What sells must then be replenished.

Happy Thanksgiving

You betcha

I am awesome

Christmas in the breakroom.

What I've done today (encoded)

Pilot Light on Halloween

You figure it out.

Mad Men humbles me

I personally think Mad Men is a stellar show. Occasionally I am humbled by the dialogue. Episode 9 of season 4 is a prime example. I transcribed this from the episode, and can't stop rereading it.

It might need context, but I doubt it.

-------

Roger Sterling: “You want me to get Don to do it? Of course, he didn’t really know her.”
 
Bertram Cooper: “No, he didn’t.”
 
Roger Sterling [intercom]: “Caroline get Mrs. Harris, it’s regarding Mrs. Blankenship’s obit.

Roger Sterling: That otta’ get her in here.”
 
Bertram Cooper: “This is an insult to her, I can’t think of anything. And I have no office in which to ruminate.”
 
Joan Harris enters.
 
Roger Sterling: “Cooper’s trying to write an obit, something sharp and sweet.”
 
Joan Harris: “Well, Mr. Cooper, shall we say…friend, devoted caretaker..."
 
Roger Sterling: “...put 'quietly in her sleep', of course. What’s her profession, secretary?”
 
Joan Harris: “Executive secretary.”

Cooper pauses, then finally finds his words.

Bertram Cooper:  “She was born in 1898 in a barn, she died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper…She’s an Astronaut.”

Break room decorated for adults?

That's more like it.

That's more like it.

Pork roast meet 16 bean.

Even the produce mocks me.

What happems when U give me fresh okra.

It was 4.

Again, I am awesome.

Elephant Super Car Wash

This is what happens when you let people rent movies from a kiosk.

Because I can't reach the top shelves. Oh. And the safety thing.

Because if you put beer on the bottom of your cart, physics will take it away from you.

Because gravity is not your friend.

Because it's aged with real Asians?

Because....NO! We've been over this one before.

Because leaving Fuccacia bread in the shaving creme isle makes it seem more European.

Because it's free sushi day. Wait...no it's not.

Because the best place for a book is the breakroom fridge.

The other cake was cornbread.

Because using the trash can 10' away his harder than tossing trash to back of top shelf.

Because if you inform someone right away, it won't be a sticky surprise they can cherrish later.

Because once you're at the front of the store, there is no going back.

Because you must use this "U" hook to stake the feet of the bird to the ground

Because it's always better to leave a rug on the floor once you've gone to the trouble to put it there.

Well placed screw for Borg future.

Can only stare @ this. Not allowed to open until Fri.

Because there is nothing I like more than cleaning up after you.

Out of "S"s?

The last time I interviewed for a job

The last time I interviewed for a job, before my recent bout of unemployment, was in 1996. Since then I have simply had jobs thrust upon me and have taken them either enthusiastically or with great trepidation, but never without the realization that I could work without slogging through the very questionable aspects of job hunting and acceptance. This did two things. It gave me work stability and also completely ruined any knowledge I had about how to get a job the old fashioned way.

Since being unemployed I have had two major jobs I was counting on fall through, either due to client shifting of timeline or budgetary necessity. I have had my first interview in almost 15 years, but having become more “rounded” in experience, my resume now lacks a certain forward momentum along career goal lines. In some ways I think it makes me more valuable, but in others it looks as though I have no job related goals.

Since I began working at the age of 14, I have been a concession stand worker at a community swimming pool, a dishwasher, deli worker and bagboy in a grocery store, a theater usher and projectionist. In college I ran an art gallery, designed numerous underground magazines and had a short-lived radio show, while working the weekend graveyard shift at Kinko’s. While in college I also ran for student body president and lost, twice. I’ve been a graphic designer, art director, technical surveyor, project manager, and a file/office manager in a Law Firm. I have been a post production assistant on a TV pilot that didn’t get picked-up and if it had I would have been hired as a writer on the show. I was a co-writer on a short film now making the festival circuit and I was an AD on a short film that won Sundance. I also produced a short film in Iceland. I stopped counting at forty the number of short films I worked on in grad school. I did everything on them from catering, art direction and cinematography to directing and writing.

I currently have a number of teleplays and screenplays in various stages of development. I have two television pilots with Olmos Productions, (Edward James Olmos’ production company based at ABC), for SyFy Channel, as well as a screenplay at Universal and another television pilot currently being developed for Bryan Singer’s production company through TEWET3, LLC. Unfortunately there is no development money anymore, so all of the work on these was and is for free. My last job, was as an assistant to the producers of a German movie shot in Salt Lake City, Utah. I have both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree, but both of them are in the Arts.

I have lived in New York City and Los Angeles, but now find myself returned home to Tennessee. Don’t get me wrong, I love Tennessee and Knoxville, but as far as the arts are concerned there are only a few companies producing the bulk of the output, and most of those jobs are either taken or require more straight lined experience than my resume indicates.

So, back here, as I write this, I have just finished looking at all of the new job postings available in the area. There were roughly a two hundred new postings, and because I am not a medical professional, a certified project manager or a willing driver of vehicles of van size or larger, I did not find anything I was qualified for. Also, I am not willing to take surveys for a living or “work-from-home” for some ponzy scheme.

I do this every morning, looking for both professional opportunities and retail possibilities that I think that I could endure knowing my boss would most likely still have pimples. I have found and applied for five “professional” jobs, learned that five more had already been filled and have filled out applications online for Target, Books-A-Million, Regal Cinemas, Borders and hand filled applications for Earth Fare and Barnes and Noble. I don’t intend to stop there; I just went for places I liked first. I would have applied for Best Buy, but if you apply online, there has to be a specific opening you are looking for before you can fill out the application.

So far I have to say Target has the best online job application site. It allows you to apply at up to three different locations for up to three different jobs at one time, thus saving you the extra two and a half hours it would take to apply for them separately.

The only problem with someone with my level of education applying for these jobs is that my resume no longer contains customer service experience ala retail since I finished doing those kinds of jobs when I graduated UT. Also, none of these jobs ask for your resume, just for bits and pieces that hardly sum up who you are or what you are capable of. Almost universally, when applying online, you also have to take the Unicru personality test. I have taken it many times now and can tell you that I “strongly disagree” with this.

While I could download the cheat key, which is posted on many online job-hunting message boards, I have no desire to cheat on this test. I am me, and I can’t hide or lie about that. If I did, I might as well stop including any education past high school, and posting only the jobs I had back in the 90s, which contained retail experience. I won’t do that either, because I have a master’s degree and I still owe $136,000.00 for it. It cost me too much to just ditch and hide it like a dirty little secret.

According to the Unicru cheating sites, there are only two right answers, “Strongly Agree” and “Strongly Disagree”, which is why I am most likely not being called for interviews for menial labor. I don’t have such polarized opinions to questions such as:

You get mad at yourself when you make mistakes
You’d rather blend into a crowd than stand out
You look back and feel bad about things you’ve done
In school or on a job, you could be doing better than you are
When you go someplace, you are never late
You have no big worries
You take the lead in conversations or discussions
It is maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free
In groups, someone else usually takes the lead
You are a good reader
You do not like small talk
You do all you can do to win
You do not like to take orders
You have trouble dealing with sudden changes

There is one other aspect to my working life that is a bit unfortunate. Even though I am currently unemployed, I cannot receive any benefits either from California, or here in Tennessee because I have quit every job willingly, usually for a better opportunity, or in one case a hostile work environment, and I was almost entirely self-employed in Los Angeles. The total amount of work I did that wasn’t self-employed was five months over three years working on film or TV productions. I would have done more of that work, but it wasn’t enough money to pay the bills.

So, I guess in the end I’m getting a little frustrated with my current hunt for employment. It is said a person averages one interview for every ten applications or resumes they submit to possible employers. So, hopefully the one I sent out today will get a response. Until them, I will continue to scour the Internet for opportunities and begin the process of making generic cover letters so I might snail spam the local business community with my two-page life. I just hope that someone eventually looks past the individual entries on my resume and sees the whole picture. That, I would “Strongly Agree” with.

I have no opinion. I am a liar.

Camo + Fez + Wedding Dress Lace = LA style

Series worth watching 2009

Some of these series were established with me simply watching the most recent seasons. Some of these series were New this year. Some of these series got canceled way too soon, but all of them were worth watching in one way or another in 2009.

24
30 Rock
Batman:TBATB
Battlestar Galactica
Being Human
Better Off Ted
Big Love
Bored To Death
Breaking Bad
Burn Notice
Californication
Caprica
Dark Blue
Dexter
Doctor Who
Dollhouse
Entourage
Eureka
Flash Forward
Fringe
Glee
In Treatment
Kingdom
Kings
Life
Lost
Mad Men
Misfits
My Name is Earl
Nip/Tuck
No Heroics
No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Pushing Daisies
QI
Reaper
Sons of Anarchy
Supernatural
Terminator: TSCC
The Tudors
The United States of Tara
The Unusuals
Torchwood
True Blood
Wallander
Weeds

Top 15 movies I saw in 2009

I titled this post the way I did because I don't see all the movies I watch in a theater. At least right now, I have access to some screener copies I can borrow from a friend. So, all of these movies may not have come out in 2009 and I don't feel like looking up the ones that may not have, but I didn't see them until 2009. They're in alphabetical order. There were a number of movies I wanted to see but didn't, so this isn't a top 15 list, just a best of what I watched.

Changeling
Coraline
District 9
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
Grand Torino
Moon
Slumdog Millionaire
Star Trek
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Hurt Locker
The Visitor
The Wrestler
Up In The Air
Where The Wild Things Are

2009 Round-Up

2009 Round-Up

Originally, I was going to take all the data I had collected and put together a sort of Annual Report of my life for the last year, but then I didn’t feel like it once the time came to actually do it. I do this a lot. I think of things I want to do and then don’t actually do them. But, since I collected the data, and actually posted 10 out of 12 months of it on the blog, I thought I should at least sum up the year.

695 EPISODES OF TV WATCHED

82 No. OF TV SERIES THE EPISODES CAME FROM

610 TOTAL No. OF TV HOURS WATCHED

1.67 AVERAGE HOURS OF TV WATCHED PER DAY

63 MOVIES WATCHED

4 BOOKS READ (started 3 more)

4 GRAPHIC NOVELS READ (started 2 more)

66 SINGLE ISSUE COMICS READ

12 WRITING PROJECTS I WORKED ON

82,457 WORDS WRITTEN (doesn’t include rewrites or Moleskin)

226 AVERAGE NUMBER OF WORDS WRITTEN A DAY

4 SCRIPTS CURRENTLY “MAKING THE ROUNDS”

3 JOBS I HAD

2 STATES I WORKED IN

4 MONTHS I WAS UNEMPLOYED (not consecutive)

$2,992.30 NEEDED EACH MONTH TO BREAK EVEN

2010

Well, it's definitely going to be different.

$2655.11 AMOUNT I NEED TO MAKE EACH MONTH TO BREAK EVEN

$337.19 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT I NEEDED LAST YEAR PER MONTH

$31,445.54 YEARLY NEED TO LIVE IN TN TO BREAK EVEN IN 2010

$43,145.54 YEARLY NEED TO LIVE IN CA TO BREAK EVEN IN 2010