Those Who Can’t, Manage

What’s worse is that it was addressed to Dougy “Stupidest fucking guy in the world” Feith so we know how THAT went.

In the land of the Neocon, the half wit is king.

Stupid CEO story… I once had the misfortune/fortune of being moved next to a bunch of IT managers who never understood the concept of whispering. On a lousy Friday I was the only one on my team working when suddenly I heard panic on the other side of the cube. It turns out our newly minted CEO was having printer problems and there wasn’t much they could do. Why? The GEniuz CEO was upset that his $900 laser printer wasn’t working and the IT tech told him that they would just replace it, but the CEO wasn’t having any of that and INSISTED THAT laser printer to work to the dismay of the IT Techs who were dispatched to his palace. The panic was to figure out how to fix a laser printer and what to do. Thus began two fucking weeks of frantic calls and barely contained snickering on my part as, this is a no shit, three directors, two managers and two IT teams danced around the pinheaded asshole’s refusal to get a replacement for a fucking $900 laser printer. The solution? When he was out, a tech came in with an identical printer, swapped out the serial numbers and CEO idiot was none the wiser (I’ve done this myself when dealing with a particularly stubborn and stupid customer when I worked in Field Applications many years ago.)

It’s a story I tell for amusement… and I was reminded of it now and last July when same still unemployed CEO “wrote” an article in the WSJ which was basically a job wanted ad disguised as newz.

Refuse service to people on the basis of their skin, national origin or religion? No problem!

Refuse service to an asshole? Prepare to have your restaurant burned down.

amazing the man is still running around giving advise instead of hanging from a spike some where.

this made me laugh

im pathetic

Two of my favorite older relatives died this week. It’s not a good week for old Jews.

@Dodgerblue: I’m very sorry to hear that.

@Dodgerblue: Stay strong, brother.

Meanwhile, just checking in to advise that your obdt. servant went to the Chicago sympathy rally for Madison this afternoon. I actually got up to the microphone and spoke for a minute. There was much thumping of the lectern (sounded good). Got interviewed after by an all-news radio station here. I sounded real nervous, and my legs got a bit wobbly, but all is well.

@chicago bureau: Did you chant “Union busting is disgusting?” We did.

@Benedick: I’m not one for chanting, but for hooting/hollering.

The official speakers (union bigs, community organizers, Dick Durbin) killed ’em with sweet knowledge. Better than hey-hey-ho-ho anyday.

@chicago bureau: Damn straight. What makes my head explode is the knowledge that Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Megyn (bitch, please learn how to spell your name) Kelly, etc, all the shills at Fox are proud members of AFTRA. A union that provides such generous pension and health benefits it refuses to merge with SAG which refuses to merge with AEA, my chief union (I belong to all three: you have to if you want to work) which reckons it’s hit an historic high with 5% employment. The soaps and ‘news’ shows – plus Colbert/Daily Show, etc – make AFTRA benefits rich.

ADD. Am I the only one working today? Bastards.

@Right Reverend Benedick: Am I the only one working today?

No.

Oh, and the AFTRA Scoop goes to our very own Ted Cox. And by “ours”, I mean we posted something of his one week.

@Right Reverend Benedick: I just got home from Work, and hope to Work no more today. I’m reading When Titans Clashed, yet another book about the Eastern Front in WW II.

@nojo: My Dad was in AFTRA and the Directors’ Guild. My mother-in-law is in SAG and SEG, and got a boatload of screeners this year.

@Dodgerblue: My dad found himself in the middle of a tussle between the Newspaper Guild and the local rag when his job was reclassified as management. (Which it was, when you look at what he did.) He didn’t care either way — he just hated being the focus of the fight.

His father is the Union Hero of the family: Organized lumber mills on the Oregon coast in the thirties and forties. Also, later, taught me chess.

@Dodgerblue: Oooo. War porn. You know what’s good is that Niall Fergusson book The War of the World. Extraordinarily interesting about anti-semitism and its relationship to the Pale. Highly recommended. And also A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous. Stunning. Nothing else like it. The Trojan Women for our times.

As to unionism, you will tell me more when we meet over spring rolls on the UWS. My great uncle (I suspect a proto-fag who perhaps slipped the gene, along with a few other things, into the family) was shipped to Oz after his exploits dynamiting coal mines in the 20s. I met him as a child, broken and crazed, a prophet whistling in the wind.

@ManchuCandidate: The latest example is the AOL chief who commanded that minions only write posts that will get tens of thousands of pageviews. Problem solved!

@nojo: Darling. We love you. Page clicks mean nothing. AOL is the Death Star. I will never write a post that gets ten thousand page views. And neither will you. Is it raining there? Are you warm and snuggly? Do you need me to board the next MGM Grand flight to hold you in my arms and love you – wrestling optional? You know who else didn’t get page views? E A Poe.

@Right Reverend Benedick: A Woman in Berlin the movie is likewise impressive. I got it through Netflix about a month ago. After seeing it, I’d like to read the book too.

@Right Reverend Benedick: We have cracked 5k a time or two.

But I’m more interested in “uniques”, aka The Warm-Body Count, aka Mostly Live Human Beings Who Actually Pay Attention To Us. That number’s been pretty solid at 300-350 weekdays for a year or two.

Oh, and I’m wearing socks again today. Brrrr!!!

@flippin eck: A movie? I did not know. I was thinking could it be a musical. The book is stunning. The scene where, after infinite amounts of risk, she gets together with some friends for tea and what they talk about is how many times they were raped is astounding. I worked on an adaptation of a memoir written by young man who joined the ghetto police only to have to load his wife and child onto the transport to Dachau which I can’t get anyone to read. This book is as terrifying. Should be read.

@Right Reverend Benedick: Are you warm and snuggly?

Let’s check the iPhone weather app, aka The Remind Nojo Why He Pays the Somewhat High Rent App:

Sandy Eggo: 55 degrees.
Eugene: 35 degrees.

I’m doing fine.

@nojo: Did GrandDad know Harry Bridges? There was a tough SOB. @Right Reverend Benedick: @flippin eck: Off to amazon.com. I’ve heard that the movie is intense and well-acted.

Let’s check the iPhone weather app… You so know how to work my nerves.

@Dodgerblue: Me too.

@nojo: 55?!?!? Have they set up warming shelters?

@Dodgerblue: I made the mistake of never collecting Union War Stories from Grandpa — in part because after he taught me chess at 5, he pretty much disappeared until I was 21 or so, and didn’t last long after that.

(Family Drama: Grandma had died, and when Grandpa turned up again, he had remarried.)

Dad & Aunt’s memories of The Coastal Years don’t involve romantic union advocacy. More like moving from one shithole Oregon town to another every year while they were growing up.

@Mistress Cynica: I know! People here make fun of me for wearing socks with my Birks. But that’s how it’s done.

@nojo: And the lumber mills are gone now, right? Newspaper circulation in the crapper, housing starts the same, hippy enviros hugging trees….

@nojo: That’s so Eurotrash.

ADD: I met a guy yesterday who left Portland for NotTibet in 1963, avoided the draft by not returning until the Ford Years, at which time they informed him they “lost the paperwork” on his draft and there would be no jail time. He’s still angry he didn’t go to jail. Dude looks just like Ken Kesey.

@nojo: Maternal grandfather held down a job throughout the Depression, with the government no less. So of course he raised a generation of FDR-hating conservatives. On paternal side, Jones and Laughlin Steel, but gramps rose to management so I’ve never heard any good union stories.

@Dodgerblue: Sorry to hear that. Two people I work with each lost one of their parents this week, including one who was only four years older than me.

@Nabisco: That’s so Eurotrash.

You can take the boy out of Eugene, but…

Speaking of Eurotrash…

My gay Scots cousin who commutes to Helsinki to work while his hubby flies to Berlin tells me that even though various Labour govts made his life possible he now votes Tory.

@Right Reverend Benedick: That’s supposed to be the American Way: Curse the unions while enjoying your weekends.

@nojo: Werd, ma brothah.