Lucky Larry

The Philosophical Dictionary Voltaire Selected and Translated by H.I. Woolf New York: Knopf, 1924 Scanned by the Hanover College Department of History in 1995. Proofread and pages added by Jonathan Perry, March 2001. Tyranny ONE gives the name of tyrant to the sovereign who knows no laws but those of his caprice, who takes his subjects' property, and who afterwards enrols them to go to take the property of his neighbours. There are none of these tyrants in Europe. One distinguishes between the tyranny of one man and that of many. The tyranny of many would be that of a body which invaded the rights of other bodies, and which exercised despotism in favour of the laws corrupted by it. Nor are there any tyrants of this sort in Europe. Under which tyranny would you like to live? Under neither; but if I had to choose, I should detest the tyranny of one man less than that of many. A despot always has his good moments; an assembly of despots never. If a tyrant does me an injustice, I can disarm him through his mistress, his confessor or his page; but a company of grave tyrants is inaccessible to all seductions. When it is not unjust, it is at the least hard, and never does it bestow favours. If I have only one despot, I am quit of him by drawing myself up against a wall when I see him pass, or by bowing low, or by striking the ground with my forehead, according to the custom of the country; but if there is a company of a hundred despots, I am exposed to repeating this ceremony a hundred times a day, which in the long run is very annoying if one's hocks are not supple. If I have a farm in the neighbourhood of one of our lords, I am crushed; if I plead against a relation of the relations of one of our lords, I am ruined. What is to be done? I fear that in this world one is reduced to being either hammer or anvil; lucky the man who escapes these alternatives! Hanover Historical Texts Project Return to Hanover College Department of History Please send comments to: luttmer@hanover.edu

I started in 1996. It was the good old days, it was before big brother came and knocked on the door. They got over 300 applications a month and hired less than 1%. It was when it was cool to say i worked there. I left because I kept asking for a raise and I got the "its not in the budget" BS. I put my notice in and was called into the office that day and offered a whole $1 an hour more to stay. I told the manager "I thought it was not in the budget". She had no comment for that statement. That was 2004. Larry and I worked together for about a month. I feel your pain Lash...... Well, I don't feel much pain no more because 'tincture of time' is the great healer, not to mention memory loss, and other things become more of a priority: like getting a job or making one up. Anyway, it seems there are a lot worse things going on in the world than working at REI, isn't there?

Glad you got my pointless point.

So what makes a working person more pissed off than their boss micro-managing them? Knowing that 90 mill people choose not to work. But how could this be? Doesn't everybody need to work in this industrialized civilization to make it 'work'? Could it be true that the great lie of the post war industrialized world of more of everything, and less work for everyone(except the worker) might actually be true? Could it be that the economics of having everyone employed would actually bring on the downfall of the system/economy/society/environment? Or is it possible that in reality we really don't need everyone to be employed? Well golly gee whiz bang boom, happy days ahead.

Thanks for the laugh, because it is.

Wow, a whistleblower at REI. That's really edgy. Not as edgy as your comment.

it seems to me that the very act of thinking about something is abstractive. does that mean "property" is an abstract in itself? only if you think about it! but seriously, it seems that possessiveness is built on an entirely primal drive, the drive to consume and devour and possess, perhaps older than the first prokaryote, older than the big bang, and perhaps (perhaps), it makes sense to collectively and legally cater to such a primitive powerful drive to some degree. i personally think we cater wayyyy too much, with our fetishizing of "property", "ownership" and the like, institutionalizing it to such a degree that we all take it as concrete and a given: the only possibility (look at wealth distribution, in america especially). also look at your statement above (also note the role the word "regard" plays in your thinking). personally, i think it's madness, this "mine mine mine". do i live my personal abstraction in its ideal form? no. i sometimes get irritated when my wife drinks the last of the cocoa puffs. yes, she drinks them. i did smile when my van got stolen. especially when i found it, and it was full of blankets and such (provided a home to some kids, judging by the cd's left behind. plus, i liked speakerbox!). but, i also suffer from road-rage. this is truly suffering. Are you a philosophy major or something? Obviously just some kook who believes that maybe stealing is OK as long as you take it from the indigenous people, or those 'foreigners' that don't believe in your brand of Christianity. Take the Chinese as one example if you don't want to use America as one. Take over Tibet, use Christian 'charity' to dilute their culture into mush and call it God's work, will, plan, mysterious design or some such double speak. Now create some 'abstract' like church, state, marriage, ownership. We 'need' church to guide us, state to keep order, marriage to make our 'love' responsible, and ownership for a false sense of individualism. We only own the usefulness of something. If something isn't in use its utility is lost. A child once asked what the purpose of life is. They were told the purpose of life is to raise babies. To truly comprehend the reality of this statement flies in the face of all abstracts. That the only true reality in life is to fornicate and have babies: this is natures only mandate. Obviously this is too simple minded for 'modern' man; we need to muck it up a bit to make it more interesting. We need entertainment! The church 'needs' forbidden fruit for its construct of evil to work. The state needs enemies to fight and laws to be broken. People need ownership to have identities--we identify with objects--my car, home, wife, family, time, gun. It's not your time, it's my time, and your making me late by your crappy driving. It's not stolen, it's appropriated from those polytheistic heathen animals. It's not your land buddy, it's mine, now go back to 'your' country. This guy says it way better than me; U.G. Krishnamurti:U.G. emphasized the impossibility and non-necessity of any human change, radical or mundane. These assertions, he stated, cannot be considered as a "teaching", that is, something intended to be used to bring about a change. He insisted that the body and its actions are already perfect, and he considered attempts to change or mold the body as violations of the peace and the harmony that is already there. The psyche or self or mind, an entity which he denied as having any being, is composed of nothing but the "demand" to bring about change in the world, in itself, or in both. Furthermore, human self-consciousness is not a thing, but a movement, one characterized by "perpetual malcontent" and a "fascist insistence" on its own importance and survival. Source-Wikipedia

many people think because the WA side is in the sun that it is less climbable, while this maybe the case it is often the WA side that has the better ice in my experience: caveat emptor or something. At any rate, it is not far to go to the opposite shore for ye of little faith.

Trip: Mt. Hamilton, WA - Just Pictures Date: 1/1/2011 Trip Report: Got these pictures from right below the top of Beacon Rock on the hikers trail; sorry I did not get the summit of Mt. Hamilton in the pictures; D'oh. Anyway, the summit had no ice. Hope someone got/gets on it. The ice is the fat-tist I've ever seen on Hamilton. Mt. Hamilton Ainsworth Park from Beacon; looks thin at time of post. Approach Notes: Trail head for Mt. Hamilton is directly up the hill from Beacon Rock. Hike about 1.5 hours to the Notch where you can see the ice and rap in? Opdyke said there is a service road too but I have no idea if this would be any easier.

holy boogers

looks forgettable, anyway, those types r usually down the road sooner than you would think because of their own stinking history

who the heck is dat Pink?

Coldfinger, "The wrong fit in the right boot is just as bad or worse than the wrong boot." Too true. I am gimped (more times than I would like to admit to) again from trying to 'make' the wrong fit in the right boot. A real Do'h. BTW it only took a couple, or less, miles. Not so Lucky, or smart.

Just a rumor, some would say fact: the USA let the Taliban and Al-Qaeda go free when we had them cornered to go chase the real deal terrorist with nucklear arms: Sadman Insane. Now that was some good info to turn tail and run the other way to fight "the real war on terrorism"; but it was bogus info, a hoax no less. Like wheelbarrows full of money just disappearing. So maybe 9/11 wasn't a hoax but ya gotta admit that some of the 'facts' we are fed are, shall we say, not above suspicion.

Well, the only lesson my dad taught me was if I wanted something I would have to work for it: strictly old school blue collar stuff. I always overcompensated by working too hard; no concept of what 'pacing oneself' was. Younger staff at REI told me to work the system and not let it work you. I don't hold anything against young adults for being slackers. Why would you want to bust your balls for a system that treats you like fast food: eats you up to shit you out.

It would appear that way.

Fair enough. It use to be a good place to work at in the old days I was told. I just got in at the tail end of the good days.

Ja, I admit I had some gas to blow Dave, it's just this environment of silence that has to be broken, by all of us, if anything is going to change. I talked with some former rei workers that have a lot more anger toward rei than myself. The anger is gone; it's just another story now. I lied, I'm still angry-wah wah.

Port-hipster-land, Oregon. Too cool for full length pants or socks while riding in the winter; just doesn't make good fashion sense. Not to mention that a lot of bikers have as much sense as many of the drivers-- us against them tude-ness doood; on both sides. However; you could scam an accident lottery ticket if you live through it; and then ride a two wheeler wheel chair if your 'lucky'.

The party line at rei was that returns sucked up a very small % of profits; but the also said that they only made $1 profit on each coat they sold. So it is kind'a hard to really know what the truth is. While working there it was a real morale buster watching "our" raises getting eaten up by the phony returns people made. And yet it was great to be able to tell people to just return it if they don't like it. Overall, I had the best and worst of times while working at rei. I am glad that I got laid off from there before I got fired. Other people were not so 'Lucky' as myself. Some of them just got fired or kept getting their hours cut to ribbons/ split shifts/crazy shifts; this is going on while rei is still hiring new people. One day, in jest, I rubbed what I thought was a friendly joking co-worker, the wrong way. They accused me of throwing them under the bus--wah wah. Turns out they had a very fragile macho(vanity) ego and so they torpedoed me, I strongly suspect, indirectly through a co-worker they set up. Lesson: Be careful who you joke with because they may not be on your side, even if they act like they are. Better yet, don't joke with anyone in the work place anymore--it's your job or theirs--serious stuff in the hyper competitive world of today. And yet, there were some people there I totally respected and had a good time working with; while others were snakes in the grass. Funny how the snakes seemed to 'fit in' almost better than some of the truly genuine people. One hired snakes' job was to work a store, get whomever they wanted in their sights (purely based on if they liked how you looked to them) and take them out of commission-- an inside informant who got employees fired based on his words, not facts--a fellow employee called him on it and was told everything was in his file. Guess what, nothing in the file. Later, the snake, would transfer to another store to do more 'dirty work.' An employee at the new store he was working called our store and asked, 'who is this guy?' I was the proverbial whistle blower, and the bug up their ass. I would call them on their shit in their so-called 'anonymous' employee survey. Later, of course, they would track me down and ask me why I was concerned about a sensitive subject. They told me rei had no corporate policy about that subject. Needless to say, I made some poor personal choices while working there; however, their lack of pro-active labor involvement, even when labor sought management guidance, lead to a hyper-inflated environment of co-worker hostilities. This may be true everwhere due to 'liabilties' of addressing any thing as sensitive as co-worker issues. Often times management would tell me that I needed to step up, and yet never give me any information on what that actually meant. I had a manager I worked my ass off with but when it came time for a review, humm, no recollection of me working hard, just hardly working. Conjecture: they were probably just playing ball with management to protect their own interests. They do discriminate: just look at the % of young workers compared to old, % of minorities that work there, % of full time to part time, who gets promoted, who gets paid the most(as usual, the ones that do the least). Of course, they are probably not much different than any other retail chain whose labor is eating away their ceos' profits. In the 60's if you did not like the way a company did their business you would boycott them. Today, who are you going to boycott when most everything is made in communist China--everyone? God only knows what kind of things they get away with over there with regard to labor and environment. But just remember dear shoppers how rei contributes soo much to environmental causes. They are no different than any other corporation in their pro-jingoisms.

moved to spray

x2. Bill - dude.......for real? I blame these guys: thanks 4 a good laugh; and then I thought maybe your write, it was Jackie Treehorn in gutter balls who did it.

well now, not sure bout this

wag the dawg. wheres the f'in $ for the hatians? still in the pockets of those who collected it. Bill, your just so out there buddy. Obviously you do not believe in Santa-4 shame.

yep, another close call for lucky after getting smashed into the shore break, i was lucky to walk away past the shore break warning signs. RRRRRRRRR no pirates?