Wow, the surprising factoid about Putin’s capitulation to Islam had me hungry to learn more unexpected facts about my country of origin!
Unfortunately, Romanian edge-lord ‘Freedom Alternative’ failed to deliver.
Our Glorious Truthseeker (In all seriousness I kinda like him. Reminds me of my goth friends from highschool.)
I’ve come away from round two of his ‘Russia is Not Great’ miniseries…even more convinced that Eastern European countries have a national small man complex when it comes to Russia.
This segment covered: “living in Russia.” And began with a fearsome haymaker of a claim stating something along the lines of “livin in Russia is much worse than living in EU countries, so significantly worse mind you, because PUTIN (da da dum!) that it is comporable to conditions in Africa!”
Well, holy shit I thought! Maybe communism wasn’t so bad seeing as the 21st century under Putin has us going from spacefaring world power to Uganda in just 20 years!
Russia Then
Russia Today
Russian Then | Russia Now
I then went on a veritable thrill ride through harrowing tales of Russian inborn and inextricable indigence, aids, and drunkenness that made me wonder how Russia could even manage to live up to Africa!
And then I did some googling fingers aquiver with grief at the ruin of my Fatherland…certain that the next google search would yield facts so devastating to one’s national pride that I’d have no choice but to drown myself in a tub of Vodka!
Chto eto! Where is tub? You can note the national tendency to degeneracy in my stooping gait, three day stubble, and atrophied musculature. A vodka drowning would indeed be fitting for such a eugenic blight.
Alas, much to the chagrin of edgy gypsies the world over my imminent demise was not to be. Instead my face twisted in Tucker Carlsonian expressions of disbelief that in 2017 (just a year after this Romanian truth bomb dropped on the pwnd faces of Kremlin lovers everywhere) the GDP(ppp)/Capita(*) had Romania at 54th and Russia at 57th with only an 897 dollar difference.
You’d think that all that magical Germanic titmilk Merkel supplied to Romania would be more nourishing than 897 measely bucks advantage over a benighted Subsaharan Russkie.
Especially, since said Russkies are naughty and currently being sanctioned by big Massah Murica! One can only hope they calm down and return to the globalist plantation. Since surely based on the rapid rise of aids vodka that 897 dollars is sure to grow as exponentially as a bat flavored virus.
So, I dug further!
Surely, the future of Russia is dire!
Note the decidedly Asiatic features of the Russian untermensch.
Fuck.
Looks like those pesky Ruskie bastards pickled themselves so silly that they must have gained enough of an aids immunity to bring the GDP(ppp)/capita difference to just 618 bucks with Romania 50th and Russia 53rd.
This did of course come from that Moscow entrenched, KGB run, Russophile, Commie bastion capitalism hating propaganda mill known as The World Bank so take it with a grain of salt.
But surely, this is a mere statistical fluke!
Reputable organizations must be making similarly dire predictions for the sprawling Borsch soaked Bears future.
Well, unfortunately all that I could find as a source was that damned Pravda subsidiary known as the IMF which has projected Romania trading places with Russia in 2020 with Russia in 50th place with 30,820 bucks/per capita and our intrepid hero Romania 53 with 29,555/per capita!
Surely these are communist lies.
Look..
In all seriousness I’m sure, in fact I know, that life in Russia is difficult, and that it has a lot to overcome. But, this video and the comments and mindset of the people that post under it and on similar channels is just polemic hubris.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so often used to stir fear and disdain in a complicated and precarious region by powerful business interests who don’t have much regard for the populations residing therein.
*Note: it is important to use GDP(ppp)/capita because: “Comparisons of national wealth are frequently made on the basis of nominal GDP and savings (not just income), which do not reflect differences in the cost of living in different countries (see List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita); hence, using a PPP basis is arguably more useful when comparing generalized differences in living standards between nations because PPP takes into account the relative cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries, rather than using only exchange rates, which may distort the real differences in income. This is why GDP (PPP) per capita is often considered one of the indicators of a country’s standard of living,[3][4] although this can be problematic because GDP per capita is not a measure of personal income.”
So, I’m currently holding the wee bit of left bollock that hasn’t retreated up my abdomen with the rest of the kit. A feat courtesy of hearing that my shift starts at 4:15 AM. As such I can’t bring you the regularly scheduled joy of disjointed rambles that would make a a schizophrenic shaman on a peyote bender seem like a card carrying Presbyterian freemason. (Yes, I stole that last bit from Billy Connoly.)
Therefore I share with you my gleeful joy in confirming that FATTIES ARE MOST AFFECTED. If you’re a jolly person of size. No beef with you. If you have a glandular problem. I’ve no donut with you. If you just don’t give a fuck. I’ve no quarter pounder with you. Yes, this is the shittiest joke of all time. Welcome to history cunts.
No, the thing I have a problem with is moralizing fatasses wagging wingers (lol that was a typo but imagonnakeepit) at folk exercising because of a HEALTH CRISIS.
Ugh, can’t get a handle on Premiere Pro. Not only is it mono again…but the graphics look like shite. (Been using Kdenlive thus far. And will use both in future.)
Today I take on: ‘the skeptic’s perspective’ on David Paulides‘ investigations of mysterious disappearances in our National Parks.
In my area, we’re still allowed outside so I went for a bike ride. Need it to help me fall asleep since I gotta get up at 4 am. Some fatty suburbanite hausfrau slapped her wrist at me and a tub of lard soccer dad in a minivan blared his horn. Moments later I saw folk walking up the street and people round my neighborhood were walking dogs, strolling, and watching kids play basketball.
Why is it the fat and obnoxious who are suddenly health obsessed?
Fat office drone drains on the economy should not be allowed to vote or drive. Imagine how much gas would be saved if these self-righteous monstrosities didn’t way down their two ten SUVS with the weight of a walrus.
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Not Just Zazz…but Pizzazz
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My Two Cents:you can’t own the mixolydian scale. you can’t own a persons understanding of music. you can’t own a person’s performance of music. by this logic cover bands, and musicians playing covers in bars, are criminals. i.e. every musician is a criminal who owes somebody money going all the way back to the caveman who smacked a coupla rocks together.
Mr. Beato’s Rant
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I was actually really set to record some music that I thought would be decent. But then I got muscle spasms/cramps in my arms because I am a girly man and will never be governer of California. So instead I did a shitty guitar jam with my crampy arms and then had a go at Jack Bickham’s 38 Common Fiction Writing Mistakes.
Interestingly enough as I was clicking around my tabs this article showed up:
I haven’t read it yet but I’m fairly certain from the volumes in my ex-girlfriends house that Walt Whitman is the cunt who wrote Blades of Grass and punched his editors. I was going to invoke him as the sort of person who wouldn’t give a damn about 38 most common anythings. But temper it by saying O come on, you can’t just shit out whatever you want…
And then I shat out whatever I wanted.
So hail Bacchus and Hail Whitman.
Cheers!
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I will never cease to be baffled by the pride that a good chunk of humanity seems to take in submitting to preistcraft. By preistcraft I do not necessarily mean religion.
In this broadened definition I include many ideologies and yes…among them I dare include that shibboleth called ‘science.’
Now, I am not a fan of comparing science to religion. This being due to the fact that science is not religion. But there is a sort of popular notion of science that may as well be religion.
It is both pro and prescriptive. It has a metaphysic. It has an ethic. There are within its dogmas not only cosmological claims but outright prophecies.
This is not the science of Spinoza or Feynman. That is to say it is not science. It is whimsy and hubris systematized. That is to say religion.
It has priests and teachers of the law.
I do not even so much here begrudge authoritarianism as I lament sloth. For its profound mental laziness that causes so many otherwise rational people to utter the demure prayer:
“I am not a scientist.”
Well…so bloody what?
Do you not have access to books? Or to get less medieval… to the sodding internet?
Ah but you require special training. These mysteries must of course be properly understood.
Yes, and did you not spend at least twelve years of your life in the school system?
Alright… I get it…that institution is deteriorated and generally rots the mind. Fine, all well and good. I too am cynical about the supposedly unalloyed good of mandatory public schooling.
However…even the most barefoot, twelve-toed, slug snacking Appalachian scion surely understands that the beauty of science is in its inherent democracy. Or if you prefer Libertarianism.
How is it that the experts to which you submit your reason came to their knowledge? Was it through sorcery? Did they approach a shewstone and therein decipher the mind of the most high God?
Or did they apply the fairly simple mechanisms of the scientific method to expand and expound upon the current body of knowledge?
You tell me that you cannot do the same?
Or are you in a roundabout way asserting that I cannot do so. That I must flagellate myself. That I should toss my critical faculties into the purifying flames of inquisition. That I should shroud my brain in the same Catholic darkness that gives you the jollies?
Suppose all those mea culpas ever bleeding from your rosary are valid. That we are both at sea before the vast incomprehensibility of the universe. That we require the confessional booth. That we must submit to a higher power.
Fine.
But I have a question…
WHICH?
To which higher power should I surrender? I suspect that your answer will depend entirely on your political persuasion.
If you do not know the things of which you are speaking of. If they are so arcane and require so many years of academic pilgrimage to fathom…then how…in all sodding Christendom do you know whether you agree.
Would it not be simpler to just vomit Druidic litanies?
Or at least more cough than humble bragging…
If you have ceased to be able to work with the facts and theories thus far achieved and must now entirely lean upon the insights of the clergy. How…HOW…pray tell is this science? The thing whose chief strength is mutability. A strength nourished by diligent scrutiny.
I guess there’s really not much use in railing against this madness. It seems to be more of a drive than a philosophical position.
I doubt I’ll ever understand it.
I guess I just don’t have that kinky submissive streak that plagues such a large chunk of humanity.
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(Warning – Much Cussing and Kvetching Ahead with Bawdy Jokes Thrown In like Filthy Garnish)
Today we are going to ask the deep questions. The philosophical questions. Questions regarding the truly esoteric and rarefied.
Questions like: Do you want the same company that delivers dildos to deliver your grandma’s betablockers?
I work at UPS. And while I have not myself encountered a box full of marital aids I have friends who have.
Far from the Hub. Where I like to be. Thanks for the hat tho!
I know that UPS delivers medicine. If you want your aspirin and statins delivered to your door instead of going to the pharmacy that’s fine. Some people are old, some people are lazy, some don’t have the time. I get it.
But generally folk who are super sick… need someone to help them take their meds. I know this. I take care of meds for my grandfather. I’m not gonna claim to be some kind of fastidious ‘type A guy,’ but it would seem that DEPENDING ON UPS TO DELIVER MEDICINE TO PRVENT DEATH; and letting the supply dwindle so low before the refill is a FUCKING BAD IDEA. And generally not practiced by those who haven’t been lobotomized.
Which is why I was surprised today by the driver of one of the trucks I was loading. When she informed me that they have “critical packages,” that they delvier hearts. FUCKING HEARTS! Are you shitting me?
Pictured: A Critical Package
For those of you not in the know about UPS. All your precious buttplugs, novelty blenders, and Nazi parephenalia get jammed onto 18 wheelers. By jammed I mean stuffed to the brim like a teenagers closet. To such a degree that they often tumble out upon opening the doors.
Your commemorative gimp suit then gets sent up a belt to the sleep deprived hands of highly caffeinated blue collar kids and poor boomers who need insurance. These are then sorted by color coding onto various belts.
THEN THEY END UP AT THE SLIDE!
So your heart, your epilepsy medicine, and Preppers Pete’s generator get’s to ride down a slide like one big happy family! Ain’t it great?
But the fun doesn’t end there! Because the slide sometimes gets fuckin’ JAMMED. So grandpa’s new vital organ may well make intimate contact with a bottle of corrosive DON’T FUCKING TOUCH THAT.
Sure the stuff is bottled and packaged with slightly more care than the tax forms and switchblades that occasionally spill out all over the place. But call me a softy…I’d rather NOT HAVE MY HEART CRUSHED.
..With stray calligraphy pens! You give LOGISTICS a bad name…
Now she may have been reffering to pacemakers, or robotic hearts, or just being dramatic but in any case…the case rests at...the same company that delivers Monster truck tires and nipple clamps shouldn’t be in the business of organ trafficking or even beta blocker delivery.
People who wake up at three in the morning to lug auto parts and ammo around aren’t FUCKING PHARMACISTS. And no matter how well trained, well rested, and diligent mistakes happen in non air conditioned buildings when you’re loading 600 -1000 packages per employee.
So…let’s talk about training. I have been at UPS since December 2017 and I have never heard the term “critical package” my supervisor for the day had…but only because a driver had told him while he was a “driver helper.”
Does that sound like adequate training. Like there’s a strong company culture of communication?
Well how about the fact that one of the managers. Not a supervisor but a fucking manager made me sign a form promising to load packages WRONG.
The drivers you see like the small packages behind the big ones so they don’t fall off the shelf. Which is what I was taught to do when I got there and… what I got in trouble for…. And what I went back to doing at the drivers request…with no further comment from the manager, because he didn’t happen to catch me stacked out on a bad day, and get the chance to don his micromanaging hat. I’m sure this had something to do with Six Sigma.
Pictured: Six Sigma Masurbation
Yes, every hub is different. But despite my bitching from what I’ve heard our hub is actually one of the nicer ones. That is if you can stand the Carolina heat.
I mention the lack of communication to highlight again how fucking dumb it is that apparently pharmacies, the FDA, etc is ok with fuckin UPS delivering CRITICAL medicine.
I can sort of see a vague economic one. Like there’s not gonna be a sustainable business model of specifically delivering medication but…there’s still the whole thing of….”YOUR MEDICINE IS BEIN HANDLED IN THE SAME PILE OF SHIT AS CLOROX, CRICKETS, AND BIKES. Being handled by multiple exhausted employees who barely have time to piss in the wee hours of the morn! (pun intended)
So this was a particularly bad day to try to guilt trip me by mentioning:
Umm..yea…do impossible things better…for less money than me..k…?
“Ummm…yea…make the truck neater because I deliver medicine – there’s a package out of order – yea out of the approximatley 1000 packages you just loaded there’s one in the wrong spot – and my cousin or somebody died because they didn’t get their epilepsy medicine when they were five.”
Lady, if the truck is loaded 90% correctly that’s already pretty good. Are you 100% on the ball on your route? Cause the drivers here just got berated for almost wrecking. And I loaded this shit at least 97% correctly.
I always try for 100% and hey…telling somebody that has had very little sleep ,and been working with no break for the past four hours that “THEY BETTER BE CAREFUL OR SOMEBODY COULD DIE…” isn’t good for morale.
“No pressure..you know…I don’t want you to make a mistake…it’s just that you’re now suddenly a neurosurgeon and if you fuck up just a bit SOMEBODY WILL FUCKIGN DIE!”
Yea…that’s real helpful.
I don’t like being guilt tripped. I don’t like the insinuation that I’m careless when for the past four sweaty ass hours I’ve been tightening, organizing, and rearranging so everythign is as neat and accessible as possible given the time constraints.
So, I don’t want to hear wails of protest about how you’re on the truck before you’re getting paid.
Lady…I currently make 13 dollars an hour whereas you likely make 22 – 28. Your little prep work is gonna pay you dividends. The prep work I do in the morning for which there’s barely any time is rewarded by FUCK ALL.
I wake up at 3 am….and load for four to five hours in a building that’s been stewing all day and all night in the southern sun. All while being given contradictory directions and having my attention diverted by forms, calls for help, and hardware.
Now…I don’t dislike the person I am currently writing about. She’s the best smellin’ driver in the hub. But…her attitude is indicative…is a crystallized indicator of the attitude of a lot of drivers. That attitude being our job is hard so yours isn’t.
The gals do smell better but…this is Not UPS reality. O well here’s a pretty girl. So stay tuned. Marketing? I am Don Draper.
Look guys…just like if you didn’t deliver the packages we wouldn’t have a job…you wouldn’t have a job if we didn’t load packages.
Do you get annoyed about dispatch riding your ass? Well our Sups and managers ride ours… so it would be nice for that not to also be outsourced to another employee. An employee who is paid exhorbitantly more.
No, I’m not saying “I don’t get paid enough so I load how the fuck I want” – what’s being contested is the assertion that: it’s not fair that I don’t get paid to come in early to make the truck look how I like it to look which is often different than how the (often shifting) loadchart looks.
It is fairconsidering the fact that I too show up early to make my day (and by extension YOURS DUMBASS) easier.. and make fuck all to show for it besides good health insurance. Especially since you’re making an uppermiddleclass income with no qualifications besides a drivers liscecne, a HS Dipoma, and maybe some dumbass MBA.
Mostly Decent and often Magnificently Moustachioed Individuals
Again most drivers even the ones I bitch about are decent people but that doesn’t detract from the vague cliqueishness that is readily apparent. Your job is grueling …so is mine…O YOU WORK LONGER. YOU ALSO FUCKING GET PAID MORE.
And…you’re not waking up at 3 AM to go to work….I can’t stress that shit enough. Hey UPS…. The constantly changing start time is not good for focus, productivity, or cancer rates. Do some actual research on sleep and apply what you learned to your policies instead of just handing out “healthy living” info sheets to sign.
As I said, and I say again, most drivers are decent folk. But they’re also a bit up their own ass.
I am in a peculiar socio-economic situation. I own things. The things I own are my business, so I live a somewhat yuppie-esque lifestyle. As such I go to the gym where I witness lots of people with their heads up their ass. Some of them are UPS drivers.
As I was benching a few months back I heard a couple babbling about loaders falling asleep to the owner of the gym. This basically turned into a Boomerific circle jerk of kids these days, and it’s a good job, and harrumph.
Hey…the reason some of them are sleepy especially the new ones is because they wake up at 3 am assholes..
This experience, along with not sleeping enough due to a busy schedule, and the god damned water heater/plumbing deciding to start a rockconcert right (as I was going to bed) did not make it a good day to be a cunty driver.
Of course there won’t really be consequences besides a snarky blogpost and me refusing to load that set of trucks. Which isn’t mine…I loaded them because…I’m nice…and someone else was out today. How bout ya have a blue vest load ’em eh…?
Maybe the consequence will be I’m fired. Fuck it. Even though this is the best job for my schedule despite the circadian fuckery, even though I like manual labor, even though I know that it has neurocognitive benefits I don’t care.
I don’t care because if I get fired over this post then it has nothing to do with my ability to perform my duties. And everything to do with appearance, and politics, and dog shit. I doubt this will be the outcome.
So why mention it?
You’re virtue signaling!
Because this gives me an opportunity to virtue signal and say free speech is more important than getting a tiny crumb off a huge corporate pie.
Why are you so like OMG overreacting…it’s just people were like teasing you and like….
Yeah…first off I’ve give the context, second off how the hell is “teasing” going to help my load quality when I’ve been initially nice, and even made a joke at my own expense, and informed you I’m tired, how is guilt tripping – teasing, and why is it tied to a larger case of head-up-ass syndrome?
It leads me to the question. Is the driver (at the very least this particular type of driver) helping JUST ME or are they helping themselves? I can’t exactly stay 100% focused after a four fifteen start time as I make smalltalk, communicate about bulk stops, avoid tripping, and navigate around you…so I think the answer is the drivers are helping themselves. They are helping themselves to make a whole hell of a lot of money. And a part of their pie involves MY LABOR.
Isn’t a bit more tact called for with exhausted coworkers?
Look God knows, I’m not always perfect about not getting annoyed, or snarky, or teasy, or preachy but I do generally try not to assume that people make small mistakes due to sloppy laziness or lack of care. Because you don’t know a persons background or their current situation.
And when a person figths your guilt tripping about – medicine and dead relatives who missed a crucial dose; by informing you that hey I’m tired, the truck is as neat as any on this belt, I’ve had no sleep, and I’m taking care of a relative who has had a stroke, my only living relative (that’s not estranged).
Yeah, you responding with “O…It’s all about you.” Doesn’t seem like teasing after FOUR HOURS OF LABOR IN A NONAIRCONDITIONED BUILDING.
What it seems like is the typical ‘Im so put upon’ attitude of drivers which while justifiable becomes unjustifiable by offloading it on the loaders. (Who are at the end of their shift. Taking a ton of hardware up the ass.)
‘O but I was just blowin off steam and you need XYZ and it was teasing.’
I do, most of the time, I do . This was the third time out of more than a year that I’ve voiced annoyance in any form about a driver.
The first one was when a guy freaked out over me moving a trash bin off the 4000 shelf so I could load packages. The trash was not supposed to be on the shelf.
The second one was when a driver decided to treat me like I was a waiter and his filet mignon was late. Spazzing out about HIS hardware as I was addressing another drivers far more pressing issue RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. (The bin guy later found me and apologized to me. So yes UPS drivers are mostly good even the ones that piss me off sometimes.)
Besides these incidents I’ve never said anything to anyone about drivers. And there are plenty of cunty incidents or teasy incidents (which can be misinterpreted) in a year and some of UPS.
I hope somebody finds this interesting, or funny, or informative. But I also don’t really give a fuck because I still haven’t slept due to plumbing, finance, and other responsibiliteis. That and if I cared what the audience thought all the time I’d use fucking cookie cutters.
Also what do you expect? A write who doesn’t write? That’s what day time TV is for…
I don’t like being guilt tripped. I don’t like the insinuation that I’m careless when for the past four sweaty ass hours I’ve been tightening, organizing, and rearranging so everythign is as neat and accessible as possible given the time constraints.
The Fractal Journal 