More News Rants

The founder of an Islamic television station in upstate New York aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes has confessed to beheading his wife, authorities said.

That's not going to help.

Don't Trust Whitey

It has come to my attention that I (along with hundreds of other people) am being laid off because the company I work for cancelled my project - TO APPEASE INVESTORS. Let me say that another way: in order to get people to keep buying stocks in the company I work for, the top executives have decided to publically cancel the huge project that so many of us were pouring our sweat and blood into for the SOLE REASON that it would show investors that they are concerned about the economy and cutting costs to stay afloat, nevermind that the company desperately needed the project to remain competitive and efficient, this has nothing to do with that.

OK, here's an idea. How about firing the CEO and the entire board of executives? Together they make MORE money each year than the ENTIRE PROJECT I was on cost. A handful of men, who are each rich as fuck, would be out of work - instead of hundreds of hard working lower white collar workers. They could all say "fuck it" and just retire in luxury, but we all have to scamper to find work in order to pay the mortgage.

So far this month, over 200,000 American workers have been cut loose from their jobs. For the exact same reasons I did - to boost investor confidence. Microsoft laid of 5,000 consultants, one of whom sat two rows over from me until he got the e-mail that he was being let go. Does anyone really believe that Microsoft needs to cut 5,000 jobs to stay afloat? No, they don't. They could absorb millions of dollars worth of losses annually and still survive. They are doing just fine, recession or no.

So in a "me first" mentality where the investors and bankers reign supreme, everyone suffers in the end. People who are out of work don't spend money like they used to (or at all). This means that all businesses across the board will sell fewer products. When they sell fewer products, they have to make fewer products. When they make fewer products, they purchase fewer resources. When they purchase fewer resources, fewer resources will be mined / harvested / fabricated. Everyone along the way suffers financially from lower sales and they lay off employees to stay afloat, contributing to the problem exponentially.

It's a long train and everyone's getting it up the ass.

Unemployed people don't pay taxes either, instead they ask for unemployment benefits. 15 states will be insolvent within the next 6 months, mine being one of them. That means that they DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY to pay unemployment benefits, so they have to go to the Federal government for handouts to cover it. The Federal government has already given away, what, 1.6 TRILLION dollars in the past few months - where the hell are they going to get the money?

Oh right - they're borrowing it. From our children's futures. The money itself doesn't actually exist, they are quite literally printing it.

All of this mess started because those same executive-type asshats were playing around with credit, lumping really badly underwritten loans in with really profitable ones so that they could sell them to investors. See, there's that word again: investors. That's right, they are the fucking assrapists that started this whole mess, and here we are, appeasing them by firing people who did nothing but show up to work and do their job.

So again, we're back to the CEOs and donkey-fucking board members of these giant conglomerations who are happily swinging the pink axe of job cuts around - once they get back from their 3 martini lunches or golf meetings.

Here's a fun fact: 90% of the executives of the banks that were the first to reeceive bailout money still have their jobs.

I'm going to repeat that using smaller words in case any of them are reading this, I want to make sure they understand.

Nearly all of the overpaid, cheating, lying, and money-grubbing snakesuckers that run the companies that started this entire financial disaster by lying to and cheating their investors have not been fired for their incompetent self-serving manipulation of the system, which ultimately broke it. THEY. STILL. HAVE. THEIR. JOBS.

And these shitballs make so much money it makes Derek Jeter jealous. Firing ONE of those monkey turds would be the equivalent of laying off 250 REALLY HIGHLY PAID white collar workers, or 500 well paid ones.

But we're sitting here on the chopping block to appease investors. Sounds amazing right?

Not when you stop for a minute and think about who's making the call to cut a company's workforce, again, to make investors happy.

It's the CEO. And the Board of Directors.

Look, I'm no Communist, but this is exactly what's wrong with our model of Capitalism. A small board of douchebags making decisions that clearly only benefit them, and indirectly, I suppose, benefit the company by keeping it in business - with no-one to answer to except these mysterious "investors" that move their money around based on rumor and speculation. Maybe it's because I'm an engineer, but I work with cold, hard facts. There's no room for guesswork in what I do, but these fuckwits base all of their decisions on it.

All of this makes me want to direct a board right at the head of the next uncle-fucker in a suit I see.

Corporate Advancement

Here I am, sitting in a virtually empty office while all of the other employees here take advantage of their vacation pay and (presumably) spend their Christmas bonus money. It's really hard for me, in this scenario, not to feel negative about my situation. Unceremoniously dumped by a company in which I invested more than 10 years of my time and hard work earlier this year, I'm now an independent contractor which means that I work for myself, and I can't afford to give myself holiday pay or a Christmas bonus because I'm now working for about 15 percent of my previous salary.

When I was interviewed for this contract, I was assured that it was a "right to hire" and that the initial contract period was merely a formality to ensure that I am what my resume says I am. I was told that I'd be hired full time before Christmas. Instead, they extended my contract (to avoid paying me benefits) and then promptly (and without ever actually notifying me) gave me a promotion (after I agreed to continue at the same rate).

Those same people are all on vacation this week, taking full advantage of their perks and benefits. Those same people mandated that anyone who can't take the time off has to show up in the office this week so that the team can "have a presence". Who are they worried about impressing I have no idea, the only people in the entire building this week are peons and independent contractors - all of the executives are currently in their second week of sunning themseves in Wakiki.

To top it all off, all 6 of my bosses have been on vacation since before last week, and they didn't leave us enough work to last us 2 days. So all I have to do all week (and it's an abbreviated week - the company gave its employees Friday off as a gift, which means that I can't work and will have to lose another day's pay without any choice in the matter) is sit here and feel disgruntled about my position.

There's got to be a better way. I refuse to do this until retirement. I poured my life into my last job, thinking that it would pay off, underestimating man's constant and dependable tendancy to screw over everyone else at the first possible chance. I won't do that again. The next project I invest myself in will be for me, and it's going to be the one that I sell to Microsoft or Google and retire off of.

And while that means that I'll find myself on the same Wakiki beaches as the executives who today I loathe, I'll happily watch them sipping their fruity drinks, knowing that the woman sunning herself next to me in her white bikini is so much hotter and wonderful than their washed up resentful old housewives, and that they may have two weeks off from the ratrace but I found a way to leave it all behind me.

I fought The Law...

For those of you that don't yet know, I recently bought a piece of crap Pontiac Grand Am solely for the purpose of commuting to and from work in the winter. Apart from the pool of water in the trunk that pours out into the interior of the car and all over my feet, and a driver door window that won't open, the driver seatbelt clip is ripped off which makes it a real pain in the ass to buckle up when I get in the car. Combine that little problem with the fact that I have to wear 17 layers of clothes these days just to keep warm (making it difficult to put my arms down), and attaching my seatbelt in the morning is like strapping into a carnival ride, only without the toothless hillbilly in a torn red bandana to help.

But every morning after swearing a bit and (literally) splashing around trying to get myself into position to properly intercourse the two pieces of metal, I succeed and drive up the driveway to work, an errant belt screeching protest under the hood. This morning was no exception.

My ride takes me through two neighborhoods that I wouldn't otherwise have any reason to visit, nor do I expect would I generally be all that welcome. These are, coincidentally, also the types of neighborhoods where the police get in the habit, apparently, of pulling people over for the lamest of reasons - maybe they are hoping (or expecting) that when the driver window rolls down a cloud of pot smoke will billow out or there will be a pile of AK-47's in the passenger seat and they can put one more hatchmark in the monthly quota of arrests column.

This morning I was stopped at a particularly vexingly long stop light, listening to the radio and pretending I was in a lawn chair on the beach in Tahiti with my woman instead of bundled into a leather coat, scarf, wool hat, and gloves breathing in exhaust fumes on my way to the widget factory with all of the other lemmings. A police car pulled up to the left of me (in the left turn lane) and stopped a few feet in front of my car. It was obvious that he saw something of interest and was stopping to get a closer look - he was about 20 feet from the car in front of him.

I looked around and there was a guy walking up the sidewalk next to my car. He saw the cop, turned around and looked behind him, and then ducked into a bus stop shelter. I figured that his day was about to get worse, that the cop was going to harass him somehow, and went back about my business of pretending I wasn't there. The left turn light went green, and I watched the cop pull up to the front of the line and then cut into my lane, almost causing an accident.

As the lemming line started pulling forward, he pulled into a gas station and then turned around to position himself to pull back out into the road. I thought he was turning around, and thought nothing of it as I drove past him. As I did, however, he pulled out behind me and turned on his lights. Not having done anything wrong I assumed he was just going to pass me, but instead he pulled up right behind me. I pulled over and started the long laborious process of rolling my window down, which, because the motor is almost shot always makes me worry that it won't go back up. It finally finished squeaking down as he came up to the car, hand on his gun.

I thought that was a little extreme, but given the neighborhood (I was headed into the ghetto, an area I flirt with on the way to and from work in order to avoid the rest of suburbia's commuters) I figured better safe than sorry. I stopped reaching into my pocket for my wallet and put my hands on my lap where he could see them.

"I pulled you over because of your seatbelt" he said authoritatively.

"This one?" I said, pulling it up off of my chest into view.

"Yeah, well, when I drove by your before you weren't wearing it."

"Uh, yeah, I was."

He got pissed. "WHAT did you say?"

"Sir, I've been wearing my seatbelt since I pulled out of my garage."

He relaxed visibly at this, as if the fact that I said I had been following the law from the get-go meant he was no longer in danger.

"Oh. OK. You're free to go." He said, waved his hand at the road, and then walked back to his car.

Now, here's the thing. I know that he's got a job to do. But enforcing the seatbelt law? Really? I always sort of thought that was the sort of thing where if you got pulled over for something else they would give you a citation for not wearing your seatbelt if you happened to be stupid enough to leave it unbuckled. I never dreamed that people actually got pulled over for something like this. And certainly not with the cars full of pot smoke and automatic weapons driving around nearby.

Perhaps most ironic is the fact that he nearly caused an accident in front of me for the explicit purpose of pulling me over because I'm not wearing a seatbelt - which presumably he wants me to wear so that I don't get injured in an accident???

I'm thinking about painting the seatbelt in my Grand Slam bright orange so I don't get frivolously pulled over again, just in case I forget to put away the AK-47s in my front seat...