Corporate Weasel

My Sealy, I... can't get enough of your love, babe.

I've heard people say that
Too much of anything is not good for you, baby.
But I don't know about that:
As many times as we've loved
We've shared sleep and had naps
It doesn't seem to me like it's enough
There's just not enough, baby:
There's just not enough.

Getting cozy with my bed for the last time for three weeks. **sniff**

In other news: it's exactly one month until I quit.

Kelo abuse with hilarious consequences.

See for yourself at Volokh.

I would SO go on vacation there. I would even chip in for the initial investment: this is amusing as fuck. I'm really pulling for this business venture based on pure entertainment value alone.

Corporate Weasel side note:  the guy who sits next to me at work is this former president of the College Republicans group from his alma mater, so we share a limited number of political views. I've been chit-chatting with some customers lately about some political issues (digression: another reason I love FC: we love talking about books about the early Republic!), which has naturally spilled over the cubicle wall. I've been sending him links about all of this Kelo stuff, and he was absolutely floored when he saw the plans for Souter's homestead. He sent all this info to Drudge once he saw it, and now it's up: he may very well have gotten Drudge to put this on DrudgeReport, via the CW. I love the internet.

"Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's interpretation of the Constitution."

Right on, Clarence Thomas (thanks to Randy Barnett).

There's been a ton of posts and outrage in the Blogosphere over this one, and I really have nothing to add but my own horror and dismay that, as the Supreme Court has now said, "All your homes are belong to us." (thanks to Instapundit for the notion and the round-up)

The right of property and it's significance in our political culture is huge - as much as I'm grossed out that the government can now transfer private property from one private owner to another (and not necessarily for public use), I'm curious to see what the backlash will be. I can't imagine that any "side" is for this - most conservatives would be against it because conservatives believe that property is a necessary part of liberty, and liberals should be against it because it threatens the little guy (the poor and middle class, usually without political power) the most. 

As CT let on before: I don't understand how the Constitution could be bent, squeezed, shaved or molded to be understood to reduce the rights that private property owners have. I may have more rights in my uterus right now than you do in your entire house and the land surrounding it: at least for the time being, the government can't claim eminent domain on my uterus and implant five embryos with the purpose of the public good (ie, creating more taxpayers to support public projects and a larger government bureaucracy).

It was my belief that as our country and political culture has grown, we have expanded and will continue to expand the meaning of freedom and rights - I'm starting to think that this is not the case. I'll close this out for tonight with a few more thoughts:

"The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this is in fact to deprive them of their liberty."
--Arthur Lee, "Prejudices" by HL Mencken

"The right to enjoy property without lawful deprivation ... is in truth a personal right. In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. Neither could have meaning without the other. That rights in property are basic civil rights has long been recognized."
--Potter Stewart, 405 US 538, 552

Feel free to read the majority and dissenting opinions here:
Stevens majority
That bitch Kennedy's concurrence
Sandra Day O'Connor's dissent
Clarence Thomas' dissent

An interesting note that I saw over at Volokh: does Sandra's use of "we" instead of "I" indicate that her dissent was scheduled to be the majority decision? Did our favorite swinger, Anthony Kennedy, play the old switcheroo at the last minute?

Convalescence: Day 3.5

Being sick has been pretty sweet - I've been sending out additional resumes in between coughs, drinking lots of juice, finding new opportunities on CareerBuilder, catching up on sleep, reading and quietly sobbing to the majority decision of Kelo.

Pretty much the highlight of the past two days was watching "Talk Sex with Sue Johaneson."

It's hard not crack a smile when she says, "You need a feminine douche" when one can't imainge what other type of douche she might be referring to.  She then proceeded to spend about two minutes trying to describe what a bulb syringe was, all the while using this weird grasping gesture to demonstrate how one uses this medical device. In reality, it looked more like the old "turn and cough" technique:  I like the cut of your jib, Sue.

As much as I do love Sue Johansen, though,  her show could stand to kick it up a notch. She should team up with Dan Savage from Savage Love. They could be the dymanic duo of sexuality: a witty  gay man and sexpert granny could take on anything together. And, of course, hilarity would ensue.

Old habits die hard.

I had a bitchin' sales day today. I'm pretty sure that I'm number one on the team this month, so here we are again: back to the old in-and-out, up-and-down. I'm guessing tomorrow will be the downside, although it might hold off until Wednesday.

In other news, I've had one human response from a resume I've submitted. Also bitchin'.

Nicole Kidman, over and out.

Tonight: sure to be a reprise of last Friday. Long Islands served in beer pitchers for $7 tend to have that effect on people.

Note to self: avoid cabbie 217, crazy Ukrainians with expensive watches and that guy who looked exactly like the hippie teacher from Beavis and Butthead (Grateful Dead t-shirt and all. Weird.).

UPDATE:

Another successful 32oz Long Island night punctuated by a shot of tequilia. Ay ay ay!

Left a good job in the city, workin' for the man every night and day...

My employment at my company is the abusive relationship that I never had.

Take today, for example:

I was positively dreading getting into the office this morning after the cluster fuck that was last week. I was sure that there was going to be some nasty remnant that I hadn't resolved before cashing out after the 12 crappiest hours EVER on Friday. I would rather be sodomized by the hour hand of the big clock at Neverland than rehash some of the nonsense that occurred last week. 

So I flinched as I opened all of my sales screens/ emails this morning, only to see that my month was completely restored by a fortuitous series of unexpected events. Not only will last week's killer return not affect my standing this month at all, I'm going to make an unprecedented amount of gross profit. Depending on how hardcore I pound the phone  over the next few shipping days, I might make a considerable commission for June. In sales, money is how you keep score: I will be the resident big shipper this month among my peers. It feels good to be ahead of the curve.

The problem: I am my company's bitch. The company is the Ike to my Tina.  The only way I make it through the demoralization and frustration is the distant hope that a better day (like today)  is just around the corner. It never gets consistently better - there are  brief flashes of pleasant success in an otherwise unnerving environment. I get slapped around to the breaking point at which point the slaps are supplanted by hugs and kisses.  Then I get a kick in the teeth, and the cycle begins anew.

I feel like one of the crack-dealing foot soldiers from "Freakonomics:" all the risks, all the crap, all the pain and nearly nothing to show for it except for about five raving fans like FC.

UPDATE:

Due to segmentation in the industry, they're taking away FC. If I weren't quitting in a month and a half anyway, it'd be on like donkey kong.

So I sell a bunch of crap to my customers and, uhh.. it doesn't really matter. I don't like my job, and, uh... I don't think I'm going to go anymore.

At least not tomorrow. I took a vacation day for tomorrow, and it couldn't have been more timely: this past week sucked balls.

This weekend was bangin': Friday was a  Long Island  and tequila induced haze at one of the local watering holes, and I didn't get home until about 5:30 in the morning. I salsa danced with a gay man, I successfully pretended to be German to make these creepy guys go away (I enlisted Dublin Dame who speaks fliessend Deutsch), someone told me I looked like Nicole Kidman (... huh?), and it was altogether banner night for the GRD club. For the most part, sorrows cannot float in 32 ounce Long Island iced teas.

I also picked up my oldest, dearest friend at the airport - we did the catching up/touristy thing. It was refreshing to have a slice of home after such a crappy week.

The combination of great people, great times and not working tomorrow makes me feel like a human being again.

It's nice to be back.

I have a dream...

... that when I burst forth from this corporate jail cell, I will one day clerk for this special lady:

She's the Lochner-era liberty/property protecting bad ass that I always wanted to be.

"Fuck the New Deal and motherfuck socialism," says Janice Rogers Brown. That's the sort of lady that I could get behind. She's also into Ayn Rand, Hayek and Friedman. Apparently, she lectures for the Federalist Society - right on, sister!

I would probably have to be first in my graduating class at a top 5 law school and have fantastic connections, but it would TOTALLY be worth it to work with this special lady. She's a legal rock star on her way up to the SC when Sandra Day O'Connor retires or when William H. Rehnquist succumbs to thyroid cancer (side note: will the next SCCJ wear the gold bands?).  She'd probably get along well with CT and Scalia. She'd totally smack that bitch Ruth Bader Ginsburg down.

see:
http://www.constitution.org/col/jrb/00420_jrb_fedsoc.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/09/politics/09brown.html?
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/brown.html
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=12751#1

UPDATE:

I just learned that one of my brother's friends from college will be clerking with Breyer. It's a better "I know someone who knows someone" than the person I knew who knew someone who made out with Vanilla Ice.

Had I gone to the Christmas party...

... it might have looked a little something like this .