I slept in. All the way to 7:30AM. Whoopeee.

After a cup of coffee, and the delicious realization that I didn't have to put on make up today, I sauntered off into the living room, where twelve years of employment and hard work has been packaged into six cardboard boxes.
I pulled out the office sweaters and the Happy Bunny desk sign book, the spare pair of socks, the container of mints, and the squishy brain that sat on my monitor.

I sorted out the tech books. Outdated systems and program version learning guides went into a bag for the used book store. Usuable manuals and in-depth guides went into smaller box, for me to finally read and work through.

I pulled out my desk calendar, marked the day of separation (free at last, free at last) and the upcoming jury duty and interviews.

I sat on the couch, depressed despite myself.

I went back to the boxes, extracting the cables, cradles, docks and chargers. Those will go to my studio. Ditto the radio/cd player.

My awards and framed samples will go into storage. I sigh. I sit on the couch and remind myself how much joy and relief I felt yesterday when I sneered at the senior vp and told him to spare me the platitudes.

I wander off to refill my coffee, pet the dog. This is going to be fine, I think.

I got to work this morning and was greeted by the PHB. I was to report to the HR office immediately.
So I did. And then I was fired. The PR office decided to outsource the web, thereby rendering my job pointless. Even though I'm an MIS employee, and even though there should have been some interaction with the group that actually built and maintained the web, there appears to have been none.

I'm sure that management was lying about that. So much for my hard work.

I'm pretty sure, too, that laughing in the VP's face when he tried to shake my hand and tell me how much they valued me and all the work that I had done for the institution was bad form on my part to.

All I have to say is:

Free at last, free at last; thank God almighty, we're free at last.

This is at least as liberating an experience for me as losing my portfolio was twenty years ago. I'm not kidding. I loved that book. I was proud of the work in it. Some of it should have been tossed out years prior, but I couldn't because I loved whatever it was. Having my portfolio stolen allowed me to rethink how I presented my book; my work. I was free to reinvent myself artistically because those pieced that I was attached to emotionally were gone. I could start new.

Kind of like today.

Yesterday sucked.

I'm twiddling my thumbs at the office these days, what with there being no content provider, anymore. I'm explaining things about server technology to the PHB, not that I actually understand server technology.

And then the phone rings.
My best friend here, a woman with more than twenty years with this institution, and pretty much the brain trust in her division, was on the phone to tell me that she had just become a victim of the downsizing.

My mentor. My friend. My sister-girl. Unemployed. At one in the afternoon, after breaking our lunch date because she just had too much work to do.

Because the administration of this institution appears to have been raised by wolves, and by that I mean every single one of them, and I'm sorry if that is an insult to wolves, not only was she fired in the middle of the afternoon, the meeting she was supposed to chair at 4 was not cancelled. No. She went to leave, to say goodbye to her staff, and there was no staff available. They were all in her meeting. The one she was no longer there to chair.

The VP who fired her kept saying the usual shit about how hard it was for him. How much it hurt him. How terrible it was for him. Yeah?

Fuck you, buddy. How terrible, how painful, how hard do you think it was for her? Oh. I'm sorry. That means you would have had to pull your nose out of your own ass long enough to smell the air. Not going to happen.

Of course, there was more. My mother's caregiver seems to have snapped her last thread binding her to reality and is having some identity issues regarding who, exactly, is my mother's child. As in: her, or me. I cannot move mummy fast enough. Assuming, of course, that the caregiver doesn't kidnap her and move her away.

Oh, yeah. Fucking blue skies here. I sent the RLA out for a pack of Shermans. I was an ex-smoker for all of three weeks.

In unison, gentle readers: BITE ME.

I give you this essay, in its entirety. Thanks to Seth, for bringing it to my attention.
GOD HELP AMERICA
Nov 5 2004

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN..

THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world.

This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.

This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes from their own sidewalks and looking outward towards the rest of humanity.

And for a few hours early yesterday, when the exit polls predicted a John Kerry victory, it seemed they had.

But then the horrible, inevitable truth hit home. They had somehow managed to re-elect the most devious, blinkered and reckless leader ever put before them. The Yellow Rogue of Texas.

A self-serving, dim-witted, draft-dodging, gung-ho little rich boy, whose idea of courage is to yell: "I feel good," as he unleashes an awesome fury which slaughters 100,000 innocents for no other reason than greed and vanity.

A dangerous chameleon, his charming exterior provides cover for a power-crazed clique of Doctor Strangeloves whose goal is to increase America's grip on the world's economies and natural resources.

And in foolishly backing him, Americans have given the go-ahead for more unilateral pre-emptive strikes, more world instability and most probably another 9/11.

Why else do you think bin Laden was so happy to scare them to the polls, then made no attempt to scupper the outcome?

There's only one headline in town today, folks: "It Was Osama Wot Won It."

And soon he'll expect pay-back. Well, he can't allow Bush to have his folks whoopin' and a-hollerin' without his own getting a share of the fun, can he?

Heck, guys, I hope you're feeling proud today.

To the tens of millions who voted for John Kerry, my commiserations.

To the overwhelming majority of you who didn't, I simply ask: Have you learnt nothing? Do you despise your own image that much?

Do you care so little about the world beyond your shores? How could you do this to yourselves?

How appalling must one man's record at home and abroad be for you to reject him?

Kerry wasn't the best presidential candidate the Democrats have ever fielded (and he did deserve a kicking for that "reporting for doo-dee" moment), but at least he understood the complexity of the world outside America, and domestic disgraces like the 45 million of his fellow citizens without health cover.

He would have done something to make that country fairer and re-connected it with the wider world.

Instead America chose a man without morals or vision. An economic incompetent who inherited a $2billion surplus from Clinton, gave it in tax cuts to the rich and turned the US into the world's largest debtor nation.

A man who sneers at the rights of other nations. Who has withdrawn from international treaties on the environment and chemical weapons.

A man who flattens sovereign states then hands the rebuilding contracts to his own billionaire party backers.

A man who promotes trade protectionism and backs an Israeli government which continually flouts UN resolutions.

America has chosen a menacingly immature buffoon who likened the pursuit of the 9/11 terrorists to a Wild West, Wanted Dead or Alive man-hunt and, during the Afghanistan war, kept a baseball scorecard in his drawer, notching up hits when news came through of enemy deaths.

A RADICAL Christian fanatic who decided the world was made up of the forces of good and evil, who invented a war on terror, and thus as author of it, believed he had the right to set the rules of engagement.

Which translates to telling his troops to do what the hell they want to the bad guys. As he has at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and countless towns across Iraq.

You have to feel sorry for the millions of Yanks in the big cities like New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco who voted to kick him out.

These are the sophisticated side of the electorate who recognise a gibbon when they see one.

As for the ones who put him in, across the Bible Belt and the South, us outsiders can only feel pity.

Were I a Kerry voter, though, I'd feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets.

The self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land "free and strong".

You probably won't be surprised to learn of would-be Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn who, on Tuesday, promised to ban abortion and execute any doctors who carried them out.

He also told voters that lesbianism is so rampant in the state's schools that girls were being sent to toilets on their own. Not that any principal could be found to back him up.

These are the people who hijack the word patriot and liken compassion to child-molesting. And they are unknowingly bin Laden's chief recruiting officers.

Al-Qaeda's existence is fuelled by the outpourings of America's Christian right. Bush is its commander-in-chief. And he and bin Laden need each other to survive.

Both need to play Lex Luther to each others' Superman with their own fanatical people. Maybe that's why the mightiest military machine ever assembled has failed to catch the world's most wanted man.

Or is the reason simply that America is incompetent? That behind the bluff they are frightened and clueless, which is why they've stayed with the devil they know.

VISITORS from another planet watching this election would surely not credit the amateurism.

The queues for hours to register a tick; the 17,000 lawyers needed to ensure there was no cheating; the $1.2bn wasted by parties trying to discredit the enemy; the allegations of fraud, intimidation and dirty tricks; the exit polls which were so wildly inaccurate; an Electoral College voting system that makes the Eurovision Song Contest look like a beacon of democracy and efficiency; and the delays and the legal wrangles in announcing the victor.

Yet America would have us believe theirs is the finest democracy in the world. Well, that fine democracy has got the man it deserved. George W Bush.

But is America safer today without Kerry in charge? A man who overnight would have given back to the UN some credibility and authority. Who would have worked out the best way to undo the Iraq mess without fear of losing face.

Instead, the questions facing America today are - how many more thousands of their sons will die as Iraq descends into a new Vietnam? And how many more Vietnams are on the horizon now they have given Bush the mandate to go after Iran, Syria, North Korea or Cuba...?

Today is a sad day for the world, but it's even sadder for the millions of intelligent Americans embarrassed by a gung-ho leader and backed by a banal electorate, half of whom still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.

Yanks had the chance to show the world a better way this week, instead they made a thuggish cowboy ride off into the sunset bathed in glory.

And in doing so it brought Armageddon that little bit closer and re-christened their beloved nation The Home Of The Knave and the Land Of The Freak.

God Help America.

By Brian Reade

In the never ending "will they? won't they?" of my job life, the newest news -- only two days old -- is that there WILL be layoffs in my department. Because the first round of layoffs, that aren't really layoffs, didn't save the hospital enough money.
Yeah. No shit, assholes. How could it? What happened is that a manager is "laid off". Meaning that they don't have their job anymore, but based on how long they've been with the institution, and what they were doing, or what they did 15 years ago, they can go down the food chain and tell some other poor schmuck that that schmuck's job is now the manager's job, and the person who really loses their paycheck is the poor schmuck, and not the manager.

Sometimes this results in the manager taking a cut in pay. Other times it doesn't. In my own department, we had managers reclassified, and theoretically demoted, but in reality, they just had their job titles changed, and the money and the power remained the same.

So how does that, how can that, save money.

Over in the PR office, Loogie, my web editor and the only person supplying content for my site, had her position eliminated. Now we are on hold for new content. Forever, no doubt.

Six years ago, when my position of graphic designer was eliminated from that office, the director told me that she had every intention of cutting Loogie, too. She told me she didn't know how or when, but that Loogie was next on the list to go.

In what is, I am certain, merely a coincidence, Loogie and I were the only two Jews. With the cuts in staff, the PR department is now white and Hispanic. Gone is the last Jew, and the last two women of color.

I'm sure it's only a coinky-dink, aren't you?

Yesterday we had another department meeting. Our VP showed us a video of some random Civil War epic. I think that it featured Jeff Daniels, hard to tell under all that bad facial hair. He was giving an inspirational talk to a group of potential Union deserters, just prior to the Battle of Gettysburg. It was supposed to motivate us to fight for the life of the hospital while at the same time throwing our jobs away to save it. He told us we had to look at the big picture, that the hospital was what we were fighting for, not our own livelihoods. Because the hospital is a representative of the greater good. We serve the uninsured and the poor. Well, I kept my mouth shut (for once and it was a fucking miracle) and didn't point out that without our jobs, we would be the poor and uninsured.

We were told to suck it up and love our jobs, and put on happy faces, because people can't think that this is a bad place to work. People shouldn't see our dirty laundry airing and choose not to come here to be healed. Dude, nobody chooses to come here, whether the worker bees are happy, shiny, smiling drones or not.

And nobody wants to wear the happy mask anymore. We don't believe in our leaders. We don't believe in our managers. We don't believe in our government, who gives us more responsibility for the county's healthcare, but cuts the dollars we're supposed to do it with.

It is, in microcosm, what happened on Tuesday. We don't care about the economy, we don't care about healthcare and education, we don't care about the future.

We care about keeping our small piece of the status quo, and fuck everyone else.

Rome is burning.

I spent yesterday with my head in my hands, crying. Crying like I have never cried over an election, not even when I was a hormonal teenager and thought that Richard Nixon was the Anti-Christ.

Of course, in later years, I married the real Anti-Christ, and he didn't look anything like Nixon. And, in retrospect, compared to Darth Cheney and Karl Rove, Nixon was a rank amateur when it came to evil and deceit. But I digress.
Yesterday, I cried. And then I trolled the web for inspiring words. I found them, and I'm going to share some of them with you. Most of these folks are in my blog links, and once you read these passages, you'll know why.

From Bryan Adams' Blog

"Mr. President:

Over the last 24 hours, I've been hearing an endless news loop about how I, a liberal, need to make more of an effort to understand "the heartland." Well, since two of the three branches of government and 51% of Americans are Republican, I think that, actually, you need to make an effort to understand us. The heartland needs to try to understand the brainland.

Unlike you guys, I'm not going to make any effort to wrap our core tenets in false piety or tired cliche. I will tell you who we are, plain and simple. My understanding is that you like oversimplified, one-page memos, so let me give it a try."

Keep reading Bryan's letter.

From Margaret Cho's Blog:

"The Bush administration will be sorry they won this battle, for they now look forward to losing the war. Ultimately, a government cannot defeat its people, no matter how much power they assume or how corrupt they are. Even though today feels like a defeat, there is no loss. There is only opportunity. Now we have the chance to challenge everything, fight everything. The possibilities are tremendous. All the polls, all the posturing, all the opinions that we endured during months leading up to the election provide us with a valuable education on how we think and act as a country."

Read her whole essay.

From the Rude Pundit:

"We are a nation of savages. That is what we decided last night. We belong to the "most advanced" society in the history of the world, and we decided that we would rather be barbarians, hunched over fire pits, ripping meat off the bones of our enemies, raping our women, howling out at the gods for peace in the afterlife."

Read what he has to say about "American Values"