Saturday 19 May 2018

My Burger-Flipper Story

I saw this piece from a research project connected to United Way (ALICE Project).

Basically....51 million households cant make enough to afford what it costs in their town or area on housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone.  It adds up to 43-percent of families in the nation....if you believe it.

I paused over this for a while.  It's a bit difficult to believe.

Course, if you marginally finished high school, and ten years later.....are still flipping burgers at McDonalds, cutting grass for the city parks department, or working at the school as the junior-junior janitor....then it's not that shocking.  You probably are still living in the basement of your dad's house with your girlfriend, and you have a sixteen-year old Ford for transportation.

Each time this United Way story gets told....people ought to stand up and ask them to introduce the the guy and his family that fell into this 'square peg'.  Most folks will ask questions....wanting to know what you did in high school, and how you failed to proceed on in life.  The term 'loser' might be uttered a bit.

I grew up in the 1970s in Alabama, and came to note various characters in the local area that you'd consider a loser.  Most were living in 'shacks' that had running water, a toilet, and had a 1950s pick-up.  No, they had no phone or health insurance.  No, they didn't have health care.  If you brought up the topic....you'd usually find out that most dropped out of high school around the ninth grade, and their only real job in life was cutting timber or changing tires.

The thing is that we had enough tire jobs and timber jobs to keep these people occupied and surviving. Today?  You've got thousands of these people around urbanized areas, and we've pretty well saturated the burger-flipper profession and filled just about every single timber job possible.

Yes, in some ways....we've reach a point where 'being all you can be' or getting ahead in life.....is not exactly the goal of maybe four out of every ten folks. Those four folks are aspiring to fill burger-flipper jobs and we've maxed out.  And these people can't move on.

What now?  If you can't invent more burger-flipper jobs....we are basically doomed. 

Talking Viking-DNA

There are a lot of people who live around the coast plain of France, Spain, Portugal, and regions of the Med....who believe their ancestor path is 'pure'.  Year, DNA tests are being done, and there's this minor bit of shock because....they have this northwest Europe and Denmark DNA marker that shows up.  Why?

This goes to a historical situation, between the 790 AD era to the mid 1100 era....the period of Vikings and conquest.

If the Vikings had ever been united.....most of Europe would have fallen and become some 'semi-giant' Viking-land.  But they weren't a unified type force, and their whole strategy was attack and rob.  You'd have a few vessels pull up....some Vikings jump off, and walk a few miles inland, then stage an assault on some village....where rape was common.

Nine months later, a number of these women would produce kids, who were 50-percent Viking.  Twenty-years later, the same Viking crowd might return....follow the same routine, and the 50-Viking woman would now produce a 75-percent Viking child.

So as much as people would be shocked to find a Viking 'marker' in their DNA....it's hard to avoid this unless you were Asian or Middle-Eastern.

Santa Fe High School Shooter

In roughly 24 hours, there's four odd things that you notice about this shooting in Texas.

1.  No assault rifles or semi-automatic rifles.  Just a shotgun, and a 38-caliber pistol.  Note, yeah....he was 17 and not legally old enough.....the weapons all belonged to the father. 

2.  Various 'signals' openly talked about in the media.  Yeah, folks suggest that for several months....he gave 'signals'.

3.  Bullied kid syndrome.  At least one associate of this shooter, openly talks about being bullied by coaches and other students.

4.  Big-time gamer.  No one says the hours per week, but I would take a guess more than thirty hours a week or more.

Drugs? Prescription routine?  Not mentioned yet.  I anticipate that we will find that he was on some type of antidepressant or mode-enhancement drug.....all legal of course.

Will this be brought up by the anti-assault weapon crowd?  No.  They won't use much of this because he didn't use the weapon they want to 'shut-down'.