable double-A club, but you'll be a little relieved, since he kept offering to come to your room and give you a rubdown after games.

Your learning will continue at this new level, and you'll be introduced to the wonder of steroids. It's only natural that a league with most of its teams in farm country has access to some of the best horse hormones anywhere. Soon you're bulking up, and you find yourself enjoying a little alfalfa each morning on your wheaties.

At 21, you're offered a contract by a major league team, and they send you to their Triple-A affiliate. It's a better class of hotel and bus; and sometimes you even fly to road games. Here they really prepare you for the big games--they warn you that the league is serious about cracking down on steroids and illegal bats, and then their trainers show you a new, undetectable hormone that can only be extracted from the pituitary gland of adolescent males. It's only on a dark layover in Topeka that you find out that the adolescent males are south american street kids who are killed to provide you with your extra hitting boost. Out of guilt, you start secretly dedicating your home runs to their memory.

You also take advantage of the next generation of corked bats, which have a special transmitter inside that broadcasts a fake image of wood to throw off X-ray machines.

At 25, you crack the big leagues, though you don't get a lot of playing time, and just when you get your big break and a regular spot as a left fielder, you are diagnosed with jaw cancer from years of tobacco chewing.

Fortunately, by this time, you are aware that the secret signs of the base coaches have nothing to do with the game, and everything to do with relaying information about secret hormone shipments between teams. You signal back your problem, and within ten days, a replacement jaw is shipped to you in an unmarked cooler--it's almost the same size as yours and after the surgery you hit 20 home runs that season that you dedicate to the memory of "Guillermo".

By the way, don't tell your dad you came here, okay?

The rest of the Cynical Career Counsellor posts can be found here.

Sunday, May 22, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As An

Advertising Copywriter

Ah, yes--you're the kid who wants to get into advertising. You wrote the poems for the bakesale posters last week--how did it go again? "They've had enough abuse, Had all that they can take, Help support the women's shelter, buy some cookies and a cake". Lovely--socially responsible and catchy.

So--it won't all be bake sales and battered wives. No, you're going to end up probably working for some two-bit "alternative" radio station which doesn't get all its commercials from a network feed. Maybe you'll write little ditties for ethicially-grown coffee for the "Lesbian Poet's Corner" or a catchy jingle about safe sex for "Percussion Only". Whatever they give you to work on, you'll be gratified to know that the 20 people listening probably appreciate it, and your below-minimum wage paycheque will pay for the stamps you use to apply for real jobs.

You see, you won't have a minimum wage because you're self-employed. If you actually owned any assets, like a car, you would be able to depreciate them for tax purposes. All you'll have is an outdated computer that you use to ghostwrite 1st-year university papers for a little extra cash.

Still, hard work may pay off, and after a few years of poverty, if you don't quit, you might get a job at a small newspaper or a commercially-successful radio or television station. There you can leave behind the socially-responsible angst accompanied by chanting goddesses, and move into more traditional jingles for used car dealers and real estate agents. The trick will be keeping them fresh. There are only so many words that rhyme with "sale", after all. You'll also become well versed in other copywriting techniques, such as the "booming echo": THIS SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! EVERY USED CAR MUST GO BEFORE MONTH END INVENTORY--AMAZING SAVINGS! SAVINGS! SAVINGS!

Your work will be fulfilling only in that it pays you enough to get by--you won't brag about your masterpieces in most social circles. One day you'll meet the girl of your dreams, and your packaged charm will come in handy. You'll sweep her off her feet with love poems and songs, but a few weeks after you announce your engagement she'll discover a digital archive of all your old commercial ditties. The confrontation won't be pretty:

"Hey Dan," (your name is Dan, right kid?) she'll say, "Those things you said in your proposal--you said the exact same thing about a self-cleaning oven at Sears two years ago. 'Warm and secure' my ass," she'll mutter and then go on a rant about how she can't trust your praises of her worth when you've called lime cola "the greatest innovation since the printing press".

That sad episode will prove to you that you've lost your soul to advertising--and even when you do find a lesser mortal who will agree to marry you, you still will have to go through life being doubted by friends, your children and your workmates. Nobody believes a schill, my friend.

Good luck with it, though. I think there's another bake sale coming up next week--this time for the homeless shelter--want a bit of help? Twinkie and stinky rhyme. Think about it.

The rest of the Cynical Career Counsellor posts can be found here.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

The Kid Who Sits Behind You and One Seat to the Left Explains Jane Eyre

You'll need to go here to see this. Alex, my hat is off to you. I don't know the protocol we're working out here, but I don't feel I can just upload it here without discussing it, but I'd like to put it on the other page--with all due authorship credit, as you choose it.

Well done.

The Kid Who Sits Behind You Explains

Sense and Sensibility
So, this Jane Austen chick wrote a bunch of books because her life all sucked and she died young but she could have romance in her imagination and stuff--kind of like that girl in the library club who's always looking at me funny and it creeps me out so I don't stay in the library when she's there. Anway, she wrote this book called Sense and Sensibility, but it doesn't seem to make much sense and all the people aren't very sensible so i guess she was being all ironical when she titled it.

Anyway, there's this family and the dad dies and the half brother says "bugger off" to his stepmom and stepsisters and they go live somewhere else and life sucks and they try to get hooked up with these guys but it's all about who's rich or not 'cause on account of if your family was poor and you were kinda hot your family could marry you off to a rich dude and everybody'd be okay but if you were fuglified and you had bucks you could get married too because it was all about the cash.

The people doubletalk all the time too--so if they're saying "what a lovely cozy cottage you have here" they really mean "nice trailer, Cletus, when's the tornado comin'?".

I tried to read to the end. I really did, but these people are sooo stupid but instead I think I'll just get that girl in the library to explain it to me. Yeah, I suck.

Oh, and by the way--I'm hitting the beach a lot now summer's pretty much here so my friend who sits beside me in class is gonna help write some of these. She's cool, if you don't mind the acid flashbacks that whack her brain out sometimes.

Friday, May 06, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future As

A Gardener

Hi--so, you're the kid who wants to be a gardener. Well, I hope you're ready for what's ahead:

You should try to apprentice with another gardener, and learn all about the chemicals that make things look natural--of course, then you'll have to learn how to pretend you don't use chemicals so the enviro-hippies think their apartment building grows organic daisies.

Once you're ready to go on your own, you'll need a truck--choose a comfortable one, even if the payments mean living in your parents' basement for a few years--after all, day after dreary day, it's likely the cab of your truck where you will be spending all your coffee and lunch breaks. Oh, you may dream of somehow becoming head gardener at the Arlington National Cemetary, or Kew Gardens, but the fact is, you're going to be the grubby guy pruning the hedge to most people. You think you're going to stomp across their carpet to go pee? Even with your boots off, it just isn't right, so you'll perfect the art of urinating in an old peanut butter jar in your vehicle.

It's at times like that you'll realize you inhabit a plane a little lower than your customers, and it will be reinforced when your wife asks you to hide your hands at your kids' parent-teacher interviews--the ground in dirt on your fingers is a little too embarassingly blue collar on occasion. You won't make enough money, either, because if you charge what your work is really worth, your customers are free to go to the next guy who's got a truck, a wheelbarrow and a rake and who's happy just to make enough to get by while his refugee status is sorted out.

The weather won't be your friend, either. If you end up in a northern clime, then your knees, followed by other joints, will be arthritic from the damp and the constant kneeling--don't think those little strap-on kneepads will help. If you work further south, you'll have regular trips to the plastic surgeon to get those bothersome melanomas excised from your forehead. With the damage your skin will take, coupled with the arthritis, people who meet you at 35 will swear you're 15 years older.

If you work in a city, perhaps doing apartments and strip malls, you'll encounter the twin biohazards of used condoms and hypodermic needles. And eventually--it's only a matter of time--a news report on a murder investigation will link your name and the words "grisly discovery", which at least will mean the forensics team will cultivate the rest of the soil around those rhododendrons for you...

The rest of the Cynical Career Counsellor posts can be found here.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Politician

Hi kid--yeah, congrats on that student council election thing. Lucky those mysterious photos of your opponent sacrificing chickens to Beelzebub surfaced just before the election, eh? Yeah, that photoshop is an amazing program...

Let me guess--the politics bug's bitten you, right? Well, making a career of it is a popularity contest on a much grander scale than you won here. I hope you've got what it takes:

First, you'll likely come to it with some ideals. You'll go to work for the candidate who shares your viewpoint on whatever topic is near and dear to your heart--your viewpoint on abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control--whatever. You'll learn the first skill of climbing the political ladder--pretending to listen. I can tell right now by the way you're nodding your head and doing the whole "eye contact" thing that you'll be good at this. You'll listen to halfwits pronounce their take on the ills of society and you'll pretend to be blown away by their insights. Your only wish, you'll assure them, is that you could somehow find a way to make the great vision they articulate somehow come to fruition. (But don't put it in those words if you're politicking south of the Mason-Dixon or anywhere more than 20 miles from a university campus.)

You'll party hard with others of your political ilk, and only under the influence of whatever fuels your parties will you admit that most of what you believe is rooted in fundamentally flawed ideology, but what the hell--it's the lesser of the evils you see all around you. Of course, bright-eyed and sincere on Monday mornings you pretend those discussions never happened.

You'll go through college honing your skills as a political organizer, and also put yourself out there as a university senate candidate, and you'll jump into the youth wing of whatever party you're most comfortable with.

After college, you go to grad school, and continue to devote your spare time to campaigns and causes. Your resumé is impressive, and it's no surprise when a candidate for your party is suddenly unable to run--perhaps another mysterious photoshop victim--and you are tapped as the replacement candidate. You have the advantage of being younger, fresher and more attractive than your opponent, but you quickly realize that as a newcomer, the political back room crowd isn't eager to shove piles of money your way. Meanwhile, your opponent's campaign is flush with cash, and is going to spend you into the ground. You have no choice--you have to quickly learn to whore yourself out to the people who matter.

This is final defeat of your conscience and integrity--you bargain away your personal beliefs in return for promises of financing and support--and realize that you're becoming one of the established hacks you always despised. It is only the sweet taste of your first victory that takes away the bitter shame.

The honeymoon won't last long though--there are political debts to pay, and as you continue up the ladder, it will get easier and easier to ignore the big issues and focus on the stupid, mundane bickering that gives you more public relations mileage. Why worry about children starving by the millions in an African draught when there are issues like banning pitbulls or protecting the flag to worry about?

Unfortunately, you'll succumb to the same delusion as most politicians--that of your own invincibility. You will almost flaunt your mistresses while playing the devoted family man, and you'll spend your weekends sampling drugs from the same dealers who you paint as the threat to all that is good about our society when spewing your political rhetoric for the cameras.

It's only a matter of time before the kid you shafted back here in high school, or someone like him, gets back at you with photos or other documentation of your hypocrisy. When the heat gets bad enough, you'll bow out, and go into seclusion for a year or so--buy a sailboat with the money fed you by drug companies or arms manufacturers and explore the South Pacific for a while. When you come back you'll quickly be hired by one of these same firms as a lobbyist, and you'll go to work corrupting others you've worked and partied with in government--it saves a lot of time already knowing their tastes in narcotics or perversions, and you'll have a better expense account than you've ever imagined...