Your job's a joke. You're broke. Your love life's DOA.

So much fun. Today is "payday" and sure enough I got the difference from what was left from my advance on the 15th but it turned out to be a little less than I was expecting. That in conjunction with the unbelievable fuck ups by both the Royal Bank and the federal student load Guidos means I have just enough money to pay my rent, my provincial student loan payment and maybe enough left over to eat. Crap this is depressing. Hopefully the money from my late Uncle Floran will come in soon because I just can't take this anymore.

"How are you, monsieur Jerry?"
"I'm broke."
"Boke?"
"That means I have no money. And when I have no money I get depressed. When I'm depressed only one thing will help: wine and women."
"But this is Paris, that should be easy."
"Yes, but even in Paris that takes money, which is what I ain't got in the first place"

- An American In Paris

New insight

I remember reading some time ago (sorry, I don't remember the source) that the average office worker only actually works four hours a day and spends the other half of their time fooling around, looking busy, and generally fucking the dog. Based on my experiences in the pulp mill I used to think that was because office workers were lazy in the same sort of way as blue collar workers. But that isn't that case. It's about motivation. There is just no good reason to run around here and get a million things done. Nothing happens quickly so why act quickly. This is mind numbing in a very real sense of the word. I can see why employees of governments and large companies turn into such plodding idiots... they end up dragged down by the rest. It's the same basic problem that affect Marxism in practice. Sure "From each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs" sounds like a good idea, but where is the incentive to be one of the fountainheads when the schleps take it all away? Sure, you can work out of love for the work, but what if the work is joyless? What if the procedures, the delays, the red tape and nonsense strip all the fun out of it? Then what reason to do anything at all execept stay out of trouble by saying something that takes five minutes will take three hours just so you can avoid jumping through more hoops. I've just discovered today that none of the stuff I have worked on is going to see the light of day until July 20th. That means it's now two weeks until I get any useful monetary reward and two months before anything I've done sees the light of day. How motivating is that? Not very, lemmie tell ya...

I am not alone

My immediate supervisor (who is quitting - that's never a good sign) and I were telling a co-worker she should see "Office Space" today. This is it, the experience is universal. Just look at Kim's journal. Different big company, same gripes. At least my cubicle has a view if I stand up and turn around. I suppose I could rearrange my cubicle so that I was facing the window, but then casual passers by would be able to see me typing in my LJ client (I'm still kinda proud of myself for writing this client software. It's hard-coded to my user ID and depends on the fact I have a Lotus Domino development environment at home, so it isn't exactly something I can post on LJ for general consumption, but it works for me).

Just a few more minutes to waste before I can bail for the day and run to the bank to do a little more robbing Peter to pay Paul. This will get better. Only two more impovershed weeks to go. Then I can begin to enjoy the fruits of my misfortune.

The problem with banks

The system in place *has* to blow up eventually. I explained this to Trish at one point a while back. At the moment, in most countries, money is "created" by banks issuing credit. It makes no sense. If you look at a reduced model of how the world's economy works it becomes clear:

Imagine 99 people living on an island. They get along by trading value for value, for example the carpenter builds cabinets for the farmer who gives him a chicken in return. This works becomes complicated when the carpenter needs another chicken but the farmer doesn't need new cabinets. The baker, however does need cabinets, and the farmer needs bread. Then along comes the 100th person, the banker. "I'll make you something called 'money' to facilitate these complex trades" he promises. "And I'll only charge a tiny bit of interest, say 5% a year, so that I can get by too." So he prints a hundred dollar bills for everyone and everything works fine until the year is up. "OK, you owe me $105," the banker says. But there is only $100 to be had. The only way the islanders can "pay" is to borrow even more money from the only source, the banker.

That's it in a nutshell. That's what we are doing. The money doesn't mean anything and when the more is needed the banks simply loan more out with nothing to back it up. It just doesn't work.

A couple of good things

Not everything sucks. I need to point that out. Here are two good things that have happened that I've neglected to mention.

1. As I was coming home yesterday I ran into my neighbour in the courtyard. We had a little chat and she told me that my paintings are an inspiration to her. I've whined about the fact that my stuff is all stacked in the corner and I haven't had a show in far too long. But my neighbour said that when she walks by and sees my canvases and panels stacked up against the window it is an inspiration to her to do more painting. How about that?
2. I found out today that my boss is impressed with me. I was talking (griping, actually) to my cubicle-neighbour and she told me some stuff he had said to her about my abilities. And here I was thinking he thought I was a slacker. I guess it is just because I am used to working a lot harder.