30 June 2012

Sunflower Downs 2012




When I was just a little lad,
My mother said to me,
Consider it an honour son,
To live here in B.C.
Where the country is so beautiful,
The people fair and kind.
Never go away my son,
And leave it all behind.

- Tall Timber Tom Mitchell

 
After my dog and his raccoon friends had woken me yesterday I had some coffee, phoned in sick, had a bowl of raspberries, got in my car and drove to Jimi's place. He had already had a beer, phoned in sick and had another beer.

As he got in the car he asked me, "Did you see Hunky last night?"

Told him, "Fuck yeah." Passed him his personal thermos. Hunky had provided me with a bag of dried mushrooms of which I had measured six tablespoons and made tea. We poured each of ourselves a small sweet cup and drank up.

We were on our way to Sunflower Downs. No point going there less than totally fucked up.

We talked about work and how much we fucking love it and listened to the first of five Free cds I had bought in a box set recently. Outtakes and such mostly. Brilliant stuff. The mushrooms began to do their work just before we began our climb out of the ratfuck's ratfuck of the Fraser Valley into the rock steady mountains of Canada.

Jimi suggested we stop for breakfast. Stopped in a place full of families. Families on vacation. Happy families having a big summery bite of their short but sweet Canadian strawberry pie lives.

After the waitress took our orders Jimi asked, "And can I get a beer with that?"

The waitress laughed. "Can't get you or anybody else a beer until eleven."

"But that's four hours from now. I'll probably be too drunk to drink beer by then."

If our country was as Free as it pretends to be a man could buy a beer to have with his bacon and eggs. Everybody likes to piss on Mexico, they think the country is fucked up, which it is, just like every other country, but you can get a beer to have with your breakfast there.

The coffee and food had sorted me out some. In the car we had another small cup of tea, Jimi grabbed a couple beer from the cooler, and we were on our way. Still too early for me to hit the beer.

It is not as hard to drive ripped out of your fucking skull on mushrooms as you might think. It is, I imagine, a little like space travel. There was very little traffic and not a cop in sight. My big car roared beneath me like a Stanley Cup Riot on Mars.

At the top of the mountain pass we stopped to piss. We found ourselves surrounded by hundreds of fucking marmots. It was all we could do not to step on the squeaky little motherfuckers as we made our way back and forth from the roadside shithouse.

Into Princeton, the small town which had beckoned us to join them at their annual Race Day, early, we aimed ourselves north first to Tulameen to have some fun before the real fun began. It is some kind of country up there. Did some redneck gravel road driving over and around Rabbit Mountain before sitting some cooling our feet in the icy Tulameen River all the while keeping an eye on our watches so we could get back to Coalmont in time for the 100 year old hotel to open its doors.

I too was drinking now and we made ourselves at home within the hotel's legendary 100 year old interior. Enough said about that. If you have not already been advised to stop by for a beer or something there you have now. Do not wait half a century to do so as we did.

The beer could not have been colder. We stayed longer than we had planned until at 2:30 we had to race to Sunflower to make the first race, bouncing off the canyon walls a few times as we did so.

The crowd was small when we arrived but grew quickly. I made both our bets for the day as soon as we got there, Jimi at last too wasted to manage such simple tasks on his own. It was hotter, much hotter than forecast and we were soon surrounded by about a thousand like-minded horse racing fans in the beer garden.

Picked the first two right and had a feeling we might just clear the table when in the third race Absolute Magnitude slipped surging into the lead on the final turn sending jockey Kassie Guglielmino to the dirt before landing square on top of her, then running on as if nothing had happened across the finish line. That is how it looked to me from my beer garden rail vantage point anyway. The turns are scrambly at Sunflower and the young rider looked to have taken the turn just a little too aggressively. She lay there motionless and appeared to remain so until the ambulance took her to hospital. As of this writing I have no further word on her condition.

After a delay the racing continued. Picked two of the final three races. Reminded, as we were by the accident we had witnessed on the historic oval, of the fleetingness of our well-being, of our very lives, Jimi and I and much of the crowd drank even heavier. You only live once, motherfuckers. Do not fuck it up living like that is not the most important truth of all.

On the way home Jimi and I repeated the same words over and over, "Hope that cute little jock is going to be ok." It is all I am thinking now as the Canada Day long weekend opens its welcoming Coalmont Hotel barroom doors to us all.

29 June 2012

Woof!



The Hammer woke me this morning with her mighty, "WOOF!" I got up. She is not one for woofing in the middle of the night for no reason at all.

She was by the front window looking outside with the intensity of a fucking Conservative looking for a fucking Communist under his bed. I could not see shit but I kneeled down by my dog to see if what what she saw re-appeared.

Sure enough a kit raccoon, now sure my dog was inside, shyly came out from under my neighbour's broken down car. Then two more. The Hammer, quiet now, was, deep inside, incensed. Hates fucking raccoons, she does.

The three kits proceeded to climb a tree amd monkey around for a few minutes before making their way up the street to catch up with their unseen mom and dad.

I like having critters in the neighbourhood. It is the one thing the Hammer and I disagree on.

27 June 2012

Hand Ride



Cleaned out my car. When I was done Sonja asked me to, "Clean out my fucking car too." So I did.

My car was littered with the usual predictable crap. Old racing forms, spilled pills, empty beer cans, dog fur and loose change. Four quarters, a couple dimes and a sprinkle of brown pennies.

The interior of Sonja's car only slightly less putrid. Old fashion magazines, spilled pills, empty wine bottles, dog fur and one coin. A fucking toonie.

When I was done I told Sonja about the toonie. She said, "Give it to me."

"Oh, I'll give it to you alright. What sort of a ride will two bucks get me."

"I'll give you what a sure winner gets at the track - a fucking hand ride."

26 June 2012

Palace Sentry



Soon after the storm
Was spent like a
Bad afternoon at
The racecourse

My dog
And I
Took a good long walk
In the welcoming forest

Wherein we did
Find a sawmill's length of a tree's trunk
Standing upright in our usual path
Like a diamond Queen's palace sentry

My dog pissed on it, as did I

My Five Cents



Is there anything quite as dreadful as those glossy coffee table books that aim to give a wide lense look at a subject? Besides motherfucking holy books? Waste of fucking trees. I prefer the written word to the photograph. Like the difference between betting on the horses and betting on slot machines, the written word leaves to you the power and the glory of your imagination.

Recently added to the growing list of Fellow Motherfuckers is Bring A Nickel. The authour has a keen eye and an equally keen way of transferring what she sees into the world's best language: English.

24 June 2012

Drinking American Beer On Canada Day



Sonja is gone away for an extended weekend. Up to 69 Mile, then to Spokane with a crew cab full of woman friends. Shopping and partying in America, all part of the Canadian dream.

Used to enjoy visiting the United States myself a long time ago. Then the motherfuckers elected Ronald Reagan and the big country beside where I am writing to you started acting like a place Hitler would have approved of. Not that the leaders are to blame, not even assholes like Reagan and the Bushes, it is the fucking government. Very much like Russia's in the decades before their revolution. Corrupt and hateful.

People are still free to change things down there but there is fear in the streets and hope, that precious human commodity the last asshole they elected President of their country sold them like our own Prime Minister sold us the past, is not at hand.

The United States of America can fuck right off. This is a matter Sonja and I disagree on. I blame it on her Swedish heritage. Those motherfuckers and the Swiss kissed Hitler's ass. Do not give me any of that neutrality bullshit.

I still have hope for my country. My countrymen speaking up and doing something about the hateful corrupt mess our national police is gives me hope. The actions of the students and their supporters in Montreal have raised my hopes for my country higher than at any time in my lifetime. Action speaks louder than words, now more than ever. We do not have to settle for being a third rate country in a second rate century.

So I am spending my time alone spiffing up my house for Canada Day. Already have Canadian records set out near the record player. Think I will read some Al Purdy poems and drink some of the fine American beer Sonja brings me home come Canada Day. I am hoping the unlikely will happen and I will be able to cheer for a football team playing for a country that never cheered for the fucking Nazis in the Euro 2012 final.

You will not find a flag waving off the side of my house like some of my Canadian neighbours, the ones who like to ape their American devil worshipping neighbours, have started doing. Hanging a flag off your house is for fascists. I am not one of those.

High Water Warning




I had been warned to stay away from the river. Warned it is higher than it has been since Status Quo released "Piledriver." Warned the dyke could give way without a moment's notice, sending us within the cold embrace of its shit brown current to the bottom of the Salish Sea.

I took my dog for a walk by the river. Figured there would be no one else there. I was right. Canadians are a cautious lot. Sometimes I wonder if I am Canadian at all. The Hammer pissed on the post warning us away.

The river, when it is high, is a marvelous thing. Quiet, yet deadly, like a bottle of cask strength scotch.

We sat on its bank and drank it in.

22 June 2012

Pays To Be Lucky



Was talking to a neighbour's wife tonight. The Hammer and I were out enjoying the air - it is so great in the evening as a warm day prepares, slow as a government's excuse machine, to turn into tomorrow's rain.

"How's the old boy doing?" I asked as she tended her garden.

"He's getting better and better. He is lucid just about all the time now. Pretty soon I think he will be back golfing."

Her old man had brain surgery a few months back. Never know when you may  need to visit one of our hospitals we hear so much bad shit about.

"Of course we were scared he might pick up an infection while he was in there but he didn't. It pays to be lucky Beer."

It does. I have been in hospitals before myself. No infections for me either.

It pays to be lucky, motherfuckers. Pays to be Canadian too.  

19 June 2012

Hunting the Great Black Bear



The rain sure has got the underbrush growing this spring. Growing faster than the list of ways the Tory government can think of to fuck us around. As the Hammer searched for the black bear loose in my black bear unfriendly city on our afternoon walk I snapped branches extending into my path. The speed with which shit grows in our temperate rain forest is amazing. Hard to believe we have logged off such fast growing woods fast enough the last four or five decades so as to put men out of work for generations to come.

Pisses me off.

Walking on the sidewalk is ok every now and then. Where I live we say hello to one another as we make our way to where ever the fuck it is we are going. It is one of the things I like about where I live. There is no fear in the streets here. There are even people drinking beer and smoking joints as they walk just like people do in the big city.

I think the Hammer caught a whiff of the bear. She veered well off the path onto a route only a well trained nose could create, at times stopping with her head real low like a hunter's in search of the great black son of a bitch. Some people do not recommend being in the bush with a dog. I would not be in the bush without one.

The government fuckers who call themselves conservation officers say there are twenty bears or more living on the mountain up behind where I live. Little surprised the bears would be down here in the city. There are berries galore in the bush this spring and lots more getting ready to feed humans and bears this summer.

Me and the bears have been sharing the woods a long time. We do not fuck with one another. The bears and I, we are motherfucking Anarchists. We could not be much different form one another except for one thing: we are both Free.

17 June 2012

Made It



I like to think I got to liking the wilderness because of my dear old dad, Beer Sr. I live in Canada, however, a land bigger than all the hockey rinks in the world combined, where if you do not like being in the wilderness, being in the wilderness as often as possible, you really ought to fuck off.

Just as I do, my dad likes the quiet of the wild. Not that the wilderness is all that quiet. It was the lack of human noise he liked. No television. No country. No religion. No war. No bullshit. Some people cannot stand it, to which I add, see the above paragraph's last six words.

When not in the wilderness my dad did what he could to re-create the Freedom from the world's troubles and inadequacies he found beneath green canopies or upon still water. That is what the liquor cabinet was for. After a couple it was all hummingbirds, crooked paths and rainbow trout cooking on a sizzling campfire.

I cannot remember my dad without a liquor cabinet. A fully stocked liquor cabinet. Enough liquor to knock out his whole regiment of army buddies if they showed up at once on a Saturday afternoon.

Took me a long time, decades, to get my own liquor cabinet looking like his always did. A little of this and a lot of that. Enough liquor to knock out East Van.

I fucking made it. Thanks dad.

Shopper Heaven Report



Ran into my dentist and my union president at Shopper Heaven this morning. Their carts were overflowing with shit they would never eat or need, as mine was soon after. Later, as I stood in the checkout line, I thought to myself, "Those rich fuckers can afford to buy whatever the fuck they want!" Then I looked down at my own mountain of crap and finished the thought, "And so can I. Some motherfucking Anarchist rebel I am."

Fact is us union and professional types fall within the top 1% of the world's money earners. Most of the world's population cannot afford a sheet of the asswipe I buy and if they could they would use it as stationary.

After I had piled all my crap into the car there was barely room left in the backseat for the Hammer, squeezed as she was between a pallet of asswipe and a dumptruck load of dog food. I yacked at her a bit as I ripped the plastic wrap off Neil Young's latest, "Americana." If you like Neil Young you will like it. Put a smile on my face several times over as we made our way to and from a mountain for our Saturday walk.

Go fucking buy it.

Old bones of mine felt real good walking in the warm late spring rain so we walked all the way to the top of the mountain instead of the usual lookout we settle on. Had to give the Hammer a couple boosts right near the peak. When we got up to the top I pulled my flask from my vest, took a proper guzzle and looked around. Know what I saw? Nothing, sweet nothing at all. We were in the middle of a radioactive cloud that spread from motherfucking Japan to motherfucking Alberta.

Did not see anybody going up or coming down. We stopped here and there to watch swollen creeks crash like the world's capitalist system down to rivers further swollen below. We listened to the birds sing, sing more tunefully than Neil Young has done since he sang "Sugar Mountain."

What is it with people? You would think not being able to afford to wipe your ass might motivate you to get organized.  

16 June 2012

Canada's Summer Pastime



Usual Friday. Went to work, worked out, drank a little, dog wanted walking so I took her. It was getting close to dark but still light out. There were two people fucking in the baseball dugout. Guy sitting on the bench, girl on top grinding away.

They had not undressed or anything. Rather modest really. Guy's pants half down like guys wear them anyway. Dick slid up inside his gal's cunt high cut shorts.

The Hammer and I walked on by. I breathed in deep to see if I could smell any of that good country pussy. Nothing. The Hammer did not have to breathe in deep at all. Whole park smelled like country pussy to her.

Hockey, done with for the summer, has made way for the pleasures of Canada's summer pastime: fucking in the great outdoors.

15 June 2012

Canadien Chien



When you live in one neighbourhood for a long, long time, as Sonja and have done, you get to know your your neighbours a little more than if you move around a lot, which we have done too. Get to know their dogs too.

Last night one of my neighbours was at the park with two of his three dogs. After we talked about weather and his wife's trip to fucking Hawaii with her girlfriends I asked about the other dog.

"He's dead," was the reply. "Took her up to the mountains and buried her wrapped in her Montreal Canadiens' blanket."

Poor thing.

The Hammer goofed off with his other two dogs. Did not seem to miss his dead dog buddy. Dogs live in the moment, living in the past only in their running in the mountains dog dreams.

We live. We die. It is excellent.

14 June 2012

New To Me



My first thrift store cd player acquisition did not go so good. Lost one channel. Twenty-five bucks down the sawmill shitter. Bought another one today. Twenty bucks. It is a Sony too. Japanese motherfuckers.

Hooked it up, filled it with music. Springsteen's "Working On A Dream," I am liking Bruce more and more all the time; Eldorado's "Suitcase" which I am liking even more today than yesterday, hey, sorry I missed you guys when you were around; Chris Isaak's "Baja Sessions," fucking brilliant shit from the man who brought me the last tv show I tried my best to never miss; Art Bergman's "Crawl With Me," the silveriest Sliverville motherfucker of them all who I remember best for the time I walked in on him working at Profile studios, cigarette smoke and a withering glance, when I was looking into whether or not the music business had a place for me in it - I am still in the sawmill business - not the lost planet Art Bergman I saw in "Bloodied But Unbowed"; and a great surf song compilation. All five of them from thrift stores too.

The Sony is a little newer than the old one and it sounds better than the old one in my ringing sawmill ears.

Was a time I would have never listened to that shit. Too mellow for this old punk rocker with a first rate death wish. Got it turned up loud. Got myself dancing, sort of, in my office rocking chair. The grave? It can fucking wait.

13 June 2012

Eldorado



Picked Dope City's Eldorado's "Suitcase" cd off a thrift store shelf after work today. Do not usually buy music from bands I have never fucking heard of but their association with Scratch Records gave me enough of a hint at the band's pedigree to gamble a few bucks on their worthiness.

Dope City rocks, motherfuckers. More talent in this smoky blue town than the rest of Canada put together, excluding Newfoundland.

If you like the Drive-By Truckers and that sort of thing you might want to try and find yourself a copy. I checked their website and it turns out they are long gone to the Yukon so if you have not seen them live you are shit out of luck.

I am happily out of touch with just about all the world's modern recording artists. I am just the sort of asshole you will see lined up to see "Rock of Ages" this weekend. Listening to Eldorado's cd was one of the few times I wished I made an effort to keep up to date with the modern world. Then I heard the latest news about the murderous motherfucking cunts who run Syria who are trying to take as many of their countrymen down with them as possible as we slip on the oil slick towards the Apocalypse.

Motherfuck the modern world
There is nothing in it for me
We have fast computers and big tvs
I just want to be Free

They are killing babies in Syria
They are stoning Anarchists to death in Iran
The police want to kick in the heads
Of everybody in East Van

Motherfuck the modern world
There is nothing in it for me
We have fast computers and big tvs
I just want to be Free

Get pissed, destroy the modern world with me  


12 June 2012

The Taste of Freedom



There was a Chinese fucker in the park with me and the Hammer today. We see him every now and then. He is one of the people who like to walk around the park repeatedly. Circles it like a buzzard. Likes the Hammer. Calls her Fuzzy.

I was eating berries off the bush when he stopped to pet the dog and talk. "What you eat?" he asked me.

"Salmon berries," I told him.

"Salmon berries," he repeated. "What about that one?" he asked, pointing at an orange one.

"That's a salmon berry too," I told him. I do not think he believed me. Us white guys are always trying to get the Chinese to eat poisonous shit. "You've never eaten salmon berries before?" I asked.

"Never," he answered. "Never eat anything grow in the bush in Canada."

"There is a lot of poisonous things growing in our woods. I eat all kinds of shit growing wild. Brought up to know the difference between one thing and another. Eat some," I told him, pulling down a branch heavy with fruit.

He backed away faster than a Canuck from success. "No thank you," he told me before asking, "What salmon berry taste like?"

"Tastes like boyhood to me," I told him. "Tastes like the Freedom I enjoyed when I was a young boy before my country turned sour some forty years ago."

"You think Canada sour? Go China some time," he suggested before returning to his buzzard path.

10 June 2012

Anarchist Cookbooks



Stopped in a bookstore on the way home from picking up my car. Bought two books. One was a cookbook. I have hundreds of cookbooks. Most all us Anarchists are big on cookbooks. You cannot whip up Freedom without a recipe, motherfuckers.

Other one was a book of philosophy, Kropotkin's "Ethics." Old boy is one of my many heroes. Smart guy from a good family who did good shit his whole life instead of fucking people over his whole long life the way everybody from a good background does nowadays.

Started reading the Kropotkin book in the pub before picking up Sonja, who  was getting her hair done. Here's a quote from a letter of his about why he wrote the book in the final years of his life, under trying circumstances. "I have resumed my work on moral questions, because I consider that this work is absolutely necessary. I know that intellectual movements are not created by books, and that just the reverse is true. But I also know that for clarifying an idea the help of a book is needed, a book that expresses the bases of thought in their complete form. And in order to lay these bases of morality, liberated from religion, and standing higher than the religious morality ... it is necessary to have the help of clarifying books."

My mind was just beginning to engage with Kropotkin's when my fucking phone went off. It was Kitty. "Me and Hunky are coming over to watch the Belmont and the hockey game. We got a trunk load of fucking near free beer fell off the back of a truck. And we want to talk to you about Mexico."

The Belmont was well run, the hockey well played, the beer the best free beer I had drank in a while. We talked about Mexico, looking at printed information and consulting the computer as we made plans for yet another winter holiday as far from my increasingly fucked, yet not quite hopeless, country as we can get.

Not quite hopeless thanks to the rebellious students of Quebec who appear to have a pretty fucking good, if imperfect, understanding of what Aldous Huxley (yet another hero) understood of the subject of ethics. "...The practice of that which is ethically best - what we call goodness or virtue - involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence ... It repudiates the gladitorial theory of existence."

Fuck the gladiators. Fuck them with goodness, fuck them with virtue, fuck them until they can be fucked no more and then fuck them some more. Only ethical behaviour can rescue us from the gladitorial situation hopeless we have all been given free tickets to watch. Give your tickets back. Better outside the Colosseum than inside cheering a fight no one but ethicless motherfuckers like Gordon Campbell, Stephen Harper and Jean Charest ever wins. 

9 June 2012

Belmont Stakes Morning Walk



Dropped the car off at my mechanic's place this morning, walked home with the dog. He was already smoking the first of the joints that keep him going all day. "You sure you don't want some Beer?" he asked. I had not had a beer yet so it was tempting to say yes but I declined the offer. Pot smoking assholes. Will not be long now before I retire and start doing everything that gets passed my way.

Walked home because Sonja was still sleeping. Quite the long walk it was. Birds, rabbits and squirrels. People making their way to fucking work. Said good morning to an old boy I see out walking every morning on my way to the mill.

City crews were blocking off roads for a police run of some sort.

Fuck the police.

As I walked I thought about which horse to add to my Belmont top four. Except for Paynter, none of them have earned a speed figure that would win them the British Columbia Derby, nevermind a Triple Crown race. Kind of hard not to throw Union Rags into the mix now, despite his low figures.

Sonja and I will still be at the track this afternoon even without the possibility of a celebration that would have matched the Canucks winning the Stanley Cup, minus the riot. The beer will still be cold; the beer girls will still be hot; the money will still be on the motherfucking line.

8 June 2012

Go! Mario! Go!



The Belmont then, a routinely difficult race to handicap, the difficulty of which doubles when the Triple Crown is on the line. That is because the decision making process can get clouded by emotion, this time around emotion coupled with a likable Dope City rider guiding the star horse around the racecourse.

I prefer Paynter over I'll Have Another. If you are inclined towards throwing a few bucks on a longshot, take a close look at Five Sixteen, one of the few horses in the field, including the two already mentioned, to be bred with a mile and half in mind.

My ticket? Paynter, I'll Have Another, Five Sixteen and Dullahan. Going to have more drama packed into the race than the whole Stanley Cup Play-offs bundled together thus far.

See you at the Finish Line, motherfuckers. 

6 June 2012

Screw the Diamond Jubilee



Added William Godwin's "Enquiry Concerning Political Justice" to the Fellow Motherfuckers sidebar. Though it is an electronic reproduction of a different volume of the book I have in my own library you will find therein the basis of my own political thought.

If you are short on time, scroll down to the very end of this volume of timeless political philosophy for Godwin's summary of how Edmund Burke blew his quite considerable talents. i.e. "...instead of cultivating the simplicity of independence; ...he entangled himself with a petty combination of political men..."

3/5



Ma was on me before the first pot of coffee was made on Monday morning. "Who win Belmont Beer? Favourite or maybe big money horse?"

I'll Have Another's pre-race line is 3/5. He may well go to post at odds less appealing than that.

"Why are you asking me?" I said irritably as I impatiently awaited my morning beer shit inducing hot black speed. "I figured the motherfucking Devils to beat the fucking Kings in seven for fuck's sake."

"That hockey. Maybe you still right. What you know about hockey except Canucks suck like Maple Leaf? Triple Crown or not? Who win Saturday?"

The Belmont, when the Triple Crown is on the line, is a race that appeals to both the most conservative chalk player and the wildest of wild-eyed Anarchist long shot players.

"I'm still working on it Ma. I will tell you what I do know though. The Belmont course is best suited for big horses and the favourite is smallish. The sort of horse you would think would make most of its money some place like Dope City's bull ring. I want the big horse in this race. I want to see if, should the favourite lose, the local horse race fans will riot like the our city's hockey fans always do when the money is on the line."

"Don't bullshit me Beer. Who do you like Belmont?"

 "I'll tell you Thursday if I can figure out which horse is the big horse."

4 June 2012

Scrutiny



There is
No institution
Undeserving
Of our scrutiny.

That
Is one
Of the things
I believe in.

We keep being
Taught this lesson,
A lesson we
Never seem to

Learn.