On Facebook there are political diatribes happening daily.
In my friend list there is someone I know who says he is an independent. This is a lie. He is one of the most staunchly right wing people you would ever meet. He just calls himself an independent. I guess it would sound better than right wing tea party nut job. These views are why I would never engage him on the topic of politics. But right now it's the Presidential election season and with 9 days left before we find out who wins, there are more and more posts about politics.
This one person is having a feud with someone he has known for years and they were incredibly great friends, but the politics they have are destroying or maybe have destroyed their friendship forever. The one is a right winger, and the other is a liberal. So there will be a post by one of the parties and then the other one will post refuting that post, which leads to another rebuttal and refutation and name calling. The liberal is more civil than the right winger. The right winger also has links to right wing sources that hold up his world view. Of course, you only read the things that you agree with and strengthen your view points.
The right winger says he likes to debate people. It's not really a debate if you steam roll someone with 5 postings to their one. But then the conservative wing has always steamrolled it's opponents. (OMG, there's my political views showing. But, fuck it, it's my blog.)
The liberal is weary of this interchange of crap and tells the right winger that he wishes him well in all his future endeavors. The thing about that phrase... it's a "fuck you" and then you never talk to them again. So the wise thing at this point would be to UNFRIEND them. They are never going to salvage the freindship. It's over. The animosity and vitriol cannot be taken back. So unfriend them and never talk to them again. Pretty fucking simple.
It's also an example of the larger problem with politics. You used to be able to be on opposing sides without hating your opponent. You could disagree with everything they stood for, but if something was good for the country they would work together. There is no cooperation anymore. Only hardline obstinance.
So please, J. & J. unfriend each other and be done with it.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Political Thoughts
The election for President is less than 2 weeks away and I have some thoughts about the process.
There are a lot of differences between Republicans and Democrats. But one I find amazing is the drive by Republicans to fix the electoral process to their advantage. When they lost the Presidency to Obama they made it a mission to suppress votes and purge the voting rolls of people who's only offense was voting for Obama. But they couched it as "fighting voter fraud." There has been virtually no voter fraud in the past 10-15 years. This was found to be the case when investigated by the George W. Bush administration. Don't like the way people vote? Maybe change your puritanical platforms to something that isn't the 1950's model.
Liberals would never monkey with voting because we see the world with a live and let live attitude. Being liberal is about seeing more ways to think than just your own.
The electoral college should be abolished. When the creators of the government came up with voting 240 years ago, they put in place a way to insure the elections did not go horribly wrong. In their view they had people voting who were, in many cases, illiterate voting, and they thought the way to control the outcome was to create an electoral college. Ok. That was 240 years ago. Thing is we then get situations like Bush v. Gore in 2000 when Gore won the popular vote and Bush was handed the electoral vote by the Supreme Court. It's an old method and should be abolished. The Electoral College makes some states hugely important, and others are ignored. So presidential candidates inundate Ohio and Florida but never go to Montana. Be thankful you don't live in a battleground state.
I don't understand the conservative drive to make their morals the morals of the country. And what I find very funny is the hypocrisy in the conservative party. There is a family values congressman from Tennessee who is anti abortion. He was taped in a phone conversation with his mistress talking about her getting an abortion and why she hadn't done it yet. What an asshole. His false hypocritical piety should make people vote against him. Though when most sex scandals happen in the conservative party, it involves men and other men or boys, not women. Why the urge to repress everyone with legislation when they cannot contain their own urges?
Rape. Rape. Rape. Lately the conservatives have been getting into trouble with rape and foot in mouth disease. They say things like a woman can't get pregnant from rape. You really haven't had any education about biology it seems. You have to be a fucking idiot to think rape can't fertilize an egg. And then this leads to stupid comments from them about abortion. Abortion shouldn't be allowed in cases of rape, incest, or life of the mother. Um, fuck you. Abortion is legal. It doesn't matter what your view of it is, it's legal. Does it make any sense to you , if the mother dies, doesn't the fetus go down with the ship, as it were? Idiots.
As far as rape goes, those who say the woman should be forced to carry it to term, what would they say if it were their daughter or wife who was raped by someone they don't share a skin tone with? Is that make a lemons out of lemonade situation for them? Or would they be at a clinic to get that fetus removed? "Sorry, dear, sorry you were raped and brutalized, but God wanted you to have this child." Bullshit. Hypocrites!
Until men can have babies they should have no say in what happens to a woman's body. If men could get pregnant there would probably be a abortion clinic on every corner like a Starbucks.
There is a certain NYC real estate mogul who is a clown. He's a huckster with an irrational hatred of a black president. He has been on a witch hunt for birth certificates and college transcripts and other documentation. Why? Obama's black. This racist mogul can't deal, like so many others in the conservative world, with a black president. That office belongs to rich white men only. His big announcement yesterday was an extortion plot. "I'll give $5 million to a charity of the President's choice if he releases his college transcripts. Fuck, G.W. Bush should have given those up. He didn't earn his way into Yale, he was a legacy.
Can we vote now?
I'll rant more later.
There are a lot of differences between Republicans and Democrats. But one I find amazing is the drive by Republicans to fix the electoral process to their advantage. When they lost the Presidency to Obama they made it a mission to suppress votes and purge the voting rolls of people who's only offense was voting for Obama. But they couched it as "fighting voter fraud." There has been virtually no voter fraud in the past 10-15 years. This was found to be the case when investigated by the George W. Bush administration. Don't like the way people vote? Maybe change your puritanical platforms to something that isn't the 1950's model.
Liberals would never monkey with voting because we see the world with a live and let live attitude. Being liberal is about seeing more ways to think than just your own.
The electoral college should be abolished. When the creators of the government came up with voting 240 years ago, they put in place a way to insure the elections did not go horribly wrong. In their view they had people voting who were, in many cases, illiterate voting, and they thought the way to control the outcome was to create an electoral college. Ok. That was 240 years ago. Thing is we then get situations like Bush v. Gore in 2000 when Gore won the popular vote and Bush was handed the electoral vote by the Supreme Court. It's an old method and should be abolished. The Electoral College makes some states hugely important, and others are ignored. So presidential candidates inundate Ohio and Florida but never go to Montana. Be thankful you don't live in a battleground state.
I don't understand the conservative drive to make their morals the morals of the country. And what I find very funny is the hypocrisy in the conservative party. There is a family values congressman from Tennessee who is anti abortion. He was taped in a phone conversation with his mistress talking about her getting an abortion and why she hadn't done it yet. What an asshole. His false hypocritical piety should make people vote against him. Though when most sex scandals happen in the conservative party, it involves men and other men or boys, not women. Why the urge to repress everyone with legislation when they cannot contain their own urges?
Rape. Rape. Rape. Lately the conservatives have been getting into trouble with rape and foot in mouth disease. They say things like a woman can't get pregnant from rape. You really haven't had any education about biology it seems. You have to be a fucking idiot to think rape can't fertilize an egg. And then this leads to stupid comments from them about abortion. Abortion shouldn't be allowed in cases of rape, incest, or life of the mother. Um, fuck you. Abortion is legal. It doesn't matter what your view of it is, it's legal. Does it make any sense to you , if the mother dies, doesn't the fetus go down with the ship, as it were? Idiots.
As far as rape goes, those who say the woman should be forced to carry it to term, what would they say if it were their daughter or wife who was raped by someone they don't share a skin tone with? Is that make a lemons out of lemonade situation for them? Or would they be at a clinic to get that fetus removed? "Sorry, dear, sorry you were raped and brutalized, but God wanted you to have this child." Bullshit. Hypocrites!
Until men can have babies they should have no say in what happens to a woman's body. If men could get pregnant there would probably be a abortion clinic on every corner like a Starbucks.
There is a certain NYC real estate mogul who is a clown. He's a huckster with an irrational hatred of a black president. He has been on a witch hunt for birth certificates and college transcripts and other documentation. Why? Obama's black. This racist mogul can't deal, like so many others in the conservative world, with a black president. That office belongs to rich white men only. His big announcement yesterday was an extortion plot. "I'll give $5 million to a charity of the President's choice if he releases his college transcripts. Fuck, G.W. Bush should have given those up. He didn't earn his way into Yale, he was a legacy.
Can we vote now?
I'll rant more later.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Lightning Fast
I was working a Maroon 5 concert last night. While waiting outside for the show to finish and us to go inside the venue, there was an altercation. One of the road crew came out yelling at a guy. The music from the concert served as background for the scene. The roadie was yelling at the guy telling him he wasn't allowed backstage and his pass was a fake.
The guy plead ignorance and was still trying to get backstage. The roadie pulled the credential off the guy's lanyard, pushed the guy away, and shut the door to the stage. The guy looked at the burly security guy there and said, "he took my pass."
Now I don't know if the guy was ignorant, but his pass was a fake. It looked like the pass that said "ARTIST" but there were some things wrong with it. It was the wrong shape. It was printed on plastic not laminated. It had a hole at the top for the lanyard that was made with a hole punch. But most important, there was nothing on the back. The real pass had the credential on both sides of the pass.
As we stood there waiting for the show to end there were more people with this fake pass trying to get backstage. Security was rounded up and shown the fake passes and told not to let anyone with them in. The angry roadie had people with the fake passes escorted off the property. It was pretty funny to watch 10 people with the passes try to get in. "Tony gave it to me." one guy said. "Fuck you. There is no one named Tony on the crew." was the answer.
So how did the fakes happen? Someone took a picture of someone with a pass and thru digital magic, made their own version. But like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark who re-created the head piece to the Staff of Ra, they only had one side to go from from the burned imprint of Toht's hand, and didn't know there were 2 sides to the pass. And since the shape was close, they didn't care...
As we waited a woman asked me to take her picture with her camera. She had the set list for the show and 4 drumsticks in her hands. I looked at her and said, "Your pass is a fake." "What?" she replied. I explained her pass was a fake and I could tell from 6 feet away. She didn't really care because she had already been inside and scored some booty.
If I were to make fake passes I would do it for the Rolling Stones or U2 or The Who. But Maroon 5?
Maybe it's easier to do with smaller shows where they may not be paying attention...
The guy plead ignorance and was still trying to get backstage. The roadie pulled the credential off the guy's lanyard, pushed the guy away, and shut the door to the stage. The guy looked at the burly security guy there and said, "he took my pass."
Now I don't know if the guy was ignorant, but his pass was a fake. It looked like the pass that said "ARTIST" but there were some things wrong with it. It was the wrong shape. It was printed on plastic not laminated. It had a hole at the top for the lanyard that was made with a hole punch. But most important, there was nothing on the back. The real pass had the credential on both sides of the pass.
As we stood there waiting for the show to end there were more people with this fake pass trying to get backstage. Security was rounded up and shown the fake passes and told not to let anyone with them in. The angry roadie had people with the fake passes escorted off the property. It was pretty funny to watch 10 people with the passes try to get in. "Tony gave it to me." one guy said. "Fuck you. There is no one named Tony on the crew." was the answer.
So how did the fakes happen? Someone took a picture of someone with a pass and thru digital magic, made their own version. But like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark who re-created the head piece to the Staff of Ra, they only had one side to go from from the burned imprint of Toht's hand, and didn't know there were 2 sides to the pass. And since the shape was close, they didn't care...
As we waited a woman asked me to take her picture with her camera. She had the set list for the show and 4 drumsticks in her hands. I looked at her and said, "Your pass is a fake." "What?" she replied. I explained her pass was a fake and I could tell from 6 feet away. She didn't really care because she had already been inside and scored some booty.
If I were to make fake passes I would do it for the Rolling Stones or U2 or The Who. But Maroon 5?
Maybe it's easier to do with smaller shows where they may not be paying attention...
Monday, October 15, 2012
Harness Envy
I wear a harness when I work as a rigger to save my life. It keeps me from falling to my death from anywhere from 50 to 100 feet. Now I've had my harness for a long time. It's a rock climbing harness I got from REI for $22 years ago.
Now when it comes to rigging, or most anything that requires a harness and fall arrest equipment of some kind, a full body harness is required. The hang point is on the back in what is called the dorsal position. The thing I find stupid about this is that if you fall, you cannot save yourself. You are dangling below what you fell off of and you are facing the ground. If the fall arrest worked, you are now 12 feet below what you fell from. So if the fall arrest was 6 feet before it deployed, you are now 12 feet from the thing you fell off of because the arrestor added 6 feet to soften the fall. The system is supposed to make the shock of a fall less hard on the body. Kind of like a limited bungy. It only goes out, it doesn't snap back.
In a rock climbing harness if I fell, I would be 3 feet from what I fell off of and facing a way to pull myself back up. But OSHA doesn't like them. Bunch of fucking pansies. But my climbing harness is not full body so some would argue that I would snap backwards and hurt myself. Who is right?
Now the reason I bring this whole thing up is that for a very long time I've been using equipment that would not be approved of for my work. How did I get away with it for so long? Luck. And I had ways of concealing the fact that it was only a seat harness. I would put on the harness and tie my rope, which was wrapped in a certain way, around me so it was a backpack. This would keep people from seeing that I only had a seat harness until I was out of the way and in the roof. Once I'm there, I'm working and being good at the job, "aw... fuck it..." might be the attitude. Or other times I would suit up in the roof. None of the other riggers commented on my incorrect safety gear. If I was bad at my job, that might have been an issue they would use to get me out of the roof.
But when I was working at one venue yesterday, I finally got called out for the harness. Johnny asked if I had a full body harness. If I didn't I'd have to go down and work on the ground. In case that ever happened I always carry a rudimentary full body harness with a dorsal hang point. So I put that one on over the seat harness and that satisfied Johnny. I didn't use the full body harness, I was still using the climbing harness, but if something had happened it would look right. Right?
The thing about my job, in my opinion, is the best harness in the world will not keep someone who is incompetent from fucking up. They might not fall to their death, but they could kill someone below if they dropped something. Conversely, a competent experienced rigger would be safe with a climbing harness. Like I was. It keeps people from dying when on a mountain, how is that different from a work situation? A mountain is far more sketchy than any place I work. I'm walking on something level 95% of the time. I have hand holds and places to sit down. Mountains are much different.
So today after years of flaunting the authority of OSHA, I went looking for a harness. There are 2 places in Burbank which are known nationwide for rigging equipment. I looked and priced things at both. One was markedly higher than the other, but I liked one harness there a lot. I didn't buy there, but I went home and looked on line and found the harness I liked for $70 less and no taxes. So I ordered it. It will arrive in 3-5 days.
So now I'm like all the other kids and my shame and harness envy will be gone.
Now I just need to get a new rope...
Now when it comes to rigging, or most anything that requires a harness and fall arrest equipment of some kind, a full body harness is required. The hang point is on the back in what is called the dorsal position. The thing I find stupid about this is that if you fall, you cannot save yourself. You are dangling below what you fell off of and you are facing the ground. If the fall arrest worked, you are now 12 feet below what you fell from. So if the fall arrest was 6 feet before it deployed, you are now 12 feet from the thing you fell off of because the arrestor added 6 feet to soften the fall. The system is supposed to make the shock of a fall less hard on the body. Kind of like a limited bungy. It only goes out, it doesn't snap back.
In a rock climbing harness if I fell, I would be 3 feet from what I fell off of and facing a way to pull myself back up. But OSHA doesn't like them. Bunch of fucking pansies. But my climbing harness is not full body so some would argue that I would snap backwards and hurt myself. Who is right?
Now the reason I bring this whole thing up is that for a very long time I've been using equipment that would not be approved of for my work. How did I get away with it for so long? Luck. And I had ways of concealing the fact that it was only a seat harness. I would put on the harness and tie my rope, which was wrapped in a certain way, around me so it was a backpack. This would keep people from seeing that I only had a seat harness until I was out of the way and in the roof. Once I'm there, I'm working and being good at the job, "aw... fuck it..." might be the attitude. Or other times I would suit up in the roof. None of the other riggers commented on my incorrect safety gear. If I was bad at my job, that might have been an issue they would use to get me out of the roof.
But when I was working at one venue yesterday, I finally got called out for the harness. Johnny asked if I had a full body harness. If I didn't I'd have to go down and work on the ground. In case that ever happened I always carry a rudimentary full body harness with a dorsal hang point. So I put that one on over the seat harness and that satisfied Johnny. I didn't use the full body harness, I was still using the climbing harness, but if something had happened it would look right. Right?
The thing about my job, in my opinion, is the best harness in the world will not keep someone who is incompetent from fucking up. They might not fall to their death, but they could kill someone below if they dropped something. Conversely, a competent experienced rigger would be safe with a climbing harness. Like I was. It keeps people from dying when on a mountain, how is that different from a work situation? A mountain is far more sketchy than any place I work. I'm walking on something level 95% of the time. I have hand holds and places to sit down. Mountains are much different.
So today after years of flaunting the authority of OSHA, I went looking for a harness. There are 2 places in Burbank which are known nationwide for rigging equipment. I looked and priced things at both. One was markedly higher than the other, but I liked one harness there a lot. I didn't buy there, but I went home and looked on line and found the harness I liked for $70 less and no taxes. So I ordered it. It will arrive in 3-5 days.
So now I'm like all the other kids and my shame and harness envy will be gone.
Now I just need to get a new rope...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
