As a school bus driver, I work with a bunch of older people who are already utterly dependent on social security and medicare to have any semblance of a life that doesn't involve living in a tent in the park and dumpster diving for dinner. They are mostly trumpers. We're all Teamsters as well, and a few are married lesbians (and these are the most rabidly pro-trump of all). I have made a few attempts to convince them that trump (and Republicans for fucking decades) are out to destroy social security, medicare, unions and gay rights (among lots of other things) - but they reacted to me like I had grown an extra head. Somehow they've convinced themselves that the GOP is the original source and the protector of these things.
how do you drive around in a school bus as a smoker and not smoke for the entire route
Funny you should mention that - a lot of them have taken up vaping and they vape on the fucking buses. At least they only do it in between runs (as far as I know) and not with actual kids aboard. This shit pisses me off almost as much as when they talk on their phones while driving, and surprise surprise it's the same shitty people doing both things (and they're all trump supporters too).
As a parent of two kids…one loud and high-energy, the other a prime target for bullying…I appreciate what you do.
I appreciate your appreciation, but we do get paid for it. It's a pretty soft gig for just driving a big Tonka truck around.
I'm a school bus driver and a lot of my colleagues smoke. The ones in their 40s and 50s look 70+ and they're just so ... leathery. The ones older than that look like zombies.
Fun fact: through the 1800s coal-powered steamships mostly replaced sailing vessels for the transportation of people and time-sensitive cargo around the world. But steamships were highly inefficient and required frequent re-coaling, and locally available coal was dirtier and contained less thermal energy than the good stuff that Britain (who was doing by far most of the shipping) got from Wales and other places on their island. Because steamships could not efficiently and cheaply haul the coal that they needed around the world to restock the coaling stations, this was done instead by an enormous fleet of sailing colliers. So the "steam revolution" of the 1800s was actually a steam/wind-power hybrid. It wasn't until the advent of triple- and quadruple-expansion steam engines, turbines, and greatly improved boilers in the early 1900s that steam-powered vessels could efficiently and economically haul their own fuel. And even with that, wind-powered cargo vessels remained economically viable and operating in significant numbers right up until the start of WWII (that's II, not I).
A great read is The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby, about his time as a sailor aboard Moshulu (a large steel sail-powered cargo ship) in 1938-1939. Moshulu went on to star in The Godfather Part II as the ship which brings young Vito Corleone to New York, and is now weirdly enough a floating restaurant in my city of Philadelphia (I've never eaten there but I want to).
The Palestinians have taken to the streets to sing songs in your honor. You've saved them!
Heh, according to the guy who sold me the house, he had to put the grey vinyl flooring in because of water damage from a portable AC unit.
grey vinyl flooring
I hate that shit even more than I hated the fake wood paneling and shag carpet of the '70s. I bought a house last year that had the grey vinyl flooring in the living room and I've tried my hardest to fuck it up during the renovation so I have to replace it, but unfortunately it holds up to extreme abuse pretty well.
I just realized Wonder Woman is actually Nancy's Aunt Fritzi. Whoa.
I have Republican acquaintances who still make fucking Clinton/Lewinksi jokes. I'm not sure they've ever even heard of Epstein.
Yesterday I watched some lady hand-wave away Trump’s actions by saying “we’re all sinners, and trump deserves our forgiveness just like we deserve Jesus’ forgiveness”.
A couple of weeks ago I watched fucking John Fetterman make essentially the same argument, saying that we shouldn't harp on Trump's status as a convicted felon because Democrats are supposed to be "the party of forgiveness and redemption". It's hard to watch (some, not all) Democrat leaders falling over themselves in their attempts to give away political advantage.
Lol every Microsoft error I've seen in the last few years has been of the "Oops! Something went wrong!" variety. I would kill for a fucking error number.