Staten Island Douchebag who predicted End of the World on May 21st calmly awaits his Mother Ship.
Notice that with less than 24-hours left until Armageddon, Dickhead still found time to give a newspaper interview. You would think a guy about to move into the Pearly-Gated Community would have better things to do.
What's stranger? This dispshit went to the same High School that I did.
Tomorrow, when we're all still here, expect to hear the following explanation as to why God didn't pull the plug when The Signs were all pointing to it:
We must have misinterpreted the prophecy. You know, the ways of God are mysterious and we mortals simply cannot fathom his ways. Perhaps The Almighty meant for this to be a dry-run, a drill, if you will, a warning to us all that we should repent before it's too late. If I brought just one person to repent and closer to God with my little misunderstanding, then it was worth it -- the media attention, the panic, the unwarranted trepidation and feelings of impending doom, the fear-mongering and needless anxiety, the seventy or eighty suicides which will soon be linked to my prediction -- and justified in the Eyes of God.
I'm betting one of the following things happens after this 'prediction' turns out to be false:
1. Mr. Fitzpatrick goes back to being the same crazy dickhead who will take the word of a radio televangelist on all matters Armageddon. The fact that the prediction turned out to be false having absolutely no effect, being unable to penetrate both his thick skull and the thick layer of batshit-insane just below it. His 'Street Cred' gets raised amongst the Rapture-and-God-Hates-Fags Crowd, and he gets fantastically rich -- flogging his books -- because if there's anything a good Evangelical Nutjob wants to do more than suck God's cock, it's give gobs of money away to people who bullshit them and excuse it with an assertion that "I did it for Jesus..."
2. Mr. Fitzpatrick loses his faith and realizes that he's pissed $140k away. He seeks out the 'Reverend' Camping and beats his fucking brains out with a baseball bat. Publicly humiliated and ridiculed, he will find himself a nice quiet place to lay down and drop half a bottle of Percocets before wrapping a Hefty bag around his head, securing it firmly with a roll of duct tape. Just in case he manages to fuck that up, too, he intends to stock the quiet place with about 50 gallons of unleaded regular and light a stogie with a blowtorch before he finally nods off.
I'll see you all at 6 pm, tomorrow, assuming the earthquake, the rain of fire, the exploding gays and all the Angels trumpeting conspire to keep me from my 'puter
Showing posts with label Earthquake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Earthquake. Show all posts
Friday, May 20, 2011
Sunday, May 08, 2011
The World is Coming to An End: Film at 11...
I was talking to my friend Mike the other day, and he told me about something that was so uproariously stupid that I feel compelled to write about it, and share it with you all. It's what we do here at the Asylum; point out the stupidity of others and laugh our asses off over it.
Mike, it turns out, has been listening to Evangelical Christian radio. Not because he fears for his immortal soul, or because he believes in an Invisible Man in the Sky Who's All-Knowing and All-Powerful, yet somehow managed to create violent, irrational human beings, the platypus, the camel, and ABBA, but because he finds it so funny.
He was telling me about one of these radio Evangelists (you will not get his name here, because this is a seriously dangerous douchebag) who has told his retarded audience that the World Will End by May 31, 2011. I guess if you have any hope of being Raptured to the Right Hand of the Father, you'd best start packing now. Anyways, it appears as if people call this idiot for last-minute advice on all manner of things; people ask if they should take new jobs (the answer: No, dispshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), should they still go ahead with that June wedding they had planned (answer: No dipshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), and, naturally, How Do I Save Myself When the World Explodes in A Couple of Weeks? (answer: Go pray a lot...and send me money, Dipshit).
Now, apart from the obvious stupidity of people seeking life-altering guidance from someone who makes his living telling them they'll all be dead unless they pray real hard, the real stupidity lies in the premise that when the World Explodes that anyone is going to be 'saved'.
Mankind, in case no one ever told you, is ultimately doomed. Thousands, maybe millions even, of other life forms that have inhabited this planet have all gone extinct at some point in history,and there is no reason not to think that we too, in our turn, will also go the way of the Wooly Mammoth, the Triceratops, or the Dodo Bird. One of the consequences of Life is the Possibility of Extinction. How we ultimately meet our final fate, I think, matters not: the planet could be hit by a comet or asteroid, the Earth's crust might burst asunder under the strain of volcanism or tectonic forces, some minor flu will evolve into a super-strain that kills us all, we'll extinguish life with nuclear war, or our Sun will go nova and bake this tiny planet in an instant. There is little that we can do to stop these things. Our science and our intelligence only takes us so far, and short of Men making the great leap across the Universe to other worlds, we're going to be extinct, and little to no trace of us will be left.
If it makes you feel better to believe that your soul, spirit, ghost, essence, chakra, ki, whatever, will persist after death, then by all means, be my guest. Far be it from me to tell you that I have all the answers, or that you shouldn't believe what you want to believe, but it seems that nowadays everyone is obsessed with the End of Everything.
It's gotten so bad that the History Channel now produces a show called Life After People, which is all about what happens to the world after mankind disappears, which is pretty stupid if you think about it: the History Channel is running a show about a time when History --as we perceive it --comes to an End. Go figure. Then again, it's probably better -- and more topical -- than Ice Road Truckers, or Swamp People. It's certainly more interesting.
Apocalyptic Christianity has become a big business, and is mostly a scam, in my opinion. It's purpose is to frighten people into the fold, and in the process, pry their cash from them. I'm certain when Pastor Asshole- on-the-Radio's prediction fails to come true on June 1st, he'll still be on the air, if only because people are truly dopey, and he has a ready-made excuse for why what he said will happen didn't; God will destroy the World Only When God Sees Fit To, and he cannot be prodded into it before he's ready to by Man, or, he was really just trying to get people to repent and make their peace with God before God really does Her thing with his Chicken Little routine. Or my personal favorite, the one that's supposed to end all debate or stop all questions; God Works in Mysterious Ways. No matter; the Ends justify the Means, especially if the Ends were several million bucks in donations and commercial fees and a higher public profile for Pastor Dickhead, and a few more fannies in the pews. I'm sure that will comfort the people who called off their weddings, or didn't take that lucrative job offer on his advice, to no end.
What people tend to forget is that the Bible was written by people -- and it might not be the best thing to take literally -- because as is often the case, people make mistakes, they misinterpret things, they let their biases creep onto the page, or they have agendas that they're pushing. Lately, there's been much talk about 'Bible Codes' in which it is said that there are coded messages hidden within the text of the biblical passages that can foretell future events, but I believe this about as much as I believe in my Lucky Astrology Mood Watch. The Bible is not the Word of God (beings that do not exist do not leave Words behind); it is a history --and a heavily-biased one, at that -- of the Hebrews and early Christians which seeks to provide a divine justification for what they have done. Mostly that was to kill and disposses Caananites and Phillestines and all the rest, because God 'promised' the land to them. You would think that an All-Powerful, All-Knowing God would just promise them an uninhabited place to live in, seeing as She (if there is a God, it must be a She) had just told them five minutes ago in the desert that Thou Shall Not Kill, Steal, Lie or Covet Your Neighbor's Goods (wouldn't that mean his land, too?), and all that.
The New Testament, as we know it today, is very much a political document; it was supposed to authenticate and legitimize Christianity, and thus, give it's great champion, Constantine, the divine cover he needed to explain his otherwise treasonous activities, i.e. leading a civil war and usurping the power of the Emperor of Rome. It had to be compiled and rewritten in such a way as to ensure that Christ could always be seen as the ultimate expression of ancient Hebrew prohpecy concerning a Messiah. The fact that the Christ myth as we know it seems an awful lot like the Roman adaptation and worship of the Persian god Mithras is conveniently forgotten... or mostly unknown.
If you're going to depend upon an ancient document, full of 'prophecy' as your guide to the End of theWorld, you could at least pick an ancient document that hasn't been (mis-)translated four billion times from seven thousand languages, and which has not been subjected to the requirements of political and cultural propaganda, I would think. The Bible as predictive tool is useless, in my opinion, because it has been so-obviously manipulated.
Another Apocalyptic theme that has gained much popular attention these days is the Mayan Prophecy, in which it is said that the ancient Mayans of Mexico have pinpointed the exact date of the End of the World, supposedly sometime in December of 2012. Which would really suck if a Republican managed to beat Barack Odumbass in November. The 'proof' that theMayan Prophecy will come true is that the Mayan Calendar comes to a complete halt in December 2012. Now, there could be a number of reasons why this should be so that don't necesarily mean Apocalypse; perhaps the astrologers/mathemeticians engaged in the project saw no need to go any further. Perhaps they were tired of making calculations. Maybe, there's another Mayan Calendar that picks up where the last one left off that we haven't found yet?
All I know is that people who suposedly had the smarts and the capabilities to accurately predict the future in such fashion should, logically, have been able to foresee their own demise; you would think they would have predicted the arrival of the Spanish...and smallpox. You have to wonder just how accurate and efficacious their predictive powers were if they couldn't even use them to save themselves.
Then there's the Nostradamus Idiots who constantly tell us that their hero has predicted every major event in modern history. The problem with Nostradamus, however, is that we never seem to hear of his 'predictions' until after something has happened. If Nostradamus was of any use, you figure someone would be able to tell you about it beforehand. So, we're told that Nostradamus 'predicted' the rise of Hitler (a claim long since disproven as Nazi propganada), the assassination of JFK, and 9/11, but always the announcement that Nostradamus 'predicted' this, that or the other comes only after the fact. Some prophet. Nostradamus is about as useful as a broken condom, or those Astrologers in your local newspaper. The Champions of Nostradamus will tell you this is because if they told people about one of these traumatic events beforehand, no one would believe them, but this is pure horseshit; I can say to you today that one day someone will have monkeys fly out of their rectum, and it's quite possible, given the vageries of time and history, that it might actually happen. Will I be celebrated as visionary prophet when that day comes? I rather doubt it.
This, incidentally, is one of the problems with some modern scientific methods, too, like the Theory of Evolution; given a time scale of billions of years, and pure random chance, literally anything is possible. It doesn't make it true.
Still, I find it fascinating to watch people knowingly worry themselves stupid about something they have absolutely no control over. If the world comes to an End (as it surely must) just what, if anything, do you, the individual, expect to be able to do about it? Will you, personally, deflect that asteroid headed our way? Will you be able to keep the Earth's magnetic poles from shifting? Can you identify and find a cure for that Super-Virus that's out there waiting to kill us all? Probably not. And your government will probably be unable to do much of anything, either, and certainly not your Church; religions usually get people to do things which only benefit the religion, as an institution.
As for me, I keep a six-pack of Heineken's in the fridge, so that when the fateful day finally arrives, I can sit on the front porch with my Holocaust Heinies, and watch the fireworks, secure in the knowledge that when it's all over, one way or another, I will at least not have to pay another goddamned credit card bill, or scratch an income tax check, or sit through another Barack Obama use-lots-of-words-to-say-absolutely-nothing speech.
The Apocalypse, you see, isn't all bad news.
Mike, it turns out, has been listening to Evangelical Christian radio. Not because he fears for his immortal soul, or because he believes in an Invisible Man in the Sky Who's All-Knowing and All-Powerful, yet somehow managed to create violent, irrational human beings, the platypus, the camel, and ABBA, but because he finds it so funny.
He was telling me about one of these radio Evangelists (you will not get his name here, because this is a seriously dangerous douchebag) who has told his retarded audience that the World Will End by May 31, 2011. I guess if you have any hope of being Raptured to the Right Hand of the Father, you'd best start packing now. Anyways, it appears as if people call this idiot for last-minute advice on all manner of things; people ask if they should take new jobs (the answer: No, dispshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), should they still go ahead with that June wedding they had planned (answer: No dipshit, because the World will explode in a couple of weeks), and, naturally, How Do I Save Myself When the World Explodes in A Couple of Weeks? (answer: Go pray a lot...and send me money, Dipshit).
Now, apart from the obvious stupidity of people seeking life-altering guidance from someone who makes his living telling them they'll all be dead unless they pray real hard, the real stupidity lies in the premise that when the World Explodes that anyone is going to be 'saved'.
Mankind, in case no one ever told you, is ultimately doomed. Thousands, maybe millions even, of other life forms that have inhabited this planet have all gone extinct at some point in history,and there is no reason not to think that we too, in our turn, will also go the way of the Wooly Mammoth, the Triceratops, or the Dodo Bird. One of the consequences of Life is the Possibility of Extinction. How we ultimately meet our final fate, I think, matters not: the planet could be hit by a comet or asteroid, the Earth's crust might burst asunder under the strain of volcanism or tectonic forces, some minor flu will evolve into a super-strain that kills us all, we'll extinguish life with nuclear war, or our Sun will go nova and bake this tiny planet in an instant. There is little that we can do to stop these things. Our science and our intelligence only takes us so far, and short of Men making the great leap across the Universe to other worlds, we're going to be extinct, and little to no trace of us will be left.
If it makes you feel better to believe that your soul, spirit, ghost, essence, chakra, ki, whatever, will persist after death, then by all means, be my guest. Far be it from me to tell you that I have all the answers, or that you shouldn't believe what you want to believe, but it seems that nowadays everyone is obsessed with the End of Everything.
It's gotten so bad that the History Channel now produces a show called Life After People, which is all about what happens to the world after mankind disappears, which is pretty stupid if you think about it: the History Channel is running a show about a time when History --as we perceive it --comes to an End. Go figure. Then again, it's probably better -- and more topical -- than Ice Road Truckers, or Swamp People. It's certainly more interesting.
Apocalyptic Christianity has become a big business, and is mostly a scam, in my opinion. It's purpose is to frighten people into the fold, and in the process, pry their cash from them. I'm certain when Pastor Asshole- on-the-Radio's prediction fails to come true on June 1st, he'll still be on the air, if only because people are truly dopey, and he has a ready-made excuse for why what he said will happen didn't; God will destroy the World Only When God Sees Fit To, and he cannot be prodded into it before he's ready to by Man, or, he was really just trying to get people to repent and make their peace with God before God really does Her thing with his Chicken Little routine. Or my personal favorite, the one that's supposed to end all debate or stop all questions; God Works in Mysterious Ways. No matter; the Ends justify the Means, especially if the Ends were several million bucks in donations and commercial fees and a higher public profile for Pastor Dickhead, and a few more fannies in the pews. I'm sure that will comfort the people who called off their weddings, or didn't take that lucrative job offer on his advice, to no end.
What people tend to forget is that the Bible was written by people -- and it might not be the best thing to take literally -- because as is often the case, people make mistakes, they misinterpret things, they let their biases creep onto the page, or they have agendas that they're pushing. Lately, there's been much talk about 'Bible Codes' in which it is said that there are coded messages hidden within the text of the biblical passages that can foretell future events, but I believe this about as much as I believe in my Lucky Astrology Mood Watch. The Bible is not the Word of God (beings that do not exist do not leave Words behind); it is a history --and a heavily-biased one, at that -- of the Hebrews and early Christians which seeks to provide a divine justification for what they have done. Mostly that was to kill and disposses Caananites and Phillestines and all the rest, because God 'promised' the land to them. You would think that an All-Powerful, All-Knowing God would just promise them an uninhabited place to live in, seeing as She (if there is a God, it must be a She) had just told them five minutes ago in the desert that Thou Shall Not Kill, Steal, Lie or Covet Your Neighbor's Goods (wouldn't that mean his land, too?), and all that.
The New Testament, as we know it today, is very much a political document; it was supposed to authenticate and legitimize Christianity, and thus, give it's great champion, Constantine, the divine cover he needed to explain his otherwise treasonous activities, i.e. leading a civil war and usurping the power of the Emperor of Rome. It had to be compiled and rewritten in such a way as to ensure that Christ could always be seen as the ultimate expression of ancient Hebrew prohpecy concerning a Messiah. The fact that the Christ myth as we know it seems an awful lot like the Roman adaptation and worship of the Persian god Mithras is conveniently forgotten... or mostly unknown.
If you're going to depend upon an ancient document, full of 'prophecy' as your guide to the End of theWorld, you could at least pick an ancient document that hasn't been (mis-)translated four billion times from seven thousand languages, and which has not been subjected to the requirements of political and cultural propaganda, I would think. The Bible as predictive tool is useless, in my opinion, because it has been so-obviously manipulated.
Another Apocalyptic theme that has gained much popular attention these days is the Mayan Prophecy, in which it is said that the ancient Mayans of Mexico have pinpointed the exact date of the End of the World, supposedly sometime in December of 2012. Which would really suck if a Republican managed to beat Barack Odumbass in November. The 'proof' that theMayan Prophecy will come true is that the Mayan Calendar comes to a complete halt in December 2012. Now, there could be a number of reasons why this should be so that don't necesarily mean Apocalypse; perhaps the astrologers/mathemeticians engaged in the project saw no need to go any further. Perhaps they were tired of making calculations. Maybe, there's another Mayan Calendar that picks up where the last one left off that we haven't found yet?
All I know is that people who suposedly had the smarts and the capabilities to accurately predict the future in such fashion should, logically, have been able to foresee their own demise; you would think they would have predicted the arrival of the Spanish...and smallpox. You have to wonder just how accurate and efficacious their predictive powers were if they couldn't even use them to save themselves.
Then there's the Nostradamus Idiots who constantly tell us that their hero has predicted every major event in modern history. The problem with Nostradamus, however, is that we never seem to hear of his 'predictions' until after something has happened. If Nostradamus was of any use, you figure someone would be able to tell you about it beforehand. So, we're told that Nostradamus 'predicted' the rise of Hitler (a claim long since disproven as Nazi propganada), the assassination of JFK, and 9/11, but always the announcement that Nostradamus 'predicted' this, that or the other comes only after the fact. Some prophet. Nostradamus is about as useful as a broken condom, or those Astrologers in your local newspaper. The Champions of Nostradamus will tell you this is because if they told people about one of these traumatic events beforehand, no one would believe them, but this is pure horseshit; I can say to you today that one day someone will have monkeys fly out of their rectum, and it's quite possible, given the vageries of time and history, that it might actually happen. Will I be celebrated as visionary prophet when that day comes? I rather doubt it.
This, incidentally, is one of the problems with some modern scientific methods, too, like the Theory of Evolution; given a time scale of billions of years, and pure random chance, literally anything is possible. It doesn't make it true.
Still, I find it fascinating to watch people knowingly worry themselves stupid about something they have absolutely no control over. If the world comes to an End (as it surely must) just what, if anything, do you, the individual, expect to be able to do about it? Will you, personally, deflect that asteroid headed our way? Will you be able to keep the Earth's magnetic poles from shifting? Can you identify and find a cure for that Super-Virus that's out there waiting to kill us all? Probably not. And your government will probably be unable to do much of anything, either, and certainly not your Church; religions usually get people to do things which only benefit the religion, as an institution.
As for me, I keep a six-pack of Heineken's in the fridge, so that when the fateful day finally arrives, I can sit on the front porch with my Holocaust Heinies, and watch the fireworks, secure in the knowledge that when it's all over, one way or another, I will at least not have to pay another goddamned credit card bill, or scratch an income tax check, or sit through another Barack Obama use-lots-of-words-to-say-absolutely-nothing speech.
The Apocalypse, you see, isn't all bad news.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Sorry, Japan...
Okay, okay, I couldn't help myself. I went a little overboard in the previous post and made light of the situation in Japan. Now, even I have to admit that it was gratuitous, in extremely poor taste, and not exactly funny unless you're off your meds.
I (Pearl) harbor no ill-will towards the Japanese people. In fact...wait for it...some of my best friends were Japanese (oh no you didn't!). Well, that's not exactly true. I don't have all that many Japanese friends, just many Japanese acquaintances.
A long time ago, a young Lunatic was hired to work for one of the largest corporations on Planet Earth, a Japanese brokerage company which at that time was involved in one of those quixotic projects which the cash-rich Japanese of the early1990's eagerly pursued. Basically, we were experimenting with the second-generation of automated securities trading systems back then, and the reason why the company had crossed the vast Pacific and the American Hinterland to arrive upon the sunny shores of Staten Island, was to set up the Nomura Research Institute wherein this experimentation would take place. Your's Truly -- all of about 22 or 23 at the time, and full of piss-and-vinegar -- was hired to run those experimental systems.
The purpose of spending (wasting, really) a shitload of money to build a showpiece data center in Staten Island was an abject lesson in how some Japanese of the time thought. The Powers That Were had discovered that American securities firms were engaged in about 90% of the electronic trading on Japanese stock exchanges, but that Japanese companies did almost none on American exchanges. This was a national insult that could not go unavenged! Nomura was going to spend like a drunken sailor on shore leave to erase this national stain of disgrace, and at the same time show those big-nosed, smelly gaijin (barbarians) that the Japanese Way was the bestest way EVAH!
No matter how much it cost, nor how paltry the results.
Now, the story of exactly HOW I got hired is both funny, and all-too-inherently Japanese.
See, I'm an Italian boy. Specifically, Sicilian on my father's side, and Neapolitan and Calabrese on my mother's. I have a last name which sounds Japanese, if only because it ends with an 'O'. So, when all these Japanese dudes looking for technicians to fill their brand-spankin' new computer research facility saw my resume, they were intrigued by my surname...
...And had assumed that I, naturally, must have been Japanese.
So, I was basically hired, sight unseen.
When I walked into that building for the first time for what I was told was a mere formality (a for-show interview) imagine the shock and dismay when it was discovered that, alas, I was not Japanese at all. I had already been told that I had the job, and now to take it back would have been a major problem; the Japanese don't like to make mistakes (who does?) and making a boner like this one involves a great deal of shame and embarrassment (Japanese businessmen have killed themselves for lesser offenses), and besides, this was the 90's, and Japan was supposed to be taking over the world with it's battalions of highly-disciplined-and-sharp-as-tacks super-duper managerial robots. 60Minutes and the New York Times said so, you see.
So now I couldn't be un-hired without somoene having to disembowel himself, and so I spent the next 18 months working like a galley slave with a bunch of Japanese managers just waiting for the moment when I finally stepped on the weasel so that they could fire my Italian ass and erase the memory of their mind-boggingly-stupid error. Eventually, because I was young, stupid, and not at all mature (I think I'm still two of those things) I gave them one; I have a terrible habit of not caring about time. I would be late for my own funeral, you know. I think I was pretty much late for work on a daily basis in those days, and it was only the quality of my work that kept me there that long. Just as soon as the lateness thing got to be too much, they sent me to the unemployment line.
A month or two later, I found myself working for another Japanese company which was right across the street from the old one, and I stayed there for four years before the stupidity of the whole thing got to be too much. These were the days of outsourcing and cost-management-as-corporate-lifestyle, and so when my department -- which had started out with 10 people -- was reduced to one --Me -- and I was working 70 hours a week, it was time to move on.
But I did meet an awful lot of Japanese in those days, and found the majority of them to be pretty good folks, if strange. That weird factor was mostly due to cultural differences, but once you got used to it, it wasn't that bad. I made some pretty good friends during that time, like the guy who was so in love with American cars that when he shipped back to Japan, he had his vintage Thunderbird and Cougar shipped with him. He used to send us pictures of himself and a bevvy of Japanese cuties in those cars -- which sat in his garage (at enormous expense) because of high gasoline prices, every few months. Thats how he'd get laid: Hey Ladies,I have a set of classic American cars...Wanna ride with the top down?
The Japanese men were strange birds. In the office, they were all work and didn't know you from a hole in the wall. After hours, they were stalwart drinking and softball buddies, and wanted you to introduce them to American girls, about whom they spoke in the crudest of ways (but who am I to judge? I probably talked the same way about the Japanese girls). The Japanese ladies were everything you'd expect; quiet, shy, demure...until they had spent a year stateside in the example and tutelage of the American women, who ruined them.
Ah, I remember a couple of Japanese lasses quite fondly before they discovered Oprah...
Anyways, I found that many of the myths we had been told about the Japanese were simply not true. The first myth to get busted was the stereotype of the hard-working dude who would spend 20 hours a day in the office. From what I saw, those who did only did so because they were waiting for phone calls from Tokyo. They didn't have any real work to do (that was left to the Roundeyes). I remember one man (a senior executive) who's only task seemed to be to sit silently at his desk and chain-smoke (yes, you could smoke indoors in an office in those days!), and thumb through his impressive collection of Japanese porn.
The second lost Maxim of Japanese Invincibility in Business was that the Japanese were smarter than we Americans, which is why they were about to conquer the planet economically. This was patently untrue. I did meet a number of highly-intelligent people, but the majority were not the best and the brightest examples. Once you figured out the Japanese style of business, it didn't take long to figure out why:
If you're a manager in Japan, and you're told that you must send one of your people to America for three-to-five years, you don't send your right-hand man. You grab Fuck-Up San, and give him a raise, a new, bullshit title, and a plane ticket to the Land of Ten Thousand Golf Courses. This made everyone happy: the manager kept his best people, the company had a warm body who could speak Japanese to watch things and send faxes in the U.S., and Fuck-Up San was as happy as a pig in shit, driving his Cadillac, eating steak, and playing all the golf and watching all the Playboy Channel he could manage.
But I did form some really good friendships with a number of my Japanese colleagues during that time. Most of them were really just ordinary people once you got them out of the office, and they could party like there was no tomorrow. The shame of it all is that I would have stayed at that job, probably, if it hadn't had been for the American Manager placed over me; the douchebag that had the audacity to tell me that, even though I had worked 600+ hours of overtime that last year, he couldn't give me a raise without breaking his budget, and then when the company had announced that it was paying it's first-ever bonus (because it had made it's first-ever profit), tried to squash my bonus because I had handed in my two-weeks notice just three days before.
Yeah,I never figured that one out, either.
The President of the Company wanted to thank me for my efforts (that 600+ hours had resulted in a very happy customer, and a huge contract for the company), and when he had found out that not only was I not aware that I would be paid a bonus, but that my American boss had conspired to keep it from me, he went ballistic. So far as he was concerned, I had earned that money, even if I was leaving. It was only fair, he said.
And that is my most vivid memory of the Japanese that I have: It was fair. Even when I was fired from my first Jap Job, it was, in retrospect, only fair. Years later I would come to remember those days rather fondly, not just because of the people I had met and things I learned, but because I finally came to understand the Japanese Way; everyone got a square deal, provided they earned it. That's a far cry from the way American business is often conducted.
So now we come to the point of this little reminiscence. I used to laugh at some Japanese customs and ways because, as a Westerner, they didn't make any sense to me. It's only years later with images of a country ravaged by earthquake, tsunami and the threat of nuclear meltdown that I began to think back to those days when I worked like a sleddog, and had a man whom I had seen every day for four years, but had never spoken to, tell me in broken Engrish that his greatest concern was that his corporation lived up to it's responsibility to ensure that I was treated fairly and with respect at the end of it all.
I've collected all the spare clothing in the house this morning, especially two winter coats that I no longer wear, and which are still in good condition. The whole thing is being bundled up and delivered to the Red Cross this afternoon. There's folks in Japan who have lost everything, and if the earthquakes and tsunami and runaway reactors weren't bad enough, there's snow on the ground, and a great many people have lost everything they own. They need blankets and warm clothes, and I have closets-full.
And if there's any justice in this world, one of those coats will go to the man who gave me respect and courtesy -- at least someone very much like him --in his hour of need. I return the dignity he gave me with a small gift of a warm coat, a couple of sweaters, and some old-but-servicable shoes. It's not much in the grand scheme of things, sure, but I think at this time it would mean more to someone who needs it than all the money in the world.
Please, if you can manage it, head on over to the Red Cross and make a donation for Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami relief. They may be weird to us, but the Japanese are a good, kind and decent people who could use our help, but who will never ask for it. Don't be a douche; stick a crowbar in your wallet or empty your attic of anything useful, and send it to them.
I (Pearl) harbor no ill-will towards the Japanese people. In fact...wait for it...some of my best friends were Japanese (oh no you didn't!). Well, that's not exactly true. I don't have all that many Japanese friends, just many Japanese acquaintances.
A long time ago, a young Lunatic was hired to work for one of the largest corporations on Planet Earth, a Japanese brokerage company which at that time was involved in one of those quixotic projects which the cash-rich Japanese of the early1990's eagerly pursued. Basically, we were experimenting with the second-generation of automated securities trading systems back then, and the reason why the company had crossed the vast Pacific and the American Hinterland to arrive upon the sunny shores of Staten Island, was to set up the Nomura Research Institute wherein this experimentation would take place. Your's Truly -- all of about 22 or 23 at the time, and full of piss-and-vinegar -- was hired to run those experimental systems.
The purpose of spending (wasting, really) a shitload of money to build a showpiece data center in Staten Island was an abject lesson in how some Japanese of the time thought. The Powers That Were had discovered that American securities firms were engaged in about 90% of the electronic trading on Japanese stock exchanges, but that Japanese companies did almost none on American exchanges. This was a national insult that could not go unavenged! Nomura was going to spend like a drunken sailor on shore leave to erase this national stain of disgrace, and at the same time show those big-nosed, smelly gaijin (barbarians) that the Japanese Way was the bestest way EVAH!
No matter how much it cost, nor how paltry the results.
Now, the story of exactly HOW I got hired is both funny, and all-too-inherently Japanese.
See, I'm an Italian boy. Specifically, Sicilian on my father's side, and Neapolitan and Calabrese on my mother's. I have a last name which sounds Japanese, if only because it ends with an 'O'. So, when all these Japanese dudes looking for technicians to fill their brand-spankin' new computer research facility saw my resume, they were intrigued by my surname...
...And had assumed that I, naturally, must have been Japanese.
So, I was basically hired, sight unseen.
When I walked into that building for the first time for what I was told was a mere formality (a for-show interview) imagine the shock and dismay when it was discovered that, alas, I was not Japanese at all. I had already been told that I had the job, and now to take it back would have been a major problem; the Japanese don't like to make mistakes (who does?) and making a boner like this one involves a great deal of shame and embarrassment (Japanese businessmen have killed themselves for lesser offenses), and besides, this was the 90's, and Japan was supposed to be taking over the world with it's battalions of highly-disciplined-and-sharp-as-tacks super-duper managerial robots. 60Minutes and the New York Times said so, you see.
So now I couldn't be un-hired without somoene having to disembowel himself, and so I spent the next 18 months working like a galley slave with a bunch of Japanese managers just waiting for the moment when I finally stepped on the weasel so that they could fire my Italian ass and erase the memory of their mind-boggingly-stupid error. Eventually, because I was young, stupid, and not at all mature (I think I'm still two of those things) I gave them one; I have a terrible habit of not caring about time. I would be late for my own funeral, you know. I think I was pretty much late for work on a daily basis in those days, and it was only the quality of my work that kept me there that long. Just as soon as the lateness thing got to be too much, they sent me to the unemployment line.
A month or two later, I found myself working for another Japanese company which was right across the street from the old one, and I stayed there for four years before the stupidity of the whole thing got to be too much. These were the days of outsourcing and cost-management-as-corporate-lifestyle, and so when my department -- which had started out with 10 people -- was reduced to one --Me -- and I was working 70 hours a week, it was time to move on.
But I did meet an awful lot of Japanese in those days, and found the majority of them to be pretty good folks, if strange. That weird factor was mostly due to cultural differences, but once you got used to it, it wasn't that bad. I made some pretty good friends during that time, like the guy who was so in love with American cars that when he shipped back to Japan, he had his vintage Thunderbird and Cougar shipped with him. He used to send us pictures of himself and a bevvy of Japanese cuties in those cars -- which sat in his garage (at enormous expense) because of high gasoline prices, every few months. Thats how he'd get laid: Hey Ladies,I have a set of classic American cars...Wanna ride with the top down?
The Japanese men were strange birds. In the office, they were all work and didn't know you from a hole in the wall. After hours, they were stalwart drinking and softball buddies, and wanted you to introduce them to American girls, about whom they spoke in the crudest of ways (but who am I to judge? I probably talked the same way about the Japanese girls). The Japanese ladies were everything you'd expect; quiet, shy, demure...until they had spent a year stateside in the example and tutelage of the American women, who ruined them.
Ah, I remember a couple of Japanese lasses quite fondly before they discovered Oprah...
Anyways, I found that many of the myths we had been told about the Japanese were simply not true. The first myth to get busted was the stereotype of the hard-working dude who would spend 20 hours a day in the office. From what I saw, those who did only did so because they were waiting for phone calls from Tokyo. They didn't have any real work to do (that was left to the Roundeyes). I remember one man (a senior executive) who's only task seemed to be to sit silently at his desk and chain-smoke (yes, you could smoke indoors in an office in those days!), and thumb through his impressive collection of Japanese porn.
The second lost Maxim of Japanese Invincibility in Business was that the Japanese were smarter than we Americans, which is why they were about to conquer the planet economically. This was patently untrue. I did meet a number of highly-intelligent people, but the majority were not the best and the brightest examples. Once you figured out the Japanese style of business, it didn't take long to figure out why:
If you're a manager in Japan, and you're told that you must send one of your people to America for three-to-five years, you don't send your right-hand man. You grab Fuck-Up San, and give him a raise, a new, bullshit title, and a plane ticket to the Land of Ten Thousand Golf Courses. This made everyone happy: the manager kept his best people, the company had a warm body who could speak Japanese to watch things and send faxes in the U.S., and Fuck-Up San was as happy as a pig in shit, driving his Cadillac, eating steak, and playing all the golf and watching all the Playboy Channel he could manage.
But I did form some really good friendships with a number of my Japanese colleagues during that time. Most of them were really just ordinary people once you got them out of the office, and they could party like there was no tomorrow. The shame of it all is that I would have stayed at that job, probably, if it hadn't had been for the American Manager placed over me; the douchebag that had the audacity to tell me that, even though I had worked 600+ hours of overtime that last year, he couldn't give me a raise without breaking his budget, and then when the company had announced that it was paying it's first-ever bonus (because it had made it's first-ever profit), tried to squash my bonus because I had handed in my two-weeks notice just three days before.
Yeah,I never figured that one out, either.
The President of the Company wanted to thank me for my efforts (that 600+ hours had resulted in a very happy customer, and a huge contract for the company), and when he had found out that not only was I not aware that I would be paid a bonus, but that my American boss had conspired to keep it from me, he went ballistic. So far as he was concerned, I had earned that money, even if I was leaving. It was only fair, he said.
And that is my most vivid memory of the Japanese that I have: It was fair. Even when I was fired from my first Jap Job, it was, in retrospect, only fair. Years later I would come to remember those days rather fondly, not just because of the people I had met and things I learned, but because I finally came to understand the Japanese Way; everyone got a square deal, provided they earned it. That's a far cry from the way American business is often conducted.
So now we come to the point of this little reminiscence. I used to laugh at some Japanese customs and ways because, as a Westerner, they didn't make any sense to me. It's only years later with images of a country ravaged by earthquake, tsunami and the threat of nuclear meltdown that I began to think back to those days when I worked like a sleddog, and had a man whom I had seen every day for four years, but had never spoken to, tell me in broken Engrish that his greatest concern was that his corporation lived up to it's responsibility to ensure that I was treated fairly and with respect at the end of it all.
I've collected all the spare clothing in the house this morning, especially two winter coats that I no longer wear, and which are still in good condition. The whole thing is being bundled up and delivered to the Red Cross this afternoon. There's folks in Japan who have lost everything, and if the earthquakes and tsunami and runaway reactors weren't bad enough, there's snow on the ground, and a great many people have lost everything they own. They need blankets and warm clothes, and I have closets-full.
And if there's any justice in this world, one of those coats will go to the man who gave me respect and courtesy -- at least someone very much like him --in his hour of need. I return the dignity he gave me with a small gift of a warm coat, a couple of sweaters, and some old-but-servicable shoes. It's not much in the grand scheme of things, sure, but I think at this time it would mean more to someone who needs it than all the money in the world.
Please, if you can manage it, head on over to the Red Cross and make a donation for Japanese Earthquake/Tsunami relief. They may be weird to us, but the Japanese are a good, kind and decent people who could use our help, but who will never ask for it. Don't be a douche; stick a crowbar in your wallet or empty your attic of anything useful, and send it to them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)