Work to Rule Strike

 Never heard of it?  I didn't either until I came across this story on my news app last night.

"In a work-to-rule strike, employees obey policies, procedures and laws that apply to their work and perform their jobs to "the letter of the law," the unions wrote. That conduct includes not answering questions from travelers about border laws or gathering duties and taxes, according to Reuters.

The unions said their conduct "may cause long and unavoidable delays at Canada's borders as workers carry out their jobs as they were trained to do."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/canadian-border-staff-to-begin-work-to-rule-strike-friday/ar-AAMX2EC?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

This is brilliant, they continue to draw their paychecks and can't be punished because they are just doing what they're supposed to do.  

Checking in...

Lot going on in the kennels of the Old Dog and didn't make it to the internet yesterday.  I was ailing and out for the count: sore throat, headache, body aches, coughing, sneezing, general weakness, and slowly rising temperature.  Everything but the Boogie-Woogie Flu, it seems.   And this morning?  Fine and dandy with a temperature of 98.3F, a little soreness in the back of the throat like when you eat a lot of crunchy food, but otherwise nothing that I've noticed.  No medications other than aspirin, lemonade (the real stuff!), gargling with salt water, and plenty of rest.  Go figure.

As mentioned previously, here's a pic of the castor bean plants I tried to get going.  The pink light is from the  grow-bulbs; I don't have any pix with natural light, sorry.

great wall 9

 When the pandemic began my sister sewed me a couple masks, and I remember looking at them and wondering what use I could make of them in a couple weeks when this had all blown over.  And maybe a month ago I was looking over the masks I had accumulated over the last sixteen months and wondering if it was time to toss them out, but then things were getting a little iffy and I took to stuffing one in my pocket before I left, and maybe slipping on if I were going to be in a store for awhile, and yesterday afternoon there was an email to all residents and now I will have to mask up when I walk into the hallway and keep it on until I get outdoors and then be prepared to put it back on whenever I go inside a building.

Fuck the anti faxxers, fuck them for fucking with me, fuck their bogus claims to personal choice, fuck them all up the butt with a long and fat needle full of vax.

Know what I mean?

Annette had left the keys with the hostess, who wanting to get out right away, left them with me to close up, and as the place emptied I remembered, how could I have forgotten, Dawn.

I hadn’t seen her come down so I went up.  It was dark and empty, and I noticed that some of the tables still had dishes on them and when I looked over to where the little bar was there was Dawn slumped in a chair.  The empty bottle, lying on its side, was a fifth of Glenlivet.

I nudged her a little and she mumbled something and slumped further into the chair.  I looked downstairs and realized that everybody else was gone.  I gave her another little nudge and now she kind of sighed and slipped right off the chair onto the floor.

Well this was just some kind of thing.  It must have been all that talk about her father and his death, and then those little bottles of Glenlivet like toy soldiers.  It must’ve just happened.  She had said she never drank. 

Anyway I had to lock up and I couldn’t leave her there on the floor. I knelt down and put one arm behind her shoulders and one arm under her knees and stood up.  She felt good in my arms, warm and soft and breathing contentedly.  I could see a reflection of myself holding her in one of the mirrors along the wall and I looked quite heroic, like an Aztec hero carrying the princess from the Temple of Evil. 

I got her to the stairs and down them, but once I got her to the first floor I realized that that was as far as I was going to be able to carry her.  I set her down in a chair.  She was a little more responsive now, her eyes opened and she looked confused.

And then I heard someone coming up the stairs from the kitchen.  It was Vincent walking around in the dark empty restaurant and looking around for anybody who spoke English that still might be around, so that he was glad to see me.  I guess Leon had called Vincent from the cop shop and taught him his first English words, “Jail,” and “Bail,” which Vincent repeated to me handing me the keys to Leon’s Buick, to drive down to the station, and the roll of bills that would be the bail bond. 

When he saw Dawn who I’d deposited awkwardly in the chair at the base of the stairs, his smile evaporated and we were no longer the Aztec hero and the princess fleeing the evil temple.  We were the lion and the lamb, and we weren’t in the peaceable kingdom anymore.

It wasn’t like that of course, but how to explain?  I didn’t have to, but I didn’t like the way he was looking at me.  I did an elaborate pantomime of putting her in the car, driving her to her house, taking her to her door, putting her inside and then closing the door and walking away, closing the door and walking away, closing the door and walking away.  And he just looked at me in exactly the same way.

So then I did another pantomime, this time I included him in it.  In this one he helped me put her in the car and I made a point of sitting him between the two of us for the drive to her house.  Now he smiled, now he nodded.

As it turned out the cold air revived her, and she didn’t need much help at all.  And with her recovery and my sincere assurances, Vincent must have felt better about the whole thing, so that when I motioned for him to get into the car, he looked about at the dark wilderness outside, shook my hand, and went back into the restaurant.

a couple things we oughta do

I am wrong again.  I was thinking of the Arizona legislature when I linked Michigan's antimasking movement with the election fraud thing.  In fact here is a an article that puts the Michigan republicans in a pretty good light, except for that voter suppression thing which I am not in a mood to bang the drum for today.    

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/michigan-republicans-eviscerate-trump-voter-fraud-claims-scathing-report-n1272116

You know I sit up here in my tower and I watch my CNN and listen to my NPR, and I read my two local papers, and I get a Washington Post feed on my tablet, and I have my two political sites which I look in on several times a day, and I think I am oh so well informed, and I think here I am with all this knowledge and my fine analytic brain, the better to steer the ship of state and yet my vote is cancelled out by some nimrod who doesn't know how many supreme court judges there are or who his own senator is.

Or how about this?  My vote is also cancelled out by another nimrod who spends a lot of time with his own political sources and is convinced that the democratic party is the party of pedophilia.  From his point of view he is also oh so informed, and maybe even moreso than me because he possesses this secret knowledge of which I am unaware, though I do expect that he also doesn't know how many supremes there are or who his senator is.

 But what he thinks is an obvious lie and since a lie is the opposite of the truth, shouldn't his vote count negatively, so that his vote goes to the candidate that he didn't vote for?  

In fact wouldn't it be a great idea to program the voting machine to sense the electromagnetic waves of somebody who believes in conspiracy theories and then automatically changes their vote to the other candidate?  

Oh wait, nevermind.  

I've got my Ten Cat show on October 2, and my annual (except for last year) Punkin Palooza coming up in a couple months and I fear now that they will both be cancelled out by the delta.  I am looking for some rosy news, but all I have so far is that the London delta rate has begun to mysterious drop and maybe the US will also, and there seems to be an uptick in vaxxes lately, not all that much, but maybe it will grow.

I think a lot of the resistance to vaxxing is kind of a tribe thing.  People have a tendency to think and act as their friends and neighbors do, and normally. everything else being equal, that works out pretty well.  And so maybe once a few of their friends get the vax, and are as fit as a fiddle while their other neighbor who didn't get it has been intubated, well maybe they will change their mind.

Masking is a good thing to do, but it is nowhere near as good as vaxxing, and a lot of people just don't want to be seen in masks, but nobody can see if you have a vax.  You know you see these motley crews of anti vaxxers here and there with their Q and Trump signs, I think we should counter them with pro vax demonstrations demanding things like mandatory vaxxing.  Yeah that's what we oughta do.

Told You So

Okay, it's not as bad as I predicted, at least not yet, largely because Biden has been continuing a policy, started by Trump, that uses COVID as an excuse to turn back most illegal border crossers.  I don't know how long he can keep this up, but it's better than nothing.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/u-s-to-continue-migrant-expulsion-policy-indefinitely/ar-AAMRlBY?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

 "Would be nice if your state legislature would also urge people to act responsibly instead of spending so much time and money disputing the election."

I don't remember hearing anything about the Michigan legislature disputing the election.  Last I heard, there was some guy going around from county to county trying to persuade the locals to conduct a "forensic audit" like they are doing in Maricopa County, Arizona.  Our county sent a letter about it to our Secretary of State or somebody, but I haven't heard if anything came of it.  I still don't know why the Trumpists would want to audit Cheboygan County since Trump carried the county by a substantial margin.  There was a lawsuit filed in nearby Antrim County, which I believe Trump also carried.  I seem to remember reading that one failed, but I suppose it will be appealed. 

The dispute between our legislature and our governor has been about COVID restrictions.  They pretty much fought each other to a standstill, but the pandemic was generally believed to be winding down by then anyway.  With the current surge, Queen Gretchen has taken to issuing recommendations instead of edicts.  At least 30 counties have been designated areas of high transmission and hence subject to these recommendations, but Cheboygan County is not one of them.  We have been averaging one new case a day for the last couple weeks, but none of them have been the Delta variant.    

moving

 Had a phone call from the nurse before some recent medical procedure.  She wanted to know some covid stuff, and as long as she had me on the line she wanted to know if I knew what year it was and what the day of the week was, and I guess we all know where that is going.  Not unlike the former prez  I aced it.  But I do have trouble with dates, but I think I always have.  Anyway it is September 11.

Chicago used be replete with art stores popping up and going out of business like champagne bubbles, which was great for us artists because the going out of business sales were fantastic.  Maybe ten years ago Blicks moved into town with these forty percent off discounts which were also fantastic, but then they drove all the other art stores out of business, and shortly afterwards the forty percent discounts disappeared which was not so fantastic.  I know people who go to Michaels and you can get some good stuff there, you can also get some crap.  I would avoid those deals where you get five packaged brushes at a fantastic price because they are likely not worth shit.   Blicks has a deal where if you buy five or more brushes they discount the price and you can get five for like fifteen bucks.  Choose an assortment to your liking.  I have cans and coffee mugs full of brushes, but mostly I just use a number six liner brush.  If you want to slash around like a movie artist, you will need something bigger.  Also don't get any paper that is less than 140 pounds.  I recommend Canson's which is pretty cheap, and pretty good.  Can I inquire if Big Dog is thinking of taking up the art?

Marina City is to the west of your window view.  I'll try to get up on the roof and see if I can see The Ravenswood.

At first I was at sea about the woman scorned remark, and then I remembered.  That scene actually happened though it was the daughter of the scorned woman who did the dunking, and instead of two hookers it was some high powered real estate agent.  Probably more humiliating to be dunked by a fourteen year old girl than a scorned woman.

Regardless of how you feel about Queen Gretchen you will be doing yourself and moreso your friends and neighbors a huge favor if you mask up and get the vaccine.  I am speaking not so much for Beagles who is vaxxed and lives in a remote freehold, but Michiganders in general.  Would be nice if your state legislature would also urge people to act responsibly instead of spending so much time and money disputing the election.

I am thinking back on moving.  Through most of my youth I have no memories and expect that it consisted of hauling a duffel bag through the leafy streets of Champaign Urbana.  In 1984  I moved my stuff to Texas by sending maybe 15 boxes to myself by Fedex.  I moved to my parents' attic two and a half years later the same way.  Moving into Marina City required a rented pickup truck and me and my brother-in-law and my nephew.  Moving out of here I cannot imagine.  I guess my strategy is to be dead.

A Woman Scorned

 That's how it is with them women, you sleep with them one time and they think they own your ass.  Of course it sometimes goes the other way.  Sometimes it's the guy who thinks they have started something special while the girl would like to forget that it ever happened.  Violence is never justified in either case, but it happens, or so I have been told.

Funny thing about relocating, the first time you do it there's nothing to it, but each time thereafter you have more stuff to move.  The last move is the worst, although somebody else will have to take care of it because your moving days will be over.  My mother outlived my father by 10 years, and she spent much of those last 10 years trying to find a good home for all the stuff he had accumulated in his life.  After my mother passed on, my sister spent over a year clearing out what was left so we could sell the house.  At one point I suggested that she reduce the selling price if the buyer would agree to take the house "as is" with all the stuff still in it, but she didn't want to do that, and she doubted that the buyer would either.

I read in the paper the other day that the Delta variant has not been discovered yet in Cheboygan County, but they figure it's only a matter of time, since the surrounding counties all have it.  Queen Gretchen seems reluctant to re-impose the mask rule, at least for now, claiming that the only way out of this is mass vaccination.  I read somewhere, or heard it on the TV news, that the federal government does not have the authority to enforce mandatory vaccination except on its own property and interstate transportation.  A recent court decision said that employers can require it as condition of employment, however.  State and local governments might be able to do it, but they would would likely face a court challenge if they did.