Saturday, February 09, 2008

The Dirtiest Job

The informal Urban Dictionary lists three separate definitions for shit storm, believe it or not:

1. n. Figuratively, a huge downpour of shit; not to be confused with an actual dump as experienced by a headshitter

Dude, I fucked up large. Now I'm gonna face a gale force shit storm!

2. When all the shit hits you at once. A whole bunch of criticism, or problems all at once. when in the shit storm you are being shit hammered.

ex: "Man my wife left me, a cop pulled me over and gave me a ticket for no insurance, and no registration, and when I came home my house had been broken into, and burned to the ground, it was a real shit storm."

[NOTE: This entry is from Alaska where all of these events often do coincide]

3. A euphemism qualifying a noun with a greater sense of intensity rather than as plainly stated.

After this past census, there's been an ongoing debate over gerrymandering by elected officials. This underlies the shit storm of controversy over who stands to gain by redrawing the new district lines.

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So this is all I can think of as I'm sitting in a cloud of methane in our living room right now. Hopefully the cloud won't burst and nothing in this storm will rain down any more than it already has. The 25 year-old septic tank finally filled, froze in the pipes, and flooded the house last night. Real bummer. The people you call to get you out of this mess showed up at around 3 this afternoon and looked like they walked straight off the set of a Cohen brothers film.

Not everyone in town will pump your septic on a Saturday when it's -40 F: these guys were true professionals with about 4 or 5 teeth between them. When they discovered they were unable to thaw the pipes from under the house, they moved the whole operation into the house. When I asked if I should throw away the towels barricading the crap water in the bathroom, one of the guys replyed, "Oh no mam', it's going to get worse before it gets better." Great. Well, I supervised as best I could without vomiting while Bob kept the dogs under control upstairs.

As they were leaving I asked them if they ever watched the show "The Dirtiest Job." They said the videographic team was up here two weeks ago filming them but hadn't yet decided whether to run the footage on the "Dirtiest Job" or the "Coldest Job" show. I can totally believe it. Well, we've got some work ahead of us.




Fun in Barrow Sun

This past week I spent some quality time in Barrow working on a snow sensor. What better time to go than when it's -35 F. Actually, Fairbanks was -45 F, so Barrow felt warm in comparison. The sun only made it above the horizon on January 22nd or so, but it was already up for four hours a day while I was there. I'm going to let the pictures below speak for themselves. They include a skinned Polar bear that was shot while I was there, our site operators helping me install the sensor, and photos from around Barrow. Enjoy!