The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Quantity Surveyor

You again? I told you to get out of here yester... Oh, Dr. Addison--no, I didn't know that Jeremy was... Yes, how lucky for him to have the principal for an uncle. Yes, I did kick him out of my office yesterday, sir. It's just that, well, I don't take kindly to practical jokes, after that gynec... What practical joke? Well, Jeremy made up a career and... Yes, he did. "Quantity Surveyor". I realize boys will be boys, but--it is? I'm sorry. Yes, I realize your family is from Britain. Ahh, well of course. Sure--just have him sit down a minute while I do a quick google search.

Hmm? No, of course you don't have to stay--Jeremy and I will do just fine.

He's gone? Okay kid--you didn't need to bring the office into this. Hmm--this looks pretty straightforward to me... Weird, I thought I'd heard of them all by now.

Okay, here goes:

You'll go to school in England somewhere--honestly, I don't know where, though--probably somewhere you can stay with relatives and eat all the boiled meat you can handle. You'll need... yeah, there it is--you'll need a bachelor of science degree specializing in quantity surveying. So you'll probably learn about, uhm, quantities, and er, how to survey them. It's kind of like you're the guy who watches over the construction jobs and figures out how much everything should cost and keeps track of the budget and stuff.

Once you finish your training, with the good grades you'll probably get, you'll have a number of major british firms competing for your services. You'll go to work for one which does big projects--everything from airports to shopping malls--and your attention to detail will make you invaluable.

You rise as do the fortunes of the firm, and one day they announce they've been awarded a contract by the americans to build a military training facility as part of reward for the brits' continued support in the war on terror. You are chosen to go to the U.S. to supervise it--having lived in the country before and all.

You do your normal conscientious job and are surprised when the subcontractor in charge of wiring the living quarters shows up and awkwardly tries to give you a briefcase full of money. You send him packing and refuse the bribe. Shortly after you discover he has overcharged for the conduit he installed by close to half a million dollars. You report him to the authorities, and he barely escapes prison by fleeing the country. Meanwhile, the word gets out that you are the main reason the typical defence contract gravy train won't be happening on this project.

A group of teamsters trap your car in the parking lot with their semitrucks one evening, and it's close to midnight when you find the one who can move the last truck--with no one else around to witness it they push you around a bit and threaten your life if you don't "go back where you came from" immediately.

Of course, you're still a self-righteous prig, er, uhm--I mean, your integrity makes you report the incident, but the company you work for warns you they can't protect you from all the enemies you're making. You turn once more to your uncle, the now retired Dr. Addison, who has some political contacts, and tell him your story. He is worried and promises to make some calls. Unfortunately, by this time your phone has been tapped and they know you've told him everything, so sadly, he has an unexpected encounter with some "burglars" who kill him slowly and painfully, so as to determine who else he may have told.

You flee back to England, and from there you are assigned to another military contract--you are to oversee the building of a new base in a "friendly" arab emirate. Unfortunately, the bulk of the work is being done by one of the sheikdom's most connected companies--the board of directors has several members of the country's royal family on it--and your attention to detail reveals that they're padding the expenses to finance suicide bombers worldwide.

Again, you blow the whistle, and barely make the flight out before your face is plastered throughout the country attached to some fabricated story of you attacking and killing one of your maids. You fly to a small carribean island which you are sure won't extradite you to face this bogus charge, and start your own small construction firm.

You are worried the first few months that your many enemies might find you, but over time you relax, and your company is a success; you build luxury homes for the executives of the huge tax-shelter banking interests on the island. Eventually you even marry and have a family.

Then, one day, while you are entertaining a small group of banking types at a barbecue at your home, you tell the story of your adventures in the Gulf. Unknown to you, one of your guests is quite connected to the financiers of international terrorism, and he reports your story to his masters.

Because your family knows the story, they won't be allowed to live, but their suffering will be less if you tell your captors everything quickly before they kill you and your kin.

See what happens if you insist on sharing your petty problems? People get hurt. Keep your complaints to yourself and your loved ones may live longer.

Have a nice day.

Congratulations

...to Murdoch on The Laramie Project. I was at the opening last night and was very impressed. She did a great job as did the entire ensemble. It's also very cool to go see a show in an auditorium that goes back generations. I did a practicum at that school in the '80s and their tradition at that point was to put a picture of the grad class on one page of the yearbook and one of the grad class from 100 years previous on the opposite page.

It's the only school around here that has not only their WWII and WWI alumni who died listed on plaques, but also those who lost their lives in the Boer War.

Anyways, Murdoch--Well done!

Poetry by Dythandra

the measure of me

It's that time again...
Standardized tests.

I know why they want to "meet" with me
I am a curiosity--they've seen my scores
All 90-something percentile
Classic "underachiever".

"Are you bored?"
Not when I picture you after school,
Seeing what I did to your car

"Are you taking something that...
Uhm, interferes with your abilities?"
I just twitch a bit, and then shake my head.

"Are there problems... at home?"
I shiver and look up
Like a wounded kitten.
"No," I stammer, unconvincingly

I toy with them--I could just as easily
Score within the norms.
But why pretend to fit?

Gifted programs, remedial classes,
Even home schooling--that was a short lived
Experiment in mutual torture

Then there was parochial school
The poor priest, so surprised,
I could see the fear when he realized
His holy water didn't hurt me.

Now I'm back, and yet another well meaning authority figure
Shakes his head and wonders what makes me tick.

A phone call; he steps out
The file is open--how can I resist:

"...exhibits sociopathic tendencies...
...potential arsonist...very dark...moody..."
And then a list, of all the stress leave
Attributed to moi.

He comes back--doesn't want me to leave,
but really, what can he do?
Better than he have lain awake worried
About what I may do next.

"Lovely flowers in your hair" he remarks,
Offering his hand--so formal as he stands.
"What are they?"

"Oh those?" I smile--he thinks me normal for a moment.

"I got them from my garden. They're... columbine."

I can't let my file get boring, after all.

Some thoughts at midnight

Well, almost midnight. As of now (although he's been asleep for a while now) my son is officially doing the "30 hour famine". He went out and canvassed the neighborhood for sponsorships after hitting up the relatives as well. I think it's a good thing, and it's going to be tougher on him than it would on the rest of the family, since he's at that "always hungry" stage of almost teenagerhood.

Question: Did the "day without immigrants" protest make an impact on any of the cities/towns where those of you south of the border live? (uhm, yeah, south of the U.S.-Canada border, I mean)

Were the turkeys being processed in H-burg? I know Chicago had a protest. How about Atlanta, Jen? Or Pennsylvania, Jenny G.? Probably not much happened up in Ella's neck of the woods, or in B.G.'s college town, I imagine.

This is disturbing and depressing

About a year ago I posted about the idea that there are probably blogs out there whose writers have died. Now I find something really kind of disturbing out there--

http://yourdeathspace.blogspot.com/

This blog links to the myspace sites of people who've died. I looked at a few, and it seems way sadder and more poignant than just reading the news stories of the deaths.

Sorry--maybe I'm just feeling a little morbid today. I will check if my friend who knows my password still remembers it though, to post or delete this blog if it becomes necessary.

The ADD Movie Usher Reviews

Memoirs of a Geisha

So this movie was kind of... weird. I mean, I'm all for chick flicks--just ask my boyfriend--but there's some things that don't make sense here. First of all, how does this Japanese girl end up with blue eyes? Huh? And how come they're all speaking "japanese" but at times near the beginning it's actually japanese, but then it's english, and then when the americans come after the war they all just speak the same english which used to be japanese with exactly the same fluency and accents?

I mean, it's like King Kong where you see this giant critter and the chick is up in his nest place and yet... No monkey poop. I mean, I've seen the cages at the zoo, and well, I just don't get it. For that matter, that monkey didn't even eat anything hardly... Oh yeah--right. The geisha.

So she ends up being put up for a bidding war for her "virtue" or whatever the hell it was called--kind of like in that movie that Brooke Shields was in--Pretty Baby, I think it was. Yeah, they put her on a big plate and she was what, 12, and her mom let her do that movie and all and then there was Blue Lagoon and what kind of parent lets their kid... oh right.

So this geisha chick is pursued by this guy who's all scarred because he's a "war hero". Right. I mean, I didn't exactly ace history, but I remember the stuff about the rape of Nanking and how the Japanese behaved in Manchuria, where this scarred guy saved his buddy. Fact is, both of them are war criminals, and the chick was what, 15 or 16 when all these middle aged--hell, the doctor who bought her had to be 60--are bidding for her virginity.

I rate this movie... double ewww.

Poetry By Dythandra

A Road Trip

I see the ad online--Switchblade Symphony,
In concert, but too far away for a day trip.
I do have friends, messages fly
Our plans are made.

The parentals, choosing unwisely,
Pick this time to make their stand.
Seems the school's been calling about me
Yet again.

I don't argue, so much as glare.
Still, they are insistent,
And needing cash more than permission
I am marched into "counselling".

I recognize the counsellor,
She's tried to break through before
I am resistant, but she holds my travel plans
Unwittingly, within her power.

I see her family photos, smiling--so... traditional,
Not that her... orientation matters;
I see such tastes as fluid and evolving
And so it begins.

"I'm ugly--no one wants me," I complain.

No dear, you're really very lovely,
Under all that white makeup...

And so our exchanges go--
I've already scripted my part,
And the mini-recorder is easy to hide.

I spend a day editing;
The results are better than I had hoped.

I call her direct line--she sounds so... ill-prepared
I just play the recording of her words
If their sentiment were real
I might even blush.

She tells my parents what they need to hear,
And my trip is justly my reward.
Unfortunately one of my compatriots,
Is not a worthy travel companion.

You've never really tasted blood, have you?
Your own doesn't count.

I could lie, but why rise to her bait?
"Poser" is such a cruel word.

Our discount hotel is not so careful
About locking up their kitchen knives at night
A large one finds its way up to our room.

She wakes to find me sitting, crosslegged
Beside her on the bed,
Fingering the blade, humming.

"I just dreamed your blood tasted... salty"

She's gone by breakfast time.
Luckily for her,
'Twas only her ticket that was scalped.

A class act

It's been less than two weeks since I emailed Carrie Fleming, a former student, after finding her email address online. I asked if she were in town sometime if she'd come visit my acting class. Today she did.

It's strange to think she was 15 when she was in my class and also the first musical I ever directed--that was 16 years ago. Now she's got a long and interesting list of performance credits in film, t.v. and commercials. It was fun to listen to some of the stories of things that she's experienced and learned.

Recently she was featured in the "Masters of Horror" cable series starring in an episode directed by Dario Argento. "Suspiria" is probably this italian director's best known movie. She also told us about recently being sent a script by a director I won't reveal here, but I guarantee you know the name.

Afterwards, it was nice to catch up over a drink and I think we'll have her back again before long, perhaps to do some audition practice with some of the group. Here's a pic of Carrie with Ashley and Rachel (who were most impressed by the fact she was in an episode of L-word, I suspect):














It was a cool afternoon, all round.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future in

Daycare

Daycare, huh? Let me guess--babysitting is the only job you've ever done? Really? Okay then, it will probably go something like this:

You'll go to college for four years to get your degree in Eary Childhood Education--even though you might not want to teach preschool, you'll need the qualification anyway. It won't really be that demanding--it's one of the few university degrees where finger painting isn't just a metaphor, but actually on your transcript.

Once you graduate you'll go to work for some licensed daycare facility. The only difference between licensed and unlicensed is that yours gets inspected once a year and you actually have to pay taxes on your income.

Your dating life will suck. As the junior person, you get the early 6 a.m. start that nobody else wants, which means you don't have many late nights, and when you do go out and meet guys, they're turned off by your job. Face it, guys in their early 20s don't want to think about kids and they assume since kids are your chosen career you're just itching to start a big family. Plus, when some jock tells you how he broke his ankle hang-gliding, he doesn't want to hear the patronizing first person plural comfort ("we got a boo-boo on our ankie") that you offer instinctively.

You barely eke out a living, and it irks you that a kindergarten teacher with similar years of college training earns twice what you do and has full benefits. Fortunately, your employer likes you and offers you the chance to buy into the day care, so as part owner you can begin to improve your financial picture. Unfortunately, you aren't aware that your afternoon relief, her son, has an inappropriate interest in some of the young clients of the daycare and when the lawsuit and criminal investigations happen, you escape charges, but your personal share of the liability cost, as one of the owners, forces you into bankruptcy.

You try to rebuild your career, but your references--you worked the last four years for a daycare that is infamous due to the publicity around the scandal, and you have a bankruptcy that makes people wary as well--simply make it impossible for you to be hired by any daycare in the area. Finally, you turn to one of those job placement services for the truly desperate, and they place you as an au pair with a wealthy family in another city.

Unlike most other live-in nannies, you are not looking for a way past immigration restrictions, but you suffer the indignity of a pathetic wage just the same. You realize how your employers view you when they keep forgetting and slipping into spanish to give you instructions. The wife insists you do all manner of menial labor that means you have little or no free time for yourself, and when she's not around to nag you about dusting, the husband is creeping you out with his inappropriate advances.

Eventually he goes one step beyond what even your virtually nonexistent self-esteem will tolerate and you quit. You go to the same lawyer that handled the class action suit against your former daycare, but before you get to trial, you are shown a video of the rich couple's maid explaining tearfully how she caught you stealing from them and you threatened to kill her if she exposed you. You remember that she had been a successful actress in her home country before the revolution and it comes in handy when she sobs her suspicions that you have a serious drug problem.

Your lawyer advises you to take the offered settlement and forget about court. It isn't what you deserve, but it's enough for you to make a down payment on a big old house in a bad neighborhood, where you open a group home for foster kids. A steady stream of deeply troubled kids move through the home, and you soon have spent a fortune on padlocks and smoke detect0rs.

One of these troubled teens will be responsible for your untimely death--either the abuse victim whose anger at authority finally gets out of control, or pyromaniac who found where you hide the matches. Either way, your next of kin will hear the words "beyond recognition" uttered at your inquest.

Hey--might be a good idea to make sure your dental records are up to date.

The ADD Movie Usher Reviews

Napoleon Dynamite

Yeah, strange kid that one. Actually, the whole movie is weird. I was sitting there--well, leaning, really--we're not supposed to sit. I think it's kind of stupid, since we're supposed to be able to watch the movie and the audience that we have to stand up all the time.

Anyway, this Napoleon kid is pretty creepy. I mean, what's the point of all these kids wanting to watch this movie and talk like this kid when if he went to their schools they'd just shun him and mock him. And that Pedro kid--if he talked at a normal speed, this movie'd be over with a lot quicker.

And tell me this--when I worked that show there were two couples in the back making out. What the hell? Who gets turned on by this stuff? I mean, if he asked you to dance after seeing those moves would you? Not that my boyfriend dances any better--but I figure Napoleon was supposed to be sober when he was dancing.

Oh, and Napoleon has this brother who's as geeky as him but gets this hot drag queen from the internet. My friend says it wasn't a drag queen, but I kinda think it was. I give it 2 stars. (That's outta five stars.)

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Marine Biologist

Oh, hi there--back from that job shadow thing at Sealand? Yeah, when I heard you were coming I got these brochures for you. You must've learned a lot about looking after those Orcas or whatever they're called--how come their fins get all bendy in those aquarium places anyway? You all good, then--I mean, you learned it all there, right? Really? Out in the real ocean? Okay, I guess I can try:

You'll go to some respected college--on a coast, I might suggest--where you'll be one of the many who think this is the ideal career choice. Most of them will be gone before they've completed three semesters. Heading out on a class marine excursion on choppy water is never fun, but combine the stench from when the boat is used for non-academic commercial fishing, and the hangovers from frequent dormitory beer bong parties, and it's silly to think many typical undergrads won't find a better major without the nautical obligations.

You'll stick, though, and your passions will carry you through the four years with honors. You'll be offered a chance to continue in graduate work, and soon you're published in a variety of obscure quarterlies that only other marine biologists ever see.

There will be a variety of studies for you to participate in; whatever is trendy enough to garner funding becomes your topic of the season. Most of your time on the water is spent close to shore--that's where the interesting sea life resides, and you soon are spending as much time in scuba gear as you are above the water. You continue to work for your mentor, a respected older professor, and the night he drinks too much and confesses his love and willingness to leave his wife of 33 years creates an awkwardness that never is addressed once the moment has passed.

Eventually, you find your passion--fish farms. You study their environmental impact and are shocked to discover that they are destroying countless wild salmon runs and endangering entire species of marine life. Your mentor shares your dismay and the two of you co-author several inflammatory articles denouncing them, while you struggle to find funding to generate a study which will verify the extent of the suspected damage in your particular part of the world.

Meanwhile, your mentor is gradually losing his "edge". First he simply forgets deadlines or misplaces things, but then he becomes increasingly bizarre and begins work on genetically modifying pirahna fish to thrive in cold ocean waters. His plan is to then release the voracious killers near the notoriously badly-built fish farms and let them work their magic.

You cannot stand by and watch him ruin the reputation of your department or your college, so you report his eccentricities to the department chair and soon a retirement opens the door for you to replace your former guide as a full-fledged professor in the marine biology department.

Your mentor is furious. A series of strange occurences put you on edge--coming home to find pirahnas in your bathtub is only one manifestation of an obssession to destroy you that never rests.

The stress of your ex-mentor's harassment makes you welcome the opportunity to go out into the field--you are following some tagged salmon far from shore to assess their condition. You travel with two men--fortunately with your looks being the only female on long lonely ocean trips will never be a problem for you, despite the quiet desperation you once inspired in your mentor. This trip, like so many before, looks to be worthwhile but uneventful. Your two partners seem to be professional and knowledgable--graduates of the same university as yourself.

News of the tropical storm comes surprisingly late--it will take a sudden turn in your direction, and as you are well out in open sea, you'll be forced to make a run for the nearest inhabited island. Unfortunately, that island will still be far away when you settle in for your four hour sleep break (the sea is surprisingly calm but the storm will be bearing down on you) and you will wake to hear your partners' incredible explanations of how not one but both motors have fallen off your craft.

You try your radio, but it is dead. Fortunately, your colleagues tell you, they already radioed for help before the radio died. You settle in with them to watch the movie permanently stuck in the cheap, defective VCR powered from the boat's battery--"A Perfect Storm". It merely brings you closer to panic.

Then you will be relieved to hear the beat of a helicopter fast approaching. It hovers over your vessel and lowers a ladder. You are so adamantly against having any special courtesies attached your being a woman, that you insist on being the last pulled from the boat. The problem sadly will be that after both of your partners are safely in the aircraft, the ladder is not lowered for you. You look up and recognize the face of your former mentor shaking his fist and laughing above you.

Then it all makes sense--your two partners were also his proteges, and eager to help with his plan to destroy you.

With luck you'll finish your 22nd viewing of "Perfect Story" before your boat is swamped and you shivver to a watery grave.

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Bus Driver

Oh, hi--you the guy who wants to drive bus? I expect your future is going to be fairly easy to figure out.

First of all, you'll need to go get the certificates and licenses you need--air brakes and more--so you'll probably end up driving truck for a year or two before you get hired by a limousine service. That gig will put you in a wide variety of vehicles--the stretch limo, and it's uglier cousin, the stretch SUV, where every grad ceremony or 16th birthday provides you once again with a reminder that human vomit has a stench that is hard to get out of upholtery. You also learn that while the limo company might want to have you keep an eye on the antics of your young charges, glancing at the monitor (the privacy window only blocks your rear view mirror--little do they know that closing it activates a hidden camera back in the passenger area) destroys a little piece of your soul each time you look.

You'll have to take some of those unwieldy machines home for the night after some of your jobs; everyone in your neighborhood will soon hate you for the times you block their driveways or your wide turns chew up their front lawns. Worse even than the pimp service you provide libidinous adolescents is the personal chauffeur duty you sometimes are assigned for various low level celebrities and music stars who inevitably make you wait for them for hours outside some trendy underground nightclub which also happens to be in the worse neighborhood in town--areas where the locals believe that the dude in the uniform in the big limo has to be worth mugging.

Eventually you pull the airport limo gig, and there you learn the truly cutthroat nature of your colleagues driving cabs and other minibuses. You also learn the hard way that the "generous" tips you receive from a variety of foreigners translate to pennies in real money when you visit the currency exchange.

After that, you'll think you've found a better job when you score the local seniors' shuttle--a bus shared by a variety of care homes to ferry their nearly-deads to all manner of painfully dull entertainment. At the end you can nearly always look forward yet another trip to the local IHOP where you learn to despise all manner of waffles and crepes. Still, there's always that box of stale chocolates to look forward to each Christmas.

Finally you manage to break into the city bus line. It's union wages and an easily-memorizable route for you. Unfortunately, as junior man, you'll get the midnight ghetto run, and likely you'll be on anxiety meds within six months, and on stress leave within a year. Of course, maybe it won't bother you--at least that way you'll be happy until the end sneaks up on you at the business end of .45.

Whatever you do, don't drive school bus. My brother did that for a bit, and let's just say, you don't want to be the guy going back to beat on a 12 year old shown on the surveillance video sent round the world...

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as a

Longshoreman

Hey kid--so you want to be a longshoreman? Well, I heard your language out on the field after you lost the soccer game the other day, so you've definitely got the vocabulary down. It won't be easy, though.

First of all, it's tough to break into the longshoreman biz unless you are related or connected to someone already there. You're not? Well then, there is one other option, but it has its risks. You'll need a good camera with night vision and a telephoto lens. Hide out for several nights, and no doubt you'll see all manner of felonies occur. Take good pics of the most serious, and get license plates and faces of all involved. A murder/body dump is your best bet.

Then it gets tricky. You'll need to make copies of all the photos and relevant information and place them in safety deposit boxes in different banks. Choose three people you trust, give each a key and instruct them to send the key and a sealed letter to a reputable news outlet if you should go a week without contacting them.

Make sure you choose one person of the three who isn't much of a friend--that's the one you're going to give up to the Teamsters when they say you're bluffing about the "I've got information that will go to the authorities in the event of my death" thing. They'll go kill your friend and find the information. Then they'll believe you've got more, and likely that will buy your life.

Of course, there is always the chance they trust their torture skills enough to simply try to force the identities of the other friends out of you. It's more likely, though, that they'll admire your tenacity in pursuit of your career goal and welcome you into their fold.

Then it's the gravy train for you, at least for a while. So much stuff "falls out" of containers being shipped, and you learn from the other longshoremen the best places to sell the electronics, clothing, watches and liquor you sneak home each week. Every so often you'll make a few grand to look the other way when a container of illegal immigrants from China arrives--you make even more when you help dispose of the ones who died in transit.

Of course, nothing good lasts long, and the other side of working the docks isn't much fun. There are the tarantulas and other tropical critters that come packed with the bananas and produce from southern climes, and epidemiologists all too often call seaports "ground zero" when describing the arrival of some new deadly infection.

Your end isn't too easy to predict, though. You see, between mafia/teamster/triad gun battles, poisonous insects, deadly viruses and "accidental" drownings, there are plenty of opportunities for you to leave your widow a hefty pension. Even if you don't get killed at work, the feds are eventually going to bring you down in some sting operation involving fake designer products and the third world slave trade.

At prison you'll encounter violent gangs of wide variety of ethnic origins. Some will remember you gouging them when they smuggled their drugs or other contraband into the country. They won't like you, and they'll make sure you know it. On the bright side, you'll be able to swear in fourteen languages when they're practicing their national form of deadly martial combat on your kidneys.

Hey, if you get any "discount" scotch, remember my number, okay?