Month: July 2023

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I want to recommend a movie called Under the Silver Lake without steering you wrong. First, it isn’t Citizen Kane. There are some real problems with the movie particularly the bone headed treatment of woman — almost all the women are good looking eye candy scantily clad, topless or nude. They are primarily there to please the male gaze. The plot is convoluted, possibly non-existent which is weird because there seems to be a plot that is always moving but not necessarily forward and perhaps not side to side or backwards either. It is way too long. The movie is clearly aimed at young men with thwarted artistic ambitions — a very limited audience indeed. The lead character, played by Andrew Garfield, is kind of creepy even though he is, for lack of a better word, the hero of the movie.

Despite all of this, I did enjoy the movie and am thinking about days after seeing it. So there is something there. I am just not sure how to describe in such a way that anybody would understand. The movie is definitely not for everyone but I, for one, kept thinking this is an interesting enough ride for me to stay on board. There is no need for spoiler alerts because there is too much going on for anyone to connect the dots to a cohesive plot even if you have seen the movie.

It comes as close as I have ever seen of capturing the offbeat weirdness that is LA. A weirdness that is both sinister and oddly cheerful. Everyone is a performance artist and a member of a secret conspiracy whether they want to be or not. David Robert Mitchell, the director, is fan of Alfred Hitchcock and this movie is definitely a homage to him. There are hints of other old movies throughout the film.

The plot sort of is this: the hero is completely distracted from the very real possibility of being evicted from his apartment to investigate instead the disappearance of a woman he met just once. Because no one can explain where she is, he becomes enmeshed in probably unrelated conspiracies from a nut who seems completely rational at times but has an answer for the hero’s every question which makes him sound believable even though you know he is crazy. There are adolescent hooligans keying cars, gurus, nuclear fallout shelters, comic book shops, parties that absolutely anybody can walk into if they have the right cookie, secret codes that lead to maps found on the back of cereal boxes, blind folded journeys through Griffin Park lead by a homeless man wearing a paper crown, and a naked women wearing an owl mask who could be a notorious murderer. Do you get it?

It’s funny, sad and frequently unbelievably artificial while also being genuinely LA.

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Our refrigerator, after 23 years of faithful service, died the other day.

Needing a replacement, Bob immediately found a new one. It’s a complicated and boring story but the crux of the matter is we can’t install the new one until we can detach our old one from the water system. A plumber has to do this and he needs a part. The installer said he can return when we know a date when this is completed. Bob has confirmed a date for the plumber.

All we need now is for the delivery people to come hook up the water for the new refrigerator and take the old one. The delivery man gave us a phone number and email address where we could contact them. Bob tried via email. No response. Bob then tried to call customer service. The recorded message informed him that he would wait an hour a customer service agent would answer. Thinking it had something to do with customer service being short staffed due to the 4th of July Holiday, he decided to wait until after the holiday. He called today very early in the day, and, received the same hour wait for an agent message. Customer Service doesn’t have enough agents when you start the day an hour behind. Given that we have heard nothing via email, I am willing to bet that no one is responding to emails and that our best bet is to wait an hour to speak with someone.

I recently had a similar experience while renting a car. We had to wait an hour and half in a line of more than 30 people to see a rental agent. There were two at the desk. Once we got our contract we went into another line to get our car. This desk had one person. We waited for 30 minutes in that line. At first, I thought a bunch of planes must have landed thus causing the long lines, but the line never got smaller, it had, in fact, got larger.

Of course, it isn’t the company’s fault. There aren’t enough good employees to do the job. They claim to be trying, but really are they? Management is always blaming labor for the lack of good employees. I invite you to look at this in a different way. Companies’ can’t find workers who are will do the job at the wage you are offering. They might have better luck if they paid more money.

Indeed, this is the way the market is supposed to operate. If something becomes more expansive to deliver, say oil for the sake of argument, then the market price goes up. So, when there is war in the Middle East or hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico preventing the refining of oil, everyone accepts that prices of oil will go up. This is what we are told anyway.

Then doesn’t the same theory applies to wages. If it is difficult to find employees at a certain wage, then you need to raise the wage until you can acquire the number and quality of employees where you can deliver the product or service you are selling. American business is, for some reason, resistant to learning this simple straightforward lesson of Capitalism. If forced to choose between higher wages or delivering bad service, they will choose bad service every time in hopes that if they hold out long enough, the labor market will change in their favor.

In the mind of Business Managers, Labor is the whipping boy for all the failures of American Capitalism. If there are problems, it was bad employees. If budget cuts are necessary, where do you think they cut first. Cut the number of staff while trying to maintain the same workload. Cut benefits, raise deductibles on health insurance, do away with sick days. They brag about profits, they brag about price shares but rarely, if ever, do you hear them brag about paying the best wages in the industry. Which is odd because a customer might infer that by paying the best wages, your company also has the best people.

I can’t tell you how many Rah Rah end of the year speeches I’ve listened to where the corporate heads are blathering on about all the successes the company experienced — profits are up, share prices are up, efficiency is up, automation is up. They claim how they are the best in the industry for this and that. Then some brave employee broaches the subject of wages. The talking head has a ready answer. The company pays wages that are in line with the labor market. This sounds like collaboration to me. If they all know the standard wage, they can gauge their salaries appropriately. I thought this was illegal but never mind. For some reason this stops all conversation about wages.

Employees buy it. Until recently, I always did. I thought well what can I say to that — the company pays what is in line with every other company in the industry. But, wait, doesn’t the company want to be best at everything? Why wouldn’t the company want to have the best wages as well? In almost 40 years of working, I have never heard a company head brag that they offer the best wages in their industry. They may say a lot of wonderful things about their employees, they may even believe what they say but they rarely brag about the wages. they are paying. Curious that, don’t you think?

Which brings me back to the extra refrigerator clogging up our kitchen. This effects customer service. Because lower paid employees are the most likely staff to work with actual customers, this lack of good employees has a detrimental effect on a customer’s experience. If you can’t afford to pay good employees you are also ensuring that, at least some of your customers, will have a bad experience. Companies are hoping that most of this will be handled through better automation, the problem is that if any hiccups occur and a human needs to get involved, the company almost guaranteeing a bad experience. Let me tell you if I have to wait an hour when I call a customer service department, I have already had a bad experience. I have had to wait an unreasonable amount of time. By the time the poor customer service agent answers, I am fuming and ready to quarrel. So, the underpaid sap might begin to think — I don’t get paid enough to this crap.

And around and around she goes.

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Billionaire Elon Musk wants to limit the vote to people with children because children give parents a special interest in the future, so hence are better voters. He provides absolutely no proof that this is true other than parents have children and, because they do, they care more about the future than single people.

I am confused. When has voting ever been about the future? It is almost always about the now. Like how are we going to spend tax revenues now, how are we going to protect people from crime now, how are we going to educate people now, do we want to send troops to Afghanistan now — I could go on but you get my point. Politics is about how we live now and, though the future looms big in the background, what people in the present are actually worried about is what is going on now. Telling people that yes things are miserable now but it will payoff in thirty years for your children isn’t exactly a rousing campaign slogan for parents either.

The good news here is Musk ‘s proposal is dead upon arrival. Voting rights for women and minorities are enshrined in the U.S Constitution so that involves a constitutional amendment to change. I suppose he could introduce a Constitutional Amendment taking away the vote from single people but we all know it is a long an arduous process through 50 state legislature. Furthermore single people still can vote and, presumably would vote against the idea along with their friends that maybe parents.

Musk isn’t being serious. He is stirring the pot and it is interesting which pot he has chosen to put his spoon. Conservatives and Libertarians are going after limiting the vote. It’s not just making it difficult anymore, it is making it impossible to get your hands on a ballot in the first place. The implications are shocking, at least, shocking to me. He is saying that there are people who are more worthy of full citizenship than others and, if you want to know who he is thinking might be cut from the voting rolls, Musk has thrown is some ideas for your consideration.

But it aligns with Republican notions that if only the right people voted, that Republicans would win. And what do you know, married couples tend to vote Republican. Single men also vote Republican but less so than married people. Single women are the trouble for the Republicans and they vote overwhelming Democratic, so much so that it erases any advantage the Republicans get from the other three groups. Instead of working on changing the minds of single women, the Republicans have opted to change who can vote.

These ideas about limiting the vote are not isolated ideas either. It’s a topic that I keep seeing – particularly in Libertarian and Far Right circles. Columnist Michael Walsh proposed limiting the vote to men. He artfully never says women are incapable of rational thought but he quotes others to defend this notion. He describes how the ancient Romans felt that “women were never considered worthy of the vote. They were too emotional, too devious in their machinations, and certainly too weak to fight.” Really. Of course it is the Romans saying it, not Walsh. Really. Is it that surprising the Ancient Romans felt this way about women. Ancient Rome, you know, about two thousand years ago. Romans were also partial to slavery and viewed women as nothing more than vessels for the production of children. How much Roman wisdom does Walsh want us to incorporate into the modern American system? These attacks on the vote are also coming from all directions. The other day Seaford, Delaware tried to give the vote to non-resident business owners. This almost made it through the Delaware legislature.

This constant attack on the present franchise is worrisome. Take away the vote from women. Take away the vote from single people. Keep taking away voting rights until you get the electorate willing to vote your way. But it won’t be a functioning democracy. And what arrogance. The underlying assumption of these men is that they are more worthy than you and know what is best for you. That is if you’re single or a woman or both. Get it. I am waving my middle finger.