I have been informed that the object that did such an excellent job trashing my thumb (or at least setting the stage for mayhem) is a “quicklink”.
Do not turn your back on this object.
Looks innocent doesn’t it? Hardly any rust right?
I’m going to hurl it into the sea. You can never be too careful with malevolent objects.
I’ve been “fighting” a cold. (“Fighting” being a euphemism for “getting my ass kicked”.)
Like all red blooded men, I approached the situation with denial. It’s in the guy manual. “Bah! I’m not that bad. A half gallon of coffee and a little mental grit and I’ll be fine.” We all think we’re John Wayne.
Thus, for a variety of unrelated reasons I was underneath my truck, far from home, hooking up a chain in a rain shower. Any sane person in similar condition would be in bed enduring daytime TV. I hate TV!
I’m not sure what you call them; the single chain link with a screw type connector? I had one that was rusted, bent, and reticent. The work of the devil! Generally I take a 9/16” open end wrench and the thing squeaks open just fine. This time wasn’t so simple. No go. The damn thing hung there on the undercarriage as if to say “Nice try bubba but you’re fucked.” I did what all red blooded men do in such a situation; I went back to the tool box and resorted to the ultimate bail out tool. Vice grips!
Frankly vice grips are a monstrosity and the world would be better off without them. Except they handle situations that are even worse than the ones they cause. I cranked the grips down, locked ’em tight and prepared to reef my back outta’ whack.
Then I paused. Was there a better way? I pondered a bit. Nope. It was brute force time.
On second thought I decided gloves were in order. I rooted around in the truck cab and put on some beefy leather gloves in the interest of safety. If you’re going to go for it you might as well go all the way.
Crank. Sqeaaaaallll. A ha! Five degrees of progress.
I reset the grips. Leaned into it. Crank. Squealllll. I was rewarded with more progress.
You know what’s coming next don’t you?
Crank. Slip. BANG!
The grips had torn off some of the cheap pot metal crap they’d used to make the link. In utterly predictable kinetic mayhem my thumb had smashed solidly into the undercarriage.
Ouch! It hurt like hell.
Normally I’d swear and cuss and roll around like a gut shot lizard. Not this time. I sat up cross legged underneath the tailgate and carefully inspected the digit. Still there. Hurting like hell. My thoughts were more curious than usual. Why wasn’t I flopping around like a fish? After all, the pain was immense. I’m not that tough.
All I could think was “gee whiz, how fortunate I am that I put on gloves.”
“Gee whiz?” What the hell was that?
It was probably the cold.
I took a deep breath. I felt a bit tight around the ribs. Dredging in my memory I counted the days since I’d had a good night’s sleep. More days than I’d like to admit. I pondered my head. It weighed what felt like thirty pounds. Plus there was the final evidence, my thumb hurt like white hot needles had been shoved in it and all I could think was “Gee whiz”.
Hmmm… pneumonia? Nah. Bronchitis? Probably.
The “cold” I’d been ignoring must be a lot nastier than I’d allowed myself to admit. I tossed my tools in the back of the truck, slammed the tailgate shut, shook my head a bit to clear it, and consulted my map. I was 40-50 miles from the nearest town.
Well that’s that. I fired up the engine and headed off. An hour later I was being ignored by a receptionist. Fifteen minutes after that a radiologist subbing for a nurse screwed up my blood pressure cuff and practically cut my arm off. Ten minutes after that a bored but very competent doctor from somewhere foreign easily diagnosed bronchitis. Perhaps “confirmed” is the better word since the thumb had already told me everything I needed to know. Then came a pharmacist assistant who wasn’t nearly hot enough to make up for the fact that she was incompetent and is sooner or later gonna’ kill someone. Then a pharmacist who was spot on and pleasant fixed everything.
Antibiotics! God bless antibiotics because without them we’d all die young and in misery!
I feel a thousand times better. Which is to say that you can’t truly appreciate how great it is to feel “bad” until the feeling of “incredibly bad” has been alleviated.
As for the link? After I got my drugs at the pharmacy I drove across the street to a hardware store where I got bigger vice grips and a new replacement stainless steel link. I crawled under the truck and bent the old rusted son of a bitch off! That’s right. I replaced it with a new link right there in the parking lot and the universe is back in balance again. Why? Because that’s what men do!
Now if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Curmudgeon says I have to go to bed or she’s going to kick my ass. If I get out of bed again I definitely deserve it.
“Portland is where the young go to retire.”
I’m traveling in the Pacific Northwest. Pray for me!
The “weird Portland effect” isn’t news. I’ve been here before. I spent several years getting rained on amid the socialists and tall trees. I did my time. I paid my debt to society. I have since escaped to flyover country. My homestead’s location is my version of heaven and their version of hell; I’m happy I left, presumably they’re happy I’m gone.
Back when I lived west of the Cascades, my thinking was “yes it’s weird here but then again there’s nothing wrong with a little idiosyncrasy”. I accepted it but never got used to it. Maybe I should have been stoned? Silly me!
I was a social outlier but it wasn’t that bad. One eventually accepts the idea that being straight, married, employed, and not actively worshiping Cesar Chavez makes you “not one of the cool kids”. Unfortunately, and this was what really doomed me, I had an unshakable innate desire to pay off student loans and support myself. It was a malady the the locals could never exorcise from me (they sure tried).
Eventually I moved to drier climes (which is just about anywhere on earth). Having neither “gone Galt” nor “gone trustfund” I chose to seek money (or rather jobs… which may confuse Portlanders as they see little correlation between the two). An economy based on mountain bikes and coffee wasn’t doing it for me.
After leaving I gradually realized that all that rain really had hammered my attitude. The sun came out and my spirits soared. My boots finally dried out and stopped smelling like mold. I could ride a bicycle without a raincoat. I could drive a truck without feeling like it was fueled with the bones of baby seals. I could put a bicycle in the back of the truck and drive it around while listening to heavy metal instead of lute and eating beef jerky instead of slimy yogurt. I could wear Carhartts non-ironically. I could walk past a smoker without feeling social pressure to be a dick to them. God bless America I was free again! Dinner became about food instead of a hand wringing exploration of GMOs and localvores. Have you noticed that they’re all skinny? I’d be skinny too if I lived in a world without bacon… and joy.
A dismal gray depression had flowed over me so stealthily that I’d hardly noticed it’s arrival. A few months after fleeing the constant rain and Marxism it had fully lifted off my shoulders and was gone. Who knows how long or how deeply the rain had seeped into my bones? All I knew is that I felt as light as a feather. I knew it was gone when I stopped wondering why everyone thought tofu was food. Perhaps it takes a lot of rain to make tofu appear to taste good and bacon to taste like murder?
I visit from time to time. I prepare like it’s a visit to Warsaw in 1950. I pack plenty of rain gear, never stay longer than necessary, and make damn sure I’ve got my escape route clearly in mind. I say “hi” to the tall Douglas-fir (I do miss them) and check to see that the Pacific is properly situated where I left it. I love watching the waves. They’re entrancing. You’ve got to keep an eye out though. Sometimes a rogue wave will rise up and suck an inattentive fool into the undertow. You can be drunk while on the beach but never turn your back on the Pacific. Then, after a few beers and some salmon, I get the hell outta’ Dodge.
Today I had to venture back across the “moss barrier to reality”. I was “forced” to drive through Portland en route to a classified location to do something that was none of your business.
I’d been looking forward to some of the highlights; Powells City of Books for example. However, it’s 2013 and the magic is gone from buying books in a place. A big honking used book store used to be a repository of awesome. Now it’s a anachronism. The whole thing could be replaced by a handful of websites and ten bucks in a PayPal account. I can get the sum total of human knowledge delivered via FedEx to my remote homestead (and probably a third of it could be beamed to my Kindle at two am during a blizzard). Bookstores are cool in the way that I think a blacksmith exhibit at the farmer’s museum is cool. Nothing more.
What did Powells have to offer but parking hassles and nearby locations where I could pay a 500% mark up on burnt coffee. I rocketed through. My truck, which views bicycle lanes and trustfunders with suspicion, thought I’d made a sound decision.
At the gas station I had to let someone else put their dirty hippie hands on my truck! Oregonians are by statute determined to be too incompetent to pump their own gas. Imagine a place even more restrictive than California! I’m pretty sure that George Washington would mount bayonets and charge had he been in my place.
By chance the truck happened to be empty. Imagine the fun I had when I pulled up with a one ton dually and carefully loaded two six packs of beer in a payload area that could tow a house. The guy pumping, who’s life savings is worth less than my fly rod, could barely contain his disgust. Yep, a guy pumping diesel who hates diesel. He’ll probably go home and write a poem about me.
The Pacific ocean appears unaffected by the weirdness. Thank goodness! The waves were as beautify as ever. I had to walk past four unused electric car charging stations and a bulletin board of protest posters to get there but that’s ok. The beer was as excellent as always. It was served by a forty year old white guy with Rastafarian hair and the far off look of a man who’ll never pay off his student loans in this century but hey, that’s not my problem. In the end it was like being an adult in a theme park.
I’m happy knowing that I can pull the rip cord and in a few hours be safely across the divide. I’ll be back where coyotes and real men still roam free. I can see my truck from where I’m sitting. So long as I’ve got a full tank of fuel (try buying fuel on a Sunday in Oregon!) and I’m not impoverished like I was when I lived there I’ve got my golden ticket out.
In case you’re thinking I’m exaggerating. That Portland is no more freaky than say, Des Moines… I’ll provide two examples. The first came about while talking with a waitress. She mentioned some ethics kerfluffle involving Portland and a New Jersey politician. I checked it out. Here it is:
“It’s America’s most famous vegan strip club, thanks to Cory Booker. Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s Twitter flirtation with a stripper has cast a spotlight on Casa Diablo in Portland, Ore., a city with proud traditions of both veganism and X-rated entertainment.”
Folks I’m here to tell you that I’m entirely used to New Jersey politicians acting like… well like politicians from New Jersey. Did any of my readers honestly ever expect there is such a thing as a vegan strip club? Is this really a pressing need that society must fill? Why? If you’re the kind of man that’ll pay good money watching a naked woman on stage but it crosses your mind to ask whether her sexy boots are leather or vinyl… hand in your balls right now. They’re defective. Or, you might just be a resident of Portland.
While checking out the vegan strip club quandary I crossed paths with Exhibit B. Exhibit B is a video of a man dressed in a kilt and Darth Vader outfit, on a unicycle, playing bagpipes, that shoot flames. I’m not one to discount the imaginative of humanity. This is truly something unique. Only Portland would create such an entity. Which is why I never turn my back on either the Pacific or Portland.
Today I don’t present a new word but rather a new application to an old phrase:
Level Up – verb – informal – To pour effort into a personal endeavor with the deliberate and focused intention of improving oneself. Particularly in reference to that last and most difficult bit of earnest hard work needed to reach a new plateau of achievement.
Unlike most of my “word for the day” posts, I didn’t coin this term. Nor do I know who did. Being as socially connected as the average rock, I always associated the phrase with D&D players from the Medieval period of twenty sided dice and books written by the Gygax. In non-geek terms (my readers who live and breathe this stuff can will correct me), a player would perform various feats and thereby earn points. Accruing lots of points would earn them a level. Each level made the player significantly more awesome. This was the whole point. The phrase sounded something like this: “It would be safer to run away from that six headed zombie dragon but instead I’m gonna’ charge it with my big ass weapon of smiting and see if I can take that sumbitch out. The rest of you can chicken out but I’m gonna’ level up!”
That was then, this is now, and I don’t even know if twenty sided dice still exist. However I’ve recently heard a new application of the term. Now the term comes out when somebody is talking about the hard work they’re putting into their favorite pastime and how they eagerly anticipate the inherent reward of mastering a new skill or completing a difficult task.
Examples:
Gun nuts: “I used to shoot crap ammo from Wal-Mart. Then I decided to level up and start handloading with super X, mega point, unobtanium alloy, match grade bullets and powder made of ostrich feathers and shark lung. Now I can shoot the nads off a squirrel at 80 yards.”
Hunters: “Going after elk with a 300 win mag was OK but I got bored. I decided to level up and stalk Grizzlies with an osage orange bow and homemade arrows. I’ll miss my left foot but no pain no gain right?”
Fitness fans: “It took months but I worked up to a new level. I can bench press a Volkswagen!”
Survivalists: “I leveled up when I decided to buy that chaingun. When I bug out I’m going through the zombie horde instead of around it.”
Homesteaders: “I used to buy seeds from Burpee but I simply had to level up. Now I grow kumquat from seed that originally came over on the Mayflower.”
See the pattern? It’s all about achievement. It comes out in terms that are defined by the participant. It has nothing to do with what you’re expected to do or what would normally be done by a fellow in your situation. It’s all about picking your mountain and climbing that sucker.
Folks who define their own standards for their own development and go after them with hammer and tongs are inspiring. Usually they’re kicking ass because that’s what motivated humans do. Nothing is certain so failures happen. Even so it’s not so much a failure as a delay. There’s a feeling of inevitability to the pursuit, and even if you get your ass handed back to you on a plate you’ve got no regrets. After all, what are regrets but the empty feeling of having chickened out or merely done a half assed attempt?
The phrase fills me with joy. Too much victimhood pulses through our society and it threatens to taint us all. This is the cure! Whenever someone is trying to “level up” they shine a light in the correct direction of travel. Further, they’re too damn busy to flounder around feeling sorry for themselves. They take one person out of the flood of stupid and that’s always a good start.
Another plus is that someone who’s leveling up is deliberately uninterested in bossing you around. It’s basically a tautology; a person who gets off on controlling others is the exact opposite of one who wants only to improve himself.
I for one have been “leveling up” lately. At what? At the moment I’m not gonna’ say. (My dog advises against putting too much information on the NSA’s cloud my blog. If you wish, you can assume I’m full of crap. I’m cool with that.) What I can say is that “leveling up” feels good. The mind, body, and soul all react positively when you pick a goal and go for it.
I’m hoping the phrase “level up” will plant its siren song in the ear of the world. Call me naive but every step up is better than a step down and we need a phrase that encompasses that concept. If even a few percent of us are out there “leveling up” it’s a hard thing to deny.
I’ve seen other obscure concepts take root. In 1980, nobody knew who John Galt was. Now everyone is at least aware what “going Galt” means. (Well perhaps I speak too broadly, everyone who is interesting knows the phrase; regardless of their reaction to it. The rest are too busy looking at LOL cats on their iPhones.) Moreover, it wasn’t an easy concept to explain until “going Galt” transmuted from an obscure book from 1957 into something an off grid survivalist and a hippie organic farmer might both understand.
For the folks who are out there “leveling up”, good luck.
First of all let me start by saying that it sucks whenever anyone who is willing and able to work gets sent home through no fault of their own. Bob Smith who does accounting at the WallaWalla Department of Agricultural Whatnottery, Region 15, Secition 9, is neither the cause of nor the controller of Governmental tectonic shifts. Don’t dump on the guy. Save your vitriol for the suits that endeavor to drive the beast. (Or you can dump on the ones who do the truly repugnant as a main parcel of their job duties, like the TSA’s serial gropers. Ironically, a service deemed “essential”.)
Also let me say that no man is an island. The shutdown has seriously hosed my homestead’s finances. It makes me wish I was as isolationist as my Amish neighbors. (Then again I like beer and swearing so that would never work. Also I could rock an Amish beard but Mrs. Curmudgeon vetoed the idea.) Taking a financial hit sucks; especially when it comes from external forces.
Finally let me say that things that suck happen all the time and… well that sucks too.
Now lets get to the point.
Here’s another concept. Everyone seems to be concerned with which party will be blamed for the shutdown. There appears to be a tacit understanding that blame is certain and credit is impossible. (This is, of course, another example of our unbiased press at work.)
I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that blame and causality are more or less unrelated. Meaning it’s one thing to foment a shutdown and another thing to get blamed for it and the two may or may not be related. At the moment I can’t turn on my truck’s radio without Pravda NPR whining that this is caused by gruesome illiterate hillbilly tea partiers in flyover country who are too stupid to submit to the better judgment of their intellectual superiors. Apparently it’s totally inconceivable that it could be caused by scarcity of resources. In some circles, nothing from the rising of the sun to the death of a songbird happens on this earth without one of two parties to be blamed or lauded.
I disagree. Sometimes you can’t have your cake and eat it too. In those cases either one viewpoint crushes the other or a compromise is reached. So far neither party can crush the other and as yet there is no compromise. Just as it takes two to Tango, it takes at least one of them to not Tango and neither party seems to be immune to shutdowns on their watch. Historically each party has had their hands on the reins during shutdowns. I’m not the only one saying as much. Here’s a quote from Charles C. W. Cooke (link goes to his article):
“Of the 17 shutdowns in America’s history, Democrats controlled the House during 15 and had charge of both chambers during eight. Five shutdowns happened under unified government! This makes sense. Government shutdowns are caused by legitimate and welcome disagreement between equal branches. They are certainly more likely to happen in divided government, but it is not a prerequisite.”
Then just to get a sense of how normal or abnormal our current budgetary kerfluffle might be I’m putting up a little table I found at NBC News. (Note: The formatting is a bit dodgy and I’m too lazy to fix it. Click on the link to see it better. You should be clicking the occasional link anyway. How else would you know I’m not inventing it from whole cloth? The press, of course, is apparently immune to that last admonition.)
PAST FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNS
Year Beginning date Length in Days Ending date
(at midnight)1976 Thursday, Sept 30 10 Monday, Oct 11
1977 Friday, Sept 30 12 Thursday, Oct 13
Monday, Oct 31 8 Wednesday, Nov 9
Wednesday, Nov 30 8 Friday, Dec 91978 Saturday, Sept 30 17 Wednesday, Oct18
1979 Sunday, Sept 30 11 Friday, Oct 12
1981 Friday, Nov 20 2 Monday, Nov 23
1982 Thursday, Sept 30 1 Saturday, Oct 2
Friday, Dec 17 3 Tuesday, Dec 211983 Thursday, Nov 10 3 Monday, Nov 14
1984 Sunday, Sept 30 2 Wednesday, Oct 3
Wednesday, Oct 3 1 Friday, Oct 51986 Thursday, Oct 16 1 Saturday, Oct 18
1987 Friday, Dec 18 1 Sunday, Dec 20
1990 Friday, Oct 5 3 Tuesday, Oct 9
1995 Monday, Nov 13 5 Sunday, Nov 19
Friday, Dec 15 21 Saturday, Jan 6, 1996
Do you see what I see? I see a more or less steady series of shutdowns on a periodic cycle of one to five years. Seventeen shutdowns in all. This, the eighteenth shutdown, is notable not for existing but coming some 18 years behind schedule.
Shutdowns aren’t good management but they’re not the apocalypse either.
Now we came across another problem. How many bundles per pallet? The Bobcat could lift no more than 15 bundles at a time. I needed to return home with Z bundles. The trailer could hold X pallets. I’d already loaded 15 bundles in the truck bed.
Remember those word problems you hated when you were in school. We suck it up buttercup because that shit’s for real! I figured out a basic equation in seconds. Each pallet should have (Z-15)/X. Also X<= 15. This was trivial… except standing in the heat with two guys staring at me I couldn’t do the math in my head. They both whipped out iPhones and plugged in numbers.
One guy got an answer. He called it out. The other guy looked up from his iDevice and agreed. I wrinkled my nose and thought hard.
His number times X plus 15 equaled something totally unlike Z… except I wasn’t sure what it was. I could simply tell that he’d missed by an amount we technically term “a shitload”. Presumably he’d dropped a decimal place… or failed algebra.
“You’re wrong.” I said. He blinked. The forklift guy blinked.
I sighed… what do they teach in schools? Is this not their job? They stood there with jaws open and iPhones poised but no thoughts behind what, if anything, they should key into their electronic security blanket. It took me a bit for me to work the numbers in my head. (Note to self; next time bring a pad and paper.) The kid eventually gave up and checked Facebook. The older guy was digging in his pocket for Skoal.
Finally I derived the answer. They both immediately agreed. Awesome!
Then I realized they would both agree to any number of any sort that might mention. I tested the idea… “What if we loaded,” and here I spit out a random number, “per pallet?” They both agreed instantly.
When I make observations like this I know why America’s national debt is so large.
On the other hand I was happy to be doing actual math. Having escaped “carpentry-math” my world was once again filled with sunshine. Meanwhile the two guys were throwing bundles like gerbils on a wheel.
“You think the trailer can handle it?” I asked. They froze. I understood, belatedly, that the delivery truck is such a big flatbed that the shingles for a single house can’t exceed it’s payload. These guys had probably never pondered the concept of “mass”. I was on my own. For all I knew they might even own a Prius and enjoy yoga. I shudder to ponder it.
(In retrospect they also seemed a bit confused about why I wanted the pallets balanced in certain locations near the axle rather than fore and aft willy nilly. The last American to stand on the moon took his trip in 1972. Since then we’ve created Facebook, microwaves, and several generations of idiots who can’t balance a payload. I’d trade a herd of iPhone wielding morons for a hearty fellow from 1950 with a sliderule and a taste for Tang.)
I looked at the shingles. On the wrapper it said a “square” weighed a certain amount. OK so X bundles per pallet, Y pallets, 3 bundles per “square”, Z pounds per “square”. So that’s ((X*Y) / 3)*Z.
I was saying this aloud. The two guys were watching me like it was performance art.
I ignored them. Figure 1,000 pounds for the trailer. Oh and 15 bundles on the truck. That’s ((X*Y)/3 * Z) + 1,000 + (15 / 3)* Z for the whole shebang.
A fourth guy had showed up and was listening. I ignored the group of four and glanced at the hitch. “And that’s a 2″ ball so that’s a 6,000 pound limit. And the truck’s GVWR is about…” For some reason I remember my truck’s GVWR even though I can’t remember my wife’s cell phone number. (But I sure as hell remember our anniversary… for some things there are consequences!)
The four guys were in awe. They waited. I came to a conclusion.
“It’s a go.” The trailer was laden close to the hitches limit but not over it. (Good thing I’d put the first 15 bundles on the truck itself. ) Also the trailer would implode long before I overloaded the truck’s overall capacity. I was pleased to KNOW I was within specs rather than the last trip when we’d merely HOPED it was so.
They all breathed a sigh of relief and pocketed the Skoal and iPhones that had appeared in their hands again.
Twenty minutes later the truck was loaded, the trailer was loaded, and I was driving out of the yard. The guy at the yard gate had to count the bundles three times before he was confident I had the right amount. I never left the cab. I couldn’t stop smiling.
I was smiling because I was a man towing a hefty payload with a good truck; as God intended. Also, I got to use some of my truck’s more awesome (and expensive) gadgets. I slipped the transmission into tow/haul. (Have you ever tried to find a used truck with a manual… it’s impossible!) My truck’s auto is so good that it’s slowly converting me to the dark side. Then I turned the jake brake on. I had a pretty hefty load and that’s precisely why I have a jake. Finally I glued an eye to my exhaust gas temp gauge because the truck was about to do some serious work.
Pistons fired, EGT gauges climbed, and huge torque numbers came into play. Heralded by trumpets (at least in my head) I rolled forward. I was at the helm of one of the peak developments of the industrial revolution. Have I mentioned that I love my truck?
The whole world was roses. I climbed a hill… slow and steady and accelerating. I dropped a gear. The EGT cooled instantly. I cruised past a crappy little econobox laboring up the hill while the driver chattered on a cell phone. He was probably hypermiling on the way to the organic food co-op. I was passed by a bobblehead in a SUV with a phone glued to her mountainous blond hair. What could she possibly have to say? Was she talking to the guy in the econobox?
Who cares? My truck was running great and that’s all that mattered. By the way. Truck… I love it. Just in case you missed it.
In a fit of overconfidence, I rolled the whole thing into a Burger King drive through. I slipped up to the window (trailer and all), got my Whopper, and was back on the road in ten minutes.
Back on the road I had no troubles. The trip was too short. The joy of towing gave way to the drudgery of moving bundles by the ton.
A few hours later the trailer was unloaded by a very overworked Bobcat and I was sitting on my porch drinking beer. The sun set over a mountain of stacked shingles on my lawn. A job well done.
Home improvement, it’s not for wimps.
Now I had to return to get the remaining 2/3 of the shipment. I decided to take the mighty Curmudgeon Truck (which is a 1 ton dually). I had visions of my friend’s 3/4 ton truck breaking in half. Besides he’d been steering it mostly by hope and I couldn’t bear taking another ride loaded like that. He didn’t complain when I suggested the switch.
I glanced at the Pony trailer but immediately rejected that idea. The Little Pony trailer would hemorrhage just looking at those heavy shingles.
I hitched up his car trailer to my truck and removed my tailgate. I left my him at the house. “I got this” I said and then zoomed off. We must face our fates alone.
I was confident. I have more or less the biggest truck you can buy without getting a commercial driver’s license and trying to cram a Peterbuilt in the garage. I stroked the truck’s dash.
“You were born for this.” I assured the beast. “It is time to shine.” The mighty diesel engine was running smooth and cool. I love my truck. My truck loves me. (The dog gets honorable mention but you can’t haul lumber on a dog.)
Back at the lumber yard I unhitched the trailer. I planned to put the first pallet on the truck itself. The yoyo that had almost killed the Honda SUV an hour earlier swooped over with his forklift.
“Nice truck.” He beamed “want me to load it.” I considered hitting him with a rock, hiding the body, and running the forklift myself.
I warned the kid in the forklift that my truck was not any truck.
“There are many trucks”, I looked him in the eye, “but this one is mine”. He shivered.
I radiated menace. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He gulped and nodded.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Nobody will think less of you if you back out.” I added. By offering him the chance to bail out I felt he’d volunteered for whatever came next. Should he damage my truck I’d feel morally justified dismembering him with a tire iron. (In certain states I believe this is actually written into law under the “he messed with my truck” clause.)
Have I mentioned that I like my truck? It is said that a grizzly bear mother is dangerous when separated from her cub. This is ridiculous. Grizzly bears have never made a truck payment.
He wanted to do it. Brave? Stupid? Regardless, he had been warned.
I manually unloaded a tall pallet down to 15 bundles. (Have I mentioned that “bundles” are not “squares” but rather 1/3 of a “square” and a “square” will cover some number that is not 100 square feet but more than 15 of them will tip a Bobcat at an angle reminiscent of the Tango? Every time I mention the ‘logic’ behind construction units butterflies get cancer and Satan divides by zero.)
To my surprise he loaded the truck gently as a feather floating on the breeze. Which is good. After all, his life depended on it.
Then I rehitched the trailer and started loading more pallets with bundles. The forklift kid helped. A third guy showed up too. We were slinging shingles like the macho men in the backdrop of a truck commercial. In fact, I was humming the theme from a truck advertisement… oddly not from my brand. Does that make me disloyal?
More in Part V.
So the shutdown is in full bloom and shenanigans abound. The award for most photogenic example goes to locking WWII vets out of their memorial.
I’ve written about shutdowns before in 2011 Tour of Reality Denial: Part I and the incredibly cleverly named follow up; 2011 Tour of Reality Denial: Part II. I even coined the a term to describe things like the vet / memorial kerfluffle:
Punitive Ineffectualism: When a person or organization deliberately chooses to be outrageously incompetent to piss people off. Example; “I’d ask Bill to pick up beer for the hunting trip but he doesn’t drink alcohol and he’d buy Zima or some other crap. Rather than deal with that idiot’s punitive ineffectualism I’ll get it myself.” It is a gambit which can backfire by generating unforgiving animosity. Example: “Remember last year when Bill threw $50 worth of Cuban cigars into the lake because he wanted to save us from cancer? As payback I’m waiting until we get to bear country before smearing his tent with bacon. Take that you sanctimonious motherfucker!”
What? You thought this was something new? Of course not. Governments “shut down” from time to time and when they do they invariably deploy “punitive intellectualism”.
It just makes sense. If everything is done competently and professionally then citizens find the shutdown more palatable. Simple game theory says that the best gambit is to shut down in such a way as to annoy as many people as possible.
I observed the same thing when Minnesota shut itself down in 2011:
Example five: Kicking Citizens out of their Park and locking the gates.
At the time I had a simple observation:
“Why the hell is there a gate at all!?!”
(In the 2013 D.C. version, unlike the 2011 Minnesota version, the gates were temporarily installed. Same concept though.)
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Now for a silver lining to all this. Pay attention because I’m really happy to see it and nobody (but me) seemed to notice.
Optimistic Observation Of The Day:
Nobody got hurt!
Men with guns and badges, with orders to keep people out of the park, refused to commit mayhem to keep their orders. Excellent news! That’s not as easy as it sounds. They had jobs to do with clear instructions. Yet when the time came, they acted like grown adults. They did the sane thing and stood down. Well done gentlemen!
The folks who stood down and let veterans (citizens!) into their monument did the right thing. All up and down the chain of command, once they realized what was happening, people did the right thing. Nobody handcuffed grandpa or fired tear gas, no guns cleared leather, nobody did anything rash. The whole thing was resolved in an unexpected outbreak of common sense. America rocks!
Park based mall cops; for your example of looking into the face of authoritarian disasters and choosing not to leap, I salute you! Thanks!
Also to the veterans, well done! When some jackoff with a badge was doing wrong you spanked their ass. As it should be. Well done in 2013 and thank you for your previous service as well!
I decided to haul all of the building materials myself. Am I not a country boy? Can I not survive? If I can skin a buck and run a trot line I damn well can deliver a load of shingles!
Mrs. Curmudgeon (who had arrived independently in her own car) saw the writing on the wall, gave me a hug, and skipped out before things got too interesting. Wise woman. I’m sure she monitored the cell phone for the rest of the day; anticipating either a call from the emergency room or the police.
I’d ridden there in a contractor’s truck. (If it gets the job done well he will be elevated from “contractor” to “hero”.) While I’d been haggling over shingles he’d been picking out a bunch of dimension lumber. He showed up and shook his head sadly at the thought of delivery trucks which are unavailable. He too knows a society which lacks trucks and drivers is going to hell in a handbasket.
Together we went to the “yard” intending to pick up the load. We had his 3/4 ton Chevy. We were towing a car trailer which had been intended for just the lumber. I was optimistic the trailer would work with shingles too.
I learned something new that day.
Shingles are heavy.
Like the sodden and compressed soul of a politician, shingles sag toward the earth and crush anything in their path. I might as well have been stacking depleted uranium. You don’t know heavy until you’ve played with shingles.
A forklift put what looked like a tiny little load on the trailer. The truck sagged precipitously. I was worried.
“Dude, you’ve got to drop the trailer and leave it here. Let me come back with my dually.” It was a reasonable and cautious idea… therefore entirely unacceptable. Like all rednecks, my contractor wasn’t about to bail on a job simply because he was risking a busted axle.
“I got this.” He said.
I had my doubts. He looked worried too. The tires were smushed.
While we were eying the tires I watched a particularly dense forklift operator drop a bunch of 2″ x 6″ planks. (Which were neither 2″ nor 6″ in size because… shut up.) They almost hammered a little Honda SUV that was parked nearby. I sure was glad that forklift driver hadn’t been loading our trailer!
Returning to the tires (they resembled crushed marshmallows) I decided we were doomed.
“Are you sure.” I waved at the squatting truck, “you want to drive that?” He looked at the tires and whistled. Nothing good comes from an exploded sidewall.
Then he checked the pressure. “Does 20 pounds sound low to you?”
“Only if you want to live.” I responded. Soon the tires were pumped up to 50 pounds and things looked much better. Huzzah! We zigged and zagged down the road with questionable steering, low speeds, and brakes that weren’t up to the task. Surprisingly, we made it to my house in one piece.
This was about a third of the shingles. The majority remained back at the yard. Life is like that.
At my house we discovered that his Bobcat (which I lust after!) could lift no more than 15 “bundles” of shingles. We’d stacked it much taller than 15 bundles. The Bobcat did an epic pirouette. Luckily it didn’t face plant.
(For reasons only known to J Edgar Hoover and the Pope, shingles are sold by the “bundle” and estimated by the “square”. It takes 3 bundles to make one square which isn’t quite 100 square feet worth of material depending on the manufacturer as interpreted by the lunar cycle and the growth rings on barnacles found in the North Sea and… did I mention that those bastards shaved 1/32″ off my plywood? But I digress. I’m sure it makes sense if you’ve been punched in the skull.)
Manfully facing the inevitable, I shifted bundles by hand. Each one weighs about the same as a bag of feed and smells like burning money. Eventually we got them all off the trailer. (Did you know there are people who think “jazzersize” is hard work? They live on the same planet. Yeah I know. Me too.)
More in Part IV.
My cheap, ugly, scratched, “disposable” cell phone has died after more years of service than most vehicles can muster. I’ve been without it a couple weeks (I’m a blogger without a cell phone… go figure). It sucks. I’ve reluctantly accepted that it’s damn near impossible to do business and travel in 2013 without a cell phone.
So I guess the bastards are getting some of my money. I’ve been looking around the web for advice about replacing my broken piece of shit phone with an unbroken piece of shit phone. Everything was ok… at first.
Then I decided to get one with capacity for an earpiece. (Which is apparently the incorrect vocabulary. It seems that only octogenarians and I use “earpiece”. I’m refer to one those blue tooth hands free devices that make it look like hipsters are talking to the air in front of them while they step into open manholes.)
There is some sort of “if it saves one life” rule that if you hold a cell phone to your ear while driving a commercial truck, the cops punch you in the balls and ship you to Guantanamo. I never talk on the phone while driving (privately or commercially). Why? Because I’m driving dammit! However, should I, in a moment of weakness, answer a call while at the wheel of a dump truck I’m suddenly a terrorist. My previous phone was so old that I couldn’t buy a “hands free” headset. They probably made them once but I’d need to find an antique dealer in Botswana to get one. (Scratch that… everyone in Botswana probably has a smart phone in their mud hut.) With a new phone I might as well remove the legal liability (appearance of impropriety?) by getting an earpiece/headset/implant/matrix visualizer.
Once I typed the word “hand free” and unleashed Google, things got funky. The universe attacked me with smart phone errata. I’ve been stuffed down the rabbit hole by nerds with plungers. Also companies that make money selling nothing on monthly payment plans smelled blood in the water.
This is precisely why I hate it when old but functional equipment breaks. Now I have to ponder stuff that bores me; CMDA versus GSM, Android 4.0 versus 4.x, Bluetooth and/or 3GWifi, and lions and tigers oh my.
This isn’t to say I’m incapable of grokking CMDA versus GSM. (I not a complete idiot.) It’s just that I don’t give a rat’s ass about it. Every second my brain is distracted by smart phones and the people that love them, God kills a kitten. I like kittens. (Though I hate cats.)
Surely there is a market niche for someone in cyberspace to service the low cost low care caller? Someone who’ll identify a cheap phone that’ll meet my needs, write the number on the case phone in black marker, FedEx it, and then disappear from my life forever.
By the way, I did lay down a couple of ground rules that make it harder. I use prepaid service. Tracfone I believe. Why? Because I don’t do monthly plans for anything less important than a house (or when I’m desperate… a vehicle). Also, I’ll die before I let an iDevice sully my truck cab. I’m just sayin’.
I’m thinking I may have to go to WalMart and deal with Lakisha at the electronics department. I’m not that desperate yet. I might choose instead to become a sheepherder and join the Basques in Spain. I’m pretty sure they’d let me borrow their smartphones once in a while and my dog loves guarding sheep.
A.C.
Update: I’m also looking for a small metal case for the phone. It must be metal… because Faraday. Remember the good old days when wondering if the Government was spying on you phone meant you were paranoid instead of correct?
Update 2: I had to venture inside a WalMart. It was horrible! They were out of stock and the salesman seemed confused by the concept of a TracFone pre-pay as opposed to the “Pay A Monthly Bill Until You Die” approach that is apparently our patriotic duty. They were sold out and some kid sneezed on my pant leg. For the greater good of society I should have cracked the little cretin in the noggin. Instead I fled. I will order off the Internet and have a phone delivered by FedEx… after I take a bath in Lysol.
