60 blocks for poverty services, after walking that much the day before, and then that much again, and again… Keep on running homeless ratboy !!!!

So I finally find a welfare office.
They’ve made it almost impossible to find them in the phone book.
And I’ve been sent to a “employment training program”
over 60 blocks from where I stand outside the welfare office.
The Social services is on willow and 8th
I’ve been told I have to go to 38th and Victoria

I’m on foot, homeless, undernourished, in need of sleep, wet….
and I have to get 60 blocks further by 2 pm tomorrow.

between here and there are a number of hills, I’m pushing my belongings,
I still haven’t had a shower, I was given no information at the welfare office about where to get a meal, clothes, shower, or any other services for the homeless
I have my dog, my guitar, and my cart with my sleeping bag, dog food etc.
I also have a bad knee.
My Anterior Crucial Ligament is stretched from a ski accident 15 years ago, and working heavy jobs in Audio Visual Presentation where I was pushing half ton carts of drape over carpet has torn it further over the years.
There’s a bunch of munged up cartilage in there.
I specifically told the social worker about my fucked up knee, and the fact that I have other serious medical issues for which I have to go downtown for Tuesday.
Downtown is the opposite direction from where I’m being sent.

and I have to walk 60 blocks.

To an area where I can’t play my guitar for a few coins and there isn’t much else and nowhere to stay.
On broadway I could make a few extra dollars a day playing my guitar.
Where I’m going isn’t a neighborhood for busking.
I could play for hours and only make a toonie there.

Why isn’t it next to the welly office, or closer to civilization?
Or why don’t they have a van to pick people up, since they service HOMELESS people who usually are pushing their belongings.

I’m pretty sure when I get there, I won’t be offered a bowl of soup, a change of clothes, a dry spot to park my cart and rest, or a shower. Somehow I doubt there will be any services near there and I’ll be given a little piece of paper that tells me where to go for a shower/food etc. and that paper will point me right back to the area I just came from.

as of 11 am I’m only halfway there in the pouring rain, and I started at 7:30 on my journey.

I’m probably the only one who sees something wrong with this picture. To me this seems like a human rights atrocity.

But in a country that doesn’t keep poverty statistics for fear the world will see the true picture, being given the runaround for poverty services is the norm.

So.
I finally made it.
60 blocks slogging through the rain.
Cart, dog, guitar, slogging away through the pain in my knee, which is swollen now.
Nowhere near here is ther a place to get a daily meal.
There’s no shower services for the homeless anywhere near here.
I’m 100 blocks away from where I need to go for my medical appointment on Tuesday.
There’s nowhere around this facility to park my stuff and crash.
The neighborhood is all Asian.
Culturally, as a demographic, Asian peoples are not receptive to busking.
It’s not part of their culture. Most here are speaking native tongues.
Bob Dylan and U2 are not going to fly on the street here, and I really don’t know any J-Pop off the top of my head. Not sure it would work on an acoustic anyway.
There is nowhere to crash on the streets, the sidewalks are narrow.
The parks have few trees and bushes.

The people here don’t even have my information from the ministry.
I have an MCSE and a CCNA, so I don’t think their “basic computer skills” course is going to be of benefit for me.

Looks like I’m fucked.
and I have to return to the office where I signed up for Social Services to bring more paperwork in next week.

My knee is swollen.

They have nice computers and printers here.
There’s almost no one here. Clients I mean.
Good place to be for computer use, if I had a home.
Supposedly they’re good at finding one.

She raises her eyebrows.
“well, we try…”
So what did I get?
NO information on free meals
year and a half old info on places for shelter
3 tinsof sardines, some crackers, a bottle of water, and a cellphone
for GPS tracking of the homeless my undernourished mind “paranoically” thinks, but then again, pop the battery out and it becomes disabled.

All in all, they didn’t have a clue where service were.

Yet 4 days later at “The Kettle”, a mental health poverty services centre that’s full of people on venables at commercial, I got a full list of clothes, shelters, food banks, etc. within 3 minutes of entering, an hour later I was given some fruit and a decent sandwich, a change of clothes, and with an onsite nurses recommendation, laundry and a shower. I can’t eat there often though because I’m not a mental health care recipient, they helped me out though. If you have some spare time or money you should consider helping them out.

Who would take my crazy rantings serious at all if I signed up for mental health services. Hmmm. Crazy is the new burning pyre in many societies. Waas Nietsche really mad for a while? Or maybe people didn’t like what he had to say.

I’ve been thinking about Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris”.
He probably ended up there because he was rocking the boat, and it was only after his works became more widely read that they couldn’t continue to suppress his mind. Hunger paranoia again I suppose.

On Wednesday I went to the Three Bridges Clinic.
An additional 100 blocks later. On my wrecked knee.
My tire on my little dolly blew out going away from the original place I was sent to. So I hiked to 3 Bridges with a pack of my belongings.
More weight on my messed up knee.
I got no medical assistance there. My second visit. 2 visits, no examination, oops, times up Mr. Taylor, please schedule another appointment. Condescension and smirking from the doctors for the smelly half mad homeless fuck who “thinks” he’s intersexed, with no examination.
No specialist referral for my knee. No examination of my extra bits. No to my other health problems. McMedicine at it’s finest.

And when I left the doctors office, my guitar, my source of income, was gone.
3 Paladin McSecurity guards gobbling about like plump idiot hens, 2 security cameras operating fine, but apparently only reserved for “crimes”
And me with no medical problems addressed, and no guitar to make money for food for the rest of the month.

36 hours without food later, another 40 blocks walking, and there I was at the Kettle, food in my stomach, a nurse with no smirking condescension on her face actually listening to my health issues and making arrangements to get something done.

They are trying to destroy people at the bottom, I firmly believe,

I’m almost certain I’ll be dead soon now.
But at least I’m clean and I’ve eaten, thanks to the Kettle, the only place I’ve seen that has it right, everything in one location, for people with no cars to zip around with.

Funny eh?
Frothing mad idiot homeless man has to arrange a dogsitter now for his interview tomorrow at UBC Health Sciences Learning Institute for a Q/A Analyst position. Wonder how a homeless loser manages that eh?

At least the clothes I’ve worn for two weeks are clean, even though a T-shirt of Shiva is not really the best interview clothes.
I really should go barefoot. My shoes reek.

I guess they would, I estimate I’ve walked over 40 miles in the last 2 weeks with an 80+ lb load and a dog. I should throw away the heavy tarp I guess, but it works as a tent when the sky piss comes down.

What a great life we have in Canada.

I’m writing a new version of the Canadian anthem as I go. I’ll share it with you if I survive to finish it.

I’m sure I’ll have lots more to add to this thread.

Gang member or RCMP – hmmmmmm…..

Being an RCMP seems to pay well.
Too bad you can’t be a pothead, or I might consider

“Academy Graduate: $46002.00. annual
Top Pay: $74538.00. annual
The RCMP pays Overtime and Shift Differential for working during other then business hours. The RCMP will also pay for up to $1200.00 in post secondary education every year.”

Being a gang member pays a lot more though, at least if you believe the movies, and the bling all around you on the streets. You can definately be a pothead and join a gang.

Too bad I’m such a non conformist.

I’d end up telling the big cheese to suck my dick and find myself floating in the straight with concrete shoes. Or be surrounded by the bodies of my “homies”.
Depending on whether or not I had my coffee that day.

My advice for young people graduating in Canada

Young person, fresh faced and ready to take on the “thriving” Canadian job market,
listen close:

If your tongue is long and you lick ass well, you’ll be rewarded well.
If you LOVE working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, you will thrive.
If you don’t care that you are paying over 80% of your wage just on rent, utilities, transportation, and food, you will be happy.
If being a meat-robot is a primary goal in your life, you’re set.
If you can stomach being a whore and selling your ass for money, this current economy in Canada is designed to to make you one, so just go with it if you’re of that type.

If none of that appeals to you, be smart.
Avoid going to university and getting into debt for more than you will make over the next 10 years.

You’ll be better off in Canada if you:

Join a gang and work hard for your organized crime boss

Grow pot. Its not very dangerous, and you’ll have money and pot to smoke. The cops will steal it from you if they can so hide it well. Don’t be a schmuck, do it right. Nobody likes kife weed.

Sell any other drug. It pays better than McDick’s. Try not to stoop to crack, but hey, money is money.

Steal from rich people. May sure you get their PIN if you beat the crap out of them.
Try not kill them, but remember, they want you dead if you’re not in the same class as them. So have at it.

Steal from large faceless corporations at any opportunity, even if you have to smack a lock or two to make off with da goods. Security guards are warrior pawns, sad to say, so whack em before they get that talkie squelching.

Lie to all people in authority or higher classes when they ask if you are a devout servant of their GOD. Say yes. Try not to believe the bullshit coming out of your mouth. When they bow to pray hit them over the head and take their wallet.

Destroy all hummers and porsche vehicles you see. If you want to show off your “bling” drive something old and cool and tricked out. Keying is second best to destruction.

Give money to buskers and wandering wizards. The ghost of Robin Hood will bless you.

You’ll be so much better off if you start selling drugs right out of high school.

Being a whore fucks up your head. It’s better to be a pimp or pimpette.

Try not to get too high on your own supply. It’s better to have variety so trade with your competitors. Remember to say hello to their little friends. It’s the polite thing to do.

sing Happy Fucking Birthday to me while you resolve to follow my good advice.

More amazing quotes from the masters…

They dedicate their lives to running all of hisHe tries to please them all, this bitter man he isThroughout this life the same, he's battled constantlyThis fight he cannot win. A tired man they see...no longer cares.The old man then prepares to die regretfullyThat old man here is me.

- J. Hatfield

"Ours is the age, that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to".- M. Jones

These are dangerous daysTo say what you feel is to dig your own grave...-S. O'connor

Revolution in their minds - the children start to marchAgainst the world in which they have to liveAnd all the hate thats in their heartsThey're tired of being pushed aroundAnd told just what to doThey'll fight the world until they've wonAnd love comes flowing through- O. Osbourne

Artists and writers, creatives that I like…

So in this post, which I’ll add to every once in a while, I’m going to put the better links to works by creative artists I admire in all mediums.

There’s a lot of them, but I want to link to sites with better quality images and biographies, so I’ll add to it slowly.

Johfra Bosschart

H.R. Giger

Hieronymus Bosch

The list will grow I promise, but back to my job search…

The Sentence

I’m writing on paper….
devouring trees.

Newspaper I read,

scavenging
scraps of information,
I throw it down,
pick up another,

Sit on my oak chair, at my ash table…

Wood,
so beautiful,
it’s bones laid bare.

Many times I have killed trees as they spoke,
they never finished their sentence,
and I’m reading this sentence.

Maybe I can write smaller,
use it again,

Maybe I can burn a log slower,

or put it out with white bleach poisoned water.

I can sit on a stump
in a vast plain of tree-bones,
no shade in sight,

only a spectre.

from “A Voice of Dissent”
-C. Taylor

Good for Nothing

Good for Nothing

-C. Taylor

Unsightly,
isn’t it ?

This ragged man,
holes in his clothes
burning your pride

with his scribbled words about
injustice

and hunger,
amidst plenty.

Why can’t he just shut up and be happy ?

Not everyone can be well off

he should serve coffee,
or gas

not hurt people
with visions

of the scars of the world.

“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover”,
he’s saying,

“my mind burns

like the sun,

and my soul touches

the blood of this earth,

rock that moves like water…”

How can we believe
his crazy rantings,

he is only a bum,
good for nothing.

———————-
From the book
“The Butcher’s Block: Poems of Poverty”
by Chris Taylor
————————-

Stargate Atlantis – Why I left and what happened to me there…

“No one gets left behind….”
right.
So its 6 months later,
I still don’t have any work
broke and homeless

My buddy tells me to keep my mouth shut,
“You’ll never work in the Vancouver film scene again!”
he exclaims.

Like I fucking care.

I never worked in film in Vancouver before,
each company I sent and received work to while I was at Atlantis has posted a position since I left, and I didn’t get a phone call, never mind an interview.
Blackballed for sticking up for myself.

despite knowledge, skill, talent, ability, creativity, efficiency…

1.
The Starry eyed hopeful Techie gets shafted

So I get this call. A gig in TV.
Sounds good. The dude likes the fact that I know Lightwave, even though the position is “VFX IO”

I agree to come on board at a ridiculously lowballed starting wage.
I had asked for $3500 a month.
I got offered $500 a week, with it going up to $700 a month later.
That’s before tax BTW.
Shitmoney in an expensive metropolis like Vancougar, but “a foot in the door” I figure, like so many idiots before me.
Multimillion dollar TV show, and I’m being offered $500 a week to do actual technical work that requires brain cells.
10 bucks a fucking hour basically.
To put that in perspective, Production Assistants(coffee gatherers and clipboard holders) make almost $15 plus they get overtime, and janitors at the Bridge facility make over $15 hr.
An actual Editor makes $3k-$4k a WEEK, and an Assistant Editor makes somewhere around $6k-$8k a month. So I’m lowballing when I talk about what a VFX Editor makes.

The guy who hires me isn’t the people I actually work under.
He’s a cool cat, excellent 3D animator and art director type dude, interesting to talk to. A teeny bit uptight and stingy, but hey, that’s what contracted supervisory roles do to people.

So I get to work.
Never had money for a Mac, but I’m a Mac technician as part of my long experience with Network Systems Administration, and a couple of different technical roles in the publishing industry.
I have to get up to snuff on Final Cut Pro.
No problem. I study applications for a living.
Make some nice word documents with all the shortcuts that would be useful laid out in large text, print em off, tape em up all over, and get to it.
Its not like its rocket science. Maybe it is to some people, but I’ve used, studied, and taught the usage of a couple hundred applications in my career.

The HD timeline templates are already in place, its just a matter of tweaking my compression settings and getting proper overlays for timecode in place.

Basically I get a list of VFX shots, broken down into the various separate shots, called elements that together when compositied with special fx make the final shot. I find the elements, set the in and outs for them, output the elements to frame sequences, and organise/package them on removeable disks for the FX vendors who are contracted to take the elements they get from me and put the shot together.

Its called pulling plates. Its what a Visual Effects Editor does.

If a shot comes back and someone needs to compare the last version recieved of the shot with the latest one, or needs to check the footage recieved from the vendors for compression or some other bad fuggum, or needs to look at the various elements and raw footages that make up a shot, they come to me.
I also make log DVD’s of intermediate show “cuts” with frame accurate timecode burned in so the VFX coordinators can “log” the shots, check them for accuracy as to what was requested. The “selects” process of collecting and trimming elements can be over 2000 mouse clicks for one episode if it has a lot of VFX, since a single 4 element shot takes about 18 mouse clicks and 3 cut-pastes

Like I said, it’s basically what a Visual Effects Editor does.
VFX Editors make about $400 a day. I make $500 a week.

There’s always those who talk about learning curves and blah blah blah.
I was up and running in 2 weeks and didn’t even have real shit coming down the pipeline yet when I was ready to go.

In the first month I had all my timecode burns set properly, labels for log dvd’s set and ready, extensive keyboard shortcut tweaking to make “selecting” the elements fast as possible, compression settings to fit full log cuts on a dvd with the highest visual quality and frame accuracy, etc.

I always take my work seriously. I’m a pro at whatever I do. I always streamline processes, and important people actually ask my advice on things. Its always been this way.

So the month goes by, I’ve been kicking ass, what I do is running smoothly, despite the fact that I actually need more ram and a faster pipeline between my two workstations, since things bottleneck fast at HD image sizes, but I’m rocking.

And the $200 raise doesn’t come.

Everyone is busy, these are important people, there is an accounting department, I’m sure it will work out. 3 weeks later I actually have to bother my busy supervisor about the raise, and when it comes through a month later, guess what? I don’t get the $200/week for the month previous.

Someone just put $800 in their pocket and it wasn’t me.

So I choke on it, cause what are you gonna do.

I work the whole of Season 4, and get hired back for Season 5, I guess because I did good work.

But no more raises. I don’t get a single other raise in Season 4, and I get hired back in Season 5 at the same wage.

You see, by changing the name of the position from what it is, to something else, a la “sandwich artist”, the wage of $400 and the film CREDIT that a VFX Editor would get suddenly disappears into someone’s pocket, and the “VFX I/O” is born. Gets around unions, and those credit things add up to big money over time.

Not for me though. Damn my ass is fucking sore from this shit.

I gotta say, the VFX coordinators that I worked with were good laid back people. Post was a bit more snooty on occasion, but mostly positive and nice.

Even the supervisor Mark Savela who reamed my ass with this rip-off wage shit was actually a nice guy to talk to, but still, getting fucked is getting fucked. I guess he made a nice $40k+ bonus in Season 4

So I finally said “Honey, I’m not enjoying this…”

2.
The Experienced Techie Consultant Screwover

I fucking hate this one. It’s the eternal ass-rip. It never ends.

So there I am, Season 5. I have a new office. No raise, but I got a new office of my own and no longer have to share the former broom closet with the IT dude.

One day, in walks a Lead Compositor.
She’s unnamed at this point, but preggo by a good number of months. Nice lady, obsessively compulsive and perfectionist like all good compositors are.

So it’s a hot day, and she walks into my office with a heavy wool jacket all buttoned up. No pregnant woman in her hot flashing right mind would be wearing that on a day like today, and the sweat on her brow isn’t even from the jacket.

She’s nervous. Because she’s been sent on a mission.

You see, this is TV land, where micro miniaturization is only a couple of years behind the early adopters in Spookland. And those fuckers had cameras the size of a pinky way back in the early 70’s.

So she’s got this heavy wool jacket, and it’s covered in camera buttons.

Yeah, that’s what I said, camera buttons. I’m an early adopter of technology and I study surveillance gear for fun. The buttons on the front of her jacket, most are lookalike duds, but the center one is a camera button, and she’s got her hands in her pockets, resting on the baby bulge, so she can steady that camera button and aim it. She’s trying to look like she’s just hanging out asking some simple questions, but she’s not an actress.

You see, on set they have a multimillion dollar camera problem that’s affecting the cost of compositing in the pipeline.

The compositors are getting crappy dirty source footage, and the 2 million dollars per episode “Video Village” truck with it’s team of 4 “professionals” isn’t making it better at all over the last 4 months. That’s quite a few million bux.

So someone, like her boss, has sent her over to my office.

To pick my brain. She makes more than twice as much as me, the other people involved in this nasty video stew shitfest make humungous amounts of cash more than I do, and they’ve sent her to pick my brain.

She’s obviously not happy about and is squirming. Because anyone with 2 or more braincells knows that its a shitty thing to do.

I’ve been in this situation a few times.

Now, you’re probably asking yourself why a bunch of video pro’s with a fancy new HD pipeline would be wanting to pick the brain of a lowly “VFX I/O” who makes $10 an hour.

I’ve said it before and here it comes again.
I’m a professional at almost everything I do. My memory is borderline photographic, my observation and analysis skills are top-notch, and I’ve been studying visual effects since I was 12 years old and first learned how to blow up plastic models with mothballs and gasoline and make planets from painted beach balls with lights inside them.

So.
A consultant would make about 5% of the amount saved by the results of his consultation on a problem. Along with all those big wig producer folks and their golden slaps on the back.

I’m not gonna get those prizes, someone else will, and I know it.
So I look straight at the camera button, watch her squirm a bit more, ask her why she’s asking me. Her boss said I might have some “suggestions”.

$10 bux an hour and I’m being asked for suggestions. I snort derisively while giving the little camera button the evil eye. I bet they had a good laugh when they watched that later.

So we pull up one of the scenes that’s recently been giving her problems.
I look at the footage closely.

Its the central command of a Wraith hive, with a couple of actors playing plastic gun shootemup, and dry ice smoke swirling about. Smoke is a killer for compositors, but I can see almost immediately what’s up.

Smoke moves with a stringy motion caused by “brownian movement”, this has little dots that point to algorithmic manipulation. A program or device has inserted its own approximations into the clip. There is also clear evidence of video gain being used to processes the footage.

I’ve been doin this shit for years.

I ask her some questions about the pipeline, since I’ve never been on set, and I’ve never talked to these particular camera crews, except when I’m having a smoke maybe. I ask a few more questions until I get the full picture.

Pregnant as she is, she refuses to sit down, see she has to get both me and my monitor in the field of view. Pregnant women do not stand for 45 minutes when they can sit. Analysis takes time, and I’m stretching it to see how important this is to her. Damn she’s sweating in that coat.

So I tell her….

First of all, scrap the “Video Village”
I’m paid shit, so I don’t give a fuck about the white collar uptight yuppie fucks who will moan at my suggestions. I’m telling it like it REALLY is and NEEDS to be for the best QUALITY.
Because I’m about quality.

So.
1. Scrap the big truck and the techs.
2. Put the best quality lenses on the HD cams and set all filters OFF and all camera gain to default. Camera gain and filters introduce NOISE. Turn it all off and go with top level optics.
3. Put a dedicated high quality video amplifier directly at the output of the HD cams and connect the P2 drives directly to the high quality amplifier.
4.If the output is digital from the camera, still don’t put anything in the pipeline to the p2, add gain in post
5. Take the P2 footage directly to ingest and do not touch it anywhere between the P2 drive and Ingest.

She asked me “why?” at a number of points. I gave her my scientific explanations. I gave her comments gleaned by long conversations with HD cameramen , tech geeks, and editors at smoke breaks and coffeeshops

And that’s all I get out of it. A thank you. A big fuck you techie.
Damn my ass hurts.

I thought about it later.
The reason for the Video Village, is the same reason that recording artists are forced to use recording facilities owned by their record companies.
It’s all about the money flow.
Save a bunch of money on this and that, switching to digital let’s say, and suddenly there is a big wad of cash sitting there. The head company has to find a way to get that money out of Canada, so they send up the Video Village. It’s not REALLY there to do anything at all, except to make sure that 2 million dollars per episode goes straight down to the states, instead of remaining in Canada and circulating in the Canadian economy.

3. Alchoholics, Weedheads, Powderheads and Hypocrites

So this lead Editor and Production Manager are telling me about
The Old Days
plates of coke held under their nose by Directors
So they can keep editing while they snort
Free. Piles of it. Just keep the slicer rolling and churn it out.

The Old Days.
Hmmm.

This is the bloody movies.
Vancouver sells itself as the little Canadian lap dog
starting to get big
Big names on the screen.
Tell me there’s no blow.
Seriously tell me about multi millionaire stars coming to Vancouver to shoot
And tell me they go cold turkey while they’re here

Fucking bullshit.
That’s part of why I hate that Intervention show so much
The film industry has been hand in glove with drugs since its earliest forms

Don’t get me wrong, I LIKE drugs.
I think they should all be legal
the only thing that should ever matter
is are you being a dick.

3/4 of any film crew in Canada are serious alcoholics
Like drink a 26′er and then some to yourself each Saturday,
They’ve got money to burn when they’re working
My cameraman friend says they’ll never really get hired on other productions after Atlantis
Because people “know”
I figure the crew on his gig probably drinks as much, he just doesn’t hang with drinkers so much anymore.

I have my 3 or 4 beers and I’m just fine, I did my bottle slinging long ago
I didn’t meet more than 2 people while I was there who actually drank less than me.
I smoke my little joints of crappy dimebag weed
Every pothead (there are lot’s, believe me) I’ve ever met in film
has a connection to the good ganja
half a doobie and you’re begging for it to be put out
space weed
I could never afford that stuff,
but I’ll gladly smoke it.

Could you imagine some big star in Van, heard about the glistening BC Bud for years
They sure don’t send him down to the streets to get it.
It gets delivered. Hotel, set, wherever, and no ones gonna stop it
because they shouldn’t really
and why would big stars come here, if not for the perks they get everywhere else
If the VPD or RCMP were to clean up the movie lots of drugs,
no big productions would ever come here again and everyone knows it.

We have a HUGE hypocrisy problem in Canada
The rich man can chomp his illegal cigar at a table where he eats
They’ll escort him to a special room with a big poofy chair
Get blow or weed delivered
Drink spirits that are illegal to purchase here

But a poor man,
sitting by some tracks
with a couple cans of beer and a joint
listening to birds
is a “drunk” or “junkie”

While plates of blow still fly up noses
And honestly
no one goes insane and kills people or self explodes
There are Hollywood and Hollywood North parties all the time
Plates of blow on the table
As much of anything you like
And they don’t die by the dozens
Betty Ford is only for those who get caught

Those are the fear stories, the fnords we are programmed with.

So why do I bring this up?
Who cares, thousands of dollars of coke and weed a day go through Wall st.
and every major film lot

Everybody knows that, why bring it up?

Because, for some reason, throughout my job at Atlantis, from at least 8 different people, things were said to me that insinuated that I was some kind of former(or current) heavy alcoholic, or druggie. It was as if, before I got hired, someone had gone around telling people
“We have this guy, a total washup druggie alkie, who we’re hiring cheap”
And almost every time I saw that in their eyes, the funny thing was, I was looking at an alcoholic who drank more than me. The expensive shit too, not the $2 tall can of cheap beer. The $50 to $100 a bottle shit. People who, at one time or another(or a few times) in their past life, had more than $100 worth of coke in them. People who had done lots of drugs in their mid 20’s to 30’s.

I really fucking hate hypocrisy.

4.I know how many people think I’m crazy.
Talking about pedophile rings, sick little covens hell bent on human sacrifice, cia backed canadian gangs and film production company fronts, cointelpro in canadian coffee shops, corruption in gov’t and law enforcement, human rights violations in our friendly happy land of poverty….

I really don’t give a shit if you want to believe I’m crazy.
There’s a reason I run into these things, I’ve been a target for a while.
I got used to it by the time I was 20.
It still wears me down.
I could cry I guess,
but I decided to pick up stones and swing my slingshot
long ago I decided that.
Like when I was 12 and knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere
in this “suck rich cock to succeed land of ever present bullshit and stupidity”

Fuck.

I’m one of those guys that talks this shit on the coffee shop patio
I’m one of the reasons you can’t smoke on a patio anymore
to shut people like me up
fucking sheep we’ve become

Live music in Vancouver pretty much sucks these days
they’ve migrated to colder cities with warmer hearts for live music.

So I know there are a lot of people who are mad at what I’ve said about my stint at Stargate Atlantis. Suck my dick, its true.

I came back to Van in Jan. 2003
I spent that winter-spring-summer hanging at a coffeeshop on commercial drive
shivering with various other malcontents on the patio as we smoked and bitched about the destruction of culture and the rise of the new culture of misery

I am fucking serious about Robert C. Cooper ripping me off at that coffee shop across from the park.
with his little marantz recorder
asking me about what I thought about Atlantis, the lost city.
I know a lot about myths and science fiction.
I told him I thought it was not an island, but an island submarine, it didn’t sink, it submerged
and after he pried and dug more I suggested that it was never found because it launched into space a la Eric Von Daniken. Of course it went on a journey of enlightenment, but if they ever made a movie about it they’d fill it with something stupid like “Army vs. Space Vampires”
Then I was talking about my “universal power block” idea which I’ve been going on about for a few years. Sound familiar? Is it zed or zee?

this is in 2003, early summer late spring

I know you don’t believe it. But it’s true,
and someone is out there whohas worked with the bastard and hates Robert Cooper.
Someone who has heard him boast about ripping off that crazy hippie cat.
Maybe they even have a copy of that cassette, or one of Robert boasting.

So consider that all of the nasty assholes I’ve run into in the last 2 years, all of the people trying to bring me down, losing my place, people tracking me, gangsters actually trying to drug and kill me, all of this started AFTER I started working for Stargate. As soon as they had my address, robert had people targeting me to mess me up.
Think about it. I may never be able to prove he stole some ideas from me, but he doesn’t want to take the chance, he’s made a couple million off of even a couple of the ideas he snarfed from me sitting at Turk’s, I’m a loose end, he has connections through the entertainment industry to gangsters. He tried to get me discredited, f’d up, and possibly even killed.
I can’t prove it at all, but I’ve been a target for assholes since I gave my original address to my SA employers. Don’t believe me, I really don’t give a shit.
But when I disappear of get sick and die, keep in mind, I’m healthy right now.
Other than a hernia, a f’d knee, I have had recent xrays and I have no cancers in my chest or abdomen. I state right now that someone in the next year is probably going to try and kill me in a staged “mugging” or I’ll be poisoned somehow. If you trace it all back, like anyone would care, it’s going to point to R. Cooper. Call me paranoid, it doesn’t mean I’m not right about being a loose end some rich fuck wants to tie up.

Would you set some gangster assholes after someone if that person could cause you to lose more than $500k? Seriously, you just gotta shut them up and you’ll have tons of cash for life?

I wondered a lot why they hired me at SA. Why people said wierd things during my time there like “this is the guy!” “This is him?” lot’s of odd looks. Like something wierd was going on behind the scenes. Questions out of the blue about what I’d do if something I wrote was stolen. I wondered about it a lot, I’ve been doing Info Tech for the last 10 years, why hire me instead of a film school brat. It was tweaking me the whole time I was there. As soon as they had my address for administration, the shit started happening in my life. The house I was renting rooms out to people in suddenly filled with gangsters and whores. Tagged for removal.

Maybe my punker friend will realize that she witnessed the ripoff sitting there at Turks that day, and that might be why she’s having some hard times too. Another loose end.

I’ll never be able to prove it unless someone else speaks up
All those people on the crew, RC had to boast to someone.
Consider, if the lighting guy works all day on a scene, and the props person spent a week on the set, is it cool to send them home with no money?? How about credit? If someone works on a show, in a gig where they are supposed to get credit, does everyone just laugh and say “oh well” if they get their credit ripped off? You there, Ms. Coordinator, would you laugh off the removal of your credit? Or your salary?

I can write, that’s all I can do I guess, short of amassing an arsenal.
and I write a lot of satire and science fiction
so get prepared this coming year
for the online novella

“Space Tunnel to Asslandia”

You’ll laugh so hard you piss yourself
I guarantee it….

The You Tube version will be even better, when I can get something faster than a 486 to work on. I’m an animator/artist/writer so maybe I’ll make something funny enough that every SA fan will want a copy sitting beside their box set.

I’ll make the RC character a bit like Kenny, dying 10 times per episode in some disgusting way, only to be revived for his next unpleasant death.

5.
Outed by a Sharpie Pen

I was at Atlantis less than 2 weeks when this humongous fat bitch named Allison
(about 350-400 lbs of fat bitch I’d say, and I don’t normally give fat people a hard time, but that’s fucking obese)
She comes up and offers me some highliters.

I’m a pro at what I do, technical stuff.
I needed bright colors.
So I chose yellow, bright green, and PINK.
OMG I chose a pink pen.

“Oh, so you’re one of those…” she intones, in front of the guy who hired me.
It’s hard not to get a bit red faced when someone who is clearly a hetero fag hater outs you.
I did my best to let it slide.

But the back story is:
I’m bisexual and have an Intersex anatomy.
Let’s clarify:
on the Kinsey sexuality scale
I would be a 1 or 2
anyway, I did my best to let it slide.

But that was the beginning of constant harassment by this cow.
5 fucking months of it.
Backstabbing gossip,
the wonderfully childish sounds of lisping speech every time I’d walk by a group

culminating in the “cheese incident”

where about $50 worth of cheeses went missing from the fridge
and it was pinned on me by The Cow.

Oddly enough, I’m severely lactose intolerant, so only one pack of that cheese would even be edible to me, and more than 2 slices in a day would give me the most severe heartburn you could imagine.

Details like that don’t really matter though, not in “high school”.
I mean work.

For 5 months I hid out and did my work as efficiently as possible.
Avoided the kitchen at lunch to reduce opportunities for so and so to slag me for whatever the infraction of the day would be.
Smoked twice as much as usual,
because it kind of stresses me out to be in an environment where I’m a target for bored children and their finger pointing games.
Fucks with your ontological security

After 5 months of ever increasing harassment, someone else in my department (vfx) finally stepped in.

So for the last 4 months of work I had peace.
And she wasn’t there at the start of Season 5 when I was rehired.

It’s not like you can really do anything about stuff like that.
You just have to put up with it.
There’s no number to call.
No one’s going to slap her on the fingers for it.
Complaining just gets you fired, not matter how much the attacks hurt your feelings.

Fucking screaming monkeys flinging their own shit at each other.
My, how we’ve grown.
So much for the efficacy of evolution.

Sometimes I wish it was a more primitive time, when you could just split your oppressor’s head in two with an axe and pay their family the blood price.

6.
Headbanger Karaoke Shitslinging

So my final months of Season 4 were peaceful and productive, and I gradually felt like less of an outsider. Less I say. It wasn’t like I was suddenly accepted.

Around Christmas time the people in Post where my job was (a vfx “I/O” in Post) went out for karaoke.

It stank like a setup.

I’m over 40. I know the feel of a set up. Inwardly I cringed at the thought of being subjected to cruel renditions of Boy George or George Michaels.

But I knew I had some chance to shine and fight back the playschool taunting.
I started in music as a singer. In fact I started in choir with a 4 octave range, and then went in to rock.

So what kind of knives would I be stabbed with?
Ahhhhh.
It was glam metal.
You see, I had grown my rocker hair back while working at Stargate Atlantis.

So, after listening to awful renditions of White Tiger(actual, Ryan did pretty good with the White Tiger), Poisoned, Crue, Warrant, etc. and every other spandex jerk off schlock that I hated throughout my teens, it was my turn.

When I went into rock, as I mentioned before, Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, Roger Waters, etc. were where I started.

So I sang “Lithium”
“- Light my candles in a daze, cause I found god, yeah yeah…..!”
I could practically see their hair blowing back.
because I’m actually pretty good.

So each round I had to counter less and less cheese with something rocking and fucking good, until it finally became what it should be, a bunch of drunk people singing together and having fun.

Setups like that are just a symptom of an underlying bitchfest, that creepy shitflinging crap that anyone who is outside of the norm is used to.

9 months of getting the job done and being professional and efficient doesn’t matter.

Monkeys need targets for their shit.
If they throw their shit at someone else, then the other monkey won’t see that they’ve shit.

I really did like working there a lot. The shit flinging and lisping behind the back crap is standard practice in the workplace in Canada.

You just get used to working and living while smothered in shit.
And try not to let it stick to you too much when you go home.

Drunken Talkers

Drunken Talkers
-C. Taylor

Shed the skin,
the worn face
Leave it in it’s dark place

Pull apart the folds

Step into the new from old

I am tired of your mindless chatter
I am bored of your smoky laughter
Minds of charred coal
No fire in your souls

Shoot me down as I fly, would you?
My light will burn your feeble eyes
Mindless, on and on you ramble
You say nothing substantial

The layers have stripped themselves away
My true skin feels the light of day,

I leave your monkey chatter

Your screaming things that do not matter

———————-
From the book
“The Butcher’s Block: Poems of Poverty”
by Chris Taylor
————————-

Soggy, wet, broke and homeless – Vancouver is a poverty paradise…

The BC Liquor Store has a new policy.

No busking.

For centuries musicians have made a living outside of drinking establishments.

But to these people
a hard working musician
fingers sore from playing

is just another bum
begging.

I do not beg.
Playing music is a form of work

and this is a policy of

NIMBY

It’s not like anyone cares
It’s not like anyone reads this

ranting of a starving madman

smelly and dirty

The extra can of dog food is starting to look good to me….

The Butcher’s Block

The Butcher’s Block
- C. Taylor

“Go on then,
tell me the story,

show me the poem…”

your eyes say,
challenging,
as they speed along
looking, hurriedly,
for the “good” parts.

When you are faced
with the glaring nakedness
of malicious acts
you will doubtless turn away
as most pious souls
usually do,

equating the Truth,
the description of evil
with the evil itself.

And who am I ?

Mongrel man,
slum-house dweller,

who thinks,
who dares to think

he can write Truths ?

You have surmised,
in this quickly scanning fashion,
that this poet,
filthy and poor,

is not going to tell you

of peaceful streams,
the souls of tranquil flowers,
dreamy eternal lovers,

and sweet memories of loved ones dead.

No.

on his knees as he begs

for food,
and a place to sleep,

he will tell you,
gently

what happens

on the butcher’s block.

———————-
From the book
“The Butcher’s Block: Poems of Poverty”
by Chris Taylor
————————-

The Butcher’s Block

The Butcher’s Block
- C. Taylor

“Go on then,
tell me the story,

show me the poem…”

your eyes say,
challenging,
as they speed along
looking, hurriedly,
for the “good” parts.

When you are faced
with the glaring nakedness
of malicious acts
you will doubtless turn away
as most pious souls
usually do,

equating the Truth,
the description of evil
with the evil itself.

And who am I ?

Mongrel man,
slum-house dweller,

who thinks,
who dares to think

he can write Truths ?

You have surmised,
in this quickly scanning fashion,
that this poet,
filthy and poor,

is not going to tell you

of peaceful streams,
the souls of tranquil flowers,
dreamy eternal lovers,

and sweet memories of loved ones dead.

No.

on his knees as he begs

for food,
and a place to sleep,

he will tell you,
gently

what happens

on the butcher’s block.

———————-
From the book
“The Butcher’s Block: Poems of Poverty”
by Chris Taylor
————————-

The Value of Art

The Value of Art
- C. Taylor

Art is worth nothing in our society.

Artless people scoff loudly,
to them
it is an idler’s game,

shameful and useless.

The hours I spend,
the months
the planning

just little scraps

of “useless” paper.

I stand eight hours working
on a ten inch square of a ten foot work
I have planned so carefully it will take a year to finish.

My feet scream in pain
my fingers and eyes sore from the strain
of being so careful
to get it right

or I must redo it.

It is only one of many.

Yet no one believes that this is work.

I sleep awhile
eat
a bowl of rice,
some cheese,
and work on writing

I work on many books at once,
many paintings,
many songs,
carefully planning

the structure, shape.

it must be done a certain way
to communicate the “idea”

to the observer.

That communication,
transferring the concept

from the canvas, tape, page,
is my only real payment.

I will die hungry, and poor,

of that I have no doubt.

I cannot stop my work
it is my only way
to change

the world around me.

My tiny influence

might affect only a few for the better,

yet it is all I can do, so I must.

The moody notes of my saxophone,

the unryhmed words of my strange poem,

the forms of near-madness
that call from my canvas,

they instill something in you,
evoke feelings and thoughts.

These are worth more
than nothing.

———————-
From the book
“The Butcher’s Block: Poems of Poverty”
by Chris Taylor
————————-

The Writers

The Writers
-C. Taylor

Oh, how they fear us,
The Big Men,
The Dogs.

We are the tiny flea,

too srnall for them to bite,

underneath
their collar.

Our words reach all the other tiny ones
bringing them together in thought
focusing their tiny voices until
millions strong,
the voices make

a shout

In many countries they kill us
for our words
and here,
though they do not kill
they investigate

“Find this flea
who dares to speak

the truths we would bury!”

They roar

…and the policemen nod their heads
and scurry…

And even though

we believe we are free

many are silenced,

silently.

“Ah ha! We have found one!
Take his food
and house
and he will shut up

while he scavenges about

searching for scraps”

We fleas are hard to kill, though.
We remember our hard lives,
and we speak to one another,
passing along
the Words.

Many times
we have hid the Words
amongst piles of others
changing their forms slightly,
to disguise them
so that only other fleas can find them.

Sometimes the Dogs themselves
like the piles of words

in their pretty sentences

and pay to buy them,

but their lives being easy,

and their pride hard,

they pass by the well hidden truths.

Many are killed, jailed, blackballed, disgraced
these tiny flea-philosophers,
but another always takes their post,
and the words themselves,

the Truths

refuse to die.

———————-
From the book
“The Butcher’s Block: Poems of Poverty”
by Chris Taylor
————————-

The Poets and Artists

The Poets and Artists

-C. Taylor

Poets and artists
are dying unnoticed here

Walk by them

the grass sprouts
from their dead eyes and mouths,
curls up through their fingers,
their minds numbed
by hunger and homelessness
their wondrous talents unused

They are not wanted here,
in fact

the giant buildings and machines,
our true masters,
would crush them in the womb
and will
When the troublesome genes that make them think
are found

and numbered

Masters do not want thinkers

talking and painting

of the unjust status quo.

walk by their dead bodies!

Before you are seen in your weeping.

———————-
From the book
“The Butcher’s Block: Poems of Poverty”
by Chris Taylor
————————-

Cineworks Independent Film Society Steals from Members!!! The ripoff society that Canada has created….

Someone asked what BT meant in “the small great book of atheist spirituality”

BT stands for Body Text, meaning I have a lot more to say there.

So why haven’t I finished these things?
Basically, I’m homeless in vancouver right now and I am playing my guitar to feed me and my dog.

I have these books pretty much finished in my head, but why would I complete them?
I’ll only get ripped off.

Like Neitsche, van gogh, orwell, coleridge, jonathan swift, P.K. Dyck, the list is HUGE.
I’ll be broke my whole life, and after I’m dead some already rich fucker will make a wad of cash.
that’s the way it’s worked for centuries, and in Canada it’s a constant for artists, writers and other creatives.

My first film I wrote was stolen by Cineworks Independent Film Society in Vancouver.

They got funding from Canada Council, Telefilm, and BBC channel 4!!!
Took my script off the mac I had typed it on at Cineworks while I was a member,
and got a good wad of money to make the production.
Money that I could have used to make my film and get my film career started

I wrote it in 1988, and in 1994 I was watching my stolen film on Bravo Showcase.
The guy who stole it was Director of the society at the time,
and Mina Shum, darling of the Canadian film scene
was sitting right there beside him, smirking, when he talked to me about my film.

My spidey sense went off when he seemed to know more about my film than I had ever told him. They get public money every year from a number of government agencies,
and I would bet I’m not the only filmmaker Cineworks ripped a film off of.

That’s why there are no real Canadian films. The creatives just get ripped off by the money people so they give up.

That and the fact that “Canadian” TV series that are made in canada today are all produced by Americans in Canada. Everyone at the top is an American, but because the crew is Canadian, they can call it Canadian and suck up the money from government troughs. Read more about cointelpro and you’ll see the past history of film productions being used to subvert any grassroots filmmaking in countries around the world where the US has interests. That’s why every “Canadian” drama production today is full of “RAH RAH USA, YES SIR!!!” military and cop bullshit.

Fuck it.
When I start making a decent living in this world, I’ll commit the rest of my books to writing and start painting again.
Till then, fill in the blanks yourself.
I need a house and car and laptop like everyone else.
Blogging at the library is bullshit.

The Order of the MEEK was designed so that reading the table of contents would lead someone in the direction of spiritual growth. What’s currently there is basically the TOC, but there is definately text for each section. I won’t write it all down until I’m certain I’ll make something off it myself.

excuse me for being bitter, but that’s what happens when a group of people targets and tries to kill you in your own house for being born with nonstandard anatomy.
They don’t like people like that here.
The police would rather shoot you for being a mutant or take you to a mental health institution for “assessment” rather than take you seriously.
Sort of like those crazy whores gone “missing” at the pig farm, who cares eh?
So you lose your house and belongings to the fuckers who try to do you in.
Your only choice is to leave all your stuff, or risk going to jail for killing the fuckers who try to beat you. If I had enough money to keep my dog safe and get some gear, I’d take care of it myself.

All my paintings, years of work – gone.
5000 albums of music collected over the years – gone
Nowhere to live and drained of all my savings from the experience
As if I saved much living hand to mouth in Canada the last 40 years
underprivileged, underclass, underpaid, with no credit and no opportunity worth having
Working at Stargate didn’t pay enough to live in vancouver, never mind save for emergencies or move to get away from evil assholes.

All that and I can’t get to the other side of town for medical attention that I need immediately.
There’s only one clinic that takes vagrants with problems like mine.

Read John Wyndham’s “The Chrysalids”, it’s a real metaphor for modern life and human rights in Canada, and it’s set in Canada too. Scream loudly in your mind, perhaps you’ll be heard.
Or burned, or sent to the twisted gnarled black wood to die anonymously.

While you’re at it, read Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” or “Ape and Essence” if you haven’t already read them. It’s worth wading through the constant puns for the meat of what he’s saying there.

What a shithole Canada is becoming.
There are more people living out of shopping carts than there ever was since the Great Depression.
Legislated poverty is the norm, and minimum wage isn’t enough for a single room in any canadian city. Never mind a suite.
Soon they’ll make it illegal to be homeless, just like victorian england, just lock them up for life if they don’t have a home.

It’s been 5 days since I had a shower, so excuse me if I sound bitchy.

At the beach… sort of…..

Just because you are paranoid

doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you….

-Anon

Not really living anyplace solid

we wander the edges

searching for scraps, clues, rest.

Importing workers while local kids can’t find jobs…that’s the new Canada…

So I’m traveling through the prairies and I stop for coffee.

At that big Canadian tourist attraction and respectable community gathering spot named after the wheelchair kid in Southpark.

Yay Timayyyy!!!!

Actually it’s a town so fucking small that’s the only coffee option on a sunday, otherwise I’d never visit their overpriced white fluorescent cubicle coffee feed trough.

But caffeine makes us do things we wouldn’t normally do sometimes.
Suspiciously similiar to the behaviour of certain drug users, those coffee freaks.
Can’t trust ‘em I tell ya.

but I digress as usual.

So there in Yee Haw, Central Canada, where there’s not a black person in site and I haven’t seen a fag, lesbian, or person of color, (most definitely no First Nations) in almost a week,

Is a Ladyboy Philipino with too much mascara serving me coffee.
A very pretty Ladyboy might add. Ahem.

However, he seemed oblivious to his peril. His great peril.
He looked like he just started and I could not see any visible scars or lost teeth.
He was new to this redneck Canadian town.

Outside, standing far from any comfortable seating, smoking while standing around a garbage can, which is the common corner for any (FREE?) Canadian who wants to having a fucking smoke at the same time while they drink their purchased beverage, I had a talk with the senior “barista” while she had her smoke.

It turns out when Timayyys!!! outlets like hers need a new worker or two, they call head office.
And order some new workers.
No sign for local youth is put in the paper.
They just order some new workers.
Who are shipped straight from the Philippines or India,
right to the Timayyys!!! in need.

“Local kids don’t want to work for this wage” she says

In MY opinion they should RAISE THE FUCKING WAGE THEN!!!

But our “caring” and “forward thinking” Canadian government wants to make sure we robots won’t get decent opportunities, it’s more important their rich business owning buddies get the cheapest labour possible, than a Canadian worker getting a decent living wage.

They ship them straight from a third world country and plunk them down, help them get a work visa and give them a place to live. So they can get a worker for $9 instead of raising the starting wage to something that a Canadian kid knows is liveable. There were lot’s of young people in that town without a job. LOTS of them.

As far as I know, new immigrants are the poorest wage sector in Canada.
Hmmm. I wonder why.

For over 15 years a “friend” of mine has been exploiting Indonesians and ripping off Canada.
Even before they made it so easy to just hire people right into Canadian jobs she was getting around the labour laws, finding people, getting them over to Canada, setting them up with a place to stay, finding people to “sponsor” them so they could get work visa’s.

All that work was worth it to her. So she could pay them $9 an hour (with nurses training I might add) to be caregivers and nannies in Canada.
A staunch Conservative, she was always so proud of herself and how she was “giving them a chance they never would have had” while saving the extra $6 an hour it would take to get a trained Canadian to wipe someone’s ass, give them a sponge bath, and take care of their spoiled bratty rich kids.

She was always wondering why she couldn’t get me to go to a Conservative party shindig.

In the Okanagan of BC, where unscrupulous fruit orchard owners have tried to rip off workers for years, they import whole plane loads of Mexicans, Russians, Poles…
Who always seem to go home with no money in their pockets after their 2 years here.

This practice of importing workers while the streets are filled with people who can’t afford a modern rent on the wages being paid out is so fucking disgusting it makes me want to scream and vomit.

The fat cats that run our gov’t are all business owners. Cheap wages for immigrants recruited right from ads in their own country, means Canadians won’t complain when they are paid next to nothing.
“You can be replaced with a cheaper import you know”

Canadians are worth nothing to their gov’t, regardless of who’s in power.

It’s just fat pigs at the trough.

What Canada should really be doing in Afghanistan..

So there we are

Protecting American oil interests.
The Caspian sea is rich in oil and gas,
and Afghanistan has been the planned pipeline in US plans for over a decade.

There’s hardly any americans there now.
It’s Brits and Canucks doing the killing, bombing, parading their might.
Big bad redneck Canadian white boys playing with their tools.
All of them wishing they had bigger, shinier tools
like their American pals.

Canada didn’t lose a business tower complex that was the center of new colonialism.
America did.

They (the American CIA) trained the Taliban in guerilla warfare and bomb making!!!!
When the Soviet Union was still communist and the US wanted to make sure Afhghanistan heroin flowed free for use in their CIA operations.
That and the oil, if they could defeat the red giant one day.

They trained the very dogs that bit them so viciously.
The CIA trained the Taliban to blow shit up.

The whole snit has nothing to do with us.

It has NOTHING TO DO WITH US EH!!!!!
Listen up, fellow hosers.

But there we are bombing the shit out of a bunch of rural Muslims.
Some brainwashed redneck in the prairies is cheering the death of “evil towelheads” right now.
Yee Haw.

That’s what Stephen Harper is so gleeful about
So intent on
Eradicating Islam
and making the world safe for Christianization
He can feel proud in his church knowing those islamic infidels are seeing his christian might.

He can beam with pride as he prays to the cross he serves…
The cross of “peace and love”

we’ve got no business being there
we’re just serving as U.S. army reserve troops
and taking the heat for it.
While they gloat and feed at the oil trough of Iraq
OPEC smashing was the focus all along
WMD’s were a convenient excuse

The only thing Candadian troops should ever have done or still be doing in Afghanistan
is putting a 10 mile perimeter around the Kabul University and its attached hospital
then sending convoys to pick people up who want education, medical aid, emancipation, or sanctuary.

All of our equipment and all of our people should be in that 10 mile perimeter around the university.
Nowhere else. Just protecting and building the university, hospital, housing, and airstrips.

No bombing.
No tank skirmishes.
No hunting down rural peasants and shooting them for having guns and hating foreigners in their country.

That’s all we should be doing.
Nothing offensive.
Just defending and building a circular free zone around the university and airport.

We’re creating our own enemies there.

Somewhere in Afghanistan is a child, covered in blood.
He’s sitting on a rock, looking at his dead mom, his uncles, his aunts, his brothers and sisters.
He doesn’t feel liberated.
He’s not thanking us for destroying a “Taliban Stronghold”.
As the jets fly by he stares at the maple leaf and screams
“One day, when I’m grown, I will make you pay for this”
Then flicks his hand, so his mothers brain matter will fall to the dirt.

We always made fun of our American neighbors,
for being the christian egocentric colonialist bullies of the world.

Now we’ve joined their gang,
and the world sees us
as bullies too.

The Beginnings of a Golden Dawn……

All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed,

Do What Thou Wilt;

because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us

~Francois Rabelais

A Slowly Dying Canada – (excerpt from "The Butcher’s Block")

A Slowly Dying Canada
- C. Taylor

My country, Canada, is falling ill.

it is colder, and a shadow obscures the sun,
A shadow called poverty, the cold of fear.

We fear for our lives now.

Losing our jobs to machines,
robot assembly lines, and computers
do the jobs that thousands
used to do.

It was supposed to be better,
more efficient,

but instead it concentrates
more money
to a smaller few,

while the rest lose their houses and dreams,
the “human cost of downsizing”.

My Canada is increasingly
a country of broken hopes,
poverty and futility
creating directionless hostility

We try to hurt others
as if that would heal
our own pain.

Can you blame my brothers ?
They attack immigrants and women
dog eat dog
because there aren’t enough jobs
to keep us fed.

We work to survive
hand to mouth

Contentedness is unimaginable

It was getting better for a time,
but the hunger is setting in,
and it will get worse.

They are without hope.

There are no loans for small businesses
The big, old ones are laying off
We are denied credit
or any true way to rebuild it

There are no places for us,
the loose pieces,
to fit

And the government has the the gall
to blame us for being poor

If we speak out,
cry for mercy
they set the police on us

find ways to lock us up
for our small vices.

We are the media scapegoat
mouths bound,
minds whirling

Is it any wonder
that the gangs of youth
are disillutioned
and turning to violence ?

They cannot hope
to own a house
or feed and clothe a child

My Canada is dying
and I cannot stop it’s death,
though I may try with my art
to give it hope,

Art is worth nothing

to speak of it’s worth is wasted breath

Our artists and craftsmen starve,
our culture dissolves,
and I can only watch,
remembering

———————-
From the book
“The Butcher’s Block: Poems of Poverty”
by Chris Taylor
————————–
Listen to it here: http://radio3.cbc.ca/bands/A-Voice-of-Dissent—Archetripal/

Tasered for $2.50…Only in Canada eh?

It takes only 2 years of college to become a cop in Canada.

I’ve known a few gun loving rednecks who did it.

They weren’t the kind of people I like to have “fun” with.

Bad attitudes about women, queers, immigrants.

Easy enough to do. Certainly not rocket science.

There he is now, on the platform.

Saving “PUBLIC TRANSIT”

Can we bold the word “PUBLIC” for this.

Saving the transit authority from poor people, who can’t afford $2.50

If they try to flee, they can’t afford to be criminalized and fined for the fact that they can’t afford $2.50 to travel across this huge city.

If they try to flee, they get tasered.

Zap. Potentially dead of a heart attack. Potential brain damage or body damage from falling and doing the funky chicken on cement.

For $2.50

Over 20 people have been tasered in BC since the police on transit were given tasers.

The toothless native man clutches his el cheapo 6 pack he could barely scrape enough together for. He’s trying to get home.

His whole ride on the Skytrain he is in fear.

The poor live in fear. Tasered for $2.50.

The cops are protecting us.
Protecting the profits of Translink.
A private corporation now.
They protect it’s profits.

I don’t see them, outside the stations, the more remote ones,
where drug dealers and thieves, bullies and belligerent drunks
harass old ladies and follow younger ones home
thoughts of rape filling their heads
Fear of it filling hers

They won’t make their quota there, of fare evaders.

To serve and protect
was meant to be about the population
but really
they protect the profits and property
of the rich

a taser should be used on a bully
beating up the weak
not on a poor man running
from a fine

for needing to travel

They’ve shown us they don’t have the self control
to use these weapons

Poor people and their safety don’t matter

That’s why 26+ whores can disappear into the darkness of a pig farm
because only those with money deserve safety
only those with money can travel
only those with property can sleep under a roof, a covering

while the city is filled with empty buildings
emptied and waiting for years at a time

speculating

on the profits they grow

at night, after the drunks drive away, unhindered by breathalysers
parking lots sit empty
but no one can sleep beneath their cold cement ceilings
because the Lord of the land
must be protected

from the serfs and beggars

So many people worth nothing here

We will zap and maybe kill you for not paying your fare
move along, you cannot sleep here
A fine for you with no money
for you with no ID to show
that you belong here

outside, where we do not care

about the gangsters and bullies
circling there