2/1/12: New Post, New Job, New Sale, New Chair, Same Old Mitt

Been light on the blogging lately, but with very good excuses, the main one among them being a new job which came out of the blue about a month ago.

There I was, slumped over the desk at my depressing, soul-sucking nightmare of a job, wondering exactly what I could do to extricate myself from my hopefully temporary vocation, when a random call from an old friend dropped the solution to all my problems right in my lap. There's nothing more boring than listening to someone describe their good fortune in great detail, so all I'll say is that I am now working from home and earning more doing so, and seem to be back in the employment of a business owner that actually looks at his employees as something more than an unfortunate expense. So far, the year is off to a great start!

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Sold another short story. I'll post more details once I receive confirmation that the contracts have been accepted. Another good start to the year.

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Since I'm going to be working from home, which will mean sitting at my personal desk for eight to ten hours a day, I decided that I needed to drop a bit of cash on a real chair. Don't get me wrong, I love the creaky wooden desk chair I picked up at a yard sale last year for $20, but the odds were clearly in favor of me picking the splintered remnants of  a rapidly deteriorating piece of furniture within the first thousand hours of usage. So, I ordered the biggest god-damned desk chair I could find. It's not a luxurious leather sink-into-it-and-sleep ego-stroker, but it is a massive chair: 350lb weight limit, 24" wide seat, and a back rest that actually reaches the back of the head of my 6'4" frame. I feel like Lily Tomlin's Edith Ann every time I swing my legs over to take a call, and I have to reach over to touch the arm rest. I could have company over in this damn thing. I'm telling you, this is one big chair.

Now I need a bigger desk.

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Mitt Romney actually trying to appeal to the 99% Occupy Wall Street crowd? He's got a funny way of doing it:

"I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich, they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling."

You know he's trying to gain support from the growing 99% movement, but apparently the Rich Elitist in Mitt couldn't allow him to do so without adding that he's "...not concerned about the very poor." When asked to comment on his lack of concern for those living in abject poverty by CNN's Soledad O'Brien, Mitt explained that he wasn't worried because "We have a very ample safety net..." He explained that "...we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor."

Of course, Soledad didn't follow up by pointing out that all of those "ample" programs have become increasing underfunded with the increase in usage by America's growing percentage of impoverished citizens, or asking how he feels about the constant push by his fellow GOP members to cut funding for these programs. Mitt's talking about "fixing the holes" in the safety net while his fellow Republicans are voicing their concern about the "Safety Net" turning into a "Safety Hammock," as Paul Ryan so dickishly put in his state of the Union response last year.

Let's be fair, Mitt sounds like he's trying to appeal to the 99%, but all he's doing is pandering to the usual middle class conservatives that the GOP constantly scares with threats that the poor are coming to steal their money via socialist government programs, while attempting to dress it up with the current anti-plutocracy catchphrases making the rounds in the ever-increasing rebellion against our government being run by people like Romney.

So, you can give Mitt some credit for trying to sound sensitive to the plight of whatever he thinks the middle class is, but you still have to add "I'm not concerned about the very poor" to the list of Things Rich-Guy Romney Just Doesn't Get, right along with "Let [the foreclosure process] run its course and hit the bottom," and "I like being able to fire people."

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New favorite commercial ever. My vote is for the Pizza Curtains.

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It's been such a busy month, I never got the chance to design custom labels for the new Wilson Compound Winery release, a nice Coffee Port. Just as well, as the person who modeled for the Christmas Port backed out at the last minute. And I was so close to have an official spokesperson! Luckily, this batch came with pre-printed labels that aren't too shabby. Too make up for the transgression, however, I am already working on the label design for the Occupy Orange Sangria currently fermenting. Should be nice.

Related articles

• Mitt Romney: 'I'm not concerned with the very poor' (dailykos.com)
• Romney tells CNN's Soledad O'Brien that America's very poor and very rich are fine (miamiherald.typepad.com)
• Compassionless? Vote Romney- He's Your Man (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)

10/7/11: The Occupy Wall Street Declaration of Occupation

Image by david_shankbone via Flickr‎"As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.

"We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

* They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

* They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

* They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

* They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

* They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

* They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

* They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

* They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

* They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

* They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

* They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

* They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

* They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

* They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

* They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

* They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.

* They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

* They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

* They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

* They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

* They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*
"To the people of the world,
"We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

"Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

"To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

"Join us and make your voices heard!"

Related articles

• WATCH: Olbermann Tears Into Media Over Occupy Wall Street (huffingtonpost.com)
• Shira Lazar: Occupy Wall Street: Interview With Micah White From Adbusters (huffingtonpost.com)
• Keith Olbermann Reads First Collective Statement of Occupy Wall Street (crooksandliars.com)

10/3/11: Delayed Dreams, Postponed News, Lengthy Protests and Depleted Days

Image via WikipediaMy use of the snooze alarm in the morning has become so routine and predictable that my dreams now pattern themselves around the three ten-minute bursts of temporary pseudo-sleep I subject myself to before finally getting up in the morning. My subconscious is become smarter than my waking self. This concerns me.

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Thanks to my relatively short commute on non-school days, I am now roughly two weeks behind on my political podcasts. This morning's Best of the Left, for example, is all about Obama's failure to update smog regulations, a news event that occurred a few weeks ago. Surprisingly, I'm finding it easier to listen to distressing and worrisome news with a two-week buffer between me and the actual date of the news in question. It's like have a time delay on reality. Am I the only one who finds it easier to handle frustrating news when it can be referred to as "recent" instead of "current?"

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The more coverage I see of the Occupy Wall Street protests, the more impressed I am that we are finally seeing a real response to crimes perpetrated against the country and its citizens by these soulless financial power structures. I actually feel guilty for not going down and participating myself.

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A common nugget of wisdom often offered around the workplace is "Keep busy, and the day will go by quickly." Why would I want that? How have we arrived at a mentality in which speeding up the passage of time and hastening our eventual demise is seen as a positive recommendation? I don't want any of my days to go by quickly. Even the crappy ones. We have far too few days as it is to go around wishing a speedy passage to any of them. When your job inspires you to consider deleting hours of your existence as a positive attitude, it might time to reconsider your vocational choices.

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I'm slowly coming around to the realization that I don't drink nearly enough. As a matter of fact, maybe our entire attitude towards recreational drug use is outdated and misinformed. Sure, habitual drug use is damaging to the individual's mind and body, and can have disastrous effects for them economically as well as socially. But these days, the same thing can be said for many of the jobs people are forced to take on just in order to survive in this economic climate.

For every person suffering physical ailments from heavy smoking, drinking, or other drug use, I can show you someone with long-term disabilities due to workplace injuries, repetitive or restricted movement, unsafe work environments, chemical exposure, or simply the constant strain from performing duties above and beyond what would normally be considered safe or acceptable. For every family torn apart by a family member's drug abuse, I can show you a family destroyed by economic realities that force both parents to work, sometimes at multiple jobs, invariably neglecting their children, eliminating familial contact and communication, and creating a weary, negative atmosphere for those rare moments that the entire family manages to assemble as a whole for a meal.

When struggling to maintain an average, modern-day existence has the same long term debilitating effects as getting high, stoned or tight, who is to say which path offers more rewarding results?

Related articles

• If You Thought Last Week's Occupy Wall Street Protests Were Crazy, Get Ready... (businessinsider.com)
• 700 Arrested After 'Occupy Wall Street' Protest (theroot.com)
• Five Things That #OccupyWallStreet Has Done Right (talkingunion.wordpress.com)
• New video of Occupy Wall Street (mycoignofvantage.wordpress.com)
• #OccupyWallStreet Is Not a Protest. It's Something Better. (resnikoff.wordpress.com)