Today in the Dickinson Press newspaper there is an article titled, “DSU could become a polytechnic campus”. Tom Mitzel, DSU president, appeared before the Dickinson City Commissioners on June 19 and explained that in addition to offering traditional four-year liberal arts degrees, DSU could begin offering technical training that would result in licensing, certification, or associates degrees in fields related to workforce needs here in western North Dakota.
The mayor of Dickinson and some of the commissioners stated that they thought that this was a wonderful idea. In my opinion, this would be the best thing that ever happened to DSU, and this is long overdue. I also think that this would be one of best things to ever happen to Dickinson. I will enumerate why this is such a good idea.
There are many high school kids in western North Dakota that already have a mechanical aptitude from growing up on farms, working on vehicles, motors, and equipment. They are just a little short of being ready to work in the oil field in a skilled trade. Being able to obtain certification here locally right out of high school, in things like welding, crane operating, instrumentation for example, would give them a much better chance to obtain employment locally, and at a higher pay rate.
Many local high school students do not want to go to college for four years, they don’t see themselves doing this, they don’t see the need to go to college for four years, they don’t see this benefiting them, and they don’t plan on doing it. Many of these high school students would see the benefit of taking only course work relevant to obtaining a certification that would make them more employable, or allow them to receive a higher rate of pay.
Many high school students could see themselves going to college for two years, in order to obtain a technical associates degree, that demonstrates both that they have completed typical college general education requirements, and that they also have a technical competency in one or more areas.
The businesses, employers, and oil companies in North Dakota would probably love to have many more prospective employees that have completed college level course work and also received relevant technical training.
The large oil companies and the large oil field service companies would probably be willing to provide funding, guidance on desired technical course work, and also loan experienced personnel to advise or perform some teaching.
If DSU developed a recognized technical program that offered certification or associates degrees, Dickinson would be a magnet for high school graduates from all over North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Minnesota.
My advice to DSU president Tom Mitzel, would be to aim for cooperation and assistance from GE, General Electric. A little more than a year ago, GE acquired Lufkin, one of the biggest manufactures of oil field pump jacks, and also control systems. About a year ago, GE also acquired Baker Hughes, a.k.a. BJ Services, one of the largest oil field service companies in the World. Both Lufkin and BJ Services have large operations in Dickinson that would benefit greatly from a technical program at DSU.
I grew up in the 1970s on the east coast of Florida, in a small town. The population of this town was probably about 10,000 people. Some of the poorest people in this town were the farmers. There were not any wealthy farmers in the area.
The farms outside of town ranged from about 10 acres to 50 acres. The farms were small like this because they were established in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when fields were still plowed with horses, or very simple tractors. 50 acres was about all one person could handle back then.
The farm houses were either “shot gun houses” or “dog run houses”. These were one-story wood frame houses, built a couple of feet off the ground on brick or stone piers. The “shot gun houses” were where room opened to room, from the front door to the back door. The “dog run houses” had a center hallway from the front door to the back door, and you entered each room from the center hallway. The walls had exterior clapboard nailed to the vertical wall studs, and usually there was no interior covering like lathe and plaster. The sizes of these houses was about 30 ft x 30 ft.
The yards all around the houses were mostly dirt with a sparse amount of grass, because of the kids, adults, and animals constantly walking and playing around the house. There was not any pavement. Kids, dogs, cats, and chickens ran wild around the outside of the house. Pigs were kept a couple of hundred feet from the house, far enough away to not have to smell them and hear them constantly, but close enough to haul food scraps and garbage to them regularly.
Barns were small and usually very primitive because animals did not have to be kept in the barn. Horses or cows would try to find shade from the sun in the afternoon, or something to stand under when it rained, an overhang, shed, or thick trees would work for the animals.
So far, everything that I described above about the farms where I lived, was the same from the 1890s up until the 1970s. In the 1940s more or less, many of the farm houses began adding indoor bathrooms with plumbing. I imagine that many farm families in Florida continued to use wash basins and outhouses into the 1960s.
Prior to the 1960s, farm kids in Florida might not have worn shoes in the summer, except to go to church on Sunday. Before the start of school in the Fall, they might get a new pair of shoes to wear to school, or be given hand-me-down shoes to wear to school. Prior to the 1960s, the farm families had a very bare existence.
In order to have more cash money, farmers in Florida had other ways to make money: cutting trees to sell for timber, working in saw mills, doing carpentry for other people, hunting animals for meat and fur, hunting alligators for meat and hide, fishing, crabbing, shrimping, and making illegal alcohol.
As the population of Florida grew more and more due to real estate development, land became more controlled, animals and fish became more scarce, many farmers in Florida began to take regular jobs working in construction. There would be five to eight years of a boom in construction, followed by a lull for several years, all through the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s.
When I was a kid in the 1970s in Florida, the farmers who did primarily farming, were very poor. The fathers drove old, worn out, beat up trucks, there was nothing fancy about them, just single cab, torn vinyl bench seat, rusty two-wheel drive trucks. The father’s clothes were old, stained, and ragged. The farmer kids had very little of anything.
In the 1970s, the farmers who worked regular jobs, they wore nicer clothes, drove nicer four-wheel drive single cab trucks, and their kids had more, but they were not rich.
I didn’t see it until the 1980s in Florida, but some farmers said, “Fuck it, I am going to sell the farm because this property is worth so much money now.” Real estate developers wanted 10 acre, 20 acre, 30 acre parcels of land that had been cleared and drained, so that they could put in a new housing development with 1/4 acre home lots.
The farmer kids who had grown up going barefoot, using wash basins and outhouses, being bit by mosquitoes constantly, now that they were adults struggling with finances, sometimes they could not resist the temptation to cash-in the family farm, and finally live a life of luxury. They could move into a new modern home with central air conditioning, shag carpeting, a couple of bathrooms, and modern kitchen. Buy a new luxury edition truck with a back seat, and have enough money for their kids to go to college. So that is what many poor farmers did.
In the 1980s in Florida, the adult farm owners were aware how poor and how much of a struggle that their grandparents, parents, and themselves had gone through. They weighed out in their mind what to do, should they continue to live poor and struggle, or should they sell their land and have a life of ease?
One thought that made up the adult farm owner’s mind was this, “If I continue to be poor and struggle with this farm for the rest of my life, when I die, my shit head son is just going to sell it and never have to work, so is it going to be me, or him that doesn’t have to work? I pick me.”
In Florida, one by one, all of the farms were sold and developed. It was just too hard to make money farming, and the land became worth so much money. Who would want to continue to be poor, when they could sell their land and become a millionaire.
By the 1990s in Florida, the only people who retained inherited acreage or who obtained acreage, were not farmers, but doctors and lawyers.
In my next blog post, I would like to try to explain and compare this to farming in North Dakota.
When I got home to my apartment in downtown Dickinson, North Dakota at 6:30 p.m., on this Monday, June 18, everything was very quiet. I opened all of the windows in my apartment, turned on my computer, checked my e-mails, looked at my Worpress blog, looked at Facebook, read the Dickinson Press Newspaper online, and everything continued to be quiet in my apartment building, the parking lot, and this downtown residential area.
I fell asleep in my lazy boy recliner chair from 9:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., and I am just now waking up. This residential area is so quiet right now, that I can hear that there is not a single car driving on the main downtown street through Dickinson, Villard Street. Either directly on four-lane Villard Street, or one block north of Villard Street, there are twelve bars and restaurants, and about eight gas station convenience stores.
I am listening and trying to time it, and I am not hearing even one vehicle per five minutes on Villard Street. I have heard one car in the past fifteen minutes. Can you imagine how quiet that is, one car in fifteen minutes on the main street through downtown, at 11:30 p.m. on a Monday night?
I know why Dickinson is this quiet, it is a combination of about four different things. I read a newspaper article about a month ago, that said the population of North Dakota decreased from 2017 to 2018, there was a net out-migration of about 500 people. The total population of North Dakota is only about 750,000 people.
Despite what the business owners, real estate agents, real estate developers, chambers of commerce, business associations, elected representatives, and spokespeople say, the economy in western North Dakota has been slowing down since 2015, and it continues to do so.
In the Spring of 2018, there were newspaper articles and advertisements, radio announcements and advertisements, television reports and advertisements, trade journal articles and advertisements, telling people about the great need for workers in western North Dakota. The truth is, that all of these reports and advertisements about the need for workers in western North Dakota, did not match the reality of the actual number of job openings posted on North Dakota Job Services, the Dickinson Press newspaper, Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, Indeed.com, LinkedIn.com, etcetera.
Yes, there was a need every week for a few CDL licensed drivers, experienced heavy equipment mechanics, electricians, experienced hydraulic fracturing operators, and laborers, but just a few, not a huge amount. Many of these job openings did not represent company growth or an expansion in business operations, but were job vacancies created by workers who quit and left North Dakota.
The truth is, that workers who are already living here or who come here, who can prove that they have experience welding, fabricating, operating heavy equipment, operating fracturing equipment, working on a drill rig, with a CDL license, or are a certified mechanic, they can probably find a job if they are in good health and have a clean driving record. But there is not a huge demand for workers.
I know experienced oil field workers living here in western North Dakota who have had difficulty in finding a job, and the jobs that they eventually accept are lower pay, sometimes much lower, than what they used to get paid. I know people over 50 years of age who have work experience in the oil field and in construction, who have a lot of difficulty in finding a job in western North Dakota.
In the past several years, I have seen many people with some college education, business experience, technical experience, construction experience, and oil field experience, decide to leave North Dakota, because of the combination of not very high pay, poor working conditions, cold weather, and overall unpleasant environment here. The people who have remained here in Dickinson after the oil boom ended in 2015, are mostly blue-collar trades people.
As I previously stated up above, there was an attempt this Spring by business owners, real estate agents, real estate developers, chambers of commerce, and government spokespeople, to entice and lure people here to North Dakota using announcements, news stories, and advertisements. Most of the people who responded to this and came to western North Dakota, were no-skilled, low-skilled, inexperienced, poor, uneducated, illegal drug users from cities in Washington State and California.
Initially, in this Spring of 2018 in downtown Dickinson, it was noisy and chaotic. The poor white-trash and poor blacks who recently arrived from the inner-cities of Washington State and California ran around and got into everything like insects that had recently hatched. In expectation of getting a high paying oil field job, these no-skilled, low-skilled uneducated inner-city people rented apartments, and behaved like they did where they came from.
These new arrivals from the inner-cities continued to use illegal drugs, sell illegal drugs, get high, get drunk, and drive recklessly around Dickinson. Little by little, bit by bit, the Dickinson Police arrested these new arrivals for possession of drugs, possession of drug paraphernalia, reckless driving, and DUI.
Once these no-skilled, low-skilled, uneducated inner-city people with criminal records and bad driving records found that they were unable to get a job working in the oil field, they began doing what they did in the inner-cities where they came from, sell drugs, steal, commit burglaries, and robberies.
Little by little, bit by bit, these inner-city people who arrived in Dickinson, most of them have either been stopped by the Dickinson Police multiple times, or they have been arrested. They are in jail awaiting trial, have posted bail and have fled the state, have calmed down because they don’t want to get stopped by the Police anymore, or they have moved away because of the Police and they can’t get a job.
What is very funny to me, is at the apartment building where I live in downtown Dickinson tonight, it is so quiet, such a contrast to the months of April, May, and the beginning of June. There is no one driving recklessly through the residential streets, there is no vehicle in the apartment building parking lot playing ghetto music, there is no one stopping by the apartment building to buy illegal drugs, there are no drug addicts wandering through the parking lot or the hallways.
The people all throughout this downtown neighborhood tonight, they have got their jobs to go to in the morning, they were all in for the night by 7:00 p.m., they had dinner, watched television, and went to bed. The people from Washington State and California, are mostly back where they came from, or locked in their jail cell.
I did not know that women powerlifters pee when lifting heavy weights, but thanks to a YouTube video explaining this phenomenon, I do now.
I imagine that some women readers are hissing, spitting, and wanting to scratch my eyes out for writing this, but I am not making this up. I never would have known about this, if these women in the video below, would not have made a video about this.
About two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post where I complained that there should be some weight room gyms, where men can expect to lift heavy weights without the distraction of women, interference of women, women taking up the equipment and not using it for its intended purpose, and women talking and fooling around.
There are several gym franchises such as Curves, that are for women only, and we all understand why women want to exercise without any men around sometimes. So why can’t women understand that men want to exercise without women around sometimes?
Men and women are different. I can absolutely guarantee you, that if I peed my pants when doing deadlifts or squats at a gym, I would be kicked out, and everyone would be furious at me, both the men and the women.
Apparently, it is very common for women to pee their pants when lifting heavy weights. I don’t care that much, but like I said, if a man did this, he would be kicked out of the gym. Probably, if a man peed his pants while deadlifting or doing squats at the West River Community Center in Dickinson, the Police would be called and they would try to charge him with lewd and lascivious behavior. But women can just pee all over the place and get away with it.
I found a very good YouTube video where a female powerlifter explains her steroid use. You will first hear the straightforward admission from her about her steroid use at the 4:40 minute mark on this video.
This powerlifter explains that though some of the side effects of steroid use, like acne outbreaks, will go away after you quit using steroids as a woman, your voice change and hair growth everywhere on your body, will not ever go away, it is permanent.
Please also pay close attention to the 11:40 minute mark on this video, where she makes the statement, I knew that if I was going to compete at the highest levels of women’s powerlifting, I had to take steroids.
I found a good video, which explains eight ways to tell if someone is using steroids:
This video somewhat addresses the increases in strength that are attainable by someone who is not using steroids, versus someone who is using steroids.
For instance, this video creator explains that it took him four years of weight training to increase his bench press from 200 lb to 300 lb, without using steroids. He states that when you see someone increase their bench press by 100 lb in a matter of months, that this is a definite sign of steroid use.
I just now read a June 6, 2018 Dickinson Press Newspaper article titled “School resource officer disciplined for disorderly conduct”. This article starts off with “The school resource officer for the Stark County Sheriff’s Department, Ron VanDoorne, was involved in a disorderly conduct incident May 27 at his residence, where Dickinson Police responded to a frantic phone call that said VanDoorne was in the house with a gun.”
After reading this entire Dickinson Press Newspaper article, in essence what this article described, was that Ron VanDoorne had lost his temper after an incident happened in the kitchen of his home, where he was cooking dinner for his wife, adult kids, and grandchildren. One of the young grandchildren got underfoot when Ron was cooking, which caused a big pot of boiling water to be spilled on himself, and a grandchild.
Not much detail is given in this article about what was said and done right when this happened in the kitchen, but someone made a “frantic” phone call to the Police, saying that Ron “had a gun”. Ron walked to a nearby park to cool off. When he returned home a short time later, the Dickinson Police were there.
Sheriff Terry Oestreich said, “Ron was walking back and there was four or five officers present and Ron was not in a good mood, he was very upset,”……”Yeah, he said some inappropriate things to the officers. He was handcuffed and he has apologized to me.”
Captain David Wilkie of the Dickinson police said VanDoorne had been “uncooperative” on that night, but confirmed there were no charges filed.
This incident is funny to me, and I will explain why. In 2014, there was an advertisement for an opening with the City of Dickinson Police Department. This job advertisement was hidden, it was not posted on the websites North Dakota Job Services, Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, Indeed.com, or the Dickinson Press Newspaper classifieds. I believe that this job opening was posted on the most obscure website possible, so that the only people who would know about it, were people who were personally told about it.
I applied for this opening with the City of Dickinson Police Department, and the application paperwork was very lengthy and time consuming. After I had already turned in my completed application package, one day before the deadline, I received an e-mail stating that I needed to submit my high school transcripts, before the end of the following day, or my application would not be considered.
I believed that the City of Dickinson had not only hidden this job opening advertisement, but they waited until the last minute, the day before the deadline, to send me an e-mail requiring that I get my high school transcripts from Florida, where I had graduated more than twenty-five years ago. Without receiving the required payment, a county archivist in Florida went to a warehouse, went through boxes of records to get my high school transcripts, scanned them, and faxed them to the UPS store in Dickinson, so that I would have them before the deadline.
I passed my three written tests for the Frontline National Law Enforcement Exam. Then I was scheduled to have an interview before a panel with the City of Dickinson human resources person, and three City of Dickinson Police Officers. I was doing O.K. at the interview, until Ron VanDoorne sunk me.
Ron VanDoorne asked me, “How do you feel about doing customer service?” I said something like, “I can do customer service, I don’t mind doing customer service, but I understand that being a Police Officer, I would have to do a variety of things, customer service, patrol, responding to calls, writing reports, but that I wouldn’t be doing just one thing all day long, that is what I was looking forward to.”
Ron VanDoorne followed up by asking me if I did not want to do customer service, and I pictured in my mind sitting at a desk all day taking in customer complaints, and I replied that I wanted a job where I did a variety of things, that I didn’t want to do just one thing all day long. I believed that this line of questioning by Ron VanDoorne, was what caused me to not be hired, because I did not want to do “customer service”. Really, what a Police Officer is required to do, is be professional, courteous, and civil with everyone, it’s not exactly the same thing as customer service.
The truth is, no I don’t want to do customer service all day long, or I would have applied for a customer service job at a call center. I should have seen that Ron VanDoorne was just looking to disqualify me anyway, that I should have seen this question for what it was. It goes without saying, that a Police Officer is supposed to be professional, courteous, and civil at all times.
The hidden job advertisement, the last minute request for high school transcripts from twenty-five years ago, and being disqualified because I answered truthfully that I did not want to do “customer service” all day long, made me a little disgusted and angry with the City of Dickinson, and the City of Dickinson Police Department.
So yes, I think that it is funny that Ron VanDoorne had the Police called on him by his own family, that he got put in handcuffs, that he received disciplinary action, and that this was reported in the newspaper. Maybe in addition to his required alcohol evaluation, he get some “customer service” counseling, because you can’t go losing your temper with the public and the Police like that.
To summarize for the readers who never agree with what I write, I think that it is funny that Ron VanDoorne got in trouble for blowing up at his family and the Police were called on him, after he disqualified me for potentially not being able to maintain a civil demeanor with people.
I have no interest in pharmaceutical steroids, testosterone, or human growth hormone. I do not have very much interest in powerlifting or bodybuilding either. I did have my own idea about what I wanted for my own physical strength and health.
I wanted to have useful strength, for the work that I did, and the things that I was involved in. But once I became over 27 years old, I did not want to spend a couple of hours in the gym every day. Partly, I no longer had time in my schedule to spend a couple of hours in the gym every day, and the other part was that it was no longer important to me to be overly strong or overly big. Getting my work completed and making money was more important to me.
In my mid 30s, after I moved away from the city and had more free time, I began lifting weights again. I was putting in good effort, but I was careful not to damage my knees, back, elbows, or shoulders by trying to lift too much weight. Again, it was not important to me to be overly strong or overly big.
In my early 40s, I began trying harder to improve my strength, and it was something that I looked forward to, to try to make gains in the gym. I was pleased with my bench press, dumbbell press, overhead press, lat pull downs, triceps dips, triceps curls, biceps curls, pretty much all my lifts and exercises, considering that I was now in my early 40s.
When I had to leave my home in Idaho in 2011 to begin working in the oil fields in North Dakota, Utah, and Texas, my life was disrupted in many ways. One of the worst things that happened to me, was getting my back hurt so bad in 2011, that I couldn’t walk for several months. But other things that were always a problem working in the oil fields, were lack of normal housing, and general chaos in just about everything else.
Working in North Dakota, for a couple of years I had to sleep in small campers on company property, and sometimes take showers at the Tiger Truck Stop. There was a shortage of housing, and housing was extremely expensive. Once it gets to be below 0 degrees Fahrenheit and you live in a small camper, just staying clean and warm, and not dying, is what you are paying attention to.
It has only been in the past couple of years, once the oil boom ended in North Dakota, that I have had the time and opportunity to begin trying to go to gyms on a regular basis again. The West River Community Center in Dickinson, North Dakota where I live is one of the nicest gym facilities in the United States. However, it is a community center with men, women, children, and the elderly.
I never had a problem with the elderly people in the WRCC, they were not a nuisance at all. The men were typical of what you would find in a gym anywhere. But the women and the children in the WRCC were a nuisance, annoyance, and a distraction to me: sitting on equipment and not using the equipment, placing belongings on equipment that they were not using, taking up equipment that they did not need for that exercise, getting too close and not understanding that they could get hurt, and fooling around being a distraction.
This year, I thought that I had found a small gym with only heavy duty power lifting training equipment, a place that would not have any women and children in it. There was nothing in this small gym to be of any interest to women and children, I thought. A couple of days ago when I was in this gym, everything that I hated about the West River Community Center, happened here in this small gym.
A couple of women came in, and were talking, socializing, fooling around, placing belongings on equipment, sitting on equipment that I wanted to use, and me having to worry about hitting them with a weight bar because they were close to what I was doing. I was angry, and I wrote a blog post about what happened. The owners of the gym and I got into a dispute over this, and they told me not to come back.
During the argument about women being in the gym, and in comments to my blog post, the gym owners, power lifters, and especially women, were telling me that there were women who could kick my ass in the gym. I doubted this. There were claims made about what weight women were lifting, so I looked it up.
I looked up the USPA 2017 Montana state records for women, which showed something like 238 lb bench press, and 315 lb squat, which sounded about right to me. Then I looked up a specific woman who was given as an example, and her bench press and squat were maybe 268 lb and 400 lb in 2015, which still sounded about right to me.
When commenters began citing even higher numbers for female power lifters, and higher numbers for some of the women power lifters that I had already looked up, I checked more records as was suggested to me, and suddenly I realized what was going on.
For adult women who were power lifters, who had been training for several years or more, who had entered and won power lifting competitions, there was a record of what their bench press, squat, and dead lift were for each meet. After several years or more of focusing on diet, nutrition, supplements, training, exercising, and working very hard, these numbers for bench press, squat, and dead lift represented a peak or plateau that they had reached, after several years or more of work.
Then in less than a year, their bench press, squat, and dead lift all suddenly increased by 40%, after they had already reached their physical plateau? They had been working for several years to make gains of 10% to 20% per year, reaching their physical plateau, then all of a sudden all of their lifts increased by 40% in one year. What was going on?
Let me put it this way. Does a college senior baseball pitcher enter Major League Baseball and begin throwing 40% faster, No. Does a college track athlete ever begin running 40% faster one year later, No. Does a college swimmer ever begin swimming 40% faster one year later, No. Does a college high jumper ever begin jumping 40% higher one year later, No.
So how could an adult athlete who has been training for years, suddenly have a 40% increase in strength?
Remembering What I Forgot About Steroids, Testosterone, And Human Growth Hormone
Reading the records of the women power lifters, this started me thinking about everything that I knew about steroids, testosterone, and human growth hormone. I will give some examples.
#1. When I was in junior high school, about 8th grade, there was a school assembly in the gymnasium, where a 30 year old man was going to perform a demonstration. This man named Chuck, he was from this town, he had joined the Navy, and he had taken up power lifting. He had achieved some kind of powerlifting record, and today he was going to give a talk, and then bench press 500 lb. At the time, I didn’t think that this was worthy of a school wide assembly, but I was glad to get out of class.
The point of this demonstration and school assembly, was that the school principal had been convinced that this was motivational, that this might give some kids an inspiration to get involved in power lifting, to put effort into something positive, rather than getting into trouble. To Chuck, this was partly an opportunity to get publicity for the new gym that he was opening in town.
However, within about a year of Chuck’s gym opening, it was shut down, by the Police. Chuck, his gym, and his gym members were found to be using, bringing in, and selling steroids, testosterone, and human growth hormones. It turns out that Chuck’s above average strength, was primarily from steroid use, etc. Within about a year of this drug bust by the Police, where Chuck was prohibited from using steroids as part of his probation, Chuck’s appearance changed, he became just a normal looking, average sized guy.
#2. When I was in high school, our high school hired a strength and conditioning coach for the football program. One of my friends named Bob, who was on the football team, his older brother played professional football. Bob was only about 5’-10” and 180 lbs, and he knew full well that he was not going to be able to play professional football.
Bob had a brother named Todd, who was two years younger than Bob. Todd was even smaller than Bob. In elementary school, junior high school, and high school, Bob and Todd lifted weights together. Bob tried to push Todd to do more weight, but Todd could only do what he could do. For instance, when Bob was a junior in high school, he could bench press about 210 lb. His younger brother Todd could maybe bench press 180 lb at this time when he was a freshman.
After Bob and I graduated from high school, when his younger brother Todd was a junior in high school, Todd was all of a sudden bench pressing 365 lb. Within a year Todd went from bench pressing 215 lb, to bench pressing 365 lb. Bob was really mad about it, because his younger brother was using steroids, and his physical appearance totally changed. He said he told him, Todd, you are only 5’-7”, you are never going to play professional football, probably not even college football, so why are you doing this to yourself taking steroids?
There were several kids who were high school football players, who weighed about 135 lbs their sophomore year and were skinny, who within a year went up to weighing over 200 lb their junior year. There were so many cases of steroid, testosterone, and human growth hormone use by the high school football players, that an investigation was done, and it was found that these pharmaceuticals were being administered by the strength and conditioning coach, who was then fired.
#3. When I was a college student, some of my friends became involved in powerlifting and bodybuilding. Even though they were training regularly, and working hard, there came a point when they quit making advances in their strength and muscle size, so they began experimenting with steroids and other drugs such as GHB.
One of my friends began ordering veterinary and ranch pharmaceuticals through the mail. One of the things that I remember him receiving, were “feed lot heffer” cattle implant pellets, which were used by ranchers to implant in cattle ear flaps, to slowly release steroids into the cattle to make them put on weight. He would grind these pellets up using a mortar and pestal, add linseed oil or propylene glycol to make a solution, heat it up in the microwave to make it dissolve, draw the solution into a hypodermic needle, and then inject the solution into his buttocks muscle.
One college student got arrested for receiving veterinary pharmaceuticals in the mail. My friend passed out a couple of times, once inside of a gym, and he was very nearly arrested for various drug charges. One of our friends who was a successful personal trainer and competitive body builder died at the age of 25 from drug complications.
My friends were using Dan Duchaine’s books, “The Underground Steroid Handbooks 1 & 2” as a reference manual on how to obtain and use steroids and other substances. Dan Duchaine was arrested and put in prison twice for his involvement with selling steroids and GHB. Dan Duchesne later died at the age of 48 from kidney disease.
#4. My friends’ idol or role model were people like Dorian Yates, a British bodybuilder who was known not just for winning bodybuilding competitions such as the Mr. Olympia six consecutive times, but because he trained with very heavy weights, almost like a power lifter would use, and he was very strong, large, and well defined.
This was in the 1990s, and the professional bodybuilders were becoming so outrageously large in muscle size, and the professional powerlifters were making such enormous increases in weight lifts, that it was obvious that steroids and other pharmaceuticals were being widely used. Very few competitors would admit this at the time, but now, many of these competitors who are now retired are coming out and admitting to their drug use, and are giving details about what went on.
Most of the competitors that are telling about their experiences now, said that they used drugs in order to be someone, in order to be a champion, in order to be successful, to be able to have things in life that they would otherwise not have had. They said that the risks were worth the reward to them, at the time, in their mind.
These competitors also described the kind of psychological addiction to steroids and other drugs, the drugs that enabled them to lift enormous weight, have a huge physique, and stand out in a crowd. Once they had to quit taking steroids due to health problems, they became depressed and wanted to withdraw, because they could not live up to the image of themselves that people had become familiar with.
This first video does not have any commentary. It shows the contrast between Dorian Yates when he was using steroids during his professional bodybuilding career, and what he looks like after he retired and ceased using steroids.
This second video is a discussion where Dorian Yates explains his steroid use during his professional bodybuilding career.
The problem is, that once people begin taking a serious interest in bodybuilding or powerlifting, begin training seriously, working hard, reading and learning more, keeping a record of their work out weights and repetitions, after several years of making gains they will realize that they have reached their physical plateau, where they are no longer making gains, and may even begin going backwards.
From what they have read, learned, seen, and heard by this time, they have to choose whether they are going to stay where they are, or are they going to try to make further gains by using steroids, testosterone, human growth hormone, or other substances. Women are no different than men now in their willingness to take steroids, testosterone, and human growth hormones. I think that some women are even more likely to use these drugs not solely to make gains in their weight lifting or muscle size, but to try to have equal or greater strength than men.
This last video, gives another person’s perspective on his steroid use, who was not a professional bodybuilder or powerlifter.
What I am going to write about, is one of the funniest things that I have seen recently. Women are always jumping on me, for writing about women who I see or meet, accusing me of being a stalker. But I have known for a long time, that women are way sneakier and snoopier than men.
On Memorial Day, I went to the West River Community Center. I parked my vehicle in the parking lot, and a young lady driving a vehicle with a license plate from an oil producing state, drove past me. I was vaguely aware of what kind of vehicle she was driving, but what I thought was funny, was that I did not think that she was a house wife, I got the impression that she worked for an oil company and she got sent up here to Dickinson.
It was funny to me, because I was thinking that an oil company sending her here to Dickinson, was kind of a mean trick on her. I believe that she had probably figured that out in a matter of days after arriving here in Dickinson.
I wanted a day pass at the West River Community Center, and I printed my full name on the guest sign in sheet at the front desk. Then I went to the weight area of the gym. I was only paying a little attention to what women were in the gym.
Today, Tuesday, I was at home looking on my Facebook page for “People You May Know”. The “People You May Know”, are usually people who are “Facebook Friends” of people who are already your “Facebook Friends”. However, some of the people who show up on Facebook as “People You May Know”, who are not “Facebook Friends” of people you already know, are people who have recently viewed your profile.
So, here on Facebook under my “People You May Know” today, was a young lady that I do not know. And, she was not a “Facebook Friend” of someone that I already know. She was young and fairly attractive. So I looked at her profile, she is a particular kind of engineer, from an oil producing state far away from here, who recently began working for a particular oil company here in Dickinson.
Then I realized what had happened, and who this was. On Memorial Day when I got out of my vehicle in the West River Community Center parking lot, I was wearing a particular oil company T-shirt, with the oil company logo in very big letters on the front of my shirt. A young lady driving a vehicle from an oil producing state far away from here, drove past me in the parking lot, and I thought that an oil company must have sent her here, because she was a long way from home.
It turns out, that this young lady is an engineer working for the oil company whose logo was on my T-shirt in big letters. She came into the gym right behind me, she saw me printing my name on the sign in sheet, she read my name off of the sign in sheet, and she used my name to perform an internet search or a Facebook search for me. Now, I remembered her and recognized her.
In order to be completely clear for the women readers who find fault with everything that I write, this young lady who showed up in my “People You May Know” today, she is not from Dickinson, she is not friends with anyone that I know, and she showed up in my “People You May Know” list because she recently viewed my profile. Why would she view my profile, I don’t know her, how did she get my name? She got my full name from the guest sign in sheet, and she wanted to look me up because I was wearing an oil company shirt, of the company where she had been recently hired to work in Dickinson. Once a few of these things dawned on me, I then remembered her as the young lady that I had seen at the WRCC.
I don’t mind that she read my name from the guest sign in sheet and looked me up on the internet. She was just curious, this is not illegal, or unethical in my opinion. Engineers try to take whatever little information they can get, and use it to find out what is going on. I don’t mind, however, if I did this to a woman, I would be banned from the West River Community Center, the police would be called, and the police would likely try to find something to charge me with criminally, such as stalking, even though this is not illegal. I would be in all kinds of trouble.
I will send her a polite message on Facebook. I expect that she will not respond, or block me from viewing her profile again. That will be O.K. with me, but I want to try to be hospitable or gracious anyway, in case she does want to talk to me.
When I was living in Idaho, this was about eight years ago, I was friends with a man who managed a bar and restaurant. I will call this man John, though that is not his real name. John and his brothers had each played every sport in high school, basketball, baseball, football, hockey, wrestling, and they boxed too.
John had joined the Marines after high school, and several of his brothers became football coaches at different schools in Idaho. John, his brothers, and most of their friends were married. John was in his early fifties by the way.
When there were college football playoffs, especially when Boise State University was playing, John, his brothers, and some of their friends would get together at someone’s house to watch the football games. They had a lot of food, snacks, and beverages.
The problem became, that one or more of the men would show up to watch the football game with their wife. The wives would say that they wanted to come, but once they got there, they didn’t really want to be there or watch the game. Inevitably, some of the wives would begin complaining more and more about wanting to go home.
When some of the wives started to complain about not wanting to be there, this didn’t just annoy their own husband, it annoyed everyone there.
So, beginning four years prior to meeting John, he and his friends decided to rent a large hotel suite in order to watch the football game, without their wives complaining. The whole point of renting the hotel room, which was rented by the most serious football watchers, the football coaches, the whole point was to be left alone to watch the game.
After about the first year, the wives couldn’t stand this, not being able to ruin the football game for their husbands. So they would try to ask and find out what hotel room their husband was going to be at. Then someone’s wife would show up at the hotel room to ruin the game.
Finally, just the football coaches would rent a hotel suite to watch the football game, and they would not tell anybody else where it was, absolutely not. They couldn’t afford to invite anyone else, even their friends, because this always caused someone’s wife to show up. They might have even had to go to a neighboring town, so that no one’s wife could go looking for their truck in the hotel parking lots.
I will end this blog post with a joke: “Why do married women close their eyes when they are having sex?……………Because they can’t stand to see their husbands having a good time.”
On the last Saturday and Sunday in May, I got into a dispute with owners of The Pit Gym in Dickinson after I updated my December 2017 blog post about their gym, and I wrote a new blog post titled “The Beginning Of The Ruining Of The Pit Gym”.
The gym owners strongly disagreed with what I wrote about their gym, and they shared my new blog post with other people. As of today, Monday, this blog post has received about 1,200 views. I believe that the comment numbers are at about 60 comments. About 25 of these comments are my response. Of the remaining 35 comments, many of these comments are from the same people.
Altogether, out of the 1,200 blog post views, about 20 people commented. Though most of the comments were negative and intended to be insulting, there was some exchange of information. I was told many times that there were women power lifters who would kick my ass in the gym.
I looked up the power lifting women record holders to see what their numbers were. All of the women power lifting record holders, except one, had a bench press of about 240 lb or less, a squat of about 450 lb, and a dead lift of about 450 lb.
I was kind of interested to see if I could beat these numbers of the women power lifting record holders. I am 49 years old, and not in very good shape. I didn’t say that I was weak, I said that I was not in very good shape.
I do not like to do squats and deadlifts because I injured my back very badly in 2011, to where I could not walk for more than about 50 feet and sometimes not at all, for several months. It took me one year, to regain about 90% of my back functionality. Here is my back X-Ray from 2011.
Like I said, I do not like to do squat and dead lift exercises. In 2012, I did a lot of stomach and back strengthening exercises, most often doing sit ups and back raises using a bosu ball. One year later, at 90% recovered, someone who had broken their back recommended to me that I take the supplement glucosamine with chondroitin, and this supplement helped me to become almost completely recovered.
After recovering from this back injury, and being able to walk again, for a long time I was protective of my back, and I tried to be careful not to lift anything so heavy that I would injure my back again. Especially not doing squats and deadlifts.
Myself, I was contented to walk 4 to 8 miles, do some leg machine exercises, do some sit ups and stomach crunches, and reverse sit ups, to maintain my leg and back strength. There was no need for me to do squats or deadlifts, being 49 years old now.
I received so many insults from The Pit Gym owners, their friends who they shared my blog post with, other power lifters, and especially women power lifters, that I will now begin again to see how much weight I can build up to in squat, dead lift, and bench, though I have no interest in power lifting, and think that this is a good way to get injured.
Here is where I am at now:
Flat bench press, 270 lb x one rep……………………now 290 lb
Incline bench press, 240 lb x one rep………………now 260 lb
Seated overhead press, 195 lb x one rep
Dumbbell press, two 100 lb x six reps
Prone triceps curls, 135 lb x two reps
Standing biceps curls, ??
Dead lift, 345 lb x one rep
Squat, ??
I did not say that this was a lot of weight, I said that this is where I am at now. I will update this list above, as I make gains.
All I was looking for, before the insults, was to get back to 315 lb bench, 265 lb incline bench, 245 lb overhead press, 120 lb x 6 reps dumbbell press, 165 lb prone triceps curls, 135 lb standing biceps curls, which were what I used to do.
When I dead lifted 345 lb today, I had not dead lifted anything in the past seven years. It was not difficult, but I could feel that there were parts of my lower back that were not ready for it. I expect to be able to dead lift 405 lb, in about six weeks, more or less.
If you read my previous blog post about the Beginning Of The Ruining Of The Pit Gym In Dickinson, North Dakota, you will know why I am on this subject.
Nothing is so frustrating as people not knowing and not understanding, I will give a few brief stories to illustrate.
In 2005, the average home price in Flagstaff, Arizona was about $390,000, while at the same time, the average hourly pay rate in Flagstaff was about $11.00 per hour. The local residents in Flagstaff could not afford to buy a home.
With great cooperation between a land owner, a general contractor, subcontractors, suppliers, and the City of Flagstaff, this team set about to build some inexpensive affordable housing for the local residents in Flagstaff. About ten town homes were completed about one year later.
This team proudly had an open house at the completion of the ten town homes. One couple from California who were visiting their daughter at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, wrote a check for two of these town homes on the spot, they couldn’t believe how inexpensive they were. Another person visiting from California wrote a check for a third town home right on the spot, they were amazed at how cheap it was.
Fuck!!! The whole point of the collaborative effort, was to create affordable housing for local residents in Flagstaff whose average hourly wage was only $11.00 per hour, not create unbelievably cheap housing for people visiting from California to have a great windfall in buying an investment property, at the expense of everyone who cooperated to perform the work so cheaply. Buying up the low income housing intended solely for the low income people.
Here is another example of wealthy people not understanding.
During the oil boom in Dickinson, there was a shortage of housing, and the housing that was available was very expensive. Many workers slept in their vehicles at the Tiger Truck Stop, the Wal-Mart parking lot, Patterson Lake, or the company yards where they worked.
In the evening, you could pay $8.00 to take a shower at the Tiger Truck Stop. There were five showers available, and you had to sign up on a waiting list. The wait would sometimes be an hour or two. The construction workers and the truck drivers, who were filthy dirty and tired, would sit around and stand around waiting for their turn.
A truck driver or construction worker went up to the cashier at the Tiger Truck Stop, and asked if a shower was ready yet. An older gentleman, maybe about sixty years old, dressed like a professional person, such as a banker or lawyer, who was paying for gas in his new Cadillac, his eyes lit up with delight, when he heard about the showers. He turned to his wife and said, honey they have showers.
This elderly gentleman, was under the mistaken impression, that the Tiger Truck Stop was like a day spas, who knows what kind of luxury pampered experience he was envisioning. In reality, you would be given a great big dirty wooden stick with a key on it, and be told you have twenty minutes.
I will give two examples of people not understanding how poor some people are.
When I was living in Idaho, there was a poor man with a wife and young daughter who sometimes worked with me at my self-employed construction work. In bad times, he and his wife would look in grocery store dumpsters for packaged food that had been thrown out because it was past its expiration date.
On many days when the thrift stores closed, his wife would go look in the garbage dumpsters behind the thrift stores to see what clothes had been thrown away. They would sometimes go to the food bank.
I stopped by Joe’s house one evening just after he had returned from picking up a large pizza from Dominoes. Joe asked me if I wanted any, and I said no thank you. I realized that this large pizza was all that Joe had for himself, his wife, and his daughter.
Just then, two Mormon missionaries stopped by Joe’s house, who he and I were friends with. Joe offered the two Mormon missionaries some pizza, which they were happy to accept. The two Mormon missionaries each quickly ate two pieces of pizza, and I can’t remember if they each had a third piece, but most of the pizza was gone.
They asked me if I was not having any, and I said no, I had already eaten. They asked Joe if he was not having any, and Joe said no, I’m fixing to have something else. Joe gave the remaining pizza to his wife and his daughter, and the Mormon missionaries were on their way shortly. That pizza was all the food that Joe had for himself and his family that night.
One more fun story about poor people.
When I was a kid, there was a white trash boy, playing with a young black kid. The white trash boy, his name was Jimmy. Jimmy gave a match box car to the young black kid whose name was Michael.
Michael’s grandparents, who were raising Michael, were very traditional, hard working, God-fearing people, and they wanted to know how Michael had come by this match box car. Michael told his grandparents that Jimmy had given it to him.
In order to be honorable people, Michael’s grandparents said to Jimmy’s father, thank you for giving that match box car to our grandson, we would like to offer you, anything that you wish in our store.
This old black woman, she went by Miss Edith, and she ran Miss Edith’s store, where she sold hand-made straw hats that she made herself, and a few other hand made items, like maybe straw fans, or straw place mats. In a glass case at the cash register, there was a gold necklace that was the most expensive thing in the store. I believe the price on it was something like $130. This is what Jimmy’s father said that he wanted.
Out of pride and wanting to keep her word, she gave Jimmy’s father this gold necklace. This $130 gold necklace, was probably the equivalent of her family’s income for the week, if not more.
My father, who was a bystander to all of this, made up some story and got $130 to Miss Edith a few hours later, and explained to her that this was all a misunderstanding, because he knew that this was something that Miss Edith could not afford to lose.
This last example, now that I think about it, may not be purely an example of someone not knowing and not understanding, but may partly involve someone not giving a shit too.
In December of 2017, I wrote a blog post about a new gym that had recently opened in Dickinson, North Dakota, called The Pit Gym. When I looked in the window of The Pit Gym, I saw two heavy-duty squat racks, two heavy-duty bench press benches, and a long rack of complete dumbbell pairs going up to 100 lbs or more.
I was very happy and surprised to see this, because this was a weight room gym, and not a fitness center. I had not seen a weight room like this, since I worked out in the Gainesville Gym, the Daytona Gym, and the Powerhouse Gym in Florida with power lifting and body building competitors.
Starting about twenty years ago, most gyms in the United States adopted a Fitness Center model, in order to appeal to a broader range of men and women. In doing so, these gyms became more feminized, or emasculated, into Fitness Centers where achieving maximum size and strength was no longer the goal, but some vision of “general health and wellness”.
The West River Community Center in Dickinson, is one of the nicest fitness centers in the United States, and probably even the World. It has an indoor Olympic lap pool, an indoor amusement park pool, an outdoor pool, hot tub, two indoor tennis courts, four indoor racketball courts, four indoor basketball courts, one indoor volleyball court, upper level 1/5 mile jogging track, outdoor skateboard park, indoor rock climbing wall, floor exercise area, aerobics rooms and classes, thirty pieces of cardiovascular equipment, bench press benches, squat racks, dead lift platforms, dumbbells, and cable machines.
The West River Community Center also has very large men’s and women’s locker rooms with many lockers, toilets, and showers. There is also a children’s day care facility. The cost of a membership is only about $30 per month. Like I said, the West River Community Center is one of the nicest fitness centers in the United States.
However, one thing that the West River Community Center, and the Anytime Fitness in Dickinson do not have, is a heavy weight lifting area with the absence of women and children.
It does not matter that the West River Community Center has three heavy-duty squat racks and two dead lift platforms, when these squat racks and dead lift platforms are usually occupied by women or children who are only lifting just the 45 lb bar, without any weights, and doing many sets of exercises.
I think that women’s fitness magazines must have shown so many articles where a professional trainer is doing squats with just a bar inside of a squat rack, or lunges with just the bar on a dead lift platform, that this is what women think these things are for.
Squat racks, which are a heavy steel framework consisting of four vertical corner posts and overhead horizontal cross bracing, were invented about fifty years ago, to allow power lifters doing heavy squat exercises, to train without a spotter, and to help prevent a catastrophic injury or accident. A squat exercise, is where you rest the bar on your upper back, and perform a knee bend and back bend, to where your upper legs become horizontal or parallel to the floor.
High School football linemen can typically squat about 350 lbs. College football linemen can typically squat about 400 lbs. Very good competitive power lifters can squat more than 700 lbs. It is common when performing heavy squat exercises, for lifters of any age, to experience a problem. The most common problems are a sudden knee weakness, loss of balance, or loss of footing.
If a power lifter is performing heavy squat exercises inside of a squat rack, there are horizontal safety bars that are set to stop the fall of the bar and the weights if there is a problem. The horizontal safety bars inside of the squat rack, can prevent the complete and catasrophic failure of a knee or vertebrae, paralysis, death, and tremendous property damage. Without the squat rack safety bars, 400 lb to 800 lb landing on your neck or head if you slip, can be fatal.
When the women and children at the West River Community Center are taking up the squat racks using only the 45 lb bar for multiple sets of exercises, usually they don’t even have the horizontal safety bars set to help them in a fall. They don’t even really need the squat rack at all, and they are just tying up a strategic piece of training equipment and preventing others who really need it, from using it.
Most people do not know how much planning goes into even minimally competitive power lifting. Most all power lifters keep a journal/log book of completed training and planned training. They are on a very complex schedule of lift rotations, and weight levels. Whether it is squat, dead lift, or bench press, there are weeks of training with increasing weight, leading up to one specific day, and one specific time of that day, that they have set to attempt a maximum squat, dead lift, or bench press.
Adult men who are involved in power lifting, will think all week about a lift, their maximum weight attempt scheduled for a Friday at 5:00 p.m. when they get off of work. They will visualize a squat lift all week, and know all week that they plan on attempting 495 lb, 505 lb, the amount that they think they can achieve in a maximum effort for one repetition. This lift will be the culmination of weeks and weeks of training. But when they get to the West River Community Center at 5:00 p.m. on Friday to use the squat rack, there is some young lady doing squats with just the 45 lb bar, tying up the squat rack, and she doesn’t even need the squat rack.
In order to do something about this problem, Dave Clem a power lifting competitor in Dickinson, opened The Pit Gym in the Fall of 2017. Now I already wrote two paragraphs describing everything that the West River Community Center has, from the pools, basketball courts, cardio equipment, weight training equipment, men’s and women’s locker rooms. The only thing that the West River Community Center did not have, was a heavy weight lifting area for adult men, with no women and children around to get on dead lift platforms and squat racks that they did not need in the first place.
On this Saturday, 5/26/18, I was at The Pit Gym when two young men had brought their two young girlfriends with them. At first, I just tried to not pay attention to these two young women, but they were talking a lot, as this appeared to be a social outing for them, like a barbeque or going to the beach. One of the young women got on one of the bench press benches and was using just the bar with no weight. And the other young woman was all over the place, not even lifting weight most of the time, just being a distraction.
I was very angry about this, and I felt like saying to the two young men, “Are you trying to fuck this up just like the West River Community Center? The whole reason why this gym exists, is because women and children would go to the West River Community Center and get on the bench press benches, the squat racks, and the dead lift platforms, and use just the bar with no weight, fool around, and prevent other people from using the heavy weight equipment.”
I couldn’t fucking believe this. The Pit Gym is small, about 35’x 50′, it doesn’t even have locker rooms or a shower. All The Pit Gym has to offer, that is different than the West River Community Center and Anytime Fitness, are the two heavy-duty weight benches, the two heavy-duty squat racks, the dead lift platform, and the dumbbells pairs going up to 100 lbs, combined with the absence of women and children getting in the way.
If you introduce women and children into The Pit Gym, it has absolutely nothing to offer, and no reason to go there whatsoever, if all of the equipment is going to be taken up by women and children. If the squat racks, benches, and dumbbell area are going to be occupied by women, you might as well just go to the West River Community Center as it is cheaper, has more equipment, and more amenities.
I was angry and distracted by the two young women in The Pit Gym on Saturday. I left the gym without completing even half of my planned exercises, partly because I lost my focus, and partly because I did not want to do my exercises around these two young women because I thought that they might get hurt, or cause me to get hurt.
The behind the head curls that I was doing laying on my back on the weight bench, I thought that the one young girl using the adjacent weight bench was going to get hit with the bar because she did not know the range of motion that I was going to do. And I could see the same thing happening with the other young woman when I tried to do dumbbell flies.
Like I said, these two young women were treating this as a social outing, and I don’t think that they were paying enough attention or had been around weight rooms enough to know what I was going to do. Them walking into to me, the bar, or the dumbbells while I was in motion would not only have gotten them hurt, it might have gotten me hurt too.
I just left, and I was angry and disgusted. I went home and I updated the first blog post that I wrote about The Pit Gym back in December of 2017. I began thinking that maybe this is what Dave Clem and his wife Wendy want, to get as many people to join The Pit Gym as possible, even if this results in the exact same problems as what happened at the West River Community Center and Anytime Fitness in Dickinson.
I am going to finish this blog post by giving some complaints written by other people about gyms and fitness centers:
From Men’s Health, Lou Schuler 9/22/15
The gym noob who sets her water bottle and clipboard on a bench isn’t trying to piss you off. She just doesn’t know better.
A bit less forgivable are the five teens using a single leg press machine, but forming a cordon that blocks off three other stations.
Or the young woman who sits on a machine for five minutes between sets because she’s returning texts.
Don’t tie up equipment that you don’t need for the exercise that you are doing. The people who tie up squat racks when they aren’t even lifting. I’ve seen it used for stretches, or to hold onto while doing single-leg calf raises with their own body weight.
From Return of Kings, Kenzie Atkins 2/28/16
I find nothing more frustrating than walking into the gym and finding it full of women and estrogen.
Working out with other men increases your competitiveness and forces you to push yourself and improve your personal best.
Let me set the scene—you have gone into the gym with the intention of working your legs, you have a set routine, and it’s coming up to the squat part of your workout. You go to the squat rack to find that it is being used by a woman who has a bar weighing 50 lbs. (She is using just the bar, with no weight.)
We are all men, and let’s be honest we are often checking out women. There are some alright women in the gym and this can be a distraction during a time when we should be concentrating on our workout and improving ourselves.
Mixed gyms discourage this kind of fellowship by changing the dynamic. Instead of the positive competitiveness of sport, there is a tendency to compete for the “cute” girl.
Men only gyms would encourage the positive traits of brotherhood and support, while giving us a distraction free environment to improve ourselves.
I don’t know what is going to happen. Why can’t the women just stay over at the West River Community Center with the swimming pools, hot tub, tennis, racketball, basketball, volleyball, jogging track, exercise floor, aerobics rooms, yoga, cardio equipment, weight area, childcare, women’s locker room, women’s showers, and women’s toilets. They have way more equipment and amenities over there. Why the fuck can’t they stay the fuck over there?
This video shows a woman powerlifter who is serious.
This video shows a woman powerlifter who is not serious enough.
This video shows a woman getting hit with weights in the gym.
This video shows a woman taking up equipment and not using it for what it is for.
This video shows women being a distraction in the gym.
Below, I am going to show you two short YouTube videos of two very attractive young women. They are both young, healthy, thin, good looking, feminine, well spoken, reasonable, and logical. The only problem is, they are both male.
These two men, at a point in their lives after puberty, began to believe that they would prefer to be women. After they had made up their mind that they wanted to be women, they began growing their hair long, growing their finger nails longer and painting their nails, applying make up to their face, and dressing in women’s clothing.
They had to learn how to speak like women, and behave like women. They began to learn and practice female mannerisms and movements. They had to learn to become feminine in every way.
Here is the point of this blog post, these men made an effort to be feminine, soft, appealing, and attractive, to the point that they are more attractive and desirable than about 95% of the women in Dickinson, North Dakota.
In other words, with some effort, these two men are way hotter than 95% of the women in Dickinson, North Dakota. I think that this kind of proves that there is something wrong with the women in Dickinson, North Dakota, that men from elsewhere are hotter than the women in Dickinson.
This first man, is more of a coquettish type woman:
This second man, is more of a sophisticated woman:
I am sure many readers would like to comment, “Hey, go for it, he/she is all yours…ha, ha, ha.” Joking aside, 100% of the men in Dickinson would like to date these two women. And, if they found out that these two women were actually men, about 50% of the men in Dickinson would still date them, because they are so desirous of the company of women like this.
I would like to have a girlfriend like these two women, or date these two women, if they were women, because they do act so appealing. Women in Dickinson could learn a tremendous amount from these two men. Why don’t the women in Dickinson know how to put themselves together like these two men?
I met Luke Simons in about 2015 at the church where his father is the Pastor. I was surprised how friendly and talkative Luke was, because most people in Dickinson are not like this with people from out of state.
At that time, I didn’t know anything about Luke, I didn’t know that he had been a barber, or that he intended to run for election in North Dakota state government. I just knew that he owned and operated a roofing business, Simons’ Roofing.
It was either in 2015 or 2016, that Luke developed a very serious illness where he became unable to walk, and later unable to move. He spent at least a month in the hospital in Bismarck, where he was diagnosed with something called Guillain-Barre Syndrome.
Guillain-Barre Syndrome causes muscle weakness and paralysis. 30% of the adults who recover from Guillain-Barre Syndrome never fully regain their previous level of muscle strength, and have residual muscle weakness.
Luke almost died in the hospital, but then he began to recover, and later over the following months he became able to walk again. As far as I knew, Luke resumed his cattle ranching business, and his roofing business. Luke was elected to the North Dakota House of Representatives in 2017.
About one month ago, Luke made an announcement on Facebook that he was opening his own barber shop in Dickinson, called The Gentlemen’s Barber Shop. It was going to be located in the same building as his father’s business Simons’ Homes, directly east of the WalMart parking lot.
In Facebook comments or somewhere else, Luke was admitting to his friends that he had never recovered his complete strength, and that he was not able to be on the job sites doing the actual roofing work all day long, so Monday through Wednesday, he was now going to spend working in his own barber shop.
The Big Sky Barber Shop had the two best barbers in Dickinson, Matt and Paul. They charged $20 for a haircut, and they were always completely booked all day, every day, Monday through Saturday, every week. They couldn’t hardly ever accept walk-ins, because they were so completely booked.
I have very fine thin hair, with much more dense hair on the sides, than on the top. The only barbers in Dickinson who could cut my hair and make it look good, not sticking out on the sides, were Matt and Paul. I would have to wait weeks longer than I wanted to, to get a haircut, because Matt and Paul were completely booked, during the times when I was off work.
I had been thinking for a couple of years, that a barber in Dickinson would do very well to have late business hours, because so many men in Dickinson work until 6:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Like me, many men in Dickinson would have to wait weeks for the chance to get their hair cut during barbers’ business hours.
I saw that Luke’s barber shop was going to be open from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday through Wednesday, which I thought was a very good idea to stay open until 7:00 p.m. I was a little hesitant to get my hair cut with Luke though, because I didn’t think that he had cut hair for a while.
I did not have anything important to do any time soon, where my appearance would matter, so I thought that now would be a good time to try to get my hair cut by Luke. His barber shop was just completed this past week, so when I went in, everything was new. The barber shop had plenty of room, and the bathroom was down the hall, where there is an extra room for his office, and an extra room for a pool table.
Luke did a very good job cutting my hair. It turned out just as good as when Matt or Paul at the Big Sky Barber Shop cut my hair. This is hard to do, to cut my hair so that it doesn’t look funny, because like I already said, my hair is very thin and fine, being more dense along the sides and much more sparse on the top.
I would recommend going to Luke the barber, and I hope that everyone will keep in mind that he is open for business until 7:00 p.m., if you are finding it difficult to get your hair cut due to work.
I had meant to write this blog post several days ago, after a reader from Seattle, Washington left a comment about her hearing on the radio that politicians in Dickinson were telling people to move to Dickinson, North Dakota.
When I read her comment, I said to myself, “I knew it! I knew it! There are idiots in Dickinson, who are announcing to the most crime infested areas like Seattle and Spokane, Washington…Come to Dickinson! Come to Dickinson!” This is why so many criminals and drug dealers from Washington state have been arriving in Dickinson this past year.
Here is her comment, I partly blocked out her user name, because she didn’t know that I was going to quote her:
Lily Onxxxxxx 3 days ago
Dickinson58601 Living In Dickinson North Dakota thanks for the honesty. I don’t recommend the Seattle area because of the crime rate. The city is rolling out the red carpet for the criminal homeless— recent rapes being committed by guys coming in from other states and living in tent camps. A woman was attacked in a rest room in a car dealership in what used to be a nice area. Another was attacked in a beach park that I used to go to frequently, I never was afraid there. I listened to radio from the Dickinson area and the politicians were eager to get families to settle there and build community—- alas
I checked out Dickinson to see if I could live and work there. Rent was too high.
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Please read the above comments from Lily in Seattle, about the amount of crime in Seattle. Also, note that she heard on the radio that politicians in Dickinson want people to move to Dickinson, North Dakota. The problem is, this message is being heard in the highest crime, highest drug dealing, highest unemployment areas in the country.
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What reminded me to write this blog post today, was that I was standing at my sliding glass door of my apartment balcony this morning, when some very trashy criminal looking people parked their beat up car in the parking lot and began walking into the apartment building. What do I mean by trashy criminal looking people, you may ask?
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Professional people, trades people, and blue collar people who work, try to get where they are going with the least amount of trouble, problems, or conflict. Trashy people and criminals, act like they are looking for trouble, problems, or conflict wherever they go.
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When I saw their Washington state license plate, it dawned on me who they were. The Stark County Sheriffs have been to my apartment building several times in the past ten days trying to serve these particular individuals court papers. Each of them has various charges to respond to, including threatening to shoot several people.
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These people have been hiding from the Police for about ten days, and are driving a different vehicle in order to not be recognized. I wanted to call the Stark County Sheriff Department to let them know that they are here now, because I want these people out of the building where I live. But I didn’t call the Police and let them know, because I would expect these criminals from Washington state to cut my car tires and break my car windows in retaliation.
In November of 2014, there was a sale at Menards in Dickinson, where the 11 ft. kayak canoes were only $160. I bought two of them, one for me, and one for a friend to use. I call them kayak canoes, because they are half kayak, and half canoe. They are more enclosed than a canoe, but not completely enclosed like a kayak.
From the waterproof rubber hatch on both the bow, and the rear, I thought that there was a water tight sealed compartment in both the bow and the rear, but there wasn’t. The interior of the kayak canoe had no sealed compartments, and no flotation foam installed anywhere.
I knew that because there was no flotation foam installed, and no sealed compartments, that if you got enough water in these kayak canoes, they would sink. I think that I would advise and warn everyone, to not ever try to paddle one of these cheap kayak canoes across Lake Sakakaweja, because if something happens, like you get tipped over, or hit by a power boat, these kayak canoes can sink.
I have been rowing boats and paddling canoes by myself since I was 8 years old. I have never tipped a canoe over, because I was scared, of both drowning and getting hypothermia in the water. I knew many times while crossing wide, deep rivers, with fast currents, alligators, water moccasins, and sharks when I was a small kid, that if I tipped over, I would probably die from drowning, hypothermia, or something getting me.
This was kind of the same thing for trappers and outdoorsmen in Alaska. The only means of transportation in some very remote areas of Alaska was by canoe. A person might have all of their gear and supplies packed in their canoe in the Alaska wilderness, and due to their distance from the shore, the coldness of the water, and being alone, they knew that if they tipped over, they were dead.
When I first tried out my $160 kayak canoe on Patterson Lake in the Spring of 2015, I stayed within 100 ft of shore to see how stable or how tippy this kayak canoe was. It was O.K., but on the first day, I just paddled along the shoreline around the lake, I didn’t try to cross in the middle of the lake, which is about 1/2 mile wide.
In the Spring of 2016, a person that I know from the Coeur D’Alene area of Idaho came to stay at the house where I was living in Dickinson, his name was Mike. I had met Mike in Dickinson in the Spring of 2013, and he was an acquaintance of mine in Dickinson in 2014 and 2015.
After Mike had been staying at the house where I was living in Dickinson for a couple of weeks, I asked him if he wanted to go kayaking with me. I asked Mike if he could swim, and he said that he had been going to a recreation center in Idaho where he had been swimming a mile in the pool, a couple of time each week. I said to him, you can swim a mile, and he said that yes he could.
I then warned Mike about the water in Patterson Lake being cold, that he did not want to tip over. Mike told me that he had been swimming in Patterson Lake last weekend. When we got to Patterson Lake, I told Mike that he should not go too far from shore, until he got used to the kayak canoe.
The very first thing that Mike did when he got in the kayak canoe, was start paddling directly across Patterson Lake. I didn’t like this, I was worried about this, so I followed several hundred feet behind him, in case something happened. He did O.K.
When we both arrived on the other side of Patterson Lake, near the south side boat ramp, I heard a very large splash behind me. I couldn’t believe it, Mike had tipped his kayak canoe over. At first, I thought that he must have been kidding around, but he wasn’t.
I asked him what had happened, and he said that his hat had blown off, and he tried to grab his hat. I waited to make sure that he could get back in his kayak canoe. He wasn’t swimming very well, the water was cold, and I think that he was in shock.
Mike grabbed the rear tip of the kayak canoe, and he pulled himself up onto the rear of the kayak canoe, which was good, this was a good way to get back in. But when he got to the cockpit, he tipped over again. This caused more water to go inside of the kayak canoe.
Mike was getting tired, and he was in shock. He very erratically tried to enter the kayak canoe from the side, which only caused more water to enter the kayak canoe, and for him to become more tired.
I was upset, angry, and frightened, I believed that he only had enough strength for one more attempt. I told him to wait, I paddled up beside his kayak canoe, and I held onto it very tightly. I told him to get in while I held it. I had to balance a lot of weight in different directions, while he was crawling in, like 50 lbs to 75 lbs, while I was sitting in a tippy kayak canoe myself.
When he sat down in the cockpit, he was way off balance, exhausted, and in shock. I had to yell at him, again and again, Mike sit up!, Mike sit up!, and I was having to hold onto his kayak canoe very hard in order to keep him from tipping over.
I couldn’t believe it. I was so angry. I wanted to knock the shit out of Mike. If this had happened out in the middle of Patterson Lake, he could have died. He was so tired, so much in shock, so not thinking, that if he would have not made it back into the kayak canoe on the third attempt, he probably would have drowned by trying to swim to shore.
I also realized that Mike could have caused me to drown too. If Mike would have tipped over my kayak canoe out in the middle of Patterson Lake, I probably could have dragged myself back into my kayak canoe once or twice, but with a drowning person trying desperately to get into my kayak canoe, I could have gotten tipped over again, and drowned by trying to swim to shore.
I was disgusted with Mike, and I am disgusted with Mike to this day. What kind of idiot puts their life in danger by trying to grab for a $10 hat? I now see Mike as an idiot and a fool. Mike had not been doing well financially for the several years that I knew him, and I attributed this to him having bad luck, and bad circumstances. Now, I just think of Mike as an idiot.
The point that I want to make is this, I had asked Mike if he could swim, and he said that he had been swimming a mile in the pool a couple of times each week. I warned Mike about the cold water, and he said that last week he had been swimming in Patterson Lake. I warned Mike to just stay near shore until he got used to the kayak canoe, but Mike headed straight across the 1/2 mile wide section of the Lake. Mike tipped over by doing something really stupid, he was unable to get back into the kayak canoe by himself, he was in shock, he became disoriented, and he became exhausted. Not only did Mike nearly drown, he could have caused me to drown too, by trying to help him, when he was in shock and irrational.
There was a drowning on Patterson Lake in April of 2014, when a man and his two children were in a canoe that tipped over. The water was very cold, a boater picked up the two young children, but the father did not make it.
There was a drowning on a lake up near Williston in 2015 or 2016. The man’s body was found first, and a short time later his kayak canoe was found.
What is happening, and what happened to me, is that people go to Menards, WalMart, Runnings, or Tractor Supply and they buy these inexpensive kayak canoes on a whim or the spur of the moment, just for something to do. It is very easy for people to put one of these kayak canoes in the back of their truck and head to a lake and launch it. The very first thing they do is start paddling across the middle of the lake, and they have no understanding of how cold the water is, that they will be in shock if they tip over, and that it will be very difficult or nearly impossible for them to get back in their kayak canoe if they are weak, out of shape, or inexperienced.
After what happened to me, I spent several hours watching videos of people tipping over in kayak canoes, and the difficulty that most people had in getting back into their kayak canoes. Many people were only good for two or three tries, and after that, they were just too weak.
Please, please watch this video, because it shows how cold, weak, and disoriented this kayaker becomes after only two minutes in the water.
In this video, this kayaker is about the same age as my friend Mike. Notice that in two instances this kayaker is able to get back into the cockpit and sit, but he immediately tips over because he is leaning so far to the right. This is exactly what my friend Mike kept doing, and I had to hold onto the kayak canoe very hard, yelling at him again and again to sit up.
This kayaker was unable to get back into his kayak, and he had to call to the person standing on the dock to come get him. Note that if this kayaker had been thinking rationally, he could have lain on the kayak on his belly, and just paddled like he was laying on a surfboard.
Here is a video of me and a different friend, who is an experienced kayaker.
How much money do engineers make? The answer is, not very much, and I will explain the reasons why, and give some examples.
One of the main reasons why engineers in the United States do not make very much money, is because the supply of engineers is much, much greater than the demand for engineers.
Before I continue, readers might be asking the question, where am I getting my information? From myself, I am a 48 year old engineer, from my friends who are engineers, from my former co-workers who were engineers, from my relatives who are engineers, and from reading first hand accounts from other engineers.
One of the reasons why there is an over supply of engineers, is because newspapers, colleges, and universities keep saying that the United States needs more engineers. That is true, the United States needs more engineers, people who truly understand the infrastructure and systems, however, there are so many engineers now, that most any engineer is easily replaceable, because there are hundreds of engineers that would be willing and able to fill any vacancy.
As long as universities are graduating tens of thousands of engineers every year, young graduates who are willing to take a job for $38,000 per year, take work home with them at night and on weekends, perform the work of two or three people, why would a business or corporation need to keep very many engineers around who are in their 40s, who do less work and are paid $50,000 per year?
Another reason why engineers are not paid very much money, is because they are not business majors or marketing majors. Unfortunately, what engineers see in college, that business majors and marketing majors do not have to work nearly as hard as engineers to pass their curriculum, this same thing continues in the real world. Business majors and marketing majors are paid more money by businesses and corporations than engineers, and they do less work than engineers.
Engineers have themselves to blame for this. Engineers are so eager to get a job and be an engineer, that they accept a very low starting salary, considering the great cost, time, and effort that they put into their education. They don’t market themselves well, represent themselves well, or manage themselves well. This is also why they foolishly accept the work of two to three people being dumped on them, and take this work home with them at night and on weekends to complete it.
Let me give two real life examples of young engineers being overworked, for low pay.
I went to the University of Florida. My cousin was several years behind me in school at UF, she was majoring in something related to engineering. Her fiancee was in a different engineering department than me, and he was getting his masters degree in a field of engineering. When they both graduated, they got married, and they both had jobs lined up in Dallas, Texas.
My cousin’s husband, would work from about 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, about eleven hours per day. Keep in mind that in Dallas, the commute in traffic is about 45 minutes to and from work. Also keep in mind, that he was on a fixed salary of maybe $45,000 per year because he had a masters degree and was somewhat of an expert. However, when he got home, the corporation would call him to come back to work to handle problems that came up, after he had already worked an 11 hour day, and had driven 1.5 hours commuting. This happened on weekends too.
After one year of marriage, my cousin wanted, and got a divorce. She said that all her husband wanted to do when he got home from work, was just sit down in a recliner and not go anywhere or do anything. Keep in mind, that he probably had to get up to get ready for work at about 5:00 a.m., and he didn’t get home from work until about 7:00 p.m. And sometimes he would get called back to work. One of the other things that was a source of problems in their marriage, was their inability to afford a house in the Dallas area on their income, even though they both had masters degrees.
The second example that I will give about young engineers being overworked for low pay is about a couple that I met in Arizona who were both graduating with degrees in mechanical engineering. The husband and wife were very intelligent, personable, and outgoing. The wife was also very attractive and athletic.
They didn’t have any trouble getting jobs lined up in Phoenix before they graduated. Because they were so personable and outgoing, they probably got hired at the high side of starting pay, maybe $40,000 to $45,000 per year salary.
Within one year, their whole outlook on life, work, and being an engineer changed. They each left home for work before the sun came up, and they each returned home from work after the sun had gone down. With the commute to work, they were putting in 12 hour work days.
To try to have some normalcy and health in her life, the wife would try to go jogging after work, but it was both dark, and in a not very nice neighborhood. There were a couple of incidents that happened when the wife was jogging, because she was young and attractive. As young engineers, they did not make enough money to afford to live in a nice neighborhood in Phoenix.
After about 1-1/2 years, they left Phoenix, not caring about what they did for a living, but determined that they were not going to live like that.
I just gave two examples of what is was like working as a young engineer, being underpaid and overworked. It was like this for me too, though in addition to this, I was sometimes treated like shit, by older engineers who wanted to run young engineers off, and by business owners who were resentful of people with an engineering education.
As a comparison, I want to give some examples of what other people are paid. Myself, and two of the other people that I gave as examples of young engineers up above, we each graduated first in our high school class. We each had to complete at least five years of college, and pass tremendously difficult classes like calculus, mechanics-statics which is twice as hard as calculus, and thermodynamics which is twice as hard as mechanics-statics.
In high school, there were girls that were in slow-learning classes, not even regular classes, but slow-learning classes. Some of these girls that barely graduated from high school, could go work in a strip bar and make $40,000 to $50,000 per year, or take a six months dental hygienist program and make $40,000 to $50,000 per year. The dumbest big tittied girls in high school could make more money than engineering graduates that went to college for five years. This is how engineers are treated in the Unites States.
I will give two examples of older engineers that I know, who went bankrupt.
One of the most brilliant engineers who I ever met, he invented a very important device that is used around the world. His name is included in books from different countries that credit him with inventing this device.
He was a very young mechanical engineer working in a machine shop type business. He was aware that there was gap in products that didn’t work on some applications. So, he came up with a device which was very revolutionary, and very practical. The machine shop began producing this new product, and they sold every one that they made. He was persuaded by the machine shop owner, that he did not need to get a patent, so he didn’t. Later, the machine shop owner applied for and got the patent on this device.
This young engineer was bitter, but he did not let this get him down at the time, or try to litigate the patent on this device, because he was sure that he would go on to invent many other things. As he went to work for different companies, he was a very intelligent and insightful engineer, but he did not go very far, because he was not good at marketing, managing himself, or promoting himself. It didn’t matter if he had great ideas or better ways of doing things, if he could not persuade or manipulate their implementation.
As he got older, each new company that he went to work for, was a greater frustration for him, as the managers and co-workers were all so stupid. I know what he went through, as I went through this myself. Working on plans, calculations, and estimates all day long based on information supplied by a stupid person, only to be told near the end of the day that the initial information was incorrect. Remember, engineers are paid on salary, not by the hour, starting over at the end of the day means working late that night and not getting paid for it.
In order to not have to work for other people, he tried to start his own business, manufacturing and selling his own products. He was so desperate to not have to work for other people, that he lept into business without having a good product, or having done much research or a feasibility analysis. He went bankrupt, and he declared bankruptcy when he was about 40 years old. One of the jobs that he had for a while after this, was installing satellite TV for Dish Network at people’s homes, which you might make $20,000 to $25,000 per year doing this.
The second engineer that I will describe who went bankrupt, he was about 50 years old. Like me, and like the other engineer that I described above who went bankrupt, this 50 year old engineer had worked for different engineering companies and businesses.
He wanted to go out on his own, because he was tired of what engineers go through, being on a fixed salary, having to work 50 to 60 hours per week, having to do the work of two people, and not getting paid for it. By the way, whenever an engineer gets down to only having to work 40 hours per week, they fire him so that they can continue to make the other engineers do the work of two to three people.
This 50 year old engineer, he began a specialty construction installation company that performed work that he had overseen in the past. He was familiar with this industry, this process, and this type of work. Working at this company, were several engineers including myself, and several technicians who had experience in this work.
I won’t go into all of the details, but the main reason why this company failed, was because all of the work was underbid. A large corporation asked him to bid on a work package, that would take a couple of years to complete. The large corporation gave him some “typical” work projects to complete, in order to determine what his costs were, and provide an estimate for the entire work package.
Towards the end of the first year, it became apparent that the work projects that were being completed, were not like the “typical” work projects that were used to determine his costs. By the beginning of the second year, it turned out to be the case that every work project had several different underlying problems and complexities that made them much more time consuming and costly to complete.
The company owner had been tricked, duped, and deceived. A business type person would have had experience in handling this type of situation, and would have had a whole repertoire of fits, hysterics, tantrums, and threats to make sure that additional compensation would be provided for the additional work, before continuing.
This 50 year old engineer had not ever made much money. He made enough to support his wife and his son, and drive an old high mileage car, but not much else. When he was in his late forties, his mother and father both died, and he inherited the family farm, which he moved on to. It had an old wood house, not very nice, and several hundred acres of land.
He got a loan on his family farm, which he used to buy equipment for the company that he started when he was about 50 years old. When his company was not making money on work projects because the projects had been underbid, based on a misrepresentation of a “typical” work project, instead of calling a halt to the work, pitching a fit, and renegotiating, he took out another loan on his family farm, on whatever equity was left.
His company closed after about the second year in business. He was now about 52 years old, unemployed, and he had nothing. His family home was completely mortgaged.
I will conclude this explanation of why engineers do not make very much money, by saying that they get themselves into positions where they do not make very much money. When they are offered a low starting fixed salary, and are then tasked with working 50 to 60 hours per week, and doing the work of two people, they don’t protest, they don’t stand up and say that they are not going to do it, they go ahead and do it.
When engineers on fixed salaries are forced to stay late, or come back to work in the evening or on weekends, they should insist that they need to be paid for this. Engineers also need to find a way to ensure that engineers in their late 30s, 40s, and 50s are not always getting obsoleted and replaced by engineers who are just starting out who will work longer hours for less money.
The Unions have made sure that workers in manufacturing, construction, operators, welders, pipe fitters, plumbers, electricians, machinists, iron workers, and laborers, get a guaranteed hourly wage rate, guaranteed overtime, benefits, and retirement. Engineers are way, way behind in pay, benefits, job security, and retirement, because apparently they have poor negotiating, arguing, marketing, and business skills.
Yesterday, I visited with a friend of mine at his home outside of Dickinson. He is about 60 years old. His income is currently low, and I pay him rent to park a truck and a utility trailer on his property. Not too long ago, I had paid rent to park this truck and utility trailer on a commercial property in downtown Dickinson closer to where I live, but the crime in downtown Dickinson is so bad and my truck got stolen.
I have visited this friend outside of Dickinson a couple of times in the past ten days. Every time that I visit him, he is worried about his grass growing, mowing the lawn, it raining, and having to mow the lawn again. He worries and complains before, during, and after he mows the lawn. He worries about the grass, throughout the day, every day.
As far as this particular friend’s problems go, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most urgent and serious, the grass growing in his yard is less than a 1. He has got all kinds of serious urgent problems, several of them being level 9 problems, but he worries about the grass, and not his level 9 problems. This choice of focus and concern, is probably why he has several level 9 problems to begin with.
Today he called me to ask me to move my truck, because he said he wants to mow the grass. This infuriated me, because where I had initially parked this truck, was somewhere he did not need to mow. At that time, he came outside and asked me to move my truck ahead to a different spot, which now is some place that he does not want it to be.
I am so fucking tired of hearing people worry about their fucking grass growing. Now, because I have to move my truck, and possibly hook up and move my utility trailer too, this grass problem is going to be my problem too, unless I move my shit back downtown where it will inevitably get stolen.
A couple of times this week, I talked to another friend of mine who is about 68 years old, and he is worried and concerned about his grass too. He has a place in Arizona, a place in Wyoming, and a place in Dickinson. He is scared to go anywhere, and he can’t leave one of his homes for very long, because there is a lawyer next door who writes him threatening letters about his grass getting too long.
Not only is this other friend worried, and concerned about his grass virtually every day, there is a lawyer who lives next door to him who is worried and concerned about his grass too, who threatens legal action if the grass gets too long.
What is it about grass? When people get old, they start to worry all day long, day and night, every day, about the grass growing, leaves falling from a tree into the yard, leaves laying in a roof gutter, to the extent you would think that the grass and leaves were going to come alive and ass rape them or something, they are so fearful.
Things that you are forced to worry about in life, are the death, serious injury, or serious illness of yourself or a family member; urgent financial problems such as the loss of employment which can lead to the loss of a home, apartment, vehicle and inability to pay for basic necessities; serious legal or financial problems which can lead to incarceration.
What mental problems do you have going on in your mind, where you begin to worry about grass and leaves, like they were matters of life or death, instead of things that don’t fucking matter at all?
I was looking at my Facebook home page this morning, Saturday May 19, and I saw a post from a local Dickinson person named Luke Simons. Luke has five children, and one of them was nearly killed by a mountain lion this week.
Luke’s son Warren who is about 16 years old, and his daughter Shyann who is about 13 years old, were repairing a barbed wire fence in the badlands west of Dickinson. The two of them split up to work separately. Shyann walked up a hillside to a clump of trees, and there were two large mountain lions ten feet from where she stood.
One of the mountain lions jumped the fence and ran away. The other mountain lion crouched down like a cat stalking a prey, getting ready to pounce, and it crept closer and closer to leap on Shyann, kill her, and eat her. Why it didn’t, no one knows, it was going to. Here is the video of Luke and his daughter, explaining what happened.
Dickinson58601 