About two years ago I got downsized from my job as a middling design guy at a big company. I was told it was a financial decision, not a reflection of my performance. I have come to understand that while I was one of the lowest paid people on my team, as a then 46 year old dude my insurance was a significant expense to the company and would only grow over time. Not that I have been told this from anyone who would know, but for lack of data this seems the most plausible (less conspiratorial) excuse. I spent a year sending out hundreds of resumes, updating, altering, and adding flair to my Linkedin. I tried recruiters, temp agencies, pleading, negging, and otherwise trying to hustle my way out of insolvency.

I could have just as well been playing a game with the controller disconnected like some mouth breathing 5 year old, pleased with the effort but not affecting outcomes one bit. In that whole time I actually spoke to a person about a job twice via email. The bulk of the replies were automated so far as I can tell, and they were pretty uniform;

The Row to Hoe, Ho, Ho: $20 is $20.

About a year ago someone offered me work driving a plow truck. Delighted to just make money of any amount I jumped at it. I love me some plow work, and hopefully can do it again this year.

Around that time I wrote a post on this here substack. A good number of people read it, which was pretty shocking and embarrassingly uplifting. I tried to keep posting things I thought were interesting, in between overnight shifts clearing up the sky dander from portions of southwest Michigan.

It was a good distraction, but as things went along I felt less and less like writing the words and making the doodles. While plow work kept me floating, land was nowhere in sight. I did grunt work where I could get it, mostly for cash, usually something like $20 an hour. I even got some contract design work from time to time. It wasn’t keeping my head above water, but it gave me a snorkel while floating in the deep. Summer brought more of that. It went from cleaning, to busting concrete, to flooring, to more cleaning, to digging of various sorts, carrying heavy stuff, and more cleaning.

None of it was going to get me out, but it gave me something to do to avoid the oncoming ottoman of doom sitting in the living room of financial ruin. I started poking at friends, leveraging any remaining work / social connections. I walked into joints and tried to convince them that while I understand that I HAVE to apply through their HR Department online, or through a temping agency, I would not make it through that filter. They talked to me, seemed as positive as they could be, and yet when I followed the prescribed channels, well no means no.

My landlords did their level best to keep me housed. But after several “It looks like I have a job” moments that vanished, they eventually had to let me go. Two months behind, and climbing they gave me as much slack as they could. However, the ottoman found me and the embarrassing journey to the floor began, canned laughter ensued.

I managed to shoe horn all my belongings into a 10x15 storage container around the corner from me. A neighbor let me store my truck, which I tried to get running but ran out of resources (why are batteries $200 now?). My uninsured, untagged, barely operating barbie-mobile Ford Escape would have to limp itself over to my sister’s house. It was given an abandoned vehicle sticker within 24 hours. So I put it next to her driveway, and currently have fingers crossed it will be there when next I can check. Though to be fair, the only thing of value is the unopened package of beef jerky in the console, and 3lb mini-sledge in the back I use for adjustments to things that need adjusting.

I slept at my sister’s for a couple days, then a buddy let me crash at a house he owned which is empty, and that is where I currently reside for the next 10 days or so. It has heat, internet, and a beautiful view of a river. My sister hooked me up with some groceries to take with, so I am sort of camping in a house. Not bad.

Today is the first snow of the year and as I stared out into the fluff, watching the river flow I thought maybe I could write something since I had nothing else to do on this Sunday afternoon. So here we are.

I have no real idea what is next. I will say my friends, and strangers have been helpful and kind to me in ways that warm the cockles. If you are looking for some kind of silver with which to line this cloud, that would prolly be it. Though I do have a half bottle of my favorite whiskey and a respectable collection of cigars, both of which I will utilize as needed.

As I look back over what I wrote above, there is no way I would want to read it for leisure. This isn’t the kind of aspirational, hero’s journey one finds compelling after all. I am not alone in this boat, so maybe that is why I am writing it. I have spoken to a lot of folks out there that don’t have work. Whether it is people amongst the laptop class as I once was, or those on the front lines huffin’ and puffin’ where I am currently navigating, everyone is having a time of it or seeing the ottoman on the horizon in one form or another eyeing their shins with malice.

So maybe we try that. Are you currently experiencing the euphemistic “houselessness” or find that your funds are “grossly insufficient”? Do you got a buddy who is in the same fix? There are like 70 of you out there still connected to this mess after this long of a time without posting, so maybe you have some thoughts. I will be down there in the comments like its my job. Controller or no, I am playing along. Commissar of Commiseration at your service!

All work is hard

Given the response to my last post, the bulk of folks don’t have experience with what I would call grunt work. There are a couple of you out there who were clearly once members of the “shit rolls downhill” industry and perhaps escaped unmolested, with all your digits and dignity in tact.

But to those unschooled in the finer points of rough work, I have some visual aids to assist you as far as identifying your grade of “work” in the larger work world.

I have the second portion of my Drywall Supply post more or less in the bag (not that anyone was actually asking) but I think this works as a good kind of intermission to outline the qualia of these jobs I often describe so unflatteringly.

Please note; this is not a “real work” vs. “bullshit work” kinda thing. There is by far enough of that kinda thing out there. Having had some 50 odd “jobs” over the years, every thing you do for money can suck. But being miserable can and often does build the greatest bonds between people. There is a whole other screed about how being a “good boss” is a disservice to your employees, but maybe later.

Anywho, what type of sucking are we talking about here? Lets begin with safety signs, a good first indicator of what kind of work you are about to do and where that falls on our spectrum of grunt.

Regular jobby-job type job

If you work in an office, retail, or a government building chances are you see these kind of warnings. Basically the kind of “do’s and don’ts” that you see in places where they prefer not to / can not supervise workers. Sure there will be bosses around, but generally those bosses are hiding from actual work just like you. You may have a time clock to punch or terminal to log into. The You-Scan of employment, act accordingly.

They say most safety regulations are written in blood (i.e. someone got wrecked). In this case notices like this are just evidence that you may have down time for grabass, or that they don’t pay you close attention or a high enough wage for what you actually do there.

If you ignore these notices, you are likely to be told by a properly trained / jealous co-worker that what you are doing is not allowed. If you pay no mind to that mid-mid level management, something passive aggressive will happen like a memo or they will attach another sign to the existing sign, probably with additional underlining and exclamation points. Quotation marks are occasionally applied incorrectly in these scenarios, but no stones can be thrown by me here, I mean just look at this blog.

RATING: Your job is fine and no one, least of all you, really care.

The Church of Labor Day Saints

Chances are if you see these cool dudes stuck onto things around your workplace you have arrived firmly into a “blue collar” job. Granted, if anyone around you has a collar they are probably management, but Mondays are certainly a shade of blue. Factory workers, assembly, packaging and shipping. Also jobs that involve carts of various sizes, and solvents of dubious labeling. Some construction sites have this vibe, but only really big ones.

There will be some kind of breakroom, with one nice bathroom, and the one the men use. Don’t worry about washing your hands, with the exception of before you pee for those of us sensitive to corrosives on their dangly bits.

If you need a fire extinguisher outside of the breakroom, its already too late. As far as fire exits, just follow the running and screaming people. It will be loud, there will be carelessness created by open spaces and mouths. Some of the machines will correct this carelessness.

There will be a sign about “X days since last accident” or some such, this will be in double or triple digits depending on the place. You probably bring your lunch, and food is prohibited in the working area. The soda machine almost certainly has the highest price per container that is physically possible on the display, and has a slot for bandaids, aspirin, or tampons. It will give you change as it sees fit.

RATING: 80’s level job satisfaction, pizza parties for quotas.

OSHA’s Eleven

A case can be made, that transport is the center of the bullseye when it comes to safety regulations. Whenever behind the scenes grunt work is done out in the full view of the public, you can guarantee there is documentation about how that particular chicken gets fucked. You are by and large the blue collar worker’s blue collar worker.

While it is very likely you will be behind the wheel of a vehicle of some sort, a huge bit of transport (be it products, animals, or people) is in the the various yard elf roles. For every driver there needs to be like 5-10 people who’s role is to fill, fit, and finalize inventories, routes and rituals. Without them none of this works, with them it still doesn’t work, but you have company. Everyone is in possession of a “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” ethos, and the CYA (cover your ass) factor is high.

OSHA will not be there to hold your dick (or funnel) while you piss. But instead of passive aggressive PostIt notes like the jobs above, there are binders, and inexplicably faxed updates to said binders so that one never forgets the hot breath of the regulatory state on their necks.

The good news here is that the warnings are fairly clear at least as far as YOUR safety. Almost everything looks “no frills” so no need for emphasis. If the iconic fire, and spikey bits of the decals don’t clue you in, the good old death’s head, grinning at you should instill the needed caution.

RATING: Shake hands with danger.

Workmen, Compensated

Whether you work for someone, or are self (selectively) employed, these types of indicators are a bit more personal, and language barrier friendly. I don’t know if those are bees in that guys lungs or if that is a mechanical snake killing that man, but rest assured I am ready for my expectations to be subverted.

As we venture into the more independent, non-regulated areas of grunt work the signs become more of a parting gift than any form of a warning. You know how you got here, thar be dragons.

You are outdoors mostly, and it is a hostile place as well as a “toxic work environment” to say the least. You are likely carrying a running engine in your hands, or standing astride one. No need for corrosive or flammable signs, because that is literally everything, including you.

You trim trees, you pull shit out of the ground (sometimes literally), your paycheck is suspiciously generous and you don’t have a lot of “work friends” that you have known for years for some reason.

The WD-40 / Duct Tape / 5 lbs sledge of grunt workers, you have to stick, unstick, or start things most people never have to look at. Weld it, wield it, or weather it, you are just dodging “local man” headlines at this point. Women are far to sensible to be anywhere near this shit.

RATING: Be the danger.

The Uninsured Masses

While it might beggar belief I assure you these are real-ass safety decals and signs. I thought Safetyman slumped over was a “Depression Hazard” sign, but it turns out it is “Confined Spaces” indicator, which you know, same thing. For those of you with a sick sense of humor like me I will include a gallery of some of my favorites I found in various decal joints, safety specs, and documentation at the end of the post. In my first stint as a grunt worker, things were slightly more tame graphically speaking. The funniest / most horrific one I had back in the day was this one, which almost seems quaint by contrast:

and also in the service we called this one the “Stove is not a cracker” warning, they were put on all the chemical stoves inside of MRE’s at the time:

All that being said, if you see some of these more illustrative warnings, you are operating far beyond anything like safety and oversight.

You are “freelance” on an oil rig, you are collecting scrap, playing with hazmat, or just generally operating equipment that the manufacturer will never recall, because they will be dissolved as a business by the time a lawsuit gets far enough along to bother them.

God bless them really, some jobs just have dangerous shit that needs to be done, and if we were all following the regulations and concerns of the well meaning we would be out here working with home-brewed horrors to get through the day.

I have definitely done work where these particular signs would now be relevant, but as of yet I have not delved back down that far into Dante’s Gloomy Walkabout, but who knows those Pizza Rolls don’t pay for themselves.

RATING: Loretta Lynn

The end of hostilities

And that is all I have to say about that for now. Shorter than my normal entries but maybe you all needed a break. I appreciate those of you who apparently do enjoy looking over my shoulder here. In tough times a little bit of acknowledgment goes a long way to make it less of a chore, and more like a comical journey. So yeah, thanks for that. For now here is the promised gallery of some of my favorite safety things I came across:

Items of note:

• Baby getting run over by lawn mower

• Masking landscapers

• Disco of Dangers

• Severed limb as a lethal projectile

• Read a book or get shot in the face with your ignorance

As usual, thank you for reading, and I am sorry.

P.s. I finally got around to hooking up my old domain to this substack so if you want to share it you will have the joy of sending someone to www.dontbethatasshole.com now. You are welcome.

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1 Better than never. Let’s begin.

Pain is weakness leaving the lobby

It’s 4:45 AM, and I have slept approximately 4-ish hours on a friends “flip n’ fuck” futon which basically makes one feel like they have been beaten with a poverty stick. It’s winter. Outside everything has that “Michigan flavored slurpee” look to it, brown and grey with rocksalt sprinkles on top.

My best friend Buddy (not his real name, more on that later) is already up as is his roommate Dexter (his actual name), and both are going through their morning rituals to prepare for the day.

I have lived with Buddy a few times over the years for brief periods and his morning routine remains unchanged. Shower, tea, boots and lunchbox. Simple.

I struggle to choke down the remains of a room temperature 40 oz bottle of Mickey’s so that the morning cigarette doesn’t hurt as much. As I do this, Dexter becomes the human equivalent of the back of the cereal box at breakfast time.

Dexter

Dexter is a tall 20 something black guy with a vague midwestern / southern accent. I can’t at this point remember what it was that he did for a living. I know it was outside and it sucked. At that time in my life most people I knew either had to suck it outside, or grind it inside, neither was ideal. Dexter’s morning process went like this:

• Beer in the shower, singing jukebox tunes

• Coffee and cigarette (hand rolled Bugler) on the couch

• Thermals, Bibs, Boots

• Old school blue screen weather channel

• Igloo cooler in one hand, milk jug of frozen water in the other

• “Time to make the donuts!”

And out the door like Kramer and I hear his exhaustless Dodge giddyup out in the parking lot of the complex.

I didn’t get a routine until much later in my life. I usually just grabbed whatever shit that was nearby, and got out the door rickey-tick as I was chronically slow getting out of bed.

Wake n’ Shake

Buddy had acquired a 66’ Ford Mustang convertible. I feel like it was Dukes of Hazard orange, but that might just be my foggy memory. It had an inline 6 cylinder in it, so we called it “the Beast” as in “666 mark of the beast”. It was a cool ass car, and also one of the coldest winter rides one can find.

We had to kind of cover our mouths as it warmed up so as to not fog/frost the inside of the windows with our breath. Once it got going it was toasty as you could want with that giant hunk of iron under the hood, but it took the 30 min drive to work to get to room temp which was just in time to hit the cold air again.

Normally our truck would be running already at the shop, and warm. This was considered a “perk” of the job at the time. It sat in the truck barn, a building that if emptied could hold about 20 semi trucks inside of it. It was always about half full of a dark grey haze of diesel and propane fumes from the running trucks and forklifts. This was especially bad in winter because they keep most the big doors closed. You can either get asphyxiated, or feel your fingers, you can’t have both. Life is full of choices, and those ratchet straps won’t work themselves, so brain damage it is.

There are trucks, and then there are work trucks

The inside of a work truck in just about any industry is fairly predictable. I say work truck because that (to me) is different than a POV2 truck you may see on the road or own yourself. Not to get all Jeff Foxworthy here, but if your truck had power anything aside from steering, you did not have a work truck. Can you locate seat belts or your registration / insurance? If the answer is yes, you probably aren’t driving a work truck. There is (or was) no AC in a work truck, but your results may vary.

There was always at least one garment of unknown origin such as one glove, a fluid stained t-shirt, or doo-rag. Plastic Mountain Dew bottles filled with dip spit were the tumble weeds of the work truck biome. Everything smelled like carcinogens, and every knob on the dashboard is either missing, bent, or non-functional due to interactions with various 200lb gorillas. It wasn’t exactly hostile to humans, but it motivated you to get the hell out of it and to do your job.

Fun Fact: Buddy got teased about how clean he kept our truck, and he was fiercely territorial over it. The reason Buddy got assigned this truck was because it was a brand new, custom built ordeal that had cost a fortune. I can’t actually recall what the rumored price tag was, but it really was a one of a kind thing. I know that Eaton transmission, which was up the road from the shop had scratch built a 4x4 transmission for this lifted 2.5 ton truck. I don’t even know how one requests such a thing, but the owner of the company had this truck purpose built. Buddy was smart, or at a minimum could talk smart, and occasionally wore glasses. So the owner decided only Buddy would be behind the wheel of this shiny Frankenstein’s monster of a truck. Boy oh boy how the Dale Earnhart type guys on the crew resented Buddy for that honor. I think at the time Julia Roberts was married to Lyle Lovitt, it was that kind of vibe.

Trucks are as much a part of the job as the board they haul. They are the setting for your greatest victories and the source of your most crippling losses. The truck you get put in at Drywall Supply says as much about you as it does about the task it is meant to complete. It is “your truck” insofar as you live and die by what happens to, and because of it. It’s your home, if home was truck stop shitter in July. It might be a POS3 but it is YOUR POS and constant companion. In the parlance most substack readers might better understand, it is your “work hubby / wife”.

Getting “run off” a job

To give you an idea of how this job worked I will say it is all rather deceptive at first viewing. You have trucks of various sizes delivering primarily drywall and drywall related products to various homes and businesses. There were “Boom Trucks” which were essentially straight bed semi-sized trucks with a boom arm that had an articulated fork at the end. These were for large shipments of board, or pallets of items that needed to be lifted to an area. We had a few “Deuce and a half” 2.5 ton flat bed trucks (of which Buddy’s truck was the flagship) for smaller jobs, usually residential deliveries. Occasionally we would “two truck” with a boom truck to assist with an offload.

Most trucks had driver and a grunt. The exception to this was when there were new guys, who weren’t schooled as of yet in the black magic of board humping, so they would travel along in a boom truck as “training” as it is easier to learn how to carry board when it came off of a boom than off of a flatbed.

These new guys would ride “bitch”4 which means they would sit on a bucket in between the seats behind the shifter. You haven’t done construction until you have had the pool ball material shifter knob hit you square in the knee on a cold December morning when a driver takes his marriage out on the transmission and traffic. It clears the mind and fortifies the resolve to look for better, more civilized work. It usually takes two weeks for one to decided or be told that this job is not for them. Sometimes you get “run off”5 sometimes you just do the running off yourself.

Drywall is not just sheets of cardboard

Anyone who has ever had to deal with drywall, either hanging it or just hanging a picture on it knows this. But to the unschooled it just looks like a big sheet of craft cardboard. It is not.

It weighs somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 lbs per square foot depending on the size, type and thickness. It is delivered in what are called “books” which are two sheets held together by a strip on either end. The lightest book is a standard 8’x4’ quarter inch board (roughly 90-ish lbs), technically the heaviest was 14’ 5/8 54” board, but to most the 16’ books were the gold standard of heavy humping, but more on that later.

However, it's not the weight so much as the shape. Carrying a man sized playing card that is made of heavy and fairly brittle material can be a challenge in many ways. The average construction guy can carry a standard book on his or her6 own with a little bit of effort and some technique. In most cases, OSHA regs insist that there be two men on each book if it is not possible to put the board on a cart and roll it to its destination. I think I used a cart on a total of 4 job sites in my entire time working at Drywall Supply.

Buddy and I mostly did small runs to residential jobs where the board was used to finish a basement, attic, or garage. Sometimes the delivery was to supplement a bigger load later.

Carrying board up or down stairs can be spicy, even for vets of the sport. The only reason I got put right into a flatbed to start is because Buddy told the boss I was “mustard”7 and that he would see to it I got with the program.

Tears were shed but I survived by the lifeblood of construction; shame and insults. My buddy was well aware of the various tender spots to poke me in, and could motivate me to perform. By week two our friendship was deepened by the hardships, and I was never so thankful we were the same height and weight, which makes a hell of a difference when it comes to carrying board.

…and on the third day, he questioned

To me the real challenge was day three. Most able bodied guys can bear the heavy lifting and marching all day long. It is construction after all, and there is some self selecting going on. But where the rubber meets the road is the hands.

On day one by the time you deliver your first run of board as a new guy, you can barely make a fist. By the second run, a 5 year old could beat you in arm wrestling, and pissing standing up becomes hit or miss.

At the end of the day, which is at minimum 8 hours even in slow seasons, you are just dead weight to the truck. Thus riding bitch bucket is essential for new guys. They will help some, but they burn out fast and you need a place to put that spent grunt where they are out of the way.

Day two you start out half the man you were (or thought you were), and no one is even trying to pretend that you have utility. You are in shock. Later, when you think about it you will have no idea there was a pause for sleep and slop in between day one and two. But for now the light at the end of the tunnel is in fact a train, or a minimum the struggle bus coming to take you home.

On day three your body has had enough time to properly process the horrific abuse you have subjected it to. It is doing it’s level best to convince you that being homeless isn’t all that bad. If by some miracle you haven’t actually injured something, your whole body feels like a bruise. Your hands generally get the worst, not accounting for whatever value as a man you once thought you possessed.

I have dainty lady hands by construction standards. Long, bony fingers are not useful for hauling board, not enough meat for padding. Most guys that do well at this job have the sausage fingered / catcher’s mitt type hands. I ended up with mountainous calluses that were in weird places and torn up. The reason for this is that I thought gloves were a good idea. They aren’t.

Your bare hand will do far better at getting a grip on the board, and that is a huge part of carrying. Put a sock on your hand and try turning a door knob. When you put on gloves you have to grip twice as hard, and your hands sweat. This sweat makes your calluses (if you have any) go soft, and your grip gets weak from all the extra gripping, so slippage happens. If you had calusses before, you probably don’t anymore.

One of the things that led me to leave the job was my hands. Touching my girlfriend at the time didn’t feel like anything to me, and god knows what it felt like to her8. I guess that was a problem. More on that later, probably.

What I am trying to say is that no one is expected to make it, but also anyone can. There were all kinds of shapes, sizes, and dispositions on the crew. If there was a unifying theme it was probably lack of options for gainful employment due to incompetence, intelligence, or criminal records. The sorting hat did not in fact take your wishes into consideration. You are all equally worthless pieces of human garbage to the general job market, but at Drywall Supply you are either reborn as a shit-hot board humping ape, or you become a reference point to someone else of how bad the first two weeks can go. With that in mind, let’s examine some of the results of that self-cleaning oven that is construction. We meet the cast of (offs?) that work at Drywall Supply.

Nicknames

In construction there are often nicknames. If your shop has an assignment board, it is almost mandatory that a nickname is assigned to you. There are many ways one gets a nickname. In almost all cases one does not choose their own nickname, and the nickname you are given is seldom flattering. Arguably the worst outcome is not having a nickname at all, but again, your results may vary.

I have had many nicknames at many jobs over the years. Most were unremarkable, and based on my appearance, name, or position of work but here were a few that I can remember:

• Bozo9

• Little Curt (I am a Junior, er was a junior?)

• Fuckstick (Fitzpatrick had too many fricatives for the Army)

• FNG / FNGIC (walk-on temp jobs I had during my construction days)

• Monkey (including variants Design, Shingle, and Rock Monkey)

At Drywall Supply almost everyone had a nickname, and they usually had a story.

I was unremarkable enough to not have my own nickname, but instead was given a nickname based on the friend who got me the job. I am what I call a default guy. If you have ever played Nintendo Ice Hockey* I am the guy in the middle on the selection screen.

I am not a big guy, or a small guy and aside from apparently having “monkey arms” too long for my body (some former nicknames see above) I am an extra in any cast. So with nothing to go on as inspiration the dispatcher wrote me down in my friend's truck for the day as “Buddy’s Buddy”. As noted above my friend’s nickname was “Buddy” and since I got straight into the truck my first morning, I was just scribbled in. I kept that name the whole time I worked there, and sometimes it would get confusing to people since my friend and I looked alike and often worked together.

Friend of mine since I was a kid. We liked Bob Dylan, Baseball, and would shotgun a pint of El Toro before going into a bar (pre-gaming for budget). We had a pyramid of little sombrero caps in our apartment as well, that is until we discovered the liquid cirrhosis that is Everclear. For those not in the know, Everclear is what they call a “rectified spirit”. It is 190 proof, that is ninety-fuckin-five percent pure memory erasing, end up in jail juice. No amount of rectifying from any spirit is gonna save you.

Fun Fact; Most professional drunks can do a shot of Everclear with a little effort. It’s doable, albeit unpleasant. However, one must train for the AA Olympics to be able to do a double shot. The body recognizes poison even if you don’t. If you toss a double shot of Everlear into your mouth, it takes about one shot of fluid before your body gets wind of the dumb shit you are attempting. Its reaction is to clamp your throat shut like those scenes in submarine movies where the sub is flooding and they merc the engineering section to save the ship. Only the engineers and grease monkeys in this case were armed and not about to take one for the team. They make their own way out, and that way is your mouth and sinuses. Nothing is more illustrative of failures in judgement like flooding your nostrils with angry corn juice. Buddy and I learned to tame this self-preservation reaction so that we could win money off the large college bros we would encounter while crashing frat parties. Fun for Profit!

Buddy was raised in a fairly affluent home by a single mother who was some kind of professional or other. Their house was, to me, like something off the tv. Think “Family Ties” but lonelier.

He didn’t have the kind of “manual labor market bound” upbringing I did, but to his credit, he was never a slouch about getting shit done and chasing that money.

We sort of shared a brain, though often neither of us knew who was in possession. Working with him in any job was going to be fine.

Lunk was the owner’s son. He is not your normal owner / boss’s boy, that is the “my dad says” or “someday I will run this place” type. He seemed like he was engineered to haul around board, or close castle gates or some shit. At 19 years old he was about 6’ whatever”, 250lbs give or take, and balding. He was dutiful, and strong as a bull. Buddy and I got him drunk all the time, and would turn him loose in public for shits and giggles.

Lunk had a girl we never met, but we all assumed she was either a Brunhilda girl, or wheelchair bound. Whatever the case one assumes he tended her rabbits in one way or another.

If you took an Airedale Terrier, doped it to the gills with PCP and bred it with a Hobbit, you would have Pork. I have no idea how he got his nickname. I kind of think he was just living on the land when they built the company and just brought him along for the ride.

He was maybe 5 foot tall and about a buck 30 soaking wet. He never got tired, ate beef jerky, and dipped that gross tobacco shit you have to fill your mouth with and chew. I think he called it “CHAW”. I never saw him drink water. Not once.

Pork was a diver and boom operator. He looked like a gremlin up on that crane and hopped up and down in the seat of the truck when we were in a hurry home from a run. He was dirty sure, but if you ain’t dirty you ain’t workin’ and Pork did the working to be sure. Maybe “Pork” came from “bringing home the bacon” now that I think about it. That makes sense, tho its too clever for what we are into here. He was prolly a Muslim, that feels closer what with the whole no swine thing. Yeah, a red-headed, drug gobbling midget, faithful to Allah sounds just like the kind of shit you come across in construction.

Stan apparently was a state arm wrestling champion. I didn’t even know we had a state level for that sport, but I guess you have to give these type of people something to do other than rape and pilliage.

He was a kind of Super Grunt in that without a license he couldn’t be a driver despite the fact he was vet of the board biz. A LOT of guys didn’t have licenses due to the ol “DUInot?” culture around after work recreation.

He could do that sledgehammer trick where you grab the end of the handle and touch your nose with the head. I never tried that shit, but it looked pretty hard and no one else could (or would) do it.

Stan left the company one day when state troopers showed up to arrest him at the shop. We hid him under a tarp on a truck and he rolled out of the yard, and our lives on that day. No one saw this as an odd thing to do btw (another theme in construction).

As for not getting to choose your nickname as noted above, Gidget was the example.

He was a weeble-wobble shaped guy, and talked alot. I can not recall what his first assigned nickname was, but he did the unthinkable thing and erased it from the assignment board and wrote in something else.

I think he wrote in something like “hammer” or “wolf” or some other such man shit. Upon seeing this later that afternoon, the dispatcher, rightfully horrified at seeing handwriting other than hers on the board decided this shit would not stand. I don’t know how long it took her to come up with it, but she got on the radio and told all trucks that the person traveling in truck 6 with Pork was now to be known as Gidget. The dispatcher is law, and so it was from there on out.

He wasn’t terrible at the job, but kind of operated like a permanent newguy / talk radio made flesh in most trucks. He did have a pretty good knowledge of OSHA10 regs, which occasionally either came in handy or were good for a chuckle or two.

Dennis was a bodybuilder. He used to go to McDonalds for lunch and order 10 quarter pounder patties with no bread, and drank that nutrient slurry whey stuff all day long.

He was generally an attractive fellow aside from the back acne and hands that were more fucked up than mine from the double whammy of board hauling AND weight lifting.

They called him Denise because one day his personal truck took a shit and he had to drive his girlfriend’s car to work. It was a barbie pink Dodge Neon with a hood decal that said “Princess” in old english font. He tried to hide it in the back lot, but as they say, truth will out. He didn’t even protest when the boss made him stand in front of it so we could take a picture. That photo was framed and hung in the shop even after he left the job.

Bossman don’t get a nickname. As a foreman / site boss Rick seldom interacted with any of us unless something went wrong. I don’t know what his normal personality was like since the only occasions I came into contact with him usually involved something breaking, or failing and the company losing money. His previously mentioned daughter occasionally helped out around the shop, and she was by all means a stout and sensible young lady. So that indicates he might have been a normal good guy in private life.

Rick’s pick up was the rare exception to the “work truck” rules as it was a bosses truck and never got a hot supper, and had power everything and AC.

Not a bad boss, but a boss none the less so I kept my distance and found something to do when he was around.

Al was the strongest human I have ever encountered. He was a bit shorter than me, so maybe 5’ 10”. I have no idea what he weighed as he appeared to be made out of some kind of high density construction polymer.

Everything was funny to Al, and being a bit on the funny side for a construction guy Al liked working with me for that reason. He was a joy to work with.

For starters Al could carry a book of 16’ 5/8 drywall (not sure if they even make that shit anymore) by himself, and did so often. That is roughly 260 lbs in one hand, bumpin off down the road. I tried it once and made it 3 steps before it ripped all the calluses off of my hand. So if you were working with Al, shit got done in a hurry. Al was also such an ultra-uber-megaman that he basically neutralized all testosterone in his general operating area. No one was playing grabass, teasing, or doing general grunt shit around Al. It was almost like a normal job, everyone on their best behavior.

Being made up primarily of peckerwood hicks, a construction job like Drywall Supply is not ideal for some folks with darker skin. Al didn’t like most of the guys, but he tolerated their shit long enough to get paid.

I kinda think this wasn’t his job, more like a hobby. But we never got into the details about anything. Just work and giggles, the best way to make a day go by.

Cracker Al (also Peckerwood Al) was essentially the negative of Blackman Al in almost every regard. He drove a fork truck in the yard, was pissy, and built like asthma. No one talked to him much, and being a yard guy11, no one had much cause to.

I assume Al had a personality, and some kind of rudimentary self-awareness but the only words I recall hearing him say were “NERTZ!” which is a term budging piles of board into an organized stack (on a truck, or leaning against a wall), and “YALLGIT!” which was his way of saying the truck was loaded and we could leave.

Al prolly shaved one year off his life every winter being inside of that fume and diesel dust filled barn for 8 hours a day, every day. He always looked like death, which is about par for the course I suppose.

Most people don’t last long hauling board. We had a particularly bad crop of new guys for a while in the summer and no one really bothered to get to know them after a while.

But Nunu (short for the NEW new guy) miraculously came back after it seemed like he had reached the end of his rope. He was unremarkable in almost every way, other than the fact he returned for more of what he clearly did not like. He was still there when I left.

There were many, many others, but these were the guys that I could recall in some way, accurately or not. This should give you an idea of the kind of setting as I saw it at Drywall Supply.

More?

Since I have been busy I wanted to force myself to put something out there as a starting point. The rest of this post is almost equally long but I have no idea if anyone would even read this much, let alone a whole other thing like it. Who could possibly find this stuff interesting other than me? However if I see that folks are actually reading it, I will continue the effort, do some more doodles, and lay out a few misadventures I had at this job in between bouts of plowing and salting Michigan’s parking lots and driveways. I have oodles of more jobs of this ilk to cover from back in the day, but if it is not sparking for folks. I will perhaps find another handle to jiggle. Let me know what you all think.

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Ok, well I would apologize for the time between posts, but it feels hilarious to think there is anything like anticipation for my next screed. That being said it wasn’t just laziness, it was weather based. After something like 20 years as a desk jockey / design guy I found myself unable to secure another cushy pixel pusher job, so I had to revert to my native hustle, freelance grunt.

In the salad days of like a year ago, I paid someone to keep the lawn of the house in order. Once I lost that sweet sweet laptop class job, I had to make some adjustments. Ol’ boy who did the deed with the lawn needed some designin’ done, and I was happy to swap some of that for continued clipping of said grass.

About a month ago it started becoming increasingly clear that that old job, or something like it, may never come back to me. So I needed to put some money in my account to cover the bills. The owner of the lawncare place had me working with his wife on the branding and website and one day she mentioned the trouble they were having on finding plow guys for this winter. To her surprise I offered up my services.

While I had never driven a plow truck, I am a competent driver and was well versed in the ins and outs of various flavors cash-in-hand grunt work. So I figured until I found something that paid better this would be one way to make the donuts. Two days later I was in a truck at 3 AM squinting my way through a typical Michigan blizzard.

As far as this blog goes this was, in its way, fortuitous since the winner of the poll was a tie between advertising and shitty jobs as my next topic. I have about 2500 words down about one such job which was delivering drywall and drywall accessories. I figure it will take something like 5000 words to do it justice, and I plan on including some doodles since you all seem to like that.

But as I rode around all by my lonesome pushing cloud dander around and humping a shovel, it gave me time to think about what particular things I would jot down about many similar jobs I have had over the years.

Late nights in the snow is not without its charms and moments:

The smell of diesel and gas station coffee was apparently the key to unlocking memories I needed to begin to describe the experience of actually working for a living. Not saying that design work wasn’t in fact work, it was to be sure. But you don’t have to put on pants, let alone carharts and longjohns to do it.

So that is a roundabout way of saying I am in fact working on the next post for those of you who care. I want to make it interesting enough to be worth the effort of reading it, so in between bouts of flurries and icy nights I will hammer the rest out. Wish me luck on the roads, as is customary, and I will be back in a ricky tick.

I refuse to self-identify as a Substacker until a few benchmarks have been passed. The first such hurdle would be having enough people read what I write and enjoy it to make that moniker remotely plausible.

I am incredibly suspect of the concept as a whole. I have always been motivated by the idea that the goal in this American life is to be wealthy and anonymous. I have never achieved either in my estimation, but have touched their edges from time to time. Substack(ing?) feels to me like the pursuit of the opposite. Be increasingly visible and embrace a life of austerity. Half the memes I see about Substack are about growth of readers, and the lack of renumeration there abouts. Maybe its just my feed or whatever one calls it on here, but that is what I see.

I made my first post a few days ago at like 4am, in a kind of dissociative fugue. It started as an exercise to familiarize myself with the platform and its capabilities. Hoping that maybe if I knew how to layout a substack, it would turn into a way to make money by helping others get theirs in shape visually.

I have always been a “sell the shovels” kind guy when it comes to the creative space. I am a designer by trade and since becoming unemployed earlier this year, I have found the job market disinterested in what I have to offer so one starts looking about for the makings of the money.

However, for some reason people have seemed more interested in the content of the post, rather than the appearance or design. A friend of mine told me this might be the case, but no matter how much I trust her judgment on things literary and whot not, it seemed implausible.

In the grand scheme of the Substack universe, what came next is probably nothing too exceptional. But for me it was a MUCH stronger response than I would have ever thought. I am entirely used to just dumping my thoughts into the void that is a comment section, google doc, or email of dubious destination. By comparison this was, a lot.

I feel my type of thinking (and volume of speaking) truly benefits from having little or no audience. My thoughts on politics, culture, and life in general are only tolerable to my friends as far as I can tell. I try to keep from bothering people who aren’t signing up for it.

Bartender: Where do you stand on abortion?

DrunkMe: I think it should be mandatory, and you should get free refills.

I had at the time of writing 41 subscribers and my first post has about 1,800 views. It’s weird, I just picture myself sitting in a theater with some two thousand strangers looking over my shoulder as I eat glue and play with Duplo blocks. A novel experience. As with most experiences, the second time is measurably less… revelatory, one should lower expectations.

I chose my next post to be about soap.

I stand by that choice. They say one should “write their passion”. But clearly my passion is… niche. I am not passionate about soap so much as about complaining. I feel it is my super power, right along side drinking and avoiding emotional responsibility. It is totally understandable that folks would see a post about soap and keep on steppin’. I get it.

That post currently has 51 views, which is… a step down. So, one must adjust to circumstances. Recalibrate. Drink with intent. With my newly invigorated humility I bring the question to you, my 41 possibly bot, possibly sympathy readers;

What is it that you like reading about that I might (in theory) be capable of writing about?

Rather than just leave it open, in the interest of further understanding this platform, I will use a poll! Of the following topics currently occupying the rats nest in my head, which would you find appealing enough to read.

Okey doke, well I hope all 41 of you “engage” with the above. You owe me nothing, my void dwelling followers. Feel free to shuffle on about your day with a clear conscience / conscious. I shall await the results (if any) and respond accordingly at my leisure.

Thank you for your time OR no problem I understand.

In the vein of “old man yells at cloud” this is my preferred fist shaking genre, products. I have thoughts on things like art, politics, and the culture, but who wants to be subjected to that kind of garbage. I used to save that punitive exchange for close friends only, these days I am branching out I guess.

So anywho, let me vent about soap. Well not soap as a product category, just my soap: Irish Spring.

Weapons grade freshness

What you see in the photo above is what will likely be the last time I purchase bathroom bar soap. I figure I have about 20 years left of ass washing, and traditionally a bar of soap in the shower will last me 2 or 3 months. By the time I do run out, I ain’t gonna be caring too much about hygiene I wager.

But why? Why on earth would someone purchase 120 bars of soap aside from some sort of Howard Hughes-esk pathology? Those that know me would find almost nothing remarkable about this kind of shit, but perhaps for a general audience, illustration is needed.

I started using Irish Spring during training in the army in 99’. In the AAFES (post exchange store) on Ft. Benning you had two choices at the time when it came to soap. Irish Spring and Dove.

Both bars have their own special side effects when it comes to teasing and insults. As a guy with the last name Fitzpatrick, I had already endured the “Patrick fits Gerald, Gerald fits Patrick” gay jokes as were the custom of the day, so what new tortures could having an “Irish Spring” in the shower room present me with. Dove however… no room for doves in the infantry.

We were all Irish Spring guys in my training group.

By the time I finished training, I had spent so many hours steeping in the smell of Irish Spring from our showers that I am pretty sure it oozed from my pores.

Uncle Ashy and the decade of dry.

I started using Irish Spring during training in the army in 99’. In the AAFES (post exchange store) on Ft. Benning you had two choices at the time when it came to soap. Irish Spring and Dove.

Both bars have their own special side effects when it comes to teasing and insults. As a guy with an irish last name, I had already endured the “Patrick fits Gerald, Gerald fits Patrick” gay jokes as were the custom of the day, so what new tortures could having an “Irish Spring” in the shower room present me with. Dove however… no room for doves in the infantry.

We were all Irish Spring guys in my training group.

By the time I finished training, I had spent so many hours steeping in the smell of Irish Spring from our showers that I am pretty sure it oozed from my pores.

So in the following 20 years or so, I was just in that groove. I never had to think about it. Which is to say, I took it for granted. The trick is that with Irish Spring, it did such a good job, and cost so little, I would buy one or two packages of it a year, and that would pretty much do it. So when they changed the recipe, I was already too late.

As a design guy I am perhaps ironically, greatly swayed by packaging. Irish Spring rebranded at some point over the past few years, and while the package looked good from a design standpoint and they often changed the box, it was different this time in comparison to the old stuff (exhibit B). When a legacy company “updates” its branding, it means something “new and improved” is coming. Some shit-heeled Product Manager got a bright idea, and a pay bump, and now I have new problems where none existed before. Hooray.

Oh, you BASTARDS!

Maybe I was primed to notice a difference. While the box looked different, oddly enough the form of the soap itself looked the same in some of the new boxes which was, troubling.

Irish Spring always cut corners, but to have the same box with different contents seemed beyond the pale itchy skin, even for the Colegate corporation. To me the bars seemed to be the same soaps, regardless of the box. But somewhere the bars diverged (exhibit C) and our adventure begins in earnest.

The first thing I noticed was the smell, or lack thereof. Idk what is in Irish Spring, but I always thought the jingle for Coast (another bargain soap) fit Irish Spring better; “...the fresh scent opens your eyes”. I essentially identify the smell of Irish Spring with waking up. I am not truly awake until that smell hits my nose half way through my shower like someone popped smelling salts. My brain is on auto-pilot until my Irish Spring alarm hits me.

There was some of the scent I remembered in there still, but it seemed somehow lessened. Sort of like those La Croix beverages, memories of flavor not actual flavor. Even that memory of the scent vanished after a shower or two. It must have been a glazing, or as if it was just wafted over the bar as it rolled off the production line. I tried another bar, and the same thing happened. The spidey senses, they were a tingling.

Leprechaun dust

The next thing was the feel. Irish Spring is notorious to some for drying out skin. To me, an Irish-Italian mutt, a little dry skin is a benefit not a detriment. I got enough self lubrication going on already, the last thing I need is an additional oil layered on top of that. Anytime I ever use any other soap on a trip or at someone else’s house I feel like I have a film on me. Not my normal genetically provided film, but artificial, like I just put on lotion or some such.

After a bar or three of the new soap I just kind of accepted I would have to find a different soap. I could write a whole other 1000 word screed about how bewildering the “health and beauty” isle is to me (I need neither health or beauty, I just need to wash my ass and look less homeless), but I will stay on topic here.

At the end of a rainbow, a pot of old

As I was shopping for a manual on Ebay I saw it. Some folks were selling “original recipe” Irish Spring soap! I say this to you all now only because I have my supply in hand. Not that there would be a run on “vintage” soap, let alone vintage Irish Spring. But I felt like I stumbled upon two things at once.

The first was that I was not in fact imagining things. If there was a market for the old recipe, by implication this proves there was a new formulation rustling my jimmies.

The second was that it was enough of a problem out there that one could charge a premium for the old stuff, a black market serving the fiending masses.

Fun Fact; I don’t know how I would react to a woman using Irish Spring. I am picturing Vasquez from the Aliens movie, which to be fair is my kind of lady.

Now I say “premium” when it comes to price, but hilariously enough it was cheaper to buy the old stuff on ebay. Though again, much like the “health and beauty” isle, amazon is also a bizarre animal. Look at the gamut of these prices in top results on amazon. From $0.17 an ounce to $0.81 an ounce. Package size always plays a role in stuff like this, but seldom does it make THIS big a difference (exhibit D).

The example on the far right of the picture appears like the old recipe, but having made this mistake before, I ain’t buying. In contrast the old stuff I got off ebay, which came from New Jersey, only cost $0.51 an ounce. Not too shabby for 25 lbs of water sensitive product that needs to be shipped. If I walked down to the store I could prolly get closer to the $0.17 an ounce rate, since Irish Spring is reliably the cheapest soap option in the store. Seems like it always has been the bottom rung pricewise, and most likely the main reason it ends up in AAFES.

Mission Accomplished

Alright so to sum up. The new Irish Spring is shit for me, but I managed to sate my psychosis through ebay and at a bargain! So, what’s the problem? (asked no one). The problem is that I had to do this at all.

If someone in the marketing / product dept. at Irish Spring would like to enlighten me, it may be a story I would like to hear. As a currently out of work design guy, I have some time on my hands and would be open to some brand consulting / customer advocate work to stiff arm getting back into the employment pool. But here is a teaser for you:

Sample for your consideration:

Never change your legacy product unless it starts killing people.

As far as I am aware, ain’t no one out there class actioning on behalf of whiskey tangos like me for the hardships Irish Spring has caused us. It may turn out to be “known by the state of California to cause cancer” but here in Michigan there is anecdotal evidence to suggest it is a viable, albeit non-evidence based solution to cancer. At least in this current case study of one.

How is it that Coke taught EVERYONE this lesson by example, so much that it is a meme, yet that meme still manages to elude a collection of marketing PM’s at Colegate?

I don’t want to hear about how New Coke was actually great. I don’t give two shits. Making that argument misses the point. It’s not about better or worse, it’s about what your customer’s value. Not POTENTIAL customers, actual bar buying, mouth breathers like me. It is certainly not about what some brand agent PWC consultant values or perceives as a value. Me (exhibit E).

If it was a profitability problem, raise the price. If it was a growth problem, break off a sub-brand (how many fucking flavors of Dove are there?!). If it was something as stupid as a tooling and sourcing issue, get off your ass and follow the chain and resolve the issue. Rest assured anyone who is working in the factories making the product would have an idea or two about this kind of thing, especially considering most of them almost certainly use the product at home.

Your product has been on the market for 54 goddamn years.

I get it, everyone is looking to “grow” and “scale” and all that. The idea of deodorant soap may not be a pitch for guys like me who now sit at a desk all day. But how stupid do you have to be to take a thing that has worked for 50 odd years and start fucking with it.

Well, apparently you have to be Coke stupid. Worse because you could have just googled “How not to fuck up your product” and had an ocean of examples for reference.

Politics aside, we JUST had the apocalypse over Bud Light. That beer is piss IMHO, and even THEY didn’t change the product. They ate it for a whole year and beyond at the cost of billions for just fucking about and finding out with their actual customers, while in pursuit of the mythical POTENTIAL ones.

I am no longer a customer of yours. Not as some kind of protest, but simply because the previously mentioned black market score I came across, now stored in sealed bags in a back closet of my house.

But on behalf of my brethren who have either failed to pathfind a way to my solution, or can’t be paying a premium for some vintage shit, I suggest (bordering on demand) that you, Irish Spring, get your shit together and roll out an ACTUAL original formula bar for them. Hell, you can frame it as charity, since the soap has always been essentially free anyways. A small nod to smelly, working bastards everywhere.

Irish Spring and Lava are the only two soaps most men I talk to even know, and ain’t none of them degloving their bodies in the shower with Lava.

They prolly HAVE to use the new shit now. Begrudgingly, and in resignation that there is nothing to be done. Another zombie brand they used to love so much, they took it for granted.

We both dropped the ball here, obviously.

Like any relationship that falls apart, blame is a shared burden. But for many out there, there is a chance you can at minimum reconcile. As they say “think of the kids” and work it out. A kid takes 18 years or so to prep for the world, and who knows, in 20 years maybe I will need my next bar of soap, there is time.

My hope is maybe by then Irish Spring will be a good and ubiquitous product again. An essential product for the guys who keep this gravy train on its tracks. Barring that, it will join the scrap heap of legacy brands that now decorate hipster t-shirts that none of them has ever used.

What follows is a post-election breakdown / justification / struggle-bus session I had with myself. I figured I would share it with folks (not sure who), and as a designer this is the language of my people, infographics.
I decided to vote for the first time in my life at 47.
The general embarrassment and frustration I felt watching the results come in, and the discourse I heard in the week that followed made me want to look deeper.
Proceed at your own risk / leisure.
I have magical thinking, piss poor memory, write incomprehensively, and was given a public school education.
You have been warned.

Your Narrator

I am kind of a both and neither person. While I have several close longtime friends, I also have a wide collection of second circle friends who wander in and out of my life. The thing both groups have in common is that I am a one on one friend. Almost none of my friends are friends with each other. It might sound like I am living separate lives or a shape changer, but if you asked any of them about me you would get a very similar description I wager.

“I am accepted in both sietch and village”

DR. LIET KYNES - Imperial Judge of the Change

About this guy:

I grew up poor, and barely noticed. By the time I became the second person in my family ever to graduate high school my dad had been gone for a decade and the two men who attempted to fill the role had moved on. We had lived in 6 different houses, with brief stints of me staying with family wherever, all within a 20 mile radius. As the school put it at the time I was “Not College Bound”. I started working at 13 in construction with family members and later in food service. I would eventually end up in the Army to avoid rapid onset alcoholism, but washed out after 6 months of training for the infantry due to a busted up knee and wonky spine. I eventually would end up living in the same 20 mile radius from where I grew up, unemployed and spending a lot of time on the internet.

About this guy:

Thanks to some inspiration from a teacher in an “Education for Employment” program in high school I had developed an interest in computers and design. I moved to a bigger town and away from the gravity of my family background, I wore a lot of black, drank a lot of coffee, and barely slept. With the help of a roommate and his computer I hatched a plan to make a living doing design of any kind, essentially to avoid becoming the nearly crippled men I grew up around. I started small at print and sign shops, built up a client list comprised of small businesses and large companies as an independent. Eventually I would end up in a design department for a publicly traded company. I lived in Chicago and was paying more in taxes than my sister made per year after working 30 years with a grocery store chain.

The Past, and How it Busta Rhymes

There have been 8 elections since I was old enough to vote. They are as follows with the general vibes I associate with them in retrospect. Again, back before it was mandatory to have a political stance, I could barely water my field of fucks with few exceptions, so your results may vary.

I was in highschool at the time, and to be fair to myself I had some stuff going on so I barely even noticed. Clinton played the saxophone at some point in the past and was talking about his underwear on Mtv so I reckon I thought he was “cool” or something. He won, and it wasn’t close. A lot of folks think Perot had once again cost team red the election. That pesky third party had become a problem for team red, but team blue would get their own “spoiler” soon enough.

My second election was Bush / Gore 00’ and at the time I was actually at Ft. Benning, Georgia literally in the middle of infantry training having enlisted in mid 99’. Here is where I am unclear if I voted or not. That time is pretty blurry generally speaking when it came to anything but training, but I do recall being given a choice between voting or doing KP (Kitchen Patrol i.e. cleaning the dining facility) so maybe I voted.

What I do remember fairly well is that leading up to it, the Lewinsky scandal had happened, Clinton was impeached, and there was a LOT of castigating and pearl clutching coming from team red. Discussions about morality, and all that were really common and the religious folks saw an opening to start jamming their claws into people’s lives since we had all seen the illustration of the “decadence” of team blue they had been bitching about since he talked about his underwear. That bit had very little effect on the way team blue saw things, but team red was interested in the proposition of a moral high-ground. There was a lot gesturing toward the church, though to be fair, no one really considered Bush as much of a Jesus man. He played the part as best he could.

It was the “dangling chad” election, it was super close and iit made a lot of folks pissed. I think this is where my brain started recording the world around me, because I remember team blue being pretty pissed at their new spoiler Nader. I feel like both team red and team blue made a pact at that point to figure out how to keep that shit at a minimum from now on.

Post 9/11 obviously a LOT of things had changed. The country was still skittish after 9/11, the wars had kicked off, there was still a lot of butt hurt around the last election, and even more butt hurt creeping in about the lack of WMD’s and “mission accomplished” and the Patriot act was about as popular as freedom fries I think. There were definitely a lot of haters for Bush at this point, I remember old heads permanently protesting in front of the courthouse downtown. The phrase “never change horses midstream” did a lot of work to get the wobbly folks to the finish line for the president. Also team red and blue had figured out that if you make third party folks look like a clown car of unserious morons it was pretty easy to keep their effect to a minimum so it’s not like there were other options on the table either.

And here is where things get relevant. I had not voted through all of this stuff, but for the first time it had crept into my head as something I should do. Pretty much all my friends were team blue and were in college, they saw the way the country was getting more and more controlling and that was just not their jam. Bush and his whole team were like an A-Team of fascists and corporate shills, and the potential damage they could do to all our liberties seemed infinite to them. This was the message I heard from many of them all day, and I didn’t have much reason to doubt it. But also, I had other shit going on and I didn’t need a hobby like politics to go with it. I had a bunch of justifications for not getting involved. The previously mentioned votes being meaningless, now backed by the election that was pure bullshit to my eyes.

The people representing both sides being generally unpleasant to talk to at the time, including my friends. So to me the LAST thing I wanted to do is go out, cast a ballot and be directly associated with this crazy shit. I did not want to be a member of either group that would have me or some such. I didn’t know what was gonna happen, but it FELT like the tide was so strong against Bush that it would be impossible for him to win. I got the gist from my friends that they were a part of a movement, and in my world it seemed like that movement was gonna tip the cart over on Bush and we would go back to situation normal like it was back in the Clinton days.

What I failed to take into account was that a second term is a form of mandate. It says to those in power, we agree to let you off the hook for what has gone on that we didn’t like, promise to be good and we will go along. But this time around the red team had 4 years getting their sea legs, and essentially assurance that there was nothing for any of them personally to worry about since it was going to be over for them after the next election anyways. It gave them a combo of experience and a lack of responsibility for an entire 4 years, and their followers would emulate that kind of vibe right along next to them.

The next 4 years were… not fun.

I am obviously not good at the history thing but I bet you can google up “bush second term” or some shit and see some compelling stories about how much impact that had on the world we live in. Whether you see it as good or bad, you have to agree fun was not a part of it.

By the time Obama came around I was outie 5000 on the whole concept of politics. From all accounts Bush and Co. had run a savage burn on us, and basically we let it happen. There was plenty of blame to go around, but generally my take was we (I) did this to myself, and we get what we deserve. But I had this lingering thought in my head that even though my vote was meaningless, maybe it was the gesture that was important. I had this idea that if I were ever going to vote in an election after all that, the person I would vote for would be someone I would be willing to personally endorse. Lesser of two evils shit seemed ridiculous to me.

Obama was interesting culturally but the things he was saying was pretty similar to what McCain was saying, just with different inflection. I was pretty gorked out and “whatever” was fine with me. People were happy when Obama won, and that basically solved my problem. It was back to the salad days of Clinton-eske culture and such that I could easily ignore and get on with life.

I am confident this election happened, outside of that I can not say.

I hadn’t had another political thought until the run up to this election, and when I did have that thought it wasn’t by choice. Given my already aloof, disinterested, and fuzzy view of politics the thought of Trump running for president seemed like performance art to me. “WWF Trump? The Apprentice Trump? LOL!”. Clearly this guy wasn’t gonna make the cut. I didn’t vote. When he won it was all hilarious to me. It was not hilarious, I discovered, to anyone else I knew. I didn’t even know it was election night and was hammered off my ass in Chicago. I was in a bar around closing time when it became clear he was gonna be the guy. People were crying at the bar. Over an election.

In my whiskey soaked brain, I chalked it up to tired drunk people blowing out the lines. People cry over football at bars, so it made sense. But the crying didn’t stop like it normally did when the “fuck-off-and-go-home” music and lights kicked in. It kept going. And going, and going, days and weeks. When that wasn’t working there was the protesting. The resistance. The rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. Then there was the rage of not “being heard” and many of the people I knew were losing their minds over everything the guy did. Little things became big things, people were… having a moment.

Later the pandemic hit... it didn’t help.

Like many others, my brain was out of service when election time came around. The previous year in October, my cat Nixon had died. He was the love of my life. I didn’t take it well.

Everywhere I looked in my apartment reminded me of his absence and apparently there was no amount of booze or purchasing of baubles that could distract me. I tried getting into the early pandemic hobbies of PPE, baking, watching graphs of the death count and reading academic papers on the 3nm scale and how that matters with viruses. Nothing was doing it.

The pandemic had forced my employer to make official what was already a habit, remote work. So that didn’t exactly help the state I was in, and access to being quietly drunk around people had been all but eliminated. I was done with Chicago.
It was time to go home.

The Odyessy

There was a window between lockdown 1 and 2, and I shot my shot. It was a harrowing experience securing a U-Haul and then single handedly moving my entire apartment, furniture and all, down from the 3rd floor. It was made all the more frustrating that there were all these Covid restrictions and “guidelines” that were strictly adhered to by just about every human I ran into during the process. I had worries that I might not even be allowed to cross state borders on my way home.

Fun fact; I was all ready to sign a lease to another house. But the morning after I got lease the landlord wrote me back to tell me they were “turning people back” at a checkpoint coming into town. Which is understandable really. It was a little town way up north I had visited a few times and I wagered they were inundated with assholes like me fleeing from cities desperate to walk outside and drink an occasional beer.

Moving from Chicago to Michigan all by myself was difficult. Doing so in the brief intermission between the first and second lockdown, was damn near impossible. But given my mental state at the time, I would have set everything I own on fire, quit my job, and walked back to Michigan if that is what it took. Luckily, it only took 36 sleepless hours and more yelling at people than I am ever comfortable with.

I got pretty misty eyed as I rolled the Uhaul into the driveway of my new place, but you might just chalk that up to exhaustion.

The year that followed was possibly one of the best years of my life. I feel no shame for saying it. I could write a book on it, but needless to say it was a return to who I thought I was at my core and a much needed break from the outer world. The pandemic was largely a reality show to me, and while I did feel bad for people, it felt like it was happening on a different planet entirely.

Little House on The Prairie

I had the luxury of avoiding the madness of the Floyd riots in Chicago, and barely took notice of the circus around January 6th. I was on my island, so even the continuing lockdowns and restrictions didn’t apply to me. When I started to pay attention to things again I started feeling a bit woozy about it all. So much suffering and hatred and I couldn’t really tease out what was real and what was the lens of the internet distorting what I was seeing.

I was hearing very conflicting accounts from my friends still in Chicago. The people I worked with said everything was fine and the news was just blowing it out of proportion. The people I had drank with were telling me the businesses were all closing down, and crime had gone bonkers. I don’t doubt the accuracy of either of these accounts, these were people I knew well after all. But what was troubling is that both sets of folks were essentially neighbors to one another. If not in actual home location, certainly in that they both spent the bulk of their day in the downtown area.

Fun fact; About the “front line workers” phrase. When I came back home during the Xmas exodus while training in the Army, I started hearing the phrase “thank you for your service”. That phrase immediately put me on edge for some reason. I had done nothing to be thanked for personally, but also it felt like an apology.

It sort of became an insult when I went back to training. A guy would pull off some high-speed performance on a PT test or in a field exercise and you would say “thank you for your service” to bring him down a peg.

Anyway, it stuck with me. What were they apologizing for? Later I would see what happened to a lot of my buddies and god knows how many other service members post 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq. None of it happened to me as I was out of it by then with my bum knee and damaged self-worth, as is a trend in my life, lucking out of a bad deal. But when I started hearing “front line workers” my gut told me these people were about to get fucked.

They always build you up before they push you out in front, is something I have heard said before.

Anywho, about my two sets of friends back in Chicago. It only took about a year for the two sides to start converging.

My work friends started complaining about the state of things in almost the exact way my drinking friends had in the past. They did it privately, but it was almost identical. The main difference is that my drinking friends had totally moved on from being good blue team members. After a year of screaming about shit being bad, they had decided to look elsewhere for answers. Both of these sets of people started out on team blue, more or less. When you live in a place like Chicago, it is basically part of the air you breathe. But by the time year three had rolled around almost none of them were team blue anymore. My work friends had either given up entirely on the political idea, and my drinking friends were by and large team Trump, begrudgingly or otherwise.

It was about here I knew team red was going to win. Importantly, I also thought my guides around voting still held true. It would all come out in the wash. America was gonna say “get fucked” and a reset would happen. It wasn’t going to be an election about Biden, Kmala, or even Trump. It was going to be an election about the parties and the flavor of bullshit they make you tolerate.

Crouching Hubris, Hidden Hubris

The red team was a shell of its former self. Trump had tipped over the cart on them and after they finally accepted him as the new boss, he shit the bed on Jan. 6th and made that new direction a long walk off a short pier.

They essentially began an apology tour post Trump. Old head republicans were coming out and trying to illustrate that they were never on board with him, and suggesting that things were going back to normal. Trump had so completely decimated their political power, they were essentially going to have to beg team blue for table scraps for the next decade at least.The republicans were done. Trump was vanquished, de-twittered and building a closet to cry into over on Truth Social.

Player 2 has Left the game

If there is one hot take amongst many herein that I will stand by no matter what, it is this: Never underestimate liberals’ ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

For reasons mysterious to me still, team blue and the media decided to pull Trump back into the public eye. Congress was spinning up a stage adaptation of Jan. 6th the musical. Democrat leadership was suing Trump for whatever they could. And to me worst of all, media folks thirsting for the ratings and views of the resistance era gone by were now saying his name more than ever, and with more froth than they had when he was actually in office.

This may be what drew in not only my drinking friends, but my work friends as well. The year that led up to the election was like a never ending competition between who could torpedo team blue faster. The democrats and their allies seemed hell bent on winning that contest. They seemed to want to prove to their voters by deed and creed that no matter what, you could count on them to bend you over, and you should thank them for it.

Had team blue maintained their standard level of choking, it would have been enough on its own to hand team red a narrow victory. But if you are going biff it, biff it all the way. Things like inflation, flirting with world war 3, the response to October 7th and the ensuing protests. The various identity politics issues that were driving normal people insane, and fucking up entire families.

Both barrels, all the time, straight to your face. But what really helped them run their own table was when a crack in the door opened for people to start saying what they had been thinking for years now. To report some reality that was obvious to anyone looking.

God save the King, Yaaas Queen!

The 4 week period at the end of June and start of July allowed some of their people in the media a little wiggle room when it came to The Narrative. First Trump was nearly killed. To me the election really ended there. If anything is assured to bring out the voters of a party, it’s when someone tries to kill their guy. In what was supposed to be another nail biter election, that is all team red needed to win. However it was the weeks that followed that would really run up the score.

After the the media tossed out a slew of gibberish to downplay the assassination attempt, “was he ACTUALLY shot?” “was it REALLY politically motivated?”, they basically all stopped talking about it at the same time. It was stunning how many times I heard the phrase “Crazy how Trump nearly getting killed a week ago isn’t the craziest thing about this election!?” or something similar come out of political pundits. But to many red team members it was, and remains THE craziest thing amongst some stiff competition in their eyes. But the grey goose got well and truly cooked at the debate.

In real time many of those still loyal to team blue witnessed just how far the Democrats were willing to test their ability to gaslight the American public. If anything qualifies as a “the emperor has no clothes” moment, it is the first commercial break of that debate. Even the most staid and ardent blue team apperatchiks of the media were speaking in tongues about what they had just seen with their own eyes. Uncle Joe had left the building, and one could wonder if he ever actually entered it at all.

After the debate mercifully ended, they did their best to claw back that collective gasp. But it was too late. All it did was build a better and better case for normal American’s to tell them to kick rocks.

The desperation became comical, if satire was dead, its dried out corpse was twirling around in its grave.

Some Highlights:

• Defending democracy by annointing a replacement for a sitting (and uncooperative) president behind closed doors.

• Suing and fighting to allow or deny candidates from ballots nation wide depending on their needs.

• Refusing to acknowledge that men and women are in fact different, yet actively pursuing voters along the lines of gender.

• Begging for Israel to get cut off, while insisting continued support of Ukraine.

• “Man Enough.”

• Hiding from the press.

• Hiding from the press harder.

• Nazis take NY!

• Muh Disinformation.
  ... and Manny Moore!

For me personally, given my history the big one was the apparent political draft night that happened in the closing month or so.

Team blue traded Elon Musk, a Kennedy, and Tulsi Gabbard for The Cheneys and a political poison to be named later. It was a breathtaking display of own goals, but to be fair to them I am unsure they even knew what game they were playing, let alone which end of the field they were shooting for.

“Ok, SO?” You may be asking at this point. What’s the problem, why are you sad balls.

I am upset because I flinched.

Stupid is as stupid does

I am consistently doubtful when it comes to my ability to know the right answer in almost every aspect of life. I was sorta raised by wolves, and when I look at how my life ultimately turned out I feel about as responsible for it, good or bad, as I do for the weather.

I am bad at math, my logic is truly of the fuzzy variety, and I sorta stopped reading 20 years ago. My memory is so poor that you can generally convince me of anything if you just toss a date in there.

However, if there is one area that I feel in my bones I understand its people, and specifically Americans. This has allowed me to survive in a world I am hilariously unqualified for. My sort of instinctual understanding of what it is to be a human on this rock.

Not to say I am “good with people”, actually far from it. Half the people I meet have a kind of ick response to me. It takes a whole hell of a lot on my part to convince them to give me a shot. More often than not it’s more than I care to attempt. But generally speaking when I meet someone, I know where they are coming from, no matter the velocity or angle. Whether I like the cut of their jib or not, I understand. Well, except people who are into feet… I still don’t get that.

What I am saying is that the week leading up to the election I had doubts, and they were fundamental ones. We all have doubts, and most people tend to tamp them down and ultimately go with their gut. I certainly try to consider my doubts, but by habit I almost never ACT on my doubts.

“A case can be made…” is the battle-cry of the masturbatory dilettante mid-wit

For various reasons, by the time election day came I had 99.99% convinced myself that not only was this a close election, but if this election went the other way there was no avoiding direct responsibility for what followed.

While generally, statistically, a vote is meaningless, I do live in Michigan. According to the current count Trump won by something like 80,000 votes. It's a low effect granted, but at the time I had this irrational fear it would end up in the courts and it would start looking like 1 in 10,000 or 5,000 or some crazy shit. But I suppose most important was that I had a crisis of faith when it came to Americans.

Head Cannon Fodder

After all that above, let me display the thoughts and thinking (or failure to think) I took with me to the bar election day morning. This narrative I gave myself, and a significant about of alcohol convinced me to vote for the first time. I am not saying it would work on everyone, but it got me there. I am nothing if not irrationally attached to the idea of not voting at this point in life. The novelty of a streak has inheirant value to me good or bad.

I will try to be broad strokes here, as anyone actually looking at whatever this is has to be damn near suicidal by this point in the journey. I am certainly way over it, but I had to work it out somehow, so you are welcome and I am sorry.

The Framework:

• An incomplete list of how I understand America and it’s politics.

• America needs two healthy, and distinct political parties at a minimum.

• The system being slow is a feature, not a bug. Chill out.

• When the media stops reporting shit, you are gonna have a bad time.

• When someone says they are saving you from something, that someone is the something.

• If you are surrounded by assholes, talk to one of them to see if you are an asshole as well.

• History doesn’t repeat, but we try to reboot it every chance we get.

• “Leave me the fuck alone.” Is the American creed, the rest is downstream of that.

You have to feed something into the machine to get the magical thinking to kick in. So to that end I had this premise. I honestly don’t know where it came from, other than to say we all make connections where none might exist. I am pretty good at this.

The Premise:

• Today’s blue team is the late 90’s red team, boosted by the speed and stupidity of the internet.

• A term of “normal” politics, that weren’t quite normal.

• The media helped those in power until it became unprofitable / too obvious.

• Instead of 9/11 to instigate a permanent state of exception you got Covid.

• Blaming the immigrants is still an alarmingly popular past-time, second only to blaming Jews.

• Instead of Christian zealots and freedom fries, you have the church of woke and paper straws.

• People who used to be funny stopped being funny, and people who were funny started to be a threat.

• Celebrities regained their rightful place as people to be ridiculed.

• Protesting is great, until it isn’t.

• Both have presidents who seem unlikely to be the masterminds behind running the country into the ground.

• The Cheneys

• Underwear and their contents, still pretty interesting.

• The fight against mis/dis/mal information on the internet smells like The Patriot Act 2.0 incoming.

• Covid and mass illegal immigration will be as bad for regular Americans as the financial crisis.

• No one will face the consequences for either, and fortunes were made.

• A significant portion of the electorate lost faith in the elections, for not entirely dismissable reasons.

• We saw a lot of people we all thought died years ago.

• Some of those people need to take the hint.

So at long last, after a bloodymary, 5 All Day IPA’s, a Corona, and 2 medically questionable neat Macallan’s I grabbed my shit and walked up the block to the church where said performance was to be made.

It was about 2pm I estimate, and I was so hammered, so early, that I think people assumed I was mentally challenged. Which is to say they were incredibly nice and vaguely condescending to me, from what little I could understand.

I did the deed.

Fun fact; From here on out if I ever hear of people getting confused about how to do the vote thing I am going to call bullshit. I wandered home and passed out on the couch waking up some 6 hours later. I pissed syrup, and drank enough Gatorade to earn an honorary sponsorship. If I can do it in that state and you can’t while sober, maybe voting just isn’t for you.

I voted for Trump, wasted a perfectly good buzz, and can never again say “I don’t vote”. It mattered, not one bit. You are welcome America. The End.