An entry which I start with a poetic nod to camera lenses, and then I get all pissy talking about the people I worked with at recent jobs and how stupid/used they are. And then I type in all caps.
Friday, Oct. 15, 2004 - 13:52

I went to the eye doctor and they dilated my pupils and I was just like a camera, I figured out after a couple minutes. Humans, they're so smart, cameras are just like eyeballs. My f/stops were low, my apertures were wide open, my depth of field was small.

I forgot about that at first and was worried about my left eye and why it was focusing weird.

The eye doctor wanted to plug up the drains in my eye. I said gross, no way, anything involving the word 'plug', yuck.

I asked about my twitchy eye. No one cared.

My contacts have been killing me. They hurt and get foggy and fucky. I told them that. No one cared.

The woman who did my prescription, the equivalent of a dental hygienist, the one who did all that stuff before the Big Doctor Man came in, wasn't very good, and I don't trust the glasses prescription she gave me. So I didn't order any glasses, just contacts, and they'll probably be just as sucky as the ones I've had for the last year because NOTHING CHANGED. THEY'RE EXACTLY THE SAME, THE EXACT SAME KIND, THE SAME PRESCRIPTION. My contacts have been giving me a lot of trouble, I said. Too bad, they said, you're getting more of the same.

But at least I got to go to the eye doctor, and now I know my optical nerves are in good shape, which is a relief. And I only had to pay a $10 copay.

If you want to know, a lot of my political ideas come from working at my crappy jobs for the last year. I worked with people who couldn't get better jobs, people who were supporting families while making $9 an hour and getting no health insurance, and that was their life, that was what it was like for them. Work their asses off for a tiny paycheck that they spend at Wal*Mart buying crappy meat and milk and clothes and shoes for their kids.

One guy I worked with this summer, Mike - and he ended up driving me crazy and I couldn't wait to get out of the truck on my last day because I couldn't stand another minute with him - but, he had two kids, he helped his mom with her bills, his dad died and he never took a day off, not even when he had to stay up all night taking care of his dad because his family couldn't afford to pay someone to do it... he was the best employee any bastard employer could ask for, he'd do what he was told no matter what it cost him. He broke his neck for one job, fell off a two-story roof when his boss told him to take off his lifeline, that it was slowing him down. "Get 'er done!" everyone shouted. His employer paid for his medical bills for his broken neck, so he thought he'd gotten a fair deal, but it still hurts him now and he's not getting anything for that. He had Hodgkin's, he's been stabbed, his teeth are falling out, he had a stillborn son, he's been divorced twice, he's 29 years old, he's basically whoring his body, working his body to death for very little pay, no retirement, no savings, no health care. He's dumb as a doorknob about some things, too, and he'll never rise above that. That bastard who owns the company we worked for will never give him a raise, will never give him any benefits, probably wouldn't even think twice about getting rid of Mike. He takes advantage of Mike, like he takes advantage of all his employees.

Is OSHA something Republicans like? Because it's the only thing looking out for people like Mike, and it doesn't do a very good job of that. Mike won't stand up for himself, and yes that's his own fault, but it shouldn't be so easy for employees to take advantage of stupid desperate people, let them put themselves in harm's way just to get 'er done.

Dumb people, is it their fault? Should you blame them for it, or should you feel sorry for them? Should you help them out, or is that belittling to them? There are crappy jobs that have to be done by someone, and many of the people who do crappy jobs aren't dumb at all - housekeeping was more fun than any other job I've ever had, who wouldn't want to do that? It wasn't a crappy job, just had crappy pay. - I was working in two fancy schmancy hotels up at a ski resort, though. I'm sure housekeeping at some dive that rents rooms by the hour is a crappy job, yuck.

Well, a job is a job, and even the "best" jobs suck in some ways. ("Best" as in highest paying, most prestige.) The problem, though, is that people are trying to make a living at these crappy jobs, abusing their bodies for horrible pay with no benefits. That's what's crappy about them. These people, when their bodies give out when they're 50 years old, when they can't bend over to make a bed or to dig a ditch, what are they going to do? If they need glasses or surgery or their kids need tubes in their ears, what are they going to do? What are their kids going to do?

Oh yeah, their kids can join the military, bang bang.

One of the ladies I worked with up on the hill - we got free season passes, and for dependents you had to pay $25 for a pass - this lady, she's 50, a supervisor, she told her son she'd get him a pass, she'd save up and get him a pass. She didn't even have $25. And that pisses me off, because that's the reality for most of the people around here.

Do you want to give them a tax break? Fine, a lot of good it'll do them, because they make so little they don't have to pay taxes anyway. It's called poverty.

I just made myself so mad I want to retype that paragraph in all caps.

Three weeks until the election. AND MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN THIS STATE WILL VOTE FOR GEORGE W BUSH BECAUSE THEY THINK THEY'RE BEING PATRIOTIC, because they're afraid of the big bad Arab boogie man. And they'll keep on going to work every day and GETTING FUCKED OVER.