Big C.: I used to work for Labor Ready.

Nero the Pict: You mean Labor Whore?

[laughter]

Big C.: It’s always the same thing, “You the big Dude, so we only need one of you to lift all dis shit”—en on top a dat I liftin’ it for less den da regala employees.

Nero the Pict: Shit, dude, I got sent on a job to work for a bowling ball manufacturer and guess what I did? I was a ball sander!

[laughter]

Big C.: Naw, naw, you was a ball technician! You must a had Popeye forearms sandin’ balls ten hours a day!

[laughter]

Nero the Pict: And I got hired next to this ghosted out skank with sunglasses and a raspberry beret, like in the Prince song. That was hideous. Now there was one chick that worked there who was a supervisor who had a rockin’ body, until you looked at her face and your blood froze in your veins—ugly as fuck. One day I rode up to the gate and I actually thought to myself, “Can I fucking sand bowling balls again today?” and I said, “Fuck this place!” and just rolled off.

Big C.: When dey had me down Sparrows Point, I was across the way lookin’ at dis steel beam. Dis thing was so big dat only one could go on a truck. I was looking at this crane where dis beam was hanging from when it snapped. It was about as far away as here and the next street over behind that next row of houses and unda it was these tiny people, men, who didn’t see it break and couldn’t hear shit ‘cause of the noise. You could not yell ta somebody if somethin’ happin. I see this fallin and one a dem look up and dey had no time to run—four men squashed like bugs and the ground shook under my feet from that far away. When I got up dare there was nothin’ but legs stickin’ out.

Nero the Pict: Good God!

[groans]

Big C.: Then, they have us go up on the crane and that jus wore me out, the stress of being up in that wind when it sway en dey usin’ us low money types up dare, one employee sayin’, “Make sure to hook on.”

En you can be damn straight I hooked on. Den dis one new dude just walk out dare without hookin’ on—you know, you hook you hook onto the rail and then also hold on to each rail—en that wind just took him like nuffin! He was gone, fell so far you could hardly see him lay.

Nero the Pict: This world is going to take its due from us so it’s good to get in a place where you can laugh a little. I was working at this storage facility out in Aberdeen. We stored and packed sides of beef and—for some—reason 55-gallon drums of Snapple syrup. I was all duded up in insulated overalls, but this clearly mixed race dude, Justin, just wore ordinary clothes, T-shirts even and he’d always complain about the black dudes that got assigned, would say shit like, “Slow-ass, lazy niցցers. I hate niցցers and you know they’re more comin’” and he wore this shirt lettered “Original Boys in the Hood” with three hooded clansmen in the foreground and a burning cross in the background.

Big C.: What?!

Nero the Pict: Fucking blew my mind, dude.

[laughter]