AWPC: Who Needs Universal Health Care?

This should never happen in a civilized nation.

Me: Should I get help?

Coworker: Just give me a minute. I can't afford to go out of here in an ambulance again.

It was a blood pressure spike caused by a stressful situation. They took some meds and within an hour had returned to normal. Thank goodness.

But can we really consider ourselves as good as the rest of the developed world when a gainfully employed individual covered by the company insurance plan still feels they can't afford a trip to the hospital? Not even when I find them squatting and sweating by a machine in a panic and have to fetch their medicine from twenty feet away because they can't stand up? How screwed up is that?

AWPC: Words of Comfort

In a meeting at work today my supervisor said something that at the time was of little comfort. Reflecting on his words, it was exactly what I needed to hear.

This isn't just our company. It's everyone. It's this whole economy. I think it's safe to say we are no longer in a recession but a full blown depression.

He's a normal guy. Exceptionally normal. As someone who is far from it, normal people are easy to pick out.

To hear a normal, average American finally face facts allows me to breath a sigh of relief. People are getting it. Of course it takes some extreme circumstances for this to come about, but it is happening.

Later I was talking with the manager.

Him: I just don't understand why we have to keep throwing money at banks who mismanaged the money in the first place. And then they give them thousands of dollars in bonuses. For what?

Me: Maybe it was the sheer scale of it all. "You didn't just screw over our bank but completely tanked the entire world economy. Wow. Here's a bonus. Hell, here's a Congressional Medal of Honor!"

To kill a man is murder. To kill thousands or even millions takes world class leadership skills. Perhaps theft follows the same logic.

AWPC

Dude: I just laid there and couldn't get to sleep.

Guy: Have you tried reading?

Dude: It would have to be a pretty boring book. If it's engaging it would just keep me up and locked into it.

Me: Maybe that's why so many people read the Bible.

AWPC

Him: Did you get new rims on your truck?

Me: No, my wife just washed them.

I Hate You Ronald Reagan

Her: Would you say pot or alcohol is worse?

Me: I wouldn't say one is worse than the other, just some people are worse than others.

Her: I'm just asking everyone because I'm pissed off. They got rid of (guy) for smoking pot. He's been here three years and never called in and always did his job and they piss test him and he's out of here for something he maybe did two weeks ago.

Me: I blame Reagan. Work place drug testing was his deal.

Her: What an asshole! He was a Republican, right?

Me: Yeah.

Her: God. Him and Bush. What fuckers!

The A-Team: An AWPC

R: I kind of feel like I'm on the A team now.

M: No. You've got a long way to go for that.

R: You saying I'm still on the B team? I think I've got what it takes to be on the A team.

Jake: Alright. You're Howling Mad Murdoch, I'm B.A. Baracus, and he's Face.

R: Wait. Why do I have to be the old one?

Jake: You're not the old one. You're the crazy one.

Coming In Late

I kept popping into conversations at strange times today. Like at first break as I walk and someone is saying, "...brown sugar. Right Jake?" I mean how could I say no to that? And then walking up as someone says, "...they are definitely a little bit more on the exotic side." Later I walked up as someone mentioned, "...so I had to take my shirt off, too."

But there was one conversation I was present for and offered my humble opinion on.

Jake: What's so bad about Easter dinner with the family? There's nothing better than eating ham to celebrate the murder of a Jew.

Freudian AWPC

Her: Can I get a screw?

(Long pause.)

Her: For that air thing on the pick-up rail. It's flopping around and the parts won't go down.

Kind of an AWPC

Stripper: Are you guys having a good Saint Patrick's Day?

M: Fuck no! We have to work. This is just our lunch break.

To note, when a stripper wraps her boobs around a bottle, it's only impressive if it disappears.

Inner Nerd Connectivity

The geek within needs some feedin'. I downloaded Ubuntu, a Linux distro, and tried to get it running on my Mac. Looks nice and clean, but it failed the first and most important test. I could not get the damn thing onto the network. The live CD I burned was for the 6.10 edgy version. Right now I've got 6.06 desktop versions for both PPC and Intel downloading. If I can get it to run and like it, I want to wipe Windows from my world. It requires two very important caveats. First I need to see if WoW runs well. After reading a few articles on this, looks like a wait and see situation. Second, it has to recognize my MMC card reader. Mac OS X won't leaving me to rely on my PC for grabbing the pics from my camera.

Another possibility if I can get the wireless working with Ubuntu, wipe the iBook. The poor thing has a small drive and could benefit from the simplified OS.

Catching a ride home from work, someone commented that they have a blackboard in their house where they write down all the drinks they want to try.

Jake: We have a whiteboard in our dining room. But we tend to be nerds.

M: Nerds rule!

Jake: Yeah, our board tends to get filled with notes, art, functions, trig, and calculus equations.

G: See, he's a real nerd. You're just a video game nerd.

Everybody thinks they are a nerd. Somewhere back in the 1990's it became cool.

AWPC: Covert Socialism

Man: Why is it that government employees get the best wages, the best benefits, and every other Monday and Friday off for some goddamn holiday or another all on the tax payers' dime?

Jake: Because the state wants to be the premier employer to seduce everyone into working for the government. In most states government is already the single largest employer. It's covert socialism.

Man: Hardly covert. But at least we beat those damn Ruskies and showed 'em what real socialism is all about.

AWPC

While not actually at work, my Saturday class consists entirely of coworkers. Today one of them said what qualifies as one of the dumbest statements ever uttered in my presence. A guy was whining about how all of the other maintenance guys pick on him and prank him relentlessly.

He is the only maintenance guy that I will openly disparage. He sucks, everyone knows he sucks, but his mom is the VP. The guy is 30, married, and has two kids, yet his mom bought him a tool chest, tools, and he even carries his mom's gas card. So since nobody in a position to do so has the balls to can his worthless ass, everybody pranks him. It's a coping mechanism. While lamenting this situation he said:

Now I know what it must have felt like to be black back in the 40's and 50's.

At which point everybody started piping in with all the reasons he was so very, very wrong!

Damn. It must really suck to be so privileged that everybody resents the way you always seem to fail upwards.

AWPC

D: So how did you decide where to put all those things?

Jake: Put all what things?

D: The rings on your face.

Jake: Oh, those things.

...

D: You know, back in my day if a guy wanted to look weird he just grew sideburns.

Jake: Yeah, but growing sideburns doesn't give you the endorphin rush giggles.

Privilege

It must really suck to live a life of privilege. Imagine being totally incompetent at the job your second in command mom got for you, her buying you the biggest tool chest in the shop, and then offering to pay for a bunch of really expensive tools that the other guys have to scrimp and save for. The rest of the guys in the shop just can't understand your terrible situation. You don't know how to buy your own tools because nobody ever showed you how. You're just trying to get by the only way you know, by having everything handed to you.

Which leads to an AWPC!

M: If my mom were paying for my tools I'd have my own optical comparator.

Jake: If my mom were paying for my tools I'd get a plastic ruler.

Actually, my mom has given me a plastic ruler she picked up for free at a trade show. My dad gave me a steel machinist's rule that he got for free from a vendor. It's tough to be so privileged.

Ignorance Is Bliss

The past few days I've managed to ignore the news. This hasn't been like the times when I have made an effort to tune it out. Instead my head, when given the opportunity to view a few news article, has replied, "No. We don't need that shit." Of course the news of the Superbowl still filtered through. Given the environment in which I work it was inevitable. Impressive was that my ignorance of the outcome lasted nearly fifteen minutes in that place.

What have I to show for tuning out my online news fix? The dishes were washed, the floors swept, my face shaved, and my board waxed. Blissful ignorance has its rewards.

But for those who are total news junkies, here is a piece of exciting election news. My campaign is kicking off swell. Today when a fellow maintenance guy learned that I was a write-in candidate, he joked about me making shirts.

Jake: I've already got shirts.
M:No way.
Jake: Yeah. You can buy them online.
M: You're kidding me.
Jake: Nope. I'll show you.

So we go over to the computer and I show him my shirts at CafePress.com. He wrote down the address and promised he was going to go home and order up a button for his motorcycle jacket and a shirt. I don't even have one of the shirts. Perhaps the time has come for that to change.

Vote Jake or Don't!

Berserker: Almost an AWPC

Several factors lead up to the incident. For the past several nights I have been taking a swig of mead before bed. There was being woken up several hours earlier than usual by three guys with chain saws wanting me to move my motorcycle and truck so they could remove the big pine tree from our front yard (which I really didn't want to see go but the landlord had a different opinion). Then some fool decided to make bad nicknames for the maintenance guys on our shift and write them into the log book for the night. I got 'Viking Quest'. None of these things are excuses, just contributing factors.

That was how things stood when I discovered several people had completely ruined the repair job I had done the night before. It wasn't just the blatant destruction of the new parts I had put on, but the way they had somehow managed to leave just about every single bolt on the damn thing loose. I lost it.

I frightened a lot of people last night. My face was red. I had raised heavy machine parts above my head and started waving them around menacingly. My feet were kicking at the air as I yelled and screamed at people who had gone home to leave me with the fruits of their incompetence. It was an easy fix. That is what made me so mad. There was no mystery as to what was wrong with the thing and they managed to screw everything else up by not seeing that the track had become magnetized. In a fit of rage I blurted out an embarrassingly regrettable phrase.

Why can't we ship these morons back to the retard farm where they belong!?

When angry, I should really stick to profanity. Otherwise I have a tendency to say really bizarre phrases. At least in my berserker rage nobody was hurt. All of the operators are now quite certain that they never want to do anything to piss me off.

When presented with obvious evidence, never underestimate the potential for human stupidity.

AWPC

ACK! They played Christmas music over the intercom all day at work. By wearing ear plugs and humming Beethoven I was able to drown out Silver Bells, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Little Drummer Boy, and Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.

D: After a couple hours of this shit I'm begining to understand why they killed Jesus.

Me: Hell. I'd do it right now.

Let's not even get into how the Jews and Hindus at work were feeling today.

AWPC

As reference, I gave one of the maintanence guys at work a nick-name because he insisted on being called Michael instead of Mike. His initials were MD. While the other shifts all call him Michael, I have gotten everyone on my shift to call him Mad Dog, and he likes it. I just can't call someone 'Michael' with a straight face. In return he has been known to say, "Let me consult the mohawk."

Me: Thanks for all your help, Mad Dog. Without it tonight would have been really evil. And not the good kind of evil like D&D and Rock-n-Roll. I mean the bad kind of evil like Police Academy 3 and Billy Ray Cyrus.

MD: Dude. That's bad. How could you even go there?

Me: Sorry man. That's just how evil it would have been.

AWPC

K: Is one of you designated the lead?
Me: No way. We're anarchists. We just do our jobs.

AWPC

Yeah, another one.

Mark: You're reading on your break? What a loser.
H: Hey, I like to read.
Mark: I'm just teasing you. Reading's cool.
Jake: Nah, reading is for chumps.
Mark: Unless you're this guy. Then you just write a ten million page book in one month.

50,000 words, actually.