I'm seriously worried about a job application which involves a vocabulary list of "encrypted"/"encoded." I feel like I'm being condescended towards.

"During an investigation into employee theft, you have been asked to corroborate the testimony of another employee. What have you been asked to do?"

Jesus. I know this is an entry-level job, but god damn...

"Your supervisor asks you to compile the credit card receipts. What should you do to the receipts?"

Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. I feel like I ought to shoot somebody.

"Your manager tells you to return the surplus merchandise to the supplier. You are returning the merchandise because:"

AAAAAAAAH!

"Your supervisor recently fired an employee for not being punctual. What did the employee do wrong?"

Christ on a buttered cracker. Is this a job application or a high school vocab test?

"A coworker is often late and causes you more work. How effective/ineffective would it be to buy an alarm clock and place it in his locker?"

I don't think I want this job because I think it'll make me feel stupid.

"You and your coworkers had to complete a large volume of work in a short time. Everyone is upset and talked to the supervisor about the situation. The supervisor said he could not do anything to help. How effective or ineffective would it be to offer to try to complete the work without saying anything about it."

Do what the fuck, now? How can you offer to do shit without saying anything?

Christ.

EDIT:

So I ended up interviewing for a Security job. Yay, I might be a Bag Nazi!

Me: "Ma'am, let me see your purse, please."
Lady: *hands it over*
*Super-Plus Tampons*
Me: "So, are you packing for the whole group?"

So.

My brother's just screwed himself out of college. He failed (well, this time he made a D) Trig twice. His GPA is 2.0 (up .8 points!). My dad doesn't want to pay for my brother to screw off like that--and he is screwing off, it's got nuts to do with giving a genuine effort, if my brother put as much effort as he did into his physique or hanging out with friends or going on camping trips with friends as he did in doing well in classes, he'd have got at least a C or B, which would have been grudgingly acceptable to my dad, and if not an A.

I have a problem with Schadenfreude, admittedly. And frankly, the higher the horse you fall off of, the better, more spectacular, and more painful the fall is. I want a video camera and a microphone for when my dad finally gets a hold of Z: he's been avoiding the house like the plague these past couple of days.

My parents aren't the kind to let children live with them if they're over 18 and doing nothing. They can do nothing with their lives elsewhere and stop mooching off the parents. (Whatever sad moralizing might be done by anyone reading this: that's the way my parents work. Step off, your parents can do as they like. But as for "heartless," I won't hear it. I don't feel like my parents owe me a room, just because I exist, at all: if anything I owe them.) I'm not bothered, I have nothing to worry about. I come home for summer break. And they'd tolerate me staying at their house, say, if I were to have a definite job lined up but only kicking in a few months later, as might happen with the JET program or with the FSOT. If not, I can find a way to fend for myself until I get something lined up, there are ways I might have never lived on my own--that doesn't mean I don't learn well on the fly and can't figure something out quick, or that I haven't vicariously paid attention to the stuff my friends deal with living on their own. But if my brother thinks he can just move back into my parents' house after pretty much near-flunking out of college and screw off and take off with his buddies to go to Renaissance Festivals in full gear, business as usual, he's quite mistaken.

Anyway I'm not sure he really realizes it in the sense that it hasn't really sunk in as to the real effectual meaning. Or if he cares. Either he's going to a community college, into the service, or moving out of the house entirely to do God knows what. And God knows what he's going to do for a career. Be some sort of meathead, I suppose.

Why doesn't my brother realize he's really got himself into a world of problems? I know college isn't the most important thing in the world. You can be absolutely successful without college. It isn't necessary (if I wanted to write as a career, I would never have gone to college). But that aside, my brother has never had the drive to be independently successful. He comes off as this easygoing doofus, though this unfortunately pervades all parts of his personality, up to and including his desire to see how to get from point A to point B--in other words, he fantasizes or just lies to get somebody out of his face. I do it because I'm terribly spiteful (I get a kick out of it, as well), and like to kick sand in the faces of people who say I can't. But he's just existed as a kind of dazed and confused bag of "how to get by under their radar."

I'm the elder sibling. I'm the snippier one, as he likes to point out, as if it made a difference, but damned if I'm not a happy one: I'm finally getting to do some of the things I've wanted to do for forever, beyond happily taking the non-medical route in college, as my parents pleasantly accepted once my dad was satisfied one could make a decent living with it, and if the overload petition goes through I'll be licensed for scuba diving by winter break, too. I'm taking violin next semester, I've started fencing, I'm studying wonderful things that are engaging and fun for me, and I have good friends. _{I'll miss college when it's gone and I'm considering grad school as a result.} Want to know why I'm snippier, and in general just plain unpleasant the majority of the time? It's not to do with me being unhappy: bitter and cynical might be a better turn of phrase, with side orders of pity lite, and exasperation, and a vengeful "thinks it's great fun" sauce.

It's because I've got my idiot younger brother to contend with. There is an Italian saying (or so the website said, I don't speak Italian so don't hold me to any of this) that pretty much went: if you can't be smart, you've got to be physically capable. Well, my brother is physically capable: see above about working out. But damned if his head isn't a vacant black hole. My parents don't want to hover over him like a helicopter, making sure he's doing exactly what he should be doing. They aren't helicopter parents. And how did he get such a nice, intelligent girlfriend? Certainly not for the quality of his thought processes.

Mom protects him relentlessly. I guess I can understand: she's a youngest child too, so she assumes his problems are half the result of eldest-child mental abuse (or some shit), meaning myself and my father. But besides that, she doesn't treat us in the same way: my punishments for the far-between mistake I make these days far outstrips in harshness the punishment my brother receives for the results of his dumbfuckery. She assumed that I needed the harsher punishment, because I just kept doing what I wanted. He acquiesced as a kid and you know what you taught him, mom? That he can fuck up and he'll be gone easy on.

I mean, seriously, what are you going to do for his lying to you about getting in his grades when he hadn't, mom? And telling you it was an A? Nothing. You're going to decline to tell dad in the first place, because you want to protect him from severe punishment. You're not doing him a favor. He boiled the soup, now make him slurp it.

I dunno what he's doing, but he's not going back to Arkansas next year. If he goes back, he'll be under extreme scrutiny.

And as a final note: I found out I get the Miata when I graduate, for keeps. Aw hell yeah.

Back home. Need job. Need to lose twenty pounds. Need to do some other stuff.

Have not gotten two last grades.

Hahaha.

And I'm fucking exhausted. Good night.

Tip: when attempting to convince someone they've been brainwashed into "anti-China" views, be fucking smart about it and take several things into account:

My government has an interest in kissing China's ass for economic reasons. We haven't raised a Humanitarian hell about Tibet just for this fact--though, it couldn't outright condone it without annoying its own residents--so show a little fucking gratitude, why don't you. /sarcasm

Two: when "proving anything," it's a safe bet that you ought to never look for information from the occupying country. This is a given Law of What Not to Do in a Discussion About Occupation. This is because the occupying country has a vested interest in making their ass look good.

Three: China bullshits its history to make itself look good or validate whatever policy they're pursuing at the moment. This is a typical pattern in many countries, but in China it is quite pronounced and common (in America, we have the convenient omission of American eugenics until you get into college, then it's not a sure bet, but in China they shoved a foot in the door everywhere and then claimed sovereignty or something). It's like reading the Bible and looking for alien abductions (thank you, History Channel). Further subnote: have you not noticed a pattern? Country A has a horrible repressive backward government and China comes in and liberates them. No, actually it was Country A was generally minding its own business and China came up with a marketable reason and method to gain more territory and hegemony.

Four: just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I'm "anti-China." I don't agree with Zionism either, but so help me God: I'm not anti-Semitic. I don't hate the Chinese, I don't hate Jews. I just...respectfully disagree (not that the two situations are comparable; it's only the similar conclusions reached that are under question).

asdfjkl;omgwtfbbq

Sorry.

I've never gotten an A in Japanese before! All through my first professor, standard B, and last semester it was a B as well, so never a C (thank the Lawd), but this time it was an A!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm elated. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA!!!!

I'm left to wonder...how. I forgot to turn in a lab, and a journal, I did awfully on my speech (read: 78...*sobs hysterically* the worst EVAR), and yet...?

Did I kick ass and take names on my final, is that it? I really want to know, because I feel like I did worse this semester than I ever have before...just because I totally got fucking lazy and figured "oh hai thar, i'z lazee this lastze semestur!"

So my only B so far is German, which is my own fault, because I fucking failed the final hardcore. Killed my grade like whoa. Though, saying I "failed the German final" is like saying "Hiroshima just got a light tap on the noggin." D: I'm ashamed at myself for that spectacular Fail.

60 is not a grade I can personally accept. I liek mai acheevements. They makes me happie...and also keeps my parents the hell out of my business while they still shell out about ten grand a year.

That's really the way my parents have always worked. They've got their own lives and have always lived them. Frankly, while some kids whine about their parents having way too much influence on their lives, mine don't really seem to care too much one way or the other so long as I'm productively in the black and am capable of supporting myself.