I worked, ran, built and fixed small to medium sized printing businesses.
I managed, worked, rebuilt, on one or two occasions got fired from, got hired back to, and worked my youth away on various types of equipment.
Stopping now and then to deal with the office twit who always seemed to be assigned the job of managing thousands, some times hundreds of thousands of dollars of graphics and printing.
I learned about computers because there was no one to ask, I learned about bars for a quick fix for people.
I learned that no matter how hard I worked or how smart I was I was riding a dying horse and one day a woman came to pick up her laboriously, damned difficult to produce business cards which we were all quite proud of and said, "oh…. Gee,…. It doesn't look like it did on the monitor".
A week later I was doing tech support a hundred miles away, glad to drive that far, making forty percent more money to start, and triple in a year what twenty years of my life had bought.
Not too long after that I heard James Taylor do this song.
Printing usually wasn't boring, but it had a sameness after awhile though we worked to one-hundred-twenty-fifth of an inch and I could see that with my naked eye.
As I told people for years to come, "the first twelve or fifteen years were sort of interesting".
Enjoy.
May 4, 2010
January 24, 2010
From April 2008
Time, labor, and materials.
A few weekends ago the 'boss' and I shot a wedding in Alabama.
Usually it's someplace on or near the Gulf, up around Santa Rosa beach, but this time it was a goodly drive up US 231, the east, some little podunk town that looked to be mostly horse money.
Lisa drove her SUV and I went in the 'redneck sportscar' my little made in Tennessee Nissan truck. We rendezvoused about the same time at the GPS loc that we'd agreed on and went out of this little town to "The Farm", she'd been kidding about HEARING the capitals in that for a week.
It was nice ceremony, but over done for my taste but that is just me. I prepped and handed the cameras, popped batteries on the forty count, held slaved strobes and fill cards… All the things a decent assistant does for a commercial shooter.
Ceremony, Set, Establishing, and Family(s) shots [[[gawd I hate shooting weddings!]]], done she told me "you can stay and eat or boogey" I chose to boogey.
Headed for Tallahassee as a side trip, not too far even though away from the target which was home. There is a decent Chinese buffet with good California Roll type sushi there that is close to the Barnes & Noble and Borders AND the Harbor Freight store, the three nexus's of my interest in Tally.
I hadn't eaten all day and it was early enough to miss the evening crowd so I went to the buffet first.
Mike and Penni and I hit this one in December when we got together a week or so after Mom passed away, and it was OK, but just OK..
When I went there in mid-May it was much better and I was enjoying a quiet leisurely meal when reality shifted.
It was like being high… for those of you who missed (or refuse to remember), the 60's or 70's, I could describe the experience like having been an outpatient somewhere, and finding that as the drugs wore OFF things looked odd and HEY there is a incision here in me!
It was one of those times in life when things seemed to get a little too sharp edged, and sound took on a different character than usual.
I blame the sushi and the company…
Dead ahead of me about three tables down with no other seat taken, there was a couple; she a hefty, gawky college girl; he a slim and well dressed guy, maybe a grad student, a little older than the girl.
To my right there was a table with three large, well dressed Black ladies who had purses you could hide a fully loaded Uzi submachine gun in each. I have NO idea why that image popped into mind, but like I said it was an odd early evening.
The college couple were doing some negotiating.
"So.. Based on a scale of say, one to eight," (why the hell EIGHT, I thought), "where would you say we are, relationship-wise?" she asked the possible grad student..
--meanwhile--
The Black ladies to the right were discussing what I finally figured out was the missing member of their usual group.
A lady who was off on this Saturday planning a wedding… and not her first.
--and the possible Grad student replies:
"One to eight???" [shrug], "I'm not even sure HOW to answer that one!"
--and the handbag ladies:
"She been married enough!" "DAMN! It were me and I was gonna get married again I'd just slip outa town to Vegas or Biloxi or somewhere!"
--the gawky BIG chick says
"Well, never mind the numbers, just think of 'US' in logical terms and tell me what is going on!".
-the oldest of the handbag ladies replies:
"somebody need to TALK to that girl!"
Handbag lady with the strawberry hair answers her:
"SHE-IT, you KNOW what she's like… it'd be a fistfight of words before you got one sentence out!".
--now the possible Grad student is starting to squirm:
"can't we just eat our dinner and go to the play?" I really don't feel up to all this right now!"
--and the handbag ladies:
Oh YEAH! She got SOME mouth on her! 'member when we came in here and she didn't like the food!?! I coulda crawled under the table.
At this point, gentle readers, I had had enough.
I got up, paid my tab, headed for the truck and went to the Borders bookstore where life stays safely between the pages.
December 28, 2009
Dirty little secret of 'government' health care.
It is pretty simple really.
Outside of capital investment such as a CT Scanner or a huge lab, the item which in almost all cases the LARGEST cost of ANY business is always wages/labor.
America has offshored almost all of its manufacturing capability since the end of World War Two.
Manufacturing was the holy grail of working class wages, driven by "organized" labor and rising standards of living brought on by these decent (if mundane and boring), jobs. Factory labor was often the PRIMARY source of tax revenue, and municipal income.
Then the sharp pencil kids figured out that Japanese, Koreans, Indonesians and others would do the same job for three or four CENTS on the dollar that American labor was charging. A 'new day' in profiteering was begun.
As people began to complain about losing family incomes... another voice was heard from.
Enter stage left those that while reaping the benefits of the increase of dividends on the bottom line made public pronouncements of how WE somehow 'owed' it to these people to raise THEIR standard of living. These same people that were crying in other countries milk neglected to mention that vast numbers of Americans would lose the only decent paying job that their families had EVER had.
Time passes. People adjust. Some retire or are RETIRED forcibly. Some die from Lung Cancer, Silicosis, other things brought on either by the job or by the lifestyle made possible by these jobs and simple human cussedness.
A new generation arrives. Jobs are FOUND for them, specially those with the wherewithal or gumption to morph thru the government training systems and come out degree or certificate in hand.
The new holy grail of American labor? Wait for it..... HEALTHCARE.
NOW in order for the stage left folks to consolodate POWER wich is the ONLY goal of politics a huge RUSHED push is made to get 'universal healthcare' IMPOSED, even though a quick read of all the plans SHOWS that it won't be "universal".
So... back to point 'a'... the LARGEST cost of ANY business, and make NO MISTAKE about it 'heath care' IS a BUSINESS is always wages/labor.
All those kids that went into the medical arena are about to be factory workers, EXCEPT instead of the jobs going AWAY they will be DRAFTED at some lower form of compensation, whether it is simply fewer of the 'gravy' billings that everyone has gotten used to OR some form of government IMPOSED fee structure.
The fat cats will never lose a dime but the nurses, the radiologists, the clerks and the maintenance people will see a drop in the standard of living BEYOND that their parents did.
And this time???? where will THEIR kids go for work.
Outside of capital investment such as a CT Scanner or a huge lab, the item which in almost all cases the LARGEST cost of ANY business is always wages/labor.
America has offshored almost all of its manufacturing capability since the end of World War Two.
Manufacturing was the holy grail of working class wages, driven by "organized" labor and rising standards of living brought on by these decent (if mundane and boring), jobs. Factory labor was often the PRIMARY source of tax revenue, and municipal income.
Then the sharp pencil kids figured out that Japanese, Koreans, Indonesians and others would do the same job for three or four CENTS on the dollar that American labor was charging. A 'new day' in profiteering was begun.
As people began to complain about losing family incomes... another voice was heard from.
Enter stage left those that while reaping the benefits of the increase of dividends on the bottom line made public pronouncements of how WE somehow 'owed' it to these people to raise THEIR standard of living. These same people that were crying in other countries milk neglected to mention that vast numbers of Americans would lose the only decent paying job that their families had EVER had.
Time passes. People adjust. Some retire or are RETIRED forcibly. Some die from Lung Cancer, Silicosis, other things brought on either by the job or by the lifestyle made possible by these jobs and simple human cussedness.
A new generation arrives. Jobs are FOUND for them, specially those with the wherewithal or gumption to morph thru the government training systems and come out degree or certificate in hand.
The new holy grail of American labor? Wait for it..... HEALTHCARE.
NOW in order for the stage left folks to consolodate POWER wich is the ONLY goal of politics a huge RUSHED push is made to get 'universal healthcare' IMPOSED, even though a quick read of all the plans SHOWS that it won't be "universal".
So... back to point 'a'... the LARGEST cost of ANY business, and make NO MISTAKE about it 'heath care' IS a BUSINESS is always wages/labor.
All those kids that went into the medical arena are about to be factory workers, EXCEPT instead of the jobs going AWAY they will be DRAFTED at some lower form of compensation, whether it is simply fewer of the 'gravy' billings that everyone has gotten used to OR some form of government IMPOSED fee structure.
The fat cats will never lose a dime but the nurses, the radiologists, the clerks and the maintenance people will see a drop in the standard of living BEYOND that their parents did.
And this time???? where will THEIR kids go for work.
December 18, 2009
My first experience with the shortfalls of academia.
My first experience with the shortfalls of academia.
It was May 5, 1961 and I was in elementary school.
Alan Sheppard sat atop a Redstone Rocket in what was then Cape Canaveral, Florida. I was in Port Orange a scant 35-40 miles down the Intracoastal Waterway, a block or two from the water.
In years to come I stood on my dock and watched the Double , then Triple manned test ships lift from the Cape, often able to hear and feel the roar. I saw every Moon shot from that dock and listened to Uncle Walter telling us about the brave new future.
Back to that morning in 1961, the powers that be had jammed about 160 of us into the auditorium to look at a grainy, black and white picture on what had to have been a nineteen inch teevee.
When the view was far better in the real world outside.
Things have not improved much in academia.
It was May 5, 1961 and I was in elementary school.
Alan Sheppard sat atop a Redstone Rocket in what was then Cape Canaveral, Florida. I was in Port Orange a scant 35-40 miles down the Intracoastal Waterway, a block or two from the water.
In years to come I stood on my dock and watched the Double , then Triple manned test ships lift from the Cape, often able to hear and feel the roar. I saw every Moon shot from that dock and listened to Uncle Walter telling us about the brave new future.
Back to that morning in 1961, the powers that be had jammed about 160 of us into the auditorium to look at a grainy, black and white picture on what had to have been a nineteen inch teevee.
When the view was far better in the real world outside.
Things have not improved much in academia.
December 10, 2009
Ghosts of eBay.
Moms Mother had a 1961 Chrysler too with the big fins on the back. she drove along with us.
About two months ago I got this postcard off of eBay for a couple of bucks of the little motel right up near the house.
The more I looked at it the more it nagged me till I blew it up.
The FIRST NIGHT we were home, for reasons I no longer remember, after going back to get the car, we stayed at that hotel...
This was shot early in the morning!
what are the ODDS?!?!?!
December 1, 2009
When morning comes.
November 26, 2009
Today begins the second year without a family of any kind.
Oh Mom actually died the thirtieth, just her and I here alone.
In spite of all of the Hospice, and the former long-time hospice nurse, Renda that used us to ego-up,... assurances that it wouldn't happen that way.
But it is today, by my choice, that I choose to begin the second year.
It was Thanksgiving afternoon that I decided to put that hospice bird in,
For something to keep busy with as much as anything,
and almost the last time Mom spoke to me.
She came back from where she was going... to visit here,
looked up at me from the hospital bed in the living room and said, "what's going on?"
I had already had to explain to her three times that she was dying,
And I just didn't have it in me to do again so I said "I'm cooking a Turkey".
"What the hell for?" was her reply.
"It was thawed out and not enough room in the freezer for it"
Was my answer, and she was gone again.
I finished cooking that day, stayed awake for two more,... deathwatch alone.
The last thing she said to me hours before she died was,
"I'm so worried about leaving you here alone", she'd been assured I wouldn't be…
When she was bright-eyed, sitting at her craft bench working and asked directly.
By someone who made now admits proudly she made no effort at all to do so.
Mom kept the blood pumping, the breath going till
It was no longer my birthday, did not leave me with that,
as well as the assertion that according to Renda I wasn't worth any effort in ANY way, from someone so selfish as to come into our lives, then denigrate them and leave BOTH of us hanging knowing full well what they were from the start, simply to feel good about her own.
Friends tell me not to dwell on this, and most times I do not,
But as I told the woman who spent ten years with me recently, NO ONE is more amazed that I survived all this relatively intact than am I, and no one could have anticipated such interweaving.
I did my job, I completed my mission, I did not shirk.
Mom was terrified for me at the end and even though it added to my burden I lied and told her "It's OK, I've met somebody…"
Once again, two years on, when morning comes I will be alone.
Now... if I bring this up I am scorned by the perpetrator as interfering
with her LATEST happiness and threatened with legal action for telling the truth.
Shunned by that sorority of women that caused John Updike to state
“How do you write women so well? I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.”
There have been others here since, for I'm not shy, or terribly ugly,
But the thought that someone would do that to another in that kind of stress simply to make themselves feel good about themselves, released by $3500 in job bonuses...
That would give a stone pause, in pursuit of companionship.
Night after night the dog and I watch Law & Order on teevee,
Monster after monster paraded to 'justice',... almost universally male.
Because advertisers know that women hold the purse strings
For the soap and sneaker culture that teevee runs on.
But often now I wonder, having run off all applicants
Who makes the monsters?
Who breaks the men?
And perhaps John Updike was understating the situation.
Today begins the second year without a family of any kind.
Oh Mom actually died the thirtieth, just her and I here alone.
In spite of all of the Hospice, and the former long-time hospice nurse, Renda that used us to ego-up,... assurances that it wouldn't happen that way.
But it is today, by my choice, that I choose to begin the second year.
It was Thanksgiving afternoon that I decided to put that hospice bird in,
For something to keep busy with as much as anything,
and almost the last time Mom spoke to me.
She came back from where she was going... to visit here,
looked up at me from the hospital bed in the living room and said, "what's going on?"
I had already had to explain to her three times that she was dying,
And I just didn't have it in me to do again so I said "I'm cooking a Turkey".
"What the hell for?" was her reply.
"It was thawed out and not enough room in the freezer for it"
Was my answer, and she was gone again.
I finished cooking that day, stayed awake for two more,... deathwatch alone.
The last thing she said to me hours before she died was,
"I'm so worried about leaving you here alone", she'd been assured I wouldn't be…
When she was bright-eyed, sitting at her craft bench working and asked directly.
By someone who made now admits proudly she made no effort at all to do so.
Mom kept the blood pumping, the breath going till
It was no longer my birthday, did not leave me with that,
as well as the assertion that according to Renda I wasn't worth any effort in ANY way, from someone so selfish as to come into our lives, then denigrate them and leave BOTH of us hanging knowing full well what they were from the start, simply to feel good about her own.
Friends tell me not to dwell on this, and most times I do not,
But as I told the woman who spent ten years with me recently, NO ONE is more amazed that I survived all this relatively intact than am I, and no one could have anticipated such interweaving.
I did my job, I completed my mission, I did not shirk.
Mom was terrified for me at the end and even though it added to my burden I lied and told her "It's OK, I've met somebody…"
Once again, two years on, when morning comes I will be alone.
Now... if I bring this up I am scorned by the perpetrator as interfering
with her LATEST happiness and threatened with legal action for telling the truth.
Shunned by that sorority of women that caused John Updike to state
“How do you write women so well? I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.”
There have been others here since, for I'm not shy, or terribly ugly,
But the thought that someone would do that to another in that kind of stress simply to make themselves feel good about themselves, released by $3500 in job bonuses...
That would give a stone pause, in pursuit of companionship.
Night after night the dog and I watch Law & Order on teevee,
Monster after monster paraded to 'justice',... almost universally male.
Because advertisers know that women hold the purse strings
For the soap and sneaker culture that teevee runs on.
But often now I wonder, having run off all applicants
Who makes the monsters?
Who breaks the men?
And perhaps John Updike was understating the situation.
October 15, 2009
Bad Bob and the St. Augustine barmaid.
We started in the City of Ormond Beach on a bright beautiful June day headed for Pasadena California, with a load of common concrete blocks and some household goods.
There was no leaving the blocks, the owners Mother was adamant. "Those belong to Dick, and I mean to see he gets them".
Dicks' brother was named Bob.
Bob was going to be doing most of the driving, I was along to make sure he got there.
Now Bob had a problem that now would certainly have some sort of warm and fuzzy title, but then was known by those who loved him and those who didn't as 'a case of the asshole'.
You could put Bob in a closed locked room (and often we wanted to), with five people and in an hour three of them would want to shoot him and the other two would be demanding a rope. Bob's problems had to do, accidentally, with alcohol, but only accidentally...
He'd 'accidentally' get drunk and start some shit somewhere.
We'd long ago decided that with him it wasn't the booze, the booze just let the 'inner Bob' out.
So why did I get in a U-haul truck with the guy for a cross continental trip? Well, suffice to say that at that period of my life one of the reasons that Bob and I ran together was that it made me look nearly normal, and the word around town was that, for me..., RIGHT NOW, a vacation was a good idea.
This was about 1973, a year or so before this the wonderful Paul Newman movie "THE LIFE & TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN" had come out and a bunch of us had gone to see it. Bob had not been among us which was unfortunate for him. Had he been there I am sure that his brother Dick would never have uttered "that is how my brother will end up" at the demise of Stacey Keech as"Original Bad Bob the Albino".
There was a wonderful line in the movie when one of the grizzled types runs up to Newman as Judge Roy Bean and says [after Bean shoots Bad Bob in the back] "You call that sportin'? It weren't a real standup fight."
Judge Roy Bean: "Standup? I laid down to steady my aim."
Dicks' brother Bob forever became 'Bad Bob' or 'Ormond Bad Bob' that night.
So as I said, we started out from Ormond Beach on the coast of central Florida, headed for Pasadena/L.A. California with these household goods and this load of about a hundred concrete blocks. this was about the time of the first big Medfly scare, and every scale and weight station we tried to pass would send a trooper out to run us down, lights and siren going.
Since I had done my best to talk "Ma" out of sending these concrete blocks to Dick they got loaded last and every inspection officer that opened the roll up door would be faced with a respectable sized concrete wall. It made the truck handle oddly too.
Most officers would look at Bob, then me, then the wall and either laugh (I had the story down pat after the second stop), or start up in there and clamber around peering in boxes, digging around in trunks, just positive that SOMETHING must be going on.
Of course there wasn't. There might have been some recreational goods in the cab of the truck but they never looked there.
We learned that if we'd take the off ramp at the scales and stations they's just look disgusted and wave us through, but EVERY time we didn't we got ran down and searched.
I should have gotten on a greyhound and come back to take my lumps the first day. We left bright and early, but we only made about a hundred miles.
Just outside of Saint Augustine the right dually pair on the back threw a shoe. We limped it into civilization and called U-Haul and they asked us to bring it another three miles in to town. Saint Augustine may be the oldest town in the country, but in 1973 it was also one of the smallest.
Blessing or curse; I still don't know but the U-Haul was only a block from the 'old town' tourist area and when we got there it was lunch time. "New place right across from the Castillo that supposed to be pretty good!" the kid working on the truck told us, "Called the Mill Top" he offered.
Between the truck depot and the Mill top there were four or five other interesting looking places, three nice, clean newish looking respectable hotel/apartment style establishments and two dives that looked like they'd been there since the local language was Spanish, and in St. Augustine you just could never be sure.
We of course being young discerning types went for the dives. "We'll just have one each and then get lunch" we asserted. In the first one the barmaid tending bar was a knockout, drop dead brunette that Bob instantly fell in lust with.
"Damnit Bob, how many times to I have to tell you that women work DAYS in a place like this because they are entangled with some guy, not so you can pick them up!" I tried, unsuccessfully, to ward off disaster.
"Ah. Bullshit! You just don't know anything about wimmen", stroked Bad Bob.
She ended up slapping him, which surprised Bob, me,... her... and half the bar which was now getting filled up with the afternoon crowd. He really hadn't done anything to warrant it, he was just too cocky and persistent.
I imagine if you'd asked her later what had caused her to do it she'd have said 'I dunno... he was just an asshole!'.
After a cool down period in the next dark seedy three hundred year old bar, we went to the Mill Top, had a sandwich a couple of beers,
and headed back to the truck. New tires all around like a NASCAR pit crew, and away we went.
End part one...
There was no leaving the blocks, the owners Mother was adamant. "Those belong to Dick, and I mean to see he gets them".
Dicks' brother was named Bob.
Bob was going to be doing most of the driving, I was along to make sure he got there.
Now Bob had a problem that now would certainly have some sort of warm and fuzzy title, but then was known by those who loved him and those who didn't as 'a case of the asshole'.
You could put Bob in a closed locked room (and often we wanted to), with five people and in an hour three of them would want to shoot him and the other two would be demanding a rope. Bob's problems had to do, accidentally, with alcohol, but only accidentally...
He'd 'accidentally' get drunk and start some shit somewhere.
We'd long ago decided that with him it wasn't the booze, the booze just let the 'inner Bob' out.
So why did I get in a U-haul truck with the guy for a cross continental trip? Well, suffice to say that at that period of my life one of the reasons that Bob and I ran together was that it made me look nearly normal, and the word around town was that, for me..., RIGHT NOW, a vacation was a good idea.
This was about 1973, a year or so before this the wonderful Paul Newman movie "THE LIFE & TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN" had come out and a bunch of us had gone to see it. Bob had not been among us which was unfortunate for him. Had he been there I am sure that his brother Dick would never have uttered "that is how my brother will end up" at the demise of Stacey Keech as"Original Bad Bob the Albino".
There was a wonderful line in the movie when one of the grizzled types runs up to Newman as Judge Roy Bean and says [after Bean shoots Bad Bob in the back] "You call that sportin'? It weren't a real standup fight."
Judge Roy Bean: "Standup? I laid down to steady my aim."
Dicks' brother Bob forever became 'Bad Bob' or 'Ormond Bad Bob' that night.
So as I said, we started out from Ormond Beach on the coast of central Florida, headed for Pasadena/L.A. California with these household goods and this load of about a hundred concrete blocks. this was about the time of the first big Medfly scare, and every scale and weight station we tried to pass would send a trooper out to run us down, lights and siren going.
Since I had done my best to talk "Ma" out of sending these concrete blocks to Dick they got loaded last and every inspection officer that opened the roll up door would be faced with a respectable sized concrete wall. It made the truck handle oddly too.
Most officers would look at Bob, then me, then the wall and either laugh (I had the story down pat after the second stop), or start up in there and clamber around peering in boxes, digging around in trunks, just positive that SOMETHING must be going on.
Of course there wasn't. There might have been some recreational goods in the cab of the truck but they never looked there.
We learned that if we'd take the off ramp at the scales and stations they's just look disgusted and wave us through, but EVERY time we didn't we got ran down and searched.
I should have gotten on a greyhound and come back to take my lumps the first day. We left bright and early, but we only made about a hundred miles.
Just outside of Saint Augustine the right dually pair on the back threw a shoe. We limped it into civilization and called U-Haul and they asked us to bring it another three miles in to town. Saint Augustine may be the oldest town in the country, but in 1973 it was also one of the smallest.
Blessing or curse; I still don't know but the U-Haul was only a block from the 'old town' tourist area and when we got there it was lunch time. "New place right across from the Castillo that supposed to be pretty good!" the kid working on the truck told us, "Called the Mill Top" he offered.
Between the truck depot and the Mill top there were four or five other interesting looking places, three nice, clean newish looking respectable hotel/apartment style establishments and two dives that looked like they'd been there since the local language was Spanish, and in St. Augustine you just could never be sure.
We of course being young discerning types went for the dives. "We'll just have one each and then get lunch" we asserted. In the first one the barmaid tending bar was a knockout, drop dead brunette that Bob instantly fell in lust with.
"Damnit Bob, how many times to I have to tell you that women work DAYS in a place like this because they are entangled with some guy, not so you can pick them up!" I tried, unsuccessfully, to ward off disaster.
"Ah. Bullshit! You just don't know anything about wimmen", stroked Bad Bob.
She ended up slapping him, which surprised Bob, me,... her... and half the bar which was now getting filled up with the afternoon crowd. He really hadn't done anything to warrant it, he was just too cocky and persistent.
I imagine if you'd asked her later what had caused her to do it she'd have said 'I dunno... he was just an asshole!'.
After a cool down period in the next dark seedy three hundred year old bar, we went to the Mill Top, had a sandwich a couple of beers,
and headed back to the truck. New tires all around like a NASCAR pit crew, and away we went.
End part one...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
