As I pointed out earlier… the French letter to myself was meant for the 10 year High School reunion. They sent it to me in the mail instead because I did not attend my reunion. Not that I could have, as I wasn’t invited, or was forgotten entirely. The funny part of this is, I had absolutely NO inclination to reminisce with those I was trapped with for 5 years, and would not have attended if I’d been invited. I graduated in June 1993, and come September 2003, I was kind of curious about the reunion in general, along the lines of if they had even had one at all. A brief search of the internet resulted in a brief article about it (in retrospect) in the local paper. So there WAS a reunion, I had just no been notified of it prior to its occurrence. I should point out that I have never officially (in terms of “real” mail – VISA bills and government stuff) from the place I lived in 1993 even though I have lived in 3 other houses in the meantime. I still live 3 blocks from my High School, have the same phone number even. Tracking me down wouldn’t have been difficult.

I’m searching for the word that describes the fact that I’m pissed I wasn’t invited to a reunion that I wouldn’t have attended anyway. Hmmm…

She looks at the letter recently arrived in the mail and says: “This looks like your handwriting”. I responded, perhaps haughtily, that I “don’t write letters to myself”. Humpf. So I looked at the letter, and it DID look like my handwriting.

I opened the letter. I was confronted with 3 pages of text, my name at the top of each, ALL of it in my own handwriting. This annoyed more than puzzled me mostly due to the earlier comment about how I’d never write my own damn self a letter. Damn. Still, I hadn’t the faintest idea what this was all about, until I noticed that it was written in ANOTHER language! I should perhaps point out that I noticed the language thing quite quickly.

So NOT only had I actually written a letter to myself, it was written in a language I mostly didn’t understand (any longer). Damn.

What had happened here, was that we had an assignment in my French 11 class where we were to predict what our lives would be like in approximately 10 years, and then we would read these at our 10 year High School reunion. The annoying thing about French assignments, above all, was that they had to be ENTIRELY written in French – which was a problem for my comprehension 11 years later. Even more confusing, there was a hand print, presumably mine, in blue paint on the last page. This looked like something out of a Kindergarten class, yet it was a full size hand. Strange.

So…. as I had conveniently written the whole thing in double spacing, I wrote underneath the French writing a translation. Managed about half of it without cheating with a dictionary. As we had to always speak in French in French class, the sentence that still most easily comes to my mind is “Je ne sais pas” and a few other things like that. Sadly, this sentence was not in my letter.

Another thing that became painfully obvious was that I wasn’t that good of a French student. This was also a letter to ourselves, so the teacher didn’t proofread it for us, as this was a private matter. This made some of the sentences hard to understand, and one of them downright ridiculous as a prediction:

It is possible that you will be a woman, but child I doubt.

In my own defence, I know that I meant that I would be married or something, not that I would BE a woman. I don’t think I meant I’d be a child either. Some might differ on the opinion as to whether that “you probbaly won’t be a child” prediction came true.

The other predictions I will leave where they are, but will point out that I am no Nostradamus. My favourite part of the letter to myself was where I, in the last sentence, pointed out that 10 years from now my French probably won’t be too good, so I bet I’d be looking all this up in the dictionary. How things change…. I was on google.com, running the parts I couldn’t’ decipher myself through the language translator. I should point out that when I graduated from high school, the world wide web had barely begun, with approximately 3 web pages in North America. Now, I have more than 3 web sites myself.

The hand print turned out, as explained by the last page of writing, to be a self administered palm reading. This reminds me exactly why I didn’t like French class. It wasn’t learning the language, it was the mentality of the teachers, invariably female. I will not torment you with tales of countless mock fashion shows and posture projects about my favourite actor that I had to endure. Horror… the horror.

The next time I get a letter in the mail, I’m going to keep my mouth shut.

It seems that Murphy, of Murphy’s Law fame…. works weekends. Just when I believe that I am save from his Law related mayhem…. he strikes.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that I was having to mow the lawn on the weekend, hurriedly – in an attempt to outrun an impending rainstorm. I start up the mower…. no gas. I add gas… spill it all over me. Now, I get a headache from the lawn mower after about an hour or so anyway, due to the toxic gasses that it belches out everywhere while burning its sinful fossil fuels (it takes about 2.5 hours to mow the lawn). If I spill gas…. it happens rather quickly. If I actually get it ON me… I get sick almost right away. Naturally, this is what occurred. So now I am not only fighting the impending rainstorm, the darkness of night – but the increasingly tumultuous headache residing in that part of your brain right behind your eyes.

So I mow a few lines up and down the largest patch of grass. Then the belt that drives the “self” propel feature of the fossil fueled grass whacker decides to fall off completely. This results in much tearing apart of the mower, some not so gentle swearing, and the eventual consternation as to how to put it all back together (once the &#$&@ belt goes back on). So, once reassembly was accomplished, I walk another 10 feet with it, and the belt falls off again.

More swearing.

Adding to the pleasure and enjoyment of my leisurely walk in the backyard was the fact that the fog that had hung over my house all day had decided, as fog tends to do, to soak the grass seemingly beyond saturation. This means that the sinful fossil fueled grass whacker can’t chuck the grass back into its bag as often, requiring me to actually bend over and empty it more frequently that I otherwise would with dry grass. Sigh…

More swearing.

I had come to the last section of lawn, with only a few more instances of self propel drive belt rebellion, and guess what? It starts to RAIN! I can’t believe it… and its that kind of cold rain that drills right through your tshirt. I was just starting to think that its ok, because I was almost done.

Then the belt falls off again.

Even more swearing.

Finally I conquered the arduous task before me, got the infernal grass whacker back into the shed… noting that the rain had suddenly stopped, and flung myself into my bedroom to relax and watch some television. Escape at last. No matter how bad Murphy comes after me, I seem to prevail. He might work weekends, but I can eventually outsmart him and therefore survive the experience. Whew!

Then I plunge a sewing needle into my thumb. Deep.

My differences with the Mus musculus (House mouse) invasions into my various homes are well documented here. Every December they invade… and ultimately cause me to leave my home, or to wage war against them. They showed up again 3 months ago, this time avoiding their earlier preference towards the month of December. Again, they were taken away in body bags, and our victory against this cell was swift.

I have just today come to learn that they were likely successful in their secret mission. Today I was reconnecting a television that had been moved due to renovations. So I put my thumb and index finger on the plug, and thrust it into the wall. What followed was rather unpleasant…. as I received what I consider to be a large shock (are their really small shocks issued from power plugs?). I was more or less unharmed, although my thumb remains a bit disgruntled over the experience. I took careful measures to remove the plug from the socket… this time avoiding any sort of painful electrical discharge into my fingers. So I scrutinized the wire… and noticed that various tiny teeth and eaten away at the hard plastic of the plug… and the plastic insulation of the wire. Tiny little bites all over…. you can even see the little grooves in their teeth etched into the plastic!

As is now obvious to everyone, this was clearly an assassination attempt. I am the only one who hooks up televisions, computers, and other electronic equipment in this household… and therefore they must have picked up on this and decided that it was a worthy angle to investigate. So while the culprits were removed from the crime scene, their work was already in place. However, I can declare victory in this matter, and far from being dead, am feeling rather fortunate to be left with only a sore thumb! I am still puzzled as to why they have marked me as a target of choice. The question is… they no doubt know their assassination attempt failed. What will they try next?

A local grocery store recently made paper bags available once again. I asked why – and they said that “we’ve always had them, but people had to request them”. I haven’t seen anyone with one for years. Fine, but I didn’t request it – why am I getting paper this time? “We’ve always had the policy of giving them to you if you had only a few items”. I pointed out that she just said we needed to request them. I also pointed out that I bought one loaf of bread last week and nothing more, and I received a plastic bag. She had no explanation. I didn’t push the matter.

On the side of my newly acquired paper bag it says “We bag your savings”. I’ve pondered this statement for a while. In order for them to be MY savings, I’d still have to have them in my possession. After all, I’VE saved them, so they can’t be anyone else’s or I wouldn’t have been able to save them in the first place. So how could THEY bag MY savings unless I’d given them my savings in the first place, in which case I WOULDN’T”T have saved ANYTHING!???? I don’t understand. I’d imagine, after the paper/plastic debacle just moments earlier, that even a polite inquisition about the savings slogan would have merely started trouble. No actual explanation would have been acquired. Security would inevitably be called. Again.

I ran this slogan by a friend. HIS interpretation of it, immediately, was that they have another metaphorical bag somewhere where they are dumping all of your savings after they shake as much money from you in the store that they can. So when they bag your savings, it is really just pointing out that you’ve been ripped off and all your savings are now in their possession. Maybe it should read: “We bag your life savings”?

I hesitate to say what follows at all. Doing so might be ultimately cause Murphy (of Murphy’s Law) to rain down such a painful punishment upon me that I might never get “Turkey in the straw” or “The entertainer” out of my head ever again. My neighborhood is not a heavily populated one. Acreages mostly. Nevertheless, each and every summer has brought a plague of ice cream trucks upon us. This year, however, the swarm has not yet invaded my neighborhood at all. I’ve heard one, and that was only for a brief period of time, and on a long weekend. We’ve had hot sunny weather for quite a while, hardly any rain compared to usual, and still there is a definite dearth of ice cream trucks. I am not complaining mind you, I hate the four wheeled beasts in every way. As a child I wasn’t allowed to indulge in such things as ice cream truck consumerism. The lack of such things in my life was under the dubious guise of what I now believe to be largely parentally imagined food allergies. So the sound of horrific jingles ringing through my neighborhood did not suggest dessert, it merely reminded me of the lack thereof. So I was left to stew over the horrific songs that came with them. Over and over and over and over. Sometimes more than one truck per day. It was awful.

A few years ago, away from the parental neighborhood (and long since free of externally imposed food restrictions), I decided to indulge myself for the first time in the sinful products the dreaded four wheeled beasts had to offer. This was unmistakably, undeniably, the WORST ice cream I had ever tasted. Even the gallon/4 liter bucket of no name brand ice cream at UnSafeway^TM could not compare to such low quality, yet expensive slop. Of course, I have become a bit of an ice cream fascist since I now make my own from scratch. My recipe is a closely guarded secret, and is no longer written down anywhere. I have only told it to one person in its entirety.

Now that I have made the observation that there haven’t been any ice cream trucks in the neighborhood this year…. I fear that I might have tempted Murphy to release the cold, unfeeling, frozen hordes in my direction. I will wake up tomorrow and the entire Vancouver fleet of trucks will be screaming their way down my street – causing all the whiny children within earshot to begin pestering their parents for change. I will only derive satisfaction from this if they are playing “Helter skelter” or something equally appropriate. Wouldn’t that be something.

I have long been free of my JobLand^TM employment. I mean free because that is what it felt like when I was there – trapped or something. I have been talking to a friend still unable to free himself from their clutches, and what little morale was alive when I was there, has been beaten out of anyone remaining. Things went sour in the morale department very quickly. This is always amazing to watch – something plummet when you thought it was already the lowest it could be.

I had all kinds of mini-dramas with the HR department, most of which have already been chronicled here. One that I haven’t mentioned entirely dealt the “contract” that I had with JobLand^TM.

I was rehired last year around the end of January, along with a number of new people. About 3 months later – the head of HR came down to the receiving department and angrily handed out letters chastizing us for not signing the “contract”. So we gathered around, all those holding letters, and wondered what the heck this was. What contract? We’d never heard of such a thing. To get a letter which was very non-complimentary about our contract signing habits was most confusing. NOT ONE of us knew what this was all about, but it seemed that EVERYONE who had been hired/rehired at that time of year had gotten the mystery letter. Not one of us had heard of the contract before. No one could figure out why they simply hadn’t come down and suggested we read/sign this contract thing. For some reason, and I can’t remember exactly why – I decided to hell with their paperwork, I was going to look into it when and only when they decided to approach me in a more appropriate manner about it.

So months passed and I had not found a reason to go up to the HR office since they had oddly enough decided to pay me properly for that period of time. Very oddly. However, at one point I had to go up there, it was undeniably a good reason, couldn’t be avoided, and for the life of me I cannot now remember what it was. So up I went. They refused to talk to me until I signed the “contract”.

So I sat down at the desk, and was handed this piece of paper and a pen. I started to read it, she took it from me, and told me “NO, no, you don’t have to read it – just sign it.

!!!!!!! ????????

Well, I don’t know what planet they were from, but I could barely think after that – with all the warning flags and sirens and lights and stuff flashing in my brain and whatnot.

I pointed out, perhaps in too vocally defiant a manner, that if I was not able to read it first then they were simply out of luck in getting me to sign it. Visions of being fired ran through my head. Nope, she simply let me read it. Well, Thank you!

It seemed fair, and was really what I’d expected all along was the case, so I signed it. Then I asked for a copy. This was not to be. Apparently, I was not allowed to get a copy of it (but I just F*&#^&@ing signed it!) and no amount of calm discussion on the matter would change their minds. So I left it at that. I began to wish I remembered exactly what it had said.

A few months later all kinds of shit began to hit the fan. JobLand^TM was moving to a new location, and combining its staff from another warehouse into one big building. However, the problem was that people wouldn’t get to keep the exact job they had – and the whole thing was going to go on about itself deciding strictly with seniority. Any system that arbitrary and fucked up is sure to cause aneurysms. This was not a unionized company – they might have not had to put up with this kind of crap – nor myself for that matter – with the kind I just stated, or the kind I am about to describe. However, morale hit a new low. Then it went lower.

We had these building meetings describing how the move was going to go. We were oft assured by Mr. Bigwig that “don’t worry – you’ll ALL have jobs and we’ll take care of you”. He always wondered why a few of us laughed when he said that. You could smell the shit on his breath. During one such meeting someone asked a particularly difficult question of him, reading right through the large volumes of bullshit he was spouting and asking a question which I’m sure was on everyone’s mind anyway. There was a long silence…. then my supervisor laughed and fled the area, then this feeble response from Mr. Bigwig and then he immediately asked if that person was on “contract”. He was, so he was immediately led away (I thought he got fired, but that wasn’t the case). Then the HR person came down and started reading a list of names, including mine. It was like we were being lead away to get shot in the darker part of the parking lot. We were no longer welcome at the meetings after that (although I managed to sneak off to a few a couple of times later on anyway). Perhaps they were afraid we’d attempt to orchestrate a regime change.

At this point in time I decided to renew my efforts to actually get my greasy hands on the now infamous “contract”. Thwarted time and time again – I now tried a slant that would get me some sympathy – I told them that I needed it for issues pertaining to my student loan (not). You see, it was no longer MY initiative that sent me up there to bug them, I needed it to provide it to another evil force entirely. Eventually, after 2 weeks (thank God I didn’t really need it) they provided me with, no, not a copy of the “contract” but with a letter to the student loan people saying that if they needed any information this was the number to contract. Gee thanks. I openly worried that this wouldn’t be good enough but was then told that the “contract” was the property of the company and I had no right to read it, or to have a copy of it. It was a private file that I shouldn’t have even read in the first place. Oh. Wow. What made me think that this was not above board was that she wouldn’t ever look at me when she was saying any of this, and always tried to change the discussion to the weather and whatnot. I had no desire to discuss the weather. I have never seen someone more uncomfortable.

I had decided that if I had signed a copy of a contract then I was entitled to a copy of that contract legally. it just made sense to me. So, they’d put me out of commission on that matter, having seemingly placated my “contract” desires.

When I start trouble I generally do not act upon my ideas myself. If I thought of a hard question to ask Mr. Bigwig I’d tell it to someone else, and encourage THEM to ask it. Hey – then I can unleash my brainchild without getting in the line of any return fire that might come from the target. Smart or cowardly… I’m not sure which. In this case I had the deep seated need to stir up further trouble. So I enlisted everyone else with a contract to go up there and demand a copy of it. Sadly, most of these people hadn’t read it in the first place, and had blindly signed it. They were especially interested in it now, since they were curious about the contents of this mysterious document that was now relegating them to third class citizens in JobLand^TM.

So this stirred up all kinds of trouble. We were all rounded up at once and addressed as a whole with two distinct parts to the meeting. No, we were not going to get a copy of what was an internal document that was the property of the company. This caused a sizable uproar, which please me to some degree (others were finally on my side). When that “contract” clamor died down, the second part of the meeting began. “So guys, we’ve decided morale is a bit low, so to boost it we started a contest. Who can write their favourite childhood heartwarming story about those woolen striped Bay blankets that everyone has”? Expletives ensued.

Yeah, oh yeah – the JobLand^TM warehouse was the Hudson’s Bay Company. The oldest company in North America, and obviously well practiced in the art of fucking over their employees. I guess in all that time you pick up a few skills here and there.

We countered this attempt at boosting morale with a heartwarming story of a young native boy who sadly dies of smallpox which was spread by the Hudson’s Bay Company (unwittingly) via the bay blanket. This was mostly historically accurate. Sadly, we won no prizes, but this was likely due to the fact we submitted it anonymously. Shucks – it was a good story.

One contract employee decided to quit and talked to HR again about getting a copy of the contract. They gave him one! Sadly, he left before sharing it with any of us. I went up there with this information. Well you gave ________ one! Sadly, I never saw the HR person who gave it to him again. Her seniority had crashed.

Through a source I was contacted by someone who didn’t want their informant identified (paranoia was common). He said that this other employee also failed to get a copy of the “contract” and had pursued legal action. Word had it that the contract was illegal, they shouldn’t have done it, it was a mistake, and that they were covering that up.

This was getting interesting.

At this point another “contract” employee pointed out to me that he HAD a copy of the contract. When he had been asked to sign it, and they had refused to let him read it, he’d fought that as well. When she wasn’t looking, he pilfered a blank copy off the stack on the desk and spirited it successfully away to safety. Cool. Now we had a copy of the beast.

So here it is. Read it and you’ll wonder what the big deal about keeping this from one’s employees is all about. When you figure it out, let me know, I’m still scratching my melon about that one.

Temporary PositionI, __________________ understand that the position for which I have been hired is temporary and is expected to terminate no later than December 31, 2002.

Signed: __________________
Witnessed: __________________
Date: __________________

Thats it. Wots the big deal??

At this point I contact the British Columbia Government to investigate the legalities of keeping a “contract” from employees who had signed it. It seems that if I was a unionized employee, they wouldn’t have the right to keep it from me. However, it was perfectly legal if I was non union, which I was. WTF?

At this point my personal interest in the matter fizzled. Since I had no real leg to stand on, and it was simply a moral issue rather than a legal one, I let it drop. Others didn’t, but they never got a copy of it either. One day, however, we photocopied (on company photocopiers – of course!) a copy of the “contract” and left them littered about the entire building. Threw a few under the door of the HR office too. I hope that stirred up something behind the scenes.

So I went back to the very Sandwich fixin’ outlet that destroyed my ideas of a drinkless sandwhich special a week earlier. The same “artist” was behind the counter – and I noted some apparent annoyance at my arrival, perhaps remembering the shenanigans of a week ago. So I order. I got my extra sauce this time (proving the existence of miracles). Then the fateful moment arrived – I was going to attempt to avoid getting a drink, as per last time. So I asked for the special for Sunday and said I didn’t want a drink. She paused, looked down and to the side. Moments passed. Off in the distance a dog barked. Then she rang up my purchases and that was it.

VICTORY!!!!!

So I wander into my local footlong custom made sandwich making place. You know the one – with the ugly yellow interior and furnishing draped in the usual adornment of bored teenagers and old folks who look like they are feeling as though its simply nice to be out. It is Sunday, and on Sunday they have this deal where you get your second footlong custom made sandwich for free – if you buy a drink (the catch). So we went through the usual game of “i want this kind of bread” and “sorry – we are out of that kind of bread – pick another” followed by “ok then – i want that kind of bread” and once again “sorry – we are out of that kind of bread – pick another”. Fine. So then we get into the usual argument of “NO – really – I DO want more sauce than that! LOTS of sauce. More sauce!” I like a lot of sauce – they usually balk at that – maybe there is a sandwich weight limit I'm violating or something. Hey – you're an “artist” – can't you just add more stinking sauce? So we shuffle along the line, doing the usual condiment dance and get the the cash register. At this point, I tried something new. Usually I provide a debit card that isn't acceptable to their machine, yet works everywhere else. This time, I tried a different move – the UnreasonableRequest^TM. The deal was: Buy one foot long, get your second free with a medium drink. So asked that since I had absolutely NO use for a drink at this point in time – if I could simply pay for it and get the deal and forgo the hassle of corralling an unwanted, poorly mixed carbonated beverage during the drive home. Nope – the “artist” couldn't be that accommodating. Sorry – we don't' do that. Then, as is my usual mistake (much like the onion ring incident) I attempted to reason with the “artist”.

Consumer: “I don't WANT the drink – so whats the difference if I pay for it, forgo having to drink something I don't want – or throwing it down a drain somewhere”?

BreadWrangler: “We can't do that – you have to buy a drink!

Consumer: “But I'd be PAYING for it – whats the difference?”

BreadWrangler: “We can't do that – the deal is you have to buy a drink.”

I was getting nowhere

Consumer: “Sigh…. so you'd rather I take the drink that I don't want and pour it down a drain than pay for a drink and walk away happy with my sandwiches”?

It was clear that this was what it was going to take – my sandwiches, which I hadn't yet paid for – were sequestered behind the counter out of reach, and unless I took possession of a drink, it seemed I would not get the second one for free. There was no way out – as I went over to fill the damn cup I pointed out that I wouldn't be drinking it – and really they were just wasting it. So I put it down on the table with the bored teenagers who had raptly been watching the proceedings and offered it with my compliments. The “artist” watched disapprovingly. Perhaps she could take comfort in the fact that there was still not enough sauce on my sandwiches. I had needed to make the point that I wasn't going to have the damn drink but as of yet I haven't really come up with a way to have handled it differently. I still don't know why the fuck it mattered that I actually TAKE the drink.

So we'll see if she remembers me NEXT sunday!

Every time the spring weather turns to things other than constant rain, the nuts in my neighborhood see fit to start burning all their yard trash. This drives me nuts, and its legal with a permit. What bothers me is not the burning, is the fact that these idiots burn WET foliage and I even caught one guy emptying his grass catcher from his mower onto his fire. What the hell is the matter with you? Burning grass clippings? As if this wasn't bad enough – the air fills with smoke, it gets hazy and so bad that you can't even open the windows or doors in the house or everything will stink inside too. Odd how they only burn when the wind isn't blowing towards THEIR house. One guy across the street burns only at night, leaving me to believe that he hasn't got a permit. Unfortunately, he burns wet stuff too – although he does attempt to encourage it a bit with spurts of gasoline. Why is it that when you drop by with a big bucket of water and throw it on the fire suddenly YOU are the bad guy?