Six Blade Knife / Two Edge Sword

"Took a stone from my soul when I was lame."

Dire Straits, Six Blade Knife

Back in the very early eighties I had a cassette of Dire Straits 1978 debut album; Dire Straits. It’s the one with Sultans of Swing on it. I played that cassette in my Walkman until it wore out, then I bought another and sent it, via that same Walkman plus a cassette player in my truck, to the same fate. When I moved to a place where I had a turn table, I bought the LP. These days, when I clean the kitchen or fold laundry and I need to create a playlist on Spotify or build a station on Slacker or Pandora I often start with the song Six Blade Knife from that album to set the tone.

I was the only one of my circle of friends back then who listened to them, and I felt very protective of “my band.” But when their album Brothers in Arms came out in 1985, and with it the astronomically popular single Money for Nothing, it seemed everyone bought that album, cassette, or newfangled compact disc. In fact, Brothers in Arms was one of the first albums recorded digitally when most other bands were still recording in analog. Suddenly everyone was a Dire Straits fan. I tried to explain how I’d been listening to them for years and how these newcomers hadn’t “earned” the right to enjoy what a guitarist friend of mine once described as the, “blues guitar on ludes” craftsmanship of lead guitarist Mark Knopfler.

I have since abandoned my crusade to enlighten others as to my superior appreciation of the band. Because of the popularity of Brothers in Arms, Mr. Knopfler and the rest of Dire Straits have amassed enough wealth to free themselves up to produce whatever kind of music they want, without the worry of whether it is “marketable” or not, which should be the way all artists create, but more often than not, it is not. Other people’s appreciation, celebration, or elucidation of the band doesn’t change my enjoyment of them one whit, and with that freedom afforded to those musicians comes superior music/art. It’s win, win.

This time of year certain TV pundits or even politicians are ranting about what they describe as the War on Christmas. They are upset about retailers using phrases like Happy Holidays in their commercials, banners, flyers, and other marketing material instead of Merry Christmas. They are offended when governors from the other end of the political spectrum speak of “tree-lighting” ceremonies without the word Christmas preceding it. They suggest that there is a conspiracy to rid the holiday season of all Christian tradition and references, and to eventually turn the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years, and our fair nation into a secular paradise.

Businesses use Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas to maximize the reach of their advertising dollar. Tree-lighting ceremonies are worded in that manner as a way of inclusion; of inviting all members of the community to participate. There are people who would love to see this country as completely secular, but they are not the people who make the decisions about TV commercials for an oak furniture store’s “Holiday Sales” or who write copy for tree-lighting ceremonies at state capitols.

No one is preventing those who see the birth of Jesus as the “reason for the season” from celebrating in that exact fashion. But are those folks trying to prevent those who don’t subscribe to the celebration of a saviors birth during December but instead just give presents, hold dinner parties, and put up lights from celebrating in that manner? Is that a two-edged sword?

There is also the idea that some people who attend church, service, or mass every Sunday complain about the people called CEOs (Christmas and Easter Only) showing up and crowding their parking lots and pews a couple of times a year. Perhaps they don’t feel these CEOs have “earned” the right to the choice seats at what they see as the most important services of the year, just like I didn’t think newcomers to Dire Straits earned the right to be a fan back in ’85.

I can’t see the harm in allowing some people to only attend church twice a year. For those two days are not the collection plates fuller, is not the message reaching more ears? Can that be anything but a good thing in the steady church-goer’s eyes?

My Precious

About a week and a half ago, someone paid 2.16 million dollars for a comic book. It wasn’t as if this comic book was gold plated, held the cure for baldness, and rested on a bed of Kardashians; instead it was a simple, newspaper quality, first issue of Action Comics from 1938, originally selling for a dime. It boasted within, the first appearance of Superman. If you want to, you can read it here. For free.

The buyer has chosen to remain anonymous, but I don’t care to know the identity of the buyer anyway; I would just like to know where he lives.

I’d like to know where he lives because there must be no homeless in his town making him obviously unaware that homeless people exist and that ignorance has freed him up to spend millions on something that can’t feed him, house him, or warm him at night. His village must also have no food banks or full food banks, all the children in his cozy hamlet have got to all have warm coats and sturdy shoes, every library is certainly stocked to the ceiling with books, and music and art programs must be bulging with funds at every school. The local university is surely turning away offers of scholarships in this man’s burg, and women’s shelters, mental health institutions, and playgrounds are all modern, clean, and empty. Unemployment in this Bedford Falls of the 21^st Century must be at absolute zero because this man chose to “invest” his many millions in a risky venture that if it profits at all, it will only profit him.

What a wonderful municipality this must be. Why, everything must be so perfect there to allow such Caligula-esque spending, it’s as if Superman was real and he has come down from Heaven and made the world right. Please, please, please tell me not who he is, but where he is. It’s certainly not Los Angeles or San Francisco because I’ve been to both and neither meet the criteria of the previous paragraph, it can’t be New York or Chicago, and Atlanta (traffic) and New Orleans (hurricane devastation) are obviously out. Could it be San Antonio, Texas? I hear that river walk is pretty nice. What about Utopia, Texas, it has the right name? Maybe it’s Louisville, CO; voted 2011’s Most Livable City. Perhaps it’s right in my neck of the country like Tulare, Visalia, or Bakersfield.

I have to know where a man can feel good at spending what amounts to a good yearly salary of 50 families for…well for nothing really.

What's the Catch

Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

-Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Here’s a new one for you. We all know that employers, in their job postings, will put qualifications like specific experience, specific education, sometimes “experience in lieu of education,” and catch phrases like, “team player, go-getter,” and “motivated individual.” Now the newest must-have qualification showing up on job postings is, “currently employed.” Companies, fearing that a worker’s skills will deteriorate while off the job, only want people who are working to apply for the jobs they post. With the unemployment rate in California at 11.7 percent as of October, that means that these employers are discriminating against over 2 million people. The 2011 job hunting Catch-22; if you want a job you have to have a job.

And what does that say about the applicants? That while employed, they are browsing Monster.com for another job? What’s to stop them from doing the same thing after they get hired by Mr. Must-Be-Working-To-Work-Here? And at the next place, and the next place, and so on?

In New Jersey it is illegal to post a job ad that requires applicants be currently employed. There are movements in other states to make it illegal there too. In California, Assemblyman Michael Allen, a Democrat from Santa Rosa is so upset he is going to introduce legislation that parrots the New Jersey law; but not until January when the legislature comes back from Christmas break. (Meanwhile, the Christmas break of the unemployed will be considerably longer.)

Until then, people who are unemployed cannot apply for some jobs, but if they are employed then they can apply for those jobs, but they wouldn’t need to apply for jobs because they have jobs, but since they have jobs they can apply for those jobs. Can you hear Yossarian whistling?

I suppose Mr. Allen is sincere in his attempt to protect the unemployed job seeker, but as far as I’m concerned, he needn’t bother. If it becomes against the law to “post” the requirement that an applicant be employed, the employers will just leave that out of their postings. Then behind the closed doors of their HR departments, they would still be free to make their hiring decisions in any manner that they fancy. Not working, not considered. Is that different than round-filing a person’s application because of race, sex, age, or religious belief?

I haven’t configured a router, switch, or server in five months but if you sit me down in front of one today I’d still be able to do it. In a year? Probably. In five years? Who knows? Who knows how to know? Is there some kind of algorithm out there that you can plug in the months out of work and get a chart that tracks the degradation of skills? Probably. Is it accurate? It doesn’t have to be. HR managers just have to believe it is. Maybe I should write a program that does that. If I put some bright colors in the graphs, most managers and vice presidents I've met would just about pee their pants to look at them.

I’d laugh but people might think I was as crazy as a B-25 pilot who wants to continue to fly missions.

Call Me Sunday

"I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room."
-Raymond Chandler

Dream job three; writing pulpy detective novels.

Of course I’ve read the works of Dashiell Hammett and James Elroy and I’ve seen enough film noir to get the gist of how a successful, fictional detective behaves, so to create a good one I’d need certain character traits.

He needs to have a drinking problem. Not a beer or wine drinking problem but hard liquor drinking problem like bourbon or scotch, or Nyquil. A gambling problem can be used as a substitute but that’s harder to feed seeing as how bars and liquor stores can be found on nearly as many street corners as people spinning signs that advertise “We Buy Gold!” or “Oak Furniture Liquidation,” whereas casinos and bookies require a little more work to root out. Although I suppose a good detective shouldn’t have too much trouble locating either of those.

He’ll need to have a whip smart, young, tight-skirt-wearing, brunette, girl Friday, who is pinning for his affections. She needs to have an innocent name like Annabelle or Hedwig, but have a less than innocent side to which he is blind. She needs to be able to do crack research, provide bail, and deliver coffee and aspirin at the drop of a hat. Oh, He’ll need a hat too.

His cases will have to either have a client who is a, or involves a femme fatale. This woman needs to be mysterious, ooze a cocktail of sexual tension and indifference, sport either a large hat or a shock of hair covering one eye, smoke almost continuously, and deposit her fingerprints on murder weapons and doorknobs at crime scenes or leave the aroma of her distinctive perfume at these same locations. Wine glasses with her lipstick turning up in the same room with dead bodies wouldn’t hurt either. She should be blonde (which is why his assistant needs to be a brunette). A redhead can be substituted for the femme fatale but not for the assistant, unless the assistant has freckles. When he first meets her the running dialog in his head should say something like, “I tried to pay her as little attention as possible but with those porcelain legs, those red lips, and that silver .38 cal police special in her hands, she was about as easy to ignore as a trombone player in Bible class.”

He’ll need a longtime friend who can be counted on to provide information that the police, FBI, or Scotland Yard couldn’t unearth in a million years with a million shovels. He can be a bartender, former partner, obscure family member, or run a diner. His drinking problem should be worse than my detective’s and he should always need rent money or “just a few bucks to get by.” Occasionally he should take over for my guy on stakeouts or following leads. If he ever is assigned to follow the femme fatale, he should either end up discovering she is lying about everything she has told him or end up dead.

My detective will need an office in an old building on the rundown side of town. It should be upstairs, no elevator, and have a door with a semi-opaque window through which he can only discern the silhouettes of anyone in his lobby. The furniture should be wood, secondhand, and uncomfortable. No air conditioning but instead an oscillating fan that moves with the speed of a man driving to the dentist, and a pulsing, red neon sign just outside the window over the large sofa where he sleeps (passes out) most nights. His ink blotter will have nothing hidden under it but everyone else’s will hide case-turning clues. The bottom right drawer of his desk should contain two dirty tumblers and that bottle of bourbon or scotch. The bottom left drawer should be stuck closed.

There should be goons. Big guys with high testosterone levels and low IQs. They should work for the femme fatale’s husband, boyfriend, or employer. He should meet them when he’s yanked off the street and stuffed between them into the back seat of a large, dark, American car. After delivering a message/beating from their boss, they should dump him in an alley or down by the harbor where his assistant or that longtime friend should find him, take him back to his office, and patch him up; all the while lecturing him on his line of work. Even though they were born and raised in the United States, they should speak English like it’s a second language. Saying things like, “I should ought to have knowed.”

When he dispatches a bad guy by either getting the drop on him or tossing him off a building, he’ll need to deliver a proper catch phrase. I’m thinking of, “That’s going on my resume.” He’ll seldom carry a gun but when he does it will not be something modern and dependable like The Sig Sauer P290 Two-Tone sub-compact 9MM, with integrated laser module and removable grips. He’d have the Browning M1911 .45 instead. It’s square, clunky, and not particularly accurate but it’s loud enough to garner the most jaded denizen of the lower parts of town’s attention, and if you happen to hit your target it does a lot of damage. He will constantly have it taken from him before he gets a shot off.

He’d also need something to set him apart; a quirk that in turn makes him both distinctive and slightly snarky. Perhaps he could quote Shakespeare, live on an old tugboat in Oxnard, or always be popping junior mints in his mouth, or all three.

He’d have to work in Los Angeles. Although it’s the last place I’d choose to live in California, I must admit the best detective stories, both book and film, are set there. William Faulkner called it, “The plastic asshole of the world.” Talk about your ringing endorsements. Los Angeles seems like a city where the majority of the population just ended up; gathered from the rest of the country, pressed and pushed out of Mr. Faulkner’s orifice of choice until they found themselves at the edge of the continent, stuck against the waves without means of surmounting them, and no desire to turn around. Once those people came to grips with their plight, they started figuring out ways to get by. Some do honestly and others not so much. My detective would protect the former from the latter.

I’ll need proper and attention getting titles. I looked up the top 100 crime novels to see what the titles have in common. Forty five of the 100 start with the word “the” (The Third Man, The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon, etc..) so that will have to be in there. Eighteen either have the words dead or death, or a reference to it like The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, or Game, Set & Match, so a reference to death needs to be included. Thirteen mention a woman’s name or a reference to sexual desire so add that to the pot. Eleven have some variation of “man” in the title if you include postman, policeman, and Chinaman, so “man” is in. So I plug all this information into the detective story name generator (The, woman’s name, death, man) and get the title: The Madonna Murder Man. Yuck. Maybe I’ll just give the book an incredibly obscure title to get people’s attention, like writer Paul Gosling did when he wrote a book that made the 100 list titled, “The Running Duck.”

Finally my detective will need a name. Days of the week make good names but Monday played for the Hated dodgers, the actress Tuesday Weld – who would make a great girl Friday if she dyed her hair – has that day, Wednesday is taken by the charming girl from the Adams Family, Thursday is brilliantly used in Jasper Fforde’s work, and Friday is already taken by Dragnet’s Joe. That leaves Saturday and Sunday. Saturday seems a little too cheery for a detective so I’m stuck with Sunday. I don’t know if Sunday would be his first or last name so maybe I should go with a single name, like Cher, Sting, or God.

Here is the probable first sentence of The Madonna Murder Man, “It was a hot, filthy, and miserable Sunday in Los Angeles, and so was I.”

Black Friday / Black Mood

Today is Black Friday. Named because it is the day retailers hope to be able to put down the red pen and pick up the black one, because this is the point they’ll start turning a profit. They hope.

This year’s Black Friday is the day my red heart came this close to turning black. Yesterday was the day we were supposed to express what we are most thankful for, but I wasn’t able to compile my list until today. This isn’t complete by any means.

What I’m thankful for:

I’m thankful that I’m not one of those kids standing on the corner with a cardboard sign, trying to get people to turn in for a car wash to raise the money for a friend or family member’s funeral.

I’m thankful that the most useful job hunting advice I’ve received so far is; lie. I realize now that lying is the only way I’ll ever get my foot in any door. Once in that door I’ll scramble and spin until I get the job or am shown the other side of that aforementioned door. Why Lie? Because lying works. Men lie to women to get them in bed, leaders lie to their people to keep them sheep, and I’ve personally seen where a man lied about a friend of mine at work and got himself promoted and my friend demoted, and eventually out of a job. I’m going to lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. College degree? Yup, from Harvard. Management experience? You bet. I supervised 10,000 children at a sneaker factory in China. Do you know VMware? Know it, I invented it.

I’m thankful for the lifetime of unanswered prayers I’ve received from
God. It took awhile but now I get it; no help is coming. I’m on my own. In fact it makes me stronger. I’m a superhero of bitterness and anger. God won’t help me; he’s too busy pouring money and success on child molesters in Pennsylvania and in cathedrals draped in gold and hypocrisy throughout the world, powerbrokers on Wall Street, extremely fat felines under the capital dome in Washington, doomsayers who are proven wrong over and over again but still get people to send in their dollars, and little Napoleons (who lie to get ahead) in every business and company across our great nation. I’m feeling so strong right now that I can even destroy God himself with a single thought. Here goes; there is no God. You’re welcome.

I’m thankful that my thyroid shut down, my immune system is systematically eating away my joints and thereby destroying my bones and that I don’t have the intelligence, or drive to do anything about it. It means the final sleep is near which is perfect for me because all I want is to sleep anyway.

I’m thankful that I’ve never known great success so I’ve never had to contemplate which person, whose livelihood I’ve held sway over, needs to be thrown into the street to bolster my bottom line and improve my portfolio. That’s time that could be better spent on the golf course talking about how we can get rid of our nigger President or at a “Gentleman’s” club sucking down Dewers and perusing the Mercedes Benz brochure.

I’m thankful that we have programs like the “It Gets Better” Project to let young gay people know that they need to shut up and keep quite to make it easier for the rest of us to pretend they don’t exist.

#########################THE TWIST#######################

The above person is who I am fighting from becoming every night when I go to sleep and every morning when I wake up. Alcohol doesn’t chase it away, and I can’t afford drugs. I only have this meager forum to spit it all out into.

The next time I see one of those kids with the cardboard sign, I’ll pull in a get my car washed.

I won’t lie. It would probably get me fired from any job I’d get because of the lie, and it belittles those who did get college degrees and some of those people are people I love.

I won’t kill God. I saw a marquee in front of a church the other day that said, “God’s greatest gift – unanswered prayer.” I don’t think this means all prayer, just a couple here and a couple there. It builds character and perhaps suggests what you asked for wasn’t something you really needed or was something that would have done more harm than good.

My medical problems are manageable and not uncommon. Plus it’s an opportunity to show my sons how to thrive despite adversity.

I’ve known success. I just define it differently than the men in my little scenario from above.

It doesn’t have to get better, because we get better.

#####################THE TURN############################

What I’m really thankful for:

I’m thankful for rain.

I’m thankful that I can visit the ocean.

I’m thankful there are good people still.

I’m thankful baseball will return.

I’m thankful I can breath, and read, and write, and listen to music, and laugh at John Cleese in Fawlty Towers reruns, that Ray Bradbury wrote, that Mark Knopfler played, that Ann Wilson sang, that George Washington Carver invented, that they put caramel in Gulden Draak Ale so it tastes better with chocolate chip cookies, that my sons are imaginative and funny, that my wife is still my wife, and that prayers go unanswered.

What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

-Ohio (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

On Saturday, during something called The Family Leader: Thanksgiving Family Forum, Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said about the Occupy Wall Street protesters, “…get a job, right after you take a bath.” I know, charming right?

I wonder which protester he was speaking about. Perhaps he was talking about Kayvan Sabeghi. Mr. Sabeghi was clean and had a job during the two tours of duty he served as an Army Ranger in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He wasn’t injured in either tour, but he was gravely injured while making his way home from the Occupy Oakland protest. He was hit in the abdomen four times by police and taken to jail where he sat for 24 hours, with a ruptured spleen but without medical attention, even though he asked for some. Oh, and Mr. Sabeghi is the co-owner of a brewery in El Cerrito; one of those job creators that men like Newt praise, when he isn’t insulting protesters that is.

Maybe he was referring to 84-year-old Dorli Rainey, who was pepper sprayed in the Occupy Seattle protests. As near as I can tell from the photos I’ve found on the Internet of Ms. Rainey, the ones where she is not doused in milk to counteract the pepper spray, she seems very clean. As to having a job, I think she deserves not to work, being 84 and all.

Newt could have been talking about the many members of the clergy, who have joined in these protests, but he would have had to take a look at the face of the Occupy movement and that seems unlikely. And besides, they likely are not a member of the correct clergy in Newt’s eyes.

No, what Mr. Gingrich was doing was what is called an ad hominem attack. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy where one attacks an opponent by pointing out a trait that others might find negative, hoping it will negate whatever their argument is. When he says, “take a bath” he’s telling his followers not just that those people are dirty, but also that they are not like them. He is setting up the old “us vs. them” scenario (another fallacy called a false dilemma). When he says, “get a job” he is saying they are lazy when 1) he has no information that most or any of the protesters are unemployed, and 2) he has no information that any have applied for work and been rejected because of their hygiene.

Newt may not even have known he was proposing these logical fallacies. He likely was making a comment he knew would get a laugh from the “The Family Leader” audience. I went to their website and found what I surmise is their mission statement, “…a consistent, courageous voice in churches, in the legislature, in the media, in the courtroom, in the public square…always standing for God’s truth.” All the ellipses are directly from their website, less you think I’m leaving something out. It’s been my experience that courageous people seldom refer to themselves as courageous.

A lot of Occupy protesters are up in arms about Newt’s comments but it’s a waste of time to be. Anyone who falls for his attack and writes off anything those protesters say are likely already solidly on the other side. Mostly what will happen is a few conservative voters will move from voting for one of the other Republican candidates to voting for Newt. Six of one…(ellipsis added by me).

It could have been worse. Mr. Gingrich could have said something about the Occupy protesters like, “It just took a few shootings at Kent State to shut that down for good.” Oh wait, Ann Coulter already said exactly that.

The Occupy protesters are not perfect. But in a world where a factory owner went from making 30 times what a worker in that factory made - likely deserved - to making 3,000 times what those workers make today, if the factory hadn’t moved to China that is, these people are doing something. Someone needs to do something.

How can they run when they know?

Bread Job

Ooh La Petite Boulangerie

-The refrain from a jingle for a bakery in Thousand Oaks, CA that I heard on the radio about a thousand times between July 1983 and May 1985.

Bread Baker.

Sometimes I’ll watch Anthony Bourdain’s show No Reservations, where he travels around the world and across the country sampling local cuisine and culture. I’ve seen him in Cuba where he toured a cigar factory and on Ted Nugent’s ranch, the one in Texas, where he ate, well I’ll leave it to you to guess what he ate. But the show, or the part of a show that I remember most is when he was in Paris, not the one in Texas. On that show he didn’t sit in a café on the Champs-Elysees sipping absinthe and flinging quiche at the wait staff, or whatever they do over there, he instead visited a bakery, presumably several blocks off "The most beautiful avenue of the world.” All they made at this bakery was bread. No éclairs, no croissants, no petit fours, just bread. They baked baguettes by the hundreds and sent them off to city’s restaurants and markets.

What more noble endeavor could there be than creating the bread that is the birthright of every Parisian? It’s like being the guy who supplies the beef for sandwiches in Philadelphia, the guy who delivers shrimp to restaurants in New Orleans, the guy who cuts the ribs in Kansas City, or the guy who makes the rice at Las Cazuelas Mexican Restaurant in Fresno. (It’s the best rice in town and therefore the best Mexican restaurant in town.)

What I know about baking could fill a business card, on one side. I can cook but I need to have exact directions and at least two mulligans. I only have a very vague idea of how flour turns into bread. It is flour right? I know bakers get up early, very early. I know bakery floors are a bitch to clean because my brother who has lived everywhere, including Paris, and done everything cleaned one to pay for stuff for awhile. But I think at the end of the day, knowing I made something as essential as oxygen is to humans and wrecks are to the success of NASCAR, would make it easier for my head to hit the pillow each night. Even though it would come right up off the pillow again in the time it takes to fly halfway from Paris, France to Paris, Texas.

Pilot is Job One

I really don’t want to work in Information Technology particularly, but that’s where my skill set and my best chance at a good paycheck lives. But if I could do any other job, what would it be? What would I do if I could do anything? I decided to make a list. One job per blog. It might go on for weeks or it might end after this one. We’ll see.

Pilot.

First of all, I like the fact that there are other definitions of words aside from what pops into our heads when we hear it. Older meanings, ancient, worn, and rubbed smooth by a thousand hands and a million tongues. The dictionary I use says the word “pilot” was born around the early 1500’s. It came from Medieval Greek words like “pedotes” which means rudder or “pedon” their word for a steering oar. It wasn’t until the 20^th century that it had anything to do with airplanes, thanks to those brothers testing their motorized kite at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

Today a pilot boards a ship that is entering a harbor or maybe the mouth of a river. His job is to guide the ship through the harbor to its mooring or through a channel to safer or more open water.

As a pilot I’d come aboard the most magnificent ocean liners, or the most sophisticated freighters or oil tankers, not to take the command from the captain but instead advise on steerage and navigation. I would know the tides better than the moon herself, both the ebb and the flood. The location of sand bars and sunken wrecks would be familiar to me as the aches in my joints or the scars on my knuckles. I wouldn’t touch a single spoke on the ship’s wheel but reveal my secrets to the helmsman from the back of the bridge; put that church spire two points of your starboard bow and make 6 knots for 30 minutes. I’d remember the mantra for the use of navigational aids; red, right, returning.

To become a harbor pilot you have to have hundreds of hours at sea, plus apprentice under a pilot. I don’t know if anyone would be interested in hiring a 50-year-old as an apprentice on any kind of ship, but look at Benjamin Button was much older when he worked on that tug. Of course he was aging backwards and I’m just aging. A degree from a maritime school or being a former deck officer in the Navy or Coast Guard wouldn’t hurt. I’ll look into the former since I don’t have the latter.

Boots

A week or so ago a man named Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud died at an undisclosed location, most likely of colon cancer, and also most likely at a hospital in New York. His age was simply put as, “in his eighties.” His death made news because this man was heir to the throne of Saudi Arabia. He was the half-brother of the current ruler, King Abdullah. Now a new heir will need to be chosen by a group that King Abdullah created as part of his reforms called the Allegiance Council. Although I don’t know how much reformation this king can claim since this group is made up of his brothers, half-brothers, and nephews. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Picking a leader by birthright is as foreign and abhorrent to me as breathing ammonia or laughing during an Adam Sandler movie, so I couldn’t care less which of these disgustingly wealthy, ancient men is next to occupy that throne. In fact as I read the article of this man’s death, words like prince, heir, throne, crown, royal family, and kingdom jumped out at me as archaic and downright alien. But it got me thinking. How can people live without objection in a place where their next leader is chosen by their current one? I know that the religious leaders over there are in cahoots with the family Saud - one side washing the other side’s hands, and away their sins - but I find I have little respect for people who sit by at let someone run things, collect so much money they live in palaces and light their cigars with gold bars, because some guy says God wants them in charge. Then I realized, their not that much different than you and me.

Here we don’t have kings of course. But we do let people ascend to leadership of us simply because of who they are related to; either by blood or acquaintance. In Saudi Arabia it’s called a monarchy, over here its called cronyism. Actually ascend not a good word to use because it suggests they moved upward when I reality they just did a lateral.

Where I used to work, the VP of Sales and Marketing was a friend of the president of the corporation, that president being the grandson of the founder. See the similarity to those men in Riyadh? In the time I was working there the Sales and Marketing VP brought in a friend to run the Fresno office, another to run the IT department whose job later change to something like Manager of Advanced Services, whatever the hell that means, and a third guy who once tried to have me written up for failing to renew a web domain by faking an e-mail message. It was a good thing he was so inept with computers, so I could prove he never sent the message and exonerate myself. Unfortunately my boss was the IT Manager and his buddy, so my exposure of his weak and fraudulent attack when nowhere. Just before I left the Sales and Marketing VP’s wife started working there and yet another friend came onboard with an equally undecipherable title as the Advanced Services guy. While the one pal was IT Manager he took so many days off we started a spreadsheet to track them. It ended up being 62 days in one year, that’s a day a week plus 10 more. The man running the Fresno office once replied to a computer tech who asked him a question, “Don’t address me.” They might as well have just put on crowns and told us to eat cake.

I understand getting a job through a friend, and I wish I had one who could get me employment, but to be so blatantly lazy or aloof?

Today, Sunday, I took a morning walk. As I passed a bus stop around the corner I saw a pair of work boots neatly tucked under the bench. I snapped a photo with my cell phone. I envisioned some blue collar guy who might have changed out of his work clothes, including foot ware, for his commute home. Maybe he wanted to travel in clean clothes, or maybe it’s a requirement of his job. His coveralls perhaps in a grocery bag, maybe even a tool bag at one knee. Perhaps in his excitement about having the next two days off he neglected to bring his boots on the bus when it pulled up. I hope he notices before Monday morning so he can either replace them, or hunt them down. I’d hate to think he would have to take a day off, and/or lose pay, so he can replace those boots.

I doubt if either the cronies at my former workplace or the brothers, half-brothers, or nephews of the king of Saudi Arabia ever forgot their work boots under a bus stop bench. I doubt if the cronies ever rode a bus, if anyone in that royal family could identify either a bus stop or a bus, or if anyone from either group ever wore anything that could remotely be described as “work” boots.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe those people at my last place of employment are hardworking and intelligent. Maybe the men, it will always be men, who run Saudi Arabia are the best qualified to run that country. Maybe those boots were left by the president of a local company who rides the bus as an example to his employees and he has dozens of other pairs in his humble closet at home. Maybe, but I doubt it.

Calypso

“Everything that's not broken is rotten, and everything that's not rotten is broken."

- Patrick Schnepp, Director La Rochelle Maritime Museum

I remember seeing the surface of the sea from underneath. Looking up at the mercurial waves through a forest of kelp and shimmering schools of fish. I didn’t have a scuba suit or even need to hold my breath, although sometimes I still did. I could exist in this world because of a man whose love of the oceans and desire to share that fascination created a television show about exploring what hid under the waves from 1968 to 1975. Or from when I was seven until I was fourteen; prime explorer hero worship years for a boy.

The man was Jacques-Yves Cousteau, or just plain Jacques Cousteau to us Americans. Mr. Cousteau created a show called “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” which weekly took us beneath the waves to visit rivers of jellyfish, rolling foothills of seals, and mountains upon mountains of uncountable varieties of fish. Had men not landed on the moon in 1969, my all time boyhood dream job would have probably have stayed an oceanographer an not switched to astronaut.

Aside from the man with the eagle-beak nose and the red wool cap, the main thing I remember from these weekly sojourns into the briny main was his stout and faithful ship; the Calypso.

The Calypso was born a wooden minesweeper, made from Oregon pine and handed off to England during World War II, mines being much cozier with iron than the soft woods of the Pacific Northwest. After the war she made some coin as a ferry, but her true calling, and claim to fame, was on television opposite Get Smart and I Dream of Jeannie. You had to be something special to draw a preteen boy away from the Barbaras Feldon and Eden. She was.

Years later when I did go to sea is it any wonder that it was on a white ship, like the Calypso?

Jacques is long gone. He passed in 1997 at 87. But the Calypso is still around, although barely. Legal wrangling between his widow and the grandson of the original purchaser, who leased it to Mr. Cousteau for one franc a year, has left the once proud ship in a state of limbo. At this point, she sits in a warehouse, in pieces, waiting for one side or the other to quit picking at the corpse.

There is a saying that goes something like, “A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.” I don’t know who said that but maybe we should apply it to the Calypso. A ship like the Calypso should neither rot nor reside indoors on dry land. I say let’s sink her and make her a habitat for the sea life that was brought into our childhood homes once a week.

Mud

“We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.”

-Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front.

A friend told me that in the context of my job hunting, I have a fight in front of me. I feel like it. I feel like I’ve been dropped in a no man’s land between the lines, but I don’t know which line is friend and which is foe. I don’t even know if there is a friendly side. I stumble across pickets who throw me back into the mud and barbed wire, confused, and angry, and depressed. I can’t keep my head down and wait for the shooting to stop because only by fighting to one side or the other will I ever again provide for my family and myself. But it’s a fight I am ill prepared for. I don’t know the weapons that win these kinds of battles today, and I have few resources from which to draw. I’m afraid that by the time I gain veteran status in this war, we’ll be living in the poor house, or worse; Los Angeles.

I keep getting ambushed by an enemy I can neither see nor hear, whose weapons are unfamiliar to me, and against which I have only the thin defense of 30 years of showing up, doing my job, and keeping my nose clean. So I stagger and throw blind punches but never land one. When these ambushes are over I’m left wondering why they felt the need to attack me when all I did was ask for a job.

This week, and it’s only Tuesday as I write this, I was ambushed twice. On Monday I got a call from a man who worked at a cloud computing company in San Francisco where I applied for a job building virtual networks and maintaining network connectivity. I can do this in my sleep. I had written in my cover letter that my experience looked like a great fit to the job description and that I could start right away. He agreed, even using the term, “Hit the ground running.” He said he would pass my resume to the hiring manager right away and I should expect a call within the hour. The company was in what he called the old Hills Brothers building, standing in the very shadow of the Bay Bridge. He went on to talk about $10 membership to the gym downstairs, Free Lunch Fridays, free fruit and drinks every day, and commuter assistance. Throw in Giants tickets and I’d work there for free. I quickly wrote a bunch of notes on the specific protocols and devices where experience was required in the ad, and waited by the phone for that call. I was going to kick ass. Instead I got an e-mail after about a half an hour saying I didn’t fit the job and they were going with someone else. Back in the mud for you.

Today I got a call from a recruiter for a flat screen monitor manufacturer where I’d applied for a job providing technician support. They wanted someone with a lot of experience with Cisco CLI (I have 12 years), Linux (I have 3 years), and customer technical support (16 years). Then he asked me about my experience with VMWARE, something that wasn’t on the job description. I have almost none. He said something about deal killer and hung up. Up into the barbed wire for you.

I was tired after the recruiter call. I decided to drive up to Shaver Lake. Get some windshield time, listen to some music, grab some fresh air, and see some blue water. They are working on the dam at Shaver so the lake is the lowest it’s been since, well since they built it. I looked at the rocky moonscape, the stumps of long ago cut down trees, and the puddle that was all that could be called a lake today. I feel like that lake. Not too long ago I was full and I was strong. Now I am far weaker than I ever thought I could be, the stumps of my unfinished accomplishments are exposed; no college degree, no technical certifications, no equity, and little retirement. But the good news is they will begin refilling Shaver in January. Maybe I’ll be refilled soon too. Then those recruiters, those hiring managers, and those pickets better watch out.

Heaven Can Wait

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Peter Tosh

I saw a bumper sticker that posed the question, “Are you going to heaven?” Under the quote was the address of a web site. I suppose the idea was to get people to go to the web site to find out if their lifestyle is going to send them north or south after they die. My guess is also somewhere on the web site there is some information on the steps one need to take to make it to the Pearly Gates, should the question be answered in the negative.

The bumper sticker does not mention if it is a Christian web site you’d be visiting, but judging by where I live and my experience on the religion of my fellow community members, I think it probably was. I’d bet real money that John 14:6 (I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me:) comes up at some point. Maybe a pop up ad.

I’ve always thought that getting a membership to the country club as a reason to behave was a little shallow, if not materialistic. Speaking of the Book of John, in it Jesus said, “In my Father's house are many mansions.” Why mansions? Why not a nice bungalow, or even just a small room with a comfortable bed and a nice view? Maybe mansion meant something different 2,000 years ago, but today, when I think of a mansion I think of a large house, probably too large for just one family, with ostentatious furniture, plenty gold fixtures, servants, and a large grounds. Mansions? This is the same guy that threw the money changers out of the temple?

Heaven, or paradise, is not exclusive to Christianity. Neither are saints as it turns out. Islam has them too, but they’re called Wali in that religion. I read about an Islamic saint named Rabia Basri. She was seen one night running through the streets of Basra, Iraq with a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. Some of her neighbors asked, “What gives?” She answered that she wanted to use the torch to burn down the gates of Paradise and use the water to put out the fires of Hell. Further inquiries produced the idea from Miss Basri that she wanted to worship not in fear of punishment or hope of a reward, but simply for the love of God. She thought those ideas block the way to God. You kind of have to respect someone who won’t take a paycheck.

I wonder if in today’s churches, if the guy at the front, whatever he is called, suggested the flock forget about Heaven and Hell and just show up, how may would? My guess is that man being man, went confronted with a behavior, asks what’s in it for me? If he were told that nothing was promised other than someone you’ll never see or hear from while on Earth will love them, I think most would look elsewhere for something to do on Sunday mornings.

Nothing

 FATHER:  One day, lad, all this will be yours.
 ERBERT:  What, the curtains?
 FATHER:  No, not the curtains, lad.  All that you can see!
          Stretched out over the hills and valleys of this land!
          This'll be your kingdom,lad!

-Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I used to work for a painting contractor, back there was music on AM radio and social media was a hand-written letter. He drove a 1972 Oldsmobile Delta 88; light yellow, two door, leather seats, nice. But once, when his car was in the shop, he spent the day driving around in his son’s, my friend’s, Datsun 260Z. He had me ride along with him that day as he drove from job to job because he wanted to talk to me. The Olds was an automatic but the Datsun was a standard so he mistakenly watched the tachometer in the Datsun thinking he was looking at the speedometer. We spent most of the morning driving around at 30MPH and 5,000 RPMs in second gear, with him thinking he was going 50 MPH and wondering what that loud whine from the engine was. When I showed him the real speedometer he pulled over and allowed me to drive.

The reason he wanted to talk to me was to show me how what he did, what his company did, would be around for years to come. We went to a bank that was being constructed near the freeway where he checked on the status of the work and I sat in the car listening to Paul Harvey; he wouldn’t let me change the channel so there would be no AM music that day.

After the bank we went by St. Paul Armenian Church in the center of town, which was also under construction. After talking to the foreman he got back in the car and pointing at the cross on the very top of the church, he said, “That’s real gold leaf on that cross. It will shine for years.”

Our third stop for the day was and apartment building that was probably 20 years old and getting a sort of facelift paint job. My boss brought the painting crew some sodas and a watermelon to cut up. It was pretty hot outside.

At the end of the day, he said, “Years from now, I can drive by these places, point at them and say ‘I helped build that, or I helped paint that.’” Then he said, “A man should have something to show for his time here. He should have something he can point at, or hold when he’s an old man and say he made it, or fixed it.”

I spent the last 25 years working at two places; a ceramic paint manufacturing plant and a phone company. There is absolutely nothing that can be held up, touched, climbed, entered, seen, tasted, or even remembered as proof I was ever even there. No buildings I can drive by and certainly no crosses, golden or otherwise. I suppose I could drive out and point at neighborhoods and say, “You see those houses? There were people in those houses years ago who had faster access to the Internet because of me.” Maybe I could find a ceramic bunny in a thrift store and say, “There’s a 50% chance I tested the pink paint used on his nose.”

There is no legacy. What I have to show at one job is day after day of testing paint to see if the color matched the last batch, and the one before that, and the one before that. At the other job I have countless hours worrying that some other man’s systems or networks would go down, hours both at work and at home, while sleeping, while on vacation, while watching the Super Bowl, and while at Thanksgiving dinner. I remember driving out to the office during the 2002 World Series (Giants/Angels) to babysit a router. No manager, supervisor, boss, vice president, foreman, or any other management personage so much as called, much less showed up.

But every hour I gave to those two men who ran those two companies, one who I left to go to work for the other, are simply gone. They amount to absolutely nothing. I might as well have been sleeping (Like my Vice President at the paint company often did, pretending to read Sunset Magazine).

I don’t know how I can work at my next job, whatever that turns out to be, and still pretend to have any investment in it. How I can pretend to care? How can smile when my next manager brings in yet another unqualified friend or family member to sit in an office, attend meetings, and collect a large paycheck? How do you do it?

My painting contractor boss is till around, although retired. If he wants to he can drive by that bank building, which is now a comic book store but still as clean and as shinny as the day his men laid down the last brush stroke, or he can drive by that church and see the cross is still as bright as the day the paint, with actual gold in it, was put on it. I envy him, even if he is still driving that Olds.