It’s Monday morning and everything in the World is normal. Which is to say that it’s completely screwed up. Spinach is public-enemy number one in America, Muslims around the world are committing acts of violence to protest the Pope’s suggestion that Islam is a religion of violence, and the Alpha Centauri system still refuses to recall its planetary ambassador, Tom Cruise.

For me, though, it’s another thrilling week of job hunting. Job hunting is great fun, if “fun” is redefined to include shelving books in a library and several outpatient medical procedures.

Job hunting is just like being a sales rep with a single, dubious product, and no budget for swanky client lunches. Some people lie outright about their qualifications, which is very naughty, but everyone has to inflate their own personal wonderfulness a bit in order to get an interview, much less a job. And prospective employers do the same with their open positions. It’s important to remember that while you may be slightly under-qualified for the job you will eventually get, you will probably be underpaid and unsatisfied, too.

Today my “office” is a neighborhood coffee shop that offers free wireless. I’m here because there aren’t any neighborhood pubs that offer free wireless. Which is probably better for my job search. I’m not the only person using this joint as an office: there are some guys who get here early, set up a complete suite of office equipment at their tables, and stay all day. I can only survive until my personal environmental irritation threshold is exceeded. I have been hovering just below this level for over an hour, now, because I am (a) hungry but too cheap to buy anything, and (b) about to go into kidney failure but too grossed out by the bathroom. The threshold has just been blown to smithereens by the arrival of I-don’t-own-a-toothbrush-but-I-breathe-heavily-man, so I’m on my way out the door.

I’m going to plug a post from last year. I think it was funny, to begin with, but someone added a comment that just kills me.

Here’s the post, and here’s the comment.