The Agrinautica

   Today I was injured at work. Grieviously! )= You see, Bob and I like to set goals and then try to beat them. Today we set a very ambitious goal -- we valiantly accomplished it, but I was injured in the process. )=
   More on that towards the end of this entry, for you know, suspense purposes.


   The other day we were up for contract renewal with a local water company. They asked us for several references, so Dave gave them several local school districts, the airport, other big contracts. They called back a few days later and said "You know, usually when we call references, we get a lots of 7s and 8s ... every one of your references we called gave you a 10!!" In conclusion, we are awesome.

   We used to have another technician, Ryan the Younger, who worked for us for about a year before he left to go visit Japan for a bit. Upon his return to the states, he returned to his native Modesto, California. There he has gotten a job a a supervisor for a pest control company. In conclusion, even our most junior employees are qualified to be supervisors at our competition. In conclusion we are awesome.

   Incidently, our senior technician, Ryan the Older ("one of the highest paid people in pest control) is more than qualified to run his own pest control business. Thats why Dave pays him really well and buys him a truck for christmas. (=


   Yesterday Bob and I killed some honeybees for a lady who kept on rambling all like "So do you guys ever get bit? I'm so afraid of getting bit! The pest control guy got bit! I knew someone who got bit and died!! ..." Bob and I both tried to ignore it as long as we could, but she just kept talking about bee bites. Finally Bob was like "You know... honeybees are physically incapable of biting" "what??" "Bees sting. You know, with their stinger." "What?! Just a minute!" She goes back in her house to consult with her husband, comes back out a minute later "But the pest control guy that was here got bit!" "he got stung ma'am" "but.. I know someone that DIED of a bee bite!" "It was a bee sting. 1% of the population is extremely allergic to bee stings." Even after this she still snuck in one or two references to bites.
   Seriously though, I thought it was like, the most basic knowledge that bees sting. I mean, cartoons always portray them flying around stinging people. How can you not know that bees sting?!? How can you know someone that died of a bee sting and STILL think it was a bite???



   But yeah so about my injury. This morning after we'd done about three jobs I believe, we were informed that we did not currently have any more jobs lined up. So Bob and I went to a nearby park and found some shade. "Lets see if we can sleep here for the next three hours!!" said Bob. "Thats pretty ambitious, don't choke!!" said I. Miraculously, our phone did not call with another job until two hours and fifty minutes later (we valiantly stayed in the park for another 11 minutes to make our goal). In the process of this, however, the shade moved, leaving me asleep in the noon sun for at least an hour before I noticed. I got horribly burnt!!! )= Its a dangerous job!


Picture of the Day

Iowa, or maybe Nebraska

Quotes
"After killing bees all day how can you sleep at night?" -Alvin Tsao
"Well, its 3am and I'm not asleep am I." -Me. I wouldn't sleep for 20 more hours or so.*

Office Dave was shleffing through business cards looking for the silkscreener who made our shirts last time. He came upon a card from someone we rent lifts from or something, the company was named something like "John's High Reaching" or long reaching or something.
"You ever wonder how people get into things like this? Like did John just wake up one day and go shit, I'm good at reaching shit, I should start a reaching company dammit" -Me.
"Yeah how do people these weird businesses... like bees..." -someone else
"I just woke up one morning and was like you know what I want to do when I grow up, I want to reach my arm into holes filled with bees!!" -Jeremy

Jeremy is gassin some bees, I'm standing next to the truck, a guy comes by and sees the bees flying around the dying colony:
"Are the doing that because there's a queen there?" -guy
"uh.... there's always a queen. -Me, after being dumbfounded for a minute on how to even respond to that.
"but they're doing that because there's a queen there right?"
"uh.. there's always a queen, you have bees, you have a queen."

"There's the bees" -some client
"um sir, thats a pinecone" -one of the technicians, arriving at a call that turned out to be a pinecone.

*but I had just woken up from five hours of sleep you see.


Today
   Today I finally got down to Diedrichs again, for the first time in at least a week. Alexis the Frenchman came as well. There were two chess boards going at Diedrichs. The regular chess games are starting to attract more chess enthusiasts. Today there was this guy Brett who teaches Chess to the children of rich people for $30 was down there. He was damn good and gave a few pointers to everyone. There was also this guy Jim who is 62 and has three masters degrees. Then this middle-aged guy who it appears had just come in for coffee joined a game.
   Former Diedrichs-area security guard Danny showed up which was awesome because I hadn't seen him in a year and he is awesome.
   After Diedrichs closed down after 10:00 Alexis went with Mike & Brian to this bar/place called Le Cave that purportedly was pretty cool and had jazz music. I didn't go though because jazz music usually involves saxophones and saxophones to me are like nails on chalkboards. Apparently they continued to play chess there.
   After they left Brett and I ended up talking about logical fallacies, paradoxes, & logical riddles. Eventually we went to Harbour House to continue talking, and played some chess.

In Other News" my laptop which is essentially dead at this point.


Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Thursday: First Occasional LJ Awards - & I see Bullets N Octane at Chain Reaction, & hang out with Hannah at Wild Rivers
   Two Years Ago Today: Getting Hassled By The Constabulary - And hanging out with Jimmy McTaig & making the Steel Reserve shirt and hanging out with Hannah at Wild Rivers.
   Year Ago Wednesday: Peasants Quest comes out!!! - And pictures of Petey & Shalane.
   Year Ago Thursday: Gutter Punk Trogdor!!! - and some chillaxing at Diedrichs

edit: original post time: 04:37 (moved to 23:37 to put on previous day)

   A year ago today, my brother Tobin's infamous girlfriend roxymartini decided to lose yet another argument with me, over the definitions of autistic and troll-like, respectively. Comments to this entry were also unusually populated with anonymous commenters.


   More recently I've been engaged in an epic debate with an ogre of political correctness about the use of the word "retarded." They content that if one uses it as an "inherently insulting" term, than one is in violation of the norms of political correctness, and by extension a bad person and a terrible human being. I argue that yes it IS an "inherently insulting" because by definition it means to have marginal intelligence, and to maintain otherwise one would have to renounce the use of the insults "idiot," "moron," "imbecile," "insane," etc, all terms which describe actual "inherently insulting" conditions. This whole experience is being made much more painful however because the individual relies heavily on insult and villianizing her opponents to win arguments (a major early tactic they used was in attempting to discredit my "just playing the devil's advocate" disclaimer). Anyway now they're finally on retreat, claiming they no longer wish to argue with me because I'm being a jerk, and using terms they claim one would have to take certain classes in to fully understand.

   Anyway, my point is that this is a case of "political correctness" extending beyond its reasonable bounds. The ideology of "politically correct" stifles discussion by villianizing the viewpoints not within it (at one point the person I was arguing with, regarding my claim to be just playing the devil's advocate, said "for all I know he can be looking at the screen through the holes in a while hood" - no relevance to the discussion except to discredit me). Basically my thoughts on the subject of PC can be summed up in this: in their own time and place, the nazis of Germany were "politically correct". Hyperbole, I think not - as you know it unfortunately did happen.

   Anyway this whole argument is huge but if you really want to look at it yourself, it is here. Though that whole thing is in fact based on commentary regarding the fourth comment to the entry.


Wiki Articles of the Day - Totally more pleasant reading than the above
Lamar Heystek - respected statesman, acclaimed columnist, distinguished Safeway clerk.
Kalen Gallagher - current ASUCD president.
Davis Players Society - Gallagher's friends are more organized than yours.