Menu Close

September 2005

Career Fair

Just got home from the Charlotte Observer Cattle Call Career Fair downtown. For those of you who have never attended one of these shindigs, it’s an event where several thousand unemployed people wait in a long line to get into a big room where they then wait in multiple smaller lines so that prospective employers can tell them they need to apply online rather than there in person…

Which, of course, may make you wonder why thousands of people show up at these things when they could just as easily have stayed home in front of their computers rather than putting on suits and ties and paying two bucks for parking. Me too…

I did, however, land an interview with a pimp temp agency next week…

Sleep

I’d always heard that people need less sleep as they get older. I don’t find that to be the case for me. When I was 25 or so, I could function just fine on five or six hours sleep, although not for days at a time. I could even do so hung over, although it might have been a little less comfortable…

Nowadays, I feel like crap if I don’t get enough sleep. And “enough” means at least seven hours. And it’s not even a case of my aging body revolting against various abuses, since I don’t even drink or smoke anymore…

But the really sucky thing is that it’s also harder for me to GET that required sleep these days, since I can’t seem to keep my eyes closed past seven or eight in the morning anymore…

Yawn…

Shut Up, Miles

The armchair quarterbacking on CNN’s coverage of the nightmare in New Orleans is getting to be a bit much…

It’s apparent that there have been significant planning and communication breakdowns and that the government response has been somewhat less than adequate, and I have no problem with the focus on victims who have some very pointed comments on the subject. These people are newsworthy and I care what they have to say…

However, this is neither the time nor the place for the sort of verbal abuse that CNN’s own reporters are heaping upon every politician they interview. It’s unprofessional and inappropriate; these people frankly have enough to do right now without having to subject themselves to constant browbeating and derision from reporters who seem to have missed neither meals nor hair care opportunities this week…

The first interviewee, regardless of party, who has the balls to tell Miles O’Brien to “shut the fuck up and let me finish my sentence” — or even better, who merely stops talking entirely or just walks away — gets a big campaign donation from me…