Going postal

So it looks as though the US Postal Service has a clever new scheme going: tell people you’re hiring, then when they go to your website to apply, don’t let them do so unless they fork over $29.95, in return for which some helpful people will send you a “well written Guide with NO MEMORIZATION required”, including test-taking strategies and tips from “subject matter experts”.

What’s particularly cool about these people is that they don’t expect you to waste time waiting for snail mail – because, as it’s important to understand if you’re going to apply for a job at the post office, actually physically posting anything is pretty old hat. No one who has a clue does that any more. So they will provide a link to a 98-page PDF document that you can download within three seconds of making payment, and print out using your very own personal printer ink and paper.

Alternatively, for only $10 more you can get essentially the same thing from another source, only what they promise to send is a “Postal Exam Package” containing exam registration materials, “eCareer Profile Creation Tutorials”, a bunch of practice tests, and a “Postal Interview Recommendation”.

It’s not entirely clear how they send this, but to me the word “package” denotes physical substance – something with heft. I imagine brown paper and string, the knots liberally coated with sealing wax … Dang, those were the days! I remember helping my mother make up parcels like that! Sometimes she’d let me hold the stick of sealing wax. I remember the smell of burning string and hot wax, and how quickly the drops of wax hardened, and how satisfying it was to scratch the hard accidental drips off the paper, and how important it was not to put my face so close to the flame that I burned off my eyebrows.

Searching for this illustration made me feel so old! Everything I found was essentially an artistically staged picture. Take this one – what’s the relevance of the man wallet? I also found a still life in shades of brown, featuring a stamped seal, a watch on a chain and a cigar, arranged like relics of a forgotten era. Also, there are lots of pictures of scrolls, apparently made of papyrus, tied with hemp, and sealed with a perfect dab of red wax. Seriously, Adobe, WTF? Real people living today actually used this stuff, you know – and it had a purpose. It wasn’t just bloody decorative, okay? It was messy and it dripped and blobbed, and if you let your kid do it they probably illustrated the package with artistic extra drips and blobs, but – and this was important – YOU DRIPPED THE WAX ONTO THE KNOT IN THE STRING, okay? It was there to discourage postal workers from opening your parcel, because that was back in the day when it was reasonable to expect the South African Post Office to deliver parcels rather than dumping them in a ditch, losing them, or selling them to the highest bidder. Because, of course, back then we hadn’t invented scissors yet, so sealed and unbroken string was impenetrable.

Well, I digress … A modern parcel would have tape, not string, and it would likely come in one of those standard red, white and blue USPS boxes. Unless they sent it UPS or Fedex, those being the faster and more reliable options since the Pony Express closed down. But either way, there wouldn’t be string.

Sorry, that was another digression, because in fact I resisted the temptation to order a Postal Exam Success Guide. The only reason I was googling post office jobs was a sudden panic over money, for crying out loud! If I was going to spend $39.95 on something, it wouldn’t be on an unartistically presented package, which I wouldn’t receive because we don’t get mail delivery at our house due to an argument over post box location with our local post office about eight years ago, which culminated in the Hubbit declaring his independence from delivery services by renting a PO box (from USPS) instead. (That’s a whole blog post in its own right, but not one I feel like writing today.) Anyway, the $39.95 option didn’t include space for a PO box address, so I couldn’t choose it. As for the other option, the convenience of receiving a PDF document is offset by the fact that I still haven’t figured out how to get our wireless printer to connect to my computer, and I am fundamentally fed up with having to forward every bloody thing to the Hubbit for printing. In any case, if I had random bits of money to be scattering to the four winds I wouldn’t be contemplating a job at the post office, now would I?

Sometimes I feel as though my life is spiraling out of control. There are too many damn buttons to push, and you have to push them in the right order, and … GAH! It’s just too  complicated.

I couldn’t help wondering what my $29.95 would get me – I mean, in the sense of what career opportunities would open up if I accepted their Success Guide. So I went back and took another look at what popped up when I googled USPS jobs, and I realized that the sites I’d found the first time I tried this weren’t actually part of the official US Postal Service. They’re very cleverly dressed up to look that way, complete with bald eagles and flags, but if you click on the actual USPS website you can go straight to the online job application, easy-peasy.

Turns out they have a new stamp design, called “summer harvest”. Click on the picture on the USPS website, and it’ll take you to a fantastic array of gorgeous stamps. Some of them are so pretty I just want to rush out and … I don’t know … start mailing letters again? Probably not – back in the day (before email) I was notorious for writing long, wonderful, newsy letters, putting them in an envelope, sticking on the prettiest stamps I could find … and then forgetting to put them in the mailbox. Actually physically going to a post office to post a letter was one of those things I invariably put off, so letters would go onto the pile of un-dealt-with paperwork I have kept on every desk I’ve ever owned, and there they would slowly sift to the bottom, to be found years later when I packed up to move house.

So anyway … I looked, and apparently the main post office in our area is looking for rural mail carriers. Only to get hired you have to pass a test, which takes about two hours to complete. I don’t have two hours right now, having already invested a substantial portion of today in writing this post. Also, I really hate writing tests, because failure, rejection, feelings of inferiority – AAHHHHH! I mean, how would I feel if I failed a test that was directed specifically at school leavers and other people with no prior experience, skills or training? Plus, apparently the test includes a section called “Summary of Accomplishments”, and the advice to applicants is  to “write about how your skill set, education and training matches the posting”. Seriously, should someone who can’t mail letters be responsible for delivering same?

Still, I have to admit I’m tempted. The thought of working in a post office, dealing with the Great Unwashed every day, fills me with dismay. Yes, I know, you don’t actually have to be nice to anyone – that’s one of the perks of working for the post office. But … ugh … you’re perpetually at the end of a queue, and every single day is just one piece of mail after another. Could that get monotonous, do you think?

Driving around delivering letters, on the other hand … now that could be fun. Lots of time to think, and – thanks to the invention of GPS – I wouldn’t get lost. Probably wouldn’t. Not very lost, anyway, and probably not permanently. It would be different if they were still using ponies – I like ponies way too much to sit on one – but these days you get to ride around in one of those cute little vans with the driver on the sidewalk side. You know, I can see myself doing that, while simultaneously dictating a Great Work (or, at least, a blog post) into a little hand-held recorder thingummy. I already have one of those. I just need to figure out how it works.

So what’s your dream job? What do you do when you suddenly realize you’re down to your last $50 and there’s still a week to go to the end of the month?

 

 

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Voluptuous, vivacious and versatile – that’s me!

My first taste of internet sex was back in the Nineties, when the World Wide Web was a flimsy new creation draped over the moldering corpses of newly extinguished dinosaurs. My business partner and I heard about it (the web, that is; we had no clue about its pornographic potential) and decided we needed to get connected. Boffins installed a modem, did mysterious things to our computers, told us many things that we wrote down and hoped one day to understand, and left us to unravel the mysteries of email and web surfing.

Those boffins were mischievous young men. In the course of getting me set up they signed me onto an online dating site, so when I finally figured out how to open my email I found it awash in penises. There were startling measurements, intriguing claims, invitations to conduct a personal inspection at a time and place of my choosing, and even photographs.

Surprise! (Source)

Nowadays, of course, we can find exactly the same stuff on Craigslist, but back then it made me blink a bit. There were a few penis-free emails (well, not totally penis-free, but the penis was implied rather than being central to the message) and I responded to some of those and it was all rather entertaining, except that it bothered me that all these hopeful young men clearly had expectations based on an ad that didn’t necessarily my reflect my personal inclinations. I eventually got one of my cyber-swains to send a link to the ad and, yeah, it was pretty much as expected. So I deleted it … and replaced it with my own creation, headed: “Voluptuous, Vivacious and Versatile Sweetheart”. Something along those lines, anyway.

And, well, apparently this description still applies, since I have just lately been honored with a Versatile Blogger Award AND a Liebster Award. (Liebster means “sweetheart”, according to Herr Professor Google.)

I have a rule when it comes to awards, which is that their rules don’t apply. My blog, my rules – okay? On the other hand, I do appreciate the compliment, and I welcome the excuse to introduce bloggers I enjoy to bloggers (and others) who enjoy me. (My writing, I mean. Let’s not get carried away here – the penis story is over, folks!)

So here is Jamila, whose blog Thisizapen is a fun read. She’s bright and articulate, and she has a zest for life and an eye for the absurd that bubbles out in her writing. Hop on over and enjoy. And Jamila, thanks for the Liebster. You now have five reasons why I think you’re epic, and maybe I’ll answer more of your questions … one day.

Also, I’d like to introduce My Perfect Breakdown, who writes mainly about the challenges of recurrent pregnancy loss and cross-border adoption. This is a world so far from my experience that I honestly don’t know how I stumbled upon her blog, but she writes with such honesty and so much feeling that I find myself compelled to stick around. I’d encourage you to pay her a visit. And Ms MPB, thanks for the Versatile Blogger Award! Some random facts about me coming up!

Okay, now I’m supposed to nominate a total of 26 bloggers, but that’s just silly, so I’m just going to pick three for each award.

First, the Liebster, which is for bloggers with fewer than 200 followers. Not all these bloggers reveal their numbers, but they’re all new to the blogiverse so I’m taking a crazy chance and nominating them anyway.
Living Between Breaths is by a mom who lost her teenage son last year to a brain aneurysm. Her courage takes my breath away.
Tim at Party of One, Meal for Two is a young gay man who writes with heart and humor about his search for a life partner.
Absynthe Minded’s Fairy Dust is all sorts of this and that – something very new by a talented blogger.

Next, for the Versatile Blogger Award I’d like to nominate:
Fiona’s Favourites, mainly because it’s fun but a little because she’s a fellow South African. Also, her recipes are wonderful!
The Tempest and the Teapot, which is every bit as amusingly random as the name implies.
Exile on Pain Street, who has been writing entertaining, sometimes thought-provoking vignettes about his life for the past quarter century or so – and I know this because, in addition to commenting on life today, he periodically publishes a post from one of his old journals. It’s good stuff!

Right, and now I get to talk some more about me… and … umm, no, I simply can’t bring myself to answer a list of questions-about-myself per the award rules. I don’t read lists like that posted by other people either. Sorry, not trying to be rude, and I really do appreciate the vote of confidence, but trust me on this – my list of answers would be very, very boring.

So … instead of lists, here are some odds and ends I found in my “potential blog posts” pile, for your reading entertainment.

Search terms

Sooner or later, every blogger writes a post about the search terms used to find their blog, and when I read these posts I’m consumed with envy because having bizarre and creepy search terms is second only to having a dedicated troll. They let you know you’ve arrived in the blogiverse. Well, things are going a little slowly here … Since December, the search term that most commonly brings anyone to my blog is “bookworm costume”. Really, Google? Yes, my parents did indeed perpetrate a bookworm costume upon my person – but there is so much more to me than that!

Things did look up a little last month, when someone found me by searching for “2015 hot fat sugar granny who want to…” hmm, yes, I’ll leave the rest of that one to your imaginations. Suffice to say that this site must have been quite the disappointment. But it raises a concern. If I want to be noticed (and yes, to be honest, I do, a little bit, anyway), and if I don’t want to be perceived merely as an unreliable authority on Really Terrible Fancy Dress Ideas For Dweebs, do I have to write more about bodily functions? Because I can do that – but if I do, will you still respect me in the morning?

So a parrot walks into a bar…

Not really. It was a restaurant, and I didn’t see the parrot walk in because it was already there when we arrived. I saw it sitting on a big hunk of tree branch, and I got all excited because it was an African grey, and – as everyone knows – they are really smart and interesting and, in every possible way, evidence that African is better. Since this happened during Himself’s first visit to South Africa, I was eager to embrace any opportunity to demonstrate the fundamental and broad-ranging superiority of all things African to him.

So I rushed over to the parrot to get acquainted, and he crooned in a friendly sort of way. A passing waitperson warned me, “Be careful – he bites!” … and the parrot cocked his head and did a little dance on the end of the branch closest to me. I sidled closer, and he leaned, and he crooned, and I murmured sweet nothings, and boop-de-boop he hopped onto my arm and scuttled up to my shoulder.

Awww… ain’t that cute! (If you ignore the depraved look in his eye.) (Source)

“Oh boy … he likes you,” commented another waitperson in tones of gloom. Feeling rather smug, I pranced around the restaurant a bit, enjoying the other patrons’ looks of envy. The parrot nibbled my ear and crooned a bit more. I sat down to eat, and he shared my salad. He snuggled up really close to me, and sort of cuddled. It was so sweet!

“That bird is humping your shoulder,” commented my adoring spouse.

“Oh rubbish!” I said, and offered the parrot another nibble of something tasty. The parrot sort of shuddered, ruffled all his feathers, crooned again, and commenced to hump my ear.

I raised my hand in an attempt at gentle discouragement and – YIKES! “They told you he bites,” remarked Himself, dispassionately.

I became aware that the other patrons were not, in fact, looking envious … although they certainly were looking, and they seemed to be enjoying the show. In fact, I had the feeling that some were regulars who had seen this show before, and would continue to enjoy it for as long as there were tourists to keep it running. It was time to dislodge Humpty Parrot. My head held high, I walked the length of the restaurant and nudged my shoulder against his branch in an encouraging, get-the-hell-offa-me way.

He scuttled to my other shoulder, clamped my ear with his beak and, with a glazed expression in his beady parrot eye, commenced frottage upon my pony tail. It took the manager and two waitpersons, armed with large towels, to get the bloody bird off me.

And I have to say, I think the applause, as I walked back to my seat, was entirely unnecessary.

While on the subject of body parts…

… in the context of the fact that South Africa just is better, did you see what our boys have done now?

Seriously, I’ve always enjoyed opportunities to brag about us pioneering heart transplants. And I think it says a lot about our values as a nation that we started with the heart. But this? It just makes a girl proud!

Awww … ain’t that cute! (Source)

So … your turn. Have you ever found true love/had sex online? And has this ever involved a parrot? Did you find this blog by googling “lonely African grey needs love”?