that ring of confidence

My head feels like a Scottish moor

Maybe it was my eager anticipation of the Oscars but I've been wiped out with the illness since Sunday.  Bed rest has been the order of the day, so I don't really have much to blog about.  I was going to post about the Oscars but at this point there isn't much new to say about the awards ceremony besides the fact that as always Jon Stewart was funny and the musical performance from the film Once deserved the Oscar win.  I've included the YouTube video of the performance from the show above.

Meanwhile the only thing of note that's happened apart from laying in bed watching Buffy and a brief spell of assembling Ikea furniture, is that one of my photographs was picked up by a travel guide for inclusion on their website.  Sadly it's a non-paying thing, but I do get the photo credit for having my photo on the What's On When site [wow] and the British Airways site [ba].  The photo, below, isn't a great picture but it's of Go Fish in Vancouver which apparently there's not a great deal of pictures of.

We are lost in a pea soup fog.

There are no more biscuits.  We appear to be completely out of them at this point.  Thankfully we have crackers, because they will be our tools to navigate this muddled time.  They are our bones and our chicken stock, but instead of making soup we will be ingesting it.  Filling our stomachs with the future we will then seek to cleanse our palate on the ice cool waters of the past.  Only the present will remain, and it will be the check on the table that we all look at awkwardly wondering who is going to reach for their Visa card first.

The world used to accept fortune tellers and mystics, the odd time they'd burn them (or dunk them) as witches but for the most part people accepted that the future was something that could be well known simply by glancing at how the bones of a small animal fell from a bag.  By a turn of a card.  By the bumps of our heads.

These days we have futurists and new media gurus.  Facebook will be the next big thing, until it's the next old thing and then we'll be exploring a new meme.  We discovered how easy it was to sell the future when 2010 Cola took off and became a hit.  Sadly unlike James I didn't invest my profits well, he truly saw the future and filled jerrycans [wp] with Premium Unleaded gas while I bought stocks.  Which of us are laughing now?  Neither of us I suppose, James knew more about the price of oil than how to safely store it in a mid-town apartment.

And I tweet with the best of them

I just thought I'd point out a new addition to the blog over in the left hand sidebar, and it's my Twitter status updates. For those of you who don't have Web 2.0 ADD that forces you to try out each and every new graphical user interface toy that gets developed, you might not know that Twitter is the new hawt thing around the world. Or the blogosphere. It's micro-blogging.

Actually it's sort of like those Facebook updates "Jeffery Simpson is eating lunch" except without the need to sign up for Facebook. So now even if I don't have a new post up when you check in I might have a new Tweet (a Twitter post is called a tweet). Or I may not. I may tear it down in a week after getting bored of it and move onto something that lets me have a graphic of my favorite strength of milk. I'll be able to constantly update you on whether I'm enjoying skim or two percent.

If you have Twitter and want to follow me I'm JefferySimpson which is my name but without that inconvenient space in the middle of it. You can find me here [twt]. Nice and easy.

Dinner with the Carters

I'm currently enjoying the hospitalty of Nathan and Krista Carter. We had some pasta, though I begged off the sauce due to the presence of my old enemy Cpl. Onion, some good homemade wine that was meant to taste of scotch and coffee ground cookies. Drink the meal Nathan spoke of his attempts to create a new type of liquor using bakers yeast and other inappropriate ingredients.

Now we are off to find beer in Kerrisdale.

Jeffery's Playlist for 02/22/08

I recieved an email from a reader named Pawel Utko asking me to recomend some music.  It seems that he came across one of my earlier playlist posts and was really getting into Sloan and The New Pornographers thanks to my mention of "Deeper Than Beauty" and "Letter From An Occupant".

So here's a quick playlist using only the songs that are currently on my 8 gig iPhone.  I'm not going to write a big todo about each one this time, just trust that if you're interested in some good music that you'll use your internet skills to find samples of these songs and explore the catalouges of the artists a bit.

Think of it as your homework for the weekend.

1. The Arcade Fire :: "Keep The Car Running"
2. The Magnetic Fields :: "California Girls"
3. Matthew Good :: "Black Helicopter"
4. Moldy Peaches :: "Anyone Else But You"
5. The National :: "Secret Meeting"
6. Peter Bjorn and John :: "Young Folks"
7. The Postal Service :: "We Will Become Silhouettes"
8. Yael Naim :: "New Soul"
9. Radiohead :: "Videotape"
10. The Weakerthans :: "Tournament of Hearts"

Another call

Oddly enough on Wednesday morning I got a call from yet another Primerica representative trying to hire me.  I don't know where this one got my name and telephone number, probably from my Monster resume, but it was a bit unnerving considering that I had just blogged about them. 

Is it like Scientology? 

Have I crossed them and now they're out to destroy me?

When my only job offer is Primerica I know something's gone wrong

If it feels like all I blog about anymore is my ongoing job hunt rest assured that it feels that way to me too.  I've essentially got two things to sort out, sorting out the whole OUC/UBC mess so that I can grab my last few credits to graduate from university and finding a new job.  I've been hoping to be able to structure my brief return to university around a new job, so I'm wanting to get a job first.  It's far easier to just pick up courses around a job than it is to find a job with the stipulation that I can not work during my courses.

Or that's the theory.  Either way the job finding is not going anywhere. 

As if to rub salt in the wounds fate threw a Primerica representative at me at work today.  I was helping a fellow look at PDA style phones and I had the sense that something was a bit off but it didn't occur to me what it was until later.  I'm not going to open this blog up to the sort of flame wars over whether or not Primerica is a scam, but when you're in any sort of job and you're half-ways friendly to a Primerica employee they will try to hire you.  So when trying to sell them something they're sizing you up because they know that they'll be trying to sell you something in a little bit. 

Back in Kelowna at the cellular store all of the employees were regularly approached by Primerica types.  As a multi-level-marketing type deal every representative another representative recruits means that they get a part of that new recruit's profits and that works its way up the ladder.  So like the Borg, vampires or zombies each person who pays their $200 and completes the four day training session is unleashed on the world to make new Primerica reps.  Getting a job interview with Primerica is about as easy as clapping your hands.

Which in and of itself does not make the job a bad one, but the fact is that it's a high pressure sales job.  Yes the numbers that they show about how much people could make are real, if you sold enough hundreds of thousands of dollars a year is an attainable goal.  The same goes for the job I have, if I sold enough cell phones I'd make a million dollars a year. 

Enough about Primerica.  I have to remain confident that something will break for me eventually.  For now though I'm seriously thinking about applying at the Starbucks in the hotel across the street from my apartment.  Not only would it be a very nice commute, I'd get a discount on the ice tea lemonades.

The best birth control

The store I work at is not particularly kid friendly.  Purchasing something takes between 20 - 60 minutes and there's no games, flashy lights or anything of interest for children to stay occupied with during that time period.  Some of the time people bring their kids in and the kids wait patiently bored out of their minds, but manage to do that without causing a great deal of chaos.  Then there's times when it's clear that the parents have no control over their children, and so the kids just run around the store grabbing things and knocking things over.

Today we had three families in, with multiple children each, and none of them bothered to even attempt to control their children, who promptly formed a street gang and began holding hands while they ran around shouting at the top of their lungs and knocked things down.  One of the smaller kids, probably about three, took a display box and began to kick it like a soccer ball out of the store.  Ignored by his parents the kid kicked it down the mall until he was no longer visible from the store.  Eventually a stranger at Perks who had watched the kid leave the store and head off down the mall lead him back to the store and that was about the only thing that prevented the kid from vanishing without a trace.

The job search shuffle

Isaac one of the company's corporate sales representatives stopped by the store today and asked if I was having any luck with the job search. I suppose one of the side effects of blogging about the job search is that it's not exactly a secret that I'm wanting to find other work. The trouble is that I'm actually trying to be sort of picky, which means that I'm not just applying to every job that comes along but rather better jobs. Jobs that I could see myself making a career out of, basing a life around. Jobs that I'd be proud of admitting having to when meeting new people, rather than having to do a grimace and head-bob move that I've been using the last few years.

"Yes I know I'm nearly 30 and working the same job I had when I was just out of high school," the move suggests, apologizing on my behalf, "I wish it were more interesting but we can't all do something nebulous and call it being a consultant."

Still even though I'm being selective the lack of any progress is getting depressing. The furthest that I've progressed is a group interview with Flight Centre, a job that in the long run I'm glad that I did not get anyway since it would have largely been more of the same thing that I'm doing. Meanwhile I've applied for reporting jobs, editing jobs and human shield work that I feel that I'm qualified for and yet there's not been a nibble.

My latest iron in the fire is a position as the Entertainment Editor of The Daily Courier in Kelowna, a job that I feel is tailor made for me. A job where I have a foot in the door since I have a weekly column at the paper's arts supplement eVent! magazine [evm]. Yet the posting I found online is gone, and once again despair overtakes me as I see another job slipping away.

Apple, who tried hiring two of my references the first time I applied, have called Sean for a job as a personal shopper but I haven't heard anything. That I told Sean that the Apple Store was opening and that they had job postings up on his site says a lot about how even with good karma on my side I'm not having any success. Perhaps blogging about the job openings on Metroblogging Vancouver, thus alerting most of Vancouver to them, was not a hot idea.

Now I spend my lunch sitting fifty yards from work, having a London Fog and applying for jobs online. The Jeff Gaulin Job Board [jg] has become both a constant friend and enemy as it taunts me with jobs that I want but apparently am destined not to have. I collect newspaper clippings from people who have seen jobs that sound perfect, but they were like that period of my life when I decided that I was going to marry Kitty Pryde from the X-Men [jks] it looked good on paper but was just a dream.

Also side note, isn't it fucking amazing that I got a girlfriend? Let's all give a cheer for Lydia putting up with me and my nerd-self.

Now my lunch is over. I'm posting this and adjusting my tie. If I'm lucky I'll have time to expel my London Fog in the bathroom and return to the sales floor.