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The more I think about Brandeis’s new scheme, the angrier I get. So I’ve crossposted this entry from my personal website here. Nothing particularly funny about this situation, but I felt this needed to be said:
Warning–rant ahead.
If Greg’s Leg Offends Him Cut it Off, An Offer Cancer Just Can’t Refuse, Kurt Warner Knows His Dante, Yes We Can Discuss the Inauguration, America is Marginally Worse Off (so America is in Huge Trouble), Money for Nothing (and Our Stocks for Free), America is Depressed and Storey Couldn’t be Happier, Clea Defends Shades of Gray, and Russ Still Thinks Most People are Stupid.
Listen Now!
An unending deluge of Madoff-related shit continues to hit the fan. The newest story is that Mep alma mater, Brandeis University, is planning a fire sale to compensate for a crumbling budget. And the budget deficit is primarily due to several major donors’ associations with Bernie Madoff.
In the strangely prophetic movie Demolition Man, all restaurants are Taco Bells (Tacos Bell?). Apparently Taco Bell was the final victor in the “franchise wars” that Sandra Bullock’s character describes as one of the key events of the early 21st century.
Welcome to the future, friends. Today, the internet at large reported that Circuit City has joined KB Toys, Linens and Things, and The Sharper Image in the ever-growing elephant graveyard of defunct franchises.
And to this commentator, a much more interesting question than “Who’s next?” is “Who’s last?” Who will ultimately win the franchise wars and provide all of our goods and services in our soon-approaching distopian, fascist, future state?
The good money is on Wallmart, or SuperWallMart, or even UltraMegaBigHappyFunTimeWallmart. But there are other contenders as well. Best Buy may decide to raid Time Warner in a bid to turn off the Internet and starve out Amazon.com. Anne Taylor may surreptitiously place explosives in all of the hoop earrings at JCPenny. The possibilities are endless. And I look forward to all of them.
In this putrid economy, searching a job via the internet can be a very self destructive exercise. Application e-mails get lost in the void like so many pieces of space garbage, orbiting the neglected inbox of some pimply quasi-intern, who’s been tasked with the responsibility of reading through a thousand thousand pleas to be interviewed for the opening on the turd-polishing team.
Well, friends, seekers, here is the first tool in your toolbox to combat this trend. I give you the anti-rejection e-mail template:
———————————————————
Dear Overstressed Manager of Applications,
I realize that this is but one of literally thousands of e-mails you receive on a weekly basis requesting entry into your project. I cannot imagine what sort of voodoo-esque speed-reading rituals you must have developed over the course of your training to deal with this reality.
Perhaps, as a consummate Scrabbble player, you only invite in applicants whose names feature ‘X,’ ‘Q,’ and ‘Z’ prominently. Perhaps you print out the e-mails and craft paper dirigibles, powered by microwaved popcorn vapor, to see whose can reach the cubicle furthest along the horizon.
It is not meant for me to know these things. But having briefly spoken to the standing Chieftain of the Overstressed Manager of
E-mails, I got the sense that you had paltry little time to listen to an individual plead their case for entry, no matter the circumstance.
And yet, here I am pleading such a case. You, sir or madam, would do well for yourself to invite me in for a meeting. I am not a random spamling of an e-mail sender. I am a transcendent talent, the likes of which Overstressed Managers such as yourself spend a lifetime in an utterly futile pursuit of.
E-mails like this do not end up in your lap willy-nilly. You have just won the Grand Powerball Lottery of anonymous e-mails. I suggest you act on it immediately, and craft a mighty paper dirigible that files striaght and true over the heads of awestruck cubiclees everywhere.
I await your very personalized and heartfelt response…
Sincerely,
Your Name Here
If you ever wonder why everything in the financial world is a stunning surprise and all results are different than expectations, this article should help you stop wondering.
In it, we learn that a worsening economy that lost 2.6 million jobs in a year, almost all of them in the last 6 months, could (mind that word now, could) lose 2.0 million jobs in the next year.
WHAT?
So, economists’ math goes like this:
-2,600,000 jobs
+worse job market
——————
-2,000,000 million jobs
Apparently, a “worse job market” means “600,000 jobs better than a better job market”.
And we wonder how things got this bad.
Though a pretty straightforward and unassuming piece, this episode shot outside the 2008 E-Tech Conference in San Diego ended up being the most prolific video I ever produced/directed. It kept popping up in all sorts of crazy places, including the side bar on an unnamed internet dating website I used to frequent.
