This constantly amazes me, that most folks seem to see the opportunity for increased overtime as somehow being more important or desireable than more leisure time. Had to leave on time yesterday and the next guy wasn't in yet but because it was slow I said to the older gentleman I was working with I'm goin' and he said but you could get some overtime in. Now here's a very partial list of what the average person has to do on any given day: haircut, oil change, laundry, renew driver's license, visit sick relative in hospital, pick somebody up at the airport, food shopping, exercising, reading, doctor's app't, blogging, cultivating friendships.... I ain't getting it but the biggest practical reason why I now philosophically opt for the leisure time over the OT is the IRS. Make enough overtime and you'll be pushing yourself into a higher tax bracket and will probably owe the IRS some dough, they'll see you as wealthy. Now if we got rid of the income tax entirely then the philosophical argument for OT over leisure time becomes more compelling but until then you're just a bunch of fools folks.
Charlie Sheen
Martin must be so proud,
& finally a Philosophical Question
Ever have a day at work where something can be right in front of you and you ask for help and somebody says over there by the ... and you still can't find it so I jokingly says to the guy yesterday don't yell at me because I'm a little retarded. Now this is not meant in a disparaging way but if you know you're retarded then you can't be retarded just like if you know you're insane you can't really be insane or if you know you have the Alzheimer's then you really don't have it. Are the people under these conditions always unaware of their situation? It's like this is rare but a few times I had a dream and while dreaming I knew I was dreaming. Since this is becoming a little Convoluted
Oh hell let's throw in a Political Point too
Re the proper role of Government in our lives what with racial and economic disparities, the lack of educational opportunities and health care and all the other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune my conclusion is this: Saty's overall philosophy resonates with me, she taps home but Beth is right on the merits. I think they're both basically saying the same thing that we should lend a hand to those in need, to help those less fortunate than ourselves but Saty sees the government as a prime mechanism here and Beth sees it instead as I do as a whole Biblical/Christian mandate kind of thing whereas Ayn Rand resolved the whole thorny philosophical dilemma with Fuck Charity. So soapie what you have done to give back??? Good day folks!
I concur on the IRS/OT thing. Once had 52 hours of overtime (yes you heard that right) on a 2 week paycheck. Never looked at OT the same way again. Any more than an extra hour or two and it's not worth it.
ReplyDeleteWhat have I done to give back?...
Well, I go home everyday for lunch to feed my beloved Winston and let him out before heading back to the office. Encountered a stray German Shepherd while waiting for the bus to go back to work. Called it over and checked the tags. Called the owner and waited for the owner to come get his dog. Missed the bus back to work and ended up grabbing my car and driving back to the office.
Went to a buddy's house lastnight for the game. Brought more than enough food. He's a single dude living the life of a bachelor so I left the extra food there and a couple cold ones to boot. Figured he could use a good home cooked meal for a change. Plus, I had more porketta at home.
I know people that when they hear they might get some OT start humping the air. This is where we've been brainwashed as a society with the help of conservatives that if you work hard enough and long enough your hard work will be rewarded and you'll be rich. Uh-uh, not if the IRS can help it, the Tax Code is designed to serve as a natural braking action to that, kind of like an emergency shutoff switch. Was it conspiratorially designed to thwart your pursuit of happiness? I'm gonna go with a yes and the progressive income tax is right there in Karl Marx's Manifesto. You got a soft spot in your heart for the critters I see. You know when I asked myself the same question what have I done to give back you really have to think. I mean I don't volunteer at any homeless shelters, don't counsel any pregnant women, haven't offered to help Charlie Sheen yet. Oh yeah I helped a young woman shovel out her SUV after the last snowstorm,
ReplyDeletefor which I got paid:)
BTW and I thought of doing a separate blog on this but it seemed so trivial but I ain't into the Super Bowl. Tried following football at times but the national pasttime is el beisbol folks. About the Game COULD CARE LESS, maybe I'm a weirdo.
ReplyDeleteOT seems like extra cash to me. I guess folks just don't like to pay taxes.
ReplyDeleteMy wife insisted we not pay off the house because
'interest is deductible', but never complained when I brought home a corporate
bonus, which was not. Worst place I ever worked at: young guy drove a forklift in the warehouse,
times were busy and he worked two shifts. They assigned him a third shift in a row, but the hospital called and his wife was having trouble giving birth. He said he was sorry, but he couldn't work three shifts in a row.
Company said 'you're fired'. Probably why taxes don't bother me as much as corporate assholes.
My experience has been that if you work more than 1 OT shift a pay period it's not worth it. Which is why I got a second job instead to make this money to go to Dallas.
ReplyDeleteProgressive income tax dates back to the days of the Caesars and the Greeks, by the way. It's not a new idea. Marx didn't invent it. It was in use long, long before he ever came to be.
And honestly, far as I'm concerned, if your ONLY motivation to work is money then you're in the wrong job. We've all had these and we've all been in situations where we need money (like I am now, I need about $1800 by May) but really if all your job has going for it is a paycheck then it's the wrong job. Even my second job is a little girl with multiple sclerosis who's basically, as we say, circling the drain. Bad family dynamics, just a crappy situation, maybe I can give her a smile but they tell me she's pretty much nonresponsive so I'll do what I can. I am lucky enough to have opportunities to pick and choose from and do what hits me on a personal level; I realize a lot of people don't have that luxury, but still. Your heart really needs to be in it.
And personally I hate el beisbol. Football is my game (Go Raider Nation!) but here's my question for you Z: why is it that we must sing the national anthem before sports events? It's a game, not a political arena. And wtf was up with Fox and their reading the Declaration of Independence during the pregame? Was it that they couldn't resist the massive viewership to throw some political propaganda in there? I fail to see how sports events relate in any way to all the flag waving red white and blue bullshit people insist on incorporating into it. And they never can get anyone to sing the anthem right. STFU and play ball is what I say.
Now, as far as your retarded comment: yes there are people who know they are retarded (not a PC word anymore, actually, the second time they've changed the designation and I don't like the new one, I'm sticking with 'developmentally disabled') Case in point the girl with Down's who voiced a character who had Down's on some cartoon show. Sarah Palin had some choice comments about that and the girl fired back with some really apt, astute answers. I think it's harder when people have real mild disabilities, because they DO know it, and it's hard because they have to come to terms with it. And lots, I should say most, people with mental illness know it too.
BB: "I guess folks just don't like to pay taxes."
ReplyDelete@Saty: Karl Marx may not have invented the progressive income tax but it was a main pillar of his Communist Manifesto is the point. B ya think? For me if I paint a guy's house and he gives me what we agreed upon is a fair wage for my labors that to me is a private affair between me and him so I'd ask by what moral principle need the government get involved??? That's the basic problem I have and I've yet to hear an answer that satisfies moral theory.
Saty: "If your ONLY motivation to work is money then you're in the wrong job."
ReplyDeleteHad to mull this over a little but you're right. I've had my share of those, jobs you take when your back is up against a wall so rather than go on welfare I took a job once at a nursery/fence company with some Albanians and it just wasn't my thing like the time I go take their flatbed truck to deliver a guy's fence and the worker didn't fasten the damn wheelbarrow in the back and it fell on the road...installing a fence in some chick's yard and the older Albanian guy pissing every hour in her bush. He was a funny guy though, every time someone would fart he'd go "God bless you."
"Why is it that we must sing the national anthem before sports events?"
I'll let Beth answer that. Re baseball vs. football I just prefer baseball since there's so many facets to the game, nuances, finer points, variety whereas in football it's just a bunch of guys tackling each other. Somehow seems more intellectual that even a guy like George Will is into it and then you get into the real arcane stuff like the Infield Fly Rule.
Re the retarded community what I was getting at Saty is a philosophical thing which I'm not sure you follow me but seems to me the retarded don't know they're retarded. Seems to me if you're aware of some type of problem or condition you have you can work at it. I am reminded of some kind of title in a medical book I read somewhere and it's an interesting phrase - The Beatification of Disease - and by that I mean to take that we have this philosophy that we are totally powerless and at the mercy of certain things and I'm just wondering maybe we're not medically advanced enough to realize we can overcome these things but this is a deep area. I had thought you with your mystical bent might argue that we have some hidden power within ourselves, an unused spiritual reservoir that we haven't tapped into yet but in most of our discussions medical so far you seem to fall into the traditional and mainstream medical paradigms (e.g. cancer treatments that rely on chemo/radiation good) and maybe I expected something else, dunno:)
ReplyDeleteRemember I work with people who are developmentally disabled.
ReplyDeleteBecause 'being retarded' has its origins in physical medicine (ie, an anoxic birth injury, a chromosome too many or too few, disrupted prenatal development due to drugs, alcohol, toxins, etc) I don't see how you can 'overcome' it. Certainly the girl with Down's who voiced the cartoon character with Down's has a very good handle on her disability and obviously manages to function. There are lots of mildly disabled folks who can manage something like a normal life with supervision; there are structured workshops where they can have a real job, supervised apartment complexes where staff keep an eye without smothering; that kind of thing. But it's not like by some power of the will you're magically going to delete that extra chromosome, or that through some mystical process you're going to regenerate all those brain cells that died when you got stuck in the birth canal for 20 minutes and were blue as a smurf when you got born.
You also have to remember that I'm a western (allopathic) trained nurse. I am in general nowhere near as crunchy-granola as most of my friends although we all to varying degrees have that 'hippie' thing going on (it's like our legacy). I believe very strongly in vaccinating babies and children. Most of my friends have refused these for their kids. Anyway, point is that I approach physical medicine from a physical viewpoint. My religious background would say that these kinds of things are manifestations of karma.
There's lots of things you can treat and lots of things you can do even when you have a disability with the right kinds of support. I recently read about a lady, can't remember her name, she's very high functioning autistic and actually is a professor in some college and does huge amounts of things to help animals (despite continuing to eat them). She talks a lot about being autistic and actually she said that if she had the opportunity to cure her autism she wouldn't, she'd keep it. I found that really interesting.
Anyway, most of the folks I work with are so profoundly disabled they don't even have self-awareness let alone anything else. But across campus we do have people who hold jobs, go to school, etc. It's all an individual thing, each person has to be taken separately and the treatment approach has to be from that individual standpoint.
And in terms of mental illness: I have a very very dear friend (who donated me 25K frequent flyer miles so I could get a roundtrip flight to Dallas for my trip) who's paranoid schizophrenic. He's fairly unstable as these things go but he knows when things are starting to go bad and that he's going to need help.
ReplyDeleteAgain, these are diseases, chemical problems, processing problems. You can treat schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but you can't cure them. The best you can do is try to live with them as successfully as you can, and sometimes that's possible and sometimes it's not. These things, particularly bipolar disorder, are cyclical, so there's times when you ARE pretty much normal, and then there's times when you're really, really, REALLY not.
With the right environment, the right support, the right medications, most people can manage a (mostly) normal life. But they are very, very aware of their illness and what they have to do to manage it. And even then, even when you're doing everything right, sometimes it gets away from you and you've got a bigass mess.
I think what I'm getting at is the existence of the Soul. What is it? if it really exists then the brain really doesn't matter that much anyway only in the motor skills area. Cognitive skills, intelligence, that kind of thing -- wouldn't the soul take care of that stuff anyway if part of us is pure spirit? Here's the thing, the retarded obviously have a hard time of it physically but why intellectually? If the mind, the soul is not dependent on the gray matter see what I mean? Savants, brilliant in one area, how do you explain that?
ReplyDelete"we all to varying degrees have that 'hippie' thing going on"
ReplyDelete& here's where you had me fooled. For some reason I had expected that when it came to cancer treatments let's say I would have had you pegged as an alternative person, maybe more questioning of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole, things like that. One of your fave bands judging from your playlist seems to be Iron Maiden and yet you haven't touched the booze in years from what you've said. Hippy-lite maybe?
Lemme take these one at a time.
ReplyDelete1. I ADORE Iron Maiden. In particular Steve Harris, who was my original inspiration to play bass. As I sit here in front of me on the wall are five b/w matted and framed pictures of said Bass God, two framed and matted IM concert posters and (framed and matted, obviously) cover of Bass Player Magazine with Steve on the cover. So what's me giving up drinking got to do with that? My husband's been a Maiden freak for about ever; he's the only person I know and the only one in the whole group of his contemporaries who can say he's been to concerts with both DiAnno and Dickinson. And he doesn't drink either. Don't judge the book by its cover. We went to Sam Ash in Raleigh one day and I was wearing this poofy girlygirl dress and everything, and I decided to try out an amp I spotted, so I picked out a bass, tuned it and plugged in. Naturally I was playing IM.. a bunch of teenage guys an aisle or so away must have recognized the song because they came barreling around the corner and their mouths dropped open; they had nothing to say to a poufy girl hammering it out. So don't go by superficial things. The VERY FIRST song I ever learned to play was Ides of March (the song I was listening to when I decided to learn to play). I don't recommend starting with IM unless you're a bit of a masochist. And Scott (who is a better bass player than I'll ever be despite not playing bass for almost 20 years-he's into guitar now) refused to teach me, so basically you could say I'm self taught. Which might be why I'm at the level I am :P
I'm gonna go ahead and take these in different posts.
Cognitive skills, intelligence, that kind of thing -- wouldn't the soul take care of that stuff anyway if part of us is pure spirit? Here's the thing, the retarded obviously have a hard time of it physically but why intellectually?
ReplyDeleteI look at it like this. The body is a vehicle. If you're driving a Bugatti, you can go 260 mph because you have 800hp to work with. If you're driving a Fiat 500 you have a top speed of 43 and need to be pushed up hills because you've got like 19hp and that's all.
So the soul is the soul, but its existence isn't physical, it's spiritual, and in order to be able to exist in the material world it has to reside in a material body. This planet isn't the natural home of the soul. So it takes birth in some material, physical body. Now, the body that you get is entirely dependent on your past karma. Even the species is dependent on this.
So while the soul itself is perfect and whole, in the material world it's dependent on the material body it gets, and whatever limitations are put on that body.
Now as for your hippie lite comment, I wouldn't go that far. What I would say is that my focus is in other areas. I work in western medicine; I understand it and I understand how it works. I don't buy into chiropractics because of what I've learned about physical therapy and anatomy. I absolutely do recommend Chinese medicine, acupuncture and herbals prescribed by Chinese doctors. I haven't studied much Ayurveda but I have no reason to distrust it. My approach to all these things is more of a fusion than anything else.
Where my 'hippieness' has always been or always manifested most has been in politics, in environmentalism, in cruelty-free living, in natural foods, crafting, living close to nature and so on. If this was 1971 I'd probably be living in a yurt somewhere in Alaska in some forest living on berries and nuts and making my own clothes out of woven birch bark or some shit. But in the mid-80s I was protesting wars, boycotting, being vegan and campaigning for socialized medicine. Kind of a post-punk hippie. That kind of hippie. I'd say I'm a little less angry and a lot more tie-dye these days.
And believe me that as far as 'better living through chemicals' goes; I did enough of that by the time I was 21 to last me a lifetime. Besides, and this goes back to your drinking comment, all that goes against my religious regulations (drinking, smoking, drugs, etc.) so even if I hadn't quit in 90 I'd have quit in 2000 when I became a devotee.
Re the drinking or your lack of that was the whole point of my comment, judge/books/covers. It'd be like if a young guy has Ozzy Osbourne posters all over his room and his nose is pierced but he doesn't even drink or smoke, the first reaction is surprise is all. Just an honest observation and on the flipside you have your ministers with perfect haircuts and polyester suits into all kinds of weird shit.
ReplyDeleteRe the retarded community since I'm a religious person as are you I don't see the mind being totally dependent on the gray matter. I mean if that's the case then how can there be life after death but science acts like all of what makes you you can be mapped out on the brain (emotion here, fear in the amygdala, intelligence over there) and if I were an atheist I'd go along with this but I'm not so I have to find ways to explain the contradiction. Hope we're on the same page here and the retarded having less cognitive skills poses a kind of paradox at least for me re the whole mind/body thing.
I worked 630-3 today, going back in at 1045 til 7AM.. then off to md appointments.. won't I be gorgeous by breakfastime..?
ReplyDeletewho needs sleep?
ReplyDelete