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Rants and Such
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The world is not so complicated a place. Make your decisions, deal with the consequences; things will flow much more smoothly that way.
Learn from your dog - When your ass itches, scratch it.
Music - There's nothing better than good music, and nothing worse than bad music.
The most important principle in life is cost-to-benefit ratio. If the prize assuming that you win is greater than the consequence assuming that you lose, then do it.
Embrace change, because eventually, EVERYTHING changes.
Honestly assess yourself. If you're stupid, don't reproduce. Please.
When manipulating styrofoam or any material that crumbles, close your eyes. Getting that stuff in your eyes sucks.
Guys - The battle over the toilet seat is crucial. Do not compromise. Either put it up or put it down, but don't allow both of these responsibilities to be pressed upon you.
Play something throughout your life. Be it sports, video games, musical instruments, role-playing games, or whatever, always play. When she starts driving you apeshit, THIS is to whence you will escape. Keep the road well-paved.
At all costs, my friends, avoid being "fwing"ed. Especially by a member of the opposite sex. "Fwing" hurts.
Peas and carrots DON'T go together. When Forrest Gump said that he and Jen-ny were "together like peas and car-rots," he was demonstrating that HE WAS HANDICAPPED.
Dislike all you want, but never hate anything.
Value the freedom and dignity and autonomy of all things.
Don't preach to those who do not listen.
Don't argue or debate religious topics. Even if you convince the other party of your position, all you've really accomplished is undermining whatever faith the other person had.
Life really IS like a box of chocolates. If you pay attention, you know EXACTLY what you're going to get. It's written in the top of the box.
If a psychic charges money, he or she is a fraud.
If you want to learn a subject in school, fall in love with the subject. Never fall in love with your teacher.
Optimism, taken to an extreme, is delusion. Likewise, pessimism grows to paranoia. Mediocrity is boring. Pick one and run with it.
Optimists live happier, longer lives, but pessimists are never disappointed.
Like beauty, the difference between efficiency and laziness is in the eye of the beholder.
Grilled cheese sandwiches are made with cheap cheese - nothing better than Velveeta. Buter the bread and sprinkle either with garlic (for sandwiches to have with soup) or with cinnamon sugar (for snacks).
Nothing is more unrealistic than reality television.
Learn basic psychology. If the difference between right- and left-brained people isn't in your repertoire, do some reading.
Always do the extra credit. Never depend on the extra credit.
Your television time needs to be evenly divided between news, cartoons, and everything else.
Loyalty, unfortunately, is no longer appreciated in the workplace. Always fight to improve your station without regard for the needs of your employer, because he can be expected to extend you the same courtesy.
Know your heart and follow it to the exclusion of all else.
Let your ear and your eye be new every day. What you didn't like yesterday may be different to your sensibilities tomorrow.
Eat lobster a hundred times in your own home before attempting it once in public.
Know your limitations. Try to overcome them. If you can't, accept them and joke about them. Rest assured, somebody else already is.
Everywhere you go, know the exits. Know which one is nearest you, and know when it's time to shut the hell up and go through it.
If you're in a monogamous relationship, and you fuck around, you are scum. Admit it, deal with it. Own your scumminess.
If you are in love for the first time, it is going to end. Nothing else to it, that wonderful god or goddess you're worshipping right now is going to do something evil. It's a growth experience for you. I'm sorry for your pain.
"Good Luck," as a quote, is basically a curse of failure. If you HAVE good luck, you'll eventually learn to DEPEND on good luck, and good luck WILL break.
Are you strong? Are you strong enough to kill for someone? Are you strong enough to die for someone? You may be, but are you strong enough to LIVE for someone? This is the TRUE test of your strength; to know that you have the power to continue in all this pain for the benefit of someone who needs you.
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Damn, what does it take?
Work is shitty - reference my previous blog postings - and my personal life is so fucking chaotic that I don't think it's ever going to be reasonable again. You know what I am?
I am tired.
I just want to go to work, do my job, leave the work behind when I go home, have my girlfriend have something on her lips other than a fucking complaint, be able to pay my fucking bills, enjoy a little down time, and, when I'm down/depressed/angry/frustrated, be able to be LEFT the FUCK ALONE.
I gave up on trying to save the world a long time ago; why does it keep coming back to me and asking for help? I AM NOT YOUR SAVIOR. I am NOT a SHEPHERD. I am not your god.
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For those of you that don't yet know quite how to take me, I offer a rant.
ag•nos•tic ( P ) Pronunciation Key (g-nstk)
n.
One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.
One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.
adj.
Relating to or being an agnostic.
Doubtful or noncommittal: “Though I am agnostic on what terms to use, I have no doubt that human infants come with an enormous ‘acquisitiveness’ for discovering patterns” (William H. Calvin).
Let me clarify my own personal belief structure for you, and in so doing, explain my problems with and support of the travesty we Westerners call Christmas.
We'll just go back a quick 2005 years to examine one of those events that proves a defining, seminal occurrence: the birth of a great philosopher. The circumstances surrounding the birth in question are irrelevant; a guy - Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary - was born in a manger in Bethlehem during the taking of census in that city under its Roman occupation.
Of humble birth, this guy grew up following the profession of his earthly father, a Jewish carpenter, and continued in this vein until the ripe old age of 30 (coincidentally, my own age as of this writing). At 30, he underwent a massive realignment of his perspective: he decided he was the begotten son of Jehovah himself. This impression may (and must) have been supported by his mother; any reasons for the propagation of this impression are likewise insignificant.
What is important is that Jesus decided that, as the son of the Creator, it would be his job and his burden to redeem mankind, to bring his contemporaries out of a barbaric oppression and instill in them a belief in such radical concepts as honesty, peace, generosity, tolerance, and piety. Ultimately, those teachings resulted in his being nailed to a cross whereupon he eventually died, surrounded by criminals dying similar deaths by the order of the State.
He didn't die before making quite a mark, though, and much of what he said and did was put to paper by his friends and followers over the course of his life and in the years and even millenia subsequent. This, unfortunately, is where things started to go wrong.
Other men since him were the writers of history, and history was recorded to reflect what those writers liked the most and to exclude what they didn't have a use for. The core ideas of honesty, peace, generosity, tolerance, and piety came through, but with blinders and filters in place. The men with the pens after those edited further, and thus and such through the next 1400-odd years. What ultimately made its way down to Gutenberg was arranged on presses and printed.
Approximately 300 full, complete, bound copies of his compilation of biblical texts were produced; it is unknown how many copies were released in piecemeal form. A lot more is unknown and sometimes suppressed, and it's commonly held that there are many, many more books that should be in there.
That defines problem #1 with the modern travesty of Christmas:
1) The Christian church is, at best, founded on revisionist history.
The teachings of the early Christians – like, back when they were still Jews – were about positive, esoteric concepts. Live your life well; love those around you; honor your parents; teach your children well and let them lead the way and show them all the beauty they possess inside; follow the edicts of a good government but change a bad government if necessary; trust in your beliefs and follow them: the Bible taught ancient peoples how to be, in essence, good.
Over time, though, the Christian church got bigger, and where it originally taught the little people how to be good little people, Christians eventually became big people. The early teachings didn’t address how to be a good king, so the teachings had to be adapted to a new role. If the current king didn’t like how his role had been defined by the previous Christian king, he rewrote his role. Eventually, kings were taking up the role of head of the church as well as head of the state. Examples were taken from the once-despised Pharaohs, and before you knew it (historically speaking), Christianity was a political, economic powerhouse that wormed its way inside every facet of Western life.
On to the second point:
2) The modern celebration of Christmas is a secular retail holiday with little spiritual import.
The recent hullabaloo about the removal of the “Merry Christmas” slogan from the holiday season is being touted as an assault on the Christian way of life. Since when is it anti-Christian to make a conscious effort to include everyone in your moments of joy? I personally believe that anyone that feels excluded by wishes for “Happy Holidays” is an insecure, selfish, pretentious, hyper-religious nitwit. “Happy Holidays” is an inclusive phrasing; “Merry Christmas” is an exclusive one.
Complaining about “Happy Holidays” is a gasping for air by a swimmer standing in shallow water. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in the year 2000, there were 159,506,000 respondents out of 207,980,000 that professed some form of Christianity as their religion. If I remember correctly how to figure percentages, that makes 76.6% of the American population Christian. Only 3.7% of Americans said they were of any other organized religion, while my people – the “no-faith” set – make up 14.1% of the god-country map. (5.4% of the total population refused to answer.)
Let’s get a little righteous indignation here. In a room of 100 people, 77 of them are on the team that’s bitching about being under assault? By whom, the 14 of us that are “godless?” 5 people are sitting in the corner with either their thumbs up their asses or their shirts pulled up over their heads, and the other 4? Hell, I guess they can be on my team. (I need all the help I can get for the storming of the beachhead, and the "other" religions are known for nothing so much as their love of a good fight.)
So, to you 77 whining, bitching, poor, victimized members of the 3:1 majority: Fuck you. Fuck you with your crucifixes, all Linda Blair-style. Just because Wal-Mart decided to include me and mine in the game, and thus get even MORE money on this secular retail holiday that hasn’t glorified anything beyond the name of your savior in DECADES, I just don’t think you’ve got that much to complain about.
How about this: Maybe the rest of us should all apply for endangered species protection so our habitats can be federally protected.
(As I’m writing, this entry is starting to seem downright letter-to-the-editor. Perhaps I should clean it up and forward it on to O’Reilly at FOX.)
Disconnect
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So this post pretty well makes this blog longer than most of the other ones I've ever messed with.
So, what's happening with the Thig... I pulled vacation time for December 27-Jan 3 to return to my family's farm in Florida to celebrate the holidays; my schedule finally came out yesterday, and not only did they give me the vacation days I requested, they also gave me the day prior as my regular day off. Thus, when I get off work today at 5 pm, I won't go back in until January the 4th.
This is good, as I am rapidly growing more and more and more disillusioned with my job. Of course, the only hits I get on Monster.com are from friggin' insurance companies and the like; a job search at this time of year is an utter waste of time.
My observation is that, since I applied and interviewed to take a promotion that would have had me surpassing my then-supervisor, I have been getting the cold shoulder from the entire management team. Where I once was chatty and chummy and friendly with all of the managers (most especially my own), those same managers with whom I once had a very congenial relationship now will not even speak to me in response when I greet them.
You know, since that interview, my morale has gone down. My interest in my job has declined. The investment I am making in terms of an ongoing emotional involvement in the goings-on of the business has degraded. My productivity is down. I admit all that. I offer a qualifier, though.
Maybe I am being held responsible for mistakes made by others.
Perhaps, after the interview and then the announcement, I was a little put out. Upset. Even offended. Perhaps I was even looking down at myself for being an idealistic fool and passing up the opportunity to apply for another promotion opportunity (Plan B) in the interim on the stated grounds that I was holding out for the first (Plan A).
The situation could be compounded by the fact that the supervisor I applied to surpass had been told six weeks earlier, in front of the entire team, that his job performance was so painfully sub-par that not only his role as supervisor, but his job altogether, was in jeopardy. Perhaps the message they gave by promoting him over me was that, no matter how bad his performance was, it was better than mine; perhaps I was and still am questioning my role in the company.
The situation could also be made worse by the fact that the individual that got the Plan B job had only recently been re-hired after having quit the company - burned his uniforms and the whole nine yards, if you believe the reports made by his off-hours friends.
Maybe my morale is even further degraded by the fact that this Plan B individual has since had so many medical problems of such severity that his usefulness in the Plan B job is not only compromised, but nullified: it's an outside technician position requiring the operation of a company car, and his medical statement bars him from driving. Or from looking at a computer screen for extended periods of time. Or from being in any environment that provides large numbers of sensory input, like, for example, a retail location, especially at this, the busiest time of year, the holiday season.
I am certainly not without fault; it is my responsibility as an employee to put my most promotable foot forward every minute of every day at work. It is my job to do the best that I can, regardless of what disappointments I may be feeling. I can only expect to be promoted if the company can expect my bad days to be my off days, and no more. I grant all that, and if my job performance is not good enough to justify my being promoted, then I shouldn't expect to be promoted. Even the simplest things are suffering; my company's web boards where we network and share solutions and strengthen our bonds as coworkers in a big family haven't seen me log in in over a month. All the tangibles show that I'm no longer supervisory material. It's that simple... or is it?
When problems arise, who do my coworkers go to, looking for a solution? When angry customers come to the department demanding a manager to yell at, who takes the brunt of those verbal assaults? When a confusing situation arises, and the associates in other departments need a creative interface solution, to whom do they turn? When the poop hits the proverbial fan, people, who is always the guy with all the toilet paper?
It's neither Plan A guy nor Plan B guy, that much I can assure you of.
There is a dim light at the end of the tunnel, though. Plan A guy vacated a position in his rise, and I am in the running for that position. That position will be announced after the Holidays are over. I might get it.
But think about it: Do I even want that position? My worth in the company has already been shown to be substantially less than I once thought. What is it that makes me believe even for a minute that, were I to receive that promotion, I would be able to make any improvements in this already-soiled department? I'd be going into the position as a lame duck; any process improvements I might affect have already had their wings clipped by the simple fact that they weren't given flight the first time I presented them.
Imagine this scene. A young man enters the jousting faire wherein the prize is the crown. He knows he is the rightful heir to the throne, and he knows he is capable of beating whomever he might have to fight. The entrenched but unpopular baron, though, wins some internecine portion of the faire, and takes up the throne, awarded by an absentee emperor. The popular favorite, the confident young man, loses.
Would the proud, confident young man then be interested in the barony, knowing that, for as long as the old baron chooses to sit upon the throne, the confident young man would always be in the old baron's shadow and subject to the whims of his vainglorious conqueror? Or, would the now-broken and insulted young man settle for whatever he could get and take the barony, hoping one day to simply outlast the former baron and take the crown he was rightful heir to in the first place?
All this allegory assumes, of course, that the (apparently OVER-)confident young man doesn't get put in the stocks and have tomatoes thrown at him until he begs for exile.
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Here's hoping to establish a meaningful presence here at the Asylum.
I have been a member of a couple of other community sites, and always left them as I watched the intelligence and maturity levels of those sites plummet. The Asylum looks solid, and the personalities I see here seem worthwhile and valid.
A bit about myself: I'm 30 years old, and a man currently involved in what is rapidly shaping up to be yet another dead-end, fruitless relationship. I've always said that the world is not as difficult and complicated a place as people make it out to be, but I'm starting to fear that I might be wrong.
Mostly, I'm hoping to find some people of comparable age and inclination with whom to commisserate; certainly I am not the only person at this stage of life and coming to the realization that the forward direction seems to either not exist or to at leaast be a very broken path.
Any feedback and participation on the part of the community is invited, welcomed, and even requested... Good days to you all.
Disconnect
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