Why oh why Linh Dinh are you doing that kind of work when you have such talent and are worth a hundred times more with it than you make there? Is there no demand for you as a teacher of English at the very least?

Once again I really enjoyed reading your article about work and life. I sit here drinking my 3rd cup of black coffee and am reminded of some of my many jobs.
Thanks for the good and bad memories.

I have read your work, assiduously, Linh. And I relate to it. I dropped out of college after 5 years of studying psychology-I took every undergraduate course-in order to figure myself out and “help” other people. The latter were just transplanted external thoughts by the late 1960s wave of idealism and nascent Social Justice turd soup.

I went on to Marine Engineering School for 3 and half years.

I too went “on the road”, hitchhiking, sleeping in parks, working odd jobs and trying desperately to connect with SOMETHING that had meaning and was nakedly real. Only later did I realize that this was my journey toward Individuation . I know how it is to feel the outsider, thoughts running differently, processing information differently.

Much later in life, disconnected thoughts, doubts, feelings of incompleteness of ideas, ideals, and conceptions that other people accepted outright and based their life around, I found unity and wholeness-much more of it, by studying Jung and focusing of the Orient, the ways of thinking of Asians and their different and similar culture heritages.

It was then I began readings on Buddha, and watched a play-like documentary on Netflix by a man named Modi, a devout Buddhist. Since then, my life and the External World makes sense and is understandable. I simply realized I was ALWAYS a Buddhist, and many ideas and insights I had were the experiences of the Archetypes and previous incarnations. My initial exposure to the Orient started at age 17, living there. I spent my life as a merchant seaman, as an engineer. The work is very hard, it is almost always in excess of 100 F, and the engine room is confined and very noisy.
I loved every minute of it. I came to love machines as Jake Holman did in the Sand Pebbles.

One of the real problems with ‘grunt’ work is that smart people avoid it. I once worked for a water utility and the starting job was fixing leaking meters and replacing them. Meter readers would sometimes deliberately smash the glass dial if it was hard to read so as to have new meter installed because they wouldn’t have to do it! Worker solidarity! Anyway the job was so unpleasant everyone who had to do it either found another position within the company, avoided the task as best they could, called for ‘distribution’ to replace the meter box , or soon quit.

Now I’m no genius but I took a look at the problem and, on my own, developed a new kit. Rather than using a manual PVC pump to extract the water from a meter box that just dumped muddy water next to the box where the worker had to lay down to repair/replace the meter, I bought an inverter that could plug into the vehicle ‘cigarette’ lighter and power a small submersible pump with plastic tubing. This did not ‘muddy’ the water so you could see which end of the meter was leaking and pump the water 15 or 20 feet from the meter box so the area around the meter box stayed dry. I also fashioned a pipe spreader gadget to expand the piping the meter sat between to ease extraction or simply to replace the washers at either end to stop leak. Cost of kit $150 or so. Official reaction? Negative, because it wasn’t their idea and ‘too dangerous’ because it involved electricity and electricity, water and stupid people don’t mix.

Finding a better way to do an unpleasant task isn’t given a lot of thought because those in charge don’t have to do it and don’t care. They may even resist change if it increases productivity/reduces manpower because fewer ‘supervisors’ will be needed and, in price impervious organizations like local government, utilities or non profits, being bigger is better.

This is a story right out of my life. Mediocre people despise anyone who works harder, smarter, and shows beyond the mean of interest in their work. I’ve had folks try and sabotage me for same. I’ve been stabbed in the back, professionally, several times. Each of these was a person from Massachusetts, for some reason, deliberate, fateful, or coincidence.

My personality type is rare-one of the Meyers-Briggs type-and it puts people off. But it also, thankfully, earns me recognition and appreciation. I retired as a supervisor (Chief Engineer), and always-as key mentor said-endeavored to hire and keep people “smarter than me”, instead of the other way around.

Today’s hiring practices almost guarantees sub-quality performance. The creation of Human Resources is the result of overflowing sewage of the modern, oligarchic ZOG NWO dominance in all institutions of the West, which could not have advanced without the the assistance and co-opting of the Shabby Shabbos Goy scum.

Hi Linh Dinh, I know some good writers who describe work in more than a few books. George Orwell, Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller spring to mind. Orwell’s graphic description of working in the coal mines really makes it so hellish that the only conclusion I can come to is ‘life was hard then.’ His other description was of ‘Plongers’ or dishwashers, described in ‘Down and out in Paris and London’.
But I think you should take inspiration from ‘ol Henry Miller’, author of Tropic of Capricon, Sexus, Nexus, Tropic of Cancer etc., to get a true handle on work and labor.
Damn, that sounds offensive to you. I know what you mean by writers rooted in academia.The writers cited by me are now dead and never rooted and lived pretty much like you do.You are right.

We used to have a tradition of writing about our jobs in the U.S., but that’s gone out of style due to snobbery.

Everybody wants to be glamorous.

I appreciate this aspect of your writing especially.

My toughest menial job was harvesting grass sod. During the work day we bent over, rolled up the cut sod then hoisted the 40 pound roll into a truck–hundreds of times. I was the only white among inner city blacks. These black folk were entirely separated from white society. They were mystified by whites.

The social manners were surprising to me. If someone asked me for a cigarette, and if I gave it to him, all the rest would pester me for cigarettes even if they didn’t want one. I had to adobt the black cultural attitude, you never show kindness or generosity or you will be exploited. The Negroes carried on a constant humorous banter through the work day and their spontaneous verbal creations could be imaginative and subtle. I never bought into the notion that blacks are a “low IQ” race. There are other reasons for their unfortunate status in the world, a long story. It took me about a week to become somewhat competent in the Ebonics language. I had previously lived in the north east where there was no socializing of the races. Found this job through an inner city labor pool when I was stuck in an inner city slum.

I learned that one doesn’t want to be at the bottom of the labor hierarchy and soon started putting my best foot forward, and hustling to Eat and pay rent. That worked to an extent but higher education turned out to be the path to getting a sit on the ass occupation. I also learned that my masters, the small business owners, were far more competent individuals than college professors or corporate/government bureaucrats. Lacking money I was forced to work many occupations through my twenties. Highest paying were air freight delivery driver, bartender and caterer. I don’t regret my years of grunt labor and kind of feel sorry for those who never had to hustle this way. I was too listless to become an outright criminal.

I rehydrate myself with Zero Degree iced tea, hot matcha tea or an ungodly concoction of hot water, spicy instant noodle seasoning and soy sauce. Though obviously nutrition-free, this broth yields a jolt of energy, or at least quickens my senses, thus lessening fatigue.

Linh,

I am fairly sure that what you are getting from that potion is salt, which you need for health in a hot climate and when sweating profusely.

Salt is very important, so I am glad you are using your unique recipe to resupply your body with this vital element.

Not a coincidence. Massachusetts people are the worst people in the nation, and possibly in the universe.

By working at lowly jobs, Orwell acquired the experience that enabled him to write “Down and Out in Paris and London” and “The Road to Wigan Pier”.

Linh Dinh is doing us a similar service today.

Linh Dinh is the Celine of the 21st century, exposing to us the underside of today’s society.

Do you view it as a virtue to so impose poverty upon yourself?

Or a disease?

I like your writing most of the time. It’s real and sincere, something that can’t be learned. Not that you give a shit about me, but when not in Burma I spend time in Amherst Massachusetts or Northampton just a few miles away on the other side of the river. I’ve known lots of writers, and teachers of writers, and met or overheard many more in the coffee shops. They are all MFA students and instructors – all writers. One thing I know for sure is this, the virus called “useless and boring” that academia’s MFA writers suffer from, thankfully, is only passed on to other MFA writers. It is difficult to find MFA writers who’ve lived. When I show them what I’m working on I’m met with silence, stares, sometimes a compliment. Long ago one of my undergrad teachers, a poet, Martin Espada, told me not to bother with MFA programs. He was right. I got an MA and then wandered into Burma and stayed for a decade. I taught English, other teachers, taught writing, volunteered more than anything and wandered all over the country until I realized one day that I was a Buddhist in addition to being Catholic. I also stayed clear of other Americans as much as possible. Not for nothing did I start work at age twelve just outside Worcester in textile factories first picking up trash, sweeping parking lots, and emptying garbage cans. If you live a real life, you have something to write about.

@GPoulin, I’m no Bill Burr. But to make a comment about people from Massachusetts, like you did, makes you a douche. If you really want to insult Massholes (which we take as compliments and welcome only when made people with solid balls) you need to give it some grit and sarcasm. The people you’re talking about must have thought about you what I’m thinking.

LOL. The most virtue signaling state in the union. The snottiness and arrogance of these people!

Yes, I thought of Celine also. Thanks Linh Dinh. U R 4 REAL.

When my father was growing up in the 1930’s he worked on dairy farms during summers and his pay was food and housing. When I was growing up in the seventies I spent summers working cattle ranches in Colorado, and my pay was food and housing plus about $250.00 bucks a month – things were getting better, but still, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Today those same places are owned by corporations and machinery and a few immigrants do most everything. I can’t imagine a single millennial lasting a day in that old environment.

MFA programs and college campuses generally are concentration (“re-education”) camps staffed by people who are content — even proud — to make a living lying to children. People who inhabit them are institutionalized, each stuck in their proper disciplinary pigeonhole, cut off at the knees so that even if it ever occurred to them to stand up and look over the 40 inch high cubical walls, they couldn’t. Infantilisation is mandatory.

That being said, I wish Linh Dinh — whose writing & spirit I admire — would broaden his horizons. Dude, look up!

A writer’s job is to understand life. Imposing poverty on oneself is one way to acquire that understanding.

Plus, it is a way to avoid distracting oneself with trivial matters.

Poverty as a bi-product of pursuit of a non-lucrative vocation is one thing. It entails resourcefulness, thrift, evasion of exploitation, avoidance of enslavement by induced pseud0-needs and pseudo-desires, thoughtful livelihood, thoughtful living, usw…. Poverty embraced as a grind is masochism.

‘Do you view it as a virtue to so impose poverty upon yourself?

Or a disease?’

I agree with Dinh’s justification for refusing to teach English to some extent. It’s been my experience that reading bad writing wrecks my own prose. Sometimes I’ll read some Orwell or something just for the health benefits, so to speak.

‘Orwell’s graphic description of working in the coal mines really makes it so hellish that…’

Orwell’s graphic description of just about anything makes it hellish. Socialism, tripe, public schools, northern England, Paris hotel kitchens, colonialism, sex…

Massholes.

He took on (((them))) in print.

That means he can’t find respectable academic work in the west.

This article resonates more than I expected.

As a house and office cleaner for several years, I’m not unfamiliar with that malodorous purview. I’ve written in a poem, “Belonging to the lower class, you’re expected / To cater to the upper class’ lower bodily functions, / Not to engage their minds but to wipe their asses, / Kiss their cunts on demand, suck cocks for tips.”

Middle class dealing with the public (commercially) isn’t much different.

Our sorters work at their own pace and, to leaven their days, chatter and joke, so you’ll hear laughter episodically, for felicitous language is the cheapest entertainment.

One of the great benefits of group work. What the Irish call the Crack (Craic).

We bring nearly three tons of plastic garbage a day, so we swim and wade through the stuff. Trash, we live garbage, with a smile.

This is actual garbage, but there’s a metaphorical daily garbage quota to work with the public (with a smile).

One of our strongest workers likes to reward himself with plenty of beer or rice wine after work, but Diep has missed two days already this week, so should be fired tomorrow. It’s unfortunate, since I’ve drank and eaten with this guy, and find his conversations alert and funny.

A universal problem. Prophet Mohammed PBUH was aware of this.

Many among us get together to feast, get drunk, joke, share stories and sing songs of love and loss going back half a century. With a shared heritage, our lives have meanings, and that’s why we work, not just to eat. A poet may leave us with just one memorable phrase, but that’s enough, and he should do at least that. Often, there’s a woman who takes pride in outdrinking any man.

Diep reminds me of a Philly friend, Jay, for not only would they drink themselves out of a job, but they’re both good looking enough to expect someone to accommodate them always, so if a door should close, another must soon open. They imagine life to be an endless series of open legs. It is rare to be blessed with such a curse. For such a man, even pussies can get tiresome.

Not such a blessing. The ones I employed were the first to crash (dead in their early 50’s)

It’s apt for American bars to pitch afterwork boozing “happy hour,” for it is the happiest, though many drink sullenly, alone, like Johnny the Hat at my old neighborhood haunt, Friendly Lounge. Enough Jamesons downed, the 55-ish car mechanic would cordially say goodbye to each before weaving home, but sometimes, he’d turn nasty, as when he growled at Aurelia, “When did they let you out of the zoo?”

Universal. Daily work and daily drink = alcoholism and failure (but it can take time).

It’s past five, so I’m done. I can’t wait to eat, then lie down.

“I’ll just lock up, then go to sleep. Sometimes, though, a man would get drunk, show up in the dark to bang on my gate.”
“And you’d let him have his bike?”
“Of course, but that’d the last time he parks here!”

That’s the way to do it.

There is a dearth of writing about work, its variety, tedium and grind.

But there is Studs Terkel’s 1974 book:

Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

To get an American kid to put his hand to work, you’d have to threaten him with a glock with a round in the chamber, the hammer cocked and he still might defy you.

A man does what a man has to do. Many of us have been “self exiled “for a long time and that is the way it is. Working labor jobs used to be how everyone started – it still should be. However , the Opportunists showed up and spread like wildfires.

Linh,

“During my few cameo appearances as a university professor, I’d encourage students to write about their work experiences, especially if they appear pointless, for this in itself is meaningful, as hard as it is to believe as you’re flipping endless beef patties, with burnt marks on your fingers, grease in your hair and sweat on your face, dreaming of sleep.”

Nothing could explain the meaning of that better than this piece.

Linh, your life sounds pathetic, mate. I don’t mean this in an insulting or demeaning manner at all, because you yourself know best how it is. There is no path forward for you but to feed and drink and work. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, yet you still trudge forward day after day. The only reason you haven’t killed yourself is because you are descended from people who hadn’t killed themselves and they also. You’ve come to a wistful realization of where you belong because as one born into a society which didn’t want you, you were already behind from the very start. It never began for you, Linh. It never began for us.

Dinh’s article caused me to reflect, once again, on the life of French writer Simone Weil, a woman of profound intellect and talent who deliberately took mind-numbing, back-breaking jobs in factories, and who limited her foods to a starvation diet all in the name of solidarity with the poor. I still haven’t concluded whether she was a saint or a lunatic, but her journals are the most spiritually transcendent writings I’ve ever encountered.

I’m coming around to thinking the same about Dinh. I don’t know if he believes in God or not, and for the moment it’s irrelevant, but his work strikes me as a gritty, bare-knuckle pilgrim’s progress, as if he is working (fighting) his way toward something bigger than he is.

I say this every time he posts a new article: this is the best thing he’s ever done. You can’t ask for more from a writer when every piece he writes is his best.

Minds me of Marx’s Theory of Alienation…seems congruent anyway. About the time they brought you to the US I was working in a foundry – brutal work, but also good. Cast iron is wonderful.

Work does bring freedom, in some sense and to some degree, despite the abuses of arbeit macht frei fascists.

At >70, like you, LD, I work every day, for the pleasure of it, or maybe because I always have…I always feel better after building or doing…otherwise sleep is hardly worth the name, and I’d get fat and miserable.

Back to the Flour Mill Pappy! is a daily routine. And good.

Yo Rudy!

1986-1988, I had a “cameo experience” as a teacher at the Jesuit University of Scranton’s evening Dexter Hanley school and taught, “The History of the Nuclear Age.” In my semi-humble opinion, I am confident of having opened student eyes to the US secret making & dreadful use of the atomic bomb.

Fyi, I cherish Linh Dinh’s works which never originate in a setting of comfort other than that which lay beneath the man’s rib cage. Subsequently, I wholeheartedly endorse how you wrote, “Nothing could explain the meaning of that better than this piece.”

Thanks & my respect, Rudy!

P.S.: At age 57, in the year 2005, I was a multi-task (salaried) Environmental Health & Safety Coordinator, Senior Project Manager, and (argh) an OSHA certified Haz Mat Emergency Spill Response Manager. Haha. By such job description, one would figure I primarily worked with my brain & educational background. No, no, Rudy. Asses & elbows, I always toiled as a “supervisor” during awful haz mat emergency incidents, & below is linked my article which describes (perhaps🤔) my worst & most challenging work experience ever, performed in 93° Scranton fucking heat!!! Fyi, in the article’s bottom corresponding picture, that is me with dust mask and uh, donning a “Quotidian” sweat band. Haha, & at age 67, 👍, with semi-regrets, am still heartily & necessarily into shit!

https://www.countercurrents.org/orloski030115.htm

@ an reader> Before enlightenment one chops wood and carries water. After enlightenment one chops wood and carries water.

Do not be detracted by this. Enjoy it, and sleep better, enjoy being, and be nice when you can…

Linh, I don’t know how you do it. Other great writers, writing full-time, could never produce the amount of output you do. You should be paid more for it. I finally went to your website and made a small monthly donation in recognition of your great work.

Interesting story. I’m a plumber. I’m going to try this lol

Kerouac’s “On the Road” was an inspiration to me, though I never had the courage to do the same, and now regret that I didn’t do a little more of it. At least I did have an Army hitch that got me a year in Europe. Kerouac invented a whole new style of writing, which the professional critics hated. Truman Capote said it was typing not writing. I wonder if today’s young people even know who Kerouac is. His post-WWII America is so much better than today’s America. It is sad that he lost all hope and drank himself to death.

Wow, nice down-blouse shot of Mrs. Ha, what a GILF!! I would get so busy with her! Next time you see her tell her she’s the object of some young American white guy’s fantasy.

Perhaps L. D. could have been another Studs Terkel, but we will never know and we will never know if the Jewish media movers and shakers sabotaged his career.

Yeah, doing the wheat harvest and stacking bales for 10 bucks a day and chow, sleep under the equipment or in the barn. It made me strong and it felt good, afterward, except for when we did a sloppy job and they made us do it over, for free,

No, to get an American kid to put their hand to work, just hold up a phone and say it’s being Instagrammed. And that #working is trending.

I am aware of the outsized Jewish power in media, but I don’t see Jews trying to deny American men credit for exploring the Moon half a century ago. Mr. Dinh pissed me off with that one, so I am just happy to point out that there has been excellent writing about work before his — and that his shtick about working in a recycling plant in Viet Nam and sitting in smelly outdoor cafes while the swarm moves about him is getting old, very old. We get it, Linh, we get it.

I’d rather muck with fermenting garbage.

A serene and localized life is the cure to everything.
If more people would deal with their own personal mental garbage instead of qualifying themselves as the supremely “chosen” to “heal the world” and be the dictators of culture, we would all be in a much better situation.

That cheapskate Unz should be paying you more!

Louis-Ferdinand Céline was very much aware of the Jews and their destructive influence in society.

LD has much in common with him in that regard. Both have paid a high price for their outspokenness on that issue, e.g., LD to be exiled from the US to Vietnam, Celine to be arrested after the war

Words to live by!!!

I always feel fancy if I have Philadelphia Cream Cheese to slather on good crackers.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=Down+and+Out+in+Paris+and+London++PDF&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=down+and+out+in+paris+and+london+pdf&sc=2-36&sk=&cvid=A00A9E28B5D74CFDA06CC253D0AEA974

My dear Linh Dinh. Write your book and make some big money. Model it on Down and out in Paris by George Orwell. From 1933. He worked as plunger…aka dishwasher. The free PDF is above. You can do this and provide an update to Orwell’s book/
________________________

Down and Out in Paris and London – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London
Down and Out in Paris and London is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell, published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities. The first part is an account of living in near-destitution in Paris and the experience of casual labour in restaurant kitchens.

Author: George Orwell
Pages: 230
Publisher: Victor Gollancz (London)
Publication date: 9 January 1933

Unless you breath the rarified air of independent wealth, we all have to shuffle through garbage.

When I have to fight down my gorge because my first appearance client smells like stale beer and body odor,

or I have to brown nose a cunt judge for a deal when I actually want to knock her teeth out-

I am in garbage. But I have to smile and wear hot clothes in 95 heat and chase assholes for money and PRETEND that everything is roses.

Viewed from 30,000 feet-what’s the difference if I was sorting shrimp paste jars? At least with that, I could leave it behind and not have racing thoughts when I want to sleep about what I missed or whose going to threaten a Bar complaint because they don’t want to pay their bill.

It’s amazing how many people find Jung after they start being nauseated by the putrid unreality of elite America (or any unreality). I worked on barges for two years with my law degree and did some politics. I can’t say I did anything as exotic as you did. I had a wife and three children to support while I was passing through this individuation process so I had to eventually make some money. Walker Percy wrote somewhere that a person trying to make his or her life meaningful more often than not considers acting. I guess politics was as close as I got to that, but hard work was the main medicine – hard, demeaning, painful work in all kinds of bad weather. You can’t commit suicide when a north wind is blowing down the river at you full of icy rain, getting under your rain suit and making your skin raw. I also finally turned to religion, not Buddhism, just Catholicism, but Jung takes you there, too, if it’s right.

to follow up on comment by restless re: ‘tea’, sweating, hydration, etc…
.
‘tea’ (assuming some variant of ‘real’ tea) is a diuretic, meaning it causes a net loss of water, you pee out more than you drank in…
.
worked a summer construction job in florida where i would drink water throughout the day, and still lose 5-8 pounds of weight during the course of the day from sweating… (outdoor work on concrete formwork, scaffolds, etc, none of that cushy indoor drywall work, hhh)
of course, the best course of remedy after a day’s work is to apply beer internally until replenished…
(real, manly-man, full-strength beer, not that watered-down, training-beer abomination called lighty-beer…)

It’s not that hard physical work is unpleasant but that it often pays so little. I’ve worked a great variety of jobs in my life from farm work to the financial industry to aviation to building sites to the army. The most backbreaking, difficult job I ever did was as a pilot in Antarctica. I only lasted two seasons. One of the jobs I got the most satisfaction from was working with two Polish guys on a building site. It paid pretty good too. I think physical activity is important in whatever we do, as is getting on with the people around us. As to writers who knew what it was to work hard jobs, there were plenty. As the above commenters state Orwell gives some gripping insight to what it is to be poor and stuck in a crap job. Jack London worked lots of difficult jobs as a young man before he became famous. Unlike most of his contemporaries and workmates Lin is introspective and can articulate the common experience of so many. I always enjoy his blog.

Linh Dinh: “… I’m rich, man, rich! I’m like the richest guy in the world!”

Just as Thoreau wrote, a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without. But Thoreau also wrote “The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes,” and this does not seem to me to be realistic, for industrial civilization despises the poetic mentality. It wasn’t even realistic for Thoreau, who was unable to support himself just by lecturing and writing, and we live in a far more vulgar age than he did. Poets nowadays are only able to survive like cockroaches in the interstices of the system, peeping out from cracks and crevices. “Maybe we can use you” says the employer. “Maybe I don’t want to be used” replies the poet. Nature grants him no greater gift than the ability to be content with what is.

so I am just happy to point out that there has been excellent writing about work before his

Yes, but considering the numbers the subjects are undercovered, and, and this is a most important point for me, much, if not most writing and reporting on the “subjects” is done by intellectuals in a condescending anthropological style which is not L. D.’s style.

and that his shtick about working in a recycling plant in Viet Nam and sitting in smelly outdoor cafes

Come on, “everybody” knows that real artists have to suffer. What do you want him to do? Cut off his ear?

There is a dearth of writing about work, its variety, tedium and grind. This is understandable, since most writers have devoted much of their time to writing and reading, and not painting houses, cleaning toilets, washing dishes, planting crops or performing mind numbingly monotonous tasks on an assembly line, etc. This blind spot or ignorance has become worse in contemporary America, where your typical writer spends nearly his entire adulthood inside academia. There is no more surreal theme park than a college campus.

Excellent! Simply excellent.

“Daily work and daily drink = alcoholism and failure” How rude, I lived like that for decades and consider it the best time of my life.

But all the pubs seem to be closing, and I’ve somehow gotten into the mood of wanting to live long enough to blow all my pension money one day. But every now and then I’ve gotto go and enjoy the full blast rock and heavy metal music, the thick smoke pouring out of the top of the door when you enter the pub like there is a fire happening inside or something, the delectable damsels swinging around the poles, Nirvana; else I don’t feel right, its like my ancestors demand it.

Cut off his ear ?

Why not his foreskin.Then he can claim his member to the tribe.
Yes we are in dire need of some diversity.Imagine a jewish vietnamese writer called linh dinhsky.

But the shnooze needs work.

Ahhh the purgatories in the factories.lol

McOhen, a circumsion does not a Jew make.

Yankees, aka Yankee Trash.

A cop neighbour who wishes to remain “anonymous” off the job always tells people he’s in waste management when asked what he does for a living.

Shitty jobs….I’ve had a few

I always felt sad for those around me who had no options. It was the best they were going to get, the bosses knew it and treated them like garbage. Sad stories, drug abusers, the not too bright, and some people for whom it seemed they were just born to suffer. Some tried desperately to turn shit into salad, got good at their work, tried their damnedest, and realized after a few years that raise was never going to come. Others knew the score and moved onto something less shitty. Me? I was doing penance for some pretty bad life choices. Worst job was bagging and stacking cattle feed for $6hr. I would run each bag through an industrial sewing machine, let it go along a conveyor through a hole in the wall. Once they had backed up to the machine, I knew it was time to go next door and stack them on a pallet. 10 levels with 8 bags apiece, unless they were 100lb bags, in which case they were 6 bags per level. Then wrap the whole thing in shrink wrap, rendering yourself motion sick by running in circles, and start over again. I averaged about 30 tons per day. Then the Hutterites would show up, say that they ordered 200 bags in a batch when we had mixed 203 bags, claim it wasn’t mixed right and refuse to buy it, their women folk looking terrified if you forgot your place and actually said hello to them. Big fun happened when you depressed the foot pedal to actuate the clamps that held the bag to the dispenser chute and then found out you hadn’t pulled it up far enough and you were enveloped in a cloud of choking dust, which promptly mixed with your sweat and filled every one of your cracks with batter.

Naturally the space heater in the stacking room was FUBAR, so throw in a few -40c drafts down your back for extra giggles. I remember crawling down the silos a few times to shovel the last bit of grain towards a swirling auger in the pitch black of night, feeling yourself sinking towards it yourself as you stepped around inside there. Fucking dump. I remember my fingernails looking like I had a manicure, they were polished to a shine by grabbing the plastic woven bags all day. Here’s a hint: If your workplace includes a firehouse that dispenses hot molasses into a hatch on the floor that has a spinning auger under it, it may not be a great place to work.

The there was that job where I spent several hours in a sugar silo covered in yellow jackets…and that day I got covered in lukewarm, ATF mixed with pigeon shit….

A real reason so many people today are miserable is because they have never known the satisfaction of having built anything with their own hands, created anything worthwhile. Never done a day of unequivocally good work. pic.twitter.com/xCsv1CD9Om

— Wrath Of Gnon (@wrathofgnon) May 29, 2018

I meant fire “hose” not house.

“Oh! blessed a thousand times the peasant who is born, eats and dies without anybody bothering about his affairs”.

Giuseppe Verdi

Yes indeed.Considering jews are the “chosen” not much choice for a newly born child.
But that leads to another question.What makes someone a jew?
One thing that the founding of israel has taught me is the gap between the idea of judaism and the reality of judaism.The architect drew up the plans but building the house has been difficult.Hopefully something good will come of it

Bingo!

What makes someone a jew?

A question that is of extreme importance to Jews and Jew-haters. The rest of us get by with close enough for government work.

I bought an inverter that could plug into the vehicle ‘cigarette’ lighter and power a small submersible pump with plastic tubing.

Logan has an improvement to suggest. Get a pump that runs on 12V and there isn’t enough juice to worry about.

You spent 5 years studying psychology, 3 years studying marine engineering and then moved permanently to asia when you were 17?

How?

‘…Hopefully something good will come of it’

Humility?

I think one point where I dissent from the article is the implication that manual labor is necessarily repetitive or degrading.

Okay — it usually is. But I have had some memorable moments. Like the time when I worked at the lumber yard when the macho Mexican and I were delivering some ridiculous number of sacks of concrete up some ridiculous number of steps (a hundred?) when it was 105 degrees outside.

So one of us started taking sacks two at a time. Then one of us started taking sacks three at a time…

Okay, that didn’t last long — but you get the point.

Later on, I started my own moving business, and although I eventually burnt out on it, that, too, generated some epic experiences.

I wouldn’t have missed them for the world. I’ve had some nice experiences in the academic and intellectual field as well, but still…

Wonderful piece of work. Reminds me of Pig Earth by John Berger, a book I read
long ago that described the life I charted for myself but never realized what I was doing.

Lol, my dad did that all the time. He’d come home from work at 9 and eat cream cheese or raw hamburger meat on saltines and drink vodka on the rocks.

Always interesting and entertaining to read your articles.

It really looks like you hard working guys could use one really lazy but mechanically inclined worker to figure out how to make the job easier. Lazy guy with creative mind can be worth his weight in gold. I am sure we invented the wheel and it didn’t stop there. Case in point it looks like it takes four people to feed the “grinder” why on earth don’t you guys rig up some hoist, a lifting mechanism or conveyor belt to feed it?

Same with the storage “hall”. Clear a path in the middle for a cart on wheels to transport the bags – or better yet, rig up a hoist in the ceiling on track that goes along the length of the building. Something capable of lifting 100 kg would make big difference and could be simple; cheap and fast – and save you guys plenty of sweat.

Just a thought!

Linh,

I love reading your articles, you have the ability to focus on the downtrodden of the world that is fascinating for the less downtrodden… I almost wished you worked in a morgue or in a Chicago trauma ER, you would probably produce Pulitzer-level literature.

I once read a book about the WWII Eastern Front “The forgotten soldier” and the author said that ideally , one should read his book outside, in February, in the freezing rain just to get a small idea of the hardships he went through instead of being comfortably seated in a warm living room. You are living the life of the people you write about and it gives authenticity to your work.

You are “not economically viable” to reuse the phrase from the movie Falling Down. Just like Poe was….I love reading him but his life was such a terrible mess, how he suffered to produce his tales. If you ever want to spend a vacation in FL, I will gladly welcome you in my condo. You might enjoy a respite……

Linh, imagine vast public lands, natural areas you are free to roam. Maybe fish, hunt. Ramble, explore, study.
Boating via simple inexpensive small craft. Guns. Campfires.
Nature, Conservation organization membership and spirited activity.
Such a life might even influence work experience.

…Dougie hoaxer.

Followed that link. Good stuff Chuck, about Ronnie and Dave; do you know Linh through poetry connections? You have your own voice when you write. Nice.

@”… built anything with their own hands, created anything worthwhile. Never done a day of unequivocally good work.”

Like I said, in passing, Marx’s Theory of Alienation…

This is serious – look it up -there’s nothing commie about this principle, and yes indeed, miserable, and desperate for contact – hence the strange and stupid behaviors and willing suspension of disbelief… Which provides for US persons a “ground” for the fascists to take power…by creating “consent”…

How about the latest working guy?
Matthew Crawford wrote a book about getting your hands dirty that was a well timed publication:
‘Shopcraft as Soulcraft’

Perhaps second to L.A.?

Stonehands asked: ” do you know Linh through poetry connections?”

Yo Stonehands!*

After interesting email exchanges on the regrettably degraded level of Amerikan poetry, fyi, 7 years ago, and late-Summertime in broken Scranton, Linh Dinh and I finally linked up at the city’s Martz bus terminal.

Was pretty funny as I thought Linh’s home was Chicago.

Right off “the bat,” & as a proud “Homelander,” I tried to show him several historical & quite beautiful sites, including a cliff view of the city nearby Lake Scranton. Nonetheless, I soon learned Linh was an unconventional artist whose more in-tune with the common people’s ways, hangouts, “bottoms up, “😏and residences.

He stayed four fun days with my ex-wife Carol and our two sons at our very humble Taylor Borough apartment. My beautiful mother-in-law, Florence, treated him to a fine Polish dinner, and upon return home to Philly’s Italian Market neighborhood, Linh Dinh wrote an amazing “Postcard” about our first ever “adventure.”

Oh yeah, I miss Linh Dinh, but I believe what we shared on-the-road, goes on forever.

Thanks Stonehands, & speaking seriously as a disgruntled Eastern Catholic-Amerikan writer, I am not fit to to clean L.D.’s worn out sandals!

* L.D. is cool & he likes to greet people by saying, “Yo.” 🤗

Thank you for an illuminating comment. With meditation-for the whole family-most problems’ solutions lie within. Stray and meaningful thoughts can be examined in a pure thought process. Discovery is limitless, ideas flow. A peaceful and happy family will be the result with consecutiveness stronger and stronger. It all comes from within. I try to tell all who will listen about Jung and Buddhism. I am not a proselytizer, but many do not know where to turn or what options are available.

Please continue to share your insights here in future.

I grew up in a US military family. My senior year in high school was spent on a US base in Japan at a State Department school. After I started sailing as an Engineer Officer, I deliberately chose ships and routes to the Orient. Over decades, I spent time there, with the ships, and on my own time. I spent months in Singapore, Japan. I lived in Hawaii for two years, and attended the University of Hawaii.
I had lived in California, and continued my experiences with Asian cultures and people.

More than observations, are the changes that occurred in my persona, values, ideas, ideals. And values. Ideally, everyone should question everything.

Millennials cannot and will not travel to any place that does not have cell phone coverage and social media access. They are “wired”, aka externally controlled.

No contest. Just the accent alone in Massofchewshits is grating and ugly. It sounds, and is, pretentious and posturing.

I just looked up Shopcraft as Soulcraft and read the first review I found. The book sounds excellent and very appropriate for our times. Thank you!

Enjoyed your article.
Loved the photo – a wise grizzled shaman from some post apocalyptic world.

Buzz wrote:

“I am aware of the outsized Jewish power in media, but I don’t see Jews trying to deny American men credit for exploring the Moon half a century ago. Mr. Dinh pissed me off with that one”

This aroused my curiosity. I wondered how what to me was evidence of Lin Dinh’s independence of mind and forthrightness could have annoyed Buzz so much. I searched around a bit and found his review of Damien Chazelle’s film “First Man” which is based on Hansen’s biography of Armstrong.

Buzz was so “pissedoff” with Dinh because for him there is no room for doubt. “This film is historically accurate.” he declares categorically and Hansen’s biography on which it is based gets this accolade “it is The source, and it will be that for as long as there are such creatures as historians”.

How does Buzz know? So many things have been revised, rejected , reversed over time why would this biography, and the increasingly threadbare story of the moon landing, be an exception?

Ha, here we get the reason why Buzz believes that this story will withstand the test of time and why Linh can’t see that.

“This movie is not entirely about space anyway” says Buzz. “It is also about Whitey”

“The challenge of going to the Moon was attempted because that’s who we are. “

“the film makes it obvious that these were Americans who did those great things. They represent what we were, and what we should still be”

And at the very end, in the last sentence in fact, he hammers the point home once more:

“It’s still all about Whitey, though.”

Foolish me thinking that it was all about the moon.

It is flattering to discover that someone, no matter how misguided, has gone to the trouble of researching one’s writing. Thank you, Adrian.

The American People have been betrayed on many levels, economically . . .

Video Link

and of course on 9/11.

Video Link

I bought it, got bored to tears about halfway through it.

Glad to be of service.

As to being “misguided” if you click on Aulis.com you can find a list as long as your arm of similarly misguided authors.

“It’s still all about Whitey, though.”

How can it be all about Whitey if black mathemagicians were the real movers and shakers of space exploration?

L. D. definitely has a hard-on for America and he doesn’t cover it up, but then there is a lot not to like about America. Most of the stuff that he whines about deserves whining.

Here, 9/11 came and went without anyone remembering anything.

It was no different across the Pacific in the “Land of the Free, etc.”

It is such a tragedy that NASA lost the data to go to the moon so now they cannot go back because they just don’t make black mathematicians like that any more. Sad, very sad indeed!

You really and genuinely hate the poor. You shouldn’t, it will make you even more miserable.

Don’t LOL so fast. The truth can still be found at YouTube. Watch the 10-minute docudrama The Old Negro Space Program… and wipe that racist smirk off your face when you do. 😆

Video Link

‘You really and genuinely hate the poor. You shouldn’t, it will make you even more miserable.’

You must have awesome insight into people. How you got that from what I posted escapes me.

that was beautiful, thank you

Yo Linh!

Showed Jack Reese this article & photograph last night.

He said, “Uh, Chuck, the fucker looks different now as compared to how ‘cool’ he looked when we went down Centralia; drank beers on way down, and at Remo’s bar, eh?”

I replied, “Yea, Jack, good point.” He said, “The Philly jungle suited him better, no?” Haha.

Fyi, Jack now resides in a Scranton high rise apartment, & he invited me to watch Eagles vs. Lions on Sunday. He promised, “I’ll cook us a good fuckin’ tailgate party in the parking lot, and maybe some old pussy will show up!” Haha.

Sick and tired -or is it only my idea?

Calm down. It was more of a dig at NASA than Negros. Since I do not believe that the moon landing happened in the first place and that the whole thing was a fiction, that would make the Negro mathematicians who worked on it a fiction too. I do not doubt that some Negros are or can be good mathematicians including many much better mathematicians than myself. Happy now?

If you believe the Jews in Hollywood who made Hidden Figures, negresses are better at math than negroes, which requires a suspension of disbelief much greater than Apollo 11 landing on the moon in 1969–a fake event more to do with masonic black magic numerology than anything else.

(See my post from yesterday about Trump the freemason and how they love to flaunt their kosher voodoo numbers in front of the dumb and gullible goys.)

Moreover, unlike the moon landing hoax, there is a ton of empirical data to prove that men have bigger brains than women and more “genius” IQs of 140 and higher. Hence, in the real world, as opposed to the fake world of Jewish movies and Jewish MSM, there are more men mathematicians and engineers and more men in other ‘hard sciences’ aka STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Video Link

Linh- A variation on your pose with the pitch fork would be to have one of your lady comrades pose next to you to your right, with head covering and no mask, and call it Vietnamese Gothic or The Rest of The World Gothic.

So true.