Once Again...

Trying is something, right?

Another day, another post where I don't want to say much. Why write then?

Why not?

Just because I don't want to write about the things that are on my mind doesn't mean that I don't want to write something. Hell, there was a time when I posted n...

You know what, fuck it. I'm sick of complaining, right now.

So, this is what you get and it's what I get for today.

Perhaps better stuff tomorrow, but I doubt it. I've caught up with all the work at my desk up through the stuff that came in on Monday and the stuff that's left in the in-basket looks to be about 1/3rd the size of the stuff I just finished and that covered 6 work-days and took me 2 1/2 days to finish.

Bollocks.

More Good News!

Subject: 2009 California State Tax Withholding Rate Changes


This is to advise you of changes in California State Tax Withholding rates. The rate changes are for both the percentage method of withholding and the supplemental/flat method of withholding. The supplemental/flat method of withholding rate has increased from 6.0% to 6.6%. The changes will be effective beginning with payments issue dated November 1, 2009.

You may view the changes by going online to the following website and inputting your personal information:

www.sco.ca.gov/ppsd_se_paycheck_calc.html

Part of me hopes that this only affects people working for the state, but another part of me wants to share the misery with everyone.

Edit@Noon: One of the ladies in the office came over to me about this and got a little... peevish with me because I didn't get all angry over it. It's not that I'm not angry, it's just that I'm so tired being angry over this sort of crap.

Something happens so we get less money each paycheck and I get angry and lots of other people get angry and nothing happens.

I'm just tired of all this crap.

Mixed

Figured out today that after this Friday I will not be at work on a Friday until January 29. That's twelve weeks.

One the one hand, that's a lot of time where I come into work only four days a week and at least three weeks where I only have to come for three days.

On the other hand, most of that time off is because my pay was cut nearly 15%.

People around here keep saying how surprising it was to adjust to Fridays off and how hard it is to work on those days where we come in for five days. I say that's nuts. Of course it's easy to adjust to NOT doing something you dislike.

Christ.

Been Trying to Catch-Up

So, there's been no reporting on my trip. To start to make it up to you, here's the bizarre statue of Bush Sr. at Houston International Airport.




For those who doubted, I told you it existed.

To Clarify, sort of

It's not so much about being back at work after being away for a while.

Yes, I have a lot of work to catch up with, but it's mindless and simple. It's more about the amazingly high stress level in the place. (I think mostly because everyone hates everyone else but tries to keep it down to a mild simmer of loathing that no one is willing to acknowledge.) The stress sort of shed itself in layers, slowly falling away, while I was gone. The moment the clock passed 8:30, and everyone was finally here, all the stress was dumped back on me.

And, so, life is not like a box of chocolates because even if you don't like the filling, at least you always get a little bit of chocolate first and can lick the chocolate to help get rid of the nasty taste.

Life *sigh* is not like a box of chocolates.

Zombie Limericks!

Sort of like that Zombie Haiku! post. (Oh, and thanks to RhymeZone for helping when I got stuck.)

He said that he wanted my brain.
Not those girls exceedingly vain.
'Til he munched on a chick
Who was built like a brick.
They just won't eat one who's so plain.

Being dead doesn't mean being rude.
Ripping flesh with your teeth is so crude.
So, use knife and fork
To eat human pork.
It's the civilized way to eat food.

It's hard to remember having fun
When worried about your gun.
We see all we kill.
There are more on the hill.
Soon everyone will have to run.

The safest, they said, would be malls,
With barricaded doors and thick walls.
Well, now we're surrounded
And constantly hounded,
With nothing to eat but baseballs.

I shuffle and groan every day.
For my people, it's just our way.
When we're in luck,
We chow down on Chuck,
Or that grizzled old bat, Aunt May.

Please do your own and if you post it to your blog let me know in the comments.

Developing Artist

Watched Capitalism: A Love Story this weekend.

While I think that he'll never have a better subject than a past film, his filmmaking keeps getting better.

Don't take my word for it, though, let's go to a person who dislikes Michael Moore:

Most interesting is the way he positions black citizens in the Obama theme. An interview is interrupted by the news that the election is won, and we see black folk leap and cheer -- a common image during that news cycle, but (as I mentioned about the portrayal of Republicans tumbling out of the closet in Republican Gomorrah) newly piquant in a narrative context: The most traditionally despised and debased people in the country suddenly filled with optimism. The payoff comes near the end, when Moore reproduces FDR's 1944 call for a new Bill of Rights-- a late New Deal legacy that presaged Moore's own hopes for the nation. We may be aware without reminding that Roosevelt's vision -- including that of "every family to a decent home.. to adequate medical care... to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age and sickness and accident" -- went unrealized after his death.

Next we see the crowds weeping at FDR's funeral procession -- many of them African-American. Then Moore avails a stealth-shock cut -- it takes a few moments to realize that the helicopters we are next shown are hovering over the flooded homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and that the terrified citizens begging for rescue are black.

I'm a terrible cynic, but the sorrow and anger at injustice I felt at what I saw, I am convinced, were not drawn by a gimp-string, nor by a clever concatenation of my own prejudices, but by the craft of a real filmmaker turning bare facts and images into art. It's political, certainly. But sometimes, if rarely, a political gesture is sufficiently inspired to cross the line.