How to Fail, Saturday Style

1) Assemble file boxes. √

2) Tear house apart. √

3) Say, "Screw this." √

4) Eat ice cream, watch TV. √

5) Trip over huge paper mess for next few weeks.

http://www.stumpymoose.com/archive/page.asp?id=839

Oh, and while I'm at it, this amuses me:

Also in recent news, I saw the new Star Trek at the drive-in last Saturday night. Completely awesome, and I've come to a realization, (see Armali.)

I am Spock!


Live long and prosper, folks.

Congratulations, S!

Big news for S. today---Hooray! We're free, it's over, we actually made it through...now for the good stuff.

PS---No blog lately, sleepy all the time.

No Blog

Got job. Dead tired.

PBS World: Worth Procrastinating For

A lot of good stuff on PBS World today! I should be doing my homework for fiction tomorrow, but these shows keep pulling me back in.

I have to leave the house at an ungodly hour tomorrow, ("working interview"), so I need to start trying to sleep around 7 pm. I can't remember the last time I went to bed so early.

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Recommended Viewing!

From the PBS Independent Lens website:

In the 1920s, Zulu singer Solomon Linda composed "Mbube," a hit melody in his native South Africa. Decades later, it skyrocketed to the top of the international pop charts as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."

A LION'S TRAIL follows this beloved song's rocky history, from South Africa to Brooklyn and back, asking why Linda died penniless---while American artists made millions off of his music.

A Global Voices film. Also features Pete Seeger. More links here.
Solomon Linda, far left, above.

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From the WGBH website:

AfroPop: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange: Being Pavarotti

"Being Pavarotti" tells the story of a South African teen who sets out to become a successful opera singer.

AfroPop celebrates Africa's cultural and historical growth through six films. These programs, each introduced by actor Idris Elba, explore the complex lives of contemporary Africans, both on the continent and abroad. The series includes an examination of the efforts of African AIDS activists, a profile of two young South African hip-hop disc jockeys, the touching story of one Cape Town boy's love for opera music, and a look inside the blossoming Nigerian film industry.

I Got a Call This Morning!

It was from a job, and I couldn't be happier.

I felt like (warning, this is just hyperbole, the following did not happen) Cornell called me and then I saw Rutgers' number on call waiting.

The funny thing is that I woke up early this morning to get ready to go out and apply to a couple new leads I found yesterday. So now I'm up early, with a whole day to figure out what to do with.

It's a good thing I'm up, though---this shift I'm going to start Monday begins at 7 am. I've been waking up around 1 pm lately. Yikes. It's a working interview at a local market, and the lady sounded really nice. So as long as I can wake up and catch the bus on time, I think I might be golden. No jinxies!*


*Which makes me wonder---where does the word jinx come from?

From Wikipedia:

It may come from Latin iynx, that is, the wryneck bird, which has occasionally been used in magic and divination and is remarkable for its ability to twist its head almost 180 degrees while hissing like a snake. The Jinx bird is found in Africa and Eurasia.

That bird's not kidding around.

From World Wide Words:

It was a famous vaudeville song, written and sung by William Lingard and first published in 1868. Captain Jinks was an unsuccessful soldier, who was eventually drummed out of the Army. The key verse is this:

The first day I went out to drill
The bugle sound made me quite ill,
At the Balance step my hat it fell,
And that wouldn't do for the Army.
The officers they all did shout,
They all cried out, they all did shout,
The officers they all did shout,
“Oh, that's the curse of the Army.”

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On a less ecstatic note, I totally gouged my right ankle while shaving last night. It's really deep this time. What a klutz, eesh.

Ouch.

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Okay, enough of that. I have to get out of this house!

Gimme Information / Please Let Me Wait Your Tables, Please

Both UMass Amherst and U Florida notified poetry people today (well, at least one poet each). Cornell notified at least one fiction writer on Friday.

It's pretty exciting. Maybe this means the big rush is coming soon soon soon? Every morning (well, afternoon) I wake up thinking This is going to be the day. Everyone is going to notify everyone today. I'm always wrong. It's so disappointing to find my mailbox full of magazines and tax forms and my inbox full of junk. Maybe there is no big rush. Maybe it's just going to be this grating little trickle, forever and ever. I'm so impatient, ugh.

Meanwhile, I'm still anxiously waiting for my official letter from Minnesota. (Their website says their notification letters will go out in February. So I'm thinking we'll start hearing about more notifications any minute now.) They're having a prospectives weekend in late March, and I really want the info about that.

Meanwhile meanwhile, I'm sooooo BROKE. I'm running out of room on my credit cards---funny how it doesn't sound so bad when I put it that way. Like I'm just storing stuff on them, instead of burying myself in debt. Lucky for me, I really like ramen. Creamy chicken with a few dashes of a chili flavor packet thrown in. Yum.

I still can't find a job. I've actually thought about standing around downtown with a sandwich board announcing my resume, like that guy in New York did. Maybe I should just have a t-shirt made.

I've begun scouring the internet for telecommuting jobs. I always thought of those as kind of fake, but some of them have to be real (?) I found something called Amazon Mechanical Turk, "Artificial Artifical Intelligence." Apparently it's supposed to allow companies to pay people to do weird little online tasks that "people do better than computers." I looked it up on Wikipedia, and apparently some people have likened it to a "digital sweatshop" of sorts.

Kind of bizarre, kind of sad, kind of insulting? Yes. Will I try it? Yes!

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Update: It's mostly a bunch of crap. Now I'm sorting through ratracerebellion.com, which a kind fellow applicant over at the MFA Blog pointed out.

I Need a JOB

Every time I check the boards, and there are no new posts to read, part of me feels like screaming. I'll lose all respect for myself if I don't find a job soon. This just isn't healthy! I'm trying to quit smoking again, too. (Umm, gradually, but I'm down to no more than 2 or 3 a day). I have a BA and Wendy's won't hire me. None of this is helping. Must...stop hitting...refresh.