Tag Archives: protest

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Morale building activities. Our office seems determined that it’s going to lick the morale problem by doubling down on potluck lunches and after-hours team building events. I invite you to piss directly off with that nonsense. If you want me to be part of a team activity, schedule that mess while you’re paying me for it. And damned well don’t expect me to cook (or inflict my colleagues cooking on me) in order to participate. Why the hell we can’t just take an hour or two, get out of the office, and patronize a local restaurant like normal people is completely beyond me. It’s all a hard pass for me. If that reinforces my rep as a non-joiner or problematic player of team ball, so be it.

2. Late night interruptions. The number of times each week I wake up at two in the morning to take a piss, spend an hour flopping around not sleeping, and then drifting off for an hour or so of absolutely ridiculous dreams before waking up to start the day bleary eyed and disgruntled is something of a too regular occurrence. It’s not every night, which would drive me batshit crazy, but it’s easily once every week or two and that makes it more than regular enough to be obnoxious. There’s a whole level of frustration knowing you can’t hold your water or fall back asleep on command the way you used to. Most other nights I still manage to sleep like a baby, but not knowing whether the night will be restful or ridiculous is just short of infuriating.

3. Protests. I’ve always looked slightly askance at protestors as a group. Clogging up sidewalks, roadways, or parks and making a spectacle / nuisance of yourself never seemed like a good way to make any kind of point. Once I started working in DC, I developed an even lower opinion of the average “protestor.” Inconveniencing me as I’m just trying to go about my daily activities is, I promise you, no way to ever convince me of the virtue of your cause. In any case, any time I see news of protestors getting all froggy – whether it’s on city streets or on college campuses – I just get preemptively annoyed and assume they’re chanting and occupying whatever for some cause I’ll inevitably think is foolish. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. A deferred milestone. I thought I was on track to hit the next weight milestone – 200 pounds even, or down 130 – on or about my birthday. Although I’ve started slowly creeping down again, the previous three weeks where I held all things equal has pretty much guaranteed I can’t get there from here unless I develop a pretty nasty stomach bug. It’s disappointing, of course. I was hoping to sit down to my traditional birthday lunch of crabcakes and hushpuppies and proceed to getting back to a “maintenance” level of eating. That feels out of reach. But I’m still damned well planning to have the crab cakes and hushpuppies.

    2. Foreign aid debate. You know what one of the most successful bits of foreign policy of the post World War II era? Yeah, that would be when the United States poured out absolute shiploads of cash, material, and expertise on Europe and rebuilt a shattered continent. It turns out prosperous liberal democracies bound together by deep ties of trade tend not to try to kill each other nearly so often as they did when international diplomacy was a zero-sum game. The weight of American troops and weapons arguably won the war, but it was the Marshall Plan that won the peace. It’s a pity that Americans consistently refuse to remember their own history when we’re talking about relatively paltry sums in the contemporary foreign aid budget. Every scrap of progress we can make by throwing money at the problem is far less expensive than anything that happens when we need to get involved kinetically. 

    3. Walking. Gods, even with the latest in listening technology, walking is just a deadly dull way to spend 30 or 40 minutes every day. Yes, the scenery in the neighborhood is nice. Sometimes I get to see neighbors doing something stupid in full view of the sidewalk. Aside from occasionally getting to interface with the local wildlife, I’m sorry, but there just isn’t much to recommend it. Living at the far end of the dead end street, there are only so many ways to make the path different… and after six months, I’ve trod all those down multiple times each week already. Look, I’ll keep doing it… under protest and purely because the doc says I must… but you’ll never convince me that there isn’t a more interesting or entertaining use to those 30 or 40 minutes of every day that isn’t called off on account of weather. 

    What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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    1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 38 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. Now, I’m told, the alleged negotiation has gone so far sideways that it’s been sent to binding arbitration. Resolution to that could literally take years. So, we’re going to be grinding along for the foreseeable future with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. I’m sure someone could make the case that there’s enough blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 38 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing to deliver for their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) and for continuing to stand in the way like some bloody great, utterly misguided roadblock. No one’s interest is served by their continued intransigence. The elected “leaders” of AFGE Local 1904 should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves.

    2. Reddit moderators. The recent Reddit blackout is stupid and a pain in the ass. In what was essentially a hissy fit launched because Reddit wants to make it more expensive for 3rd party vendors to use the ecosystem, the real impact wasn’t felt so much by Reddit’s executive suite as it was by normal users who use the site for entertainment, information, or just to piss away their free time. It might be a Big Deal ™ for the mods, but I suspect for most people using Reddit day to day, it’s more of a so what. It has the same flavor of the protests that disrupt highways or otherwise inconvenience people who are just trying to get through the day. I can’t believe it’s the sort of approach that ever wins adherents to your side. Then again, I rarely find myself wanting to side with those who are trying to make a point by being just one step removed from tantrum throwing toddlers.

    3. The wreck of the Titan. The word “experimental” is right there in the description of what the Titan is (was?). I know that among the wealthy and not so wealthy, there’s been decided move towards “extreme tourism” recently. Everyone wants that surge of adrenalin. I don’t find it appealing – particularly when they whole craft looks like something me and my three high school best friends could have cobbled together in the back yard over summer vacation. The media can’t help themselves from being entirely enchanted with this story. At best it should have been a one day story under the headline, “People who should have known better did something stupid and are now experiencing the natural consequences of their actions.”

    What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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    1. Blue Falcons. From time immemorial there have been Blue Falcons. They’re the kind of people who would step over their own sainted grandmother or cheat their best friend if they thought it was a chance to get ahead. The ranks of the great green machine are thick with them to some greater or lesser degree. The worst of them, the ones who create a lot of smoke and heat but not much light, are the staff schmucks who think they’ll gain the barest marginal advantage by selling out someone down the hall over an issue that could have been remedied with an email. Being a buddy fucker isn’t a good look, friends. Even if you gain a nominal advantage temporarily, the taint will be on you till the end of your days.

    2. Weekends. The problem with the weekend is whole vast swaths of the population are off at the same time. I found myself unavoidably out on Saturday afternoon to do some business with places that don’t obligingly open their doors before 7 AM. To my never-ending horror, there were people everywhere. Traffic backed up at every light. It’s goddamned nightmare fuel. Maybe I need to find a gig where I can take two sequential weekdays off instead of Saturday and Sunday… because weekends are absolutely not relaxing when I have to subject myself to the crowd.

    3. There’s been a wave of “climate protests” across Europe. The most recent spate of “protestors” feature assholes damaging and destroying art across the continent who rank right alongside the Taliban scum who blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas or the ISIS fucks who destroyed the Roman theater at Palmyra. At best they’re petulant little shits throwing a temper tantrum because their ideas can’t draw support on their own merits… but in my estimation they’re domestic terrorists who should be delt with as such.

    What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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    1. Protests. I’ll be honest, I can’t remember a sign waving, getting in the way of things protest that I’ve ever knowingly supported. The tactics most protesters employ seem almost perfectly designed to guarantee that I’ll either quietly oppose them or openly mock and deride them. The small “r” republican protestors who have been popping up in London this week aiming to disrupt the most solemn state occasion of the late Queen’s funeral are probably exactly the kind of friendless cranks you might expect to engage in that kind of ill-timed, boorish behavior. I’m not saying the Crown should necessarily haul them off to the tower, but if the rest of the populace got together and heaved them directly into the Thames, I’d likely look the other way and then have a good laugh about it.

    2. Lindsey Graham. For the last six months every Republican who could find a TV camera earnestly declared that abortion was an issue that should rightly be resolved by the states. That the federal government has gotten too large and overreaching is a reasonable argument. The remedy, of course, isn’t to hand that misbegotten power to the states, but rather return it directly to the people, who are the font of power under the American system, and allow them each to decide based on their own particular light. But then here comes Lindsey Graham, boldly introducing a bill that not only flies in the face of small government orthodoxy, but which will be wildly unpopular with 60% or more of the electorate. It might buy him some votes from the Republican base in South Carolina, but otherwise it makes him look like a fucking moron.

    3. Eyes. My eyes suck and have since I was a kid. Take away my glasses and I could probably squint my way through things at very close range, but forget about telling the difference between a car and a cow more than a couple of dozen yards away. I’m headed off to my annual eye exam tomorrow, where I plan to spend my hour griping and complaining that by 8PM, my eyes are shot. It’s a situation that’s beginning to interfere with my evening reading and that obviously can’t be allowed to stand. With the return of wasting hours of the week commuting to the office for reasons that defy logic, but make perfect sense to management on the near horizon, I can’t afford to lose another hour or two in the evening with my eyes running everything together into lines of black smudge. 

    The injustice of the month club…

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    Oh good. As expected, we just couldn’t let the truck protest have it’s time to shine in Canada. According to The Hill, there’s a plot afoot to bring traffic on the Washington beltway to a halt. 

    As someone who spent a portion of his career commuting into and out of DC on a daily basis, let me just say fuck directly off with that asshattery. The only people you’ll be screwing with are the working schmucks who just want to get home and get on with their lives – exactly the kind of people I’d think you would want to support your little protest, no?

    Of course they are, but deep thinking never seems to be among the traits displayed by people who plan this kind of goofy ass protest. Thinking in broader strategic terms is a game for grown adults rather than those whose notion of how to go about doing things was stunted around the time they were 17-year-old. Truly they’re almost always driven and supported by the kind of people I don’t even bother arguing with – or engaging with at all if I can avoid it. I just don’t have the patience anymore to suffer fools with anything less than complete disdain.

    Look, I know I’ll never be mistaken for any kind of man of the people. That’s fine. It’s good that I’m not king, though, because given my preferences, I’d pull back and nuke this shit from orbit. But we live in world where even the village idiot is allowed to have a voice and we’re legally obligated to allow him or her to use it. So do what you want to the beltway and tens of thousands if commuters, I guess. I can only hope you turn every single one of them into opponents of whatever grave-injustice-of-the-month it is you think you’re trying to highlight. 

    What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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    1. “Don’t Say Gay” Bill. Ah, Florida. How is it not surprising that it’s Florida? Let me be blunt here: Some guys like dick. Some girls don’t. Pretending that simple fact goes away because legislation prevents people from mentioning it is ludicrous. Not “agreeing” with someone else’s lifestyle isn’t sufficient reason for the state to censor them. Your flavor of religion calling something sin isn’t sufficient reason for the state to censor them. Getting up in your feelings because someone says words that make you sad isn’t sufficient reason for the state to censor them. I wish to hell these right-wing snowflakes would try reading the Constitution instead of just wrapping themselves up in it like day old fish. 

    2. Intellectual inconsistency. A year ago, there was a group Black Lives Matter activists who, on several occasions, blocked up traffic in North East, Maryland. The local Facebook groups raged about them hindering commerce, being a danger to public safety, and generally being a pain in the ass to anyone just trying to get home from work while they filled the crosswalk. Now that same Facebook group is cheering wildly for the Canadian truckers blocking off whole interstates and downtowns. The truckers, of course, are heroic freedom fighters. Intellectual consistency is far too big an ask in our dumb 21st century. Personally, I think the worst way to convince people of the rightness of your cause is by making a general nuisance of yourself. It’s a stupid way of trying to win over people who largely don’t give a single shit about what you want them to care about. It doesn’t make a bit of difference to me if you’re BLM, a bunch of Canadian truck drivers, or the inevitable Americans who decide we need our own road closing protests. If I had my way, we’d read out the Riot Act and clear the rabble so the rest of us could continue on with our business. On that position, I’m absolutely consistent.

    3. Taxes. I’m beginning to assemble the sea of paperwork required each year to file my taxes. The sheer complexity of it, even while filing single, is probably more rage inducing than annoying if I’m honest. This is just the grievance before I even find out the total butcher’s bill for 2021. I’m not one of the oddball “taxation is theft” types. I like living in a country whose military has more bits and bobs than the next ten countries on the list… combined. For now, it’s just the fact that I have 20 or more bits of paper (with more yet to come in), that all need to be coordinated before I can even send the whole mess off to the guy who actually understands how it’s all supposed to fit together and save me from handing over one more thin dime than is legally required.

    The protestor mentality…

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    I’ve never quite understood the “protestor mentality.” You know the ones I’m talking about – everyone from the kids a decade ago who hated Wall Street so much they wanted to physically occupy it or the Canadian Convoy who are determined to stay in Ottawa until the government there agrees to their right to die horribly from a largely preventable illness or the fading rock stars who threaten to take their catalog and go home unless someone gives in to their demands.

    Mostly I don’t understand from where these people find the time. I mean I’m not the busiest guy on the planet, but while they’re out marching around waving signs, I’ve got a job to do, meals to make, animals to tend, and the thousand other things that go into keeping a household running. Most of the time, that’s a full day’s work right there… and what hour or two of unallocated personal time I do manage to carve out, I can find more rewarding things to do than standing on a street corner with my bullhorn antagonizing people like some kind of asshole.

    Maybe some of these people have valid grievances, but it seems that I’ve always had better results in finding redress by talking directly to the people who can do something about whatever my problem happens to be. I can’t think of anything less apt to convince me of the rightness of your position than seeing you and your friends throwing big adult sized tantrums for the benefit of the howling mob, or news cameras, or your social feeds.

    It doesn’t make you look principled, it makes you look like a moron. If you’re bored enough that marching around in the cold sounds like fun, shoot me an email, I’ll be happy to set you about doing some winter yard projects for me. With a little bit of my own time freed up, maybe I’d even find time to more deeply consider, but probably still not care about, whatever happens to be the flavor of popular outrage this week.

    Pro-plague protestors…

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    This past Saturday afternoon employees of our regional medical center marched for their “right” to remain unvaccinated.

    Their Facebook posts seemed to gin up all the usual things you’d expect. Arguments like “it’s not a vaccine,” or “the FDA hasn’t approved it,” or “I won’t be a lab rat,” or “government tracking,” or “my body, my choice,” or, more creatively, an oddly undefined “right to choose” abounded. 

    The thing here is, Christiana Hospital is a private entity. They have all the right in the world to establish their own conditions of employment. Employees, like the assembled jackasses who have decided the COVID-19 vaccination is a globalist plot to sap and impurify their precious bodily fluids, are free to either meet those conditions or go off to seek employment somewhere willing to tolerate their bat shit crazy ideas. 

    The only thing anyone is being forced to do here is make a decision – and then live with the consequences. As it turns out, people really hate it when they’re faced with consequences. 

    I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to call these people “anti-vaxers.” What they really are is pro-plague. In word and deed, they’re actively advocating medically irresponsible and dangerous theories. Frankly, the hospital system should be glad they’ve so helpfully self-identified. They’re exactly the kind of people that shouldn’t be involved in providing health services to the public. 

    If these pro-plague healthcare workers had the courage of their convictions, they would immediately resign in protest – refusing to participate in a system they believe is doing direct harm to patients or is otherwise engaged in unlawful practices. As it is, I can only assume what they really are is attention whores who want to stomp around shouting “look at me, look at me.”

    Believe me, I’ve looked at you. I’ve taken your weight and measure and found you wanting in almost every possible way.

    You can do both…

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    I spent a lot of this summer calling out lefty “protests” that descended into the looting and burning of American cities as violent insurrection that should be put down swiftly with great force.

    I’ve spent a lot of the last few days calling out MAGA “protests” that resulted in storming the Capitol and the attempted subversion of the Constitution as violent insurrection that should be put down with great force.

    What we have here is a case of two different things being simultaneously true. I can oppose leftist anarchy at the same time I oppose right-wing sedition. The world is not a binary system where if something is 1 it cannot also be 0. The world, as it turns out, is a complex system. It’s filled with extraordinarily few great absolutes and enormous gradients of gray everywhere else.

    The number of people who want to excuse “their” side as being justified or righteous would be horrifying if it weren’t so tiringly predictable. If you’re so blinded by your “side” and its rightness, so steeped in your side’s talking points that you can’t apply a single shred of independent thought, or God forbid, analytical rigor, then we probably don’t have much to say to each other.

    As for me, I feel an inherent moral obligation to oppose extreme fuckery it all its many forms from both the left and the right, so I’ll keep calling the balls and strikes just as I see them.