Perception

Seldom do I write about myself.  I am a most dull subject, and posts about all other subjects are autobiographical by nature in an underlying way anyhow.  But I want the Peanut Gallery to chime in with what to do to gain a damn mill job!  I test in a couple of days, and may interview then, too.

Everything’s that been thrown my way regarding gainful employment has proven to be wrong.  Coming out of high school, going to college for programming was the thing.  You have to go to college; you won’t be able to get any kind of a job anywhere without a diploma soon.  And programming is a growth industry.  So I get the B.S. and endlessly shop it around at job fairs, sending resumes to want ads, registering with the state job center, the whole mess.  And all the while, all I hear is “you’re doing what you need to do; don’t change anything or you’ll ruin it.”  The career placement office holds mock interviews where a half dozen HR people evaluate the seniors or graduates, then tell where they need to improve.  All I’m told is I’m fine, from posture to eye contact percentage to voice inflection, the answers they expect to hear, clothing, and resume paper and layout.  Just keep doing what you’re doing and don’t be impatient.  Over a year after my graduation, after constant hunting, I’m increasingly told “your degree is old.”  All they want are prospects within six months to a year from their graduation date.

My original plan, before I was told by every adult in my life in what amounted to be a group intervention to not be so stupid, was to go into the Army.  Now I say, “I tried your way, it failed, now I go with MINE, as stupid and seriously wrong as it is.”  I go in, and find my calling.  I am HOME.  Of course, the Berlin Wall falls, the Warsaw Pact collapses, and hundreds of thousands of us are no longer needed.  I saw how many good officers and NCOs were being drummed out in a bad way, saw the future, and took my honorable discharge.

I’ll skip a lot of minutiae to get to my main point.  I’m called to take a test for a local steel mill.  It should be a slam dunk, but I am mortified.  The following two examples show why.  In 1993, I got a postcard from the state employment office asking me to test for Mill 1.  I ace the test with a 96%.  I interview with two execs, and all goes well; in fact both pretty much tell me welcome.  The first ended the conversation telling me how his son, who has an MBA, went through exactly what I did after graduation, and if he didn’t use his pull to get him in, he didn’t know what his son’s prospects would’ve been.  And he gave me a two handed clasped handshake when I left.  I figure I’m as good as hired.  I was going to buy myself a bunch of mill blues, but decided to wait for the Sunday sales.  Good thing.  The interviews were on a Tuesday afternoon, and early Thursday morning I get a letter telling I am not good enough.  There I was, 29 years old, 34 inch waist, bench pressing 250 pounds (I whipped myself into shape with an eye to reenlistment now the draw-down was stabilizing when the mill came a calling), drug free, no criminal record, Army veteran, college grad, hammer the entrance exam like it’s child’s play.  And still not good enough for a well paying job.

The following year the process repeats with Mill 2, except I get a 98%.  Once is a fluke.  Rejected twice?!

What exactly do these people want?  I hate to be arrogant, but if I was a dropout doper with an arrest record and a dishonorable discharge, I can see.  But I lived close to the vest, not taking chances, doing what all the job experts who were 20+ years my senior and so much wiser said I should do to get ahead, sacrificing my youth for a better future instead of having a ball and making an enjoyable, meaningful, life worth living, and it doesn’t even get me into the simple world of the steel mill.

Extra credit fun story, for you who followed this far!  When Mill 2 sent me its rejection letter, one sentence said I’d be eligible for hire one year after its date.  So precisely one year later, I mail a letter to the head of HR, and one afternoon he calls!

HR: I called to let you know that I got your letter, and I found it very interesting.

Me: Well, I wanted to know what I can do to improve myself so I can one day have a job that’s not minimum wage, one to start a family and plan a future with.  I was surprised I wasn’t hired given my background, so to better myself, I’d like to know where I went wrong so I can correct it with my next opportunity.

HR: I’m looking at your paperwork now, and I can say you haven’t anything bad here.  It wasn’t that anything disqualified you; you just weren’t chosen.

Me: I keep being told that, but I keep getting passed over, so I wonder what I can be doing to improve myself so I’m not at minimum wage all my life.  Actually, a year has passed since I last applied, and you said there was nothing keeping me back, so would you consider hiring me now?  You’re the head of HR.

HR: [ten second pause] Hey, I see you graduated from the same high school that I did, but I was almost 20 years before you!  They didn’t have the football field back then, and hunters used to shoot rabbits and pheasant while we were in class.  Well, gotta go!  Bye!

[click]

Filed under: no wonder I'm fed up

Bugs

Starbucks is trying to get away from artificial coloring and sweeteners, so they now use ground up bugs to color their strawberry frapp.  Now vegans are angry that formerly vegan Starbucks (I don’t know how they can call them that when they have meat sammiches, but I’ll never understand the Hipster mind) is doing this.

I do understand that people with food allergies need to know what’s in their foodstuffs, in case they have a reaction to this or that.  But I’ve come across vegans who don’t eat honey because it oppresses the bees by making them work for our benefit and not just for their own hives, and these folk I have in mind when I see this.  It’s not the what, it’s the how, of vegetarianism and veganism that gets my goat.  Actually, Drs. Scarsdale and Ornish showed how a plant based diet fights heart and arterial disease, and watching one’s meat intake can be quite healthy.  If you’re doing it for that, or for some disciplinarian reason, like giving it up for your faith (hello, Jains!) or to just deny yourself as an exercise, fine.  But these people who think man is only bad for the world and worry about bee oppression; c’mon.  You’re in the same boat with people who claim to have an addiction to lip balm and need government paid counseling, and that guy who wrote a book about the images he sees in clouds when he lays out (in a radio interview he admitted he was on government assistance and spent his days watching the clouds go by).

Many in the Greatest Generation used to say “what this country needs is another war or Great Depression to straighten things out.”  Hell, we have TWO wars and another depression, and they haven’t done a thing.

I had recently decided to not spend money at Starbucks, but in light of this, maybe a strawberry frapp would be a good break one day.

Filed under: common stupidity, liberal games, no wonder I'm fed up

Graves

It makes one wish the Allies would’ve let Rommel keep Libya.  I take that back; have Rommel turn Libya over to Himmler:

When the guy was on the ladder while they were hitting the cross, I was hoping the thing would give while he was up there, but no.  Boy, they were sure happy to find a Jewish grave; you can clearly hear the word Israeli at that point, though there was no Israel at the time.  Nothing like saying the mantra “God is Great!” while breaking headstones.

I’m sure to see the day when the same folk are kicking over the headstones of American GI’s at Normandy.  And if one of them sprains an ankle while doing so, our re-elected Kenyan will bow lowly and apologize for the tensile strength of the headstone that caused the injury.  If you think I’m being facetious, you aren’t paying attention to the speed-up of world events.

Filed under: no wonder I'm fed up, religion

Orangutan

I thought the whole point of going to a prostitute was to have sex with a woman who was better looking than one with whom you’d normally end up having sex.  I must have the whole notion wrong.  After all, what guy is so pathetic he goes to an orangutan?  Obviously, there’s enough of them to keep a whole village living fat off the land, with the land being the village orangutan prostitute…

“Now the story of Pony, an Orangutan in Borneo who was rescued several years ago from a “prostitute village”, has been circulating again through the internet. It seems that Pony had been held as a sex slave in a village, tied by her ankle to a wall on a mattress, having her body shaved every day to make her more smooth and appealing to the men who came to pay to have sex with her.  Whenever anyone tried to investigate this or save her, they were met with villagers who threatened the would-be rescuers with poison-tipped sticks and other weapons.”

 

At what point does having sex with a shaved orangutan rank higher than just staying home and masturbating to Zooey Deschanel?

Filed under: common stupidity, no wonder I'm fed up

Chase

This experience is not rare.  I go to the bank, cash a check, pay the mortgage, get some back.

Cashier:  And how would you like your change?
Me:  One hundred, the rest, well, you know, normal.
Cashier:  And how would you like the rest?
Me: Twenties and down, you know, normal.
Cashier: How?
Me: From the top – one hundred, three twenties, one ten a five, four singles, and a dime.
Cashier: [giggles] Ok.

Enough people tell me I need to see the movie Idiocracy.  I don’t.  I get it.  I live it.  Every. Single. Day.

Filed under: common stupidity, no wonder I'm fed up

The Existential

As you can see, I’ve not maintained this blog as of late, and the last few posts have been more like spinning the wheels on a car you’ve put into cold storage to prevent tire rot.  I make posts that consistently get no comments, so I’ve taken to commenting on higher traffic blogs.  And a lot of times there, my brown marble becomes the last in the series, leaving me to wonder if I was the conversation killer.

I don’t blog out of a need to express myself as an exercise in itself as much as a need to convey, to impart, to pass on and make useful, the gift of intellect, natural curiosity, and the desire of turning data into knowledge, knowledge into wisdom, then doing what a dandelion does and scatter the seeds into the air and hope the exercise results in benefit down the line.  It’s not meant in an arrogant know it all way, but a vo-tech teacher can see his students go on to work their trade, an RCIA instructor sees his people get baptized into the Faith on Easter Vigil.  I’ve lived, I’ve learned, I’ve studied along the way.  To sit on it if there’s something that can be useful to someone trying to figure something out, well there.  That’s putting your lamp under a basket.  Everyone in the link fest to the right has given me something.  I would like to think I can do the same for someone else.

In real life, “face time,” attempting to do this has resulted in a situation not unlike Charlie Brown trying to get the Christmas Play actors to rehearse their lines, all the while they dance to the piano, leaving him and his megaphone off to the side in obscurity.

Or like the words of the Genesis song Man on the Corner

Anonymous blogging allows me to peel myself off of the ideas and let them stand alone without whatever jinx I bring along from affecting them.  If I am anything, I am practical, so if an action brings no result, I stop it.  My futility has been exercized like a long distance cyclist.  It has the physique of a greyhound.

But recently, both Neanderpundit and Pascal Fervor gave enthusiastic reviews of a simple comment that I fired off.  It’s like Peyton Manning telling you that you pass well, or George Brett saying you have a good swing.  When a pro compliments your content and delivery, you second guess your cipher self analysis.  So let me go have some knowledge casserole and a piece of humble pie, a laxative to speed delivery, and I’ll soon produce a post for your joy and benefit.

Filed under: no wonder I'm fed up, observations

Arizona Giveaway

So Obama a) ordered a halt to the border wall, then b) declared large chunks of southern Arizona to be no travel zones to Americans due to illegals being there in small, armed paramilitary bands.  Nothing like handing a handful of spite to the state trying its utmost to uphold federal immigration laws.

General Pershing, my apologies to your spirit.  Same to your, General (at the time Lieutenant) Patton.  The last time Mexican nationals came roaming into American border towns killing ranchers and terrorizing towns, you two lit up northern Mexico.

Hat tip Indiana Conservative Hardball.

Filed under: fact nugget, liberal games, no wonder I'm fed up

224 – 206

It’s the first thing I think of, when I thought I drank it out of my mind.

Filed under: liberal games, no wonder I'm fed up

Loot

Here is a photo essay of Haiti, six days after the earthquake.  Because of problems bloggers have had with reprinting photos, even with full credit, from wire agencies, I’ll not post, but let you click the link beginning the post to see.  Plenty of violence and gore. so you decide if it’s safe for where you are right now.

There are people who break into damaged stores to recover foodstuffs before they spoil, drugs and first aid for the injured, water jugs, and the like.  That I don’t think of as looting.  That stuff is perishable, and would go bad anyway, so why not take it and put it to good use while it still had some life in it?  There is one photo of a water or juice bottle flying through the air to an awaiting crowd.  Another is of people filling up their jugs from a busted water pipe.  This is understandable, and quite natural.

Then there is a photo of a looter taking the backpack off of the looter that was shot dead earlier.  I see photos of guys walking off with bags of balls and balloons (!).  Two thirds of the way down the photo essay, there is a photo of a looter with a slight grin on his face as he lifts a dead Haitian out of a coffin in preparation of stealing the coffin.

If you’re unfamiliar with Haiti, you don’t know this is business as usual.  The country was like this before the earthquake, and will remain so after the cleanup.  A large part of the capital city was damaged, but a lot of it was not.  And the people in the hills were the least affected, if affected at all.  People just came into the damaged business district and the bad areas to take advantage of the anarchy, and help themselves to the belongings of the dead.  These are the types of whom my father used to say, “They’d steal a penny off a dead man’s eye.”  Hell, one man pulled the corpse of another out of his coffin to steal it.  This is not a food fight.  In fact, food is piling up at the airport.

The secular side of me has made the religious side sit down and shut up.  I wouldn’t give a stolen penny to help these s.o.b.’s.  S.o.b.’s because the poor schmucks will have their aid stolen from them by the s.o.b.’s by machete and rock point, who will be the only ones then with the stash, and will lord it over them.  If you think your donation will help the poor farmer and shoemaker and their wives and children, you’re a bigger dupe than I give you credit for.

A few years ago when Japan had a major quake in Osaka, there was cooperation and harmony among the Japanese as they recovered.  I wonder how it was after the two atomic bombs.  Doubtfully do I think it was anything like New Orleans or Haiti.  War ravaged Germany didn’t have this.  When Alaska had its level 9.2 earthquake, was there this?

Haiti lies along a fault line that causes earthquakes.  Too bad it isn’t a fault line of volcanoes, to make it into a new Pompeii and bury the place under hot ash.

Filed under: no wonder I'm fed up

Amazing Country

In 1944, Pvt. Ed Slovik was executed from walking away from the front.  In 2009, Maj. Hasan lays in a comfortable hospital bed, recovering from the wounds he got when he initiated a massacre in Ft. Hood, killing and injuring a good number of servicemen and women.  Click on Right Truth’s blog to see the video of people praising his actions.

I don’t recognize this place anymore.  Is this still the country the Greatest Generation fought for?  Is it even the one I raised my right hand for?  I like the old one, the one that Canadian broadcaster Gordon Sinclair stood up for.  May I please have it back?

I have a lot of ancestors who saw what it was like to be non muslims living in Turkland.  Um, never again.  It’s going to suck when I’m the only one not bowing to the new muslim bosses in this land, while everyone else fights to be the first in line to be his footstool.

Filed under: liberal games, no wonder I'm fed up