It is sad, but I’ve heard more than a few people lament on the lack of, well, anything for those aged from late teens to late thirties. There is nothing to do in that age span except what, a cruise maybe? Today’s teenagers know exactly that they are heading for those doldrums. That could partially explain the addictive nature of the Internet. Maybe I should be glad I was a teenager before social life was replaced by social networking.I spent this evening contacting musicians I met last weekend. There are several opportunities including the reopening of the Club X lounge (finally). As luck would have it, one of the musicians is a country singer who reports he “just can’t learn guitar”. This may be ideal for I know exactly what the problem is. He took “lessons” and that is not what you do if you want to have fun with music. This is a situation I can work with, so we are exchanging song lists tomorrow.
Another contact was Laura, the Karaoke lady from the bowling alley. She has a ton of CDG disks. I’m advised that these disks behave quite differently when played on a Karaoke machine than on a regular or compatible CD player. Rumor has it they are idealized for Karaoke presentation. Laura has some of the best versions of popular tunes I have ever heard. Many are realistic enough to pass for the original covers.
Of all the. I can’t find Cowboy Mike’s phone number. It was on the old cell phone. I was serious about asking him to look into that airboat pilot job. You see, I know they must have trained him. That is important because until this point, I thought you had to be a qualified airboat captain. Yes, that is a course you take which includes man overboard drills and memorizing Florida flora. I’ll make a trip to Jimbos soon since they must have his number around somewhere.
I also emailed Nokia telling them if my phone, a model 1606, cannot be made to work like a regular cell phone, that they can have it back. Of course, it would not end there, as I am the true identity of one of the more popular product reviews on the Internet. At this point I do not know if it is Nokia or MetroPCS at fault, but I do know that MetroPCS has lied to me before and the low caliber of their staff is legendary.
An extra hour this afternoon found me on the Internet examining the job situation from a beginner’s angle. What are the jobs that pay these days and who is doing them? It would seem that $25 per hour is currently considered high-paying. That’s a pity. In purchasing power, that is probably less than thirty years ago. Worse, most of the good jobs are not to be considered careers any more. They are dominantly service industries, the ones most likely to be replaced in the short run.
Take the surge in jobs for graphic artists. That is an occupation where you probably need 10,000 plebes to support each practitioner. Since the art is not sold directly to these people, it is likely paid for by media who influence the buying decisions of said masses. It would seem to me a dead end, as survival depends on selling products that can be sold for enough to recover the costs of that advertising. Such products are dwindling in number and I can attest that I have not witnessed any real improvement in overall graphic artistry since the trend began.
If that is hard to follow, let me restate my own career experience. I switched to accounting largely because it was touted to be immune from automation. Big mistake, but not a mistake due to incorrect thinking. It was an error in prediction. I admit I am as lousy at prediction as you probably are. As computers advanced, more and more companies found it was cheaper to adapt business practices to what the computer could do rather than vice versa. Between getting into the field late and not having my own practice, I was one of the first to be let go. I have been out of work 4-1/2 years on May 23. Then again, define “out of work”. “Enjoying life” is more accurate.
[Author’s note: I have become aware of a consistent punctuation error in this blog. My defense is I have a rulebook that is unclear. It seems the punctuation always goes inside the closing quotation mark. However, that just has to be wrong in cases where the final part of a sentence must be clear. Consider these two sentences.
A. Define “out of work”.
B. Define “out of work.”
The first version is wrong, but it seems correct to me because the quotes enclose only what is to be defined. There is no need to define the period, and indeed its inclusion could lead to misinterpretation. For that reason, this blog will continue to make this “error”. ]
