Sunday, March 26, 2006

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as an

Investigative Reporter

Ahh--you’re one of those journalism kids that drove your teacher to the nut house… Well, let me explain your future in this biz:

First of all, you’ll either go to one of those pretentious ivy league programs where you learn about grammar and journalistic etiquette, or you’ll end up someplace less grandiose and you’ll hear guest speakers from the local “smart shopper” weekly paper explain how it’s all in the adjectives when one is writing about the opening of the new juice bar in the mall.

While at college you’ll be part of the staff of the university paper, and as such you’ll try to find your niche. You’ll share office space with the wannabe jock sports reporters, who steal catch phrases from ESPN and party with the football team after wins, the angry lesbian/feminist contingent who editorialize weekly about evils of patriarchy, the "Young Republicans" or "Young Democrats" or "Young Communists" who see the paper as their personal political soap box, and the ones like you--no real values beyond a desire to see your name on the byline of the article everyone's talking about.

There will be three of you--all devoted to exposing injustice or uncovering a scandal--whatever brings you glory. Unfortunately, when you finally do find something juicy enough to make a splash, the college paper gets cold feet, and in your frustration, the three of you start an underground publication to tell the stories the "legitimate" paper won't touch.

While you personally see the three of you as a team of crusaders, Jill and Mike, the other two, secretly will begin a romance and leave you out of the investigation of the more exciting stories. While they're uncovering the dark secrets around the origin of the med school's cadavers, you're blowing the whistle on the rampant use of MSG by the cafeteria staff. While they have to change their number and take precautions due to death threats after they show how the popular student night club is used to launder drug money, you merely get a certificate from the college environmental club for your revelation that harmful herbicides are used to kill the weeds in the faculty club's lawn.

After college you'll suggest the three of you start your own crusading newspaper, but they'll already have jobs lined up in the newsroom of a well-respected national publication. You, on the other hand, grudgingly accept a position with one of the more trashy supermarket-checkout tabloids. You meet the two of them for drinks once a month, and when they get married, the reception is a collection of "war stories" with daring journalists showing scars from mujahadeen rifles or white supremacist bombs while all you have is the dubious status of having more of your stories made fun of on radio morning shows than anyone else at your scandal sheet.

Then, a few weeks after your friends return from their honeymoon in Central America they tell you they spent it taking surreptitious photos of a secret chemical weapons facility being funded by the CIA. They fear for their lives, and give you copies of everything. When they perish in a suspicious car accident a week later, you go to their employer and publish the the whole story, suddenly earning you credibility that had evaded you while your friends were alive.

Unfortunately, you are never able to follow up on that story with anything meaningful of your own, and you are fired in six months. You will either drift into the pathetically-paid editorship of a small town weekly, where you will drink to forget your mediocrity, or worse, you'll accept a job as PR consultant for the Republican National Committee, where you'll help develop the cover stories that save the careers of the same politicians who were behind your friends' deaths.

Have fun.


Go see all 63 Cynical Career Counsellor posts at this site.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Poetry By Dythandra

when Irish eyes are bloodshot

Your cousin's coming over, dear--won't you wear that green dress?
Not likely mother--and not for Shame... Us.

It's Seamus, dear--one word
I've heard it from you and father often enough--I was sure it was two.

My mother's cousin arrives, already "into his cups"
A lovely description for a stinking, bulbous man
Who lost his wit to whisky long ago.

Can this be young...
I won't say it--he uses that name.
No priest sprinkled Dythandra on me,
And none ever will.

My how you've grown
I notice where he's looking
Why do we tolerate him again?

He comes every March 17 without fail
Misses the Ides by two days;
I'd overlook his lateness if they'd give me the knife.

Celebrating St. Patrick--
He drove out the snakes,
But left the Catholics.

No wonder they blow each other up.

Why aren't you wearing green?
He slurs, later--so far into his cups
We'll have to throw a rope to get him out.

"I am", I explain.
Then I guide his booze-blurry eyes
To the lettering of the pro-choice button on my shirt.
No pinches for me.

If you want me, I'll be upstairs.
Listening to an old Sinnead O'Connor album.


When Hitchcock meets Python



Here's the thing--They were up there for about half an hour. They're up to no good, I tell you.

Monday, March 13, 2006

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Pharmacist

Pharmacist, huh? I bet while the other kids were playing doctor you were the girl handing out the tic-tacs like they were mommy's happy pills, right? How'd I know? Most kids wait until after they struggle through a year or two of premed and take pharmacology as the easy way out--anyone who sets their goals there in the first place must have a special place in their heart for chemical fixes.

So you'll do your degree at one of the many universities that offer the program, and either intern at a hospital pharmacy, in a corner drug store, or in the drug department of some major chain. Once you're done, you'll have to choose which of those venues will become your regular workplace, provided you do well enough and the job market is good enough for you to have a choice.

If you pick the hospital, you'll have a predictable salary and benefits. If you aren't ambitious, this is fine--not much room to advance there. You'll have to deal with the scary radioactive cancer therapy drugs, and you won't have the power to fire the sketchy assistants that pretend not to speak English when you notice narcotic tallies don't add up. (Their union is stronger than you can hope to overcome.)

If you choose the drugstore option, you'll probably have to start on the late night shift, and that's a sure formula for at least a couple of holdup experiences with strung out junkies.

Eventually you'll figure it out and go to work in the upscale pharmacy in the rich suburb. You'll be surprised by a few things there--you sell an amazing volume of infant formula due to the popularity of plastic surgery rendering many mothers unable to nurse, and the sales of certain, uhm, male blood flow stimulants will peak the same week that many of the wives head off to a golf tournament in the next town.

You'll be discrete, of course, and the pharmacist owner will reward you with a generous profit-sharing plan, and make no secret that he might be willing to sell you the whole business in a few years. He's done well, too--everything from herbal tonics to the blood pressure tester helps bring in more customers, and the rich don't mind paying a little more for the discretion of their local trusted pharmacist.

You'll be careful to follow your code of ethics strictly, at first, but over time you'll blur the moral line a bit. First it may be the friend of your daughter who's too scared to go to the clinic for a morning after pill, or maybe your husband's headache that needs something more than the over the counter medication, but like all in your line of work, you'll dip into your own stock. Once you cross that line, it's only a matter of time before you start medicating your own aches and pains with powerful opiates.

You take advantage of the owner's longer and longer vacations to set up an ingenious system of fake prescription pads and use the doctors' down at the methadone clinic as the most frequent fake signatories to your bogus prescriptions.

You might never have been caught, if it weren't for your boss deciding he needed a detailed audit of his business before selling it. He confronts you gently--he knows this is a problem common to the profession--and you agree to go to rehab. When you get out, he surprisingly offers you the whole business at a reasonable price--he knows the customers love you and appreciate your lack of curiousity about their disgusting personal matters.

Your husband agrees it's a great opportunity, and the two of you scrape together everything you can to make the deal. Soon you're paying down the debt ahead of schedule; the pharmacy is as profitable as you'd hoped. The only thing that disappoints you is the lack of perks you are entitled to. Sure, you get free samples of non-prescription drugs, and lots of bright drug posters, but the conferences in the Carribean are reserved for doctors--they write the precriptions. The most the drug companies offer you is a commission for every hemmorrhoid-fighting seat cushion you sell, and the occasional product fair at the Howard Johnson's 20 miles down the interstate.

It's a pleasant, though predictable life. Then one day, a doctor you've gotten to know calls you with a last minute offer of his place at a pharmaceutical conference at a luxury resort in Thailand. You are thrilled, and when you get there you are amazed at the decadence of the whole affair. It is unbridled bribery; people happily wear the drug company's logo on all manner of clothing, while you've hidden the few polo shirts they sent you after some angry customers asked "Didn't you see the evilness of drug companies in that Constant Gardener movie?"

On the third day of the conference there's a bit of a disturbance, and when you open your door to check, a wild-eyed man forces his way into your room. Before the security team finds him and drags him away, he babbles about his frightening discovery--that the main ingredient in the latest Parkinson's drug your host makes is derived from the glands of children snatched quietly from third-world streets.

You are questioned about what he told you, and wisely pretend to know nothing. Still, once you return home, you get the feeling you are being watched. You quietly begin researching the drug in question on the internet, and this is how they will catch you. Their strategy is simple but effective--they have two supposed DEA officers come to question you about several addicts who claim you illegally provided them with narcotics a few years earlier. It was during the worst part of your own addiction battles, and you realize it could be true. Then, tragically, a customer of yours dies when apparently the wrong medication is dispensed. You find the whole business suspicious, and your worst fears are confirmed when your assistant and a representative of the well known drug company (with an odd combination of consonants at the beginning of their name) explain that the drug charges and the potential wrongful death lawsuit will go away if you forget anything you might have heard about the Parkinsons drug.

You quickly agree, but after a couple of years, you slip up after a few drinks and tell the whole story to the assistant who replaced the one who had been working for the drug company. Little did you know that your trust was misplaced. Your brake failure will be branded a "tragic accident".

Saturday, March 11, 2006

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Gynecologist

Really? Gynecologist? Well, I figured you were still going for that football scholarship and your marks in the sciences aren't all that high, but I can probably give you an idea of how it might go.

First of all, you'll need to find a premed program... Hey, who's laughing out in the hall there? What the...? Is that a video camera in that bag? Hey, get out of that filing cabinet!

Fine! Run away--don't think I don't know who you are! And that bottle you stole--I just confiscated it from some kid and was gonna give it to the principal!

Bastards.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future in

Auto Body Repair

I know you--your locker's just across the hall from this office. Yeah, while those other boys have all those swimsuit models stuck in their lockers, you've got all those muscle car pictures--probably something Freudian going on there, and I'm sure a psychoanalyst would have a field day with it, but my job isn't to diagnose your problem; I just need to tell you how to make a living from it.

You won't find a lot in our school auto shop--it's all about the mechanics and you're all about the cosmetics. Soon you'll be skipping out to go do joe jobs for the body shop down the street, and it's more relevant than anything you can learn here. There's something satisfying about putting the big suction thing on a compressed panel and pulling it back to shape, or in seeing a crappy looking primer wagon turn into something red and shiny.

After you serve your time as a minimum wage peon, you'll eventually win an apprenticeship. You'll learn about the different qualities of paint, when to repair a fender and when to simply replace it. You'll also learn about safety equipment--the goggles and the ventilator that you're supposed to wear when spray painting cars, but you know the old pros in your shop will laugh at you if you come in looking like some Darth Vader wannabe so you file that information in the "forget it after the test file". When you're 40 and coughing up blood you'll wonder about the wisdom of that decision.

You stay on with the same shop once your apprenticeship is complete, but your old boss retires and he sells it to a shady guy who already owns a couple of other shops in the area. Nothing changes too much except you notice the lights on more when you drive by late at night, and you're told not to ask dumb questions about the origin of some of the replacement parts that show up in unmarked vans.

It doesn't take long for you to understand what's going on in the shop is often on the wrong side of legal, and your employer and his associates make it clear that telling anyone would be even worse for your health than the metal-flake carcinogens you inhale in the paint room daily. Car theft is at an all time high, and the demand for efficient and discrete "chop-shops" has grown accordingly. Soon you're part of a team that can dismantle a Porsche or BMW in under an hour.

You aren't exactly sure when you became an accessory to crime, but you only report the legal half of your actual income and you find yourself more uncomfortable when you pull up beside a police car at traffic lights. Then, you make a crucial miscalculation which changes your life.

Your boss comes in quite upset about something and calls you away from the '68 Camaro you're painting with special instructions. There's a car coming in right after closing, and you're to stay late and completely dismantle it on your own. You agree, but in your head you're thinking about the fact you've got your third date with a cute girl you met at a bar a couple weeks before--what with all the skipping school and looking at car pictures you were a bit of a late bloomer in the dating game--and you decide you'll just come in early the next day, a Saturday when the shop is closed, and take care of it.

Unfortunately, when you arrive early Saturday morning, the police are already executing their warrant. The car you were supposed to have disposed of is towed into the evidence garage, where the blood and other evidence it provides helps put away your boss for 15 years. From the muttered threats you hear while the cops are scouring the shop, you quickly realize that getting out of town is your only chance of survival.

You spend the next few years wandering from place to place, taking jobs for cash in small bodyshops so as to avoid showing up on any computers where friends of the mob could track you down. You never form any meaningful connections with people, and the loneliness is agonizing. Then one day you give a ride to a young woman you meet in a highway diner and she invites you to the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.

You are amazed at what you find baking in the middle of nowhere. It's like a cross between Mardi Gras and the Mad Max movies, and in a fit of artistic inspiration, you pull out your torch and welding kit and turn your old pickup truck into something that draws rave reviews from old and young burnouts alike. For the first time you feel safe and happy, surrounded by next generation hippies who introduce you to the pleasures of peyote and invite your advice on their bizarre motorized scupltures.

As the festival winds down, you're invited to a number of different wilderness communes, and decide your best chance of happiness is to stick with Unity, the girl who brought you there in the first place. She's almost 20 years your junior, but you feel younger and happier than you have in ages and can even feel hopeful about the future for a change.

Unfortunately, you hadn't realized that "Woodstock Charlie", with his dirty bandanna and scraggly beard, was actually Carlo "The Fixer" Giavisi--the mob was very happy to supply the festival goers with all the mescaline they needed, and Carlo realized after the first day who you really were, which gave him time to call in the help needed to finish you off.

Your only chance will be your newfound friends. The mob is out of its element in the desert and when the black SUVs show up your well-honed paranoia kicks in. You tell a few of your folowers what's going on, and they rally around you. It's a surreal scene as dirty potheads driving a variety of vehicles that might have escaped from a Dr. Seuss book shoot the few shotguns they own at gangsters who can't really tell which one is you. They're under orders not to kill indiscriminately as the negative publicity might lead to a crackdown on the unfettered festival that provides them with such a good annual drug market.

In the confusion you escape, but you receive a small cut from a rusty edge of your truck sculpture, and while hiding in a remote commune with Unity, your untreated tetanus almost kills you before you seek medical treatment. Unfortunately, the shootout in the desert had attracted more attention than you realized, and the police show up at your hospital bed to arrest you for your years of chop shop work.

Your plea bargain involves testifying against more of your former colleagues, and if the guards in the solitary confinement wing are morally strong enough to resist the mob's bribe offers, you might live long enough to make the witness relocation program.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Restaurant Critic

Oh, hi kid. Aren't you the guy who led that "make our vending machines healthy" campaign last fall? Still getting beat up a lot for that? Oh, that's good. Yeah, I must admit I buy the bulk packs of chips now myself--probalby saving me a bit of money but... Oh right. Really? A food critic? Okay, probably you should expect something like this:

You'll go to a culinary college where you'll learn some of the basics of haute cuisine. Although you won't enjoy creating as much as consuming, eventually you'll manage to put together a decent enough five course dinner and armed with a knowledge of the difference between bernaise and hollandiase, and a good idea of what wines complement each food group, you're on your way.

Unfortunately the critic gig isn't one that offers a lot of employment opportunities. The jobs for the major papers in the big cities are so coveted that it's almost impossible to break in, and the smaller communities don't pay someone a living wage just to go try out the local eateries and review their fare. To pay the bills you'll have to actually go to work for a restaurant preparing food for some employed critic's analysis.

You have enough training in upscale cuisine to catch on at a trendy bistro, but the first time you hear through the grapevine that the critic may be coming, you're told not to expect to cook for him--it's Henri, the head chef, who reserves that honor for himself. Besides, the staff asks--why would you want the stress? They don't know the passion that burns inside you. You want to test the critic more than you want to prove yourself.

When the critic shows up, you watch him surreptitiously. When he leaves, you will make an excuse and follow his car home. You'll take the next few days off work, and begin seriously stalking him. The skulking skills you learned sneaking home to avoid pummeling from the kids here at school after you got all the good stuff taken out of the vending machines will stand you in good stead as you log his movements.

He's a creature of habit, and when his car dies on his way to some remote new eatery, you'll just happen by to rescue him. His ego will keep him from wondering why this random samaritan knows so much about his column, and your obsequeious behavior wins you an invitation to be his dinner guest. Over the veal veloute you charm him as you mock your employer's bechamel sauce and he breaks his two glasses of wine rule. You continue to lavish praise on his insights, and soon he's consumed most of two bottles and is singing duets with the waiters, who have heard enough of your conversation to realize his identity and rightly assume that his enjoyment of the evening equals a good review for their restaurant.

Then it's time for the final part of your plan--you've hired one of the waitresses at your restaurant to walk in and began yelling at you for missing your own engagement party, and the critic is too drunk to wonder at the coincidence of her finding you there. She storms out, and you sheepishly apologize and drop your car keys on the table, explaining you'll call him tomorrow about getting your mazda back.

The staff will offer to call him a cab, but he feels in your debt and insists on making sure your car gets back into town. Little will he know that you and your "girlfriend" will have already alerted the police to the drinking driver weaving back and forth across the highway in the red mazda; his arrest will be front page news, and the fact it occurred after a restaurant visit forces the paper to suspend him.

You won't be surprised when he phones to offer you the chance to fill in--you're certain you can make a good enough impression to take the job from him. As one of the few people your age who can comment on a restaurant's "insouciance" while tossing in witty barbs about the decor, you soon see your own picture on the column heading and your predecessor is reduced to writing recipes for a discount airlines in-house magazine.

You enjoy the good life for about six months, then it all begins to go wrong. Your gall bladder rebels against your rich diet, and every cream sauce you taste leaves you in agony a few hours after you sample it. While waiting for surgery, you struggle on, convincing your employer that it's a good time for a series on vegan cafes.

Your waitress friend, meanwhile, has an attack of conscience about her role in the plot that gave you your dream job, and secretly goes to the former critic and confesses all. He debates filing criminal charges, suing you, or writing an exposé, but settles on something a bit more satisfying. He hires someone to break into your home and secretly slip a few drops of highly-concentrated e coli bacteria into your favorite bottle of salad dressing.

The discovery of your body slumped near a beautifully laid table and an untouched salmon kiev is a headline-writer's dream.