Things have been a little slow here of late so I thought I'd share a true story. I hired an old guy to be a day watchman. There aren't any "Welcome to walmart" jobs for old geezers here so they do this. Not gonna stop anyone, not even going to try but it saves them from begging. They are very common. We even have one really old guy at the government building comes every night and is paid even though I doubt he'd even wake up if there was gunfire and the building has a 28 armed with AK47s police detail. Back to the story. One day he showed up early to inform me that he had a big problem, his wife died at 2 AM. So I'm thinking that I need to arrange a coffin, moonshine for the grave diggers (it's traditional) and rice and beans for the mourners. But wait! "I took her to the clinic and she got better and is OK now". I was now thinking I want to meet this doctor that can raise the dead when he added "I need $20 to pay him or he says she'll die again". Now we are getting somewhere. He needed $20 but didn't want to ask for it but knew I had to pay medical. Yes, I gave him the 20 for coming up with such a good story.
When I first landed at Schiphol Airport, in Holland, I had to take a pee. As I stood at the stall and prepared to do my business, I noticed a fly sitting in the basin. Being a man who prides himself on good aim, I was obligated to prove to myself that I could kill that fly with one shot. Ready, aim, FIRE!!! A direct hit! But he just sat there. So I continued my assault with a vengeance, unleashing everything I had in my arsenal. But to no avail. I finally realized that the fly was just an etching in the toilet. It was found that men cannot resist a target. And there is no better target than a fly. By etching a fly in the right spot, splatter was reduced by over 80%. That is what engineers call an elegant solution!
Erwin Schrodinger, the physicist who created Quantum Mechanics, often gained inspiration through trysts in the Alps with young women. It is perhaps notable that one of the core concepts in Quantum Mechanics, is the Principle of Superposition. And don't even get me started on Schrodinger's Cat jokes...
WAL-MART SENIOR GREETER Charley, a new retiree-greeter at Wal-Mart, just couldn't seem to get to work on time. Every day he was 5, 10, 15 mins. late. But he was a good worker, really tidy, clean-shaven, sharp-minded and a real credit to the company and obviously demonstrating their "Older Person Friendly" policies. One day the boss called him into the office for a talk. "Charley, I have to tell you, I like your work ethic, you do a bang-up job, but your being late so often is quite bothersome." "Yes, I know boss, and I am working on it." "Well good, you are a team player. That's what I like to hear. It's odd though your coming in late. I know you're retired from the Navy. What did they say if you came in late there?" (scroll down...................) "They said, "Good morning, Admiral, can I get you coffee, sir?"
Retirement sucks for most people. Look at Gen. Kelley and Gen. "Mad Dog" Mattis, both have well over 30 years of service in the Corps and are still working after retiring from the military. (fired by Obama in Mad Dog's case) Most flag and field grade officers who retired after 30 years of service continue working in the private sector many in the defense industry. They aren't working because they need money but they would go nuts sitting around doing nothing. Most retired officers and SNCO's who have 30 years of service that I know work part time jobs in the private sector just because they are bored. When you retire you have to keep active or you're going to prematurely die from boredom.
Lawrence "Larry" Richard Walters (April 19, 1949 – October 6, 1993), nicknamed "Lawnchair Larry" or the "Lawn Chair Pilot", was an American truck driver[1] who took flight on July 2, 1982, in a homemade airship. Dubbed Inspiration I, the "flying machine" consisted of an ordinary patio chair with 45 helium-filled weather balloons attached to it. Walters rose to an altitude of over 15,000 feet (4,600 m) and floated from his point of origin in San Pedro, California, into controlled airspace near Los Angeles International Airport. His flight was widely reported. After 45 minutes in the sky, he shot several balloons, and then accidentally dropped his pellet gun overboard. He descended slowly, until the balloons' dangling cables got caught in a power line, causing a 20-minute electricity blackout in a Long Beach neighborhood. Walters was able to climb to the ground. - wiki - For a time this was claimed to be an internet myth. But I remember Lawn Chair Larry. They had to stop flights at LAX.
I had a house-mate in college that was responsible for creating an urban legend that was actually true. He was a med scholar. They are people doing MDs and PhDs simultaneously. Their first year is entirely independent study. Very unique people. Anyway, he would leave the house to study around 6PM and drag back in around 8AM. Because of their unique standing they had keys to labs so they could work in peace with little distraction. They also had made arrangements with a pizza joint to deliver to certain labs even though it would be late. One night he was working in the cadaver lab with a couple of others and they ordered a $6 Xlg pizza (yeah, I'm old) and when it arrived they all feigned lack of cash and then someone piped up "Joe, Joe has the money." Needless to say "Joe" was a cadaver and was sitting in a chair with a twenty in his fingers. Totally nonplussed the driver plucked the twenty and asked Joe how did he want his change? No answer. "I can have the rest as a tip?" no objection. Thank you sir!!! They couldn't say squat and just tipped the driver $14 on a $6 pizza. Served them right. If you ever heard this story and thought it fake, it's not.
Speaking of the med scholars. They'd study for 13 days and then have a party on the 14th. Our house was ideal for them because it was a house with a carpeted basement and we could throw the bodies down there to sleep it off. A central feature was the punch bowl. Your typical Hawaiian Punch, OJ, 7UP and ginger ale. The difference was that instead of ever-clear they'd add pure, 200 proof, distilled that morning, alcohol they'd get from the lab using their special status. Odorless and colorless, you'd think you were drinking from the kiddie bowl, for awhile anyway. They also added one other ingredient, methyl red. For those who have forgotten high school chemistry, methyl red is used to indicate the presence of an acid. It didn't show up in the punch but later. Whenever there was a new person drinking the punch everyone wait in eager anticipation of their first trip to the bathroom. It takes a bit to get used to pink piss. The reactions generally revolved around OMG!!!!
A few years ago we met a young Canadian woman hitchhiking across Africa. She told amazing stories of generosity in her travels and never once had to use her black belt in karate. Because her visa was about to expire she had to leave here by train for her next leg. We gave her a warning before leaving to not be surprised nor alarmed when asked to disembark in the middle of nowhere, they just need the passengers to help push the train over a hill. She laughed. An hour after the train left she called to apologize for laughing.
On a trip I made to Peru, we were supposed to land in Lima but it was fogged in. We circled for several hours but finally ran low on fuel. So we headed about 500 miles North to Chiclayo. As we were landing I noticed crashed and burned aircraft along the side of the runway. Hmmmm. That's interesting! It didn't take long to realize this was a military base. What we had seen were planes left over from the civil war, about ten years earlier. Soon we pulled up to a small white building, from which about ten men with machine guns came out and surrounded the plane. Hmmmmm. That's interesting! We sat there for about the next 18 hours. During the day, it was sweltering hot and we had no air conditioning. With no engines we had no power. We ran out of water. The toilets were full and began to stink up the plane. Everyone was hot, tired, angry, and scared. We had no idea what was going on. We only knew we were waiting for fuel. Soon, tempers began to run hot. People started arguing and getting hostile. I remember hearing some guy argue that we could rush the guards. It was getting seriously nuts. But in the end, nothing really bad happened. We were finally refueled and landed at Lima about 24 hours late. As it turned out, we had made an emergency landing without permission. The Black Eagles - the military guard - were essentially extorting a ton of cash from Delta Airlines and using us as bartering chips. What's the funny part? I had worked 36 hours straight just before I jumped on the plane. When we took off from Atlanta for Lima, I saw three open seats in the rear of the plane and laid down across all of them. I slept through almost the entire affair. I woke up long enough to see what was happening and quickly went back to sleep. I remember stewardesses trying to wake me and make me move, but I just played dead. I was the most hated person on the plane. By the time I got off the plane I was well rested and ready for work.
Welcome to the third world. It reminds me of a story by the Bishop here. He was in the Vatican diplomatic corps. His very first assignment was to Pakistan. When they arrived the plane started circling the airport and after a while the passengers became confused because there was no visible reason why they should not land. Finally the pilot addressed them to say that the government was in the process of hanging their ex president Bhutto and the airport is closed during the execution. As soon as he was declared dead the plane landed. Welcome to Pakistan!
In Dutch Harbor, the heaters in the hotel rooms cannot be adjusted for temp. The hotel lies and pretends they are supposed to work, and they send a repairman who pretends to do something, but they don't and everyone knows it. So you have to sleep with the window open or you end up with a 100 degree F room. Keep in mind that we sometimes had 100 mph winds laden with ice pellets. The best part is that the locals know that people can't close their windows. A few years ago, one person had a Samoan shemale come through his window at night and tried rape him. I kid you not. The guy had to beat him off with a chair. There is a population there. I tried to find something that would block the window from opening too far, but couldn't. Sooooooo, I woke up about every 15 minutes for a Samoan shemale check.
So I was reading about the lady in Florida that suffered from a roach in her ear for 9 days. She got off easy. I was 14 when a bunch of my older siblings with spouses came for a visit. I was shuffled down to sleep in the basement guest room. About 3 AM I awoke to a serious pain in my ear, apparently a roach had crawled in and since they can't back up it died there deep in my ear causing an infection. Normally ear infections drain out through your sinuses but I had a head cold that blocked the passage which also explains why the loss of hearing in that ear went unnoticed. Well, since the infection couldn't go out through the sinuses it went out through the ear drum. I screamed. Never before or since have I suffered such pain and the pain came in waves. During one wave a brother in law started shaking me yelling at me to wake up. Through clenched teeth I said I....AM....NOT....ASLEEP. Then he saw stuff oozing out my ear. So they stuck a belt in my mouth to bite on and called the doctor who said to give me serious pain killers, he'd call Slow Sam the pharmacist to get a prescription ready, small town in a different time when a doctor could phone in a narcotic prescription at 3AM. Next morning they get me to the eye, nose and ear doctor who rooted around in there and dragged the offending body out. He then told the nurse to flush the ear to get it good and clean. She apparently was new to this and was using a tool that looked like it should be used for artificially inseminating a cow. Each time she'd inject the water in my ear I'd stiffen up in the chair and at the end she injected air when the water ran out. After three times the doctor came in and inquired why he kept hearing the sound of one of those stainless steel kidney shaped pans bouncing off the walls? She said that I was experience some discomfort. I so wanted to smack her for saying that to see if she encountered any "discomfort". He saw what she was using, then checked to find that she was also using cold water. He wasn't surprised that I had some "discomfort". He explained to her that because I had a ruptured ear drum she needed to use this other device that pumped a continuous flow of warm water, no air. He demonstrated and if I'd been a kitten I would have purred, it felt sooooo good. She fumed as if it were my fault she tortured me and got spoken down to.
For a number of years I did field work that involved insanely long hours. I've worked back to back 24 hour shifts with only a few hours of sleep in between. I've been so tired that I couldn't remember if red meant "on" or if green meant "on", or if red meant "off"... But the mechanics had it as bad or worse because they were doing physical labor, in addition to the long hours. A mechanic I was working with told me about his worst experience. He had been working long hours for weeks, with the last few days being the worst. He had hardly slept in a week. He was working on a system when suddenly a large air conditioning unit, maybe 500 pounds, fell from the ceiling and landed right next to him. He said he didn't even jump. He just looked at it and thought, wow, I almost died, and then kept working. After a time the production manager came along. So my buddy told him what happened and pointed to the AC unit sitting near him on the floor. But as he pointed and looked, he saw nothing there. He had hallucinated the entire event.
It would be interesting to hear stories from the White House staff - I mean the cooks and butlers and housecleaning people. I remember a chef who had been there for over 50 years, who had many fascinating insights into the personal lives of previous Presidents. But I'd bet it's a horror show in there these days! And I can imagine the head chef: What the hell is a Big Mac?!?!
As kids, we walked the 3 miles to the local lake with our fishing rods. As we walked along, a tractor went passed. My older brother pointed his fishing rod at the tractor and said 'bang', pretending it was a gun. The tractor had a blow out a split second later. What are the chances that happening.
