Home
The Homeless Migration
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 111
And now, a few days of nice weather and it's begun, the annual migration of the homeless, and I'm wondering how they all get here and where did they come from? Who stops to pick up someone pushing 2 shopping carts filled to the brim with trash, or someone spattered in blood and feces and with the classic opioid stoop?
It kills me because the town can barely afford to feed it's own homeless contingents, the year 'rounders, the locals, without these hundreds of new arrivals. But spring is here and summer not to far behind...
Nostalgia...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 140
Scrolling through old photos to put together banners for the site, there are a lot of old photos. In my Google acct. there are thousands, on my phone as well.
I come to the old photos, Son, as a child, well dressed, on my shoulders, baby photos. And the Daughter, cute as ever, and old unrecognizable photos of myself, ...
I have to stop, the time flies and just looking at the photos make years pass. I'm gone in mind for weeks, and when I get back to the present I find only a few short minutes have past.
I have a fear of Nostalgia, of old people that live forever in the "good old days". When you start looking back the void is quick to rise up in front of you...
The same with Music. I generally despise the music of my youth, not because it was bad, but because it was overplayed, hundreds, thousands of times over, stripping it of it's freshness, novelty, associations, because it's become the background music to a generation of old bikers and hippies...
That said, I've been listening to Fludd - Cousin Mary, which seems to strike a chord. From here to Led Zeppelin's "House of the Holy", - The Rain Song, followed by Over the Hills and Far Away, and finish with The Ocean, which I don't like so much as admire the way they lightly introduce the drumming and riffs to be found later in Fool in the Rain.
This is of course gold for YouTube, they begin feeding me all sorts of old music, and I hate this, living in the past, and so I switch up and listen to some Michael Kiwanuka - Love & Hate & Cold Little Heart, still in the past, but not so far.
I need to find some contemporary sources for music, these mixes, they're good once in a blue moon, but only once in a blue moon.
It's the same with Facebook, reinforcing what you like, dating you, any chance looks back, clicks on comics you might remember, and it's quick to reinforce it with more, keeps you mired in the old and stale times of yore, confirming all of your worst boomer prejudices...
Although I've been rather off Facebook later, I never was on it for more than the infinite scroll of inanity, and I think I've reached my limit.
But now is the time, in age, to ignore the past, keep walking away from it, ignore it or at best check it in the rearview mirror, or you'll become stalled and stagnant, this probably kills as many people as the broken hip or short falls on slight stairs..
The Alumni of Unspeakable Trauma
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 120
While I'm no longer working there I still get news from the old restaurant. The one in Balfour. That they hired a new chef, brought him out from Cranbrook, moved him into the basement where Sean OD'd, and it took him under a week to discover that he has cancer.
That whole workplace is toxic AF. If anything would give you cancer, this would be it, no doubt.
And that they hired a new waiter, he works doubles all day Thursday and Monday because JR., he has to be in Cranbrook, he's gotten a "Government Job".
They're making lots of promises to this new waiter, he's going to be manager, in charge, everything, it's his show....
I've heard all this before, but the "Government Job" rather intrigues me, and while I have a theory I think it best to confirm...
I call the mother-in-law.
Now we're laughing and sure enough she confirms my suspicion. His "Government Job" is that he's on-call to stock shelves at the Liquor Store 3 days a week. BCLB. This is the "government job" his mom is bragging about.
I'm all for work, it is - for the vast majority of us - inevitable. But you get it. And BCLB - at best - is paying him $20 an hour. When he gets work. But it's important he be available for if and when they call. And he's already planned a summer vacation, so the job, well, he doesn't want it to get in the way...
This should be compared to the fact that even in the "shoulder" season - adding together wages and tips, and he'd be clearing very close to $50 an hour. Enough, in fact, that if he leaned into it he wouldn't even need to collect EI in the winter, he could haul the family off to Mexico and winter there.
Anyways, we're laughing at the absurdity of it all, about how the more shit changes the more it stays the same.
She's got other news related to the family. This is good. What is it?
Well, JR.'s wife has bought a stripper pole. And while I can't say (it's her daughter, after all) I'm thinking they'd better reinforce the ceiling, because there's no way that girl could get 2 feet off the ground under her own power. Maybe if she were on her back, but you don't need a stripper pole for that...
...oh, and she (the daughter) bought a silicon sex doll. Of a woman. They keep it in their bedroom. She's not happy because it's not very good looking...
...and again, you know what I'm thinking, how fucking great is your marriage that you'd rather have a lesbian affair with a Silicon Sex Doll than sleep with your husband, but - and this is the clincher - I get it.
And I'm laughing and laughing so hard, and she's feeding it, more details, absurd, gruesome, and this catch-up-call, it's killing me, and no sooner than I hang up having resolved to make it a weekly thing than I call Cathy - the other Alumni of Unspeakable Trauma, and share with her what I've found out...
Now, time for me to find work so I can afford to take my broke ass back out to Balfour with a bag of popcorn to sit back and enjoy the show...
Cleaning Up the Cherry Orchard...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 78
Another YouTube Channel I most definitely shouldn't subscribe to...
I love how he's working old ground, tailings that have become now an orchard, and it's just the zen walk interrupted to pick up gold nuggets...
Page 15 of 1021