working thoughts

so at work I'm often inside a half-finished condo by myself moving material, cleaning up, looking for tools, whatever. I take advantage of the alone time to sing (poorly) and think. today I had two good thoughts and one decent song. I can't very well share my singing with you through a blog, but here were my two epiphanies:

1. Construction is essentially moving things. No matter what trade you are, your job is to move something from the pallet on which it was delivered to the place in one of the units where it will remain for up to a few decades.

I was taking a couple trash cans down the lift to the dumpster on 4th Avenue, when I saw a forklift unloading a stack of drywall onto the loading dock. I envisioned watching the path of one sheet of drywall, following it in fast-forward motion as it got taken up the lift to the floor it was headed to, then sitting in a stack for a couple seconds as men scurry around like blurry ants taking sheet after sheet off the pile until this one was up. then it gets carried into some bedroom, screwed into the metal studs, painted over, and there it sits for the rest of its life as the inhabitants of its bedroom scurry around busily and age and move out.

2. Construction is essentially the male equivalent to stripping. a woman's body produces more estrogen than a man's, so she grows boobs and makes money off them. a man's body produces more testosterone than a woman's, so he grows more muscle mass and makes money utilizing it. we're all just exploiting our hormones.