Dreams and Reality

The last few days have been on foot job canvasing days. Forty five minutes into the city, hours asking for applications from every store that I would possibly consider working for, and then the drive back. Today I turned in the applications I had collected in bulk, and tomorrow I track down the Barnes and Nobles stores I did not hit. I haven't turned in any online applications in a few days, even though I've still been collecting listings, so now there's 10+ e-mails to send out, cover letters to write, and tedious application forms to fill out that ask for all the things the resume has in it anyway. I'm considering not making a tailored resume for jobs with application forms, just because I feel like I'm doing the same thing twice every time, but even though the resume is optional I don't want to put myself at any disadvantage.

The job hunt today also included a trip to the library to take a test for a sorting position. I was given a sheet of ten problems, with ten items per problem, and asked to alphabetize everything. I got a 91%, which is as embarrassing as hell. Still passed, but it appears I need to retake kindergarten.

I have a guest blog up at the Private Library. I had been meaning to write the article ever since I had picked up a half dozen catalogs from the New York antiquarian book fair, but the thing that spurred me to finish it was the need for a writing sample in a job application. I've been wanting to write something on unconventional and 'exotic' binding practices too, but that will require more research and resources than I have time for at the moment. It's still in the back of my mind.

So far I have gotten two call backs for 'jobs'. One was for a speech recognition service. It isn't a job per se. When I fall into the right demographic range they give me a call and I read stuff for them in my East Coast accent. Given that I am constantly being told I don't have the Joisey accent I guess I won't provide them with the most stereotypical data, but whatevs. It's 40 bucks for a 45 minute session. The other job is as part time as it comes. Occasional yard work and mending for a doctor in the DU area. These things might provide for a little, but I'd still love for a JOB to call me back.

It's gotten to the point where I've had dreams where I'm asking some anonymous employer why they aren't contacting me and they're giving me some speech about 100 applicants yadda yadda yadda. Dreams are times for floating ships and pirate islands, not more job searching.

Anyway, to move away from the depressing, some quick notes:

• I still can't believe Denver spends money on buses that go up and down a single street and stop at every corner every minute.


• There are pianos standing along the 16th ave. mall for anyone to come bang on them for change. They are painted all sorts of gaudy colors and some people really can play.


• I had a real hankering for spring rolls and immediately ran into a Thai food cart selling spring rolls.


• I then waited 20 minutes to order said spring rolls only to be told they were out, so that part of the day wasn't as awesome as it could have been.


• My friend's grandma is essentially adopting me and is treating much better than I deserve.


• After living with 4 cats and 2 dogs for a week and a half I want one of my own. =x

Even though the job stress has been driving me a little nuts, I'm enjoying the freedom of exploring the city and chillaxing with Fides while I gear of for class. I'm crossing my fingers that the classes will be worth the move and the financial wager.

Chugging along

I feel as if I haven't played a computer game in ages. There's a Oregon Trail tribute game online I've been using to let off steam between applications as I spend my days looking for work and writing reviews (4 in two days. That was pushing it.) But other than that I haven't had the time for much leisure. Austin's mom took us out to the movies two days ago, where we saw the Expendables. It was a perfectly straightforward action movie that probably would have been ten times more awesome had the director given us a few straight shots of the action. Also, Jet Li got a terrible part. But overall the carnage was satisfying, and the plot just there enough to keep it all together.

It appears that I have a place in Englewood. I am knocking on wood until a lease is actually drawn up, but unless my possible roommate completely changes her mind, everything is good to go. School is likewise in set it and forget it mode. I -still- have to register, but it seems that I will be able to register for 7PM classes almost exclusively, which keeps my job options at maximum. Again, knocking on wood.

What I would really like to find would be a job with a publisher or a library, but beggars can't be choosers in this economy. As long as I can stand it (and I can stand a lot) and maybe even learn a little while on the job, I will be happy. And of course it would be nice to end up with a salary that will actually let me pay my bills.

Amongst this all I have not read a page of my book since I set off. The Shouwa emperor is just going to have to wait.

YESSSSSSS

Every day since my application has been complete I have looked at the status page on the DU site. It's an informative little page, with a two column table noting each element of the application and its status, including acceptance. Every day I've seen the acceptance field set as 'pending', sighed heavily, and moved on (until 2 hours later when I had to check again real quick).

Today, like every day before it, I check the status page and saw 'pending'. I let out some steam with a grumble, and prepared to do something else, but first I scrolled down to the very bottom of the page.

There were two buttons down there that I hadn't noticed before, marked "Accept offer of admission" and "Decline offer of admission" respectively.

So I hit Accept.

So now I guess I'm accepted. Great news just two days before I'm scheduled to set out for Denver. I promptly told everyone I knew the news, and now my optimism meter is a full.

This means that the 10+ applications to work that I submitted are probably useless, but ah well. I had broken down and submitted an application to a winter internship in LA too, just in case I didn't get in, but now that's no longer an option.

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My brief foray into 'freelance writing' died in utero, which I do not regret at all, and after deciding that if I hated BSing for a grade I would hate BSing for money, I fell into an opportunity to write for real, albeit for free, when a request for reviewers was put out by the proprietor of a Spec. fiction review site. I had the itch to write, and my article writing skills -were- rusty, so I applied, and now it seems I will be reviewing for Tangent Online. The guy who runs it seems like a chill dude, and I'm going to enjoy the opportunity to read new stories and gain a little experience as I do so. Who knows, I may just find a doorway to something even better here.

===

I got a guest pass for SCII so that I could play some vs. with friends, and after the lan ended checked out the campaign. As annoyed as I am about Blizz's marketing direction, I have to admit that I like the campaign a LOT. I also am reminded at each mission how much I suck at SC. I tunnel vision too much and cannot run a base and a group of units at the same time. Period.

Unfortunately, you can't play single player without being connected to bnet, and bnet was down, so I got denied play time. The movement gaming companies are making to require that people are always online, even when they are playing a game that should have not problem running offline, really irks me. I don't think I'll be buying SCII with the way it's set up. I'll probably just play on someone else's account whenever the urge hits.

If Diablo requires 24/7 online access I am going to be PISSED.

First, in gaming news, and interesting post from Neuroskeptic. Some Korean scientists are trying to develop a drug from video game addiction. Their subjects are cited as being so hopelessly addicted that they play at least "4 hours a day". Four hours! If that's addiction I'm in huge trouble. Of course the article goes on to say that these subjects have dropped out of school or lost wives due to their play habits, so I suppose I'm safe yet. Plus, I don't play Starcraft.

These last few days have been extremely active (not quite productive) to my pleasant surprise. I finished three more job applications yesterday and have signed up to contribute to a F/SF review site on the side. While there's no payment involved, there are galley copies to be had and my name in the byline for future references. My last published article is something like five years old now, so I figure it's about time that I added a few more writing credits to my name.

I also did some vague checking into freelance work. Online freelance is a domain so choked with land mines I don't think it's worth the effort, and many of the big freelance sites looking for writers are either looking for people to write student papers for them, or want 5 articles a day on random subjects for the sole purpose of boosting Google traffic. I can feel the suction of hell on my fingertips when I browse through stuff like that. And yet, I almost want to try. Would I be able to write 500 page articles in less than 15 minutes 5 times a day about random crap? (That's the speed I'd need to keep up to get get at -most- 8 bucks an hour) I don't know if my BS powers are -that- strong.

Ah, the job search. What an adventure. I'm looking for work at full speed now, and have been quickly reminded of how painful it really is.

The first job I applied to was fishy at the very beginning. There was 0 information about the business in the ad, and they had posted it on Craigslist. But at 16 bucks and hour full time I couldn't resist sending off a resume anyway. Today I got an e-mail back from them saying thanks, they really want to interview me but could I just sign up to this credit verification website that tricks people into paying monthly fees first?

Oh well.

I have not gotten anything back from the second job I applied to last night, so I figure that's probably a good thing. And while I would like to stop using Craigslist, I don't want to miss a thing. I'll be canvasing for jobs in person when I get to Denver, but the sort of job you get that way is usual retail or food.

The last piece of my university application puzzle was submitted two days ago, and now the ball is entirely in DU's court. Considering that there are only 3 weeks until the start of the semester, I don't have my hopes up too high, but considering that I haven't gotten a letter saying no yet, I'm still looking for a miracle. If I get in I may be able to find work on campus, which would be a double blessing.

It's about time I considered what I would be taking with me to Denver, but I haven't started bothering with that. I don't need much to live. The only minor challenge is making sure I have enough to keep from freezing to death in the coming winter. Not looking forward to that at all.

For the past few years now I've aimed to read about a book a week. Last year I only managed about a book a month, and the year before I don't think I actually kept a record.

This year has been pretty slow too. Technically I'm on my 14th or so book, and I don't think anyone needs to do the math to realize that we are not in the 14th week of the year. I've been reading consistently, but the books I have been picking up were not easily digestible. Typically it would take me a month or more to finish one, and then I would sit down with something short and finish that in a single sitting.

This time I spent about a month or so slogging through London, which was not nearly as good as what I've been reading lately, and the next item on my plate was a quick novel by Asimov that I finished in a few hours.

What I have been consistent with is writing reviews for each of the books I finished. I think so far Les Mis has been the only exception, and I have exempted it because I am still writing the review in my head. It's such a good book that I want to do it justice. All my reviews are linked to my account on library thing, and one I add one the widget on the sidebar is updated. The last few have been lazy, but I'm trying to up the quality into something that people might actually consider reading. I figure if that's almost all the writing I do, I should put more work into doing it well.

I myself don't usually read reviews of anything unless I have already read it or am in the middle of reading it. I use them not so much as a guide to what I should read next (because I have a list that stretches 100 books long to do that for me) but as a way to check my own impressions and understanding against some outside experience. And, I do get some bit of egotistical pleasure from reading reviews by people who really didn't get it too.

Next on the plate is Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. Lately I've been trying to brush up on my academics, listing Kanji compounds, practicing reading, etc... so it's good timing to read a book with a focus on Japan. Maybe I'll keep up with the good habit of updating this damn thing and put some notes down as I go through. I do this on paper as well, but true to my disorganized nature I keep forgetting which notebook I'm using for the purpose, and so my comments on books are spread out on random pages of random notebooks and are almost impossible to reference properly.

I was watching Inception, and every time this dude came on screen I felt this small tug at my memory. I knew I had seen him from somewhere before. I KNEW it, but could not for the life of me place his face. Well now, a week later, as I was doing something completely unrelated to anything, it hit me. It's Tommy from 3rd Rock from the Sun.

Looking through his discography, 3rd Rock was the only other thing I've seen him in. So now every time I recall a scene from Inception I see Tommy, the alien with long hair, running around in people's minds. Wonderful.

And no, this is not particularly blog worthy, but I'm trying to build up a habit again.

Books Books Books

Why do I love books? Because these sort of things exist:

The Voynich Manuscript

And

Codex Seraphinianus

I was reading this blog a while ago and it got me thinking about many things, which is something I find DFW does whenever I run into him. The source article is worth reading here. At this point I'm blogging about a blog about a blog about the original text, when it's the original text I'm looking for, but I suppose that's how information travels nowadays, and since I don't have the money, time, or space for a new book at the moment an excerpt will suffice.

The important quote is here:

Serious Novels after Joyce tend to be valued and studied mainly for their formal ingenuity. Such is the modernist legacy that we now presume as a matter of course that “serious” literature will be aesthetically distanced from real lived life.

Pointing to Ippolit’s “Necessary Explanation” in The Idiot, Wallace asks:

Can you imagine any of our own major novelists allowing a character to say stuff like this (not, mind you, just as hypocritical bombast so that some ironic hero can stick a pin in it, but as part of a ten-page monologue by somebody trying to decide whether to commit suicide)? The reason you can’t is the reason he wouldn’t: such a novelist would be, by our lights, pretentious and overwrought and silly. The straight presentation of such a speech in a Serious Novel today would provoke not outrage or invective, but worse—one raised eyebrow and a very cool smile…. People would either laugh or be embarrassed for us. Given this…who is to blame for the unseriousness of our serious fiction? The culture, the laughers? But they wouldn’t (could not) laugh if a piece of morally passionate, passionately moral fiction was also ingenious and radiantly human fiction. But how to make it that?

My first urge was to say that this was true, but then I wondered if the books I have read really support it.

What have I read that's both Serious Lit and recent? By recent I suppose Joyce is a good cutoff.

We have The Fountainhead, DFW's own Infinite Jest (Though only a small part of it, as true to the joke I didn't bother to finish), Invisible Cities, a good smörgåsbord of HS required reading, like Animal Farm and Catcher in the Rye... And even among these titles the only ones that might not be considered old is IJ, which was published in the 90s, and Invisible Cities, which was published in 1972. In other words, I have no idea what passes for a Serious Novel nowadays. If it was written before I was born I probably have not bothered with it.

For a while I've noticed that I simply do not like 'modern' novels and have been struggling to understand this bias. For the most part I have assumed that the problem was in the sheer number of novels being published and the fact that the cream has not yet risen, which means the modern reader is slogging through the crap that has been only somewhat sifted out by the publishing industry. The democratization of publishing has exacerbated the problem. When I went up to Lunacon there were a number of authors peddling their small press publications. I purchased a book and found it riddled with basic grammar and copy errors before I even realized that as a story it wasn't any good.

If you go to Barnes and Noble, where the stock is more closely curated, you will still find that 99% of the titles are completely mediocre. Slogging through a minefield of duds is not my idea of a good time, and so I've stuck to what I know will at least give me something, even if it's nothing more than a stronger historical perspective or a familiarity with a title that has had an effect on literature as a whole. Even then you have duds. The Octopus was not worth my time, but the chances that I wonder why I bothered drop considerably when I go back 50 years. So, as a reader I'm not really equipped to talk about the situation of modern Lit.

I think the reason I feel so inclined to nod my head at DFW's position is that I can see the influence of the thought he is expressing in my own writing. Perhaps it's because I'm a denizen of the internet, where expressing passion is akin to being trolled, but it seems almost impossible to hit earnest without slipping into shrill. Perhaps it's because I'm an intellectual child of the 1900s that I struggle with the mores of my own time, but I would like to write something earnest and forward and true to an older aesthetic without having it feel pretentious and out of touch.