January 2008 archive

Nothing fancy this morning. Now that I have whined like an addled lost cow about my stressful week and let’s face it I didn’t lose my job or go hungry or face great adversity or torment so in the end what is there to really complain about?

Here are a few random pictures I took around home and the neighborhood…

I don’t know why Sawyer kitty looks so grouchy in this picture. Maybe it is because I wouldn’t let him eat these guys…

Arno gives a big yawn, and he clowns.

So…. I had a crazy week at work. One night I had to tell the &^%$#@ doctors how to do their job when they decided to have a collective brain blank when a patient got sick. These people are smarter than I am when I started basically telling them what to do they said,”Good idea”, and then when we got the patient to ICU I had to answer all the questions for the big dog doctor that they should have. In the movies doctors are all cool and heroic and the nurses flutter around them like silly butterflies hoping to be noticed while they are applying lipstick

Last night, I had a complicated social situation that involved an intervention with volatile people who for a strange reason liked me. Follow up included several phone calls and emails and no doubt a meeting next week.

Then I had to read my evaluation. Usually we hand in a self review first. Because we were so short staffed this year I did a terrible job of keeping up my accomplishment diary so one of the two big critiques I got in my evaluation was that I handed in a terrible self review. I was also told to work more closely with my manager to solve ongoing conflicts but was told I deserve “partial credit” for improving morale. I won’t challenge number two even though my manager tends to ignore many of my concerns until they blow and then act like I did not keep her informed. She also has a different way of dealing with personal conflicts. I like to meet with each person separately and then bring them in together with myself and or my manager for a group discussion. My manager just brings them in together without talking to them separately and people have a tendency to feel ambushed. I like my director and I am alright with my manager and I don’t plan to change my style to look more harmonious. The net result of this is an excellent evaluation instead of an outstanding one. Only one co-worker got an outstanding evaluation last year and she is the director’s pet. I actually like her and work well with her. She has the ear of the director so I often tell her things I hope will float back to the director when I think being completely open and honest might damage my ability to pay the mortgage. Ah, the price of being a slave.

Working for a living is highly over rated even though I enjoy the challenges my job brings.

Hey. That felt good. Time for tea.

An observation leads to a question.

In the wake of New Hampshire’s Ed and Elaine Brown affair have government agencies given tax breaks, incentives, grants, etc for the purpose of promoting a new tax resolution specialist “industry”.

The commercials coming out of 96.9 WTKK radio in Boston are reaching an unprecendented saturation type plateau.  Taxmasters, call 1-800-IRSProblems, etc.  

I mean really, one could very plausibly assign it to a co-intel-pro Pentagon operation.  Ed and Elaine Brown did get great press coverage even with corporate media’s blacklisting policies.  Should one not want thousands of Ed and Elaine wannabes one would seek to perhaps compromise just a tad.  “We will “negotiate” a “settlement” for “pennies on the dollar”, ya, well, I’m hearing that far too often for it to be mere co-incidence.

In this “post 911 world”, this “land of the free”, where corporations can hold you personally responsible for damage to THEIR company, I think it’s a perfectly rational question. They certainly don’t want millions of other people telling the government to show me the law this April.

It also indicates my level of contempt.

So how’s things in your neck of the woods?  Don’t you think perhaps maybe the demographics would indicate a concentration in the New England area?  A pro-active approach to diverting tax resisters?  If I was part of our Stasi type government it’s what I would do.

Thanks to Iowa, we have the big three having thinned the Democratic field somewhat.  Dodd and Biden, both honorable public servants, have dropped out.  Mike Gravel, my second choice, hangs in there though he’s been thouroughly marginalized.  Bill Richardson will be on the stage tomorrow with the big three, and to be honest, he belongs with them.  From my perspective, electing HRC, BO, JE or BR will pretty much get us the same thing.  The differences among themselves are window dressing, and the differences they will bring to the White House are window dressing.  Yes, better than the Repugs, but window dressing none the less.

This is a partial crosspost from the ePluribus Media article The Devil Quotes Scripture: The GOP’s Damning Hypocrisy.

“Gaeity” is a term denoting joyful exuberance or merriment, but in the hands of today’s Republican party, I would not be surprised to find it reinterpreted to a bastion of misleading and negative connotations almost as confusing as the definition and use of the word  gay.  The “Party of Moral clarity” has demonized the use of any word, term or action that could even hint at homosexuality in order to key into the knee-jerk prejudice of millions of “Christian” voters everywhere.  (Note that I put quotes around “Christian” — I can’t duly insult those who actually practice the teachings attributed to Christ, when I’m only targeting those who simply claim to.) …