You might think the victim of Ray Rice’s rage was the 100 and nothing pound woman the NFL player cold-cocked with every steroid enhanced muscle at his disposal, before quickly dragging her unconscious body out of sight. But a guest on Hannity’s radio show identified the real victim of domestic abuse: Ray Rice! [Read more…]
During my short August sabbatical, ISIS again dominated news coverage. I may not have posted anything here, but rest assured my Godless friends, I weathered many slings and arrows fired by my right-wing Texas pals about how ISIS is the new biggest threat ever and it’s all Obama’s fault. Each winger being either blissfully unaware or willfully ignorant in his or her own way of the fact that roughly 100% of non-partisan Middle East analysts worried or flat out predicted that the Bush led 2003 Iraq invasion would ultimately generate even more violent Muslim extremists than we were already facing.
ISIS has garnered compliments for their deft use of social media in proudly spreading images of dismembered heads. Maybe the average head-chopping fanatic is feeling the heat of that negative manly PR, because they’re now reportedly making a concerted effort to woo more women: [Read more…]
Hello FTBers! My cable was out for a few weeks, I managed to keep up with current events using my cell phone, coffee shops, and an occasional loose cable signal from an unwittingly helpful neighbor. Besides, I wanted to stay out of the way while the new format was debugged, and it seems to be doing fine. It’s rare when a major overhaul goes that smooth, so grats to Ed and the design team!
Not much changed for me over the month of August. I did find a new job that pays a living wage, but it doesn’t start until the end of September. As for cable being out; after paying off my past due balance thanks to the fruits of reader contribs a few weeks ago and little backbreaking minimum wage manual labor — and I do mean literally manual labor — my access is restored. Have you ever worked cash-under-the-table part time construction jobs in the middle of a blazing Texas summer at age 52?
Whenever I hear some privileged whiner whine on about how hard they work and that’s why they should get another fat tax cut on their millions, it’s worth a good loud laugh. I can tell you what it’s like to work real, real hard for shit money, because that’s what I’ve been doing all month long. But some people, who are probably not poor, have a very different idea why people might be struggling and very old, very bad ideas about how to help. Follow me below for the punch-lines.
I apologize for not blogging for a few days. Another good friend of mine has passed away. He was full of life, a gifted athlete well into his forties who set new standards for his sport that still stand today. A talented artist and analyst, he was the full package, left and right brains hitting on every cylinder. Successful at everything he tried, this guy founded and ran two profitable businesses for more then 20 years after graduating Sigma Cum Laude from the Lone Star version of an ivy league school with a design engineering degree. But in the wake of the Great Recession, those businesses collapsed. He hung on for a few years, unable to find even a living wage, slowly losing everything. Finally, he took his own life, completely alone and no doubt feeling utterly abandoned. It sounds like they didn’t even find the body for awhile — I could be wrong but from what I can piece together, they only found him because the landlord checked his cheap, shitty apartment after August rent didn’t show up.
I’m not sure exactly what happened, the grisly details, but I might know how he felt. I know it every day and I get emails from people who feel it too. It just goes on and on for those of us who are middle aged, out of work highly trained professionals. It happened to me again in the last few days. Two weeks ago I interviewed for a job, an easy job well within my skill set and track record. And I still have no idea what happened. Because that’s how it works nowadays. Just for fun I sometimes try to imagine what might have happened to a job I thought I had. [Read more…]
As you can see have a new site complete with splash page and new listings. It might take some time to get used to — the older I get the more homeostatis seems like a good deal. I was prompted to update a few items like Java and may have contracted some Malware, but other than that it’s been pretty smooth.
Please chip in to my Paypal account at Darksydothemoon-at-aol-com if you can. I might just make it thru July with your help afterall. Reports surfaced this week of a third mystery hole in Siberia. Suspician mounts that climate change may be playing a role:
I have a friend who suffered a recluse bite a week or two ago. As those nasty bites go, it was a doozy. It got her good, inside the shin, down near her ankle. She saw the critter, there’s little doubt. It formed a blister that broke and oozed, it got bigger, after about ten days there was an open wound roughly the size of a dime. It was angry and red, she’s reporting intermittent, low fever. [Read more…]
Well, I may have made a mistake in taking this new job that’s been keeping me from blogging. It’s not the work, the work is the fun part. Getting inside servers and figuring out what might be going wrong is kinda cool. Like a math problem or a puzzle, one that you’re being paid to solve. No, it’s the people. Some of my coworkers are bullies. [Read more…]
Below is another blast from the past, pure political comedy gold, from back in those ancient days lo these many weeks ago, wherein the social machinery was being pre-placed to attack anyone who stands in the way of Gilded Age 2.0: [Read more…]
