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So I have taken on a couple of volunteering commitments to pass the time between jobs, to broaden my social horizons a little more in line with my values.
One of them, a thrift shop in town. The biggest, I limit it to a couple of days a week, 4 hours a day, I'm glad to be of service but you can see pretty quick how this could turn into exploitation. They'll take every piece of good intentioned free labor they can get.
The first couple of days, dusting, sweeping, sorting out of donations...
But, by and by they find a department they think interests me - which it does, and it's the vast repository of unsold pictures and frames.
They've not sold them, just laid them up in the back, a hoarders paradise, clutter everywhere, hundreds of unopened boxes, each potentially containing treasures, most containing nothing but kitchen appliances, used, brand new still-in-the-box, cutlery, plates, cups, saucers...
Some are valuable, most aren't, in any event, the sheer volume inoculates you against ever buying any of this shit new ever again.
And the pictures, laid up, they never found time to get around to them, as in a bunker of them laid up in storage. So my days now are spent finding space on the walls to hang pictures, price picture frames, assess and price pictures.
Now - this, while a job in every sense of the word less payment - it amuses me. Most of the pictures, bad-art extraordinaire. Hotel art. Pastel prints of flowers in vases. Or of old cartoons - think back to the 70's caricatures that were briefly so popular - "The Golfers", some painful, comical hijinks involving golfers. Or hunters or fishermen or rugby players or tennis players or cricket players or...
You get the idea.
OMG. Anne Geddes. God, if I had one bullet and it were her or President Putin I would probably put it in my own head. No, hers. He threatens life on earth, she the very heart and soul....
Prints of Holland, Amsterdam, London, the Vacation trophies or souvenirs. Bad third world paintings of tropical sunsets, someone playing the mandolin, guitar, who knows.
Commonplace landscapes, decorative arts, a lot of the acrylic pours - I've tried this, and - if I don't say so myself - to much better effect.
Portraits.
Oh, yes. The portraits.
Now we're getting to it, the meat of it, no longer prints, but the untutored geniuses of Nelson and Environs.
And there are some truly - great? horrible? wtf? I don't know.
Someone has painted his probably beautiful East-Indian or Polynesian bride in painstaking, loving detail. You can see the effort. And it's painful. The effect - not good, merely - well, painful, you can see how hard (he?) tried. And then again - exactly the same painting, only twice the size, but the same level of incompetence.
It's brutal. I look at it and immediately see a divorce. I don't blame her. And - to make matters worse - I see my own hand, the painstaking attention to minute detail that amounts to nothing of value - the trying too hard, the inability to speak what's so clearly in your heart. A bungling oaf, an inept clown. It's personal now, it hurts.
Another, sepia toned "Hobo embracing boy" by so-and-so in memory of so-and-so out of Castlegar, and - the style, like a Penguin cover of a George Orwell novel, but - not.
Nope. Nope nope nope.
A 5 panel "original" of a tree who's branches turn into 2 faces that each look at one another. Badly done, probably painted in China in 10 minutes (tops!), sold on Amazon - and - even as I laughed at it sold yet again.
This is it, my tastes, bloody hell, I have to be careful, most of what I love will never sell, and a lot of what I think of as trash flies off the shelf.
This continues, no end to bad art, the lack of signature doesn't tell me if it was painted in Nelson or the Dominican Republic, and then - once in a while you find it:
The treasure.
Here - a painting of 2 black women, with thatched huts behind them pulling water from a well. Less a painting then daubs by a well-meaning missionary that wanted to document his/her good deeds in the dark continent. It hasn't aged well.
Here - a painting of a dark Mexican in formal dress lurking in an emerald green forest. The emerald green, unadulterated, straight from the tube, it looks like a bad painting of the final glimpse of a serial killer spotted waiting to pounce...
Here - surprisingly - on a 16" X 20" panel, a collection of tree boles in a forest. The stumps extend up and above the frame, the greens and browns, I'd date it - maybe the 40's? It smacks of the Group of 7. Same color palette, perfect color harmony, hard to explain - but I like it. This I'd hang at home.
Here, a 60's or 70's portrait of flowers, oil on canvas, beautiful colors again, well realized, abstracted slightly, it needs an ornate gilt frame. I set it aside.
And - finally - perfect wood frame, an Indian sitting at a campfire. Dark, muted colors, perfect. Another masterpiece, I'd buy.
***
I've tried to talk them into having a bad-art-gala, a fundraiser, silent auction, with a guided tour by none other than myself, lecturing on the deep mystery of art, talent, in the vein of "What in the world were they fucking thinking??!!", but - I've not been there long enough, and the guy I work with, I think we disagree on a few points, a little more conservative - and - well, it's not gonna happen. Which is a shame, because, surely, I can't be the only one looking at this and wondering...
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You knew this was coming. I did as well.
Try as I might, study the menu, work faster, smarter, or slower, more cautious, it wasn't working. There was no way it could work.
The week before, turning, my back twists, lower back. Sunday, barely unable to get out of bed. Monday, very slightly recovered.
The job, nothing but stress and anxiety, you see it in the mannerisms of those who've somehow managed to fit in, the swish, swagger, effeminate manners - even affected by the straight lads, the "stoop" - shoulders hunched - the physical symptoms of having being "broken", the "Knowing" of the menu - that this morsel has 3 bites, this tid-bit has 4, the continual reprimands - about offenses you see everyone around you committing - wine glass - filled too high - not high enough - the constant querying of the Chef, because under no circumstances do you promise anything to the customer that he has not approved - and - when not reprimanding you he reprimands others in your presence - for filling your shot glass too full, for answering a question...
It's feudal - this - the managers, Chef, eat at a common table, many courses, dirty plates left for the servers to clean, to see how "the other half" eats.
Contrast this with your overcooked pasta in oil, and the same bloody salad day after day.
So, after another intolerably long night of perpetual reprimands and bitchy behaviors I'm done. Chef agrees.
He's a short man, who - through a triumph of will has realized his every ambition, but - this with everyone that has served being squashed underfoot. It's feudalism, he will accept you as a subject - but you must accept him as your Lord, these are not human relationships, or like none that I am familiar with.
I have never hated a job so much in my life, or been so relieved to escape.
But now, what next?
We will see.
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This job. It's built into it - a staff meal, consisting of a bit of salad, and a pasta of different shapes tossed in oil.
The contrast between what the staff are fed - and what the customers eat - is huge. It's an abyss, a gulf, a chasm, and the meal, it's a way of reinforcing it. This food, you wouldn't feed it to dogs, yet -
Well, it's war, really.
And the service - the maitre-d breathing down my neck the whole night, telling me I'm not keeping up, if I just offered water to a table and they declined, and he - on my heels, offers and they accept I'm at fault. Everything is my fault. I can't tell if he hates me - personally - or this is just the "break your will" portion of it. Every night I expect to be fired - and - really, apart from the immense financial inconvenience - I'd be grateful. I cannot recall a job I've hated as much as this, that so preoccupies me with the despair of having to go into work. Better, by a long shot - to work at a Denny's or Smitty's than here.
My section - 3 tables. 2 deuces, 1 four top. They're drinking - each of the deuces spend upwards of $1500. The four top - in excess of $4000. It's spending money for the sheer joy of spending money, there is no correlation with a real-world economy, no amount of "foody" justifies this - every course left partially unconsumed, the wine, the liquor goes.
This - I would once have considered $150, $200 a pretty good "date night", but here - well, that gets your coat checked. It's - quite literally - a full order of magnitude above anything I've experienced.
So you struggle on, night after night, hoping it either gets easier, or just ends. My preference - well, I know - the end would be a damned sight preferable - but - I need wheels and so I would prefer to drive onward, as I still apparently have a little too much baggage.
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And everything I eat here, everything within a 10 block radius of the hostel, the Subway, the Donair, Pizza, Tacos, Pub-grub, it's all the fucking same, taste, texture, Soylent Green, and I find myself staring down the countless rats that run down the alleys, big ones, juicy, is this the reason everything here is so bland, food flavored like the weather, is this what they're serving? Who knows, it wouldn't be a surprise, really, at this the end of days.
I've come to the conclusion I hate Vancouver. I don't know why, the weather, buildings, slums or wealth, there's no single thing I can put my finger on, only that I hate it. I try to imagine improving it - maybe if I found a permanent place to live here, or a job I enjoyed more, but even if I were independently wealthy, a gentleman of leisure, nothing would improve it. Nothing would make it better. And I don't know why that is.
So get to work, make the best of a bad situation, set the target on the end of May, I need a jeep, a great metal detector, $10,000 Fisher or Minelab, a pocket full of cash and an off-road map to the Yukon, this city has been it's own adventure of sorts, only one I rather haven't enjoyed and I need to find some new adventures more to my taste...
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This appeared on my "Yahoo News" feed today - admittedly a dubious source, but the Telegraph, from which it's reprinted, is less so.
Anyways - link via the Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/11/scientists-believed-covid-leaked-wuhan-lab-feared-debate-could/
Now, searching for the full article (sans-paywall) I'm unable to find it, and a surprisingly low number of results for the search. Already the "leak" is being scrubbed from the internet.
The fact that as soon as it's reported it disappears in my mind - at least - in a large part substantiates it. The fact that bad information (think "Ivermectin" and "Drink Urine") is always readily available is a testament to Big Brother's rewriting of the past.
Subcategories
Dating
OK. I've been on a few internet dates. I confess this with the same reluctance I would admitting to masturbating, adultery, or excessive drinking and drug use.
This is a list of some of my best -- AND WORST -- dates ever. Note that you gotta go on a lotta dates to get this kinda list, this kinda discouraged. And my online dating thing has been sporadic - an every few years kind of thing at best. Some of these dates go back 10 years, others are a little more recent. And to answer any people who might argue "It beats hooking up at the bar", well, you don't have to hook up at the bar, and at the bar you can see what your getting...
Anyways - apologies to the countless normal, decent dates that I went on but just didn't hit it off with. Memory is selective, it tends towards the extreme, and in this you will find the extremes...
Dear Osama
In which I write everyone's favorite advice columnist.
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