Introduction: Or, Unemployment Blues

I don’t know how many blogs I’ve started in my lifetime, though I can at least tell you that under this specific profile, you’ll find four blogs started by me, and one blog that I’ve contributed to. Of course, most of those are at least semi-inactive, which should indicate that I’m not very good at the biggest part of authoring a blog: authoring. Indeed, though I already have a tumblr with this exact same name here, you’ll notice that the last post was dropped nearly nine months ago. You will probably also notice that most, if not all, of the posts were entirely inconsequential. I have no reason to believe that this blog will not fall quickly to the same fate. However, I do have one mixed blessing on my side, a situation that gives me more opportunity to write blogs, but one that simultaneously gives me less reason to do so. You see, I’m unemployed.

Yes, times are tough for librarians… well… let me rephrase that: times are tough for this librarian. I’ve sent out plenty of resumes and cover letters, all with different permutations of a theme:

I would like to work for you because (I’m awesome/I have many different skills/I’m an enormous  library geek/I don’t care what I do I just need a job). Let me tell you about (pervious jobs and how awesome I was at them/previous jobs and how the skills I used could be bent and bullshitted to fit what you need/how desperately I need money and something to do). As you can see (I possess a drive to [insert mission statement here]/am a great candidate to [insert mission statement here]/just want a job!). Please, (contact me for further information/contact me/just let me know you exist).

And, so far, there’s been little to no bites.

I used to think that a cure-all for unemployment blues was daytime television. Watching the schlock broadcast on the airwaves when the useful members of society should be at a job seems to force people to take a good look around themselves and realize that they are in the very bowels of despair. “Oh! Don’t you dare take him back!” you find yourself saying, “He’s just going to cheat on you again! Tell her Jerry!” And then you stop, look at your Cheetos stained fingers holding a Cheetos stained remote, “My God… what have I become?” And you go out to hit the bricks with renewed vigor. Okay. It’s not really a cure all so much as a self-induced kick in the ass, but you get the idea. Obviously, I’ve been keeping my television tremendously off during the daytime.

Instead I’ve thrown myself entirely into the Internet. Of course, rooting around in the Internet is the new hitting the bricks, so spending your entire day on the computer has the potential to feel incredibly productive. But, as everyone knows, the Internet contains about 5% productive content, and 95% vast, miasmatic oubliettes of depravity and stupidity. And where do you think I’ve been spending most of my time?

Now, let’s be clear, I’m not talking about porn… Okay, I’m not just talking about porn. Porn can be distracting, but it really isn’t engaging enough to hold your attention for very long. The real problems with the Internet are message boards and repositories of user created content. Both are equally distracting and debilitating for the same reason: the mistaken belief by everyone that uses them that they have something even remotely interesting to say. They don’t. Everything anyone says on the Internet has several “interesting points” automatically deducted from it. There’s just too much shit on the Internet. As soon as you say anything in hypertext, it’s automatically spread thinly across vast stores of already useless information. But goddamnit, to every person on a message board or a wiki: that intricately composed bon mot, that small esoteric and entirely unimportant factoid, that dubious allusion… all of those things are so astonishingly relevant that the whole world just has to know. It’s all I got, man!

And so, wallowing in wiki’s has taught me that I don’t even need to turn on the television to descend into the abyss; I’ve got the abyss open in every other tab besides the singular job search engine I usually have open… taunting me towards inactivity. The specific site that’s been openly mocking my lack of social contribution, lately, has been discogs.com, a perfect storm for a music collector and cataloger. “Hey big boy,” it purrs coquettishly, “I’ve got some releases that you own that don’t have their credits accurately linked! Oh my! They’re CDs and no one’s bothered to even enter the timestamps! Look at that metadata! It’s so lonely…”

The siren song of Web 2.0…

But I’ll get to that at a later point. This long rambling post, was designed entirely to welcome you, whoever you may be, to my own humble miasmatic oubliette of depravity and stupidity. So, please, pull up a chair, and contribute your very own intricately composed bon mot, small esoteric and entirely unimportant factoid and/or dubious allusion. I certainly won’t mind. You’re in good company here.