For Sale: 1 Journalist. (Free to a good home)

So I found this posting on Gawker today. It made me laugh...but only to keep from crying for how true it is.

How's The Journalism Job Market?

We like to take stock of the journalism job market through the most obvious raw data: Job listings! This week, the Chicago bureau of the New York Times posted an ad for a reporter/office clerk/stringer. You should have: a minimum of a "few years" experience at a newspaper, and should be able to order office supplies while reporting other people's stories—and you should know that the "right applicant will care more about getting good stories and learning the craft than about the paycheck." So we're going with: The job market unrelentingly sucks.

Chicago stringer - The New York Times Posted by: [REDACTED] Wed Aug 29, 2007 3:22 pm (PST) The Chicago Bureau of The New York Times has an opening for a fulltime reporting assistant/stringer. We seek an unflappable, tested, hungry reporter to handle a variety of support duties in our Midwest bureau. We require a poised juggler of tasks -- deadline reporting and writing of hard news, research and legwork for our national correspondents' stories, tracking news trends and developments every day in 11 states, paying bills and ordering supplies, and far more. At minimum, applicants should have a few years of experience at a newspaper. The right applicant will care more about getting good stories and learning the craft than about the paycheck. Please send a cover letter, resume and clips to: [REDACTED] or Monica Davey; The New York Times; Chicago Bureau Chief; 111 E. Wacker Dr.; Suite 2912; Chicago IL 60601. No phone calls please.

How much you wanna bet their office is drowning in applicants?

Re-Stalkered

So just as I've managed to get rid of one stalker, I've acquired another.

I haven't seen the downstairs neighbors in WEEKS and it has been blissfully wonderful. Now, it's like he's avoiding me. Yeah! He finally got the hint.

Since there was an opening for stalker in my life, though, someone else has stepped up to the plate and unfortunately he works here, which I suppose means in theory he has access to my apartment. I can't even remember his name.

This apartment complex is large and spreads over a lot of space. There aren't a lot of units per building but there are a lot of buildings. So they have a pretty big staff that keeps the place up. For the most part the people who work here are very friendly. They wave and say hello whenever I'm walking the dog. I tend to see the same couple of guys every day.

Then one day a few weeks ago this one guy was driving by on the supped up golf carts they use to get around and he stops as Roland is peeing and makes small talk about the weather. I don't think anything of it. Till the next he stops again and asks the dog's name and continues small talk. Whenever I see him thereafter, the same. He even shouted to me out of second floor window.

So today I see him over where all workers take their break. Everyone waves as I walk by. I wave back, say hello, etc. Keep going. The next thing I know, he's driving up beside me and stops. He starts with, "We've gotten a bit of a break with the weather, huh?" And then starts telling me about how he has a couple tickets to go see Jethro Tull up near Albany and then asks me if I'm from around here. I say no, but I don't offer up anything else. He doesn't seem put off by this, he seems nervous. Then he's says, "Well have a nice weekend." And drives off.

I think this guy is going to be even harder to avoid. Sigh. You know, if I had to have a stalker, it could have at least been one of the cute workers. At least then he wouldn't be creepy AND unpleasant on the eyes.

To Kill An Arts Director

The Big Read book for the city (and I guess the universe) this year is To Kill A Mockingbird. Yesterday, the arts reporter who was working on the story was interviewing the director of the arts council, which is coordinating the local Big Read. And lo and behold, he admits he has never read To Kill A Mockingbird. Though, he quickly added, he's read "parts" of it. The newsroom went wild.

"Didn't he go to 9th grade?"

"By parts of it, does he mean Cliffnotes?"

"Has he, perhaps, also read parts of Huckleberry Finn and 1984?"

You really can't make up stuff like this.

Not-so-funny spoofing

Today the weirdest thing happened to me.

I got accused of calling someone whose phone number or last name I do not know. (It's a long story.) It's been bothering me all day. I looked at my statement online (I only have a cell phone and it lists every call I make): nothing. So I'm wracking (also, while we're having silly little asides, is that the right wracking? doesn't anyone know?) my brain all day trying to figure out how my name and number wound up on this person's Caller ID.

I come home and Google "Caller ID". I thought, "I'm going to get a thousand ads for the service." I paused, tried to thing of what to add that might give me some insight into my problem and NOT the ads. Didn't come up with anything so I pushed search.

The first thing that came up was a link to this Wikipedia article:

Caller ID spoofing is the practice of causing the telephone network to display a number on the recipient's caller ID display which is not that of the actual originating station; the term is commonly used to describe situations in which the motivation is considered nefarious by the speaker. Just as e-mail spoofing can make it appear that a message came from any e-mail address the sender chooses, caller ID spoofing can make a call appear to have come from any phone number the caller wishes. Because people are prone to assume a call is coming from the number (and hence, the associated person, or persons), this can call the service's value into question.


Has anyone even heard of this? I'm so behind the times. Apparently there's legislation that's passed some Senate committee this year to make it illegal. And I didn't even know it existed. You KNOW if Congress is taking up the issue, it's like so 20 years ago.

The thing is, I can't think of anyone who would spoof my phone number. Do I have any enemies? I don't think so. Now I feel all paranoid. Like I need to move out my apartment and into a bunker and start printing newsletters about alien conspiracies.

Any similar stories? Thoughts? Government conspiracy theories.

Fun fact o' the week

A sperm can survive for up to a week inside the female.

Thank you WebMD for teaching me that, in fact, I do NOT know everything there is to know about sex.

Reports from the front line

As some of you perhaps don't follow the happenings of our dead king as much as I do, you may not have realized that Thursday was the 30th anniversary of Elvis' death. This meant much hoopla...well, everywhere there are Elvis fans, I guess. But nowhere more so than in Memphis where Death Week is celebrated every year, but the major milestones are even crazier, as you can imagine.

Anyway, today I got this e-mail from the photo assignment editor of the Commercial Appeal. I wanted to share. The subject line: Elvis has not left the building

Well you missed another anniversary of The King's death here in
Memphis.
It was particularly freaky this year.
My grossest Elvis fan sighting was Wednesday (death day) in the lobby
of the Peabody Hotel.
He was a man about 65 years old with a huge belly, wearing a black
fish-net tank top, a huge crop of hair on his chest, a huge crop of hair on
his back protruding thru the tank top, wearing black shorts, black
loafers and black socks. Of course he was also adorned with the
mutton-chop sideburns and shades, and one of those little Elvis boat captian
hats. Or I guess it could have been a motorcycle cap.
Naturally he was lugging two shopping bags full of his Elvis crap
around with him.
He was standing in the traffic jam in the lobby outside Lansky's (you
know where the King used to shop for all his clothes).
Tourist were jammed up outside the store shooting video of the window
displays.
And I thought I didn't have a life.

It wasn't two minutes later that I almost bumped into a little midget
Elvis as I was leaving the hotel.
At least he was dressed like he had some dignity. All three and a half
feet of him.

Just thought you'd enjoy the vision as much as I did.
Now you write back ya hear.

MM

What I'm reading

Reading:
Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson
Marley & Me by John Grogan
Getting Away With It by S. Soderbergh

Bought:
Bruno's Dream by Iris Murdoch ($2.50 used)
Banana Diplomacy by Roy Gutman ($1 used + $5 shipping)
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold ($7.50 used hardback)

Read:
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

We can all see where this going...

I am not overly fond of magicians. They're fine. I have nothing against them. They don't creep me out like clowns. I've just never been wowed by seeing the Statue of Liberty disappear or watching some dude escape from a buried glass box filled with water and sharks or whatever. I rather grudgingly watched The Illusionist. It pretty much furthered my previous opinion of magicians and also of Jessica Biel's acting ability.

So it was with something less than enthusiasm that I agreed to read Carter Beats the Devil when it was handed to me by Deadman as a MUST read. I set it aside and it has mocked me since April. I finally decided I had to read it so I could send it back.

Well I have to tell you, I just finished it the other day and I LOVED it. Toward the end, though I had guessed most of the ending, I still couldn't put it down. I stayed up one night till 4 a.m. getting to the story's climax. I bought a copy of the book because I liked it so much and I have someone I plan on forcing it on.

After finishing it Wednesday night I was surprised to find out that Charles Carter, the main character, was a real person that the author based his fiction on. This made me realized, in turn, that I knew very little about Warren G. Harding. And THAT made me depressed at once again how little I know about everything. I have resisted the urge to go and immediately buy a book on Harding. But I plan to make a visit to a certain used book store in the City when my parents are visiting in September. Don't be surprised if the next installment of my book review lists some biographies.

In fact this is why I am now reading the Che book, because I realized after a year of pretending to know stuff about Che that, of course, I knew nothing about him other than he had something to do with Cuban revolution, my dad and others like him hate him and The Motorcycle Diaries. I'm a little disappointed because I had hoped for at least a semi-unbiased account of his life, but the author of this book did the weirdest thing by putting his acknowledgments at the front of the book, in which he gushes about Che and Cuba, etc. I'm only a few pages in, but it's already colored my judgment of everything he writes.

And in case your interested, I'm reading Marley & Me because 1) I love dogs and 2) the Che book is not at all transportable. I needed something that I could take "to go" and you need a pushcart to move that Che book.

My namesake

For the few who don't know, this blog is not, in fact, named after the former Yankees player from Savannah, but after the comic strip cat who is named after the former Yankees player from Savannah. "Get Fuzzy" and I had a rough start in that I did not care for the executive editor that tore up our comics strips page and got rid of one of my favorite comics, "Mixed Media" in order to get his favorites in. He introduced "Get Fuzzy" in the spot where "Mixed Media" was previously and I kept finding myself reading it out of habit due to its location. Well, long story short, I fell in love with that crazy cat and his roommates, Satchel the dog and Rob the human.

To make an even longer story not all that much shorter, the purpose of this entry is that I felt most of you reading would love the series that ran last week, which I am totally illegally posting (in part) below in case you missed it.







For more, check out Get Fuzzy site at Comics.com

And winner of gaudiest apartment living room is...

I'm sure there are better candidates for that title out there, but I came across this place yesterday and it cracked me up. This is the living room of the "apartment" in a two-family home. (It's like a duplex only split bottom and top. Usually the owner lives in the bottom part with garage and basement fun room and the smaller upstairs is rented as an apartment. It's the only way people can afford houses up here.) That fact made it even funnier to me because someone did up their rental apartment like it was a Roman palace.

So. Very. Tired. (Or, This is what happens when you give up your only addiction.)

I recently decided to cut back on my caffeine consumption. I went from who knows how much caffeine to one caffeinated beverage a day. I did it in part because my doctor freaked out when I told her how much caffeine I had in a day (and as you always do with the doctor, I lied and undercut the amount I really drink), but mostly just to see if I could do it.

It's been surprisingly easy. I take my one beverage in the morning to stave off the caffeine headaches I get when I don't. But other than that, I haven't had any cravings. What I have noticed, however, is my inability to get up in the morning and how tired I am at the end of the day. The getting up in the morning is really bad. I sleep till 11 most days and today until noon. (This was bad since I was supposed to be at work at 1 p.m.) And when I sleep I feel like lead. I wake up and I also feel like I'm made of lead. I feel impossibly heavy. I also bought my first caffeine free Diet Pepsi the other day. Though, I must admit that was mostly due to the fact that the 7-11 I was at was out of regular Diet Pepsi and I needed something to mix with my bourbon and did not want Diet Coke or any un-diet sodas.

I also started taking a new multi-vitamin made by Wild Oats that turns my pee neon yellow...but that's a whole different story.

The update from Staten Island

Looks like the Staten Island Advance also reads my blog:


African American, Asian populations jump on Island
Posted by Staten Island Advance August 10, 2007 5:00PM
Categories: News

Staten Island has become increasingly attractive to minorities as evidenced by significant spikes in its Asian and black population over the past six years.

Among the five boroughs, Staten Island experienced the largest growth, percentage-wise, in Asian residents, jumping nearly 36 percent from 27,916 in 2000 to an estimated 37,959 in 2006.

The number of blacks calling the borough home bumped up almost 13 percent to 55,782 in the same period. That figure also represented the biggest increase, percentage-wise, in the city.

In all, Staten Island's population growth rate of nearly 8 percent topped the city between 2000 and last year. An estimated 484,176 people lived here in 2006, compared to 449,196 in 2000.

"The changing demographics reflect a pattern that you're having a more diverse Staten Island. It's becoming less of a white-bread borough," said Jonathan Peters, associate finance professor at the College of Staten Island, who also studies demographics and transportation.

Yet, Peters noted, Staten Island's white population, which includes persons of Hispanic descent also remains strong, rising almost 5 percent to an estimated 386,485 in 2006.

Hmm, looks like maybe Rupert Murdoch heard me

August 10, 2007
Gannett Changes Pay Rule in Case of Sale

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK (AP) -- Gannett Co. Inc., the nation's largest newspaper publisher, changed agreements with its top two executives that would accelerate payment of retirement and deferred compensation if the company is sold, according to a regulatory filing.

The company also changed the threshold at which an employee buyout constitutes a change in control that would trigger the executive payments. A spokeswoman for the company said she could not immediately confirm whether the change involved lifting the threshold.

Gannet said it made the change to comply with tax codes and the move did not indicate it was entertaining any offers.

''These were routine amendments and were not made in anticipation of a sale,'' said Gannett spokeswoman Tara Connell. ''Nothing is in the works. We were mandated to make these changes by the IRS.''

The newspaper industry has been in turmoil for the past year, as several prominent -- and previously thought to be untouchable -- properties have changed hands. The sector has struggled with a persistent decline in revenue as advertisers shift spending online.

Most recently media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. prevailed in a monthslong courtship of Dow Jones & Co., the family controlled publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Knight Ridder Inc. was sold last year and Tribune Co., publisher of the Los Angeles Times, got bought a few months ago.

Gannett, based in McLean, Va., consistently delivers double-digit profit margins and is considered well run. With a market capitalization of about $11 billion, the company would constitute a large purchase, especially in a market where debt financing is difficult to come by.

Gannett shares fell $1.01, or 2.1 percent, to $46.33 in midday trading. In the past year, the stock has ranged from $45.96 to $63.50.

A new take on Census data

Island's white population rising
Posted by Staten Island Advance August 10, 2007 9:38AM
Categories: News

New York City's white population has increased in every borough but Queens since 2001, according to a published report.

Staten Island's white population rose by about 12,000, an increase of 3.2 percent, a Post analysis of Census data shows.


I don't know. Why do I feel like this is, oh, what? So very white flight? I'm sure it's true. I'm also just as sure that the island's entire population increased.

Seven More

In all the excitement of Spanish and centigrade, I almost forgot. My newspaper laid off seven people on Tuesday - one from the newsroom. We were already down, nine in the newsroom, I think it is, since the beginning of the year. It's because the company is doing so bad, or so we were told at the staff meeting where they announced the cuts. Though, at the same time, our Web hits are through the roof. (Only the executive editor was excited by this because none of us sees any correlation from Web hits to income. That's the part the corporate execs haven't quit worked out yet.)

People are more depressed than usual. Everyone is overworked, stressed out, drinking too much, angry a lot. And now THERE IS NO END IN SIGHT. At least before they had hope some of the positions would be replaced. Now there is a hiring freeze on indefinitely. I think the entire floor left the meeting then went directly to looking for new jobs and polishing their resumes.

The next day after the meeting, we get our daily e-letter from corporate, which include a Wall Street Journal article on our company and how our return to shareholders is up 40 cents a share over the previous year's quarter. This further depresses the staff.

I wish Rupert Murdoch would just buy us and get the whole damn thing over with.