Blog Guy, I got a glossy brochure asking me to consider a career as a “recortador.” I know you give great career advice. My college friends and I are wondering if we should try this when we graduate in May.

To be honest, no. This photo shows all you need to know about recordators, who work with no weapons and just hop over the intended victim in a bullfight. Look, even if you majored in English lit, you should be able to land a better gig than this.

“Hello Mister Bull, I’ll be your recortador tonight, and I won’t fight back if you want to gore me. For your convenience, I’ll just leap like an idiot until you see a spot you’d like to stick your horns in.”

Related news: Publicity shot from “Superman Returns to Pamplona”

A Spanish recortador jumps over a bull during the rehearsal ceremony of the World Bull Fair in Seville, February 5, 2008. REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo

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Blog Guy, we all appreciate the wise career advice you give in your blog. Recently you reported on the worst job for a guy. Are there also bottom-of-the-barrel jobs for women, so I can avoid them?

Yes. Every year there is this huge chicken wing-eating competition, and I always notice the “Wingettes” - women who wear sexy outfits and are supposed to appear interested in whether the contestants are choking to death.

I realize it’s just acting, and they don’t really care. But it just seems to me that if your job is to show cleavage at some low-rent spectacle while staring at vile, greasy mouths to see if food is going in or coming out - a strong indicator of whether something has gone very wrong - then maybe your guidance counselor has had a big laugh at your expense.

A Wing Bowl slideshow:

Reigning Wing Bowl champion Joey Chestnut reacts after winning the 16th annual Wing Bowl event in Philadelphia, February 1, 2008. REUTERS  photos by Tim Shaffer

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Blog guy, I know you’ve given a lot of good career advice, helping to steer recent college grads away from bad jobs, so I’m wondering if you’ve seen rock bottom. I mean, a career path that is worse than all the awful ones you’ve warned us about.

You mean, one where I think wow, if that dude took a job looking down gun barrels or putting snakes in his mouth it would be a promotion? Yes, that would be Fernando Aguirre, an Osama bin Laden look-alike.

Wow! I see what you mean! And where does he work?

He patrols the most dangerous slums of Bogota, Colombia, and reports small crimes to police.

He does what? Yikes! Still, I see in the picture he carries a pretty wicked rifle.

Yeah. It’s a toy. I’m not making this up. Here’s a slideshow of Fernando on the “job” and here is a video report…

Fernando Aguirre, locally known as Osama Bin Laden, patrols a slum in Bogota January 17, 2008. REUTERS/Daniel Munoz

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Blog Guy, in the past you’ve given great tips to help dudes like me figure out whether we made good career choices. Is there any single litmus test that works?

Well, I do have a quick quiz I often use. Look down. Are you standing on top of thousands of fireworks? Now, look in your hand. Are you pouring gasoline on those fireworks?

If you answered YES to both questions, you may have made bad career choices. Take a moment, light up a cigarette, and give it some serious thought. For further helpful tips, check out earlier posts such as Free advice from the Blog of Death, and Kind of a Daffy vocational move? Good luck, and I care.

Worker pours gas on confiscated fireworks in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, January 7, 2008.  REUTERS/China Daily

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I hate to say I told you so, but it was just two months ago that a reader was tempted by glossy brochures about jobs in the exciting world of drug-smuggling homemade submarines. I advised him against it in a post called “Gosh, this sub really dives fast!”

Sure enough, some smugglers were just caught on their way from Colombia to the U.S., and as bad as that is for them, getting arrested is the best thing that can go wrong in one of these cheesy boats. Here are some common things you hear on a homemade sub:

• “Captain, it looks like this up-and-down switch only goes down”
• “Hey, this bathroom door is stuck - oh wait, it’s only painted on!”
• “So like, what do we use these COCAINE STORAGE BINS for?”
• “Shouldn’t you have shown an important film on emergency safety procedures before we left port?”

Crew members of a homemade sub are arrested by Colombian navy personnel near Buenaventura January 3, 2008. REUTERS/ Colombian Navy/Handout 

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Quick question: this newsphoto shows…

1. The mosh pit at an over-40 club
2. A humiliating intervention for some guy who wears too many blue shirts
3. An Asian production of Julius Caesar
4. South Korean politicians wiping the floor with each other

The correct answer is the last one. For you newcomers, a scene with this much chaos and violence usually involves lawmakers in Bolivia or Taipei or someplace, where now and then the fists start flying as part of the deliberation process. If you watch the whole video you’ll see one dude carried out on a stretcher. Check it out:

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Lawmakers of the ruling United New Democratic Party struggle with lawmakers of the main opposition Grand National Party occupying the National Assembly speaker’s podium at the National Assembly’s main chamber in Seoul December 14, 2007. REUTERS/Han Jae-Ho

Blog Guy, you recently gave some career tips called Free advice from the Blog of Death. You said we should avoid jobs with the phrase “of death” in the title.

Can you say more about what might go wrong? Some of these jobs look pretty sweet.

Okay, watch this video report about the “Well of Death.” Here are some things to worry about in this line of work:

• Gas is expensive, boss is cheap
• Driver in front of you brakes for vertical deer
• Dang, your SatNav system orders a sharp right turn!
• What if that Japanese dude from “Heroes” stops the action?

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I’m always looking for careers that might interest my readers, and you recent grads may want to consider the exciting field of professional mourning. It turns out, some families will pay total strangers to sob, convulse and crawl on the ground at funerals.

You’re thinking, Bob, that sounds too easy, but it’s not. You just try weeping on command. Generally, people who can do that break down into several groups:

• Professional actors
• Two-year-old children
• People who just finished watching “To Kill a Mockingbird”

So, if you think you can do as well as those people can, maybe you should start chopping onions and read Ralph Jennings’ story:

President George W. Bush with a crying baby in a 2006 photo. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

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Blog Guy, I avidly read your advice for college seniors considering careers,  and it has saved me from a number of bad decisions in areas like  homemade submarines, trolleybus electricity, and so on.  Any new career information? You should write a book!

Thank you. This photo helps make a point that I haven’t mentioned, which fools many people. These guys are driving in a “Well of Death,” and only a foolhardy belief in centrifugal force is holding them up. Generally, you should avoid jobs at places where the phrase “of death” shows up prominently in the name. 

Thus, the “Anthrax-laced Elevator of Death,” the “Fargo Wood Chipper of Death,” or even the “Cute Golden Retriever Puppy of Death,” are not career paths I currently recommend.

Stuntmen perform on their motorbikes and car on the walls of the “Well of Death” at a fair on the outskirts of Jammu November 28, 2007.  REUTERS/Amit Gupta  

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I’m getting a stream of e-mails from college seniors, frantic over what kind of career to choose in just a few months. Okay, write this down: if there is a job opportunity in which you are expected to hold an apple in your mouth while a dude the color of a Smurf slices into it with a chainsaw, that is not a career for you, even if it pays $8.20 an hour and is sort of show business.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure this young woman’s parents are very proud of her, and she is getting to see Peru. But if she had taken more home economics courses, or even watched a classic Honeymooners episode, she would know there are far easier ways to disassemble fruit.

If you’re still tempted, watch this slideshow:

A performer from the U.S. known as “The Enigma” uses a chainsaw to cut an apple placed in the mouth of his assistant during his show at the International Tattoo Convention in Lima November 24, 2007. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares

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