This morning I have an interview many miles to the north. That's OK, I'd have gone to the interview if it were held many, many miles to the north. I just need a damn job.
My last assignment was the George in Manhattan, coming to an end just a few weeks after it started. When I took that job, I was of the understanding that we were looking at more than a couple of weeks; I guess companies will tell you anything to get you in the door when it suits them. I sure hope someone tells me something I want to hear today. I haven't been out of work this many months in a row in a very long time.
My girlfriend has been so patient with the situation. She knows I'm putting forth good efforts, but I can also tell that the situation is taking it's toll. I can't blame her if she feels a little weird about everything. I certainly feel weird about everything. I've had some near-misses the last few weeks, including what I think of as the "bus driver incident" and, more recently, the local cable company making with the employment teaser over and over. I've just about resigned myself to not getting any kind of job in my chosen industry. This is flatly ridiculous.
She has been sweet to me too. She shelled out for a much-needed haircut (she says I'm so handsome now!), new glasses, even a new monitor to help with my eyestrain and neck kinks. She works hard at her job, cooks fabulous meals ... I can't ask for more and don't deserve as much. All I want to do is get a lousy job so I don't feel like a sponge. Is this too much to ask?
I send out resumes every morning like I'm delivering the daily paper. I make phone calls, I talk to HR people and bosses ... but there's so many people out there looking for work, the competition is enormous. Couple this with the fact that I don't have a college degree and it gets worse. I have years - in some cases, decades - of experience, but for many employers that doesn't mean as much as a 4-year degree. It also doesn't help that I'm not the youngest kid on the block. Anyone who thinks getting older doesn't mean squat in the job market is fooling themselves.
So, I'm off today for another interview. Long trip; train to Newark, then a bus to wherever-the-heck I end up. Likely for an interview that won't last but twenty minutes, if that. It's the way things usually go; arrive, give resume, fill out some papers, give some guy ten minutes of energy, take the trip back home and do it again the next day. Over, and over, and over.
I'm not whining. (Really, I'm not!) It's just getting to be very frustrating. I don't even bother getting my hopes up any longer; I just go, give my best shot, come home and keep plugging. It's like training for a marathon. I don't actually expect to win, I just expect to be able to keep running.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The Unkindness of Strangers
I promised you people that I was not going to post on this blog any longer regarding a certain virtual-world-type online social construct, and in a manner of speaking, I'm keeping that promise. The fact that the individuals I'm referring to in vagueness here can be found in that environment really has little to do with the topic, except that, like many online environments, they live for the most part in anonymity. And, no, before you ask, I am neither of the persons in question.
Anonymity online has its pluses and minuses. A big minus is when someone uses it to destroy the reputation of others, wholly for the personal pleasure of doing so. We're not talking about a nosy neighbor who can't help peeking over the privacy fence, then caterwauling to everyone else in the vicinity about your doings in your own backyard. We're talking scandalous perceptions, misconceptions, assumed activities and even outright lies in the pursuit of personal fame and a constructed aura of serving the community while attaining the actual destruction of someone else's reputation, someone who has likely done absolutely nothing to the squawker in the first place.
Rather dramatic? I'd love to point you to the blog post of the offending miscreant who spurred the offending essay, but (a) it's filled with a lot of terminology and concepts only users of that unmentionable virtual environment would even be interested in knowing, and (b) this stirrer of online pots doesn't deserve any more traffic than they already get. It's like linking to the online Enquirer, save for the fact that the Enquirer isn't typically being malicious and everyone knows their tongue is firmly in cheek.
This person's tongue is not in cheek. I happen to be an acquaintance of the target of the malicious blog posts (and, without extensive conversations and a willingness to peel back the veil of online anonymity, "acquaintances" are really all anyone has online), and I know her to be intelligent, kind, helpful and generally good fun to have around. Here is the issue: how do you combat someone posting as their anonymous online entity, with the intent to slander, defame and destroy the reputation of your own?
Online personages can have real-world influences and consequences. For example, my online moniker is tied to the writings in this blog, my digital art, and other things having a direct tie to what I, as a real person, create. I am, for all intents and purposes, "Ghosty Kips" (trademark filings aside, of course). How would I fight back, possibly bringing my reputation into question further than it would have been anyway, against someone else who posts inflammatory and defamatory content against my online personage, and even against my real-life one, without drawing even more attention to the miscreant and their offensive missives?
I'm not a lawyer. It would seem to me that, even when speaking about a virtual representation of a person in an online environment, libel is libel and character defamation is character defamation. But, not being a lawyer, I have no real idea if this stuff is worth seeking legal damages against or not. I don't even know if theres a charge that can be levied at all - we're talking about online, "virtual" reputations, aside from the real-life character bashing that has been done. Not only this, but pursuing those damages would have to be prohibitively expensive, I'd imagine. I certainly don't have the monetary means to fight a war against someone slandering my online good name, outside of a DCMA filing with a suit against theft of content. Copyright and trademark infringement is one thing; libel against a virtual personage is quite another.
There are the ramifications of such a legal pursuit to be considered, apart of the monetary cost. Would I want to be responsible for the setting of a legal precedent where online personages are due the same protections under the law as real-life ones are? Or the establishment of a legal tie-in between an actual person and their online personage? After all, while it can be argued that libel isn't libel if it's true, defamation is defamation regardless. An online persona can always be shed, but if it is directly representative of a real person's content and body of work, is it due the same protection under the law? The difference may lie in the amounts of money, time, work and marketing that virtual personage has been given as a means of creating a marketable entity. Or, it may lie in whether the online personage is a trademark. Certainly pen names must be protected; one couldn't go about publicly slandering Richard Bachman without getting a friendly phone call from Stephen King's lawyers, I'm sure.
I don't know how this detestable situation will pan out, but I'm very interested in keeping an eye on how it progresses as I've advised the target of the antagonist to seek legal recourse. As someone who wishes to be known by a pseudonym himself, how much and what forms of protection that pseudonym has is of keen interest to me - as is whatever restrictions to online enterprise and freedom of speech may come of any legal proceedings. I will say that hiding behind an anonymous entity to degrade the reputation of another person - virtual or otherwise - purely for personal gain is, at the very least, detestable.
Anonymity online has its pluses and minuses. A big minus is when someone uses it to destroy the reputation of others, wholly for the personal pleasure of doing so. We're not talking about a nosy neighbor who can't help peeking over the privacy fence, then caterwauling to everyone else in the vicinity about your doings in your own backyard. We're talking scandalous perceptions, misconceptions, assumed activities and even outright lies in the pursuit of personal fame and a constructed aura of serving the community while attaining the actual destruction of someone else's reputation, someone who has likely done absolutely nothing to the squawker in the first place.
Rather dramatic? I'd love to point you to the blog post of the offending miscreant who spurred the offending essay, but (a) it's filled with a lot of terminology and concepts only users of that unmentionable virtual environment would even be interested in knowing, and (b) this stirrer of online pots doesn't deserve any more traffic than they already get. It's like linking to the online Enquirer, save for the fact that the Enquirer isn't typically being malicious and everyone knows their tongue is firmly in cheek.
This person's tongue is not in cheek. I happen to be an acquaintance of the target of the malicious blog posts (and, without extensive conversations and a willingness to peel back the veil of online anonymity, "acquaintances" are really all anyone has online), and I know her to be intelligent, kind, helpful and generally good fun to have around. Here is the issue: how do you combat someone posting as their anonymous online entity, with the intent to slander, defame and destroy the reputation of your own?
Online personages can have real-world influences and consequences. For example, my online moniker is tied to the writings in this blog, my digital art, and other things having a direct tie to what I, as a real person, create. I am, for all intents and purposes, "Ghosty Kips" (trademark filings aside, of course). How would I fight back, possibly bringing my reputation into question further than it would have been anyway, against someone else who posts inflammatory and defamatory content against my online personage, and even against my real-life one, without drawing even more attention to the miscreant and their offensive missives?
I'm not a lawyer. It would seem to me that, even when speaking about a virtual representation of a person in an online environment, libel is libel and character defamation is character defamation. But, not being a lawyer, I have no real idea if this stuff is worth seeking legal damages against or not. I don't even know if theres a charge that can be levied at all - we're talking about online, "virtual" reputations, aside from the real-life character bashing that has been done. Not only this, but pursuing those damages would have to be prohibitively expensive, I'd imagine. I certainly don't have the monetary means to fight a war against someone slandering my online good name, outside of a DCMA filing with a suit against theft of content. Copyright and trademark infringement is one thing; libel against a virtual personage is quite another.
There are the ramifications of such a legal pursuit to be considered, apart of the monetary cost. Would I want to be responsible for the setting of a legal precedent where online personages are due the same protections under the law as real-life ones are? Or the establishment of a legal tie-in between an actual person and their online personage? After all, while it can be argued that libel isn't libel if it's true, defamation is defamation regardless. An online persona can always be shed, but if it is directly representative of a real person's content and body of work, is it due the same protection under the law? The difference may lie in the amounts of money, time, work and marketing that virtual personage has been given as a means of creating a marketable entity. Or, it may lie in whether the online personage is a trademark. Certainly pen names must be protected; one couldn't go about publicly slandering Richard Bachman without getting a friendly phone call from Stephen King's lawyers, I'm sure.
I don't know how this detestable situation will pan out, but I'm very interested in keeping an eye on how it progresses as I've advised the target of the antagonist to seek legal recourse. As someone who wishes to be known by a pseudonym himself, how much and what forms of protection that pseudonym has is of keen interest to me - as is whatever restrictions to online enterprise and freedom of speech may come of any legal proceedings. I will say that hiding behind an anonymous entity to degrade the reputation of another person - virtual or otherwise - purely for personal gain is, at the very least, detestable.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The End of Exclusion
What I want to know, to put the query into the first sentence of the essay (for once), is how God got to be as elitist and exclusive as we are. Seriously.
Let's take this idea on from the beginning. God creates the universe, in whatever fashion you feel comfortable with, and includes a variety of humans. Humans are a weird lot, consisting of dentists, gay couples, polytheists, pacifists, Tibetan monks, ballroom dancers, students of cosmology, D&D players, hula-hoopers, worshipers of Cthulhu, you name it. God loves them all, of course, whether sewer workers or Satanists, because He created them all in His likeness.
Some of those people have some fairly bizarre ideas as to what it is God actually intends to do with His own creations. Some insist that, even though God created everyone, and everything, and all situations and all times and all places, even though God was the intelligence and the energy and the motion behind all Creation, there are clearly - clearly! - some parts of God's Great Work which are in dire need of a lesson that extends to the end of time, and perhaps a bit longer, for being the Naughty Entities He created them to be, unabashedly and unapologetically existing just as God made them (how dare they).
After which, someone, somewhere decides there needs to be a group of appointed Holy sycophants chosen by the very Finger of God, to teach the ways of their religion to those who will listen, and a good lesson, By Gum, to the ones who won't. It's not enough that God created them, and it's not enough that God will deliver judgement upon them one day (or not), the situation must be further complicated by protesting their choice of lifestyle in this life, to make them feel wrong, dirty and sinful in chasing after whatever it is God wanted them to be. It is SO important that these sinners know that God, who made them exactly what they are, does not approve, and that we KNOW God doesn't approve because it says so right here in the Bible / Qur'an / Torah / Spiderman #1, and we're going to smack the dog poop out of you for it via protest / fist fight / French bomb / military action / suicide bomber / NY Times article / lessons to our young on Holy Day.
Then, while professing God's love for everyone, and telling the tale of all the great things God has done for all of us (though they really don't mean all of us, since some of us obviously aren't deserving), the religious better-than-thous carefully and diligently point out the parts in Holy Writ where God quite plainly and rather succinctly declares His unending and eternal distaste for you, even though He created you just the way you are. Because of that dirty, dirty fact of your existence - the very proof that they are wrong - they don't WANT you in their places of worship, or their neighborhood, or their churches / synagogues / temples / grottoes, or being involved with their religion in any way. You are unclean, you are sinners deluxe, you are not like they believe, and therefore you are most certainly Not Welcome.
What brought on this rant tonight? A shooting on an army base, protesters with signs that read "God hates fags", arguments over who should or shouldn't be clergy, children taught in schools that their religion says other races aren't human, organizations that profess charity while funding terrorism, and on, and on, and on. All in the name of some religion claiming to have the market cornered on truth. I am tired of religions that exclude. I am tired of belief systems - I am tired of people who promote belief systems - that teach hatred and intolerance as some integral part of God's plan.
God created everyone. Everyone is included.
Let's take this idea on from the beginning. God creates the universe, in whatever fashion you feel comfortable with, and includes a variety of humans. Humans are a weird lot, consisting of dentists, gay couples, polytheists, pacifists, Tibetan monks, ballroom dancers, students of cosmology, D&D players, hula-hoopers, worshipers of Cthulhu, you name it. God loves them all, of course, whether sewer workers or Satanists, because He created them all in His likeness.
Some of those people have some fairly bizarre ideas as to what it is God actually intends to do with His own creations. Some insist that, even though God created everyone, and everything, and all situations and all times and all places, even though God was the intelligence and the energy and the motion behind all Creation, there are clearly - clearly! - some parts of God's Great Work which are in dire need of a lesson that extends to the end of time, and perhaps a bit longer, for being the Naughty Entities He created them to be, unabashedly and unapologetically existing just as God made them (how dare they).
After which, someone, somewhere decides there needs to be a group of appointed Holy sycophants chosen by the very Finger of God, to teach the ways of their religion to those who will listen, and a good lesson, By Gum, to the ones who won't. It's not enough that God created them, and it's not enough that God will deliver judgement upon them one day (or not), the situation must be further complicated by protesting their choice of lifestyle in this life, to make them feel wrong, dirty and sinful in chasing after whatever it is God wanted them to be. It is SO important that these sinners know that God, who made them exactly what they are, does not approve, and that we KNOW God doesn't approve because it says so right here in the Bible / Qur'an / Torah / Spiderman #1, and we're going to smack the dog poop out of you for it via protest / fist fight / French bomb / military action / suicide bomber / NY Times article / lessons to our young on Holy Day.
Then, while professing God's love for everyone, and telling the tale of all the great things God has done for all of us (though they really don't mean all of us, since some of us obviously aren't deserving), the religious better-than-thous carefully and diligently point out the parts in Holy Writ where God quite plainly and rather succinctly declares His unending and eternal distaste for you, even though He created you just the way you are. Because of that dirty, dirty fact of your existence - the very proof that they are wrong - they don't WANT you in their places of worship, or their neighborhood, or their churches / synagogues / temples / grottoes, or being involved with their religion in any way. You are unclean, you are sinners deluxe, you are not like they believe, and therefore you are most certainly Not Welcome.
What brought on this rant tonight? A shooting on an army base, protesters with signs that read "God hates fags", arguments over who should or shouldn't be clergy, children taught in schools that their religion says other races aren't human, organizations that profess charity while funding terrorism, and on, and on, and on. All in the name of some religion claiming to have the market cornered on truth. I am tired of religions that exclude. I am tired of belief systems - I am tired of people who promote belief systems - that teach hatred and intolerance as some integral part of God's plan.
God created everyone. Everyone is included.
