This was a lousy year. Oh, I don't mean on a personal fiscal basis. We did okay although for the first time in my life, I was thinking of asking our Canadian clients to pay us in Canadian dollars. No, what I'm talking about is the angst, uncertainty, and tri-polar disorders that the government and stock market have given us ... uh, me. It must be me only because everyone else seems so positive, annoyingly positive, like a re-re-rerun of Rachael Ray.
Of course, I realize that everyone must be positive. It's the will of the corporate state. No one likes a complainer even though they're easier to take than someone who's gushingly positive. But what if we have something to complain about? Shouldn't we have the right to bellyache in public or at work. After all, there's no one else to go to. You can't even contact the PUC or a specific company when you have a gripe. The only ones who might understand you are your coworkers, not that they want to listen to you. Your SO's are so tired of hearing it, you have to go to those you work with. Of course, if enough people become like you (me), then everyone at work will be hiding from everyone else and the workplace will look like pachinko machines with employees finding the nearest hiding places.
[Oh, did I tell you that in January 1,500 Colorado workers were laid off.]
My wife came in with our Comcast bill yesterday. "Lookit this," she said. Dutifully, I lookit it. $115!!!! But that used to be $54 a month and we were complaining about that. It was only five years ago, and I distinctly remember Comcast telling the city that, if allowed to cable us, prices would not increase more than one or two percent. Somewhere, either under their collective breaths or in miniscule fine print, it must have been one or two percent a month!
I took a look at our "plan" which is now like Medicare Part B-D only worse because you don't get pleasantly drugged in the process. By Comcast's reckoning, we get over 200 channels. Okay, but the last 60 or so are their High Def channels, and we don't have High Def and we're not even sure we want it. What if we dumped HBO and Starz? Well, that only saves you $16 a month. Okay, what if we get basic extended which used to be basic on steroids, but is now more like basic on reruns. That gives us 68 channels.
[Did I tell mention that Chrysler is laying off as many as 68,000 employees?]
Comcast will tell you it's 71 - channels, not employees (please try and keep up) but three are snow or blue. Seven are in Spanish. I don't understand Spanish. Two are Chinese or other Asian. Once in a while I like to watch the Chinese station because even the subtitles are subtitled, dialectically like someone from upstate Vermont watching "Hee Haw." Twelve channels are Fox which explains why my fair and balanced TV set leans to the right. Five channels are buying or selling something. Like HSN hawking splatter shields made out of a miracle substance that will steam your buns and broil steaks at the same time cause it's made out of the same materials as Nasa heat shields. One channel only sells knives and coins which fascinates me if only because I get neither connection nor how many machetes and Bowie knives you can sell.
One channel is local which is good for yucks once in a while because you get to hear a Deputy Assistant for Smelt give a summary of the Smelt Subcommittee on pish and go on for 20 minutes, all the while you're thinking this guy would be great as the president of a homeowners association.
Then there are three or four CNN's or incarnations of CNN, and everyone is yelling. I realize that there's a need for at least three of them with elections taking three years, but really! I think Wolf Blitzer and Headline News are gone, where, I don't know. Maybe restocking Yellowstone.
There's also some guy yelling at me about my money and how stupid people are who call in and people who don't call in, and I don't get it. And there are those annoying shrill Ann Coulters telling us what's wrong with Democrats, or OJ, liberals, moderates, or the way we're bringing up kids.
To top all this off, they all have that annoying scroll at the bottom of the screen which we're supposed to read while listening to the blabber above it. And on the rest of the channels, every minute or so, figures and print pop up to tell you what's coming on next. I don't even know what I'm watching now.
Six channels are taken up with reruns of Sopranos, Sex and the City, Sex In the City, Sex in the Suburbs, Raymond, cartoons (and not good ones like "Tom and Jerry"), and some kids named Raven and Hanna Banana or something like that. I've saved the best for last: There's the Cooking and Travel Channels. You have your choice of Rachael Ray, who originally was cute, and is now pukingly perky. She has 300 shows and she's on both channels. And her "30-Minute Meals" is a crock unless you, too, have 26 people to buy, stock, set up, and clean up the mess you actually can make in a half-an-hour. Julia, I never watched you, but I miss you. Come back soon in any incarnation.
I do wonder how the Food Network survives with our government's food police telling us - just in 2007 - that transfats, sugar, real butter, and just today, salt (again with the salt) is bad for us. As soon as they find out that baking soda can cause migraines, a stack will only be an eighth of an inch tall. Then again, maybe the network won't last. Hey, Emeril was laid off today. Really! Maybe Rachael will take over his show although, remember, too much syrup isn't good for you.
[Did you know that Carnation used to be owned by Borden but is now owned by Nestle which I'm pretty sure is a Swiss company. Makes you wonder if any companies are owned by Americans. Parker Pens was bought by Gillette who sold it to Sanford Pens. Why did they need a middle man? Okay, makes me wonder.]
So that leaves me with the basic channels -- you know, the ones we got in 1980 -- plus PBS. Since they only talk about the negative things and PBS shows 12 minutes of a show before stopping for 15 minutes to ask for money (thank god for TiVo), and for that I'm paying $115 a month!
You don't think they're negative? Have you ever watched Nova or Nature where the program didn't end up with global warming, the death of another species, or that any time now an earthquake is going to wipe out North America?
[Did I tell you that 85,000 people were laid off in September and that was just in real estate. 84,000 are trying to sell their own homes, a case of believing ones own press.]
Back to the newspapers. We get three of them, and until a couple of weeks ago, I would peruse six on the Internet. "If It Bleeds, It Leads" is the media slogan. Yesterday, all of the locals (which are probably owned by the same company), had the following headlines:
- Market Drops 231 (that's okay, it's up 331 today, based on a truly rational rationale that someone whispered something about an interest rate cut. If that's all it takes, why don't they whisper that every day? We could ALL retire next year.)
- 72 Million U.S. Adults Obese (Santa Claus, who is only 1/1800 US, was not included. He has dispensation from the AMA and the US BLS)
- Laci Peterson Home Sold at Discount
- No Suspect in Killing of NFL Player
- Cell Phone May Have Killed Man
- Saudis Arrest 208 in Different Plots (I'm assuming that was not in a cemetary)
- Cops Say Wife's Body May Be In Barrel
- Nixon Papers Illuminate Deep Throat Link (thank heavens, I didn't think we should let that go)
- U.S. Students Lose Grounds On Reading Tests (they're spilling coffee on their exams?)
[Did I mention that The Wall Street Journal could not survive without me? I'm the one that gives them all their ideas for articles. Last month, I spotlighted previously published articles on dating in the workplace, succession planning, and the 360-degree performance appraisal. Lo and behold, within 10 days, the Wall Street Journal ran articles on relationships in the workplace, succession planning, and performance appraisals. Hey, if you're subscribing to them you're missing the better bet of subscribing to ewin.com.]
Tip of the iceberg. There's more bad news, but why bother you with that. Besides, I've got my own problems. Bigger problems. I've got low water pressure and just spent a small fortune on a plumber who doesn't know what's causing it, but suggested that I dunk each faucet into something that cleans out the deposits. Yeah, right. That ought to do it, and it so explains why flushing a toilet cuts hot water by two-thirds. And as the plumber leaves he says (I swear), "You're good to go." Probably from a Roman plumber who had "ex opere operato" over his door in 19 BC, or to be more PC, BCE. Too many people thought BC stood for British Columbia, and that just didn't make sense.
My dog has had an undiagnosed or misdiagnosed or guessed at digestive problem for four months. I'm not sending him to the Mayo Clinic (mayo is very bad for dogs and, with 72 million of us being fat, I guess it's not good for us either) but some blood work done on him was supposedly sent to Minnesota for evaluation. Judging from the cost, it must have been sent in first class with full service and leg room. Hey, his crap is perfectly normal. His blood is normal. His temperature is normal. He's just sick. That will be $2,000, please. Don't forget his special diet and these pills which are $1.50 each, but which I get for 6¢ because it's a people med that I was on last summer when I had food poisoning. Anyway, now he's good to go and go and go and go.
[Oh, by the way, did I tell you that Citigroup is laying off 45,000 people. They're good to go.]
During the summer, I cooked a $145 piece of salmon for my wife. She had an evening meeting, and I prefer scavengers than swimmers in oil-soaked bay waters. So, I did her the huge favor of BBQ-ing this slab of pink stuff. Never sure when it's done - though I'm known as a real expert when it comes to salmon - I brought it in for her to tell me that it was cooked to a "T." The next day, I happened to notice that I had left the BBQ on and having a direct gas line, it never ran out of fuel on it's way to 1200°. When our bill came, it was $145 more than the same time a year ago. Most expensive salmon steak on record unless someone burnt down their house in the process. I was glad to help out the utility which has always served me so well, the same utility that took nine years to fix the electric grid we're on and only did so when there was a petition from those of us who lost power for 47 hours during what they referred to as "a heat occurrence." Yeah, right. 98° inside the house, and a loss of all our groceries, but no compensation because you have to be without power for 48 hours.
[Did I tell you that the CEO of our gas an power company got a $15 million bonus last year. So, let me amend something I said: that salmon steak actually cost $15,000,145.]
Why all this personal stuff? Because there's not a hell of a lot new in HR or work. Oh maybe some new terminology, but nothing substantive. Congress diddles, but it doesn't do anything on the work/labor front. Besides "classic labor" is dying out. Labor codes just sit. Courts screw around and hand down contradictory rulings. I don't even have to modify "Labor Pains," first time in 12 years. But just you wait: I predict that when we have a new Secretary of Labor, there will be changes. And I will get to complain about those because whatever they are, I won't like them. I am not a bubbly, Rachael Ray, character. I'm a positively negative person whose main purpose is to make other people realize how miserable they should be.
Failing that, did I mention that my granddaughter, Haley, thinks I'm a hoot - says so right down there
, that my grandson is due in April, and that we had as much of the family for Thanksgiving as possible - two weeks before Thanksgiving. Our calendar isn't even Julian. Thanks to Rachael Rae, it's more julienne. And with 2008 right around the corner, we're good to go.
