You All Suck (#57 - Hamas Is Killing The Wrong People Edition)

 "A fool says nothing worth hearing and takes offense at everything..." -- Aristotle

The world is full of fools. This is axiomatic. It behooves those of us who aren't to contain our desire to beat the living fertilizer out of these idiots, not just because doing so is a felony, but because it doesn't pay to lose your head when you're one of the few with one that works properly.

Case in point -- Sunday evening; the becoming-routine neighborhood booze gathering. This is where all the good Christian folk gather at some neighbor's garage (usually chosen at random) to imbibe adult beverages and speak of things only adults speak of, perhaps share some camaraderie, and definitely to feel a little happier.

Until Karen shows up...

I have discussed the neighborhood Karen before on this page. so no need to recite her list of scornful wokescold qualities.

As in the last time I encountered this harpy, I was in discussion with her husband. Bob (not his real name) is a pretty cool guy and we share an interest in history. The subject of our conversation -- really, of the group's conversation, for there were five of us -- was the October 7th Hamas Massacres.

Karen, of course, does not like to hear this kind of talk. To her, anyone who kills babies (in or out of the womb), hates Jews, supports terrorism, embraces the trans idiots, and generally votes to the Left of Stalin, is pretty much hunky-dory.

Seriously, other than her massive rack, I'm not sure what Bob sees in her. I have rarely met such a disagreeable, perpetually angry psychotic in my life. Naturally, in her eyes, Hamas is the next best thing to a partial birth abortion and we're all a bunch of (insert word ending in -IST here) for thinking otherwise. She is asked to leave. With some choice four-letter words, no less. Her routine has become tiresome in the neighborhood; no one likes her, and if it weren't for the facts that everyone likes Bob and Karen doesn't let him out of her sight she would never have been here in the first place.

Naturally, this is somehow MY fault. I should have known before starting the conversation that such topics invariably upset her. Had I never brought the subject up (and I didn't; more on this in a second) we could be discussing much more important matters, and besides, I'm only displaying a fake intellect that she sees right through.

After all....she went to college.

Yes, and you're a gym teacher, too.

(An aside: why people feel that it is necessary to tell others "I went to college", and furthermore, to declare the name of whatever tony school they went to, as if it were a badge of honor -- in this case, not surprisingly, Arizona Fucking State -- as if this either ends an argument or establishes some form of intellectual authority over others, is beyond me. It's a form of insecurity, I think. In any case, millions of other people -- including me -- have been to college, too. It's not that uncommon a thing. It's nothing special. But there is an unhinged libtard wing out there that believes that in order to make itself sound smart, it must make everyone else look or feel stupid. In the end, guess who looks the jackass, anyway?).

I've had enough of her, too (and enough beer to forget my manners, as well). So I responded to her attack with the following:

1. No one gives a fuck about your feelings, Karen. Why do you assume anyone does?

2. You also assume that anyone cares about what you think.

3. MIT trumps Arizona State, fucktard.

Karen stormed off. Bob followed, apologizing profusely over his shoulder.

I suspect Bob gets beaten up by his wife  regularly.

Now, as to WHO brought the subject up, why, that would be some of the other neighbors.

The sort that spend all day Sunday in church repenting the hangover they acquired the night before, only to repeat the process as soon as possible.

The Hamas-Israeli conflict is important to them. very important. Not because it is a serious issue that threatens a wider war; not because the brutality on display on the part of Hamas is shocking. It's not even so much a defense of Western Civilization and democracy that is at issue here.

No, none of that matters. Israel cannot go down to defeat for a simple reason.

If it does, there will be no Rapture. Reverend Billy Ray said so.

And then what is we gonna do? Well, this is why they stock up on food, water and ammo, don't you know?

It is at this point where the Overlord begins to think that maybe hanging out drinking with the neighbors is not such a good idea. For if there are few things more wearying then the incessant whining of a self-important, unhinged liberal, its Jesus.

Two thoughts on the whole Jesus thing:

1. God could have opened the gates of Heaven anytime She wanted to (I reckon God is female, because only a woman could fuck up this spectacularly and still demand to be taken seriously, obeyed, is owed thanks, to be praised, worshiped and financially supported for it) and did not need the entire 33-year Jesus drama to do so.

2. Jesus got himself beaten, flogged and nailed to two pieces of wood. By comparison to Hercules, Thor, Mithras, Shiva and even Buddha, this is weak tea. So much for divinity.

In other news, I have FINALLY officially joined the ranks of the deplorables and gotten my North Carolina drivers license. I am now counted among the members of the Order of the Crimson Neck.

North Carolina is a motor-voter state, so when one is issued their temporary license you are offered the chance to register to vote, as well. I took the opportunity, and chose the Republican Party (as the lesser of about 26 other evils).

This displeased the functionally illiterate state worker who was doing the paperwork. She tsk'ed and shook her head, and said something under her breath. 

Why black women must behave this way, I don't know.

She, half-jokingly, asked how I could possibly register republican, because, as EVERYONE KNOWS, the republicans only work for rich people. They hate "the poor folk", you see. To which I replied that the democrat (small 'd' intentional) party loves "the poor folk" so much that it keeps making more of them, helps them to stay that way, and when there aren't enough "poor folk" even goes out of it's way to import more of them from all the rancid shitholes of the Third World, making certain our "poor folk" get and stay poorer.

I then asked her if she thinks Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Joe Biden, et. al. are "poor".

Because if they loved "poor folk" so much, you'd think they'd want to join their ranks, too, no?

I got no answer to my query and my paperwork was churlishly tossed back at me.

Work has been an unmitigated hell these last four weeks. The staff keeps getting smaller -- five resignations in the last six months -- and someone thought it would be a really good idea to let one of the few remaining take all four of weeks of his vacation time ALL AT ONCE.

And so he fucked off to Nepal for a month.

That meant that the remainder have had to do extra duty. In my case,. this has meant my three-day work week has become a five-day work week, complete with switching between day shifts (to cover Nepal's departure) and my regular night shifts. 

Where my partner has just resigned, as of last week.

This situation was not improved this past Tuesday morning, where after working a Sunday day shift and then my-regularly scheduled Monday night shift, the other Day Shift Guy decided to call in sick.

I was immediately angered.

For a start, this idiot works from home. He has for almost three years.

How does one "call in sick" when one is already home? I told him he had a set of brass ones, and that he'd better have a case of Ebola or have an internal organ on fire -- and hanging out of his ass -- to do something like this, and hung up on him.

So, my regular 12-hour shift became a 16-hour one as I covered  a portion of his shift until another dumbfuck who works from home could be scared up to cover the remainder.

I then did my regular Tuesday night shift, as well.

Today was the first day I've had off -- with enough sleep -- in about a month.

Mine is going to be the next resignation, because this job has been nothing but a headache since I began it.

To begin with, I was told that I would be working for IBM. That wasn't exactly true, as I was hired to work for a subsidiary of IBM. I found that out on my first day of work back in February.

Within a week, the "subsidiary" part was also falsified, as the two companies where in the midst of a corporate divorce, and this was made official at that time. So, not only am I NOT working for IBM, I'm also not working for a subsidiary of IBM, either.

In the past few months, I have been harassed to collect documents, get fingerprinted (repeatedly), stand on line in the Post Office, pay for my own background checks, and shipping, in a an effort to get "onboarded" for the non-subsidiary's government clients. Why do I have to do this? because the ex-subsidiary has no HR department, having relied upon IBM to do this work for them, but IBM can't run away from subsidiary fast enough, and the federal agencies involved are sick of dealing with both.

The government now contacts me directly to get this done.

My "boss" (I'll get to this in a minute) has been "micromanaging" me in this regard for months, so when the process doesn't move quickly enough to suit him, I get phone calls at home around lunchtime -- the day after I've worked a night shift and I'm sleeping because I'll be in that night, too. I get flooded with e-mails and text messages.

Two months ago I told this bozo to knock it off. I told him the agencies involved no longer want to work with IBM or the Ex-subsidiary, which is why they're dealing directly with me, and why your dumb ass doesn't get any updates on the progress made. When I'm told that the guy above him is unhappy, my response has been "fuck that paper-hanging dumbfuck", the man doesn't even come to work.

That would be my department head. I have been here for nine months and I have yet to see, meet or even speak to this asshole. He didn't even interview me. In fact, he hasn't been in the office for three years.

In the meantime, the day after I got all of this completed, two weeks ago -- for three different federal agencies, no less -- I was informed that one of those efforts was all for naught. 

Because the customer had decided to "go to a different platform" and we wouldn't be doing any more work for them. 

And this had been known all the way back in May.

So why was I being pressed to get credentialed for this customer, when the background check, itself, is going to take a minimum of 18-24 months, and we knew six months ago we  had lost the customer, and the response I got was "because that's just how we do things".

In other words, since no one told them to NOT put new hires through the process they decided it was best to go through with it, anyway, even knowing it was going to be an exercise in futility, because the paperpushers were annoying them and no one told the paperpushers the customer was gone, either.

My immediate boss -- when he comes to work, that is -- concerns himself with trifling and annoying tasks, such as finding out why the phones suddenly don't work (hint: IBM took the phone numbers with them in the divorce, Shithead!), why we can't print or scan anything on the "company" printers (hint: Because IBM cancelled the contracts, Asswipe!), or, my personal favorite, trying to discover why the ice maker in the kitchen doesn't work (because no one has cleaned it in two years, it's frosted over, Plowboy!).

The important stuff, like how we're working on antiquated equipment, on improvised networks, with Byzantine processes and procedures that are largely obsolete and unnecessary (but which will still be followed religiously!) and short-staffed gets no attention.

The building is a physical wreck: the "cleaning crew" exists in name only. The place is filthy, overrun by roaches and rodents. Recently, we had to scavenge toilet paper from the unused ladies rooms -- there haven't been any females in the building since late 2021 -- and the soap dispensers in the Men's room don't get refilled. The carpets are filthy.  You can walk the halls and find dead roaches, waterbugs and Palmetto bugs liberally strewn. They will often stay in the place where they met their demise for a week or more. Half the lighting fixtures are dark because they've taken the bulbs out of them to keep the other half working. The company that claims it is dedicated to data security sits by as the front door to the edifice has been hanging off of it's hinges since 2020.

At it's height, this building would have housed 3-4,000 workers. On any given day, if there's two dozen in a 24-hour period it would be a crowd.

if none of that was an indication that this location is probably on its way to being shut down, I was recently interrupted -- at 3 a.m. -- by three guys who came in to measure the work space and identify all the utility cabinets.

Yep, we're getting shut down. For sure. Even when I have working networks all the logon banner screens no longer read "Research Triangle Park" but "Boulder Operations Center".

My recent discussion, held in a deadly serious manner, concerning my compensation (I'm not getting enough for this shit!) was met with a lukewarm reception. A "New Guy" who was hired last week quit before the week ended. I spoke to some of the people who have recently departed and discovered that not only were they seeking more money and being told no, but that no one even bothered to make them a counter-offer on their way out.

And some of them had been with the company for 25 or more years. Two even came out of retirement as a "favor".

And then Management wonders why they can't keep anyone?

Hey, Hamas...if you want to behead some people, I have a whole list of candidates right over here in Hells' Armpit Raleigh.

(I'm only half joking).