Flowers for America

Over the last few years I have blogged and tweeted about shows from HBO Now, Youtube TV, Acorn, Britbox, and briefly the Mhz channel. In response to the pandemic, we dropped all those pay channels and have been streaming free channels like Roku, TUBI, FilmRise, etc. I rewatched UFO, a paranoid 1970 sci-fi series by the team that had produced marionette series like Fireball XL5 and Thunderbirds, and later Space 1999. I am rewatching Merlin, too, which presented the Arthurian legend as a mix of adolescent comedy and melodrama.

I had seen parts of the first Hunger Games film, but TUBI had the entire series for nine more days, so we started watching those, and comparisons to the current economic landscape are inescapable. We’ve also been watching the Genius of the Modern World series on Netflix, which my stepson has not dropped. The first two episodes featured Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzche. We watched Nicole Kidman in Bewitched, and last night my wife found a 1990 Cinderella-type flick called, If the Shoe Fits, starring post-sex tape Rob Lowe and post-rhinoplasty Jennifer Grey. That was terrible, but I owed her for sitting through Marx and Nietzche.

One film we enjoyed was Flowers for Algernon, a 2000 TV movie starring Matthew Modine. I saw Charly in theaters when it first came out in 1968, and found it very moving. Cliff Robertson played Charlie Gordon on TV in 1961, and again in the film. I thought Cliff Robertson deserved his Oscar, but there was one scene where he plays the developing Charlie Gordon being “groovy” that was tough to watch. Later I ran across the story in a scifi anthology. I hadn’t initially thought of it as a science fiction tale, but increasing his intelligence got Dr Morbius in all sorts of trouble in Forbidden Planet, and there were the Outer Limits episodes, Expanding Human and The Sixth Finger, where Skip Homeier and David McCallum ran afoul of their experiments in increasing intelligence.

Daniel Keyes was an experienced author and editor of pulp magazine and comic book science fiction, horror and fantasy, but also spent some time teaching English to special needs students. He reportedly developed a synopsis, Brainstorm, at the request of Galaxy Science Fiction into Flowers for Algernon, whose editor then requested a happier ending. Keyes published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction instead, and won a Hugo award for Best Short Story. Keyes later expanded it to a novel, which I have not read, which shared a Nebula Award, and was nominated for a Hugo. Again some publishers requested the happier ending, but Harcourt Brace published as written.

Anyway, we enjoyed Matthew Modine’s performance. There were staging differences from Charly, but the story was essentially the same, and at the end we had to wonder how we would deal with a loss of intelligence. We each have relatives who are dealing with this in a very real way.

As I drifted off to sleep last night, it occurred to me that our nation-state is facing an impending decline of intelligence with far less grace than Charlie Gordon. We’ve witnessed an experiment in which a surfeit of natural resources – taken from around the globe – fueled a massively prosperous middle class, but the experiment is being carefully wound down, and we are being made to forget all the rights and prerogatives we once took for granted.

Spurious Job Adverts

My wife and I watch a lot of documentaries, and just watched The Social Dilemma [youtube trailer], which is trending on Netflix. The film interviews former execs from Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc, who wonder how firms that worked under mottoes like, “Don’t Be Evil,” created a social media environment that is so addictive, divisive and demeaning. Short answer: as with drug dealers, their earnings depend on modifying the behavior of the users, whether it benefits the users or not. A screen quote claims that drug dealers and software developers are the only ones that call their clients, “users,” though network administrators also use the term. Many of the interviewees claim that they now restrict their children from using the platforms they developed. The film is worth watching, but they scarcely mentioned the workplace media sites, LinkedIn or Monster.

Until recently, I was employed – busy with renovations and new buildings for colleges and universities – but nothing stops architectural projects cold like uncertainty, and college administrators don’t know quite what is hitting them. After being laid off, I updated LinkedIn with my new status, and applied through them to the few firms that were advertising, two of which were employment agencies. I then received an email thanking me for joining Startwire, which I hadn’t realized I was doing. My profile/resume must have been sent to quite a few places, too, because over the next several weeks I was besieged with useless and repetitive emails. I divide these into two groups: irrelevant listings, and scam offers.

I am a building architect, and am used to confusion with my work and software architect positions, but Career Builder sends me scads of emails to be a Customer Service Representative, or even a Border Patrol Agent. Nexxt forwards all sorts of engineering jobs, but I’m not an engineer. Gpac submits project manager positions from any industry. Monster perhaps saw that I had worked on hospitals and suggested Licensed Healthcare Insurance Agent, but also many, many grocery shopper positions. Artech offers clerk positions. AllRetailJobs is always showing me posts for Amazon shoppers and Uber Eats drivers. Maybe these are the only jobs out there.

Worse are the dicey offers. An email from ActionCoach.com, and referencing Master Coaches Association, suggested I become a business coach. ActionCoach is a franchise business that seems to resemble a multilevel marketing scheme. I plan to avoid it.

I have gotten many, many copies of the, “We are considering you as the new Quality Control Inspector for our company,” sort of offer from fairly anonymous email addresses, which always seem to involve handling shipping from my home address. Very often there is an attached pdf named something like, Description_684. This is known as the reshipping scam, and can land you in jail for handling stolen goods.

I was told several years ago that most firms don’t bother with rejections, but I did get one polite acknowledgement, followed by a polite rejection from Larson Design Group.

Years ago, I used to joke to coworkers that I had joined LinkedIn even though I didn’t know what it was for. I have posted industry articles, which seem to have been read, and I have read similar posts from former coworkers. I do also have the feeling that I am sorta, kinda keeping in touch with former coworkers. But I’m losing any expectation that LinkedIn will be an asset in searching for a job.