Will Work, Can’t (Find) Work.

23 06 2009

Growing up, expected to do the bare minimum given the budding eggs that came before myself, yet encouraged – half-heartedly – to do better, I have found myself in an odd predicament of having an air of arrogance firmly cemented in my ego. This, you may not be surprised to learn, is why I have found little time to blog as of late. Or, rather, trying to find work has been preventing me from adding to this virtual diary.

I have given up early into the metaphorical day, admittedly, and have realigned my virtues towards the internet job sphere. You know the type: earn money from home; earn money doing nothing; attractive older women ready for you. The latter is perhaps just something that piqued my interest, it was late, I was bordering on tipsy and the way the fluorescent light danced through those silver wisps of budding upper-moustache hair immediately caught my attention. My bad.

Discovering that my favourite broadsheet had a job advertisement section was the best thing that happened, the morning after the night before. Unfortunately, the only jobs that interest me, and that I am adequately prepared for, are those in the Media industry, an unforgiving hound of an industry, which demands previous experience. Frankly, it is experience which is impossible achieve. Every media position available for applicants requires that same very experience, experience which would-be advertisers, PR officers and journalists lust after and cannot find.

One’s only real option is to do, essentially, volunteer work. Write free, for publications that could care less about the individual and more about the quality of work they are able to churn out en-masse, for a false promise of recognition. False, because no one will actually ever find your work, and will most likely be in the very brochures you scoff at in the dentists’ offices around the country.

Furthermore, as previously noted, I find myself in the position of being far too good for that.

So, to sum up, the broadsheets have been of no help.

We have all seen the horror stories of online wanted ads. A service that is primarily used by phone sex lines and escorts, but my own experience was remarkably enlightening.

Craigslist allows anyone to list a service that they have to offer in regards to a specific city or state, and I cannot fault what it offers. For example, it is a most perfect way of finding accommodation if you happen to be on the look for an apartment, or, you know, a stripper with an apartment. I am looking for a job though, and not as a stripper, although that is certainly something I may have to consider, given the way things are going.

Like in the broadsheets, there was a plethora of jobs available, and like in the broadsheets, it was jobs that required that mythical previous experience. However, one advertisement did suggest that freelancing would offer a small, very small, income, and get my name out there – published – in the very same brochures that litter those, previously noted, dental offices.

The moral of the story, as it were, is to bite into a piece of humble pie once every so often.

Otherwise, we will just be stuck in perpetual disappointment: in a town where the majority of its residents are so intoxicated by alcohol and narcotics that the opening of the first ever off-license pharmacy would not garner so much as an eye bat. Perhaps that is just my circumstance, then.

However, the work is there, the people claiming otherwise have, clearly, no intention to work, in a state where they are instead paid to blame their lack of work on honest foreign nationals, doing work that is available because the country’s own is too ignorant and aloof to do it themselves. I don’t want to be like them, and neither should you.





Letter to a Friend.

25 05 2009

I’m trying to imagine you with a personality, because bluntly, I doubt your fabricated semblance is any more sincere than your friends on your social networking site of choice are being when they tell you that you’re unique and super-cool, and vice-versa.

Extreme angled close-up shots aside, greyscale forgotten, hair-dye out of the window, you are you, and I am me. Given, I am probably slightly better than you are, for to be equal you would have to be less you. For example, you are not retro, and your given name is not spelled as you wish it were. Likewise, your last name isn’t as flagrant as the one you display on your profile.

Jamie Jactancy, can you imagine that?

I was, originally – in the beginning, hoping that this would be a phase. Much like how the yo-yo was, but it seems to have taken a firm grasp of our social conscience and refuses to let go.

As the pioneer of the shirt/ jean style, I feel compelled to point at these people on the street, and laugh at them. Except, you know, not on the street, and from the comfort and relative safety of my home.

So, I digress. I can only hope that these people, with their ridiculous neck, face and hand tattoos grow up in the relative near future to realise that they are huge D-bags, to subsequently spend the rest of their time on this planet convincing others to not be like them, to be like everyone else, and instead actually be unique.

Frankly, every time you claim to not care what people think about you, I cry a single tear for your bruised and withered self-esteem.





Belatedly, I Have Nothing to Say.

11 04 2009

I have been wondering what to write about for a while. I was, for some time, considering posting articles I had done for journalism (my course, incidentally). However, that idea — due to the fear of being called a plagiarist — has since been scrapped. It did start the brain to crank through the gears, though.

I am not even sure I believe in plagiarism, for an idea can never truly be thought only once. That much is evident in independent evolution, the striking similarities between upcoming video-games InFamous and Prototype, and even in movies. Of course, a few bad eggs will, word for word, copy someone else’s work in an attempt to pass it off as their own.

However, those people are surely in a minority, and I – we – should not be made to suffer for that, no? Anyway,  I will instead just touch on a few things I have come to realise whilst bemoaning my very, very dull existence.

To say I live in a rough town would be an understatement. It is not rough around the edges, either; it is rough as in this town – if it were personified – would tell other towns to just walk away. This town, my town, would drive a one-litre diesel, front wheel drive car with an unnecessary large rear spoiler and exhaust. It would also, most likely, have an ASBO.

As a fishing town, we take an unusual pride in the sea. However, with EU regulations and the like prompting a change in the way we fish our seas, my town has been made to stop over-fishing in an attempt to, you know, save the planet. My town, or its inhabitants, does not like that.

So, we have seen the birth of residents claiming that they cannot maintain a standard of living thanks to, and you have probably guessed it (and because I have some tact I won’t actually say who they blame, but rather), fear mongering and the inability to fish their own water. That is how much spunk, or spine, or ignorance, my town has. Their already apparent sheer lack of common decency and sense has been intensified, and they complain that it is everyone else’s fault that we have been over-fishing our oceans for far too long.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of how bad my town can seem. However, I would never ask that it change, or dream of it, because in its own special way my town provides me an infinite amount of laughs that I hope to, on another dull day, share with you. I also apologise, this could have been written and edited to a better standard, but take it for what it is, the first rant I have ever dared to share with you.

Better still, I do not even like fish.