she could give me a raw potato and convince me it was a peach
bukvich
action. Nothing like that.
Exciting color news. I am wearing hued clothing today. Yessirree my
boxer shorts have white stripes on sky blue. White shirt, off-white
pants, white sox, black shoes. So you are the only people who know I
have any hues!
Now for the news. Where are you on the Scrooge-Pangloss continuum?
You have to have some standards after all. Some things are better,
goddammit. But if you go too far you really put a whack into your own
potential because nobody likes a critic. And you go all the way and
it's Ted Kazcinski lalalala land which you really do not want.
But where to draw the line. This probably is trivial if you have had
good parenting, teaching, mentoring, role-models and so forth but when
you are trying to figure it out by yourself this problem is nearly
incomprehensible. Far more difficult than figuring out which color
piece of your wardrobe goes with another, and we already know my
solution to that problem is to forego hues altogether.
Why do you suppose Mica doesn't want to tell us about her sunroof? She
has posted girl on girl action for goodness sake, what is there so
terribly embarrassing about sunrooved automobile ownership?
Oh well everybody has problems, I suppose. Some people are desperate
clingy needy, some people can't drag their ragged ass out of bed in
the morning, some people are tortured by demon rum. (That last is
beyond me totally--how can anybody stand to drink rum? OK, scotch is
worse, but still . . .)
The book Desnos was shilling for the other day (2 Income Trap) was
given a boost in the New York Times today. Americans continue to
borrow, and the credit card companies continue to lend. We won't
mention the word addiction.
Telemarketers are people too you know. I just don't care to know
anybody that low on the human evolutionary chain of Being. Or
Nothingness. My last shrink admitted to me that he actually spoke to
telemarketers. He was programmed in grad school to treat every human
being with positive regard. So he could talk to Charles Manson or OJ
or a professional wrestler or anybody, as the professional situation
might arise. So he couldn't just hang up the phone on a telemarketer,
yell at them "don't ever call this number again you farkin' creep" and
any of the normal patter you hear in nearly every modern household.
Couldn't do it.
He said (I swear I ain't making this up) "thank you very much for
bringing this opportunity to my attention but I really don't have any
use for it at the moment."
There is your Doctor Pangloss end member. Not even Jonah would do
that. I don't really think Jonah is anywhere near that, he is merely
the closest we have on alt.angst. In the land of the blind the
one-eyed man is king. Similar analagous situation we have here.
I finished Bandura's book. Great information but the guy needs to make
friends with a good editor. Not Desnos. I said a good editor.
Just kidding hahaha.
Bukvich
David O'Boy
[...]
> some people are tortured by demon rum. (That last is
> beyond me totally--how can anybody stand to drink rum?
Have ever had rum? If so, how? I like it in peppermint tea.
> OK, scotch is worse, but still . . .)
Ditto scotch. I've had good scotch and bad scotch; the
good scotch I've had is very very good. It almost makes
me wish it weren't 80 proof; I'll be buying more of it
eventually. And I got a book on Scotch from the library
so I'll have an easier time picking another old single-
malt I might like, when I save up enough money again.
--
"Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murder, than into the
dreams of a lustful woman?" -Nietszche _Zarathustra_ trans. Common
Nova Siecle
> Why do you suppose Mica doesn't want to tell us about her sunroof? She
> has posted girl on girl action for goodness sake, what is there so
> terribly embarrassing about sunrooved automobile ownership?
An oversight on my part, and I do apologize profusely. Yes, I do have
a sunroof. First time ever. However, it, like my car, is fifteen
years old, so it doesn't work all that well at this point.
If we are all very, very lucky, I may have some girl on girl action to
report soon. Do you think it unwise to sleep with co-workers?
> Americans continue to borrow, and the credit card companies continue
> to lend.
Not me! I have gotten our joint credit card debt down to about two
grand, and that will be gone by the end of the year. I no longer even
carry a credit card in my wallet.
> We won't mention the word addiction.
Yes, let's don't.
Mica
Brett Gilmour
> Ditto scotch. I've had good scotch and bad scotch; the
> good scotch I've had is very very good. It almost makes
> me wish it weren't 80 proof; I'll be buying more of it
> eventually. And I got a book on Scotch from the library
> so I'll have an easier time picking another old single-
> malt I might like, when I save up enough money again.
I like Bourbon.
Nippon Talking Happy Robotica
<<fe4c6b70.0311...@posting.google.com>>, Nova Siecle
<novas...@hotmail.com> spleniated...
>If we are all very, very lucky, I may have some girl on girl action to
>report soon. Do you think it unwise to sleep with co-workers?
The vet clinic the girl works in got a new hospital director (aka
boss)...the only mail nurse. The hefty overweight nineteen-year-old worked on
him and he crumbled. Or he got desperate. Hard to say. He's kind of like
bukvich, but more effeminate (perhaps) and less dorky.
Anyways, he took her virginity. Perhaps she took his. (He being
25ish). After the fact he decided this was a bad idea, since it could cost him
his job. She decided it was a great thing indeed, and kept trying to keep
going by humping his leg, frequently literally. He decided to start hinting he
was gay, announcing that he couldn't go out with her one night because he had
to go home and tape 'Queer as Folk'. Then he flat out told her he was gay.
...
She bought it.
Then she proceeded to have all sort of exciting mood shift, combined
with excessive 19-year-old whining. He, being clueless, teases her in way that
she interprets as picking on her, so she makes up shit to tell him about what
other people said about him. Meanwhile, since he was promoted from within, in
an office/clinic full of women nurses and women vets, nobody respects him, not
least because he is titled the Gayest Straight Man Ever.
This has been going on for six months.
I would say that if you can blow the popstand immediately afterwards,
and you can never see the person again, then sleeping with a coworker probably
won't be disasterous.
If you stick around and she gets attached, you are SO hosed.
ash
['I never did answer that other one.']
--
"We oughta tell 'em th' whole Army don't look like us, Joe."
_________________________________________________________________
Give me Liberty or give me a nice house in France from whence I
can hunt some Liberty down. Or you can eat lead. Get off my wave.
Two|Riven against a Black Sun|six|...that which we are we are|One
bukvich
> If we are all very, very lucky, I may have some girl on girl action to
> report soon. Do you think it unwise to sleep with co-workers?
w00t!
Darling Dearest worked here. In that instance wise and unwise were not
part of the equation. It was a glandular thing.
She's preggers again.
Have you ever gone out with an ex- who has multiply sprogged when out
there at the perihelion?
You may be assured I would not be posting that.
Bukvich
Nova Siecle
> On 10 Nov 2003 17:03:03 -0800, in message
> <<fe4c6b70.0311...@posting.google.com>>, Nova Siecle
> <novas...@hotmail.com> spleniated...
<snippage>
Good story, but it seems a cautionary tale for sleeping with
youngsters just as much as for sleeping with co-workers, maybe moreso.
> I would say that if you can blow the popstand immediately afterwards,
> and you can never see the person again, then sleeping with a coworker
> probably won't be disasterous.
I was just joking anyway, for Buk's amusement. After last Saturday
night, I'm 90% certain the girl is strictly straight.
> If you stick around and she gets attached, you are SO hosed.
Now, see, that is one problem I don't have. They don't get attached
to me. Apparentlyl, I am not stalk-worthy.
Mica
David O'Lantern
[...]
> it seems a cautionary tale for sleeping with youngsters
Indeed. Especially if "youngster" means "under 30."
[...]
> After last Saturday night, I'm 90% certain the girl is
> strictly straight.
Oh? Please elaborate in delectable detail.
[...]
> They don't get attached to me.
That's what you think.
> Apparently, I am not stalk-worthy.
I think it's just that you've been lucky not to have drawn
a weirdo with that kind of twisted persistence.
It's surely not that you don't rate a long long-distance
crush, I swear.
D.
--
Pointlessly incomprehensible.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) `TheDavid^TM' 2003 | David, P.O. Box 21403, Louisville, KY 40221
David O'Lantern
[...]
> he is titled the Gayest Straight Man Ever.
I thought that was ME. No, wait, I'm the Gayest Straight Man Who Fell
To Earth, especially since for my erstwhile role-model all that might
very well have been just a role. (Kinda like finding out Muhammad was
really just a Zen practical joker, y'know.)
On my home planet we go for girlish boys, boyish girls, and Mica.
bob
wrote:
I like Bourbon too much to buy it more than twice a year.
Bonnie
>On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, it was written:
>[...]
>
>> he is titled the Gayest Straight Man Ever.
Oh, I missed the beginning. Are you talking about Mathew Broderick?
Bonnie
Brett Gilmour
> I like Bourbon too much to buy it more than twice a year.
I must be either stupid or lacking in humor but sometimes your comments go
over my head.
Confused.
Brett
jonah thomas
> Telemarketers are people too you know. I just don't care to know
> anybody that low on the human evolutionary chain of Being. Or
> Nothingness. My last shrink admitted to me that he actually spoke to
> telemarketers. He was programmed in grad school to treat every human
> being with positive regard. So he could talk to Charles Manson or OJ
> or a professional wrestler or anybody, as the professional situation
> might arise. So he couldn't just hang up the phone on a telemarketer,
> yell at them "don't ever call this number again you farkin' creep" and
> any of the normal patter you hear in nearly every modern household.
> Couldn't do it.
> He said (I swear I ain't making this up) "thank you very much for
> bringing this opportunity to my attention but I really don't have any
> use for it at the moment."
> There is your Doctor Pangloss end member. Not even Jonah would do
> that. I don't really think Jonah is anywhere near that, he is merely
> the closest we have on alt.angst. In the land of the blind the
> one-eyed man is king. Similar analagous situation we have here.
Yes, I often do something like that. I dated a telemarketer once. They
have it hard. Most of them are doing it just for the money, because
they haven't found anything else that pays adequately, and that pay is
barely adequate. Capitalism. You think galley slaves had it rough?
They at least knew where their 2 meals a day were coming from. Now the
idea is you get to be *thankful* for the telemarketing job. It's sick.
But That guy isn't the end member. I knew another former telemarketer
who'd tell them, "Hey, do you get points if I wait for you to get all
the way through the script, or would it be better if I just hang up
now?" and he'd do whichever they wanted. He'd been there.
bukvich
> Yes, I often do something like that. I dated a telemarketer once. They
> have it hard. Most of them are doing it just for the money, because
> they haven't found anything else that pays adequately, and that pay is
> barely adequate. Capitalism. You think galley slaves had it rough?
> They at least knew where their 2 meals a day were coming from. Now the
> idea is you get to be *thankful* for the telemarketing job. It's sick.
There has to be something else, if you are so desparate for money that
you would cold-call people. You could stock the shelves at the grocery
store for crying out loud. You could flip burgers at McDonald's. You
could put on a pirate's costume and lead haunted French Quarter tours.
Security guard. You can't possibly need a college diploma to be a
security guard.
(it has been awhile since I have looked for a job)
B.
[ ' I am mean to telemarketers ' ]
David O'Lantern
[...]
> (it has been awhile since I have looked for a job)
It shows. And it's probably been a while since you've been
on close terms with someone in a low-paying low-status job.
> [ ' I am mean to telemarketers ' ]
We just never turn the ringer on so we never get the phone.
Caller ID stores as many numbers as are needed; mostly it'll
come up "out of area" anyway. When I'm here alone this is as
much a service to any caller as to me: say I'd be sitting at
my desk where on phone is, but as usual had left my hearing
aids somewhere else -- would they pay a telemarketer extra
who had to keep repeating himself more loudly?
bob
<thed...@shell.rawbw.com> wrote:
>On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, bukvich wrote:
>[...]
>
>> (it has been awhile since I have looked for a job)
>
>It shows. And it's probably been a while since you've been
>on close terms with someone in a low-paying low-status job.
I'll probably be looking for one of those soon. I have a feeling I was
hired on a 3 month plan. They were getting behind schedule and they
needed a warm body. They've had 2 layoffs in the past 15 months. The
average engineer's seniority is at least 15 years. It appears new guys
are brought in to be used then released.
David O'Lantern
[...]
> I have a feeling I was hired on a 3 month plan. They were
> getting behind schedule and they needed a warm body. They've
> had 2 layoffs in the past 15 months. The average engineer's
> seniority is at least 15 years. It appears new guys are brought
> in to be used then released.
Wait a minute, aren't you an engineer with ~15 years experience
doing stuff life designing replacements for busted body parts?
How *can* they do same things to you people that they do to
Visual Basic programmers and Wal-Mart management trainees?
Somehow I don't think your personal history accounts for all
of it-- I think it's bigger than just Bob.
It *used* to be that we were told to get an education that'll
help us make good bucks in a secure fashion. If they've broken
*that* then America is *really* in trouble.
What will we tell our country's youth? "Spend 20 years in school,
learn a really complex and nifty skill, then find when you're 40
and have a few kids that your field is kaput and you have to try
to compete with 16 year old high school kids for jobs at a mall."
Prepare to be disposable!
Except for the part about Higher Education, isn't that what they
did to the auto workers in the '80s?
Last night I noticed on the handout from "Saxophone Weekend" that
the UofL School of Music has a few dozen kids getting BAs in Jazz.
I wondered how they expected to make a living doing that.
Now I think that it doesn't matter much: if worse comes to worse
they can serenade passersby for whatever change people can spare
on their way to their rich and rewarding de-skilled jobs hacking
up chickens for $5 an hour.
When I'd talk about "ending white-skin privilege" I did NOT mean
making the whole planet Third World.
The older I get, the gladder I am I lived my life *this* way.
Sheesh.
D.
bob
<thed...@shell.rawbw.com> wrote:
>On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, bob wrote:
>[...]
>
>> I have a feeling I was hired on a 3 month plan. They were
>> getting behind schedule and they needed a warm body. They've
>> had 2 layoffs in the past 15 months. The average engineer's
>> seniority is at least 15 years. It appears new guys are brought
>> in to be used then released.
>
>Wait a minute, aren't you an engineer with ~15 years experience
>doing stuff life designing replacements for busted body parts?
Something like that.
>
>How *can* they do same things to you people that they do to
>Visual Basic programmers and Wal-Mart management trainees?
Easy.
>Somehow I don't think your personal history accounts for all
>of it-- I think it's bigger than just Bob.
My personal history has nothing to do with things at this job other
than the fact that I had to pretty much beg the recruiter to send my
resume in for my first non-managerial position in a decade.
>It *used* to be that we were told to get an education that'll
>help us make good bucks in a secure fashion. If they've broken
>*that* then America is *really* in trouble.
Things are getting worse, for sure.
>
>What will we tell our country's youth? "Spend 20 years in school,
>learn a really complex and nifty skill, then find when you're 40
>and have a few kids that your field is kaput and you have to try
>to compete with 16 year old high school kids for jobs at a mall."
>Prepare to be disposable!
Prepare to be flexible anyway. I should have been a hit man.
>
>Except for the part about Higher Education, isn't that what they
>did to the auto workers in the '80s?
I've got a couple of uncles who could answer that one better than I
could.
bob
- would anyone like to form a militia (chyx who are into sex with guys
who tote guns are more than welcome)
jonah thomas
> bob wrote:
> [...]
>>I have a feeling I was hired on a 3 month plan. They were
>>getting behind schedule and they needed a warm body. They've
>>had 2 layoffs in the past 15 months. The average engineer's
>>seniority is at least 15 years. It appears new guys are brought
>>in to be used then released.
> Wait a minute, aren't you an engineer with ~15 years experience
> doing stuff life designing replacements for busted body parts?
> How *can* they do same things to you people that they do to
> Visual Basic programmers and Wal-Mart management trainees?
> Somehow I don't think your personal history accounts for all
> of it-- I think it's bigger than just Bob.
Yes, it is.
Ten years ago, the USA had some of the best engineering schools in the
world. But if you looked at the students, the big majority of the
engineering students were foreign. Here's why: Engineering is hard.
You have to learn math. You can make more money with less math if you
go into accounting. Or medicine.
So the americans who went into engineering were kids who were inspired
by the glory of it. The practical ones, who wanted to make a good
living, did accounting or medicine or tax law etc.
So now we have people like Bob with 15 and 20 and 30 years experience,
and we don't have enough young people to replace them. We can bring in
foreign engineers to replace them, and suffer all the language problems
we'd have if we outsourced to foreign countries. Or we can collect the
foreign engineers we trained and send them home, and pay them a lot less
over there. The good remaining market for engineers is for the
military. Once you have your security clearance, they strongly prefer
americans. But there aren't enough american engineers with security
clearances, and it's slow and expensive to create more, so the natural
tendency is to work around the requirements (which results of course in
foreign engineers getting access to lots of classified material, and we
get occasional scandals when they're caught spying).
In the 70's and early 80's people talked about a "brain drain". In
those days good scientists and engineers came to the USA from all over
the world because we paid so well, and particularly western europeans
were worried; what would they do without that engineering talent? Those
days are gone.
So older american engineers get the scraps of the projects that are
still here. They're getting phased out. They can look for other work,
or emigrate (if they can handle the language problems) or find niches
where they can go into business for themselves. Or find a company that
will apply for security clearances for them. Since it takes 6 months or
more and thousands of dollars to get the clearance, a company that hires
you on that basis intends to keep you. At least they intend that when
they hire you. It just doesn't pay to get a security clearance for
somebody and then let them go. The company has to be in bad shape to
pay you for six months to do makework while the expensive security
clearance comes through, and then fire you.
> It *used* to be that we were told to get an education that'll
> help us make good bucks in a secure fashion. If they've broken
> *that* then America is *really* in trouble.
It's still true. You can get by on what an MD makes. Not as well as
before, you're likely to be a million dollars in debt by the time you
get out of med school and it may take years to pay it back, but you can
enjoy a very comfortable middle age apart from being way overworked.
And you can get by nicely in corporate law, if you study hard and learn
carefully. You can do very well as an accountant. All except the MD
are jobs that would be hard to export. The tax laws and accounting laws
very different in other countries, and it takes a very long time to
learn them well enough to avoid legal trouble. Not like engineering
which works everywhere.
What this says for the future of the country, I'm not sure. We can go
on making more and more complicated laws that need high-paid specialists
to untangle. But how does that help us? We'd do better to all make
salt-water taffy and sell it to each other. At least we could eat the
taffy.
> What will we tell our country's youth? "Spend 20 years in school,
> learn a really complex and nifty skill, then find when you're 40
> and have a few kids that your field is kaput and you have to try
> to compete with 16 year old high school kids for jobs at a mall."
> Prepare to be disposable!
It's tended to be that way for engineers for some time. And for
research scientists. Go into research and by the time you're, say, 40
you'll either be an administrator or you'll be out of research
completely. You hire people to write research proposals for you, and
when the proposals are funded you hire people to do the research, and
your name goes on the publications because it's your reputation that
helps get the research proposals funded in the first place.
> When I'd talk about "ending white-skin privilege" I did NOT mean
> making the whole planet Third World.
In the short run, that's how it's going. There was a time when
americans had 5% of the world population and used 50% of the natural
resources. Now we're down to maybe a third of the resources, because
more foreigners are getting wealthy enough to use more resources. That
means we have to compete for those resources, and we aren't king of the
mountain anymore. Except militarily. The more resources we use for the
military the less we have left for civilians. Unless we can go out and
get more resources some other way than paying for them....
The way we used resources in the old days was not sustainable. We're
facing a crunch and we'll have to accept a drasticly different standard
of living. The problem isn't just oil, but oil is the obvious thing to
look at, so.... Carter asked the USA to accept "the moral equivalent of
war" and find a way to become energy independent. The USA refused. We
elected Reagan, and the solution Reagan accepted was to buy oil whenever
the price was low, and pour it down a hole in the ground. So if some
monopolist tries to raise prices too much we can pump that oil back out
and outwait them. Think about it. Our solution to the oil shortage was
basically to put price supports on oil. And we put in tax incentives to
get american oil producers to pump faster. With the result that
american oil production has passed its peak; now we're drilling more and
finding less. Instead of looking for an engineering solution we found
accounting solutions, and here we are.
> The older I get, the gladder I am I lived my life *this* way.
What would give us the commitment to reform our way of life? "The moral
equivalent of war" didn't do it. Probably an actual war that it looks
like we're about to lose, would work. Like, a world war. Everybody
pitched in before. We collected scrap iron and scrap paper for the war
effort. We accepted rationed gasoline. We bought savings bonds whose
value depreciated, out of sheer patriotism. (Plus there was nothing to
buy with the money, and there was a lot of unsubtle social pressure to
do it.) We could be a lot more efficient now. We have the internet to
help us organise. Just don't let anything go overseas until it's been
censored -- we'd have our own national internet. So we could
nationalise UPS and FedEx etc, and whatever you need to buy that's
available, you just fill out the order and provide the credit and the
ration points, and within a few days van comes around and drops it off.
If you need to travel and your excuse is good and it has to be after
the morning commuter bus, you can sit in the UPS truck and help keep the
packages from sliding. But if you're a tax lawyer etc, you'll just work
at home and also tend your garden. No need to commute when it can all
be handled over the net.
Of course we wouldn't have as many resources to coddle unemployables.
You might find your bennies cut in half, and your ration book giving you
half rations. Not that they'd want to starve you, just there's a war on
and we all have to do our part.
I don't know what's better. When it hits the fan, it would be so much
nicer to have some other habitable planet to have emigrated to. But we
don't.
Death From Above
<<fe4c6b70.03111...@posting.google.com>>, Nova Siecle
<novas...@hotmail.com> spleniated...
>Good story, but it seems a cautionary tale for sleeping with
>youngsters just as much as for sleeping with co-workers, maybe moreso.
Probably. He's kinda foolish, and she's kind of insane.
It seems he decided to sleep with her again, after a coupla months
telling her he was gay. "I have needs," he says. "That's what your right hand
is for," says the spitfire.
>> I would say that if you can blow the popstand immediately afterwards,
>> and you can never see the person again, then sleeping with a coworker
>> probably won't be disasterous.
>I was just joking anyway, for Buk's amusement.
Tsk. Tease.
>After last Saturday
>night, I'm 90% certain the girl is strictly straight.
Did you make her blow into the gay ballon?
Ok, so this is the gay [LARGE VET CLINIC CHAIN IN LARGE PETSTORE
CHAIN], right? The boss vet is a 50-year old lesbian, and half the clientele
are gay (nobody knows why, it's not in say, Oak Lawn), and the groomers are
all gay, and there's the male nurse who's gay and calls in sick everytime his
HIV-positive boyfriend gets the sniffles, and there's the other chunky
20-year-old girl who has an entire court of gayboys and so on and so forth.
So, I'm talking to the girl and she pops out with 'all the gay people
[at the clinic] hate bisexuals...they think they're out to fuck everyone in
the world.' And I'm like, 'Who says this?' and she's like, "[The boss vet] and
[the head groomer] and [the male nurse]. They're like 'pick a side' and stick
with it!"
There was a long silence. And then I said, "So it's ok if you're out
to fuck HALF the people in the world, just as long as it's not ALL the people
in the world?" Which was followed by much discussion of sluts and people who
can't make up their mind and stuff.
I found it a very amusing, if highly ironic discussion.
>> If you stick around and she gets attached, you are SO hosed.
>Now, see, that is one problem I don't have. They don't get attached
>to me.
Picking the wrong girlies?
(Picking the right girlies?)(Where do they make that model, anyways, I
never seen none around here.)
>Apparently, I am not stalk-worthy.
{throws celery}
ash
['It's hot lesbian vegan bait!']
Death From Above
<<2003111120...@shell.rawbw.com>>, David O'Lantern
<thed...@shell.rawbw.com> spleniated...
>On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, it was written:
>[...]
>> he is titled the Gayest Straight Man Ever.
>I thought that was ME.
Are you short, have the the short hair and facial cream 'I take care
of MY skin' look, speak in a constant nasal whine and, everytime you eat a
Dorito do you exclaim loudly 'Agh! Straight to the hips!'?
>No, wait, I'm the Gayest Straight Man Who Fell
>To Earth, especially since for my erstwhile role-model all that might
>very well have been just a role.
Smashing Pigeons on Mars!
>(Kinda like finding out Muhammad was
>really just a Zen practical joker, y'know.)
I thought he actually worked for Geico?
>On my home planet we go for girlish boys, boyish girls, and Mica.
Androgynous hermaphodites with really really enourmous talents?
ash
['Basically, neolithic female icons?']
bob
Steve Murgaski
> Ten years ago, the USA had some of the best engineering schools in the
> world. But if you looked at the students, the big majority of the
> engineering students were foreign. Here's why: Engineering is hard.
> You have to learn math. You can make more money with less math if you
> go into accounting. Or medicine.
>
> So the americans who went into engineering were kids who were inspired
> by the glory of it. The practical ones, who wanted to make a good
> living, did accounting or medicine or tax law etc.
So, what is the core problem? Americans can make more money doing
things which don't produce anything, than they can doing jobs involved
in manufacturing? Why did that happen?
> What this says for the future of the country, I'm not sure. We can go
> on making more and more complicated laws that need high-paid specialists
> to untangle. But how does that help us? We'd do better to all make
> salt-water taffy and sell it to each other. At least we could eat the
> taffy.
The small per centage employed by the military might simply try to
steal what they want from whomever is producing it. If the amount of
goods being produced in the US is decreasing, it should keep getting
more difficult to dress the theft up as "Trade," and "trade
agreements." The threat of violence would have to be more open, as
the terms demanded become more and more one-sided.
If there's a strong military doing all this, there's no need to share
the spoils with all Americans. High-tech weapons can be used just as
easily for domestic repression as for international. So, an empire
comes out of the closet.
Is that what you think is happening?
> What would give us the commitment to reform our way of life? "The moral
> equivalent of war" didn't do it. Probably an actual war that it looks
> like we're about to lose, would work. Like, a world war. Everybody
> pitched in before. We collected scrap iron and scrap paper for the war
> effort. We accepted rationed gasoline. We bought savings bonds whose
> value depreciated, out of sheer patriotism. (Plus there was nothing to
> buy with the money, and there was a lot of unsubtle social pressure to
> do it.) We could be a lot more efficient now. We have the internet to
> help us organise. Just don't let anything go overseas until it's been
> censored -- we'd have our own national internet. So we could
> nationalise UPS and FedEx etc, and whatever you need to buy that's
> available, you just fill out the order and provide the credit and the
> ration points, and within a few days van comes around and drops it off.
> If you need to travel and your excuse is good and it has to be after
> the morning commuter bus, you can sit in the UPS truck and help keep the
> packages from sliding. But if you're a tax lawyer etc, you'll just work
> at home and also tend your garden. No need to commute when it can all
> be handled over the net.
>
> Of course we wouldn't have as many resources to coddle unemployables.
> You might find your bennies cut in half, and your ration book giving you
> half rations. Not that they'd want to starve you, just there's a war on
> and we all have to do our part.
You probably know about ideas like the `Tobin tax.' Couldn't real
production be stimulated by discouraging the kind of speculative
capital flow we have now?
There must be other ways to increase employment besides trying to be
self-sufficient.
jonah thomas
> jonah thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net> wrote
>>So the americans who went into engineering were kids who were inspired
>>by the glory of it. The practical ones, who wanted to make a good
>>living, did accounting or medicine or tax law etc.
> So, what is the core problem? Americans can make more money doing
> things which don't produce anything, than they can doing jobs involved
> in manufacturing? Why did that happen?
I dunno. A combination of reasons. Foreign students did a lot of
engineering, which doesn't take so much language skills. And with the
engineer shortage a lot of the engineering teachers were foreigners who
also lacked english language skills, which put foreign students more on
an even footing. Foreign engineers were cheaper, so american engineers
needed to be cheaper too.
And then, a disproportionate part of congress is lawyers. This is
partly because you can leave a legal firm and go to congress for a few
years, and then slip right back into your legal job when you get voted
out. If you're an engineer and you run for office and win, by the time
you get voted out of office you're an obsolete engineer. And if you're
employed nobody's going to hold your job for you while you're being a
politician. But if you're a partner in a legal firm they do. So the
laws naturally got more complicated with more niches for legal minds.
And the tax laws keep getting more complicated even without congress
because the IRS gets to write its own tax laws. There are lots of
contradictions in the IRS rulings so you can get away with a lot if you
have what it takes to take the IRS to court. That means lots of jobs
for tax lawyers and tax accountants etc, who have to be real smart but
their job is to follow the random twistings of the tax code. If you
save a rich man or a rich corporation millions or hundreds of millions
of dollars, they can afford to pay you well.
Etc.
>>What this says for the future of the country, I'm not sure. We can go
>>on making more and more complicated laws that need high-paid specialists
>>to untangle. But how does that help us? We'd do better to all make
>>salt-water taffy and sell it to each other. At least we could eat the
>>taffy.
> The small per centage employed by the military might simply try to
> steal what they want from whomever is producing it. If the amount of
> goods being produced in the US is decreasing, it should keep getting
> more difficult to dress the theft up as "Trade," and "trade
> agreements." The threat of violence would have to be more open, as
> the terms demanded become more and more one-sided.
Yes, but we'd still keep dressing it up for domestic news until
americans got so upset about the world that they didn't care any more.
> If there's a strong military doing all this, there's no need to share
> the spoils with all Americans. High-tech weapons can be used just as
> easily for domestic repression as for international. So, an empire
> comes out of the closet.
> Is that what you think is happening?
We'd tend to go easy on domestic repression except for well-defined
groups. The majority should believe that they're makin patriotic
sacrifices because the nation needs them to, and get no hint that
they're being repressed. The system depends on highly-motivated
military people to do their jobs, and they'd lose morale if they saw
themselves repressing the citizens of the country they swear to defend.
Maybe. But we'd need the political will, and at present we haven't got
it. Still, if there's a way out of the trap then that will at least be
a part of it.
> There must be other ways to increase employment besides trying to be
> self-sufficient.
Carter's idea was to be energy-self-sufficient. If we reduced our
energy consumption to match what we could make, we wouldn't *have* to
control the middle east. If we chose to, it would be to control *other
people's* oil, not to ensure our own desperately-needed supply.
But instead we chose to try to keep expanding GDP etc. We found ways to
subsidise oil and spread the effect of high oil prices throughout the
economy without providing much economic incentive to economise or
conserve. And here we are.
There were lots of things we could have done different. For example, we
had a lot of people who were rightly concerned about nuclear waste, and
so they opposed nuclear power. There were various palliatives. For
example, we could have used non-uranium/non-plutonium radioactive
materials for shielding in nuclear plants. Put more shielding around
that, and you get nuclear waste absorbing most of the neutrons and so
you vastly reduce the cost of decommissioning the plant later -- plus
you have a safe place to put a lot of waste. There were many ways that
engineering solutions might have improved things. But we were so heavy
on bureaucratic regulation and legal and economic "solutions" that there
just wasn't much room for that.
So in the short run we're stuck. There's a limited amount of oil in the
world, and we can pump so much of it a year, we can increase the maximum
we can pump in a year but we can only increase it slowly. The USA needs
a lot of it, the rest of the first world needs the rest. Everybody else
needs it if they want to develop, and we don't have it to spare for
them. And if they start to build nuclear plants we get upset that they
want bombs.
David O'Lantern
[...]
> High-tech weapons can be used just as easily for domestic repression
> as for international. So, an empire comes out of the closet.
Yes.
> Is that what you think is happening?
Yes. And I've only been warning Usenet about this shit since 1995.
One problem is that most Americans -- i.e., most white "middle-class"
Americans -- are incredibly fucking stupid, as well as petty, greedy
and malicious: they think it's understood that only the "lesser races"
will lose all those rights, freedoms and preogatives they allow the
"Thrones and Dominions" to take away, forgetting that as the majority
segment of the populace they gain the most from all those vanishing
rights, freedoms and prerogatives. Woe betide them when they wake up
to find themselves "no better than off them damn niggers" -- and that
they've been in that position for many years, and that it's their own
damn fault. Again, when *I* speak of abolishing "white skin privilege"
I mean making life more dignified for everyone, not making everybody
equal crawlers in a shithole.
Whether it's being free to cross the street without being searched,
or whether it's being free to join a union, it's all of a piece:
victories won in America by the majority of the Americans -- most of
whom are still Caucasian -- that they can't get rid of fast enough.
Embarrassedly,
TheDavid^TM
David O'Lantern
[...]
> The system depends on highly-motivated military people to do
> their jobs, and they'd lose morale if they saw themselves
> repressing the citizens of the country they swear to defend.
There are ways to get around that. There always have been.
Appeal to pettiness, greed, imputed status, fear and macho.
Weren't the people of Georgia as American as Sherman's troops?
Nova Siecle
> On 11 Nov 2003 08:52:14 -0800, in message
> <<fe4c6b70.03111...@posting.google.com>>, Nova Siecle
> <novas...@hotmail.com> spleniated...
>
> There was a long silence. And then I said, "So it's ok if you're out
> to fuck HALF the people in the world, just as long as it's not ALL the people
> in the world?" Which was followed by much discussion of sluts and people who
> can't make up their mind and stuff.
> I found it a very amusing, if highly ironic discussion.
Ah yes, that's a familiar refrain. Or at least it used to be when I
was involved in the community. I do understand (in part) where the
resentment comes from, but it still seems pretty fucking weak-kneed to
me, and hatred of bisexuals within the gay community has always
brought to mind the racist mexicans in my family who hate black folks.
Uh, ain'tcha supposed to know better?
> >> If you stick around and she gets attached, you are SO hosed.
> >Now, see, that is one problem I don't have. They don't get attached
> >to me.
> Picking the wrong girlies?
> (Picking the right girlies?)(Where do they make that model, anyways, I
> never seen none around here.)
Well, some sort of attachment are better than others. I like having
friends who care about me. I don't like having friends who drive by
my house twenty times a day and call and hang up to check up on me and
all that shit that psycho stalkers apparently do. So I guess I pick
the right girlies.
> >Apparently, I am not stalk-worthy.
> {throws celery}
What, no blue cheese with that?
Mica
Steve Murgaski
> On Sun, 16 Nov 2003, jonah thomas wrote:
> [...]
>
> > The system depends on highly-motivated military people to do
> > their jobs, and they'd lose morale if they saw themselves
> > repressing the citizens of the country they swear to defend.
Interesting. Seems possible.
> There are ways to get around that. There always have been.
> Appeal to pettiness, greed, imputed status, fear and macho.
>
> Weren't the people of Georgia as American as Sherman's troops?
I think it could be done too, and it might even be considered
necessary. But that might be my canadian bias.
The danger in giving that much power to the military would seem to be
that a coup becomes far more likely. If they're programmed with
nationalism and patriotism -- "Fighting for American values," and all
that -- they probably won't depose the bumbling bureaucrats in
Washington who keep messing things up. To the soldiers programmed
this way, they probably seem incompetent, but they're the duely
elected representatives (sort of) -- "part of the freedom we're trying
to defend."
If you give the soldiers too much independence and machismo -- which
they'd probably need, if their job is keeping other Americans under
control -- then they might not obey their commander in chief either.
Better to have a real general in charge of things than some idiot
paper-pushers.
On the civilian side, justifying repressive measures wouldn't be that
difficult. The "patriot act" already exists. All you do is faze out
social programs, coz you can't fight a war on terrorism and support a
bunch of free-loaders at the same time. Then, if there aren't jobs
for americans, whose fault is that? It's just economics and the
market. When the starving masses rebel, you're just "Keeping law and
order," by crushing it. There was really no choice but to call in the
military, when the violent protestors overwhelmed police.
*shrug* It could keep going in that direction pretty easily. A
second patriot act, and more surveillance, because you need to crack
down on terrorists. And so on.
Maybe Jonah's right, and the American government would calculate that
it'd be safer to distribute a bit of wealth within America than to go
through all this. But I do think the propaganda machine is wearing
out, and they may decide there's no choice but to fight a war at home
too. "Vietnam syndrome" is pretty bad in the US, relative to the
early 60's. The "third world" is getting uppity -- walking out of
trade negotiations -- and enough Americans sympathize with them to be
disruptive. Even with the absolutely huge PR campaign about Iraq,
they don't seem to have a free enough hand to keep things there under
control, and the UN doesn't know its place anymore either.
I can imagine the neocon clan gaining popularity in your government,
with a nice simple argument of "Violence across the board! If we go
on coddling the American people, eventually they'll want to cut back
the military, and the next spineless wimp like Clinton might go ahead
and do it. Free markets and democracy were supposed to be fantasies
to keep the rabble quiet, but they're taking it seriously now, and
things are getting out of hand! Instead of spending a fortune on
"Public relations," lets just spank the children when they get out of
line."
jonah thomas
> jonah thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net> wrote
>>Yes, I often do something like that. I dated a telemarketer once. They
>>have it hard. Most of them are doing it just for the money, because
>>they haven't found anything else that pays adequately, and that pay is
>>barely adequate. Capitalism. You think galley slaves had it rough?
>>They at least knew where their 2 meals a day were coming from. Now the
>>idea is you get to be *thankful* for the telemarketing job. It's sick.
> There has to be something else, if you are so desparate for money that
> you would cold-call people. You could stock the shelves at the grocery
> store for crying out loud. You could flip burgers at McDonald's. You
> could put on a pirate's costume and lead haunted French Quarter tours.
Grocery and burger jobs don't pay the rent. They can pay the food bills
though if somebody else pays the rent.
> Security guard. You can't possibly need a college diploma to be a
> security guard.
I knew a couple of security guards. You don't need a college diploma,
but you need experience in security. If you do something stupid you can
get a giant lawsuit against both the security company that hires you and
the business that rents you. So they try to be cautious. Both the
guards I knew were heavily into martial arts though I didn't meet them
that way. It's that they were supposed to patrol deserted areas
carrying no firearms, and when they saw people up to no good they were
supposed to scare them off or possibly arrest them. And they could be
arrested themselves if found with firearms on the job (lawsuit). It's
kind of scary to be responsible for driving off probably-armed
criminals, and they learned all about the right ways to hit people with
giant flashlights and such.
So, do you figure it's a better job to meet people in person and bark at
them and tell them they're someplace they aren't supposed to be and
harass them and threaten to arrest them, than cold-calling strangers on
the phone?
> (it has been awhile since I have looked for a job)
Congratulations.
Death From Above
<<fe4c6b70.0311...@posting.google.com>>, Nova Siecle
<novas...@hotmail.com> spleniated...
>Ah yes, that's a familiar refrain. Or at least it used to be when I
>was involved in the community. I do understand (in part) where the
>resentment comes from, but it still seems pretty fucking weak-kneed to
>me, and hatred of bisexuals within the gay community has always
>brought to mind the racist mexicans in my family who hate black folks.
>Uh, ain'tcha supposed to know better?
If you can get your minority in, you can dominate a smaller minority.
That's what it's all about.
>> >Now, see, that is one problem I don't have. They don't get attached
>> >to me.
>> Picking the wrong girlies?
>> (Picking the right girlies?)(Where do they make that model, anyways,
>>I never seen none around here.)
>Well, some sort of attachment are better than others. I like having
>friends who care about me.
Friends. Check.
>I don't like having friends who drive by
>my house twenty times a day and call and hang up to check up on me and
>all that shit that psycho stalkers apparently do.
Bad friends, check.
>So I guess I pick the right girlies.
Non-possessive attachment!
>> >Apparently, I am not stalk-worthy.
>> {throws celery}
>What, no blue cheese with that?
Plain? On celery? Stuffed in a vagina ala that photshopped ad I got
spammed with a coupla months ago?
Wouldn't some Gruyere be better?
ash
['Cheese crash.']