Category Archives: Work

White Slavery in the Twenty-First Century

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If Eliza Armstrong were alive today, I know exactly what she’d be doing: running interference on her overlord’s stalker, fighting over table scraps, and contributing keyword-heavy posts on the state of the chimney sweeping industry to some faceless blog network for five bucks a post.

Oh, a blogger’s life is not all Champagne and Caviar, my friends. No, nor Skittles and Beer neither.

Alas, not even Smarties and Orange Crush, most days.

It all starts so innocently. You LiveJournal, perhaps, or you get a bit of a reputation as a Tumblr.

You see a blog job listed on MediaBistro. You think it’ll be fun. A laugh. Something you do in between vigorous rounds of Scrabulous and the performance of whatever lucrative, yet cushy, professional tasks the future holds in store for you. Someday.

As this video exposé from BarelyPolitical (via Valleywag) demonstrates, you could not be more wrong. Long hours in murky darkness, scant rations of Chex mix and RedBull ( or cheap knockoffs, if you work outside Silicon Valley), and a polyester duvet that you have to share with the owner’s poorly-housebroken bulldogs are the lot of a typical blogger.

And your overlords? Raising a toast to themselves at Balthazar.

Stupid Girl

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Shirley Manson wearing angel wings. She deserves them more

Loyal followers of Operation Global Media Domination will no doubt have several questions at this point.

  1. Who’s the stupid girl and dear god raincoaster’s not talking about me, is she?
  2. What does one of the best music videos of the 90’s have to do with the economics of prostitution?
  3. Really, she’s not talking about me, is she?
  4. etc.

Newcomers to the ol’ raincoaster blog will no doubt have an additional question, What the hell is she talking about?

She’s talking about this.

Now, to pick up the story where we left off (have you done your homework? Skim it at least enough to pass; didn’t you learn that essential skill in high school?)…

This post, and that post, were sparked by this post on Valleywag which in fact I did not read, because I went off on my own little egotistical tangent and became far more interested in what I had to say than what Melissa had to say.

That’s not like me, eh?

Now, if you’ve read your homework you know that the general opinion among economists is that prostitution is economically not only viable but also cheaper than being married. One economist went so far as to suggest that men open accounts with their wives and pay only for services rendered, on the basis that this would save the men money overall. One presumably unmarried economist (or, if married, presumably permanently celibate after penning the column).

The consensus was that marriage had one single advantage over prostitution as far as men are concerned:

Procreation.

I’m not exactly sure how it is that all these economists are unaware of the phenomenon of surrogacy, but apparently they are. The laws around surrogacy are quite obviously not relevant to the discussion because in most of the areas studied by those economists I referenced prostitution was itself illegal. Illegality and unregulation obviously pose no meaningful barrier to entry for clients as far as these studies are concerned; things might be different if everything were legal, but the studies stand for our current situation regardless of the legality or illegality of the activities described, which presumably extends to surrogacy. If a man can find a woman who will accept cash for sex, he is presumably not constrained by conscience or threat of the law against finding one who would accept cash to carry a pregnancy to term.

What I am saying is that: these women exist. I know one. She has babies for money. It is her career. And that song is dedicated to her.

Read past the jump for the whole story.

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Cthulhu finds his dream job

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We all have one, and sometimes we find it in the strangest place:

Cthulhu Hentai

via SeismicTwitch

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Blogging for Nonprofits Course March 26th

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social media

OUR NEXT CLASS RUNS
Wednesday, March 26th

Current course: Blogging for Nonprofits

 

• What: a hands-on, blog building workshop including advice on how your organization can get the most impact from social media and blogs.

• When: 9 – 4 Wednesday, March 26th

• Where: Tradeworks Training Society, Downtown Vancouver

• Why: Learn to use social media and blogs to complement your organization’s mission. Get a blog up and running in one day with personal instruction in a small, intensive workshop.

 

This workshop covers blogging issues like:

> what social media can and can’t do for your organization

> posting rich media like podcasts, video, and images

> basic copyright law and accepted practices

> solving basic technical problems, where to find help

> privacy, confidentiality, and the internet

> balancing accessibility and professionalism online

> SEO, publicity, and building your media presence

Tuition is $200 per participant. Please pre-register via email prior to Friday, March 21st. No late registrations will be accepted. Computers are provided; you may bring a laptop if you prefer. Presented by raincoaster media ltd, in partnership with Tradeworks Training Society. Contact or 778-235-0592, bloggingclasses AT gmail DOT com .

With class size limited to 6, this will be a program of personalized, intense learning. During the workshop you will create a blog, customize the design, and publish several draft posts including various multimedia formats such as video. You will leave with a functional, professional blog and the skills you need to run and promote it.

Why blog? Check out the creative, effective ways that other nonprofits are using blogs to distribute their message independent of the mainstream media:

> 10 reasons every nonprofit must have a blog

> 10 ways nonprofits can use blogs

> blogging basics for nonprofits

> the nonprofit blog exchange

> net2learn blogging for nonprofits

> how nonprofits can use social media

> should your nonprofit have a blog?

Upcoming Courses: Corporate and Nonprofit Blogging, Pimp My Blog (blog
promotion), Blogging for Business, Audio Podcasting, and Photoblogging (online and in
Montreal, courtesy Neath of Walking Turcot Yards). Please email bloggingclasses AT gmail DOT com to be put on the notification list.

Bio: Lorraine Murphy has been blogging for many years, and her flagship blog, raincoaster, is ranked in the top 20,000 blogs in the world. She maintains The Shebeen Club Blog for the literary group of the same name, running through rain for students of her course Blogging to Personal Growth, and Blogger’s Blurt, a resource for beginning WordPress bloggers. She mommyblogs at TeenyManolo and celebrityblogs at Ayyyy!. Ms Murphy is the author of Terminal City: Vancouver’s Missing Women and a former Small Business Columnist at Business in Vancouver newspaper and Occupational Pursuit magazine. As one of the cornerstone volunteers in the WordPress.com technical help forums, she has long experience helping beginning bloggers develop fluency and achievement online.

Contact us below for more details:

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Wanted

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Vicky Pollard and kids

Job posting of the year, this one.

I have a friend. My friend is smart. My friend is funny. My friend is possessed of a wide and varied range of interests and a keen appreciation for what people call “having a life” that precludes her putting mundane concepts like Calvinism, Liberal Guilt, or Suburbianism ahead of that whole life-having thing. And one day we were in conversation; well, if truth be known we were in IM or rather, I believe, GChat: one of those things for sure. And the recurring theme of prosperity and my own lack thereof arose, as it is wont to do whenever it wonts to, and she said, Come over here (meaning England). They’ve never seen a work ethic in their lives. I am serious: They will throw money at you.

And I liked the sound of that, I did. But I doubted. Yes, I doubted my good friend’s word, despite the fact that all my English friends who do have work ethics are never short of work for long and always get paid well when they’re working. I read everywhere in the English press about the terrible plague of unemployment in the country, the near-impossibility of obtaining anything approaching a living wage, and the terrible, grinding burden of the Sisyphean workload forced upon a helpless workforce by faceless corporate overlords in Monte Carlo.

But eventually I read different. I stopped reading the news and started reading the facts.

I read a starting wage of over $40,000 per year offered to someone who hadn’t yet passed final exams (capable and worthy though we know StevenL to be) and then I read something even more interesting, although not useful to those of my rarefied gender.

I read this want ad:

Teenage Pregnancy Implementation Manager

Grade 8 £29,728 to £33,291 (bar at £32,436)

Location: Joint Health Unit, Town Hall Extension, Manchester, M60 2LA

Hours: 35 per week

We are now looking for an experienced and enthusiastic individual to support the management of the local teenage pregnancy programme. The successful candidate will be a strategic thinker with strong project management skills and a proven track record of partnership working. Reporting to the Teenage Pregnancy Coordinator, the postholder will contribute to the development, implementation and monitoring … Excellent communication and negotiation skills are required…

Or at least the ability to say, “Buy you a drink?” in a Lancashire accent.

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