josiah gatlyn ha ha

[TheFifthColumn]

I doubt the 90% number you mention is correct either, as there isn't anything 90% of any social scientists agree on and there are plenty of economists who agree that a solid and healthy manufacturing base is the basis of a healthy and relatively egalitarian economy within a capitalist framework.

The 90% number comes from a survey in the 90's

Alston, Richard M.; Kearl, J.R. and Vaughan, Michael B.
"Is There a Consensus among Economists in the 1990's"
American Economic Review, May 1992

It's also cited in "Principles of Economics" by N. Gregory Mankiw, which is a pretty widely used textbook.

There is also a survey in 2006 where "90.1% (of economists) disagree with the suggestion that the U.S. should restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries":

Whaples, Robert.
"Do Economists Agree on Anything? Yes!"
The Economists' Voice, 2006

I'm not sure those citations were in correct format, but my point is that there is a broad consensus among economists in these matters. Almost every economic's teacher I've ever had has not only talked about how wonderful free trade is, but also how it is one of the few things economists across the spectrum see eye to eye on.  I guess economics and history must be incompatible.

[darrin lee]

I was going through a dark patch in life over the last couples of years.

I was in pain, it was dark.

Then I found jesus...


...


He was in the trunk of my car the whole time.

[bumptobar]

The fact that JT comes on slap and even addresses these issues at all with you has to be something you respect gipper.  I think the fact he even debates these subjects is something no other distributon owner would do.  Would you say these same things to mike carrol, rick howard, jim thiebuad, mickey reyes, if they started to post?  I dont see the point in singling out jamie for doing what is the general accepted practices going down in the skate industry today.  Your responses just seem personal like he has directly wronged you before.

[tb303]

cold war is a fucking stupid name for a video, I guess there is some 'edgy' christian spin on it...

[Strike A Pose]

"Cold War" is a metaphor for the battle between Christianity and Islam.

Anders Behring Breivik graphic series coming soon!

[Tuna]

The fact that JT comes on slap and even addresses these issues at all with you has to be something you respect gipper.  I think the fact he even debates these subjects is something no other distributon owner would do.  Would you say these same things to mike carrol, rick howard, jim thiebuad, mickey reyes, if they started to post?  I dont see the point in singling out jamie for doing what is the general accepted practices going down in the skate industry today.  Your responses just seem personal like he has directly wronged you before.

Jim does post on occasion.

[johnnymousedoom]

all i learned from reading this thread, is that josiah is a dumb prick, but i knew that already. I have lost respect for the gipper for not practicing what he preaches. Jamie thomas should learn a bit about Nafta, but other than that. good thread gays

[David Schwimmer]

I know how you feel guys , and I really enjoy the debate. For a long time in my life after going to Beverly High
I was an unemployed actor, but even after "Friends" I still felt like there was a yearning to behave and act properly.

[victor333]

all i learned from reading this thread, is that josiah is a dumb prick, but i knew that already. I have lost respect for the gipper for not practicing what he preaches. Jamie thomas should learn a bit about Nafta, but other than that. good thread gays

I know how you feel guys , and I really enjoy the debate. For a long time in my life after going to Beverly High
I was an unemployed actor, but even after "Friends" I still felt like there was a yearning to behave and act properly.

[BraveUlysses]

I know how you feel guys , and I really enjoy the debate. For a long time in my life after going to Beverly High
I was an unemployed actor, but even after "Friends" I still felt like there was a yearning to behave and act properly.

If it weren't for Joey or Chandler you would've been the lamest character.

[meathead genius]

JT, do you want me to find and kick Ronald Wilson Reagan's boney ass? I can do it. I'm RIPPED. Get that money bro, make it rain on the haters.

[Mouth]

What I would give to feast my eyes upon your chiseled manliness....

[victor333]

What I would give to feast my eyes upon your chiseled manliness....

ditto. I'm foaming at the mouth just thinking about it

[Tufty]

I'm a conscious consumer, but we have no choice but to buy foreign goods anymore because of imperialist asshole producers like you.  The producer and distributor have far more control in terms of what products are made available to the public than consumer.  That's why when a producer who decides to export production opens himself to conversation, its important to tell that person they are a fucking terrible human being who is screwing our economy and foreign economies for his personal gain.

But what about comparative advantage man?  I'm mean if this stuff is so bad, why does it have so much support from mainstream economists; why do 90% of economists think the US should not restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries?

Because if you say otherwise you become non-mainstream and instead of that you are called a communist, a conservative and a real scapegoat not like jamie drama king scapegoat. So you either support the system and the hand that feeds you or you get out of the spotlight.
 
There are also the opposite ideas but you wont hear them unless you look for them by yourself, because lets say the system likes you informed only from one side.

 As simple as that.

[cringe.]

Feist - Let It Die	Small | Large

[Ronald Wilson Reagan]

This has become a retarded ad hominem fest. I do practice what I preach (explained later), but what I do personally actually doesn't relate to the factual merits of my argument, and doesn't actually affect social change on a large level in the way the changes a manufacturer could make.

The MLK metaphor works perfectly. He was out preaching about god's word and living a peaceful and holy life and he was out regularly breaking one of the ten commandments. It actually was used as a dig at him to make him seem like a hypocrite. Again though, it didn't stick, because people understand that his goal was much bigger, and it was still a completely legitimate goal.

The reason I give Jamie Thomas shit is because he is a PR man who attacks everybody who criticizes anything having to do with his company, including the fact that his team rider is broadcasting hateful bullshit over the internet, then has a thousand dick suckers back up his obnoxious attitude. Jim has NEVER come on here with that attitude. Fuck, the first time he PM'd me I told him to go fuck himself because I thought he was a fake and he laughed about it. Karl, Kalis, Cliff, Richie Jackson, none of them come on with that business man PR jock attitude. Hell, even when Kalis had Berra's back he talked it through, and people here were hostile as fuck on that. Jamie on the other hand comes on here and tells all these bullshit lies about poor Jamie Thomas (do any of you actually believe for half a second he isn't wealthy as fuck?) and the honest to goodness company he runs, then everytime somebody criticizes him he does this "I'm imperfect unlike you!" whiney bullshit where he turns it into an us against them thing instead of focusing on the issue. He doesn't discuss things honestly and he's insulting in his nature of doing it. Fuck him.

Fifth column- any pre-2008 economist survey is like a pre-9/11 defense survey. Opinions have changed over 6 years. Why do you think Obama and Rick Santorum both have restoring American manufacturing as centerpieces to their campaign? Because in 2008 people found out you DO need manufacturing and that our entire "financialized" economy that all those economists agreed on was a bullshit house of cards, just like in the 1920's and economists all agreed on some things that turned out  to be bs. Would you give me a 1927 economic survey to show me what economists thought in 1933? Of course not. The standard belief today is that economists were wrong in thinking you could sustain an economy like ours without manufacturing, and that faulty assumptions like that led to the crash.

Now, in response to the unfounded, uunrelated ad hominem attacks. Practice what I preach? Do I manufacture abroad? That's the issue I'm talking about. I want more American products made available to consumers so even the least conscious consumer can support our economy and middle class job growth. I don't know why I am so evil and worthy of attacking for wanting that. Jamie doesn't want that, he wants profit, and is willing to sacrifice all of that for profit. It really is the epitome of going against Jesus's teachings on wealth too. Why side with that position- how does that benefit your perspective? Do you really think its cool to undermine our economy so he can have personal profits? As far as I know, its not a publicly traded company, and Chris Cole with 10% of zero is the only other owner, so how do you benefit by less available jobs in the country, the exporting of money, all for the profit of two people, and no other noticeable difference? Just explain why you think its so great Jamie has exported manufacturing of goods from our country, how it has a social benefit, or even how it personally benefits you. Because him continuing to make his shit using slaves (like a good Alabama boy who makes confederate logo gear) really has no positives at all aside from increased personal profit for poor old Jamie Thomas.

In terms of my consumption habits, although they are irrelevant to the validity of my argument about making more American manufactured products available, you guys don't actually have the first idea about my consumption habits. I'll admit some food I buy probably has issues, though I buy all of my produce at a local farmer's market.  My apartment has almost no furniture, the stuff I have is all found. My clothes are all years old, I haven't bought new clothes in years. I still regularly rock an aesthetics shirt. I own virtually no electronics aside from a laptop. The bicycle I own was made out of parts of totalled bikes and a used frame. How exactly do you know I don't practice what I preach? Again, you can be conscious, but if you actually have tried to live a zero foreign goods lifestyle, you realize that its very difficult, as there are some things that just aren't made here, which is why it is important to work for more goods being manufactured here. If it was easy to do, there wouldn't really be any reason to call other manufacturers into action. This is the REAL reason you assumed I am a hypocrite, but really it just proves my point, you can't just do it, and even if you did, it would be difficult, and wouldn't actually create any sort of larger social change.

 I don't see why you guys wouldn't want domestic manufacturing of the goods you buy. It creates jobs, it keeps money in our economy, it builds up the middle class.

Jamie Thomas is a classic capitalist pig.

Again, if a topic about the general manufacturing habits of board companies came up, plenty of people would be on my side, and wouldn't say wanting more boards manufactured here is hypocritical, but because you all want to be loved by Jamie, you attack the person telling the truth to a person who actually can make a change.

Sorry if I'm a person who says "You know how you exploit people and undermine our society for your own profits while simultaneously selling a good that claims to be spreading religious blessings? That's not ok."

[newhampster]

This has become a retarded ad hominem fest. I do practice what I preach (explained later), but what I do personally actually doesn't relate to the factual merits of my argument, and doesn't actually affect social change on a large level in the way the changes a manufacturer could make.

The MLK metaphor works perfectly. He was out preaching about god's word and living a peaceful and holy life and he was out regularly breaking one of the ten commandments. It actually was used as a dig at him to make him seem like a hypocrite. Again though, it didn't stick, because people understand that his goal was much bigger, and it was still a completely legitimate goal.

The reason I give Jamie Thomas shit is because he is a PR man who attacks everybody who criticizes anything having to do with his company, including the fact that his team rider is broadcasting hateful bullshit over the internet, then has a thousand dick suckers back up his obnoxious attitude. Jim has NEVER come on here with that attitude. Fuck, the first time he PM'd me I told him to go fuck himself because I thought he was a fake and he laughed about it. Karl, Kalis, Cliff, Richie Jackson, none of them come on with that business man PR jock attitude. Hell, even when Kalis had Berra's back he talked it through, and people here were hostile as fuck on that. Jamie on the other hand comes on here and tells all these bullshit lies about poor Jamie Thomas (do any of you actually believe for half a second he isn't wealthy as fuck?) and the honest to goodness company he runs, then everytime somebody criticizes him he does this "I'm imperfect unlike you!" whiney bullshit where he turns it into an us against them thing instead of focusing on the issue. He doesn't discuss things honestly and he's insulting in his nature of doing it. Fuck him.

Fifth column- any pre-2008 economist survey is like a pre-9/11 defense survey. Opinions have changed over 6 years. Why do you think Obama and Rick Santorum both have restoring American manufacturing as centerpieces to their campaign? Because in 2008 people found out you DO need manufacturing and that our entire "financialized" economy that all those economists agreed on was a bullshit house of cards, just like in the 1920's and economists all agreed on some things that turned out  to be bs. Would you give me a 1927 economic survey to show me what economists thought in 1933? Of course not. The standard belief today is that economists were wrong in thinking you could sustain an economy like ours without manufacturing, and that faulty assumptions like that led to the crash.

Now, in response to the unfounded, uunrelated ad hominem attacks. Practice what I preach? Do I manufacture abroad? That's the issue I'm talking about. I want more American products made available to consumers so even the least conscious consumer can support our economy and middle class job growth. I don't know why I am so evil and worthy of attacking for wanting that. Jamie doesn't want that, he wants profit, and is willing to sacrifice all of that for profit. It really is the epitome of going against Jesus's teachings on wealth too. Why side with that position- how does that benefit your perspective? Do you really think its cool to undermine our economy so he can have personal profits? As far as I know, its not a publicly traded company, and Chris Cole with 10% of zero is the only other owner, so how do you benefit by less available jobs in the country, the exporting of money, all for the profit of two people, and no other noticeable difference? Just explain why you think its so great Jamie has exported manufacturing of goods from our country, how it has a social benefit, or even how it personally benefits you. Because him continuing to make his shit using slaves (like a good Alabama boy who makes confederate logo gear) really has no positives at all aside from increased personal profit for poor old Jamie Thomas.

In terms of my consumption habits, although they are irrelevant to the validity of my argument about making more American manufactured products available, you guys don't actually have the first idea about my consumption habits. I'll admit some food I buy probably has issues, though I buy all of my produce at a local farmer's market.  My apartment has almost no furniture, the stuff I have is all found. My clothes are all years old, I haven't bought new clothes in years. I still regularly rock an aesthetics shirt. I own virtually no electronics aside from a laptop. The bicycle I own was made out of parts of totalled bikes and a used frame. How exactly do you know I don't practice what I preach? Again, you can be conscious, but if you actually have tried to live a zero foreign goods lifestyle, you realize that its very difficult, as there are some things that just aren't made here, which is why it is important to work for more goods being manufactured here. If it was easy to do, there wouldn't really be any reason to call other manufacturers into action. This is the REAL reason you assumed I am a hypocrite, but really it just proves my point, you can't just do it, and even if you did, it would be difficult, and wouldn't actually create any sort of larger social change.

 I don't see why you guys wouldn't want domestic manufacturing of the goods you buy. It creates jobs, it keeps money in our economy, it builds up the middle class.

Jamie Thomas is a classic capitalist pig.

Again, if a topic about the general manufacturing habits of board companies came up, plenty of people would be on my side, and wouldn't say wanting more boards manufactured here is hypocritical, but because you all want to be loved by Jamie, you attack the person telling the truth to a person who actually can make a change.

Sorry if I'm a person who says "You know how you exploit people and undermine our society for your own profits while simultaneously selling a good that claims to be spreading religious blessings? That's not ok."

Jesus fucking christ, you need to get off the internet. Take a break for a while.

[chitownchaz]

backin the gipper

also jamie is rich as fuck. dude has thousands invested in his own home gym w/ mirrors..

[David Schwimmer]

This is what participation is all about gentlemen, as you can see Ronald is making a
clear point in what you can do when you type and use fingers such as ones you folks
have out there. It also reminds me of a time when I wasn't quite an actor yet and was
still testing out the ropes of a newborn society. As you can see Reagan I really enjoy
your topic and would like to offer you 25% off on my new book coming out 2013.
Also Mr. Reagan I would like to tell you of a time when I wasn't the top dog in a society
like you make speak of.  

For one year, I worked as a web designer at a newspaper. This paper, which we'll call The Daily News, was in a little logging town, which we'll call Bumpkinville, about 40 miles north of the town I live in. The drive was mostly a stretch of 70 MPH freeway, so my commute was only about 35 minutes each way. Now, driving to Bumpkinville was like driving through a time machine that took you back 40 years. So it was a lot like the 50's there, minus the good parts. Remember the movie "Pleasantville"? Well, this was Unpleasantville.

Bumpkinville, being a logging town, had paper mills. Four of them. So the entire town always smelled like an old person's armpit. Therefore, anyone with any ambition or brains tended to get the hell out of there, meaning the city was basically made up of retired people, most of them nearly deaf from working in the mills for years without ear protection, and uneducated idiots just too stupid for life in the big city 50 miles to the south.

I was hired as part of the three-person Internet Department at the paper. It became clear early on that my boss, Kirk, knew nothing about the Internet. He had been the paper's owner's son's best friend all through school, and after stints as a Marine, a firefighter, and a financial controller for a southern California airport, Kirk wanted to move back to Bumpkinville. The owner's son offered him a job as Online Manager despite Kirk's complete ignorance of the Internet. After all, the owner's son was here on a free ride, so why not get his best buddy in line for the gravy train?

However, Kirk had one skill, sort of: The gift of bullshit. He could make the yokels actually believe that he knew what he was doing, despite much evidence to the contrary. He could lie all day long without stopping to take a breath. When he hired me, he told me that 200 people worked there. I found out later it was more like 110. One day, I asked him why the Advertising Department was still stuck with Photoshop version 4.0 on their machines while our department had 5.0. He went into a big speech about he really took care of things in our department, while the other departments were lax in this area. A few minutes later, I realized I had gotten it backwards. Advertising had 5.0, and we only had 4.0. When I told him, he gave me a blank stare, which is what he always did when he got caught in a big lie, which was often.

The other person in our department was a bright young girl named Karen. Being bright meant that she was overqualified for nearly any job in Bumpkinville, including this one, which was running an Internet Service Provider with 1800 customers. Since we were actually just an agent for a real ISP in the big city named Transport, and Transport was an incredibly unreliable provider, she spent most of the day on the phone with angry bumpkins. But she did her job well, and even went well beyond the call of duty at times.

Once, Karen agreed to represent our newspaper at a local "Safety Fair", manning a booth from 9 AM to 1 PM on a Saturday. Kirk was supposed to relieve her at 1 PM. He never showed up, so she was forced to stay there until the fair ended at 4 PM. When she asked Kirk what happened, he said, "Well, I looked at my watch and it was 1:30, and I figured you were out of there by then, so I didn't bother." This was typical for Kirk, an irresponsible, lying piece of human garbage with rich parents, who had basically spent his whole life avoiding education and actual work. I remember he always spent Thursday afternoons golfing with the owner's son before the new management took over.

Kirk was full of ignorant ideas befitting someone born and raised in Bumpkinville. At one point, he decided that we were going to "sell" our older, archived newspaper articles to the locals, like the LA Times does. He had me copy all the web pages relating to this from the LA Times website, changing the name of the newspaper to make it our own. He honestly believed the yokels would be willing to pay for past articles from our little turdtown newspaper. Naturally, that idea sank like a stone.

And it's just as well, because the paper never did get a secure server running to deal with e-commerce transactions anyway, despite Kirk always telling the customers that it was forthcoming. The Information Systems department at the paper was, of course, staffed by a bumpkin too.

Jay, an ugly, zit-covered loser from the IS department, had his own problems. Born and raised in Bumpkinville, Jay had made only one attempt to get out of town, which failed miserably. He was quite an accomplished computer geek, and a web-related company in the big city hired him. He lasted less than a day, returning to Bumpkinville in the afternoon and begging for his old job back.

Jay was one of only two people in the IS department and before long the other person left, making almost everyone in the company dependent upon Jay for computer support. He used this "power" to bestow favors on people who pretended to like him, while putting off those who refused to pretend. Naturally, I was in the latter group. One day, I had trouble with a Jaz drive in my computer at home. I removed it and needed to test it on a computer with a SCSI bus. I asked for Jay's help, but he told me he didn't have the time. I knew this would take all of about 5 minutes. After Jay dropped by our office later that day to talk to Karen about nothing in particular, and hanging out for 20 minutes or so, I began to understand what a lying little asswipe he was. So, later on, with Jay about 40 feet away in another department, I popped the top of my own computer and did all the testing myself, right behind his back. He never found out. Which was a good thing, because Jay was weirdly possessive about all the computers, and he would have freaked out. He considered himself my boss, which he wasn't, but he was such an incredible kiss-up to Kirk that he could get away with anything.

Jay had a complete lack of social skills. There was this really creepy way he'd get all giddy and excited every time he was around Kirk. You expected him to go down on Kirk at any moment, and he'd laugh out loud with this mulish braying every time Kirk said anything even halfway funny. This, combined with he and Kirk going out for long lunches together a lot, made a lot of people think he was queer. No wonder he lasted less than half a day in the big city. Here at The Daily News, he was hot shit. Once outside the building, however, he was just another lonely zit-faced freak. It was hard to believe that he had been married at one time, until you found out that he had impregnated his bride first. Not long before I started working there, she left him for some German guy she had met on the web but never met in real life, dropping off their daughter at Jay's mother's house and just disappearing for a while. I don't blame her. A judge, apparently recognizing Jay's many social handicaps, granted custody to Jay's ex-wife despite this.

Now, like all ugly losers who had been made shunned by nearly everyone while growing up, Jay had fantasies of being a policeman. When the paper was bought out by a conglomerate shortly after I was hired, they put up a firewall which was programmed to block any and all websites unsuitable for anyone under 18. This cut everyone in the building off from about a quarter of the web. I pointed this out to Kirk, and he laughed it off. No lazy little shit on a free ride like Kirk was going to make any waves with the new management. That was when I started looking for a new job. Eventually, reporters in the newsroom got the ban lifted by pointing out that they couldn't do much research with a huge chunk of the web off limits. The new management, which owned 11 other newspapers and should have known better, was amazingly stupid to have ever tried this in the first place.

This bothered Jay immensely. He hated the idea of not being able to control what his co-workers could or couldn't see on the internet. But the new management still had a partial firewall in place, sort of a "Net Nanny" that could log when one of their workers went to certain types of sites. They had it set to notify Jay whenever someone went to an adult site on their computer. Now, the program was capable of informing on all kinds of sites -- entertainment sites, racist sites, religious sites, gambling sites -- but the management chose only to inform on adult sites. I remember Jay showing me the two dozen or so types of sites that could be selected, and bitterly informing me that if it were up to him, they would ALL be checked. What a voyeuristic, ignorant freak. After all, it didn't affect Jay in any way where anyone surfed to on the web. He just loved the idea of playing web cop. It was an opportunity to get back at a world that made fun of him throughout his childhood. He'll make a good Republican someday.

One day, Jay and Kirk called me into their office to have a talk with me. I had visited one of the banned sites! Horrors! Now, "having a talk" with me was basically their only recourse. Firing me meant I could collect unemployment, so they were unwilling to do that. So they got together beforehand and made up some stupid story that was supposed to scare me. Jay went on about how at some places, anyone caught visiting a forbidden website was simply marched out of the building between two security guards and never allowed to return, no chance to tell his side of the story, no nothing. Right. It was a lot like two farm-boys telling me that I'd get mugged if I ever dared to venture into the big city. They could tell I wasn't buying it, which I'm sure bugged them to no end.

The thing about Bumpkinville was, it was such an incredibly undesirable place to live, you wondered what the problem was with people who chose to live there. But you didn't wonder for long. Nearly everyone I worked with had some odd quirk or nutty problem that made them unfit for the big city.

There was Kirk, with no work skills whatsoever, an irresponsible human leech. His best friend, the owner's son, left the company after the conglomerate took over, leaving Kirk with no future at the paper, which is a good match for his no skills. Even his wife, born and raised in Bumpkinville, wants to move back to California, showing that she has better sense than Kirk. Kirk is still working at the paper as of this writing although the Online department is supposedly going to be folded into the Marketing department, making him just another salesman instead of a department head. Apparently there's nobody for Kirk to leech off of in California.

There was Jay, who both looked and acted like a weasel, the company's digital Barney Fife. He was working 12 hour days when I left. Hey, why not? After all, at home there's nothing for him to do but pop zits and masturbate.

Their top ad salesman, a really nice and personable fellow named Scott, had this quirk: Whenever he laughed, he'd repeat the last thing he said while he was laughing. This would cause people who had never heard it before to look at each other with an expression on their face that said,"Did you hear that? What the hell is wrong with this guy?" It was just weird, and the type of thing that would make him a social outcast -- except in Bumpkinville.

This sort of thing was not limited to the employees of The Daily News, however; the yokels who signed up for web access were pretty much the same story. A normal looking guy would walk in, and you'd be glad that, finally, someone intelligent-looking was about to sign up with the ISP. Then he'd open his mouth to reveal missing teeth, or a harelip, or he'd express what a relief it was to finally be out of prison. Most of the women over 30 in Bumpkinville had long since given up on trying to look good, and mostly consisted of waddling, obese, stringy-haired hose-monsters with masculine facial features. Often, they would come in to cancel their account because their husband or boyfriend was headed to jail.

Just before I left The Daily News, the Marketing Manager left and was about to be replaced by a 26 year old squirt who's about 5 feet 6 and looks like he's 19. Most of the employees were calling him "Doogie" behind his back before he was even hired, but I saw Doogie walking around with the publisher one day wearing the same suit, which naturally caused me to label him with the moniker "Mini-Me". On my last day there, which was about three days before Mini-Me was to take over a department wherein everyone was much older (and taller) than he was, I saw that a box of business cards had been delivered to his desk. I took one out, crossed out his name and replaced it with the name "Mini-Me", and carefully placed it back into the box.

After nearly a year of employment in Bumpkinville, I finally got out of there. I was the 58th person to leave the company, out of 110 employees, since the new management had taken over 6 months earlier. So desperate was I to leave that I took a job as a temp for an internet start-up named iChristian.com. But that's another Unspeakably Stupid Story.

Thank you for your time Ronald, and I really hope you took my story to heart.


-Dave

[Stoop Kid]

This has become a retarded ad hominem fest. I do practice what I preach (explained later), but what I do personally actually doesn't relate to the factual merits of my argument, and doesn't actually affect social change on a large level in the way the changes a manufacturer could make.

The MLK metaphor works perfectly. He was out preaching about god's word and living a peaceful and holy life and he was out regularly breaking one of the ten commandments. It actually was used as a dig at him to make him seem like a hypocrite. Again though, it didn't stick, because people understand that his goal was much bigger, and it was still a completely legitimate goal.

The reason I give Jamie Thomas shit is because he is a PR man who attacks everybody who criticizes anything having to do with his company, including the fact that his team rider is broadcasting hateful bullshit over the internet, then has a thousand dick suckers back up his obnoxious attitude. Jim has NEVER come on here with that attitude. Fuck, the first time he PM'd me I told him to go fuck himself because I thought he was a fake and he laughed about it. Karl, Kalis, Cliff, Richie Jackson, none of them come on with that business man PR jock attitude. Hell, even when Kalis had Berra's back he talked it through, and people here were hostile as fuck on that. Jamie on the other hand comes on here and tells all these bullshit lies about poor Jamie Thomas (do any of you actually believe for half a second he isn't wealthy as fuck?) and the honest to goodness company he runs, then everytime somebody criticizes him he does this "I'm imperfect unlike you!" whiney bullshit where he turns it into an us against them thing instead of focusing on the issue. He doesn't discuss things honestly and he's insulting in his nature of doing it. Fuck him.

Fifth column- any pre-2008 economist survey is like a pre-9/11 defense survey. Opinions have changed over 6 years. Why do you think Obama and Rick Santorum both have restoring American manufacturing as centerpieces to their campaign? Because in 2008 people found out you DO need manufacturing and that our entire "financialized" economy that all those economists agreed on was a bullshit house of cards, just like in the 1920's and economists all agreed on some things that turned out �to be bs. Would you give me a 1927 economic survey to show me what economists thought in 1933? Of course not. The standard belief today is that economists were wrong in thinking you could sustain an economy like ours without manufacturing, and that faulty assumptions like that led to the crash.

Now, in response to the unfounded, uunrelated ad hominem attacks. Practice what I preach? Do I manufacture abroad? That's the issue I'm talking about. I want more American products made available to consumers so even the least conscious consumer can support our economy and middle class job growth. I don't know why I am so evil and worthy of attacking for wanting that. Jamie doesn't want that, he wants profit, and is willing to sacrifice all of that for profit. It really is the epitome of going against Jesus's teachings on wealth too. Why side with that position- how does that benefit your perspective? Do you really think its cool to undermine our economy so he can have personal profits? As far as I know, its not a publicly traded company, and Chris Cole with 10% of zero is the only other owner, so how do you benefit by less available jobs in the country, the exporting of money, all for the profit of two people, and no other noticeable difference? Just explain why you think its so great Jamie has exported manufacturing of goods from our country, how it has a social benefit, or even how it personally benefits you. Because him continuing to make his shit using slaves (like a good Alabama boy who makes confederate logo gear) really has no positives at all aside from increased personal profit for poor old Jamie Thomas.

In terms of my consumption habits, although they are irrelevant to the validity of my argument about making more American manufactured products available, you guys don't actually have the first idea about my consumption habits. I'll admit some food I buy probably has issues, though I buy all of my produce at a local farmer's market. �My apartment has almost no furniture, the stuff I have is all found. My clothes are all years old, I haven't bought new clothes in years. I still regularly rock an aesthetics shirt. I own virtually no electronics aside from a laptop. The bicycle I own was made out of parts of totalled bikes and a used frame. How exactly do you know I don't practice what I preach? Again, you can be conscious, but if you actually have tried to live a zero foreign goods lifestyle, you realize that its very difficult, as there are some things that just aren't made here, which is why it is important to work for more goods being manufactured here. If it was easy to do, there wouldn't really be any reason to call other manufacturers into action. This is the REAL reason you assumed I am a hypocrite, but really it just proves my point, you can't just do it, and even if you did, it would be difficult, and wouldn't actually create any sort of larger social change.

 I don't see why you guys wouldn't want domestic manufacturing of the goods you buy. It creates jobs, it keeps money in our economy, it builds up the middle class.

Jamie Thomas is a classic capitalist pig.

Again, if a topic about the general manufacturing habits of board companies came up, plenty of people would be on my side, and wouldn't say wanting more boards manufactured here is hypocritical, but because you all want to be loved by Jamie, you attack the person telling the truth to a person who actually can make a change.

Sorry if I'm a person who says "You know how you exploit people and undermine our society for your own profits while simultaneously selling a good that claims to be spreading religious blessings? That's not ok."

Jesus fucking christ, you need to get off the internet. Take a break for a while.

I know seriously. Dude turns every thread into some political debate.

[sleepypancakes]

^^^ Not quoting that shit, its too long. But what I will say is that I agree with Gipper on his economic stances about bringing more manufacturing back to the US (or wherever your home country is). I'm no economics expert so I'm asking anyone at all who knows the answer, would manufacturing here raise or lower the cost of the specific product? (ie. Skateboards, wheels, shoes, rocking chairs whatever in the fuck). And I also don't see a problem with debate or discussion.

[pica]

^^^ Not quoting that shit, its too long. But what I will say is that I agree with Gipper on his economic stances about bringing more manufacturing back to the US (or wherever your home country is). I'm no economics expert so I'm asking anyone at all who knows the answer, would manufacturing here raise or lower the cost of the specific product? (ie. Skateboards, wheels, shoes, rocking chairs whatever in the fuck). And I also don't see a problem with debate or discussion.

is this a serious question? do you think anyone manufactures stuff in china because it would be cheaper in the us?

[DaSk8D00D]

This is what participation is all about gentlemen, as you can see Ronald is making a
clear point in what you can do when you type and use fingers such as ones you folks
have out there. It also reminds me of a time when I wasn't quite an actor yet and was
still testing out the ropes of a newborn society. As you can see Reagan I really enjoy
your topic and would like to offer you 25% off on my new book coming out 2013.
Also Mr. Reagan I would like to tell you of a time when I wasn't the top dog in a society
like you make speak of.  

For one year, I worked as a web designer at a newspaper. This paper, which we'll call The Daily News, was in a little logging town, which we'll call Bumpkinville, about 40 miles north of the town I live in. The drive was mostly a stretch of 70 MPH freeway, so my commute was only about 35 minutes each way. Now, driving to Bumpkinville was like driving through a time machine that took you back 40 years. So it was a lot like the 50's there, minus the good parts. Remember the movie "Pleasantville"? Well, this was Unpleasantville.

Bumpkinville, being a logging town, had paper mills. Four of them. So the entire town always smelled like an old person's armpit. Therefore, anyone with any ambition or brains tended to get the hell out of there, meaning the city was basically made up of retired people, most of them nearly deaf from working in the mills for years without ear protection, and uneducated idiots just too stupid for life in the big city 50 miles to the south.

I was hired as part of the three-person Internet Department at the paper. It became clear early on that my boss, Kirk, knew nothing about the Internet. He had been the paper's owner's son's best friend all through school, and after stints as a Marine, a firefighter, and a financial controller for a southern California airport, Kirk wanted to move back to Bumpkinville. The owner's son offered him a job as Online Manager despite Kirk's complete ignorance of the Internet. After all, the owner's son was here on a free ride, so why not get his best buddy in line for the gravy train?

However, Kirk had one skill, sort of: The gift of bullshit. He could make the yokels actually believe that he knew what he was doing, despite much evidence to the contrary. He could lie all day long without stopping to take a breath. When he hired me, he told me that 200 people worked there. I found out later it was more like 110. One day, I asked him why the Advertising Department was still stuck with Photoshop version 4.0 on their machines while our department had 5.0. He went into a big speech about he really took care of things in our department, while the other departments were lax in this area. A few minutes later, I realized I had gotten it backwards. Advertising had 5.0, and we only had 4.0. When I told him, he gave me a blank stare, which is what he always did when he got caught in a big lie, which was often.

The other person in our department was a bright young girl named Karen. Being bright meant that she was overqualified for nearly any job in Bumpkinville, including this one, which was running an Internet Service Provider with 1800 customers. Since we were actually just an agent for a real ISP in the big city named Transport, and Transport was an incredibly unreliable provider, she spent most of the day on the phone with angry bumpkins. But she did her job well, and even went well beyond the call of duty at times.

Once, Karen agreed to represent our newspaper at a local "Safety Fair", manning a booth from 9 AM to 1 PM on a Saturday. Kirk was supposed to relieve her at 1 PM. He never showed up, so she was forced to stay there until the fair ended at 4 PM. When she asked Kirk what happened, he said, "Well, I looked at my watch and it was 1:30, and I figured you were out of there by then, so I didn't bother." This was typical for Kirk, an irresponsible, lying piece of human garbage with rich parents, who had basically spent his whole life avoiding education and actual work. I remember he always spent Thursday afternoons golfing with the owner's son before the new management took over.

Kirk was full of ignorant ideas befitting someone born and raised in Bumpkinville. At one point, he decided that we were going to "sell" our older, archived newspaper articles to the locals, like the LA Times does. He had me copy all the web pages relating to this from the LA Times website, changing the name of the newspaper to make it our own. He honestly believed the yokels would be willing to pay for past articles from our little turdtown newspaper. Naturally, that idea sank like a stone.

And it's just as well, because the paper never did get a secure server running to deal with e-commerce transactions anyway, despite Kirk always telling the customers that it was forthcoming. The Information Systems department at the paper was, of course, staffed by a bumpkin too.

Jay, an ugly, zit-covered loser from the IS department, had his own problems. Born and raised in Bumpkinville, Jay had made only one attempt to get out of town, which failed miserably. He was quite an accomplished computer geek, and a web-related company in the big city hired him. He lasted less than a day, returning to Bumpkinville in the afternoon and begging for his old job back.

Jay was one of only two people in the IS department and before long the other person left, making almost everyone in the company dependent upon Jay for computer support. He used this "power" to bestow favors on people who pretended to like him, while putting off those who refused to pretend. Naturally, I was in the latter group. One day, I had trouble with a Jaz drive in my computer at home. I removed it and needed to test it on a computer with a SCSI bus. I asked for Jay's help, but he told me he didn't have the time. I knew this would take all of about 5 minutes. After Jay dropped by our office later that day to talk to Karen about nothing in particular, and hanging out for 20 minutes or so, I began to understand what a lying little asswipe he was. So, later on, with Jay about 40 feet away in another department, I popped the top of my own computer and did all the testing myself, right behind his back. He never found out. Which was a good thing, because Jay was weirdly possessive about all the computers, and he would have freaked out. He considered himself my boss, which he wasn't, but he was such an incredible kiss-up to Kirk that he could get away with anything.

Jay had a complete lack of social skills. There was this really creepy way he'd get all giddy and excited every time he was around Kirk. You expected him to go down on Kirk at any moment, and he'd laugh out loud with this mulish braying every time Kirk said anything even halfway funny. This, combined with he and Kirk going out for long lunches together a lot, made a lot of people think he was queer. No wonder he lasted less than half a day in the big city. Here at The Daily News, he was hot shit. Once outside the building, however, he was just another lonely zit-faced freak. It was hard to believe that he had been married at one time, until you found out that he had impregnated his bride first. Not long before I started working there, she left him for some German guy she had met on the web but never met in real life, dropping off their daughter at Jay's mother's house and just disappearing for a while. I don't blame her. A judge, apparently recognizing Jay's many social handicaps, granted custody to Jay's ex-wife despite this.

Now, like all ugly losers who had been made shunned by nearly everyone while growing up, Jay had fantasies of being a policeman. When the paper was bought out by a conglomerate shortly after I was hired, they put up a firewall which was programmed to block any and all websites unsuitable for anyone under 18. This cut everyone in the building off from about a quarter of the web. I pointed this out to Kirk, and he laughed it off. No lazy little shit on a free ride like Kirk was going to make any waves with the new management. That was when I started looking for a new job. Eventually, reporters in the newsroom got the ban lifted by pointing out that they couldn't do much research with a huge chunk of the web off limits. The new management, which owned 11 other newspapers and should have known better, was amazingly stupid to have ever tried this in the first place.

This bothered Jay immensely. He hated the idea of not being able to control what his co-workers could or couldn't see on the internet. But the new management still had a partial firewall in place, sort of a "Net Nanny" that could log when one of their workers went to certain types of sites. They had it set to notify Jay whenever someone went to an adult site on their computer. Now, the program was capable of informing on all kinds of sites -- entertainment sites, racist sites, religious sites, gambling sites -- but the management chose only to inform on adult sites. I remember Jay showing me the two dozen or so types of sites that could be selected, and bitterly informing me that if it were up to him, they would ALL be checked. What a voyeuristic, ignorant freak. After all, it didn't affect Jay in any way where anyone surfed to on the web. He just loved the idea of playing web cop. It was an opportunity to get back at a world that made fun of him throughout his childhood. He'll make a good Republican someday.

One day, Jay and Kirk called me into their office to have a talk with me. I had visited one of the banned sites! Horrors! Now, "having a talk" with me was basically their only recourse. Firing me meant I could collect unemployment, so they were unwilling to do that. So they got together beforehand and made up some stupid story that was supposed to scare me. Jay went on about how at some places, anyone caught visiting a forbidden website was simply marched out of the building between two security guards and never allowed to return, no chance to tell his side of the story, no nothing. Right. It was a lot like two farm-boys telling me that I'd get mugged if I ever dared to venture into the big city. They could tell I wasn't buying it, which I'm sure bugged them to no end.

The thing about Bumpkinville was, it was such an incredibly undesirable place to live, you wondered what the problem was with people who chose to live there. But you didn't wonder for long. Nearly everyone I worked with had some odd quirk or nutty problem that made them unfit for the big city.

There was Kirk, with no work skills whatsoever, an irresponsible human leech. His best friend, the owner's son, left the company after the conglomerate took over, leaving Kirk with no future at the paper, which is a good match for his no skills. Even his wife, born and raised in Bumpkinville, wants to move back to California, showing that she has better sense than Kirk. Kirk is still working at the paper as of this writing although the Online department is supposedly going to be folded into the Marketing department, making him just another salesman instead of a department head. Apparently there's nobody for Kirk to leech off of in California.

There was Jay, who both looked and acted like a weasel, the company's digital Barney Fife. He was working 12 hour days when I left. Hey, why not? After all, at home there's nothing for him to do but pop zits and masturbate.

Their top ad salesman, a really nice and personable fellow named Scott, had this quirk: Whenever he laughed, he'd repeat the last thing he said while he was laughing. This would cause people who had never heard it before to look at each other with an expression on their face that said,"Did you hear that? What the hell is wrong with this guy?" It was just weird, and the type of thing that would make him a social outcast -- except in Bumpkinville.

This sort of thing was not limited to the employees of The Daily News, however; the yokels who signed up for web access were pretty much the same story. A normal looking guy would walk in, and you'd be glad that, finally, someone intelligent-looking was about to sign up with the ISP. Then he'd open his mouth to reveal missing teeth, or a harelip, or he'd express what a relief it was to finally be out of prison. Most of the women over 30 in Bumpkinville had long since given up on trying to look good, and mostly consisted of waddling, obese, stringy-haired hose-monsters with masculine facial features. Often, they would come in to cancel their account because their husband or boyfriend was headed to jail.

Just before I left The Daily News, the Marketing Manager left and was about to be replaced by a 26 year old squirt who's about 5 feet 6 and looks like he's 19. Most of the employees were calling him "Doogie" behind his back before he was even hired, but I saw Doogie walking around with the publisher one day wearing the same suit, which naturally caused me to label him with the moniker "Mini-Me". On my last day there, which was about three days before Mini-Me was to take over a department wherein everyone was much older (and taller) than he was, I saw that a box of business cards had been delivered to his desk. I took one out, crossed out his name and replaced it with the name "Mini-Me", and carefully placed it back into the box.

After nearly a year of employment in Bumpkinville, I finally got out of there. I was the 58th person to leave the company, out of 110 employees, since the new management had taken over 6 months earlier. So desperate was I to leave that I took a job as a temp for an internet start-up named iChristian.com. But that's another Unspeakably Stupid Story.

Thank you for your time Ronald, and I really hope you took my story to heart.


-Dave

damn son this shits even longer my chris hansen interview. i dunno if i should either respect or feel sorry for you

[LOU.502]

This is what participation is all about gentlemen, as you can see Ronald is making a
clear point in what you can do when you type and use fingers such as ones you folks
have out there. It also reminds me of a time when I wasn't quite an actor yet and was
still testing out the ropes of a newborn society. As you can see Reagan I really enjoy
your topic and would like to offer you 25% off on my new book coming out 2013.
Also Mr. Reagan I would like to tell you of a time when I wasn't the top dog in a society
like you make speak of.  

For one year, I worked as a web designer at a newspaper. This paper, which we'll call The Daily News, was in a little logging town, which we'll call Bumpkinville, about 40 miles north of the town I live in. The drive was mostly a stretch of 70 MPH freeway, so my commute was only about 35 minutes each way. Now, driving to Bumpkinville was like driving through a time machine that took you back 40 years. So it was a lot like the 50's there, minus the good parts. Remember the movie "Pleasantville"? Well, this was Unpleasantville.

Bumpkinville, being a logging town, had paper mills. Four of them. So the entire town always smelled like an old person's armpit. Therefore, anyone with any ambition or brains tended to get the hell out of there, meaning the city was basically made up of retired people, most of them nearly deaf from working in the mills for years without ear protection, and uneducated idiots just too stupid for life in the big city 50 miles to the south.

I was hired as part of the three-person Internet Department at the paper. It became clear early on that my boss, Kirk, knew nothing about the Internet. He had been the paper's owner's son's best friend all through school, and after stints as a Marine, a firefighter, and a financial controller for a southern California airport, Kirk wanted to move back to Bumpkinville. The owner's son offered him a job as Online Manager despite Kirk's complete ignorance of the Internet. After all, the owner's son was here on a free ride, so why not get his best buddy in line for the gravy train?

However, Kirk had one skill, sort of: The gift of bullshit. He could make the yokels actually believe that he knew what he was doing, despite much evidence to the contrary. He could lie all day long without stopping to take a breath. When he hired me, he told me that 200 people worked there. I found out later it was more like 110. One day, I asked him why the Advertising Department was still stuck with Photoshop version 4.0 on their machines while our department had 5.0. He went into a big speech about he really took care of things in our department, while the other departments were lax in this area. A few minutes later, I realized I had gotten it backwards. Advertising had 5.0, and we only had 4.0. When I told him, he gave me a blank stare, which is what he always did when he got caught in a big lie, which was often.

The other person in our department was a bright young girl named Karen. Being bright meant that she was overqualified for nearly any job in Bumpkinville, including this one, which was running an Internet Service Provider with 1800 customers. Since we were actually just an agent for a real ISP in the big city named Transport, and Transport was an incredibly unreliable provider, she spent most of the day on the phone with angry bumpkins. But she did her job well, and even went well beyond the call of duty at times.

Once, Karen agreed to represent our newspaper at a local "Safety Fair", manning a booth from 9 AM to 1 PM on a Saturday. Kirk was supposed to relieve her at 1 PM. He never showed up, so she was forced to stay there until the fair ended at 4 PM. When she asked Kirk what happened, he said, "Well, I looked at my watch and it was 1:30, and I figured you were out of there by then, so I didn't bother." This was typical for Kirk, an irresponsible, lying piece of human garbage with rich parents, who had basically spent his whole life avoiding education and actual work. I remember he always spent Thursday afternoons golfing with the owner's son before the new management took over.

Kirk was full of ignorant ideas befitting someone born and raised in Bumpkinville. At one point, he decided that we were going to "sell" our older, archived newspaper articles to the locals, like the LA Times does. He had me copy all the web pages relating to this from the LA Times website, changing the name of the newspaper to make it our own. He honestly believed the yokels would be willing to pay for past articles from our little turdtown newspaper. Naturally, that idea sank like a stone.

And it's just as well, because the paper never did get a secure server running to deal with e-commerce transactions anyway, despite Kirk always telling the customers that it was forthcoming. The Information Systems department at the paper was, of course, staffed by a bumpkin too.

Jay, an ugly, zit-covered loser from the IS department, had his own problems. Born and raised in Bumpkinville, Jay had made only one attempt to get out of town, which failed miserably. He was quite an accomplished computer geek, and a web-related company in the big city hired him. He lasted less than a day, returning to Bumpkinville in the afternoon and begging for his old job back.

Jay was one of only two people in the IS department and before long the other person left, making almost everyone in the company dependent upon Jay for computer support. He used this "power" to bestow favors on people who pretended to like him, while putting off those who refused to pretend. Naturally, I was in the latter group. One day, I had trouble with a Jaz drive in my computer at home. I removed it and needed to test it on a computer with a SCSI bus. I asked for Jay's help, but he told me he didn't have the time. I knew this would take all of about 5 minutes. After Jay dropped by our office later that day to talk to Karen about nothing in particular, and hanging out for 20 minutes or so, I began to understand what a lying little asswipe he was. So, later on, with Jay about 40 feet away in another department, I popped the top of my own computer and did all the testing myself, right behind his back. He never found out. Which was a good thing, because Jay was weirdly possessive about all the computers, and he would have freaked out. He considered himself my boss, which he wasn't, but he was such an incredible kiss-up to Kirk that he could get away with anything.

Jay had a complete lack of social skills. There was this really creepy way he'd get all giddy and excited every time he was around Kirk. You expected him to go down on Kirk at any moment, and he'd laugh out loud with this mulish braying every time Kirk said anything even halfway funny. This, combined with he and Kirk going out for long lunches together a lot, made a lot of people think he was queer. No wonder he lasted less than half a day in the big city. Here at The Daily News, he was hot shit. Once outside the building, however, he was just another lonely zit-faced freak. It was hard to believe that he had been married at one time, until you found out that he had impregnated his bride first. Not long before I started working there, she left him for some German guy she had met on the web but never met in real life, dropping off their daughter at Jay's mother's house and just disappearing for a while. I don't blame her. A judge, apparently recognizing Jay's many social handicaps, granted custody to Jay's ex-wife despite this.

Now, like all ugly losers who had been made shunned by nearly everyone while growing up, Jay had fantasies of being a policeman. When the paper was bought out by a conglomerate shortly after I was hired, they put up a firewall which was programmed to block any and all websites unsuitable for anyone under 18. This cut everyone in the building off from about a quarter of the web. I pointed this out to Kirk, and he laughed it off. No lazy little shit on a free ride like Kirk was going to make any waves with the new management. That was when I started looking for a new job. Eventually, reporters in the newsroom got the ban lifted by pointing out that they couldn't do much research with a huge chunk of the web off limits. The new management, which owned 11 other newspapers and should have known better, was amazingly stupid to have ever tried this in the first place.

This bothered Jay immensely. He hated the idea of not being able to control what his co-workers could or couldn't see on the internet. But the new management still had a partial firewall in place, sort of a "Net Nanny" that could log when one of their workers went to certain types of sites. They had it set to notify Jay whenever someone went to an adult site on their computer. Now, the program was capable of informing on all kinds of sites -- entertainment sites, racist sites, religious sites, gambling sites -- but the management chose only to inform on adult sites. I remember Jay showing me the two dozen or so types of sites that could be selected, and bitterly informing me that if it were up to him, they would ALL be checked. What a voyeuristic, ignorant freak. After all, it didn't affect Jay in any way where anyone surfed to on the web. He just loved the idea of playing web cop. It was an opportunity to get back at a world that made fun of him throughout his childhood. He'll make a good Republican someday.

One day, Jay and Kirk called me into their office to have a talk with me. I had visited one of the banned sites! Horrors! Now, "having a talk" with me was basically their only recourse. Firing me meant I could collect unemployment, so they were unwilling to do that. So they got together beforehand and made up some stupid story that was supposed to scare me. Jay went on about how at some places, anyone caught visiting a forbidden website was simply marched out of the building between two security guards and never allowed to return, no chance to tell his side of the story, no nothing. Right. It was a lot like two farm-boys telling me that I'd get mugged if I ever dared to venture into the big city. They could tell I wasn't buying it, which I'm sure bugged them to no end.

The thing about Bumpkinville was, it was such an incredibly undesirable place to live, you wondered what the problem was with people who chose to live there. But you didn't wonder for long. Nearly everyone I worked with had some odd quirk or nutty problem that made them unfit for the big city.

There was Kirk, with no work skills whatsoever, an irresponsible human leech. His best friend, the owner's son, left the company after the conglomerate took over, leaving Kirk with no future at the paper, which is a good match for his no skills. Even his wife, born and raised in Bumpkinville, wants to move back to California, showing that she has better sense than Kirk. Kirk is still working at the paper as of this writing although the Online department is supposedly going to be folded into the Marketing department, making him just another salesman instead of a department head. Apparently there's nobody for Kirk to leech off of in California.

There was Jay, who both looked and acted like a weasel, the company's digital Barney Fife. He was working 12 hour days when I left. Hey, why not? After all, at home there's nothing for him to do but pop zits and masturbate.

Their top ad salesman, a really nice and personable fellow named Scott, had this quirk: Whenever he laughed, he'd repeat the last thing he said while he was laughing. This would cause people who had never heard it before to look at each other with an expression on their face that said,"Did you hear that? What the hell is wrong with this guy?" It was just weird, and the type of thing that would make him a social outcast -- except in Bumpkinville.

This sort of thing was not limited to the employees of The Daily News, however; the yokels who signed up for web access were pretty much the same story. A normal looking guy would walk in, and you'd be glad that, finally, someone intelligent-looking was about to sign up with the ISP. Then he'd open his mouth to reveal missing teeth, or a harelip, or he'd express what a relief it was to finally be out of prison. Most of the women over 30 in Bumpkinville had long since given up on trying to look good, and mostly consisted of waddling, obese, stringy-haired hose-monsters with masculine facial features. Often, they would come in to cancel their account because their husband or boyfriend was headed to jail.

Just before I left The Daily News, the Marketing Manager left and was about to be replaced by a 26 year old squirt who's about 5 feet 6 and looks like he's 19. Most of the employees were calling him "Doogie" behind his back before he was even hired, but I saw Doogie walking around with the publisher one day wearing the same suit, which naturally caused me to label him with the moniker "Mini-Me". On my last day there, which was about three days before Mini-Me was to take over a department wherein everyone was much older (and taller) than he was, I saw that a box of business cards had been delivered to his desk. I took one out, crossed out his name and replaced it with the name "Mini-Me", and carefully placed it back into the box.

After nearly a year of employment in Bumpkinville, I finally got out of there. I was the 58th person to leave the company, out of 110 employees, since the new management had taken over 6 months earlier. So desperate was I to leave that I took a job as a temp for an internet start-up named iChristian.com. But that's another Unspeakably Stupid Story.

Thank you for your time Ronald, and I really hope you took my story to heart.


-Dave

damn son this shits even longer my chris hansen interview. i dunno if i should either respect or feel sorry for you

respect for sure. this dude is awesome

[smokecrack]

damn son this shits even longer my chris hansen interview. i dunno if i should either respect or feel sorry for you

respect for sure. this dude is awesome

he's a god dang phony! he just copied and pasted it from another website.

http://unspeakablystupid.com/uss15.html

i was really starting to back Mr. Schwimmer too.

(Gipper, i really like your post and respect your views. people always come with that "he's Jamie, leave him alone!" bs, or they'll try to disregard your opinion because you tend to make long posts, but you hit the nail on the head with that one. keep doing your thing, man.)

[darrin lee]

No way I'm quoting the novels above there, but:

1) Ronald's making some valid points- particularly about people ass kissing and going along with whatever the pros on here say 'cause they want to be accepted.

2) I didn't get 10 words into that David Schwimmer bullshit, but seriously trying to personify the dude with "before I got into television."  You are full-on fit for a straight jacket, rubber-room delusional.

[LOU.502]

damn son this shits even longer my chris hansen interview. i dunno if i should either respect or feel sorry for you

respect for sure. this dude is awesome

he's a god dang phony! he just copied and pasted it from another website.

http://unspeakablystupid.com/uss15.html

i was really starting to back Mr. Schwimmer too.

(Gipper, i really like your post and respect your views. people always come with that "he's Jamie, leave him alone!" bs, or they'll try to disregard your opinion because you tend to make long posts, but you hit the nail on the head with that one. keep doing your thing, man.)

DAMMIT! david, get over here, what do you have to say for yourself?

[tb303]

It's always about money at the end of the day, profits and margins, and whilst it would be moral/economical to keep jobs in your home country it's never going to happen. It's the way most business is done these days, manufacture goods offshore for a fraction of the cost and profit. I get his opinion and viewpoint and it's been made, but you're not going to change the world sitting in an apartment with a laptop and milk creates for furniture, posting on a skateboarding forum about how a christian skateboard company owner should be admitting he wants to make money from his business and that he isn't being a proper christian. No doubt he gets tax exemptions to by making donations to charities. If you disagree with his business practices, don't buy his products. I always saw Zero as a teenage thing anyways. Bunch of emo's doing 5.0's on large rails.

[Narcissus]

Imagine how nuts it's gonna be when David Schwimmer, relaxing at home, Googling himself while enjoying a snifter of port, finds the SLAP forum.

[StabMasterArson]

Everybody sucks, the people in this thread are no exception.