11/16/2010

Old Harbor Dock Shenannigans

So just what is a CoW?

The Clerk Of The Works job description template includes the following job summary: To provide on-site observation, issue progress reports, oversee budget, act as owner's representative with architects and contractors, and monitor all operations to ensure quality of construction in accordance with specifications and code requirements. Additional information available includes essential job functions, additional responsibilities, and education and experience requirements.

Anybody got any idea just WHERE our CoW is for this job? Well I just found out today that he resides, on a daily basis in the grand old city of Beantown Ma.! What the hell is he doing up there? He must have fantastic eyesight to be able to monitor just what is going on down here almost a hundred miles away!

I thought the operative words in the job description was "on-site observation"? So just what is going on here? Is there some sort of an agreement between the hire-ee and the hire-er? Dollar bills being kicked around? back and forth?

Just how does one go about getting in this largess where you get paid $100K to not show up on the job? Didn't we just go through an election where the people of this country told the friggin' politicians to straighten up and fly right or else? SO what the hell is the reason the local ones and the bueareucrats just blow us all off and go right to outright crookery? I'm pissed and you all should be too!! TIFN

11/08/2010

On, and Of Kings and Queens

I just came across this in a folder full of misc. "stuff" and thought I'd post it here. It was written about 10-12 years ago or whenever the Queen Mum croaked. I think I sent it to the local paper but Mr. Wood declined to print it, so 'ere it is matey's!


ON AND OF KINGS AND QUEENS

The recent notices on TV and in the newspapers about the passing of “The Queen Mum”, has brought out of hiding in me, all the feelings of the ardent separatist that led my ancestors to depart the European Continent three hundred and some years ago. And to then become involved in that little brush fire called the American Revolution. I watch the rites being acted out with regard to the death of Elizabeth’s Mother and my revulsion for the whole system of Kings and Queens, rises to the fore.

They speak of themselves as being “of royal blood”. Well, just what is royal blood? Is it imbued with, or does it posses some “factor” that the rest of we commoners don’t have? Is it really blue? If so, is it blue because it is “special” or because it is tainted? Where did it come from in the first place? Was it brought here from another world and injected into them? I think not. The only thing that we know for sure about royal blood is that it has been sorely weakened by the repeated occasions of inbreeding that has gone on for hundreds of years!

So from where did these people derive their ability to call themselves Royal? When you take a good long, long, look back in time, you discover that we all arose from virtually the same line of ancestors. Cro-Magnon I believe is the presently accepted line of descent.

All over the European and African continents as the tribe moved out to colonize new ground, some of them split off from the main group and went in different directions. Some went on over to England, Ireland, Scotland. Some moved up to the Scandinavian countries. Still others went on to become part of the Germanic hordes and to colonize the Balkans and down into Italy, Greece, etc.

In each of these tribes there was probably at least one strong willed, as well as physically strong person, who took it upon himself to be the leader. He, in all probability, was not elected to the position by any sort of due process. After awhile he may have become disenchanted with the title of “Chief” and cast around for another word that would make him seem to be of more “stature” in the eyes of his other tribesman. In due course and with the continuing evolution of the languages, some one of them came up with the name, “KING”! Then the self-crowned king says, “ I have to call my life partner something, so it shall be “QUEEN”! While we are at it, and in the business of procreating, henceforth all our little offspring will be known as PRINCES and PRINCESSES!” Voila! Thus was born the, NOBLE, ROYAL, MAJESTIC, farce that has been perpetrated on the people of the world ever since!

Over the course of time it spread to all the different tribes, and in order to keep the power solidified and contained within the ruling families, the art of inter-marrying and inbreeding became a major part of their lives undertakings. All the pomp and circumstance that they could possibly add to the trappings of their office, was there solely to keep impressed on the minds of the “commoners”, just who it was that held sway over their very lives. With a snap of their fingers, they could have anyone they took umbrage with dispatched to the nether world.

After a couple thousand years, it looks as though most of the world has come to recognize the fact that Kings and Queens are passe now. They have become nothing more than a financial drain on the treasury of the countries who still hang on to the artificial myth of Nobility and Royalty. I am SO glad that my ancestors had the foresight to either leave, or get kicked out of, Merry Auld England when they did. If nothing else was gained by their departure, it gave me the ability to write this little harangue without the worry of losing my head to the headsman’s axe, as did Anne Bolyn, Kathryn Parr and the rest of “Good KING Henry the Eight’s” marital brood!!