Ininewcrow

Reminds me of how proud I am to remember one of my uncles.

Some of my dad’s family went to St Anne’s Residential School in Fort Albany in northern Ontario in the 1950s … it’s famous as a very brutal institution that did terrible things. Dad had one older brother who was famous for being thrown out of the school and told to not return. He was very rebellious and constantly fought with everyone the entire time he was there. He was regularly beaten and punished when he was smaller and younger but he never stopped fighting back. He was a naturally strong and built young boy. When he turned 12, he was built like a full grown man and was known to punch out and beat any of the priests and brothers. They couldn’t handle him at one point, sent him home and just told him not to return.

My cousins in that family are some of the toughest, strongest most brutal people I know. I’m glad I’m related to them because anyone who ever crossed them on the street didn’t do so good.

Paula Abdul for me … and I had to absolutely hide that fact from everyone I knew

This reminds me of one of my favourite memories this time of year - walking the streets of Lisbon, Portugal with my wife. We didn’t have much money (we never did) but it was always fun to travel to new places in the world and to explore it as much as we could. It was December, cold, wet, miserable which is why we were there … it’s the cheapest time of year to travel because no one wants to go somewhere where the weather is not so great. But on those cold walks at night, they have street vendors selling roasted chestnuts … we couldn’t believe it. We had only read about stuff like that and it was the most cozy feeling to huddle in the drafty cold while eating a warm handful of freshly roasted chestnuts next to the hot fire of the cart.

They applied that same logic to Indian Residential Schools in Canada … but they weren’t trying to grow men … they just wanted to get rid of the Indian inside the Indian.

My work here is done :)

American cars with French technology … what could go wrong?

Always love that argument … they don’t want or they disagree with the idea of ‘equal rights’ … which logically means that they are in favour of or agree with the idea of ‘unequal rights’

It’s not hard … you just turn the monitor upside down and you can translate everything.

Bored apathetic McDonald’s worker: … please sir, get off the table … (then walks away to check the deep fryer)

I remember reading once that world wide, all the ants on the planet weigh collectively more than all the elephants put together on the planet.

I’ve got a mechanical device that will shake the ants out … I’ll just crank it up to 10,000 rpm so I can get my ants fast and be on my way … let me just adjust the carburetor so I pull start the engine to get started … HOLD STILL!!!

Hi! … (then awkwardly standing by for the next two hours as the snail slowly moves away)

I love VPNs for this … I get to see advertising from around the world … Japanese noodles, Nordic furniture, some weird German food, Turkish real estate, Australian drinks … and all of it delivered in languages I don’t understand.

I thought this was the start of a joke

Your work is valuable and profitable

When you work for yourself, all that value is for you to benefit from … that’s why you like working for yourself and it feels enjoyable.

When you work for someone else, almost all the value of your work benefits someone else and you receive very little back. You are also aware that you are just one of many, many people around you who are being held in the same situation. This is why you don’t enjoy working for someone else.

Which I understand and appreciate … any other time of year or maybe on birthdays, I’ll take a bit of time to try to remember what the person likes and what gift they might enjoy. Usually, we’ll be doing something and the person will mention something like ‘I like that’, ‘I wish I had that’ or something … then it’s easy to just buy the thing and gift them that shortly after.

But during Christmas, it’s really hard to try to figure out what a bunch of different people like or not like … it usually ends up that you’ll mess up on most people and get it right with a few. Which is why I settled on just cash.

Same here … if I’m gifting to someone under the age of about 8 years old, I’ll them a little toy and some cash … anyone older than that is just getting straight cash.

I’m not spending time to try to figure out what people like or dislike or whether or not they’re following some latest trend … take my cash and do what you want with it … and for teens, they combine all the cash they get and get one big thing they want which works out best for them.

You give rattles and shiny things to toddlers to keep them from damaging the furniture or falling down the stairs.

Or better yet …

Fired workers: … sure, I’ll come back on one condition … you give me four times the rate of pay I had before … then when your stupid backlog is taken care of … you can go fuck yourself.

… oh you don’t want to pay four times the rate? … no problem … go fuck yourself.