Do people actually use blogger anymore?

I remember when I used to post every day, and If I took some time off people wondered where I was. I rember heated arguments, many of which were "lost" in the comments sections after republishing the blog.It seems like a lot of stuff ended up missing or deleted or whatever. I also remember that stupid "Life at TJ's" blog. That Kevin guy would write some stupid crap like " today I got a haircut from a woman. She was a beautiful woman. I always wanted to have sex with the woman who cuts my hair. Today I played golf. I work in a strip club. There is a really tough guy who works there. " then you'd see like 4000 comments form ignorant teens or whatever saying "oh my god Kevin you are the world's best writer, I feel so much like I'm there, I feel the passion of your vivid beautiful world you create in such eloquient writing". Then disaster struck. Kevin disapeared... then all these idiots were forming suicide pacts. There were hundreds of "where's Kevin" theories, people claiming they were family members and that he had died, people were looking at his blog for secret messages. Then you had the so called "Kevin experts" who in some kind of stupid assed CSI fashion suposedly found where Kevin grew up and where he worked. The thing is I doubt you could get that kind of passion from blogger people today. Even our good friend Barrie shut down or deleted "the pink bee" then still hasn't shown on her "alternate blog" for a while. They even shut down the audio blogger service. I used the hell out of that one for a while.Used to be the asian girls were all on Xanga. I learned that from some Vietnamese employees of mine who had blogs up at Xanga. Now it's all "my space" and "u tube" . I wonder if anyone reads this stuff. I had a lot of things up over time, wrote a lot of opinionated stuff that "defines" where I am at the time. Things are definitely different but still the same. Dealing with the same things differently or just trying to be comfortable with the things that aren't going the way you wished is a form of change. It just doesn't seem like change when you look out the window and it's the same scenery. But then you go back and read things you wrote or look at old pictures and then you start to notice things are different. Like getting older. You never seem to notice getting older until your thirties, and then it's from looking at a picture one day and seeing somthing you really can't explain. You just look different. You can't explain what it is. Were you happier? What is it that looks different. Maybe you look better in some ways. I know when I started this blog I was doing somthing that made me feel "not like myself". I was dropping 50 lbs. I was 235 lbs, 5'9'' but I had never quit lifting weights. I just started to feel as if I was getting a little too "bulky". I had the build of a powerlifter rather than a bodybuilder, a little bit of fat coming on but no so called "gut". I deicded I wanted to look like a male stripper. I dropped weight but then I went under 200, felt like crap , lost way too much muscle mass, and still never got that perfect "six pack" like I wanted. I had no love handles, a flat stomach, had those "lines" on both sides of the abs, but never the "look". I look at pictures I posted when I was 185 and even though I was in good shape and had good muscle tone, I just felt like it wasn't me. I posted this story before, but the point is I can look at pics from those two years I was "under 200" and tell I wasn't feeling good. I wrote about 85 percent of this blog during my "skinny" phase. Sometimes it's like I was a different person. Another thing I thought about was how I actually quit carrying a gun for about a year. Right after I left the club business. I always carried a gun. I had been shot at before , my life threatened before, and I never went anywhere without a gun or "guns". Guns were part of my identity. People knew me for my gun knowledge. SO here I am , not running a club, not carrying a gun, 50 lbs lighter. It just wasn't me. But I had to take a break from "me" . Part of it was a forced break. At least the part where I ended up without a business to run. I hadn't done a 40 hour job for years. It was all 12 hours or more all those years. Then your phone rings off the hook with questions or personal situations or whatever. I remember how the phone just got quiet one day. Now is another period. I'm back to my comfortable size. Well not as big but a little over 200 lbs and still working out 5 hours a week. My fathers work has slowed to the point I'm doing remodelling or staying home during the day. I've had more time off than I ever did in my life. It's starting to not feel like me again. Sometimes I feel useless. I worked hard my whole life. Always put in an honest day's work and then some. But now it seems people who excel in any workplace are better at selling themselves or playing politics than working. It seems to me hard work is a concept that's looked at as "old school" , Everyone is so focused on doing less work and getting more back. People who are motivated to do everything that needs to be done are used and mocked nowdays it seems. Guys who get everyone else to do it for them are getting the attention at the workplace. Guys who couldn't do the job themselves. Even happening at my fathers business. I was the guy who could handle all the trouble shooting, do all the insane shit that no one wanted to handle. He hired a lot of new guys, and one guy ended up being put "in charge" of the crew. I just ran jobs before, did what I had to do. Got it done. Now we got a guy who is good but he relies more on the others to accomplish his goals. My father can do it all, and is self reliant. I was raised that way. Yet the guys running stuff nowdays can't get it done unless conditions are met. They have to have the "right help" the "right situation" etc. and in optimal conditions they perform. And it seems those types of guys get the optimal conditions they require and get to shine. OK I understand this is a great way to do things. But what about when things go wrong? When conditions are less than perfect, then these types are the first to blame or bitch. Then guys like me who can handle it all are needed. I guess people with my mindset are mostly the guys owning the businesses. Most of my friends are business owners. Or they're in charge where they work. My problem is I got screwed when it was "my time". So now I'm just a guy who knows too much to be where I am. I'm smart and talented but I have no outlet. I have this constant desire to be "good at" somthing new. I feel like by now I should own my own business. All the money I put away, all my investments and money put into the club industry or money I had to invest ended up burnned away from divorce, dishonest partners , and just general bad luck. I never stopped working hard. I tried to "make my own luck" but I'm not good at it. Making the kind of luck I need always required a form of dishonestly I didn't feel comfortable with. When I could have taken a short road with a dishonest deal I decided "hard work" would compensate for the fact I wasn't going to do things the wrong way. Now I see so many people who cheated just a little bit here or there and still going strong. My father has what he does from hard work. He's a workaholic. But he also took a lot of shortcuts in beginning. He worked hard but had to do a little dirt here and there to make his hard work pay off. I've doen my share of "wrongs" in life. Just never anything big enough to take it to the next level. I think I'd be OK with where I am if I just knew how to play politics like a lot of people in the workplace. But I know no matter what I do I end up being the same in any work environment. 1) used up and worked hard 2) I make the guy above me look good, not myself 3) blamed when somthing goes wrong because hey, if you don't do anything you can't make a mistake can you? Then I hear these fucks saying shit about my "attitude may be bad" or I may be "burned out" when I get discouraged from not moving up. I do all the damn work, and then I get judged. All that shit is is a way for the man above you to explain why "he's the boss and you are where you are". I was the boss be default. Every time I was running shit it was mostly because no one wanted the job at the time because it required a leader who could "handle a crisis themselves". Which most so called leaders can't. They can win a popularity contest any day. Every time I was ever put in charge of anything it was when the place was in trouble. When I was a Platinum, for example it had gone down to under 15 girls and was dying. I moved back up the chain of command ONLY because the sorry ass before me finally took so much money from the place he just had to be let go. He should have never got the damn GM job to start with. He was a lazy, ignorant theif with a gambling addiction that was obvious to a 5 year old. He got the job over me for about six months. I continued to do all the work. The bookings, the advertising , the only thing he wanted to do is "check the books" after I turned in the money. He re did all the paperwork at home and I'd be at the club dealing with bullshit. He'd come in long enough to start a fight, of fire someone he didn't like, or run off business. Even though I was doing all the work, he would override anything positive I tried to do. Finally money got so bad , we were a joke, he had to go. No one wanted the job. So I finally got a chance, built us up to around 46 + girls, brought it all up and then what happens? Another "popularity contest" begins and when I have the place "running itself" everyone else wants in. Seven years wasted for nothing. Same scenario everywhere else too. I brought business up in a lot of locations and when it gets rolling I get thrown out. I had dreams of actually getting enough cash up to "buy in" or start my own place but before I can get my foot in the door the scavengers come in. I've never gotten past a 20 percent interest in any business except my website program I used to do. I owned 100 percent of that one. Then trouble with the server, heavy competiton, and I didn't have the thousands required to "stay competitive" in the market. So I sold out to a bigger company and used the money in my savings for my "new business". One disaster after another followed and I ended up without enough money again. I guess the only job for me is a job where conditions are always so bad that I can always have a place because I'm a "crisis manager". When I came back to work for my father, he had heart surgery, a bunch of employees that quit and was in a panic. I stayed with him the whole time, we had a group of guys quit and take some contractors, we had all kinds of hard times. My brother was screwing the business up too. I put up with all that crap day in and day out. Now dad has a reliable crew. I guess I'm not important on the job as I was because thee is no crisis. I want to be around for the "goods times" too. I gets me down that whenever work conditions are smooth, I end up not being needed as much. MY dad had a problem with a home owner last week so he calls me and says he needs me to handle their warranty situation. SO I guess his "good crew" can't be bothered with difficult sitautions. I remember I once worked for a printing company for dupont, and they treated me like shit. One day they bulit this machine no one wanted to run because it was so fast and the work was non stop. And to top it off the machine was a prototype, one of a kind that was computer controlled.The thing broke down or malfunctioned constantly. But when it worked it put out a hell of a lot of product. I ended up with that job, and all the undisreable employees to boot. They gave me all the people no one wanted to work with. Mostly those "militant black" types, those black people who hate white people, sneer and joke and snicker at them as if they are making fun of a "slave master" they hate. People who say "fuck you, that ain't my job" all the time. Well guess what? I ended up out producing the whole damn factory. And that's no lie. People who know me from there read this blog and know how true this is. But since every other operator couldn't fix the machine when it broke down, they started blaming me for "producing too much". Like I overworked the machine. I had the company record for product. I was doing 3 to 4 times what the other two shifts were. What thanks did I get? The machine was scrapped after about a year, I ended up with an opportunity to learn the printing business because I got transferred. But they entrusted a kiss ass who made supervisor ( who never produced shit as a worker) to find a way to get rid of me because they were paying me too much to be in training again. All the money I made them wasn't good enough for a measly extra forty or so dollars a week extra I was still getting for operator pay. They didn't demote me, my machine was shut down. So they bean counted me out, blamed it on my second job at the club. Another "victory" for hard work I guess. Maybe one day I'll be needed somewhere. I'm sure someone is screwing somthing up right now for me to deal with. Maybe I just won't fix the problem next time. Do you guys honestly think that Bush would have been re elected if the country was in good shape? He got to keep his job four more years because things were screwed up. Just like the Reagan years. The only time a presidient lost the country when it was really fucked was Jimmy Carter, because he fucked it up way too much. And Clinton won the "popularity contest" after Reagan /Bush senior fixed Carter's mess. Yet we have 8 terrorist attacks against us, the stock market bottoms out, building slows, unemployment rates way higher than now, interest rates are high, taxes are high, but Clinton stayed "popular" so no one noticed. Bush comes in,has eight months in office, it all catches up to us and now these idiots blame him. If the country is "fixed" after Bush they'll just elect a democrat to take credit and win the next popularity contest. They'll help our enemies become stronger and bog us down with "pollitical correctness" shit, and do stupid shit like Clinton did giving Iran and North Korea shit to make nukes with during his administration. As far as Clinton helping Iran and N. Korea, this is a FACT, not a conspiracy theory. A well known policy that only a few people bring up. Yet look who's stuck dealing with it? And people wonder why guys like me identify with Bush. Anyway I guess that's enough for today folks. Think about it and have a great day...

posted by anthonygrieco @ 6:20 AM Comments: 0