W.T. Fallon's Blog, page 4

Getting a Job After College: You’re Doing Everything Wrong

The second time I graduated from college, I expected to do better with my second degree. I didn’t, but today I realized where I went wrong, so I have some advice for college students.

Getting a job after college was never easy, or so I’m told repeatedly by my parents. However, I think it’s safe to say it’s a lot harder today. After I graduated with my second degree, I applied for job after job, only to receive one rejection letter after another. At one point, a former professor tried to help me out by sending me a job posting for an “entry level” position. This job required TWO YEARS OF EXPERIENCE in the field. For an ENTRY LEVEL position. I applied anyway, but as expected, I got another lovely rejection letter.(Eventually, I did find a job that paid like I was a college graduate and not a kindergarten dropout, but that lasted six months before I was replaced by a $10/hr, no-benefits intern.)

Today, I realized why I had such a hard time finding even an entry-level position after graduating. I thought it was all about my lack of experience, and wasted hours doing volunteer work for people who never recommended me for paid work, and applying for internships I was turned down for because I was no longer a student (“It’s a legal thing…”) What I should have done was find a rich relative to donate a bunch of money on my behalf to some political party. You see, I learned today that while you need two years of experience in your field to be hired for an entry-level position, all you have to do is have your family donate millions to a political party and you can get a high-paying cabinet position with ZERO work experience in your field!

[image error]

 

Then again, if I had millions or had any rich relatives who had millions, I wouldn’t need a job in the first place….

 

Signs You Are Not Smart Enough To Use The Internet

Lately, it’s come to my attention there should be some sort of IQ test before people are allowed to internet. In fact, I think Facebook should stop having an age requirement of 13 and instead require people of all ages to prove they’ve reached a maturity level appropriate for posting cat pictures and arguing with strangers.

Here are some signs you may not be smart enough yet to use the internet:

You share stuff online without looking at where it came from.

Yeah, you, the one who just shared that story promising to destroy the political career of the politician you hate the most. I know, it’s so tempting, but seriously, look at the website it links to. Have you ever heard of Raw Story or Breitbart winning a Pulitzer for its journalism prowess? No? Then you might want to fact check that shit before sharing.

You keep trying to tell your friends those articles from The Onion are fake.

The only thing worse than failing to recognize fake news is failing to tell the difference between fake news and satire. The more outrageous/funny it is, the more likely it is to be satire, which is fake news intended to be funny and so exaggerated that the publisher assumes no one will be stupid enough to think it’s real.

Unfortunately, writers and publishers have been overestimating the intelligence of the public for years. Occasionally, they even overestimate the intelligence of other journalists. When I worked at a TV station, one of our reporters used a story she read in the paper about an escaped python named Monty in the area. Worse than that, she failed to even consider the date on the article, April 1. The newspaper ran a story about the TV station and “intrepid reporter” that fell for their April Fool’s Day joke article.

As a general rule, if you see something from The Onion, it’s satire and it’s meant to be funny, not taken to be the truth. (Those are instructions for all my friends who keep telling me those Onion articles aren’t real. No shit, Sherlock! Can I interest you in a story about an escaped python named Monty?)

Of course, when you have a presidential candidate/elected official who actually says and does crazy shit all the time, like, I don’t know, someone who just got elected president, it can be hard to tell the difference with lesser-known sources. Again, if you’re not sure, fact check the damn thing, or Google the source website to see if it’s known for its brilliantly witty satire.

[image error]

You share stuff just because you want it to be true.

I understand the temptation, I really do. Every day I see articles screaming click-baity headlines like, “This Could Be the End of Donald Trump’s Career,” and holy SHIT do I wish that was real. HOWEVER, I am painfully aware of the vast gulf between what I want and what’s actually reality. (Case in point: My continued failure to win the fucking lottery.) Anyway, I know those headlines aren’t real, MUCH AS I WANT THEM TO BE, because:

A) No real reporter would write such a vague headline, nor would a professional journalist make a call like “the end of someone’s career.” Even if they thought it was the end of Trump’s career, the headline would just tell you what he did/said specifically, and let the public decide. (And let’s face it, the chump’s already said and done a hundred things that should have ended his career, so clearly this guy is defying all standards for the behavior of public officials and a lot of people just don’t care.) If you turned in an article with such a vague, sensationalist headline in a Jouralism 101 class, you would get it back with red marks all over that headline.

B) These types of headlines are also too vague, plus not funny enough, for satire, so this is definitely faux news.

C) The source site is inevitably not a reliable news organization.

You believe things you hear on TV and repeat them in social media flame wars, without bothering to fact check.

What, did you think fake news was limited to click-baity headlines on Facebook? No way. Do not repeat stuff you heard on Faux News—er, Fox News—without fact-checking. Keep in mind that all twenty-four-hour news channels often have a lot of time to “fill” when there’s no huge breaking news story like a politician who pays people to pee on him or whatever. They often fill this time with commentators arguing about the issues, which is fine, as long as you remember that is the equivalent to the Opinion section in the paper, and each of those commentators has an agenda. Some of them might exaggerate or outright lie, and chances are whoever’s hosting the show isn’t fact-checking everything everyone says in real time, because then they couldn’t keep up with the conversation.

Again, wanting to believe something bad you hear about a politician you don’t like doesn’t make it true. Check your facts on Snopes or Politifact before blathering that story you heard about a presidential candidate running a kiddie porn ring at a pizzeria or fathering a child with a space alien or anything else that may or may not get accepted by The Enquirer.

If you are doing any of the above things, please discontinue your usage of the internet until further notice.

Things I’ve Learned from Watching The Twilight Zone Marathon

Things I’ve learned from watching the Twilight Zone marathon for three days:

1. Nuclear war is bad. You want to stay the hell away from that shit.

2. Never trust genies, ghosts, aliens, satan, or salespeople.

3. Or anyone else.

4. If everyone else in the world is dead and you finally have time to read, don’t drop your glasses. Better yet, find an optometrist’s shop and set up your library there. If you break your glasses, you’ve got hundreds of pairs to choose from.

[image error]

5. If a seemingly friendly alien shows up and assures you his only goal in life is “to serve man,” ask what kind of wine he wants to serve with us, then run like hell.

6. Seriously, get your finger away from that big red button. You do not want to starting nuking shit. Nothing good EVER happens after a nuclear war.

7. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

8. Don’t be an asshole. Aliens don’t like assholes, and neither do other human beings.

9. If aliens show up, don’t trust them but don’t shoot first and ask questions later, either.

10. When riding on an airplane, if you look out the window and see Bigfoot clomping around on one of the wings, you should probably lay off the LSD.

How to #Nanowrimo while #BlackFriday shopping on Thanksgiving

I will confess I’ve gotten hopelessly behind on Nanowrimo this year. I have not been doing my 1,200 words a day or whatever it is, and I probably won’t finish this year. I like to keep telling myself I’m going to get inspired and bang out another 40,000 words in the last week, but that’s probably not going to happen.

I can’t give up yet though. Today, while I waited in a horribly long line at JCPenney, I ended up writing almost a thousand words on my phone. And that’s hard, because typing without a keyboard is so much slower, even though I’m pretty fast at it.

In retrospect, I should have skipped Penney’s and gone to Walmart. But in the past, I’ve noticed most of Walmart’s deals aren’t really worth anything to a reseller. And this year, as I found out today, most didn’t even scan on the Amazon Seller app. Plus you have to fight the #PeopleofWalmart for cheap crap.

So I went to Penney’s in the hopes of winning $500 worth of stuff (that would probably net me fifty bucks in resale, if I’m lucky, but free is free, right?). No, all I got were those ten dollars off ten dollars coupons. Sounds like a good deal, until you read the teeny tiny fine print and see it excludes all the semi-good brands they carry, toys, electronics, and basically anything anyone would actually want. So basically they’re inviting you to take ten dollars off all the crap no one wants, the stuff that congeals on the clearance racks and gets reduced a hundred times and still gathers dust because it’s just so fucking worthless.

Well, I decided I was going to get SOMETHING out of the this year. I went through the clearance racks, trying to find an ugly Alfred Dunner shirt to sell on Ebay. (I know they’re hideous, but some of those go for twenty bucks on Ebay. I guess old people have finally learned to shop online.) There were some on clearance, but none for less than twenty bucks, and I really wanted something where the ten dollar off coupon would make it only a buck or two.

Finally, I decided to buy myself a pair of pants that was $16.99. Not a great brand either, but at least it didn’t look like something my grandmother would wear, and I have worn out most of my pairs of pants. I haven’t bought clothes in months. I walked the store five times looking for a register with a line shorter that wasn’t longer than the one at the DMV. I finally settled on shoes, which looked the shortest but still had about 15 people. It barely moved, and I wished Penney’s had an express line so I wouldn’t have to wait behind fifteen people buying twenty items each just to buy one fucking pair of pants.

After that I went downstairs and found a set of VR goggles that was actually worth about thirty bucks after fees on Amazon. It was $9.99 and with a .49 hand towel pushing it over the edge to ten dollars, I could use the coupon and just pay a dollar in tax. So I stood in the world’s longest line, because all the lines were a million miles long, and the registers all ran at the speed of a turtle on valium, or the customers all bought a hundred things even though, like I said, Penney’s doesn’t have much that’s worth much, and I was so fucking bored. After twenty minutes, I’d run out of interesting things to read on Facebook, and Gardens of Time isn’t available for Android (bastards). My Kindle battery was dead. Why didn’t I remember to charge it last night? Because I’m an idiot, that’s why. Granted I’m out of books to read anyway, but if the battery was charged I would have broken down and spent four bucks on a book just to have something to read.

But the battery was dead, so as I stood there in the stagnant line, pondering whether I would be a skeleton by the time I reached the front of the line (and even posted, “I think I am going to die in this line” on Facebook), it occurred to me I could work on my Nano novel and catch up on that 43,000 words I still have to write. So I got out my phone and painstakingly typed on the screen, and I ended up writing almost 1,000 words.

When I finally got out of Penney’s (fortunately not a skeleton yet), I went to Wallyworld, where I reevaluated my opinion that it’s not worth shopping on Black Friday/Thanksgiving Day. On the one hand, yes, I was right, 90% of the stuff in the ad was junk I couldn’t resell at a profit. Almost all the cheap electronics I scanned, despite being recognizable name brands like Crock Pot and Farberware and Black & Decker, were not on Amazon, or at least their UPC’s did not scan as recognizable in Amazon’s system. I looked up some of the non-scannable toys on Ebay, but they weren’t worth much there, either. I started thinking this miniature #peopleofWalmart had the right idea:

Just when I was starting to think I was right and I should just go, I spotted a box of Legos sitting on the floor in an aisle. Something told me that might be a good item, so I scanned it and saw it was going for a good price, about double what it cost (which I determined after finally finding a pole with a scanner). I carried it to the front and begrudgingly got a cart, then fought my way back through the throngs of customers to try to find more.

After making a side trip through electronics, where I found nothing worth reselling, I ducked back up front in the congested toy/home/lawn crap section. Still no display of Legos. However, I wound my way through the aisle just in case another one appeared, and there I saw a cart with one box of Legos in it, plus another toy that wasn’t worth anything.

I looked up and down the aisle. Nothing. Several customers walked by, but none gave a second glance at the cart. I decided it had been abandoned, grabbed the Legos, and put them in my cart. (If you let your cart out of your sight on Black Friday, it’s fair game, am I right? International law of salvage applies here, I’m pretty sure.)

By that time I was starving, and I hadn’t packed any food like I usually do because I thought I’d be home before I was hungry again. I was wrong. While I was walking to the grocery section to see if they had any hummus that hadn’t been recalled, my dad texted that he’d found me a TV for $298 that was bigger than the one he’d planned to get me to replace the 40-inch one he gave me last year after upgrading to a 60-inch. (It worked great for about seven months, then got struck by lightning, and I’ve been using my old 32-inch ever since.) I looked at it, and it was way better than what I’d expected to get—55-inch 4K Ultra with built-in wifi. I told him I was fine with that one, and he went to pay for it.

I started making my way toward the front to check out, then made a detour to the food because I knew it was going to be a long time before I got home and I really get hangry. I walked up and down, looking for the hummus. An employee who spoke with a thick accent told me it was up near the deli, but I didn’t find it there and I’m not sure if he understood I meant hummus in the first place. I never found it, possibly because the only brand Wallyworld carries any more is that stupid Sabra, which was AGAIN recalled for listeria. (I never buy the stuff because it’s full of preservatives, which ironically does no good whatsoever for listeria.)

Finally I settled on a package of apples and peanut butter, which I really felt badly about because A) they weren’t organic apples and PESTICIDES and B) most importantly, it cost two dollars and I already have peanut butter and ORGANIC apples at home at a much lower price per unit. I also bought a $2 organic almond milk and coffee drink, which would also have been cheaper if I’d made it at home, so the moral of the story is pack food when #BlackFriday shopping on Thanksgiving.

But I’m going to make sixty bucks profit on the Legos, and did I mention I wrote ONE THOUSAND WORDS today?

How to Design a Non-Offensive Starbuck’s Cup: My Musings While #amwriting for #Nanowrimo

 

I personally don’t care what Starbucks does or doesn’t put on their ridiculously overpriced coffee cups (although I firmly believe that if you’re paying 7 bucks for coffee you should be able to design your own cup from the Starbuck’s app while waiting in line). But I have an imagination that gets out of hand sometimes (especially when I’m sitting in a coffee shop pretending to work on my #Nanowrimo novel), and I think I’ve figured out why Starbuck’s went with the plain red cup last year, and the green cup with faces this year. Here’s how I picture the decision playing out:

(2015)

Starbuck’s Marketer 1: How about a Christmas tree?

Starbuck’s Marketer 2: Ooh, no-can-do, our research shows some whiny butts might get offended.

1st Marketer: By what? It’s a Christmas tree.

2nd Marketer: Exactly! A CHRISTMAS tree. People who don’t celebrate Christmas could get offended if they’re also whinybutts.

1st Marketer: Okay, uh, what about a reindeer?

2nd Marketer: Might offend non-religious people. I mean, it’s Santa’s reindeer.

Marketer 1: Santa’s a religious figure?

Marketer 2: He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good and will punish or reward you accordingly. ..

Marketer 1: Holy crap, Santa is an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful higher power. That would be worse PR than putting Jesus on our cups! Okay, how about a wreath?

Marketer 2: Might offend the tree-huggers, damaging a tree just to make a wreath.

Marketer 1: Will it offend them more than a disposable paper cup?

Marketer 2: That’s a recyclable paper cup, and who knows? Anyway, the eco nuts would hate the Christmas tree, too.

Marketer 1: Snowman?

Marketer 2: Feminists might be offended by a snowMAN.

Marketer 1: Then a snowwoman!

Marketer 2: If we draw a snowman with boobs, some people might be offended. They’ll say it’s not anatomically correct, or we’re objectifying women, or—

Marketer 1: Can we just tell people to bring their own cups and add a “green” surcharge?

Marketer 2: Wait, I have the solution! A plain red cup with nothing on it but our logo! That can’t possibly offend anyone, even the whinybutts!

Murphy’s Law: Hahahaha!!!

(2016)

Marketer 1: Well, we tried a plain red cup last year and still managed to offend people.

Marketer 2: What if we do a green cup this year?

Marketer 1: Well, okay, but it can’t be a plain cup. That pissed off the whinybutts last year.

Marketer 2: What was wrong with Santa?

Marketer 1: All-seeing, all-knowing, omnipotent guy who punishes the bad and rewards the good.

Marketer 2: Okay, right. How about a candy cane?

Marketer 1: A candy cane? Don’t you think we’ll offend the disabled?

Marketer 2: Okay, those round peppermint candies that taste exactly like candy canes but aren’t cane-shaped!

Marketer 1: We take so much crap already for some of our drinks having more sugar than a king-size Milky Way.

Marketer 2: Okay, what if we just put a bunch of little faces on the cup, we could show people of all ages and races and genders getting along and working together. It would be totally inclusive of everyone.

Murphy’s Law: HAHAHAHA!

My Musings on Starbuck’s Cups While #amwriting for #Nanowrimo

 

I personally don’t care what Starbucks does or doesn’t put on their ridiculously overpriced coffee cups (although I firmly believe that if you’re paying 7 bucks for coffee you should be able to design your own cup from the Starbuck’s app while waiting in line). But I have an imagination that gets out of hand sometimes (especially when I’m sitting in a coffee shop pretending to work on my #Nanowrimo novel), and I think I’ve figured out why Starbuck’s went with the plain red cup last year, and the green cup with faces this year. Here’s how I picture the decision playing out:

(2015)

Starbuck’s Marketer 1: How about a Christmas tree?

Starbuck’s Marketer 2: Ooh, no-can-do, our research shows some whiny butts might get offended.

1st Marketer: By what? It’s a Christmas tree.

2nd Marketer: Exactly! A CHRISTMAS tree. People who don’t celebrate Christmas could get offended if they’re also whinybutts.

1st Marketer: Okay, uh, what about a reindeer?

2nd Marketer: Might offend non-religious people. I mean, it’s Santa’s reindeer.

Marketer 1: Santa’s a religious figure?

Marketer 2: He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good and will punish or reward you accordingly. ..

Marketer 1: Holy crap, Santa is an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful higher power. That would be worse PR than putting Jesus on our cups! Okay, how about a wreath?

Marketer 2: Might offend the tree-huggers, damaging a tree just to make a wreath.

Marketer 1: Will it offend them more than a disposable paper cup?

Marketer 2: That’s a recyclable paper cup, and who knows? Anyway, the eco nuts would hate the Christmas tree, too.

Marketer 1: Snowman?

Marketer 2: Feminists might be offended by a snowMAN.

Marketer 1: Then a snowwoman!

Marketer 2: If we draw a snowman with boobs, some people might be offended. They’ll say it’s not anatomically correct, or we’re objectifying women, or—

Marketer 1: Can we just tell people to bring their own cups and add a “green” surcharge?

Marketer 2: Wait, I have the solution! A plain red cup with nothing on it but our logo! That can’t possibly offend anyone, even the whinybutts!

Murphy’s Law: Hahahaha!!!

(2016)

Marketer 1: Well, we tried a plain red cup last year and still managed to offend people.

Marketer 2: What if we do a green cup this year?

Marketer 1: Well, okay, but it can’t be a plain cup. That pissed off the whinybutts last year.

Marketer 2: What was wrong with Santa?

Marketer 1: All-seeing, all-knowing, omnipotent guy who punishes the bad and rewards the good.

Marketer 2: Okay, right. How about a candy cane?

Marketer 1: A candy cane? Don’t you think we’ll offend the disabled?

Marketer 2: Okay, those round peppermint candies that taste exactly like candy canes but aren’t cane-shaped!

Marketer 1: We take so much crap already for some of our drinks having more sugar than a king-size Milky Way.

Marketer 2: Okay, what if we just put a bunch of little faces on the cup, we could show people of all ages and races and genders getting along and working together. It would be totally inclusive of everyone.

Murphy’s Law: HAHAHAHA!

Blogging My Way Through #Nanowrimo: Why #amwriting Should Be Uncomfortable

Every year when I do #Nanowrimo, I spend more time thinking about random shit than writing. I’m not promoting procrastination, but I do find writing allows for some serious introspection, so I figure I might as well blog my way through this year’s National Novel Writing Month.

Last year I worked on writing 50,000 words of my next novel, The Trust Pill. I didn’t finish the book, but I did make some headway. I also spent a lot of time thinking about the differences between the two main characters, McKenzie and Jack. One was born rich, while the other was born broke and struggled to become successful. I guess she’s the person I always thought I would be, except that I never became successful at anything except making sarcastic comments. Sadly there’s no money in that. (But WHY NOT???)

Money is the thing that’s always been just out of my grasp, the thing that has always eluded me. Please don’t give me any platitudes about how money doesn’t matter, because I will lose respect for you instantly. That’s easy to say when you have enough of it. It’s easy to say when you’re broke but really good at self-delusion. It is not something I can ever say. I know that money matters. I saw my family ripped apart over a feud about a stolen inheritance. I’ve watched relatives throw each other under the bus for money. I’ve seen elderly relatives abused by caretakers who just wanted to take their cash. I spent my childhood listening to my parents scream at each other about whose fault it was we were broke. I couldn’t have friends over, because my parents didn’t want anyone to see how our house was falling apart on the inside.

I think that’s how I learned to associate shame with money, or rather the lack of money. Although my parents also told me being poor was nothing to be ashamed of, they also didn’t want anyone to see the inside of our house with the hideous seventies carpet and the broken doors and the splintered holes in the surviving doors where the knobs were supposed to be. I remember once arguing with my mom because she refused to mail a letter to my pen pal (back in the nineties we still exchanged letters by snail mail) because I described our house as “green with peeling paint.” But our house did have peeling paint, and although she forced me to erase that bit, I felt the censorship was wrong, and still do to this day. So anyway, guess which one of those mixed messages about shame and money actually stuck? Yeah, that’s right, actions speak louder than words.

Today I refuse to not write something because it makes people uncomfortable. I will always associate lack of money with shame, but I will not try to hide it. I own my shame. I own my failure to build a successful career. I won’t apologize for it. I’m not proud of it, and I fucking hate it, but I won’t pretend it’s some embarrassing secret.

I believe we all do our best writing when we write about the things that make us uncomfortable, make us feel ashamed, the things we want to hide. So I didn’t avoid that when I was writing the character of McKenzie in my book. When we meet her, she’s a successful advertising executive, but she did not grow up with money, and she sort of resents Jack because he did. When she attends a swanky party, she sees only the contrast between the expensive china there and the cheap, scratched plastic plates of her childhood. She silently judges all the people who have never had to work for their money. Meanwhile, Jack feels sorry for himself because he believes everyone is after his money.

This also came in handy when I was writing Fail to the Chief. Although my book features politicians competing on a reality show to find the next American President, it also features a lot of real people with real problems, as the candidates are forced to work in real jobs. I used my own experiences working in retail, which is one of the most humiliating and degrading jobs around, if you think about it. You’re forced to smile and be nice to people who are assholes to you for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON, and not only do you have to be nice to these asshats, you get paid very, very, very little for it. Compounding my embarrassment was the fact that I had to do this shitty job even after working my ass off at not one but two shitty, low-paying jobs to pay for not one but two college diplomas. That’s right, I was a college graduate smiling and resisting the urge to slap stupid people in a store all day for $10.25/hr. That anger, frustration, and humiliation comes through in several scenes in Fail to the Chief, where candidates work in retail/customer service jobs and learn what life is really like for their coworkers.

How do your personal experiences shape your writing? Do you write about things you feel ashamed of? Do you strive to write about things that make you uncomfortable?

Are You #Writing a Novel for #Nanowrimo?

I have been participating in #Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) since 2012, at which time I started a novel with the working title of You Can’t Go Home Again. I promptly finished that novel in November….of 2014. (Hey, they didn’t say it had to be November of the same year, did they?) At that point, the damn thing was a 176,000 word first draft, so I put it in for Nano credit because damnit, I deserved something after writing that long of a first fucking draft.

Subsequent efforts at Nano-ing have not met with great success, although I usually conclude that I got more writing done than I normally do in a month, so I accomplished something. To be fair, although I have not actually written an entire novel in a month, I have definitely written 50,000 words in a month. This seems to only really happen right after I get fired, though.

In 2014, the hellhole (retail store) I worked at finally closed on November 15. As much as I needed the lousy $10.25/hr pittance I was making there, I was so fucking happy to see that store close. I mean, it wouldn’t have been such a bad job if it wasn’t for the customers. In fact, it was an idiot customer who inspired the world for one of my books.

In February of this year, I lost a job I liked—well, okay, I really just liked the money, but still, I liked it a hell of a lot more than retail—and was replaced by a couple interns. That was on February 12, two days before my birthday, because nothing says happy fucking birthday like a termination letter, but anyway, I did a sort of mini-Nanowrimo after that. I had about 20,000 words on the novel I was plodding through at the time, so after I got kicked to the curb I said, “Fuck it, I’m going to finish my book.”

I did finish Fail to the Chief on March 4th, and my first draft was 72,222 words. (I learned my lesson with that book two years ago. No more obese first drafts for me. Do you know how long it takes to edit a 176,000 word first draft? Too fucking long for me.) So technically I kind of did my own Nanowrimo there, and although I feel like I’ve already done my Nano for the year, I guess I’m doing it again.

Why do I do Nano? The same reason I write the rest of the year, I guess. To express myself. To say all the sarcastic shit I couldn’t say when I worked in hell (retail) because I needed the lousy $10.25/hr. As an outlet for all the stress and frustration I feel, as an unemployed, two-time college graduate and epic failure who lives with her parents and still struggles to pay her bills every month while trying to earn something resembling a living as an internet reseller. Because I’ve been running in socks with holes in them since last year, I’ve been shaving my legs with the same disposable razor for even longer, I’ve never been able to afford a real vacation as an adult, and I live in fear of a car repair ruining me financially, but damnit, I can 50,000 words in 30 days and not everyone can do that, so maybe I can be proud of something for five minutes. (Unfortunately, I can’t my bills in pride, but whatever.)

My time in hell (retail) also inspired my current Nano project, a book about a parallel universe. (You know I’m right if you ever worked in retail.) I actually began writing this book six years ago, while still working in hell, after a particularly long and frustrating day during the back-to-school season, when a customer let her SIX bratty kids throw merchandise at me and didn’t ONCE tell them to stop. (Please, PLEASE, don’t have that many kids if you’re not going to make one ounce of effort to discipline them. Seriously, either commit to teaching them acceptable social behavior or get your tubes tied. Don’t let them throw shit at a cashier and stand by doing NOTHING.)

So, anyway, I started writing this short story about a bratty kid who gets abducted by aliens during the back-to-school rush at a store. I never knew how to finish it, so I didn’t. Earlier this year, I came across that story on my hard drive, and thought about finishing it. I didn’t do much more than think for a while, until one day I remembered I’d always wanted to write a parallel universe story, and then I had an idea for finishing the story without the alien abduction. Instead, our miserable cashier gets transported to a parallel universe, where she no longer has to put up with unruly brats and their worse-behaved parents.

So here I am, plodding along and trying to get to 50,000 words by the end of November. I had almost exactly 10,000 when I started, so I figure if I write 50,000 I should be finished with the book, or pretty close to being done. (Like I said, no more 176,000 word monsters. Never doing that again.)

What inspired your #Nanowrimo novel?

Why Building a Wall Will Never Fix the Economy

One of my Facebook friends, who like me has had no use for the orange-dusted mushroom cloud, recently told me she was considering voting for him. Although she still thinks republican policies are bad for the economy, and she agrees the Trumpster Dumpster is a despicable jerk, she thinks that “something needs to be done about the horrible trade deals and our illegal immigration problem, and he’s the only one who’s talking about it.”

Yes, he’s talking about it. He wants to build a wall. Now let’s just think about this for five minutes. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Trump is telling the truth (which I doubt) and he somehow manages to actually build the wall. As far as I can tell, neither Mexico nor Congress has any plans to pony up the cash, but that’s okay. Trump is a billionaire, remember? Why can’t he just pay for the wall himself?

So, we’ll assume for the moment that he actually does build the wall. Where does it stop? Wherever it is, that’s where people will go around it and sneak in if they want to. Oh, it’s not going to stop? It’s going to extend across the entire southern border of the U.S? With no breaks at all? Well, that’ll be lovely for all those coastal towns with beaches that rely on tourism. Sure, you can go to the beach, sit in the stand, and stare out over the ocean at that big, beautiful wall.

But that’s okay, we’ve stopped illegal immigration, right? Well, no, you could still go around that wall and come in on the eastern or western coast. Well, guess we’ll just have to wall off those, too. (Hey, we’ve got Mr. Moneybags paying for it, remember?) More tourist traps will go out of business, but that’s okay, the economy will be awesome now that we’ve stopped illegal immigration.

Except it won’t. Illegal immigration is just a symptom of the real problem—big businesses screwing anyone and everyone over to save a buck. Even if Cheeto Hitler managed to round up every single illegal immigrant and deport them, then keep them out, that would not fix our economy. Big businesses would just move their plants to other countries with cheaper labor.

Oh, but he’s going to solve that problem by putting a 25% tariff on goods imported from Mexico (where, ironically, a lot of our jobs have gone anyway). Fine, they’ll go to China. Slap a tariff on them too? Sure, why not. And also every other country with cheap labor due to a lack of pesky labor laws and human rights concerns. Then American companies will HAVE to bring our jobs back here, right?

Well, maybe, but we won’t be exporting much, because every country we slap with a tariff is going to do the same thing right back to us. So we’ll just be making really expensive products for domestic use.

And it still won’t solve the jobs problem. I lost my job in February. It wasn’t to an illegal immigrant. It was to an American citizen, a college intern who was willing to do my job for ten bucks an hour. How do we deport that problem?

We can’t. But we can stop giving massive tax breaks to big corporations, so they can “create jobs.” (Something politicians on both sides of the aisle have been guilty of on many occasions.) Sure, they create a few jobs—mostly low-paying, part-time ones with no benefits that no one can survive on. Meanwhile, the CEOs and executives line their pockets with the extra hundreds of millions they saved in taxes for creating a couple hundred jobs that cost the company six figures.

Not giving out huge charitable donations to big companies won’t fix the economy either, but it will at least save the taxpayers some money. And if Congress stopped wasting money on stupid shit, maybe they could use some of that dough for job creation.

 

From Presidential Election to Presidential Parody: Writing Fail to the Chief

Last week my novel Fail to the Chief, a political satire that envisions the presidential election as a reality show, was published—less than ten months after I finished writing it.

No, it wasn’t a Nanowrimo novel, although I do attempt that every year. To give you some perspective on my Nano accomplishments, the first time I tried to write my Novel in a Month was November of 2012. At least, I started writing my novel in November of 2012, and I finished in November…of 2014. (Hey, they never said it had to be November of the same year, did they?) That was my last serious attempt at Nano-ing, although I still try to start a big writing project every November and vainly try to convince myself I will hit 50,000 words.

Fail to the Chief came about in a different way. This January I was running on the treadmill when I had what I thought was an idea for a short story. I was watching some 24-hour news channel, and it struck me that the election was a lot like a reality show, with cameras following the candidates constantly and pundits weighing in like the judges on “American Idol” about everything said candidates do. So then I started picturing “American Idol” as “American President,” starting with a “top ten” selection of candidates. That actually worked out well because Idol usually did a top ten or top twelve, and at that time, pre-primaries, there were about ten people actually running for president. I used “American Idol” as a model because it’s the only reality show I’ve spent any time watching, mostly before I auditioned and got rejected twice because the judges don’t know singing talent when they hear it, but ANYWAY…

By the time I got off the treadmill, I thought this was a funny idea for a campy short story about a reality show to elect the president. I had a good idea who some of the candidates were. Because I have an extensive imagination—a side effect of spending most of my life around multiple habitual liars—I was able to invent fictional candidates that bear no resemblance whatsoever to anyone who’s ever run for president in real life. There’s a billionaire named Ronald Chump who only joins the race after being told he can’t direct-purchase the White House. There’s the guy who has more complaints about America’s declining morals than solutions to real problems. There’s the congresswoman who promises to help the poor but mostly helps wealthy corporations line their pockets. There’s the former tech CEO who promises to create American jobs even though she mostly outsourced jobs when running her company. There’s the not-too-bright third-party candidate whose solution to every problem posed to him is “Legalize pot.” And those are just the first half of the candidates.

I wrote about ten pages of what I called, for lack of a better title, “Reality Show,” and hit a wall. I had the setup for the show but didn’t know how the story was supposed to end, or how to get there. (Remember that I still thought this would be a short story, and that ten pages was about half of it.) Finally I decided to read it to my critique group in the hopes someone would suggest something that would give me an idea how to finish the damn thing. Or better yet, tell me to burn it, because then I wouldn’t have to worry about how to finish the damn thing, but unfortunately that never happens. There just aren’t enough quitters in my group, I guess.

Nobody provided me with an ending for my story, but I did get one suggestion that indirectly helped me finish the damn thing: “This should be a book.”

Initially, I didn’t agree. I couldn’t even figure out how to make a complete short story of it, how was I supposed to make a whole damn novel out of it? But sometimes with groups, one person says something and everyone enthusiastically agrees, so the next thing I knew everyone was telling me it should be a book instead of how to fix it.

Although I left thinking that this was not going to be my next book project, the suggestion did get me to start looking at the story in another way. Once I started to at least consider the story as a book and not twenty pages, I realized why I couldn’t finish it—there was too much story for a twenty-page resolution. When I started thinking about all the things I could do in a book, I realized how easy it would be to finish the story if I had 70,000 words to do it instead of 5,000 or 10,000.

Then I thought about all the things I’d always wanted to see in a presidential election—what if the candidates were forced to work regular jobs, with no aides around to get them photo-ops and tell them people’s names and make them look good? What if they couldn’t escape the cameras, but had to work at a real job all day long and deal with real, angry voters?

I decided each candidate should be assigned a job, selected by the American people via social media suggestions, based on either his/her campaign promises or previous experience. The billionaire who wanted to build a moat along the Mexican/American border would have to personally dig part of it himself. The anti-minimum-wage-hike governor would have to work at a minimum wage job. The former bank president would have to wait on foreclosed customers in his bank. And so on, for all the contestants.

That ended up being the first half of the book. I plodded along, writing a chapter or two a week, which was a good pace for me, for about a month.

Then I got fired from my job. When I asked why, I was told they were “going in a different direction with the department and needed someone with a different skill set.” In reality, I’m fairly certain my job was given to an intern making ten bucks an hour, although I can’t prove it. When I went to collect unemployment, my former employer lied and said I was fired for misconduct, so I got screwed twice.

At that point, I said, “Fuck it, I’m going to finish my book.” And I did. I got fired on February 12 (two days before my birthday, because nothing says happy fucking birthday like a pink slip), and I finished Fail to the Chief on March 4th.

It was a therapeutic process. I’ll admit that some of my anger about being fired just so the company could save money worked itself out in the pages. I also found I had the chance to write about a lot of issues that annoyed me, from unemployment to the cost of college vs. job opportunities/earning potential for graduates. Most of all, I got to make fun of the rich, powerful people who get to run our country, no matter how unqualified. That’s something I still do, now that I write regularly for Humor Outcasts.

If you get a chance, check  out my Facebook page and tell me what topics you think I should satirize next. I love to hear from my readers.