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All the cool kids who get ridiculous book deals start out on Tumblr these days, dontcha know?

Meanwhile, enjoy Fashion Corpuscle if you are into fashion, shopping, and other frivolous things that are not as enjoyable when you are unemployed and broke.  Put it in your RSS pipe and smoke it because let’s face it, you need another annoying weblog to follow because your Google Reader hasn’t given you the dreaded 1000+ unread items count yet.

Since I have time on my hands, I decided to take up the challenge of making tortillas:  a grudge match, if you will.  I’ve had house-made tortillas at places like Guero’s in Austin, TX and they are so, so, so much better than store-bought.  You’d think it’s a hassle to make your own tortillas, but that, my friend, is like following the yellow corn road expecting to find the mythical Mexican grandma painstakingly and lovingly patting out tortillas one by one.  When you rip away the curtain, you will see yourself speedily smooshing masa balls into tortillas in a matter of seconds.

Tortillas are probably some of the cheapest food staples you can buy, and at $1.25 each, taco truck tacos (and Rubio’s Tuesday Tacos) are definitely the most economical dining out options.  The incentive here is the same taco in a warm, tender tortilla with the ever-so-slight natural sweetness of corn.  A bag of masa harina is about $3.50, and I bought a plastic tortilla press for under $8.  I used about 1/4 bag of the masa so far and made over 30 tortillas, so after the initial investment of the tortilla press, the cost per taco is in the realm of ridonculously cheap.  My inaugural batch of tacos were filled with carne asada (flank steak on sale at $3.98/lb), avocado (on sale for $2.99 for a bag of 4), onion, and cilantro then dressed with fresh lime and green salsa (on sale for 77 cents a can).  It’s sacrilegious, but they were better than the best taco truck tacos thanks to the fresh tortillas.

The biggest challenge was finding a tortilla press.  I went to a few grocery stores in the Mission before I finally found one stored behind the counter, neglected.  When we asked for a tortilla maker, one store tried to lead us to the back to show us the machine cranking out tortillas–they must have thought we were curious tourists?  Or we were shown a bag of tortillas, which Mexican grandmas were buying because no one makes tortillas at home anymore.

When I accept the Oscar for best performance by a non-Mexican in making tacos, I’ll make sure to thank YouTube.  I watched some YouTube videos on how to make tortillas.  If my mom and I had the world wide web, we would have never had that huge fight with dad and it would have changed the course of history.  Namely, he would still hover around the kitchen like flies around a cow’s ass.

If I say O RLY, you say YA RLY.

Brillat-Savarin, by way of Chairman Kaga on Iron Chef said, “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are.”  A paraphrase of this, I think, applies to people who dish out job search advice.  I’ve collected a virtual file cabinet full of advice and tips, but have no job to show for it.  Unlike the Iron Chefs, say, the so-called experts on job hunting don’t necessarily have prominent resumes of people they’ve placed or proof that what they say works.  The more appropriate aphorism here would be “Tell me a bullcorn piece of information I can find on a thousand websites, and I’ll tell you that you’re a job search expert.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the experts tout “personal branding,” a professional networking cult lingo that skeeves me out.  I’m told blogging, twittering, and being on LinkedIn are all great ways to “build your personal brand.”  I get the jist of this advice and having a LinkedIn profile makes sense, but blogging and twittering to audition for potential employers just seems like polishing the professor’s apple before you even take your SATs.  My skepticism is compounded by the fact that this advice comes from people who are old enough to be my parents, or perhaps have the same mentality as my parents’ generation.  To get blogging and twittering advice from them elicits a resounding O RLY?  And you know that they don’t know what that means, much less respond appropriately with YA RLY.

To me, the use of Web 2.0 (I hate this term, but it’s the best I can do) to naïvely “build your personal brand” for the purpose of job hunting seems counter to the whole spirit of Web 2.0.  Wasn’t blogging, micro and macro, built on disseminating your funniest, most cutting snark into the ether to find like-minded eye-rollers?  Who wants a blog wearing a virtual job interview suit?  Not I.

With that being said, I was pleased to come across this talk by Merlin Mann on the Sound of Young America.  It has the right proportions of motivational, realistic, and snark.  Plus, he references the seduction community.  (That particular society of peacocking losers so closely mirrors the job search/coach community.)  Why can’t more career coaches, recruiters, lifepath shamans, or whatever be more like Mann?  Or maybe the correct question is, why aren’t more truly fun, funny, savvy people choosing to wade into the fetid pool of job coaching?  I could use the morale boost right about now.

(If you want to download a mp3 of Merlin Mann’s talk, here is a direct link to the file.)

Staff of Life, d/b/a Bread

Rob Corddry‘s seemingly random remark that girls who make their own bread intimidate him struck a chord (Cordd?) in me.  Let’s not even get into people being intimidated by girls who can do stuff in light of today’s headlines.  But hell yes, bread-making definitely intimidates people with all that yeast, kneading, and rising.  It’s a shame because a $3 bag of bread flour can make more than 5 loaves of rustic, artisan bread that would set you back anywhere from $3-5 per loaf from fancy bakeries.  Having all the time in the world, I haven’t bought a  loaf of bread in months, instead spending $6 on two bags of unbleached bread flour and investing time to make my own delicious bread.

While my trusty Kitchenaid is more than willing to knead the toughest whole wheat dough on my behalf, my all-time favorite bread recipe is the New York Times No Knead Bread recipe.  The No Knead Bread recipe is like an elegant mathematical proof or physics theory — it’s simple and adaptable, while demystifying a seemingly complex phenomenon.  You only need three ingredients: flour, salt, and yeast.  These ingredients are transformed magically by common kitchen tools: measuring cups and spoons, spatula, a bowl, Dutch oven, and a working oven. Basically, all you do is mix the three ingredients with water, let it sit in a covered bowl overnight, shape the dough, let it rise, and bake it.  It’s idiot proof.

It helps if you made bread before so you know what bread dough feels like or how a fully baked bread thumps when you tap the bottom.  However, if you watch the video accompanying the recipe you’ll be all set.  You might mess up the first batch or two, but in no time, you’ll be turning $3 bags of bread flour into loaves of amazing bread.  It’s so easy to make more than one loaf at a time.  I give away the extra bread to friends and let them think I labored for hours, kneading a defiant piece of dough into submission.

The recipe has been altered and adapted by many, including Cook’s Illustrated who say they improved the flavor by adding beer and vinegar to their recipe.  (I couldn’t really taste the difference, but I enjoyed drinking the leftover beer.)  Personally, I prefer adding more salt, up to 2 or 3 teaspoons of kosher salt.  Depending on the weather, I use less or more water until the dough quits being dry and shaggy, but stop before it’s completely wet.  The flour takes a few minutes to absorb the water so it’s best not to add the whole amount at once.  I slash the top of the dough 1/2 inch deep with a razor blade immediately before baking to let the dough expand even more in the oven.  Your oven’s quirks will vary the baking time so after the first 20 minutes, keep an eye on the bread so it won’t burn.  And my goodness, I know it’s impossible not to cut into the loaf right out of the oven, but let it cool for at least an hour before slicing to let the moisture redistribute evenly amongst the crumb.  Most importantly, buy some good butter (or olive oil) for your bread.

Now, are girls who bake their own bread really that intimidating?

Photo via S. Bourdos/Flickr

I’m four months unemployed.  It’s time to start minding the gap in my resume. There are a few ways to do this: volunteering, going back to school, or–wait for it–working for free.  Call it an internship, being a pro bono consultant, whatever.  You’ll have a new position to include on your resume, and you don’t have to say you were not getting paid until your interview.

Working for free–or rather, applying to work for free–can bruise your ego.  When I started college, our class had a 40 year old freshman.  Everyone recognized him from the facebook–that is, the old school facebooks on paper–and he was a popular campus fixture.  180 degrees from that is the 40-plus-year-old intern at one of my old jobs.  Everyone wondered why someone well into adulthood would work for free instead of having a steady job.  Now, I was that weirdo who was willing to work for free.

One thing I noticed in my job search is that a lot of employers in my field are advertising for internships instead of hiring entry level workers or consultants.  I see a slew of  “Social Media intern” listings, but very few for paying gigs.  I think it comes with the misconception that young people are savvy about technology and social networking in addition to being open to working for free.  Marketing and customer service via social networking is more than updating the company Twitter or Facebook.  I know because I’ve done it for a living.  As much as I hated being the creepy, old intern, I decided to write to a few startups advertising for social media interns, pitching it as “You can get an experienced marekting/PR person working for you for free, and I can get experience in a new field!”

I was turned down for one, citing that I lacked customer service background (but isn’t internships about creating a background out of nothing?).  And I was offered a position–we’ll call it a pro bono consultant–with another company because of my experience and skills.  So, how does it feel being the old intern?  It’s not bad.  I don’t feel like a creepy, old person who makes everyone wonder what’s wrong with me.  It helps that I look way younger than my age and count Gossip Girl as one of my favorite shows.  I’m also getting practical experience that should ready me for a paying gig as online community manager–a interwebs-addicted slacker’s dream job.

Being laid off, I had to file for unemployment, which asks me every other week if I’ve been looking for work or slacking off.  (My mom isn’t even that nosey!)  And now, I had to apply to work for free.  (And got rejected!)  My professional ego is like one of those sad, bruised peaches at the bottom of the fruit bin.  I now pin my hopes on social darwinism and hope that my willingness to adapt will mean I’ll survive this economic apocalypse.

A 10 minute wait to get inside the job fair.

I took one for the team and went to a job fair.  I’ve been to a few of these, and it’s only helpful to me when they offer resume critiques.  The employers represented aren’t in my field.  Actually, some employers don’t even show up at all; it’s not uncommon to see empty tables.  Whether it’s because they’re not hiring or the company has a terminal case of the Mondays, we’ll never know.

This job fair had a long wait to get in.  I wondered if there were headset-wearing, clipboard-toting gatekeepers with whom you have to plead you’re on “the list” but it was just a really long-ass line.  And once inside, there were more lines snaking around and criss-crossing the ballroom as the unemployeds waited for face time with potential employers.

I spent the bulk of my time at the resume critique table.  Actually, I don’t think the resume guy meant to give out so much free advice as he meant to promote his resume-writing business, but we were all like Oliver Twist asking for more.  Seeing everyone’s resumes laid out on the table together was like judging a pageant, except there were one or two pretty girls who were sure to win, and everyone else had below average looks.  I can see why resume writing is a legitimate business after seeing all the sad resumes: too much whitespace, a 2″ left margin and a 0.5″ right margin, a three pager in 9 point font with 0.5″ margins chronicling only 8 years experience.  As if in a plastic surgery consultation, the resumes were marked up with brackets and arrows indicating where to nip, tuck, and lift.  This particular resume-writer’s improvements would cost you $150-$350.

The jist of what I got from this resume-writer/recruiter (he said he has 15 years recruiting experience) is below.  I’d like to know if other recruiters agree or disagree.  Obviously, this is one guy’s opinion but the frankness with which it was dispensed made it seem more fresh and honest than anything I’ve seen so far.

• No one reads cover letters. By “no one” I think he means recruiters.  I know employers who receive direct applications read cover letters.

• Don’t use borders/lines to divide sections of your resume. The borders confuse the scanners used by companies and job boards that process resumes in bulk.

• Have your resume available in three file formats: PDF, Word document, and a plaintext file.

• You don’t have to include your entire address, just the city and state is fine. Privacy trumps information overload.

• Eliminate unnecessary words like “e-mail” or “phone” for self-explanatory information. Oh, and only list a number that you alone will pick up–meaning, cell number not home number.

• Don’t have a line with just a single word. Rework the sentence so it fits in one line, or it fills out the second line somewhat.

• Job Objectives are better than Summary of Qualifications. If you’re transitioning to a new industry or relying on transferable skills to expand your options, use the objective to indicate your goal.  Make as many resumes as you need with different objectives suited for each job title you’re aiming for.

• Chronological resume trumps over functional resume. Recruiters want to gauge how many years’ experience you’ve had with certain skills and responsibilities.

• Bullet points, from your best accomplishments to your good accomplishments. Yes, best to good, meaning you need to know where to cut it off.  Also, note “accomoplishments” not responsibilities.

• Don’t include months in work history. Only including the years de-emphasizes any gaps; including months will draw attention to them.

• If you can help it, you are at your last position “to present.” At least this recruiter says employed people are significantly more likely to get a call back.  We can ask the Ethicist if it’s okay for us to fudge this point and tell the employer we didn’t have a chance to update our resume when we got shitcanned.  This guy told a lady who worked at Mervyn’s, which went kaput very publicly  in 2008, that she should just say she’s there “to present.”  You be the judge on this one…

• Don’t say you’re taking English or Computer classes. You want potential empoyers to know you’re taking the initiative to acquire new skills, but this recruiter said mentioning English class makes you look like you’re not a good communicator  (the owner of the resume did struggle with her English) and Computer class makes you look like you don’t have computer skills.

• Leave out assignments/contracts that lasted a month or less. This goes back to using only years, not month/year in your work history.

• Name drop. Include names of high-profile companies or clients you worked with in accomplishments.  Some recruiters use those as key words in searches.

• Don’t save anything for the interview. Blow your wad on the resume because that’s the only chance you get for a call.  The guy with the three-page, 9 point font resume was saving his best accomplishment for the interview.  Mind boggles!

• Don’t include references, don’t say references are available. It’s understood that references are available.

• Don’t include interests or volunteer activities. Well, “warm and fuzzy” recruiters like volunteer experience, and San Francisco may be a good market for it.

Give this man a job already.

• Balance the whitespace. Don’t have margins that are too big or too small. Don’t have too much empty space, but don’t cram too much onto a page.  You wouldn’t believe how many people got scolded for this.

And on a final note, somebody give this guy a job already.  He was in fatigues and had a huge backpack that must have weighed 50lbs, as well as a sleeping bag.  He probably didn’t have a safe place to stash his stuff, or own a dress shirt and slacks.  He came to the job fair with all his worldly possessions and a single rumpled copy of his resume.

He walked away from the resume writer queue as soon as there was an announcement that the line was not for a job opening.  And soon after, he left the job fair.  Who knows where he went after that.

Not a typical pink slip party.

It didn’t take me long to realize that filling out online job applications or e-mailing resumes to anonymous jobs@ addresses would not get me anywhere near a job.  If I were to make a triumphant return to the workforce, I needed a referral, a hook-up, a little birdie on the inside to sing my praises so my resume ends up in the good pile.  There are only so many “Hey, I’m still unemployed.  Anyone got job leads?” tweets and Facebook status updates you can shoot into the ether before people stop paying attention and you feel like the most pathetic, hapless failure.

The universal prescription for this condition is:  networking.  Whether networking on LinkedIn or in real life, most job tip treatises tell you to “put yourself out there” in front of recruiters, employers, clients, and other vocational gatekeepers.  “Tap into the hidden job market,” they say.  In most major cities, people are hosting pink slip parties to connect jobseekers with potential employers.  I’ve been to a few of these events and had conversations with random people ranging from interesting to somewhat awesomely insane, but I’m not sure if there is “there” there in “putting yourself out there.”  (My skepticism of this cliché deepens with knowledge that it’s Denise Richard’s mantra for 2009, seriously.)  In other words, are we just networking for networking’s sake?

Okay, you guys.  In my head, the last two non-parenthetical sentences sounded so disgustingly Carrie Bradshaw as I tap, tap, tap away on my Macbook in my Thakoon for Target shirt and Tepper Jackson pyjama pants in my room.  But stay with me here.

We go to networking events, collect business cards, send our follow-up e-mails and LinkedIn requests, then what happens?  Sometimes, it seems like networking fills the same emptiness as sending job applications into the void of jobsearch industrial complex.  It makes us feel like we’re taking action and controling our future.  It makes us feel more industrious and less feckless.  I’ve yet to find a meaningful connection–not only something that leads to a fruitful job lead (love your job leads, wanna shake your tree?), but also something beyond the ritual smalltalk and kvetching about the economy and being unemployed.

I braved the tightly packed bar for a while, then slammed on the proverbial eject button and ditched the happy hour mixer to crash a friend of a friend’s going away party.  I knew all but two or three people there, but when it came time to go, I didn’t want to leave.  This is what happens, I guess, when you compare a placebo and the real cure side by side.

Musical interlude:

Bad Connection (Album Version) – Yaz

Even Google thinks we should go back to work.

In the last week, both LA Times and SF Weekly have featured articles on “funemployment”–the young and the unemployed who are making pink lemonade out of their pink slips by traveling, playing sports, volunteering, etc. There seems to be a groundswell of press for this phenomenon in the last few days as publications wear out the “holy shit! economic apocalypse!” angle of the story.  As one of the pink slipped statistic, I’m not wholly buying into this media coverage, which just seems like a 21st century version of the typical coming of age Grand Tour story recasting the well-to-do young bourgeorsie with 20- and 30-somethings jettisoned from their daily grind.  Judging from the comments posted on the SF Weekly story, most people who read these articles (and care to comment) now seem think the unemployed are the new leisure class, leeching off the government like AIG execs with their fat bonuses.  We’re already unemployed; we don’t need to be kicked while we’re down, and out.

First and foremost, can we please stop creating catchy, cutesy portmanteaus –funemployment?  staycation?–as the germ of social trends?  Invent a word, and suddenly, every evening news show picks it up as a human interest piece.  But are funemployments and staycations really unique to the current economic downturn?  I don’t think so.  With every recent recession, there were people who decided to take time off to get their professional bearings, or canceled a family vacation.

Six months ago in the depths of dreary winter, in the shadowy valley of the Dow crash, these stories were covered from different, more somber angles appropriate for the social climate.  Claire lost her job but hasn’t even received many calls back from the hundreds of resumes she sent out, so she’s taking time off to reevaluate her career.  The Bojangles saved up for a Disneyland vacation, but they’re falling behind on their mortgage payments so they’re taking a short trip within the state and applying the money saved toward their bills.  Now, it’s: Claire was bummed about being laid off, but while unemployment checks keep coming, she’s going to take time, enjoy herself, and soul search–now, that’s funemployment!  Or the Bojangles have come up with a creative staycation plan to save money and are having as much fun as they would’ve at Disneyland!

Each of us, the unemployed, are doing what we need to do, whether it’s taking the next flight out of the country or hopping on the job search wagon.  There’s no trend here.  So why are we inundated with these funemployment articles?  At the very least, these pieces could have examined the rise of corporate culture, and how, in spite of the economic uncertainty, people find it a relief almost to be let go so they can do what they always wanted to do.  Or explored what became of people who chose to be “funemployed” in the last recession.  That would peak my interest, and would not incite an exasperated eyeroll.  And let’s not talk about how these articles inevitably end with a gentle hint that even the funemployed need to go back to work someday.  Well, DUH.

I think these fluff pieces point to a parallel narrative to the economic collapse: the death of the newspaper.  Except, it’s a chicken or the egg question:  are these lame trend pieces the death rattles of newspapers who can’t give us anything better (or worse yet, think we want these stories?), or did the trend pieces that get picked up by blogs and other news outlets banish good old scrappy journalism from the papers and hastened their demise?  (New York Magazine has brought to light several instances of sloppy journalism in NY Times trend stories.)  I don’t have the answer, but I certainly think that the media’s examination of the leisurely unemployed can be anchored to something more profound and concrete than a cutesy, made-up word.

Either way, I’d like to tell you all to scoot along.  There’s nothing to see here.  That is, until the meida finds another way to repackage the “economy sucks right now” story.

Photo via NY Times

This week’s NY Times Sunday Magazine has a feature by Matt Bai on how the Obama administration has been laying the groundwork to pass a massive healthcare reform through the House and Senate.  It’s worth a read and think about how the Obama team plays the game can apply to one’s own life.  (Plus, what little there is about Joe Biden‘s buffoonery is fantastic and slightly disheartening…he’s like G. W. Bush 2, without the extreme rightward lean.)

Here are a few interesting points I found in the piece.  None of them are new ideas, but it’s cool to see these social tactics being used on a large scale.  Passing a major healthcare reform is as large as it gets.

1. Every venue is ripe for networking, schmoozing, and reconnaisance.

Emanuel has taken an unusually personal role in handling Congress. One of the first things he did as chief of staff was to give out his cellphone number to every Democratic senator (and some Republicans too), and he occasionally pops up on the House floor, jawing with one member or another. Like Biden, he still exercises on the Hill, at the House gym, mostly so he can jog next to members who might have a question or some new rumor to share.

2. The not-so-dreaded pop-in for impromptu discussions that nudge things along.

Emanuel and I had been talking for just a few minutes when his office door suddenly burst open and the president strode in . . . . I was reminded of how different it is to talk with someone who has actually assumed the historical weight of the presidency, even if you’ve spoken with him before. Emanuel knows this phenomenon is as real for senators and congressmen as it is for reporters, which is why he choreographs the same kind of “spontaneous” drop-bys when members comes to see him. “I’ll have a lunch here, and he’ll come by to say hi to Susan Collins the way he came by to see you,” Emanuel told me after Obama departed, referring to the senator from Maine. “It’s an efficient use of his time.”

3. Making people think they came up with an idea to create the momentum to push it through the process.

The Clintons, fresh from their shared experience with a small-state legislature, at first chose to commandeer the legislative process, simply delivering their bill to Congress for ratification. This is, incidentally, precisely the same tactic that George W. Bush tried when he virtually demanded that a Republican Congress pass his prepackaged Social Security plan in 2005. The lesson, according to members of Obama’s team, is that professional legislators consider it their business to legislate. “One of the mistakes of the past is that when presidents arrive on Capitol Hill with legislation chiseled into stone, it’s not well received,” says David Axelrod, one of Obama’s most influential advisers. “You have to give people a sense of ownership.”

4. Pick up the damn phone and make the call already.

Obama is not the schmoozer that Clinton was, nor does he bestow nicknames like Bush. Rather, he has impressed lawmakers with a direct, businesslike manner and an outward deference to the legislative branch. As Obama mulled whether to nominate Sonia Sotomayor or some other jurist to the Supreme Court last month, he called every member of the Judiciary Committee personally, taking the “advise” part of “advise and consent” to a level that impressed some longtime senators. “This is the first time I’ve ever been called by a president on a Supreme Court nomination, be it a Republican or a Democrat,” Charles Grassley, the Republican senator from Iowa, told Peter Baker and Adam Nagourney of The Times after Sotomayor’s nomination was announced.

5. Take a stance, but have an exit strategy.

During his campaign last year, Obama took at least two positions on health care that he may soon find hard to maintain. First, in the primaries, he differentiated his plan from Hillary Clinton’s by refusing to back an “individual mandate” — that is, the provision that would require every American to obtain insurance. Then, during the fall campaign, Obama criticized John McCain for proposing to tax employer-based health benefits. If he were to offer a detailed proposal of his own right now, Obama might have to walk out into the Rose Garden and reverse himself on one or both positions. But with Baucus urging him to leave the details to his committee, Obama can instead wait for a plan to emerge from the Senate and then, if need be, reluctantly change his mind in the interest of compromise. Thus he preserves the option of backing away from his previous anti-big-government stances, and he gets to appear statesmanlike and pragmatic in the process.