Unemployment, RULES!

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/school-ditches-rules-and-loses-bullies-5807957

Try to read the above article. This stupid blog isn't letting my post a link again.

See this is what I'm talking about! I just love it when someone else does research, experiments or a study that proves I'm not just ranting and raving here like the conspiracy theorist lunatic I am sometimes taken for. There's being proactive and then there's being meddlesome. It starts early in life. "We have to wear knee pads, elbow pads, helmets, Kevlar body armour and have someone supervising who has dialled 9 - 1 and has his/her finger on the 1 button if we want to roller blade, skateboard or ride a bike." says Teacher. "Screw it then I'll stay inside and play video games or beat someone up for their lunch money." says the kid. Kids develop their frontal lobes when taking risks. They teach themselves, (and let's face it, WE can't in a sterile classroom environment), how to evaluate risks and consequences. Overzealous protection takes those chances away from them and bores them to the point of rebellion.

We've become so used to this overzealous protection that it has become a, (lucrative), part of adult life too. If people eat at a place and get sick either the owners will smarten up and employ cleaner practices in the kitchen or the people will stop dining there and they'll go out of business. There are health inspectors who routinely check on this stuff and if it's too bad they'll shut the place down. The problems in a free-thinking, freedom to make our own choices, succeed or fail on our own merits society would tend to take care of themselves. Prospective customers would be able to weigh the risks and consequences of eating at a sketchy restaurant and choose for themselves to go somewhere else. The business owner would see the risks of lazy kitchen habits costing him the rewards of frequent customers. I'm typing in the hypothetical because we don't live in a society like this do we? Do we need EVERY single worker in the food industry to pay a couple hundred bucks to take a Foodsafe course? Do we need every entrepreneur who can make something that other people might be interested in having go through the process of licencing, legalization and giving the government, lawyers and other parasitical agencies THEIR unearned portion of his/her good idea and hard work? That's just the "busy-ness" I've blogged on before.

This might come as a surprise to my readers. Am I saying that I am against taxes? Well, it sure might sound like it from the things I write. But if taxes could be administered by people who would give them to people who can't get work because of age, disability, or some legitimate reasons like that, and take them equitably from people who can, I'd like the idea of taxation. If they were taken to make roads and infrastructure more from the people who use those roads and infrastructure and less from those who don't, I would have no problem with taxes. But you will notice I am typing in the hypothetical again.

Back to the point. When principal Bruce McLachlan, a dude who, no doubt, had most of his opposition from overprotective and maybe controlling mothers, yet sacked up and did what was right anyway, talked about bullying, graffiti and wrecking things, he was talking about the rebellion that is a natural response to over structured environment.

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/01/24/firefighters-search-frozen-rubble-after-quebec-seniors-home-fire

There's another example of what I'm talking about. Come on! A guy who's lived on the earth 70, 90 years is not allowed to decide for himself to go out into the dangerous cold air and smoke a dangerous cigarette? Why not? Was there, as we say in the security biz, an "elopement risk?" Did the orderly reckon that one cig would burst the old man's heart and because he had given him permission to smoke it, he could be somehow held liable? Or was his supervisor constantly giving him shit for letting residents bend the rules from time to time? I sure know what that's like!

When a contractor comes to my site I am supposed to check the records and see if there was a memo posted in the memo book about that contractor coming. No memo, no access. That's exactly what Melissa, the representative of the company that owns the buildings, Morguard, said. And in a threatening way! I haven't had a memo in my site memo book since October and every day except sometimes weekends, I let contractors on the site who have no memos and are not in the acceptable contractors list. I'm also supposed to take I.D. like driver's licence when I issue them passes or keys to move about the buildings and get their work done. I just get them to sign the contractor sheet. That way they can drive if they have to or drop their passes or keys in my card drop box if they want to leave and I'm not at my desk. Instead of wasting their valuable time waiting for me to get back to my desk. You see what I do expedites things and I have found no contractor who does not like that. They show their appreciation by ALWAYS remembering to return their cards or keys and being friendly. But I could probably be fired for doing such a great job!

I have worked security in jail and hospital situations and I understand the need for highly regulated sites in these cases. There are people who are not in full possession of their faculties due to mental illness, stress, or mind altering drugs. When I worked in these positions I was less likely to bend a rule because they were warranted. Still, every prison show we see on TV shows the prisoners using drugs and the guards and warden allowing it. Why? If they allow it a little, they can regulate it and they know who is using it. Otherwise rebellion. The drugs will still find their way into the prison and then the authorities WON'T know how or where.

I have heard several stories of people forgetting their access cards and being swiped in in the morning to gated parking and then at the end of the day pressing the intercom to be let out and being told by security that they can't do it. No card, no luck. So they just get the next person leaving the lot to swipe them out. Or a nice security guard like me might do it. But I will get in trouble if I do. Because Morguard wants to run their buildings like prisons on lockdown. It's going to bite them in the ass someday. People will realize they can't talk to security about this so they will go about getting access from friends and giving it to friends. This will cost Morguard money. They may also just keep their daily parking passes longer in rebellion again costing the parking lot owners money. All the while security is not going to know who is swiping in who and someday the wrong person will be swiped in. Probably just someone who will just drive through the wooden gate on his way out. But you never know. Someday maybe someone who loads his pick-up full of computer equipment before leaving. An arsonist, a rapist. I'm not saying if I were guarding I'd recognize the person as a bad guy and not swipe him in. What I'm saying is if they know security will swipe them in and they don't take it upon themselves to break the rules, at least I would get a good look at the person and his vehicle before he commits a crime.

Unfortunately if this happens, guess who would be blamed. The guard. And guess what "solution" would be applied. Stricter rules! This is why guards are always trying to cover their asses and not do anything that they could be blamed for. Like Bruno Belanger in Quebec. It's a tough position to be in. As guards, and Bruno was sort of doing that, we take all the responsibility and some group of greedy scumbags get way more than their fair share of the earnings for doing almost nothing. I've worked a position in which my employer got in the neighbourhood of 500 bucks for every hour I worked. They gave me 10. Scumbags. Was it Bruno's fault? Surely not! But in a world where we are allowed to think for ourselves and we have the freedom of discretion, I have no doubt this tragedy could and would have been avoided. Who knows how many problems I have avoided at work with my thinking man's approach to security? Why, just the other day there was a fella who came in. He was not happy because it was a really busy day at work and there was just no parking. It was obvious he was upset. He said it's crazy that he works for Cenovus and has to pay to park at their building. He had an appointment at Cenovus and could find no parking anywhere on the site. I asked how long he expected to be and he said from 2 PM to 3. I told him we had 2-hour free parking but he told me all the stalls were full. I told him about some he didn't know about and walked out with him to check. They were all full. So I said all I could do was sell him a 10-dollar underground parking pass. I said it didn't seem worth it for an hour but it was an unusually busy day and that was all I could do. He said, "Well shit, I guess I have no choice." It was already 5 after 2 so he went out before I could show him where to get into the underground lot. He drove right past it and reached the upper parkade gate. The card didn't work. He got a bit angrier. Then he pressed the intercom and talked to Melissa. Melissa is a hardass at the best of times but I'm betting this guy was not the most polite to her and I KNOW she was not polite to him. I was told later that he became abusive to her although I didn't hear anything about what Melissa had said. I DO know she didn't bother to tell him that all he had to do was go to the entrance before the one he was at and the card would work. No I guess they just argued. She called me on the phone and told me the guy was coming back to see me and that he had gone to the wrong gate. I saw his truck lurch to a stop out front of my building and I went out the door while he was getting out of his truck. I yelled across the lot to him, "The entrance right there with the sign!" He got back into his truck, sped over to the entrance, forgot to swipe the card and went down to the gate. It didn't open so he reversed back up the hill, swiped the card again and finally parked about 25 minutes late for his meeting. I am positive he was ready to kill somebody!

A little later, an hour later as he said it would be, he was leaving. I radioed Melissa and told her. She had previously asked me to get all his information including licence plate, name, number and such because she was interested in pursuing some sort of punishment for his attitude. She told me to verify his plate and that she had deactivated his card. I couldn't believe it. Obviously if he couldn't get out after all the problems he'd already had he would have been REALLY mad! Maybe he would have pressed the intercom and given Melissa a long streak of invectives. Or maybe he would have plowed through the gate and thrown the card away. Or maybe he would have come in to ME to return the card and yell at me. I ran down to the lower parkade exit and got there just as he was going to swipe his card. I told him it had been turned off, swiped him out and took the card. No further incident. Luckily. I am pretty sure Melissa WANTED one though.

But this is what people want from security at a lot of sites. I don't want to be a part of it. I asked for a transfer off the site this week. Still haven't received any kind of answer but told them my last day of work at that site will be Feb. 8th. If they don't find a better spot for me by then I'll just look for work elsewhere. It really sucks to be looking for work again but for this and about 11 other reasons it's time to leave the site I've been at for so long now. Well almost three years. That's long. For ME!

So, anybody need a worker? Know of anyone who does? I have a few ideas for jobs but nothing solid yet. I'm waiting to see if the company I work for will give me a new job. It sucks to be leaving a site where I've made lots of friends but it's really far from home and the commute is a killer. I'm actually unable to get home Sunday night after work. How crappy is Calgary Transit? So I've spent lots of time waiting out in the cold or taking expensive taxi rides that I've had to wait up to 2 hours for. How crappy are Calgary's taxis? They're taking way too much off my checks for taxes and such so while I was promised a tiny raise, it has actually worked into a pretty big pay cut. And since moving and more than doubling my rent, I need more money not less. At contract time I was assured by everyone I would remain in SLP3 and 4 the AHS sites, no everyone is saying that nobody is hired for one site, they are hired for all four. There's a new plan for me to work the other sites half the time. Only a couple months after being promised to work just the one. And maybe the worst part of all is that all the hierarchy of supervisors right on down the line had the brass bollicked arrogance to try to convince me that this was a good move that would improve security. The double whammy is I now know where I stand with them in that they think so very little of my intelligence that they were all sure they could lie to my face and I would not remain unconvinced. The company changed hands, 11 days after I started, from TSM to Garda, small to big. SUPER big. And one of the reasons I had quit Paladin is that they were getting too big. I don't like the new sites I will be working half the time. One of them is secretary work, not security. The other will soon house the offices of Paladin Security who I am trying to distance myself from! Garda had the perfect opportunity to act like a small company that cares about its employees and throw a Christmas party for us. Nope. No party and no invitation. Way to make a first impression Garda! Someone's been stealing my food out of the fridge at work. I know who it is but just don't want extra confrontation. I have no access to the building where I work. Every time I ask Melissa she says I don't need it even though everyone else who works there has it. In fact I had it when I worked as an AHS guard there. There are all kinds of other reasons just screaming every day at me to get the hell out of that place so I have put in for a transfer. In true big company fashion, TSM/Garda has not only ignored my request to this point, (5 days), but they made an error on my latest paycheck. I got 857 bucks for 84 hours of work. Woohoo I'm back to 10 bucks an hour again! I called about that too and have received no response. I'm sure I'll have to do lots of paper pushing, getting my pay stubs copied in triplicate and the manual timesheets as well to provide the company with evidence. Then they will process it for a while and THEN give my the money that was withheld by mistake, in two to three weeks.

Do you think I need any more reason to leave? Because I have more. I guess this might be why my blog posts have been EXTRA melancholy lately. Not like they're usually cheery but it sucks when you dread going to work. I'm not looking forward to two more weeks of it to tell the truth. But it'll give me some dough just in case it takes me too long to find a new job.

Anyhoo, I'll take any help I can looking. I wish I could make some money writing my blog but until that happens I have to be part of this hypocrisy we call the work world. Help me find a different soul-sucking job if you can. Thank you.

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking

I have hitchhiked many times and I have picked up hitchhikers many times. I have exactly zero stories of the peril it is supposed to put the hitchhiker in or the psychos that are supposed to be trolling the streets looking for people to put in peril. But it's dangerous isn't it? It's something about which there are endless tales of horror! Seems odd that every person I can think of that I have shared a hitchhike with is someone who I think would like to ride with again. Not to toot my own horn, which we always say before tooting our own horns, I think the feeling was probably mutual. They would like to get to know me even better. Cook me a meal, not cook me AS a meal. Take me out somewhere, not take me out. Shoot the breeze with me, not shoot me. It's the simplest thing in the world to create a baseless fear. I am not going to say I don't believe any of the stories about people who were hitchhiking and they got picked up by a lunatic and murdered, but I'm sure it's the one story in a million that gets promoted. I'm sure there have been great partners who met hitchhiking, great ideas that were discussed with hitchhikers that lead to wondrous inventions that help us all, marriages, (not necessarily happy ones but...), that started with a person who needs a ride and a person who has a car and offers a ride in a spirit of brotherhood. In fact, possibly the only person you can pick up or be picked up by who is any danger to you is the kind of antisocial cretin who, if he/she doesn't kill you quickly before the trip is finished, will likely climb to a position of political or business prominence from whence that person will institute protocols and procedures that will kill you slowly anyway.

Caravans, wagon trains and pilgrimages are not a whole lot different. People going the same way and joining up with one another in a spirit of friendship. Sometimes it was for reasons of protection since bandits are less likely to attack a large group of travellers than a small one. How crazy is that? It used to be more dangerous NOT to pick up hitchhikers! If not for hitching up with fellow travellers, we would be without some classic stories from all of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to Kerouac's On the Road to Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which isn't one of his better books, I know, and I can't imagine why IT was the one made into a movie, but...

In Cuba you can get two kinds of driver's licence: one is private and it's exactly the same as the selfish, fearful, pass-by-your-fellow-man-hitting-a-mud-puddle-splashing-him-and-laughing kind we get in Canada. The other is a public one. The licence plates are a different colour. With this one you have to pick up a fellow Cuban and drive him/her as far as you can. What the hell is wrong with that? In fact I can guarantee there are all kinds of stories Cubans have of fantastically fun encounters they've had this way. I wonder if there are so many stories of hideous rapes and murders as a result of the public driver's licences. Hmmmm. Guess I'll have to go to Cuba and find out.

But they're evil Commies there aren't they? Imagine the ignorance! Giving someone something they, (maybe DESPERATELY), need, that you have, will not inconvenience you to give it to them and giving it to them absolutely FREE! Why, that's the kind of thinking we oughtta get rid of! Outlaw it somehow. Well, by golly we did! It's illegal to pick up a hitchhiker. It's illegal to hitchhike. Break out the defibrillator and oxygen mask, that fish looks like it can't breathe!!!

Don't take candy from strangers; pretend you don't notice others in elevators on on buses; don't meet your next-door neighbours; don't offer a stranger a push if he's stuck in the snow; don't offer any stranger ANYthing because how are they to know you aren't a deranged madman who wants to make a lampshade out of her/his stomach lining and keychains out of her/his nipples? It's true. They DON'T know you're not a nutjob. But why is our SOCiety so interested in promoting such incredibly anti-SOCial thinking and behaviour? And would I blow your minds, dear readers, if I suggested that maybe the people who are encouraging us to treat everyone like life-or-death competitors are the mental misfits who really should not be allowed into positions of encouraging others to do anything? Well they ARE there and they have been for as long as history has been recorded.

One of my personal heroes, (although he is ANOTHER evil Commie), is Confucius. Kong Qiu. It's pronounced Jyu. How the hell they get a Q in there is just an example of the wrong people promoting the wrong stuff. Capitalists in charge of society will create countries full of people scared of their neighbours, and Chinese people in charge of transliteration will take the letter Q to places it was never meant to be. But how can we get societies in which the right people make the decisions that help all of us? One answer is government. The masses governed by the few. If this idea weren't so vulnerable to greed and corruption in its very nature, I just might vote. Or if we had a dude like Confucius again. In his time the government was corrupt too. Greed and power motivates bad people more than doing the right thing motivates the good it seems. There were all kinds of douchebags running the three families of power in Kong Qiu's day and he knew them all and knew what they were up to. He bided his time teaching wisdom until one of his former students reached a position of power from which he was able to grant Confucius a governmental job where he could make a difference: Minister of Crime. And what a difference he made! He did not just remove the corrupt douchebags from power, he charged them with the CRIMES they had committed against the people for years and he removed them from the earth. He had all kinds of dirty, rotten scoundrels killed. And for a glorious little while, the areas of China he was in charge of were run the way things should be run emphasizing personal morality, even in politicians, social relationships, justice and honesty. Crime rates were non-existent, jails were empty, people were brothers and sisters sharing instead of hoarding, "fair market value" was FAIR, unemployment was wiped out and as if by some MIRACLE, all of this lead to financial prosperity! For everyone! Not just the few at the top! Of course this couldn't last because of that situation we can call "human nature" that leads the Buddhist, and, (like Confucius the Taoists), to believe that life IS pain and suffering, and the situation is simple: the bad guys are just more motivated than the good. So what happened in the case of Kong Qiu was that the bad guys found a weakness in the powerful Confucian disciple who had given him the post. They gave him, I think it was 500 of the most beautiful girls they could find to be his dancing girls, servants and probably concubines. In exchange Confucius was demoted and instantly exiled on fear of death. All of China still knows the mistake that was but like North Americans every four years, that same mistake just keeps getting duplicated. The Chinese Communist Party is the antithesis of Confucianism if ever there was one. The few have all the power and riches and the many have all the character.

The Confucian example, and there are many others we never hear about in our schools, pretty much shoots down every single argument in favour of capitalism. Things like, "Competition encourages ingenuity," "Equality encourages laziness," "Entrepreneurism and financial success should not be punished by taxation," and all these other THEORIES were disproved in PRACTICE. People still worked during Confucius' tenure as Minister of Crime. People didn't cheat each other. Mutual respect was taught to children instead of fear of strangers. And when the kids weren't getting the best grades teachers probably weren't blamed or fired for physical or sexual abuse of the students, the kid was told to pull up his/her socks. I bet kids didn't sass their parents either.

The point I'm skirting is that people who DON'T want to live in societies where people help one another, like a motorist picking up a hitchhiker, are few and far between. But they are the people who have managed to work their ways to the positions of power in our world. They WANT to promote fear of all sorts of things to keep us in our insular, little worlds enabling us to be more efficient consumers who enrich THEM. They demonize communism and socialism because they are about community and society and not about capital. Why does it seem like our owners are so invested in outlawing helping each other and working together and promoting throwing each other under the bus as a way to be successful? Pretty simple: if we work together we can oust these douchebags a la Confucius.

During the New Year's Eve celebrations in Calgary, as it was last year, transit was absolutely abysmal. Buses stopped at 12:30 and taxis were impossible to get. Not hard, impossible. I mean you phone and there is no answer. Because the number of taxis was capped in a year when there were 400,000 people in Calgary, not the 1.2 million there are today and it hasn't been changed because corrupt municipal politicians are being bought by Taxi company lobbyists. Not normal people, assholes who made it to positions of power. After two weeks of non-stop local media griping about it, I said to myself that if I have a vehicle by next year I am going to cruise around Calgary between the hours of 1 and 5 AM picking people up and driving them home. What is wrong with that? It's the courteous thing to do isn't it? But even though the people stranded outside the bars they got booted out of at 2 will be drunk, and about half of them will be male, I just KNOW there will be a ton of folks giving me strange looks, fabricating excuses and reaching for the mace in their jacket pockets saying, "Nah, I don't live far and I'm enjoying the crisp -30 air." or "My friend is sober and is coming to get me but thanks anyway." I WILL get stopped by the cops for suspiciously driving aimlessly around with no business to conduct. And think of all the laws I'll be breaking! I am essentially acting as a taxi without a licence, which I've just explained, is not possible to get. If the strangers feel like they should give me something in return like a few bucks for gas, I am conducting a business without proper licencing. I am soliciting favours not from but FOR private citizens and since every law in existence is but malleable clay in the hands of a "good" lawyer, I'm sure one little word won't make that much of a difference. And I am picking up strangers endangering myself in a way that is a crime against myself tantamount to picking up a hitchhiker so I should be fined or at least removed from the road for disobeying the people who know what's better for myself than I know myself. Meanwhile if it turns out to BE -30, people will be freezing and maybe even dying out there.

Fuck that! This is what our society has come to? It's time for some civil disobedience. I am going to revolt by becoming a gypsy cab, baby! And I may not only do it on New Year's Eve either. I might just continue on for the whole year. And then some! Who's with me?

Saving Fish From Drowning

A couple of my facebook friends posted this pic and I had a good chuckle. I then started thinking a little more deeply than I should have. I tend to do that. It ruins a perfectly good joke. It occurred to me that there are a lot of girls who aren't little any more STILL trying to save fish from drowning. The Alberta Health Services building complex where I work is full of them. Last weekend there was a meeting on Saturday in which 10 people, (all women), who had recently been operated on met to discuss their experiences and make suggestions. They were almost all fairly old and one even needed a walker. But they were buzzing like school girls with that post-performance actor afterglow when they were let out. I asked one of them how the meeting had gone and she was all too happy to tell me! "It is just fabulous! Only AHS does this! Talking to surgery patients and asking for suggestions. Because I made a suggestion I have already changed the way they do things in the hospitals! It's so nice to get results!"

I didn't ask what rule she had changed and she didn't tell me. It didn't seem to be what she was so excited about. Making the change and forever being associated with it was what got her tired heart thumping that day. It could very well have been something well thought out and necessary and for all we know it could save some people's lives. Like a rule that requires surgeons to take off their watches before operating because maybe she had heard some post-op ticking inside her after her surgery. It's a silly example but possible. It's also possible, and I see this so often in governmental agencies in Canada like AHS, it's possible that maybe these were 10 ladies with good intentions, trying to help people, but just creating more and more rules and regulations that bog down the entire medical procedures they are hoping to improve, thereby accomplishing the exact opposite of what they were attempting. Like the girl in the pic, they are trying to save fish from drowning.

Maybe, and I'm just gonna blue sky this, maybe while they were drinking Tim Horton's coffee and picking at their fruit plate, scones and finger sandwiches, maybe it was decreed that doctors henceforwardly must all get certified in hand washing, Foodsafe and Toastmasters before they are allowed to practice. Hand washing is a must, and don't think I'm joking here, there really IS a course and you really DO get a certificate upon completion to frame and hang on your wall somewhere fairly high up or surrounded by many other certificates so that people might not be so inclined to actually read it. The Foodsafe, well to deal with "meat" in a sanitary way. Cutting a spleen is surprisingly similar to cutting a ham hock and they are both veritable petri dishes of bacteria! Toastmasters? Bedside manor. There is just no substitute to the healing process for an upbeat, kind, good-looking, well-dressed, spicy-smelling member of the medical profession at your side to inform you of how well the procedure went. Even if it didn't go so well, it certainly hastens along the placebo effect to have a confident, clearly speaking, professional-appearing doctor lying to you. Incidentally I just read an article, IN the AHS published health magazine I see at work all the time, that the placebo effect is actually MORE effective than it's ever been. I also recently watched the Star Wars series again because that's the colourful social life I'm rockin' here in Cowtown, and was reminded that Jedi mind tricks only work on the weak-minded. It has been said that the same goes for hypnotism and the placebo effect. And speaking of Alberta Health Services, coincidentally all three of these courses are offered by the busy, busy people at A.H.S.

I say "busy", TWICE, because it seems to me that there is a newly commonplace kind of business here in my home and native land that went nuclear whilst I was away, and it's best described as the business of busy-ness. That is, here in Canada, there are a lot of extra steps taken, previously understood to be unnecessary, that are mandatory before a person can do, (fake "well"), ANYthing! As I have said many times since returning, and only slightly hyperbolically, "You need a certificate to take a crap around here!" And I have also said before that it appears as though these extra steps in licencing, upgrading, complete re-educating, might have been implemented just as much to keep some people employed coming up with this extra, "busy-ness" and enforcing it, as to help with the process they are supposed to be helping. Getting back to the group of ladies on Saturday, one of them commented during one of the group's mandatory 10-minute breaks, that I must surely get a little bored doing what I was doing. To be fair, yes, a Saturday is a little dull around there because usually we don't have a group of 10 ladies who need to have me as door opener, door holder, escorter to the meeting room or washroom, lunchtime food deliverer and basic be at their beck and call-er. "What is your phone number here so we can call you if we need something?" she asks taking out her phone to punch in the number. I tell her that I cannot be reached directly but give her the number of dispatch who can be called so that they can radio me and get me to return to my desk and meet with them. After all I have patrols to do, boilers to check, reports to write and other things that can take me away from my desk and their service. She got a look on her face of someone who might just call a meeting to streamline THIS particular procedure so that OTHER people need not be inconvenienced in future by security keeping the place secure. She says to me, "With so much time on your hands, you really should be taking online courses!" I came this close |_ _ _ _| to saying, "Well why don't you call another meeting so that you and your girlfriends can make it mandatory for me to do just that?" You see, while it may appear that I am just sitting at my desk, every time I am there I am monitoring the security cams. And it actually happened, right around the time these 10 ladies were intermittently arriving for their meeting, that I saw a group of folks that were known to me from previous encounters on the site and C-Train during which I had seen them being obnoxious and conducting themselves in such a way that other people were endangered or at the very least bothered. But in their defence, always with pleasantly minty fresh breath. Three dudes and one chick, every time I had seen them before they were sharing a bottle of mouthwash, completely pissed, loud and up to no good. I saw them that Saturday on my camera making their ways across the site and, as always, sharing a bottle of mouthwash. I thought it was Listerine, the beverage of choice for hoodlums like these, but it turned out to be, "Equate." I had a good laugh at that!

Like Listerine I'm sure the alcohol-free kind of Equate sells for considerably less. And I wondered if their slogan might be something like, "It's not Listerine but it "equates" the buzz!", or "Contains just as much booze as Listerine!" I may have been printed on the bottle for all I knew. So anyway this quartet of quarrelsome Equate quaffers made their ways across my parking lot, chucking the empty bottle there, (which was how I ascertained the brand and flavour), and they were going towards the Superstore, ostensibly to get a refill.

People such as these are probably not SOLD mouthwash at the Superstore. Or snow shovels. But at the time our ladies were arriving I saw the group coming back across my site, one of them swinging a snow shovel around contributing to his already unsteady gait. This, I felt, needed my attention because they were approaching an area where there was no camera coverage and I wanted to make sure they left the premises without, I dunno, breaking a car window with the shovel or brandishing it at someone, quite possibly one of our group of 10 fish lifeguards. As I was leaving my building to maintain a visual on these yahoos, one of the group of ten stopped me. "I am wondering about parking around here. I am parked right there. I just don't want to return to my car and find a ticket on it." I had to curtly advise her, as I was trying to detach myself from the conversation, to, "Park anywhere you want." As I was walking brusquely away I saw two understanding contractors who said nothing, just nodded their understanding and belief that I might have something more important to tend to at this precise moment. I also heard, as the lady got to the locked doors, the same locked doors the contractors were waiting patiently outside of until I returned, "How am I supposed to get in? Hey come back here young man!" Or something like that. Security guard manners no doubt appeared on the minutes of the meeting.

Well the hoodlums went toward the Walmart without incident. What kind of Walmart munchies go best with Equate spearmint? As I got back to the main entrance to my building there were to two contractors and two of the ladies. One of the ladies was the member of the group with mobility issues so I had to open the door and hold it for her since the handicap entrance was locked as it always is on a Saturday. One of the other ladies chose that opportunity to give the disingenuous, "We're so very, very appreciative of all your hard work!" speech. She then taped up a piece of paper on the entrance which announced that the meeting was to the right in the cafeteria. I asked her, "Is your meeting in 1103, the education room, or is it in the cafeteria?" "No," she says, "It's WAAAY past the cafeteria in the boardroom. The big board room past the cafeteria on the left." Well the cafeteria is past room 1103 and past the doors that you can only get through with an access card. I would need to escort all the late arrivals, and since she was posting a sign, I was pretty sure there would be some and that they would not have access cards. Also, in my building it is quite the procedure you need to go through to post a sign on a door. On the entrance next to the one she had just slapped the sign on there was another one posted by the owners of the restaurant inside the main entrance. It was a notice to use the revolving door on cold days so that the staff wouldn't get a chill every time the regular door or handicap door was opened. I remember the owner had to talk to security who referred it to building owner Morguard representatives, who referred it to Morguard management, who probably referred it to a room full of fish resuscitators who gave it the okay, passed the word back to management, then back to me and I passed it to the owners of the restaurant. Two days it took before they could tape a piece of paper to the door. This lady was just hanging her sign up all willy nilly without following proper protocol. But I decided to allow it since it was a Saturday. I DID tell her to make sure she takes it down at the end of the day. She informed me there was another one on the main entrance of the other building I guard but that she would take them both down before going home. I THEN decided I had better find out what room they were in. You see I need to know how many there will be and where they are for fire safety reasons. If there is a fire alarm I need to evacuate them and special priority would need to be shown to anyone with mobility issues. This is why I had told the organizers of the meeting to all sign the after hours guest book on my desk so I'll know who and where they are. Only two of them had signed it and neither had put the correct room number in the space for the room number. Had they gone through the proper channels to book a room on a Saturday at an A.H.S. facility it would have taken a week or so of meetings to arrange but Morguard would have been informed and I would have been informed via the security memo book AND I likely would have received the correct room number and a list of guest names. But because of the bureaucracy-heavy system that IS our A.H.S. it is not an easy thing to book a room and when it is done, there are so precious few who know about it. This usually does NOT include reception or security. So there's no guarantee we'd have been better off even if they HAD booked the meeting properly. So, I went with her to the room they were in which was in her description some board room way past the cafeteria on the left that was definitely NOT room 1103 the education room. I apologized to the very patient contractors, who were there to do something far less important like clean the air purifiers or something like that and walked with this lady to find out what room their meeting was in. It was 1103 the education room and as I said something like, "So it IS in 1103," she overvolumed me with, "SEE? THIS IS THE BOARDROOM WE ARE IN!" What good would it have done to argue? I didn't bother and even if I didn't have people waiting at my desk, don't think I would have. THIS is often how these people get the results they get.

When I returned to the contractors and finally signed them in and gave them the access they needed to do their jobs, they said something like, "It looks like you're having fun today!" Then we exchanged knowing headshakes much like the understanding looks these two guys gave me when I was chasing the shovelling garglers down the street. I said, "How much do you want to bet she doesn't take those signs down at the end of the day?" Unfortunately the contractors were both gone before the fish-whisperers left or they would have known that I won that bet.

Now to address the possibility that you think I might be harshly overgeneralizing and disparaging the fine women of Canada: all I can say is, "busybody" is a term rarely applied to men. I know, I know, all Canadian women aren't like this but if I hadn't put my finger on it before this incident, I was, after Saturday, even more confident that the palpable difference in my country since coming back to it was a distinctly female difference almost as if a manipulative mother or an overbearing girlfriend or a gossipy goose were in charge of it. Every day I work at A.H.S. headquarters where one in every 20 or 30 employees is a dude and they are making an art form of busying themselves doing practically nothing. They are responsible for many good ideas but just as many overly intrusive brainstorms that make people want to say, "Just mind your own business!" I could change jobs but one area that is even WORSE is the education system in Canada where fishy rules and regulations have mandated constant upgrading and certificate buying that force one to take time off teaching to get better at teaching. So what am I to do? To maintain the metaphor I suppose I'll just have to swim with the rest of this school of fish. Don't want to go against the flow. Holy mackerel, that wouldn't please the carping critics! Walleye bass be going. Sushi ya later. Ugh...

Catching Up: Take Two

"A lot of the best reasons why people should not take advantage of other people are the very reasons it is so easy to do so." Me

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me TRUTH." Henry David Thoreau

I'm still upset about the whole work thing. But I figured I had better nuke that last, "Catching Up" post before someone at work stumbled upon it. It has actually happened to me before! It was at Hanguk University of Foreign Studies. A place in which the English program had been somehow taken over by a corrupt contingent of cretins that I was just counting the days till the end of my contract so I could tell them all to study my UNhanguk foreign arse! It was probably the most reputable English language program in the country and may have deserved to be so long before I got there. There were more than a dozen teachers and we all shared one computer in one office. Yeah they were coasting on their rep. And I made the mistake of accessing my blog during an internet session on our one office computer that was followed by the talentless, classless, brainless, sycophantic, tongue kisser of the English program director's vacuous ass, named Dean. Him and Ms. Oh, who he never passed up a chance to call, "Dr. Oh", something like Me Sook I think was her name, the erstwhile Japanese soft porn eyes are open but brain is closed for business looking, talking and acting, Kao San Road, Thailand phony degree buying dizz-brain who "directed" the English program with nowhere near the intelligence to direct traffic on a one-way street! Well they just ran a check on what I had been looking at during my session, read my blog and, BINGO, they became outraged not because a word of the blog post was untrue, but because they hated me for exposing their treachery. As well as the fact that they just weren't clever enough, (as they thought), to screw people over without them knowing.

See I can slag THEM as much as I want cuz I don't work for those butt smokers any more. Bridge BURNT! But I had better be more tactful, that is, avoid drinking 15 beers before writing about my current employers just in case I need this job a little while longer. I got some irons in the fire, I just don't want to strike till the irons are hot. Er... am I mixing metaphors or just making my own? I dunno! I don't care! As long as you get it. The irons are heating up. Got a friend of a friend who tells me there are always openings in security at a casino where he works. I have another friend who tells me the Commissionaires are hiring. I worked for them as a jail guard in Smithers before. They pay better than I'm getting now. I also have another friend looking into teaching ESL at some correctional facilities around Calgary. So I have some ideas in case the situation becomes unbearable at work. But these last two days things have been pretty much business as usual. I have been reading the standing orders from 10 years ago and things have changed A LOT! Maybe this "cross-training", this easing me into the position at SLP1 that NObody, least of all ME, wants, will be a strategy that is abandoned like many others have been at the place I work.

But I can't help thinking about the other two guards who have worked the post I'm in now. They're old, they're crotchety, they have more years on the clock than the folks who are in positions to order them around now... neither one of these guys would be treated the way I'm being treated. Now maybe it's because I am viewed as a better candidate for the job, but I sure hope it's not because I'm nice, I'm agreeable, I'm a team player, I'll do as I'm told, I can improvise when it's called for, I work hard, I don't fall asleep or slough off, I'm kind, I prefer to avoid conflict, I get the job done! I am just the absolute perfect patsy for someone who doesn't have a single scruple! And what's more is I know that, I know how to change that but I refuse to do so even though I KNOW I'll be taken advantage of. The reason is simple: I would rather be burned 100 times than withhold my trust from a trustworthy person punishing them for the sins of the scumbag greedmongers of this world! So YES I'll sign your three-year cable or gym membership! YES, I'll pay the surcharge the company didn't tell me about! YES, I'll take three shots at the basket for 20 dollars to win a 5-dollar stuffed toy! Just in case deep down in one or all of you there is a defence mechanism that passes for maturity in this messed up world. The idea of "the only way to get ahead is to become what I have learned to hate." Then pile on the defense mechanisms like, "I'm only doing it for my family," or, "If I don't do it, someone else will," or, as you know, my personal favourite, "It's only business."

You know you hate your job and it's sucking your soul out one impossibly long day at a time. You are cowtowing to people you would rather cowpunch and it is all for reasons we are assured, (by people who don't have to), are legitimate, but you just know if you just eat shit for a few more years you can bust out of this cycle of self-loathing and become a self you can be proud of.

Too close to the mark? Join the majority! The LUCKY majority! Most places in the world people would consider themselves lucky to have some evil boss to cowtow to! This is why on the bus or the C-train in the morning, (you didn't think I'd go a whole blog post without bringing up the source of most of my inspiration did you?), they could be chock-a-block full and you won't see anyone who doesn't look like he's going to the gulag to be hung by his testicles or she's going to a concentration camp where nobody will listen to, much less obey, anything she has to say. The virtually impenetrable fortress of helpless melancholia that is the mass transit morning and evening commute is testament to the truth that is so obvious we think it just can't be true: we are chattel. We don't work for anyone, we are owned. And our owners are the ones who are constantly trying to keep us from throwing ourselves off the buildings we work for them in or in front of the trains we operate for them by providing us with bright and sunny deceit. And because we are optimistic, upbeat, loving, co-operative, artistic, warm, compassionate, ("stupid" is the term our owners use), people, we believe our peers will think less of us if we don't work 100 hours of overtime, pay our taxes and tip 25%. And THEY believe WE will think less of them if they don't contribute to RRSP's, spend 3 month's salary on a diamond ring, and pretend like WE are OWNERS when really we just have 5% down on a 40-year mortgage that will probably solidify our slavery for the rest of our lives.

WOAH! You know what, it really hasn't been quite this bad! I have days at work that are enjoyable! In fact every single shift has a lot of things that I like! The vast majority of people there are great! Today my buddy Rafael, (who we all call Raffy), gave me a shirt he bought for me in Vegas while he was there on vacation last week! What a guy! And there was the Starbucks coffee card from Lee Anne. Then the awesome 100-buck Safeway card from Morguard. I'm being negative again. My job is pretty sweet! I just have to look past the recent events and hope for the best. Another good reason to have erased my previous post.

So consider this the mental conflict ridden replacement for it. If you read my previous post, you will only have its memory. Or I could email you a transcript I saved for my personal pleasure. Lemme know if you want to re-read it and marvel at how, though a bit repetitive and topically transient, was pretty darn coherent for a guy drunk off his ass!

One final quote and I think it's appropriate given the new year we have begun and the gist of this post:

I think I'll stick it out for a while at work. I know they need successors as secretaries/receptionists at SLP1 and will probably pay me more if I do it. They are more than likely grooming me for the position, and the pay raise now. But, in the words of the Irish guy on the I.T. Crowd, "Couldn't give a shitsss..." If they just can't accept that I want to stay where I am now, even at a lower grade of pay, I can always find another job. They would be foolish to bluff me into that position. I KNOW they don't want to lose me.

We'll see what happens...

ACHOO! May you walk in darkness.

I think a lot early in the morning. Especially when I don't have the luxury of being able to slowly and naturally ease my way out of the sack. Like every day I work. I bolt out of bed still half asleep like most of God's children SHOULD be at or before 5 AM, and have some really furious action in my head. It could be residual dream state so I'm not sure about the quality of the thoughts until I have a coffee and a shower and am able to evaluate them without the cobwebs of sleep skewing my perception. You know how you can have a dream in which you have this earth-shaking idea or invent a fantastic new device or hear a joke that while you are asleep seems like it's the most hilarious thing you've ever heard, then you awake, possibly laughing, jot it down and return to the land of slumber from whence it came. The next day you read that hastily jotted joke or that idea with all of your faculties fully functioning and it's an absolute dud! Ever happen to you? That happens to me a lot.

During my commute to work I am usually showered and my caffeine thirst is sufficiently slaked but I'm not convinced I fully wake up until I do my first patrol or hand out my first parking pass of the day and am forced to slam myself into responsibility mode. Then I just think about work usually. It is for this reason that this blog is often filled with contemplations originating on a bus or the C-train. Today's post will be one of those.

I was riding the C-train and 4 guys dressed in orange coveralls and work boots splattered with dried mud from previous days on the job got on. They were chatting away. I am almost certain that none of them knew the person sitting beside me. Then the person sitting beside me sneezed. Immediately one of the coverallers leans down, (because they were standing and the guy beside me was sitting), and says, "Bless you!" Boy that got the old wheels a-turning and the gears a-grinding in my head! What is this compulsion for people to bless other people after a sneeze? I remember the first thing I thought of was my grade school teacher, Mr. Ottawell, explaining that in the olden days people thought a sneeze was an evil spirit escaping or that after a sneeze you were vulnerable to evil spirits getting IN. Either way it required a kindly blessing. It was just common courtesy to gird up one's loins with truth, slap on the breastplate of righteousness, arm oneself with the Word and slay that evil sneeze demon as a solid Christian soldier. Even for a total stranger. That's what got me thinking. I thought, "What if this guy who just sneezed was a Satanist? Or agnostic, atheist, some non-Christian religion, or what have you?" Mr. Coverall was forcing his faith on someone who just might not want it! Why, in Canada he may well have been cited on the spot for cultural or religious imposition and forced to attend publically funded sensitivity training for a few months. I then began picturing this coveraller as the skinny priest from the Exorcist flinging holy water on the guy beside me and hollering, "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELLS YOU! THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELLS YOU!" And the guy beside me smokily melting like the Wicked Witch of the West screaming, "OOOOOHH NOOOOOO!" I actually chuckled at myself a bit, trying my best to hide it from my fellow commuters. I chuckle both at the spectacle I had conjured up in my head and at the fact that so much of what goes on in there is directly linked to some movie or another. The power of entertainment!

The guy beside me didn't thank the blesser. This, I have found, can upset a sneezer. Have you ever had someone around you sneeze and then get all snotty, pardon that intentionally placed pun, and say, "Well? Isn't anyone going to say 'Bless you?'" I have. For all we know Mr. Coverall may be rewarded in Heaven for his act of punicharity. But he got no gratitude from the guy beside me! And this is flu season! For all we know he could have filled our car with millions of H1N1 germs and the magnanimity of the person who actually BLESSED him for doing so went unacknowledged. The nerve!

Then I started thinking of other bodily expulsions we don't get blessed for. When we burp or fart we may not be blasting out anything as dangerous as flu germs but the gas can be quite unpleasant. So we excuse ourselves as if to say, "Sorry for polluting the air we share." Why don't we say that after we sneeze? I guess we sometimes do, but not nearly as often and it occurred to me that sneeze germs warrant more apology than a few moments of burp or fart vapour. And I wonder why people in the olden days didn't believe a burp gave just as much opportunity for an evil spirit to invade the belcher's body. I guess I can understand the fart on this point because if I were a spirit, evil or not, I think I too would choose my aperture of entry carefully.

Then I thought of cultures all over the world. The sneeze blessing is not as uncommon as one might think. In my youth when I lived next door to our Russian Babooshka and Dyedooshka I learned that after a sneeze they said something. It was, "Bud zdorov." This means, "Be healthy." The Romans said, "Salve," which means, "Good health to you." This could be taken as a kind of blessing or it could be, in my mind, a more appropriate order for the person to take better care of him/herself and stop polluting everyone's air with germs. I guess that might depend on the delivery. Pretty much the same in German, "gesundheit" means "health." Loads of people with no German heritage at all say that. Evidently, from my internet research, this has been going on for thousands of years! Romans used to say, "Jupiter preserve you." Jupiter is Zeus to the Greeks. I wonder if the Greeks said, "Zeus preserve you." I don't know but reportedly the Greeks DID say, "Long life," after a sneeze. That's similar to the Chinese who say, "Bai sui," when children sneeze. That means, "May you live 100 years."

If you ask me when a person burps or farts we should be saying this stuff about health and living long lives. I know holding in burps and farts is unhealthy. We've all been in public places, at the office, at a hockey game, in elevators, at church, holding our gases. How many dates have we been on having just eaten a meal that is turning into gas, desperately needing to get rid of some of that gas but politely, maybe even painfully, holding it in to avoid the embarrassment of blasting a fart in front of that special someone who you earnestly want to believe you don't do such hideous things? You also want her/him to believe other totally false things about you too like you are always pulling out chairs, opening doors, paying the check, wearing your good underwear, smelling of lavender, and just being extra polite. But that's dating. And job interviewing. Which really, let's face it, are the same thing. I think if I were interviewing a job candidate and he or she stood up, lifted a leg like Bruce Lee and cracked a loud, noxious fart, I would say two things to her/him: "Good health," because that IS good for the person's health and I want employees who are health conscious because they won't be calling in sick as much and they will work for me for much longer, and, "You're HIRED!" We are taking years off our lives holding in farts and burps, folks! If we could learn to just let these natural body functions fly, maybe our culture would be just a little bit more honest. We'd certainly be more healthy!

But back to the sneeze. I have heard it said that holding one in is also unhealthy. In fact some people believe if you do so, your heart stops. I don't think that's true but it really is a tough thing to do! So let it out. Good health. Live 100 years. That makes a bit more sense when your think of it that way.

What may not make so much sense, (and this was all stuff I thought about on about 10 or 15 minutes of my morning C-train ride, mind you), is the idea of the evil spirits. I doubt there are many people left today who actually believe that, though the institution lives on, but I started thinking about myself and my sneezing habits. I have eyes that are not very good at what they are supposed to be doing and are very sensitive to light. Though I am an organ donor, I doubt there's gonna be a line-up of people who want my eyes when I'm freshly deceased. Almost every time I leave a building and walk into bright sunlight I will sneeze. So I got to thinking. Light. We have heard Jesus called the light of the world. In fact I'm pretty sure he said that himself along with, "Whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness." Jews light candles during their Feast of Tabernacles. The epiphany that brings one to ultimate understanding and a state of oneness with everything in Buddhist and Taoist philosophy is often called, "Enlightenment." Light is just associated with God and good and darkness is associated with evil. So why is it that light makes me sneeze so often and opens me up to the ravages of evil spirits? That doesn't make sense, does it? When it's dark I rarely sneeze. So why don't people say, "May you walk in darkness," after a sneeze. It would be healthier, good for longevity and it would limit the openings for evil spirits to pass in and out of the transoms of our open mouths.

So there you have it. It would make so much more sense, for ALL reasons, if after a sneeze we wished the sneezer a healthy, lengthy, germ-free journey in darkness. I'm going to start saying that. You don't have to, but I think I will. Somebody sneeze around me, please! I want to try this out!

The Great Wal of Mart

I saw an old Chinese guy on the bus yesterday wearing a poppy. I wasn't all that clear on the role of China in WWII or how they might have had some impact on making Canada what she is today. What I found out, and this is a very general summation of some of the events of WWII, the war helped the Chinese Communist party. You see, at the time of the war Chinese Communists lead by Mao, were battling with Chiang Kai Shek and the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, who were in favour of something called a "New Life Movement" for China. This was a sort of combination of Confucian ideals, Christianity, Nationalism and Authoritarianism. Nobody really knows if this could have made China into a better place than it is today but it is tough to imagine any ruling party that could have made them any worse. However, judging from the period in Taiwan known as "White Terror" when Chiang Kai Shek's Kuomintang ruled Taiwan with and iron fist persecuting and executing people who were believed to be threats to its power, it just might have done the unthinkable and created something worse in China than what we have today. It lasted from 1949 to 1987 and was the longest period of martial law ever until the Syrian situation recently broke the inauspicious record. Inside Taiwan members of intellectual organizations for "re-emancipation" were roundly imprisoned, tortured or put to death for the threats they posed to the ruling Kuomintang. Much like Tibetan Buddhism and Falun Gong in Communist China. It should be noted that in the 1920's the Kuomintang persecuted Buddhists too so, as per my opinion of most opposition parties in most countries of the world, it's possible that the two factions were not fighting over who could make China better, rather who would win the spoils that come with the privilege of making it worse.

At any rate, Japan invaded China in 1937 and the two warring factions within China agreed to a sort of co-operative war against the invading Japanese. What ended up happening is the Kuomintang took the bulk of the burden, wearing themselves down in number and supplies while the Chinese Communist forces largely sat waiting in the wings, strengthening their forces with an eye toward winning the civil war. It worked. In 1946 the civil war resumed and the CCP defeated the Chinese Nationalists by 1949. This is part of why the world has had Communist China ruled by the mighty bastion of evil known as the Chinese Communist Party ever since.

So, the old Chinese guy wearing the poppy: Was it appropriate? I guess like is the case with so many of life's most important questions, the answer is probably, "It depends." Maybe the guy had relatives who were persecuted by Kuomintang forces and was happy that WWII was a factor in their eventual demise. I don't know. I don't even know if I should care. As long as he donated a decent amount to purchase the poppy, a salut. The observance of Remembrance Day is in honour of the sacrifices made by the soldiers to make Canada a better place. And he lives here now so his life was directly affected by those who fought. So it's right for him to wear the poppy. I guess...

But in the grand scheme of things, his native country, (and I'm not making the silly mistake of assuming because he's Chinese, he supports the actions of his government and his country), figures very largely in the deterioration of Canada into a country not very much like that for which our soldiers were fighting. So maybe he is wearing the poppy to show solidarity with his adopted country and as a statement AGAINST China. It depends... a powerful statement.

What the heck am I talking about? Aren't we supposed to show appreciation for the actions of the soldiers and the freedoms we enjoy because of them at this time of year? Au contraire, mes amis. I think we are supposed to honour our fighting forces and the great sacrifices everybody at the time were making for our country and maybe try our best to do what we can to make it into what they wanted, and let's face it, what almost all of US living today want as well. That is NOT what we have in Canada today. Oh we are closer than lots of countries and I am thankful for that, but it is my belief that we are moving farther and farther away and it all ties into the perversion of democracy and capitalism, corporate mentality, banks, the U.S. and inevitably, China. So if you wear a poppy it is your responsibility, in my mind, to do whatever you can about getting Canada back on the right path.

First let's explore the wrong path we are on. In past posts, even from years ago, I have been warning the oh-so-gullible politicians in Canada against making deals with China, promising trade with the expectations that there will be social and trade reform in the country because history has shown, China lies. It also has shown that they think anyone engaging in business deals based on such pie-in-the-sky promises are fools. In fact NOT lying in business is the most foolish concept of all! Has China improved conditions for workers in their country? Have they obeyed international manufacturing practices? Have they lived up to safety regulations that other nations expected them to? If you watch the documentary called, "Death By China," the answers to all these questions is no. In fact they have gone backwards!

Canada being on China's list of preferred trading partners, I think everybody in this country should see that documentary and do what we can to make things better. For some reason blogger won't let me post links any more. But the movie is on Netflix if you want to watch the whole thing. I'd recommend it. Here are some interesting things the documentary shows. And I'm just cherry picking here, there are all kinds of facts and figures that I am not including here.

"People's Republic of China." Stop saying that! It's not the people's and it's not a republic. It's still treating workers as slaves. If you try to unionize for wages that might get you out of abject poverty, you are thrown in jail. If you don't make your quota in your 16-hour day, you could be thrown in jail or maybe you just don't eat. The laws of China governing safety in the workplace and manufacturing codes and workers' rights are not obeyed. All of these things are what ATTRACT businesses to China. Along with illegal subsidies paid to manufacturers who build companies there and currency manipulation, it makes for a virtual Mecca for manufacturing and corporate greed. And, hey, that's just business! That's the explanation we get from companies like Wal-Mart and Apple. It's not up to THEM to change those things, it's up to them to make their stakeholders more money.

It is stated in the documentary that 91% of Wal-Mart's products originate in China. 2 years before the doc. was made Wal-Mart spent 50 billion in China. If they were a country that would rank The Great Wal of Mart as China's 4th largest trading partner.

And when we hear corporations explaining the mass exodus to China saying things like, "I can't compete," don't feel sorry for them. What that means is NOT what we think. It's corporate-speak. Like when they made 40 billion two years ago and only 35 billion this year, they "LOST" 5 billion. Corporate-speak. "I can't compete," does not mean that things produced in China will cost less in the countries where they are eventually sold. The prices will be similar, or maybe even MORE expensive! All it means is the CEO will have a smaller paycheck, the owner will make less profit or the shareholders will receive fewer dividends. Take Apple for example. It is a microcosm of the cause of financial inequities in countries like Canada and the U.S. Everything Apple is made in China. Does that make it cheaper to produce? Hell yeah! Does that drive the price down? Hell no! Apple has always been, and continues to be more expensive! All that means that the big wigs and shareholders make obscene profits to which they inexplicably believe they are ENTITLED!

Here is the problem! Aye, there's the rub! How do we convince people to be satisfied with reasonable profits for their businesses? Well that's as easy as convincing China to have reasonable working conditions in their factories! It won't happen with a bunch of suits sucking back sushi and sake and shaking hands on the promises of fair play. It requires some strictly enforced international trade rules and reform in the countries who do not abide by them. Who does that fall to? Me? You? Nope, it's supposed to be the job of the government officials that represent our respective countries. You know the ones who regularly accept lobbying funds and campaign contributions and the like from private corporations. Or if their corporations don't make them, the CEO's will make them privately. Or their wives. Or their lawyers. They have been finding loopholes in the laws for years.

We could all agree to boycott products from Wal-Mart or Apple or any of the MANY companies who take advantage of the horrible conditions in China, but things are SO out of hand that we would find this to be a much harder thing to do than expected. One lady in the movie tried to find a microwave that was not made in China and just couldn't. And I'm sorry but I don't believe the people who are suffering most should be the people who have to do without, or pay higher prices for products in the attempt to right this global wrong. I believe the people who have been making these obscene profits should be forced by competent labour law and business law enforcement to right these wrongs that have bolstered their offshore banks books lo these many years. The enforcement should be done by government and this should be what we DEMAND from our government.

I can't stand the way Canadian politicians prattle on about human rights and proper business practices with the same tongues they have up the asses of the Chinese businessmen who are the worst offenders! And I know it's exactly the same in the States where they are, what 17 trillion dollars in debt to them? And I hate the cavalier irresponsibility of the corporations that has become an accepted excuse for the atrocities they make profit from! "It's just business." That's just not good enough! They too need to be held accountable and they have shown no ability to rehabilitate at our polite requests for them to do so. So it's time to get tough.

The best example in Canada I can think of is all these oil pipelines. You've seen the publically funded commercials all over the TV here about how we will protect the fish and nature Canadians love so dearly. What a crock of shit! While telling us this the government of Canada has been cutting back on oil spill experts and companies. More oil to spill and less people to clean it up. The bottom line is there should be no pipelines at all! We are only doing the exact same thing as the American manufacturers in "Death By China." We are outsourcing jobs and refineries to the country where it can be done the cheapest while endangering our own country with oil spills that WILL inevitably happen! Refine it here in Canada. Transport the safer and more expensive oil to China. THAT'S the sort of thing the rest of the world, and most particularly Canada is too "nice" to do. The Chinese see it a different way. We are all too STUPID to do this. And they're laughing their way to world domination. This is not conspiracy theory, this is happening and it's gotta stop.

Leastaways, that's what I reckon.

I don't have the right word...

I remember one time I was playing Euchre, a card game, with family. The best hand you can possibly get is called a "lay-down lone hand." It's a hand that you can just lay down and nobody can possibly beat any of your cards. The perfect hand is when you can do this after going alone, without your partner. It's worth 4 points. It doesn't have to be both jacks with the ace, king and queen of trump but if it is, it is the ultimate hand. I HAD this hand. Everybody passed and trump was turned down. All I had to do when the call got to me was call trump and alone and lay it down. BOOM! 4 points! In a game that goes up to 10 this is the sweetest feeling you can have! So the call GOT to me, I was ready to add some cocky flourish to my lay down and maybe some trash talk when all of a sudden the phone rings. My Mom got up to answer it. She was on the phone, as is her way, for quite a while before returning to the game. It knocked the fun right out of the experience! Oh it was still pretty sweet, but nowhere near the blast it would have been without the wait.

I have needed a word for this feeling a few times in life. One time in Korea I had a girlfriend nicknamed Jeannie. I think her name was Jin Hee. I can't remember exactly because our relationship didn't last for a long time and this story I'm about to tell may have been a harbinger of the doom it was to suffer. She told me she wasn't a fan of flowers. Unless they were hand picked and given to her. I can't remember what day it was or even what season but it was her birthday and it was either spring or fall. It was probably spring because I remember the days being fairly warm. Warm enough to go out, buy some flowers and climb to the top of a little mountain in Yong In where I lived and plant them on the side of the path. In a secret spot that no passer by would notice. I then convinced Jeannie to come visit me in Yong In. She lived in Seoul. The day I planted the flowers and bought her a nice gift and planned an evening with wine, Jeannie and song, (at a local singing room), was quite warm. Warm enough to plant the flowers and know they wouldn't freeze. Jeannie agreed to spend her birthday with me in Yong In. The plan was coming together! The NEXT day, her birthday, was not so warm. In fact it was unseasonably cold. I wondered if my flowers had frozen overnight. But Jeannie was coming some time around noon so I thought they'd be okay.

I met her at the bus depot and as soon as I saw her I lost a bit of the excitement you get when you are about to do something nice for someone. She was wearing nowhere NEAR enough clothing for the weather. I remember the first thing I said was something like, "Is the weather different in Seoul?" Seoul being a 40-minute trip from Yong In, of course it wouldn't be. She just said she was freezing and wanted to get to someplace warm. So I had to do all I could to convince her to go on a hike up Mt. Nogobong, (it's no more than a 20-minute hike). I told her there was a birthday surprise up there for her. I practically had to drag her. But she was not wearing the clothes, or the footwear for a hike. In the end she agreed to wait for me at the bottom while I sprinted up, grabbed the flowers out of the ground, which were frosty and wilted but still not UNbeautiful, ran down and handed them to her with the announcement, "I hand-picked these for you at the top of the mountain." I think she said something like, "Thanks, let's get inside." Not the response I was planning to get out of her. And not the feeling of having done something nice, and if I do say so myself, quite romantic, for a gal I liked a lot. Heightened expectations completely shot down by circumstances.

Is there a word for this? I know the Germans are pretty good at words that describe specific feelings like this. They have a word, "schadenfreude," that means the feeling of joy or pleasure when one sees another fail. The natives of Tierra del Fuego have a very specific word, "mamihlapinatapai," which means to look at each other, each hoping the other will offer to do something which both parties much desire done but which neither is willing to do. Maybe the natives of Tierra del Fuego often bring their cheap friends out to dinner and have this feeling when the check comes. I dunno.

Thursday my brother, Rob had some tickets to the Kiss concert Friday night that he couldn't use. I love Kiss and I knew my brother Jeff liked them too so I offered to take them off Rob's hands. He came to my work and I bought them from him. I texted Jeff and told him he should make me supper that night because I had a surprise for him. I suggested he cook up some cabbage rolls I had in the freezer along with some perogies. He found the cabbage rolls, rotten, in our freezer that is not quite cold enough. So he said he'd make some Hamburger Helper. Meh. It's not cabbage rolls and perogies but at least I'd have supper waiting for me when I got home. Something I haven't had since I can't remember.

7:30 rolls around. I worked from 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM that day and was pretty hungry at the end of my shift. However, my relief was nowhere to be seen. We tried and tried to call him but to no avail. Then every person who has ever worked my site was called and either could not be contacted or could not do the shift. By 9:00 it was decided that the mobile guard would sit in for me and I could go home. Jeff had texted me at around 7 telling me supper was ready. It was re-heated Hamburger Helper when I got home. I guess it's better than re-heated cabbage rolls and perogies but geez... And the thrill of handing over a ticket to Kiss just wasn't what I had been looking forward to all day.

Well the concert was spectacular! Kiss put on a show that I don't think many other bands could match. Paul Stanley's voice was cracking a lot and he couldn't sing the songs that well but it was okay. They had just finished their Monster tour and his voice was tired. Calgary was tacked onto the end of the tour because on July 13th, the original Calgary date for Kiss, half the Saddledome was under water with the great floods of '13. So crackly voice or no, Kiss was much appreciated! The plan was to go to the pub just around the corner from my place after the concert. They have a Kiss greatest hits album on their jukebox and I was going to plug the whole thing and have a few beers. I only had one at the concert. So we get to Bonasara's and I show the waitress my Kiss tour T shirt and say, "Guess where WE just came from!" "Oh the Kiss concert. Nice." The place was too busy for her to ask how it was or what songs they played or have the conversation with me I'd hoped for. Also when I got up to put some money in the juke box, I noticed a guy playing the guitar in the bar. He was good but he was no Kiss. It was local musician open mike night. The next few acts were nowhere near as good as the guitar guy and the music was not what I wanted to hear. Then the guy who was sitting next to Jeff at the bar tries to pick a fight with him. "You think you're better than me?" "You're not better than me!" Then he looks at ME. I hadn't said a word to him! He goes, "You too! Have some respect!" He was told to go home. Obviously had too much to drink. So we had a burger and a beer and left. I don't know what was in those burgers but I just came home and hit the hay. I was tired! Hardly "rocking and rolling all night and partying ev-er-ry day!"

Today I wake up at some hour and go to check my phone to see exactly what hour it is, and it's gone. I have looked everywhere but can't find it. I was so busy trying to make sure my very expensive Kiss concert shirts got home safely, I guess I forgot about my phone. On the bright side, I had wanted to take pictures and vids during the concert by my cam phone was no good. Every pic was blurry and in the darkened stadium it was useless for pics or vids. So at least I got THAT goin' for me. Wonder what the word for that feeling is...

So, I think I'm going to make up a few words here. When you try to do something nice for someone and are subverted by circumstances I'm going to call that "punicharity." No good deed goes unpunished. And when you try to find something good from a disaster like, "I lost my legs in Nam but just look at the musculature in my arms!" "At least re-heated Hamburger Helper is better than re-heated cabbage rolls and perogies!" "The flowers weren't UNpretty!" "Well at least I didn't lose too many great pics of the concert along with that crappy cam phone!" I'll call that, "negapositivity." And for those of you who will read this, laugh at my misfortune, (and that's okay. I don't mind.), and take my negapositivity with a grain of salt when I say that the Kiss concert was a total blast even though I can't post any of the pics I took of it here, I'll call you punicharitynegapositivityschadenfreuders.

But anyhoo, the Kiss concert was a total blast! I just wish I could post some of the pics I took on my phone cam here! Who knows, maybe it'll turn up. <---- What about that right there? What's the word? Thinking wishfully in the face of great odds against, hmmmm... "Canuckfanity?"