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Mr. Tickles in Ymir
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 353
And I hear from Mr. Tickles, who's been wintering in Ymir and whom I haven't heard of nor seen in the long wintry 6 months since we parted in October.
He's doing well, as well as can be expected, on his way back from Balfour to Ymir, his car, parked at the Superette all winter now driven across the highway to be fixed since last years accident, and we catch up.
He'd dropped by the restaurant to say hi, they offered him his job back, he could live in the basement, Sean's old apartment, no thanks. He hasn't got work. Ymir - well, he's refrained from meeting the locals, hasn't gotten work, although he got a few months more EI than I had available, largely due to the fact that he'd worked a couple of months at the local dive bar before being fired for being too white.
It happens. East Indians would prefer to work with East Indians, and our government only recognizes discrimination by white people, not against them.
Ymir, not even 250 people, 30 KM SE of Nelson, not much going on in Ymir. So a long winter for him. He's never left all winter. We reminisce about old times, about all the grief I used to give him and all his little trainees, the young 14, 15, 16 year old girls and boys who's first job happened to be that cesspool of a ...
He misses working with me and knowing that wherever he finds work next it's not going to be anywhere near as amusing...
We talk, about how the old restaurant, the new chef got cancer and quit within 2 weeks. A coincidence? I don't think so.
And about old servers and kitchen staff we knew, news, where available, and asking of a few of the more infamous locals, he has news on one, the crackhead who contacted me to borrow money last fall, set up a go-fund-me to get to Calgary, she's got an Only Fans, and I'm like...?? Her and a few others I know, apparently.
And he's met the new waiter, thought I'd be back there, looked for my puppets behind the bar, no puppets, no Rod, and he was perhaps as surprised I wasn't back as I am that he isn't going back.
We're both overdue for employ, but not at that price.
And we chat the other restaurant, the dive bar, run by a MAGA couple, "managed" you might say only there's nothing approaching management, just the village idiot and his wife calling the shots, him, from a pint of beer at the end of the bar (which entitles him to an equal share in the tips, because somehow he feels he's doing "equal work"), and his wife, who just installed a new camera/microphone/speaker system behind the bar, so she can "manage remotely" and I've heard from staff that her voice will appear out of nowhere, she's on her phone at the Wal-Mart or Dairy Queen checking the cameras, and you know that not only that this is creepy as fuck it's also a big sign that neither of them knows what the fuck they are doing.
Camera's, technology, surveillance, all this technology enables people, restaurants, that are bad at their job to be even worse at their jobs. Who ever heard of "remotely managing" a restaurant? Oh, and she's as well doing "equal work" and claiming her share of the tips, despite weeks going by without a single employee seeing her face. We're both Alumni of Unspeakable Trauma, and despite coming from one of the poorest run joints on the planet there's always competition by those who manage to do it worse.
So, this catches me up with Mr. Tickles, Cathy now is back from California and I'm due to catch up with her, soon, and I'll write about that when it happens...
Kelly Shpeley
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Other
- Hits: 473
A local artist of some considerable talent, showing now at the Cantina on Baker.
View more of her work here: https://kellyshpeley.com/previous-work
She'd be an interesting person to meet, were it not for the fact I'd probably enquire about rhyming her first and last name and that would not endear me...
OF Wasp nests and Jellyfish on Kootenay Lake
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 898
I'm walking on the shore of Kootenay Lake with JR (the infamous son of the last restaurant I worked in...). It's a beautiful day, the sun is bright and trees hang their branches over the sandy shore. JR, he's finding these little grey paper wasp nest submerged in the lake, just beneath the surface, and he's telling me that sometimes wasps survive the freezing of the lake (?), and he's taking them out and gently hanging them from trees, and I'm wondering why?
I'm walking in the water, noticing strings of algae, when one begins to move, pulsate, and I recognize that it's some form of jellyfish, and there's another one, clearer, transparent, with tentacles like an octopus...
(Dreams lately restless and largely inexplicable)
Ethan Crumbley's Fine Parents
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 579
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.
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