Where's my four leaf clover?

Haven't posted in awhile.

Things have been bad. Employed, unemployed, employed, unemployed...

When I was in High School, I knew someone that had many auto accidents. Every time He'd had a car for awhile, someone would rear end him, or blow through a stop sign to sideswipe him... It was always classified as the other person's fault, and he'd always end up with a better car out of the deal.

I thought, "this can't be random chance, he's doing something, or NOT doing something". I figured there was something wrong with his driving habits to cause so many accidents. The man ended up in the hospital for several of these accidents, so I didn't believe it was deliberate.

I just thought that since I had almost NO accidents and he had so many, there must be some difference, some habit that caused him to be more vulnerable.

Now? I'm not so sure.

My brothers got a nice job right out of college. They work for a big company, they have training and health benefits, they keep earning more and more money, and they get more and more well-off.

Me? I do it all, and I do it well. I work hard, I accomplish everything put in front of me. I just always seem to be in position of losing out. I'm in a department that is closed down, I'm put in a bad political situation that ends up with me being let go for something completely out of my control.

Life isn't fair, I know... But some people seem to be in a continual situation of sacrificial lamb.

It's the worse possible situation. It's frustration, it's the feeling of being in a pit and continually clawing your way up without any purchase. It's being closed in, trapped, not able to get any purchase, and the sheer frustration of knowing how capable you are but not being able to show it.

Maybe... Maybe some people are just born to frustration. If some people are born to situations that allow them clear sailing their entire lives, might not some be born continual no-wins?

I've never known this kind of hell. How many of our most capable people have died in situations of quiet desperation?

Is success luck? It's definitely not simple capability. Maybe it's combination of the two, with luck being the most important.

Fully Caffeinated

Ok, for those of you that followed my blog in earlier days...

I'm employed again.

I'm working in a Network Operations Center, which is a bit underemployed for me, but in this market I'll take it and be glad of it.

The schedule is NOT happy happy. I'm on second shift, which I can live with. I work Tuesday through Saturday, which is a bit of a pain.

I get NO holidays though, which is a ROYAL pain. I was supposed to host Christmas for the family this year, but if it isn't on a Sunday or a Monday, I'm not off.

Period.

The pay is about 2/3rd of what I earned at my last job, that's going to take adjustment.

Still, it's a delight to be working again, and there's a lot to learn at this place.

The dynamics are amusing and infuriating at the same time, I'm sure I'll be posting more about those.

NOC work is mad and hectic, with periods of pure boredom.

Speaking of which, time for me to head to work. I want to be there at 3:00 today, which is 30 minutes early.

At least I get to wake up slowly with a nice pot of coffee each day. That's a bit of a luxury.

Don't piss off the natives

This lovely statue is of Napoleon's wife, and sits in a beautiful public park a short walk from the pier in Martinique.

It's not very interesting until you hear the back story. You see, it seems Napoleon's wife was a hero to the slaves in Martinique, she is credited with freeing them.

A short time before my cruise, old documents were uncovered that revealed Napoleon's wife had urged they RE-ENSLAVE the people there.

Result?

The blood red paint splattered across the statue, and the head still hasn't been found.

Can't say I blame them.

By the way, that fetching lady in the picture is my neice. I'm so old...

May I sleep now?

I'm just about set. LG&E restored my power last night. Since my neighborhood was down, AND the individual lines to my house had been ripped free by a falling branch, I'd assumed I'd be down for a week or more.

This was the first extended outage I've ever experienced during cold weather. My brother described it as "camping in a really good tent.

My girlfriend ("J") had a generator she owns jointly with her Ex, so we fetched it. Along with a couple of space heaters, we took the edge off the cold. The last few days turned into working to cope, hooking up the generator, finding a secure place to put it, running extensions lines into the house, getting containers to carry gasoline, filling coolers with snow, and emptying my fridge, moving video game equipment and hooking it up so the kids wouldn't too bored, making supper on my grill standing in the snow...

Nice to be lazy again today, but there's something enjoyable about "survival mode".

Meanwhile, everything I did now has to be undone.

My house.

No power.
No heat.
No phone.
No computer.
No Internet.

Just me & my iPhone huddled in front of a gas log.

Snuggle

Mahatma Microsoft

I'm watching "Gandhi".

I've always had a fascination, and a weak spot for Gandhi. He epitomized a level of wisdom I could never hope to approach.

Here, now, with a glass of whiskey in my hand and a pack of cigarettes by my chair, I wonder how we could apply his lessons to today's inequities.

Today, society's inequites are more systemic, more due to how much of influence our corporate structure has, and how little the mass of humanity has. There is not the central power structure that there was in Gandhi's day.

But, the inequities do exist, and they exist in at an ever increasing level.

I'm pondering. I'm pondering how we could apply Gandhi's lessons to today's inequities. I'm pondering what the moral justification of resistance would be.

This is a work in progress of course, but there is one idea that occurs to me.

Today's corporations employ entire buildings full of people to influence our politics, warp our policy to fit their purpose. They do this without paying the price of the results.

Increasingly, I believe that we should limit the rights to free speach to those that have the right to vote. Corporations have no right to vote, so corporations have no right to free speach.

If a company wants to participate in political activities, they they must bear the responsibilities that come with citizenship. We are all responsible for each other at some level. Companies apply the cold equation of profit exclusively to their actions, yet claim the rights of a citizen that lives, works, and sleeps with fellow citizens.

I think the rights of citizens should not be extended to corporations. If a corporation wishes to lobby the government, display political advertisements, influence public policy, then they must meet a minimal standard for social responsibility.

This concept is just the beginning of what should be set of broad changes. Companies need to be responsible at some level for their workers. They need to offer them training instead of demanding more and more educated workers without contributing enough to education in America.

If they wish to not be responsible for the health of their workers, then they need to abide for certain standards to allow their workers to be responsible for their own health.

The list is endless, we are allowing our corporations to rule our society.

There must be a way of combining the lessons of Gandhi to our current social problems.

I'm going to ponder this.

These people are serious

Within minutes of Barack Obama becoming our President, the website www.whitehouse.gov changed drastically.

Check it out. I know enough about what it takes to create a website to know they've been working hard to prepare this in the days since the election.

I love symbolism

I encourage everyone in the world to shave themselves to celebrate being "Bushless".

It's fun, it's hygenic, and it's the kind of message we need to send.

Personal responsibility vs. compassion

I watched the movie "Traffic" a few days ago.

It was a great movie, being one that looks at an issue from all sides. There was a scene in which a college student was talking to the "drug czar" for the US.

He was trying to explain the drug traffic in the poorer sections of town. He described the atmosphere in which it happens, the influx of thousands of richer (mostly white) people that pour into these neighborhoods, asking everyone around if they know where there are some drugs for sale.

Imagine living there, with all these rich (by your standards) people asking to buy drugs. Imagine knowing that all you'd have to do is sell some, and you could spend a few hours a day to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars easily.

If that was happening in the richer neighborhoods, how many of those kids do you think would go to law school?

The people that give in and take the easy way out are still responsibilt, but it brings up the concept of personal responsibility vs. compassion.

I was debating declining school grades, and the parent's responsibility with someone once. The man I debated was from another country. I was trying to make the point that the nation was full of single mothers or even full parent households of adults working two, or even three jobs just to keep a roof over them, and food on the table. The more this kind of thing happens, the less likely the parents are to put in the time they should to help and guide their children.

He was all about personal responsibility, saying "it doesn't matter", he knew parents that did without sleep nightly to help their children.

There's a lot of this around, people ignore the societal problems and focus solely on "what they SHOULD have done".

We do horrible things to our young women. We glorify their sexuality, all of society rotates around a pretty young woman.

Later when some of them become manipulative, when they've learned they can behave any way they want to and avoid responsibility by being flirtatious, when they lie, flirt, or even fuck people to get their way, we come down on them hard.

It's true in all of these cases... The assholes deserve it, they fell into a trap. They took the easy way with drugs, let the world keep them from being good parents, or let themselves become social sluts, using and manipulating those around them...

But we also to look however, at how that happens. Some liberals look only at the societal pitfalls, and forgive the individuals because of them.

Some conservatives look only at the personal responsibility, and ignore the societal pitfalls.

We can't ignore either. Assholes (or in the parental cases, the overwhelmed) deserve the results of their actions, we can't save them from that. In the asshole cases, I have no intention of forgiving people for making bad choices.

But we also need to look at why people make these bad choices, why they find the proper actions so hard. We can't ignore the barriers we put in front of people, or the temptations we create for them. Bad behaviour doesn't happen in a vacuum, if we gave people some help, or even a fair shake... If we gave them a SINGLE way out toward a reasonable life, I think we'd find things would get a lot better.

I'm not LISTENING!!! LA LA LA LA LA!

I have the gift.

Well, I have A gift, and I'm not so sure it's a gift.

I'm a good counselor. People come to me when they have problems, to get support, find a way out, find some comisseration.

I never understood why it seems to be so rare, but it does. It only takes consideration, empathy, a little honesty (in the right places)... You just have to sympathize, tell the other person that it isn't their fault, agree that circumstances dealt them raw hand...

Of course, that alone isn't very constructive, you also have to find ways to show them any way out you may see, while not blaming them. You just use phrases like "Yeah, it sucks that guy/girl/company/tornado did that to you, it's really unfair... You know, if you tried kindness/wacking off less/kissing ass/building a storm shelter, it MIGHT make it better next time. It's that pits that you should have to, but maybe that's the price we pay"...

I've been accused of innapropriate honesty at times in my relationships, but I always saw relationships as being the place where you should err on the side of too much honesty if any.

When someone is upset, going through a crisis, that is NOT the time to be telling them everything you think they did wrong.

It's cruel, callous, and it shows a lack of concern for the person you're talking too. It also shows you don't care enough about them to bother to try to see what they're going through emotionally.

Lack of empathy is the primary symptom that the person you're talking to doesn't give a shit about you anymore. Many people will become unfeeling and cruel long before they actually decide to tell you to fuck off.

That's an odd message isn't it? "I still want to spend time with you, but don't bother asking me to be interested in you, what you're feeling, what's going on, or any of that. I'm just putting in my time so I don't feel bad about myself...".

Classic.

I've seent this kind of thing a thousand times, I've been used as a crisis counselor by damn near everyone around me, and 99% of them are gone the second their problems are gone.

For a long time I told myself I just had to bear it, that this was the price I paid for being the kind of person I wanted to be.

Then I got fed up and hid for awhile, only trying to help those that I truly considered my friends.

Then I found out that even they would do the same thing to me.

I guess I'm back to the original thought, I need to allow this to happen to me, in order to be the kind of person I want to be...

It's impossible not to become jaded, or even suspicious, it's just something you have to fight.