Category: Satire

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From here on out, all my clothing will be gray

It occurred to me as I was sorting my laundry that by separating the white clothing from the colored clothing I was engaging in systemic institutionalized racism.

Even the laundry detergent instructions engage in this kind of oppression.

I think too that all of my clothing should be uniform, a simple set of pants held up with a rope. After all, leather belts are not green, not PETA approved, and might be used to strap poor immigrants. Although I suppose a rope might be construed as another symbol of racism, given how ropes were used in the past.

I know, to avoid this, I’ll use a string or bit of twine.

My shirt will be a gray tunic not requiring any buttons. Plastics being bad and all. I guess I could carve buttons if I really needed them.

Since leather is murder and its production requires cows whose flatulence contribute to the destruction of the planet I’ll strap the bark of trees to my feet, or perhaps I’ll use some of the piles of used tires in dumps, cut to fit my feet, instead of shoes.

I can pad my footwear with 20 or 30 discarded masks that are prevalent in the streets, on trails, and in the forest these days. Since rope is a no-no perhaps I can use some bits of twine to affix my retreads to my feet as well. I’ll bet I could carve a Nike swoosh on the bottoms and retain stylishness.

The nasty chemicals required to make clothing dyes hurt the planet too, so by going gray I can stop climate change.

This ensemble will make getting dressed in the morning so much faster. I won’t have to pause to decide what I’d like to wear anymore. If there’s no choice then there’s no time wasted deciding.

Laundry will also be much simpler, with no sorting of clothing, everything can just be carried to the creek behind my dwelling and I can hope for some trickle of water to be running. There are plenty of nice flat rocks to beat my clothing on and then I can hang the clothing on some friendly trees until they’re dry.

There will be times in the winter when the creek is frozen, and times in the summer when the creek bed is dry, so obviously I won’t even have to wash clothing then. I can just rub some of the gray dirt surrounding my dwelling on any offensive stains and I’ll look fresh as a daisy.

I do hope no-one will be offended by my naked bathing in the creek (water dependent of course) Or when I’m lying out on a large flat rock allowing the sun to dry my skin.

I’d never thought that being “woke” could be so simple. Or that my life would be enriched by total convenience and simplicity just by going woke. This is going to be bliss.

I seem to recall China instituted a nice homogenous dress code and their people were very happy about it. I’m sure we’ll be just as happily un-racist in our future. Oh, there is the slight problem of our dwellings. Well, I’m sure that our government will provide us all with a nice uniform gray, EPA approved paint for the purposes of ensuring community equity and consistency.

Maybe they’ll distribute approved paint with our mandatory physicals just before we pay our mandatory tithes while swearing and/or demonstrating our loyalty to our masters.

Yeah, I woke up in a mood today! I don’t know why, perhaps I was having bad dreams or something.

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Sick & tired of the News…

I’ve been enjoying the sound of the recent rain on the roof and haven’t paid attention to the news, or turned on much of anything that makes noise.

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I’m suspecting that I may have had a light touch of the flu but I’m not sure. This morning I’m feeling better.

I did however, make the mistake of switching on the news. 

Nothing is different!

I swear it’s like the world paused the bullshit just so that I could be offended by it when I decided to pay attention again.

I wish that was the case… I know in reality that the bullshit keeps coming at a more or less constant pace. The news is like a soap opera… You can miss years and still know exactly what’s going on, because human nature is a constant as hydrogen fusion in stars.

Have you ever noticed that riots pretty much look the same? Really, check it out, tell Google you want to see only images then type riots.

Regardless of time or place, they all look the same, even the drawings of riots look the same.

The news is always the same… In broad strokes I think the news template is something like this;

Somewhere people are rioting and burning buildings because they’re unhappy about something.

Somewhere else someones military is shooting rebels, insurgents, dissidents, students, or another army.

A disaster or two have happened someplace else, hundreds or thousands of people are displaced, famine and disease looms in the not too distant future.

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Politicians from group A are condemning politicians from group B for failing to act or disagreeing with their position.

Somewhere somebody’s children were in danger, are in danger, have been saved from danger.

There’s been another car chase that ended, with a crash, or with an arrest, or with a shooting, or with a tasering. Or jackpot… all of the above…

And now the weather…

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Being a fan of TrueBlood, the scene where the vampire Russell Edgington rips a newscasters spine out, then tells the public that he’s the real face of vampires and describes in gruesome detail what vampires are going to do to humans is one of my favorite scenes for a number of reasons.

When he turns to another camera and in a lovely Southern accent and with a happy smile, says “Now time for the weather… Tiffany…”

I howl every time I see it. The whole scene is priceless and some damn good writing.

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It’s also a very sad comment on our news cycle.

That scene lasts a minute or so, but it’s exactly what watching the news is like.

Think about it, the news is 30 to 60 minutes of real blood, violence, hatred, and despair, followed by the weather presented by some airhead blond with perfect tits and a million dollar smile telling you it’s going to be sunny and warm tomorrow. And somehow knowing it’s going to be sunny and warm makes the preceding horror just fine.

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We all know that the weather is always at the end of a news segment. Did you ever wonder why? 

I’ve come to the conclusion that weather is all we really care about.  

It’s the most immediate thing that we have to deal with.

If the weather was first in any newscast I’d tune in for that, and turn the TV off once I knew if I was going to need my umbrella.

I can’t do shit about riots in another country. Nor can I control the earthquake, volcano, hurricane, or monsoonal flooding in another country. I’m sorry folks there are having problems but there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

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As far as car chases… I’m reminded of the old Keystone cops shorts.

Do I need to see 6 hours of live aerial coverage where 4 police cars are following one piece of shit 30 year old Toyota that can’t get above 50MPH? Or god forbid a white Bronco?

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I swear on more than one occasion I’ve thought about Mad Maxing my truck and just T-Boning the hell out of the dumbass running from the cops.

I imagine that afterward, I’d drive home and get back to watching the football game that was interrupted for the car chase.

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Or watch Tiffany’s perfect tits jiggle across my local weather map.

Maybe I need to go back to bed… I think I’m a little grumpier than I should be.

On the other hand… 

A few episodes of TrueBlood might just make me a happy camper.

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I’ve finally learned my lesson

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I’ve been tinkering with this post for a while. I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to post it but I’ve come to a “what the hell point”  about it.

Let me preface with the following statements; I’m the guy that doesn’t illegally download music from the internet. I obey the law. I do whats right because I believe that’s the best way to live. I like the simplicity of not telling lies. I have purchased all my videos, and software. I pay my bills, and I admit it if I’ve fucked up and missed a payment.I admit when I’m wrong. I tell the truth and have always done my best to be honorable.

The problem is:

Honesty doesn’t pay.

This flies in the face of everything that I was taught as a child. When I was a kid, My parents taught me that being honest was absolutely the best thing you could be and that the rewards of being honest were great.

As an honest person I could expect respect from others, I’d be someone who people trusted and preferred to do business with,  my word would be my bond and we’d therefore not have to engage lawyers in anything but the most complex of contracts, I’d be a valued employee and could look forward to retirement as an honored person.

Perhaps these things were true when my parents were growing up.

They’re sure as hell not true now.

Let me give you some examples;

When I was dealing with the California EDD there was a question on the form you fill out. The question is “Did you start any training during period X or period Y. (X is the first week and Y is the second week). I answered yes… because I’m an honest man and I had in fact taken a 1 week training course.

My reward for being honest? EDD withheld the unemployment compensation for both weeks. Resulting in a shortfall of cash and late payments on several bills. Why the shortfall? because I was running that close to the line and attending the training class meant that I had to buy gasoline to attend the class.

Thanks EDD! Now I have the training to do a new job, but I don’t have the ability to attend any interviews.

I looked at that question for a long time before answering it. I knew in my heart that I should lie. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. In the back of my head was the knowledge that the class I was attending, reports the student attendance to the state of California. 

If it wasn’t for raiding my 401K I’d have had my car repossessed when I owed less than 3K on it. Since the car could still be sold for 20K this represents a wonderful profit for both the bank and the state.

#FAIL

The correct answer is to lie to EVERY STATE OFFICIAL, and on EVERY STATE FORM. Lie about your age, ethnicity, your religion, sexuality, and national origin, your circumcision status, and anything else you can.

I’m now a blind, black, mexican, transgendered, 30 year old, druid. Prove me wrong!

NEXT!

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Another example was when I was working for a government contractor as a Software Quality Assurance person.

The software was broken. It was horribly broken and with each iteration it was broken more severely than the last. As a lifelong QA person this is something that raises alarms in every industry. 

A QA persons job is to find the defects, report the defects, and come up with a way for the defects to be demonstrable on command, preferably so that the programmers can do a fault trace and correct the code in 20 minutes or less. (As an aside developers hate intermittent or difficult to reproduce problems.)

As a QA person I recreated every defect I reported at least 3 times. I did this to insure that I’ really did have a defect worth reporting and that I’d documented the steps to demonstrate the problem in as simple a way as possible.

While doing my job, the defect count kept going up I dutifully reported the problems. I followed procedure, and because I was concerned with the safety of the end users of our product I stuck to my guns about the defects. But I was told not to report the defects and eventually my ability to enter defects was revoked. This left me sending my defect reports to my boss who wouldn’t enter them because it made the project look bad.

I was honest. I didn’t lie, even when it was suggested that I do so. This was after all a government contract and my job as a citizen and QA person was to make sure that the product was delivered to the end users with as few defects as possible and that the project be delivered under budget and as quickly as possible.

WRONG

The game is that government contractors always overrun their budgets and their time. Why? because the government will penalize the contractor by reducing the amount of money it pays if the contractor delivers a product early.

Burying defects and slowing the progress of a project is the only way for a contractor to maximize their profits. It’s called follow-on maintenance.

So in this instance… once again truth is a very bad thing.

The common thread is that the state government and the federal government seem to operate on an illogic where honesty and truth are not in the best interest of the parties involved.

LAST EXAMPLE

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Under absolutely no circumstance should you ever tell the truth to your boss. In private or publicly, even if you’re respectiful and honestly trying to insure the success of a particular project or venture never tell the boss that their plan won’t work. Even if you have the weight of the history of mankind on your side… never tell them it won’t work. 

By doing so, you’re just setting yourself up to be at the top of the layoff list. If there aren’t layoffs imminent, you’re setting yourself up for poor reviews, and being tortured daily.

At the risk of sounding misogynistic (I wonder what the opposite of misogyny is? Oh there it is. Misandry, I’ve been on the receiving end of that more than once.), this is especially true if your boss is a woman. She is always right, she is always perfect, her ideas are just the best you’ve ever heard. “Of course we’ll make space in the office by drawing pentagrams on the floor and  casting spells to levitate the furniture. Obviously parking my desk and chair above my co-workers will work and save space.“

Just make sure that you’re as far away from the explosion and laying of blame as you can be because you can bet your bottom dollar that she will try to blame anyone else for her half baked plan failing.

Whatever you do… NEVER EVER keep a record of your bosses directives. Absolutely, never present that record as your defense to upper management when your boss tries to blame you for the chaos and failure.

You’ll win the war… But you’ll lose your job.

Oh and never point out to anyone that working is about receiving compensation for your labor… The correct statement is, you work because you love the people at your office and you think your job is important and fulfilling. 

So from here on out. I’ve decided that I’m going to be like everyone else. 

I’m going to lie, cheat, and generally fuck over everyone else. The rules no longer apply to me, I’m special, I’m important, I’m entitled!

Never let it be said I don’t learn from my mistakes…