Dontcha sometimes wish

So a few of our elected employees were on the tube this week thumping their chests about how we need to re-write the current overtime laws so that employers don't have to pay people for the hours they work.

And I'm sitting there, watching this. 

And I'm thinking back to all the jobs I've worked (including my current one) where there were set protocols in place to diddle away any significant OT that anyone works, and realizing that each and every one of these talking heads makes close to a quarter mil/year with full benefits for what times out to about five months of going out to dinner on someone else's dime, accepting 'gifts' that someone else is paying for, and sitting at a desk and spending someone else's money. 

And I found myself thinking that it sure would be nice (as an amendment to our current constitution) if we could require ALL elected officials at the federal and state level to (as a part of their campaign, and regardless of party affiliation)  spend a year or two in a non-union warehouse anywhere in the country (though preferably in their constituency).  I think it would do them a world of good to know what a  'fall and you're fired' health plan is... To work in a physically taxing (and often demeaning) job with no medical coverage, no dental, heat stroke in the summer, frostbite in the winter, no vacation, no sick leave, no safety equipment or inspection,  no overtime (no matter how many hours you work in a week),  earning (and living on) eight and a quarter an hour or less and praying every day that you don't get injured because you know that (if you're lucky) you just be fired and crippled.

When I was doing that sort of work, we use to joke that at least the jail had decent medical coverage, because the company I worked for had a habit of pre-dating the termination papers of employees who were injured on the job, and then calling the police and claiming that said employee was disgruntled over their termination, and injured themselves while attempting to vandalize or burglarize their former employer.  (Every time I see a story on the news, or on the internet about someone who was injured in a similar way, I always hope that whoever the manager was at that site didn't make the poor bastard wait till after closing before calling an ambulance). 

So  that's what was waiting for me when I got out of college (and I was lucky enough to have experience with that sort of thing growing up, so I was able to adapt).   I hear it's only gotten worse in the last decade and a half.  

And that's assuming that they got a chance to go to college in the first place. 

Don't forget that we've got several hundred thousand coming back from the gulf, and from Afghanistan, and from half a dozen conflicts that didn't even make the evening news.   Some of these folks have been stop-gaped well past the limit of their original tour, and (in spite of what their recruiting officer told them going in) have few commercially viable skills coming out.  Some of these folks having spent close to a third of their lives in combat zones, and we can expect that they'll come home with all the health and re-integration issues that we have previous conflicts, plus a few new ones thrown in for good measure. 

Taking into account our society's already deplorable treatment of it's veterans (and for all the flag wavers out there, don't get your panties in a bunch. I'm not talking about your politically advantageous patriotism, but the cold hard reality of aftercare for something like this.  The necessary medical care, vocational and societal re-integration assistance, addiction treatment, etc that we should be giving these folks the second they step off the plane), do you really think these folks are going to get the help that they need, that they deserve, that they have earned?

Do you think these elected windbags are going to be the ones to take a salary hit to make that happen?  Or do you think they'll just point at the problem and blame the other guy?

And people want to know why the the younger generation seems to be either completely apathetic or chronically upset and depressed?

Coming back from years of service overseas to find nothing waiting for them but unemployment, debt, lies and bullshit. 

Or leaving college high on the false promises that they've been spoon fed their entire lives, humping it through the modern job market with a quarter million in debt on their shoulders, with a third or more of them not even able to find crappy warehouse work to scrape by on.

And these pompous douche bags talking about how spoiled and lazy and 'entitled' they are...

Hell, I'm surprised every day that these kids AREN'T out in the street rioting and torching off dumpsters, cars and buildings at random.

It seems oddly fitting that, as our country circles the bowl, the folks riding the top of the vortex can think of nothing more worthy to do with their remaining moments but deride the folks who have already been sucked down. 

And I take some small comfort in the knowledge that, for the most part, these windbags are so very ill equipped to deal with where this country will be in twenty years.

waking dream, the internet will eat me...

I sleep, and find on waking that I've not slept
I sleep, wakeful dreams embraced
I sleep, soon to wake but not awake
I sleep.

I'm now officially a corporate tool

So my sister finally managed to open her shop this weekend, and because I gave her my motorcycle to sell so that she could use the proceeds to help in this endeavor, I now own five percent of her company.  (I may end up taking labor cost in percentage as well).  So it's taken my entire life, but I'm now a corporate tool... As soon as she gets underlings, I'll be able to tell them what to do 5% of the time... or something like that. 

One of my co-workers was giving me shit about spending all my off hours working for free.

I told him that it wasn't really that different from all the other employers I've had.

All of them have (at one point or another) found some creative way to get me working for free.  It's the corporate way, work for a company long enough and eventually they'll find an excuse to diddle your wages, or (often under threat of layoff or termination) coerce you into starting before you're on the clock, or working after you're off the clock, or through your unpaid breaks, or on your days off... Or calling you in for 'just a few minutes' to handle something.  The only real differences are that I am doing it voluntarily now, and I'm doing it to line the pockets of someone I actually like.

Murph, corporate tool...

Kinda has a ring to it, don't ya think?

Skin changer

It is a condition of our species that we all have more than one personality.

The difference is that (for those of us who do not have multiple personality disorder) we cycle through our personalities fairly slowly.

I'm not talking about the facets of your current personality (for those of you who are saying 'wait, who I am at work is not who I am at home is not who I am with my lover is not who I am...' etc).

Let me put it this way.

Who were you seven years ago?

Think back, don't just answer "I was the same as I was today"...  If that's truly the case then you're probably either lying to yourself or you lead an exceedingly dull and sheltered life.

Honestly, try to remember who you were, what you did, what was important. 
Remember the heartaches, the loves and the petty arguments.
Remember the political strife, whatever was bothering you. 
Remember how you interacted with your fellow humans. 
Try to remember each and every political view you held then, every social belief, every moral.  Can you remember them?  Are they the same?   It was just seven years ago, it shouldn't be that difficult.

Can you do it?

I can, sort of.  But the things I remember seem alien to me now.  Life has happened in the interim, and I am nowhere near being the same person I was then...  I am a new and different personality.  All of the people I know now who I also knew then are whole new personalities (to say nothing of the ones who have entered or left or passed through or glanced off of my sphere awareness in that time frame) We have all been shaped by our lives, our interactions, and the endless coming and going of existence.

If I go back another seven I find I can barely remember that person, and they are utterly and totally alien.

If I go back an additional seven I find yet another stranger, more energetic and more optimistic but with almost nothing in common with the person sitting at this computer today.

I could choose to use any increment of time for this exercise, but I think seven is a good choice...  Not quite a decade.  Just far enough back to be difficult to remember.

We are all skin changers.

Each of us a constantly drifting and evolving personality.

We can't stop, we don't dare.  The world changes and we are part of the world... 

I think that's a part of why folks take so many pictures.  Like folks who hoard junk because it's tied to special memories, something they want to hold on to, something they've promised themselves they will never forget.  But it's all transient in the end.  The memories fade, and we're left with that ever present, familiar and terrifying emptiness.  The hole where our life use to be, which we try to fill with whatever is handy. 

We are a nation of quick fix addicts.  Incapable of making lasting connections because life demands that we change so quickly and so regularly that we can never keep the good things around for long.  So we search for the quick fix, the work-around. 

We fill our lives with noise, cheap entertainment, cheap thrills.

We take too many pictures, enshrine every possible moment in video form.

We acquire the latest goods, the latest gadgets.

The fire and forget relationships and the single use friends who fill the endless terabytes of our various storage systems. 

All those precious moments we swore that we would remember forever...

Which we will experience once, remember for a time, and never pick up again.






Our species is dying.

It has very little to do with environmental damage or climate change or extremist thought or our general disregard for our own welfare, or the welfare of those around us...

Those are just symptoms.

We are dying because we are forgetting.

As a species we are forgetting who we were as a species, and more importantly who we wanted to be.
We may have our 'history', but we have viscerally forgotten what it was like to be the folks we claim to come from.

Buried in our junk and our useless mementos, we are fading into that rest-home oblivion of eventual stagnation and forgetfulness from whence we will not, in my opinion, return.