Interviewed For The Shampire

Being out of work is nerve-racking. It’s the process of enjoying all the free time you coveted while you were working, but with the added pressure or knowing you haven’t any money coming in, the added pressure of knowing that you’re going to have to find a job, and the added pressure of those around you simultaneously judging you and envying you for not going to work everyday. Finding a quality job, really is a fulltime job in itself. I don’t care what anyone says, you put more effort into it, you weigh more factors, your cover letters are less non-committal and sincere when you’re out of work. Daunting tasks become manageable, you house is cleaner, you get more sleep, you’re more personable, the world seems far less daunting when you don’t have to confront it with balled fists five days a week.

However, once these initial benefits become part of the overall structure of your life, once you have grown used to the benefits and reaped them to their fullest potential on a daily basis, once again our inherent human unhappiness of complacency starts to jab at our ribs and not always, but occasionally, a finger will slip through and poke at our heart, making us feel useless, without societal contribution, purposeless. So the job hunt becomes a calling, a mission, an expedition into the rear-end of the corporate infrastructure. The land of back-door politics known popularly as human relations.

So you make past the initial interest phase, they like you, they want you, they feel you may be qualified for the job. An interview is scheduled, you have anxiety and/or excitement leading up to said event. You go, they like you, or, they don’t, you don’t really know. You wait a week, they liked you, they schedule another interview, you have anxiety and/or excitement again leading up to it. You go, they like you, or secretly hate you but feel you are a good fit and need you. They’ll be in touch. You say thank you, you thank everyone, because that’s what you do. You show them how much you appreciate them even considering you for the job. Then you wait, they say they’ll be in contact, will they? They sweat you out, you sweat it out. You wait, and wait and wait. The end result means your future, either you work for them, they who like you, or secretly hate you and need you, or you’re back to being self-employed, gainfully driven and exploring the endless possibilities of the job market with your limited skill set. You start thinking, well I COULD do This, or I COULD do That thing, and even I guess I wouldn’t MIND doing something like THAT. But you won’t do it for long, don’t lie to yourself. Tell all your friends and strangers you meet that you’re freelancing and secretly live off of the savings you told yourself you’d never touch. Pay for things at hand from the earmarked funds for your future whatever that was, because the future is now when you’re unemployed and dangling in the wind. So you wait, you bide time and bate your breath. You sweat silently and let your stomach eat itself wondering, pondering, floundering. When will they call, when will they write, will they?

You listen to the radio and hear about how many other folks are in your position, lost their jobs, got laid off, cancelled their health plan, behind in their rent, calling public radio stations to justify their lifestyle. Calling strangers to validate the unfortunate state of the world, the unfortunate state of the economy. We find it far less daunting in trying times to be truthful with strangers about our situation than with loved ones, who seemingly would have a better perspective on your situation. However, strangers have a completely objective view, a long ways, farsighted, telescopic vision into our estranged bereavement with society’s failings and short-comings, our inability to speak up when the screws were being put to our futures, and the ease with which we replaced our tormentor with a savior to whom we weigh challenge with the shouldering of our collective burdens, not to mention his own possible performance anxiety because of the connotations his presidency brings not to mention the proxy benefits he brings to this country by simply being brilliant and idealistic.

The question of whether or not you’ll get that call, that demand for a weak mind and strong back for minimal compensation and cut-rate benefits, depends largely on people who are at the opposite end of the spectrum, it’s also pivotal upon the relative demeanor of said people and their own approach and attitude towards their positions. Those in short-term, dead-end positions they don’t plan on staying in and can’t see a future in will be quicker to offer a position than those who love their jobs simply because they don’t envision themselves sticking around to see the ramifications of their actions reach full fruition and therefore are likely to hire the best-looking candidate rather than the most qualified. Whilst those who love their jobs, their co-workers(in a plutonic capacity), and their work environment will be extremely careful and meticulous as to whom they staff in the open position based mostly upon not upsetting the careful balance and equilibrius synergy they have achieved in their office. You don’t want to BE the chainsaw in the abattoir. So you play it cool and calm, just like the interview itself, minimal contact, with maximum enthusiasm.

The truth is, it isn’t a decision that’s up to you, you can’t fake you. You can’t completely misrepresent yourself, especially in multiple visits, you wouldn’t be able to fake it twice the same way, you aren’t that good. So you’re real, you’re you, and at least you don’t fuck up being yourself. You’re nervous, you’re edgy, you’re trying your best to answer authorities thoughtfully and not dodge confrontational corners of questioning. It’s a bit like being accused of a crime, being accused of ineptitude, misrepresenting your abilities and your capabilities. Are you qualifications what they say, they assume you’re lying, they just don’t know what about, and if you’re totally honest, it confuses the hell out of them, because they start to assume everything is a lie, even though you know what you’re talking about. Hubris, that’s what hits them in the face, appropriately placed gallbladder oozing across the line into lines of quandary that qualm queries of quote and quickly quips into quixotic quelch, which is a made up word that means you drank a lemon-lime soda of medicinal resolution. It’s a decision out of your hands, it could be in the stars, the planets, the fates, but at the end of the day your career belongs to working people, folks who themselves must resolve that you will be around, a cog in their machine, and they want one with sharp teeth, not a squeaky wheel. So you’ll just keep rolling along, no matter where your gears turn, your wheels will spin and your machine will keep on working, at work, out of work, working on it, working it out, it’s an active part of your lifestyle, even just the thinking, the pondering, notions of working, earning, a return to joyless toil or the bubbling basis for all creative wellspring embodied in an office, or a cardboard cube and a fluorescent glow, it’s patience that defines progress, the patience of searching, the patience of finding, the patience of waiting itself, because the decisions are bourne out of patience, so everyone will wait, and see.

Wait Up

All good things come to those who wait, but so do terrible things. If you wait around long enough, terrible things catch up to as quickly as wonderful things. The only difference is, you’re patiently waiting for them to overtake you. You’re waiting for fate to step in and take control of your life for you. It’s an avoidance of making a decision, getting involved, making an impact on your own future. You’ll let the planets decide before you know what’s for dinner. The only problem is, the planets could care less, and while you’re waiting, you starve to death. Me, I’ll eat something small and then see what the planets are dishing out, usually orbits, I don’t eat orbits. While you’re waiting to hear about a job, an examination, that clunking noise your car makes just before it overheats, while you’re waiting, the outcome doesn’t change anyway, if you’re leaving it up to fate, it’s already pre-decided anyway, you aren’t going to change the outcome by being less vocal or by feigning apathy or suppressing your anticipation. Really all you can do is move forward, get busy, put in some work, because all things may come to those who wait, but personally, I’m hoping to avoid some of them.

Cable Boxed Out

I’m kicking myself really, possibly the most historic moment to take place in my entire generation and the ultimate irony is that I couldn’t watch it, because I don’t have TV. Recently the people who brought you television have stopped sending the “snow signals” we’ve all known and loved over the years. The barely visible, barely audible transmissions broadcast locally for decades are, at least in some places, a thing of the past. Thus, we have no other choice than to go out and spend fifty dollars on these digital converter boxes (ten if you bring in a government provided coupon, of which, in the midst of economic crisis, ironically, they’ve run out of). The problem is that the fuzzy channels are no more, either you receive a digital signal or you don’t, which means you wait around for ten minutes just to see if you CAN watch tv. Now, again, you’re getting frustrated saying, why didn’t you just watch it over the internet on CNN? The short answer, is I did, but because all that information has to be uploaded and cannot be telecast, I had to wait on the delay which then led to an edited version, and though I can now watch it in snippets, doesn’t have the same power as watching it live. Now you’re asking, why not go to a bar, the library, break into your neighbor’s house, call your friends? I explored most of these options, save for the bar, I didn’t like the subtext of being briefed with the future of this country surrounded by people drinking their breakfasts at eight in the morning. In the end, I didn’t watch it, I caught snippets on news websites, and heard them discussed on NPR. My mom expressed reservations about specific quotes I hadn’t heard as yet and dissected them. This is how I receive my news.

In a world full of watered-down, flattened-out, spun-around, topsy-turvy factual event dispense, I have complicated my sources even further. Gaining my up-to-the-minute updates through third and sometimes fourth-party sources. And though many of you are now groaning, aching and wishing you hadn’t read this, I’m proud of it, rather than gaining a newswriter’s opinion, or the networks, or the company who pays for CNN’s banner ads, or the secret agenda of the fox news corporation, I’m getting the input of people. They may have the wrong information, their facts may be twisted and terrible misinformed, but their opinions about them are there own. Their own readings of subjectively delivered news coverage is there own, even if they think Bill O’Reilly holds merit, I have to believe that there is a reason they said so. Maybe Bill O’Reilly is holding their entire family hostage, which is a great deal more likely than his opinions holding merit, but their opinion would still be important, it would prove what we’ve all known for many years, Bill O’Reilly kidnaps people’s families to prove his points. Whilst I, get as convoluted as possible with my non-sequiturs as possible in order to prove my own.

In light of this discovery, I’ve decided not to discount anything the people around me say, just because it sounds different or insane. If you tell me you were abducted by aliens who decided to destroy us when MASH was cancelled but got sucked into the cable tv abyss, I believe you. If you’re convinced someone is after you because you’ve recreated great moments of the cold war in your imagination, don’t walk into any dark alleys in your imagination, you’ll get stabbed, I believe you. If you tell me Bill O’Reilly is a nice man deep down, he’s just angry and frustrated, get bent, Bill O’Reilly kidnaps people’s families with the possibility of eating them. If you’re sorry you didn’t speak up about political corruption and the destruction of our economic stability until it was hip to do so, you should be ashamed of yourself, for that, and wearing pants that clearly don’t fit you and your father’s salvaged prescription glasses from the 80s, they weren’t cool then, your father wasn’t cool then, and as his progeny your twice as uncool for wearing them.

I’ve also decided that it’s okay I don’t watch tv, it’s okay I don’t stay up on current events, or sound smart when I talk, look strangers in the eye, have very little grace and poor depth perception. I’m comfortable with not being a part of a historic piece of media coverage, though I secretly envy everyone who went to DC ie T ,A and S. Everyone can remember where they were when JFK was assassinated and what they did in the aftermath. I can remember where I was when I heard about 9/11 and what I did in the aftermath. Whenever someone asks me where I was when Barack Obama was delivering his historic inaugural address, I will proudly state, I was in bed, fast asleep, dreaming of something weird, because I had the freedom to.

Acute Tellevism

So you’ve decided to become addicted to a television show. It wasn’t a choice, you did your best to avoid tv at all costs, but you were caught. You hadn’t considered the fact that once it was all on dvd, you wouldn’t be able to resist the whole story. An epic saga, with high production value, great story, in-depth drama and closure, sweet, sweet closure. Private cable entities with great spending possibilities and loyal fan-bases couldn’t be completely wrong, could they? The television show that dare not speak its name, is available, in entirety on a series of discs readily available to the rental and purchasing masses. Waiting patiently to usurp weekends, drag out evenings, and give you a radioactive tan line in a bulbous concavity from the glow and hum of the idiot box. An escape that willfully removes us from our everyday worries, a reason NOT to watch the news, a current event that lives in a moment of time, a moment of time that lives on a series of discs, that are readily available, for sale or rental. Easy answers with concrete closure just your local video store away.

So you became addicted to a television show by proxy. Someone you know, watched an episode and was hooked, or was talked into renting the first disc of the first season, “begin at the beginning the dark lord beckons.” And so you do, but first, you have that inkling in the back of your mind, once I open the floodgates, will I be able to say, ‘no more’. For those of us without an existing tv addiction, it only takes from season to season for the serialized crack to work its way from our system. We need only sleep it off, and our curiosity is trumped by actual responsibilities and life as it continues in general. However, for those who watch habitually, loyally and compulsively, there is no escape, will they escape the perilous predicament in which they’ve found themselves? This is how the first Batman tv show stayed on the air, this is why kids planted themselves in front of giant cabinet radios to find out what would happen. At some point we became a nation that needed closure, we started going to the movies too often and one day, that was it, every show dawned on a new day. One could pick it up as needed and a miss a few without missing any key plot points. Though to be sure, there were still a few that required continued attention. But not until our introduction to the first family of the mafia The Sopranos, followed quickly by the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Lost television franchise was a can of worms opened. Those worms are still crawling, day by day, hour by hour, we are not getting what we want and we are getting invested in the lives of people who don’t exist.

So you’re addicted to a television show because there was nothing else to do. It’s interesting how invested we as a society can be in television programs and their outcomes and yet so disconnected from politics and the inner workings of our social systems. It’s a brave new world we live in, in our cultivated complacency our eyes and minds are diverted daily and we are rewarded with the happy lives and ongoing trials of people whose lives we are not wholly invested in. Evening after evening we plant ourselves in the comfy lull of a cushy couch or other cultivated cushion with our proverbial mark and print in it. Our conscious minds are suspended in their disbelief at art imitating life for an hour at a time. It’s satisfying, to be sure, not being directly affected by the drama, social anxiety, real life decisions and consequences of everyday life, knowing that it will not affect our personal lives. Ironically our lack of investment and focus in actual life, everyday events and the state of political and social affairs has led to an increase in global drama perpetuated and often cultivated or originating with our own country of origin. It was sheer luck and social buzz that got us out of the political purgatory of the last decade.

So you were forcibly addicted to a television show. Society forced you over the edge, you couldn’t find anything else to discuss around the watercooler at work, your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife threatened to leave you if you didn’t. I understand, everyone else who’s seen it understands. But will society understand? You’ve lived almost an entire lifestyle out of bondage, only to pick up the shackles and bind yourself in a prison of your own design. Our lack of focus and haphazard cautionary tale, begins at this moment, nearly a decade ago, when our minds were first being mesmerized and hypnotized by media and our attention was being pulled away from the small political fire and towards the serialized explosion. It seems that the period of implied and self-induced ignorance and complacency is coming to a close. The age of television has not ended, but the age of using the proverbial idiot box as a radioactive curtain shielding independent thought and keeping the people out of politics is over. That said, our President cannot do his job alone, we cannot sit idly by and expect him to perform miracles. He needs and requires our continued support and outspoken motivation. The time has come for those who want to get involved, to find their niche. You can become the pebble in the folds of the political oyster, a tiny thorn on a big, pretty flower, too small to remove, but just big enough to be a prick.

So you’ve been kidnapped by armed gunmen and while tied to a chair you’ve become addicted to a television show to pass the time until rescue. The ultimate irony of this predicament is the notion that the show in which I’m so ensconced concerns the corruption of America and its political system during a time of upheaval and renewal. I can only hope that my interest is held as equally by the developments and future endeavors of the new administration. I can only hope that I wait with bated breath for refreshing news, breaks in the lulls and doldrums of frustrating cleanup left in the wake of an irresponsible tidal wave of corruption and violent self-indulgence. I can only hope that the hope we’ve invested manifests itself in the form of positive action and a new path through the political bureaucracy like a chainsaw through a chair factory. I can only hope that your mouth is that chainsaw, cut through all the bullshit and from the splinters honesty, integrity and a renewed hope will rise. I can only hope that your rise doesn’t plateau and that the idealism and honesty you bring to the office is everything I can only hope it can be. Television gives closure to all stressful situations, all loose ends are tied to something and rarely are questions left in the air during the final commercial break.

So you’ve come to realize that being addicted to a television program isn’t so bad, as long as there is a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel and you know it has some form of resolution. Recently politicians speak of America as a young country, a country in it’s early years of development, in the budding years of character development, not yet reached the crescendo of it’s plot arc. We have not reached any closure in our future, this country has no pigeon hole to which we are relegated. We have finally re-invented the nature of our characteristics and broke the mold from which the world thought our ideas would continuously pour. Now is the time for our rebellious teenage years, to begin discovering who we are as a people, to establish our identity as we as a people wish to be. We can be better, we will be better, things will get better, but our final season is a long way off. We will yet have many episodes, we will yet have many adventures, and we will yet face many challenges, but though closure is a comfort many Americans wish and hope for, it is not without open-ended change and upheaval that greatness and wonderment develop and as we dawn on a new season, a new chapter in the future of this country, I hope this season goes on forever.