Job Search - Part One

My apologies to my dear readers, that I have not written a post in the past two weeks. I've been looking for a job. I haven't done that in quite some time. It is exhausting. I've been applying for anything that pays $12/hr or more, everything from light industrial/warehouse, to corporate copywriting. Ten to fifteen applications a day, online. A few highlights:

The first response came from an ad I responded to, for office work. It was an innocuous ad, nothing special. The response came by email, asking if I wanted to be Eugene's personal assistant. A representative for Baume de Mercier watches, he was in Switzerland temporarily, and needed someone to handle money transfers from clients. All I would have to do is receive the transfers in my account, and then transfer the money to another account. That's it. $2000/month, plus 10% of every transfer. Maybe 3-4 hours a day, he said. I just needed to send him all the relevant information. I looked up Baume de Mercier watches online. I emailed him back, innocent like, saying it sounded like a great deal - but if I can buy a Baume de Mercier watch online with a credit card or paypal transfer, why does money need to be transferred through my account? I didn't ask what he was really trafficking in. He did not respond.

The second response came from an ad about entry-level management. I'm not sure why I applied to that one, except they talked about integrity, and it being a family friendly environment. The gal who called was Asian, with a thick accent. We set up an appointment - I figured at the time, I haven't been to an interview in a while, it would be good practice - and she told me to look sharp. Then she told me where the meeting would take place, in an office building on the second floor across the street from the UofM campus, and then I knew it was a shitty call center job with a ridiculously high turnover rate because poor college kids couldn't stand it. I skipped that one.

The next one involved the selling of insurance. I have no interest in selling insurance, but I went to that interview because their niche market is unions, credit unions and associations, and the meeting was in Eden Prairie, one of the ritzier suburbs of Minneapolis, so I figured it was legit. I was also under the impression it would involve more the reviewing of documents, than selling insurance. And I figured, even if there's some selling, at least I'll be talking to union guys. I can do that.

I walked into the office and was surprised to discover everyone working there seemed younger than me. And there was contemporary yuppie music blaring from the front desk, out of two cheap computer speakers. The pretty girl at the front desk was wearing so much makeup I couldn't really see her face, and she averted her eyes as soon as I made eye contact. I interviewed with another young woman, when it became clear that it was all about sales. I didn't exactly hide the fact that I wasn't all that interested, but when she asked if I wanted to stay for the informative "second interview," I was like, ok, sure.

I sat down in a circle of, well, losers - from a success perspective. Not all of them. There was one recent college graduate, who hadn't been totally kicked around by the job market the past four years, though she likely had more debt than anyone in the room. Most of the guys were working class themselves. There was an army wife from Missouri who, when it came time to introduce herself, went on and on like she forgot she was talking. There was a mortgage guy who got out of the business because it had become so "distasteful." Everyone, including myself, talked about how much they wanted to make the world a better place - except the mortgage guy. After introductions, there was a canned speech by the maybe thirty year old Brian leading the meeting, while some dirt bag sat in the corner silently without introducing himself, and took notes about each of us. Then the Brian introduced the introductory video.

I thought it was a farce at first, like they were making fun of fat cat rich guys. Then I realized it was a compilation of the company yearly meeting, set to rock and roll. The leadership looked union, and talked union, except when they got to talking about how much money they made. There were profiles of this twenty something worth two million, and that twenty-something making $435,000/yr, etc. The last guy was the CFO, I think, congratulating his people for their honor and integrity, before he ended the video by saying something about how cool it was to be among so many rich people. I remember thinking, if these guys showed this video to any of the union guys they were trying to sell to, they'd never sell another policy. It might be the end of the business, which has been around for awhile - which wouldn't be good for existing policies of course. Maybe the insurance is good, I don't know. It must pay out, or word would get around. It should probably be cheaper than it is, though. The Brian wouldn't look me in the eye after that, and I didn't even say anything. The rest of the spiel was about how much money you could make. Quite the gravy train, to retire in ten years. Hard to get people to sell insurance, I guess.

I sat down with the girl from the initial interview, after, for the "third interview." She couldn't get rid of me fast enough. I didn't get a call back for the "fourth interview."

The job search got considerably better after that. I'll get to that in part two.


PS: My deepest gratitude, to those readers who have contributed to me recently. You kept the water on, preventing condemnation. Thank you so much - and blessings, for you and yours.

Grief and Anger

I once attended a training taught by a man named Jim Mitchell. A tall, robust black man, a former bank executive who gave up that life well before people were hungry to hang bankers, he'd dedicated himself to training men to deal with their emotional baggage. One of his central ideas, in the training at least, was the idea that there are interior reservoirs, of grief and anger. He told us, if you want to get clear about who you are, and what you are doing in this life, you need to dive down into those reservoirs and drain them.

That made sense to me, on a visceral level. I was working at a Fortune 100 at the time, at their world headquarters, paid more for less work than I'd ever done anywhere before, and yet I didn't feel right. I had dedicated myself to a path of healing two and a half years prior to that, and those years had been productive; I felt better and more clear about who I was than I ever had in my adult life. But still, something wasn't right. I didn't want to be working in a climate controlled tower surrounded by sound deadening cubicle walls and profoundly conventional people. I wasn't sure what I wanted, but it wasn't that. So I took that training, and I thought about what Mitchell said, and I set about an intention.

I took some time off work, and fasted and deprived myself of sleep for three days, at the end of which, six of my most trusted friends came to my house, and they sat in a circle on my living room floor, with me in the middle. I fasted and sleep-deprived myself because I figured, the weaker my defenses, the more I might be able to get to the core of what I was looking for. I also had severe symptoms of Lyme disease at the time, which I didn't know was Lymes, which exacerbated my physical strain immensely. My friend Snake facilitated, and I went about exploring the depth of my grief. I was a mess from the beginning.

I wrote about that experience in my first book, The Dream That Must Be Interpreted. Free to download, such as it is, if you don't read any other part of the book, and want to know what a grief reservoir draining session might look like - there it is, chapter five, Initiation. Suffice to say, I did not know I was that deep. Nothing very pleasant about it, I might add. But such is the nature of personal growth, dealing with unpleasantries.

A young woman who goes by the handle Karpatok said it well, about grief, with these simple words: “How could they...HOW COULD THEY!” in the Doomstead Diner forum recently, in reference to the hideous destruction of the mountainous land of her birth and childhood, West Virginia, by mountain-top removal coal mining. Grief, in it's generalized form, about what has been done to me, what has been done to the earth, and also, consequently, what I have done to myself. The constant breaking down, the demands of obedience, the cruel critiques, the minimizing, the petty and not so petty tyrannical pressure to conform, the physical and psychological abuse, the irrational command and control aggressiveness of Authority. The Destruction of the biosphere in the name of self-interest, the systemic toxicity, the burning of fossil fuels wantonly and the denial of the consequences, the constant enforcement of separation, the predations of the monied. All the stupid petty things I have done to fall in line, to debase myself, to make myself small.

Of course, the other side of that is anger, for all the very same reasons. If you want to know what my anger has come to look like, I'll refer you to my recent post 911, which I wrote shortly after I came to the belated conclusion that 9/11 was a false flag, inside job to initiate a war of Terror on all the people of the world, that cannot end or be won, any more than the drug war, which never was about eradicating drugs or drug use, but about the control of the people. What I would like to do, to the defilers! There is a thing in me that desires to kill every last one. But in case you haven't figured out, and I haven't been clear enough about it, I am NOT encouraging you to explicit violence. At most, I am encouraging you to explore the depths of your anger. Because if there is to be anything like a change of course, driving humanity in a direction away from mass extinction and the destruction of the biosphere, IMHO we're going to have to get clear about our anger. As is, it's coming out sideways mostly, directed by Authority at anything but Authority, or directed at Authority impotently, or bottled within and tearing us apart.

Mitchell talked about draining that reservoir too, and he's right. I don't think one can think or be clearly, as long as that reservoir remains full, spilling out over the sides. I think we have to drain it. And at the bottom of those two reservoirs I think, are pearls of forgiveness. Because we have to forgive, or it isn't the thing we wish to destroy that is destroyed, but ourselves instead. And the thing about that is, forgiveness isn't anything like giving up, giving in. Forgiveness is like freeing oneself to be in love with this life fiercely. To be in love with this earth, to be free to do what one can to nurture and protect it, each other and ourselves

So I think if you really want to understand how deep you are, how deep down you really do go, you've got to dive on in, into one's own depth, inside. Nothin' pleasant about that work, necessarily, but real change rarely is.

And if you do that work, if you're anything like me, you may just find, the hardest one to forgive is myself.

Note: There is a fundraising drive going on for me, at the Doomstead Diner. A couple of my posts have been featured there. It's a great crowd, a great resource for dialogue and information about the collapse of Civilization. I find myself in a bit of a financial bind, my utilities long in arrears and threatening to open up another confrontation with city governance over an attempted condemnation of my house. RE, chief admin there, found out, and offered up the idea. I accepted. To anyone who gives, to help give me a little breathing room while I figure out WTF with this house, and myself - THANK YOU! Whether you come from the Diner, or from my blog, drop a note and I'll reply. Blessings, with gratitude.

Techno Triumphal Cornucopianism

Meanwhile, Apple Inc recently pulled out of the EPEAT, a registry of “green” electronics. A non-binding certification process that tech manufacturers have largely agreed to adhere to, a baseline set of agreements that pretty much amount to whether or not the gadget can be taken apart to be fixed, and recycled. The only word Apple has given as to why they will no longer submit their products to the EPEAT for certification, is that the guidelines are no longer consistent with Apple's design direction.

What is that direction? To make smaller and smaller products that can do more and more, but can't be fixed, or recycled, because they can't be taken apart, and so are destined for the trash. Why is that a problem? Because consumer electronics are highly toxic, comprised of a myriad of chemicals and base metals that are anathema to the health of the biosphere. Not only that, many of the rare earth metals necessary to a functioning computer or phone are called rare for a reason. These rare earth metals in Apple products will now be destined for the landfill even more than they already are, where they can never be recovered. Apple is widely acknowledged as a design leader, and other electronics manufacturers are likely to follow.

You are free to call this evil, if you like, this kind of thinking that “designs” the ill health of the biosphere, while eliminating the ability of future generations to build such things as electronics. But you will be in the minority, as nary a soul will stop buying Apple products because of this news. Most Homo sapien with access to high technology are convinced, the resources of the earth are infinite, and technology is making the world cleaner and safer. If that sounds Orwellian to you in a most 1984 kind of way, then take heart, you are not an idiot.

Perhaps the Apple people are convinced that James Cameron, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Peter Diamandis et al, are going to start mining asteroids soon, and the fact that China has a lock on the few remaining rare earth metals won't be any kind of issue. Never mind, as I have mentioned before, that these are supposed to be the good guys, and the bad guys in the Cameron franchise Avatar at least, are the ones going to other places in the universe to mine things, because the earth is dead, because we poured toxins into the biosphere for profit, without limit. That these guys can't see the irony should give them (and you) pause, if they truly gave a damn about the earth, but when you are a master of the universe type, your words have to reflect the opposite of your actions. And it's not like Avatar fans, the majority of them, have critical thinking skills enough, or the will, to put the pieces together.

I haven't read Diamandis' new book, Abundance, profiled in the video above. The computer lady says, "We will soon be able to meet the basic needs of every man, woman, and child on the planet. This bold, contrarian view backed up by exhaustive research..." Contrary to what I said above, I do believe Diamandis believes what he is saying. His TED talk is particularly enlightening. I also readily admit, his attitude is abundantly more attractive than my own, at least as it appears in this, and my latest post. I too believe humanity will live a glorious techno existence someday.* I just don't think the current crop of geniuses and their mostly as yet imaginary tech are capable of overcoming the crop of greedy warmongers controlling things, and we're going to have to pass through a threshold first, which isn't going to be pleasant, at all. And Daimandis is simply saying that everything is ok, nothing to worry about, and Jesus, I mean aliens, I mean technology, is going to save us from our global predicament.

We are seeing this same sort of thing coming from the energy industry. America is to become the new Saudi Arabia, they are repeating endlessly (sort of reminiscent of Dick Cheney in the polar op., "Terror, terror terror terror...") Again, with the irony, that Saudi Arabia is a major oil producer, and also a repressive Monarchy with 28,000 members of the Rich-as-God royal family, lording over an illiterate, unskilled, poverty stricken populace of 28 million (all hail the .001%!) Never mind that the idea America is going to be the world leader in fossil fuel production is a transparent lie, to anyone who understands the definition of EROEI, or is paying attention to the coming collapse of the natural gas bubble - because the media are pumping peoples heads full of bullshit 24/7, and the people are utterly hypnotized.

It's possible these guys don't even believe their own bullshit. When TransCanada built the first Keystone pipeline, the damn thing bust open a dozen times in the first year. Word is, they didn't care that they were building a POS product even when they were building it, as if saying everything is hunky dory after the fact when the damn thing is spraying cancer causing benzene and heavy crude all over the place, is sufficient enough to make it not a problem. Besides, if Obama has his way, and this turncoat Congress is sure to capitulate, foreign nationals will be able to build shoddy pipelines spilling toxins, or things like sulphuric acid from copper mines, into the water supply, and no American law or court will be able to do a damn thing about it.

It's like Enron all over again, and again, and again, and again, ad infinitum. The smartest fucking guys in the room. Do you begin to wonder why in my last post, I was like, off with their heads! I'd be lying, if after reading about the Michigan spill, I wasn't thinking like, line up the entire executive staff of Enbridge and Bechtel against a brick wall, ratta tat tat. But let me be clear, if the scenario I painted last week were to actually happen, say a million Americans descending on the Beltway with rolls of concertina wire, pitchforks and AR-15's, the Department of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the military, would just haul out some Apache gunships and start spreading .50 caliber rounds with all the compunction of those goons at that university in California with their pepper spray. And Americans would be outraged for about three days, and then they'd go back to their wage slave jobs and wonder about things like whether or not Top Gun Tom Cruise is going to have to choose between Scientology and his daughter Suri.

Blah blah blah. I'm preachin' to the choir, aren't I? Well, let it be said, it's easy to be drawn into the story of the techno triumphal cornucopianists, that we are on the verge of a new day in the life of Humanity, not a collapse but a glorious new techno heaven on earth, utopia for the geek wanna-be-a-cyborg set. Take the Higgs Boson chatter lately. You might think it was like the first time anyone ever saw E=MC2. Confirmation of the standard model of physics, yeah (pump fist)! Except, the standard model of physics contradicts the law of gravity, and it can't explain why anything in the universe spirals or spins, or why quantum physics tells us empty space is denser than matter by an order of magnitude running to infinity. That's a very big deal. Really. For all their talk – and look at all the fancy shit they can do with all those bloody millions and billions! - they don't yet know shit enough not to spoil the damn planet they live on.

Be wary of the masters of the universe, no matter what their specialty. And remember, the calls that everything is fine are always loudest and most shrill, in the weeks and months before meltdown.


* As to a glorious techno future, I'm of the opinion that the "prime mover" so to speak, that is responsible for things spinning and spiraling in this universe, is contained in the vacuum, the empty space that quantum physics tells us is denser energetically than matter by an order of magnitude running to infinity. If the brainiacs ever figure that out, it's a whole new reality. But we aren't even close, and given another 200,000 years, we might figure it out. Maybe.

911

I was reading about 9/11 this week. I know I'm a little behind the times, in that regard. I guess I always kind of knew, but maybe I didn't really want to know. An hour reading was all it took, to convince me, there is only one player on this planet truly capable of knocking down those three buildings in that way, and attacking the Pentagon in the way it was attacked, and that is my government. Or more accurately, the military/industrial complex. And the blame, while widespread, clearly rests with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. They were maybe following orders from someone or some others, but they were the hands on de-architects, no doubt.

I'm returning to this because of all the chatter on the Internet about a potential false flag operation planned for the London Olympics this summer. Some people think it will be a faked alien invasion, others think a small nuclear or “dirty” bomb. Many are tying it into the so-called Illuminati and their goal of the new Zion, or total world domination. That weird ass emblem has an uncanny resemblance.

It shouldn't take a genius to figure out something is being planned. Barack “hegemon” Obama hasn't eviscerated the Constitution for nothing. Many are afraid the elite of the world are preparing to exterminate the majority of us. Did you hear the Department of Homeland Security purchased 450 million rounds of hollow point bullets recently? Why are international elite special forces running drills on the waterfront of Tampa Bay? Why are American soldiers running drills on the streets of St Louis? One might argue, the government is afraid of riots, should the global economy go into recession, and they want to be ready to restore calm. What's that they say, about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? Conversely, how can an elite military/industrial leadership capable of something on the scale of 9/11, have anything resembling good intentions? Forty caliber hollow point bullets for crowd control?

Meanwhile, word is out that phytoplankton are going the way of the dinosaurs. Phytoplankton. I know we humans like to think of ourselves as the center of the proverbial universe, but phytoplankton are the primordial foundation of the existing ocean food chain. Not only that, they provide an estimated 50% of the oxygen we breath. Why are they declining? Because we are toxifying the oceans with our burning of fossil fuels and our chemical making. If the phytoplankton are lost, the food chain of the ocean collapses, the ocean dies, the air is no longer breathable, we all die. Get it?

This is old news (that should be on the news every day, every minute, every second, what we are doing about it.) The new news is (which isn't reported either, except to say everything is fine), conventional oil supplies are on the decline, but wouldn't you know it, they've gone and saved the day by figuring out how to drill for oil in super deep ocean waters, dredging it out of the ground like coal, and fracking for it; the later two methods compromising our already polluted and strained fresh water supplies, the former threatening an already strained and polluted ocean (they can figure out these funky new extraction methods but not how to efficiently use the renewable power of the sun, sea and wind to generate power?) But don't just blame the oil industry. The chemical industry is pouring more than 100,000 different chemicals and chemical compounds into the air and water, daily. Of course, humans breathe air and drink water. But that's ok, that they are polluting so wantonly, because we need economic growth more than we need breathable air and drinkable water, and really one of the few sectors where economic growth is even possible anymore, other than making weapons and bombs, is Health Care.

But clearly I do not know what I am talking about, and everything I'm saying is delusional, because if it were true, it would be reported in the mainstream media. Unless of course the mainstream media were simply appendages of the military/industrial complex. (Fuck you, Anderson Cooper, I don't care if you're gay or straight, you're no different than your high dollar cronies on the other end of the dial, Hannity, Limbaugh, et al - you're a well compensated shill for monsters.)

If you have the courage to put the pieces together, the reality is inescapable. Not only is humanity on a course of mass suicide, by way of mass global extinction, our elite global leadership may very well be conspiring to preempt such an outcome by killing off most of humanity. And if you think they aren't capable of that kind of logic, it doesn't matter, because if you're an American at least, there are 1.5 DHS hollow point bullets with your fate embedded in the lead. Whatever false flag operation there is planned, and the foil looks to be Iran, or Syria, it is merely an excuse to institute martial law, total global control, and probably elite managed mass death for the useless eaters and undesirables, basically, the non-militant and not-willing-to-be-a-slave sets.

So what has to happen? I'll tell you what I think needs to happen, assuming our leadership doesn't reverse course and start telling us the truth (acknowledging that just because I think this is what needs to happen doesn't make it a good idea, or even plausible. Think of it as me venting.) Fence off the DC beltway with concertina wire, let no one from Congress, the Pentagon, or K-street escape alive, empty out the executive suites and board rooms of the Fed, Wall Street and all the major banks and corporations, the major players in all the major family empires, the various billionaires, and basically the entire political class and their shill major media talking heads, and add them to the DC mix, and then leave them to cannibalize each other. Or just cut off their heads and be done with it. You know that fence surrounding the White House? The head of Dick Cheney on a spike right out front, with his new heart spiked to his forehead. Donald Rumsfeld on a spike next to him, with GW Bush on one side, and Barack Obama on the other. Ring the rest of it with the rest of Congress, and whatever other major players, and then toss the remaining on the grounds. There'd be heads overflowing, from the roof of the White House to the peak of the fence, yet hardly a percentage of all the sick fuck who have poisoned this earth and turned it, and us, into their private ATM.

But what am I saying? That's so awful! Well, if you think that, you haven't been paying attention.

Of course, all those elite monsters who are driving this military/industrial/technological/financial machine, are also in control of the mainstream media, which is actively engaged in perpetuating the mythology of progress and growth, war mongering, lionizing elite etc, encouraging the demonization of the right or the left among the people, of the poor generally, and otherwise titillating the senses ad nauseum unto blind obedience and abject stupidity. No one gets time on the MSM unless the Machine approves of the message. (Isn't it astounding, how much the military/industrial/technological machine has come to resemble the great beast of the book of Revelations, and yet here in America there are hardly any more fervent supporters of that great beast, than Christians.)

What am I prepared to do? Not much. I have no military training or fighting skills, nor any keen desire to kill or even hurt anybody. I haven't even struck someone in anger since I was sixteen, and then I had a hockey glove on, and he had a face mask (he was also my teammate and he slashed me on the wrists with his hockey stick, in a team practice scrimmage, the prick.) What I want really, is a quiet, ascetic kind of life, to build my own house off the grid, studying plants, gardening, hunting and fishing, with some friends and companions, who appreciate dancing and singing. That's it. But what is that, when the path of humanity is so clearly engaged in making that very simple thing impossible for anybody? When the economic system we take for granted is so inherently hostile to life, so geared to depriving us of true health and general welfare, so clearly destined to generate death on a grand scale here-to-fore unseen? These people who rule over us are not American, in the pure sense of what that was supposed to mean. They are scarcely human, with their desires and their actions, having so closely come to resemble a machine. It's no wonder people get to thinking they aren't human, reptile aliens in disguise (there is not a greater charlatan than David Icke.)

I'm down to my last few dollars. My house is on the verge of being condemned for failure to pay my utility bills. I am estranged from most of my family and my friends. Today, July 04, Independence Day in America, is my 39^th birthday. My name is William Hunter Duncan, and I used to be afraid, but I'm not afraid anymore.


You might want to consult another voice for this kind of thinking, without the recital of explicit violence, and something more in the way of doable sollutions...here.