Your Unemployed Daughter

photo credit: Robert Banh

You’re hardly even sposed to tell people about your dreams, much less write about them, but I have had such a bizarre collection of REM-thought in the past few days that I can’t help it.

1.) In this one I was the child in a terrorist family. They were all about to commit ritual suicide, but I wasn’t ready to die. So I escaped out of the second-story window of a house that looked much like that of my childhood, and began to roll down hill after hill. Except they weren’t so much hills as broccoli, and I was rolling over the tops of huge broccoli trees. And then I woke up.

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photo credit: Jeremy Brooks

Here’s an interesting piece, on Gawker today, about the fate of those print journalism types who haven’t been laid off. And while I don’t think it’s as dire as all that—things change, and people need (after their fair share of wallowing boozily, semi-conscious in private miseries) to hop on board and adapt or just go ahead and retire—it’s telling.

Who has it better? Maybe it’s actually us unemployeds.

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photo credit: Todd Mecklem

Hey guys!

Remember that old Unemployment Quiz, the one that I begged and pleaded with you to answer? Yeah, it was a while ago. At any rate, two of you have seen fit to respond, and I hate to punish two good test-takers just because the rest of you are out on the Vineyard or strung out on Quaker Chewy Bars or just too “busy” or whatever.

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photo credit: digital_monkey

You know how yesterday I was all moans and groans about my freelance gig for the next two weeks? All, Woe to the weary freelancer! So tiring, being in an office all day long! So hard to fit in your blogging, your workouts, and your social time! How do the employed do it?

It does take some getting used to. I am working on a theory about this, but I think it’s because it’s unnatural. People were not meant to sit in tall, heavily air-conditioned buildings staring at computer screens and reading Gawker all day long, listening to loud, plummy-voiced fellows talking about how to get relationship dish from underaged, inexperienced actors at film screenings. People were meant to be active, and enjoy life, and make a difference—do something good for themselves, and each other.

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photo credit: twen

Are you tired of not having a business card to give to all the men you meet in bars?

Embarrassed to have to say, “Oh, I’m actually … unemployed … um … check out my blog …” ?

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photo credit: candrews

You know how when you were little, and you told your mom you felt bad, and she thought you were just faking to get out of going to school but she took you to the doctor and it turned out you had a strep throat, or pneumonia, or swine flu?

That’s kind of how this recent NYT report makes me feel. Vindicated. Sorry for self. In need of antibiotics.

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Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m generally not out to make enemies (it just happens, okay?). And I like a cool $100 in my little pink wallet as much as the next guy. But does this job description (posted today on Mediabistro, names removed to protect the “innocent”) seem – somehow – a little shady?

“TK.com is looking for inquisitive people to work on a freelance basis in booking and conducting video interviews with renown and recognizable individuals in the arts, business, academia, science, and politics — and then editing those interviews. You don’t need to know anything about video editing, however, because you won’t actually be touching any video! Essentially you’ll take the interview you did and identify up to 10 one-minute to three-minute segments that you think would make good stand-alone video clips. At this point a professional video editor takes over and edits the video according to your instructions.

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photo credit: bowbrick

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a media implosion going on. And by imploding, I mean deflating like a punctured helium balloon tearing through the sky on its last gas. Or maybe a meteor falling out of the sky. Get out of its way. It’ll hit you.

Now, if we were in a media explosion, I would have at least one of these jobs (companies will remain nameless to protect the innocent – me) that I’ve applied for in the last month. I would have at least been called. I know, I don’t always have the right experience. I don’t expect them all to call me. I’m not that egotistical. But you’d think more than one would have gotten in touch, no?

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Imagine this: Virtual shopping malls! Four-pound “notebook” computers! Bedtime stories from a [[insert ominous tones here]] … Peeee Ceeee???

We’ve come a long way, baby, from the “International Network of Computers,” as evidenced by this report from Tom Brokaw circa 1995 (thank you, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon). When addressed with concerns that people might lose their jobs on account of this newfangled technology, Bill Gates simply points out, “it does have a CD-Rom player.”

Hello, magazine industry 2009. If only someone had thought to charge for content back then.

Perfect for corgis and smaller golden retrievers

Maybe you’ve heard this already. A girl, recently unemployed in New York City, turns to dog-sitting to pay her rent. She’s checking in on a couple’s German Shepherd at their Tribeca apartment. But when she opens the front door, there is the dog, sprawled in the middle of the foyer, dead as a doornail.

Despite being paid (What do dogsitters make these days? Anyone know?) let’s say, $25 … no, $50 a day, this couple does live in Tribeca, our fearless and dedicated dogsitter takes it upon herself to immediately call and alert the animal’s owners (who are say, vacationing in St. Barths), that their pup has expired. The couple, demonstrating precisely why they don’t have children, assign their intrepid dogsitter the duty of disposing of the body.

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