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November 2012

 

bullet November 30, 2012

I've now hit a full six months of job searching with nothing to show for it. A full half year and not a single call for an interview or even a call to any of my references (that I've been told about at least). I have received a few dozen e.mails telling me "Thanks but no thanks" (although more politely than that), and it's sad to think that I am glad with those that I at least knew someone had looked at my application and/or resume, but it's sad to be glad about a rejection letter.

I am more than willing to accept that perhaps I'm doing something wrong, but what? I'm completely at a loss. I've applied for all types of jobs from entry-level up and in a wide variety of industries, locally, nationally, even where I have references from friends who work there. I've tailor-made every cover letter, changed my resume when there were no responses; I've applied online, by mail, in person, and by phone, and I've posted my resume and job history in over a dozen online job sites, social media avenues, and job banks. The only thing I haven't done is go door to door asking if they have some work I could do.

This just gets more and more depressing by the day, and considering how I feel today it's hard to believe I'll feel even worse tomorrow, but that's been the way of things for weeks now as each day passes with no job and no news.

Posted at 11:27 AM
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bullet November 29, 2012

I have a severe headache and aching in what must be every muscle in every portion of my neck. Oh joy. Ain't this the life.

Posted at 9:24 AM
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bullet November 28, 2012

Clear skies but still cold today, and I simply have to rake up the leaves today. The second (and last) city leaf pickup is in a couple days, and rain is forecast to come in which would make it even more horrible to do after today. Hopefully it will go quickly and I won't get a cold or push my allergies too far - although that would be a first for all of the years I've been doing leaf clean-up. But it must be done. Wah.

Posted at 10:35 AM
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bullet November 27, 2012

While it is always best to believe in one’s self, a little help from others can be a great blessing.

- Iroh

Posted at 9:46 AM
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bullet November 26, 2012

Disappointment is the new normal.

Posted at 10:56 AM
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bullet November 25, 2012

Why are every one of the Dungeons & Dragons movies so incredibly horribly bad? And why, after watching each new D&D movie as it gets broadcast, do I keep going back for more when they are always so, so, so, so bad?

There is infinite possibility for great storytelling in D&D and hundreds of great stories already out there that have been made into game-play modules, novels, console and computer games, and graphic novels - why are none of these already-successful and appreciated titles made into movies? Particularly when all of the movies made so far have been so outrageously bad and so minimally watched.

What a sad waste of potential.

Posted at 10:11 AM
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bullet November 24, 2012

It's snowing.

It's not unprecedented for it to snow in late November, but on the rare occasions that it does it's just a brief, light snowfall that melts the moment it makes contact with anything: grass, pavement, rooftops, etc. Today, however, it has been snowing since just past dawn and while it has slowed down at points it hasn't ever altogether stopped ... and it's accumulating.

Just after 7 Am there was already appreciable accumulation on the rooftops. Now, after 10 AM, the pavement is wet from melting snow, the grass and ground have accumulation around the edges and dusting the surface, and the roofs have even more snow on them ... and this is with the sun now fully up, even if it is rather overcast.

For almost all of my life, until the past couple of years, you might expect two or three snows in December and only one of those sticking (not melting on contact) and even that snow melting off before the day ended. Last year we saw snow sticking and not melting in early December and had massive snow by the end of December. To have snow accumulating a full week before December even starts does not bode well for what might be to come. I hope this is an aberration, but as with all of my hopes it seems to be pointless.

Posted at 10:22 AM
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bullet November 23, 2012

Happy 49th Anniversary/Birthday, Doctor Who!

Posted at 9:47 AM
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bullet November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, although I, personally, am finding few things for which to be happy or thankful.

Of course it could be worse; it could be raining.

Posted at 11:22 AM
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bullet November 21, 2012

What can I say?

Posted at 10:09 AM
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bullet November 20, 2012

This day - like so many - has not gone very much like I had planned. Fortunately this time I've been able to make it work despite the problems - just later, as this Journal post makes fairly clear.

Posted at 4:44 PM
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bullet November 19, 2012

I slept last night! Yea!

Who would think that just sleeping would be such a wonderful thing, but after a night of getting no sleep no matter how I tried, last night was a true pleasure.

Posted at 10:17 AM
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bullet November 18, 2012

I haven't felt very great the past couple of days. Last night I went to bed early but simply couldn't get comfortable or relaxed enough to sleep, and once Midnight had passed I had a headache and was so uncomfortable I simply couldn't drift off.

I suppose at one point or another I did actually sleep, but for the most part I spent the whole night tossing and turning, thinking far too much and in a much too depressed fashion, and my headache simply got worse and worse. I finally got permanently out of bed at 7 AM (having been in and out of bed for the bathroom at various points through the night). I feel like crap because I'm very tired, my head still aches after migraine aspirin, and my eyes feel like they were gouged out.

I have insomnia so rarely for this to be an almost unique event, and while my thoughts last night were part of the problem, keeping my mind too focused, there may be more to it. It's possible I have some degree of a cold or flu. I've been achy for a couple of days, had the headache for a coupe days (although it is infinitely bad now), and I've had exceptional amounts of gas. It could be something I ate also, but I can't imagine what. All I know is I feel horrible.

These last few months I've grown more and more out of shape as I've had less and less activity, and that likely has played a part, too. Emotionally I've been miserable for a while now, but being physically miserable on top of that is terrible.

How bad must everything get?

Posted at 8:16 AM
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bullet November 17, 2012

We all collide.

Posted at 10:21 AM
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bullet November 16, 2012

Won't anybody just give me a call for a quick interview? Just something quick to make me believe that I'm not stuck in some episode of the Twilight Zone where every job application or submitted resume is grabbed by a mischievous gnome that takes them away to a paper shredder and uses the leavings to create a nest. I need some sense that someone is at least looking at my resume before hiding it away in a dusty old file cabinet.

Posted at 9:41 AM
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bullet November 15, 2012

Oh figgle-fump.

Posted at 10:20 AM
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bullet November 14, 2012

Does anyone say "Egads!" any more?

Posted at 10:27 AM
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bullet November 13, 2012

Another day ...

Posted at 10:01 AM
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bullet November 12, 2012

Empty.

Posted at 10:39 AM
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bullet November 11, 2012

Much like what I wrote two days ago, today I write about the wrong-headed ideas of the right/Republican/Conservative side of the political spectrum in regards to taxation. Believe me when I say that the whole system stinks and should be revised from the ground up to simplify it and streamline it - both for easier understanding of the system but also for more speedy processing which would allow for reductions in cost to the entire state and federal system of taxation and collection. More importantly, however, is the basic fact that - both historically and by any standard of economics - higher taxes for the wealthy are good for all of society, top, bottom, corporate, and individual. Today saw a great essay on Daily Kos that sums this up quite nicely. Enjoy:

Conservative Exceptionalism
byMark SumnerFollowforDaily Kos

"My corporations employ scores of people. They depend on me to do what I do so they can make a nice salary. If Barack Obama begins taxing me more than 50 percent, which is very possible, I don't know how much longer I'm going to do this. I like my job, but there comes a point when taxation becomes oppressive. Is the country really entitled to half a person's income?"–Bill O'Reilly

As we creep toward the oh-so-scary fiscal cliff and peek over the edge, expect far more whining of the sort O'Reilly delivered the last time there was some prospect of taxes increasing on the wealthiest Americans. Republicans have emphasized again and again that raising taxes on the wealthy will have a detrimental effect on the economy. That CEOs facing a tax increase will be less inclined to create new jobs. That the 1% will react to any attempt to collect more of their take by trimming back their companies, or even taking their cash to early retirement somewhere nice and sunny.

Bill's personal warning that if the president isn't nice to him, he might just take his ball and go home, is just one example of the idea at the heart of conservative economics—that the rest of us are utterly dependent on the wealthy; that people like O'Reilly aren't just making money for themselves, they're making money for everyone. That these are damn nice crumbs spilling off their table, and we'd better just shut up before they close down the feast.

There are enough problems with O'Reilly's particular statement that it's hard to take it seriously. No one is suggesting that the tax rate on the wealthiest individuals be moved anywhere near 50%. They probably should, as much higher rates were associated with some of the greatest growth and the most generally healthy economies in the nation's history. But they're not considering it. Instead, the end of the Bush tax cuts would move the tax rate (not surprisingly) back to where it was at the end of the Clinton administration, a time when the economy was strong, the budget was balanced, and the wealthiest paid up to 39.6% on income.

Secondly, O'Reilly's fame, like that of Limbaugh and Beck, came because he was at the center of a wave of talk radio consolidation. Stations that had long broadcast their own content found it much easier and cheaper to simply pipe in the feed from a syndicated broadcast. Easier and cheaper because it took far fewer people. Fewer engineers. Fewer producers. Fewer people working as local on-air talent. Far from providing an employment boom, O'Reilly's wealth was generated by a kind of broadcast black hole, sucking away the jobs of hundreds, even thousands, of local station employees and lining big Bill's pockets with a cut out of each salary saved. It was that ubiquitous right-wing exposure that allowed O'Reilly to make the jump to full time TV talking head where he could continue the same schtick. O'Reilly and his ilk are the Walmarts of broadcast punditry, reducing diversity and eliminating jobs as they funnel customers to a mass-produced product.

But the biggest problem with O'Reilly's threat–and the threat of every conservative who ever longed to go Galt–is that they forgot one thing. A kind of surprising thing. They forgot how capitalism works.

Markets are moved by a little thing called supply and demand. If the market supports yet another talk show, then someone will probably air the show. And that show will hire construction workers and cameramen, caterers and chauffeurs. If the demand isn't there, the show won't be there. Neither will the jobs.

It's not always that simple. There are breakthroughs that create a market where it never existed before (see Pad, i), and there are industries where other constraints prevent a good synch between production and demand, but over the long term these exceptions tend to be exceptionally rare and very short lived. Behaving as if the employment levels are shaped by generosity and caprice rather than a pragmatic reaction to market demands, shows how badly the "party of business" is disconnected from the facts of business. For O'Reilly's threat to hold, you would have to believe he is uniquely capable of filling up air time, which Bill O himself clearly does believe, but which simply isn't true. Conservative exceptionalism, the kind that elevates the wealthy beyond the rules of the market, is not supported by real world data. Any executive adding and removing employees on a whim is unlikely to stay in business very long.

The same market rules apply whenever someone hints that, because of increasing personal taxes, he might not choose to create a new job. That's fine. He doesn't have to. Because if the demand is there, someone will. A company that refuses to expand in the face of rising demand will be supplanted by one that will. In the real world, jobs are not created or destroyed out of spite. They are created because they fill a need to create something, whether it's objects or information, that the market demands.

Even if you limit the scope of the argument to activity within a single company, the "taxes leads to less jobs" equation doesn't hold true. In fact, there's a counter narrative that has turned out to be a better fit with the data. When taxes are low on the wealthy, then they can directly pocket much more of the money coming in. That means there's less incentive to invest more in their company because they are able to meet their own desires by grabbing a higher portion of a smaller pie. When taxes go up, a wealthy business owner wanting to keep the same level of income has only one choice–grow the pie.

Instead of reducing jobs, higher taxes can actually stimulate the creation of jobs. They don't prevent the accumulation of great wealth, they just expand the base that's needed to support the narrow top of the pyramid. Without any direct "redistribution" in the form of the government taking dollars from one person and giving them to another, higher taxes still act to reduce the gap between rich and poor by providing incentive for real growth rather than simple concentration of wealth.

So as the clouds of Taxmageddon gather on the horizon, don't worry. Increasing taxes are sure to reduce the deficit and slow the widening gap in incomes. They won't reduce jobs. If they do end up cutting into Bill O's salary, or even convincing him to put down his microphone, just take that as a bonus.

Posted at 9:21 AM
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bullet November 10, 2012

Happy birthday wishes to my old friend Dan and to my favorite niece Christa! Have a great day and an incredible next year of your lives!

Posted at 10:31 AM
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bullet November 9, 2012

The right/Republican/Conservative part of the political spectrum is screaming loudly that they are indignant and they'll either leave the country or declare war on everyone who doesn't see things exactly their way. This sort of childish tantrum is not exactly unexpected but ridiculous nonetheless. For myself I would say, "Please! Leave the country! Go ANYWHERE else!", and I would add to those who wish to wage war, "Go ahead - a new civil war or a revolution is exactly what this country needs to redistribute equality and balance, for as Thomas Jefferson said:"

God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion.[1] The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independent 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure.

Rachael Maddow feels differently, and while I feel justified in thumbing my nose at the sore losers in this country, Rachael makes a valid point that would indeed be a better solution. The problem, however, is that the calm rationality that this sort of request expects has been absent from the right/Republican/Conservative movement for the last couple of decades, and I fear such sensibility and patriotism will never be seen from that part of the political spectrum for years to come.

Posted at 9:44 AM
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bullet November 8, 2012

The yard work is done (for now - there will be more leaves to clear away after the trees have dropped their last), and now I can spend the next couple of days or so trying to make sure my slight symptoms don't turn into a full-blown cold. I also have to buy groceries and go to the bank and do laundry and a bunch of other largely unimportant things, and of course I'll search for jobs with vigor only to be rewarded with a full round of disappointment. Such a grand life.

Posted at 9:41 AM
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bullet November 7, 2012

I completed much of the hated yard work yesterday - but not all (Damn!). Today should hopefully see the last of it. Hopefully it will be warmer than yesterday, but so far it appears it's even colder. Yea.

Posted at 9:34 AM
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bullet November 6, 2012

Doom. Doom! DOOOM!!!!!

Election day today. There is no good outcome.

Posted at 9:57 AM
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bullet November 5, 2012

I am sick of life and living, but like everything else what I think and feel doesn't matter the least bit.

Posted at 10:17 AM
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bullet November 4, 2012

I've known a few people in my life who were big Ayn Rand fans - I was even friends with a couple - but I've always thought Randian philosophy was not only wrong-headed but quite unrealistic and selfishly evil. This recent commentary fits perfectly with my views.

Go, Galt, Go
by Mark Sumner for Daily Kos

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”

— John Rogers

Have you ever wondered what it looks like? Galt's Gulch. That fabled refuge of the wealthy and talented, home to those who have slipped the surly bonds of mediocrity and passed through the magic door into a place where they can associate only with their equals? The land of beautiful people unafraid to sneer at the little folks in between bouts of rough sex.
I think I know. I've seen it, or at least, gotten a pretty good preview. So have you.

In Ayn Rand's giant-ego fantasy, the wealthy decide to emulate a kid who thinks bringing the ball entitles him to be not just a player, but king of the court. Upset that their inestimable genius has brought them only money, power and fame, they turn their private jets away from the ungrateful wretches and hie off to the new industrialized Eden. We only get a small glimpse of the rainy, rusty world they leave behind, but it's enough to let you know that the comic opera bumblers left outside the magic valley won't be able to cope the first time they're confronted by something as complex as a burned out lightbulb. Meanwhile, back in the Gulch, it's sunshine and lollipops (and rough sex) all the way down.

Why is there still such a focus on a book populated by characters with square jaws but paper thin personalities who spend their time kicking over the most shoddily-assembled straw men ever to flop onto a page? What's so important about Rand's talky tomes that someone would throw away $20 million on a film with worse dialog than Mega-Python vs. Gatoroid (yes, that's a real film) then turn around and do it again?

It's important because these Republicans, the ones who have captured the party of Lincoln and reshaped it into the party of Limbaugh, are the children of Rand. Sure, they may invoke the name of Reagan as the root of their movement, but the followers of Reagan are exactly the kind of Republicans now being chased out of offices both state and federal. The ones too weak to regard every instance of selflessness as a sin, too ignorant to know that any effort toward community is only a few letters away from communism. This isn't Reagan's party. It's not even the party of George Bush. It's the Grand Objectivist Party, and it's proud of it.

So it's not surprising that more than one conservative has talked of "going Galt" in the last four years, and even more have suggested that should President Obama be re-elected, they'll be looking for an exit (ignoring the fact that most of the places they plan on escaping to are far more progressive than the place they're leaving in a funk). Even more oddly, they really seem to believe that this is a threat that should concern us; that the response should be something other than "yes, please and let me hold the door."

They believe this because Rand's work sells the world as a place scraped out by a few hands. In her philosophy, not only is being generous a sin and kindness a crime, but talent and determination are rare traits allocated only to those who are at the top of the heap. Dagny Taggart, having proved her worth by being born the right parents so that she can be made vice president of the family railroad, is infinitely better than Eddie Willers who works his heart out for her but has the misfortune of being born to someone who has only worked on the railroad for generations. So Dagny is better because... she's better, that's why. She's not just a hard-working, dedicated employee completely loyal to his company. She's a job creator.

The new Randians Republicans don't just take this classist fantasy into the real world, they've built an entire political movement around it. In fact, in many ways they've gone beyond even Rand. Under their system, the only measure of accomplishment is wealth. A corporate raider is given more credit as a job creator than someone who started the business the raider usurped. There's no difference between net worth and simple worth.

They assume that only a few people carry the spark of ambition, that progress is vested in only these few hands, and that if they all slip away to Canada (or a hidden canyon in Colorado) the rest of us will be left as helpless as turtles on our backs. The modern Republican never pauses to think that there are other limits on the system. They don't consider that the difference between heroic take-this-world-and-shove-it Dagny and stay-and-work-his-ass-off Eddie isn't ability, it's opportunity.

That's really what this election comes down to: those who are trying to pry the door of opportunity open wide vs. those who are trying to weld it in place. Those who think there's worth in every person vs. those who think there's worth in every Cayman Islands account. That's been true for a long time, of course. Making sure that women have opportunities, that minorities have opportunities, that people whose personal lives don't match a 50s sitcoms have opportunities–Democrats have been fighting that battle against Republicans for years. The difference now is simply one of degree.

Ayn Rand was wrong. The titans of industry stir the cup for a moment, but ultimately they all do leave, mostly by taking the same unglamorous exit that we all must file through eventually. Their fire goes out of the world—but the world does not go dark.

It doesn't go dark because the bounding factors on the system are not ambition and certainly not the willingness to work hard. We're blessed with those in abundance. The limiting factor has always been opportunity. It still is. Reducing the tax rate on the rich has played a large role in reducing opportunity. Reversing that trend will help bring it back. So will providing working people benefits that keep them from being bound to employers who dictate far more than the numbers on their paycheck.

Want to know what the wonderland of Galt's Gulch would look like? It could look like any interchange along interstate 70. You know the place. Massive big box stores merging cheap clothes and cheaper groceries, a pair of interchangeable hardware giants, two nearly identical office supply stores, two nearly identical steak houses, office supply stories, pet stores, along with a cadre of gas stations and an attendant flock of fast food joints. That's what the "Promethean Spark" of capitalism has brought us in the twenty-first century: endless rows of stores with all the soul of a styrofoam peanut and the warmth of a packing container.

But the truth is, Galt's Gulch really would be a paradise of sorts. All natural. Because in Galt's Gulch, all the people who can build, feed, and clothe the select would be excluded. Nobody to build all those stores, much less stock the shelves. Things there would get very quiet, very fast. Galt's Gulch? More like Galt's Graveyard.

Posted at 10:38 AM
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bullet November 3, 2012

I can see blue sky through the clouds today - amazing. Of course I'm fighting the beginnings of a cold that surely started when I was working outside on the yard, and I have more I need to do outside still, even though it's still cold out. So I'm destined to have a cold I think. Blah.

Posted at 10:35 AM
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bullet November 2, 2012

Incredibly cold today but while quite overcast it is not raining for a change. No rain in the morning for the first time in about two weeks is a nice change, although it's hard to imagine it will last with such a full cover of grey clouds everywhere.

It's a good thing I raked leaves yesterday between rain showers. Even if the leaves were wet and heavy I at least got them ready for the city leaf pick-up - although now that I've gotten it all set out, the city will probably be late or altogether skip picking up the leaves, as has been the case many times in years past.

Posted at 10:35 AM
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bullet November 1, 2012

It's definitely November: damp, cool air; lots of leaves everywhere (seriously - everywhere); a sense of everyone feeling they don't have enough time for everything they have to do; a morning that's far too dark to be normal yet the reluctance to change the clocks back when the time comes; piles of leaves at the curbs that the city never seems to pick up on their schedule; stores selling cut-priced Halloween candy in displays next to Christmas cards, trees, and ornaments; and the lane barriers that guide/force people into the proper direction for Cedar Point are gone because the amusement park closed after Halloween night.

It's a lot of stuff, but it's what's always expected.

Posted at 1:29 PM

 


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Journal, by Paul Cales, © November 2012