Unemployment ver. 3.0

So for the third time since graduating college I find myself out of work again. To some this may be a welcome vacation, me not so much. I enjoy what I do, and I'm not lazy by any means, I just have the worst luck ever. With this new found free time that I have, I've been trying to get better at skateboarding by skating every morning. I've been applying to jobs like mad, but haven't gotten any responses. If you've been watching the news at all, you know our economy is in the toilet, and most companies aren't looking to take on more employees. Although it's a great time for me to have no savings, no investments, no stocks, no 401k, no job and no girlfriend.
Anybody wanna trade a BFA for hardcore records or vinyl toys?

On the positive side, I will be filling in bass duties for an awesome band from Chicago called Poison Planet. here are our tour dates:

Tuesday October 14, 2008

Vitamin X
Poison X Planet
Everything Falls Apart
Done Deal
Brown Sugar

@ The Argyle
18 Elmview Place
Buffalo, NY

$7.00 6PM

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Wednesday October 15

Vitamin X
Black SS
I Object
Poison Planet

Castle Rochmore
113 W Borden Ave
Syracuse, NY 13205

$8.00 5:30PM

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Thursday October 16

Day off. Recording at Side Two in Boston.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Friday October 17

Vitamin X
Resistant Culture
Perdition
Poison Planet
Morne

Democracy Center
Cambridge, MA

7PM $7.00

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

SATURDAY OCTOBER 18

HARDCORE PUNK SHOW AT...

THE COPRSE FORTRESS
906 PHILADELPHIA AVE.

SILVER SPRING, MD

SICK FIX (DEVASTATINGLY HEAVY, DISGUSTINGLY HARD)
POISON PLANET (UNAPOLOGETIC VEGAN STRAIGHT EDGE.
NO METALCORE CRAP, JUST EARLY 80S INSPIRED HARDCORE )
BAD HABIT (HARDCORE PUNK TO MOSH TO)
NO MINION (1ST SHOW!!!! FAST, 3 CHORD MANIC HARDCORE FRONTED BY THE ANGRIEST MAN ALIVE)

6 BUCKS, 7PM.

http://myspace.com/poisonxplanet

Never Make a Change

A few weeks ago there was a Barak Obama rally in Philly to coincide with the Democratic primary. There were people w/ Obama signs and posters (designed by Shepard Fairey) all over the city. It got me thinking that even though he seems well liked in my area, and probably the coasts in general, that I don't think he stands a chance against McCain if it comes down to it. Honestly I'm not a fan of any candidate, but I think regardless if Hillary or Barak win the Democratic nomination, they still won't become president.
The Democratic party seems to be pushing the "change" agenda for both candidates, but as we've seen from 2004's election, Americans don't want change. All the presidents in the past have been rich old white men, so why would a woman or a sorta black guy go over well? I'm not a fan of McCain by a long shot either, but I think he's got the best chance of winning. Regardless of who wins, the major problems with the country won't cease immediately. The economy and job markets will still suck, countries/people in the middle east will still hate us, the war's not going to end and the troops aren't coming home.

I think part of the problem is that people don't vote. More idiots voted for the next American Idol than any presidential election. In the 2000 election we learned that write-in votes were only counted if the election was close. That basically means that most votes from college students and soldiers abroad go uncounted. The whole voting process seems to be a joke anyway, as witnessed in the 2000 election. They could easily establish an online voting system, but they make you go to a school on a Tuesday instead. If voting was as convenient as a website or a text message like American Idol, then maybe more people would do it. The voting percentages are only based on a percentage of certain people, not the entire country.
So to sum things up... We're all screwed! (still)

I wonder what PunkVoter has to say about this year's election...

Who's gonna help when my body is broken?

As if I haven't complained about my job enough on here... I was supposed to get Health Insurance after working here for 6 months. However, It's more like 8 months by the time it becomes active. Apparently the insurance company needs 30 days to activate, then it has to activate on the first of the month. Rather than being punctual with this matter, and give me the paperwork early; they decided to wait until exactly 6 months had passed and gave me the paperwork a week later. I started on Feb 3, six months from then is Aug 3. My actual insurance won't be active until Oct 3... 2 months late! One of the major reasons I took this job was because I thought it would be nice to have benefits for once, and here it is 7.5 months later and absolutely nothing.

Since our country does not have universal healthcare, a lot of people like me are drawn to crappy companies with good benefits. If benefits packages were eliminated from the employment process, companies may actually have to increase the pay rate. However, the health care industry is so messed up from insurance in the first place, that anyone without insurance can instantly go bankrupt trying to pay bills to stay alive. It's ridiculous that money is actually a deciding factor in saving a life in the first place.

Anyway, lately my stomach's decided that whenever I put food in it that it doesn't want it in there anymore. Which leaves me with annoying cramps, and being afraid to eat much. Because of my stupid job, I'll have to pay for the doctor's visit myself. With insurance it would be $20, but w/o it will be probably in the $100 range (which is over a day's pay).

Addicted to Oil

I might say that the only thing I ever agreed with George Bush on was his statement of "America is addicted to oil." I don't think he was sincere in his concern by a longshot, but the need for oil is a huge problem. Cars are getting bigger, and gas prices are getting higher, yet virtually no solutions have been put in place. Hybrid cars may get good mileage, but they are in limited supply, and cost more than a regular car. People can convert their cars to run on corn oil, but there is a lot of preparation involved in getting the oil and removing impurities that can clog up your car. Despite gas jumping up to $3 per gallon, there is no less amount of Hummers and SUVs. We're more or less backed against a wall, and are forced to pay whatever oil companies want us to pay. Oil companies post billions more in profits over the past year, because the cost of oil is so high. If the supply of oil was running lower, you'd figure it'd be more expensive to acquire/ distribute/ manufacture. I guess not, it probably costs the same, they just figured it would be about time to exploit America's need for it.
Oil puts us in a weird position, especially with things in the middle east, where the majority of our oil comes. Do you honestly think that America would care about who's in charge over there if we didn't have some sort of interest? There are oil fields in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if the US had someone in control that they could easily do business with, it makes getting oil over here much easier. Saudi Arabia is considered an ally, yet most of the 9/11 terrorists were from there. If all the terrorists in that plot were from Iraq, you know we would have bombed the shit out of it within a few hours. They say that "war makes strange bed fellows," but now it seems that our greed is making for some strange bedfellows.
What can you do? Nothing, sit back and take it? Pretty much, however since it's you who ultimately chooses where to stop when you go for gas, you can choose who gets your hard earned cash. Keep in mind there's no such thing as a "Mom and Pop" oil company, they're all big evil corporations, but Exxon/Mobil is the biggest oil company in America. Maybe if everyone stopped going there, and distributed their potential profits across the board prices could go down. If you need a reason to boycott Exxon/Mobil, remember the Exxon Valdez? If you don't, click here. A Gigantic oil split ruined the wildlife and economy of a small town in Alaska. Did you know that Exxon hasn't paid any reparations to that town since 1986, and it's been 20 years since the accident and it's still not back to where it was before the accident. Exxon/Mobil could care less about you, why should you feel loyal to them? There's tons of gas stations around, it's your money... Use it with a conscious

FYI: When I got my license in 1997, gas was $.89 in NJ, which has full service gas stations. Today, gas is $3 or more for unleaded. Seems a little bit ridiculous, doesn't it?

Fuck You, Senator!

...a lot of kids don't know what work is. They think work is a four-letter word -Hillary Clinton

Dear Senator Clinton:

My name is Jeff DeSantis, I represent the generation you speak of with no work ethic. My problem with work is not that I feel entitled to a great paying job with no effort, but the fact that I've put forth the effort to no rewards. I went through High School, then to a county college, then to a 4 year state college; I posses a HS diploma, an Associates Degree, and a Bachelors degree. I graduated in 2003, and it took me 2 and a half years to find a job in my field. I wouldn't say I felt I deserved a six figure salary job, but I felt (and still feel) that I was somewhat entitled to a job that would be complimentary to the efforts I had made with my education. I currently have a job, where I am underpaid, that I took in order to gain experience and have it on my resume that I worked full time doing what I went to school for. Jobs don't want people with no work experience, but you can't get experience without a job, so we're all supposed to take low paying jobs in order to get experience. What was college for? I certainly didn't get enough experience to get a job there.

It's not that we expect work or that we think work is something bad, since a child we were told: go to school - go to college - get a job. Now the fact that we have trouble finding jobs, and when we do it's something we don't want to do just so we can pay off our student loans. I bet your daughter didn't go unemployed for 3 months after college because she couldn't find work. I bet she didn't work at a retail job, since her student loan payments were coming up, and she needed money. I'm sure that she found a job right out of college due to her parent's connections. I'm sick of privileged people who've had things handed to them based on who their parents know, turn around and call me lazy because I don't have the same advantages as them.

You say we're lazy, you say we hate work; but we've worked hard and got nowhere, and we see people who just knew the right people have no problems finding their first job within weeks of graduating. I've been through your system, I've done everything we'd been told to get a job, and now when it comes time for the pay off we're thrown scraps. We see no benefit in hard work, and it's not our problem it's the economy and work environment. So, in closing, FUCK YOU SENATOR CLINTON!

Sincerely,

Jeff DeSantis
- Generation Y representative

I don't get it...

This is an undoctored image of the cover of the NY Post. Does anyone else find it extremely disturbing that the picture of a dead and bloody Zarqawi has been everywhere? I mean when they went looking for Saddam, they weren't looking to blow him up, just find him. Why now with this new threat did they blow him up along with his family and spiritual advisors. It all seems rather forced. The US government has lately been trying to alter the past by saying they were aware of Zarqawi before invading. What about Saddam? What about Bin Laden? It seems that the US needs to have a figurehead of evil, when actually there's a country full of people who hate us. By killing their leader, it will only intensify this hatred. Can't we all just get along?

"Osama Bin Laden? More like Osama Been Hidin'"- Black Gallagher

ImmigrationMasturbation

There's been a lot of talk about immigration lately, out of nowhere to get everyone's minds off the failing "war" abroad. It seems odd to be much of a political issue, since many large corporations and rich folk alike love immigration. Why pay someone a fair day's work when some illegal immigrant will do it for half the price? They don't get rich by being honest... The fact of the matter is that it's impossible to guard every stitch of our borders, even the parts that don't touch land could potentially enable someone to come in illegally. You can't put a wall up on our coastline and have people guard it constantly. A lot of it seems to be more concerned with Mexican immigrants than Canadian immigrants, which is more of a thinly veiled racist issue. I don't have any statistics, but I'm sure there's a good number of Canadian illegals here as well.

I had a Canadian friend who had moved to America, and married an American. You'd think that'd be enough to convince immigration to grant a citizenship, nope. He got a work green card, but the process to become a legal US citizen was so much of a hassle that him and his wife moved to Canada. First of all it was extremely expensive, then he had to list every organization he'd been a member of since the age of 18. This included internet sites and mailing lists. I know I've probably signed up for tons of useless crap on the internet I could never remember. The problem begin that if they find out you omitted an affiliation, you could be denied citizenship and be out your money and basically screwed. Another thing that was weird was that you couldn't leave the country for a year. I mean if you're coming from Canada or Mexico, chances are you have friends/family there. You wouldn't be able to see them for a year? That hardly seems fair, I think there should be a little more leeway within the continent of North America. If anything, it's almost flattering that so many people want to join our country, but if there's such a problem with them being there legally, there should be some effort to make it easier to obtain legal citizenship.