Burnout. Or, "Everything Sucks!"

I'm still at the job I've been working at since October. And instead of hiring me on, I got to switch to their main temp agency when the one I worked for was being phased out after Peak. I don't know how they expect me to put up with this place for the next six months without vacation time or health insurance(!). Between my situation and other stories I've heard of people getting screwed over at their jobs, it's like companies are just setting up Unions to become popular again.

I've been meaning to write about everything that's been bugging me, but I seem to have lost interest in just about everything, and my thoughts are scattered. The health insurance I had at Steel Johnson sucked, and the insurance I had most of last year was pathetic. It's like, I survived 2018, and all I got were these ungodly medical bills. My insurance was canceled because I forgot to pay it in January and February. I opted not to have it automatically withdrawn because it was due the same day as my rent, which I have a hard enough time paying as it is.

I only work eight hours a day, sometimes less, but I'm often falling asleep before 8:00 p.m., and need every bit of bedtime I can get before 6:00 a.m.. I don't really have many people to talk to at work. I have no social life outside of work anymore.

If I took home about $500+ a week like I did during Peak, I'd probably be doing okay. Everything is so fucking expensive now, and I'm making close to the same amount of money as I did when I got laid off in 2008. People act like the price of everything is going to skyrocket if the Federal minimum wage is raised to $15 an hour, but the minimum wage hasn't gone up in ten years, and the cost of living has skyrocketed anyway. Capitalism doesn't work unless people are paid enough to participate in it. I almost feel like I'm being punished anymore if I want to do something fun that costs more than going to the coffee shop and falling down the internet rabbit hole.

I don't see anything in the U.S. getting better until Trickle Down Economics and the for-profit healthcare industry are utterly annihilated.

Metallica remasters, and semi-retiring from the Loudness War

I'm not totally retiring from commenting on the Loudness War, but I have realized some things that make me not care so much about it anymore. One is that I do most of my music listening in the car, and sometimes more compressed versions can sound better in the car than some more dynamic versions. Another is that while I might hear differences in different masterings, they're usually just that, differences. I rarely have clear preferences between them, so I don't care unless they sound like total dog shit, or if the quieter songs sound louder than the loud songs. An example of the former, Anthrax's thirtieth anniversary remaster of "Spreading The Disease" sounds like shit, but the thirtieth anniversary remaster of "State Of Euphoria" sounds alright to me in the car. A couple of examples of the latter include Steve Hoffman's "remastering" of Phil Collins's' "No Jacket Required", as well as the most recent remaster of Black Sabbath's "Vol. 4".

I do want to comment on the recent Metallica remasters. I own or have owned these versions of the first four albums on CD:

• "Kill 'em All" - Marino '95 remaster
• "Ride The Lightning" - DCC Steve Hoffman re-remaster, original Elektra
• "Master Of Puppets" - DCC Steve Hoffman re-master, Marino '95 remaster, original Elektra
• "...And Justice For All" - original Elektra, Marino '95 remaster

I don't know how the remasters of the first three albums compare to the original Elektras, but I strongly prefer them over the Marino '95 remasters and DCCs. I've only gotten to listen to the new remaster of "...And Justice For All" a couple of times, and I don't know how I feel about it. It's by far the most different of this batch of remasters. It seems like they did something to make the guitars less overpowering, thus making the bass guitar slightly more audible, especially on "One" and "To Live Is To Die". The main differences I can tell between the original Elektra and the Marino '95 remaster of Justice is that the drums suffer some from the brickwalling, but the drums were mixed so loud that they're still loud as fuck, and the bass guitar is slightly more audible when listening in the car.

I previously only had the "Garage Days Re-revisited" tracks on the "Garage Inc." compilation, and the only reason I bought the remaster of "Garage Days Re-revisited" was because of the mastering glitch on "Last Caress/Green Hell" on my copy of "Garage Inc.". If I had had the original Elektra of "Garage Days Re-revisited", then I probably wouldn't have bothered with the remaster. I actually could've bought it for $30 a year or so ago, but couldn't justify paying that much for it at the time, nor would I now (but that's a topic for another post). I wish I had bought it back whenever I saw it in the early Nineties, along with a copy of "Kill 'em All" that also had "Am I Evil" and "Blitzkrieg" that I saw at a Walmart back in 1992.

I imagine that Metallica will probably put out a remaster of their self-titled album (a.k.a. The Black Album) sometime between now and the end of 2021, though I see no reason to since the version that's been available since it came out sounds perfect, unless they just want to expand on it. The only albums of theirs that I really want to see CD remasters of are "St. Anger" and "Death Magnetic".