Tag: work

BLM Means Workin for a Livin

Love this quote:

While this sounds like a scene out of Portlandia, it exemplifies why BLM is shifting toward traditional Marxism. Devotees of intersectional theory are too triggered by the lack of gluten free cupcakes to organize and fight capitalism.

So true.

Oh boy are we being duped. Just some of the headlines out there:

  • BLM, ANTIFA, and the “New” Face of Communism;
  • How Black Lives Matter Is Bringing Back Traditional Marxism

user generatedBLM adopts clenched fist of communism

 

  • Communists Secretly Organizing ‘Black Lives Matter’ Protests?
  • Black Lives Matter co-founder describes herself as ‘trained Marxist’
  • Communists, Islamists and Radicals Behind the BLM Movement …

To name but a few. This video deserves repeating:

I know, I know. Too political today but after the NHL’s puke worthy tribute to BLM before the opening of their playoffs, I felt this was timely.

Liberal-Speak alert:

Dems claim that People Will Forego $600/Week In Unemployment Benefits To Earn $300/Week Working…. Obviously they have never met a Canadian hoser:

See the source image

Whaaaat? Me work?

 

 

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…2

…The jobs just seemed to come our way: by chance, by rote, or by sheer luck, perhaps madness, although Timmy could really put on the charm. One homeowner, happy with the job we did for him, owned a strip mall in the local area. Would we be willing to take that on? You bet. And on and on she went. Just like that. All the customers that we landed wanted us to come back regularly, say every four to six months. Before long and by word of mouth we had quite the catalogue of clients, our own body of work.

We were working, making money, growing. We would leave our digs every morning around 7am, drive down 4th Avenue by the local am radio station and the Last Chance Saloon, a favourite hangout for the local hippy clientele. I always wondered how they stayed in business for most hippies I came across were always broke, panhandling, begging for loose change. One of my future naval colleagues, he himself a hippy at the time, used to sell pencils in the downtown core of this same west coast city. He was pure Officer material for sure.

Yet here they were hanging out at their Last Chance Saloon, appropriately chilling out in their drug induced Purple Haze of life. The real stoners would crash on the front lawn and terraces of the radio station, which was adjacent to the Saloon, which fronted 4th Avenue. We would pass them every morning on our way to the north shore, stoned, crashed, bellies up toward the heavens, like sea lions on the rocks except there was no squawking, no squealing, no cawing from this crowd as they appeared to be comatose. On our way back to our flat from a hard days work these same stoners, these same dudes, these same mans, were still laid out across the green expanse of the radio station. “Hey man, what a life man. Want a toke?” Good gawd. And if they were really bored or stoned they could go up one block, turn left, walk about a half mile and crash at the local Kool-Aid. Man, what life has to offer to a stoner: from Kool-Aid to the Last Chance Saloon. “What a trip man, dude, toker…yeah smokin dude!” And if they were really, really lucky they could catch up on the morning’s children’s show at the Kool Aid, and tune into the show sponsored by the letter “M:” “yeah man, cool man, hey man, what’s happenin man, chilling dude. No man, the letter “D” doesn’t come on til tomorrow man. Far out!…

House of Horrors…5

…Scotty was well turned out, at least his hands and forearms were. His face was round and jovial looking, clownish perhaps. His eyes were of a dull grey, probably a reflection of the grey matter and visual reality of his mind. His hair was cut very short in a crew cut fashion, well groomed actually. I wondered who cut his hair. Why I wondered that I don’t really know but I dearly hoped that he didn’t have the tools to try this on his own, or to shave himself or anyone else in this house for that matter. Sweeney Todd kept coming to mind.  Was this the Barber, the Butcher of Fourth Avenue?

And through all of this Mrs Redfern held her sway. I watched in amazement as she orchestrated and dished out the various portions of soup, salad, main course, then dessert. She could hardly handle the various pots and pans over the stove with her dangly, fragile arms and extremely dainty hands. How on earth she never burned herself of take the house down and all of us with it I will never understand. I would also learn afterward that she only ate by herself after all was said and done, cleaned and put away.

This was my home for the foreseeable future. I gave Scotty a very wide berth. Robert was harmless until the one evening at dinner when he lost it, big time. His passive aggressiveness exploded into an onslaught of verbal bile the likes of which I have never seen. It all started when Scotty, in one of his rare and lucid episodes of thought and clarity, wormed into Robert’s high sense of personal importance by insinuating that his job at the paper was irrelevant, miniscule and gratuitous in the overall scheme of things, and that he only kept his job due to the good graces of the Newspaper’s hierarchy. They felt sorry for him. That may have been true but it incensed Robert to such a degree that his animosity at what had been said about him by Scotty turned him into a physical pile of mush and with that he lost control of his senses and his propriety. He burst into tears, crying uncontrollably as they took him away to settle him down. We didn’t see him for a couple of weeks after that incident.

Then Scotty lost it.  One day when Timmy and I came home from our day of work we arrived to witness another verbal onslaught at the front of the house. Something had set Scotty off to such a degree that he was now in the middle of Fourth Avenue ranting and raving at the top of his lungs to anyone who would listen about the injustices of the Nixon presidency and its impact on his own sense of well being.  He was calling on all of his conspiracy cohorts, especially the ones from the planets Argon and Anus to come forth and castigate this curse of a human being, that being Nixon, off the face of the earth. I could not really understand much more of what Scotty was yelling about but before long the police and paramedics arrived to take charge.  As the police distracted Scotty the paramedics executed a flanking manoeuvre, caught Scotty off guard, then injected him with something that immediately made him as docile as a lamb. They took Scotty away in the ambulance and I never saw him again. What caused this rant and personal breakdown? Not being absolutely sure or knowledgeable of these things at the time but I was told that Scotty went off of his meds.

This black comedy went on at various times throughout my stay at this House of Horrors. Some were quite hilarious like the time I came home on my own accord only to hear screaming and wailing coming from the front room. I was in my room at the time so I couldn’t be sure it was another wrestling match on TV that was setting Mrs Redfern off. But the timing and day was off so I bolted up the stairs and ran into the drawing room to see what was going on.

It was Mrs Redfern but in a dire state of panic. There she was standing just about upright in her chest freezer with her head holding up the lid and preventing it from falling down completely. She was a frightful sight standing there looking about in all directions, her small tiny hands holding on to the sides of the freezer for dear life. She was screaming in fear at no one in particular but hoping against all hope that someone like me would hear her and show up to rescue her.  It was a good thing too as she was beginning to shiver and turn blue it would seem from mild hypothermia. Apparently, as she leaned over the front side of the freezer to grab the evening’s main course, she fell in. And she couldn’t get out as she was not tall enough or strong enough to leverage herself out of this predicament. I ran over, grabbed her by the arms and lifted her out. What amazed me more than anything else was how light she was. It was like pulling a feather out of the depths of the freezer’s chest. Once I had her settled on the couch, I found a blanket to keep her warm and made her a hot cup of tea.  I then proceeded to scold her for what she had done. I made her promise me, no us, that she would ask someone ahead of time to retrieve the next day’s morsels. I must admit though, when looking back on this that it was a hilarious sight to behold.

Mrs Redfern’s life was a wonderful story. Born in Rochester Minnesota, she moved to Hollywood California during the silent movie era. She knew all of the famous starlets of the time. She was also married a number of times finally settling down with a local businessman whom she shared her life with up until his untimely death. He left her the house that we were now currently sharing with her. Mrs Redfern kept a picture of herself as a young woman on a mantle beside the door to the front hallway. She was a knockout.

She lived a long life dying sometime in her nineties. Mr Johnston also lived to 97. Robert left the coast and moved back east to live in a small town with his aunt. He’d be in his late 80s if still alive. I never heard of him again. Same with Scotty.

That house is now gone. Torn down to make way for monster homes and condos.