Personal Privilege
On a matter of personal privilege, I'd like to make a clarification. The movie Pirates of the Caribbean is just a movie. It is a fun Walt Disney movie my kids like. I remember when I dressed up as a pirate at the Boot during the TELUS dispute and one of the AFI guys asked if I had taken my meds that day. I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from laughing. That was really funny. That guy came up with a few good ones during that dispute. A lot of times I quote movies and liken them to real life people or circumstances. Mostly because I've had so many lawyers up my ass I've had to adapt a modern day animal farm and talk about circumstances with allegories to maintain my right to free speech. What has it got me? What has it accomplished? Absolutely nothing. But I still cherish free speech and I still oppose censorship with a passion and I am still very concerned with the direction our country is going in.
I'll never forget sitting across from Peter Gall in the Guinness Tower at my arbitration and listening to his opening remarks as he summarized the four inch binder of exhibits listing everything I said on the www.moyagreene.com web site as well as private things I posted in private Union forums on the Internet. He went on a rampage about how I referred to the second lawyer Moya Greene hired to sue me as Roger Rabbit and how I referred to myself as Finian and how I even had the audacity of referring to him as Jack Frost from the Movie Santa Clause 3.
I thought to myself, Do you have any idea how stupid you sound? If my greatest crime was referring to a lawyer who threatened to sue me for over $500,000.00 as Roger Rabbit and how I had the audacity of referring to him, the highest profile anti-Union lawyer in the province as Jack Frost, then bloody hell, lock me in jail and throw away the key! Why do lawyers always use 20 year old photos in their profile? That guy had the biggest double chin in recorded history. He looked to me like Humpty Dumpty. Only he didn't fall, he pushed me off the wall and all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Finian's grievance back together again.
I have a lot of remorse for the prank I did as I was obviously caught up in the frenzy of the moment and got carried away. But I tell ya one thing. Even though I'm an idiot who took a huge cut in pay and work my ass off just to feed my kids, I still rather be me and I still think Peter Gall is an asshole. Oh yeah, he still brags about knowing Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien but I wonder how closely Peter Gall was connected to the sponsorship scandal. I didn't see Paul Martin's name on his letterhead but Chretien was the Prime Minister at the time.
Uncle Buck from Canada Post, same story. Not to be confused with the Uncle buck from the TWU on VFC. That one is a great guy. The one from Canada Post however is a hired hit man that gets off on firing people for Union activity. Ya should have seen him grinning from ear to ear when Peter Gall read out how I referred to him as Uncle Buck because he looks like John Candy and because he doesn't give a buck about the employees. I guess telling the truth in Canada is a crime after all. Of that I am guilty. Well like the song says, go ahead and hate your neighbour, go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of heaven, you can justify it in the end. There won't be any trumpets blowing come the judgement day. On the bloody morning after, one tin soldier rides away.