Basket Weaving for Dummies
I apologize in advance if you came here actually expecting information regarding basket weaving. My misleading headline has lead you astray. I sincerely apologize for wasting your time. At least there aren’t 42 self-loading videos on this page. I guess it could have been worse. –Ed
For a fun mental exercise I will often take modern situations and problems and try to extend them, in my own inimitable fashion, to a hypothetical construct in my mind loosely based on my concept and interpretation of an indigenous people’s village.
Does this make good sense? Is it accurate? Does it result in increased understanding of how things work? Is it, in even the slightest way, particularly useful? Perhaps not, but I enjoy it and besides, it’s my brain. That’s the one place on this planet where I get to make the rules. No wonder it’s so crazy in there.
—
One day there was a visitor to the village who observed two people sitting on the ground and weaving some baskets. It was clear they were not equally skilled at the task.
Continue reading →
What would your reality show be called? (via So anyway…)
Reality TV
I came across a blog today that asked the simple question: “What would your reality show be called?”
My first thought was, “Hey! Excellent idea for a blog post.” But my second thought was, “Yeah, what would it be called?”
And that’s when I decided to think hard and figure it out.
It turned out to be a wee bit tougher question than I originally thought. Continue reading →
Stressure
December 23rd. Woot. Doing the lame “what I was posting a year ago” thing is a cheap way to milk out the start of a new post. Last year on the 23rd I blogged about some women who stole a child’s WalMart gift card and wrote about some really cool photography by a woman who has been featured in National Geographic magazine…
If Sarah Palin can do it, why can’t I? I’m going to invent my own words, too. I’ll start with this one:
stressure – A place where stress and pressure meet
LOLZ! RAWR! Mother Grizzly is in the house, yo.
So yeah, I was having another heart to heart with my new boss. We were talking about my fun-filled work days of balls to walls and hair on fire. Days that are so busy and hectic I don’t usually have time to take my breaks or even sit in a chair.
He was asking me about why I was letting the stress get to me.
“What would you do if you were an emergency room surgeon?,” he asked. “How would you handle the stress then, eh? They have a lot of stress!”
Wow. He really thought he had me there. So, so very clever.
I thought it over for a couple of nanoseconds and volleyed back with my rebuttal.
“Well, the first mother fucking thought that pops into my head is, oh, I don’t know. What? An emergency room surgeon? I’d probably be making what? Five million fucking dollars a year?!?!?”
I’m working on a new mathematical formula to explain this phenomenon. Think about it. Let us consider someone with a minimum wage job and no stress. Say it’s pumping gas at the local station. Now someone comes along and says, “Wanna get out of this dump? I’ll pay you $1 an hour more but I’ll literally blow your fucking head off with pressure and stress. Sound good?”
The point here is simple: I don’t want a level of stress equal to an “emergency room surgeon” while making damn near minimum wage. Seems simple, eh? Yet in my boss’s mind that level of stress in exchange for peanuts sounds perfectly reasonable.
The formula for this seems simple. If the situation you have to go through at work isn’t worth the level of pay, then you won’t give much a shit, will you?
Measuring my worth
Yesterday I experienced a sobering thought. It rattled me hard.
My current hourly wage is the same as what I made in 1986.
Fuck. Seriously. Why the fuck did that thought have to cross my brain? As if I didn’t have enough to think about already. Like all great thoughts, it has really stuck with me. I find myself thinking about it all the time.
1986. Gee. That was 24 years ago.
I mentioned this thought to a co-worker. She was like, “Hey. That’s a year before I was even born.”
It is hard to describe this feeling. Hopefully you can use your imagination.
As a math lover, I decided to celebrate this revelation like I do with all great thoughts … with a graph!
This graph is based on information I obtained using a web site called “Measuring Worth – Relative value of US Dollars.” If you’ve ever heard someone say that “$X amount in X year would be worth $Y amount in today’s dollars” then you already know what this web site does. The site uses six different methods to attempt to answer the question. It shows my 1986 wage compared to what it would be worth today using those six different computational methods.
Yes, like I often do, I omitted the data labels on the left side of the graph. This is out of shame and embarrassment over my current salary range. But I can express it like this: Based on the data I obtained from the Measuring Worth web site, my 1986 hourly wage would worth about 2.4 times what I make today.
In other words I have less than half the buying power that I had in 1986. The word “career” hardly applies. Of course some of the positive thinkers out there (shudder) would be happy to point out that at least I have a job. Hopefully they won’t attempt to express such a sentiment directly to my face.
That graph was so much fun I decided to celebrate with one more.
Some remarks about this graph:
- 1983 = Cook at McDonald’s
- 1984 to 1999 = 16 year career at a major company where I worked my way up to management (yes, I used to be somebody)
- 2000 = Left major company to pursue a more enjoyable job as computer programmer (with cut in pay)
- 2001 = Moved to the small city to get out of the rat race (with major cut in pay)
- 2005 to present = Current employer
Well, I think that’s about it. I can’t think of much else to say, except I sure am in the mood to go to work now. Up ahead today may very well be the most special ass fucking of the year, but more about that later after I see how it all goes down. I have little doubt what happens at work today will live up to my wildest expectations and will no doubt completely justify my low rate of pay. Wish me luck!
Shouts from the Abyss 
Recent Comments