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Everyone going on about the Solar Eclipse yesterday, here in Nelson it was pretty cloudy, but I still managed to snap a couple of good photos...
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The town has become overrun.
Not just this town, everywhere I'm sure, but summer brings them out, and from where I wonder?
Walking home from dinner last night, along Front Street, Past City Hall and the homeless encampment set up there, for the most part the legitimately homeless, people with no other issues other than a want of reasonably priced housing.
And crossing Vernon towards Baker there's a homeless person, shopping cart tipped over in the middle of the street, walk over to help them upright it and reload their possessions...
A new face, although I can't see it, obscured between masses of matted hair, and she's swearing at me "FUCK OFF!! GIVE ME A MINUTE!! JUST GIVE ME A FUCKING MINUTE!!" and my helpful disposition expires, carry on, fuck you you little crackhead.
In the time I try to upright her shopping cart I notice her pants are down to her knees.
The locals, by and large, they're not like this, they're not this degree of sketchy, adversarial, violent, and we have all of that, you can tell summer's coming by the non-stop sirens, and I've asked before where they come from, and why here of all places, but to find out...
Everywhere, the alley behind the liquor store, the parking lot behind share, needles, single-use crack pipes, it's not just this town, it's the country, the world, that largely invisible but growing subset of the disenfranchised, the overlooked, the unhoused, the wedges have been set and the hammer's being pounded and we all pretend that nothing's wrong.
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And, as per the previous post, I unbox a fine stainless steel Bavarian pub-mount corkscrew. Brand new. It's quality, how to price, say $20.00, put it on the shelf.
Later in the morning a box comes in, full of that dirty pressed-crystal, vases, canape and olive plates, straight into the garbage, we get so much of this, hundreds of pounds of it per day, it never sells, none of it. Even the finer cut crystal is a hard sell, can't give that stuff away.
But in with the garbage there's another freestanding corkscrew, with a price - $5.00 still on it, my handwriting, I remember this from last spring or fall...
On a hunch I check, the fine stainless Bavarian Corkscrew has sold, somebody is organized, bought the clearly better one, re-donated the old one. Garbage in, Garbage out.
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4 days last week, keeping up with the flow of garbage so we don't get backlogged. And doing pretty good until Friday, when I went in and discovered some 30 large UHAUL boxes, an older lady slipped on the ice at Wal-Mart, brought to Kelowna to be with her family. So her estate was packed up, all of it, no room in the home for it all. And what a lot of shit she had.
Baking pans, maybe 50 counting muffin tins, all in good shape, some used once if at all. Every conceivable kitchen appliance. A hundred electric labour saving carrot slicers, radish dicers, cucumber spiralizers, blenders, mixing bowls, coffee mugs, brand new in the case, quality shit, for sure it'll sell, only, only we already have a hundred more just like them on the shelves.
And so it goes, and I'm wondering, how does one person have so much kitchen shit? I mean, how many baking pans do you need? And gadgets, do-dads, what-nots, many never even used, straight from the Wal-Mart to us...
I'm talking it over with a friend, baffled by this consumerism without end, and she explains it well. That as the Matriarch with everything she's probably stumped her kids, grand-kids, great-grand-kids for gifts, what to get the person with everything, and so the things she once liked are repeated endlessly without end, the inanity of custom demanding acknowledgement of every anniversary, birthday, Xmas, and so it piles up and up..
And yesterday, watching the cars pull up and unload their shit, more shit, more shit, boxes and boxes of stuff that will buy a little time on our shelves before heading for the landfill...
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For those of you not paying attention, Ethan Crumbley was the Oxford, Michigan student who killed 4 students and wounded another 7 in a schoolyard shooting. Prosecutors later sought to hold the parents responsible.
Link here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/oxford-school-shooting-ethan-crumbley-parents.html
And here: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/03/us/crumbley-parents-michigan-shooting-prosecutors-sentence/index.html
Note the phrases "Chilling Lack of Remorse" and "Threatened Prosecutors".
Ethan Crumbley was the victim of incredibly negligent and indifferent parents. His mother too busy swinging with strangers to heed his pleas for mental help, his parents instead "placating" him by buying him a gun.
***
This is long overdue. While there are "Bad Seeds", Children who despite the best of parenting grow up to be murderers and monsters, this is the exception, not the rule. And just as those dog-owners who allow their animals to maul, maim and kill innocent children and elderly people, they should be held culpable. Ethan Crumbley was more a victim and his parents were the villains.
***
This case reminds me of the 2019 manhunt for Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod, the two young men who murdered 3 people across Northern BC, disappeared, and were found dead after an intense manhunt across 4 provinces.
You can read the details here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/northern-bc-murders-ito-1.5401732
And watch the interview with Kam McLeod's father here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HGJWr_Ycis
It doesn't take long to realize how this situation developed. Again, the fact that the young men were guilty of atrocities does not diminish the fact they were also victims of appalling parenting that should in some ways be held accountable.
But accountability is an idea so far beyond the pale of our judicial system it doesn't bear mention.
Subcategories
Dating
OK. I've been on a few internet dates. I confess this with the same reluctance I would admitting to masturbating, adultery, or excessive drinking and drug use.
This is a list of some of my best -- AND WORST -- dates ever. Note that you gotta go on a lotta dates to get this kinda list, this kinda discouraged. And my online dating thing has been sporadic - an every few years kind of thing at best. Some of these dates go back 10 years, others are a little more recent. And to answer any people who might argue "It beats hooking up at the bar", well, you don't have to hook up at the bar, and at the bar you can see what your getting...
Anyways - apologies to the countless normal, decent dates that I went on but just didn't hit it off with. Memory is selective, it tends towards the extreme, and in this you will find the extremes...
Dear Osama
In which I write everyone's favorite advice columnist.
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