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In Which I Find Myself Overqualified For a Good Cause, and Subsequently Return to Teaching

In Jobs on May 12, 2009 at 8:37 am

Until recently, this was my routine: Get up, check Craigslist and other listings, and respond to job postings. All sorts. Nearly anything I was qualified for. I thought of it as a numbers game- eventually something would come up, and eventually something did. I recently did a stint working for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the nonprofit made famous by Jerry Lewis.

I’ve never actually seen any of Jerry Lewis’ movies, and the most prominent detail I knew about him was that he once let the word “faggot” slip while doing one of his telethons on live TV. The only thing I knew about muscular dystrophy was that Stephen Hawking has one version of it, albeit a rather rare one. Nevertheless, it was for a good cause. I certainly believed in funding medical research more than I believed in the child sponsorship model of private aid, which is what I was pitching in my brief stint as a street canvasser. Inviting people to fundraising events was definitely something I could do.

That was the job- calling up local business owners and professionals and asking them to come to fundraising events. Many of the contacts were warm leads or referals, but there were just as many people there who had never heard of us. “I don’t want anyone to say ‘I work in a call center,'” said one of the coordinators at the group interview, “you don’t. You’re not selling anything. You’re trying to get people to participate in a good cause.” This was true, but the job seemed very telemarketer-like, calling a long list of people and hitting them up for their time, money, and participation.

There were a little over a dozen people in the group interview, all of whom seemed to have been unemployed for some time. Many of them were young people of a certain demographic (mine) who had recently moved to Portland. Everyone seemed happy just to be in an interview. The whole process lasted for about two hours, and afterwards I got on the bus with a bunch of my fellow interviewees, each of us talking about our prospects for getting the job. In mid conversation, my phone rang and I answered it. I’d gotten the job. I suddenly felt a bit awkward- no one else’s phone rang. My fellow interviewees told me “congratulations” and I got off the bus awkwardly.

There were five of us the next day in training, in addition to five other volunteer coordinators. Cubicles of phones dominated the office. There was a script which we were expected to follow, and we were given a stock set of answers to deal with people who did not want to come to the fundraiser. There was also an MDA FAQ if anyone had any questions about where money was going, and we went through some telephone roleplays. The next day, we were good to go and on the phones.

Reaching for my list of numbers, I was nervous. The very first call seemed like an alien thing to do- calling up a law office and inviting the lawyers to a fundraising luncheon. I dialed with uncasual slowness, and asked for the names of one of the partners. The receptionist told me that he wasn’t there, anyway. I went to the next number on my list.

And that was it. That was my whole job. Most of the time when I was asking for a lawyer, business owner, doctor, or other such person, they were busy or away. This seemed logical, as we were targeting professional people who had fairly active lives. But, on the occasion that I got through to someone, I was surprised how easy the conversation was.

I tossed out the script, for one thing. We weren’t supposed to, but I found it poorly written and insincere, so I made my own rap. I wasn’t reading anything and didn’t sound canned at all. “We’re putting together a community event,” I said, “it’s a fundraiser and business luncheon to benefit families in Portland Metro Area who are affected by muscular dystrophy,” and so on. I got several people, maily lawyers, to say yes. A few said that they couldn’t come, but would be happy to write a check. None of the professionals told me to fuck off. They were really polite, even when saying no. That’s all part of being professional, I suppose. The secretaries, though, frequently took on snide and bitchy tones. I thought of the “bitchy secretary” as a hackneyed streotype, but apparently there are plenty of them. I imagined them filing their nails while they contemptuously talked into the reciever, like they were in an 80s movie.

I was pretty good, though, consistently getting yeses. It wasn’t particularly rewarding work, or stimulating, but it was a job and I could get results at it. However, I rather unexpectedly got an email from Kaplan, the tutoring company, while I was doing this. I’d applied to Kaplan some time ago, and had gone into their offices to do a teaching demonstration, which I thought had gone rather well. They hadn’t contacted me for some time, so I just assumed that they didn’t want to hire me. Out of nowhere they contacted me and said that they wanted to interview me as a potential ESL teacher.

This was great, of course. A teaching job with them was better in all possible ways- it was more money, a shorter commute, and loads more interesting. The interview went very well. I talked all about my time with GEOS, about my ideas regarding teaching, and about my general work habits. The interviewer, as it turned out, had spent a year in Osaka, which was a nice bit of rapport. A few hours later, he emailed me to tell me that I had the job.

Which meant I had to quit the MDA, of course.

When I went in yesterday, I knew it was my last day. I almost quit a day ahead of time, but decided to be responsible and get myself a day’s paycheck. Three of my coworkers had been let go for not getting enough yeses, and the office as a bit emptier. I was sort of proud of myself, knowing that of my hire group I was one of the two best people. The coordinators were a bit friendlier with me, after I’d proved myself. I didn’t really want to talk to them, though, since I knew I was ditching them. I felt bad. There would only be one person from my hire group left when I quit, and they would have to start all over, getting new people to call local businesses for them. Had I been bad at the job I wouldn’t have felt all that terrible about quitting. I would have thought, “well, I’m sure my replacement will be much better than me,” but I don’t think that’s the case.

Later today I’m going into Kaplan’s offices to fill out paperwork, do some training, and other such things. Apparently most of their ESL students are from Japan and Korea, which I think is sort of funny and sort of awesome. I’m imagining it as the inside-out of my GEOS experience. What I’m most looking forward to, (besides a paycheck and steady work), is being around people who are out of their element. Here in Portland, I’ve found it both fun and odd that the landscape seems to reflect my values and biases (or vice versa), and I’m looking forward to meeting students who’ve come from abroad and find this place foreign. I was in their shoes for so long, it’ll be nice to see it from the other side.

Someday, Egon Will Be Right

In Rants on May 7, 2009 at 5:33 pm

At one point in Ghostbusters Dr. Egon Spengler remarks that “print is dead.” I the 1980s it was a funny line because it looked like premature futurism. Recently, though, Warren Buffet made a statement that could have come from Dr. Spengler, if Egon were a business bigwig. Buffet said the same thing that lots of other people have been going on about recently, that newspapers are a dying form of business, and that he would not advise investing in them.

With the ascendancy of the web, the folding of so many newspapers, and the advent of the Kindle, we are seeing a process that is steadily taking us away from the printed word and into an age of digital media. As much as people might complain about the new formats and lament the death of newsprint, I think that there are a few very real upsides to this.

The demise of print will be great for the environment.

I’m sort of surprised that no one’s talking about this. Think of newspapers: Every day, sheets and sheets of paper printed and consumed to produce something that is only useful for one day. Many of them go unsold and unread, and all of them have to be disposed of at the end of a 24 hour period. Even if they are recycled, that still expends a fair amount of energy. They still have to be gathered, transported, and rendered into raw materials, all of which takes time and money. Hopefully, future generations will find these one day use news sources to be laughably extravagant, and produce less in the way of waste than we do now.

With print dead, information will be more accessible.

Before the printing press, books were hugely expensive. Better technology made information cheaper, and therefore more people could access it. Now, the challenge is getting things such as out-of-print books and high-demand items into people’s hands. When I worked in a bookstore, I had no shortage of requests for out-of-print books. People paid stupidly huge amounts of money for things that weren’t being printed anymore. Likewise, there were tons of requests for recently popular books, and we couldn’t accommodate everyone’s demand.

Ebooks could fix that. Nothing has to go out of print, and nothing is inaccessible due to shortness of supply. There will be little reason for anything like a rare volume to exist, and as much as that might disappoint rare book collectors, it will greatly democratize information. Likewise, if news archives are all available on the web, any curious person can become their own investigative reporter or historian.

The death of print will reduce clutter.

As much as I like books, the fact remains that they can be rather troublesome as objects. You have to store them and sometimes move them from house to house. I’ve recently hauled around a few boxes of books, and as nice as they are as objects, I have to admit that I’d rather own a single, portable electronic tablet that I could read them on comfortably, rather than tons of boxes of paper. Likewise, I’m all for not having to budget old newspapers into my living space. I don’t keep phonebooks in my personal space at all, because they are bulky and troublesome objects, made redundant by electronic means. Future generations may feel the same way about print.

I’m looking forward to all of those, and, unless you have a chemical addiction to newsprint, you should as well.

We should not ask the question, then, “How can we save newspapers?” The question we should be asking is “How can we insure that reporters get paid for the services they provide?” As nice as bloggers and the like are, we still need people who dedicate their time to covering current events, and who can afford to do things like ship off to foreign countries. What is more, we need media organizations that politicians can’t afford to ignore. I’m sure that politicians would be happy to hang up on me if I called them. They cannot afford to hang up on the New York Times, though. They need to be held accountable. If information is as common as air, though, then how do these people, doing an essential job, get paid?

My conclusion right now is that reportage will become a public good. Like roads, law enforcement, and a clean environment, an active information society is something that benefits everyone, that is essential to our civilization, and that no one wants to pay for. Like most public goods, the answer might be that government will have to pick up the tab. I’m not too opitimistic about this, given that PBS is plagued by pledge drives and that the News Hour with Jim Lehrer is not exactly gripping material. However, I’m not able to come up with a better alternative at the present time. We need something like an American version of the BBC.

Print is dying, but information is more vibrant than every. Newspapers, and books as well, will go the way of the illuminated manuscript. The essence of those things, though, will remain. Romanticizing old technology, I think, can be something of a trap. As many problems as modernization may bring, we all too often forget that we live in an extraordinary age.

Re: Superheros. More Being, Less Becoming.

In Comic Books, Movies on May 2, 2009 at 11:11 pm

There’s a Wolverine movie out. I’m not going to see it.

Normally I would be all about this sort of thing. I’m a shameless fan of things geeky, and I quite like superhero movies. I loved the first two X Men movies, Christopher Nolan’s Batman films have been excellent, and the first two Spiderman films were great. I even liked Ang Lee’s Hulk, which I know puts me in the minority, but I found it a nice take on the genre, and, say what you will, the Hulk-dogs were pretty nifty.

However, I have no desire whatsoever to see the Wolverine film. It’s not just because it’s gotten terrible reviews, though that’s a big part of it. The thing that really puts me off is the fact that it’s an origin story. I’m sick of origin stories in superhero movies. I know, I know, the director has to get the characters’ backgrounds and motivations out of the way and such, but, really, I would like to see something other than a variant on the whole “journey of self-discovery” thing. The origin story is something of a cop-out for writers and directors. Really, it has a simple formula: 1: Oh shit! I have superpowers! 2: Oh my god! Having superpowers means that my life is different from and in many ways more difficult than the average person’s! 3: Wow! I must use my powers to get out of a nasty situation, resulting in a certain equanimity about my newfound sense of self! Woo!

It pretty much writes itself. Telling a story about people who already are different though, and talking about what they do about it after they’ve come to terms with it is a far more difficult task. One of the best things about The Dark Knight was that Nolan didn’t bother with giving the Joker an origin story. He recognized that the Joker is an iconic character, a force sadism and clownophobia. Giving him an origin story would have robbed him of some of his power- it would have turned him into something of a person, rather than the frightening icon he is. I don’t care where the Joker came from. What I want to see is him embody fear, anarcy, and cunning. His origins are utterly and completely irrelevant.

Wolverine is much the same way. He doesn’t work because he has a compelling backstory- he works because of what he represents. When Logan says “I’m the best there is at what I do,” we know exactly what he means. He’s a pissed-off tough guy, a cigar-chomper, a guy who can feel pain but doesn’t give a shit. He’s not a prettyboy priss like Cyclops or a cartoonish muscle man like Colossus. Wolverine is a certain kind of sideburned masculinity that’s not pretty, not admirable, and not even all that functional. He feels pain and doesn’t care, doens’t bother to really make connections with anybody, and snarls dismissively at just about everyone. Yet he somehow works. Like Dirty Harry, he’s a nasty asshole, but he’s a nasty asshole in a way that inspires you for some ineffable reason.

And I really don’t care how he got that way.

I’d rather see Wolverine being “the best he is at what he does” than becoming that. It would be like a whole movie of seeing the Joker go crazy, but only seeing him put on a purple suit at the end. Really, it’s the representation and the iconicness that’s important. Unless the origin story is particularly unique, I’m fine with it being hand-waved away.

What’s more, origin stories are utterly perfunctory. One of the nice things about Hellboy was that even though it had a lot of origin stuff in it, it was mainly concerned with an actual plot. We got to see Hellboy and his associates doing what they did on a regular basis, rather than being subjected to a grueling sequence in which they all awaken to their powers in an awkward metaphor for puberty. Instead of that, we got an actual story. Yes, it was a little silly, but I appreciated it for what it was.

That’s what I want. I want to see superheroes be superheroes. I want to see people who emobody ideas of awesomeness, not another movie where the protagonist goes “Holy shit! I can suddenly shoot fire out of my eyes! Zowie, my life is forever changed!” As much as I like Wolverine, I’m giving his movie a pass. I would be happy to see his whole origin hand-waved into vagueness, not trotted out in front of me.

Thirty Seconds of Amusement

In Politics on April 30, 2009 at 8:30 am

This right here is one of the reasons why I love Slate Magazine. Most of the “first 100 days coverage” I find pretty artificial, but this is definitely an exception.

Rock Your Pixels Off

In Music, Video Games on April 27, 2009 at 4:44 pm

I love video games. I don’t think I’ll ever really get over them entirely. When I was a kid I cared way more about Mario than Mickey and recently I’ve had a good portion of my brain eaten by Grand Theft Auto IV, a game that’s probably better written than most TV shows. When I see people mix up the trappings of video games in their work, I’m generally interested, and I think that if Warhol had lived long enough he would have done a few prints featuring Mario. Apropos of nothing, here’s a bunch of video game-laced musical things.

This video is probably one of the more awesome things that I’ve seen on the internet in a while. The video below is not game footage. It’s certainly inspired by Megaman, but all of it is the work of a guy called Myk Dawg, who’s made a few unofficial game-like videos. Kanye West really ought to just buy off this video from him and use it, as it fits well with West’s aesthetic. Take a look.


(HD) Kanye West – Robocop (1988 import version) from Myk Dawg on Vimeo.

I love this type of stuff. Nothing gets my nostalgia going like 8-bit games. Another group, Desert Planet, is sort of the audio-equivalent of this, as all of their music is intentionally made to sound like it’s from a video game.

What surprises me about these videos and music is the realization that I’m attracted to a certain kind of technological imperfection. Visible pixilation was not initially the result of any kind of artistic process. It was an artifact of technological limitation. Had the developers of Pac-Man had their way, Pac-Man would have probably have looked more like this:

And less like this:

I personally prefer the second image. As irrational as it is, I find the second image to be “warmer” or more “authentic” in some kind of way, but I know that that’s simply the result of nostalgia and conditioning. People who say they prefer the sound of vinyl to digital music are usually fooling themselves, and I know that I’m sort of fooling myself with my experience of the pixelated image, but I enjoy it anyway.

Anyway, here’s another video, but this time it’s a cover of actual video game music with footage of an actual video game:

I couldn’t post about this stuff without including The Minibosses, a band I’ve known about for some time and do some rocking covers of old 80s games. The video is amusing enough, but I distinctly remembering Castlevania III being only one player.

This sort of stuff reminds me that art doesn’t really need to be realistic or accurate. That’s obvious, when you think about it. I’m far away from being a luddite, and I think it’s great that the images that jump out of modern video games and CGI movies are more realistic than every. Realism, though, is a tool. It’s something that can aide and enforce emotional reactions in the viewer, but it’s not a prerequisite for something to be good.

Think about this: One of the most popular game ever is Dungeons and Dragons specifically, and RPGs in general. RPGs don’t have any graphics. Players might use drawings and models, but these are static. The experience is not diminished by the absence of realistic representation. If anything the addition of animated images would distract from the experience. It’s all about what’s going on in the player’s heads, not what’s going on in front of their eyes.

Anyways, I’m a sucker for this retro stuff, and I’m sure I’m not alone. A whole slew of twentysomethings are probably going to remember the NES and Atari 2600 in much the same way that our parents remember the Beatles. That will be sort of trip- think of the future equivalent of VH1 specials.

Anyway, here’s another video. It’s newer, yes, but still cool. A very talented dude plays Zelda music. I quite dig his light-up hat and use of kitchen implements.

I Just Can’t Finish 1421

In Books, History on April 26, 2009 at 10:33 am

I rarely put down books. Even if something is not going very well, I want to see if the author can redeem themselves with a good ending. Occasionally this happens. Today, though, I tossed aside 1421: The Year China Discovered America by Gavin Menzies.

Menzies’ thesis is that Imperial China’s treasure fleet sailed not only throughout the eastern Pacific and Indian oceans, but also went to the Americas, mapped the coast of Antarctica, sailed around western Africa, established colonies all over the world, and left maps that were put to use by later European explorers. I’d heard of the book before, and was suspicious of it from the outset, but it had been recommended to me enough times that I finally picked up my roommate’s copy. As bad as I feel, I can’t finish it.

My first red flag was that Menzies, early on in the book, talks about how the Yongle Emperor received a collection of heads of state at his new capital in Beijing. He notes the absence of the Europeans, though, because he said that the Europeans were “too primitive.”

Now hold on a second. If the Emperor was willing to entertain guests from, say, Mongolia, a place full of nomads who lived in Yurts, then surely he’d also accept the company of someone from, say, France. Menzies doesn’t for a moment entertain the idea that the Chinese were either ignorant of Europe or unable to establish connections with it. He just takes it for granted that the Europeans were too savage to be invited to Beijing. Sloppy.

His map of the world also shows the Chinese fleet going everywhere except Europe. I find this highly suspicious. The treasure fleet was an entity that was all about extracting tribute from foreign lands, hence the name. If the Chinese were willing to accept tribute from, say Africa (where they famously brought home a giraffe), then they’d probably also want to do the same thing with Europe, which had much more in the way of stuff. So why didn’t they show up in Europe and demand tribute and recognition? Oh yeah- because they probably didn’t know what Europe was or how to get there.

I also found the bits about Chinese foreign colonies to be highly dubious. Wouldn’t we have heard of these before? Shouldn’t someone have fond some pictographs on a rock or something? Really. You’d think that would be a pretty big deal, and someone else would have found something.

Reading the book, though, I felt sort of sorry for Menzies. He obviously has a love for history and things nautical, and seems very much to want to say something interesting. Personally, I find the whole history of the treasure fleet fascinating, and would love to read a more credible history about it.

That story is good enough without making it world-spanning. The Chinese built huge ships, sailed around the Pacific and Indian oceans, and almost bankrupted their empire doing it because the voyages could not pay for themselves. Then, in a fit of reactionary fury, the government banned sailing and went isolationist. That’s an incredible bit of history right there, and I’d love to know the details of it. Menzies, though, reminds me of one of my favorite Douglas Adams quotes: “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it, too?”

I want to learn more about the garden, but Menzies is just looking for fairies.