5. Society III

I was never a fan of Circuit City, but their just announced "cost-cutting measure” should be very disturbing to anyone working a job in the United States. Please read the section below that went quietly out in the news this week:

“NEW YORK — A new plan for layoffs at Circuit City is openly targeting better-paid workers, risking a public backlash by implying that its wages are as subject to discounts as its flat-screen TVs. The electronics retailer, facing larger competitors and falling sales, said Wednesday that it would lay off about 3,400 store workers — immediately — and replace them with lower-paid new hires as soon as possible. The laid-off workers, about 8 percent of the company's total work force, would get a severance package and a chance to reapply for their former jobs, at lower pay, after a 10-week delay, the company said.”

This photo is a recently fired Circuit City dad congratulating his newly hired son on his new full-time managerial position at

Circuit City, which pays minimum wage. They will celebrate their bankruptcy and foreclosure in their cardboard box house by sharing a meal of orange rinds and Lo Mein recovered from a restaurant dumpster.

So if you stay at a job, and do that job well- which then increases your pay, you are liable to be fired? Better yet, these poor employees get to reapply after only 2-1/2 MONTHS for lower pay! I am not all for companies having to make the bottom line and move to re-structuring or lay-offs- but I understand that happens. That is a fact of life. Corporations make money...no money = no corporation. BUT- this is more than that. For clarity, while Circuit City may not be the top seller, they are not in dire straights. Forbes puts their holdings at $11 billion plus. It is the fact that they are not displaying growth this year, as they were in the last- and that translates to stockholder displeasure. But look what happened with this "cost-cutting measure" - the Wall Street response on March 29th was that Circuit City shares rose. The bottom line is money.

I read a nice quote about this situation: Henry Ford realized if no one had money, no one could buy his cars. So he paid the employees well. People bought cars, Ford made money, everyone prospered. If the bottom line forces us to strip well paid employees from a corporation...who is left to buy the goods? A move like this puts everyone at risk in every job. This is not simply retarded, this is the evils of wages that are “market-based” over people based. This seems like a great big "DUH"! I would rather see complete lay-offs than this move. I have not shopped at Circuit City in more than 5 years because while trying to price match a videogame, a manager became very insulting to me about price matching. To not shop there for the past few years was a personal choice brewed with bitterness, but I find it funny to think that this manager (if she is still there) is probably going to be out of a job. I also love the number of stories that tag this as a “cost cutting measure”. Nice term…but it is semantics for lay-offs. "Cost-cutting" is going with cheaper 1-ply toilet paper in the restrooms, or appointing a copier nazi- not firing people simply for doing their job well enough to not be fired in the first place.

(April 2007) Technology, cell phones & me

I like computers.

I'm not entirely sure what to do when things go bad, but I still like technology. It's the future, and it cannot be avoided. But it also does not need to own us. That disposition of "liking" technology disqualifies me as a technophobe, and that's important because: I do not, and have not ever owned a cell phone.

Now, normally this is not even a rant worthy statement, I am not one of those people who parades around about "tv rotting your brain"...except recent events warrant me writing a short bit on this.

In recent months I have had numerous people tell me that they are getting me a cell phone. That kind of ruins a present if you tell them doesn't it? They do this because they know that I do not want it. Even after protesting that I do not want one or need one, they still mumble something about getting me one. They make this angry statement towards me simply because I do not have one. Not because I borrow theirs (I never do), but just because I do not own one. They must feel pity for me, or they do not want me to be left out, cast out, discarded- so they loudly declare "That's it! For [insert birthday, holiday, bar mitzvah, day of the week...] I am getting you a cell phone!" (Usually followed by a very self-righteous smirk akin to one of those Christian saviors eating their lunch with the camera crew in front of a starving third world village.)

I have seen more than a few people even become angry with me for not having one using the "what if's?". It always falls back on the "What if your car breaks down" or "What if you get in an accident?" or "What if you get kidnapped...catch fire...or trampled by a raging circus elephant?... then what'll you do smart guy?"

What if?

What if we did not live in fear? What if we were not being manipulated by industries that tell us what we need in order to make money and line the pockets of those that are already wealthy? Ask yourself the age old question: who benefits? Do you want it, or need it? Where has this NEED come from? What if I wanted to talk to people face to face, instead of on cell phones or computers? Better yet, what if I don't want to talk to anyone... or to be found?

Cell phones have opened the flood gates to social rudeness, and I happen to still like good social manners. People take calls at meals, yell into their phones in crowds, disrupt movies, have private arguments in non-private places, text while pretending to listen to others...Why? For what value?

Is it fear of being lonely? Maybe missing out, or just a need to find some glint of acknowledgement that they are still alive and noticed?

Not for me. Computers and the internet and other media/entertainments suck away enough of my "real" life. Maybe someday in the technology-laden future I'll have one implanted in my brain. Until then I will just keep being amused by the look of sheer terror when I tell people that I don't have a cell phone. And I'll keep waiting on Big Bertha the circus elephant to trample me after I spontaneously combust beside my broken down car after my accident that occurred during my kidnapping.

(May 2007) Surprise!...It's racism!

I was explaining to my wife how often I find myself ambushed by racist ideology, jokes, monologues, and statements. I must be a magnet for certain people (henceforth endearingly referred to as "retards"). Maybe it is because I am a male, or white, or an average everyday looking type. Maybe it is because I expect more of people that this still startles me. It happens at parties ("Anyone want to hear a nigger joke?"), family gatherings ("They play that loud nigger music"), workplaces ("ahh, he's just a fag."), and public forums ("Kill the jews!"). These are all actual examples, but hardly all of them that I encounter. Just today I came across a blog on MySpace. She ranted and raved how "...stupid we all are to allow blacks to run people like Don Imus down because they don't like what is being said...". She then went on to list the Untied Negro College fund as something racist, and that BET (Black Entertainment Network) is racist because a "White Entertainment Network" would never be allowed. I tried to post a response, but she chose to set the blog to no comments. So here are a few to this retard, and to all of the others in the past few years that have surprised me by dropping bigotry into the everyday.

The United States was FOUNDED and FUNDED by centuries of slavery. Slavery from all types of cultures and classes, but in particular- African slavery. Taking people out of their homes by force, away from families and land, and shipping them for 3 months or more by boat chained in a dark hull. Sleeping and dying in their own feces is an image that we should never cast aside from our collective social conscience. I am not in favor of reparations (as an earlier posting states), but I am not in favor of pretending that it did not happen either. Slaves were brought in not by the hundreds, or thousands- but by the million. Only to be followed by 300+ years of backbreaking labor, beatings, gut-wrenching poverty, public humiliation and auction, no social rights, no legal rights, and lynchings. That created the Untied States class and race system*, and an un-level playing field that still exists today. Most people think that the Civil Rights movement ended the issue, all that did was provide a right to vote, and a legal platform to fight racism.

The piddly amounts that the United Negro College Fund can dish out to the small percentage of African-Americans attending/accepted into college pales in comparison to the amount of scholarships (and the increased acceptance levels) of whites. Generations of abject poverty do not amount to a dream of college, they amount to any job or lifestyle that can pay the rent. BET exists to offset the lilly whiteness of the big networks. How many positive black/hispanic/gay faces do you see in primetime? Now exclude "Cops" on fox and count again. How many negative stereotypes do you see?

The use of the term "they" (in this blog) about the Don Imus event threw red flags up in my head. The red flags went higher when you see she also says "we allow blacks". That signifies the idea that (in her mind) whites are the keepers of blacks. We "allow" "them" to protest their wrongs, but "we" do have a limit. That's the way to treat children, not other adults. Anytime I hear an "us versus them" in discussions about race, I know what is sure to follow, and I was right as I read on. This MySpace blog went on to justify using terms like: "Towel Head, Nigger, Kike, Spook, Spic, and Wop" with many more as descriptive terms. I believe speech should be free, but hate does not have that same luxury. I cannot tell you how many situations have become very tense when someone decides to tell a "nigger joke", or complain about their "Wop/Nigger/Jew/Fudge-packing" neighbors. I have seen college educated people complain about "the darkies", or the "jew-bastards". Maybe I need to remind college students and graduates about a line from Chubb Rock: Put down the brew, and have a brain.

If I see it coming, I can leave. But if I do not see it...if it surprises me; it hits me stinging like a slap in the face.

As long as I have studied racism, as many books as I have read on the topic; I still find myself asking why? I get the psychology of poor self-esteem. I understand the fear, the poverty, the lack of education from people vomiting this philosophy. I am even aware of the societal need for stereotypes and classifications. I understand that we all have some prejudice. But I still don't understand it, and I don't think that I need to, or want to anymore. We don't need to give in to that base element in ourselves because it is simply easier to go along than to get along. When these people highjack speech, I just cross them off of the human list in my head- regardless of who they are. I think that unless we all start to really fight against this type of mentality, we will continue on this same path of cultural warfare. As long as we keep arguing race, classifying race on job applications, use minority hiring statistics, and ethnic scholarship percentages instead of dealing with the enduring issues of socio-economic slavery- we are doomed. And it is not just limited to racism. I am sick of the religious battles, the sexual inside jokes, the gay bashing. In the end, it is all hate and fear. At this point in my life, I honestly thought that we would have moved on to greater things.

*Clarification: When I mentioned that slavery created a race and class system in the United States, I intended that as a mutated form of discrimination still in existence. Obviously class and race issues existed long before slavery, and long before the United States.

(May 2007) Basic rule of Sport

This is brief, because the topic turns my stomach.

I remember being a young kid when they broke into whatever was being broadcast to show Hank Aaron at the plate when he hit homerun number 715, breaking Babe Ruth's MLB record. I vaguely recall Aaron modestly discussing the events in interviews and on various shows. He broke a hallowed record by a sports GOD with humility. He did so under extreme pressure, amidst death threats, and racial insults. Aaron did it with class and talent. He did it with hard work. Aaron did it without agents, public relations front men, and without a posse. He did it without a reality TV show, without holding any teams or states hostage to his financial demands, and without selfishly hording his own historical baseball memorabilia. Most importantly, he did it without the aid of performance enhancing drugs. The first rule of sports for all kids is: NO CHEATING. Hank Aaron was one of those childhood sport icons for me. He is the bar that everyone else measured up to, that is until everyone else started doping to hit the ball further. This makes me incredibly sick. Using any drug to enhance your performance (when the drug is against the rules) equals cheating.

Barry is all about Barry, forget the sport, the history, or that it depends upon fans to continue to exist. Everyone thinks that it is not having that much of an effect, but I know that it has made a big impact on how interested I am in the sport. To quote Barry Bonds about his memorabilia: "I don't care about the hall (Hall of Fame), I care about myself." (ESPN.com 5/29/07) You see, Barry is banking on the steroids and the fame they bring- in hording everything related to breaking this record for future financial gains.

I keep hoping that everyone in MLB will wake up and stop this before the record is broken. I hope they just suspend him (because he has failed a drug test already), and let all the legal craziness occur while keeping him away from the game. By the time it all gets sorted out, he may be too old anyway. In the meantime, I think this is bad for MLB, bad for all sports, and bad for society. If you don't think this is cheating...then just look at this comparison of young and old Barry and ask yourself the question: Does it look like the steroids gave him something to enhance his hitting power? And is that not cheating?

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