SICK? OR FUNNY?

Yvonne says my sense of humor is sick. I say she has no sense of humor. You decide.

A day at the office, 2500 feet below ground.

Another day at the office

MY NEIGHBOR

Even if you don't know about my stupid neighbor, you will understand why this is funny.

So here’s gonna be the first thing that’s like a normal blog.
This weekend I got food poisoning and I thought I was gonna die, at one point I hoped I would, at another I told Yvonne I was gonna kill her for being the one who gave it to me. It wasn’t her fault though; it was Papa Murphy pizza that was the culprit. I didn’t feel like going to tell the folks at the store how they took 2 days of my life away from me, but I was curious, so I put this ad on Craigslist.

Just wondering if anyone else got food poisoning from Papa Murphy’s in Liberty Lake lately.

And here is the response from some guy.

Have you no life at all? It is only obvious that dumb fuck kids work their and don't clean the food prep areas properly because they are too busy texting and watching the clock tic by until they can get off work and go fuck their boy freinds or girl freinds, yet another group which is growing in size are those who can't get a girl freind and so they watch the clock so they can hurry back to the comp to post their troll drivel on CL.

So in short, it does not surprise me, and fuck you.

Wow.

Psychopath:mentally ill or unstable person; especially: a person affected with antisocial personality disorder

This guy is clearly a psychopath. The hatred is just thick. What does he hate me for? I deserve to be sick because I bought food from a place that sells food? That pretty much means the end of society doesn’t it? You don’t suppose this guy only eats what he kills or grows himself. Not likely, or he wouldn’t have the time to spew his hatred on the internet. I love the irony of how he hates people who post on Craigslist. That’s himself. Man, this dude needs to be in a loony bin before he hurts someone. This sort of thing really makes me feel like there is no hope for the human race. One of the things I have noticed about the internet is that the process of de-evolution happens so rapidly. Any of the sites I have seen where anyone is allowed to post eventually degrade to where you get this kind of thing. I used to read Rants and Raves all the time, but it has reached that point now, there is no useful content, just powerless, sad, little men whose only pleasure is from anonymous abuse of others.

The West

The West

The bent and muddy license plate lying on the back seat says “US Government, official use only”. It’s in the back seat because I ripped it off the front bumper turning around on a narrow mountain road.
I am sitting in the official truck trying to find a place where my arm will be out of the sun. Every place it shines on me, it hurts. That’s because the elevation is eight thousand feet, and I’m used to living in a place where it’s less than two thousand feet. The truck is parked in front of a cattle gate with barbed wire running off to infinity in both directions. I say infinity, but in fact, I can only see the fence for a little ways because the terrain is so rough. Some of the posts are metal, but most are crooked and spindly little sticks. This is western Colorado, and it looks very much like most of the rural west. Off to my left, about ten miles away, I can see the Gunnison Mountains. Seventy something miles away are the La Sals in Utah.
The guy I’m working with is asleep, so I start daydreaming. Déjà vu tells me that I have lived this very scene before. My first job when I was eighteen years old was working for the Government, and I spent most of my days driving around in a truck much like this one, on roads much like this one. That was thirty three years ago. It feels like perhaps I have accomplished nothing since then. I am right back to doing the same thing after all this time.
Still, I love the West.
Whenever I go to a new place I really enjoy the different geologic features and the various micro eco systems. During my last trip the variation of terrain and vegetation was amazing. Everything from bare dry rocks radiating the sun’s heat in waves, to a ravine filled with ferns that could have been somewhere near Seattle, all in the same general area. Fourteen thousand foot high mountains only a few miles from a mostly flat, dry, wasteland.
It occurs to me that I have become jaded to some degree by the remarkable things I get to see. Six point buck deer walking through town. Being only a few feet from bears, elk, and moose. Looking down a thousand foot drop-off where eagles are flying below me. Rivers that boil with spawning salmon.
You see, I work in the places others go to vacation. The perspective of a tourist is different then the one of someone there to work. You see all the tourist attractions, but also get to learn the inside story. I feel quietly superior to the tourists and people who live in the “civilized” parts of America; they don’t know what they are missing. You don’t just observe the West, you become part of it. You become accustomed to the severe weather, the dangerous creatures, and the rugged terrain. You understand the culture of the people who live here. The West is a place, but it’s also an idea. It lives in the people who inhabit these remote places.
I take for granted people waving when you pass, men dressed in camouflage wearing guns. I’m not surprised when there is a horse or an ATV parked at the cafe. I know “the Code of the West”.
Looking back, I realize that at eighteen I knew nothing of the West or how to make my way through it. Now, I have become accustomed to the extremes of the West. My daily commute to work has been in helicopters, boats, ATV’s, and hiking up vertical distances greater than the Empire State Building. I’ve been two hundred feet below sea level, had lunch on the top of a mountain in fifteen feet of snow, and been a mile below the ground in a silver mine. I have watered my horse with my cowboy hat.
I am a Westerner.
I guess the last thirty-three years haven’t been a waste after all.

Rocket Science

When I was a kid, junior high, I think, we all had to take some sort of skills test. I found the test to be very easy and found out why shortly after. I was called into the counselor’s office when the results arrived, and he told me I had scored in the top 1% of every category. He looked at me in a different way this visit, you see, I had been to the counselors office before, but always to be chastised for being a trouble maker. He asked me if I knew I was brilliant, and I laughed. No, I never thought that, I did notice that there were a lot of stupid people though!
Ever since, I have reflected on how people think, why they do the things they do, and to a lesser degree, if I really am smart or not. A few years ago, I took a MENSA test just for fun, and I did not do very well. That might indicate that I am not the genius I think I am, or perhaps that my genius is not one that shows up in that sort of test. Either way, I am constantly disappointed in how dumb a lot of people are, so I was very excited to learn that I was going to have dinner with an actual NASA rocket scientist. What lively conversation we will have! It will be great.
This guy was the father of a relative of somebody else’s friend and this would probably be the only time I would meet him. We all went out to dinner and said our howdedoos,
I noticed he was putting down the drinks pretty fast. Then I noticed his hand on my girlfriend’s ass while we were at the salad bar. I didn’t know rocket scientists were lecherous, but it’s all just part of the learning experience, I guess. We never did seem to get past the small talk, and I kept waiting for an opportunity to ask him about black hole theory or something, but he had many drinks in him by now. All of a sudden he looks at me and says “why don’t you get a job?” This seemed odd, since I had a job. I told him so. Then he says “why don’t you get a haircut?” I told him because I already had a job, so I didn’t need a haircut to get one. I noticed his daughter had her head in her hands and realized this was not the first time he had made a fool of himself in public. While he was rambling on about goddamn hippies or some such thing, I thought about starting some debate with him, a conversation I would obviously control, but what would be the point. Everyone at the table could see he was a loser, no need to point that out, and a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent isn’t much fun.