GRABBINGSAND

from the fate’s-funny-ain’t-it? department:
i’m listening to the drones on my alarm clock radio this morning, and they are going on and on about gadgets and electronics. well, its not long until they run out of their own ideas and open up the phones to the teeming screaming meemies, which brings on this first caller from a company i met a few months back.
back in november, i (like so many of my friends) was once again downsized and sent along my merry way with a “good luck” and a shallow pocket of severance. during the course of my re-employment quest, i attended a job fair at the galleria and handed my resume to this company. a start-up, though not necessarily a dot com, they claimed that their product would drop magically from the sky in the spring of 2001 and revolutionize home entertainment. not a bad idea, it seemed, and when i interviewed with them some time later, it looked like a pretty cool toy, something to sit in the stack with your dvd-player and surround sound receiver. the price was steep, around five hundred, but that was supposed to be a “launch price” – kind of like cd-players were initially prohibitively priced in the 80s, and the price would come down after the sharper image set had bought enough to start a kind of buzz. regardless, they didn’t hire me, though they really liked my resume. i was bummed, i’ll admit it.
so this guy calls in this morning, and he starts waxing in a marketing fashion about that same product. and its still not out, it hasn’t revolutionized anything. they don’t expect it to see daylight until september, and even then the thing will be selling for over $900. one of the drones reduced the product to a “jukebox” which annoyed the caller. i just started smiling and kept smiling until i got to work.
you can’t always get (the job) you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get (the job) you need.

• Share