It’s a Dirty Job, but somebody has to do it.

Have you ever watched Mike Rowe and his show Dirty Jobs? Oh, first of all, before I go any further, if you’re eating you might want to put down your fork and spoon. Sorry. Anyway, on his show, Rowe tackles some of the nastiest tasks on the planet that people actually get paid to do.

According to Mike, these are the top five dirtiest jobs: 1) Sewer Inspector – That one is basically self-explanatory; 2) Snake Researcher – Apparently, some people pull large snakes out of Lake Erie and analyze the contents of their stomachs. The report I read said Mike was bitten at least three dozen times during this escapade; 3) Cow Inseminator – Again, no enlightenment necessary; 4) Concrete Chipper – This involves climbing inside a concrete mixing truck at the end of the day and jackhammering the hardened cement off the truck walls; 5) Shark Suit Tester – Mike himself had this to say about that job: “The only way to see if a stainless-steel shark suit works is to put one on and jump feet first into a full-on feeding frenzy, to be bitten by a variety of hungry sharks and shook like a tug toy 60 feet below the surface.”

No thanks on all counts.

But reading about the dirtiest jobs got me thinking about the most dangerous ones as well. According to one published account I saw, here are jobs you may have trouble getting life insurance for:

–       Logging Workers

–       Aircraft Pilots & Flight Engineers

–       Roofers

–       Iron & Steel Workers

–       Truck Drivers

–       Farmers & Agricultural Workers

–       Fishing Workers

–       Garbage/Waste Collectors

–       Construction Workers

–       Miners

From just reading that litany of occupations you can probably conjure up an image or two of why those jobs are particularly perilous and fraught with at least occasional danger.

To that list I think I would add one more: Russian General.

Perhaps you’ve read recently about a war aficionado named Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group. Up until a couple of weeks ago, Prigozhin’s men had been helping Vlad “the Mad” Putin try to win his “special military operation” in Ukraine. But more recently, Prigozhin mounted a brief uprising against Russia’s military command. He said he didn’t really want to overthrow the Russian government, but he claimed his troops were being treated shabbily. It seems the Ministry of Defense was trying to force his mercenaries to sign contracts with the government, and he didn’t think that would be in his, or their, best interest. He also claimed his guys were attacked from behind one night by the Russian army.

So, Prigozhin sent one group of fighters to take over the city where the Russian southern command is headquartered inside Russia, and another group to Moscow to, well, register their strong discontent with the situation. He apparently had been haranguing Russia’s military leaders, causing a bit of a feud between Russian high command and the Wagner group.

Putin originally called Prigozhin a traitor, but changed his mind and simply told him to go to Belarus and all would be forgiven.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, at least as of this writing, two Russian military head honchos are now suddenly missing. Generals Valery Gerasimov and Sergie Surovkin haven’t been seen in public since the uprising took its drastic turn. The former is the commander of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the latter is deputy commander. And Gerasimov, it seems, is presumed to be the holder of one of Russia’s three “nuclear briefcases,” the bags that contain what are needed to launch some very destructive missiles.

You may recall that just about this time last year, after the Ukraine invasion had not gone according to plan, it was reported that six of Russia’s top generals had been fired. And at least ten other top generals had been killed in that skirmish. Now, I certainly don’t know how many generals Russia has in its armed forces, but it does seem as if the ranks are thinning rather rapidly.