The Doomsday Machine

Feeling far too well-informed and thoughtful, I decided to kill a few brain cells on the FoxNews website (JP ducks after deliberately provoking Dave). I couldn't pass up the line, "Doomsday Machine Might Destroy World." (Here's the link) I know that FoxNews has a flair for excessive hyperbole, but I was far too intrigued to pass that up. As I suspected, the "Doomsday Machine" in question is the much ballyhooed Large Hadron Collider, a high-energy particle accellerator that looks like it could power the starship Enterprise.
But what does the Large Hadron Collider do? This is what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:
It is theorized that the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the last unobserved particle among those predicted by the Standard Model. The verification of the existence of the Higgs boson would shed light on the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking, through which the particles of the Standard Model are thought to acquire their mass.
Exactly!! What could be clearer than that!?

As you may have heard, some people are concerned about the minute possibility of the Hadron Collider inadvertently creating an artificial black hole. According to FoxNews and the babbling hobo that verified the information, miniature black holes could be created by the machine. According to three scientists who are actually intelligent enough to understand how the damn thing works,
"We conclude that ... the growth of black holes to catastrophic size does not seem possible. Nonetheless, it remains true that the expected decay times are much longer (and possibly >> 1 second) than is typically predicted by other models."
As seemingly reassuring as this statement might sound, leave it to FoxNews to bring on the fear. The reporter, and I use the term loosely simply to agitate Dave, had to add this at the end of the article:
"FoxNews.com can think of a few other things that didn't seem possible once — the theory of continental drift, the fact that rocks fall from the sky, the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun, the idea that scientists could be horribly wrong. We're also wondering how often the LHC might create individual black holes, since longer-lived ones have a greater chance of merging with each other, and, um, well, see ya."
Is it too much to ask that I be allowed to go to bed at night without the existential fear of being sucked into another dimension by a minature black hole? I imagine that this Large Hadron Collider isn't exactly easy to understand. I'm sure you have to have the combined I.Q. of Doc Brown, Stephen Hawking, the old man from Fringe, and Scotty from Star Trek just to turn the damn thing on. How does the argument "Well, scientists have been wrong before!" possibly stand up to the reassurances of three world-renowned physicists who could probably melt metal with their minds?

Besides, FoxNews is being such a downer in this case. FoxNews is in the business of predicting worldwide armageddon (Hell, most Christians are looking forward to it), and compared to their usual harbingers of global destruction (democrats, universal health care, gay marriage, abortion, and just plain old wacky hippies), I think "black hole sucks us all into oblivion" has a certain flair that their other panic-inducing stories have been lacking. If I could choose a way for the world to end, black hole is up near the top of the list (right behind "Klingons arrive in orbit to enslave us all but not before proving that Star Trek is real). Think about the benefits of a black-hole-induced armageddon. Not only are you killed in less than a millisecond, but the entire world is vaporized leaving no evidence of our brilliantly stupid world wide suicide.

FoxNews is always saying that our world is becoming a moral vacuum. We might as well become a literal one.

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FoxNews.com: Existing solely so that JP can push Dave's buttons by mocking it mercilessly.

Those Who Can't Do

Imagine a man with the following life moments:
--- At the age of six, he had fashions his attic into a classroom and plays school with the neighbor girl.
--- On several occasions in elementary school, he makes "helpful" suggestions to teachers about how they might improve their classes.
--- During tedious lessons with boring teachers in middle school, he constantly thinks, "I could do this so much better."
--- When asked by a high school counselor what he wants to do for a living, he secretly wants to say "teacher," but he sees no practical future in that and so decides to pursue engineering.
--- In college, he's nominated for the "Behrend Future Teacher Award."
--- At graduate school, his lesson plans are praised and used by other teachers. His supervisor and mentor give him glowing reviews.

And then after all of that... this man decides that he's going to try to get a job in publishing or technical writing.

Well, nine months and 61 rejected job applications later, this man has reconsidered his position. Not only has the business community supplied a resounding "up yours" to our humble hero, but unemployment has given him a lot of time to reconsider his life goals. Indeed, in retrospect the solution seems laughably obvious. This man has applied to get his teaching certification.

(I feel that I shouldn't have to indicate that "this man" is actually me, but I know that some of my readers are a bit obtuse and hebetudinous -- as proof, many are googling the definitions of those two words as we speak -- so I thought I should be clear.)

That's right, loyal readers. I've applied to a teaching certification program at the University of Pittsburgh so that I'll be qualified to teach high school English. As a true masochist at heart, I just can't wait to throw myself upon the mercy of the public education system. I crave the opportunity to put on a dazzling show of brilliance and understanding in front of 30 apathetic and attention-starved students every hour of every day for nine months out of the year. In 30 years, I'm going to be a cranky old man in a bow tie and sweater vest tousling his mussed hair with his chalk-stained hand as he babbles on about the importance of symbolism in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and berates his students for their misuse of "who" and "whom."

All of this did not come out of the clear blue sky. Last Wednesday I visited with an admissions officer at the Pitt School of Education. They have a one-year certification program that's very highly regarded, and the admissions officer was EXTREMELY impressed with my transcripts and experience. After months and months of being told that my credentials were about as valuable as goat urine, it was gratifying to have someone think of me as a highly qualified individual. I wasn't particularly surprised-- after all, I took the PRAXIS I test three years ago, and I was practically insulted by how easy it was. Nevertheless, many of the people with whom I took the test came out of the room complaining that this was their third time taking the test, and "this one had FRACTIONS on it!" I'm not surprised that schools of education aren't receiving the most sterling applications. It really speaks to the poor state of our education system that the worst and dimmest are drawn to the teaching profession.

At one point during our little chat, the admissions officer asked about my basic classes. "You need six math credits, and just about anything will do: college algebra, basic geometry, elementary statistics..." I replyed, "Calculus I and Calculus II... I got As in both." The man was genuinely impressed. He said, "Wow! You just have all sorts of skills!" Not able to pass up a chance for witty self-deprecation I remarked, "Yes, I'm a man of many skills but few job offers." Needless to say, the guy thought I'd be accepted into the program in a heartbeat. I came out of that meeting feeling like a million bucks, which was a nice change of pace. Normally when I'm dealing with my career options, I have to eat ten quarts of ice cream and a whole pizza in order to get my self-esteem out of the gutter. If I'm ever feeling down, I think I'll pick a certification program out of the phone book and call for moral support. It's probably about as effective as talking to Dr. Phil.

This all may seem rather abrupt, but this course isn't set in stone. If I choose to go through with this, the program doesn't start until the fall. That's eight months away! I still plan to apply to more jobs, and I'll network as best as I can to find relevant opportunities; however, it's nice to have something to fall back on. As far as I'm concerned, I can apply to the job openings that seem to be as good as or better than a teaching gig. Positions like "Assistant Sewer Repairman" and "Professional Ferret Kisser" seem promising.

But this is more than just a backup plan. I really do like teaching, and I think I could be very happy doing it. I just don't want to dedicate myself to a singular goal and completely disregard other potentially rewarding opportunities. On the other hand, I hesitate to turn my back on what seems to be a life-long ambition and dream. How I long to simply be abducted by aliens and told that the video game I beat was actually a test of space-fighting ability and that I'm the last savior of the Rylan Star League.

Somebody just give me a wizened old man who can tell me, "This is your destiny!"

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Nine out of ten readers are now committed to not having children for fear that JP may end up teaching them.

Able to Jump the Shark in a Single Bound

There's a term in television called "jumping the shark." This refers to the moment when a show has hit its peak, and it's all downhill from there. The term comes from an episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie goes water skiing and jumps over a shark. Apparently, Happy Days had a dramatic decline in quality since that episode, but the creators had the decency to pull the plug on the show not long after that.

Smallville jumped the shark long ago, but its creators continue to taunt the shark with juicy morsels year after year. They simply won't let this show die. Last year, I managed to cut myself off of Smallville. I stuck it out for seven long years, but I finally decided one day that I couldn't watch that drivel anymore. I thought the show was really good in its first three years, but then it gradually slid into a mindless abyss of bizarre character behavior and non-stop superpowered villains-of-the-week. However, I'd invested so much time into the show that I felt obligated to see it through to the end. I thought it couldn't possibly last beyond a seventh season.

I was wrong. The show is currently in its eighth season, and there's talk of there being a ninth.

For the longest time, I couldn't understand who was keeping this show alive. I thought I was one of the few masochistic viewers clinging to this show out of sheer will. Then I visited a Star Trek message board (as if anyone reading this is surprised), and I came upon the following exchange regarding Smallville:

KIRKALICIOUS: "How in the fuck is this show not cancelled yet?"

SPOCK4PREZ: "Because it is one of the best shows ever on TV. BSG and LOST may be superior but Smallville was and always will be greatness at its best. It is the show that The Adventures of Superman (1950s), Lois & Clark and Superboy and even the bigscreen features wanted to be. It is the very incarnation of the myth...

"Honestly, I hope it'll never stop. After nine years of Smallville let's go on with another ten years of Metropolis...suit and flight provided, of course.

"Smallville is the reason I became insterested in comic book adaptations in the first place! It is far superior to any Marvel movies..."

WORF-DWARF: "My god. Never did I think that words could actually give me a stroke. But bravo you've found away."

(Names changed to protect the shamelessly nerdy, though I'm sorry to say that none of them is me.)

I now imagine that everyone still watching the show is just like SPOCK4PREZ. Of course, I go to the same message boards as these fruit cakes, so I'm hardly in a position to judge. Though it says something that people who masturbate to the footage of Kirk fighting the Gorn are giving this man grief for having no taste.

I browse the Smallville entry on Wikipedia every once in awhile just see what new lows the show has sunk to, and the show never fails to disappoint. Just about every major character has left the show. Clark Kent and Chloe are still there, but Lex and Lionel Luthor are both gone as are Clark's parents and Lana Lang. Lex Luthor was the best character on the show. That should have been their cue to end it right there.

But no, they just keep going. Even though I no longer watch the show, I have a morbid fascination with its progress. I'm definitely going to watch the series finale (if they ever decide to let this abortion of a show die) just to see how they decide to end it all. I like to think they had some idea of how they'd transition to Clark being Superman, but knowing this show, it probably has something to do with some emo kid discovering he has the power to control wasps and using them to sting Clark until he becomes Superman. Smallville is already bringing in the Legion of Superheroes and Zatanna for a wacky plot or two, and if you don't know who either of those are, just nod politely and walk away now.

I'll end now with a partial list of the moments given on "jumptheshark.com" that first indicated Smallville's downfall. I think you'll get the idea:

1,937 Votes: Too much fawning over Lana
1,420 Votes: Never Jumped (at least this many people think the show is still in its prime, or SPOCK4PREZ has voted that many times)
687 Votes: Lana, Lois, and Chloe become witches
179 Votes: Lana is pregnant with Lex's baby
89 Votes: Krypto the Super Dog
60 Votes: Aquaman
47 Votes: Singing the Dukes of Hazzard Theme
40 Votes: Chloe survives a mob hit
18 Votes: Matricide

Yes, that's right. Matricide!

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Star Trek Fans: Lording their good taste and superior skills with women over the Smallville fans since 2004.

JP: Master Criminal

The face of a career felon.

A byproduct of watching so many criminal procedurals on TV is that I begin to think about how I would have committed the crime in question to avoid prosecution. Contrary to what many television cops (and especially David Caruso) would like you to believe, the police are not demi-gods who solve every crime that crosses their desks; furthermore, they don't begin every investigation by turning to their colleague and saying, "And this time... it's personal!!" In short, confounding the cops, while not a cake walk, isn't exactly rocket science.

While watching TV, I've come up with some advice for how to commit the following crimes:

Murder: This is, naturally, something that's probably crossed everyone's mind at least once. The easiest way to avoid detection is to select some random idiot out of a phone book and blow the guy away - no motive and no ties to the deceased (and you get to make a nice homage to the movie The Jerk.) But if killing random innocents isn't your style, there are always ways to get away with killing those who deserve it. Let's say your neighbor is pissing you off... maybe he's shitting on your lawn every morning. First, don't lose your cool about it. That way, other neighbors won't be able to tell the cops that you've been screaming vulgarities and shouting, "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!!" to the recently-deceased. Second, don't use an unusual object to kill him. Chances are slim that anyone else in the neighborhood has an authentic pewter-molded Highlander sword with bloodstains on it. Use a screwdriver to stab the guy in the eye - everyone has a screwdriver. Third, try to get everyone else in the neighborhood mad at the guy so that you're not the only one with a motive. Go take dumps in their yards and frame your soon-to-be late neighbor. Finally, dispose of the body in some dinky town with a really shitty police force. A go-getter New York City detective might go the extra mile to solve your crime, but Sherriff Billy-Bob from the Ozarks will chalk it up to witchcraft.

Theft: I've never considered the old B&E (breaking and entering). I'm much too easy to describe to the constabulary. Shoplifting is where you can have the most fun. Common sense would tell you that you should try to be discreet and low-key when trying to shoplift. That may be okay if you want to pocket a pack of gum or other small tidbits, but if you really want to do things right and make off with some serious loot, you have to go the other direction. Waltz into Wal-Mart wearing an employee vest (they can't be that hard to find), grab a crate of iPods, and then stroll right out the front door like you own the place. If the buzzer goes off, explain to the dottering old woman at the front that you're just doing some routine inventory. The store may not be fooled indefinitely, but by the time they catch on, you'll be long gone. You can also come into the store like a regular customer. Put something extremely expensive but relatively small (like a laptop for instance) in the bottom of your cart. Then pile a bunch of bulky but cheap shit (like paper towels) on top. Make a HUGE scene at the cash register over... anything. Make extremely inappropriate comments about the cashier's breasts. Insist on paying in pennies... from Zimbabwe. Make a completely baseless but insistent argument about your receipt being wrong. By the time you decide to leave, they'll be so happy to see you go that they'll probably forget that you didn't put your laptop through the scanner.

Car Theft: This one gets its own mention because it would seem to go against all reason. Pick the car that has the car alarm. NOBODY takes a car alarm seriously... even if it's YOUR car. If people see you surreptitiously fiddling around with a desolate car at night, they may alert the authorities. But if you set off the car alarm of a vehicle in a store parking lot in broad daylight, you can violently smash the windows and just assure other passersby, "I locked by goddamn keys inside and this motherfucking car alarm won't shut off." They'll probably just nod their heads in understanding and walk away. Some good samaritan might even HELP you steal the car. You know what they call a guy like that... a patsy!

Commit Perjury: You know, when you say that you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help you God, that doesn't really mean anything if you don't believe in God. As long as you're sure that the police can't find fault with your testamony, choosing atheism for all of your courtroom needs is an effective and easy way to bypass any etherial retribution.

Libel / Slander: If you have any desire to completely sully the name and reputation of celebrities, take some advice from the master. Start a blog and use a convenient pseudonym. Using your actual initials and plastering your picture all over the blog might be something to avoid; however, if you ensure that your blog never makes any money, you won't have to worry about getting sued.

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9 out of 10 readers know that Pat Sajak is a convicted pederast!

Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar

I'm so hot that I'm smokin'!

I really abhor smoking. There's nothing worse to me than a poorly ventilated bar with a large group of assholes filling the place with billows of smoke. I always leave the place smelling like an ashtray. I've gone into many a bar freezing my ass off simply because I don't want to have to wash my coat every time I want a drink. Naturally, the recent Pennsylvania law that curtails smoking in most bars and restaurants helped quite a bit, but establishments that make more than 80% of their profits from alcohol sales are exempt from the state-wide smoking ban. This is a ridiculous law that hurts everyone. Now the bars that permit smoking attract all the most obsessive chain smokers, and the air in these places has become almost oppressive. If they'd simply make the ban universal, like they did in many other states, the smokers will eventually come back. Nobody wants to sit at home drinking alone... and if they do, they're probably not the most fun people to have in a bar.

Needless to say, I loathe cigarettes. There's no greater turn-off to me than if a woman smokes. It's a repulsive habit, and many many people agree with me. Nevertheless, there seems to be a bit more permissiveness and acceptance for cigars. There are people who would never touch a cigarette who jump at the chance to wrap their lips around a big brown stogie.

None of my friends in Kittanning smoke, but at Joe's wedding, we celebrated the new marriage by drinking beer and smoking cigars while our wedding party pictures were taken... at the cemetary. Apparently, someone really wanted to make sure that the whole "til death do us part" thing was thoroughly emphasized. I think the cigar has a certain history attached to it that gives it more nobility and class than it probably deserves. A few of my friends claim that they have a rich and delicious flavor, but I really don't get it. I've smoked precisely three cigars in my lifetime (all in the past year incidentally), and I really don't like them that much. They taste like shit, but I do like the way I look with one. I feel like Groucho Marx... if he were six and a half feet tall and got rid of his fake mustache and eyebrows.

Let me slip out of these wet things and into a dry martini.

Remarkably, these pictures of me with the cigar are some of the best pictures of me that I've ever seen. I guess there's something about holding a large brown phallus in my hand that just brings a genuine smile to my face. Though my reaction wasn't nearly as extraordinary my friend Kevin's declaration upon lighting up his first cigar at Joe's bachelor party, "This may be the greatest thing I've ever had!!! Where have these BEEN all my life?" He declared this with renewed vigor about once every fifteen minutes. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but for some people, it may be something else entirely:

They may have misspelled Freud, but you get the idea.

So once again, it's proven that I can't participate in any traditionally masculine activity without inserting subtle homoerotic overtones into the scenario.

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9 out of 10 manly men only suck on the largest, plumpest, and firmest stogies that money can buy.

Oh What a Life!

As part of my continued attempts to become more traditionally masculine, this afternoon I went to a musical with another man. A friend of mine is a music teacher, and she got tickets to the critically acclaimed musical Jersey Boys for her students. She had two tickets left over, and she gave them to my other friend Mike. Mike's girlfriend was unavailable, so he took me along instead. I must admit, I looked ravishing as his date.

Jersey Boys tells the story of the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, a popular music group from the 1960s. I'm sure some of you are saying, "Who the fuck are the Four Seasons? Are they the guys who started the hotel chain?" Not exactly. You may not know the group's name, but you've heard their music. You have to know "December 1963" ("Oh what a night, late December back in '63. What a very special time for me..."); they still play it on the radio all the time, and I think Billy Joel may have done a cover of it. But their other songs have been used for countless product jingles over the years. I seem to recall "Big Girls Don't Cry" being used for a Pampers commercial, and I wouldn't be surprised if "Walk Like a Man" was used in Reebok commercials. I'm almost certain I once saw some tubby man serenading Mrs. Butterworth with "Can't Take My Eyes Off You."

The musical was excellent, but what struck me the most was the group's riveting tale of success. By the age of 22, Frankie Valli had a string of number one hits and a boatload of money. This doesn't even take into account the throngs of adoring fans. I'm 25 now, and my life consists of watching Boston Legal DVDs, making copies of church bulletins, eating leftover meatloaf (sometimes while listening to Meatloaf), and then blogging about my stygian existence on this blog.

Oh sure, the Four Seasons had their share of troubles, and the play ends with certain tragic overtones. One of their members racked up enormous debts to the mob. Frankie himself even ended up divorced, and his daughter was killed in her early 20s. But failures are so much easier to take after glorious success. People talk about how money doesn't buy happiness, but I'll bet the gloomy abyss seems a bit more bearable when you can drown your sorrows in the finest wines while cruising on your yacht with women of dubious moral character.

And I'm sure the royalties from this musical aren't keeping Frankie Valli awake at night.

Jersey Boys is ostensibly about living the American Dream. Even a group of poor Italian boys from Jersey can make it big. But to me it only highlighted the fact that I could have made it by this time if I'd been scrappy and cunning enough. This performance only drove home my own failures. It also didn't give me a lot of hope for the future. Even if success is achieved, you're still doomed to a failed marriage and huge mob debts. So if I one day become a wildly successful producer of pornographic films, I'll probably be diagnosed with terminal dysentery before my first check arrives in the mail.

Although there was one bright beacon of hope in the production. There's a small subplot featuring a exuberant but dopey kid named Joey from their New Jersey hometown. Apparently Tommy DeVito (no relation to Danny), one of the original Four Seasons, took great delight in their teenage years in tormenting and mocking poor Joey and using him to run errands. Tommy DeVito is the one who later accrued the massive mob debts, and he was kicked out of the group. Joey, meanwhile, would later group up to be Joe Pesci.... yes, THAT Joe Pesci.

And in a delicious twist of fate, Tommy DeVito now WORKS for Joe Pesci!! (I have no idea if character of Tommy DeVito that Joe Pesci portrays in Goodfellas is a direct reference to this relationship, but I wouldn't doubt it.)

I don't see myself as Joe Pesci in this little tale. Nay, I am Tommy DeVito. I find solace in the fact that at some point after years of wretched unemployment, some successful guy that I wronged in the past may take pity on me and offer me a job. In a cruel bit of irony, maybe I'll end up as the secretary for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

And then someone can write a glorious musical about my life.

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Big girls don't cry, but sometimes big unemployed bloggers do.

Yeeeeaaaaahhhh!!!!

David Caruso: King of the One-Liner

Why does CSI: Miami continue to garner good ratings? Is it because of its stellar writing? I highly doubt it. Is it the top notch acting? They wish! Could it be the preponderance of women in string bikinis that are constantly filling the background? ... Perhaps... But I believe that the real reason this show still brings in the viewers is the David Caruso One-Liner.
Every teaser opens with some hapless Miamian getting killed in a gruesome fashion followed by the CSI crew showing up for the initial investigation. The teaser ends with David Caruso slipping on his shades while uttering a completely deadpan one-liner (often a pun) about the situation at hand. For instance, suppose they come across a man who's been mauled by a dog. David Caruso (or Horatio Caine if you'd rather use his character's name) will slyly stare at the body and say, "Well I suppose in this case..." (puts on sunglasses) "... a dog wasn't man's best friend." The show's theme song, a variation of The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again," will then immediately kick in with the screaming "YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!"
And these one-liners occur in every single episode. Viewers of the CSI franchise are probably saying, "Well Grissom does the same thing in the original series as well!" That's true, but when Grissom delivers the line, he always has a little smirk on his face as if he knows he's making a wise-ass comment. David Caruso's expression never changes... ever. You see his expression in the picture at the top? That's how he looks ALL THE TIME. You wouldn't think that the line, "Looks like the wave isn't the only thing about to hit Miami." could ever be delivered with a straight face, but David Caruso will prove your ass wrong!

JP's Note: This is my favorite one

The deliberate and calculated way that he puts on his sunglasses while delivering these one-liners is just icing on the cake. Someone putting on a pair of sunglasses wouldn't seem to be a ridiculous action... until you see him do it a hundred times in a row!

That's how you do a one-liner, my friends.... Miami style!

I watch those clips, and I can't help but wonder what it must be like to be a writer for CSI: Miami. The one-liners are just the most noticable traits; the show really fails on all levels. David Caruso seems to demand the same character description as Batman: "Awesome and Badass!" The problem is that everything else takes a back seat to that. You would think that David Caruso would have to be a scientist first and foremost, but David Caruso is to "scientist" as Batman is to "detective;" it's all just a pretext for kicking ass. Not that there's not a certain appeal to watching David Caruso skulk in the background and scowling at everybody while interrogating suspects in a gravelly voice, but you can't hang an entire show on that.

Or so I thought.

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"Wow, David Caruso! CSI: Miami really jumped the shark!"
"Yes... I suppose you could say it really should be FIN-ished."
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

(JP's Note: I don't know who first created those Caruso Cartoons, but it wasn't me. My hat is off to the clever bastard.)

Press Start to Continue

In today's geek-friendly world, there's nothing fundamentally wrong about a guy not having a boner for sports. But if said guy doesn't know shit about video games either, then he is one emasculated little girly-man. Well buy me a bra and call me Suzie because when it comes to video games, I have the skills of Glass Joe and the manly attitude of Don Flamenco.

To be clear, there are certain video games that I like. I am such a whore for Mario games that my sexual fantasies involve dressing in a raccoon suit while an unnamed floozy in red overalls begs me to eat my mushrooms so that I can "grow bigger." I also have a certain affinity for Sonic the Hedgehog games, but sexual fantasies involving a hedgehog seem a bit hazardous to me.

I think time passed me by at some point. I remember spending a lot of loving time with the original Nintendo and Sega Genesis, and I recall many hours playing Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64. But somehow I lost interest in video games about six years ago (just before going to college I believe). This excludes, of course, every Mario game (even in Kart form) that is released.

Why can't I love video games again? My life is hardly filled with extraordinary challenges and hours of spellbinding fun. I could really use a game that absorbs me so fully that I can go to bed sobbing because my entire day was wasted in a virtual environment. I want to be able to cheer like I did when I first destroyed the giant Dr. Robotnik in Sonic 2. I want to giggle with glee as when I discovered my first warp zone. I want to experience the same passion and fury that I had when I tried to swim through the electrified plankton, laser beams, and time bombs in the Dam level that was designed by the Marquis de Sade for the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game.

Today's shoot-em-ups seem too repetitive. How many different ways can you blast your way through an army of Nazis or space aliens. Now when a game incorporates space alien Nazis, they might have my attention. MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games... or so I'm told) are too damned slow. I have no patience to spend time hacking down rabbits and spotted owls so that I can build up my attack points and become a tenth-level dwarf in the land of Azeroth. Fuck that noise. That would be like popping in the first Mario game and being told, "Sorry. You can't use the fire flower until you stomp on 10,000 goombas."

I do love Wii Sports. It's the first time since Mike Tyson's Punchout that I've actually been able to hold my own in a sporting event. I may not be able to tell "30 Love" from 30 Rock, but on the Wii, I'm like the love child of Bjorn Borg and Serena Williams. (Actually I'm not all that good... but it gives me an excuse to call myself a Borg.) Of course, on the Wii, you don't get the supreme Manifest Destiny-esque satisfaction of taking down Piston Honda, White Tiger, Don Flamenco and the other minority rejects from Mike Tyson's Affirmative Action Day. Little Mac was quite the Aryan wonder!

What was my point again? ... Oh yeah. The world needs more racist video games!

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I'm sorry, Mario. But your virtual manhood is in another castle.

The Unemployable Element

I now believe in God... because I believe he hates me.

Astute readers may remember that I recently bumbled into an interview with a company in Washington D.C. It was, without question, the best opportunity I had found so far. It was a position with a well-respected company doing research about how to improve higher education programs. I met a guy in a relatively high position of power at the company, and he was able to help me get my foot in the door. I was qualified, and it was something that I wanted to do. I really wanted this job.

And today they turned me down.

Two weeks ago, I had a screening interview over the phone with someone in the company's human resources department. The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Perfect Interview has this to say about a screening interview: "Its purpose is not to identify and harvest talent, but to eliminate 'unacceptable' candidates in order to save the valuable time of the senior executive--the person with the power to hire you." The screening interview is essentially used to weed out the flotsam that doesn't meet the minimum requirements. I'm not only flotsam... but jetsam as well.

(And I'm upset... so I don't need to hear any complaints about my excessive nautical verbiage.)

I thought the screening interview went very well. I said all the right things; I plugged my research experience, my dedication to long-term projects, and I had some terrific stuff to say about how my teaching improved not only my ability to work well with others but my own research as well. In my mind, I was perfect: dedicated researcher with fresh ideas, a Masters degree, and experience working in higher education. I even had a guy who worked at the company who could put in a good word for me.

In short, it's not that I failed to get a job that's got me upset. It's that I had everything going for me this time... and I STILL failed. And after the SCREENING interview of all things. I wasn't even good enough to warrant an in-person interview.

My qualifications are about as marketable as sand in the Sahara. I have to give serious thought to how I want to proceed. After 60 unsuccessful job applications, it's clear to me now that this idea of breaking into the corporate world is just not going to pan out. What's worse is that I applied to four adjunct Composition positions at local colleges in the area, and I haven't heard back from any of them. I can't even get a job in a field in which I actually have experience!

As if life decided that my Christmas holiday wouldn't be complete without piling on the fail, I got my LSAT scores back the other day. For those not following along with the blog, I was recently considering law school, and while I decided I didn't really want to go, I signed up for the LSAT anyway just to see how I'd do. I figured if I did extremely well, it might be an area to consider. Fortunately for the world of law, I only scored in the 60th percentile, which isn't terrible, but it's not exactly a riveting endorsement of my potential legal prowess.

So I'm stumped now. I emailed the guy who first put me in contact with that company to see if he knew of any other companies that might have a use for my skills. I'm not holding my breath on that one. I think I'll also try a headhunter to see if a professional salesman can make JP the Busted Stationwagon look like a sleek Lamborghini to desperate companies.

But I believe the most promising option is what I've blogged about before... getting my teaching certification. I'm extremely qualified, and I've wanted to be a teacher forever. It may not be the perfect job, but goddammit, if I was perfectly satisfied, I'd have nothing to bitch about on this blog.

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If at first you don't succeed, try and try again. If you still don't succeed after 60 tries, you may be doomed to a life of failure.

Ten New Year's Resolutions

Because I'm too awesome to have just one.

Can I be as jubilant as this man??

My New Years' Resolutions for 2009:

10. Watch The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I haven't seen it yet, and my geeky troika is not complete having only seen every Star Wars and Star Trek movie. I'd have zero street cred at the Comic Con.

9. Lose 44 pounds... not for reasons of health or vanity, but so that I will be light enough to safely skydive out of an airplane. I'll show those aerodynamic motherfuckers who's a flight risk.

8. Become a space pirate, or failing that, a cocky omnipotent energy being who trifles with Earth starships while dressed as a 19th century fop.

7. Stop making obscure Star Trek references on my blog. The majority of people don't understand them, and the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... or the one.

6. Find Jesus. He's always in the last place you look.

5. Find a way to spin the wheel on the Wheel of Fortune set. I've been dreaming about that since I was three years old.

4. Buy personalized license plate: "JP 4 PREZ", "HOT 4 JP", and "JP 8 PIE" are all acceptable.

3. Start smoking and then quit. It'll make me seem dedicated and responsible.

2. Help the local community by ensuring that Batmite is registered as a sex offender.

1. Create illegal counterfeiting operation should the job search not pan out.

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<-- Not hard to copy with the proper paper and printer... and folks in Kittanning are mighty stupid.