Gas hogs and illiterate children, THE FUTURE OF AMERICA!! hoo-ray

http://music.download.com/jellobiafraandthemelvins/3600-8719_32-100677958.html

2 free songs!!

I highly recommend grabbing and listening to Yuppie Cadillac. Great song for those of us whom are sick of watching H3s and other such extravagant vehicles go rolling by as we pull into the station to drop $3+ /pg. Doesn't really help solve the problem, but it's great for a laugh.

Yesterday was quite an interesting experience for me. I survived my first "concert band" day. Now for those of you who don't know, my place of employment is a local theatre and arts organization, and I am a custodial engineer. You could call me a janitor but my responsibilities extend beyond that, that's why I get to be an engineer ;). I like my job, mostly when something goes wrong 'cause that's when it gets interesting, but the everyday routine isn't too bad either. Yesterday was WAY out of the norm though. Something like 200 7th and 8th graders were zipping around the buildings I stand watch over with minimal to no supervision. Now if you know me, you know that I genuinely like kids... and if you don't know me then, uh, why are you even reading this? (creep) Kids are kids and they do what their tiny little minds want to do at any given moment, which is great, but lately they seem to be getting dumber. Example: I have a cart which contains my custodial supplies and also has a large trash receptacle on it. It's about 6 feet long, 2 feet wide and a complete pain in my ass; I can't stand the thing as it only seems to get in my way. I decided to use it to its fullest potential yesterday while I was cleaning the ladies' bathroom. At that point there were 200 kids running around with pizza and pop mucking up all the areas I had cleaned the day before. Now kids have to eat, we all do, but is it necessary for kids to eat off the floor? You'd think the answer to that question would be no, but I have evidence that proves otherwise, or so it seems. I figured since they were distracted with pizza that it would be an opportune time for me to blast through and clean the bathrooms. Here's where the cart comes back. It's large. It's difficult to move. It's the perfect roadblock. I drag the thing out and jerk it around until it is placed perfectly in front of the women's bathroom door. Armed with the proper custodial weaponry and my Ipod I venture in to see what surprises await. Now I like music, have for 20 years or more, and the one thing I like more than music is loud music. So there I am going to town on the counters and the mirrors rockin out and whistling along with The Melvins when I turn to throw some junky towels away. I stop, a bit surprised and see 2 girls standing next to the half wall in the restroom staring at me, one with arms folded and a hilariously "badass preteen" look on her face. Nanoseconds go whipping by and I realize their purpose; there is a third girl USING ONE OF THE TOILETS! I was disappointed to see that the sizeable plastic boulder I had left in the hall did not convey its purpose properly. I was also a bit nervous for the peeing girl as I had just minutes before hosed down each and every one of the toilets with my new favorite low acid bowl cleaner. Slightly annoyed and more honestly, shocked as to what was going on I left the bathroom, climbed over my now completely worthless janitor's cart and headed to see my good friend "the druid" out in the box office. I told him what happened, he laughed, reassured me that I should have expected such a situation and agreed to my request which was to print up a sign that stated the bathroom was being cleaned. With sign printed and tape on top I returned, closed the door which now had the sign on it and continued to rock n clean. I wasn't interrupted again... UNTIL I reopened the door (which still had the cart in front of it). I propped open the door and removed the sign from it. I then re-taped the very same sign to the side of my oversized bright ass yellow cart, which was STILL blocking the ladies room door, moved 2 feet up the hall and into my closet to grab some paper products for replenishment. Not even out of the bathroom for 30 seconds I exited the closet to catch 2 girls climbing over the large brightly colored, sign-posted obstacle that had obviously been left there with purpose; it makes me wonder... when asked to retrieve the mail at home do these kids climb over their parents' cars to get the job done? I stopped them, informed them that I was almost done cleaning and received their attitude heavy glares and scoffs. I took a deep breath, resisted kicking one of 'em in the back of the head as they left and finished restocking the paper towels. As I locked the final dispenser 2 MORE girls came wandering in! I said nothing. I was done anyway so there was little to no point of engaging them in conversation and even if I had I'm guessing it would have taken me 45 minutes to get anything to sink in. I returned my invisible roadblock to it's rightful place, taking up far too much space in my supply closet, and headed for the lobby so I could go tackle the Men's room. As I rounded the corner and the lobby came into full view I saw a sea of tiny heads bouncing emptily up and down. I felt as if giant ants were attacking and I was mankind's last hope for salvation. They swarmed everywhere running up and down stairs. Pop and pizza remnants were bountiful, their queen would be happy... I wasn't tho. I turned up my music, looked for an adult to smack in the mouth, and headed outside for a smoke. There was no way I was gonna clean those bathrooms with 200 kids running in and out of them getting changed for their concert so I took the slacker road, sat down and enjoyed myself until I could actually get the work done... which never really happened. I managed to squeeze in some cleaning trioge on the theatre, avoided strangling anyone and headed home...

Maybe some day soon I'll tell you just why the theatre has to be soooooo clean... But only if you finish those vegetables.

And So IT begins...

A fistful of you have asked/encouraged/hassled me time and time again about jumping into the marvelous world of blogging, so here I am. Dunno... it does look kinda nice in here; high ceilings, soft comfy couches and thick carpeting... yeah I suppose I'll hang out for a bit. So I better say hello to the Galoot, the Prep, The man who is a Spy in some circles, The Muze and the Ass Director; I'll do my best to keep this thing updated but I'm not making any promises; I have other shit to do too, and I'm kinda lazy.

Tuesday 10:05 pm
Its an unseasonably warm night in WNY but I'm not gonna complain; no snow means more sleep for me. Tonight I spent 3 hours standing in the small parking lot behind my workplace talking to "The Painter" and generally all around good guy M.C.; makes me glad it was unseasonably warm. After all those minutes of jaw jacking the only thing I know for sure is that we have a lot of work to do around here. It seems to me that it may just be possible to get this big ugly ball rolling in the right direction if we can find a few people who have the time, the motivation and the courage.

Sidenote: I'm also gonna need about 5 million dollars, a bulldozer and a truckload of smokes...