In what must have been like a total James Bond scenario, a NASA researcher at Langley named Bo Jiang was arrested on a plane bound for China as it pulled away from the gate at Dulles International Airport. No facts confirm that this was actually an action movie-worthy moment, but one can imagine.

The Justice Department has filed charges in a case against Jiang and an FBI affidavit confirms he was leaving the States "abruptly to return to China on a one-way ticket." He was questioned about some electronic devices he was carrying, which he said included a cell phone, a memory stick, a new computer, and an external hard drive. However, eagle-eyed agents discovered "an additional laptop, an old hard drive and a SIM card." Complaints were then filed that Jiang lied to federal investigators. He appeared briefly in court on Monday and will remain in custody until a detention hearing today.

There is some talk that Jiang is being accused of serving as "a Chinese spy" according to Representative Frank Wolf, whose district includes the research facility. At a news conference Wolf said Jiang worked on programs involving high tech imagery that could be used by the Chinese military. Wolf said he spoke out and revealed Jiang's name publicly last Wednesday after some whistleblowers at NASA claimed Jiang and some other Chinese nationals were traveling to China with laptops containing NASA research.

[CBS News, image via Getty]

"Real tough guys don't need guns, they just need a positive, can-do attitude."

In and of itself, the premise behind the single serving site Thumbs & Ammo is pure gold: User-submitted stills from famous action flicks with the guns photoshopped out in favor of a tough-guy thumbs up.

But toss in the fact that the shop jobs are top notch, and you have a time-waster worthy of its own seal of approval.

You can submit your own to thumbsandammo[at]gmail.com (or below, should the mood strike you).

[H/T: PetaPixel via HyperVocal, images via Thumbs & Ammo]

(UPDATE: We've swapped the original in-progress photo for one with a more complete paint job.)

By the end of today, the inhabitants of the Westboro Baptist Church compound in Topeka, Kansas, should have a new view out their windows, just past their FAG MARRIAGE DOOMS NATIONS sign: a new gay-rights center across the street, painted in brilliant rainbow colors, with a pride flag flying from a 30-foot flagpole.

Right now, a crew of volunteers is at work on the siding of a house opposite the headquarters of the publicity-hunting hate-preacher Fred Phelps.

The center is the work of a roving do-gooder named Aaron Jackson, a 31-year-old community-college dropout whose other projects have included opening orphanages in India and Haiti and buying a thousand acres of endangered rain forest in Peru. This year, his charity, Planting Peace, also intends to de-worm every child in Guatemala.

Jackson was drawn to Topeka after reading about Josef Miles, the local boy who last year, at the age of nine, photobombed one of the Westboro protests with a handmade sign that read "God Hates No One." Jackson had been looking for a way to support equality, anti-bullying programs, and some sort of pro-LGBT initiative, he said.

"I've been accused in the past of being all over the place, and they're probably right on some level," Jackson told me last night by phone. "Right now we are standing up to bigotry and promoting equality."

So while considering the Westboro Baptist Church, he began dinking around on Google Maps late one night. He pulled up the church, at 3701 SW 12th St. in Topeka, and took a virtual walk around the block. In the front yard of a house across the street, he noticed a For Sale sign.

"It hit me right away," Jackson told me last night by phone. "Huh. That would be interesting to own a house across from the Westboro Baptist Church and turn it into something.' And then, within five seconds: 'And I'll paint it the color of the pride flag.' Perfect."

The house he'd thought for sale no longer was, but he found another, two doors down, that was still across the street from the Westboro compound. It was listed for something in the $80,000s.

"I find that if you have a hate group in front of your home, that should bring the price of your home down just a little bit," Jackson said. "Unfortunately the gentleman that was selling the house, he didn't seem to agree with me." The guy wouldn't budge. Jackson was tempted to walk away. "What he did not know," Jackson said, "where he had me, was I needed this home. I had to have this house. There was no way around it."

Eventually the guy dropped to 81 and threw in a new roof. Jackson bought it sight unseen, without knowing so much as the number of bedrooms. Turns out there are two bedrooms, one bathroom, a carpeting dining area, two garages (the house sits at a corner), a fireplace, hardwood floors, a small porch, and a decent-sized yard that overlooks the headquarters of an active hate group. "The view is what I bought the home for," Jackson said.

He closed on it about six months ago. In January he and his friend Davis Hammet, a 22-year-old Florida State grad, drove up from Florida overnight to move in. "We thought we were about to become popsicles," Hammet said. They've been hunkering down, waiting for the weather to break, so they could get the house painted.

The plan is to ride the coattails of Westboro's own media strategy. "We're going to take the negative attention and try to spin it into something positive," Hammet said. "Instead of millions of children around the world getting this hate message, they're going to see this message of compassion and love."

When I visited the house, during a cross-continental road trip in February, they had scarcely a stick of furniture other than the tables and chairs at the front picture window, their office and de facto crow's nest. They were keeping a low profile, but were making some friends. This wasn't long after Valentine's Day, and a confidante at a fruit-basket outfit had given them a small fortune in leftover strawberries. It paired well with a housewarming six-pack I'd bought at a gas station in rural-highway Kansas.

We looked out the front window sipping beers and munching berries and wondering what the WBCers, who live throughout the neighborhood around the church, made of two dudes with a Jimmy Carter sticker on the bumper of their Prius moving to the neighborhood and staying up late every night.

The painters prepped over the weekend and did the white shutters on Monday. If all goes well, it should be a multi-hued spectrum by the early afternoon. Monday night, Hammet was exhausted but thrilled for Tuesday. "It's the most important day of my life so far," he said.

To the best of anyone's knowledge, this will all come as a surprise to the WBCers. A few weeks ago, Jackson was walking around the iced-over block when he met Fred Phelps' daughter Shirley, out plowing snow on an ATV. She was wearing a helmet, so he didn't know who she was was until they and her husband got to chatting. She apparently cracked a pretty decent joke. "We all shared a giggle together," Jackson said. "It was a sweet moment. And I just carried on."

A British tourist in India was badly injured this morning after she reportedly jumped out of the window of her hotel room to escape the aggressive sexual advances of the hotel's owner.

The unnamed tourist, said to be in her 30s, was staying at the Hotel Agra Mahal in Agra — home of the Taj Mahal — when she allegedly received an unsolicited visit from the hotel's owner, Sachin Chauhan, at around 5 AM local time.

The details of what transpired are still fluid, but according to India TV, Chauhan used a key to enter the woman's room, and locked the door behind him.

He then offered the guest a "free oil massage," insisting that it was one of the hotel's amenities. The tourist refused, but Chauhan allegedly persisted, forcing himself on the woman.

Local police say it was at this point the victim became frightened and leapt off the balcony of her first floor room onto the street.

The extent of her injuries is unclear, but most media outlets are reporting that the woman sustained fractures to both her legs.

While in custody, the hotel's owner told police he had gone to wake the woman up after staffers were unable to rouse her using the hotel's intercom system, and became concerned.

Police also say the tourist asked about a massage the day before, but changed her mind after the owner said he performs them himself.

The British Foreign Office has just issued an advisory to British women, warning them to use caution when visiting the country due to the recent spike in sexual assaults.

[photo via AP]

When we say, as we often do, "You will never retire," while pointing directly at you and waving a fistful of dollar bills and burning an American flag, it is not meant to be taken as a jeer; rather, it is our way of soberly guiding your attention to the distressing probability that you, personally, have little chance of attaining the type of comfortable retirement afforded to earlier generations, and will probably spend your "golden years" desperately trying to live off your meager backyard garden, until you grow too decrepit to work it, at which point you will, in all likelihood, simply starve.

Lest you accuse us of alarmism, may we gently take your hand and sit you down and instruct you to read this WSJ story today about an annual survey of Americans and their retirement prospects:

Fifty-seven percent of U.S. workers surveyed reported less than $25,000 in total household savings and investments excluding their homes, according to a report to be released Tuesday by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Only 49% reported having so little money saved in 2008.

The survey also found that 28% of Americans have no confidence they will have enough money to retire comfortably-the highest level in the study's 23-year history.

Americans are an optimistic bunch. If 57% of working households have less than $25K in savings, then one would think that the level of those who have no confidence they will have enough money to retire would be... at least 57%. Of course, you can't rule out all those people who expect to have their retirement needs provided for by large inheritances, blockbuster novels, and/ or winning lottery tickets. It could happen. That would be the "plus" column, subtitled "Possibilities." Over in the "minus" column, subtitled "Absolute Certainties," we would put the death of pensions and of the American Dream. And also the fact that people are living longer now, which will—O! Bitter irony!—only extend the non-earning portion of your lifespan, stretching your meager-to-nonexistent savings even farther. Masses of Americans will no doubt respond to their nigh-hopeless situation by flocking into the stock market, helping to inflate the next bubble, which will crash and burn just in time for the planned retirement date of millions of temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

This is a good topic about which to laugh, to keep from crying.

[WSJ. Photo: Flickr]

Selena Gomez went on Letterman last night, ostensibly to discuss her new movie, Spring Breakers.

But Dave couldn't help bring up Gomez's world-famous ex, and Gomez couldn't help burning her former flame.

After Letterman casually mentioned to Gomez that the last time she was on his show she was still dating "a Justin Bieber," Selena shuddered for a moment at the thought of there being more than one Justin Bieber, before confirming that the two had in fact split up.

Dave went on to mention that the last time Bieber was on his show, the late-night talk show host said something that made Bieber cry.

To which Gomez replied: "Well, then that makes two of us."

Ouch.

Gomez is no stranger to death threats, but the Belieber Army is becoming more unhinged every day, so be careful out there Selena.

We want you to be around to burn Justin Bieber for years to come.

[H/T: ONTD]

The Syrian government and the rebels have each accused the other of using chemical weapons in a missile attack that killed 25 people on Tuesday, though U.S. and British officials have expressed skepticism that such weapons were used at all. President Obama has described chemical weapons being used or moved in large numbers as a "red line" for the U.S. government's decision to intervene in the ongoing civil war.

According to the regime, more than 80 people were injured in the attack on Khan al-Asal, a town in the Aleppo province; the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has confirmed that 16 soldiers in the Syrian army were killed. Russia, one of Syria's remaining international backers, claimed to have "information" showing the rebels had used chemical weapons, but the rebels denied the charge categorically:

"The area that was targeted is under rebels' control, so it is quite absurd that the regime would accuse us of attacking our own people," [Free Syrian Army spokesman Louay Almokdad] said.

"The Assad regime possesses chemical agents and they already used weapons of mass destruction against its own people, so we do expect the worse from this brutal psychopathic regime," he said. "The international community must take these attacks against our civilian population seriously. It is time to put an end to the daily mass killings in Syria."

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the Obama administration had no evidence that rebels had used the weapons, and was looking into the charges. State Department officials interviewed by CNN said they doubted rebels could obtain chemical weapons, but also thought it unlikely that the regime had used them, either. Britain's envoy to the U.N. said reports had not been verified, and the independent Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons could not confirm that they had been used.

[CNN, image via AP]

People who are uneducated boors generally assume that college is little more than a four year-long fraternity party during which the main activity is drinking vast quantities of intoxicating liquor. That's not true at all; it takes many frat boys six years to finish college. Haha, but seriously folks, I'm not very drunk at all right now—thanks to college.

According to a study out of Penn State last week that is, as we speak, being incorporated into Spring Break 2014 marketing materials, going to college may actually make you less likely to become a drunk, provided you fall into a specific demographic category:

The researchers found that college enrollment may actually prevent adult substance abuse among youth who might not be expected to attend college because of factors such as low household income and low maternal education. Specifically, they found that adults would be more than six times more likely to engage in problem drinking at age 33 if they did not attend college, compared to if they did attend.

So if nobody expected you to go to college but you, being an inspirational young person with a heckuva lot of drive, did go to college, you are less likely to be a drunk when you are 33. But if everyone expected you to go to college, then hell, all bets are off: "we found that college enrollment does not protect against problem drinking, nor does it place individuals at risk for future problem drinking."

If you're a poor kid you must defy the odds and prove them all wrong, and possibly sell a memoir based upon your uplifting, booze-free story one day; if you're a rich kid, you're not gonna impress anybody by not drinking, so go ahead and drink in school, but keep in mind, you'd be drunk as hell even if you weren't going to school, because your father is a god damn drunk, son. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but it's true. He loves you a lot but god damn it, why do you think he never made partner?

"Can you believe a study about not drinking came out of Penn State? Ha." - Jay Leno.

[Penn State via Inside Higher Ed. Pic via.]

Google Maps has sent some explorer scrambling up to a few of the highest peaks on the seven continents to showcase views of the Aconcagua in South America, Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Elbrus in Europe, and Everest Base Camp in Asia.

While you might expect these maps to be dizzyingly terrific or breathtaking or even just cool, prepare yourself from some genuine disappointment. The landscape consists mostly of a big old pile of rocks and some tufts of snow here and there. Unfortunately, the Google Maps feature makes these places look like a lackluster rocky wasteland or the moon.

Certainly these vistas must be striking to actually visit. Google Images, on the other hand, confirms that each of these peaks are pretty stunning pointy land formations. Why did Google Maps even bother to put up these dinky panoramic photos that make these wonderful mountains look like boring dirty piles of sand? Well, we guess they did it because they could.

So if you're interested in some interesting adventures, armchair traveler, you're better off if you stay indoors on Google Maps' marvelous gallery view project.

For the first time since 2008, no state in the union has a double-digit unemployment rate. That's some kind of progress, at least. There are still 12 million officially unemployed Americans. Every week, we bring you true stories of unemployment, straight from the unemployed. This is what's happening out there.

Humiliation

I've been out of work for over a year now. I'm in my 40's, I've been in the tech field for many years, and I've had jobs with "progressively greater responsibility" with some relatively high-profile employers. I'm starting to realize that I may have to leave my profession because nobody wants to hire someone whose career is on the downslope, and I guess "on the downslope" describes me now.

Last year I let myself get forced out of my job when my department head made it clear he didn't like me personally and I'd be miserable every moment I tried to stay. I thought I could make a go of the consulting/freelancing route but haven't found any clients. I'd built up a lot of savings so I haven't gone into debt yet, and I have no spouse or dependents, and I know how good I have it compared to most of the people trying to find work, but I can't live on my savings forever. For the last year I've been applying and interviewing for full-time work at all sorts of places, and I routinely get "you are probably overqualified for this job".

They might be right. The jobs at my previous "director" level are very rare, and I apply for them when they come up, but I'd been better and happier doing hands-on tech and leading small projects anyway. Usually those hands-on jobs are what I'm interviewing for, usually with people who are younger than me and have worked at lower-profile jobs than I have, and I often get the feeling that they're going to be uncomfortable managing somebody older and more experienced than they are.

There's an age bias in tech and I can't do anything about that, but I do try to reassure them that I'm trying to be more a doer than a director now, but that gets to the worst catch-22 — who wants to hire somebody who isn't that ambitious? When you're asked "what do you see yourself doing in 5 years?" the only real acceptable response is "your job" but my answer is more likely to be a long variation on "this job." I've hired plenty of people, and I always wanted to hire people with an "upside". I look at me through those eyes, and I see someone who has already peaked.

I've thought about downplaying some of the things on my resume to make myself look less overqualified. I haven't done that yet, because just like lying about your age on a dating site it'll come out. I get interviews, and even second or third interviews, and that's another thing where its like online dating — no call back after the first date isn't so bad, but getting dumped after the third or fourth date, when you've gotten your hopes up, is painful. I've been on dozens of first-round interviews, and had maybe eight go to second-round, and four go to third or more rounds of interviews where I was told I was a finalist, and the rejection, again and again, is making me not want to try anymore. It's almost a relief that the interviews are coming less often as that hole in my work history gets bigger.

And I'm staring at the recognition that the field of work I've spent my life in may no longer be viable for me. Besides that, I'm in touch with so many people who I've worked with that are flying really high now, and if I go back to working retail or in food service like I did before I got my diploma, the humiliation I'll feel will be pretty horrible. I know "humiliation" is stupid prideful vanity but it is painful and I'm tearing up even writing about it. I made my career happen from not much once, and I don't know if I have it in me to start from scratch again.

I'm too young to retire, and I'm already a college graduate with technical skills, so I'm not sure what "retraining" could do for me. There aren't many entry-level jobs available for middle-aged people with extensive work experience. And I don't know if I can stand much longer not knowing where I fit. I've always tried to contribute to society, but I'm just a drain now. I'll keep going through the rejection and pain of applying and interviewing. I'm going to go cash in more of my retirement in a few days, and I'll probably keep doing that until I run out in a few months, then I'll sell my home and hope I get enough out of it to live on for a few more months, and then I don't know what. I can't even feel justified in feeling sorry for myself.

The mature worker

I worked for 31 years as a manager for one of the top publicly held telecommunication companies in Canada when I was laid off in march 2012 to help the company bottom line. i was almost happy at the time as the industry now sucks to be in and so does senior management. i was confident that i could get another good paying job...and would find a company that would have a better culture that wouldn't probably kill me. On the flip side, If you take 2 years severance into account that I received, I was 2 lousy years away from a full early retirement package that would have allowed me to do everything I needed and wanted to do.

Almost a year into being jobless at 51, my optimism for the future is....gone. I took a mature workers course, expanded my network, did a great résumé, custom cover letters, but between my age, the specialization of the industry I was in and no degree, I can't get an interview for any job. I'm working 4 days a week running a computer repair shop for a non profit to keep busy and have something current on my résumé. I love the work, but it's never going to pay a bill or lead to real work. I hate it when people ask me...did you get a job? I have black periods that come upon me that I don't see coming..like sitting in a mall during Xmas, seeing all the happy people with their packages. I could barely keep myself from running out of the mall. Tightness in chest, feelings of sadness, hard to breathe. Panic attack I'm sure.

Some will criticize me for saying this I'm sure, but I won't take a job simply to survive. I am prepared to earn way less than I did, to not earn enough to own a home anymore...but I won't take a job that simply provides enough to survive. I was homeless at 17 for 3 months and promised myself I would die before I lived in poverty again. I have a bad back, severe carpal tunnel in both hands (both from work but I was a loyal employee so never made a claim and can't now) and I will not..I repeat, will not, be a burden on anyone when the money runs out. Once my severance is gone next year, I either am "happily" employed by that time..or I move forward with the backup plan.. Leave what money I have left for my kids and girlfriend to help them to have a better life and I will "go away". Its enough to make a difference for them..not enough for me to retire on. you know, I actually get some measure of comfort having a plan in any case rather than leaving my life to fate..or having false hope for the future

The retail manager

My junior year of college, I was in an honors program and doing well. Then I got a call from my father. My mother had collapse, was rushed into surgery. It was cancer, surgeries would follow, she needed round the clock care, and no one was able to provide it.

I left college that day.

I nursed her back through another two surgeries, then, still living at home, picked up a part time job and did a semester locally. By this point, I would have graduated a year prior. I decided to seek some friends who had been in my degree program. I figured it was the best way to find my prospects post-graduation.

Two were unemployed, three had part time jobs, one excitedly told me she had just gone to full time—at the grocery store. One had merely gotten his CDL and taken to driving cross country. Another three had taken call center jobs, which did not require a degree for the position. Only one had gone onto graduate school, the rest bemoaned lack of scholarships and grants. Only one had managed a professional level job, and it was in his father's company. We talked about there being no paid internships, leaving them with the choice of in field experience or paying rent. We discussed crippling student loan payments and the high cost of furthering education.

I didn't enroll for the next semester.

I took a retail job, worked my way from part time to full time to management. There were three tiers of management at this job, mine was the lowest, but the pay was good. Then, after a few years we were asked on a conference call, with 300 other people who held the same job position as me. Our position was being "phased out" in the company, and no one in the position was eligible for promotions elsewhere in the company.

I got another part time job almost immediately. Again I worked my way to full time and was offered a management position. They moved me for a while, store to store. I lived out of suitcases and uncompensated hotel rooms, burning through money faster than I could make it. Finally, they decided to settle me. I was told at the time that the manager at the store closest to my hometown was about to retire. They would position me in a store in another state, see how I did, and relocate me when he retired. I accepted the relocation.

Two years into the relocation, and I had turned the store around. Sales were up 120%, customer satisfaction had doubled, and I had managed to cut huge amounts of wasteful spending from the previous manager, increasing profits. I inherited a store with a 12% rating and brought it up to 94%. It was hard work. My average work week was between 60 and 70 hours, mandatory 6 day weeks with only Sunday off. As the location I was managing was a joint warehouse/storefront, it also involved a lot of physical labor. I believed I should work with my crew, so I hauled 50 lb boxes around the warehouse, shipped and packed the daily tuck. I'd come home from work exhausted, but my store was winning awards in the company.

At some point, I started to have health problems. My childhood asthma, which hadn't acted up since puberty, suddenly was kicking into overdrive. I visited a doctor who was concerned, and scheduled follow up tests. I struggled to make an appointment. Corporate needed six weeks notice to schedule someone to watch the store while I was gone. Additionally, I only was getting 6 days off per calender year, and the appointment would take up one of these days. Then I got my bill from the doctor. Insurance refused it, citing pre existing condition. It was over $2,000.

In the meantime, my condition was worsening. I was lethargic, dizzy, constantly feeling I was out of breath. The day before my doctor's appointment, corporate called to say my replacement wasn't able to make it. I rescheduled my doctor's appointment another month out.

I didn't make it to the appointment. I collapsed, was rushed to the hospital. My blood oxygen was 81% when I was brought in. I spent two weeks in ICU, another three weeks hospitalized.

I got back to angry emails that I hadn't given corporate any warning about my leave. My medical documents were questioned, a higher up told me on the phone that if she could, she would fire me for being out so long. They complained that I had to take breaks for nebulizer treatments.

A month out, I had a partial relapse. The doctor told me the dusty conditions, heavy fumes and heavy physical level of the warehouse work was causing the issue. He put me on light duty, and I was put on oxygen.

At this point, the manager at the first store announced he'd be retiring. As that location did not have the warehouse making it a mostly seated job, I requested to be transferred to better suit my restrictions. I was denied, citing my "frequent days off" as the reason. Around the same time, I got my bill from the hospital. All total, it was over a quarter of a million dollars, almost entirely denied by insurance.

My third relapse the doctor informed me that if I did not change my daily environment, I would probably not survive the next attack. I begged for a transfer anywhere within the company, but was denied. I felt I had no choice but to quit.

At this point, I stand disillusioned with the corporate world. They don't care about their employees, and I don't see myself being able to care about the company I work for. I have made a partial recovery since changing my daily environment, but may need to declare bankruptcy to handle the medical expenses. Meanwhile, I find that my retail experience means nothing while searching for a desk job. Plus, the city my old company transferred me to is poor for job seekers, but I am trapped here unable to afford to move. I interview at least once a week, all to no end.

I explored going back to school, but my huge medical debt makes me unable to seek out financing or grants. In the meantime, I've taken small jobs that last a week or two, just to make ends meet.

Hamster on a wheel

I'm nothing but a hamster on a wheel. Day in and day out, it's the same grind. Like the hamster, I keep pushing but get nowhere. I have worked for 14 years in the field of journalism and publishing, doing everything from copy editing and proofreading, to production editing, technical editing and even being the editor of a business digest. I have edited everything from feature stories to highly technical journal articles, sports round-ups to novels. Over the last 5.5 years, I have been laid off four times. Each and every layoff came as a part of a restructuring or change in strategic direction for that particular company. One company even laid me off twice! I thought I was safe going back, given that they had just undergone a significant restructuring that eliminated an entire editorial group (you guessed it, the one I worked for). I was, however, mistaken.

I've been able to eke out a bit of freelance work here or there, but the jobs are few and far between. Not for lack of trying, given that I have been burning up the job boards, as well as the freelance and contract job boards. No love, or at least not consistent love. And this wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the wife and four kids. Our 401ks? Gone. Savings? Gone. Bonds we could cash in? Gone. Assets that could be liquidated? So very, very gone.

Here's the kicker for me: Journalism is not the only field I have worked in. I also (concurrently, even) worked in food service, managing stores for local and national chains. I was even pretty successful, doubling the volume of one store, and taking a store that was perennially not profitable to a nearly 20% growth, year over year. So, it feels especially amazing when I can't even get hired on to work in a food service job. Sure, I'm not 20 anymore, or even 25, but I know what I'm doing and do it well. Lot of applications, lots of resumes, but no calls and no interviews.

So, I'm on the wheel, grinding away. The sawdust looks like it needs changing and could someone top up the water bottle?

Over-educated, under-qualified

I'm not sure where to really start. Feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place doesn't really quite summarize it. For me, it's like being in tunnel that is completely and totally pitch black. I don't know which way I'm going or if I'm wandering around in circles. I keep looking for some kind of light that would point to a way out. So far, it's all been my eyes playing tricks on me. There is no light.

Anyway, I got a late start to college. I worked for several years after high school and then went part time while I still worked. When I got into a really good public university, I focused on that and didn't worry about working until I was getting ready to graduate. Even then, I worked in a lab on campus for one of my professors. I graduated in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science in geology (Yeah, I know, but trust me, jobs that utilize my degree exist; there just aren't many). Unfortunately, that has been worth nothing so far. All of the hours that I spent writing papers, studying, and working out equations more complex than I care to think about; all of that makes me wonder what it was all for. I finished my last class in August 2008, almost exactly one month before everything went to hell. I spent the downtime in that class sending out my resume and applying for every job that I could find. It makes me chuckle now how optimistic I used to be.

Here I am, four years later wondering if the life that I once envisioned for myself will ever get started. I'm a few months away from turning 32 and I'm stuck in my parent's house. I've learned more about rejection than I ever wanted to learn. Aside from a brief few months at the Census Bureau and working on projects for family, I haven't had anything close to a regular job. Every time a family member asks how things are going, I know that their look of disappointment isn't far from appearing. I can hear in their voice sometimes that they just want to ask "What the fuck is wrong with you? How can you not find anything?"

I've asked for the help of friends and have gotten a couple of interviews that way, but nothing. I've offered to work for free as an unpaid intern just to get some experience, but I have yet to receive a reply with that offer. My most common rejection reason (in the outside chance that I get a reason): because I lack experience. No one has explained to me how I'm supposed to get experience without a job. Some other awesome reasons that I've been rejected: I wasn't excited enough about the job (In my defense, I flew across the country to an area that I've never been and didn't get to the hotel until near 2 AM and then didn't get much sleep. The only thing I would have been excited for in that interview was a pillow.), I didn't do well in the performance evaluation that they did for me, the interviewer didn't receive the voice mail that I left in reply to scheduling an interview and hired someone else, and because my referrals didn't respond to inquiries about me in a timely fashion several days before Thanksgiving. I'm an amazing combination of over-educated and under-qualified. I apply for entry level jobs, but so are people that have several years of experience. Where does that leave me?

It isn't much, but all that I have is hope and belief in myself. Both have been worth has much as my degree so far, but I still need both. I'd be completely lost without them. It's hard to maintain both though. Sometimes, I feel like a total burden and a waste of life. Those worst days, I just try to remember one of Andy's quotes from The Shawshank Redemption, "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." I try to remember, but son of a bitch is it hard.

Previously
The full archive of our "Unemployment Stories" series can be found here.

[Thanks to everyone who wrote in. You can send your own unemployment story here.]

In case you don't trust your own eyes or sense of logic, the Jackson family has basically confirmed that at least one of Michael Jackson's children did not spring from his seed. According to a TMZ report:

Michael Jackson's family is pleading with the judge in their wrongful death lawsuit against AEG Live to EXCLUDE any evidence of the paternity of MJ's 3 kids.

TMZ has obtained legal docs in which Katherine Jackson, Blanket, Paris and Prince argue ... it's irrelevant for a jury to hear evidence about the conception of the 3 kids. Specifically, they believe AEG has no right to delve into their biological parentage.

Ostensibly, it makes sense that this information is irrelevant to the wrongful death suit, but it is entirely relevant to inquiring minds.

We know that Debbie Rowe, MJ's one-time wife give birth to Prince and Paris (or do we?), and that an as-yet-unidentified woman gave birth to Blanket (or do we?). Jackson denounced reports that Prince was conceived via artificial insemination, but claimed that Blanket was. Then again, he's a Jackson, so who knows what to believe. For all we know, Prince, Paris and Blanket are all the real-life realization of A.I.-style androids sculpted from the Elephant Man's bones by Bubbles the Chimp.

Just kidding, they're just kids. It's fun to think of who their dad might be, though. My guesses are Tom Cruise and Elizabeth Taylor. Blanket might actually be MJ's, though — he has the same pre-surgical eyes and the have-you-seen-my-childhood deadness in them.

Michael Jackson's three kids are pictured above standing with the person who has become the most relevant Jackson in current pop culture, La Toya. She hasn't left the TV airwaves since MJ died and will have her on reality show on OWN starting next month. She is also not his child. Or is she?

TMZ: Michael Jackson's Family: Don't Ask 'Who's the Daddy?'

[Getty Images]

Two high school students in Florida were arrested today following an investigation into an alleged sex act that took place in the school's library last week, which was filmed by a student and shared with classmates.

The Pasco County Sheriff's Office reports that two teens — a 17-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl — had sex in the media center of Fivay High School's library around noon on Monday, March 11th.

Another student, a 15-year-old boy, spotted the two students having sex and pulled out his Samsung Galaxy smartphone to record the encounter.

The boy then forwarded the footage on to another student, who may have shared it with others.

Police today arrested the 17-year-old on a charge of lewd or lascivious battery. The 15-year-old girl told officers the sex was consensual, but police say her age still makes the act a crime under Florida law. Neither was aware of the recording.

The 15-year-old boy was also arrested on a charge of creating and transmitting child pornography.

According to police, anyone in possession of the film would also be subject to arrest.

"Having this thing go viral would have been horrendous, because what we are doing," Pasco Sheriff Chris Nocco told ABC Action News. "Being proactive, we are going to send a message to anybody involved who committed a criminal act, they are going to be arrested."

Fivay, which opened just three years ago, has come under fire in recent months for a string of incidents that have reflected negatively on the school.

Another student was recently arrested for bringing knives to school, which he claimed were for protection. In December of last year, a 16-year-old from the school took her own life as a result of intense cyberbulling.

A third of all students and faculty members surveyed say the school does not foster a positive learning environment.

"I don't feel safe here with everything that's happened," ninth-grader Kaylee Ashton told WTSP. "Suicide, knives, sex in the media center... what's next?"

[screengrab via WTSP]

Scientists in Australia are hopeful that they can bring back a strange species of frog that went extinct a quarter century ago. The Southern gastric brooding frogs, amphibians native to Queensland in eastern Australia, were best known for its strange parental habits (the mother would swallow the eggs after they hatched and regurgitate the completely developed offspring).

The gastric brooding frog might lack charm, but a successful attempt to resurrect the species could give hope to bringing back some more popular extinct animals—like the woolly mammoth, saber-toothed tiger, aurochs, passenger pigeons, or any of these cool extinct horses.

The only other extinct subspecies to be successfully brought to life was a goat-like creature called the Pyrenean ibex that lived for just minutes. The species had gone extinct only four years before it was brought back in 2003. Scientists used a cloning method; they implanted a surrogate mother of a very similar existing species with the frozen cells of the animal they were trying to create (kind of like the way Dolly was cloned).

However, some innovative DNA technology could lead to a new method of species recovery. Scientists could compare DNA of an extinct species to a closely related existing species, and then start to replace sections of the DNA of the existing animal with DNA of the extinct species. After a few rounds of this, the resulting creature could have enough of the extinct species' genetic material to start to resemble it.

Hank Greely, the director of the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University, noted that this method would most likely only be applicable to species that have gone extinct in the past 100,000 or 200,000 years, so adjust your expectations accordingly. And of course, bringing back these animals would require finding a perfectly intact frozen cell of the species, which might be difficult, so again—expectation management. But also woolly mammoths milling about! And dodo birds waddling wherever they please! Teeny-tiny horses!

[New York Times, image via Getty]

The U.S. Civil War officially ended 148 years ago this spring, and will likely be unofficially wrapping up any day now. But not quite yet. According to the AP, two children of veterans are still receiving benefits as a result of their fathers' service.

Years after the war ended, it was common for very young women to marry very old veterans (often after the soldiers' first wives had died), so that they could receive a widow's pension after their husbands' deaths.

But who are these children with the dads who are so old fashioned they think 14 is a little old to start dating? Who wouldn't let their kids practice flute in the house because it reminded them of infantry fifers? Who can't even figure out how to work the camera on their cell phone LOL?

While the survivors' names have not been released for privacy reasons, we do know that one lives in Tennessee, the other in North Carolina. The Tennessean survivor was born around 1920, and the North Carolinian was born around 1930. (A veteran who was 15 when the Civil War ended would have turned 80 in 1930.) Each beneficiary receives $876 per year.

It's possible the recipients continue to receive their father's pensions into adulthood because they both suffered some disability that prevented them from supporting themselves financially. U.S. News & World Report writes that, as of last year, both were found to be "in poor health."

It's not clear which side of the conflict the soldiers were veterans of; initially, only Union vets were eligible for federal benefits, though Southern states drew up their own individual laws about compensating Confederate veterans. Federal assistance opened up to Confederate soldiers several decades after the war ended.

The total cost of compensating veterans and survivors from the Civil War—and, uh, all other wars that Americans participated in after it, including those happening now—is around $40 billion per year.

The value of bringing your dad to school on Career Day and having him open with "This reminds me of something that happened during the Civil War..." is priceless.

[AP via Newser // Image via Shutterstock]

Magnet-powered mutant ultranationalist Magneto will set aside his political convictions for a day and officiate the wedding of his old friend and sometime enemy, assimilationist schoolmaster Professor Charles Xavier. Sort of.There are real human beings involved, but some of us have dreamed of writing this headline for years, so let's just pretend for a second:

Ian McKellen, known for his role as Magneto in the "X-Men" films, will preside over the nuptials of Patrick Stewart, a.k.a Professor X in the mutant superhero franchise. [...]

Stewart, 72, also a television icon for his portrayal of Captain Jean Luc Picard in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," is set to get hitched to Sunny Ozell, 35, a jazz singer he has been romantically involved with since 2009.

The other appropriate response to this news (besides "Magneto is Marrying Professor X?!") is "Patrick Stewart is dating a 35-year-old?!"

[NYDN, image via AP]

An Illuminati-obsessed hacker is breaking into the email accounts of Washington, D.C.'s political elite, and sharing what he finds. Who is Guccifer, and what's his motive?

This weekend, the hacker who goes by the handle "Guccifer" reportedly leaked confidential memos longtime confidant Sidney Blumenthal sent to Hillary Clinton regarding the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. According to the Smoking Gun, the cache consists of four emails, recreated in Comic Sans font to apparently maximize the humiliation. Guccifer sent the emails to dozens of politicians and journalists this weekend, after he'd broken into Blumenthal's AOL email account last week. (Nobody has published the emails yet; this might be another effect of the Comic Sans.)

The leaking is the latest stunt in Guccifer's weeks-long hacking spree targeting Washington insiders. He hacked into friends and family members of George W. Bush and exposed his amateurish paintings and personal correspondences. He broke into Colin Powell's Facebook page and defaced it with anti-Bush screeds. Mostly silly stuff. But with the leak of the Clinton emails he seems to be set on using his access to the inboxes of the powerful more powerfully.

Unlike hacktivists whose manifestos are longer than their list of accomplishments, Guccifer has not indicated any real motive for his spree. He's targeted both major parties, and it appears that he's leapfrogging from politco to politico using information gained in each hack, much as "Hollywood Hacker" Christopher Chaney weaseled his way into the accounts of dozens of hollywood starlets, domino-style.

One possible motive is a misguided attempt at digging up evidence to back up the conspiracy theories Guccifer has tossed out in his emails to The Smoking Gun and the posts on Colin Powell's page. According to The Smoking Gun

In e-mail screeds, "Guccifer" seems to subscribe to dark conspiracies involving the Federal Reserve, the Council on Foreign Relations, and attendees of Bohemian Grove retreats. "the evil is leading this fucked up world!!!!!! i tell you this the world of tomorrow will be a world free of illuminati or will be no more," the hacker declared.

(Of course the Illuminati stuff could easily be a troll.)

Guccifer seems to come out of the blue. I haven't been able to find any reference to him before the George W. Bush hack in February. But he's claimed he's a longtime veteran of the scene. "i have an old game with the fucking bastards inside, this is just another chapter in the game," he told The Smoking Gun. Hackers often switch handles, so he could have been causing mayhem under a different name. In the meantime, we'll be waiting to see what Guccifer finds next.

If anyone knows more about Guccifer and his exploits please email me.

[Image by Jim Cooke, photos via Getty]

Cartoonist Bill Watterson has been notoriously against allowing his beloved creations Calvin and Hobbes to be commercially repurposed, despite their immense continued popularity nearly 20 years after their final strip.

That being said, he has in the past expressed an interested in seeing the two characters brought to life through animation, telling The Comics Journal he has "a real awe for good animation."

While it's unlikely fans will get to see a real Calvin and Hobbes cartoon anytime soon, animator Adam Brown (Ugly Americans) has come about as close as one can to producing one.

Using Watterson's own drawings as keyframes, Brown animated one of the better known Calvin & Hobbes strips in meticulously loyal fashion.

The one thing that kept Watterson from green-lighting a C&H animated series more than anything else was the "scary" task of selecting a voice actor for Calvin.

Happily, Brown left his animation silent, leaving fans to fill in the blanks with the inner-Calvin that has no doubt accompanied them for many years.

[H/T: Reddit via The High Definite]

It all seemed to be going to well until Norman Bates busted out his iPod. Up until then (and granted, it was just a few minutes of airtime), it seemed like A&E's new scripted series, Bates Motel, was at least trying to preserve the legacy and reality of its source material, Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 horror classic Psycho. But no, this prequel series, which premiered last night, is set in the present, an act of folding time for the sake of...what? Not scaring the kids away with something that would have to be set in the '40s to preserve the timeline set by the film (and Robert Bloch's 1959 novel of the same name) while chronicling the adolescence of Norman Bates?

The show's executive producer Carlton Cuse, who was key in developing the series, put it a different way to EW.com:

One of the original things we both agreed on is we didn't want to do an homage. We thought there was no value in retelling a story that we were never going to tell as well as Alfred Hitchcock. We just used these characters as a point of departure. Kerry had this idea, thinking about this in terms of being a tragedy, which I instantly responded to. We just made it ours. It really became our story, taking these characters as launching points.

I see bastardization, they say respect. OK, whatever. Not like it really matters. Psycho has proven tough enough to withstand the most brutal of hackings. A line of follow-ups with diminishing returns (including the 1990 made-for-TV prequel Psycho IV: The Beginning, and another pilot-turned-TV-movie in 1987, also called Bates Motel), Gus Van Sant's needless, almost shot-for-shot 1998 remake, and countless B-level copycat slashers have done nothing to diminish the status of Hitchcock's original as one of the most effective horror films ever made. It is synonymous with the genre. There wouldn't be so many attempts to ride its coattails if it weren't.

And so, instead of getting upset about the ridiculous, trashy nature of Bates Motel, that nature can be enjoyed on its own terms. Yes, this crappy show is part of a legacy that is key to the shaping of an arm of contemporary pop culture, but it's also just a crappy show. Its wide-eyed Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) flips in and out of an English accent (a cornerstone of camp) and is pursued by a pack of five outrageously attractive high-school vixens, despite his dweeby awkwardness. He attends a party that is scored by My Bloody Valentine and then Radiohead – when the latter plays, the kids slow dance. Meanwhile, his on-the-verge mother, Norma, is played by the acclaimed Vera Farmiga, who is either absurdly unpretentious in her role selection, or who consciously surrounds herself with material that she is better than, the way an insecure beautiful person might surround him or herself with less attractive people. (I mean, have you seen Orphan? I love it, but oh boy is it intensely pungent garbage.) She carries herself with a catlike affect, a waking slumber that suggests participatory unwillingness. Her character ends up stabbing a stock frustrated townie eight times after he has kicked her in the stomach, sliced her with a knife, gagged her, bent her over a table, handcuffed her to it and raped her in the most visceral scene of the sort that I've ever seen made for TV. That part isn't enjoyably trashy, it's just trashy.

Upon discovering his mother's murdered rapist, Norman howls, "There's a dead man on the floor! There's a lake of blood!" And then the show is enjoyable again.

In a perverse way, the B-ness of Bates Motel is true to Psycho's legacy, too. While a box office smash from the start, it took time to gain the critical acclaim that it eventually did. In the excellent horror history Reel Terror (check its cover if you need more evidence of Psycho as a genre synonym), David Konow runs down the varying assessments upon release ("A first-rate mystery thriller," wrote The Hollywood Reporter; "Third-rate Hitchcock," wrote Esquire) and the eventual turn-around:

[Star] Janet Leigh recalled the reviews being 60 percent negative, 40 percent positive...Hitchock had seen reviews for his films turn around before, and several years after the initial release of Psycho, critics gave it a second look and saw a much different movie. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times first called it "a blot on an honorable career," but then changed his opinion and had it on his ten best list for the year. Time called the shower scene "one of the messiest, most nauseating murders ever filmed," then in 1966 the magazine called it "superlative" and "masterly."

I'm not expecting a turnaround like that for Bates Motel, although the show's brand of good badness does tend to ripen over time. That, of course, is a different sort of sea change — I don't think anyone's going to mistake this for landmark television anytime in the future. I'll be watching just to see how things progress, though – and to see how they deal with the whole cross-dressing, possible mother-fucking thing.

After removing a light-blue button-up shirt to reveal a t-shirt onto which he'd scrawled "KILLER" in black marker, T.J. Lane, who pleaded guilty last month to murdering three teenage boys in a school shooting, smirked as an Ohio judge gave him three life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Lane, who injured three others in his February 2012 rampage at Chardon High School, east of Cleveland, also smirked as the victims' families faced him with their final words. Dina Parmertor, mother of one of the victims, told Lane he is "a pathetic excuse for a human being" and said he deserves "an extremely, slow torturous death."

Lane responded to the grieving families with two brutal sentences: "The hand that pulls the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory. Fuck all of you." He then gave them the finger.

NBC News reports that Lane was found competent to stand trial last year "despite evidence he suffers from hallucinations and psychosis."


[Image via AP]

Celebrity nude leaks are most often met with a respectable amount of fanfare and jubilation, irrespective of the celebrity's place in the Hollywood hierarchy.

On rare occasions, the nude pics might even be granted instant icon status.

But Roswell star Shiri Appleby's alleged nude pic leak couldn't even muster a meh from most corners of the net.

The full-frontal selfie in question first appeared online late last week, and proceeded to drip its way down some of the seedier websites dedicated to celebrity nudes (not to be confused with the classier websites dedicated to celebrity nudes).

A few intrepid Internet sleuths took on the necessary task of uncovering identifying marks to ensure the pic was legit.

For the most part, however, news of the leak never made it past the gatekeepers to the web writ large.

Why?

Some suggest the so-called "leak" isn't so much a leak but rather a calculated promotional stunt given the proximity to Appleby's appearance on HBO's Girls.

And speaking of Appleby's cameo, another possible explanation could be that her pornographic turn (NSFW) left little to the imagination.

Meanwhile, some are insisting it isn't even Appleby, and the actress herself has so far remained mum.

And speaking of mum, Appleby is currently "fully preggers" as one denizen of the underweb put it, so this is likely the last nude pic of her that's likely to emerge for some time.

And that alone deserves at least an honorable mention.

[H/T: Egotastic, photo right via Getty]