I keep seeing a lot of people posting the following status update on Facebook:

“Thank you Florida, Kentucky, and Missouri, which are the first states that will require drug testing when applying for welfare. Some people are crying and calling this unconstitutional. How is this unconstitutional? It’s OK to drug test people who WORK for their money but not those who don’t?… Re-post this if you’d like to see this done in all 50 states!”

Sounds pretty awesome, right?! You work your tail off for peanuts and people who don’t shouldn’t get a free ride, should they?! This is America! Make your own way and get a job, you lazy bum!

Maybe it sounds good as a knee jerk reaction. Maybe you haven’t thought it through. Well, considering I’m unemployed, and don’t drink and don’t smoke and don’t do drugs, let me take the side of those in a less fortunate situation. And I DEFY you to say that I am lazy and haven’t earned my way and contributed to society. I made TV shows and you watched them, so if anything, you’re the couch potato.

First off, each welfare applicant has their own unique set of circumstances at the root of their misfortune, so therefore no broad legislation could right the wrongs of the system.  I believe this means that we should, for the time being, accept the shortcomings of the current system and focus our efforts in more effective areas.

Let’s not stop there. If you’re so into drug testing for these lazy good-for-nothing welfare users who are taking advantage of all your hard work, let’s take it further. Shouldn’t all types of public assistance require drug testing?  How would you feel if testing was required for unemployment benefits or social security?  How about those on disability or the parents of Head Start children?  Should they be tested as well?  What about students receiving financial aid, or WIC mothers, or seniors on Medicaid?  Clearly these people could also be abusing the generosity of the American public.

LET’S BE THOROUGH.

You also might not be considering this, but the bank and auto industry bailouts are estimated to be somewhere between 770 billion and 1.2 trillion.  We’re talking tax cuts, grossly profitable contracts, and outright cash payments to big businesses that take that money and a lot of the jobs at those companies and take them overseas.

All that bailout money could have paid the last decade of social welfare and not even one CEO or politician was drug tested. Plus, urinalysis is the only semi-affordable way to drug test on such a large scale and there are a handful ways you can beat that already highly ineffective test. Also, if you think the cost of the drug testing isn’t going to come out of your tax dollars, you are beyond naive.

People applying for state jobs have to pay around 90 bucks out of pocket for this test. Do the math of that cost times however many people are on welfare!

It’s time to come to the realization that salvation doesn’t lie in reforming our tiny offerings to the poor, but by taking back the money that was swindled from us by the wealthy.  Even Warren Buffet agrees with it, as he wrote an op-ed piece last week in the NY Times telling the Government to tax the rich more and take away the tax cuts. The richest 1% of our nation possesses more wealth than the poorest 90% and this gap is growing every day.

Wake the hell up, America, and put your vitriol towards the real issues.

EDIT – 8/21/11: Jon Stewart from the Daily Show pretty much took what I said and ran with it to hilarious effect. Do enjoy.

The Daily Show – World of Class Warfare – The Poor’s Free Ride Is Over
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Share/Bookmark

My last day at work.

Suddenly I have an abundance of time for watching The Wire, and reading all the Game of Thrones books, and any of the other countless books and DVD’s stashed around my house that I never quite had time to sit and enjoy.  The fact that I’m typing this at 3:22 a.m. should be an indication that things have changed a lil’ bit. Usually I save this sort of stuff until at least 4 a.m.

But I digress…

While a few weeks of enjoying the entertainment I have amassed over the last several years of being in the workforce will be a nice change of pace, I do want to get back to being a productive member of society. So, if you own a place of business dealing in any aspect of creative, tv/radio, internet, internet marketing, you name it: Contact me! I’m one of the most creative, driven individuals you will ever deal with in a working environment. Plus, I’m sassy.

Until then, I’m going to be cackling at Omar. Email me.

Share/Bookmark

If something works to a degree, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, or even good. Just because you have something out there, doesn’t mean it’s worth anyone’s time. This falls flat in front of the latter.

To some work, is what you do and to some degree you’re defined by it and how proud you are of what you’ve accomplished.

Others are just happy to get a check and barely put in the required effort to do exactly what the boss has said to do (usually with no questions asked, and no challenges to it’s validity), and usually the boss is just doing what his boss said to do without questioning or challenging what they’re wanting.

This brings up the great debate. Should you put your heart into your job, and make it something you want to be proud of even though you’re not going to get what you want 99% of the time? Or just punch-in and punch-out, get your check, and retire at age 65, never to think about the place you worked again.

I feel disconnected from the people I work with, and I don’t know what their motivation is for anything, except abject fear of losing their jobs. Where’s the pride for making a quality experience anymore? Where is the feeling of discovery, and innovation, and knowing that you left it all out there?

Or does that even exist anymore?

It hurts because I care too much. Because I see the potential and no one else will help to make what could happen actually happen.

Good night.

——A letter from Matt to his manager at Dairy Queen, 1997.

Share/Bookmark

December 30th,
2010 and it was in the high 50s – which to me is an altogether
foreign experience to not have to wear a coat outside in the last
month of the year. So my wife and I ventured out into the
unreasonably warm and wet city to dodge the people who can’t drive
in the rain (all of them) and who don’t pay attention (most of
them) and eat delicious food.

Basically this whole post is
just a set up for me to show a picture of the scrumptious gelato
offerings at Za-Za pizza and salad in the Heights neighborhood in
Little Rock. I’d been there before-the wife hadn’t. She got the
tandoori chicken salad, I got the Santa fe (loaded with black beans
and caaaaarn) and we both got broccoli and cheese soup and it was
all delicious, but it was all a precursor to the gelato. We stared
at the case, making a Sophie’s Choice level decision on which of
these icy marvels would pass through our lips.

Moments later, sitting in my car, shame eating
the hell out of some gelato we agreed that we’d both made a wise
decision.

The choices were: Pistachio,
strawberry/banana yogurt, chocolate mint, dulce de leche, tiramisu,
cookies and creme.

Which one would you have
picked? Reply in the comments!

Share/Bookmark

I worked for a sign company (Sign Masters, lol) for about four or five months back when I was Fifteen. In that time I screwed up things that you had one shot to paint, made huge bubbles in tons of vinyl appliqués, and shoved a nail straight in one side of my foot and out the other while breaking down boxes and crates (destruction being the one strength I brought to the Sign Masters’ table.)

Anyway, regardless of my lack of skill in making signs, I can still appreciate the skill and craftsmanship that goes into making good ones. Flying Fish co. In downtown Little Rock has an example of just that. Great design, flawless execution.

Oh hey, and there’s a horse standing on the street, too! (That I somehow didn’t even see until looking at this picture much later.)

Anyway, Buddy Follis, sorry for sucking at making signs. I know you were just doing my Dad a favor by having me work there after school, but it was one of my first jobs and I didn’t quite “get it” at the time. I hope the fact that I didn’t cash my last paycheck out of abject shame somehow made up for how terrible I was.

Who am I kidding? Like he would have noticed $9.87. I could’ve bought a new Meat Puppets tape.

This post is now about Missed Opportunities.

Share/Bookmark

We play games for a long list of reasons: to escape reality, to try on someone else’s life for a little while, or to experience thrills and adventures that aren’t pertinent or practical in our normal day to day existence. With it comes an ingrained understanding of how games work, and what the series of events unfolding before you are going to be. Fable 3 comes a few years after its series revamping predecessor and brings a new gameplay element that while innovative in its genre, sort of comes as a “no duh” step in interactive storytelling.

Read the entire thing at The Dead Pixels blog at TRC by Matt Barnette (and acclaimed artist Dave White)

Share/Bookmark

http://mattbarnette.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/barnette_fire_header.jpg

Share/Bookmark

Image by Kyle Jones - http://www.twitter.com/justkyle

Nashville, Tennessee…

I was born there. I lived there for 21 years. (I’m 31 now.) I remember growing up thinking it was the greatest city on earth. I remember listening to Coyote McCloud, Rhett Walker and the Y107 Zoo Crew radio show, and thinking that no one else on earth could do things on the radio or make me laugh like that. I remember the KDF neon on top of their building back when Carl P. Mayfield and Bubba Skynyrd were ruling the rock airwaves of 103 KDF. I’ve had my share of Rotier’s burgers and Vandyland shakes and well, probably everything at Pancake Pantry…and I remember watching them change the banner out in front of Tower Records on West End every month and thinking it was cool as hell that they went through all that trouble just to look cool and sell records. I remember getting really excited going to Stone Mountain and buying stupid band t-shirts, some of which I still have to this day. I remember going with my friends to see the Fun Girls from Mt. Pilot at Lucy’s Record Shop, or to see the Melvins at 328 Performance Hall. I remember the construction of the SBC/Batman building and how cool it was that we had a Batman building, even though it wasn’t “technically” a Batman buidling. I could still explain to people how to get from one obscure place to another just by closing my eyes and visualizing it.

I’ve over-made my point. I remember Nashville how it was when I lived there, way back up until September 2001, when I moved to the West Coast, right around September 11th.

Which makes what I’ve seen the last week so hard to choke down. Yes, there is an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and yeah, a guy tried to blow up some sort of jerry-rigged bomb in Times Square, but my thoughts, and my heart are in the 615 area code, trying to figure out what’s going to happen next…because my city is under ten feet of murky Cumberland River water. Twelve feet above flood levels. That’s insane. That’s once every 1000 years kind of stuff. That’s 0001% chance of happening kind of stuff.

The Flood - i-24 by Riker Photography

Yeah, we just had a tornado here in Arkansas, and that’s what we’re dealing with on the day-to-day basis, but to go through the shock of that and hear the following day that my hometown, where my parents still live, was being covered in flood water. Killing people. Sweeping them away. Burying and destroying institutions, places, things that I’d grown up around and in. Well, it’s made me sick all week.

I’m five or six hours away, and I’m not sure that I could even do anything if I *was* down there, hell, I’d probably make it worse,or drown, or something…but I’m definitely thinking about it.

I’ve been away for almost a decade. Done a lot of living and traveling since then. Have settled down, gotten married, the works. Have a great job at an excellent company doing remarkable things. The last time I was in Nashville was December of 2008. I drove there in my new car and went from the slow, methodical pace of drivers in Arkansas back into the frenetic frenzied lane swapping craziness of downtown Nashville traffic. It overwhelmed me. I hated driving there the last time I visited. It freaked me out and made me feel like I’d grown weak and unaccustomed to my city. Like I was a tourist in my own hometown now. It pissed me off. To say I’d gotten used to Arkansas traffic would be an understatement. I remember when I first got to Little Rock screaming curse words and flipping people off because they were going FIFTY MILES AN HOUR. Hell, let’s be transparent, I’d yell at people who were going seventy on the interstate. Because Nashville is just fast. People drive fast, they talk fast, they say “Ten” like “Ten-ee-unn” and we deal with things even faster.

Which is probably why we’re not getting as much press as some of the other things going on right now. Nashvillians have an innate ability to get things done and keep on moving no matter what happens. No one seems to be looting. Everyone is just doing what needs to be done and trying to get past it. Everyone is not-so-secretly happy that the stupid “Ghost Ballet” statue/sculpture fell apart. Nashvillians are kind of dicks. We know that. We’re fine with it.

I haven’t been a live-in Nashvillian in years. But I always feel that it’s my home and I always think in the back of my head that someday I will end up there again, for good. But who knows.

I just hope that the Grand Ol’ Opry, and Hatch Show Print, and Tootsie’s, and Jack’s and Robert’s Western Wear, and Adelphia Coliseum (sorry it’ll never be LP Field to me) and all the things I know and love about Nashville will bounce back.

I know they’ll bounce back.

It’s what Nashville does.

WE GOT THIS. WE ARE NASHVILLE. WE ARE MUSIC CITY.

———————–

Here are some other awesome blogs about the Nashville situation:

Nashville Scene: http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/the-flood/Content?oid=1526360

Section303: http://www.section303.com/we-are-nashville-4366

and a big list I stole from the mighty mighty Nashvillest.com

• Stephen Yeargin: “Not landlocked anymore” and “Sandbags”
• Goldni: “I Don’t Get It”
• East Nashville Blog: “The Great Nashville Flood of 2010?
• Kristine Neeley: “This Is Our Home”
• Annie Blogs: “Stories of Rain”
• South Nashville Life: “Nashville Life”
• I [Heart] Nashville: “Nashville Needs Your Help” (pictured above)
• Shakesville: “The Situation In Nashville”
• Tiny Cat Pants: Ah, heck, just read everything.
• Holly Wynne: “Down in the flood” and “More about our flood”
• Lori Lenz: “Nashville Flood, part 2?
• Southern Beale: “Devastating” and “After the Deluge”
• Avalon Acres Farm: Perspective on cleanup
• Looking For Like: “Rebuild This City On Rock and Roll”
• Nate News: “Nashville, Breathe”
• Huffington Post: “They Are Nashville: Standing By Music City”

You can help, if you want to, by donating to http://www.hon.org (Hands over Nashville) or by going to http://www.NashvilleRedCross.com (which has been getting so much traffic it has been crashing, so please be patient and keep trying.)

Thanks!

Share/Bookmark

“You’re still here? It’s over!  Go home! Go!”

Share/Bookmark