My New Job

I started a new job last week. I had to. They didn't want me showing up at my last job anymore. Even though I had been with them for 28 years, through three corporate owners, three locations and umpteen downsizings, reorganizations and reviews, suddenly I was the red shirt beamed down to the planet. Expendable. I`m unsure what I did to become surplus stock, but it must have been bad. After all, they didn't just lop off me and my position, but closed the entire warehouse and ceased distribution in Western Canada. I feel so responsible! I suppose I should explain to people that the job I had was with a different company than The Pipestone Flyer.

Many assume I make my living from writing this column when, in reality, what Brian gives me for my hours and hours of fashioning each weekly masterpiece would only be enough to qualify as beer money if I quit drinking alcohol. Until the hearty handshake and the heavy-hearted heave-ho, I actually worked for a multi-national conglomerate that sold and distributed a vast array of staples from the staple mines that riddle the bowels of the earth. Luckily avoiding the mines, my main tasks fell into two categaries; order desk and warehousing. The order desk is where you answer telephones and explain to people why we are out of a particular staple and how many arms and legs it will cost them to place the backorder.

The job I had for the other half my career was in what they call "shipping and recieiving".

Shipping is a job where you pick up heavy staple boxes off a rack and put them on a pallet, while receiving is picking up heavy staple boxes from a pallet and putting them on a rack. I really liked shipping better than receiving but then, the jobs were as different as night and dark. I remember so well, how badly I had wanted the job when I first applied. I had been working at McBain Camera in Edmonton and had never heard of the sage advice against "dipping your pen in the company ink". This led to me wooing a considerably younger version of Cupcake. (That is, if wooing means to be finally cornered into proposing.) When we began dating and, ultimately, living in sin (Woohoo! The good old days!) we realized that working together, playing together, socializing together and sleeping together might possibly be too much togetherness. I became highly motivated to find a new job somewhere... anywhere other than McBain`s. It was a tough economy then, too. The early 80`s. The big bust, and I ain`t talking Pamela Anderson. Interest rates were at 20% on mortgages. Unemployment was high. Gloomy economists were talking about The End of the World As We Know It, years before R.E.M and Great Big Sea.

Unemployment was huge. In fact, when I got the job, I had beat out 127 other applicants. The guy that made the hiring decision told me long after I came onboard, that he picked me ahead of the others because, in my skill set list, I included "morale booster" with such important workplace abilities as telling jokes and spinning yarns. Also the fact that he didn`t know I lied about having forklifting experience helped greatly. So I started out in the lowest rung of the corporate ladder, since they had yet to recognize my obvious genius and corporate leadership skills. Instead, they felt I had other assets to draw from, namely the aforementioned picking up heavy boxes and putting them down again. Still, as easy on the brain as that sounds, the fact that you have to pick the correct box up and set it down in the correct place every time weeds out many warehousing wannabees. After about eighteen months, I was transferred into the service department to fix staplers. I am not sure if they recognized my incredible potential and wanted me to have the widest field of expertise for their products as possible or I was a lousy shipper but they still wanted to keep me.

Eighteen months and 15 bazillion T5-8 pusher spring replacements later and I was given another position: the order desk! I knew I was on my way. I knew that OD`ing was a stepping stone to sales, then management and inevitably to the CEO`s office. My career path was set. It was great. I loved the order desk job lots. I got to talk to customers and help solve their staple-related problems. I was the face of the company to many and I loved feeling like an ombudsman between them and the big, scary staple empire.

Then, in the late 90`s, my career path became so lost, a bloodhound couldn`t have found it. The Graph Jockeys and Chartoholics in Head Office decided they needed more Control. They sent the order desk jobs to their Canadian head office in Ontario, shortly after Cupcake`s job had suffered an identical fate. She was, as they say, not amused. The company did, however, decide to keep the warehouse in Edmonton and make it into the Western Canadian Distribution Centre. I could keep my employment if I went back to being a warehouseman. I had come full circle. Oh sure, eventually, I became The Boss in the warehouse but it was harder to take than those gigantic pills they make you swallow when you have a sore throat.

I will admit that being The Boss was kind of cool but it didn`t last. I was only in that capacity about 18 months when the Graph-holes struck again and deemed our operation to be expendable. So now I have a new job. It`s at another staple company! On the order desk!! Life is good!!!

Mega-Sized Calmar Fair

Most weeks I sit staring at the blank screen on my laptop and wonder how I'll fill this space. After writing a humour column for 14 years, it is sometimes more difficult to select a topic than it is to write about it. Not so, today, however. I have more selection than a mega-sized dollar store and every story would have something to do with the amazing Calmar fair.

I'm sure you're thinking “How amazing can a small town fair be?” After all, Calmar is seriously small I mean, it's so tiny, no word of a lie, we've had visitors drive right through town thinking there would be more to it. There isn't, sadly. (Dear Calmar Chamber of Commerce, I was just joking.

What? We're so small we don't have a Chamber of Commerce?) Seriously, though, you might think that, being a town of just 2000 souls, the fair would be lamer than a one legged pirate. Instead, the entertainment was so wonderfully varied and plentiful, I thought I was in a town twice as big in size and sophistication. Sure there was the obligatory features; the pancake breakfast served from 8:00 AM until oh-my-gosh-they-keep-coming-lock-the-door-quick, a parade featuring elected officials waving out car windows, fireworks that rivalled those on my wedding night (wink wink) and a dance featuring an ocean of barely legal partiers trying to see who can out-drink each other while wildly leaping about in what passes for dancing nowadays and we can't forget the three day slow-pitch tournament with a beer garden right at the diamonds, a marketing move as clever as placing a Dairy Queen next to a fat farm.

In addition to those wonderful things that make a small town fair a small town fair, however, they had some additions that made this year's fair arguably the best ever. First of all, the town was celebrating 20 years of hosting the Mega-Market; the garage sale that is more like a bazaar in some exotic land. Vendor's tables line both blocks of main street and there are tons... er... tonnes of other yard sales all over town. People come from all over; like legions of bargain hunters on a dream safari. Then, at the stroke of 11:00, seemingly all transactions stopped when the parade began. I know from experience there was a time when Calmar had the quietest parades you could ever imagine. There were no marching bands, no music on the floats.

The whole thing would kind of slip by un-noticed like it was staffed by ninjas. Not this year. There was music. There was colour. There was flash and pizzazz and there was a large contingent of Jamaican cadets who had flown in for an exchange with their Alberta-based counterparts. The aforementioned parade, almost cancelled a couple years ago due to lack of interest, ended up longer than the actual parade route. And the crowds! I have never seen people five deep along main street in my life. It was like people had heard the float riders were tossing twenties instead of candy.

My fellow thespians with the Calmar Prairie Players had run off 200 little handbills for our melodrama at the beer gardens but we could have used ten times as many if we were to give one to every spectator. It was such as switch from the night before when you could have rolled up the streets and put them away in the shed considering the lack of traffic. Speaking of the Prairie Players, our small but vital troupe staged a melodrama called “Calamity in Calmar or Dark Doings on the Finley Farm” in the beer tent at the ball diamonds.

Paula Bosse had penned it just for the Prairie Players and we are hoping to negotiate with her for the rights to put it on YouTube. After all, if you compared on a per capita basis, with over 300 people viewing the play “Calamity” was a bigger hit than Cats was in New York and without the annoying show tunes, too! With the big Apple boasting a population of 8,200,000 people, they would have to draw 861,000 Cats fans in a single day to equal our record.

They would definitely need a larger beer tent than we had, though. We can't forget the wheel nuts over at the Show and Shine, either. Not that I understand these folks one iota. Cars are a tool to get from one place to another and to provide a place to sit while you wait to place your Timmy's order. However, having been to past shows, I'll admit the older models are pretty neat. The effort to reclaim those vehicles requires far more skill, tools, money, time, patience and talent than I will ever possess. I admire these antique aficianados but for myself, if I wanted to restore a decades old chassis, I would just go on a diet.

There's so much more to talk about at the fair but sadly, time and space preclude their inclusion. I know there was lots of activities for the “small fry” (a phrase appropriate for such a sunny day) at the water spray park, however, I didn't go as I am a bit old for face painting and I've always had a deep abiding fear of petting zoos after an incident with a goat. I did see the bench show, whereby people paid 50 cents to enter categories such as “Best Carrot” or “Best Photo” with the first prize being worth $3.00, second $2.00 and third $1.00.

I would have stayed but they shooed me away in fear of their first place cookies. If the fair had been an entry in the bench show, I am sure it would have won first place. On a per capita basis, of course.

Making Sense

I don't often write about news because many nowadays aren't interested in current events and frankly, I need all the readers I can get. An alarming amount of people find that keeping informed is more depressing than my bank balance.

In fact, lots of folk aren't just satisfied to simply avoid the news but are actually actively opposed to it. They feel so strongly about their anti-news stance that they have begun an ad hoc, listless fight for their right to be apathetic. “My grandpappy fought in some kind of war or something to give me the right not to give a rat's patooty about current events and I'm going to exercise that right, dad gum it.” said one spokesman who didn't care to be identified.

Although it's unclear as to what dad's gums has to do with the issue, it's felt that the anti-info backlash is because issues today have become more complex and confusing than a government form. Nothing is black and white anymore, just like TV's. As a result it seems nothing in the news makes sense. Humans have been trying to make sense of the world ever since day one... whenever that was. (I should be upfront and declare that on the creation/evolution debate, I come down strongly on the side that says we're some kid from Alpha Centauri's grade nine science project.)

Fact is, whether you're into creationism, evolutionism or science project-ism, you're just trying to make sense of the world. It's an inate drive within each of us to understand our environment; much like the drives to survive, to procreate and to drink beer.

In an effort to help us figure out what makes the world tick, the team of smarty-pantses (smarty-pantsi?) at the Loco “think tank” embarked on a program to examine the news for logic and pure common sense. (That's think tank, not drunk tank as some have claimed. I'm not mentioning any names but her initials are “Cupcake”. ) Let's look at a simple issue. Bottled water under fire. First introduced as ”Perrier water”, bottled water was so expensive it was only enjoyed by the rich and snooty and those that aspired to snootihood.

It was sold in green glass bottles and was even more money than pop. Everyone who was not in the ranks of the ridiculously rich, simply drank water from the tap. Then, suddenly, bottled water was everywhere. Convenient, portable, healthy, it created jobs, stimulated the economy. It was A Good Thing; the drink of choice for soccer moms and fitness Nazis everywhere. Then, just as suddenly, it became A Very Bad Thing. Bottle pollution. Waste of money. Governments and institutions banning it like it's liquid crack. In the markets, every time water falls and investors take a bath and workers are sent to the showers. People buy pop instead. Less guilt.

As if the bottled water suppliers are the only polluting, wasteful companies. Okay, so that doesn't make much sense. Maybe we can look at politics. Should be simple.

There are only three parties. My Guys, Your Guys and The Other Guys. When my guys are in power, they fumble along as best they can and have things dictated to them from the beaurocracy.

They blame everything bad on the Previous Guys. When Your Guy gets in, he also fumbles along as best he can being equally dictated to by the ever-present, all-powerful, all-seeing beurocracy. Your Guy blames everything on My Guy who was the Previous Guy and would sell his mother's soul to be the Next Guy. Sadly, between the fighting between all Those Guys, nobody ends up remembering it was Us Guys that voted all These Guys in.

Incredibly, all Those Guys get away with it because Us Guys let them. It could be because Us Guys don't actually get to vote for The Big Guy directly; the part that makes the least sense. Here's one more. It's from the sports pages. The names have been changed to protect the stupid. There's a team in a premier two-nation hockey league losing money like a drunken Chev plant at a casino. We'll call them the Flagstaff Wild-Dogs. They lose tens of millions per year because Arizona has a climate so hot, the only ice available is in glasses of scotch and bourbon. There's a Canadian, John Nutfunny, we'll call him, that wants to pay an obscene amount for the team and move it to where people are rabidly fanatical about hockey.

The league, however, would rather keep the team in Flagstaff losing millions rather than sell to this guy. They feel this billionaire businessman is “untrustworthy”. This begs a number of questions. Firstly, why would the league want to maintain a franchise where hockey rates in popularity somewhere below roller derby and belly bucking? Why would anyone smart enough to make a gazillion dollars in a different industry want to buy a business with the financial success of a crown corporation? If professional sports clubs lose money like they claim, why does Nutfunny want to own one and why is a failing franchise worth so much?

When has trustworthiness been a prerequisite for owning a hockey team? It didn't seem to be a rule for owners like Peter, Nelson And Bruce. The biggest question is, of course, how much sense does any of this make? The answer to that question is, “none”. Maybe the anti-news folks are onto something!

The Heat Wave!

I am always leery of writing columns about the weather given the fact that the Pipestone Flyer is a weekly paper. Invariably, by the time a weather-related column hits the newstands, the conditions are radically different than it was when I wrote it. If you thought yesterdays news was boring, try listening to last week's weather report!

Still, it has been hotter than a lava sandwich and we northerners with our obvious willingness to tolerate -40 temperatures in winter, have a hard time with anything over +25. We break out in a sweat with just the slightest movement; drinking beer, having a nap, breathing. Mostly we just suffer in silence, although some, sadly aren't so silent in their unhappiness and want to share that with every person within proximity of their "Hot enough for ya?" conversation starter.

Therefore, in order to help humanity and set myself up for the Nobel Prize for Something-Or-Other, we at the Loco World Headquarters have been experimenting with the best way to stay cool during the screaming hot temperatures we've been having. If we are no longer having screaming hot temperatures when you read this, you may cut this out with scissors (No running with them!) and put it on your fridge with a magnet for future heat waves.

Of course we must caution you about the application of these solutions. Remember; moderation in all things. A good example is a ceiling fan. It can provide a wonderful breeze to sleep under if done in moderation. Unfortunately, Cupcake is a hottie in more ways than one and I'm sure has the ceiling fan wired to 220. Laying under the fan with the blades whipping around at warp factor 5 billion is like sleeping in a wind tunnel. I can barely fight the force enough to get up to go pee in the night.

So, with moderation in mind, here are the findings of the Loco team of investigative researchers. They have assembled them into the top 20 ways of staying cool during crematorium conditions:

1: Hug a bag of frozen peas. This is particularly helpful at bed-time. Carrots and corn also work but broccoli can be a bit bumpy. Make sure whatever frozen fruit or vegetable you select, the bag is sealed perfectly. Having a bedful of frozen strawberries would be a drag.
2: Purchase a "Slushy" ice drink. Rub it all over your body. Watch out for brainfreeze, not to mention torso freeze, buttock freeze and sensitive inner thigh area freeze.
3: Go to the beer cooler of the beverage purveyor you have given the most business to over the years. Bring a comfy chair.
4: Try sitting in the shade... of an iceberg.
5: Stand in front of the fridge for hours with the door open staring inside like teenagers do constantly.
6: Hang out in the freezer section of the grocery store until you're booted out for being thought a creeper.
7: Have a cold shower. All day. Prepare for hate letters from water conservation groups.
8: Burrow underground like gophers do. Watch out for garden hoses and 10 year-old boys with pellet guns.
9: Wait for the end of the screaming hot day for the sudden, intense thunder, lightning, gale force wind, flying garbage can-type storm blow all the hot air from the house along with your roof.
10: Duct-tape popcicles to your body. Try and stay away from taping hairy areas.
11: Tell your wife those pants DO make her butt look big. Enjoy the frosty silence.
12: Buy one of those cheapie, above-ground pools. Get a part-time job at an air-conditioned Wal-Mart to help pay for the water, chemicals, testing kits, water toys and pumps.
13: Hire servants to wave palm fronds over you. It may not be the most efficient manner, but it would be the coolest.
14: Freeze-dry your clothes in the freezer after washing. Put on when not quite dry. Watch out for frostbite in unusual places.
15: Jump and frolic about in the sprinkler. In the front yard. Naked. Psych wards are usually air-conditioned.
16: Catch a cold. Hope for chills.
17: Flip off a bike gang. Bask in how your blood turns to ice when they circle the block for a chat. 18: Drink a lot of beer. You won't actually feel cooler since you are taking on a ton of extra calories and it is a diuretic so it will strip you of precious bodily fluids . Still, you won't care about the heat nearly as much.
19: Move into your parent's basement. Take up computing, texting, video gaming and going to comic conventions.
20: Put on a pair of shades. At least you will look cool.
As you can tell, once again our crack staff of researchers have proven once again that they are useless in a crisis. Don't try these at home kids!