What Color Is Your Badge?

I just finished my first month at my new workplace, and I must say that I'm happy as all get out to be there. What with unemployment in this state currently running over 10 percent, I'm a pretty lucky guy.

I'm not exactly an employee of the place where I plop my ass down every morning. I actually work for someone else. Which makes me what's known in the trade as a contractor. My employer, wielding great clout, finds me work at another organization. That organization pays my employer an agreed upon sum, and my employer, in turn, throws some money my way. I receive no benefits, vacation or holiday pay. If I show up for work, I get paid. You could say I'm a modern day indentured servant, only I don't get flogged if I fuck up.

The site I work at is huge and at any given point in time, there are thousands of people occupying the grounds. There are reasonable security measures in place to keep the blaggards at bay, one of which is a security badge, which everyone wears someplace on their person. Some people wear them on their belts, others wear them around their necks and a few free spirits clip them to their ear lobes or wear them in their hair as part of a decorative bow.

The badges all have embedded microchips so you can get through traffic gates and enter the various buildings on campus. Your badge has your picture on it, taken by that same guy who came to your grade school every fall and made sure that all conditions were just wrong before he snapped your picture and charged your parents $12.95 for the "skool daze" package. My picture makes me appear as if I am suffering a particularly advanced stage of jaundice.

So, just a badge ... plastic and ink. But there is one odd thing. The badges that the organization employees wear are all white. The badges that the contractors wear are white also ... but with a yellow stripe at the bottom.

It's a small thing, but it struck me as odd that one group had to be differentiated from another.

Why?

I haven't figured it out yet. Is there some plausible, reasonable explanation for it that only certain people know? Or is it some unwritten caste system, that will help organization members sort out their true brethren from the outsiders, so that they don't get too close to them?

Absolutely no one that I've encountered so far has treated me any differently than anyone else, and we all talk and joke freely. But I do notice when I walk down the halls, that people will flick their eyes from my face to my badge, and then back to my face when we greet each other. Are they just mesmerized by my jaundiced visage on the piece of plastic, or do they want to classify me?

I've often suspected that I'm neurotic by nature and perhaps this is the definitive proof, but just this morning, I was talking to a woman and she happened to ask me how long I had worked for the organization, but then her eyes went to my badge and she said "Oh, you're a contractor!", and gave me a sad smile, sort of like someone would do if they said "Oh, you poor dear."

As I mentioned earlier, it's a minor thing and I suppose everyone has the need to sort and drop people into certain slots in order to keep everything straight in their own minds. I do it myself. I suppose the organization is just trying to help with visual aids.

It's just human nature.

Crabby Samaritan

I don't know what it is with me and people this weekend, but I'm not even going to step outside the house again until tomorrow morning. This morning I was at the bad grocery store with good vegetables because I either like grocery shopping more than I thought, or I never make up lists and depend upon my steel trap mind, which nowadays is more like a cardboard trap and I invariably forget 10 things that I can't live without.

I picked up my stuff and moved into the checkout line. There was some guy in front of me who obviously hadn't seen the "Express - 10 Items or Less" sign flashing like a beacon and had his weekly allotment of groceries spread out for 10 feet on the belt.

But I didn't really care, because I wasn't in a particular hurry. After about a half minute, I became aware of someone standing extremely close to my back. In fact, they were brushing me. So I turned around to make sure it wasn't a pick-pocket, and there stood an elderly lady clutching a loaf of french bread. I turned around and inched forward as far as I could to put some space between us, but she just crept up close to me again.

And then she tapped me on the arm and said "Excuse me, I only have one item and my son is waiting for me in the car out front". Well, shit. I only had 4 items, but if she was so antsy to pay for her crusty loaf and get to the car before her son started beating her, well, why not? So I told her to go ahead.

The cashier rang up her purchase ... and then she pulled the checkbook out of her purse.

Motherfucker. But I still didn't say anything. I didn't even change my expression. The cashier took the check, and then asked for a drivers license or some other form of ID, as is standard. And, of course, the old lady didn't have a drivers license, or "other".

Stalemate. The natives behind me were starting to get restless, and so was I, so I asked the cashier how much the bread cost. It was $2.75, so I whipped out my wallet, threw 3 dollars on the belt, and said that I would pay for it. The old lady looked at me and said "you don't have to do that", to which I replied "it's not a problem". Which was actually pretty good for me, because any other time I probably would have added "because I'd like to get home some time today". So, to all of the people out there who know me, this will prove that I do have some capacity for empathy.

After this grand show of graciousness on my part, I waited for my thank you, but the old bat skittered off with her bread ... without a word. I looked after her, turned back to the cashier and mouthed soundlessly ...

Motherfucker.

The Piano Has Been Drinking

It's Saturday night, The Midnight Special is on the radio, and I was just listening to this song. Performed by my old friend ... Tom Waits.

The piano has been drinking My necktie's asleep The combo went back to New York, and left me all alone The jukebox has to take a leak Have you noticed that the carpet needs a haircut? And the spotlight looks just like a prison break And the telephone's out of cigarettes As usual the balcony's on the make And the piano has been drinking, heavily The piano has been drinking And he's on the hard stuff tonight The piano has been drinking And you can't find your waitress Even with the Geiger counter And I guarantee you that she will hate you From the bottom of her glass And all of your friends remind you That you just can't get served without her The piano has been drinking The piano has been drinking And the lightman's blind in one eye And he can't see out of the other And the piano-tuner's got a hearing aid And he showed up with his mother And the piano has been drinking Without fear of contradiction I say The piano has been drinking Our Father who art in ? Hallowed by thy glass Thy kingdom come, thy will be done On Earth as it is in the lounges Give us this day our daily splash Forgive us our hangovers As we forgive all those who continue to hangover against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver from evil and someone you must all ride home Because the piano has been drinking And he's your friend not mine Because the piano has been drinking And he's not my responsibility The bouncer is this Sumo wrestler Kinda cream puff casper milk toast And the owner is just a mental midget With the I.Q. of a fencepost I'm going down, hang onto me, I'm going down Watch me skate across an acre of linoleum I know I can do it, I'm in total control And the piano has been drinking And he's embarrassing me The piano has been drinking, he raided his mini bar The piano has been drinking And the bar stools are all on fire And all the newspapers were just fooling And the ash-trays have retired And I've got a feeling that the piano has been drinking It's just a hunch The piano has been drinking and he's going to lose his lunch And the piano has been drinking Not me, not me, The piano has been drinking not me

I need to get on Amazon right away to find this CD. And Jan says that it's difficult to find Christmas presents for me.

Realtor-ese

Sometime at the beginning of this year, Jan and I started to explore the "what if" options of what we would do once we decided to retire. One of the big decisions we have to make is whether we will stay in this area, or whether we will move somewhere else entirely.

We've kicked around the idea of moving back to our home state, more specifically, the southwest section of Missouri, where I grew up and where Jan and I attended college.

To help us get a better handle on what housing is available in that area, I enlisted the help of a local realtor in that region. Susan knows in general terms what we are looking for, and every week, she faithfully sends pictures and details of current listings that she believes may interest us.

Some of the listings that she sends are so right on-spot, that I wish we were retiring tomorrow so we could make an immediate offer. Others are so off-the-mark dreadful, that I wonder if she was ever listening to us at all.

Perfect or dreadful, she always talks each property up in language that only a realtor could believe, or at least state with a straight face.

This morning she sent me a listing for a "show home" that needed just a touch of attention (her words) because it had been unoccupied for several months. As usual, she sent a set of 12 photos, highlighting the houses strong points, both inside and outside.

This is a picture of the kitchen:

What? That cabinet on the left? Why a few nails and some duct tape and no one will ever notice that it broke off and fell on the counter.

And then there is the room cobbled into the attic, that she described as a "man cave":

I had to look at the picture for several minutes before I could figure out what that protuberance was hanging from the ceiling. But then I realized that the builder had been clever enough to provide an upside down replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza. No man cave would be complete without one.

And try as I might, I was unable to determine with any certainty what hallucinogens the owner might have consumed just before he or she picked out the carpet.

In a way, I'm relieved that we do have a couple of years before we have to start taking this shit seriously.

I'm going to need at least that long to build up an adequate supply of my own hallucinogens to tackle this thing head on.

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride ... Deuxième Partie

This is a continuation of a previous post. If you'd like read that one first, feel free. Or if you don't, that's okay too.

The plane was really started to rock from side to side. Much more violently than I'd ever experienced in a commercial jet or turboprop. And for the first time, I started to seriously consider the possibility that we might crash tits up in a fucking corn field. Wouldn't that be a hoot? I wondered if it would be too late to make the evening news. Do we have enough in our checking account to bury me? Oh crap, I never did tell Jan if I wanted to be buried or cremated. Well, if the plane catches on fire, then I'll be halfway there to cremated. No open casket for Cap'n Crispo!

I don't know how long this train of thought went on, but I snapped myself back to reality and took some comfort that the runway was now visible in front of us. Wayne was still sweating like a bitch, but we were really slowing down. In the last seconds, the plane seemed to just hang in mid-air a few feet above the concrete, any forward progress negated by the force of the wind blowing into us.

And then we just ... settled. The plane thudded down a little hard on it's tripod gear and there we sat, in the middle of the fucking runway. I thought Wayne was going to taxi over to the little terminal building, but he cut the engine and told us to get out. We stood there for a little bit, and when the plane started rocking again, Mel and I draped ourselves across each wing strut and Wayne held the nose down until a pick-up came out and hooked onto the plane and slowly pulled it toward the terminal building, all of us still holding on to it so it wouldn't flip over.

We helped Wayne tie the plane down and then walked into the terminal building. Wayne walked over to the pilots lounge, no doubt to brag to the others how he landed in a 50 knot wind, no sweat. Mel and I looked at each other and giggled like little girls until we told each other to stop.

Then we rented a car, and drove the remaining ten miles to the site in a raging dust storm, and got down to business. We were done with our evaluation in a couple of hours. Mel called Wayne at the airport, and was told that there was no fucking way we were going back until the wind died down to nothing, which by the looks of the forecast, wouldn't be until after sunset.

So Mel and I drove to the nearest town, which had exactly one cafe, and spent the rest of the afternoon, drinking coffee, eating pie, smoking cigarettes and bullshitting about nothing. At sunset, we drove back to the airport. The air was calm, so we got on the itty-bitty Cessna and flew back to LaSalle. I took the front seat this time and occupied myself looking out on the lights of the towns we passed over. I spoke to Wayne a couple of times, but he'd had a hard day, so I generally left him alone. I was just looking forward to getting back to LaSalle and driving home from there.

It was after 10:00 when we reached the airport, which meant that everyone had gone home and turned the lights off behind them, including the runway lights. Wayne said this wasn't a problem, because he could turn the lights on remotely from a transmitter in the cockpit.

Except that it didn't work. No matter how many times Wayne hit that little button, the runway stayed dark. We circled several times and then Wayne made an executive decision. The airport manager lived on a small farm outside of town and we headed for it. And I am not making this up ... we actually buzzed the house twice to get the manager's attention. He came on the radio, Wayne told him what was wrong, and he drove to the airport and turned the runway lights on for us.

We landed. Mel counted out 12 crisp 100 dollar bills into Wayne's outstretched hand for his trouble and I headed for the Day's Inn in LaSalle at midnight. I called Jan to tell her I wouldn't be home until the next day and went to sleep.

I don't know if this little incident was what soured me on air travel.

But it sure pushed me in that direction.