Q and A: The Greek Calendar Explained And Other Stuff

Q: How many months are in the Greek calendar?
A: 14. In addition to the traditional 12, the Greek year includes two fully-paid vacation months, Ouzember and Sleepober.

Q: Who will be the Next UK Prime Minister?
A: A male who will make John Major seem like Lady Gaga.

Q: What does the term "nearly a trillion" mean?
A: It means a number between 2 and 3 trillion. Politicians universally believe that the larger bailout sum will be far more palatable if taken by citizens in small bites, as when a parent cuts a child's meat.

Q: What would the US be like under Tea Party rule?
A: A combination of Greece and England with very good, cheap dry white wine and a steady diet of bangers and eggplant.

Q: How can a stock fall from $40 to a penny really, really fast?
A: We honestly do not know. We asked a dozen highly successful financial executives over the weekend, each of whom gave a different, long, indecipherable "explanation." The only unifying thing we noticed was that each of these gentlemen (apparently very few women are allowed to be highly successful financial executives) was very short.

Q: Did you see Betty White on Saturday Night Live?
A: We did not even know that Betty White was alive. Now that we know, we would have preferred Betty Crocker.

Q: Hey, what ever happened to that Icelandic volcano?
A: It is still there, spewing ash and  disrupting travel. It is not nearly as important as Lawrence Taylor's private life or the seventeen ways BP (Big Problem) have tried to get their thumb in that hole.

Q: Why is the traditional media, like the Times, so boring?
A: As you can see today, their idea of real excitement is a Supreme Court nomination announcement, as the entire rest of the world focuses on the possibility of another global financial collapse. They are obsessed with the Court's election of W, and won't rest until they get revenge. Ho hum. More cake for us.

Boomers: Five Things To Avoid In Resumes

The Thirdgarage staff ponders our own real life histories (we couldn't make this stuff up, if we tried) and shares some advice on what to leave out or cleverly conceal in those Boomer resumes:


1. Seven Years of College. Technically, someone could make a case that it's really nine years from your first year of attendance to the day the BA scroll arrived in the mail at your beach house. This can all be easily explained, but why take the chance that the interviewer, who was born after you entered your first college, is one of those four-straight-year types? If you must discuss this, take the Horatio Alger approach, rather than alluding to a Jim Morrison technique. Emphasize that full time job in the Exploitation Dept. at a film company to cover the rent on the fourth-floor walk-up. Do not try to explain what "draft-avoidance" means or that you "were catching up on lost sleep due to jungle-themed nightmares." Obviously, you should not mention the actual expulsion letter from one college or the one that your third, alma mater, forgot to send. It's best to conceal all of this from your college-bound children too.

2. The Three Missing Years Of Your Life. Obviously, these would read like some of the best years to reasonably fun people; however, it is very unlikely that anyone interviewing you will be one of those. They will do the math and find that from 1974-1977 you apparently did not exist. As if! You would have to call these years: The Beach, The City, The Mountains, which sounds like the novel you probably should have been writing. You could call this "graduate work" and it wouldn't be a total lie, but why go there? And why try calling it a "writing internship?" Internships only occurred in Dr. Kildare re-runs in those days. Do not, repeat, do not list real jobs held like: pottery shop clerk, short-order cook, census-taker, nightshift porter, ski-lift operator, laborer for masons/landscapers/sheet-rockers/sandblasters, or for goodness sake "Orange County weed-chopping fire-protecting crew." That last one may sound like a prison job, despite actually being mostly for released prisoners, who wrongly assumed you'd also just "been sprung."

3. Some Best, Worst Or Almost Jobs. Okay, so operating the cider mill was truly cool, but it will distract the professional resume reader, who will think you're a flake. Dropping the museum security guard gig is a no-brainer too, even if it was at The "Frick Collection", which may sound like foul language to some. Finally, it's about time that you got over not taking that Forest Ranger job in Placer County, CA. Nobody cares and neither should you.

4. Living With Your Parents At Thirty. Many people would assume that, if even some of the things mentioned above were true, they may have caused you to wind up living with your parents at an advanced age. Don't bring up the result, if you're going to avoid the causes. You cannot  successfully explain this to potential employers, despite the fact that this phenomenon has become much more prevalent again during the past three years. This period is easily concealed by the entry called "free-lancing." (Note to young job seekers: The corollary to #4 you avoid is: Your Sixty-Year Old Parents Live With You).

5. What Truly Motivates You. It is not going to be good enough to tell the truth about your always having loved a great story. You cannot say that you won't jump off the job search train without finding out what happens next. Only one person out of hundreds will care what happens to you next. When that person reads your resume, you will know what happens next: you will get a job offer. Then you can really begin to worry about some of that stuff listed above, but do not think about this now.

We hope this helps. It did for us; we wound up here, covering the Transition Era for you using Truth (mostly) and Humor (sometimes).

This Just In: Virtual World Tree-Mendous!

A Word From The Trees

Humans are often
such scary creatures,
especially when believing
they're Creation's main feature.

But, once in an oak ring
they get it just right,
despite long odds
and their lack of foresight.

This digitizing of magazines,
newspapers, books,
snarky notes 'tween teens
has got Trees thinking that perhaps
we really love all of these new apps.

Now, paper money may be extinct,
as iphones, BlackBerrys, and who
knows what link.
Humans may now be saying,
"In igods We Trust," when
Jimmie Choos or JCrews
become to-die-for musts!

Book-huggers, editors,
stationers, counterfeiters bemoan
a virtual world,
in which they feel all alone.

Well, boo-hoo, for them.
Hoorah for the Forest and the Trees.
We humbly dip to our barky knees.
Thank You, Kindle, ipad
and the new "cash bumps,"
from our rings, sap, leaves and trunks!

Job-Seekers' Prayer

Grant us the energy and grace
To keep connecting and offering our skills,
The strength to accept that some might not respond,
The humility to help others in their own searches,
and wisdom to those who will make offers to us.

Most of all, we give thanks
For Your willingness to guide
Our searches along true and honest paths,
Though they may seem long, as they
Rise, fall, and loop back and forth.


copyright/thirdgarage/2010

Top Ten Reasons To Finally Find A Job

                      

10. You applesolutely, ipositively have to be able to afford an ipad, and fast.

 9. You categorically refuse to get on your knees again to fix the printer; you'd rather eat the expensive toner cartridge that must have come from Cartier! You desperately want an IT department again.

 8. You are now the oldest person in the second floor reading room at The New York Society Library; when you began your search, you were the youngest.

 7. You are actually beginning to understand the Pentagonian language used to write corporate job descriptions!

 6. Recently hired employees of companies near Grand Central Station have occupied your desk space in the lower level.

 5. Kirstie Alley's Fat/Thin career is beginning to look good to you.

 4. Your youngest child just got hired; your entire family has lapped you on the job track.

 3. You begin to believe reports that the recession ended a while back, the economy is adding jobs, and that the economic stimuli have trickled down and worked.

 2. You realize that 401k is just another four-letter word.

 1. You know it's got to get better, when you begin to compile lists like this one.

To Be ,Or Not To Be....Ordinary

When we left the country a couple of weeks ago, ordinary Americans were angry at Washington D.C. because it never seemed to get anything done. Upon our return, we find that the same people are even more angry because Washington finally did something.

This is why we take vacations. Just trying to keep score can be exhausting.

Despite all the anger out there on Main St., some in Congress still rise to praise those same ordinary Americans, saying the equivalent of "we know how they feel, because we're ordinary too!" Some people will do anything to get re-elected. And why not? Congress has exempted itself and its employees from healthcare for ordinary folks, whatever it turns out to be.

All over the country ordinary people are getting together to party. Imagine, all of these explosive folks riding into town on their Harleys and Schwinns heading for the nearest saloon to down a quart of Tetley's! It makes your knees shake just to think. Perhaps the backs of their faux-leather jackets read: "Honk if you're Ordinary," or "Live Ordinary or Die."

We are learning a few things about these people: they only want to pay for average schools; they like to buy and sell normal things like auto insurance, homeowners' insurance, life insurance, travel insurance; mention health insurance and they go postal.

Their knowledge of geography is limited; when you say "China" to them, they go to the cupboard and get Granny's tea set.

And who are their heroes? A certain former VP candidate for one. Mobs of teetotalers would make her Ordinary Prom Queen tomorrow if it weren't for that biggest of inconveniences, elections.
And they love their Foxy Boys too, who can still impersonate middle class Americans, despite making millions each year from all the anger and frustration without having to provide a single interesting idea.

Where is it written: "We, the ordinary people....?" Or, "In order to pursue a more ordinary Union....?"

As we've said here before, no matter what your political stripe, the whole point of America is to be extraordinary. Nobody sails across oceans in cramped hulls to get here with one set of clothing so that they can sit in lawn chairs yelling at their TV sets. Nobody crawls across a desert with fifty bucks in their pocket to make sure they find average schools for their average kids. Nobody ducks enemy fire on a beach, in a jungle, or in a 150 degree tank to make sure everyone back home has an opportunity to become ordinary.

We returned to a country where the only extraordinary thing that seems to be going on is that so many people are obsessed with being normal, average, and ordinary. They just want to be left alone, except when you ignore them. They believe in survival of the fittest, but don't want schools to teach evolution.

We can do a whole lot better than this.

Meanwhileville USA

Caution. You are approaching Meanwhileville USA.

The Times reports today that millions of retirement-age Americans are starting their own businesses. Some of them got bored with retirement, but many more had been forced to retire, could not find a job or even get seriously interviewed, and finally decided to hire themselves instead.

The WSJ reports today that corporations are sitting on nearly $1Trillion of cash and that they will soon be using that cash to go on a mergers and acquisitions "shopping" spree.

Employees of those corporations being merged and/or acquired might want to begin to cut back on their own shopping. Also, they would do well to begin thinking of starting their own businesses soon. One of the reasons that Wall Street loves M&A, besides the hefty no-risk fees it "earns," is the cost savings achieved by reducing "headcount" after a deal has been closed.  The people who invest 401k and pension dough love these job-busting deals as well. Go figure.

Meanwhile, in Washington D.C. (it is always Meanwhile there) politicians are seriously thinking that incentives will create jobs. Their idea of incentives to counter the lost heads: relaxing the 6.2% Social Security tax for employers who hire for the rest of this year, and, now here is a real incentive, paying them $1,000 if they keep the hired person for a year. That, my friends, is not a typo: $1,000.


The country's corporations have $1trillion of private money to invest, and they are very likely to have huge incentives to invest it where the result will be more jobs lost. Yet, in Meanwhileville USA the best that they can do to encourage job growth, while they are busy reforming healthcare (wink, wink), is this dinky joke of an incentive plan.

Will someone please explain to me once more exactly why Afghanistan and Iraq should adopt our system of government and capitalist economics? Will someone please remind me why a Dictatorship by even a half-wit titan would be worse than having Meanwhileville in charge here? Will someone please tell me why banks cannot focus more attention on lending to entrepreneurs who can actually build new businesses and hire thousands of people?

Everyone is busy dumping on the ethically-blind New York Governor, David Paterson. May I suggest a scary thought: that he is probably more capable than many of our representatives in Meanwhileville or some of the occupants of corporate corner offices, based on the evidence?

It may be a while before we come to a stop and begin thinking and acting like an intelligent, vibrant culture. Meanwhile....