blogito ergo sum
Curious leapbloggers may have clicked on my profile, where it says that I'm a "dredge operator". This isn't some attempt to be cute. I am not (yet) one of those bloggers whose sum purpose is to trawl the net for cool, exciting, weird or insufferably dumb things in order to collect them all here and prove to you that I know where they are too. This blog is about - jesus, I haven't gotten that figured out yet. I want to write more about music, really I do. I will when music excites me again. Right now I'm kind of tired of it. I listen to the same things over and over again, and mostly because they're such a soft cushion to lay on that I don't have to have a response to them: Richard Hawley for those times when you feel like you should be listening to music but you don't really want to, Pavement or Swell when you just want a friend in the empty room at night before you go to bed, Alice Coltrane when you're hooked up to the milking machine staring at a dry barn wall wondering why you followed all those other cows into the narrowing corral and you just want something to take you out of it without punching you.
Right now: Secret Chiefs 3. Because the duMaurier I'm smoking tastes like every other duMaurier I've ever smoked and I hate that.
I am a dredge operator.
That's not my dredge, but it's sort of close. Now, I don't actually work on the dredge, it is operated via remote control from a shack on the shore of the lagoon. There is a cutter head on this dredge which can be lowered, and a pump which pumps sludge through an endless series of pipes into a tank down the hill. This sludge is then added to a mixture of polymer which turns it into a substance of about the texture of a stiff, heavy chocolate mousse. This substance is added to the city's garbage, as it winds its way through expensive and labour-intensive processes on its way to becoming compost. The sludge speeds the composting process.
What I do is not really complicated, but it takes a knack. If the sludge I pump is too thin, then more polymer must be added - polymer's expensive. If it's too thick, it will trip out the transfer pump breakers, and eventually degrade the very expensive equipment.
Here's part of that equipment. It's called a "muffin monster" (I've heard all the jokes).
This thing chews up whatever errant materials get sucked up - wood, trash, rocks even.
This is what I do for maybe three or four hours every day. For the rest of my twelve-hour shift, I operate a much simpler and more expendable piece of equipment.
It's not exactly what I had in mind for myself after six years of post-secondary education, but such is the nature of a raw-materials based economy. If you can't capitalize on your fresh, piping hot education righta-rightaway, then to the factory with you, sir or ma'am. I know a lot of people here in Alberta who wound up like this.
Anyways, it's not really that bad. At least I work for someone who's doing something positive for my city, and for nature. I could just as easily be some tenderloin snaggletooth being menaced by equipment designed to extract oil from our obdurate tarsands to the north, where all the big monkey oil companies have parachuted in an entire city's worth of men for the tenaciously single-minded purpose of fucking shit up. Or I could be working retail or food service in our terrifying Mall.
Aaand, it turns out that I'll most likely be getting a promotion from the dredge soon. It's not official yet so keep schtum and cross your fingers, but very soon I could be running one of these:
Hooray for commerce degrees!
Right now: Secret Chiefs 3. Because the duMaurier I'm smoking tastes like every other duMaurier I've ever smoked and I hate that.
I am a dredge operator.
That's not my dredge, but it's sort of close. Now, I don't actually work on the dredge, it is operated via remote control from a shack on the shore of the lagoon. There is a cutter head on this dredge which can be lowered, and a pump which pumps sludge through an endless series of pipes into a tank down the hill. This sludge is then added to a mixture of polymer which turns it into a substance of about the texture of a stiff, heavy chocolate mousse. This substance is added to the city's garbage, as it winds its way through expensive and labour-intensive processes on its way to becoming compost. The sludge speeds the composting process.
What I do is not really complicated, but it takes a knack. If the sludge I pump is too thin, then more polymer must be added - polymer's expensive. If it's too thick, it will trip out the transfer pump breakers, and eventually degrade the very expensive equipment.
Here's part of that equipment. It's called a "muffin monster" (I've heard all the jokes).
This thing chews up whatever errant materials get sucked up - wood, trash, rocks even.
This is what I do for maybe three or four hours every day. For the rest of my twelve-hour shift, I operate a much simpler and more expendable piece of equipment.
It's not exactly what I had in mind for myself after six years of post-secondary education, but such is the nature of a raw-materials based economy. If you can't capitalize on your fresh, piping hot education righta-rightaway, then to the factory with you, sir or ma'am. I know a lot of people here in Alberta who wound up like this.
Anyways, it's not really that bad. At least I work for someone who's doing something positive for my city, and for nature. I could just as easily be some tenderloin snaggletooth being menaced by equipment designed to extract oil from our obdurate tarsands to the north, where all the big monkey oil companies have parachuted in an entire city's worth of men for the tenaciously single-minded purpose of fucking shit up. Or I could be working retail or food service in our terrifying Mall.
Aaand, it turns out that I'll most likely be getting a promotion from the dredge soon. It's not official yet so keep schtum and cross your fingers, but very soon I could be running one of these:
Hooray for commerce degrees!
posted by gibletquesterrs at 10:04 PM
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