What is so hard about saying, "I'm sorry"...

It's a really strange situation I'm in, at work...

I need a new job REALLY BAD...

I am surrounded by a bunch of young, irresponsible, bullying dumbasses much of the time...

It's not just that they don't think nearly enough...

Much more of the time...it's that they don't ever seem to be able to take responsibility for anything...

I've got two leads I'm working with, right now, who have been OBNOXIOUS...and neither of them can be responsible for it...

And I've now been effectively muzzled to say anything about it...any conflict, at this point, is being blamed on me...so I just don't have them anymore...biding my time for a new job...

And...in the meantime...the last thing I had conflict with someone about -- what an asshole one of our leads was -- stays in place...whether folks want to face that or not...and now there's no effective challenge for them to get better...just more and I'm sure worse of the same...

It's kind of pathetic, really...

It's amazing the difference between an environment where people strive for excellence -- where this is far from the norm, obviously, for anyone who's ever been a part of those organizations --- and an environment where everyone is just trying to hold onto a job...I've resisted that impulse up till now...but noone is sharing the burden of the risks it takes to change these things...

So I resign myself to a pretty fucked-up, dysfunctional situation that I'm just trying to escape, now...and not trying to change, anymore...

And all my co-workers get to live with the consequences of that after I'm gone...

Congratulations to everyone who helped make that happen:):):)...

Dumbasses:):):)...

Denial is an awfully powerful coping mechanism isn't it?...

Just a dysfunctional one, long term...

I've got to try to get some sleep before the brilliance that is garage doors, tonight:):):)...

Have a great day, everyone:):):)...

Love,
Ben

The morality of rules...

Alan Schwarz at the New York Times does an excellent piece on Baseball and steroids...

Trying to keep records pure could prove to be futile...

His interview of members of the records committee of the Society for American Baseball Research yields this very important bit of wisdom...

"Players have always broken rules, the experts said. Using steroids may also be a violation of federal law, but it was quickly noted that Babe Ruth was not exactly sober for all 637 of the home runs he hit during Prohibition.

'A record's a record," David Vincent said during the meeting. "A number doesn't have any moral value. People do.'

Very nicely put...this "scandal" should be a dead issue, by now...Congress will look to the history books like the group of sissyfoots that those who amended the Constitution to outlaw alcohol rightly do in all of our imaginations post-Prohibition...

Their problem, at the turn of the 21st century, as was the problem of teetotalers around the turn of the 20th century...is lack of perspective...on what issues are really problems...and what attempts to solve problems just complicate and compound a problem, further...

The drug war is a dead solution to an issue that needs our concern...not warfare...

The steroid scandal, from the beginning, has been all about rationalizing the failures and the counterproductiveness of the drug war...and about moralizing, under the guise of rules...

And the jig is up...

Time to move on...to a more constructive and compassionate American future:):):)...

Love,
Ben