I recently concluded I hate freelance jobs.
This conclusion did not come from a recent failed job. In fact, I have taken no freelance work since July. While it may be odd that it took me six months to reach a conclusion, in my defense I have the fact the last six months were among the lowest points in my life so far; considering only the really worthwhile days out of those six months, those days where I did slightly more than keep on existing, July was about three weeks ago. It just so happened that January popped up right after it.
For that freelance in July, I had to proofread and normalize a book. Normalize: I am not sure if this is the right term in English, but I doubt there is a consensus on the word to be used, in Portuguese as well, for the act of making the fonts and their sizes in a given document all follow the same standards (eg, all first level titles in 16 points, bold; all third level subtitles indented by one inch). Precisely, I was supposed - or rather, it is generally believed I was supposed - to mark on the printed copy I was sent all the alterations that should be made.
I am not sure how I got this one, to tell the truth. I think a student from my course, with whom I worked on the school's comic book (Webcomics Special; shame we took so long to finish it, or we would had done the Manga Special that followed, as well), mentioned the publisher he was working for (one of the majors in the country) needed some books proofread urgently; I what-the-hecked and sent them my resumé. Absurdly, it was accepted; they had around five books to do, would give me one and if they liked my work they might give me another.
A few days after the initial contact I had in my hands a hundred pages of a very cheesy pseudo-didatical story about a family who spends the holiday in the middle of the Amazon Forest and comes into contact with all sorts of local problems, such as land appropriation, bio-piracy, deforesting, lack of general support and credit for farming. After the "adventures" they decide to found a non-government agency to aid the peoples of the region. The side-notes attempted to bring concrete information about the subjects being fictionalized about, but an afternoon watching the Discovery Channel would teach the poor student more than that book ever could. Still - money.
"What is your Social Security number?"
I have little idea how it works in other countries, but "Social Security" seems the closest thing in English, so that is the term I use. They needed my number to say to the IRS-equivalent here that they hired SS number 123 to do a job costing $, so later the IRS-equivalent can check on my declaration if I got $ from said major publisher.
"I don't have one. Smaller publishers never asked for it, do I really need one?"
"Yes, we can't pay you if you don't have a number."
"So how do I get a number?"
"You get one when you get your first job."
"You mean a 'common' job where I get paid monthly, yes?"
"Yes."
"If I had one I would probably not be doing freelance work."
"..."
"Is there another way?"
"I'm not sure. Check the IRS's website?"
"Okay, I'll get back to you."
Indeed, the IRS-equivalent had an answer for me. "Autonomous workers' numbers", I got one. But a number was all I got. They never sent me a card and never charged anything. I am not sure, now, if I actually have said number, and if I do, I wholeheartedly hope I am not six months in debt.
"You were right, the website had it."
"Good. Before you tell me it, can you confirm your ID card's number?"
"Sure, it's ..."
"Okay, now give me your Physical Person Catalog number."
"Of course, it's ... . Want my passport's number, too? Driver's license?"
"No, only your birthdate."
"I was born on ..."
"And your age?"
"Why, I am 14, of course, can't you tell by the birthdate?"
"... alright. Now, Social Security number."
"Finally. It's ..."
"Thank you. We'll get in touch."
"Alright, but when do I get paid? I already sent back the book five days ago."
"In another fifteen business days, should nothing go wrong."
"Ah. Very well, thank you."
Two days later I received an e-mail asking me to fax them my bank account number. I kind of did. Dawn came.
"You mention in the fax this account is not under your name."
"Yes, the account is under my father's name."
"Are you listed as a secondary user of the account, in the bank?"
"No, I am not."
"You have to have an account to receive the money."
"No bank would open an account for a student whose earnings are eventual freelance jobs."
"..."
"Can't you really deposit it into my savings account?"
"No."
"Can't I have it in cheque? I'll go pick it up myself."
"No."
"Then you'll just have to deposit the money in my father's account."
"Alright. What is your father's Social Security number?"
"Why do you need his number? I went through the trouble of getting one myself solely because you demanded I did, now you need his as well?"
"We can't declare we paid Social Security number 123, owned by person X, and deposit money into person's Y account."
"But he is my father, we have the same last name, I am listed under his IRS declaration! No deal?"
"Sorry."
"So now I have this number for absolutely no reason at all?"
"..."
"I will check with him, let me call you back."
I got my father's number, gave it to them. Three weeks later the money was in the bank account. Another four weeks later there was a letter in my mailbox from the publisher to my father, "Mr. Father, you were paid $ for the work you provided us, so you should pay $ of taxes. Thank you."
Other than that, I never heard back from them. I never knew, however, if they gave up on me because it was so complicated to pay me (in no way by my own fault! I did all they asked me to, even the completely unnecessary steps) or because my work was not good enough.
Which is the main reason I gave up on freelance work - all the long dialogues so far were just for entertainment, and to illustrate a secondary reason. Ah, yes, a parentheses for another secondary reason.
They needed it "two days ago" but were kind enough to give me three days to do it - which included Saturday and Sunday. Still, when I called them Monday morning to say they could pick it up by noon instead of the end of the day, as originally scheduled, I was told it had been delayed until Tuesday afternoon. Close parantheses, on to the main reason.
With the "book" I received an entire mini-PostIt of instructions. "Normalize titles pages 17 and 76, check footnotes on maps." Did I do it right? No idea. Did I do anything right? I had no one to ask. The fact they never called back leads me to wonder I just wasted their time and money and blew any chance I had of getting anything more serious from them than a lousy pseudo-didatical pseudo-book. Pseudo-pay, too.
Six months later, then, I concluded I hate freelance jobs, and am likely to only go after them if absolutely necessary, hopefully after I figure out if I indeed have that number and if I owe them anything, and after I open my own bank account - for which I need a monthly-paying job, which defeats the purpose of and nearly impossibilitates freelance work.
From this post one can derive the information I am still an unemployed college student. Good thing I am slightly protected by the fact this applies to around 70% of college students in this country, or I would feel a bit worse.
Maybe I will delete this post later, it says more than it should. Heh. Bah.
I am fully aware 2005 was a year of few posts, but in the now traditional spirit of explaining each quote used as a title on the last day of each year - or the first day of the new year (the Vineyards' anniversary), I feel I should write it, despite having little to explain - and little to talk about. In fact, 2005 was a lousy year, as clearly reflected in the infinitesimal number of posts I wrote, and the infinitesimal number of everything else I did. But a year is not complete without this post! Therefore, here it is.
(Third year I do it and I call it tradition. Exactly the same as the British Monarchy. No doubt.)
January 1st - "And we've made it tooooooooo year two!"
That is from Sluggy Freelance, as mentioned one year ago. Now we made it to year three. Barely.
January 8th - "Drei Drachen kriechen in meinen Schlaf."
I had mentioned in the post before this that I had started taking German classes, a revelation that probably made Justin either spit juice over his now retired CRT monitor or drop on his keyboard whatever it is he was eating (which was not cake, as his most recent memorable quote, "To hell with cake!", leads me to believe). It was fair, then, that I threw in a quote in German, one I had been meaning to use, regardless. Writing a post about jazz and New Orleans and Gabriel Knight had been on my mind for a very long time (like the post about the word "whatever", now). I am slightly glad I wrote it before that diselegant wind made that fuss all over the city, too; now I will have to wait some ten years for the city to be rebuilt before I can visit it and see all those things I so dreamed about when I played Gabriel Knight. Yes, yes: the verse in German is from the game, more precisely from a book he randomly picks up in his bookstore; it relates to a certain clock in his grandmother's attic.
Ah, of course, this post includes what is probably the best moment of the Vineyards in 2005: the chat between the true Jazz Players and the powermusickers.
January 20th - "Don't Walk Away From Love"
Maybe I should not had done it. This is actually the song's title, I broke my own rule once again, etc etc, because it was supposed to be a "special" post. It actually is, it reached its purpose: now the site's stats show about 70% of visitors get here while looking for the lyrics to that song. Nearly one year later I still get an eventual "thank you" comment from a listener of Antena 1, the radio responsible for the dissemination of this song in Brazil. This post really did its job. Honestly, however, I am not terribly proud of it.
February 17th - "shutdown -h now"
This is the command used to halt a Linux system immediately. It is the one command I remember without even having to think twice about it (that and cd, actually; moving and copying files still make me pause for a second). Shutting down Linux systems was exactly how I felt like when I wrote that, having gone through countless attempts at installing countless distributions of Linux on Midgaard, which I later found out to be suffering from faulty hardware. Regardless, it was not the moderately fried CPU that made Slackware give me a list of kernels to choose from when I booted it up. I promise to give Linux another try, however, when I have Valhalla (or any replacement for Asgaard). I am just not very sure why I would want to run Linux, though.
March 12th - "One, two, three, four, five, and six. Six, the perfect number."
A quote from "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", a classical western movie (in the sense of cowboys, not in the sense of "opposed to eastern"). I was talking of six subjects and I needed a quote about the number six, I went to IMDb and found that one. Yes, it was that disappointing - I never even saw the whole movie, actually. Shame.
May 12th - "I thought three was the perfect number."
From the same movie, same scene, it is the next line. I was talking about three subjects this time. There is a pattern, see? It is not all that bad. And if you only read that post when it was originally, hm, posted, I will have to say I later edited it to include a third "worst song". Dear gods, those are songs I refuse to even capture.
May 26th - "This 'X' is... considerably to the North, and... to the East."
From "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis", the LucasArts classic PC adventure game, when he and Sophia are looking for an X in a map of the desert, but it is hard to figure out; the local nomads (paradox, heh?) give better indication. I doubt, however, they ever say "considerably to the North", as the X is very close to the bottom right corner of the map. However, I wanted to give the slight impression I was talking of Europe, perhaps to move the focus away from the United States. I had not given much thought to these matters in a long time, really.
June 30th - "What you say !!"
The classical response, italic exclamation points and all, to "All your base are belong to us". The shiniest pearl of Engrish (on its shinier dialect, SNK-Engrish), used in the post that shows Engrish turned around: Babelfished into Portuguese.
August 22nd - "How are you gentlemen !!"
The explanation of the previous post deserved a quote from the same source, no?
September 29th - "Hi, Honey!"
The most famous post of this whole year, second only to those lyrics, of course. This one was actually printed and shown around to people who would otherwise never come across the Vineyards (not my doing, no less). It is all in the map, really. "Aquatic Ocean", "Here there be monsters". The quote comes from the only full sentence the characters from the soap opera managed to speak in English, "Hi, honey!". A shame the post is in Portuguese; a full explanation in English was written, as an e-mail to Justin, who wanted to know what was going on that so many comments seemed to find it so funny. Unfortunately, no one else asked about it, so I never posted this explanation. Perhaps it can be added as an appendix at the end of "The Vineyards: Hard Cover Special Anthology (2003-2013 period)". Or I can post it sometime later.
October 12th - "We'll surely avoid scurvy if we all eat an orange."
Monkey Island, though I fail to remember if "Return to" or... I forgot the other name, too. Well, third or fourth game. It is the ending verse of "A pirate I was meant to be", the song improvised by Guybrush's slacking crew. Because I wanted to be a pirate, and a good man, and a Pokémon trainer, and look like Legolas.
October 27th - "Words communicate to things the spirit that the society imposes upon the words which have come to be the names for them."
This post is a major bash on that thing where I studied in the past five years - and where I will spend at least another six months, but the post about this was destroyed by a power failure, perhaps for the best. The gigantic words about abstract theories that talk about other people's theories about gigantic words and so on, a spiral of pointlessness. I just picked some random big words relating to the field of "communication" and threw them into Google, he sent me to this page and from it I picked what seemed to be the most pointless. Later, after pondering for a while, the sentence started making some sense. Still - honestly, really: bah.
For the record, the author is Kenneth Burke; a more precise source can be found by following that link.
October 28th - "In the 2921st year of Danaan, Tenes was overthrown."
That is from my own "L'Imperatore", a Dark Ages History contest entry, Kingdom Award (second place, Courtney is declared guilty). I just wanted a nice quote that would be immediately recognized as a Dark Ages quote (by those who knew the game, at least) and not be the "Every light casts a shadow" quote (see how it got these thinner spots from overuse here, and here? The color is faded here, too). I quoted myself, then. Har.
And that is all. 2005 was a bad year for the Vineyards, aside from Gloria Perez's map and the Jazz chat. I hope 2006 will be better. On to it, then. Happy New Calendar Day to everyone.