Monday, January 03, 2005

IT AIN'T SMALLPOX, BUT IT'S CLOSE

Back to work bright and early, well, early anyway. I caught the back half of that show "Smallpox" , and since they showed it in encore right after, I stayed up and watched to the point I came in the first time around, and as a result, was lacking sleep.
(Sidebar)...I really have some reservations about a show that, while not exactly presenting a new idea to the terrorists ( I'm sure the idea of unleashing smallpox on the world is akin to the.best.orgasm.ever. for terroristas), gave them a blueprint of how to pull it off and (I'm afraid) a scarily accurate picture of how the response would be bungled by the people "in charge". Smallpox is a fine example of what Midnight Oil called short memory back in the 80's...It was probably the first biological weapon ever used...against the native americans. Then it was eradicated, and by that I mean all of it except some that we and the "former soviet union" kept "just in case".
Just in case...of what exactly? For a time when any and all innoculations have worn out because after all, we eradicated smallpox right? So why innoculate? How about those cryogenic tubes marked "watch the fuck out! SMALLPOX! DO NOT THAW!" ? Overall, it was mediocre at best, but the actual pictures of victims creeped me out. (End sidebar).
So...we end up back at a job where we had been waiting for the abatement people to do the demolition...another lovely relic of the past, asbestos, was everywhere. I start demo-ing some recessed lighting. When you demo stuff, the idea is it's going to be discarded, so you aren't gentle in the process. I'm 4 lights into 12 when the "project manager" shows up and informs us the recessed lights stay, despite what the blueprints indicate...I have to put them back. I look down from my ladder, brushing the dust and debris from my shirt ( it's "not asbestos" BTW) , at the decimated carcasses of 4 can lights. I set about reanimating them, and an hour later, they were back in their place. As if I had never touched them (unless you look up inside the ceiling and see the frankenstein...that's Frahnkensteen to you...mish mash of parts wired together to render them working recessed lights once again) .
And the rest of the day just kinda went by, with an endless stream of bureaucrats from various disciplines, each one more important than the last, coming through and contradicting each other on various points of the project, causing us and the other trades to shift gears and change direction, in subtle, but time consuming ways. I'm back to work, I thought,and then I thought about that movie...Smallpox, and understood who the real enemy was...again.

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