Yet another saturday blog. Not too much goeth on during my week at school and work. I don't have quite as much thinking time as I would like due to my head not being quite as clear as it might be since my job is rather fast paced with a lot of people around and when I'm getting around 5 hours of sleep at night. I could get more i guess but I really like to spend a little time here on SG before zonking out, so as to have a little something for myself, to relieve the grind of my "real life".
Couple of annoying people(complainers) from my class have moved on out to the field however, and that improves things in class a bit. One of them got me thinking a bit though. He's a former music teacher and he burned out on it after two or three years owing to the vexations of pedagogical culture. He tell this story about an incident when he observed some of the schoolkids out doing something or other, and as they were unsupervised, he went out and supervised them. Unfortunately for him the wrong person observed him doing that, and he was reprimanded by the teacher's union and the school board for having done something that was outside of what was spelled out in his contract that he might or might not do. At the hearing about it he had said that he thought that school was supposed to be about the kids. Thing about it that is apparent to any kid is that school is not about the kids, it's all about the rules. The idea is that you run a rat through the same maze enough times, and then you put him in an open space, he doesn't become disoriented and lose his way; he continues to see the maze and contunues to run in the pattern he ran when he was in it. This makes him a good citizen and a utilizable economic production unit.
I recall when I was doing school photography in 2001 I did my old high school on the first day of class. We were set up on the stage in the school auditorium and they had a big assembly there first thing in the morning. They went over the rules "you can't smoke, you can't leave the campus, you can't be in the hallways during classes . . . " and all that shit. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck hearing that and I was 13 years past graduation and just a photgrapher behind the curtains on stage. There's a vocational HS just up the road from there that I also did. A student described that place as "boot camp" and apparently the principal there is a hypermotivated ball-breaking bitch who will actually go up to the students and march them through the halls of the school more quickly if she think's they're not walking fast enough. I can easily see myself opening up that woman't neck with a machete, leaving her head attached by just the spinal column. I should probably not be so up front about the monster that lives in my heart, but in any case, people like this are a problem for me do deal with and I need to stay the hell away from them. I despise what we put our kids though and I abandoned my teaching career plans partly because of the deep loathing I have for what goes on in schools. Loathing for the values that I disagree with that I would be expected to inculate.
A lot of teachers have an annoying snarky priggishness.to them. I recall once visiting my former GF Erica at the middle school where she was teaching latin. She was in her office in the trailer where a lot ot the foreign language teaches had their desks, as they had no rooms of their own. She asked me what I thought of some assignment that she was preparing for a class and another teacher whose back was tuned to us snapped her head around and said "is he a teacher?" Well, fuck you, bitch.
Was thinking about what to say if you were having a conversation with some snarky priggish type and you were complaining about the vexations of some asinine rule or other. The snarky prig might say something like " are you saying we don't need rules?" with the implication that we obviously need rules or the world would go to hell in a handbasket. And that criticising rules is tantanmount to saying they are unnecessary. I personally am not aticulate enought to address this sort of thing in a real conversation but one observation that i've made is that in the absence of rules, what you need to have is undefinable. Rules about things tell you what it is necessary to have. Rules generate their own necessity.
Another thing to say is that if it is necessary to have rules, at times it will also be necessary to not have rules, when such rules as exist do not adequately address the circumstances in which one finds oneself. Obey the speed limit, but exceed it if your passenger is having a heart attack and needs to get to the hospital.
Yes I know I have a problem with authority figures. My dad beat the crap out of me a few times too many.
I dislike my mind in certain respects. Other people seem to me to have much clearer intelligences. They are more artculate and structured in they way they think and present ideas. My thoughts are a tangled not of reason and emotion that when written down strike me as a semicoherent mess; come to think of it it's no wonder i can't talk to people.
My cat max seems to be unable to tear himself from my presence when I'm sitting here with a bowl of spaghetti typing up a blog. I could toss him from the room and shut the door but he's my best friend and I can't be spurning his love. Just wish he would stop trying to put his paws on my keyboard or in my lunch.
Don't know how sane or neurotic this blog's going to make me seem to those who ain't neurotic. But it's me, best as I can put it for the time being.
Aleikum salaam
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I -never- go to NYC. I pass through it on occasion but I never pick up or deliver there. My company doesn't take any freight there so it is mostly a non-issue. Occasionally Jersey City (which is practically NYC but across the water). I'd never spend the night though. I'll park somewhere else and then do the last hour or whatever it might be in the morning before my delivery. NYC isn't the only danger-zone though. I would also not spend the night in Miami (for instance). Miami is a unique pain in the ass because the closest real truck stops are over a hundred miles away. Conventional wisdom blames this on the cost of real estate. So the only real strategy is to get a parking spot ASAP at one of those truck stops and then do the last couple hours right before your delivery appointment.
My company is FAIRLY consistent with giving morning delivery appointments. That allows me to more-or-less stay on a routine where I'm working during the day and sleeping at night. I complain in my blog whenever I have to break from that routine. I have worked for other companies where there was no rhyme or reason to schedules. Each assignment I got had seemingly random pickup and delivery times and that truly sucked. Very difficult to manage hours even when that was back during the days when we were allowed to split our working and sleeping times a lot more flexibly than we can now.
Anyhow, this company I am with (Pohl) is a small carrier. Just over a hundred drivers. The entire home office and garage staff knows me by name. I like that. There are places that could pay me a few cents more per mile perhaps... or give me a fancy Pete. But as for being strictly a company driver, I'm pretty happy here. While I'd never say never... I think the only change I would make... assuming I were to remain a company driver... would be to go to work for Wal-Mart. That is pretty much top of the game for not owning your own truck. 5 days out, 2 days off. Mostly running from distribution centers to stores. All drop and hook. Very high pay.
Aside from choosing carefully where I park... I have a couple of knives (one with a 3.5 inch locking blade, the other is really just a Leatherman). And... straight from Half Life... my handy crow-bar. I've never had a hijack attempt to date. I'd love to carry a firearm but I'm equally afriad of being busted for having it... so I don't. Pepper spray is actually a decent idea that hadn't occured to me. I may look into acquiring some.
Regarding sliding tandems and bridge formulas and all of that (my current tractor doesn't have a sliding 5th wheel. Some do, some don't. I've never found it to be THAT useful, frankly). Just remember that the lesser of two evils is likely the bridge law. If it was a matter of one or the other... either having my tandems stretched out a bit too far OR being overweight on an axle... I'd accept the former. It's a lot more likely a DOT officer or scale-house will pull you around back for a ticket and / or full inspection if you're overweight than if your wheels aren't quite where they ought to be.