This is the start of the third week I have been in the USA, and my main focus is still on looking for a job. I have found one job I want badly enough that I would kill the other applicants if the company asked me to, one job that would r0X0r, and one job that would be pretty cool. I have also found about forty jobs I'm pretty sure I could get but don't currently want, mostly in secretarial or other support/clerical work. I'm not going to apply to any of those unless it becomes obvious that I won't even get an interview for the good ones.

The three jobs I want, in order of wantingness, are a writing/editorial job for the city's public library system; a production job for a cable movie company involving editing promotional video clips and writing reviews and taglines; and a secretarial job which would ordinarily be quite boring except that it's for a company that supports research into space exploration and Mars landings. I'm qualified for all of them and I believe I'm overqualified for two of them, but of course my opinion doesn't count for much in comparison to that of whoever reads the applications. So I am now in the wait-and-see stage.

I hate the wait-and-see stage.

In the process of looking at job listings, I have found a lot of funny or weird things. I look at every listed job, not just the ones I think I might be looking for, because I don't really have a particular type of job in mind, and most of the really good ones I've had in the past have been found in unexpected places. This also means you find out about jobs you never even knew existed, such as Staking Technician, which sounds like vampire-slaying but turned out not to be. Whatever it really was, it was boring enough that I can't remember the details. Another listing that cracked me up was Mudlogging Geologist, especially when I read the description. They started out by calling it an "exciting opportunity!" and went on to say that you would be counting different types of mud. In Wyoming. Somebody hold me back!

My favourite so far is the title of an ad from some fast food chain or similar soul-destroying high-turnover industry. "WE ARE NOW HIRING -- PLAIN AND SIMPLE!" I always suspected those were their two requirements for employment, but I didn't realise they'd say it outright. Heh heh.

Brunnen-"in other news, living with Dave continues to rule"G