new career options #4

I'm one of those people who talks back to television. I especially talk back to ads, when they speak to me in some special way, or when they seem to miss a golden opportunity of some kind. I wonder sometimes if I haven't missed my calling to be in the advertising business.

I couldn't do market research, which would bore me to death. I'd have to work on the creative side, coming up with taglines or writing copy. I'd re-write all the ads for Progressive insurance, for example. Here's my idea. Same set-up with the bright white fake big-box retail electronics store, same actress as "Flo." Same great big nametag. The main difference - it's subtle, but I think it would be very effective - is that when "Flo" leaps out at an unsuspecting customer to chirp manically about Progressive policies, they punch her in the face. Every commercial would have the same basic script. "Flo" pops up. "Can I he-" WHAM! Memorable, eh?

I can obviously write better than the people who are putting together the awful ads for Bud Light and Chevy. The Bud Light ads where the guys express their love for Bud Light more freely than for their women? Half-assed. In my Bud Light ad, we pan over piles of greasy pizza boxes and discarded aluminum cans and brown bottles - about 4 cases' worth of Bud Light. We discover a disheveled, greasy guy in a greasy Barcalounger, apparently passed out. See? Simple story, told with bold, indelible images. Perfect.

And then, Chevy. Here I think we want to identify our target audience. Sell Tahoes by showing them in use - being driven very badly on crowded freeways by people who are totally oblivious, or possibly comatose. Avalanches being driven aggressively, tailgating and swinging wildly from lane to lane, with, of course, nothing in the truck.

Not only am I a veritable font of brilliant advertising ideas, I also have experience in the very similar field of higher ed. All we really do in higher ed is persuade people to believe things without any evidence or reasoning, right? Right?

new career options #3

I suppose an obvious new career option for anyone with a PhD in the humanities is to turn to crime.

I have some skills and relevant experience as a criminal. I can be very deceptive and sneaky (viz., PhD in humanities). I learned at a very young age how to move about the house without being heard or seen, at any hour I chose. Beginning in junior high, I taught myself how to palm things, hide them wherever I could, and how to use a credit card to break into doors or windows. [Incidentally, that's a skill I recommend to anyone. People forget their keys.]

Most of my criminal experience came during college - which I suppose is true for most college-educated people, of my generation at least. [College life has changed, and colleges have changed, and now there's far more surveillance and discipline going on for most students to get the full benefit of the opportunities campuses afford them.] A friend of mine and I started hanging around our campus late on Sunday nights during our freshman year. We spent a lot of time in the Art building, which was always open, legitimately or not, so some painter or sculptor or musician, or a pair of them, could get in to work or to meet for a tryst, or possibly both. It took a handful of Sundays hanging around there before we struck on the idea that other academic buildings could also be open - or made to be open.

We spent the next month of Sundays on nighttime prowls of the campus, checking every door to every building, seeing where we could go, what we could get into, mainly for the sheer hell of it. There were odd doors in odd buildings that people would prop open or forget to lock, and that gave us access to almost every building on campus over the time period of our crawls. We were experimenting on how far into any building we could get, and in the process learned a bit about what people were studying and researching.

In addition to our usual B&E activities, we would do whatever petty looting or stealing we could arrange easily. Because we had no money, we used to hunt under vending machines for lost change. One night my friend found a six-pack of generic orange soda behind a machine. We figured that meant the vending machine service people sometimes left surplus just lying on the floor, so that became a major target. Plus, he thought he knew how to use a wire hanger to yank stuff out of vending machines from the little doors at the bottom.

We took door signs from every building we could get into, as a kind of trophy. We glued them on the walls of our dorm: "Rm 218," "WOMEN," "Dr. Shepard," "NO SMOKING" and so forth.

One night we broke into a weird maze-like building on campus, and got completely lost in the hallways. We couldn't find our way out again. Eventually we found a stairway down, and tried to take that back to the ground floor. Instead, we ended up underground, in a series of catacombs under the campus. They seemed to lead in a spider web throughout the place - one thread stretching the quarter-mile to the quad, another 500 feet to the library, one locked and padlocked and locked again leading to the administration building. But one catacomb was open, and it led, we believed, in the direction of the student union. We followed that, trying doors and gates as we reached them, hoping to find our way back up to the ground to escape. Finally a door opened, to a small room with a mini fridge, microwave oven, another door leading somewhere else, and a table and chairs. Some kind of break room. My friend looked in the fridge (there was the foraging operation to think of, after all), found a can of Beanie-Weanie, and handed it to me just as we heard voices and footsteps beyond the other door in the room. We retreated rapidly.

I don't remember too clearly what happened next. Several blind turns and stairways doors later, we were back on the bricked sidewalks crossing the campus, on a part of the long sidewalk crossing the campus that we didn't realize we had been anywhere near. Instinctively, we walked away from where we'd been, doubled back, and then started back toward our dorm - which meant walking back past the scene of the crime. There were a handful of campus police roaming about near where we had entered the catacombs, through the unexpectedly open door.

We concluded we'd broken into the cops' break room, and consequently, stolen one of these cops' lunch for tonight's graveyard shift. "WHERE'S MY BEANIE-WEANIE?!!" he would roar, as we recounted the story to ourselves years later.

There's no way this kind of stuff will keep us afloat now in 2010, but I think I might be able to put a resume together - you know, puff this up into Professional Experience. Maybe I can track down that cop and ask him for a recommendation.

new career options #2

Today, I'll consider another potential career option, that my loveliest suggested during a discussion of CFA political endorsements. Just as we heard that a CFA staffer is doing well in his campaign for the California Assembly, she leaned over and whispered, "That'd be a good career move for you - you should run for office!"

Interestingly, many of the same skills are needed to be a successful Politician as for being a successful Cult Leader. Recent history suggests a Politician probably shouldn't be as articulate as a Cult Leader, so I'll have to try to tone that down a bit. It's also apparently tremendously helpful to have a few stock slogans, in particular moralizing ones.

A successful Politician needs the backing of a major political party, enormous quantities of cash, and a support system staffed by munificently-paid consultants, well-paid operatives, and unpaid volunteer grunts. Those will be tough to pull together. I've never been very good at raising money. Getting the endorsement of one of the two major political parties seems to depend on whether I can raise money for the party and come to the aid of other Politicians. Whew! I'm gonna be busy!

And I'll need your help. Please send your campaign contribution today. Join our fight in Sacramento or Washington or Turlock or wherever.

On the other hand, the response to my pondering being a Cult Leader suggests that I could already have a few unpaid volunteers lined up for stuffing envelopes and walking precincts. I think I could rile people up to the point that they devote their energies to the cause of not really doing much to change anything.

There are a handful of basic styles of Politicians. I don't think I could pull off "down-homey salt-of-the-earth" as my basic style. Y'all would see through my protestations of unsophistication. I'm more naturally like the "brainy policy wonk" style, but the problem there is that when the chips are down I might have to actually know something about policy. I think "tough, street-smart" is the easiest, because all you really have to do is be cynical about your opponent.

My opponent - easily the biggest threat to democracy we have ever experienced - must be stopped at any cost. And I need your help with that cost. Send your campaign contribution today. No amount is too small or too large. (There are donation limits for campaigns, of course, but these are easily avoided by contributing to "advisory" committees.)

Finally, as we all know, a Politician has to deny having skeletons in the closet. So: I have always lived a completely upstanding and moral life, and have never strayed from my basic principles of justice and ethics. There. That should handle it.

new career options #1

With all the uncertainty and potential doom I face in my current job, I thought it might be a good idea for me to consider alternate careers. Today, I want to take a look at whether Cult Leader would be a good career choice for me.

I have a lot of the basic skills needed to be a successful Cult Leader already. I'm fairly charismatic, and I have better than average leadership skills. I'm quite articulate, and can speak extemporaneously. I'm energetic and a hard worker, which I think has to be very important for a Cult Leader.

One thing I lack is a cult. I could try to get in on an existing cult - the Rajneeshee business, Aum Shinrikyo, or maybe the Jesuits - but most of their leadership positions are filled. I could maybe bring back a defunct cult, like the People's Temple or the Branch Davidians, or even the Whigs, but I'm guessing the red tape would be nearly intractable. If I were to start my own cult, I'd obviously have a lot of up-front planning and initial investment, but it'd be fully customizable and I could pick the pajamas color and everything.

Generally, cults have sacred texts. Here I've got a few options as well. I could pick a book that's already out there. There are excellent choices, like Plato's Symposium or Larousse Gastronomique, or possibly, copyright clearance pending, the New User's Guide for iPod nano. I've long considered finally sitting down and writing The Book of Dave, based on the life, miracles, and prophecies of my pal Dave "Dave" Koukal. But it's also pretty tempting to write one from scratch.

[Note to self: remember to include a good flood story.]

Turns out the distinction between a cult and a religion is somewhat hazy and fairly subjective. Sociologists and other folks who study cults tend to associate high degrees of mind control, personality-reverence, and aggressive discipline and efforts to retain members. But the history of the Catholic Church is full of that kind of stuff, and several major world religions today continue these practices (Catholics gave up discipline ages ago; they're much more into heavy petting these days).

In any case, I need a flock of the faithful to really pull this off and get any return on it. So I need a marketing campaign. It's gotta be the toughest part of starting a cult, when you think about it. Plus, obviously, you need to target the lost, confused, left-out, and un-culted 18-25 year-old demographic to pick up hip, cool cachet.

**

True story: A girl I knew in high school wrote a note in my senior yearbook predicting that she'd hear about me, 20 years on, having moved to California [done!] and, maybe, started a cult or something. [Aha!]