Personal Revelation

At work today I realized something important about myself. Heretofore only a slowly swelling knot of impressions and glimpses, it finally crystallized. I used to think I was a pretty nice guy. I was wrong.

There is nothing more perfectly suited to make one doubt the value of humanity in general than interacting with them at their most animal level. Being a 911 operator basically means nobody you talk to is having a good day, and everyone you talk to thinks their crisis demands immediate intervention via tax-funded resources (no matter how petty those "crises" might be).

Also, you face the increasingly insistent and obvious fact that your job is working against the general trend of evolution. I am paid to do the species a disservice––I keep people in the gene-pool who, a few generations ago, would likely never have survived long enough to spawn! It's as though I'm shepherding idiot salmon upriver to safety, when by all rights they ought to get eaten by bears! I can almost see Darwin hanging his head in sorrow, like the lachrymose bench-warmer surrounded by zombie politicians in this McNaughton confection. (Empty your stomach before you click the link, Gentle Reader; he's a veritable Michelangelo of nausea-inducing pseudo-religious political kitsch.)

I seem to be channeling Malthus, so I'd better quit. (He is among the least pleasant Georgian Era economists to have as a spirit-guide, but this is what happens when you combine Ouija and The Wealth of Nations.) I'll just sum up with what a co-worker declared today after several long minutes spent trying to tease the most basic information out of an irate and hysterical caller: "Dumb b*tch probably deserved to get punched in the face!"

And I couldn't agree more.