I just noticed that my loving wife isn't a fan of this Blog. I suppose that isn't that big a surprise, given that she lives both with me, and with whatever usually spews from my yawning facial orifice.
she really doesn't need to read about it too.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
inconsistent effort
I am perfectly aware that a Blog is supposed to be updated, regularly.
What can i say except that Life gets in the way of finding the time to generate the fucking 'posts about your life'.
I have tons of shit trapped within me, trying to get out. I will try and hen-peck it onto the blogosphere.
Encourage me (my devoted 4-fans) and I have a fighting chance of making the effort.
Things that I need to speak of - Pedicures / and the odd smell of those who frequent book-sales...among other things.
What can i say except that Life gets in the way of finding the time to generate the fucking 'posts about your life'.
I have tons of shit trapped within me, trying to get out. I will try and hen-peck it onto the blogosphere.
Encourage me (my devoted 4-fans) and I have a fighting chance of making the effort.
Things that I need to speak of - Pedicures / and the odd smell of those who frequent book-sales...among other things.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Beer Store Loser
I am not a tree hugger, never was. I am also not an owner of a 1-ton Hummer, with a fuel gauge that moves faster than my speedometer. I don’t deliberately support the killing of whales, nor do I own a fur coat. I am pretty sure that the only thing I have ever deliberately done to support my planet, is recycle.
In the grand scheme of things, it really aint that much to ask. If you don’t own a blue bin, or you don’t use one on a regular basis, I would love to come to your home and beat you with said blue bin.
So I just don’t get the whole ‘return your wine bottles to the beer-store’ initiative. I was quite happy taking them to the curb every week, and did so religiously. I havent met anyone who didn’t do the same.
But now we truck the goddamn empty wine and cooler bottles to the beer store, which in and of itself should not be any hardship at all. But hold on a sec, clearly the hard-working folks at the Beer Store have a real fucking problem with the whole program.
Go on – see if I aint wrong on this one…return some bottles sometime, and see how the magic wheels of efficiency spin at your local government-funded beer store.
I am pretty sure these Mensa-club fellahs are deliberately attempting to fuck the customer. If they weren’t, then maybe they would perhaps SORT THE BOTTLES IN THE BACK ROOM, instead of while you watch.
I get that they have to be sorted, I really do. They’ve been sorting shit at the beer store since god was a boy, but holy fuck, do they HAVE TO SORT IN THE LINEUP when the lineup (to return the shit we used to gladly send to the curb) is 20 customers deep?
There is always a tune-box playing in the back. It’s a damn party back there….but If they aint sorting anything, then what the fuck do they have to do all day? Stack the shit? Why does it always sound like there are half a dozen staff in the back-room, but there is only ever one lone surly, slow-moving asshole manning the cash register?
Want to bypass the asshole at the Beer Store? Do you chose to value your time more than the measly $3.25 you get back from speedy Gonzales? Fuck the Beer Store man, I’m gonna simply put the shit on the curb! Well, that’d be foolish, for then the dude with the bicycle and the enormo-backpack ends up stealing your money. Yes, these dedicated souls bike around in the early am, rifling through your recycle bins on garbage day, to cash-in your deposit, and earn about 1/1000th of what the unionized staff at The Beer Store take home.
I would love to think that maybe these folks just aren’t that enlightened. Perhaps maybe it never occurred to them to focus on the customer, and devise a simple method to make returning crap and buying more beer easier, and quicker.
Don’t fool yourself folks.
When the plan to take back the damn empties from the LCBO was tabled, the Beer Store Union demanded that they put a Fuck-The-Customer clause into their collective bargaining agreement.
Please dear readers – enlighten me – what other motive can there possibly be, for this massive cluster-fuck of organizational behavior?
In the grand scheme of things, it really aint that much to ask. If you don’t own a blue bin, or you don’t use one on a regular basis, I would love to come to your home and beat you with said blue bin.
So I just don’t get the whole ‘return your wine bottles to the beer-store’ initiative. I was quite happy taking them to the curb every week, and did so religiously. I havent met anyone who didn’t do the same.
But now we truck the goddamn empty wine and cooler bottles to the beer store, which in and of itself should not be any hardship at all. But hold on a sec, clearly the hard-working folks at the Beer Store have a real fucking problem with the whole program.
Go on – see if I aint wrong on this one…return some bottles sometime, and see how the magic wheels of efficiency spin at your local government-funded beer store.
I am pretty sure these Mensa-club fellahs are deliberately attempting to fuck the customer. If they weren’t, then maybe they would perhaps SORT THE BOTTLES IN THE BACK ROOM, instead of while you watch.
I get that they have to be sorted, I really do. They’ve been sorting shit at the beer store since god was a boy, but holy fuck, do they HAVE TO SORT IN THE LINEUP when the lineup (to return the shit we used to gladly send to the curb) is 20 customers deep?
There is always a tune-box playing in the back. It’s a damn party back there….but If they aint sorting anything, then what the fuck do they have to do all day? Stack the shit? Why does it always sound like there are half a dozen staff in the back-room, but there is only ever one lone surly, slow-moving asshole manning the cash register?
Want to bypass the asshole at the Beer Store? Do you chose to value your time more than the measly $3.25 you get back from speedy Gonzales? Fuck the Beer Store man, I’m gonna simply put the shit on the curb! Well, that’d be foolish, for then the dude with the bicycle and the enormo-backpack ends up stealing your money. Yes, these dedicated souls bike around in the early am, rifling through your recycle bins on garbage day, to cash-in your deposit, and earn about 1/1000th of what the unionized staff at The Beer Store take home.
I would love to think that maybe these folks just aren’t that enlightened. Perhaps maybe it never occurred to them to focus on the customer, and devise a simple method to make returning crap and buying more beer easier, and quicker.
Don’t fool yourself folks.
When the plan to take back the damn empties from the LCBO was tabled, the Beer Store Union demanded that they put a Fuck-The-Customer clause into their collective bargaining agreement.
Please dear readers – enlighten me – what other motive can there possibly be, for this massive cluster-fuck of organizational behavior?
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Dregs of Humanity
Last Saturday I stood in the blazing heat of a gorgeous summer day. I was utterly slack-jawed in amazement as I chatted-up yet another Garage Sale Customer.
Surrounding us were three young children, ranging in age between 5 and 8. Friends were assisting the hosts of this sale, and their kids brought along some of their unwanted items.
Each diminutive salesman was holding up a distressed toy or trinket they hoped to peddle for a few cents. My ‘Customer’ a diminutive and grizzled woman, probably in her late forties, was carefully examining a small item she had plucked from the youngster. She squinted, and slowly turned the item over in her hands, while the kids jumped up and down hopefully.
“Pleeeeease” the smallest boy cried..
“Pleeeease buy my yellow truck, he’s perfect and he’s only one dollar!”
The woman locked eyes with me, ignoring the boy’s pleas (for I was the Czar of this bizarre marketplace) and with a dead-straight face, clearly said..
“I think…uhm...free, no?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I hissed, close enough for her to smell the freezie I’d just inhaled.
“These little kids are trying to sell you their old toys for next to nothing. Can you at least pretend that you know they might be a bit disappointed with your oh-so-generous offer?”
We were toe-to-toe now, and she wasn’t backing down on her wacky bargaining stance. She looked at the item again, and paused, acting as if perhaps I didn’t hear her the first time, and repeated..
“free I think, yes? free?”
She said with the same dead-pan inflection.
“Beat it.”
I snarled.
This seemed to puzzle her, so I tried to make things as clear as I could, by speaking slower, and directly into her ear.
“Get your cheap-ass back in your shit-box minivan, and haul-ass back to wherever the hell you came from.”
This, she seemed to understand. She shrugged, casually dropped the toy in the basket on the grass, and left me with the disappointed kiddies. My nails digging into my palms.
Two minutes later I paid a total stranger to buy that kid’s yellow truck for 2 lousy bucks. The kid practically shat himself he was so happy. And that was just about the time I decided I was overdue for my first Miller Light.
*******************************************************************************
All this started with a small dream.
It wasn’t a crazy dream, nor was it a particularly lofty dream. It’s not like our friend Nicci was looking to take her three girls to Disneyland, or on a world cruise.
Nicci just wanted to park her car in the damn garage.
Hers was a unique storage problem, that stemmed from the fact that just about everything she wasn’t using on a regular basis, ended up in the garage. Now generally this isn’t an uncommon approach to eliminating in-home clutter, except that in Nicci’s case the sheer volume of stuff was truly awe inspiring.
Picture all of life’s clutter in one large box – toys, clothes, books, lamps, home furnishings, electronics, photo’s, and just about every item that was ever on sale at Umbra. Now imagine placing the contents of that box in a giant blender, and then pouring that mixture back into the garage. That’s where this story begins, and that is where Nicci and I started our preparations for the Greatest Garage Sale Ever.
Fucking crazy people show up at garage sales 8:00 sharp.
The truly insane, socially stunted lepers of society show up at 7:00.
“I think, maybe 20 cents.”
The woman with the hair on the end of her nose said.
They all start their sentences with “I think” like this is all some sort of sambuka-fueled game of arbitrary pricing.
“C’mon, be reasonable. It says $2, how about a buck?”
I repeated the mantra in my head ..Nicci must park her car inside…Nicci will park her car inside…
“I think, maybe…10 cents.”
I sighed. So this was the way it was going to be.
After five minutes of back and forth, I actually convinced her to swing the bidding in the general direction of the asking price, and we settled on a dollar. If this was my regular gig, rough calculations had me earning about $1700 a year.
And on and on it went. Where do these crackpots come from? Are there perhaps secret societies that get together in basements, surrounded by mountains of others people crap? Do they huddle together in the darkness swapping personal stories of triumph?
“Oh you should have seen the fool trying to sell me a $20 picture frame for two bucks! I showed that arrogant bastard!”
They would all have 300 packs of Sugar-Twin jammed in their shitty second-hand purses, and about 200 bucks in nickels and dimes. The former swiped from the local restaurants (as they sipped their tea for 4 hours) and the latter in case the hotline rang with word of another garage sale. …
“Helga! Mabel! Edna! It’s a Moving sale!! Quick get the Voyageur!”
Holy shit there was no end to the cheapness. One piece of work bought a shower caddy, left, came back, and said it didn’t fit in her bathroom. She first asked for her dollar back.
Yes, we are talking about a dollar here.
Her crappy smoke-blowing Hyundai was actually idling away more than a dollar, while she confronted me with her counter-offer. She had hoped to trade the ill-fitting item, for something else.
I gave her two choices:
1) sell it to someone else
2) move to a house with a bigger bathroom
Neither of these reasonable options seemed to resonate with this piece-of-work. While she sadly stared at the shower caddy, her two street-urchins were scooping up armfuls of kids videotapes, and hopefully presented them to mom.
She looked at each of the tapes, all Disney, all ridiculously priced at a buck apiece, and again held up the caddy, and said.. “trade?”
“Please leave.” I begged.
I felt like crying, and I was fighting the urge to force the chrome shower caddy up into her rectum.
She trudged down the driveway, likely wondering how she could possibly make that shower caddy fit into her complicated life. A blue plume of smoke hung in the air as her Hyundai edged up the street, on to the next garage-sale-apalooza.
The kids were really pouring it on by now. They had a lemonade stand set up, and after drinking most of their wares in the noonday sun, were looking to increase their profit margin. Nicci had just the ticket – Jumbo sized Freezies.
They started out at fifty cents apiece, but my son Zachary soon realized that the weather could be an ally. He promptly announced the prices were going up to a dollar “cuz its way hot out mister”.
While the kids gobbled up their own inventory, and while Nicci’s friends gave money to their kids so they could pocket the coins, Nicci and I worked the asphalt. And man, we worked it.
“how much?” obese woman asked.
“that’s three bucks” I said cheerfully.
“I think….25 cents” she smiled right back.
“I think not. I’ll take 2 bucks though” I volleyed.
“No, I think not” she snorted.
And then something magical happened. Something I would never have expected. It made my heart soar, and kept me going for pretty well the rest of the day.
Obese woman dropped her leopard print prescription glasses as she was moving onto the next bargain. As if acting completely by reflex alone, my next set of motions took less than three seconds.
As soon as her glasses hit the basket under the table, I picked up a tea towel, and dropped it on top. I then quickly shoved the basket way under the table.
I smiled sweetly as I agreed to accept a dime for a piece of stemware we had priced at a dollar.
*******************************************************************************
Nicci sold almost all of what she had hoped to unload, and in the end netted a respectable sum. She is well on her way to getting that brand new garage door opener, and is resisting the urge to place anything new into her newly vacated garage space.
We have both agreed that we do not need to (ever) associate with this unique form of humanity again, so this would indeed be our last garage sale.
I do however, take some perverse pleasure in telling you that the obese woman’s leopard-print glasses sold for five bucks.
Surrounding us were three young children, ranging in age between 5 and 8. Friends were assisting the hosts of this sale, and their kids brought along some of their unwanted items.
Each diminutive salesman was holding up a distressed toy or trinket they hoped to peddle for a few cents. My ‘Customer’ a diminutive and grizzled woman, probably in her late forties, was carefully examining a small item she had plucked from the youngster. She squinted, and slowly turned the item over in her hands, while the kids jumped up and down hopefully.
“Pleeeeease” the smallest boy cried..
“Pleeeease buy my yellow truck, he’s perfect and he’s only one dollar!”
The woman locked eyes with me, ignoring the boy’s pleas (for I was the Czar of this bizarre marketplace) and with a dead-straight face, clearly said..
“I think…uhm...free, no?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I hissed, close enough for her to smell the freezie I’d just inhaled.
“These little kids are trying to sell you their old toys for next to nothing. Can you at least pretend that you know they might be a bit disappointed with your oh-so-generous offer?”
We were toe-to-toe now, and she wasn’t backing down on her wacky bargaining stance. She looked at the item again, and paused, acting as if perhaps I didn’t hear her the first time, and repeated..
“free I think, yes? free?”
She said with the same dead-pan inflection.
“Beat it.”
I snarled.
This seemed to puzzle her, so I tried to make things as clear as I could, by speaking slower, and directly into her ear.
“Get your cheap-ass back in your shit-box minivan, and haul-ass back to wherever the hell you came from.”
This, she seemed to understand. She shrugged, casually dropped the toy in the basket on the grass, and left me with the disappointed kiddies. My nails digging into my palms.
Two minutes later I paid a total stranger to buy that kid’s yellow truck for 2 lousy bucks. The kid practically shat himself he was so happy. And that was just about the time I decided I was overdue for my first Miller Light.
*******************************************************************************
All this started with a small dream.
It wasn’t a crazy dream, nor was it a particularly lofty dream. It’s not like our friend Nicci was looking to take her three girls to Disneyland, or on a world cruise.
Nicci just wanted to park her car in the damn garage.
Hers was a unique storage problem, that stemmed from the fact that just about everything she wasn’t using on a regular basis, ended up in the garage. Now generally this isn’t an uncommon approach to eliminating in-home clutter, except that in Nicci’s case the sheer volume of stuff was truly awe inspiring.
Picture all of life’s clutter in one large box – toys, clothes, books, lamps, home furnishings, electronics, photo’s, and just about every item that was ever on sale at Umbra. Now imagine placing the contents of that box in a giant blender, and then pouring that mixture back into the garage. That’s where this story begins, and that is where Nicci and I started our preparations for the Greatest Garage Sale Ever.
I won’t bore you with the details of all the work that went into organizing and pricing the gazillion items Nicci had to sell. Suffice to say that it took a long time. Nicci stubbed and bloodied her toes often as we tried to snake our way through the crazy maze of boxes and lighting. I did however find myself wondering how one person could amass so many lamps, and not actually work in a lighting store.
The pricing system was pretty simple – we stuck to the original premise of The Dream - get the crap outta the garage, so Nicci could park her car. Sell it cheap, and it’ll move.
Eventually as we sifted through the mountains of stuff (and the crap I hauled over form my home) it son appeared as if we may actually make a few bucks in the process. Somewhere between Kitchenware and Electronics, The Dream was eventually modified to include provisions for a garage door opener, and dinner at the local Chinese all-you-can eat place. We were still shooting pretty low in the expectations department.
When you work this hard at something, you expect there to be throngs of people waiting at the end of the driveway, in anticipation of the awesome savings. We had some pretty imaginative and snappy advertising lining all the adjacent streets, and Nicci even took out an add in the local paper. It was so big, she had made arrangements to also use the neighbours driveway. We were out at 6:00 AM setting up, and we were rushing to be able to have it all set up by the time the sale began - at 8:00 sharp.
Despite our fool proof formula, we both felt like kids throwing our first party – would anybody come? We’d feel like such losers if nobody showed. We needn’t have worried.
The pricing system was pretty simple – we stuck to the original premise of The Dream - get the crap outta the garage, so Nicci could park her car. Sell it cheap, and it’ll move.
Eventually as we sifted through the mountains of stuff (and the crap I hauled over form my home) it son appeared as if we may actually make a few bucks in the process. Somewhere between Kitchenware and Electronics, The Dream was eventually modified to include provisions for a garage door opener, and dinner at the local Chinese all-you-can eat place. We were still shooting pretty low in the expectations department.
When you work this hard at something, you expect there to be throngs of people waiting at the end of the driveway, in anticipation of the awesome savings. We had some pretty imaginative and snappy advertising lining all the adjacent streets, and Nicci even took out an add in the local paper. It was so big, she had made arrangements to also use the neighbours driveway. We were out at 6:00 AM setting up, and we were rushing to be able to have it all set up by the time the sale began - at 8:00 sharp.
Despite our fool proof formula, we both felt like kids throwing our first party – would anybody come? We’d feel like such losers if nobody showed. We needn’t have worried.
Fucking crazy people show up at garage sales 8:00 sharp.
The truly insane, socially stunted lepers of society show up at 7:00.
“I think, maybe 20 cents.”
The woman with the hair on the end of her nose said.
They all start their sentences with “I think” like this is all some sort of sambuka-fueled game of arbitrary pricing.
“C’mon, be reasonable. It says $2, how about a buck?”
I repeated the mantra in my head ..Nicci must park her car inside…Nicci will park her car inside…
“I think, maybe…10 cents.”
I sighed. So this was the way it was going to be.
After five minutes of back and forth, I actually convinced her to swing the bidding in the general direction of the asking price, and we settled on a dollar. If this was my regular gig, rough calculations had me earning about $1700 a year.
And on and on it went. Where do these crackpots come from? Are there perhaps secret societies that get together in basements, surrounded by mountains of others people crap? Do they huddle together in the darkness swapping personal stories of triumph?
“Oh you should have seen the fool trying to sell me a $20 picture frame for two bucks! I showed that arrogant bastard!”
They would all have 300 packs of Sugar-Twin jammed in their shitty second-hand purses, and about 200 bucks in nickels and dimes. The former swiped from the local restaurants (as they sipped their tea for 4 hours) and the latter in case the hotline rang with word of another garage sale. …
“Helga! Mabel! Edna! It’s a Moving sale!! Quick get the Voyageur!”
Holy shit there was no end to the cheapness. One piece of work bought a shower caddy, left, came back, and said it didn’t fit in her bathroom. She first asked for her dollar back.
Yes, we are talking about a dollar here.
Her crappy smoke-blowing Hyundai was actually idling away more than a dollar, while she confronted me with her counter-offer. She had hoped to trade the ill-fitting item, for something else.
I gave her two choices:
1) sell it to someone else
2) move to a house with a bigger bathroom
Neither of these reasonable options seemed to resonate with this piece-of-work. While she sadly stared at the shower caddy, her two street-urchins were scooping up armfuls of kids videotapes, and hopefully presented them to mom.
She looked at each of the tapes, all Disney, all ridiculously priced at a buck apiece, and again held up the caddy, and said.. “trade?”
“Please leave.” I begged.
I felt like crying, and I was fighting the urge to force the chrome shower caddy up into her rectum.
She trudged down the driveway, likely wondering how she could possibly make that shower caddy fit into her complicated life. A blue plume of smoke hung in the air as her Hyundai edged up the street, on to the next garage-sale-apalooza.
The kids were really pouring it on by now. They had a lemonade stand set up, and after drinking most of their wares in the noonday sun, were looking to increase their profit margin. Nicci had just the ticket – Jumbo sized Freezies.
They started out at fifty cents apiece, but my son Zachary soon realized that the weather could be an ally. He promptly announced the prices were going up to a dollar “cuz its way hot out mister”.
While the kids gobbled up their own inventory, and while Nicci’s friends gave money to their kids so they could pocket the coins, Nicci and I worked the asphalt. And man, we worked it.“how much?” obese woman asked.
“that’s three bucks” I said cheerfully.
“I think….25 cents” she smiled right back.
“I think not. I’ll take 2 bucks though” I volleyed.
“No, I think not” she snorted.
And then something magical happened. Something I would never have expected. It made my heart soar, and kept me going for pretty well the rest of the day.
Obese woman dropped her leopard print prescription glasses as she was moving onto the next bargain. As if acting completely by reflex alone, my next set of motions took less than three seconds.
As soon as her glasses hit the basket under the table, I picked up a tea towel, and dropped it on top. I then quickly shoved the basket way under the table.
I smiled sweetly as I agreed to accept a dime for a piece of stemware we had priced at a dollar.
*******************************************************************************
Nicci sold almost all of what she had hoped to unload, and in the end netted a respectable sum. She is well on her way to getting that brand new garage door opener, and is resisting the urge to place anything new into her newly vacated garage space.
We have both agreed that we do not need to (ever) associate with this unique form of humanity again, so this would indeed be our last garage sale.
I do however, take some perverse pleasure in telling you that the obese woman’s leopard-print glasses sold for five bucks.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Independant = Indifferent
Now I am sure this may seem fairly obvious to those familiar with the blogosphere, but ya sorta have to have something sentient to say, pretty well every day.
As I am on vacay this week, there ain't too much to report, but I do have a mini-rant, associated with the level of (non) service I received when visiting my local Independent Grocer this morning.
I needed limes for my beer, and so popped in for that, and a few other staples, like chips & sausages.
Now you would think that given they don't even have to bag yer shit anymore, or even give you the bag (humanity brings their own to save the planet, one plastic bag at a time) that the sorry-ass behind the register could at least muster a smile. No luck.
I can take solace in knowing that there will be a checkout line in Hell, and I will eventually be there to buy limes for my Tabasco-hot cocktails.
Surly-bitch will be there too.
As I am on vacay this week, there ain't too much to report, but I do have a mini-rant, associated with the level of (non) service I received when visiting my local Independent Grocer this morning.
I needed limes for my beer, and so popped in for that, and a few other staples, like chips & sausages.
Now you would think that given they don't even have to bag yer shit anymore, or even give you the bag (humanity brings their own to save the planet, one plastic bag at a time) that the sorry-ass behind the register could at least muster a smile. No luck.
I can take solace in knowing that there will be a checkout line in Hell, and I will eventually be there to buy limes for my Tabasco-hot cocktails.
Surly-bitch will be there too.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Well Packaged
The previous forum for my ramblings was my Facebook account. While it has developed a decent fanbase over the past few years, its serves a different purpose than a straight-shooting Blog.
So, in an attempt to introduce new readers to my odd brand of semi-humour, I am posting stories I had previously made available through Facebook.
Eventually, I will write new stories/commentary, but for now, here is an older favourite...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My brother toiled as a mover for many years. He worked with a colourful bunch of characters, bumping and shoving other people’s precious belongings from point A to point B. There are tales of heroism, and well, tales of complete disdain for other peoples stuff. Yes, The Mover is an odd dichotomy of personalities, whose moods and motivations seemed to change with the wind.
On some days, the crew could be capable of discovering new ways to magically transport oversized furniture into impossibly small residences...
“No worries sir, we can just pop this window here right out, slip that beauty of a hutch in here nice and easy, and replace that window in a jiffy – ya wont even know we were here!”
And like a team of experts, they would produce small crowbars and oddly bent screwdrivers from a old battered hockey bags and carefully remove the trim pieces first. Soon the insulation around the exposed casing would be placed in a moving box, and the entire window would be hoisted out of the opening and gently placed against the exterior of the home. Two movers (whose wiry frames belied their physical strength) would snatch up the hutch, and quickly guide it through the now ample opening. A slow smile would spread across the owner’s face, as he realizes he won’t actually have to take a sledge-hammer to the low-ceiling entranceway, just to appease his wife.
On a different day, perhaps a rainy day, perhaps a long day of having to endure the non-stop shouts of “CAREFUL! EASY! EASY BOYS!” the movers aren’t quite so customer-service focused. A swift kick to the box with just one too many “FRAGILE!!” stickers. A rude shove of a headboard into the wall on the way up a too narrow set of stairs. The very same men who used a wood-filler pencil to hide the nail-holes in your window frame, would quietly and systematically sabotage as many pieces as possible during a four hour residential move. Perhaps if the Sales Team actually costed the job right, and allotted enough time to work carefully, maybe (just maybe) not so many things would get bust.
They were a tight group, my brother and his mover friends. Apart from perhaps miners, or firefighters, I don’t think there was ever a profession that washed the days troubles off with more beer. And with the beer, there were stories. The is one particular story I would like to recount here…
The Department of National Defense would often have to move high ranking military personnel from one city to the other. These moves typically spared no expense, involved ridiculously tight timeframes, and always took place during a snowstorm. When the salesmen went to quote on the job, it wasn’t unusual to return to the office with a triumphant smile, with every type of service available checked-off on the forms. If there ever was a VIP customer in the moving industry, the military clients - by virtue of their willingness to pay astronomical sums for the service - certainly fit the bill.
On a cold winter morning in Ottawa, our crack-team of movers were all slamming their palms down on four separate snooze bars in four different neighborhoods. Each of the hand-picked elite were confident that even with a few snoozes, they would make it to the address with plenty of time to pack and hit the road by sundown. And they likely would have been able to pull it off…had Steve not left his car lights on the evening prior… had Mike not agreed to catch a lift with Steve, and had either Gilles or Edge known it was going to snow overnight.
Alas, the perfect storm of troublesome coincidences had our crack-team arrive at the address almost 2 hours late. And that tardiness would later force a set of circumstances that would end in calamity.
There was no yelling customer on this end of the job. Just a key in a lockbox, stashed in the mailbox. Gilles fished his pack of smokes out of his pants pocket, flipped up the flap, and read off the lockbox combination to Edge, who deftly spun the tiny dial till the little steel door popped open.
“Lets get to work!”
Yelled Gilles, who promptly stepped through the doorway, and found the nearest bathroom and closed the door, for his morning constitutional.
“Motherfucker!! Why the fuck do they always pack the fucking ass-wrap?!
Cant they spare the fucking 50 cents?"
Gilles screamed.
“ I got some in the truck ya cry-baby”
Edge mumbled, as he went back out to retrieve the precious roll.
Edge was always prepared.
I’ve moved several times in my life, and there are four essential lessons I have learned, most taught to me by my brother:
1) Don’t ask your friends to move you. It’s the worst goddamn job in the world. Ask your sworn enemies to move you. The quality of the work will be similar anyway, and you get to keep your friends.
2) When you hire your movers (or your sworn enemies) leave water and pop in the fridge. Let them know its for them to drink anytime. If they are moving the fridge, put it in a cooler.
3) Have beer available, in a cooler, at the FINAL destination, dole it out generously with pizza, AFTER your crap is in your home. Have a tune box available. Don’t play shit top 40 radio.
And lastly, and most importantly…
4) For god-sakes put fucking toilet paper in each and every bathroom, at both ends of the job. Its simply the decent thing to do.
So, even with their late arrival, and with a serious requirement for haste, Edge took the time to pack the china with care, knowing that for every broken piece of cheap dinnerware, there would be a hefty claim against the company that would far exceed the value of the broken piece.
Gilles was taking his time to wrap all the furniture tightly – twice in some instances – with the musty smelling moving blankets. He taped up each piece nice and snug, making sure no vulnerable antique this, or heirloom that, were left exposed.
Mike packed that truck like a champion Tetris player, with barely space for a deck of cards between each irregular shaped box. His trusty helper Steve, quickly hand-bombed the never ending stream of boxes into the back of the 26 foot Straight Truck, so as to give Mike as many items to choose from. The tighter the pack, the less movement there would be during transport. More importantly though, if they were able to jam in the customer’s belongings in less space than anticipated, they could lay out the remaining moving blankets in the back of the truck. Perhaps one lucky Mover could snooze en-route.
After much perspiration, no lunch break, and some serious cursing, the truck was successfully loaded, with just enough space for one guy to comfortably snooze for the 6 hour ride to the clients destination. They’d likely draw straws, for there wouldn’t be any time to stop and change-up, and Mike blocked the entrance to the back with the piano. Unfortunately, there wouldn’t be time for much of a dinner break, as there was clearly two hours lost that they would be hard-pressed to make up on the road. Everyone was pleased though, as while yhey all needed the shut-eye, three in the cab was way better than four.
One last sweep of the house, the lockbox key returned to its little prison cell, and our Fab 4 hit the road. Next stop – McDonalds drive through.
The past half hour was spent discussing the merits of the many offerings at McDonalds, and Edge was quite excited about a brand new burger called the McDLT. The burger’s puzzling acronym didn’t provide much of a clue as to its novelty, but apparently the burger was presented to the customer as a sort of do-it-yourself project. The burger patty and bun was on one side, and the other side of the bun and the condiments were on the other. “Hot side Hot - and the Cool Side Cool!” was the catch-phrase dreamed up for this cholesterol confection.
The Movers would need to draw straws for the snooze-spot in the back of the truck, so it was decided that could be done after dinner. The boys chose to eat in the restaurant, instead of the truck.
The jingle of the day hit upon every item ordered by the team…"Big Mac, Filet o Fish, Quarter Ponder, French fry, ice cold milkshakes, sundaes and apple pie, you-deserve-a-break-today-so-come-on-and-get-away…. to McDonald's today!”
(..and 2 McDLT’s for Edge.)
“Look at this! Look at this! Its supposed to be cool on this side, but it isn’t – look, the lettuce is all wilted. The idiots put the cool side under the heat lamp too! What’s the point in making me go through the work of assembling my own burger, if I cant actually have the lettuce crisp. Mark my fucking words, this friggin’ sandwich aint gonna be on the menu long. People are too lazy to put together a burger, and the quality control on the line is non- existent. Who wants to trade one of their sandwiches for one of my McCrapLT’s?”
The Crew paid no mind to Edge, as they knew he’d happily eat the shredded lettuce that fell out of their sandwiches, wilted or not. He was just on a rant.
“OK Boys, time to draw straws”. Gilles announced.
He held up a handful of coffee stir-sticks, one of which he had cut shorter than the others. The sheer number of sticks made it tough for Gilles to stack the deck, but it really didn’t matter because Gilles was always the driver. He had been known to drive 20+ hours without stopping, and nobody else wanted to take the wheel.
Edge emerged the winner, and happily raced out of the restaurant, and scampered into the back of the truck.
“See ya guys on the other side!” He shouted.
“Just give me a sec to get set-up”
“2 minutes Edge.”
Gilles mumbled.
“Piss if you need to boys, from here on in, its Bottle-Time.”
Gilles said with an ominous tone.
Edge poked around in his duffel bag, and fished out the red plastic case with the carrying handle that held his little green Coleman Peak 1 Model 222A. He located his Zippo, carefully lit the light, and hung it with a carbineer to the inside lock mechanism of the swinging truck doors.
“Ok guys, I’m good”
Edge yelled.
And with that, the big doors swung shut and the engine fired up, clearing its throat a few times to hit its rhythm. The familiar low diesel growl would soon lull Edge to sleep, but he wanted to get in a few chapters of the Louis L’Amour paperback he snagged for just a quarter at recent garage sale. Curling up into his little nest of stinky moldy moving blankets, Edge was happy.
As a writer of western yarns, Louis L'Amour worked at a variety of jobs: he tried boxing, worked as a circus hand, a lumberjack, and a seaman, and traveled in the Far East, China, and Africa. In the ring, he won 51 of 59 fights as a professional boxer. He was even an elephant handler for a while. During the 1930s he traveled Asia. It might have been the writer’s persona that so captured Edge’s imagination. Edge secretly yearned to live the life of L’amour, fantasized about leaving the crappy job forever. His knees hurt in the morning, and his back ached at night. There had to be a life more adventurous than shoving other peoples crap around the country.
Up at the front, the big truck was lumbering up the 400, picking up speed as the cab filled with the stench of Gilles shitty ‘duty free’ cigarettes (which is a euphemism for ‘bought from the natives who smuggle smokes’.) Mike and Steve generally let Gilles smoke as much as he wanted, provided they got to pick the music for the crappy in-dash cassette deck. The selection usually stuck to obscure punk bands nobody had ever heard of. Gilles didn’t care about the music, as long as he could smoke – all the time.
Edge had nodded off, the Coleman still casting a warm glow over his nest. He was out for less than a half hour, when suddenly he sat bolt upright. The McDonalds was no longer sitting well, and it was evident he would have to take a big crap.
He also knew that being at the back of a noisy truck, with about 20+ feet of tightly packed belongings between he and the crew, meant he was on his own. Gilles ominous warning about ‘Bottle Time’ referred to the truckers propensity to pee in all manner of bottles on long hauls. If you’ve ever wondered why so many people throw out so many bottles of apple juice along the highway, now you know it aint apple juice.
There was no real plan for emergency shitting though, at least not one that was widely discussed, but Edge knew what he had to do. He started fishing around in his bag, but a look of horror passed over his pinched face….
Fuck.
Gilles didn’t give him back the ass-wrap. He’s have to improvise.
Edge got up on his creaking knees, painfully aware of the screams from his lower colon, leaned over and started looking in a medium size box that held all the smaller boxes used for china and glassware packing. He pulled out a small unassembled box, usually reserved for teapots and gravy boats, and began unfolding it, then refolding it into its intended shape. He deftly taped up the box, using an unusually large amount to be sure every seam was covered. This box would be a temporary latrine, and he really couldn’t afford to have it leak.
Then placing a good amount of packing paper in the bottom (for absorbency) he ripped off a number of smaller pieces and placed them to his right, on top of one of the packed boxes. He grimaced as he pondered how that paper would feel on his ass, and yearned for the roll of White Cloud toilet paper he normally kept so close at hand. He could hear the jingle…“White Cloud…because little things...mean a lot…” Edge sorely missed his soft double-ply perforated friend.
It wasn’t pretty, and it stunk something awful, but the McDonalds shits were a lot like car accidents – they hit without warning, but are over quickly. The packing paper felt like Tabasco-soaked sandpaper on his tender hole, but it was over quickly enough.
He snapped shut the box lid, a frenzy of more tape application, and the unit would be sealed and ready for disposal at their final destination. But first, before he could responsibly go back to sleep, he needed to do the right thing.
Edge fumbled around in his duffle bag, and eventually produced a thick black felt tip marker. On the top of the small box, in bold clear lettering, he wrote the word
SHIT
He then carefully placed the box as far from his face as he could, threw a couple moving blankets over top of it, and was soon fast asleep, feeling oddly proud of his improvisational skills.
Hours later, he awoke to the sound of the back door’s locking mechanism screeching, and Gilles barking commands. The customers have been waiting for almost two hours, and they were pissed off. The doors swung wide, and Edge blinked at the bright light of the streetlamp that illuminated the path to the front of the house. As usual, it was snowing, and the entrance involved stairs that couldn’t be traversed with the truck’s ramp. This was gonna be shit. Again.
Our heroes really poured it on, barely speaking a word, moving in concert, almost seeming to dance around each other as they gracefully moved the truck's contents into the sprawling home. Most of the truck was unloaded within the hour. Suddenly Edge froze in mid step.
"What?"
Mike asked.
“Holyfuck did you see a box of shit?”
Edge whispered softly.
“Could ya be more specific asshole?”
Mike replied, in the same low voice, hissing through his teeth.
“I mean an actual box, with my shit in it, labeled with the word shit right on the top!!”
Edge whispered back, with panic in his voice.
Edge scrambled back up into the interior of the truck, to hunt in the area he had carefully hid his excrement-in-a-box.
“Fuck, I labeled it so this wouldn’t happen! How the fuck could anyone not see that!?”
With eyes wide, Edge appeared to be on the verge of tears.
Mike was silent and they both peered over their shoulders back towards the house. They could hear the customer yelling at his wife, as they slowly crept up the front steps to see if they could somehow find the box before the customer did.
“Honey!”
The big burly army-dude yelled from the kitchen.
“What’s this box of shit!?
Army-dude asked, with playful laughter in his voice.
Like statues, Mike and Edge stood frozen in the hallway, their mouths agape.
“What the fuck are you idiots doing standing around?”
Gilles grunted, coming around the corner with a floor lamp in each hand, Mike taking up the rear with the coffee table.
Edge lifted a finger up to his lips in the universal sign of ‘sshh’
“I dunno honey!”
Army-man’s wife yelled back from the living room with a giggle.
“ I though we agreed we weren’t gonna move any shit this time!”
More laughter, drifting down the hallway.
The pretty blonde stepped out into the hallway, flashed the men a warm smile, then strode into the kitchen to examine the mystery box. A soft click-click-click of the retractable Exacto-knife’s blade could be heard, and then…
In unison, both husband and wife let out such a gut-wrenching scream, you’d swear they were in mortal peril. Gilles dropped both floor lamps with a crash, and Steve started to laugh uncontrollably..
And that was the last anyone saw of Edge that day, as he sprinted out the front door and up the street, in a strange town, six hours from his home.
If there can be a moral gleaned from such a tale, I suppose that this fits the bill:
It matters not how well its labeled.
Sometimes, shit is still just shit.
So, in an attempt to introduce new readers to my odd brand of semi-humour, I am posting stories I had previously made available through Facebook.
Eventually, I will write new stories/commentary, but for now, here is an older favourite...
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My brother toiled as a mover for many years. He worked with a colourful bunch of characters, bumping and shoving other people’s precious belongings from point A to point B. There are tales of heroism, and well, tales of complete disdain for other peoples stuff. Yes, The Mover is an odd dichotomy of personalities, whose moods and motivations seemed to change with the wind.
On some days, the crew could be capable of discovering new ways to magically transport oversized furniture into impossibly small residences...
“No worries sir, we can just pop this window here right out, slip that beauty of a hutch in here nice and easy, and replace that window in a jiffy – ya wont even know we were here!”
And like a team of experts, they would produce small crowbars and oddly bent screwdrivers from a old battered hockey bags and carefully remove the trim pieces first. Soon the insulation around the exposed casing would be placed in a moving box, and the entire window would be hoisted out of the opening and gently placed against the exterior of the home. Two movers (whose wiry frames belied their physical strength) would snatch up the hutch, and quickly guide it through the now ample opening. A slow smile would spread across the owner’s face, as he realizes he won’t actually have to take a sledge-hammer to the low-ceiling entranceway, just to appease his wife.
On a different day, perhaps a rainy day, perhaps a long day of having to endure the non-stop shouts of “CAREFUL! EASY! EASY BOYS!” the movers aren’t quite so customer-service focused. A swift kick to the box with just one too many “FRAGILE!!” stickers. A rude shove of a headboard into the wall on the way up a too narrow set of stairs. The very same men who used a wood-filler pencil to hide the nail-holes in your window frame, would quietly and systematically sabotage as many pieces as possible during a four hour residential move. Perhaps if the Sales Team actually costed the job right, and allotted enough time to work carefully, maybe (just maybe) not so many things would get bust.
They were a tight group, my brother and his mover friends. Apart from perhaps miners, or firefighters, I don’t think there was ever a profession that washed the days troubles off with more beer. And with the beer, there were stories. The is one particular story I would like to recount here…
The Department of National Defense would often have to move high ranking military personnel from one city to the other. These moves typically spared no expense, involved ridiculously tight timeframes, and always took place during a snowstorm. When the salesmen went to quote on the job, it wasn’t unusual to return to the office with a triumphant smile, with every type of service available checked-off on the forms. If there ever was a VIP customer in the moving industry, the military clients - by virtue of their willingness to pay astronomical sums for the service - certainly fit the bill.
On a cold winter morning in Ottawa, our crack-team of movers were all slamming their palms down on four separate snooze bars in four different neighborhoods. Each of the hand-picked elite were confident that even with a few snoozes, they would make it to the address with plenty of time to pack and hit the road by sundown. And they likely would have been able to pull it off…had Steve not left his car lights on the evening prior… had Mike not agreed to catch a lift with Steve, and had either Gilles or Edge known it was going to snow overnight.
Alas, the perfect storm of troublesome coincidences had our crack-team arrive at the address almost 2 hours late. And that tardiness would later force a set of circumstances that would end in calamity.
There was no yelling customer on this end of the job. Just a key in a lockbox, stashed in the mailbox. Gilles fished his pack of smokes out of his pants pocket, flipped up the flap, and read off the lockbox combination to Edge, who deftly spun the tiny dial till the little steel door popped open.
“Lets get to work!”
Yelled Gilles, who promptly stepped through the doorway, and found the nearest bathroom and closed the door, for his morning constitutional.
“Motherfucker!! Why the fuck do they always pack the fucking ass-wrap?!
Cant they spare the fucking 50 cents?"
Gilles screamed.
“ I got some in the truck ya cry-baby”
Edge mumbled, as he went back out to retrieve the precious roll.
Edge was always prepared.
I’ve moved several times in my life, and there are four essential lessons I have learned, most taught to me by my brother:
1) Don’t ask your friends to move you. It’s the worst goddamn job in the world. Ask your sworn enemies to move you. The quality of the work will be similar anyway, and you get to keep your friends.
2) When you hire your movers (or your sworn enemies) leave water and pop in the fridge. Let them know its for them to drink anytime. If they are moving the fridge, put it in a cooler.
3) Have beer available, in a cooler, at the FINAL destination, dole it out generously with pizza, AFTER your crap is in your home. Have a tune box available. Don’t play shit top 40 radio.
And lastly, and most importantly…
4) For god-sakes put fucking toilet paper in each and every bathroom, at both ends of the job. Its simply the decent thing to do.
So, even with their late arrival, and with a serious requirement for haste, Edge took the time to pack the china with care, knowing that for every broken piece of cheap dinnerware, there would be a hefty claim against the company that would far exceed the value of the broken piece.
Gilles was taking his time to wrap all the furniture tightly – twice in some instances – with the musty smelling moving blankets. He taped up each piece nice and snug, making sure no vulnerable antique this, or heirloom that, were left exposed.
Mike packed that truck like a champion Tetris player, with barely space for a deck of cards between each irregular shaped box. His trusty helper Steve, quickly hand-bombed the never ending stream of boxes into the back of the 26 foot Straight Truck, so as to give Mike as many items to choose from. The tighter the pack, the less movement there would be during transport. More importantly though, if they were able to jam in the customer’s belongings in less space than anticipated, they could lay out the remaining moving blankets in the back of the truck. Perhaps one lucky Mover could snooze en-route.
After much perspiration, no lunch break, and some serious cursing, the truck was successfully loaded, with just enough space for one guy to comfortably snooze for the 6 hour ride to the clients destination. They’d likely draw straws, for there wouldn’t be any time to stop and change-up, and Mike blocked the entrance to the back with the piano. Unfortunately, there wouldn’t be time for much of a dinner break, as there was clearly two hours lost that they would be hard-pressed to make up on the road. Everyone was pleased though, as while yhey all needed the shut-eye, three in the cab was way better than four.
One last sweep of the house, the lockbox key returned to its little prison cell, and our Fab 4 hit the road. Next stop – McDonalds drive through.
The past half hour was spent discussing the merits of the many offerings at McDonalds, and Edge was quite excited about a brand new burger called the McDLT. The burger’s puzzling acronym didn’t provide much of a clue as to its novelty, but apparently the burger was presented to the customer as a sort of do-it-yourself project. The burger patty and bun was on one side, and the other side of the bun and the condiments were on the other. “Hot side Hot - and the Cool Side Cool!” was the catch-phrase dreamed up for this cholesterol confection.
The Movers would need to draw straws for the snooze-spot in the back of the truck, so it was decided that could be done after dinner. The boys chose to eat in the restaurant, instead of the truck.
The jingle of the day hit upon every item ordered by the team…"Big Mac, Filet o Fish, Quarter Ponder, French fry, ice cold milkshakes, sundaes and apple pie, you-deserve-a-break-today-so-come-on-and-get-away…. to McDonald's today!”
(..and 2 McDLT’s for Edge.)
“Look at this! Look at this! Its supposed to be cool on this side, but it isn’t – look, the lettuce is all wilted. The idiots put the cool side under the heat lamp too! What’s the point in making me go through the work of assembling my own burger, if I cant actually have the lettuce crisp. Mark my fucking words, this friggin’ sandwich aint gonna be on the menu long. People are too lazy to put together a burger, and the quality control on the line is non- existent. Who wants to trade one of their sandwiches for one of my McCrapLT’s?”
The Crew paid no mind to Edge, as they knew he’d happily eat the shredded lettuce that fell out of their sandwiches, wilted or not. He was just on a rant.
“OK Boys, time to draw straws”. Gilles announced.
He held up a handful of coffee stir-sticks, one of which he had cut shorter than the others. The sheer number of sticks made it tough for Gilles to stack the deck, but it really didn’t matter because Gilles was always the driver. He had been known to drive 20+ hours without stopping, and nobody else wanted to take the wheel.
Edge emerged the winner, and happily raced out of the restaurant, and scampered into the back of the truck.
“See ya guys on the other side!” He shouted.
“Just give me a sec to get set-up”
“2 minutes Edge.”
Gilles mumbled.
“Piss if you need to boys, from here on in, its Bottle-Time.”
Gilles said with an ominous tone.
Edge poked around in his duffel bag, and fished out the red plastic case with the carrying handle that held his little green Coleman Peak 1 Model 222A. He located his Zippo, carefully lit the light, and hung it with a carbineer to the inside lock mechanism of the swinging truck doors.
“Ok guys, I’m good”
Edge yelled.
And with that, the big doors swung shut and the engine fired up, clearing its throat a few times to hit its rhythm. The familiar low diesel growl would soon lull Edge to sleep, but he wanted to get in a few chapters of the Louis L’Amour paperback he snagged for just a quarter at recent garage sale. Curling up into his little nest of stinky moldy moving blankets, Edge was happy.
As a writer of western yarns, Louis L'Amour worked at a variety of jobs: he tried boxing, worked as a circus hand, a lumberjack, and a seaman, and traveled in the Far East, China, and Africa. In the ring, he won 51 of 59 fights as a professional boxer. He was even an elephant handler for a while. During the 1930s he traveled Asia. It might have been the writer’s persona that so captured Edge’s imagination. Edge secretly yearned to live the life of L’amour, fantasized about leaving the crappy job forever. His knees hurt in the morning, and his back ached at night. There had to be a life more adventurous than shoving other peoples crap around the country.
Up at the front, the big truck was lumbering up the 400, picking up speed as the cab filled with the stench of Gilles shitty ‘duty free’ cigarettes (which is a euphemism for ‘bought from the natives who smuggle smokes’.) Mike and Steve generally let Gilles smoke as much as he wanted, provided they got to pick the music for the crappy in-dash cassette deck. The selection usually stuck to obscure punk bands nobody had ever heard of. Gilles didn’t care about the music, as long as he could smoke – all the time.
Edge had nodded off, the Coleman still casting a warm glow over his nest. He was out for less than a half hour, when suddenly he sat bolt upright. The McDonalds was no longer sitting well, and it was evident he would have to take a big crap.
He also knew that being at the back of a noisy truck, with about 20+ feet of tightly packed belongings between he and the crew, meant he was on his own. Gilles ominous warning about ‘Bottle Time’ referred to the truckers propensity to pee in all manner of bottles on long hauls. If you’ve ever wondered why so many people throw out so many bottles of apple juice along the highway, now you know it aint apple juice.
There was no real plan for emergency shitting though, at least not one that was widely discussed, but Edge knew what he had to do. He started fishing around in his bag, but a look of horror passed over his pinched face….
Fuck.
Gilles didn’t give him back the ass-wrap. He’s have to improvise.
Edge got up on his creaking knees, painfully aware of the screams from his lower colon, leaned over and started looking in a medium size box that held all the smaller boxes used for china and glassware packing. He pulled out a small unassembled box, usually reserved for teapots and gravy boats, and began unfolding it, then refolding it into its intended shape. He deftly taped up the box, using an unusually large amount to be sure every seam was covered. This box would be a temporary latrine, and he really couldn’t afford to have it leak.
Then placing a good amount of packing paper in the bottom (for absorbency) he ripped off a number of smaller pieces and placed them to his right, on top of one of the packed boxes. He grimaced as he pondered how that paper would feel on his ass, and yearned for the roll of White Cloud toilet paper he normally kept so close at hand. He could hear the jingle…“White Cloud…because little things...mean a lot…” Edge sorely missed his soft double-ply perforated friend.
It wasn’t pretty, and it stunk something awful, but the McDonalds shits were a lot like car accidents – they hit without warning, but are over quickly. The packing paper felt like Tabasco-soaked sandpaper on his tender hole, but it was over quickly enough.
He snapped shut the box lid, a frenzy of more tape application, and the unit would be sealed and ready for disposal at their final destination. But first, before he could responsibly go back to sleep, he needed to do the right thing.
Edge fumbled around in his duffle bag, and eventually produced a thick black felt tip marker. On the top of the small box, in bold clear lettering, he wrote the word
SHIT
He then carefully placed the box as far from his face as he could, threw a couple moving blankets over top of it, and was soon fast asleep, feeling oddly proud of his improvisational skills.
Hours later, he awoke to the sound of the back door’s locking mechanism screeching, and Gilles barking commands. The customers have been waiting for almost two hours, and they were pissed off. The doors swung wide, and Edge blinked at the bright light of the streetlamp that illuminated the path to the front of the house. As usual, it was snowing, and the entrance involved stairs that couldn’t be traversed with the truck’s ramp. This was gonna be shit. Again.
Our heroes really poured it on, barely speaking a word, moving in concert, almost seeming to dance around each other as they gracefully moved the truck's contents into the sprawling home. Most of the truck was unloaded within the hour. Suddenly Edge froze in mid step.
"What?"
Mike asked.
“Holyfuck did you see a box of shit?”
Edge whispered softly.
“Could ya be more specific asshole?”
Mike replied, in the same low voice, hissing through his teeth.
“I mean an actual box, with my shit in it, labeled with the word shit right on the top!!”
Edge whispered back, with panic in his voice.
Edge scrambled back up into the interior of the truck, to hunt in the area he had carefully hid his excrement-in-a-box.
“Fuck, I labeled it so this wouldn’t happen! How the fuck could anyone not see that!?”
With eyes wide, Edge appeared to be on the verge of tears.
Mike was silent and they both peered over their shoulders back towards the house. They could hear the customer yelling at his wife, as they slowly crept up the front steps to see if they could somehow find the box before the customer did.
“Honey!”
The big burly army-dude yelled from the kitchen.
“What’s this box of shit!?
Army-dude asked, with playful laughter in his voice.
Like statues, Mike and Edge stood frozen in the hallway, their mouths agape.
“What the fuck are you idiots doing standing around?”
Gilles grunted, coming around the corner with a floor lamp in each hand, Mike taking up the rear with the coffee table.
Edge lifted a finger up to his lips in the universal sign of ‘sshh’
“I dunno honey!”
Army-man’s wife yelled back from the living room with a giggle.
“ I though we agreed we weren’t gonna move any shit this time!”
More laughter, drifting down the hallway.
The pretty blonde stepped out into the hallway, flashed the men a warm smile, then strode into the kitchen to examine the mystery box. A soft click-click-click of the retractable Exacto-knife’s blade could be heard, and then…
In unison, both husband and wife let out such a gut-wrenching scream, you’d swear they were in mortal peril. Gilles dropped both floor lamps with a crash, and Steve started to laugh uncontrollably..
And that was the last anyone saw of Edge that day, as he sprinted out the front door and up the street, in a strange town, six hours from his home.
If there can be a moral gleaned from such a tale, I suppose that this fits the bill:
It matters not how well its labeled.
Sometimes, shit is still just shit.
My First Ever blog posting
Ok, here goes…
I am a 43 year old husband and father of one 6 year old boy. I am a middle manager that yearns for change, and (sometimes) accomplishes much in his fight. I am constantly in search of an audience. I am Machiavellian, and am clearly aware of the negative connotation. I am addicted to carbohydrates, but have a fair measure of control. I love vinyl records and never tire of their warmth and the comfort they provide. I have a wonderful family, and a loving wife, and want for very little. I keep work and life separate, as that is as they should be. I sometimes have trouble sleeping. I can often steer the content and outcome of my night-time dreaming. I drink too much, but love to drink. I have but a few friends, and like it that way, for the ones I have are actually worth having. I love the smell of the ocean, but easily settle for my salt water pool. I love my boy, but am scared he will grow up like his dad did, with an unhealthy and (sometimes) destructive disdain for authority. I have no regrets, ever. I do not believe in anything I cannot quantify with each one of my senses. Sometimes I just want everyone to leave me alone. Sometimes I cannot stand to be alone. I hate being interrupted. I hate being overlooked. I love both a job well done, and no stone left unturned. I love building things. I love to putter. I love a good cigar w a cold beer. I love my wife. Sometimes I love to argue. I love to nap. I love a great violent movie. I love huge ships & airplanes. I hate ignorance and stupidity. I generally have no patience. I am happy, though I love to complain.
And so it begins…
I am a 43 year old husband and father of one 6 year old boy. I am a middle manager that yearns for change, and (sometimes) accomplishes much in his fight. I am constantly in search of an audience. I am Machiavellian, and am clearly aware of the negative connotation. I am addicted to carbohydrates, but have a fair measure of control. I love vinyl records and never tire of their warmth and the comfort they provide. I have a wonderful family, and a loving wife, and want for very little. I keep work and life separate, as that is as they should be. I sometimes have trouble sleeping. I can often steer the content and outcome of my night-time dreaming. I drink too much, but love to drink. I have but a few friends, and like it that way, for the ones I have are actually worth having. I love the smell of the ocean, but easily settle for my salt water pool. I love my boy, but am scared he will grow up like his dad did, with an unhealthy and (sometimes) destructive disdain for authority. I have no regrets, ever. I do not believe in anything I cannot quantify with each one of my senses. Sometimes I just want everyone to leave me alone. Sometimes I cannot stand to be alone. I hate being interrupted. I hate being overlooked. I love both a job well done, and no stone left unturned. I love building things. I love to putter. I love a good cigar w a cold beer. I love my wife. Sometimes I love to argue. I love to nap. I love a great violent movie. I love huge ships & airplanes. I hate ignorance and stupidity. I generally have no patience. I am happy, though I love to complain.
And so it begins…
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