Keep Thanking God for your Horrible Job, According to New Unemployment Numbers

hobo-soupSurprise! The unemployment rate has risen again, to 9.7%.  Of course. And,

A broader measure of joblessness rose even more sharply than the headline unemployment rate. An expanded unemployment rate that includes people who have given up looking for a job out of frustration and who are working part time but want a full-time job rose to 16.8 percent, from 16.3 percent.

Of course, 83% of us are still gainfully employed, waiting out the Friday before Labor Day weekend, so that we too can be unemployed, for three days of drunkenness or and yard work.

The job losses aren’t in every sector.   So there’s good news in that some of our industries are still thriving.   According to the Post,

The health-care sector, as it has throughout the recession, added jobs.

Health care actually added 50,000 jobs, for people to work on the death panels. which means that the rest of the economy lost 266,000. And many of those 266,000 people no longer have insurance, so that they can bankrupt themselves paying into the burgeoning health care industry. Hurrah.

Unemployment Rises to 9.7 Percent; 216,000 Jobs Lost in August [Washington Post]
97 Comments

Working in HC doesn’t mean you’ll get HC, but a job’s a job.

But please don’t call it a career. Only when you’re old and grey can one talk about a career (even professionals.) I used to hear in the cafe at work all these younger engineers and recent grads jabber about how wonderful their careers would be (everyone would be a CEO) and all the money they’d make.* That was till the Tech Crash Fairy wiped out most of their jobs.

*I used to have fancy pants dreams like that, too. Nothing wrong with dreaming, but it seems incredibly fatuous to base your life on the assumption that that was how everything was going to be played out.

Unemployment was at 12% in California in July. Curious to see this month’s number.

I’ve spent my life working in a field in which 5% employment is reason to rejoice. Not to complain, I chose to do that. For me the opposite is true: I cannot conceive of working at the same place for years. Let’s not find ourselves in a US in which my experience is the norm. There aren’t enough restaurants to keep everyone employed.

You say “Drunkeness or Yard Work” like there is some kind of distinction to be made there, some manichan dualism to be respected or honored there in some way . Well, I say to you : Drunkenness AND Yard Work. DRUNKENNESS AND YARD WORK!!!!!!

Good Day. I said GOOD DAY to you, Sir!

@Tommmcatt Floats: I acknowledge my error and have fixed the post.

@Tommmcatt Floats: True story: my furrin father in law tried mowing the lawn his first day here (a) without starting the power mower and (b) wearing sandals. That has nothing whatsoever to do with drunkenness and yard work except that for four weekrs or so now I’ve not had to choose. All drunkenness, no yard work except for picking the beautiful habaneros, jalapeños and chiltepes from my pepper patch.

@SanFranLefty: NM’s rate was 7.0 percent in June. Have not seen today’s numbers, but somehow or another we usually lag behind the national numbers.

@Tommmcatt Floats: Friend of mine’s stepfather used to torch a joint when he fired up the chainsaw for cutting firewood.

@The Nabisco Quiver: To see a display of ethnic dancing, you could have handed him the weed whacker while he was wearing sandals. Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!

Yard? Yard? Qu’est-ce que c’est this “yard” business?

If I ever have a yard, I’m rototilling the sod and planting wildflowers. That’s this asthmatic’s dream.

Next year around this time, the unemployment rate will be 50% and rocketing with the only growth rate in retail arms sales. The first reports of cannibal feasts will be hitting the papers and the Adkisson Brigades will be laying siege to small towns in the Northwest, declaring secession and facing down National Guard troops – and turning them onto their side with offers of food and potable water.

@JNOV: @The Nabisco Quiver: Considering someone recently (initially, it was reported) got shot in broad daylight over a weed whacker in my ‘hood, I haven’t mowed the yard in weeks.

Happy Mayday Labor Day everyone!

And don’t forget to look for the union label!

@Tommmcatt Floats:

Heh. Gots to keep them on there toes, eh?

@Marcel Parcells:

See that it doesn’t happen again.

Seriously, though, I’m going for a bit of a vacation in about three hours, so I won’t be around for a bit. All my love, and have a great day off, my stinquey freaks.

@Pedonator: Ma Nabisco just called to tell me that she picked up everything we had on our list for the Take the Heathens Bowling yard party we’re having tomorrow. Source of our proud Labor Day feast and fun? Sprawl-Mart!

I will point out the irony tonight, over coctails.

@The Nabisco Quiver: Isn’t there a Camper Van Beethoven song along those lines…? Oh yeah, that was skinheads, but heathens are more fun anyway.

So when are you all sneaking out of the office? I’m shooting for 3.

@rptrcub: 3 p.m. sounds good. Who’s up for some fishing and grilling this weekend?

@The Nabisco Quiver: Fuck it. Drink more to kill the pain.

@Tommmcatt Floats: Have fun, Sr. Gato.

@rptrcub: Argh! I didn’t want to come in today. I think I’m going to go out to get lunch and not come back until Tuesday.

@redmanlaw: I’ll be going to the nerd festival downtown, followed by another nerd festival in Decatur.

@rptrcub: @redmanlaw: @SanFranLefty: @rptrcub:

Hang it all, but since this is my fifth from last day on the payroll, I’m busy going through my files, cleaning up and handing over things to the next poor s.o.b. who’ll take on my duties. But it ain’t exactly “work” I’m doing; sure would be helpful to have a Fawn Hall around, though.

/stage whisper/ psss, anyone know a good way to do a super duper triple positive file delete of the trash on Ventanas XP?

pfft
drunkeness and yard work. indeed. this weekend I plan to FINALLY finish cutting up my storm damage from a couple of weeks ago. on the upside I will have several hundred bucks worth of wood for the fireplace this winter.

once done it will be time for drunkeness. since I am wielding chainsaws I think that would be prudent.

@rptrcub: Starbuck, Crow from MST3K, Langley, Adam Savage (!) and . . . Anthony Daniels!!! Duuude. So why is the otherfest celebrating an old email program?

Also: Why has no studio ever at least looked at making a 1602 movie?

/ pet peeve

Yo – Baked – Shatner, Nimoy and Jean-Luc are at the nerdfest, too, and about half of Monty Pithon.

@rptrcub:

My boss has you beat, timewise. I worked like hayll yesterday to finish this big project, and then, five minutes before I was to present it to him, he sends me an e-mail (an e-mail! His office is next door to mine!) wishing me a happy weekend and that he’ll see me next Tuesday. Heard his tires squealing in the parking lot before I could object. Dude, whatevah!

@The Nabisco Quiver:

Take a drill to the hard drive. Sorry, it’s the only way.

@Original Andrew: . . . and leaving you with all his work, as in the beginning of “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle”.

@Original Andrew: I have a couple of removal utilities you could borrow. 12 ga or 20 ga?

@The Nabisco Quiver: What’s going on? Did I miss something? I would also defrag the hard drive.

And can I just say that even I’ve heard of the “controversy” of BHO addressing our nation’s schools next week.

These honkies have totally lost their fucking minds (never had minds to begin with?). I hated Caligutard more than anyone, but even I recognized he had a right to address our country’s citizens since he was, ostensibly, the leader of our nation.

Those parents sho is gonna be freaked when all their little blond, white, blue-eyed sons and daughters begin immediately screaming “Allah Akbar–death to the Great Satan!!” in unison.

“Hey kids, it’s President Obama, with special guests Jeremiah Wright, Michael Moore and Cat Stevens, here to explain why you must convert to Islam–immediately this morning–or die in a fiery terrahist attack with the infidels!”

@Original Andrew: Indeed, what do they imagine he’s possibly going to say?

@IanJ:

Last month, in an interview with 11-year-old student reporter Damon Weaver, the president announced his big back-to-school plan:

“I’m going to be making a big speech to young people all across the country about the importance of education; about the importance of staying in school; how we want to improve our education system and why it’s so important for the country. So I hope everybody tunes in.”

OMFG!!! He’s going to tell our children to get all edu-ma-kated in the skools!

@IanJ:

Apparently Preznit Osama is gonna perpetuate the Big Librul Lie that you can get ahead by book learnin’ and stayin’ in school, when everyone knows that in a kleptocracy it’s really all about who you know, comprendez?

He also may wax eloquently regarding the necessity of their parents’ upcoming, mandatory gay marriages and French lessons, and gawdammit French is hard, y’all!

Either way, someone’s gonna lose a finger.

@Original Andrew: I’d call it more wishful thinking by the liberals than a lie.

@IanJ:

Le merde is really gonna hit the fan when Obama outlaws football.

@SanFranLefty: Ha! On the signal, the kids, brainwashed by secret brainwaves, will knife their teachers, run into the playground, raise minarets and throw themselves on their faces for prayers, before retuning home to murder their parents and reporting to Al Qaeda training camps at the edge of town where they will be instructed on the monstrous arts of guerilla warfare to garrison the North American caliphate for Obama and his master, Osama. I mean, isn’t it obvious?

@Original Andrew: A friend who lives in Norman, OK (the librul bastion of the state, having all them edumacated commie college perfessers ‘n such) reports that her son brought a form home from elementary school asking if she wanted to “opt out” of him watching the President’s address. She was itching to write back that BHO was fine by her, but she’d like to opt out of the mandatory “moment of silence” and recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance that invokes a god she and her family do not believe in, but didn’t want to make life miserable for her kid.

@Mistress Cynica: No more socialist US American tax dollars for Oklahoma (except for the Osages, etc.) or Texas.

Speaking of indoctrination ( was anyone?)
The influence my state has on the nation and the world is truly awesome.

Could Texas’ Gingrich-Based High School History Curriculum Go National?

Laura Bush, interestingly, founded the Texas Book Festival, (They Say).She told reporters last night in her home that George loves his Kindle, which I think Laura was confusing with his old GameBoy.

@texrednface: It’s a video IPod he uses to watch videos of him and Victor Ashe.

@texrednface:

Oh sure, he and Karl Rove are now using Kindles to each read 70+ books per year, in one of the more totally believable propagandist puffs of the last 9 years.

@texrednface: The thing is, these morans make it that much harder for local governments to recruit high tech and highly skilled jobs to Texas. I would think that the bidness folks could pull Gov. Good Hair to the side and point that out to him, but I guess he’s so wrapped up with the Jeebus lovers he just doesn’t care.

Sigh. How things change – we had full on discussions of birth control and sex ed in health classes at my Texas public school 25 years ago. Now? Not so much.

@texrednface:
I’d drop out if I had to read Newti’s Love Poem to Nazis, 1945. I stopped after 3 paragraphs.

@FlyingChainSaw:
SIR!Your assertion is truly preposterous! George would not be able to find the on-off button for such a device in order to watch videos of Victor Ashe and himself! Totally absurd!

@SanFranLefty: Same here, 36 years ago!
It was a biology and Physiology class. (I went to Richardson High School.)

@texrednface: He has a staff member do if for him. The same one that helps him dig pretzels and cocks out of his throat when he gags. Caligutard has never been that coordinated and all the cocaine and bourbon doesn’t help

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/04/rick-perry-obama-speech-d_n_277812.html

Check this the fuck out. Gov. Rick “My Wife Catches Me Fucking Guys Whenever I Am Not Out Bashing Gays” Perry is upset that Obama didn’t personally ask permission of 64,241 school districts and Rick himself before going on TV. Obama needs to grab fucktards like this and bounce their heads off of the fucking ground, send in the federales, grab them and throw them from helicopters on pay-per-view. Who the fuck is this asshole? Fuck you, Rick! Fucking DIE!

@FlyingChainSaw:
Slow down there rattlesnake. Rick will get his in due time.(I personally believe he arranged to burn down the Guvner’s Mansion in addition to other things that will be revealed.)

@SanFranLefty: All this talk about the way things used to be got me to thinking. Remember the Gablers and their strangle hold on text book selection back in the sixties and seventies? You should also check out: the 1974 Kanawha County textbook controversy as well. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Oh will these people never grow tired of themselves and go away? I’m so tired of them and I don’t even know them. Though I have seen them at various China Buffet’s while driving fast through Idaho.

So George is playing with his Kindle. So that’s what he calls it. I thought he called it 44.

@Mistress Cynica: Why shouldn’t she make her child’s life miserable? Why should he be different from the rest of us? That’s what mothers do: they make their children’s life a living hell. So I’m told.

The classroom speech shit has me so mad I need to call Rush Limbaugh and ask him if he heard Obama is going to replace the Star Spangled Banner with “In the Stone” as the national anthem. I want to make psychoconservative heads asplode so I can shit down the runny pulpy holes DIE! DIE YOU FUCKS!

@FlyingChainSaw: I suggest that he mandate gay Boy Scout leaders and establish the fellatio merit badge. I can think of any number of Repubs who would be in favor.

@Dodgerblue: Yes, the Schlong Gobbler Ensign of Merit. I think I read about that in one of those Marxist tracks that the DCN mails to my house in red envelopes every thursday, you know, with the scimitars they deliver to use to behead the white people when Obama gives the signal.

@FlyingChainSaw: It pisses me off more than almost anything else right now, as well. A local weatherman – a fucking weatherman! – was guest hosting a local radio callin show and said “although I have complete respect for the office of the President, and am in favor of teaching civics in the classroom, I’m just not so sure about the way Obama is going about this. He’s scary.”

A fucking weatherman in central fucking Pennsyltucky.

@The Nabisco Quiver: This is consistent with my theory that having a Black president has caused many people’s brains to short-circuit.

I’m just going to look on the bright side.

Right, they’re so concerned. Oh, fuck me. Fuck them. Fucking die, assholes. Fucking die. Call that piece of shit weatherman up and tell him about fucking scary. How about you reach down his fucking throat, grab his fucking intestines and turn him inside out? How about a couple of guys grab him, duct tape him to a chair and have batting practice on his fucking face until his molars stick to the wall behind him? How about that for fucking scary, asshole? What’s scary is that he is either terrified of the mochalatteness of the president or he is so fucking peabrained, he is being brainwashed by fucktard psychocon media assholes. Tell the station owner to kick him to death next payday.

@Dodgerblue: The technical term, minted by RptrCub, is ‘asplode’.

@FlyingChainSaw: Excellent. This assumes, of course, that there are brains to asplode.

@Benedick: Where is that, exactly? I’d love to see it sometime.

@Dodgerblue: I think the gas just expands to effect a percussive eruption of the cranium, however empty.

@Dodgerblue: I think RprtCub cites that in the etymology he composed when he minted the term.

@Mistress Cynica: It’s over the rainbow, darling. Get hold of some lemon-drops and suck on them like your life depends on it. And that should get you there. If not click your heels together three times. Oh no wait, that takes to Kansas. You don’t want to go there. I know! Ask the bluebirds. They’ll show the way.

T/J: More importantly the bats are back! I haven’t seen them flying all summer but the last few days at twilight there they were. I love to see the bats fly.

@Benedick: Had a small veranda at the terrace house in Sydney and, in the summer, the flying foxes would swoop almost silently over the house on their way to Centennial Park just after night fell. It was a regular treat for those of us at my end of Paddington, between Darlinghurst and the park.

@FlyingChainSaw: @Dodgerblue: Thank you, but most of the credit should go to Strong Bad for creating the word; I merely gave it the connotation of something worse than a mere kiloton explosion.

@FlyingChainSaw: Nevermind that, my buddies at Media Matters reminded me of a day in high school where we had to listen to Saint Ronnie address schoolchildren across the country about the glories of unfettered capitalism and the evils of the government. I vaguely remember that this was going to occur, I think that the other theatre geeks and I skipped class and went to the Wendy’s across the street to smoke our clove cigarettes and have Frosties.

Nothing better than getting home from work in time for Friday’s 5 o’clock salute.

@SanFranLefty: Say hi to Mr. SFL for us, as well!

/rimshot

@Benedick: ,@FlyingChainSaw: Stood outside the mouth of a cave in Likin, Guatemala (Alta Verapaz for those scoring from home), and at sunset there were literally thousands of bats that flowed from that freaking hole. My friend and I stood rock still because of that old trope “they’ll get caught in YER HAIR!11!!”. Then finally, gradually, I started raising my arms then moving my hips and the fantastic, sonar-enriched bats flew every which way including inches from my body but of course never once so much as touched me. I danced with bats!

We slept next to the creek at Lankin that night, and there wasn’t a single skeeter to bother us. That’s what I like about bats.

@FlyingChainSaw: I’m going to write to his fucking station (CBS 21, which I only watch for Steelers games anyway) and tell them they have a pedarast freak on their hands, that I saw him prowling around the bus station with his pants around his knees shouting “what’s the barometer say today, sweeties“. That’s what I’m gonna do.

@The Nabisco Quiver: I danced with bats! Bitch. I make do with my three or four, kiting for bugs in the air. So beautiful! They get in the house sometimes and bang around. How to get bats out of the media room? Turn off all the lights and open the windows. And pretty soon they’re gone. After all the reports of the mad bat sickness I was thrilled to see them flying.

@FlyingChainSaw: Ditto. BTW. Sometime check out For Love Alone by Christina Stead. She was born and grew up in that place and the first half of the novel happens there.

Now I go back to work.

@SanFranLefty: Oh, thank god I was never in a classroom with a TV in it. Up With People showed up at the HS once for reasons no one could understand because of the nature of the school, long story, but I was so enraged at the trite, grinning sameness of all the songs, I started hammering the upbeats as late as I could to provoke the clapping underclassmen into a crosstempo. The UWP kids were drilled hard, though, and didn’t phase the tempo at all.

@The Nabisco Quiver: No, no, no. You did the Bat Dance!

Yes, his pants were around his ankles (pulling a Clinton we call it here), pulling on his schlong, wriggling his tongue at the kids and asking, “hey, hey, kiddies, who wants to take a hold of my barometer and take a reading, hey?!”

What’s this asshole’s name? Maybe we can do a BIGGEST FUCKING FUCKTARD IN THE FUCKING WORLD feature on him here on Stinque.com.

@FlyingChainSaw: I’m sorry — Up With People! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

PS You’re young.

@Benedick: I’ll see if I can Amazon it. Thanks. Spent all my time in that neighborhood reading non-fiction, ah, Paddo.

@JNOV: Yeah, it was kinda bizarre. I don’t know why they let them into the building.

@FlyingChainSaw: I think it was this douchenoozle, but I honestly couldn’t stick around to catch his name. I was enraged but driving 55 mph to work, wanted to call the station and give him a piece of my mind.

@FlyingChainSaw: @JNOV: Hey JNOV, we had UWP at my school as well, so, uhm, youngish? We had one of them stay at our house, a comely latina who scared the bejeebus out of my pre-adolescent self, I was old enough to know what my body was saying but that eternal singing smile of UWP must have scared my hormones into hibernation. My parents even shelled out $5.99 for the album, what a piece of wasted vinyl. I can still remember the theme song “up, up with people, there’s people wherever you go” or something deep like that.

ADD: come to think of it, wasn’t that the Nixon or Ford administration era? Talk about dangerous for the kids. I think the police officer who came every year to show slides of horrific car crash victims was more wholesome for my upbringing than that shite.

@The Nabisco Quiver: I only remember them being at some Olympics or SuperBowl or some old shit like that. I thought I was older than UWP.

I propose we start a DWP. Let’s take on Glenn Beck first. Here’s a nasty rumor (parody?) site.

@The Nabisco Quiver: Is the Nabisco Quiver a dance move, a commitment to having 19 kids or some sort of seckshual thing?

@Benedick: I’m terribly fond of Lemon Drops, but they give me a dreadful hangover.

I’ve found a bright side, and it has a baby snow leopard with blue eyes one it. I recommend repeated viewings to cope with the ugliness in the world.

@The Nabisco Quiver: Everyone knows Camper Van Beethoven’s Take the Skinheads Bowling, but what you need for your party is Lawn Darts, and alas, a kid was pegged in the head with a lawn dart, and now they’re off the shelves in the Kmart.

@Benedick: Whenever I see bats, I start throwing little pebbles straight up in the air, so they fall back down around me, the bats will pursue them, if you have the pebbles falling around you, the bats will be around you, I love bats.

The surface of my yard consists entirely of little white pebbles, rounded stream gravel left over from the glacial streams of the ice age. Yard work consists of raking the pebbles (in theory, as if) and blasting anything green with Roundup. And this is GREEN, because the worst thing for the estuary we live on is runoff from fertilized lawns, the nitrogen gets in the bay, the algae run rampant and choke out all life, in a scary explosion of eutrophication that happens by July every year.

But I won’t kill flowers, herbs, or vegetables that pop up among the stones, so I have little patches of thyme, oregano, sunflowers, and crocuses scattered among the stones. I admire their pluck.

@The Nabisco Quiver: His is a face that God made for people to shit on, massively, juicily after 6 meals of barbequed meat. This guy is an utter bag of shit and must die.

@FlyingChainSaw: I am in awe of your talent, raising righteous anger and revenge to a high art. I have had to stop myself, lately, I have had to force myself to take a vacation from being fucking insanely enraged and angry, I know that its appropriate, and right, and necessary, as the only warranted response to the fucking miserable injustice and pain that is the world we live in, but my health, my mental health, my ability to raise a child who is also not always angry, it all has forced me to try to not be fucking enraged as I should be.

But its comforting, FCS, knowing you are out there, taking it hard for all us poor sinners, when we are exhausted and forced to retreat to medication and intoxication so that we can enjoy the mindless happiness of the olivious for a short time, a brief respite from being aware, and therefore, being angry. FCS abides, and allows us to take a breather on the bench, knowing that the necessary moral outrage will be there, until we can gather the strength to confront reality again.

@Promnight: Why, I’ve never uttered a cross word in my life. Where do you get these ideas?

@Promnight: That is the most awesome thing anyone ever told me. I will be so totally out there tomorrow with pebbles.

I don’t care if the lemon drops give you a headache: suck it up. Oh, and the snow leapardy thingy: it wll be shot.

@JNOV: We had the Jesus freak version of UWP come to my middle school and high school. It was a knock off version that involved weight lifters and singers and dancers and all the songs were about giving over to a higher power. The amount of prosletyzing and religiosity that went on in my public school was horrifying. We had to pray before every sporting event or public gathering. My 11th grade English teacher was a born again who bad-mouthed Thoreau because he thought you could commune with God in nature, and she told me that I was going to go to hell and never achieve anything in life because I had not accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. I’m dying to go back some day to my high school and say “Suck it, bitch!” The one and only time I’ve been in the SCOTUS was in 2000 when I was there gawking in the audience and waiting for them to announce their decision in another case that was important to my work, and then instead they announced their decision in Santa Fe I.S.D. v. Doe and I started crying I was so happy.

I think the UWP knock-offs were called Power Rising or Power Exchange, which is hilarious to me now because that is the name of a big sex club here in SF.

@SanFranLefty: Ummm. Yeah. It’s totally and completely unacceptable to have those wackadoos at public school. We didn’t even have to deal with such nuttiness at Catholic school (except for the graphic AB movie that scarred us for life but didn’t prevent many of us from being pro-choice).

Will read Santa Fe right now…

ADD: Oh, ho! I, too, “”bristle with hostility to all things religious in public life.”

Huhfuckingzah!

And, I watched an American Masters episode about Dalton Trumbo last night. My hero!

@JNOV: Well, there was no discussion of abortion in the sex-ed section of my health class, but by today’s standards it was scandalous that they talked about birth control.

The excuse was that all of the praying and prostletyzing at my school was somehow “student-led” which was total disingenuous bullshit. Santa Fe called that out and said nope, can’t do it.

@SanFranLefty: EXACTLY! Public school function on public school grounds — they were just about a dumb as the Dover PTA. “Oh, no — this ID bizness is nuuu skience! Really! It’s not repackaged creationism. It’s got pandas and peoples, see?”

@Promnight: Lawn Darts were fucking awesome, I think they make a Safe ™ version of them without the sharpened pike. Next best thing are quoits, which of course are an indoor version of horseshoes.

@JNOV: [in my best Barry White voice] It’s whatever you want, baby…

@JNOV: Will someone tell that man’s wife to stop being a walking gumball machine?

@JNOV: When I have a cold and my voice drops an octave or so, I can do a pretty mean Barry White imitation.

@Dodgerblue: C’mere and let me sneeze on you.

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