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CareerBuilder Can Blow Me

Just when I thought job hunting advice could not possibly become anymore ridiculous comical nonsensical bizarrely, astonishingly, breathtakingly, frelling STUPID,  CareerBuilder published an article today entitled, Is To Whom It May Concern the Kiss of Death?

LMAO.  I have to seriously wonder what kind of weed Rachel Zupek now Farrell was smoking when she wrote the piece because clearly, it wasn’t quality stuff or else she would know what any stoner, or, for that matter, what anyone who has ever had to look for a job already does.

Hey Rachel?  Listen babe,  maybe you  previously worked in an HR Department (this would explain your cluelessness); or maybe you are simply a freshly minted college grad, and, Uncle Richie knew the hiring manager at the company and, that’s how you got your first job EVAH.  But I have to tell you that dispensing the kind of idiotic guidance you did today with your bitchin’, 1980 Way Back Advice Generator Device to job seekers facing double digit national unemployment numbers was like showing up to an Obama rally dressed in your best Klan linen.  You were lucky all you received was a civilized lambasting. What you deserved was to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

If you are surprised by the thorough thrashing that was administered by the majority of comments to your article, then you really ought to rethink the whole career advice giving gig; it’s not your thing.  At all.  Seriously.  Pull your head out of your ass.  You’re embarrassing Uncle Richie.

No HR Department and/or hiring manager gives a good shit about what the salutation in a cover letter is or is not these days because for every single job that is even available, there is a herd of applicants lined up around a city block waiting for it.

An applicant can address the cover letter to Dear Ass Muncher, and, the company would never notice it because that isn’t what gets the eyeball time or even the interview.  If you had any real world job hunting experience whatsoever, (and after this particular column, I have to believe that you do not) you would know that generating an interview is approximately 50% luck with a fair smattering of equal parts buzzwords, salary history and who the applicant blows knows at the company.   If you don’t have any luck, buzzword inclusion, the proper low-balled salary or a point of contact (like say an Uncle Richie who knows the hiring manager) then yer shit outta luck, as my Gramma used to say.

They don’t want you calling for the name of the hiring manager, the HR Department contact or ANYBODY in the friggen company.  THAT’s why it wasn’t included in the ad in the first place, you silly twat.

The person who placed the ad wasn’t being cute, coy or mysterious.  They were instructed not to include anything above or beyond what they did because the company does not want job seekers to know who the hell will be looking at the thousands upon thousands of resumes from college graduates that will be submitted for the part-time job scrubbing the toilets in the head.  There aren’t enough permanent, full-time employees left to answer all the phone calls asking about the job because they’ve all been pink slipped.  If you didn’t have your head wedged quite so far up between your cheeks then you’d know all this, darlin’.

People who write advice columns for a living like Rachel Zupek probably never had to experience a serious job hunt and that’s why she pulls her recommendations out of her ass.  But I would submit to all the job counselor shitheads living in their ivory towers made of HR fluff and bullshit that before they write an article instructing others how to look for a job, that they first do it themselves following their own polished turds of advice.  Then they can report back to the rest of us with the quantified and qualified results.

Update (2013-07-25)

Well, it has only taken Ms. Zupek three (3) years to come back with what she (and her readers) evidently imagine is a witty retort – better late than never, eh Rache?

Oh and by the by, a big thanks for all the extra traffic.  You’re a peach for being so thoughtful.

Excuse Me Waiter?

Mission Viejo, CA resident, Phil Hodousek, was surprised to find a condom in his mouth one, sunny Sunday during brunch at Claim Jumper with his family.

In a complaint filed with the Orange County Superior Court, Mr. Hodousek says he ordered a bowl of french onion soup as an appetizer and shortly after he began eating it, thought he felt a piece of cheese on the side of his mouth. When he couldn’t chew it into pieces, he spit the cheese into a napkin, and, upon closer inspection, realized it was a condom.

Upon having been notified of the incident, Claim Jumper management told him that the item was a rubber glove used by the kitchen prep crew, but Hodousek says it was clearly a condom.

Hodousek has since had the condom tested by a lab and the results have revealed the presence of female DNA.

According to the court docket, a Case Management Conference has been set for January 4, 2010.

Good luck to Mr. Hodousek with his lawsuit.

It will be a frosty day in Hell before I ever eat another meal at a Claim Jumper restaurant.

Popular Culture Fetishisms 101

Furries

Over the holiday, I became aware of a few new practices that have apparently become sufficiently ubiquitous for the producers of the CSI crime dramas to have included them as storylines.

The first proclivity is called “furries,” and, while the Urban Dictionary currently includes several similar definitions, the word used as a noun means fans of anthropomorphic animals. Examples include Jar-Jar Binks, the car insurance lizard, and Sonic the Hedgehog.

The Dictionary then goes on to further describe the word. Used as a verb, “furries” means people who like to dress up as anthropomorphic animals and have sex with each other. That’s a new one on me, but hey, provided the activity occurs between consenting adults, whatever floats yer bobber, I suppose. Who am I to villanize the furverts of the world?

Sloshing

The Dictionary has a few different definitions of sloshing, but essentially it means the act of having sex with your favorite foods. I think we’ve seen an earlier version of this one before back in the 80s.

The act itself was more of a unilateral than bilateral event. After all, the only one we saw being massaged with honey and other miscellaneous sweets was Kim Basinger. We never saw Kim’s character in the movie treat Mickey Rourke to a habanero in any of his orifices. Mickey did all of the doing there was to be done.

I am reminded, specifically, of a particular segment from the film that I have not been able to find on the web, otherwise, would have included for your enjoyment. It was the one scene that basically sold the movie to audiences and involved a scarf, an ice cube, and a naked boob. During the years following the movie, we were treated to various images of the famous ice cube shot in everything from adverts for booze up to and including a mini-segment on The Sopranos between Meadow and her boyfriend Finn. (Season 5, episode 8, for anyone who wants to see it.)

I don’t really have much of an opinion for or against either predilection, but I do, however, think that the latter is a lot more fun than the former. Maybe it’s because when I was growing up, there was a lot less anthropomorphic animal images available than there was for the current crop of twenty-something furries practitioners.

Gen Xers like myself had the old Loony Toons Bugs Bunny cartoons, and, a handful of other notables, however, absolutely none of them were considered, nor meant to be sexy. That meant a lot less animated material available for spanking the monkey. And by the time softcore, animated quasi-porn came along such as the Thunder Cats, I was already in HS and far advanced from the informative years the Echo Boomers were just commencing.

©2009 Peyton Farquhar™ and Prattle On, Boyo™. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Peyton Farquhar and Prattle On, Boyo with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Day After

Black Friday. No other concept seems to be more ridiculous or emblematic of contemporary American society. Whether it’s good or bad depends on which side of the sales counter you’re standing. But we’ll get to that in a sec.

Historically, the words, “black Friday” used to mean exclusively the Wall Street Crash of 1929. But during the eighty (80) year stretch that has gone by since, the American economy has experienced numerous crashes and panics to the extent where we don’t even think about it anymore. We just deal as we are dealing now and the bailouts keep onnnnn coming.

Boom and bust cycles have been engineered by design into our economy by the creation of two financial institutions that are neither public nor part of the federal government, but whose names include the word “federal” in order to hoodwink the uninformed American taxpayer into thinking they are.

I’m referring to, of course, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, better known as the Fed and the FDIC. Two privately held entities that our economy lives or dies by. Currently, it’s dying. The economy, that is. For those of us that don’t make a living as an executive officer in either the banking or automotive industries, there will be no million dollar bonus in our Christmas stockings.

GM and the “too big to fail” bankers Goldman Sachs et al. are doing just fine thanks to the great taxpayer sponsored bailout of 2008. This round of corporate welfare currently comes in at $700 billion and counting, but it could end up costing us as much as $2 trillion.

But don’t take my word for it. If you want a fascinating explanation of the current manufactured fiscal crises and how we got here, then I highly recommend you read Bailout Nation and The Creature from Jekyll Island.

Upon reading these books, you’ll laugh (Like a lunatic in desperate need of thorazine.) You’ll flatulate. Your eyeballs will hemorrhage and pop out of your sockets. Your anal sphincter will pucker. You may even experience simultaneous explosive diarrhea and vomiting. But most of all, you will weep. Uncontrollably. And not even the FDA and CDC approved scam that is known as the swine flu vaccination will help you.

But returning to our topic, Black Friday now simply means this:

And this –

And this.

Personally, I am unable to think of anything more farcical and absurd than standing on a long ass line during the ass crack of dawn in 20°F (-7°C) for a freakin’ X-box or some other item whose availability was deliberately held back so as to create demand and justify jacking up the price tag.

If the average American had a firm grasp of the concept of supply and demand instead of spend and charge it, then those of us who have to work for a living would probably have a hell of a lot better representation in both Houses of Congress. As it currently stands, we’ve got a two party system whose members are indistinguishable from each other on either side and who represent the highest bidder.

It’s ironic. The governments of other developed nations are afraid of pissing off the voters because they fear the people. But instead of holding the “leaders” accountable for their actions, we here in the good, ol’ U.S. of A. go shopping.

I will be spending Black Friday as I usually do. On the couch leaning against my comfy backrest pillow with a good book and/or watching the boys, and, otherwise letting the rest of yooze fight it out amidst the aisles and pallets filled with Chinese manufactured junk at the local crapmart.

Enjoy! I’ll be thinkin’ ’bout ‘cha.

NB: Watch out for the dude who just took a dump in the water fountain.

Sing it, Chrissie.

©2009 Peyton Farquhar™ and Prattle On, Boyo™. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Peyton Farquhar and Prattle On, Boyo with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Caller ID Blues

Click to enlarge.

Is it just me or does it drive you as batshit crazy when someone rings your line with a blocked number, gets the voicemail, but doesn’t bother to leave a message?

I have a policy – I don’t take live calls from blocked numbers. Period.

The only exemption is if I know in advance that you have a blocked number and that you’ll be ringing the phone. Case in point: I have a friend with a private number and when the caller ID displays “private,” I know it’s usually a legit call. There is the occasional exception, but all these other chuckleheads who call up with “unavailable” displayed on the phone’s L.E.D.? Fahgetaboutit.

The reason I have an unpublished number and caller ID is so that I can avoid the likes of undesirable sales types phoning to waste my time, and, “unavailable” is inevitably what they ring up as. Ironic, isn’t it? They don’t want to reveal their ID, but yet assume their recipients will take the call because why?

Note to all the folks out there with the “unavailable” numbers – I’m probably not the only person on the planet who doesn’t answer blocked numbers, so, no dice, pal. Either unblock your number OR at the very least, if the option exists, then speak your name when the automaton prompts you to ID yourself. If you’re not willing to do either, then I guess what you’re calling about isn’t all that important.

Clueless in Orange County

Click to enlarge.

So I received a response from one of the recipients I sent my discovery request to in my traffic citation case. You remember, the same organization the traffic court told me was in charge of prosecuting the case?

Hold up a sec. I have to settle myself down a bit before I can continue.

Alright. I’m slightly more composed now. I was on the floor laughing uncontrollably because a sheriff’s department clerk called me to ask for…

You know something? I’m not quite sure and neither was the clerk.

Best I can derive upon attempting to pull away from the clerk’s mouth the tangled morass of English language confusion is that the OCSD wants a copy of my citation.

Wait. One of their officers wrote it, and now they want a copy?

So, essentially, I am being asked to bear witness against myself and GIVE THEM the evidence with which to prosecute me. The same evidence that their own agent originally issued and then, apparently, lost.

What else am I to derive from a clerk who calls me asking for a copy of the citation?

As much as I would like to help out, I’m gonna pass. Because if the sheriff’s department lost THEIR copy of the citation that THEIR OWN officer wrote, then I don’t know how else to put this except:

Too bad, so sad. Not my problem. This is a discovery request, not a discovery call me up and ask me for your evidence because your officer lost his copy.

I’m not an officer of the court, but I distinctly remember a coupla, maybe three Criminal and Con Law classes mentioning something about not being compelled to testify against oneself.

Yes, I’m quite certain I read that somewhere.

Right. Here it is. It’s part of that thing we call the Bill of Rights. Some moldy, old document full of legalese that nobody but lawyers read anymore.

Specifically, the Fifth Amendment states in pertinent part:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Food For Thought

Can we infer that the officer in question, since he may not have kept his copy of the citation that he issued perhaps may also not even have -in his wildest imagination- EVER had to appear in traffic court to testify against a defendant because the citizen fought the ticket and forced the D.A. to prove each and every element of their case?

Naw, couldn’t be. These are Official People we’re talking about here, not the Keystone Kops. And a law enforcement agency tasked with keeping our streets and byways safe from traffic scofflaws such as myself would surely make it a point to keep their official records handy in the event that one of the scofflaws would maybe submit a discovery request for copies of all of their evidence they have against the defendant in which to prosecute the case.

Wouldn’t they?

I’ll let you decide for yourselves as to how on-the-ball these folks are. I’m still pondering that one. May take me awhile…

I think I’ve decided.