A New Week in the New World

(F Minus)

A few warm-ups before we get all heavy.

I signed up for something yesterday that required a credit card, my address and a password, and they were picky enough about the password -- eight letters or more, you couldn't have three consecutive digits -- that they kept kicking it back for revision.

The good news was that they didn't wipe out the credit card numbers and other data each time.

But they did keep re-checking the "please spam the hell out of me" box, I suppose in hopes I wouldn't notice.

I noticed. 

But nice try.

And today's Warped sent me on a nostalgia trip, back to my days as an editor when people would send me these insanely expensive multi-page résumés professionally printed on textured rag paper in die-cut folders and which, once you translated the "action verbs" and other consultant-babble Michael Cavna mocks here, boiled down to the fact that they were not in the least qualified for the job I was advertising.

That is, I was hiring reporters, who are not only supposed to be able to write with clarity but should not be gullible and yet they were sending me proof that they failed both factors.

The résumés that impressed me were from people who, whatever their level of experience, were at least smart enough to turn down a job that paid as little as I could offer them.

So it was something of a stand-off.

In my case, it was made more challenging by a publisher who felt the proper way to correct errors was by firing someone, which clashed with my tendency to think that a fish stinks from the head and that errors which appear in print are the fault not of the 22-year-old rookies who make them, but of the twice-that-age editor who doesn't catch them.

And so I would install additional levels of security, including trying to train the people we already had instead of trying to find new people raw and foolish enough to work for what we offered, on the theory that you can coach away inexperience if you don't have to keep starting over.

Which combines "a fish stinks from the head" with another wise maxim: "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys."

(It was not flattering to realize that I had been hired by someone who felt that new monkeys were a viable solution to staffing issues.)

 
And speaking of screw ups, Boulet has a strip about what, back at the dawn of time, we called an "Oh No Moment," which is that ghastly instant when you realize you've just "reply alled," perhaps, a truly filthy joke intended for one person, or ... well, let him tell it.

And then wish you had his apparent subconscious ability to avoid the Oh No Moment.

 

On a less frivolous note

(Clay Jones)

Today is the first full working day of the Trump administration and we've already had a cascade of nonsensical, clearly disprovable lies from the White House, the result of which was a Sunday in which social media rocked with "alternative fact" jokes and less hilarious references to George Orwell.

Orwell is like Hitler, in that he has been cited so often over the years on scant evidence that, when he finally comes into play on a more realistic level, you find the reference so watered down that it no longer has the sting intended, or needed.

It's possible that Trump will adjust to the greater demands of his office, or that his GOP allies in Congress will insist that he do so, but, at the moment, he is in a full-out war with the truth, in which his press secretary cites statistics that are clearly, obviously, easily proved to be bogus and then Kellyanne Conway explains that these are "alternative facts."

And, whether they are fools or paid trolls, there are people posting on social media in support of these clear, obvious, easily refuted lies.

It's one thing to believe that the GOP will come up with a fair alternative to the Affordable Care Act, and we can argue over why, in seven years of trying to shoot it down, they've never proposed that fair alternative or, apparently, bothered to start working on it.

That's politics.

But, goddammit, if the DC Metro System records 570,557 riders on the day of the Trump inauguration, compared to 782,000 riders for Obama's second, you can't simply stand up and claim your own set of contradictory DC Metro numbers.

Unless you're adding public transit to the lying media and the CIA nazis who conspire against Dear Leader.

Nor will Conway's earlier suggestion work, that we go by what is in Trump's heart rather than what comes out of his mouth.

And whether the administration is delusional or purposefully lying is not the point.

The point is that people believe them and the other point is that they clearly have no intention of trying to set the record straight or of letting anyone else tell the truth unobstructed.

Saturday's marches, as noted here yesterday, were an encouraging way to insist that, no, we aren't all going along with the program, and that, as noted as well, while there were SJWs who wanted confrontations, they were a nearly-invisible minority and the vast, vast bulk of marchers were not there to cause trouble, except in a conceptual, democratic sense.

Shannon Wright and Sarah Mirk have a guide to constructive opposition at the Nib which I'd like to think hits the mood of the nation better than either the anarchists or Trump loyalists do. It's both worth reading and worth sharing.

 

The Whole World Is Watching

Well, Canada is watching, anyway. But I saw this linked both on a Canadian and on an African site, so the word is getting out.

The question is, how well is the word spreading internally?

Read that Wright/Mirk piece again and ask yourself what you can do for your country.

 

Comments

[Kelli]

I had that Warped cartoon pinned to my cubicle wall back in the late '90s! Nice to see it again. And thank you for sharing the "Eight Ways to Resist..." piece.

[Robin (from racs)]

Regarding the "Oh No Moment": I learned it as "ohnosecond," referring to the period of time that passes between the pressing of the "send" button and the actual disappearance/distribution of the email, during which you realize exactly what you've done, and you watch, powerlessly, knowing you can't stop the impending disaster even as it unfolds before you. The similarity to "nanosecond" is not coincidental, but an ohnosecond seems to last so much longer.

[Mike Peterson]

Yep -- your memory is better than mine. I wonder if the term disappeared because we're so much smarter today or because we no longer give a damn.

No, I don't wonder about that at all.