Month: January 2022

Run Off – Losing a Job on the Oil Field

No one gets fired from the oil field, except for a failed drug test. If you show up and work, as far as dispatch cares, you can keep your job. No one will call you into the office and give you a talking to for bad behavior or laziness. They don’t give a shit how bad you are. Dispatch put the bodies in the field and the field can take care of itself. And the field does. Because in the oil patch, on a job location, sixty miles from the office, a different set of rules apply, and they are about as kind and as fair as nature’s. If men don’t believe you can do a good job, if they think for any reason that your ignorance, laziness, or ineptitude will put them or anyone around them in danger, or even if they just don’t like your face – just for the fun of it – they will run you off. They will do everything in their power to make your life such a living hell that you will go home one day and you will not come back. They will replace you with someone else and good fucking riddance. We do not want you, we do not need you. You are a worm, you always were and you always will be. So, go home and worm, you fucking worm.

The Good Hand
Michael Patrick Smith

See also: Safety Tips from the North Dakota Oil Field

Supporting the King Soopers Strike

I live maybe a mile from a King Soopers store and have been shopping there for years. I went to Safeway this weekend instead of King Soopers, out of support for the strikers. Noted that the Safeway store was extra busy. Great minds think alike.

Marvin Gaye’s Impromptu Musical Convoy

“You should have been on the rest of the tour,” Big John told me, referring to Marvin’s last cross-country excursion before leaving America behind.

“We drove to Denver and Milwaukee and New York and Chicago—all over,” said Cammon. “Marvin could relax on the bus. It was his method of getting away. One time, I remember, he got on the CB and started talking, telling people that he was Marvin Gaye. When they asked him to prove it, he started singing. Well, they sure-enough believed him then, and soon we were leading a caravan of thirty cars and trucks. This went on for a hundred miles. Finally he had me pull over at a truck stop, and everyone stopped along with us. He broke open a half-dozen bottles of champagne, and we had a beautiful party.

Divided Soul: The Life Of Marvin Gaye
David Ritz

Denver Home Price Average Over $700,000

As documented by the January 2022 market-trends report from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors, the red-hot real estate scene in Denver has defied expectations, with the average price for a detached home in greater Denver rising above $700,000, a mark associated with the eye-popping peaks registered during the spring and early summer.

Denver Home Price Average Over $700,000 — Again
Westword
MICHAEL ROBERTS

Literature Promotes Empathy and Self Understanding, Example of

As I was steeping myself in the art of the popular genre writers of the day—Thomas B. Costain (The Black Rose, The Silver Chalice), Frances Parkinson Keyes (Dinner at Antoine’s, Came a Cavalier), Samuel Shellabarger (Captain from Castile, Prince of Foxes), Frank Yerby (The Foxes of Harrow, A Woman Called Fancy)—I was also marching through the middlebrow writers (John P. Marquand, Pearl S. Buck, John O’Hara), the current literary heroes (Waugh, Orwell, Faulkner), and the classics: Balzac, Dickens, Hardy, Twain. My crucial literary experience of these pre-college years was my first reading of Emma, when I was sixteen. When Emma behaves so rudely to poor, harmless, talkative Miss Bates in the famous scene of the picnic on Box Hill, I was suffused with mortification: I had been forced to look at my own acts of carelessness and unkindness. Jane Austen had pinned me to the wall. It was the first time I really made the connection between what I was reading and my inner self. There was no religious instruction in my life, no guiding principles other than to work hard, and my mind was not a philosophical one. It was in the novel, beginning with Emma, that I would discover some kind of moral compass.

Avid Reader: A Life
Robert Gottlieb

The Way Of The Shadow Wolves, Steven Segal Book – Commentary on

Amazon:
5 Stars

It really feels like a Steven Seagal movie but in a book. Honestly, maybe even better because of these deep state conspiracy theories him and his co-writer weave in. I also like the Native American setting. It makes the lead character feel like Seagal meets Walker. I can’t speak on the political aspects but I will say I was very entertained and couldn’t put it down. I didn’t expect it to be as excellent on the inside as the cover is but it’s legit. Don’t listen to these unverified reviews, I read the book. I’m still not sure why Obama would be bringing jihadists into this country by way of Mexico, but everyone is entitled to their own opinions and that’s what makes this country special.

via goodreads:

my friend patrick recommended me another book.

i will no longer let him control my life with book suggestions
i will no longer let him control my life with book suggestions
i will no longer let him control my life with book suggestions
i will no longer let him control my life with book suggestions
i will no longer let him control my life with book suggestions

This is not a good book. In fact, it’s very bad. However, this pile of word turds makes a great drinking game. Every time you read ‘my gut’, take a drink. You’ll be drunk within three chapters.

Came here for the comments section, was not disappointed… truly speaks to the lack of quality affordable education in America. Also, anyone want to talk about the blatant racism and cultural appropriation/ tropes??

Dabbawalas: India’s 130-year-old food delivery system

wikipedia

The dabbawalas (also spelled dabbawallas or dabbawallahs, called tiffin wallahs in older sources) constitute a lunchbox delivery and return system that delivers hot lunches from homes and restaurants to people at work in India, especially in Mumbai. The lunchboxes are picked up in the late morning, delivered predominantly using bicycles and railway trains, and returned empty in the afternoon.
…

Lunch boxes are marked in several ways:
1. Abbreviations for collection points
2. Colour code for starting station
3. Number for destination station
4. Markings for handling dabbawala at destination, building and floor

A colour-coding system identifies the destination and recipient. Each dabbawala is required to contribute a minimum capital in kind, in the form of two bicycles, a wooden crate for the tiffins, white cotton kurta-pyjamas, and the white Gandhi cap (topi). Each month there is a division of the earnings of each unit. Fines are imposed for alcohol, tobacco, being out of uniform, and absenteeism.

A collecting dabbawala, usually on bicycle, collects dabbas either from a worker’s home or from the dabba makers. As many of the carriers are of limited literacy (the average literacy of Dabbawallahs is that of 8th grade), the dabbas (boxes) have some sort of distinguishing mark on them, such as a colour or group of symbols.

The dabbawala then takes them to a sorting place, where he and other collecting dabbawalas sort the lunch boxes into groups. The grouped boxes are put in the coaches of trains, with markings to identify the destination of the box (usually there is a designated car for the boxes). The markings include the railway station to unload the boxes and the destination building delivery address. Some modern infrastructure improvements such as the Navi Mumbai Metro are not used in the supply chain, as cabins do not have the capacity for hundreds of tiffins.

At each station, boxes are handed over to a local dabbawala, who delivers them. The empty boxes are collected after lunch or the next day and sent back to the respective houses. The dabbawalas also allow for delivery requests through SMS.

Liz Cheney vs Her Gutless Colleagues

“And it’s very important, if you look at what’s happening today in my party, the Republican party, rather than reject what happened on (January) 6th, reject the lies about the election and make clear that a president who engaged in those activities can never be president again, unfortunately too many in my own party are embracing that former president, are looking the other way, are minimizing the danger. That’s how democracies die, and we simply cannot let that happen.”

Liz Cheney says too many in GOP are ‘looking the other way’ on Jan. 6: ‘That’s how democracies die’
The Wyoming congresswoman says media and members of her party who try to downplay the attack on Jan. 6 “ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

Ms. Cheney was the only Republican leader telling Mr. Trump to move on from the election. A year later, while many in her party have backed down from their criticisms of the former president’s actions, she has remained steadfast — a conviction that has cost her leadership position.

In the second part of our look at the legacy of the Capitol riot, we speak to Ms. Cheney about that day and its aftermath, her work with the Jan. 6 commission and the future of the Republican Party.

The Daily