This Here's A Story 'Bout The House Rent Blues

"I'm terribly sorry, Toby old chap, but you're ineligible for unemployment being that you're, well... a locomotive."

So I was laid off from my most recent job (a temp assignment in Murrysville) a couple weeks ago. That's not a good feeling, especially with student loans to keep up with. Worse still, I had really gotten to like the place and especially the people there. But I will say one thing with certainty: Of the two jobs I had previously left behind, I will never go back to either of them under any circumstances.

Yes, I started out, like so many other vaguely fresh-faced young people working at McDonald's. One thing that was, however, different in my case was that I began after college. I left State College without having completed my degree, and without one jot of experience. (Looking back, a year of the place BEFORE college might have changed some things for me. I also think it would be wise to look for a small amount of job experience in college admissions, but hey - what do I know?) I think everyone can relate to the kind of suckage that such jobs seemingly consistently are, so I thin I'll pass on talking about most of it. My coworkers were the usual mix; mostly local high school kids and the like. There were some of the crew I liked and some I didn't; and the owners were good guys but with autocratic tendencies.

That said, what I got tired of fast was the customers. Most were fairly indifferent; and really, if any were outright nice people, there was no time to find out. But the bad ones, holy fucking shit. Typically the bad customers were just miserable, clueless (one time the nearest Wendy's had to close their drive-thru because some idiot managed to wreck into it, and so their customers came to us - and ORDERED WENDY'S MENU ITEMS.), or expected to get stuff for free (e.g. the wad that canceled his order because there was a 50-cent charge to add lettuce to his sandwich, and said rather loudly that he'd go to Wendy's because he'd get it for free, not factoring in that Wendy's is pricier...). But let me tell you, we had some real lunatics come though. Like the cranky old biddy who complained about yellow crap in the vanilla milkshake we served her. It turned out to be VANILLA SYRUP. Y'know, the actual FLAVOR. And she went on this rant about how we were all terrible at running the restaurant and how supposedly her 30s-ish son sitting there in the dining room right then could do better. Or the people who got MORE disappointed when we fixed their complaints. Yeah. That actually happened.

I finally got fed up with this crap, and found another job. In hindsight, the better option might have been politics, or maybe guerilla warfare. Mainly because said job turned out to be Leed's. What a beyond worthless, entire-family-fucking piece of ass crap waste-of-time company this turned out to be. Spoiler alert: I eventually walked out. I managed to piss away four years there on 50+ hour weeks and sometimes weekends. But worse - remember my complaints about the customers at McDonald's? Well, now I WORKED WITH THEM. Sure, I had some good coworkers, but all in all, most of them were lucky enough to move on or unlucky enough to get fired by the time I was done. And you wouldn't believe what it took to get rid of the bad ones. Especially when some of them were friends with a supervisor. I have said that I would refuse to go back even at gunpoint, and I mean it. Surely getting shot would be less painful.

But fortunately, there's a happy ending to this story. Sort of. For the time being, at least. I'm employed again and have returned to the job I lamented losing at the start of this essay (read: rant). I was ready to go to another assignment elsewhere in the Valley; everything was in by last Friday and we were just waiting on the company to respond. Monday, I get a call that the company that laid me off was looking for someone in a different department. I really struggled with such a short-notice decision, but in the end, I elected to return.

You Got A Hubcap Diamond Star Halo

Well, it sems I did it again. I went to Dee's on Thursday and put ten bucks in the jukebox. So immediately after I went up, there was a lady who put another ten in right after me, and she spent XTC, 80s Neil Young, Guided By Voices and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs waiting for ten bucks worth of T. Rex. That's a lot of the late Marc Bolan.

He Was Driving Down The Right Lane When Ahead He Saw A Sign

Your tax trillions, in some form or another (PennDOT, education, PennDOT education), at work. 

Who You Jiving With That Cosmik Debris?

THIS IS THE LEAST EXPLAINABLE PICTURE EVER

They Climbed Aboard Their Starship And Headed For The Skies

Drew at Back Of The Cereal Box posted an amusing anecdote about wearing a certain hat into Home Depot. I think it's a cool hat, despite never having watched Gravity Falls. That said, it reminded me of a similar thing that happened to me - way, way back in 2005 while I was a Penn State New Ken student.

See this hat?

I even have the officers' oak leaves! I expect a salute next time. 

It's a piece of merchandise from the Robotech universe. It is in fact designed after the command ball caps worn by U.S. Navy personnel, mainly officers (though I can find precious little info on them online). The SDF-1 Macross is the freaking huge spacecraft from Robotech canon that, in 1999, falls out of the sky, crash-lands on Earth, and brings World War III to an abrupt halt. After kicking the tires and taking a peek under the hood, Earth's military decides to fix it up a little and press it into service. Ten years later, on its launch day, the insanely powerful alien fleet that's been trying to track it down makes it to Earth. Needless to say, hilarity ensues. (No. No it does not.)

Not long after I'd received it - this was a birthday present, I think - I was getting ready for class at PSNK and was running behind. For whatever reason, I still had wet hair and the day wasn't very warm. So on the way out I grabbed the hat, slammed it on my head and away I went.

First class of the day was Intro to Chemistry with Dr. Clarence Finley. Luckily I popped in just as he was starting class. Dr. Finley's a pretty cool guy and I knew he didn't mean anything sinister when he cheerily quipped "Glad you could join us, Derek," as I took my seat. My friend Mike and I had actually discovered that he was another railfan, and could be our faculty advisor for the railfan club we started. It would have taken a bit more than just being a few minutes late to class one day to make the man unhappy with me, I believe. I think I simply apologized for being late, and so class started properly.

Dr Finley started by introducing what we'd cover in class that day, and asked a question. I had actually done my homework (figuratively and literally, mind you) and knew the answer. Up may hand goes, and I'm given the chance to answer - which I did correctly. Dr. Finley thanked me.

And then he asked me, "Are you a veteran?"

I had no idea what he was talking about. And then I remembered that I was wearing a hat. My Macross hat. Like the official Navy hats. And a lot of Navy veterans wear similar hats. As a matter of fact, my grandfather has one - he served aboard the aircraft carrier Lake Champlain between '53 and '56. I think he might even have a spare.

I froze for a moment. I respect the men and women that make up our fighting forces for their willingness to give their time and possibly their lives in service to their country (although I admit to increasingly questioning the validity of the tasks which the federal government asks of them; but that's a hysterical rant for another time), and the idea that I might end up diverting attention from them with my hat made me feel a little guilty. I should have grabbed the Mon-Valley System trucker hat. Fictional railroads are a lot less controversial. (They may actually be the least controversial thing to exist, ever.)

I still had to answer the question, though. "Oh, uh, no. The hat's just from an old sci-fi TV show."

This is probably why I've only worn it once or twice since I got it.

Robot Minds Of Robot Slaves Lead Them To Atomic Rage

Well, that's cute. Another dream to report. This was over a week ago.

I was in a warehouse somewhere, and for some reason I was handling items removed from nuclear reactors (no apparent protective gear either).

There were two pairs of items. The first was a pair of dense metal plates, about the shape and size of an eight inch long chunk of yardstick. They were black with a red stripe, and I thought they were out of a German reactor.

The other two were plastic shells, black with blue highlights, shaped somewhat like a Tamagotchi (holy shit, remember those?), but about the size of the palm of my hand. There were magnetic tape reels inside, like you'd find in a cassette tape. One was damaged and the tape was trailing out. These seemed to come from a British reactor.

Why the shapes, and what purpose these... items had is lost on me. Equally strange is the association of the shape, color and apparent national affiliation of each pair. It's been a heck of a couple of weeks for dreaming.

I Fought The Law And The Law Won

Looks like even the city needs a good proofreader! Didn't notice this until tonight.

I've Got The Boxcar Blues, Shuffle On Down The Track

This was the condition we found the train set in one of the South Side's tattoo parlors the other night. 

Track half-connected, the manifest freight on an incomplete loop, and the local in the ditch...

This is no way to run a railroad. 

Going Off Of The Rails On A Crazy Train

BACK IT OFF BACK OFF THE THROTTLE

OH GOD SHUT OFF STEAM WHAT ARE YOU DOING

STOP YOU'RE GOING TO BREAK SOMETHING ALREADY

JUST GREAT NOW YOU'VE GONE AND DONE IT

THEY'RE NOT FOOL ENOUGH TO LET THIS HAPPEN IN THE COLONIES UNLIKE YOU

Oh. I stand corrected. 

Found In The Wreck With His Hand On The Throttle

I'm posting a photo of a preserved steam locomotive. You may find this photo unusual, as I myself do. 

Southern Pacific 0-6-0 shifter 1294 was retired in 1957 and displayed in the San Francisco Zoo playground as a monument to the bygone era of railroad steam traction. Apparently, however, the salty air of the Bay accelerated the locomotive's deterioration and forced the zoo to remove the locomotive. In 1987 she was cut up. 

The locomotive was pretty popular on the playground, however, because it was essentially a standard-gauge jungle gym. Yes, kids were allowed - and apparently encouraged - to climb all over 1294, as you can clearly see from Alan McFaden's 1969 photograph. 

Photo by Alan McFaden, found on steamlocomotive.com

I do not think this was a good idea.

Could someone tell that kid standing on the stack to get the hell down before he falls off? He's at least twelve feet off of the ground right there. If he survived this day, he's probably in his sixties now; but he's still making me nervous. 

Am I already a cranky old man?

Here Comes Your 19th Nervous Breakdown

It's been a long couple of weeks. I need something to make me laugh, don't you?

(Settle in. You might be here a while. It's been a VERY LONG couple of weeks.)

I feel much better, don't you? Don't you!? DON'T YOU!?

She's Just Sitting In Her Room Reading Books About UFOs

I'm a reader of the Myth Adventures series of comic fantasy novels by the late Robert Lynn Asprin. They follow the adventures of amateur spellcaster Skeeve and his mentor, the demon (dimension traveller) and native of the dimension of Perv (a Pervect, he insists) known as Aahz. Asprin began the stories as an homage to the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby 'Road' movies, and a lighthearted reprieve from some very dark, depressing sci-fi he'd previously worked on.

Along the way the pair make friends with an entourage of characters, and for the eighth novel, MYTH Inc. Link, Asprin changed format as a result. This one followed Skeeve and Aahz' friends and partners on smaller adventures, while hinting that later books would bounce back and forth between this and the regular novel format used when Skeeve and Aahz were at the center of the action.

One of those adventures was the assignment of guarding a warehouse full of back-issue comics; undertaken by Skeeve's pet dragon Gleep, and hit man Nunzio, a former Mafia associate now in Skeeve's employ as a bodyguard. Nunzio determines, by inspecting the comics, that they're forgeries, as there seem to be more comics in storage than the original print runs could have totalled. As a result, the warehouse ends up torched, quite mysteriously.

I'm also a comics reader, and the warehouse full of comics reminds me of the backstory of Mile High Comics, founded by Chuck Rozanski in 1969 in his parents' basement, and now grown into one of the largest back-issue comics retailers in the market. One of the stepping stones to this growth was the purchase of nearly two million back issues in a deal with some shady characters.

The trick here is that the comics were largely affidavit returns; books that were not sold at retail, claimed to be destroyed for a refund, then subsequently resold for an additional profit. Rumor had it at the time that organized crime had a hand in this fraud. Rozanski certainly came by the comics in a legitimate fashion; but the surprisingly harrowing tale of the deal in full is best told in twelve parts at his editorial blog on MHC's site, beginning with Tales From The Database - Mile High II Collection Part I.

Seemingly, Asprin thought something was fishy in Rozanski's deal and devoted a few pages of his novel to satirize it. Certainly, though, the large numbers of back issues that Rozanski purchased had accumulated genuinely, albeit for a fraudulent purpose; and in the end bolstered his business. If you read through the story of the deal, you may get the feeling, as I did, that chances were they may have been irrevocably lost otherwise.

As an aside, two comics creators that Asprin was friends with and gave a little in-story tribute to happen to be Wendy and Richard Pini, creators of Elfquest; a favorite title of mine. And guess where issues to fill some of the gaps in my Elfquest collection have come from? Yep, I've got Rozanski and Mile High Comics to thank for that.

Put Another Nickel In The Jukebox

Best drunken jukebox mistakes ever!

ABBA's 'Dancing Queen' instead of Led Zeppelin's 'Dancing Days'*

The Osmonds' 'Down By The Lazy River' instead of Neil Young & Crazy Horse's 'Down By The River'

Pink Floyd's 'One Of These Days' instead of The Eagles' 'One Of These Nights'

Olivia Newton-John's 'Xanadu' instead of Rush's 'Xanadu'

Justin Bieber's 'Baby' instead of Styx's 'Lady'

Peaches instead of Peaches & Herb

Kenny Chesney's 'She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy' instead of Guided By Voices' 'Tractor Rape Chain'**

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' 'We No Who U R' instead of Neil Young's 'We R In Control'

Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' instead of The Black Keys' 'Never Gonna Give You Up'

The Flaming Lips instead of The Fiery Furnaces (or vice-versa)

* This happened to me once. No lie. It was awkward.
**Your mileage may vary.

Humble Thyself To The King Of The Kids

You hipsters have nothing on dear old dad. Dads Are The Original Hipsters

Since the federal government nixed the Death Star proposal, I guess this hotel will have to do. From TYWKIWDBI. Hotel's Solar "Death Ray"

Looking for new music? This online doodad may be able to help you find stuff you'd like. Music Plasma: Visual Music Search Engine

That about sums it up. Humor Train: The Internet Is A Lot Like Ancient Egypt

Words That Never Were True

Have you ever written something that sounds reasonable in your own head, but as soon as you ship it off to the intended recipient you begin to think 'I bet they hate me now'? I think I just did. Don't read it at work.

No Consent Or King

It's one hell of a photograph! You'll understand why they titled it as such when you see this. This Is A Photograph, Not A Painting

What the hell? I hope she has a layout big enough to run that thing on... Stolen train crashes into building in Sweden

If you like graphical representations of your music, here is the Flickr group for you. Flickr: The Song Chart Pool

On the 'What the hell did I just watch?' list:

'Western Spaghetti' by PES

Through The Fire And The Flames We Carry On

You know, I wonder if the subpar reliability of most British diesels has anything to do with the following videos.

A Class 20. 

A Class 37.

A Class 31.

Sure, let's let all our diesels shoot flames out of the stack! That's never a bad idea!

Even the Russians are getting in on the act!

No idea what type this thing is, but I've never seen a diesel blow smoke rings.

He Feels The Piston Scraping, Steam Breaking On His Brow

Oh shit! OH SHIT!

That can't be good. Found on TYWKIWDBI.