Insensitivity vs Inclusion

Is it “insensitive” to build a mosque near Ground Zero?  Yes.

Is “sensitivity” alone a reason for anybody to do anything?  No.

Even social conservatives would normally state that the “social harm” principle going back to J.S. Mill would have to be fully cleared before saying that somebody shouldn’t do something just because the majority may not like it.  Just as I’m sure that there are people who would say that Dr. Laura Schlessinger was not “wrong” for her views in what happened over her use of the N-word and saying that a caller was hyper-sensitive about race, so too do I feel that those who are saying that Muslims should know better than to build so close to Ground Zero.  I have no idea what is an acceptable distance from Ground Zero, so the distance argument is a hard one to make — it’s an appeal to emotion rather than logic and though the old rules only apply when it supports anyone’s case, the fact is that appeals to emotion are logical fallacies which cannot alone be used to justify social action.

The same could be said for the Hispanic couple that moves into a neighborhood where there previously were no Hispanic homes, but a violent gang shooting involving Hispanics and the town is against them.  Or the first time in the South that some Jews or Blacks moved into a neighborhood.  Maybe this analogy will be called invalid because it didn’t have the social defining moment and body count of 9/11, but then that is a matter of elevation of 9/11 to a sacred status that actually makes it incapable of being debated even as we say that there should be a debate about whether a mosque should be built.

Whether the mosque is provocation, the mosque is not the central portion of the multi-story Islamic center that is planned, so much as the part that is being most protested (since protesting a day care center or a book store is a bit harder to do).  The ones who are planning the general Islamic center fit in about as well with the America-hating stereotype of Muslims as Fareed Zakaria, but their status as liberal, progressive Muslims means that their job is to be out of sight and out of mind?  The “Don’t build” side of the equation isn’t doing an adequate job of distinguishing and promoting the people who should be lauded for their efforts in opposing radical terrorist Islam, instead such Muslims are taken out of the equation completely so that efforts may instead be focused on keeping the more prevalent image in the mind of the average citizen of the Islamic boogeyman who wants to kill you, he just may not know it yet.  Was anybody now citing Raza and Fatah before searching out that Ottowa Citizen article just to say that “Even Muslims don’t want the mosque there!”  Most likely not.

Meanwhile there are those who would also say that the imam does not take adequate opportunity to decry the violent radical fundamentalists in their faith.  I’ll admit, it would be nice to see more of those voices out there, especially in media that we can see, but at the same time that would raise the question as to whether or not imams  who are not violent or vocally inflammatory are required as part of their faith to spend time out of their day to call foul on others, any more than members of other religions likely spend their time talking about other denominations.  This myth of the monolith of Islam is not solely the responsibility of “the other side” to deal with.

The calls of “insensitivity” are based on propagating a “victim” status against a specific kind of Muslim, and that is where this whole argument loses me.  A few thousand people died on 9/11.  Only 6 million people actually witnessed it within their city.  The rest of us, for or against the right of the Muslims to do what they want to do in New York, are all playing armchair patriot talking about something that we most likely cannot personally emote for on the deepest level even as we’re making appeals to emotion.  The ones with the most emotional stake in this are the 9/11 families, and even those families are not all in agreement on whether such a move as the construction of an Islamic Center anywhere near Ground Zero is insensitive.  And certainly I can find no media outlet or “patriot” on any internet message boards (though my search was casual rather than exhaustive) who have the brass balls to look at the 9/11 families in support of the Islamic center and tell them that they’re wrong and don’t understand how 9/11 families feel and how it’s a stab in the eye or heart or other body part of reference to Christians or true Americans or take your pick of distinguishing factors.

So I, recognizing that I have no personal stake in this, can only look at this in a completely distanced way and say that legally, the Muslims have every right to build wherever they want to build, and I cannot shame them for choosing to exercise their rights under the law.  My personal emotion comes into this insofar as to admit that as a member of a minority that for a very long time suffered codified second-class citizenship in the Western world, I cannot bring myself to immediately look at a group of hundreds of millions of people and declare that they are either my enemy or that they need to make all the concessions in the world to appease my sentiments and sensibilities because my opinions and feelings are the only ones that matter.

As to the mosque… what if there were no mosque?  What if the Islamic center were built without the mosque being a part of it?  Would that be okay, or is the idea of Muslims building anything near Ground Zero the real problem?  Should Muslims even be allowed to be present near Ground Zero?  Should the families of law-abiding Muslims who died on 9/11 be permitted to attend any ceremonies or collect any money?  If a Muslim wishes to donate money to the 9/11 fund should that money be rejected?

If we’re going to call insensitivity and say that Muslims have to be the ones to “take one for the team” by staying away from everybody else, then where do we draw the line of the exclusion of Muslims from anything relating to Ground Zero?  I don’t see this simply about a “mosque” and the mosque would not be “on” Ground Zero, so then I look at this as a general matter of whether 10 years after 9/11 have we as a nation moved past the “socially-permissible” discrimination of any and all Muslims simply because they are Muslims?  Because if we cannot allow Muslims to participate in the national feeling of 9/11, treating them as “the other” in this debate even if they may be citizens, then have we truly accepted them at all?

Now I have this open for commenting and this is probably the most “controversial” topic I’ve ever spoken about, but I have no real expectations of comments since this topic has made the rounds for quite a while before I said anything about it.  I figured I might as well get my thoughts out into the digital ether as well.

Or a spaghetti-western style thing.

Change In 2010

I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions.  Typically resolutions end up being year-round lifestyle habits.  That sort of thing isn’t a resolution so much as a path.  You stick to the path or you wander off of it, but it’s not a simple “Keep it or break it.”  The only thing that I try to make happen from year to year is to try to, overall, do better for myself than the previous year.  That can be in terms of career, health, strength of relationships, or other intangibles that lead to personal fulfillment and satisfaction… whatever the case might be.  So that being the case, I more look out upon the world and see the things, big and small that I feel should change for the better.  I present just a sampling of that list to you now, in no particular order.

1. Netflix has to stop trying to get me to rent Megan Fox’s cleavage when I surf the web. They’ll say that they’re really promoting Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but why do they always show the image of Fox, sweaty and scared, with the camera half-panned down her shirt?  Surely there’s better imagery evocative of the actual giant robots that are the movie’s namesake?
2. Entry Level needs to make a return. I have younger cousins and some internet friends who are just getting out of school, and then there’s my little brothers Shelby and Sterling, who are in high school and for them there’s really a good 5 to 8 years before they get their Bachelor’s and then go on from there.  I’ve noticed something, however, as I’ve watched the job market — the meaning of “entry level” has contracted exponentially over the years.  Entry level employment in the professional world is all about getting your feet in the door and growing your water wings, but as the economy corrected for the various bubbles that it rode to illogical heights, hiring for recent college grads fell noticeably.  The best way to create another bitter, disillusioned workforce akin to the stereotype that Generation X carried for so long is to have people going tens of thousands of dollars into debt, only to get out of school and end up working the same jobs as somebody who never went to university in the first place.  Entry level should not mean “Hire that kid only if we can’t get somebody with experience.”  Honestly I think the only people advertising entry level positions in earnest anymore are your telemarketers (or worse, door-to-door salesmen) and is that really what you want to send your kids to college to do?
3. Be honest about “tall, dark and handsome.” Tall is relative to the person observing it.  Most guys aren’t actually dark.  And handsome is as handsome does, though that doesn’t make much sense.  I suppose the point is, I’ve spent my whole life tall and dark.  I’m still working on the handsome part, I’ll admit it’s a shortcoming of mine.  But seems to me that if you’re not going to have all three as a guy, it’s better to just be handsome and lacking in height and melanin, than to be tall and dark and lacking in looks (unless you’re an athlete, then all bets are off).
4. Air-conditioning is not a luxury. Global-warming, right?  I’ve lived in places with a single fan jammed into the wall and in places with true A/C, and I’ve gotta say that air-conditioning is not at all a luxury.  I spent half my childhood in Florida… those humid, stuffy nights with no air when the power was out after a storm were crazily uncomfortable.
5. Repurpose the Take-A-Penny/Leave-A-Penny trays. Last night, after running some errands at various stores, I stopped in at Taco Bell to get my little brothers a little snack (and myself, too, 7 layer Burrito for Big Sky).  After getting my food, I noticed that there was a homeless man who’d come into the place asking for coffee or a drink of any kind.  The woman mopping the floor told him $1.49 dismissively for a drink and went back to her mopping.  Myself, and another man behind me, spontaneously decided to treat this man.  Between us, we got him a couple of volcano tacos and a large drink.  No big deal, you help somebody out if they need it.  But what if we hadn’t been there?  Lexington isn’t a big area, but there’s no public transportation and their small churches are pretty much closed if not giving one of their semi-weekly services.  So where was that man, perfectly nice and respectful (he thanked us profusely for helping him), supposed to go eat?  I propose that the Take-A-Penny tray be repurposed into a petty cash tray for providing at least a single sandwich and drink to any hungry, destitute individual who seeks something to put in his or her stomach.  Because just like the Salvation Army, you don’t have to save the world with a donation… even a few coins here and there can help someone.
6. They have to bring back the Whatchamacallit commercials. I don’t know how many people remember them.  You can likely find it on Youtube.  But there’s not a store that sells candy that doesn’t sell the Whatchamacallit candy bar and that commercial was pretty catchy.
7. Anderson Cooper must release his own pin-up calendar. Hey, I’m a heterosexual male, but even I know when another guy is hot enough to do big business with this sort of thing.  He can donate the proceeds to charity or to hiring a better New Year’s co-host than Kathy Griffin… I don’t care.  But he’s missing out on a major opportunity there.
8. Dick Cheney has to become a superspy. At least then when he berates the Obama administration on not being tough enough on national security, Cheney can bring in personal examples such as busting up an Iraqi slave ring armed with nothing more than a pen knife, or going “Delta Force” and singlehandedly bringing down al-Qaeda in Yemen with one hand tied behind his back, uphill against the snow, both ways.
9. Tiger Woods should join the NBA. Extramarital affairs tend not to be career-ending in that sport.  He can join the Lakers and form a coalition with Kobe Bryant.
10. Insurance companies have to stop talking about all the money you’ll save if you come to their side. Of course people saved money by switching to your company.  Nobody switches insurance to pay more.  How about elaborating on your services, and effective rate of claims return?  On a side note, Dennis Haysbert would totally win in a fight with Tim McCarthy (plays the “Justin Case” character from Safe Auto commercials).

There’s more that I think should change in 2010, but I won’t bog you down with all of it.  Have a great day and make this year even better than the last!

What Is Shared Sacrifice?

This will be my first blog posted as a response to a page posted in the media.  I posted first as a comment within the site itself, but I thought that for proper archiving I would put the same post here.  You can find the full opinion article at the following URL:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/12/20/greene.wartime.christmas.sacrifice/index.html

After reading that, if you haven’t already, my thoughts will be shown below the line-break.

________________________________________

I hope I understand this article correctly.  I believe that it effectively tells me that I couldn’t care less about the troops, and this writer is entitled to his opinion, but I at least want to be sure why this and some comment-posters would say I don’t support the troops.

1) I don’t read maps of troop movements in the paper.  Didn’t Geraldo get in trouble for that gaffe back in the initial invasion of Iraq because he gave away troop placements, activities and intentions on international television?  The guys that our troops are fighting can simply stream a broadcast or check a newspaper’s website online and hear what the troops are doing if the reporting was that focused and delivered content daily.  I see why, for the troops’ safety, this information is not released to the public, and I’m certain that the military itself would want to highly limit how much information gets out through the news, but apparently that this news is not on the front page every day in perpetuity, I’m to blame.

2) It’s also my fault that following World War 2 and moving into the Korean War, the United States has never slowed down.  We’re in a permanent war-time economy.  There’s no such thing as an “arms race” anymore because we have contractors, the U.S. has permanent funds set aside in the national defense budget every year — for decades now — to pay people to build the weapons and armaments and vehicles necessary to mount a war effort, and to make and package the food, and to supply the tents and sleeping bags and brick and mortar for FOLs and everything that you would need to mount a war effort.  I get that there was sacrificing for rubber and sugar and grease, I get that the government had to order the manufacturing industry to re-purpose in order to build up the war machine, but that’s just not the case today.  What exactly would I be required to sacrifice, exactly?  Nobody’s really giving any clearly explained plan for how I can prove my concern the same as the generations before me based on the situations that exist today.  But I get it, that’s my fault too.

3) In the past, there wasn’t a day gone by where the war wasn’t on everybody’s minds.  There’s no problem there.  President Bush and Obama both stated that, effectively, the United States fights overseas so that we don’t have to fight the enemy within our own country.  That actually makes me think back, since I didn’t live in the first half of the century or even much of the second half — although I did pay attention in history class — and a good amount of the war propaganda in the Veteran and Boomer generations that I remember seeing wasn’t just based on a moral imperative to save our European brothers… it was about the enemy already being at the gates.  Communism, socialist sleeper cells, Japanese spies, air raid drills… part of the culture of “shared sacrifice” in the past was the idea that one could die at any minute because the country would get bombed by an invading military force from another nation’s full war machine.  It was easier, then, I would say, to keep the war in mind all the time when you couldn’t be sure that some other country wasn’t going to be sending their air-force to blanket the sky with bombs.  But the fact that the troops are largely fighting terrorists and insurgents who couldn’t possibly mount that kind of war effort at my front door in rural America… that, too, is my fault.

I come from a military family.  I didn’t serve myself, due to a general cowardice when it comes to getting shot at; I’ll admit that.  I donated to military charities in the past before I became unemployed, and I kept track of developments with the wars as best I could.  What, short of serving myself, can I actually do that would qualify as “caring” to a sufficient level?

I always roll my eyes and shake my head at these kinds of discussion, because to me it always seems to dance on that very thin line separating “Being a good person” and “I’m more patriotic than you.”

The Truth About Tiger Woods

I’ve done a lot of research.  I’ve checked through a number of sources, including biographies and reading interviews from primary sources, and I’ve discovered something.

He’s just one man.

Seriously.  He might have been some $100 million endorsement industry, but he didn’t ask for that, it was put upon him by the outside world.  Now naturally, any professional athlete (and somehow golf is considered athletics… I figure it’s for all that walking) is just that: a professional.  He’s not just doing it for the love of the game, he’s trying to make a living off of that sport.  He’s trying to build a nest egg, save up money for his family to keep them living comfortably for as long as they can and provide them with the best health care, perhaps provide the starting finances if they have a business of their own that they’d like to run.  Point being, Tiger Woods was at no point going to deny all the money that people were throwing at him.  And why should he?  He’s a professional.  If he plays well, he gets rewarded — not just with tacky green jackets and trophies that he tosses into the closet, but with money.

Tiger Woods makes more money per golf tournament appearance than most people make in a year, but that’s not where his money primarily came from.  No, Woods was an endorsement machine.  This started in 1996 and really had gone uphill from there for a long time until this scandal hit.  We’re talking Nike, Gatorade, TAG Heuer, Buick, Accenture, Gillette, Electronic Arts… you name it, there was probably a product he endorsed for it or at least an offer made.

Here’s the thing.  While we can certainly say that Tiger’s endorsement of the Nike Golf product helped to launch sales of that franchise into the stratosphere, it’s doubtful that the same can be said for the other products.

Gatorade?  Well their Tiger drink has already been discontinued due to weak sales.

Electronic Arts?  Video games based on golf are a niche product to begin with, and nothing would change that even if Tiger Woods was involved.  In fact, while sales for Electronic Arts PGA games were respectable for what it was, it wasn’t exactly a stellar sales record (Electronic Arts itself has had a habit of underselling to expectations of its video game product, especially games based on sports, which have only a 12% market share of all games sold in the United States anyway).  Seems people would rather be watching, or doing, but not pretending to be doing.

I haven’t found any sales numbers for Gillette razors, but Gillette is a long-time product that pretty much had its lock on market share, and let’s not forget that Tiger was only one of three celebrity endorsers for the product.

The point being, Tiger Woods made the most money for Tiger Woods. He wasn’t extolling the virtues of a product — commercials would just be him doing a golf trick or a long drive, while a narrator said why somebody’s product was so great.  Woods, being a professional, didn’t have to personally believe in anything that he was endorsing.  It wasn’t a matter of placing your faith in Tiger not to steer you wrong if he put his name to the Rendevous SUV because if you step back and look at it realistically, he’s not selling you an SUV.  He’s selling you Tiger Woods.  Companies are hoping that you’ll connect the thought, “Oh, Tiger’s a nice guy, he wouldn’t lie to me” (something you couldn’t know for sure anyway) to the thought, “I should buy this product that Tiger was paid an obscene amount of money to associate with his face and name.”  And maybe some people did.

But shouldn’t we as people be better than that?  Now, that means, not getting caught up in the usual trappings of celebrity endorsement.  Because these are just people, the same as us.  They have no greater understanding of what is a good product to sell than we do.  If you want to take your shopping habits from a celebrity, then at least try to be reasonable about it and take a look at what they buy and are seen to use as consumers, not simply what they are paid to endorse.  After all, if Tiger endorsed a feminine cleansing product during his “unspoiled” days, his single days, would you have trusted him then to know what was talking about?

Now then, it’s not just about being better than to pay attention to celebrity endorsements.  And not just because they take away good jobs from smallter-time commercial actors who need the work.  No, it’s about not boycotting a product that doesn’t throw a “fallen” celebrity under the bus.  Because what message is that supposed to send?  We can look back at Mr. Woods.

So Tiger isn’t a golden boy anymore.  Does his endorsement mean that a company supports his actions?  No.  And it’s ridiculous to think so.  No one would confuse national companies, international franchises, and global corporations with being the moral authority, or even the moral majority, in our lives.  So they have no responsibility to act according to what we think about whether or not some celebrity is a paragon of virtue.  And releasing somebody from an endorsement contract right away… well, let’s be honest.  Most of the time, Tiger Woods wasn’t really used well by the companies seeking his endorsement.  Accenture showed a few commercials but they were terrible at utilizing him to properly explain just what in the blue hell it did as a service.  But think beyond that.  There are people who state that they will not buy a product or service that keeps Tiger Woods as an endorsing athlete.  Who does this hurt, exactly?

The celebrity isn’t hurt.  He’s basically made his money already.  And marital infidelity, while a juicy topic that finally gave the media a crack in the veneer of the previously untouchable Tiger Woods, is rather forgivable as a peccadillo.  The people to whom he has to answer the most are his family, not the strangers that he’s never met in his life.

The executives and marketing departments in the companies that keep Tiger, they aren’t suffering for this.  They’ll keep their spots regardless.

No, when you boycott Tiger, if you really put a dent in revenues, you’re hurting the average person, just like you.  And who are you to say that a normal 8-to-5 worker has to lose their job because Tiger Woods cheated on his wife?  And if for some reason you’re okay with that, or you know somebody who is, the question that then follows from there is, why just Tiger?  Why should it be just be some celebrity that you think you’re hurting, or the business that is perceived to support such behavior?  Shouldn’t that be standard operating procedure for all companies that employ individuals who have at any point in their lives cheated on their significant others?  Because if it’s some arbitrary and awkward concern about not wanting children to believe that it’s okay to do such things, then here’s what I want you to do.

Go to your kids.  Sit them down.  Talk to them honestly about what Tiger Woods did.  And then explain that all the people you know personally or whom your family and friends know, who have ever cheated on their wives/husbands/girlfriends/boyfriends, should not have to be fired from their jobs selling or providing some service.  Because it’s not that what Tiger Woods did was bad, it’s that he’s on the news for it.

Consistency, people.  If what Tiger Woods did was horrible that a message has to be sent, then statistically half of the country should be unemployed because that’s how many people cheat.  Maybe you should lose your job because of what Tiger Woods did.  Because he’s no better than you are, even if you wanted to believe so at one point in time.

He’s just one man.  He shouldn’t have to hypocritically suffer for everybody else’s sins.

Saving Money In Today’s Economy

If  you’re like me, you’re a 26-year-old black guy living with his mom and two younger brothers and spends most of his time looking for a higher-paying job and running household errands.  Sucks, doesn’t it?  But for the rest of you, even if you’re not much like me, I bet we’re all doing what we can to tighten our belts and stretch the monthly budget further and further.  Many professional economists have forecast that things are getting better (although the professionals tend to be full of it only because there’s only two possibilities: get better or get worse — any collection of monkeys or kittens or other adorable animal could make the same predictions at random with about the same level of accuracy).  Still, we all know that the person on the street feels an economic recovery much much later than does a corporation or does a guy who sits in a room all day reading reports to give a thumbs up/thumbs down vote at the Coliseum in New York where I presume that The Fed holds death matches and decadent buffets only to determine during the half-hour intermission to decide what to do about interest rates.  So with that all in mind (the delayed recovery for average Janes and Joes, not the death match stuff) I’ve put together a handy guide of tips to save money.  I’ve personally tested these and can affirm their usefulness and efficacy.

1. Cut and style your own hair. Granted, I’m a guy who keeps my hair fairly short.  This might not apply to the women out there, but overall I think that one can save a fair amount of money over the year by simply eschewing salons and barbershops and doing what we can with our own hair.  The down-side is, of course, that you screw up and look ridiculous, but that’s what wigs and hats and bandanas worn around the head are for.  Start of simple, and work your way up.  My family saves probably $60 a month because I use clippers to trim down my hair and my little brothers’ hair as well.  I don’t go down to the scalp, they’re left with a few millimeters of hair left.  It’s still thick enough to look dark and grown out but thin enough that it’s very easy to maintain.  And I can give us all a quick run-over with the clippers for free every week, rather than having to wait until a certain time when we really need haircuts.
2. Get thee to Hulu. There are reports and rumors that Hulu might become a pay subscription service over time, but for now you can use it however you please.  I don’t watch much TV, but I can skip the Digital boxes and all that nonsense for the expanded cable packages on the channels that I do watch simply by going to Hulu.  As long as I keep up an internet connection (which I would do anyway) it’s still viable.
3. Use Netflix.  I don’t know many people who are avid moviewatchers who don’t do this, but Netflix is about the best deal on renting movies that you can get.  One monthly fee and rent whatever you want.  I used to see people returning them through work mail with stamps, it’s that easy.  And now that Netflix has hooked up with the makers of video game consoles, you can stream content directly into your gaming system.  If you watch a lot of movies, this is the way to go.
4. Play video games. Awkward advice but it’s a bit feasible.  I go for used, or otherwise cheaper, “current gen” video games.  Not much a buyer of video games when they first come out because they’re pretty expensive, but with a cheap used X-Box I picked up some choice games such as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Lost Odyssey and Mass Effect.  For $60 dollars I’ve had 100s of hours of entertainment.  That’s a good deal no matter how you look at it.
5. Frequent your local public library. An old school recommendation but if you like reading books and magazines, or even if you want to rent movies and DVDs, the library is a great place to do so.  Befriend the folks behind the counter and they’ll look out for you.
6. Stop eating healthy.  This is something that obviously isn’t for everyone, and the long-term health effects are not good, but to a point the human body is like a car engine.  In the short term, if you just put some kind of fuel in it, it’ll get by.  Fruits?  Vegetables?  Yeah, I get them when I can, but in a pinch if I can only spend $5 that day and I don’t want to walk around still being hungry, a $1 chicken sandwich or double cheeseburger can tide me over pretty well for hours.  I like apples and oranges and salads but sadly they don’t really fill me up and for the amount of fruits and veggies it takes to get my stomach to capacity I’ll have spent over $5 just on that one meal, still with two left in the day to have to figure out.
7. Eat less. Although as money becomes tighter, this won’t be so much a choice as  survival adaptation.  My basic rule is, I will be the first in my household to go without.  So this is more of a personal rule.  If  you have family that eats a lot, then if you don’t want to overtly tell them not to eat so much, then store food and drink in an out of the way location.  Sometimes it’s the mere belief in the (over)abundance of food that causes people to eat that way.
8. Grocery shop like you won’t get paid for another 3 months. Use coupons, scope out which stores in your areas tend to sell certain goods for the least, and don’t hesitate to buy the off-brand.  I’d only recommend joining store buyer-rewards clubs if it’s not a credit card or if you don’t have to pay dues to join it.  If somebody truly wants your business and appreciates you as a customer they should be willing to give you a great deal all the time, not only under specific circumstances.  Wal-Mart is a good place to shop much of the time for groceries — their Great Value brand items are routinely cheaper than most brand names and the selection of GV items has expanded to nearly every staple food product you could want.  They have comparable or better prices than most chain stores for non-food items, and in general you’ll save a good deal of money every month unless you are part of a Store Club that gives you mammoth discounts.
9. Host small socials at your house. I like hanging out with people as much as the next person, but gas prices fluctuate too much and they’re usually a hassle.  I often have to figure whether the cost of gas to go somewhere that I’m not earning any money is worth it.  You might have to deal with people being on your things a lot, but you can work around that.  Have them outside, confine them to a certain room, do as you must.  As long as everybody’s aware that you’re not personally footing the bill for a lunch/dinner party this shouldn’t cost you too much.
10. Invest in a mini-oven. You’ll see them listed in SkyMall or on QVC.  George Foreman grills or Wolfgang Puck cookers, crock pots… all good options.  The key here is to avoid using your stove and especially your large oven.  That’s one of the single biggest drains on electricity in your house.  Cooking without it, as much as possible, will greatly reduce the power bill each month.  I won’t talk about unplugging all the appliances before you leave the house or go to bed because that’s good advice for conserving resources but you probably have a lot of appliances and don’t want to have to plan an extra 5-10 minutes at various times throughout the day to walk around plugging everything in/out.  If you want, the main things to unplug would be your computer, printer, and television.  Smaller things would be any device that requires a charge through the wall.  Make sure to remove the charger from the wall, even if there’s nothing plugged into it.
11. Thrift stores. In a pinch, you can find usable clothing, bags, shoes, even furniture in thrift stores.  And if you’re not a frequent shopper in thrift stores, know that it’s not all old ripped Iron Maiden t-shirts and warped 50s cocktail tables missing legs.  Thrift stores have some standards — if they don’t think they could get anybody to buy it, they won’t take it.  Besides, even people who have some halfway decent stuff might choose thrift stores, especially if there isn’t a convenient pawn shop in the area.
12. Drive smart. Remember to buy gas during the cooler times of day.  Drive the speed limit, don’t go significantly above that.  Make sure that your tires are inflated.  Remove any excess weight from your car.  Turn off the engine whenever you anticipate having to have the car sit in one place for more than a minute (perhaps not at traffic lights but anywhere else).  Running the A/C and putting down your windows have negligible effect on gas mileage, though if you prefer, you can keep your windows down when it’s not raining.  Make sure that you don’t wait until the gauge is on E to fill up — doing so at a quarter tank is better for the fuel injector and it gives you some psychological leeway to look for the best price.  And remember that unless your car states that it requires premium, regular gasoline is fine.  And don’t fret about buying from small gas stations that don’t advertise any special additives in the fuel — that “Techron” and “Ultimate” stuff is just a gimmick.  The gas you buy from any station will pass the same standards for sale, “brand” or not.

If you have any personal tips you’d like to contribute, feel free to mention!

Keeping All Options Open

A few days ago, I’d say Friday, I spoke with a man from Chicago on a forum (the URL escapes me at the moment) about the tragedy in Fort Hood.  He expressed his disappointment and anger at what he felt were religious zealots of whatever faith.  The radicals, the fanatics, he said, were ruining religion for the regular people who are just trying to get by in life.  I hadn’t really heard much about the events at Fort Hood at that point, the investigation still in its early stages at that point.  I didn’t match the other man’s point of view about religious zealotry, but simply offered the point of view that perhaps the suspect had gone crazy.  Now, what I was told, and this is from a self-proclaimed political conservative (important to note because more often, liberals will be concerned about understanding why a crime happened and about rehabilitation and prevention while conservatives have a greater propensity to be focused on punishment and determent) was that saying that the Fort Hood shooter may have been crazy was too easy.

I don’t believe that at all.  Of course, the only thing that I could say at that point anyway would be speculation.  That he may or may not have had some deteriorated mental faculties had no less validity than to suggest, as the other commenter did, that it was a case of a Muslim terrorist who infiltrated the U.S. military.  I had no reason to believe that until an investigation by trained professionals on the scene could say anything one way or another.  However, for me, the important thing is that the possibility of “crazy” is “too easy.”

Believe me, I’ll be the first to admit and agree that many times when it comes to human nature, saying that something or someone is crazy is more of a defense mechanism for the speaker.  Without any clear understanding of what’s in front of them, perhaps without the willingness to understand, saying that something is “crazy” as in simply being beyond the accepted normalcy happens all the time.  What I believe, though, is that there is a right and wrong way to bring up the matter.  If you say that something is crazy as a way to put it out of mind without thinking about it deeply, without having to truly analyze and comprehend what happened… that is not the correct way of looking at it.  Even in the case of true dementia leading to loss of life, there are still lessons to be learned: early warning signs and manifestations of abnormal behavior that, seeing those conditions in the future, someone may be able to act ahead of time and help avert another disaster.  Something can be “crazy” and still be used as a learning experience.

Part of the issue, for those who wish to say that they want to “understand” what happens when an individual decides to go on a rampage and take the lives of as many people as possible, is that saying that someone is insane feels like a cop-out.  As though allowing that person to have a dementia somehow excuses their behavior.  That couldn’t be further from the case.  Even if the justice system states that an individual declared legally incompetent to stand trial should not be pushed forward into the same prison population as a sane convict, at no point is anyone saying that the crimes that the insane person committed are any less bad or wrong.  Insanity doesn’t diminish the gravity of the crime committed, so that’s not the issue.

Still, I don’t prejudge whether somebody who makes the decision to shoot many innocent bystanders may be insane, simply that such an option should be on the table for investigative purposes.  Let the professionals rule that out.  After all, we can look at the tragic shooting incident at Virginia Tech as a case study in how a suspect’s legitimate mental illness was considered taboo, even as psychiatric evaluations in the past clearly indicated that the individual could potentially be a danger to others if left unchecked.  And that’s the important part… not that the VT shooter was an inherently bad person, but that he didn’t have the capacity to fully appreciate what were appropriate behaviors.  And that’s the important lesson here.  Not that the Fort Hood shooter is or is not crazy, I still don’t know enough about that.  But if we’re unwilling to accept the consideration that there are, in fact, high-functioning individuals out there who may nonetheless have some unfortunate mental condition and could do the wrong thing… by not allowing that possibility we inadvertently become complacent about whether such a person could end up hurting somebody.

That’s all I have to say about that.  All well wishes go out to the survivors and surviving families in Fort Hood.

— Sky

A Hypothetical Situation

So, say you’re working.  Say you’re fairly young, 20s to 40s.  You’ve worked, you’ve paid into the social security system, paid your taxes, kept your bills up to date… you’ve done everything that you’re supposed to do.  You’ve done everything right, so far.

Now, say that you get laid off (through no fault of your own) from a great job with good benefits.  You have that “eight month emergency fund” that Suze Orman’s always talking about so you don’t sweat it.  You hit the pavement looking for another job, and meanwhile, you budgeted to the point that all of your bills are paid and you can even pay another 2 months if you had to.

Then, say that you go without finding a job for 2 months.  You’re eager to get back to work but you understand that the average time that it takes for an individual to find a comparable position to what she previously held takes longer and longer every year.  In the meantime, you sign up at contract employment agencies that send you some day work, but nothing longer than a few weeks.  Nobody has the budget (or is willing to allocate the funds) to hire you on, no matter how competent an employee you prove yourself to be within the company.

Then it gets to 4 months and you’re stir crazy.  You volunteered all over town but after a while that starts to cut into your time to search for jobs, especially when you go in person but everybody says that you should go home and apply online since paper applications are an unnecessary expense nowadays and businesses have to cut costs somehow.  Then after you go home, you sign up to Monster, Careerbuilder, Job.com, Yahoo Hotjobs, and many local sites through Craigslist and media outlets.  And even if you spend a few hours crafting your perfect profile on each site, odds are that every time you apply for work at another location, you’ll have to spend another 1 to 3 hours making another job seeker’s profile before you can even begin to tell anyone what position that you’d like to pursue.

Now it’s six months and you’re sweating it.  You never liked the idea of taking from the government so you don’t want to go for unemployment, but you know that even though the most recent statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor show that the average job seeker spends 6 months looking for work, if you haven’t found steady employment after 4 months hiring managers will perceive that there is something wrong with you, rather than there being something wrong with the job market.  To cope, you think, maybe now you should seriously consider going for unemployment and food stamps.  After all, you don’t want your family to suffer a loss of lifestyle for your pride.  So you put in your paperwork and you wait.

Now, say that you get injured.  Once again, through no fault of your own.  And it’s an injury of moderate severity, you don’t bounce right back from it but it’s not fatal either.  You don’t have health insurance so you have to cover the bills out of your own pocket.  But your savings are budgeted to your home, so you have to decide what you’re going to do about the cost for the hospital.  And that gets pricey.  After all, when you’re in the hospital, you’re charged for, in no particular order:

1. Test after test after extraneous test. Keep in mind that many doctors and hospitals admit to running unnecessary tests simply to make it look like they’re doing everything that they can for someone.  It protects them legally, as well.  Nobody sues for malpractice because a doctor ran too many tests.  They could, as it’s just running up a huge bill, but sadly the healthcare industry accepts this practice and would crush the plaintiff if anyone brought suit about the matter.
2. More tests. You didn’t think they were done, did you?  Personal example, when I went to the hospital a little while back due to high blood sugar (I discovered I’m a Type 2 diabetic) the hospital ran 8 blood tests, claiming that my liver readings were abnormal.  I’m not a surgeon but that seemed odd to me, so I did my own web research.  Turns out that because of my high blood sugar, my liver readings were supposed to be abnormal.  So the hospital ran too many tests to confirm what 2 tests would have accomplished.  No problem for the hospital, right?  The work was done in minutes and they got to charge me well over $3000 for 8 urine tests and two bags of very low concentration saline (read: salt water) that they dripped into my blood intravenously.  The sad thing about that is the doctor even said that I could’ve just stayed home and drank a bunch of jugs of ice water for a few days straight and accomplished the same effect.  Wish somebody had told me that in the waiting room.
3. Receiving a hospital bed. Even if you’re only going to be there in the emergency room for a couple of hours they’ll sit you onto a bed because if you’re on a bed they can charge more than if you’re just around in a private examination room.
4. Giving you food. If you realized that your small Healthy Choice sized container of flank steak, mashed potatoes, carrots, and jello cost $12 per serving, you wouldn’t complain about the quality of hospital food but instead treat it like the best meal you’ve ever eaten.  You’d have to, at that point.
5. Seeing a doctor. And when I say “seeing a doctor” that may or may not mean that the doctor comes over to say “Hi.”  The mere fact that you’ve witnessed a doctor somewhere in your vicinity is enough to get charged for that doctor working on you.
6. Not seeing a doctor. Honestly, if a doctor just happens to hear that you’re on his or her floor while you are being treated, even if it’s only the nurses that have anything to do with you, odds are that doctor will try to claim a visitation fee.  One would say “They shouldn’t do that, it’s dishonest!” but again, it’s accepted practice.  Plus, in the emergency room they don’t have time to check your insurance information, they simply assume that somebody’s going to pay it and add to your tab regardless.
7. Treating you. Oh, yeah, you probably want to get better if you’re seeking medical care.  That’ll cost you.

So getting back to the hypothetical scenario, let’s say that you end up in the hospital for a grand total of three months.  Your medical bills are tremendous at this point.  Obviously the hospital can’t afford the negative press to kick you out before your treatment is complete, even though you’re unable to pay them.  And you’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars of healthcare expenses on you at the end of this medical ordeal.  You only had a few thousand left budgeted to the house at this point, and the hospital wants some money upfront just to know that you’re serious about paying them.  So you have to split your costs.  Now you’re broke, and you still don’t have any work.

But you’ve had unemployment for three months, right?  That should help a little back home.

Wrong.  To qualify for unemployment you need to be available to look for work.  While you’re in the hospital laid up in bed, you can’t look.  You can’t interview.  You can’t accept positions.  So you’re ineligible for unemployment for the time that you’re down and out.  You can look now but you’re already broke and that makes you desperate.

What about social security?  Disability benefits through SSI could help.

Scratch that.  Social Security Income benefit rules require that you have a documented disability (according to what the government considers a disability).  That disability has to keep you from being able to work, or at least from being able to make more than $900 a month by your own effort.  And your disability has to have lasted for 12 calendar months, or at least be projected to last at least that long.  Plus, you’re not that old and so you haven’t paid that much into the system — you wouldn’t get very much of a stipend per month anyway.

So now you’re on the hook for medical bills that you have no way of paying, and even the bills at the house (essential things like water, electric/gas, insurance, car if you live in an area with little to no reliable public transportation) are backed up.  So what do you do now?  If you’re loathe to file bankruptcy, which many people are because that can be reported on your credit for up to 10 years and not everybody who reads that credit report will care enough to ask you why you filed bankruptcy, you go into credit debt to pay off your medical bills, then file bankruptcy to discharge as much of the credit debt as possible.  Or if you go ahead and file bankruptcy outright, you can discharge your medical debt.  And don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t.  Hospital bill collectors are not unbiased sources of information on what you can or cannot do.

So you discharge what debt you can, and while you’re on that and having to take downright insulting counseling courses that ask you to write essays on how you can better manage your money so that unpredictable circumstances don’t bankrupt you again, you can rest assured that at least you have those meager food stamps to keep some nourishment in your family’s stomachs.  Although the state is always looking for ways to reduce the EBT benefit as more and more people file for it, so if you were hoping to feed your family a lot of organic, or at least non-processed foods, say goodbye to that dream.  Oh, and since you’re still hard up for cash, you have to move to a much smaller and less comfortable house… or an apartment… you might even have to move in with other people who have families of their own.

Now let’s say that you actively voted against, rallied against reforming healthcare in a way that would keep you from going bankrupt because of medical bills that stacked up on you.  No one is going to laugh at you, and all sympathy should be extended to your family because they probably didn’t have anything to do with what you didn’t want, but at the same time, do not fail to appreciate the hypocritical irony of your belief (with an audaciously straight face) that help should be extended to you when you need it but denied to others because they are not you.

If you believe in “every man for himself” and in that time-honored-yet-antiquated notion of “rugged individualism” then you have to live by it when the time comes for you to pay the piper.  Otherwise, when your neighbor (from across the street, from another town, from another state) needs assistance, lend it to him with a smile and an open hand and genuine statement of “I’m here to help, brother.”

It’s not about socialism, it’s not about trying to steal the country from your children, it’s about being a good person.

 

— Sky

Due Diligence

Okay, tell me what you see wrong with this employment posting from Craigslist.

Consulting firm is seeking an Administrative Assistant/Receptionist for our office.
Compensation: $12.50 to $13.00 per hour

 

The ideal candidate will be a highly motivated, multi-tasking quick learner. Position responsibilities include: answering phones and transferring calls; data entry; knowledge of computers and MS Office; distribution of daily periodicals and correspondence; general filing; maintaining office and equipment; ordering supplies; courier liaison.

Interested applicants can contact or email resume to Toni at: tonimfranklin@gmail.com, for an interview. (Name changed to protect privacy).

Or how about this incredibly detailed listing?

You will be responsible for answering main phone line, meeting and greeting clients and anything else that may need to be done.
Must have a positive attitude, strong multi-tasking skills and be very professional.

 

Pay starts at $12.75-$15.25 per hour

Or even…

In the midst of a trying job market, continue to lay the foundation of your professional resume with this progressive Customer Service Representative / Data Entry position.
Thrive in a personal-professional environment as the center point-of-contact; facilitating dialoging between mortgage venders and appraisers. Maintain the highest level of professionalism and customer satisfaction throughout the day while handling inbound and outbound phone calls along with basic clerical responsibilities.
Requirements:
– Previous Call Center Experience (6 months)
– Continuous Professional Work History
– Microsoft Competency (Word, Excel, Outlook)
– Typing (35 wpm), Data Entry (5000 wph)
– College Coursework Preferred

What do these three postings have in common?  I’ll give you a minute, and no, the answer isn’t “Everything’s administrative work.”  I mean, it is all administrative, but that’s not the problem.  Give up?

The answer is simply this: I have no idea who these people work for or if the posting is even legitimate.

In the days now where even the big career resource sites are suggesting that one may utilize Craigslist as a good place to find local employers who are definitely hiring, how common yet how incredibly sloppy is this?  Careerbuilder and Monster always say, do your research on a place of business.  I can dig that.  I’d love to research these places but I can’t because they don’t tell me who or where they are.

This happens all the time on Craigslist and it makes it very difficult to find the individuals who merely seek valid e-mail addresses and resumes to send me scams to cash forged checks and send them overseas via Western Union, and which companies have a real pressing need for additional staff.

Odds are that all those postings likely are legit, but how am I to know this?  Just taking it on blind faith that the people who ask me to send a resume are a true place of employment?  And shouldn’t I, as a potential worker, feel just a little perturbed that I shall likely be required to be much more thorough in everything that I do than whomever is already working at these companies to put up these Help Wanted signs in the first place?

The greater Columbia area isn’t small.  Not as massive as Atlanta, certainly, but shouldn’t I at least receive the luxury of a company name and address to determine if getting to that location for an interview wouldn’t turn into a 2+ hour round-trip drive, before I commit to the interview and thus waste both of our time?

Due Diligence?  You First.

— Sky

What Color Is Your Landing Pad?

So, I’ve been thinking.  Yeah, again.  Anyway, I get a lot of reading material from Careerbuilder and Monster and other such career-resource websites.  And when I’m not getting unsolicited e-mails by multi-level marketers, I see a number of articles designed at career coaching strategies: where to look, who to talk to, what to do from the search leading up to the job offer itself.  It’s all generally useful information; these services really are trying to help.

The major issues that these career resource sites stress is proper behavior, proper dress, proper speech… in short, professionalism.  And I get that, I understand it and agree with that — applicants should maintain the appropriate decorum and operate with a level of respect and professionalism that will allow them to be seen as valuable potential assets to the organization.  It makes total sense.

What doesn’t make sense is that there is no standard of professionalism for the recruiters and hiring managers.  I know that the applicant basically has no  more leverage in the process than what the interviewer grants her, but nevertheless there are some downright stupid things done by those whose responsibility it is to cover that “Help Wanted” hiring and we don’t have any career resource sites or career coaches publicly saying what needs to happen in that regard.

I named this blog “What Color Is Your Launching Pad” based on the popular book What Color Is Your Parachute? because while I do absolutely agree that there are certain things that an applicant must do in order to make oneself palatable as a potential hire, so there are definitely behaviors that are made by those who are there to screen applicants or assist job-seekers in finding work that definitely should not happen.

So among other things, you may occasionally see me highlight silly or questionable actions I see while searching for employment.  While I won’t take up very much of your time today, I do have one example from just yesterday.

At about mid-morning, I received a call on the house phone from a staffing agency that I’ll leave nameless simply because this isn’t the Ripoff Report.  My mother answered it, saying that she’d put me on the line, but the agent told her that she would call back on my cell phone.  Good thing that my mother told me, because I never received that call.  After about a half hour of waiting (because that person might have had to take another call, I tried to be fair and reasonable), I called back to their office.  I didn’t know who to ask for because the person who first reached out over the house phone didn’t leave a name with mom.  I simply stated my name to the first person to pick up the phone, correctly guessing that it was a small office and if somebody would just call my name out loud there would be a staffer who could say, “Yeah, I called him.”

Anyway, I got “Marta” on the phone (name changed to protect privacy), who asked what I was looking for.   I explained that I would like something that I could quickly and easily fit into, utilizing my background in office administration.  The woman on the phone explained to me that the agency specialized in placing paralegals, which I am not.  No harm no foul, except that her tone seemed to suggest that I should’ve known that this agency specialized in paralegals, even though the fact that I’m not a paralegal, don’t know any paralegals, and generally don’t pay attention to the need to staff paralegals, there was no reason that I should have known that they existed.  Not the best phone etiquette, Marta.

Anyway, that’s enough out of me.  Have a pleasant day, everyone.

— Sky

And Just Who The Heck Are YOU?

Well, I suppose if I’m going to have people paying attention to what I write, I might as well say a little more about myself.

You already know my name, Skylar Green.  I’m 26 years old, living in South Carolina outside of Columbia.  I’ve been here since July 2nd, which was a hell of a move and I’ll have to tell you about it some other time.  It’s a really nice area, pleasant people… not nearly as racist as my mother worried it might be (I’m not sure why she thought that… it’s not like Mississippi Burning was intended to be a travel guide for contemporary red state America).  Landscape is a lot more dynamic than South Florida, which tends to just be one long flat stretch of road.  Fewer beaches (although I’ve been to the little area in front of the Lake Murray Dam and that was neat) but I’m not much of a “sitting outside in the sun” person.

In July, I moved my family up to South Carolina mainly for the much cheaper cost of living, and so far that’s turned out well.  My meager Floridian savings are getting us quite a bit further here.  I’m not making the kind of money that I used to down south, but that was a sweet job making nearly $17 an hour.  I’ve not found full employment yet, still looking around.  I get by due to being a passenger on the Odd Job Express.  I’ve helped people move, pick crops, clean houses and prep them for rental, and clear property of brush and hazards.  It’s generally not been that bad, except for the one incident of farming, in which the size of the plot of land needing work was GREATLY understated.

Whenever I say I’m looking for work, the follow up question is “What kind of work?” and apparently despite the whole recession thing going on, “Anything” isn’t an appropriate answer.  I find that a little disappointing; I mean, last I checked, the light bill can’t be put into deferment like a student loan.  Currently I’m looking for anything but ask me what my goals are.  Then you’ll get a clearer answer.  I would ideally like to write for a living, and I’m arranging a couple of projects right now (no details as of yet, sorry); however if I had to work for someone else, I’d like it to be either an administrative position (up to office manager) that would allow me to learn all the facets of the business up close and personal.  However, I’ve also got an interest in the education industry, especially after the 15 months I worked at Kaplan University.  I’ve applied to Connections Academy in the area, another online school servicing K-12 students, as well as putting my information into the system at South University.  In addition, I’m looking into the requirements for teaching certification in the state of South Carolina.  In the meantime, I’ve put my name forward into the state’s substitute system and listed interest in subbing as an instructor or instructional assistant.  My degree is in Political Science, but I could easily substitute for math and science classes in addition to subjects like economics, government, or world history.

In my personal life, I’m not dating right now, but it’s a bit difficult when the house has only one car for two drivers.  Job interviews take precedent, of course, but otherwise if I’m not using the car I give the keys to my mother so she can handle her business.  Her car is still back in Florida, collecting dust and probably rust.  I hope my aunt is going over there to start it up every once in a while; my mother didn’t put any fuel-activator into the tank to make it last long-term.

I’ve managed to lose about 9 pounds this month thanks to my diet plan, which I call “Don’t go to the store so much.”  I don’t recommend it to everybody, but it works.  It gets ridiculously hot up here (ALL day long) and I’m not a morning person, but I’ve got an exercise bike in my room so I can at least do cardio that way.  I’ve got a couple of 10  pound dumbbells that I found in the garage and brought with me, but there’s only so much muscle-building I can do with those.  Soon as we get back down to Florida to get mom her car back (and I get a steady job, for that matter) I’m getting a gym membership.  I tend to take exercise more seriously when it costs me money.

When I’m not applying for jobs, or at least attempting to (really, job posters do some ridiculously stupid things that I’ll have to blog about later), I’ll either be handling chores around the house, reading, checking the news online, and I’ve actually picked up an X-Box Live account.  Although I don’t have too many online games, if anybody sees me online as “Ciel Complex” (don’t ask about the name… “Ciel” is Sky in French, but the word “Complex” I just added for the sake of another word) then you can send a message.  I have a mic, so those of you who do reach out will have the pleasure of hearing my voice in 3-D Techicolor!  Or something.

Well, that’s all out of me for the time being.  Back to the application grind.  Careerbuilder just sent a new notice my way.

Before I leave, however, here’s a final thought: Everybody should be able to declare their retirement at least 2 times before the age of 45.  If it’s good enough for professional wrestlers, Jay-Z, and Brett Favre, then it’s good enough for the rest of us.

Have a good day, everyone!