Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud

Just about anything fun can turn into work.

Part of my daily routine is to check all the blogs I read, and once I’m done with that, I read all the web-comics in my favorites list.

Now, I’ve stated before that I’d love to create a webcomic, and the only things holding me back are:

1. I can’t draw worth a damn.


2. I don’t have an idea, bar ripping off Penny Arcade of Ctrl-Alt-Del

Here’s the thing. I used to think webcomic artists had it made.

Despite the fact it’s a very crowded and oversaturated market (One of the pitfalls of the internet, just about anyone can make a webcomic, and the vast majority of them have the same things holding them back as me… but don’t regard a serious lack of talent to be a problem), but, and this is a big but, if you have the talent, you can become very successful.

I mean, take the guys at Penny Arcade, whose page hits number in the millions each day.

That’s an awful lot of eyes on ads (Which I have to say are actually tailored to the readership. In other words, the ads they have on their site are ads I’d actually click…none of that “Click here and get a free iPod’ crap).

Then you factor in things like sales of Penny Arcade T-Shirts, actual comic books, mousepads, plushies etc.

I’m not saying these guys are millionaires, but lets just say they must make enough money to get by.

That sounds like a dream job. Three times a week, you draw a three-panel comic, post it up there, maybe write a news post…and watch the cash roll in. Being able to work from home, sitting at a desk wearing your jeans and T-shirt, not having to worry about another pointless bloody staff meeting…it sounds perfeck.

But then I started thinking about it.

I love to write. It doesn’t matter what it is I’m actually writing, I just love to write.

However, there are days when you couldn’t force me to write anything, even if you had a really big stick. A really big stick with nails in it. A really big stick with nails in it, smeared in poo.

Now, when it comes to comics, there’s plenty of people out there who draw just for the sheer pleasure of it.

However, I think there’s a huge difference in doing something just for fun, and doing the same thing when you absolutely have to do it.

For example, another of the things I love to do is film-making. Some of the best times of my life was when I was doing media studies it college. Given a great video camera and access to a state-of-the-art editing lab.

However, when it came to coursework time, and you absolutely had to be out there with your camera, or sitting in a darkened lab at a work station desperately trying to sync your music up to your footage…I’d give anything to be anywhere else.

So, suddenly that job doesn’t look as attractive as it first seems.

You feel like crap, you don’t want to do anything that day. If you were working a normal job, you could take a sick-day.

However, when you’re your own boss, it must take a hell of a lot of self discipline to force yourself out of bed.

Oh, and if you don’t post regularly, you start to lose your readership, and if you lose your readership, you lose your income.

The other biggie is there’s a huge difference between forcing yourself to go to work, and sit at your desk, doing whatever mind-numbing task you get paid for. Imagine having to be ‘creative’ on cue.

I think the best way to describe it to imagine that your blog has become so successful, that you’re getting hits in the millions each day. You put up a Paypal Donate button, and people actually send you money. You start to make enough money that you make blogging your solitary ‘job’

Now you have to post every single day. Not just post, but write at least 1000 words, and 1000 words people want to read. If you’re like me, you love blogging…but there are days when big sticks with nails in them smeared in poo come to mind.

I never thought I’d say this…but I’m glad I don’t run a successful webcomic.

Bo and Luke Had The Right Idea

I was thinking today, and that’s never a good sign.

I watched an episode of ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ (I don’t know why either), and of course, it was about moonshining.

Now, for people who’ve lived under a rock for most of their lives, moonshining is essentially making your own booze. It’s not exactly illegal to do, but requires all kind of licenses, and as The Duke’s often exclaim, brewing moonshine will ‘get the revenue after you’.

However, this is something I don’t get.

You see, you can buy all the ingredients perfectly legally. You can buy all the parts to make your still legally.

So considering you’ve already paid taxes on all of this, why do you have to pay more taxes for mixing them together?

I mean, I understand if you’re selling the stuff. You’re basically starting a business, and have all that income tax crap to worry about. But if it’s for personal use, how can the government charge you for it?

For example, I can go out, buy powdered sugar, flour, eggs and milk, but I don’t have to pay extra tax if I make those ingredients into a cake!

It’s even more ridiculous if you actually grow your own ingredients. You can make hard liquor out of anything from rice, to barley, to potatoes.

I can understand the safety issue, distilling booze essentially involves heating up something with alcohol in it, so the alcohol evaporates, and you the alcohol in another container. Fire and damn near pure alcohol in a pressurized container is a recipe for a big boom if not done right…but then again, people do all sorts of dangerous stuff.

I should point out here that I have absolutely no interest in distilling my own booze. One, I wouldn’t have the first idea how to start, and Two, I only actually drink a couple times a year.

My point is, in England, it’s perfectly legal to make your own beer and wine, as long as you don’t sell it. I’m not sure what the deal on ‘hard’ booze is.

What I’m essentially trying to say here is that I think the government getting involved in this is basically them saying:

“Oi, we make exactly one shit load of money from taxing booze. If you can make it yourself, and make it a hell of a lot more cheaply than what we you can buy in a liquor store (because we tax it out the ass), it’s less money in our pockets. So unless you’re willing to let us take a big, wet bite out of your profits, it’s illegal.”

It’s the same way that there is a limit on how much booze or cigarettes you can buy abroad and bring back into the country. It’s common for Brits to jump on the ferry to France, for the singular purpose of stocking up on booze, because it’s a hell of a lot cheaper over there.

How can people in a supposedly free country be told that it’s illegal for them to buy anything from somewhere else, and instead are forced to buy it, at a higher price, in their home country…because if they don’t, the government can’t tax it?

Here’s an idea! Why not lower the taxes on this shit, so people don’t have to buy stuff abroad.

Oh, and just to give you an idea, a pack of cigarettes (a single pack, that is), in American money will cost you roughly $9. A gallon of gas will cost you roughly $8.50, and a large bottle of Jack Daniels will cost you roughly $60.

It all comes from the same place, and the reason for the price difference is simply tax. For every British Pound that’s spent on Gasoline, only 6 pence of that actually pays for the gas…and considering I can buy a whole carton of cigarettes over here (That’s ten packs) for less than two packs would cost me in England…you can understand just how reamed we get by the old Inland Revenue Service.

It’s bullshit, is what it is.

Oh, and in England, the same Government that will throw you in jail for bringing in too much booze from France, is the same Government that set the policy for farmers to send 90% of their livestock and meat to France, and buy meat from France, because it works out cheaper for them to do that, and they can pass all the transportation costs onto the consumer.

In other words, when it makes a profit for them, it’s all fine and dandy. When it takes money from them, it’s illegal.

Sounds fair to me! How about you?

(and yes, I’m aware this is a very weird post.)

Brunch Unlovable

Spam.

We all get spam.

It doesn’t matter what kind of spam filter you use, no matter how many message rules you set up in Outlook…you still get spam.

I currently have four email addresses. My main, private one, given out only to friends and family. The Yahoo account I set up purely for this blog. The Gmail account I set up in order to replace the Yahoo account (that I haven’t changed the link on here for yet), and last but by no means least, the Hotmail account I set up when I was 14, that gets a few hundred spam emails per day, that I keep alive purely to have an email address that I can use when I want to sign up for a forum or something, so my main account doesn’t get spammed.

However, the latest spamming ‘trick’ I’ve become a victim to is really pissing me off.

You see, the reason people bother to send spam is that it’s free, and you can reach a few million people in a few seconds. If you send out 5 million spam emails, and only half of one percent of the people it reaches actually but something from you, that’s still twenty five thousand sales.

However, this latest thing gets me mad because it’s just so pointless.

Currently, my Yahoo account is getting something like 15 emails a day. Each email is the same, basically being ‘top secret inside info’ on the latest stock tips, stocks I should watch and invest heavily in as soon as possible.

Alarm Bell #1:

These are supposed to be top secret stock tips. So why the hell are they being mass-emailed to complete and total strangers? Isn’t the idea supposed to be that if you have a good stock tip, you keep it on the ‘down low’, because a flood of buyers will push the prices up, meaning you can’t buy low and sell for the much higher price when the news comes out and prices jump?

However, the thing that really makes me mad at the sheer stupidity of this is the way these stock tips are delivered.

You see, I get 15 of these a day. If these emails all came from the same address and actually had ‘stock tip’ as the subject, once I’d had a full frontal lobotomy, I might actually think the things where genuine.

Instead, each email comes from a different person. (Well, actually they don’t, but it’s meant to look like they are). The subject line has nothing to do with stocks or shares. The subject is obviously plucked randomly by a computer from a dictionary.

The idea behind this is that if you block a particular sender, or all emails with a particular set of words in the subject line, the emails will still get through. Of course, if you have half a brain-cell, and aren’t an AOL subscriber, you know to simply block all emails from that particular domain.

However, my point is, who the hell would believe a stock tip given to you by a random person, when the subject line obviously has nothing to do with the subject?

Here are a few examples of the emails I got today alone:

Sally Lawson : Sitter
Annabel Frost : Tuition Troubleshooter
Dorothy White : Noun Until
Tobias Christian : Gulf
Cecil Foley : Brunch Unlovable
Louie Daniel : Royal

All of them telling me to “Invest Immediately” and “Watch these like a hawk”

Well, here’s my reply:

Why don’t you just fuck off and leave me alone, you complete and utter retard.

You see, I’m not an idiot, and that qualifies me to not take stock market advice from a guy named Cecil Foley, who thinks that “Brunch Unlovable” is an accurate description for a stock tip.

Ok, here’s what I suggest. For the next two weeks, every time you get a piece of junk email, look closely at the message header, find out where it actually came from, and ‘Bulk Email’ them back.

I don’t know, send them about a quarter million copies of an advertisement where, for this week only, they can get a right royal ass-kicking for the low, low price of just ten dollars.

I mean, it’s legal to send unsolicited ads through email right?

Let’s give the bastards a taste of their own medicine.

(Oh, and don’t forget to attach the 500mb ‘promotional video’ in each email.)

Hmmm

I just thought of something.

Make a film.

Make it about two gay cowboys.

What do you get? A critically acclaimed ‘masterpiece’ with all kinds of Oscar nominations that won’t be watched by the majority of the male 16-25 demographic.


Now, let’s make another film.

Make it about two gay Cowgirls.

What do you get?

A porn movie.


Sexism? You decide.

Good opportunity for daisy-dukes though.

Vicious Circles

Well, I read the comments to yesterday’s post, and started to write a comment back. Then I realized just how much I wanted to say, so I decided to write a new post about it.

First is MC Etcher’s comment:

…I can totally sympathize with the whole qualified to do something (like computers) but having no piece of paper that says so. I guess you could pay to get certified in PC maintenance. Pay someone else to give you a piece of paper... Why not print your own Certification? It's not like anyone is going to contest something like that.

During my first full-time job search just after I graduated, I found that the main attitude of my friends and family was: “You’ve got a degree, you’ll just walk into a job.”

This is from the viewpoint of someone who’s been working for years and years, and got started in their career 20 years ago, when very few people went to University. (In England it’s only really my generation that went to college, before that, University was the domain of the rich).

Unfortunately, (or fortunately) times have changed. With government grants and student loans pretty much anyone can go to University now. The current system in England is that you get a loan through the student loan commission, and then after you graduate, your loan is paid back directly from your paycheck. You pay something like 15% of everything you earn over 11,000.

In short, it’s no longer an advantage to have a degree, it’s become a disadvantage to not have one. The playing field has changed from most people not having degrees, and a select few having one…to a playing field where nearly everyone has a degree, and few people don’t.

In short, the same percentage of people who had degrees ten years ago is now the percentage of people who don’t have degrees.

Because of this, all a basic Bachelors degree will do is get your application looked at.

As to why I don’t want to pay someone to give me a piece of paper, or print my own certification…well, there’s a few reasons.

The first is I simply don’t want to go back to college. Not only can I not afford it, I’ve already spent 6 years of my life in further education. If I was going to get certified in computers, I’d want an actual degree. I’m 25 right now, and I don’t want to be pushing 30 by the time I start my career.

It’s the same reason I didn’t stay on and get my Masters degree. In my old college, you didn’t apply to do your Masters Degree, your Bachelors Degree tutor would ask you if you wanted to continue in their Masters Degree course. My English Literature tutor asked me to stay on and do my Masters Degree, but I turned him down. Another 3 years at college? Then, I don’t see the point of spending that extra time to get a masters, if you’re not going to do your doctorate, which takes another 5 years.

Spending another 8 years in education when you’ve just completed 6 long, stressful years? I don’t think so.

The second, and much bigger point, is I simply can’t afford to go back to college.

As for printing my own, or paying some internet site to send me a certificate, employers have become a lot more savvy in that respect. Too many people are applying for jobs with ‘fake’ degrees from unaccredited universities. Even if I managed to hoodwink an employer and actually got the job, faking a resume (and I mean ‘faking’, not ‘embellishing’) is grounds for instant dismissal, and I don’t want to go into work every day wondering if this is the day I’m going to be found out and sacked.

My only other major point on this is the principle of the thing. While I’m in no way qualified to do a job like OzzyC’s (Either officially or practically), I can do standard maintenance standing on my head. I resent being forced back into college to ‘learn’ something I already know and paying for the privilege. I had enough of that when I was in college when I did Information Technology, and I don’t want to sound like a smart-ass, but I knew more about actual computers than my tutor did. Sure, he knew his way around excel, but I was the one who opened up his computer when his display went dead and seated his graphics card properly.

Now for ‘The Girl’s comment, that really highlights the other big problem I have:

…Are you opposed to admin work? If not, sign up with temp agencies. With a degree in English, you could probably substitute teach or be a teachers assistant. Check at the local community college for their job board as well. Also, law firms would drool for a good typist/ proofreader with proper english skills.

Actually, it’s Admin work I’m looking for. Unfortunately Temp agencies are a big no-no.

One, I need steady, full time work. The second problem won’t last forever, but it stops me from signing on with temp agencies right now.

I’m an immigrant. My British Drivers license was only valid for the first 90 days I was in the country, and I’ve been here for over two years now. Without a Green Card, which I’m still waiting on, I’m not officially a permanent resident yet. (Well, I am, I just don’t have the piece of paper to say I am. I have the piece of paper that says my other bit of paper is on the way, but that I can’t use that as proof). At this point, it’s just a matter of time and paperwork, but the big problem is that until I have proof of permanent residency, I can’t get a drivers license.

Can you see where I’m going with this yet?

We have one car, and I’m 100% dependent on Sunny for transportation. She works nights and only arrives home at 8:30am. This means any job I get has to start at 9am and be within a half hour of my house.

Working as a temp, I’d need to be flexible, and flexibility doesn’t fit with my situation right now. I need a job that has definite set hours at a set place.

In other words, I’m in a bit of a vicious circle. I need a car and a drivers license, but the only way I can get a car and license is to get a job, and my choice of job is severely limited until I get a car and drivers license.

As for the rest of your advice, I’m already doing that. My resume is posted on Monster, Local Jobs and Careerbuilder, and I’ve applied for admin positions in pretty much every field I can think of.

Right now, It’s just a matter of playing the waiting game…and as Homer Simpson said:

"The waiting game sucks…let’s play Hungry Hungry Hippos”