Tag: weird

Imagine!

United Nations Announces Who’s to Blame for the COVID-19 Pandemic.

I agree.

‘Protesters’ Take Over a McDonald’s, Assault the Black Manager

It was the special sauce, lettuce, cheese man that did them in. Large fries matter dude.

Pandemic and riot survival guide Lesson #1: avoid all major cities like the plague, man.

Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for brokering Israel / UAE Accord. No matter as no one on the right side of the political spectrum will ever win that prize. My bet goes to ole, er young, Greta.

In the last 24 hours 4 people in New York died from Covid related illnesses while 19 died from gun shot wounds. More masks please. Keep your distance and remember – wash them grimy little hands to keep that trigger finger clean.

Has this been worth it?

“More than 5.8 million Canadians have been tested. The total number of cases stood at 132,000 on Monday, or about 0.3 per cent of the population. Most of the cases (about 117,000) had safely recovered and only 6,500 were active. Of the 9,146 deaths since the pandemic started, almost all occurred during the early stages among elderly people, most in nursing facilities. Through August, fewer than 200 people died from COVID-19, well below the spring and summer rate when up to 200 people were dying every day. We are making progress, as the National Post’s Colby Cosh suggests elsewhere in these pages.

“Instead of an assessment of the effectiveness of these massive policy initiatives, Canadians and the rest of the world are being urged to prepare for more spending, more interventions and more government control over the economy. From top-level policy shapers in international agencies to bottom-up activists of all stripes — union leaders, green activists, municipal politicians, national politicians, climate scientists — everyone is scrambling to find ways to keep the pandemic policy machine humming along indefinitely.”

Code for more control of your life.

Standby for the great Canadian economic and social reset as will be announced in Trudough’s Sept 23rd Throne Speech – based on the UN and World Economic Forum’s policy for a global economic and social reset.

“Here in BC more legislation and absurd restrictions are coming into place, mainly in bars and restaurants. Background music is too loud. It must be turned down to a volume below normal conversation.

Who controls that? Oh yeah, and you must close by 10pm. Why? At 1005 you are at risk of getting or giving Covid?

It is all “muzak” to my ears. After all, if we couldn’t scare and control your lives with our Climate Change liturgy we will do it with this pandemic (UN policy guideline).

Rack em up Yoko

https://youtu.be/wQAQe24YY4A

Oh…No

Imagine that. And no religion too: the UN’s unofficial global anthem.

Are we still a member of this thing?

SJ…………Out

Weird and Wacky

I just read about this:

“I see the first nations want to buy the trans mountain pipeline from the government. So let me see if I’ve got this right. Trudeau’s government paid 4.9 billion dollars to buy the pipeline, now the first nations want to buy it for a similar amount. The only problem is that one of the first nations primary source of income is government largesse. And they pay no taxes. So if this deal goes through then the Canadian taxpayer will have paid 9.8 billion for the pipeline – that hasn’t been built yet. This sure sounds like liberal economics.”

BTW, Canada is now viewed as a nation that is unable to build anything of major importance!

See the source image

I didn’t know I was toxic. I’ll have to order one of those Haz-Mat suits from Amazon. Notice too in the ad that whitey males are toxic and black males are righteous.

https://youtu.be/ZJAgAzpmNnU

Or become New Age Enlightened. Like these guys

SNAG (see add above) or “How I Spent My Summer On Hornby Island.”

Or perhaps this guy.

I always hated this cartoon character.  Annoying!

From the new age journalism file comes this bit of journalistic professionalism…or “This is really awkward file:”

CNN host accuses guest of “White Privilege.” Only problem here being is that her guest was Black. She tried to apologize, accusing others such as her producer for her own lack of preparation, but her guest would not let her off the hook. In quoting Martin Luther King her guest stated that he would rather by judged by his character and deeds rather than by the colour of his skin…….or what razor he uses in the morning.

Be the best a man can be…not get….always.

Still a great song after all these years. Stevie Winwood (singer) was only 17 years old when this song was produced in the 60’s.  Play it LOUD!

Have a great Navy day.

Have a great weekend. Read ya Monday.

SJ…………………………….Out

Rabid Dogs…4

…I thought of my options. Why not join the Navy?  Why not indeed. But the military life seemed to be an anathema to my easy going ways. Yes, I was intrigued by the stories my father told me of his military life. The fun he had although he never ever parlayed his combat experiences to me or anyone else in the family. His friends, the sports, the overt camaraderie he seemed to enjoy were interesting but I always sensed that he despised the discipline, arrogance and bullshit of the Army. It was no wonder, or joke, that we never ever went camping as a family. Holed up in a tent for weeks at a time: cold, dirty miserable English weather or the heat and humidity of a European summer all the while scared out of your ever loving mind.  No, I think for me I was scared of the discipline and uncertainty of the military life. Especially the Army. All that salutin; yes sir, no sir, your shit lockers full sir etc. On top of that, the only insight I had of the Navy arose from the serious and dark images of Jack Hawkins in “The Cruel Sea;” or the fanaticism, madness of Burt Lancaster and Clark Gable in “Run Silent Run Deep;” or conversely “McHale’s Navy.” What should I do? Yes or no?

I decided to check it out as I didn’t have to commit right away. I didn’t tell a soul what I was doing.  Down I went to the recruiting centre, taking the metro then bus to an imposing but stark and sombre looking building downtown. I hesitated. Should I or shouldn’t I? Yet the unknown always appears worse than it really is. Just go for it and see what happens. It may turn out that they “DON’T WANT YOU.”

In I went, to reception. Everyone here, except us snot nosed delinquents, was in uniform of some sorts. But I didn’t really know one from the other.

“Can I help you” a uniformed man asked.

“Um ah, yes Sir. I think I, well what I mean is, I would like to or perhaps – do you have any openings for a Boatswain’s Mate?” Not cool!

The guy looked at me like the dork that I was. He chuckled somewhat, gave me a book of forms and asked me, politely but assertively, to fill them out in the “fill out the book of forms” room.

I complied. It took me about an hour to complete the application, as best I could. Of some concern was the part about a criminal record, trouble with the law etc and my mind came back to that time with Timmy and the Great Record Robbery. I felt I had better be honest here and not lie for I had seen the movie and knew what happens to guys who lie in the military – Firing Squad – just like that anti-war movie “Paths of Glory” with Kirk Douglas. “Nothing glorious in being dead” I shivered to think of it myself. Then again this was the Navy. What then? Oh damn, the gangplank, as in walk it, as in how long can you tread water? As in how far can you swim? As in keel hauling, just like Jack London’s “Sea Wolf” with Edward G Robinson and John Garfield! Cookie and the shark! Good gawd man I thought to myself, stop with the movie fantasy, this is real life.

I handed the application back to the nice man in the uniform. He shuffled them into a file folder. Oh yeah, the infamous file folder. If you want to look good in the military and not be a target for some stupid duty, like KP, you walk around looking important, and busy, with a file folder in you hands – just like Phil Silvers as the Master Sergeant con man in “Sgt Bilko.” But I digress.

“Thanks John” the recruiter said, then adding “Now I have here a battery of aptitude tests for you to take: basic math, algebra, general knowledge, things of that nature. If you would be so kind as to go over to the “take the battery of aptitude tests” room and I’ll be right with you.”

In I went into the “take the battery of aptitude tests” room and sat down. I was the only dork there. The recruiter came in and told me that these tests were time sensitive in that I had a certain amount of time to complete them. Fine I thought but somewhat nervous.

“Try not to be nervous,” he reassured me. He was a nice guy actually. But then again they are all nice guys and gals until they have you dead to right or lost to your rights, right? No left!

First math – 20 minutes, done. Then some geometry, algebra – 30 minutes, done. Then general knowledge – 30 minutes – done admiralty, er admirably. Finally history – 20 minutes, done. Whew, finished, tough go for sure.

“Okay John, thanks. You can go back to reception, or go out for a smoke, or whatever. We should have the results in about 30 minutes.”

Whew, that was tough I thought. Almost two hours of this. I was a tad drained of energy.

Rabid Dogs…3

….It wasn’t long before I was out of that place. Appendicitis will do that to someone. Yet I almost died from that infection.  I was laid up in the hospital for over a week.  Lots of time to think about my future under the cloudy haziness of morphine. Weird but oh so wonderful dreams. Suddenly I could relate to my hippy brethren and their Last Chance Saloon.

Then out of the blue my sister from the wet coast called me. Seems that her husband had bought a 35 foot sailboat with the intent or dream of sailing it to Japan, his homeland. Indeed he had already made plans and departed with a Brit companion, who was a professional sailor. Together with George, his girlfriend, frigate birds and flying fish Sid made it to Hawaii in 19 days. Unfortunately this trip was a wake-up call to reality for Sid in that his dreams of maritime lore, Pacific blue and Japanese pride came crashing down on him drowning him like an emotional tsunami on his psyche, his self confidence and his personal well being.

Sid realized that he did not like open ocean sailing. He was seasick most of the time during the crossing from the west coast to Hawaii. He missed his wife as well as their first newborn child. Consequently he decided to pack it all in in Hawaii but still wanted George, the Brit, to sail the boat to Nagoya Japan, a Pacific port town that was close to Sid’s birthplace. George needed some help to achieve this as his girlfriend had split. Thus the phone call to me.

Sail to Japan? You bet. I quit my job, said goodbye to family and friends off I went to Honolulu. The Ala Wei Harbour and Ala Moana Yacht club near Waikiki would be my home for the next 6 months, then off into the wide Pacific expanse to Japan via Micronesia: the Marshall, Caroline, Gilbert and Marianas island archipelago was beckoning.

That excellent adventure is the subject of another story. Suffice to say we only made it as far as Saipan in the Marianas as the boat was taking on water as its seams were opening up under the strain of pounding seas and surf. There was no way on earth that we could sail her from Saipan to Japan as it was a “beat” all of the way up to Nagoya. Sadly I said goodbye to George, who would end up sailing the boat south from Saipan to Guam to sell her to some American sailor.  I flew to Tokyo where I proceeded to my sister’s place in a section of Yokohama called Totsuka. That was the end of this journey. Ever try speaking or learning Japanese? No wonder “hara-kiri or seppuku” was so popular. I returned home to my shit city of a city by plane about a month later.

I really enjoyed that experience and found that I was drawn to the maritime life.  By hook or by Captain Crook I had to find a way to continue on this path. Without a hesitant breath I began surveying the quays, the berths, and the jetties of the waterfront area of my home town within a nano second of arriving home. I read the local maritime shipping newspapers to see if I could some how worm my way into this profession. No luck. A longshoreman perhaps, or a deckhand, a boatswain, maybe a third mate, whatever, anything at all to belong to the maritime brotherhood. No luck. The maritime employment doors in this city at least were slammed shut on me like some battened down hatch on a ship in a storm. The union was as tight as a dolphin’s ass and was, in the vernacular, a closed shop. Unless someone died of nepotism, not likely, my chances for employment in this profession were about as slim and as ornery as a sailor’s fart upwind…

I Can’t Wake Up…3

…Speaking of the hippy lifestyle, Woodstock had just occurred this very summer. August 15-18, 1969. It was all the buzz among the hippy counterculture, but even more so with music fans like Timmy and I. Not to be outdone by the East Coast, some copycat festivals began to spring up here on the wet coast, everywhere it seemed, every weekend, on some non descript farm in the farmland east of here.  It had to be on a farm you see. Such originality! Most were abject failures, but it provided hippy food for thought and something to talk about.  It must have been tiring for the hippies to talk about the alphabet all day long.  As it turned out that there was a music festival planned for a farmstead not too far from this coastal city.  I believe they were calling it “Strawberry Fields,” or something equally profound like that.  Timmy and I decided to check it out.

We drove out to the prospectus. And just like Woodstock it was automotive gridlock. We decide to park our car a few miles away and walk in. Turned out to be a good plan as many of the autos became bogged down in the mud and sludge. Yes it was raining, just like Woodstock.  There was a great deal of cussing, yelling, pushing and shoving going on among the various drivers and bikers, especially the bikers. It was automotive pandemonium, definitely a frightful, fitful, love-in man as the fists came out from every which way from Sunday. And this was only Saturday.

We skirted around the problems, found the main gate, paid our fee and walked in. And what a sight to behold. Utter chaos. The end of the world as we knew it. This must be what Armageddon is going to look like. A sparse, barren, rain soaked, mud caked, garbage strewn landscape. Passchendaele couldn’t have been worse. Probably around 10 thousand hippies all gathered together in one place. All smokin, all tokin, all jokin, all smilin with their coke-ins and love-ins.  Stoned out of their ever lovin minds. And the music hadn’t even started yet….