There is no great book or music store to speak of.  We have the very quaint Paragraphs bookstore downtown, and there is the Kenyon College bookstore in nearby Gambier, but both of them lack the kind of massive, reeking edifice quality that the big B&N or Borders stores offer… an inviting atmosphere where you can sit and peruse books, enjoy a decent cup of coffee, and relax.  Both of our local outlets are a little more clinical (Kenyon) or too small (Paragraphs).  While the essential work of buying a book is satisfied by the stock at the store itself or the vast ordering capabilities of the Internet, it’s just not the kind of experience I crave.

I’ve already blogged about music sales in this town, but it’s worth mentioning again.  There is nowhere within 40 miles to buy music other than Wal Mart.  Wal Mart often sells edited versions of records I want to buy.  Yes, because some of the music I want contains profanity, or songs about drug use, or murder, or not liking Wal Mart.  Avril Lavigne, a cute little slice of Americana; James Blunt, the Irish drug-toking pop singer with the nasal-y voice; and many other, all edited.  Mainly this is because the radio songs have been edited, and we don’t want our kids going to the store and buying a record where their favorite, FCC white-washed songs include the words that they themselves say everyday…  Makes me angry.  Yes, I could just order music over the internet, download it from iTunes, etc, but I actually like the experience of purchasing a physical object that I can enjoy very soon after in my car or at home, and not have to wait.  It also stimulates the local economy and adds to the sales tax revenue of the community.

Yes, I argue for paying more taxes.  Shoot me.

Small-minded racism and classism is kind of endemic here.  As I have pointed out religiously, the status quo rules here.  It is a town of white people, overwhelmingly Christian, and set in their ways.  This homogeneous character lends itself to predictability, an under-riding sense of social responsibility, and at least a somewhat positive disdain of laziness, but it also breeds fear, intolerance, and simple foot-in-mouth syndrome.  A young friend of my wife’s little brother recently made an offhandedly racist comment without even realizing it.  He is a teenager, and his political and social views are not totally developed (more a carbon-copy of his father’s Rush Limbaugh Republicanism that doesn’t really breed the kind of balanced discourse, open investigation and criticism that I prefer in educated life), but the simplicity of his statements were kind of shocking.  My boss, at the bakery, who claims he is not a racist, has that same in-bred quality that my father has, where disdain of the black stereotype is the standard, and to bandy about the terminology is natural but sometimes shameful.  “I don’t hate black people, but… they should get off their asses and get jobs!”

It’s a generalization that the small person cannot see, because of their smallness.  They refuse to understand the larger picture, the history and economics behind the social situation we have now.  They want to dismiss 400 years of American political and economic history, declare the victory of the civil rights movement (because, of course, that’s great and they’re not racists), and say that everyone is equal now–go get a job.  I know it’s not that easy.  Despite the current economic state of being, it is not as easy for a black person to get a job as a white guy, like me.  The ingrained racist tendencies manifest in more places than the baker or my father would admit.  They’ll hire the black kid to work in the shop, and his nickname will become “Black Matt” to differentiate him from “Fat Matt,” who is white.  The owner of the shop will tell racist jokes and make comments at lunchtime.  “Did you hear that in Cleveland, 80% of the crime is black on black?… So, to help them out, we sent a truckload of guns, grenades, and knives and handed them out for free.”  Would you keep working there?  Nah.  Me neither.

There’s more, but those are some of the endemic problems I see every day.  One of them is a selfish, quality of life issue, but one that would improve the lot of everyone around, and the other is a general problem that isn’t just small-town provincialism, but a deeper problem in the white American psyche.  I’ll talk more on that one later.

Palladium Books represents a weird middle class of gaming, having grown up with licenses for Robotech and TMNT role-playing games, and then creating its own brand, revolving around the most famous title, RIFTS.  In the early 1990’s, it was a pretty innovative game, a mash-up of fantasy and sci-fi in a far-flung, post-apocalyptic Earth.  My friends and I played it quite a bit through high school, but it was a clunky system and any decision to go back to it was met with some trepidation.  “How long is this fight going to last?  I have a date tomorrow.”

While D&D and White Wolf have undergone some high-profile makeovers in the last few years, and D&D getting ready for its FOURTH edition, if you don’t count the intermediate 3.1, 3.5, etc, but Palladium has remained relatively stable… or stagnant.  It seems to putter along with roughly the same stable of writers and artists, bashing out a few books every year and continuing to put out a sizable sourcebook/magazine every month or so, called The Rifter.  I guess they’re filling a niche and managing to make money doing it, so more power to them.

I popped back over to their site tonight, partly out of curiosity, and their site is still pretty much exactly the same as it always was.  Same logo.  They’ve even done some creative triage with photoshop to make it look decent on a white background.  It’s not bad, but for me, it’s a little embarrassing.  I think I’m going to call them this week and see if they want some help.  It’s not going to be an easy project, since they have a store, a forum, and heaps of old press releases.  I guess, if I have to, the company is in Michigan, so I can drive up there and see them, if this gets serious.  Wish me luck, tolerance, and good will.

I used to think that work was the problem.  Too much work drained the well, and I’d need a few days off to recover, gain that inspiration back, and paint or create.  Now, I’m starting to think it’s not like that at all.  Having a daily purpose throws the rest of my life into perspective.  Knowing that at least 8 hours of my life is going to be eaten up by some mundane task makes me take greater advantage of the time I’m not working.  I might be failing at the Samuel Johnson ideal, instead I am someone who wants to work so that he can afford to do the other things he wants to.

This all came up when I was talking to a friend last night.  She’s a super go-getter, running herself ragged from 5AM to 11PM every day, just to suck up as much of life as she can.  She goes to the gym, to work, out with friends, out with more friends, gets some sushi, does some work from home, gets a late cocktail, and finally crashes out around midnight, almost every day.  She travels a lot, too.  She seems to think that NYC would be the ideal place to live and she says she’s looking for jobs there, too.

Since I’ve been unemployed, I’ve been kind of a lump.  I sit and stare at the internet job postings for a few hours every day, play some warcraft, idly peruse blogs, and sometimes try to study or learn something.  I’ve made a few improvements, in that I’m becoming a fine baker and all, but it’s really a small trophy for a year of sloth.  I’m looking forward to getting back to work, full time.  When I think about it, I start looking for my paintbrushes again.

Today, I have kind of petered out on studying and have just been getting things done around and outside the house.  I dropped the TV off for repairs, got a new lawnmower blade, bought some grillin’ supplies and a few other odds and ends.  When I’m not doing that, I’m sweating and filling out my federal security clearance forms.  Financial reporting always gets me down.  Ugh.

That’s it for now.  If you get a call from the feds, asking about me, tell them I’m Captain America.

Good afternoon,

You have been tentatively selected for an FCIP Adjudications Officer position, GS-1801-09, salary of $50,285.00 with the New York, NY Office (NYC).

Would you please reply to me by 06/02/08 with either your acceptance or declination of this position?

I talked to Carly about it for a bit, polled some of my friends, and decided I would, in fact, accept the appointment.  For several reasons:

1. I need a job.  I am in such desperate financial straits that it would be very stupid and careless of me not to accept a job offered to me.
2. This is a job that I would like to do.  It is in the legal field, it requires using that old brain of mine, and it is a new area of study for me to dive into.  I like to learn new things and this is going to be a great opportunity.
3. It is a good opportunity for building my resume, as a stepping stone to greater fed jobs and higher pay grades, and to gain much-needed experience in the law and government.
4. It pays rather well.  About $20k/year more than I’ve ever made, with lots of benefits and plenty of promotion potential.
5. It’s in New York City, the capital of the world.  I really love the City and I try to visit it every year, just to soak up some of the culture.  To live there for a year or so would fulfill one of my “do this before you die” dreams.

The bad parts of the job are obvious:  I would have to move to NYC, 500+ miles away from my wife.  It is only a two-year internship, and I would not be guaranteed a permanent position after that.  I would have to rent an apartment or room in the NYC area and buy stuff to sleep on, use as a desk, etc.  I don’t know a whole lot of people out there, except my sister and her family and a handful of other scattered people.  The cost of living is high, and the increase in pay is not as great as it would have been back home.

I counter all this with concessions.  I plan on returning home at least every other week, by plane or by car if necessary, to see my wife and puppies.  I’m setting up a VOIP system to talk to Carly for cheap whenever we want, and I’ll keep my life there very simple, with a very modest place to live and the absolute minimum of creature comforts to keep me sane.

I’ve known way too many people who have had to live the split life in order to get by.  Professors, legal professionals, all kinds of folks.  It’s mainly the highly educated sorts with specialized jobs who have to undergo this kind of stress.  Carly was lamenting it all weekend… we pay tens of thousands of dollars to get an education, to better ourselves, to meet the world on our own terms, and it’s still nearly impossible to succeed.  Student loans, bills, taxes, and now this?  We have to get jobs two states away to survive?  I feel the pain, the disappointment from her whenever I talk about the job.  She doesn’t want to hear about it and I don’t blame her.

But I can’t help but be excited.  A job!  In a cool city!  How could you not be exuberant?

Mr. Diroll,

You have been tentatively selected for the position of Adjudications Officer, GS-1801-09 in New York City, NY.  You were found qualified for this grade level based on your Juris Doctorate Degree.  In order for us to proceed with your selection, I will need for you to fax a copy of your transcripts showing that you are in receipt of this degree…

So I sent in my transcripts today.  I even convinced them that a PDF of the document would be fine.  I guess we’ll see where it ends up.

The federal job I applied for has been abolished.  They have simply done away with the title, and created another position, which is the exact same job, with a different name.  I have to re-apply for this job.

I’m kind of pissed.

B-b-biz mar…

I’m the drunk dance rocka
that don’t drink vodka
Never sang a song
called “Frere Jacques”
Rap-rhyme schoola
Pole Position Rula
In seventh grade I had a teacha
named Mr. Doola

I’m very unique
and you will agree-a
One in a million
like Mohammed and Aaliyah
An over-acheiva
Have more stunts than Carl Seaver

Ain’t no other like
B-I-Z M-A-R-K-I wit’ da E
Hank at the rucka
Glad I’m a huma-drucka
Wouldn’t trade the Beastie Boys
cause I’m no sucka
I’ll be bouncing like a ball
when I say ‘yes, y’all’
if you don’t rock with me
you don’t rock at all
So check me out
wit’ out no doubt

I guarantee the rock to turn the party out

Gonna do right, gonna do right

I’m on
like popcorn
Like a Saturday night
at the Auto Barn
Listen to the brotha
ain’t no other can mess
with the man with the plan
with the most finesse

I make you scream
and I make you dance
I guarantee to rock the mic
and put you all in a trance

So listen to the brother
ain’t no other can stutter or
utter or mutter and rock
like M.C. Butter
The man to do the-uh
one-two or, the
ha ha haha ha
I rock with you

So listen to me
cause I’m the original
B-I-Z to the M to the A to the R to the K-I-E
BOOSH

Now, someone who isn’t getting a break from the TV is a fellow named Marc Dann.  He’s the Attorney General of Ohio.  He was elected over Betty Montgomery, a career politician who has held just about every state office you can hold and still be a dullard.  She’s been in office for ages, and I think it’s time for her to get a real job.  But I digress.  Mr. Dann immediately established himself as a defender of consumer rights, cracking down on mortgage companies and strictly enforcing a number of laws that have been kind of squishy on the books for a while.  He should have turned out as a great AG.  Unfortunately, like many politicians, he can’t keep his libido to himself.

In the last few weeks, a number of his underlings have been fired over an office sexual harassment case, wherein it was discovered that Dann was present at, or at least aware of, both listed events.  Then it comes out that he’s been having an extra-marital affair with another underling.  The Ohio Dems are pretty much calling for his head at this point, and the governor has said that if Dann doesn’t step down, he’ll endorse impeachment proceedings.  Did I mention that Dann is a democrat, as well?

It’s disconcerting because here’s another apparent example of a guy who gets into a position of power and can’t help but abuse it.  Just a little.   Eliot Spitzer was the reason I went to law school.  Now, he’s kind of a footnote in history, an adulterer and liar.  Dann didn’t personally do anything illegal (that we know of), but he’s failed in the Clark Kent persona we require of our politicians these days, and he failed spectacularly.  Adultery isn’t that bad a thing, in most people’s estimation, but it does smack of dishonesty.  He had to be hiding it from his wife, right?  Does that mean he has the traits of a person who hides important facts?  What else is he hiding?

In the legal profession, he could be disbarred for that.  Dishonesty, even legal dishonesty such as cheating at games of solitaire, can be a grounds for disbarment.  Lawyers have a lot of power in society, and we police ourselves.  If a guy is a habitual liar, constantly telling stories about how he met several famous celebrities in bars in Italy, he is at risk of being blackballed by the legal profession.  We just don’t want to take the risk of the general public having actual proof that lawyers are liars.  Lawyers should know better.  We’re trained to seek truth, to tear apart arguments, to evaluate statements.  We are supposed to be good at getting to the bottom of things.  So why do so many of these men delude themselves and play fast and loose with the rules?

Marc Dann may be right, and he may have done nothing to impugn his ability to act as AG, but I don’t know if I trust him.  I don’t know if anyone should.

Here’s something that kind of drives me up the wall, and it shows how stupid politicians and the media think we are: Clinton’s plan to fund a tax holiday is to penalize the oil companies that are reaping record profits.  This was in response, I think, to Shell reporting something like $8 billion in profits last quarter.  It’s a bewildering number.  I don’t think anyone can really wrap their brains around what eight billion of anything is.  It’s just a huge number.  It is so big that we only really measure money with it.  I couldn’t find an instance of eight billion anythings on Google (except bushels of grain over several years) except dollars.  Google even thought I was looking for millions instead of billions of ‘pieces’ because it’s just too big.

So here’s the problem:  oil companies appear to be making ridiculous amounts of money off of us poor, working people who dump half our paychecks into our gas tanks.  Hillary Clinton says, let’s take some of that money and give it back to the people!  It’s a bad idea and here’s why:

First off, despite Google not believing me when I asked, $8 billion is not that much, when you consider the context.  Dutch Royal Shell of America has operating capital of around $114 billion per fiscal quarter.  It just costs that much to run the business.  It reported $8 billion in profits, which is about 7%.  For any company in the world, that’s a decent return.  In fact, most multinational corporations make between 6-10% profits every quarter.  If you’re not doing that, it’s time to merge and fire all the middle management.  In the words of the Shell CEO on CNN last week, “no other industry would be criticized for 7% profits.”

Second, penalizing the oil companies would not necessarily limit the cost of gasoline.  Corporations have a duty of loyalty and care to their shareholders’ bottom line, meaning… they have to make up that money somewhere.  Let’s say a gas tax holiday would drop the price of fuel a solid $0.15 from it’s current $3.61/gallon for three months (one fiscal quarter).  According to some simple math, the United States was consuming approximately 400 million gallons of gas per day.  That would cost the oil industry a total of about $5.4 billion.  Why, that’s not even the total profits from one company’s quarterly profit!  Surely they can afford to subsidize that?

Well, no.  I mean, yes–they can afford to do it, but it’s not their responsibility.  Our culture has dedicated itself to the free market economy, and in order for it to work we really do have to let it work its own way out.  If the government is going to tell these companies what they can and cannot charge for fuel, they start to tamper with the way the market works.  Oil companies are no longer free to spend their profits how they wish, will not be able to invest in new markets or research at the same rate, will likely not hire new people or increase the wages of any of its workers.  If the US government steps in and controls their profit making ability once, it may happen again.  Investors will start to pull their resources from these companies and will destabilize the entire economy worse than it is now.  It’ll be the end of the world.

The oil companies aren’t that stupid, though… they’ll just raise their prices to offset the cost of the penalty.  After all, they have a duty to their investors…

That argument seems a little flamboyant, but it’s true.  If our government were to start micro-managing the economy in such a way, it would undermine the entire system and smack of socialism.  And I don’t mean the happy socialism that exists in Sweden, I mean the bad, nasty socialism where there’s no toilet paper anymore.

McCain should stand for lowering taxes, but his plan is flawed because that’s a lot of money the government needs to operate, fix roads, pay border patrol, and so on.  Clinton’s plan is flawed because it is either ineffective or highly dangerous.  Obama says that no tax holiday is a good one, “there are better ways to cut fuel consumption and control the price of gas.”

Fiscally, this should be eye-opening for critics of Obama, as his policy is rather extremely fiscally conservative: Let the market sort it out.  If we want to control the price of gas, the government can encourage people to buy more efficient cars and offer grants for researching and developing alternative fuels.  We can let the dinosaur industry maintain itself, and when it becomes a totally useless hulk, the market will abandon it for a better idea.  In the meantime, let the evil oil companies have their profits, and if they’re smart they’ll spend some of it designing efficient batteries for electric vehicles, developing air, water, and geothermal power, and raising their workers’ wages (so they can afford to drive to work).

So, don’t be misled by the big numbers.  Change your perspective and think about it in context.  It is only seven percent.