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Tuesday, September 25. 2007
The Pack
It’s Tuesday and as usual, there’s really nothing to write about, or nothing that comes to mind. The Packers won in typical nail-biting fashion. They need a ground game — like this week! But you gotta love the way the Packer D shut down LaDanian Tomlinson, although every team the Chargers have played so far this year (New England last week and Chicago to open the season) have kept Tomlinson under wraps. Am I the only one mystified by the Chargers’ choice of Norv Turner to replace Marty Schottenheimer?
Our Man Brett (Favre, for those who can’t guess) tied Dan Marino for most career touch down passes — 420 — and we can guess next week Brett breaks the record. Donald Driver is back in top form, Brett needs him, the team needs him ... Greg Jennings probably had the sweetest TD catch — the sweetest play — of the game. But the Packers need a running game, especially now. Next Sunday it’s the Minnesota Vikings and whatever the records, whatever personnel, it’s a division game between two long time rival.
Hard to determine who is more hated, Da Bears or Da Vikings …
The Chargers, on the other hand, just ain’t getting it done. I might start telling my fellow San Diegans I’m a Raiders fan. Say that in the right drinking establishment and the fun could ensue! Not that I would start any brouhaha; I’m an adult now and don’t do things like that anymore.
Saturday the Badgers beat conference rival Iowa, so the Badgers are also unbeaten so far this season. Despite the 4-0 record, Wisconsin remains at #9 in the polls. They play Michigan State next Saturday at Camp Randall. Hopefully it will be on TV. So my weekend was pretty triumphant — in a detached, uninvolved sort of way. Why would anyone get excited — or depressed — over the outcome of a football game? Or any other sport that requires one to do nothing more than park your ass on the couch, eat chips and suck down the beverages of your choice?
It’s a diversion from the reality going on around us. If you’re a Wisconsin National Guardsman serving in Iraq, the win-loss record of the Badgers and the Packers becomes one of the too few lifelines to life away from the violence and bloodshed surrounding you 24 hours a day, seven days per week. Your sports team — sports in general — have given the members of the armed forces that one enduring link to the home front. Everyone in the platoon can gather around the TV to watch the Badgers-Spartans game, or whatever games AFTV is showing that day, and share a moment away from the reality id IED’s and roads littered with the dead.
Not just service men and women serving in war zones use sports as a diversion from reality. People here too who are living a Dickensian life, struggling to live from paycheck-to-paycheck find some relief from the drama of life by watching and getting into the drama of sports.Been out looking for a job lately? Logged on to Monster, hoping the job site can find you the perfect job, or at least a job that doesn’t suck? My Monster account is always filled with temp agencies. As a person trying to make my way in the self-employed field — with absolutely no knowledge of how to do it — getting a job to fill in the financial gaps can be a journey at least. If you’re over 40, the chances of landing a job diminish greatly.
Earlier in the year my nephew, who was living in San Diego at the time, found himself without employment. I looked at him with a bit of scorn when he said he couldn’t find a job. It didn’t seem possible. He’s 22, able-bodied and can actually do heavy labor.
But then, when my short term as a manager of a rock band came to an end, the reality of the job search became clear: jobs are in short supply and there always seems to be someone better qualified or better suited to the job. What am I doing to fill in the gaps? Won’t even mention it.
Besides being over 40, I have severe health issues; most notably a heart with about 25% of it that doesn’t work anymore and is enlarged. Consequently, any heavy labor is out of the question. That pretty much limits the options to office work: secretary, customer service, technical support or the dreaded telemarketing.
You think telemarketers enjoy their jobs? Not in a million years. I once worked at a place part-time in the mornings and one of the telemarketers was a dancer at a local gentleman’s club. After a month, she gave it up and just put in a few more hours a week dancing around the pole. She actually put in fewer hours dancing and made more than if she had stayed at the telemarketing job.
Just to check up on how she was doing, I stopped in at her dancing job to see her. Honest, there was no prurient interest whatsoever!
Wish I was 25 years younger and a sexy woman like Patrycja Mikula. I’d be a dancer. Isn’t that just like men; we get sexually entertained at a night club and see the women collect 50, 60 sometimes 100 dollars per dance session and we think, “What a great job!” We never think about this reality of being a “stripper”: if I were a young, attractive, 20-something woman would I want to give a schlub like me a lap dance at any price? Well, maybe. I’m a pretty nice guy and being respectful carries a little gravitas with anyone. But you get the point. Most — if not all — men think, “She’s giving me a lap dance! How much for a blow job in the parking lot!” It goes through our minds and there are those men who will not only ask the question, but insist the women do it because the common “opinion” most people hold of dancers is, they are sluts and whores and will do anything with their bodies to make a buck.
People have the same “opinion” of women who model nude. And that is for the most part not true. No doubt we can find dancers and adult models who will do anything to make a buck, but the majority of dancers and models do what they do — and just what they do — for a living and have no inclination to move into prostitution. It’s our ugly social attitudes that puts that onus on these women. Which is why I prefer to call them dancers and models. The word “strippers” has such negative connotations.
Patrycja Mikula, by the way, is a Playboy model; Cyber Girl of the Month for July of this year. She’s gonna be on the Jerry Springer Show Wednesday. Her boyfriend, Andrei Arlovski, is a UFC fighter and is a guest security man on the show that day.
So, a public apology to my nephew. Finding a J-O-B is hard. And the employers have attitudes. They can get tax breaks for outsourcing their jobs to India, China, etc so why would they really worry about you, the employee? Just over two years ago I was fired from a nice job with a local cable company. The reason? Absenteeism. What were my lost days of work due to? My health issues. When I was getting shuffled out the door by my supervisor and the human resources director, they both acknowledged the missed days were due to my heart attack while on the job—yep, in January of 2005 I had my second MI while at work.
The issues of how the doctors and health insurance company—the HMO—handled that little situation would make you faint. I didn’t find out it was a heart attack until five months later when I saw my Nurse Practitioner at the V.A. “You had a heart attack in January,” she said. Really??!!?? No one told me! Not at the hospital emergency room, not the cardiologist or my primary care physician. This is a topic for a different blog, but yes, I sought legal recourse and I’ll never forget what one lawyer told me: “If you were a woman or a minority, we’d take the case.”
So, the job market sucks and the economists say it will only get worse. Alan Greenspan said just last week the indicators were very similar to those that precipitated Black Monday in 1987 — that’s Monday, October 19 when the Dow Jones took a huge crash. And we’re spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq.
Just read a few articles from publications like The Economist and it’s their studied opinion the housing market crash will wreak havoc on those looking for a job. Oh, and those of you with a job. And you thought it was all the fault of those pesky illegal aliens sneaking across the border.
So, watching my Green Bay Packers win their third game of the season, their 7th in a row is really important to me. There’s something to cheer about. My happiness, my sanity, now rests completely on the shoulders of the Packers, the Badgers and the Milwaukee Brewers. Them damn Brewers! Three games behind the damn Cubs! Jeez, they better make the effin’ playoffs or else I’ll be a Padres fan! Naaah, life’s tough enough as it is.
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