Stuff

The "share it" tab said that my blog had been shared 9 times.

To which I said "9 Times?"

"9. Times."

(ahh sleep dep. I wouldn't be near so clever without you)

In Memory

He so bald it crack!

So you probably don't understand...It's okay though. No one who was actually there for the joke did either. The best part was how much Jimmy was enjoying it.

Hatchling

First Night Back

So alas my days of parental leave are officially over.

After being back at work for half an hour it felt like I had never even left. Nothing's really changed...You know what? Fuck this. Are you bored yet? I am.

This is going to be a short post as I've not slept much today and I'm just not in the mood for complaining about work. You know the drill: Blah,blah, blah, they're all dumb and if I'm the smart one we're all in trouble yadda, yadda.

What I will be doing as you may have noticed follower (thank you Marc!) that I've started to change the look of the blog. I wasn't all that happy with the green and I think I'm going to change the name of the blog to match the handle that I've started using on twitter. So this space may become John Henry Ink. John Henry was my paternal grandfather's name and the ink is, well mostly obvious I suppose. I couldn't use Inc. on twitter so went with ink but it may be a little too clever, and quite frankly over done, what with the tattoo shows everywhere. John Henry Inc. (or Ink) is supposed to be my parent organization for all the stuff I get involved in though it's more concept really. I've not made a real corporation or anything.

Well time to do the dishes make some dinner for the kids and go to bed! Goodnight!

Taggs

Reasons

Well I've been managing to post fairly regularly now. I hope to be able to maintain this pace once I go back to work. Right now, for those of you not in the know, I am on parental leave after the birth of our (meaning my wife's and mine. Not me and you. That would be weird. We may not even know each other. You may be male. Not that that has anything to do with it I suppose 'cause there's always adoption. Or you could be trans-gendered. But then again it does have something to do with it because I'm not gay. You may not have known...or cared...where was I?) fourth child in June of last year. I should be alright for the posting of drawings at least as I've got a pile of them just waiting to be scanned and manipulated for your viewing pleasure (I hope. I mean I hope it's your pleasure not I hope you can view them. Well actually I DO hope you can view them, christ are you getting tired too?).

As my dad would say, "due to circumstances completely within my control" I'll be on nights for the first month and a half or so when I return so my wife can work and not have to put all her money to baby sitting. This is completely within my control, he would argue, because it was my choice to have this many kids. "Hey!" I say "I don't know how to respond to that!"

So if my posting (is that even a verb?) drops off it will only be because between the working all night and watching kids during the day and sleeping at some point I'll have actually tried to eat something as well.

It's funny, I had intended to write this post about why I had started posting again. Some of the forces involved are quite happy. Others, not so much. I think maybe I'll just skip it for tonight. Writing this made me laugh. I think that's where I'm going to leave it.

The one that started it all...

Well it's the first drawing I did with the Alien Fossil label. And "it" didn't really start anything. Like I wasn't halucinating and it said "you know young master David, I look like a fossil from another planet. An "alien fossil" if you will. You shall call me that henceforth!" And it certainly did not speak with an english accent...Never happened.

So I've finally gotten a photoshop program so I can start manipulating my raw drawings into something, well, more expressive I guess.

Being in a Union ain't all that...

So as an extension of my tweet from the other day I'm going to go into further detail. For those of you who don't follow my tweets, well, first shame on you, but second, here's what I said:

"At my job what we need is united workers. What we have is a Union. I think I'm not alone in that experience."

I'm not a big fan of unions. I think they have greatly out lived their usefulness. They seem, from my perspective, to have grown into large lumbering behemoths that only seem to exist for their own sake. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that unions were supposed to help workers stand up against the huge corporations that they, the unions, now bare more than a passing resemblance to. So who helps you stand up against your Union?


The place where I work is dangerous. We have all kinds of methods with which we can fail to arrive home, if we aren't careful. We have safety measures, rules and procedures set in place to reduce the risk of injury or death, but they have to be followed to be effective. The problem arises when management gets under pressure to perform and then one of those procedures interfere with the task at hand. They will then pressure the worker or workers to "just go and do it cause we need this out the door now!"

So stand up and say no, you may be thinking. Well you're right, that is what should happen. The union should back us up on that decision. But what often happens, from my experience, is they just move on to someone else who will do it. The union reps say something to the effect of "Meh, what are you gonna do. The union's only as strong as its members". I pay a thousand dollars a year for that?!?!! What the hell do I need a union for if they won't bring both the worker AND the company to heel, especially where safety is concerned?

The labour movement has stalled. The laws exist now that make unions largely redundant. Where they do retain some usefulness is during collective bargaining. Four thousand dollars (per contract), of just my money, is a fairly steep price to pay when what I seem to be getting at the table is, not professional negotiators, but guys selected from my workforce. There are over 2000 of us in the wage agreement. How much of that money is lining the pocket of the union's president? He can grandstand all day long and rave up and down about the raw deal workers are getting but he isn't taking any cut in pay is he? How much risk is there that he'll get laid off? Is he reducing dues to make things easier for the members? The saying goes "when you point your finger at someone; there are three pointing back at you."

Workers don't need unions. What they need is to do away with the large organizations and just stand up for each other when it counts. That's what I would like.

I'd also like a unicorn.

Angry Clown

Skully

Allien Fossil

Classic to whom?

I'm watching the truck race and in the pre-race show they were all over the "classic" Daytona style racing we were about to see. That's not a selling feature folks.

Daytona may be the biggest race of the year but it's been a snooze fest since the day they put in restrictor plates and made drafting the only way to get by anyone. So everyone just stays in line scared of losing the draft and they're always waiting on the "big one". The wreck where half the field is taken out because one guy made a mistake.

This truck race has had about as much excitement as melting ice. The only excitement it has had is coming from the wrecks. I get my fill of wrecks from celebrity news.

It's a little known fact...

After The Peanuts comic strip stopped running, Woodstock resorted to pimping to make ends meet.

I drew this with soapstone on an old piece of ducting then took a negative picture of it.

Name Tag

So this is something I drew well over a year ago. I took a picture of it with my phone and could not get the damned photo sent anywhere.

Well apparently you have to own a smart phone if you don't want to have to perform some sort of ancient ritual to get shit uploaded to the web.

I figured it out, so here you go.

A Year??!!??

Where does the time go? Well, when you've got four kids, two cats, and two puppies, time doesn't fly; it's at warp friggin ten. So here we go with another stab at web 2.0! By the by I'm on twitter @JohnHenryINK.