Read All About It

Posted by John

If you live in a city of any sort of size, large or small, you’re likely familiar with the street publication known as the Homeless Paper. If you’re not, it’s a pretty simple concept – an organization, likely a non-profit, publishes a newspaper, probably once a month, containing articles that are either written by or about homeless people. Homeless people then become vendors and sell the paper for $1 on the street. I don’t know how the distribution works out but I imagine the homeless vendor keeps the majority of the money while the organization gets a percentage to cover operating costs. All in all it’s a really good concept that helps a whole bunch of people, especially those individuals who are highly motivated and not resigned to being homeless for the rest of their lives.

Having said all of that let me state this as plainly and sensitively as I can: I fucking hate the homeless paper.

Now just hold on a minute before you completely crucify me for such a blatantly dickish statement, I can explain. There are several reasons why I really don’t care for the homeless paper:

Number 1: Guilt

On any given day I will pass anywhere from 3 to 6 homeless paper vendors on my way to and from lunch and I’d love to give them all a dollar in exchange for a paper but truthfully I just can’t go spending $6 a day on homeless papers plus I don’t ever have any cash on me… Sort of. You see, one vendor in particular who I pass almost every single day stands right outside my goddamn bank. And believe me, he’s the nicest guy in the world and he truly, truly got a shitty draw in life. He was a fire fighter whose last call was 9/11 at the World Trade Center where a 10-ton slab of granite fell on him and now he’s disabled, homeless, and selling papers. So every day I pass this guy and he wishes me a nice day and I thank him and give him this look like, “Sorry dude, no cash today,” but fuck me - he can see my goddamn bank and my goddamn ATM right there! But what am I supposed to do? The other day I was pseudo approaching the guy to buy a paper when I overheard him say to a young woman, “I haven’t seen a $20 bill since December.”

“Well, shit!” I thought, “That’s just depressing as hell, plus there goes my plan to get him to break this 20 for me.” But shit, I really needed a bunch of ones. So I went on by without buying a paper.

So I feel guilty as hell when I pass the guy if I don’t buy a paper but then I feel even guiltier when I do buy a paper and he tells me how sick he is or how he wishes he could just go back to fighting fires if not for the crutches or how he only pulled down $8 the day before… And all of this while I’ve just walked out of my bank and on my way to get some dim sum at the Chinese takeout place. I mean, my god! I know he’s homeless and hungry and all that but he is guilting the shit out of me every time I see him and honestly that shit keeps me up some nights just thinking about the poor guy.

I know what you’re thinking though, and you should feel ashamed for thinking this – how do I know he’s not lying and putting on a big act just to guilt people into buying some papers? Well, I’ll tell you how. I buy a paper from the guy every few weeks, especially when the new issues come out, and the guy tells me the same story every time. He doesn’t remember me for a second and he always tells me the same story about 9/11 each and every time, so he’s consistent as hell. Of course, I’m a little fucking pissed that I buy a paper from him all the time and he doesn’t at least remember me but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here.

Number 2: Mother Nature

As much as I would love to feel good about giving several dollars every day to every homeless paper vendor I pass, I simply can’t do that. Why, you might ask? The environment, of course. I honestly can’t bring myself to buy a paper every day because as I walk away with it in my hand all I can think about is all the trees that died in order to make it. I knowIknowIknow! It’s ridiculously hypocritical to value the lives of a couple trees over a human being, starving, without shelter, living on the street. But come on – it’s a hell of a lot of trees. And for what? A paper I’m never going to read? Okayokayokay! Just wait while I explain again…

Number 3: Zoloft

You see, that’s the other hypocrisy of the whole deal – I can’t bring myself to actually read the paper; it’s too fucking depressing. I’m serious, have you ever read anything in the homeless paper? Oh god, it’s horrible.

One day I bought a paper and I was waiting forever for my Chinese takeout so I thought, “Well, I’ll just pass the time leafing through this homeless paper… oh what’s this? It’s a poem written by a homeless man. Oh, this should be pleasant…” Holy. Shit. It was the worst thing I’d ever read. It was all about how this guy lives under a bridge because he went off to fight for his country in the army only to come back and find that his country didn’t care about him and how he wished he’d died in the war like his fallen buddies and now all he wants to do is get drunk to dull the pain while he looks up at the bridge that is his home and all he can think about is jumping off it to end it all.

Well, fucking-a! If I want to be that depressed I’ll get a bottle of white zinfandel, put on some Sinead O’Connor and go through my old yearbooks and circle the pictures of all the chicks that wouldn’t go out with me. Jesus, who wants to do that? So instead I just buy the papers and they collect in a large stack at my desk without getting read until the once-monthly paper recycling pickup at which point I just look at the stack and think, “Well, that sure is a hell of a lot of trees sitting there…” I mean, you’d think they could go digital like all the other publications in the world, right? Yeah, there’s some logistics to work through with that but what else are they thinking about all day?

Number 4: Competition

The thing with the homeless paper vendor is, they’re not beholden to anyone else, not even any other vendors, so it’s actually a very competitive endeavor for these people. One guy stakes a claim on a street corner and that becomes his territory. The code of the homeless paper vendor clearly states that no other vendor can encroach on his territory any closer than one linear block. But even then, one linear block isn’t very big so you can imagine how in the heart of downtown there is literally one vendor on every single street corner. So when I walk to lunch to Subway to get my $5 footlong sub because I’m always starving by the time lunch comes around and you really can’t beat $5 for an entire foot of Subway eat fresh sub although I only ever eat like 50, maybe 60% of the sub before I put the rest if the fridge and tell myself I’ll finish it later but I never do because once you put the mayonnaise on it really only has a shelf life of 20, maybe 30 minutes before the bread gets unacceptably soggy so I always end up throwing away like $2, maybe $2.50 worth of sub so when I’m on my way to go do that at lunch every day I pass like three homeless paper vendors and if I happened to stop and buy a paper from one of them the other two can clearly see me do it because it’s only one fucking linear block so what am I really going to say as I pass those other two vendors with a paper already in my hand? “Sorry, that dude has a better corner. You should really take his corner and then I’ll buy a paper from you.” So again, it goes back to the guilt.

So at this point you must be asking yourself, in a world where a bunch of greedy assholes on Wall Street can literally devise something out of thin air like a credit default swap and sell that worthless piece of shit for millions of dollars, how can I possibly be any more insensitive about a few homeless people trying to feed themselves by selling a legitimate product for one dollar? Well, clearly you underestimate me.

The thing is, some vendors have it down and know how to sell some papers and some just don’t. The key is to look just homeless enough but not too homeless. Some homeless vendors put on their best clothes to go sell papers and honestly it just gets confusing because if they’re not clearly homeless then you have to wonder what this asshole is doing selling newspapers like the asshole parents who sell the candy bars for their kid’s marching band at work instead of making their kids actually sell them. If I’m going to buy a homeless paper or not buy a homeless paper I want to buy it or not buy it from an actual homeless person.

They also need to lay on the guilt, but not too thick. The guy I buy from has a great story – injured at the World Trade Centers. It’s consistent and it makes me feel bad for him. But one day I bought from a different dude and he was telling me about his chronic illness and was like, “Some days I don’t know if I’m going to make it, COUGH-COUGH!” Alright dude, I want a homeless paper, not a bout of the whooping cough, so this is the last time I’ll be buying from you.

And lastly, if you’re going to sell some homeless papers, keep the crazy under control. For instance, there’s a guy who yells, whistles and barks at people in order to draw attention to himself to sell some papers. Literally he’ll be like, “HEY-OH! HOMELESS PAPER HERE! BARK! BARK! GET YOUR PAPER! YUP! YUP! HEY-OH! HOMELESS PAPER! BARK! BARK!” I didn’t take any advertising classes in college but I don’t think he did either because I don’t care if he’s selling cheap beer with free porn on the side, if there’s one thing I’m going to avoid it’s a crazy ass homeless person.

So there it is; that’s why the homeless paper tortures me on a daily basis and hopefully you can empathize with my situation. If you can’t and you just think I’m a dick for all of this, well that’s fine – the new issue of the homeless paper comes out this week so you can go buy one for yourself. Just don't come crying to me when you can't get to sleep tonight. 

Nothing Compares to Safety

Posted by John:

And we’re back. It was a glorious month-long World Cup hiatus and it really couldn’t have been better. Actually it could have been better if England and the US hadn’t shit the bed in the Round of 16 but I’m not upset that Spain won and I’m not upset that I watched 50 or so of the 64 matches. It was wonderful. Now I feel like a convict that has been paroled after 30 years behind bars - I’m not quite sure how to reintegrate myself into society. The other night I came home from work and instead of watching three soccer matches in a row I had to actually find something else to do. I briefly thought about having a conversation with the wife but then I thought I would just read instead. After several seconds spent trying to focus on the words on the page I gave up and opted  instead to just stare at the wall and remember all the fantastic moments from the World Cup. 

One of my big concerns prior to the World Cup was work travel interfering with my match watching agenda. In fact, I had several trips planned during some very crucial stages of the tournament that would have prevented me from actually seeing many of the games. That is, right up until I lied to my superiors to get out of the travel. At first I felt this little pang of guilt for my deception but that quickly turned to anger for living in a part of the world where it is not socially acceptable to skip work for soccer let alone watch it at all. I actually had one redneck tell me that he tried to watch 5 minutes of a match before he got too bored and changed the channel. “They’d just kick ‘er down to one end then kick ‘er back to the other end then kick ‘er back to the first end and I was like, ‘I’ve already done seen this before!’ So I switched ‘er over to the NASCAR race instead.” The NASCAR race??? Are you fucking kidding me! You opted for NASCAR because soccer was too boring!?! I can’t even look at you right now! Anyway, after I lied the first time to get out of work travel it actually got increasingly easier to lie each successive time. In the end I was able to watch every single match that I wanted.

The benefit to living in the South during something like the World Cup is that I could easily record the games during the day on DVR and not have to worry about anyone ruining the results for me before I could get home to watch them. In fact, only one of the results was ruined for me when my buddy sent me a text message before I had a chance to see the game. Shame on me for checking my text messages on the day of a game but the reality is that I blame him exclusively for ruining it for me. In fact, not only did I not respond to his text but I haven’t talked to him since then. Maybe in 30 years he’ll realize his mistake and apologize at which point I’ll consider reconciling with him, but until then he’s as good as dead. Seriously.

I actually did have one business trip during the Cup that I had to take. In the end it worked out fine because it was just a 2-hour drive down to Alabama for some safety training and I was able to get back home in plenty of time to watch the games that night. In fact, the only place better than Tennessee for avoiding the results of a soccer game is Alabama. If you’re in Alabama and you ask someone if they know the score of the soccer game you’re just as likely to get a comprehensive dissertation on the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement on Central American agricultural labor as you are the actual score of said soccer game. So I didn’t hesitate to take my ass deeper into the south on that occasion.

Actually that’s not true; I did hesitate only because the purpose of the trip was to sit through 5 hours of safety training which I had already completed just barely a year prior. If you recall, I wrote about it here. Back then there was only one other person in the safety training - a Good Ol’ Southern Boy that I affectionately nicknamed Bubba. The safety training class I took a few weeks ago was actually full of about 20 Good Ol’ Southern Boys that I affectionately nicknamed all sorts of names from Cletus to Hal to Forrest to Jeb to Roscoe to Cooter to Robert E to… I could go on. But let me digress for a moment and bring up something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately – when did the phrase “Good Ol’ Southern Boy” became a a term of endearment synonymous with “racist and homophobic”? Why do we need to sugar coat that shit and pretend like hating minorities and homosexuals makes you a good ol’ anything? You don’t see anyone going around and being like, “Oh, you know Abdullah, right? He’s just a good ol’ jihadist…” When did we allow it to become acceptable to take something that’s clearly morally and ethically reprehensible and make it whimsically endearing? “Roger is a great friend of mine. He’s just a good ol’ cannibal. What are you gonna do? He just loves that human flesh…”

At any rate, it was evident from the get-go that all the other participants in the class were contractors or laborers including the instructor who was a retired laborer. I pretty much knew going into it that not only would I be the only non-blue collar worker in the training, I was going to be the only engineer. Which, if you recall from any of my previous posts, the only thing worse than being an engineer in a room full of Good Ol’ Southern Contractors is being a black homosexual engineer. If for some reason I had forgotten about that for any reason I was given a reminded as soon as I sat down in the class. Immediately after the instructor introduced himself he asked if there were any engineers in the room. Now, I’m no idiot and despite the fact that I was the only one not wearing a shirt with a grease stain on it, you better believe I did not raise my hand to identify myself. Granted, the instructor’s purpose for asking the question was just to make a joke about engineers as an ice breaker, but it was really no different than telling a good ol’ joke about an African American, Latino and Muslim in a bar – even if it’s the funniest joke in the world the fact that it’s funny doesn’t excuse you or hide the fact that you’re an ignorant racist; or that you hate engineers, as the case were. Part of surviving is knowing your surroundings and in that case I knew if I wanted to survive in that surrounding I was not going to raise my hand as the only engineer. In fact, there were a number of similar questions the instructor could have asked that I would not raise my hand to answer under any circumstance in a room full of Good Ol’ Southern Boys:

“Did anyone here catch the episode of Project Runway last night?”

“Who knows how to get to the nearest Whole Foods?”

“Did anyone vote for Obama?”

“Anyone know the score of the Germany v Ghana match today?”

“Who can spell the word ‘Pelosi’?”

So I kept my mouth shut and sat through 5-hours of safety training intermixed with horrible first-person stories about accidents that people had either witnessed or been through personally. The thing was though, for all my self-awareness and self-preservation during the training it was almost all for not because of a stupid lapse of judgment on my part earlier in the day.  

I had to be on the road at 5:30 that morning for the two-hour drive to Alabama. At that hour I have one priority – staying awake at the wheel. Luckily I have several playlists on my iPod with just such a purpose in mind. One such playlist is titled “Badass Music”, which is a compilation of songs taken largely from my childhood in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Think lots of GNR intermixed with Poison next to some Nirvana along with some Rage Against the Machine. The utility of the playlist is pretty obvious – the nostalgia of the songs from my youth will keep me pumped up and rocking the whole way down the road. Now admittedly not every song from my childhood was a badass, face-melting, ear-drum splitting example of alt-rock/grunge/metal. Admittedly some tracks are a bit on the softer side but that doesn’t mean they’re not still great nostalgic songs from when I was a kid.

It’s under that pretense now that I admit my single biggest faux-pas of the day was pulling into the parking lot of the training center amid more than a dozen big ass pick up trucks, the redneck owners of which were all filing into the building, with my windows down completely ignorant to the fact that I was blasting Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares to You” for all the world to hear.

Now let me digress for a moment and say this – I don’t care what you think, “Nothing Compares to You” is a seriously badass fucking song. Period. I mean, you can’t submit any evidence to the contrary. We’re talking about 5-minutes of the most gut-wrenching, tear-jerking audio bliss ever produced for human ears.

It’s been so lonely without you here,

Like a bird without a song.

Nothing can stop these lonely tears from falling.

Tell me baby, where did I go wrong?

Oh my god, I just want to rip my heart right out of my chest, it hurts so bad.

I can assure you I’m not making this up – my love for the song nor the fact that I was playing it as I pulled into the parking lot. Rolling up to a safety training session with a bunch of Good Ol’ Southern Racists and Homophobes blasting Sinead O’Connor out the windows of your Mini Cooper is like a death wish. I might as well have been carrying a giant banner that said, “Osama Bin Laden 4 President!” or “Healthcare Reform is for Winners!” or “Crimson Tide? More like Crimson Gay Pride!!!”

Needless to say, I killed the radio as soon as I realized what was happening and thanked my lucky stars I didn’t end up in a bloody pulp. After that I didn’t say a single word the entire rest of the day – especially about engineering, politics, social injustices, Sinead O’Connor or anything else.

I’ve listened to that song several dozen times since then, as I do every week, but now I’m careful to do so within the privacy of my own headphones, just for safety’s sake.

I went to the doctor and guess what he told me, guess what he told me?

He said, “Girl you better try to have some fun no matter what you do,”

But he’s a fool.

Because nothing compares, nothing compares to you…

Ah, my soul is sobbing like a goddamn baby right now. 

Mountaineering State of Mind

Posted by John:

So I spent the whole of last week in Shitstain, West Virginia doing a jobsite observation at a large hospital project that has been under construction there for the past two years. I don’t want to fall into the stereotypical West Virginia jokes because I don’t think it’s that bad of a state. It’s quite scenic and I know several West Virginians and they’re all fine, upstanding people. Granted, they all moved away from West Virginia as soon as they could, but that’s neither here nor there. This particular place I was visiting wasn’t necessarily a destination I’d recommend, but it wasn’t terrible per se. If I were to describe the place in a few words I would say that if God exists he’s definitely forgotten about this particular town. As an example, the woman working the counter at the hotel had the most tragic haircut I’d ever seen. In fact, it was four haircuts in one and all were outdated by at least two decades. She had the old school, fluffy bangs along with a poodle poof/beehive-thing on top, then a mullet in back with the most glorious perm this side of 1984. I couldn’t stop staring at it but I also couldn’t wrap my head around it. It’s like when Conan used to be on the air he would occasionally do celebrity mash-up photos where he would take two or more celebrity photos and turn them into one singular hybrid monster celebrity. The whole point was to take the celebrity’s worst features without any attempt to actually blend them together to make them look good. That was pretty much what this hairstyle(s) was. I was going to feint admiration and ask where she had her hair done, then I was going to sneak out in the middle of the night and burn that fucking place down for the safety of the rest of humanity.

At any rate, this story isn’t about West Virginia or haircuts. It’s about a horrendous week spent on a construction job site. As I’ve said before, rule number 1 on a job site is, don’t be a douche, so that was my top priority the moment I set foot out there. In fact, my whole strategy was to be like a ninja and encounter the fewest number of people possible. The less people you encounter the less opportunity to do something douchey. Fortunately for me this was an absolutely massive building with seven floors and hundreds and hundreds of rooms, so it wasn’t difficult to strategically avoid contractors anywhere I went. Therefore, all I had to worry about was not leaving any evidence of my presence. Unfortunately, that proved to be easier said than done.

My job was to make sure all the sinks and toilets in the entire facility were operational. I’m talking hundreds and hundreds of sinks and toilets. It was the same shit for 4 straight days: walk in a room, check for hot water at the sink, flush the toilet; walk to the next room, check for hot water, flush the toilet; walk to the next room… Holy shit I wanted to stab myself in the eyeball with a plastic fork, it was so horrible. So on my first day there I wandered into one room, turned the sink on to let it warm up then turned my back to go flush the toilet when I heard the sink cough, sputter, spit, then I turned back just in time to see the water erupt from the faucet, hit the sink bowl, then launch into the air like a goddamn geyser. Apparently there had been a lot of pressure built up in the pipe and by opening the faucet I released all that pressure. I rushed over to shut the sink off but the damage was already done. Water was dripping from the ceilings and walls and puddling up all over the floor. And there I was, my face and shirt soaking wet. So what did I do? Got the hell out of there of course. Then I went to hide in a room somewhere else for 20 minutes to let my shit dry out. Now I’m going to write in my report, “Sink in room 7124 not functioning properly… PS – Mop up floor, walls, and ceiling.”

Plus, do you have any idea how often you have to pee when you’re constantly checking sinks for hot water and flushing toilets? Like every 30 minutes. You might as well walk around with your hand in a goddamn glass of warm water. And the thing was, there was a strict rule on site to not use any of the toilets. A few weeks ago when the plumbing started to get up and running all the construction workers were sneaking off to remote parts of the building to take huge shits wherever they could. You can’t blame them; can you imagine being on a construction site for two years, taking all your shits in a dirty-ass porto-pot after hundreds of other construction workers? The first time you’d see an actual toilet would be like seeing a French prostitute after spending a year out at sea. But the thing was, not all the toilets were operational yet. So these guys were going, dropping huge deuces, and then the fucking toilet wouldn’t flush. This was happening multiple times each day. One of my coworkers was unlucky enough to be on site a few weeks ago and he walked into a room and nearly passed out from the smell. Being the curious critter that he is, he soldiered through the toxic odor to discover the source, which as you can expect was a massive unflushed turd in the toilet bowl. It was so huge and disgusting that he naturally took a picture of it with his phone. He then showed me the picture and I nearly passed out just from the image. Now, a lot of you probably find this pretty appalling, and if you do you likely have two X chromosomes. If you don’t have two X chromosomes you probably have a picture of a huge turd on your cell phone right now. I’m not kidding ladies, ask your significant other right now if he has a picture of a turd on his cell phone and he’ll confirm it. Just don’t ask to see it because dudes don’t take pictures of just any old, average, run of the mill turd. No, it’s likely the most disgusting turd he’s ever come across, human or otherwise. Hence the picture on the cell phone. In fact, I’d venture to say that the guy who thought of putting a camera on a cell phone had one day walked into a stall in a hole-in-the-wall shit bar and unwittingly stumbled upon a massive unflushed turd and thought to himself, “Holy shit! This is the biggest turd I have ever seen! If only I had a camera on my person right now!” In fact, the person that produced said turd was probably like, “Holy shit! This is the biggest turd I have ever produced. I’m going to leave it so I can go get a camera,” because he knew that any guy that stumbled upon that masterpiece after him would never flush it, opting instead to take a picture of it. You think I’m making this all up just to get a rise out of you, but seriously, ask you boyfriend if he has any pictures of turds on his phone right now. Ask him. Personally I have a picture on my phone of the biggest pile of dog shit I have ever seen, which was left in my yard by the neighborhood stray dog nearly 2 years ago.

Now, getting back to the construction site, there was obviously a pretty simple solution to this issue of taking a shit in a toilet then finding out it doesn’t flush – you flush the goddamn toilet before you sit down to make sure it works. If it doesn’t flush, just go on to the next one (In fact, I’m pretty sure this is what Jay-Z’s new song, “On to the Next One” is about). How retarded are these guys? But the other, much larger issue in my opinion was, there wasn’t a single shred of toilet paper in the entire building, obviously because the toilets weren’t fully functional yet and the owner of the building didn’t want to encourage people to take a shit. So what the hell were these guys wiping their asses with? That must be why most construction workers wear sleeveless shirts. The shirts didn’t start out sleeveless, but if you were taking a shit somewhere and suddenly realized you didn’t have anything to wipe your ass, what would you do? Probably sacrifice the sleeves on your shirt. I’d also be willing to bet that most construction workers don’t end the workday with their socks either. At any rate, the issue with the contractors taking shits in non-functional toilets was obviously a pretty big deal, hence the rule that everyone was forbidden from using any of the toilets on site. As you can imagine that was a huge inconvenience to anyone that has to take a piss every 30 minutes. At first I honored the rule and would walk down 7 flights of stairs to the porto-pot, then walk back up 7 flights of stairs. Then 30 minutes later, down 7 flights of stairs, then back up. After doing that a few times I was like, “Screw this shit, I’m not training for a stair walking competition here. I’m using one of these goddamn toilets.” So I found a bathroom in a remote corner, flushed first to make sure it worked, took a leak, then got the hell out of there. Believe me, it was worth the risk.

A while later I had worked my way down to the 6^th floor where I saw three plumbing contractors frantically rushing about, “Where is the leak coming from?”

“I don’t know, it’s above the ceiling here somewhere…”

“Wait, it’s coming from a toilet up on the 7^th floor!”

“The 7^th floor! No one should be using any toilets anywhere! How is it leaking???”

Holy shit if the leak wasn’t coming from the exact toilet I had used not more than 30 minutes earlier! I’m not making this up. You can imagine the panic that gripped my bowels at that moment. Can you imagine what would have happened to me if those contractors had found out I was the one to use that toilet? Dear God, I would have been drawn and quartered then they would have used the sleeves of my severed arms to wipe their asses.

But how did that happen? I was flushing every goddamn toilet that in that entire goddamn building; how in the hell did the one toilet that I actually took a piss in start leaking into the ceiling of the floor below? How??? I have no idea.

So what did I do? Got the hell out of there of course. I went to a remote part of the building and hid in a room for 20 minutes to let things blow over. Now I’m going to write in my report, “Toilet in room 7378 leaking into ceiling of 6^th floor… PS – If you find a navy blue sock in the waste pipe downstream of the toilet in room 7274, it’s not mine.” 

Survivor: Imbeciles

Posted by John

I’ll tell you what you shouldn’t do – take the 6 AM flight through Orlando the day after Memorial Day. Inevitably the plane is going to be full of a bunch of goddamn snot-nosed kids on their way to Disney World who are so excited they’re about to puke, or in at least one case, shit themselves. When the kid in the row behind you stops kicking your seat just long enough to say, “Daddy, I tooted,” go ahead and get the barf bag ready to go as quickly as you can because “toot” is about as accurate a description as calling the Deep Horizon Oil Rig disaster a “boo-boo” as the smell of toxic kid-shit, so thick you can feel it in the back of your throat, emanates through the airplane like crude oil through the Gulf of Mexico. It’ll also become evident that the father of a kid who just shat its pants on an airplane in mid-flight is about as helpless at mitigating that disaster as a bunch of overly compensated oil engineers are at containing oil that’s spewing into the ocean.

Then inevitably the flight out of Orlando will be full of a bunch of goddamn snot-nosed kids with entertainment hangovers, still coming down from their week-long sugar highs, and smelling like they’ve spent the last few days bathing in kid-filth and bacteria with a bunch of parents who have long since lost their ability, their will, and their diving right to discipline their children.

In short, if you’re like me it will be an absolute living hell.

But that’s neither here not there.

We had some friends come to visit us this past weekend for the holiday so we took them kayaking west of Nashville on the Harpeth River. For those not familiar with the area, the Harpeth is one of the main waterways that flows into the Cumberland River, and one that flooded the worst a few weeks ago. Admittedly as we were heading to the kayak/canoe rental place the thought occurred to me that we’d be seeing some of the aftermath of the flood but I was entirely unprepared for what we actually saw. For beginners the rental place had been under 12’ of water, lost 5 of their transport vans, along with $10k worth of canoes and kayaks, and that was after they had already recovered 52 canoes somewhere downstream. You can’t help but think that some douchebag in west Tennessee had 200 canoes wash into his backyard and was like, “Well shit, this must be a message from God! I’m gonna open a canoe rental business. And you know what I’m gonna call it? Tip-A-Canoe! Look, it’s already written on the side of all the canoes!”

Once we got into the river and started paddling the damage was even more evident, and more jarring. It looked like someone had gone along both banks and just ripped all the trees out of the ground, roots and all, and laid them back down. Any tree that was able to hold on for dear life was still bowled over and stripped clean of its bark and leaves. Just as an example, there are mile markers all the way down the river so you know how long you’ve been paddling. I was keeping mental track of how long it took us to traverse each half mile just so I’d know if we were making good time or not. At one point we passed the 39 mile marker then a really long time lapsed before we finally passed the 38.5 marker. I couldn’t imagine that we had slowed down that much but then just another 200 yards away we passed the 38 mile marker. The river had actually ripped up the tree with the 38.5 marker on it and carried it 200 yards shy of a half-mile down the river. Unbelievable.

And it wasn’t just the destruction to the trees, it was the amount of debris everywhere. And I mean everywhere. There were cloths, tarps, boards, sheets of plywood clinging to the branches of the still standing trees, 30 or 40’ above the river. In some instances there were smaller trees stuck in the branches of larger trees 30’ above the river.

Towards the end of our trip we passed under an old steel railroad bridge where an entire section of it had been blown out by the surging river. No shit, an entire section of steel bridge was just ripped away like you’d peel the top off an aluminum can. They’d already gone in and repaired the bridge – with three massive steel i-beams.

Normally the Harpeth in that area is just a lazy Class 1 river, which is mainly just flat water with very little current to it. By and large it was like that on Saturday for us but there were a few spots where some downed trees had created a makeshift dam that forced the river to neck down into a narrow channel, and as all of you that passed your Fluid Dynamics class know, that can significantly affect the velocity of the water. At one point in particular there was a large sandy island in the middle of the river that split it in two. We chose to go the right only to find one such dam had narrowed the river to just wider than two kayak widths. Even then it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal except as we got closer we realized someone ahead of us hadn’t it made it through the gap and instead had run their canoe into the dam and capsized it. Then we realized it was a family of four – father, mother, and two small boys. The mother and boys had already made it to the island but the father was chest-deep in the water trying to wrestle the current to free the canoe from the tree branches. I maneuvered my kayak to shoot the gap between the dam and island and as I did I looked over to see the small boy, crouched in the fetal position, crying his eyes out saying, “I want to go home!” then I looked to the father who had the look of a deer in headlights and I just thought to myself, “Sweet Jesus, we have a Survivor Imbecile on our hands here!” I quickly paddled over to the island and jumped out of my kayak in time to see my buddy, who is an accomplished kayaker, approaching the dam to offer his assistance to the guy who, like an imbecile, reached out to cling to the side of my buddy’s kayak, instantly capsizing him and his kayak.

“Sweet Jesus, you fucking imbecile!” I screamed out loud in my head as I ran over. My buddy was able to collect his kayak and swim over to the island then turn back and jump in the river where we helped to dude free his canoe and get it over to the island, where the little boy was still in the fetal position crying, “I want to go home!!!” I looked over to the mother who was lamely trying to comfort him with this stupid look on her face and I could only think, “Dear God, you’re a fucking Survivor Imbecile too! What made you think you could take your kids canoeing on a river that had just flooded 4 fucking weeks ago???”

Once we got the Imbeciles straightened away we returned to our kayaks where my buddy pulled out the cooler that contained our Subway eat fresh sub sandwiches, turned it upside down, and watched the river water just pour out of it. I immediately started looking for the sharpest rock I could find to go murder that sonofabitch imbecile who had capsized my buddy’s kayak and ruined our Subway eat fresh sub sandwiches we’d packed for lunch. Four hours on the river without food? We were going to need to find some wire and fashion makeshift fishing poles to catch some fish, or set some traps along the banks to catch whatever frogs, snakes, or rabbits we could, then I’d need to gather some dry would to start a fire with the flint I’d brought along but in the meantime we’d need to scavenge for beetles, salamanders, or grubs – anything to hold us over and give us the vital protein and vitamins we needed to survive. It was going to be tough but by keeping our wits about us we’d be able to make it through alive.

Fortunately for the imbecile, my buddy pulled the subs out and remarkably they were not ruined, as they were safely contained in the plastic bag. “Thank God,” I thought, “I didn’t want to have to dig a bunch of shallow graves in this island to dispose of the imbecile’s body and the three imbecile witnesses.”

After we ate our Subway eat fresh sub sandwiches we set back out on the river and finished the trip without further incident. I have no idea what happened to the Imbecile family though. For all I know they’re still on the river somewhere. For fuck’s sake, who takes their family out on a river four weeks after the worst flood event in recorded history? Who does that? And who does that who hasn’t already extensively studied, contemplated, and written about survivalism? Who does that? Goddamn imbeciles! 

Kohler, WI - Part Deuce

Posted by John

After the best shower of my life this morning I met the rest of the group in the lobby where we were shuttled off to the Kohler Design Center to begin our tour. The tour guides are all retired factory workers who couldn’t possibly be happier about spending their retirement days giving tours of the facility that has provided them the community, family, and living that they absolutely love. Our guide was Carl, who looked, acted, and talked like your grandfather if your grandfather was born and raised in Wisconsin and started every statement with, “There again…” Carl worked for 28 years in the cast iron foundry as an enameler, which really didn’t mean much to me until we saw the actual enameling process. The enamel is the coating that gets baked onto the bathtubs to give them their color, durability and shine. It goes on as a powder then gets baked in a 1700 degree furnace for several minutes. Most of the enameling process is automated these days except for some of the high-end custom products that are still done by hand. Holy shit, after seeing how a cast iron bath tub gets enameled by hand gave me a new found respect for Carl. Basically a red hot cast iron tub comes out of the furnace where a guy in a fire-proof space suit shakes a bunch of enamel powder like you would powder the top of a funnel cake or some shit then shoves it back into a boiling hot furnace to bake that stuff on. We were standing 50’ away from the furnace and I was sweating my ass off and Carl did that shit for 28 years. For Christ’s sake, I can barely do a desk job without wanting to kill someone. If the phone rings I feel like stabbing someone in the face with a colored pencil, yet there was Carl in a space suit shaking powder onto molten hot cast iron for 28 years and loving every second of it.

Most of the processes in the plant are all automated now as you’d expect, a fact that Carl didn’t hide his disdain for. Every time we passed by a process he’d say something like, “There again you have a robot to grind down the edges of the tub. There again I guess a robot doesn’t need to take any time off but there again you won’t find a robot that will buy toilet now will you?” and then we’d move on.

One of the cool things was seeing the way Carl interacted with all the guys still working on the plant floor. They all had respect and adoration for him because they knew he had already put his time in. One guy who was polishing a bunch of brass fittings yelled out to Carl as we walked by, “Hey Carl! I want your job when I retire!” Carl smiled and waved but as we walked away he said under his breath, “That guy will never retire,” as if to really say, “That sonofabitch has the easiest job in this entire goddamn plant. Strap on the enameler suit and go stand in front of a furnace for a day and then tell me about retirement!”

We went through the portion of the factory where they make all the vitreous China (porcelain) toilets and sinks and whatnot, which was just like one big pottery factory. They literally mold all of the fixtures out of clay, set them up to dry, then send them through a furnace for 24 hours to harden. It’s pretty amazing that the technology to make a shitter hasn’t really changed since it began. The thing about that part of the factory was, they had to keep it at 80 degrees year round so the clay could dry properly. Understandably working in 80 degree temperatures could get a bit stuffy so that’s why most of the workers just didn’t wear a shirt. That was a little fact that Carl failed to fill us in on before we walked into the place, so you can imagine our surprise to find a bunch of fat, hairy, sweaty, shirtless union workers milling about playing with pottery. It was like wandering in on craft hour at a nudist colony or some shit.

All in all the tour was pretty awesome and if Carl hadn’t been such an honest, respectable guy I probably would have gone hog wild talking about upper deckers and number twos and whatnot but as it was I just enjoyed walking by his side and hearing what he had to say. Overall I gave the tour 3 turds and Carl earned one himself. Thanks for being such a good turd Carl!

We even got to see a brand new prototype that Kohler was actually hoping to keep under wraps. I'll respect them by not revealing what it was but I will say this just to pique your interest - inverted shits.

Perhaps my favorite part of the whole day had nothing to do with Kohler or the plant tour at all. One of the engineers, the one who was sucking down the most booze at dinner last night; the one who was most vocal and most obnoxious about his distaste for Kohler products; the one who had the class to get a to-go cup from the restaurant for his gin and tonic as we were leaving; that guy was so hung over this morning that he almost slept through the plant tour, barely completed the tour once it started, and had to excuse himself from lunch and the afternoon presentations to spend the rest of the day in the shitter puking his guts out. The Kohler rep actually had to retrieve him from the bathroom when it was time for us to finally leave. When he came out looking all pale and sweaty like he was auditioning for a role in the new Twilight film I wanted to ask, "So how did that Kohler toilet in there flush with your entire digestive track in it, douchbeag?"

I don't necessarily like to delight in other people's suffering but there again, in this case I did. 

So after two days in Kohler Wisconsin I have to give the overall experience 8 turds, which is pretty good. They missed a few opportunities here and there but there again, the plant tour really sealed the deal. No, I didn’t piss in a freshly made toilet; no, I didn’t press ham on every toilet seat that rolled off the assembly line; no, I just sat back and enjoyed myself pretty thoroughly.

Two things from the first day I forgot to mention:

-I’ve long known myself to be a conversational black hole. That is to say I am virtually incapable of starting a conversation, maintaining a conversation, and if you’re in the middle of a good conversation I will suck the life right out of it. This is largely owed to my own personal social awkwardness and the fact that I hate small talk. So, it was just my luck that I happened to sit down at the end of the table at dinner on Tuesday night with a Chinese dude, a Bolivian, a Peruvian, and a Cuban. I did my merry best to make small talk but when it was obvious it wasn’t going well those asshole just switched to Spanish and had they’re own little conversation for about 15 minutes around me. At one point, having no opportunity to participate in that conversation, I turned to the Chinese dude and asked him how his food was. “It’s shit!” is all he said and turned back to his steak. Well said, man. Well said. So I sat in silence.

Part way through dinner though the Peruvian and Bolivian started talking World soccer (in English) so I saw my opportunity to jump in and actually have a conversation. I started rattling off all these stats and facts I knew about all the teams and watched as the guys just sank into their seats thinking I was some sort of insane Yankee soccer fanatic. I asked them what team they were rooting for and one dude said Argentina and I was already a bit spiteful for the whole Spanish thing and I had a few glasses of wine so I just couldn’t help myself but to jump all over his shit. “Really? Argentina? You don’t think Maradona is just going to capsize that team with his ridiculous psychotic cocaine fueled behavior? I mean, the guy has promised to run through the streets of Buenos Aires naked if they win the Cup. Do you honestly want to see that?” Dude just cowered in his seat like a scared little child and was like, “I just really like Lionel Messi.”

And that’s why I’m a conversational black hole.

-My mom will likely cry herself to sleep tonight after reading this little nugget about how I completely wasted my youth, but after watching the toilet flushing demonstration with the little hand-made miso-paste turds I was reminded of my high school days. My senior year I had the second of three lunch periods with 4 of my best buddies. How this happened I have no idea but if the school had realized the administrative error that led to this they certainly would have corrected it immediately, splitting us up into different lunch periods or preventing us from taking lunch at all. In addition to running an underground Hostess Ho-Ho and Nutty Bar ring (which is another story for another day) every single day at the end of lunch we would take a chocolate brownie from one dude’s lunch, chocolate milk from another, combine them in a ziplock bag, squish it all together, and create a nice little brownie turd that we would then place somewhere in the school. I’m not making this up. 18 years-old. Seniors in high school. Brownie turd. Everyday. The only deviation from day to day was where we chose to leave it throughout the school. One day on the main staircase in the middle of the school; the next on the floor in the middle of French class; one day in the drinking fountain; the next in the mouth of the vending machine. It was like Where’s Waldo, if Waldo was a little man-made brownie turd.

If you’re doubting the hilarity of this in any way, go get a brownie, some chocolate milk, squish it together in a ziplock bag and tell me it doesn’t look exactly like a goddamn turd. Then, rather than let that little gem go to waste, set it on the keyboard in the cubicle next to you and try not to soil yourself while waiting for that dude to return to his desk.

There again I guarantee it’ll be worth every second of it, even the occasional detention for getting caught with a fake turd on your person.  

Kohler, WI - Part One

Posted by John

So here I am in Kohler, Wisconsin as we speak. Day one has been mostly travel and a bunch of presentations on all their new products. The big plant tour that I’ve been looking forward to like a dog in heat at the local canine park is tomorrow morning.

I appreciate everyone that provided me with more ideas on how to inject suggestive poop innuendo into my every word and action, many of which I was jealous for not thinking of myself. For instance, I’m going to ask the tour guide, “So can you guys manufacture a toilet with a larger flush hole? My wife is tired of me messing up all the broom handles at the house.”

Or if the factory has a second story I’m going to refer to it as the upper deck. “Earlier you mentioned that the flush valve is manufactured on the second floor. So that makes it an upper decker, correct?”

In fact, I’m going to refer to any level above me as the upper deck.

Stewardess: “Sir, will you be checking that luggage?”

Me: “Nope. It’ll go in the upper deck luggage compartment.”

Or

Hotel Clerk: “Here is the key to your room, which is number 201.”

Me: “Nice. I like sleeping in the upper deck.”

Or

Me, to the tour guide on my way out of the plant: “So just to let you know, I left an upper decker somewhere in this factory. It’s your job to find it.”

No doubt the plant will have a cafeteria of some sort where I can go around loudly and obnoxiously criticizing all the food choices:

“Cheese? You honestly have a cheese bar here??? Oh, I get it – this is Wisconsin and cheese is your thing, but seriously, what are trying to do to me? You’re a toilet manufacturer; do you not want me using your products??? Wait, is this seriously a cow that you are carving up right before my eyes? You are actually carving the meat off the cow’s hide as we speak? Honestly what is your goal here? I’m so confused. I mean, I’m typically as regular as a Republican congressional sex scandal; now you’re going to go feeding me a bunch of cheese and bovine meat. What do you expect? I’m going to be plugged up for a week!”

But like I said, all of that is for tomorrow. I figured my expectation for this trip was pretty high coming into it so I thought I should come up with some sort of metric to determine if it actually lives up to that expectation. Therefore I decided I will be keeping tabs on a scale of 1 to 10 turds, with 1 turd being pretty shitty and 10 turds being pretty awesome, to evaluate the overall trip. It’ll start out at 5 turds and it can either go up or down from there depending on how the trip progresses.

The day got off to a pretty bad start because the flight they booked for me was at 6 AM. When I got out of bed at 4 AM, which used to be a bedtime for me, not a time to wake up, I immediately thought, “I’m docking you guys 1 turd right off the bat, this is too goddamn early, even to go talk about poop for two days.”

Now, I consider myself a pretty efficient traveler and I don’t like to get to the airport any sooner than I have to but admittedly this morning I was cutting it really close. I didn’t even park my care until 45 minutes before the flight was scheduled to take off and I was actually a little worried I’d miss the flight. How the hell was I going to explain to someone who was paying for all my expenses that I fucked up my one responsibility – making it to the airport on time? Fortunately I made it to the gate with 2 minutes to spare where I was meeting the local Kohler rep, who was clearly not impressed with my travel efficiency as he said, “Nice of you to join us,” as if what he was really saying was, “Cutting it a bit close there, asshole. Maybe next time you can pay for your own travel.” I briefly thought about just growling at him in return, “Grrrr…” but opted instead to just respond smugly with, “Thanks,” as if I was really saying, “Nice of you to schedule this flight at the ass crack of dark, dickhole. I hope the goddamn pilot got more sleep than I did. I’m docking you one more turd for being a douche at 6 in the morning.”

After a flight, a layover, and another flight, we arrived in Milwaukee where about eight other guys had already arrived. We were met by a driver who led us out of the airport where a Chrysler 300 stretch limo was waiting. Everyone was like, “Ah, awesome! We’re going to ride in a limo! Shweet!” But instead of getting in the limo we got into a shitty-ass 15-passenger van parked behind the limo like we were a goddamn high school tennis team or something. One less turd.

An hour later we arrived in Kohler where we sat through 4 hours of new product demonstrations, which would have earned them another 2 turd deductions if not for the one presenter who went into WAY more detail about how they designed all their products and actually used the words, “drop zone,” “landing area,” “deposit,” “Urinator 5000,” “urine pudding,” and “the flop factor,” to describe their various design considerations. So I gave them back 1 turd for keeping my interest.

The highlight was unquestionably the demonstration of their new 1.28 gallon per flush commercial toilet, which has been tested to flush up to 1000 grams of “medium.” In case you’re not current on your metric-to-English unit conversions, 1000 grams is equal to 2.2 pounds. And just in case you’re not current on toilet flush testing techniques, the “medium” of choice is miso paste which they form into little sausage-like packets that resemble, ironically, little hand-made turds. Honeslty they could have flushed anything down the toilet that was equivalent to 1000 grams but I guess if you’re looking for the real thing, might as well go all the way. They passed around a bucket full of the miso-turds that equaled 2.2 pounds and I think all of us were thinking the same thing, “Dear god, if I ever shit 2.2 pounds worth of shit, it would be the worst day of my life.” But thankfully the fine people at Kohler test for that condition because if there would be anything worse than shitting 2.2 pounds worth of shit, it would be doing it on a toilet that couldn’t flush it. So when they dumped the 2.2 pounds of miso turds into the toilet, pushed the flush valve, and the toilet actually evacuated the entire bowl, it was nothing short of spiritual moment for me. I gave them back another turd for that.

They really made up a lot of ground in the turd ratings with the accommodations and meal. They’re putting us up at a local lodge that was just recently renovated and I’m not one to get too worked up about something like a hotel but let me tell you, this place is fucking awesome. King bed, wet bar, mini fridge, 42” flat screen tv with speakers in the headboard and shower, and don’t even get me started on the bathroom. Sweet baby Jesus, I already have an unnatural obsession with quality plumbing fixtures but this is the top of the line from Kohler’s luxury brand. Just look at this place:

The shower alone is worth the trip. It has two multi-directional shower heads and 3 multi-directional body sprayers, each with enough flow and pressure to strip the hide off a caribou. This is the best shower on the market, stopping just short of washing your ass for you.

I briefly considered skipping dinner just to spend the evening in the shower but I’m glad I didn’t because the meal was amazing. We ate at some super remote hunting lodge where the food was to die for and the alcohol was never ending. Now, I certainly appreciate an open bar whenever I find one but I’m a man of class and taste, which is more than I can say for some of my other engineering counterparts on this trip. A couple of those douche wads were sucking down the booze like a freshmen in college who just snuck into the local bar for the first time. Before dinner even started you could just hear the decibel level in the room rising as these ass-monkeys were getting drunker and drunker and try to out talk each other about this plumbing job they did in Philly or that horrible building official in Richmond and that blah, blah, blah. By the time dessert came out the guys were just letting it all hang out. One dude was just laying into the Kohler reps telling them exactly what he thought about their products in excruciating detail, “Your producsh are shhhhit! One time, free years ago, I took a monser shhhit! Like the biggesh shhhhit yuv ever seen. And yur stoopid toilet wouldn’t flush shhhhit! Not a goddamn thing! I had to reach in thur with my hand! My hand I tell you!”

Okay, maybe that was a little exaggerated but not by much and I’m still docking them one turd for inviting a bunch of amateurs that can’t hold heir liquor. Still, despite the classless drunk assholes it all evened out because I gave them back 1 turd for dinner, it was that good.

So after day one the overall trip stands at 4 turds. Tomorrow is the defining moment though. If I can successfully use the term “upper deck” in conversation without pissing my pants, it will all be worth it.