One year Jimi got “Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols” from his brother for Christmas. In those days me, Jimi and the guys fucked off from our families all afternoon to drink and run around. Once we had enough of that we would go home, get dinner and get back at the drinking shit.
That year I stopped into Jimi’s folk’s place on my way home. Jimi walked over to the record player, picked up the bright as a stripper’s light show record and put it on, took a step back before keeling over backwards, heaving all over his chest and passing out cold.
Jimi’s brother, looking at the scene over a tall glass of rye and ginger ale from the comfort of his dad’s easy chair, the room shaking like a universe of tits, shook his head slowly as an old dog walking on a hot day as he grimaced like a pastor at his parish on New Year’s Day. “You punk rock fucks don’t have any god damn stamina.”
An interview, in which Drive By Truckers’ Patterson Hood spoke glowingly of AC/DC’s “Powerage,” steered me towards taking the album off its shelf for the first time in a good long while. Its white paper sleeve having turned light brown. Brilliant record it is too. Old records, I remind you, never die.
Remembrance Day has long meant more to me than having a few beer at my local bar and listening to and telling stories about the Hell on Earth we know as war. My dog Strangler died on Remembrance Day 25 years ago.
Strangler was a big Northern Girl. Alpha, intelligent, strong, fast, independent, affectionate and good humoured. I rescued her from a neighbour who was treating her badly, just as others had done before him. I do not know where she originated from but I suspect she was a commercial dog team lead dog at one time who escaped an uncertain fate and found her way to me: a man who had never had a dog.
She both rolled in and ate shit, a downside of all the northern dogs who have journeyed with and bettered me in this life. Strangler had fewer opportunities to engage in this brown behaviour than the dogs who followed her into my life because homelessness and the rise of living and shitting outdoors did not really get going until late in her life.
She did not nor would not be fenced in much as I tried and she knew the neighbourhoods I lived in and their surrounding neighbourhoods better than I. Street smart, she did so without ever being injured as she wandered. Her memory was such that after being driven to visit friends she would often escape the next day and go straight back for another visit. After one house move her first escape came to an end when the local butcher phoned to tell us she was having a good visit with him.
Northern dogs are known for their sense of humour. Strangler was no exception to this rule. Her favourite prank was to slip her long tongue into your mouth when you were least expecting it. She never tired of doing this and the laughter in her eyes never diminished each time she did so.
I sure do miss my Strangler all these years later.
Working in a political campaign is more than just work. Campaigns nearly always have some fun time scheduled to keep a smile on everybody’s face. Early yesterday Chuck, the out of town campaign manager, asked no one in particular, “Where’s the worst fucking bar in town?”
“The Pooter!” answered Bill, our computer and social media guy, without hesitation.
Turns out The Pooter, a hole in the wall in the worst end of town with a small stage, has been an entertainment option in the city since 1925.
“When’s the last time someone was fucking murdered in there,” Chuck asked.
A cell phone search by Doris, the phone bank boss, revealed it was last night near closing time.
“Odds are no one will get killed there tonight then. Drinks on me at The Pooter tonight!” Chuck decided.
It was quiet inside when we arrived. Our crew, a dozen thirsty as a desert ridden horse campaign workers, soon changed that. You could hear us out on the street which soon attracted passers by in search of a party. Before long the place was hopping and dancing to a band playing modern day hillbilly music.
On my second trip to the can I was offered some meth. Cheaper than beer and 100 times as powerful. Town is swimming in the stuff. Back at the table I poured my buy into my drink and told everybody at our tables who to talk to if they were interested. Nearly everyone is. Meth and a night out go together like ironed trousers or a fresh smelling frock at church on Sunday.
I would like to tell you a story about what happened after that but I blacked out for quite a spell once I had poured some whiskey on top the powder in my gut. I already phoned around to make sure no one got jailed or murdered and they did not remember shit either so they were no help filling out the details that ought to be a part of this story.
There is a moral to the story however. Always go to the worst bar in town if it is fun time you after.
Here in Manitoba there is an election going on. Looks like my NDP is a little behind in the polls but our leader, Wab Kinew, is much more popular than the Conservative fuck we are trying to stop in his tracks. Not a bad position to be in with 2 1/2 weeks remaining before Election Day.
I am a voter contact specialist. In every jurisdiction there are different methods that work best to both identify our voters and sway the undecided. Across Canada, however, there is, with appropriate local adaptations, one method that works every fucking time: I drink steadily all day long, not enough to appear too fucking incoherent before the afternoon but from there on I am on as unsteady ground as the average voter once they have been home for 45 minutes. We then identify with one another surprisingly well.
The rye is good here, as it is elsewhere. I look forward to having a glass or two of the best on September 10.
The long weekend began in its usual fashion when we have not fucked off out of town a day or two early. The pub half empty. Me on the beer. Sonja on the wine. Led Zeppelin on the stereo. Heaven several drinks and a stairway away.
“We should go home and pack,” I suggested to the best drinking partner ever born. In the morning we would leave for our province’s Interior aka Wine Country even though more far dope is grown there than fucking wine. Such is the supernatural power of public relations.
“What’s the fucking hurry?” asked Sonja. “I’m already packed and all you need to pack is shorts, socks, gonch and a toothbrush.”
She was right. We did not even have to pack any booze to take with us. You cannot take a dozen steps in Wine Country without being near a liquor outlet of one kind or another and we were staying in a Super 8, not camping, as we had been listening too much Jason Isbell. I was both hoping I would not die in the motel and that I would. Dying a bad poetic death being preferable to not dying poetically at all.
In the morning we would be on the highway, what we fucking live for would have truly begun, a weekend lakeside in Canada, its memory blurry before the fun.
Spent the day working in the Jagmeet Singh campaign on Saturday. An hour drive to get there. Four hours of work. Another hour back to my home in the sticks. If I lived in fucking Kamloops I would have made it in to Burnaby for the day. How often does a motherfucker get to help out the leader of the NDP?
I was teamed up with someone from Richmond to go do a little door knocking. Chinese. Cute. Union. Made it to the campaign office on the fucking train.
Once we parked in the neighbourhood we were assigned I pulled the joint out of my pocket I had rolled for the occasion. “I never smoke that before!” she admitted.
“I can smoke the whole fucking thing myself I guess. But if we smoke it together we’ll have ourselves one fuck of a good time with the people of Burnaby.”
“Maybe I just smoke a little and you let me take the marks,” she suggested. She did just that. Relaxed her a little, like good cannabis should.
Neighbourhood was solidly for our candidate. People from all over our fucked up planet too. In time we were invited into a women’s place for tea. She was a cancer patient. Braver than fuck. Full of the stories only people who spent too much time in hospital and survived can tell you. Woman, like so many of us, was just fucking hanging on. And she said this as we were about to go, “The last thing I would do with what might be my last vote on this planet is give it to those scumbag Liberals!”
