George Carlin on Elections

Brave (poem)

 

Brave

The time has come to take a stand

Against those who try to destroy us

For so long we have held our tongues

But their actions now are treasonous

 

Even now, they try to steal our future

Corrupt and rewrite our proud history

Indoctrinate our children to their cause

And promote social Marxist anarchy

 

There’s one thing they seem to forget

We were born in the land of the free

Where our fathers have taught us well

To take a stand against tyranny

 

Where those of feeble constitution falter

We shall rise to fight for our Land

Go through the valley of the shadow

One patriotic army, ready to command

 

We do not fear the soulless mobs

Go head to head and toe to toe

All who oppose our God given rights

Will have to reap that which they sow

Truth (poem)

 

Truth

 

Every day we see it in the news

The deceptions that they try to sell

For far too long we have followed them

On a destructive course straight to hell

 

Hollywood and sports have distracted us

Like ‘Bread and Circus’ in days of old

Our ‘heroes’ lay out the narrative

And obediently, we do as we are told

 

How could we be so blind to this?

The signs have always been there

But were we too comfortable to see

Or was the sight simply too much to bear?

 

Foolishly we trusted ‘for our own good’

As the corrupt politicians raped the land

Chipping away at all our freedoms

And dumbing us down so we won’t understand

 

But the time has come at long last

To spread our wings and let truth soar

To embrace that which should be self-evident

And we shall be ‘Sheep No More’

Tales from the Dorkside Episode XIV: "London Calling"

Around the turn of the century, for that matter, the turn of the millennium; I found myself making a spontaneous trip to the United Kingdom. I was to rendezvous with an acquaintance from London, Ian, and his junior associate, Mark. Ian was a few years older than I and had served as a commando in the Royal Marines during the Gulf War. Although he felt a sense of comradery towards me due to the fact that we had served on the same side in the same conflict, he never missed an opportunity to call me ‘nurse’, and I would always remind him that I had seen enough tough guys calling for their mamas, while I dodged bullets trying to drag their sorry asses to safety. If you have read any of my earlier stories, you will know that I am exaggerating. As I have said before, I didn’t have to treat any combat injuries, only accidents. But Ian didn’t know this, though if he is reading this, he does now.

Mark, on the other hand, was straight out of the university. He was born and raised in Brixton, so he had quite a fight to get as far as he did and I extended him a level of respect that I usually did not to someone of his age. I even let it slide when he would jokingly refer to the United States as ‘the Colonies’. But not before I reminded him that we handed them their Imperial asses.

I had had previous contact with both Ian and Mark over IRC over the past couple of years, but when I heard that Marcel had set up a face to face with Ian and was flying in from Geneva, Switzerland, I grabbed the first flight I could to London. Marcel was a solid operator, cold as ice but a bit of a loner. This earned him the nickname ‘Blue Wolf’.  My dealings with him in the past had not gone very well, on more than one occasion he sniped targets out from under me. He was that good, and I was glad we were on the same side. I just hoped he would remember that when we finally were in the same room. I’m not the kind to hold grudges, no point crying over spilled milk. I hoped Marcel felt the same.

We still had a few hours until Marcel's flight was to arrive, so Ian and Mark decided to take me for a short tour of London. I hadn’t eaten all day, and though our meeting was in an Italian restaurant later, I needed something now. It was 2 P.M. so I was looking for a place to eat lunch. Both Ian and Mark were nearly useless when it came to finding something for me to eat, as apparently I’m ‘too picky’. But seriously, the food in the UK is definitely not my taste. I ended up in Chinatown, where at least I saw things on the menu that sounded familiar and appetizing. The food there was decent, but the service was kind of a shock in comparison to what I was used to in an American or a German Chinese restaurant. This became very clear when the waitress, instead of politely asking “What would you like?” she asked instead in a very aggressive and less than friendly manner “What do you want?” So I tipped accordingly. My British friends only ordered a beer and waited for me to finish. Only later telling me how brave I was to eat there and jokingly, at least I hope, questioning from which animal the chicken in my sweet-sour chicken came from.

My guides showed me around Piccadilly Circus, which was actually much smaller than I’d expected. I had seen pictures of it before and I had envisioned something like Times Square. But it seemed to me to be one of those places where if you’ve seen it once, then that’s enough. Besides the big lighted billboards, the only other similarities were the dense traffic and the use of pedestrian crossing signals. It would appear that only tourists wait for the light to change before crossing. This was nearly my undoing, as I forgot that the traffic flows the other way in the UK. So looking left when I should have been looking right, I was about to step into the street only being pulled back by Mark a second before a big red double-decker bus went speeding by.

We continued on without further incident to Covent Garden. Ian said that he had made arrangements to meet Marcel at the Apple Market. Since Marcel didn’t know that I was going to be there, we decided that Ian and Mark would meet him and I would join them as they were walking towards the Italian restaurant. Slowly I closed in on the trio approaching as casually and quietly as I could and just as I reached out to tap Marcel on the shoulder, I heard him say ‘Don’t even think about it, Yank’.  We had a laugh and I asked him how he knew I was there, of course he said something to the effect that ‘Amis’ stink of hamburgers and french fries. Of course I wasn’t gonna let that slide and said ‘at least we don’t stink like cheese fondue and think that yodeling works as a mating call.’ So our little rivalry was still on. Nothing too serious though, just a little elbowing. Truth was he saw me before I split from Ian and Mark. I have to say, the ‘wolf’ had very sharp vision.

At the restaurant Ian, Mark, and I ordered ‘penne arrabiata’ while Marcel scanned the menu longer until the waiter grew impatient and finally asked him what he was looking for. When Marcel answered with ‘pizza’ the waiter exploded! ‘This is a RESTAURANT not a PIZZARIA!!!’  He was so mad, he threw us all out so we decided just to go to a pub and get fish and chips and drink a couple beers. We had a pretty good time despite of the bad food. We swore that we’d do this every year, but as life goes, we never had the chance. (But that’s not a story for now – Eat, drink, and be merry.) I still don’t remember how I got to my hotel room.

The next morning I was on my way to the breakfast room. Passing an older gentleman, I politely said ‘good morning’ and he answered in kind. A few minutes later, he walked up to me and started a conversation… in German. After a nice little chat about London and Germany I decided to ask ‘How could you possibly know that I speak German? I’m an American in London!’ Apparently my brain played tricks on me going to my default language when not in America because he replied ‘Because you said Guten Morgen’.

I hope you've enjoyed this episode of "Tales from the Dorkside".

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Thank you

Tales from the Dorkside Episode XIII: "On the Knight Shift"

Have you ever been in one of those jobs that was so routine that you didn’t have to think much at all, just do it? Oh, I have been, when I was in my mid 20’s. I used to joke that when I went to my locker at the beginning of my shift to change into my uniform, not only did I lock my street clothes in that locker, but my brain as well.

This was back in the mid 90’s. I’d been in Germany already a couple years already, so my German was understandable, for the most part. I landed a manufacturing job and found myself working swing shifts on a factory floor. As I may have mentioned before, I was actually a trained medic, but since my language skills were not adequate enough to work in that field, I found myself looking for a job where I didn’t have to interact too much with other people, especially when any misunderstanding could make the difference between life and death.

I had never worked swing shifts before, and I never really wanted to either. My father had been working shifts for well over 20 years and I saw what a toll it was taking on him. Besides the factory where he worked often laid off the new hires periodically. So I joined the Army to learn a skill that would help me land a job where I didn’t have to work shifts. Okay, I was naïve, had I thought it through then I may not have wanted to be a medic, since paramedics and hospital staff often have to work shifts too.  But here I was less than 10 years later doing exactly what I was trying to avoid in the beginning.

I had been used to getting up nice and early due to my military service, but this is not saying that I liked getting up at 5 A.M. Even that wasn’t the worst part of the morning shift. The management would always be there hovering around making sure you’re not only doing what you’re supposed to, but also making sure you were doing it exactly like they wanted, and I’ve never been a fan of micromanagement.

Of course, anytime we’d get visitors from our general offices in the States, they’d run and get me to give the tour of the lines. We had an engineer from research and development visiting who apparently didn’t catch my name in the introductions. Had he done so, I doubt he would have mistaken me for a German. At the end of the tour, he decided to complement me. “Gee, your English is really good.” I smiled and said “Thank you, yours isn’t that bad either.” Leaving him with a puzzled look on his face, until I explained that I was from Pennsylvania.

Late shift really sucked because by the time you got off work practically everything except the bars were closed. I had actually worked late shift all the time before when I worked in a rest home back in the States. After work I could still go to Kroger’s and buy frozen pizza rolls or some other snack if I wanted, but not in Germany. Nope, back then they closed the stores at 6 P.M.

But the night shift was a different story altogether. There was very little management there, so you could relax a bit more. If you didn’t sleep the whole day, you could still get up on time to buy something before you went to work, and we hardly had visitors during that time. But night shift brought its own challenges. First of all you had to get used to working while most people were sleeping and fight with yourself to stay awake while the hum of the machines tried to lull you to sleep. Especially when your tasks were as routine as mine were, feed the machine and clean up scraps. Secondly, when you’d mastered staying awake, it was the boredom that took over next.

I overcame this by being a bit of a prankster. I’d tape together my colleague’s tools in their tool bags, making them borrow somebody else’s until they could free their own. I’d take a screenshot of the shift report and use the picture as the desktop background. This was always amusing because they thought that the background picture was their report and they’d get pissed at the computer because it wasn’t showing what they were trying to write. I used to use the boxes from the raw materials to construct cardboard costumes and weapons and attack my colleagues. A knight in cardboard armor. Okay, I was a bored young man just trying to stay awake and doing what I had to do.
 
Well apparently I took it too far one time and nearly got myself fired over it. You see, the finished product would be boxed up at the far end of the line, palletized, and picked up with a forklift to be taken to the warehouse where the pallets would be wrapped with stretch foil and labeled. If you’ve ever driven a 5 foot high pallet with loose boxes, then you know you have to drive very carefully. Occasionally a forklift driver would hit a bump and lose a box forcing him to stop, pick it up and put it back on the pallet. So I filled one of the empty boxes with scraps from the production line and taped it closed. When the forklift driver passed my workstation, I threw the box on the ground so he would hear the ‘thud’ and stop. I’d hide my decoy box and leave him looking for the fallen box. When the next driver came, I did the same, but this time I left the box for him to find it. I waited until I saw him completely confused as to where this box should go on the full pallet before I let him in on the joke. So I had a bit of a laugh at the expense of my colleagues, with no harm intended. Of course, I could only do this once or twice before the joke got old, so I planned to destroy my decoy after my break.

 When I came back, the decoy was gone. I searched everywhere, at this point I was wide awake and not bored in the least bit. Then I saw it, not where I left it mind you, but in the hands of the warehouse manager. The box top was open and the scraps were clearly visible and he looked pissed. He was marching toward my manager to complain about it. I cut him off and tried to explain in my broken German. He explained to me that someone had seen the box and thought a forklift driver had lost it, and my decoy was nearly on its way to the trucks waiting at the loading docks. He asked me in German “War das Spass” which could be understood two ways. How he meant it was, ‘was that a joke’. How I interpreted it ‘was that fun’. So of course I answered ‘no’ which only made thing worse because he thought I did this intentionally to harm the company. Fortunately, one of my German colleagues intervened and explained to the warehouse manager that it was a stupid joke. Seeing how shaken I was, I guess he decided to let me off the hook, because I never heard anything about it again. And I decided to be more careful about pulling pranks. Yeah, that definitely was ‘not fun’.

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Thank you

God Bless Tucker!

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Freedom of speech

Freedom (poem)

Freedom

You do not yet know what it means

As educated as you claim to be

To live in a land of greatness

Where every man, woman, and child is free

You burn, loot, and murder with no regard

For all the good lives you destroyed

You think yourselves folk heroes

Despite the tactics you’ve deployed

You talk about Marxist revolution

Like it brings a utopian fantasy

But we have heard this lie before

And we have seen its misery

Our fathers have paid a heavy price

To give us that which you spit upon

But we shall not stand idly by

And watch you stomp it until it’s gone

For this is ours to pass to our children

Who we shall teach to protect so dearly

Not sell off in the promise of false safety

And they shall see this oh so clearly

Our freedom will not be surrendered

Nor will we drop to our knee

We will fight and freedom shall ring

From sea to shining sea