Category Archives: wage slavery

this…

exactly why i am eternally grateful to whatever force put that brain-injury in my head so that i no longer am forced to put up with this kind of horseshit:

——

Client: I want a big image of the director prominently displayed on the main page of the website, front and center, about this size.

Client sends me an 800×600 image of the director in a stern, unsmiling pose, staring straight ahead.

Me: I don’t think that’s a good idea. That image is going to completely dominate the front page and gives a very unsettling “Big Brother” look.

Client: Big Brother? Who is that?

Me: Erm, it’s a reference from a very famous book about totalitarianism.

Client: I don’t know what that means, but I like the term “Big Brother”, it reinforces the “family” feel we are trying to portray. Please go ahead and put the image on the front page. Thanks.

     — Clients From Hell
——

The client wanted an advertising poster done by the 1st of May. I had informed them in advance that I would be gone on holiday in the 1st week of April. This is the phone call I received the evening before I was to depart with still a lot of preparation for the trip that needed to be done.

Client: Listen, you have to help me. There’s been a mistake. The poster has to be finished by Tuesday.

Me: What happened to the 1st of May?

Client: Yeah, you see, I sort of misread my boss’ intentions. Apparently it has to be printed and distributed on that date.

Me: I’m afraid I’ll be on a holiday until Friday, starting from tomorrow morning. I told you this in advance.

Client: Yeah, I know. But it’s not as if you have a stressful job right? I mean, it’s just making some illustrations and adding some text. You could easily do that by the pool or at some table by the bar. If my boss finds out about this mistake I will have a very stressful job.

     — Clients From Hell
——

Time for a guaranteed income?

Time for a Guaranteed Income? — this is the first step towards The RICH Economy, which i have been promoting for 20 years or so. nobody’s actually done it yet, but the fact that sweden is voting on it soon is definitely a step in the right direction…

although the author of this article doesn’t seem to think too highly of the concept… at least she isn’t dismissing the idea outright…

Continue reading Time for a guaranteed income?

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs – i have an “excuse”: i am “disabled” and thus eligible for SSDI (which isn’t a walk in the park, even after i qualified for it, which was 5 years after my injury). but even if i weren’t “disabled”, i would probably NOT be “working” — in the traditional sense of the word — anyway, simply because so many of the jobs that i could obtain are “bullshit”…

now, here’s another point of view…

Continue reading On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

& stuff

me in 20 years

when you’re unemployed/unemployable/disabled, you get to a point where it doesn’t matter whether it’s the weekend or not. for me it comes down to working and doing what i do anyway, regardless of what day it is, or facing the possibility of even deeper depression because of the fact that i’m not really doing anything to bring income into the house. i’m a wage slave even when i deliberately try to remove myself from the cycle of wages and slavery.

along the same lines, i got a notice from the “Office of Disability Ajudication and Review” about my disability case the other day. a person who has never met me and knows nothing about me is going to decide whether or not i actually am “disabled”. thrill. if they decide that i am, then i’ll get disability retroactively from the time i first had my injury, a portion of which i will then have to fork over to the attorney who has sat there doing nothing for 2 years while the government decided to pull their collective thumb out of their ass and do something about it. if they decide i’m not disabled, then life continues exactly as it has been, except there is no further possibility of my being able to get disability from the government, ever. at this point, it’s still a 50/50 shot, which doesn’t make me feel particularly good about the chances.

meanwhile, i’ve been working hard on feeding the database, and i’ve run out of photos, which means that i’ve got to run another batch of product through the GIMP before going any further. i get the impression that i’m getting fairly close to being finished enough to go live with it, but there’s still darkness at the end of the tunnel. at this point, i don’t know if it’s because there’s still a long way to go, or if it will just be night when i reach the end.

the fremont philharmonic played at a benefit concert for HonkFest West at the Lo-Fi on friday. it went really well, despite having a substitute trumpet player. we had random dance/movement art going on while we played, including one piece that had a woman stripping, which was excellent. she said afterwards that she had only worked to a live band once before, and that we had blown them out of the water and wants to work more with us, which is amazing and exactly what i want to do – and it’s not because she’s a stripper, it’s because strippers always seem to have work, and if there’s money to be made, i wanna be a part of it.

moisture festival coming up. there’s a possibility that the circus contraption band has stolen april 1st from us, but i don’t know for sure.