Tuesday, January 12, 2010

clues...

I was cleaning out the van and found some of the original notes I took at the orientation meeting over at Cyberdyne. remember that job??
I think the writing was on the wall. Can you spot the comments that are out of place? Which of these doesn't belong??

"Safety suggestions
lock out/tag out
industrial accidents
blood borne pathogens
terribly mangled
energy control plan
once premise has been accepted i.e. manufacturing is good, then the ends is justified. tanks of poison become a line in the budget.
medical insurance
worker's comp
?K
incredibly contradictory...smart enough to detail the destruction of earth. We categorize it because we are powerless. like GATTACA or Brave New World.

important Phone numbers
call supervisor if sick
sludge from anodizer
waste narratives
satellite stations
emergency evacuation
Minutae--must be clearly marked and legible. legalese. indelible ink. black. written w/ right hand. if you are left handed then notify the supervisor. enter door. turn right. nod to coworker. put on safety glasses. turn off brain.
smart smart monkeys playing with alien powers. one drops a mysterious box and destroys a city. we learn as we go.
waste stream ID
dress code"

IQ test


I went to take an aptitude test. You know, because I'm looking at jobs stocking shelves at Vista foods and want to know if I'm right for it. I have my doubts.
But then I saw an IQ test so I took that. But I got bored after a few questions and then I started to figure the end would just lead me into a pop-window hell and even then I would have to register or buy baby food to get the results. And even the questions looked more like a 7th grade geometry test than having anything to do with IQ. It was like an SAT test. This isn't IQ, I thought. No. This won't define me! Then my internet connection quit and I was sitting on the stairs to hitchhike off a neighbor and we're taking down the Christmas tree finally (because Little Christmas is over. and little Christmas is when the three wise kings brought gifts to the baby Jesus some time in January. The boy may have been born Dec. 25th but little Christmas is in January and we kept the tree up. And the christian death metal tenant came over and we talked about apple pie.)
And I had a vision about the santa cruz book that was like, "If we dismiss philosophy, if we disregard the wolf and the social depravity of Hannah Montana (a position many recommend I adopt), then we are basically admitting that it is better to live well at any cost. Fuck the wolf! IF a poor person has money then take it. OR get the person to work for you until they die. THat's the world without philosophy. IF I can get a job manufacturing useless devices for other useless devices then I should only ask how much I'm getting paid. There should never be a question of why. Thoreau was an idiot who died young. The role model is Bill Gates. Let's devour ALL THE RESOURCES ON THE PLANET. because at least we'll be able to sell stocks faster. TO my mind this is not only insane it is killing all creatures great and small and impacting species in remote places who have no connection to silicon chips but must nevertheless suffer and die. And if we are to dismiss philosophy then we live in a world without reason. There will be reason, I suppose, but only in the sense that if you kidnap someone and have a debate about the most efficient way to hide the body. Buried, or fed to pigs? Well, the pigs devour the evidence and burying is not a guarantee. We'll still have that kind of reason but we will lack the initial reason that asks why are we creating all the problems for ourselves in the first place. And if we ignore that fundamental reason then we reach the Russian royalty point where women should be hitched to barges and whipped until they must be cut from their shackles and their bodies pushed into the river. Since poor people are plentiful and since the Chinese are short and have a lower center of gravity we can use them to push trash cans and if the gravediggers accidentally fall into the mass graves then IT DOESN'T MATTER because gravediggers are cheaply purchased from dutch ships in Portsmouth Harbor. And you need not feed them much. The important thing is the labor gets done so you have leisure to play lawn croquet. This isn't speculation...it's what is actually happening right now in India, Vietnam, China. That hamburger you're eating isn't beef, it's human flesh from a rural village near Hong Kong."
This wasn't the first time I had this monologue in my head but since I now have a setting in which to apply it (fictional Santa Cruz) then I'm trying to get the arguments tight or at least entertaining so my characters can deal with them.

Anyway, the IQ test...which was originally supposed to be the aptitude test.
I stopped answering questions. or just clicked randomly without reading. Some were hard and I did get them wrong. Damn quadrangle area! One question was like:
Re-scramble the following letters and you get what of the five options: ONYRAW
(It doesn't spell one of these words, it spells a word THAT IS AN EXAMPLE of one of these words)

State
Ocean
Country
Animal
River


But I still got a 112. Average asshole. And let me point out that there was not a single question about wolves or philosophy or Karl Marx or slavery or the current ecological genocide being waged by Hannah Montana. So what good is it? Bill Gates is pushing a button that muzzles one arctic wolf after another but he's considered pretty smart. He probably has at least a 119 IQ. Maybe 120. But he's stupid. Silicon is our undoing. If you subscribe to the Ayn Rand philosophy that newer is better then you don't love the wolf. Private Property?? Are you joking? Ownership decreed by God? What? No, that doesn't work at all. It's crusade fantasy. Are we still living in the 11th century?

The IQ test did make me purchase baby food to see the results. But I need it because I have no food. And in the process I missed the window to apply for the Vista Foods stocking job. Goddamn you Ayn Rand!
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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.