On the road: Halloween style

We’re off to Nashville this morning. I hope everyone has a safe and spooktacular Halloween! Watch out for witches and demons. They walk among us:

Just a friendly reminder to the powers that be:

You're going to call off your rigorous investigation. You're going to publicly state that there is no underground group. Or... these guys are going to take your balls. They're going to send one to the New York Times, one to the LA Times press-release style. Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us.

Monster Sunday School: The entire class learns that some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

This is possibly the strangest show I’ve ever seen on television: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Sunday_School. Nothing brings me closer to Jesus quite like monster sock puppets correcting my moral failings through song.

At the end of the longest line…

Altogether this was an excellent weekend. Saturday we finally bottled the dark beer we’ve been brewing. Hopefully, some 52 bottles of yummy beer will be ready in about ten days. I also got part of my check from Captain Bringdown, which was a nice surprise. I can tell that there isn’t a lot of love lost between us.

This morning we biked at Sherman Branch (http://www.singletracks.com/php/trail.php?id=1952), a gentle how-do-you-do after the hell of the 12 hour Treeshaker race. Sherman Branch is not the toughest trail ever, but it is a lot of fun. I even went over that nasty wooden roller coaster obstacle in the pictures. It doesn’t look like much I suppose, but get your ass on a bike and go over something like that at speed and we’ll talk.

The afternoon was mostly wasted with a friendly game of disc golf at Kilbourne Park (http://www.charlottedgc.com/kilborne.asp).
My game was cursed as usual, but between babysitting the dog and getting drunk on cheap beer, I’m not that shocked that my driver disc found every tree that it could.

Tomorrow will most likely be a wash, other than I might finally send out a few resumes, clean out the small room, and maybe write that long essay about leaving graduate school.

Super Bonus Fun Etc.: I’m really looking forward to the Halloween road trip to see Nine Inch Nails in Nashville. Besides seeing a great band on an otherwise awesome night, I’m excited to add yet another visited state to my list of lifetime accomplishments.

Today was a low “give me a cup of poison” day, but you’ll still find me at the end of the longest line.

So long and thanks for all the bringdown

Well, that didn’t take very long. After yet another heated conversation, Captain Bringdown told me to pack up my tools and go home. I find it funny that after working as a greenhouse keeper, a roofer, a truck loader, a painter, a trim carpenter, and a history teacher, that this was the first time a boss told me that I was anything other than one of the best employees they ever had. I understand that my attitude (meaning I actually stand up for myself) probably did not help the situation, but I refuse to be worked like a slave and treated with contempt. I will not eat your shit with a smile and call you sir. I don’t have a family to support. I live well within my means. I can get a better job.

At least now I can go finish up Burton’s exterior repaint. Other goals for the day: learn a new song on my guitar, finish setting up my room, and yet more job hunting.

I came to Charlotte looking for new experiences and I certainly had one today. I’m just disappointed that such a total douche bag got the pleasure of being the first person to ever fire me.

The legend of Captain Bringdown

I really need a new job. My current boss is a close approximation of Captain Bringdown of West Virginia fame. I've never worked so hard for so little while at the same time being told that I'm not doing enough. What a fucking clusterfuck this is turning out to be.

Gone drinking!

Tonight I will be washing out the bad aftertaste of work at Uptown’s fabulous Cutter’s Bar. Bitter old dudes in suits and delicious pork nachos for the win.

No more blowing guys on Colfax Avenue for a pint of vodka for this cowboy!

So I started the new job today. Oddly it feels much like the old job I held seven years ago. Would this seem to suggest that I’ve wasted the better part of seven years? I want to say no, but in truth I have to admit that I’m essentially worse off now than I was all those years ago. Pretty sad. Mistakes were made. I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time. Perhaps realizing this will allow me to have greater success in the days to come, but I fear that I will end up just making the same old mistakes. I waste so much time trying to sense which way the tide is flowing…and I still can’t tell. I feel like I’m doomed to toil in the hottest and noisiest jobs our fine country has to offer. Oh well…a great man once suggested we should learn to enjoy losing.

If nothing else, I wish people had more respect for skilled tradesmen. Most people just don’t understand the shit that we have to go through so their McMansions look beautiful. Next time you look around your house and admire your perfect life and possessions, say a silent prayer for all the poor bastards that broke their backs to satisfy your aesthetic sensibilities.

Now, off to pack my lunch for tomorrow like a good little communist!

Redoubling your effort after you've forgotten your aim...

By stating the narrowness of the limits of action, is one denying the role of the individual in history? I think not. One may only have the choice between striking two or three blows: the question arises: will one be able to strike them at all? To strike them effectively? To do so in the knowledge that only this range of choices is open to one? I would conclude with the paradox that the true man of action is he who can measure most nearly the constraints upon him, who chooses to remain within them and even to take advantage of the weight of the inevitable, exerting his own pressure in the same direction. All efforts against the prevailing tide of history -- which is not always obvious -- are doomed to failure... So when I think of the individual, I am always inclined to see him imprisoned within a destiny in which he himself has little hand, fixed in a landscape in which the infinite perspectives of the long term stretch into the distance both behind him and before. In the historical analysis ... the long run always wins in the end.

-- Fernand Braudel

Here I am at the beginning. Am I going against the tide of history?