Occupy My Arse

It is really too bad that your liberal arts degree cannot get you a job in one of the very Fortune 500 companies you are protesting against.  Surprise!  You live in a world where it is not good enough to prove you can "read good" and spew a 10 000 word essay on oppressed rats in medical research.  I am sure your interest in 19th century art and the history of weapons used in the Boer War makes for interesting conversation at cocktail parties and fund raisers for PETA, but let us get something straight: you were out of your fucking mind if you thought that was going to be the foundation for employment.  Most of you owe your parents an apology and all that tuition money they gave to you.  Same goes for all the "flash cash" you asked for so you could beer pong your way through your third year.  Oh you know who you are.  I spent many a Friday at the Power Plant watching you trying to replace you blood volume with alcohol so shut it.

Before you get all bent out of shape and take one of your clever protest placards to my head let us get some things straight.  I started out university as an English major.  In this particular matter, I am the voice of experience.  I wanted to take classes that broadened my horizons, study literature written by the best of the best and have my mind blown by the debates in class.  By the end of my first year, my brain had been filled with vast amounts of knowledge about history, anthropology, political science, archaeology, and Victorian English but the fact of the matter was that this was not going to pay the bills unless I taught classes on Victorian English and let's face it, that is a pretty narrow market.

What happened after that was a re-shaping of my future.  I came to understand that I could always go back and study those things but what I needed to do was restructure my education so that what I learned was useful, lent itself to employable job skills, and gave me a foundation for future employment.  Jane Austen and Athena would have to wait.

Along the way, I took a few courses in economics.  I learned a thing or two about capitalism.  One of those things is the power of the consumer's dollar.  Oh you may think that the Walmarts and Chase banks of the world have all the power but the truth is, they don't.  They exist because you buy from them or do business with them.  Want to really protest?  Hit them where it hurts: the bottom line.  Do not buy from companies that fund/support/prop up things you do not like or agree with.  Same goes for places that offer services you use.  If you are reading this online, you can use the services provided by Lord Google, do some research and find out if that Capital One credit card is what you really want in your wallet.  All you do when you destroy the property of the "1%" is give them reason to charge higher interest rates on things like loans and mortgages and give you less interest on your savings; someone has to pay for the damage and you just gave them justification for doing so.  Thanks a bunch.

So all you Occupy Wherever can take your Marxist/Socialist ideals and rotate.  You are where you are because of choices you made.  Do not bother making your shitty choices someone else's responsibility or problem.  Trust me, the "1%" do not feel guilty about where you chose to be in life.  Have the balls to stand up, get a job, pay your taxes and contribute to society in a meaningful way.  You say I am my brother's keeper?  Well that asshole better get off his duff and get a job and I don't care if it is at a convenience store or bagging groceries at a market.  No one is too good to work at these kinds of jobs.  I have a hippie heart but I am tired of funding his leaderless, pointless Arab Spring field trip to Wall Street.  And tell the fucker to pack up his tent, go home, and take a shower... him and his new dreds are stinking up the place.

Amen.

300 Really Is Too Many

I was bullied in high school.  Not because I was gay, but for being short, for being fat, for being smart, for being ugly, for being poor, for coming from the wrong part of town.  And while I am not gay, having been bullied, I can sympathize.

The "It Gets Better" campaign always seemed to fall short to me; celebrities appealing to kids they have never met that sunny days are ahead.  Kids staring down the barrel of a gun that they themselves are holding know that more often than not, that celebrity is just jumping on a band wagon and that the words being said are being read off a cue card that a publicist approved.  Nobel idea, sure, but it still smells like a steaming pile of bullshit to me. 

Before I finished grade 11, two kids I knew blew their heads off with shotguns.  I was 17 then.  I am 40 now.  Things have not got better.

As Mr. Mercer says, we have to make it better now.