Monthly Archives: March 2015

* Welcome to The Big Jewel, where we are always careful to stay culturally sensitive and politically correct. Our Corporate Correctness Ombudsman this week is Luke Kelly-Clyne.

Letter To The NFL, From Native Americans

By: Luke Kelly-Clyne

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Dear National Football League,

We are writing to inform you that we have raised the funds to start a football franchise (blessed to be in the casino biz) and we are hoping you will consider allowing us to compete in your fine league.

Now, we know our relationship with your organization has been a bit contentious in recent months and it is true that a very small contingent of our group find the Washington Redskins name to be onerous, but let us be clear: we are not a part of that contingent. We are sports fans and we are business people. Our intentions are driven not by a desire to stoke polarizing political debates but rather by a humble aspiration to become a small part of this country’s most honorable pastime with our new team: The Culturally Insensitive Pricks.

Coming up with a team name is a challenge, as we are sure you know all too well. The Eagles? The Falcons? The Seahawks? The Seahawks. How did you think of that? Is it a bird? Is it a fish? That’s not just run-of-the-mill, slur-an-entire-people creativity. That’s art. It should come as no surprise, then, that when we sat down to brainstorm an identity for our team we took it seriously, and we started with one simple question: what’s a name that the NFL will relate to? What’s a name that would honor your great coalition, no matter what city our team came to represent? When Dan suggested “The Culturally Insensitive Pricks,” we knew we’d found something special.

First, it’s got staying power. Culturally insensitive pricks aren’t some fly-by-night fad or passing infatuation, they’re an inextricable part of our very American fabric. Looking back through the annals of this great nation’s history, what’s the one element that has been here all along? Besides Eagles and Falcons. The answer, of course, is raping, pillaging, self-important, power-mongering, money-grubbing, megalomaniacal, culturally insensitive pricks. As long as an arbitrarily imposed hierarchical arrangement of races is tacitly encouraged by wise bodies like the NFL, being a Culturally Insensitive Prick will mean as much 1,000 years from now as it does today. Of that we can be sure.

Second, culturally insensitive pricks are indigenous to every American state, so they can be housed in any city, big or small, near or far. New York? Certainly. Los Angeles? You betcha. Delaware? Yes, and literally anywhere else. Culturally insensitive pricks know no geographical bounds!

Last, and perhaps most importantly, the strength of a team’s name relies on its identification with a singularly powerful character, a character who routinely flouts the bounds of expectation and convention to accomplish something that shocks the many who watch, like a Seahawk swimflying in a wave or, and apologies if you know where this is headed, a culturally insensitive prick. A true, proud culturally insensitive prick like each and every one of you.

In closing, we thank you for your time and hope that you consider our proposition. We look forward to hearing from you Pricks very soon!

Sincerely,

Native Americans

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* Welcome to The Big Jewel, your connection to the workplace of tomorrow. For some random reason, that seems to imply a need to share what your coworkers were up to yesterday, courtesy of Jeremy Harbin.

Staff Bios

By: Jeremy Harbin

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Your Dream Job isn’t out there — it’s right here! Unfortunately for you, all positions are filled. But just because we’re not hiring now and never will be in the future, you shouldn’t refrain from poring over the staff bios below and savoring each wave of jealousy as it courses through your body. Here at Your Dream Job, we love it when outsiders look in and ask, “It’s too late for me, isn’t it?” So go ahead and meet our talented, attractive, self-actualized staff. Just try not to lie awake tonight mentally cataloguing every mistake you’ve made to ensure you’ll never be on this list.

Tania Larsen, Director of Creative Inspiration

Before becoming a director here at Your Dream Job, a position you’re definitely unqualified for, Tania held a series of lucrative positions, each one more rewarding than the last. She has a master’s degree in something interesting, while you didn’t even apply for grad school. People write magazine articles about her. In her spare time, she attends a lot of parties (everyone who works here hangs out together during their off hours). You don’t go to many parties these days, do you? You mostly just watch Netflix while waiting until you’re tired enough for bed.

Cassius Lanois-Vizeen, Senior Dreamer

Cassius has made a career of doing all sorts of interesting, fun jobs that seem, frankly, low paid, which makes you wonder how he has enough money to pay rent and buy food. “Seriously,” you’ve wondered aloud to yourself as you sat around staring into your laptop, “did this guy get a large inheritance or something?” No, but he seems to love life anyway, and doesn’t give himself stress headaches thinking about money, like some people. (Update: After these bios were initially posted, Cassius did, in fact, receive an enormous sum of money from an aunt he didn’t even know very well. You’ve only gone further into debt since then.)

Herschel Rimbauld, Executive Heart Follower

We can get pretty bogged down in the details of our creative, inspiring work here at Your Dream Job. It’s nice to have one person around who’s doing nothing but the most important work of all: following his heart. On any given day, Herschel could be researching his genealogy online, filing an LLC for his food truck, or sleeping. Whatever his heart tells him to do that day, he does. You tried that once. Hey, how did playing synth in that band work out for you? Oh yeah, you guys broke up eight years ago.

Che’clark Levine, Coordinator of Fulfilling Opportunities

Che’clark worked her way up to this position in a thoughtful, intentional way. She set goals for herself and worked hard to achieve them. She always knew she wanted to do the really specific thing that she does here at Your Dream Job and started collecting internships as soon as she got to college. That prepared her to work in this field and introduced her to all the contacts she’s ever tapped for favors throughout the years. You didn’t do any part of that. You drank beer and took statistics three times before passing.

Alan Westcott-Herndon, Positive Vibration Designer

While most people can’t help but notice that everyone working here is above-average looking, Alan is probably the most beautiful. People think he should be a model or an actor. They don’t tell him that, though; they usually just tell him how funny he is while reaching out to casually touch his arm. He enjoys that kind of physical contact on a daily basis, while you’ve not felt an intentional touch from another human since your ex-fiancée awkwardly shook your hand when she picked up the last box of her stuff.

Byron Adams, Manager of Operations (?)

Byron manages operations here, or something like that. He’s awesome, everyone loves him, and he’s really funny on Facebook. Before this, he had a job tasting new ice cream flavors, but he never lost his slim figure. His upcoming projects include being sent into space, for free, because someone over at NASA saw him at a concert and was like, “You like this band, too?” And he was like, “These guys are my favorite.” Then the NASA guy was like, “Dude, we need someone to go up into space. You up for it?” He was all, “Yeah man, definitely.” You’ve never heard of the band they were seeing.

Thank you for your self-flagellating interest in Your Dream Job’s staff. Click here to listen to us be comfortable with who we are on our iTunes-ranked podcast. Click here for our Instagram to look at pictures of us being effortlessly stylish while having fun around the office. This link goes to our Twitter account, where we appear to be knowledgeable of and engaged in important social issues. If you’d like to follow your current misery down into a deeper state of existential despair, head over to the webpage of our parent company, Things You’ll Never Have, Inc. Then simply follow the links to visit its other subsidiaries, A Healthy Intimate Relationship and The Last Ten Years Back.

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* Welcome to The Big Jewel, where we are on pins and needles waiting for that new royal infant to come flying out. Hearken to the voice of earnest Anglophile Garrett Socol.

Royal Babe

By: Garrett Socol

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An Open Letter To The People of Great Britain

From Prince George of Cambridge

My official name is His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge. That’s quite a mouthful for my contemporaries to say. Sometimes at the playground they can’t remember it, so to get my attention they throw sand in my face. Why couldn’t I have been given a simple name like Tom? Or Ben? Or Max? I would’ve even settled for Dudley.

I turned one year old in July of last year. Despite my impressive royal lineage, I’m a typical one-year-old tot, so keep that in mind, would you? When I’m out for a stroll in Mayfair or Piccadilly Circus, the masses flock to me with such excitement you’d think I was Harry Styles of One Direction. I could do nicely without the bowing and the curtsying. I’ve had it with the endless shaking of hands and the taking of those “selfies.” For goodness sake, stop acting as if I’m the bloody King of England.

Please treat me like a little tyke on his way to becoming a toddler. Make silly faces. Talk to me in baby talk. I’d much rather give you goo-goos and gah-gahs than quote Winston Churchill, as I’m often expected to do. Think of me as the little boy next door (if you happen to live near a 775-room estate with a 40-acre garden, a helicopter landing pad and a lake). If you want to buy me a gift, get me a rubber duckie for my bath, not a first edition copy of I, Claudius. I recently received a gold-embossed invitation to the christening of a cruise ship. Why on earth would I want to christen a cruise ship? I happen to get seasick. Do you really want to watch me upchuck in the English Channel?

The only person who treats me properly is Francesca Cheddar, my Italian nanny. (I’m actually dictating this letter to her.) She plays with me the way you’re supposed to play with a one-year-old, with stuffed elephants and toy fire trucks. She also teaches me everyday skills like how to wash my hands and prepare a good gnocchi. My Norwegian nanny is intimidated by me, as are all the other nannies except Frau Schwanhild from Frankfurt, who is positively infuriating. She insists I sit ramrod straight with my chin out and head held high. Not what I’d call comfort.

Mummy told me that I’ll be devoting my life to serving the unfortunate and assisting the befuddled in my fiefdom. And to that end, I’ve already begun. Every Friday, Francesca and I do the food shopping for a paraplegic paralegal. On Saturdays, we pick out proper wardrobe for our style-challenged members of Parliament. And very soon, we plan to visit England’s poignant leper colony (the moment one opens).

Because the press has written about me since I was in the womb, I learned, post birth, that I gave my mum acute morning sickness. There was nothing cute about it, I hear. She vomited violently every morning, afternoon and evening. How can she look at me and not think about all that throwing up? It can’t be good for the start of a mother-son relationship. And stop asking, “Do you know who your great-grandmum is?” I know she’s some sort of queen. (Elizabeth? Latifah? I can never get them straight.) To me, she’s just the wrinkled old relic who wears a kooky hat and lives in a creepy old castle. Sometimes she rummages through the contents of her leather handbag (lipstick, mirror, lunch meat, smartphone, laxative, bug spray, bicarbonate of soda, binoculars, flask) for a piece of hard candy to give me. More often than not, she comes up empty-handed.

Then there’s my granddaddy’s brother, Prince Andrew, Duke of York. He’s in the midst of a sleazy sex scandal involving an underage prostitute, or as I like to call her, a prostitot. I don’t understand any of it, but I know it’s sleazy because Mummy and Dada discuss it in whispers.

Even at my tender age, I’ve come across some frightfully unsavory characters in this supposedly dignified country. You see, disreputable dirtbags want access to members of my family. But I do my research. Most of these immoral mongrels have pasts peppered with pandering, perjury, battery, burglary, looting, littering and loitering. So I’ll have nothing to do with them. Just last week, I was bribed by a conniving bloke who could coax a kid out of a candy bar. (I know this because I was the kid with the candy bar.)

As the world knows, I’m expecting a sibling. I’ve decided to be present in the delivery room for this momentous birth. That way, if the doctor slaps him (or her) too hard, I’ll encourage the baby to slap him back. If necessary, I’ll remind the obstetrician that this is no ordinary infant, that this crying little creature happens to be the newest addition to the royal House of Windsor.

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* Welcome to The Big Jewel, your source for all Matthew David Brozik-related news. After reading his latest bit, you should click on the ad for his book "Whimsy & Soda" on the right-hand side of this page. Or else we might hurt you.

Play The Hand You’re Dealt…At Birth!

By: Matthew David Brozik

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It’s no coincidence that there is the same number of whole weeks in a Gregorian calendar year as in a standard deck of playing cards. Each week corresponds to a card, and knowing the card for the week in which you were born can reveal a great deal, so to speak, about your fate. Consider the following examples…if you dare:

January 1-7: Ace of Spades
If you were born in the first seven days of the year, you’re likely to be a natural with a shovel and destined to be a gravedigger — at the very least, a ditch digger. Gravedigger is, of course, a time-honored profession (to say nothing of it as a pastime). Indeed, a gravedigger features prominently in one of the most famous scenes of one of the most famous tragic English plays of the past 450 years! (In the same vein, there’s a scene in one of the most beloved comic American films of the 20th century in which a wise old man says, “Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.”)

April 9-15: Two of Hearts
While no single human is born with a pair of hearts, it is your destiny to have two tickers, and this inescapable eventuality is likely to come about in one or the other of two ways. In cases of extreme cardiomyopathy, rather than receiving a new heart in place of the one you started with and ruined, you might undergo a medical procedure in which a second heart is grafted onto the first, to share the work. That’s one way. The other way is that you might wake up one morning and discover that overnight you were transformed, Gregor Samsa-like, into an octopus. Octopi have multiple hearts.

May 21-27: Eight of Hearts
You will be a cannibal, with a particular penchant for internal organs, if you aren’t already.

September 17-23: Queen of Clubs
When you get to high school, you’re going to be a busy, busy girl. (And after high school, you’re never going to run out of stories to tell about high school!) You’ll be the first to arrive and the last to go home each day. You’ll be in the marching band and on the cheerleading squad. You’ll be a mathlete and a non-mathlete. You’ll be on the chess team, the debate team, the chess debate team, the student council, and the yearbook committee. You’ll be exhausted by the time you graduate and you’ll probably need to take a year off to “find yourself” before starting college.

September 24-30: King of Clubs
Same as the previous week, except you’re a dude.

Trumptober $-$$$$$$$: The Donald
You were born into privilege, and in privilege you will remain, growing ever more politically connected as you win ever more friends and influence ever more people…until ultimately you attain a position of such global power that you are able to change two of humanity’s most established institutions — the Christian calendar and the standard playing card deck of the Western world — to include references to yourself.

December 10-16: Jack of Diamonds
If you’re born between December 10th and December 16, odds are that you will legally change your name, if necessary, to “John O’Diamond,” but people will call you “Jack.”

December 31: Joker
Born on the last day of the year, were you? Think that’s funny? Ruining New Year’s Eve for your parents and everyone else who had to be there at your delivery? Well, that’s why you don’t get a regular card: you don’t deserve one. You and the weirdos born on February 29. You’re all outcasts, rarely useful, cast aside and forgotten by civilized society — discarded, if you will — as you should be.

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