A Tale of Two Kitties...

I have to do it this way, Kiddies, because otherwise Libtards don't understand. I've discovered recently that a Libtard manages to just barely grasp a simple notion if you present it graphically, and if you can include cat pictures, they love it even more.

Now, I know that people are not the same as cats, but bear with me, because I have to explain a thing or two about these animals before I make my argument. Perhaps after this little explanation, the analogy will start to make sense. The cat on the Left  (below) is a pampered housecat. The one on the Right  (below) is a feral cat, and yes, my use of Left and Right does have a specific point, and that will become crystal clear as I get to the end of this little screed.

The pictures of the two felines below are a metaphor for American Life:

Mark Steyn Repeats Everything I've Said for the Last Ten Years...

...but says it better than I can.

The Athenian Legacy...

A very good article on the nature of Freedom, which I found quite interesting. It's a bit thick to read, but well worth the effort. If more people in this country were aware of this sort of thing, we'd all be in much better shape, and would probably have never elected the string of incompetent-but-well-meaning doofuses from Bush I to the Present (very-temporary) Inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Emperor Barack Hussein Obama I.

I don't agree with everything the author had to say, but he made enough interesting points for me to recommend that you invest your time in reading it.

If you don't, I will hunt you down and kill you in your sleep.

And Speaking of Jobseeking...

Can a process become any more monumentally fucked up?

It used to be a straightforward thing; you needed a job, someone had one to offer, you got together and hammered out the details, if you were qualified. There were firms that facilitated the process, so-called Personnel Agencies, and their Job Placement Specialists, who were plugged in to your industry, and knew who to talk to. They had personal relationships with hiring managers and Human Resources folk, and that went a very long way towards making the whole thing run that much more smoothly.

Nowadays, your so-called Placement Specialist is little more than a just-barely-intelligent-enough-to-remember-to-breathe moron who seemingly does little more than occupy a seat and occasionally answer a telephone. They certainly are not knowledgeable about the industry they're supposedly screening candidates for, and their great asset seems to be the ability to scan a resume for acronyms they remember seeing on the request form they got from the employer. They do not know the differences/similarities between one software package and another, one system and another, and most give the impression that they still wouldn't know if you pumped the data into them via high-pressure, 24-hour-enema.

All of them will tell you the same thing when you call them on their shocking lack of knowledge:

"I'm not required to know that...I only have to make sure that what's on your resume is the same as what the customer is asking for on this form..."

And it seems the majority of that vital task isn't even done by them personally. Instead, the information on your resume is entered into a database, and a computer searches for matches, and then spits you out. So, not only don;t the Placement Specialists know the difference between, say, CA-7 and OPCA (or what they are used for!) -- neither does the computer.

Which brings us to the buzzword. I hate buzzwords. Buzzwords are for people who can't remember a concept in entire sentences. The buzzword for this situation is "networking".

In other words, you'd better be in touch with people in your industry, and not just the hiring managers and Human Resource types, and the Job Placement Specialists, but the people on the floor doing the actual work. Because you have a better chance of landing a job by talking to someone who knows someone else then you do by the tried and traditional means of retaining the services of a Job Placement Specialist.

Which begs the question:

"How do the Job Placement Specialists continue to stay in business?"

Anyways, here's some of the really ridiculously-stupid questions I have been asked in the last week by so-called professionals (and the answers I would have really loved to have give, but had to think twice about):

Q: Would you be willing to relocate?

A: If there's a paycheck, then yes. Why do you think I'm here?

Q: Would you be willing to relocate to Nebraska?

A: If there's a paycheck, then yes. Why do you think I'm here, and besides, didn't I check the box that read "Would you be willing to relocate?" on the form? What kind of a douche are you?

Q: Do you have any hobbies that might make you a more attractive candidate?

A: Am I applying for a job, or a new best friend? I'm absolutely certain that no one will hire me because of my rabid passion for coin collecting, interest in tropical fish or near-religious hockey fanaticism. Why, when I was a boss, I know I certainly spent many a sleepless night concerned about what my worker bees did in their off hours....not! Think we can work around that one, Sparky?

Q: Do you belong to any organizations that might make you a more attractive candidate, or perhaps, make it more difficult to place you?

A:I didn't go to college, so I wasn't in any dopey fraternities, I'm not a Freemason, Knight Templar, member of the Raccoon Lodge, or Mafioso. I was kicked out of the Klan several years ago because I dated an Asian girl (she could cook and liked doing laundry!), and i let my Nazi Party membership expire. I'm not even a registered republican, so I guess that means I can't be on the Board of Directors, huh? And besides, didn't I write "none" on the form? Can't you read, Skippy? Isn't this rather irrelevant?

The Online world is not much better; I have used Monster. com and TheLadders.com (I will provide a link for neither, because they're sorta-kinda useless) and a few other online services, and I get offers fairly regularly...from people on the other side of the continent -- which makes interviewing somewhat problematic. Besides, very few of the postings on these services tend to be long-term jobs (in my industry, anyways), and most are short-term contracts -- which are lucrative, but guess what?; since I don't have a degree, I usually don't qualify for them anyways! The computer (there's that damned computer again!) spit my resume into so-and-so's in-box, and they reflexively contacted me.

Even though I could easily do the job they have in mind, they can't get me past HR because of the degree requirement.

*Sigh* Maybe I'll just sell my body...

Please Excuse My Absence...

But, I've had to look for another job these last few days, and there hasn't been much time for writing much of anything.

Yeah, that green energy gig, which appeared so promising at first, has, indeed, failed to live up to expectations. Especially in the paycheck department, so I've quit. It's a pain in the ass to make a sale and then not get paid for it for three months, and that's assuming that the other hurdles in the way of finalizing the sale are overcome relatively smoothly (the customer doesn't avail himself of the customary 'think it over' period and cancel, the original utility company gets off the stick and processes the paperwork relatively quickly, your compensation request doesn't get momentarily lost on it's way through the ,ysterious labyrinth of Canadian management practices, the customer finally gets his first bill).

It's one thing to make a sale that nets you a $1,200 commission (that's good!), it's another altogether to have to wait three months for that money (that's bad!) when you have bills due today.

So, I wish my colleagues the best of luck (many of them were also beginning to get a little peeved about the paycheck situation, too), but I need something that pays on a steadier basis. Besides, I'm not a salesman (I have morals and scruples), and I was starting to hear the sales pitch in my sleep, having repeated it 150 times a day.

The really bad part? I can't collect unemployment, since I was supposed to pay that tax myself (as an independant contractor), which is hard ot do when you don't get a friggin' paycheck for three months at a time!

You Grow Like Your Dog...

Here's some really spiffy writing by Peter Hitchens, addressing the real political purpose of unchecked immigration, the dangers of marijuana, and the ersatz patriotism of a certain American President of a certain political stripe.

It's almost axiomatic that whatever happens in Britain eventually happens in America. I mean, they had them Cavaliers and Roundheads and Oliver Cromwell, and then we got George Washington , Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon. Now that the cat is out of the bag vis-a-vis the real purpose of immigration from the perspective of the lefties, I wonder what will happen in this country when that secret is revealed (most likely on the Internet, because you know the MSM won't touch these issues with a 10' pole).

Update: Sorry, initially identified the author as Christiopher Hitchens. I've corrected it to give Peter Hitchens his proper due. My apologies.

Bad Economy? The 'Problem' of Immigration?

The three or four people who read this regularly will recall, fondly (I hope), the little blurb I recently posted about my new job: selling energy door-to-door.

Today, as I was making my appointed rounds, I found myself becoming slowly aware of two truly stunning concepts.

The first is that despite what some people say, the economy is actually chugging along quite nicely, thank you. How do I know? When people can sell electricity door-to-door -- and there's a market for it -- and customers love it (and they're buying it by the megawatt, incidentally), something good economically must be happening. Someone must be using all of this electricity for more than just running a laptop or recharging a cellphone, after all. And since I speak almost exclusively to small business owners, one might assume that small business is indeed thriving. It may not be roaring along at the level it was, say, five years ago, but it's surviving this economic downturn rather well. The 'For Lease' signs notwithstanding, the strong are, indeed, surviving and growing.

Not only that, but it's not unusual for me to find similar businesses located within short walking distance to one another engaged in friendly competition, both buying new energy plans and newly-generated, green energy (which is a bit more expensive). Both businessmen may be locked in the death struggle that is capitalism in tooth and claw, but both would seem to be doing rather well. I've seen it every day this week; on the same thoroughfare, it's not unusual to see five laundromats, four nail salons, three liquor stores, and a variety of other outlets selling everything from knit goods to produce all within a few blocks of one another.

I should think the 'bad economy' is a misnomer. Business, apparently is humming along...for everyone but Wall Street, of course. This economic 'crisis' is not one of actual commerce, to judge from the activity I've seen, but rather because some fool with a Harvard MBA can't balance his checkbook without a massive dose of low-interest credit. The Hungarian ex-pat with a small bar-and-grill is happy as a clam. Small business is alive and well, at least in the areas of Staten Island and Brooklyn I've been in recently.

The second thing I've noticed is the business owners, themselves. Every day I speak to Russians, Arabs, Indians, Chinese, Koreans, Mexicans, Czechs, Poles, Nigerians and Salvadorans. And where am I speaking to them? In their offices. The ones tucked into little corners in the back of the bodega, small restaurant or coffee house. They own the businesses I'm supplying.

The Little Guy is suffering? Tell these people. They're working. Well. They may not be Donald Trump-wealthy, but they ain't collecting welfare, either.

The American Dream is lost? Let me introduce you to the man who told me how he worked as a non-union carpenter and janitor for 12 years, and saved his pennies, so that he could open his own cleaning company...with 24 employees. How about I introduce you to the Korean woman, missing a finger on one hand, who somehow managed to parlay the veritable fortune she must have made cutting hair into her own beauty salon. You'd be shocked to learn that not only do many of these people own one going enterprise, but they often own multiple concerns. I spoke to a Polish man just yesterday who owns...wait for it...five tanning salons. And he started out by driving a cab and knowing very little English.

You'd be flabbergasted to learn that these people not only (usually) own their businesses free and clear --most don't believe in 'credit' -- but that they very often employ 10 or more people, and they spend an average of $60,000 year on energy bills. Let me repeat that: $60,000 a year on energy (electricity and natural gas) alone. That's before you factor in that they're renting in New York City -- one of the most expensive commercial real estate markets in the solar system, and paying the New York State minimum wage of $7.75 -- which is higher than the federal rate.

How did this happen? I thought all these immigrants were downtrodden victims of destructive capitalism, American racism, and a society that abuses them and takes advantage of them. Apparently no one told them. If someone did tell them, they didn't listen. They have grabbed capitalism by the horns. They seem to have emerged none the worse for wear for having been chambermaids, busboys, landscapers, pizza makers and street vendors.

I have a new-found respect for these people. They certainly have shamed me. I had thought I was industrious. They leave me in the dust.

I used to think that because I wore a tie to work and rubbed elbows with a higher-class (supposedly) of individual, that I was somehow better than these people. Not in the sense that I'm a superior human being, but that I was of a higher social class, and was destined to be much wealthier than they could imagine. My eyes have been opened; these people are better human beings than I am. I have never considered myself lazy, but these folks would work circles around me. They can think circles around me; one gentlemen divided 19,268 kilowatt hours (the amount of juice he used) by the total price he paid for it ($768.00), to four decimal points, in his head to arrive at the average cost of a kilowatt hour before I had finished tapping the numbers into my calculator.

These people are sharp. Very sharp. And for the record, no --- he was not Asian.

Anyone who says that immigration (we're talking legal, not illegal, immigration) is bad had better come meet some of these folks. Anyone who says the great box stores are pushing the 'Mom and Pop' out of business ought to see how these people operate.

They'd perhaps shut their pieholes about 'American' this-that-and-the-other, if they did. I know I will. I've just realized that in many ways, these immigrants are more quintessentially American than I am, the native son.

It's an experience I have enjoyed, and have learned from. I suggest that everyone take the opportunity, whenever they can, to avail themselves of the experience. It's both fascinating and humbling.