A steel tear drop suspended in an amber plume. Billowy orange brown smoke rose up from Glendale as I drove down the 134. A lone helicopter flew in and out of the apocalypse on the horizon, dropping its flame retarding chemical pay load in voluminous gushing bursts like old faithful in reverse, shooting downwards from the sky. I hummed along with the tune on the radio and adjusted my sunglasses. "Only one helicopter," I thought, "can't be the one I'm looking forward to." I drove on.
It's horrible for me to speak well of any corporation. All I can say about Earth Link is that it is there, at least, how it was before the corporations started stripping away all the worker's rights that so many died to obtain. At earth link I'll be paid for my half hour lunch and fifteen minute breaks. I get holiday pay for Christmas and New Years Day even though I haven't worked for them for 6 months or longer. They supply free tea and coffee in the break room. Golly, I almost feel human. No weekends off for the Techies but I do get two days off per week. Can't beat that with a TeleTech owned stick, surely. Thank the maker I got canned for the Heroin incident. I knew things would work out better in the end.
Baldwin park, where training has been taking place off site, is a strip mined hell of gravel piles and geo-epidermal scarring. They also have a McDonald's which doesn't exactly add to the beauty of the landscape or blocky strip mall architectural cunning of Baldwin Parks buildings.
Unfortunately that McDonald's was the only place I could obtain nourishment, yeah, I call it that, for under a dollar, four quarters alone in my pocket. I handed the four quarters over to the acne spangled trollop on yonder side of counter after standing in line for 23 minutes. I demanded satisfaction for my wait. I received a super sized fries. I ate half a smalls worth out of them and threw them away. It isn't free food I wanted, it was simply to cost them more money than they were costing me. I think I received no satisfaction on that front. As I unwrapped my third brown and white paper clad 2 oz. burger, I noticed McDonald's had a new slogan on the wrapper.
I'm
sure it's meant to compete tangentially with Burger King's long held stroke
of advertising genius, "Have It your way." There is of course a plethora
of dime store comedians who will want to comment on who the hell else they'd
have to share the damn burger with if it wasn't just for them or if without
McDonald's telling them they'd perform the fucking loaves and fishes trick
with the slimy patty and additive laden bread product. "Hot.
Fresh. Just For You!" It isn't that the slogan sounds
more like it should accompany a picture in the back pages of the "L.A.
Weekly" of a nubile nymphet skirting the legislative edges of prostitution,
but that McDonald's trade marked the phrase. Only product names and
one phrase and one log to be associated with that product should be allowed
to be trade marked. That is it, by law. If you want another
logo, untrade mark the old logo. A new phrase? Untrade mark
the old phrase. All this trade marking, copyrighting, registering,
and service marking of words and phrases is corrupting freedom of speech
and expression. When Chesebrough- Ponds threatened to sue the creator
of a Q-tip fan page for trade mark infringement, something in the world
of free expression and even "art," if I may use the word in one of its
loosest senses, had gone awry. What could be more insouciant to any corporation
than a joker's funtime website dedicated entirely to an otherwise uninspiring
bit of bathroom detritus most of us don't give two thoughts or a fuck about.
I have a word for this.
