Blog Guy, you give great career advice. I want to enter the glamorous and exciting field of fashion photography.

I understand that there must be quite a lot to learn before I could actually produce pictures that do justice to the creations of the designers. Do you know how much training is required?

Um, maybe not quite as much as you think. Here are a couple of actual photos I got from our Australian Fashion Week file over the past couple of days. Let’s just say if the fashion industry has problems with knock-off pirates stealing their designs, well, they’re certainly not copying them from these photos…

Much more advice on careers

Above, a creation by Friedrich Gray. Below, a creation by Honey Hartley house design show. Australian Fashion Week, REUTERS photos by Daniel Munoz.

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Life a struggle? Help us smuggle!

Let’s say your business requires you to transport certain items quietly, without much attention. I believe the technical word for it is smuggling. Where do you get guys to do that for you? The local pool hall?

If you’re in Guatemala, it turns out you just advertise on radio, as if you were selling Buicks or something. The ads, aimed at recruiting elite Kaibil ex-soldiers, offer work “securing vehicles transporting merchandise to Mexico,” and then, naturally, they give a contact phone number!

Our story says officials are “investigating” the ads, but that’s a tough one. Gosh, where would you even begin?

More posts about crime

Kaibils cross a river during an exhibition in the Special Forces Brigade, known as “Kaibil`s Hell”, in Guagemala, in a 2006 file photo. REUTERS/Carlos Duarte

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Blog Guy, you’re great at giving advice on careers. Should I consider letting venomous snakes bite me for a living?

You know, that’s not as much fun as it sounds. In fact, here’s a pretty good litmus test. If you have a hard time saying the word snake because there’s one hanging from your tongue, you may wish to consider a pro Russian roulette career, instead.

While I’m at it, you also don’t want to be the guy who takes the venom out of the snakes, or the one who scotch-tapes teeny labels on the snakes so you can tell which ones still have venom in them.

But what you really don’t want to be is a customer at the tavern where the bartender stores the bottles of snake venom in the fridge right next to the mixers he uses for pina coladas…

Much more advice on careers:

A snake bites a snake charmer at Lohagara village, India, April 22, 2008. The snake charmer says the venom has been removed from the snake. REUTERS/Jitendra Prakash

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I get what happened here. This young gentleman looked at the wrong end of his Assault-Ready Heavy-Duty Atomic Super-Pneumatic Staple Gun, to see if it was loaded, which it turns out it was. I get that, and I certainly have to admire the professional-quality results.

But now he has a problem. Unless he wants to spend his life working as a human cake decorator - not that there’s anything wrong with that - he needs to find a plastic surgeon who is really, really, really good at filling out pesky insurance forms!

Man poses at an international tattoo convention in Moscow, April 20, 2008. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

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Blog Guy, I really need your famous career advice. I got into Harvard, but now I can’t find the courses I need to prepare me for the lucrative field of carnival sideshows. Help!

You’re not the first to make that mistake, but you caught it in time. One word for you: Vomit. As in  Professor Donny Vomit, of the famous Coney Island Sideshow School, where you can study sword swallowing, fire eating, sleeping on nails - everything you need to see why the word sideshow is synonymous with glitz and glamour. 

In no time, you can be stubbing out cigars on your tongue! Remember their motto, “Be a freak in just one week!”

Sideshow slideshow, and related post: Hit me with a shovel!

A student swallows fire, and teacher Donny Vomit demonstrates how to hammer a nail up his nose during a class at the Coney Island Sideshow school in Coney Island, New York, April 10, 2008. REUTERS photos by Mike Segar

If you’re thinking of a public relations career, watch and learn. Italy recently did a recall of some mozzarella cheese linked to dioxin contamination. Okay, so how do they restore public confidence in the product?

a) Trot out scientists to say how safe it is
b) Trot out doctors to say how safe it is
c) Feed it to gladiators to show it doesn’t kill them

If you chose gladiators, you may have a future in PR! They fed cheese to these guys who wear flimsy costumes and pose with tourists in Rome, and I guess it worked. But I keep thinking hey, didn’t gladiators go to the Colosseum to die, anyway? So who cares that a gladiator is willing to eat the stuff now? “Sure pal, give me another mouthful, I may as well get it over with.”

More gladiator news: Put on your “glad” rags!

Man dressed as a gladiator eats buffalo mozzarella cheese in front of the Colosseum in Rome April 2, 2008. Italian buffalo mozzarella cheese producers organized a demonstration to prove the quality of their cheese. REUTERS/Tony Gentile

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Oh, what have I done? Mom wanted me to be a chiropractor, but no! I knew better! Mister Smarty-Pants just HAD to be a matador!

So here I am, dressed like Elton John, in front of all these boobs who came to see blood. They expect me to take my sword and… Caramba! I left my sword at home, on the sofa! Under my CAPE! Can anything ELSE go wrong today?

“Well, there’s the roar of the crowd. That means they’ve let the bull in. It’s just me, this black beanbag on my head, and a one-ton bull. What? And the program says I’m FRENCH? I know, who’s even HEARD of a French bullfighter? Maybe if I stand real still…

Related posts: Meester bool and “So? What do you do?”

French matador Sebastian Castella crosses himself before starting a bullfight in The Maestranza bullring in Seville April 4, 2008. REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo

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Blog Guy, I know you’ve said bullfighting isn’t a wise career choice for college seniors, but the profession still intrigues me. Isn’t there anything in the pointless animal torture field that might suit me?

Look, there’s more to a career than silly outfits. You might consider becoming a creepador. As you can see in this photo, this furtive fellow works in the shadows, irritating the bull with whispered slurs and insults, mostly recycled Don Rickles material. 

The creepador gets the bull so furious that it doesn’t notice the sniperdor, way up in the bleachers, who shoots the animal with a high-powered rifle just as the bullfighter is about to stick those pointed things in it. But remember, the creepador is like the vice president. If something happens to the real bullfighter, guess who gets an instant promotion?

Related links: A goofy job and Try not to impress him

A Spanish assistant bullfighter pokes his head out from behind the barrier during a bullfight in The Maestranza bullring in Seville April 2, 2008. REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo

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Blog Guy, I’m very interested in how news is covered. Let’s say you hear about something new. How do you cover it?

Well, let’s take news from Victoria’s Secret. It turns out they’re going to be selling their swimsuits in stores, instead of just online and in catalogs. This is big news, because with summer coming, women are facing a shortage of places to buy beach wear. Some cities are down to their last four or five thousand shops!

I hear you. That IS a big story, especially with online and catalog shopping being so tough. So then, you would send a reporter to learn more about this and write a story, huh?

Are you stupid? No! We’d send a photographer to shoot the swimsuit models! Heck, another major news organization sent TWO photographers on this story!

Other posts about Victoria’s Secret

Victoria’s Secret model Marisa Miller (2nd R) poses with models during a store appearance at the Victoria’s Secret store in New York April 2, 2008. Victoria’s Secret announced they will be selling their swimwear collection in stores nationwide. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

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Clinical study, day one: Researchers, we recently became aware of Fashion Model Rage, thanks to the respected journal Oddly Enough. I presume you read the relevant papers, The age of runway rage? and Why so crabby, Abby?, which got us our $8.2 million study grant.

Pay attention to our first subject. We dressed a model in a shiny suit four sizes too small, and a Doc Holliday string tie. Note he cannot button his jacket and breathe at the same time, thus instantly raising his anxiety level. We adapted the outfit from a 1640s sketch of a Puritan undertaker.

Then we pushed him onto the runway, where strangers will mutter, snicker and gawk. Note his fists are beginning to curl and clench. He is about five seconds away from wading into that crowd for a large dose of chair-climbing whoop-ass.

The audience? Just a bunch of yokels off the tourist bus. I imagine they have health insurance.

A model presents a creation by Russian designer Max Chernitsov during Russian Fashion Week in Moscow March 31, 2008. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

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