Haven’t heard from Jacinda in over a week.

Every night after work we’ve had long phone conversations. That’s been the routine for a while now. Jacinda doesn’t have much going on from day to day so we talk about old times together, mutual friends, bands each of us likes and dislikes. Sometimes she complains about the neighbors in her apartment complex. Many of them sound like total freaks the way she describes them. Jacinda can’t stand her apartment manager, apparently. Last time we spoke I brought up the possibility of driving to see Jacinda soon, which she seemed happy about. Going there for a visit would mark the first time in more than thirteen years since we last saw each other. I estimate it will take me about four hours to reach her town from here. Not a bad drive if I leave early enough in the morning. It may turn out to be a fun adventure.

Since that conversation I haven’t heard from her at all. I have to admit I am a little concerned. Trying to avoid the perception of becoming a pest I have not left more than a few messages on Jacinda’s answering machine. Calling repeatedly is probably going to piss her off, especially if she’s okay but just doesn’t want to be bothered for a time. I can’t help but wonder if something bad has happened to her though. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary during our conversation on that final call before everything went radio silent. I know she has relatives near where she lives. I assume if Jacinda did really need help her family would be there and step in to save the day. Maybe I will try to call them in a couple more days If I don’t hear back from her. I can probably find a listing for them online.

I threw one of those Indian necklaces into a box with some more compilation CDs for Jacinda shortly before she stopped returning my calls. Can’t help it, but I realize that might have been too much too soon. Perhaps she thought it creepy and weird. Guess I’ll have to wait and see what she does next.

I drove over to Berkeley this weekend. Since Autumn and I are no longer together there is really no reason for me to be there anymore. It’s almost like a no-man’s land over the border that you don’t dare visit because memories will surface that you would rather not think about. Over the past few years I spent so much time in Berkeley with Autumn going to shops and restaurants there probably isn’t a single street that would not trigger a moment from the past. I’d rather try to forget. Something compelled me to make the afternoon trip though. It was going to be a quick dash to one location and then turn around to bounce out.

Through the mail I sent Jacinda some music CDs. She seemed to like them, and we’ve been in more regular contact since then. She doesn’t write or put anything in the mail. I send stuff, she calls and we talk. I’m cool with that. From the sound of things she really is bored and doesn’t have a whole lot to look forward to each day. So I been thinking it might be fun to send her some of those elaborate Indian wedding necklaces I used to buy for Autumn. Each one is different, with deep colors and bright gold or silver metal bits holding all the cut glass together. Honestly when I see a woman wearing one of them it does make me kinda squirmy. Especially the necklaces that plunge from a girl’s neck line down to the cleavage. I can’t help but let my eyes be dragged downward by the jewelry…

Taking the freeway exit I drove a couple blocks up University and parked the car around the corner from a shop Autumn and I used to frequent. As I shoved the door open and walked inside I was greeted by the owner. I don’t know her name, but the woman is always there. Dressed in a colorful sari and with her graying hair pulled back tightly she recognized me with a big smile and asked how Autumn was. I frowned, quietly told her we weren’t together anymore and mentioned something about being angry over the whole situation. The old Indian woman seemed very surprised at the news and changed the subject. It was an awkward moment. Leaving me alone I wandered away from the front counter to browse the latest arrivals on racks around the shop floor. I stared at expensive traditional wedding jewelry secured behind back lit glass display cases for a few minutes. Nobody else was in the store and neither one of us spoke as I walked around looking.

It didn’t take long. I found a nice emerald green necklace, and two others that I suspected Jacinda might like. After selecting them the old woman brought them to the counter, carefully wrapped them all up and gave me the bill. I paid and left just about as fast as I could. Driving home I thought about when I might ship Jacinda the first one and wondered if she would be happy, or if the gesture would somehow backfire in a way I might seriously regret.

So I survived my first compulsory Six Sigma brainwashing session this afternoon. The material we covered was bone dry, boring as hell. We were being indoctrinated in the ways of the Six Sigma White Belt by a tall slender man with bright blonde hair. Our teacher reminded me of a full grown successful Nazi eugenics experiment due to his master race appearance. I’ve never seen the guy on campus here before. My guess is he’s one of those cubicle dwelling drones from Building 2 upper, or maybe he’s buried somewhere in the bowels of Building 1. Whatever he does here the man has now apparently been trained extensively in Six Sigma by outside consultants. He’s supposed to be one of those experts in the methodology- a Six Sigma Black Belt. As he was running through power point slides and scribbling on a dry erase board while walking around the edge of our conference table I half expected him to kung fu chop me at the back of my neck with no warning. Maybe it had something to do with my apparent lack of interest during the two hour class. I don’t know for certain.

We covered far too much material over an inadequate amount of time. With all the bar charts and diagrams I felt like this was overkill, a solution to a problem we didn’t really have. Nobody seemed to have a better idea of Six Sigma or a direction on how to employ it in their daily tasks. I could see it in their faces. Waiting patiently for my fellow zombies to leave I sat in my chair thinking about asking one question of this Black Belt uber man. He didn’t notice I was still there. He immediately began collecting training materials strewn about the room and straightening his papers in a case as soon as the course was closed. When he realized a straggler was loitering I mumbled something about wanting to yap for a minute about Six Sigma on the down low. From his reaction it was obvious mister Black Belt thought it odd, but he didn’t tell me to get lost. I hung out.

When I felt like the flock was herding itself down a hallway and it was safe to speak candidly I began to rant.

“Okay so since you’re the expert on Six Sigma I wanted to ask a question. If you’ve been here for a while you know we have the Business Metrics program which is a long standing part of Bill and Dave’s workplace culture. It’s quite comprehensive. Now we’ve got Six Sigma being rushed in here like it’s the greatest thing ever, and I find myself dismissing it as little more than an elaborate repackaging of common sense data collection tools that are already widely accepted in business and industry. The six standard deviation junk doesn’t do much for me. Parts per million factoring on an instrument line I only ship thirty or so units a month from is kinda dumb. What I want to know is, is Six Sigma in your opinion the Emperor’s New Clothes? I mean, you’ve got the Black Belt now so what do you think?”

Mister Black Belt stopped cleaning up the conference room and sat down across the table from me. He kind of looked around to make sure no one was within ear shot and he said while nodding, “Yes. It’s just a repackaging job. They spent a lot of money putting five or six of us through a crash course in Six Sigma. For the most part everything we already do here is covered in Six Sigma. It’s redundant.”

I was surprised by his honesty. I did not expect that kind of reaction from him actually. Since I had nothing better to do I anticipated our Six Sigma Sensei to debate me on the subject for a while. With any luck I might make him angry which would be entertaining, until he used his lethal Six Sigma factoring skills to kill me. Instead I think I may have discovered another wise employee who saw through the corporate bullshit but was keeping his head down in an effort to not get himself laid off.

“Will Six Sigma change anything here?”

“Probably not,” He said.

That’s exactly what I was thinking.

I’m in regular contact with Jacinda, we usually talk in the evenings a couple times a week. She sounds bored most of the time and keeps complaining about the sorry radio stations in her local area. Since she doesn’t have a CD collection or anything to listen to besides shitty college stations from Chico I decided to put together a care package of discs to listen to. The best way to do it up I figured was get one of those car CD binders that hold thirty or so discs. They’re small enough to fit in a glove box so that would make it easy to box up and ship via mail. I bought one and got a bulk pack of a hundred blanks. Then it was time for the difficult part. What to put on them? And what order should the tracks be in?

Making compilation collections of music can be tough. You’ve got to think about what the person you’re making the compilations for likes and dislikes; plus sneak a few favorites of your own in that won’t be too disruptive to the overall theme. Jacinda and I both had similar tastes in music which would make things somewhat less of a pain to put together. We had some common interests like punk, gothic/death rock, and industrial music. I chose to start with the gothic stuff, making discs with Christian Death, Bauhaus, Malign, The Sisters of Mercy, 69 Eyes, Chrome, Android Lust, and a bunch of others. On the Industrial side I made up discs of Front Line Assembly, GGFH, Skinny Puppy, 16 Volt, Diatribe, Godflesh, Sleep Chamber, and more. Included in the audio care package was a notebook. I hand-wrote in all the song titles and numbered each CD with a corresponding page so she would be able to quickly look up whatever it was she would play on her stereo.

Where I really got into time consuming compilation projects was with the punk stuff. It’s challenging to think of the best two dozen or so tunes from a band like the Dead Kennedys and put it into a cohesive collection. But, I had plenty to work with and lots of time on my hands so each night after work I picked a punk band and put together one anthology of each group’s work. Even though it was tedious I did have some fun listening to some stuff I haven’t heard in years. I raided my Misfits collection, The Cramps, TSOL, Agent Orange, Sonic Youth, Big Black, D.I., etc.

Nearly two weeks later the whole project was nearing a total of 32 CDs. There were a number of one-offs I added like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Pixies, and Cocteau Twins. Standards like them never seem to become tired and boring. In a way I was trying a shotgun effect hoping to throw in enough material that there had to be a good enough chance Jacinda would be into it.

Six Sigma training works on a silly colored belt system like a martial art. It’s statistical analysis Karate. Take a bow facing your opponent, a software generated scatter chart and do the parts per million factoring. Roundhouse flying foot Karate kick to the head! Allegedly, basic Six Sigma training when completed results in an employee having a White Belt status. Wow. Can you tell how interested in Six Sigma I am? White Belt training will comprise of self-paced web modules that must be finished by a deadline set by corporate. The few people who have been assigned to act as internal trainers overseeing the project will be referred to as Black Belts. These folks are supposedly going to be the Six Sigma experts throughout the division. I’ve heard their Black Belt training with outside consultants is going to cost Bill and Dave’s $20,000 per person. Ouch. That seems really steep to me. Between the White and Black Belts there are a bunch of specialized training modules that would result in a different color of belt. It remains to be decided if we will be messing around with any of that junk.

With self-paced web module training employees here generally cut corners to get it over with as quickly as possible. Cheat sheets containing all the correct answers for each module usually surface, and then are circulated rapidly from department to department. Part of the issue is there are so few of us left working here that we are sinking. We are drowning fast with the workload. The water level is about ten feet above our heads and rarely can we swim up to the surface for a breath of air. I have mentioned it before, for those of us who have survived a dozen rounds of layoffs we are doing the work of multiple people. Not just our own forty hour a week assignments anymore. That’s why so many of us are burned out and uninterested in this place. Six Sigma is just going to have to take a back seat to all our other daily priorities. We gotta make those month-end shipments or Super Geek doesn’t get his glorious Shareholder Value.

The Beard sent everyone an email detailing how this Six Sigma thing is going to go down. Here’s what he provided:

To all WBU Manufacturing employees,

In WBU Manufacturing the Six Sigma White Belt team members must complete Basic Curriculum Quality Training and White Belt Training so they can provide project specific process and cross-functional support. Under the guidance of Black Belts, they will gather and analyze data as well as help sustain the gains created by the Six Sigma project. White Belts will work on projects as needed, by providing expertise on areas where they are directly or indirectly involved in the processes. On larger projects, White Belts may be asked to dedicate themselves full time to the project.

Within the company interweb you will find the Basic Curriculum Quality Training Course. The goal is to have 100% of WBU Manufacturing employees take these classes. Instructions on how to launch these classes will be available during the week of February 12th, the Kick Off week for Six Sigma’s White Belt Training.

The White Belt Curriculum will be made available as soon as the Six Sigma White Belt classes are complete. The goal is to have 40% of WBU Manufacturing employees take these classes. The following is a complete list of all the required classes for White Belt.

Required courses for a White Belt are: (classes with a Blue * are the Basic Curriculum Quality Training classes you will find on the web)

Introduction to Quality Series:
· Quality@Bill and Dave’s – Know Your Role*
· Introduction to Quality Tools*
· Introduction to Process Improvement*
Quality Tool Series:
· Pareto Chart *
· Cause-and-Effect Diagram*
· Process Flow Diagram*
· Time Series Chart*
· Histogram *
· Scattergram*
· Control Chart*
Root Cause Analysis Series
· Introduction to Root Cause Analysis*

In addition to the Basic Curriculum Quality Training you will need to take the following classes to meet the White Belt requirements:

· Basic Root Cause Analysis
· Corrective Action
Six Sigma Courses
· Overview of Six Sigma (yet to be released)
· Six Sigma Methodologies and Tools (yet to be released)

Thank you,
The Beard
Basic Skills and Quality Training Coordinator
WBU Manufacturing Center

Scanning over The Beard’s training matrix I realized there is very little new to us with Six Sigma besides the Six Sigma overview sections. Everything else appears to cover what we already have in our Business Metrics program. We currently perform in-depth root cause analysis when we discover serious problems with product platforms and we always have a Continuous Process Improvement policy. None of this is new, as I mentioned we’ve had all of this in effect at the company for decades. The only notable change in the past five years or so is nobody is paying attention to that data collection anymore. That’s why we are in so much trouble. With Six Sigma I think someone is trying to reinvent the wheel. Maybe at another company where they don’t already have some sort of statistical analysis program or a form of quality data collection Six Sigma would be a better match. Here, it will be entirely redundant to what we already have in place. I really don’t understand the point in bringing Six Sigma to life here at Bill and Dave’s.

Weeehooo. I’m gonna get me a White Belt.

I am now convinced the company is not at all serious about Six Sigma. If this is such a groundbreaking, important initiative key to our future success I would have expected management to assign a hot shot leader. Instead they announced Six Sigma training would be organized and lead by none other than The Beard. He’s been lingering here for a while as an “Individual Contributor.” They took away his supervisory role so he has nobody reporting to him anymore. He’s part of the good old boy network of managers in this division. While hardworking veteran employees are thrown out guys like The Beard are allowed to linger on until retirement. His pals have protected him from layoffs by granting him Individual Contributor status and assigning him projects nobody else would want. Most of those projects are like unwanted leftovers in your refrigerator. They don’t affect anything which is probably a safe bet he won’t be able to screw up royally. Let’s face facts. Anybody here worth a shit has better things to be doing with their limited time.

His previous assignment was some sort of vague training position. I heard The Beard routinely fell asleep during his meetings and training sessions. For example, he was supposed to be video taping technical training on Network Analyzers but he was too stupid to figure out how to transfer the video to software for burning onto discs. So his retarded solution was to present new technicians with power point slides instead. You can’t train green techs on circuit theory and PC board test that way. It’s not practical or useful. Before that he was directly involved in some goofy Malaysian initiative. The Beard made appointments in each department on each instrument line to observe how people did their job functions and then note ways to improve the process. I forget what that dumb program was called, but when it was my turn to show The Beard our button up process before shipment off the line he fell asleep in his chair. I was about two seconds away from slapping him across his knees with an instrument side-strap handle and asking him if he understood what I was explaining. One of his peers saved him though, he gave The Beard a nudge that startled him back into consciousness as I was reaching for a strap handle to hit him with that was on the edge of my work bench.

We used to call leaders of screwy corporate-backed programs “Champions.” Totally corny. Those were the unlucky employees assigned to lead whatever new industry trend crap being foisted upon us. I guess The Beard is now our Six Sigma Champion. I know he’s going to doom the whole deal somehow before it’s over with. But that’s cool with me. Six Sigma will fade away far sooner than it would in anyone else’s capable hands.

Well, here we go. It hasn’t even been a whole week since Super Geek dropped the Six Sigma bomb on us and mid to low level management types are already rubber-stamping the initiative. They’re such good little yes-men. Top Cat decided to follow up and then Scar Lip also chimed in. But let’s take a look at what Top Cat had to say first shall we?

Dear TeaM,

One of Bill and Dave’s priority is to “Achieve superior business results through Six Sigma.”
-What is Six Sigma ?:
It is a methodology that helps companies provide products and services of the highest quality and value. Six Sigma is a financially oriented, data-driven, structured improvement method that involves projects, teams, data-analysis tools and statistical expertise. It can help us in all aspects of the company — in satisfying our customers, in our product quality and delivery, in the way we manage our inventories and assets, in our new-product development processes, and also in managing our functional processes throughout GIO.

-Why is Bill and Dave’s company implementing Six Sigma now?:
We have lots of room to improve in quality, and it’s an important business issue. Quality has suffered during all the cutbacks, systems changes and focus on financial results. We have work to do to get refocused and start improving faster — Six Sigma is a proven way to accomplish and maintain that.

The bottom line is that Six Sigma achieves business results measured in dollars.

Let me quote B.S.: “If there is any message I would want to leave with you it is that this Six Sigma effort is not a Quality program. This is to build a foundation of rigor, a systematic approach to solving problems in the company. Without a systematic approach to solving problems, we will not make the systematic changes we need to do to improve customer quality, improve our financial performance, and getting our products to market.”

-What can you do ?:
Consider a White Belt training. It provides a great set of tools to help you make the most of your time. It is a self paced training available on the quality website that will clearly enhance your skills.

Have a great week,

Thanks and Best Regards,

Top Cat
FY05: How will We delight our Customers today?

Hmmm. Very interesting that Top Cat chose to actually mention anything about our ongoing quality problems. I doubt he knows how severe they actually are at this point in time. Since those serious issues were created by off-shoring to Asia, twelve or thirteen rounds of massive job layoffs, and subcontracting to a bunch of weasels, it is not realistic to expect Six Sigma is going to be able to turn customer dissatisfaction around at all. I mean, we already have plenty of data gathering tools to measure quality and I’m sure alarm bells have been going off non-stop for the past couple of years. The critical thing to remember is nobody with any real power in the company to change things has been paying any attention to those alarms. So why would they pay any attention to Six Sigma?

Top Cat included a quote from B.S. who happens to be Super Geek’s No.2 at Corporate in Palo Alto. I smell some confusion brewing between our fearless leaders. From his comment “If there is any message I would want to leave with you it is that this Six Sigma effort is not a Quality program” I can tell the big guys are already unclear on what Six Sigma really is. Super Geek told us in his communication that Six Sigma IS a quality driven program. B.S. just went and contradicted his boss, y0. Perhaps it matters little what Six Sigma can be defined as but I think it is becoming obvious our leadership has no clue what they just purchased for us and what it is that Six Sigma is supposed to do. Also of note, they did a thorough job laying the axe to everyone’s necks in our division Quality departments. So I guess for now we better hope and pray Six Sigma is not a quality-based program because if it is nobody will be here to implement it.

Now let’s see what yes-man babble Scar Lip has to add to the Six Sigma mix.

As a follow-up to Super Geek’s message launching the company’s Six Sigma program, we want to add our sponsorship to this exciting initiative.

Six Sigma is an industry-proven methodology to create process rigor in all aspects of business operations. Many companies, including General Electric, Samsung and Motorola, have generated billions of dollars in savings that are directly attributable to Six Sigma programs.

Within our division, the benefits will include enabling the entire organization to simultaneously address financial goals and enhance customer satisfaction while improving our ability to execute through more efficient and organized processes. The Six Sigma program will also provide this division’s employees with a tool set to help generate breakthrough business results.

More details will be communicated soon by your manager.

Best regards,

Scar Lip

Okay. Any time one of these nitwits refers to an industry-trend program as “exciting” I am convinced it’s going to be mind numbingly boring. Not to mention useless. This shit is never exciting. I mean let’s think back for a moment. Was ISO:9000 exciting? Fuck no. That was just a quick way to deforest the entire West Coast of trees for paper due to all the printer copies of pointless documentation we generated overnight. Was BSOF hip and happening? Fuck no. That had to have been some sort of safety related insurance scam and it successfully introduced the safety Gestapo to our company. Diversity Training. That was a great one I will never forget. We were corralled like livestock into mandatory brainwashing sessions and encouraged to hassle minorities and gays. Totally insane. I still cannot believe we weren’t sued into oblivion on that deal.

Just because General Electric, Samsung, and Motorola adopt a program does not mean we have to act like Lemmings and jump off a cliff into the Six Sigma abyss. Besides I’m sure they all padded their numbers heavily in favor of how great Six Sigma was and then cooked the books on how profitable it was when they instituted the program. Especially if one of them created Six Sigma in the first place. Do you realize how much loot they could make by marketing a package like this? There’s training courses, books, seminars, video presentations, online resources, etc. all of which has to be bought by suckers like… us. Whoever packaged Six Sigma must be raking in the dough.

Scar Lip says this is going to “enhance customer satisfaction” as he puts it. Yeah, it’s magic bullet time again. It’s like we’re all passengers on the Titanic. Standing on the wooden deck we can clearly see the ship is going down, and the life boats are fading fast in the darkness, but the Captain and his immediate crew are all convinced it’s unsinkable. How reassuring. Will Six Sigma cause the company leadership to hire back skilled employees in the Quality departments? Probably not. Is Six Sigma going to reveal how badly the Research and Development labs need realistic schedules for producing rugged designs that last more than twelve months before crapping out? Nah. Could Six Sigma data prove how negative the impact was to off-shore our products to unskilled workers in other countries? Nope. Nor will it reverse these trends for one simple fact – the damage done is too severe for this company to repair.

I was wondering how long it would be until corporate latched on to another tech-industry snake oil scam. Looks like I didn’t have long to wait at all. When I got in to work this morning and started my daily scanning of emails to ignore I came across a company-wide announcement from Super Geek hailing the introduction of Six Sigma to every division. Part of me wanted to laugh sarcastically as I read it, another part of me just wanted to sigh and shake my head at the futility of it all. Anyway I clicked on his email.

Dear Bill and Dave’s employees,

Our FY05 Priority to Achieve Excellence in Customer Satisfaction includes the strategy to “achieve superior business results through Six Sigma.” I am pleased to announce that, Six Sigma will be launched across the company. Six Sigma is an industry-wide quality approach that helps companies provide products and services of the highest quality and value. Specific to our FY05 theme, “Winning Through Innovation,” Six Sigma enables innovation by providing a method and tool set that can be applied to any business process to boost new ways of thinking and working. Additionally, Six Sigma has been proven successful in Bill and Dave’s ATG and Corporate Controllership. All employees can participate in Six Sigma. You can learn program specifics and answers to frequently asked questions via the Six Sigma website. And, going forward, you can expect project updates on this website and from your management team, InfoSpark and other communications. Six Sigma is an important element of our FY05 Priorities. My staff and I are fully committed to using this methodology to achieve a higher level of customer focus and operational excellence. Thank you for your efforts toward achieving all of our FY05 Priorities.

Best Regards,

Super Geek

I decided to look a little further into Six Sigma on my own by hopping onto Al Gore’s Internets. As I suspected, Six Sigma is another bolt-on industry standard that Super Geek and his platoon of yes men are going to force down our throats. Their hope no doubt is that Six Sigma will act as a magic bullet for all of our company woes. From what I could gather on the Six Sigma thing it looks like nothing more than data collection on your existing manufacturing process, and then you make common sense decisions based upon your findings. Uh, isn’t that what we are already supposed to be doing? I mean, we’ve got self-imposed systems here that do the exact same thing already and those seem to have been working well for decades.

For example, a huge cornerstone of the Bill and Dave’s method is what we refer to as Continuous Process Improvement (CPI). Basically anyone in the company is empowered to make suggestions on how to solve problems in our manufacturing processes or sidestep them entirely. All you have to do is gather some data, make observations, and present it to the group. It’s been effective in the past. We also have what we call “Business Metrics.” Business Metrics are a fairly comprehensive set of data collection tools that we use constantly. Each line supervisor is responsible for putting all the information together however he or she can delegate the data collection out to subordinates on the line. The end result is the same either way. We look at our problems and performance based on the data and make changes to resolve or improve deficiencies. It’s pretty simple.

So why in the hell are they rolling this Six Sigma stuff out now? The timing seems very odd. I mean if Super Geek was going to pull this out of his pointy nerd hat why didn’t he do it when the company was split up? Rolling Six Sigma out in the first year after the company split would still be dumb in my opinion but it would have made a little more sense on the timing. I think it’s also interesting he chose to mention the Automated Test Group (ATG) was used as a guinea pig for Six Sigma. Word on the street is they’re getting ready to sell off the whole ATG division to an outside company and jettison their employees without a severance package. That’s an awesome start here for Six Sigma. I guess Super Geek was too busy driving yellow Ferrari’s while plotting the wholesale destruction of the company’s United States workforce to think about Six Sigma at the time our company was unnecessarily broken into two. Remember folks it’s just like Super Geek always tells us, it’s all about “Shareholder Value!”

Here’s what I predict is going to happen in short order:

1) Management at all levels are going to get spun up on Six Sigma like it’s crack cocaine.

2) They’re going to mandatory training-session-us-to-death and pay through the nose for an army of faceless Six Sigma consultants. Not long after that we will all be good little Six Sigma zombies.

3) Within a year after zombification the whole program will wither on the vine and die, like so many other half-baked corporate sponsored industry trends Super Geek has picked up.

4) All the cash we threw at Six Sigma will have been pissed down the toilet.

I don’t know, call me a skeptic. This shit just keeps getting more and more stupid around Bill and Dave’s company. I am not sure how much longer I want to hang out here and deal with it.

Jacinda and I have been talking a lot over the phone lately.

She tells me about her ex-boyfriend. They moved to Oregon and got a small place together in a rural area. He got a job with the Forestry Service as a firefighter. Jacinda was not working, so she played housewife. Both of them were getting by, they even bought a new car. Things were good. Months passed with little changing in their daily lives. He worked and made enough money to pay the bills while Jacinda kept the house in order.

She wasn’t allowed to go out alone much and she didn’t have many friends or acquaintances in the town they moved to. At some point her man became possessive, and controlling. Jacinda tells me he threatened her. He was becoming abusive. Maybe it had something to do with hours being scarce at his job. They argued. Bills went unpaid. He lost his job, debt collectors were calling. They fought often. Fearing for her safety Jacinda abandoned her belongings and fled back to California. On her own with little in the way of income she was able to find a single bedroom apartment and move in with some help from her family. Jacinda tells me she barely has enough money each month to survive. Most of her income goes to rent, anything left over goes to food and basic utility bills. She has no job prospects. There is nothing to do where she lives and the local radio stations suck. She says her town has to deny her basic social services because illegal immigrants have used them all up. Local government agencies are broke and turn her away.

I tell Jacinda about Autumn. I describe her in detail and I tell her how Autumn kept my relationship limited to her liking and my frustration. I talk about how we were together for five years and the same problems continued to surface like bad re-runs of syndicated television shows. Autumn always left me with no workable solutions. I am bitter as I describe Autumn’s problems and remember some of the incredibly stupid disputes I had with her. In hindsight these problems seemed so simple to resolve, but she would never allow it to happen. I deliver a skillful monologue about Autumn’s social activist tendencies and how meaningless it is to everyone else who lives outside of Berkeley. And I talk about how sick of Berkeley I am in general. It’s full of freaks, losers, and filth. For all the social activism and ecological awareness Berkeley residents proclaim to be fostering daily you’d expect the city to be a Utopian model for the rest of the nation, and the world to follow. Yet there are plenty of homeless and hungry people sleeping on the streets of Berkeley every night. Violent crime is high. Trash piles up along the streets. It’s like many other American cities, and it’s a hypocritical joke.

Berkeley has a place near the college campus called People’s Park. It’s a rundown city block where addicts hang out in broad daylight smoking drugs. They’re all the same. Gray hair and wild smiles from behind scruffy beards wait for anyone to come close enough so they can tell you how they “stopped the war” while their vacant eyes glisten in memories of protests past. I have little use for these burnouts and in my opinion they were nothing more than a circus sideshow of the Vietnam War Big Top. There was a group of people who did stop the war and none of them were in America. They had an unbreakable will and determination to retake their country, which the Vietnamese did at great cost. It’s easy for anyone to get loaded, hang out in public parks with a cardboard sign over your head, and stink. That does not take any effort at all. The sixties free love generation has given themselves far more credit than they will ever deserve.

Talking with Jacinda I realize how angry I am. She listens, and I feel better.

Buying a membership for a local twenty-four hour gym was more expensive than I guessed it would be. I’m so sick of the petty employees up on the hill at work that I decided the less I have to interact with them the better. Their sense of entitlement and spoiled brat behavior disgusts me. The cost of the fitness center membership is worth it to me. After the incident with the Wednesday evening cubicle-dicks dressed up like Olivia Newton-John extras from the “Let’s Get Physical” World Tour I chose to boycott the company exercise room. I suppose now that the company has more or less stabilized from job attrition in the United States, those who still hold a position that comes complete with it’s own little office at Bill and Dave’s are even more arrogant. They’re buying into corporate management’s propaganda that everyone who is left standing is now safe from future layoffs, thinking they will be there until they retire or some shit. Can’t wait to see the look on their faces when they get thrown out with a severance package next year.

I workout at the gym three times a week. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I gave myself weekends off to relax and drink beers. My routine is a half hour on a stationary bike in the cardio-room and then I spend 45 minutes to an hour on the weight floor. I alternate between upper body and leg machines until I’m too tired to continue.

On the bike after ten minutes or so I start to zone out. I don’t listen to music or watch the televisions on the far wall of the expansive room. It’s like I’m hypnotized or something. Time disappears until all of a sudden the red LED display on the bicycle tells me the session is complete. Sometimes before the time is up I have a moment of clarity and I scan over all the bodies in front of me, organized by equipment rows. They jump up flights of stairs to nowhere and run in place endlessly. Some of them seem so incredibly active and in good health I wonder why they are here. Others are terribly overweight and I am surprised they don’t drop dead on the spot. Standing up from the bicycle I wipe sweat off of it’s handlebars and control panel. Then I walk away towards the weight room and slide into a vacant machine to punish my arms.

I zone out on the weight machines too, but not as much. There are more distractions on the weight floor. More people wandering about talking with each other or on their cell phones. Some people just don’t know when to ditch their ever important cell phone. It’s like life might end for a half hour without it. As I sit working on my shoulders a stranger will be at the machine directly across from me sitting on another machine babbling into their cell phone about their job, what they bought at the store earlier, or what the neighbors have been up to. It’s all mindless bullshit. And these jerks are blocking anybody else from using the machine they’re on. Seems oblivious, selfish, and inconsiderate of others. Nobody can use that piece of equipment until they get up. But what do I know maybe I just constantly complain about people no matter where I am. I try to tune them out and get back to the zone.

Oddly enough I have observed a new kind of female nitwit here at the twenty four hour gym. It’s some sort of workout-makeup-zombie. These horrible little monsters are rail-thin, wear skin tight metallic outfits that make them look almost naked, and they’ve got makeup caked so thick on their small faces that they might as well have gone to Tammy Faye-Baker’s cosmetics school. Here’s what is so weird about them. They arrive at the gym already dressed in their bodysuits and they proceed to come onto the weight room floor but they never actually exercise. I haven’t seen one of these broads lift a single weight. What they do is position themselves near a busy area and sit on an unused abdominal machine for example, and watch. That’s all they do. Besides talk on a cell phone of course. I suspect these women are here man-hunting. And they need to be seen, badly. I guess it’s an attention thing.

I fade back into the zone until it’s time to leave. At least the beat-downs are helping me get to sleep at night.