Or, How to Flawlessly Deliver Crushing Disappointment In Twelve Easy Steps.

1) Advertise a cool-sounding marketing job.

2) Receive a resume and creative cover letter from hopeful and unsuspecting applicant. (note to readers: that's me.)

3) Immediately call applicant for an interview.

4) Hold the interview and tell hopeful applicant that you're not sure what job you're going to hire for. It's either going to be another experienced account manager, or someone like you who could start as an assistant and learn the business. You say you are leaning towards the second option. (hopeful applicant thinks: yay!)

5) Receive thoughtful, hand-written, thank you note from hopeful applicant.

6) Call hopeful applicant and ask if she's free to work in the office for a day, just to help out while you're out of town and to see if you like it there.

7) Hopeful applicant gladly puts her current temp job in jeopardy in order to work for a day. She thinks maybe you really like her!

8) Let a few weeks go by before emailing applicant to say a check is on it's way for the day she worked and that you're not sure yet what your decision is.

9)Wait another week before actually sending the check and include a note saying you'll contact the applicant later that week to let her know what the decision is. Don't do this. Instead...

10) (And this is key!) Let two more weeks go by, then run a new ad in the paper for the assistant job you'd talked about creating.

11) Don't bother to ever contact the hopeful applicant.

12) Instead, breezily assume the pathetic and hurt applicant will figure it out when she sees the ad, thereby freeing yourself of the pesky task of personally breaking the news that she won't have to work for a FLAKE.

Grah. Didn't want the stupid job anyway.

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So, besides wrangling loans, what have I been up to? Mostly the same crap: riding my bike, reading Harry Potter V, eating Hanover tomatoes, (aka Manna from heaven) and watching the Tour de France.

Ah, the Tour. I won't go into it too much for fear of alienating those of you who haven't dropped my ass, but it's been a really exciting race this year. To answer Mimi Smartypant's question, yes, there are lots of interesting parts, but if you've not been following the whole thing, a time trial is about the least interesting stage to watch. If you have no previous knowledge of any of the on-going battles, the individual rider strengths, weaknesses and history, it's going to be boring as hell.

If you want to catch a purely exciting stage, I suggest a mountain stage, where riders attack while cranking up a mountain on a road that's practically vertical. Also, the fans are insane and there's Didi Senft, who dresses like the devil every year and chases the riders while brandishing a pitchfork. How could that not be exciting?

It also helps to be interested in bikes, but that goes without saying.

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One last complainy thing. During the Tour footage, Land Rover has been airing a particularly offensive commercial. Every time I see it I get a little more pissed off. Here's the scenario:

Third world country. Many decorative natives flock a dirt road, while a curtained litter, containing an Important Third World Personage, is carried down the center of the road towards an intersection. At the intersection, a shiny, shiny, Range Rover with leather interior stops to let the litter and townspeople pass. The Important Third World Personage seeing the Range Rover, and apparently recognizing its First World superiority, sticks his hand out of the curtain and beckons for the Range Rover to go first. The Range Rover plows through the crowd, taking out many unimportant natives (okay, slight exageration) and heads on down the road.

The tagline is something like: Range Rover- Respected. Nice. Really, really nice. Drive a big shiny $71,000 gas-guzzler and the natives will respect you! You will crush the less-important with your respected vehicle! Does this kind of advertising work? Who sees something like that and thinks "Yeah, that's what I want from a vehicle- the respect and admiration of poor people!" Yuck.

Okay, I sleep now. Good night monkeys!

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