My world since Christmas has been depressing, I have been unable to sleep (A perfect time to write I hear you say, but writing something that wasn’t said in anger and getting my skinny white arse litigated all the way back to my mothers womb is probably not a good idea) and writing down what was in my head would probably be as boring as watching snails masturbate (think about that for a while) I’m sure you don’t want to hear the endless arguments in my head about what I could have done differently on the day my work place was shut down, or how the Owner of the actual business has screwed all the staff here 6 ways from Sunday, so you see my self imposed sabbatical was done with the mental health of my small but intellectually superior audience in mind. I didn’t want to fuck with your heads.

I promised earlier that I would call Obama out to the mat for being an utter barstard, and yes, its true, Obama has been an utter Barstard, but not in the manner you may think, Obama has been a grade A barstard to the Republican party, his master stroke of barstardry basically boils down to his public preaching of bi-partisanship, then running his stimulus package through Congress with out so much as the cons getting to dot an “i” or cross a “t” and having it slide out the other intact and un-sullied It’s just a pity that the senate treated it like the cousin who just attended her first red neck family reunion.

There has also been other Barstardry around the globe, the shit fight in Gaza and Israel spring immediately to mind, seriously, what the fuck happened there, both side are blaming each other, and Hamas needs to get its own house in order because you don’t go poking a lion with nothing more than a small pointy twig, because as we have all just seen, a Lion doesn’t always know when enough is enough,  and you will lose something, in this case it was probably more good luck than good management that prevented to total annihilation of Palestine. Not that I condone in any way the completely over the top response of Israel, unfortunately in this case, two wrongs still don’t make a right, and my thoughts go out to a friend of mine who lives near the Israel Palestine border, he is lucky to be alive at the moment as he was walking home one afternoon when a Katyusha rocket landed about 100 meters away from him, fortunately he had just turned a corner and a building protected him from any shrapnel, to say that he wants to see Palestine crushed into the dirt is an understatement. I know this is a complex problem and I have no answers other than to get all the US B52’s to fly over the area, wing tip to wing tip and flatten the entire area and start all over again.

I also spent my time by putting a simple web page together for a local Dragon Boat club, who would have thought that  somewhere with only a dinky little man made lake would be able to support such a thing, but its growing in popularity and there is even talk of having to get another boat.

So there you are folks, I’m currently looking for work, so if you know of a high paying job where I only have to put in a few hours a week and get huge benefits, please feel free to let me know

Some of you know that I recently became one or the worldwide millions without a paying job, and due to curcumstances beyond my control, curcumstances were beyond my control and I, along with 30 others was locked out of our job just before Christmas. I waited and waited for some form of answer about my future and I might ad it was tained with just o touch of denial as well. As the denial has now been replaced with a touch of anger sprinkled with a degree of retribution I have had to pull my head out of the proverbial sand and start looking for more gainful employment, so my Resume has been doing the rounds, and the cards and letters have been streaming back and so far all have been of the “Thanks, but no thanks” type. On the bright side I now have enough spare paper to scrunch it all up, stuff it under a jumper so it can help to keep me warm during our upcoming winter, with any luck, there will soon be enough so I don’t have to choose who my favourite child is

And THAT my good readers is why my the blog has been neglected, I promise to post something very soon, and it involves the complete barstardry of the new US President
Oh and I have been press ganged into setting up a web site fir a club I am involved in, when it goes live I will post the URL

Product placement at its finest

Come the first day or December this year, my world was thrust headfirst into the world of utter utter barstardry. It seems that the owner of the business that I work for had decided that he didn’t need to pay rent to the owner of the building and after quite a few months of this, the owner of the building decided that maybe he should do something about it, so he sent in his crack storm troopers and seized the premises and locked us out of our work place. Like a mushroom at the bottom of a very long and very dark cave we were all told nothing and fed on a diet exclusively made up of the finest bullshit, and regardless of its pedigree, bullshit still tastes like………….well bullshit!

As barstardry goes this was small potatoes, after all they were only trying to recover, what we later learned, was a substantial 6 figure sum. one of the things we were told was that the matter was scheduled to go before the NSW Supreme court on Thursday, with the intention being that the business would be liquidated and then ran by the liquidators until the debts could be made good. Now this is where the true essence of Barstard starts to waft across the landscape, polluting the senses of all those unfortunate enough to have to endeavour into the putrid mist. The owner of the business decided that it was time to throw a spanner into the works and put the assets of the business into the hands of a receiver on the Wednesday, thus spoiling everyone’s party, mine included. You see, on Friday the liquidators went through the bank records, bills and creditors statements with the intention of re-opening the business on the Monday and trading as normal, now with the bank accounts frozen by a receiver there were no funds to run the business with, so no money to pay staff or essential bills like power and phone etc.

So this utter barstard had frozen the cash assets of the business, and as he had told the business manager, it was to protect “our” entitlements, things like out pay and holidays but what it in fact did was freeze those monies so no one could get to them and as a consequence, not one of the 35 staff have received a cent since November 28th. This small, man had then been spinning the line that he would release the funds so we could all be paid, but that was another lie as I rang the liquidators on the Monday before Christmas to find out what was happening with out pays as most of us were now living on air and love, only to be informed that the monies were NOT released but still in the hands of the receiver!!
I rang the Manager to inform him of this (as he was the one being spun tall tales by the (former) business owner) and by the time I finished talking to him, he was shaking with anger. I haven’t had time to talk to him since then to find out what he may have found out (he sent, from all accounts a very angry and strongly worded email to out former employer) but tomorrow I will be ringing the receiver to demand my pay and holiday entitlements, and I will also ring the owners of the building to see what plans they have for the building as it is purpose built.
So this may explain why the blog has been left to simmer for a while as to tell you the truth, I haave been too depressed to care about it for the past month.

I will however keep everyone posted about any outcomes while I try and feed my family on noodles and love

Garry

To say that this has upset a few people would be an understatement, apart from the 35 people that have lost their jobs, there is the Film Distributors who cannot get their films out of the building, and the Church that uses Cinema 1 on Sunday mornings for their services and they also store all their gear under the tiered seating in that Cinema.

Rumour has it (and I can only go on rumour as they have not contacted me to say what is going on, as promised by Tracey Sunderland from Fleetstone Group of Companies) that they are trying to re-open the cinema themselves, but due to the stupid way they closed us down, they are now meeting some resistance from the film distributors, who quite rightly don’t like being treated this way, especially this close to the busiest time of the year. I honestly don’t know what they were thinking but because they obviously didn’t know themselves, they are now at the bottom of a very long and greasy slope, and if they think they can have a profitable business going in anything less than 18 months, then they obviously have rocks in their heads.

Firstly they will have to regain the trust of the distributors, and THAT will take more than a few assurances and some cash, those people have VERY LONG memories. whoever they get to do the film booking is going to be holding the dirty end of a long shit covered stick for some time.
Then getting the necessary licenses to actually be allowed to show any movies that they may eventually get will also take a while and this close to Christmas it may be game over until at least mid January. One of the Aces up our sleeve when the Metro Cinema’s was operating was the fact that we were going to be getting state of the art 3D digital projectors, this would have allowed us (or whoever we leased them from) offload our 35mm film projectors at a decent price as there will be a glut of them on the market in a short while. you see the big Hollywood studios are currently making the next batch of children’s movies in 3D digital, for digital distribution and will be dropping film print distribution in the very near future. So that’s another expense they will have to wear, and at around $170,000 each, it will soon eat into any profits that they might have been expecting.

I could go on with all the hurdles they have put in front of themselves for no good reason but hey, why should I help them, suffice it to say the biggest hurdle they now face is regaining the trust of the local cinema going public, as we operated in a competitive market against an established cinema, we have gradually eked out a 70% market share (figures are from within the industry ) we didn’t do it by being cheaper, we weren’t, we did it by being better, we did it by not treating the public as a cash cow, the truth is, our opposition used to only spend as much, or should I say as little as possible to put a picture on a screen, the majority of the seats in the cinemas were/are second hand and came out of the Adelaide Entertainment Centre when they refurbished it, so the seats are circa 1970’s vintage. How do I know this, because I was the head projectionist there for nearly 10 years and I was there when they expanded from a single screen to a 4 screen complex. The sight lines are the minimum you could get away with, because if they improved them, seating capacity would be reduced and the screens are a joke, there were supposed to be curved but because they did everything to a price, the screen frames turned up as flat and the actual screens themselves turned up from England the wrong sizes, this means that in the majority of screens there, you cannot get the edges of the picture focused. Did I mention that our screens were all curved and professionally installed, as well as having the lensing of the projectors all correctly worked out.

Anyway, that’s my story for the moment, hopefully I will get some real information from the storm troopers at Fleetstone and when I do, I will pass it on here.