Published On: 07-02-2006 02:48 AM
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Today at work, I was stuck doing shitty menial labor stacking freshly
printed magazine orderforms onto a skid.  these were particularly
shitty forms, because they had what we call in the industry a "Gate
Fold."  Think Playboy centerfold, only on a slightly smaller
scale. What this means is each stack comes out of the stacker lopsided,
and you have to split each stack in half, and twist one side around to
make it into a level sitting pile.  I was paired up with a quiet
gentleman, who's knowledge and understanding radiated from him, almost
like a halo.  Without more than a handful of words, we coordinated
the task so both of us had maximum time to stand around between lifts
of orderforms, and so that our pallets of forms looked perfect. 
Working with Jesus made this job a sinch. 



This of course isn't the first time my life has been rocked by Jesus...
A few years back, I met the jolly buhdda of Jesus, a 6'6" mountain of a
man, who would often try to drink me under the table. He also played an
extremely mean contra tuba, and does musical arangement. I spent a few
late evenings down at Paddy O'breins with him, cheering for random
wrestlers on the WWE payPerView nights, even though we both knew it was
completely fake.  Jesus stood up for me when one of his drunken
friends'
wife had way too much to drink, (1 bottle of champaign, 2 FULL pitchers
of Margaritas, and had a second bottle of champaign in hand) and took
something I said to heart, (She was always interrupting people, and
blurting out stupid
things continually in her drunken stupor, so I said "Knock knock <whos there>
Interrupting Cow <interrupting c..> MOOO!)  and got
extremely bent out of shape.  She cried all over her husband, then
dissapeared inside, at which point he stalked over to me, and
threatened to kick the living fuck out of me.  Jesus looked up at
the sky for a moment, sighed, and told him to get his drunken woman the
hell out of his appartment, and never to come back.



I think perhaps the oddest form of Jesus I've ever met, was the quiet
spoken gentleman who would wander around a bad part of phoenix, and
offer to sell you your hubcaps back.  These were the hubcaps which
had turned up mysteriously missing a few days before when you parked
out front of the scary ass chinese food place  off of McDowel,
near 16th street to grub on some cheap food.  This miracle of
re-appearing hubcaps never failed to amaze even the most skeptical of
believers, although as often as not, people would make heinous claims
that Jesus stole the hubcaps 3 days prior and was merely trying to
shill them for a buck. 

Published On: 06-09-2006 06:28 AM
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At least not when you're 6'3", and big like a viking. I spent 4 hours
crammed into a window seat with a fat man beside me, a kid who shit
himself 3 times on the flight 2 rows back ("MOMMY!! I MADE A POOPIE!!!
I MADE A POOPIE!!" as if he really needed to announce that as the
mankey stench of kidshit permeated the cabin) and some kind of a
bastard in front of me who CONTINUALLY TRIED TO RECLINE THE SEAT
THROUGH MY KNEECAPS. Seat didn't move back much, so rather than pausing
for thought, he throws a little weight into it... then a little more,
then I punched his headrest, and he looked back at me. I asked him not
to do that again, since I don't like people using blunt force
trauma  to split my kneecaps in twian.   Every 20
minutes or so, he'd try to sneak the seat back a half an inch, and I'd
kick him in his feet from under his seat, and it would go back up. I
had a strong desire to cause him great harm.



Oh well, I am here in "Sunny" "California" now.  I don't know why
they call it sunny, since the Junegloom has most of the sky occluded
for most of the day, and I don't know why they call it California,
since according to the ballad of Jed Clampet, California is the place
to be, and the place I am at is not really high on the list of places
to associate with. 



Happy 30th wedding anneversary Mom and Dad.

Published On: 06-07-2006 01:48 AM
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Yesterday, I worked at a different printing plant than I normaly do on
account of the fact they were doing electrical work at mine.  It
sucked hard, because I was doing back breaking labor all day long... I
lifted stacks of freshly printed books as they came off of the press,
made sure they were neatly stacked, carried them 10 feet to a pallet,
and stacked them.  These stacks of books came out one every 20
seconds, and each stack was as thick as 3 metropolitan phonebooks
stacked up.  my shift was 12 hours long, with 2 breaks.  The
only thing that got me through the day was the belief that I'd be back
on my home press, pressing a button to do everything for me. 



Holy fuck was I wrong. When they did this electrical work at my plant,
they simply grabbed the main breakers, and shut them off without doing
anything like turning off all the computers in the plant that run
various systems like Color conrol, compensation control, Roll
consumption tracking, and in the case of my press, the roll loading and
tracking system.  What this meant was instead of pressing a
button, and having a roll of paper brought to me, I had to do a lot
more horrendous back breaking labor.



First, I had a section of my track system that wouldn't work, so I had
to get a crowbar, and shove a dolly down this section of track to the
part that worked.  Next, I had to get a 5 foot diameter roll of
paper, shove it up a slight incline to the dolly I called, then, shove
it on top of this 2 inch tall steel plate that makes up our dolly
systems.  The trick here wasn't getting it on the dolly so much as
keeping it from rolling off the back side of the dolly once I got it
on.  After that, I had to go over to a touch screen, and manually
activate each section of track to bring said dolly to the stripping
station ( which also took a shit) remove the cardboard wrapper, put the
splice tape on it, then manually activate each section of track and
turntable between the stripstation and the splicers to get the roll to
the press before it ran out of paper.  The first 10 rolls weren't
too bad.  The second 10 started to wear on me a bit... The next 10
downright sucked monkeyballs, and I had to call one of the
secondpressmen back to give me a hand with flopping dollys around while
I stripped some rolls ( after the stripping station took a shit) 30
through 40 I could hardly load onto the dollies, 40 through 50 I was in
a zombie like trance. Somewhere between 50 and 60, I almost ended up
getting my shit killed, when I didn't quite get a roll onto a dolly,
and it came flying back down the ramp at me. 



The worst part of this whole ordeal? The electricians, IT guys, and
system programmers couldn't durring this 12 hour shift manage to get
any of the system working again... truthfully, they managed to make it
even more broken: When we showed up this moring, the splicers still
autoloaded... Sometime durring the day, while they were "Fixing it real
good like" they managed to fuck it up even worse. 



I fully expect tomorrow to suck ass twice as hard as today, since I've
managed to strain my elbow with all the heavy pushing and shoving I've
done today.