Off To Anaheim

After a frantic all-night, last-minute packing session, I'm off to Anaheim to a conference, and see if I can end this employment drought. I should be able to find an internet connection (or bum someone else's wi-fi) to keep this updated. I hope something comes out of this trip, so wish me luck.

Either way, I'm leaving extra room in my suitcase for all the free samples the companies spread out on their booths.

RIP Inspector Gadget

Yesterday, Don Adams, someone sure to be familiar to us and to our parents in one form or another, passed away from a lung infection. As kids, I'm sure most of us know Inspector Gadget, even though fewer of us have seen the man who gave the voice. Our parents, on the other hand, know him as goofy spy Maxwell Smart from the silly TV series Get Smart.

Fortunately, as long as they rerun Inspector Gadget, we won't hear the last of him. I still remember waking up early Saturday mornings (a feat we are only capable at a young age) to watch him. I never really cared how the plot of each show was formulaic, it was just a damn fun show to watch. All you people who grew up in the 80's know what I mean. And of course, an obituary post cannot end without possible last words or an epitaph.

Go-go-Gadget COFFIN!!!

Worst Excuse For A PFO Letter

I know HR people have the job of turning people down. One of their tools to do so is the PFO ("Please Fuck Off") letter. However, as a point of interface between the company and the outside world, they have the responsibility to put a good face to the company and let people down gently and politely.

Our friendly recruiters at CitiMorgage have a different idea.

Their approach is, "Why don't we provide an excuse to turn them down that is so lame, we insult them?" as shown by the following letter lovingly delivered to my e-mail:

Thank you for your interest in CitiMortgage!
All scheduled interview times for the National Society of Hispanic
MBAS has now been filled. However, we encourage you to visit the
CitiGroup exhibition booth for more information on our job opportunities.

XXXXXXX
Recruiter

So how about scheduling an interview outside the conference if you're really interested!? Fuck CitiMortgage. My reply to them is the same to every company that turns me down (i.e. Johnson & Johnson, General Mills, General Electric, Proctor & Gamble).

It's your loss, and I'll be happy to run you down when I work for the competition.

Bad Golf Day

I should've known better.

I should not have gone to the driving range knowing that the stars were not aligned properly to play golf. Say what you want, but for a game where you have to keep three billion things in mind at the same time whenever you swing at the ball, astrology is the only way to explain my erratic golf skills.

I certainly don't play golf to have fun or relax. Hell, I don't even like golf. It's just something I'll have to do as part of my business career, with golf being the chessboard for most business talk between corporate bigwigs. By the time I'm in the position to do that, perhaps my golfing would be good enough to go pro.

Sometimes I get the swinging motion perfectly, right down to the follow-through. It even feels sweet when I contact the ball. But no matter how well I swing, the ball still goes further if I just throw the fucking thing. Underhand. If anyone out there knows a thing or two about golf. please, please, please tell me what the hell I'm doing wrong.

Do not answer, "Taking up golf." I've already taken that as a given.

Someday, I'm going to be good enough to hit those power lines and cut electricity to the city.

Stupid Cat

So the stupid fat bitch decides to roost on top of a pile of cardboard boxes in the basement all night. It's quite unusual for her to stay in one place for that long, especially because it far exceeds the ten-minute intervals she has between meals.

Then it dawned on me that it's not that she woudn't come up, it's that she couldn't.

Other cats get stuck up trees. Mine gets stuck on top of cardboard boxes. There was no way I'm touching her, the fat bitch she is. My first solution was to leave her there until the desperation for food drives her to find her way down. Then I realize that desperation may not motivate her to come down as much when it comes to her going to the kitty litter box.

With cat shit being more foul-smelling than dog shit, I had to get her down. I tried pulling her down with my dad's putter, but it only made her bitchier. At that point, I was tempted to use the three-iron, and I'm not talking about pulling her down.

Setting aside the thought of justified animal cruelty, I figured that you can't make a cat do anything unless there's something in it for her. Going back to hunger as the driver, I painstakingly piled up some of the boxes into a makeshift staircase, and made a trail of dry cat food leading down. Lo and behold, she shows up at living room.

This should no longer be a problem, and I think it was worth the pain and effort dragging and hauling those heavy boxes full of stuff into a staircase for her to use, whenever she wants to perch up there to survey her territory.

And being the cat she is, she will never use it again.

Jesus Loves Food

Two middle-aged white men showed up at my door in nice suits.

Upon seeing one of them hiding behind a bible as if it's bulletproof, I silently cursed my home's designer for choosing doors with large windows on them rather than a peephole, rendering it impossible to identify the arriving party without being spotted.

"Are your parents home?"

"Umm...no," I answered.

"Oh, then we'll drop by another time. Good day to you."

How aggressive and relentless they must be, seeking to convert my entire family in one fell swoop, wielding their pedantic grasp of the holy text. It was the first time I witnessed Jehovah's Witnesses invading my neighborhood, and it was because of that very agression to convert people in masses that got me off the hook. I didn't have to summon my creativity to think up an excuse as to why they can't intrude on my life. They didn't even leave one of their weird and sometimes creepy publications like The Watchtower or Awake! I thanked God for my good fortune, savoring the irony of the act.

Do I have to live in China to be safe from these bible thumpers!? I thought they would never find me in Japan, but I was WRONG. Not only did they come, but they were former Japanese who spoke fluent English, so I couldn't get away with playing dumb clueless foreigner like I did with the NHK bill collector. Then again, the NHK guy was used to putting up with dumb foreigners' shit, as he was armed with English pamhlets, but I digress.

Back to the point. I can't stand Jehovah's Witnesses! This is how they spend their weekends, choosing a neighborhood to invade in a concerted and merciless effort, in order to shove their beliefs into others. Like a swarm of wasps seeking hapless victims to impregnate with their eggs.

Me and a Mormon buddy of mine once thought out a "Mission: Impossible" type of plan to outquote a Jehovah's Witness on the bible (he's a really cool guy, and probably not like the Mormons you are familiar with). One of us would be the Tom Cruise character and invite some Jehovah's Witnesses over for tea. The other one would be the Ving Rhames character: he will sit at a computer and search for relevant quotes on Bible.com, then feed the quotes to the Tom Cruise through a hidden earpiece.

We never got to executing the plan, for fear of attracting the entire congregation to our doorstep, like the hive of wasps they are when perceiving a threat to their colony. It would've been fun successfully rebutting a Jehovah's Witness with their very own bible, and watching their brains short-circuit and fizzle out, leaving them in a vegetative state with smoke coming out their ears.

At least now, I still have the chance to do so.

---

That interruption aside, today I was planning on going to the Taste of the City food festival. Of course, I went alone, having no friends who are "available" to go with me (Mental Note: Make more friends). Admission is free, but you buy tickets for the food, which are worth 50 cents each. I guess they do things this way so that the participating restaurants can't "shave down" their revenues when it's time for the event sponsor to collect his cut.

I was initially going to eat 60 ticket's worth, but I decided to take transit most of the way on the account of me not being accustomed to driving far, and in case alcohol is being served there. Unfortunately, the ride in the bus was quite similar to a ride in a blender ("Can you possibly brake any harder!? I don't think everyone in the bus is packed to the front like a giant plug of human flesh yet!!"). So in the end, I could only stomach 40 tickets of food. After the festival, I decided to spend the day downtown and walk off the food, in case they set the bus to "purée" on the return trip.

(Mental Note: Remember to draw a pentagram in sheep's blood at my door, leave the skull on the welcome mat, and change all light bulbs to red when I go home to repel Jehovah's Witnesses.)

A Shitty Day

Hi there,

We appreciate your interest in Career Edge internship opportunities at GE Canada and wish you success in your job search (so you can finally leave us alone).

This note is to confirm that your application has been received and will be reviewed by our recruiting team. If your skill-set matches our requirements, you will be contacted by a representative from our group. (Please fuck off.)

Best of luck, (You're gonna need it, loser.)

XXXXXXXX

That's just one of many letters I get from one of many companies I apply to in this fruitless job hunt. That is, when the company chooses to send me a personal letter from the recruiter rather than the automated PFO letter.

Maybe it's the cloudy, rainy weather that's putting me down today. Or maybe because it's the fact that I have no available friends here. My friends are like stars - you can look at them but they're too far away to touch (in the metaphorical sense, of course!). And that's not the only thing.

Yes, the FedEx idiocy saga continues.

I just got a call from them, telling me that three of the packages in my old Miami apartment are now stuck in a warehouse in Miami. If you did the math from last time, there should be FOUR packages, but now another package has magically disappeared. They were supposed to be picked up from my old apartment with customs documentation intact, and the ground shipping labels replaced with express shipping labels. Instead, they're now stuck in a warehouse with NO customs documentation and only a ground shipping label! To make things worse, they say the boxes are too beat up to endure another trip!!!

This display of incompetence has lasted a month and a half now. FedEx advertises that they deliver within a week. Please, please, PLEASE!! If you ever want to send your stuff, DO NOT use a courier!! Stick to your postal service!

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to figure out whether to cry somewhere or go to the gym.

The City's Under Smoke

It's a severely hazy day today.

I went down to settle a problem with my bank regarding them getting my birthdate wrong. This isn't the first snafu I had with them. My most memorable one was when they listed me as "retired". An understandable mistake, since I wasn't working at the time, being 8 years old and all.

When I exited the branch, the entire city reeked of smoke, and visibility is down to a few hundred meters. It was probably some nearby moron who was burning a huge pile of autumn leaves, except it's too early in the year for that.

It was actually an entire bog that is on fire a city away. The methane produced by decaying vegetation probably sped up the fire. They shipped in every firefighting aircraft in the province to put out the fire, and they're still trying to get it under control. (full story)

The bog's name is Burns Bog. How's that for ironic? As ironic as that time when a fire burned down a condominium complex under construction, down the mountain from me. The developer's slogan: "The toast of Town Centre!"

In fact, I'll even go as far as to say that it's ironic as THIS.

Remembering 9/11

It's been 4 years now.

When the most brazen terrorist attack in history occurred, the day that changed everything, I was teaching English in Japan. I came home, turned to the news on TV, and saw a burning building. That building looked vaguely familiar. It was probably some electrical fire, or some dumb executive trying to burn some documents and his pyre went out of control. I was sure that the firemen will able to put it out. It was then that the horror seeped in, when I heard the news anchor say, the weight of dread in his words, that a plane was crashed into the World Trade Center.

I was in total disbelief. I immediately called my most available colleague from the US, a buddy named Joe from Hawaii. I asked him if he was watching the news, and he said yes. He was equally shocked as I was. We had that conversation everyone has when something very bad has happened to something or someone mutually familiar.

And then the second plane crashed into the other tower.

HOLY SHIT!! I remember jamming into the receiver. It wasn't just the towers that were being demolished, it was also my perception that America was the invincible world power. If even America could be vulnerable to attack, is anywhere safe, or would peril ever follow humanity where they roam? I still managed to sleep that night, but I had to fall asleep with the events that I had witnessed scalding my mind.

Japan also felt the shockwaves of that terrorist attack. When I reported to the school office for work the next morning, the front of every newspaper bore that image, a besieged citadel of Western civilization.

For our parents' generation, the question was: "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" For our generation, it would ever be: "Where were you on 9/11?"

I know you heartless bastards read my blog but never leave comments. But this time, please make an exception. I'm curious and I want to know.

Where were you on 9/11?

Ground zero, visited two years later

Just Me And The Fat Bitch Now

I'm out of shape.

I know people of my gender are known for looking in the mirror and seeing the body of a Hellenic god, when in reality they have enough padding to survive a fall from an airplane. I'm different. I don't share these delusions. I know I look and feel out of shape. I've been trying to nurture this feeling to push myself to exercise more. If I was a girl, this feeling would probably lead me to starve myself, but being a guy, I believe this would actually help me lead a healthier life, provided I don't burn myself out exercising.

There are two gyms available to me down the mountain, but not as nice as the weight rooms in the student rec centers at UBC or UM. They should suffice. the one at the Aquatic Complex, presumably the better of the two is closed until the 14th, but the one at the Community Center is still open. I was reluctant to use it because it's next to a secondary school, and I imagined that gym being full of punks. I finally summoned up the guts to go, and it turned out only three other guys were using it, and none of them looked like they want any trouble. The place was tiny, but it will make do.

Going to the gym was one of the luxuries afforded to me now that my folks are gone on vacation to China, leaving me with the car. Lucky bastards get to go on a trip retracing the Silk Road. But then again, being herded around like sheep by the tour guide, where the whole flock is either suffering a mid-life crisis or retired can be pretty depressing.

This just leaves me with the cat, who I appropriately name "Fat Bitch". The dog has been taken to the care of the vet, because I can only manage taking care of one pet and one house. Panning for kitty nuggets, for a cat that's nice to my parents but hostile to me, is enough thank you. Perhaps I was born with a birth defect making my feet resemble mice, but that cat has marked them for prey, and has a nasty habit of stalking me and running up from behind to swipe my Achilles'. If I spot her chasing after me, I usually stomp on the ground real loud to ward her off, but I still have to wear blue jeans around the house.

Being alone in the house, I want to have a BBQ, but all my friends have "something to do" at whatever time and day I propose, leaving me with nothing to do but clean my shithole room and continue with my futile job search. It's so depressing to finally go home, only to find that you just left behind more close friends than you have here. What do I need to do to get more time with people dear to me!?

Maybe I'll just sneak behind them and swipe their Achilles' instead.

At least she doesn't have to worry about being in shape.

The Other Dumb FedEx Guy

Alright, it's not really one individual like the one I encountered last time, but the collective efforts of many individuals to execute a spectacular demonstration of sheer incompetence.

The FedEx courier was supposed to arrive to pick up my packages from my old apartment in Miami, which have been sent back because they screwed up the delivery. How did they screw it up? Well, it all started with me choosing FedEx Ground as a means to ship my personal effects back home, since it was the cheapest alternative (which would cost me even more in time and money later). Unfortunately, they' don't do ground shipments for personal effects, something they failed to inform anyone who elect to arrange and pay for the shipping online.

Well, not only did they fail to inform people, but their online system even allowed it! In fact, on their online shipping form for ground shipping, they ask for the purpose of the shipment, after which you can select your response from a drop-dowm menu. One of the items on that menu: PERSONAL EFFECTS! So from my point of view, FedEx can perfectly ship personal effects via ground shipping.

That's when all hell broke loose. So back to the courier, who was supposed to pick up the returned packages from my old apartment. There was only one day he could do it before the guy living there leaves for a one-week trip. Guess what? The courier never came!

The reason? I found out later after calling FedEx. My old apartment's address is XXXX SW 1st Ave., Apartment #5 (number concealed for tenant's safety). The dyslexic moron instead read XXXX SW 5th Ave., Apartment #1, despite the fact that the correct address was clearly printed on all labels! Then he came back whining about there being no such address!!

So now I have to have my 6 packages shipped back up via FedEx Express once the guy in my old apartment comes back, which is going to cost me big time. Well, more like 5 packages, since they've already lost one and are now trying to find it. Go figure it's the package with the most valuable contents that gets lost.

If FedEx cannot handle a simple shipment of 6 packages of personal effects, how the hell can they manage a shipment of merchandise for a business!? Let this be a lesson to you all. If you're going to have your stuff shipped, use the POSTAL SYSTEM. That's right. By personal experience, UPS isn't any more competent, being legally retarded and all, but that's another story.

DHL has a fighting chance in the US market after all.

Not Even Blogs Are Safe From Spam!

After browsing through a couple of my friends' blogs, I have to write this. I've been seeing a lot of spam on your blog comments. You know what I mean. They look like:

anonymous said...

Nice blog you have. I've linked you to my blog. Please visit www.cheapdrugs.com. Cheers!

Yes, spamming has reached a new low. They lull you into a false sense of amity through flattery about your blog and/or writing skills, then they insert their plug without hesitation. Don't fall for their manipulation! No matter how nice they sound, SPAM IS SPAM. Swapping links with a buddy is one thing, but using your buddy's blog and trust to sell your non-value-added (aka worthless) crap is plain WRONG.

For those of you using Blogger.com, there are a few of things you can do to prevent this scourge:

1. Go to Settings in your blog control panel, then go to the Basic section (you're probably there already). Then, where it asks, "Add your blog to our listings?", select "No".
   
   
2. Once again, under Settings, go to the Comments section, and where it asks, "Who can comment?" change the selection from "Anyone". This prevents anonymous postings. The problem is you either have to register all the people you want to see your blog as blog members, or have them register to Blogger.com.
   
   For me, I think the first suggestion is better, because at least my friends seeing my blog can refer it to their friends, which I assume are not spammers. Friends of spammers are not friends of mine.
   
   
3. DELETE the spam comments! If those motherfuckers are as merciless to use your blog as a vehicle for their wanton pandering, you should be just as merciless to shoot them down and deny them the exposure they crave.
   
   
4. For Christ's sake, DO NOT CLICK ON THEIR LINKS TO VISIT THEIR SITE!!!! It's like escaping a shark attack only to go back and offer the shark your ass.

I hope this has been helpful to all of you fellow bloggers. Unfortunately, those of you who are using Blogger.com for free have to have that Navigator bar stuck at the top of your blog page. Potential spammers need only to click on the "Next Blog" button to cycle through all the blogs they want and leave their dog shit on the post comments.

I don't think the other blog services have it any better (at least not for free). Xanga.com addresses this problem by allowing ONLY Xanga.com members to post comments. I have a couple of buddies using that service, but I'm not willing to register to Xanga.com and have another blog page just to post comments.

If you have any other ideas, please post them in the comments section below. You heartless bastards have not been leaving any hint that you visited my blog.

If it's spam you can just as well go sodomize yourself. Well actually, you won't have to. There is a place in hell reserved for all of you spammers, where each single spam message you send is represented by a red hot cactus (Believe that they can pull off this shit in hell!) to be inserted in your anal cavity, but not before you are nailed down to a giant cheese grater by your joints and placed on a giant paint shaker bathed in a pool of vinegar.

Jesus loves you!

REPENT SINNERS! Or God Will Send Katrina!!

This has been a week of complete and utter chaos and anarchy for what's left of New Orleans. Just to give you an idea, snipers are shooting at hospital evacuations, and even the police are looting Wal-Mart.

And even more sadly, I heard on the radio that said 55% of Canadians polled will NOT donate a cent to the US for Hurricane Katrina disaster relief, mainly because of Bush, Iraq, US violation of NAFTA by putting up tariffs on our softwood lumber, blah, blah, blah. Since WHEN did politics get mixed up in this!?!?!? If you think some good and innocent people should keep on suffering just because their president looks more like he belongs on a Paul Frank t-shirt, GO FUCK YOURSELF. I'm ashamed you're Canadian.

For those of you with a heart, here's a list of organizations you can donate to, but if you're not sure, you can never go wrong with the Red Cross. Take it from me.

All this crisis with Hurricane Katrina made me think of this photo that I took during Mardi Gras in New Orleans last year:

Pay attention to what the sign says. Damn, I wonder how many of those bible-thumpers are profiting from the disaster by gaining influence with chants of "I TOLD YOU SO!" No, God didn't just go, "Hmmm...I've just about had it with these people. I think I'll send a hurricane their way even though I'll hurt and kill a lot of innocent people in the process." It's a NATURAL PHENOMENON!!

God, I can't stand religious people (a quote for the books!). I've seen religion motivated too much by power and profit. I've seen religion being marketed and pandered. I've seen (albeit not personally) religion cause wars.

I still believe in God, but I don't think I need to channel my faith in Him through religion. I guess I can best describe myself as being spiritual, but not religious. I ask all of you to find your own way to become closer to God. If you think a particular religion suits you, then go for it. But don't try to aggresively convert or even force your religion upon people by telling others that they're wrong just because they don't share your beliefs.

I'll end this appropriately with a bible quote. This is for you, televangelist who sells Holy Water in ketchup packets, loony Pat Robertson, and Farting Preacher!

And Jesus entered the temple of God and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you make it a den of robbers."
- Matthew 21:12-13

The first time Jesus snaps in the Bible!! Who says it's boring reading??