Ten thousand thundering typhoons!
"You know, back in 2000, a Republican friend of mine warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true." -- James Carville
If you were to plot Republican arrogance on the X-axis, and flimsy rationalization in support of George W. Bush on the Y-axis, you'd find Republican rabble-rouser Tom DeLay at the intersection point.
My evidence:
Yesterday, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi challenged Bush's leadership, saying: ""The situation in Iraq and the reckless economic policies in the United States speak to one issue for me, and that is the competence of our leader. These policies are not working. But speaking specifically to Iraq, we have a situation where -- without adequate evidence -- we put our young people in harm's way."
These are good criticisms, and they certainly deserve some kind of response from the Republican party; but DeLay doesn't refute what Pelosi said. Instead he replies: "Nancy Pelosi should apologize for her irresponsible, dangerous rhetoric. She apparently is so caught up in partisan hatred for President Bush that her words are putting American lives at risk."
Wha-wha-what? It's Bush's dangerous foreign policy, not Pelosi's words, that have put American lives at risk. I don't think Iraqis are shooting at American troops because of something Pelosi said; they're firing at us because Bush ordered American forces to invade their country under false (and falsified) pretenses.
Today is the 498th anniversary of the death of Christopher Columbus. It is also, coincidentally, the 12th anniversary of the arrest of Amy Fisher.
The more I think about yesterday's Idiotic Fuckhead Boss incident, the more enraged I get. I don't want to describe the particulars because it could compromise my anonymity, but basically the situation can be explained only one of three ways:
— I am a liar
— My boss has remarkably bad memory
— My boss is a liar
I am pretty sure that I'm not a liar, which means that my boss is either incredibly forgetful or he's a liar. Both possibilities are believable, knowing Idiotic Fuckhead Boss. Neither possibility is appealing. And my options are few: anything I do to address the issue either with Idiotic Fuckhead Boss or his superiors is sure to exacerbate the situation.
Now, I must make doubly sure that I document everything that happens at work, even though Idiotic Fuckhead Boss says it's inappropriate for his employees to keep paper trails. It makes him look bad, he says. Well, screw him. Why wouldn't I want to keep a record of what happens when I've got a boss who can't remember what he says — how delightfully convenient for him! — or who is a liar?
More importantly, I've got to redouble my efforts to find a new job. After all, the best way to deal with a lying, forgetful manager is to not have one in the first place.
Idiotic Fuckhead Boss reached dazzling new heights of idiotic fuckheadedness today. It was like I was watching my own private Cirque Du Soleil performance, except all of the clowns and acrobats were replaced by a solitary sadistic paranoid senior manager, performing amazing stunts of anger and stupidity as he tried to explain the unexplainable. His dandruff was really flying. It was quite a show.
It turns out I remember plenty of cheesy lyrics from the 1980s, but not nearly enough to earn a high score on this nostalgic Web site:
Some quick thoughts:
I despise the soul-crushing dungeon that is my workplace, and I am fed up with the mediocre bad guys who fumble their way through management.
And yet I do not leave.
I tell myself lies to justify my job. I say I'm happy with what I do, even if I don't like who I'm doing it for. I say things are bound to improve. These are the tiny doses of delusion I feed myself when I am tempted to run out the door, or when I'm called upon to be a good company soldier.
But there's poison in this Kool-Aid, and I know it, and yet I don't move on. I am lazy. That is the only explanation that makes any sense. I am lazy and I would have left ages ago, if only I had a scrap of self-respect.
So, do I have any right to complain about the way things are at work? Probably not. People should hold themselves accountable for their decisions — and their indecisions. If you refuse to move on the beach when you see the tide come in, then you shouldn't complain when you find yourself sitting in two feet of water.
My point? I'm not sure I have one. I'm just tossing around a few thoughts that have been rumbling around in my head. Perhaps, when they're all written down, I'll discover a hidden message — like a pattern in the dried tea leaves — that will lead me away from my faults and toward happiness.
At long last, I've added comments to Two Monkeys, Ten Minutes. You don't have to be kind or polite with your comments -- but also be anonymous. If I don't use my name, I don't see any reason why you should use yours.
Enjoy!
This comes from a high school friend:
NEW WORDS FOR 2004 - Essential additions for the workplace vocabulary:
BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.
ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.
SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.
STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiney.
SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.
IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials were a prime example.
PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located.
GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food establishments, subdivisions, and strip malls.
OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.
What if some of my least favorite coworkers made guest appearances on NBC's Must-See TV Thursday night lineup?
8 p.m., Friends: The Central Perk gang is disgusted when ugly naked guy makes a new friend, ugly naked sweaty guy.
8:30 p.m., The Apprentice: Dandruff-added contestant tapes sign to the boardroom door saying he's busy and must not be disturbed by anyone, then jabs at his keyboard with two fingers all day to catch up on five-month-old paperwork. He is not fired.
9 p.m., Will & Grace: Karen is indignant when she discovers she's being followed by a paparazzi, and then insulted when the photographer turns out to be so lazy that he never gets out of his car.
9:30 p.m., Scrubs: Turk and J.D. are driven insane when a patient tries micromanage his entire hospital stay, including the surgery.
10 p.m., E.R.: Hospital is forced to scramble when new administrator fails once again to assign doctors to work over the weekend. Blame is shifted elsewhere, as usual.
A friend forwards the following link and message:
This link memorializes a prank which the Bush/Cheney campaign enabled, with hilarious results.
Check out http://homepages.nyu.edu/~meo232/sloganator/
The backstory is as follows: earlier this month, the Web site for the Bush-Cheney campaign -- the real one, paid for by MBNA America and Richard Scaife -- featured a "create your own banner" tool, where you could enter your own slogan and print out your own poster, with the Bush-Cheney logo, and a note at the bottom "paid for by Bush-Cheney '04, Inc."
Democrats, of course, couldn't get enough of this. The original sloganator accepted everything, then it started censoring profanity and words like "Hitler," "dictator," and "evil." Nevertheless, many clever folks exploited the sloganator to their own ends before its sad demise only a couple of weeks after its birth, and its mourners
assembled some of the best for the slide show.
Good stuff. I recommend you try it out.
I am not an expert in law, religion or medicine, but I certainly think it's time to let this poor woman have some peace. Why did Gov. Bush and the state legislature make this their business in the first place?
Now, if we really wanted to pass a law about brain dead people, I think we should start with one banning them from our Governor's Mansion and the White House.
I'm sitting at my desk, hard at work, when Cro-Magnon Man, one of my umpteen bosses, lumbers over and tosses a scrap of paper at me. On it, he's written a name and a phone number. I ask what it's about.
"I don't know," he says.
Why does he want me to call?
"I don't know," he says again. "I don't know anything about you. You look into it. You find out," he orders.
I point out to Cro-Magnon Man that I'm already knee-deep in another project, and that I have a meeting to attend in a few minutes.
"Well then," he says, trying his hardest to sound sarcastic and failing, "you will go to your meeting and then when you get back you will put all your effort into this." He gestures to the scrap of paper as he completes his sentence.
I ask again for any information he can give me about who I'm calling or what I should be asking about. I don't think I'm asking for too much. He explodes.
"I am a manager," he huffs. "My time is too important to be wasted on these things. That's why I pass them on to you. I've already wasted five minutes talking to you."
At this point, I suspect he wants to call me "subordinate" or "peon," but since he does not know what either of these two words mean, he just looks at me menacingly. Knowing that anything other than a smile and a shrug would exacerbate the situation, I say OK and get back to my project.
Later, I call the person whose name and number is on the scrap of paper. Nothing important, it turns out. I am not surprised.
I believe my company should change its name to AIMA -- the American Institute for Management Assholes.
Check out "A Wretched New Picture of America," by Philip Kennicutt. Sample:
But these photos are us. Yes, they are the acts of individuals (though the scandal widens, as scandals almost inevitably do, and the military's own internal report calls the abuse "systemic"). But armies are made of individuals. Nations are made up of individuals. Great national crimes begin with the acts of misguided individuals; and no matter how many people are held directly accountable for these crimes, we are, collectively, responsible for what these individuals have done. We live in a democracy. Every errant smart bomb, every dead civilian, every sodomized prisoner, is ours.
You've got to love George F. Will's latest column in The Washington Post. In "Time for Bush to See the Realities of Iraq," he writes:
This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts.
So true, so true. I can only hope that more thinking conservatives -- yes, I know that's a contradiction in terms -- start to rally against Bush. I'm sick of watching everyone on the right cowtow to the neoconservative cabal in the White House.
Will's column is here.
At last ... you can now send me an e-mail message. The link is to the left.
Also, I've adopted a minimalist design for the site. Everything is still being tweaked. Now that you can reach out and touch me, why not drop me a line and let me know what you think.
A couple of stories that have caught my eye recently:
-- I feel absolutely horrible for this kid, and hope the coaches involved never teach again.
-- There is nothing wrong with being a stickler for good punctuation.
-- Perhaps I will give up my aspirations of becoming a world-famous poet. Here's a haiku on the subject:
Electric oven --
Whaddaya think about that,
O Sylvia Plath?
I hate it when my horoscopes are contradictory.
Horoscope 1: Everything's been turned on its head. What now? Lay low and don't commit.
Horoscope 2: No matter what you're thinking about trying for the first time, you can rest assured that all the cosmic lights are green. You'll have absolutely no interference. Get busy and make it all happen.
Now I don't know what to do!
