Things Left Unsaid

a work day

September 2, 2026

My coffee mug gets empty too fast. I don't have enough time to just sit here and type this garbage.

I pack my lunch, and walk to work. I show up on time, and punch the clock. I say, good morning to some, before work begins. Sometimes we chat, and sometimes not. Work begins.

Safety is paramount above all things. I work hard, and I work efficiently. My work is accurate. I help out when asked by my coworkers. I stay calm. I get along. I don't yell. I don't blame, or snitch. I clean as I go. The machine I operate weighs about 4500kg, and can lift pallets down from 8 meters high. It is a lot of responsibility, and requires skill. The task that is assigned to me is dirty, and intense, and has a lot of (at times heavy) lifting involved.

None of that counts for anything.

My worth as an employee is mostly based upon the transactions that go from the scanner on my machine, to the screen on the laptop that my boss stares at all day. Also somewhat whether or not I measure up to the standards of his nepotism (and I mostly don't measure up). A lot of the work I do does not show up on the screen as a transaction. I've pointed that out many times to him, but he a) doesn't like me, and b) I suspect he is going senile.

My worth to my coworkers is mostly based upon whether or not they have to wait for me to deliver the products that they need to assemble orders, and whether or not I'm close by when they need assistance. If I'm on time, and there when they need me; they like me. If I'm not they turn on me in an instant, and won't hesitate to, as they say, 'throw me under the bus'. They expect me to stop 100% of the time, but then also expect me to deliver the products to location on time. They can't see how fucking stupid that is. If I'm doing the one thing, I'm not doing the other. I can't do more than one thing at a time.

It is a toxic and hostile workplace. Sometimes it gets to me, and sometimes it does not. It depends on how well I can drift below the radar. The pay rate when I started there over nine years ago was not too bad, but now it is really not competitive (on top of the sleazy oligarchs vacuuming up the wealth from all things). I know the pay is no longer competitive from looking at job ads.

I think of leaving sometimes. If I left though, I would not get benefits or vacation time for awhile. Possibly never if I ended up being a temp again. The other thing that deters me from leaving is that I would most likely end up doing the same stupid shit anyway. Only it would be in a different building with different people. It could even end up being a more toxic workplace.

I'm out of time. The coffee ran out awhile ago. I have to get ready to go there. I've been doing variations of this more days than not for over 37 years of my life.

It is no wonder I'm so tired.

Long weekend coming.

Less than 30 days to vacation time.

snapshot

August 31, 2026

It is Monday morning. Very early. When I woke up I was thinking back to a time before cell phones existed. I suppose that the amount of people who have had that experience is diminishing. There are likely some people out there who can't get one, or who are die hard holdouts and won't get one ever. A very large amount of society has been effected by them though. Shit changed when cell phones started being used for more than talking.

So what?

I don't know so what or where to go with that, or why I even typed it really. I'm half awake and typing before the caffeine kicks in. Cell phones were not what I was thinking about anyway. What got me thinking of the time before cell phones was clock radios, actually.

I had one beside my bed since digital was a new thing. About a year ago the one I had just stopped working. Something with the power cord. Sometimes it would stay on for days, and other times it would just randomly shut off until I wiggled the cord. Then it would come back on. I did that a few times before I just gave up and unplugged it. It sat there collecting dust for awhile before I threw it out.

Then I went without one beside the bed for maybe a year or so. I wear a watch that illuminates when I turn my wrist. Phone is beside the bed charging. There is little need for a clock beside the bed. Recently I got a new one though. It has big yellow numbers instead of red. Has a dimmer dial, and an alarm to set that I will never use. Has no radio though.

I remember when the latest technology was a digital clock radio. You could set it to wake you up with a radio station playing. It was actually a pretty nice way to wake up. Not very nice though if for some reason it was set to full volume static. That could cause you to wake up the same as if someone had started a chainsaw right next to your head.

There was a radio station that we could tune into. Oh man, even that is a weird thing to say now. Tune into. You had to be close to the radio station to be able to hear it clearly. So? So now you can listen to almost any radio station on the planet with the computer in the palm of your hand.

The station I used to tune into for my clock radio alarm was an easy listening station. It was not just soft rock or classical or anything like that. It was all elevator music 24/7. Popular songs of the time slowed down and had no vocals or drums or anything. Soothing. Smooth. It was great for the anxious child that I was. Now that I'm thinking about that radio station it reminds me of the other amazing feature of the clock radio... sleep mode. I would also go to sleep with that station playing. It would shut itself off in twenty minutes, or whatever.

And now I find myself thinking of my father and my older brother. My father worked in the factory I ended up working in for 20 years. After I dropped out of high school he hired me, and was my supervisor there.

He also had a woodworking shop in the garage at home, and he used to build things like shelves, workbenches and bookcases for employees to use in the factory. My brother and I used to help with delivering those things if they were a reasonable size for a child to lift and move. We would go at night when there was no one there. It was me holding the doors and them doing the lifting and moving. Funny to think that I was going to the factory for many years before I started working there. It was pretty exciting to go there at night when I was a kid.

One night came to mind. A snapshot really. A big old 80's sedan with a little trailer attached to be back of it. A cabinet of some kind secured in the trailer with a rope. Drifting down a narrow highway in the dark. A father with his two young sons. My brother in the passenger seat in the front. Me in the back. Our three faces lit up by the dim glow of the dashboard lighting. A guess at how old we were would be maybe 12 and 11. Maybe younger. My father would have been about 20 years younger than I am now. That elevator music radio station was playing. It came time for a break between songs, and it had a little tune for the call letters. C-H-A-Y, Huronia's welcome sound. (seeee-eeeee aayyych ayyyy whyyyyy... huuuuroniahhhhss welllcommm sound). My brother and father sang it out obnoxiously loudly and out of tune when the radio played it, and then we all laughed.

I have to get ready for my stupid job. Fuck Monday.

At least a long weekend is coming, and vacation is now only a month away.

untitled

August 31, 2026

Huron

Ontario

Michigan

Erie

Superior

Huron

America

Michigan

Erie

reminisce

August 30, 2026

I think way back sometimes to the moment I first heard he was running for president. I laughed out loud, and rolled my eyes, and said, holy shit, they will let anyone run for president these days. Then it was like I went through stages in the following months. At first it was simply funny to me. Then it was like, wow, that is really happening. Then that changed to, omg that actually might happen. Somewhere in the middle it ceased being funny. Then it happened.

Thinking back again on another tangent, I believe I had kind of a naive impression of him more than an opinion based on any solid info. I didn't know very much about him. I like to look things up about favorite bands or musicians, actors, or authors. Important people. Real people I find interesting, or creative, or who had done great things. He lacks all of those things, so I knew only the basics about him. Like I knew he had a lot of money (that turns out he didn't earn), and a terrible show that didn't interest me even slightly. He and his family made the news a bit while they fumble fucked their way through their miserable lives.

I also have a very distant and vague memory of my father laughing at him when he saw him on the TV. Not in the way a person would spontaneously laugh over something funny. Laughing at how over the top ludicrous of a human being he was. The way someone would laugh at an inappropriate offensive joke, or if the person walking beside them stepped on a fresh dog turd.

Those are memories I have of him in my household from when I was quite young up until he swindled his way into politics. I would say that to me he was sort of a caricature of a human being that appeared on the TV screen from time to time. Once he was gone from the screen I never thought about him at all until next time he did something stupid enough to be on TV.

Instead of succumbing to the needs of his toxic narcissistic tendencies, he could have lived out the end of his failure of a life, shitting himself and mumbling nonsense in the shadows of some gaudy abandoned rundown skyscraper. The T fallen from the sign long ago. No one left in his life but maybe a flunky or two. Or better yet, he might have been incarcerated for the heinous crimes he has more than likely committed. In the end, his death would have been barely noticed. Would have been one of those, oh shit, I didn't even realize that guy was still alive! A front page sidebar headline for a day, at best. Maybe a brief story in the back pages about what a fucking piece of garbage he was. We can only dream of alternate timelines.

https://thingsleftunsaid.ca/grateful

rename

August 27, 2026

If they are actually going to go through with the farce of renaming Lake Ontario; perhaps it should be named something relevant to him:

negotiate

August 23, 2026

Our Prime Minister knew that the CUSMA trade agreement was up for review this summer. Months ago he assembled a team of economics experts who would negotiate new trade deals when the time came. I, just a random nobody Canadian citizen, with very limited knowledge of politics and economics, am not even slightly surprised by the news that the trade negotiations collapsed. There is absolutely no way that our team of experts didn't anticipate this happening. In fact, I think that I (and our team) would have been more surprised if they had walked away with a deal.

I bet most of what they have been working on as a team has been based on the assumption that it would turn out exactly this way. I picture them maybe briefly pondering the possibilities of a logical and fair deal for both countries, but likely not wasting too much precious time on it.

They would have been like, ok then, now that we've figured out what would be best for both countries, lets forget about that, and move on to things more likely to occur with this fucking failure of a regime that we have to deal with.

We sent the best of our best to the table, to meet with the worst of their worst. Our people went there to make beneficial deals. They met with our (supposed) allies who were sent to the table only to take and take. Likely a bunch of unqualified bootlicker morons like most in the regime. Their boss says, lick, and they say, where exactly would you like the licking to occur (wink wink), oh glorious bully, and for how long shall our licking go on?

Forever subservient to the dilapidated old clown who really needs to specify which Americans he means when he says America First. He certainly doesn't mean, and has never meant, the majority of the American population. America First is not about the working class consumers who suffer the most for his endless failures. Most likely, like everything else he has ever done, it is all about the top one percent, the richest of the rich. They come first, above all. Or maybe to him there really is simply no one other than them.

America First also means, fuck (over) everyone else on the entire planet. A fair deal is a fail. Generosity is a fail. Helping is a fail. Really anything contributing to the success of humanity, that a real world leader in his position should be striving to achieve in 2026, is a complete fail to him. The deal has to be maximum taking, taking, taking, for himself, the regime, and for the billionaires they serve, or no deal at all.

I've noticed quite a lot of similarities between what he is trying to 'accomplish' in America, and what The Taliban has 'accomplished' in Afghanistan. He wants to be dictator of an isolated and feared country that chooses warfare over diplomacy. Bombs for the enemy, bad deals for the ally, and fuck all citizens worldwide, including those he claims to be 'a leader of'. He wants 'those people' to be desperate, endangered, broke, uneducated, silenced, hungry, diseased, scared, and to be stripped of all their rights.

And yet he still has supporters. ? ? They must be excited about the ballroom they will never get near. The ballroom with a million dollar cover charge, mandatory orifice and strip search at the entrance for staff and guests. How much are they spending on gold paint? Will they make the statue of him look as though he's healthy, or will they make it look like the unhealthy sagging blob that he actually is? Have the designers and builders ever designed and built anything before? Are they familiar with 1940's Germany decor? Will the merch table be in the lobby or in the corner of the ballroom? Fucking ballroom. Who even uses that word anymore? Like, what next, will there be a cotillion in the ballroom? Is there really a secret bunker under it? A gigantic sealed tomb for the scared man-baby leader to hide in. If it's secret then why does everyone know about it? How thick are the walls? Will it have a door like a bank vault? Will they sneak him in there in a catering truck?

event prep

August 16, 2026

Just before I began to type these things, I looked at the countdown timer thingy on my phone, and I saw that the start time to my running event is 6 weeks, 6 days, 5 hours and 25 minutes away. I'm not sure why I called it thingy. Thingamajig. Thingamabob. Doohickey. lol. App. I looked at the app, gosh darn it to heck! I'm not old. Yes I am!

My event is getting quite close. Some time ago I decided to do the 5k this year instead of the half marathon, so I changed my registration. I guess decided is not entirely the right word to use. Had to decide to. This will be my first live event 5k.

Back when I first started running, when everything was shutting down for covid restrictions, I did some virtual 5k events. Register, get a running kit and finisher medal in the mail, then do the run whenever wherever, then submit tracker data to them to prove you ran. Be in the stats. It was as ok thing for a beginner runner I suppose.

Not at all like lining up in person with a crowd of people. Pictures and video being taken by photographers on the ground, and with a drone whizzing overhead. Lining up at the start line instructions being spoken through a speaker (that no one ever seems to even hear, let alone care about or follow). Music blaring.

The gun goes off.

Some oblivious dude you are passing blows their nose on your leg. Smelly people. Extremely fit and fast, wrinkle free young people, floating along effortlessly at an unreal pace, like they are made out of liquid. They look like they are in a picture in a fitness magazine or a shoe ad. Groups of slow people blocking most of the road, who have to talk to each other the entire race. One of them is wearing fuzzy deer antlers for some reason.

There is always a handful of runners who look like they might die from exertion less than 1/2k in after the gun. They registered and showed up with zero prep because 'running is easy' or 'I ran all the time in high school'. That's always really insane to see when they are wearing a full or half marathon bib.

Police and event volunteers on bikes directing traffic because a lot of locals can't just stay home for a few extra hours one Saturday morning a year. Crowds of cheering people on the edge of the road with signs. Dodge a puddle of vomit. Some guy pissing into the ditch. I haven't seen anyone shit themselves... yet (myself included… lol). Yes, virtual race is not like an actual race.

Not like going for a 5k before sunrise by myself.

omg that sounds so unappealing and not fun... lol. Why the hell am I doing this? I don't know. Because I'm 50+ and I can, I suppose. It is out of my comfort zone. It actually is fun. It is the reason we began heading north for vacation once a year every year since 2021.

I got a virus some months ago. The illness had only minor symptoms, so I never went to the doctor or got tested. I think it was covid... again. Slight sore throat for a day or two, occasional coughing spell for some days. Tiredness beyond normal. Then I started to really struggle with running. I was becoming terribly fatigued and out of breath long before I should have been. I was doing 5k runs every other day all winter. Running is never easy, but I could finish a 5k without too much difficulty. When I had that very minor illness suddenly I couldn't manage 2k without feeling like I had to sit down. I was having to walk to catch my breath, especially on hills. It was frustrating more than anything. It lingered for a long time. I do feel better now. The reason I had to change my event was that I felt like it was getting too close to get in enough prep to be ready for a half.

My prepping for this event is quite different than prepping for a half. It is sticking to the eating plan, and is about intensity more than endurance. For a few weeks now I have been doing all cardio wearing a 12 pound weighted vest. It forces me into good posture, and good running form. Engages core. I intend to keep wearing it for all cardio things until near mid September. Then I plan to do a few 7k runs with no vest. Then no running at all for a week before the event. My hope is that I get used to the extra weight. My body will physically adapt to that extra weight, and get stronger. And I hope there will also be a mentally getting used to the extra weight. This is totally an experiment, and I have no idea what the outcome will be. No idea how the race will go.

2 jobs 1 politician

August 15, 2026

I'm sorry I abandoned you babe. It's going be different this time. I promise. I used to be mayor of Mississauga. One day I decided that I wanted to be Premier of Ontario instead so I just stopped going into city hall. Like, whatever, right. Who needs a mayor?

I failed so badly at provincial politics that the only way I knew what was going on at their meetings was from bootleg recordings. Me and the leader of the conservative party would sit in his car listening to them. Then I quit. I have nothing better to do right now, so I decided to try and get my silly old job as mayor back. I just need something to do while I sort out what it is that I really want to do with my life.

I should be able to distract the voters easily enough. Make them forget what I did last time. Everyone who isn't me has the IQ of sloths, and the attention span of fruit flies. I will blame everything on the woman who took over the job after I abandoned it. Like the failing economy, even though that is a worldwide issue caused by an unstoppable unnecessary war started by a withering senile dictator, and his incompetent cartoonish war department leader. I will blame her for the housing crisis even though that is something that has been slowly and steadily creeping up over the horizon for decades, and everyone in all levels of government ignored it.

I won’t even need to learn anything about politics. Me and my people will get A.I. to figure out what people want. Then we can use that information to fabricate half truths about my opponents, and create lofty goals that I'll never achieve so I have things to say at my loyalist gatherings and press conferences. The possibilities are endless!

I'll ride the Liberal wave that is sweeping the nation right back into my old office. I'll be a celebrity!

p.s. my enemy just endorsed my opponent, and gave me a popularity boost! omg I love me. <3

absurd

August 8, 2026

Oops! We hit the moon with rocket junk accidentally... again. lol. Those headlines made me envision the chainsaw wielding idiot owning hoards of loyal minions who have dedicated every waking second of their lives to fabricating and releasing lies about the activities of his stupid failure of a space company.

I didn't believe it at first. I treated the stories as though coming from an attention starved weirdo with too much money buying his way into the spotlight. I thought the news was as fake as his trillionaire status was. But it turns out that some of their space junk actually did hit the moon. It wasn't a planned impact. Maybe they should never be allowed to launch anything into space ever again. Like what are they going to 'accidentally' hit next?

South of the border it seems that the leader of the department of health has slightly altered his idiotic views on the MMR vaccine. He must have learned things about how the vaccine works. Perhaps someone told him it is the reason measles was on a decline from the 60’s until recently. In the future people in top level government jobs should know things about the job they are taking on.

But hey, he now has a cooking show. I wonder if he will point out (with that almost angelic magical voice of his) that if he was doing his fucking job instead of trying get likes on Youtube maybe the salad he wants you to make wouldn't give you diarrhea. Omg I wish someone would make a song, or at least a montage, with him saying diarrhea.

The elderly hypocrite suddenly became mad at how oil companies are profiting too much from the war that he shouldn't have started and now can't stop. Was saying things about how it is effecting the price at the pumps. Does he even know what a gas pump is? I have doubts. I have no doubt that his soft little hands have never touched a gas pump.

Oil companies have been robbing nearly everyone on the entire planet for decades. Seems weird that he is suddenly pretending to care about it. What about all the other corporations and billionaires (himself included) that are stealing from the poor for their own profit every second of every day, and have been for decades?

Him suddenly noticing the price of gas could be just more evidence that the dementia is getting closer to the point where they will no longer be able to stuff his gelatinous tired old body into a chair, and then prop the whole mess up behind a desk in front of the cameras. The shit that spews out of his miserable old face has been hovering around 80-90% incoherent for a decade or more. There will come a tipping point when the unstoppable progression of dementia causes that typical (mostly incoherent) to become 100% gibberish. But the race is still close? He and his incompetent regime could still have total control after November?

empty

August 3, 2026

Most mornings when I'm walking to work I listen to music. The playlists I choose are generally like the music version of comfort food, or a favorite pair of comfortable shoes. It is something I enjoy for that twenty minutes or so on my way to work where generally there isn't any enjoyment. Or maybe I shouldn't say there isn't any enjoyment. I think from time to time my coworkers and I intoxicate and entertain each other with sarcasm about how stupid our f'n job is. Is fabricating joy by hurling insults toward a corporate employer behind their back better than no joy at all? I don't know. Probably.

Most days when I listen to music on the way there I usually end up with one of the songs stuck in my head. One morning I had a rather strange and unexpected thing happen. When I got to the edge of the parking lot at work I decided to sit for a moment on the picnic table and finish the song that was playing, which happened to be Empty by Metric.

I removed my phone from my pocket before sitting down. Right after I sat down I unlocked it with my fingertip so I could check and see how much of the song was remaining. Just as the screen illuminated a lyric in the song played, “ask the line on your face what the line on your hand meant”. Not only did I hear it as it was playing, but the lyrics were also showing up below the little picture of the album cover. I also read the words while hearing them.

I had heard the song likely a hundred or more times over the years but I hadn't heard it in awhile. All day at work I could not stop thinking about that one lyric. It was not something that ever stood out to me on previous listens, and I found myself wondering if it even would have stood out this time if I hadn't sat down just then and read the words on my phone while they were being sung.

The lyric seemed to have an implication that maybe (most likely) it would not have had to me earlier in life. Sort of like regret, or like I had missed something fundamental along the way. At the same time though I felt a kind of freedom in knowing there is fuck all I can do about any of it now. The past can haunt me all it wants, but I can't change it. I can only live with the consequences of my bad decisions and enjoy the rewards of the good ones. Try to learn from all of it, and hopefully use what I have learned to make better decisions in the present.