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.”
Yes! You didn’t snag the 666...
I was going to give you a link to herbal remedy teas, but I can’t access it. I think it’s a local problem, not operator error...
I’ll trade...
It is 800 indeed.
You might want to reconsider. The type is not dense but the material is.
Anyone recall Hank Johnson, D-Georgia, saying Guam would capsize?
I wanted to contact him and tell him that Hawaii was blown off course by the tsunami and would collide with California unless something was done.
Welcome to the world of Jeremiah the capital "P" Prophet. He was shown everything that was coming, and it all happened just like he saw it. He felt helpless. He wrote "Lamentations" out of his pain.
If I knew something dire would happen to you, would you want me to tell you? Knowing it was inevitable?
The record shows that even when people are told in advance, most of the time it makes no difference. The people of Nineveh are an outstanding anomaly; they actually responded wholesale to what they were told, but that's not how it usually goes. Back to Jeremiah, again. He had the whole timeline just dropped right into his lap; saw it ALL coming, and nobody would listen to him.
Still, he had to speak. The paradigm was given to Ezekiel, and it was this: if you don't speak, and they die, their blood is on your head; if you do speak, and they die, their blood is on their own heads.
The deciding factor there is accuracy; out of all the things you see, how often are you dead-on accurate? I don't know about anybody else, but if you're accurate, and you see something about me, I wanna know. Heck, even if you're only 50/50 I wanna know, but you should also say, "I'm only right about half the time."
Leave it to the other person to decide how to handle it. You tell enough people enough stuff, and they see enough of it come true, they'll start taking you seriously when you speak.
True story: The day I wrecked my truck I was TOLD, "You're gonna be in a wreck but you'll be completely fine."
I could have gone straight home; I wasn't that far away, but I figured that, since I was going to be totally OK, it couldn't possibly be that bad. Well, it WAS that bad; my truck was totaled; rolled up onto the passenger side and totally demo'd out. I climbed out through the driver's side window without a single scratch or bruise.
I'd sure like to have that one back; I'd have gone home.
I'm happy to have escaped unscathed but DANG I still miss that truck!
I double dog dare you. ;-)
Will likely not hear anything about it.
But, you never know.
And suddenly we have high winds and very heavy rain outside....
LOL, that you did!
That works!
Sadly, the accuracies of time and place are seldom carved in stone. The people, however, are in my head for at least six months. This includes me. I nearly lost my life in January of ‘69, but I had no less than four months “lead time.”
I keep hoping if I talk about it, some of the “mojo” will be diminished. Not.
My accuracy rate is about 75%, sad to say.
80 degrees out there right now. Clear and no wind. Tomorrow and for the next week, we are subject to the winds from the storm you’re getting.
I’m feeling a little better, but not great. I had to go out and get some beer to quell the nausea, but I’m still not interested in food. The consequences are too dire for me to eat.
Well, you’ll all be happy to know I haven’t been dreaming about any of you.
Whew!
2000+ pages
Unngh.
Glad to be of relief.
Really dry stuff but nobody else has the time (or inclination!) to read through everything I've read through, and I've provided them (our sales channel) with lots of additional and useful references that are not in the "base" material.
Doing the work nobody else wants to do, doing it better than anyone else could even imagine doing, and making it all useful to the employer -- I think there's some job security in that.
And hey, in a month I'll be giving a talk on this stuff in London!
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