John Henry Ink

Stuff

2011-04-09T07:16:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-09T07:02:00.000-07:00

He so bald it crack!

2011-03-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

First Night Back

2011-03-07T13:38:00.000-08:00

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

2011-03-06T12:02:00.000-08:00

Reasons

2011-03-01T18:43:00.000-08:00

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...

2011-03-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-02-26T17:40:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-24T16:13:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-22T18:57:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-02-22T18:49:00.000-08:00

Angry Clown

2011-02-20T18:56:00.000-08:00

Skully

2011-02-20T18:47:00.000-08:00

Allien Fossil

2011-02-18T18:31:00.000-08:00

Classic to whom?

2011-02-18T18:11:00.001-08:00

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...

2011-02-15T05:13:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-14T19:06:00.000-08:00

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

Name Tag

2011-02-14T18:42:00.000-08:00

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??!!??

2011-02-14T18:37:00.000-08:00

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.

Vote For Iggy

2010-01-11T23:02:00.000-08:00

Just arrived from another planet and ready to tell you what to do.

Vote For Steve

2010-01-11T22:55:00.000-08:00

He already lives under your bed.

Grafitti

2009-12-30T06:30:00.000-08:00

I saw this statement and rebuttal in the cab of a locomotive that had obviously been to the states.

ALL CANADIANS ARE COCK SUCKERS (done very messily)

(in very nice cursive) At least we're useful

Well that degraded quickly

2009-12-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

Me (texting Mike about a previous conversation regarding something called back pressure in his motorcycle engine): Taking the baffles out of your muffler effectively shortened your exhaust system and changed the fill pattern in the chamber. What your engine likes is a longer pipe. Small engines are easily affected by changes in air wave patterns.

Mike: Fuck your hat

me: Ha

Mike: No one talks to me like that and gets away with it

Me: So I shouldn't send that pic of my asshole then?

The Trouble Clef

2009-12-20T23:06:00.000-08:00

One Unhappy Grapefruit

2009-12-14T22:51:00.000-08:00

These pictures are the first tattoos that I have done. The grapefruit in question was really an innocent bystander in all of this. It was just sitting at the grocery store minding its own business when I came by, purchased it, and started filling it with ink without any real plan.

"Oooops!" I said after drawing a particularly awkward line attempting the eye ball.

"The grapefruit seriously does not want to hear that!" Said my friend who is guiding me in the techniques of tattoos.

"Yeah, well, this fruit is seriously going to be looking for a cover up!"

Untitled

2009-12-05T04:16:00.000-08:00

or "It's not me that is crazy. It is I that am MAD!!!" (borrowed from Ren & Stimpy: Space Madness)

Alien Fossil

2009-12-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

Captain Picard and The Green Eyed Monster

2009-12-03T06:38:00.000-08:00

Alien Fossil: Hominoid

2009-12-01T22:54:00.000-08:00

So I'm gonna start just posting my raw drawings instead of waiting to get them all gussied up and what not. Hey If there's actually anyone reading this I wouldn't mind some kind of feed back. This is one of the many skulls I've drawn (though there are only a couple actually on the blog) and I was thinking of putting them on t-shirts or posters or something. I was going to make a subdivision of my online store John Henry and call it Alien Fossil. But I think I might just change it to Skully, which was a term the jocks at my high school used for fellatio. Using that particular word for drawings of skulls amuses me on some deep level that I can't quite explain. Is that irony? Feels like it somehow, but I'm not so sure.

Dinner Conversation (antother true story)

2009-11-28T23:01:00.000-08:00

Sitting at a table in the lunch room with F. and J.

Me: So have either of you seen the new "Star Trek" movie?

F. & J. together: No (F. starts to say he wants to but J. talks over him) I hate Star Trek! It's so stupid.

Me: Well actually you don't really have to be a fan of the other movies to enjoy..

J.: Oh it's just so dumb! (makes a face)

Me: Easy Captain Negative!

F.: (snickering) My sensors are picking up some hostility!

Me: Yeah! Set your phasers to "Sorry"!

untitled

2009-11-08T06:33:00.000-08:00

Persavereance

2009-10-11T22:51:00.000-07:00

Upside down, flying through the air,

The world dangling below him.

On his face an expression of concentration,

Like he thought he could still pull this off.

Impressive

2009-08-11T18:21:00.000-07:00

What Mr. Spock was really thinking

2009-07-31T06:08:00.000-07:00

Poppa

2009-07-13T03:58:00.000-07:00

The General

2009-07-10T04:43:00.000-07:00

Of course!

2009-04-19T10:55:00.000-07:00

"Immy? Why do you need to be naked to go pee?"

"Because I want to be a princess!"

Pain and comfort

2009-04-10T06:04:00.000-07:00

So there is a couple in T.O. whose daughter is in pretty rough shape. She has some kind of rare disorder that won't allow her brain to communicate with her body. She's been on life support and earlier this week the decision was made to stop the machine that was breathing for her. She then began breathing on her own and, seeing as there are only 500 known people in the world living with this disorder, it's pretty amazing.

The thing is the parents of this little girl have been taking all kinds of flak because they stated publicly that they want their daughter's organs to be used to help save another child (this was before she had started breathing on her own when it was assumed she would die without the life support). They've been told by various people that they should just keep their mouths shut and let their daughter die with dignity. Ethics professors are questioning their motives without actually questioning the parents directly. Insinuating, to a degree, that these parents are using their daughter's plight to gain public notoriety.

Here's the position I take on it. ( I'm just as qualified as any other person to comment on this because: a) I have kids and b) I've never been in that situation like probably 90% of the people telling them they aren't dealing with it properly.) How these people choose or need to deal with the pain of having a child in this condition is their business. If they take comfort in telling their story, let them. Maybe they need to get this out because the pain is just so great they need to tell as many people as possible to divide the pain by the number of people being told. Maybe they want people to know about organ donation. Maybe they want everyone to know that their daughter exists and, though she's likely going to die, she matters. I don't know. I have chosen not to pay too much attention because I have difficulty dealing with the idea of a child dying. They HAVE to deal with the idea.

I think they need to be cut some fuckin' slack!

Alien Fossil: Cave Drawing

2009-04-05T07:43:00.000-07:00

2009-04-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

2009-04-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

Iron Monkey

2009-04-05T07:07:00.000-07:00

"Your gonna do WHAT?"

2009-04-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

So that's the main reaction I get when I tell people the following news: My wife and I are thinking about becoming foster parents. Right now we're starting to do some research to see how it all works or how one gets qualified to be a foster parent.

People tend to think we're crazy. "You've got three already" or "you gotta be careful" or "why would you take care of someone else's kid?" (I'm serious about that last one too! That's not exactly what he said but that's the jist of the conversation!) The bottom line is my wife and I want to help and we think we could give a solid foundation to a kid who needs it. And the government PAYS foster parents, so it's not "detracting" anything from my biological children. It's like homecare in the healthcare system. It's way cheaper to pay to have someone stay in their home (when appropriate) than to keep them in an institution. The government actually saves money paying foster parents to care for wards of the state, and the kids have, I would argue, a much better chance at something approaching a normal childhood.

Oh and we are still planning to have a fourth biological child too.

"You have how many kids? You want more? You need to pull out!!"

"Three. Yes. I do pull out...I'm here aren't I?"

I guess I just need to stop sharing information with the knuckle draggers at work!

Alien Fossil: The Mouse

2009-03-11T18:29:00.000-07:00

Justification

2009-03-11T02:40:00.000-07:00

fuck

A true story

2009-03-07T16:01:00.000-08:00

The tears came quickly. Streams running down my face.
I tried to suck them back before;
Dad could see
"Are you crying?"
"No" wiping tears from my eyes
"Then what's that?"
"I hit
Myself
In the face
With
The steering wheel!"

Joy Boy

2009-03-06T16:49:00.001-08:00

Right...and poems HAVE to rhyme!

2009-03-04T18:37:00.000-08:00

So I was listneing to the CBC's "Canada Reads". This is a contest where they take 5 works of Canadian literature and debate on which of the five all of Canada should read, with five famous and not so famous Canadians defending one of the titles. I was only half listening really, while I did the dishes. That is until the woman who was defending a book that had just been removed from the competition made one of the oddest comments I think I've ever heard. She said "I don't think literature should be enjoyable"........I'm sorry, what? Did I miss something? Are people at local bookstores telling their customer's "you need to read this book. It's tedious and long with no redeeming qualities to speak of!"

News flash: People don't read things they don't find enjoyable! People read "literature" for the challenge, to explore the human experience, learn, escape, understand and so on for as many different reasons as there are people, or books to be read. All of that comes under the heading of enjoyment. How can she expect the average Canadian to read this book while also telling them literature isn't enjoyable? What a sales pitch! Sign me up! I missed the trudgery of high school and now I think I'll spend my precious free time not enjoying a book! Just like the good ol' days!

It took me a long time to find my way into books and topics that kept me reading. It didn't come as easily to me as it did for my sisters. If my parents had taken the kind of attitude that I feel is prevalent at least on the surface of that statement, maybe I'd end up a functional illiterate like so many of the jocks I went to high school with. Maybe she didn't mean that exactly how it sounded. I don't know. I do know, however, if my kids have trouble reading, that is not a tactic I'll be taking to encourage them to carry on.

Whose an adorable two year old?

2009-03-02T14:48:00.000-08:00

My son is who! The boy's got cute to spare! Turned two yesterday.

No Time

2009-02-28T02:15:00.000-08:00

I guess this will be a short post due to the fact that I seriously don't have very much time to do this. I was going to talk about being in a union but it took so long to get into my blog and my typing skills being what they are I don't really want to get into it right now. Sufficed to say I'm not all that impressed with what is going on. At least I'm under-worked and over paid!

Watch that first step....

2009-02-18T15:43:00.000-08:00

So I saw the title of my blog listed on my oldest sister's blog Radial Symmetry and figured, what the hell!

Good lord so much has happened since my last post oh so many months ago. My wife gave birth to our third child, his name is Maxwell Dimitri. I have to say that is pretty well the over riding event of all others that have happened in the past 6 months or so. So now my wife and I have three kids, Imogen is the oldest, then we've got Declan, and now we have Maxwell. One more girl and we'll have a complete set. And yes we are going to have a fourth. I'm the third of three and someone is always the odd one out, which always felt like me. Also with all these people spending untold sums of money to do what my wife and I can just DO, it would be a shame, in our minds not to have more, when in fact, we want more.

We've been through an election and the good guys won. I mean in all the ridings the people voted for who they thought were good. I like having a minority government in power. I think it tends to keep the ruling party more honest and open to input than might otherwise happen.

You know I'll rant and rave about things to myself, while I'm driving the hour and a half to work one way, but as soon as i sit down to actually pound something out on my blog I'm completely bereft of ideas. Also, when I start to write I feel like my ideas are getting lost in my words. Probably has something to do with my sub-standard typing skills and not having written much in the past oh ten years or so since I've been out of school. So once I start down a path of thought, if I feel like the Idea needs more than a few sentences or a paragraph at most, I'll probably scrap it and start on something else. Something easier.

Though I suppose that's the best way to start something new. Go with the easy topics first, get used to putting ideas down on paper again, then go to the more complex thoughts that take time to fully convey. Though i have to say I'm really more of the type of person who gets frustrated when complex tasks don't come easily to me. It's part of a deep inferiority/superiority complex I've developed. I never feel like I measure up to others standards, knowledge or whatever but if someone doesn't understand a concept that I do I tend to think "what the hell is wrong with you? If I understand it, it can't be that difficult! Dipshit!" Harsh? Yes. The truth often is, right? Wait, I mean the truth about me being harsh, not the truth of people who know less than I do on a certain topic being dipshits. Okay, some are dipshits;....see what I mean about my ideas getting lost in my words?

Well, I'm working on it.

My Favourite things: The smells

2008-10-26T18:34:00.000-07:00

The smell of kerosene. It reminds me of my paternal grandfather's workshop. My sister's and I adored that man, and he us.

Non-emission controlled car exhaust. Another one from child hood. The Old Man builds race cars and engines. My sisters and I spent many Saturday nights at a small track outside of Toronto watching cars go around in circles and eating chips. My sister's claim they hate racing. Though they do admit that, when ever they pass a race on television, they can't stop themselves from looking and thinking "Oh, whose racing? What's going on? Whose winning?" Then, much to their chagrin, they realize what they are doing and curse their formative years! I'd hope that when a Hot Rod passes by them and wafts that sweetness by their noses they'll be taken back to those nights and smile. They were actually some of the happier times for our family, for all the grumbling they did at the time.

Bacon and coffee.

My kids. Children have a smell. Babies especially. They should make Fabreeze smell like that. Sales would quadruple.

Electionista

2008-10-22T16:56:00.000-07:00

I don't even know what that is. I just made it up, I think. Well here, imagined reader, is my definition.

Electionista: n. A person who follows elections and politics very closely and cares enough about it to make fun of the whole process.

Getting down to it 2

2008-10-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

So that last post took forever to post because of technology. This further cements my desire for things that are supposed to make life easier and more enjoyable to do just that.

I live in a fairly rural area. Rural enough that we don't get cable out here and the cost to get one of those line of sight jobbies is excruciatingly prohibitive. So I'm stuck with dial-up. Not high speed just plain, old, don't expect to download that anytime soon, dial-up. This is also one of the reasons no pictures will be posted on this blog until I get some pictures on disc and find a better connection somewhere.

Anyhoo, I figured I might as well explain to you, imagined reader, why this site is called what it is. The original Timid Turtle is not a person really, it is a thing. Or was a thing, but I'll get to that. It was a 1958 Chevy two-door that had a 302 cu. in. (that's inches cubed or cubic inches) and ran a respectable 11.5 in the quarter mile. So you can compare, in 1999 a Viper could only manage high twelves. Not bad for an old tub running in the late '60's.

The car was owned by my father and his friend. It provided my Old Man with lots of stories of fun and failure.

One of my favourite pictures of the Old Man is of him standing over that engine while they were at Cayuga raceway. He was getting on for my age now and you could see the bald spot just barely starting. He hadn't grown a beard yet so he still looked real young, he still had a Greaser kind of hair style, white shirt, blue jeans, very fifties. He was fiddling around with the fuel injection trumpets and someone snapped the photo. He looks calm and confident in that photo. They raced that car before he and my mom got married. My oldest sister was born around six years after that car and I wouldn't be around for another four after her.

I think I like that car, the idea of it, that photo of my dad because I get to see small portions of what kind of life he had before my siblings and I were born. There was an entire lifetime of events between the day that photo was taken to the day I was born. It's the same man but two completely different worlds. I guess life is like that for everyone.

Nobody knows exactly what happened to the car. Well, I shouldn't say that, they know what happened. The Old Man and his buddy decided to sell the car. My mom showed it to some guy while my dad was at work and the next day the car was gone. So, nobody knows what happened to the car, after that.

So that's why I named the blog what I did. I don't know if I'll keep the name forever, but it seemed more real than trying to be clever. Well, more real than trying to be "super" clever!

Getting down to it

2008-10-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

I don't like technology. It infuriates me. I can hear you saying " so what's with the blog then? Isn't that conforming to the world of web and the technology that spawned it?" So here is what I mean. Technology isn't bad in and of itself, it's what happens to people who get a hold of it that I can't stand.

I'm at the local auto parts store looking for a specific item so I ask the man behind the counter with the mistaken impression that he might be able to help.
"Well" he says " I'll just look that up on the computer". He gets the part number and brings me to the item.
"This" I say "is nothing like what I need."
"But that's what the computer says you need." That little phrase is enough to make my blood boil. Essentially what this goub is saying is,"My computer tells me what to think".
"Well" I say "your computer is wrong! This part is the part I need." I show Mr. Too Old For Any Use my broken part "and what you've shown me looks nothing like that."
"Sorry, the computer....."

Now it's not technologies fault this guy wouldn't a starter from a starfish. But the people who implement these computerized stock/parts tracking systems think that the system is so good that any moron can do it, instead of thinking we could make a competent person even more efficient. And what happens to people when they get menial jobs, doing menial things, for menial pay? I'm sure you can guess.

A new day dawns

2008-10-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

So this what a blog is, eh? Well, let's see how long this lasts.

I was talking to my sisters about doing something with some drawings that I have and i figured this is probably just as good a way to get them out in the open as any.

Also, as my old man always says; everyone is entitled to my opinion! So I hope, if there is anyone reding this, I'll be able to entertain you with my quick wit and charm. Barring wit and charm I can ususally be counted on for bouts of stupidity which can also be entertaining.

Cheers!