Disarray on the Workfront

October is my crunch month, the busy month at my place of employment, when we have concurrent fundraisers so we can keep the doors open the rest of the year. Last week, I submitted a draft of a schedule for the month, but it still hasn't been approved my management. For some reason, the Powers that Be have decided to limit the part-timers to a cap of nine-hundred hours for the year. I have four part-timers in my department, so I can foresee some bad decisions being made for us, decisions which will negatively impact our functioning. So far, I have had to cover two sites for two nights in a row due to staffing limits.

I spoke to my immediate supervisor about this, and he is trying to make things work within the parameters set by the mucky-mucks. He's a good guy, but this is his first Fall with the organization, so he is still learning the ropes and feeling his way through management. His suggestion was 'calling a meeting' for everyone in my department (he himself is juggling several departments), but I think that tomorrow I will try to get him to commit to a certain amount of hours per employee so I can coordinate with everyone in order to allocate shifts. Personally, I only need two days off this month (both SSC nights), and have already joked about setting up a cot onsite somewhere.

Needless to say, morale is bad. Even our contractors are picking up on this- I had a long conversation with one guy I have know for years and mentioned a grumpy vibe. To compound matters, one employee who was universally beloved by the rank-and-file, including myself, was fired for snapping at a vendor when said vendor broke a piece of equipment that was crucial to his job. Even worse, one of our contractors wanted to hire him, but was told that that would be unacceptable under any circumstances.

So... the 'spider sense' is tingling, telling me that the coming month is going to be an unpleasant slog. I am probably going to have to pull an ad hoc schedule out of my ass, and justify my decisions after the fact. The way I see it, I have to be willing to force the staffing issue in the face of institutional paralysis. I've been with the organization for over ten years now, and I feel that I have a reputation for level-headedness and a sincere, though not sycophantic, dedication to the organization. To paraphrase 1980s-era local band Dancing Hoods, I've got a reputation and it's giving me the hoops of fire:





I must jump through, when I've got a reputation, you know.

Hef Dead

In the world of celebrity, if being able to go by one name means success, what is being able to go by one syllable? At any rate, 'Hef' has died at the ripe age of ninety-one. I think it'll take a while to process exactly what his overall effect on society was. My favorite snarky assessment, which I can't seem to find on the t00bz, of his career is that 'he brought masturbation out of the bathroom and put it in the newsstands.

Obviously, Hugh Hefner didn't invent pornography, but he did 'class it up' by placing it tastefully in a magazine featuring articles and fiction by a host of luminaries. Hell, I bought an issue of Playboy six years ago for an article about narcotrafficking. In an interview I recently heard on the radio, the impetus behind Playboy was repackaging men's lifestyle magazines, which generally focused on hunting, fishing, and fighting off inexplicably hostile animals for the urban sophisticate. Hefner himself held a lot of progressive views, even putting up $25K for a reward for information leading to the arrest of killers of slain civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.

Despite Hefner's progressive bona fides, there's still the nagging feeling that his fortune was based on the exploitation of young women. Was Playboy's depiction of women in various states of undress liberating or demeaning, or both or neither? The prudes of the time sure got their dander up, but did women benefit? Hefner obviously was a product of his time, a time during which sexism was rampant, but was the freedom he offered really a liberation? I don't describe myself as a feminist, because I feel that it's a label that has to be bestowed by others, and I honestly don't have a good handle on how erotica should be considered (for instance, a friend of mine who is an alternative model told me that she got over her body dysmorphia by posing without clothes- sorry folks, no pics!). I will defer to my great-and-good friend Vacuumslayer to explore the less savory aspects of Hef's legacy. I agree with her that Hefner, who seemed to have been prematurely weaned, pushed an airbrushed image of pulchritude which is unrealistic and unhealthy and has fed into a Beauty Industrial Complex. Personally, though, while I can see how someone could derive benefits from posing nude, I can't imagine that any of you would be happy to discover naked pictures of your mother:





At any rate, I can't help but feel that Hugh Hefner remained in the public eye about forty years too long- after his heyday of the 1960s, he seemed to devolve into a parody of himself, ending up as an elderly cartoon lecher canoodling with girls young enough to be his granddaughters... not that I'm knocking it. I can't say that I, like the vast majority of straight men, have never had an occasional fantasy about such a life, but few of us have that combination of wealth and arrested adolescence that we attempt to live such a life, and most of us recognize the sleaziness of the fantasy.

Yeah, Hefner was a complicated fellow, and his legacy is pretty hard to unravel- I'm having a hard time even sorting out my attitude toward the guy. That being said, I can't help that our current president fancies himself a 'playboy' in the model of Hefner, but lacking any of the redeeming qualitites.

9/11 Was an Inside the Butt Job

Republicans sure know how to pick candidates, with the GOP voters of Alabama picking Roy Moore as their candidate for an upcoming special election to fill Jeff Sessions' former Senate seat. Moore is a religious fundamentalist who, among other things, recently blamed the 9/11 attacks on, among other things, 'legitimizing sodomy'. Weird how much he sounds like the senior members of Al Qaeda, blaming the victims of religious fanaticism for incurring the wrath of God... fundamentalists are fundaments, to a man.

Basically, Roy Moore was blaming 9/11 on buttsex, but he's wrong- lube doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel beams!

On a serious note, how the hell did our nation, founded on secular Enlightenment principles, come to this?

Banning Chad?

Like most people who follow current events, I am puzzled over the addition of Chad to Trump's new travel ban. Chad has been an ally of the United States in the fight against radical fundamentalist Islamist (the GOP's magic words!) terrorism. Chad is particularly helpful in the fight against Boko Haram. My brother Vincenzo, who was with the US Army's Africa Command, liaised with the militaries of Chad and Mali to a great degree (he'd jokingly refer to himself as 'Vinnie of the Sahel' those days).

Part of me wonders if Trump had a high school rival named Chad, the sort of perfect specimen that the MRA/incel types hate. Trump is the sort to never forget a grudge, maybe he's got the country conflated with some guy he hasn't seen in decades.

Remember this Handsome Fellow?

Some years ago, I posted about a magnificent black cat which sometimes hangs out at my principal workplace. His status was pretty ambiguous, he was un-neutered and bore no collar of any sort, but his glossy pelt and overall healthy, well-fed condition suggested that he was not a stray. He shows up from time-to-time onsite, but yesterday he was hanging out outside of our visitors' center, receiving adulation from an adoring public, including myself:

He's even more well-fed than before, has been altered, bears some flecks of gray in his beautiful coat, and bears a flea-collar, but no identification tags of any sort. He is even friendlier than he previously was:

I still have no idea if he belongs to any particular neighbor, or if he's just the recipient of care from the neighborhood. Apparently, there is a local woman who cares for feral cats in the neighborhood. If his status were less ambiguous, I have no doubt that we'd grab him and put him on the payroll

Llorando Para Puerto Rico

Being a New Yorker, and one who worked in the South Bronx for fifteen years, off and on, I have an appreciation for Puerto Rican people and their culture. Being U.S. citizens, the Puerto Rican population of New York city, Nuyoricans, often have jobs as civil servants- cops, firefighters, state and local clerical workers. Puerto Ricans have a long history of serving in the US military- they are good people, good neighbors, and good Americans.

It's heartbreaking to see Puerto Rico devastated by hurricane Maria after having been hit by hurricane Irma just days before. To compound matters, the government of Puerto Rico has labored under a debt burden for too long with no relief in sight.

At least FEMA seems to be on the ground, though Trump has been spending his day picking fights with football players. Knowing the close relationship between New York and Puerto Rico, our governor Cuomo traveled to the stricken island with needed supplies and a cadre of aid workers. At least one of our local papers has been vociferous about Puerto Rico's need for aid.

I've been reading up on which charities to donate to, and I think I will choose Voices for Puerto Rico, as they don't have a 'faith-based' agenda.

Here's a video of Ponce, Puerto Rico-born Eddie Palmieri and his band playing a love song to the island:





To all of my Puerto Rican friends, tuvieron mal suerte, tiene que estarán fuerte... y no se olvidáramos.

Nibiru? Nah, Beer/Brew

Yet again, some idiot is claiming that a 'hidden planet' called Nibiru is going to crash into Earth today, killing us all. Meh, we've seen these idiots claim that the world is going to end time-and-time again. Nibiru, my ass... if a friggin' planet were on a collision course with Earth, it would be visible to the naked eye by now.

At any rate, this is a shitty day for an apocalypse, because it's the day of the local street festival, and I plan on going on a twelve-hour bender. October is a hell of a month on the job, so I figured I'd binge on craic (this elicited a hearty laugh from a co-worker of mine) before going on a long slog. The festival is always fun, and I only need to crawl two blocks to get home.

The beauty of the neighborhood is that it has its own theme song by a bunch of great local guys, a song which perfectly captures the spirit of the community:





There's no need to worry about the end of the world when there is an endless supply of beer.