Union For A Day

UNIONS! We love them and hate them! Me?  I understand their purpose but question their usefulness for the most part.  I am able to speak from experience on this matter as I was a union member for exactly ONE day...

The Story: I was hired as a grocery bagger at the Kroger supermarket in town and my starting wage was a hot  $3.45 per hour which was ten-cents higher than the minimum wage of $3.35. How did I manage to successfully wrangle such a deal? The Union, Man!  See, when I first started the local union rep explained to me how they had negotiated a "premium" starting wage for new employees and since they went through all this trouble to do this for me that they were going to deduct a mere TEN-CENTS-PER-HOUR in union dues in order to continue fighting for me, their fellow brother.
What?
So the union fought for an extra dime per hour for starting employees just so they could pay the union dues? That can't be right, can it?  You bet your ass that's what they did, and after my first shitty day on that job I was thankfully contacted by a local restaurant(non-union) which offered to pay me better hourly wages and tips. I called up the Kroger store and told them the situation and they told me that I would have to meet wth the union rep(again) to sign a paper which would formally release me from the union. Yeah, right.

With that in mind, dear reader, I leave you with this classic union commercial from the 1980's. Enjoy.

 

I Know These Things!

Just some of the amazing things that I know...
  *five people that I work with have Bachelor Degrees but make under $10/hour.
   *three different guys who have either a Playstation or an Xbox but don't have a bed and sleep on the floor.
    *a Puerto Rican woman who believed that Puerto Rico is a State in the Union.
     *a woman who bet me $10 that Oklahoma is located on the Gulf of Mexico.        
        *a guy who thinks that the Holocaust is fictional.
        *a guy that only eats beans and bananas(not the same guy, surprisingly).
         *a couple who lost over $150,000 to Bernie Madoff.
          *a guy that played the video game "Halo3" for five days straight and lost his job. 
            *five lawyers that I personally know are currently unemployed.             
                *a guy that accidentally shot himself  in the head
              

                     

I Hate Minivans(and the people who drive them)!!!

GAHHHH!!! I hate the minivan and the bitchy, middle-aged women that drive them. I've had four altercations with this unholy union and the common denominator is a pushy, hurried broad driving her cargo box with reckless abandon. Two were talking on their cell phones at the time. Today's incident involved one of these spawn driving into a crosswalk that just happened to have myself and three kids walking in it. As soon as she realized that there was an obstacle in her precious way she threw up her hands in disgust and then squeezed her van in between myself and the kids. I pointed at the light to let her know that WE had the right-of-way and not her and she promptly gave me "The Finger".
   And because it's never a good idea to possibly incriminate yourself in writing, I'll just let that story end there for safety's sake.  Later on I did a search for "against minivans" and came up with a surprising amount of sites who cater to my feelings. This is my personal favorite is this People Against Mini Vans or P.A.M.V and here is the link--LINK

And of course there are the obligatory facebook haters as well-- LINK

"Life has no genuine intrinsic worth, but is kept in motion merely by want and illusion."
                                            ---Arthur Schopenhauer




Whoa...

How to make $1,000,000!

A great guy named Larry Flynt has an offer for you!

I am not a potted plant, madam!

Working in the restaurant industry, you learn to cater to the eccentric whims of customers. Sure, I'll turn the air conditioning lower even though everyone else in the place is comfortable. Sure, I'll read the whole menu to you over the phone during our lunch rush. Sure, I'll personally butter your bagel for you because you think it tastes better when I do it. etc
But then there is the lady who chastised us during a rush for not caring for our potted plants that we have on the patio.  She shrieked, "..they are in desperate, desperate, need of water!" and  then read us the riot-act on caring for living creatures.  We agreed to water the plants when we had time and she left. I didn't mention the fact that since they are annuals that they were at the end of their lifespan anyway and that they would be pitched in about a week or so. But the eccentric"kicker" is that she has done this two years in a row...

No Campaign, por favor.

I'm out. I don't f**king care about election 2012 anymore. I'll either vote Nader or Teetotaler but I'm not following this bullshit anymore.Two reasons:

*No Democrat is challenging Obama or has at least it's not getting any coverage. Challenging the incumbent is a good thing and usually adds dialogue and discourse within the party.

*Ron Paul. No media outlet is covering the guy even though he came up strong in the Iowa straw-poll. He's the only guy that's actually saying how he really feels about things and actually provides real solutions to current problems. I don't agree with everything he says but I like the fact that he tries to be honest with people.
Jon Stewart talks about this in more detail:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Legend Lives On From The Chippewa On Down...

Had a dream last night that the Edmund Fitzgerald had sank again(!?!). Right. Well, Freudianism aside, I've always been a bit fascinated by the Fitzgerald tragedy. Huge iron ship in the middle of hurricane winds and monster waves then suddenly gone--along with her crew.  Now the Edmund sits on the bottom of Lake Superior underneath 500ft of frigid water in absolute darkness. (Shudder)

But what really makes the little hairs stand up on my arms is this photo which was taken from a submarine they sent down to survey the wreckage.  Just a couple of glowing orbs in the water?

"The water temperature was 43 degrees and the depth was 530 feet. Pressure was 251 pounds per square inch. No debris was in the water and nothing was dropped from the surface. There is no logical explanation for their sudden appearance. The objects floated toward and disappeared into the hull of the ship."--The Detroit Free Press
No fish can live down there so who knows. Plasma? Spirit orbs? Just plain mystical.
And in case you haven't heard it in awhile, here is Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" just to set the mood.