Sucking Sucks   Man... The Squire Lounge I've been wanting to do the stand-up thing forever. My first time out was at Comedy Works and it was ok. People go to The Works' open mic night to hear their friends do the stand-up thing. It is an overly forgiving crowd and not much of a barometer for newbees to gauge an act by. Nice place to start out, though.   I was advised to try other open mics and found that the only other place that I was free for was the Squire Lounge. They have open mics on Tuesdays at the Squire so I decided to go ahead and do it.   The Squire is on 1800 East Colfax in a not-so-good part of Denver. While it is not as bad as people made it out to be, it is kind of a rundown joint. I like it, though, because it reminds me of some of the places I used to go to when I was younger. While the place is ok, the experience so far there has been awful.   First of all, I just can't seem to get a handle on the mic. I get close and wind up with feedback; I back off and disappear entirely. Last week I was too far away, this week I was too close. I can't win. I guess what I have to do is just crank the volume, that's the only thing left. My plan for the moment it to break out my own setup and get some practice time here at home.   Second, the material was ok but the delivery was shit. I dunno, I'm just going to have to work it out.   Third, my confidence level is crap at this point. I think the whole second job thing has done a number on my confidence. It's a crappy excuse but it's true. For the last couple of months I've felt like a two year old with severe brain damage. I'll have to work on it.   In any case. I'm going to go do it again next week.   Random Stuff   I dunno. I really can't think of a thing to write. I've been meaning to write more on my site since I started on the stand-up thing but I really can't thing of anything.   Normally I would go on a tear about one thing or another but I'm just not motivated to do so. Since I quit the second job, all I've wanted to do is sleep.   The second job thing has really hammered my self-esteem. It wouldn't be so bad if it were a job I was not qualified for but I've done stuff like this on-and-off for the last 13 years. I'm not stupid, I just need to find a way to get things to make sense to me in my own way. I think the worst part of the whole gig was when I found out that my support staff was talking shit about me, by name, no less, in front of one of my co-workers. That's just fucked up. If I were in charge of an outfit and found out that shit, I'd have canned them on the spot. Maybe that's why I don't have a business of my own; I'd have two or three good employees and I would fire everyone else. Then I would go out of business.   This is going down a really weird path but it makes me feel better.   When I was a kid, I knew I would eventually grow up to be someone that contributed, that I would be someone that made a difference. Over the last ten years or so, I have come to the realization that this may never happen.   I used to think that most people were salvageable, I'm not so sure that I believe that any more. These days, all I see is a parade of losers trying to get something for nothing. Ground level workers want everything without having to put in any effort; managers want to get something without having to do anything more than make declarations and hand out decrees.   The worst part of this is watching company after company hire managers and supervisors that do nothing more than cover their own asses. These degreed losers go around spouting whatever the company line is with no thought as to how any of the company's policies fare against reality. The disconnect is staggering.   When companies, like the most recent one I worked for, say things like "We need to get the number of truck dispatches down..." with absolutely no changes in anything else, I go nuts. It would be understandable if the company had done a study and pointed out specific problems with the process and said, "We are sending people out to fix these specific problems that could have been resolved with the following approach," but that's not how they do it.   No...   Instead, a bunch of idiots sit in the penthouse level and say vague shit about getting costs down and then someone says something about the high cost of dispatches and the rest is history. The company went from "one call, one resolution" to "one call, no resolution" in zip-flat. Everyone in the call center was looking for ways to pass on their dispatches to the next poor bastard in line. What a joke.   We were also told that if we were to get our call times down by ten seconds a day, the company would save eight megfucktillion-billion dollars a year. Frankly, this is bullshit. All it would do is create an open space in the queue of ten seconds by however many employees worked there. It's not like the company could stack all of this time up and save it for the end of the year for an extended vacation or something.   I don't think it would be so depressing if this was the first time I had seen this, but I've been seeing this kind of thing over and over for the last ten years.   The flip side of this is that there are companies that will allow employees to make a difference only to then fire the employee so that management can rip off their ideas and claim the ideas for their own. This has happened to me twice. It just sucks.   Jesus, this is depressing.   Oh, well. At least I got some of it out of my system.   I feel a little better.   Weird thing: I read sometime in the last year or so two things about the the International Space Station.   1. The International Space Station had just added a new system that converted the astronauts' urine into drinkable water.   2. The new urine converter on International Space Station broke.   Jesus.   How would you like to have been the poor SOB that discovered THAT problem?   "Dang, what's wrong with this water, Mike? Holy shit, it's yellow! And I think Alex has a urinary tract infection... Again."   Yes, I feel better.   Later...   Copyright 2009 by Frank Emsley