NFL Conference Championships Picks

It certainly appears that I'm not going to have time to watch any football this week, but astoundingly it looks like I have time to post a schedule and picks. I know I'm behind on posting results, plus probably this week's results may not come out for some time, but...you're still all welcome to join in. Anyway...this is the last week until the Super Bowl on February 4th!

( Conference Championships Schedule and Picks )

Personality: Negative

The short version: The interview was crap, and I'm not getting that job. I'm surprisingly okay with this.

The longer version: When I say the interview was crap, I don't mean that it went poorly or anything, really...I mean it was a joke. I showed up, and they sat me down in front of a computer to fill out some kind of employment questionnaire. It turns out this thing was like a personality or aptitude test or something. Do I play well with others. Do I like money or free time. Do I work hard. Do I work fast. Do I complain. Stuff like that. It was, I think, 40 questions, multiple choice, and the final one was about math. Yay math. :) Anyway...so I took the test, then I sat around waiting to talk to an actual human. Eventually the human showed up, and she read off a list of additional yes/no questions to determine more practical aspects of suitability. Can I work where people smoke. Can I work on weekends. Like that. I signed a couple forms for background checks and that kind of hoo-hah, and then I was told that I failed the personality test, I won't be hired, and I can't try to re-take the test for six months. Have a nice day.

I blink.

I leave.

( I ponder the implications )

Art and life

So, as part of my new technique of trying to travel without a backpack, I've been choosing books to get out of the library based on whether they're small enough to travel in my jacket pocket. But anyway, I came across this passage recently, which I found quite apropos to my recent evaluation experiences:

"You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe."

Wilbur Mercer in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

Anyway, I don't agree, really, but I love the quote. It sort of frames the moral struggle differently in my mind...the idea that the fight to preserve an identity runs counter to the nature of life. I've always sort of thought of life as our struggle for order in a universe that tends toward chaos. That's sort of endemic to the human condition, in my eyes. And that's actually a big theme in this book, too, so...I don't think the two notions are that far apart from each other. But anyway, yeah. Identity.

Well...hitting the road again. Back to work.