And then, there was hydraulic fluid everywhere!

Went to work last night, the machine I normally drive was in Maintenance. So, I took 112, my back up machine. I know they're not really my machines, but we get possessive of our equipment.

So halfway through my shift, I pick up a couple of pallets to take to the guy loading the truck, press the button for the lift, and it won't stop raising. Not good. I shut off the machine. And it still won't stop raising. Even worse! I unplug the machine. It stops raising. Now, I'm in a dilemma. I have freight on my forks which I can't lower to get off my forks. This looks like a job for...Maintenance.

I plug the machine back in, drive it to the truck, the loader and I move the freight to other pallets, all to the gentle sounds of my machine grinding away, still trying to lift. Off I go to Maintenance, with the machine still trying to lift the whole way there. The good little machine actually made it to the front door of the Maintenance Dept. where it promptly emptied itself of every fluid it had.

There was smoke, and hydraulic fluid, as my machine gently lowered itself to the ground, nothing left to hold the forks up. With one final grind and a puff of smoke, I'm pretty sure it died.

RIP, 112.

They've finally done it

The company that I work for has finally done something so stupid, it's made even me go "What? What the fuck? Are you fucking kidding me? This is a joke, right?"

Ok. I've worked for the same company for 11 years. I have seen them do some truly stupid things. Before I go on with this, let me first point out I have no problem with women in management. I've had many female bosses who were quite intelligent, very skilled and good at the job. However, my company has just promoted to Assistant Area Manager someone who thought Nova Scotia was a suburb of Toronto, and that you could drive to England from Canada. Thanks, i guess, to those really well spaced out oil platforms.

I'm questioning, did nobody else want the job? Wasn't there any other choice? Someone with an IQ, a brain cell-anything? Someone who's recently suffered head trauma? Road kill? A lawn gnome? A plastic flamingo? Anything?

I'm fairly certain that if this woman got into a debate with toast, toast would win. You know how liquid nitrogen is the coldest substance on the planet? Well, she's liquid dumb.

I feel better now. The company is still stupid, but I feel better now. Stupid useless gits.

My wife makes me do things

My wife tagged me for this thing, so here it is.

8 Things I'm Passionate About
My Wife
My Kid
Loyalty
RPGs
Music
Reading
Cooking
Baking (yes, they're different, dammit!)

8 Things I Want To Do Before I Die
Win the lottery
Smack someone who's being really stupid, just because they're being stupid
Trip a kid that's running around screaming in the supermarket
Smack the parent of the kid that's running around screaming in the supermarket
Go to Thailand
Write a novel
Get my kid to actually do what I tell her to
and marry my wife.

8 Things I Say Often
Oh, look, it's the Cluster-Fuck Fairy!
The Cluster-Fuck Fairy showed up riding in the pocket of the Cluster-fuck Ogre riding the Cluster-Fuck Dragon (can you tell I love my job?)
They're what?!? Are they really that stupid?
Stupid. (when my wife asks me how work was)
I'll get right on that.
Don't hurt yourself, Princess! (not you, Prin!)
Why are you talking to me like I should care?

8 Books I've recently read
Harry Potter books 1-6
Hannibal by Thomas Harris
It by Stephen King

8 Songs That I could listen to over and over
Look Back In Anger by David Bowie
Andy Warhol by David Bowie
anything from Kiss' first four albums
Chemical Warfare by The Dead Kennedys
Monkey Suit by The Plasmatics
Aenima by Tool
Stereo by The Watchmen
I Lost My Job To Guy Named Gino by My Dog Popper

8 Things That Attract Me To My Friends
sense of humour
loyalty
common interests
intelligence
debates
lack of prejudice
compassion
sarcasm

8 Things I Have Learned In This Past Year
starting a new business is hard
dwelling on the past can really fuck with your head
trying to figure out why your old friends will no longer talk to you will really fuck with your head
forgetting how important you are to your family is bad. Bad, bad, bad.
Apparently, I'm more important than money.
my kid is now officially a teenager.
I make really fucking good cheesecake!
My blood is the consistency of pudding (and it's a good thing, too!).

8 People who should do this meme
I don't know 8 bloggers who haven't already been tagged.

So there you have it.

Cyber-clan

This is a very odd concept for me. I've made a bunch of friends that I will likely never, ever meet and who I wouldn't know if I saw them in person. I kinda hang out on a website called Nutrinopets. And I've met some pretty cool people there. My little sisters in particular.

That's what I call them 'cause that's how I think of them. Lilybri and mocha. I talk to them a lot. It's weird-for people that I've never met, I think about them a lot. I like to keep apprised of the things that are happening in their lives. And I actually worry about them. I find it very odd that people I've never met can be that important. Thus-cyber-clan!

She likes me, she really, really likes me!

This one is totally about my wonderful, wonderful wife. Or un-wife. Whatever. It's taken her awhile but she's finally managed to remove my head from my butt. I think I'm actually starting to believe this the only thing that matters is me thing. It's not about money or stuff or whatever. It's about us.

And my kid. In spite of being a pain in the ass who doesn't do what I tell her to, she's still a good kid. She doesn't make the same stupid decisions that a lot of other kids in her school currently do. And she only rolls her eyes at me about three times a day, so I suppose it's not that bad. I did raise her to be a punk, after all.

Realilty versus fuck you guys!

So after much internal debate, I have decided that I am, in fact, very real, in spite of lack of perception. So it boils down to this: I made my promises, I will keep them forever. If you need me, call me but fuck you guys.

Thanks for all the support. Thanks for being there when I had my stroke. Thanks for being there when my Dad died. Thanks for being there when my Mom died. Thanks for keeping me apprised of all the important events in your lives. I stopped calling you because no one returned my calls. Marriages, births, deaths ect. went by and not so much as a quick message on the machine. I find it ridiculous and depressing that friendship has been reduce to a couple of quick lines on facebook.

Apathy versus Existence

OK, bear with me. This is really out there.

So, I've had a very interesting existence so far. Back in the drug days I was infamous as a bad guy. When I cleaned myself up, I was known as a "good friend". I always had every body's back, regardless of which phase I was in. Loyalty has always been very important to me. Something I noticed was sorely lacking in my family.

Here's where my existential crisis comes in (seriously, this is really fucking out there). Perception is reality. As pretty much all of my friends no longer perceive me, I find that my reality is greatly diminished. I am becoming less real every day. The question is, am I no longer perceived by them or do they just not care? If they just don't care, I'm still real. If they no longer perceive me, then I no longer exist to them. Thus, I'm no longer real to them.

This diminishes my personal reality. I'm becoming less real. As an example of this theory, take a look at the Old Gods-Zeus, Odin, Ogham, the list goes on and on. When they had many followers who truly believed in them, they existed. Now, with the advent of Christianity and other religions, and their war on the Old Gods, they are little more than folk tales now. They are powerless and no longer exist in the minds of most of the world (excluding pagan folk like myself, even though we don't perceive them in the same way as in their hey-day). Now, I'm not claiming to be godlike by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just an old punk who's tired. And I feel like I'm becoming less real with each passing day.

What the hell happened? Where did the apathy to my existence come from?

Like I said, it's really fucking out there. It's been a tough year.

Introduction

Well, I guess I'm a 37 year old father of a 15 year old girl, who fortunately has my musical tastes. I discovered the secret to invisibility-move more than an hour away from your friends. I have been very happily unmarried for over 10 years (thank you, Gene Simmons!) to, to be perfectly honest, the best woman I have ever met in my life. Some of you may know her as skryker. She makes me laugh. For reasons I will never really understand, she loves me. She just is.

OK-the early days. My mother beat me and my sister like animals, everyday until I was 15. She only stopped when I threatened to kill her. 12-16 I sort of remember thanks to drug addiction; gee, I wonder how that happened. "Smoke this, you'll feel better!" And 16-now, I've been trying to be the best man that I can. Though many days, IMO, I fail at it miserably.

I chose the name punkdad because, well, I am. Hard to fight authority when you ARE the authority, though. But at least I'm cool authority.