Chicken Salad Recipe

I could live forever on a good chicken salad.
I used canned chicken for this recipe. I price checked, and it worked out to be about 1 cent cheaper and with more protein than chicken thighs I would normally use.  I use Aldi's brand.

12 oz can chunk chicken.
1 tablespoon mustard
3 tablespoon sour cream
3 tablespoon mayo
1 tablespoon flaxseed meal
2 tablespoons Sriracha
Salt and Pepper
a dash of garlic powder
1 stalk celery

It works out to be about 900 calories, 6-8 grams of Carbohydrates, and 74 grams of protein. On Keto we don't worry over much about fat, but it works out to 54 grams of fat.

Jobs don't work.

Marco's update: Apparently my legend grows, even those who loathed me (except for the antagonist) say they miss me. I am touched by the sentiment, but sadly sentiment doesn't pay the rent(iment). I am still planning a crowd funding and to add a donation/buy stuff button as soon as I can figure out a product or service other than "miserably bad advice", "swear word portmanteaus", and "anti-corporate screeds."  Hell, I bet I could raise about 50 dollars just for the service of "shutting my mouth." 

I looked back at my work experience, and I have settled all previous jobs into two categories: "Useless Insanity" and "Unskilled Idiocy." I imagine that I am not the only person to categorize so, nor the first to realize the futility of work. My talent for miscreance, and the words of Michael Ventura, Alan Watts (or read the transcript) ,and Harlan Ellison have left me bereft of job morale.

Why, in that video by Alan Watts, he echoes my sentiment - or perhaps I echo his:

But if you do a job, if you do a job with the sole purpose of making money, you are absurd.

He suggests that when we do so, we begin to equate money with happiness. I can't argue, or won't, rather. I don't want utilize my talent for opposition today

My work has been as absurd as Alan Watts suggests. I was taught, rather harshly, that I must have a job. That my talents were not in fast food or factory, that I have a natural savant-like idiocy when it comes to schedules, rules, and policies. A trained monkey with a severe bleeding head injury can follow rules that I find as alien and incomprehensible as Martian mating rituals.

Actually, given my lewdness, I suspect extraterrestrial sex makes more sense to me. 

I was raised to work jobs. I had to have a job, according to my father. I don't blame my father completely. His father was raised on German work ethic and an industrial-revolution perspective of the world. My father would pull apart guns at age six and draw each part, then put them back together flawlessly. And when he performed this miracle, his father and mother told him that it was "nice" , but he ought get a job in a factory.

Lamentable. If a child showed such precociousness today, his parents would encourage him to study math and become an engineer.

My father said the same thing, like a mantra. You have to have a job. You have to have a job. You have to have a job.

And so I spent much of my time working as call center tech support, my stock and "trade". This trade constitutes being yelled at, screeched at, cried at,  for 40 hours a week, but for the blissful two hours a month when we were  droned at or yelled by our manager about our metrics.

No call center I worked for scored me on customer satisfaction. On the contrary, they scored me negatively if I spent the time to actually help the customer.   I was told at TDS Telecom that despite having more "Kudos" (compliments from customers) than other technicians, if I didn't lower my call times I would be fired.

Let that ruminate in your head. A kudos required extra work from the customer, and generally meant they were satisfied beyond mere resolution. TDS threatened to terminate me for helping customers. 


But that doesn't matter. What matters is call times. If your call takes longer than 6 minutes, you are doing your job wrong. Hang up on the customer - so long as they don't call back - and the managers are happy. Avoid helping the customer and - so long as the customer doesn't complain - call centers are happy. 

And if we are being honest, companies placed "First Call Resolution" as a metric only because agents hung up on customers to meet call length metrics.It's hard to fix someone's error in six minutes when you spend two of those minutes gathering required information and another two trying get them to find the start button.

Absurd, absurd, absurd.  Insanity. Put together unreasonable expectations and then get angry when people cannot meet them. That is the nature of corporate jobs.

I don't have a particularly good answer - I have some, but that will have to wait for another blog post.

If you want to read more, or see videos of these screeds, don't be afraid to subscribe, share on Facebook, on Twitter, or +1 on Google.


Marco's update part II: As I typed this, a  coworker texted me that the blow-job-enjoying manager told the antagonistic coworker to eat a bag of dicks as well. But he did it when they were punched out (and away from the eyes of corporate). Marco's me fired for breaking the illusion of cog-like perfection and order Frank -er, my manager, had cultivated. 
Don't send them hate mail. Send me 5 dollar donation I receive I will mail them a drawing of a bag of dicks. A dollar donation means I'll spent more than 30 seconds proofreading.Or, actually proofread.

Self-Soothing, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love the Moment.

A lot of times people say you need to let go. Yesterday I finally understood it. I discovered something that helped me. Hopefully it will help others.

I am not a psychologist, a psychiatrist , or a psychic. But it struck me with a particular pop profundity.

Depression causes me to hold on tightly to negative experiences instead of positive ones.

Experiences are how we build self-identity. What we experience informs who we are. In self-soothing, we are asked to experience, in a positive way, a moment in our day.  We are to focus on the five senses. they say, for ease of remembering, this mnemonic: 5 sights, 4 sounds, 3 touches, 2 smells, 1 taste.

For example:

After my workout, I sat in McDonald's and watched a breeze play over a pink dogwood. The leaves rippled and swayed, I imagined, in an extemporaneous and improvised dance. As I watched, a woman leaned urgently over an envelope in a table to my left. She would carefully write in small letters, then look up at me tersely. Her arms warded off onlookers.
I sipped my ice water. Condensation collected on the outside in spite of the the air conditioning. I lifted the cup to my lips, and I was struck by how heavy and leaden it felt in my hands.My knee pressed into the half-wall near me. I felt grave. I moved my knee away and suddenly felt as if I might fly away. I turned and set it again to the wall.

In therapy we discussed some moments in our past that were pleasant. As we relived them, even the most unhappy of us smiled wistfully. It was then that the thought struck me that for the briefest instant that telling these stories, these details, made us seem like people without depression.  When "normies" talk, they share positive experiences. In sharing them they relive them. Most often they share humorous, happy, and pleasant stories. Let me emphasize: They are routinely connecting with levity.

I hold tightly to negative experiences and ignore positive ones. So my self-identity is made up of a remarkable number of sadness.
 And in pandering to this depression caused me to avoid positive experiences. I often suffered bouts of depression that kept me from engaging in and enjoying positive experiences. Parties, concerts, dinners with friends.

I see it a lot in my father. He will have a bad day if he has a single bad experience in a day. If I attempt to argue that his day went well, he will refuse to acknowledge it.

Depression is described as a black hole. I can't argue. i use positive emotions to try and fill that hole, but can't seem to. And while I won't discount biology (Well, I will for me), I will say that depression has trained me to connect with negativity. I feel intimately tied to it. It's cliche to say, but I wrapped myself in it.I gave unhappy moment s more gravity than they deserve.And I've spent years practicing this.

People without depression seem to have a much easier time letting go of  sadness. They have an easier time finding pleasant experiences that connect them to happiness. they, in fact, have a long history of practicing self-soothing.

Self-soothing is connecting with positive experiences. Pleasant experiences. As trite as it sounds, self-soothing trains people with depression to look on the bright side. Something we often dislike being told to do.

This module has convinced me further that dialectical behavioral therapy simply trains you to think and act like a normal person. 

In Defense of Chefs (Where I Pick On Endive)

The other day as I flew down the State Highway 41 on my way to a paying gig as a dancing monkey and I slipped on NPR. Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! always entertains me. This week their special guest, Thomas Keller,  owns two restaurants. At The French Laundry, he serves very small-portion many course meals at brickshittingly high prices.

Seriously? $175? Maybe I am a dirty philistine ankle deep in bacon, but I don't see the need for Endive.

You know what, I am just going to say it. Fuck Endive. It can suck eggs.

OK, I want to shift gears. Because menus like this, combined with the apparent arrogant bullfuckery of Chefs, leads many who don;t know better to ask "Why are Chefs such douchebags?"

A justified but inappropriate response by a chef is to put the thousand dollar knives through the offending ignoramuses neck. Put down your babies. A better response is to puff up you chef's jacket and paraphrase the book of Job:

Gird up now thy loins like a Chef; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Dish Tell me, if you understand. Who hath memorized the measures there of? Or who had stretched the dough upon it! 

I wanted to be a Chef for approximately 3-4 hours back in 1999.  I saw the Chefs in their fine whites and thought it was fun. And hey, I can cook - I use recipes. But unlike a lot of people who chef-hate, when I realized what was involved, I said "Fuck this shit" and decided to be headbutted in the dick by a goat. Much less stressful.

A Chef isn't just some random  dorkfaced snotweasel in the kitchen baking a pie. Any jerk can yank a recipe from the Internet and slap together a solid Apple Crumb Pie or Casserole. If you think this is cooking, then eat a bag of dicks. [FB friends - ;) ]

A Chef has to be several things by the time they get to rightfully be called a chef. They are at once a hustler, salesman, artist, an accountant,and an epicurean.

Hustler
I mean hustler as "one who hustles". You see, when some 16-17-year-old says "I want to be a chef" what they are really saying is "I want to be a gopher bitch-boy (or gopher bitch-girl)." They are going to start at the bottom, amongst a bunch of bottom feeders. Assuming you have a bit of sense, a smidgen of education, and some luck, you start as a Chef de partie.  In the US we call them station cooks or line cooks. There are a bunch of types, but the all mean the same thing. Tedious-fucking-peon. Go on, fry shit for eight hours in a kitchen that is as hot and greasy as Hell's asshole. And when you aren't risking 3rd degree burns frying, sauteing,  and baking, frying, you are stocking, and prepping for the other four. Bathroom breaks? Fuck you. Cigarette breaks? Not if you want someday move up to rotisserie and roundsman. And say goodbye to your days off.  You have to ship 12 appetizers out in four to six minutes. It's liked those timed cooking competitions, but for hours. Don't fuck up.
And that's if you are lucky enough to snag  a chef position. In actuality you'll start as a busser or a dishwasher. All the heat, all the grease, but with 200% more "half-eaten-food-sludge"

Oh, and did I mention these positions pay right about minimum wage? Maybe a few dollars more. This is why I nope'd right the hell out of being a chef. 

This never stops, by the way. You just sort of add more work and that work has greater repercussions. Instead of holding the line back 5 minutes for a single customer, suddenly your failure to inventory causes you  run out of Endive in the middle of Friday dinner service. Fucking Endive.

Salesman 
Diners are the biggest whiners ever.  They have high expectations despite the fact that their meal is made by minimum wage gophers amongst 30 meals. And when they see the bill they choke on their spiteful tongues. When I found out it costs $175 dollars a plate for The French Laundry, I just about pissed myself. But Then Chef Keller started describing one of his dishes, about the experience of small plates and diminish returns. He wanted each person to ask "I want a little more." and receive the new surprise.
Why, this old art hating philistine wistfully thought on being in Yountsville and dropping two bills.
See, he smartly turned it from "$200 dollars in tiny food" to an experience. A good salesman will sell the feeling, not the product.

Artist
A chef is always trying to wow you, to evoke feelings. Whether it's the feeling of comfort in a hot curry or the sensual lust of a dessert. They are trying to provide a unique dining experience.  The philistine in me struggles with this. When I see them haul out a frozen block to paint with chocolate, I yawn. I am impressed by the clever design of Heston's feast - and I might enjoy the experience. But I find it unnecessary.

I am wrong. Dead wrong. The search for novelty - the driving force of humanity, demands greater and greater effort into cleverness. No longer is steak good enough. Now we have to have a pureed steak milkshake with garlic mashed potatoes and Endive sprinkles.

That three-minute cigarette doesn't come with a mental disengagement. Anytime not spent cooking is spent 


Accountant
Once you work five or six years of 18 hour days and become a head chef (often by virtue of simply sticking it out),  you have to start performing Inventory, which is Latin for "counting boxes with a clipboard." and can also mean "alcoholism." You have a limited budget,often provided by an owner who is clearly living in 1765 when chickens went for a half-farthing for ten. How many boxes of goat spleen do you have? How many services tonight? How long until the spleen goes bad? And can you get by after that idiot Ralph dumped an entire box of Endive?

Can you? I sure as hell can't, not after working seven 18-hour days.




So they have a right to be arrogant - as anyone who exhibits expertise won  through hard sacrifice deserves a goddamn medal. 

Real Gun Control

So my polemic went over well - agree or disagree, you read it, and sent page views my way, suckers!
So here's another.

I am absolutely pro gun, I enjoy shooting, I think people should be allowed to own guns. But regardless of  personal feelings, stories like this from Detroit News show why we need responsible gun ownership:

From the article:

Detroit has experienced 37 percent fewer robberies in 2014 than during the same period last year, 22 percent fewer break-ins of businesses and homes, and 30 percent fewer carjackings. Craig attributed the drop to better police work and criminals being reluctant to prey on citizens who may be carrying guns.

Indirect correlation between private gun ownership and rates of robberies simply shows that the former deters the latter. And it makes sense, really. Few criminals are desperate enough to attack someone if their victim can attack back. Robberies and break-ins are crimes of opportunity. Make yourself a less enticing target, and suddenly criminals find someone else to take on. 

Many of my friends are concerned about gun violence. A recent carjacking ring was thwarted in Milwaukee and Wauwatosa with a concealed handgun. Sadly, the carjacker was a 15-year-old boy, who remains in serious condition.  Obviously we are taken aback when someone is hurt by firearms. Our heartstrings are tugged harder when the victim is a teen. 

But we must be honest. The boy is a suspect in a homicide and charged with carjacking and assault. The boy's willingness to commit violence against others consequentially puts his life at risk. If this boy had been minding his business and shot, we could imagine him the victim. But - whether from desperation or for mischief - he accepted as a consequence that violence could be turned back on him.

Ultimately, I am thankful that Victoria Davison had means to protect herself. I believe in self-defense - fleeing if you can, defending yourself if you cannot. I support her belief that her life was in serious, immediate and emergent jeopardy.

 I have no desire to see someones life be ended - I think that case-by-case adjudication is necessary to avoid rare "trigger happy" gun users. This case (Sorry, fox News) was one of the first to introduce me to Castle Doctrine.   Four shots fired after being punched in the face. But the truth is drawing and firing takes very little time - and when an assailant is engaged, a victim doesn't necessarily have time or mindfulness to simply threaten. They fire on instinct, relying on training.

Honestly, most people simply want to get on with there lives and never have to draw their gun in defense. But if they must, I am sure they are thankful, in that moment, to have it.

Police work is an excellent way of investigating and punishing crimes, but they don't offer the deterrence. They also don't offer protection - most investigate crimes after they have occurred. Sexy cases and cases that ensure reelection get preferential sentencing and prosecution. Many criminals are released without serving sentences. The threat of punishment is less and less a deterrent. But the very real threat of losing one's life still has incredible potency to control crime in concealed-carry states. 

Off-Topic: Politics (or "Fear will keep the local systems in line."

So, I am going to diverge slightly from my normal self-help/self-improvement discussions to discuss, briefly, the attack on the Malaysian Airlines plane. I mean to discuss the tragedy in political terms, and address a broader problem that started with U.S. President Bush and was exacerbated by U.S. President Obama, Ukraine President Poroshenko, and various talking heads.

While listening to the news of the attack last night, I was shocked at how many people called it an act of Terror. A quick Google search shows this video of the crash and accusations of terrorism.

An airplane flies through an active war zone between separatists (rebels) and Ukraine. This is not an act of Terrorism. And an act of tragic stupidity on the part of Malaysian Airline pilots and traffic controllers.

. It's an act of war. One side in the Ukraine civil war shot likely shot down the plane, and in realizing they shot down a passenger jet, refuses to acknowledge it for fear it will delegitimize their cause in the public forum.

It's not terrorism, it's war with a Twitter feed. 

There is a problem with the definition  or Terrorist. A quick jaunt over to the FBI website tells us that a terrorist. Let's look at  the "international terrorist" definition:

• Involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law;
• Appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
• Occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S., or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.*

Pay attention now. the  parts that are important are number 1 and 2. Acts that are dangerous to human life and violate the law (of the US) and intimidate and coerce the civilian population.

All definitions of  terrorism maintain those two qualities. An illegal act, dangerous to human life, that is intended to coerce civilians.

Every crime is terrorism.  Every act is terrorism. Robbing a bank is now domestic terrorism. Mugging is terrorism. And in the US terrorists lack fundamental rights. If  a US citizen  is labelled a terrorist, they lose the protection of the constitution.

Fascists believe anything that creates civil unrest harms the state, and anyone engaged in civil unrest that harms the state is not a part of the state, nor granted the rights of a member of the state.  Disagreement with the state causes civil unrest.  Can we see how language here is being manipulated?

And let's not even discuss the terror of Drone strikes. They cow entire nations into acquiescing to the US.

I am not saying we shouldn't take a hard stance against terrorism or crime. But I think our broad definition allows those in power to take advantage of it for social capital.  In the case of the plane, it's clear the intention was to shoot down a plane. Perhaps it happened by mistake - they thought it was a fighter or bomber, perhaps on purpose - what kind of damn-fool pilot flies through a contested militarized zone?

War is inherently terrifying  and chaotic, especially to the civilian population. Does that mean war is terrorism?

I guess the point I try to make is that we make everything terrorism when we label everything as terrorism.And that is dangerous, especially for a nation built on freedom from the government for those governed.

All the world's a stage, yadda yadda yadda.

I love misfits. I admit it. I love people who just don't seem to fit. My favorite fiction, "'Repent Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman." is the story of a misfit. Everette C, Marm, who "wasn't much to begin with, except a man who had no sense of time."  In a world where being on time is the most important of values, he simply had no ability to do so. He couldn't fit in.

I wonder when he stopped trying? What day did he become the Harlequin?

I hero-worship misfits. I can't help it. All my heroes, all the stories I adore, are stories of misfits. Ellison, O'Conner, Butcher, Martin. I identify with them because I am a misfit. I can't keep my trap shut. I cannot be anything but what I am. I am a loudmouth, a snarker, and a clown.

I am not much to begin with, except a man who has no sense of propriety. And we live in a world that values decorum over morality. You can be a scumbag as long as you are polite about it. 

Yesterday during group therapy we read about activities to distract from emotional distress. The last line was "Sex; put a rubber band around your wrist, pull it out, and let it go."

Dear Kittens, when presented with something like this, what am I to do? When the universe gives you a gem like this, who am I say to no? Simon Peter spoke with the Holy Spirit to Jesus, right?

"Sounds exactly like my sex life."

Everybody laughed. I mean the kind of laughing, guffawing, and giggling that comes from releasing pent up energy. Therapy was derailed. Luckily, we neared the end of our session.  

The problem is twofold, my dear kittens. Chiefly, I am rewarded. When I mouth off I get laughter and I get likes and I get attention. Like a comic I get approbation from the audience. I have a reputation for being a funny guy. An amateur - very amateur -Patton Oswald. Which therein lies the second problem: I seem to believe I am always on stage - always entertaining. And it's not particularly exhausting to entertain all the time. But it is dangerous. Talking about telling someone to eat a bag of dicks is all well and good. And telling the story entertains - on stage or in a small group. And certainly all my coworkers were overjoyed that I told off the nagging bitchy shrew.

Seriously, she needed to eat a bag of dicks and shut her pieholster.  

But work is not a stage, and insults, however just and however warranted, are not tolerated in this "PC Bullshit" world. No matter how often we talked that way as a crew, no matter that a manager was blown by a subordinate and another manager sent dick pics to six subordinates without punishment until Marco's was threatened with a lawsuit.

So once again I find myself on the receiving end of a Pink Slip. I have a Kickstarter as soon as Amazon payments goes through.  We'll see what I can do from there. I've been on stage a long time, maybe it's time to pass the hat.