Bitterly Clinging

From Reuters today:

http://lite.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N26491120.htm

In spite of the swine flu epedimic in Mexico, the Department of Homeland Insecurity is not screening passengers flying into the US from Mexico.

I guess they're too busy looking for suspect #2 from the OKC bombing:

I gotta go now. I need to go cling bitterly to my bible and my guns.

If not, please continue

I applied to a job posting last night. I found the craigslist entry amusing...

Are you looking to work for a traditional company?

If so...please move on to the next posting.

If not please continue.

Our company is coming to town and we are looking to bring on a experienced talent coach. This is not your sleepy non engaged company. So if you're interested in working in an environment where sit behind a desk and work in a traditional scene... I suggest you apply somewhere else.

Email for details

At the airport.

Compensation $30-40K.

I thought to myself, yeah. look at this mess of a job posting. Maybe he's afraid of hyphens. Or maybe he's just a tard. Let's see if he means any of it.

So I replied to the job posting thusly:

Four details:

I don't like traditional companies either.

I moved along to the next posting, but yours was more interesting.

I'd like to find a new career.

I make more money than you're offering as a professional bum.

And received the following reply:

Aloha!

I see your interested in working with a fresh new company that has a unique twist in travel.

To directly apply for all positions please see ourcompany.com and click the jobs selections.

Please apply through that application only.

If you want to see a little about our product look us up on you tube.

Silly company motto.

Wow. Four lines of brilliant sarcasm wasted on this cat. I don't miss often.

Try, try again.

I sent back:

Wow. You misspelled "you're", and you don't know how to include a hyperlink in an e-mail.

Yeah.

I wanna work for you.

And received the following reply:

Dear Sir or Ma'am,

Thank you for your withdrawl of any consideration for a position here at our company. We are aware that not everyone is unique and exciting, and these departures from the hospitality industry leave an average individual feeling out of place. Please do not feel that you carry any responsibility for this, not everyone is suited for this brand. May your future be as bright as you allow it to be!

Silly company motto again

Roddy Flowers
General Manager

Heh. So I replied:

Ah, now you're doing much better!

See. Not only do I have a talent for sarcasm and for ticking people off, but I bring out that quality in others as well.

Perhaps I should try talk radio.

I appreciate your consideration.

Best wishes!

Maybe I'm just too unique for some jobs.

Flash in the fog

The Z28 was bright red. I bought it ready to run bracket races and put it on the street instead.I'm just shady like that.

I was 21, and I didn't even care that my car insurance bill was 20% of my income.

I didn't care about a lot of things.

Many of the insane things I did, I did in that monster of a car. Oh, it would only do about 120 on the top end. But it would get there in an eighth of a mile from a standstill.

There was an interstate that ran through town, and North of town a dozen miles or so it crossed a huge river. Sometimes the river would get fog so dense you could cut it with a knife.

Now if you've ever driven in fog you know how bright lights just make things worse. You also know to slow down because you don't want to over-drive your headlights.

So what better idea could there be than to flip on the high beams and see how fast we can go for how long in the fog, right?

Well shoot, only if you do it so wasted you couldn't see anything if it was a bright sunny day!

I have no idea why I am alive today, other than divine grace.

I sure do miss that car!

Winning the drug war

I looked up from what I had been concentrating on and gazed blearily through the big plate glass window in the front room of the apartment my girlfriend and I were squatting in. Her mom had abandoned the place (and her), and the Sheriff hadn't come to put the furniture out yet.

The complex was built in a horseshoe with the open end facing West. Our apartment was on the second floor halfway down the Southern leg of the U. Below was a pool, a small laundry room, and a Coca-Cola machine.

I lit the joint I had just rolled, and placed the bag of weed, the papers, and the tray underneath the edge of the couch. I took a big toke, and held it until my head started to throb a little.

As I blew out a cloud and surveyed the morning unfolding below, Bob Barker's boy was telling some cow from the midwest to come on down in the background. TV sucks.

A cat skittered from the corner of the laundry room on the other side of the complex towards the pool, passing from left to right.

Behind the calico were people running.

They took the door of the bottom corner apartment right off it's hinges at a dead run and poured inside.

The first ones in the door looked like the black-suited, jack-booted thugs in the movies.

The guys in the plainclothes stopped and let them go past 'em at the corner of the building. One was wearing a yellow polo shirt, and carrying an MP-5 submachine gun like he was Don Johnson or something.

I watched, fascinated, toking on my doobie.

My doobie.

It might be a good idea to close the door, I thought to myself.

And the curtains too.

In fact, I think I'll finish this in the bathroom.

I needed my schmoke. I had been up all night drinking and smoking with this hoe I was shacked up with for the moment. Real piece of work that one. Once she woke up she would be on the rag again and it would be best to find a better place to be until she gets horny again.

Since I was in the can for the wake 'n bake, I went ahead and got cleaned up. Closed up in there I realized I smelled like a goat in the springtime.

Coming out of the shower in last night's clothes, I grabbed my keys. And my ID - don't want to be out there without that. And my shades. Some coins.

Playing off, I went down to the vending machine to quench my terrible thirst. It was already hot early in the morning, in the way only Texas can be.

I thought I'd hang out in the parking lot for awhile. See what the narcs were driving. The squad cars were gone, but for a couple. The arrests had all been made. A plainclothes cop walked by so I thought I'd ask him...

What happened?

He stopped and fixed me with a steady gaze and then he said to me with a stern and serious demeanor:

"Winning the drug war son."

"I'm glad." I said to him. He just nodded and walked away.

Self-righteous, tight-assed bastard doesn't have a clue, I thought to myself.

With all of this excitement, I decided that I needed another doobie, and so I walked upstairs with my warming half-can of Coke, contemplating the past half hour and shaking my head, just kinda grinning to myself.

When I opened the door the phone was ringing, so I went to answer it before some fool woke that bitch up. It was my best friend telling me about this killer stuff he had just scored from his new connection.

I looked out the curtain at the evidence technicians hauling off the belongings of my best hook-up.

That's good, I said. I'll have to check that out. I'll see ya in about an hour.

Incorrigible

Incorrigible:

1. Defective and impossible to materially correct or set aright.

2. Incurably depraved, not reformable.

3. Impervious to correction by punishment or pain.

4. Unmanageable.

5. Determined, unalterable, hence impossible to improve upon.

6. Incurable.

Have you ever been labeled? When I first read the word used to describe me, and learned of it's meaning I knew that it wasn't just a label, but that my entire outlook on life had just been defined.

Have you ever been incorrigible?

Have you ever become enraged?

Have you ever just had enough?

Have you ever lashed out, rather than be pushed around?

Well, I just can't help myself. It's a personality disorder. A disease. A virus that feeds on my mind and my patience until I lean out the window and yell GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THE WAY JACKOFF!!!

Hell I think we need more incorrigible people around.

The world just ain't right anyway.

Mr. Walker

Mr. Walker was a dean of boys at my high school. I had a rule about high school: Don't go to high school. Go to school high.

This more than anything describes why Mr. Walker didn't care much for me.

Mr. Walker was a distinguished black man. A preacher. An educator. An authoritarian. A royal pain in the ass.

Educators of his caliber breed kids named Klebold and Harris in my opinion. And he was one of the least evil of the administration at this place we refered to as Hell's High School.

I was trying to calm myself as Mr. Walker closed his office door behind me. I sat in the chair in front of his desk trying to contain my rage.

Rage. I had it in spades. My neck was burning. My face hot to the touch. Of all the injustices and offenses committed upon a teenager, this was the one that could not be tolerated. For all of the heat eminating from my visage, inside I was cold.

I had all of this cold, cold fire built up inside. Moments before it had all come flying out at once. And here I was sitting in this chair that had surely had a groove worn in it by now by my big behind, packing it all back down inside again. Bottling the anger up. Building up that cold fist of rage that comes flying out white-hot when forced to defend myself in the most basic way.

I was almost sixteen years old. At 5'11" and 200 lbs, no man was going to lay his hands on me in anger ever again.

They'll have to call a cop to stop me from dismembering you with my bare hands.

Disrespect me at your own risk.

So when that science teacher put his hand firmly around my shoulders and leaned into my personal space and whispered that he already had my name on a disciplinary form, and he couldn't wait to send me out of his class today, I told him to take his hands off of me or I would throw him out of the second floor window.

He responded by turning his fatherly gesture into a headlock.

I went to my knees. Any kid knows dead weight is impossible to hold.

When I shot back up it was right fist first.

You ever see a blind uppercut landed squarely on the chin?

It's a sight to behold. The recipient flys backwards and up at the same time. They stare right at you with their eyes fixed, a look of shock and disbelief and pain in their eyes as they go over the horizontal, and the back of the head angles down to the tile floor with the weight of the body all landing right on the neck.

That's when the lights go out.

I know I'll never forget it.

So there I sat in the chair, trying to get a handle on my anger.

"I'm not going to have any choice but to declare you incorrigible." said the distinguished man in the impeccable tie, leaning across the desk from me.

"Do you know what that word means, incorrigible?" he asked.

Of course, I did not. He handed me a dictionary and instructed me to address my ignorance.

"Unwilling or unable to be corrected." I read from the dictionary.

"That's you" Mr. Walker declared.

"But Mr. Walker, I'm not wrong. He had no business putting his hands on me. How can I be corrected when I'm not wrong?" I protested!

Be that as it may, guess who got kicked out of school?