Year of the Carnivore.

Year of the Carnivore opens today. You should go see it for various reasons.

Jian Ghomeshi and Sook-Yin Lee chat about it. Hate to get all gushy, but they are the most pleasant part of CBC.

my old neighbourhood

The following youtube video is from CBC's Wiretap with Jonathan Goldstein. He lives in the same neighbourhood that I used to call home. In fact, the phone booth is only a hundred and so feet from my old front door.

I miss it... my front door that is.

the CBC technical skills exam.

I have been trying to get my little media savvy self hired on to the venerable Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

I wouldn’t call it a ‘dream’ as such. More of a desire for a job in a mostly non-profit corporation with generally good intentions. Not quite the same as working for Amnesty International, but at least I wouldn’t be actively doing things to wreck havoc on the environment and civilization. I also like the idea of a steady paycheck, union regulated coffee breaks, and, possibly, interesting co-workers.

Oh, how I would love to have co-workers again! I can almost hear you office drones groan. I’ve read (okay, heard of) the studies indicating how little work gets done in the average office due to interruptions by said co-workers. I still remember how the old, evil boss would phone in 5 minute intervals not allowing me the chance to finish any of the work in question.

However, work at home is no picnic.

First off, there is the television. Then all the books and magazines. Then the internet. And finally a pleasant kitchen were I can drink endless espressos. Sounds nice, right?

This merely extends the work day far into the night. The guilt is what drives me to stay up. A sterile office would leave me with nothing but work to do. It would possibly leave me annoyed and tired, but it would be over for the day at 5pm.

So imagine my joy at finally getting an invitation to an entrance exam at the CBC that I thought would never ever come.

The 4 hour exam is only to put me in the running for a temporary position during the summer... maybe. It also put me in a very bad mood. I had to force myself to smile when I handed in the exam.

One has to score at least 60% on the entire exam, which would be fair, I suppose, if all of the exam had something to do with my expertise. There was a first section to the exam which had a French grammar question first thing. This is remarkably ignorant, as I won't be writing material for the CBC and I wouldn't be able to read the exam at all without an appropriate level of French. That is the state of affairs regarding language around here. If I took the same exam in Toronto or Vancouver, there wouldn't be an English grammar question.

The French are so touchy. You'd think General Wolfe was still marching across the Plains of Abraham the way they go on.

Following that were a bunch of questions on general knowledge that included such gems as 'when did the CBC start colour broadcast television?' and 'Match the faces with the show on which these people are on.' and my favorite 'Pick out which photos are of labour leaders'. I tend to listen to the news on the radio, so that wasn't much help.

My chances of success were saved by the fact that I happen to have had a job in a very small and ridiculous newsroom where I watched and encoded news videos for 8 hours nearly every day for nearly a year. I can match up world leaders with the flags of their countries, no problem. I’ll be able to ace any exam involving world current affairs for at least the next 6 months without any effort. The newsroom in question didn't cover local labour leaders or Québec talk show hosts.

The problem was really the second section which was all technical, but covered 11 different technical jobs, none of which are related. So I found myself trying to answer questions regarding electrical wiring, set design, and computer programming. I know nothing about these skill sets, except that you should never, never put your tongue on a nail or an electrical outlet or a hard drive. None of the questions covered those safety aspects.

If I score less than 60%, then I cannot apply for a position at the CBC for a year.

So I figured that at least now they have a paper file on me. It contains all of the information I give to them each and every time I apply to the CBC, but it at least feels like a step towards employment. I was reasonably confident on over 60% of the questions, but multiple choice is not a good way to evaluate people, and I have always feared the silly trickery which examiners are so proud of. Such a cruel game.

I'm not sure I understand the modern hiring practices. Do these people honestly think that I'm sitting at home by the phone waiting for the temporary offer? What happened to the old fashioned job interview?

The happy news is that this is all moot. Back in November, in a fit of panic at not being gainfully employed, I decided to return to my old job forest fire fighting with the small twist of filming a documentary at the same time.

I’m about to leave this snowbound city for the entire spring and summer seasons. There will be bugs and annoying work related politics, but in exchange, I get adventure and pay. It’s like the army minus the guns (and hopefully getting shot at).

CBC will just have to wait on me. I know they’ll be upset, but there is the chance that I failed their exam anyhow. I’m not good at multiple guess.

Today, I hate the CBC

Nearly everyday I look over the job opportunities at the venerable institution. Some jobs are well beyond me and my skills, such as president, or anchor, or journalist. I don’t want to get myself in over my head and either get fired on the first week, or have a staff that resent me for my incompetence. (I have been that staff. Being the incompetent one in charge fills me with dread.)

So I apply for jobs I know I’m capable of doing. Things such as assistant camera person, technical helper monkey, production assistant, maybe even video editor (again, I’m happy to be an assistant at this too). I even applied to be the video archives clerk cause at least it says video in the job title and I don’t mind working my way up from a windowless dungeon, if that’s what it takes.

The online process is routine. The website even saves your information so you only have to change the relevant bits.

But there is one section that fills me with annoyance. The one section that gives you the option of not filling it out.

It asks the following questions: Are you aboriginal? Are you a person with disabilities? Are you a member of a visible minority? What is your gender?

I have considered lying at this point. Of course that would be caught the moment I show up for the interview, but then, who is to say that I am not a visible minority, or that I don’t have some native blood in me somewhere?

The following is from the CBC online application process:

"Members of visible minorities" means persons, other than aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.”

So not me, so much. In fact the only yes answer I can give this series of questions, is yes I’m a man and a white one at that. Not my fault, not my choice, but I don’t feel guilty or responsible for that.

Let me be perfectly clear; I don’t believe in racism or treating handicapped people like dirt, beating up on women or feeding aboriginals rot gut in an effort to steal their land.

I don’t believe in those things, and have not done those things. I do acknowledge that such things happen.

The reason I don’t agree with these sorts of actions isn’t because I’m such a great fucking person. It is because no one should be evaluated based on an element of their life that they can do nothing about.

Racism is wrong because the judgment stems from the colour of a person’s skin or their culture.

You can’t do anything about that. You are simply born. You don’t get to make those decisions. You are male or female, white, brown or purple, based on barely understood realities of biology.

Thus on a purely logical basis, you cannot and should not judge another based on such things.

Affirmative action does not work outside of theory. It places the very same discrimination it seeks to eliminate on what is perceived as the opposing party without consideration for the individual.

It is just as racist to say ‘I will not even consider hiring that person because HE is WHITE.’

One day I decided to fill out the page. Why should I feel ashamed, after all?

Today, I finally received a call from Radio-Canada, the french arm of the CBC.

I was instantly excited. Perhaps a job... I’d even take a modestly paid intern position and do it with a smile on my face.

Predictably enough, it was in french. That isn’t a problem, usually. I was thinking in english, so my brain struggled for a few seconds to make the necessary switch.

The man wanted to know more about the school in Alberta that I graduated from. No problem. I answered. I worked hard at that school and learned some stuff, hopefully the required stuff.

The next thing I know he is asking rather technical questions, while not really hard, and I do know the answers, took me a bit by surprise. He hadn’t even told me at this point what the position was for.

So I asked. Apparently it was for a job as an assistant in a television studio. Great. A chance to work and learn some stuff. I have hung lights for theater and for studio work, so it is something I can do.

He was calling to not waste my time and theirs since they were considering asking me in to write a 4 hour exam.

Apparently, he decided that because I wasn’t ready for rapid fire technical questions at 10 in the morning and couldn’t give him an answer to the question “What do you know about electricity?” CBC would be unable to pony up the 50 cents or so in photocopy costs to write the fucking exam and prove myself one way or the other.

So I didn’t pass the screening call.

Granted I’m a little upset that within seconds my sought after chance at an interview with CBC was utterly destroyed. I do feel that had I been able to claim some sort of minority status other than the obvious western Canadian in Québec, I might of at least had the chance to write that 4 hour exam that would somehow magically make me able to hang lights, plug them in, and know to keep my mouth shut while the show is being taped.

At this point, at least for today, I want nothing to do with working for organizations more worried about how they are perceived than actually getting on with business.

I can't find an appropriate image to go along with this post. I already used the photo of shit in my last post.

i love the cbc

I love the CBC. I was brought up to love the CBC. Growing up it was the only radio station that I really knew about. Turning on the radio meant listening to the CBC.

I’m not sure why my parents were like this. They were aware that there was a knob to change the station... but it never got changed, ever.

Normally this would turn into a hard luck story about my clumsy teen age years and how unfair and weird my parents were.

But I’m happy to have lived with a stead diet of interviews and news stories along with awkwardly produced documentaries and retarded stories about a guy in Westlock, Alberta who collects antique combines. It calms my erratic little brain. Background white noise in the apartment. Plus it has filled my head with all sorts of important knowledge and even more useless trivia.

They will broadcast almost anything. They are responsible for the Beachcombers and my favorite all time teevee show, Twitch City. They even bothered to broadcast some little things that I have written. Nothing extraordinary, but it is still nice to hear your name on the radio.

It certainly isn’t perfect and that is probably what makes it so great. It stumbles less than college radio, but unlike college radio, it keeps on going despite the mistakes. The fact that something can keep on going despite being run by entirely by committees of suits is impressive.

A friend and I constantly rail against the main morning host, Shelagh Rogers. For a while we had discussed how we could get on the show and mock her somehow during the interview. It could still happen.

The strange thing is as much as we hate her interview technique and her obnoxious laugh, neither of us considers turning the radio off or changing the station. He is an artist and I sit in front of my precious computer, so we both are within easy reach of the radio off button. We both listen to the whole show, and yell at the radio and later we sometimes meet and discuss how much we don’t like her.

I do feel a bit bad about this. I’m sure if I met her I would be humbled at how nice she really is. And if I could work for her, I probably would swallow my pride, and take the job.

Why would I put my friendship with my artist friend in jeopardy? Firstly, I want to join the workforce again. My EI holiday has gone on long enough. More importantly, I just want to work at the CBC.

If this post ends up on some lowly production assistant's mandatory internet search... pass it on up the line, would you?