Category: Uncategorized

I have to have a resume ready by tomorrow morning at 9 for adecco. One that says I’m great around the office and you want to hire me. What the hell do you put on such a beast?

I went to the nonprofit thing today. I meant to go tomorrow, but my intentions were rescheduled. Still too late. Stopped taking applications for web dork. Will volunteer there anyway, because it is a worthy cause. And maybe boost my ego by being 20 times more technically competent than the guy who will be doing it.

Came back and within in an hour convinced the oakland adecco office to interview me (thursday morning at 9. The berkeley office turned me down even after I explained my situation), despite my lack of secretarial experience, as well as calling up 4 or 5 different messenger service places (2 of which were collectives, and one of those collectives was helpful. The first one was, err, not.) How this ranks me on the point scale, I don’t know, or especially care. That this all took place within 1.5-2 hours says something.

Goals for tomorrow: hit the two nearby, morning-oriented coffee shops, and see what they have to say for themselves.

Advantage of bike messenger: no need for gym membership, and if I don’t get a washboard this way, I won’t get one any other way. Enough pay to support myself, relatively performance driven pay. Fairly low cognitive demand.

Advantage of temp agency: better pay, though still not great. Greater safety, no serious risk of accidents or damage.

Tomorrow. More craigslist. More universities. Also hit the bike messenger stuff before I cross the bay on my way back. Now heading to east bay.

Laters.

posted an entry in the ongoing debate on monogamy. And since it’s a distraction from my job hunt, I couldn’t resist the chance to chime in.

There’s alot to be said for monogamy; in terms of disease prevention, relationship stability, and a few other things, it tends to work out better. There’s alot to be said for nonmonogamous setups; jealousy isn’t validated, it makes it clear that the relationship is about what you do together, not what you do with other people, and, of course, you have permission to have some fun at the same time. And each also definitely has their drawbacks. There is no perfect way to handle the human heart and libido.

It’s possible for either choice to be a selfish or giving decision (or both, of course). Who are you thinking about when you think about this issue? Are you thinking about protecting your lover from stds, from the hurt feelings if you were to sleep around, about reassuring them that they are all you need? Or are you thinking about protecting your own wang, your own emotions, your own insecurity? Are you thinking about the freedom and joy that your lover can experience? Are you thinking about the opportunity to get your rocks off with that pretty thing who isn’t your lover?

There are a couple of unique challenges for monogamy among homos (including dykes, people). Homos don’t have nearly as consistent a support system for monogamy as straight people. There are calls for monogamy, there are calls for abstinence, and there are calls for getting your rocks off. Some people pick and choose the message to listen to, others choose none, and some just listen to everything.

Then there’s the graph theory explanation. Unlike heteros, this isn’t a bipartide graph. In everyday english, me and my ex’s ex are far more likely to find one another attractive than my straght friend’s straight ex’s ex. Since everyone can be attracted to everyone, it’s a much messier playing field. And a less stable one. This applies to lesbians and bisexuals as well. There’s a really obnoxious model for this, that I think actually makes a valid point, but I wouldn’t want to subject anyone to an obviously flawed mathematical model that doesn’t want to hear it. 😉

But unless it’s his mother or sister, his lips shouldn’t touch another’s unless they’re mine. No one should see him naked but me. No one should have his hands up his shorts / down his pants, unless it’s me. And certainly, his hands shouldn’t be in someone else’s pants unless they are mine.

The latter parts aren’t so objectionable (though my first thought on hearing them was “what about the doctor” and “what about the lockerroom”), but I do find the first part objectionable. Do the same rules apply when they’re in france, russia, spain, or other situations where kissing is a standard greeting among friends, like for some bar fags?

Yes, yes, those are all special circumstances, but my point is that I bet it’s not really the action, so much as the intent that bothers you. It’s a complicated thing that can’t be measured easily by a set of simple “thou shalt not”s. “Thou shalt not take action out of other attractions” or “Thou shalt not violate my standards of accepted social behavior”. Except, of course, people have different standards.

As more time passes, I see that fewer and fewer gay men feel this way. It seems to be mostly a heterosexual thing. As I said before, I don’t care what other couples do. But with so many people adopting this multi-partnered philosophy, it seems to be leaving fewer and fewer men who actually believe in “my one and only”. Where does that leave me?

See, I’ve observed the exact opposite trend. I think with increasing social acceptance (not to mention the advent of hiv), there’s been a trend towards a more coherent advocacy of monogamy, and that the younger generation tends more towards that perspective. But maybe I’m on crack, cuz this is based on my own observations, naturally biased by my own ideas. Maybe you are too 😉 Maybe things haven’t really changed all that much.

Score for today, 3

Applications dropped off at Whole Foods, Radio Shack, and Barnes & Noble. I also checked the aforementioned local non profit, but nobody useful was there, so I’ll be dropping by later, as in on wednesday. Plans for tomorrow include a trip over to SF. Will see what I can get out of UCSF temp pool, also want to talk w/adecco about the office experience requirement. And look at all the bike messenger stuff over there (thanks for the idea, ).

other stuff for the day

Thursday, opportunities identified, no applications

Friday, 2 pts.

http://www.xinet.com/aboutxinet/jobs/ax.jobs.berk.support.html
and
http://www.craigslist.org/sfo/sfc/sad/5667179.html

On the upside, those two followed one another quite readily due to having very similar cover letters. So, a few more such ‘templates’ should speed it up immensely. In a week or two, I should be getting 15 pts/day with little difficulty.

Things to look into: community college math and tech ed stuff, it/tech support/web foo (from craigslist), local nonprofit tech foo, adecco, and the ucsf temp pool. Also specific position with nearby nonprofit, which would provide nearly-subsistence income for 24 hrs/week, and applications for barnes & noble, radio shack, and whole foods.

Oh yeah, finally got around to meeting for more than 10 seconds last night. Originally my goal was to meet him at Lucky Creation in china town, and have dinner there. Well the first part of that goal happened. The dinner part didn’t so much, since they’re closed on wednesdays. Erk.

So, we walked back to market, took muni to the church station, and walked down market until we hit ristorante capri. The waiter called me high maintainence (not that it’s not true). Walked around for a bit, then I went home. I was in a strange & funky mood because of being told to piss off earlier that day, but Jim’s company improved the day.

Must rub fuzzy head.

8 job opportunities identified. 0 applied to.

Problem is, I haven’t been. It’s a hard thing for me to do. For several reasons. So, I came up with a metric, far from perfect, but whatever.

Quality of job hunt (add scores together for daily score)
1 – Response to online posted job listing
1 – Follow up on prior interest
2 – Face-to-face contact with individual who can advance job acquisition process
5 – Giving resume directly to the hiring party, while in committed relationship with CEO and gaming with the majority of HR.

Goal of 15 pts/day.

Oh yeah, m-f, no gay.com, no warcraft 3, unless goal is met. Ummm, whee.

Further amendments:

will post itemized daily score.

And for today, target sites include the berkeley hr page, craigslist, ucsf temp pool, uh… Yeah, we’ll see how it goes.

So, I was chatting with this kid. He’s pretty internally conflicted between being gay and devoutly religious. Was chatting with him as I was getting ready to go to the Students for A Non-religious Ethos thing on tuesday (the under god in the pledge thing), and I mentioned it to him, and he was all “I’ll pray for you” and I was all “And I hope you come to a reasonable set of assumptions about the universe” and he was all “I’m going to eat some cruelly slaughtered animal product” and I left.

Yesterday, I try to start chatting with him, and he’s generally anti-social, I try to figure out what it is, and he turns into a raging asshole. Saying things like I should leave America, I don’t care at all about my country, I have no beliefs, blah, blah, blah. The kid has alot of self-hatred going on, and apparently decided I was the incarnation of everything he didn’t like about himself. (He had earlier expressed that he felt that the choice between his sexuality and his religion was an either/or thing).

So I told him if he wanted me to leave him alone, that’s all he had to say. He said yes, with some pretty nasty comments on the side, I wished him the best, to which he replied “I don’t have the same wish for you :-)”. I then removed him from my contact list, etc.

And the strange thing is, I actually worry about him. Hope he grows up at some point. <shrug>

Went to a talk by Michael Newdow last night, he being the guy suing congress for putting ‘under god’ in the pledge of allegiance, with . We sat in the front row, and exchanged a couple of words with him before he put on his show. met up with us afterwards, and had some very negative opinions of it, mostly regarding the lack of propriety, which is a fair criticism, even if I didn’t care about it. =)

It was interesting. Part informative presentation, part history lecture, part personal story, part rally. One of the parts that found most objectionable were his little interspersed home-written folk songs. (I bought a cd for $10 afterwards, mostly to support his cause). He claimed that one of his major reasons for doing this is to encourage a sort of individual-striving-for-the-common-good that I find quite heartwarming. And I think the folk music worked towards supporting that spirit.

It was also somewhat educational in terms of constitutional law, and the place religion holds in the government.

I’m wondering what all my elitist friends think of this one 😉 When I’d heard that flight 93 had crash landed in southwestern Pennsylvanian farm country, I could think of no more plausible explanation than passenger resistance (though I was surprised by the cellular phone element). See also the gang-tackling of the individual trying to light his shoes.

I think that the idea that e pluribus there arises unum, or a few unos, and that these people are not so very different from the rest of us, gives me more faith in humanity than terrorism has taken away, and underscores our lack of need for massively increased security measures.

http://www.livejournal.com/talkpost.bml?journal=politicsforum&itemid=18739
points to
http://www.scifi.com/tribute/citizens_as_soldiers.html