Everything is Shit

People often ask me why I became a truck driver after I got a degree. I’ve tried various answers but in truth the reason is freedom: Freedom to make my own schedule; freedom to travel and see new things; the chance to actually work in other languages (I do a lot of work on the US-Mexico border and in Quebec and could not do my job without a working knowledge of French and Spanish.)

Most significant is the freedom from that most horrid of people, the manager — that professional make work busybody, that same idealess,  average I.Q. lawn NAZI who dreams of little beyond orgasms and a good morning shit, that sometimes bully who has only enough passion to get angry at the people who stand up to him.

If I learned anything about life from trucking it was how little managers are needed. Seriously, take a good truck driver, give him some bad info about a load that needs to be delivered across the country within a certain amount of time and forget about it. This is a person who needs no supervision to accomplish a task. Someone who does need supervision cannot do the job, so the answer is simple: fire them.

So why have some trucking companies decided to try “the driver manager concept”? I’m working for one of these companies — for the moment — and it is amazing how effective managers are at destroying everything that made this job worthwhile: the freedom, the self reliance, the pride that came from knowing that you could be trusted to do a hard job well with no supervision, and the fact that there was no one breathing down your neck, justifying their existence by making you explain your actions to them hourly.

Best of all was the complete and total divorce from office politics, from the knife-in-your-back relationships with coworkers, and all the horribleness of that environment. All that mattered was job performance and how you dealt with the customers (just a little hint: usually I am respectful, but sometimes I have to give them a bloody nose. Its a rough job.)

Now I have all the disadvantages of life on the road and all the horrors of of life in an office cubical. These people offer no advantages to us  — none — and are experts at making it impossible for us to do anything other than obey and whine. Truckers are being transformed from tough minded, self starting, independent adults who never needed to be told what to do, into just another bunch of wage slaves who find themselves being treated like children. I’ve actually found myself acting like a kid, finding ways to sabotage the system not only because its often the only way to get the job done, but out of spite as well.

There must be an advantage for the company to form entirely new divisions, offices, and job categories and then employ, insure and equip them (and then hire managers to do the managing of them), but I can’t see it. Is it really such a threat to a company to have employees who don’t need to be told what to do? I’m not just asking this question to be a smart ass, I’m really curious. I would really like to know how any company is threatened by competent employees.

The worst part is the way these groups form little territories within a company and defend them against other departments, often working against each other in defense of their petty holdings, the greater fate of their employer be damned. The Chinese had a group of people like that once: the Mandarins (you know, those Chinese guys in the old pictures with the long creepy fingernails?) While there was no single cause for China’s inability to deal with the Europeans who sailed into Canton Harbor and demanded tribute, the Mandarins were almost certainly the most important. Now that I think about, the “driver managers” I’ve met actually have long, creepy fingernails — even some of the men!

Well, I suppose I shouldn’t complain, a lot of people these days don’t have any work at all. On the other hand, there is always that 5K per week job I was offered out of Hong Kong fighting pirates in the South China Sea. All expenses paid, including burial if needed!

A few years ago I took my taxes to H & R Block, thinking my tax forms were a simple exercise that I just didn’t have time for. I was told as much, and promised that the whole thing would be wrapped up within two weeks, for the price of $80. I was also  assured I would get several thousand back.

I stopped by after two weeks and was told my tax preparer was not there at the moment but would call me that evening. Two weeks and several phone calls later — none of which were returned — I finally made a call where I was put on hold and was told “she will be with you shortly.” She wasn’t, so I hung up, got in my car and drove to their office, where I was told to sit and wait. I did, for over an hour. When I finally got to speak with my preparer I was told not only that I owed the I.R.S. several thousand dollars, but that H & R’s bill was — so far (they were still not done) — over $800.

I looked at this woman and asked what happened to the original quote. I don’t think I’ve been talked down to that badly since boot camp. I listened, then asked for my paperwork. I was told no, that I owed her and she would not return my paperwork until I paid her. I asked her why I owed her when I never agreed to the new terms and she ordered me out of her office. I left, without a years worth of receipts, records and other papers I needed to file my taxes.

You’ve been warned.

I checked google today and did an ego search for “everything is shit” (without quotes) and sure enough, it was gone again. From page one to limbo in 24 hours. I checked as far back as page 30 and only found one link leading to this blog, nothing to the domain site itself. How can a service this fickle be relied upon for anything? Everything is shit .COM was right up front as the number one search result, as always, despite the fact that my site has been up longer, changes regularly, etc. (again, I wish them no ill will, I’m just perplexed.) Google is capricious at best — and is quickly becoming unusable (spent a half hour trying to find something on google yesterday, went to Yahoo and got it on the first try.)

All is not lost, however: the comment spammers who bizerked this blog after google put it on page one have not abandoned me, if anything they have redoubled their efforts to make sure I never feel unnoticed again. Kinda makes ya feel warm and fuzzy, eh?

Whadda Ya know? I wrote that post about google a week or so ago and now if you do a search for “everything is shit” — without quotes —  I’m on page one. Maybe they listened? With all the gazzilion voices out there could it be true? I don’t know, but its pretty cool anyway.

On the bad side, I cleared over a hundred spam comments out of my Akismet comment queue today. You people are costing me time. In fact, from this moment forward you are on notice: all spam comments (defined as comments that provide even a single link to any product being sold) will never see the light of day, will be deleted, and if I ever get lucky enough to find out who you are, be advised that I consider the time you are stealing from me to be valuable and I will charge you accordingly. The current rate that I am charging (subject to change at any time for any reason or no reason at all, with or without announcement, and may be backcharged to posts that were deleted BEFORE I changed the rate) is $10 per comment that you force me to delete. If you still choose to post spam comments, be advised that you are agreeing to the contractual relationship described above, and if I do find you, I will come to collect it with lawyers, guns and money (and you are agreeing to that too.) Have a nice day.

(Comments that are not spam [defined as comments that link to any non commercial site that is demonstrably relevant to the topic I am writing about] are not only excluded from the contractual relationship described above, but are welcome.)

How is it possible that you can get your own modest domain, pay for it, put it up, write some humble html — circa 1995 I will admit — and put up a modest blog that has no intention of ripping anyone off or making a dime, yet be shunned by the one search engine that counts? Seriously, type “everything is shit” in any search engine but google and you will find this site on the first page, right at the top, which makes sense: after all, “Everything is Shit” is the domain name for crying out loud. Try the same search — enclosed in quotes — on google and you will find it on page seven. Without quotes it sometimes shows up on page 27, sometimes on page 97, sometimes not at all. I mean nowhere.

What’s worse, you can find obscure blogs that use the word “shit” once, and you can find them repeated in the search results 10 to 15 times by the time you get to page 27! How can google claim to be a search engine when you can’t find a domain called “everything is shit” by typing the words “everything is shit”?

Worse still, there is a web site called “Everything is Shit.com” which is pretty cool, but it’s static: whoever put it up has written a short missive claiming that everything is shit and always has been. I enjoyed what the author had to say the one time I read it, and I even linked to his site. Nothing bad about it. Its just that its not the most profound thing I’ve ever read, and there is not much to it, and what little there is never changes, yet whenever I do a search for “everything is shit”, there it is at the top of page one. Is it possible half the world thinks this small group of paragraphs is so profound that everyone is linking to it? Is it possible that the author thinks that these few paragraphs are so important he spends weeks learning all the ever changing tricks to getting placed highly on google searches? I don’t see any money being made from his site so what is going on?

So far I’ve just been bitching (and let’s be honest, this blog/website is pretty much like that tree that fell in the forest: maybe it fell and maybe it even made a sound but who cares? I long ago stopped writing this for anyone but myself, and truth be told I’m pretty sure writing this blog in plain site has been the most private thing I’ve ever done — I doubt my own family would read it [even to be polite]); however, I think there might be something more than just bitching about my ratings here, and I think it reflects on the quality of google’s product.

This experience caused me to wonder if google is really all its cracked up to be. We have all gone through the horror of typing search terms into google, only to confront 3 million plus hits, much of it unrelated to anything we were searching for (I’ve often found it easier to search in google images than to do a google web search.) Curious, I started using Yahoo and found the search to be quicker, while the the results were more relevant. I had a similar experience with Dogpile — even LiveSearch was less frustrating. The only search engine that did not turn up results that were as good as google was Ixquick, which I still use sometimes because they respect our privacy and somebody needs to support them until they can match the other search engines (and when they do, they will be my only search engine.)

So, there it is. Google used to be a wonder. Now they have gotten so clever at defeating the search engine optimization experts that they outsmarted themselves and created a product that can’t find what you are looking for. Google, you have become shit.

Zima is kinda like me: it was cool for about thirty seconds. Zima, though an icon of the 1990s, is actually studied as the paragon of the product cycle, because it rocketed to popularity, collapsed into obscurity, then hung on for over a decade, trying to reinvent itself (usually with unfortunate results.) Zima finally met an unremarked fate recently, when Coors Brewing Company (or Miller, can’t remember which) decided that while it was still a moderately profitable product, it really wasn’t worth their time or trouble. Most people didn’t notice, and of those who did, most said “Good riddance”. For the rest, Zima’s demise is a bit of a minor cause: people are actually coming out of the closet and telling the world they want their Zima back — or at least they did, before their website went under too, probably from a lack of hits (before it was canceled, Zima was like a Moped: fun, but they wouldn’t want to be seen doing it.)

Babylon 5 fans are in a bit of a quandary, because Zima exists in the Babylon 5 universe. If you ever watch B5 look above the bar in some of the drinking scenes and you will see a Zima sign somewhere. Product placement? Probably. Zima came out right when Babylon 5 — another ’90s icon — hit the now defunct Prime Time Entertainment Network, and both were popular topics on and early users of the Internet (which also exploded in popularity at the same time.) More to the point, my friends and I used to play a drinking game that involved watching Babylon 5 while drinking copious quantities of Zima. Those were good times, and I still drink a (single) Zima when watching reruns of the first season of B5 (or at least I used to.)

Yes, you read correctly. I admit it. I am a (mostly) macho guy who drinks Zima. And I like it (well, I like ONE Zima: the second Zima isn’t quite so good, and the third is kinda nasty, so if I’m determined to get plowed I usually switch to wine after that single Zima. Also I never drink it unless I’m watching B5, its a retro thing.) I know its not cool to like Zima, but nobody has called me cool since college and I’m old enough now that I don’t care any more.

So, when I saw the last three six packs of Zima on clearance sale at the local grocery store, I bought them. They are taking up space in my fridge and probably will for some time. The question is, if Zima was still profitable on a small scale and it still has its fans, would it not make a decent business for someone interested in serving a niche market? Hmmm . . . maybe I could be my own boss? Zima, anyone?

Why do girls think they own the toilet? This week I was in a public bathroom — a public MENS bathroom — and two girls walked in while I was at the urinal. They laughed at my discomfort, and then loudly demanded that the man in one of the stalls “Hurry the fuck up.” Unfortunately for the young ladies I was just finishing, so as I zipped myself up I confronted them. Briefly, I promised them that if they wanted to play in the men’s room, I was more than willing to treat them as if they were the sex who were supposed to be in that room in the first place (and needed a lesson in manners.) I was bluffing of course — I don’t beat women — but I still can’t forget the look of shock and terror on their faces. What else on earth could they possibly have expected?

I once worked at a theater in Hollywood that had four bathrooms, two for the men, two for the ladies. On big events we had to turn one of the men’s bathrooms into a ladies because the girls would not only use the men’s bathroom anyway, but they would cut in front of the men in line to do it. The men would stoically endure and say nothing. Despite the unwarranted privileges we granted the women, ten to twelve times a night each of the employees would be still screamed at by some woman for giving all the bathrooms to the men.

I know a guy whose wife threw a bucket of water on him while he was asleep because he left the seat up. I know this because she boasted about it to an entire group of people while we were eating at a raucous pizza parlor. I asked her why she got so upset, because I just don’t understand the anger. She laughed and said, “Wait till you fall into the toilet in the middle of the night because some inconsiderate jerk left the seat up.”

I asked why she didn’t look where she put her bottom, and she looked at me like I was from Neptune and replied, “Because it was dark — DUH!”

“Why was it dark?” I asked, and just looked at her.

“You mean why didn’t I turn on the light, don’t you Mr. Professor?” she sneared, “because I woke up in the middle of the night and I wanted to go back to sleep and I didn’t want the light to wake me up.”

I thought about that for a second, and said, “OK . . . so if your husband wakes up in the middle of the night, chooses to leave the light off so he will remain sleepy, and assumes you left the seat up, then you are responsible for him whizzing all over the toilet?”

(If at this point you can imagine a group of henpecked husbands begin to laugh and cheer, while the wives, suddenly forced to do an impromtu balancing act on formerly sacred terra firma, begin to yell and try to shout me down, you have a good mental image of the scene.)

I waited for them to finish or at least quiet down some, so I could get a cogent argument out of them, but all they had to offer to the conversation was. “You don’t know what its like!”

To which I replied, “Thank God, your husbands are pretty hairy.”

This allowed a bit of laughter, and the conversation got back on track, so I was able to ask, “Why, what is it about being a woman that makes you not responsible for your actions? Are you not the equal of a man?”

This predictably brought more wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the response that got my attention was by an usually quiet young lady at the end of the table who peevishly said, “You try raising a child and then talk to me about responsibility.”

Rather than point out that I was probably just as good at changing diapers — the old kind, with pins — and testing to make sure the milk isn’t too hot, and had long ago proven myself more than capable of meeting all the other demands a young child imposes on it’s parents, I simply asked, “So you only teach your sons they are responsible for watching where they are going? Even when they are climbing trees, or learning to drive?”

You get the idea of how this conversation went, and the point is not to put down the ladies. The point of bringing this conversation up is say how much fun I had challenging received consensus and forcing a rethinking of an issue by people who think they have a religious mandate to dominate a physical thing by virtue of their place in society.

As you can imagine, none of the ladies were convinced of anything, but the men certainly began to look at the issue in a new light. I don’t know if that will keep my friend dry in his sleep, but at least I won’t have to hear some inconsiderate screech brag about bullying her husband. Sorry to tread on what you thought was your territory ladies, but either you are equal, or not.

ADDENDUM: I’ve since learned that each of the ladies present at the above encounter — all four of them — have decided that I am no longer welcome at any of their gatherings, that their husbands should no longer be my friends, and that one of the women insisted on it. I wasn’t surprised, I’ve had more than a few ex girlfriends try that ultimatum on me too, but I was surprised that all four men could be such slobbering dogs to their women. Perhaps they deserve to be bullied in their own homes, perhaps not. I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers, but I wish them all good luck: God knows they will need it.

Recently my ancient toilet (cast in the 1920s) finally gave up the ghost — and in a rather spectacular way, don’t ask. Faced with a sight no one was ever meant to face, I set upon a quest to find the perfect home for my bottom. How was I to know the green meanies had wormed their creepy tentacles even into that most private of spheres, the bathroom? I was instructed — by an inexperienced, peach fuzzed, snot nosed know it all with too much familiarity with textbooks and no knowledge of the actual books those texts pretend to describe — I was instructed on the how to and manner in which I was to perform that particular bodily function from now on, in the name of water conservation. Hey, what’s not to like?

So, where is that little shit now that I have a few questions for him? God only knows, but I’ll bet he is on some Peace Corps sabbatical in the third world, barking orders at little brown people because he knows what’s best for them too. Can you imagine how hard those little brown people have to work to keep that insufferable bastard alive in their world? One wonders why they don’t just eat him and save us all a lot of trouble. Please, PLEASE get me invited to the BBQ if they do, ok? The mental image of turning that little turd into a little turd brings new meaning to the phrase, “just desserts”.

Questions you say? Yeah, I’ve got questions, or at least observations. First, the whole point of my new eco crapper is that it has been designed to save water. To save water it uses a smaller bowl. Because it uses a smaller bowl, and therefore a smaller volume of water, the hole all the crap gets flushed down is smaller, to keep the water pressure up during the flow, I assume.

Whether or not my assumption is right, the hole is still smaller, so you can’t flush both toilet paper and the crap at the same time or the new saviour of the environment wonder throne gets clogged beyond description. So, the algorithm flows as follows: 1) park bottom on the glacially frigid plastic seat — the old seat was made of wood and parking your backside on it was not the uncomfortable analog for the birthing process the new seat provides — then; 2) do your stuff; 3) flush while remaining seated and enjoy the cool sensation of a shit spritzer all over your ass; 4) wipe your now soaking bottom with twice the paper you would have otherwise used; 5) flush again; 6) get up and run to the shower to wash your now disgusting caboose.

So . . . how exactly does this thing save water? Oh that’s right, I’m supposed to take it on faith. I’m reminded of a professor I once had, who, when confronted with a politely phrased question she found a bit too revealing of her intellectual perfidy, replied with, “If you want to pass this class, do not dispute the material.” Talk about a load of horse hocky! The entire class started laughing at her, which I suppose meant they saw through her bull too.

Unfortunately the adventure doesn’t end at, ah, the end, if you get my meaning. For some reason (perhaps the small size of the bowl) the new, eco loving pooh festival of a device in MY bathroom somehow manages to make a mess whenever it splashes — er, I meant flushes, of course, only it doesn’t doo that very well — and after my unscheduled shower now I have to clean up the mess (using chemicals and more toilet paper, of course), flush it AGAIN, and then wash my hands, all in the name of saving water.

Tell you what. Next time one of you know it all wunderkind gets a bright idea, I will listen to your little tale of your own wonderfulness and self congratulating superiority if you will A) spend a month on that infernal device you foisted upon my person and then B) stick your pea brain into that device and explain to me how your miracle pooper schluscher failed to flush you, your pea brain and your arrogant little pencil neck down to the very special Hell Dante reserved for all flatterers, even those who only flatter themselves.