Blog guilt

I should blog tonight.

But I don't want to.

So there.

When hipsters congregate...

The venue, a converted church. On the stage, a pair of overly-earnest music students taking down the classics with piano and violin. The crowd, hipsters of all sorts (both), waiting inattentively for the arrival of the main act and the subsequent banishment of these cultured types. They shift. They whisper. They escape to the lobby for the requisite drinks. A few especially rude souls commence with the blogging via their hipster phones.

The classical girls finish! Massive applause for the end! But wait, it's only the beginning. One unidentifiable song bleeds into another as the IT workers and waitresses-but-really-I-act begin to resemble more and more the pre-schoolers they are at heart. As the "adult" standing to the side shakes his head in disgust, the hipsters save seats for their friends and slurp over-priced cocktails through straws.

More applause. It sounds sincere, if you don't notice the faces. Not a smile to be seen, except on the faces of the people whispering to their friends.

How long until the hipster singer-songwriter takes the stage? How much more of this actual culture must we put up with before the arrival of the culture we accept? Why do we need this? How many of us will feel validated tomorrow, telling our friends about the formerly-religious venue? The quirky and oh-so-cool mixing of classical and rock IN ONE EVENT?

And how many will just be hungover?

Cats

They're out to get us, you know.

My rubber ducky disapproves.

Sometimes it's weird to think that the whole world isn't in my head. I don't mean that in a sociopathic, "only I exist" kind of way. It just surprises me sometimes when I surprise anyone. I mean, it should be obvious? It was all obvious to me!

But if I could remember that you're all not in my head, I'd probably be less surprised by the people who don't make sense. There are so many of them!

It's sad to think that I'll probably never understand them. Most of them, I won't ever even know.

Think about it! A whole world of people that I will never know. Plus all the people who used to live in the world. I'll never know them either.

We're all missing so much of each other.

But maybe someday there will be a party! Even if it's just in my head.

Is it time to stop crying now?

Sometimes life is hard. Really, really, really hard. I don't like that. Not one bit.

People say that it's the hard times that create character, that make you what you are. Whatever. I would be willing to be a characterless blob, if it meant that I didn't have to deal with the crap that life likes to throw at you.

And the really horrible part? Things aren't that bad right now.

I've got my health. The people in my life are more or less OK. I'm about to finish my seemingly neverending education. I've been successful. Some people think I'm smart.

But man it's tough.

For one thing, my life is changing. No more school. Back out into that "real world" place people keep talking about. And, suddenly, there's just not very much in that real world. There used to be jobs. Money! Now, there only seem to be a lot of people looking for those things.

Am I going to be one of them? How do I do that exactly?

I have to face the ramifications of 6 years in grad school now. Will anyone ever see me as a prospective hire? Will the PhD label make me an undesirable? I've heard that happens. Even if I do get hired by someone, somewhere, will I be able to pay off that debt? Because it's awfully monstrous at the moment.

These are problems. Tough problems. Problems that are not helped by that dissertation that still hangs over my head.

Still, it's not the problems that are the only problem. The really tough part about these hard times is that my supports have been disappearing on me.

Don't get me wrong. I still have family. I still have friends. The missing supports are not those old standbys. Instead, they're my silly internet supports. My favorite band. The message board that's been my virtual home for almost 3 years now.

The band went and broke up a few weeks back. I suppose technically they didn't "break up" in the classic sense. But the lead singer left, and now the band is different. They might be good, but they're not what I've been relying on for entertainment.

This is hardly the end of the world. It's just that I suddenly don't have concerts to look forward to. It's that I always have an underlying feeling of dread when I look them up on the web now. It's that I sometimes stay away from fan message boards, not wanting to read about what's happened.

And then there are those message boards. One in particular. Technically, a fan board too. But really, it's more like a place for friends. A place where I could always be sure of a laugh. A place where I could find people who liked me, people who admired me, and people who I liked and admired in turn.

This morning, however, it was gone. Suddenly. No warning. Just gone. Probably for good. Everything that we had there is gone. All those friends, all those laughs, gone. Not for any good reason, either. Just gone.

I can be angry. I have people to blame. I can be proactive about this -- helping to set up a new board, contacting those responsible, moving on with my life. I can do all of these things.

But mostly, I just want to stop crying.

Thoughts on Exhaustion

I should go to bed now.

An Open Letter to Those Who Should Hire Me

When applying for a job, conventional wisdom has it that one must write a kick-ass cover letter, should one actually want to get hired. This is especially important for people, like myself, whose resumes do not immediately indicate how they might be qualified or why they'd even want the job.

So I need to write a cover letter. What follows is the cover letter I want to write. I doubt it's the cover letter I will write, since one must follow convention, even when one is, by applying to that job in the first place, punching convention in the face. Thus, this particular cover letter will remain here, in its virtual home, in the vain hope that someone with a job might stumble across it and take pity on the poor fool who wrote it.

It could happen, right? Sure... Anyway, the letter.


March 11, 2009
Dear Really Important Hiring Person at the Coolest TV Show on the Planet,

HIRE ME!!!

Please, please, please, please, please, please, please! Pretty please! With cream and sugar on top! Please, I beg of you! Don't let my lofty dreams crumble into dust!

What do I bring to the table of your show? Creativity! Dedication! Loads of skills! Punctuality! Enthusiasm! (Unless that irritates you, in which case I can totally tone it down. Just delete all those exclamations and we're good.)

Thing is, you should hire me. Yes, I have a skill-set not immediately applicable to the television industry. Yes, that skill-set indicates that, even if it were applicable to the television industry, I'd be way over-qualified.

But it's not. And I'm not.

I could totally do the television thing. All of that serious historical research into medieval Arabic texts and the star knowledge of Tunisian fisherman? Transferable! Just substitute "your show's production needs" for "medieval Arabic texts." And "applicable background research" for "star knowledge." And "awesome producer-types" for "Tunisian fishermen." Oh, and drop the "historical" altogether, OK? It could work!

As for the over-qualified thing, I'm not. I'm so not. Seriously not. I mean, I've been a grad student for the past 6 years. Before that, I was in the Peace Corps. We're talking glorified slave-labor here. How would that over-qualify me for anything? And, if we're going to be honest, I'd do pretty much anything to work on your show. Get coffee. Run photocopies. Shine your shoes (actually this last one isn't such a good idea -- I'm guessing that the tragic, yet hilarious, mishap that would befall your shoes within mere seconds of me being handed the polish would result in my termination). What I'm saying here is that you really don't have a job that's beneath me.

So hire me, OK? Like now. Or soon. Because I need a job. And you need me. Honestly.

In Desperation,
Laurel Brown

Why I Will Be Unemployed Until the End of Time

I set up my very first informational interview about trying to get a job writing for TV today.

I had planned to wear my black slacks, because otherwise I pretty much have jeans. So of course the pants were wrinkled. Which I figured out AFTER I put them on and was about to walk out the door. I hastily ripped them off and attempted to iron the stupid things. On the floor. Which I haven't swept in roughly 18 million months. Thus, after I ironed the pants, I had to lint-roll them. Lint-rolling reintroduced wrinkles. But I was so late at this point that I put on the pants and my shoes to go.

So, my shoes. I noticed yesterday that my normal shoes were starting to look a little scuffed. Fortunately, I had another pair of shoes that looked to be in better shape. At least they looked in better shape in the flourescent lighting of my bedroom. Out in the light of day, I was dismayed to find them equally scuffed. If not more so. Plus, these particular shoes highlighted the fact that my nice black pants had apparently shrunk a bit in the wash. Where once they had reached the tops of my shoes, they now stopped just above the ankles.

But, like I said, I was late. So I went with it.

I couldn't even go directly to the coffee shop wherein this interview was to take place. Oh no, that would be too easy! Actually, it wouldn't be easy at all, since I had no money. The bank, where the money is, was five minutes out of the way. Since I was already five minutes late, this added a fun new dimension to my day! Fortunately, for the first time in the history of the universe, my beloved WaMu cash machine ACTUALLY HAD CASH ON A SUNDAY. Seriously, this has never happened before. I was fully expecting to have to go to another bank and suck up the many dollars of extra charges they would impose on poor little me. But something worked out! Yay!

Eventually, I arrived at the coffee shop in question. And it was only a block away from the address I gave my interviewee! (Never, ever trust Mapquest when giving directions to important people) At least I had gotten the name of the coffee shop right...

Since I was a little late at this point, I figured my interviewee might be inside. He wasn't. But approximately 4/5 of the population of the Upper West Side were in there instead. Took me three minutes to even get in the door to ascertain that not only were there no tables, there would probably not be any tables available before about 3 PM the next day.

I went back outside, where I realized that I might not actually recognize my interviewee. I then spent a fun 15 minutes staring intently at every male between the ages of 18 and 50 who had the misfortune of walking past. My interviewee was none of these men. He was instead, at that time, stuck on a dead train. It's the weekend, after all, so who needs public transportation to actually transport?

Thanks to the wonders of mobile phone technology, I did soon learn about the dead train and its deletorious effects on my meeting schedule. Yay for being a grad student who rarely has to be anywhere else -- I could wait some more!

While I waited, a colleague from my department spotted me from the sea of occupied tables and offered me a seat. Upon my news that I was waiting for someone, he shared some news of his own: he'd found a job. Kind of the ideal professor job -- teaching in his field, in a tenure-track position, at freakin' McGill University. Despite my desperate not-wanting to be a professor, I had to restrain myself from throttling the lucky bastard. I went with congratulations instead.

My interviewee, despite the best efforts of the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, did eventually show up. He did not seem particularly impressed with my choice of a coffee shop. Probably because he preferred establishments with enough room to actually sit. Some people are just so picky...

We decided to leave the shop that we could not enter. The interviewee indicated at this point that he hadn't actually taken nourishment (probably due to his unexpected confinement under the streets of New York) that day and would greatly appreciate a restaurant that had food.
You'd think that wouldn't be a problem. This is Manhattan, after all! There's a restaurant approximately every five feet! Except that apparently the restaurants in this neighborhood don't serve food between 3 and 5 PM on Sundays. Just for the hell of it, I guess, since the restaurant we tried was at least 3/4 full, despite having no food.

They suggested the coffee shop/swanky bar two doors down. I'd been there before, but only for pretentious and overpriced late-night drinks. But I knew they had coffee and brunch during the day. Brunch food worked for my interviewee, who expressed an interest in French toast. We even found seats after about five minutes of being ignored by the Worst Waiter Ever.

Granted, our seats were under the DJ. Seriously. UNDER the DJ. Because what self-respecting coffee shop doesn't have a DJ? The DJ in question was of course having a shouted conversation with another guy, who was standing next to us.

No matter. On to the interview! In which I was pretty much informed that I was totally not on the right path to become a successful writer in television. And that, if I were extremely lucky, I might just get a job as a production assistant, where I could fetch coffee and suck up in the desperate hope that a higher-up might take pity on me and consider my existence to be worthwhile.

Whatever.

Our food came! Well, my interviewee's food came. As did my chai. Now, I mentioned before that my interviewee wanted French toast. He found French toast on the menu. He ordered French toast. He got... ummmm... Something that resembled a chopped up and reformed muffin, with a pat of butter placed in its center. Drowned in a white sauce with black specks. Plus two artful dabs of a red gelatinous globs on the side.

This food-substance was placed on our table without a word from the Worst Waiter Ever. When we asked him what the food was, he condescended to inform us that it was the French toast. My interviewee requested some syrup. Actual quote from the Worst Waiter Ever: "We don't have syrup here."

Since he was feeling akin to a famine victim at this point, my interviewee proceeded to eat the food-substance, even having a go at the gelatinous red globs, once we had agreed that they were probably jam. The interview proceeded apace, with me learning that my interviewee had actually met this one person who one time actually managed to work their way up to being a writer after years and years of work at their production. (As far as I could tell, the other writers had sprung fully-formed from the head of Zeus.)

After about 45 minutes, we decided that we'd had enough of loudly-conversing DJs, gelatinous red globs, and my inane interview questions. Only about a dozen attempts were required to wave down the Worst Waiter Ever, who eventually brought the check, stopping only to give change to a homeless woman on his way to our table.

For your future dining reference, the food-substance with gelatinous red blobs costs $11.50. Plus the pre-added tip for the Worst Waiter Ever.

My interviewee and I said good-bye on amicable terms, despite his being ruined for all French toast in the future. He even said I could e-mail any further questions (presumably this was to stop me from ever suggesting more meetings in coffee shops).

He left to attempt a successful return trip on the subway. I left to walk home and ponder whether or not this afternoon foreshadowed a certain level of catastrophic failure in my career plans.

Then it started to rain.