Now What?: A Senior’s Search for a Job in a Horrible Economy

With my impending graduation, and the economy being in a historic slump, my prospects for getting a decent job are pretty slim. I suppose my prospects would be slim anyways since I really do not have much to offer an employer except a smartass attitude and a rudimentary knowledge of baking. So where can a useless person like me find a job?
The first option that is looking better and better in this recession is crime. We’ve all in our weaker moments considered robbing a liquor store or selling drugs. However, since most of us are not violent and have moral qualms with these types of things we never actually end up committing crime. Bit there are some illegal activities that fall into an ethical grey area. Promoting gambling is one of them. It’s possibly the biggest money making enterprise one can be a part of. People come in, give you their money, and then leave. It’s basically a license to print money with little to no overhead. Despite, the non-violent nature of this crime it carries a stiff prison penalty. The government holds a monopoly on saying who gets to own casinos because they feel that there is too much peripheral crime in unregulated gambling. This is particularly evident in the government run gambling operations. Off Track Betting parlors and race tracks are some of the most shady places in America. I think you’d be hard pressed to find an OTB that hasn’t had a homicide in it.
One part of industry that seems to be thriving is the repo companies. These guys have been making money hand over fist by taking back things that people end up unable to afford. The repo industry has always been steady, but now it’s experiencing a renaissance. Repo men actually have a more dangerous job than people think. They are often attacked by people who want to keep things they actually don’t own. The best position to have in this industry is the auctioneer. You stand in front of a bunch of people and you just sell people’s stuff. Though auctioneering requires a capacity for speech that only a few people possess. The best way to take advantage of the repo industry is to buy stuff from auctions. You can get great prices on things that you may have thought were unattainable. Houses, cars, boats, this may actually be the best time to make a big ticket purchase if you have the means.
The last opportunity that is out there is economist. I don’t know much about economics or why our economic situation is so bad, but I do know that every time I turn on the news I see a different “economic expert” claiming a completely different outcome to our country’s situation. It seems like you can get on TV and say that the country will end up invaded by Canada and people will accept it as a sound possibility. And why not? Most people are either completely confused or scared because they are so confused. It’s pretty easy to take advantage of people’s fears when you claim to be an expert. The job market is not a complete wasteland, although it may feel like it is. You just got to look at things the right way. I’m looking at the current economic situation as an excuse not to get a real job.

Defining Offensiveness

I’ve noticed a strange trend taking place here at Dickinson College. People are beginning to protest events that previously never caused any problem. For some reason, certain traditional school events are now offending people. It all started a while back when the annual crush auction was held in the dining hall. As usual, people bid on the services of individuals and groups to benefit charity. But this time there were a group of people sitting at a table near the auctioneer holding placards that said things like, “People at this table are against the crush auction,” and “Slavery is bad,” or something to that effect. At first, I honestly thought it was a joke. I chuckled to myself thinking that this must have been something dreamed up by the wacky dining hall staff. I realized it was serious when I found one of the leaflets distributed by the protesters. It basically outlined that the crush auction was sexist and was making fun of important issues like slavery and human trafficking. I got the point they were trying to make, but I really didn’t feel that the crush auction was offensive and warranted a protest. I would have to say pretty much everyone in attendance agreed due to the enthusiasm for the event and the large amount of money it raised for charity.

The most recent of these occurrences occurred at the “Mr. Dickinson” mock beauty pageant. I was not there because of my current bitterness towards talent shows, this started when I was not aloud to perform my lurid stand up routine at the Apollo night talent show. All I really know is that some people protested the very principle of the show while at least one other person felt the material of the show was offensive.

So what is causing this discontent? Most of the arguments against these events seem to be focused on an allegedly sexist nature. I recall receiving a mysterious and cryptic e-mail from the head of the Women’s studies department telling us that something happened that offended some people, (we were never told what happened or how people were offended) and that there was hostility towards various groups of people on campus. To stop this hostility, the e-mail instructed us to ask ourselves how our environment affirms us. Although the vague nature of the e-mail made me dubious to the referred hostilities actual existence, I certainly felt that it should be addressed if it is actually a problem. However, the idea of our environment affirming us is pretty ridiculous. If you think that people are going to tell you you’re a good person for being yourself, you’re going to have a very tough time outside of college.

So do we live in a sexist environment? Although I am a man and can’t be certain how women here actually feel, I’m going to have to go out on a limb here and say no, this is not a sexist environment. The events being protested have been around for a long time and only recently have been declared sexist. I certainly support people’s right to protest these things, but I have to say it’s not very effective. The reason events like these continue to happen is because people like them. The alleged sexist nature obviously doesn’t seem to bother the vast majority of people here. Just because you may find something offensive doesn’t mean that everyone else does. So say what you want about these things protesters, but don’t expect there to be any serious changes, and don’t you dare try to use this as an excuse to bring about censorship.

Bombs Away! A Study of the Abject Horror of Failing in Standup Comedy

Originally published March 4, 2009

It was a normal Treehouse open mic, just like the several others I had performed at and done quite well. But this night turned out to be much different. For those of you who don’t know or never cared, I do standup comedy. I have been doing it quite a while now with much success. I started doing some performances at a bar in the deceptively dangerous town of Bridgeport, Connecticut. From there I was able to get a gig at the Good Life Café here in Carlisle. For the most part I felt the crowd there liked me. Most of the people there were there to see a folk music group and I went on during the intermission. Some of the older people seemed horrified at some of my more lurid material, but I got a lot of laughs. Unfortunately, I have not been invited back.
Running out of venues to perform at, a friend suggested I should perform at the treehouse. I was a little reluctant to perform there since I thought it was mainly a venue for music. Plus, I wasn’t sure how a group of people who take sustainability so seriously would react to my material. Environmentalists are notorious for having no sense of humor. It was a little strange going to an open mic that didn’t have a microphone, but I killed anyways. After a few successful performances my confidence had increased substantially. I even began to refer to myself as “bombproof”, not in conversation, just in my egotistic internal monologue. It was only a matter of time before my hubris got the better of me.
I went to the treehouse only to find that not a single person I asked to come see me perform showed up. This was a little disheartening but I wasn’t going to let it get to me. Once I got up, I began with one of my successful opening lines and I heard an unusual sound afterwards, silence. This lack of laughter completely threw me off. I went on with more previously successful material only to hear more silence. The feeling I had was like the awkwardness of a long pause in a conversation. If you multiply that awkwardness by fifty, that’s how I felt. The worst was when I tried some new material that was focused on how ridiculous anti-Semitism is. I said something along the lines of “Now I’m Jewish…” Suddenly I was interrupted by a person who laughed loudly and deliberately at my saying this. A heckler, a Jew hating heckler. I should have torn into him, asking him how long he had been a member of the Nazi party and the like, but instead I froze up. I finished my set and proceeded as quickly as I could to the exit. Two people stopped me to say it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but that was little consolation.
There is no way to describe the pain of bombing on stage. Especially when you question your comedic ability. This was very problematic for me since comedy is pretty much the only thing I’m good at. After a little research I discovered that bombing is inevitable. Every comedian there has ever been has bombed at one point or another. This was very reassuring, and now I am more concerned with trying to redeem myself. Despite the soul crushing pain of the experience, all in all it’s just a bump on the road.

A New Way to PSA

Originally published February 18, 2009

Since I’ve been attending Dickinson College, the green devil has been our mascot for sustainability. For those of you reading this outside of Dickinson College, the green devil is basically a cartoon or a person in a costume who speaks on behalf of the sustainability initiative office. He’s basically a manipulation of our normal mascot, the red devil, who is much less vocal about everything because he is almost non-existent. Every now and then we get e-mails from the sustainability office that are signed by the green devil. His picture can be seen all over campus and he is the most visual symbol for our college’s sustainability program. Most of us are used to this, but recently I’ve begun to question the green devil’s adequacy.

My doubts first arose when I told several non-Dickinson students about the green devil and every single one of them laughed in my face. I guess that at the college level it’s pretty ridiculous to have a cartoon to persuade us to be more civic minded. That should probably stop at around the beginning of 7^th grade. Although I have at times been critical of the methods which sustainability is being promoted, I absolutely support sustainability and understand that it must be promoted. But being told to conserve electricity by such a puerile symbol is kind of patronizing. The green devil clearly does not respect my intelligence. However, sustainability must continue to be promoted. So how can we promote sustainability without childish mascots?

The first thing we can do is look at advertising strategy. Believe it or not, the use of a character like the green devil used to be very common in advertisements. Cartoon characters like Joe Camel and the Frito Bandito spoke to young consumers in order to get them to buy something unhealthy. This tactic is beginning to be frowned upon because it manipulated children’s inherent lack of common sense. The green devil could be just as bad as any of those mascots, except he stands for a noble cause. But that also makes him much less cool and therefore much less influential. There is another advertising strategy that works especially well, using sexual imagery.

The term sex sells needs to be applied to our sustainability campaign. I can’t promise that hot women promoting sustainability will work, but I can promise you it will grab everyone’s attention. Just look at those commercials for Axe body spray. People don’t buy it because it smells good. It smells like vinegar mixed with cinnamon. People buy it because of the commercials that insinuate that if you wear this body spray you will get laid by hot women. Right now environmental movements are severely lacking sexy spokespeople. Al Gore is not going to cut it. We need to show someone recycling and then sexy women congregate around him. I’ll admit this is less dignified than the green devil. In fact it may also be more insulting to our intelligence, but let’s face facts, sustainability doesn’t sell itself. We all are going to have to be willing to make sacrifices if we’re going to save the planet. Some may be offended if sex is used to promote sustainability, but how else are we going to convince people to conserve energy? The only other way that is equally effective is scaring the crap out of people to get them on your side, and let’s not forget how the Bush administration screwed things up doing that.

A Tradition of Pointless Holidays

Originally published February 9, 2009

As some of you may have been aware last week we had the very strange holiday of Groundhog Day. If you’re like me you were unaware of this. I had forgotten about it until I read that the groundhog, Staten Island Chuck, had actually bitten mayor Bloomberg during the New York City Groundhog Day ceremony. Even though groundhogs’ habitat is not New York, Staten Island Chuck clearly has adopted the aggressive New Yorker attitude that makes it the greatest city in the world. I’m sure Groundhog Day provides much needed revenue to the town of Punxsutawney, and much needed publicity to the groundhog species, but it is an ultimately pointless celebration. Seeing a morbidly obese squirrel crawl out of a tiny hut and then having some guy interpret it as a weather prediction just seems wrong to me. Perhaps I’m not comfortable with the idea of a rodent oracle. We are turning groundhogs into false prophets, just like Pat Robertson. Perhaps in the 18^th century people really respected the prediction of groundhogs, but today it is obsolete and so are other holidays of ours.

Remember Earth Day, of course not. Oddly enough there are actually two earth days every year. One on the 22 of April and one on the vernal equinox, both are equally pointless. There may have been a time when we needed to devote a whole day to conservation, but ever since “An Inconvenient Truth” came out everyday is earth day. Arbor Day is similar to earth day except it is more tree concentrated. I like trees as much as the next man, but growing up in suburban New York and Connecticut has desensitized me to their importance. Maybe if I grew up in a city or a desert I would feel some sense of novelty, but being around huge forests since birth has made me indifferent. Instead of being a symbol of life and nature, to me trees are just the things outside of my house that cause power failures periodically.

Valentine’s day is not pointless, but it seriously needs to be changed so it doesn’t make single people like me want to kill themselves. Throughout the first half of February I constantly see commercials about giving chocolates, flowers, and jewelry to a significant other. Every time I see one of these commercials it reminds me to get a bottle of vodka as a Valentine’s gift for myself. I have to imagine that as well as jewelry and candy companies do on this holiday, liquor companies are also comparably successful.

So we may have a slew of ridiculous holidays, but at least some of them give us days off from work. I would have spoken about Columbus Day earlier in this article, but that holiday has a point. Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic ocean with the very noble intention of giving us a day off in October.

Obama's Range of Change

Originally published January 28, 2009

President Obama has promised that change is coming to the nation. Personally, I am not entirely sure how much change he means to bring. We all certainly expect that he will be different from Bush because he will actually use facts and logic in his decision making, but is that enough? Some other things are going to have to change to.

First off, President Obama must stop the treasury from constantly changing our money. This is probably one of the most pointless things our government does. Aside from the one dollar bill, every other bill has been changed dozens of times. The ten dollar bill has an orange tinge to it now for some reason and the five dollar bill has a purple five on it. I have to think that retooling the printing presses and making new engraving plates cost a lot of money. Believe it or not there is actually a congressional committee whose sole purpose is to come up with new ways to screw with our money. Remember those one dollar Sacagawea coins that were around for a while then just disappeared because nobody used them? Good one treasury subcommittee. These guys are elected officials who get paid by our tax dollars to sit in a room and think of new color schemes for money. Well I say no more.

The next thing that needs to be done is to stop declaring figurative wars on things that have always existed. The war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terror, the war on crime. When we declare war on something we expect that eventually it will go away, but there will always be terrorism, poverty, and drugs. We can slow these things down but we will never eradicate them. So, President Obama, come up with a new term for trying to lessen these things. When we declare war on things that can’t be killed it just sounds stupid.

Lastly, a new approach towards foreign policy needs to be taken. To get nations like Iran and China to do what we want we have to utilize a tool that has been neglected in affairs of state. Tobacco. The Chinese and Middle Eastern people love to smoke. And they especially love to smoke American cigarettes because the tobacco they produce is inferior. Have you ever smelled a Chinese cigarette? It smells like burning hair. If we want Iran to stop it’s nuclear program or China to release political prisoners all we have to do is stop the cigarettes form coming in. Once they start going through nicotine withdrawal we can get them to do whatever we want.

It’s a bright new day for America. We’re not entirely sure exactly how Barack Obama will do as president yet, but we know he doesn’t have a tough act to follow.

Forbidden Comedy

Originally published November 19, 2008

Well, I hate to say it, but I have been deprived of my right to free speech right here on the campus of Dickinson College. How you ask? Because I was not allowed to perform my stand up routine at the Apollo night. I was initially allowed to perform, but then a bunch of little kids decided to show up to the Apollo night, and my material was deemed too offensive for children to hear. This is just another entry on my list of why I hate children.

Sure my material is a bit raunchy, but it’s also educational. Children hearing about things I saw in Amsterdam will teach them about foreign culture. I also inform children about how to spot drug addicts, and things they should not do while drunk. I feel no child will end up worse off than they did before by listening to my routine. The reason for this is that according to statistics over half of all families in the U.S. are dysfunctional. So I doubt my seven minute routine will cause any serious harm that isn’t already there, except of course for the just less than half of the children who come from functional families.

We let our children watch far more horrible things on TV everyday. Have you ever actually watched an episode of the teletubbies? It is disgusting. My stand up routine looks like the family circus compared to the teletubbies. I ended up watching an entire episode while babysitting babysitting my 2 year old cousin. He was laughing the whole time while I watched in terror as his mind slowly became corrupted by the teletubbies, who should be known as the four fluorescent colored horsemen of the apocalypse. The only message I can perceive from that show is this: take lsd. The whole show is more or less based on someone’s acid trip. It’s just a bunch of bizarre little alien people with televisions in their stomach who live in a meadow where the sun has a baby in it. That’s it. Nothing else. At least my stand up has some context and coherence, teletubbies teaches our children that a plot is unnecessary to be entertained. The whole show is clearly a devious British plot.

So children will continue to be corrupted into unproductive members of society while my art is censored. And yes, my stand up comedy is art. It will reach you on a spiritual level and make your life richer. And if you’re reluctant about bringing your kids to see my act, just remember, they’re going to have to learn about junkies and prostitution sooner or later.