NoodleDog

Alright. I apologize for the last post. It was down, and it showed. The whole post was ranting and whining so I’m sorry for that. I will try my best not to do it any more.

I’m feeling MUCH better today, possibly because I was able to get in some gratuitous stupid TV-time last night watching one of the worst television shows ever created, “Lost”. Now, this “Lost” show came on in the fall. I caught about five minutes of the premiere episode and abandoned it as irretrievably dumb. However, The Mac explained to me later on that the show contained, get this, a fucking polar bear on a tropical island that was occasionally picking off stranded passengers, so I rethought the whole abandonment and started watching it just in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the fucking polar bear. I was not disappointed.

I have, over the weeks, grown fond of this mildly retarded child of ABC’s programming intellect. I enjoy the stupidity of the passengers. I laugh at their truly ridiculous plight. I feel a certain attachment to the Locke character, who (before the crash) was without the use of his legs and confined to a wheelchair, but somehow in the crash regained the use of his lower extremities. He was able to take away a fantastic reward out of a catastrophic event. I’m happy for him. Plus, he’s weirder than all hell, so I kind of think he’s cool. I keep hoping various passengers will be eaten by the fucking polar bear, so that’s always something to look forward to. Really, this stupid, horrible show improves my life so much that it’s probably pathetic. Honestly, I have a lot more going on than this, but this is just so… much like junk food. It is kind of like the beloved but also-hated cheezie. They are terrible for you, have no nutritional value and will make you fat and lazy, but you cannot deny the sheer orgasmic pleasure of an excellent cheezie (there are also less-excellent cheezies in the bag – just regular cheezies – but you put up with them because you’re hoping for an excellent one).

Also, “Lost” has many plot twists. It’s as though the creators of the show sat around watching all the shows that had come before, wrote down all the plot twists and are now using a matrix to randomly insert them into the show. Plane crash? Ha! It didn’t JUST crash, it crashed in a place it wasn’t supposed to be, so no one will come looking for it. Disabled passenger with attitude problem? Ha! Now he has his legs back and is running around all weird and mysterious!! Bitchy attractive female passenger with obvious troubled past? Ha! She’s really a bank robber, and is secretly in love with the leader/doctor! Charming accented rocker? Ha! Former drug addict until Locke steals his drugs and makes him rehab!! Beautiful tropical paradise with lots of food and fresh water? Ha! Populated by fucking polar bears and a tribe of insane loonies bent on world domination! Troubled pregnant female character? Ha! Her baby is going to be the destructor of the universe, and she’s going to get kidnapped by the insane tribe of loonies!

It’s as though the matrix runs at a certain rate and you have to have a minimum number of plot twists per show in order for them to justify their existence in a programming world increasingly dominated by those horrible reality shows. See? We can compete, we really can! We’ll just make the show so breathtakingly fast-paced no one will be able to keep up with this stuff, even if they are real people doing real things in real life competing for real money!! You won’t want to miss even fifteen minutes of an episode or you’ll hate yourself and be wondering about it for weeks!

I have to admit, I haven’t watched all the episodes. I’ve watched a bunch of ‘em, sure, but there are things going on I’m not too sure of. Like this lost tribe of loonies, and this French woman who is clearly insane but who is probably pretty pivotal. And the question plaguing me late at night as I’m falling asleep is “where did those fucking polar bears come from, and what are they doing there? Why don’t they just swim over to the arctic where there are nice yummy seals and Inuits to eat? It can’t be THAT far; those things can really swim.”

Speaking of random thoughts, I was in the car yesterday, driving from THE house over to my parents’ house with the dogs, talking to myself in a nice gravelly low voice (so I wouldn’t feel like I was actually just talking to myself – come on, I know you all do that, so don’t judge). I said to myself “You have a sock addiction problem”, and that started the whole thing off.

I never, ever used to wear socks. I hated the buggers. I still kind of don’t like them, but at the same time, I am strangely compelled to wear them now. I had not worn any yesterday during the daytime, but as I was changing into my after-work wear (jeans), I put on a pair of socks and felt a strange sense of pleasure. My feet were, well, warm. These socks are the Wigwam socks that Rob gave me for Christmas so there is a sentimental attachment, sure, but these socks also rock. They’re light, but heavy at the same time. They’re warm, but not scratchy. And they are the most fantastic socks in the universe for sliding around on the hardwood floors. THE house has all hardwood upstairs. It’s cold on the un-socked feet, but if you have socks on, you can take a run down the hallway and slide about seven to ten feet or so. It’s fantastic! I love it, and it gives me great pleasure to slide up and down the hallways during the commercials when “Lost” is on.

I visited my parents and the cats last night. I found out, to my dismay, that Smudge now hates me and loves my mother instead. She’s actually afraid of me and runs away when I try to pet her. It’s disappointing, and I wonder whether she’ll ever forgive me for having her spayed. Not that she realizes what happened, of course, but just that I took her away from the super-fun house where she is endlessly spoiled, and she was hurt, and miserable when I brought her back. So it’s my fault, basically, that she was hurt. I don’t think she had ever really BEEN hurt before. I found her when she was about three or four months old, and I’m not sure whether she had a family before or was abandoned right away. She was pretty skinny when I got her, and had some mats in her fur, but she didn’t look beat up and she was never afraid of anything before. So she was probably just lost or her people didn’t care about where she was. No one claimed her, so they can’t have loved her. But this running away when I try to pet her thing is devastating because I love her SOOO much! She’s such a pretty little thing, and charming, and funny… She has decided that water is the most interesting thing, ever, and camps out by the sink watching the taps drip. According to my mother, she laps water out of the cup by the bathroom sink JUST in order to get some over the edge of the cup so it will run down into the sink so she can watch it go!

It was good and soothing to see the cats. Apparently, I needed it. Apparently, I will need it more in the future, because Rob says there is a possibility his union will go on strike or will be locked-out by the company.

This real-life plot twist makes me think. I’m a fairly conservative-minded person, I think. I believe in fiscal responsibility, fewer social programs and more civilian efforts on behalf of the groups they choose to support, no legislated morality (I’m not social conservative, but more libertarian conservative, I think), proper enforcement of laws and generally a good society. I don’t really like unions. The actual theory of a union is fine, but the way they have come about and operate today is pretty heavy-handed. They FORCE you to participate if you work at a unionized company. I don’t think anyone should be FORCED to do something like that (or, really, much at all, especially if you’re not breaking any laws). Unions set the dues and don’t remain fully accountable to their members. They can negotiate issues without the express permission of their membership. And when something like a strike is imminent, you don’t get to choose whether you participate. I believe it should operate more like this: If the company proposes a contract change, and the majority of the workers reject it as expressly unfair, then that majority of the workers band together and strike, those who don’t participate can take their chances and work for a lower rate. The company has a choice – either go through the hassle of trying to deal with a strike, reduced service levels and probably a lot of lost business and realizes the financial burden of hiring new staff and still losing a lot of business from sympathetic and annoyed customers, or it deals with the workers by negotiating.

As it stands now, the union may strike or be locked-out. The company’s service will suffer (don’t tell me it won’t, because it will), and they will lose a percentage of customers, whether they like it or not. In turn, the company will have to cut staff, which means fewer union members, fewer union dues, and more unhappiness all around generally. It sucks that the company doesn’t recognize this. I think they believe that technology will require people to stick with them, although consumers have enough choices now that they really don’t.

When you think about it, we’re all pretty lucky to have jobs, no matter what the unions tell you. Sure, you can make more money if you demand it and force the company’s hand, but it means you may have fewer co-workers, and you run the risk of being one of those who lose their jobs because the company has a finite amount of money to put towards payroll, or another risk is that the company overextends and has to collapse. Yep, those companies make a bundle. They’re run by people whose entire purpose in life is to make money. That’s their choice. They’re accountable to shareholders who want a return on their investment. If the company isn’t making enough money, the people sell their shares and put their investments elsewhere. It’s nice to think that everyone will share all their profits with everyone else. Dear Head Honcho: I don’t make enough just now to cover my new boat, so can I have some of your money? I don’t want to do any more work for it, just give it over, pronto.

To someone only making $10/hr, $15/hr sounds like paradise when you have a fun job with fun co-workers and a nice environment to work in. The same job, to someone making $20/hr, that $15/hr seems insulting. Why? It’s all perception. You need a certain skillset. You need a certain aptitude. You need qualifications in order to get the $20/hr job. You work your way up. You can’t all make $20/hr just because you want it. Say you have 100 people working at $15/hr. They all want to jump up to $20/hr. The company can’t put more resources towards that department, so you lose 25 co-workers. Is that a win? Sure, to the 75 who get kept, but to the 25 who get fired, it’s not a good deal at all.

When people were working in mines, under unsafe conditions, and the unemployment rate was 40% and you had to fight for a cup of flour at the local store (run by the mining company, of course), unions were an absolute necessity. I don’t disagree. But today is not that day. The TELUS Mobility building is not a mine filled with sulfurous air and collapsing tunnels. TELUS Mobility does not force you to earn only pennies a day which they then force you to spend on bread in their local store, thus indebting you to the very company that was supposed to be supporting your family. What is being argued over today is money. The TELUS workers have nice jobs. They make a fair amount of money, when it comes right down to it, for what they do. Don’t hate me, TELUS workers, just think about it for a minute. If you have safety issues, you have an avenue to deal with them, and insurance or worker’s compensation to cover your potential injuries. However, if you don’t like what you’re being paid, then find other jobs. The company would then be forced to raise their wages in order to keep people. The unemployment rate is approximately 6% these days, there aren’t people knocking down doors to steal your jobs. If the company can make more money transferring your jobs to another province, well, then let ‘em. Alberta will either have to make it more attractive for TELUS to employ people here, or they’ll lose jobs. Or other industries will snap you up because of your experience. Or you’ll have to find another industry to pursue.

Sometimes, an industry just has to die, or shrink. Hundreds of people once made candles for a living. When the lightbulb was invented, and candles were no longer the main source of light for a home, then they didn’t need so many candle-makers. Those candle-makers had to find other things to do. Like the fishermen of the East. There are a lot fewer fishes out there now, and if you can’t fish, you need to find something else to do. Our whole country is founded on the principle of people giving up their unsustainable situations to find new ones. What about the pioneers? Did they like the idea of traveling across miles and miles, far away from friends and family, to start a new life under considerably harsh conditions? Probably not, but what else were they going to do? Become bums in Toronto? What about all those coal miners? We don’t burn a whole heck of a lot of coal these days. They would had to have found something else to do. Go find some gold, or learn to transfer their experience to the oil industry. It’s called progress.

No one is exempt from progress. It’s a cruel process of life. Sometimes, you benefit like those dot com freaks from the ‘90s. Sometimes the industry shrinks and crashes, and the dot com-ers have to find other means of support, like being someone’s lackey. Industry is best friends with Fate and Whimsy, and I have a feeling they all sit around chatting late at night trying to find a way out of Economy’s stupid rules. Economy makes all these rules about how things will rise and fall, and Industry just ignores them as long as he can, until finally, Economy gets his friend, Market, and goes to kick the shit out of Industry. Industry is lying there, helpless, because Fate and Whimsy have buggered off, and has to call Government to help him out. Government intervenes, and convinces Market and Economy to stop it, but then makes side deals with both of them, which will ultimately cripple poor old Industry.

Basically, you have to be prepared to change. Change is always hard. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes, it means you don’t see your cats for a month. But you still do it because you have to, because you want the benefits from change.

(Y'all, feel free to comment if you disagree on this stuff - dialogue is good!)