What If?

What if every American just refused to go to work one day? I mean all of them (us), every one, including policemen, firemen, pilots, sewer plant workers. Everybody.

What if cars could drive themselves? Would they really do that much better a job than we do?

What if you remembered everything? For all your life. What you ate for breakfast as a three-year-old, every stroke from every time you shaved, how much water was in every glass you ever poured. The look on that middle-school kid's face when you told him his family was poor? Everything.

What if the Chinese had a decent navy? They could put a lot of sailors on the water, and a lot of Marines on foreign soil.

What if lightning keeps the Earth alive? Like a huge defibrillator?

What if someone was secretly photographing you when you picked your nose, and then they posted the pictures on line? And then what if someone did that to them?

What if you could understand what your dog was thinking? Would you be flattered, bored, or horrified?

What if you could understand what your cat was thinking?
   We know the answer to this one. You'd be horrified. Cats think of nothing but murder all day.

What if you weren't potty-trained until you were 30?

What if you could see air? What would you see? And would that make you functionally blind? And if you were an astronaut how would you see out of your space helmet, and how freaky would space with no air be to you?

What if all the power in the world stopped working? Even solar and hydroelectric? What would we do?

Wouldn't That Hurt?

I was at the gym today, gettin' my sweat on, and I saw a guy running on the treadmill. Nothing out of the ordinary, that's what treadmills are for. There was something wrong, though, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. He was running... funny. And I do mean ha-ha funny. Comical, in a you-have-to-be-embarrassed-for-him sort of way. So I looked at the other guys beside him, and it hit me. The first guy was running on his toes.
   Normally you go heel-toe, heel-toe when you run. Like when you walk. But this guy had the speed cranked waaaaay up and he was prancing along on his toes like he was an antelope or something, and bobbing up and down like a piston. It was the oddest thing I've seen in that gym in a while.*
   The only thing I could think was 'man, that's gotta hurt...'
   Fast forward to thirty minutes later. I've finished with the cardio portion of my workout and I've moved on to strength and flexibility And who do I see but Prancer from the treadmill. And what was he doing? Groaning and moaning as he tried to stretch out his calves. You'd have thought he was having surgery with no anesthesia the way he was carrying on, wincing in pain and gritting his teeth.
   For a moment I thought I should go over and explain to him what I saw him doing, but then I thought better of it. Not really my business in the first place, and he was making a big show of stretching so he liked the attention that running like a douchebag brought him. And who am I to get in the way of someone else's desperate cry for attention?
   It does make me a little self-conscious, though. Am performing any exercises comically wrong? Am I in a glass house throwing stones here?
   Nah...


* aside from Mr. Grunty Seven-Rep and his torn wardrobe, but I'm used to that annoying bastard now

I Want To Be The Termite Guy

My apartment has termites. I know this because I saw them crawling on the carpet, and one hit me in the back of the neck when it was flying around. I thought they were ants until I took a closer look at the one that hit me in the neck. So I called the manager and told her about it, and she called in the termite guy.
   Man, what a gig. I have no doubt he knows his stuff, but it just seems so easy...
   He carried his stuff in a plastic bucket, and in the other hand he carried a step ladder. He looked around for a few minutes, and I showed him the termites I put in a sandwich bag in the freezer (yes, I really did that, they were evidence). He identified them right away, and we had termite conversation for a few minutes. Then he looked up into a light fixture and saw that was where they were coming from. Kind of like a termite Sherlock Holmes, because I had certainly never thought to look up for bugs that crawled on the carpet.
   Here's what he did. Got on the step ladder, drilled three holes around the light fixture, injected some termiticide into the holes he drilled and then filled the holes with spackle.
   Bada-bing, bada-boom. Done. In and out in fifteen minutes, tops, including the search.
   I don't know what he billed - I don't own the building - but whatever it was he's making a killing. Especially since he mentioned that what he'd just done was kind of hit-or-miss since there was no crawlspace he could get into. In other words, what he'd just done might not have killed termites, and the only way I could tell it didn't work was when I saw more termites. And if I did see more termites then the manager could just call him back out.
   Don't get me wrong, he was a nice guy and extremely professional, but I want a job where I can do something that may or may not work, and if it doesn't work I get to bill for another service call.
   Any ideas?

Corporate Monkey-Spank

The more things change the more they stay the same. And just when you think corporate weasels would start to get the message they prove that they just don't get it.
   I worked out this morning, and as I was walking home I decided to stop in at the convenience store along the way for a soda and a lotto ticket, my only two vices if you don't count curling up in my robe on the couch Friday nights to read the latest vampire book while my hot rollers set my hair just-so.
   The place is closing.
   They have a half-off sale on most things, including beer, as they try to liquidate inventory before they close in ten days. So I doubled up on the diet soda - half off is essentially 'two for one' - and I asked the guy behind the counter why the place was closing. I expected to hear 'raising rent' or 'losing money' or 'lost the liquor license' something like that. Not even close.
   The corporate offices decided to close the store because it wasn't making enough money. Not that it wasn't making money - the manager assured me they had been turning a profit since the day they opened - but that they weren't making the kind of profits the corporate weasels wanted them to.
   This is why I hate, hate, hate MBAs. They don't know how to run a business, they know how to do algebra on a spreadsheet. Some jerkoff who's never actually operated any kind of store, web site, or even a cart at the mall sets a sales goal, a number he creates out of thin air according to his flawed analysis of whatever bogus metrics he can think up. Then when the store doesn't meet those artificial goals, he makes the 'command decision' to shut the place down because, after all, not meeting goals needs to have consequences. Ridiculous and short-sighted.
   'But Don,' you MBAs say, 'there are all sorts of considerations beyond profitability that might call for closure.' Bull and shit. If a place is profitable it should stay open, even if the profit is only $1. If it doesn't make enough cash to contribute to the middle-manager corporate bloat of do-nothing asswipes then the ranks of those weasels needs to be thinned.
   So for want of a few extra dollars to pay the salary of someone who shouldn't be working anyway, people lose their jobs, the neighborhood loses a store, and I get an excuse to go on my anti-MBA rant again.
   Oooh... it just angries up the blood...

Termed With Pay

I am one of the several million people terminated as a result of the economic corrections going on. I’ve been unemployed for a day and I’m already going insane, so I decided to start this blog to keep the crazy down. Don’t know if anybody’s going to read it except me, but what the hell.

Let’s start with my monkey-spank severance letter and the manner by which I received it. My impending severance wasn’t a surprise, I did know about it months in advance, so I’m fortunate in that regard. I still needed ‘official’ notice, though, a formal handing over of the appropriate paperwork. I live in Pasadena, CA, and the person giving me the pink slip lives and works in Calabasas, CA. So, on 04 Mar 2009, I got to drive from Pasadena to Calabasas to get my severance paperwork at 8 AM.

You read that right, I was the one making the trip. At 8 AM. On the 101 through the Valley. Did I mention that it was raining too?
   If you’ve never been on LA highways in the rain a) count yourself lucky, and b) imagine giving car keys to a million eight-year-olds and letting them just go have fun.

The trip takes half an hour in the best circumstances, and that morning it took over an hour. Man, I hate the West Valley. Bastards. To be fair, there’s no manual for this kind of thing, but if I were delivering the bad news, I would have been the one to make the drive. The fact that I - the terminee - had to make the trip speaks volumes about the priorities of corporate America that mere words cannot convey.

I spent two hours in traffic, there and back, to get a brief letter that states in perfect Corporate Monkey-Spankese : ‘...the Company must undergo a job elimination and reduction in workforce. We regret that as part of the necessary reduction in force, your employment with the company will be terminated...’ and blah, and blah, and blah.

So now I’m terminated with pay, at least for a few weeks. It’s only been two days now, like a sick day, but it’s not like calling in sick when you’re not really sick. If you call in sick you know there’s always work to get back to. Now I got nowhere else to go. And that’s what’s making me crazy.