You can’t always get what you want…

You ever had one of those days when everyone wants something from you? That’s what my day was like yesterday.

My job largely consists of getting people what they want… well, not everything they want ’cause that can’t be healthy. Sometimes they get what they need instead, as the old song goes. With varying degrees of success, therefore, I am the Great Provider. And that’s fine. It’s just a job. It’s not like I take that home with me or anything.

Some days are more intense than others – it’s serendipity or synchronicity or chaos theory – one of those. All of them, maybe.

But on days like the one I had yesterday it’s like the forces align and array themselves to assure that your day will be homogenous in its general suckiness. Genral Suckiness (salute here). It boggles the mind. How is it possible? Practically every e-mail, phone call, conversation and semaphore I got was about someone wanting something. Want. Waaant.

What am I? A veritable cornucopia of getting shit done? I can be helpful, sure, but there comes a time when you just feel like hurling the phone clear across the room. You wish you had one of those old bakelite phones where you could get some good emphasis on hanging up instead of just pressing the off button. There’s no satisfaction to be had from pressing the button and sticking the phone back in your pocket. You want to slam something.

I put in the usual ten hour work day and had to deal with the same kind of shit when I left the office. It just seems that these things gang up on you and you just have to try and fight your way out tooth and nail. And quite possibly go off and hide under the stairs in the basement when you get home. Turn off the phone, computer, brain and lights – not necessarily in that order. But that really is a rare luxury. It’s a weird thing though – you can be so in demand and yet so totally inconsequential at the same time. I guess that’s just the way modern life works.

ROL

Feed the Demon

“Kill your darlings” they say. But they do talk a lot, don’t they?

I am a believer in the opposite theorem – feed the demon. So I do just that.

I feed my obsessions to the point where it’s down right unhealthy. That’s why I find myself in these interesting conundrums, living in interesting times. I got the job for which I did the diagnostic tests. Like I said, I generally test well. It doesn’t really mean anything – other than the fact that I test well, but it obviously fools some people. It’s generally enough to be able to fool some of the people some of the time.

It means I now have to go into training. Which is going to be interesting for a couple of different reasons. The main office is in another town all together and I have to go live there for about a month. That should be interesting. And another thing – the candidates that got through the tests come from all over. The ones living in the same city will have six weeks of training on some weird half-time schedule. Those that don’t, i.e. me and a handful of other lucky ones, will do the same amount of work in three weeks. Ok. That’s supposed to be for our own good. Same amount of work, half the time. I’ll be in my hotel room late at night doing my homework, sharpening my knife and cleaning my metaphorical gun. Knife’s real though. Good thing I don’t sleep.

When you feed the demon, the demon also feeds you. That’s the moral here. You know, in a Nietzschean “when you look into the abyss the abyss also looks into you” kind of way.

I am also applying for a university thing. Mores the pity if I get that too. But I had a good long talk with the professor and he seemed positive. So that should work out nicely. Damn.

And I went to a fair. This was for the other-other-other job I have. My own little budding business which I run with an old colleague. I’m the pimp, he’s the whore. It’s blatantly obvious as I watch him hand out business cards and network his way around the place. I just stand back and let him work, enjoying the show. I don’t mean to convey that I am not perfectly capable of whoring myself, but I like to think of I’m more a high-end commodity. Not for everyone. Those who like action, maybe. The exotic isn’t always the easiest sell. That’s why the partnership works so well.

Feed the demon.

Trust me, it’s the only way to go.

And that way you won’t be bored.

ROL

have gun – will travel

Things have been a little insane lately. Not that things aren’t always, but more than usual. Seriously.

I am always looking for work. Partly because – what am I going to do with all my spare time? and partly because I’m just a little twisted that way. It’s not like I have much else going for me, so I might as well work, right? If I work myself hard enough I can sleep and not start seeing Tyler Durden hanging out by the copying machine. At least, that’s the theory… I know this because Tyler knows this.

So I found myself on a train heading north the other day for a job interview. Well, not so much an interview as a diagnostic test. I generally test well, but prefer contextual knowledge so just rattling off facts and maxims isn’t really my thing. I get to the place, find the magic door and have a mini-interview with the lady who’s in charge of the testing and then I am put into a room with four other people.

This is enough of a test right there. Trying hard not to let the fact that they’ve stuck us in a room with no air conditioning bother me I look around and nod. I was lucky enough to carry my own pen, since one was not provided. The girl sitting across from me is eating candy. Loudly. She doesn’t manage to finish it for the duration. Hmm… If this was a different process I would say that part of the test would be to not strangle the young lady in question. Focusing is part of the test too, I guess. And I do just that.

I turn the pages looking over the questions. Brace myself. Gather my wits and just get on with it. After an hour and a half I’m done. The four other hopefuls were writing furiously when I entered and when I stood to leave they were still writing furiously, heads bent low over their desks. I stand, look around, do the nod thing and leave.

As I hand in my paper I smile and say “Okay, so it’s been an hour and a half. I’m not going to become smarter, younger or more pleasing to the eye”. I smile. Shake hands. And leave.

I am not getting the job, which is fine. I applied mostly out of curiosity anyway. But that feeling, you know, when you stand to leave when everyone else is still hard at work… It can either be a good thing, or really, really bad. I honestly don’t know this time. At university I did the same thing a couple of times, freaking everyone out. When you study for a specific test it’s easier, though. You just need to know your shit. This time it was not like that. You either know stuff, or you don’t. Shrug and move on. Occam’s razor.

Next week I will be off again. This time relating to a different project. On Monday I’m having a serious conversation with a man about a thing. If that goes well I might find myself in a rather curious situation. I may have to chose between three things that are more or less full time. That’s going to be interesting.

Hence the opening line on this particular rant – have gun, will travel. I don’t much care, right now. I can always make a living. Maybe on my next interview I should just saunter in, put my big boots on the desk and go “here we are, now entertain us…”

ROL

Rhetoric – Bigger Guns

I’m taking a course in rhetoric at the university. It’s one of those online internet things – that way you don’t have to see the faces of the ever-hopeful FNG.s Why would I do such a thing? Because I get bored? Because I have an IQ of 146, which is three more than Ted Bundy? Because I might as well do something useful with my time when I can’t sleep? Because I need bigger guns?

Possibly all of the above. I’m a very complicated person, I have two sides to me…

I don’t really believe more learning is what I need. I gots them book thangs all in check. I knows my readin’, ritin’ and rithmetic. I just like playing with the bunnies, that’s all.

Problem is, I’m not as starry eyed as I used to be. Gets a bit tough after hitting 30. Hell, it got a bit tough after I hit sixteen to be quite frank. And as you grow older cops, soldiers and teachers get younger. Damn. You should see the two I have now. They are no doubt good at what they do, well trained, well educated young professionals. Sort of the whole hitch right there. The guy looks like I could throw him clear into next Tuesday without breaking a sweat. He’s got one of those straggly little “look I’m all grown up now” beards. The girl looks like one of those “I take spinning lessons just so I can bounce around the room with boundless energy” chicks.

How do I know what they look like?

They have little movies for each weeks assignment. Double damn. They do a little presentation, talk their talk and what not. I have to tell you sometimes the fantasy is better. I would have preferred thinking of my lecturers in Rethoric as two stately white haired Roman senate figures in crisp white togas. Not that the lady would have been allowed in the senate, but she could have been like Aspasia or Diotima (look ‘em up).

Still I’m learning new stuff. Some of it in Latin. That’s always good. You know – bigger guns in Latin can’t be bad. And I’ve always had weak spot for the art of arguing without resorting to telling people they have stupid hair.

ROL

The End is … Nigh-ish? It’s Small Bang time.

In Cern (Geneva) physicists are doing a Bing Bang thing today. With a particle accelerator they are going to try and recreate the Bang, but in a smaller scale – yes, of course – because otherwise; hubris, nemesis divina, end of the world as we know it … bad things will happen quite simply. And we wouldn’t want that, now would we? Small Bang, it is then (it’s just Wednesday, after all).

So – concerns have been raised that this might result in the creation of Black Holes that will swallow the entire planet. There was obviously a strokey-beard meeting amongst the scientist where they all decided that “naawh, that could never happen”. What they’re looking for is dark matter, antimatter and something called the Higgsparticle (this has to do with quantum electrodynamics). If they find any of these things without killing us all that’s a guaranteed Nobel prize. They get to shake the hand of the Swedish king and cash in a respectable sum of money. That is if they don’t kill us all.

The thing about anti-matter, black holes and the like is that we have only pretty vague assumptions about what these things are and what they do. It’s not like Star Trek where you can just jump, skip and hop through these things at random and land in a dimension where everyone stays forever young. The Cern crowd says that “yes, yes, there might be black holes, but they’ll be really small and you’ll hardly even notice them”. Newspapers say they held an ironic “end of the world” party yesterday.

Do you want irony? Nobel made his fortune in dynamite. His wealth has since been put to good use in the arts and sciences through the Nobel Prize. Wouldn’t it be kind of ironic if some tinkering physicists blow us all up to get the money from Nobel who got rich from blowing shit up? You know the Powers that Be love that kind of thing… And Higgs boson, the particle they’re hunting is sometimes refered to as ‘the God Particle’.

Damn it if we aren’t all chasing things we can’t see. Think about it. It doesn’t matter if you’re after anti-matter, dark holes, Higgs, wealth, respectablitiy, notoriety, fame or success. There we are again, poking things with a stick just to see what happens.

Now if the end is nigh-ish I would hate for that to happen before I’ve had my second cup of coffee, to I think I’ll just go and get myself some. And I leave you with the poet T.S. Eliot’s lines from The Hollow Men:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

ROL

Cloned Cows – Yeah, you read that right…

I am getting a bit tired of coming to work in the mornings having to do damage control the first thing I do. And finding that stuff isn’t working. And feeling like I need a … shotgun? Beta blockers? something from Black & Decker? I don’t even know anymore.

But I digress. I actually had something else in mind for my rant today.

Ok, so yesterday I turned on my television and was treated to the unexpected pleasure of genetically enhanced and cloned cows. Yeah, you heard me. Cows. Cloned cows. Cow clones (gets funnier every time).

Ok, so you take a cow. Tinker with its genetic make up until it produced the equivalent of human antigens. These gorgeous little beasts (antigens, not cows) help the immune system produce all kinds of antibodies and that can more effectively battle some kinds of viral diseases. And as we get progressivley more obsessed with living forever and never, never falling ill this is of course the cat’s pyjamas.

You then milk you cow.

Sounds pretty healthy, right?

But, you see, we’re not milking it for milk. We’re milking it for blood.

Now things start getting a bit Transylvanian.

You then take your cow’s blood and run it through a hamster, for some reason (it’s got to do with genetic sequencing – complicated stuff) and then insert into sick human. Sick human all better. Full of goodness. Full of vitamins. Full of cow’s blood and hamster genes.

The cows are worth half a million dollars each. Roughly.

I don’t know about the hamsters. Man, I can’t even begin to speculate how the hamsters got in there in the first place.

I am a determinist when it comes to tech stuff. I believe in the axiom that if we can do it we will and bugger the consequence. Never mind what nature intended and what might go wrong in the not too distant future. It’s all a bit eye of newt and toe of frog, in my opinion. And there’s something just so incredibly wrong with the notion that this is the way forward. If I get rabies, or lupus, or TB I’m sure I will change my mind and happily take whatever pill, or phial, transfusion or transubstantiation modern medecine offers. But the hamsters…

Lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my… Becomes Cow’s blood and hamsters and genes. Oh, my.

The chaos theoretician in Jurassic Park played by Jeff Goldblum has the best line on this topic. He says: “Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” On the topic of genetics.

And things might be very different for us in the near future. Maybe the “Moo?” will be a little different. And maybe it will be like the song “Cows with guns”.

The only thing I know is that the whole debate about cloning? You can forget it. It’s here and it’s here to stay. Everyday the level of acceptance is raised a little in the name of progress and that’s just the way things are.

ROL

Shoddy Work

We were supposed to have a brand spanking new wall – what we got was an invoice.

I’m not kidding.

After having waited for two days for the workers to come finish what they started, we finally lost our patience and told them not to bother with the painting and niceties. We got another guy to do that.

You would expect them to be angry, right? But, no. Actually the foreman seemed relieved. So let’s recap: Not only did they do a bad job when they were actually there, they also broke a light fixture, failed to clean up the unholy mess they left behind and remove the left over drywall, they didn’t finish the job and just got on everybody’s nerve for the duration. They cost us money twice – we lost income during the time they were there and they also expect to be paid. And to top it off they were relieved not to have to finish what they started.

Take all of that into account and you might see why we felt more than a little inclined to just slip that invoice to the bottom of the pile once we got it and let it sit there for a while.

This is where things get funny in my world.

The foreman showed up today in person at the front desk and handed over the invoice asking for it to be paid in cash or at least as soon as possible.

Coffee went down the wrong pipe at this point. I feel myself looking at the guy with that slightly odd seasick sensation you get when you realise you’re obviously not living in the same space/time continuum. I want to tell him exactly where to stick the greasy paper. Or, even better, one of the sawed off pieces of 2*4 laying about. I am not allowed to do that sort of thing. (Remember – little voice on the inside of the head). So I try not to apply too liberal an amount of sarcasm as I tell him we’ll see what we can do. And echo his own words back at him along the lines of “we’ll get right on that”. Sheesh.

I really don’t understand the attitude, the sheer oblivious lack of pride in your work that makes that kind of thing ok in your own head. It’s one thing to run into snags during a project, encountering problems you didn’t foresee or whatever, but really… These guys are just bad at what they do. That’s it, that’s all. Just plain bad.

I’ve had a lot of shit jobs. The only thing that gets me through is taking some kind of pride in what I do. Along the lines of “if you’re going to do it, do it to the best of your ability”. It’s not about what any one else thinks, it’s just about being able to look yourself in the eyes in the mirror in the mornings. I don’t know who to blame for that… Calvin, St Benedict, the Spartans, you name it. I don’t think I could gaze upon my own visage having just performed such an incredibly shoddy piece of work and then handed over a bill for 54 hours. Come on, guys…

I handed the bill to my boss. I’m sure a vein that size should not be throbbing that way. He looked at the request for immediate payment and actually sniggered. His only comment as he let the paper gently float to the pile of papers on his desk was “yeah. Right.”

And that about sums it up.

ROL

The Not So Handy Men…

We need to put up a wall. No, not because we’ve been hurt inside, it’s all about noise reduction and stuff like that. So for the last week handy men have been showing up. Sad as it might seem every preconceived notion you might have about carpenters, builders and the like is completely true.

They were supposed to be done two days ago.

They were really supposed to be finished yesterday.

Now they think they might be finished sometime next week.

So the guy who is supposed to be in charge calls me earlier and goes “well, eh, I can’t get hold of this guy, you know, whose going to do, like, the wiring and stuff… But we’ll be there as soon as I find him”.

?

Excause me, please, aren’t you supposed to be the boss of these people? Don’t you have roll call in the mornings, or something? Why do I get the feeling the missing guy is at home sleeping the sleep of the righteous as we speak?

And yesterday was like watching a troupe of clowns climbing out of a clown car and then just milling about more or less aimlessly for a couple of hours before fucking off to do Lord knows what. Having coffee probably.

First there’s three guys. One of them is out the door again in five minutes to buy supplies – I’m thinking they should know what to bring but ok, so maybe they forgot. Second guy is out the door half an hour later, having breakfast. Third guy actually does some work for about 45 minutes, then he leaves. First guy comes back with whatever the hell it was they forgot to bring. Out the door with the speed of light again. Second guy comes back, does god knows what for about an hour.

Guys nr. 4 & 5 show up (I think they were supposed to paint) have a look at the wall and then fuck off again.

Then everybody leaves and no one comes back.

This is around lunch so I figure, they’ll be back to finish later. Not so much actually.

I don’t know if it’s bad management, bad planning or just general incompetence (General Incompetence to be saluted here) but I must say my confidence in these gentlemen is dwindling as I write. They’re looking like a bunch of muppets from where I sit. Meanwhile it’s business as usual so every day they drag this out is costing us money in more ways than one. I am also overwhelmed with a lack of willingness in the area of paying for the work they’ve done.

Me and Colleague Nr 1have a motto. “Get it done” You have the specs. the materials, you know what needs doing. Don’t discuss it or fret about it. Just get it done. The more trivial the job, the more essential the attitude. And that’s what I feel like yelling everytime I see these guys. Get it Done! Yabitch!

ROL