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Prison
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2487
A local mafia boss is in for a "meeting", is just out of prison, a 7 year sentence for conspiracy to murder, loan sharking, various organized crime related offenses...a proper stereotypical Italian.
His time, he's nonplussed, he's had lots of day paroles, supervised releases, he's been in the restaurant with his wife and kids, prison, meh, it's no big deal he tells us, he's got his own suite, the guards are all on his payroll, he gets what he wants, when he wants it, it's business as usual just he's not getting as much of the old conjugal privilege as he'd like...
This tallies surprisingly with what I'd heard from others. My father had always advised against my going to prison, I'd had some vague plans to try it out and see what it was all about, I'm old enough now that the possibility of being made somebodies bitch isn't a concern...but these testimonies, they positively recommend it...
Hitchhiking, outside of Drumheller, outside the penitentiary, 3 hours in the blistering heat before I get a ride. 3 hours in the fucking desert and I'm basically hallucinating and feverishly thinking I'll have to catch two headed lizards and eat them to survive...when finally...
I gotta like the guy, I mean, he's the first person to stop (not just slow down and tell me it was a dumb place to be hitchhiking...), and he's going half my way. We talk, my age, he'd done a few years in the Pen back there, he's built, a big boy, 60 pounds on me easy, he'd done his time for dealing, was a family man now, reformed, still, we talked and he told me how it wasn't so bad, wasn't bad at all, really, he had his own space, made money buying and reselling foodstuffs & tobacco, guards on the lookout for the surprise inspections, only regret that he missed the birth of his twin sons...
Now he's reformed, mended his ways, repentant, the first example meanwhile has (according to him) merely honed his skills and expanded his social network, and I wonder, what was the point?...
Do good by stealth...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Quotes
- Hits: 1851
“Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.” — Alexander Pope
Bushmaster 2012
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2489
In the earliest days of my prospecting adventures I invented the Bushmaster 2012. A sluice box of sorts, consisting of layers of screen mesh overlaid weeping tile...
Poorly assembled out of duck tape, found timber, etc, it was the best I could do. I'd counselled a female friend, who promised an abundance of power tools, upon showing up to avail myself of them I discovered that most of them seemed to involve "AA" and "AAA" batteries. Oooops. Clearly I had misread the situation. Nonetheless, with hammer and nails and a bit of savoir-faire, the Bushmaster 2012 was assembled...
Despite appearances, it actually worked pretty good, collecting the fine gold out of the Athabasca River, problems I later ran into involved having to completely destroy the box to recover the fine gold from the weeping tile (really, in the end, not a big deal, but it lacked practicality), and the fact that while the gold accumulated in the weeping tile, the diamonds would just slide right off of the screen mesh. Probably I lost millions.
First attempts, not bad, but not good when analyzed in terms of re-usability or the recovery of things other than fine gold...
Of Castles & White Cobras
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 2201
I'm the king of a castle at the North end of a remote mountain lake, large, several stories, stone, it's at the end of a long road...
And I've received word that there's going to be an insurrection, and so I'm packing my things to flee, at first, only a dinghy, I'll follow the lake down into the wilds, but then I realize that their the wilds for a reason, there's nothing down there, and so I take the car, pack the dinghy into the trunk, and then I realize I have no money for gas, a castle with no money? and I think there must be a treasure some where I should be able to dig up...
Fuck it. I know who's behind this, and I go to his house in a rage...a suburban house, windows, portly wife, it's the middle of the night and I'm banging on the door, go around the back, break the windows to let myself in, the Councillor, he want to know who it is, his portly wife, she's offering me some shepherds pie...
...And now, walking up the shore of the lake I'm passed by a white blur, too quick it whips along the rocks, and when it stops I see it's a magnificent, pure white garter snake with pale grey markings and pink dots, perhaps 6 feet in length, I try to pick it up but it flares it's head, turns in my hand, I let it go, fumble with my phone to take a picture, for my father, we'd been discussing how snakes have been disappearing, another one appears, the same size and colors, but different markings, I recognize it as the female of the species, the first one's mate, they're both sunning themselves on rocks, I'm trying to get a picture, but my camera is loaded with dumb games, stupid software, I can't find the camera app, I didn't install these, don't know who did, the only solution is to reboot the phone into safe mode and restore it...
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