Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   afield of dotcomer ground zero
Saturday, June 28 2003

The ongoing Vodkatea.com post-rating project was precipitated in part by a recent job application I made to Bard College. Earlier this week Gretchen had seen a web developer position for which I was perfectly qualified, so I'd updated my resumé and sent it off. Then I waded into the weeds of Vodkatea and began installing methods for curtailing the free expression of trolls, racists, and anti-semites. With a few new rating rules I could allow people to say whatever they wanted to but keep it from appearing in places where it could be read by the casual visitor. I didn't want some prim and proper (though miniskirt-wearing) Bard College employee freaking out about fucked-up posts on the Vodkatea homepage when checking out my sample websites.
But it was all a waste of time. The job advertisement was just a formality, the kind colleges are required to take out to demonstrate that they are equal-opportunity employers. In reality, they already had the person they wanted to hire lined up for the job. Yesterday they sent me a letter saying that they'd found someone more qualified than me - a logical impossibility given the job description, my resumé, and their failure to interview me. Oh well, the process of applying for a job had been fun while it lasted. Gretchen and I had a couple hours back on Tuesday to count our chickens before they hatched, discussing the various ways we'd be spending all the income I'd soon be receiving. I'd even joked about how much more recklessly we could drive once we had proper health insurance. Gretchen had been genuinely optimistic, saying, "there's now way they won't hire you." But I knew better. In this economy, sweet computer jobs like that are scarcer than prison virginity pledges. The only hope I'd had was the fact that Bard is a couple hours from New York City and well afield of dotcomer ground zero.
Today I kept working on my Vodkatea rating system despite the evaporation of my major reason for doing so. I'm so bored by the wasteland it's become that I needed to roll with the momentum.

For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?030628

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