More Job Ideas

Now that the holidaze are over, I am getting more focused and creative in my job search. Here are my latest job ideas (borne out of desperation, true, but they're generally useful and meaningful jobs, nonetheless!).

Actually, I have been feeling incredibly depressed about my situation because I have been job hunting for 17 months and five days (as of today), so I spent some time thinking about things that cheered me up when nothing could make me laugh. I recalled how my pet golden hamster, Mesocricetus auratus, whom I named Caesar (and who is an angel now), always could made me laugh when I was 8 years old. After some thought, I realized I could use these same techniques -- taught to me by dear departed Caesar -- to cheer up sad NYCers: I could be New York City's first Dwarf Hamster Therapist! But because golden hamsters are too cranky to be reliably used as co-therapists, I have opted to rely upon dwarf hamsters, Phodopus sungorus, instead. Dwarf hamsters have a much better sense of humor than their much larger cousins and, if provoked enough to bite, their small overall size translates into smaller teeth, too.

Already I can hear you ask, "Are you thinking of shrinking the heads of unhappy dwarf hamsters?" No, guess again! Similar to Cognitive Behaviorism where therapists use reasoned arguments to help their clients re-educate their thinking processes, dwarf hamsters are a special therapeutic approach that I use to re-educate my clients' behavior: in fact, dwarf hamsters are my therapy tool. It works like this; the unhappy person lays down on a couch and puts one dwarf hamster under his shirt and lets her run around on his belly for a few minutes at a time (NOTE: two dwarf hamsters might be necessary if the client is clinically depressed).

You may not know this, but dwarf hamsters are very fuzzy, warm and soft (even the bottoms of their feet are fuzzy!), so dwarf hamsters tickle. A lot. Even people who are not ticklish, like me, dissolve into tears of unrestrained laughter after a few minutes of this therapy (and for this reason, I strongly encourage the unhappy person to use the bathroom before each therapy session). When the unhappy person becomes so animated with general hilarity that the hamsters' lives are endangered, the furry little guys are rescued and kept in a safe place until the person calms down. This therapy is repeated several times during each session until the ability to genuinely laugh at the world is restored to the unhappy person.

The biggest benefit of this therapy is that I will have tiny fuzzy roommates who don't eat much or need much space (the perfect pet, er, colleague, for an unemployed person).

Tuesday, my craigslist friends and I discussed my best ("best" meaning most mainstream) job idea so far; replacement newscaster for either Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw. Okay, I know I have camera issues that I need to work through first, but because I want to prove the old maxim wrong, if you've listened to one newscaster, you've heard them all, I am willing to make the necessary sacrifices. Why? You ask. Because unlike those boyz, I am not suffering from testosterone poisoning combined with a seriously overinflated ego, so I don't need to hog the spotlight all to myself. Instead, I will be part of a newscasting team with my faithful newsparrots! Yes indeed, folks, I will sit at my little news desk in front of the glare of lights and cameras with my newsparrots sitting politely on my shoulders. I will read the news, just as our former evening news heroes did, while my newsparrots nibble gently on my ears (while hoping that they don't suddenly rip the studs out of my pierced earlobes). Then, at the conclusion of each news story, the newsparrots will make a cryptic or enlightening "color comment" such as "I can talk, can you fly?" or "There's nothing wrong with him that unemployment wouldn't fix" or, most succinctly, "Bite Me!" My special newscasting style, combined with my faithful newsparrots' witty insights, are guaranteed to inform you while also helping you place world events into their proper context within your busy life.

Wednesday, as I was working on flyers that advertize my tutoring services, I barely resisted the urge to promote myself as Hedwig the Owl's Tutoring and Cheating Services. This is a reality-based business idea: Even though I tutored only two college students during the previous academic semester, I could have been hired to cheat by twice as many, and for much more money, too. I was approached by four different university students who wanted to hire me to do their homework. It was fun homework such as designing and carrying out an animal behavior experiment in Central Park (there's lots of possibilities there for both avian and primate studies) and then writing up the results or completing a molecular biology take-home exam. I was approached most frequently by pre-meds from Columbia University, but I was also approached by one NYU student (who, curiously, also wants to go to medical school ... does anyone notice a behavioral trend here?).

Unfortunately, instead of collecting some desperately-needed cash by doing their damned homework for them, I gave them a lecture on ethical scholarly behavior, free of charge! They were amused by my idealism. Then they paid someone else to cheat for them. I'll bet they don't even remember me now (nor my free lecture), even though I still remember them after all these many weeks. I'll also bet I will be thinking about them a few months from now when I am receiving another free lesson on how integrity doesn't pay the rent. Hopefully, I will have the opportunity in the near future to make amends for my ridiculous high-mindedness.

Inexplicably, Thursday was an exceptionally bad day, even by my standards where all my days blend together into a never ending nightmare. Basically, depression attacked my brain cells so I couldn't think of any job ideas that were even mildly entertaining. In fact, I had trouble thinking at all because my bills were closing in on me and I wanted to escape .. perhaps by going "clubbing" so I could forget my own troubles by laughing at the silly people there. But even when I was employed I can't afford to buy a drink in the average NYC nightclub. So I wondered if I could get free drinks by being hired as an official drink taster for the gorgeous and sultry NYC women who lurk on couches in darkened corners that are occasionally pierced with flashing disco-ball lights.

I am not talking about common and uninteresting women (like me) who "clean/dress up nice"; I am talking about showy, high-maintenance women whose loud, high-pitched giggles give you a headache while simultaneously making you want to crawl under a table to avoid your impending public humiliation at their hands. I am talking about pre-fabricated women who have had more cosmetic surgeries than I have books in my personal library. These are women whose fossilized remains will consist of bones and silicon implants, thereby causing future space aliens to identify them as a distinct subspecies, Homo hubris pretentious. Basically, these are the plastic women whom all the NYC lawyers, bankers and other Wall Street types buy drinks for in the hopes that a real (or fictional) romp will ensue.

Needless to say, my role as official drink taster will be similar to being the official food taster to a king; by sampling every woman's drink a few minutes before she drinks it, I will ensure (by example) that these women can make an informed choice as to whether they wish to be drugged into a coma and taken advantage of by overzealous admirers.

Because I was still recovering from the previous day's psychological ravages on Friday, I decided it would be appropriate to consider a career as a turdologist. ("It's a shitty job, but someone has got to do it!"). I already have a good start on this career path since I am a professional cat crap scooper and, according to some of the more dubious rumors flying around out there, I am also a professional scientist (great joke, huh?). But more than simply scooping cat crap, I was planning to revive the ancient Egyptian art of foretelling a cat owner's future by analyzing his or her cat's shit. This would involve recording the season when the craps were produced, color of each turd, gender of both the cat and the cat's owner, brand name of the cat's food (this is my special addition to this ancient art since modern cats all have their own special food brands now), number of poops produced daily, and amount of cat hair in each turd, then feeding these data into a complex mathematical formula of my own devising to yield information that the client can use. Information such as the answers to these burning questions, to whit; "Will I meet the man/woman of my dreams?" and "Will I get that job that I interviewed for?"

But unlike most turdologists, I will not accept shit for pay: I will demand to be paid with real money.

Saturday, I rested. All day. I also contemplated how tiring it is to do absolutely nothing meaningful for long periods of time.

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Academic Job Applications: 2

Non-academic Job Applications: 3

Academic Job Rejections: 1

Non-academic Job rejections: 2 (Scientific Assistant and a telephone rejection for Web Editor for a (unnamed here) veterinary publication -- I have never been rejected via telephone for a job I didn't interview for, have you?)

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