Found this on Yahoo today

Keeps the Trains Running on Time

Photo: Derek Teed

Name: Derek Teed
Job: Train conductor
Salary: Expecting $100,000 or more
Age: 25
Hometown: Aberdeen, SD
My salary is based on the jobs and terminals I get assigned, but if they pan out as expected, I've been told I should break $100,000 this year.

I just graduated from the University of Minnesota and served two deployments to Iraq as a medic. Yet, I somehow landed a job that requires just a GED or high school diploma and pays over $100,000 in some areas.

I'm used to a tough lifestyle and am good at working away from home and at all hours -- and that's why the railroad pays you so much. You could get called up any time to work. Like today, if I wanted to go to a bar and have a drink, I couldn't because if I was called and I showed up after having a drink, I would be fired on the spot.

I've done five shifts so far, and four of them were 12-hour shifts. As a conductor, you're responsible for the whole train -- the cars, communicating with the dispatcher and making sure everything is set up and in order. You're the one out there making sure you have the right-away on a track, so that two trains coming at each other don't hit.

So far, it's going alright. I'm really tired, but I make enough to support myself. I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone's pretty well off, so a lot of my friends went for doctor degrees and whatnot. And I'm out here making more money than any of them.

Entirely random blog entry

So today I looked up juliecharles.com. Or maybe that was yesterday. Anyway, today I looked it up on the wayback machine, and the first time they crawled it was March 2006, when it led to a blog which looked like this:

Dogs ate my car; rats ate my lunch

I haven't actually read any of it yet, but I can't wait.

Random links and random thoughts. Pretty fitting blog post, eh?

Wait, still need a random thought: I'm glad my sister's an ex-pat, even though Canadian banks are, apparently, confusing and stressful.

Meta-Hamster

Taking allegorical form for 100% of its conscious existence, the Meta-Hamster, or Meta-Ham, is, according to those who have the ability to perceive it, a conceptual species of hamster that can only be perceived “as it ‘really’ is” if you have earned an MFA (or, increasingly, a PhD) in English, Creative Writing, or “Comp Lit.” Those without advanced degrees see only a nondescript hamster of normal height/weight, or what is known as the Common American Hamster. Those with advanced degrees in literature-related subjects, however, see—in addition to the Common American Hamster (though in recent years some have claimed to be unable to see the Common American Hamster but only the message it conveys)—“the fall of Western Civilization,” “the deterioration of a marriage,” “the loss of a child via abortion,” “[something about the bourgeoisie],” or, sometimes, “technology’s crippling effect on the youth of [the word ‘today,’ a country, or a generation],” depending on their context/goal in life at the moment of viewing. Many have argued that the Meta-Hamster is “not really meta” or “not at all meta” in the way that most things referred to as “ironic” are “not really ironic,” but usually simply “coincidental” or even “normal, not even coincidental,” but these arguments have only served to strengthen the Meta-Hamster’s brand, because to argue against its name seems, for the majority of people involved in the perpetuation of the Meta-Hamster as a legitimate species (and however ironic/sarcastic they are being in their claims of this), to only “prove” that the Meta-Hamster is meta, perhaps more meta than anyone yet realizes, even, as most people who see it have at most only one doctorate degree and two or three graduate degrees.

- from “North American Hamsters,” a forthcoming iPhone app by Tao Lin

Tao Lin and I are tight - and by that I mean we're friends on Goodreads.com. I don't remember how I stumbled across this paragraph, but it cracks me up.