Day 156: Saturday, March 13, 2010:  Your dinner bell is in a church tower.

I’m screwed on so many levels:

The postal academy warned me that there was a HUGE problem in our town’s office, after my carrier already warned me, and now the time for reckoning has finally arrived.

I’m gonna cut some fucking heads, and it won’t be pretty.

I stopped by my future place of employment to hand in mileage sheets for paid training, where they said a social war was presently taking place, and nobody was talking to each other, and some guy was driving every newby out of there with pure hatred and crap, to find out that the spiteful prick was going to be my mentor, as I was taking over his Saturday route.

So here we go.

The postmaster introduced me to the office like they do when you’re a new kid in school — everybody staring and giving little raised hands — and then he led me to the back corner and introduced me to the guy who hates life, and sure enough, the motherfucker refused to speak and just stared at me with pure, unadulterated hatred.  He never offered his hand, smiled, or even spoke a word.

It made Clint Eastwood’s squint look like a goddamn pants party.

So I took his tiny little hand and shook the shit out of it, announcing that it was a GREAT pleasure to meet, and walked away with the giggling postmaster.

Stay tuned.  I don’t take any shit these days, but I do write plenty of notes.  How badly do I need this job?  How long will I last before calling him out like McMurphy in “Cuckoo’s Nest”?  We’ll soon find out, in some very interesting stories.

We’ve all had enough, and I really don’t mind walking point.  It seems that people are running scams everywhere we turn these days, just short of smashing through our front doors to pull it off.  I spent an hour on the phone tonight negotiating with cable people, who have happily ripped us off for years but will now quickly present a “special deal” because I finally called to ask some questions. 

Yesterday I got this fat package from Saint Joseph’s Indian School in South Dakota, full of notepads, address labels, and a beautiful dream catcher, not to mention a very touching note “written” by a Lakota child, explaining abusive and alcoholic parents beating them up ten ways to Sunday.  If I couldn’t give eight dollars, they would gladly take five to cover “hand-crafted” trinkets.

My daughter is working on a nice Irish American craft to send back, with a touching note about caring parents who could really use five bucks for a six pack of beer, to help forget about their next brutal job adventure that may last about . . . oh . . . ten fucking minutes.

It’s a Christian school, and we all know what takes place when men wear robes and try to impose manifest destiny.

Since I’m a Theravadin Buddhist, my daughter’s craft could say one of our many quotes, like “The greatest worth is self-mastery,” or “Don’t try to guilt strangers into sending money they don’t have.”  Instead of a dream catcher, we could send a fat little Buddha, so they could rub its tummy and contemplate the possibility of other super heroes who don’t hang hell over their heads. 

Stay tuned; I’m setting my present attitude to “rock and roll”.