Choices

I didn't realize it at the time, but I reached a crucial turning point in my life when I chose "Johnny Pez" over "Augustus Sol Invictus" as my online pseudonym.

For Want of a Nail: The Next Generation

It's been four weeks now since I was able to get a steady, albeit "temporary," office job, ensuring a steady weekly paycheck for as long as the job lasts. However, this comes after seven months of unemployment, and my financial situation remains precarious. Frankly, I'm sick and tired of being poor.

The theory of comparative advantage suggests that the best way for me to end my impoverishment is to find something that I'm relatively better at than anyone else in the world, and do it for money. So, what am I relatively better at than anyone else in the world? Regular readers of this blog will have no trouble with that one: I am relatively better than anyone else in the world at writing about Robert Sobel's For Want of a Nail.

Mind you, I can think of several people who are absolutely better than me at writing about Sobel's book (Hi Carlos! Hi Noel!), but since they are even better than me at numerous other activities, that leaves me with the comparative advantage.

So how do I make money doing that? The answer again seems clear: write and publish a sequel to FWoaN. So that's what I'm going to do.

I've been given permission by Robert Sobel's estate to produce a sequel (and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Carole Ritter Sobel and David Sobel for doing so). Now comes the first hard part -- lining up a publisher -- and the second hard part -- actually writing the book.

If any members of my vast global blogging audience have suggestions about achieving the first hard part, feel free to make them in the comments. Better yet, if any members of my vast global blogging audience are themselves book editors who are looking for the next blockbuster in the alternate history genre, feel free to suggest that in the comments.

I'll keep everyone out there up to date on my quest to find a publisher. For now, wish me luck.

Desk

My time working as a day laborer is over, for now. I've been given a long-term assignment as an accounts payable clerk at a waste-disposal company, and for the time being I will put away my steel-toed work boots for a desk job in a cubical farm.

Under foot

Yesterday I went back yet again to the vacant office space to help strip it down for the use of a hypothetical future tenant. The last step in the process has been pulling up the rest of the floor tiles and throwing them away.

Scrappy do

Today I returned again to the renovated office space, this time to throw various pieces of scrap metal into a big blue dumpster, and to rip up floor tiles. Eventually, assuming the owner of the office space is able to find another tenant, they'll hire a contractor to replace all the aluminum girders, drywall, floor tiles, and ceiling tiles I've been throwing away. It's not quite paying people to dig holes and then fill them in again, but it's close.

Shaka, when the walls fell

Today I was back renovating an empty office, which mostly involved ripping down drywall and throwing it into a dumpster. You get a real sense of the transience of modern life when you spend a few days tearing apart the interior of a building and get to see just how flimsy it is.

The machine that goes "ping"

Today I helped to unload a heavy piece of medical equipment off of a truck and deliver it to a hospital. I think I'll add "medical technician" to my résumé.

Cuttin' the rug

I was back at renovating the office space yesterday, this time pulling up carpet. Given the near-certainty that someone would eventually be pulling the carpet up, you'd think the guys who laid it down in the first place wouldn't use quite so much glue. Apparently someone was a little too fond of his electric glue gun.

Office space

Today I cleaned up after some unused office space underwent renovation. It turns out that disposing of fluorescent lamps is pretty easy if you don't care about mercury contamination.

The last dangerous pods

I spent Monday at the moving company again, finishing the last of their wooden storage pods. Perhaps other branches of the company will have their own pods to build in the future. Who can say?

More pods

My facile use of electric screwdrivers and glue guns was apparently so impressive that the moving company asked me back on Friday to continue putting their wooden storage pods together. Sadly, there were no Martian heat guns in evidence.

Pods

Today's assignment as a day laborer was to travel to a moving company to help construct large wooden storage pods, using electric glue guns (a tool I was previously unaware of) and screwdrivers. Man, that glue gets everywhere.

Door

Spent Wednesday morning helping a guy install a sliding door in a house. The job only lasted three hours.

Left behind

Today I was sent out to an apartment complex to clean up an apartment whose tenants had departed (whether voluntarily or otherwise I never learned). Afterwards, I picked up litter around the complex, including the remnants of various types of fireworks.

Point State Park

Spent five hours last night working at Point State Park after the fireworks show, helping to pack up a cookout sponsored by a basic cable channel. Also got to see fireworks.

Glue gun

Spent the day yesterday helping a guy install a new floor in a house he was renovating. Got to use a glue gun for the first time.

Crunch time

Six months after being laid off from my job as a finance clerk, I still haven't been able to find another full-time job, and my unemployment benefits are about to run out. That means that I have to re-enter the hit-or-miss world of being a day laborer, taking whatever jobs are available (cleaning up construction sites, unloading trucks, washing dishes) for a pathetic $7.25 an hour.

So, the blogging is going to slow down for a while.

Vertigo

I recently suffered an attack of vertigo that has made it difficult for me to use a computer, so my appearances online will be few and far between. I'll be back if and when I recover.

Call the police there's a madman around

NICK: ...hate cops, Guido! I'll always hate cops!

GUIDO: Yeah, Nick! I hate cops too!

PAOLO: Yeah! Me too!

NICK: I'll tell you guys what I'm gonna do! I'll tell ya' what! I'm gonna get even with every rotten cop in this city!

PAOLO: Yeah! Me too!

GUIDO: How ya gonna do it, Nick? How ya gonna do it?

NICK: You know what I'm gonna do?

GUIDO: No, no, Nick! Whatcha gonna do?

NICK: I'm gonna ... turn in my badge!

--Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"

As usual the Four or Five Crazy Guys got there before everyone else on the whole Chris Dorner business. I'm not going to talk about Dorner, because I don't really know anything about him. Instead, I'm going to talk about something I do know about: cops.

As long-time members of my vast global audience will remember, I used to work the graveyard shift behind the front desk of a hotel in Newport, Rhode Island. And I can tell you, based on first-hand knowledge, that the absolute worst guests we ever got were off-duty cops. The reason they were the worst guests was because they knew they could do pretty much anything they wanted and nobody could stop them.

Standard procedure at the hotel was that guests who disturbed other guests (invariably because they were too drunk to realize how noisy they were being) were given exactly one warning to stop. If they peristed, they were turfed out. If they refused to go, we'd call the Newport Police Department, and they would escort the stubborn soon-to-be-ex-guests off the property.

The system usually worked well, but it would break down whenever the rowdy drunken guests were off-duty cops, because the local cops would drag their feet about throwing them out of the hotel. In one instance, the local cops refused to throw out a room full of noisy, drunken off-duty cops having a bachelor party. The drunken cops' long-suffering neighbors called down to complain about the noise at least half a dozen times, and the hotel eventually had to apologize and waive their night's rent. I doubt whether they ever came back, and I don't blame them.

On another occasion, some drunken off-duty cops who were staying at the hotel decided to hang out in the lobby, and they became extremely abusive when I couldn't get them a light for their smokes. I eventually called the local cops to throw them out, but the local cops didn't send them on their way. Instead, they took them to a local donut shop to cool down, then let them sneak back into the hotel through the fire door. At that point, of course, the drunken off-duty cops were trespassing on hotel property, but the local cops refused to arrest them.

And that sums up the problem with police is America today. In a sane society, the police would be held to a higher standard of behavior than everyone else, because the State arms them and charges them with protecting the rest of society. Instead, they're held to a lower standard of behavior than the rest of us just because they're cops. And being human, they abuse the privilege.

Lovecraft answers

Let's face it, folks. If any man knows what true horror is, it's H.P. Lovecraft. So I sought his advice on dealing with my own personal nightmare, and he did not fail me.