skookum joe

Friday, February 10, 2006

Brokeback Welders

Brokeback Welders

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Misdemeanor attempted possession of cocaine.

I was watching LA Detectives on the satellite tonight. The LA County Sheriff’s Dept. set up a sting operation with undercover officers pretending to be dealers and nabbing people who tried to buy. There were at least 20 officers and 3 cars involved. At the end they listed what sentences the people arrested had received.

The most serious charge in the list was “Misdemeanor attempted possession of cocaine.” That case is yet to go to trial, so I better be careful what I say in case I bias a jury or something (I promised to give that up), but it hardly seems worth all the effort and expense does it?

Now, I’m not really surprised anymore by this sort of foolishness, but I am a bit disturbed by the amount of backslapping going on among the coppers. The high-five index was peaking in the red.

These people are not hard to catch. Most people who would discuss drugs on the street, in a “bad” neighborhood, with a stranger…are either desperate or stupid. Either way, they are not at their intellectual best and would have wandered in front of a bus eventually anyway.

A similar thing goes on here in Australia. A young Aborigine man died a few years ago as a result of “huffing” which is inhaling fumes, usually solvents, or things containing solvents like paint or glue. In this case it was a particular type of metal-finish spray paint. Soon other cases made the news and the government felt it must be seen to be acting on this crisis.

Did they fly in counselors to these remote, poor communities? Offer small business loans at low interest to create jobs and a feeling of self worth in the community? Build a better school? Ask the people why THEY thought kids were huffing paint?

Well, you know they didn’t. Instead the Australian government made it illegal to sell that particular brand of metal-finish paint to people under the age of 19. Case closed, problem solved, joyous backslapping and vigorous hand pumping ensued.

I dig being human…but sometimes its hard to defend.

ps. for the sake of accuracy, there were people arrested on the show that did recieve jail sentences, but each of them had outstanding warrants on other charges. The highest charge relating to this particular operation though, was the title of this post.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Dinner

Dinner

Monday, February 06, 2006

Intelligent Design Disproven!

Lets have a look at intelligent design. The theory that life is far too complex to have happened by chance; that there must be a "designer" (they used to call it god) responsible for the whole thing.

As you all know I'm a pretty big deal down at the factory. Well, we're thinking of putting in a new roller door on warehouse number two and of course they sent their top man to the big Roller Door and Pressed Metal Products Show down in Sydney.

Anyway I just got back in time for Friday's shift and when I took over, the first thing I notice is this god-awful stench coming from the big collection bin. Now, that bin was empty when I left, and by Friday it was near full...with this reek coming from it. Everybody's been playing dumb about it, and this Monday morning I found out why.

The truck came to empty the bin at about 9am (they always show up at tea time) and after he left, I went out to roll it back in. Well sir, that smell was worse than before. The cause, it turns out, was the decomposing corpses of 17 tiny mice and one big one - presumably the mother.

I'll just mention that being summer down under, we are averaging 40C (really hot, in American degrees ) with stinkin' humidity.

The short of it is that the knucklehead who filled in for me while I was down at the Pressed Metal Show (those guys from Allied Galvanizing are nuts!)... that knucklehead came in one morning and found all these baby mice in the freshly emptied bin. And there was the mother mouse trying to get them out. But the bin's deep with steep metal sides and she wasn't having much luck.

Does our hero maybe try to evacuate the rodents to safety? No, this throw-back sat on the edge of the bin tossing chunks of wood at the mice until he had killed them all. I guess once they stopped moving, they lost his attention, because even then he did not remove them. He just went about his work...which consits of filling the bin with scrap wood.

And this is where we came in... I had to get the forklift and litterally tip the bin over, hose it out, scrape it out, bleach it, hose it again and let it sit in the sun for the rest of the day.

Evolution has mechanisms to explain odd creatures like our hero, and Americans; animals that defy logic, yet continue to flourish. But that intelligent design guff says someone actually sat down and had a good think..."hmmm, what about a big lunky red-headed guy who likes to throw wood at baby mamals? Yeah! Lets make one of those."

I'd want my money back.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

What's an Illidge?

Hey Kid, you remember Illidge? Do you still see him around? He stopped talking to me after I went south. Here he is after he chewed the nose off a racoon.

First Contact

I first ran into the Kid back in the late 60's. He still had nine freckles back then and a firey independance that might have made him a champion welterweight one day.

First Contact

I think that guy in the background was a narc.

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Giants

Giants walk behind the

Nearby hills the window

Sills just a step away

Look out there you

Don't think you'll catch

Sight you

Can't catch sight

Giants have walkways behind the nearby hills

Where they march and file the day

Out of sight, huge steps taken

For distant thunder

And Black men mine

The Giant's bones for marrow

To replace thier own

I am becoming giant.

Kid Savage

Kid Savage.

The Kid and me go way back to the dirt streets of Vancouver. We used to hang out by the wharves in the 60's. KS looked like he was gonna be a top boxer at one point....but that's all gone now. Ain't for me to say what happened.

Friday, February 03, 2006

Adding the Baboon Logo

Please email me at mamalfarmer@yahoo.com if you would like some HTML to put the Baboon Army logo in your own blog. Thanks very much to Exile who supplied the code.

SJ

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After finally having enough daily exposure to jerks, idiots, morons, plebes, whiners, whingers, cry-babies, dickheads, maroons, idgits, wheeler-dealers and people who call you "Chief", I decided all I could do was create an army of genetically modified baboons, howling vicious primates with robot brains and rainbow asses, to guard and protect me from the above.

A rag-tag group of fellow bloggers, armed with special powers of sarcasm, irony and wit (and one who can talk to molusks) and plain good sense, have agreed to help in the Army's creation in return for a spot in the Baboon Army Compound when it is built.

The Story So Far:

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Free Gift

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Precious Moments

Sometimes in our hectic, workaday lives we need to stop and reflect on the little things that make it all worthwhile. Here is a bittersweet and poignant look at life’s Precious Moments...