opinion

Black Pepper is the most overrated spice on the rack.

There it is. I said it. I'm sure many of you have been thinking that for a long long time, but I've got the stones to throw it out there. (p.inc.)

Fuck Black Pepper.

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After re-reading that post, I realize that I might be starting to lose it a little.

I got a call from another legal temp agency last week. Legal temp work presents an interesting paradox: on one hand, it pays by the hour and it pays fairly well; on the other hand, it makes me feel like an idiot / drain on society / complete waste of a functioning brain. I decided not to call them back.

Since I had originally sent that agency my resume a few months ago, I felt bad not returning her call, so the next day I waited until after business hours and left her a voicemail. The next day she left me a message asking me to come in for an interview. (I've done a few of these "interviews" before. The agency basically wants to meet in person for 5 minutes just to make sure that there isn't anything extremely wrong you. (because applicants are selected for these jobs by resume alone, we never meet the actual client before the work begins))

Her message continued: after asking me to call her back, she said that her next available appointment was on July 26. (in case anyone hasn't been keeping up with the date lately, last week was June 5th)

I called her back today, and she confirmed that she had not misspoke in her message. Her next available appointment is at 10:30 am on Thursday July 26th. Again, let me emphasize that these appointments take minutes, and there are probably at least 20 other agencies like this one in Chicago. I told her to put me down for 1:30 pm on the 26th. Although, I'm afraid that if I'm still doing this type of work in two months, there might actually be something extremely wrong with me.

I've been thinking about becoming a mango farmer. I love mangos.

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If you're looking to get into Hollywood, this is a great time to be middle eastern or british. There's gotta be a lot of demand for extras who can play terrorists in movies and TV shows these days. Even those mini documentary shows on history channel could use some Arab looking extras. (this could be my chance to make a few bucks in the acting game)

Or if I was British, I could just pretend to be an asshole and probably land a gig as the next "jerk" judge on some type of talent competition TV show. I saw a little bit of "America's Got Talent" today, and I couldn't believe it. They march all of these young kids out there (I'm talking 8-12 year old kids) and the British judge is a complete asshole to them. Much worse than Simon on American Idol.

For example, this week, a little girl went up and sang the same song as last week's winner. (In my opinion, she had a great voice, but was not a great performer) After the performance was over, the British judge just laid into her, and this girl was probably 8 or 9 years old. He said something like, "Last week's winner had personality, she was cute, she was interesting, and she could sing... you are the opposite of all of those things."

We're talking about a 9 year old girl here! I was embarassed for the network.

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I'm taking an online CLE course right now. For those of you not familiar with this, it's a way for the state bar association to steal money from attorneys every year. $100 is the extreme discount price for first year attorneys to get a 15 hour lesson in common sense.

"So you're saying that I can't represent the husband AND wife in a divorce? That's a conflict of interest? Gee, I would have never guessed..."

I'm going turn up the volume on the training course right now, and I'm going to tell you exactly what the instructor is talking about at this very moment:

(I'm going to paraphrase what he says in this paragraph) ""If you want pull certain dockets, use Pacer, and if we have any problems with the Pacer system online, the instructor encourages us to use their help desk. Rest assured that they've worked hard to make sure that their helpdesk is actually helpful. He says that many government agency help desks are not helpful, but Pacer has really put in time to make sure that their help desk is in fact helpful. The help desk phone number is ___ ___ _____, then he gave us the first and last names of the three people responsible for setting up the help desk. If you set up an account with Pacer, don't share your username and password with people you don't trust, because it is possible that they could log on using your account and rack up $.08 per page charges.""

I swear, I turned up the volume and paraphrased what the guy said. No bullshit. I didn't listen for 20 minutes and type the dumbest thing, I turned the volume up and started typing.

Oh man, the next speaker is a magistrate. (a magistrate is kind of like a poor man's judge) and he immediately declares that a magistrate performs many of the same functions as a real district court judge. He then lists the functions shared by the two in detail.

Every 12 minutes they give me a two minute window to verify that I'm still in front of my computer and paying attention to the course.

ok, that's enough pointless unentertaining rambling for one night, good night.