Phil 2.0 -- Rising From The Ashes

I Googled myself the other day. Many of the 57 results that came up were fascinating.  There are still stories posted online that I wrote 12 years ago at The Hartford Courant.  I totally forgot that, at one point, I had a MySpace page.  Apparently there's an award named after me at Cal State University - East Bay, though what exactly what the award honors is a mystery.  There's a web page that gives me a "hot rating" of 8.2 -- not sure if that refers to my physical attractiveness or my proximity to the equator.  And there's a voter database that lists me as a Republican (which I am not) and another one that lists me as a Democrat (which I also am not).

But the most interesting one, to me, was the one that said I died last month in Ogden, Utah.  Apparently the cause of death was natural causes (I was 75).  I died 5 days before I was laid off, and a week before I began this blog.  At least it's a little refreshing that I didn't meet my demise in a fiery car accident, ambush crocodile attack or falling from a cliff.  I suppose natural causes is the way to go.  I have to say, life dealt me more than my share of curveballs, but overall it was a fun ride.

Seriously, though, I think it's pretty obvious that, like the Phoenix, I've risen from the ashes.  Shouldn't somebody be doing a story on me right now?

 

The Phone Interview

People seem to be fascinated with how I did at the job placement agency yesterday.  It was pretty bland, more or less what I expected -- yes, we like your resume; no, we're not working with any companies that have immediate openings; yes, we'll call you when a suitable opening pops up; what's the lowest you'd be willing to make per hour, etc., etc.

I also spoke with a company that wants to do a phone interview with me this afternoon, and another that wants to interview me next Tuesday.  I'm always skeptical of phone interviews.  To me, a phone interview is a company's way of saying, "Your resume isn't bad enough for us to disqualify you immediately, but you're probably not going to end up on our short list."

But maybe I'm just being too cynical (I know, I know, you're shocked, me, cynical?).  You never know.  Stay tuned.

Nowhere To Go But Up

I have an interview with one of those professional job placement/staffing agencies later today.  I should probably go to bed instead of blogging.  But I'm also doing some more work on my novel, and I'm up anyway, so....

Anyway, I don't know what to expect at this intwerview.  Two years ago, when I was last unemployed, I want to one of them.  I interviewed on a Friday afternoon, took a couple of tests, proved that I'm at least reasonably proficient in Microsoft Excel, etc.  The guy I interviewed with told me I was a good candidate and that if I called him Monday, he had a couple of job leads and he'd refer me to them.

When I called back Monday and asked for him, the receptionist said, "Oh.  Sorry, he no longer works here."

I guess my experience can't be any worse than that.

Favre = Pure Evil

Brett Favre just keeps becoming more and more unlikeable, and I'm not just talking about his constrant retiring and unretiring, or his lacklister effort tonight against the Jets. Now he's accused of sexting a female Gameday host during the 2008 season when he was a Jet.

When will it end?  What's next?  Brett Favre grabbing cats by the tail and flinging them into the river?  Brett Favre grabbing foul balls from 9-year-old boys at baseball games?  Brett Favre coming out in favor of the terrorists? 

Sounds Familiar

Every 90 seconds I see a commercial on CBS for this upcoming new show called The Talk.  It apparently features several prominent woman -- Sharon Osbourne, Leah Remini, Sara Gilbert, Julie Chen and Holly Robinson Peete, as well as one of two others whose name escapes me -- as they talk about current events.

Huh? Isn't that The View?

ABC should counter by lauching a game show where people guess the prices of new cars and boats called The Cost Is Correct.

I Give It a Thumbs-Down

This semester I've been a fiction reader for my grad school's literary magazine. I've read dozens of stories and given my thoughts (i.e., Yes, No, Maybe, followed by a brief synopsis of why) on whether they're fit for publication.

Sometimes the story just doesn't agree with me.  I'm not gonna go into more detail that what follows, but I was in a snarky mood today and this story made me snarkier.  This is what I wrote in response. 

"No. And if there were a "Hell No" option on the dropdown menu, I would select that. In a word, WTF? The author is too cute for his or her own good. The unorthodox writing style could work if there were an actual story here. Instead, it's just a group of people preparing for a party in which an acquaintance has unexpectedly decided to attend. And in the meantime, the author takes the annoying steps of stopping the story to introduce him or herself to me personally, interrupting the story to bore us with two long and clunky poems, making a ridiculous analogy about a conversation being like Pearl Harbor, and ending the story with random, disconnected snippets of dialogue from the party. Extra points deducted for not double-spacing (hence the demotion from "No" to "Hell No"). Sure, some of the lines in this story are creative. But someone needs to sit this author down and explain that a story is more than cutting and pasting random lines of text together. The sum of its parts has to add up to a cohesive whole. Now that I'm all riled up, I'm gonna go outside and kick someone's ass."

I don't know.  Maybe if I had read it on a different day, I'd have been more inclined to like it.

Declined

It's a little disconcerting being out of work.  But it must be more disconcerting being the woman in front of me in the checkout line at Price Chopper yesterday afternoon.

She rang up a bill of $170, and ran her credit card through the swipe machine.  It was declined.  She ran it again, intending the split the bill in half and pay for her groceries using two credit cards.  Declined again.

Then she moved her grocery cart to the front window and said, "I'll be back.  I have to run to the bank."  The cashier canceled the order and then proceeded to ring me up.  "That was embarassing," the cashier said. 

I shrugged my shoulders and said, "I suppose it happens to the best of us sometimes."