This is a picture of the Tarsier, a primate from the islands of southeast Asia. They are a nocturnal animal with eyes the size of their entire brain. They have long hind legs, elongated fingers, and are covered in very soft, velvety fur.

They also have two noteworthy distinctions in the world of primates. 1. They are the only purely carnivorous primate on Earth. 2. If put in captivity they severely injure themselves, often to the point of their own death.

This second point is what caught my attention. I’ve long believed that humans were the only animals that while physically and sexually healthy will knowingly take their own lives. And yet, here this little primate does itself in if put in an enclosure or cage. This is such a truism for the animal that they simply cannot be kept in places like zoos.

So is it suicide? Does the tarsier understand what it’s doing when it seemingly tries to end the stress of captivity? Are they just playing out some pre-programmed behavior, set to be executed under certain conditions?

Do we really understand what we’re doing when we do the same thing?

I somehow suspect that we’re just another dumb animal, doing what evolution has told us to do, experienced subjectively as a choice made while operating under the illusion of free will.

But maybe not.

As promised in the 10 best jobs post I made, here are the 10 worst jobs for 2010. Though this is generally a response to the ridiculous official lists that are put out (compared to my list their worst looks like free money for getting blow jobs), I’m also trying to make you feel better about the shitty job you’re probably blowing off while reading this blog post. Enjoy.

10. Sewage Treatment Worker. You work with and process piss and shit and whatever else I happened to flush down my toilet. There’s no tellin’ what you’ll come into contact with as aids infected bits of flesh come down the pipe from your local prison. And you’ll never, ever, wash out that smell.

9. Prison Phone Bank Operator. So, you think your cubicle is a prison? Well as a prisoner working as a customer service agent, your cube is actually your break from your small cell. Just imagine getting prison raped and then having to take angry customer calls for Visa?

8. Biological Waste Handler (Medical Garbage Man). Those little bins with the needles and bloody crap from the operating room has to go somewhere and you’re going to take it there. Here, have a bag of tumors and body fat. Good times.

7. Crime Scene Cleaner. All the fun of the biological waste handler but with none of the safety features. Bits of brains, blood splattered on a wall, entrails dragged through a living room by a hungry family dog, it’s all yours.

6. Animal Inseminator. Just reach right up that horses vagina. Yup, that’s right, all the way up to the shoulder. Now breathe deep, my friend. This is your life.

5. Body Cavity Searcher. Maybe you’re a cop, maybe a prison guard, but whatever the case you are going to search the rectum of the 6 foot 4 inch rapist in front of you.

4. Chicken Killer. Before it comes to the super market, it’s a bird and you must decapitate it, de-feather it, cut out it’s guts, and send it along on a conveyor belt of doom. Lip itching? Don’t scratch it as you’re covered in feathers, blood, feces, and the remnants of your childhood dreams.

3. Spooge Mopper. From the slang dictionary: spooge n.
semen. From the normal dictionary: mopper. n. a worker who uses a mop to clean a surface. Put them together and it means you have one of the shittiest jobs on the planet. All day and (more likely) all night, you clean up the jizz of the sex shop patrons. The only way to get this job is to rape cancer ridden child midgets in a previous life.

2. Child Soldier. While not a common career in the U.S., child soldiers exist on every continent in the world. Chances are, you fell in to this career when a small group of armed thugs showed up in your hometown and forced you to kill your parents right there on the spot. From there they got you addicted to drugs, raped you repeatedly, forced you to kill other kids, and then marched you toward enemies that might not want to kill kids. To add insult to one of the greatest horrors mankind has ever invented, you work on commission, only getting paid when you loot something of value.

1. Whore (all types from crack to call girl). The oldest profession is still the shittiest. It doesn’t matter if you’re sucking dick for crack or sucking crack for cash, your life is pretty much fucked forever and you know it. In fact, it’s all you can think about as that three hundred pound, sweat covered biological waste handler, thrusts his swollen belly against you as you (under orders) call him “big bill the love king”.

See, life’s not so bad…for you.

I wrote this yesterday and decided not to post it. Then this morning during my commute MPR was airing a discussion which involved the stigma of mental illness (set in the context of politics in this case). I don’t like to keep quiet about my problems and I really don’t like feeling like I have to keep quiet. This is my life and if some part of it sucks, I’m going to talk about it. So, I’ve changed me mind. Here’s what I wrote yesterday…

Some days I just cannot get it together. My head is cloudy, my body is tense, and my emotions twist like a knife in my chest. I try to focus and I can only capture a fixed point in space and time for a few seconds before blurring into a catatonic hundred mile stare. Everything is bad, bad, bad and as far as my aching head is concerned, it can really only get worse.

Anyone who’s followed this little blog of mine knows that 2009 was the worst year of my life and that I am currently in a perpetual state of crisis. So it is from within this particular depressive period that I’d like to make a few observations about how I experience depression/anxiety/being nuts.

First, depression seems to equal the absence of hope. If you can find some hope, which I would define as some possibility of a better tomorrow, you can think your way into a functional state. Or at least, I sometimes can if my mood is triggered or heightened by circumstance. This might seem obvious to a sane person but to crazies, hope seems mushy and sappy and useless and naïve. But if you have some of it, then your suffering is finite and you can muster the will to make it through.

Second, having people dependent on you is a blessing and a curse. My kids save my life every single day. I could never hurt myself because I wouldn’t do that to them. I can’t even wallow around in self-pity because I wouldn’t want them to see that. For them I put on a mask of normalcy and pretend to function. On the other hand, they are insanely demanding and quickly tap my already limited energy reserves. They tear a swath of destruction and in their wake I am left standing amongst the rubble; an emergency response team of one. At times like this, I have to remember the upside: they keep me going and I love them more than anything or anyone.

Third, nobody is going to understand BUT that’s not the same as not caring. What’s happening is happening to you and it is not entirely rational (let’s take a moment to recognize that it’s not all irrational either). Don’t expect sympathy, understanding, support, sex, or hugs. You usually won’t get it. But that doesn’t mean the entire world is a cold and indifferent place. Those same people who don’t get it are probably worried about you but think about it, what can they really do? In my particular case, visible sympathy or concern is usually met with deftly deployed minimization and denial tactics. Instead of accepting the help or sympathy, I recoil and insist that I’m just a little tired today.

Finally, if you can trick yourself into getting out of your own head, it will help. Today I read an early draft of a friend’s short story and that made a big difference. It elbowed my analytic mind to the foreground and forced me to do something I’m good at. Suddenly a little pride slipped in and my whole world got a little brighter. It’s simple but it works.

Until this period ends I’m sure I’ll be writing more about depression than film, screenwriting, comedy, etc. and I know it might not be what people want to read. Bummer, it’s what I need to write.

Also, I know my readers are mainly comprised of close family and friends and these posts could be taken the wrong way. So let me clear that up: this isn’t a veiled attempt to get help, you don’t need to do anything, but I do need to have this blogging outlet. Seriously, you do enough by reading this as it justifies the existence of this blog and I find the whole thing…therapeutic.

Today Careercast.com released their ranking of the best to worst 200 jobs in 2010. The best job is Actuary and the worst goes to Roustabout (which just beat Lumberjack). Well, for fun I decided to come up with my list of 10 best and worst jobs for 2010. This list is completely subjective and I’ll start with just the 10 best.

10 Best Jobs For 2010

1. Lottery winner. This is pretty much as good as it gets with lots of money, no work, no obligation to your family, friends, or anybody really. Downside: Strangely high probability of falling apart in some serious way, including the possibility of blowing your head off inside the original batmobile.

2. Entitled Blue-blood Asshole. You were born into a family with infinite resources and have been pampered since birth. You’ve known nothing else which is why you feel you deserve everything you have. Even if you fuck it up, the family is there like a giant safety net. Downside: You’re an asshole.

3. Kept Boy/Girl. Lavish gifts, some sugar-person’s bottomless checkbook, it’s a good life. Downside: You must fuck on command (more of a drawback for girls than guys, assuming the lights can stay off).

4. Dysfunctional Pop/Rock Legend. Sure, you have to play music now and again but that’s an ego stroke you don’t really mind anyway (and if you ask nice you can just lip sync the whole thing). The rest of the time it’s shallow sex, money, drugs, and more sex. Downside: Herpes.

5. Sex Slave/Gimp. Ok, you’re a slave which comes with some baggage. You don’t have freedom is probably the big one. On the other hand, your master wants to keep you alive and that means taking care of your every need. That and ya know, you’re with someone who’s sick enough to have a sex slave which means there’s a good chance you will experience every sexual sensation biologically possible for a human being. Downside: Fecal play.

6. TV/Film Celebrity. Sex slave beat this out because at least as a sex slave your humiliation is private. As a celebrity you will have lots of money and drugs but not quite the same amount of hot/loose groupies that benefit the higher ranking pop star. But hey, you’re rich and beloved and umm, rich. Downside: You have to memorize really long scripts.

7. Porn Casting Director. Attractive people having sex with you isn’t part of the job, it IS the job. Now sure, you’re not rich but you have money and there’s someone sucking your genitals as you read this. Downside: You’re not rich.

8. CEO of a bank that’s too big to fail. I’m not going political on you here, it’s just that as a CEO of an essential part of our economy you not only can’t lose your company do to your management of it, but you don’t even have to give up your bonus. I mean, hey, you’re too valuable and if they didn’t give you millions in bonuses for running the company in the ground you might leave and run a different company into the ground (possibly one that is allowed to fail). Downside: Feigning regret over the trouble you’ve caused for everyone else.

9. Sex toy mold model. Your job is to think dirty thoughts and once aroused, let someone encase your junk in plaster. You watch tv for a bit and they remove the plaster. Some short time later your cock is a dildo and you can literally fuck yourself with it. And you got paid for this! Downside: Shaving junk prior to casting.

10. Executioner. So why is this in the top ten? Because you get paid to throw ONE SWITCH. Sure, some poor bastard dies because of it but still, you showed up and pressed one button or lever or whatever and then you went home. George Jetson had to do more work than that. Downside: Smell of burning hair.

I’ll write the 10 worst soon, I promise.

I’m starting a new category in this blog to journal about my professional life, including everything from ShopNBC to freelance jobs and, of course, my personal artistic projects. In truth, I’ve always intended to write about this but this is a very difficult time in my life with very little time to create, much less talk about it. My hope is that this journal will help get me through this period by keeping my dreams alive, providing me with some focus and perspective, and by preserving my strained sense of self.

For this first entry I think I’ll just list projects that are open or in progress. Sort of a status report as I begin the new year.

1. Butler wedding photos. This job is nearly done. I have one last batch of photos to deliver along with a round of manipulated images. My process for most of them has been pretty simple, just a little cropping and color correction. The manipulated images will be a little more artistic, including creating black and whites, sepias, faux paintings and the like. Novice Photoshop stuff from a professional point of view but I like how they turn out and they’re pretty cool to anyone who doesn’t have that kind of software.

2. Warumzer wedding video. This job is dragging on, partially because I shot so much damned footage (which means many more hours capturing and editing) and partially because I did the job more or less at cost and other things came up that I had to give priority. The footage looks good and it seems it will turn out well. I just need to get it done and out the door.

3. New demo reel. My existing reel is waaaay out of date and as a couple interesting job opportunities are presenting themselves, I need to make this a priority. It’s not that I’m in a huge hurry to leave ShopNBC but when these chances come up, you have to consider them and to do that, you need a reel.

4. Echoes. Oh, poor Echoes. I shot this film years and years ago and it’s wallowed in post production hell ever since. I’ll write sometime about everything that’s gone wrong but for now I’ll just say that it’s all my fault and I need to finish it to get my confidence back. Thankfully there’s only some sound design work, some mixing, and the ending credits left to do. It’s too bad that I’m always going to look at it as a sort of personal failure as I think it’s a good little film, I will just always feel a bit of a sting when I think about how I fucked it up for so long.

5. Microscopic Life. I’ve decided to kill this video podcast series but I have a couple episodes already in the can so I might as well finish them and put them out there. I learned a lot creating this series but due to life changes (which derailed the project) I no longer have the time it would take to keep it going.

6. Producing John Bungert’s solo album. I haven’t produced a CD since Psychopop and I’m excited about this one. John is one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever known and he needs to put out a CD. I recently received some rough recordings from him and am planning to start doing studio work with him soon. This will be a long slow process and I doubt the album will be done anytime soon but it will be worth it. Maybe we can have it ready by next Christmas.

7. Recording some of my own songs. I’ve been writing them, I might as well record them.

8. The Fall Of Dick. This is my current spec feature. It keeps getting shoved onto the back burner but it hasn’t left my head, which tells me I should keep it going. Besides, I’ve written something like six screenplays for other people since The Survival Hypothesis (the last spec I wrote for myself) and it’s time to get another one of my own stories on paper. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll see another one of them on film.

9. Working title: Conduit. This is a web series I’ve been developing with the intention of one day making it with friends. Sort of a micro budget sci-fi thing, all written to work with the filmmaking materials I have on hand (it actually uses these limitations as a stylistic tool, which is fun). God knows when or if I’ll ever make it but the script I count as an active project.

10. My website. I had these lofty ideas about having the site completed by the end of ’09. This didn’t happen and since I get the same amount of traffic as a dirt road in rural Minnesota, I’m not worried about it. But I do want it completed so I’ll keep plugging away at it.

11. ShopNBC. Producing for them is my day job and since it represents the vast majority of the writing, directing, and producing that I do, I guess I should list it.

I have a lot of other projects too but I don’t consider them active. Lots of screenplays, podcast ideas, songs, etc. I may write about them here but I wanted to limit this list to those pressing items that need to be completed sooner rather than later.

Depending on who you are you either look at this list and think it’s huge and that I’m crazy, or that it’s a little sad (not a lot of freelance stuff on it right now). Eh, either way it’s more than I can handle right now so it’s enough.

As I mentioned, this is a rought time for me but I will update this category with progress, musings, etc. as I get time.