Murphy’s Bye-Laws

Bizzaro Superman

Bizzaro Change

I know how redundant it can be to point out irony in politics.  There are entire cable television shows built around exploiting the irony and hypocrisy that flows from the cornicpia of the absurd, Washington D.C.  But every now and then a particularly absurd offering trickles from the swamp and I can’t help but point and laugh.

President Obama has been an effective catalyst for absurdity due to his image of freshness and hope in the media multiplied by his proclamations of what people wanted to hear.  Sure, he meant to end these pointless wars, and he meant to save the economy and make everybody’s financial worries disappear forever, and he meant to reduce corruption in government, etc., etc..  To the politically cognizant the failure to actually achieve – or even attempt to appear to achieve – these lofty goals is far from ironic.  The continued portrayal of change even as the wolf disrobes from his sheepskin robe isn’t even ironic.  Irony is not found in the media, but in the details (a telling statement as to the state of the media, IMO).

The glow from Obama’s media-bestowed halo has dimmed a little and his sandals are taking on water after a stint of walking atop the water.  To some, especially those who have been successfully disillusioned of the simplified-to-the-point-of-falsehood story of Lincoln found in indoctrination history texts, the endless comparisons of Obama to Lincoln could have foretold the eventual outcome.  The best correlation between the two, so far in my book, is the link to slavery.  No, I’m not talking of Obama’s blackness; I’m speaking about his push for “voluntary” national service, which would be required of all capable youths.  Lincoln was known for his Emancipation Proclamation, fabled to have freed all the nation’s slaves (though, in reality he only freed those in the North), whereas Obama, elected partially because of white guilt over centuries of injustice to the black population – the most obvious being slavery – wishes to enslave (reads as “involuntary servitude” in the framework of this farcical government) the youth of the country.  Obama is in no way the first to do this since the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment; every President who instituted the military draft has blazed the trail for him.

Jim Bovard has written an article highlighting the doublespeak of “service” as implemented by politicians.  Like most things, it is not indicative of the entirety of volunteers or the effectiveness of all programs inside of AmeriCorps; rather, it is indicative of the taint that comes with all things political, especially the unearned money of government and the useless non-productive leeches attracted to it.

On a related note, here is a video of more irony as it relates to color and slavery (video here):

Hat tip to Jeremy at Social Memory Complex for the video.

There are phrases like “the working poor” floating around. This refers to the people who are actually employed, sometimes in more than one job, who still can’t afford housing, food, and other tenets of the American dream. Perhaps this state of affairs is due to the cost of actually going to work.

In the past I’ve written about the chicken-or-egg nature of earning and spending; the first time I talked about some of the factors affecting the work environment that make us desire escape so frantically; the second time I elaborated on how we spend our treasure in pursuit of an escape from the depressing world of employment, in turn resulting in the need to work in order to pay off the escape. Somewhere else, though I can’t find where, I thought I also mentioned that my spending habits go contrary to reason and become less frugal the more pinched I feel and yet more stingy when I feel like I’m getting ahead. And just this past week I noticed an expansion, or perhaps a corollary, to this phenomenon. The busier and more frantic my employment environment becomes, the more my feeling of pinched finances grows in parallel. This also seems to contradict logic. When working hard for long hours, one is apt to collect overtime, which means actually getting paid more. So why does it seem like I’m with less money when working so much? Is it just an illusion brought about by stress and the apparent contraction of time ([time flies when keeping busy (less time)] x [time = money] = less money)? Read the rest of this entry »

I experienced major disillusion yesterday.  Part of the illusion I was holding was borne of supreme confidence and hopeful expectation (and probably logic not encountered in the structured corporate environment).  How foolish of me!  The hope of a great leap ahead in compensation and professional expansion was just too much to not latch on to, I guess.  The position laid out, and the process of actually creating the position, was so compartmentalized that one would need to already hold the same job to fit, like a good cog in a machine.  Of course carried to an absurd conclusion, those cogs in the corporate mechanism have no ability to expand or evolve, but only to fit in their rightful place as they were manufactured to.

After viewing the situation from a new distance, am I disappointed that I don’t get the opportunity to be a cog?  Surprisingly, yes.  There were many benefits to occupying the cog slot.  Read the rest of this entry »