Listen up, dish washer

I gave my major appliances a long pep talk this morning, but I’m not sure I got through. The TV and washer seemed particularly apathetic, as if they’ve resigned themselves to a final resting place in the garage. They're not even trying, dammit. Clearly they don’t understand what a blow it can be to an unemployed person when a trusted device gives a final shudder and works no more.

I found out how tough that can be this weekend. Last Thursday, I’d laid a hand on my IMac screen to slide it back a few inches. I must’ve used too much force, because I heard a SNAP!, and the screen went haywire. It was clear I’d crunched the LCD screen of my 18-month-old, much-beloved machine.

My wife managed to snag an appointment at the Apple store’s Genius Bar, where you can consult for free with a technician. So at least we got the bad news quickly: A repair would’ve run over $1,000, or two-thirds the cost of a comparable new unit. “Just buy another monitor and look at that instead,” said my genius. He wasn't wearing robes, and lacked a long, white beard. But I'm sure he meditates daily.

Best Buy had a monitor on sale for a mere $200. So far, not so bad.

But then we decided to do something about my phone, which is falling apart faster than Britney Spears' career. $125 later, I had a new Blackberry.

Then disaster struck: We came home to find a house where you could’ve baked bread in the living room. The dogs were panting, the room actually looked steamy, and the air intake for the central air conditioning system was making a horrible noise. Clearly the system had broken and, on the first truly hot weekend of the summer, had decided not to do its job.

We managed to find a technician who could come take a look on Sunday (I thought about my genius from Apple, figuring he could do anything, but had failed to get his superhero contact info. I was going to shine a spotlight on the clouds with a silhouette of an IMac, a la Batman, but didn't have a spotlight handy).

As I described the symptoms over the phone, the technician loud out a “Oh, no.” Clearly this was not going to be good.

It’s not. We’ll probably be hit with a cost in four figures. It won’t kill us, but there will be considerable bleeding.

Hence my pep talk. I think the toaster’s shaping up, and the frig is clearly doing its part. But I worry about the others, including the gas grill.

Oh, well. Time to have a stern heart-to-heart with the car.

A Twitter of relief amidst the tragedy

You’re probably wondering what the death of Michael Jackson has to do with my now-chronic state of underemployment. But this has less to do with the King of Pop than with how his death came to light. And, amid the tragedy, that surprising process provides some encouraging news about my career plans.

You swells who have a job probably weren’t avidly scouting Twitter yesterday afternoon, as per the norm for the rest of us. So you missed the first news flash from one of the most followed parties on the medium, Breaking News, a Twitter-based news service: “REPORT: MICHAEL JACKSON TAKEN TO LOS ANGELES HOSPITAL IN CARDIAC ARREST.” It was posted yesterday around mid-afternoon, or around 3 o’clock E.S.T.

Eleven additional flashes from Breaking News would follow in quick succesion, including one refuting a rumor that Jackson had died of a drug overdose.

Then, an hour after the first report, came the stunner: FLASH -- LOS ANGELES -- "KING OF POP" MICHAEL JACKSON HAS DIED.

That was around the time that the New York Times reported via Twitter that Jackson had been hospitalized.

Indeed, at 5:51 I got a news alert e-mailed to me from the Times, saying the same thing.

I got a nearly identical e-mail alert at that time from CNN.

By then, Breaking News was offering the few details it could unearth about Jackson’s death. But it had definitely reported that Jackson was dead.

I didn’t know which to believe, the New York Times and CNN, two titans of the business, or this Breaking News upstart, which was relying secondhand on reports from media like TMZ.com. But I knew that this event would either validate Twitter and its specialists as a news medium, or underscore why we need our old reliables to keep us informed.

Finally, at about 6:30, some two hours after Breaking News had reported Jackson’s death, the Times and CNN sent news alerts stating that the King of Pop had passed. The reports were secondhand, based on Associated Press reporting.

Twitter, in short, had kicked the mainstream media’s butt. Indeed, I was annoyed at the Times and CNN for taking me on a rollercoaster with their mistakes-by-omission and lateness. Was Jackson indeed dead, as I’d learned somewhere around 4, or was that a mistake, as the Big Two had indicated? I didn’t need the emotional tumult.

So what does this have to do with my state of employment?

Everyday I’m looking for the check in the mail. When it comes, I’ll crack open a bottle of Champagne and celebrate that I have officially been paid to Twitter.

It’s still freelance, and it’s not that much. But, as yesterday sadly proved, Twitter is a journalistic medium of the future. Print isn’t disappearing, but social media are rivaling it in terms of immediacy, and even accuracy, given its nature (the group-report aspect of it tends to be self-policing).

I’m glad I have a hold on it, albeit by my fingernails. It’s nice to have any sort of affiliation with a form of journalism—and, as yesterday proved, it definitely is—that’s growing in use and reputation.

My cats wouldn't know an extra virgin

With journalism in a freefall, I’ve been forced to consider alternate careers. Number One on my list is being an heir, but there are so few openings in that field these days. Which means I’ll have to fall back on the obvious area of job growth, cat culinary consulting. I could save the pet foods companies a bundle of money by injecting a healthy does of reality into what they’re putting on the shelves for Whiskers and Snowball.

Right now, for instance, Purina is pushing a new line of Fancy Feast meals that are based on the cuisine of Tuscany. “Our modern take on Tuscan traditions,” explains the promotional copy. My five cats enjoy “Top Chef” as much as the next feline, but they could care less if the rice in their meal is long grain versus the bleached white variety. (Besides, isn’t farro the grain of Tuscany?) And don’t even bother asking them about olive-oil preferences. The Tuscan connection just doesn’t add anything for them. They’d wolf it down if the can label read, “Unidentified organs and other garbage pieces of animal flesh.”

Nor do my four dogs care whether they’re getting Campfire Trout Feast, Grammy’s Pot Pie, or Mediterranean Banquet (again with the olive oil!), some of the varieties we offer them. From careful study of what’s left in the bowls when they come back into the kitchen, I’ve learned that our pack tends to divide anything ingestible—nay, the whole world--into two large categories: Food, and non-food. They’ll eat either, but prefer the former, especially if it started out on a person’s plate.

As David Letterman once astutely remarked, his dogs spend the dog rooting through garbage and lapping water out of toilets. They could really care less that the food in their bowl contains no cereal filler.

My cat, the punk rocker

A common danger of unemployment is convincing yourself there's no need to pay someone for work you could do yourself. Preparing meals, cutting the lawn and washing the car may be fine. But dentistry, tax preparation and boiler repair are best left to those who know precisely what they're doing. Topping that list has to be pet grooming.

One of our cats, Simon, has always been prone to dreadlocks. We've kept him from turning too Bob Marley-ish by getting him foo-foo trims called lion cuts, where the groomer buzzes off all his fur except for what's on his head, feet and tail, making him look like a mini king of the jungle. We then pay them about $75, and Simon looks bitchin' for a few months.

This time, my wife announced, we were going to save that money by trimming Simon our selves. Then came the question that should be a warning to every under-employed person out there: How hard could it be? We had clippers. It was just a matter of running it through his fur.

Turns out it was like diapering a tiger cub. Simon fought with all he had, making us wonder if the groomer used one of those dart rifles you see on "Wild Kingdom" to sedate him first.

Even when the blood flow could be staunched sufficiently for me to get a hold on him before I grew too weak, the dreadlocks proved impossible to shear.

Simon finally fought his way free and fled, no doubt to secure a weapon of some sort. We figured we had no choice but to surrender, given my blood loss by then.

And now he looks as if he was no stranger to CBGB's. Here's his picture, below. The moral: Don't try this at home.

Like being behind the scenes of 'ER'

Being unemployed, you tend to be volunteered as a responder to any family situation, no matter how silly, vexing or time-wasting. Yesterday was the classic example.

It started off as what seemed to be a true crisis. Spring made a surprise appearance in New York, with temperatures climbing to a record-tying 69 degrees. My wife and I decided to enjoy it by driving into the country.

But halfway into the outbound trip, she fielded a call from the son of her father’s girlfriend. Her father, 89 years old, was in the emergency room. He’d taken himself there because of pain in his fingers, explained the caller, Javier, whom we’d never met. Because of language problems, we couldn’t get any details, but feared that we’d be dealing with a serious heart problem.

Then we got the hospital’s input, though it could’ve come from Larry David. My father-in-law had gone to the emergency room not because of pain, but because the tips of his fingers were tingling. Three weeks earlier, he’d explained to one of the nurses, he’d gone out without his gloves during a cold snap. I must have frostbite, he informed her.

Amazingly, the ER suggested he get an MRI to see if that was the case.

We trucked into Queens to be of assistance, despite an occasional suggestion—from me, if you hadn’t guessed—that frostbite might be a little far-fetched. Indeed, it seemed bizarre, given that we weren’t wearing coats. Might it just be another in a long, long string of hypochondriacal panics on her father's part?

But we dutifully drove to Elhurst Hospital, one of New York’s more infamous institutions. The ER care there is top-notch, perhaps because the staff is so fire-hardened. It’s the facility where gunshot victims are usually taken, as we’d seen firsthand in earlier visits. It also serves as the hospital for Riker’s Island, the city's notorious prison. We had no idea of its adeptness at treating frostbite, but confidence was high.

They allowed us back into the treatment area, where my father-in-law was lying in a bed, talking to everyone and seemingly having a decent time. He confirmed that he feared the onset of frostbite, and had been worried about it for the last three weeks. But we couldn’t get an reply to our queries about why he’d waited to seek attention, or why he didn’t call his doctor instead of going to one of the world’s busiest ERs.

We got there about 2:15. He’d been there two hours already. But the wait was just starting. As we sat in the grim, windowless room, I tried not to think about the weather outside. That task was eased a bit by distractions like the guy who waddled past in ankle chains with a police escort, or the fellow in the orange DOC (Department of Corrections) jumpsuit. There was also the obviously troubled soul who loudly demanded to be released. He shut up after the staff pointed out that he was there voluntarily and could leave at any time.

Sadly, because I had to make the hour's drive back to our house to tend to the dogs, and then trek back, I missed some of the entertainment. A high point was my father-in-law’s revelation, after persistent prodding, that he’d sought help that day from the ER because he thought gangrene had started to set in.

He did get his MRI. And a diagnosis. No, it wasn’t frostbite. The problem was Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

We thanked everyone, said we’d pick up a wrist brace for the patient, and left the hospital—at 9 p.m.

I, personally, plan to see that he also gets a new pair of warm gloves, just in case.

Insanity of the times, Take II

A contact for a freelance story promised to get back to me by a certain day. Halfway through that day I sent him an e-mail as a reminder. The e-mail bounced back with a "no known addressee"-type message.

I'd sent the message to an address that incorporated my contact's division in the suffix--i.e., division.com. Thinking that maybe his filters were acting up, I re-sent it, using a suffix that included the parent company's name.

It, too, bounced back.

In any other time, I would've taken it as a technical glitch. But now I was certain my contact had been pink-slipped. Mindful of a friend's experience in being an intruder on D-Day, I figured I'd give the situation an hour and then place a call to my source's office.

Minutes later, an e-mail arrived from my source, providing the information I'd been seeking. He'd been reassigned to a new division, with his e-mail suffix adjusted accordingly.

Any other time, that would've merited no more than 15 seconds of reflection. But it was as if he'd survived and airplane crash and was letting me know. He was alive! Corporately speaking, of course.

I held off from calling the guy, afraid I'd gush.

Insanity of the times, Take I

A friend went to make a sales call with several colleagues on a large manufacturing company in the heartland. Because of the place's remoteness, you can count on a day's travel to get there.

The group knew something was amiss when they tried to check in at the company's front desk. Instead of the usual security process, the guard waved them on without hesitation and directed them to an elevator.

Similarly, everyone seemed distracted on their contact's floor, hardly noticing their presence. So, on they marched to the client's cubicle.

There he was, packing his desk. He'd not only been pink-slipped that day as part of a cutback, but that very hour. All he could do is wave them away, his shock evident enough for my friend to note it.

He and his group had come 800 miles to catch a client in his underwear, so to speak.