[ox-en] [BUG] Something is rotten in the state of Debian
- From: Adam Moran <adam diamat.org.uk>
- Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 05:15:03 +0000
Ayup Paul, Hi List
Thanks for the alert.
On 20-01-04 Paul Bowman wrote:
these cunts
The last time I used this term in anger was against a gang of men who
intended to clear a tunnel face with hydraulic picks; we had just
blasted the face and I, the Engineer, thought that there were some
unexploded detonators in the bottom of the dig. I was wrong and the men
knew it; they wanted me out of the face so that they could dig. I
normally kept out of the drives; the men in general knew what they were
doing; however money was tight on the job and everyone was cutting
corners. The men were being pushed toward the face by the money-artifact
and I happened to be in the way.
A 60-old miner called Micheal had got me into that position. He had
pulled me from the bottom of the shaft where I was having the crack with
two of his nephews about the extra-curricular activities of the
night-shift. They had painted in red a sign on the shaft wall to the
left of our 1.8m circular drive. It said:
This Way
Sligo --->
500 Rings
The nephews told me that my mate / Inspector Mick had put them up to it
during the quite times of the night- shift. Mick had the *shout* on the
night-shift 19:00 - 07:00 and I had the *shout* on the day 07:00 - 19:00.
Micheal, the miner, wanted to have the powder-holes jetted with water;
he wanted to flush out any stray dets. It took me a while to understand;
he had had a stroke and had difficulty speaking. When I understood what
he was suggesting, I cleared the tunnel and sent for the pit-boss, Tom,
who was a brother of Micheal's.
Tom turned up with two Yorkshire ex-coal miners and said they were going
to clear the face instead of Micheal. Tom took me to one-side and told
me that Micheal had 'been slow' as a kid and his stroke had made matters
worse. Tom shouted across at the powder-monkey and asked him to confirm
that the drive was clear of explosives. This was just street-theatre; he
knew I had written / signed confirmation of this fact in my pocket; I
wouldn't have let any one down the Drive without it. However, Tom pushed
passed his brother Micheal who was blocking the ladder at the top of the
shaft. He called the two Yorkshire miners to follow.
"You thick Paddy cunt" called the last miner as he was descending.
Micheal nodded at me and then to the shaft and we descended also.
Both Micheal and Tom knew why I had stopped the drive even though I
had confirmation that the drive was clear of explosives. A few weeks
earlier, at the beginning of the job, they and their brother John, the
owner and leader of their Gang had been with me in an ad hoc cabin
meeting. My mate / Inspector Mick and other mates / Inspectors of other
Drives had come to the cabin on the pretext of seeking my help with a
claim for damages against our employer; loss of hearing on this occasion.
The true intention of this meeting unfolded when Mick asked John about
their cousin Lenny.
Lenny had lost one leg, his bollocks and one arm, in that order, on a
Drive four years prior to this conversation. He was clearing the bottom
of a Face, after a Blast, and he hit a stray detonators with an
air-pick. This tunnel was 2.73m in diameter and progressed a much larger
infrastructure which our organisation had been building since the 1970s.
Well, when the brothers told us how Lenny was hanging, the mood in the
cabin was low, to be sure. Mick sensing that this mood was no good for
the cabin, or the site in general, started telling a story of an absent
colleague of ours, Gil, who was known to the brothers through tunnel
folk-law.
Mick told the story about when Gil was a pit-boss and had lost a
tunnel face to running-sand. If the geology of a tunnel drive is likely
to intersect sand, hay bales must be kept near the face to block the
sand from flooding the tunnel. Gil had been driving the men, the
*banana-bunch* as he always termed them, pretty hard. He did this
through his *shout*.
When *shout* failed he used brute force; he'd boxed for the merchant
navy before becoming a miner as and was known to be particularly
aggressive to push production.
I'll cut out the introduction of Mick's story about Gil, and get
straight to the push line:
"... and there's Gil, buried up to his fucking neck in sand ... and
the sand is still flooding in the face"
"'Come on ya fucking Irish cunts ! Faster !' Gil shouts at the men
'Stow that fucking hole'"
Mick continued to tell the story, his Face now grimacing to mimic that
of Gil's own. The men in the cabin laughed as they catch the impression.
Mick continues the act, changing his Face to demark Gil's character:
"'You, you cunt ! Get here with that shovel and dig !' ... and Paddy
starts to dig at Gil's face and Paddy says ... now listen to this lads :
'I ought to let you die you fucking Welsh cunt !'"
'"Dig ! Dig ! You Irish cunt !" shouts Gil " Dig you cunt !, Dig ! Dig
! Dig ! Dig " shouts Gil and Gil lived to tell the tale ! '
Mick finished the story and the mood drop once more; he had only
recently taken on this role in the organisation, a role previously taken
by Gil himself. Mick dogs me to tell the story about when I first worked
with Gil some 8 years prior to this time. This is the story I told:
We were relining a long length of egg-shaped sewers built in the late
1800s; the sewer was 1050 mm high and 900 mm wide at the shoulder, a
tight squeeze with our equipment. We decided, in line with the
sub-contractor's safe working policy, to enter the sewer with out
air-bottles. We were relying on a series of gas-detectors to alert us to
the existence of toxic / explosive gas and to the oxygen level in our
environment. , A detector was placed at each end of the sewer and Gil
strapped his detector on to back of his harness.
I went into the sewer first and started to tap for voids. It was heavy
going; the sewer was some 50-60m long and very tight. It was well lit
but we had to shout to communicate as the sewer was being over pumped,
and the pump noise resonated through the line.
"We'll know for sure if the pumps fail" shouts Gil from the back
reassuringly"
We were about 20m in when we hear the first alert; It was the behind us
at the beginning of the crawl. It stops. We get a shout up the line that
"Alls Clear !". We shuffle on, and continue our tapping. The connections
are live and the occasional lump of shit floats by; but the flow is
dry-weather and mainly washing machine effluent.
The detector behind us alerts again. This time it continues and we hear
"Get Out ! Get Out !" ... as if we needed telling twice.
We start to quicken our speed, but you can only go so fast in an egg
shaped sewer. The bottom is the narrow end of the egg. You are forced to
have one leg in front of the other and push with alternate knee and
toes. Still we picked up speed and headed toward the upstream exit. Then
the gas detector upstream of us sounds an alert !
"Wait here !" shouts Gil. To be honest I wasn't thinking about moving.
We wait, behind us and in front of us there is either gas or a faulty
gas-detectors. The one which Gil has strapped to his back is just
playing its normal tune; "Good." I think "It's still working."
We wait.
"Move !" says Gil "It's Monoxide ! Behind Us ! It's coming down a
connection !"
"Good guess ?" I think "Good gamble ?" ... but I pick up speed with
avengence when Gil's detector sounds the alert.
"Move you cunt !" He snarls. "Move ! Move you Irish cunt !"
We move and shuffle and move.
"Don't breath !" he snarls, "Get to the connections !"
Fortunately there are three connections in front; two to the right
separated in-the-line by about 3m and one to the left between them. His
plan is to breath air from a connection; I knew this from an office
story along the same theme.
"There's three, 3m" I shout.
"Move you Irish cunt !" He snarls.
He fucks me 2m up the line with his head and fists and then knocks me
flat in the sewer. Sliding half-on top of me, he puts his mouth in the
connection on the left which was pissing-in shit and toilet paper. "He's
playing Russian roulette" I thought and then I shared his logic. He gets
hold of the top of my harness and lifts my face in to the same
connection; I breath. I look at Gil; he trys to wipe the shit of his
face but it is caked-in to his gray beard.
We still had 10m to go to our exit, the upstream manhole. We shaped
ourselves in to the little-ease / sewer and he starts the rhythm:
"Move cunt !" he snarls,
"Move cunt !" I say to myself now in harmony with the *shout* behind me.
It was all a scam. Gil had set the play up with the men. There are many
ways to die in a confined space and I needed to learn quickly how to
avoid them.
Well, when I told that story it made the men in the cabin laugh, no man
more so than Micheal who began to splutter; the left side of his face
being numb in consequence of his stroke ...
... And it was with this Micheal that I was entering yet one more
fucking drive, this time 1.8m in diameter, and chasing his brother Tom,
the pit-boss and the two Yorkshire miners. This time I started the
fore-play:
"Hold on you cunts ! I want those holes jetted !"
"Fuck off Engineer" snarl the miners in unison.
"Steady lads" called Tom.
We walk to the face; the money-artifact pushing us this time:
" ... Move you cunts ! Move you cunts ! Move you cunts ! Move you
cunts ! Move you cunts ! Move you cunts ! ... " it whines in monotony.
The tunnel face looked exactly the same as when Micheal and I had left
it, some 20 minutes earlier. Why I thought it could look different I
don't know ? The bottom of the dig was still high with rock that hid
maybe a det or two ?
"Bare with me lads; Clear away the cut and expose the powder holes.
Use your hands and clay spades." I say. Tom agrees and the Yorkshire
miners start the clear.
"You can fuck off, you senile Paddy cunt !" they say to Micheal as he
trys to help with the clear. We retreat to give them room about 4m back
from the face; they fire both rocks and 'cunts' back our way. We are
there 30 / 40 minutes before my gas detector alerts.
Strange ? The one at the Face is silent ?
"Don't breath ! Out ya cunts" I snarl
"Grab them ! Now out ! Out ! Out ya cunts" I begin the rhythm.
We scrambled back down the tunnel pushing and pulling each other with
our bodies and 'cunts'. A narrow escape; we had hit trapped gas but live
to tell the tale.
Near death clarifies the mind, although not nearly as much as death
itself. There were many 'cunts' exchanging many 'cunts' in the cabins
that day. Exotic 'cunts' as well as familiar species.
In the weeks that followed, while the drive was stopped, many myths and
rumors began kicking around the site about our 'lucky escape': Thank
God, Thank Fuck, Thank Adam, Thank 'lucky old' Micheal who was becoming
metamorphosed in to a 'lepricorn-cunt'.
Well I can dismiss most of the myths about this 'lucky escape' in fine
detail as I was party to most of the debate and 'pier review'. Mick and
I started the sackings as quickly as we could to dispel the myths and
regain the *shout* and the safety of this site. A contracts-manager was
the first to go:
"Get from here you thieving cunt !" were the words of his dismissal.
A quantity-surveyor was next; this 'cunt' just the beginning of our
drive upstream toward the money. Others followed.
The 'why' we survived that day was because of Micheal. That same
senile-fucking-Irish cunt both knew and loved his many brothers; He took
over the *shout* of site on took on the endless chant of money. He got
the one thing to the Face of that drive which was needed - a mere
artifact - a working gas detector.
Micheal never said 'cunt' once to my recollection.
On 20-01-04 Paul Bowman wrote:
fucking Yanks! ... there are days when I loathe Americans ... Californian rubbish
Jonathan Walther writes:
certified nut-case from Yorkshire
Come on lads. You know better than this. We live on lists now. This is
how the Masculine chant begins:
"Move ! Move ! Move you fucking Debian cunts ! Move you Debian cunts !"
Paul and I are probably more used to this Yorkshire Love / Hate
Dialectic than others. Some of us have it tattooed on our knuckles. It
is a product of the confined mysoginistic physical spaces in which we
currently live. It has some value as a push for life.
However I do not contemplate using the hate-women-cunt part of it again
until we start the main drive against *pornography*.
--
Adam
[1] Further reading if required - *Pornography* Andrea Dworkin
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