"Yeah, I got a solution, you're a dick! South Carolina, what's up!"

I have always been a fan of dystopian fiction. I think mainly I just like the creativity involved in making up a whole world but am far too fundamentally skeptical of human nature to think it would be remotely accurate for things not to be fucked up. Also, it's why I always thought the idea of Heaven was boring: what do you do after that if everything's perfect, right?

So anyhooze, when I was in middle/high school I was all 1984, like that was how things were going to work out. Understandable: while living in one's parents' house, living under the crushing weight of someone else's rules and authority might cause one to project that out into the future too.

Then I got out into the world and was then all, "Hold up. BRAVE NEW WORLD." It seemed clear that was a more accurate dystopian vision, what with the castes and the soma and the feelies and Fordism and everything.

Let's turn to someone smarter and more articulate than me to sum it up. Sayeth Neil Postman:

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy."

Then tonight I saw like an even more accurate dystopian vision, one that starts with the same kind of hypothesis as Brave New World, but is able to add a timeliness that makes it even more...well, it's just that it's refined further, refined with the Now, with the knowledge of where we are and how the current trajectory might be affected by what's happened since Huxley wrote his idea about the future.

I feel I have the authority to make an assessment on the accuracy of this vision based on exactly what I have been documenting in this blog (you were wondering how the fuck my little comp lit aside was all going to come back to resumes, right?).

And not just what I document in this blog; I also have another job, which I can't really get into too much, but let me just give you an example of the kind of stellar mind I have exposure to in that one (believe me, context is unnecessary, although I will tell you that context would only make this seem worse):

"You is a dumb bitch how in da !@#!@ is they gon move to a new state and they was born and raised ther and thats where ther jobs are. U dumb bitch think. Man i tell u bitches dese days r stupid ass hell. And if they were to move it would probably be L.A. "

So anyway, tonight I watched Idiocracy, the Mike Judge film that came out a few years ago with like no press for some reason I could probably research and won't.

I feel like a dork making a movie recommendation on this blog. A) I hate movies, with the exception of documentaries or anything made before 1979. B) Like how much more masturbatory-bloggy can you get? Who gives a fuck what movie I just watched? and C) Like a lot of people seemed to think that Idiocracy isn't ABOUT stupidity, it IS stupid, and I don't know. Maybe I'm stupid now too, like I have contact stupidity from my daily exposure to it,

But all I could think upon watching it is that first off, how Luke Wilson's character seems to feel once he gets to the future Idiocracy is how I feel EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE and second, holy shit, this isn't satire, this is fucking PRESCIENT.

(In case you don't know what the movie is about, Judge basically extrapolates a dystopian future based on the fact that I believe birth rates are inversely proportional to IQ levels. So like take the second quote above and then breed that person with others like him for centuries, et voila.)

I was simultaneously delighted yet terrified. Judge puts this dystopian society 500 years into the future. I think he was being optimistic; my experience is we don't have that long to wait.

Despair: Now in Real Time!

Normally I do try to buffer in some time between the day job happenings and my posts due to my totally unwarranted paranoia.

But today I am feeling ca ca enough to just go ahead and LIVE BLOG THE AWFULNESS.

I have phone screened a gajillion people this week and 90% of them have been:

• Unqualified despite what their resumes said. It stretches the boundaries of credulity, if you have only used a certain software once a month in a job you have held for a few months, to call yourself an "current expert user." Maybe so, but the hiring manager is going to think I am an idiot if I send you in for an interview. Now get off my phone. Thank you for wasting 15 minutes of my life with your fibs.
• Complete nutjobs. I know I am the Girl Who Cried Nutjobs, BUT this week I received independent confirmation from someone who is not a misanthrope (she is, in fact, a REGULAR and NORMAL person) that all of these candidates are, in fact, totes crazeeeeee.
• Argumentative and vaguely belligerent. I am not a person who goes looking for confrontation - the LAST thing I want is more interaction with humans - so I am usually eager to deflect and avoid. Nevertheless, I seem to have stumbled upon a group of candidates that is itching for trouble. I know I know I should show and not tell but I am too exhausted to give you some specific examples. It's just all oddly adversarial out there, which, to me, is not a word I would normally associate with recruiting. And again: independent confirmation from a cheerful, non-curmudgeonly co-worker.

AND WHAT IS WORSE:

It is THURSDAY! Not Friday! I mean, it's nearly Friday and that means it's nearly not a workday (although they are ALL workdays right now, but at least on Saturday and Sunday it's just me and the laptop and I don't have to talk to any people). But I have about four more hours of phone screening today and I do not know how I am going to get through it without losing it all over one of these people. Even the cheerful co-worker admitted yesterday that she was nearly yelling at a candidate.

Having to pay deep attention to complete strangers all day long sometimes feels like zombies are eating out my brain.

Zombification

So part of why I am so grumpy all the livelong day is because I haven’t had a real vacay in just about forever, and have a sort of job that much like a gas, expands to fit whatever container (i.e., my waking hours) it’s put into.

And to abruptly change metaphors, work is also like a toxin that builds up in your system. I think of it like gout: there are these work crystals building up under my skin and eventually I get so sensitive I cannot bear the weight of a sheet on my toe/phone call from innocent candidate.

BUT…although there is apparently a war on Xmas or something that people like me are somehow perpetrating by sending out cards that say “Happy Holidays” because we know/like some Jewish people and atheists and are too lazy/indifferent to send out different cards to every person based on what holiday they may or may not be celebrating, Xmas has nevertheless retained the strength to get me a (paid) day fricking off in a week and a half. (Thank you, Xmas!)

And I am going to finagle a few other days off in there and I am going to have five – count ‘em FIVE FIVE FIVE – days where I do not have to ask anyone to describe their current job duties or what their target salary is or how soon they would be available to begin if a position is offered. Five whole days in a row where I can spend all day talking with people about something other than their experience with SOX 404 or their skill level with Excel!

And THAT, Reader, is my Thursday’s Installment of Some Shit that I Am Happy About.

Until then, I am switching into Recruiter Zombie mode. I am still physically here, I am still carrying out my duties, but my brain/soul has already left my body and won’t return until Jan 1, 2007. Posts until then may consist of grunts and or zombie-typing which looks like this:

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