After another momentary acknowledgement of my many years existing as contributing and noncontributing member of this particular society, I have come to another conclusion. There are no absolutes or guarantees, only the inevitable and continual cycle of risk versus reward. If you don't understand the significance of that, life might be a wee bit more frustrating than it need be.


Note from management,

“The pending sale of the company to our former competitor has taken an unexpected turn. It appears that they do not want any of the equipment or fiber, only the customer base. After the switch over from our network to theirs, most of you will no longer be needed and will be eligible for unemployment benefits. We realize you will all have an extremely difficult time finding work doing what you do best considering there are 600,000 of your brethren are out of work nationwide, but believe us when we say, we wish you all the best of luck for the future and can not thank you all enough for your dedication and effort the past year.

-Tootles.”

I went the way of bandwidth manipulation as my profession because of three main reasons. One, I failed Spanish in high school so why would I attempt to learn programming. Another language is but another language. I figured the rest of the planet will all speak English soon enough and it wouldn’t be long before a gizmo of some sort will be implanted in our brains that allows us to translate hip-hop into code. It all seemed to be a waste of time to learn with the inevitable in site. Two, I had had enough of trying to wade through everyone’s desk crap, moving things that should have never been there in the first place, as if it mattered that I returned everything to where I had found it—just to get to the monitor or open the case of the CPU. Three, at the time in the late 80’s, the pay was similar to nonunion trench digging. Communications was it, the wave of the future. Everyone needed it. Expansion and development were mutually inclusive entities. Money was readily available. Layoffs were nonexistent. The sky was the limit, baby.

Bandwidth is delivery. It is Dominos Pizza without the paper hat and rusted Pinto. It’s fast, it’s streaming hot, and it’s cheap. It also comes with conditions and expectations. It is born of military roots and governed by the oppression of the bottom line. It is subject to whims and hype, of feeding frenzy and denial. Of course, I didn’t see all of that stuff coming. I saw 25K a year plus overtime. It was 1989.

Well, to make a long introduction short, I now am on my third telecommunications company in three years yet I drive the same van complete with the wrong phone number decaled on the side and tools I never use. The first one divested its communication division because of a stockholder revolt (and some Enron-esque type dealings), the second bought the customer base of the first so as to beef up its total worth before filling chapter 11 and posting a large for sale sign on the front door, and then my there is current employer, which is well known for making refrigerators and blenders. They got a 100 million dollar a year company for 15 million and retired a 200 million dollar debt. Not bad, eh?

Well, its Monday and time to put on the "I'm here for you" hat...

Note from Personnel,

“Due to the sensitive nature of information and the potential negative end result to our bottom line if anyone ever really found out how we are fucking over our customers during this merger, we would expect that any inquiries to the intent of events, specifically by any members of the local media (who also just happen to be our customers) be directed to the following 1-800 number. It is not that we don’t think you are a living breathing sentient being, but you are not worthy of position and title enough to speak for the corporation or even have an opinion for that matter. That is why we have an aristocratic ascension process within our corporate structure for those qualified to play. Also, it scares the shit out of us that you intermix with customers unsupervised. We are working on that problem with a new field employee monitoring system that should alleviate our concerns—kudos to our development team. Therefore, shut up.”

There are many reasons for wanting to escape, from the rational to the sheer panic driven. There are subcategories: criminal prosecution, debt to unsavory people, disillusionment, depression, wanderlust for the sake of wanderlust, and of course mental illness. Then the subcategories within the subcategories: murder, theft, fraud, extortion, death of a loved one, divorce, social deviancy, ideological contradictions, Prozac shortages, the price of healthcare, substance abuse, and my personal favorite—boredom, which is the main reason for all the afore mentioned.

My final defiant act toward a ring in the nose led sheep infested society, mostly known as Middle American culture, other than getting fired for attempting to engage my co-workers in lofty debate about mundane corporate practices during the time allocated for said mundane practices, was the following letter to the editor:

“To whom it may concern,

What is really cool about this Iraq thing is we get to go in and stomp a third world country like ants under a pair of over-sized Doc Martins. God, it gives me such a hard-on just thinking of how good it feels… all that national pride building up, and it is guaranteed too. Like, they could even come close to stopping us being our military expenditures are more than most of other country’s GNP’s. I now know what Mussolini’s people felt like when the Italians over ran the Ethiopians. Took their tanks and mowed many a spear-chucker right over and then threw a glorious party complete with flags and song and beer and probably even pussy. I was getting pretty bored with watching the NBA players kick all those also-rans asses in the Olympics every four years. It was fun for a while celebrating our assured victories night in and night out but after a while it was like, what’s the point. But this is really cool—lots of high tech blood letting and we are in and out fast—like using the remote to flip channels. It really sets me right knowing my country can do this without any retaliation from anyone else on the planet because we have most of the mass destruction hardware now. We fucking rule! All it will cost is a few lives on our side and we can blame the liberals down the road for the national deficit as usual. I can’t wait until we invade another camel jockey compound or maybe even France or Canada. Damn it’s great to be in the totally awesome 70%. Well, gotta run. My SUV is triple parked at Applebee’s and idling on fumes. Fuckers want to raise the gas tax, too.”

I suppose the length and choice verbiage led to the editing. Then there was the context thing and the fear of retribution from key sponsorship. Anyway, I did glimpse at the published version but tossed the paper after getting the reconstructed gist of it:

“Dear Editor,

Going to war against our enemies like Iraq is cool. It builds national pride and brings us together to support our military. We should increase the military budget to show our appreciation and maybe even send our solders beer and a pet cat. I think we should let the NBA play some exhibition games over there to boost their morale. What a great country we live in with great leaders. I’m supporting the effort by buying goods and services from patriotic establishments and so should you.”


… Or something similar to that.