New paper to write, the final paper for the semester. The professor says that usually the final has to be completed during a set amount of time, but they've given it as a take home. If it were a two hour thing, I would fail miserably. Of course, because of all this, our professor says she wants 'kick ass' essays. Anything I write couldn't be considered kick ass, no matter how long it takes me to write it, but I'm glad I get a few days, I will probably end up writing it in a few hours, but it will take me a week just to get an idea down, if the last papers were any indication of what I have to go through to come up with something worth turning in.

So here's the assignment. How do the ideas and/or techniques in the final exam text encourage you to reconsider your work this semester? There's another I might use... Explain how your personal context has 'connected the dots' between your final exam text and at least two other texts you have read this semester.

Now, I really have no clue what my 'personal context' is, and I asked the professor about it. She wasn't sure either. It still sounds like something I might be able to handle. There are other prompts we can use, mainly concerning an 'exam text', but the professor told us there was no such thing, although she did put a poem up for us to use. Basically we are supposed to make connections between the 'writings' from the semester, and she is looking for 'analysis, synthesis, and clarity'. So, my biggest problem is the 'making connections' part, I still have no clue how to go about coming up with an idea that will satisfy this requirement.

Anyway, on with the ideas!!! Here's one... wait, I guess I should say something about the poem she posted. It's by Langston Hughes, a guy who wrote poetry during the depression. I found the poem on the Internet, I looked for it because the people that scan shit for the professors did a fucked up job, and cut off the last stanza. Lucky for me, it came up on a google search easily enough. It's called Let America Be America Again. Here's the line I will try to use from the poem...

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

Basically saying that the people that make money off the sweat of other people's work are worse than the people that bilk their employers through goldbricking and other means meant to shirk an honest day's work and still get on honest day's pay. He says that the companies that pay people low wages just because there are people willing to work for low wages is horseshit. Well, it wouldn't be horseshit, if they actually maximized their wage expenditures in order to maximize cost for their customers. That doesn't make sense. Let's supposed a company makes shoes. These shoes sell for a certain amount, and the profit from sales goes above what the company needs to produce the shoes. This, of course is the idea, maximize profit. Now, I have no problem with this, and I believe the author of this poem would have no problem with it. The problem arises when the company starts charging more for the shoes simply because people will pay more. Even this wouldn't be a problem if they spread the wealth around. See, some people think it's morally right for a company to make as much profit as possible and keep it to themselves. This is what the author of the poem means by "those who live like leeches on the people's lives",

So, who else should profit from these adventures? A lot of conservatives will say that sharing the wealth is a scary concept, they imply that lots of people will just sit around on their asses reaping the rewards of someone else's toil, someone else that worked hard to build their particular company from nothing. This of course is nonsense. How is it that someone could get their hands on the profits of someone else's company just by sitting on their ass? Some would argue that this is exactly what government programs and public assistance, welfare, accomplish. People sit around on their asses because the government will give them enough money to survive without any effort on their part beyond getting the fat ass off the couch and going down to the local welfare agency to fill out a form. Does this happen? Of course it does. How can it be prevented? Hmmm, how about if a company rewarded people that worked for them with good pay and benefits? There's a novel idea. Let's see, if a company used excess profits to pay out wages that increase the standard of living for employees, rather than to buy several 'getaways' for a few lofty executives, who could complain?

Ok, I lost my train of thought. Mainly because I think again about that shoe company that gave out fat bonuses to ALL their employees. Holy shit!!! That is unheard of!!! This shoe company somewhere in the northeast was doing so well they could afford to give huge bonuses to every employee based on the number of years they worked for the company. $1,000 for every year worked at the company. Even those who had worked less than a year got $500 each. So, if you worked for the company for 20 years, your xmas bonus was $20,000!! See, I only know this cause I wrote about the story when it came out back in December of 2003.