Far East Cynic

Greetings from Frankfurt Germany. I am transiting through here on my way back to points east.

What am I doing here, you ask? Going here to work for a while-at least for the short term, while I work, search, and hope some things fall into place. Whether they will or not is still TBD.

I took this assignment as a bridge of sorts-from a certain point of view it can most definitely be perceived as a damn fool thing to do-especially in light of recent developments on the job and career front. On the other hand-assuming it goes for its projected length, its a chance to do some meaningful work again, save some money for the war chest, and to see someplace else besides Shopping Mall USA. Furthermore-it saves me from the distraction of 130 pounds of Japanese baggage, while I sort through various options and make various applications, if required. The last thing I need now is the mundane distractions of US domestic existence.

Plus-truth be told, I really wanted to do it. My time last summer was the one time I have had-working for this particular customer, where I really feel like I accomplished something. The people at the place I am going must have thought so-they asked for me by name. I was more than happy to oblige them. Whether I can pull off the same deals I did last summer, well that remains to be seen. I’m a little doubtful-the landscape has changed. Plus-unlike last summer-the contract foundation I am working under is not quite as stable as it was then.

But that, as Scarlett said, is something to be worried about another day. For now,  its just one day at a time-and I can’t think of a better way to start the day than being overseas someplace.

The flight over was….well underwhelming. But the decline of United Airlines will have to wait for another post. I’m hungry und Fruhstuck awaits!

Every thing is a new opportunity. That’s the current fiction I keep telling myself. Next week, I will figure out a new one to tell myself.

Working on a short term unique and interesting thing to do-until the rest of this little drama sorts itself out. Monday, we get to hear the Director of this government agency explain how this new contract scheme-and the subsequent heavy personnel turnover, and over all screw job to so many of his employees got-is “just another success” for the agency. This, after he has already been publicly forced to admit the initiative did not save any money.  It did break up some really effective teams though.

There is a reason this agency was ranked 224 out of 225 entities in government concerning being a good place to work. And 225 doesn’t exist anymore. “We are Dash Last!”

When you see another contractor on the elevator these days-someone you haven’t seen in a while-the greeting is usually the same. “Have you been converted yet?”

The answer is about the same too: ” Yep, new company, more work-30% pay cut. But, at least I have a job.”

Our government companions have a different predicament, while they may in fact enjoy some measure of job security ( and that may not be true either if there is a RIF due to massive cuts potentially coming), their pay is frozen for the next five years probably, their authority gets reduced and kicked upstairs, and because of the different schemes they work under-they can’t even move to a regular GS job, not without taking a pay cut themselves. The Director, who hates contractors-keeps boasting about the coming hiring surge on the government side.

Except of course-there are no jobs out there to be hired into. Clearly, the Civilian Personnel office didn’t get the memo.

“See your future, Danny. Make, make your future.” ” The world needs ditch diggers too you know!”

At home, we have been fairly low key. The S.O. seems totally oblivious to this situation-and it is really driving me nuts that she doesn’t grasp it. She just assumes I will find something, and her lifestyle will continue unchanged. Glad she has confidence in me-because I sure don’t.

One of the more disturbing things is that the company that did win the contract, has yet to come around to talk to any of us. Which is both odd and not so odd. Not so odd because our transition has been delayed for 3 months ( possibly more) due to some external circumstances and the desire of the program I work for not to break up a team right in the middle of an upcoming flight test.

My co-worker and I talked about it. We see it as a two edged sword. It gives the new company-who is well knowing for screwing people and casting them aside like cord wood, time to get cheaper folks lined up on contingency offers. Furthermore-the guys who have a lot of contacts and other opportunities (like the folks in the DC area)-are already looking for a new place to go. They are not going to stick around and go to Hawaii for two months only to find they are going to get f*cked at the drive through when they get back. The number of people hitting the eject button will probably go up. Even though the place they are currently working is hard to recruit folks into. I agree with him-that is probably what is going to happen. Also even if folks stay around for the transition and are hired by the new company-morale is already as low as it can possibly go. We all like our current company and don’t want to leave. The company does not want us to leave-but it cannot probably find spaces for all of us to go to. ( Not without winning some more work soon).

Down here in Shopping Mall-its not quite the same thing. Engineers are everywhere here-if you don’t like what they offered, they won’t negotiate-they just will quit calling. Plenty of folks with my lack of skills. Now supposedly, per the terms of the contract, I have first right of refusal before they can bring in other people. They , supposedly, have to negotiate with me first. So I was told a few days ago, “not to worry”.

I doubt it. I am convinced that’s just one more lie, from people for whom lies are a daily currency. There have already been cases where this particular company has brought in inexperienced people -in violation of the specifications of the contract-and no one has cried foul. Cause its all about the dollars and a new college graduate will think he’s making really good money. So what if he doesn’ know anything about the military?

But I digress. In the short term, I am working hard to finish up my course. Two more assignments on my project and I am done with that. Three more tests. Trying to finish up two this week-so I can actually feel ahead of the game for a change. It is what it is, and there is nothing I can do about it anyway.

And the S.O. and I are going to go see Cars 2 today. In 3D, of course. After action report to follow.

There is no point to this particular post-except to vent a little. That makes me feel better at least.

A whole new group of lawyers is studying hard to be able to do your divorces…………

James Fallows has a great post up concerning Libya-and how Obama has no one to blame but himself for his troubles with Congress:

This was a problem foreseeable from the very start* — more than three months ago, when we were told that this would be a campaign of “days, not weeks.” Obama has so often proven himself to be the master of the long game that it is genuinely puzzling that he has stuck with this approach, rather than roping in Congress back in the days when most Republicans were criticizing him for taking too long to intervene.

Usually when his administration suffers a reverse, I blame the vicious nihilism of the opposition, or assume he has chosen the least bad of the dire options available. In this case, I cannot understand why he made and persists in what looks like a foolish mistake. Not the intervention itself, though I was skeptical of it. Rather, the refusal to engage Congress, which now leads to a predictable backlash.

And now-what do we get for our trouble? Not a damn thing.

It is crunch time for a bunch of reasons I cannot go into right now. Mostly related to my @#$%^& Six Sigma course. ( Which blows with a capital “B”).

But-it has been brought to my attention that some folks are taking issue with John Stewart’s statement that Fox News viewers are the most uniformed in the world. So the good Mr. Stewart issued a clarification:

To heck with it-Fox News still blows.

Was explained very cogently yesterday by Jon Stewart, and ironically it was explained in the place where news goes to die-the Fox Noise Machine.

If you haven’t seen this interview between Chris Wallace, you should. Its a tour de force take down of the people at Fox News. There are so many great slams by Stewart its hard to relate them all, but I will try.

A lot of people evidently missed this yesterday-probably because they were so up in arms about the Pledge of Allegiance in front of the US Open. ( What the hell is the Pledge doing at the beginning of a golf tournament anyway? Especially one where a 22 year old is playing so far over his head that he is 15 under going into the final round-talk about misplaced priorities.) But if you did watch this telling interview you would have heard this very true statement:

Stewart: I’m given credibility in this world because of the disappointment the public has in what the news media does.Wallace: I don’t think our viewers are the least bit disappointed in us. I think our viewers think finally they’re getting someone who tells the other side of the story.

Stewart: And in polls who is the most consistently misinformed media viewers? Who’s consistently misinformed? Fox. Fox viewers.

Fox News-News broadcasting for the learning impaired. Headlines for stupid people.  Watch the whole interview-but if you are in a hurry just skip to the 14:30 mark and watch Jon Stewart crush Wallace with his strongly worded statement above. Rather than try to come back to that-Wallace tries to change the subject.

Stewart handles the whole interview in a careful and measured fashion-but still manages to lay telling blows on his opponent.  And he echoes a point I have been making for a long time here at Skippy-san HQ, there is no such thing as a main stream media.  And if Fox News is going to use that term-they sure as hell better include themselves in the group because of their size. No, what Stewart points out is that we have a lazy media-that long ago abandoned the principles of detailed research and telling stories in context. There are a few exceptions of course-such as Kiplinger,  The Economist, NPR, and some of the smaller cable news outlets like Bloomberg. The rest-as Stewart points out- jumped in the slime pool looking for sensationalism. Edward R. Murrow would be disgusted with what he saw now at his old network, CBS-whose news division has become a slave to CBS corporate. Much as Fox News has become a slave to Rupert Murdoch and his lap dog Roger Ailes.

An added bonus is the way Stewart deflects Wallace’s criticism that he too has an agenda, pointing out a very big difference between him and Wallace: As a comedian he is supposed to have an agenda, and its a false equivelance to suggest that Fox and Comedy Central should be compared to each other.

As I watched the interview-I actually felt sorry for Wallace. He appears to be a reasonable man, who-however nice-appears to have willingly given himself to the service of the devil. And is not bashful about repeating the devil’s propaganda. Stewart takes Wallace to task for that:

If you see nothing else (after the 30-second embedded intro ad), watch the three and a half minutes starting around time 6:45. What is most striking is Wallace’s either feigned or genuine inability to grasp the main point Stewart is making, and making not once but about ten times. Stewart seems genuinely appalled by Wallace’s “moral equivalence” riff between Fox News and Comedy Central. “You think we’re the same?” Stewart says with real animus. And he goes on to lay out the difference between an operation whose goal is principally satirical, but from an ideological perspective, and one that is principally ideological and is satirical or comedic only as it helps toward that end.

The point is not really that difficult, and Stewart tries to illustrate it this way: “What am I, at my highest aspiration? Mark Twain? Or Edward R. Murrow?” Wallace correctly says “Twain” but seems not to register the larger point Stewart is making. Maybe that’s him; maybe it’s a for-the-team game face. (The same “can he believe what he’s saying?” issue comes up with Wallace’s insistence that he was shocked and offended to have to watch South Park and didn’t consider it funny.)

Watch too the claim that Stewart makes about Wallace being unable to understand a comedic satire- ” You can’t understand because of the world you live in….”. True for Wallace-and true for the Fox Nation, who have yet to grasp the the real world doesn’t work in black and white-or red and blue-just one big shade of grey.

This is really sad.

Any male of a certain age-who tells you he never drove his car fast with this song blaring out of the radio at about 90db-is lying. Clarence Clemons was the “power sax” player in Springsteen’s band and his sax playing makes this tune extraordinary.

Rest in Peace.

To watch this video. Conan O’Brien gave the commencement address at Dartmouth this year. It is a great speech-the last 4 minutes really spoke to me. Take the time to watch it. If you don’t have time-just pick it up at about the 14 minute mark or so.

““There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized.”

I can attest to that, eleven years ago it was true-and I think it will come true again this year too:

It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.It’s not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound reinvention. . .no specific job or career goal defines me, and it should not define you . . . Whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity; with clarity comes conviction and true originality. . .whatever you think your dream is now, it will change, and that’s okay.”

Watch for yourself:

And putting together a plan of sorts-in the short term at least, I could at least have a lot of fun riding the roller coaster to career oblivion.

Then again-maybe not:

Conor Friedersdorf has a good take down of America’s most worthless piece of shitsleaziest blogmeister:

There is some truth in Breitbart’s assessment: liberals do excel in the realm of culture, and conservatives too often convey their ideas less adeptly. But he hasn’t a clue how to remedy the situation — in fact, he exacerbates it. On his own Web sites, where he is free to reign as he likes, he doesn’t publish journalism of exceptional quality, like some feature stories you see in The Weekly Standard, or arguments of great sophistication, like the best of the essays in the Claremont Review of Books. He publishes aggrieved blog posts, many of them poorly reasoned, and the person he has most elevated is James O’Keefe, purveyor of low-budget ideological sting videos.

The temptation is to tell Breitbart, “Quit whining and produce something of quality, rather than incentivizing a whole generation of young conservatives to jet around the country trying to win news cycles, or convincing them that if they go into any cultural industry they’ll be persecuted.” [Italics mine]I’ve tried to tell him before. But he still doesn’t get it, and his remarks in the clip above illuminate his error. It’s telling, for example, that what he wants isn’t for conservative directors to produce their own It’s a Wonderful Life, or Cool Hand Luke, or The Graduate. What he wants is Avatar, a film that succeeded almost entirely due to its achievements in the technical realm, and whose plot was widely regarded as a hackneyed piece of simplistic borderline propaganda.

Friedersdorf understands what Breitbart doesn’t seem to-the problem, with the evil Mr. Brietbart, is not with the other media-its with Breitbart himself. He’s too fucking lazy to do any real work.

What Breitbart wants is more conservative creative professionals. But what’s needed to even the playing field in the arts is something different: creative professionals who happen to be conservative. Folks for whom excellence in their chosen field comes first and is their desired end. That is why Jon Stewart succeeds. He is a comedian first. Through his comedy, we get a window into his worldview, including his ideological preconceptions. They shape what he satirizes. Sometimes his comedy gives insufficient due to conservative insights. It would be nice for the right if there were a TV comedian as talented who bought into some right-leaning ideas. But if Andrew Breitbart launched a site called Big Comedy, he’d recruit based on ideology, house the comics in a business model where ideological agreement with the audience was vital, and pronounce it a success if it showed a profit, even if the jokes were awful.

That is what he’s done in the realm of journalism, seemingly blind to the fact that NPR is excellent largely because it employs folks who care a lot about producing exceptional work. Listen to the best public radio generally – This American Life, Planet Money, Radio Lab – and what you hear isn’t merely an impressive technical adeptness. The substantive quality is evident too, whatever one’s ideological predispositions. Sure, its mostly liberals producing these shows, but they’re mostly doing their utmost to follow their stories and ideas where they lead.

Connor also very distinctly tells us why this is so. Breitbart doesn’t care about the quality of what he does:

That is because in practice, Breitbart isn’t motivated by producing work of high quality in any field. He is an ideological warrior, someone who cares more about destroying ACORN, embarrassing the NAACP, and exploiting the sex scandals of Democratic politicians – all political projects – much more than building any journalistic or artistic institution of exceptional merit.

Which is his  privlege, I guess-if were not for the fact that he is taking other people over the cliff with him.

With living in Shopping Mall USA.

The last few days have been a pretty up and down  ride. First of all, it has reaffirmed my faith in my company-which may yet prove misguided, but for now I am sticking with them. I think I am going to land on my feet-despite all indications to the contrary.

But the other thing this week has taught me, rather regrettably, is how much I have come to terms with life here in Shopping Mall USA-home of incredibly fat women.

Now part of it is that our daily existence is quite comfortable. I work, she plants, and the garden grows. Not my idea of what the S.O. should be doing , but our house is always clean, I have clothes and a tie laid out each morning ( Wednesdays are “cartoon tie” days-but I ask no questions about that, just tie the double Windsorknot.), and there is food on the table each night. ( That I paid for). More importantly-thanks to her frugal ways-and the ones she taught me, we have saved a fair amount of money for the future. For all my complaining-all she has to do is smile at me-and and I fold like a cheap suit. I’m not sure why that is-all I know is I don’t like it a lot.

One of the things that burns at the back of my brain is that -for right now-we can pay our bills.  Without ever worrying about that. This on top of putting 20% of my salary in retirement or other savings. So I am not in a hurry to leave either of that.

Our house is nice-I like it-and its more than enough for me and her and my stuff. The drive to work is short and I deal with it well. If I were either a boater or a football fan ( college not pro) life would be fine.

Still it frustrates me-especially now that I am back on the job prowl. I find myself advocating anything that would bring me back to Asia-but also not so dissappointed when it doesn’t happen. I’d love for some one to show me how to attract an Asian foreign employer.

Till then I keep swimming around. Kind of strange isn’t it?

But it is what it is-and after a very sleepless night last night-I am OK.

Who would have thought the juicy girl bar owners  had their own lobby? More wives in Korea is the last thing they want or need:

Service members headed to South Korea on assignment in the next few years may not be taking their families.

A Senate subcommittee voted Tuesday to put on hold a so-called tour “normalization” program that would greatly expand the number of tours where dependents are authorized to accompany a service member at government expense.

Tour normalization has been a big morale issue, especially for people assigned to South Korea following a combat deployment that resulted in a long family separation.

Preparation for more accompanied tours requires an expansion of community facilities, which would be done as part of a larger rebasing program.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel voted Tuesday to delay construction projects in South Korea, Guam and elsewhere in Asia until the Defense Department provides a master basing plan, according to Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the panel’s chairwoman.

The freeze was part of the 2012 defense authorization bill prepared by McCaskill.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., said there may be more restrictions added to the bill later, when the full Armed Services Committee takes up the 2012 defense policy bill. Webb has been working with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Ill, the committee’s chairman, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the committee’s senior Republican, on an initiative that raises doubts about basing plans for South Korea, Guam and Japan, especially Okinawa.

 Filipinas gotta earn a living too!

Lots going on-lots of things to work through and consider. Six Sigma is kicking my beleaguered butt-it shouldn’t and if this were a regular weekly class it would be a lot worse. But I let some things slide ( funny how the prospect of unemployment does that)-and now its catch up time.

And unlike the rest of America it seems-I’ve got more important things on my mind than Anthony Weiner’s wang.

So if you will excuse me-I’ve got some worrying to do.

I think you have to be a real Star Trek fan (and be half in the bag) to really appreciate this:

Bill Maher points out that if you are at least going to have to go through the indignity of a sex scandal-maybe you ought to actually have sex: