• I don't get a lot of emails on this site, though I know there are a reasonable amount of visitors.  April is averaging around 350 hits a day, of which probably 349 are lured my the shameless link in my forum signature on the D2 site. *cough*

Saidin, a friend from D2X on Bnet, mailed to say that he couldn't find the contact page easily, so maybe that's it.  I'll just put an email right on the nav bar.  Being as this is my domain and the server supports it, you can mail me withanythingatall@blackchampagne.com.  Literally or figuratively, if you grasp my meaning.  I don't have any plans to add a forum or guest book or anything interactive like that on this site, but I have no objection to posting pieces from emails.  As I told Saidin, it's easier than thinking up all this BS on my own.

I'm not entirely sure I want more email.  I mean I'm a hit whore, I like to think that this is being read and possibly even appreciated by people, but it's sort of awkward that X number of total strangers are reading my semi-diary entries.  True I don't detail my bowel movements or the baby talk I use on my rodents or masturbatory habits, but at the same time it's easier to write this sort of free association blog when I'm not really thinking how others will take it.  Self-censoring to any degree would steal much of the freshness, methinks.

• Site reader Jim sent me this link, which I'll admit I laughed at.  There are good times to fart, and there are bad times to fart...  And generally, when you're unconscious it's a good time.  But not always.

Isn't "site reader" an awkward term?  I never know what to call site readers here or on the D2 site.  "Visitors" isn't bad, but it's got that whole South Park anal-probing connotation.  "Viewers" sounds voyeuristic.  "Surfers" is okay in a general way, but when applied to a specific person, it sounds silly. "Site surfer Jim..." for example.  It sounds like a person who visits 500 sites in a hurry. "Readers" is okay, but it seems to demand a noun qualifier, "site" for example.  And that's awkward, as I think I mentioned previously.

Anyway, that settled nothing.  *puts back the cookie*

• Another funny site he pointed out, one I've visited in the past but not that recently, is the Fortean Times.  It's a sort of supernatural weird news site, with frequently-updated odd story links on the main page, as well as articles.  I have 3 or 4 of the Fortean Times books; they seem to do one every year.

• Another link sent by Jim, found on the Fortean Times site, leads to an odd tale of "worm grunters".  I've seen this on TV before; for some unexplained reason you can put an iron bar into the earth and make it hum just right, and it attracts worms to the surface.  The town in the news item has some sort of festival to honor their dark worm gods as well:

No no, I made up that second part.  The first bit is real though. Her festive tiara is not my invention.  Doesn't it remind you of the Conjoined Twin Myslexia school nurse on South Park?  Or more specifically, the hats the mayor had made to celebrate her comically grotesque deformity.

It's somewhat eerie, especially when you consider that there are always that many worms down there, just waiting for their iron god to call them forth to the culling.  It would make a good horror story device.  Not with worms obviously, unless the tale was designed to gross out pre-teen girls.  I'm thinking more like a horror story with invisible, lurking, malevolent demons, or evil giant insects that would come right through the floor when summoned.  And totally eat you. I just like the idea that they are down there, all around us, all the time.  And can be summoned forth by some bizarre and yet mundane technique.

• Another item from the Fortean Times site detailes Mel's Hole.  It's supposedly some bottomless pit in the woods in the Seattle area, near Mt. Rainier.  Taken as true lore, is the tale of some guy running over 80,000 feet of weighted fishing line down it and never hitting bottom.  Yes, that's 80,000 feet.  Or 15 miles.  Mt. Everest is less than 30,000 feet high.  So he's saying a hole maybe 20 feet across is almost 3x as deep as Mt. Everest is tall, and straight down, like a well.  No ledges or twists or turns that would get a line hung up on the side.  Just where do you get 15 miles of fishing line anyway?  Useful if you want to fish in the next town?

Anyway, that is just the first of numerous humorous items.  The article about it is well-written, since rather than laughing about how silly the claims are, it presents them plainly, in all their absurdity.  Which just makes them look even dumber to me.  Of course I'm a skeptic, so I would see it that way.  A credulous reader would probably eat this up.  See the two emails on the Tom Tomorrow comic strip mentioned above, if you don't see where I'm going with this paragraph.

Here's one quote:

Odd how there are all these tales from the hole, but now no one can find it for any actual scientific research into it.  Perhaps Aliens zipped it up, or dragged it behind some trees?  And why exactly are mysterious government soldiers in yellow uniforms trying to cover up the knowledge of some bottomless hole?  And if they really wanted it covered up, wouldn't they just kill the guy?  It's not as if body disposal would be a problem. I'm surprised he didn't think to say they did shoot him and throw him in, and then next day he found himself out of the hole, and with a strange urge to frolic in the woods. As well as sniff his own ass.

Another scientific tidbit from one of the search party:

Now just because everyone searching for the hole is a total kook with theories borrowed from rejected Twilight Zone plots doesn't mean there isn't some deep hole out there, and the geological explanation of how such a thing could come to be would be interesting to hear.  But when it's discussed in terms of bringing dead dogs back to life and storing live Elvis broadcasts, you're not going to find a lot of scientists expending effort on it.

am fired, BTW.  Not quite officially, but the company is "moving to terminate" me, or so I've been told.  Not by them, of course.  I've only worked there for 13 years, after all.  Hardly enough to expect oh, say a phone call?  Perhaps after 15 years they give you a phone call to let you know they're firing you.

So how do I know this?  Well, since I called the Union and then went down to file a grievance in person.  And the Union rep called the stadium and managed to extract the info.  Probably risked several fingers in the process; like taking a granola bar back from a weasel.

Yes, it's a weak metaphor, but I had to work in "weasel" in some way.

I haven't the heart to go over the whole thing again, and nothing has changed from what I first posted about it last Tuesday.  So please to be reading that first, if you didn't already.

So as I said, there's nothing new.  I got pissed at another employee, entirely with cause, since he was going against the rules and policy, just to fuck me.  So rather than belaboring the argument there, perhaps escalating it to a screaming match, I just went back to my stand, where I could get more crap to sell, and knew I'd be able to tell my stand manager about it, and he'd contact a supervisor, who would take care of it.  Which I did, and he did.

The problem was that on the way back I was fuming, and smacked my wire mesh carry thing into a wall, breaking the flimsy little price sign off of it.  And some customer saw that and complained.  And management obviously had some desire to be rid of me, to bother with such a minor issue.

I have hated the job for several years, and really wanted to quit like two years ago.  It ruins my feet/ankles/knees/hips, I'm always sore and hardly able to walk after working several days in a row.  And as I've detailed in the past (even before they were trying to fire me) it's a total waste of time.  As I see it, the benefits of a job are:

• Money.

• Interesting.

• Learn useful skills.

• Meet interesting people.

• Opportunity for advancement.

In this case, I get a partial on #1, and nothing on the rest. I have had opportunity for advancement, but as I generally work 5 hours and make $150, and managers work 9 hours and make $10 an hour, and their work is far less enjoyable, I think you can see why I didn't want advancement.  Though you do get the perk of trying to fire people you don't like for no good reason.

So as things stand now I'm working with the union to try and get reinstated. I want to at least make them work to fire me.  If I'd actually done something wrong enough to be fired, I wouldn't really care.  I've had ample opportunity to steal several thousand dollars cash any number of times, and I would not have been caught.  They might have suspected after the third or fourth time, but they couldn't have proven a goddamn thing.  That would be worth firing me for. Or if I got really pissed at some idiot manager refusing to put the bottled water into the walk in so it would be, you know, cold, and punched his trout face in.  That would be worth firing me over, and worth getting fired for.  Hitting a wall in a moment of temper is just not how I'm willing to go out.

On the other hand, it's sort of a blessing in bad makeup.

I was prepared to work most every game there this year, hating it as always, earning just enough $$ to survive on, while continuing to live with the disposable income of a welfare recipient.  I have other job opportunities; I could work for some web design company, my dad works part time with a textbook company that always needs more people to do editing and design and writing and other such things, and pays well for it.  I could hustle up more freelance web design work; I did a lot of that a couple of years ago.

Any of those would be far better for me than the stadium work, especially given the apparent vendetta against me by management.  I'm biting my tongue (fingers) about management for now, given that I'm trying to get the job back, and at some point they might trip over this webpage and use my own noose to hang me.  I don't have any real animosity towards anyone in management there or other employees.  There is a general level of incompetence that's almost shocking, but I think that's the case in most every blue collar job.   And perhaps white collar, if Dilbert is to be believed.  However I can't comment on those specifically, but I certainly could about the company I work for.  And generally-speaking, the lower level employees are the dumbest, but it's not like management doesn't regularly do their part to monkey wrench things, mostly with general cluelessness.

I'm sure discussing that (this) sort of thing would be "actions to the detriment of the company" as they said about me hitting that poor defenseless wall.

I don't have any real anger at anyone in management, but I could certainly vivisect a couple of them.  Both on personal habits as well as job performance.  But look, it's a relatively thankless, miserable job, dealing with tons of mostly high school kids who don't want to be doing what they are doing.  Management has to try to get them to come to work largely on weekends, and at irregular hours and schedules, and get them to work when there are ready distractions all around.  It also doesn't pay well (hardly any of the management work full time, just on game days, or make enough from it to live on) so what sort of quality of employee is going to end up in that job?  Obviously the bright, motivational, productive type will have a real job, full time for a real company.  Not part time calling a bunch of little punk kids every other day to tell them what time to get to work tomorrow.

So in fairness, you can't really expect great bosses at a small time job like that.  Not that that makes them any less great.  Especially ones that have legendarily-stupid laughs and no visible chin or waist.

I thought, hours ago, about a funny thing to discuss about this whole lost job thing, so I'll throw it in now, assuming anyone is still reading after all this whining.

A job compared to a girlfriend.

Do you need either, or both?  I'd say you need the job, and the GF (or wife, or BF, or whatever) is optional.

The fringe benefits of a job are mandatory (pay), while the fringe benefits of a GF are optional, and can be replaced. So to speak.

A shitty job can be made tolerable by having a nice GF to spend time with when you aren't at the job.  The opposite is almost never true.

A GF is more likely to help alleviate the crushing, bitter loneliness that is life.  A job is more likely to add to the crushing part.

Getting a GF requires you to go out in public and talk to strangers, or get a recommendation from a friend.  A job is pretty much identical on that front.

A GF forces you go leave the house and do expensive things you don't really want to do.  A job forces you to leave the house and do unpleasant things to afford the other unpleasant things.