he stared at the branches knotted skyward
like his father's raised fist. the lawn was
trashed again, another night tallied by beer
cans, and inside he heard
his mother in the kitchen, methodically
opening and closing
drawers. he dangled from the first branch
and held his legs to his chest, then kicked up
to a higher stoop, up and up,
his perch over the quiet street.
he watched the sun sink
below the evening's quicksand.
he could stay here unnoticed, webbed
in leaves and dark, his loneliness
like a cloak.
20090217
.american.apparel.statement.of.interest.
Not that I ever really expect to hear back from them.
"
Is it a biting irony for someone with questionable beliefs in America to apply to American Apparel? Certainly not. Is it something of an irony that American Apparel hails to labor practices that are contradictory to the outsourced slave labor that most of corporate America has invented and sustained? Certainly not. Any hipster that doesn't stare in the face of self-contradiction and scoff apologetically has revoked his scene points. Because let's face it, I'm a hipster. And if you are an American Apparel employee reading this, chances are that you are too.
Everyone wants to work for American Apparel because of the totally rad non-slave labor and stuff. I'll skip over that. No doubt, I hold fair labor practices close to my little leftist heart, but there is no need to rehash something that you already try so hard to publicize. Instead, let me talk about what I would hope to get out of this job, other than a paycheck and the shirt off your back(room).
I am unabashedly a student, currently waiting to hear back from graduate schools. My intent, as a graduate student, is to study the changes undergoing Modern Israeli Hebrew as a result of language contact. And before you decide that that is totally irrelevant, think about who it is that is responsible for modernizing language. Young people? Good, keep going. Young hip people. Cool, groovy, hip, epic, sweet, awesome young people.
Each generation is reinventing language word by word. They aren't just recycling their old vocabulary; they're importing words left and right, PBR cans in hand. I have heard a literal Hebrew translation of the phrase "da bomb", direct from English. The borrowed Arabic curses would burn your ears. This demographic is my demographic, whether or not I slipped into the skinny jeans of hipsterdom myself. If I'm going to understand the linguistic neologisms that occur because of these people, I'm going to have understand the things that motivate them. Sure, I could float around parties, you say, but that certainly doesn't give me an structural insight on an institutional column of hipster culture. If hipsters prescribe to the medicine of fashion, and American Apparel is the doctor, I want to be the pill-cutting pharmacist.
Ok, so maybe it's still a stretch. Maybe you think that being able to interact with a social subculture responsible for language change is a rather flimsy excuse to get hired. That's ok. I have other skills. I can do a skid stop with a leg dangling over the handlebars; I can play the obscure music game with the best of them; I can name drop existentialist philosophers like a pledge of allegiance, and even compelling argue for or against their works. Wii Fit even tells me I'm underweight, but we'll just pretend I'm tall.
Perhaps more importantly, I am amiable and resourceful, important factors, no doubt, in working with customers. And for someone applying to a fair labor employer, I work like a slave, with high expectations of myself with regard to diligence and efficiency. Computers are yesterday's news, and I can work with them natively.
So if you don't hire me, don't do it on the pretense that I'm an ostentatious pseudo-intellectual, but by all means do it on account that I can't grow a beard.
"
"
Is it a biting irony for someone with questionable beliefs in America to apply to American Apparel? Certainly not. Is it something of an irony that American Apparel hails to labor practices that are contradictory to the outsourced slave labor that most of corporate America has invented and sustained? Certainly not. Any hipster that doesn't stare in the face of self-contradiction and scoff apologetically has revoked his scene points. Because let's face it, I'm a hipster. And if you are an American Apparel employee reading this, chances are that you are too.
Everyone wants to work for American Apparel because of the totally rad non-slave labor and stuff. I'll skip over that. No doubt, I hold fair labor practices close to my little leftist heart, but there is no need to rehash something that you already try so hard to publicize. Instead, let me talk about what I would hope to get out of this job, other than a paycheck and the shirt off your back(room).
I am unabashedly a student, currently waiting to hear back from graduate schools. My intent, as a graduate student, is to study the changes undergoing Modern Israeli Hebrew as a result of language contact. And before you decide that that is totally irrelevant, think about who it is that is responsible for modernizing language. Young people? Good, keep going. Young hip people. Cool, groovy, hip, epic, sweet, awesome young people.
Each generation is reinventing language word by word. They aren't just recycling their old vocabulary; they're importing words left and right, PBR cans in hand. I have heard a literal Hebrew translation of the phrase "da bomb", direct from English. The borrowed Arabic curses would burn your ears. This demographic is my demographic, whether or not I slipped into the skinny jeans of hipsterdom myself. If I'm going to understand the linguistic neologisms that occur because of these people, I'm going to have understand the things that motivate them. Sure, I could float around parties, you say, but that certainly doesn't give me an structural insight on an institutional column of hipster culture. If hipsters prescribe to the medicine of fashion, and American Apparel is the doctor, I want to be the pill-cutting pharmacist.
Ok, so maybe it's still a stretch. Maybe you think that being able to interact with a social subculture responsible for language change is a rather flimsy excuse to get hired. That's ok. I have other skills. I can do a skid stop with a leg dangling over the handlebars; I can play the obscure music game with the best of them; I can name drop existentialist philosophers like a pledge of allegiance, and even compelling argue for or against their works. Wii Fit even tells me I'm underweight, but we'll just pretend I'm tall.
Perhaps more importantly, I am amiable and resourceful, important factors, no doubt, in working with customers. And for someone applying to a fair labor employer, I work like a slave, with high expectations of myself with regard to diligence and efficiency. Computers are yesterday's news, and I can work with them natively.
So if you don't hire me, don't do it on the pretense that I'm an ostentatious pseudo-intellectual, but by all means do it on account that I can't grow a beard.
"
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