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Clown School
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 733
I thought I'd blogged about her before, searching the blog, apparently not.
So I'll tell you about this person, famous local personage whom everyone knows and whom I met shortly after moving to the area. Maybe before I moved to the area, on one of my frequent trips, coming via the ferry to Nelson in my old Volvo 240 DL. Best car ever, although not so good for prospecting...
Anyways, a rainy May long weekend, coming from the Balfour terminal towards Nelson and what should I pass but a Circus Clown. Genuine. Bona Fide. Giant Clown suit, oversized clown shoes, clown make-up, tiny umbrella. There's no way I'm not picking her up. The only thing that could make this better would be a bloody hatchet in her free hand, but - you take what you can get and I've learned to compromise.
Pull over, she puffs over and tries to get in, once, bounces out, twice, bounces out, third time's a charm. Turns out the Clown suit is a tight fit.
Drive towards Nelson. We chat, she introduces herself, explains the clown suit. I didn't ask, didn't think it polite, you see a lot of way out outfits out here, but I'm just straight enough she thinks it necessary.
So she's a clown, off on her way to do some clowning.
Now, having lived here a few years I recognize her as a local personage, she's quit clowning and tried politics (a natural evolution I've come to recognize), still pass her once a week in town or on the highway.
Anyways, long story short - this isn't the clown I'm talking about.
No, this is about the Valley Shaman. Friend's told me about him before, I'm pretty sure I know who she means - I mean, how many Shaman can there be in the Valley, but - as it turns out - you'd be surprised. So the Shaman had been invited to her workplace to do a cleansing. Lots of Shaman stuff. Sage, smudging, dowsing, pegs thrown down in corners, rocks, chanting, drumming, more dowsing, minor pyrotechnics. Friend is impressed. How could you not be?
Anyways, friend is discussing Shaman with co-worker, who - as it turns out - knows him. Co-worker is not the person in the first story above.
- "Yeah, me and '....(shaman)', we graduated from Clown school together back in...."
And I'm thinking. You know what I'm thinking. How many clowns are there out here?
Star Trek - TNG
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 788
So on one of the TV's at work the last few days they've been playing a marathon of Star Trek - TNG.
I was never really a fan, never owned a TV and so missed it when it first came out and was popular and had to endure it when other people had it on.
Now's my chance to catch up and see what all the fuss was about. Only the TV's in the restaurant, we don't play them with volume or Close Captioning, I'll just have to figure it out, and given that I'm forever to and fro (the nature of service) this isn't working so good for me.
Never mind, I can figure it out.
Watch it. I can see why I never got into it. The authority of Jean Luc Picard undermined by his ridiculous "strut of authority" - arms stationary at side as he walks about bridge, planets - wherever. WTF? It looks unnatural. Riker's "Devastating" good lucks and wholesome close ups, that dumb ass empath and the prodigal young Wesley Crusher. My God I dodged a bullet.
Still, not much going on in the afternoons and so I make a note of what's going on on screen and when I go for a cigarette ask Ken.
"Ken, There's a dead Picard lying on a table and a live Picard standing over him and Councilor Troy has just entered the room..."
- "That's episode ... where Picard has to time travel to save then Enterprise and then kill himself to avoid violating the time-space continuum..." Ken explains.
I'm in awe. I was lighthearted in my testing of his fandom but he's rising to the test. I try him again several times:
"Ken, a bunch of people are trying to talk to this crystal..."
- "That's the episode where they meet the Crystalline Entity and are introduced to Data's evil twin, Lars...."
"Ken, Wesley is getting in trouble for getting off the Holodeck wet..."
- "That's the "Encounter at Farpoint..."
He gets them all. I get increasingly vague in my descriptions, with things like:
"The Enterprise is circling a green planet"...
- "They used that footage for a number of episodes. Give me a minute..." and he come out, glances at the TV, the scene has changed and quickly summarizes the plot.
I get emotional:
"Ken, Ken, Picard has just died" or "Wharf is getting mad" and "How did that darned Wesley Crusher get to be so smart!!??" and it excites him to come out from the kitchen and see what the fuss is about, update me as to the episode and plot.
The man is a genius in all trivial things...
Kootenay Weatherman
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 1268
The app on my phone, it tells me it's sunny, 20 degrees. Meanwhile there's a gale force wind whipping up the lake, mangling the pagodas, tearing up the umbrellas.
Check the app on your phone again. Oh, now it's updating, rain.
Every day, the forecast dictating where I'll be working, the forecast off - invariably - by an average of 10 degrees above or below the target.
You want to know the weather? Look at your phone - then take your best guess. Whatever it is it won't be that.
Alberta
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 1222
The Kootenays, under lockdown, 6, 8 weeks now? I don't know. It's been forever. Everywhere the signs tell you: "Essential Travel Only" and "Stay Local".
Most of us oblige. But it's hard. Especially when you see the Alberta plates everywhere. The lockdowns, they apply to everyone but them.
Alberta, Alberta...
Covid numbers double ours. Everywhere, it's always a result of government - the more regressive/conservative your government, the higher your numbers.
And Alberta, it's not as if it was an 8 party system, where the tyranny of the minority won with 15% of the popular vote, no, a clear majority of you voted for Jason Kenney,
Heinreich Cumschwiller Kenney. How many voted? 54.88% majority, less the 1% raping the rest of you - so 53.88 percent of you thought things would get better with this ass-clown in charge? I'm being kind.
Truly the cuts to education have paid off.
Alberta, Circle-jerk of ranchers and oilmen, darkened back rooms filled with cigar smoke, enter Kenney in his best bondage gear, an oily black PVC catsuit gifted him from his equally erudite and well educated friend Ted Cruz.
Concerned about abortion? How is that an issue when all you can do is butt-fuck the very people that voted and work for you?
And how.
The UCP, like the Conservative Party, only with more swastikas - left gets in, not because people like the left, only because they want to punish the right, then next election counter by swinging more right - "We'll be just like the old Conservative Party, only with more Swastikas..." And Alberta, always, will vote for the clown with the biggest belly and nose. It's a tradition.
Kenney, rewriting the Alberta Curriculum to highlight his families role in the province, he is making himself king...teach the students about Jazz Legend Grandpa Kenney... about the Famous Impressionist Grandma Kenney, About the Titanic Victim Jack Kenney who drowned while making room on the raft for his other Grandmother Rose DeWitt Kenney, about Easter and how it celebrates Great Grandpa "Jesus" Kenney's persecution at the hands of his political opponents, what year, what country is this?
Nevermind, it's Alberta.
Alberta, birthplace of Ted Cruz the prodigal son that never returned, went off into the world and did well for himself, a source of pride, "The one that got away" most Albertans think to themselves, better looking, better groomed than Trump, and sharing all of their own homespun values.
And Kevin J. Johnston - a contender for Calgary Mayor, why can't he take his talents to the Provincial Level? Clearly the man's an intellectual - and represents faithfully the Alberta ideology - shouldn't Kenney bring him into the cabinet? Offer him a role more suited to his talents and ability?
On the Ferry, 6:30 AM, the Ferry's full, we're the only 2 BC Plates. Everyone else is Alberta. Driving our economy during Covid when even the locals are requested to stay home, rioting it up in Nelson (link here: https://www.castanet.net/news/BC/330033/Kootenays-restaurant-closes-for-long-weekend-after-being-overwhelmed-by-rude-tourists), work, it's scaring me.
Here on "Essential Business" involving a dozen mountain bikes obscuring their license plate, Kayaks cluttering their car rooves, feeling free to share their "Pandemic is a hoax" theory with any local trapped within earshot.
How badly do I want to go back to work?
And most people polite, kind, but the Albertans, you can always tell, coming in with t-shirt pinched over their noses, "Do you need a mask?", and "Can we eat inside?", and waiting in a hostile stance at the door to inform me that they want to come in at 10 minutes to close because "Your website says you're open until 9:30". I don't know if it still does, but these people, they're attitude - the Alberta Attitude, The Karen's come calling, it's trying my patience.
An anti-mask rally draws thousands, yet you can't even protest Kenney? Does it never cross your mind to flush the toilet? These people - every member of the UCP - need to tarred and feathered and run out of town. No - it's time. There's an exemplary side to both Justice and Politics. This is it. The tar, think of it as the hot-latex that you all wear in the back rooms, the lather of hot-spicy-capitalist "Most Certainly Straight" sex, sprinkled with Chicken feathers, a homage to all the hard-working poultry farmers.
Alberta, Alberta, rarely even rising to the level of incompetence, "not even wrong", to be wrong you'd have to have understood the question, instead, you deflect it, change it, change the topic, make "Health" about the economy, make the pandemic political.
At war with a cartoon bigfoot and not a single fucking advisor suggested that - well - really? Haven't we got bigger concerns? Maybe bigfoot is right? I agree- I've seen the picture - he's an affront to good taste and grooming - but - that doesn't seem to be where you're taking offense.
Alberta, Alberta.
Gas to Coal - what's next? Stone tools? Banana farms? Sabre-toothed tiger hunting safaris? Kenney, the future hope of all Albertans....Leader of the Regressive Conservatives, The - next to Ted Cruz - epitome of Alberta Culture and education.
You know the Albertans here, their cottages, you know them, they chop all the trees down so they can see the trees. The level out the mountains so they can see the levelled mountains. They won't be happy until everything is like home. Cheap vinyl sided subdivisions, - no taste restrictions in effect - and - what was an eyesore everywhere you looked out past Bearspaw and Cochrane is here doubly so.
But - good news just in - Alberta will be fully open in time for Stamped and Klondike Days. Whew. Maybe that will keep y'all home.
Wow. Alberta. Alberta.
Home of the rich rig-pigs who flew back to their vinyl-clad Shangri-La's to discover their vacuous blonde trophy wives cheating, divorcing, taking up Yoga or Exercise, weren't the 3 snowmobiles, 2 F150's, 4 ATV's, enough? Are you really missing the fucking 16 hour days in the oil patch where you had to fucking snort coke all the live long day because - really - that's the only thing that fucking made life worth living? Alberta, living proof that you can have too much of a good thing.
Newspapers that stopped reporting, relied on the Police to report on their policing, the city to report on their debates and policies, the provincial government to advise them of policy, newspapers that forgot about journalism, analysis, facts, all in favor of "OP-ED", shallow criticism of the party in power because we want to be seen as being controversial or independent but we don't want to give offense or they'll stop feeding us news. Newspapers who's only use is to line puppy cages - you wouldn't read one if your life hinged on it, couldn't, you'd gag at the nonsense they publish, fucking rip up you're kindergarten diploma, what was the point if this is all the nonsense they feed you.
I didn't agree with everything Notley did either - but it was clear she was trying, and working in the best interests of the people. When was that not enough? When did you decide you'd rather have a limp-dicked self-serving cuck as your premier? Although - to be fair - he does represent an awful lot of you...
Alberta, Alberta - where every day, every headline is an "April Fools", only - only it isn't. With Trump out of the way we can look closer to home, and - rest assured - Q-Anon's got nothing on you. Shame.
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