Late Boomer's Den

  • Vibrating back massage at a job interview? Really?

    My favorite scene from the TV show Taxi.

    I swear to God this is a true story. If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’.

    I had a hell of a time breaking into the working world. I made some spending cash mowing lawns. I spent a summer working at an instrument repair business, painting cases for trumpets and saxophones. Tedious and shit pay.

    One day I saw a classified ad in the paper (remember those?) that read:

    “Creative, hardworking people needed for display and demonstrations.” Display? Creative? I was an arty kid so that was right up my alley I thought. Paid well too, according to the ad.

    The office was in a mall, an hour from the house. The sign on the door said something like “investments.” I sat in the lobby and began filling out an application.

    Suddenly a middle aged man came out and said, “Finish the paperwork later. Let’s talk.” He led me through a door – into a room full of vacuum cleaners. Same loud brand my grandmother got from a door to door salesman.

    Display job, right…

    He went a blackboard and wrote down the weekly pay amount from the classified ad. “Now let me explain to you why this ad is not a lie,” he said. “If you sell X amount of vacuum cleaners a week you will definitely make that amount.”

    A young man in a suit and tie came in, picked up some papers and left.

    “You see that guy? He’s our biggest success. He’s made so many sales he’s about to start his own operation. You can be like him.”

    I was too polite to leave, but I smelled a rat. “We have all the latest technology,” he said. “Come here and let me show you something.”

    He took the front off a vacuum cleaner and attached a hand-held device. He turned on the vacuum cleaner and the little machine in his hand buzzed loudly. A vibrator. A vacuum cleaner-powered vibrator.

    I wanted to leave, but I was still in polite mode. He pressed it against my back and said, “doesn’t that feel goooood?” Was this really happening? Was I being molested?

    Worst job interview ever.

    I said I would finish the application and bring it back later. I tossed it in the trash can on the way out. When I got home my brother said they had called asking when I was coming back. “Never,” I said. “Long story.”

    #Employment, #Vacuum cleaners, #MLM, #Multi-level Marketing, #Taxi

  • Domesticated, but not very mindey

    Not scared or polite, just being an asshole.

    I think Nigel is part cat. He’s started doing that thing where he can’t decide what side of the door to be on. He’ll boop the door to be let in, then walk away and refuse to enter. Too bad for him he’s little.

    Only now when we go to pick him up, he gives us “passive aggressive tummy.” Yeah, dogs give tummy to show you’re the boss.

    But not this little asshole. He’s saying, “Oh no, please don’t beat me! I’m just a little guy!” Like we ever have.

    Sorry dude, you’re a dog and sometimes we gotta go out. It’s what we get for being lazy and not doing all the stuff the dog trainer told us. I guess we’re not very mindey either.

    #dogs

  • ‘Winning’ the dirt clod war

    It was a dirt clod fight, not a rock fight, but that’s the best I could do for a song. We did have a pine cone fight that turned into a rock fight on one campout…

    It was just a dip in the creek at first. Then it turned into a war. The Scoutmaster lost track of us like he sometimes did on campouts. He was old. Several of us Boy Scouts took off through the pasture.

    We climbed a couple of fences and found a swimming hole.

    A farmer had scooped out a hole next to a 9-foot mud embankment. The water smelled like cow shit, but no one cared. A deep spot in a muddy creek might be as close to a swimming pool as you’re gonna get in the country.

    And who needs a swim suit when you already have underwear? It wasn’t really deep enough for swimming, but we had a hell of a time splashing each other in the face. An older boy got out and pelted us with dirt clods.

    They weren’t rocks, but they still hurt like a bastard. Soon the water looked like chocolate milk. The war was on.

    My buddies and I got up the cliff first. We had the high ground and plenty of ammo – the embankment was made of dirt clods. I can’t throw for shit, but I got off a couple of good ones.

    I saw my patrol leader, almost at the top. He was a cool guy, but also kind of a badass. He could beat up his brother, who was fully able to kick most of our asses. If he got to the top my team was done.

    I found a basketball-size dirt clod and rolled it over the edge. As soon as I did I knew I fucked up. It hit him on top of the head and down he went. I saw the look in his eye just before he fell and forgot all about the dirt clod fight.

    I ran through the pasture and hid in a gully until dusk, then wandered back to the campsite. He was waiting for me next to a galvanized tub of warm water.

    “You better be glad I didn’t catch you,” he said. “I was gonna break your arm. Now I’m JUST gonna make you wash the dishes.”

    All in all it was a good day.

    This was my dad’s Boy Scout Handbook. I don’t know what happened to mine.

    #Boy Scouts, #Camping, #Boys, #Country Life

  • Celebrating Mardi Gras from afar

    Courir de Mardi Gras in Mamou Louisiana. The other Mardi Gras.

    I love Louisiana culture, especially the way they celebrate Mardi Gras – even though I often forget, since I was raised protestant. Most of the fun has probably been had by now or is under way.

    When I remember, I usually play music from Lousiana. Close as I’m probably going to get.

    I recently found out they don’t just do Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Cajuns have their own version. It comes with its own set of traditions including some wild looking costumes and a chicken chase. I love that traditions like that still survive.

    Like a lot of folks outside Louisiana tend to think of New Orleans first, but the only time I ever celebrated Mardi Gras properly, it was a Cajun event – Charles Thibodeaux of Beaumont, Texas put on a concert at Central Market in Austin.

    Lots of transplanted Cajuns were there, dancing and drinking wine, kids were doing their own thing. I envy cultures like that, where drinking can be family friendly. When I was a Baptist I drank plenty, but only when I was sinning.

    #Mardi Gras, #Cajun, #Courir de Mardi Gras, #Louisiana, #Charles Thibodeaux

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  • ‘I sure hope you don’t get the electric paddle’

    Found this in a box of Dad’s things. He must have gotten it in college. Never used it on us. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt more than the electric paddle!

    That was something cold you could say when you and your friend got into something and it was his turn to see the principal and get paddled.

    It was a legend at my elementary school. “Mister Blankenship used it on a kid last week and it flipped him over the desk.”

    If you’d been there before, you knew it was bullshit. There was no electric paddle and he never hit hard enough to flip you over a desk. If he wasn’t mad enough to do it after my friends and I peed on the little girl’s hat, it wasn’t ever gonna happen.

    It was fun to scare the second graders though. In fact, it was kinda fun getting licks – it made me feel like Evel Knievel every day. It didn’t really hurt, and you could sometimes negotiate licks in exchange for them not calling your parents.

    I only started behaving when they came up with detention. Licks only stung for a few minutes. Detention could take weeks.

    I’m just as glad corporal punishment is out of fashion. At least for me it wasn’t abuse. Or not intentionally so. Most adults who spanked me were doing what they were taught to do: “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” But after meeting enough unspanked kids who were better behaved than I was – at best it’s ineffective.

    It probably just made me sneakier. It never stopped me from any shenanigans. A kid in my high school got licks for jumping off the back of the football stands onto some pole vaulting cushions. How was that supposed to scare him? He already jumped off a stadium.

    #Discipline, #Education, #Corporal Punishment

  • Don’t know shit about sports

    I may not be typical, but I never gave a shit about sports. I don’t even watch the Super Bowl. It was hard to get interested in something I was so bad at.

    I never hit or caught a ball in Little League. Struck out every time.

    Junior high football was just PE with extra equipment. It was a contest between me and this other guy to not come in last during laps. He was also the only one I managed to knock over during practice. I said, “Sorry about that,” which really pissed the coach off.

    I let the quarterback get sacked the one time they let me off the bench. Worthless at football.

    How about bowling. That’s the everyman sport right? I took bowling in college and on the first day, rolled the ball into a pole, rang like a gong. The coach said, “You know it IS possible to fail this class.” Pulled off a C.

    And ended up covering high school sports for years. I sucked at it (now and then a coach would call me and say, “Umm, that’s not a real play”) but I liked it better than I expected.

    It got me out of minimum wage land and into the newspaper business. Yes I said I’d never be a journalist after I left my diary at the old sheriff’s house. But that was before I’d spent three years night clerking for motels.

    #Sports, #Journalism, #Newspapers

  • What do words mean? What does meaning mean?

    Interesting bit of graffiti I saw today. Way deeper than it seems at first. Ignore the spelling mistake. In fact, I think it’s a feature, not a bug.

    “Before love I used to think words ment something.” True statement, maybe even truer than they thought. It’s also a paradox. Love is something words can’t express. But they said it with words.

    That got me thinking. Language itself is a kind of paradox. A sentence never really “means” anything, because it’s made out of words, not the thing it refers to. Like an internet friend said on the subject, “It’s only a paradox because you’re using words.”

    “The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes. Whenever the map is confused with the territory, a ‘semantic disturbance’ is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.”

    — Alfred Korzybski

    I’m definitely not the first person to think of this. Wittgenstein explored the subject, as did Alfred Korzybski, quoted above. Surrealist Rene Magritte’s famous painting “This is not a pipe” is a good illustration. It definitely represents a pipe, but you can’t smoke it. It’s a symbol, just as words are symbols.

    Here’s a good video on the subject.

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  • Algerian music rocks

    Still dipping into the Algerian music. Still having a hard time figuring out what kind of music Houda Hamouda was doing. – just that it was definitely not rai, the rock ‘n’ roll of Algeria and probably beyond.

    With the control of Saleh-( a wonderful musical). Per Google Translate – best I can do.

    Going back to one of the channels that posted some of her videos I keep finding other cool stuff. I found several jam sessions by this same group, The Nafis family I guess. Love the rhythms and that mix of tradition and new tech.

    Karzika Bilal – (Tehivalt & Tabarlem) New. Per Google Translate. Just wait till those crazy beats kick in at around 1:50. I love the way Arabic looks, by the way: كرزيكة بيلال -(تهيڨالت & تبرلم) جديد

    I may be wrong, but I think these guys are likely Berbers in the Red Oasis part of Algeria. I would love to be corrected if I’m wrong. I’m just an old country boy, figuring things out the best I can.

    #Algeria, #Algerian, #World Music, #World Folk, #Arabic, #North Africa, #Africa, #Ethnomusicology

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  • Stop making me feel old!

    This hit pretty close to home. I’ve been with my wife 10 years and we’re having more of those “if you’re too tired, so am I, let’s watch TV” moments.

    We were starting dinner early and I was justifying it, like, we can eat early if we want. It’s not a law! And she says, “yeah, then we can go to bed early. We’re old. If you weren’t gluten intolerant, we could go down to iHOP and get the senior citi-“

    “This conversation is making me uncomfortable.” The reaction she was looking for. She’s 10 years younger than me, so she can rub it in. Despite the fact that she’s about to run out of hormones. (She said she’s afraid she might lose her sex drive. I said, “Do it for the hugs baby.”)

    I’ll admit to being old, but in my mind I’m just old-ISH. When I get letters from AARP I tear them up. You don’t represent me AARP! I’m still on the young people team!

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  • Write for a newspaper? No way in hell

    Sometimes my sci fi brain gets me in trouble.

    My first job writing for a newspaper was just a way to make extra cash in between night shifts at the motel.

    You could actually make a few bucks using those college essay skills. Who knew?

    This was what they called stringer work. You’d get assignments and got paid by the column inch.

    I covered high school sports and wrote a few features. Kinda fun. At first…

    I interviewed a retired sheriff, one of those “back in my day” stories. I thought I did a pretty good write-up. A few days later I was sleeping it off after a shift at the motel.

    My uncle came in and asked, “Lose a notebook?” and handed me a legal pad I didn’t even know was missing. I had left it at the old sheriff’s house. My blood ran cold. I’d been using it as a diary.

    The newspaper folks had questions. The old sheriff saw “disturbing things” in my notebook. AKA, me talking about the time I smoked too much weed in college and some “Satanic” doodles of some alien monster I’d made up.

    This was probably around 1990, right at the tail end of the Satanic Panic. Not so close to the tail in rural West Texas.

    I promised myself I would never work for another newspaper. Ended up working in newspapers for 20 years.

    I did keep another promise: Keep your work shit and personal shit separate!

    #Newspapers, #Journalism, #Satanic Panic, #Marijuana, #Texas