death spasms of summer (yelling at raccoons)

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Yeeaaaargh.

I hate this phone tag game between me and the workplace. I called them earlier this week trying to wrangle a sixth day, and they had nothing. But then tonight, 15 minutes after midnight, they tried to get me to go to Omohundro because some jackass didn’t show up.

No! Fuck no!

There’s a pizza about to go in the oven. I have sketches that need finishing. I’m not dropping everything and rushing there to get 6 hours of overtime. But damnit, they make me feel guilty. But… you said you were available to work tonight. Are you going to come in?

NO.

For the first time, Sweatt pointed out in a huffy tone that i’m picky about my overtime. Yes. I am. Deal with it. I’ll work 5 of the 7 posts, and i need at least an hour warning. So now, i’m probably at the very bottom of the overtime list.

Raaaaaaagh. Fuck Sweatt.

At least i have more drawing commissions than ever. They’re all still amateur stuff, but i’m making money on my days off. Not as much as if i was at Omohundro, but still, it’s a few dollars. Most people spend money on their off days, so i don’t feel too bad.

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You know, there was actually a tiny bit of excitement at the Stone Ring this week. I got my first actual security breach, a bona fide intruder who nimbly scaled the fence and entered the property illegally! Wow! Probably just some drunk asshole looking for a bit of adventure and taking a shortcut to the Projects. Can’t say for sure because neither i nor the police ever found him. He probably just strolled through and jumped out at the other side…

…no big deal. If R. Kelly or Dahir had been there, it would have been interesting. But i was with Muna that night, and she FREAKED OUT. She was literally hyperventilating and saying “oh my god, oh my god, he has a gun, he’s going to kill us, he’s coming to kill us, we have to get in your car and escape! I can’t be here! We have to get out of here, oh my god!”

…..yeeeesh. Panic.

I tried to calm her down. And then i tried to shut that obsolete second gate to make her feel safer. R. Kelly showed me how to do it one day, and he’s the only one who ever uses the thing. That was a mistake…

…because i didn’t know that this gate was like the one at Stormwater; if you open it, it will close automatically about 30 seconds later. Needless to say, i left in the vehicle and Muna came with me because she didn’t want to be alone.

And it closed, and we were locked out.

By then, ol’ Parrish was there, filling in as supervisor. And i’m so glad it was her. See, this is why people are wrong about Parrish. she’s incredibly grumpy and abrasive, but when things go wrong she’s on your side. She said that we could be disciplined or even fired for this, but that our boss was never gonna find out about it.

“Naww, Muhommadoo, we’re getting back in that bitch even if i have to climb on top of my car and jump my ass over. I ain’t letting the Captain hear about this. He don’t need to ever find out!”

Luckily, it didn’t come to that. There’s razor wire on the top of that thing. I remembered the dirty little secret of our place, that the chain link gate on the other side is held in place by this weird latch-pole combo that is really quite weak. So i went around to that side and used my manly strength to shoulderblock it into submission. I got a gash on my forearm, but finally the thing gave way, and we were back in. Oh, crap, i was glad. There have been so many times that i wanted to put the spare padlock and chain on that gate, so it would really be secure, but i never did. If i had, all would have been lost probably.

So it all worked out in the end. The police came and left. Muna stopped hyperventilating. And the three of us made a sacred pact not to tell anyone about anything that happened.

I haven’t told anyone yet. Wait! You didn’t just read all that.

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The next night, the new supervisor showed up. They’ve had a hard time hiring someone for that spot after they fired Reese all those months ago. Some guy named John Steel took the job and left after one day… i thought there’s just no way they’d find anyone with a name that awesome, but i was wrong.

Meet your new supervisor, Robert Smith.

Yes. Lead singer of The Cure. That Robert Smith.

But nah, he seems like a great person. After being there for two days and talking to everyone, he very astutely figured out the real problem with the place — the boss, and Sweatt. The Dictator and his attack dog. Asshole and Baldilocks. They’re the cancer, the festering heart of darkness that makes this such a shitty place to work. I keep remembering back to when neither of them was there, and how much fucking better everything was.

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But hey, Dahir and i are having a blast as this summer enters its death spasms. I mean, we’re just watching stupid movies and riffing on them, and talking about crap, and yelling at raccoons, and listening to the occasional gunshot from next door.

But it’s fun. This really is the best it’s been since 2009. I hope Dahir and Muna don’t go anywhere soon. Damn! What is happening in two months? Is the company staying? Is a new company going to hire us? Are we all going to be laid off? What am i still doing here, anyway?

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Hey, i want to rant about Teabaggers again. You down?

A vital component of the Teabagger mythos seems to be this idea that society is on the verge on near-total collapse because of the deficit, and that we’ll be living back in the Dark Ages before we die. The leader of that one website i love is currently begging his fans for donations to buy more rifles, because he fully expects that if Obama is re-elected, there will soon be a currency crisis, rolling blackouts, and gangs of negroes and latinos trying to take his white stuff.

I am not kidding.

Behold, some recent quotes from a conversation sparked by a warning from a world banker that the US economy is still shaky…

“I don’t think civilization will collapse so much as it will roll back. Imagine life for the little nobody’s being at the 1911-1920 level, everywhere with some higher tech around but not widespread and no Great Britain to keep the seas safe for trade. And the farms won’t be making enough food and the trucks won’t be transporting enough so we’ll have to spread out a lot. We’ll have de facto baronies and fiefdoms if people embrace the new ways and warlords and tribes if they don’t. We’ll have guilds in either case.”

“Subsitstance living for everyone! We have huge population centers jammed full of people who don’t know where their food comes from. Sure, they may have a houseplant or two but they aren’t farmers. Declawed indoor cats don’t make very good mousers. Purse dogs aren’t very good protection, either. I’m glad I’m out in the hinterlands.”

“It won’t quite be subsistence. You probably won’t throw out bottles and worn old clothes but will instead find ways to repurpose them. You might have to move after two bad seasons. I’d say that you might have news papers and magazines for wall paper but I doubt there’ll be much paper unless it is made locally. Think of all those 30’s Appalachian hillbilly stereotypes on real, and with more plastic and rubber and less wood. (Not that we won’t have to learn to carve and whittle to make the furniture we can’t afford. ) I suspect fans made from woven dry johnson grass and tables made from bent mesquite and willow stitches will be a thing. Most of the time we’ll go to bed tired instead of stressed or bored.”

“Those with skills and work ethic may find a place in these rural communities. Those with entitlement attitudes will find a welcome of an altogether different sort. I am a city dweller, but I’ve spent years cultivating friendships with the people in the village where my parents retired. There is a wide circle of good people who like and respect me, and who are especially fond of my folks. There are days when I think The End can’t come fast enough, because I figure my odds up there are pretty good and we might as well get it over with. I just wish there were more apple trees up there. Can’t ever have too much cider and vinegar.”

“Swap meets and tinkers will fix your pots and pans again. Everyone will learn to solder, weave, and tape. I suspect you’ll have “open project” local tool shops where you spend a buck or two, sign up, and get to use their CNC mill to make or modify a part you need from some stock you brought in, and get some advice from the qualified operator.”

“A revitalized “rural-centric” America would be the end game, but would take six months to several years in the making, depending on locality. The lead up to that will make the book of revelations look like a Sunday school picnic. Hunger games was a pale description of what you’ll have during ‘the change’. The general population has to slough off tens of millions that can’t feed themselves. Endless dead, sick, and dying, no one to attend to them even in death. Desease, widespread starvation, death, and eventually a rural existance would emerge with the remaining survivors, enclaves that form in cooperatives. The new American dream. Simple survival.”

“Those with skills and work ethic won’t be the problem. It will be the countless millions of metro’s that have no such abilities. Initially they will form gangs to try to take by force what they can’t gain by ability. There will be much bloodshed, but that will taper off as they either die in attacks, or simply starve or from desease. Time is on the side of the survivors, so that will become the initial goal of the enclaves, waiting out the attacks.”

“It’s a good thing we still have the whole set of Foxfire books, a generator and fuel, several cords of wood, at least six months worth of food and a well. Corpses? We have wild life around here to make short work of that mess.”

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…..gosh, sounds dire.

But i ask myself, how much of this is the result of clear-eyed thinking, and how much of it is just wish-fulfillment? Is it just a coincidence that these older Americans are dreading but also dreaming of a new world where fifty years of progress gets wiped out overnight? Videogames, cel phones, the internet, rap music, human resource departments…. all that crap you don’t like, all gone in the blink of an eye.

Enclaves? Let me guess, when these folk imagine their ideal post-crash enclave, it’s probably inhabited by mostly white straight Christians and lorded over by rich white Christian men. Uppity blacks, people who don’t speak english, the gays, snotty kids with piercings and funny haircuts — yeah, they’re probably not going to let any of those past the perimeter. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the people who make you uncomfortable just went away?

Also, where is the rest of the world at this point? I would imagine that whatever financial crisis befalls us, China would offer us a series of trillion-dollar bailouts in exchange for economic serfdom, disarmament — basically a total shift in the balance of world power. But if they don’t, could we Americans who don’t want to become grass-weavers and mesquite-benders emigrate elsewhere? Japan might want some immigrant workers to exploit. What about Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Iceland, South Korea, or Canada? Can we just go there? I assume that air travel isn’t just going to vanish… or is it?

I don’t think these people realize that America is not the entire world. They really think that the smart white people of America are running literally everything, and that outside our borders there is nothing but Hawaiians paddling around in canoes, coolies toiling in rice paddies, and Eskimos building igloos. I suppose this really is the picture of the world you get if you grow up in the ’50s and never step outside whatever midwestern state you live in.

Am i wrong?

I dunno.

Obama 2012.

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