Blogging To The Oldies Pt 1

The DaDimwit Code

Ok, Since you've asked for it. Guy and BA (whom I hope never meet or civilization is doomed) have deviled and chivvied me into revealing a deep deep secret. Never before have these secrets been revealed to the general public.
Not since the dawn of time itself have these words been put on paper for the common man to read. Usually kept deep in a locked vault four miles beneath Ft. Detrick, Maryland I have at great personal peril and expense brought to you:


THE SECRET INMATE CODE

Baby- An inmate who gives out or sells sexual favors. Usually "run" by a Daddy (who takes a large percentage of whatever the baby brings in.)

Baking A Cake- Getting it on. One way or another or sometimes both. Taking one for the home team. Often referred to as "Hoo boy! He's gettin' wallered out!" And the cell or place where it is happening is often referred to as The Betty Crocker Institute. I could have gone my whole life without seeing (or even writing) that.

Beat- Nothing coming. "You're beat. Go kick rocks."

Block- Where you from. Your crib. Where your homies hang.

Bullets- Not like they sound. Usually tightly packed packages of tobacco, lighters, papers and notes, often hidden in uncomfortable places. Made so they can be smuggled in to places where they aren't supposed to be, like the Adseg unit. I would imagine it's uncomfortable, anyway...

C- Coffee.

Cadillac- Any weighted object, like a bar of state soap or the end of a toothpaste tube, tied to a long string and slid under the door of the cell. The inmates use these to transfer tobacco, lighters, notes, stamps, food and even books and magazines between cells.

Chomo- A child molester. One of the most despised beings in a prison setting. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Dead man's number- Any younger inmate with a short number. Usually a "recycled" number from an earlier inmate who has passed away. The numbers are kept on file until the person dies.

Demo- This could be anything. You have to take it in context to the conversation. A Demo could be a cigarette, a stamp, a lighter, a box of cereal or a chicken leg. Or anything. It's usually up to you to figure out what the hell he's wanting.

Door Warrior- An inmate who is ten feet tall and covered with hair when the cell door is closed but sniveling in a fetal position when it is open. We get alot of those.

Help Me Out- Bring me some tobacco and coffee and a lighter.

Info- An inmates name and number. Or telephone number. Or home address.

Kiester Bunny- An inmate who secrets bullets of contraband in those uncomfortable places. Sometimes you can tell just by the look on their face that something's "up". Not a pleasant situation to be in for anybody involved.

Kite- A note. You can "shoot them a kite" or "fly them a kite". Also known as a "Scribe".

O.G.- Old Guy. Anybody older than the speaker or who has been around for awhile. Sometimes used as an honorific and sometimes as a curse. Depends on what they think of whoever they are talking about.

People- Usually referring to family on the outside. Or someone who can do them favors, like sending money. If they aint sending money, or pictures or both, then their "peeps" aint doing them no good.

Police- Pronounced "Poe-leese". That's us. We's the police.

Punk- Usually referring to a "baby" but sometimes just used as a curse. Even worse than the way Dirty Harry uses it. A punk is someone who either gives it away for free or has it taken from them on a regular basis. Willingly, or otherwise. Not an enviable appelation.

Roll- A hand rolled cigarette. From thin "pins" to fat "yard rolls". Occasionally referred to as a "demo".

Shank- A prison made weapon. Usually a knife or sharpened piece of metal like a soda can wrapped in tape. Sometimes made from tools stolen from the prison work areas. Nothing you want to come into close contact with.

Sunglasses- A lighter. AKA a flintstone, a light, a flashlight, a spark or a flame. Anything to do with light used in a sentence is referring to a lighter or a way to light a cigarette.

T- Tobacco.

Top- Tobacco. Loose tobacco sold in boxes at the prison canteen. A regular cigarette bought in packs is known as a "tailor".

Wick- A twisted bit of toilet paper set smouldering. You blow on it to get a flame going to light a roll. Also known as a "west side". A handy way to cadillac a light to your partner, if you got a flintstone and he doesn't.


This is a short list of the words I hear every day. You'd think they would have figured out that I know what they are talking about. Now and then I repeat it back to them and they are just flabbergasted that I know what they just said. I guess I'm not as stupid as I look.

Note: This was originally posted on 2-2-09. I was looking for another post about the words we use rather than the ones the inmates use but I can't find it. Either I imagined that I wrote it or I put it under some stupid name I don't recognize. If I can't find it, I'll just write another one.

**sigh**

Ahhhhhhhhhhh.........................

Well, that's it. I am officially on vacation for the next two weeks. They forced me to work the Hive for my last day, but I survived anyway.

Actually I suspect the Lt thought he was doing me a favor giving me a 2-10 spot on my Friday. It's 50/50. Don't much care for working down there so much any more, but I do know the job and I can definitely fill the position and I don't mind getting off work early.

Earlier in the day I had a whole post written in my head about pure bone laziness and how much it pissed me off. Big M and I came in and found a bunch of things left undone and a bunch of things done half-fast and very poorly and we set about fixing them and making things right so that there wasn't a big mess when "our" crew came in.

But as the night progressed I just wanted to get out of there and go home so I could relax. The aggravation melted away into one of those "Oh well, what do you expect?" moods. Frack it.

That's my motto for the next couple of weeks. Frack it. They can clean up after themselves. Or not. Frack it.

I think I was getting a little burned out. Maybe I needed a vacation.

Not exactly sure what I will be doing on the blog. I imagine if I do anything exciting I'll post some pictures. But I've been toying with the idea of running a "best of" series of some of my old posts from way back when. That might be fun to go back and read a few of those.

Then again, it might be one of those "What the snap was I thinking when I wrote that?" moments. Who knows? I guess we'll find out together.

So, before I toddle off to bed, here's the rundown for the weekend. Saturday will be National Cheesecake Day. Oh yummy yum yum! Save me a big slice, please! It will also be Father In Law Day and Paddle For Perthes Disease Awareness Day.

Sunday will be Parent's Day, Shredded Wheat Day, National Raspberry Cake Day and Harry Potters Birthday.

Monday will be Friendship Day and National Raspberry Cream Pie Day. It will also be Girlfriends Day and Lughnasa , as well as Respect For Parents Day, Spiderman Day and US Air Force Day.

Enjoy! I will.

Laughter Is Not The Best Medicine After All!

Ye gads. I'm still sore. I guess you could call it a work related injury, but it's nothing I plan on filing any paperwork over.

I hurt myself laughing.

Gray Ham and I were out front of B-dining patting down inmates as they came out of the chow hall. He was being the silly/serious coot that he always is. He flips back and forth between cracking jokes and chewing butt like flipping a light switch. If you have a butt chewing coming, he will give it to you like nobody's business. If you don't, he'll crack a joke. That's him.

I was bent over patting down an inmate and he came off with a one liner in response to something another inmate said that caught me completely off guard. I whooped and went to stand up and something in my ribs down low on the left side went "Pop!"

I don't know if it was just cartilage or if one rib crossed over another or what, but for a second there I thought I had been shot. It scared me a little but I was still laughing and saying "Ow ow ow ow!" and dancing around in little circles holding my side.

And they all tried their best to make me laugh all night long and succeeded several times. The evil swine.

That was close to seven hours ago and my ribs still hurt.

I can just see that accident report going up the chain and the snarky comments that I would get back on it.

No thank you. I don't want to be the first officer in the department to be officially ordered not to laugh at work.

Then again, I would love to have that in writing, just to hang it on my wall.

Anyway. I'm 2-10 down in the Hive again tomorrow. They do love doing that to me on my Friday. I'm not so crazy about it myself, but at least I get to start my vacation early.

So Friday will be Cheese Sacrifice Purchase Day. Apparently if you have mice in your home you have to sacrifice some cheese in the traps to be rid of them. And Friday is the day you purchase that cheese.

I think somebody was smoking the Liquid Wrench when they thought that one up!

It will also be Lasagna Day, Lumberjack Day, Rain Day, National Talk In An Elevator Day and Systems Administrator Appreciation Day.

Good thing it aint Tell A Bad Joke Day! I couldn't take it....

Gruntled, Or Not?

For the most part, my nights in the comm room are uneventful. Unless something gets lost or broken or somebody does something stupid. I just put in my eight hours and go home.

There's seldom any real work to do. And certainly nothing strenuous. When the a/c and/or the heat are working correctly when they need to be, it's not a bad gig.

We had enough people on shift that they stuck DoubleH down at the front desk and I spent a good amount of the night chatting with her. She doesn't smoke but she knows I do so she kept saying "Hey Rev! Come out and smoke with me!" And we'd sit out on the step and I'd smoke and she would clatter on about this and that. A nice lady. A little disgruntled, but nice none the less.

She even came out and said "Hey! You can tell 'em all on your blog that you spent the night with the disgruntled woman!" I laughed and said "Well, I probably won't say it quite like that."

But then I did. Hmm.. She got to me.

Some of us are so disgruntled that I do wonder if we were ever gruntled to begin with. And until right before I started to write this post I wasn't even aware that "gruntled" is a real word. I'm sure it's not in the Webster's or the OED yet. But look it up! It's being used! As a matter of fact, I ran across a picture of this shirt here:


That took me a few moments. Give me some slack. It's late and I've already taken my meds. It meant that the wearer was neither impetuous, inept or disgruntled.

If they gave me the task of going through the list of the 400 or so custody employees and said "Give one of these shirts to each employee that this describes", I might hand out three. Tops. And right now I couldn't name those three. Everybody I know or work with is at least one of those things, if not all three.

I willingly admit that I am in the "all three" category.

But I had a good time talking to DoubleH. She's been on utility forever and is hoping to get a bid in either 10 or 7 house and stay in one place for awhile. Maybe that will help her with her gruntulation. Or Egruntulation. Whatever it is that makes her happy. Fresh coffee usually does it.

Okay. I can tell that my meds are kicking in and I'm getting silly. Soon I'll be typing this with my nose. Time to check the calendar and go to bed. And hope for no more of those fragged up dreams I've been having. I would have mentioned the last one but it gave me the shivers all day. Yuck. I'll bet Chanel would drive all the way here and smack me for mentioning it.

Hmm... It might be worth it.....

Nah.

Thursday (B-yard and near 100 degrees) will be National Milk Chocolate Day. Sweeeet! It will also be Buffalo Soldiers Day and National Chili Dog Day! Yayyyy!!!

The Dreaded "Q" Word

They had me schedule to work the Hive today. I wasn't looking forward to it.

It's funny. There was a long time when I thrived on working that house. I just ate up the stress and the aggravation and the smell and the violence inherent in the place.

Working the Hive was like being a gladiator. I'd walk into the arena each day wondering if I was going to be able to walk out again under my own power at the end of the shift. There was a time when it was that dangerous. I'd seen more than one coworker carried out of the place and off to the hospital.

I was lucky. Extremely lucky. I'd been hurt a few times, sure. Left bits of my skin and not a little of my blood on the floors and walls in the Hive in my day. Like so many others. But I never got hurt too bad that I couldn't come right back that evening, if not the next day.

And every night when I walked out I felt good and happy and not just a bit relieved that I had made it through another day.

Not so much anymore, though. Now 99% of the danger is gone and pretty much just the aggravation remains. The Hive has gone from being the Colosseum to being an office building with noisy neighbors.

Snap it was hot! I just barely made it inside the fence and I'm already sweating. Took my hat off and laid it on top of my lunch box in the shade and ran my hand through my short brush of gray hair. My hand came away wet. Yuck. I keep an extra handkerchief stashed just to dry off with. Wiped off my hand and ran it over my head like a beach towel.

Stood there awhile and waited for the crew to assemble. Chatted awhile with the Watcher and the Fireman and Miz Fawkes, who had gotten an embarrassing rip in her pants. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it. But my eyes kept getting drawn to that flash of pale skin. I thought she knew about it. Apparently not. The next thing I knew she was on her way down to the training building for a new pair of pants. I guess her idea about the stapler didn't work.

Finally, it was time. I tossed my hat back on my head and said "All right. Let's get this over with."

It was hotter than crap and I knew the knuckleheads were all going to be hot and pissed off. And the house was almost full so if anything happened we had very little room to maneuver as far as moving people around.

Plus we had the cream of the present crop of prime wobbleheads down there already. They had already been playing the little attention games lately.

In short, it was prime ingredients for one heck of a long night. If we didn't have a mostly veteran crew like we had, it could have been bad.

The Super Twins were already down there running rec. It was me, Farmer John, Super V in the bubble and Sgt LB. Super V hadn't run that bubble much but he knew how and did his very best to keep up with all of our comings and goings. He did good.

Farmer John and I did count and a good portion of the feeding and later, when the Super twins were doing rec, searched ten cells. That was always a good time for somebody to get pissed off and start a ruckus. But we double teamed them and kept them corralled and nothing happened.

We had no lockups, no check-ins and no trouble at all.

And we all fought against saying the dreaded "Q" word that would jinx us.

Me, I waited until LB and I walked out into the parking lot after work.

"Man! It sure was a quiet night!" He just laughed and walked away.

Wednesday will be Take Your Pants For A Walk Day. Yeah. I'll do that. It will also be Korean War Veterans Armistice Day, Take Your Houseplant For A Walk Day, Barbie In A Blender Day and Walk On Stilts Day.

Let's see you do all of that at the same time! Can you imagine what the parade would look like? Woof!

A Day At The Skunk Works

Here I was thinking I wasn't going to have much to write about. I was an extra on B-yard. One of three extras, to be exact. There were five of us out there today. Incredible.

I kept waiting for something to happen or somebody to realize that we had so many extra people. Usually when someone sees we have extras, several people suddenly get "sick" and have to go home. Then I'd get pulled somewhere else. But it never happened.

Went down to the chow hall after the yards closed and grabbed a popsicle out of the freezer and immediately dripped some of it down the front of my shirt. Nice. Went into the bathroom to wash it off the best I could.

Then I stepped outside to watch the laundry workers on their way to chow. I got about three steps away from the door and a bird crapped on my shoulder.

I thought "So, this is the way it's gonna be, huh?"

Went back into the bathroom to wash the bird crap off of my shirt.

At least it didn't clash with the popsicle stain.

I really thought about taking advantage and going home myself. I imagined that it could only get worse from there.

But it didn't.

We got all the way through open yard with nothing happening. Closed them down and sent the little dogies back to their pens for the night and settled in to eat some dinner.

Not long after I sat down to eat I heard this "Yee-Haw!" off in the distance. Like Slim Pickens riding the A-bomb in "Dr Strangelove". I step around the shack and see that ridiculous m....... My immediate supervisor, Sgt Uncle T, chasing a medium sized white skunk across the yard with the golf cart. And he's herding it right towards the shack!

Me, Nook (up from 30 yard for a visit), Red, Meanie and Sausage all take off in different directions as this poor skunk is running for it's life right towards us. Me, I closed myself in the shack. Everyone else ran off.

The poor skunk, not the most agile thing in the world, managed to jink to the side and run off across the baseball diamond. Sgt Uncle T, also not the most agile thing in the world, barely missed taking out the foul pole and a bit of the diamond fence with the cart and chases the poor thing back around for another trip around the shack.

Finally, the poor critter managed to elude him and go through an opening in the fence and took off across the yard, heading for 6 house. It was running just as fast as it could go. When I saw it last, it was through the fence behind 6 house and still going strong as it ran off into the night.

It's probably still running.

At least I didn't get any of that on my shirt!

Tuesday I will be in the Hive (joy...) and it will be All Or Nothing Day. That just doesn't sound good. It will also be One Voice Day. There are several different meaning for this one. Take your pick!

Finally A Floor!

Way back in March, I wrote this post about tearing up my office to take out the nasty old carpet and put in a new floor.

Well, that didn't work out so good. We ended up having to spend a bunch of money on other more important things and the cash for my floor went by the wayside. But I had already taken about half of the stuff out of my room and stuck it in the spare room in boxes and heaps.

Then about two weeks ago I finally got some money and went out and bought me some self adhesive tile that I thought looked okay. It wasn't what I had originally planned, but it was good enough. And I hauled out more stuff from my office to the other room.

But I was getting mighty tired of not being able to find any of my stuff. So this weekend I decided that now was the time to get it done. Broke everything down and hauled it out. The only thing I left was my desk. This was fairly early Saturday morning. After I had read the comics and the blogs, of course.


My desk is so old and decrepit that I didn't want to haul it halfway across the house and risk it falling apart on me so I left it there and worked around it. Pulled out half the carpet then moved it onto the bare floor before I pulled the rest of the carpet up.

It wasn't quite as nasty under my old carpet as it was in the living room. But it was still pretty nasty. The padding was disintegrating and whoever had put the padding down had gotten pretty gay with the stapler.

Of course I mean that in the best possible way.

And beneath the padding we found more staples and chunks of even older padding from the carpet before that one. And bits of the previous carpeting, maybe going back two layers. I'm not sure which one came first, but we found chunks of a deep green carpet as well as maroon. We pulled staples and swept and vacuumed and pulled more staples and swept again. Then I started putting down the tile.

I was pleasantly surprised that it looked so good. And I do like the brick pattern.

It's been ages and ages since I laid any tile and I was pretty rusty at it. Fortunately the trim, once I get it repainted and put back in, will cover most of my mistakes. And the older I get the less padding I have on my tailbone. Spending most of the day sitting on a hard floor has left me sore in some different places. I'm glad my desk chair is well padded.

Saturday evening I got my desk moved back where I wanted it and my computer set back up again. The only thing left to do was a strip in front of the door and inside the closet. I left those for today.

And this morning I got up and finished the tile and spent most of the day moving the rest of my stuff back in. There's still a few piles of miscellaneous junk to sort out, but I got most of it back. And I got my comfy reading area back as well. I've been missing that.

I still hurt in all of those places and maybe a few more. But I'm happier now that I finally got my space and my stuff back in the same room. And it's opened up some more wall space so now I need to find more stuff to hang in those empty spots.

My wife designed and printed me out this cool steampunk poster a couple of weeks ago. I think I'll try to encourage more of that. It goes good with my gears and things.

And since the weather has been so miserably hot, we decided that a cold dinner would be preferable to a hot one so we splurged just a little bit and bought some fancy sammich fixin's and she made a batch of that great pasta salad made with rotini, ranch dressing, shredded cheese and chicken meat.

I made me a fat victory sandwich and enjoyed the heck out of it, even if it was almost too big to fit in my mouth.


Tomorrow I can go back to work and get some rest. Phew!