employer relations

A wise man at the office gave me some advice on blogging the other day. He said that, due to my youth, I should be cautious about what I write. He told me to keep in mind that future employers will be searching for information about me using the web. They will probably look at my photos on websites like facebook, and if they find my blog, they might be interested to read what I have (or had) to say. I'm thankful to him for this advice because I wouldn't have thought about this otherwise. Upon further thought, though, instead of just being cautious, I'd like to communicate with my future employer:

To the sir, sirs, or ma'am this may concern,

I won't trouble you with the general course my life has taken; ie, schools I attended and previous jobs. All of this should be on my resume, which you're probably holding in your hands right now as you sit in your nice corner office. That's assuming, of course, everything hasn't gone to Virtual Reality by now. What company or firm would waste their money on offices when they could just strap on a pair of VR goggles, and go to work virtually? Not to mention the savings on clothes. The CEO could run a shareholders meeting by just sitting at home in his rope and slippers, while everyone else attending (virtually) sees the executive in one of his web-customizable fitted suits.  My assumption that you're holding my resume stands on another assumption; that paper is still in use. By now, I'm sure that after the successful two-term Obama administration, the number of young liberals has multiplied and they've finally gotten America environmentally conscious enough to save the rain forests by stopping paper use altogether (citing Fern Gully as a visionary artifact, right up there with the works of HG Wells and Al Gore). Of course, the hologram boom aided this transition as much as the liberals. Now, when you apply for a job, you just send your resume as a holographic file straight to your prospective employer via bluetooth (connectivity is now universal) by pressing a button on your wrist (or the side of your temple, whatever's "hip").  Actually, it's probably becoming more common to see a blue shimmer in someone's grin; an actual blue tooth that does the job that bluetooth headsets used to.  Some paranoid businesses still insist on storage basements for hard copies of everything, but I'm sure your faith in technology has overcome these fears of the past; that's what attracted me to your company in the first place. Actually, that's probably how you're reading this blog right now, by hologram, which is entirely hands-free. Hands are so twentieth century. The only things you need your hands for now are eating and driving. Speaking of driving, cars don't drive on roads anymore, do they (unless they have to)? Of course not, the air is now their autobahn. Popular Mechanics was right after all, and boy am I glad. The only intelligent debate that could be heard among my fellow third grade classmates and I was, "are there going to be flying cars when we grow up?" Whoever said no didn't get to sit at the cool table at lunch. I was disheartened when I "grew up" to find cars still on the ground. But thanks to Kia, now the world leaders in automobile technology and luxury cars, my boyhood dreams have come true.
So, employer, why not make my adulthood dreams come true? Hire me. You won't regret it. Of course, regret is also something of the past now. Memory can be erased as easily as those old dry-erase boards, now also replaced by the hologram. Speaking of memory, and since, by now, you've probably arranged a live interview with me (by live I mean virtual), can you deliver a message to me?

To future Jon:

You made it! Whoever this employer is, I'm sure it's at the top of whatever field you've chosen. Remember how hard it was to decide what you wanted to do? I don't know how that turned out yet, so don't ruin it for me! jk.

I want to take this time to remind you of a couple things:
Don't forget who you are, Jon. All this money that they are about to offer you, which I'm sure is an exorbitant amount, is just money.
Don't forget where you came from, Jon. So, don't forget me. I am you once. Remember that.
Also, I don't know what memories you've erased by now, so remember that the Frank Thomas rookie card with the error in his name, along with the MXPX "Chickmagnet" single, are buried near the water spigot in the back yard at Mom's (old) house. Face away from the spigot, take six steps forward, and four right. If you've somehow grown or enhanced your body with bionic limbs, remember you buried them at 15; adjust your steps accordingly. They should both be worth thousands now, which I'm sure isn't much to you now that you're at the top. You might as well, at least for posterity sake (although, unfortunately, you'll have to use your hands).

Employer, I hope you make the right decision. I'll thank you for delivering this message when I see you.

Jon Allison

Jim Zorn for Gubernor

You know what word I don't get? gubernatorial.

If you've never seen this word before, here's a little SAT quiz:

president is to presidential as governor is to...

you got it: governatorial. Even as I type the word, my browser has underlined it with an everlasting red ellipses because Firefox has been hoodwinked with the rest of the English speaking world. Now, I'm a lingual descriptivist, as opposed to a prescriptivist; meaning I think we tell the dictionary what to say, not the other way around. That's why it gets revised every so often, and words like 'phat' get added in and definitions like 'bundle of sticks' get taken out (at least it should be); dudes, you know what I'm referring to.
Evidently, gubernatorial goes back to the Latin word for governor: gubernator. If that doesn't make you think of Arnold, I don't know what will (save for those videos to your left).

There's a scene in the Truman Show where the head producer/director of the show (Ed Harris) is doing an interview on TV. The interviewer asks why Truman has never figured out that his whole life is a ruse? The director answers, "We accept the world around us; simple as that."

That's a powerful statement; the trouble is that it's generally true. That's why it's time to yank Webster over by the twisted ear and tell him that it's time to make things right. We can't just keep teaching kids in Civics that when someone runs for governor, he runs what's called a gubernatorial campaign. At least switch the b out for a v. We'll go for the u when it's time.

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For some reason I laid in bed last night for about an hour just remembering. By just concentrating hard with my eyes closed I was able to remember some moments from my childhood clearer than I had in a long time. It was almost like when Peter (Pan) realized that the food really was there; he just wasn't believing hard enough and it wasn't until he closed his eyes really tight that he started to smell it. A lot of these memories were about my next door neighbor, Evan Balaban. He was a Jewish kid that went to Norfolk Collegiate and was the closest neighborhood friend I ever had. We would wash our parents cars for money ($5 to split). We would go to the bread store with my mom and roam the aisles picking out goodies to buy and split; although, we usually just ended up with a 2 liter of Mt. Dew, the holy grail for hyper young boys. We played little league baseball on the same team from when I was 7 until I was 13. We also played a lot of Duke Nukem and WCW/NWO Revenge. Evan was a little bit of a cry-baby and would run home if things weren't going his way, but I remember always just laughing at it.

Evan moved away to Virginia Beach when I was in 7th grade. I remember going to spend the night at his house once after that; all I remember about that night is QB Club '98 on N64. I never saw him again after that. Our friendship faded just like that. Maybe boyhood friendships aren't deep enough to last 30 miles of separation. The last memory I have of him living next door involved was he and I playing with his black lab, sitting on his couch. I had just told him that my dad was cheating on my mom and that he wasn't living at home anymore. This is all I remember:

"Why doesn't he just dump the other woman and get back together with your mom?" Evan asked.

I looked down at the ground and said, "I don't know."

The reason I remember this was that Evan asked me his question with such a 'duh' look on his face; the mouth open, one-eye-squinted look. He didn't understand what was so difficult about what my dad needed to do.
And neither did I.

I wish the ghost of Christmas past would visit me so I could walk around my memories and see them as who I am now. Hopefully he wouldn't show me a game that other people are playing where the goal of the game is to guess my name based on clues describing a despicable person. Maybe that was just in Scrooge's case.

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Here are my thoughts on the Redskins (by popular request):

I like that Jim Zorn's close friends call him the "Z Man."



It's crucial to notice the shorts here. While he is the head coach, Zorn will also be assuming the duties of quarterbacks coach. I think the first thing he'll do for Jason Campbell's development is force him to wear the shorts. I can't imagine a more comfortable passing pocket.

bleemcast!

I have never been a blogger before, and I never planned to be a blogger. Two months ago you couldn't have paid me to blog, anything less than $5 a word. Now, I'm doing it for free. I don't know if this will last because I don't know if it will be interesting to you, unless you're bored or my mother. Hell, the real reason I'm even doing this is because I'm bored; so, pull your self-esteem up by your bootstraps, take a deep breath and realize that you are nothing to me. If I had something better to do I'd do it; believe me. If I looked down at my black leather shoes and noticed a slight blemish anywhere on them, I swear I'd drop this keyboard right now and run to the nearest mother-figure in my life, and ask her to do something about it.


But as I said I'm bored. Today is Friday, and for most people who work full-time in typical American office settings, Friday is an exciting day for obvious reasons. Here in the newsroom at Learfield Communications in Jefferson City, Missouri, however, the boredom is excruciating. I have literally run out of websites to surf; which brings me here. I am so bored I will now create new websites for me to surf. Even the reporters, here in the newsroom, are running out of work to do. As Greg Sceviour well knows, Jefferson City is the capital of Missouri, which is why this newsroom exists. The reporters here run a radio broadcasting service called Missourinet, which broadcasts the news three times every hour from 6-6 to all of its radio station affiliates across Missouri, which is around 60. They cover the legislature at the capital. Today, unfortunately, the house and the senate are not in session; so, the reporters spend their Fridays trying to scrape stories together for the weekend for whoever is broadcasting. Steve Walsh, one of the reporters, has now come over to my desk, hit me in the back and is attempting to insult me because he's bored. Maybe that's a sign. Steve Walsh is attempting to communicate with whoever will listen, out of boredom (he is now harassing the other reporters). Am I not doing the same thing? Is that what "reporter-types" do? Maybe I'm a "reporter-type." Then again Steve Walsh continually recycles this joke whenever he beckons someone to follow him: "Walk this way. If I (now out of the corner of his mouth) had to walk this way, I wouldn't need the corn starch," followed by laughter (his). I've never seen any one show any signs of understanding this joke, and I am confident I never will; though not for lack of opportunity.


This day is possibly so excruciatingly boring only because it's contrasted by two news-filled days preceding it. I attended no less than four press conferences (starring the likes of the Governor (pictured right, peeking in) and the US Secretary of Education) the last two days and shot tons of photos and video, which I edited and posted onto the stories on the Missourinet website. On the other hand, today I searched the web for rumors concerning the next Superman movie and became so enraged at a comment some dude made suggesting Michael Bay direct it and The Rock play Superman that I actually commented.


I guess those of you who have read this far are wondering what the hell bleeming is. Well, this story begins on 9.9.99, the fall of my sophomore year of high school. I walked out the front door of Norfolk Christian High (or summer camp) thinking about only one thing: Sega Dreamcast. It was a Thursday, the day before my annual sleep-over birthday party and Dreamcast was being released. I wasn't going to have mine until the next day, as a birthday gift, which was just in time for the sleep-over. I imagined all my friends would sit in awe as we all took turns duking it out in Ready2Rumble Boxing at 4am, hopped up on Mountain Dew and onion dip. The reality was slightly different: Gabe Cohen tripped on the power chord, ruining my copy of Hydro Thunder, followed by Bryce Vitasek kicking me in the ribs for beating him in some fighting game. But back to Thursday; My mom sidled up to the curb that Thursday in her 1993 tan Aerostar and as the door slid back, I spotted it; my Dreamcast, a day early! What started that day was a three year dedication to video games. I was a gamer before, but not like this. Dreamcast was my life. Sheldon Vanauken claims we all search for timelessness in life; well, let’s just say when I was playing Dreamcast the only way I knew the time was if my Dreamcast told me so (it would decorate certain games at certain times of the year).


Fast-forward a couple years. Things weren't looking so good for the Dreamcast; PS2 and XBOX had come out and were quickly stealing its customers. Sega tried dropping the price lower and lower, but while more people bought Dreamcasts, Sega lost money. In the Dreamcast's waning days, bleemcast! (the exclamation point is actually part of the title) was released. Bleemcast! allowed Dreamcast systems to play certain Playstation games like Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo. I immediately knew this was a bad sign for the Dreamcast. If a video game system offers a way for gamers to play another system's games, that's the sweaty towel being thrown in the ring; and it hurt. I truly loved my Dreamcast; the last time I would ever love a video game system. Hell, maybe if Dreamcast was still around I'd be gaming today.

I call this blog Internal Bleeming because I feel a little bit like my Dreamcast when bleemcast! came out. All that little, loud, white system wanted to do was make kids happy. All of a sudden those kids are jamming Playstation games into its mouth expecting it to help them kill Revolver Ocelot. The 128-bit processor wasn’t good enough for you? Power Stone wasn’t good enough? Not even the VMU?
I feel a little strange out here in Jefferson City, like someone is jamming mach3 razors and ties down my throat; and while I don’t think my fate will be that of my Dreamcast, which only gets to see the light of day a couple times a year, things are changing.


At this point, you’ve probably checked to make sure this isn’t actually a Live Journal (or Dead). Maybe it is. Just remember to put on Juliana Theory's Understand This is a Dream album the next time you read this and if the CD doesn't already have enough stars on it for you, draw some.