So there I am, frantically searching the Interpipes for a job because this one is starting to shit me no end lately, what with all the extra crap dumped on my desk because someone pisses off without giving due notice. And I’m doubly pissed off because finding a job now is bloody hard since Teh Age sacked most of its hacks and replaced them with redundant ballboys from the Australian Open, so now the job market for journos is flooded with jobseekers who have been Fair-fucked. Anyway I find a vacancy for something called an ‘Online Journalist’, which reads OK and pays slightly more than a week’s shift work at McDonald’s (always a bonus in the lucrative field of journalism). And then I see this line:

Familiarity with C#, Linux, Apache, Perl and Python

And I’m thinking “…unless this is a gig reporting on music performance, Snoopy characters, native Americans and the herpetology scene, I may be under-qualified”. Apparently to be an ‘online journalist’ these days you’ve got to be able to hack into the NASA mainframe and re-task the Hubble telescope to read over Bolta’s shoulder through the window of his suite at Docklands. Being able to research, interview, write, spell, proof, edit and format are optional skillz.

I must be a Luddite.