todd of tacoma

1. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. That is, show up to work regularly.
2. Americans on the whole are bad at separating trash from recycling. We also spend an inordinate amount of time folding incapacitated toothpaste tubes.
3. There are seven plastics categories. You can recycle 1, 2, 4, and 5. Three, 6, and 7 are trash.
4. Labor Day is a celebration of the eight-hour workday and those who fought for it in the late 1800s. Working four tens, however, makes for a pretty great weekend.
5. I bought a pair of Carhartt overalls. They’re a bit of a pain when you suffer frequent urination from coffee, but I like them overall. I have a friend with a similar pair of overalls who wears them all the time, among other pairs. I want to be an overall guy, but he’s such a good overall guy, and I don’t want to cheapen his overall experience with my poor imitation of a good overall guy. I think of him every time I put on pants.
6. Let’s hear a story:

Ernie Henry was parked at a pump at the Chevron on 56th. He was sitting in his car staring at his dashboard radio screen, set to 710 AM. He had been sitting like this for fifteen minutes, zoned out, listening to Kenny Albert and Monica McNutt call the Boston Celtics at the New York Knicks.

He couldn’t tell you why he was just sitting there.

The game was at halftime and no good.

No one had scored in the last five minutes.

He had just learned the longest single team scoring drought in NBA history lasted more than nine minutes.

A single team is one thing, he thought, and he stepped out of his car.

He made himself small immediately. It’s what he does in public because he’s probably done something wrong. Today, it was that he hadn’t called his son in Portland, whose fifteenth birthday would probably be his worst yet.

Ernie also had to make himself small for an extra long Sprinter van parked at the pump opposite him. It was taking up all the space in the neighborhood. He heard a voice from the other side. It sounded like it was coming around the van.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah, it said.

There was a man there suddenly. He was red-faced with a permed mullet.

Yeah yeah yeah, he said, and he opened the Sprinter’s sliding side door. There were four five-gallon gas cans tied together with rubber tarp straps.

Ernie remembered he’d forgotten to pop open his gas tank flap. He had been forgetting things lately.

The man with the mullet was on the other side of the vehicle again, but you could still feel the heat of his red face. He was saying yeah again.

Yeah yeah.

One of the gas cans from the van was gone. The yellow one. The two red ones and the blue one were still sitting there.

Oh yeah sure okay, Ernie heard.

He pulled out his card and tapped his pump’s reader. He selected his fuel grade and reached for the nozzle handle. He saw that he still hadn’t popped his gas flap open.

He did so, rounding the car just in time to catch the eyes of the red-faced mullet man returning with the yellow can.

Yep okay, he said.

Ernie put his head down and opened his car door and popped the flap and rushed back to the fuel pump and opened the flap fully and twisted the cap open and grasped the nozzle and squeezed the handle to begin.

Nothing happened.

He had forgotten to select No. He was not a rewards member.

I remember when I used to fit in my overalls, he heard.

The red-faced man was talking. To him.

Yeah? Ernie said.

Now I look like somebody who’s about to explowed in ‘em, the red-faced man said. Like pfftft explowed!

Okay, Ernie said. He felt the man was about to say something like, boy, you don’t say much, so he said okay again and stopped his gasoline short at seven dollars and some odd cents he didn’t care about. He selected no receipt and rushed to his driver side door. 

Gonna need more gas than that, ain’t you? the man said.

Ernie shut his door, turned the ignition, and found himself in traffic breathing fresh exhaust before he even knew he’d merge into it.

The game was on again. Three minutes into the second half. Still no buckets. Knicks sixty-eight, Celtics sixty-six, he heard McNutt say. Her voice was pure chamomile.

7. You should brag about yourself at work all the time. You’ll annoy everyone, sure. That is, you’ll annoy the people you want to distance yourself from anyway. But it’s apparently the only way you’ll get any credit for anything. Point to the fact that you didn’t trip over a power cord and senior leadership will all suddenly have sweaty foreheads and their hands near their zippers.
8. One caveat: You will hate who you are all the time.
9. Let’s see how Ernie’s doing:

I think it’s the Raptors, Ernie said.

Why’s he like the Raptors? the girl in the mall booth said.

He likes Kawhi, Ernie said.

Then why don’t you get him a Clippers hat? the girl said. He hasn’t been a Raptor since the championship.

I don’t like the Clippers, Ernie said.

Touche touche, the girl said. Ernie gathered that she meant fair fair and not that he had scored a verbal point against her.

He was not against her.

What birthday is it? she said.

Fifteen, I think, Ernie said.

Oh, that’s a terrible one. And you don’t know if he’s still into sports? she said.

Yeah, he found himself saying. He heard the squeak of sneakers in a gymnasium.

Is that the Knicks game? he said.

I think so, she said.

He heard McNutt’s honeyed voice.

Can you turn it up? he said.

End of the third, McNutt said. Still no score.

No new scores, Albert said.

No new scores, McNutt said.

I’ve never seen anything like this, have you? Albert said.

Not in a professional basketball game! McNutt said.

Even my nephew’s junior high school team scores every quarter, Albert laughed.

Then there was dead silence on the radio. Five seconds. Ten seconds, eleven. Before they cut to commercial.

No score for a quarter! the girl finally said. That’s so hilarious!

You think it’s hilarious? Ernie said.

I can’t wait to read about this, the girl said.

Don’t read about it, Ernie said. Most of those postgame stories are written by AI. You should just listen to it. This is a historical moment.

The girl put away the Raptors cap and turned the radio volume down.

You should call your son, she said. Have him pick. It’s his birthday.

10. The worker as resentful outcast of society was invented already in ancient Greece in the form of the god Hephaestus. He was cast out by his mother, Hera, for being born with misshapen legs. He was cast out by his father, Zeus, for taking his mom’s side in an argument. He spent a whole day falling to Lemnos, where he showed up to work day after day after day to learn his many trades.
11. Jack of all trades, master of all trades, Hephaestus made Zeus’s shield and Achilles’s armor, made Pandora her box, made a throne to lock his mother in, made an invisible net to capture his wife and her lover in so all the gods could mock them. He was spurned by his mom, his dad, his wife, and all women. Still, he made the best weapons, armor, traps, and jewelry.
12. Hephaestus also invented automata, statue servants who could think and feel like men. One of them was the eagle who tortured Prometheus.
13. Despite vast improvements in robotics and warehouse automation, the skill most bragged about where I work is moving boxes quickly. It’s still the best skill to have there.
14. Where’s Ernie now?

Ernie had his son’s Raptors hat on at Denny’s. He felt like he should go to a meeting. He hadn’t been to one in a year.

Beware of self-isolating, a friend in recovery had said.

Is there another kind of isolating, Ernie had said, thinking it was clever.

Yeah, he found himself hearing, you can go to jail.

Right, Ernie said, in his recollection of the past, and at Denny’s in the present. Jail’s worse isolating.

He looked around for his server. No one in sight.

Right, he said again.

He checked his phone for the time, for a call, and just to check his phone.

Nothing.

You have to check in with yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah yeah.

He went to ESPN’s website. Top of the page was a banner image of Madison Square Garden having witnessed a global event. Eyes were larger than backboards. No one’s mouth was open, no one saying a word, not even whispering in a neighbor’s ear. The headline read: Surreal moment as fans exit Madison Square Garden to scoreless second half.

Ernie’s strawberries were still cold on top of his triple-stack.

Yeah.

15. Contrary to popular belief, overalls aren’t slimming.
16. I’ll bet anything Hephaestus has a nervous habit of adjusting his shirt collar with both hands. I’ll bet he laughs really loud, too, like he’s competing in a laughter competition. He probably says I’m here when he’s asked how he’s doing. Or woke up on the right side of the grass this morning, so I guess I’m okay.
17. We act very worried about what AGI will do to the job market. If we’re smart, though, we’ll petition for a simulation where we’re miserable for only forty hours a week, maybe thirty.
18. I vote for three tens. Salaried with ninety days vacation and health insurance with little to no copay. Dental, too. But no vision. Vision is bullshit.