Archive for: August 2007

[This post contains some language and subject matter that is not appropriate for children. Parents are advised.]

I wasn’t going to write anything today; I’m supposed to be on vacation — I figured, since I hadn’t taken any time in over a year and just got laid off, why the hell not? But the crap that I’ve been tripping over in my daily paper is just plain (you guessed it) gettin’ on my nerves.

First, there’s the bunch of lazy shitbags in TO that drank a little too deep of the Entitlement Koolaidâ„¢ and knifed a guy to death when he wouldn’t give them any change. It’s not like no one could have seen this bullshit coming, either; “aggressive panhandlers” have been becoming more and more of a problem in the Arsehole Of The Universe® for years now and every time someone dares to point out the fact that it IS a problem, the argumentum ad hominem flies fast and furious from all the usual suspects in TO’s Homeless Millâ„¢ industry. But for all that, it is still a problem, and the tax-dollar Pac-men know it too:

Earlier this year the mild mannered woman told a committee of Toronto councillors that when she asked a panhandler to leave the Tim Horton’s she owns, the panhandler slapped her across the face and cut her. She says her staff “don’t want to approach [panhandlers] at all anymore.”

And before some squawking dildo out there starts in with all the “you’re just a mean conservative, you don’t understand, etc, etc, ad nauseum” bullshit, there’s a little something that you need to know about me. I don’t admit this very often because, quite frankly, I’m ashamed of it but here it is anyway:

I used to be homeless at one time.

That’s right, I lived on the street for nearly a year once. So, before all those self-righteous buggers out there sitting on your comfortable little arses start condemning me as an ignorant meanie, consider for a moment that I just might know one hell of a lot more of what I’m talking about than you do. Or ever will.

Did I beg for change from strangers on the corner? Not on your life. I’d rather cut my own nuts off. I didn’t beg, I didn’t steal and I didn’t do dope. I managed to survive, get by, and get the hell out of there, and I did it without any free sleeping bags or crack pipes. There are a whole bunch of misconceptions filthy lies that the homeless industry (and don’t fool yourself: it IS an industry) has perpetuated for years that need to be shot down.

And I’m in the mood for some skeet…

LIE#1: They’re victims of circumstance
Bullshit. The vast majority of these buggers aren’t downtrodden victims of a heartless system; they live on the streets because they choose to! Yeah, you read that right. They choose to live on the streets because, on the streets, you can do whatever stupidity you damned well please; the bar is so low that you don’t have to worry about disappointing anybody, not even yourself…
Wanna spend your days stoned stoopid, doing bugger all? No problem. Anybody that points out what a screwup you’re being is just an asshole that “doesn’t understand life on the street.”
Wanna rip something/someone off? No problem. They have something you don’t, so they’re better off than you, so they can spare it. Besides, if they really wanted to keep it, they’d have locked it up better. And if they don’t hunt you down and stomp a mudhole in your ass for it, well, that just shows what suckers they were to begin with.
Feel like banging/getting blown by half a dozen chicks today? No problem. Their expectations are just as low as yours and if somebody points out that they’re being slutty, they’ll get condemned for trying to stifle the poor girl’s sexuality, complete with the full “it’s my body, blah, blah, blah” rant. Throw in a “Patriarchal Oppressionâ„¢” reference for good measure.
Feel like kicking the shit out of someone that pissed you off? No problem. The rules are different on the street, don’tcha know? And the pigs really need to learn to mind their own business.

LIE#2: They’re hungry
Bullshit. When’s the last time you heard of someone starving to death in Canada? I haven’t heard of it either. As far as I know, there isn’t a single God damned city anywhere in Canada that doesn’t have food banks, soup kitchens, a Sally Ann, or some other place to get a meal. Most cities have a shitload of ’em. These assholes aren’t hungry, they’re just sober. And they don’t like it.

LIE#3: It’s not their fault because they have addictions
So God damned what?? If you’re addicted to something, it’s only one person’s fault: YOURS! YOU are the one that decided to pop those pills, mainline that speed or suck on that glass dick. YOU did that, not somebody else. It’s YOUR fault. YOU dug the hole that you’re in. You say you want help to get off the stuff? Fine. But there’s a couple of things that YOU are damned well going to have to do before I’ll even bother listening to you:
First, you have to damn well prove to me that you mean it. Yeah, you heard me: PROVE IT! Get off your lazy ass and DO something to prove to me that you’re serious because, unlike those soft-headed, social worker idiot types, I’m a little too damned street-smart to take a junkie at his word. For anything.
Second, you — yes, YOU — are the one that’s going to have to do all the hard work. Get that through your head. Nobody is going to fix you; you’re damned well going to have to fix yourself.

LIE#4: They’re mentally ill
No, they aren’t. The mentally ill make up, by my observation (and I’m someone that would know), less than 5% of the so-called “street people” that you see bugging you for change every day. I can think of only one homeless person that I see regularly in the city of London who is, beyond any doubt, crazy as a shithouse rat. The vast majority of panhandlers are either late teen/early 20s buttmunches looking to score some cash to get high on later, or else they’re middle aged drunks, jonesing for a jug of ale. I know this because I see them emptying out their piles of change onto the bar. Yes, that’s right: I go drinking in the same places that most of you buggers criticizing me would be scared shitless to even walk past, let alone enter.

LIE#5: They CAN’T get jobs
Bullshit. It isn’t that they CAN’T get jobs, it’s that they WON’T get jobs. There’s a bunch of sub-lies that go along with this one: they can’t get clothes, no one will hire you when you can’t shower, there is no work to get. All bullshit. Let’s take ’em one at a time, shall we?
They can’t get clothes… Even in the town where I grew up (population: a piddling 3000), there was a Sally Ann store where you could get clothing for free if you needed it. And not all thrift store clothing is crap, either. I once got a three piece suit and an Armani tie (yes, Armani) at a thrift store, so don’t tell me that there’s nothing there. Getting a pair of jeans, shirt and work boots is a no-brainer.
Showers… Please piss off with this one. I was on the street during one of the most humid summers I can remember and nobody smelled me coming. There are all kinds of shelters, mens’ missions, Sally Anns and other places where you can get shower and even do your laundry. Most of ’em serve meals, too (see LIE#2).
There is no work for them… Again, piss off. There was work to be had, even in the middle of a recession, there’s honest work to be had now. There was a place in London — it used to be down on Marshall Street, I don’t know if it’s still there or if it’s moved — called the “Casual Labour Office.” All kinds of companies, from factories to small construction contractors, would come in every day looking for someone to hire for the day. Some of it was minimum wage, some wasn’t. If you did a good job that day, you might get called back by the same company, maybe even hired on permanently.

Casual Labour opened the doors at 7am every day. The lineup would start forming at somewhere around midnight. To this day, I have no idea how many nights I slept on that sidewalk. There was a stack of flattened-out cardboard boxes that we kept tucked around the corner so we wouldn’t have to sleep on the concrete. When it rained or snowed, we’d move and take shelter in the parking garage across the alley (long since torn down for a co-op), always keeping in mind our numbers in line.

I did that for nearly a year, saving every spare cent until I had enough for first & last on an apartment and a bit to float me until I could find a permanent job. But I did it, and so can they. The difference is that they choose not to. I have a T-shirt that reads “Yes, I have plenty of change, you homeless piece of shit, thanks for asking.”

I wear it for a reason.

The so-called “homeless advocates” aren’t advocates of anything except keeping themselves firmly locked on the government teat. They need these people to look pathetic so that they can keep their cushy, overpaid jobs. The best way to get people off the street is to make living on the street actually suck. That means no free sleeping bags, no free pipes and no spare change. Anything less is being part of the problem.

I was going to go off on a rant about something else, too but this is getting kind of long-winded. I’ll do the rest later…

Let the hate mail begin…

I’ve seen a lot of odd stuff in my life but this not only takes the cake, it quite frankly creeps the hell out of me. Never thought I’d see the army called out for something like this; not in this country, at least. The Freeps and the TO Red Star seem to be the only ones that have picked this up so far but look to hear more of it as word gets around.

It seems that a couple of kids were with their mom walking the family pooch on Friday along a creek that crosses Inadale Drive between Strathroy and Mt. Brydges (not sure about the name of it yet but the locals seem to just call it “crayfish creek”) and they stumbled on… two antitank mines!

That’s right. Two God damned landmines — like the one in the photo on the right, taken at the scene — were found in the creek right by a culvert that a buttload of people drive over every day.

We’ll start off with what the Freeps had to say about it today:

The potential for devastation was evident yesterday as a military team detonated the mines from a safe distance.

The force of the blast ripped bark and limbs from a tree and sprayed water so high it could be seen by observers a kilometre away.

“I could feel the percussive force,” Overdulve said, “It was 100 times louder than any fireworks you ever heard.”

Seven centimetres thick and 25 centimetres in diameter, the mines appear to be the kind used to disable tanks.

“We can’t definitively prove that, but that is the direction we are leaning,” Overdulve said.

After the detonation, the explosives experts found debris “consistent with timers,” he said.

The first mine was found Friday afternoon by nearby resident Lynn Denning, who walked to the creek with her two teenage daughters so that their yellow lab, Jesse, could enjoy the cold water.

“It’s upsetting,” she said.

While Inadale is a two-lane country road, many residents cross the culvert to commute to London, Denning said.

“There’s quite a lot of traffic during the week,” said Denning, who commutes to work at London Health Sciences Centre.

The family called Strathroy-Caradoc police, who sought help from the OPP, who called in the explosive ordinance disposal team from CFB Base Borden.

The explosives team left its base 100 kilometres north of Toronto at 6:20 a.m. yesterday.

“We responded quickly — we take this matter quite seriously,” said Capt. Cheryl Swarbrick, a base spokesperson.

Their presence was soon felt and heard on a normally quiet, tree-lined road.

“I’ve seen hand grenades and ammunition, but I never encountered anything like this,” Overdulve said.

Until a year ago, Overdulve lived near the creek, taking his three kids there to fish so often, they called it “crayfish creek.”

“This area is typically occupied by children, who come here to play,” he said.

The Red Star, of course, took their usual “nothing to see here, folks, move along” stance. You know; the same one they take every time something happens that has the potential to suggest that those on the Right side of the political spectrum just might be right about the idea of national security…

“It would be very premature to say how they might have got there,” Overdulve said. Around 1 p.m. after inspection, the military detonated what they describe as possible anti-tank devices – a type of land mine capable of damaging or destroying tanks or other armoured vehicles.

Investigators are unsure whether the suspected land mines were modern or from a bygone military era. “It’s possible that the ordnance is quite old,” Overdulve said. All the debris was collected and sent for analysis, with results expected within the next two weeks.

Bygone military era, my lilly-white ass. Dawdling around and leaving antitank mines all over southwestern Ontario has never been a part of the Canadian Armed Forces’ training and exercises regimen. 🙄

Meanwhile, over at Canada Free Press, Judi McLeod seems to be the only one asking the right questions, out loud:

The big question about two live landmines found in a countryside culvert running under Inadale Drive between Strathroy and Mt. Brydges, Ontario yesterday is who put them there?

Appearing to be attached to timers, the landmines were likely of the type used to blow up tanks, according to Strathroy-Caradoc police.

[…]

The Strathroy and Mt. Bridges communities are 20 kilometres west of London, Ont. and 30 kilometres from the former Military Camp Ipperwash (also Camp Ipperwash, a former Canadian Armed Forces training facility, now held by Stoney Point First Nation natives.

The only other military base in the area was CFB Clinton, about 40 kilometres away [actually, Judi, it’s more like 100 kliks away -Dennis], shut down some 36 years ago, and CFB London, about 20 kilometres away and downsized some 15 years ago

Let’s face it, boys and girls, the friggin’ Mine Fairy didn’t leave those things there. And there are two things that suggest to me that they haven’t been there for very damned long:

1. They were submerged in water, but not for so long that they couldn’t still go off. And as one Korean War vet told me once, in the winter time the pressure from expanding ground frost (or in this case, solid ice) will often set mines off.
2. The size of them. Earlier AV/AT mines were damned big things. They had to be, simply because the kind of compact, high-efficiency explosives that we can find today hadn’t been developed yet. Most accounts put these things found in the creek as being discs about 20cm across and about 6cm thick. That’s small for an AV/AT device.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t get that little voice in the back of my head to shut the hell up. You know the voice I’m talking about; you might have one yourself. The one that keeps saying, “They said we were a target. Even before we sent troops to Afghanistan, they came right out and said we were on their hit list. And everybody knows that they always try to do a dry run first…”

Is that nagging little voice wrong? Am I just being paranoid? I sure as hell hope so.

Okay everybody, gather ’round and check out this guy here on the right ( no, bonehead, not the one with his thumb in the air; your other right 🙄 ). This guy’s name is Marc Patterson and he has totally got my nomination for the Biggest Balls In British Columbia Awardâ„¢ after what he did.

I’ll bet you’re wondering what’s got me so impressed, aren’t ya? Well, it’s like this:
Marc and his family went on a camping trip a few days ago, along with a 12-year old friend of his family’s named Colton Reeb. Things were all fine and dandy until Colton needed to make a short trip to the thundershack after dinner. On his way there, Colton bumped into a cougar. The kind that doesn’t wear lipstick (watch the story here):

Colton Reeb was bitten on the head, face, neck and upper chest before a family friend wrestled the big cat off the boy, but his parents told CBC News on Thursday evening their son is resting and in good condition.

[…]

“I see the cougar with his mouth on top of the young boy’s head. [There’s] nothing but blood everywhere,” said Marc Patterson, a Reeb family friend who eventually fought the cougar off the boy.

“I jumped down there on the cat, grabbed him by the neck and started squeezing him from behind. I tried to pull the cat off and it took a few seconds. Finally the cat did let go and then we tumbled,” Patterson said.

“The cat was so strong he just pulled himself out of my hands. Then he’s a metre in front of me, looking at me with his ears back.”

Yeah, you read that right: “wrestled the big cat off the boy!” 😯 This guy must clank when he walks or something…

Five soccer kicks to the head of a cougar weren’t enough to wrench a 12-year-old boy’s head from the mouth of the big cat, says the man credited with saving the lad’s life.

So Mark Patterson put a chokehold on the cougar that had ambushed his young neighbour Colton Reeb, who was on his way to an outhouse near a cabin about 100 km northwest of Kamloops late Wednesday afternoon.

“The cat had Colton’s head in its mouth …blood was squirting out everywhere,” said Kamloops resident Patterson, 45.

“I’m a soccer player and I kicked the cougar in the head five times and it didn’t flinch so I grabbed him by the throat and squeezed as hard as I could and he finally let go.”

Patterson then wrestled with the 70-pound male cougar, which broke free, fixing him with an evil glare and growl, he said.

“I growled back at him and said, ‘I’m ready to go,’” said the five-foot-six, 210-pound Patterson, adding the entire melee lasted up to a minute.

As his wife stood nearby armed with a meat cleaver, the cougar then slinked away.

“I was scared but I don’t remember … I love this little boy and I didn’t want him to die,” said Patterson.

And Colton? Well, I get the feeling that he’s going to be just fine (thanks in no small part to his buddy Marc):

Colton Reeb was in good spirits but feeling “ripped off” after a planned five-day camping trip with his family was cut short when he was attacked on Wednesday near Clinton, British Columbia, the BC Children’s Hospital said.

Yup, got mauled by a cougar and mostly feels bummed that his camping trip got cut short. Ain’t the resilience of kids amazing? All Colton’s thinking about is getting back up there so he can have some time on his new dirt bike. I’ll let Colton’s dad and Marc have the last words today:

An emotional Robin Reeb, Colton’s father, said Patterson deserves a medal for heroism.

“If it weren’t for him, my son would be dead,” said a tearful Reeb, who was in Kamloops at the time of the attack .

“He attacked this thing with his bare hands and kicked the s–t out of it – it’s amazing.”

Said Patterson: “I guess they’re calling me a hero now – I thought soldiers were heroes.”

Alright, boys and girls, I finally have the time to write up a post on yesterday’s capture. Got me a hangover to, come to think of it…

For those of you that haven’t heard yet (yes, I’m talking to both of you), Jesse Imeson finally got himself bagged just outside of Portage-du-Fort in La Belle Province, just before 9 o’clock last night. And that murdering little toad is now off on a one-way trip to a hell of a lot more than 30 days in the hole.  I guess the guy that found him didn’t have ol’ Betsy with him at the time…

Everybody and their pet beaver in the MSM has some story or other on it today so I guess I’ll start with the Freeps version:

RENFREW — Jesse Imeson, the 22-year-old suspect in three Southwestern Ontario slayings, was nabbed by police last night in Quebec after two weeks and nearly 600 kilometres on the run.

The hunt for Ontario’s most wanted man ended with his arrest just before 9 p.m. near the town of Portage-du-Fort, Que., about 100 kilometres west of Ottawa, in a joint operation by Ontario and Quebec provincial police officers.

He was apprehended a short hop across a bridge over the Ottawa River from a rural area of eastern Ontario where a slain Huron County couple’s stolen pickup truck had been found less than a day earlier on a logging trail.

Tight-lipped last night, OPP confirmed Imeson was in custody in Quebec — expected to be taken back to Ontario — after a man was found trying to break into a house in the Quebec village shortly before 8 p.m.

The homeowner chased him, possibly unaware he was considered “armed and extremely dangerous,” before police finally caught him.

Officers quickly descended on the area, using dogs and helicopters to aid in the search, said Quebec police Sgt. Michel Brunet.

Imeson was located by an OPP officer about an hour later and did not resist arrest, police said.

Some folks in other threads have been wondering alout just why it is that Imeson managed to be taken so quietly. After all, he had two guns with him so you’d at least expect some long standoff, if not a shootout, right?

Wrong.

Take a look at those guys in the photo on the right. Those ain’t peashooters they’re toting. In the real world, unlike TV, when a scumbag finds himself confronted with overwhelming firepower that’s being packed by men with the will to use it, he’ll almost always shut the hell up and do as he’s told, damned quick. Especially if the cop holding the gun has that “I’ll bet blowin’ your brains out would get me a lotta pussy” look in his eye. Imeson was likely armed with nothing but a couple of varmint guns and that kind of junk just plain isn’t any kind of match for an HK MP5.

By the time you read this, that murdering little bag of mule shit will be on his way back to face the music.

Other links:

• Hunt for slayings suspect re-enacted, Presence stuns neighbours, Imeson ‘hyper,’ tattoo artist says (the Freeps)
• Back to Ontario (National Post)
• Imeson caught (Clinton News Record)
• Fugitive wanted in 3 Ontario slayings caught, Suspect in 3 slayings to be flown to London, Ont. (CBC)
• Triple-murder suspect to be transported to Ontario (CTV)

I, for one, am going to be damned glad that this prick is under lock & key.  Now I’ll be able to take my boy up to the farm for a little target shooting without having to keep one eye on the tree line.  That, and get back to ranting about my usual stuff.

I also want to say thanks to all the folks who have been stopping by.  Keep coming back, you might find something that interests you.  For now, though, just let the kids out to play for a while.  They’re likely going stir crazy. 😉

After all this time, I figure it’s about damned time that I blabbed about something other than a murdering sack of maggot shit that has had everybody worried lately. So here goes…

HOLY [BLEEP]ING [BLEEP]!!! I’ve heard of “dragon skin” before. I even had a chance to get an up-close look at how it performed against a full burst from and AK47 and I was impressed as hell. But I NEVER thought it could pull this off. This is just too damned surreal.

From the vid, the grenade looks like a standard frag (an M67 or some such) but I can’t really see well enough to be sure. Either way, this is un-Goddamned-believable! Some of you might have seen this before, but I just tripped over it and I’m still shaking my head. Part of me is skeptical, but…

Just watch for yourselves…

PS-
I know I promised another/final Imeson post, but well… when word came out that he was bagged, me and the mates went out and tied a few on. So the Jesse post will have to wait til tomorrow, when I sober up. Sorry, folks.