Well, I had a feeling it was going to come to this. After two and a half months of being, technically, Temporarily Laid Off, I found out today that my status is now Unemployed. Period. There just hasn’t been enough work at my job two keep a three-person shop busy and, as the employee with the least seniority, I was first in line for the axe. What makes matters worse is I can’t even be mad at my employer. He has been doing his best to drum up enough work to avoid having to do this and I’m certain it distressed him quite a bit to give me the news. Almost as much as it distressed me to hear it. I blame it all on the Bush administration. Our economy is in the toilet and Bush and his cronies are getting filthy rich (or filthy richer. Filthier rich? Filthier richier?) as a result. All that money gushing out of the US Treasury to fight an illegal war (or two or three) is somehow (yeah, somehow) finding its way in to the pockets of the Bush family and their pals. Why not just take our money and skip the killing part? That would be more honest. “Hi, I have more money than I can actually spend and I want yours, too.” Of course, no one has ever accused them of being honest. I don’t see it getting better any time soon, either. (Pygalgia, whose blog is well worth reading, posted this article and this article about how BushCo has negatively effected the US economy and the global repercussions.) It could be turned around. We could invest in taking care of people at home rather than in killing people overseas, but that would be anti-American. We could have an equitable tax structure so the wealthy paid their fair share of the tax burden, but if the rich have to pay taxes, then the terrorists have already won. I’d better be careful or people might think I’m a (gasp!) .... Socialist! We have to kill people so we can bring them democracy!
I'm sure things will work out, for me, anyway. There are people in the world who have much larger problems. No one is bombing my city. I'm not going to starve any time soon. There are people that care about me. I will find some kind of job, but right now the coefficient of despair is pretty high.
