[262] Screed City

[262]

09/05/2023 Monday. Kitchenette Microwave. Room 113. Holiday Inn Express. Middletown, New York.

Out on the road again. I mean, at least it's interesting. Kind of. The breakfast was great this morning. Biscuits and sausage gravy with Tabasco. #1 favorite breakfast. The job is at this weird Chinese right-wing cult place. There is security to get in. Which is not new, but there are two German Sheppards chained up in front of the gate. Just in case, I guess. The stage is 108 ft from deck to loft and then another 9 ft to the steel. It's a shit-show, naturally, but in all my years of rigging I have never come across such a high ceiling for absolutely no reason. Like none. The proscenium is 40 ft. That gives you 60+ ft for travel. Meaning anything you want to hide in the air, out of sight of the audience can be 60+ ft, give or take. I don't know. Maybe the thing height is just for easy of install, but the building was built because of the stage, or for the stage, I mean, maybe they just wanted to eliminate a whole floor for the sake of savings? Two floors? It is quite weird. And there is a severe language barrier. Everyone is speaking Mandarin, according to Jayboo and us honkys are speaking gutter English, Jayboo and Jimmy smoking like chimneys during break. They got caught and were told they can't smoke on campus. And then when we left after a 11 hour day, we got to the one place to eat near by called Nick's Pizza, we get a call from the boss-man telling us to go back to the place because we can't leave the box truck in the loading dock. Boss-man had to drive to some town 1 and 1/2 hours away to get some new chain for the chain motors because nobody bothered checking the box of chain in the three months it had been sitting in the shop, and it turns out it was wrong and we couldn't use it and the job couldn't happen without out it. So we drove back the campus. Went through security. Moved the box truck to the parking lot. Drove back to security. The guy stopped us and told us there was a mis-communication and that the box truck couldn't stay on campus over night, so we drove back up again and Jayboo and Jimmy sat in the truck for 10 minutes smoking cigarettes and finding a route back to the hotel that was okay for the truck to use. Free of low bridges and et cetera.

[Insert Work Photos]

But the job is wild. Nobody thought about it at all. And because it is so high, everything takes a million hours to do. The scope of the job is to take a line set down so there is room to install a motor assist for the main curtain, which is 40 ft high and 100 ft wide because...? But in order to get to the loft you have to take an elevator to the fourth floor, take a set of stairs, walk down a 200 ft corridor, climb five very steep and windy sets of concrete stairs to get there. So if you forget something, it sucks. It has to come up on a rope or you have to go down again. I was worried my glasses were going to fall off so I tied a string to them. I mean, for half the day my loins ached from being up so high. And then when we were removing the head blocks at the end of the day I thought for sure something would go terribly wrong. I was standing on top of a ladder and Jayboo was hanging from the J-rail. I mean, we were wearing harnesses, but still, nobody thought this shit through so it felt like we were in a trench somewhere getting shelled by the enemy trying to get a tank un-stuck from the mud and every action we were making had a million different ways to blow up in our faces and kill everyone involved.

But nobody died and tomorrow is going to be the real test. Getting this motor up to the head steel and putting it in place. I honestly don't know how we are going to do it. I think if we get the chain motors involved and operating we can get the thing to the catwalk, but once it is there, I don't know how much further we can get it up. And I don't know how heavy the thing is, but I am guessing close to 400 lbs. And there is about four inches of space between the diagonal cross beam that is connected to the top of the head steel and...

I just bored myself with my own details. These goons I am working with though. Brooks great, Jayboo is great, but he has this thing about working on these jobs that I totally agree with, to a point, but I mean, so, sometimes we come out here to do work and it sucks because there is so much travel and then when we work in the day we just work 8 hours and then we travel on Friday so the work day is short and we end up only getting 32 hours of actual pay, the rest is travel pay which is literally minimum wage. So it is best to work long days and then leave after work on Thursday or first thing Friday and not go into work at all. Things I totally agree with. But his reasoning is that, "What are you going to do? Hang out in your hotel room doing nothing? Checking the tv channels?" Which I agree with. But that fucker and those other three fuckers are pushing to start tomorrow leaving the hotel at 6:30a to get to the site by 7a. Which is assanine! If the idea is to work long days, sure, but by my calculations showing up to work an hour early does not make working a long day longer, it just means we are done with work an hour earlier. It means getting up an hour earlier. It means having an extra hour in the hotel room doing nothing but pulling your pud. It means missing breakfast and feeling like a zombie because you spend the most productive moments of your day feeling weird and working in the dark. I find it so idiotic that I will probably take a plate of biscuits and gravy with me in the van tomorrow and eat them while we are driving. And it will make us all 5 minutes late because of it. I mean, the problem is not the morning hours it is the afternoon hours and I have never ever understood the get to work early so you can be done early bullshit. What? So I can take a nap and ruin my night's sleep? So I can spend the hours between 3p and 6p feeling gross and unproductive? I mean, we weren't supposed to even be able to get into this place until 8a and it is a 30+ minute drive, I mean, leave it at that and be done with it. There is a difference between screwing yourself out of work from not working more and screwing yourself out of work by working too much. It is entirely possible we are done with this job tomorrow. Just because we are going to work at 6:30a. This is how capitalism screws you. When you give all the things to the employer and take none of the things for yourself. The ideal world we work until 3p on Wednesday. We don't spend the night, we get 30 hours of labor pay and we still have four days of weekend. What these jerks are pushing for is that we are done tomorrow and get 22 hours of labor pay and then whatever, fuck off.

We are going to reach a moment tomorrow when it doesn't make sense for us to come back to the job site on Wednesday. Which is my point. So maybe we get 24 hours of labor, but those strung-out last-minute, running up and down nine flights of stairs, I mean, I hope I am wrong, but I can already see it. "Let's just fucking do this shit. What's the hold up?"

I don't know. What do I really care? I don't. Once again I had the pivotal conversation with Jayboo about less government versus more government and he always tells me that I am insane because I trust the government somewhat, like enough to think that we can have healthcare and infrastructure and I have to respond that I really don't think feudalism is going to save America and he's like, well, if private companies ran the subway in New York than I guarantee that nobody would be unsafe and I have to say, yeah, well, wasn't it great when after 9/11 there were men and dogs and AK-47's or whatever searching your bags because the subway was private property and he was like, well, I don't know if that means it is private business, and I have to say that sort of thing is exactly the same and that et cetera and et al and ABOLISH TURNSTILES and he did agree with me about that. That taxing the working class to go to work was kind of fucked up because guess what? The ECONOMY NEEDS PEOPLE TO GO TO WORK. And then, of course, as I was walking away from the argument I yelled, NOBODY NEEDS WORK, WORK IS GREAT AND CAN MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD, BUT IT IS NOT WORK ANYONE NEEDS, IT IS MONEY, PEOPLE NEED MONEY.

Anyway, I don't mean to riled up. He just hits a nerve. And I like to talk to him about things because he acts in good faith. But he has that the notion that all government is corrupt and bad and therefore capitalism will save us all from taxes or something? And I remind him that the entire notion of government was established when we wrote the constitution and we couldn't exist without it and sure, we can have anarchy or libertarianism, but all of these things only lead to first a fascist state and then a feudal state and conservatism is just a way for the status quo to stay in charge and yes, maybe the subway would be "Safer" in his world-view because they would have to make profit above anything else, and nobody would use the subway if people were being mugged all the time, but without the government the subway would not exist and nobody could get to work and, frankly, the idea of efficient is an anathema to what being human is and sure, the stock market will do great as long as we invest in fossil fuels, maybe even better, for now, to not invest in the future, to invest in green energy, but how long is that going to last? That somehow not investing in the future is somehow a good business model? Because that is what capitalism is, and the opposite, the investing in the future and not getting the maximum return is somehow communism?

I mean, it is getting up at 5a to go to work so we can be done early and not have more work later in the week that just doesn't make sense. All we have to do is MILKBRICK. Forget GOLDBRICKING. Just take the time to do the job and then be done with it when it is done. Know that all the bosses and the bosses bosses get paid irregardless. They are paid by the year. It is the per diem assholes that get screwed when we have to hurry up and wait. I know the exact moment we will be done tomorrow if we go to work at 6:30a. And it is going to be stupid. There is going to be yelling and some exhausted and frustrated people involved. For no reason.

My god! I was supposed to have a good time with this writing tonight and instead I pull this nonsense. Can't we get back to the laughs? I need to retool Screed City. I have been trying to get my shit together but I can't figure it out. Between my teeth and Vermont I am incredibly frustrated. I have this huge art project too that needs to get going and I need money and I have a book coming out soon that I need to figure out how to promote but I have been lost to the internet community. My website got de-funded, and I don't care. I hate social media and I want it to die. Yet without it I have nothing, but I had nothing anyway, so it is hard to boot-strap my way up the viral bus. It is just sad that somebody the other day saw G wearing a DISHWASHER t-shirt and asked them what the shirt was about and they said it was a book and the person was like, "I'm gonna get that book." And if you go on the internet there is no way to find the book unless you know my name and nobody knows my name so out there there is a fun young person looking for my book and there is no way to get to her. And now what? A new book coming out to do what? Languish? And Agustin is trying to get me to finish my HILARIOUS re-edit and I have this new project that is 10 books I wrote in the last couple years that based on what happens when somebody like me goes through a mid-life crisis, but so what? I have to pay the rent and worry about working and my teeth falling out and what else I can do to maybe feel okay about the art I am making even though It is only something I make for myself and it is dark because I have about three months of work to do with respect to the writing, but instead of doing that I need to return to Vermont and get the decent tires I own because I need to switch them out because winter is upon us already and the fucking boiler doesn't work in Beaver Haus and I am ready to strangle the New Landlord and everything is my own fucking fault and I kind of want to just start walking into the wilderness and take the road less travelled and walk up onto a mountain and watch the moon rise and freeze to death because it is all so overwhelming and nothing matters and next week I will be making less money per hour then this week and the following week it will be even worse than that and all my plants are dying and I can't stop writing and this fucking book I am working on is kind of the best thing I have written, but so what? I mean, at the moment it is called:

I Thought I Won The Race, But The Race Was Over Before I Started

but then I was thinking it should be called:

There Is Always An Excuse

now I think it should be called:

I Didn't Hear Nothing

or

A Fucking Tree Falls? God-Damn!

Whatever, I need to hit the sack. Apparently I have to get up at 5a to get done with work early tomorrow so I can hang out in my hotel room and memorize the television channels. Jayboo!