We live in a society full of fear. We over-regulate nuclear power, have airbags on everything but our pee-holes, have to wear helmets to sleep safely and can’t play with anything that has a corner. George Carlin was right — we are definitely a paranoid bunch not willing to take a chance.

And so George would agree that our fear of germs is pretty ridiculous as well. We can get food poisoning, chicken flu, bacterial infections, colds, viruses, STDs. We can even get AIDs from kissing! Holy shit, doctor — you’re a fricking moron!

So it’s no surprise that one day I went to the bathroom and as the person in the stall next to me sat down, I heard tissue paper crinkling. It was enough to make Seinfeld have a seisure. What’s with that???

Apparently we can’t even shit in peace. While we are defecating, germs are trying to kill us through the back door! Will we ever be safe?!?!

Not if you live scared. See, I can go to the bathroom, sit down, do my business and not have to use a piece of paper to shield my ass from the grim reapers living on the toilet seat. It saves me the time and humiliation of putting a thin piece of wax paper under my ass. Also, it gives my immune system some practice!

People forget that your skin is your first line of defense. Bacteria isn’t going to seep into your pores and take over your body. You have to somehow eat or suck in this stuff. Now, maybe some of you shit and snack at the same time, but that’s not my style — and I don’t recommend adopting that habit.

Overall, I think toilet seat covers are symbolic of many things we do in this country to make us feel safe — to give us the illusion of safety. It’s a band-aid fix for what pretty much amounts to general sloppiness and poor personal hygeine. In some cases, I guess it makes up for lack of dexterity — but come on, it’s not that hard to aim, is it?

Instead of drinking toilet water, rubbing your genitals on public surfaces and licking toilets, why don’t you just be careful, stay in good health and not worry so much about stuff?

Worrying about germs messes up your immune system, which lets germs kill you. Twice. In your sleep.

I recently took a training course on conversational skills. The presenter, Paul Axtell, tried to explain how we could objectify conversations and intrapersonal contact. Doing so would allow us to maximize our day-to-day interactions and maintain better relationships at work and in our personal lives.

Paul was a chemical engineer for 20 something years. Therefore, I did not find it very surprising that Paul was trying to objectify and rationalize conversation.

To his credit, he did not try to give us the “for-sure, heal-all” equation for how to interact with people. Instead, he tried to give us a different perspective on what our interactions with people actually are. Based on our improved perspectives we could then grow, learn, and refine our methods in order to improve our relationships through our conversation skills.

To a certain extent, I agreed with his theory — our relationships are indeed a series of conversations. Without knowing it I have actually approached relationships this way for a long time.

I recognize my relationships are perpetuated by conversations, and the ones I value I keep alive by checking in once in a while on a personal level. I call someone to say hi, or I drop them an email to say hi. I talk to them for no reason but to let them know that I think about them.

Then there are special relationships where bonds are so strong that it doesn’t take conversations to keep them going. You know who you are. ❤

On the other hand, there are those relationships I don’t value as much, and those are ones that I do not nurture. They lack conversation. They are utilitarian. If I do not talk to these people for a long time, I am perfectly fine. I don’t worry about them at all until I need something from them.

If you know me, I’m the guy who gets annoyed when people ask me how I am doing when I know they don’t give a shit. I don’t particularly like small talk, although I recognize that it is important to establishing comfort and familiarity, it just seems so vaporous. Well, small talk is white noise — and Paul touched on this when he said that a relationship based on just small talk is not really a relationship at all.

But it takes two people to step beyond sports and the weather. You can’t have a meaningful conversation when one person is mentally disengaged. Each half shares equal ownership of each conversation — each half of the relationship.

And so I started to think that maybe these people don’t give a shit because I never stop to talk to them — not the other way around. So next time someone asks me how I am, I might just stop and tell them.

If you look at it a different way, it is them giving you a chance to speak. And your chance to speak is a great opportunity to say something much more meaningful than “Hi” or “Good” or “Fine”. Everytime you answer with one word like that you fail to create a connection. Imagine if you went the rest of your life like this.

Paul did say that you should not ignore your goals and committments. Of course, if you talked to everyone all the time you would never get shit done. Plus, some people are fricking annoying and they’d keep you in that hallway for over half an hour as they rambled about their bathroom remodelling or how their dogs like to eat their own shit. They should be skipped.

As for the people you don’t know about, stop and talk for a minute or two. You’d be surprised at what they have to say.

The American Dream is in danger. With each passing day, I see the system repeatedly failing to reward honorable, competent people who are accountable for their actions and deserve better.

In the corporate world, there are winners and losers. The losers pack up their shit and go home. They find another job, or they get unemployment. But sooner than later management recognizes they are holding the company back.

The winners are rewarded with job security, stock options, profit sharing, promotions and relative prosperity. They get what they deserve.

In the system, government employees do not answer to such requirements. The process for holding workers accountable for what they do is a long and arduous one, due partly to restrictive union rules to prevent abuse or unfair labor practices but mostly because the system repetatively rewards people for being good at the system, not how well they can do their job.

It is a top-down disease. I don’t blame government employees, I blame ineffective management. Middle management in the government system is comprised largely of people who worked their way up the chain. They did not receive proper training or experience before assuming authoritative roles. This is a large generalization, but bear with me.

In the system, the first thing that contradicts our meritocracy is the inability of middle managers to enforce position description requirements in accordance with union regulations. They are given the power to hold people accountable, but for whatever reason they avoid conflict and do not properly document worker incompetence, insubordination, or lack of productivity.

Some of this is due to the superlative maze of red tape linked to almost any government transaction. But the root of it is a deep-seeded inability to face conflict, deal with a difficult situation, and do what is best for the team even if it is unpopular or not well received. Nobody likes to rock the boat. That is a huge problem.

On the worker level, this creates an environment where someone can work hard enough not to get fired, and still work their way up the chain. The system fails these workers because it leads them to believe that incompetance is the norm; that a lack of productivity and a lower standard are acceptable.

Fast forward a few years. New management comes in, they restructure. We mix workers schooled by an old system with workers that are energetic, productive, and more inline with the typical darwinist meritocracy so closely tied to the American Dream. We have a serious problem.

You end up with people who get something for nothing. And, in some cases, they actually get more for nothing, depending on seniority. To them, it is their entitlement, because they were not ever told it was wrong. Again, I blame shitty middle management spawned from the same flawed mindset. The workers, old and new alike, are all the victims.

New management, competent or not, is left powerless to change things for lack of precedents that would allow them to hold the old schoolers accountable for past flaws. New management is now forced to retro-actively set precedents to make up for the shortcomings of previous management. In a sense, they have to clean up someone else’s mess. In the meantime, the good workers deal with all of the side effects.

So the department suffers. The organization suffers. The old schoolers stay, they ride it out as long as they can because the system affords them that right. The new people, who can easily make it anywhere else, find better paying jobs that offer proper compensation. Because of an inability to keep and reward good workers, the system is diluted, which only perpetuates it’s self-destruction … because guess who’s going to be manager next.

The solution seems pretty simple; people should be held accountable for what they do. But it is no surprise to me that our country, with our President, our Secretary of Defense and our Senate Majority Leader leading the pack, lacks accountability.

We need to offer better education for managers in government agencies. Encourange worker accountability, and offer training for all levels of government in the area of conflict resolution and the ability to handle difficult speech. This empowers workers and managers alike to honor a higher standard that is not conducive to the old status quo.

Resolving conflicts today, no matter how difficult, will prevent catastrophes later on.

Overtime is what people do to get the job done when 40 hours a week is not enough. Often times I’m not the first guy to claim overtime unless it occurs in 3-hour blocks or more. I don’t count minutes and think dollar signs. I count goals. Sometimes I have to give up some of my time to meet them. So be it. The money, when I deserve it, is a bonus. It’s a microcosm for darwinism in the economy. Bust your ass, get a little extra.

At least — that’s how it should be. It isn’t always the case. There are many people who don’t qualify for overtime who probably should as it is — and now we’re tightening the ropes? Huh?

The solution to an overloaded work schedule may be to add additional workers, but is it? Is the solution always going to be add another worker and pay them for 40 hours even if they only need to do 10 hours of work, or if they are not qualified for the job? There is a certain point where the overhead required to hire an additional worker, train them, then wait for a return on that investment (which isn’t always going to be realized) is worth the effort. Preventing all overtime should not be one of them.

The only reasoning behind the federal law passed is that in the long run it could force employers to hire more workers which may indirectly boost the economy.

That’s great if everyone has the same skill set, and any job can be accomplished by simply hiring another monkey. Of course, it sure seems like a certain job could be done by any monkey on the street. It requires no thinking, writing of speeches, judicious leadership — oh — and did I mention that you’d never have to claim any overtime?

Bush has some nerve supporting a bill that takes money away from people who work extra hours and are trying to get the job done and do the right thing. Worse yet, the bill doesn’t even really clearly state who it applies to. Human resources departments everywhere are scrambling to get a grasp on which workers this applies to and how to enforce it. Who pays for the confusion? Is HR going to work overtime?

This is one issue in a long line of things that piss me off about this administration. This labor bill is brought to you by the same assholes using the same backdoor methods as with the ironically named Patriot Act. Brought to you by the same people so concerned with their security they stuck the city of Washington DC with a $40 million bill for their inauguration celebration.

Yeah – I know – Clinton’s cost about as much. But he wasn’t at war, ran a good economy, and a certain national disaster hadn’t just happened. WTF?

And I read some bullshit talking about the celebration of democracy. Is this the biggest joke in the history of political government? We re-elect a failed administration because he caters to the ignorant, have an increasing debt, are in a war that was never justified, kill people who are different from us, hold a multi-million dollar party when the money could be spent on helping nations recover from what is one of the worst natural disasters in modern history, and we have a lot to be proud of?

On January 20th, think about what our country has done in the past 4 years to itself and to other nations. If anybody should be working overtime, it’s our leader. Instead, he’ll be on a ridiculous float. What a way to kick things off.

You could multiply my paid overtime on January 20th by infinity and you’d have zero. Regardless, I’ll still be at work after 5pm.

To my deep disappointment, Bush was re-elected today. I fear for the well-being of our nation more now that I ever did before.

Ironically, for each bomb that drops, we feel safer but in reality we should actually be more scared of retaliation. The aggressive and non-cooperative diplomacy of the Bush administration destroys our global image and only increases the power of our enemies.

How much longer can we ignore the possibility of an equal and opposite reaction to our tyrannical acts? We invaded a country in retaliation for something it was not responsible for against the wishes of the world and completely destroyed it. We lied about why, cover up how bad it is there, and insist on deferring blame for our mistakes. Where will we go from here? How will we progress without change? Where is our leadership? How can this be happening?

Our leader, our country, our congress — do they believe true equality or justice for our own people? They seem more interested in equality among heterosexuals, Christians or whites but not all people of all faiths or affiliations. I do not find it suprising that we lack the same compassion on a global scale.

My hopes and dreams lie with the supreme court and the strength of the constitution. The democracy we hold dear is in jeopardy unless checks and balances can keep our current conservative regression from de-evolving our society 50 years. The legality of imposing religious beliefs such as the pro-life paradigm and marriage must be challanged. Congress needs to reduce the power of the president through legislation and strong leadership in order to prevent the destruction of our social infrastructure.

Ultimately, without justice there can be no peace. We are in many wars because we are not fair to our brothers and sisters both in our own nation and others.

Today is a sad day for America. We have witnessed nationally our lack of education, ignorance, complacency and bigotry. It almost makes me want to pray.

If we don’t reclaim our principles of justice and equality, all is lost..