The only job I have managed to land is a part-time job working at retail store for minimum wage. On a rare occasion, I can land a temporary assignment for a day or two making $10.00 an hour. In the meantime, I try to make ends by running a small, socially conscious business. It is a struggle.

I can so feel this job hunter’s pain because I have gone through the exact same thing in my job search. I have an undergraduate degree in liberal arts, more than fifteen years experience in the insurance, banking and financial services industries and skills that are easily transferable to another industry but I can’t buy a ‘real’ job. I’m hard-working, honest and a quick study but have yet to land a job interview. I have at least five versions of my resume but none of them can even get me an interview.

The last interview I had was with a temp agency doing a cattle call for a non-existent job. I was evaluated in a two-minute interview and given a ‘B+’ by an office clerk who, I am sure,  barely got a high school diploma. Needless to say, I have yet to get a job assignment through that agency.

This  ad from Craigslist accurately reflects the frustration that I feel with the current job market and potential employers. As of September 2009, the unemployment rate was 9.5% and in the state I live, it’s expected to reach 11%. I can hardly wait!

Dear employers with job openings,

I just want to take a moment or two to thank all the companies that now only use online applications for the jobs for which I am best qualified. I’m so happy to know that in the past eight years, you have dropped the very impersonal practice of requesting well written resumes (which took the place of having me come into your place of business in person and fill out an application by hand) and now for convenience, give me the opportunity to waste my fucking time trying to guess what it is you want me to write in your online application fields in eight words or less, what work I’ve done that will make you call me for an interview. Because of this new-found simple-mindedness of yours, I can guarantee that you will have the weakest, most uninteresting, unmotivated new-hires EVER!

Because I have had to have more than three jobs in the past eight years, at which I have excelled, some of which I was laid-off from due to down-sizing, and most of which are your competitors in the marketplace, you will never know what I have done because you only allow three previous employers in your simple, automated application program or only want experience from the past five years.

Because I have always been capable of doing more than one thing at a time, you will never know that as a free-lance writer/costume designer/photographer, what I have done Monday through Friday to support myself quite well, thank you, is to be the most efficient, bright, hard-working, easy-going, intelligent and dependable administrative assistant an employer could wish for. But you will never know that because your measly-ass job application program is only looking for words your witless HR staff has programmed it to look for and then spitting out applications by people like myself with a form email thanking me for my interest and wishing me luck.

Thank you also for the Myers-Briggs psychometric type test to see if I actually would be able to sit next to another person and not drive them crazy.

Thank you for sparing me the waste of my time outshining most of your other staff in their presence by having me come in to your office in person, dressed to the nines, flashing my intensely alert eyes at you, and shaking your hand with confidence, yet sensitively. You wouldn’t hire me anyway because I’m probably more interesting than you and therefore a threat.

You have saved me from the humiliation of taking a position with a company that probably has the dullest, most unadventurous, most boring staff that has been hired through this elimination process of an online application to which you have given ultimate authority to decide, only by the selection of some dozen or so “key” words, to interview.

And we wonder why there are banks going under, businesses making toxic loans, stock market losses, medical errors, corruption, Bernie Madoffs in the world, and police who can’t allow a family to be with their dying mother so he can write a ticket.

Yours very truly,

The one that got away

before and after

Alleged terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed has the distinction of taking one of the most publicized but unflattering pictures seen around the world. Every time I see that picture of him on the left, I cringe. My driver’s license picture is bad, but not that bad. He’s wearing a stretched out t-shirt that’s seen better days, has bed head and from just looking at the scowl on his face, he probably has breath could launch a million ships.

Mohammed has been accused of some despicable things, namely being the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.  If you ask me, he doesn’t look capable of being any kind of mastermind. Okay, I take that back. At the time he was captured, he didn’t look like he missed any meals. My idea of a criminal mastermind has been heavily influenced by watching James Bond movies. The criminal masterminds are always filthy rich, have a bevy of beautiful women and have one word names like Goldfinger, Blofeld or Largo.

Since his capture in 2003, he has the distinction of having been water boarded 183 times and subjected to all kinds of illegal torture methods. He’s probably suffering from some kind of post traumatic stress since he’s been held at Guantanamo for more than six years. That’s enough to make even the toughest terrorist drop a pound or two.

The latest controversy surrounding Mohammed is a recent photo taken of him by the International Red Cross which is the after photo on the right. He looks like a different person. Most of the controversy has to do with how he looks ; some people argue that this picture makes him look more human. I disagree.

Mohammed doesn’t look like he got drug out of bed at an ungodly hour of the night, but he looks very sinister. To me, he looks like the evil cousin of the elusive Osama bin Laden. In my opinion, this can’t be good.

Countdown montage contrasts Obama’s speech to students with conservative media’s claims about it

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Steele is just window dressing on a party that is chock full of racists, xenophobes and backward thinking zealots. Nothing about the GOP screams 2009, we’ve got to go back to at least 1959, the old days, where black people knew their place and everyone spoke English. As the GOP’s house negro, Steele thinks he’s immune to their  racist tirades. They are not, he thinks, talking about HIM!

Although this video is less than six minutes, from watching it, I can hear the condescencion in Steele’s voice. He’s talking down to these students and is acting as if he and the Republican party really has something to offer them.

I was further incensed when I heard him mock a woman in the audience who said everyone should have health care.  The young woman told Steele that her mother died from cancer six months ago because she couldn’t afford the chemotherapy treatments. Rather than offer condolences or acknowledge that our health care system needs to be fixed,  Steele ridicules woman.

Acknowledging the fact that many Americans are without health care and sometimes die as a result of it is missing from the health care debate. We should really be talking about covering people who don’t have it and making sure people don’t go bankrupt because of it.

If Steele’s appearance was really about exchanging ideas and discussing health care, why isn’t he (and the rest of his GOP homies) capable of doing anything else but mocking someone who has been personally or financially devastated by our health care system?

Hidden agendas have nothing to do with Obama, left internationalists, ACORN or graft. Beck uses these words to incite his audience, knowing good and darn well they don’t know what they mean and are too stupid to look them up. Isn’t it much easier to let someone like Beck do your thinking for you than thinking for yourself?

The spineless chairman appeared on a conservative radio talk show last week in Missouri. This isn’t anything new since he often guest hosts Bill Bennett’s radio show on occassion but this appearance was different. The host Vincent David Jericho talked about the lack of leadership within the Republican party, he went in on House Minority Leader John Boehner and the rest of the Republicans for their lack of leadership all while Mr. Chairman agreed. Jericho even went on a tirade about the moral shortcomings of Republican Congressman Roy Blunt for having an affair with a tobacco industry lobbyist to which the chairman also co-signed. Uh-oh!

While Jericho’s critique of the party and Blunt were spot-on, why does Michael Steele have to travel all the way to Missouri to acknowledge this? I have contended all along that he is the Republican’s lame attempt at riding Barack Obama’s coattails as an affirmative action hire. The American people elected a black man president, we need to get a black man too! Too bad they thought Steele would be perfect for the job. Electing him chairmain of the RNC is the equivalent of hanging new curtains in a condemned house.

I’m wondering how much got donated to the collection plate over at Hope Christian Church in Washington D.C. Bishop Harry Jones, a cancer survivor, is opposed to health care reform for moral reasons. Someone must have also slipped the conservative talking points against health care reform in the collection plate too.

The Bishop repeats the death panel and rationing of service myths but he’s concerned that the rich are going to be discriminated against in favor of the poor. That’s reverse “classicism”! Health care should only be available to those who can afford it!

I looked up classicism over at Merriam-Webster.com, I am certain this is not what he meant. Classism was probably what he meant to say but since he didn’t bother to do any fact checking, he deserves to be talked about. All the Bishop did was repeat the same lies spewed by health care reform opponents except he added his own twist. He believes tax dollars are going fund abortions and is concerned about the effect of abortion on the black community. What about poverty and the lack of access to affordable health care?

I get the feeling that the Bishop is probably one of those ministers who only has time to counsel those church members who are financially worthy, while those who are not, are left to fend for themselves. Sort of like our current health care system.

This is surprising rhetoric for someone who is a cancer survivor. The Hope Christian Church must have a really good health insurance plan for the Bishop. Let the congregation say ‘Amen’.