Looking Forward

The blackeye peas are on the stove filling my home with their luscious aroma. The kitchen is stocked with food and gnosherie and a fine assortment of liquors await the promise of the evening.

I may be enslaved in another job in a week or so but for the moment I'm free. Also in a week or two, a new and powerful collection of poetry called "Cosmic Thrum" by Mary McAnally will be available from Partisan Press for $14.00 (including shipping). The Poet Christopher Butters says about this collection:

"The publication of Cosmic Rainbow by Partisan Press is an event for those who have followed the growth of Mary McAnally's poetry in the small press over the last thirty years. Present are poems many of us have loved like "We Will Make a River ", "Pain Teaches Us" , "The Great Beggs, Oklahoma Bank Robbery", as well as poems in solidarity with the African revolution, poems about her beloved cardinals and swallows, poems about the forgotten street people of New York .
Side by side with these are later poems occasioned by her return to Oklahoma, her spiritual awakening and later ministership in Tulsa. Unlike the Moral Majority, however – and very much like the poets Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan and Ernesto Cardenal – her tango with organized religion seems to have broadened rather than narrowed her world outlook, and only deepened her wrath against the philistines and money changers of our time.
Part memoir, part selected poems, Cosmic Rainbow gives witness to one extraordinary woman's search for truth, meaning and solidarity amid an American landscape ravaged by institutionalized exploitation, sexism and racism. Part conversation with the dead, part conversation with future generations, the later poems encourage us all to explore the " thin places" -- that unitary reality that McAnally's beloved Irish seers, magicians and prophets have long claimed lies within each of us -- even as we rededicate ourselves to the struggle for social justice in our time."

This book is an inspiring "must have" for those of us struggling daily against the odds for a just society and a life changing read for those new to the idea that a better world is possible.

Drink Up!

Happy New Year! Drink something nice and celebrate,
it's later than you think!

Then let's sober up and see what is to be done. . .

A Changing Course

It's been a lousy year. Thousands murdered in an illegal and unnesessary war by an incompetant and illegitimate fascist cabal. Our country is less safe and more hated than ever because of a leadership that wants to "stay the course." The course of imperial intimidation and interferance in other countries, the course of wiping our feet on international law, the course of torture and deathsquads to promote a vile and self serving corporate agenda, the course of creating a corporate dictatorship in the U.S. No wonder others hate us.

Still, there is hope. This year, things began to come to a head as Cindy Sheehan awoke the sleeping giant of a sane America. Even the complicit embedded corporate media are beginning to report the criminal abuses of the Bush administration in spying and lying on and to the American people. It's time for a change and 2006 bears the promise of being a better year -- it can't be much worse!

I'm still unslaved but there are possibilites for a local gig. Meanwhile, new T-shirt designs are available and as ever, I'm open to suggestions.

Holding My Own (leash)

It's GREAT not to have to slave at a stupid job! It'll continue to be great until the money runs out. Hopefully something else will come along before too long. I'm often more productive at home and have just gotten the Blue Collar Review done and in the mail and I have a couple of other projects going as well.
Being home give me more time to spend with my wife and also more time in the kitchen as I love to cook.


Happy Holidays to all and remember --

Take This Job & Shove it

The Prole walked. I quit a lousy job at Office Max yesterday. I have hated the job for some time -- not the work, but the job. I was running copiers and doing digital production, bindery . . . but the work environment is horrible. Bad as it was, their attitude toward workers was even worse. The insistance that workers are plugged into the hive via radio earsets like the Borg, the constantly being treated like an imbicile or a child and the blatant inconsideration of the scheduling. At any time you might be informed that your shift has been extended an hour. You can't leave without permission even if your shift is over . . .

The final event that snapped my frayed yoyo string was that not only had my schedule been screwed up so that I didn't get two consecutive days off but then, in the middle of the day, without so much as a mention, much less asking if it would be OK, my strawboss put me on the next day (which I had off and which would have made a 6 day week). I blew -- but not right then. Since he hadn't mentioned it, I just ignored the change. Actually, I had an interview for another gig in the morning and was planning to milk a few more days out of this hellhole but, now I was done.

I waited for the inevitable call asking me why I wasn't there the next morning. Feigning ignorance I said my schedule showed me off. The jerk strawboss first admits he changed it but I wasn't coming in. He then starts backing down saying it was a "glitch" and he meant to have me off on Friday. I told him I couldn't make it as I had other obligations (which was true) and that as long as the schedul was constantly changing, he could change it again and take my ass off of it.

He didn't get it at first and called back to clarify threatening that if he took me off for the week, he was taking me off for good. That's OK, I said, and hung up on the bastards.

The first page of the Office Max employee handbook clearly states that they are an "at will" company. That means you are shit and can be dumped at any time without notice or reason. "At will" works both ways.

So as long as the Prole is between gigs, there has never been a better time to buy a t-shirt!

It's nice to be off after a grueling work week. Working for others is a hellish trap and it cuts severely into my time. I hate the place I'm in and the pittance I receive is hardly worthwhile. The redeeming aspect is the enjoyment of co-workers; especially those who are class conscious, realize the universal rotteness of our condition and knows who is who in the class divide. Having conscious co-workers you can joke with makes the situation nearly tolerable.