h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

B4, My dad is a salesman for electrical components and he has shown me some of the stranger bird related gear he sells. One of the devices is a perch for eagles, as they often have a windspan great enough to brush the transmission lines and electrocute themselves when they take flight. The perch sits atop a utility pole and an eagle will prefer the higher perch.

The Norway maple in my front yard attracts every crow for miles around. So far, none has pooped on my car, which is ten feet away.

Toccata, I am always hesitant to lump any behavorial patterns into men versus women. There are so many individual variations due to culture, age, class and upbringing. From personal experience (which a proper researcher *never* relies on, mind you ) the men I have known who have suffered from depression have turned inward, quiet and sullen rather than lash out in anger.

Marv, I think it's time for legal representation.

If you lose your job over this, Marv, I would think you would have a case against those that posted the erroneous information about you.

I heard a story on NPR Tuesday that is tangentially related to your situation. It concerns an former employer giving out a fictitious bad reference in spite. You may find it interesting. Click on "Bad References" about 1/3 of the way down. It runs about 4 1/2 minutes.

http://discover.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.jhtml?prgId=3&prgDate=February/25/2003

*Crosses fingers that the forum doesn't go wide.*

Marv. This is just getting worse and worse for you Not much I can say but I hope in the end of it all you manage to get yourself happy - goodness knows how much happier I was when I left my last job. Ok so it sucks that I've still not got a job but it's so much better than what I was doing.

I'd agree with FG. Not all men lash out - or at least lash out against others. Quite a few lash out against themselves and suicide is one of the biggest killers of young men I remember reading somewhere I my own experience of it all I withdrew from people and turned inward.

Toccata, I wonder if indeed it's a cultcha thing and not a genetically programmed one. What I see and read and hear about suggests that younger women than I have become more aggressive and self-assertive. I was raised in the 50's and 60's, when self-assertion was considered a serious character fault in a girl. This might be off by a decade, but I detect a shift in public persona among those women 25 and younger.

Having to lash out and express one's anger physically can be a consequence of cognitive dissonance as well as emotional projection. Gah, I'm going all terminological. A lot of men I knew in my younger days did have problems relating to their own emotions. Drink and drugs got some of them through the days. If anyone got violent, surely it would be a failure to acknowledge the equal humanity of the woman? And that was the way it used to in our culture, still is in some others.

I listened to that NPR story too, Witty. This is that sort of incident that can haunt you for a long time Marv, when it comes to submitting your resume to other jobs. Unless you take action now, your current employers can cast aspersions on your character when future companies come calling.

Speaking of NPR and the subject of the sexes, a few Sundays ago Morning Edition interviewed John Gray, the creator of the whole Mars v. Venus pop psychology crap. He claimed that his theories have stood the test of time (those books have been out for about ten years) and are more popular and valid then ever. I about choked on my toast. His theories reduce complex human beings with an endless variety of motivations and behaviors to the same old sexist dogma that stifles both men and women. Unfortunately, they're quite popular in the U.S.

[Hati]

[BB]

Marv, they threatened you with the FBI, get some Feds of your own. Who do you think your employers are more afraid of, The Department of Labor or The Department of Commerce? Either agency might be persauded to investigate, even if your lawyer is right about your being screwed. Just having to talk to an investigater, even if you are cleared out right, is good punishment.

Marv - I agree with everything everyone has said here - get legal, and when it is all over, move. And remember you have friends all over the world who are rooting for you.

Caerwyn - you mentioned straw houses - my osteopath built one! I have seen photos - it is the most amazingly cool thing. He did it during foot and mouth, and sidestepped a lot of the planning issues.

I phoned the person who was due to interview me tomorrow - and she was disappointed but fine. These two kittens are now officially the most expensive cats in the world!

I had a very odd afternoon - I spent it sorting out the photos with my ex, and choosing who gets what. The unexpected kicker was the album I had put together of our honeymoon. The downside is that I now have a huge box of photos to sort through again - I only want to keep about a hundred or so of the very very best ones. And the worst thing is that I have all of our love letters. What the *hell* do I do with them?

BTW - I actually liked Mars and Venus, and found it a useful metaphor and a helpful way of looking at the world. I have not read all the others, but the first one is full of good - if obvious - stuff.

Ben

Ben

[spk]

Marv, if your company has a history of mistreating employees maybe you could start a class action lawsuit. That would get the media's attention.

I have had to cancel my children's programs for tomorrow. The weather forecast is for more snow and freezing rain tonight and tomorrow. The kids will be disappointed because they love to come.

Daylilies are one of my all time favorite plants. I've never raised foxglove. They are so beautiful, I don't know why I've never tried them.

Bummed. Really bummed. I'm going to a Live Action Role Playing convention this weekend and the game I'm running is only half full. There were 4 games in my time slot and we were all begging for players; no one knows why, the convention has record registration, but very few players are signing up for games in the 8 to 11 Saturday night slot. But I have made my minimum number of players so I'm going to run (even if I run at just above stall speed). The player that put me over is the GM of a competing game. I hate it that he had to drop out, I know he was psyched to run his game; now I can only hope he'll have a good time playing in mine.
It has been a rotten 2 weeks, with me volunteering to drop out and the convention organizers and my players talking me out of that, and its been emotionally up and down and up and down.
This convention is something I normally look forward to all Winter, fight now I'm just now up for it. I really have to get my game face on. I'm bummed.

Toccata - I agree with FG that lumping people into categories doesn't work very well. Just when you've got everybody in their neat little pigeon hole something happens to knock down the coop.

Ben - I think that *not* having that commute will be a better thing for your life. Tell us about the kittens! Babies of any kind are great.

Marv - Don't mess around with this man. If you have proof that this is bogus, get mean. This will follow you into a bad job market if you let it go.

Hope the game works out OK for you Mac.

Round here the common wild foxglove is all over the place, the tall flower spikes covered in little purple bell like flowers, growing in field margins and hedges and walls

Where's "here", Phil?

Here, is sat at the computer

I'm just outside of Manchester, England, on the edge of the peak district national park which in this bit has large expanses of semi barren peat moor upland.

Ben - If you plan to be famous you might want to save those letters for a biography. Reference material can be hard to find. Otherwise, paper makes a lovely fire.

FG, those books are popular here too, he has appeared on many a daytime chat show.

Ben, it was an interesting programme and I thought the house was lovely. But I would be worried about a house with so much untreated straw in it, although the lime plaster is a natural insecticide. The show also featured a clip on the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum, which I must have bored you all to tears with by now.

I do know that I am not going down with out a fight. At the very least I will make my leaving as hard on the company as possible.

At the moment I am trying to track down the inhuman recourse flack that I met with yesterday.