Yeah, āPara Machucar Meu CoraĆ§Ć£oā is one of my favorite recordings in 120+ years of recorded music.
I hadnāt yet told my daughter, a huge Descendants fan.
I guess he was finally allowed to finish.
Iāll see myself to the doorā¦
Was Perot a proto-Trump?
Sorta but with some actual brains. Still not great ideas about running the country like a business and he was actually amusing rather than horrifying.
Didnāt @Malarkey work for his business?
If so, it would be interesting to hear about.
Damn it, I recently read a good article about the rise of the right wing and it involved Ross Perot, and I canāt find itā¦
Yes, I did.
I went to work for EDS in 1982 and for Perot Systems in 1990. Seven miserable years total. I learned to code (COBOL and Assembler) in EDSās Systems Engineering Development program, so Iām at least partially grateful. BUT they wouldnāt let me turn in an assignment late in order to be able to go to my own college graduation AND I couldnāt quit because we all had to sign a promissory note - we owed them three years or $3K if we left early. Real money back then.
In 1990, the bank I was working for was bought by another with a completely different corporate culture and I had a moment of insanity. I sold my house in Delaware and moved to Northern Virginia to work for Perot Systems. Biggest mistake I ever made - including my brief, miserable marriage.
Ross Perot presided over toxic workplaces and was a complete misogynist. I donāt like to speak ill of the dead but in his case, Iāll make an exception.
I can remember reading Usenet posts in the mid-1980s that called out EDS as a miserable place to work. Iām glad I dodged that bullet, though working for small companies has its own problems.
How was indentured servitude still legal in the late 20th Century?
Oh, yes. Texas. Got it.
I prefer to think of it as āspeaking truthfully of the deadā. Toxic public figures donāt magically transform into paragons of virtue for simply shucking off their mortal coils.
He couldnāt take it with him.
True, and sometimes it can go the other way in a very big way. Check out the lyrics in this video of Shostakovichās Symphony No.14 in which he leveraged an actual historical event to deliver scathing insults to then-dead Stalin. The 'āShostā felt safe in having this performed since 16 years had passed since Stalinās death; Stalin would surely have had him murdered otherwise.
Worth repeating just in case you harbored any good will toward Perot.
He may have held some progressive positions, but he was still the enemy. Christ, what an asshole.
ETA: looks like this was actual fake news that has since been retracted.
The title is from a line in Jim Boutonās book Ball Four "Us battered bastards of baseball are the biggest customers of the U.S. Post Office, forwarding-address department.
