In a previous life...

A photo from my first attempt at doing what was expected of me including two years of technical school and my first REAL job (not by my definition) at Electronic Systems Products or ESP for short.

That was considered long hair in the work place back then because it was past the collar but things were loosening up slowly.

The company built video projectors used in flight simulators, top secret situation rooms and other applications such as peepshows where a person could pay to watch a pornographic film in a miniature theater and 'flog the log'. Hated doing the service calls at the enema cinemas, especially the 12 seat mini theaters, talk about residual DNA, nasty! I was a germ-a-phobe long before Covid.

I reckon they were easier and more profitable to run than the actual live girl peepshows.

Yes sir, from jerk-offs in top secret situation rooms to just plain jerk-off parlors and sports bars we were the top of the fucking line in high resolution video projectors, American made.

I guess I worked there on and off for...fuck if I can remember, we got laid off frequently because it was a struggling company and we weren't the only company in the world making projectors. The company was sold a bunch of times but it still exists under a different name to this day. Fucking should have gone into computers more specifically programming because bench techs don't make shit.

That job payed for my first Gibson Les Paul Studio guitar and later on my black Les Paul Custom that I still play.

We partied pretty hard for a company of mostly veterans, a lot of navy guys, fucking genius electronics guys.

I got my degree by going to a struggling tech school that needed that guaranteed student loan money to keep its doors open. We partied pretty hard and there was only one guy who REALLY understood electronic theory and he was totally fucking up the grading curve for the rest of us dumb asses so the school invented a special type of grading curve where they excluded anyone with an A average (him) to prevent the entire guaranteed money from flunking out.

I got hired at ESP because the company had hired a couple of other guys from an earlier class from my tech school that actually got straight A's and the company figured I knew my shit as well as they did and with much effort I eventually became the lead technician as the other guys were willing to take the new drug test to get a big money Space Center job.

What an absurd time. That's when I realized I was never going to fit into the whole 'Just Say No' world. What I was taught were freedoms and unalienable rights ended up being nothing more than lip service just like my dad warned me.

I had a fucking boss that kept a whip on his office wall and he wasn't ex-rodeo. The kind of douche that stands in your parking space if you're a minute late. The kind of asshole that would take your test stamp and mark untested parts and stick the untested parts into the machines that were on the assembly line and then try to lay the blame on you. The whole 'Never time to do it right but always time to do it over' routine. He kept a six pack of tall boy what-ever-was-on-sale beer in his hot car in a paperbag and drank it on his way home. Classy guy.

Why waste my life doing shit that sucks for people who don't give a fuck? "Cover your own ass" is no way for a team to succeed and every idiot that utters those words deserve to be fired. It's called a toxic work environment designed by losers, to keep everyone trapped in a depressing dead end job.

Most work places don't encourage growth especially personal growth because your expected to tow the company line and nickel and dime raises to reward all your loyalty, except that nickel raise just got wiped out by higher insurance premiums.

And every year that goddamned war on the poor empowered the absolute WORST demons of human nature to come up with new lows for torturing their fellow citizens and depriving them of their rights.

Fucking DARE was an abysmal failure, kind of like praying away the gay. Nothing like religious fanatics trying to teach people about reality.

Finally, I got laid off and collected about 1/3 of what the State Unemployment cocksuckers owed me because thats what they do and for me I never took a drug test for a job, Got hassled over it but I've always made it clear that any job I took was TEMPORARY and as soon as I got another band together I was gone.

Yes, I'm that fucking stubborn and I don't believe in the future.