By “C2E2″, I mean the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo. And by “appearing”, I mean moving boxes and things, because I’m volunteering to be an unpaid lackey for three days.

Not sure what I was thinking. I signed up four months ago when I was getting Scribs into swing and had some fanciful notion that I was going to get more involved in the comics community, but now I pretty much don’t care.

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This was funnier before it was true.

Depressing on two levels, actually. The near-reality of its topic, and the simulation of the one-sided non-argument argument that typically happens in our national media.

It’s like some twisted version of It’s a Wonderful Life, where the bank’s in trouble, so George Bailey gets everyone to kick in money to help Mr. Potter pay for his yearly $35,000 ball gown budget. Ah, crap, now that I reread that sentence, it’s not a twisted version of a movie, it’s pretty damn close to what we’re currently living.

ginandtacos.com » Blog Archive » A NATION OF WHINERS AFTER ALL

Could an author, one presumably raised by humans and not by wild bears, begin a serious, non-satirical story like this?

PRIVATE school: $32,000 a year per student. Mortgage: $96,000 a year. Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year. Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are 1/4″ into the column and already the premise is irrevocably fucked.

It’s just a bad day to be paying attention.

Wildfires in California are, of course, because of teh gay. Wonder where these guys are when, for example, Hurricane Gustav hits at the same time as the Republican convention.

Lieberman’s everyone’s best chum again. It’s actually this chain of events that made me get irritated in the comments of my last post. The Democrat personality type tends to be more reasonable and accepting, but you have to have the fortitude to say when someone’s wrong. Lieberman should be kicked the hell off whatever he thinks is important, and I don’t know why they continue to coddle this buffoon. Well, I have a guess: it’s because the Senate Democrats think “play nice” is more important than “do what’s right”.

And I can’t even read Glenn Greenwald recently, it’s just too depressing.

I am pretty sure Obama is going to disappoint me. This is the best time we’ve had in decades to push for universal health care, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s going to happen. We’re just going to be further locked into depending on employers, which further deepens the leverage corporations have over their workers. And Lieberman saying that Obama’s support was crucial, that just further gives me an idea of how things are going to go. I was hoping that all the idiots saying “Obama must act from the center, not the left” would not have an effect on him, but given he’s probably inside the bubble now, it probably is.

Edit: though, on the other hand, here’s Greenwald today talking about the probable new attorney general, and there’s the news that Tom Daschle will be Secretary of Health and Human Services. And nice words from Rahm Emanuel on health care, though of course they’re just words. I dunno, tho, what Obama was saying during the debates — “we’ll make your premiums lower” — doesn’t sound like the scale of things Emanuel’s talking about. If it turns into the kind of thing where they said one thing during the election so as to not make waves, but actually have bigger plans — well, that’s kinda a typical politician underhanded move, but at least if it gets us an actual working health care system, I might not care so much.

So yeah, I’m fully with the argument that “he’s not even President yet, let’s see what happens.” But I’m not going to reflexively believe him just because he was elected, and I will admit I’m cynical on the activity of federal politicians. And the market forces involved, in the form of health care companies, drug companies, and the like — are massive and glacial.

You know how someone makes a cheesy remake of a childhood show or cartoon (I’m thinking the Grinch movie here), and someone says “they’re raping my childhood”?

Well, now, through the miracle of modern technology, your childhood memories can be pre-ruined for your convenience.

Scan-It Operation Checkpoint Toy XRay Machine

The players:

Boss Not Boss (BNB): Not my boss, but plays one on TV. My actual boss does something or another, but I rarely ever see him these days, so my co-worker got a kinda implicit, non-pay-increase promotion to tell us what to do. He’s a nice enough guy, but he frequently has a disconnect between what he is thinking and what he thinks he’s explaining, which makes information transfer a tricky and unreliable process. This extra sucks when it comes from the guy who’s telling you what needs to be done.

The UK guys: our company is owned by a company in the UK, and despite the fact that we are their largest, most profitable company, they tend to forget we exist. A year or two ago, we took their treatment of us and turned it into paranoia: most of the people in my group were convinced that the UK was taking on all our work in preparation for calling our jobs redundant. After two years of not being laid off, though, we’ve settled into a sort of dull acceptance that they just don’t care about us a whole lot, and we pick up the dregs of whatever mind-numbing work they don’t feel like dealing with.

Each of those items is worth a story in itself, but nevermind for now. That’s the setup for last week:

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Exhibit A: I’m telling you this.

Work is “teh sukc”, as the kids say. The whole week’s been a reminder of how little they regard me and how little they need me. There were times in my job here where I said “if I left, it’d be a real problem for them,” but not now. I’m pretty sure they’d barely notice, as far as work scheduling goes. I’m a problem solver by nature, and work’s just giving me nothing. And even my fallback position, “invent projects for myself and improve things on my own,” is getting nowhere, because each time I try to get something done I get resistance from other people, and I have no authority to actually tell people to do things. So I’m feeling pretty goddamn useless right about now.

So, blah, I’m now in a position where I’m wholly working for the money, which I used to say I wouldn’t do, but here I am. And the way I feel now, I have no interest or ability to try to explain to someone else (e.g., interviewer) why I’m worth hiring, so I’m pretty much stuck. And it’s dragging me down something awful.

But, aside from wallowing, I wanted to post about this because I’ve learned something over the years that may help others who got depression. When I mentioned it to my therapist, she took a note to pass it on to other people, so I figure maybe I thought up something good.

Anyway, it’s this: don’t let depression depress you. I used to feel bad about being depressed, or I’d figure there’s more going on that’s making me depressed that I don’t even know about and go looking for other things that could be wrong (and usually make things worse), or feel generally inferior for being depressed. Or I’d realize I wasn’t doing anything to improve my situation, and “if you’re so depressed, why don’t you do something to fix it?” but I’m just in no state to do so, but given I’m generally a troubleshooter I’d feel like a failure for not fixing my problem. Which would be additionally depressing.

But now, I mean—I really feel like shit. My limbs are weak, I don’t even feel like sitting up, I honestly wanna find a dark corner and curl up on the floor. But at the same time, I’m like, so the fuck what. It’s just a mood, it’ll pass. No, I’m not being productive about myself right now, but screw it, I’m just not in a mood to do it. Eventually, my core goofiness will kick back in and I’ll work something out and be fine, but for now, I just gotta accept it and ride it out.

At that point, depression gets relegated to the level of, say, you wake up and your knee really hurts. You limp around for the whole day, and it’s painful and annoying and makes everything you do more difficult, but eventually it’ll pass and you’ll be fine. That’s kind of how I approach my depression these days: I woke up with a hurt in my brain, but I know that in a couple days it’ll smooth out. Even when I’m in the depths of my grandest mope, coming to understand this has provided me some real perspective and comfort.

Years ago, I worked in tech support for a large government facility. Joe, one of my co-workers–college age, libertarian, unhappy with the way things were run–had reached his breaking point with HR not letting him work at home. Pregnant women/recent mothers were allowed to work from home, though not officially. He spent a lot of time trying to convince them that it was unfair, but got nowhere. His tolerance gone, he decided to make a point about it.

He made this point by sending e-mail to the facility’s “Everyone” mailing list. These days, if you’re a corporate employee, you already see the problem. But this was, oh, maybe 1994 or 1995, the early days of modern corporate e-mail, so it wasn’t understood that this was an easy way to make a mess of the e-mail system. But that’s fine, pass that part over, because here’s the kicker: he started the mail with something like, “there’s something bothering me, and I have to get it off my chest or I’m going to go postal.”

That certainly got everyone’s attention. In tech support, we all got the mail, read it, and said to ourselves, “ah geez Joe, what are you doing now.” We knew him; we knew he wasn’t seriously contemplating picking up a gun and shooting random employees; in fact the phrase “go postal” did not even register with any of us as a problem. We had a sorta “ah, crud, people on the network are going to complain about this useless email” reaction. Joe wasn’t in our building at the time, so we couldn’t go to his desk and tell him not to be an idiot with the mailing lists, but for my part, I read it and processed it and forgot about it.

So we were sort of surprised to learn later that Joe had been escorted off the facility in handcuffs while people determined what kind of threat he presented. I couldn’t imagine why, until I heard from people in other buildings that the “going postal” references actually scared a lot of people, to the point they were too anxious to leave their offices until the threat was resolved. They had no idea who this Joe guy was or what the hell he was talking about, but they sure saw that he was thinking about going postal.

I mention all this because I’m trying to use my first “eh, so what” reaction to Joe’s e-mail, and the pointless panic that ensued, as a guide to understanding how Boston could’ve gone so apeshit insane over a couple cartoon Lite Brites.

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Today I am waging battle with my pride. It’s putting up a hell of a fight.

I’d give you details, but I’m not the kind of idiot who gives specifics about his job in a blog. Just mentally put “dear diary” at the front of this and some frowny face dots over some I’s and that’d probably make the context more appropriate.

I’m getting used to the indignities of my job. Mostly. I used to be worse on this point, but I’m getting around to convincing myself it’s just a required and natural part of corporate employment.