Year: 2004

I obviously don’t know much about finding a job, but I do know this: when someone calls you on the phone and says in a rapid, practiced monotone that she saw your resume on Monster.com and wants to schedule an interview in a hotel room the next day and seems reluctant to answer any questions or provide additional information, this is probably not Destiny calling. But hey, maybe I should give it a try. Do you feel that you have adequate insurance coverage? Are you sure? Who would provide for your loved ones in the event of some tragic unforeseen circumstance, like, say, me shooting you and taking all your stuff? Let me tell you a little bit about our policy.

I used to search only the “Advertising/Marketing/Public Relations category on the various job boards, but I’ve branched out. “Drilling sounds like fun, but I’m sure you need experience, and putting up shelves probably isn’t what they’re looking for. So far I haven’t had to search in the “Loading/Unloading category, but that day may not be far off. And, amazingly, the opportunities that show up under “Writer usually aren’t very appealing.

So many of the listings are incredibly specific, and I guess that’s not surprising with so many applicants for every job. So I’m not going to bother to apply to the ad that reads “the world leader in clamp-together ducting seeks a Dust Collection Professional” “Although anyone who has been to Plooble HQ knows that I’m a world leader in collecting dust.” And if I don’t know what a “thin client is, I probably shouldn’t apply for the position of Thin Client Product Manager. Besides, most of my clients have been a little on the heavy side.

A lot of the ads try to make the job sound like a party with Outkast on a Gulfstream V headed for the Cannes Film Festival. “”Throw away your suit and tie and come to work in a rock ‘n’ roll atmosphere!” I figure if anybody is trying to convince me I want the job, then I probably don’t want the job. Then there are the ones that seem to be written in an attempt to actively discourage applicants:

This position works with marketing groups to execute on interactive and direct marketing strategies that deliver on the utilization of interactive technology, customer insights and the application and utilization of customer information and behavior.

I’m sorry, what? Who do you want me to execute?

The best item I’ve seen in a job description was probably a placeholder from an earlier draft that never got corrected. Even so, I loved the idea that I would “work closely with Harriet”

yeah, well you try finding a photo for this post

Even before I was “rightsized” I was never a fan of doublespeak. Sure, euphemisms have their place, especially if the intent is to keep from degrading someone. But what about referring to death as “negative patient care outcome or the especially mealy-mouthed and hateful “collateral damage”? “Now that “wardrobe malfunction has entered the lexicon, I look forward to using it the next time someone informs me that my pants are riding dangerously low, as they are wont to do.”

As I’ve mentioned before, airlines are a top source of obfuscation. “I once heard a flight attendant say, “We will now begin serving nutrition” which told me she felt dishonest calling it food.” When I was a lad, we had airsickness bags. Now they are apparently called “motion discomfort bags” and I wouldn’t be surprised if they soon become “wellness restoration receptacles”

I discovered a new one today that is very subtle, and as someone who has occasionally been employed to make bad stuff sound good, I had to admire it. I booked a flight this morning and asked for aisle seats on every leg. I got them on all but one “the longest, naturally” and was informed that I was in the “center seat for that portion of the journey. Ooh! The center! I’m not in the middle, I’m in the center! Everything will revolve around me!

What’s your favorite euphemism?

When people click on the Yahoo slideshow for Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl stunt, do you really think this is the photo they’re hoping to see? “Reuters: Kevin Lamarque-Files”

Regardless of how you feel about Janet Jackson’s semi-naked hooter on national television, I know where I draw the line. When you’re having lunch with relatives and somebody says the phrase “Justin Timberlake dry humping Janet Jackson” things have gone too far. “I also believe the term “nipple decoration may have been uttered. The complete phrase, as you all know by now, is “sun-shaped metal nipple decoration””

Buried deep in the Yahoo News story was the sentence, “The show also featured P. Diddy, Nelly and Kid Rock” Who now wish they had stripped naked and dry humped one another.

I do have one comment for FCC Chairman Michael Powell “pictured above”: The halftime show was “classless, crass and deplorable long before Janet’s “wardrobe malfunction”

Of course, the biggest outrage is that the commercials sucked.

I’m feeling a bit random today, and luckily the random absurdity has been piling up. I saw the sign pictured above during a recent visit to UNC Hospitals. I thought it was a bit zen for a traditional western medicine establishment. “Actually, I first noticed “Remember 3C and thought, “There must be a ‘Remember 2B,’ and drove around until I found it. My apologies to anyone who had recently had a major organ removed who might have been waiting on the sidewalk in a wheelchair.”

At the hospital, I also saw this, on a Mustang. I will make no further comment other than to direct your attention to the handcuffs hanging from the rearview mirror.

There’s a banner ad that keeps popping up on Yahoo aimed at people who suffer from acid reflux “or GERD, which will always sound like an East German weightlifter to me”. It reads, “Bowl of pasta, or bowl of pain? Bowl of Pain needs to be the name of a band right now. Get on it, people.

The Hardback Café used to put a chalkboard out front with the specials on it. One day it read, “Gazpacho: the cold soup of Spain” a quote from the Pepper’s Pizza menu. Later in the day someone changed it to “the cold soup of pain” and still later it read, “the cold soup of space” I can never hear gazpacho mentioned without thinking of that and telling the story, often to people who have heard it four or five times.

Finally, randomly, I got an email from a friend the other day who is a highly-accomplished professional in his field. He was mortified to notice that he had let the Microsoft Word autocorrect feature get a bit away from him. In a proposal to a client, he meant to say he would “provide coaching and feedback to others” What he actually proposed was that he would “provide coaching and feedback to otters”

If that’s a real job, I want it.

After five years I have come to the conclusion that, as sweet as he is, Hastings is not the sharpest flea comb in the drawer. Let’s just say it’s a good thing he’s domesticated. As with most cats, he is primarily concerned with eating, napping, parasitically sucking up body heat, and chasing imaginary rodents. He used to be really good about eating. I would put a small bowl of dry food down in the morning and he would stand there until he finished it, and that was that. Then, during last year’s ice storm, I really screwed up. I felt bad for making him stay in a cold house all day while I decamped to places restored of power, so I started giving him a snack at night. The first time I did it, he looked at me with an incredulous expression that seemed to say, “What?! You mean you can feed my anytime you want?! And from then on I was doomed.

For the past year he has followed me around relentlessly, and meows plaintively whenever I walk into the kitchen. Any time I stand up, he is on me like a cheap furry suit. And of course, he greets the dawn by jumping on my bed and putting his nose in my mouth. “”Oh, you’re awake? Well then you might as well feed me.”” I finally got tired of it and inaugurated the Full Bowl Policy two weeks ago. Many of my cat-owning friends keep a bowl of dry food constantly replenished and their cats eat whenever they feel like it. Sure, some of them are a bit, er… zaftig, but they also aren’t leaping around like Chinese acrobats on the Ed Sullivan show every time you get up to go to the bathroom.

On Day One of the FBP when I filled his bowl to the brim, Hastings thought it was Kitty Christmas. Since then he’s gotten used to it, but whenever I top up the bowl he looks at me as if to say, “I’ve never loved you more” I think he’s gained maybe a pound, and for him that probably isn’t a bad thing.

But has it changed his behavior? Has it my eye. He still meows at me when I walk past the cabinet where his cat food is kept. When I point to his full bowl, he kind of shrugs and goes, “Oh, right” And he still wakes me up in the morning and tries to herd me downstairs when I head for the bathroom. I realize he’s an animal, but like some kind of pathetic parent with a child vying for a spot in a magnet school, I want him to be exceptional. “Then again, as far as intelligence goes, I’m the one trying to reason with a cat here.”

Maybe he needs a tutor, or some flashcards.

A few weeks ago, Jean came over for dinner and gave the hairy eyeball to my stove, which I’m assuming has been here since 1978 when the house was built. At first I was confused because I thought it was pretty clean, and not just by my pathetically lenient standards.

“You know you can get new trim rings and drip pans” she said. What? Of course I don’t know that. Who the hell knows that? I didn’t even know those objects had names, although “trim ring and “drip pan seem pretty straightforward. If something has to be purchased at Lowes or Home Depot, I usually assume it’s going to have some kind of specialized and esoteric name that I will neither know nor be able to deduce. It wouldn’t surprise me if these things on my stove were called plattrens and cronnets.

Anyway, my 26-year old stove now has brand new decorative hardware “one of the odder gifts I’ve received, I must say”, and it does liven it up considerably. But now I have to worry about getting fingerprints on my shiny new cronnets. Err, trim rings.