Strippers are people too

So last night at summer hockey scrimmage I got to play with a group of guys who where actually good. My team last winter league sucked balls. We got our asses handed to us by the guys I was playing with last night on a regular basis. I'm not the best player in the world, but I can skate and have some presence of mind. Shit I scored two goals last night. None-the-less, it was nice to skate with some guys who knew what was up.

About halfway through the game some girl shows up. Everyone starts giving Roast-Beef shit. I call him Roast-Beef because he's a huge fucker who can skate like a kid out in the rain. When he gets his 300 pounds moving, which is easy for him, you don't want to be in his way. Then this other dude O'neil starts saying he has some one dollar bills for her. All the other guys start saying she's a stripper at World Famous Big Al's. O'Neil says he's had her naked ass in his face on numerous occasions. So I ask the logical question of what her stripper name is. "Missy" he says.

So "Missy" sits down on the bench. I glance down at her, and even with her hockey gear on, you can tell she's a stripper, and if not, she's pretty slutty. She also had a real bitchy attitude, which I guess you would have towards males if you were a stripper. She wasn't particularly good at hockey, but she was enthusiastic about it.

Overall it was a fun hour and a half of hockey. I played pretty well, and I think I gained the respect of some of the better players in the league. Hopefully the schedule God's will put me on a decent team this summer. I can't handle playing with a bunch of hacks again.

Today the volume is turned down on everything else. I've got the overall afterglow feeling in my body after a full body workout from hockey, and I get my house today. The next four days are going to suck though. My father in law is coming down and we're going to roof and paint the outside of the house. At least it's not 90° outside.

Skitch the Wonder Dog

My deaf 14 year old dog Skitch went to the vet yesterday. Being 14 years old makes him between 65 and 70 years old in human years. The only problem he has are his teeth. He's already had most of his top teeth removed, and his lower ones need to be cleaned. Other than that, he's in good shape. I didn't really want a dog when my wife suggested getting one, but now I'm happy that we got Skitch. I never had a dog when I was younger. We only had fish and hamsters. A good dog really is man's best friend.

We get possession of our house tomorrow. We got our bill for closing costs. Since we already paid $500 in earnest money, we only owe $21.89. We thought we were going to have to pay like an additional $1500 so this is nice. We'll have more money now for improvements and stuff we need like a washer and dryer, lawn mower, dehumidifier, tools, etc.

Summer hockey league has practice tonight. I can't wait to play. I need a good stress reliever. Too much shit has been on my mind with no place to go. A good primitive experience is just what my mind needs.

In the morning

When you throwup in the morning after you've been sleeping, it's orange. When your nerves get the best of you and your mind makes you run into the bathroom and start retching, it's thick like maple syrup. All the snot that's been draining into your stomach is flopping around with no food or drink to calm it. It's the most bitter taste in the world. It's nothing to be scared of, nothing you're not used to.

When it first started 5 years ago then it was a bit scary. A doctors visit later it's confirmed that theirs nothing physically wrong with you. It's all in your head. You're crazy. You should talk to a therapist. You worry too much. Your mind is making you ill. It's your fear of changing your daily routine. It's your mind thinking your plane to Seattle is going to crash. It's thinking your not going to get the job. It's that you have to drive 13 hours today to get home. It doesn't happen to normal people. They adapt. They adjust. 5000 years ago, you'd be a victim of natural selection. The lion would have killed you while you were wretching in the bushes.

Then it goes away for a while. You're fully entrenched in a routine. Nothing to bother you. You're still crazy. It's just hidden below. You still can't urinate if there aren't dividers in the men's room. Even if there are, if a dude is standing next to you, you get stage fright. Look on the bright side, you're not vomiting into the urinal. You wish for that moment of clarity you only get for a few seconds every so often.

You got one today. You saw it's heart beat. You heard it. You saw the screwed and chopped sine wave. It was perfect. For that second, life was perfect. The nothingness in your stomach was gone. Your gut wasn't rumbling. You threw off this mortal coil for that brief moment, the tired tattooed flesh. Then your eyes clouded up and you got slammed back into your body. For a good reason. Not to vomit. Not to feel uncomfortable, but to be happy.

Bill My Magic Castle

It's times like this that I've lost all faith in humanity. It's 11:00 PM on a Friday night, and I'm trying to figure out which one of the "new" shitty health care plans Opposite of Dog is going to implement next year will cause me to take the lowest pay cut. Because when it comes right down to it, that's what it is... a pay cut.

The reason it makes me think that things won't be alright, and that my dreams of not having to work for the rest of my life dry up like oh so many tears into salty crust, is that no one who has any power in this life cares about anyone else. They only care about themselves, and money. The more power and money you have, the less you care about your fellow man. The more suspicious you are of poor people and minorities, and the less tolerant you become of things that are different than you.

It won't be alright, we(humans)'re fucked. There won't be a happy ending for us. Jules Vern knew it. The Haves and the Have-Nots will only grow farther and farther apart. Did you know that more than 60 MILLION people in the United States don't have health care? Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness... Unless of course you need a life saving medical procedure you can't pay for. Then you can go fuck yourself you socialist cunt. We live in America. You need to pay up for the basic human dignity of being healthy.

The whole thing just sucks.

And I should stop thinking about it on a Friday night.

Self Loathing

I've heard of members of groups of people being self hating or self loathing. Like a self hating Jewish person, or a black person who dislikes themselves because they are black. Usually this is as a result of being persecuted or told you're not good enough, or that your race of people isn't as good as another race.

Well, I think I'm a self loathing engineer. Not that engineers are in anyway persecuted or told they aren't worthwhile. Well, we are, but that's a whole different post about outsourcing white color work to Inida.

I am a self hating engineer because of the common characteristics of my fellow engineers. This is a short list of those charateristics of which I have, or am beginning to have after working as an engineer for a few years.

1. Engineers are cheap. I guess it's not entirely our fault. We're beat over the head on a regular basis for cost reduced designs. We always ask our manufacturers to give us the highest quality product at the lowest possible price. My wife tells me I'm cheap, but there are engineers I know who are well beyond how thrifty I am.

2. Engineers are indecisive, maybe not indecisive, but they need far to much information and/or analysis to come to a decision. Engineers can not make a decision until they've made a spreadsheet, consulted with two other engineers, and then read every document know to man on the particular subject they are making a decision on. All this just to buy a $100 TV, or to choose a cellular provider, or to buy a set of kitchen knives. This is the one I try to break the mold. I despise myself when I over analyze a situation. If I need to buy something I try to do it in less than 2 days. Shit it only took me a 1.5 weeks to buy a house. Sometimes all the analysis in the world won't help you to make a good decision. Sometimes you need to say fuck-it and go with what you feel is right. Your instincts kept your monkey ancestors alive, so you'd think they could help you buy a car. That's one of the reasons I love my tattoos so much. They have no practical application, they are outrageously expensive, and have 100% depreciation the second they are applied. Any purely analytical person would never get a tattoo.

3. Almost all engineers are highly conservative. This kind of ties into number one and number two. They want all their money right now and don't want to share any of it. Fuck social programs, fuck taxes, gimmy gimmy gimmy. What's mine is mine. They think that a privatized world would be a better world. Let private companies take over anything, and they will run more effectively and drive down prices. Yeah, right. The longer I'm a way from Madison, the more conservative I become. It's like the Simpson's Tree House of Horror where Homer doesn't have beer or TV so he turns to killing.

That's all I can think of right now. I can feel eyes boring into my back so I need to have at it.

I scared myself the other day.

For a brief moment yesterday I contemplated killing myself. It scared me, because normally that thought never crosses my mind because I have a huge fear of death. When I say brief, I do mean brief. A few seconds really. The flash in my mind that if I would somehow lose my job and not be able to get another, and not be able to pay my bills from all the mounting responsibility I have, that I would have to kill myself. Just that brief thought, and the thought of a handgun. Just the gun. No actually seeing myself doing the deed or anything like that. I was fighting with my wife at the time.

Don't get scared out there in blog land. I'd have to overcome my huge fear of death before I could kill myself. A nearly insurmountable task. What was that famous poem where the guy contemplates killing himself for a brief moment? I can't remember. I just searched Google and can't find the poem I was thinking of. Ah well. Maybe I'm making it up.

I don't really know what else to say. I probably disturbed a few people now, but I felt as though I should write this. Again, don't' worry about me. I'm OK.

If I knew where he was right now I'd be down on the floor licking his balls.

Today in a meeting we are all fortunate enough, no, we were blessed, no, we were graced with the presence of the all powerful, man in charge, supreme ruler of Opposite of Dog.

There were those in the audience who were star struck. Still others thought we were in church or something. When he said good morning, the whole choir of people in the audience repeated, "Good Morning" ... They say jump and you ask how high?...

The row of managers in the front looked like a bunch of bobble heads. Hanging on his every word and nodding in approval, as if to say, "What an amazing string of words you've put together. I whole heartedly agree, and want to shake your hand for bringing up such a wonderful point." One of my favorite Simpson's episode is the one where Homer becomes the leader of the Stone Cutters. He becomes bored with it because no one questions him or contradicts him. He also reenacts the Civil War with a bunch of monkeys at the end.

Another interesting thing that happened was that he made two drug references in his speech to us. "People asked what we had been smoking", and "Our dealers are "OD ing" on...". I really don't care, but I though we were a conservative company, but then I got to thinking. What does one do with ones life when you are the CEO of a Fortune 100 company. You can't really go to the local bars or stripclubs or bowling alley or bookstore or wherever without someone recognizing you. Potentially this person doesn't like how you are running the company and wants to beat the shit out of you. Maybe this person wants to expose how much you drink or that you like boobies rubbed in your face. Who knows... So what do you do instead??? You chill out in your million dollar house, in your indoor pool, and you spark up a J. Maybe chase the dragon on the weekend. Dirty up some one dollar bills, or hundreds in his case. Who knows... Or maybe you just play golf with your CEO buddies. It's always warm enough somewhere, right?

The final intriguing thing that happened was the question and answer part of the meeting. I really wanted to ask about healthcare. About why our out of pocket costs keep going up? Why do I keep hearing that, "Well, it's comparable to other companies like us"? But then five minutes later I hear, "We are about our people and we are industry leaders in what we do" Then my next logical question is why aren't we the industry leaders in the health care we provide to our employees? That would cost too much. That's unamerican. That's too compassionate. We'll give you a new chair, and put an action plan together to pretend we care about you. We really don't though. If we could run a business with 75% less employees and still make as much money as we do now, we'd do it in a heartbeat. We just haven't figured it out yet. Until that time, we're not going to cover your children's inoculations. We're not going to pay for preventative medicine like a yearly physical.

I knew he was a Republican, but he even put out some Republican talking points for us to munch on. "we need more personal choice in healthcare" No we don't, we need universal healthcare so we don't have to pay for the MILLIONS of people without it. "the economy is booming" Not really, our little corner of the market is, and so is the service industry, but I wouldn't call that a Boom. More like a pop.

Of course, the managers at the meeting lobed some softball questions for him to respond to. He knocked them out of the park. Haza! Hurray! The shit that tore me up though, was at the end, everyone clapped for him. Why? Did he just give us a cure for cancer? Did he slip everyone a $50 bill as they walked in? I don't get it. I didn't clap. I was the only one who didn't clap. Someone needs to not be star struck, or money struck, or power struck. In 500 years, will anyone know who ran Opposite of Dog in 2005? Will anyone care? Should I have clapped? Doesn't really matter now does it?

Please stop the smuggling of the rare Siberian Albino Monkey.

No bosses today. That means fuck-all to work. I should be doing things, but I need to make back all the shit they're taking from me. My health care, my bonus money, my cool, my freedom, my Liberalism. I need that back. I need some time for me. I need to fuck all those rich bastards who want an extra penny per share. I became an engineer to further my pile of green, not someone else's.

Pod six is jerks

That's right you heard me. They think they know what's best for us all. They have their fun and don't invite us. That fucking Egerrs, what's his deal. Talking to McMurphy like he's farther up the totem pole than anyone else. I guess he realizes that all he has left in life is his work at Sea-lab. What a shame. Now he'll do whatever he can to get as far as he can.

My sister's pregnancy is going just swimmingly. Great. Super. Fabulous. Breathe. My mom's hoping for a girl. Another picture not of me or Steph to put up on the mantle.

I wish I could shake off this fear. This big fucking joke that I just don't get. I don't understand a lot of things though. I lack the understanding behind everyone's motives in this place. Even if paradise were my prison, I should still like to leap the crystal walls. This place is far from paradise.

When Dante went to hell in the middle of his days, was that just a metaphor for a midlife crisis? Back then would the middle of his days been his 20's?

I need to do more. I'm anxious with my potential being unused.

Rambling is fun. Just type what pops into your head. Hopefully it's more than ... ... ... ...

I am a God again, or at least I feel like one.

I started today not feeling very well. I had to get up early, and get into work early for some meeting. Then I went to get our future home inspected. Everything went well. I'm actually started to get excited because the people living their now have started to box up and move their shit out. Also there is nothing major or even really minor wrong with the house. It needs a few little touches here and there, but all the big things, roof, foundation, electrical, furnace, and AC are all in good working order. I wish I was there right now. I feel really restless now at night in our apartment, like I should be doing something.

Ah well, I feel very entrenched in all the bullshit at work. I shouldn't be. Who really cares anyway about who designed the whatever the fuck on anything. It pays well, and it used to have good insurance.

I really feel the strong need for a tattoo. I don't want to get one here though. I don't really know what I would get anyway. I also don't really have the money to be throwing away on tattoos. Damn responsibility... I wonder how long it would take to get reprimanded at work if I wore a short sleeve shirt. I don't really feel like getting blackballed though. Fucking engineers...

Our section is going to get a lot less cool on June 1. Two exceptional individuals will be leaving it, leaving a large vacuum in their absence. Who knows what crazy bastards they will have replace them. I can't handle any more conservative Christians, or country bumpkins.