This piece was written September 11th, 2001.

In the wee hours before the Twin Tower Attack.

INPUT UNWANTED

Work ended. I went to the supermarket (thankful I wasn’t a prescient cow).

The supermarket was overcrowded (any more than me is overcrowded).  I was dismayed to learn they do not sell Percodin, cocaine, heroine, PCP or lithium over the counter (seemed like a good day to start).

I settled for painkillers, Ben Gay, cigarettes and 5 liters of bag in a box wine (should work).

As I waited in the checkout line, it occurred to me how much fun I could have dressing to kill and going to a fancy club using my new career to impress the babes…I’m a migrant worker…Hmm, just received a short s-mail from the sexual region “we’re fucked”.

Nights passed quickly…

I was well into my next date with a shovel.  The heat melting my brain.

I occasionally had to cheat on the shovel and swing with a pickaxe.  This I was OK with, since everything now is relative to the Torture King 2000.  The Torture King and I have broken off communications. 

I contemplated the physical difficulty of this job, but I was calmed when I remembered at least the pay was low and I wasn’t burdened with any benefits.

I found myself longing for the period of serenity created by the lack of bitching from my hands.  They were now constantly s-mailing complaints of throbbing and aching.  I wish they’d shut up.  My eyes s-mailed they’d like to see some beautiful women; I looked around, there were none.  I appeased them by assuring them that we’d watch the free porn available in our otherwise shitty room.

As I contemplated which dirt urgently needed to be extricated from the ditch, my mind wandered.

I wondered why we were wrapping the pipe with warning tape, warning carbon based life forms not to drink from the pipe then burying the pipe under 18 inches of dirt?

I wondered what my fellow compadres were thinking.  I discontinued this tangent, when it occurred to me that I really didn’t care what they were thinking.

I moved the dirt urgently…I really didn’t. I was slacking.

It became evident that we live in a world were common sense is an oxymoron and “honesty is the best policy” is a lie.

The difference between Darwin’s Theory and my theory of devolution is I can prove mine.  The theory of evolution has many holes, not the least of which is thousands of our best and brightest have worked to prove it and haven’t. 

And of course there is “the bucket” that would appear to be evidence that we haven’t evolved much.  Humans invented work. And then there is coming in contact with fellow carbon based lifeforms…more evidence to the contrary.

The only thing standing between me and an asylum is a ride.

I realize the perma-smile on dolphins is because they know something we don’t and are infinitely smarter than us (not a major accomplishment).  They are so smart they never invented work.  They swim around in groups, procreate and live. They do seem to have wars though.  I have become one with the shovel.

Proof of my theory:

Warning label: Do Not Put in Mouth…this was on a FAX machine.

Corporate America.  “Honesty is not the best policy”. 

Honesty has given me the opportunity to be unemployed many times and cost me many female induced orgasms.  Many is a close enough estimate for orgasms since the loss of one is a traumatic experience and causes endless angry s-mails from the frequently unemployed phallic region.

The inventor of the shoe is under-appreciated.

My mind continues to stumble-off, proof…oh yeah…

Common sense is an oxymoron?

Nudity should be a controlled substance as those that should wear more, wear less and vice versa.

Shit another s-mail from the phallic region: Migrant work stimulates abstinence.  Can’t argue, no reply.

Honesty and common sense:

There was a guy working at a big corporation that heard another guy boasting to all his co-workers about his sexual escapades the night before.  Being a manager he reported said discussion.

He got written up for lack of tolerance to alternative lifestyles.

Was fired 2 weeks later.  I don’t know the guy very well,  because it’s me.

I sure hope I’m living in an alternate universe where common sense and honesty do count for something.

We’re living in a time devoid of great creative minds or seemingly devoid. Yet there are 7 billion minds. Where are the Da Vinci's?

I pulled an incompetent pinhead off cash register duty, because when it got busy he began to shake and scurried to the back room.  There are no cash registers or customers in the backroom.

A couple days later I got a call from corporate headquarters (the place where common sense goes to die), the father of the incompetent pinhead was going to sue the company and me for racial discrimination. 

Odd, since we were a diverse group and others of his race were working the registers.  Of course this was because they were competent, so evidently I was discriminating against incompetents.

The company said I needed to put him on the register every shift…so if I needed four people, I now needed five to cover his ass.  AND he was costing me money since I couldn’t meet the man hours budgeted by the same company that told me I had to put said pinhead at the register, so I got no bonus. 

Common sense where art thou?

Why didn’t the intellectual blackhole of a father call the Packers and threaten to sue if his son couldn’t start ahead of Brett Favre?  He was as qualified for that as running a cash register.

Politically Correctness is the modern version of putting blinders on.  Just rename the problem and it will go away. 

Shit, gotta watch out for the shovel.

The ditch digger is ripping at the earth, jagged teeth spewing dirt akimbo.  On this rather clearly dangerous machine is a large sign that says dangerous.

The golfers are complaining about the lack of sun, me and my shovel are not.

One of the major problems with civilization is its inability to allow natural selection.

No question Hitler and Germany itself were the most influential on the 20th Century.

France?  They came up with the impenetrable Maginot Line.  Inadvertently creating the bypass. 

One can only imagine the parlay:

“I don’t suppose you’d mind coming back and fighting us at the line?”

“Uh, I think it’d be better if we bypassed your big guns and endless shells and concrete and took on your horse powered cavalry.”

“Bypass?”

“Yes, go around and make useless.  You see those guns could cause injury or death and should be labeled as such.  I’d much rather the odds favor our tanks against your horses and rifles .”

“What do we do?”

“Contemplate your embarrassing fate in history, polish the guns and go home to Paris, Germany.”

Gluing pipes together is pretty damn easy.  I thought about sniffing the glue.  I stopped thinking about it and sniffed.

Good glue.

I missed my shovel.  I vowed to found the People for the Ethical Treatment of Inanimate Objects. 

Problems?  How the hell did they sneak in here?

I know I’m broke.  I know my body is exquisitely broke.  I have accumulated 13 dollars for the week.  I know I live in shithole hotel with drug dealers, vagrants and hookers.

Hookers are pretty pleasant.  And anyone that gets people to pay for sex with them deserves respect. 

Furthermore, people that give pleasure are a good thing.  Most people should wear warning labels. 

Ex.: Danger: Synapse free zone.  Danger: May speak!  Danger: Almost ate FAX machine!  Danger:  Pissed-off Middle Manager! 

Which segues into my quandary over my next adventure? 

What the hell do I do after migrant work?  I’m already undisputed lord of the idiots (Castanza was a lightweight).  My body was not built to be a porn star (a fact I often lament on long cold nights).

Obviously Chef is out.

I immediately discontinued reality based thought and sent mind out to wander as I glued more plastic together.

Mundane, meaningless, E=MC2 all of these things my mind has fumbled into.  I need to know E=MC2 like I need another orifice or calculus…Teachers did not adhere to honesty is the best policy, because the truth would’ve eliminated their job.

But mundane and meaningless…those are useful. 

I’m leveling off a trench where pipe will be laid to create faux rain showers to grow grass so carbon based lifeforms can putt. 

Completely meaningless to the universe, and it really should be to the people putting as well.  But, I have putted and at the time it seemed urgent that I send that ball immediately into the hole, any delay was catastrophic.  I swore a lot, I still do.

I used to carry clubs for golf, now I have a pickaxe.

At least if you’re golfing you’re not doing any damage to the universe, so golf is good.  Since humans left unattended tend to invent things, like war.

I decided I had glued enough pipe to circumnavigate Marlon Brando…should be enough; I put the cap on the glue.

The inventor of the wheel is on my shit list.

Knee deep in mud, a pipe has broken.  It’s OK.  We’ll fix it and it’s easier to tell when to stop showering when color-coded.  Brown water?  Keep showering.  Clear Water, all done.

13 dollars for 5 days…laundry has suddenly become an extravagant luxury.  And I’m out of Ben Gay…looks like I’ll be wearing ode de migrant worker for the week.

Corporate Memo: Real or fake?

If customers drop eggs prior to purchase people will have to buy more eggs, begin dropping. 

It has been established that the dropping egg policy is not increasing egg sales as previously hoped. 

People are shopping elsewhere, discontinue egg dropping. 

Egg sales dropping will be factored negatively in to your bonus quotient.  Thank you for working at Dumbassmart.

Leave no stone left unturned….  I’m not.

There are good holes and bad holes.

Time is man made.

How the hell was I supposed to know to call ATT? 

Well, I would. 

You work for the Phone Company.  I’m sorry, is there something on the bill that says please call us if you call someone new because we reserve the right to rip you off if you don’t call us?

That’s our policy.

Are you reading to me out of a book?

Yes.

Is the person that wrote the book available?

No.

So, you’re not allowed to make decisions.

Sure, out of the book.

Right… thank you.

Waiting impatiently for the soda scandal.  12 idiots award millions to a single idiot who was surprised to learn that the bazillion sodas he drank gave him cavities.

All our jobs are meaningless or worse.

Yeah, I hear ya. 

What about doctors? 

Doctors will be tried and convicted for saving lives in the forthcoming Crimes Against the Universe trial as most lives need not be saved.  And the universe and the Earth's environment would be better off without us.

I have a friend that wanted to be a palm tree; he’s still trying. 

Most people waste time talking about work in a futile effort to convince themselves and the person pretending to be listening that their job is important.  It’s not.

Apathy, wherefore art thou?