the can racket

the eye is better and i'm back collecting empty beer cans. i got a few dollars worth today and a nice pair of adidas sneakers. i'm too lazy to clean the sneakers right now but a good bleach bath and a few days in the sun and bob's your uncle.

i go bike riding real early in the morning. when i'm riding the night workers are getting off shift. i'm talking about the ladies that give comfort to men with a few bucks in their pocket. some of the ladies resemble the walking dead. i'm sure they have all sorts of substance issues and i don't even want to think about their hygiene. others look quite lovely. it doesn't seem to be an industry where the workers age well.

i get lots of smiles and greetings as i ride by them. they see an older gentleman dressed like a bum riding along with a bag of tins and the more downtrodden workers see me as a brother in arms. i'm sure i could get a mercy fuck if i asked. so far i haven't asked.

this morning i saw a lady from the back who looked quite nice. she was thin and had nice black hair. i rode over to where she was standing and almost fell of the iron maiden when she turned around. she was real old! i mean real old. maybe she could suck a golf ball through a garden hose or had some other talent. she smiled at me and i smiled back. so it goes.

it's nice to be back in the saddle again with 2 eyes that work.



i think i saw this horny lady while having lunch at a dim sum joint this morning.

i love you son's of bitches.

general motors

GENERAL MOTORS, YOU BETTER START SWIMMING OR YOU'LL SINK LIKE A ROCK!

the american and canadian governments are pouring billions of dollars into the general motors sinkhole. general motors has been a basket case for years. they were a finance company that made cars on the side. any profits in recent years came from the financing division. we all now know what a house of cards the financing division was.

in exchange for the 40 billion dollar cash infusion, the american taxpayers will receive a 72.5% interest in a company that presently has a market cap of less than a billion dollars. not a good investment.

by owning 72.5% of the company the poor tax payers are also responsible for 72.5% of the losses. it doesn't seem like a good investment to me.

i don't know what the mood of taxpayers is in the united states but in canada about 90% of the tax payers now hate general motors and the canadian auto workers with a passion. i don't think any of these people are going to buy a chevy any time soon. i can understand their anger. people with no pension are having to pay for the pensions of auto workers who have had the sweetest of contracts for decades.

does the average american tax payer support the auto bailout?

one more thing, the stupid arseholes are closing down pontiac. pontiac makes the only american car i'd consider buying.



speaking of china....

the ceremony

i was at sonny's convocation today. a long day with speeches that dragged on ad infinitum. the chancellor gave a long speech. guess who was her inspiration.

susan fucking boyle!

now ms boyle is probably a fine person and the first few times i heard of her i had positive thoughts about her but she's getting a little worn out in my book. i never really understood the big deal about her. she's a good singer, the world is full of good singers. i guess some people thought she looked a little feckless and were surprised that she had some talent. what a bunch of narrow minded nitwits. since when did talent depend on outward appearances? she never looked all that bad to me. she just looked like a nice middle aged woman in my eyes.

what do you think all the beautiful celebrities would look like without their make-up, liposuction and cosmetic surgeries? not too fecking good!

all growed up

sonny gets his diploma this coming week. he's an engineer now! actually he needs to 5 years work experience to get his P.eng. that gives him the magic signature. with the tight job market he's heading back to university in september to get his master's. oddly enough, he'll have M.eng. after his name before he gets P.eng. so it goes.



here's the guy i named him after. hopefully my shane has the soul of poet just as mr mcgowan possesses. only time will tell.



my shane's heading up to the yukon in early june. i think he'll be drilling for gold. i hope he finds lots of it.

doctor my eyes.......

i saw the opthamologist today for a follow up. he took out the eye shield or patch or whatever in the hell it was. i'm glad it's out. the good news i can still see pretty good, the bad news is my eye still hurts like crazy.

i was given a wee lecture on how lucky i was not to have lost my eye. i hadn't thought about losing an eye and i don't think that i was ever in danger of losing the eye. there's just something about eye doctors, they take eyes real serious and don't want people doing stupid things. he gave me some more anti-biotic eye drops. i like doctors that aren't cheap with the samples. they all have tons of samples from the pharmaceutical companies. god bless the doctors that hand out the samples rather than hoard them.

take the eye and ear test.



i love you sons of bitches

call me king

in the valley of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

i was riding through the park this morning and spotted several cans in the bushes. i left the iron maiden on the path and entered the bushes to retrieve the cans. since the iron maiden was by herself i was picking up the cans as fast as i could. while bending down in a hurry i got a stick in the eye. i yelled fuck several times.

the eye was bleeding and i couldn't see for sour apples. i rode home and felt sorry for myself. i went to the walk in clinic and was checked by a lovely russian doctor. she was slim and i loved her accent. she gave me a prescription and a referral to an opthamologist. the eye doctor gave a thorough check. i have a gouged eye ball and a scratched cornea. i feckin hurts like crazy. he gave me some drops, he said the ointment prescribed by the russian was no good. he also put in some kind of lens to protect the cornea. i have to go back and see him on friday. i'd rather go see the russian.

in picking up about 50 cents worth of cans i've cost the medical system several hundred dollars and have an eye that hurts like crazy. i also have a toothache and have an appointment with the dentist tomorrow morning for cleaning and scaling. i might chicken out and not tell her about the toothache.

i'm falling apart faster than a dodge caravan.

poor little, poor little me.

the iron maiden

it was time to give the iron maiden a bath. riding through mud and routinely oiling the the chain and sprockets can produce a bit of a mess. in the past i've thrown the changers out of whack when giving it a bath. since i have a few months left on my free tune ups for a year i decided to give the old girl a clean up while i was still protected.



after the bath. i used a toothbrush and one of the fast food princess' paint brushes to clean the touchy areas. too bad it'll be a mess again in a few weeks.



i didn't know the iron maiden possessed hyper drive until todays cleaning.

i was riding a bike with grip shifters yesterday and almost suffered a painful injury. a traffic light was about to change so i decided to make a sprint for it. i wanted a higher gear to get some speed. i turned the grip and started pedaling like a madman. the shift didn't work and my foot slipped off the pedal. i almost injured the family jewels when i landed on the bar. things are still intact much to the chagrin of the not so lovely mrs myshkin.

i've been spoiled by rapid fire shifters.

I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. i deserve those rapid fire shifters.

the cadillac of ivy

i picked up a few more ivy vines this morning. last year i tried cutting off the end of the vines but none of the cuttings survived. now i grab a vine and pull the whole fecking thing out. with a little luck i get some roots. getting roots seems to be the key to survival.



i'm sure the day will come when i rue the day that ivy caught my eye but for now i'm enjoying the ivy challenge. i figure it's easier to cover the weeds with ivy than to pull them out.

on a different note, i opened my mail today. i hate opening mail so i only do it once or twice a month. the shit piles up until i get curious. any mail without first class postage goes straight into the garbage. opening it is the easy part, deciding what to do with it is the hard part. usually i take it to the cracker factory and shred it.

i get most bills paid directly out of my checking account so the crap in the mail is just a formality. i never balance checking accounts or reconcile credit card statements. i'd rather watch movies or take ruby for a walk. on the other hand, the lovely mrs myshkin goes over her stuff with a fine toothed comb. she keeps every receipt and matches them up to her statements. it causes her a lot of grief when things don't add up. like i said, i'd rather watch tv.

the idiots won

the assholes, disguised as idiots, won the election. the douche bags came in second and none of the other parties won anything. the green party continues to sound nice but be totally ineffective.

i voted libertarian which ended up in a wee argument. some people accused me of throwing away my vote. fuck them, i voted for the guy and the party i liked the most. isn't that what you're supposed to do in an election?

the douche bags think that if you don't vote for the idiots then you must vote for them in order to defeat the idiots. it's like those arsehole democrats who cry when people vote for ralph. so it goes.

the new system for voting, STV, was shot down in flames.

steve earle has a new album out comprised of townes van zandt songs. i hope to find it under my pillow when i wake up tomorrow morning.



i love you sons of bitches.

call me undecided

hi ho, hi ho
it's off to vote i go

i'm now an undecided voter. it seems we have a libertarian candidate in our riding. i had decided to vote green but this libertarian deal changes everything.

i need a little help.

treasures

i'm still collecting empty tins while riding the iron maiden most mornings. me and ruby haven't found much in the parks so far but things should pick up with the warmer weather.

i'm not keeping track of the can money any more because it led to some pretty good conflicts when i was short changed. so far this year i estimate the haul at about $200. i've got $120 in my jar and have probably spent about $80 on my special medicine.

in addition to empty tins i've been picking up a lot of ivy clippings. someone told me not to plant anymore ivy. i took that as a personal challenge. i plan to be the ivy king before the summer is over. the ivy i'm picking up is hard to grow. i guess that's why they call it the cadillac of ivies.

this morning i had a special find whilst out riding.



these little babies posed quite a retrieval challenge. try riding a bike with 4 bags of empty beer tins and 50 lbs of iron. it ain't easy. i was about 5 km from home when i found them. there were some bushes about 200 yards from where i found them so i rode to the bushes taking 1 at a time. then i drove back later and picked them up.

they'll be put to good use by me and sonny. we have some crappy old ones but now we'll be exercising in style.

i figure that they're worth about $50.

so i got that going for me too, which is real nice.

our little election

on may 12 our fair province heads to the polls to elect a provincial government. things are a little different in b.c. than in other provinces.

to recap from the last federal election:

idiots - the liberal party (center)
assholes - the conservative party (right)
douche bags - the new democrats (left)
loonies - the green party

in our fair province the idiots and assholes merged to prevent the douche bags from forming government. the douche bags still win once in a while. it's not because anyone really likes them it's just that their hatred for the idiot/asshole party intensifies every 10 years or so.

the asshole/idiot party call themselves idiots. this is a bit of a misnomer because our idiot party is really a right wing asshole party but it's easier to market them as idiots.

i don't like the idiots, assholes or douche bags so i usually vote for the loonies unless the libertarians or marijuana party run a candidate in my riding.

this time we're also voting on a new system to elect the crooks who will fleece us. the parties that lose are sick of losing so they're proposing a new system. it's call "STV", it stands for single transferable vote. it's pretty complicated and most people don't understand it. i've read lots of stuff on it and it's still not crystal clear to me. basically you get rank your preferences of the candidates. ie, you not only indicate whom your first choice would be you also indicate your second and third choices ad infinitum. it's still not that easy. your vote can get carved up to more than one candidate.

STV explained

i defy anyone to read the above link and be able to fully understand he new system in 10 minutes or less. maybe josh will figure it out because he's really smart.

feck obama (mr wonderful)

CANADA ON BLACKLIST!!



so mr wonderful has put canada on a blacklist. fuck him!!

it seems mr wonderful is determined to remake the world in 7 days. i would have thought that his plate was already full playing robin hood.

i think mr wonderful has the robin hood thing backwards. rather than taking from the rich and giving to the poor he's been taking from the poor and giving to the rich. of course i'm talking about his bailouts of the wall street bankers and investment houses.

to be fair i like his approach to marijuana and lobby groups but putting canada on a blacklist is the last straw for me. do you think he owes a few favors to the hollywood leaches and parasites that threw so much money and support his way during the primaries and election? how about repaying the automotive labor unions that tossed 50 million his way? sure, toss billions at companies that produce shitty cars and negotiated the stupidest labor contracts in recent history. can you say legacy costs? oh yeah, the legacy costs go to the guys that tossed 50 million his way.

we canadians are just a humble and backward little community that would rather regulate banks and carbon emissions than morality.

"For years, the powerful International Intellectual Property Alliance – a group that includes companies such as Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Paramount Pictures Corp......The alliance cheered Canada's blacklisting Thursday. "

MICROSOFT, APPLE, PARAMOUNT PICTURES... that's who's pulling obama's chain!


blacklist us? fuck you assholes!!