Really Really Really Cold Calls

I told you before about my thus-far futile attempts to break into the scene as a freelance journalist. There's some sort of invisible wall of admittance that I can't seem to penetrate no matter how hard I try (and I have been trying). Maybe they just don't like Jews or something...I can't tell.

In fact, the only publication from whom I've heard back about running some of my writing is Flak Magazine (www.flakmag.com). Flak's a pretty cool spot, a news and pop culture periodical that could stand to update a bit more often. But it looks like I might be contributing soon to their TV section, which is perfect because it gives me a good excuse for my 6-10 hours of daily TV viewing (and that's with fast-forwarding commercials!)

The only catch is...the Flak gig isn't really gonna help with the rent. I mean, it might help a little, but no more than getting the regular-sized value meal instead of the Biggie size would help.

So I need to start getting my work into reputable publications that actually will exchange money for services. I started by sending big packets full of clips from the Daily Bruin, PREMIERE Magazine, and even this here blog to editors all over California. But I really didn't get much of a response. And even when I'd cold call the editors afterwards, I'd occasionally speak to a real live human being, but I'd never end up with the promise of work to come.

So then I started sending out a barrage of e-mails linking editors to my blog, in the hopes that the spectacular writing you see spread about before you would entice them to hire me for the fabulously extravagant price of, say, 10 cents a word. No dice.

I did get some responses, though. Most of them are friendly enough, from editors who want to give me the kiss-off but don't want to make it seem like they're giving me the kiss-off. Most of them tell me they're all full-up on freelancers at the moment, and that I need to have better, more recent clips of my writing from real publications. An editor at Citybeat informed me that I need to have clips from published sources so editors could see that I can work with other editors.

Now, I'm used to the kiss-off, as I think everyone who tries to get work in a competitive industry has become. I don't mind being rejected by a company with no more hiring capacity. But I find the attitude of most of these editors strange.

You would think that the best writing would earn a place in a publication, wouldn't you? That the entire idea of putting out a newspaper or magazine is to attract readership, and that people want to read the most interesting writing by the best writers.

Instead, I keep running into problems with what the media industry refers to as "networking." This seems weird to me, because I'm actually quite a personable guy (hey, I'm not the one reading my blog...), and if given the opportunity to speak with media professionals about what I want to write and some of my ideas, I'm confident I could get a job writing for some magazine or website or something. You know?

I mean, we're talking Citybeat Magazine here. Have you read this thing? It's not a horrible rag, it's an alright paper. But I think I could handle writing little feature articles for them. It's not like it's The New Yorker of the West Coast or anything...

But, no, apparently I don't know the right people, so the overall quality of my writing doesn't matter in the least. The Citybeat editor (who I'm not really harping on...she did seem like an alright person who wanted to help me out but couldn't really do much...plus, she knows the blog address now...) recommended that I visit the website Media Bistro for networking and employment opportunities.

Oh, man, do I hate the Media Bistro. It's this BS site that journalists are always telling wannabe journalists to visit. It has, like, five job postings a day for jobs somewhat resembling writing jobs (but almost never writing jobs) located all over the country. Plus it has paid seminars where you get to sit in a room and be talked at by actual real media professionals! And there's only a small fee to join the site!

I've been having people tell me about Media Bistro since I was a UCLA undergrad. I've even been to a "networking get-together" at a West Hollywood hotel before sponsored by the site. And guess what? Everyone stood around and talked to the people they already knew! I met one guy who wrote for a website, and started to hit him up for a job before I realized he was talking about writing for his own website. Which is what I'm doing right now! And, let me tell you, I'm in no position to hire anybody!

So, this thing is half a sham. And the fact that media professionals are constantly instructing me to go and do networking through there tells me one of two things are true:

1) Media Bistro has somehow obtained a massive amount of capital, which they are using to bribe everyone in media to direct underlings to their site

OR

2) The world of professional writers in Los Angeles is so closed-off by an exclusive network of insiders, they are simply telling everyone who's not already involved to screw off by giving them the name of a next-to-useless Internet destination

I'm leaning towards #2, but either is possible.

So, I'm pretty frustrated. I know I can do this thing well. I'm sure of it, 100% positive. Plus, the fact that I keep failing to get work just means I have to keep doing this obnoxious paperwork of mailed-out clips, follow-up e-mails and, ugh, cold calls.

And I freaking hate cold calls.

WARNING: AWKWARD SEGUE DEAD-AHEAD

But I am only calling editors and writers and stuff. That's nothing like the cold calling being done by the SETI Program. When you're trying to contact aliens, now that's a cold call.

You know about the SETI Program, right? They monitor outer space constantly, hoping to pick up a transmission from an alien life form. But did you know that SETI only sits around and waits to receive a signal? They don't bother to send anything out to the aliens. Some message from Earth or something.

Which leads me to this very enlightening article from Space.com, in which SETI scientist Jill Tarter explains why I'm an idiot for even considering the possibility of sending out an Earth transmission to an alien life form.

During our 1997-99 workshops on the next two decades of SETI research here at the SETI Institute, the workshop participants took the question of an active transmission strategy very seriously. The results of their deliberations have been published as SETI 2020: A Roadmap for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. They concluded that transmission is NOT an appropriate strategy, at least for the next two decades. Humans need to grow up first.

Ms. Tarter's is certainly direct and to the point. Basically, what SETI has done is use statistical analysis to determine whether or not we could theoretically communicate with aliens who are less advanced than we are.

We've had about 4.5 billion years of evolution to get to where technology now stands, with me typing an odd, malformed post bitching about not being able to find work, on a miraculous invention that will zap my words to unconcerned people all across the globe. Out of that, we've been capable of sending or receiving transmissions from space for a bit less than a century. When you consider how long the universe has been around (a whole lot of billions that I'm too lazy to bother finding out about), it's near-impossible that we'd find another civilization at the same point in evolution as us.

And since it's been such a long time, we're probably a very young civilization. Any alien species who can communicate with us at all are likely to be considerably older.

Now figure in the exponential increase in technological innovation. Once technology gets started, it tends to become more and more complex more and more quickly. Remember how vinyl lasted for decades before cassette tapes, but then cassettes became outdated right away by CD's, and now CD's are already sharing the market with mp3's? That's exponential increase. By the time I'm an old man, kids will have mp3 players installed in their chest cavity by age 13 with a PSP lodged into their spinal column for good measure. They will still, I predict, forget to turn off their cell phones before entering a movie theater or comedy show.

So if there's an alien race that's been around longer than us, they almost assuredly have much better technology than we do. Unless they're a very stupid alien race, like the pot-smoking aliens from 80's teen comedies or those Signs aliens that come to Earth despite the fact that they can't handle touching water. They call it the Blue Planet for a reason, alien dumbasses!

Therefore, because it's a lot harder to send out a communique for the thousands of years it would take to contact an alien life form, we should leave that to the ET's and not worry about it ourselves. Here's how Harvard professor Paul Horowitz put it:

"If it happens at all, there always has to be a first contact between two technological civilizations. Statistically, it is extremely unlikely that our fist contact with an ETI civilization will also be its first contact with an ETI civilization. Thus the advanced technology we detect will have experienced this type of encounter many times before. It already may have established a galactic protocol for information interchange, to which ab initio transmissions by Earth will have no chance of adhering. Thus we justify our asymmetrical listen only strategy by recognizing our asymmetrical position amongst galactic civilizations. We are among the very youngest!"

You've got to love Harvard professors. See how he threw that "ab initio" in there even though it's totally unnecessary? That's a rhetorical device known as "letting everyone know you're super-smart." He just means transmissions that start from Earth, that's it.

But what he's saying makes sense. If there's aliens who can actually hear what we're saying, they're probably way way beyond us. Our technology's not so great, really. I'm living in the middle of one of the largest cities on Earth, a metropolitan area that dwarves every other urban center in the country in sheer magnitude, and I can't get a pizza delivered after 11 pm. You call this the year 2005? That's the limits of our human progress?

No flying cars, no war-fighting robots, no hoverboards, not even freaking virtual reality sex yet, which they started promising us in, like, 1991, and we really think we're ready to talk to advanced alien civilizations? Who are we kidding?