Looking back on 2019, and ahead to the new year

Inspired by a dear friend and compatriot in fighting the good fight, here is my year in review and my goals for 2020.

This year was one of ups and downs, but I like to think that there were more ups than downs.

1. Found a job that I really enjoy and am thankful for the amazing people I get to work alongside.
 
2. Was able to get back into regular blogging.
 
3. Lived long enough to see Star Wars Episode IX, knowing that there were many who didn't get to be so fortunate.
 
4. Got to see my best friend and brother Ed become a father to a beautiful baby girl (only three nights ago!)
 
5. Was able to get past maybe 80% of the demons from my past.
 
6. Learned to cook a lot more, as in REAL food.

7. Got bitten by a small dog and lost approximately $27,000 worth of productivity at work (I should have just risked the tetanus, and I hope my supervisor is happy!!)

8. Began outlining a novel, and finally writing that childrens' book.

9. Have maintained a real place of my own for the first time in my life.

10. Haven't stopped having fun with my mini dachshund Tammy, we look after each other.

My goals for 2020:

1. Travel to Florida to see my cousin get married.

2. Write even more articles for publication.

3. Fall in love with just one woman who I can spend the rest of my life cherishing and serving (am beginning to think it's a vain desire but something deep down won't stop hoping).

4. Get back to being fully involved in community theatre.

5. Continue to take care of myself, having come so far with that.

6. Keep striving to be in control of my manic-depression and not let it be in control of me.

7. Finally finish watching all of Breaking Bad, not just the first season.

8. Eat a Carolina Reaper hot pepper and video it for readers of my blog to enjoy watching and laughing.

9. Finally find a church to belong to and become part of a real faith community.

10. Draw closer to God... if He would even want me despite my brokenness and mistakes.

11. Keep trying to be the man who Dad would have been proud to have for a son.

Happy New Year!!!

Star Wars Story Group, you got some 'splainin' to do... (more about Snoke)

A few days ago I became an uncle.  Yaaaay me!  Okay, she was born to my best friend from college but the two of us are "brothers from other mothers" if there ever is such a thing.  I'm still going to be "Uncle Chris" and I plan on playing the eccentric relative bit to the hilt where the little lady is concerned.  What more could a kid possibly want?

Anyway, while Weird Ed and his lovely wife and their freshly-decanted spawn were basking in the first hours of being a beautiful family together, Yours Truly felt that  some measure of celebration was in order.  And what better way to mark the occasion than by seeing Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker for the fourth time?

The dovetailing of all that has come before, the symmetry, the complementing... it's a beautiful thing to behold.  Despite initial impressions that the first half of the film is exceedingly dense and loaded with exposition, subsequent viewings have mellowed that somewhat.  And in my mind there is a dire lack of exposition about things that could have been far more blatant.  It's the "less is more" approach.

Want an example?  It's just my personal theory but, I think The Rise of Skywalker did address midichlorians: that microscopic albatross of the prequel trilogy.  Without even invoking the word itself, Episode IX brought up midichlorians and lo and behold it makes sense.  Rey and then Ben using the Force to heal others: sounds a bit like the power Darth Plagueis is said to have wielded by influencing midichlorians, aye?  Except that  being a Sith, Plagueis wouldn't be imparting his own life energy, probably.  That's how Rey and Ben were doing it though: using the Force to influence the midichlorians to impart healing from their own being and onto another.  Try to NOT see midichlorians in The Rise of Skywalker now that you've read those words.

(I could also remark on how Ben giving Rey the full measure of his life force could be perceived as bestowing the Skywalker name on her in all proper sense.  Especially if somehow that life force made midichlorians conceive a child with Rey... but that's too wacky to suggest here.)

Yes, a lot to digest and muse upon about this movie.  We'll probably be doing it until the end of time.  I'm cool with that.  But even so, there is one matter about The Rise of Skywalker that sticks out like a gangrenous pus-seeping thumb, and there is no allocating some peace from it...

Snoke.

Yeah, I know: "Chris you've already written about Snoke on this blog!"  Maybe I don't like it that he was set up to be darker and more malevolent than Palpatine himself.  And he still could have been despite getting slain in The Last Jedi.  Instead we got a cheap trick of Snoke being a clone or an "artificial being" or some other bullcrap.

And it doesn't jibe at all with what the associated canon... emphasis on canon... literature was heavily indicating about the former Supreme Leader of the First Order.  Especially from the novelization of The Last Jedi.

Let's be fair: novelizations aren't necessarily a perfect reflection of their respective films (the novel for Independence Day still has the city destroyer taken out by Russell's crop-dusting biplane: a remnant of the original script prior to changes following test screenings).  And then there is the novelization of Return of the Jedi, which included dialogue between Obi-Wan and Luke revealing that Uncle Owen had been Obi-Wan's brother.  Oh, how much we speculated from that between 1983 and the prequels...

Still, the Star Wars novelizations are - or once had been - considered part of the official lore.  And to a lesser extent, so too could quotes by J.J. Abrams, Andy Serkis and others about Snoke be taken as veritable gospel.  But above all of those in large part it's the Star Wars Story Group guiding the mythology since it came under the Disney umbrella.  Nothing gets canonized without their blessing upon it.

Snoke, however, is Cathar-league heresy from the established doctrine of the saga.

The following is excerpted from chapter 25 of the novelization Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Expanded Edition) by Jason Fry:

Interpreting visions of the future was a dangerous game. Whether Jedi, Sith, or some other sect less celebrated by history, all those who used the Force to explore possible time lines kept that uppermost in their minds. Those who didn’t died regretting that they hadn’t.

Snoke had learned that lesson many years ago, when he was young and the galaxy was very different. These days, what struck him was how much visions of the future left out.

For example, who would have guessed that the girl Rey would be so slim and fragile-looking? She looked lost in the throne room, dwarfed by both her surroundings and the galaxy-shaking events for which she was the unlikely and unwitting fulcrum.

But Snoke knew appearances were often deceiving—sometimes fatally so. Underestimating Rey had nearly cost Kylo Ren his life, after all. Snoke knew better. For he had his own legions of uncounted dead, their ranks filled by those who had underestimated him.

Snoke knew he himself was an unlikely fulcrum, just about the furthest thing from what the tattered remnants of Palpatine’s Empire had imagined as a leader. The admirals and generals who’d survived the fury of the Empire’s implosion and the New Republic’s wrath had envisioned being led by someone else, anyone else: pitiless, devious Gallius Rax; dutiful, cautious Rae Sloane; the slippery political fanatic Ormes Apolin; or even an unhinged but ambitious military architect such as Brendol Hux.

All of those would-be leaders had been co-opted, sidelined, or destroyed, leaving only Armitage Hux, the mad son of a mad father. And that one was but a mouthpiece, a miscast tinkerer whose rantings could only persuade the sort of rabble who blindly worshipped rage and lunatic certainty.

Though galactic history would record it differently—Snoke would see to that—the evolution of the First Order had been more improvisation than master plan. That was another element visions tended to miss.

Palpatine had engineered the Contingency to simultaneously destroy his Empire and ensure its rebirth, ruthlessly winnowing its ranks and rebuilding them with who and what survived. The rebuilding was to take place in the Unknown Regions, secretly explored by Imperial scouts and seeded with shipyards, laboratories, and storehouses—an “enormously expensive effort that had taken decades, and been kept hidden from all but the elect.

But the Imperial refugees’ military preparations had been insufficient bulwarks against the terrors of the Unknown Regions. Grasping in the dark among strange stars, they had come perilously close to destruction, and it had not been military might that saved them.

It had been knowledge—Snoke’s knowledge.

Which, ironically, led back to Palpatine and his secrets.

Palpatine’s true identity as Darth Sidious, heir to the Sith, had been an even greater secret than the Contingency. And the Empire’s explorations into the Unknown Regions had served both aspects of its ruler. For Sidious knew that the galaxy’s knowledge of the Force had come from those long-abandoned, half-legendary star systems, and that great truths awaited rediscovery among them.

Truths that Snoke had learned and made to serve his own ends.

One obstacle had stood in his way—Skywalker. Who had been wise enough not to rebuild the Jedi Order, dismissing it as the sclerotic, self-perpetuating debating society it had become in its death throes. Instead, the last Jedi had sought to understand the origins of the faith, and the larger truths behind it.

Like his father, Skywalker had been a favored instrument of the will of the Cosmic Force. That made it essential to watch him. And once Skywalker endangered Snoke's design, it had become essential to act.

And so Snoke had drawn upon his vast store of knowledge, parceling it out to confuse Skywalker's path, ensnare his family, and harness Ben Solo's powers to ensure both Skywalker's destruction and Snoke's triumph.

So here we have it described in no uncertain terms that Snoke was already firmly established as a character who existed long before the Empire ever came about.  He observed the Jedi and made note of their decline and fall.  It was Snoke, and Snoke alone, who found the First Order and saved it from oblivion in the Unknown Regions.

This is nothing whatsoever like the face value of what was told to us about Snoke in The Rise of Skywalker.  We went from enticing hints about Snoke and his backstory, to his being a cheap and disposable gimmick and nothing more.

I'm not buying it.  Neither, apparently, are a lot of other fans who are just as honked-off that Snoke was treated so shabbily.

Or maybe there really is more to Snoke's history as a character that hasn't been revealed yet.  Yeah, Palpatine said "I made Snoke!"  But it could also be pointed out that Palpatine also "made" Darth Vader, figuratively and literally.  Or like with the Mafia: you aren't a "made man" until you've "made your bones" by killing someone for the benefit of the family.  There are all kinds of ways that "I made Snoke" could be interpreted.

That's what I'm hoping for.  That much is still left for Snoke and that it may reconcile the gaping disparity between the published smattering of detail and those floating Snoke clones on Exegol.

I'm leaning toward Snoke being a Paul von Hindenburg-type figure.  Yes, Hindenburg was the titular President during the Weimar Republic era.  But everyone in Germany knew that Hindenburg was merely a prop for the true ruler of the country: the Nazi party's Adolf Hitler.  Hindenburg became a puppet with Hitler pulling the strings.  And in time, when Hitler had no further use for Hindenburg, he crushed the revered general and tossed him aside.  Hindenburg died not long after.

Now THAT would be an effective and satisfying use for Snoke.  It would make Palpatine even more powerful: that he could co-opt the Unknown Regions' biggest threat into working for him.  Likely without Snoke even knowing he was being manipulated.

So to anyone sitting among the Star Wars Story Group: c'mon guys, fix Snoke.  Make him the villain he deserves to be.  Let him be his own man.  Not a meatbag created by Darth Sidious.  You've tantalized us about there being much bigger and better to Snoke's fictional history.  Time to bring him beyond the shallowness of mere clone-hood.

Return of the Deep-Fried Turkey!

Hey gang, hope the holidays have been going well for y'all!  Christmas was rather good on this end.  I wound up with some Star Wars, some LEGO sets (Christmas is NEVER complete for me without Star Wars and LEGO no matter how old I get), some clothing, my mini dachshund Tammy received a bunch of toys.  And one way or another a lot of new cooking stuff came into my possession.

And speaking of cooking, steer your peepers onto this bad boy:

That's the first turkey I've been able to deep-fry since Christmas 2013!  Between my father passing away just before the following Thanksgiving, journeying across America and to a new hometown, getting situated in a house etc. it just wasn't practical all this time.

But Christmas Eve 2019 was a glorious return to feeding my irrational addiction to fried turkey.  I got a shiny new rig and it was screaming to be inaugurated.  A baptism of fire, so to speak...

Sixteen-pounds of turkey, mega-marinaded with garlic butter and slathered in Cajun rub.  45 minutes in the hot oil and out came a juicy, tender, succulent Christmas Eve feast for friends and family.

My friends, I truly have a home of my own now.  A house is not a home without a turkey fryer :-)

About Snoke and THE RISE OF SKYWALKER...

WARNING:  This post deals with matters pertaining to Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, which hit theaters less than 48 hours ago.  There WILL be spoilers openly discussed so if you aren't one to have the experience of seeing the movie for yourself ruined for you (take the hint: go see it, now now now!) don't read what I'm about to write.  It is ONLY for those who have already seen The Rise of Skywalker and want to discuss a fairly major element of that movie and the entire "sequel" trilogy as a whole.

No, seriously.  I mean it.  Stop reading if you don't want The Rise of Skywalker spoiled for you.

Still here?

Okay, let it be on your own head.  Here we go...

Let's talk about Snoke.  The late Supreme Leader of the First Order who was infamously bisected by his main boy Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi.  And if your reaction was anything like mine during that opening night screening, you probably saw Snoke's upper torso crumple onto the floor and right as the lightsaber lands in Rey's hand you were thinking "NOW what?!  Where is this going?!"

Snoke's death was the last thing we were expecting.  I think in our collective mind we knew Snoke was going to be the ultimate baddie of the sequel trilogy and maybe, somehow, the master nemesis of the entire Star Wars saga from The Phantom Menace on through (that was my expectation anyway).  Instead we had those expectations subverted by Rian Johnson.  Maybe that's why there's so much disdain for The Last Jedi: many wanted it to go the way they demanded it go.  But I digress...

Very early in The Rise of Skywalker Kylo Ren uses a Sith artifact to locate Exegol, a lost planet of the Sith.  Seems that Palpatine's voice broadcasting from a pirate radio station has spooked the galaxy.  Kylo wants to shut it down so he goes looking for the source.  He finds Palpatine: more than a mere clone, less than the man he had been when we last saw him in Return of the Jedi.  And Palpatine greets Kylo with "Snoke has taught you well."

Kylo declares that he killed Snoke and took his place.  Palpatine responds by revealing some canned Snokes floating in big jars, driving the point that Snoke had been a created being all along that had been used by Palpatine.

Heh.  Okay.  Not what many of us were expecting.  I could accept that.  Maybe.

The thing is, Snoke being created by Palpatine doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't jibe whatsoever with established canon. Not one bit.

The precise details of Snoke's life have not been divulged but we are aware of some things.  That he watched the fall of the Republic from afar is one of them (The Force Awakens novelization).  That Snoke was apparently sensed by Palpatine shortly before the Battle of Endor (a number of sources).  That Snoke had at least one other apprentice before Kylo Ren.  That Snoke was fascinated by the Light Side of the Force just as he was about the Dark Side (does that sound like any Sith to you?).  That Snoke apparently had encountered Luke Skywalker before.  That Snoke had long been a collector of arcane lore and artifacts (The Last Jedi novelization).  That the Imperials who became the First Order would have perished without Snoke finding them and guiding them into the Unknown Regions where he "unexpectedly" became their Supreme Leader.  That Snoke's twisted and deformed body came about because of "injuries from battle" as revealed by Snoke portrayer Andy Serkis..

None of these and more allow for any margin other than Snoke already existing before the events of The Phantom Menace and possibly much further back than that.  Snoke is already ancient and not even in the at-times ridiculous nature of Star Wars lore can someone get retro-actively cloned.

Chronologically, the numbers just don't add up.  The history doesn't work out.

And yet, Palpatine more than just knows about Snoke.  He also has clones of Snoke in his possession.

So here's my own take, no doubt one of a jillion and a half floating around already.  It's how it's worked out in my head based on what we've come to know:

I believe that Snoke was indeed his own person.  For most of his existence anyway.  He must have been.  It's the only way to reconcile his history (what little we know of it) with the officially established canon lore.  Snoke really was out there all along, watching the Republic wane and fall and seeing the Empire rise in its place.

It is a classic trope of evil: that it can never truly create.  It can only corrupt.  Consider the works of Tolkien for a moment.  The orcs weren't created out of whole cloth.  They had originally been Elves, captured by Morgoth then tortured and twisted and bred into an obscenity of life in service to shadow.  And corruption is the number-one weapon of Palpatine's arsenal.  He corrupted and manipulate the Republic.  He corrupted the creation of the clone army.  He corrupted Anakin.  He tried to corrupt Luke.  As now seen in The Rise of Skywalker he tried and failed to corrupt his own granddaughter.

For Palpatine to create Snoke as a meat puppet doesn't fit his modus operandi.  It kinda violates it, to be honest.

Palpatine never created anything under his own power.  But he often did take something that already existed, and then polluted it with his own dark schemes.

For that reason alone, I can't buy the notion that Palpatine just created Snoke from scratch.  As the clones of the Army of the Republic derived from the template of one man, so too was Snoke (if that really was a clone all along) generated from someone who lived and breathed of his own accord.  And that's the best that Palpatine could have done with Snoke.  So if Palpatine did clone Snoke, it happened sometime between the end of the Empire during that thirty-years interval between the Battle of Endor and the events of The Force Awakens.

There is another possibility: that Palpatine had clones of Snoke made but for whatever reason didn't use them.  And so that was "Snoke Prime" that Kylo Ren cut to pieces.

Which lends itself to an interesting theory: that Snoke - if he was a force of evil unto himself - was corrupted by Palpatine.  Maybe without even knowing it.  The most powerful wielder of the Dark Side at the time of The Force Awakens, himself being a puppet on a string with no idea whatsoever that he was being manipulated.  And suddenly Palpatine really does become the ultimate "man behind the curtain", plotting wheels within wheels of schemes that none but he can grasp.

Which, in my mind, makes Palpatine a far more dangerous and formidable enemy than anything we had suspected he could have been capable of.

So yeah: Snoke already existed long before Palpatine.  He found and warped Ben Solo into becoming Kylo Ren.  Snoke however was being played with by Palpatine during the era of the First Order.  And when Snoke was no longer needed, Palpatine maniuplated Kylo into killing Snoke.  Snoke was crushed by his true secret master, just as Han Solo warned Ben that he would be crushed by Snoke.

What's with the Snoke clones then?  Who knows.  Backup puppets?  Something further to play Kylo's mind with?  Darth Sidious/Palpatine has lied before in order to get what he wants.  Who's to say he's not lying when he spoke of Snoke to Kylo Ren?

Or maybe it's none of these at all.  Maybe it's not supposed to be.

Perhaps it is merely nothing more or less than one more mystery from the Star Wars saga, that we will eternally be debating and dissecting and having heated arguments over, before shaking hands as fans and acknowledging that we'll never get a straight answer that satisfies us completely.

In that case, then The Rise of Skywalker indeed failed to tie up all the knots.  It gave us a whole new one to unravel.  We aren't going to solve this one.  But that's fine.  It's okay.  Because what is life without mysteries that we will never understand?

If so, then The Rise of Skywalker truly is a perfect capstone of what has come before in epic tale of the Skywalker family.

It is, in every way, a film worthy of Star Wars.

A brief, non-spoilerish review of STAR WARS EPISODE IX: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

Now look, I waited decades... decades... to be able to say that I have seen "Episode Nine".  It became like a lifelong hope that someday, as the Plaid One promised in that Reader's Digest article in 1982, there would be nine of the Star Wars movies and I wanted to see all of them.  'Course, Lucas was referring to the core "Skywalker Saga" at the heartmeat of the saga, and had no idea about the other works that would come (like Rogue One, or The Mandalorian which gets better and better with each new episode).

So yeah.  I haven't been saying "The Rise of Skywalker" these last several months.  Almost every time I've mentioned seeing "Episode Nine".  And wanna know a cold hard truth?  There are a lot of Star Wars fans, better than I'll ever be, who didn't make it this far.  Life in this world can be a cruel, cruel thing.  Fate can take any of us at any moment.  So many were hoping to see Episode Nine, but for one reason or another... they were taken from us.  And often long before there was even a glimmer of hope that there would be any new Star Wars at all past Revenge of the Sith.  I owe it to them to honor the dream, that they too longed to see come to pass.  It's the least that I can do.

Let's get into it.  Last night I caught the first showing of Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (let's just call it The Rise of Skywalker for the rest of the post) along with some friends.  After something like 23 trailers the movie began.  And so did the end of my quest.

To be as brutally honest as I can be (and there will be no spoilers here), The Rise of Skywalker is a dense hot mess of a motion picture that is heavy - maybe too heavy - on exposition.  Perhaps also some derivatives of other works... like, say, The Goonies (that's the closest I'll come to spoilers, promise).  And there were two elements of the story that had it been me in the director's chair, would have been drastically changed.  One of them makes NO sense whatsoever in line with established canon.  The other, well... maybe you will figure it out during the course of the film.

The Rise of Skywalker can be a slog to work through.  At least for the first half or maybe even two-thirds.  But that last good stretch of it?

Holy smokes!!!

The back half of The Rise of Skywalker almost completely redeems whatever faults came before.  Give J.J. Abrams and his crew their due: they did accomplish the seemingly impossible.  They tied up eight previous films across the past forty-two years, and put a beautiful bow on the entire saga.  Put simply: the thing works!  And as I heard some speak while the credits were rolling, this movie even makes The Last Jedi a much better film.  Which, I have to agree.  The Last Jedi has given me more fits than any other Star Wars movie about whether I like it or don't.  I won't be seeing The Rise of Skywalker again this weekend, but I will watch The Last Jedi with refreshed eyes.

Is The Rise of Skywalker perfect?  Far from it.  But it is what it is: a Star Wars movie.  With all the action and outrageousness and humor and nonsense that you've come to expect from the franchise.  It may not be the best "entry level" film of the saga.  This is a film especially for those who have been along for the ride.  But if you have been following the saga all along, I believe you may agree: that The Rise of Skywalker is a magnificent capstone atop this grand monument of modern mythology.

That's pretty much all I'm going to say.  It's all you need to have, if you haven't seen The Rise of Skywalker yet.  Best to go in cold, knowing as little as possible.

Oh yeah, one more thing: this saga is called "Star Wars".  If you thought we haven't seen a REAL "star war", ooh-boy... are YOU in for a treat!

Look! Second article at American Thinker in 48 hours! Not kidding!

Just think: a few years later chunks of that wall were being sold at K-Mart. 

Friends, I have a secret to tell.  I've waited decades... decades... for the chance to use the word "perestroika" in a written piece.  Not even during college and my senior history thesis - about the Russian space program and how it had tracked with that country's politics since Nicholas II's reign - did "perestroika" get to be employed.

I guess "perestroika" on some weird level is for me, what "smock" was to Hobbes:

Credit: the peculiar genius of Bill Watterson

Anyway, the considerate curators of conservative-ish contemplation at American Thinker have published a second article from me in as many days, and I am extremely thankful for that.  "The Fall of the Deep State and 1989's Fall of Communism" relates some parallels between the events that transpired across Eastern Europe thirty years ago to our own "revolution".  Mainly, that the United States already had a political revolution in 2016, with the election of Trump sending a message to the entrenched system of Washington politics.  That's how it mostly went down in the fall of 1989 also: peacefully shaking off corrupt government throughout the Soviet Union's satellite states (the USSR itself would follow the same course two years later).  The so-called "resistance" symbolized by the "impeachment" however is almost like a slow-motion version of the counter-revolution in Romania that year.  And in case the kiddies need a history lesson...

That's the visage of Nicolae Ceausecu, a few minutes after he and his wife Elena were taken out back and shot.  On Christmas Day of 1989, no less.  He had tried to placate the people of Romania with goodies like higher wages and money to the college students.  Except the people of Bucharest had woken up feeling extra-pokey that morning, and they were justifiably angry at Ceausecu's lethal crackdown on the protests in Timiasora.

As you can see, having control of the media and throwing money at people didn't work quite as Ceausecu intended.

New article at American Thinker: My six months at Amazon

The days after Thanksgiving once signaled training season for Christmas caroling. Recent years have instead heralded the shrieks of entire choruses of Maynard G. Krebs: “Work?!?”

The past few weeks have been no different and once again the squalls of disdain have almost invariably diffused from those tan arcologies of Internet commerce: the Amazon Fulfillment Centers.

Well, for a good chunk of the past year I was an associate in one of those very centers.  I am not employed or affiliated with Amazon at present and don't foresee that changing anytime soon.  Nobody from the company is paying me or giving me some kind of perk (and I'd refuse free Amazon Prime on general principles if Mr. Bezos himself extended the offer).  I’m not trying to curry favor and I don’t cotton to anyone.

But I would have done this anyway: provide a perspective that may differ wildly from what a lot of people have remarked about working in one of Amazon's distribution warehouses.

So all that being said, my first published article in over a year is up at American Thinker today.  "Six Months at an Amazon Fulfillment Center" says what it means and means what it says.  Half of a year on the floor, and I ended up being involved in everything from stowing merchandise to loading outbound trucks.  It also meant being there throughout the entire "Peak Season": Black Friday through Christmas Eve.

A snippet from the article:

My primary mission was stowing. It means pushing a cart of merchandise around the warehouse, finding bin space that a product can fit in, using a laser scanner on the bar codes and then physically moving the item into the bin. The facility’s inventory system was at all times tracking the associate’s rate of work as well as accuracy. Several times during the night the rates were posted so that each employee could see how he or she was faring. And as many who have written about working at Amazon have already noted, the managers are looking hard at those rates… 

My stowing during those first few weeks? Abysmal. In fact, I was the very worst of the lot from our orientation group. Getting fired would be a decision born within the circuitry of the Amazon master computer somewhere in Seattle, not any human judgment. My career came a few steps too close to ending during that first month or so.

What happened next? Did the rates rise? Or did your friend and humble narrator get a pink slip from the Amazon cluster-processoring mainframe thingy?!  Mash down here and find out!

The perfect commentary

Whenever I look at the news lately this image keeps springing into mind:

That's from Mel Brooks' woefully under-rated Silent Movie.

Then again, real life is looking more and more like a Mel Brooks production.  Isn't it?