Judgment Day

Tupac believed that only God could judge us. Well, it’s a good thing he’s dead (Pac, not God), because this past weekend I was judging like Greg Mathis let loose on 26th and California, except I was doing it at a speech tournament in the middle of Corn Country. Here’s how it worked: For 10 bucks a round, I—guided by my lackluster credentials and finite widsom—got to decide which speakers would advance to the next stage of life.

My morning started out with a round of informative speeches. Here, I learned about robot fish, a home-made heroin substitute, and how to use of urine as an alternative energy source. As I ranked these speakers, I thought: Yeeeeah, if Pac were here, I’d judge the thug outta him. Then I thought the same thought in Spanish. But then I backed off because I thought Pac’s ghost might rip my face off, write thugmatic poetry on the back of it, and sell it as previously unreleased material.

While my first round of speeches was familiar territory, the next event (in which speakers recited dramatic stories) was completely new to me. Not having any idea of what criteria to evaluate these speakers on, I did what any good judge would do: I acted like I was listening and oathed to myself that I would name my first newborns “Thurgood” and “Ito.”

Next up was the extemperaneous round. Speakers had to prepare a persuasive speech on a topic given to them only 30 minutes prior. Subjects included politics, politics, and the decline of tourism in Portugal—things that I deeply care nothing about.

Today I shared my recent judging experience, provided some insightful observations based on that experience, and demonstrated my unconditional luv for Tupac. The day was also filled with tons of puns and a 2-star hotel, but a judge-l-man never tells all.

All Natural Job Opportunities

I found these job ads on Idealist.org for a new health foods store in the Chicagoland area. Let me know if you're interested. I'll message you the link.

ASSOCIATE U-BOAT TECHNICIAN

Position type: 1/3 time

Job ID: 60568

Position Overview:
As a member of our Retail Team, your role will include servicing the store’s fleet of u-boats.

Responsibilities & Duties:

1. Comply with federal regulations and policies regarding organic cart transport systems.
   
2. Follow advancements in u-boat theory and its application in holistic retail environments.
   
3. Educate fellow staff on historical significance of mid-20th century submarine warfare.
   
4. Perform other duties as assigned by Retail Team Leader, Associate Retail Team Leader, or Elias.

Requirements:

1. A desire to work with blue objects.
   
2. A desire to not knock over wine displays with u-boats.
   
3. Ability to resist taking off the “U” part of the boat and using it as a sword.
   
4. Lift loads exceeding 500 lbs unassisted.

BANANA MARKETING SPECIALIST

Position type: Crucial

Job ID: 60449

Position Overview:
As a member of our Promotions Team, your role will include marketing bananas, marketing products with natural banana flavoring, and marketing products that promote banana consumption.

Responsibilities & Duties:

1. Surprise and delight customers with 'gorilla' marketing techniques.
   
2. Maximize banana size with company ray gun.
   
3. Maximize banana quantity with company duplicator gun.
   
4. Cater to and support banana culture in national, regional, and store programs.

Requirements:

1. Ability to market yellow fruit proactively.
   
2. Minimum of 2 years banana-eating experience or equivalent of 5000 consumed bananas.
   
3. Must be currently of (or evolved from) the hominidae family.
   
   

If I Ruled the World

Ruling the world. We’ve all thought about it. Tears for Fears confirmed it. Nas made a song or two about it. Even I, during long stretches in the dairy cooler, have ruminated on how I—if given the job—would run this crazy place we call world.

So, if I ruled the world . . .

• School districts would have salary caps. And for every dollar a district goes over its cap, it would have to give $10,000 to a neighboring district in need.
  
  
• Tavis Smiley and Barak Obama would trade places. This would allow Tavis to speak while standing up and Obama to host a radio show with Cornell West. A pretty sweet deal for both.
  
  
• The Fugees would still be making music together. Get to work. Ain’t none of you dead.
  
  
• The highest salaries would go to the most important jobs: teachers and retail workers.
  
  
• Noise would be quieter.
  
  
• Silence would be louder.
  
  
• 1996 Tercels would be exempt from speeding tickets.

I’d ask how you would rule, but I’m pretty confident that you’d pretty much do the same stuff I would.

Also, I would only rule the world for two years. I’m not trying to Mayor Daley this thing. Give me two years, take notice of the vast improvements I’ve made, then reunite the madness that is Smiley and West.

My Review of 'Black Swan'

A psychological thriller set in the world of New York City strip clubs, Black Swan stars Natalie Portman as Nina, an exotic dancer who discovers she is the mutant lovechild of giant swans: one white and one black. Besides grappling with the obvious oh-my-god-my-parents-are-birds thing, Nina also struggles with her newfound biracial identity, and like all who are haunted by mixed heritage, she questions the worth of her existence.

Portman gives a wonderfully disturbing performance. From her climatic girl-on-girl “homework” to her willingness to undergo swan leg implant surgery for the Kafkaesque role, her passionate portrayal of a mulatto bird woman is as real as it gets. Black Swan will—without a doubt—alter Portman’s career and sex life.

Director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler) does what he does best: craft artistic, edgy films about “don’t ask, don’t tell” matters. With Swan, he unabashedly handles the delicate subject of mixed-race bird freaks with care. Especially attentive is his decision to score the film to a chopped and screwed version of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

Black Swan is the most important movie about whiteness, blackness, and birdness this year.

Red No. 40 is the New Vitamin D

The cover story in this Sunday's Chicago Tribune is on the potential harm of artificial food coloring. Supposedly, research suggests that the synthetic hues used in food are linked to rashes and attention disorders, especially in children. This infuriates me. I’ve eaten colorful food-like stuff my entire life and…wait, what was I writing about?

Anyways, the title of the article asks, "Are Food Dyes Worth the Risk?" Duh! People, come on already. You can’t live your life in a cave and expect to become the star of car insurance commercials. You have to go out and take risks. Besides, it’s not even that big a deal. I mean, if it just affects kids, who cares? They don’t have jobs. They aren’t the president.

For those of you concerned about "the future," allow me to give you a scientific history lesson. Humans evolved. The ones who survived were good. The ones who died were bad or old. At one point in time, every person was lactose intolerant. Then, some genius was born with a mutation that allowed that genius to consume animal milk without puking. That genius had sex with lots of people. This filled the planet with milk-drinking humans. This is how we came to be. It’s called survival of the best, and it makes us better, attractiver, and smarterer people (trust me, cave chicks were not that hot). My point is, we should be encouraging genetic mutations, not playing it safe. And yes, there are still people who are lactose intolerant today, but they are ugly.

Nowadays, you have all these books saying this and that about food. And they do it to the movies too. All that stuff is nonsense! In the movies, the real ones, do you see people in the future eating vegetables? No, only food from tubes. The next thing you know, these "authors" will be telling us we shouldn’t be eating the packaging the food comes in! I got to hand it to Morgan Spurlock though. That guy was on to something. Still, he was too weak. People like him need to die. If you can’t flourish on a diet of McDonald’s and Go-Gurt, that's fine, but don't get in the way of superhuman evolution. Besides, we need to protect the food product industry. If it disappears, how are we supposed to eat? What jobs will we have? You can’t expect people to farm in ties and pant suits. And even if we did farm, how would we know when to stop? And what if it rains?

Blue No. 1 and Orange B are not killing me. They are making me, you, and our species stronger. And if I have to endure some itching, so be it. I just hope that my dietary commitment to the superhuman is enough to combat the ill intentions of those who eat food that comes out of the ground.

Ban This, Lousy Bastards

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and all that David Blaine crap. But that stuff bores me. So instead I’ll tell about last month when I went to Philadelphia.

I had a morning flight out of O’Hare. But not too early. That would kill me. People think that because I run I get up really early. But I don’t. I really don’t. Anyway, I got to the airport with plenty of time, and the security line was a breeze. If you really wanna know the truth, I kind of like the airport and security lines. I mean it. I really do. You get to see all types of jerks—unless you’re one of those bastards who have their own jet. God I hope you’re not one of those bastards.

I spent most of the flight eating my bananas and reading some corny book. The guy who sat next to me kept mumbling something to himself about leaving the foils on the subway. Crazy sunuvabitch. You would have liked him though. You really would. He wasn’t one of those goddamn jobbers who yaps your goddamn ear off the entire goddamn flight. I can’t stand those bastards, I really can’t. I think they should have non-talking flights. I mean, if nobody can smoke on the goddamn plane, nobody should be able to talk on the goddamn plane. All that yapping could interfere with the plane’s communication signals or something.

The first thing I did when I got to Philadelphia, I rented a goddamn car. They gave me a Dodge something. What a lousy car. The only good thing about it was the goddamn satellite radio.

I didn’t have anything special to do, so I decided to drive to Camden, New Jersey. I saw 40 guys in the middle of this one street, wearing their caps with the peaks to the back and to the side, horsing around, shooting the crap and drinking eightballs. I thought about asking them if they know where all the ducks go in the winter, but they seemed like the type of guys that might get sore about it—so I didn’t.

After driving for 300 goddamn years, I checked into my hotel back in old Philadelphia. Boy, what a room. It had a kitchenette and two flat-screened televisions and a bed with 800 pillows and everything. You could even order Super Nintendo games and play them through your goddman television if you wanted. I thought about ordering Super Punch—Out!!, but you have to be in the mood for that type of thing. Instead, I had a drink and watched Teach: Tony Danza on two goddman TVs.

The next day I went to the wedding that I came out to Philadelphia for. For Chrissake, you really didn’t think I was one of those phony bastards who just goes to Philadelphia because they goddamn feel like it, did ya?

At the reception, I had a couple of cocktails and chewed the rag with this guy at my table. We talked about old Schopenhauer and his goddamn suffering. Just for the hell of it, I asked the guy if he knew where the goddamn ducks go in the winter. He said the ducks didn’t need to go nowhere because it was always sunny in Philadelphia. What a prince.

The last day of my trip, I didn’t have anything real special to do, so I decided to do some pull ups. People never do pull ups. I swear to God they don’t. They’re always too busy raving about life or trying to imitate characters from coming-of-age novels they read in high school.

My flight back to Chicago was freakin' grand. I finished that corny book. And when I got home, I almost gave Ol’ Dirty Bastard a buzz. But he’s dead. That’s all I’m going to tell you about.

I’m No Bruce Willis

Have you heard of "the illusion of upward social mobility"? According to this idea, the social class that you are born into is the social class in which you will remain. In other words, the American Dream of starting from scratch and making it big is a myth.

Maybe this explains why I work in the dairy cooler at a grocery store. It may not pay much, and the hours can be unfavorable, but it’s an honest paycheck—and in a world where occupation and ascribed social status are synonymous, it may be my destiny.

The thing is, when I think of destinies, I think of self-sacrificing heroics, like jumping into a volcano to save the dinosaurs or what Bruce Willis does at the end of Armageddon, not hourly jobs. But, as a recent Pew study reports, destinies, as thought of by 72% of wireless Internet users, are as much practical as they are heroic. Bruce Willis did not just fulfill his duty as a hero. He also, quite pragmatically, saved Earth and the human race.

Now, I’m no Bruce Willis. Statistically speaking, that guy is average. I think I’m more of an outlier. Practicality seems to out power the heroics of my fortune as a dairyman by about 10,000:1. And this is fine with me. I’m a practical guy. My job’s pay and status align well with my lack of desires. I won’t want a car payment. I don’t want a dog. I don’t want to save Earth.

My not wanting of things and predisposition to working in retail became apparent when I met Dennis. Dennis and I met in front of the dairy case. I made a baba ghanoush recommendation. He made a playing card disappear. The next thing I knew I was in an unmarked business complex interviewing with his boss for an opportunity to sell Tupperware insurance.

BOSS: If you woke up tomorrow and didn’t have to worry about money, what would you do?

ME: I’d probably run a little, read some, and keep busy by working somewhere where I had access to food.

BOSS: Sooooooo, you’d do the same thing you’re doing now?

ME: ...Yeah, I guess. (Though there would probably be a considerable more amount of time dedicated to grilling vegetables and listening to Eazy-E records, be he didn’t need to know that.)

Unimpressed with the promise of making big money and a difference in the world by way of plastic container protection plans, I decided that getting solicited for a life path by an amateur magician in front of the humus display was probably not the best way to upgrade destinies. So instead, I went one worse by checking in with family members who had no idea what type of fate I was looking for.

My grandma, who made a life out of taking jobs that nobody else wanted, told me that Best Buy was hiring. I told her that was fantastic. Then I told her that I already had a retail job.

Understanding my lack of interest in a lateral move, my mom gave me a napkin with a web address scribbled on it. “Check this out,” she said. “This guy said they are looking for good people.”

I checked it out. It was a job posting for a senior-level helicopter repair technician. I imagined myself in a baby blue jumpsuit wearing a tool belt that held really tiny hammers and saying things like “Here’s our problem. The rear hemi axel blade is low on trans capacitor fluid.” I daydreamt a little more, hoping that the helicopters I would get to work on would be of the stealth variety, but then I reminded myself that my publishing internships probably didn’t qualify me to fix flying vehicles, let alone flying vehicles that could disappear.

With family leads shot, I revisited Craigslist—and though it may be great for finding slightly-used, third-generation, 4 GB pink iPods with minor scratches, I don’t recommend putting much stock in the ‘pin the tale on the destiny magic 8 ball’ app. Mine kept coming up as Assistant Manager at Nike Outlet Store (aka no thanks, but will reconsider in 6 months).

Only after this series of events did I realize that this was just the Societal Godpeople’s way of getting me to accept my vocational decree. And with that, I'm able to strut to my aluminum-encased, 30-degree office, taking solace in the fact that the Government won'’t be calling on this guy to save the planet when the jig is up. Hopefully, they’ll call Dennis. I heard he’s good people.