Cattle Punching on a Jack Rabbit

And to reiterate - I *hate* talking on the phone. Cell phone in particular.

Christmas was a series of fourteen phonecalls, all work-related.

The first was at 0330. Valium Wailer got an alarm from the UPS that it was overheating and wanted to know what to do. He also noted that as he was calling me, he noticed on The Sleeper's report that the same thing had happened the day before (which I also got called on) but that The Sleeper hadn't bothered to inform Valium Wailer about it.

I ran VW through the usual drill, and told him to call me in the morning if it was still an issue, or became an issue again.

It did.

So I started the series of calls to the client and the service people to get this dealt with.

Then came a whole series of calls about a pipe blowing out the ceiling of a washroom and flooding all over the place. Happily, it was in Evil Property Manager's domain, although it did affect our area somewhat. Call call call, more or less dealt with. One brief trip in to the site. Last call, 2300 or so. Well, that was only twenty hours of Christmas bliss.

Then, at 0430 Palooka called me to tell me about the leak downstairs. You know, the one I'd spent all that time dealing with.

The ceiling was still leaking, but only in drips. It was all the wet material slowly shedding the water that had been soaked up. Palooka was disturbed because, and I quote here: "Where before it was like drip, now it's like drip-drip."

I told him that was fine, and to just keep an eye on it. Then he said "Hey, you weren't sleeping or anything were you?"

No, not me. Perish the thought of me sleeping at 0430. Truly I only sleep once a week, and it's in a chair for about an hour.

I then got a twenty minute monologue from him about his step-by-step journey downstairs and exactly what he was thinking about, and how that changed when he saw the drips. Sigh.

DiceGimp is still working, although I can't figure out why. Here's how he did his Sunday night shift:

1) Shows up at 1800. Needs to change.
2) Changed and back up at 1815. Tells his partner (Q-tip) that he's starving, and McDonald's is closed. So he's going to bike a few kilometers off to a mall and find something to eat.
3) Partner (pretty serious about the realities of the job) pages and pages DiceGimp, and finally at 1930 or so gets a response: "I've got my food, and now I'm on my way back."
4) Page page page and finally a response at 2015: "I'm back and now I have to eat."
5) Page page page until 2115 or so: "Okay, I'm done eating so as soon as I've gone to the bathroom I'll start my first patrol."

The one-shot guard they had come in on Monday from 1600-0000 (for the bike patrol guys) was from Pakistan and after the now-familiar questions about marriage status, children, and where am I from? Canada. No no, where is your family from? Sigh, Germany and Europe.

... he talked about nothing except for herbalism and sex. Often in conjunction. Although I was greatly amused (as will Tursi, possibly) that he knew an herbalist that cured someone's leukemia with a single dosage. I guess someone we know who got hers from shaving her legs with a leukemiac's razor must have used that, since she's been clear ever since. :P

I've been playing Guild Wars for the past few days, has anybody else played this? I'm a party of one. :P

Leaving the ladder, one may fall upward!

Tursi's been and gone. And doesn't it just suck that I don't have evenings free to do anything? We ate breakfast/lunch together like a couple of old men, but didn't get to do anything.

Still, I'm glad he came to visit.

Although I get to curse him for two things:

1) in jest, I suggested he become a guard. He replied that he'd get too bored.

Now, I know the job is boring but damn, didn't the shift that followed that comment go super slow!

2) he mentioned getting a four core chip, and now that's all I can think of getting. What the hell, I'll get two!

He also installed Google Earth on my machine, and I've been amusing myself watching the geography bounce in a tour of every place I've ever lived that I can remember. Next I'm going to mark places I've slept and see how that goes.

Due to some majorly provocative irritation from my company, the clients at the site are going to (so it seems) attempt to have The Sleeper removed in the new year. We'll see.

And DiceGimp. Ah DiceGimp, you really aren't very good for much, are you? You got an alarm call at 2000-2030, and said you'd check it out. And then didn't.

An hour or two later, you went wandering around on your bike and found an open door. A door that had been popped with a tool. Oddly, it was the door you'd got the alarm on.

So what do you do, call the police? Nope. Radio for backup? Nah. You go in. Once through the popped door, you find another door that's been subjected to tool-augmented entry. You go through that too.

And find somebody.

You say "Who are you?" and the person says "It's okay, I work here. Here's my ID." and they reach for their wallet.

You wave aside the offer of ID, apparently feeling that if they look like they're going to tell you who they are, that's close enough. In the dark, with a guy holding a tool, behind two doors that have been forced.

You then proceed to chat with the guy for a good five minutes, as faithfully recorded by the cameras that you didn't know where in there, and then left the building to go on a bike patrol.

Altogether four doors were forced, although nothing seems to have been taken. The guy left in a black BMW.

So from what I hear, the mix of eight and twelve hour shifts that don't really make much sense are being stopped and three eight hour shifts will replace them. Q-tip will be training the evening guy, and there doesn't seem to be a place for DiceGimp.

I wonder if he knows that yet, since the morning after that happened Tursi and I saw him in IHOP.

I've got to admit, I'm a little lonely right now. I've finished my sushi, I don't have the next Doctor Who episode downloaded yet (but I've got the three after that one sitting on the drive - thanks for addicting me, Tursi!), and there's nobody around to play a game with.

Ah well, such is life.

I know I've posted more than once on the "intelligent design" thingy that stupid people want taught in public schools in the US, but something I'd never heard of before is the religious-based argument against daylight savings time. Enjoy, if you've never heard it:

Kansas rescinds Daylight Savings Time
Sunflower State reverts to "God's Time"

TOPEKA, Kan..-- The state legislature here has voted to return to standard time on a year-round basis. Following a 63 to 21 vote, legislators passed a law repealing the adoption of Daylight Savings Time in favor of keeping the state's clocks set on Central Standard Time all year.

Burnett "Bud" Jameson (R - Monroe County), speaking in favor of the measure said, "When God created man, He took exactly seven days - not five days, not seven days, exactly six days. That's exactly 132 hours* - not 131, not 133, exactly 132. So we've got no business monkeying around the intelligent design of the 24-hour clock that God set in motion when He started time here in the U.S. around 6000 years ago."

Jameson, a supporter of the Kansas Board of Education in its fight to introduce teaching of alternatives to evolution in the state's schools, also said, "Turning back the clock in the Fall is like ripping pages from the Bible."

While the effects of this change are likely to be minimal to most Jayhawkers, transportation to, from and through Kansas is expected to be disrupted and travelers are expected to be totally confused, with the most confusion among travelers who make airline connections through the state's airports.

The Kansas move comes only months after Indiana's governor signed a law that will at last put the entire state on Daylight Savings Time starting next year. Whether Indiana will adopt the Central or the Eastern time zone is still in question.

Editor's note: When contacted by Shari Wrightwood, the Travel Fox facts checker for this story, Mr. Jameson said that he miscalculated the number of hours in six days saying, "I should have said that there are really 144 hours in six days," then he added, "and that's true for all of the other 47 states in the U.S. as well."

Stolen from here.

-----

Absolutely hilarious!

And now for a little music: you can listen to someone ripping it up on a nine string bass, or some rap. Or both!

Don't blame the dominatrix for your welts if you're paying for the whipping.

A couple of drunk guys got on the SkyTrain and sat behind me, each one slumped in a bench sort of passed out. One of them got a call on their cell phone and stomped around while talking, then threw himself back into the bench while his cell phone clattered to the floor and skittered to the far wall.

They got off a couple of stops before I did.

Looking up from my book, I saw the cell phone. That's got to suck.

So I picked it up and checked through the call log, just in case it was a stolen phone and left on purpose.

Nope - all the calls made and all the calls received were tied to names in the phonebook. Cute picture of a girl for the background too. Good enough for me.

Turned it in to the platform attendants at my stop. Easy like Weezie.

I was talking to Palooka the other day, and seeing the papers get delivered to the site got us talking about our respective paper routes.

And that reminded me of the time I was walking home at the end of mine, up a hill in the dark, skateboard in hand (a giant yellow one with KAMAKAZE! written on it)... and I'd chewed all the cinnamon out of my Big Red gum.

Curious to see if I could throw it all the way across the semi-busy four lane road, I gave it a heave. TONK!

I couldn't. Brake lights went on, and a car went by me and hung a left. Ah well, I kept walking up the hill.

A minute or so later, a big guy looking and walking like a bodybuilder came striding down the sidewalk ahead of me. "Hey asshole!" he said.

If I was a different sort of kid (i.e. smarter) I'd have hopped on that board and rolled my ass back down the hill.

"Yes?" I replied wittily.

"What the fuck did you throw at my car?!" he said as he grabbed my shirt where my lapels would be, if I'd had lapels.

"Nothingpleasedon'thurtmeitwasjustgum!"

Clearly disgusted (both that I'd done it and that I was too little a kid for him to get any satisfaction out of), he threw me down into somebody's recessed yard. It was about a meter lower than the sidewalk. I luckily missed the ornamental thornbushes.

"If I ever see you again I'll fucking KILL you!" he yelled and off he went.

And as I lay there in the dark, under the bushes, in a stranger's yard, my glasses vanished into the dark, worried he was going to come back and finish me, I realized that I really didn't like Big Red that much.

And so I stopped buying it. Hello Juicy Fruit!

Jesus died for someone's sins but not mine, meltin' in a pot of thieves, wild card up my sleeve, thick heart of stone, my sins my own

They belong to me. Me.

I was sitting here minding my own business. Well, I was watching The Muppet Show with John Cleese in it, if you must know, and my phone rings. Looking at the screen, I see it's my site cell phone. The Sleeper is on. Oh shit, is he going to rant?

Pause.

During the week I reminded the client that since they're closed for a few days over Christmas and New Years, they need extra coverage (during times we're not normally there). They asked if I'd do it, and I said of course I would. They wrote it up and faxed it in. And got no reply. Not that day, not the next.

So I had them call my office. They got the head scheduler and she said she'd received the request. The client reiterated that they wanted me on those shifts, but the scheduler said they couldn't do that, and that they'd put The Sleeper on instead.

The client demured, asking if Palooka or the other guy could do it.

I need a name for the other guy if I'm going to be refering to him, so I'm going to call him Valium Wailer, since he's the most laid back guy you'll ever meet but sings and plays keyboard for a speed metal band.

Anyway, the scheduler said no to both of those since Palooka would be working eight hours already that day (that's her problem with putting me on as well), and Valium Wailer isn't available except on weekends. She said "Are you sure you don't want The Sleeper?"

The client put her on hold for a moment and got me. "It sounds like there's nobody else available and they want to put The Sleeper on." they said.

"You don't need to have anybody you don't want to, since you're paying extra for this anyway. If they won't put me on, or one of the others you're okay with, ask for a random person that hasn't been here before. It'll be a cheaper rate and how badly can they screw up three shifts?"

I was interested in seeing the new schedule, which I should have got on Friday, but my field manager didn't show up.

More's the pity, since I was going to bounce this whole Cafeteria Lady thing off of him. Ah well.

I always ask Palooka and Valium Wailer how their encounters with The Sleeper go, since at first they were creeped out by how he acts and wondered if it was just them. For the past couple of weeks, they've said he's been extremely pleasant (because of the raise that he got that he and my CSM, Cookie Monster, don't know I know about) and has been showing a lot of teeth in a grimace that I assume is his attempt to smile.

But on Friday, when Valium Wailer relieved me, he said that the pleasant times were over and The Sleeper was back to his odd behavior.

Now, this will sound innocuous to the uninitiated, but try to remember that The Sleeper hates (based on pooled observations from several people, many of which I wouldn't trust to give their opinion on what their own names are) everybody who isn't from India and/or isn't able to get him something. If you don't fall into one or both of those categories, he's basically a bubbling cauldron of rage and loathing held in by a thin veneer of surliness.

Valium Wailer goes in to our office to relieve The Sleeper, and says hello. This is about the only safe thing you can ever say, and it's not always a certainty. The Sleeper says "The radio, phone and keys are over there on the desk."

Valium Wailer says "Great." - more as something to say than anything else. Just a response to the statement.

The Sleeper flicks into agitated mode and says "Yeah, it's really great that a phone and some keys are on the desk. Have a good shift (standard line for him)." and he left.

Valium Wailer was kicking himself for letting it get to that point. His usual strategy for dealing with The Sleeper is to say "Hello", nod at whatever he says, and be moving away from him as fast as possible so that if The Sleeper does try to start a conversation (it's a trap - RUN!) it can always be plausibly assumed that it wasn't heard, due to the increasing distance from him.

I know it sounds like nothing, but you have to know the guy.

Also, the batteries were scheduled to be replaced in one of the big (maybe the size of three standard refridgerators) UPS' and the client was insistant that security be at the beck and call of the guys doing it, as they would charge them a buttload if there were any hitches getting access or having to come back on another date.

So I left the email from the client on the desk where The Sleeper could see it with a post-it saying "The Sleeper - be conspicuously available for this."

Unpause.

I answered the phone.

"Is this Rimmy?"

"Yes, what can I do for you The Sleeper?"

"Nothing. But I'm going to do something for you."

Oh please, don't do anything for me. I can't think of anything good that you could do for me.

He passes the phone on to one of the outside contractors that works at the site, whom I rather like. I've been out to see her horses, and we seem to enjoy each other's company. She finished her latest assignment in late November and won't be back until January. But she'd stopped by to give me a Christmas present and didn't know my number.

Oddly, she also rather likes The Sleeper. Note that a few good words from someone of her standing can do wonders for him within our company. So she doesn't get the rage/loathing thing.

She has a farm up near Armstrong, and raises lambs. A half lamb goes for about a hundred bucks, and she feeds them primarily on hay and alfalfa which she also grows herself. If you want some fresh meat, I can hook you up. ;)

Anyway, she brought me some chops and left them in a freezer at the site for me. That was sweet of her. But she couldn't talk, since she had to boot out to Tsawwassen to pick somebody up from the ferry, so she said goodbye and while I listened she asked The Sleeper how to turn the phone off.

I guess he might have been irked that she was speaking to me, as a comment that I might have received was her reply: "All cell phones work the same way."

Anyway, that wasn't as bad a call as it might have been.

Also, the cleaners at the site bugged me all week to come to their Christmas party. I couldn't of course, since I was working (Friday night - lame), but it sure shows the difference between me and Barney. They still can't get over that I don't ride them like I'm a tinpot dictator.

I saw King Kong with the folks on Saturday night, and I liked it. Duh.

Although as I was leaving and thinking that I enjoyed it, I remembered an old Andy Capp strip where Andy and Florrie are leaving the cinema and Florrie is irritatedly commenting to Andy "You're the only man I know that cheers for the monster."

Now, I haven't seen the original in a while (but it was in the nineties), but something carried across from it into this picture loud and clear - people react way differently than me in unusual situations.

For instance - there's a dinosaur stampede of large herbivores down a narrow canyon, with velociraptors or small allosauri weaving through the legs. The Venture's crew are racing along underneath these things as they bounce and smash and ricochet off the walls.

Perhaps there's a reason I wasn't invited along on the cruise to Skull Island, but I've got to think that if I were in such a situation, I'd find the first semi-crack in the canyon walls and get myself out of the frickin' stampede. And not just because I probably couldn't run as far or as fast as they ran, even with adrenaline. I certainly wouldn't be punching out the carnivores that were running along with us - moving any part of my body towards the part of theirs with the teeth would just seem to be as good an idea as dumping Worcestershire sauce on my head and arranging myself on a bed of rice.

Also, while my fieldcraft skills aren't as good as they used to be - how exactly do various groups meet up on an uncharted island with no maps, no radios, and no rendevous points? Tracking is one option, but after rockfalls, vertical falls down sheer chasm faces, and generally not leaving footprints, not to mention the aforementioned saurian stampede, what is left to follow?

Even better, how do timely reunions happen when it's obvious that they've come from another direction entirely? Such things bother me when I can't resolve them.

I'd like you to note that when the people are actually on Skull Island, nobody sleeps. And yet, they're alert and fresh and have way more energy than seems reasonable.

And am I the only person to wonder why Kong appears to be a silverback gorilla with spidermonkey agility and a chimpanzee sense of humour?

My mom adds that she liked the film, but thought it dragged at the start. You don't see Kong for the first half of the film. "We came here to see an ape, so where's the ape?" said my mom.

All of that aside, I dug the flick. I'd go see it again even, although I probably won't. I didn't find it dragged out, and even knowing how it's going to end (does anybody not know the Kong story?) doesn't make you bored as the flick unwinds.

Although I sure would like to get to smash stuff like he does. You know, with impunity.

FWOOOOOOOOOOOSH, bisnitch! I used to clean up after stuff like this. And I bet that despite that, my lungs are still cleaner than yours!

I'm outtie

Thanks, President Clark

THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.
THE ASCENSION OF THE ORDINARY MAN.

I'll shoot him, but YOU clean him.

Heh.

DiceGimp thinks that if there's ever going to be a supervisor for their site, he's going to be the guy. Which is why he gets so upset when other people get things done and not him.

After a couple of instances of guards going home with the master keys and being unreachable for the day, Q-tip suggested that they institute a system where the guards have to sign when they surrender or receive the keys. He got this suggestion approved by both his own company, and Evil Property Manager's office. Simple enough.

But DiceGimp balked. He says it's "demeaning" to do so, and that he likes the way they did it before.

Demeaning? This coming from a guy who thinks it's demeaning that other people use soap in contrast to his anti-hygiene stance.

Anyway, while he was sulking about it, the female guard said she doesn't like having to haul all their stuff down to the storeroom after her shift, and would he please take his chair down when his shift ends two hours before her.

Basically she's got a folding table, chair, bike, and whatever papers they were using. Plus her personal stuff. It doesn't seem out of line to have him take down a single chair with him when he goes.

But he said that this is the way they've always done it on this site (he's been on the site since May and I assure you, it's not the way it's always been done nor is it cast in stone that they do it like that) and so that's how they'll keep doing it.

She gave him a bit of static about it, saying it wasn't unreasonable for him to take something down with him when he goes. So....

Yesterday there was no sign of him that I could see. I don't spy on them, but when I'm on duty I'm fairly aware of my surroundings and the surrounding buildings, and I didn't see him at all. Ah well, not my problem.

Palooka and the female guard show up, and they ask me where he is (along with the table and chair that usually sits so prominently in the foyer). I give the female guard my site phone so she can call her partner, and guess what?

Stung because someone else (Q-tip) managed to make a change in the routine, and irritated at female guard because she dared challenge him, DiceGimp has decided that he'll just sit outside on the concrete steps and write in his notebook, and towards the end of his shift he'll go down to their storeroom and write up his report.

Quote: "I thought I'd try something new for the site, since everybody else is doing it."

Well, I guess he'll show them. :P

And now people at my site, through no influence of mine, are referring to him as "that guy who kind of looks like a badger". Ha!

I told you he was ridiculous!

"You wanna go to the aquarium?" "Dey got squid."

Cafeteria Lady continues to elude me. Although I'm getting closer - I saw her driving out of the underground yesterday. I'll catch up to her yet.

She does seem to think that Eyes and Ears is on my side though, since when one of her employees had a problem with their access card, she went to someone else rather than him. (He's the only one that could do it - she was looking for an intermediary)

A couple of hours into my shift, a manager told me that another manager had just called her and said there was a suspicious person loitering in the underground. So I blasted off and tore down there, but didn't see anybody.

The client's eyes and ears, having seen me blast past his office, followed me down and bade me to jump into the company van. We then tore around the parking levels at semi-high speed looking for for whoever it was, but mostly just having fun.

If Rockafeller Skank was playing on the radio, it couldn't have been any more ridiculously funny.

Didn't find the guy, but when I tracked down the manager who'd actually seen him, the description was awfully close to DiceGimp, who did turn up late for his shift, not too long after this happened.

What an idiot.

No, not because of this. Just... generally. :P

I can't believe I'm going to buy a can of Brasso

Cafeteria Lady is still avoiding me. She also went running in to meet with the client and complain about what happened with Palooka.

But interestingly enough, she screwed up. When she was ranting at Palooka, saying she "had permission from so-and-so", this client was the so-and-so. And this client didn't give her permission for sweet bugger all. Oops.

I guess when she and Crazy Cougar Receptionist were making their little agreement (free food in exchange for letting anybody in who wants it) and their excuse in case anybody asked (so-and-so gave me the nod), somewhere along the line it was forgotten that it wasn't true.

The only thing better than making a jackass feel like a jackass is when they do it to themselves. :D

This kid looks like a misbehaving refugee from some 70's tv series, but you've got to admit he's got skills.

A woman got bit by a lion at Melbourne Zoo when she climbed over the safety barrier and stuck her hand inside the enclosure to, and I quote, "to pick a flower".

At least nobody can blame that particular bit of stupidity on video games.

Batmobile car kits, eh?

First they come after you for mp3s, then movies. Now... lyrics?

I'm so glad that the RIAA and its Canadian counterpart can't do squat to people in Canada. You can't be fined or taken to court for downloading, making, or sharing music or movies. Unless you make a profit.

Whiners.

Did you hear about the guy who had his car stolen, and when he got it back it was better? He got his ride pimped, and didn't even have to appear on the show!

And to end, is everybody as tired as I am of hearing people saying "Give - it's Christmas time!" about donating?

Go ahead and do it, but you're kind of messed up if you think that there's something special about tossing some food in the bin or a toy in the collection box for the holidays, but you do bugger all the rest of the year.

I usually eat once a day, sometimes even twice. Do you suppose that poor folk might be into that too? Or do they just have to stretch out that box of Weetabix until next year?

If you've got more cans of beans than you can fit in your bindle, any time is a good time to pass that on. Or a couple of bucks, whatever you like.

And, in my experience, the people who self-righteously whine the most about giving around the holidays are the ones least likely to give. There's nothing better than hypocrisy from someone who wants you to do something, or wants you to gush all over them when they do something.

And for the dimmer hypocrites who thought I said something hypnotism above, let me elaborate:

hy-poc-ri-sy n. pl. hy-poc-ri-sies

1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.

2. A act or instance of such falseness.

3. An expression of agreement that is not supported by real conviction [syn: lip service]

4. Insincerity by virtue of pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not really have.

Alright, bobbins?

What the hell did I EAT?!

The female guard at the site delivered a long soliloquy about how she, as a mother, has a right to use the company cell phone to call home whenever she wants.

Myself and Buffalo Kisser's replacement disagreed, and I added that while she might have a desire to do so, she has no particular right. An employer isn't required to provide a means of communication for non-work related matters.

She asked something along the lines of "Don't you think it's important that if something happens, my kid can contact me?", and a few other questions of that ilk.

Of course I answered that I did, but that doesn't confer any particular right to have something, just because you want it. Want communication with your kid? Get a cell phone.

Friday night, I was telling our weekend graveyard guy about Alicia, and he had a story of his own.

When he's not doing weekends with my company, he works for a different security company at Metrotown, which is a big-ass mall for those not in the know. And he said that last February he and a partner found a group of people huddled in a stairwell in the underground parking area, and they had to be rousted.

While they were doing that, he noticed that one of them didn't belong. He stuck out because he was younger than the others, so this guard talked to him a bit.

It seems that the kid was twelve, just a hair away from being thirteen. He has a one year old son with a thirteen year old girl. He's sleeping in the stairwell instead of staying with his own mom because she's a crackhead, and she's not thirty yet. The age I sort of remember is twenty-six.

That's three generations of fucked right there.

I went out for dinner with the folks last night. But clearly my mind is rusting out fast because by the time I got out of the restaurant, I couldn't remember what I'd eaten. Neither could anybody else.

I mean, I remember having some nice meaty mahi mahi, and a piece of incredibly tender tuna, but I'll be damned to Montana if I can remember what the other thing was.

Some sort of fish, anyway. And it was good. But utterly unmemorable apparently.

Scored some clothes and a cake to eat the way I like it - in solitude. Huzzah!

Oh, and Cafeteria Lady avoided me on Friday again. Rumour (from the client's eyes and ears) has it that she's specifically avoiding me. Which is odd, because while I'm likely to make her feel fairly insignificant, she can't possibly know that ahead of time because I've not done that at work before.

And now I probably won't get the chance, since the client herself is in town today and will likely deal with it herself, instead of me getting to chain my Jun combos and see if I can get two rounds of victory...

Sorry, drifted into Tekken 2 there. My bad.

And before I go to work tomorrow and wander the cube maze, an old joke:

In prison, you spend the majority of your time in an 8' x 10' cell. At work you spend most of your time in a 6' x 8' cubicle.

In prison, you get three meals a day. At work, you only get a break for one meal and you have to pay for that one.

In prison you get time off for good behavior. At work, you get rewarded for good behavior with more work.

In prison a guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you. At work you must carry around a security card and unlock and open all the doors yourself.

In prison you can watch TV and play games. At work you get fired for watching TV and playing games.

In prison they ball and chain you when you go somewhere. At work you are just ball and chained.

In prison you get your own loot. At work, you have to share.

In prison they allow your family and friends to visit. At work, you cannot even speak to your family and friends.

In prison all expenses are paid by taxpayers, with no work required. At work you get to pay for all the expenses to go to work, and then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for the prisoners.

In prison you spend most of your life looking through bars from the inside wanting to get out. At work you spend most of your time wanting to get out and inside bars.

In prison you can join many programs which you can leave at any time. At work there are some programs you can never get out of.

In prison there are wardens who are often sadistic. At work you have managers.

"Parent" isn't just a noun, you know.

Alicia. That's her name. I overheard it as she spoke on her cell phone.

I was riding the train, and she was across the aisle, sitting with a couple of boys. She was fourteen, maximum. She might have been as young as twelve.

She's from the Sunshine Coast. She's never been in Vancouver before. Her family has ditched her, or at least actively separated from her and left her to roam with a boy she vaguely knows.

She was unsure what to do. You see, her mom had just been arrested. For fraud. At Money Mart. Again.

She was fielding two calls at once, and as soon as one was done she'd have another or she'd make one.

She didn't where she was going to sleep that night. One of the boys she was with thought that maybe his friend's (whom she didn't know) mom would let her stay there.

The mom declined.

Eventually, one of the calls to the police netted her the information that her mom was going to be released in about thirty minutes, and she would meet the girl at Metrotown.

The boys she was with gave her the instructions on how to get there: "Keep on the train until you get to Commercial, then go up an escalator and take a left and you'll see all sort of people selling stuff. Go up to Broadway and get on a train going to Metrotown. You can't miss it - bye!"

And with that, they got off the train and left her.

Remember, first time in Vancouver, never been on the SkyTrain, mom's been arrested, nobody to turn to.

She was upset. Angry at first, but as the phone calls continued she started to crack. She was upset, she was crying, she was afraid.

She was alone.

Lame.

I'd gone in to work extra early to deal with Cafeteria Lady. I had the time.

I took her to Commercial and got her on her train to Metrotown. I hope she made it okay and found her mom.

I hope she does okay, despite what seems to be a less than ideal home life.

I wish I'd given her ten bucks so she could get something to eat.

Sigh.

I still made it to work early. Cafeteria Lady had lit out of there extra early. I was disappointed.

Maybe today.

How come I have to pay AND leave the hair when I get my hair cut?

DiceGimp has gone and fucked up again. Anybody surprised?

Me neither.

Earlier in the week, a guy at work (the guy I report to, client-wise) asked me which of the bike patrol guys was on Sunday night. I told him DiceGimp, and he shook his head.

Apparently someone had gone in to the fitness centre downstairs and plugged up the men's room toilet with paper, and then taken a big ugly crap on TOP of that, and left it.

It was found by someone on Monday morning, and they were inside the fitness centre as soon as it was open (the doors don't work with access cards until 0500, and it locks itself at 2000; it's closed over the weekends). Evil Property Manager and his ilk merely had to look at the access log to see who had gone in there before active hours. Guess what? Apparently security guards go in there! A lot! Who'da thunk it?

Tuesday morning, when DiceGimp was down there again changing out of his uniform, someone confronted him and demanded to know who he was. He gave them his name, and they said "You're not supposed to be in here, I'm going to talk to [Evil Property Manager's company] about this."

On Wednesday, the word went out: they're not allowed in the fitness centre, period. They're also not allowed on two floors of one of the buildings that houses a single company. Apparently that company is tired of its late-night or early-morning employees finding guards snoozing on the couch in their breakroom, or watching tv while drinking tea/coffee they've ransacked from the cupboards. Go fig.

That same night, I was talking to the female guard and she said how the guards' morale is down because they were given a perk (fitness centre) and then it was taken away.

I pointed out that it was never a "perk", and they they had never been given permission to go there.

Her: "But we have access!"

Me: "You have access to lots of things, none of which are yours. You might have access to an open computer, but security companies have lost contracts because a guard checked their email."

Her: "But I like to workout before I start my shift!"

Me: "No offense, but what's stopping you from working out at the gym before you go to work? There are three within five blocks that I know about, and probably more than I don't."

Her: "I just can't get myself out of the house before it's time for work."

How do you compete with that? ;)

And finally, this morning I got a call from Palooka at about 0730. It seems that Cafeteria Lady, Crazy Cougar Receptionist's old ally and general gossip monkey chewed out Palooka for not letting someone into the cafeteria. The private cafeteria, for employees only. The person he didn't let it wasn't an employee.

The person said that Cafeteria Lady was expecting her, so upon hearing that Palooka let her in and escorted her directly to CL. Once that was done, he went off on a patrol.

When he looped back through the cafeteria, Cafeteria Lady started freaking out on him, saying how he was REQUIRED to let people in, that the cafeteria was losing money, that she had permission from so-and-so, blah blah blah.

She went on and on, and got louder and louder. He was embarassed, and tried to calm her down, but she was in full self-righteous mode and wouldn't be calmed. He told her that I hadn't given him any instructions to let non-employees in, and that did the trick.

My name, rather.

Upon hearing that, she stopped berating him and said "Well! I'll get to the bottom of this!" and that was that.

Then he called me. ;)

So! I have to give a response to this. She can't be telling guards what to do, as physical security is our mandate and... managing the people that scramble eggs and arrange the pre-bought pastries are hers. We don't report to her, and we're certainly not going to do her any favours (especially after this). And since I'm sure this incident will be the spray of venom she includes with every cup of coffee she sells today, I can't just ignore it.

So if any of you have a suggestion, let's hear it! Although by the time you suggest, I'll probably have already done whatever I'm going to do, but you can see how well you know me or else how much more creative you are than me. ;)

So if you'll excuse me, I have to go get some hazardous material handling gloves, some rubber ligatures, and a smoke machine.

You know wha' they say: "See a broad to get that bodiac lay 'er down an' smack 'em yack 'em!"

Propel, propel, propel your craft
softly down liquid solution.
Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically,
Existence is simply illusion.

A German Protestant youth group has put out a calendar for 2006 with erotic (read: nude) scenes from the bible. If you read German, check it out here.

If you don't, here are a couple of samples:












Cover























Delilah cutting Samson's hair


















Shrugs. If you don't like it, don't buy it. I won't even tell you about the cunnilingus passages in the Psalms.

Meanwhile, last weekend a bunch of guys who worked at a vending machine company staked out their machines waiting for the guy who keeps stealing from them.

When he showed up, they surrounded and hogtied him, and took pictures of themselves with him trussed up like the Abu Ghraib photos that made a brief media star of Lynndie England. Story here, but no pictures.

At work, the woman who got rid of Buffalo Kisser is leaving in January to go to a different site with different hours. Apparently she finds it hard to stay up at night, and has had to go home several times because she's too tired to work.

On Sunday night/Monday morning, she apparently called in such a request at 0030 and was gone by 0200. Note that her shift starts at 0000. Sigh.

She, myself, and Palooka were standing in the lobby talking last night, and DiceGimp came up and stood in the group as though he was part of it. Simultaneously, without any previous plan, we all concluded our conversation and went in three different directions. I don't know about the other two, but I wasn't interested in including DiceGimp. I wonder if he gets that a lot?

No happy ending here.

Even if you don't want to read through this entire entry, which can be found here, check out the picture gallery and go through them. They tell the story too.

Special Report: What's best for Baby M?
By Jonathan Martin
Times staff reporter

Baby M was a gift.

Born a month prematurely, with a tuft of her father's dark hair, she arrived no bigger than a loaf of bread.

Mike Testa peered into his daughter's eyes and beamed. She looks just like me, he said.

Mike, 37, had yearned for a family and badly wanted this child.

His girlfriend, Liz Campo, lay exhausted after 17 hours of labor at University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.

Liz, at 42, was a reluctant mother. But this baby was her chance to start a new life with a new man. The 5 ½-pound newborn was swaddled, and Liz held her to her chest.

On this day, Aug. 19, 2003, their dreams were within reach.

But the next day the euphoria began to fade. Traces of methamphetamine were found in Liz's blood. Hospital officials called the state's Child Protective Services.

Baby M was 2 days old when Mary Marrs, a veteran CPS investigator, showed up. Do you know why I am here? she asked Liz and Mike.

The couple rushed to explain themselves. The meth was a stupid mistake, Liz said. In a moment of grief, she'd smoked it a few days earlier, after her mother died.

Life had been particularly hard, they told Marrs. They had lost everything in a house fire. Then Mike took a three-story fall off a balcony. Unemployed and facing $50,000 in hospital bills, Liz and Mike ended up homeless. Mike even attempted suicide.

Liz already had three children from a previous marriage. Although she had recently sent her 6-year-old son to live with his grown siblings in California, she had never run afoul of CPS. I'm a good mother, she told Marrs.

But it was an easy call for CPS.

Show up in court, Marrs told Liz and Mike, and make your case to the judge. Until then, the baby can't leave the hospital.

Just like that, Liz and Mike lost their newborn child.

Mike was in a rage, but he reassured Liz with a promise he would repeat over and over: "We'll get her back. I refuse to lose."

Courtroom 5 in King County Juvenile Court is spare, with a judge's bench and just a few chairs for visitors. This is where the state wields what is known as "the civil death penalty," the power to break up a family.

More than 10 times a day on average, 4,000 times a year, Washington state exercises its power of "in loco parentis" to protect children by separating them from neglectful or abusive parents. In at least half of those cases, the children return home.

These decisions are made against the speeding clock of a child's life. Once a child becomes a ward of the state, parents have up to 15 months to show they're fit to care for their children, or they risk losing them.

The state must make a good-faith effort at helping parents like Liz and Mike overcome their obstacles, and must provide them lawyers.

Ultimately, though, the law says the "child's health and safety shall be the paramount concern."
It is a high-stakes gamble for the state. Err by being too conservative and demanding too much of the parent, and a family is destroyed. Err by being too lenient, and a child may die.

For 40 years, this process was done privately, in closed courtrooms. In 2003, a month before Baby M's birth, the state opened Washington's dependency-court hearings, giving the public its first look inside a system that spends nearly $500 million a year.

Nine days after the birth of their baby, Liz and Mike walked into Courtroom 5, haggard and anxious.

Mike wore black sweatpants that kept slipping off his hips. Liz was dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans borrowed from Marrs.

This day has got to be a mistake, Liz said.

The state's lawyer attacked Liz and Mike's grim parenting credentials, recounting their admissions to Marrs. Mike once had a decade-long struggle with cocaine. And their home was the back of a Toyota pickup with 379,000 miles.

Why the hell did we tell Marrs all that, Mike thought.

Parents rarely speak at these hearings, but Mike shushed his public defender and stood to tell his tale of bum luck to Court Commissioner Hollis Holman.

Mike recounted the house fire, the fall that shattered his pelvis. And his suicide attempt? Slashing his wrists was a cry for help amid the pressure of poverty and a baby on the way, he said.

"I'm not a jerk," he said, choking up. "I'm not a drug addict anymore. I want to be a responsible dad."

Holman had a choice to make: Return the baby to Liz and Mike and order the state to provide them a therapist, or keep the baby in foster care.

"Mrs. Campo, I'm concerned your idea of mourning was to use crystal meth," she said. "Mr. Testa, I'm worried about your mental health."

For now, Holman said, the state needs to protect this baby. You can get her back, she told Liz and Mike, but you must pass random drug tests and find a place to live.

CPS, Holman said, must assess Mike's mental health and allow the couple to visit their baby.

With that, Baby M was no longer theirs. Winning her back could take months.

Stunned, Liz and Mike made their way toward the door. Without warning, a sheriff's deputy stopped Mike. "I've got good news and bad news," the deputy began. "I just saved money on my car insurance, but you're going to jail."

Mike was arrested on a warrant for failing to pay restitution on a 3-year-old forgery conviction.
Liz cried as she drove back to the hospital alone. She rocked and nursed her daughter for two hours until a foster parent showed up and took her baby away. With nowhere to go, Liz sneaked into an empty hospital room and fell asleep.

Liz first met Mike at a Ballard bar in 2002. She was on the rebound from a 19-year marriage. She found a job at a dry cleaners and was hopeful about a new start. She still wanted to become a veterinarian, something she had dreamed of at Shoreline High School. But Liz, who came from a family with seven kids, got pregnant at 17 and dropped out.

When Mike met her she still looked younger than her age and was looking for an uncomplicated guy, someone to make her laugh, provide a house and give her a normal life.

Mike was a talker. He told bawdy jokes and boasted of a wicked fastball, a construction job that once put him atop the Kingdome, and a knack for fixing anything. He had a relentless energy coiled in shoulders the width of an NFL linebacker.

"He filled my head with promises he'd get a job, we'd have a future, a house, and it would be wonderful," Liz would later say.

Mike had found his soul mate, and Liz found him charming and attentive. They moved into an apartment and Mike got a construction job pouring concrete in Bellevue.

Quickly, though, it became a struggle. Lost jobs. Bills. Evictions. Soon they were living in cheap motels and Mike's truck, sweating through a hot summer.

And Liz was pregnant.

Just before Baby M was born in 2003, Liz's two adult children drove up from California. They were afraid for their mother and 6-year-old brother, who was living with Liz and Mike.

"My mom would call me and cry. She was really depressed," her daughter Aleasha Campo would later say. "She was ashamed to admit a lot of stuff that happened."

The mother she knew had danced with her children to oldies and cooked garlicky chicken adobo. How had she become homeless?

With Liz's blessing, they took their little brother back home to California.

Liz's own childhood had been hard. Her mom left when she was 8 and her dad could be abusive. The physical abuse continued after she married. Her husband, she said, would hit her, to the point where she called police.

Mike, she said, was different. "He doesn't put me down or make me feel like I'm dumb. He's the first person who really listens to what I say."

Mike grew up in Marin County, Calif., his stepfather a firefighter, his mom a secretary. As a kid, he loved playing Little League baseball. But as a teenager he started using drugs and drifted away. It wasn't long before he was in and out of drug treatment and jail.

CPS telephoned Mike's parents in California soon after it took Baby M away. The state first reaches out to relatives to try to place a child. Would Mike's parents be willing to care for their new grandchild?

The couple flew up to spend a weekend with the baby. They flew home alone.

"They do not want to have anything to do with the father," a social worker wrote.

In a bland visiting room of CPS's Lower Queen Anne office, Mike hunched over his baby girl, nestled in a car seat. She was now 2 months old. "Oooh, you're so cute," he cooed.

Liz and Mike were now seeing her at least twice a week, though never without an "observation" worker there taking notes. The visits had been sporadic at first and Liz complained about not getting to see her baby. It's an issue with many parents like Liz and Mike who say CPS does not make these visits a priority.

On this day in October, Mike held his daughter like a football, his parenting unsure. Baby M started crying. "It's not my fault," he snapped, handing her to Liz.

Mike picked up the phone to try to find them a place to stay that night. They were sick of living in Mike's truck.

Liz sighed as she held a bottle for her baby. Mike will get better when he spends more time with his daughter, she said.

The baby had already been shuttled between two foster homes. She was first given to a 22-year-old with a child of her own. That didn't work, and she was sent to live with a middle-aged couple in Lynnwood.

These new foster parents seemed caring, Liz said. They had two other foster children and two of their own. The foster mother sent Liz a photograph of Baby M. She added it to her collection, which she kept in a Ziploc bag.

Despite their situation, Liz and Mike had a better shot than a lot of parents at winning their baby back. They were together and motivated. And Liz had no prior record with CPS.

"I think it's very possible they will have her home by Christmas," a social worker said.

At their next court date, Liz and Mike tried hard to make a good impression. They found thrift-store slacks and a leather jacket for Mike, and a red sweater for Liz.

"I'm tired of dressing like a teenager," Mike announced as he and Liz walked into Juvenile Court. Liz, her auburn hair pulled back, looked more lawyer than client.

But they had to wait for Courtroom 5. Long waits are a problem statewide for dependency courts. A recent survey found that state social workers waste an average of 12 hours a month waiting for overbooked courtrooms.

As one, two, three, then four hours slipped by, Liz and Mike grew more and more confused. They struggled to understand the paperwork their court-appointed lawyers handed them. What's a dispositional order? Why was Mike listed as his baby's "presumed father"? And where was the help finding a place to live?

"I don't want to sound dumb, but I don't understand this," Liz said when her lawyer stopped by. "I want to know, am I going to get my kid back?"

Before she got an answer, the lawyer peeled off to chat with another lawyer about another case, not uncommon in dependency court, where public defenders carry heavy caseloads.

By the end of the day, Liz and Mike had yet to see the inside of Courtroom 5, but their two public defenders had cut a hallway deal: Baby M would remain a ward of the state — indefinitely. If they were to get her back, Liz and Mike would have to finish a checklist within 15 months that included parenting classes and mental evaluations. Both would be required to take random drug tests. Mike would require drug treatment, but not Liz, the state determined.

Resigned, Liz and Mike signed the papers.

As Liz stepped outside for a cigarette, Mike spotted some leftover cake in the court clerk's office. "This is the most humiliating day of my life," he said, eating a piece.

On Thanksgiving Day 2003, Liz and Mike hit bottom.

Mike's pickup — their home — was gone, smashed in a hit-and-run.

They bought a basket of chicken strips and ate their holiday meal at a Ballard bus stop, then walked to a park to sleep. But Mike's damaged hip locked up, so they wheeled their suitcases to the Sunset Bowl to steal a few winks in the hard plastic chairs.

"I don't know how much longer I can take this," Liz said the next day.

They turned to their new social worker — their third so far — for help.

But Carole Johnson made it clear she was not the maternal type of social worker. No hand-holding. No excuses. Get your checklist done and we'll try to get your baby back, she advised.
Johnson, 59, with short silver hair and a husky voice, had been a drug and mental-health counselor earlier in her career. Liz and Mike were good at finding free lunches and donated clothes, Johnson said. But why can't they just find work and get an apartment?

"There is this scattered thing they do," she said. "They light on an idea and then Mike is on to the next idea."

Johnson was not one to back down when confronting Mike, and even called for security during a heated argument with him.

When Liz and Mike asked her to help them find a place to live, Johnson handed them a two-page list of housing providers. Start calling, she said.

The list wasn't much help. It can take months, even years to get a subsidized home in Seattle, and some providers turn down people like Liz and Mike, who have prior evictions.

Johnson understood the problem. And she offered Liz another solution. "Certainly housing would be easier if they were to separate."

If Liz checked into a shelter for single women, Johnson said, she would stand a better chance of getting a permanent place. A stable home could then help her get her daughter back, she said, echoing a suggestion made by Liz's lawyer.

The state cannot order a couple to part ways, and Johnson said she was just stating the obvious.
But Liz was upset. "They have no right to say that. Mike is my best friend."

Instead, Liz made a request of Johnson. Several housing providers that rent to families said they might offer Liz and Mike an apartment if Johnson would sign a letter supporting their daughter's return.

Johnson refused. "I can't give a letter, in good conscience ... " she said later. "What if they start using crank?"

A thin winter light faded to dusk as Liz leaned against the pickup, smoking a cigarette. Interstate 5 hummed overhead. It was now late February, Baby M was 6 months old, and the couple was back living in their truck parked near the Ravenna Boulevard overpass. They had driven it away from the repair shop without paying, claiming the work had been shoddy.

Liz ticked off their appointments for the next day: a morning visit with their daughter, drug counseling for Mike and then a trip to West Seattle for parenting classes.

Mike, drowsy from his antidepressant medications, yawned.

"Don't fall asleep again during the visit," Liz scolded him.

With their home-on-wheels back, they were finally feeling good about finishing their checklist. Their drug tests had come back clean for the past three months. The eight-week parenting class had gone well. And they'd been regularly visiting their daughter, watching with wonder as she grew curls and learned to sit up.

Mike also was making some money. His public defender had paid to get Mike's pressure washer out of a pawn shop. Soon after, he scampered up the cedar-shake roof of a mini-mansion in Woodinville and blasted off the moss. Astride the peak, he looked down at Liz sitting on the bumper of his pickup.

"Someday all this will be yours. I kid you not," Mike said, laughing. Liz rolled her eyes, but she wanted to believe his promise of a better life.

Even Johnson saw some progress: "They're doing well." It might be possible to start giving Liz and Mike more time with their baby, she said, in anticipation of returning her to them.

But she was concerned Mike's psychological evaluation was still missing. "The question with Mike is how can he maintain 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Mike was leery of the evaluation. "They want to go into all my past and find dirt."

As Baby M was nearing her first birthday, Mike was earning enough to pay for a $38-a-night motel room on Aurora Avenue North. Liz and Mike settled in, decorating with strings of tiny lights.

Watching TV one night, Liz saw a crime drama linking antidepressants to suicide. She asked Mike if his medications were making him feel worse. Mike had loathed the side effects that came with the Zoloft, so he had quit taking it.

Right outside their door, there was another drug, cheap and easily available, that Mike turned to: meth.

"It was a bad environment for a recovering addict," Liz later said of Mike.

Mike's optimism began to fade. He turned down a job at Jiffy Lube and spent his days scouring Aurora Avenue thrift stores to find something valuable enough to sell to pawn shops. A 69-cent gold necklace turned into another night at the motel.

Mike began skipping visits with Baby M; when he did attend, he often was in a foul mood and picked fights with Liz.

He was starting to scare her, but she didn't want to tell anyone, hoping he would return to his old self.

Johnson, after hearing about Mike's behavior during the visits, asked him to resume drug tests. He refused.

Whether it was mental illness or the delusions and paranoia often linked with meth use, Mike lost his grip on reality.

One day in early September, at the Ballard Denny's, Mike calmly explained that he was being chased by the paparazzi in helicopters and that he had bumped into Mike Tyson at his motel. He heard whispers, he said, but couldn't tell where they were coming from.

He munched on a French fry and said Liz, too, was suspect: Martha Stewart had undergone reconstructive surgery and was now masquerading as his girlfriend.

"I kid you not," he said. "It's Martha Stewart. I'm not crazy."

Liz was desperate to get her baby back and to get Mike away from Aurora Avenue. She arranged for her young son to come up from California, hoping his presence would help them cut through the waiting list for a subsidized apartment.

They finally got a two-bedroom duplex in Edmonds. They had survived more than a year on the streets and in seedy motels.

Liz hoped their new home would be the last thing that was needed to convince Johnson to help her get her baby back. She carried a picture showing her daughter's face smeared with cake frosting from her first birthday party. Liz had not been allowed to be there.

The deadline for Johnson to make a decision was approaching: Baby M had been in foster care for almost 15 months.

Johnson needed to check up on Liz and Mike in their new apartment. Liz's youngest son was also living there, but he would soon return to California to live with his older siblings.

A video camera that Mike had mounted outside the front door tracked Johnson as she approached. Inside, the place was packed with his other thrift-store finds, including stereos and furniture, power tools and cans of paint thinner. Poked in among the clutter was a crib, there for Baby M.

This looks crazy, Johnson thought. This is no place for a baby.

On Nov. 18, 2004, Liz and Mike had another visit with their daughter. It didn't go well and Liz scolded him for being too rough with the baby.

That night, back at the duplex, Mike erupted. He pounced on Liz and began to throttle her until she heard the bones in her neck pop. A neighbor called 911.

Liz escaped and hid outside in bushes until an Edmonds police cruiser crunched up the gravel drive. As Mike was handcuffed, Liz pleaded: He's mentally ill, take him to a hospital, he needs help. Instead, he spent nine days in jail.

Edmonds police came back five times in the following months.

Liz automatically was given a protection order, but she had it rescinded. When Mike wasn't doing drugs, she said, he was a sweet man.

"She was always concerned about him and didn't want to leave him behind," Liz's sister, Sandra Smolinski, said. "She loved him."

Johnson saw Liz's reluctance as textbook: "If you looked up domestic-violence victim ... Liz would have every characteristic. A classic case."

Domestic violence, drugs and mental illness are the most common problems confronting families in dependency court. Even if Mike were out of the picture, Liz's failure to leave him earlier would cast doubt on her priorities.

The question of what was best for Baby M had been answered, Johnson decided.

She started the process of terminating the couple's parental rights.

Once the state files for termination, about four out of five parents simply give up.

Liz decided she had to leave Mike. On March 23, 2005, she packed everything she could salvage into a second truck Mike had bartered for. She headed for her sister's place in Ballard.

Earlier that day, a pawn-shop owner had warned Liz: Be careful. Mike was just by and was threatening to kill you.

He's said that before, she replied, and headed out the door.

Mike, on his way back to the duplex, spotted her truck on Aurora Avenue North. His pockets were full of fake gold jewelry that the pawn shop had refused to buy. Liz had the real stuff, he thought.

He flipped a U-turn, gunned his engine and went after her. Liz looked up and saw him in the rearview mirror. He's going to kill me, she thought.

Mike chased Liz as she tore through parking lots in a panic. He caught up to her back on the street and rammed her truck until it flipped upside down, skidded and smashed into oncoming traffic. The six-car pileup was all over the news that night.

The impact broke Liz's shoulder, ankle and jaw. She struggled to breathe.

Then came a cheerful voice: "Squeeze my little toe and I'll sing you a song." A Barney doll Liz bought for her daughter had come alive, she would later say.

As Liz howled in pain, Mike poked his head into the cab and yelled at her, "Ah, shut up."

Five people were taken to the hospital; Liz and a 59-year-old woman from Everett underwent emergency surgeries. Mike was hauled off to King County Jail.

Four days later, he was still unhinged. When told the crash had broken Liz's jaw, he drew his mouth into a tight grin. "Good. I hope that bitch is wired shut."

He was sent to Western State Hospital. His diagnosis: schizophrenia.

Mike was about to lose all that mattered to him. In October, he gave up his parental rights to Baby M, including his chance to see or even write her. Mike got one concession: If his daughter is adopted, she or her new parents must send him a letter and picture once a year.

"It breaks my heart to give up my kid," Mike said. "I was acting out crazy with my illness, and I hurt someone I love very much."

A few weeks later, after he pleaded guilty to assaulting Liz and the Everett driver, he was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison.

And he was ordered to never see or contact Liz.

At the hearing, Liz faced Mike for the last time. "I want to know why," she asked, trembling. "I'm suffering the rest of my life, Michael. I will never be the same. I never did anything whatsoever to make you want to do this to me."

As Mike was being led back to jail, he turned to Liz and mouthed, "I'm sorry."

On a crisp fall day two months ago, in the lobby of a CPS office, Liz kneeled in front of her daughter and zipped up the girl's carrot-colored jacket.

Her baby was now a 2-year-old with curly brown hair. She could run and talk and giggle. She looked like Mike, with a wide, toothy grin.

Liz wiped away her own tears. After the crash, she had endured six months of hospitals, nursing homes and physical therapy. At first, she had hoped to build a new life, away from Mike, solid enough to get her daughter back.

But her shoulder, held together by pins and a metal plate, made it impossible to lift her girl or find steady work. Penniless and again homeless, Liz decided to sign away her parental rights and move back to California to be close to her three other children. She is guaranteed three visits, three letters and three pictures a year.

It was anguishing, Liz said, but best for her daughter. And the foster parents in Lynnwood had been working to adopt her.

"She looks happier in the pictures sent by [the foster mom] than she looks with me," said Liz. "I'm just beat down."

This day in October would be Liz's last visit before the paperwork went through. Carole Johnson, who had spent two years as Liz and Mike's social worker, choked back tears as she watched Liz bundle up her daughter.

Baby M rubbed her eyes, ready for a nap. Liz leaned in.

"I love you. Don't forget me. Don't forget me," Liz said. "Never say 'goodbye,' just 'see you later.' "

Baby M nodded, waved and hugged a bottle of apple juice. "I see ya," she said, and headed home.

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com
Mike Siegel: 206-464-8144 or msiegel@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

"Calgon, take me away!"

crunch crunch crunch wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Sorry. Snow and a hill. What do you expect?

Teenage girls have the most absolutely comic looks of unbelieving disgust when they don't know that someone is eating wonton with chopsticks, and not damp filmy turds.

I saw the newest Harry Potter movie today. Does anybody besides myself think that it was edited really badly? I knew the story so it wasn't a problem, but even within scenes there was missing connective dialogue, nevermind between chapters.

Or I could just be too picky.

Current bought-on-a-whim candle burning: Lemongrass & Citrus

I've got one more commandment to break... and I'm looking for victim volunteers.

In the Easter of my sixth year, an itchy-suited and hard-shoed visit to church with my grandma turned into a raging holy war that had the parishioners and the clergy arguing with me in teams and relays.

It started innocently enough: "Why does God care if we take off our hats, Grandma?" But the nosy ladies in the nearby pews couldn't bear to simply listen in, and the argument spread like ripples on a pond, out as far as the pulpit, where the pastor decided to squash the whole line of inquiry with some half-remembered philosophical word games from Descartes in which the objective truth of reality is used to prove the beneficence of God and vice versa, and culminates with "I think therefore I am." Pastor Rhiel even managed to work it into the thread of the sermon, but before he could go on, my shrill little voice answered from within the congregation.

Amazingly, my six-year-old brain had managed to assimilate all of Descartes' fairly tricksy riddles in as long as it took to describe them, and then went on to use those same arguments to prove the necessary cruelty of God, followed by the necessary nonexistence of the Supreme Being, and Grandma tried to take me home then, but the pastor - who'd apparently watched Jesuits play intellectual table tennis and recognised a natural when he saw one - called me to the pulpit, where I took on the entire congregation, singly and in bunches, as they assailed my reasoning and I built it back up, laying rhetorical traps that they blundered into with all the cunning of a cabbage.

Pastor Rhiel laughed and clarified the points when they were stuttered out by some marble-mouthed rhetorical amateur from the audience, then sat back and marveled as I did my thing. Not much was getting done vis-a-vis sermonizing, and there was still the communion to be administered, but God knew it had been a long time since the congregation was engaged so thoroughly with coming to grips with God and what their faith meant.

Afterwards, when I was returned to my scandalized, thin-lipped Grandma, Pastor Rhiel made a point of warmly embracing her and telling her that I was welcome at his pulpit any time, and suggested a future in the seminary. Grandma was amazed, and blushed under her Sunday powder, and the clawed hand on my shoulder became a caress.

note: none of the above may actually have happened

I still like to argue.

Sometimes to clarify what someone is saying, either for myself or for their benefit. Sometimes just for the sake of arguing.

And sometimes when I get frustrated. I'm not a big one for hitting walls, but I can let the force out of my mouth. God help you if I've been eating onions.

When I made it home last night (around 0200), I checked my mail. There was an envelope from work in there, which is odd. I got my renewed license earlier that same day so it couldn't be paperwork for that. I'd received the schedule for the next two weeks and my name was on that, so I wasn't fired. What could it be?

So I tore open the end and saw... a pink slip.

Rather, a pinkish slip of paper. It was a cheque. Get this:

It was pay for working the Grey Cup last Sunday. And a letter of thanks for working it, but that's not the problem.

One: who the hell mails pink cheques to employees?! Especially since I use direct deposit!

Two: those sneaky buggers payed me out for the day so that it didn't count towards my weekly hours, meaning that I won't be paid overtime for working more than forty hours that week. Dirty out-of-wedlock-children!

They did pay me for one extra hour than I worked though. Didn't get OT on that either.

I'm going to hold my arguments in though, until I get paid on Friday. THEN I get get well and truly pissed off.

And for those who like to rock, a little rocking chair in the middle...

Song stuck in my head again.

This time it's the theme from The Friendly Giant, which I mainly liked for the opening sequence which featured more castle and giant/miniature stuff than the show itself, which featured a giraffe puppet named Jerome and a rooster called Rusty.

In a similar vein, I mainly liked Mister Rogers because then I could see Trolley come out of the tunnel in the wall, roll through the living room on a ledge, and back into the tunnel. What can I say? I liked toy trains. I still have mine in boxes.

Anyway, the song is all the worse because thanks to someone that used to insist I watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I even know the words to it.

And if you're not old enough to remember The Friendly Giant but are/were a Buffy fan, it's the song that Spike kept being tormented with towards the end of the series.

Way to take my childhood memories and make them torment me years later, Joss Whedon.