Deadly Game: Job Hunt Pt. 2

I imagine that college graduation ceremonies haven’t changed very much over the course of the past 100 years. Proud families fill the auditorium, Handel’s Nocturne in G Minor is played in a constant loop, and old men in funny outfits talk to young people in funny outfits about the future that lies ahead of them. Much is said about the pride the oddly dressed neophytes should be feeling; the years of hard work, the breadth of their accomplishment, the pride that must be theirs to have completed the studies in their chosen fields…etc. Then, after much pomp and circumstance, the graduates file out of their assembly with their degrees (with all the right, privileges and honors pertaining thereto) conferred upon them.

In my limited experiences with college graduations, I found this to be pretty much standard operating procedure. However, I found something to be missing at my ceremony this May. As I stood huddled in a parking garage under the Liacorus center with the rest of the eager graduates I overheard a lot of conversations regarding the future. There was a lot of talk about graduate school, a good amount of “I can’t wait to travel through Europe” conversations, and even a few “I’m not doing anything this summer” remarks. The one thing that was conspicuously absent was any remarks of pride or relief. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but as I started to search for jobs, it occurred to me why this was.

Simply put, graduating college with an undergraduate degree is not the accomplishment it once was. There are innumerable jobs that require Master’s degrees before they even require work experience, and you’d be hard pressed to find a place of employment (outside of a low level marketing job or retail job) that requires anything less then a BA and there is virtually nothing that requires only a BA without prior work experience or additional qualifications. That’s nothing new though. The undergraduate degree has been the new High School Diploma since before I entered college. What I find particularly disturbing is the fact that we can go through four years of fairly grueling academic study, and not feel a profound sense of pride and joy.

When a college graduate enters the world, there is no longer a sense of joy. People who have been conditioned to view themselves as students are thrust from the cozy familiarity of college to the grind of the working world. These students might have complained about term papers, or getting up at 9 am for a class, but the truth is that when all was said and done they prefer college over pretty much any other situation. There is no other time in life where such an expanse of possibilities lay before you, yet you can still be cocooned in a circle of friends and free housing, sequestered from the financial obligations of the real world. No term paper frustration can match the horror of haggling with an insurance company over the phone. And waiting for your grades to appear online isn’t nearly as tense as navigating the job market.

So what’s the point? Why belabor the trials and tribulations of the college grad, or belittle the accomplishment of graduation? It is because as a new generation of worker bees enter a job market that is particularly hostile, they may not know why they aren’t as excited as their parents and loved ones. After years of schooling that were supposed to lead them to the next stage of their life, they might feel strangely unprepared for the reality that awaits them. Not because they were uneducated or unaware, but rather because it was presumed college would give them the tools necessary for the real world. Instead, they’re finding out that education continues well beyond the classroom.

In the Criminal Justice System…

Anyone who is currently unemployed or actually watches NBC primetime on a regular basis (I think the unemployment numbers are higher) can finish the statement started by the title. “There are two parts. The police, who investigate crimes, and the district attorney, who prosecutes the offenders. These are their stories.” This is followed immediately by a bell whose sound cannot be fully described nor duplicated or associated with any natural occurrence. Also, lets be honest here, the bell has no bearing on the show and it doesn’t make any sense when you consider the larger context of the television program. But, I’m not here to critique bells. I am here to critique a show that has like twenty off-shoots, employs every actor ever fortunate to get a set of glossy headshots, and somehow manages to keep Chris Noth relevant after Sex and the City went off the air.

So here is a list of the things that make Law and Order what it is. The good, the bad, and the childishly immature.

1. The approximately 1,000 versions of the show.
Law and Order, Law and Order: SVU, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and the short lived Law and Order: Trial by Jury. Listen I know I’m not the only one to bring this up. If you’ve seen a stand-up comic in the last five years you’ve heard this joke, but indulge me here while I regale you with rejected ideas for new Law and Orders

Law and Order: Basic Misdemeanor Unit
Law and Order: Graffiti Patrol
Law and Order: Domestic Disturbance
Law and Order: Jaywalking
Law and Order: Truancy report

2. The way they have the same actors doing completely different characters within the span of three episodes.
Apparently the people who cast these shows don’t like searching for new people to play defense attorneys. They recycle victims, witnesses, and even murderers to play the obligatory slimy defense attorney. Hey, I know it’s hard to find good talent out there, but space it out. Its hard to watch a father grieve over the corpse of his raped and murdered daughter only to see him an hour later defending the Mexican immigrant who farmed out her uterus to a wealthy couple who couldn’t have a baby.

3. Jerry Orbach
I have nothing bad to say about Jerry Orbach. He was the man, Lenny Briscoe was the best cop ever (yes, he beats EVERYONE from NYPD Blue), and the world is left wanting after his passing. Just to reiterate…Jerry Orbach is the freaking man.

4. Vincent D’onofrio and Jeff Goldblum
Both of these men play lead detectives in Law and Order: Criminal Intent. It all started with Vincent playing an offbeat, incredibly smart detective who speaks in an abrupt, mannered style. Then apparently, they were throwing ideas around in the writer’s room and someone tossed out this gem: “Hey you know all those traits Vincent D’onofrio has to act like he has every episode? Let’s just cast an actor who does that in every role!” Next thing you know Jeff Goldblum’s phone rings. Seriously guys, who is next…Christopher Walken?

5. When they catch the murderer within the first 15 minutes.
I hate when they do this because I know the next 45 minutes are going to be spent in court with Sam Watterson asking questions like “Your Honor you can’t be serious!” or if he wants to change it up “Is this some kind of joke your Honor?” It always involves some screwball defense plan like “God told me to do it,” “the tumor was inhibiting her impulse control,” or “before I sawed that guy in half he said he wouldn’t press charges.” By the way, the first two have actually been used in the show. The point is they spend all their time in the courtroom which means they don’t spend their time out on the street with…you guessed it, Jerry Orbach. Who is the man? That’s right. Jerry Orbach.


If you understood 3 or more of the five poorly articulated jokes on this list it means you need to stop watching Law and Order and get a job.

Deadly Game: Job Hunt pt. 1

I would like to usher in my return to blogging by introducing a series called “Deadly Game: The post graduation job hunt.” Within this series you’ll be able to relive every excruciating, demoralizing, emasculating, doubt filled moment of my job hunt as if you were right there with me! Huzzah!

I know, I know, you’re thinking to yourself, “Francis, the horrible state of the economy, the collapsing job market and the general malaise that has spread over the country is nice and everything, but I’m looking for something that’s really depressing. Like ‘wash the sleeping pills down with cyanide’ type of depressing…can you supply that?” Unfortunately I cannot. As a young person with the future ahead of him and a relatively stable home and family life, I can’t provide the kind of pants-crapping terror you’ve become accustomed to. What I can do however, is make you grateful you didn’t decide to hang your hat solely on a BA in English.

So, let’s set up this first little gem with a little background. I’m graduating in August with a BA in English and a Writing Certificate (whatever the hell that means). I am fortunate enough to have a lot of positive influences. My father and sister have taken job finding to the level of art. If only job hunting was a paid profession, I wouldn’t need to worry about money because the family would be loaded. My sister was also kind enough to lend me her mentor, Rich Levin (or as he is known in our house “Saint Rich”), for help as a look through the vast wasteland of the current job market.

Despite this help, and the fact that I have been looking since March, I have yet to come up with a decent job, and I have had only one interview. This is the story of that one “interview.”

I had applied to a bunch of low level marketing jobs through GradStaff. The name sounded promising. I am a grad. I wanted to be on a staff. It felt like a slam dunk. A few of the places responded to my application and I was able to set up an interview with a company called Bald Eagle Marketing. It sounded professional, even patriotic, and so I was optimistic. The interview was 3pm on a Thursday, and as it turned out, the office was based in Wilmington, Delaware. Seeing as I live an hour outside Philadelphia, and I don’t have a car or driver’s license, (That’s right ladies, unemployed college grad with no car or license right here. You can start the line for this sweet piece of ass by my bike with the busted front tire) this posed a scheduling conflict for me.

So, dressed in a stunning suit, I caught the 12 pm train to 30th Street Station. I was supposed to catch a train there that would take me to Wilmington at 1:30. That train was 20 minutes late. No biggie, I had padded my schedule for just such a delay. I get on the train at 1:50 and we go on our merry way. Halfway through our merry way, the train stops and decides it’s done for the day, even though we are still two stops away from Wilmington. It did this at a station stop so 40 minutes after we were supposed to keep moving onto Wilmington I hear this announcement “Yeaahhhhh. So the train is not moving. We called for a SEPTA crew but we don’t know when they’ll be arriving or how long it will take them to fix it. So this train is done…yeahhh *click*” I get off the train, call the place, tell them I’ll be late and try to find a cab. Apparently though, I was in a no man’s land between PA and Delaware. Delware cabs told me it was illegal to go across the state line, pick me up and go back. Philly cab companies told me I was too far out of the city, and while I was at it I should go screwmyself.

So I waited, and waited, and waited for the next train to come through the station. When I finally reached Wilmington it was 4 pm. I was supposed to arrive at 2:15. I cried a little bit and then caught a cab to the office, which was WAYYYY farther away from the station than I had anticipated. I paid the cabbie the twenty dollars and went in for my interview.

I went into a cold, small office, filled with other applicants. I was told to fill out a form that required me to give info that was on my resume, which they also required me to have, and then I was briskly ushered into an office by a guy named Mike.

Mike seemed like a nice enough guy, but he didn’t exude authority the way you would expect a potential employer to do. Instead he took me into his office which was remarkably even colder than the waiting room and proceeded to read from a script at the speed of light. It was bad enough that he wasn't actually interviewing me; he didn’t even take the time to memorize the description of the mind numbing job he was explaining to me. the whole thing turned out to be a glorified canvassing job, and all that was accomplished was that he scheduled me for another interview with one of their "top reps" to help them with their job on a "training day", which sounded suspiciously like I was giving them a free day of work. I did my best to quell the instinct inside me that made me feel like painting the room in Mike's blood, and ended the interview amicably. I thought the worst was behind me. For the 40th time that day, I was wrong.

When I stepped out of the freezer they called an office into the sweltering heat of the day I realized something very demoralizing. I did not have enough money on me to get a cab back to the station and still afford the train ride home. So I walked. Three and a half miles down a highway with no shade or sidewalk. In a suit. A stunning suit, but a suit nonetheless. I spent most of that time cursing. Not at anyone or anything in particular, but I thought maybe a constant string of obscenities would make me feel better. If I had to guess, I think it just made me look crazier to all the people passing by in their cars.

When I finally dragged my sweaty ass up the stairs into Wilmington station I saw that my train back to Philly was 20 minutes late. Everything went white after that as an endless river of profanity flowed from me but when I came to I was on the train. With my day closing I called my housemate in Philly and asked him to pick me up from the train station. I realized our lease was up in two days and he would most likely be packing or moving his stuff, so I was thrilled when he picked up the phone and agreed.

Twenty minutes before my train arrived (horrible things happened every twenty minutes this day for some reason) I got a text from my housemate that read “Yo bro, sorry but I’m going to take a nap.” To which I could only reply “Seriously?” So once again, I walked.

When I reached my house, with blistered heels, chafed inner thighs and all, I walked into to find a sight that I can only describe as…frustrating. My jobless roommate, with no schoolwork to do, was sleeping on the couch in front of the T.V. in a house that had not one single item packed up and ready to move. As I looked down on his sleeping peaceful body a profound thought crossed my mind: “I could kill him right now, put his body outside, and no one would finger me for it.” Ultimately though, I decided against it as it might hurt my job search even more if I was charged with 2nd degree murder. That lucky bastard.

Don't Quote me on this...

I love quotes. Like a man loves a woman, a dog loves his master, or Donald Trump loves himself. They can be anything and everything. They are rallying cries, teaching tools, time capsules, prophecies. They can be funny, inspiring, sobering, and even tragic. Quotes tell you a lot about the people who said them, and tell you even more about the people who use them in arguments. I’ve always wanted to be quoted because it seems like the most concrete indication that you were prominent and your opinion was valued for posterity. I tried to write my own quotes when I was younger (12) and I have to be honest, things didn’t work out the way I hoped. I wasn’t aware that before you actually do anything of importance, people don’t give a shit what you have to say. This is especially true when you don’t even have peach fuzz on your balls yet. A tremulous, breaking teenage voice emanating from a hairless prepubescent doesn’t command the kind of respect you think it would. As a result, I gave up on my dream of being a Professional Quote writer. I gave in to all the naysayers who told me “that job doesn’t even exist.” Truly, it stands as one of my life’s greatest regrets.

I intend to change that here by rolling out some of the gems that have come to me over the years. If you like them, tell me. If you don’t keep your stupid opinion to yourself you son of a bitch…

I am going for a kind of Socratic wisdom mixed with some Napoleonic arrogance, and some Kierkegaard (I have no idea what that means but smart people frequently reference Kierkegaard in conversation).

“Life is like a roller coaster. Its very scary, and sometimes you soil yourself.”

“Strip clubs are stupid. Why pay 60 dollars for an erection when you wake up with one every morning for free?”

“There is no such thing as doggie heaven. Only doggie hell.”

“When God shuts a door He opens a window. Unfortunately that window is four stories up.”

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. Oddly enough, Success and foolish optimism are one in the same.”

“Before you give way to anger ask yourself a simple question: Can I take this guy?”

“Crime doesn’t pay. Unless you factor in all the money. Then it looks pretty alluring.”

“A cynic always looks like a douchebag until it turns out he’s right. Then he looks like a pompous douchebag.”

“If women ran the world there would be no threat of nuclear war 25 days out of the month.”

“I’m fine with men and women being equals, but women could probably do a lot better.”

(See how I balanced that out? Eh?)

“There is no such a thing as a completely level playing field. If there was everything would end up as a tie.”

“We’ve all made mistakes…but none as colossal as that one you made that summer when you were a kid. You know the one I’m talking about you sick bastard.”

I am going to end with one of my favorite quotes. Its not mine, but that’s the point.

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
- Anonymous
(Didn’t seem to work for this guy)

This Week in Feminism...and Poker?

A few days ago I happened to be leafing through the Sports Illustrated 2009 Swimsuit issue (there are some really compelling articles this year) and I came across a two page advertisement for PokerStars.net. The page on the right was a beautiful woman looking like a hardened Poker junkie with PokerStars attire on with “Strength is Measured in Chips” in bold font above her. Okay, so far so good. Then I look to the left and that same beautiful woman is in a swimsuit, standing in a body of water teeming with sharks. Below her is an interview, and above her is the caption “Swimming with Sharks.”

Well apparently this beautiful woman’s name is Vanessa Rousso (which is odd because in my experience all beautiful women have had the same name: “I’m not interested”), and she is a major poker stud. To top it off, not only is she blessed with defined cheekbones, blonde hair and a statuesque body, she’s also really smart. She received a full scholarship to Duke and graduated in less than three years. I know, what a bitch. Apparently her main course of study was game theory, which allows her to mathematically analyze people’s behavior and has earned her nearly two million in winnings in a few short years.

What pissed me off in this ad wasn’t the poker playing fembot, it was the first line of the interview. “Professional Poker has long been a sport dominated by men. So when Vanessa Rousso came to swim with the sharks, her looks may have thrown the guys off.” I have so many problems with this statement I need a moment to collect myself.

First of all, enough talk about poker as a sport. Yes it requires skill; no it’s not purely a game of chance…I get it. However, chess masters aren’t demanding they get into the Olympics. And you can make fun of ice dancing, or equestrians all you want, but remember that at least their activity requires participants to stand up. I know what you’re thinking: “what about NASCAR?” Let’s make this clear; while I will not watch NASCAR, these guys aren’t just sitting down. If poker players can call somebody’s bluff while doing 220 mph around a turn as fifty other players try to do it too, only faster, then poker requires more skill then racing. At any point during a poker tournament do people crash into each other and burst into flames? I don’t know, I rarely go to poker tournaments.

Secondly, who are these sharks they constantly refer to? I know, I know, its terminology based around the game, but have you seen the guys who play poker for a living? Half of them look like they had to come up from their mother’s basement to take a shower before the tourney. This isn’t Casino Royale, there aren’t billionaire tycoons, secret agents, and criminal masterminds playing for amounts equivalent to the national debt.

Finally, is poker really “dominated by men” or is it dominated by people who like to play poker? There are sports in which gender plays a big part. I have never met a guy who can match the grace, agility, and skill of a female figure skater. They’re better. You know it, I know it, let’s move on. On the other hand, I’ve never met a woman who could hit like Mike Singletary or get off the line like Jared Allen (look on nfl.com if you don’t know these names). To be fair though, I have always attributed the absence of female football players to the fact that women are too smart to play a sport that requires you to run into another person every play.
Saying poker is a sport dominated by men is like saying “knitting is a pastime dominated by women.” Nothing is being dominated, it’s just something a percentage of the female population chooses to do that men typically won’t. If women decide to play poker its not like they’re Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, they’re just sitting at a table with a bunch of guys who probably haven’t dated in awhile. My real beef here is that Vanessa Rousso may be a woman (a gorgeous woman at that), but it doesn’t sound like that’s the thing winning her poker tournaments. It always seems a shame when a fine intellect is reduced to a pretty face.



p.s. : my apologies to whoever wrote that interview, I’m sure you weren’t loading those two sentence with that much meaning.

My Saintly Sister

For a long time, my sister has been a better person than me. I don’t say this in a self deprecating way, she’s better than most people. When she was explaining to the babysitter that our mom did NOT usually give us that much ice cream, I punched her in the face. When I was saying yes to peer pressure, she was deciding which college scholarship would be the best long term move for her. When she was in the church choir at college, I was in the back of a squad car. Needless to say I’ve almost always had an elevated opinion of her. So imagine my surprise and confusion when I went to see her play in Washington D.C. (Hexagon Theatre’s “What So Proudly We Bailed.” All the proceeds went to charity. The theatre was not shaped like a hexagon. Freaking liars) and my saintly sister comes out for a musical number dressed in nothing but a Playboy bunny outfit and a smile. My memory of what happened afterwards is fuzzy, what with the blinding rage and all, but I remember a few specifics.
I’d like to say I briefly considered killing everyone in the theatre who had set eyes upon her, but I have to be honest. I considered it for a LONG time. I considered it in the theatre, I considered it after the show, I even considered it on the car ride back to Philadelphia. I also recall a cat-call coming from the corner of the theatre when she came on stage. My instincts got the better of me and I stood up in my seat, scanning the audience for the source of the noise so I could mute him by punching his mouth through the back of his head. Thankfully my friend Maggio was there with me, and he had the sedatives ready for just such an occasion. I woke up 15 minutes later and enjoyed the rest of show, which I must admit was very funny. It was like the Daily Show, but with music…and an audience composed of liberals age 45-80.
When I got back home and tried to purge the image from my head by dousing my brain with alcohol, I stumbled upon a realization (truth be told, I stumbled on a lot of things that night). What if my sister was as pure and saintly as I imagine her to be? I probably wouldn’t even be able to spend time with her.

Me: Hey Julia, do you want to see a movie?
Julia: Sorry Fran, I have to pray for the poor tonight.

Me: Hey, you wanna’ grab a bite?
Julia: Not when so many around the word are wanting…

Me: Are you going to be around tomorrow?
Julia: No, I have to martyr myself for the betterment of humanity.

Sufficed to say, it would be a drag. So it occurred to me, maybe I don’t need a saint for a sister. I’ll settle for a good person. And I can rest easy in the knowledge that despite the fact she’s not a saint, she is still better than the rest of us.

The Most Existential Post Ever

I wrote it here. You read it here. Neither one of us was actually here.







Did I just blow your mind dude?









Wait! Don't go yet! I didnt mean it, there's more to the post!

This was all meant to illustrate a point. That point is the frequency with which young drug users are fed misinformation, which they then carry with them the rest of their life. Having formerly been (emphasis on formerly) a card-carrying member of the college/drug counterculture, I can tell you that despite the fact that a stoner will refer to existentialism about twenty times during a conversation, he/she will have no idea what it means. One might think this is an isolated problem, but people are overlooking the drug-induced, faux-intellectual epidemic sweeping our country’s youth.
Before we go on lets clarify one or two things about the drug community. Having not dealt with them personally, I have to exclude injection drug users and pill community from our conversation. Sorry guys, keep reading though. My next post is probably going to be on the importance of sterilized needles and what to do when you’re caught at a rave with no pacifier. Moving on. As I see it, there are three major branches of the stoner community that most people will fit into.
1) The College Stoner – Didn’t smoke before college, won’t smoke after college. However during college…wooo! These people will smoke anything that happens to be on fire at the time. They aren’t interested in drug culture though and temper their drug abuse with a healthy dose of alcohol abuse. When they get older they’ll get married, have kids, then yell at the kids for smoking pot.
2) The Life-Long Stoner – These people will most likely be buried in a casket made of hemp. They started smoking before freshmen year in high school and haven’t looked back since. You can tell these people apart from most because they are skinny, wear clothes that smell like if Petuli and weed had a baby, don scraggly facial hair (if male), there is a 60% chance they have dreadlocks and they are in the process of handing you a PETA pamphlet. The Life-long stoner has accepted weed not just as a drug but as a lifestyle, and will probably end up owning some property in Vermont, selling homemade crafts (candles, preserves, wood-carvings) to yuppies at craft fairs.
3) The “Learned” Stoner – This is the problem group that’s disseminating misinformation across an impressionable young stoner community. These are people who consciously decide to mix a mind-numbing drug and dense scholarly material. They started smoking pot to gain a measure of individualism, but still wanted to believe they were better than most people. At some point in their college career they’ll talk about expatriating to France because of America’s “moralistic hegemony,” but won’t because they don’t speak French and are cowards. The Learned Stoner has never played a sport for more than a year but has no problem labeling everyone that enjoys sports as plebeians. Their greatest crime however is their abuse of knowledge. They’ll pick up the works of Kant, Kafka, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard without a teacher to guide them and try to interpret it through their juvenile, drug-addled mind. You might ask, “Why do you hate this group so much?” My answer is simple. They enjoy the idea of being intelligent more than they enjoy actual intelligence. That and they frequently misquote Voltaire. Voltaire deserves better than these douche bags.
Perhaps the best argument against weed is that it will bring your children in contact with group 3. However, I still hold strong to my belief that the most harmful substance in this world is ignorance. Keep your kids ignorance free or they might grow up one day and vote for someone like George W. Bush