Welcome to my website! You can find my fiction here, as well as my blog, a little about me, and my comics. If you’re here looking for my professional writing, shoot me an e-mail at ben6754@gmail.com and I’ll send some samples your way.
On this page, I’ll let you know whenever I post anything new. If you’re looking for something old, you can find all my archived work in the Content drop-down menu to the right.
Otherwise, feel free to just look around, read, post comments, or make me a sandwich (just kidding about the sandwich…sort of).
-ben
Note: For the comics, just click them for an enlarged version!
Again, I know this isn’t a real update, but I have been swamped lately. Traveling all the time, working two internships, still fitting in time for creative stuff…essentially I sacrifice sleep. Here are my relevant life updates, for those of you who care (and if you do care, you probably know this already…)
1. I’m about 7 weeks into my 10 week internship at Cognito, a financial services PR agency. It is an absolutely fantastic place full of terrific people, and I’ve learned an unbelievable amount about how PR works from the bottom up. A lot of the copy I write gets used by actual clients, which is a thrill, and by week’s end, I’ll be able to link to what I’ve been working on.
2. I’m starting to pull ideas together and get some writing done for my next big book project. Hopefully this one will actually be, you know, good.
3. Learning a lot about search engine optimization. When I get some more free time, I’ll do some more independent research so I can be the best at it.
That’s about it.
Also, you know you’re old if you root through public trash cans (taking off the lid, arm deep into the muck) for a newspaper. Yuck.
-ben
You have ever said, “Oh, we had a lovely conversation.”
You have designated times during the week where you sit on a specific bench. No newspaper or book or anything…you just sit.
(Not a real blog post…I just noticed these things 
)
-ben
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/26/elizabeth-edwards-marriage-is-a-great-love-story/
So, John Edwards cheated on his wife. You know, the wife with terminal cancer. No, I won’t joke about this. Recently, she’s been quoted as saying their marriage is a ‘love story,’ and that she’s trying to make the marriage work.
To be honest, I planned on writing something about this, but I’m not really sure what anymore. I suppose I was wondering what was going through her mind. whether she based her decision on courage or cowardice. But I don’t know…unless I meet her, I can’t ever know, and even then, she wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) tell me.
I’m really too young to have any perspective on love, and if I were in her shoes, I don’t know what I would do. I would have trouble being happy, that’s for sure. I hope she is, though, or is as close as she can get to it. I think that’s what I wanted to say here. Have a good one.
-ben
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
I Corinthians 13:4-8
UPDATE: 2/1/2010:
The Edwardses are now legally separated, and they intend to file for divorce. Some love story!
http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/06/news/companies/riskiest_foods/index.htm?postversion=2009100609
CNN bothers me sometimes, and this is article is why. Their reporters are no longer reporters – they are repeaters. Guys like Edward R. Murrow no longer exist. Even Cronkite, who prided himself on reporting ‘unbiased’ news, knew when he needed to step in and give a well-reasoned opinion, like during the Vietnam War. I like the NYTimes columnists, but overall, reporters are merely in charge of drumming up website hits and drawing ad revenue for a country with a severe case of ADD. So instead of reporting on, “Foods with a Slightly Higher Chance of Contamination that May or May Not be Statistically Significant, Use Your Own Judgment, Educated Reader,” they report on ,“Daaaangerous Foooooods!” (please insert the spooky announcer voice on your own, thank you). And they don’t bother telling you it’s not really a crisis to begin with.
Because the most dangerous food on the list? Leafy greens. Lettuce. A side salad. Cue millions of Americans vowing never to eat vegetables again, as if that’s really what this country needs. Except that amidst the sensationalism in the article, you’ll read that those sickly salads cause about seven hundred ‘illnesses’ ranging from ‘stomach aches to death’ a year (compared with how many people in the country?).
How dangerous! God forbid a stomach ache. I won’t even mention that most of those are probably children faking it, trying to solicit their parents’ guilt at the dinner table (oh crap, I just mentioned it).
So the moral of the story? Be careful with statistics. Because I’m betting lightning will strike me down sooner than a piece of lettuce will. But then again, God works in mysterious ways.
What else bothers me about the article? Tuna is apparently dangerous too, so the plucky reporter asks the head of a fishermen’s association whether we should, in fact, be wary of purchasing what he needs to sell in order to live.
Can you guess what the guy says? I thought so. That’s like asking Gene Simmons, “Sir, sir, would you like to rock and roll all night? And, perhaps, just perhaps, would you be interested in partying every day?”
So yes, I still lead a life of thrill and danger – I still eat salads.
But only because chicks dig bad boys.
-ben
There are some things I just don’t get about online job postings. For one, why every job qualifications list includes, ‘excellent organizational skills and attention to detail.” Every time I read that, it’s always me yelling,
“Oh come on, I’m totally not qualified for this! Where are the jobs for the messy, detail-disoriented college grads without analytical or interpersonal skills?** This recession must be hitting us hard!”
Please forgive my sarcasm. For the last few weeks I’ve been hammering out cover letters and researching companies like it’s my job (ha ha, or an unpaid internship), and I’m little burnt out. It’s rough, since I write a new cover letter for each job I apply to. It’s good writing practice though, and I gain a better feel for what works. With each letter, my writing gets a little more personal and a little less what my peers refer to as “professional” but which is really “stilted BS.”
In terms of cover letter advice, not that I am a good source of advice: research the company you’re applying to and set your tone accordingly, ranging from ‘Thus, I would excel in a position at your firm, and that is why you should hire me,’ and, ‘I would totally kick ass at taking dictation! Hire me dude!’
I don’t recommend the second one, by the way, unless Jon Bon Jovi is seeking a personal assistant. And the first one is too pretentious, so unless Kanye is hiring… (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
Anyways, the point of targeting cover letters to each job, and not sending out a generic one, is to catch someone’s attention. The internet is great and all, but there’s so much out there. One minute I’m reading an article about health care reform, and the next thing I know, I’m on Youtube watching a hamster eat popcorn. God knows how I got there, but my point is that our scarcest resource nowadays is attention. So standing out among your thousands of peers is important.
That’s why I don’t take it personally when a company doesn’t respond to me. It has to read hundreds of applications, and that leaves a lot of buzzwords to sift through (expertise, achievement, enthusiastic, experience, perspective, extensive…that’s a lot of E words).
So my advice about cover letters to the unemployed, not that it’s worth anything, is as follows.
- Get rid of the buzzwords, or at least grab a thesaurus. Make your letter stand out. Yes, companies will appreciate the fact you are excited by the prospect of ‘facilitating communication among different departments,’ or , ‘providing swift beverage service to the CEO and his bros,’ but all the other applicants will be excited too. Make the case for why you deserve the job over everyone else, whether you’ve done the same thing before and rocked it, or, in the case of the coffee monkey job, you know the menu at Starbucks inside and out (I will have a short, 140-degree latte please, and yes, that does exist).
- You’ve spent years and years building up your accomplishments, but you’ve probably spent two minutes writing about them. Make someone read your letter for typos, because I guarantee no company will hire you as a ‘capable profreader.’
So, that’s all I really have to say about this. To be honest, I really am excited about finding the perfect job. And some day, when I’m in charge of reading through all the cover letters, they better say, “Dear Mr. Jacoby,” instead of “To Whom It May Concern,” because you better know my name.
And if you don’t, I won’t be very concerned with you.
-ben
** This isn’t true! Because actually, I am organized, detail-oriented, terrific, and super-excellent (and also handsome).
I wrote this in February for my old blog, about Facebook returning the ‘rights’ to the content on the website to the original owners. I thought it was pretty good, so I’m bringing it over here
-ben
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/18/facebook.reversal/index.html
All those drunken pictures of you on Facebook, where you insist you just look bad because of the lighting, or your red face, or the camera adding ten pounds, or the photographer accidentally hitting the ‘ugly’ button on the camera (right next to the flash button, really Sony?) now belong to you again. Putting aside the fact that I don’t know why anyone would want to own those pictures, now, like it was before, when you close your account, Facebook can’t keep an archive of your content.
Of course, while your account is active, it can claim rights to your content. And if someone else uploads a picture of you, and you close your account, your image (some cultures believe it is your soul) still belongs to them. Firstly, I’m surprised anyone read the terms of service. Thank you law students and computer nerds for doing so. I’ve accepted so many terms of service at this point in my life that I wouldn’t be surprised if CEOs started lining up at my door for foot massages I’ve inadvertently agreed to give them (at that point, I would be happy it was only foot massages). Secondly, Facebook didn’t change the terms of service back because they like you, because they respect your opinions, or because they agree they did something wrong.
Facebook changed it back because they hate you and don’t want you running away to Myspace. They also don’t want you starting your own social networking site. They want to get as much as they can without losing too much, which means they’re going to piss off a few hardcore Luddites who fear getting barcodes branded on their arms while keeping the rest of us vaguely unsettled, but not unsettled enough to actually leave.
Like KFC. Popular opinion has it that they might be torturing chickens, and a few people have done research and probably don’t eat there anymore, but most people still do. Economically, it’s cheaper to have a few less customers while still torturing Foghorn Leghorn than to have a completely happy customer base and NOT torture him. The people who care about the chickens would probably only get a salad with dressing on the side anyways.
Personally, I don’t like chicken torture, and I don’t like having content directly involving me belonging to someone else. I don’t eat at KFC (I was going to make a joke about how it’s because it’s not actually chicken, but that’s hackneyed, isn’t it?) But I still use Facebook, because at this point, the benefits of Facebook exceed the costs. For people who value their privacy more highly, that’s not the case, and they’re the ones who made this whole fuss in the first place.
I still de-tag pictures of myself where I look stupid and ugly though.
Which is most of them.
