Verbal Spark!

I gave up 15 years of working in corporate America to go on the outside and work as an installer here in South Florida. I install DSL service for the local phone company. I just could not deal with the office politics, boss over the shoulder, trying to stay awake sitting on one place for hours and supervisors expecting me to do work. I was sick and tired of watching ass kissers running around the place laughing at the bosses dry jokes, asking stupid questions in meetings effectively extending the meetings past complete boredom. I was sick of it.

Well now I on the outside. Have no desk to sit at, no bosses over my shoulder, no weekly meetings to attend, no dumb ass jokes to listen to and no retards sitting next to me. Out here it’s just me and the open road which leads me to the homes of some interesting folks. I’ve met them all, but something tells me that might not be final. I’ve met some extremely nasty people (fortunately that have been relatively few), very clean people, hideous looking people, beautiful people, everyday people, celebrities, poor folks, rich folks, women trying to hit on me and men trying to hit on me (yes, I do work in an area with a rather large gay population). Then I’ve had dogs humping my leg, dogs trying to bite my leg, come to face with large hideous iguanas and snakes slithering around backyards.

Then there are the stories. One colleague of mine told me a customer locked him in a downstairs room an told him he could not leave until his DSL was fixed. Another colleague told me that an old lady locked him in her house and told him he could leave unless her computer was up and running. Another installer told me that he went to the house of a male gay customer for an appointment and had to go back a few days later because of a recurring problem. He was pleasantly surprised to enter the home to find the man in a silk robe and a frisky smile on his face. It’s not all bad though. Working on South Beach or Ft. Lauderdale Beach can be rather invigorating, if you know what I mean.

I once had a neighbor who made a living working for a company that installed home theaters for the rich and the famous. He noticed something about them other than their affluence. He told me that by listening to their conversations, they all were trying to outdo the other. In other words, if Jay-Z, for example, installed a $50,000 projector, he would get on the phone to tell his other peers. To go one up, the peers would then seek to purchase something for more money just to say they have a more expensive projector. Poor people like me are more inclined to help other poor folks find deals and ways to save a few precious dollars. For us, it’s all about how much we can save. For the rich it’s all about how much they can spend.

People I don’t know where I got it from, but be it my house or anyone else’s, I just can’t make a whole lot of noise when people are sleeping.

My floors are all tiled and the last thing I would do before I leave home is put on my shoes because I don’t want to walk about with all that tapping and disturbing people. I open my door quietly and I close it quietly. I close the bathroom door when I am brushing my teeth as not to allow the sound of running water to come through too loud. I don’t talk loud to anyone when I know others are still sleeping - I whisper. I try at all cost to not turn on any unnecessary lights and try my best to have all my things prepared from the night before so I dress in my garage where any sound will not be heard and lights not be seen. You won’t hear me reaching for the glass all the way in the back of the cabinet or fumbling through frying pans at 7 in the morning or 14 o’clock at night.

Now people have come to my house and did the opposite of all the above and I have gone to people’s homes who do the same thing. You’re sleeping and they’re carrying on like it’s a soup kitchen, lights on all over the place, in and out the doors opening hard and pulling it in so it could slam, up and down with hard shoes on and rumbling around in the pots and pans cabinet and calling one another from one area of the house all the way across to another. Maybe it’s because I have kids and at that nosey point in their lives, any little sound caused them to pop their heads up because they felt they were missing something important and had to get up and terrorize my ass after that.

Some of us are very well aware that when we call our credit card companies, Internet providers, computer vendors we are often calling overseas. The company I work for has call centers in India, the Phillipines, Costa Rica and I’ve even heard, Jamaica (still trying to confirm this one). This has frustrated customers that I meet on the field who either complain about a communication problem, lack of understanding of their needs or just outright anger at the idea that “American jobs” are going overseas to foreigners in the name of saving money.

Saving money? Well, the multi-billion dollar companies are outsourcing their tech support services and customer services overseas because they can get away with paying what we would consider pocket change to employees over there. Why pay someone in the United States $15 an hour when you can pay someone overseas $15 a week to do the same job?

Well a new wrinkle has been added to this arrangement. Countries like India are now outsourcing the work given to them from “First World” countries to African countries like Kenya where their workers are paid even less than their Indian counterparts. Of course, Kenya was a former British colony like India so English is also spoken and spoken rather well by the more educated class. When all is said and done, the exploitation still ends in Africa.

I was revisiting the biblical book of Numbers chapter 31 and began to wonder about something. I mean we all know the writers of the Bible were “inspired” and because of this cannot be considered primitive in their thinking and on target with all their facts and all that good stuff (anyone wants to buy the Eiffel Tower?). Well, if anyone had any doubts the Bible was written by men and solely by men without any so-called inspiration of a “good and loving” God,  you need look no further than here.

The chapter opens with the “Lord” speaking to Moses (conveniently so, of course) to go and massacre the Midianites to avenge the Lord. Later on in the chapter (verse 16), Moses explains that the reason for this was because the Midianite women caused the Israelite people to trespass which led to a plague (sickness). Please note that the “inspired” writer attributed all devastations to God so if a plague broke out, justification had to be found as to what pissed this good and loving god off. After all, he couldn’t be that petty. Interestingly though, while Moses wanted everybody from Midian dead, he did not mind sparing the virgin girls for the men. Hmm…

So in order to find out what this was all about, we have to go back to the equally wonderful chapter of Numbers 25 where the offense allegedly took place. Seems like the women of Moab/Midian were too irresistible to the Israelite men and they got their whoring on. In addition, the writer had to toss in the usual idol worship to justify what was to come which played out wen a certain Eleazar in a frenzy of fanatical zeal started impaling folks. This “holy” act supposedly stayed the plague.

Now when one REALLY takes a good look at the story, the orgyfest, the subsequent plague and how Moses was adamant on killing all Midianites except the virgin girls, do you think it is plausible that the plague that broke out may have been some kind of sexually transmitted disease, maybe even an ancient version of AIDS (from God as punishment of course)? Think about it. The plague came upon the Israelites after they involved themselves in what appeared to have been a sexfest and the writer highlights the contact with these women as the cause and also as the cause for the vengeance taken upon the Midianites. In addition, Moses spares only the virgin Midianite girls. There seems to have been a connection made in the mind of the writer with sexual experienced Midianite women and the subsequent outbreak of a plague so it made sense that only the virgin Midianite girls were to be spared. So Moses…er, God was not upset that Israelite men had sex with Midiante women, just that they had sex with the infected ones, those who were not virgins.

It is rather clear that this was all about vengeance, a vengeance to wipe out a people who  infected the people of Israel with some disease.  Later in the chapter we also read how the Israelites also plundered the Midianite land and divided it up amongst their tribes. Old fashioned plunder, loot and steal in God’s name. What is also rather mysterious about all of this is the fact that Moses’ wife, Zipporah, and his father-in-law, Jethro, were Midianites. Where were they in all of this?

By the way, how did these soldiers determine who were virgins and who were not? Not sure I even want to think about it. You just have to love this. After all, God’s ways are higher than our ways and his ways is beyond our understanding. I sure don’t care to know what they are about either. Seems quite bloody.