Which family members you can and can't marry

I've always wondered what the difference between second cousins and first cousins twice removed was.

Where have I been?

I've really been slacking lately... I know. Life has been a bit hectic lately. Mrs. T-L and I are starting to prepare ourselves for the big move to Atlanta. We still have three months to go here in Olde Neuwe England, but the trek south is imminent. Also, my job here in Boston has taken an interesting turn lately: My boss has me now doing some copy editing work instead of just archiving. It's all very exciting, but leaves me little time for blogging.

What I have been spending my precious time on is job hunting. Here's a particularly "interesting" job ad I stumbled upon today:

Do you like to spend your days bouncing off the walls with smart people? Do you have so many ideas that you oftentimes feel like sticking your head in a paint can and shaking it out on a blank canvas? Are you fabulous?

If you just thought to yourself, How did they know? then you may want to consider [name omitted to protect the guilty], the countrys [sic] largest and most experienced creative advertising agency of its kind, offering more than 30 years of service in retail and direct-response catalog services.

I am fabulous. Somebody give me a job! Wait, that's what fabulous means now? Oh, never mind.

Why job ads are horrible

It's been a big week for Mrs. T-L and I. We found out we'll eventually be moving to Atlanta, Georgia. As much as we love it here in New England, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity came up for her and we're now planning to move there sometime in the late summer.

I've already started looking for work down there, and as much fun as it can be imagining myself in different jobs, I sometimes wonder what people are thinking when they come up with some of these job listings.

For instance, I was looking at listing today for an editor position at a trade journal. The company publishes a paper products magazine. So not only do they want someone to do painstaking editing and journalism work, but they expect the applicant to be "familiar with the forest products industry" as well! Now, I don't know any lumberjacks personally, but my guess is that they're a lot frickin better at cutting down trees than paginating a centerspread in Quark XPress and then exporting it to a high-res PDF. The worst offenders of this type are medical journals/magazines/etc. If I have a medical degree or experience as a doctor, why on earth would I take a job as a lowly copy editor? I honestly think some of these corporate publication types really don't understand that journalists are paid to be generalists -- we can't be experts in every little topic under the sun, but we know when to ask more questions and what needs to be verified.

And there's this: A little while ago I happened to look at a job listing from a local TV news station. The job was for a news editor. I think the last line is just depressing: "News background a plus."