Here I Stand (as at a virtual hiring fair)

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Sunday October 04, 2009 · 10:05 AM PDT

2009/10/04 · 10:05

This morning, looking futilely again through the job listings, smiting as many of the scammers as I can, and recalling the fatuous bit of "help" I recently read on MSN about how the most important thing in getting a job today is connections I mulled over the thought of appealing to the community here to ask if anyone has an opening in my neck of the woods, and thought why not? What's the worst that could happen?

And then being me, I answered promptly "getting outed locally and losing your current shit job working for wingnuts that was the only job offer in over a year of searching" but then after another hour of prowling through the underbrush of scams and jobs for people with nursing degrees or accounting degrees or other degrees or experience in fields that I don't have and still more scams, I thought "Heck, I'll do it, I can be careful" and so I have done.

I'm looking for a job in Manchester, NH that pays $400 a week take-home, since rent in a downscale firetrap old tenement building here runs a bargain at $900 a month. I can do a lot of different things, as I list after the fold...

bellatrys

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Sunday September 06, 2009 · 2:16 PM PDT

2009/09/06 · 14:16

Once upon a time there was a young wingnut who didn't realize that's what she was, raised to fear and hate and pity and pray for the conversion of the Godless Commie Babykilling Civilization-Hating Liberals who were trying to destroy all that was Good and True and Wholesome in the world, until little by little she worked out that things outside her community's bubble were not exactly as her elders had described them to her.

But she was still dumb enough to believe her elders - both the theocon ones and the secular-humanist ones in the wider world of school and the media - when they said that working hard and studying hard was both necessary and sufficient for earthly success.

This, though she had seen how the children of doctors and lawyers were treated better by her teachers, and how malignant fools who made the right noises in the right places (smooch,boot-or-buttocks) got promoted over people (not just herself) who had worked longer, harder, and better over the years.

So she went out to seek her fortune and tried to make it on her own, with about five thousand dollars in savings...

Poll

57 votes Show Results

My health insurance...

57 votes Vote Now!

My health insurance...

doesn't take so much of my paycheck that I can't afford healthcare

19 votes

does take so much of my paycheck that I can't afford healthcare

3 votes

health insurance? what health insurance? What healthcare, either?

24 votes

I'm from a socialized - or civilized - country, this question doesn't apply to me.

11 votes

Raging Against The Machine, Circa 200 Years Ago

bellatrys

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Saturday August 22, 2009 · 7:37 AM PDT

2009/08/22 · 07:37

Crossposted from Nothing New - it is and it isn't a continuation of the Soylent Granny series.

"America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace.
(1997)

We are warlike in France, and we are citizens. Another reason to be proud, this being a citizen! For the poor it consists in sustaining and preserving the wealthy in their power and their laziness.
(1894)

Now, Mrs McGrath, the captain said,
Would you like to make a soldier out of your son Ted?
With a scarlet coat and a big cocked hat,
Now Mrs McGrath, wouldn't you like that?
(circa 1815)

Most of us only know one, tiny, decontextualized fragment about bridges from Anatole France...

Poll

27 votes Show Results

The past

27 votes Vote Now!

The past

is irrelevant.

1 vote

is something we're doomed to repeat.

7 votes

is not even past, let alone dead.

19 votes

Soylent Granny Icefloe Bars, part 3*

bellatrys

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday August 21, 2009 · 6:17 PM PDT

2009/08/21 · 18:17

"Timor Mortis conturbat me"

--"The fear of death confounds me" This dread of the inevitability of our own singular personal terminations combined with the (fortunately-mostly-fantasized) willingness to inflict death upon innumerable strangers is a grotesque enough hallmark of conservativism as it has existed for as long as I've been alive in this country, and based on my readings of writings from both elsewhere in the Anglosphere and before my time: the warmongering chicken-hawk, tough-on-[some]-crimes, "are there no workhouses? better they should die &c" Podsnaps of the world shivering in fear of "the rabble" they require to batten on is not a modern invention, nor an invention at all, alas.

Poll

27 votes Show Results

This series has been helpful in unpacking the memes

27 votes Vote Now!

This series has been helpful in unpacking the memes

Yes

13 votes

9 votes

3.14159...

5 votes

Soylent Granny Icefloe Bars, part 2

bellatrys

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday August 17, 2009 · 4:22 AM PDT

2009/08/17 · 04:22

It's hard to explain the existence of Willful Cognitive Dissonance - tho' Slacktivist has certainly tried hard enough over the years - and how someone can manage to simultaneously believe and not believe that their mostly-churchgoing neighbors are all just waiting for the signal to come from the Kremlin (or the Mothership, perhaps, or just the Mouth of Hell) and seize them and throw them into concentration camps for the crime of being really Real True Christians (for a totally subjective value of the modifiers Real & True) and happily hand over their lives and their children's lives to the Godless Totalitarian Hippies in a brainwashed-cultists-of-Dystopia scenario.

Poll

60 votes Show Results

Seventies Conservative Pop Culture Pop Quiz

60 votes Vote Now!

Seventies Conservative Pop Culture Pop Quiz

I read The Painted Word when it first came out & loved it

2 votes

I read it then, and went "meh"

1 vote

I read it much later and went "WTF is Wolfe talking about?"

0 votes

I read it much later and loved it.

6 votes

I read it much later and went "WTF is Wolfe talking about?"

1 vote

What's "The Painted Word"--?

50 votes

Soylent Granny Icefloe Bars, part 1

bellatrys

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday August 15, 2009 · 6:07 AM PDT

2009/08/15 · 06:07

I know a lot of people in Center-Left Blogistan have been baffled by the speed with which the "ZOMG! Obmama's gonna kill your grandparents!" meme has been spread, and consider this to be a sign of something new in US politics, or at least something that only dates back to the Clenis Frenzy era - but "not so, but far otherwise," as I can well attest. Rupert Murdoch didn't create it, at all.

It goes back at least to the mid-Seventies,

Poll

33 votes Show Results

Were you there...?

33 votes Vote Now!

Were you there...?

I was around in the Seventies and remember this fearmongering.

10 votes

All that, plus I was PART of the fearmongering!

3 votes

I was around, but don't recall anything of the Seventies aside from HR Pufnstuff.

12 votes

I wasn't even alive in '75!

8 votes

NH action alert - public transit, not marriage

bellatrys

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Thursday May 07, 2009 · 4:24 AM PDT

2009/05/07 · 04:24

This is cross-posted from Blue Hampshire, with some explanatory notes

Manchester is the largest city in the state, with one of the most underfunded, poorly managed public transportation systems that I have had the misfortune of having to use, in three countries and six states. We've been pretty much cut off from the rest of the state as far as public transit goes, ever since we destroyed our train station in the Sixties and replaced it with expensive coach services, which we further cut back to zilch last year - if you don't have a car, and you need to get out of town, tough luck! And if you need to get around in town, good luck! The MTA was in bad shape before last year, when they cut routes and shortened service hours.

But they're about to make it even worse - and they haven't warned us who use it. (Seriously, try to find a notification on the website.)

Poll

34 votes Show Results

Are you dependent on public transportation?

34 votes Vote Now!

Are you dependent on public transportation?

Yes

15 votes

19 votes

Mushroom Clouds over Wall Street!

bellatrys

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday October 01, 2008 · 9:56 AM PDT

2008/10/01 · 09:56

--Would you trust this proposal?

Here is an older homeowner, living in (let us say) a large, once-regal Victorian with significant acreage, who due to increasing years can no longer get around it so well, nor maintain the estate in the style formerly accustomed, and so has hired someone to look after the building and yard for which this individual is paid rather handsomely, particularly given the typical income of neighboring families.

One day after a severe rainstorm this property manager comes to the householder and says that the roof is in such dire need of repairs that it must be fixed IMMEDIATELY to the tune of a half-million dollars, otherwise if it is not done at once the next big storm will rip it off entirely and the house will be wrecked. "Here's the checkbook, please sign here and I'll take care of it."

bellatrys

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday May 24, 2008 · 8:03 PM PDT

2008/05/24 · 20:03

(originally posted at my blog Nothing New Under The Sun)

There has been alas too much personal stress (code for my family and coworkers have driven me round the bend again) as well as the dauntingness of all the awfulness of the news, how to comment on any of it? the sorrowful are mute - but one small aspect of all the headdesking quality (or huddled-under-the-desk quality) of it all has galled my history-buff brain into banging on the desk, because words matter, ideas matter and sloppy language --> sloppy thinking --> grossly-stupid action (or inaction), and this way, way, too common bad habit is something this first-hand-sources junkie knows a little about.

I'm speaking of all the ~~whinging~~ Deploring of the Vitriol-Slinging in the Political Discourse in Online Communities Today, Undoubtedly Brought About By the Slacking Moral Standards Caused By The Anonymity Of The Internet - using perhaps not all those exact words in every instance, but inevitably* using the word "vitriol", along with these memes--

People, do you know what vitriol-slinging really IS? Do you know what vitriol is, either? It has NOTHING to do with harsh language, at all.

Poll

9 votes Show Results

Is being flamed...

9 votes Vote Now!

Is being flamed...

Just like having battery acid thrown in one's face

0 votes

Much WORSE than having battery acid tossed in your eyes

0 votes

Stop asking rhetorical questions! - you're cutting me to the quick!

9 votes

To the victor...and to the victor's spoilsmen, as well--

bellatrys

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Wednesday March 05, 2008 · 4:04 AM PST

2008/03/05 · 04:04

(Also posted at my own blog, Nothing New Under The Sun)

A while ago, looking in my old Merriam-Webster dictionary for something, I stumbled over the word "spoilsman" - something which I don't recall ever hearing used, in political blogging, during all these years. It's a curious thing that this concept has gone from modern political discourse, and that the rediscovery of the thing itself - "OMG! Look at all these fiscal connections to various industry! Look at these paybacks! How the hell do they get away with this!" has come as such a shock. But that loss does explain a great deal how corporatism has been allowed to creep in and control politics unchecked for so long, before and since Nixon took undisclosed donations from Democrat tycoons in exchange for promises to make sure the EPA was toothless...

So how does this affect today's landscape? (Call me cynical if you like, but prove me wrong.)

bellatrys

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday September 09, 2007 · 12:12 PM PDT

2007/09/09 · 12:12

I don't know how many dKos readers have heard about the Rapleaf/Upscoop/Trustfuse scandal, or the similar but not-connected Quechup/iDate scandal, but for those who have and those who haven't, here is something interesting which may tie into Granny Doc's recent post, "Big Brother IS Watching You" and also the documented efforts by the PTB to protect their civilian corporate subcontractors of unconstitutionality.

Auren Hoffman, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has been playing the wide-eyed ingenue ever since his Rapleaf/Upscoop/Trustfuse project blew up in a cloud of flying spam mails, is an old Young Republican.

What is Rapleaf, and why should you worry about it? I'll tell you - it begins with an email I got last week that I first marked as "spam" and ignored, until I ran across a blog post warning against this outfit.

bellatrys

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday January 22, 2006 · 11:59 PM PST

2006/01/22 · 23:59

Tonight on the dark road I heard a song I'd never heard before, the end of a ballad as I turned on the car, haunting and hollow in fourths and fifths unaccompanied male voices--

...Listen through the rubble for a rescue team;
Six hundred feet of coal and slag--
Hope imprisoned in a three foot seam,
Hope imprisoned in a three foot seam.
Eight days passed and some were rescued,
Leaving the dead to lie alone--
Through all their lives they dug their grave:
Two miles of earth for a marking stone,
Two miles of earth for a marking stone.

I had to wait out the rest of the set in the driveway, listening for the host to identify it, so that I could find out the rest of it - "Springhill Disaster" by Peggy Seeger. Read More

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Here I Stand (as at a virtual hiring fair)

My Healthcare Horror Story : A Snake Ate Up All My Savings

Raging Against The Machine, Circa 200 Years Ago

Soylent Granny Icefloe Bars, part 3*

Soylent Granny Icefloe Bars, part 2

Soylent Granny Icefloe Bars, part 1

NH action alert - public transit, not marriage

Mushroom Clouds over Wall Street!

A Little Historical (And Forensic) Perspective--

To the victor...and to the victor's spoilsmen, as well--

Rapleaf - Cynical Spammer or NSA Front?

"for blood and bone is the price of coal"