Sunday, August 19, 2007

The Horror, the Injustice


If you live in Montreal, no doubt you’ve heard of the strike by the people who maintain the Notre Dame des Neiges cemetery. Basically, it’s around 129 people who do the tough stuff — mow the weeds of vast tracts of meadow on state-of-the-art tractors while listening to their iPods (I’ve seen it; I’m not exaggerating) and otherwise trundle around the cemetery in their oversized vans at a leisurely pace, all for the penurious sum of $24 an hour.

The horror, the injustice of having to slave so much for so little.

I literally live across the street from the cemetery and I’ll have to say these motherfuckers know how to be assholes. Not content with camping out in front of the gates of the Decelles entrance and eyeballing everyone who walks in (they’ve closed the gates and put barriers up on the roads so cars can’t get by) they’ve plastered the fences and map post with their stupid, childish, very-difficult-to-remove stickers. As if anyone besides themselves gives a shit. But someone is going to have to clean all their puerile shit up — these are the types of stickers (thousands upon thousands of them) which tear immediately when you try to remove them. Read: ten years of having to look at the aftermath. This is not to mention the acres of waist-high weeds someone is going to have to cut — and you and I are going to pay for.

$24 an hour. 129 selfish bastards. The math just doesn’t seem to add up.

The above is a shot of my son playing in the cemetery today. Think we could make room for 129 new plots?

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