On Work

The prevailing view about work in this society is pretty basic: you don’t work, you don’t eat. If you are able-bodied and capable, you are expected to have some sort of job, be productive, make a living, keep the world running….and if not, you are a lazy, good for nothing free-loading miscreant.

I’ve certainly felt this way at one or more points in my life. I don’t feel this way now. But I still hate working with lazy people. I still would rather do a job myself than count on someone who isn’t giving the job their full attention. But worrying whether or not someone has a job or is working hard the entire time?

I couldn’t care less.

When I think about my life and how I’ve spent it so far,( I’m 45) it breaks down into a series of relationships, places I’ve lived, people I’ve met, things I’ve done, schools I’ve attended, and whatever job I was doing at the time…when I remember something, it is usually connected to one of these factors. (conversely, as I’ve lived in the same house for 11 years, been at the same job for 10 and been with the same partner for 15 years, it becomes harder to use this method to remember things). But how many of these things define me? How many of them define you?

Let me put it this way: do you love your job? Or is it something that you just do because it’s easier than doing nothing? (then again, what could be easier than doing nothing?) Or do you fall in the dreaded category of actually hating your job?

“If you hate your job, quit!”

(Oh lord, how I hate when people say this. It’s usually some lucky person who has no memory of what it was like to do something you don’t like just to pay the bills.)

As if that were the only factor. As if nothing else mattered other than my happiness on the job. As if getting another job that may turn out to be just as bad or worse than the one you presently have isn’t a crushing heartbreak of a journey. As if getting another job wouldn’t come with its own set of problems. As if you weren’t simply blowing off steam when you said you hated your job and maybe just needed a few minutes to cool off…

But love…love, love your job…?

I guess I started thinking of this recently after watching the magnificent documentary film about soundtrack composers, called “Score.” At the end, in the wrap-up, composer Hans Zimmer (wearing his velvet jacket and sitting on a velvet chair looking like the happiest man on earth) says, with no irony or sarcasm “I love, love, love what I do.” These words inspire me as much as they depress me.

Can you say the same thing? Can anyone?

Is it the lack of effort? Lack of imagination? Lack of passion? Lack of funding? Lack of motivation? Lack of opportunity? Or a combination of all of these things, and more?

I don’t bemoan where I am in life. The bigger problem is why is it like this for anyone… I don’t want to suffer and go back to where I was 20 years ago, unable to do basic shit like buy carryout food or drink in bars or even worse, having to donate blood plasma to make rent….but I also don’t want to get rich and leave everyone behind and say “Fuck you. I made it, why can’t you?”

But the system is: get an education, get a job, work until you die. It’s a waste of life except for the very few who love what they do. We don’t all love what we do. Some of us just “do” what we have to.

It just shouldn’t be this way, period.

Death Penalty Blues

The Federal Govt. threw up quite a stinkbomb the other day, carrying out the first Federal execution in 17 years because the guy who they executed was a White Supremacist who killed in the name of White Supremacy. Putting people who oppose the Death Penalty (a-hem) in the awkward position of having to take the side of a fucking racist. The guy was white, so there are those on the side of killing people as punishment who say “see, the death penalty isn’t racist!” (even though it’s employed far more often against Black Americans, but like everything else, who cares about facts when I have this one measly example to claim that those overwhelming facts don’t matter.) It’s quite diabolical.

I am against the Death Penalty, just not in an impassioned “fight to the death with those that support it” kind of way. But to be sure, it’s yet another weapon that the Man uses against Black Americans and just for that reason, it is wrong enough.

Columbus was the line we shouldn't have crossed? Really?

Baltimore.

Hey…I do love it here, but somehow the Governor declaring that we need to “Regain control of our streets” because people threw Columbus into the water is the most asinine shit ever. That’s the line? That’s the line we shouldn’t have crossed? Not murder, not drugs, not poverty, systemic racism, failing schools, corruption in the police department (though to be fair, and to their credit, they haven’t been National news lately). No. But Christopher Columbus…how much money did we spend fishing him out of the water?

Shaking. My. Head.

A Parochial Take on Mask Wearing (take this shit seriously)

COVID-19

I don’t know why Americans are so hell-bent on destroying themselves. We’re not asking you to jump into a fireball or go fight in a war somewhere (unless you’re a fireman or a soldier). Comparatively speaking, staying inside or wearing a mask when you go out is pretty small potatoes. It’s just wearing a mask—as a courtesy to others, as a way to stop the spread. You can cry “fake news” all you want, but the consensus has become that if more of us were wearing masks (and had been doing it since the beginning) we could have stopped this spread. (South Korea, and New Zealand have stopped Covid-19 and if you can’t be bothered to research things then I can’t be bothered either, but I know there are more.). But we don’t. The “President” doesn’t want to lead so he leaves it to the Governors. The Governors don’t want to lead so they leave it to the local authorities. And more people get sick. And more people are going to die. People hate when I say we are going to lose 300 thousand Americans (we’re at 120 thousand now). I want to be wrong. I hope I’m wrong.

“But the economy,” or the assholes that cry “herd immunity” (this article is a few months old, but it gets the point across about why herd immunity is not the answer for this https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic ) or “that mask won’t protect you.”

Yadda, yadda, yadda. Don’t believe me.

I’m just wearing my mask and trying to get through this whole thing alive without unknowingly transmitting the disease to anyone else. I wish other people felt the same.

I am the Parochialist.

Imagine...my take on the Shake Shack Incident...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/nyregion/shake-shack-police-nypd.html

Imagine…

Imagine being so hated that your mind jumps to “I’ve been poisoned!” anytime you get sick at a restaurant. Yeah, I’m talking about Shake Shack. I worked in food service for over 16 years, mostly in 2 small, family-owned facilities. Maybe my perspective is narrow, maybe it’s unique…but I think it’s a decent representation of the experience. And I worked with many people who’d worked in bigger, more professional places who talked about their past experience. I have reason to believe that the following observations apply to this situation.

In 16 years, I never fucked with anyone’s food. Not once. Never even crossed my mind.

I couldn’t.

Number one: it’s illegal.

A super quick Google search…

In California at least (where I don’t live), it is illegal. It most likely is illegal elsewhere, as well.

Under the food tampering law, it is illegal to willfully add poison or other harmful substance to a food, drink or medical product that will result in injury to another person. ... While spitting on someone's food may not seem like a serious crime, it could result in incarceration. Jan 13, 2017 (from https://vistacriminallaw.com/)

Number two: Karma. If I was doing it, I’d have to assume that somewhere, somehow, it was happening to me.

Number Three: if you are working around any responsible people and they see you doing something bad to someone’s food, they will not stand for it-restaurant owners, head chefs, supervisors, people who take the job wayyyyyyy too seriously…no one wants to see that.

At any rate, a person who came into the kitchen with that kind of attitude would find themselves out of a job quick.

Number four: Professionalism. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I knew I was that kind of person. I’d have to hope that other people feel the same way. But in my experience, many people I worked with took pride in their jobs: their job was part of their identity. They wouldn’t think of tampering with a customer’s food. Most wouldn’t, simply for the “karma” reason I listed above.

Number five: I have never, ever hated anyone enough to do that.

Number six: Oh, the humanity! Ethics? Morality? Belief in a higher power? All that stuff. We know it’s wrong.

I’m not saying it never happens (if it didn’t, why would there be a law?) but these are my immediate thoughts upon hearing about the Shake Shack incident.

Now. With that particular incident…. where cops got sick after drinking Shake Shack Milkshakes…

If you are such a retched human being that you just assume that your food making you sick is the result of a deliberate action, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your life choices…

I am The Parochialist, and you are not.

The Rise of the Parochialist.

June 1, 2020 Baltimore, The Confounder. Violent Protests in other major cities but somehow Baltimore protests remained (for the most part) non-violent. Yet the murder rate just keeps on chugging. We’re at 125 on the year (124 at the same point last year.). This is such a strange place.

On the one hand, there aren’t mass shootings, not in the city. No one going postal at schools, church, or…at the post office. But we have shootings and murders every day, or every other day, or sometimes we double and triple or quadruple up on a day to make up for the few days where nothing happens. A little bit, every day, and pretty soon, more people die here in the daily shootings than in the mass shootings that get all the publicity.

It is so gradual and it doesn’t get the press (except for local press--The Baltimore Sun is good about logging every one of these killings) but it is more of a steady grind that just becomes part of the background noise of the city, along with jury duty, trash, and parking tickets…. Yet…sometimes we keep it together. Our team wins the Super Bowl and 200,000 people hit the streets and there is only one murder and it’s a “good day.” We have a protest that doesn’t turn deadly while other cities burn, and suddenly we feel a little better about ourselves…

But then we balance it all out with a violent weekend outside of the protests and then everything is back to normal. Hell, even Covid-19 doesn’t slow this down.

Hell, years ago the late City Paper did a piece about how a guy got murdered in a blizzard when the whole city was locked down. That took a commitment that I can’t fathom.

I don’t get it.

Baltimore. Sometimes I hate it with every fiber of my being, sometimes I can’t imagine being anywhere else…

I am the Parochialist. I took a break but now I’m back.

CITY PAPER IS CLOSING. I didn't want it to end this way.