Shit, shit, shit, crap and double shit! I am at work. The first reasonably nice day of the year, the SUN is actually shining and it is going to be 14 or 16 degrees today (that's Celcius you American morons). I could be sitting on the Quay with a coffee, reading the paper and watching the river. But no, here I am at work. How did that happen? Easy, it's a split super long weekend here (Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon) but the Tues-Sat shift has to work on the Saturday, everyone else headed out of town and I got the short straw, the shitty end of the stick, low card, whatever fucking bad luck karma seems to dog me at work.
Okay, besides me, there are THREE other people here. THREE! Count them. Apparently they need a supervisor. Me. Jesus on a stick.
Okay no dwelling on the down side of an otherwise up day. I was thinking today of the men in my life. Men like Harry Bosch, Rebus, Jack Liffey, Alex Delaware, Inspectors Jury and Banks. I think the attraction I have for them is that they are all a little dark, a little twisted and with the exception of Delaware, loners. All of them are a fine line and a scream away from being serial killers, their ability to slip over that line mentally, into the mind of a killer, says a lot about them.
Rebus, is intuitive, and not to mention dogged, persistant, offensive and hilarious. His flaws, alcohol and women. It seems the alcohol wins most of the time. He's cranky, obnoxious and offensive. My kind of guy. He's always railing against his boss, the system, society, something, and you can feel his working class anger seeping out of his voice and comments.
Harry is dark, dark, dark. What's with detectives and music, they all like it. Harry likes Jazz. Is that a carry over from the authors? Harry is emotionally stunted, terrified of intimacy and very much the loner. The last few books, which involve his sort of ex, and his precoscious daughter, are not as good as the first bunch. It's part of the attraction for me, to see a character grow and develop though, even when I don't agree with the author as to the direction.
Alex Delaware is probably someone I would not like very much in real life. I don't trust people who pay over $200 for a pair of shoes. I do like his side kick though, a bit of a cliche, but a fat black gay guy covers a lot of marginalized groups, and the character is very good. Trouble comes to Alex, it follows him, he has the quirky mind that goes from A to B, and then jumps to M, back to D, and then fast forwards to X. Intuitive leaps in logic, a mostly non male trait, a bit too much American shoot em up for my liking, but if there isn't guns around, the average American can't pay attention.
Inspectors Jury (my romantic ideal) and Inspector Banks are pretty much in the mold of the English detective, but not totally routine. Jury was never in a rush to get into a relationship, and Banks, for the most part fails. The Jury books are humourous, at least in the beginning, but as Jury's character becomes more developed, we see better plots, and less of the English country side pubs and humour (even though all the books are named after pubs). The Banks books are not in the least bit funny, but they are always full of good music, and the plots are generally superior to most.
Jack seems to be a chick magnet of sorts. He's older, has less expectations of his women, and really really seems to enjoy their company. Jack is also a magnet for trouble, he is forever getting the crap kicked out of him, or shot or hurt somehow, and the trouble in the story tends to weave itself into his life in very negative ways (loses the girl, someone in the family gets hurt). Jack is humble, and that is one of his most endearing traits. He's "not a detective", he just looks for lost kids. I like the plots, and I especially like the way the author brings the country/city landscape to life. All the characters in these books "grow" , their journeys to the darker side make them better, smarter, kinder.
So there you can see my problem with men. The ones I like are fictional, and the real life ones I could go for are all about 32 years old (which feels slightly illegal). Not that I am looking. I enjoy male companionship but I will never again live with a male - there is something about testosterone that upsets the karmic balance in my living space.
So, after work there should be enough of the day left to muck about in the garden, so I will....
COURAGE MY LOVE... May you have the courage you need to be the person you want to be.
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Saturday, April 23, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
April 20, 2011 - Courage My Love
Today is Hitler's birthday. I do not know why that stuck in my brain, it just did. From the 11th grade. Too bad the important stuff didn't stick.
A bad news sort of day, Andrea went to see the transplant team and it looks as if she will not be getting the transplant. Too sick. Let's see, lung failure, kidneys are failing, new nasty viral infection, going blind - not exactly a prime candidate for surviving the transplant. They told her she has about a year left. God. That sucks. She is so not ready.
I am not sure I am either. We have home care now, but this will probably go down hill quite quickly. We have been checking out full time care facilities, there will come a time soon when I will not be able to take care of her, even with home care.
I guess I should not get too depressed over this (because after all it is not me who is dying), she has fought back before. Ten years ago or more when she got sick, they told her she had 2 - 3 years left, so we have managed to stave off death from our door before. Well whatever the outcome, I need to make sure she departs with some dignity.
I need to phone the cousins and let them know that if they want to see her, then they best come out and do it now. We are not making that journey back there to see them. I am more than a little pissed at them anyway, so this probably won't be a great bunch of phone calls. Not once have the fuckers ever come out to visit.
This is not a night I should be writing.
A bad news sort of day, Andrea went to see the transplant team and it looks as if she will not be getting the transplant. Too sick. Let's see, lung failure, kidneys are failing, new nasty viral infection, going blind - not exactly a prime candidate for surviving the transplant. They told her she has about a year left. God. That sucks. She is so not ready.
I am not sure I am either. We have home care now, but this will probably go down hill quite quickly. We have been checking out full time care facilities, there will come a time soon when I will not be able to take care of her, even with home care.
I guess I should not get too depressed over this (because after all it is not me who is dying), she has fought back before. Ten years ago or more when she got sick, they told her she had 2 - 3 years left, so we have managed to stave off death from our door before. Well whatever the outcome, I need to make sure she departs with some dignity.
I need to phone the cousins and let them know that if they want to see her, then they best come out and do it now. We are not making that journey back there to see them. I am more than a little pissed at them anyway, so this probably won't be a great bunch of phone calls. Not once have the fuckers ever come out to visit.
This is not a night I should be writing.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
April 12, 2011 - Courage My Love
Well last night was a success at work, using the leap frog approach to installation. I am looking to try something that will ease the backstrain on the next install. We had a company meeting today, remember those, the ones they call you to and tell you the bad news (that you already knew). We are so slow, and there will be little or no improvement for the next couple of months. The lay offs will cut deep, this one is kinda scary because if it all goes to hell in a handcart, I'll be one of the ones let go (more than likely). Double dipped crap.
Other than that, all is quiet on my western front. I had a good chuckle at lunch, I was in the Jeep and heading for the A'n'Dub, when I heard a Beatle song on the radio, it was "Ticket to Ride", only I could swear they were saying "She got a chicken to fly". I turned it up, listened carefully and still heard that. WTF? Anyway it was the damn radio station had taken an old tune and changed the words, so yes indeed, she did get a chicken to fly. Don't do that to old people you assholes, we can barely hear the alarm clock and then you go and fuck with our heads like that! Still it was pretty funny.
I finished that book, it was dumb, dumb, dumb and oh yes, stupid. So stupid I cannot remember the author or what it was called. I have immediately tossed it to the dust bin in my brain. It was the kind of book that you kept reading, because you felt there was some redeeming quality, but no, it was serious as a heart attack junk. It was a book where each chapter was named after a character, and it kept bouncing from person to person giving their perspective on what was happening. All these characters either knew each other, or glanced off each other in some way. It should have been a good book dammit, but it wasn't. The characters were engaging, well thought out, but holy fuck, there was no plot, no story line, well a little one but it was stupid and boring. Don't waste my time.
Listen to me, critic of the week. Can't help it, books must engage my mind first and foremost, and if they touch emotion that can be okay too. If I like a book, I will read it a couple of times. My father thought that was nonsense, said I musn't have understood the book if I had to reread it. There is something addictive about word craft when it is well done, and the pleasure increases each time you reread it. I have a couple of books I keep in reserve, in case there is nothing else to read in the house, because I know I can go to them, open them at any page and instantly I am engaged, entertained, questioned, challenged - even though this might be my fourth or fifth time through it.
Certain authors can do that for me, Elizabeth George, at least the earlier books. And of course, silly and as dated as they are, Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Love them.
On to another topic, did I tell you how much Walmart pisses me off? No? Well listen up. I bought Andrea a shuffle (ipod) for Christmas. It didn't work because we needed to update our OS on the apple. So, procrastinator that I am, I just got around to doing it. Well the shuffle doesn't work at all, it won't charge, nothing. So I take it back to Walmart, and they say, sorry, our return policy is three weeks. Are you kidding me? No! We never even used the fucking thing, it's brand new, untouched, virgin so to speak. No way. Actually yes, they will not take it back, so go away we got your money, now take your piece of crap and get out of here. So you silly fuckers, I bought another shuffle, switched the boxes so the serial numbers matched and took it back and got my money back and Andrea got her shuffle. Walmart, go away, go back to the U.S. and take your third world crap and your first world capitalism with you.
You know it's a good thing I can dump all this cynicism here, it's not a pleasant load to carry through life most days. A constant battle between what my brain is thinking and my mouth is saying. Being quiet, being silent, not saying what I am thinking takes courage, my love.
Other than that, all is quiet on my western front. I had a good chuckle at lunch, I was in the Jeep and heading for the A'n'Dub, when I heard a Beatle song on the radio, it was "Ticket to Ride", only I could swear they were saying "She got a chicken to fly". I turned it up, listened carefully and still heard that. WTF? Anyway it was the damn radio station had taken an old tune and changed the words, so yes indeed, she did get a chicken to fly. Don't do that to old people you assholes, we can barely hear the alarm clock and then you go and fuck with our heads like that! Still it was pretty funny.
I finished that book, it was dumb, dumb, dumb and oh yes, stupid. So stupid I cannot remember the author or what it was called. I have immediately tossed it to the dust bin in my brain. It was the kind of book that you kept reading, because you felt there was some redeeming quality, but no, it was serious as a heart attack junk. It was a book where each chapter was named after a character, and it kept bouncing from person to person giving their perspective on what was happening. All these characters either knew each other, or glanced off each other in some way. It should have been a good book dammit, but it wasn't. The characters were engaging, well thought out, but holy fuck, there was no plot, no story line, well a little one but it was stupid and boring. Don't waste my time.
Listen to me, critic of the week. Can't help it, books must engage my mind first and foremost, and if they touch emotion that can be okay too. If I like a book, I will read it a couple of times. My father thought that was nonsense, said I musn't have understood the book if I had to reread it. There is something addictive about word craft when it is well done, and the pleasure increases each time you reread it. I have a couple of books I keep in reserve, in case there is nothing else to read in the house, because I know I can go to them, open them at any page and instantly I am engaged, entertained, questioned, challenged - even though this might be my fourth or fifth time through it.
Certain authors can do that for me, Elizabeth George, at least the earlier books. And of course, silly and as dated as they are, Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Love them.
On to another topic, did I tell you how much Walmart pisses me off? No? Well listen up. I bought Andrea a shuffle (ipod) for Christmas. It didn't work because we needed to update our OS on the apple. So, procrastinator that I am, I just got around to doing it. Well the shuffle doesn't work at all, it won't charge, nothing. So I take it back to Walmart, and they say, sorry, our return policy is three weeks. Are you kidding me? No! We never even used the fucking thing, it's brand new, untouched, virgin so to speak. No way. Actually yes, they will not take it back, so go away we got your money, now take your piece of crap and get out of here. So you silly fuckers, I bought another shuffle, switched the boxes so the serial numbers matched and took it back and got my money back and Andrea got her shuffle. Walmart, go away, go back to the U.S. and take your third world crap and your first world capitalism with you.
You know it's a good thing I can dump all this cynicism here, it's not a pleasant load to carry through life most days. A constant battle between what my brain is thinking and my mouth is saying. Being quiet, being silent, not saying what I am thinking takes courage, my love.
Monday, April 11, 2011
April 11, 2011 Courage My Love
Another weekend of freakin rain, I have abandoned all hope of gardening and have taken up carpentry. Seriously, I am building a fucking Ark.
It was a low energy weekend, I finished all the Jack Liffey books I could get my hands on. A good author cannot write fast enough to satisfy the reading dragon inside me. Now I am reading another Scandinavian book, well sort of Scandinavian, the author is American but it is set in Denmark and since the author has lived there for years, it follows it would have that flavour. I can't quite get into it, I keep reading and reading, waiting for it to grab me, but it doesn't.
I am trying something new at work, we have an install where we do not make the time, have never made the time and despite all arguments to the contrary, using our current process, will never make the time. So there in lies the problem, the process. It is a very simple install, 4 components (left/right/front/back), some clips and some screws. The biggest slowdown has been finding the units to do the install on, they are hidden in a random pattern in the boat discharge. If they were all in one spot, we would have a better chance. So we dig through a boat discharge (and that can be messy) and it takes forever. The install also involves some poor ergomomic postures, we cannot locate the install units any where but on the ground (really, why?).
So on goes the thinking cap, and one of the first things I know is that if you are paying an installer to install something, then that's all they should be doing. Take away anything that person does that does not directly add to the install. We have to go get the install (can someone else do that? Yes). We have other accessories that go in the install (we call them hooks, books and stickers, which is exactly what they are, throw ins - so can someone else do this? Yes).
Normally one employee does 14 of these installs per night. We get paid .325 per install. That sucks, because if you do 14 you only get about 4.5 hours credit. I took two groups of two people and set them up with 6 installs in a row, each team of two would work on one install (1 person does the right front and back and the other does the left front and back) and then they move down the line to the next install and repeat the pattern. The installers no longer go and get the vehicle, no longer put the stickers on, no longer put the books or mats in the vehicle, they simply install...
The worst case scenario would be that the team did 28 installs per night, which would leave us exactly where we were, losing money on the install. Using this very simple method, the install teams are now able to do 60 installs per night. Now I have two teams of two, which would mean 120 installs per shift would pay us 39 hours. I add one person to the mix (gets the car, does the sticker, hooks, books and mat) and keeps the line going. So now we have 40 hours of labour earning 39 hours of credit, which is a fuck of a lot better than the "old" way in which we would have earned only 22.5 hours. Just have to find 1 hours worth of work credit for the guy moving the vehicles.
There is another scenario that I would like to try next time, and I believe it could increase the throughput by another 20% and best of all, reduce the ergonomic strain on the employees. If we used an elevated ramp so the installer was working in his or her "zone", in other words not reaching out or bending over, it would eliminate a lot of body stress (especially the lower back).
People are not good with change, even though they like to tell you they are, so just to add to the mix, I used the oldest, least fit, crankiest, slowest installers I had to try this experiment, and even doing that it was a success. Hot damn hootchy mama, bring out the beer!!
Maybe more later, maybe not. Either way will take Courage my love.
It was a low energy weekend, I finished all the Jack Liffey books I could get my hands on. A good author cannot write fast enough to satisfy the reading dragon inside me. Now I am reading another Scandinavian book, well sort of Scandinavian, the author is American but it is set in Denmark and since the author has lived there for years, it follows it would have that flavour. I can't quite get into it, I keep reading and reading, waiting for it to grab me, but it doesn't.
I am trying something new at work, we have an install where we do not make the time, have never made the time and despite all arguments to the contrary, using our current process, will never make the time. So there in lies the problem, the process. It is a very simple install, 4 components (left/right/front/back), some clips and some screws. The biggest slowdown has been finding the units to do the install on, they are hidden in a random pattern in the boat discharge. If they were all in one spot, we would have a better chance. So we dig through a boat discharge (and that can be messy) and it takes forever. The install also involves some poor ergomomic postures, we cannot locate the install units any where but on the ground (really, why?).
So on goes the thinking cap, and one of the first things I know is that if you are paying an installer to install something, then that's all they should be doing. Take away anything that person does that does not directly add to the install. We have to go get the install (can someone else do that? Yes). We have other accessories that go in the install (we call them hooks, books and stickers, which is exactly what they are, throw ins - so can someone else do this? Yes).
Normally one employee does 14 of these installs per night. We get paid .325 per install. That sucks, because if you do 14 you only get about 4.5 hours credit. I took two groups of two people and set them up with 6 installs in a row, each team of two would work on one install (1 person does the right front and back and the other does the left front and back) and then they move down the line to the next install and repeat the pattern. The installers no longer go and get the vehicle, no longer put the stickers on, no longer put the books or mats in the vehicle, they simply install...
The worst case scenario would be that the team did 28 installs per night, which would leave us exactly where we were, losing money on the install. Using this very simple method, the install teams are now able to do 60 installs per night. Now I have two teams of two, which would mean 120 installs per shift would pay us 39 hours. I add one person to the mix (gets the car, does the sticker, hooks, books and mat) and keeps the line going. So now we have 40 hours of labour earning 39 hours of credit, which is a fuck of a lot better than the "old" way in which we would have earned only 22.5 hours. Just have to find 1 hours worth of work credit for the guy moving the vehicles.
There is another scenario that I would like to try next time, and I believe it could increase the throughput by another 20% and best of all, reduce the ergonomic strain on the employees. If we used an elevated ramp so the installer was working in his or her "zone", in other words not reaching out or bending over, it would eliminate a lot of body stress (especially the lower back).
People are not good with change, even though they like to tell you they are, so just to add to the mix, I used the oldest, least fit, crankiest, slowest installers I had to try this experiment, and even doing that it was a success. Hot damn hootchy mama, bring out the beer!!
Maybe more later, maybe not. Either way will take Courage my love.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
April 9, 2011 - Courage My Love
Not a bad day, all in all. Did the gardening, the shopping and tada!! the computer was ready so I went and got that. Works like a hot damn now, not much wrong with it, I have so many pictures on it (more than 15000) so I had to get a little bigger memory. Also upgraded the OS to snow leopard. Damage was minimal to my pocket book.
Kim dropped in this am with the girls, girls being Sidney and Morgan, the two most disgustingly spoiled dogs I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Kim and Wayne treat them like children, probably better than children. Kim buys two turkeys and 10 lbs of fresh ground buffalo meat every week and makes their meals daily, fresh veg, rice and meat, either raw or stewed.
Who the hell am I to point this out. Andrea feeds that fucking chihuahua a raw diet. Fresh ground chicken, fish, veg and fruit. Little heathen, that dog will eat so much her belly distends and now she has multiple cleavages. If I ever open a restaurant I will call it "The Exploding Chihuahua" in honour of the fact that the fuckers will eat until they explode and if that doesn't work, then there is always John's solution, two minutes in the nuker. And God forbid we run out of the fresh food, the little immigrant walks around the house giving us the "old stink eye" and mutters under her breath "you anglos are such assholes, I weel keel you".
Anyway, we have a bit of a shot gun house, so we opened the front and back doors and let them run in and out for a couple of hours. They loved it. The yard is fenced so no fears about the great escape. Morgan dug up a disgusting bone and laid in the grass and mauled it. Daisy was pissed, because she had buried it, and Sidney just sat there and watched them. Tequila sat on the fringes of the pack as she is oft to do, probably afraid that one of the big goofs might step on her.
The adults made coffee, and Kim brought some wicked wicked cake. An absolutely erotic carrot cake, so rich, so decadent, I wanted to find Mark Mckuen, rub it all over him and spend about three hours licking it off. And then there was the chocolate fudge cake, sure made the decision about what for supper pretty easy. After all, as Bill Cosby liked to say, chocolate cake has all the food groups in it - what's the problem??
I had a big think today about knowledge and how the internet has changed what we know, and how fast we know it. I had to take Latin in school (WTF - why for crying out loud) and although I like that it is something slightly arcane in my reportoire, it serves no real purpose. No one needs to learn it anymore, it's on the internet with full translators. Same with history, why bother, it's all there. Today we were watching Troy and I was surprised that Andrea's whole idea of it came from the movie. She thought it was a battle between the Romans and the Greeks (after Jesus was born) and did not understand the concept of "gods" in Greek mythology. She was so fucked up, but I got her on the internet to a really good site and let her go over it. It may even propel her to pick up a book, who knew it was the same gene pool?
And then I got on the topic of cops, that deserves a whole post. Man, what a bunch of testosterone laden dummies. They tasered an 11 year old boy today. That is seriously fucked up.
anyway, gotta go, but cake, chocolate cake especially, takes courage my lovel
Kim dropped in this am with the girls, girls being Sidney and Morgan, the two most disgustingly spoiled dogs I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Kim and Wayne treat them like children, probably better than children. Kim buys two turkeys and 10 lbs of fresh ground buffalo meat every week and makes their meals daily, fresh veg, rice and meat, either raw or stewed.
Who the hell am I to point this out. Andrea feeds that fucking chihuahua a raw diet. Fresh ground chicken, fish, veg and fruit. Little heathen, that dog will eat so much her belly distends and now she has multiple cleavages. If I ever open a restaurant I will call it "The Exploding Chihuahua" in honour of the fact that the fuckers will eat until they explode and if that doesn't work, then there is always John's solution, two minutes in the nuker. And God forbid we run out of the fresh food, the little immigrant walks around the house giving us the "old stink eye" and mutters under her breath "you anglos are such assholes, I weel keel you".
Anyway, we have a bit of a shot gun house, so we opened the front and back doors and let them run in and out for a couple of hours. They loved it. The yard is fenced so no fears about the great escape. Morgan dug up a disgusting bone and laid in the grass and mauled it. Daisy was pissed, because she had buried it, and Sidney just sat there and watched them. Tequila sat on the fringes of the pack as she is oft to do, probably afraid that one of the big goofs might step on her.
The adults made coffee, and Kim brought some wicked wicked cake. An absolutely erotic carrot cake, so rich, so decadent, I wanted to find Mark Mckuen, rub it all over him and spend about three hours licking it off. And then there was the chocolate fudge cake, sure made the decision about what for supper pretty easy. After all, as Bill Cosby liked to say, chocolate cake has all the food groups in it - what's the problem??
I had a big think today about knowledge and how the internet has changed what we know, and how fast we know it. I had to take Latin in school (WTF - why for crying out loud) and although I like that it is something slightly arcane in my reportoire, it serves no real purpose. No one needs to learn it anymore, it's on the internet with full translators. Same with history, why bother, it's all there. Today we were watching Troy and I was surprised that Andrea's whole idea of it came from the movie. She thought it was a battle between the Romans and the Greeks (after Jesus was born) and did not understand the concept of "gods" in Greek mythology. She was so fucked up, but I got her on the internet to a really good site and let her go over it. It may even propel her to pick up a book, who knew it was the same gene pool?
And then I got on the topic of cops, that deserves a whole post. Man, what a bunch of testosterone laden dummies. They tasered an 11 year old boy today. That is seriously fucked up.
anyway, gotta go, but cake, chocolate cake especially, takes courage my lovel
Friday, April 8, 2011
April 9, 2011 - Courage My Love
Another day in paradise. Today we are shadowing Korean technicians who are here doing port upgrade mods to their vehicles. Easy peasy. It is a brilliant day on the west coast, the sun is bouncing off everything, the air is cool and it's just about as perfect as a spring day can be.
I was thinking about Larry today. Larry came into my life in 1988 and out of my life in 1989. It was one of those "what the hell relationships" that people have and when it is over, you wonder "What the fuck was I thinking??". At the time, I was sharing a house in Brampton with Andrea and Wayne. I was in the process of breaking up with a long time squeeze, and it was that painful, kicked in the gut kind of ending that I have done my best to avoid since. Wayne was a welder (and incidentally a drunk but that didn't interfere with his natural talent with welding) and he worked for a little company in the city. That's where he and Larry met up, they hit it off and before you know it, Larry was a regular at our house.
The first time he came to the house, he was downstairs and I hadn't met him yet. Andrea pulled me aside and said "Don't be freaked out by this guy, Wayne will get rid of him". Who was she kidding, me freaked out - not likely unless he was wearing a Roman collar. I went downstairs to have a beer with the boys, and there was Larry. He was not really tall, maybe 5'9, but holy fuck was he built. He was wearing jeans and a vest, so a lot of his arms and torso were available for my jaw dropped scrutiny. He looked like a biker type, he had tats all over, major on the sleeves as well as everything else I could see that wasn't covered.
He and Wayne were into the beers and telling stories. Well, Larry was a story teller, and his stories were drop dead hilarious. He made me laugh. So in addition to the arms of steel, he had a mind like Robin Williams. A perfect combination to start me thinking about something other than the jackass that had cheated on me and broke my heart. Larry and I hit it off bigtime. Andrea was a little taken aback, she always had me pegged for the shirt and tie type guys, since that had been all I had ever brought home. Larry was a bad boy.
I did not follow my instincts and immediately drag him by his dick into my room, but the thought did cross my mind more than once that evening and eventually I did. Larry's story was a mixture of sadness, badness and hilarity. His mother had been a whore. She had the two boys, and the father had left, so Larry and his brother Murray were left pretty much on their own. He told me they used to watch his mother sucking his "uncles" cocks on the fire escape. How sad. The mother would go out drinking every night and bring home a new "uncle" for a few days, which meant the boys would have something to eat because the uncles would give them money to leave the rat trap apartment their mother had for a few hours so they could roger the old doll. They didn't have much money, they were always the poor and ragged kids at a school that they did not go to very much. In the summer, their mother would send them down to Sunnyside Beach in Toronto and they would hang out in the change room and steal shoes. Those shoes had to last them until the next year.
Left to their own devices, the two boys bonded very strongly, but play was extremely roughhouse. Once Murray had done something to Larry, like put his gold fish in a frying pan on the stove and threatened to cook them and it made Larry really mad, so he took Murray's turtle and put it in the oven and turned the oven on. Murray thought he was cooking something when he smelled it and came running into the kitchen. Larry told him dinner was in the oven. Murray sobbed for a week.
Another time they were visiting their paternal grandmother. She sounded like a typical granny, with a nice little house, but certainly not used to a couple of little hellions like this. The Canadian tradition is that you do not wear your shoes in the house, and so the boys would run around in their sock feet. They would come flying down the stairs, and then leap from about the third step from the bottom and come crashing onto the landing at the foot of the stairs. It drove her crazy. One day Larry found a package of carpet tacks and he got, what he thought was a great idea to teach Murray not to jump off the stairs. He went to the landing and took about 50 of the carpet tacks and stood them up on their heads on the rug at the foot of the stairs. Then he called out "Murray, come into the kitchen, granny has cake, Murray!" And sure enough, he heard the thump thump of Murray's feet coming down the stairs, heard the silence of the leap, and then heard the screams as Murray impaled both his bare feet on the carpet tacks.
Apparently they were in the emergency room for three hours while a doctor extracted over 20 carpet tacks from the soles of Murray's feet. They were sent home to their mother shortly afterwards.
When they were teenagers, and were briefly out of remand, they were at their mother's house. She had a budgie and both boys hated it. She cooed over it, talked to it, fed it special treats, in fact she treated the bird better than she had ever treated the two boys. Larry was sitting in a chair watching tv and he noticed his mom's sewing basket by the chair. There was a pack of needles on the top of the basket. There was a straw on the table beside the chair. Larry decided nothing would be funnier than to turn the straw into a blow gun and blow needle darts at the bird. He didn't think it was possible, but one of the needles pierced the birds chest and the bird ends up doing the funky chicken on its' perch and then keels over and dies. Both Larry and Murray knew they would be in deep shit when the old lady got home, this bird was like a baby to her. They pulled the needle out of the birds chest, smoothed down the feathers, removed all the needles from the cage and left the bird lying in the bottom of the cage. They told her the bird must have had a heart attack, they didn't see or hear anything, they just found the bird on the bottom of the cage
Larry has his first sexual experience when he was 10 going on 11. He hung out on the fringes of the tough guys in the neighborhood. He ran errands for them, going to get cigs or pizza, generally he was their gofer (he would gofer this and gofer that). They paid him off by letting him hang around. One night there was a party at one of the guys apartment (this would be about 1959), one of the cool guys had gotten this young woman dead drunk and she was passed out on the bed. The guy decided nothing would be finer than for every guy at the party to fuck her. Last but not least was Larry. After about 15 guys had dumped semen in and on this young woman, they let Larry have a go at her with his tiny ten year old dick. It was the first time he had seen a naked woman, and even though he knew it was wrong, it felt wrong, he did it anyway. The guys were laughing and cheering him on, and dammit, that ten year old did have an erection, as tiny as it was.
I didn't find that story very funny, it made me sick, but it was insightful into what made Larry into Larry.
Larry and Murray spent considerable time at her majesty's request, first in the boys school system (a sort of juvenile facility for bad boys) and then a couple of years in the penitentiary. What they did get out of that time of leisure was a trade, both of them learned to weld. They considered that their "straight job" but they still had a vigorous sideline of stolen goods, cars, drugs, guns and girls. Once they managed to smuggle 200 hand guns in from the U.S. They dug a huge pit out in Caledon, lined it with plastic, made sure the guns were greased and wrapped and then buried them. There was a third guy, you know the type, got busted for something else and then to get his sentenced dummied down, ratted out Murray and Larry.
Well they got 10 years in Kingston for that one. They got out after 6, robbed a bank. The only reason they got caught that time was because Larry dumped all the money ($600K) onto a bed and took a picture of himself and the money. Didn't he send it to someone, who showed it to someone, and so on, until yes, once again they were caught. Got 20 years for that, got out after 10. Paroled to a half way house were they stumbled on the bright idea of robbing the Gold Exchange in Toronto using motorcycles. Fucking brilliant, easy to make a get away until they turned down what they thought was a side street with the cops in full pursuit, and ended up in an industrial cul-de-sac with absolutely no way out, save through a chain link fence.
Got 20 to life for that one. By some strange twist of fate, they both got early release. The pen was undergoing the strains of overpopulation, so they first got bumped to a lower security work farm and then out onto parole. When I met them, they were in their mid forties. Murry spent almost all his free time watching porn. Larry, not so much, but he vowed never to darken the door of a prison again. He said he would go out in a blaze of glory rather than be locked up. You think it would have dawned on both of them that their life of crime had not exactly been what they dreamed of, but like so many people, they did not have the best up bringing, the best education and they wanted what everyone wanted - the good life. The only way they could see to get it was to take it.
Larry taught me that any man who made me laugh was worth spending time with. Ultimately we did not last, because he scared me. He also still had that tiny ten year olds dick, that he could only partially compensate for by breathing through his ears. One time after making love, we were lounging naked on the bed, he sat up and reached over to grab the candle on the bedside table, to light a cigarette. The candle was about 5 inches in diameter and it had been burning for several hours, consequently there was a huge pool of blistering hot liquid wax around the wick. Larry did not realize that as he tipped the candle towards himself to light the smoke. That hot wax landed on his tiny dick, and splashed all down his legs. Ok, maybe that's not funny either, but it's like watching an old lady fall down, it's not funny but you can't stop laughing.
I have a million Larry stories, but as I read back on these ones, they are sad really. Being Larry, or then again, being with Larry takes courage my love.
I was thinking about Larry today. Larry came into my life in 1988 and out of my life in 1989. It was one of those "what the hell relationships" that people have and when it is over, you wonder "What the fuck was I thinking??". At the time, I was sharing a house in Brampton with Andrea and Wayne. I was in the process of breaking up with a long time squeeze, and it was that painful, kicked in the gut kind of ending that I have done my best to avoid since. Wayne was a welder (and incidentally a drunk but that didn't interfere with his natural talent with welding) and he worked for a little company in the city. That's where he and Larry met up, they hit it off and before you know it, Larry was a regular at our house.
The first time he came to the house, he was downstairs and I hadn't met him yet. Andrea pulled me aside and said "Don't be freaked out by this guy, Wayne will get rid of him". Who was she kidding, me freaked out - not likely unless he was wearing a Roman collar. I went downstairs to have a beer with the boys, and there was Larry. He was not really tall, maybe 5'9, but holy fuck was he built. He was wearing jeans and a vest, so a lot of his arms and torso were available for my jaw dropped scrutiny. He looked like a biker type, he had tats all over, major on the sleeves as well as everything else I could see that wasn't covered.
He and Wayne were into the beers and telling stories. Well, Larry was a story teller, and his stories were drop dead hilarious. He made me laugh. So in addition to the arms of steel, he had a mind like Robin Williams. A perfect combination to start me thinking about something other than the jackass that had cheated on me and broke my heart. Larry and I hit it off bigtime. Andrea was a little taken aback, she always had me pegged for the shirt and tie type guys, since that had been all I had ever brought home. Larry was a bad boy.
I did not follow my instincts and immediately drag him by his dick into my room, but the thought did cross my mind more than once that evening and eventually I did. Larry's story was a mixture of sadness, badness and hilarity. His mother had been a whore. She had the two boys, and the father had left, so Larry and his brother Murray were left pretty much on their own. He told me they used to watch his mother sucking his "uncles" cocks on the fire escape. How sad. The mother would go out drinking every night and bring home a new "uncle" for a few days, which meant the boys would have something to eat because the uncles would give them money to leave the rat trap apartment their mother had for a few hours so they could roger the old doll. They didn't have much money, they were always the poor and ragged kids at a school that they did not go to very much. In the summer, their mother would send them down to Sunnyside Beach in Toronto and they would hang out in the change room and steal shoes. Those shoes had to last them until the next year.
Left to their own devices, the two boys bonded very strongly, but play was extremely roughhouse. Once Murray had done something to Larry, like put his gold fish in a frying pan on the stove and threatened to cook them and it made Larry really mad, so he took Murray's turtle and put it in the oven and turned the oven on. Murray thought he was cooking something when he smelled it and came running into the kitchen. Larry told him dinner was in the oven. Murray sobbed for a week.
Another time they were visiting their paternal grandmother. She sounded like a typical granny, with a nice little house, but certainly not used to a couple of little hellions like this. The Canadian tradition is that you do not wear your shoes in the house, and so the boys would run around in their sock feet. They would come flying down the stairs, and then leap from about the third step from the bottom and come crashing onto the landing at the foot of the stairs. It drove her crazy. One day Larry found a package of carpet tacks and he got, what he thought was a great idea to teach Murray not to jump off the stairs. He went to the landing and took about 50 of the carpet tacks and stood them up on their heads on the rug at the foot of the stairs. Then he called out "Murray, come into the kitchen, granny has cake, Murray!" And sure enough, he heard the thump thump of Murray's feet coming down the stairs, heard the silence of the leap, and then heard the screams as Murray impaled both his bare feet on the carpet tacks.
Apparently they were in the emergency room for three hours while a doctor extracted over 20 carpet tacks from the soles of Murray's feet. They were sent home to their mother shortly afterwards.
When they were teenagers, and were briefly out of remand, they were at their mother's house. She had a budgie and both boys hated it. She cooed over it, talked to it, fed it special treats, in fact she treated the bird better than she had ever treated the two boys. Larry was sitting in a chair watching tv and he noticed his mom's sewing basket by the chair. There was a pack of needles on the top of the basket. There was a straw on the table beside the chair. Larry decided nothing would be funnier than to turn the straw into a blow gun and blow needle darts at the bird. He didn't think it was possible, but one of the needles pierced the birds chest and the bird ends up doing the funky chicken on its' perch and then keels over and dies. Both Larry and Murray knew they would be in deep shit when the old lady got home, this bird was like a baby to her. They pulled the needle out of the birds chest, smoothed down the feathers, removed all the needles from the cage and left the bird lying in the bottom of the cage. They told her the bird must have had a heart attack, they didn't see or hear anything, they just found the bird on the bottom of the cage
Larry has his first sexual experience when he was 10 going on 11. He hung out on the fringes of the tough guys in the neighborhood. He ran errands for them, going to get cigs or pizza, generally he was their gofer (he would gofer this and gofer that). They paid him off by letting him hang around. One night there was a party at one of the guys apartment (this would be about 1959), one of the cool guys had gotten this young woman dead drunk and she was passed out on the bed. The guy decided nothing would be finer than for every guy at the party to fuck her. Last but not least was Larry. After about 15 guys had dumped semen in and on this young woman, they let Larry have a go at her with his tiny ten year old dick. It was the first time he had seen a naked woman, and even though he knew it was wrong, it felt wrong, he did it anyway. The guys were laughing and cheering him on, and dammit, that ten year old did have an erection, as tiny as it was.
I didn't find that story very funny, it made me sick, but it was insightful into what made Larry into Larry.
Larry and Murray spent considerable time at her majesty's request, first in the boys school system (a sort of juvenile facility for bad boys) and then a couple of years in the penitentiary. What they did get out of that time of leisure was a trade, both of them learned to weld. They considered that their "straight job" but they still had a vigorous sideline of stolen goods, cars, drugs, guns and girls. Once they managed to smuggle 200 hand guns in from the U.S. They dug a huge pit out in Caledon, lined it with plastic, made sure the guns were greased and wrapped and then buried them. There was a third guy, you know the type, got busted for something else and then to get his sentenced dummied down, ratted out Murray and Larry.
Well they got 10 years in Kingston for that one. They got out after 6, robbed a bank. The only reason they got caught that time was because Larry dumped all the money ($600K) onto a bed and took a picture of himself and the money. Didn't he send it to someone, who showed it to someone, and so on, until yes, once again they were caught. Got 20 years for that, got out after 10. Paroled to a half way house were they stumbled on the bright idea of robbing the Gold Exchange in Toronto using motorcycles. Fucking brilliant, easy to make a get away until they turned down what they thought was a side street with the cops in full pursuit, and ended up in an industrial cul-de-sac with absolutely no way out, save through a chain link fence.
Got 20 to life for that one. By some strange twist of fate, they both got early release. The pen was undergoing the strains of overpopulation, so they first got bumped to a lower security work farm and then out onto parole. When I met them, they were in their mid forties. Murry spent almost all his free time watching porn. Larry, not so much, but he vowed never to darken the door of a prison again. He said he would go out in a blaze of glory rather than be locked up. You think it would have dawned on both of them that their life of crime had not exactly been what they dreamed of, but like so many people, they did not have the best up bringing, the best education and they wanted what everyone wanted - the good life. The only way they could see to get it was to take it.
Larry taught me that any man who made me laugh was worth spending time with. Ultimately we did not last, because he scared me. He also still had that tiny ten year olds dick, that he could only partially compensate for by breathing through his ears. One time after making love, we were lounging naked on the bed, he sat up and reached over to grab the candle on the bedside table, to light a cigarette. The candle was about 5 inches in diameter and it had been burning for several hours, consequently there was a huge pool of blistering hot liquid wax around the wick. Larry did not realize that as he tipped the candle towards himself to light the smoke. That hot wax landed on his tiny dick, and splashed all down his legs. Ok, maybe that's not funny either, but it's like watching an old lady fall down, it's not funny but you can't stop laughing.
I have a million Larry stories, but as I read back on these ones, they are sad really. Being Larry, or then again, being with Larry takes courage my love.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Flotsam and Jetsam - Courage My Love
OK, so we have this huge mother of a ship at the berth and the captain calls me over because he is concerned about a safety issue. He shows me the back of the boat, a huge piece of somebody's pier - it's old, you can tell, and it has obviously torn away from a pier or berth, has tucked itself in behind the boat, fairly close to the prop. It's about 4 or 5 telephone type poles capped with sheet metal and they are attached to a crossbeam about 8 feet long and roughly 2 square feet in diameter. You can see it is soaked in creosote, and you can see where it has torn away from something, the edges of the poles are all ragged.
So Captain Billy Bob wants me to call a tug to move it, because he is concerned it will foul the boat's prop when they leave. While I understand his concern (I once got a sheet raveled around my sailboat prop - what a fucking pain that was!) I have neither the equipment, people or authority to deal with this problem. This piece of flotsam was not there when the boat landed last night, it must have floated there on a waning tide.
Here's an aside, even though we are 14 kilometers from the ocean, we still have a substantial tide (about 10 to 12 feet) and when the tide is going out (down the river to the ocean) it's like a rocket ship ride. I have taken Duncan's boat from Shelter Island (about 1/2 kilometre from here) out to the mouth of the river in about 25 minutes on a running tide.
When the tide is going out, all kinds of flotsam (like this big chunk of pier) and jetsam (I've seen a bath tub float by) rockets down the river. This is a huge boat, that juts out into the river and it is only natural that this kind of crap will pile up behind it. However, it does not fall into the domain of stuff that I can do anything about. His crew managed to secure it to our berth with a little rope, and my suggestion to him was that when the tugs arrive to nose him out into the river, he should ask them to latch onto, move it either out into the river to float out to the ocean (tide has just about turned) or to move it further back to our breakwater and secure it there.
He asked if the tugboats would charge him for doing this and I said, maybe, but it would be cheaper than running it into your prop. Problem solved. - Ok I came back later to add this in.... After the boat successfully pulled away from the berth, I called security to come and release the flotsam from the pier, it was only attached by a rope. At the time I call, I am in the far yard, almost a kilometer away, so I tell the guy to release the rope. He asks me how he is going to untie the rope at water level. This puzzles me for a bit, and then I think "oh, okay the tug crew has tied it to our pier at water level" instead of the top of the berth. So I drive out onto the berth and the security gaurd is there and we walk to the edge and look in the water. He says "I can't figure out how I'm expected to untie that" and points to the flotsam. There is one end of the rope actually tied to the flotsam, but the other end is tied to the top of the berth. I'm thinking, he's kidding right? I look at him, but he's not kidding. So, I said, watch this, and I untied the rope at berth and threw it down on top of the fotsam, and of course, the flotsam immediately took off (upriver, the tide was almost full, but still coming in so the water was flowing up the river). He looked absolutely stunned. I didn't say anything, because Don the security gaurd is not the type you can tease, he cries. I'm serious, he cries, (but that's a whole other story for another time). Jesus on a stick, why do I continually end up working with the handicapped?
This river is amazing, it really is. I know Monty Python calls it "the mighty Fraser River" in the lumberjack song and it's true. I have no idea where it starts out, but by the time it hits the lower mainland it is huge. The ocean of course adds to the mix with the tides rushing in and rushing out. Our part of the river is called Fraser Port, and more specifically my part of the port is called the Annacis Island Terminal, and both are part of the Greater Vancouver Port Authority (which is why I have the high security port pass I have to wear).
When I look across the river, I see Fraser Port proper, which is a high and heavy and bulk break port.
So Captain Billy Bob wants me to call a tug to move it, because he is concerned it will foul the boat's prop when they leave. While I understand his concern (I once got a sheet raveled around my sailboat prop - what a fucking pain that was!) I have neither the equipment, people or authority to deal with this problem. This piece of flotsam was not there when the boat landed last night, it must have floated there on a waning tide.
Here's an aside, even though we are 14 kilometers from the ocean, we still have a substantial tide (about 10 to 12 feet) and when the tide is going out (down the river to the ocean) it's like a rocket ship ride. I have taken Duncan's boat from Shelter Island (about 1/2 kilometre from here) out to the mouth of the river in about 25 minutes on a running tide.
When the tide is going out, all kinds of flotsam (like this big chunk of pier) and jetsam (I've seen a bath tub float by) rockets down the river. This is a huge boat, that juts out into the river and it is only natural that this kind of crap will pile up behind it. However, it does not fall into the domain of stuff that I can do anything about. His crew managed to secure it to our berth with a little rope, and my suggestion to him was that when the tugs arrive to nose him out into the river, he should ask them to latch onto, move it either out into the river to float out to the ocean (tide has just about turned) or to move it further back to our breakwater and secure it there.
He asked if the tugboats would charge him for doing this and I said, maybe, but it would be cheaper than running it into your prop. Problem solved. - Ok I came back later to add this in.... After the boat successfully pulled away from the berth, I called security to come and release the flotsam from the pier, it was only attached by a rope. At the time I call, I am in the far yard, almost a kilometer away, so I tell the guy to release the rope. He asks me how he is going to untie the rope at water level. This puzzles me for a bit, and then I think "oh, okay the tug crew has tied it to our pier at water level" instead of the top of the berth. So I drive out onto the berth and the security gaurd is there and we walk to the edge and look in the water. He says "I can't figure out how I'm expected to untie that" and points to the flotsam. There is one end of the rope actually tied to the flotsam, but the other end is tied to the top of the berth. I'm thinking, he's kidding right? I look at him, but he's not kidding. So, I said, watch this, and I untied the rope at berth and threw it down on top of the fotsam, and of course, the flotsam immediately took off (upriver, the tide was almost full, but still coming in so the water was flowing up the river). He looked absolutely stunned. I didn't say anything, because Don the security gaurd is not the type you can tease, he cries. I'm serious, he cries, (but that's a whole other story for another time). Jesus on a stick, why do I continually end up working with the handicapped?
This river is amazing, it really is. I know Monty Python calls it "the mighty Fraser River" in the lumberjack song and it's true. I have no idea where it starts out, but by the time it hits the lower mainland it is huge. The ocean of course adds to the mix with the tides rushing in and rushing out. Our part of the river is called Fraser Port, and more specifically my part of the port is called the Annacis Island Terminal, and both are part of the Greater Vancouver Port Authority (which is why I have the high security port pass I have to wear).
When I look across the river, I see Fraser Port proper, which is a high and heavy and bulk break port.
I love working here, on a sunny day like today it's spectacular, and even on a rainy day, it's not so bad. This river plays a major part in how and why people settled here. The Fraser Valley was traditionally a gathering place for first nations people. The Solh Temexw (or Sto:lo as we call them) are the owners of this land, although the Musqueum, Skwxwu7mesh (Squamish), Chehalis and Kwantlen people all lived here as well. It's an abundantly rich area, the salmon run thick in the Fraser, the land is extremely fertile and I suppose that there was an abundance of wild life as well. It's actually pretty funny, because the first nations peoples own some of the MOST expensive land here, and they lease it to the rest of us at exhorbitant rates (what price is priceless??).
Rivers and thinking about them always remind me of that poem by Al Purdy, called "Say the names", it has a wonderful natural rhythm to it and the powerful language of the first nations comes through loud and clear.
SAY THE NAMES
--say the names say the names
and listen to yourself
an echo in the mountains
Tulameen Tulameen
say them like your soul
was listening and overhearing
and you dreamed you dreamed
you were a river
and you were a river
Tulameen Tulameen
--not the flat borrowed imitations
of foreign names
not Briton Windsor Trenton
but names that ride the wind
Spillimacheen and Nahanni
Kleena Kleene and Horsefly
Illecillewaet and Whachamacallit
Lillooet and Kluane
Head-Smashed in Buffalo Jump
and the whole sky falling
when the buffalo went down
Similkameen and Nahanni
say them say them remember
if you ever wander elsewhere
"the North as a deed and forever"
Kleena Kleene Nahanni
Osoyoos and Similkameen
say the names
as if they were your soul
lost among the mountains
a soul you mislaid
and found again rejoicing
Tulameen Tulameen
till the heart stops beating
say the names
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
March 6, 2011 - Courage My Love
The sun is shining. Four little words, with the most important one being "shining". Out of the darkness into the light. It's still freaking cold, but today was filled with warm corners where the wind could not find you but the sun did.
Good news today, my pension funds have totally turned the corner. They were pretty beaten up in the market dive two years ago, but it seems that health has returned. The TSX is cruising over 14,000 and that is great news. I have my money socked away in agressive Canadian markets, and we perhaps better than most, have not felt the economic rumbles of the last few years. Maybe the agressive markets should be toned down a bit, but even as I watched it tumble a few years ago, I knew it would claw up and surpass the level where it started to fall.
I am certainly no financial genius, but I will be okay in my retirement years. The real key is avoiding that stupid consumer debt and having your home paid off. I have no intention of leaving a bundle to the kids, since they are both on their way to be financially secure anyway. As I mentioned at some earlier point, all I want is endless days filled with painting and gardening and writing, what more do I need?
Okay the topic of the day is politics. We are in the midst of a national election and probably a soon to be provincial one. I love politics, but I can't seem to find a one party fits all scenario and so will probably just vote for the local yahoo I believe might actually be inspired to do a good job. So nothing along party lines, because let's face it, party lines are stupid. In this country we have the right (the conservatives), the left (the liberals) and the far left (the New Democrats). The lines between them blur at the best of times and this election, even more so.
The conservatives won't discuss abortion or gay marriage. Easy to say their power base is the religious main stream middle of the country. The Liberals don't want to talk about leadership - they have a penchant for picking incredibly intelligent leaders who come across as arrogant. The New Democrats want to double the output of social security (probably at the expense of big business).
There is absolutely nothing about the conservatives that appeals to me, and never has been. Harper is a perogie, mostly for the way he looks (dumpy and white) and partially where he is from (the near west). A flatlander and a dunderhead at the best of times. He waltzed into power on the dissolution of the Liberal party's government. We tend to allow our leaders to take charge for anywhere from 4 to 12 years and then we absolutely pummel them in the polls and switch to the next party. Let's hope that is his fate.
Ignatief suffers the intelligent arrogance curse of the Liberals. He's smart as hell and he's probably right but he has too many American affiliations (he taught at Harvard for christ's sake) and he is arrogant. Joe Average will not vote for someone they perceive may be smarter than they are. However, that said, the Liberals do really well in urban areas with high ethnic content. The Indian community and the Chinese community control a huge block of votes.
Jack Layton is every man, but he is feared by big business. Jack would spend all the tax dollars on health and education and looking after our social network. To hell with job incentives and work, to hell with infrastructure, to hell with big business. Maybe that is not such a bad thing. Jack does not appeal to ethnic minorities but he does appeal to the socialist in all of us.
We never go as far to the right as the US and we certainly go a lot further (to our credit) to the left. Our economy is doing the best of all countries in the G8, which says something for our banking system and our productivity. We are failing to take care of those who need our care the most. The lower most layer of our society, those we turfed from mental homes to the street, the old with no pensions, the young with no skills, are left drifting in that cold cold wind.
The people I work with are smug. You know the type. Oh, we should enforce the "work for welfare" rules and the "let single uneducated mothers" get jobs instead of riding out welfare - you know the ones who talk like that. They are concerned about what they can buy, and where they can go on holidays, and damn the little people, let them get jobs. Little do they realize that our social safety net is for them as well, everyone is about two weeks away from living on the streets. Jobs can be gone in a heartbeat.
Think about it, the mortgage, the car payments, the kids in hockey/dance/tennis/whatever and you lose your job - then what? Pogey pays a max of 1500 per person per month, try living on that in this fine expensive city we live in. Once you miss a payment or two, everything goes, just ask Duncan. I am of the belief that it is just stuff, it isn't important, let it go, but then, I don't have to worry about young children or extended family.
When all is said and done here in this country, the medical is free, the drugs are free, and you will get the basics of life. Ok not what you wanted, but better a little for all, than none for everyone.
So back to politics, I will probably vote left of centre and maybe even venture to the far left this time.
Added later: it is much later, darkness has fallen, the wind has died down, and it is very crisp. I went out onto the docks to watch a boat pull in, amazing really, where we are located on the river, they have to spin the boats so they face out to the ocean again, so when they depart, they are going the right way. It looks like the river isn't wide enough to spin these boats, but it is.
The boats are huge, you can tell by the size of the tugs in the picture. It is pretty slick how they do this, it sure wasn't my strong point when I was sailing. Of course, this isn't going into a slip, just up along to a berth, which is totally different. Whatever, glad it's not my job. There isn't a boat pole large enough to fend this sucker off. Landing this boat, any boat really, takes courage, my love.
Good news today, my pension funds have totally turned the corner. They were pretty beaten up in the market dive two years ago, but it seems that health has returned. The TSX is cruising over 14,000 and that is great news. I have my money socked away in agressive Canadian markets, and we perhaps better than most, have not felt the economic rumbles of the last few years. Maybe the agressive markets should be toned down a bit, but even as I watched it tumble a few years ago, I knew it would claw up and surpass the level where it started to fall.
I am certainly no financial genius, but I will be okay in my retirement years. The real key is avoiding that stupid consumer debt and having your home paid off. I have no intention of leaving a bundle to the kids, since they are both on their way to be financially secure anyway. As I mentioned at some earlier point, all I want is endless days filled with painting and gardening and writing, what more do I need?
Okay the topic of the day is politics. We are in the midst of a national election and probably a soon to be provincial one. I love politics, but I can't seem to find a one party fits all scenario and so will probably just vote for the local yahoo I believe might actually be inspired to do a good job. So nothing along party lines, because let's face it, party lines are stupid. In this country we have the right (the conservatives), the left (the liberals) and the far left (the New Democrats). The lines between them blur at the best of times and this election, even more so.
The conservatives won't discuss abortion or gay marriage. Easy to say their power base is the religious main stream middle of the country. The Liberals don't want to talk about leadership - they have a penchant for picking incredibly intelligent leaders who come across as arrogant. The New Democrats want to double the output of social security (probably at the expense of big business).
There is absolutely nothing about the conservatives that appeals to me, and never has been. Harper is a perogie, mostly for the way he looks (dumpy and white) and partially where he is from (the near west). A flatlander and a dunderhead at the best of times. He waltzed into power on the dissolution of the Liberal party's government. We tend to allow our leaders to take charge for anywhere from 4 to 12 years and then we absolutely pummel them in the polls and switch to the next party. Let's hope that is his fate.
Ignatief suffers the intelligent arrogance curse of the Liberals. He's smart as hell and he's probably right but he has too many American affiliations (he taught at Harvard for christ's sake) and he is arrogant. Joe Average will not vote for someone they perceive may be smarter than they are. However, that said, the Liberals do really well in urban areas with high ethnic content. The Indian community and the Chinese community control a huge block of votes.
Jack Layton is every man, but he is feared by big business. Jack would spend all the tax dollars on health and education and looking after our social network. To hell with job incentives and work, to hell with infrastructure, to hell with big business. Maybe that is not such a bad thing. Jack does not appeal to ethnic minorities but he does appeal to the socialist in all of us.
We never go as far to the right as the US and we certainly go a lot further (to our credit) to the left. Our economy is doing the best of all countries in the G8, which says something for our banking system and our productivity. We are failing to take care of those who need our care the most. The lower most layer of our society, those we turfed from mental homes to the street, the old with no pensions, the young with no skills, are left drifting in that cold cold wind.
The people I work with are smug. You know the type. Oh, we should enforce the "work for welfare" rules and the "let single uneducated mothers" get jobs instead of riding out welfare - you know the ones who talk like that. They are concerned about what they can buy, and where they can go on holidays, and damn the little people, let them get jobs. Little do they realize that our social safety net is for them as well, everyone is about two weeks away from living on the streets. Jobs can be gone in a heartbeat.
Think about it, the mortgage, the car payments, the kids in hockey/dance/tennis/whatever and you lose your job - then what? Pogey pays a max of 1500 per person per month, try living on that in this fine expensive city we live in. Once you miss a payment or two, everything goes, just ask Duncan. I am of the belief that it is just stuff, it isn't important, let it go, but then, I don't have to worry about young children or extended family.
When all is said and done here in this country, the medical is free, the drugs are free, and you will get the basics of life. Ok not what you wanted, but better a little for all, than none for everyone.
So back to politics, I will probably vote left of centre and maybe even venture to the far left this time.
Added later: it is much later, darkness has fallen, the wind has died down, and it is very crisp. I went out onto the docks to watch a boat pull in, amazing really, where we are located on the river, they have to spin the boats so they face out to the ocean again, so when they depart, they are going the right way. It looks like the river isn't wide enough to spin these boats, but it is.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
April 5, 2011 - Courage My Love
Tuesday has arrived, it's a nothing day, sort of like the middle child. The actual middle day of the work week is cool cause it is "hump day", just past lunch you are over the hump of work and headed to the weekend. Tuesdays however, are forever bland, nothing good happens on a Tuesday, and likewise, nothing bad happens on a Tuesday. It was a day for chores, took the computer in for an upgrade, I jacked up the memory a bit and got the latest Operating system installed. Also took a print in to be stretched. It is a very cool picture I took, had printed on canvas and am now getting stretched onto a frame.
My boss is back at work, after a week or so off. He's a nice guy, thinks he is running NASA somedays, when in reality he is running the kiddy rides at the carnival, but everyone deserves at least one delusion in their life. Have you ever looked at someone and got that weird, a "their not there" feeling? I don't know how to describe it really, sort of like they have a lesser life force in them, like they are fading or something. That's the feeling I get when I look at my boss. Like he is fading, sort of like hobbits do. Strangely enough, he is fairly young, I wonder if he is sick or something I am not aware of.
It's a shop night, which means we are installing widgets. Suits me, I can spend the next 8 hours cruising the internet, checking out the world and some one is paying me for it. Ludicrous, lovely but ludicrous.
I really suck at keeping secrets, if there is something you don't want everyone to know, then for crying out loud, don't tell me. I am great at keeping my secrets (otherwise they would not be secrets) but I have noticed as of late, that I am "gossipping", which I always found a complete and utter waste of time
Women are always getting tagged as "gossips" and sure they do, but by god, men are ten times worse. They gossip about everybody, everyday, everything... oh sure they throw a lot of sexual talk and swear words in, but when all is said and done - it's gossip. Any shop, factory or facility I have ever worked in, the workforce is fueled by gossip and it is pretty safe to say, in my line of work, there has never been many women.
Men gossip to avoid talking about serious things, once they have run the gamut of sports, and hunting, they then move on to the category I like to call "Things I'd like to fuck". Men will discuss physical features, sexual acts and desires as if they were talking about the price of coffee. Eventually, they will see a woman, and the talk swings over along the lines of "I'd like to fuck her" or something similar, and then someone else jumps in with a grapic recounting of a sexual encounter and it may be with a woman, or it may involve a woman and a donkey, or two women, or a goat, a donkey, or... well you get the drift.
They say men think about sex every 5 seconds on average. Well here's news for you, so do women. Only we don't want to fuck everything with a heartbeat and we sure as hell don't want to describe it in detail to a bunch of other women. I do know from personal experience that women have a hard time differentiating between love and lust. I now realize I have never been in love, but lust was sure fun. Maybe women have to tag the word love to the word sex to make it more acceptable to themselves. Not me, not anymore. I see lots of guys I'd like to fuck, I certainly don't want to set up house with them or have their babies, I just want to play with them for a while and then send them home. How the hell did I get onto this subject. Oh yeah, gossip, and secrets. Shows you how my mind works. I do know that just wanting sex and getting what you want takes courage my love.
My boss is back at work, after a week or so off. He's a nice guy, thinks he is running NASA somedays, when in reality he is running the kiddy rides at the carnival, but everyone deserves at least one delusion in their life. Have you ever looked at someone and got that weird, a "their not there" feeling? I don't know how to describe it really, sort of like they have a lesser life force in them, like they are fading or something. That's the feeling I get when I look at my boss. Like he is fading, sort of like hobbits do. Strangely enough, he is fairly young, I wonder if he is sick or something I am not aware of.
It's a shop night, which means we are installing widgets. Suits me, I can spend the next 8 hours cruising the internet, checking out the world and some one is paying me for it. Ludicrous, lovely but ludicrous.
I really suck at keeping secrets, if there is something you don't want everyone to know, then for crying out loud, don't tell me. I am great at keeping my secrets (otherwise they would not be secrets) but I have noticed as of late, that I am "gossipping", which I always found a complete and utter waste of time
Women are always getting tagged as "gossips" and sure they do, but by god, men are ten times worse. They gossip about everybody, everyday, everything... oh sure they throw a lot of sexual talk and swear words in, but when all is said and done - it's gossip. Any shop, factory or facility I have ever worked in, the workforce is fueled by gossip and it is pretty safe to say, in my line of work, there has never been many women.
Men gossip to avoid talking about serious things, once they have run the gamut of sports, and hunting, they then move on to the category I like to call "Things I'd like to fuck". Men will discuss physical features, sexual acts and desires as if they were talking about the price of coffee. Eventually, they will see a woman, and the talk swings over along the lines of "I'd like to fuck her" or something similar, and then someone else jumps in with a grapic recounting of a sexual encounter and it may be with a woman, or it may involve a woman and a donkey, or two women, or a goat, a donkey, or... well you get the drift.
They say men think about sex every 5 seconds on average. Well here's news for you, so do women. Only we don't want to fuck everything with a heartbeat and we sure as hell don't want to describe it in detail to a bunch of other women. I do know from personal experience that women have a hard time differentiating between love and lust. I now realize I have never been in love, but lust was sure fun. Maybe women have to tag the word love to the word sex to make it more acceptable to themselves. Not me, not anymore. I see lots of guys I'd like to fuck, I certainly don't want to set up house with them or have their babies, I just want to play with them for a while and then send them home. How the hell did I get onto this subject. Oh yeah, gossip, and secrets. Shows you how my mind works. I do know that just wanting sex and getting what you want takes courage my love.
Monday, April 4, 2011
April 4, 2011 - Courage My Love
It's April. Who said that April is the cruelest month? T.S. Eliott comes to mind. I feel like checking my armpits for moss, it is so sadly wet and dreary here, I am feeling something akin to practicing Hari Kari with a dull kitchen implement, like a wooden spoon. OMG where in fucking hell is the sun. Is this some perverse ecological fallout from the earthquake? Can't be, it has been cloudy and raining since last September I am sure.
On a more positive note, it did not rain on Saturday, so I managed to work on the garden a bit. It's a tiny garden but looks promising, as any garden does in spring. I dug it all up, got rid of all the weedy things. Then I had a surprise, Cindy dropped over with a truck load of stuff she pulled out of her garden for us. Stuff that had mulitplied. I got a bunch of iris's, a peony, some shasta daisies, bluebells, hosta and even a lilac bush. Not so much for the garden but for the yard. Great stuff. In the house I have started the little peat pots with peppers, tomatoes, zuchinni and egg plant. I also have spinach, garlic, onions and carrots ready to plant, I think it is a tad too early. I have never successfully started tomatoes from seed, but I have no great garden ego to satisy, I'm quite willing to go buy fully formed bedding plants if these little fuckers don't grow.
On Sunday I went and picked up a friend of Andrea's to come and visit for the day. That was a load. This woman is about 68 and acts and giggles like a 10 year old. Taxes my patience a lot. I am trying to not over react, just because I am not the huggy join a club type does not mean Andrea has to be punished for my lack of willingness to interact with most of the human race.
Mostly I spent the weekend reading, I have "discovered" a new author. Well, he isn't new but he is fabulous. I hadn't read him before so I went and got all of his books that were in the library and read them. John Shannon. He writes mystery/detective type books, not the ones all caught up in police procedures and CSI, just a guy solving a puzzle. His lead character is Jack Liffey (yes I caught the reference to the rivers of Ireland right away as well as the Jack-John relationship). Jack is as imperfect a human being as they make, he can't maintain a relationship (except with his daughter), he has been known to abuse substances and he often misjudges situations. All that aside, he is strong, even when he isn't, and noble, even when he thinks he isn't and best of all, he grows and changes from book to book.
The books are gritty and real, set in LA and not always in the nicest parts of LA. I did something I have never done in my entire life. I was looking him up on the web and found his website, it said "send a message" and so I did. I must have sounded like the biggest wannabe loser fan, but I just really wanted this guy to know his books were really really good and that someone appreciated them.
Well, fuck me gently, if he doesn't email me back! I was gobsmacked to say the least. How nice a gesture.
So now I am at work, and it is deadly quiet. The crew is out in the yard, moving crap from point A to point B and there is FA for me to do. I could go watch them, but it would only make them uncomfortable and bore me even further.
I am seeing the pipeline from the far east drying up, the vehicles from Japan are still arriving, but very few in number, and the calendar is looking empty. The Koreans are still shipping in healthy numbers, I think we will see a big impact on North American markets before long. It is shocking how much we buy from Japan and China. It used to be a sign that something was cheap if it said "Made in Japan" but now it means luxury cars with big price tags on them, and not just that, but all the electronics, most of the appliances, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Everyone rode the gravey train to offshore for producing goods (we all wanted everything cheaper) and it has come to the point where we produce nothing, or very little. I probably won't know in my lifetime whether this was a good thing or a bad thing to do, we will have lost the ability to "make" things here, at least at a price anyone would pay. In return, we have cheaper goods, long supply lines and this vulnerability in our economy if something happens "offshore". Have our expectations for a good lifestyle grown out of all proportion to our ability to create it here?
Look back at what our parents had, and then look at our generation, and then our children's and then their children's. My parents were major blue collar, we had nothing luxurious in our house. Our car lasted forever, we had hardwood floors instead of wall to wall, we had a fridge with a little freezer up top. Kids shared bedrooms and there was ONE tv in the house.
My generation went way over board, we bought everything, a big house, big cars, fancy everything and strangely enough, our children do not value it. My kids would be as happy living in a tent. They do however have a love affair with electronic gadgets and take everything I grew up without, as a given. They make less money than we do, do not care that they make less money and do not find having money as an admirable goal. What will their children be like?
Do you ever dream of being able to live your life over (with the adage of knowing what you know now?). Yes we would all buy microsoft stock, or better yet, apple stock. Seriously I wonder what decisions I would make that would be different from the ones I did make. I certainly don't regret any thing I did, or I wouldn't have ended up as the same person (then again I might have ended up a better person).
There should be a Do-Over lottery, where you buy a ticket and you win a chance to do it all over again. A Back to the Future ticket, back to 1957 and hula hoops and skorts and being 5 again. I think living in the past tense or the future imperfect takes courage my love...
On a more positive note, it did not rain on Saturday, so I managed to work on the garden a bit. It's a tiny garden but looks promising, as any garden does in spring. I dug it all up, got rid of all the weedy things. Then I had a surprise, Cindy dropped over with a truck load of stuff she pulled out of her garden for us. Stuff that had mulitplied. I got a bunch of iris's, a peony, some shasta daisies, bluebells, hosta and even a lilac bush. Not so much for the garden but for the yard. Great stuff. In the house I have started the little peat pots with peppers, tomatoes, zuchinni and egg plant. I also have spinach, garlic, onions and carrots ready to plant, I think it is a tad too early. I have never successfully started tomatoes from seed, but I have no great garden ego to satisy, I'm quite willing to go buy fully formed bedding plants if these little fuckers don't grow.
On Sunday I went and picked up a friend of Andrea's to come and visit for the day. That was a load. This woman is about 68 and acts and giggles like a 10 year old. Taxes my patience a lot. I am trying to not over react, just because I am not the huggy join a club type does not mean Andrea has to be punished for my lack of willingness to interact with most of the human race.
Mostly I spent the weekend reading, I have "discovered" a new author. Well, he isn't new but he is fabulous. I hadn't read him before so I went and got all of his books that were in the library and read them. John Shannon. He writes mystery/detective type books, not the ones all caught up in police procedures and CSI, just a guy solving a puzzle. His lead character is Jack Liffey (yes I caught the reference to the rivers of Ireland right away as well as the Jack-John relationship). Jack is as imperfect a human being as they make, he can't maintain a relationship (except with his daughter), he has been known to abuse substances and he often misjudges situations. All that aside, he is strong, even when he isn't, and noble, even when he thinks he isn't and best of all, he grows and changes from book to book.
The books are gritty and real, set in LA and not always in the nicest parts of LA. I did something I have never done in my entire life. I was looking him up on the web and found his website, it said "send a message" and so I did. I must have sounded like the biggest wannabe loser fan, but I just really wanted this guy to know his books were really really good and that someone appreciated them.
Well, fuck me gently, if he doesn't email me back! I was gobsmacked to say the least. How nice a gesture.
So now I am at work, and it is deadly quiet. The crew is out in the yard, moving crap from point A to point B and there is FA for me to do. I could go watch them, but it would only make them uncomfortable and bore me even further.
I am seeing the pipeline from the far east drying up, the vehicles from Japan are still arriving, but very few in number, and the calendar is looking empty. The Koreans are still shipping in healthy numbers, I think we will see a big impact on North American markets before long. It is shocking how much we buy from Japan and China. It used to be a sign that something was cheap if it said "Made in Japan" but now it means luxury cars with big price tags on them, and not just that, but all the electronics, most of the appliances, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Everyone rode the gravey train to offshore for producing goods (we all wanted everything cheaper) and it has come to the point where we produce nothing, or very little. I probably won't know in my lifetime whether this was a good thing or a bad thing to do, we will have lost the ability to "make" things here, at least at a price anyone would pay. In return, we have cheaper goods, long supply lines and this vulnerability in our economy if something happens "offshore". Have our expectations for a good lifestyle grown out of all proportion to our ability to create it here?
Look back at what our parents had, and then look at our generation, and then our children's and then their children's. My parents were major blue collar, we had nothing luxurious in our house. Our car lasted forever, we had hardwood floors instead of wall to wall, we had a fridge with a little freezer up top. Kids shared bedrooms and there was ONE tv in the house.
My generation went way over board, we bought everything, a big house, big cars, fancy everything and strangely enough, our children do not value it. My kids would be as happy living in a tent. They do however have a love affair with electronic gadgets and take everything I grew up without, as a given. They make less money than we do, do not care that they make less money and do not find having money as an admirable goal. What will their children be like?
Do you ever dream of being able to live your life over (with the adage of knowing what you know now?). Yes we would all buy microsoft stock, or better yet, apple stock. Seriously I wonder what decisions I would make that would be different from the ones I did make. I certainly don't regret any thing I did, or I wouldn't have ended up as the same person (then again I might have ended up a better person).
There should be a Do-Over lottery, where you buy a ticket and you win a chance to do it all over again. A Back to the Future ticket, back to 1957 and hula hoops and skorts and being 5 again. I think living in the past tense or the future imperfect takes courage my love...
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