On the way into work today, I see "The Precious Juice" at the independent for $2.77.

When I get into town I see the Citgo pricing it at $2.96.

Tell me again how Hugo Chavez hears our cries?

I gotta stay out of that parking garage, last week it was some free-loader trying to ride my bumper out for free....Anyway....
Tonight I was riding up the lift with a woman who said "I wish I was staying to hear Lech Walesa speak."

Me: "Oh, that's right, that *IS* tonight. I'd like to ask him how his labour organization changed Poland when ours can't seem to even save our jobs."

"Oh, but they DID! 80 years ago."

"Yeah, 80 years ago, but now they seem to roll over and pee like puppies when Management growls."

"Oh, but if they'd push for EDUCATION for their members instead of 10 cents on the hour more shift diferential, Management would 'roll over' for them!"

"So how much education do you need, exactly, to make cars or washing machines or lay bricks? We can't *ALL* be supervisors with nobody to supervise."

"Oh, no, there's plenty of new service jobs!"

"Yeah, we become a nation of minimum wagers with Master's degrees, selling hamburgers to each other...Mmm-Huh..."

"Oh, no, why, 'A man's home is his Castle', and security systems are going to become in great demand, along with people to install and repair them!"

"Wait-you're telling me I'm going to get rich installing burglar ALARMS? Lemme tell ya, lady, $15 an hour, which is the going rate for 'Installers' of ANY kind, is *NOT* 'Good Money', unless you're working at Walmart. I *HAVE* a degree, and I'm not even making $40,000. So what do you tell people out there who have their Master's in computer science and just saw their third job in 6 years go to India? Lady, I don't know where you're coming from, but it's a LOT diferent down here in the trenchs..."

"Well, I have to run, I can see I really should talk to you more....By the way, I'm in the trenches, too, you know!"

"S'Yeah, but I'll warrant MY part of the trench is a lot muddier than yours..."

I forgot to ask her if she knew what happens to wages according to the Law of Supply and Demand when you still have plenty of Supply (able workers) but all the Demand (jobs) has gone to China and India?

Oh, boy, we're all gonna be selling ALARM SYSTEMS to each other! We're gonna be RICH!!!
Ain't GAWD GOOD to Murka?

Just who's going to need all these new alarm systems? The housing market's gonna bust in a year.

Burglar alarms. Service jobs. Yeah, maybe I could get a job working for "Geek Squad"...

Last month I had to attend a "lunch" given by the Senior VP (I guess so he can tell himself he's "human" and a nice guy "in touch with the smelly little people") And I'm sitting there feeling very self-conscious because I was the only person in the room who gets his hands dirty for a living. Sort of like having one of the Black Gang from the stokehold attend dinner at the Captain's table.

Anyway, I'm sitting there flashing on the fact that this sonofabitch makes SIX times the money I do.
SIX fucking times as much. Now, any given person can only eat so much, drink so much, and can waste only just so much gasoline with his play-toys, so I'm thinking "This guy has abso-fucking-lutely NO gawd-dam idea in the world what's its like to have to turn your thermostat down to 58 at night, and shut the heat off completely during the day, or play musical utility bills, or squeeze your feet into a pair of too-small bike shoes and ride because you can't afford the $60 for a new pair.

It makes me angry. I just looked at our Org chart. Senior staff makes between 2X and 6X what I do. They have NO fucking idea what it's like to live on my pay.

And they probably could give a Shit, y'know?

"How can a Man who's Warm understand a Man who's Cold?"-Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, Odin den iz zhizni Ivana Denisovicha

And I'm about to tell DOCTOR Howard Dean to take his Democratic flavour of the Capitalist Party and blow it up his rich ass, I'm turning Socialist.

I paid $2.76 for "The Precious JUICE" yesterday, and that will last me maybe a week.

I don't get a specific COLA. Traditionally, we get a 2% or so raise if we come in sober and don't get caught with our pee-pee's in an undergrad's mouth in our cubes. That's Management's version of "COLA".

Until the failed Dot-Commers took over the IT department 5 years ago, now "At Expectation" performance will get NO increase whatsoever. You're at expectation, well, that's what we pay you for. You need more money, re-invent fire and cure AIDS EVERY day and maybe we'll give you 3%...

The Middle Class is dead. I had a TASTE of what it could have been like to be Middle Class, then that rotten bastard Reagan got in office and his buds raped this country bloody, then we got a little respite from the Big Dawg and I was able to get off food stamps and stop having to scrounge butts out of public ashtrays like some homeless guy, then the Bush Family Crime Syndicate gets in and I get shoved back into the Working Poor. Everything I saw come my way during Clinton's era has been gobbled up by Bush's greedy fucking Pioneers and Rangers.

Every year, I have less money for fuel, food, and medicine, yet I'm supposed to "drive this economy" by signing my paycheck over to Wally-World and Ditech-Dot-Com.

I quit smoking, only to see the $30 a week savings get gobbled up by other things increasing in price.

This ain't "Middle Class", people, it's "Working POOR", just like the poor bastards who ruined their health 14 hours a day, 6 days a week for the likes of Ford and Carnegie and Vanderbilt.

"Family Values"=Hatred of Gays and STR8 single parents
"Protection of Marriage"=No weddings for Gays
"Guest Workers"=Mexican Slave Labourers
"This is a CHRISTIAN Country!"=Let's burn Atheists and Muslims at the stake!

Xians=80% PLUS of the population
Atheists=MAYBE 5% of the population

How the fuck can 5% successfully prosecute some kind of culture "war" against an 80% majority?

I really think a LOT of these "Christians" need to take a LONG ride in the "WAHHHHHHHmbulance".

Get it. Read it. It's online, even:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301001h....

You have no excuse. Ignore "Demon-Haunted World" because Pastor says it's "worldly", but READ the Sinlcair Lewis book!

The Neo-Cons did.

Heard on the Glass Tit this AM that Our Bitch Mitch is just itching to sign the Tele-con (that's not a typo) "Reform" bill into law, that will "Give us more'n our own MUNNY" back through "Competition"...

I live in a town that has about 1,000 households. Who in their right mind is going to "Compete" for service HERE?

We don't even have "Digital Cable" available.

I can see the telecom giants fighting over communities with 50,000-300,000 households and maybe those folks will see amazing things for "pennies a day", but out here in the sticks?

35 years ago, when SBC was Indiana Bell and I lived out on Rural Free Delivery Route 5, we had a 4-party open-wire line for phone service.
Yep, we shared ONE phone line with THREE other families! And the open line was a real joy when it rained, and the trees would get wet and rub up against the wires and make noise, and hum, or short them out completely....

Fiber Optic HDTV Cable? Cheaper telephone service? High-speed internet? And all at a low price?

Not here in Cornfield, Indiana.