Polishing my resume for the job hunt

So a few of you suggested to me that one of the reasons I couldn’t get a job was because of my lack of a solid resume. Of course, none of you have seen my resume, so none of you actually said that to me. Mostly you said it was because of my unrealistic salary demands, my wardrobe consisting mostly of cut-off jean shorts and replica jerseys and my general lack of oral hygiene. Again, none of you actually said that to me, but that’s generally the feedback I receive from people who interview me.

It’s a free country, so you’re allowed to question my oral hygiene, but last I checked the Bible doesn’t say anything about God creating toothbrushes. Why would he give you teeth but no toothbrushes? Think about it. Seems to me that the guy who made teeth would know a little bit more about taking care of them than some guy who works for a company called AquaFresh. This is what happens though when Big Toothpaste gets their hands on those Washington fat cats in Congress.

But I digress. I was reading up online about resumes and how to make them (turns out your birth certificate isn’t your resume), and it seems like an awful lot of work to me. I don’t think it’s fair for a company to expect me to put in work just so I can go interview with them and not pay me throughout the process. I’ve suggested this in various board meetings (that I’ve crashed) but no one seems to be interested in my ideas to get the best of the best to apply. I know I would apply to tons more jobs if I were getting paid $25 an hour to do it.

Still, I need a job and the whole freelance architecture thing still hasn’t really taken off yet despite the fact that I spend a lot of time sitting around and thinking about how to make it work, mostly by playing Sim City. I thought I had a pretty good project lined up when I heard my next door neighbor’s kid begging his dad for a treehouse. I took a little initiative and drew him up some plans for a pretty sweet treehouse/grotto that I could have built for him for about $15,000, but before I could show it to him the plans got thrown away after they got mixed up in my old newspaper collection that my mom threw out.

I know what you’re thinking. “Why do you have an old newspaper collection?” It’s because for a while I thought I had a pretty nice money-making scheme where I would stand on the street corner with a stack of newspapers and yell, “EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!” and peddle headlines from a few years ago as new ones. (Holy shit! The Twin Towers collapsed again!) Turned out those newspaper kids didn’t make as much money as I thought and on top of that old man Carter, the publisher of the local paper, took two-thirds of every nickel I made selling papers and kept it for himself. He also locked me in his basement and fed me nothing but gruel. Even worse, it turns out old man Carter wasn’t actually the publisher of the local paper but just some random old man who locked people in his basement. It all worked out in the end, though, when he fired me because he thought I was editorializing too much in my sales pitches.

Getting back on point, though – my resume. I need a resume. So here it is. Any advice would be welcome, or if you want to steal it and use it as your own, that’s cool, too. Just be warned that you’ll find yourself sorely overqualified for most jobs to which you apply.

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Bill Legarm
Address withheld (no way am I giving you creeps my address – unless you’re a lady – then we can talk)
Phone number withheld (see above note)

 

Experience

January 1997-February 1997 | Assistant cafeteria worker

Worked here as punishment for repeatedly calling science teacher a witch (True, by the way. How else could he have built a full working volcano in our classroom?); Washed dishes; Cleaned up trays; Ate leftover scraps for money; The story about the pickles in the back room is totally untrue and not why I got fired.

April 2001-April 2001 | Communist hunter

Rounding up communists for fringe organization in Michigan; Was responsible for the arrest of 14 communists, mostly children; Fired when group found out about my refusal to acknowledge a united Germany – also I don’t know what a communist is.

November 2001-December 2001 | Mall Santa

Point of clarification: By Mall Santa I mean Front Yard Santa. The company that hires the Mall Santas didn’t hire me, so I got my own costume and set up in my front yard. In hindsight that wasn’t the best idea, but if attempting to bring joy to the neighborhood is wrong (and, according the arrest warrant, it is), I don’t want to be right.

July 2005-May 2006 | Stalker

Long story short, apparently the girl I thought I was dating wasn’t actually dating me. More on that in a later post. Still, this counts as a job because I got a hold of her bank account number and so I was kind of getting paid to do it.

September 2008-present | Freelance Architect

Designing and building buildings for major cities and corporations. My designs can be seen in various places including in my head and scribbled on public restroom walls, which is where I do my best thinking.

Education

All my life | Street smarts

You could hire somebody that reads books and has a degree, but do they know how to make a weapon using some rope, a piece of gum and a medium Frosty? Neither do I, but while they’re reading and getting degrees, I’m sitting around in my underwear watching MacGyver. Who do you think is going to figure it out first?

Skills

• Bob Barker trivia
• Opening Excel on my computer
• Watching Knight Rider
• Driving exactly 7 miles per hour over the speed limit
• Playing the Flying W on the guitar
• Really good at I Spy
• Boiling water
• Pretending to be Jason Bourne
• Eating ravioli
• Huntin’ commies
• As a general rule, if Ronnie James Dio can do it, I can do it better

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By the way, I completely agree with you. I have no idea how I haven’t been hired yet.

 

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I belong at Applebee’s and averting a Jamaica-U.S. cold war

Obviously, I haven’t posted much this week, but I have a good excuse. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve lost library Internet privileges, so my friend Barry does my posting for me. Usually Barry’s pretty reliable, but he’s been busy lately trying to get his fledgling electronics business off the ground. He’s been going door-to-door trying to sell the 57″ LCD-TV he just finished building, but so far there haven’t been many takers. I’d buy it, but I don’t have a job and Barry’s TV is actually just three 19″ tube TVs tied together. Just between you and me, it’s a little bulky for my tastes.

But thankfully Barry was able to take a little break from trying to sell because, lo and behold, I actually got a comment. And not just a comment, but a comment seeking my advice on four separate but equal topics. So why not another edition of comment Friday?

1.) Do you know if Applebee’s still has that “It takes two” special going? I loved those commercials. And I love Applebee’s when I want food that takes little preparation to make, a deep fryer to cook my triple fried potato nubs, and the pay off is always awesome later that night.

I was at Applebee’s once and went looking for the restroom and ended up in the kitchen. Turns out their kitchen was actually just a small room with a sink and a microwave.

That being said, I’m not sure there’s a better place to go on a first date because things can only get better from there. I dated this girl once and, as tends to happen, one thing led to another and I punched a hobo and we ended up in jail and she said it was the worst date she’d ever been on and I reminded her of our first date which started off at Applebee’s and she agreed that maybe this date wasn’t so bad after all. She still broke up with me, but that was only because she thought I was enjoying spooning with an inmate affectionately known amongst prison guards as Big Larry a little too much.

2.) Do you know if Ronnie James Dio is married? And more specifically, do you know if he is attracted to single white males around 30 yrs old? Tell him I’m into leather.

Two problems with this question. First, it involves me doing research. Second, you appear to be asking for dating/matchmaking advice. The only dating advice I give is during my four week long seminars on dating and the intricacies of the opposite sex with a cost of $49.95 per session ($10 off if you make out with me a little. $10 off promotion not available to dudes.) That Applebee’s tip was free. Here’s another freebie: Go-Karts=guaranteed action.

I’ll say this, though…Ronnie James Dio is most definitely married to being awesome.

3.) Remember that old movie Lightning Jack with Paul Hogan and Cuba Gooding Jr.? I do.

There are only two movies I care about. Rocky IV, because it helped end the Cold War, and Cool Runnings, because it helped end the threat of a potential Cold War between the U.S. and Jamaica. Oh, Jamaica. We just can’t stay angry at you.

4.) I think I can help you with that time machine thing. I’ve got a time travel theory that involves meditation and malt liquor. With enough of both, and chanting the name Marty McFly until you pass out, you can travel to the future. But not the past. I’m sure that the past must be some sort of a variation on that formula though. I’ll keep working on it. I met my future child. He’s a Brazilian MMA Fighter named Scorpion. I tried to tell him who I was. He choked me out after I embraced him, which brought me back to the present. He’s really made something of himself though. A father couldn’t be more proud.

Traveling to the future does nothing for me. As I’ve said, I’m trying to travel to the past so I can form an army, beat the North and the South in the Civil war and form a new nation known as the United States of Awesome, embracing life, liberty and the pursuit of being totally sweet. (Nation’s flag TBD, I said looking towards people who are good at Photoshop.)

That being said, if you could maybe figure out a way to get Scorpion to come back to present day, I’m sure I could use him in my army.

Unhealthy update – Another blogger that also knows how terrible Applebee’s is.

Why I decided to start blogging

Have you ever seen The Matrix?

If so, let me first apologize and I also wish you could have those two precious hours of your life back. Secondly, that movie is a lot like my life…well, until Keanu goes into that weird alternate universe and starts getting shot at in slow motion. My life is nothing like that, which is good because that’s when the movie starts to blow.

But the part where he has to pick the blue pill or the red pill? My life is a lot like that. Because I have two choices.

1.) Wait patiently for my opportunity to meet Ronnie James Dio and challenge him to a guitar battle in which the winner would get the hand of a fair maiden in marriage. (We’ll call this the blue pill.)

2.) Write a blog while I wait patiently for my opportunity to meet Ronnie James Dio and challenge him to a guitar battle in which the winner would get the hand of a fair maiden in marriage. (We’ll call this the red pill.)

[Editor's note: I removed a third white pill option, which would have been to bone a mermaid. I don't know any mermaids, so that's just not a realistic option.]

At first it seemed like option one would be best because I would need to have time to learn to play guitar while I’m waiting, but then I realized learning to play guitar is probably really hard and that anyone with the ability to type and who hasn’t lost library Internet privileges can write a blog. In the name of full disclosure, I actually have lost library Internet privileges, so my friend Barry is actually posting these for me. He’s still allowed to use the computers at the library and he’s also very good at reading my handwriting off the back of Wendy’s napkins.

I figure I can just wing it when I do finally meet Dio because he’s old and there’s only one old person who rocks, and that’s Jon Bon Jovi, so I should be able to out-ax Ronnie James. Plus, as a previous post mentioned, I know a few chords already.

Anyway, blogging is pretty easy, and when you’re like me and have a lot to talk about and a lot of knowledge to pass on to the youth of this world, it’s even easier. I might not have an education in the formal sense, but I’ve spent many hours watching my DVD sets of Knight Rider which really serves less as entertainment and more as a textbook for life. Though I’d recommend not taking these lessons literally. Turns out there are very few companies out there in search of people who have been shot in the face. Turns out even fewer of these companies want to rebuild said person’s face and give them a talking car. It’s a lesson my friend Rich had to learn the hard way, though admittedly it was pretty sweet when they wheeled his casket in to the funeral to the Knight Rider theme as he’d laid out in his will. So, in that sense at least, it was totally worth it.

But that’s not something I’d recommend for everybody. Knight Rider is meant to be viewed as a metaphor for life, not a way to necessarily live your life. It’s really complicated and sometimes it makes my head hurt and just thinking about KARR gives me the chills. But it’s certainly made me a better person and that’s why I’m blogging. Because we’re all in this together and I have a responsibility to pass on my deep knowledge of life to you, my blog readers.

I’m building a time machine

If I had a time machine, all my problems would be solved.

That’s why I’m building a time machine in my garage.

To be fair, it’s actually my mom’s garage. But it’s kind of like mine, though, because I live over the garage. Think Kirk Cameron in Growing Pains, but less preachy. Also, my room is less a room in the traditional sense and more some stuff I put up on the roof of the garage. It’s cold in the winter and things tend to get wet when it rains, but it’s a small price to pay for freedom.

But back to my time machine. It was designed by a well-respected design firm. And by “a well-respected design firm” I mean it was designed by a homeless guy outside the design firm’s office. But it’s cool, because if you’ve ever seen Good will Hunting you know that if you’re around something long enough you’re bound to learn about it. You also know that Matt Damon is the perfect man.

But I digress. I’m not sure what the homeless guy’s name is, so I just call him Hoss, but he’s very reliable. Whenever I need to have a meeting with him, he’s always there, usually sans pants.

Recently Hoss asked me for a progress report on my time machine and I told him that things were going well. I told him that because I’m a liar. Things aren’t going well at all. In fact, I’m way behind schedule. The problem isn’t so much that I’m not putting the work in to get it done – I spend close to 15 minutes a week on the damned thing – as much as I’m having trouble tracking down the parts.

I thought I’d found some plutonium on eBay, but I was unable to purchase it before the government took away my computer and arrested me for cavorting with known terrorists. First of all, cavorting sounds like a made-up word to me. Secondly, isn’t this America? If I want to buy a little plutonium from a dictator in a country I’ve never heard of I should be able to do so. This eroding of our civil liberties is getting out of hand. (I plan to touch on this in a later post.)

So no plutonium. Of course, fuel wouldn’t do me any good, anyway, because I don’t have an engine to fuel yet. Hoss and I had originally decided on building a jet engine from scratch, but stupid Auto Zone doesn’t carry jet engine compressors. So it was on to Plan B – the engine from a 1983 Chevette, and good luck finding one of those that works.

So my time machine is completely unusable and that’s too bad because I’ve got big plans for it. It’s kind of like when I went house shopping and I was looking at a house and the real estate agent laughed at me when I told her I was ready to make the purchase. Turns out she thought I was just a drifter looking for someplace to stay warm. She also didn’t like my payment plan which involved winning the lottery. She didn’t care that, based on my calculations (which I made up), I was sure to win some time in the next 27 years. She also didn’t seem to understand that I had already invited all my friends to the housewarming party.

Now here I am again … big plans and no way to execute them. All I want to do is form an army, go back to 1862 and beat the North and the South in the Civil War and form a new nation known simply as the United States of Awesome.

I’d bring my electric guitar, too, and I’d shred out some “Holy Diver” for everybody and get credit for writing it and make it our national anthem. And when Ronnie James Dio tries to release it in 100 years he can go fuck himself because I already recorded it and released it on the phonograph. That would also give me plenty of time to learn how to play guitar, which is good because right now I only know three chords – a C, a G and one I invented that I tentatively named a flying W. You have to play it while you hold the guitar behind your head. If you don’t, it sounds wrong and you look less awesome.

Of course, on top of all this, “the man’s” trying to hold me down. Hoss and I were talking about this just the other day. Building a time machine costs money and neither he nor I have any money. Neither of us has a “job”, per se, though he donates plasma regularly and I dabble in freelance architecture. I’m currently working on a building I hope to erect (pause for laughter because I said “erect”) a couple blocks over. It’s going to be 200 stories of solid steel and the windows will be made out of bulletproof glass and there will be gargoyles all over the place – maybe every other floor or so. I talked to a developer the other night and he told me I need to find some tenants if I really want to sell this to city council. He also said something about not knowing why a small suburb of 5,000 people would need a 200-story office building at the end of a residential street and I thought I heard something about years of schooling to become an architect, but I had pretty much stopped listening at that point.

So I’m working on lining up some tenants. My brother, Chad, is a lawyer, and he doesn’t really talk to me anymore, but I think he’d be interested. Also, my friend Barry is going to start an electronics company. He actually already started it and he finished building his first LCD TV the other day, so once he gets a buyer for that and really starts making money, he said I could block out a couple floors for him (but nothing too high because he’s afraid of heights). So things are looking good on that front. Once the money for my design starts rolling in, Hoss and I will be able to really get moving on this time machine.

But until then, I’m stuck in this holding pattern, staring at a bunch of useless parts and listening to my mom tell me to get that monstrosity out of her garage because she has to park her stupid Ford Taurus in there. As a certified time machine expert (I made the certificate myself) I can tell you this – the next Ford Taurus that goes back in time will be the first.