Most regular users get the benefit of UNLIMITED COMMENTS! and UNLIMITED ♥ & WRONGS! After a single day they get the one time only BONUS OFFER of two (count ’em) TWO ESSAYS A DAY!
Yay!
But tell them what’s behind the curtain Johnny.
November 14, 2008 archive
Nov 14 2008
Projection Now, Projection Tomorrow, Projection Forever
Changeovers can be brutally destructive things. Many re-inventions happen in the wild and chaotic aftermath of massive, revolutionary change, but many more take place during the subtler transitions. Inevitably, though, naked avarice, cognitive dissonance and crude denial reign supreme. The winners scramble for as many spoils they can get, and the fleeing losers become scattered refugees, wailing in wide-eyed, desperate panic. Once-apt definitions no longer apply, as all forms of communication are pulverized into malleable blobs of Play-Doh, ready to be built back into whatever lingua franca the victors see fit to impose.
Nov 14 2008
Yes, there are people this stupid
As some of you know, every now and again, I take my local newspaper in South Carolina, The State, to task because it is run by idiots and ideologues. Here is another of these times.
The State published a letter by Mr. Springs as a “guest columnist” entitled, “President Bush kept America safe”.
I have sent this letter in response to every person I could think of…
Nov 14 2008
Our Virtues Are Killing Us
For somebody who is basically lazy, I picked the wrong profession. And I did it on purpose I reasoned that if I did not find a job where showing up on time verged on moral necessity, I wouldn’t show up at all. The truth is I would really rather just stare up at the sky for no apparent reason or rub my dog’s belly than work. Pretty unAmerican confession.
Part of the reason so much of our popular culture makes reference to work and the ups and down is because well…. That is what we do. Americans work. It becomes our frame of reference for how we see ourselves and others socially. How we measure ourselves and how we judge others. And it would be great and inspiring if every single America was working because it was their absolute fucking passion, not their job.
Americans put in more hours at work than any other nation, surpassing even the workaholic Japanese. We average nine more weeks of labor per year than our working counterparts in Western Europe, who get at least 20 paid days of vacation each year
My old homeland isn’t quite the mega paradise my faded memories insist it is….
Canada and Japan are near the bottom of that list, with a legal minimum of 10 vacation days, while the United States has the dubious distinction of being the only industrialized nation that does not have a mandatory minimum of vacation time. In fact, out of the world’s 195 independent countries, 137 have some kind of vacation/annual leave legislation in place.
I have blogged about this topic before but I think it deserves another visit. Why? Because we are entering an era of sacrifice, dwindling resources, and a well intentioned new administration that will be unable to deliver on a lot of promises. And the fact is if Americans are going to have to “make do with less” then perhaps we should all consider also doing less ourselves, at least in the free market.
The article I am drawing from here focuses on an activist who tries to raise the work/vacation issue and finds that he gets rebuffed and told….
- 1
- 2