“He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth, partly fiction.” - Kris Kristofferson describing his neighbour, Yogrish the Pilgrim
“It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think I'm wrong. The number of people who thought Hitler was right did not make him right. Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?” - Frank Zappa, quoted from The Real Frank Zappa Book
Hello friends and that dear, loyal reader. Hey, check this out: I don’t have a lot of leisure time to dedicate to this week’s column. Actually, this week, this missive shall be referred to as a ‘blog’ for no significant reason other than I can use this term to pad my resume. I am now a published blogger, not to be confused with a logger, a term which sounds similar, but is a very different profession.
Hello friends and that dear, loyal reader. Hey, check this out: I don’t have a lot of leisure time to dedicate to this week’s column. Actually, this week, this missive shall be referred to as a ‘blog’ for no significant reason other than I can use this term to pad my resume. I am now a published blogger, not to be confused with a logger, a term which sounds similar, but is a very different profession.
I’m currently looking for a job, and I seem to be in pretty good company. I am not serious about the blogger thing though. Misrepresenting myself on paper is more than a little pointless. To brush up on my job-seeking skills I have been applying for about sixteen jobs a day - from fitness trainer to bush pilot, and everything in between. But today’s workforce has shape-shifted - the rules have changed with the internet and globalization of the economy, forever altering the way people search for work, and the lengths people will go to get a job. If there’s not a job out there, I say make one and cross your fingers. I have just applied for small business funding to open my own wrestling school. I don’t know how to wrestle, but for three hundred dollars I will let you pick me up, spin me around a few times then body slam me through a glass coffee table. Included with the price of tuition: a juice box and sandwich. Or, maybe I can teach Hungarian? They say it’s nice this time of year on Jupiter. Maybe there are more employment opportunities out there.
I’ve been skimming through Craig’s List but it seems easier to deal in the flesh trade than to actually find a legitimate writing job. Work from home, you say? Xanadu! A few years ago I fell for a freelance writing scam that involved churning out mindless articles for anonymous web pages. These marketing agencies are by some referred to as ‘writing mills’ - and if you can imagine a dank Dickensian boiler room stuffed full of chain-smoking, speed-fed grinder-monkeys hammering away blindly on cracked, oil-smudged keyboards, collectively worked up to some psychotic frenzy, for nineteen hours a day, you have, in my moronic view, what amounts to a modern day writing mill (except the boiler room is now virtual, and there is no smoking within nine metres of the entrance). Maybe it’s time for a career change.So, what else is out there? Of course, I need theme music while I orchestrate my rise from the ashes. I can’t deal with absolute quiet – never could – absolute silence rattles me absolutely - my mind races and I tend to panic. So with Grooveshark.com stacked up nicely, I sit here with Freddie Mercury and his fellow Queens singing their praises for Mustapha and all that jazz.
Maybe I should become an ophthalmologist or a proctologist, or any profession that ends in ‘ologist’. Hey, quick sidebar - I recently had a casual conversation with a noted psychiatrist. And do you know what the weird thing was? Well, of course not, how could you? The crux is that for a book smart professional making a ton of cash dissecting the human psyche, he did not seem very perceptive. Go figure. Okay, at the time of this writing it’s Good Friday, which if my limited Catholic understanding is correct, may not have been that good for everyone. I’ll have to reference this later. But for now, it’s back to work finding work. Back to the grind and all that. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and feed him and his family for a lifetime. I never could fish. A few summers ago, like Huck Finn, I did sit on a bridge with my jeans rolled up doffing a straw hat while chewing on a blade of grass, but instead of gripping a fishing pole I held The Real Frank Zappa Book, re-reading it for the millionth time while both my kids fished. Shannon, my son, hooked one through the eye. I don’t know what kind of fish it was. I am reasonably sure it was not a fancy marlin or an Atlantic tuna. Maybe it was a trout? Whatever species of fish it was it did not seem comfortable out of the water with a hook in its eye. The whole thing bummed me out. It bummed my son out, and I’m just assuming that the whole episode bummed the fish out. I tried to free it by gently tugging on the hook, but I knew it was not going to end well. What an unfortunate way for a fish to end the day – being snagged in the eye with a barbed hook. Today it’s a weird balmy 28 degrees. Nice enough to go fishing.
For most people the worst thing about being between jobs is that you can’t really consider it time off for good behaviour. One cannot simply rest on past achievements or accolades from John Diefenbaker. When I say ‘one’ I mean ‘me’. And then there’s the whole prickly issue of finances. So I don’t sleep in, nor lounge around in a red 70’s terrycloth robe and booze it up in the sun, smoking big fat cigars while betting on horses, or trying to improve my long division. I don’t update my Facebook profile nor do I sit around reading for long periods of time – these are all luxuries I enjoyed while gainfully employed – luxuries enjoyed while not having to worry about finding a job, which is more time consuming than actually working 9-5.
Maybe I should become an ophthalmologist or a proctologist, or any profession that ends in ‘ologist’. Hey, quick sidebar - I recently had a casual conversation with a noted psychiatrist. And do you know what the weird thing was? Well, of course not, how could you? The crux is that for a book smart professional making a ton of cash dissecting the human psyche, he did not seem very perceptive. Go figure. Okay, at the time of this writing it’s Good Friday, which if my limited Catholic understanding is correct, may not have been that good for everyone. I’ll have to reference this later. But for now, it’s back to work finding work. Back to the grind and all that. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and feed him and his family for a lifetime. I never could fish. A few summers ago, like Huck Finn, I did sit on a bridge with my jeans rolled up doffing a straw hat while chewing on a blade of grass, but instead of gripping a fishing pole I held The Real Frank Zappa Book, re-reading it for the millionth time while both my kids fished. Shannon, my son, hooked one through the eye. I don’t know what kind of fish it was. I am reasonably sure it was not a fancy marlin or an Atlantic tuna. Maybe it was a trout? Whatever species of fish it was it did not seem comfortable out of the water with a hook in its eye. The whole thing bummed me out. It bummed my son out, and I’m just assuming that the whole episode bummed the fish out. I tried to free it by gently tugging on the hook, but I knew it was not going to end well. What an unfortunate way for a fish to end the day – being snagged in the eye with a barbed hook. Today it’s a weird balmy 28 degrees. Nice enough to go fishing.
For most people the worst thing about being between jobs is that you can’t really consider it time off for good behaviour. One cannot simply rest on past achievements or accolades from John Diefenbaker. When I say ‘one’ I mean ‘me’. And then there’s the whole prickly issue of finances. So I don’t sleep in, nor lounge around in a red 70’s terrycloth robe and booze it up in the sun, smoking big fat cigars while betting on horses, or trying to improve my long division. I don’t update my Facebook profile nor do I sit around reading for long periods of time – these are all luxuries I enjoyed while gainfully employed – luxuries enjoyed while not having to worry about finding a job, which is more time consuming than actually working 9-5.
Identity theft seems like a booming business. Hum. But it’s a little shady. If there was a way to somehow legitimize the thievery, could it not end a little better for all parties involved? Maybe instead of waiting for my personal information to be compromised I could get a little proactive and timeshare my identity and credit rating to any interested parties. That way you won’t have to sneak over my shoulder to get my PIN at the ATM, or use one of those fancy skimming machines, or steal my junk mail to open a whack of credit cards. Plus, you’re getting me at a good time between legitimate jobs - my identity for virtually pennies on the dollar
Screw it. Please indulge me for a few minutes. A few years back I witnessed a man with tremendous upper body strength, strictly on some kind of primitive impulse, pick up and literally launch a wooden picnic table one hundred feet onto a pretty unruly bonfire. Not to be outdone, another gentlemen (both strangers to me) decided to take it up a notch by throwing three Muskoka deck chairs and a blue Coleman cooler over six hundred feet onto the blazing pile. A third guy, again, caught up in the infectious heat of the moment, drove his Dodge Neon balls-out into the inferno, parked it, then scrambled out and came to stand beside me, waiting. He quipped: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” which has become a popular refrain recently. I’ll be back shortly. Feel free to do whatever you like to do when you have a few minutes to kill.
Screw it. Please indulge me for a few minutes. A few years back I witnessed a man with tremendous upper body strength, strictly on some kind of primitive impulse, pick up and literally launch a wooden picnic table one hundred feet onto a pretty unruly bonfire. Not to be outdone, another gentlemen (both strangers to me) decided to take it up a notch by throwing three Muskoka deck chairs and a blue Coleman cooler over six hundred feet onto the blazing pile. A third guy, again, caught up in the infectious heat of the moment, drove his Dodge Neon balls-out into the inferno, parked it, then scrambled out and came to stand beside me, waiting. He quipped: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” which has become a popular refrain recently. I’ll be back shortly. Feel free to do whatever you like to do when you have a few minutes to kill.
(Panting) Okay friends. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I’ve just returned from stealing someone’s identity, and although his shoes are too small, I must admit that it’s going pretty good. It was not as difficult as I reckoned. I didn’t even need a balaclava and a pipe. All it took was a brief online tutorial from Youtube. Now I have a brand new name (which I am leery of disclosing at this time), a full head of luscious curly hair, a little over three hundred dollars burning a hole in my pocket, and a new fancy car that gets poor mileage but handles smartly. Granted, his (my) pants are way too big for me. Yes, Virginia, there can be a downside to identity theft. They droop in the ass when I walk, but when I sit on his couch things are pretty much fine. His wife seems pleasant but is surprisingly indifferent. I don’t think she’s noticed yet. Over supper she suggested we attend a revival of Grease starring that sassy Rosie O’Donnell, “in the role she was born to play.” Yikes. I was speechless. She then asked why we no longer communicate like we did when we were first married. Yikes again! I’m not sure what my new wife’s name is as it has yet to come up in natural conversation. After supper we drank a tub of wine while listening to a CD of the Mambo King – Tito Puente, Live at the Copacabana from 1963. My old self always liked mambo music. It’s uplifting. It’s hard to take life too seriously when listening to the mambo – genocide, global doom & gloom, tyranny, treason, high unemployment rates, pestilence, pandemics and Somali piracy, weekend sniper attacks and localized locust swarms do not seem as dire when cloaked by Tito.
“In for a penny, in for a pound.” I think Dr. Oz said this. Or maybe Justin Beiber.
I’m in deep. Since I have now fully committed to ripping off this identity, I am now committed to showing up for his job each day in jeans that droop in the ass. But then I get to change into something. I am now doing very well in the field of internal medicine as a specialty doctor with my own parking spot, iPad and golf membership. Hot damn, I picked a good identity to rip off, regardless of the droopy drawers. I saw a patient today who complained of acute pain when bending his arm, to which I replied without missing a beat: “So, don’t bend your arm, and please stop complaining.” Then I asked him for money. It’s a good gig, and I didn’t have to submit a padded resume, answer any questions about what I thought were my strengths and weaknesses, or where I pictured myself in ten years in order to get hired.
Today I’m living in a well-decorated house of cards. This scheme will surely crumble. But until then I have decided to take a break from the job search for the rest of the week while I give out bad medical advice, work on my slice, buy a belt made from baby seal skin for my droopy drawers, and splurge on possibly a new boat. It’s a brave new world for a guy with a new name and a stellar credit rating (for now).
The preceding cautionary tale was a re-enactment only. No patio furniture or baby seals were torched or harmed in the making of this column.
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