Update: here some great reporting on WAPO purchase by Bezos.
Was reading through the news last night using Flipboard. When I saw the headline that Bezos bought WAPO I yelped kinda loud. Startled my dog and perhaps a neighbour or three thru various open windows that seem to offer no help in this Eurowasteland heatwave. Indeed, worst-writer, dear worst-reader, was shocked. Obviously print media is on its deathbed. Even though I remember vividly walking around the front of the Washington Post building in DC dreaming about being a writer, and I even spent a summer delivering this fucking paper to the suburban dead of suburban hell, I have no remorse for the death of print media. RIP and good ridden. But there is something else about this life-saving-ring that the Post has been thrown. There is something I can’t help but feel regarding this transaction between the old economy and the new economy. For example, could this mean, perhaps, even though I’m not sure of what Bezos’ political orientation is, that for the first time a relatively young man, someone reared by the new economy, that potentially knows there is a difference between political right and wrong and just might not be skewed by baby-boomer parents, is now stepping up to an earned pedestal and may very well start wielding some (political) power that could potentially get rid of all the krappy conservatism that has ruined American’t? I know, I know. Wishful thinking. And it’s dangerous to assume that someone like Bezos could actually be liberal (which is the only thing that can save America now). But my yelp in the late, musty, dank heat of Cologne was one of joy and hope. Which reminds me of a little story.
Time travel back twelve years. Worst-writer tried to get a job with Amazon Germany once. What a disaster that was. I was on my third interview with the company to be a project manager for various tech implementations. I had already sensed after the second interview that I wasn’t going to get the job. In fact, it was one of the last job interviews I ever had. It was, for worst-writer, after years of job-jumping and working my ass off for the privilege of never getting ahead, the moment of perpetual semi-retirement was becoming more and more reality. Indeed. I already sensed the outcome of the interview. These Germans are that predictable. Numerous, result-less job interviews provide premonition. The only thing holding me together at the time was my intellect. For while others struggled with their job finding in a world where a job is a commodity not unlike oil, wheat or sugar, I indulged my mind and furthered my lust for knowledge that was above and beyond the idiocy of a cubicle existence. And so. Getting this job wasn’t an issue of my qualifications. I wasn’t going to get the job because I wasn’t German and I already had long surpassed my welcome in this part of the old country. Sure, I could stay in Germany but to actually take away a job from a German when globalisation had already run its course for this pseudo and highly confused communist nation-state, well, ‘nough said there. I went into the third interview at Amazon cynical and confident. And when Hr. Schwantzlutscher came in to the interview room he reeked of Germanin children he created at the behest of a country, government and female that think human procreation requires only that men, real men, fight their way out of wet paper bags. After initial greetings and introductions were over Schwantzlutscher did what all corporate HR schmucks do.
Hr. Schwantzlutscher: (reading from a clipboard) Mr. Stuff, if required, would you get up on this table and dance to Guildo Hat Euch Lieb and then go and sell lots of books?
Hr. Stuff, aka worst-writer: (pounding middle finger on interview table) Fuck no. But if you play Fettes Brot’s Schwule Mädchen then I might not kick your pacified ass. Now. Thanks for the cookies and you can use the rest to… fick dich ins knee.
Indeed. Worst-writer’s last job interview. Go Bezos. Save this fucked up world run by conservative cocksuckers and corporate HR schmucks. Please.
Links:
- Washington Post Sold To Amazon’s Jeff Bezos
- With Washington Post, Jeffrey Bezos has chance to overhaul newspapers – latimes.com
- ‘What if you could Amazon the news?’ Why Jeff Bezos invested in The Washington Post | The Verge
Rant on.
-tgs-
worstwriter 