19 out of 50. Do you still love me?
When I did the second half of my sixteen hour day on Friday, there were some tile layers just finishing up a repair job... just outside the door to my office. They said nobody could go on the tiles until about 2300 (I came on at 1600).
Okay, no problem.
After they left, and a couple of hours had gone by, the Romanian guy appeared to start his shift. I mentioned how I couldn't go in my office and showed him why.
And that's when we both noticed what a shit-poor job the tile guys had done. Tiles tilted, tiles not evenly spaced, discoloured tiles... ah well, noted in the report and forgotten about.
I didn't go on for my entire shift. And I told the guy who relieved me not to go on them for HIS entire shift either. ;)
That's the guy that wouldn't answer the phone that I mentioned in the previous entry, btw. Ha ha, he had to sit in the cafeteria! AND he couldn't lock a door that required turning a key. HA! :P
So that means that those tiles had seven extra hours of being left alone.
So what did I hear when I came on shift last night from the Sleeper?
"Those tile guys wanted to know your full name, because they said that you walked all over the tiles and made them lift and shift." Buzzah? "They were really mad."
Yeah, I'd be mad too if I did a shitty job and my only hope was to blame it on some guy with a polyester uniform. Jackasses.
Also in the realm of slap-in-the-face irritation, when I came on for that 1600 shift, my S/S asked if I was taking time off in a week or so. I said no, and he said that he didn't think so, but the woman in charge of scheduling had called and asked. So he called her back on the spot and confirmed that I was not, in fact, taking off time in a week.
Then last night, as I looked at the freshly printed schedule, I see that I'm not on it for the shift I was currently working, and the following three days. Well fuck me running.
These are actually the days that I asked to have off 2.5 months ago, but found out that I couldn't have them off not that long ago. Company policy is three months notice to take vacation time, btw. I knew I was applying with less notice than that, but whatever.
So I called in to Operations (because also my radio didn't seem to be receiving) and found out that I am, in fact, scheduled to be there.
All of this made me grumpy, and I'm inflicting that on you in the form of this rambling. Take that!
One of the bike patrol guys from the other company just successfully completed his road test and air brake test to qualify him to be a trucker. He figures he can make more money doing that (not at first he can't, since he has no experience and so he doesn't get the good money) and he's right, and he'll stay in security to pick up shifts on his days off.
Anyway, he was telling me about one of those extra shifts he took the other week. It seems he was working at the international airport (lots of different security companies have contracts there to be present at various places). He was paired up with a nineteen year old kid that didn't have a lot of experience. First day at that site, first day with the company, and first day ever working security. The airport was not the place for him. :P
But there was another nineteen year old there that I wanted to mention.
You see, he used to work for my company. At a college with another nineteen year old as his partner, and their twenty two year old supervisor. And the three of them used to drink while they were on the job.
One day one of our roving Field Managers came by and smelled the booze. He told them that they know they can't be drinking on the job, and they replied that they'd had to handle some bum that threw his drink at them.
The F/M wasn't fooled, and wrote them up. They continued the practice of drinking while at work.
Then one day there was a butt or can collector at the site. He was apparently just doing his thing, and one of these guys accosted him. They told him "Get the fuck out of here!", and the guy (understandably) said "Fuck you."
So the guard jumped him, while calling his partner over to help. Which he did, as they both pulled out their flashlights and beat this guy down. I kid you not.
A supervisor or F/M or something happened to be nearby and jumped over a fence and put a stop to it. "He tried to assault us, we were defending ourselves!" said the two guards.
Too bad for them there was a camera recording the entire thing. My company fired them, and rightly so.
And now they work for the other company and are keeping the airport safe. Isn't that a wonderful story?
To lighten the mood (before I bring it back down again), my buddy Tursi posted a list of the supposed top 50 worst songs of all time. The idea is to copy the list and bold the ones you like. So here it is, along with comments:
1. We Built This City ... Starship
2. Achy Breaky Heart ... Billy Ray Cyrus I don't even like the Weird Al parody of this song, and I'm a dude that's been to see Al in concert twice.
3. Everybody Have Fun Tonight ... Wang Chung Do you remember the video for this? At the time, everything was "the first time". So the vibro-alternating-frame makeup of this video was unforgettable. As was the tune - what is the entymology of "wang chung" anyway?
4. Rollin' ... Limp Bizkit One of my nieces bought this (well, I bought it for her at her request since she was too young to buy it herself) when it was contemporary and there were three versions of this song on there. The regular one, and two remixes. I liked one of the remixes.
5. Ice Ice Baby ... Vanilla Ice I was doing my time in exile way up in a northern town when this became popular. I'd heard it maybe half a dozen times before I came down to Vancouver for Christmas. There I hooked up with my old friends, and one of them had an entire tape made up of nothing but this song, over and over again. Yes it got tedious, but I enjoyed myself so much then and this song was a part of it.
6. The Heart of Rock & Roll ... Huey Lewis and the News
7. Don't Worry, Be Happy ... Bobby McFerrin You know, a lot of people bash this song, but it's not because it sucks. It's because every third song that was played on any station was this one. The entire thing is done with voice, no actual instruments. It was an incredible song when it came out, and most people thought so. That's also why it received so much (over)play. But of course overplay led to getting sick of it, and that's probably why it's on this list.
8. Party All the Time ... Eddie Murphy When I was in grade eight, I was pretty miserable. When my birthday in December came around I received an AD&D book (Unearthed Arcana) and got to go to a movie with my family. I chose 'Golden Child' (starring Eddie Murphy), and read about the new magical weapons in the book by the passing orange light of streetlamps on that rainy night, while this song came on the radio. Truly one of times during that hellish year that I was actually happy.
9. American Life ... Madonna
10. Ebony and Ivory ... Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder
11. Invisible ... Clay Aiken
12. Kokomo ... The Beach Boys
13. Illegal Alien ... Genesis
14. From a Distance ... Bette Midler
15. I'll Be There for You ... The Rembrandts
16. What's Up? ... 4 Non Blondes
17. Pumps and a Bump ... Hammer
18. You're the Inspiration ... Chicago
19. Broken Wings ... Mr. Mister
20. Dancing on the Ceiling ... Lionel Richie
21. Two Princes ... Spin Doctors
22. Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American) ... Toby Keith
23. Sunglasses at Night ... Corey Hart Before Much Music launched in Canada (or at least before we had it where I lived) there was the channel that nowadays is the tv listing. But that's not what it was then - it was some sort of advertisment channel that would show odd little bits of content. The 'Tears Are Not Enough' song played on it, and I duly taped it. So did 'Sunglasses at Night' and I taped that too. And I played them over and over again. After all, that's what normal teenagers did - watch videos. Right? Right?! Okay, I was a loser and didn't know any better. This was also one of the first two cassette tapes I ever got, the other being the Brian Adams one that was out at the same time.
24. Superman ... Five for Fighting
25. I'll Be Missing You ... Puff Daddy featuring Faith Evans and 112
26. The End ... The Doors
27. The Final Countdown ... Europe Hey, it sounds like they've got a big band backing them! My brother actually owned this on a vinyl record.
28. Your Body Is a Wonderland ... John Mayer
29. Breakfast at Tiffany's ... Deep Blue Something At the time, I thought this was an interestingly non-standard type song.
30. Greatest Love of All ... Whitney Houston
31. Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm ... Crash Test Dummies I don't care what anybody says - the song was different that the usual prattle that played, actually made you think about those nasty situations, and that singer's voice was amazing
32. Will 2K ... Will Smith
33. Barbie Girl ... Aqua Yeah, I liked it. Probably you did too, at first. I bought the album even. It might have been the first cd I bought after I lost all of my cds.
34. Longer ... Dan Fogelberg
35. Shiny Happy People ... R.E.M.
36. Make Em Say Uhh! ... Master P featuring Silkk, Fiend, Mia-X and Mystikal I still love this song, especially after Mia-X sings and you get to hear the gravelly stylings of the Tom Waites of rap. :)
37. Rico Suave ... Gerardo
38. Cotton Eyed Joe ... Rednex
39. She Bangs ... Ricky Martin
40. I Wanna Sex You Up ... Color Me Badd
41. We Didn't Start the Fire ... Billy Joel This was another amazing song. I'll bet everybody who heard this song learned something about the preceding decades that they didn't know before. Although I couldn't convince my buddy Gord that I had, in fact, heard of thalidomide babies before this. :P Speaking of Gord, he had a parody song about the current Prime Minister at the time that went "We didn't vote for Brian! He's so disrespected, how'd he get elected?" that was just hilarious.
42. The Sound of Silence ... Simon & Garfunkel
43. Follow Me ... Uncle Kracker
44. I'll Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) ... Meat Loaf I had never (to my knowledge) heard a Meat Loaf song before. If you'd asked me who he was, I'd have said he was a big fat biker rocker from the seventies. But then this song busted out and it was long and lush and over the top. Of course I liked it.
45. Mesmerize ... Ja Rule featuring Ashanti
46. Hangin' Tough ... New Kids on the Block
47. The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You ... Bryan Adams I have said this to a certain woman several times. She always agreed with me too. ;)
48. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da ... The Beatles The first time I heard this song, it was the theme from Life Goes On. I'd never heard it before, and I've never actually heard it since. I was astonished to learn it was from the Beatles. (I like several Beatles songs, but I'm not a fan if you know what I mean)
49. I'm Too Sexy ... Right Said Fred That woman I mentioned from #47? She had this entire album on tape. And she played it in her car, via the only cassette adaptor I've ever seen that plugged into an 8-track deck. She seemed to really like it, but I was disdainful. But I never forgot that convertor. lol
50. My Heart Will Go On ... Celine Dion This suffered from the same problem as #7, except that it sucked to begin with. It should have stayed on the closing credits of Titanic and never been allowed to leave.
And now to bring you down again. I read the article entitled 911 recordings reveal the final confusing hours and I felt the sympathy rise up in me. There is some audio of the 911 calls if you follow that link, but I'm going to reproduce the entire article here for you anyway:
911 recordings reveal the final confusing hours
Recordings of the lost couple's calls to 911 emergency dispatchers weave a heartbreaking trail through fear, delusion, agony, frustration and desperation.
The trail that ultimately failed to bring help to the two as they struggled to survive in the snow and the dark began in the first call, when Janelle Hornickel asserted that the two were near their central Omaha apartment.
That was at 12:28 a.m. Jan. 5.
Over the next four hours, she and Michael Wamsley never gave up telling 911 dispatchers they were near the Mandalay Apartments, 75th Street and Poppleton Avenue, regardless of how illogical that was shown to be.
And dispatchers never could pin down the couple's precise location, despite promising threads of conversation that suggested Platte River sites maddeningly close to where Wamsley and Hornickel actually were.
A deputy acting on those prompts actually found footprints in the quarry near where their bodies were eventually found. But the officer was called off when the search focused elsewhere.
The couple cried for help in the calls. Dispatchers worked them for any shred of information - mostly pushing calmly for details, occasionally barking for clarity and sometimes making emotional appeals to keep the couple going.
The tapes reveal moments of lucidity, sandwiched between tales so incredible that they must have been hallucinations.
Wamsley gave clues that proved true. He saw a gravel pit. A sand pile. A crane. A window-wrapped shack containing a blue book.
He also reported seeing 200 people on a pond. He called out to them for help but told a dispatcher they wouldn't help because they didn't speak English.
And Hornickel told Douglas County 911 that she was above her apartment in the trees, "and there's a lot of Mexicans and African-Americans and they're all dressed up in like these cult outfits, and they're moving all the vehicles."
They were, she said, taking cars apart and putting the parts in trees.
In the end, the conversations, like a person lost in a blizzard, wandered only in circles, and led nowhere.
"Hi, um, I'm here to report, um, I feel very threatened . . . hello, hello, can you hear me?" Hornickel said in her first call to 911. "I'm at the Mandalay apartment complexes."
"Are you in Omaha?" the Sarpy County dispatcher asked.
"Yes."
"OK," the dispatcher said. "Let me transfer you. Stay on the line."
About a half-hour later, Wamsley called back, reaching Sarpy County 911 again.
"My girlfriend placed a call earlier, out by an old sandpit," he said. "Out by a sandpit, oh, probably around 75th and Poppleton."
He said somebody had taken his truck, and the couple went out to look for it and became lost. Another time, he told a dispatcher they were following people to a party along some winding trails.
The one constant was they were near their apartment. The couple told dispatchers that no fewer than 22 times. They continued to insist so despite all evidence to the contrary.
"Did you get off a highway to get into the sandpit?" a Sarpy dispatcher asked.
"No, it's just off of 75th, far as I understand," Wamsley said.
Dispatcher: "75th Street?"
Wamsley: "Yes, it's like you take 75th straight back here far as I understand."
Dispatcher: "You understand, the only thing we do know, is that you're hitting off a cell tower at 216th Street. So can you do the math? 216th minus 75 is. . ."
Wamsley: "I understand the math, ma'am, but . . ."
Dispatcher: "So, let's try to forget the 75th Street, because that just doesn't kind of make sense. OK? So let's try to rethink it here, OK?"
Wamsley: "OK, my apartment number is 7524 Poppleton Plaza, Apartment 2. You can call Kristi and tell her that Mike Wamsley and Janelle Hornickel and that we need to be assisted. . . ."
Dispatcher: "Does she know where you're at?"
Wamsley (crying): "No, I doubt it . . ."
Wamsley went on in that call or others to say they were near a pond or a lake. He described the site as an old pit where gravel was pumped from the ground. He described a toll-booth-like shack the couple had taken shelter in, and what they could see from it.
The threads were strong and specific enough that a Sarpy dispatcher placed them near the Platte River in western Sarpy County.
"Are you near Iske, or are you near the river?" the dispatcher asked.
"I'm guessing it's . . . um, probably it's . . . (crying) oh, I don't know for sure . . .," Wamsley replied.
Dispatcher: "OK, well, I can't trace where you're at, do you understand where I'm coming from?"
Wamsley: "I, I understand where you're coming from."
Dispatcher: "OK, are you near the Platte River? Are you near Gretna, Bellevue?"
Wamsley: "Are we near Gretna or Bellevue? Gretna."
Dispatcher: "OK, good, that's a help . . . Did you pass Linoma Beach on Highway 6?"
Wamsley: "Ma'am, I don't think so."
He hadn't seen the Linoma Beach lighthouse, he told her. So it went with nearly all of the dispatchers' delving for landmarks. No street signs. No businesses. No road name anywhere near where they were.
The one business the couple referred to by name was Dr. John's - which is within blocks of their Omaha apartment.
Always confused, the couple occasionally reported seeing outlandish things.
There was a shack, they said, but they couldn't get to it because it was surrounded by dogs.
Wamsley and Hornickel later took shelter in the shack. Wamsley accurately described it and its contents.
As the night wore on and the frustration mounted, the couple's directions grew increasingly garbled and desperate.
In an early call to Douglas County 911, Hornickel sounded plaintive as she tried to give directions.
In the background, she asked Wamsley if they were "east or west of the apartments, would you say?" Then she tells the dispatcher, "Straight south. Go down 75th, go straight into them. Yeah, I think I'm just going to have to start running and get out of here. I don't know who else to call. OK, thank you."
Dispatcher: All right.
Hornickel: OK, bye.
Dispatcher: You going to stay on the phone with me?
Hornickel: I don't know what else to do . . . I can.
Dispatcher: Up to you.
Hornickel: I just don't know what else to do. I hope we have enough gas to keep moving around until we find a way out.
Dispatcher: OK. Help's on the way, OK?
Hornickel: OK. How long do you think it will be?
Dispatcher: It takes time to get out there because of the snowy conditions.
Hornickel: Can the helicopter go over the trees?
Dispatcher: The helicopter cannot fly in this kind of weather.
Hornickel began crying.
Throughout the calls, the couple could be heard breathing hard as they walked through the blowing snow or huddled for shelter. Wamsley on several occasions encouraged Hornickel.
Dispatchers tried to encourage both of them.
At one point, a Sarpy dispatcher butted in when Wamsley suggested sending rescuers to 75th Street and West Center Road.
"Mike, Mike?" she said.
"That's the best I can give you," he said. "That's all I've got.
Dispatcher: "OK, do you want to give it up then, because that doesn't make sense."
Wamsley: "I don't know, I don't know."
Dispatcher: "You don't want to give it up, do you?"
Wamsley: "No, I don't."
Dispatcher: "Yeah, I don't either."
Wamsley: "But I'm freezing, and my girlfriend is freezing, and . . ."
Dispatcher: "That's why we want to help you, Mike."
Wamsley: "Help then, please."
Dispatcher: "That's why I'm saying, please, please, please Mike, I need you to think about it, OK?"
As the night went on and help could not find them, the couple's calls became increasingly frantic and decreasingly lucid. Wamsley could barely be understood in a call to Saunders County 911 at 4:20 a.m. But he could be heard saying he was at a horseshoe-shaped gate.
"It's OK," he said.
Dispatchers and operators continued talking to each other. Twilla Hornickel, Janelle's mother, called Saunders County 911.
But the call from the gate was the couple's last.
Body failing, confused... this is just heartbreaking to me. It's like the worst of bad dreams, where nothing works or makes sense. :(
Okay, no problem.
After they left, and a couple of hours had gone by, the Romanian guy appeared to start his shift. I mentioned how I couldn't go in my office and showed him why.
And that's when we both noticed what a shit-poor job the tile guys had done. Tiles tilted, tiles not evenly spaced, discoloured tiles... ah well, noted in the report and forgotten about.
I didn't go on for my entire shift. And I told the guy who relieved me not to go on them for HIS entire shift either. ;)
That's the guy that wouldn't answer the phone that I mentioned in the previous entry, btw. Ha ha, he had to sit in the cafeteria! AND he couldn't lock a door that required turning a key. HA! :P
So that means that those tiles had seven extra hours of being left alone.
So what did I hear when I came on shift last night from the Sleeper?
"Those tile guys wanted to know your full name, because they said that you walked all over the tiles and made them lift and shift." Buzzah? "They were really mad."
Yeah, I'd be mad too if I did a shitty job and my only hope was to blame it on some guy with a polyester uniform. Jackasses.
Also in the realm of slap-in-the-face irritation, when I came on for that 1600 shift, my S/S asked if I was taking time off in a week or so. I said no, and he said that he didn't think so, but the woman in charge of scheduling had called and asked. So he called her back on the spot and confirmed that I was not, in fact, taking off time in a week.
Then last night, as I looked at the freshly printed schedule, I see that I'm not on it for the shift I was currently working, and the following three days. Well fuck me running.
These are actually the days that I asked to have off 2.5 months ago, but found out that I couldn't have them off not that long ago. Company policy is three months notice to take vacation time, btw. I knew I was applying with less notice than that, but whatever.
So I called in to Operations (because also my radio didn't seem to be receiving) and found out that I am, in fact, scheduled to be there.
All of this made me grumpy, and I'm inflicting that on you in the form of this rambling. Take that!
One of the bike patrol guys from the other company just successfully completed his road test and air brake test to qualify him to be a trucker. He figures he can make more money doing that (not at first he can't, since he has no experience and so he doesn't get the good money) and he's right, and he'll stay in security to pick up shifts on his days off.
Anyway, he was telling me about one of those extra shifts he took the other week. It seems he was working at the international airport (lots of different security companies have contracts there to be present at various places). He was paired up with a nineteen year old kid that didn't have a lot of experience. First day at that site, first day with the company, and first day ever working security. The airport was not the place for him. :P
But there was another nineteen year old there that I wanted to mention.
You see, he used to work for my company. At a college with another nineteen year old as his partner, and their twenty two year old supervisor. And the three of them used to drink while they were on the job.
One day one of our roving Field Managers came by and smelled the booze. He told them that they know they can't be drinking on the job, and they replied that they'd had to handle some bum that threw his drink at them.
The F/M wasn't fooled, and wrote them up. They continued the practice of drinking while at work.
Then one day there was a butt or can collector at the site. He was apparently just doing his thing, and one of these guys accosted him. They told him "Get the fuck out of here!", and the guy (understandably) said "Fuck you."
So the guard jumped him, while calling his partner over to help. Which he did, as they both pulled out their flashlights and beat this guy down. I kid you not.
A supervisor or F/M or something happened to be nearby and jumped over a fence and put a stop to it. "He tried to assault us, we were defending ourselves!" said the two guards.
Too bad for them there was a camera recording the entire thing. My company fired them, and rightly so.
And now they work for the other company and are keeping the airport safe. Isn't that a wonderful story?
To lighten the mood (before I bring it back down again), my buddy Tursi posted a list of the supposed top 50 worst songs of all time. The idea is to copy the list and bold the ones you like. So here it is, along with comments:
1. We Built This City ... Starship
2. Achy Breaky Heart ... Billy Ray Cyrus I don't even like the Weird Al parody of this song, and I'm a dude that's been to see Al in concert twice.
3. Everybody Have Fun Tonight ... Wang Chung Do you remember the video for this? At the time, everything was "the first time". So the vibro-alternating-frame makeup of this video was unforgettable. As was the tune - what is the entymology of "wang chung" anyway?
4. Rollin' ... Limp Bizkit One of my nieces bought this (well, I bought it for her at her request since she was too young to buy it herself) when it was contemporary and there were three versions of this song on there. The regular one, and two remixes. I liked one of the remixes.
5. Ice Ice Baby ... Vanilla Ice I was doing my time in exile way up in a northern town when this became popular. I'd heard it maybe half a dozen times before I came down to Vancouver for Christmas. There I hooked up with my old friends, and one of them had an entire tape made up of nothing but this song, over and over again. Yes it got tedious, but I enjoyed myself so much then and this song was a part of it.
6. The Heart of Rock & Roll ... Huey Lewis and the News
7. Don't Worry, Be Happy ... Bobby McFerrin You know, a lot of people bash this song, but it's not because it sucks. It's because every third song that was played on any station was this one. The entire thing is done with voice, no actual instruments. It was an incredible song when it came out, and most people thought so. That's also why it received so much (over)play. But of course overplay led to getting sick of it, and that's probably why it's on this list.
8. Party All the Time ... Eddie Murphy When I was in grade eight, I was pretty miserable. When my birthday in December came around I received an AD&D book (Unearthed Arcana) and got to go to a movie with my family. I chose 'Golden Child' (starring Eddie Murphy), and read about the new magical weapons in the book by the passing orange light of streetlamps on that rainy night, while this song came on the radio. Truly one of times during that hellish year that I was actually happy.
9. American Life ... Madonna
10. Ebony and Ivory ... Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder
11. Invisible ... Clay Aiken
12. Kokomo ... The Beach Boys
13. Illegal Alien ... Genesis
14. From a Distance ... Bette Midler
15. I'll Be There for You ... The Rembrandts
16. What's Up? ... 4 Non Blondes
17. Pumps and a Bump ... Hammer
18. You're the Inspiration ... Chicago
19. Broken Wings ... Mr. Mister
20. Dancing on the Ceiling ... Lionel Richie
21. Two Princes ... Spin Doctors
22. Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American) ... Toby Keith
23. Sunglasses at Night ... Corey Hart Before Much Music launched in Canada (or at least before we had it where I lived) there was the channel that nowadays is the tv listing. But that's not what it was then - it was some sort of advertisment channel that would show odd little bits of content. The 'Tears Are Not Enough' song played on it, and I duly taped it. So did 'Sunglasses at Night' and I taped that too. And I played them over and over again. After all, that's what normal teenagers did - watch videos. Right? Right?! Okay, I was a loser and didn't know any better. This was also one of the first two cassette tapes I ever got, the other being the Brian Adams one that was out at the same time.
24. Superman ... Five for Fighting
25. I'll Be Missing You ... Puff Daddy featuring Faith Evans and 112
26. The End ... The Doors
27. The Final Countdown ... Europe Hey, it sounds like they've got a big band backing them! My brother actually owned this on a vinyl record.
28. Your Body Is a Wonderland ... John Mayer
29. Breakfast at Tiffany's ... Deep Blue Something At the time, I thought this was an interestingly non-standard type song.
30. Greatest Love of All ... Whitney Houston
31. Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm ... Crash Test Dummies I don't care what anybody says - the song was different that the usual prattle that played, actually made you think about those nasty situations, and that singer's voice was amazing
32. Will 2K ... Will Smith
33. Barbie Girl ... Aqua Yeah, I liked it. Probably you did too, at first. I bought the album even. It might have been the first cd I bought after I lost all of my cds.
34. Longer ... Dan Fogelberg
35. Shiny Happy People ... R.E.M.
36. Make Em Say Uhh! ... Master P featuring Silkk, Fiend, Mia-X and Mystikal I still love this song, especially after Mia-X sings and you get to hear the gravelly stylings of the Tom Waites of rap. :)
37. Rico Suave ... Gerardo
38. Cotton Eyed Joe ... Rednex
39. She Bangs ... Ricky Martin
40. I Wanna Sex You Up ... Color Me Badd
41. We Didn't Start the Fire ... Billy Joel This was another amazing song. I'll bet everybody who heard this song learned something about the preceding decades that they didn't know before. Although I couldn't convince my buddy Gord that I had, in fact, heard of thalidomide babies before this. :P Speaking of Gord, he had a parody song about the current Prime Minister at the time that went "We didn't vote for Brian! He's so disrespected, how'd he get elected?" that was just hilarious.
42. The Sound of Silence ... Simon & Garfunkel
43. Follow Me ... Uncle Kracker
44. I'll Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) ... Meat Loaf I had never (to my knowledge) heard a Meat Loaf song before. If you'd asked me who he was, I'd have said he was a big fat biker rocker from the seventies. But then this song busted out and it was long and lush and over the top. Of course I liked it.
45. Mesmerize ... Ja Rule featuring Ashanti
46. Hangin' Tough ... New Kids on the Block
47. The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You ... Bryan Adams I have said this to a certain woman several times. She always agreed with me too. ;)
48. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da ... The Beatles The first time I heard this song, it was the theme from Life Goes On. I'd never heard it before, and I've never actually heard it since. I was astonished to learn it was from the Beatles. (I like several Beatles songs, but I'm not a fan if you know what I mean)
49. I'm Too Sexy ... Right Said Fred That woman I mentioned from #47? She had this entire album on tape. And she played it in her car, via the only cassette adaptor I've ever seen that plugged into an 8-track deck. She seemed to really like it, but I was disdainful. But I never forgot that convertor. lol
50. My Heart Will Go On ... Celine Dion This suffered from the same problem as #7, except that it sucked to begin with. It should have stayed on the closing credits of Titanic and never been allowed to leave.
And now to bring you down again. I read the article entitled 911 recordings reveal the final confusing hours and I felt the sympathy rise up in me. There is some audio of the 911 calls if you follow that link, but I'm going to reproduce the entire article here for you anyway:
911 recordings reveal the final confusing hours
Recordings of the lost couple's calls to 911 emergency dispatchers weave a heartbreaking trail through fear, delusion, agony, frustration and desperation.
The trail that ultimately failed to bring help to the two as they struggled to survive in the snow and the dark began in the first call, when Janelle Hornickel asserted that the two were near their central Omaha apartment.
That was at 12:28 a.m. Jan. 5.
Over the next four hours, she and Michael Wamsley never gave up telling 911 dispatchers they were near the Mandalay Apartments, 75th Street and Poppleton Avenue, regardless of how illogical that was shown to be.
And dispatchers never could pin down the couple's precise location, despite promising threads of conversation that suggested Platte River sites maddeningly close to where Wamsley and Hornickel actually were.
A deputy acting on those prompts actually found footprints in the quarry near where their bodies were eventually found. But the officer was called off when the search focused elsewhere.
The couple cried for help in the calls. Dispatchers worked them for any shred of information - mostly pushing calmly for details, occasionally barking for clarity and sometimes making emotional appeals to keep the couple going.
The tapes reveal moments of lucidity, sandwiched between tales so incredible that they must have been hallucinations.
Wamsley gave clues that proved true. He saw a gravel pit. A sand pile. A crane. A window-wrapped shack containing a blue book.
He also reported seeing 200 people on a pond. He called out to them for help but told a dispatcher they wouldn't help because they didn't speak English.
And Hornickel told Douglas County 911 that she was above her apartment in the trees, "and there's a lot of Mexicans and African-Americans and they're all dressed up in like these cult outfits, and they're moving all the vehicles."
They were, she said, taking cars apart and putting the parts in trees.
In the end, the conversations, like a person lost in a blizzard, wandered only in circles, and led nowhere.
"Hi, um, I'm here to report, um, I feel very threatened . . . hello, hello, can you hear me?" Hornickel said in her first call to 911. "I'm at the Mandalay apartment complexes."
"Are you in Omaha?" the Sarpy County dispatcher asked.
"Yes."
"OK," the dispatcher said. "Let me transfer you. Stay on the line."
About a half-hour later, Wamsley called back, reaching Sarpy County 911 again.
"My girlfriend placed a call earlier, out by an old sandpit," he said. "Out by a sandpit, oh, probably around 75th and Poppleton."
He said somebody had taken his truck, and the couple went out to look for it and became lost. Another time, he told a dispatcher they were following people to a party along some winding trails.
The one constant was they were near their apartment. The couple told dispatchers that no fewer than 22 times. They continued to insist so despite all evidence to the contrary.
"Did you get off a highway to get into the sandpit?" a Sarpy dispatcher asked.
"No, it's just off of 75th, far as I understand," Wamsley said.
Dispatcher: "75th Street?"
Wamsley: "Yes, it's like you take 75th straight back here far as I understand."
Dispatcher: "You understand, the only thing we do know, is that you're hitting off a cell tower at 216th Street. So can you do the math? 216th minus 75 is. . ."
Wamsley: "I understand the math, ma'am, but . . ."
Dispatcher: "So, let's try to forget the 75th Street, because that just doesn't kind of make sense. OK? So let's try to rethink it here, OK?"
Wamsley: "OK, my apartment number is 7524 Poppleton Plaza, Apartment 2. You can call Kristi and tell her that Mike Wamsley and Janelle Hornickel and that we need to be assisted. . . ."
Dispatcher: "Does she know where you're at?"
Wamsley (crying): "No, I doubt it . . ."
Wamsley went on in that call or others to say they were near a pond or a lake. He described the site as an old pit where gravel was pumped from the ground. He described a toll-booth-like shack the couple had taken shelter in, and what they could see from it.
The threads were strong and specific enough that a Sarpy dispatcher placed them near the Platte River in western Sarpy County.
"Are you near Iske, or are you near the river?" the dispatcher asked.
"I'm guessing it's . . . um, probably it's . . . (crying) oh, I don't know for sure . . .," Wamsley replied.
Dispatcher: "OK, well, I can't trace where you're at, do you understand where I'm coming from?"
Wamsley: "I, I understand where you're coming from."
Dispatcher: "OK, are you near the Platte River? Are you near Gretna, Bellevue?"
Wamsley: "Are we near Gretna or Bellevue? Gretna."
Dispatcher: "OK, good, that's a help . . . Did you pass Linoma Beach on Highway 6?"
Wamsley: "Ma'am, I don't think so."
He hadn't seen the Linoma Beach lighthouse, he told her. So it went with nearly all of the dispatchers' delving for landmarks. No street signs. No businesses. No road name anywhere near where they were.
The one business the couple referred to by name was Dr. John's - which is within blocks of their Omaha apartment.
Always confused, the couple occasionally reported seeing outlandish things.
There was a shack, they said, but they couldn't get to it because it was surrounded by dogs.
Wamsley and Hornickel later took shelter in the shack. Wamsley accurately described it and its contents.
As the night wore on and the frustration mounted, the couple's directions grew increasingly garbled and desperate.
In an early call to Douglas County 911, Hornickel sounded plaintive as she tried to give directions.
In the background, she asked Wamsley if they were "east or west of the apartments, would you say?" Then she tells the dispatcher, "Straight south. Go down 75th, go straight into them. Yeah, I think I'm just going to have to start running and get out of here. I don't know who else to call. OK, thank you."
Dispatcher: All right.
Hornickel: OK, bye.
Dispatcher: You going to stay on the phone with me?
Hornickel: I don't know what else to do . . . I can.
Dispatcher: Up to you.
Hornickel: I just don't know what else to do. I hope we have enough gas to keep moving around until we find a way out.
Dispatcher: OK. Help's on the way, OK?
Hornickel: OK. How long do you think it will be?
Dispatcher: It takes time to get out there because of the snowy conditions.
Hornickel: Can the helicopter go over the trees?
Dispatcher: The helicopter cannot fly in this kind of weather.
Hornickel began crying.
Throughout the calls, the couple could be heard breathing hard as they walked through the blowing snow or huddled for shelter. Wamsley on several occasions encouraged Hornickel.
Dispatchers tried to encourage both of them.
At one point, a Sarpy dispatcher butted in when Wamsley suggested sending rescuers to 75th Street and West Center Road.
"Mike, Mike?" she said.
"That's the best I can give you," he said. "That's all I've got.
Dispatcher: "OK, do you want to give it up then, because that doesn't make sense."
Wamsley: "I don't know, I don't know."
Dispatcher: "You don't want to give it up, do you?"
Wamsley: "No, I don't."
Dispatcher: "Yeah, I don't either."
Wamsley: "But I'm freezing, and my girlfriend is freezing, and . . ."
Dispatcher: "That's why we want to help you, Mike."
Wamsley: "Help then, please."
Dispatcher: "That's why I'm saying, please, please, please Mike, I need you to think about it, OK?"
As the night went on and help could not find them, the couple's calls became increasingly frantic and decreasingly lucid. Wamsley could barely be understood in a call to Saunders County 911 at 4:20 a.m. But he could be heard saying he was at a horseshoe-shaped gate.
"It's OK," he said.
Dispatchers and operators continued talking to each other. Twilla Hornickel, Janelle's mother, called Saunders County 911.
But the call from the gate was the couple's last.
Body failing, confused... this is just heartbreaking to me. It's like the worst of bad dreams, where nothing works or makes sense. :(
posted by Rimmy at 16:57
4 Comments:
Wow, if I had a trophy, I'd give it to you for longest post ever. You could break them up if you wanted to you know, so I guess you just love to torture us!
I don't know how you go to work and remain sane; just reading about your posts drives me crazy!
Funny about the songs though...no way I'm admitting how much I would have scored!
It was only long because I pasted that article verbatim - I wanted people to read it instead of just skipping the link. :P
Followup to it though - they were both baked out of their head on meth. Doesn't take away the sense of hopelessness the story evoked in my at first, though.
What is this sanity you speak of? Your ideas intrique me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. ;)
I liked more of them at the time, but these are the ones that I can still listen to. :)
Sanity is that pretty table cloth you put over the table of reality to make it look nice. Then you try to launder the table cloth and you see what life really is. Scratched and stained
But you can always buy new and different table cloths :)
If you can afford it, ...after a while you can't and you just go with out :P
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Those people? They were on meth. To continue your analogy, meth would be the magician in the top hat and tails with the dead soggy doves up his sleeves attempting to yank the tablecloth off, while simultaneously filling your glass with Orange Daylight Kool-Aid (tm)and blazfazzing the shimstock. KnowwhatImean? ;)
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