So this installment is going to be a bit like an 80's Dodge, it's going to be cobbled together from various bits laying around that don't really go together, but can be made to do so with a lot of sweat and questionable engineering.
A writer better organized, talented and most importantly, more patient than me could've taken the unfinished drafts that comprise this post, and turned them all into their very own completed selves. I cannot do this because I am unorganized, of mediocre talent and am working on becoming very drunk after kicking ass at online poker.
Therefore if structure and continuity are of even vague importance to you, I beg you to ignore this post and read some David Thorne instead.
I'm basically just going to be throwing blog salad onto the internet and hope something in it turns out to be amusing for someone.
It goes something like this. I'll put up the unfinished post with it's original title in big blue letters and then try to add some new content to it which will show up as red.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Here we go.
Chingachgook Say "Do Not Try To Understand Strippers, And Do Not Try To Make Them Understand You. That Is Because They Are A Breed Apart And Make No Sense." Or, The Service Industry Will Scrape You Raw Like A Vegan Cereal Made From Bark And Twigs."
I'm not a very nice Floor Janitor at all anymore. This industry has worn me down to the bloated, soggy stick. I barely even try to be cordial at my job anymore, pathetically hoping for a tip. I've found being being a unamused and uncompromising asshole makes me the same amount of money as trying to appeal to my fellow humans' kindness.*1
When you choose to make your living in the service industry, an occupation that features watching every other person in the world having a good time and then cleaning up all their vomit, drama and social abortionry, you tend to get increasingly volatile*2. Patterns of dick-holery emerge. You end up being able to predict with 90-some percent accuracy how a given situation is going to evolve.*3
Therefore you, for right or wrong, tend to preempt certain situations by exercising what may appear to be to the untrained eye, the unspoken promise excessive force.
I suppose that if I'd wanted to stare at the same wall for hours on end I would've gotten a desk job. Those sound like a lot of fun. I'm not very satisfied with my occupation at this time, but things could be worse, I could be a clown, or a patent lawyer.
So I just bottle it all up inside where it can only kill me, then drink it all away. Perfectly safe and environmentally friendly*4. I have been assured there's no such thing a suppressed-rage induced aneurism and that I'm far more likely to die from
The point being is that babysitting drunk people can be very irritating. Toss in some random junkies, con artists, ghetto thugs, out and out thieves, huge doses of stupidity and lots of money and things become less savory very quickly.
Awww, poor me. My job is SO demanding. Suck it up you bus driving minge-prodder!
Christ, sometimes I get so immersed in my own self pity that I realize I don't ever mention anything that may be a positive in my life. I mostly do this because writing about happy shit just isn't very interesting. It's hard to make funny because the rainbows and unicorns get in the way.
So, to poorly construct a rickety segue, here's the next bit which deals in the weighty issue of values left to me by my long departed Father.
My Dad Could Do All Kinds Of Shit That I Would Fuck Up Like A Retarded Chimp If I Tried Doing Them Because I Was A Fuckhatted, Disinterested Worthless Gobshite Of A Kid When I Should've Been Learning Incredibly Useful Lifeskills From This Multi-Disciplined Craftsman. Or, At Least I Picked Up Frugality...
You know, I make very few demands of life, I keep my needs simple and generally have much lower standards of living that most people I know. I think this comes from my Dad, who spent the last 5 years of his life living either in my Grandparent's spare bedroom, an 8X10 mini-camper parked in a junkyard and in a giant former school bus that he was converting into a mobile home.
My Pop didn't really care too much about his lair as long as it met the basic needs. Those being:
A) Can I fit in it?
B) Does it keep the rain and snow off me?
C) Can I heat it sufficiently so that I don't die in winter?
D) Is there some place in it or near it where I can shit?
E) Does it allow me to divert as much of my income as possible from 'living expenses' to 'hobby and fun shit expenses'?
I pretty much have the same set of parameters concerning my living space as my Dad did except for my 'E' reads Does it have air conditioning?
I actually hate where I live. It's loud. It's next to a high school. It's above a food bank. It has shitty insulation. All the windows are on the same side of my apartment, thus making a cross-breeze impossible. I have emergency temporary housing on the apartments on either side of me.*6 Its all the way across the county to where most of my friends live.
But I pay less than $400 a month rent. It has artic-level central air conditioning. I have a 9 minute commute to my night job and a 2 minute commute to my day job headquarters. I am well positioned for the apocalypse in that my apartment is second floor, is very defensible, features a skylight for an emergency exit, is positioned over a food bank and I have a pick-ax and a giant, frighteningly accurate hand-cannon with which to harvest food.*7
So, all in all, it's fortunate for me to have the job I have. StripperHerding. I can work 3 days a week, sometimes 4 and usually provide for my basic expenses. Just like my Dad did except that he made a lot better money than I do, but seeing as how I have no hobby's outside of drinking, fantasy football and online poker, only one of which I actually spend money on-it all equals out in the end.
It's also possible that someday I may make some money off of my day job, which I am part owner of. You never know, stranger things have happened.*8
My Father was what some people referred to as 'an Engineer without a degree'. The man's skill set was so far beyond me that I can only feel like I fucked up by not learning from him.
My Pop was a certified Electrician. He could frame a house and wire it for electricity. He could fix any type of engine and it would fucking well stay fixed or he'd goddamn well fix it again, permanently. He didn't take any shit from mechanical crap.
He could weld with the best of them and indeed welded from scratch the whole frame for a trike he built in 1975-1977. This wasn't like every other trike in those days which was powered by a a 4 cyl Ford or Volkswagen, nope. Not my Dad. He put a 425 CI Oldsmobile engine in it rated at 380 HP.
His speedometer went up to 120 MPH ans I very distinctly recall being on the back of it and forcing my head against the slipstream screaming off his shoulder to look at the speedometer and seeing it buried past 120. It may have done lasting damage to my neck.
I remember the brimstone smell of him welding the metal in the basement. To think that he built something like that from scratch and it fucking worked really well, astounds me.
I can't build a birdhouse that would be anything but a disgrace. A section 8 nightmare for some poor, unfortunate birds that will likely collapse on them some day, killing them.
There. That's two drafts united as one. Like broth and flour make gravy.
Tune in next whenever when I explore the departure and subsequent return of Vodzilla, my Arch-Nemesis. I disclose several little known tidbits of strip club lore and tell you how to construct an emergency shelter in the wild using only two worthless strippers.
Peace my malashites,
-The StripperHerder
*1 The level of which has been seriously exaggerated
*2 And by volatile I mean frighteningly hateful of the trivial stupidity that thrives in drunken people. Stuff that might be amusing if your friend did it at a party. Things that might be excusable in a more isolated setting or where you're amongst people you know.
Or things that have grated your nerves so often over the years that you daydream about going all kinds of murder jerk.
Going utterly supervova. Getting all postally. Pulling a Norway.
*3 Because I recycle the beer cans and only flush the toilet every 3rd piss.
*4 Like I can look at a guy guy just coming into a club and think to myself, "I'll be throwing that dude out of the club in 13.2 to 17.8 minutes.
*5 79,483 people have been killed by llamas in recorded history.**
**This may not be completely accurate because I just made it up.
*6Sometimes the emergency is that the person is fucking crazy and completely unemployable. Welcome to my building.
*7 Courtesy of my friend Erik at Pittsburgh Tactical Firearms. He'll hook you up, mowwa-fakka.
http://www.pittsburghtactical.com/
*8 Like the 1956 Freak Rain of Small Appliances which occurred in Plato, Illinois on an otherwise unremarkable June day. In a matter of moments over 5,000 small household appliances such as toasters, blenders and hand mixers rained down on the tiny Midwest town in a fierce but highly profitable storm.
