I recently had a guy from the church I go to invite me to participate in a mens support-group-type-thingie.  Having never been invited by much of anyone to participate in much of anything since moving to the wonderful panhandle of Nebraska, I was at first quite excited.  He explained to me that this would be a group of guys getting together once a week for a couple of hour shooting some hoops and, you know, just being there for each other if anyone needed some other guys to talk to about, you know, guy stuff.

What a spectacular idea!  I thought this sounded pretty cool, and I was stoked that this guy had thought of inviting me to participate!  I was stoked until he asked me the following:

“You are 40 or over, right?”

Oh crap.

“Yes, I’m 42,” I said, suddenly feeling a little nauseous.

“Great,” he said.  ”We’re doing this for guys 40 and over.  You know, the younger guys have other stuff they are involved in and support groups in place.  When you get to be our age, it’s harder to keep up with the young ones but all guys need a little male bonding.  We thought it would be pretty neato if a group of us older guys could hang out.”

Suddenly, my mind is racing.  ”Our age”… I believe this dude just turned 50.  All of a sudden “our age” is 50?  Crap.  ”Harder to keep up”… “older guys”… “neato”… I don’t remember anyone from my generation ever using stinking “neato” in daily conversation… am I starting to lose my memory?  All of a sudden I’m being asked to join a senior citizens’ group!  It’s almost like he just handed me the stinking senior discount card for Perkins and is asking me to join him and the other codgers for some pie and coffee at 4:30 in the stinking morning.  This is what I’m reduced to?!?

I’ve never really had a “group” that I fit in with here in the wonderland of Nebraska.  At 42, I feel like I may well be stuck in some sort of groupless vortex.  Those younger than me are either hanging out at the bars or doing the sports thing.  I’m not too keen on any kind of bar scene, and the thought of taking off my shirt for a pick-up game of shirts and skins makes me (and anyone who has seen me) have a little bit of throw-up-in-the-mouth action going on.  I don’t really hunt, and fishing is fun for about 15 minutes.  Driving for 8 hours to Lincoln for a Husker game — along with the 4 hours of the game itself and the 8-hour drive back… plus the cost of the ticket and travel — is time and money from a short, poor life that I would never be able to get back.   Willingly going to a Husker game would be kind of like paying the police $300 to spend the day in jail; it’s just not something I personally could do and still claim sanity.  I’m at an age and level in the local society where I really just don’t fit in with any group.

Many of the guys my age or older seem to be either:

A — of a higher social standing than me and/or making more money than me.

B — on foodstamps and welfare and happy as hell that they are living off of the taxes of others.

C — of a similar social standing and income to me, but they like spending their evenings and weekends at the bars or rooting for the Huskers.

C- — This is a subsection of C.  These are guys who are in pretty much the same crappy, sinking boat as me, but they have something aside  from work to latch onto.  They have their music, or they have their art or their hobbies.  They get together with a bunch of other geeks  once a month and play Dungeons and Dragons.  They have something in common with others that draws them into groups.

So, even though I may be resigning myself to the fact that I am approaching ancientness, I decide to be thankful that at least the old guys at my church are willing to invite me into their group.

“So, who all will be there?” I ask the inviter (who happens to own his own successful insurance agency).

He proceeds to tell me that there will probably be a couple of other successful business owners, a couple of dentists, a pastor, and other various successful guys.  Once again, I’m starting to doubt that I stand much of a chance of fitting in.

“And when do you meet?” I asked.

“Mondays, from 7 to 9 at night at the church,” he said.

“Oh… that’s too bad,” I said.  ”I’m a boy scout leader and we have troop meetings every Monday at 7.”

“Well, if you ever get a chance, try to make it,” he said.

“I will, ” I probably lied.

So on Monday nights, instead of hanging out with a bunch of good guys who will unwittingly make me feel even more down about my social lot in life, I’ll still be hanging out with the boy scouts.  Boy scouts are young and eager and full of optimism… and I have the responsibility of awakening them to the realities of life as I see them.  How’s that for hope for our future

I remember back to when I first moved to the panhandle of Nebraska way too many years ago. I remember all of the disgusting smells that should have warned me that I wasn’t going to like it here, smells that I ignored and have somewhat gotten used to. I remember complaining about those smells only to have one crusty old codger or another tell me not to complain. “Smells like money,” was the codgerly proclamation. I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now. Money, from what little interaction I have with it here in the panhandle, smells of musty paper and cocaine. None of the things around the panhandle have what I consider to be the smell of money. I have people tell me that I need to appreciate the beauty of the panhandle. These are the same people who go around taking pictures of weeds and sunsets and crap and find beauty in these simple things. My observations tend to tilt in a little different direction, so I have tried to capture the stench of the panhandle through pictures. One of the first smells I had to adjust to was the smell of processing sugar beets.

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A sugar beet is a tuber-thingie that tastes like a potato. Apparently, through some magical chemical process, sugar can be drawn out of these bland wads of starch. I don’t know exactly how it is done, but I know it involves lime, a lot of heat, and the production of some major stink.

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Sugar beet is a major crop around these parts, and you can see the harvested beets in seemingly endless piles around the area.

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I remember the first time I inquired about this stench. “Smells like money,” I was told. I don’t remember ever opening up my wallet and being met with the smell of sun-ripened vomit, but I guess, to some, that’s what money smells like.  And, apparently, the smell of money is good for the environment, too.

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There is another smell that permeates the region from time to time.

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No, that’s dead possum.  Although it didn’t smell that much more unpleasant than what I’m referring to… and it does remind me of a series of unrelated pictures that I have on my phone. I think I’ll share them here.  In other words, here lies a totally unrelated sidetrack.  Stay tuned for more of the stench of the panhandle…

Okay, so last winter after one of my posts dogging on Nebraska, this guy comes up to me and says, “Why don’t you try to find the beauty in our area? Why can’t you be more like Katie Bradshaw?” Apparently, Katie recently moved here. She does a blog on her experiences (which are far different from mine), and she has major photo-taking abilities. Her blog actually landed her a position with one of the the local newspapers. I don’t have much in the way of photo-taking abilities, but I thought I would give it a shot.

I thought I could document the businesses that have gone under in our spectacular rural community.

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Problem is, this business is still open.  This business was a car wash, tanning salon, custom embroidery, restaurant, cocktail bar with a self-service dog wash.  No kidding, I couldn’t make something this ludicrous up.  Apparently, the rest of the business is doing great, they just had to close, you know, the restaurant part?!?

Then there are the plethora of these:

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During my younger days in Montana, I used to hunt… a lot.  Public land was everywhere, and finding a deer or an antelope or a pheasant or a grouse to take home and put in the freezer was easy.  In Nebraska, private land rules the range, and if you don’t know some crotchety old landowner, there is no reason to buy a hunting license.  Needless to say, even after 15+ years of living here, I don’t know any crotchety old landowners.

I could have focused on what we meager-wage-earners have to look forward to here in the panhandle…

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… but that would have just been plain-old depressing.

I’m going to throw this one in just because I think it’s cool.  It’s from a local tattoo shop and the outrage that it created was extraordinary.  It was free speech versus the anally uptight… and free speech won

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Wait a second!  What’s that beautiful dark figure in the awesomely artistic photograph I have taken below?

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Ah, the beauty of a winter’s night in the panhandle of Nebraska.  Is it a beautiful winter street flower? Is it a fairy from the tales of old?

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Yeah, no, it’s a dead cat. This stupid cat had been in the road by my house for like a week. Poor thing was hit by one of the speed-limit breaking residents of the trailer park up the road. I was going to dispose of it when I first saw it, but I figured there may be a little girl somewhere missing her lost kitty. I wanted the family to be able to find the cat for, you know, some closure. However, after a week, I was tired of looking at it and decided to scrape it’s frozen butt off the street and throw it gently place it in the trash receptacle. So, I scraped it and bagged it. Little did I realize that frozen cats are a little… pointy.

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So, I did what any good samaritan would have done… I double bagged it.

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Still pointy. If not so morbid, it’d almost be a bit funny… you know, how pointy that frozen cat was. Wouldn’t want to swing it around because you could put an eye out or something.

Anyway, so ended my attempt at capturing the beauty of the panhandle in pictures. I disposed of the cat properly, said a few words for the family who was probably still looking for her, and may have made a pointy-cat joke or two. Katie Bradshaw can keep her picture-taking ability.

Okay, so now we get back on-track to the smell of money that reminds me of roadkill.

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That’s right, the good old feedlots. When the breeze blows just right, you can get your face full of the smell of feedlot at any given time of the year. Summer seems to be best though.

“Smells like money!”

Seriously? Are you sure that smells like money?

“Yep, smells like money!”

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Smells like cow shit to me, but to each his own, I guess.

Finally, the third horse of the smells-like-money trifecta: the railroad.  In our little community, we have not one railroad line usurping the positive energy from our lives, but two monstrosities of greed and power to interfere with our daily being.  Stupid BNSF and Union Pacific.

“Don’t complain, ’cause it smells like money!”

But the railroads don’t really have a smell, do they.  I mean, that really doesn’t even make any sense…

“Shut up, whiny boy!  Smells like money!”

Okay, whatever.  The railroads apparently smell like money, too.  A few years ago here in the wonderful panhandle of Nebraska, BNSF smelled like benzine.  We got us a little national press coverage, and BNSF paid-off a lot of people to guarantee the prevention of future lawsuits.  Now, all is well.  I mean, there is the occasional child born with extra digits and whatnot, but we make them feel extra special… like one of the X-men.

“I’m gonna count your piggy toes… yes I am!  1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13!  13 just means you’ve been blessed by the benzine, and your special… like Wolverine… except with extra piggy toes instead of super claws.  We’ll call you Piggy-Toe Man, and your foot stench will be extra powerful… because, you know, you have extra piggy toes…”

Ah, the joys of benzine.  They should put it in our water… you know, like fluoride.  ’Cause I’m guessing benzine may actually be less toxic than fluoride…

The tragic thing is, you can actually get stopped by multiple trains at multiple crossings if you are traveling from one end of Scottsbluff to the opposite end of Gering.  That’s right, not only can you get stopped by both BNSF and UP trains, you can get stopped by more than one train at each crossing.  But you know what really sucks?  What really sucks is when BNSF decides to close multiple crossings in Scottsbluff for repairs… AT THE SAME TIME!  BNSF has like 6 crossings within the Scottsbluff city limits, and 4 of them are currently closed.

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Talk about throwing a major screw-up wrench in the daily lives of thousands of people.  What mongoloid idiot made that insane decision… and why did no one from the city do anything to alter those magnificently dubious plans?  City manager Rick Kuckkahn made a statement to local news outlet KNEB and he said he understood drivers’ frustrations.  Does he really?  Apparently BNSF has “extra people” in town, so the jobs can be completed quicker than normal.  Notice all of the people humping ass to get the work done in my pictures above?  Yeah, drive by any of the closed crossings and they all look pretty much the same.  And not only is there an apparent lack of urgency in completing the work necessary to re-open the crossings, now all of the trains creep through town at like a quarter of there normal speed.  Talk about some small town gridlock.  Mr. Kuckkahn said the closings were “unavoidable.”  Really, Rick, unavoidable?  The city manager has no say on not closing the majority of crossings in the town he manages?  I don’t think Rick Kuckkahn understands much of anything.  Smells like money to me.

I have come to a distinct conclusion after considering the various smells of money that permeate our community:  there may very well come a time when one must stop living in a community where one can smell the money and  move to a community where one can actually earn it.

A few years back, I had a job that required me to spend a large portion of my time behind the wheel of a truck.  Early mornings were common, and I’d drive a lot of miles before returning home.  One memory stands out in my head above all others from that period of my life, and I believe that memory helped shape my current attitude toward the community I currently call home.

The day I remember must have been really close to this time if year.  The leaves had mostly turned, early mornings demanded a slight scraping of frost from the windshield, and the jacket I wore to brace against the frigid morning breeze rested on the seat beside me before noon.  Fall in Nebraska is almost like two seasons in one: the pleasant, warm time while the sun brightens the day, and the crappy, cold time when the sun, too, has had its fill of Nebraska.  On this particular day, I had left at around 3:00 am for some early morning business in Kimball.  The business in Kimball didn’t take too awful  long, and I found myself driving back into Scottsbluff at around 11:00am.  As I drove north on Highway 71 and drove over the bridge spanning the meek North Platte River, I couldn’t help but notice all of the leaves that littered the side of the road.  The area around the river is one of the few places where you can find a multitude of trees all in one spot in western Nebraska, and a significant wind must have blown through the previous night.  I can not remember a time before nor after that day where I have seen an exodus of leaves along the roadside of that magnitude. I was so impressed that I actually pulled over to the side of the road and just stared at the leaves.

A light breeze blew, and the leaves tumbled and twirled along the embankment.  Brown leaves, yellow leaves,  and even some green leaves and the occasional red leaf — leaves of all shape and size, though mostly cottonwood leaves — bustled along in an attempt to find the final resting place where decay could completely consume them.  The leaves fascinated me.  They were just a bunch of stinking leaves, but they were beautiful in their own way.  As I watched the leaves, I realized that they had all come to this stretch of road in Scotts Bluff County, probably through no choice of their own (I don’t think leaves have “choice”, do they?) either to die or because they were already dead.

While watching the leaves from my truck by the bridge over the North Platte River, I remembered a man I had recently seen at Walmart.  A funny looking man standing back in the dairy section caught my eye.  From a distance, the man appeared to be quite well-off.  He appeared to be dressed in a nice suit with shiny shoes and a stunning little bowler hat.

“How odd for someone to be dressed like that in Walmart,” I thought to myself, “and it’s not even Sunday.”

As I pushed my shopping cart closer to the man, his clean, crisp image began to unravel.  The man’s suit was not really very nice at all; it was haggard and stained… and it smelled… smelled bad.  His shoes (although it was obvious that a great deal of care had gone into their shining) barely had any soles, his right toe peeked out from not only the right shoe but the right sock as well, and the frayed laces appeared to be just getting the job done of keeping the shoes on his feet.  The white sweat stain that circled the man’s bowler added to the appearance of age that the runs in the bowler’s fabric created.  The old man seemed to be in a hurry to find something.  As I passed him, however,  he offered a sincere, toothless smile as he gently touched the brim of his hat… then he bustled on his way.

The memory of the man faded, and once again I watched the leaves — the leaves whose sole remaining purpose was to become fertilizer for the next generation — the leaves whose final resting place may be a stretch of road in the panhandle of Nebraska.

My mind wandered again, this time to the overweight population of Scottsbluff.  In 2009, Quality Health ran an article titled “10 Fattest Cities in America.”  Scottsbluff (not a community that graces many “top ten” lists) with 31% of its population classified as obese, came in at number seven.  Seventh fattest city in America… there’s something to take pride in.  See what a little corn-fed beef and buttered corn on the cob can do for a community?  And don’t forget about the wonderful high fructose corn syrup!  Corn… it’s what for dinner… and it leads to obesity!  Maybe people here just don’t know how to take care of themselves.  Maybe people here just don’t care.  Maybe people in the panhandle of Nebraska are just trying to tumble and twirl through life and get what little pleasure they can along the way.  A lot of pleasure can be found in a couple of Big Macs with a large fries and a Coke.

As I continued to watch the bustling leaves, I started to get cold.  The leaves I watched put on quite a show, but I started to realize that they really weren’t as beautiful as I originally thought.  I began to suspect that, upon closer inspection, the leaves might actually be kind of gnarly — full of bug bites and patches of disease and torn flesh and broken dreams.  I thought of the people that I know who have a bachelor’s degree in this or a master’s degree in that, and they are stocking shelves at a grocery store or working as para-educators  or slinging a construction hammer.  The leaves weren’t searching for a fulfilling life there along the side of the road in Scottsbluff, NE; they were there because they were dying or dead.

My appetite for watching the leaves gone,  I  suddenly just wanted to go home.  Still chilly, I slid on my jacket from the seat beside me as I started the truck and bustled toward home with the dawning realization that I probably had a lawn full of leaves in need of raking…

When I was a kid, I was pretty involved in sports. In elementary school, I played basketball, Little League, flag football, and participated in track. I was very young and relatively skinny then, so I (like most young, skinny kids) did pretty well at sports.

Then I entered high school, and everything changed.

In high school, I started to put on weight. I stopped growing vertically, but I didn’t limit my eating, so I began to grow horizontally.

In other words, I got fat.

Even though I was fat, I tried my hand at various sports. Okay, not really “various”… more like a few. And two is really more like “a couple” than it is “a few”, so I really participated in “a couple” of sports in high school: football and track. Needless to say, I really pretty much sucked at both of them.

I went out for football because my dad really wanted me to. I went out for track so that I wouldn’t put on a tremendous amount of gut-fat before the next football season.

I totally sucked at track. I attempted the javelin, discus and shot put. I was too fat to run or jump, and I wasn’t strong enough to excel at any of the “strong guy” events. I remember one of the coaches didn’t like me very much. In fact, I would dare say that man hated me. I wasn’t good enough to really even be on track, but I went out all four years. This may be hard to believe, but I was kind of a smart-ass in high school. I was never disrespectful to my teachers or coaches, but I liked to make people laugh… and apparently this coach didn’t share my sense of humor. Also, one of his pet runners was one of my best friends. This coach felt that I was a bad influence on his pet. Little did this coach know that his pet was far more of a bad influence on me that I could have ever been on him. However, I liked my friend and was happy when he had success with his running. So, I put up with all of the crap that jackass coach dished out solely to me. I can’t remember a single thing that I did to that man that would have made him hate me so much… but he never once had a kind word for me… not even a smile. Whatever. It’s not like I hold a grudge or anything… that miserable son of a …

Anywho, football was a little more up my alley. I understood the game, and I even came to enjoy playing it. I actually came to believe that I wasn’t half bad at it. My junior year, our varsity team went undefeated and won the Montana Class A State Football Championship. That championship was in 1986… and was the last year to date that a Glasgow, MT football team has won state. I should be proud, right? Well, seeing as how I really didn’t have anything to do with it, nah. In fact, that championship year actually kind of ruined sportsmanship for me. I am probably the poorest loser ever… and I have had plenty of practice.

The summer before our big championship year, my buddy and I started hitting the weight room. At first, we were the only football players there. We really wanted to get a shot to start on a team that we both knew was going to kick butt. Slowly, more and more of the kids from the team started showing up in the weight room. By the end of summer, most every starter on that championship team was in that weight room lifting weights, every starter… and me. I could press a mean bench, and I could squat the crap out of those weights, but I weighed all of a buck-75, and I still wasn’t extraordinarily fast… so I got to sit the bench. Those who tell you that if you want something bad enough and work for something hard enough you’ll get it… are full of crap. I learned this when I was 16-years old. It’s a lesson that I have never forgotten.

Because I showed such dedication in the weight room, the coach must have felt like he needed to throw me a bone. I was put on special teams. I was the center for PAT (point after touchdown). I believe I was on the kick-off team as well. Bones for those who have the determination and put forth the effort… but really aren’t good enough. Some people just aren’t meant for athletics. I hate bones.

So anyway, the team went undefeated in an impressive way and slaughtered most of the competition. Of course, the summer in the weight room was the last time I really ever felt like part of the team, but I was happy for them. And I was ready for the next year.

Another summer was spent in the weight room, a bunch of talented seniors graduated, and I knew that I should have a starting spot. I really like playing middle linebacker (which is where I played in junior varsity), and I didn’t mind center (which I also played in JV). The season starts, and I get both a starting linebacker spot and the starting center spot. Finally, I get to play real high school football and contribute to the team.

The first game comes and goes, and we lose. I felt like I did pretty good. A got a couple of tackles during the game and had several assists. The next week, during practice, the coach pulls me aside and says, “Rich, we don’t have anyone to back you up at center. If you get hurt, we’re in trouble. I’m pulling you from linebacker and we’re going to have you focus on your duties as center.”

I wasn’t stupid. Apparently the coach thought I was. Almost every other player on that team played both ways, and there were many of them who were a hell of a lot more important to the team than I was at center. Like our quarterback, and our running backs, and our receivers… all of whom played both ways. Also, there were two guys who could easily replace me at center… one of whom was a year younger than me but was awesome. He went on to be the center for the Wyoming Cowboys on a scholarship after high school. The coach was feeding me a line of crap, and I knew it. He probably wanted to stick someone else at center as well, but my commitment to the weight room and the fact that I was a senior probably led him to feel obligated to keep me in a starting position… for at least half of the game. I came really close to quitting the team, but I figured I’d stick it out for my final year.

“Sure, Coach, whatever you need me to do,” I said.

We went four-for-four that year. Not nearly as impressive as our predecessors the previous year, but not too shabby considering that a large volume of talent graduated the previous year… and considering that all focus from the coaching staff had gone into those (mostly) seniors and that team.

Still, old people in Glasgow, MT at that time lived and died by Scottie football. It reminds me a lot about how stupid people in Nebraska get about Husker football. I remember one evening, a lot of us football players waiting outside the high school before a basketball game or something. We had a boom box out there and were listening to some tune-age before going in to root for whatever Scottie team was playing in the gym that night. I remember this crusty old piece of crap coming right up to me (why me… I don’t exactly know… probably because I was only 5’7” and he didn’t feel as threatened by me as he did the larger players) and he says something like, “If you boys concentrated more on the game and spent time listening to your loud music, maybe you could actually win a game!”

We were all stunned. The old man hobbled past us and into the building. We turned the music off, staring at our shoes. No one knew who that old man was. No one had ever seen him before, and I don’t remember ever seeing him after. All that I know is that old fart brought down a bunch of teenaged boys very quickly… a bunch of teenaged boys who were doing nothing more than having some innocent fun being what we were: teenagers. Some of the guys went in to watch the game inside. Most of us just went home. Even though I don’t know who that guy was, I hate him. I’m pretty sure he must be dead by now… and that warms my heart just a little bit. It boggles my mind how people get so wrapped-up in sports… or, as I like to think of them, little kid games played by people way too old to be playing little kid games. Old farts past their glory days living vicariously through the efforts of those much younger… playing a little kids’ game. That old fart probably never even played football, yet he took our having a little fun outside of the grueling practices and intense games as a personal assault on what he expected us to be doing. Like I stated earlier… knowing he’s probably dead warms my heart just a little.

So many people talk of the importance of sports… how it teaches teamwork and good sportsmanship, and blah blah blah. For those people, I’m gonna have to call a BS-time-out. In all of my years of school athletics, I didn’t learn how to be part of a team… and I surely didn’t learn good sportsmanship. When we won, it was great. It’s easy to be a good sport when you win. When we lost, I hated life. I was depressed for days after a loss, replaying in my head every mistake that I personally made that in any way could have contributed to the loss. I beat myself up, and I hated the victors for making me feel that way. And when I’d find a way to not focus on what a loser I was and would start to enjoy life again, some crusty old fart would come along and make me feel like garbage. Such is life. Losing is part of the game. In athletics, however, you may learn from your mistakes… but if you don’t have the natural athletic ability, or are not of the right physical composition to acquire that ability, you learn that losing is going to become commonplace. You learn that you, not the team, are a loser at certain things and there is nothing you can do to change that. My belief is that a young person can learn just as much about teamwork (perhaps even more) through clubs and other non-athletic activities that will benefit the young person more later in life than athletics ever will for the average student. America, however, focuses (too much, in my opinion) on athletics. After all, most people aren’t gong to rake in a multi-million dollar contract with a signing bonus by being good at debate. Most won’t even get a small scholarship to a small college to continue with sports after high school. Those same people who focused most of their attention on sports in high school would benefit from being able to enter into a lively debate… but that doesn’t matter. In our society, chase the money and fame even if they realistically don’t have Frosty’s chance in hell of obtaining it. Besides, the starting quarterback has a better chance with the ladies than the president of the chemistry club (at least in high school)… even though the head of the chemistry club will probably make more money in real life. Instead of focusing on developing skills that could actually benefit me in the real world, I played sports… poorly.

I don’t regret my years wasted playing sports. I had some good times and made some good friends. However, if I could do it over again, I probably would chose a different path for my high school years. But hell, if we could do anything over again, I’m sure most of us would change a thing or two (or a thousand). Life doesn’t work that way, at least not until I find that stupid genie’s lamp, or catch that elusive leprechaun.  Until then, maybe I should start going to the local high school’s athletic events.  I can look around for a bunch of student athletes and tell them how their behavior off the field is causing their lack of success on the field… whether that’s true or not.  Maybe, just maybe, I can make myself feel better by making them feel like crap.

With my recent high blood pressure diagnosis and my brand-spanking new high cholesterol discovery, I have decided to start eating healthier.  I do not want to do this.  This is not a choice that I enter into lightly.

I love food.  I love fatty, carb-filled, salty, sugary food, and I love eating it until I feel like my stomach is going to explode and my brain erupts into toe-curling, food-fueled orgasm.

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Did I mention that I love food?

Now, food that is good for you tends to taste pretty ass-tastic.  Normally, if I were given a choice, I would almost always chose a nice, juicy hamburger with a side of crispy fries

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… over a healthy alternative.

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Healthy food is bland, non-filling garbage.  Who could possibly feel satisfied after eating a broiled fish and a side of steamed broccoli?  Not me, that’s for sure.  But, here I am, trying to burn at least 500 more calories than I’m taking in every day to lose a pound a week… for the next several months.  This is going to suck… but I think it’s probably time.

I’m exercising harder than I have in the past.  I used to get on an elliptical and sweat away for 30 minutes.  Now, I get on an elliptical and push myself to the verge of a heart attack.  I still only go for 30 minutes, but by the time I’m done, I can hardly catch my breath and every muscle in my body (including my heart) is screaming.  As long as I have to suffer from the absence of the pleasures of good food, I at least want to get a relatively-ripped body.

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Of course, I have a long way to go.

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Who am I kidding?!? I’m never going to get in any sort of real shape.  I’m going to be a butterball for the rest of my days; I guess I’ve just got to focus on adding days… days filled with the torture of exercise… and crappy, flavorless food… and expensive daily medication.

Not sure I want to add too many days…

Are you an optimist?  Do you like to look on the bright side?  Do you see the glass as half-full instead of half-empty?  Do you tend to tell friends who are going through hard times things like, “Don’t worry, things will get better,” or, “Smile, at least things can’t get any worse”?  I’m sorry, but things don’t always “get better,” and things can always “get worse.”  In fact, I recommend that if you are going through hard times, you should not only not expect things to get better… but plan on them getting worse!  I’m a pessimist, and I’m proud of it.

Being a pessimist isn’t always easy.  Sometimes, we too let a little bit of hope crowd its way into our daily lives.  However, once that hope is shattered by the lead bullet of reality (hollow-point-style), we are quickly reminded why we chose to be a pessimist in the first place.  That’s right, I wrote “chose”, because being a pessimist or an optimist is initially a choice.  Over the course of a lifetime, different experiences form our attitudes and opinions, and we can chose how to experience those… well… experiences.  My belief is that most of us start out pretty naturally optimistic.  Our parents take care of us.  We always have food in our tummies.  When we get a boo-boo, there is someone to kiss it.  Santa Claus is going to bring those presents.  The tooth fairy leaves some pocket change for our lost teeth. Our friends are going to be happy to see us after a summer apart when school starts in the fall.  When we make a mistake, an apology is all that it is going to take to make things all better again.  And then reality sets in.  Over the summer, maybe we put on a little weight and now have a belly (yes… I’m a fatty), or maybe we developed a case of acne.

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Our friends may still be happy to see us, but they are making fun of us as well.  The reunion with those friends we hadn’t seen over the summer isn’t as enjoyable as we had imagined it would be.  Or maybe we studied really hard for that final exam and believed we were going to ace it… and then we barely pass because the stupid teacher made it an essay test instead of multiple choice… and she didn’t care for the way we worded our answers… and our GPA plummeted.  Or maybe you ask that nice, pretty fellow-junior girl to the prom, and she tells you that she won’t go with you because she is expecting that tall, popular, good looking senior boy to ask her.  Or perhaps you apply for that dream job only to be told that you aren’t as outgoing as the person needed to fill the position… and that stupid optimism leads to more hurt and pain than necessary if we had just been more realistic in our expectations.  We slowly learn that pessimism is synonymous with avoiding pain.

My belief is that people who have more positive experiences in life tend to be more optimistic.  For people whom life isn’t quite as “fair”, pessimism is the road more often chosen.  There are those who would argue that optimists attract more positivity because of their optimism, but I would disagree.  I believe an optimist is more optimistic because, through physical appearance, family wealth, station in life, or plain and simple luck, they tend to have more positive experiences.  Of course this is not all inclusive, nor is it, in my strange little belief system, a steadfast rule.  There are people who have a picture-perfect life who tend to be pretty negative, and there are people whom life has completely screwed who are able to keep their chins up… but these are the exceptions and not the rules.    However, as a basic, general rule, I believe I am right.

It always kills me when the pretty person who comes from the upper-middle class family says stuff like, “If you believe in yourself, you can accomplish anything,” or, “I don’t understand negative people…”  Of course you don’t understand negative people!  It’s easy to have sky-high self-esteem when the masses in general find you attractive and you and your family aren’t worrying about how they are going to pay for your college.  The world population in general treats people it finds attractive different than it treats the rest of us.  Don’t believe me?  A middle-aged, overweight woman in a muumuu is broken down on the side of the road.

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Along that same stretch of road, a twenty-something of better-than-average appearance wearing short-shorts is broken down as well.

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Who do you think is going have more offers of help from passersby (and I’m guessing that this would be consistently higher for both men and women stopping).   Which one of these stranded ladies do you think tends to be more optimist… and rightfully so.  Nobody said that life was going to be fair… but it seems to be less unfair when you’re good looking (or so it seems from a relatively unattractive person’s viewpoint).

Let’s move on to success.  Who do you think is going to have a better shot at a career in sales: an attractive gentleman who has a aura of financial success

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… or the poor, ugly schmoe who, based on appearances, you would be afraid to leave your small children in a room alone with.

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Which of these gentlemen do you believe would be more optimistic?  Of course it’s the rich-looking dude… that’s how life works.  This is why the wealthy constantly find themselves on the cover of the local newspaper.  There are articles about how this rich person is doing this, and that rich person is doing that.  One local rich guy is going to be on TV on the Speed channel because he is rich and has fancy cars.  Do you think this guy is more of an optimist or pessimist?  I, on the other hand, am not rich (well, I am “Rich”… I’m just not “rich”… stupid name).  I’ve never been on the cover of the local newspaper, even though I did write a relatively funny article about technology one time.  I work relatively hard and have what I consider to be a strong work ethic.  In my 42-years of life, I have never once called in sick to a job.  I’d have to be puking my guts out with a brain-searing fever to consider calling in sick.  Luckily, I don’t get sick very often.  When I do get sick, I have never felt that I was sick enough to not be of some value to my employer.  Want to know what my years of working through my mild illnesses has garnered me?  Absolutely NOTHING… except boiling my blood pressure whenever I have to take-up the slack of someone who has called in sick.  And the pessimism simmers below the surface all the while… eroding my hope and will into the darkest abyss.

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Pessimism is a defense mechanism.  Like I stated earlier, we all pretty much start out as optimists.  It’s only after (usually) years of unmet expectations and irreconcilable defeats that we develop our pessimism.  When you expect a positive outcome, and that outcome is negative instead of positive, it hurts.  A few of these defeats are natural and build character… or something psychobabblish like that.  After a few, the pain involved with the disappointment of failure becomes more powerful than any character-building gains you may receive.  We begin to expect the worst.  In most situations, the pessimist is the voice of restraint (or, as I like to think of it, “reason”); the one who has thought-out all of the possible negative outcomes to any given process or procedure.  The pessimist isn’t prone to “dream”, because “dreams” in the past have meant painful disappointment.  To refrain from hope is to avoid the torture interwoven with that hope’s demise.  And guess what… every once in awhile, things don’t turn out as poorly as we expected they would… and that is a gracious surprise!  Like around 17-years ago when I asked my wife to marry me.  Do you think I had any hope that she would say yes?  Of course not!  I expected a resounding “NO WAY”, and then I would have been free to get on with my miserable life.  However, she surprised me by saying “yes” and it was a pleasant surprise indeed.  If I had actually been expecting it and she had said yes, it wouldn’t have been a surprise, nor would it have meant as much.  So, by avoiding the optimistic risk-taking that so often ends in failure and despair, we actually glean a gleam of happiness when our negativity is proven wrong.  It is better to be wrong and happy about being wrong than it is to be wrong amongst the shattered remains of a precious dream.  Pessimists don’t dream much.

The problem with being a pessimist is that we don’t dream much.  Sometimes, in order to find some sort of value in this life, we need to dream.  Often, after decades of having giving-up on all dreams, the pessimist forgets how to dream.  This isn’t necessarily bad, since dreams so often lead to disappointment.  However, at times, the pessimist may find that a dream is something he or she may want to work towards making come true.  We used to have the choice to be optimistic or pessimistic in any given situation.  After so much time passing with pessimism working so well for us, we forget how to be positive.  We forget how to believe in ourselves or others.  We still have a choice, but we have forgotten how or lost the tools necessary to follow a dream with a positive attitude.  We can’t see the glass as half-full.  We don’t really even see it as half-empty anymore.  Now, we believe that because the glass isn’t full to the brim, it’s not even worth drinking… and through our stubbornness we run the risk of dehydration.  The choice is still there, but the pain that used to be experienced by being an optimist has reached legendary proportions in our memories, and it is a very difficult choice to make.  So, we usually continue along in our pessimistic ways with the occasional happy surprise of being wrong.  And we hate optimists.

We are all equal in the eyes of God, and He loves us all equally as His children.  Sometimes, I’m sure, He has to wonder what exactly we are thinking when we do stupid stuff, but He still loves us.

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However, in the eyes of man, the pretty people with the money rule and find themselves with the self-confidence necessary to be optimistic on a day-to-day basis… which leads to less misery in this realm.  I wish I had been born with good looks and money, but I’m afraid I posses neither.  My only hope for a touch of optimism while here on earth is the coming zombie apocalypse.  My hope is that when the zombies attack, they will go for the rich, pretty people first.  It’s only fair that those who have had people falling all over them because of their looks and wealth in this life also have the brain-starved zombies falling all over them during the apocalypse.

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Then again… nobody said life was fair…

I am subscribed to receive Seth Godin’s blog posts via email.  For those not in the know, Seth is one of the most respected marketing gurus alive and kicking today.  He is the founder of Squidoo, a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, beautifully bald, and he gives out a plethora of free, useful marketing (and life) philosophy every day via his blog.

Seth seldom promotes himself or his products via his blog.  Occasionally, he will plug a new book he has written or provide a link to where tickets can be purchased to his latest training/speaking/learning/brainstorming session (which are always out of my price-range… unless I could talk the wife into taking out a second mortgage on our home).  I’ve never monetarily supported Seth Godin, but a friend gave me a copy of one of his books (Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?) and it was worth the read.  Seth predicts a future work world that is quickly coming to fruition (it really is pretty much already here); a world where just doing what you’ve been trained to do (work hard and do what you’re told) does not lead to any sort of success.  Of course, the “new” success means you have to go outside of your comfort zone and become indispensable in the world in some way, shape or manner… so I know there ain’t no success in my future.  Also, Seth preaches that one should do his or her “art” to be fulfilled and become indispensable, and he claims that you can find “art” in working a job… so I have some basic philosophical differences with Mr. Godin.  Of course, Mr. Godin is well respected, has thousands of followers, and is independently wealthy.  I get no respect, write a blog that my dad and a couple of friends read, and scrape by.  Whose outlook you want to subscribe to is up to you.

So anyway, I don’t feel the need to support Seth Godin.  He does pretty well without my help.  When he blogs about his latest book or seminar, I just chuckle to myself and delete that email.  I likes me the free advice.

Today, I get an email with Seth’s newest post.  It’s about his newest book, We Are All Weird, and I was about to send this little sucker right to my deleted items folder when I noticed a couple of phrases:

“limited number in stock”

“no plans to reprint”

Hold the phone… back that station wagon up, Betty Lou!  Did I just read, “Limited edition book by a best-selling author that may some day be worth MILLIONS of dollars”?  Seth sells millions of books, and he is only actually printing 11,000 copies of this one.  So I’m immediately IMing my wife to see if we can squeeze about $17 out of our budget, and she says we can.  So, before you can say “sucker”, I’ve secured one of the 11,000 copies of Seth’s newest book.

Seth is also of the belief that paper books will become a thing of the past.  He is most likely correct.   The release of this newest book has unlimited availability in it’s digital format.  Is Seth Godin trying to hasten the decline of the paper book?  I believe he is.

I don’t read digital books.  I don’t believe in digital books.  I believe that digital books will continue to trend for the next several years… until the zombie apocalypse!  How are you going to charge your Kindle when there isn’t any electricity, Joe Bob?  How are you going to get to that PDF when you can’t turn your computer on, Sally Sue?  There will be millions of copies of books on digital storage devices that will be completely useless without power of some sort.  Meanwhile, I’ll have my library of paper books that I can read at my leisure in between foraging for food and beheading zombies.   Hahaha… take that, Kindle freak!  Besides, there is nothing in the world like spending an afternoon browsing a book store; it may be the most relaxing experience on the planet.  Plus, books smell good… you know, that dead tree and glue smell.

Seth is obviously smart.  Many of his followers (or “Tribe”, as he refers to them), I’m sure, subscribe to his opinion that digital is better.  Those people will buy the Kindle edition of his new book and be completely happy.  I, on the other hand, would have never purchased this book in its digital format.  I would have not purchased this book if I knew that I could check out a copy at the local library a few months from now if the desire struck me.  Throw “limited availability” out there, and all of a sudden I’m interested.  Make it seem like this is my only chance to own this bad boy in a format I would read, and suddenly I’m forking over 17 bucks for it.

I’m a sucker.  I’m sure the book will be great.  I’m sure it will be chock-full of great insight and advice (which I will probably never apply to my life).  Maybe I’ll even review the book on this blog once I finish it.  I am feeling, however, a little used… a little taken advantage of.  Maybe it’s just a touch of buyer’s remorse.  Or maybe it’s the fact that a master of the art of marketing just went fishing… and the taste of blood and metal from the hook and lead from the sinker is still fresh in my mouth.

So about six months ago, I go to our Quick Care clinic to get a referral for a sleep study.  I leave the appointment with the referral… and a brand-spanking new prescription for blood pressure medication.  Stinking people looking out for my health.  Anyway, so I had a six-month prescription, and that prescription was about to run out, so I figured that I better go see a real doctor about my blood pressure.

Now, when I went to Quick Care, my blood pressure was like 170/130.  I’ve been tracking it ever since, and although there are times when it spikes in the 160/110 range (which is pretty much any time I get pissed off… which, as you can imagine, is almost daily), it’s usually in the 140s/90s.  Still high, but better, no?

I make an appointment with an actual real doctor (figure I’m about at the age where I need a family physician).  The appointment comes, I go to see the doctor, and my stupid blood pressure is still high.  It’s 148/98.  So, the doctor wants to double the dosage of the lisinopril that I’m on, and I’m fine with that.  Aside from a constant nagging cough, I don’t really suffer any side-effects.  Then the doctor tells me that he wants to check my cholesterol.  Crap.  I have no doubt that my cholesterol is high, and I’m sure that I’m going to have to fork out money for a prescription for that crap every month too.  The nurse sticks a needle in my arm and draws a couple of vials of blood.  I’m amazed at how dark the blood is… almost black… and I’m thinking to myself that may be part of my problem.  With all of the tons of fat that I have eaten in my 41-years of life (’cause, damn it, it tastes good), the crap has actually morphed into actual oil in my system.  Of course my blood pressure is going to be high with Pennzoil 10w30 running through my veins, and I’m way past the 3 month/3000 mile mark.  Can’t I just get a stinking oil change and a lube job?.

I heard from the doctor’s office today.  Low and behold, I have high cholesterol.  SURPRISE!  They called in a prescription for some statin-thingie to Walgreens, and as of tomorrow, I’ll be medicated for my condition.  Possible side effects are muscle cramps, drowsiness, and liver damage.  They recommend taking it before bed so that the side effects are less noticeable.  The drowsiness thing happening while I’m sleeping makes sense.  However, being awoken in the middle of the night with a charlie horse doesn’t sound very pleasant, and I’m sure my wife would agree with me on that.  As far as the liver damage part goes, I’m kind of hoping to avoid that.  I guess if I have liver failure or something, having that happen while I’m asleep might be a plus?!?

Why is everything that tastes good bad for you (and if someone tries to tell me that steamed broccoli or broiled fish “tastes good”… I may punch him or her in the lying, filthy little mouth)?  “Everything in moderation,” you may say, but I would reply that moderation sucks.  Stupid common sense.  If I’m stuck in the Craphandle of Nebraska with nothing to do and no real future worth caring about, I want to be able to eat what I want when I want.  Eating is one of the very few pleasures I have… and now it just happens to be killing me.

AARGH!

Apparently, high cholesterol makes one very pirate-like?

With the history of high blood pressure and heart disease that infests my family tree, I figured all of this was coming.  I just hoped that maybe I was going to be the branch that could remain healthy.  I’m telling you, optimism in all shapes, colors and sizes, leads to nothing but disappointment, which is why I usually do such a wonderful job of avoiding it.

Okay, so here’s the Catch-22.   The potential side effects of the statin-thingie don’t sound very pleasant.  So, I figure I need to lose about 20 to 30 pounds and start eating gross crap, which doesn’t sound very fun.  Then, when I’m all sickly skinny and eating leaves and twigs, there is still a chance that I will need to remain on cholesterol medication.  Stupid genetics.  So, do I just let the doctor medicate the hell out of me and potentially destroy my liver (a problem that may never come to be… look at me, the stinking optimist) while I continue to enjoy one of the few simple pleasures I have in life: eating good food?  Or, do I give up one of the few simple pleasures that I can experience in the Craphandle of Nebraska in an effort to extend my life so that I can potentially live out an extended life in the Craphandle of Nebraska with no simple pleasures?  And even if I give up the simple pleasure, there is still the chance that I will need to remain on the liver-destroying medication, so I may actually give up the simple pleasure and still die of liver failure.  Sounds pretty much like a lose-lose-lose situation to me.  There… now I’m sounding a little more like the pessimist that I know and dislike an awful lot of the time.

So, now I have a doctor.  He wants to see me again after about 30 days on the current medications to measure my progress.  I should be proud of myself for taking some responsibility for my health and trying to be there for my family’s future, right?  But all I can think about is how I’m 41… and it is just going to be a matter of time before Mr. Dr. is going to be thinking that he needs to be sticking his finger up my butt.  Seriously… if I’m falling apart this much in my 40s, what bright, shiny stars can I expect in my 50s… and beyond?  Well, with the Dr. seemingly intent on destroying my liver, I may not have to worry about it at all…

If you were to judge this post based on the title, you’re probably thinking this is going to be me ranting about some crappy service I received from some crappy company that I need to vent about.  Wrong.  I am feeling the need to rant about crappy jobs in customer service, of which I have held my fair share.

You hear “business gurus” lament constantly about how poor customer service can destroy a company.  I do not disagree.  The gurus preach of the importance of customer service skills for every employee who could potentially come in any sort of contact with a customer or potential customer.  Amen!  The gurus don’t seem to understand why so many companies can’t provide quality customer service.  I think I can help answer this question with one word: money.

Oh, I know, money isn’t everything; job satisfaction isn’t reliant on money alone; there are numerous ways to motivate employees other than with money; blah… blah… blah.  The people who come up with these unrealistic views of the importance of money in employment have listened to the gurus for far too long!  Money is the reason that most people go to work every morning.  If you don’t believe me, think of it this way: if you won the lottery and would never have to work again for financial reasons, would you go to your current job every day and do it for free?  If you would, you are either a very lucky person who has found your calling and are able to utilize your inherent gifts and talents in a satisfying manner or… you’re an idiot.

So, back to customer service.  I am going to use my recent employment experience with an unnamed cellular telephone company for demonstrative purposes.  The unnamed cellular telephone company was Alltel.

For anyone who has ever had to wait in line at  a cell phone store to have an issue resolved, I feel for you.  For anyone who has had to wait in line at a cell phone store to have an issue resolved and then took out your frustration on the person who finally waits on you… go pound sand!  You have a problem; you would like that problem fixed; you’re mad because you’ve been in line for 45 minutes or so; so you yell at or cop an attitude with the person who you expect is going to fix your problem… seriously?!?  Remember, this person who you are yelling at has probably already had half-a-dozen other nincompoops yell at him or her and your yelling is getting pretty close to the straw that is going to break the camel’s back.  Do you want help or not?  If so, please remain calm and speak the way you would like to be spoken to.  If getting your problem resolved is not the true reason for your 45 minute wait in line and you really just want to yell at someone and make a donkey-butt out of yourself by causing a big scene to prove to everyone within a 4-block radius of the retail store exactly mad you really are… keep yelling, sap-sucker, ’cause when you finally finish your little tirade, you are most likely going to be told that your problem is unsolvable: “So sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to GO POUND SAND!”  And it’s not that your problem is really unsolvable… it’s just that  you have  caused such a commotion and made such an… uh, to put it in acceptable English/slang/cockney format… “arse” out of yourself that you are beyond help.  If your problem is actually fixed, a precedent is being set that people who throw a temper tantrum and behave like an arse get their way just to shut them up… and that is a precedent that is not going to be set.  Why, you may ask, is that precedent not going to be set?  Why will the squeaky wheel not get the grease?  What is going through the head of the customer service representative at that crucial moment when he or she makes that uber-important decision not to help you resolve your problem?  I can tell you in one succinct sentence exactly what is going through the mind of that representative: THEY DON”T PAY ME ENOUGH TO DEAL WITH THIS.  And Mr. and Ms. business guru, all of a sudden monetary reward is important to get people to perform in menial jobs!

“Well, if current employees won’t get the job done, fire them and hire people who will!”

While I put in my time at Alltel, the turnover rate was over 30%.  What that meant was that for every 10 people hired, more than 3 people quit… and this was at a time when Alltel was striving for aggressive growth!  Finding someone who is willing to deal with belligerent customers all day (and actually not making any real money unless selling to said belligerent customers) takes more than $8 to $12 dollars per hour, especially when the rules that are put in place to actually take care of a ripped-off customer are ignored by all levels of management from store management to regional management… and rules that actually benefit the customer are few and far between!  Let’s look at an example from my personal portfolio of the crappy-life files:

A friend was having trouble with his cell phone.  I had recently quit Alltel, but I was still the “go to” guy for friends’ and family’s cell phone questions.  The friend had trouble with his cell phone ever since he first got it.  He was on his third replacement phone (”replacement phones”, by the way, are often refurbished pieces of crap… as are “insurance” phones).  His original new phone and three refurbished phones all froze up.  He was about a two-weeks past his original one-year warranty, but he had received his last replacement less than a month previously.

I wasn’t a vast clearinghouse of knowledge for every rule and regulation of Alltel while I worked there.  However, I did know every policy and procedure that was beneficial to our customers as far as receiving a POS phone (and there were a lot of POS phones) and what extents could be gone to in an effort to make a pissed-off customer happy.  I explained to my friend that, although he was past the original one-year warranty on the phone, each replacement phone (exchange by mail phone, or XBM) came with it’s own warranty above and beyond the original manufacturers’ warranty.   It has been over three years since I worked at Alltel, so I don’t remember if that warranty was 30, 60 or 90 days, but I remember that my friend’s was well within the XBM warranty period.  I told him that, at the very least, he should be able to get another POS XBM phone.  However, since he and had been through three replacements, there was a “lemon policy” that the store manager could apply which would result in a brand-spanking new replacement phone of like value.  I told him to go to his local store, to be “nice”, not cause a big stink, and ask politely for the manager if the customer service rep wouldn’t help him. I stressed the “be nice.”

Well, he called me a couple of days later and told me that no one there was willing to help him.  The rep and manager who helped her both said that I didn’t know what I was talking about.  They told him that the XBM phones had no warranty of their own and since he was past his original warranty, he was out of luck.  Pretty much, he got a big, “Sorry, sucks to be you!”

I was furious!  I was ready to get on the phone with that stupid manager and give her a piece of my mind… and then I was going to call the district manager and let him know what had happened!  Then, in a flashback,  remembered what it was like to work at Alltel.

“Did you remain calm and stay nice?” I asked.

“Well… I started out nice.”

“That’s not what I asked,” I said.  “Did you remain calm and nice throughout the conversation?”

“Well… no… but they weren’t willing to help me!”

“Did you yell?” I asked.

“A little.”

“Did you personally attack the person helping you?” I asked.

“Well… she was being a bitch!”

Now, I know that this friend can be a little demanding as a customer.  He is the sort of person who will hold up a line at Walmart for 15 minutes arguing about a 25 cent perceived difference in the advertised price and the price that rings up at the register… even when he is wrong.

“Yeah, maybe I was wrong about that XBM policy thing,” I concluded.  I was not wrong.

When I worked at Alltel, I never screwed a customer just because they treated me like crap, and employees who did abuse their “power” really pissed me off.  However, I can think back to what it was like to be treated like complete garbage by an abusive customer.  It wasn’t fun… and I tend to blame most of my current stress-issues on the two years I spent at Alltel.  Every time I deal with just about any stranger in just about any potentially confrontational situation, I am braced for the worst… which is stressful.  I couldn’t handle it, so I quit (and remain scarred from the experience).  For those who can stick it out… if they need to screw-over the occasional asshole just to keep their sanity (and keep working there), more power to ‘em.

By being the guy who always did everything in his power to take care of the customer, I developed a reputation as being the guy to go to if you had a problem.  People would wait an extra half-hour in line just to see me with their problems, which was fine.  The problem I had, with the Alltel gig being commission-based, was that those same people weren’t nearly as willing to wait for me when it came to making an actual commission-earning purchase… they went to the first available rep… and those were the straws that finally shattered the spine of the hump-backed mammal… because the money wasn’t there.  The district manager told me, when I informed him that I was quitting, that if I just stuck around for four or five more years, I would start to see that loyalty from the problem-solving start to turn into sales.  I told him that I would be dead of a heart attack before I would ever reap those benefits.

And you know what’s strange?  I really think that if the money had been significantly better, I wouldn’t have minded dealing with the crap quite as much.  It’s harder to get stressed about a situation when they actually are paying you enough to deal with it.

I’m a happily married dude.  I am about to embark on, most-likely, a once in a lifetime adventure with my family: a cruise to the Bahamas.  However, when I discovered that almost a third of the guests on Royal Caribbean’s  Majesty of the Sea were attendees of some sort of fraternity leadership conference that Royal Caribbean was happily ($$$) hosting, the wind in my sails diminished just a little.  Even though I’m happily married, I am not dead.  I had some preconceived notions of what the view around the pool on that cruise ship was going to look like.

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My “notions” were quickly replaced by reality.

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Yeah.  Disappointing, to say the least.  Anywho, now I can try to focus on actually enjoying the family time, right?

The ship is amazing.  It’s like 14-stories tall, and it travels across the ocean; this in and of itself is utterly amazing to me.  There are two formal dining halls, a buffet, a pizza place, a deli, and a burger joint.  Everything except the burger joint is included in the cost of the cruise (you have to pay an entrance fee of like $5 to get into Johnny Rockets).  There was a full-fledged casino, two or three lounges, an awesome weight room with a spectacular view of the ocean (which I promised myself I would use… but never did), a teen hang-out area, a little kid hang-out area, two small swimming pools (constantly full of frat boys), two hot tubs (constantly full of frat boys), a basketball court, a climbing wall, a ping-pong table, and the Chorus Line theater which had nightly live entertainment.  The center of the ship was kind of like a mall, with various stores selling various expensive items: a Caribou Coffee, a jewelry store, a liquor store, a gift shop and the like.  Each day, in the area between the stores, they were selling different garbage that looked expensive and was ridiculously inexpensive.  The wife and youngest son each got a watch for like $10 each, and they looked like they were worth much more.  We’ll see how long they actually last :)  Needless to say, the ship itself was pretty cool.  Our room, on the other hand, not so much.

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Standard rooms on a cruise ship are extremely small.  I cannot stress enough how small these stinking rooms are.  It’s a good thing you pretty much just sleep in the rooms, because, in a family of four, someone would end up dead if you had to spend too much time together in those stinking rooms.

So, we check in on the ship and go through a “muster drill”.

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A muster drill is where they make everyone get outside by the lifeboats and tell you what to do to avoid dying if the ship starts to sink.  Great!  Now that we are all now terrified, let the fun begin.

We spent the first night at sea and just enjoyed the boat and tried to avoid the drunk, potty-mouthed frat boys.  Man, when the frats were sober, they were bearable, but once they got liquored-up, we pretty much had to walk with our hands over our sons’ ears to block the f-bombs.  Thanks, Royal Caribbean!  Thanks for not warning us our cruise was going to be a floating college party full of frat boys with no chicas for them to concentrate their alcohol-fueled, testosterone-driven horn-doggedness on.  I actually overheard a frat boy talking to a girl who appeared to be about 16-years-old, and he was trying to talk her into going to one of the lounges with him.  She kept shaking her head, looking around for someone to rescue her, and I heard him say, “I keep forgetting you’re under age.”  Man, that girl’s parents (as well as almost every parent with a daughter on that cruise) had to be loving Royal Caribbean for that week.

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The next day, we ported in the Nassau.  Pretty cool, if you could look past the poverty that was prevalent everywhere.  We got off the ship and were immediately accosted by numerous people trying to get us to take a taxi or go on a tour or buy stupid toy turtles.  One old guy even asked me if I needed something to smoke, and when I told him I didn’t, he got pissed and stormed off.  We walked around the streets of Nassau.  Me loving people the way I do quickly grew tired of the people constantly in our faces, and we returned to the ship after a short time.

Later that afternoon, we went on a snorkeling tour.  We got on a boat and left the port area to an area where we could check out the corral.  We boated past a lot of really nice houses and the tour guide dropped a few names while cruising past these mansions.  Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan had houses there, along with a bunch of other people whose names I don’t remember.  Can’t imagine owning a mansion of such incredible grandeur surrounded by such intense poverty.  Nothing like rubbing it in the face of the locals, huh?

The snorkeling was kind of lame.  On the way, they warned us that people had seen lion fish in the area we were going to, and lion fish are apparently quite poisonous.  Coolest thing about snorkeling was that I actually found a lion fish.

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I got both of my boys and the wife to see it before one of the tour divers discovered it and scared it away.  Bastard!

That was pretty much the day in Nassau.  The next day, we relaxed on the beaches of Royal Caribbean’s private island, Coco Cay.  This was, by far, the most relaxing day of our adventure.

Swimming in the ocean…

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… playing with the conch…

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…tearing it up at the water park

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… avoiding the killer seagulls…

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… or hanging out in the hammocks…

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…oops, I forgot… stinking frat boys…

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Overall, a very good day.  Then, back to the boat for a relaxing evening and lots of eating.

The next day, we ported in Key West, FL.  Can you say “tourist trap?”  Of course you can. I really felt for all of the foreign (non-US) guests on the Majesty of the Sea when we ported in Key West.  Every single one of them had to take part of their day to go through US Immigration, whether they were getting off the boat in Key West or not.  The immigration officers apparently set-up shop in the theater and the lines were horrendous of families waiting for immigration’s approval.  I imagine those vacationers wasted hours of the last day of the cruise waiting for US Immigration to check them out.  Honest to God, it’s no wonder why so much of the rest of the world hates the United States.  Sometimes, our laws are just retarded.  I really thought it was cool how there were different people from all over the world on this cruise and, except for the frat boys, we all got along just splendidly… up until “Homeland Security” kicked in and the US made sure there wasn’t someone vacationing from Japan or France setting off a dirty bomb in Key West (or someone who has just spent thousands of dollars on a vacation trying to sneak into the country… if they can make that kind of money, they have brains and a good work ethic… let ‘em in!) by making every man, woman and child go through an immigration checkpoint.  I didn’t feel safe, I felt embarrassed for our country.  Why not allow these people to enjoy the last day of their vacation and check them out after the cruise in Miami?  I didn’t have to go through immigration in the Bahamas… and I could of been planning to buy some crack from that dude who wanted to know if I needed a “smoke”… or something!!!

Anyway, back to the non-crappy part of the Key West visit.  We did a little sight seeing

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… did a little shopping…

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… ate some conch fritters…

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… enjoyed frozen chocolate-covered Key Lime pie on a stick…

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and overall had a touristerrific, sunshiny day!

Then, back on the ship for the last time.  We had a wonderful evening of eating lots of food and swimming with the frat boys… and then eating some more.  I crap you not, I gained 10# on that stinking cruise!

When we woke up the next morning, we were in Miami.  Up and at ‘em and off the ship.  We spent an entire day at Miami International Airport (’cause we had to watch our luggage… we could have “checked” it at this storage place, but they want to rape you and kill your first born as payment for that, so we said “screw it, airports are fun”).  We discovered that Miami isn’t too exciting when experienced from the airport, so airports aren’t really that fun.  Didn’t even get to see Tubbs, let alone Crockett

Finally, a turbulent flight back to Denver, a late-night hotel stop on the way home, and finally back to the Craphandle.  And then, back to work with another year until the next real vacation.

Crap man… I just realized how much I miss my ΣAE buddies…