“Omnes relinquite spes, o vos intrantes” ~Dante
Or, alternately “Welcome to America”.
I’m tired, I know, I know, so are you. But I’m tired for a different reason.
People need to wake up, but I fear the day that they do. The world is collapsing around us, and very few of my fellow ostensibly sentient bipedal hominids seem to have the slightest clue.
Good. Yup I said it, good. I hope with all honesty that they don’t wake up.
“But how can you be so cruel” is the hue and cry, “don’t you have any sympathy for your fellow man”.
Short answer? no. Long answer? Not on your life. I didn’t create their issues.
“Well neither did they”, well they may not have “created” the situation, but they sure as hell didn’t do much to make it better. All I read online, is “I’ve sent 100 resumes out without a single nibble or interview” hmmm…have you gone down during the middle of July and offered to clean the stalls of a local horse farm? Have you gone to the lettuce and strawberry fields and bent over them for 12 hours a day to the point you can’t walk just about, only to go back the next day and do it again? Of course the answer is “No”.
Then why pray tell, would you insist I have the single bit of sympathy, hell even the poor in America don’t know what poverty is. They think they do, but they would be considered kings in many parts of the developing world for simply having a single faucet that puts out somewhat clean water that hasn’t been contaminated with some parasite that makes you shit yourself to death.
Never mind the car (that runs no matter how crappily), the 56 in flat screen TV. you can find in almost every poverty stricken apartment in any ghetto in the united states (an no I’m not talking about people who voluntarily give up what passes for entertainment these days.) along with the fact that most everyone has at least one game system to keep the mini gang bangers busy between drive by shootings.
Well guess what buttercup, shits about to get a far site worse, and your fat pathetic candy ass aint gonna make it through the upcoming bottleneck, which bodes well for me, cause I get all your shit. All your plastic pumpkins you milked the welfare system to get are now MINE.
While you were out buying Xboxes, and large screen televisions I was out buying tools and seeds to make it through, while you were getting beer and smokes with your monthly allotment of other people’s money, I was investing in shovels, hoes, and rakes. While you were buying ding dongs and Twinkies with your food stamps, I was buying rice and beans in bulk, not the tastiest I’ll admit, but it’ll be enough calories to keep me going while you sit around and try to figure out where your next crack hit is going to come from.
Granted that is probably a wholly absurd notion above, however close to truth it may ultimately turn out to be. For the typical American their crack may turn out to be dancing with the has beens, or American idolatry, makes no difference.
To quote the late great George Carlin, “they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and do the paper work, but not smart enough to sit around the kitchen table at night and figure out just how badly they are being fucked”.
Critical thinking is not in their plans. Too bad it aint in yours either.
And in the event you are wondering about that quote at the beginning, it’s Latin. It translates “all hope abandon, ye who enter here”.
Now if you’ll kindly excuse me, I need to finish sorting my seeds, and sharpening my tools. I think I’ll make a junk run around the local yard sales to see what can be repurposed or saved out for trade when the shit really hits the fan.
20 July 2012
15 June 2012
No I'm Not Sorry...
“I’m sorry” ~ Modern colloquialism used when someone has done something society states they should feel remorse for.
And you are not going to hear it from me. I’m not sorry; above all else I seek the truth, no matter how inconvenient. I don’t deal well with feelings, in order for me to do so it would first require I have them, and being half Vulcan and all it’s kind of tough.
Fact is no one is coming to your rescue. Fact is if you have been unemployed for 2 or 3 years you really need to take a hard look in the mirror, because you obviously missed something when you showered.
Above all else you are solely responsible for you. No one else is, Mitt Romney is not going to save you, Barack Obama is not going to save you, and only person that can save you is you. The Federal Government can bloviate all it desires about the “little guy” fact is they don’t give two rat shits about you or the fact you’re going to lose your house, or that you lost your car, or that you lost your job. Really they don’t, they have much bigger fish to fry, and let’s face it you aren’t even bait to them. After all they just rushed to take care of all those Katrina victims…oh wait, yea that’s right they did too little too late.
When you realized you were going to be at the very least under employed for a longer period than you anticipated, first thing you should have done was sell the McMansion, even if you lost your precious deposit, after that you should have sold the other two cars you really don’t need and never drive, and found something you could afford, rather than try to hold onto the house you were in because “it was your dream home” well guess what buttercup your “dream” just turned into a nightmare.
After that it’s time to go through the garage and get rid of all that crap you don’t use anymore that’s been in a box or bin out there for the last 20 years.
Next you get rid of cable, dish network or whatever other idiot entertainment you have piped into your home. Then you sell the gaming systems you spent all you’re hard earned cash on for your overly spoiled offspring who have known nothing more than a much better life than the typical Ethiopian.
Ok now on day two, you get rid of all but one of the 14 cell phones you have for you and your progeny, cut that plan back to the bare minimum or get a prepaid plan and tell your phone carrier to kiss off, don’t worry about your credit, you don’t have that anymore, after all you stopped paying those the day you lost your job, sorry Charlie, but look at it this way, if you don’t have a phone the collection agencies can only send letters…and who actually gets their mail.
Fact is by severely slashing your outgo from the outset you stand a much better chance of a rapid recovery to something that resembles your old life; at least you’ll be able to afford a monthly trip to McDonald's and not have to order off the dollar menu.
You should reduce your outgo to rent, utilities, food. After that if there is enough to keep the car, insurance and gas then good on you, if not might I suggest you either find a place to work you can walk to or move somewhere they have public transportation to work.
Also start applying to those places you said “I’ll never work there”. Hey bunches of other people have, and they are still alive to tell you about it, your turn. Just keep the Ivy League education off your resume; actually don’t give a resume at all, it just makes you look desperate. And guess what, when you’re in that situation, there are jobs Americans WILL do, go get one of those, oh wait your probably overweight and no one wants to smell you sweaty fat carcass when they are working.
While I can have some variety of empathy for the genesis of your situation, I have no empathy or sympathy for its continuation at your own hand. Only one responsible for you is you.
Got news for you, the President of the United States can no more spur job growth than Madonna or lady gaga could be Mr. Rogers, it’s just not in their genetic makeup.
And you are not going to hear it from me. I’m not sorry; above all else I seek the truth, no matter how inconvenient. I don’t deal well with feelings, in order for me to do so it would first require I have them, and being half Vulcan and all it’s kind of tough.
Fact is no one is coming to your rescue. Fact is if you have been unemployed for 2 or 3 years you really need to take a hard look in the mirror, because you obviously missed something when you showered.
Above all else you are solely responsible for you. No one else is, Mitt Romney is not going to save you, Barack Obama is not going to save you, and only person that can save you is you. The Federal Government can bloviate all it desires about the “little guy” fact is they don’t give two rat shits about you or the fact you’re going to lose your house, or that you lost your car, or that you lost your job. Really they don’t, they have much bigger fish to fry, and let’s face it you aren’t even bait to them. After all they just rushed to take care of all those Katrina victims…oh wait, yea that’s right they did too little too late.
When you realized you were going to be at the very least under employed for a longer period than you anticipated, first thing you should have done was sell the McMansion, even if you lost your precious deposit, after that you should have sold the other two cars you really don’t need and never drive, and found something you could afford, rather than try to hold onto the house you were in because “it was your dream home” well guess what buttercup your “dream” just turned into a nightmare.
After that it’s time to go through the garage and get rid of all that crap you don’t use anymore that’s been in a box or bin out there for the last 20 years.
Next you get rid of cable, dish network or whatever other idiot entertainment you have piped into your home. Then you sell the gaming systems you spent all you’re hard earned cash on for your overly spoiled offspring who have known nothing more than a much better life than the typical Ethiopian.
Ok now on day two, you get rid of all but one of the 14 cell phones you have for you and your progeny, cut that plan back to the bare minimum or get a prepaid plan and tell your phone carrier to kiss off, don’t worry about your credit, you don’t have that anymore, after all you stopped paying those the day you lost your job, sorry Charlie, but look at it this way, if you don’t have a phone the collection agencies can only send letters…and who actually gets their mail.
Fact is by severely slashing your outgo from the outset you stand a much better chance of a rapid recovery to something that resembles your old life; at least you’ll be able to afford a monthly trip to McDonald's and not have to order off the dollar menu.
You should reduce your outgo to rent, utilities, food. After that if there is enough to keep the car, insurance and gas then good on you, if not might I suggest you either find a place to work you can walk to or move somewhere they have public transportation to work.
Also start applying to those places you said “I’ll never work there”. Hey bunches of other people have, and they are still alive to tell you about it, your turn. Just keep the Ivy League education off your resume; actually don’t give a resume at all, it just makes you look desperate. And guess what, when you’re in that situation, there are jobs Americans WILL do, go get one of those, oh wait your probably overweight and no one wants to smell you sweaty fat carcass when they are working.
While I can have some variety of empathy for the genesis of your situation, I have no empathy or sympathy for its continuation at your own hand. Only one responsible for you is you.
Got news for you, the President of the United States can no more spur job growth than Madonna or lady gaga could be Mr. Rogers, it’s just not in their genetic makeup.
24 January 2012
Darkness Falls
“ ”~Zen Quote
I’m that guy. You know the one down the street; my kids went to school with your kids, yeah that guy. The guy who you let your daughter babysit his kids when his wife and him went out for dinner every now and again, yeah him.
The guy who owned a nothing special American or Japanese car, the kind of car that just screamed mundane. I went to work every day, kids went to scouts and soccer, sometimes with yours, sometimes they played against each other, but always ended up eating pizza at the same place it seemed. You knew my name, I knew yours, but neither of us really knew the other.
What you did not know however, that I had a hunch about but never said anything, was the world was about to collapse around us, and there was very little either you or I could do to prevent it. The housing bubble popped, jobs were lost in the name of “profit”, you felt ok, after all you were still employed, but you remained worried even if you didn’t say anything.
To you I seemed aloof, not caring one way or the other, secretly you wondered what was hidden behind it all, the fact I never seemed phased by what was going on around me, even as neighbor after neighbor lost their jobs, and subsequently their homes to foreclosure. Signs now dot the street you live on, I live a block over in the “older” homes that predated your cracker box development of McMansions, “but I had a good job” you cry as the repo man comes to take your toys away for nonpayment.
Hard as you tried you were unable to fathom why, why I seemed so content, why you were being punished for simply doing what you were told, following that dream that everyone had. As you sit remembering the life you used to enjoy, comparing it to mine for some reason you still cannot elucidate correctly, that guy, yeah that guy, always seems to have food, and lights, and heat, try as you might you can’t keep but one on at a time, let’s face it rapidly diminishing unemployment checks are killing you as you try to salvage what’s left of your dream, even the food bank is tired of you, or so you think.
Here’s what you don’t know. I survived, some things are best left un-discussed at length, but suffice it to say that at one point in my life I was put into situations that most people until now would have no idea about. I lived all of this once before, not here, not on this soil but this, what’s happening now to us, here, at home. And while I cannot “un-see” what I witnessed, it did teach me a valuable lesson, one you did not learn, even though during our conversations I tried to tell you about it, about what was coming you thought “aah, he’s just a kook”, or one of those “survivalist” types you hear about on the news just looking to prostilyze to whoever will listen. But since you haven’t heard anything in your normal circle of prayer group friends, I must be some kook.
Now you just wonder, your wife has left and taken the kids, moved in with her mother, or so you were told, you honestly don’t know at this point. Some thugs just came and stole your 88 ford, the only car you had that was paid for and the repo man couldn’t lay a hand on. Your food ran out three days ago and while the mail still gets delivered to both of us, as we are the only ones left in the neighborhood, all they seem to bring you is notices of default, foreclosure notices and other sundry bad news.
You sit in an empty house, the majority of your possessions were sold long ago to try to keep the house from going back to the bank, powers been off for almost a week, gas has not been on for a couple months, you’re not quite sure, cable TV was the first to go, then your cell phone, then the house phone, and now the house.
The food bank has long since closed, you now wander the neighborhood looking for left behind food stuff, and you don’t even care if it may be spoiled or out of date. You’ve long since ransacked all the remaining homes looking for so much as a left behind can of tuna, eyeballing my place, but not certain you want to try to take anything from the kook, no telling what’s behind the fence you think to yourself.
You will however come take fruit that hangs over the fence on my trees, it’s on the outside of the fence you think to yourself, and if that guy wanted it he’d have trimmed the trees, at least that’s how you rationalize a behavior that eight months ago you would never have engaged in. Truth is, I left those there just for you, and those like you who failed to listen to those like me when they tried to tell you.
Pretty soon the fruit hanging over the fence runs out, and lacking another food source you decide to peer over the fence, when you do you almost pass out, there are all sorts of vegetables growing almost wild around the yard, no dog, at least not one you can see, you whistle, and wait, after what seems like an eternity you decide to see if the gate is open, it is, aah, your luck has turned, if only for today.
You never hear the shot as the bullet passes without effort through your pectoral muscle piercing your heart, as you lay there the last thought going through your mind is “he don’t live that way” the bullet came from the wrong direction.
That kook you ignored learned many a valuable lesson, the only defensible position is the one aren’t yet occupying, while you were out in the other part of the neighborhood in a desperate search for even the tiniest morsel of food, I took up residence 650 yards in the opposite direction, that dog you remembered came with me, the balcony on the master suite made a good vantage point to keep an eye on my place without being obvious, another lesson I learned, I made an educated guess as to how long you would last before you came to steal what I had planted. Had you attempted to knock on the door first, I’d have come out of hiding long enough to give you whatever you needed, I might have even asked you to come stay with me for a while.
I’ll bury you properly of course, since there hasn’t been law enforcement in this area since about 2 months after the crash “not enough people to worry about” they claimed, what they didn’t say was the guy who lived two doors down was a cop, who lost his job, then ate a round of his own accord…
I’m that guy. You know the one down the street; my kids went to school with your kids, yeah that guy. The guy who you let your daughter babysit his kids when his wife and him went out for dinner every now and again, yeah him.
The guy who owned a nothing special American or Japanese car, the kind of car that just screamed mundane. I went to work every day, kids went to scouts and soccer, sometimes with yours, sometimes they played against each other, but always ended up eating pizza at the same place it seemed. You knew my name, I knew yours, but neither of us really knew the other.
What you did not know however, that I had a hunch about but never said anything, was the world was about to collapse around us, and there was very little either you or I could do to prevent it. The housing bubble popped, jobs were lost in the name of “profit”, you felt ok, after all you were still employed, but you remained worried even if you didn’t say anything.
To you I seemed aloof, not caring one way or the other, secretly you wondered what was hidden behind it all, the fact I never seemed phased by what was going on around me, even as neighbor after neighbor lost their jobs, and subsequently their homes to foreclosure. Signs now dot the street you live on, I live a block over in the “older” homes that predated your cracker box development of McMansions, “but I had a good job” you cry as the repo man comes to take your toys away for nonpayment.
Hard as you tried you were unable to fathom why, why I seemed so content, why you were being punished for simply doing what you were told, following that dream that everyone had. As you sit remembering the life you used to enjoy, comparing it to mine for some reason you still cannot elucidate correctly, that guy, yeah that guy, always seems to have food, and lights, and heat, try as you might you can’t keep but one on at a time, let’s face it rapidly diminishing unemployment checks are killing you as you try to salvage what’s left of your dream, even the food bank is tired of you, or so you think.
Here’s what you don’t know. I survived, some things are best left un-discussed at length, but suffice it to say that at one point in my life I was put into situations that most people until now would have no idea about. I lived all of this once before, not here, not on this soil but this, what’s happening now to us, here, at home. And while I cannot “un-see” what I witnessed, it did teach me a valuable lesson, one you did not learn, even though during our conversations I tried to tell you about it, about what was coming you thought “aah, he’s just a kook”, or one of those “survivalist” types you hear about on the news just looking to prostilyze to whoever will listen. But since you haven’t heard anything in your normal circle of prayer group friends, I must be some kook.
Now you just wonder, your wife has left and taken the kids, moved in with her mother, or so you were told, you honestly don’t know at this point. Some thugs just came and stole your 88 ford, the only car you had that was paid for and the repo man couldn’t lay a hand on. Your food ran out three days ago and while the mail still gets delivered to both of us, as we are the only ones left in the neighborhood, all they seem to bring you is notices of default, foreclosure notices and other sundry bad news.
You sit in an empty house, the majority of your possessions were sold long ago to try to keep the house from going back to the bank, powers been off for almost a week, gas has not been on for a couple months, you’re not quite sure, cable TV was the first to go, then your cell phone, then the house phone, and now the house.
The food bank has long since closed, you now wander the neighborhood looking for left behind food stuff, and you don’t even care if it may be spoiled or out of date. You’ve long since ransacked all the remaining homes looking for so much as a left behind can of tuna, eyeballing my place, but not certain you want to try to take anything from the kook, no telling what’s behind the fence you think to yourself.
You will however come take fruit that hangs over the fence on my trees, it’s on the outside of the fence you think to yourself, and if that guy wanted it he’d have trimmed the trees, at least that’s how you rationalize a behavior that eight months ago you would never have engaged in. Truth is, I left those there just for you, and those like you who failed to listen to those like me when they tried to tell you.
Pretty soon the fruit hanging over the fence runs out, and lacking another food source you decide to peer over the fence, when you do you almost pass out, there are all sorts of vegetables growing almost wild around the yard, no dog, at least not one you can see, you whistle, and wait, after what seems like an eternity you decide to see if the gate is open, it is, aah, your luck has turned, if only for today.
You never hear the shot as the bullet passes without effort through your pectoral muscle piercing your heart, as you lay there the last thought going through your mind is “he don’t live that way” the bullet came from the wrong direction.
That kook you ignored learned many a valuable lesson, the only defensible position is the one aren’t yet occupying, while you were out in the other part of the neighborhood in a desperate search for even the tiniest morsel of food, I took up residence 650 yards in the opposite direction, that dog you remembered came with me, the balcony on the master suite made a good vantage point to keep an eye on my place without being obvious, another lesson I learned, I made an educated guess as to how long you would last before you came to steal what I had planted. Had you attempted to knock on the door first, I’d have come out of hiding long enough to give you whatever you needed, I might have even asked you to come stay with me for a while.
I’ll bury you properly of course, since there hasn’t been law enforcement in this area since about 2 months after the crash “not enough people to worry about” they claimed, what they didn’t say was the guy who lived two doors down was a cop, who lost his job, then ate a round of his own accord…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)