» Karma

Always help the disabled!
When I was in grad school there was one professor in my department that was a real bitch. The undergrads were generally terrified of her and the grad students for the most part never put her on their committees for her outright abusiveness.
So one semester she had a student in a wheel chair that had a rare type of dwarfism that we had to by law accommodate. The girl in the wheel chair was well liked by all the grad student teachers, she was a hard worker, and we figured out ways for her to get work done. This was art school and the grad TA's had her participating in complex tasks like bronze casting, welding, ceramics, etc. The girl ended up in the bitch teachers printmaking class one semester doing wood block prints. The professor immediately kicked the student out of class on the grounds that the girl couldn't do the work. It was woodblock... the simplest form of printmaking! Us grad students were appalled and even after we figured out how the girl could print the professor wouldn't budge. (More background, the professor got her job by sleeping with the dept chair and then sued for tenure and won years before.) So naturally a lawsuit starts up after it was clear accommodations could be made. The bitch professor had tenure and was bullet proof and a settlement was taken out of my departments funds... wiping out all the money for supplies and operations, as well as the money us grad TA's were given to work and offset our tuition. The bitch professor blew the whole thing off, felt no remorse and talked about it in a joking and flippant manner to us. The grads were seething with rage... our funding was pulled and the professor was punished in no way.

The karma part?
Two weeks ago she was out riding a horse, was bucked off and snapped her neck when she hit the ground. She is paralyzed from the neck down and will be wheel chair bound for the rest of her life most likely.

That professor was a huge bitch... but Karma is even bitchier!
(Fri 22nd Feb 2008, 21:43, More)

» Personal Hygiene

I went out with this girl once...
Back in college this girl I was taking a photo class with finally got me to take her out to a movie. So I go by her house and her and her sister who was still in high school come rushing out to my car. I found them both quite annoying instantly... they argued over mindless shit... but it was sorta fascinating at the same time. So I decided just to go with it out of morbid curiosity. We go to the movie and have a decent time, the arguing stops and I begin to think that the girl might be ok. So she invites me back to her house that she says her parents rent but don't live at. The girl was kinda cute and I thought hey why not!
I walk into her house and was instantly alarmed, because the house was unlocked when we got there. From the way the house looked it appeared to have just been broken into and trashed. "We gotta call the cops!" I say and start backing out pushing the girls back, thinking robbers might still be inside because I hear noises coming from inside. "No! Those are just the dogs," and the girls go inside.
The place looked like a tornado had blown through... every square inch of the place had stuff lying everywhere... dirty underwear... pictures fallen off the wall and broken... you could barely walk through the place. They had a small herd of 4 chihuahuas that ran all over the place and obviously pissed all over the place because of the smell. It was amazing and I had to explore further... out of morbid curiosity yet again. The girls run into the kitchen and start taking their meds, which I recognized as anti psychotics... as if I didn't have enough red flags popping up. The girls start quarreling about something again and I say I really must get going, oh look at the time! type of thing... when the older girl asks me to go to her room in the basement. So I go downstairs and like the upstairs it is a total wreck. Her room had water on the floor and a fan to dry it up, but it reeked of mildew (which I personally think caused them both to be crazy as hell, it was rotting their brains). I'm looking around and she is doing something under the crusty looking sheets of her bed and I note her jeans are on the ground. "Yeah... I gotta go..." and I leave the room to find the sister lurking outside. Luckily this was just after classes were over and I never saw her again. So about a year or two later, I'm talking with a few guys about crazy girls we have been out with and I'm telling this story and one of the guys goes... "Dude, was that girl named Rebecca? Because... I went out with her once and what you said is almost exactly word for word the same!" I start laughing and ask if he actually stayed and did the deed with her and he says, "Oh god no way! But I did see something that you didn't... she actually got everything off while my back was turned as I was looking through her CD's and she had this gigantic 70's style crotch bush. I told her crazy ass to put some clothes on and left! And her sister was right outside too!"
(Sun 25th Mar 2007, 22:44, More)

» Have you ever seen a dead body?

She's dead... again... and again... you know... the usual...
I grew up in a neighborhood full of elderly people and it wasn't an uncommon thing to find someone who just dropped dead. I found one old lady who apparently dropped dead unlocking her house after breakfast at the waffle house.

There was one old lady that I found "dead" on multiple occasions. She would go into diabetic comas and just fall out wherever she was at. I found her in the bushes that she was trimming, on her back porch, the front porch... and one unfortunate time where she fell out her back kitchen door completely naked...

I got to know the 911 and ambulance guys pretty well while she was alive... haha One guy was always amused "You again! This kid is always calling in the usual!" They would show me all the nifty medical crap they carried around and their truck.
(Thu 28th Feb 2008, 15:17, More)

» Work Experience

Locker Grunt
My first job was for a division of a large construction company in Birmingham, Alabama. Our section fixed time clocks and lockers. Since I was right out of high school I was put on the locker crew with a bunch of other guys I knew.

It turned out to be a completely insane job... beating sheet metal back into shape... rebuilding locks... etc. (found out master locks really aren't bullet proof)

The pay was pretty good... we got paid hourly and if you traveled around the southeast to high schools you got $200 in cash to take care of hotels and food.

When fixing locks and overhauling lockers you can find most anything... I found a brand new pair of Doc Martins in my size, a sega game system, some stereo speakers, a good deal of cash, all sorts of things!

A few quick stories...

I once worked in a upscale HS in Tennessee late into the evening and once the sun went down.. holy god... roaches literally poured out of the walls. It was like some Hitchcock movie! The lights in the school were motion activated and there was enough roaches that the lights would randomly blink on and off up and down the dark hallways... it freaked us out!

Then one time in a tiny poor ass school in north Alabama one of our crew guys was chased by a pissed off peacock that had apparently taken up residence in a boys bathroom.

This was also around the time of the Olympics in Atlanta, GA... we happened to be working in a very swanky HS that was all computerized and motion activated. Everything moved on its own... the doors opened and closed... the water fountains... the lights... toilets... sinks... etc. The school was huge and cavernous and we happened to be in it working while a class 1 hurricane screamed overhead. We thought we were going to die... the power was blinking on and off and all the motion activated stuff was going insane... doors slamming by themselves.. toilets flushing... water fountains squirting... all the while Tornado sirens blasting. So we go to the lowest point of the school to take cover to find... THE WOMENS OLYMPIC SWEDISH HANDBALL TEAM taking cover there as well! As three 18/19 year old guys we assumed we had died in the hurricane and went to heaven! They were there practicing with their giant blond man-apes of trainers and were all freaked out by the storm. Naturally we had to console the girls ;-)
(Thu 10th May 2007, 17:58, More)

» Barred

A few years ago in NYC...
A few years ago I went on a class trip up to NYC. We toured galleries and museums during the day and went out and partied at night. Well we had one day "off" to go do whatever we wanted. So my professor, his girlfriend and I decided to check out a few more galleries and drop off portfolio packets. Along the way we happened upon a fetish shop. So my prof. and I were prowling about the store trying to snap dumb pictures with our cameras of all the latex suits and dildos.. etc. The guy behind the counter eventually caught on and ran us out of the store. The prof's girlfriend was rather ticked at us, as she had found a bargin/sale bin of all sorts of rubber and leather things...haha
(Fri 1st Sep 2006, 8:26, More)