Everybody Panic!!!!!!!!

Hello.

I awoke so early this morning that even the birds were still asleep. When I tried to wake them, they gave me the middle feather. Cheeky bustards.

After reading the news, I turned to my abnormally cheerful husband and wailed “But, I was only gone for five hours!”

Here’s what I found :

The banking sector of the United States is in Chicken Little mode with every newspaper screaming that the sky is falling. As it may well be. When the smoke clears, will Bank of America be the only financial institution still standing? One pundit goes so far as to hint the “thousands” of banks will now fail in the coming months. Which is of course a signal for everyone to begin pulling their money out of the bank and hiding it in their mattresses. Failure to help people fully understand what the collapse of these financial giants means for the average Joe almost guarantees a run of worried customers, causing further panic and instability. If they can soft pedal of war of indeterminate length and destruction, why can’t they lie about the money problems of the entire country?

Also, because I have to live here, this really pisses me off and makes me hate the GOP more, which I didn’t think possible, but there it is. The Michigan GOP is trying to use the nifty Right-To-Vote laws here in Michigan to keep those who have been foreclosed upon from voting. Last time I checked the only groups of people not eligible to vote in the U.S. are illegal immigrants and currently incarcerated felons. Is the Michigan GOP trying to say that those who lost their homes to the shady dealings of the mortgage companies are actually criminals???? That’s one way to misdirect to mislead. Which seems to be the GOP’s SOP.

This one is more of an observational question. If oil is now selling for under a hundred dollars a barrel, why am I paying almost 4.50 a gallon this morning? If you say Ike I will issue a horrible Ancient Roman Curse upon you and your family. And your dog. While the closing of the refineries was probably a factor it does not explain to my personal satisfaction a jump of nearly 70 cents in two days. Especially with the price of oil continually falling. At one point on Friday a gas station here in Michigan was selling at 5.99 a gallon. Clearly, they were gouging. Yet, are the oil companies now gouging on the speculation of the maybe of things to come? So it would seem. Starting a mass panic can be profitable.

There was also a story about a house burning to the ground in North Texas because some geniuses disconnected the fire hydrants. Why, you ask? Because they were afraid that terrorists would poison the water supply. *Headslap* Good God, I knew this country was going backwards but, all the way back to the Middle Ages?

If you haven’t yet started running about your abode wailing in terror, scrabbling for your bankbook and refusing to drink the tap water, well, there just might be hope for you yet.

Dogwoman

Boring Speech and The Gentle Scent of Scandal

Hello.

Obama made a speech yesterday. It went something like this:

Blah blah blah, Oil Bad, blah blah blah, McCain Bad, blah blah blah, Prius Good, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, Vote For Me.

Al least that’s what I heard.

I think trying to push hybrid cars as a solution in a state that has very slowly watched it’s auto industry die is well… stupid. Has he not seen the GM reports?

So very uninteresting speech there Obama. Next time try harder.

You know what I find more interesting than Obama rambling on about things he’s never really gonna do?

Mary Kate refusing to talk to police about Heath Ledger’s death until she gets immunity from prosecution. It perked up my giant fluffy ears. Dost I smell a new Hollywood scandal in the making? I hope so. There are only so many jokes one can make about Lindsey Lohan and Miley Cyrus just isn’t worth the effort of pushing down the keys on my keyboard.

Dogwoman

Legislating Dystopia: Huxley Is Laughing

Hello.

Today I am having a fit of moral curiosity. It could happen, stop laughing.

As our culture endures a rather lengthy shake up and restructuring due to gas prices and food costs, I’ve noticed something. The government in the background is trying to legislate morality. They are going about it much more forcefully than ever before.  They are in the process of trying and potentially winning a battle to make nicotine a governmental regulated drug. Recently legislation was presented to make female contraceptives on par with abortion.

Why is this being allowed? Is it because we the people lack the common sense to live up to high moral standards or have we just stopped trying? In a culture that excoriates anyone who attempts to live outside the consumer mentality and exonerates greedy corporations for what amounts to illegal activities it is not a surprise that we no longer care. No one is listening. We are not being heard.

At some point being a gansta became the highest achievement teens will reach for. I say this, not because of flimsy media reports, but because that is what the students tell me. So, instead of looking beyond, they look around this country and feel that since it cannot be fixed in any meaningful way they will glorify defiance and violence. And that is where many inner city teens live. Not all of them mind you, but many of them.

And the adults are losing hope as well. We are losing the feeling that this government is for the people. As oil companies take in record profits on the backs of working Americans, many of whom are losing their homes, what is there to makes retain any hope for the future? Apparently nothing.

That being said, do we need government to regulate our personal habits? After allowing greed and gluttony to rule the last eight years what right does the Bush administration have to decide what we do with our lives?  They are trying to tell us who we can sleep with, while Republicans and evangelist ministers are indicted for prostitution and fraud. They are trying to tell us how to have fun, while Legislators are indicted for sexual harassment and fixing the judicial branch to reflect their groups’ philosophy. And more importantly, they are trying to tell us what we should believe in. By passing care for the poor directly into the hands of protestant churches and giving them government funding, by defining what a human being is using a 2000 year old book and repeatedly failing at passing new marriage laws aimed at keeping out non-traditional families, our government is trying to force this country to move backwards rather than forwards.

This moral legislation ideology will only last as long as the current crisis. Once Bush and his cronies no longer have their boot heels on the throats of ordinary citizens there will be a backlash. One has only to look at periods of history to see this. And it will not be good. Our society is in the midst of a shake up, a change. It happens every 65-70 years or so. Social patterns change and grow. Not everyone will engage in the change and not everyone will appreciate the new direction. However, it is coming, and it is coming faster than most of us realize.

To legislate personal choice is a violation of not just the constitution but the section of the constitution that guarantees us the ‘pursuit of happiness’. To look over the neighbors fence and decide that their idea of happiness is just a bad choice is ludicrous. We do not all engage in the same behaviors. Nor should we.

I, for one, would find no pleasure in living in a dystopian society in which everyone is expected to behave the same way at the same time, all the time.

Would you?

Dogwoman

Pink Will Always Get Bad Service

Hello.

I just read an article about how the British are bad tippers. The best part was the ensuing commentary, much of it from those I can only assume have never waited tables. Suggestions ran from changing the way American restaurants do business to getting a better paying job.  And this all for a waiter in the New York restaurant business. I wonder what those same commentators would say if they were dealing with someone who worked in restaurants that were not top scale?  Where taking home $30 a night was a good night? I’m guessing they would say the same thing.

Ah yes, like most who have attended college I have done my share of restaurant work. Everything from bussing tables/ washing dishes to bartending and floor management. In upscale and ‘family dining’ restaurants. I have to say, no matter where one works, it’s a shitty job.

And it’s shitty because of the customers and the management. The customers want to believe that they are superior to the person trying to accommodate their often ludicrous requests. The management wants one to work like a dog and be grateful they allow you to make money in their restaurant. The word raise is not in their vocabulary. When waitstaff asks management for a raise they inevitably get the same response “Be a better server.” Balls. In some places one can be the top earner and still not make a living wage. It’s arrogant for a customer to make assumptions about the staff. Not every server works in a five star restaurant. Nor is every server a college student who deserves to make less money because they are in school.

A server is a person who works hard for little money. After tipping out 10% to both the bartenders and bussers, and accounting for a standard 15% Federal tax, what does the thirty dollar a night server take home? About 15-17 dollars. Times five days a week, comes to about 75-85 dollars a week. Oooh yeah, they’re living high on the hog!! Oh wait, plus the 2.85 they make an hour here in Michigan, which is automatically taxed, so that’s– Oh hell I don’t know, but not a enough to live on I can tell you. Let alone raise children with.

Nothing gets my fur in a bunch faster than those who take exception to tipping waitstaff.  It’s the superiority of the customer who seems to feel that your service is worth shit. That as a person you are so far beneath them on the social scale that they can ignore your work. And it is work. It’s much more than carrying plates. Servers work very hard to make things look easy to the customer. That’s part of the job. They don’t have a PDF to keep track of the seven to ten tables they have. They rely on memory. They can’t control mistakes made in the kitchen but they are certainly responsible for it. They are not to blame for arbitrary changes management makes from one day to the next but they have to commiserate and ego stroke the ranting of customers who are upset by those changes. And none of this includes the work they do before and after they begin waiting on tables.

I’m not saying every server is stellar. I once refused to tip when the service was very poor. But I then I let the server know why they got nothing. And when they got upset, I told them that waiting tables is a skill, not a gimmee.

Here in the U.S. one should tip 15-20% of the bill. Period. And that is for standard service, not for exceptional service. Exceptional service should be rewarded with a higher tip. Try to remember this. If you tip well, waitstaff will be all over you next time you come in. They will actually squabble in the backroom over who gets the honor of waiting on you.

All servers have great memories. They know who the bad tippers are and they always pass them off to the worst waitstaff. So, if you are constantly getting a different lousy server at a local restaurant, it’s probably because you are a crap tipper and the service will always be rotten, for you. And you alone.

Servers might be poor, but they’re not stupid.

Dogwoman

I Know I’m Terrorized. Aren’t You?

Hello.

The asshat government of our esteemed country is debating whether or not to take a name off the terrorist list.

It would seem this man is a known terrorist.

That’s right. The U.S. has Nelson Mandela on it’s list of terror suspects. The ANC was considered a terror organization because it used armed force. Against a government that was killing it’s citizens with impunity and perpetrating genocide. And it’s the ANC they objected to, not Mandela himself. A man who has never raised a hand to punish those who falsely imprisoned him for 27 years.

It would seem that the U.S. forgot to remove his name earlier and now there are those who are rushing to push a bill through congress to see  that it’s done before his 90th birthday next month.

Honestly, what’s he going to do? Smile someone to death ? Speak rationally and patiently until the other side shoots themselves out of embarrassment?

Mandela is 90 years old and not in the best of health. However, he is one of very few voices of calm in an otherwise chaotic world. His various foundations have helped thousands of people. Not only should he not be on the Terrorist Suspects list, he should receive a very public apology for the lapse.

Of course, he’d probably just smile and pat our government on the shoulder and tell them it’s ok, he understands, but thank you for removing him from the list, he really appreciates it.

Yeah, all that warmth and kindness can be really scary.

Dogwoman

Thank You For Your Reply.

Hello.

Dear Senator Carl Levin,

In response to the recent arrival of a form letter regarding the war in Iraq.

Bullshit.

If in fact you are fiercely against the war as you imply in said form letter you would stop voting to fund said war without restrictions. You would stop handing our Puppet President a blank check to continue the Iraqi diaspora and the needless deaths of our soldiers.

Please don’t tell me that it’s all the fault of the Iraqi government. When did they ask us to descend on their country and demolish their infrastructure? And why should they be responsible for the mess we created?

So thank you for your reply but why don’t you take your form letter fold it into three corners and shove it up your ascot?

 

Dogwoman

When Bad Agencies Go Worse Part 2

Hello.

New Orelans: Give us back our supplies, numb nuts.

FEMA: Oops. Our bad.

New Orleans: Heard you get some levee problems along the Mississippi. Good luck with that, jerks.

Dogwoman

Don’t Come Around Here No More

Hello.

John Edwards made a speech last night. It went something like this:

“There is one man who knows and understands that this is a time for bold leadership. There is one man that knows how to create the change, the lasting change, that you have to build from the ground up,” Edwards said. “There is one man who knows in his heart there is time to create one America, not two…”  And that man is–

Alan Greenspan??

Warren Buffett??

William Easterly??

Noooo, Barak Obama.

Edwards, after waiting months to see how the race would turn out, has thrown all of his political weight, all 20 ounces, behind Obama. And he did it right here in the Mich.

Are you (radio edit) kidding me? I smell ploy. Big, billowing clouds of political ploy wafting all over the west side of this state. Seriously, one whole side of our mitten is now covered in snake oil. Someone call the Nature Conservancy I think we have a disaster site that needs cleaning.

These two couldn’t be arsed when it came to the problems with our primary. They blithely stuck with Howard Dean and his mindless drones at the DNC in their quest to disenfranchise Michigan voters. They punished every voter in this state because our primary date was moved. Obama has gone so far as to suggest he get half of the delegates. Even though he refused to put his name on our ballot. Now they’re grandstanding in Grand Rapids?

Ya know who else visited Grand Rapids? George W Bush. Dick Cheney. John McCain. Bono. Ya know why they go to Grand Rapids? Because, Lansing, Detroit and Ann Arbor won’t allow them past the city limits. They have standards. While Grand Rapids is the Babylonian whore of Michigan cities.

The new financial center of our state is located in Grand Rapids. If one wishes to cull the political newbies who control or have large amounts of cash, Grand Rapids is the place to do it. Not to mention, it being the home of one of our most benign and lovably forgettable Presidents, it tends to make a statement. Which statement I’m not sure. Maybe something like “I’m a political hack who wants you to equate me with President Ford.” or maybe “See, I’m a harmless conservative” or “Give me all your money.”

My position is this: When I see Obama in a pair of old jeans, hosting a rally in Flint, shaking hands with Michael Moore and holding a steaming hot pasty, then I might lighten up.

But watching these two slick snakes spend a night patting one another on the back in OUR state is just tasteless and petty.

Tom Petty.

Because as I watched events unfold this is what went through my head:

Don’t come around here no more

Whatever you’re looking for

Give it up

Hey!

Give it up

And now I can’t get that damn song out of my head.

One more thing to hate them for.

Dogwoman

If You Only Knew

Hello.

I read a news report about a substitute who was fired for doing a magic trick in class. Oh and he let students use a computer. I’m willing to bet he didn’t let the students use it, they just waited till he wasn’t looking. Or lied to him.

Another Sub was fired for having blue hair.

The charges against the Subs were, respectively, wizardry and paganism.

I find this interesting, considering that Subs are expected to be magical beings who can wave a wand and keep a class of forty two strangers under control while simultaneously getting them to do ridiculous busy work.

The complaints came from parents. Parents. Oh, parents.

Recently, I was redirected to another job at the last minute. After getting into the class and starting my morning walk about, a parent came to the door with two little ‘uns and began without preamble to scream at me. I watched and waited for them to take a breath. This took a while. When they finished calling me everything they could think of except ‘fine individual’, I smiled and said:

” I wasn’t here yesterday and I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Aren’t you the Sub?”

“I am a Sub, but not the one you are looking for I think.”

” Oh. Well my kids” indicating the two children who hadn’t said anything thus far, “said he was screaming at them.”

I nodded. ” Well, you could go to the office and discuss it with them but, right now I have to finish reading the lesson plans. Sorry.”

“Right.” Then they left.

The problem is that the parents have no idea how their children behave in school. The class mentioned above contains no less than eight conduct disordered and special educations students. I know this because I have spent a lot of time in that particular class. The students don’t get away with much when I am there, though they do try. Of course they try, they’re kids. And it’s ten times worse when a Sub is there. On this day, a student from this class was given a three day suspension. He came back after I sent him to the office and said ” You got me suspended.” I replied in my best teachery voice, “No, —, you got yourself suspended by making a poor choice. Next time, think carefully before you act.” Which of course was followed by the student yelling “I hate you.”  Sigh.

If parents could see what their children really do when Substitutes are in the room, I think the two people at the beginning of the article would still be employed.

Wizardry and Paganism are not really the issue. The issue is parental complaining. If they think that their children are being treated badly they don’t stop to rationalize the problem, they just go off. My children, over the years, have come home telling me about a mean Sub and I always ask them what they did to make the Sub mad. Inevitably, the answer is ‘nothing”. Bull. I know better. And so do they.

In the course of this last year I have been subjected to: Paper airplanes , paper wads, bits of erasers, pencils, paperclips, books and marbles thrown at me during lessons. I have been threatened with physical harm, spit at, screamed at, pushed and physically intimidated. I’ve been told to fuck off, get fucked, fuck you. I’ve been called bitch, geek, loser, stupid, dumb, not a real teacher, idiot. These are general education students. Every parents’ precious little snowflake treats strangers this way. Strangers, I might add, who have come into the class to help them learn.

So the next time your angel comes home whining about a Sub who was mean, take a minute to think of all things said angel might have done to push that person too far. Everyone has limits, even substitutes.

Paganism and wizardry, my ass.

Dogwoman

Uncommon Idea

Hello.

I keep reading about the world wide food crisis. It sounds awful. Oh wait, it is awful but I have revolutionary idea that might help.

STOP MAKING FUEL OUT OF THE COMMODITIES THAT PEOPLE NEED TO EAT.

I know that this position will perhaps make me even less popular than I currently am, but it’s chance I am willing to take. Especially when one considers that we have a huge ball of self renewing energy in the sky that has proven itself more than capable of helping out. Oh and that little thing that sweeps down from the hills from time to time freshening our lives and creating the perfect ambiance might be useful too.

Yes, there are obstacles. Problems like, no one wants to pay for the conversion. Cheap is not helpful. If they can ask us to pay extortionist prices for gas while simultaneously starving entire populations to create new fuels, they can invent a supersolar conductor with their 900 bajillion dollar oil profits.

Ridiculous. When are we going to get mad enough to capsize this incredible ship of fools ?

Because these things don’t need to happen, we just let them.

Dogwoman