Category: California

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Another EDD #FAIL

Ok so I get this thing from EDD in the mail yesterday.

It said “Additional Instructions”

Please follow the instructions below. Failure to do so may result in denial of your benefits. Please include your name and Social Security number on any additional forms you mail to the EDD.

1) You are potentially eligible to file a new claim effective 07/01/12. We need your correct last employer informant and tast date worked before the claim can be filed and any payments can be issued. You may apply on-line at WWW.EDD.CA.GOV or cal the 1-800 telephone numbers above for assistance to complete the filing of your claim.

The problem is that I to the best of my knowledge ALREADY have an open claim which begs the question why does this look like a new claim is being filed?

I think whoa! what’s going on here?

I’ve just spent the last 4 hours continuously calling the EDD numbers that they reference. Mind you this is 4 hours I have not spent looking for a new job.

I can get to the EDD, I can get all the way to the point where they’re “Transferring my call” Then I get a message saying that due to the number of callers they cannot take my call at this time. CLICK! Then I get to dial all over again.

I’ve got a slight problem with these so-called instructions. Namely… THESE ARE NOT INSTRUCTIONS! There is NO and I repeat NO directive.

A directive would say something like;

1) Go to the EDD web site

2) navigate to xyz page

3) input the information we need.

OR 

1) navigate to the EDD web site and submit a new claim.

The problem is that I already have a claim that was as of last week being paid, so why suddenly do we have this form with nebulous “Instructions” on it?

This is why I really want to take to a human being. It looks like this confusion has already resulted in my unemployment transfer being stopped. 

Taking a break… then back to dialing! I have no fucking idea what I’m supposed to do.

Gotta love how well Kalifornia takes care of it’s citizens… 

Seems like the more you try to do the right thing… the more you get screwed

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Nice to know that I’m not the only one…

Norcalreflection

Was at the Car Dealership yesterday and overheard a couple of conversations that had me nodding in agreement.

California isn’t just hated by me… 

I heard two separate conversations between four different men all of whom are in their mid 40s to mid 50s. In their conversation they were all talking about packing up their shit a leaving the state.

One guy was waiting for his 2 sons to get out of the house. One of them is going to be a sheriff, the other one is 23 and still at home, fighting for a job in an ever decreasing job market.

In this guys case he wasn’t too upset at having a 23 year old living with him. He rightly observed that with things as expensive as they are here, his sons really couldn’t afford to be out on their own. His strategy is to leave for Arizona when his boys have settled.

One of the other guys had just packed up his company and was having his car serviced as the last step before moving to Reno. The money his company was going to save in taxes and fees over the next year PAID for him to be able to pay for the relocation of his entire staff.

In yet another conversation, a guy was counting the days to retirement (90) then he & his wife were heading to New Mexico. They’d already sold their house and had packed up most everything which was sitting in a storage facility in NM. They were doing the minimalist thing until he retired.

His wife had been nice enough to her employer to let them know that she’d be leaving in 90 days… Of course the fuckers she worked for fired her because after all she wouldn’t be working as hard knowing that she’d be leaving… (To This I say WTF??? She could have trained her replacement and she wasn’t under any obligation to let her employer know shit! But courtesy is truly a thing from another age.)

The last guy was funny as hell because he too was heading to Arizona. He said it was as simple as the gas prices dropped 60 to 70 cents per gallon when he crossed the border out of California… He said that alone was enough to sell him on relocating. But then his wife got laid off and after searching for a job in her field for 9 months she’s decided to leave the kids & grandkids in CA and accepted a job in her field in Flagstaff. 

If the kids want to visit it’s not too crazy a drive for them, and It’s an easy drive for the guy and his wife too. When asked why drive? He replied; “Who wants to fly anymore? I know I don’t want the TSA feeling me or my wife up she might trade men in…”

The common thread is that all of these guys are middle aged, Middle to late career and they’ve had enough of the B.S. that is California.

Of course what this means is that if the trend continues… California will have a tourist industry ONLY and the dream that was once the Golden State will be just another tourist trap. 

Even the technology companies are leaving. Many of them are reducing their presence here to nothing more than small offices. They’re not even maintaining corporate headquarters here. It’s just too damn expensive…

All of this is to say, 

It’s nice to know I’m not insane or over-reacting as some people close to me have implied. 

I think I can move to another state following work in my field. After 15 years of patiently driving obscene distances I can finally and with a clear conscience put the Golden State in my Rear View Mirror

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Bad Dreams

Usually, I sleep the sleep of the dead.

If I have dreams, they’re most often of a highly erotic nature or if I’ve been playing a little too much Xbox then my dreams are… shall we say all about the violence.

Sometimes the sex and violence combine into a disturbingly satisfying, purely visceral fantasy that satisfies my inner primitives blood lust.

These dreams can’t be considered by any stretch of the imagination to be bad. They’re my own private world and while some of the scenes and imagery may appear in the pages of a story or book that I may be writing… They’re not likely to ever become reality.

The dream last night… In fact the one that woke me at 5AM was of a completely different kind.

Images 1

In this nightmare I was being forced out of my home so that a Locust kind of person could move in. I was still going to have to pay the mortgage and I wasn’t being allowed to take any of my really good stuff.

This person and their family were standing at the door to the house with a cop and pointing at objects like my computer, watch, furniture, etc and keeping all the best stuff. But they and the cop were making me take other stuff. Many of the things I was being allowed to take weren’t even things that were in my house (Nor would they be).

All the items I could take were broken in some way.

The cop was pointing his gun at me the whole time.

In the dream I considered taking the gun from him and making he & these other people leave my home. But when I looked outside, there were police cars and police 100 deep on my lawn. There was no way to win, and I couldn’t see going out in a blaze of glory over stuff.

Toward the end of the dream the Locust was screaming at me in broken English that I couldn’t leave the broken stuff in the trash cans. I had to take it all with me or be arrested. Problem was that these people wouldn’t let me have my car, motorcycle or my truck. They grudgingly let me have my bicycle only after one really fat member of the Locust family sat on it, bending the frame and the front rim.

When I made it clear it was impossible for me to carry everything in one trip. All the police put their coffee down and aimed their guns at me.

That’s when I woke up…

That’s why I’ve been up since 5, and why you’re reading this insanity.

My Brother will no doubt have a field day with this one. He’d say something like this is a reflection of my thoughts on California (Kalifornia, the way he spells it). He may be correct. I think this may be a reflection of my thoughts on where this country as a whole is headed.

This nightmare may have been triggered by an article my Brother sent me.

In the article, a 13 year old boy and a 43 year old adult were arrested. Believe me, In Southern California this is nothing new. What was interesting is what they were arrested for…

The 13 year old was supposedly sitting on a roof with a rifle. As it turns out the “Rifle” was a BB gun. Other “Weapons” recovered were a replica 9mm pistol and an inert M136 AT4 “LAW” anti-tank weapon.

So lets step through this again.

A 13 year old with a BB gun

Living in a house where theres a REPLICA 9MM pistol

And an INERT anti-tank weapon.

Hummmm….

replica

noun

1.reproduction, model, copy, imitation, facsimile, carbon copy (informal)It was a replica, for display only.

inert

adjective

1. inactive, still, motionless, dead, passive, slack, static, dormant,
lifeless, leaden, immobile,inanimate, unresponsive, unmoving,
quiescent, torpid, unreactive, slumberous 
Nope… The definitions of these words hasn’t changed…. I figured I’d check god knows I miss memos all the time…

So what laws were broken? What justified the arrest of the 43 year old adult and sending the 13 year old to juvenile hall?

Hell, when I was growing up I had an INERT artillery shell from the ship my Father served on, I used it as a door stop…

I suppose that NOW I’d be arrested for having something that had no powder in it, no primer, and which I had NO capacity to fire since the gun that fired this shell was mounted on the deck of a ship.

The article says “suspicion of possession of a stolen weapon and possession of illegal weapons.” The BB gun isn’t illegal, nor is a replica 9mm.

Which leaves the inert anti-tank weapon and begs the following question;

If you have no ammunition, and no capacity to obtain ammunition for a weapon, is it still a weapon?