Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

It was a tough loss. Aren't they all?

In a season where we lost games we should have won and won games we should have lost, it was very hard to see Jake Cutler out of the game, standing on the sidelines and -worse perhaps- riding a stationary bike.

"We" didn't lose. The Bears did. We didn't play the game and we didn't hurt our knee.

They did and he did.

Yep, it was tough to see him out of the game. He sure didn't *look* hurt....

In the post game interviews though, if Brian Urlacher tells you that his teammate is hurt and that he's a tough guy, you better fucking believe it. I think Urlacher knows a bit about being a tough guy. I also believe he knows Jay Cutler better than you, me or some sportswriter does. Not a single Chicago Bear has even hinted that Cutler wussied out. Neither has a one said he was anything but "tough". The man plays football in the NFL. He got sacked more times than any QB in the league. Oh yeah, and he plays while having Type I diabetes. Have you ever missed work because you had a cold?

The worst player in the league is a better football player than I am. Even Todd Fucking Collins is a better football player than I am (though I think Lovie should have not put him in the game at all!) Jay Cutler is a good QB. I wish we had Rogers or a couple of other obvious choices that won't happen but Jay brought 12 wins under a difficult offense, with a line that needs to get a whole lot better.

That's football.... I liked Jay better when he got away from the 7 step-drops and opted to run more when he had no receivers open, and threw the ball away rather than risk an interception. That's when the Bears really started to jell as a team that just mightcould go all the way.

And they almost did, even without him. Caleb Hanie- the 3rd string QB- stepped in and put 14 points on the board. Were it not for an ill-advised screen pass inside Green Bay's 20, well, it's a tie game and who knows what happens in over time....

We'll never know. That's football. Perhaps a healthy Jay Cutler, who played poorly in the first half, comes back and has career day the rest of the way. Us fans will be talking about this for years to come. That's our *right* as fans. It doesn't make us *right* though.

And it doesn't make Cutler a pussy. Tell it to Urlacher if you think different. Tell it to Cutler.

Don't tell it to me. I never played the game. You?

I sawr a film today, oh boy

"The Boy In The Striped Pajamas". I highly recommend it.



It's the holocaust as seen through the eyes of an 8 year old German boy, a boy on the *right* side of the fence in life.



I'm no spoiler so, they'll be no telling the end here. Rather, I'll speak to the beginnings because most of history is about beginnings as we the people keep on beginning the same things over and over again.



Do words hit harder than fists? Sure. The words I read on Topix hit hard in gut because they resonate with the awful words of history. It seems silly- and disingenuous- to equate the rhetoric of conservatives and the tea party of today to yesterdays Nazi's. They tried to eliminate an entire race of people, murdering more than 6 million Jews. Today's conservatives have not done anything like that.



But, they have talked about it. And not just on Topix. Rush Limbaugh has said on his radio program that all liberals shouldn't be killed. Enough should be spared to use as living fossils to be shown on every campus, to show what these people were all about.

Well, that motherfucker is very lucky to live in a nation where he can say such things. What he wants though, is to achieve a nation where such obscenities are policy and that no one may disagree. In the guise of dissent, he is trying to portend policy.

Can it be done? Of course. Adolph Hitler was not the overwhelming choice to lead Germany in the 30's. He certainly did not quickly rise to power or popularity. It took a lot of rhetoric, a wearing down of the German people. He pointed out "the enemy" and went about *proving* his case against them.

On Topix, on right-wing radio and TV we had this rhetoric for eight years of George Bush. Things seemed to have accelerated with Obama as president, because Obama is president. If you can forget for a moment that he is part black, if you can ignore his race, you cannot ignore that he is one of them. A liberal.

"Liberalism, of course, is a disease".

People repeat this on Topix as if it is known fact. "Water is wet." "Liberalism is a disease". It's as simple as that. Not at all complex. As if anyone just couldn't know this....

I mock these people. Hell- what can you do? It's not as if you can reason with them. Sheesh- if you ask them for a link, the fuckers got one! Absolutely ANYTHING can be *proven* on the internet. And anything can be disproven simply by denial. How DO you deal with people like that?

Well, they've made their own suggestions. FEMA camps was one. After Obama's election, the right was fearful that he would put conservatives into FEMA camps....work camps.....re-education camps.....just like Hitler did....

Of course, that wasn't true. That wasn't on the table. It wasn't in the house. It wasn't even on the property. But, some people on the right believed it were true and, Glenn Beck, while he couldn't "prove it", also" ( couldn't) disprove it....." Thus, it's still out there, in the conservative cupboard, whenever they might need it. They'll use it again.

This irks the shit out of me. Perhaps you could tell? It just befuddles me that people living in the greatest nation in the history of the world could be filled with so much hatred for NO good reason. The election, like all of our elections happened without violence. George Bush later showed Barack Obama around the White House, gave him the keys and went off to clear brush from his ranch in Texas. No tanks, no troops in the streets. No blood. Some people are very unhappy about that though. It doesn't make sense but, I understand it.

I understand it because past is prologue. Some people want it that way. They always will....

Pimp My Blog

Of late, this space has come under attack by a couple of knuckleheads who believe that my followers- of which there are just two- are indicative of how many dedicated non-readers I have. Worse, one of the attackers is one of my listed followers! YIKES!

Well, as alert, dedicated non-readers know, I fired one follower- Sublime- last month or something like that, so, technically, I'm down to one follower. And she rarely comments on the blog itself but rather directly to me via e-mail. DOUBLE YIKES!

And- TRIPLE YIKES!- my #1 Fan, annie, IS NOT A REGISTERED FOLLOWER!!! How'd THAT happen?

It is humorous to me that Sub and this other guy (Craig) go about Topix often LINKING this blog to anonymous people. Thanks! They don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts of course. They are actually try ing to be mean, But, they say that any publicity is good publicity. Somehow these two think that directing people to my blog will somehow result in LESS people reading my blog.

Huh? How's that work? They must be government employees.

The idea is to embarrass me. People will follow their direction, check out my blog and read it to see what people are not reading. It's brilliant. That is, if by "brilliant" I mean: "stupid".

I don't get paid to write this. I knew a guy who started an advice column on blogspot. He solicited donations and sold advertising space. His advice column failed miserably and he came to resent his friends for not (literally) supporting him. Sublime himself created a blog and wrote exactly one rambling post (about marijuana laws) before realizing he couldn't hack it. Maybe the dope wore off. And Craig, who does not have a blog at all, equates having 1700 *friends* 0n Facebook to being a blog, thus being a more popular blogger than I. Oh, OK. I'm gonna guess there are teenage girls who have more than 1700 FB friends thus making them more popular bloggers than Craig. I, by the way, have 55 FB friends. To my shame, some of them are family members....

I write this just for fun. I enjoy it. It's there when I need it, whenever I feel like *talking* about something or writing about extremely idiotic people I know from the 'net. It's eclectic. It is, as they say, what it is.

It's not my dick but, to some people, I think they see it as their dick.

What a way to compensate....

Sara Bareilles - Love Song

Last night a friend posted a Sara Bareilles song on Facebook and I and another friend of hers remarked how much we liked this "Love Song" of hers. The other woman noted that it was written by Sara when her record label asked her to write a love song. Now, how cute is that? All this time I thought it was a cute song about some romance Sara was having. Now I realize it's a cute song about having to write about romance!

This makes me like it that much better. She's showing a great deal of personality in writing a song to fulfill a contractual obligation and making it work so well as.....a love song.....

What is any song *really about*? I guess only the artist knows for sure. We fans think we know how a certain song speaks to us, what it's about and I'll bet the artist is good with that as long as you enjoy it and buy the CD.

Years ago I heard a DJ talking about the 1974 tune, "How long?" by Ace. It sure sounds like a "hurt me" song- and it is but, it actually had nothing to do with romance. The band had just found out their manager was stealing from them! How long had THAT been going on?

As far as I know, that's a true story. Thousands of people who have been cheated on may hear that song and get melancholy, maybe a little misty and think back to when they caught on to their significant others indiscretion. Well, they can still relate if they put the song in it's proper context and remember how that lover also cleaned out the bank account.....

Life gives you lemons sometimes and some make lemonade. Sometimes life puts demands on others to write love songs when they might not really want to and they wind up writing a love song. Sorta.

and it works.

Sen Bernie Sanders Amazing Speech!

I Always felt that, the middle-class having made this country great with it's blood, sweat and tears, would always survive and thrive. How could America go on without us? Could you imagine an America with only the rich and poor- an oligarchy? The people this man speaks about can and they are doing everything possible to bring that America- that world- about. Madness. Greed. Insanity. The New World Order.

First they came for the finishers....

In the 90's, I worked for a large, progressive commercial construction company. I recall I hadn't even been there six months when, one September afternoon, the boss stopped by with bonus checks. Fellas that had been there longer than I marvelled that they had never done that before. Christmas came early that year.

Aside from surprise bonus's, the company- I'll call it RatMo Construction- rewarded us in other ways. Raises, which were pretty easy to come by anyway, were now subject to review for all and were 3% of your hourly rate. If that percentage worked out to an odd number, they cheerfully rounded it off to an even fifty cents. The reviews were easy enough. Everyone was judged on a scale of 1 to five. No one, we were told, would get a five. I got a four despite laurels from my boss and his boss that they "....could put me anywhere and (I) would perform (my) work to perfection."

That was a tad disingenuous but, their hearts and generosity were still appreciated. Just struck me as odd to be told you were wonderful but- hey- nobody's perfect! Nobody! But they also saw fit to give us a Simple IRA retirement plan which they detailed to us at a pizza party. They matched our contributions up to 3% even though they didn't have to. This was nice and unexpected. In those days they fed the whole company on the job at least twice a year, good Memphis barbeque and chicken. One Christmas they surprised us with Paid Time Off that we had secretly accumulated over the past 12 months. It amounted to five days of pay either in cash or personal days. All this was icing on the cake of a pretty damn good insurance plan that was free for individuals and very reasonable for families. (The only quirk I felt about the insurance was that you had to have at least 25 hours of work, each week, for six consecutive months. Three eight hour days wasn't going to get it. If you missed that 25 in one week, the clock re-started the next. I knew for a fact that the office kept tabs on who was coming due. Superintendents were consulted and, if a person was useful but out of favor, they would miss a couple of days that last week and go back to square one. Holidays, which accounted for a lot of three day work weeks, didn't help either. But, a good boss would let a good man work an extra hour or two to beat that twenty five. Despite a vacation, I made my insurance by Fall of that first year, working over that 4th of July week). It was all good as far as work goes.

That was, until George Bush came to power. There must have been a memo to all corporate heads that year.

"Fuck your employees! You DO NOT need to coddle them! DO NOT FEED THEM!!!!! DO NOT let them pass 'go' or collect $500 bonus's!!!!"

I would not be surprised if it did indeed read like that. Things DID change with Bush. We still had our reviews but, instead of generously rounding it off to 50 cents, if your raise percentage was 47 cents, that's what you got. Imagine a company being so cheap as to chisel a man out of a $1.20 A WEEK! It's the thought that counts. Suddenly, they didn't think much of us. Bonus's, which had been about a weeks pay were grudgingly given out as a half a weeks pay. Worse, some fellas didn't get anything at all. Worser, the company rats got more.

Construction, like every job, is very competitive. Cutthroat. It got meaner. As shit rolled downhill from management, the rats climbed up on that shit. No doubt, management encouraged this. Lou and Little Jimmy, my supervisors, became less and less interested in supervising. It became a little more like "Lord Of The Flies" than it previously had been. The paint crew had always pretty much run itself as Lou was incompetent (NOT at all a painter) and Little Jimmy had his head and physical self south of Memphis at the casinos in Tunica much of the time. We were left to our own devices. Ratmo didn't have official foremen. I ran work more often than not because I was good and responsible. I treated my people pretty good. In the south, in construction, these isn't necessarily seen as a "good thing". I think the coal-black souls of many a plantation overseer were reincarnated in most of the foremen and superintendent wannabe's that I knew. The south is very hard on itself, the residue of a not-so civil war, I trust.

In 2000, they let all the finishers go. They kept Don, the superintendent, Wayne, a black guy who had sued the company and, thus, they were afraid to fire him, and a young, under paid kid. The bulk of the sheetrock finishing was then subbed out to a company that employed illegals on a day labor type basis. This absolved the company from the nuisance of insurance, workman's comp and all the little unpleasantries that unions fought decades for.

It was a shock. We had long known that the company fantasy was to fire EVERYONE save for a couple of people in the office and sub out all the work to other companies. We just never figured it would actually happen. Long story but, RatMo did 90% of it's business with one powerful man and his family who appreciated the hands on, GET IT DONE NOW! dedication that you just don't get with sub-contractors. RatMo jumped for them, never asking how high. Subs will "get right on that....tomorrow...."

It was a stupid move, probably fiscally brilliant but, stupid. From the moment the finishers were fired, we were warned that we *could* be next. It was fatherly advice at first but, soon enough, it became a threat and then a promise. A "Good morning" to Little Jimmy was often met with: "You motherfuckers can ALL be replaced with Mexicans!". How that little prick survived us is amazing. He was five-foot- nothing. We were all fully grown men. A lot of eye-rolling and sighs, mixed with a good helping of fuck you's was our typical response.

If it got nasty when Bush took office, it got really mean after 9/11/01. Little Jimmy put the screws to us then. We became more aware of our expendability. Even Lou, the *good boss* distanced himself even further from us. The once good job became daily harassment. NOTHING we did was good enough. We were killing the company. We all just sucked. (Some literally figuratively, I'm pretty damn sure....)

On February 1st, 2002, a select group of 14 of us were called to meet in the parking lot of the paint store. That adage about sitting at the poker table and not seeing a chump made you the chump, came to mind. I saw 13 chumps. We all saw 13 chumps.

Little Jimmy was nervous. He'd been running his mouth and getting his ass beat all his life. I'm sure he felt an ass-whuppin' coming that morning. I knew I wasn't going to do it though I might have surprised myself. I was more surprised but nonetheless pleased that none of my fellow chumps made a move on him. He wasn't worth it. Even when he opened up with: "Well, because of Osama Bin Laden and 911...."

He got THAT out of his mouth before I let go with: "You motherfucker! Don't give me that 'Bin Laden' shit! THIS is what you've got after 6 years!!??"

He replied that he didn't know what I was talking about...this wasn't personal.....just business..... work was slow.....

"Shut the fuck up!" I grabbed my last check out of his fat little hand and walked away. I've never killed anyone in my life despite many opportunities. I know when to walk away. I'm glad of that.

In my truck, I opened the envelope. I had been into my sixth year at RatMo. After five years they used to give you a company jacket (a windbreaker) but they had ceased that in 2000. Inside was a $100 savings bond to honor my fifth year. That was nice, I thought. The fucking bastards didn't HAVE to do that....

I bet they don't bother anymore.

Downsizing

And then there was one....

I had to fire one of my last remaining followers today. Worse, I'm doing it like this. Oh, the indignity!

Rest easy, Curly1, it's not you. You've got a no-cut contract. It's Sublime.

I can't afford to keep him on payroll anymore. He hasn't been producing. He posts comments to me while under the influence; rambling,babbling, waffling posts most of which are longer than my posts which they are allegedly about. I've never had someone so relentlessly agree to disagree with me when I wasn't even consulted! And I've been married one and a half times! Note to future followers: DO NOT begin your comments to me with; "You make a lot of good points Ferrerman, but....." and then proceed to slam EVERY fucking thing I wrote. It's lame. Get your own damn blog! Dissension is fine. I'm a liberal, for chrissakes. Just don't bore me to death while doing it. And papa, don't preach. I ain't the choir.

Now, as dedicated (and undercover) non-readers of this blog know, I started it to combat some lies that were told about me by A770 and others. This was, I don't know, ten years ago? Last century? Something like that. Anyway it was-

Goddamn it! The phone....

Hello? Brett Favre?! Huh? Yeah I heard about that. Yeah. Call the bitch on it! Two years and NOW she's coming up with that? Mine did it after TWO MONTHS! Yeah- I know! Crazy. So, yeah, make her prove it. She can't 'cause it didn't happen so, put the ball in her court. She probably just wants money, right? Mine just wanted ninnie domination. Yeah, go and figure THAT. Yeah, I didn't see that coming! Just blog about it- have some fun! It worked for me. When life gives you lemons, have a beer and have some fun with it! Huh? No, I don't put lemons in my beer. That's not what I meant. That's just me being a Ferrerman. I'm known for my irreverence. You took a pretty hard hit last week. It shows. Listen, I'm busy blogging now so, I gotta get back to that. You take care and, next time you retire, FUCKING ACTUALLY RETIRE! I've fired people for such waffling. In fact, that's what I'm doing now. OK. Take care!

Sheesh. That guy's a talker! Anyway, kinda ironic that ol' Sub is STILL obsessed with that A770 stuff. Kinda sad too. But, like I told Favre there, ya gotta roll with it and have some fun. It's just Topix Town, man. Some people take this shit too seriously.

That's a shame.