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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 20 February 2026

Hits: 44

These are things I know I have. Watercolour pencils, yes, and I need them now for the members show at the Museum. I need them to vaguely outline my painting.

Only I search through the 5-6-7 bins of art supplies I have and I can't find a single one. And I know that I have many.

I'm not as organized as I think I am.

I check the dollar store, but they're all out. I didn't want or need them - or more of them - anyways.

Never-mind, in my search for the watercolour pencils I turned up a white charcoal pencil and some conte crayons and they will suffice.

But, as luck would have it I'm in need of a pencil sharpener.

I have many of these, I know, the fancy aluminum-block ones that you buy at the art store for 3 or 4 $$. I have good taste in pencil sharpeners.

Again, I search my 6-7-8 bins of art supplies, charcoal, oil pastels, watercolour tubes and palettes, acrylic, oil paints, my box of fountain pens and hundreds of loose nibs, calligraphy pens, supplies out my ----- and I can't find a single pencil sharpener. Checking my drawers, my bags - the ones I take to the cafe with my books that I'm reading, my laptop, my whatever, and again I can't find a single one.

I'm loathe to buy another, but I have no choice, and so it goes, the dark matter of the universe, 100 inexplicably invisible pencil sharpeners and the one that I've set very conspicuously on my easel. 

Now to get started...

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 16 February 2026

Hits: 96

This is how we mark the years in restaurants.

The Valentines' Day Massacre.

Friday the 13th, slow in the book, but in real life we're slammed. Busy, busy, busy, just the two of us.

Then Saturday, again - slow in the book, tables, 2 every half hour. We've scheduled for the nightmare, 3 servers, the owner's wife to manage bar and take-outs, only the take outs are crazy. People are smart, don't go out for Valentines, get a take-away, but the sheer volume of take aways exceeds the volume of food we're selling in the restaurant, slowing us down in a major way.

And the low volume of reservations, well, we're still getting them, "we'll be coming down in 20 minutes and would like a reservation for 6 people" sort of idiocy, less a reservation than "do you have room?"... and we do, we think. From 6:00 to 8:00 we're full, full up, line out the door, walk-ins, reservations, can't keep up.

Keeping up on the bussing, resetting of tables, it's a nightmare. And chaos slowly builds, servers take shortcuts, drop their dirty dishes off on the bar meaning to pick them up later and shuffle them to the bus-bins, glasses piled by the sink for washing, empty drink cans and containers tossed wherever, the mess compounds itself, a thousand trifles soon add up and then there's the unending volumes of plates, glasses, washed and to be put away...

On my own I'm not so busy. If I had this section, 7 tables, all deuces, on my own, I'd be fine. But the interference of others, waiting to get into the till, the bar, working around the increasing piles of rubbish, this is the craziness. 

****

The night ends and now time for the plan, the Valentine's Dosed party. I've bought tickets for everyone. H*, cafe acquaintance, E* and his wife, R*, Mr. Tickles, I've assembled a posse. 

We meet outside the rave, get our wristbands. R* takes his and promises to come back later, around midnight. He never does.

E and his wife, well, she's not comfortable, finds a sofa, sits in it, scrolls her phone. She's out of her league. E* gets it, he's down to party, but what can he do?

They're gone by 12:00. As is H*, who is as well a fish out of water. Leaving just me and Mr. Tickles, who's taken the MDMA and has become, as he always does, a security guard standing by the doors looking for trouble...

***

It's pretty damned good, I have to say, Tickles gets it, E* gets it, I go until 2:00 and then pack it in. The outfits, the crowd, the people, it's great, but it's been the Valentines Day Massacre after all and I'm a little bit exhausted and have vague hopes of being somewhat productive on Sunday.

Vague is the key word.

***

Sunday, wake up around 9:00, grab a coffee, head back to bed. Wake up again at 1:00, up until 4:00, having foraged for some lunch, then back to bed. The Valentines Recovery. Today, up at 8:00, feeling surprisingly refreshed, but - not taking any chances, will be back to bed soon. In a few hours, back to the real world, work, the land of the fairies left far behind...

E left in a hurry, his wife upset, I will catch up on that, and R will make his excuses and the night will pass.

Outside now it's snowing, the snow, gently falling, flakes, the tell-tale signs of winter that's never arrived...

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 14 February 2026

Hits: 109

The circumstances of which are too widely known and tragic to be elaborated upon here.

But I'm going to use this to make a couple of different points. 

First, we need to take back ownership of all US owned media in Canada. This should be illegal. Thank Harper for this. 

We share the same language, and that makes it easy for the contamination of their stupidity and politics to cross our borders. That their media has been at best an attempt to set the groundwork to colonize us should be now readily apparent. Look at all the half-wit Albertans that voted UCP and want separation from Canada. That is a direct result of their malign and predetermined influence.

But that is not all. In the USA, "News" is entertainment. There is very little in terms of 'reputable' and responsible reporting. It has been known for a long time that publicizing schoolyard shootings normalizes them, and opens the doors to copycats. Every schoolyard shooting since Columbine is a direct result of the media fanfare the first and every subsequent one received. 

We don't need that. The incident in Tumbler Ridge should never have been broadcast beyond Tumbler Ridge. The media should have accountability - the same reason they do not publicize suicides should be the same reason they don't publish murders, shouldn't publish incidents of violence, etc. Except in the case of appeals to the public, who might know something, nobody needs to know.

Respect the privacy of the victims and families. Respect the community.

The advertising of violence only promotes more violence. 

The second, read through the previous article on the past weeks headlines. None of it of any relevance, all designed to outrage, get a reaction, polarize us. These headlines, while they get a reaction, do not advance us in our lives, with our neighbours, communities, in any way. The "News as Entertainment" model has to go. 

"News as Relevant Information" should be the go to. "How will it affect/benefit/ our readers" should be the question on every publishers list. Even CBC - whom I am not entirely impressed with - could learn from this. National news should exclude community tragedies, not publicize them.

We need a wall between us and the dumpster fire blazing south of the border. We've needed it for a long time, to distance ourselves from their mis/disinformation, their imbecilic reportage on everything irrelevant, their "news is a means to sell advertising" sensational approach. They have failed, as a nation, as a country, as a world leader. 

If we need content to fill up our televisions there's the UK, Europe, there's Africa and South America, even China, most of which have values that will align a lot closer to ours.

Our Television should be scrubbed of their programs, except in the rare instances where it can be aligned with our cultural values. How this is determined - well, that's no so easy, but it's a talking point that we should get on ASAP. We'll start with it's not hatred of minorities or varying sexualities and lifestyles. We can start with the theory that we're here to help our neighbours and the less fortunate. And there's a lot of places we can go from here. 

We can learn from their mistakes and be a lot better. And we should get started, because this is just one of the signs that dumpster fire is spreading north of the border...

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 14 February 2026

Hits: 54

So, starting off this week, and continuing the previous. 

There's the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, no hopeful outcomes there I think, funny that she was the target, but - wait - didn't her daughter once have the audacity to interview Jeffrey Epstein's victims? And is there a link here?

That's an underreported headline there. There's news that the FBI busted a big Pedophile ring; no, not that one, so take it with a grain of salt. Then there was Trump posting his "Ape Obama's" photo - a good 20 minutes of outrage there, then quelled. There was the threats over the Canada bridge, the shutting down of Federal Airspace over El Paso Texas, there was the Bondi Congressional "Interview", the "MAGA Father Kills Dissenting Daughter Headline"; quickly acquitted of any wrongdoing because MAGA and Texas, there was the suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein is alive and well in Israel, because he's been seen online under his username and playing Fortnight and his bank accounts all still oddly are active...

Then there was Tumbler Ridge, but that's a separate post. 

All these things, the machine-gun fire of irrelevant news and conspiracies and "connect the dots" - and you can, and maybe one day someone will, but they're all to distract us - Project 2025 is halfway there inside a year. 

The MAGGATS are swarming America, picking it clean, but keep everyone outraged, distracted, with these click-bait 20 minute wonders and the juggernaut will continue to roll forward...