In Which Carmen Spells Business and Makes Change

I still don't really have a job. So I went to the zoo today to see if they have any summer openings still available and ended up filling out an application. I handed the application back to the secretary, who smiled at me and said, "Do you have time to take our quiz?"

"Quiz?" I asked.

"It's something we give in addition to the application," she said.

This is a minimum-wage job, I thought. In the past, I'd applied for real jobs in important places and I'd never had to pass any sort of test. "Sure," I said. "I'll take the quiz."

It turned out to be a double-sided sheet of paper. On one side were ten or so vocabulary questions (Absence most closely means: (a) Notice, (b) Vacancy, (c) Test, (d) Ulcer) and some spelling (Circle the correct spelling: (a) Busness, (b) Bisness, (c) Business, (d) Bizness). On the other side, they asked some free-response math questions (A customer pays for a $9.47 purchase with a $20 bill. How much change does he/she receive?) I wish I were making these up--at least then, this could be a simply case of me kicking my snark into overdrive. But these are 100% authentic. I paid close attention to them.

After I completed the last question, I felt like writing, I aced four years of Honors and AP English and I can integrate multivariable equations in my sleep, but I can neither spell Bisness nor perform simple subtraction problems. Clearly, I'm the wrong person for this job. I didn't. Moreover, I refrained from pointing out to the secretary that my first words to her upon entering the office were, "My name is Carmen--I called your office yesterday to inquire into job availability and to schedule a time for me to complete the application." I even--and I'm particularly proud of myself for this one--returned the secretary's pen instead of making off with it as was my first impulse.

This job-searching thing is getting ridiculous. This is not what I signed up for at the beginning of the summer. And how is it anyone's Bizness whether or not a hander-outer of brochures can spell?

(no subject)

You've all heard about the terrorist attacks in London by now. If you're there, I hope you're all right.

I don't understand what's going on in the world. I understand it on an objective level, and I can work statistics and casualty counts and risk indices with the best of them. But on a sociological level? I don't understand it at all.

This simple lack of comprehension is why we as a country--we as a Western world--can neither anticipate terror accurately nor fight it effectively. We don't understand our enemies. We can't imagine strapping bombs to our bodies and walking into cafés. We can't conceive of someone to whom fundamentalism is more important than human life. We don't comprehend the series of mental processes that could inspire a man or woman to sacrifice himself for something we cannot perceive as greater good. We keep hoping that if we make noble speeches about the ultimate victory of our "values," the terrorists will go away.

Others have said this much more eloquently, I'm sure, but the old "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" applies well here. We've tried and failed to go into the Middle East without solid knowledge of who lives there, without understanding, to some degree, that neither "al-Qaeda" nor "Taliban" covers the complete definition of "Terrorist." A penny is a coin, but not all coins are pennies.

I don't believe it's too late to revise our strategy. With just a few flexible people in the right places, we can learn something that we are clearly missing: how the mind of a terrorist works. Because terrorism comes down to mind games and attrition, and we cannot afford to lose.

In other (related) news, Tony Blair has the worst job in the world. Someone needs to give that man a hug for me, because I can't do it myself. I have the strongest possible admiration for him, because what he has to get up and deal with on a day-to-day basis would break most people. He's done an incredible job since September 11, and I have the utmost faith in his ability to continue doing his job.

In Which Carmen Goggles

God I love Tony Blair.

He's amazing. He woke up this morning to news of a terrorist attack in the capital of his country, calmly issued a statement along with the rest of the G8 leaders, helicoptered from Scotland back to London, wrote and delivered a simultaneously heartbreaking and galvanizing speech there, and then returned to the summit. I would have woken up, heard the news, and curled myself back into a ball, preferably in the company of a healthy amount of Scotch. He woke up, heard the news, and stepped up to the task of leading his country with a grace that impresses me more with each passing minute.

Why can't we have a president like that? More to the point, why am I not a British citizen? Clearly, I'm living in the wrong English-speaking country.

Or maybe I should just avoid English-speaking countries altogether and buy myself an island off the coast of South America where we would eat grilled eggplant with parmesan and speak pig latin and watch the sunset stretch over the water.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

I'm off to check on prices.