Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
A Few Thoughts on Welfare
Should be for people. Not corporations.
The fact that unemployment insurance is tied to recent employment in the US is BULLSHIT. I worked my ass off 9 shifts a week for 9 months, saved up, moved into a car, and had myself a nice little vacation for the next 8 months. Then worked for 5 months... then got laid off. Turns out unemployment is based on the income you made for the first 4 of the last 5 financial quarters. So despite me paying thousands into the system over my life they were only going to give me about $100 a week.... but my employer then denied I had worked for them and someone in Georgia was stealing my identity and they just left me a voice mail saying they deleted the claim it took me 45 minutes on a computer to fill out.
The fuckers. It was easier to just find another job.
At the next job they illegally stole my tips and I requested help from the division of labor and they said I needed to hire a lawyer to get anything but the lawyers wanted to steal half of what they could win back for me and only getting like $500 then isn't really the hassle of a lawyer.
The government only cares about rich people, and helping them. If you have problems, like a drug problem, a poverty problem you try to resolve through crime, a bad employer problem, a laid off problem, or a medical problem... there are plenty of people making way more money than you who will make more money off your problem. Drug treatment class teachers get money, judges get money, cops get money, lawyers get money, prison guards get money, prison builders get money, pharmaceutical companies get money. Everyone gets money once you've hit down and out and started to sell weed to pay your bills.
But when you've worked for these corporations for years and you have hit hard times it comes to getting just a little help to keep the rent getting paid and food being bought until you can find another job, you are OUT on your ASS and the corporate government basically says fuck you. Instead of giving you back a few hundred or thousand of your own money to keep you alive they let you fall, and then spend thousandS or millionS to process the mess (but not really fix it up at all, mind you).
* * *
"The problem, again, is when people abuse the privilege. I'm referring to capable people who lack ambition, common sense, and a sense of personal responsibility."
Like the good folks at Fannie May, Freddie Mac, Citigroup, AIG, Ford, GM, Chrystler, Wells Fargo, or Bank of America?
Or how about Lockheed-Martin, Blackwater, Haliburton, Bechtel, McDonald-Douglass, Armalite- or any of the other defense contractor gluttons making a killing in government handouts for their gracious role in the destruction of human lives and infrastructure? Maybe Monsanto, Dupont, or the other heavily subsidized agricultural giants? Or how about the goddamned ranchers growing their cows fat on the public lands? And I haven't even begin to talk about big Pharma... my entire 4 year college education was very graciously and freely provided by Uncle Sam's circuitous shuffling of Medicare funds into a fake non-profit healthcare company my family helped to start.
There is plenty of fat on the system. We need not fight each other over the appropriations of what crumbs are occasionally flung down to us.
THE FUCKING HORROR! SOMEONE IN A SHITTY CRACK DEALING GHETTO SHANTY HAS A TELEVISION SET THAT IS TOO LARGE! HOLY FUCK! HEAR BOUT THAT SHIT YOU'LL BE PISSED OFF ALL DAY THINKING HOW BAD YOUR TAXES ARE WASTED!!!
But... 45 BILLION dollars to bail out Bank of America? Your mind can't comprehend how much money that is. The entire US Department of Education had a budget of $59.2 billion in 2008. That took care of "56 million students attending some 98,000 public schools and 34,000 private schools.
So think for a second about public schools, how much times is devoted to thinking about them, talking about them, praising them, condemning them, and coming up with new ways to make them better, and elaborate schemes to put teachers under microscopes to assess their performance. Can I ask you how often do you think or talk about how the Bank of America is doing, or how their employees and executives should be carefully vetted?
We evolved from hunter gatherers. We have millions of years of being able to tell the difference between one banana or two bananas or many bananas. We can tell the difference between one deer or three deer or a herd of deer. We can imagine several herds of deer. We have very little experience imagining BILLIONS of deer. It's not something that our brains are very good at comprehending. So we dismiss it, and move on.
The scale of corporate looting of the public treasury is a mind boggling thing to try and comprehend. The powerlessness we feel to confront it makes it even less comfortable to dwell on or discuss. But ONE broke ass desperate drop out with no money and no skills and the wrong skin color and dead end future who has figured out some way to get an extra 100, or even 300 bucks a week or month outta whatever federal welfare program hasn't yet been completely dismantled by rich congressmen- and you are up in arms. You're bringing it up at work to talk about. You're mentioning it at the dinner table, or during the football game. This is outrageous! Someone needs to DO something!
Do you know what the biggest demographic of welfare recipients is? It's white children. But Ronald fucking Reagan has you so scared of a black lady with a functional car or a decent television set that you'd never in a million years, say, ask the Census Bureau or the GAO or the Department of Labor or Health and Human Services what their own, actual, carefully gathered data on the subject actually says.
Eugene debs had this great quote about the American justice system being like a magic net that only catches minnows while letting the sharks slip right through. The same principle applies. The bigger you are and the harder you fall the more likely there is to be a safety net to catch you. But if you're small, innocuous, forgettable, and the help you need is in the range of hundreds or thousands- rather than billions- of dollars... you will fall and you will keep falling and the only sirens you will ever hear coming to your rescue will be the wail of paramedics coming to scrape you off the pavement.
The fact that unemployment insurance is tied to recent employment in the US is BULLSHIT. I worked my ass off 9 shifts a week for 9 months, saved up, moved into a car, and had myself a nice little vacation for the next 8 months. Then worked for 5 months... then got laid off. Turns out unemployment is based on the income you made for the first 4 of the last 5 financial quarters. So despite me paying thousands into the system over my life they were only going to give me about $100 a week.... but my employer then denied I had worked for them and someone in Georgia was stealing my identity and they just left me a voice mail saying they deleted the claim it took me 45 minutes on a computer to fill out.
The fuckers. It was easier to just find another job.
At the next job they illegally stole my tips and I requested help from the division of labor and they said I needed to hire a lawyer to get anything but the lawyers wanted to steal half of what they could win back for me and only getting like $500 then isn't really the hassle of a lawyer.
The government only cares about rich people, and helping them. If you have problems, like a drug problem, a poverty problem you try to resolve through crime, a bad employer problem, a laid off problem, or a medical problem... there are plenty of people making way more money than you who will make more money off your problem. Drug treatment class teachers get money, judges get money, cops get money, lawyers get money, prison guards get money, prison builders get money, pharmaceutical companies get money. Everyone gets money once you've hit down and out and started to sell weed to pay your bills.
But when you've worked for these corporations for years and you have hit hard times it comes to getting just a little help to keep the rent getting paid and food being bought until you can find another job, you are OUT on your ASS and the corporate government basically says fuck you. Instead of giving you back a few hundred or thousand of your own money to keep you alive they let you fall, and then spend thousandS or millionS to process the mess (but not really fix it up at all, mind you).
* * *
"The problem, again, is when people abuse the privilege. I'm referring to capable people who lack ambition, common sense, and a sense of personal responsibility."
Like the good folks at Fannie May, Freddie Mac, Citigroup, AIG, Ford, GM, Chrystler, Wells Fargo, or Bank of America?
Or how about Lockheed-Martin, Blackwater, Haliburton, Bechtel, McDonald-Douglass, Armalite- or any of the other defense contractor gluttons making a killing in government handouts for their gracious role in the destruction of human lives and infrastructure? Maybe Monsanto, Dupont, or the other heavily subsidized agricultural giants? Or how about the goddamned ranchers growing their cows fat on the public lands? And I haven't even begin to talk about big Pharma... my entire 4 year college education was very graciously and freely provided by Uncle Sam's circuitous shuffling of Medicare funds into a fake non-profit healthcare company my family helped to start.
There is plenty of fat on the system. We need not fight each other over the appropriations of what crumbs are occasionally flung down to us.
THE FUCKING HORROR! SOMEONE IN A SHITTY CRACK DEALING GHETTO SHANTY HAS A TELEVISION SET THAT IS TOO LARGE! HOLY FUCK! HEAR BOUT THAT SHIT YOU'LL BE PISSED OFF ALL DAY THINKING HOW BAD YOUR TAXES ARE WASTED!!!
But... 45 BILLION dollars to bail out Bank of America? Your mind can't comprehend how much money that is. The entire US Department of Education had a budget of $59.2 billion in 2008. That took care of "56 million students attending some 98,000 public schools and 34,000 private schools.
So think for a second about public schools, how much times is devoted to thinking about them, talking about them, praising them, condemning them, and coming up with new ways to make them better, and elaborate schemes to put teachers under microscopes to assess their performance. Can I ask you how often do you think or talk about how the Bank of America is doing, or how their employees and executives should be carefully vetted?
We evolved from hunter gatherers. We have millions of years of being able to tell the difference between one banana or two bananas or many bananas. We can tell the difference between one deer or three deer or a herd of deer. We can imagine several herds of deer. We have very little experience imagining BILLIONS of deer. It's not something that our brains are very good at comprehending. So we dismiss it, and move on.
The scale of corporate looting of the public treasury is a mind boggling thing to try and comprehend. The powerlessness we feel to confront it makes it even less comfortable to dwell on or discuss. But ONE broke ass desperate drop out with no money and no skills and the wrong skin color and dead end future who has figured out some way to get an extra 100, or even 300 bucks a week or month outta whatever federal welfare program hasn't yet been completely dismantled by rich congressmen- and you are up in arms. You're bringing it up at work to talk about. You're mentioning it at the dinner table, or during the football game. This is outrageous! Someone needs to DO something!
Do you know what the biggest demographic of welfare recipients is? It's white children. But Ronald fucking Reagan has you so scared of a black lady with a functional car or a decent television set that you'd never in a million years, say, ask the Census Bureau or the GAO or the Department of Labor or Health and Human Services what their own, actual, carefully gathered data on the subject actually says.
Eugene debs had this great quote about the American justice system being like a magic net that only catches minnows while letting the sharks slip right through. The same principle applies. The bigger you are and the harder you fall the more likely there is to be a safety net to catch you. But if you're small, innocuous, forgettable, and the help you need is in the range of hundreds or thousands- rather than billions- of dollars... you will fall and you will keep falling and the only sirens you will ever hear coming to your rescue will be the wail of paramedics coming to scrape you off the pavement.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Never Work With Createspace.com
NEVER WORK WITH CREATESPACE.COM
These are the people Connexion Bizarre made me go to for physical cd printing. A week and a half after the thing is officially released by them, and after I already got a proof in the mail, made a minor artwork modification, and re-sent it in, I get this fucking email. You may notice there is no way for me to contact the human who sent it, because the return address is " donotreply@createspace.com ".
WTF??
That's it. Fuck music. Too much head ache. For fucking morons who want to waste their time and money. I don't have time for this shit.
---
From:
"CreateSpace Support"
Add sender to Contacts
To:
"XXXXXX@XXXX.com"
Please Note: This e-mail message was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.
Hello Christian,
I am contacting you in regard to the artwork for your title "Ghosts Dance Lightly on the Puncheon Floor."
The artwork you have submitted for this title does not meet our submission requirements because there is live text that extends past the bleed zones. Therefore, I kindly request that you revise your artwork and re-upload in your account.
The only way for our system to properly produce your packaging is if we have artwork that conforms to our templates. CreateSpace provides guidelines and templates for artwork to help you get the best results preparing your artwork, with the least hassle.
You will find instructions and templates for CDs at:
https://www.createspace.com/Products/CD ... p#content3
Furthermore, please contact us as soon as you have made this update so that we can issue a proof copy for your review.
We greatly appreciate your understanding in this matter and I hope this information is helpful to you. As always, please feel free to contact us regarding any further questions you may have.
If you need more help with this issue, click here:
http://www.createspace.com/Support
Best regards,
Molly
CreateSpace Support
Need answers? Visit our new searchable Help Page at https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp and take a look at our Community to link to others who share your interests at https://www.createspace.com/en/community/index.jspa.
Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:
If yes, click here: http://www.createspace.com/Special/L/hm ... ref=226541
If not, click here: http://www.createspace.com/Special/L/hm ... nr-neg.jsp
Your original message:
Title ID 1798699, "Ghosts Dance Lightly on the Puncheon Floor" has been placed on hold due to artwork issues. . There is an outstanding order (#8088336 ) that we would like to fulfill if this member can provide updated artwork. There is live text that extends past the bleed zones. Please contact this member to update their artwork so it follows the artwork templates.
Follow CreateSpace on Twitter! Visit www.twitter.com/createspace.
These are the people Connexion Bizarre made me go to for physical cd printing. A week and a half after the thing is officially released by them, and after I already got a proof in the mail, made a minor artwork modification, and re-sent it in, I get this fucking email. You may notice there is no way for me to contact the human who sent it, because the return address is " donotreply@createspace.com ".
WTF??
That's it. Fuck music. Too much head ache. For fucking morons who want to waste their time and money. I don't have time for this shit.
---
From:
"CreateSpace Support"
Add sender to Contacts
To:
"XXXXXX@XXXX.com"
Please Note: This e-mail message was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.
Hello Christian,
I am contacting you in regard to the artwork for your title "Ghosts Dance Lightly on the Puncheon Floor."
The artwork you have submitted for this title does not meet our submission requirements because there is live text that extends past the bleed zones. Therefore, I kindly request that you revise your artwork and re-upload in your account.
The only way for our system to properly produce your packaging is if we have artwork that conforms to our templates. CreateSpace provides guidelines and templates for artwork to help you get the best results preparing your artwork, with the least hassle.
You will find instructions and templates for CDs at:
https://www.createspace.com/Products/CD ... p#content3
Furthermore, please contact us as soon as you have made this update so that we can issue a proof copy for your review.
We greatly appreciate your understanding in this matter and I hope this information is helpful to you. As always, please feel free to contact us regarding any further questions you may have.
If you need more help with this issue, click here:
http://www.createspace.com/Support
Best regards,
Molly
CreateSpace Support
Need answers? Visit our new searchable Help Page at https://www.createspace.com/Help/Index.jsp and take a look at our Community to link to others who share your interests at https://www.createspace.com/en/community/index.jspa.
Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:
If yes, click here: http://www.createspace.com/Special/L/hm ... ref=226541
If not, click here: http://www.createspace.com/Special/L/hm ... nr-neg.jsp
Your original message:
Title ID 1798699, "Ghosts Dance Lightly on the Puncheon Floor" has been placed on hold due to artwork issues. . There is an outstanding order (#8088336 ) that we would like to fulfill if this member can provide updated artwork. There is live text that extends past the bleed zones. Please contact this member to update their artwork so it follows the artwork templates.
Follow CreateSpace on Twitter! Visit www.twitter.com/createspace.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
11.11
The armed and psychotic ex-ranger who telephones death threats to the former best friend who hooked up with his GF when he was in prison... the abrasive narcissist with pot but no groceries and outstanding pay day loans... the confused high school drop out... the Mexican family man... the laid off Oxycontin withdrawals... the ex-marine trying to find a way beyond the Democrats and the Republicans who writes heavy metal songs about things he hates... the white, vegetarian Naropa University student with money and a sex drive... rock star gossip and the potentially sketchy website the Portuguese netlabel owner is sending me to sign up on... the king soopers where the strippers buy their groceries at 3 am... the DUI and your totaled car the week you are evicted... muckraking impotence... political betrayal... tattoos... concerts... alcohol and you... America.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Snow
Here is the story of the snow:
Just before Halloween a large snow storm dumped 3-4 feet on the foothills and about 2 feet in Denver. Many schools were closed and the radio told people not to go to work if they can avoid it. This is the story of going to work in the snow.
The night the snow began to fall, before the temp had dropped and it was still a light rain / drizzle, I went down to the shop and learned how to attach snow plows onto 3/4 ton and 1 ton Chevy trucks. There are maybe 15 or so such trucks at the building services company I work for. Once they were attached we drove all the trucks to the gas station to fill them up in preparation for a long night. Then we went home.
Due to some trucks breaking down, I did not work the first night, because there were not enough trucks for me to drive one. So I had it off and got a lot of sleep in. The snow fell that night, all the next day, all the next night, and much of the day after that.
The next day I came into the shop at midnight. This is what my car that had been parked on the street the whole time looked like when I went to go drive it.
At the shop I got into truck 29 and followed my supervisor to an office park in the Denver Tech Center. I hopped into his truck and got a quick lesson on how to plow snow, check for curbs with a shovel, how to back drag, etc... With that I went to work and plowed the whole lot and then the back lot. Then I plowed it again. And then I plowed it again. Forwards, Backwards, Forwards, Backwards, etc... Used about 3/4 a tank of gas in 9 hours of driving around this one lot.
Here is the truck:
After all that I went to another office park and plowed it.
Our company for snow does three main things. The first is it has plows that plow. The second is that it has big sander trucks that dump a magnesium chloride "ice cutter" onto the pavement which works to melt the snow and keep it from refreezing. The third is that it has shovel teams who clear the snow off walkways and stairs so people can walk into and from the building.
By the time I was about done plowing this next lot I got instructions over the radio to head back to the shop. One of the shovel teams was all out of ice cutter and I was sent to go get some more for them. I dropped my truck off at the shop and picked up another truck which already had 10 100 lb barrels of this stuff sitting in its bed. Then I drove back to the job and dropped it off. Then before the 13.5 hour shift without a break or lunch was completed I helped shovel and throw this ice cutter down for a while. You can distribute the ice cutter by hand by taking the lid off the barrel, picking up a lot of the chemical and putting it onto the lid, and then walk around with the lid like a tray throwing the chemical onto the walkways.
You want to be sure to use work gloves and not your personal nice warm gloves to do this because the ice cutter can bleach your clothes / gloves if it touches them and and can also start to burn them.
Then went home and slept.
The next night I returned to the shop at midnight and picked up a truck. Plowed the first lot I had origionally plowed 3 times for a fourth time and then drove to another lot and plowed half of it while another truck plowed the other half.
After this I had off to go play a show in ft collins, which was a story in itself. Then there was Halloween and I dressed as a skeleton and went dancing.
Last night I was back in to do some snow clean up, with bob cat loaders and the one tons. Where the snow drifts the plows made were very large in certain lots and spilling over far onto the parking spaces the bobcat would scoop them up in big chunks and dump them into the one tons. These trucks have beds that raise up so you can dump their contents, kind of like a dump truck. We'd then drive to a back, not so much used area of the lot, and make these really big piles of snow / ice / slush.
This pile here is about 8 feet high
Here's how such a pile gets made:
The one ton on the left has returned from elsewhere in the lot with a bed full of snow a loader has dumped into it. Here he is backing up into the pile (the bright lights on the left side of that image are his headlights. Once he dumps, a second loader (visible on the right side of the photo) consolidates the load scooping it into a tall mound that takes up less of the parking lot.
News articles about the storm:
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13667567
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13658273
Just before Halloween a large snow storm dumped 3-4 feet on the foothills and about 2 feet in Denver. Many schools were closed and the radio told people not to go to work if they can avoid it. This is the story of going to work in the snow.
The night the snow began to fall, before the temp had dropped and it was still a light rain / drizzle, I went down to the shop and learned how to attach snow plows onto 3/4 ton and 1 ton Chevy trucks. There are maybe 15 or so such trucks at the building services company I work for. Once they were attached we drove all the trucks to the gas station to fill them up in preparation for a long night. Then we went home.
Due to some trucks breaking down, I did not work the first night, because there were not enough trucks for me to drive one. So I had it off and got a lot of sleep in. The snow fell that night, all the next day, all the next night, and much of the day after that.
The next day I came into the shop at midnight. This is what my car that had been parked on the street the whole time looked like when I went to go drive it.
At the shop I got into truck 29 and followed my supervisor to an office park in the Denver Tech Center. I hopped into his truck and got a quick lesson on how to plow snow, check for curbs with a shovel, how to back drag, etc... With that I went to work and plowed the whole lot and then the back lot. Then I plowed it again. And then I plowed it again. Forwards, Backwards, Forwards, Backwards, etc... Used about 3/4 a tank of gas in 9 hours of driving around this one lot.
Here is the truck:
After all that I went to another office park and plowed it.
Our company for snow does three main things. The first is it has plows that plow. The second is that it has big sander trucks that dump a magnesium chloride "ice cutter" onto the pavement which works to melt the snow and keep it from refreezing. The third is that it has shovel teams who clear the snow off walkways and stairs so people can walk into and from the building.
By the time I was about done plowing this next lot I got instructions over the radio to head back to the shop. One of the shovel teams was all out of ice cutter and I was sent to go get some more for them. I dropped my truck off at the shop and picked up another truck which already had 10 100 lb barrels of this stuff sitting in its bed. Then I drove back to the job and dropped it off. Then before the 13.5 hour shift without a break or lunch was completed I helped shovel and throw this ice cutter down for a while. You can distribute the ice cutter by hand by taking the lid off the barrel, picking up a lot of the chemical and putting it onto the lid, and then walk around with the lid like a tray throwing the chemical onto the walkways.
You want to be sure to use work gloves and not your personal nice warm gloves to do this because the ice cutter can bleach your clothes / gloves if it touches them and and can also start to burn them.
Then went home and slept.
The next night I returned to the shop at midnight and picked up a truck. Plowed the first lot I had origionally plowed 3 times for a fourth time and then drove to another lot and plowed half of it while another truck plowed the other half.
After this I had off to go play a show in ft collins, which was a story in itself. Then there was Halloween and I dressed as a skeleton and went dancing.
Last night I was back in to do some snow clean up, with bob cat loaders and the one tons. Where the snow drifts the plows made were very large in certain lots and spilling over far onto the parking spaces the bobcat would scoop them up in big chunks and dump them into the one tons. These trucks have beds that raise up so you can dump their contents, kind of like a dump truck. We'd then drive to a back, not so much used area of the lot, and make these really big piles of snow / ice / slush.
This pile here is about 8 feet high
Here's how such a pile gets made:
The one ton on the left has returned from elsewhere in the lot with a bed full of snow a loader has dumped into it. Here he is backing up into the pile (the bright lights on the left side of that image are his headlights. Once he dumps, a second loader (visible on the right side of the photo) consolidates the load scooping it into a tall mound that takes up less of the parking lot.
News articles about the storm:
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13667567
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_13658273
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