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the competition of fools
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1814
Wherein the roommates ask about my day and I tell them, much as expected, outside all day, 12 hours, blizzard, sprain my wrist, broke my toe, lost my nose to frostbite, they feign interest but it's really just a sedgeway into how their days went.
"Brutal. 67 emails, had to watch 6 hours of video on the computer, all fascinating stuff but there isn't enough time, I only got through 18..."
I know this. Is the competition of fools, they're so long retired they don't remember what misery is. And, to be sure, I'm always pushing the boundaries, but it's a little like listening to the 16 year old princess tell her friends how her parents must hate her because they bought her the wrong color of Porsche for her birthday...
The Weather
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1871
I've never paid it too much attention, but with the new job and all, working outdoors, it's become a bit of a priority.
Every day last week all of the forecasts were wrong. By a lot. Highs of 5, 7, 10 degrees, only once did it break 0.
The easiest job in the world must be that of a weatherman. I could do better tossing bones or chickens into the air. And provide quality entertainment, but then maybe everyone would see the news for what it really is ... entertainment of the basest and most inaccurate kind.
The roommates, they're addicted to the weather channel, watching it and noting when it's inaccurate, nonetheless quoting me the next days, weeks best guess as if it will help.
It never does. Better to dress as if it was going to be 10 or 20 degrees colder than their forecast, it usually is.
But the ads, for incontinence diapers and bladder control shorts, they say it all. They've found their audience.
pump-tastrophe
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1787
Morning, descending into the pit, the headlamps on the hardhats lighting the way, the flagger, sentinal, takes a cigarette, his toll for signing you safely to the bottom, a pump-tastrophe, flood, over the weekend all the pumps have failed, the pump-gineer's idea to run a four-way off another four-way has blown the breakers, water everywhere, 4, 6, 10 foot pits deep filled with rebar and water, vast flats of mud, a days work for the excavators lost, for us just begun...
Falling from a crane...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1429
(70 hours work this week, last night a full 10 hours sleep, woke with these dreams still vivid in my head, they lasted past coffee and so are recorded. So much work, so little sleep, dreams are a luxury...)
Morning, high above the world, golden morning, fall, the earth spread out below me, I can see the curvature of the earth, across from me there's a helicopter flying, surrounded by a grid of iron bars....
I'm falling from a crane, waiting until the last possible moment before pulling my parachute, falling and waiting, it's a beautiful morning...
***
I land, looking for someone to tell of my adventures but it's a busy morning and it's back to work, there's water to be pumped, new holes being dug, and the memory of the fall from the crane soon disappears, it's dark...
I meet four construction workers, older, grey men, faces clouded with cement dust, I recognize them from high school, they look sooo old...
They recognize me as well..."Look who's kept his youthful good looks" they say to me...
I recognize them from high school but I can't remember their names. One is disabled, he is supported by the other 2, withered and perhaps mentally deficient, a construction accident of some sort and the company's kept him on, another is wearing women's clothing - I ask about this, he tells me (us all) that he's been in drag since he was a baby and forced to wear girl's diapers....
Another of the four volunteers that he's killed a man "and I haven't any regrets, he deserved it..." he tells me proudly...
I want - only slightly - to stay and catch up, the one schoolmate I haven't spoken to, the only one I vaguely recognize, still silent, but there's work to be done and so I promise to catch up with them later...
***
I'm walking around the site, picking up rubbish and bits of wire, it's dark, night, and as I come around a corner of the building I find a duck with a broken wing. I think to myself that it's escaped having it's neck wrung for dinner, and it comes to me for consolation, as soon as it does the lights from a row of townhouses across the street come on. The duck flees, and I can see that it was being hunted by a fox or cat hiding in a shed and I want to catch it before the cat or fox does but it's doing it's best to flee...
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