The Holiday Season

The Holiday Season

 

When in tarnation does this folly really begin? I would say about mid July with the onset of “Back to School” sales. That’s really the primer to get retailers motivated for another season of retailing. Well it’s a joyous occasion for both parents and children. The kids get out of day long day-care and back to their friends. The parents finally have the little buggers out from under foot. That’s certainly cause for celebration. So the retailers go gang-busters in encouraging the season. We are led to believe that EVERYTHING is on sale!

Then of course there’s the labor day weekend. We even get a statutory holiday out of it! That’s when Rona an’ Home Depot an’ Canadian Tire gear up an’ go to town. So it ends up to be a “fix your house up” weekend. After that there’s about a two-day lull before you gotta get Halloween costumes an’ decorations ordered an outfitted. An’ Holy Crap! Almost forgot! You need winter clothes for yourself an’ the kids too!

The food stores an’ specialty shops have their go at you for Thanksgivin’ an’ you stock up on enough food to last through Christmas (if it don’t go bad before). It seems the cheapest thing you can buy throughout the sellin’ season is the poppies for Remembrance Day.

My Missus has spent her whole life in the retail business, sellin’ about everythin’ there is to sell except maybe cement, an’ I can tell you – no, maybe I’d better not – what she thinks about shoppin’ malls, shoppin’ in general an’ the whole commercialization of about everythin’ there is. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she wasn’t alone neither. By the time Christmas finally shows up, these sales people are totally exhausted, an’ for want of a better expression, disgusted with anythin’ associated with Christmas. The expression “Thank you for shopping at . . . . and have a nice day/evening” has an entirely different meaning than the words represent. It might make a Longshoreman blush.

We’d come home on Christmas Eve, close the gate, drive into the garage, run into the house an’ lock the blasted door as a definitive gesture an’ go to bed. The thing is, she knew she had to be at work on Boxing Day to handle all the returns an’ take care of all the Boxing Day sales crap.

So even after all these years of retirement, when she says she hates Christmas, she ain’t kiddin’. An’ it ain’t got nothin’ to do with our Lord an’ Savior neither. He’s alive an’ well in our house, just not in them greasy admen’s minds or in the malls. Bah Humbug to them! As far as she’s concerned, you can take your Christmas an’ stick it where the sun don’t shine. At least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.

A Woman's Work is Never Done!

A Woman’s Work is Never Done!

 

Yeah, well that’s what the Missus says as she’s busily dustin’ off my desk an’ putin’ things away in places that only she knows about. It’s got so I make for my office whenever I see her armed with her dust mop. That thing is like one o’ them AK47’s in her hands. You never know what’s gonna get hit next. So half my time is spent in the office on guard duty rather than doin’ anythin’ productive.

Well an’ that ain’t the only thing neither. Dollars to donuts I could easy get a job in an art gallery hangin’ pictures up too. It ain’t nothin to see a bunch o’ pictures on the floor, leaned up against the wall when I get up in the mornin’. It seems she’s been dreamin’ about or schemin’ about re-arrangin’ how things ought to look an nothin’ satisfies her ‘til it’s done. Even then it’s not a for sure thing neither. It could last a coupl’a days or weeks even, but eventually . . . . . . well, she has another vision.

Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t complainin’, far from it. How else would I get the kind of entertainment offered up by these antics? It’s like mock war games to keep up with all the goin’s on. Reminds me of that old couple we knew in the square dancing club we belonged to years ago. They’d lived in England durin’ WWII an’ he was in the Home Guard. She had a different motivation for movin’ stuff around. She was nervous about bombs an’ doin’ that sorta thing occupied her time.

You got to remember that in them days there was total blackouts to confuse the Germans. Well, after about two or three days without much sleep, the guy comes home, dead tired. Not wantin’ to wake the wife, he creeps in, pulls off his boots an’ flops on the bed. Imagine his surprise when the bed wasn’t where it was the last time he flopped into it.

Well thank goodness my Missus don’t go THAT far. At our age, if we missed the bed, we’d likely end up in the hip replacement department of the local hospital. Although I gotta say she come pretty close the other day when she informed me that them two big horkin pictures in the bedroom hadda get changed around. Well I couldn’t do anythin’ about it cause they were already layin’ on the bed where I wanted to have a nap. So, grumblin’ under my breath (so she wouldn’t hear) I make a new nail hole an’ hang the one right over the bed. Shame, really. I liked to look at that one across the room while I was dozin’ off. Then I hung that heavy sucker over the Missus’ dresser an went to bed. Layin’ there, still mutterin’ under my breath I look up an’ notice the one over the dresser is that big petty-point of a boy layin’ on a hill, day dreamin’ about the clouds in the sky. Well if that don’t beat all! That’s just the mood I’m in, an’ I promptly fall asleep. Don’t you just hate it when the Missus is always right? To tell the truth, I hope her work is never done. The only thing is, I’m puttin’ a police tape around my office. She has a healthy respect for authority. At least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.

Canad's Human Rights Record

Canada’s Human Rights Record

 

Gomeshi really started somethin’ this time. At least he did with me. Another sleazebag in the lime light vying for our attention. Thankfully the court of public opinion has thrown him under the bus an’ not a moment too soon! No sooner did women start coming forth with some of the ammunition to nail his hide to the barn door than complaints of abuse started surfacing (of all places) in the House of Commons. A couple of Liberal MPs were suspended pending the outcome of an investigation (by somebody unknown) and the whole house got its shorts in a wringer about privacy and reliving the abuses, whatever they were. Low and behold, all of a sudden Sheila Copps comes out of the woodwork, announcing the abuse she suffered at the hands of parliamentarians years ago. I can still remember when she got into a verbal swordfight with big old John Crosbie and ended up skewering his big fat butt to the pork barrel. I think in one of his typical tirades he called her “baby” and she pointed out that she wasn’t anybody’s baby, especially HIS! I certainly hope she now comes forward and files formal complaints with the police on her abuses.

We “tut tut” and shake our heads in disapproval at the abuses that go on in India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan and other places far away from Canada. We would never condone such things here in Canada. Oh no? Well just for your information, read this: http://criaw-icref.ca/ViolenceagainstWomenandGirls. That’ll open your eyes a little bit. It turns out that we are one really sick nation of abusers. Five hundred thousand cases per year happen here in Canada. If you do the math, that amounts to one case of abuse per minute.

So when we stand in silence to remember those who have fought and died so that we may live in a free and democratic society, we need to look and see just what kind of free and democratic society we have wrought. Would these men and women have given their lives to pay for the sick society we have become? I think not.

The twelve hundred murdered and missing Aboriginal women would agree with me. The men and women who are being abused every minute of every day would agree with me. Just now there was another report of a sixteen-year-old Aboriginal girl who was assaulted and left for dead in the Assiniboine River. She was fortunately found and survived. She would agree with me.

We have absolutely no business calling for improved human rights in the countries we’re wagging our fingers at when we ourselves are blatant abusers. We’d be far better off recognizing our own shortcomings and cleaning up our house rather than point our accusatory fingers at our neighbors. But then Mr. Harper et al would be confused at my accusations. He would peek out of his fluffy cocoon, declare that everything is fine in there, and keep on allowing abuse. In fact that’s the case with many of us who either haven’t been abused, or those that think this is acceptable. At least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin.  

Respect

Respect

 

On the eleventh day of November at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour we will stop whatever it is we’re doing and for two minutes will remember the service men and women who gave their lives in service to their country. We will remember them singly and collectively and honor them for their ultimate sacrifice on our behalf. Having done so, we’ll go about our business again.

Well, theoretically, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. But now we have the government debating whether we should make this a national holiday. Really? REALLY? Just what is that supposed to imply? Who in the department of Stupid thought that up? Are we really supposed to have a holiday in the midst of the armed forces laying wreaths at cenotaphs, march pasts and parades to honor their fallen brothers and sisters? Is that how we honor those who have sacrificed their lives on our behalf? Oh sure, the people in the military and the families of those being remembered will remember, that stands to reason. But what about the rest of us? What are we supposed to do, go bowling?

Respect! Let’s start with respect. Perhaps we should commemorate a special day for respect. Of all the things we seem to have lost in this whole business of paying homage to our fallen brothers and sisters is respect. We don’t have to believe in the causes they went to war for or even that they had a choice or not to decide. But we should respect their right to do so and their families in their grief for the ones lost.

I remember a time during WWII when there was soldiers, seamen an’ airmen everywhere you looked. They was in train stations, on buses, on the streets – everywhere. Mind you, that was a big war, not like these mini “police actions” we have today. But there was respect. Even among the service men. Mind you, with them it was either respect or court martial (not a bad idea). Well, even funerals if you can imagine. If a funeral procession was goin’ by, you automatically stopped, removed your cap or hat an placed it over your heart and stood still while the procession drove by. There was never a question about it. That was respect, pure an’ simple.

These days though, ever since advent of the “Me” generation, respect has taken on a whole new meaning. It has become an entitlement rather than an obligation, something to be received rather than given. In other words, whatever we do or say should be respected by everybody else, regardless of what it is. OH, REALLY! It’s high time for an attitude adjustment, or at least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin’.

 

The Freakin Frickin Frackin Felons

The Freakin Frickin Frackin Felons

 

Well there ain’t no other way to describe them bunch o’ thieves! Oh I guess there is but there’s gotta be some law against it. Maybe the keyboard would melt if I used some of the terminology that comes to mind. An’ I don’t fancy the tongue lashin’ I’d be in for from the Missus if I did. All I can suggest is you use all the despicable adjectives you ever learned as a youngster an’ apply them to these miserable excuses for humanity that are intent on destroyin’ our planet for the sake of their own greed.

The huge amounts of water they use in their frackin’ operations will soon suck the world’s aquifers dry. Well, just figure on two to four million gallons per well (which is what they estimate). You take the thirty-five thousand wells in the U.S alone an’ you get some idea why California is in its drought status. I started readin’ about this stuff the other day an’ just up an’ quit right in the middle of it. I gave up. Holy Hannah! Makes gang rape seem like a Sunday school activity! Not only do they poison the huge quantities of OUR water they use in their operations, makin’ it useless for anythin’ else, but they try (in their righteous environmental minds) to recover it as best they can an’ dump what’s left in the oceans of the world. An’ they don’t do much of a cleanin’ job neither. In the meantime a lot of it gets flushed into our rivers an’ streams an’ thus into our drinking water sources.

What the heck, we’ll get used to it (they think). Small incremental amounts of poison at a time an’ we’ll build up a resistance to it an’ won’t even notice. Pretty soon poisoned water will be the new normal so what are we complainin’ about anyhow?

I can’t even think of a suitable punishment that should be foisted upon these freakin’ frickin’ frackers, but I’m workin’ on it. Do we know who they are? I don’t mean the companies in particular, but the people who work for them. They should be identified with names – an’ maybe with a tattoo on their foreheads that says “Fracker”. Or maybe they should be made to wear armbands so we know who they are. We need a registry of these people so that every time they want a drink of water, they should be given a glass full o’ their own profit money instead, or a plate full o’ their money instead of food. Let’s see how long they last that way.

Clean drinkin’ water is a basic human right that cannot be tampered with. Nor can it be requisitioned for ownership by someone for his/her own use, whatever it is. It used to be that if you wanted to dig a well of a certain size above the normal four inches, you had to get permission from the municipality. If they didn’t approve it, you didn’t get the well. Whatever happened to them kinds o’ laws anyways? We gotta put some teeth into what can an’ can’t be done ‘round here. At least that’s how it seems to me from up here on the top of the shelf.

Just sayin’.