you did me a favour when I left you behind

I love smashing glass jars when I take our recycling to the depot. Now let’s just get this out of the way, Bowman:

What does this joy in smashing jars say about me? I mean, I hate waste like crazy. Recycling has its place but it’s still dreadfully wasteful when it would take less energy to simply reuse a thing. So it drives me nuts that when it comes to glass — an easy to clean, disinfect, and reuse product — we instead opt to collect it, drive tons upon tons of it around (and glass is heavy as hell so think of the fuel costs to move it from place to place), and use special processes to break it down or melt it or whatever, reform it, ship it out again. Recycling glass is maybe a little bit better than tossing it in the landfill but not by much so I don’t like recycling it — I don’t enjoy smashing jars because I am so wildly supportive of our glass recycling programs.

And yet, every time I go to the recycling depot, my fave part of the visit is launching each glass container into the metal bin. I’m sure the staff and other people stare and wonder why an apparently normal adult is making such a point to gleefully smash all the glass they possibly can, but I couldn’t care less. It’s worth it. Despite being wasteful and something I can’t abide by, I can’t deny that smashing glass is really fucking fun.

It makes me wonder about the odd drive so many humans have to just break shit. I mean, I am not alone in this, and it’s not just glass. People love watching building demolitions, and hit-to-pass car racing derbies. And when crowds of people celebrate it often turns into a riot where windows are smashed and cars are burnt and flipped over — and the people doing that shit are happy! So why? Why do we take such joy in destruction? My first thought is that doing so is like freeing yourself from the shackles of developed human thinking and living — we live in such highly structured and ordered worlds that I bet it just feels good to free yourself from that in some small way and say “aahhhh fuck it, I’m sick of having to make sense and have reasons for my actions.” It’s probably just a rebellion against the tyranny of a conscious and/or structured existence.

Wow, I think that’s a pretty good guess for me just sitting at my computer, plunking keys while thinking about smashing jars at the recycling depot. Not sure how right it is but it seems plausible and that’s enough for me. Well done, Janie.

^{chaos reigns}

wordy texts from a filthy (but nice) pig of a man

I just found some old texts in my phone that I was hanging on to. I wanted to take screen shots of my convo with the buyer and post them here but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to take screenshots with this stupid phone (despite way too much time spent on youtube vids and experimenting on my own). So instead, I forwarded them to my email and will copy/paste them here. Then I can finally delete the stupid things from my phone.

The background: I had a set of wheels and tires from my old Toyota for sale on usedvic, and came across another ad where someone was looking for wheels and tires for their old Toyota. I texted them to let them know, and they called me back and chewed my ear off for like 10 minutes while I was in the middle of a hike with pals. Very irritating. After that, I stuck to texts with the person. Here is the resulting convo.

***

buyer:

I'm good to do it at 8 a.m. or at noon. I'll be working with another guy who needs my direction, from about 10 a.m. until noon. So before that or after is fine.

What works best for you?
....
I'm at ______ which runs off ______. When you get off the highway and turn towards the downtown of Langford , it's the first left when you are barely over the hump of the Highway. The job is on the left and the only muddy mess you will see on the left maybe a quarter kilometre from the start of the road. They are doing Rock Drilling and later blasting. Hard to miss.

buyer:

Not sure if you are a morning guy. I think 9 a.m. would be great because the frost will be gone if we get any and they will only be setting up to drill and they won't be blasting yet. I had totally forgotten about the blasting when we first talked.

me:

9 will be fine. See u then

buyer:

Great. I have cash.

buyer:

I have my impact and a 13/16 socket, which I think is correct, but it's not an impact socket. I'm hoping you can bring your impact and socket just in case there's a problem. We have a temporary power pole so there's somewhere to plug in. Thanks.

 I might park by the pole anyway, just because it's a little further from the rock drilling. I don't know what time they're starting that.
.....
If you have any building plans, we should talk. I'm in the demolition business and I also prepare houses to be picked up and moved. I often have stuff for sale. Lumber, windows doors,  garage doors, appliances and many other things.

***

This post is about those stupid texts but I also want to document the actual meeting with the buyer. I was so desperate to get rid of the tires that I actually agreed to deliver the damn things. I pulled up to a house that was in the middle of being demolished. It looked like an abandoned squatter’s building in the middle of a huge mud pit. There were filthy men walking all over the yard, loud machines running everywhere. I had to yell to one of the guys and ask where I could find the person buying my tires. The guy was like “oh, them, uhhh yeah they’re around here somewhere, maybe over there,” and pointed me toward a corner of the mud pit. I got there and found a filthy, smelly, very friendly 50-something yr old man warming up a pizza pop in a toaster oven he had plugged in to a generator. His beat up Tercel was there, full of fucking garbage. It looked like he lived out of it. He told me a lot of very personal details about his life as we swapped the wheels onto his car, like how he had a wife who was down in the Philippines and he made good money in the demo business and living down in the Philippines was so cheap that he was just saving up a bit more before moving down there to build a dream home with his wife. You won’t blame me for not believing a word of this, I’m sure, but he really did seem quite earnest. I finished helping him and got the fuck out of there as quick as I could. He seemed like a nice guy but when a person has that many red flags, I don’t like to spend any more time around them than absolutely necessary.

Annnnd, now I can delete those texts. Phew.