Was listening to Van Morrison late last night and got caught up in memories when the said track played.

When he first started his practice, my father often accepted barter when his patients couldn't afford treatment. One man brought in a couple jars of Tupelo honey from his own beehives. Naturally, when I heard this story a couple years ago, I asked my dad how it tasted. "Sweet," he said.

When my pal T's father opened a cram school thirty years ago, many of his students came from poor families, so he also accepted fresh produce or other various goods as payment. That's so cool.

When I think of how impersonal and insignificant office jobs are in the modern world, it makes me fucking sick.

I just reviewed a technical journal describing recent work-related accidents in our industry (electronics manufacturing) and came across an incident I coincidentally heard about from another source a few weeks ago. Last month, a manager at a (whatever) factory blew his stack at a worker who was welding together a steel support during factory expansion. He tore this guy a new asshole and made some threats, and told the worker to complete the job before he returned. The job wasn't finished when he came back, so manager dude decides he's gonna show the worker how to do the job right... Except he had no formal certification for welding (and thus no formal training on record). Perhaps you see where this is going.

His hair caught on fire. He was not, however, seriously injured. He was also not able to cover up the incident (apparently not for lack of trying; I wonder how he explained the wisps of smoke emanating from his head) and I am just guessing that his "overzealous micromanagement" was grounds for dismissal. Considering the materials he was working with, I think this lesson, if indeed learned, came relatively cheaply.

Dumbass.