John’s Crawlspace

As some of you may know, I’m jobless right now. I’ve been applying to tons of places, and I had 2 interviews last week. One of them told me up front that the job paid $15/hr and had no medical benefits, so that one was out of the question. The other one was for some type of marketing position, and they didn’t say anything about wages - I didn’t feel comfortable asking, as it was a quick-and-to-the-point interview, and since I had been told beforehand that if I qualified that I’d get a follow-up interview, I figured I’d just ask then. You can view a description of that job here. Keep in mind that I was applying to pretty much everything that is even remotely in my field, so I didn’t exactly read over that description ten times or anything.

Anyway, later on that night I get a call from that company telling me that I was chosen for a follow up interview. They told me to come in the following Monday and dress professionally, and that I’d be observing what the work there is really like, in order to get a better feel for the job. I figured that sounded alright.

So I show up fifteen minutes early, and there’s like 8 other people who are clearly there for the same reason that I am. They call each person into the office one by one, and they are each sent out the door with someone else, I assume these are people that are taking them to another office to talk to them or something. Eventually they called me in, and the same guy that interviewed me introduced me to some other dude that worked there, and explained to me that this dude would be taking me out “into the field for a bit” to see what the job was really like. So we go out to his car and there is one other kid waiting at the car already. The dude gets called back up to the office, and comes back down with one other girl. We all pile into his tiny car, and start driving.

On the way, he is making small talk about “the field”, asking us questions about marketing and etc. Basically he was keeping our minds occupied, so I still hadn’t really had a chance to ask where exactly we were going. I didn’t want to cut him off because in a way he was quizzing us, and he had told us beforehand that he would be evaluating us to determine who the best candidate was. He also told us that even though there had been a lot of people in the office, they were only looking to fill 1 or 2 positions. Right.

Anyway, we finally get out in some neighborhood, and we follow him… Right up to someone’s door. He starts talking to them. “Hey there ma’am, nothing crazy or anything, I’m just here on behalf of the neighborhoods number one fine dining restaurant. You folks go out to eat, right? You like Italian? (laughs) Of course you do. We’re out here in the neighborhood to give 15 local people some free appetizer coupons, and give you a chance to try us out, as we’ve made a bunch of renovations to the place, and added some stuff to our menu…” Blah blah blah, there is nothing ‘free’ involved though - He is trying to sell packages of coupons to some restaurant that not one person in the neighborhood had ever heard of before - It was in a shopping center, next to a Joeann Fabrics. Anyway, after the lady said she wasn’t interested and shut the door, I asked him what percentage of the job involved going door to door and selling stuff. He looked at me with a blank stare that practically screamed “are you serious?” and said “One hundred percent. That’s what we do.” And without further thought, headed towards the next house.

It turns out that the other dude that had been waiting by the car at the office was already an employee, and he was along just for training purposes. Well, me and the other girl were pissed. Had they been up front about what the job entailed, we definitely would not have come along for the ride. A few minutes later, she asked him what time we’d be going back to the office, and he said not until 8 that night. She told him she didn’t know we’d be going far or staying out long (as they hadn’t told us, and they said we were going out ‘for a bit) and he basically said “tough shit.” For the rest of the day, the dude was a dick, and I guess he figured it didn’t matter since we made it very clear that neither one of us was even remotely interested in being a door to door salesman.

Now I like to think of myself as a relatively intelligent person (POOPFART!) but I have to hand it to these guys, they were able to keep me interested in the position without actually ever saying what it was. I guess I figured it was a general marketing job that had a bunch of different resposibilities. Look at the ad again though, does that look like a door-to-door salesman job? Maybe to someone who has been in the industry for a long time, and maybe I’m a total idiot, but I just wasn’t expecting that at all.

I didn’t end up getting home ’til around 9:30 that evening. I wish I could say I learned something from the whole experience, but I really didn’t. I just walked around a neighborhood in a suit and uncomfortable dress shoes in the blazing sun for 8 hours. Oh well, things can only get better from here, right?

You can download a webrip copy of Down’s upcoming album “III: Over The Under” right here (mirror). I haven’t had a chance to listen to it, as I’ve been on the phone with retarded Dell tech support people since I woke up, but I’m sure it will be just as good, if not better, than the previous two albums. Enjoy!

Don’t have much time to post, but I just wanted to throw this on here. I heard Down’s new single yesterday on Sirius and it sounded pretty good. When I got home, I started looking around to see if I could find a copy of it online, and sure enough, someone recorded it. It’s not the best quality, but if you’re a Down fan, I’m sure you’ll be glad to hear new material regardless of the quality. You can download the track here. Down’s upcoming album, “Over The Under”, is set to be released on September 25th.

This summer, I’ve been to more shows than I usually go to in an entire year. And that’s awesome, but my checking account probably wouldn’t agree. Two weeks ago, I ended up going to the Warped Tour. Yeah I know, that’s pretty lame considering the fact that I’m 23 years old, but I didn’t feel too bad buying a ticket since it’s was around $25 (before Ticketmaster bent me over and had it their way). And now that I think about it… I feel worse about having purchased a ticket to Sounds of the Underground, since a portion of that money definitely went straight to Hot Topic, who I believe was the main sponsor of that tour… Ugh. Anyway, Warped Tour was pretty cool musically - since that’s what it’s all about… I think? Anyway, I got to see Coheed & Cambria and Killswitch Engage (I’ve seen both of them twice before), Tiger Army, and Bad Religion. They all put on great shows, and it was definitely awesome to see Bad Religion, who I’ve liked for probably 7-8 years now, but never had a chance to see live before. I also saw some of Pepper’s set, and the last bit of MC Chris’s set. I totally forgot he was gonna be there - For those of you who don’t know, he does the voices for some of the characters on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, notably MC Pee Pants. Judging by what I saw his set wasn’t incredible or anything, but at the very least it was entertaining.

Two days after the Warped Tour, I went to see Between the Buried and Me at the Chameleon Club in Lancaster. They played with The Red Chord and Cephalic Carnage. Last time I saw BTBAM they were with The Red Chord too. The Red Chord put on a pretty good show - I like these guys a lot, but we were up on the balcony for their set, because that’s where the bar was. I actually drove to the show alone and met up with two friends, one of whom (Brian) was already hammered when he got there. He got kicked out of the club within 15 minutes of arriving. Anyway, when the Red Chord finished up their set, Kyle and I headed down to the stage. Somehow I managed to make it to the front row. This was great, because not only did I avoid the scene kids in the mosh pit doing their karate kicks and windmill moves that they spend hours practicing in the mirror before the show, I also got to yell into the mic at one point, like a 14 year old girl at a Fall Out Boy show. Tommy, the lead singer, was no more than 2 feet from me for the majority of the performance. Anyway, their performance was nothing short of amazing. Most of you probably aren’t into these guys at all, so I’ll wrap this up and stop wasting your time, but if you are a fan and have yet to see them live, do yourself a favor and check them out.

Yeah, I’m not done talking about music yet. After Bonnaroo this year, I told myself I had to make it to another music festival before the “season” ended… “Season” meaning the warm weather that allows for camping and basically being a filthy hippie for 3-4 days. There have been a ton of good music festivals since Bonnaroo, but the majority of them are nowhere near me, and I’m not at all in a position to be buying plane tickets right now, the tickets to the festivals are usually expensive enough as it is. So we eventually decided on Camp Bisco. This is Camp Bisco’s sixth year, but from what I’ve read it’s usually at a different venue every year because they are never welcomed back by the property owners. Anyway, the festival was started by The Disco Biscuits. I’m actually not too crazy about this band. I’ve tried to get into them before (they were at Bonnaroo in 2006, but I didn’t end up seeing them) but nothing about the music really grabs me. I’ve heard nothing but good things about their live shows though, so I thought I’d give it a shot anyway.

The Disco Biscuits ended up playing four seperate sets (all three nights, plus one unscheduled afternoon set to make up for some scheduling conflicts). And I’ll be honest, I was bored during the majority of those sets. I thought I’d be able to get into them, but I really couldn’t.

That’s not to say I didn’t have a good time though. Umphrey’s McGee played an awesome set. They played for around 2 hours or so, and I definitely would have rather seen them play more sets over the weekend than the Biscuits.

There was an abundance of electronic music there. When I hear “techno”, I lose interest right away… But some of this stuff is cool. Shpongle is some of the most out-there music ever (I just couldn’t bring myself to call it “trippy”, that’s so lame). Unfortunately, Shpongle’s set was during a Disco Biscuits “setbreak”, so it was only about 3 songs, and it wasn’t really that great either.

I was really excited to see Hallucinogen in Dub. Unfortunately, Hurricane Bisco was at it’s most intense during their slot. The wind and rain was so ridiculous at this point that I actually stayed in my tent just to hold it down - I honestly thought that if I wasn’t inside it to anchor it down, it would have blown away - And it most likely would have. I saw the damage the next day, and even people’s E-Z Up shelter things were destroyed, and those things are sturdy as hell. There was tent shrapnel all over the place, bent poles and stakes all over the ground. It was some of the most ridiculous weather ever, and we camped through it. I ended up sleeping in my friend’s truck that night though, because my tent got flooded. This was the second night in a row that it happened, too. The first time (Thursday night) I definitely wasn’t in the right state of mind to come back to my tent late at night and find all of my clothes and stuff completely soaked. I won’t get into that here, but let’s just say it sucked.

I missed Girl Talk’s set at Bonnaroo, so I was determined to catch it at Camp Bisco, and it was pretty cool. He had like 25 people up on the stage dancing with him. It might sound lame, but I enjoyed it. And speaking of lame, I thought Slick Rick had one of the shittiest sets of the weekend. His backing band was cool, but he just didn’t really do anything for me.

Anyway, the venue is owned and operated by bikers (some people say they’re Hell’s Angels) and they couldn’t have been nicer. I’d love to go to another festival there. There was no unnecessary searching or anything - They checked cars upon entry, and that was it. At Bonnaroo, everytime you wanted to enter the stage area, you got searched. At Camp Bisco, not only do they not search you, but you’re actually allowed to bring beer with you to the stages, as opposed to breaking the bank on six dollar beers all weekend.

I’m not going to touch on every band I saw there, but Sound Tribe was awesome, Bustle in Your Hedgerow was cool, and Holy Fuck put on one of the best sets of the weekend, in my opinion. Anyway, I’m sure most of you don’t care about this, so I’m not gonna keep going with it, but I feel obligated to let you know what I’ve been up to… Minus the incriminating details, of course. Hi mom!

When I have kids, I will teach them to read using this book. Every child should probably own a copy, right?

Not feeling very creative? Depending on what you’re trying to come up with, the Idea Generator just may be able to help you. It’s pretty simple: it just gives you 3 random words, but if I was trying to come up with an idea for a drawing or something, this thing would definitely help me out.

Dammit… Seeing stuff like this makes me wish I had time to learn to play guitar. I used to listen to In Flames constantly, not so much anymore, but I still love their older stuff, and that video is awesome.

I take my iPod Nano with me when I go running, and I have the Nike+ thing - That’s how I track my runs, and it’s also how I keep my ‘running stats’ thing on the right side of the site updated. I just realized today that it hasn’t updated the last couple runs, though, and then my iPod stopped working. I’m pretty sure if I do a ‘factory restore’ through iTunes it will start working again, but that means I’ll lose all my run data, as well as all my music and playlists. What a pain in the ass. But I guess it’s been way too long since something electronic of mine has malfunctioned or broken. Actually, that’s not true… My digital camera is all screwed up, the memory card got corrupted or something and I lost like 200 pictures. So that’s good. Anyway, that’s all I have time for right now. Have a great weekend everybody.

I’ve been meaning to post about my weekend, but I had a job interview today, and I have another one tomorrow, so I’ve been working on getting my portfolio together and all that good stuff. In the meantime though, another album I was looking forward to made it’s way onto the internet. Belive it or not, it’s not metal this time around… It’s the newest album by Galactic. They’re a funk/jazz band that somehow ended up on the “jam band” circuit. It’s definitely not in the same vein as the majority of the stuff I post here, but these guys are pretty cool. I was looking forward to this album because they basically made beats for a bunch of well-known hip-hop artists, with a different lyricist on every track. The album is called “From The Corner To The Block”, and features guest appearances by Jurassic 5’s Chali 2na, Mr. Lif, Gift of Gab from Blackalicious, Juvenile, and more. Give it a shot, you might like it. You can download it right here. I saw them at Bonnaroo this year with a bunch of rappers and it was pretty damn cool, so I knew the album wouldn’t disappoint.

I showed up to work today, and the doors were all locked. This happens sometimes since I usually arrive pretty early, and have to wait for other people to show up and let me in. So I head over to Wawa and while I’m there, I get a phone call. Once I heard that it was someone from my company, I knew what was going on. I was jobless. I knew this would be happening eventually, I just had no idea when. And the word ‘fired’ tends to carry negative connotations that aren’t really applicable to my situation… My company merged with another company out in California, and over the past few months, they have been moving people out there. They offered me a promotion to move there, but I decided against it. I realized that if I stayed here, it would only be a matter of time until I had to find a new job… But I was hoping I’d be able to stay there for the rest of the year. Everything was pretty shady after people started moving. I was happy with my job, although I’d definitely like something that required more of me as far as creativity goes… A lot of the work I did on a daily basis was very monotonous, and wasn’t challenging at all. It made me wonder why I had a college degree if the work I was doing could easily be done by someone with little to no experience with computers. Anyway… Hopefully I will be able to find a job that is a bit more challenging, and better paying.

I think normally I’d be in a pretty shitty mood right now, having just been fired and all. Not only that, but it takes me an hour and a half to get to work… So I woke up at 5 am, drove an hour and a half, got fired, and drove another hour and a half back home. Anyway, it’s hard for me to be in a bad mood, because when I got home, I realized that the new Between the Buried and Me album made it’s way onto the web. I haven’t been this excited for an album for a while now… Anyway, I just started listening to it, and it sounds awesome so far, but with a band like this, it’s gonna take at least 5 listens to get an idea of whether I really like it or not. You can download the album here (mirror here). Let me know if those links stop working, and I will upload it again. I have more to post about the weekend and all, so check back later for that.

I may be a bit late on this one, but it’s probably worth mentioning anyway. Serj Tankian has released the video for his song “The Unthinking Majority” which can be seen on his site. The track is from his upcoming solo album, “Elect The Dead”, which is due out on October 23rd, and clearly will not be politically charged in any way, shape, or form. I heard about this track’s availability last night on Sirius (I believe it was on Faction) and they also mentioned System of a Down calling it quits. I don’t know if there is any truth to that or not, but according to Wikipedia they are on an indefinite hiatus - And apparently that’s old news as well. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Anyway, you can read about Serj’s upcoming solo effort here.

I gave the track a listen and it sounded kind of generic to me, obviously Serj is a vital part of System of a Down’s sound, but without Daron it just doesn’t sound right, I dunno. I’ll give it another chance later, and I’ll definitely still check out the album when it comes out. And when it leaks, you’ll most likely find it on here as well.

Pearl Jam performed at Lollapalooza last Sunday night, and AT&T “Blue Room” featured a live webcast of the concert. Fans of the band are now saying that certain portions of Pearl Jam’s performance were censored by AT&T. It wasn’t profanity or lewd conduct that was missing from the webcast, though, it was a segment of Pearl Jam’s “Daughter”. Sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall”, the following lyrics were cut from the webcast: “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush find yourself another home.” You can see a clip of this here. Some may say that this was an honest mistake. But what are the chances that just those specific lyrics were missing from the webcast? AT&T is the same company that is cooperating with the NSA, MPAA, and RIAA (they didn’t deny it, either - look), and has supplied the government with private phone records (here), amond other things. This sort of rambling might make me seem like a conspiracy theorist or something, but all I’m saying is that it’s a little strange, and I don’t think that the censorship was an accident as they have claimed. Did you know that if you wear a tinfoil hat, the aliens can’t read your thoughts? Good to know.

This Sunday, August 12, there will be a new moon - Meaning no moonlight, dark skies, and a visible meteor shower (Perseid), with a frequency of 1-2 meteors per a minute at the shower’s peak. Want to watch the meteor shower? It’s easier than you think: Here is a simple guide to make sure you won’t miss out. I wonder how easy it is to get good pictures of this?

Thank god for CBS… Otherwise concerned mothers such as myself wouldn’t even know where to begin when dealing with teenage drug abuse. The CBS teen drug slang guide helped me so much. For instance, did you know that if your kid ever mentions “pineapple”, that he/she is actually referring to ritalin? Just to be safe, if your kid ever mentions any fruit at all, start drug testing them. And if they ever so much as mutter the word “cheese” (or hell, any dairy product for that matter), they are definitely talking about heroin. Don’t let those little shits outsmart you… Get your learn on.

I’m not a huge Kanye West fan or anything (I don’t mind some of his stuff) but this is amazing. I’m pretty sure Zach Galifianakis could videotape himself sleeping and I’d still think it was funny.

Let them sing it for you - This thing is pretty cool. Type in whatever, and press play, and it converts your text to speech - But this isn’t a typical text to speech program. All of the words are taken from different songs. It’s interesting to see what songs are used, a lot of them are identifiable, too. I need to know where they got the audio for the word ‘vagina’ from, though.

The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test is definitely one of my favorite books. And now it’s being made into a movie. I’m not sure how I feel about Gus Van Sant directing… I guess we’ll see what happens.

I dunno how I didn’t hear about this movie “The Ten” until just now, but it looks pretty funny. I like the majority of the stuff that the Stella guys do though, and judging by the looks of the trailer, this movie won’t fail to please. I love the voice at the end when they’re saying the names of the actors and actresses.

That’s all I have time for. Have a great weekend everybody.