The Last Man

In my Romanticism class we are reading The Last Man by Mary Shelley, which is decent for the most part, but not overly exciting. It's written in a very strange manner, where actual scenes aren't described; it is mostly just a recounting of events told from an almost uninvested narrator. Strange. I'm not in love with it, though I did read this one monologue by a character that I really really enjoy. It's a bit long, yes, but I love the truth in it.

"O happy earth, and happy inhabitants of earth! A stately palace has God built for you, O man! and worthy are you of your dwelling! Behold the verdant carpet spread at our feet, and the azure canopy above; the fields of earth which generate and nurture all things, and the track of heaven, which contains and clasps all things. Now, at this evening hour, at the period of repose and refection, methinks all hearts breathe one hymn of love and thanksgiving, and we, like priests of old on the mountain-tops, give a voice to their sentiment.

Assuredly a most benignant power built up the majestic fabric we inhabit, and framed the laws by which it endures. If mere existence, and not happiness, had been the final end of our being, what need of the profuse luxuries which we enjoy? Why should our dwelling place be so lovely, and why should the instincts of nature minister pleasurable sensations? The very sustaining of our animal machine is made delightful; and our sustenance, the fruits of the field, is painted with transcendent hues, endued with grateful odours, and palatable to our taste. Why should this be, if HE were not good? We need houses to protect us from the seasons, and behold the materials with which we are provided; the growth of trees with their adornment of leaves; while rocks of stone piled above the plains variegate the prospect with their pleasant irregularity.

Nor are outward objects alone the receptacles of the Spirit of Good. Look into the mind of man, where wisdom reigns enthroned; where imagination, the painter, sits, with his pencil dipt in hues lovelier than those of sunset, adorning familiar life with glowing tints. What a noble boon, worthy the giver, is the imagination ! it takes from reality its leaden hue: it envelopes all thought and sensation in a radiant veil, and with an hand of beauty beckons us from the sterile seas of life, to her gardens, and bowers, and glades of bliss. And is not love a gift of the divinity? Love, and her child, Hope, which can bestow wealth on poverty, strength on the weak, and happiness on the sorrowing.

My lot has not been fortunate. I have consorted long with grief, entered the gloomy labyrinth of madness, and emerged, but half alive. Yet I thank God that I have lived! I thank God, that I have beheld his throne, the heavens, and earth, his footstool. I am glad that I have seen the changes of his day; to behold the sun, fountain of light, and the gentle pilgrim moon; to have seen the fire bearing flowers of the sky, and the flowery stars of earth; to have witnessed the sowing and the harvest. I am glad that I have loved, and have experienced sympathetic joy and sorrow with my fellow-creatures. I am glad now to feel the current of thought flow through my mind, as the blood through the articulations of my frame; mere existence is pleasure; and I thank God that I live!

And all ye happy nurslings of mother-earth, do ye not echo my words? Ye who are linked by the affectionate ties of nature, companions, friends, lovers! fathers, who toil with joy for their offspring; women, who while gazing on the living forms of their children, forget the pains of maternity; children, who neither toil nor spin, but love and are loved!

Oh, that death and sickness were banished from our earthly home! that hatred, tyranny, and fear could no longer make their lair in the human heart! that each man might find a brother in his fellow, and a nest of repose amid the wide plains of his inheritance ! that the source of tears were dry, and that lips might no longer form expressions of sorrow. Sleeping thus under the beneficent eye of heaven, can evil visit thee, O Earth, or grief cradle to their graves thy luckless children? Whisper it not, let the demons hear and rejoice! The choice is with us; let us will it, and our habitation becomes a paradise. For the will of man is omnipotent, blunting the arrows of death, soothing the bed of disease, and wiping away the tears of agony. And what is each human being worth, if he do not put forth his strength to aid his fellow-creatures? My soul is a fading spark, my nature frail as a spent wave; but I dedicate all of intellect and strength that remains to me, to that one work, and take upon me the task, as far as I am able, of bestowing blessings on my fellow-men!"

Legit.

Little Match Girl

I am in a class called Creative Writing and it is by far one of the more interesting classes I've taken yet in university. I have a lot to say about this class but I'll leave that for another post. Every week we're given prompts that encourage us to write in different forms or expressions. This week we are supposed to write about something to do with the following video: The Little Match Girl. If you haven't seen it before it's only 7 minutes long and it's a Disney short and you need to watch it right now.

If the video doesn't work, try this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUSzQBaWq0Q

Occupied

I was supposed to read a 500 page novel tonight. I got about 150 pages in before I fell asleep. As an English major, the tendency --nay, the inevitability-- of me falling asleep while reading makes for a long and a difficult homework process. I've got a long night ahead of me; good thing I love what I do.

To make up for it, here is something awesome:

And here is something funny:

Goodnight!

Interviews

My posting has been scant. Here is something to make up for that:

So I’ve been on the job market for quite some time now trying to save up for some upcoming adventures. I had been thoroughly unsuccessful which was really discouraging for quite some time, until all of a sudden I got a call from Chapters and Future Shop on the same day. So, I set up interviews with both.

I have never really gotten along well with interviews. One of the more traumatic experiences in my life was when I interviewed for Sport Chek and they decided to make it a duel interview. Literally they brought two of us into a tiny room and asked us questions, instructing us that we had to explain why we would be the better hire. For every question you had to quickly think of an answer that was not only original, but had to somehow make the other person look bad. For a seventeen year old, this is scarring. I also was at a complete loss when the other interviewer said that her greatest weakness was perfectionism. Frick! There goes my classic one-liner. In the end we both got hired, and we never became friends while working together because we had both shut the other person down so much in the interview. Way to support “team unity”, jerks.

That anecdote is important because it set the tone for the feeling I experienced when I walked into the interview at Chapters only to see 9 other chairs set up beside mine. My heart stopped and I almost walked out right there. They called it a “Hiring Fair” and proceeded to ask us all questions where we had to show originality and quick thinking. If you were the tenth person answering the question, “Why do you want to work here?” saying “because I love books” for the seventh time is a pretty insufficient answer. Thankfully I was the only English major so at least I had something. All in all it wasn’t as traumatic of an experience as Sport Chek and I walked out feeling decent.

Two days later I had my Future Shop interview. Well, I should back up. In order to get to this interview, first I had to hand in my application. After I did that, I got a call saying that my application had been approved, and I would be participating in a phone interview with the manager. After a fairly awkward 30-minute phone interview with the manager, he informed me I had been approved for a meeting with the general manager. So I went to Future Shop and waited for the general manager.

The interview started off terribly with him accusing me of being an hour late, despite the fact that I insisted he had told me to come in at 5, not 4 (which was true, I promise. I wrote it down in three different places.) But he still didn’t believe me, and continued to reference it throughout the interview, so that wasn’t the best.

He then proceeded to ask me every single question that an interviewer could possibly ever think of. He was incredibly intense and incredibly blunt and would call me out if an answer sounded too cliché or vague.

I was doing all right until he asked me about a conflict that I had experienced in my life that I handled well. I immediately went to my go-to story about a kid who bullied me for many years in school. Finally I just approached the kid and genuinely told him how much I hated it and how I wanted him to stop. (Aside: I’ll be honest, this story is not entirely factual. In actuality, the result was he kind of laughed at me and ran off, but for the sake of the interview, the conversation worked wonders and we never had any issues and we became the best of friends forever and ever… or something like that.) To wrap it up I said, “Yeah, and it’s a good thing the talking thing worked out because otherwise I was going to have to beat him up, and if that didn’t work I was going to have to get my dad to beat up his dad.” We both laughed and he kept asking questions.

This would have been fine if my mind hadn’t gone into immediate panic mode. What if he didn’t realize that was a joke? What if he actually thinks I solve things by beating people up!? What if he actually thinks I get my dad to beat up other dads!?! In my desperate need for clarification, after a couple questions had already passed, I awkwardly spat out, “You know I was just kidding about the whole dad beating up other dads thing, right?”

He just stared.

I blushed. I’ve made a huge mistake.

“Yeah...” he said, “I figured that out.”

Ugh.

It’s hard to recover from that.

So the interview went on. At one point he threw down the questionnaire sheet and announced, “I’m not sold. You’re not selling me. I need you to sell me. You have ten minutes to tell me everything about why you deserve this job and why you think you’re a good person. Go.” So, that was a terrible time.

Then he asked me what it was about Future Shop that attracted me. I told him I was a bit of a gamer and I liked electronics. Big mistake. He asked me what kinds of games I play.

“Well, to be entirely honest, I… I really like the Sims…” Ugh. I've made a huge mistake.

“Oh. Uh, ok. Hmm. K, well Call of Duty just came out, why weren’t you at the midnight release?”

“I’m not really into games like that.”

“All right, then what’s in your playstation right now.”

"..................... Harvest Moon.”

“What’s that?”

“Well… you… you farm.” I hung my head. Seriously Michael!? You can make up an entire story about conflict resolution in high school and you can't think of a cooler game than Harvest Moon?! Never have I regretted calling myself a gamer in all my life.

At one point he also asked me if I could be any animal right now what would it be. My first thought: Haha, what is this camp? So I told him that a past employer had already asked me that and I had said I would be a tiger (Aside: This is also not entirely true. In truth I had said, quote, “a fox, because I’m so foxy,” but I felt like after the gamer incident I really didn’t need to kick myself while I was down. Apparently I lie a lot in interviews, who knew?) His response to my answer of a tiger was, “Tigers are lame. Everyone picks that. What else?” Considering how intense he was, I took the question into careful consideration. He had been so demanding and rude the whole interview so I didn’t want to mess it up. “I guess a horse, because they are known as being both free and really hard workers.” He laughed at me and told me he would be an effing T-rex because they’re awesome and people always take that question way too seriously. Frick.

The questions got even more intense and grueling and the interview went on for an hour and freakin’ forty-five minutes. At one point he declared that everything in the store was not necessary—“we don’t sell a single thing that anyone needs”—and demanded I attempt to sell him something that he didn’t need. It felt gross. At the end of the interview he actually began to sound very optimistic and told me that he actually really really liked me. Go figure! He said he liked me so much that he was going to approve me for an interview with the regional manager.

WHAT.

After a phone call, a 30 minute phone interview, and an hour and forty-five minute grueling interview, I had been approved for another interview!?! SERIOUSLY!?! The man who had spent the last almost two hours psychoanalyzing and intensely critiquing every decision I had ever made in my entire life was awarding me with another interview!?!?! YOU ARE FUTURE SHOP. YOU ARE A STORE IN A SMALL CITY THAT PAYS MINIMUM WAGE!! ARE YOU SERIOUS!?!?!

I hid my thoughts with a smile and left the interview rather frazzled. Over the next couple of days, I got calls back from Chapters and Futureshop. Needless to say, I can now proudly announce:

  

And I can’t wait to start. Because at Chapters, I can sell people knowledge, and I can be a freakin’ horse if I want to, and the people there WON’T MOCK ME FOR PLAYING HARVEST MOON.

Well they probably still would, but at least they’re never going find out.