The Skill of Gymnastics, The Kill of Karate
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Aaron's LiveJournal:
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| Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 | | 6:47 pm |
Oh! I have another internship interview, this time on Monday. (Hopefully the people tomorrow won't demand an answer right away.) | | 10:55 am |
I've got an interview scheduled for tomorrow! What a fine way to start my morning (although I woke up hours ago). No, it's not for a paying job, but whatever sort of internship I get (if not this one—but I'd be happy with this one) I intend to schedule a part-time job around it. And then suddenly I'll be busy all the time and not really making as much money as I ought to, but I'll be fine. | | Sunday, July 12th, 2009 | | 7:52 pm |
I did an awful lot today, going to Coney Island with Suzi, Prospect Park with Natalie, and some hipster breeding ground with my new roommate Pat and my neighbor/Marlboro peer Dan. Such good things. Coney Island was the most interesting, as I had only been familiar with it via a documentary on its existence in the twenties, and we went on the Ferris wheel and saw feral cats. And I did apply for a job today. Everyone's been good to me lately, so I'm happy. | | 8:04 am |
I'm cranky today. Part of it's job frustrations (getting turned down as a cashier was demoralizing, as was discovering typos in the cover letters I'd been sending out). Not a lot of new jobs are posted on Sundays, either, so it's hard to find ways to feel productive. Today I hope to see Suzi. Tomorrow I hope to send in a crapload of applications and keep doing that for the rest of the week (as usual, but this time with fewer mistakes). At least I'm not bored. | | Friday, July 10th, 2009 | | 7:30 pm |
Peter and I encountered a Greenpeace canvasser today. She was much more tenacious than I had been. We told her that we didn't have any money (besides that, we find Greenpeace mildly dubious), but I tried chatting with her by mentioning how I'd just had a stint as a canvasser. And our conversation would cycle between chatting and her coming back around to telling us to become members of Greenpeace, despite our insistence that we couldn't afford it. And she tried guilt-tripping us, implying that we (especially Peter) didn't really care about environmental issues, and said that we could just try spending a little less on food per year in order to afford this membership. It was exasperating to encounter a real canvasser who cares enough about her job that she doesn't just have a conversation like a regular human being (not that you're supposed to as a canvasser, but that's part of why it feels like there's a certain suppression of human character when you're trying to manipulate people into giving you money). I'd have given her a one-time donation out of pity for her occupation, but they only allow monthly fees. I could never ask someone for money after hearing them tell me that they can't afford it. I didn't while I was canvassing, because it would have felt like I was telling the person that they were lying to me. And if a person is kind enough to chat, even if they don't have money, then I don't want to just keep making my sell to them; I want to have a pleasant conversation. Even the guy in the truck who disagreed with the ACLU was pleasant to talk to because he wasn't overly confrontational and he seemed to realize that I was just a human being trying to get by in this job. I thought the Greenpeace canvasser would appreciate the same effort from me, and maybe she did, but she spoiled it by always returning to the sale while we were just trying to be nice to her. I'm not sure if the kind of people I want to know and befriend are those who make actually good canvassers. (That's a totally unfair generalization, and I realize that, so don't fret over it.) | | 5:41 pm |
The manager at the grocery store wouldn't hire me as a cashier, because he didn't want to waste time and money training me only for me to find an internship or a real job in a month. I couldn't really refute that, so I said that I understood his apprehension, and then it got real quiet. | | 9:39 am |
How much do people outside of the United States know about our individual states? The only country where I can name most of the states (or local equivalent), besides knowing of Chihuahua in Mexico, is Canada, and even then I don't know any of the cultural qualities of those provinces. Yet places like Texas and California, at the very least, seem to be pretty well-known worldwide. And I wouldn't think that people outside the country would have much of a reason to know about Ohio, but I'm sure quite a lot of people do. | | Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | | 7:46 pm |
The canvassing job was almost a total fiasco. Here's a tip: don't get a job where you can't be true to what you are. I got my first ominous feelings about it yesterday when the guy at orientation kept going on and on about the Bush Administration and telling the sort of sanctimonious jokes and easy lines that liberals love to toss out. (Like making hay about the fact that Bush was originally from Connecticut, not Texas. Who gives a fuck?) I mean, yes, I'm liberal, but I simply can't take that shit. We were then given rap sheets to memorize about holding people accountable for torture, and that was what we were working from today. There were three things we were told to do, if I remember correctly, and in this order: 1) Smile! 2) Have fun! 3) Shoot for at least $210 this evening; if you don't make at least $140 you're gone. Three of us went off to 5th Avenue with a trainer, and she set us up on either side of the street facing different directions, and off we went. I could go through the spiel with people, that wasn't the problem (well, it was a problem because I forgot parts of it and I stumbled over myself, but nevermind), but one of the bits of advice my trainer gave me was to speak louder. Unless I am very excited, or drunk, I am a very quiet person. But I can speak up without moral objections. The second thing was, after calling out to a person "Hey, could you give the ACLU a moment of your time?", if that didn't get them to stop, then I was told to add "come on, it's just a second." I told my trainer that I couldn't do that. I hate pushing people into things they don't want to do, much less if I've never met them. She said that was fine, some canvassers are more laid back, but I sort of doubted that they brought in very much money. And really, beyond trying to fine tune my technique, I just felt extremely uncomfortable asking people for money. What ended up happening, if I got a person to stop and they let me know that they couldn't give me anything, I'd just end up chatting with them, even though you're supposed to move on to the next target. I didn't get a single person to sign up. I did have three interesting exchanges. The first was early on, when a guy who was parked on the curb called me over to ask what I was doing. I got through my talk to the point where I mentioned "torture," at which point he finished my sentence with "which is a good thing." I laughed and said that this probably wasn't his sort of organization. I'd have walked away except he asked, essentially, what we should do besides torture if we needed to extract information from a terrorist, and I said that depended on whether you wanted to get information that you wanted, or information that was actually true. He then asked what I thought of Guantanamo, and I said that that wasn't really cut and dry, since no one wants to take in the prisoners, although I thought that American prisons were a safe enough place for them. These things are complicated, I said. Then I told him that I needed to go and try to reach a quota, and he wished me luck. The second was a guy who was sympathetic to my cause, but couldn't contribute any money (there were a number of people like that), because he was on his way to a collections agency because he had to deal with someone else's problem. That sucks, I told him. Yes, he said, but people just have to do these kinds of things sometimes, and there's no point in whining about it, you just need to get everything figured out. I told him I was basically doing the same thing (which I think is true, but I don't really know what I was referring to). He asked how canvassing was, and I told him I didn't expect to make it past the first day. But he, once having had to sell toys out of a box, gave me some advice, first of all to breathe (because I'd given the talk with such a stammer), and to smile and have a positive attitude, because people feed off of those vibes. And he told me that he had come up to me because I seemed approachable, and he liked my attitude. So that was really nice. I was glad I talked to him rather than shooing him off to try to get more people to stop for me. An interlude. We had dinner, and my trainer proposed a fun "boys vs. girls" competition to see which group could get the most people to stop. About one minute into that, the guy who provided the third "interesting exchanges" came up to me without me calling to him, saying this: "Let me tell you something. What you guys did with those Abu Ghraib photos got my brother killed. Fuck you." And he walked off before I could say anything, not that there's anything I'd have said. Honestly, I have no idea how true any of that is—it's probably impossible to prove that any one soldier in Iraq or elsewhere was killed because of those photos—and I think that it's best that we as a country know what's going on in our prisons (or prisons under our control, anyway). But that stuff is besides the point, because what the conversation really hammered home was this: I can't be in a job where people hate me (much less one that also requires me to smile and have fun). The ACLU identity is part of that, but people find canvassers annoying in general, and I can't be someone who annoys people for a living. Due to both not wanting to have people hate me and because of the severity of the man who accosted me, I was distraught. I went to my trainer, and she gave me a pep talk, but after I took a walk around the block I told her that I quit. But I did make friends with one of the people training with me, so that mitigates things. | | Monday, July 6th, 2009 | | 5:18 pm |
I have my first job lined up—a political canvasser for the ACLU. I embarrassed myself during the interview since the only specific thing I could remember the ACLU doing was defending the rights of the KKK to march through Southern towns, and scrambled but failed to think of, as I said, "a better—uh, a less ambiguous example." But I seemed to impress the interviewer well enough, and I have an observation day tomorrow, where I go with more experienced folks and see just how they get strangers on the street to give them money. If I had to guess, I would imagine that canvasser is one of the easiest jobs to get, but one of the harder ones to keep, but maybe I'll surprise myself. It is, at any rate, one of the last jobs I imagined myself having, but if it doesn't work out, no sweat. | | 9:37 am |
Finally got my computer charger this morning. I'd been fine without it, though, since I just popped onto Peter's computer to apply for jobs (got an interview today, by the way) and spent my free time walking around or cleaning or reading. I've been listening to Off the Wall a lot lately. It's sad that it took Michael Jackson dying for me to explore more than Thriller. As for what I thought of him as a person, that's annoying to get into, honestly. | | Sunday, July 5th, 2009 | | 5:49 pm |
I walked around a hell of a lot today. The used booksellers here and there actually have surprisingly good selections. Not sure if we're doing anything for Independence Day tonight; we might just eat burritos. There's still plenty of things to do before I'm fully settled in (I need some furniture for my room, mainly), but it's nice to be busy. Applying for a few jobs every day. I think I'm getting better at it, but I can't really say until I actually get a job. | | Saturday, July 4th, 2009 | | 3:11 pm |
For whatever reason, I didn't hear the delivery guy buzz our room when he came with my computer charger, and one of my roommates came in with the missed delivery notice sometime after noon, so I walked to the post office, but they closed at noon because it's the day before Independence Day, and so they will also be closed tomorrow because of that holiday, and the day after that because it's Sunday. It sucks, dearly, mainly because it complicates applying for jobs. | | Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 | | 5:29 pm |
I am in Brooklyn. It's nice. I won't be on the computer too much, not because of the lure of the big city, but because I forgot to bring my charger. EDIT: It's being sent via overnight mail, so it's not really a problem. | | Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 | | 8:31 pm |
I head for Brooklyn tomorrow. Boy oh boy. I never much got into the details, but I'm moving in with my college friend, Peter, because one of his roommates moved out and I decided to take advantage of the situation. If I can't find a job in three months, I'll come back to Virginia, but I imagine myself setting my sights pretty low at first in terms of what work I'll be willing to do. Which isn't to say that I won't try to get office work, which is indeed what I've been applying for the last few days, but, as everyone knows, it's a tough market. But I'm moving in under pretty good, fairly low-risk circumstances, so I'm not too worried. | | Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | | 3:10 pm |
I spent a while today cleaning out the desk in my room. There's an awful lot of photographs I'd forgotten about—of parties, Panama, King's Dominion, our school trip to New York, a few pictures of me in a suit with longer hair than I ever remember having. Also a lot of somewhat embarrassing school papers that I threw out before I could become too mortified. I also found that by some chance I have a couple of pre-New School quizzes on The Red Pony that show just how hard I'd stopped caring about school. ("Where does the pony come from?" "Some other horse, probably its mother." At least I used "its" correctly.) Some nostalgia trip! It'd have been nicer if most of the pictures hadn't turned out so badly. | | Sunday, June 28th, 2009 | | 10:17 am |
Last night was a good time. | | Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | | 7:12 pm |
Well, not much else I can say on a day where Michael Jackson dies. Except that I'm astonished by the obscene idiocy of the people on the discussion for Wikipedia's front page (where there's a box for recent news events). Most aren't reporting it as "official" yet, but I agree that, at this point, we should take reports with a pinch of salt. Not sure if it is worth the main page anyways, but still... J Milburn (talk) 22:09, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
IIRC, deaths from natural causes don't really go on the main page. There was a fight over it when Sir Edmund Hillary died. ZeaLitY [ DREAM - REFLECT ] 22:48, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't think this should be on the main page, even though he is an extremely famous person, if we put this on the main page then why shouldn't we put Ed McMahon(or however you spell it), Farrah Fawcett and other notable deaths recently? Blah42b10 (talk) 23:03, 25 June 2009 (UTC)Meanwhile, on the front page, admittedly among reports of deaths and international events: "American Lucas Glover wins the 2009 U.S. Open Golf Championship." (Of course the death was shortly added to the front page.) | | Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | | 7:12 pm |
I intend to have a party this Saturday. I think it should be fun. Please come to my fun party. | | 7:07 pm |
I walked to the grocery store today, and on my way there I encountered a girl who wanted a cigarette, and her gay friend, who wanted a dollar. They were back from school, trying to get home to D.C., and didn't appear to be sure which town or state they were in. They were drunk. (This was around 2pm.) I told them where the nearest Metro stop was, but it was a forty minute walk so they said they'd wait for the bus. The guy commented that I was cute. Then the girl kissed me on the lips. When I got done with grocery shopping, I took pity on them and drove them to the Metro. Some week. | | Monday, June 22nd, 2009 | | 11:21 pm |
I just got off the phone with Erin. She is staying in California until perhaps March of next year, and I am going to live in a city where she would have never have any reason to live, so we decided to "take a break," which I guess is a break-up where you still hold out hope for the future. It was very tough and I cried a lot. But then we talked about birds, because today I saw two angry birds attack a crow in midair, and we realized that we are "friends to the end." |
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