Listen, kids, don't ever let them convince you that a mundane job is some sort of ticket to independence or security. It's just the opposite: a ticket to endless dependence and unfathomable insecurity, as your soul runs down the tube, drop by drop, into that little bottle the boss drinks out of to cure his erectile dysfunction.

Never TRUST a Man in a Tie

A man in a tie is Working For Someone Else, and he is a Professional. Being a Professional means being willing and able to lie convincingly in order to generate profits for one's boss. The tie makes a barrier between the mind and the heart, and you will notice that being a "professional" generally means being able to ignore the heart. Or use it. If you try to make a heart connection with a man in a tie, he might not even notice, if he's a fairly low-level dweeb with barely the intelligence to perform the rote tasks his masters have laid out for him, or if he's a mid-level type, he will look at it as a weakness on your part, a vulnerability, a place to get some hooks in and manipulate you with.

Now, trust is the glue that holds a society together, and cynicism and mistrust threaten the very core of future profits, like glue coming unstuck and individual strands getting loose and going off in their own way. The Empire is under siege and could collapse into freedom at any moment in the right kind of wind. We all have a Sacred Duty to prevent this, mainly by
BELIEVING REAL HARD
that the Emperor DOES TOO have clothes on. See, if people stop believing the lies of men in ties, then the whole thing comes unglued ... but who wants to stay glued to assholes like this? And if the frenzy to kill most of the life on the planet and enslave the rest is the best the current tragic empire can do, then why lift a finger to help it or preserve it?

Pray for Rain.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 

9/15/1999
It's been a while. It was last Spring, pretty much, when last I had anything much to say here. At that time, I was working regularly as a kind of p.c. tech in training. Well, I lost that job, because I asked out two of the wrong women. One of them was a co-worker who had some sort of inner emotional catastrophe that compelled her to slander me to the company uber-bosses. The other had a husband who turned out to be a lot less dead than she'd told me he was... and who showed up at my work to play out his pathetic jealous husband shtick, lifted self-consciously out of a certain Lynard Skynard song. So this glassy eyed little troll stands there and threatens my life, all in front of the prepubescent son of the blessed union he brought along to prevent me scrubbing the pavement with his face. These Appalachian sex and jealousy dramas never seem to end well, so I decided to exit stage left , before this pecker wood decided to wax "heroic" and shoot me. I told him the truth, that I had not known and would not knowingly have become involved with a married woman, and that now that I did know, said involvement was at an end. I apologized profusely. I felt kinda sorry for him, knowing what a huge ball of chaos and craziness she'd been in my life, and I thought being married to her could be pretty hellish. He looked like he'd been ridden hard and put up wet ... on most days.

So those two little incidents were given as the reasons why my employment was terminated. Just as well, for it is Written: "The best day on any job is the day you quit." Back to my habitual vocation as ne'er-do-well jack of all trades. No riches there, but not far to fall, either.

I guess if I'm gonna get in trouble for something, hedonic excess would pretty much be my choice... better than trouble for not having enough fun. What can I do? Arcadia of old was the birth place of Pan, the Goat-Foot God. So naturally I get a little randy, a little goaty, a little horny every now and again.

So I went to Starwood with no particular job to return to. Made a run of pipes when I got back, blessing the soap stone during the eclipse.

Then I hit some sort of karmic lottery and was invited on an expense-paid trip to Colorado.

Now I'm back, and well and truly broke, but it's all good, as there's plenty of work lined up.

As the Storm Approaches...
The radio tells me the Commonwealth of Virginia was planning on executing a man named Mueller tomorrow night, and there was some question of power interruption due to the storm, and it was thought that maybe they could stay the execution for a few days while the storm passed. But the State assures us it will go ahead with the execution regardless, even if Hurricane Floyd is kicking in the very windows. No mere category five hurricane is going to stay the wheels of Virginia justice from grinding away the life of this man Mueller. The execution facility, we are told, has its own multiple-redundancy power supply. It occurs to me that virtually every government function will be shut down while the hurricane actually blows through: police, fire, emergency people will answer all calls, but only after the wind has died down. Everyone else will be at home. It will be as though there were no government at all except a skeleton crew of the most essential persons doing the most important of government jobs: killing a civilian. Yes, even while fire trucks don't move, this obscene ritual of tribal retribution will go forward.

I notice also that this hurricane skipped Florida, just like the last one did. I remember because that was right after Pat Robertson predicted hurricane damage in Florida as part of God's retribution on that state for passing laws tolerant toward homosexuals. He said that, and then the very next big hurricane sidestepped Florida and headed straight for Virginia Beach, Virginia, Headquarters of Pat's personal empire.

And now here's another one. Makes me wonder. Seems to me that Pat ought to recant his hateful nonsense, or else be subject to lawsuits from insurance companies that have to pay for the damage. That would be the right thing, but we cannot expect that of Pat, who suffers with the Pope the disease of never being able to admit when he is wrong. No, that would be too much to expect. But there is no reason that a select committee of Virginia Beach citizens could not pay Pat a visit and strongly suggest that he take his operation elsewhere, in the interests of climatic harmony.