Cougars Eat Deer

I was so tired.

Working a twelve hour shift caused me to practically stumble out of the buildings. It was somewhere around three in the morning, I thought, but I couldn't remember when I last checked a clock to see what time it was. Outside it was pitch black and cold, not like inside where it was harshly overbright and warm. I picked up the pace of my footsteps and pulled my Army field jacket in tighter to keep my muscles from shivering. I got to the Cougar, put the key in the door, and practically flew into the driver's seat.

The car was on auto pilot as I left the factory. Sometimes this happens, because I'm too fatigued to remember where I'm going. Luckily the Cougar somehow always knows the way home and I make it there safe and sound.

I was so lazy as the car was driving me homeward that I didn't bother to hit the footpeg for high beams. I leaned back in the bucket seat with one arm outstretched lightly grasping the steering wheel. It had cigarette burns in the plastic from where my grandmother used to hold her hand while she drove. I liked it, always reminded me of her smoking Pall Malls while we were in the car together seeking adventures.

Up ahead there was something orange. Fuzzy looking. The Cougar would know what to do, I was too dazed from work to even think, let alone worry about anything. The car and I were cruising at seventy miles per hour and the 302 under that long solid steel hood wasn't even trying. Walk in the park for that small block engine. Even though I was cold I had my window down so I could listen to the music of hot glass pack dual exhausts ripping through the still night air. My left foot decided on it's own to hit the foot peg. Two extra lights instantly flooded the pavement ahead.

Too late.

The Cougar's hood magically launched upwards into the starry night time sky perhaps under the influence of anti-gravity. An unidentifiable fuzzy orange looking thing that just a moment ago was up ahead of me in the road became an identifiable object. It was a medium sized deer which in a second was consumed by the Cougar. Underneath my 1968 XR-7, body and frame metal sounded like it was exploding with severe force. Suddenly alert and wide eyed, I gripped the wheel with both hands white knuckle style and rode out an earthquake of carnage. The front end eased back down to the pavement as something passed below my seat. I imagined the deer must have been directly under the middle of the car. Then the rear end raised off the ground confirming my hunch as the now very dead deer smacked squarely against the rear differential. One final loud smashing sound later all four wheels were back on the road. Maybe just a few seconds had passed.

Everything seemed okay. Horrible metal groaning wasn't coming out of the car, I scanned the instrument cluster in front of me and all was well. Oil pressure hadn't dropped, water temperature was the same old same old, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I was in shock, I suppose. Not knowing what else to do I kept the car heading straight up like nothing had happened. I was lucky. That critter could have come up over the hood just as easily as it had been eaten by the front end. I'm certain if it had come over the top the deer would have smashed through my windshield and killed me.

I laughed like a maniac. I was alive.

Back at home I didn't have any way to light up underneath the car to check for serious damage. Being the impatient fellow that I am I decided to haul ass over to an all nite burger joint on the east side of town and use the floodlights in their parking lot to give a quick inspection to the underside of my Cougar. When I got there no one was in the drive thru lane so I pulled into that and hopped out. I got under the front with the engine still running and thanks to the blindingly bright parking lot lights I could see pretty much everything clearly. Orange tufts of animal fur and bloody gore were everywhere. Fur was crammed into the front license plate holder, underneath the bumper, lower valence, and stuck in random places around the engine block. Luckily for me the oil pan wasn't dented all to shit and that surprised me. I anticipated it would have been thrashed because it seemed the stupid deer went right down the middle underneath my ride. But there it was, the oil pan was just fine.

I climbed back in the car with a feeling of relief that nothing serious was damaged and headed for home.

Canopener

I cleaned out my big room at the B Street house yesterday afternoon so Canopener could move in tomorrow. He was supposed to kick down $270 for the room before I left for The Cramps, but I told him if he didn't have the cash not to worry. We could take care of it later. I had a feeling he wouldn't be able to come through anyway. I hope he will be able to take care of it this week along with dough Vanessa owes me for my other room.

Canopener is a childhood aquaintance of mine. When we were little both of us attended the same grade school, but we weren't friends. Myself and another kid, named Tony, used to mess with Canopener all the time. He was much bigger than we were and if I remember right we were behind him by a year or two. What made him so much fun to pick on was the way he would go totally out of control on the blacktop at recess. We called him names like Can Opener and Gnip Gnop, and he freaked out. He would start doing figure eights in the air with his fists and yell and try to kill us. Then he left the school and I pretty much never saw him again.

He lived on the next hillside up from where my parent's house was. Both of his folks died when we were high school age, and he was left a ton of cash. Guess both him and his younger brother went kinda haywire for a long time since nobody was supervising them and they had loads of loot. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning and go outside my parent's house to discover hundreds of broken records in our front yard and all over in the street. If it wasn't vinyl records, maybe it was hundreds of tennis balls. The overnight rain of items I would run across changed from time to time. I found out many years later that was all Canopener's work. They were launching or throwing shit off their back deck which overlooked our street below.

A couple months back I ran into Canopener at Autumn's brother's house. He had just driven 6+ hours from Crescent City and needed a place to stay for a couple of nights. William, Jay, and Adam refused to let him stay there for the night which meant he was going to have to sleep in his truck. His truck had holes in the cab and it was going to rain that night. I was really disappointed in the guys because they wouldn't let the man sleep one rainy night on their livingroom couch so I invited him over to stay with us at B Street. It seemed like the right thing to do. Now I'm moving out of B Street for good, and Canopener just got himself a room. I feel good about that.

Canopener told me a pretty nice story about Adam and his girlfriend Marci the other day. I don't talk much to Adam anymore for a variety of reasons, one of which happens to be that he treats Marci so damn bad I don't want to be anywhere around when it's happening. It really bothers me. Anyway, Canopener was walking through the Old Vic (which is a local bar I try not to go to anymore) and he saw Adam and Marci sitting at a table eating the Old Vic's bland English food and drinking beers. Adam saw Canopener and instantly waved him over to their table. Adam offered him a beer. When the bill came, Marci paid. As usual. Adam never has a dime to spend on that poor girl. The funny thing was that Marci made a comment to Canopener about me. She said that whenever she talks to me I seem to be thinking of something else. I must admit, Marci is a perceptive lady because I usually am thinking of something else while she's yapping at me. Canopener said to her, "Factory Peasant is thinking of something else. He's thinking of ways to kill you, Marci."

11.1.1998

The Cramps show was most excellent. Yesterday was kinda rough though. I had nothing to eat all day except for rum, and some coke.

After the memorial gig Jay and I drove into the city and parked on Market Street. It was around 7 or 7:30pm and we waited for the girls in front of The Warfield since I had neglected to call Autumn before we left town. She had the tickets. So, the two of us stood on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes that Jay had hand rolled. To pass time I watched the city's Halloween weirdos wandering about in the street.

I dressed up for Autumn in a vintage 1940s grey double-breasted suit. Jay was dressed mostly in black like he used to do when he was out late at night doing crimes. As we were pacing back and forth in front of the venue waiting for Autumn and Leslie I got a bunch of comments about my suit from the downtrodden. They were trying to bum spare change and cigarettes, as they always do. One old scruffy hobo walked right up to me and said, "Yeah man, nice! It's like Fortune 500!" I laughed.

Out of nowhere Autumn and Leslie finally appeared. I didn't even recognize Autumn at first. She looked so cool. She wore mettallic red spiked heels, black nylons, a vintage pink dress from the 1950s, and she had on a bleach blonde wig that lended a Roaring 20s flapper-girl feel to her costume. She looked gorgeous. Leslie looked cute, she was in a middle eastern belly dancer getup. Autumn planned ahead by bringing a small bottle of rum with her. So we all decided to get some cokes and go back to Jay's car to wait out the opening bands and attempt to become a little more drunk. The four of us sat in the car a few blocks from The Warfield drinking while telling each other stupid stories. We talked about Potato Bug encounters that we've had. I hate those damn things.

The Cramps were badass. They're one of the best groups to see perform live. I noticed a few minor differences in their show compared to their past antics. Lux Interior stayed relatively clean and managed to keep most of his clothes intact, which is unusual. Well, his clothes were doing okay until the encore. Lux was handed a blow up doll from someone standing right up against the stage. He grabbed it, bit the nipples off, and then he proceeded to eat it out. After that he tied it's legs around his neck and wore it like a scarf while he climbed around on top of speaker stacks. Lux arrived at a closed balcony tangled in stage rope, the blow up doll, and his microphone cord. The whole time Lux was being a Warfield jungle gym monkey the rest of the band kept playing the same monotonous rockabilly riff. Eventually he made it back down to the stage safely only to shatter his wine bottle and use a piece of the broken glass to rip his skin tight body suit to ribbons. The Cramps played all of my favorite tunes but I was especially pleased when they let loose with Human Fly, I Was A Teenage Werewolf, and Shortnin' Bread.

Autumn stood in front of me during the whole show. I fondled her while she was grooving out. Occassionally, she turned around to kiss me and then returned her attention to watch the band. I kept grabbing at her which she seemed to dig. Through the fabric of her dress I felt straps of a garter belt which I didn't expect. I was completely aroused.

When the show was over and Halloween revelers flooded through the lobby towards the street, Jay and I somehow lost track of Autumn's car. We were supposed to follow the girls back to Autumn's apartment in the East Bay but we screwed up and didn't know where they had gone or which way they drove off. Jay tried valiantly to escape the downtown area but traffic, costumed pedestrians, and one-way streets plagued us for over an hour. By the time we finally made it to Autumn's both Jay and I were starving. I hadn't eaten anything all damn day. I felt ill. Autumn was the coolest thing ever though as she had chicken legs and pizza waiting for us. I love this woman! Super cool is all I have to say.

10.30.1998

Buddy of mine was murdered recently. Happened on a weekend while he was working for his boss at his home. I think he was doing some construction work for the guy when someone, nobody knows who, came through the place with guns blazing. Shot his boss execution style once in the head and then evidently the unknown assassin caught up inside the house with my pal and totally overkilled him. Ten bullets through his body. The memorial service is tomorrow night. Jay and I are going to drive over there for the 'doins and then afterward head to San Francisco to see The Cramps play at the Warfield. I haven't seen them play since Halloween 1988 at The Fillmore. I had tickets to see them there again Halloween '89, but that pesky earthquake wrecked The Fillmore and the show was cancelled. Since I was in high school I've made a yearly tradition out of seeing The Cramps live in San Francisco either on New Year's Eve or on Halloween. Jay and I are meeting Autumn and her friend Leslie at the show. It's going to be a strange and interesting evening.

Seeing Autumn has been super cool. She's extremely intelligent. Much more than Jennifer ever was. She's better in bed than Dara or Jennifer, as well. I'm constantly daydreaming and comparing the old girlfriends with the current one. I don't know why I do that other than it's fun to think about. It's been about a month since Autumn and I became involved with each other. During the week I don't get to see her since she works on dayshift in San Francisco. I work in the North of the bay at night. So we see each other on weekends only. I've enjoyed the time I have been spending with her immensely. Seems like when I'm with her it puts me at ease with the world and I feel comfortable going out to do the most insignificant and unimportant things with her. I just like being around her.

Jennifer never really was very good to me, and it put a serious zap on my headspace. I mean, mentally it really screwed me up. Dara didn't do much to help me out either even though she was kinda fun, but Autumn sure as hell has made things much better for me. I feel more confident again and I'm more at peace with myself than I have been in many years. I hope I can return the favor for her. Sometimes I look back and wish I had done this with Autumn years ago and I have to admit there were a few times I certainly wanted to, but the opportunity never really showed itself. She was moving around alot back then for school. East Bay, Southern California, Indiana, Russia, and who knows where else. I'm just happy as hell she's back and I hope she stays with me for a while.

The Fear Factor

It wasn't bad enough that Meth wasted dozens of our stockpiled microcircuits. The Factor is helping make things exponentially worse here on a variety of levels, but her mishandling of legitimately broken microcircuits has pushed me over the edge.

Electronic technicians troubleshooting our units in the test area frequently narrow the failure down to a microcircuit in the RF chain and of course, they need good replacements to swap out the non-functioning ones. Since Meth has burned through our on hand stock of microcircuits we have barely anything remaining. There's another pile of broken microcircuits that are genuine real live junkers that we need to send back to the micro department to have repaired and retested, or replaced outright. Processing them back to the micro department for a good replacement part is the responsibility of the line Material Coordinator who now happens to be The Factor. She's useless in just about every sense of the word.

I kinda blew my stack after Potatohead refused to consider even for a moment that his dog Meth is committing crimes against us by destroying expensive items whenever it pleases him to do so. I discovered a stash of damaged microcircuits sitting on The Factor's desk doing nothing but collecting dust (some of them had been there for months already), so I hatched a simple plan. Get those microcircuits back down to the micro department and expedite those parts getting repaired and returned to our production line. No big deal there, right? As it turns out The Factor refused to do any of the paperwork necessary to get those parts on their way to recovery. She gave me no reason explaining why she wouldn't do her job. Then I really got mad. I confiscated all of the microcircuits and I processed every last one of them out of here. I know I'm doing an incompetent's job for her, and I know I'm a chump for doing it, but we need the fucking parts. What else could I do?

Another thing. We're hunted now. All of us guys that are in our early to mid 20s are being stalked by The Factor. To her, we're prey. Musclehead is taking the brunt of her unwanted sexual attention though. Sometimes it really is better to be a tall, scrawny geek instead of a musclebound meathead on the verge of obesity. Heh. Almost every afternoon she waltzes through the shop floor wearing black spandex bicycle shorts and a skin tight neon tube top like she's some hot little high school chick. Makes me want to retch every time I see that monstrosity coming toward me. To accent the juvenile outfit sometimes she wears a white accountant visor. Dumb. Guess that's the trendy thing to do if you're a fifty year old pear-shaped Weeble-Wobble of a woman with droopy tits. She will suddenly appear out of thin air and pick a hapless victim. Then she will proceed to hover over her victim as her goofy noggin jitters about atop her shoulders like a bobble head figurine in the rear window of a Cadillac jamming over speed bumps. It's positively creepy, and annoying at the same time.

Supertech nicknamed her The FEAR Factor, because of the fear that spreads through every molecule of our bodies when she makes unwanted sexual advances towards one of us. Her shoddy attempts to bag a guy here on the line are truly the stuff nightmares are made of.

V Is For Vindictive

Since the majority of us are now Potatohead's unsupportive enemies things around here have become pretty rough. Gary has been spearheading our resistance to Potatohead's stupid ideas and schemes whenever he brings them up in our regular line meetings. Yelling and fingerpointing are common now during our little get-togethers. We expect it to happen and I think everyone is becoming used to it. At least the women aren't on the verge of tears as much or at all when the brawling takes place. Musclehead has been teetering on the edge of sucker punching Potatohead for days. The arguments those two get into are vicious, and entirely entertaining for me to watch. I've been laying low and avoiding my idiot boss as much as I can. I only brawl him when he provokes me into it, I'm not following him around the department looking for a fight. Sometimes I think Musclehead is.

I have an overwhelming feeling that Potatohead is looking for any and every possible way of making our lives miserable. The thing that troubles me the most is what I will be able to expect from him when my next performance review comes up. How badly will he fuck me up? Or, what will he do to screw me out of my next merit wage increase? This is getting dicey for me to stick around here. Real dicey.

One of the dayshift assemblers is a nice lady by the name of Julie. She is a rather slow worker whose daily volume of throughput is minimal. But, she does consistently good work. Ideally we want people who produce quality rather than quantity. Julie is in the slow quality boat, which is fine with me. She does have a problem though. Julie is extremely overweight. She's so overweight that I have a tough time looking at her when I am talking to her about whatever. Really. In order for her to be able to work in the area Bill and Dave's company had to obtain a special kind of desk chair made for people in her situation. It's custom built to handle a harsh occupant weight and be infintely ergo adjustable. It's also required to be ESD compliant. Final cost: nearly $1,000 for the sci-fi wide load seat.

Potatohead seems to personally dislike Julie and it's an easy couple of guesses for me to figure out why. He's unsatisfied with her performance speed-wise so he's branded her as some sort of deadbeat employee. And he is angry that he has to buy her more chairs. See, Julie has wrecked a few of her thousand dollar chairs in recent months. Sometimes when she sits down the chair is under such strain from her weight that one or more sets of casters will literally explode off of the chair's legs and skitter across the assembly area flooring like a bullet from a gun. It happens so fast that her balance is thrown into chaos and it's just pure luck she hasn't been dumped face first into the linoleum tiles on the floor. The chair is ruined as the collars inside each leg that held escaped casters are mangled beyond use. So Potatohead is livid when he has to spend the money to buy her a new chair.

I Must Be A Liar

Meth has gone completely out of control wrecking brand new microcircuits again. I caught him breaking open more this week. I bitched at him about it, but he won't listen to me or knock it off. So I decided I had no choice but to go to Potatohead and fink on Meth about it. I mean, the guy is laying waste to tens of thousands of dollars worth of microcircuits daily. That shit has got to stop.

I cornered Potatohead while he was walking through the test area and I said, "I need to talk to you about something right now." He stopped and listened. I explained, "Meth has been destroying our microcircuits by breaking them open with heavy duty cutters and channel locks. It's been going on for months so we don't have the parts on line when we need them for instruments and our inventory is going to be heinously off. The only reason why he busts them is just to satisfy his own stupid curiocity about what they look like inside. You gotta stop him." Potatohead looked me right in the eye and replied, "I don't believe you."

And that, was that.

Team Loser

I nicknamed our product line Team Loser. My sense of humor is pretty grim most of the time and with the way things have been going around here lately I'm really a generator of negativity. Some would probably say I was already an instigator of hatred but now I'm in overdrive. This has been a way for me to kind of ease the pain of having to work with Potatohead and The Factor. Morale across the line is extremely low right now. Especially after what happened yesterday.

Over the past few days the Team Loser thing has spread like wildfire. Everybody is referring to our instrument line as Team Loser now. Some of the guys have been high-fiving each other while shouting "Team Loser, Yeah!" and laughing. One of our test technicians has been talking about making some custom t-shirts that would have Bill and Dave's company logo, our instrument model number, and the words Team Loser in bold across the chest. Nice. Someone else suggested it would be cool to have a sign hanging from the ceiling over our assembly area that would say Team Loser on it. I don't see why we couldn't do the sign action, one group in another building has a sign over their area that says "Nerdville". We should be able to get away with having a goofy sign too.

Potatohead caught wind of the Team Loser nickname and he's been walking around the line jokingly announcing "We're not losers! We're winners!" He's so lame. The reaction he's been getting from our people has been one of quiet indifference. None of us want him hovering over our shoulders trying to be a positive motivational figure. Coming from him it's stupid. Out of frustration Potatohead pulled us all into a hasty meeting on the line yesterday and made a stern announcement. He said to everyone, "I am tired of hearing this Team Loser defeatist attitude. If it keeps up, I'm going to write you guys up for it. If it continues I will fire people." Wow. I guess this is like telling us "The beatings will continue until morale improves."

Way to go, asshole.

The Inside Scoop

I've been doing some snooping around the Source Process Area to try and find out why Potatohead was dumped on us. It happened so suddenly, nobody saw this coming. A select few employees know what the scoop is though and they won't talk about it.

Today I finally got someone to spill the beans. I didn't have to torture them this time. Honest.

First off, I have to explain a little bit about how our instrument lines are structured here at Bill and Dave's company. Traditionally each product family has been set up to operate as it's own entity within the company. It's like a bunch of little mini-businesses that pay the division individually for expenses. The instrument lines have to pay rent for their floorspace, pay their phone bills, electricity, materials and supplies, etc. A supervisor is pretty much allowed to run the line as he or she sees fit with little to no outside interference. It's their own show.

Over in the Sources department, things are very different. Upper management decided to try something new there. In a grand experiment they took a half dozen separate but similar product lines and shoe-horned them into a single department. It has a common assembly and test area. All of the employees working in those groups got piled in together and their managers gave up their autonomy to run things. In the Source Process Center supervisors have to work collectively while running the operation and that's got to suck for them. From what I've heard none of them are too happy about it and just about everyone else wants to avoid getting stuck working there. It's been branded a shit assignment. Who could blame them?

Potatohead was causing conflicts with the rest of his management peers in the Sources department. With his lousy personality I'm not at all surprised. There's a team of four or five managers and consensus is the only way they can make decisions. Potatohead kept arguing with his fellow managers about every little last petty detail. If they all agreed to tackle a problem in a certain manner, as soon as their backs were turned Potatohead did whatever he wanted regardless. He really pissed them off. I guess they became so sick of his crap that the other supervisors approached our department manager, Master MC and demanded that Potatohead be removed from the line. Master MC's quick solution was to move Garden Tool in from our line and give us Potatohead in return. We got a raw deal.

That's one of the things I really fucking hate about this company. Instead of dealing with problem employees, higher-ups in the management food chain keep shuffling bottom of the barrel performers around from line to line, department to department. I don't get it. I mean, motivate these dirtbags to clean their act up or get rid of them. What's the big deal with that? Is it really that hard to figure out? Substandard managers like Potatohead do nothing but cause massive amounts of damage to the company. Would you want to work for a boss like Potatohead? Probably not. Good employees here won't tolerate this kind of junk and they will either attempt to move elsewhere in the company to get away from it or quit outright. That's not what we need.

Line Meeting Battleground

Our afternoon line meeting was a real hoot today.

I got in early, around one o'clock for the dayshift/swingshift touchy-feelie get together that I adore so much. Potatohead made some astounding observations about our instrument line. His intelligent comments sparked a shit storm of verbal insults and colorful hand gestures from the group. The conference room was rockin', let me tell you. Musclehead looked like he was going to get up from his seat and choke Potatohead into unconsciousness at one point. Gary lashed out with fury at our bungling leader to which Potatohead shouted, "I am your supervisor! YOU don't point fingers at ME!" Gary said some pretty funny stuff while he was shouting and shaking his bony finger in the general direction of Potatohead. Guess that really got to him and he completely flipped out.

A couple of ladies were on the verge of tears during the brawl. They looked like they wanted to shrink up and hide somewhere, but there was no place to go. I was surprised none of them simply ran out of the room. Squirrel has done that on occassion, just got up like a bat out of hell and fled a meeting with tears streaming down her cheeks. Oh, the drama. This time she stayed glued to her seat.

I would have to say, this meeting was truly the most entertaining I have ever been to here. It's clear the battle lines have been drawn. It's us against him, he is the enemy now. Potatohead is our prison camp commandant. Meth is sure to be one of the few enemy collaborators ready to sell us out at any and every opportunity just to further his own career.

Widget Propaganda

widg·et n.

1. A small mechanical device or control; a gadget.
2. An unnamed or hypothetical manufactured article.

Potatohead has set up his command cubicle of hatred smack dab in the middle of the production area. Every afternoon when I come in to work I have to pass by it to get to my work stations. Usually he isn't sitting at his desk so I slip into the area undetected like a thief in the night. Today I wasn't so fortunate. I busted a right hand turn from the main aisleway to face Potatohead sitting behind his desk, looking straight at me. Before I could flinch at the sight of him, I was called over to his cube. That's a shitty way to start off the work day.

Smiling, Potatohead told me there was something he'd like me to look at. I cautiously stepped up to the edge of his desk. He handed me a thin paperback book with a white cover and asked me to read it when I had time. I said, "What's it about?" Potatohead jabbered on explaining that it was a study concerning process flow in a hypothetical work environment. He informed me that the book had some really good stuff in it and I should find it directly applicable to what we do here at Bill and Dave's. He was way too enthusiastic about it so my bullshit detectors went off like a burglar alarm at a jewelry shop. As he was running off at the mouth about how great this little book is I thumbed through the pages with a disinterested expression on my face. I continued flicking through the pages until that hideous word caught my eye: widget. I hate that word and I know instantly when I see widget in a document like this that whoever wrote it knows absolutely nothing about manufacturing. Widget was plastered on page after miserable page. The little book in my hand might as well have been a piece of stinky dog poo. It was pure filth, I wanted to throw it into the trash bin.

People who write books about factory production use widgets to describe their fictional product that can be assumed is the lowest common denominator in a manufacturing scenario. A widget could be anything from a common brick to a sophisticated jet aircraft. The misguided authors of such nonsense contend it doesn't matter how intensive or elaborate your particular product is to get out the door, the theory always applies. That's where they fail every god damned time. The shit just doesn't work in places like this, instead it's better suited for making hippy sandals or pie tins.

I handed the book back towards Potatohead. There was no way I'd waste a single minute of my time on his half-baked production propaganda theories. Besides, this smelled like it was another attempt to recruit me as his personal ass kisser. I said to him, "No thanks." I walked towards the assembly area and took a quick survey of where my dayshift counterpart Gary had left off for the day. Then I got busy with my evil little Signal Generators. They were going to fight me through my entire shift, but ultimately no matter how much trouble they gave up, I was going to win the war.

A few hours later I saw Meth walk by, and in his hand he had Potatohead's widget book. I think Potatohead has officially selected his premium-grade kiss ass.

To Hell In A Handbasket

We've gone from having a good lieutenant to having a bad lieutenant. Potatohead and his number one in command, The Factor, have managed to completely fuck up our instrument line in less than three weeks. It truly is amazing to behold. Garden Tool gave us positive leadership that rewarded the key players. He not only made good business decisions, he also was a good judge of character. That's becoming more of a rarity these days around Bill and Dave's company. Few if any of their production supervisors have the skill, experience, or personality to run a line well and do right by their employees.

With Garden Tool the area made a solid comeback. Many of us were recognized for the work we had done, and the bad guys like Meth were put on notice. I think Meth was actually close to being fired. That's all been erased by Potatohead since he arrived here. Meth appears to be Potatohead's latest and greatest boot-licker. I mean, Meth's nose is already so far up Potatohead's ass I could call him a butt snorkel. It's shameful to say the least.

Seems to me our best people are being persecuted by Potatohead. He's alienated just about every one of the star employees in our group and instead placed his faith and trust in the worst of our fuckups. It's like he's somehow determined to sail our ship into as many torpedoes as he can, as fast as he can. For a grand finale I expect him to run us aground as we sink.

Push Or Pull

At work today Potatohead snuck up on me at my workbench and said he wanted to talk for a minute. I was in the middle of gutting one of our Sig Gens when the fool materialized out of thin air. The unit I was messing with had failed in test, technicians troubleshot it down to the main wiring harness and they called me in to do the dirty work. I had to replace the wiring harness which is a nasty job that takes time. Fifty solder joints have to be removed and cleaned, the instrument card cage has to be pulled, and the front panel must be dropped. Then the new wiring harness can be installed and connected up. It's sort of like doing a spine transplant. I was a busy cog in the great corporate machine at the moment. Reluctantly, I swiveled my chair to face the man and asked what was up.

Garden Tool apparently had some sort of meeting, or briefing session with Potatohead during the managed move of supervisors between Sources and us. Garden Tool identified me to Potatohead as one of the go-to people on the line. That's a compliment I didn't need. Anyway, Potatohead wanted to ask my opinion on a new method he invented for flowing the instruments through the area. He also hit me up about implementing his idea. If I liked it, he was hoping I would spearhead the project for him. I think he was sniffing around for a kiss ass...

Potatohead said in an overconfident tone, "Peasant, what do you think about going from a Push system to a Pull system?" He was referring to the que we have at each station on the product line. The way a que system works is simple, in theory. In reality it's useless. If you know you have X amount of units to build and test by the end of the month, and you know how long each step of the process takes time-wise, you can figure out how many boxes you should have in que at each station every eight hour shift.

For example, the Assembly I station might have say, five boxes in que on dayshift, then Assembly II should have five boxes in que by the time swingshift starts, and so on. Trust me, it's entirely stupid, total bullshit. Only gung-ho process engineers and doofus managers like Potatohead pay any attention to que systems. We are entirely at the mercy of the individual units themselves because they are totally complex. There are nearly thirty PC boards with over 6,000 components in every instrument. According to Murphy what can go wrong, will go wrong. These boxes get finished when they get finished. No sooner.

I complete an instrument at a step in the process, I push it to the next station. I grab another unit and work on it. Like mindless robots we repeat the cycle until everything is pushed out of our que. I like to stay busy so if I'm fortunate enough to wipe everything out at one station I'll hop over to the next and keep going there. So I thought about Potatohead's question for a moment. Push system to a Pull system. Well, what's the difference? None. Boxes are still going to be shuffled around on the shop floor regardless. They won't get completed any faster. I said to Potatohead, "This seems like you're trying to re-invent the wheel. It's the same thing, really. So, I guess I'd say I think it's dumb." I swiveled back to face my eviscerated test instrument and resumed performing surgery on it.

Potatohead

We're doomed.

Something happened with the management team in the Sources Center this week. Nobody knows exactly what went down, but the result has been terrible for us. Our department manager moved my boss, Garden Tool, into Sources and replaced him here with Potatohead. That's no good at all. Potatohead is bad news. If that wasn't enough evil, they also swapped Material Coordinators. Sources got our best two people in one shot. We've got a fuckup Material Coordinator, The Factor, and an incompetant supervisor in trade. Great. I think I'm going to call our product area "Team Loser" from now on, since upper management keeps using us as a dumping ground for problem employees.

I've met Potatohead once before, it happened a couple years ago when I interviewed for the Spokane transfer project. I didn't like Potatohead at all that day. Something about him was very, very wrong. I couldn't decide if it was his lame attitude combined with the dumb shit coming out of his mouth during my interview. Or maybe it was because he looked like such a fucking mutant. His head is shaped like a lopsided watermelon and he's got one of the oddest jaw lines I've ever seen. Totally dopey.

We had our first line meeting with Potatohead yesterday. He arrogantly stated to all of us, "If you make me look good, I'll make you look good." Everyone stared across the conference table at each other's faces with disbelief in their eyes when he said that. I don't know about them, but I'm not here to improve the image of a dunce manager. It's not my job. Obviously Potatohead is an ego-boy that needs to be knocked back into reality quick like. I walked out of the conference room feeling like we were truly headed for disaster with this guy at the controls.

A Final Rescue

It's been over a week since I last heard from Dara. She flaked on me again when we were supposed to do something together one night after I was off work. I got a call from her this morning asking for help. She pulled another one of those disappearing acts she's famous for and told me she needed a ride home from the city. It was a deal where she caught an out of state plane flight on short notice with her friends and now that she was back, she had no way to get home. Fuck. I decided enough was enough. I wasn't going to leave her stranded down there but I was going to make sure this would be the last time I'd get roped into a situation like this. I had a message for her that needed to be delivered in person.

Dara said she would meet me on Market street. She planned to be on a sidewalk corner in front of Burger King. I knew where it was, on the edge of the financial district. It was going to take me about an hour to get there through traffic at that time of day. What a nuisance. Just to make certain she would be there waiting for me I said if she wasn't in plain sight when I got there I would not waste time wandering around the neighborhood searching for her. By God, she had better be there or I was going to turn right around without hesitation and head home without her. Dara said she'd be there. No funny business.

I came into the city across the bridge and headed down Lombard for Van Ness. I crossed Market and made a loop around the block to drive down Market St. in the direction of our planned meeting location. Traffic was heavy and with my bad luck such as it is, I hit every damned red light at every intersection. Seems to always work out that way for me. The traffic gods hate me. As I proceeded on Market, I got stuck at an annoyingly long red light and spotted Dara standing on the sidewalk. She was wearing a frilly velvet overcoat with tight dress underneath and she had a feather boa wrapped around her neck. Dara was wearing those evil looking bitch boots of hers, and she had some neon colored ribbons in her hair. She was being surrounded by dirty bums. A whole wolf pack of bums. Something in her hands was rapidly flashing bright lights but I couldn't clearly see what it was. The stop light finally turned green.

There was no place for me to park anywhere near where Dara was, and she was so involved with the swarm of miscreants that she didn't see me driving by. I looked out my passenger side window to catch a glimpse of her making an R. Lee Ermy style war-face. It appeared she was in the midst of emitting a loud victory cry. Dara was armed with a large translucent plastic two-fisted assault raygun that she had lowered in the direction of a bum closest to her. The bum was being repeatedly zapped with flashy lights and I think, maybe some sparks were coming out of the tip of the rifle. She was thick in the heat of battle. I wished I had brought my camera.

I took the next left and drove the long block, took another left, and found a spot to park on the opposite end of the block from where Dara was. The meters raped me for my spare change and I walked from there to go fetch the crazed stripper. I walked with a fast pace because I wanted to get this over with and be back on the road right away. When Dara saw me coming towards her she bounded over to me with a shit eating grin on her face and she grabbed me by the arm. She seemed happy enough I was there. I told her there was something I wanted to talk to her about, but I would wait until we were back on the freeway heading North.

Crossing over the bridge and passing the vista point I looked at Dara and said, "I'm not your private taxi cab service. The next time you get stuck in the city, call someone else to come get you. I don't appreciate you flaking out on me and then call up expecting me to be your personal chauffer. It doesn't work that way, understand"? For the rest of the trip home Dara didn't say anything. I dropped her off in front of her place and left. I didn't have much time to get ready for work so I wasn't into dawdling around.

That was the last time I saw Dara. She never called me again.

Dessert With A Coroner

Last night was interesting. Dara told me her mom wanted us to stop by her place for dessert and coffee. Guess she wanted to see me for some reason. Dara said her mom remembered me, but I don't recall ever meeting her mother. Must have been a quick hello-goodbye sort of thing when we were still in high school. It didn't really matter, all I was thinking about was cheesecake. That's what was for dessert. I'm a total fiend for cheesecake. If I'm at a restaurant and cheesecake is on the dessert menu, there are no other options for me. I must have it.

Her mother lived in a nice apartment building not far from where my grandmother lived when I was a kid. I had not been back to this neighborhood in many years. It was a little strange to be driving the Cougar through there since the last time that happened I was in the passenger seat of the car and Grandma was behind the wheel. When I turned 16 she gave me her car and I've had it ever since. It's cool. Definitely rips up the pavement.

When we arrived at the apartment Dara's Mom was acting really happy and kind of silly. She gave me a big hug and invited us in. Her apartment was very tastefully decorated. We all sat down in the living room and began to chit-chat. I asked Dara's Mom what she was doing for work these days and she replied, "I'm a county coroner." Damn. That's got to be kind of a harsh job, I thought.

I said, "You must see some really terrible things daily. It's got to be a difficult job to go to every day. Myself, I don't think I could do it."
She nodded and said, "The people I have the most trouble with are the jumpers."
"Jumpers?" I had no clue what Dara's Mom was getting at.
She said, "The people who commit suicide by jumping off of the Golden Gate bridge. They're the worst."
"How come, and why do you have to deal with them? The bridge is quite a ways up the freeway from here." I didn't understand.

Dara's mom explained. "The county line is in the middle of the bridge. If someone jumps off on our side of the county line, we have to go get them. If they jump off the city side, it's their body. But, if a jumper goes from our side of the bridge and then washes up on the city side, we still have to go get them. And vice versa. It's a pain trying to get them into a body bag because when they hit the water every bone in their body breaks. It's like trying to grab a large sack of jello. There's no good spot to get hold of them. Once you have them inside a body bag it's still a chore to get them off the ground and into the back of the car." She continued. "I've noticed one strange thing about them, happens every time. If they were wearing blue jeans, their pants will be ripped like someone took a knife and tore them to ribbons all the way to the crotch."

How odd. Must have something to with them hitting the ocean feet first, I figure. I bet the water pressure travelling up their legs is so extreme that it rips the fabric like that. This was certainly some unusual subject matter to be having over cheesecake and coffee. I was fascinated. Dara changed the subject to something else. I rapidly lost interest and I proceeded to focus my attention on the plate set in front of me. About an hour or so later, Dara's Mom said she had to get up early for work in the morning. It was our cue to leave. On the way out her Mom smiled at me and whispered, "Take care of her for me." I nodded and said I'd do my best, but I knew there wasn't much I could do about that. Dara's too rowdy, too uncontrollable for me to have any influence over. I had to go with her antics, or not. Simple as that.

Afternoon Shooting Part Two

Wingnut Dan opened up his ALICE pack to reveal an Uzi that he called Little Susie. With Little Susie in one hand he dug around inside his pack and produced what looked like a fat piece of pipe. He threaded it onto the muzzle of Little Susie and giggled like a kid while he tightened it up. I asked what it was out of genuine curiocity, he told me it was a dummy silencer tube. I didn't see any use for a fake silencer, until he put a 40 round mag into the weapon and handed it over to me. After giving me a quick rundown on where the safety was and explaining the quirks of an Uzi to me, he let me loose with it. The beauty of a dummy silencer is that it extends the length of the gun out another ten inches or so. With the extra room a person firing the weapon can place their other hand on the tube and shoot from the hip much easier. It's like having a forward grip where before, there was none. There was no need to aim, Uzis aren't very accurate at distance so Wingnut Dan instructed me to use each bullet strike on the hillside as an aiming point and then "walk the bullets" to the target, as he put it.

Damn, it was so fun. I gotta get one of those.

I gave Dara a short but necessary lesson in operating my AK-47. I went over what to do if there was a jam or a misfire, some tips on using the iron sights, how to remove and load magazines, and of course where the safety was. Dara was a good student and picked everything up instantly. I stepped back and watched her first few shots. She was way off from hitting targets she selected, but that is always the way it goes the first time you pick up an unfamiliar rifle. It was fun for me to observe. She got the hang of it in no time. As soon as she unloaded the first thirty round magazine she turned to me with a huge grin on her face. I think she liked it. I had already set up a stack of thirty round magazines for her to burn through so she was on her own while I stayed close by and hung out.

I noticed off to my right Wingnut Dan's friend with the FN FAL was unhappy. Those FN FALs look vicious to me and I had considered buying one. Until now, that is. I stepped over to where FAL guy was tinkering with it and asked what was up. He said that he adjusted the gas piston before coming out to shoot and he screwed it up somehow. The rifle wasn't cycling rounds properly. I was unaware FALs had an option to adjust something like that. To me that seemed like a really bad headache I didn't need, being a novice gun owner. I decided to leave him to it and pay attention to Dara.

AK-74 guy spent the rest of the time we were there cleaning out dirt from his rifle. I took a close look at it and I was shaking my head in disgust at him. His AK-74 was brand new, today was the first time he brought it out to shoot with. It had a nice light blonde wood stock set on it. I say had, because after his dirt and weed environmental testing with it, the stock was completely scratched up and ghetto. What a waste.

Dara did well with her shooting. I was impressed, and she seemed pleased with herself. The main thing for me today was that she had fun. That's what it was all about. Wingnut Dan seemed happy with the world after he had put hundreds of rounds through Little Susie. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from his chest and all was good again. FN FAL guy gave up on trying to fix his rifle and settled for watching Wingnut Dan, Dara, and myself have a good time. We didn't let him or the other Army kook sit and rot though. That would have been too cruel. They both got to take turns with my AK and Little Susie until ammo was running low.

As the sun was starting to set we packed our crap up and headed home for the day. Wingnut Dan, Dara, and I were satiated, somewhat tired, and reeking of cordite.

Afternoon Shooting Part One

I planned for a few hours of ripping up the hillside with hot lead and ejecting shell casings today, and I invited Dara, Wingnut Dan, and a couple of his buddies from the Army Reserves. Since I picked up that rifle I've been going to an unofficial outdoor range in the woods that Wingnut Dan told me about. It's secluded, on a massive amount of unused acreage only a thirty minute drive from my house. We all met up at B Street and proceeded to load up our gear into one car, then head out.

Dara was excited about the prospect of firing weapons, and I told her a few days ago that I had a thing for pretty girls with machine guns. I was just joking around with her when I said that, but she decided to surprise me by going all-out on her attire. Wingnut Dan and his Army pals got to the house first so we were sitting around in the living room jaw jacking and waiting for Dara. She wasn't terribly late. When she finally arrived and walked through the front door everyone's eyes practically bugged out of their skulls. She was wearing a gothic styled mini-dress, fishnets, and those spiked heel bitch boots. Her makeup was killer. I was impressed. One of the Army guys looked at me, leaned over in his chair and quietly said, "Where did you find HER"? I laughed.

Bitch boots were going to be a problem. Since the range we were going to was in an isolated area, we would have to hike about a mile up a narrow, steep, inclined dirt trail to get there. Dara wouldn't make it with footwear like that. I grabbed a pair of my old tennis shoes for her and threw them into my pack. As soon as we got out of the car she would have to change to the tennis shoes. It was kind of a bummer because her outfit mixed with white tennis shoes was going to look entirely silly. Oh well.

It was a beautiful day out, clear skies with no wind and fairly warm. The drive to the trailhead was quick enough. After parking the car off the road and getting everything squared away we began the walk single file up to the shooting area. Wingnut Dan had an ALICE pack on his back, the two Army guys were carrying their rifles on their backs. One of them brought an FN FAL with bipod and the other guy had an AK-74. The AK-74 is identical to an AK-47 on the outside, the only real difference is the round it's chambered for. I had an ALICE pack and my black AK was slung over my shoulder. The walk on the trail is scenic. As the trail winds up the hillside you pass through dense redwood forest and there's a fast running creek with a few waterfalls.

At the top of the climb the forest begins to thin out and part to reveal a wide, open field that faces the side of another hill. It's a perfect backstop for absorbing bullets. We stayed on the edge of the tree line and found a spot to set up in the shade. I walked out to the hill and placed twenty or so bright orange clay targets into the dirt. They're clay pidgeons meant for blowing away with shotguns but I like using them for distance targets. A case of 90 of them only costs five bucks and when the rain comes all the clay fragments will dissolve into the mud like they were never there. It's better than cleaning up broken bottles and shredded cans when we're all done for the day.

While we were getting situated, Wingnut Dan and his friend with the AK-74 got into a serious discussion about how rugged and reliable the AKs are. Apparently they have an almost legendary reputation for reliability in harsh conditions and for taking a ton of abuse from soldiers. Wingnut Dan was of the opinion that if the AK-74 was dragged around in the dirt and stomped on a bunch, as his friend was threatening to do to prove his point, the rifle would jam. AK-74 guy went on a tirade about how AKs have been run over by tracked vehicles like tanks and still functioned properly. Their debate was becoming more of an argument so I stopped what I was doing and looked over to where the two of them were standing. AK-74 guy took his brand new rifle and threw it down to the ground and he began kicking it. He heaped piles of dirt and weeds onto it and then jumped up in the air over it and stomped it's guts out. I was glad the rifle wasn't loaded. All of us were watching as he picked up the filthy AK, placed a magazine into the receiver, slammed the charging handle backwards, took aim on the hill across from us, and pulled the trigger.

In a split second a cloud of dust erupted from the hill. The report of the round exploding from the rifle's muzzle echoed out of the forest and a shell casing bounced off the ground. AK-74 guy took aim again as his finger twitched. Click. Nothing happened. The rifle had indeed, jammed. Wingnut Dan gave his friend an "I told you so" speech as the rest of us laughed at him. Chump.

Souvenir

When I woke up this morning, I rolled over to Dara's side of the bed and something cold touched my stomach. I scooted over a little and saw one of the steel nipple barbells she usually wears. Must have fallen out during the night. Two of her hair extensions had busted off, I discovered those as I got up to put the barbell away. Might as well save it to remember her by. I placed the barbell and the hair extensions in a small box, which I then hid at the back of one of my cabinets. Somehow I don't think I'll be seeing Dara much longer. There's already been some weirdness...

Her work schedule in the clubs is keeping her so busy that we only hang out once a week. She claims she's that busy, anyway. I have no idea what she's actually up to at any given time. To be honest I'm not concerning myself with it too much. The thing that bugs me though, is if she makes plans with me to be here on any particular night after I get home from work about half the time she never shows up. Irritating. I could have made other plans. Last week she really pulled a dumb stunt. She did a no-show and I didn't hear from her for three or four days after that. Then I get a goofy phone call from her that she met up with some band from who knows where that just so happened to be good old friends of hers and she hopped on a flight to go tour with them out of state. Huh? I picked her up at the Oakland airport and brought her home the following day.

That better not happen again.

A Peasant And A Stripper

Dara came over last night. It had been about a week or so since I bumped into her on the street downtown. I called her up a few days after our chance meeting and we made plans to hang out at my place after I came home from work. She didn't seem to mind the late hour and she said she would bring some stuff to listen to, which she did. I had a bottle of good red wine and a box of clove cigarettes ready to go. She brought two CDs with her, something from a band called Apoptygma Berzerk, and another band called Malign. I put both of them in the stereo and we settled in for a night of conversation.

Dara ended up living in the city working in strip clubs. That's pretty much the long and short of it. She had been ripped off numerous times by some club managers and or owners for her night's take and in one case she told me about, she had worked for weeks at a joint only to find out that the strip club had gone out of business. She never got paid. During those strip club years, she was attacked once. Riding her bicycle down the street where she lived one day someone clocked her upside the head with a metal pipe or something. It ended up crushing her skull badly and she's got a metal plate in her noggin now. She let me check it out by placing my hand on her head. I could feel it under her skin. Kinda weird but not in an icky way or anything. Just weird.

When she was able to work again she shifted gears from the strip club scene to working in fetish clubs and dungeons as a dominatrix. That raised my eyebrows a bit. I've heard of some of these establishments in the city but I never worked up the interest or courage to actually go check any of them out. Figuring I might get some crazy stories from Dara about these places I asked her a bunch of questions. What were the dungeon customers like? What was some of the strangest stuff you had to do to them? Did you have any clients that really were off the hook insane? That sort of stuff.

She said, "When I first started working at this one place, I was told about a regular client that was from Marin and he would visit once a week. He was very specific about how he was to be disciplined. He preferred to be kicked really hard in the nuts while he was wearing his wife's horse riding boots. He had an arrangement with his wife that it was okay for him to do this. The Mistress told me to kick him in the balls as hard as I could and if it wasn't powerful enough, if it wasn't to his satisfaction, he would complain about it and try to have me fired. I didn't want to hurt him but they said he liked it best when it would almost lift him off the ground".

"So did you do it? Did you kick him hard enough"?

"I was wearing what I call my 'bitch boots'. They're shiny black stilletto spiked heels that lace all the way up my legs. I kicked him. Alot. Then he would lie on his back on the floor with his legs spread out and we had to kick him while he was like that, too."

Holy shit. I couldn't imagine anybody wanting that. Especially working out some deal with his wife to get permission for the beating and be allowed to borrow her footwear for the occassion. What a kook.

Hours passed as we talked. The wine was good, the cloves were perfect, and I was getting drunk. I decided I didn't like Apoptygma Berzerk much but the Malign disc was killer. It's some of the best gothic material I've heard since Rozz Williams was still with Christian Death, and that was many years ago. I have to get a copy of Malign. That's all there is to it. When the wine bottle was empty and both of us were too tired to think of anything else to say, Dara went home. Before she left though, we made plans to do something together next week.

The ESD Police

Two things happened back in the 1970s and 1980s that drastically altered the way the electronics industry manufactured products. One of them was the discovery that static electricity partially damaged or completely destroyed electronic components, and the other was the Dendrite crystal scare of the 1980s. Before these things were recognized for the serious problems that they are, our employees ate lunch at their workbenches and practically used the test instruments they were building as a dining table. Ashtrays were installed into the workstations and smoking was permitted on the instrument lines. My, how things have changed since then.

ESD stands for Electro Static Discharge. If you work in the tech industry, you know what this shit is, and it's poison for your electronic gadgets. Basically it's static electricity generated by objects sliding across each other. A classic example is when you walk across a carpet and then grab a door knob. What happens? You get zapped. The voltage generated by that static discharge is enough for you to feel a small shock and maybe see a flash in low light conditions. If anything, it's nothing more than a minor annoyance. Working with electronic components that same static discharge will completely fuck shit up. I've seen electron beam microscope photos of ICs and other parts that have holes blown clean through them and it's all thanks to a similar, seemingly harmless static discharge.

In the late 1970s Bill and Dave's company did some experiments to discover why some product divisions were experiencing higher component failure rates. If a part fails in the field, it will also bring down the unit it's in more often than not. So they ended up figuring out ESD was a huge issue and they implemented a bunch of stuff to help eliminate the problem. They forced their manufacturing workforce to wear grounding wrist and foot straps, and came up with special ESD containers for transporting PC boards and components around on the shop floor, just to name a few things. By the early 1980s some people still doubted the severity or existence of the ESD problem...

Every day when I come in to work I have to put on ESD foot straps. Sometimes I forget I've got them on when I leave the factory to go out for lunch. People stare at my feet like I'm some kind of retarded when they see those foot straps. Depending on the kind of work I'm doing I might also have to use a grounded wrist strap and a special smock that has metal fibers weaved into the fabric. To be honest, it's all kind of a pain in the ass but we've got to go with it.

The real problem I have here is with certain zealous employees who for dubious reasons become an ESD cop. I can deal with the ESD foot straps and shit. What I don't like are dead end co-workers who have little to offer and latch onto any and every extra assignment or job to try to offset their lack of usefulness. One of those available extra assignments is joining the ESD Police. ESD cops are individuals that fall into two categories.

The first category would be the cool ESD cop. The cool ESD cop is a person that has better things to do with their time on the job but somehow got fingered by management to appear and perform in the area making daily or monthly checks of workbenches and employees' sign in sheets. This individual isn't thrilled about the extra work and might care less about it but will at least go through the motions. If you forgot to sign in on the ESD check in one day, or you skipped a couple months on your bench check this person isn't going to fuck with you about it. They'll just get it fixed and move on. No big deal.

Category number two ESD cop is the worker I'd like to haul outside and shoot execution style in the back of the head and watch them fall into a shallow ditch. These assholes are ESD fanatics and they volunteered for the job because they saw it as some sort of stepping stone to bigger and better things. Or they discovered they hate/suck at working their production job. Give me a break. Running around with a clipboard in your hand writing up ESD citations isn't going to get you into a high paying corporate job that comes complete with a plush cubicle. These shit breathers come out of nowhere and try to find any and every excuse to fuck with you. Oh, you forgot to check your ESD footstraps before coming into the area yesterday, huh? We'll just have to tell your supervisor about this now won't we? And oh my, you didn't use a wrist strap while you built that box there at your bench. You're in trouble now buddy! Let's see here. Hmmm. This log is missing your bench check for the past couple of months. That's no good mister! No good at all!

Yeah, well, fuck you. I just spent the last two days fixing instruments that you installed everything upsidedown and backwards 'cause you can't read plain English and have the IQ of a dented hubcap.

Dara

This afternoon I decided to walk over to The Last Record Store and see if any new punk or industrial stuff had come in during the past couple of weeks. I needed something new to listen to. I'd played everything else I had picked up recently into the ground.

On the way to the record shop I saw this hot, gothic babe riding a bicycle towards me. I am hopelessly attracted to deathrock chicks. Always have been. This one was wearing a velvet burgundy dress and she had black boots laced all the way up to her knees. Her hair was in long tight braids that included a few brightly colored extensions. Her skin was ghostly white. So beautiful. As she was about to pass by me she stopped and smiled. She asked me what my name was. When I responded, she smiled again and told me she used to be close friends with my younger sister and said her name was Dara. I didn't recognize her right away because she looked completely different from the way she did back in high school. How could I forget Dara? I always had a thing for her. Hell, every guy did. She was one of the most goregous girls out of the whole damn school.

We yapped about what each of us had been up to over the years that passed by and asked about family stuff. You know, the usual pleasantries. All I wanted was her phone number. I figured we could make small talk later on some evening after we'd both had numerous drinks in us. I'm no player, in fact quite the contrary. I'm a total chump when it comes to trying to finesse the ladies. I never know what to say to them. It's like if you're interested in a girl you have to play a stupid fucking game with them. I hate games, but more often than not it seems that's the only way females operate. You have to give off this total give-a-fuck attitude the whole time. I can't do it. Generally when I'm trying to chat one of them up, I crash and burn like a WWII Japanese pilot. For example, if I try to innocently compliment a woman on her looks, specifically the way she's dressed or her attractive features, I get written off as being creepy. Being spur of the moment clever and witty isn't my bag, either. When I go that route stupid shit comes out of my mouth and then I'm dismissed for being a dimwit, or worse. Luckily I didn't get too nervous or weird on this occassion. On the inside I was rapidly becoming a wreck though. I think I did a pretty good job concealing that fact from her.

Dara said she had to get going, but before we parted ways I somehow managed to get her number. Whew. I watched her peddle on down the road and disappear.

This could be interesting.

Sighting In

Across the street and down just a little bit from our Victorian house there is a pink two-story apartment building. In my opinion it's an eyesore thanks to the bright pink paint some idiot decided to cover the structure with. I hate pink. On the roof of their building a swank penthouse suite remains uninhabited and abandoned. Years ago I walked over to speak with the apartment manager about renting the penthouse out, but I was immediately rebuffed by him as he claimed it was a fire hazard. I doubted he was telling the truth about the penthouse being a potential fire problem, rather I suspect he was content to use it as a large storage room for his own personal use. The only reason it would be a fire hazard is because he has the suite crammed with cardboard boxes and dozens of old wooden chairs.

I can see alot of what goes on in that building from my bedroom. At night with the lights out anyone on the street below or in the apartment buildings across from us can't see anything in my room. I have no curtains. It's just a void of nothingness due to the black paint I used in here on the ceiling and walls. Sometimes, I sit in my easy chair facing the street while sipping a glass of red wine or drinking beers. I peer into the lives of people living inside the pink building. One of the tenants on the second floor seems to feel completely safe from prying eyes. She rarely if ever draws her curtains closed and she stays up late into the night scurrying around the rooms of her flat doing whatever. On slow nights she provides me with a small amount of people-watching entertainment.

Usually every evening when she arrives home from work she gets into a little spandex workout number and proceeds to jump all over the living room like a crazed candy raver on ecstasy. I don't find her attractive, so I'm not sitting here in my room with a huge boner pulling on it while she flaunts her hind quarters in my general direction. More than anything else I observe and laugh at her.

With my glasses on I don't see far away all that great. The distance to her apartment is at the point where my vision begins to get fuzzy. I can see pretty well enough to know what's going on over there though. Anyway tonight I had an idea that seemed evil, yet fun. I had to try my idea out on my poor, unsuspecting neighbor. For my new rifle I bought a rubber armored sniper scope that mounts to the upper receiver cover plate. It has an adjustable zoom on the lenses. Why not try it out on the Mexican jumping bean across the street in her apartment? I went into my other room and came back with the scope and my rifle. In just a few seconds I removed the regular upper receiver cover plate and replaced it with the new one which has a scope rail built in. I had already installed the optics to the new cover, but I hadn't assembled it on the rifle yet.

Plunking myself back down into my easy chair and with the lights in my bedroom still out, I made the switcheroo and locked everything into place. I took the lens covers off and hoisted my rifle tight into my shoulder and up to eye level. I still had an empty thirty round magazine placed in the receiver. As I peeked through the optics of the scope and the tiny black crosshairs came into focus I had a hell of a time getting my bearings on that apartment building. As I squirmed around in my seat, the sight picture I had in the scope flew by in a rapid blur and I had no idea what I was looking at. I quickly learned to try to stay as still as possible and make careful, slow, sweeping movements while using the scope.

By the time I finally found my way along the outer wall of the building to the woman's apartment windows, she was gone. Fuck! The lights were on over there, but I saw no movement. No action. I was fascinated with how clear and in focus everything appeared though. I could see the framed pictures on her apartment walls and what kinds of plants she had in the window sills. I used the window frames as reference points and began checking out what I could find in her kitchen, to the left. I saw everything. Cans and bottles were placed neatly on her countertops and I could easily determine what brands of items they were. This scope is pretty good, I thought to myself and I chuckled. The lights were off in her kitchen but what little light flowed in from the living room was enough for me to be an effective Peeping Tom.

Movement in the livingroom caught my attention, so I swept the rifle steady to the right and zoomed the scope back into focus once again. There she was, standing perfectly still in a shiny light cream colored silk nightgown. She was facing with her back towards the apartment windows and she was looking at something intently that was out of my field of view. She turned slightly to the left so I could plainly see her breasts under the thin silk cloth. Then she began to slowly and gently pet her tits. I thought she must have gone wacky and I couldn't figure out what the hell she was doing. Suddenly it hit me. My neighbor was feeling herself up in front of a wall mirror! I laughed like a maniac and when I regained my composure I put the crosshairs right over her heart. I smiled, and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell forward and struck nothing, a hollow mettalic thud sounded from inside the rifle. While my neighbor stood there like an idiot playfully tinkering with her cleavage, she had been placed squarely in sniper crosshairs.

What she doesn't know won't hurt her...

Assault Rifle Bliss

I couldn't sleep at all last night. Funny, I realized I hadn't been this excited since I was little and it was Christmas Eve. For the past two weeks I had been stoked about my weapon purchase and last night the anticipation of the road trip to go fetch it today was too much for me. With the lights out I stared at the ceiling for hours, then tossed and turned in my bed all night. I hate that.

The mandatory waiting period was over, Saturday was the day I marked on my calendar for picking up my rifle in Sacramento.

The trip to the gun shop I bought from was going to take me a little over two hours, the place was located on the eastern side of the city which was further away. Planning accordingly, I left at 6am and gave myself enough time for the drive there plus a stop in Dixon for a breakfast of eggs and pancakes. I always stop in Dixon to eat in the morning when I'm headed out that way. It's an easy and fast destination point for fuel and grub. I like it.

I arrived at the gun dealer's shortly after they opened and paid off the remaining balance on the rifle. I also bought a few thirty round magazines and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Magazines are plentiful and cheap, but the ammunition was not. Twenty rounds per box of ammo cost close to three dollars. That sucked bad. I decided buying bullets retail was a sucker's game and I had better find an alternative as soon as possible. I was planning on doing alot of recreational shooting hence I'd need loads of rounds for plinking with.

The rifle I bought is a Bulgarian made AK-47 from a company called Arsenal. Totally badass. It's all black with a chrome lined barrel, superior milled machining on the metal parts (rather than stamped), and it's got a built in muzzle brake/flash suppressor. Nice. After I got home with it this afternoon I put a 30 round mag into the receiver and set it out on my bed. Wicked. Just wicked. I can't wait to take this thing out to the range and rip shit up!

No Sausage For Miss Viet Cong, Thanks

When I arrived at work today I noticed something strange was going on with Meth and Mr. Mo. Both of them were unusually quiet and acting like polite cardboard cutouts of themselves. It didn't seem right. Meth wasn't running around foaming at the mouth, yelling at Stupid Guy or making inane comments towards everyone else he crossed paths with. Instead, he was meekly silent. Mr. Mo wasn't smiling and jovial like he normally is. He sat quietly at his assembly bench for most of the shift not talking to anyone. I wasn't going to ask what the deal was, but Mr. Mo walked over and gave me the scoop.

Screw Murderer went to Human Resources early this afternoon and made a formal complaint of harassment against Meth and Mr. Mo. I'm not sure how she handled it exactly, like if she complained they were harassing her because she was a vegetarian or if she came up with something more devious and sinister. I didn't care so I neglected to press Mr. Mo for details. Our management team was notified of the incident from the previous evening and got involved immediately. They were waiting for the two of them to come in to work today. Both of them were hauled off separately to conference rooms and royally beat down by their supervisors. During the closed door thrashings they were threatened with losing their jobs, apparently. I'd love to see Meth get fired especially for something as petty and stupid as this. I'd laugh my ass off. Really. If Mr. Mo lost his job though, the whole ordeal would seem foolish. It was juvenile and superficial to say the least. It wasn't like they were sexually harassing Screw Murderer or anything truly serious. She does have a tendency to emotionally freak out. We all know her for the drama queen that she can be so these guys should have seen this coming. I did. This was an entirely predictable outcome.

Bill and Dave's company doesn't mess around when it comes to women who complain about harassment in the workplace. Sometimes I think the pendulum has swung too far out to one side on this issue and it makes working with the ladies very dangerous. A handful of women have falsely accused employees of harassing them just to get back at a coworker for being critical of their workmanship, or because they didn't receive a promotion or a raise when they wanted it. Most of the cases I'm aware of resulted in people being demoted or fired by Human Resources. They see the world with black and white vision. Shoot first, ask questions later. For most of us the real problem is you never know which woman you happen to work with might pull a stunt like that. So you always have to keep the possibilty in the forefront of your mind and act accordingly. It's shitty because it's like walking through a minefield every day at work. Everything could blow up right in your face with little to no warning.

If anything else maybe this deal will cause Meth to shut his fucking mouth for a change. Probably won't last more than a few weeks at best, but I'll be happy to take the peace and quiet around here as long as I can get it.

Do You Eat Meat?

Tonight at work I was too lazy to go out somewhere to buy lunch so I called up one of the local pizza joints that's got good grub and had a pie delivered. It's always a little stressful getting a pizza delivered here because the driver has to head to the main lobby and get security to give me a call in my department. Too many things can go wrong which will screw the whole deal up. The time they tell me the delivery will arrive could be way off, the driver can get lost wandering around the building parking lots looking for the lobby, security might not let the guy in, or someone might need my help elsewhere in the plant and I will miss the phone call that my food has arrived. It's all happened before. Just to be on the safe side I usually will take the walk through the campus about fifteen minutes before delivery time and camp out in the lobby so nothing stupid happens. I learned another important lesson concerning delivered pizzas this evening. Don't place the call within earshot of fellow coworkers who also might be hungry.

As soon as I got off the phone making my sausage and pepperoni pizza order, Meth and Mr. Mo wanted in on my lunch and thrust handfuls of cash in my face. I should have told both of them to fuck off and die, but I've already got enough problems in here with these people so I took the coward's way out. I said sure and accepted their loot. At the same time I was angry with myself for doing it because I was ravenous. I can easily down damn near a whole large pizza alone when I'm this starved. Only getting a third of it will be a meager snack. I'll probably be hungry again a few hours afterward, thanks to them.

Fourty five minutes later I returned from the lobby with pizza box in hand and a scowl on my face. Meth, Mr. Mo and myself set up in a recently vacated area of floorspace ajacent to the Precision Group's assembly benches. They set up a round conference table with a few chairs and grabbed a stack of shoddy light brown napkins from one of the nearby coffee stations. I hate those napkins. Screw Murderer was sitting at a board mod workbench nearby. While I was concentrating on feeding my neck as much greasy grub as possible, Meth started bothering Screw Murderer. He asked her, "Do you eat meat"? Screw Murderer got this horrified look on her face and she sternly said, "No" in response. Meth snickered. He wasn't asking her if she ate meat as in food, he was pulling a junior high school joke on her. He meant did she eat meat as in sucking cock. There's no way she would know this, she's an old Vietnamese with traditional values and culture.

Mr. Mo caught on and thought it was funny, so he started in on her too. "Yeah, you should eat meat. Eat a cow it's good for you". Both of them were laughing like idiots. I kept chowing down. I could tell Screw Murderer was getting upset at these guys because the tone of her voice was becoming more high pitched and waivered like she was going to cry or something. She yelled at them, "No! I no eat meat! It my religion!" They continued laughing and kept terrorizing her. Just before it looked to me like she was going to burst into tears and run off the line I said under my breath to both of these nitwits to knock it off. "You guys know she's weird about that shit. She's gonna freak out here if you keep it up and guess what's gonna happen? She'll head straight for management and mess you guys up". Meth balked at the idea and Mr. Mo ignored me completely.

I tried to warn them.

Gun Show

I've really done it this time. I don't know how I'm going to eat or afford gasoline to get in to work for the next couple of weeks. Payday is a long way off and I spent my last two hundred dollars as a deposit on an assault rifle. I don't even know what it is, actually. When I saw it I knew I had to have it and I didn't bother to ask the gun dealer anything about the weapon. I forgot to ask what make or model it is. How irresponsible is that?

Senor 23 and I left early in the morning for Sacramento's State Fairgrounds. The drive took us about two hours and was uneventful. Neither one of us talked much during the trip as we were both out of whack from not getting enough sleep. Rather than talk we listened to music. I wondered what kinds of firearms would be available at the Gun Show. I had never been to one before. California's gun laws are some of the most draconian in all 50 States so I wasn't expecting much from the show.

After paying for parking at the fairgrounds entrance and finding our way to the buildings hosting the gun show Senor 23 and I stepped inside and I was amazed. Two huge multiple story buildings were crammed with people and weapons everywhere the eye could see. I felt like a kid in a candy store and I mumbled "whoa" to myself. People from every background and walk of life were here checking stuff out and making purchases. There were elderly couples, gangbangers, rednecks, cops, dirtbags, survivalist militia kooks, and plenty of your average Joe types. Security was being provided by Sacramento Sheriff deputies and many of them were chatting up gun dealers and asking questions about their offerings just like everyone else was doing. It all seemed relaxed and low key.

The first aisleway I went down I happened to spot some serious military hardware. That kinda shocked me. Behind a table with a blue cloth draped over it there was a couple wearing camo boonie hats. They weren't selling any handguns or rifles. Even from dozens of feet away I easily recognized both of the missile launchers they were selling thanks to my former job at TDS working on weapon systems. I stopped in front of their kiosk. To my left there was a Stinger shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile launcher, and to my right was a Dragon anti-tank weapon. Both launchers appeared to be in near perfect condition but neither one had a round installed or anywhere near them for that matter. Since I already knew what these weapons were I didn't inquire about that. They weren't marked with anything saying what they were for customers, either. But I was so surprised to see shit like this here I asked the woman behind the table, "Where in the HELL did you get these"? She coyly smiled at me and said, "Eight hundred cash or a thousand credit, each. We guarantee all the electronics are still working and fully functional. No ammo though. You have to get that on your own". She smiled again. Her partner sitting next to her never looked up at me and didn't say a word the whole time I was there. I couldn't believe this was on sale here especially with cops crawling all over the place. I shook my head and walked away. Insane.

Hours passed by without my noticing. I saw everything from flintlock black powder rifles to some of the most modern day assault weapons on the planet. There were ammo dealers, optics dealers, guys selling recent generation night vision goggles and scopes, vintage military firearms and antiques, and handguns galore. Then, almost by accident, I saw it. It was at a dealer's kiosk sitting on top of it's cardboard shipping box and I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It was beautiful. All black, and wicked looking. I asked if I could pick it up and feel the weight and see how the pistol grip fit in my hand. As I hoisted it up to my shoulder I felt comfortable. An evil grin cracked on my face. The asking price was $469.00 and even though I only had two hundred bucks left in my account to last me until my next payday, I decided I had to have this weapon. Financially, it was entirely stupid of me and I knew it, but I couldn't help myself. Since I didn't have the full amount on me nor could I get it anytime soon I asked the dealer if I could put down a deposit on it now and pick it up in a couple of weeks. "No problem" he said. "And, we can start the waiting period now so when you come in to pay the rest of the balance you can take it home with you same day". I was so excited about this that my hands were shaking slightly. Yeah!

Business was booming at the gun show. It was so busy in fact that I asked a few dealers if these shows are always so hectic. Most of them told me this show was unusually busy due to the new proposed federal firearms ban being pushed by Clinton. It woke alot of people up, they said, and people are trying to buy whatever they can before any new ban goes into effect. I had to admit it, in part that's why I was here. I wanted to do some investigation and consider buying some sort of firearm before I might not have the right to anymore. As it happens, thanks to a few stupid politicians they just helped create another new gun owner.

Back To Work

I've pretty much written off the rest of our Diversity Training classes. I'm there physically, but mentally I tuned it out. It was the only way to get through the rest of that crap and still stay somewhat sane. None of it was worthwhile and now that it's all over with it's time to get back into the area and go into damage control mode. I'm going to be working long hours and weekend overtime in an effort to finish up all our late boxes. I hate it when we have to work harder just to make up for management's stupid diversions that waste our time on the job. Losers. In an average 40 hour work week I swear we must be rotting away in conference rooms nearly 20 of those hours. Totally counterproductive.

The new line supervisor, Garden Tool, is working out much better than I could have hoped for. The Tool has already pegged Meth and Stupid Guy for the fuckups that they are and he's begun to put the finger of doom on them. I'm happy about that. He's got a wicked sense of humor and a good personality, two things Squirmy was lacking. Garden Tool is a short shit with snow white hair and a sparkle in his eye. Occassionally he reminds me of Tony Curtis' character in the film "The Great Race". I love that goofy movie. Jack Lemmon really stole the show in my opinion. Professor Fate is my hero...

Deadwood was handed a rough beatdown from our management team after their risk assessment meeting about the missing noise filtering capacitors. Engineering's verdict was that the caps needed to be in the power supply line module, but now that those affected units are all over the globe it's going to be too much hassle to recall each and every box for a field repair. Instead of notifying the customers of a potential problem, management is going to send out a service note bulletin to all our regional repair centers with a list of serial numbers for the affected units. If and when any of them show up for an unrelated repair, the service center will quietly add the capacitors back into the power supply. It's good that Deadwood came clean about this situation, but it's definetly going to be a black mark on her next employee review. I continue to feel kinda bad about it however if anything else I hope this has taught her a lesson. Don't interpret the assembly documentation any which way you please.

I Need A New Hobby

Even though months have passed since I moved out of Jennifer's place once in a while I still become extremely depressed and lonely thinking about everything that happened. Most of the time I've been doing much better with it, but sometimes when I am not occupied enough my mind wanders backwards to her and I get all fucked up again. The solution is to stay busy. The problem is not knowing how to stay busy. I've been craving something exciting for a change of pace but nothing has sparked my interest.

Lately Senor 23 and I have been walking around the corner from the B Street house to a micro brew pub on 7th Street to get hammered and have dinner. Both of us are too lazy to do any serious cooking in our kitchen. The kitchen is generally mangy with colonies of bugs growing in pots and pans left discarded on the stove. The sink has a variety of different colored molds thriving. Ivy is still growing through the kitchen wall and emerging from our busted dishwashing machine.

We have a good neighborly relationship with the pub. They allow us to borrow tons of their pint glasses when we have a shindig at our place complete with multiple kegs and dozens of thirsty guests. All we have to do is promise to bring the glasses back the next day. I bought a gallon jug from the pub so I can pick a beer on tap and have them fill up my jug for ten bucks. Beer to go is a very happenin' thing.

This evening the two of us settled in at the bar for some serious beer guzzling and dinner. After placing our dinner orders I happened to look up at the TV to catch President Clinton on the evening news whining about assault rifles. I didn't get the whole gist of what was going on, but what I did piece together amounted to some sort of a national ban on machine guns and stuff that looked like a hell of alot of fun to shoot. I saw video clips of people at the range blasting refrigerators with round after round of belt fed ammunition. As I was watching I think a smile broke across my face, which Senor 23 noticed. I don't own any guns, but I got to thinking that buying a gun before a federal ban was placed into effect might be a good idea. And shooting at the range is something exciting that would get me outdoors more often.

"There's a gun show in Sacramento about two weeks from now. I was gonna go check it out. You want to go"? Senor 23 asked.
I thought about it for a moment. "I don't have any money to buy anything, but I'd be up for the road trip. Sure, I'll go. If anything else I can see what's out there and price some things".

The idea was appealing. I've been interested in firearms for years but for one reason or other I haven't bought a gun. I don't know where to begin and I know zero about guns except for the ones I've seen that look cool. This trip in two weeks will be a fact finding mission, nothing more. Should be fun though.