Posted on 02/26/2011 1:38:34 PM PST by Squawk 8888
I’m not the wiener peeler, I’m the wiener peeler’s son, And I’m only peeling wieners, ‘Til the wiener peeler comes.
I apologize to pheasant pluckers’ sons everywhere for stealing their tongue-twister.
But who can resist when my Internet fairy, Irene, drops this job ad on my desk? “Get out your resume,” she purrs.
I pause in processing Moonlight Lady submissions, and take a boo.
“Full-time Wiener Peeler,” says the ad.
Wazzat? I ask. A red-hot stripper?
“No. As in weenie. It’s got you written all over it, ” says Irene, and she flutters off.
Well, I’m getting sick of grinding out daily columns like hamburger. So I read on.
“Opportunity. Excitement. Teamwork. Respect.
“At Maple Leaf Foods we are committed to attracting, rewarding and retaining talented people who are passionate about making a positive impact in their professional and personal lives every day.”
A noble mission. What better way to pursue it than as a bona fide full-time professional wiener peeler. The opening is at Maple Leafs’ hotdog plant in Hamilton.
Imagine the awe when you tell fellow partiers your occupation.
Picture the lineup of schools recruiting for career days.
The teachers may giggle, but the kids will scream for free samples.
You’re on Price Is Right and Drew Carey says, “What d’ya do for a living up in Canada, Mikey?”
I peel wieners, Drew.
“Good for you. Wiener peeler. Hmmm. reminds me, folks, get your pets spayed or neutered.”
Anyway, I check around and find yet another job opening at Maple Leaf. Wiener stuffer. Hit it ...
I’m not the wiener stuffer
I’m the wiener stuffer’s son
I’m only stuffing ...
(Ed. note: Stop that, you hotdogger, or we’ll make you pose for a picture like Gilles Duceppe in the silly hairnet.)
NO! Not that! I’ll do anything, boss.
The photo of Duceppe in a cheese factory was a body blow to the Bloc. He looked like a weenie. Un chien chaud. Un hotdog.
I wonder. How do wiener peelers and stuffers look? All dressed?
I call Linda Smith at Maple Leaf Foods and ask: What company wit came up with those job titles?
“They’re in the union contract,” she says. “They’re really a kind of food-processing operator.”
So machines do the actual stuffing and peeling. Thank God. I can’t imagine sitting there all day, fingers numb, going, “hundred thousand and one weenies, hundred thousand and two weenies, hundred thousand and ...”
The wiener stuffer fills the tubular collagen casings with hot dog sludge. Since you asked, the ooze typically comprises mechanically separated chicken, pork, beef, water, wheat gluten, salt, sodium phosphate, spice, dextrose, corn syrup solids, sodium erythorbate, garlic powder, onion powder, sodium nitrite and smoke.
If you need to ask what mechanically separated chicken is, don’t.
Or go eat a veggie burger.
Once the dogs have been divided and smoked and solidified, the wiener peeler removes the casings.
The stuffer and peeler look like hazmat officials or Apollo astronauts.
They wear blue rubber and plastic head to toe, with hairnet, hardhats and mask. Plus earmuffs. Yes. All those dogs barking.
The hirings, says Smith, are to gear up for summer, when 60% of wieners are sold.
What a great job, eh?
I assume you get to take home any bent, twisted or otherwise defective wieners.
And you’d be in the pantheon of careers with chicken sexer, pet food tester, bounty hunter, odor reader, fortune cookie writer, golf ball diver and newspaper hack.
Plus, you’re wrapped in a soft, warm union. The Brotherhood of Bun Fillers (BBF), or whatever it’s called.
I can picture the negotiations:
“We want a raise, a longer lunch, three weeks holiday, dental coverage and pension improvements.
“But hold the mustard.”
That sounds like it was really different. Halo has the guys who look like Star Wars storm troopers, only not white, right?
We had the Spanish choir over this morning, and then we went to Mass, but Frank fell asleep so I left him home with Tom, and then I had to take Tom back for 5:00 p.m., but it was worth it not having to carry Frank the whole time. My neck hurts from yesterday.
Tomorrow I’ll have to go by Asuncion’s on the way home from the gym, because she left a couple of CDs. Not anything you’d like, though.
Yuh. Be sure to say "Hi - Hi" before you say "Bye-Bye".
I recommend dinner together at the Timbuktu, if possible.
Thanks sionnsar! Farting too she was....... somewhat back to normal...;)
The poor old pet. Ash is our first dog, so we haven’t been through declining years with a dog yet: only catz, and the current ones are both under 5 years old.
I am going to Martinsburg WV to visit my sister so I have a choice of airports to fly to. Now flying out of, Ontario is the closet and the best to get in and out of but LAX is about 1:30 hours away and can be hundreds cheaper. My sister is the one that told me about Freerepublic about 10 years ago. She joined in 1998.
If “Da Inbox” look like dat, I ain’t a gonna TOUCH “Da Outbox”!
The 20-year-old miniature dachshund simply went to sleep and didn't wake up, My stepfather found him the next morning. (We kids loved him, but he was not an affectionate dog.)
The 14-year-old coyote-shepherd mix was barely about to walk, incontinent and in much pain, but the Evening Before he managed to escape from the yard, walk a very long block, right into traffic on the arterial there. He was very much family, and is remembered as such.
Here's an idea, and note I'm not saying it's a good idea:
Ride commuter rail from BWI to Martinsburg.
You can check the maps and schedules to see if it fits your needs.
It could be the adventure of a lifetime. In more ways than one.
So very glad to know that all of your data is safe!
As for your “OS” dilemma...I just need more info, I guess.
I’ve been running Windows XP Pro boxes at home and at work for as long as that OS has been alive, and although the OS isn’t perfect, I can’t peg it with any issues. Nearly every software problem I’ve encountered has come from software NOT tied to the OS.
I skipped Vista entirely, and I’ve heard mixed reviews about it, but my HP laptop is running the 64bit flavor of Windows 7, and it’s been very solid, although the interface has taken some getting used to after all the years with XP.
I’ll add my voice to the chorus regarding OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/); between that and Google Docs I can’t feature any need to fork out for MS Office.
BWI probably means you'll be on Continental. A lower-middle-price airline with some of the best service in North America. I wish they were still partners with my preferred carrier -- whoops! I forgot they're being merged into United; probably crummy service and at best indifferent personnel.
BWI is generally less expensive than the others, AND you don't have to deal with D.C. Beltway traffic which can be pretty bad. And maybe you can arrange a dinner with NicknamedBob at the Timbuktu -- a quite good restaurant with extremely good (moderate to low) prices. I wish they had Timbuktus everywhere I go.
A test run on http://TravelZoo.com shows ONT-BWI, 7/12-19) prices in vicinity of $350-400, depending on the wholesaler site the best price is either United/Continental (Kayak & Continental) or Delta (Travelocity).
WATCH THOSE CONNECTION TIMES: I've seen sites offer connection times down to 35 minutes or less -- from experience I never accept anything under an hour (no more O.J. dashes for me, and believe me I've made them), and big airports such as Houston, O'Hare, and Dallas-Fort Worth I add 15 - 30 minutes more. (Atlanta is marginal at an hour, Minneapolis has improved a bit over marginal at an hour.)
You can also save a bit of money ($15, $25 or more) by packing light and carrying aboard -- for a week for me a "standard" rollaboard (I have two sizes plus a hardshell suiter for international trips) and a backpack that's not stuffed to the gills.
To the last: these days many airlines are operating smaller regional jets whose bins won't even accommodate rollaboards; you can "gate-check" your rollaboard (at the gate you get a tag and a claim check, and leave the bag somewhere along the jetway or the walk to the plane, on arrival you'll pick it up on deplaning, along the jetway or at the gate).
Some of those small regional jet bins will NOT accommodate overstuffed backpacks. Once even mine was on the margin (but once I took my book out it fit).
Hot dogs are breakfast food in Japan. Strange but true.
"In more ways than one." Especially if you're traveling in commute hours. But at least he won't be trying to park in already-filled commuter lots.
LoM has been using OpenOffice on XP for a while, though with strange issues that may be related to other things.
I'm using it on Xubuntu and though it feels a little bit clunky (I AM using it on rather old hardware, lder distribution, and use MS Office 2003 a lot at work), the only complaint I've had is that one colleague exclusively uses OO on Linux; highlighting is NOT some the same way -- it takes some effort to discover the way to remove OO highlighting in MSO.
Breakfast foods overseas are often a trip.
Then again, as a midwesterner one of my sisters loved to have toast with peanut butter and mayonnaise for breakfast.
I took a gander at the schedules and fares. It's like translating hieroglyphics.
From what I can deduce, if you arrive in the afternoon, you can join the commuters back to Martinsburg. And when you're ready to leave again, you'll have to do the morning commute with the rest of them.
Judging by distance, and from what I could glean of the schedules, it would take at least three hours total. If so, that really isn't too bad.
And at least someone else would be driving.
Not at all. You can leave at least as late as mid-afternoon and arrive on the West Coast at a decent hour. On a direct flight you can leave much later than that.
I was talking about for the train ride.
It’s two legs; one from BWI to Union Station in DC, then from there on MARC to Martinsburg.
Eventually, back again.
It might make sense to rent a car and drive there from Dulles.
If you have a nasty breakfast it is generally a bad sign.
Even the British haven't managed to mess up breakfast. Not even with kippers and baked beans.
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