So what to report since our last meeting. Well Hollie is now doing more work experience in the children’s department of that place where she does work experience. Whooo kids books for everyone! Also she met Gillian McKeith at a party last week and confirmed previous suspicions that she looks like an angry camel (Gillian that is not Hollie). It appears that publishing houses have a strict policy on hiring staff; in contrast with the fashion-esque norm in publicity, things are a bit more relaxed in the children’s department. On stepping into Editorial today it quickly became clear that this is where the size 14s hide, far from the judgemental eyes of the Cosmo fashionista wannabe’s. All huge generalisations of course.
Sarah spent yesterday at the National Archives (it was like being back at University) researching for the documentary/TV drama we are writing (humm that sounds a bit grand, it’s not really). So as you can see we are actually doing things. How exciting. But fear not, still no sign of imminent employment.
Something we know you are all dying for us to tell you… now Big Brother is over and Sarah has watched every episode of Scrubs ever released, what are we doing with our spare time? Well don’t worry kids because fortunately for all concerned the new Season (7) of America’s Next Top Model started last night. It was as if they heard our call and answered with fantastically bitchy wanna be model drama. Go Tyra!
Continuing on from the last blog’s theme of using rhetorical questions to set up long rambling answers or indeed entire episodes of Sex in the City we have come up with another one.
How Many Friends Is Too Many Friends?
It has been brought to our attention that you can indeed have too many friends so we had a ruthless cull of ours a while back. The advantages of this were that we have fewer people to try and keep in contact with so fewer laborious e-mails about what we are not doing with our lives and fewer phone calls. It also means that we don’t have to feel bad when we can’t see them for months and then get guilt tripped into expensive catch up dinner. Also (and most importantly for us) it means we get fewer inquiries about what we are doing, meaning we then have to reply ‘nothing’ to those expectant faces - only to see them drop a bit as we go down in their estimations.
However this cull may have backfired on us as it now seems that we have no friends left at all – apart from each other that is. So what do we do now? Try and get back some of the old ones or just make new ones. Or does it just not matter? In today’s fast moving and consumer driven society who needs friends anyway?
Tuesday 30 January 2007
Wednesday 24 January 2007
Tales of the Unemployed Part 5 (Mmm... Scrubs)
Scrubs is back in my life and being unemployed is sweeeeeeeet once again! So Hollie is still at her work experience of doom ™ and I have been left to tend for the blog on my own. As we all know I don’t like to rant as much as her but I’ll give it a go. That being said I’ll do my best to keep up to her standards.
Speaking of the Hollie she is soooo busy at work that she just sent me a rather amusing link to an article she found on the Times Website. Yes luckily for Hollie and all the other single women in Wales a group of desperate dairy farmers are advertising themselves on cartoons of their organic milk.
The Times claims that ‘their pictures are accompanied by the slogan Fancy A Farmer?, and "Ffansi Ffarmwr?" in Welsh, along with a website address where potential love interests can find out more details.” So all Hollie need to do now is hop on a train to Wales and any farmer is hers.
….. sorry I stopped writing for a mo then I got distracted by Scrubs… god its good.
Oh so trivial stuff aside I actually did something yesterday, I interviewed a chap called Patrick Wolf. You will all be able to view it on that web site I write things for next week. Go me.
It has also been brought to my attention this week that the how shall we say ‘traditional blogs’ use a lot of rhetorical questions and sum things up nicely at the end in case you fell asleep during the middle, like in Sex in the City.
I think we should ask some of our own questions and do some summing up of things which is what I shall do now to signify the end of this yet another thrilling blog entry.
‘Sitting at home today doing nothing but watching scrubs gave me some time to reflect on all the things I could be doing with my life. Like working, or looking for work. However what I realised was that sitting watching scrubs all day is ok it has a lot of lessons to teach me and when daddy turns up with a glass of Cava it gets even better. So another day is over I still have no job but I’ve learnt something and now I’m drunk!’
P.S. From Hollie: I'm going to a book launch tomorrow, yay! (Clearly I've got to the point where 3 hours of extra unpaid work in a day is cause for jubilation. Likewise, I'm very happy that they've offered me 2 extra weeks in the children's books section).
Speaking of the Hollie she is soooo busy at work that she just sent me a rather amusing link to an article she found on the Times Website. Yes luckily for Hollie and all the other single women in Wales a group of desperate dairy farmers are advertising themselves on cartoons of their organic milk.
The Times claims that ‘their pictures are accompanied by the slogan Fancy A Farmer?, and "Ffansi Ffarmwr?" in Welsh, along with a website address where potential love interests can find out more details.” So all Hollie need to do now is hop on a train to Wales and any farmer is hers.
….. sorry I stopped writing for a mo then I got distracted by Scrubs… god its good.
Oh so trivial stuff aside I actually did something yesterday, I interviewed a chap called Patrick Wolf. You will all be able to view it on that web site I write things for next week. Go me.
It has also been brought to my attention this week that the how shall we say ‘traditional blogs’ use a lot of rhetorical questions and sum things up nicely at the end in case you fell asleep during the middle, like in Sex in the City.
I think we should ask some of our own questions and do some summing up of things which is what I shall do now to signify the end of this yet another thrilling blog entry.
‘Sitting at home today doing nothing but watching scrubs gave me some time to reflect on all the things I could be doing with my life. Like working, or looking for work. However what I realised was that sitting watching scrubs all day is ok it has a lot of lessons to teach me and when daddy turns up with a glass of Cava it gets even better. So another day is over I still have no job but I’ve learnt something and now I’m drunk!’
P.S. From Hollie: I'm going to a book launch tomorrow, yay! (Clearly I've got to the point where 3 hours of extra unpaid work in a day is cause for jubilation. Likewise, I'm very happy that they've offered me 2 extra weeks in the children's books section).
Sunday 21 January 2007
Tales of the Unemployed Part 4 (Now We Are Writers)
After another week of bumbling around not doing very much Sarah has somehow found us a new venture to focus our attentions on (AND we can use our degrees!). She went to see a man about a proverbial dog and it now turns out we're writing a script loosely based on crime in Victorian England. Who knows whether it will work but at the moment we are nievely enthusiastic about it all and planning trips to the National Archives, once Hollie's Work Experience Of Doom (TM) is finished. So you heard it here first (don't be surprised when you see us on telly collecting our BAFTA)! Thats of course if this blog isn't published beforehand.
We are concerned at our lack of googleability (TM, again). Sarah being the frantically busy person she is tried to google this site the other day, to no avail. In order to get up the Google rankings we need
1) more people to view our site
2) possibly to name drop famous people so those looking for, say, 'BRITNEY SPEARS SEX TAPE' or the classic 'ONE NIGHT IN PARIS' would see us listed and click away. If that's what you've just done, you're a pervert. But feel free to read the blog anyway, you never know you might learn something.
Speaking of which, in response to Andy's comment I did actually manage to do some research on the rumour that Lisa Stansfield was once allergic to her own saliva. According to the Daily Mail (yeah, I know) Lisa Stansfield did go through a period of being unable to sing or eat anything because she had become allergic to her saliva. I'm not sure how she was cured of this, but she was and thankfully for the music loving community she was soon back on top form.
Whilst at Tristan's house last night our good friend Emma came up with another good question which we will attempt to answer next time: Why is belly button fluff blue? Please write in with any suggestions. Or indeed questions of your own.
[Back to googleability, we've discovered that if you type 'Sarah Grun' into Google it does actually come up with stuff she's done. So in a vain attempt to up our ratings we're going to name drop my (Sarah Grun's) name as much as possible.
By Sarah Grun]
Having said that, people probably wouldn't be searching for Sarah Grun anyway.
All this googling is actually quite amusing. If you have a few moment to spare (and we do) try googling yourself and your friends. We've found one site describing Chrissie as 'lovely and smiley' and another dedicated entirely to Tristan. Have a go, see what you can find! We're going to do some more googling now.
We are concerned at our lack of googleability (TM, again). Sarah being the frantically busy person she is tried to google this site the other day, to no avail. In order to get up the Google rankings we need
1) more people to view our site
2) possibly to name drop famous people so those looking for, say, 'BRITNEY SPEARS SEX TAPE' or the classic 'ONE NIGHT IN PARIS' would see us listed and click away. If that's what you've just done, you're a pervert. But feel free to read the blog anyway, you never know you might learn something.
Speaking of which, in response to Andy's comment I did actually manage to do some research on the rumour that Lisa Stansfield was once allergic to her own saliva. According to the Daily Mail (yeah, I know) Lisa Stansfield did go through a period of being unable to sing or eat anything because she had become allergic to her saliva. I'm not sure how she was cured of this, but she was and thankfully for the music loving community she was soon back on top form.
Whilst at Tristan's house last night our good friend Emma came up with another good question which we will attempt to answer next time: Why is belly button fluff blue? Please write in with any suggestions. Or indeed questions of your own.
[Back to googleability, we've discovered that if you type 'Sarah Grun' into Google it does actually come up with stuff she's done. So in a vain attempt to up our ratings we're going to name drop my (Sarah Grun's) name as much as possible.
By Sarah Grun]
Having said that, people probably wouldn't be searching for Sarah Grun anyway.
All this googling is actually quite amusing. If you have a few moment to spare (and we do) try googling yourself and your friends. We've found one site describing Chrissie as 'lovely and smiley' and another dedicated entirely to Tristan. Have a go, see what you can find! We're going to do some more googling now.
Thursday 18 January 2007
Tales of the Unemployed Part 3 (Rejection and Red wine)
Well the rejections are coming in thick and fast making me feel like a bit of looser yes but then if I had got a job this darling little blog we have started wouldn’t have quite the same resonance to it. Plus being rejected from things give me a jolly good excuse to drink a lot of red wine! The main problem with applying for jobs is being rejected and rather unfortunately for me I take rejection rather badly though again this another good excuse for lots of red wine!
Shock in the big brother house my love Dirk is up for evection! I don’t know what I’ll do if he leaves! Cry probably!
I think that’s it for today I’m not as good at ranting as Hollie is.
I’m off to eat spaghetti.
Shock in the big brother house my love Dirk is up for evection! I don’t know what I’ll do if he leaves! Cry probably!
I think that’s it for today I’m not as good at ranting as Hollie is.
I’m off to eat spaghetti.
Wednesday 17 January 2007
Tales of the Unemployed Part 2 (Not Quite Unemployed, Just Unpaid)
Well well it's been a week since the last blog already. We seem to have managed to fill our time, which is probably unsurprising as even I (Hollie) have managed to procure some form of meaningful employment this week. Having pursued the publishing thing, I applied for work experience at a major publishing house and promptly got 2 weeks in the publicity department.
3 days in and I'm repeating, mantra-style, 'It's good for the CV, it's good for the CV (and I get free books...)'. The distinct disadvantages of working somewhere for free - and in fact, PAYING to be there - are that:
a) everyone at the said place of employment knows you're desperate and will do any job, no matter how menial, in order to ingratiate yourself with them.
b) leading on from this, there is no need for them to bother learning your name or indeed refer to you in any other terms than 'the work experience girl'
c) whenever you're photocopying/cutting things out/sticking bits of paper to things, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'you're not being paid, nur nur ne nur nur'.
Added to this is the feeling that I'm wandering around in a world vaguely reminiscent of 'The Devil Wears Prada'. It turns out that book publicity is quite closely related to the magazine world, which means that everyone is extremely thin and (in my experience so far) extremely female. I saw someone eat today and I nearly had a heart attack. I'm not saying that I'm so blimp-like that this alone would discount me from the industry, but it's not really my style. Whilst I think the work that the girls are doing is quite interesting it's not screaming 'Future Career' at me. Then again, does anything? As always, I wish that someone would give me a big pile of money to read things and possibly write things as well. Sadly this job does not seem to exist (please someone let me know if I'm wrong).
In other news, Sarah interviewed a man about a club night today and then wrote about it. That's more interesting than my life, definately.
Right I'm going to stop ranting now and watch Desperate Housewives or something. I do enjoy working Monday - Friday in a macabre sort of way, because it means the weekends are something to enjoy rather than being like the weekdays, but without This Morning. Isn't that philosophical.
3 days in and I'm repeating, mantra-style, 'It's good for the CV, it's good for the CV (and I get free books...)'. The distinct disadvantages of working somewhere for free - and in fact, PAYING to be there - are that:
a) everyone at the said place of employment knows you're desperate and will do any job, no matter how menial, in order to ingratiate yourself with them.
b) leading on from this, there is no need for them to bother learning your name or indeed refer to you in any other terms than 'the work experience girl'
c) whenever you're photocopying/cutting things out/sticking bits of paper to things, there's a little voice in your head saying, 'you're not being paid, nur nur ne nur nur'.
Added to this is the feeling that I'm wandering around in a world vaguely reminiscent of 'The Devil Wears Prada'. It turns out that book publicity is quite closely related to the magazine world, which means that everyone is extremely thin and (in my experience so far) extremely female. I saw someone eat today and I nearly had a heart attack. I'm not saying that I'm so blimp-like that this alone would discount me from the industry, but it's not really my style. Whilst I think the work that the girls are doing is quite interesting it's not screaming 'Future Career' at me. Then again, does anything? As always, I wish that someone would give me a big pile of money to read things and possibly write things as well. Sadly this job does not seem to exist (please someone let me know if I'm wrong).
In other news, Sarah interviewed a man about a club night today and then wrote about it. That's more interesting than my life, definately.
Right I'm going to stop ranting now and watch Desperate Housewives or something. I do enjoy working Monday - Friday in a macabre sort of way, because it means the weekends are something to enjoy rather than being like the weekdays, but without This Morning. Isn't that philosophical.
Wednesday 10 January 2007
Tales of the Unemployed Part 1 (Was Texas a Country)
This may seem like an eager start - two blogs in two days, however don’t expect them to come at this rapid rate much after this week. One because the novelty will have worn off and two being unemployed makes you terribly lazy!
To prove to the world that we do things occasionally such as meeting up to eat soup for lunch (butternut squash, apricot and ginger – yum) we bring you Random Trivia of the Day. This one originated from an argument we were having in the pub on Monday! Sparked off by Sarah talking about the existence of the Texas Embassy near Trafalgar Square: was Texas a country?
After some hard core research it was discovered that Texas had indeed been a country for the grand total of 9 years! To commemorate this and because some like to think it still is a country, a few enthusiastic Americans in London have set up the Texas Embassy which is essentially is a glorified Mexican restaurant. Strictly speaking of course, Hollie was correct in saying that Texas can’t have a real embassy as it is not a real country. (Stop referring to yourself in the third person you twat. I was right it was at one point in the past a real country – Sarah).
So there you go – Random Trivia of the Day: Texas was once a country.
Other than this amazing revelation, very little has happened in the last day. Sarah has become obsessed with Celebrity Big Brother and particularly with Celebrity Big Brother and particularly with Dirk (The Face) Benedict. In fact we will award him the status of a DOM (dishy older man), an honour also held by Howard from Take That.
Whilst on the topic of acronyms, when reading the Times the other day I discovered that Sarah and I have our very own, bestowed by our gracious government. We are NEETs – not in education, employment or training. That this title is usually applied to council estate inhabitants named Wayne has not escaped us, and is slightly perturbing. Never mind eh.
That’s all for now. We should probably look for jobs, or something.
To prove to the world that we do things occasionally such as meeting up to eat soup for lunch (butternut squash, apricot and ginger – yum) we bring you Random Trivia of the Day. This one originated from an argument we were having in the pub on Monday! Sparked off by Sarah talking about the existence of the Texas Embassy near Trafalgar Square: was Texas a country?
After some hard core research it was discovered that Texas had indeed been a country for the grand total of 9 years! To commemorate this and because some like to think it still is a country, a few enthusiastic Americans in London have set up the Texas Embassy which is essentially is a glorified Mexican restaurant. Strictly speaking of course, Hollie was correct in saying that Texas can’t have a real embassy as it is not a real country. (Stop referring to yourself in the third person you twat. I was right it was at one point in the past a real country – Sarah).
So there you go – Random Trivia of the Day: Texas was once a country.
Other than this amazing revelation, very little has happened in the last day. Sarah has become obsessed with Celebrity Big Brother and particularly with Celebrity Big Brother and particularly with Dirk (The Face) Benedict. In fact we will award him the status of a DOM (dishy older man), an honour also held by Howard from Take That.
Whilst on the topic of acronyms, when reading the Times the other day I discovered that Sarah and I have our very own, bestowed by our gracious government. We are NEETs – not in education, employment or training. That this title is usually applied to council estate inhabitants named Wayne has not escaped us, and is slightly perturbing. Never mind eh.
That’s all for now. We should probably look for jobs, or something.
Tuesday 9 January 2007
The Beginning
From dictionary.com:
"Schadenfreude - a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction when something bad happens to someone else".
Neid zu fühlen ist menschlich, Schadenfreude zu genießen teuflisch: "To feel envy is human, to enjoy schadenfreude is devilish." (Arthur Schopenhauer)
Wikipedia lists 21 translations of the term and several references to it in popular culture (including the obligatory Simpsons episode). It seems appropriate to begin this new blog by setting the tone, as it were; having returned from my travels around the world - a thoroughly great experience filled with daring escapades, intrepid adventures and a vast amount of boxed wine - I find myself unemployed, skint and living with my parents.
The time has come to find myself a career - but in what? I have no work experience and very little idea of how to go about finding a job that I won't find soul-destroyingly dull (unfortunately this seems to apply to most careers out there and at the least, any involving numbers). Having settled upon publishing as something I could probably deal with (all you have to do is read books, right) I intend to ignore the average starting salary and insanely competitive nature of the field, and make my first steps towards Goal Of The Year: moving out of chez Rendall.
It's not all bad though. Despite the fact that the vast majority of my friends from home are decided on their careers and either on the first stages of them, or waiting to finish uni and begin training on ridiculously high starting salaries, I have an ally. Sarah is trying to get into production and has three years of unpaid work experience to back her up yet is finding it impossible to get a pay cheque out of anybody. Basically no one will give her a paid job until she's had a paid job. We came up with the idea for this blog yesterday over our second coffee of the day, after laughing about how distant the getjealous website seems to me now. We hope to track our trials and tribulations, and of course the number of free coffees we receive due to our unswerving loyalty to Caffe Nero.
Right, back to that recruitment website...
"Schadenfreude - a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction when something bad happens to someone else".
Neid zu fühlen ist menschlich, Schadenfreude zu genießen teuflisch: "To feel envy is human, to enjoy schadenfreude is devilish." (Arthur Schopenhauer)
Wikipedia lists 21 translations of the term and several references to it in popular culture (including the obligatory Simpsons episode). It seems appropriate to begin this new blog by setting the tone, as it were; having returned from my travels around the world - a thoroughly great experience filled with daring escapades, intrepid adventures and a vast amount of boxed wine - I find myself unemployed, skint and living with my parents.
The time has come to find myself a career - but in what? I have no work experience and very little idea of how to go about finding a job that I won't find soul-destroyingly dull (unfortunately this seems to apply to most careers out there and at the least, any involving numbers). Having settled upon publishing as something I could probably deal with (all you have to do is read books, right) I intend to ignore the average starting salary and insanely competitive nature of the field, and make my first steps towards Goal Of The Year: moving out of chez Rendall.
It's not all bad though. Despite the fact that the vast majority of my friends from home are decided on their careers and either on the first stages of them, or waiting to finish uni and begin training on ridiculously high starting salaries, I have an ally. Sarah is trying to get into production and has three years of unpaid work experience to back her up yet is finding it impossible to get a pay cheque out of anybody. Basically no one will give her a paid job until she's had a paid job. We came up with the idea for this blog yesterday over our second coffee of the day, after laughing about how distant the getjealous website seems to me now. We hope to track our trials and tribulations, and of course the number of free coffees we receive due to our unswerving loyalty to Caffe Nero.
Right, back to that recruitment website...
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