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four Novembers without work

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2003.11.04

It occurred to me today, as I waited in line at the federal government's Human Resources department's office, that this is my fourth November in a row that I've faced without a job. While in 2000 it was voluntary (as I was traveling in Australia), the last three have been due to the (literally) perennially slow IT market. Four in a row!

Note, 2020.02.01 Don't worry young Michael, you have a good run coming. In a year you'll be working. In Halifax! Then you'll have employment in Japan for three Novembers, then self-employment for one, then you'll work in Toronto for nine Novembers. And then OK one more unemployed but that's a ways off.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton