SINKCHICKEN

Send In The Clones

2006-06-05T10:45:00.000-04:00

And here I was trying to go and collect only one of each, with the occasional double of a trooper or guard! When I saw this photo of some other guy's collection I had two thoughts:

1. So that's why you can't find Clone Trooper figures in retail stores!!!!

2. I'm just not obsessive enough!!!

(and I've gotta borrow a digital camera from someone soon so I can update and post pics from my own rapidly increasing collection. See a couple photos from waaaaaay back in February. It's at least doubled since then! Do I sound like a proud father or what!?)

Au Naturel!

2006-06-02T10:48:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Blog Monkey I suddenly feel inspired to post after a long absence! Seems the "Controversial One" has once again stirred up the mud puddle that is our lives and away we go! I was going to post this as a comment to his post but found it started getting too long and got me thinking and writing passionately on a subject upon which I've mediated from time to time over the years. So it starts kind of like a comment to his post which maybe you should read before this:

Totally agree with what you're saying. If the drives are there they must be understood so that they can be managed without guilt. But, as with so many other human impulses and tendencies, I think we have a kind of knee-jerk reaction to hard-to-deal with aspects of humanity that says something like, "If it's natural, then there must be a way to let it work itself out naturally, after all, it's only natural". And nobody stops to ask what the hell we mean by "natural" and where our concept of it comes from? Not that I think this is your [Blog Monkey's] problem, just that this topic could end up going down this slippery slope of sloppy thinking, which is why it scares people (though that's no excuse not to tackle it head on of course! All the more reason....)

We often forget, conveniently so, that as human beings our ability to reflect and reason is one of our most extraordinary evolutionary achievements (if it can be called that). It is a human necessity to take responsibility for our abilities and the actions to which they can lead. As our actions, as we know, can have incredible consequences for life on earth, this should be a moral imperative with no exceptions. Never ever ever. I think the tendency humans have of taking a somewhat under-explored notion of "nature/natural" and applying it to human drives can be dangerous. Not that it's not true (that they are natural and not manufactured in a lab in the Antarctic) it's just that our unique situation, what with language and reason and writing and meaning and our ability to reflect and go deeper than mere stimuli/response relationships with each other and the world, adds a certain something to the pot. Our evolutionary gift is this higher intelligence. Do we use it fully yet? No, obviously. Why? Not sure exactly, probably easier not to, or to let a few leader-types use it for us even though they might only be using it for their gain at our expense, and the expense of the planet as a whole. Humanity's biggest problem is that it does not accept and acknowledge that our "nature" is to have to use our intelligence as close to fully as we can in order to survive as a species. I think we knew this before, way back when our situation was a bit more desperate on the day-to-day level. But we've (the West) have hit this comfortable blip on the radar that is humanity's past, present and future existence on this orb and for some reason, because we don't reflect enough and most often look at the situation from our limited and unexamined point of view, we don't see that our current way of thinking and the actions it leads to is slowly but surely destroying the very possibility of survival in the long term. Our intelligence could be used to guide us along easily through life if we took the responsibility and made the effort. We could have by now accepted the way the ecosystem is balanced and worked intelligently to sustain it and ourselves for millennia to come. In a way, I think this is exactly what humanity is trying to work out in recent history, as we strive to disburden ourselves of superstitious restraints such as organized and misguided religions, despotism and, to some extent, though god knows it's damn hard, materialism. Another interesting point is that often when scoffers are pushed to respond to the "what if" scenario of the Earth becoming uninhabitable, their defense is to actually call up a faith in our intelligence and our ability to "find the solution through science and invention and technology". Interesting because it is an admission that our greatest gift is our intelligence, sad because it puts off using it to the brink of collapse.

So what is natural for a human being? Is making conscious and conscientious decisions with much reflection and a sense of responsibility and duty to our intelligence not natural? It may not seem so because it does not happen to us as automatically as breathing or a heartbeat, or, an erection for that matter (for that percentage of humanity that can have one, you know who you are!), but I think this is only because of an ill-defined concept of nature infected with a carryover attitude from humanity's pre-scientific and more religious years when we thought of our intelligence as reflecting something above and beyond nature, something that had affinities only with the gods.

So how the heck does this jive with Blog Monkey's topic of discussion? Well, I'm just saying that to keep the debate intelligent I think we have to remember that the scariness factor comes from past examples of humanity using the idea of "well it's only natural" to justify all kinds of horrible things, like injustice, war and genocide. So if we've got these "Throbbing Biological Urges" (to quote the Simpsons), we've still got to realize that our intelligence can come into play to find a way to give them healthy and just outlets that will not harm others.

It's time humanity gave intelligence its due. And it's high time we see it as our prime ability for survival. Think of it as our wings, our jaws, our gills, or our powerful hind legs, whatever analogy works for ya!

In case yer checkin'

2006-05-19T00:45:00.000-04:00

I'm alive.

I'm just kinda busy, kinda in a weird head-space, not feelin' like writin' much lately, nor reading much for that matter.

No offense to anyone.

Just watching a lot of TV in DVD format lately [Lost, Buffy, Angel] and waiting for quick and terrifying bugs to start showing up unannounced and just on the outskirts of my peripheral vision, what with spring having sprung and all. Also, my daughter is terribly two and suddenly no longer sweet and adorable 95 percent of the time. Had to drag her kicking and screaming from a Walmart last night (and I never go to Walmart so I consider this a punishment from above for being so conveniently amoral).

Wow, this is almost a post.

Futureless

2006-03-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

James Lovelock thinks it's too late. Gaia is sick, maybe dying. Nothing we can do, anything that could have been done would have had to be undertaken 50 years ago back when we knew too little (or ignored what could have helped us). Got this from an interview with him on CBC for his new book, The Revenge of Gaia.

Anyway, it made me wonder about something, thought I'd throw it out there.

Is it possible that the birth of science fiction or any literature concerned with the future came about when something in us clicked and we knew, instinctively, that we are without a future, that a future for us as a species is now impossible? To stave off insanity we had to imagine ourselves projected into fantasy times yet to come so that at least the life of the mind could experience a type of transgression of our limits.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure this isn't the case and that the birth of science fiction had more to do with ideas of progress and the amount of change in the cultural landscape (and the actual physical landscape) an individual human began to witness in their own life time at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Still, it is intriguing to wonder if there was more to it than that given what is happening around us today, how any of our imagined futures seem impossible and unrealisable. I wouldn't put it past our more instinctive animal brains to have subconsciously seen this before we could realise it consciously. Maybe it was even meant as a warning, the only one we would psychologically allow to manifest from our own pens.
After all, much sci-fi is concerned with apocalyptic or dystopian futures and rarely something to be admired and striven for. So maybe, just maybe, we had ample warning from the depths of our imaginations. Or maybe I'm just a flake. But I like the way it sounds to say we had to dream ourselves a future since we were destined to be without one.

I Like James Taylor....

2006-03-18T01:40:00.000-05:00

Driving home very late, listening to his Sweet Baby James album and fuck you I don't care what you think! Yeah maybe I'm singing right along or maybe I'm not. Not really any of your business. But there are certain songs on there that make me wish we were all stuck in the seventies forever! And this is a weird kind of nostalgia because I never heard him much when I was young during that actual decade. My parents never had any of his albums, whatever I heard must have been playing on my hometown radio station, between "The Open Line" and "Dial-A-Deal". Regardless, when I listen to those songs I am touched by the voice of that time, a recent time, one that seemed to be moving towards recognizing what it meant to simply "be in the world". A time when perhaps there was still hope and you could just look out the window of your car on a road trip and see the world in all its mysterious glory and feel confident in assuming there would always be a tomorrow.

Now the first of December was covered with snow
And so was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston
Lord, the Berkshires seemed dream-like on account of that frosting
With ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go

Who the hell can write and sing that today without having it ring false somehow? There seems to be something so unpretentious about it all, something that puts faith in the common experience and lets it speak for itself.

Convinced? Whatever. Maybe tomorrow I'll see a map to world peace hidden in a Scorpions ballad. Sue me.

[And by the way, for a real treat, check out Two-Lane Blacktop, the film by Monte Hellman starring baby James himself as a practically mute drag racer alongside his mechanic friend played by the late Beach Boy Dennis Wilson (who died diving off his boat while drunk and wearing jeans, or so I've heard). A purer film has not been made, ever.]

Do We Need the "Current State of Affairs" to have what we have?

2006-03-11T13:42:00.000-05:00

Once and for all I want to know if all the "bad" of industrial society is really necessary to have all the "good things" (such as medicine, shelter, food, books, and even our technology of convenience, such as cars, elevators, trains, planes, telephones, internet)? It is often assumed, even stated, that the modern world, its luxuries and conveniences and life-enhancements, both in quality and quantity, could not exist without industrial capitalism and the way it currently operates. Is this true? This is a fundamental question that our societies must address (should already have addressed by now, actually). Ignoring the very notion for the time being that our "improvements and betterments" to living may actually lead to worse and meaningless modes of existence, ie the benefits we enjoy pale in comparison to the quality of a perhaps shorter but more meaningful existence that could exist in a world that had less convenience, less medicine, fewer all-consuming machines and minds, is there not a way to keep all these improvements but in such a way that the world and humanity actually sustain themselves indefinitely, and even repair the damage done? Is there not a way capitalism, or a system like it, could work more sustainably ? Has anyone read anything along these lines? An analysis of aspects of the current state of affairs and whether or not a change in it is possible and if so what might be sacrificed that we currently think we cannot live without? It is a forgone conclusion that even if the answer is "YES", that we can change the way our societies function but still keep the machines, keep money, etc (ie is the true problem shortsighted leaders and spineless, greedy corporate kings using a system to their advantage alone at the expense of the future?), that I would like to think we can still consider other options. But my sneaking suspicion is that we can do all we do currently and more and for longer, more sustainably and more fairly with a tweaked, better-guided, farther-looking approach that would only upset the minority that currently benefit in a massively disproportionate way. Anyone read any good books on this subject?

Commuting Thoughts 3: Law and Justice, Past, Present and Future

2006-03-08T10:32:00.000-05:00

I've been reading Ronald Wright's Stolen Continents: The "New World" Through Indian Eyes, mostly while riding the subway to and from work. It is a very healthy, though often painful, antidote to all the propaganda we've been force fed about the European invasion of the America's and the continuation of those same attitudes and practices to this day. (I'm going to do more research and post stuff on Canada's hushed-up, extremely recent abuse of their indigenous populations, what I've read so far has made me ashamed to be associated with the government of this country and I don't care if that smacks of treason....is it treason when you're expected to pledge allegiance to criminals and subtle despots?)

Anyway:

One question that has come up in my reflecting upon Wright's work is how justice can be applied to the problem of past, sometimes long past, atrocities (and not even just atrocities but I'll get to that in a moment). I've been exposed to the rhetoric for years now about how we cannot be held accountable for the sins of our fathers, how we cannot and should not feel guilt over what has happened in the past since we weren't there perpetrating it with our own hands upon entire, healthy and fully functioning civilizations and how those of the past "didn't know any better". But for me these convenient truisms have never rung, well, true. It hasn't rung true not only because, to this day, the two sides of this conflict have continued to either benefit or suffer disproportionately because of those past actions, not only because a little deeper reading reveals that one culture was allowed to so devalue another that it could hate and destroy it, treat it as so inferior that it could make and break "binding" treaties on a whim, justify it as good for the other side, claiming the other side was too "ignorant" to understand this. What bothers me on a more fundamental level is that I still feel there needs to be some way of making "something" accountable for past acts of barbarism, avarice (of absolutely insane proportions), manipulation, distortion, cruelty, slaughter and lies. If it only takes a few years for such crimes to become mere myths, rumours, "whatevers", or worse, justifiable, then what good are the concepts of law and justice to human societies in the first place?

It is about the larger question of responsibility and hinges on our understanding of something like an action/time dynamic. Does a certain quantity of time take away our ability to judge something criminal, unjust or immoral and to attempt retribution? If so, how much time is sufficient and to what infallible, universally comprehensible logic can we turn in order to calculate the quantity and justify our decision? If it is merely based on the longevity of those who carried out the unjust actions, then what are we to do with the ramifications their actions have had upon the descendents of the contemporaneous parties involved? Can justice only be meted out if the perpetrators are amongst the living? If we do decide, rather callously and much too lazily for my tastes, that this is to be the basis of how we know when we can stop seeking justice for crimes, then the winners are always justified no matter how they win as long as enough time passes before anyone successfully brings them to justice in the present. Basically, this is a childish, if you can squeak by and not get caught mentality then you're home-free! If we allow this, how can we expect to turn to history to learn from past mistakes? What is history actually teaching us if we allow this continue to be the normal order of things? Does it not teach that, given enough time, anything is justifiable? This is a very real and slippery slope, one that we have already been sliding down for some time now. For if the past can have its criminality erased then the present and future are also susceptible to being "justified" with a similar logic. The logic might go something like this: If in the past our ancestors did "X" and even though we see that though "X" was bad, we can say they didn't know any better or that it was done based on some vague, unexamined notion of "simple human nature", and we admit that our action today, "Y", is similar to "X" (though perhaps apparently we see differences that to us make it more justifiable), then doing "Y", though it may involve ignoring laws and morality, can be done and cannot really be punished since "X" can has been forgiven and time will let the crimes severity diminish and fade. And what's to stop the "X", "Y's" and even "Z's" of tomorrow from also being necessary and ultimately forgivable such that we start to lose recourse to precedent and the insurmountability of laws and the concept of justice? We begin to start to feel complacent about injustice knowing that history will not judge us too harshly.

The ideas of Law and Justice need to be better understood and comprehended even (or especially) by the common citizen. As social beings it is our duty to uphold and keep honest and incorruptible such institutions that seek to protect us from ourselves and our weaknesses. Laws are supposed to be thought out, created and written down in what we could call our better times, at the moments in the lives as societies when we are best able to reflect, think and critique human actions and decide, well in advance or in response to a recent injustice, a way of delineating what is right and wrong and how those who refuse to obey these delineations will be dealt with. This is meant to prevent situational ethics, to defend against the abuse of power by disallowing in advance the mutability of law and the concept of justice. This is not just an intellectual exercise, this has the most practical fallout in all aspects of our individual lives. Just look at what is occurring in the USA right now. The Patriot Act seeks to bypass or even usurp laws and the Constitution because of "the current situation", one that is spoken of as if it was something completely new and unforeseen, something with which the laws of the past cannot adequately deal. This is, of course, rhetoric said and disguised as thoughtful, insightful discourse. Leaders have used the fear of "threat" for centuries in order to justify their actions even at the expense of the basic needs of the citizenry.

There are of course problems with an overly simple concept of Law and Justice. If taken as too simple it can easily be abused while seemingly being upheld. The creation of the Patriot Act, for example, is just such a case. It could be viewed as a calm and measured response to a recent injustice as if from a "better time", post the actual days on and around September 11th, 2001. But if there was a more general and better understanding of how individual laws have functioned to protect rights and how a law should not be easily overturned without an incredible amount of evidence and overwhelming support to do so. Otherwise, laws are temporary, fleeting and easily changed based on the apparent, real or imagined, needs of any given situation (and we all know how much human beings like to take advantage of 'situations'). The laws that have protected rights must be upheld no matter what the situation. To operate within their boundaries must be the highest priority and worked at exhaustively. This requires real and actual leadership, seeking not simple, band-aid and potentially dangerous "modifications" to current laws, but the most intelligent and measured response in accordance with Law and Justice. We should learn to immediately fear and end any government or body that claims the need for a quick and easy solution that undermines the foundations of society by circumventing current, entrenched laws and rights. Their actions should be instantly considered treasonous.

The problem of how to maintain a state of justice and seek retribution to the descendents of past atrocities is also complicated by the fact that it is difficult to come up with material and monetary quantities that could be seen as adequately compensating or, worse, that would somehow, again, work negatively to erase the severity and abhorrent nature of the past crimes by somehow canceling them with sufficient funds. Also, at what point does one stop seeking to be compensated for ancient decisions? If I find that a great great great uncle had a castle in England and was murdered and had it stolen from him by someone whose descendents happen to still be living in the lap of luxury because of it, while I'm now working menial 9 to 5 jobs (as have all my ancestors since), can we seek retribution from the present day descendents of the murderous thief? I admit, this is a sticky situation but we should not shy away from it for such reasons. Humanity needs to take responsibility for the problems it has created for itself. We need to know that effort is required and not quick fixes. We also need to be able to judge the severity of past crimes and current fallout. For example, in the scenario I gave, have I truly been put in a position that has crushed my soul, blocked my ability to enjoy rights and freedoms? No, not really. I still have my culture intact, I still have strong standing in a community and do not experience the irrational fist of prejudice on a daily basis. In the case of past atrocities and injustices committed against aboriginal populations, these crimes have far more damaging ramifications to this day. Racism, inferior status, continued lying and manipulation, attempts to eradicate entire cultures and civilizations. There is a major difference here, I think.

An appropriate quote quoted in Wright's book to end this:

(this concerns events around 1838 when Cherokees were being forced to be resettled, yet again):

"When removal came, they argued that Treaty of Echota did not apply to them, as they were North Carolina citizens. Their leader, old Yonaguska, or Drowning Bear, was said to be the finest speaker of his time....When Boudinot's Bible came out in Sequoyan script [a form of writing created by the Cherokees after colonial contact], Yonaguska listed to a chapter or two and remarked, 'Well, it seems to be a good book - strange that the white people are not better, after having had it so long'."

Bedtime Stories

2006-03-06T16:16:00.000-05:00

Spent a fun filled Sunday evening-into-the-night (post Church group meetings of course) with the blog monkey yesterday. Well, not that fun, but it got late, silly, stupid and almost dangerous so, therefore, at least it wasn't boring. And although these are pretty much all "you had to be there, I guess"-type anecdotes, here they are anyway for your perusal, in no particular order:

1. "I'm gonna tear out your heart and cook it in a bucket of shit and then eat it!" - Said while imitating some halfwit he meets at the gym from time to time.

2. References made to sexual acts using martial arts' belt categories. It was all new to me.

3. The work we were doing wasn't supposed to take long. We were supposed to go out for something to eat or at least dessert/coffee after but it got way too late. On the way out he asks if by chance I have any food in my car. I say, not any that would be there intentionally. He says, what like a Cheeto under the seat? I say, yeah next to the used condom....some references made to wife helping me get off while driving but using a condom instead of any part of her anatomy....somehow that gets us onto something like, but don't get any on the cheetos under the seat! And then he says, imagine trying to come onto a Cheeto, which is totally stupid I know, but you had to see his imitation of trying to do it. Priceless and will not get out of my head no matter how much I smack it against the wall. So we're dying laughing, walking down the hall to the exit when lo and behold, what do we spy for no good reason in the middle of the corridor?!?!?! A lone, half-eaten Cheetos-type cheese puff!!! I couldn't even speak! I could only point and make grunting sounds while trying not to snort my brains out my nose! After we regained some composure, we began to speculate that it was most likely the work of a poltergeist with either a very good sense of humour or, even better, no sense of humour at all but for whom their sole afterlife purpose was to try to help the living as best they could and who thought we seriously wanted to perform this sex act with high fat , simulated-flavour snack food and was trying to provide us with the means to do so. (We absolutely did not do so, FYI!....though I suppose we could have, given how late it was and nobody being around and all and goddamn what a missed opportunity!!! Oh well, maybe next time).

4. Roughing out an idea for somehow replacing Dr. Phil with somebody in a top-notch Chewbacca costume in actual episodes of the good doctor's "let me self-help you, you dumb fuck" talk show. In might take a lot of work that could at times seem as if for naught but when it was finished I'm sure it would kick ass! Just picture it, Chewy grunting and growling and otherwise vocalising all from a chair on stage and the people, as if understanding everything he's saying, trying to explain themselves, denying, crying, admitting they need help or a change or a miracle. Even having them hug him or have him get up and get ultra-angry and have the audience burst into applause. God, this would be so awesome! If there is anyone out there with enough free time, I'll supply you with all the sandwiches you can eat so you can work non-stop until the hilarity is able to ensue!

5. During one of the several times he tried to come onto me, by suggestively positioning his body next to mine in some way, he tore the ass out of his pants (put his foot on the desk beside me to kind of "open up his crotch area" at about the general height of my face). His attempt to turn me on failed yet again and he started swearing and cursing about how he now needed to buy yet another pair of jeans (seems he's ripped quite a few as of late). Then made a crack about the "slow life" post he did a while back and how he needed to get pants of a much better, longlasting quality, something that could survive his lifestyle choices. To which I queried, "You mean 'Slow Pants'?"

Hmm, when I started this I was sure there was about 10 other things we cracked up over but none are coming to me now, perhaps I'm repressing, and bm's offline so I can't even ask him if he recalls other "funnies". I guess I'll have to update later if anything comes back to me, that is if I don't get told not to bother and erase this post to boot.

Okay: HOLY FUCKIN' SHIT!!!!

2006-03-02T11:44:00.000-05:00

I thought I was being paranoid when I read the headline: Crash kills police officer who shot native protester at Ipperwash and my first thought was "how convenient, he's taken out before he can testify. I mean, it reads like any conspiracy movie script: the guy who actually did the dirty work mysteriously vanishes or conveniently dies before he can spill his guts. Then I read this:

"Deane is the third provincial police officer involved in the Ipperwash crisis to die before testifying before the inquiry. Insp. Dale Linton, the incident commander the night George was killed, died in a car crash six years ago. Another officer has also died.

"Sgt. Deane's death is only one of quite a long list now of witnesses who have passed away," said George family lawyer Murray Klippenstein."

(for the rest of this article you can find it here.)

I mean, holy fuckin' shit! Does this not scream conspiracy at the highest levels? I mean somebody seems to be offing cops! Okay, okay, trying to breathe calmly, I mean, this could be a coincidence and I know nothing about the mortality rate of Ontario police officers but this seems awfully suspicious to me. And here I thought our politicians were mostly inocuous, selfish, bumbling business men. Turns out they can snap their fingers and have you killed, even the ones no longer in office! Anyway, doesn't anybody think this "coincidence" merits an investigation? Why has nobody at least come out and said "It looks suspicious, but it's not"? Are they scared shitless to even suggest it be looked into? Am I about to be the next victim of a "car crash" because I'm speaking out on this in my own little way!?

Okay, okay, maybe I am being very paranoid. But if I fail to ever post again, can somebody promise me they'll at least try to avenge me?! Pretty please?

Geek out if you dare....(b.y.o.l=bring your own lightsabre)

2006-02-22T20:35:00.000-05:00

Well, I've finally added a post to my Star Wars blog. Prepare to be dazzled by the geekiness of it all! It's a long post in which I attempt (though I admit I started to run out of steam by the end, and felt the constant pressure from blog monkey to post something asap, not sure why since I think he hates Star Wars!). Anyway, I'm probably not saying anything (yet anyway) that's not obvious but if you're a fan(atic) like me and perhaps were born and raised on the original trilogy maybe you'll find it somewhat entertaining. Or not. Anyway, check it out if you want. I'll understand if you don't.

MTFBWY

"Ipperwash Inquiry Inconveniences Mike Harris"

2006-02-14T10:04:00.000-05:00

Yeah, today's the day that up here (or over here, depending on your reading location) in Canada a former provincial Premier (and all round dickhead) Mike 'Golf Course' Harris goes on trial to testify to his involvement in the death of the Ipperwash protester Dudley George. For those of you who haven't heard of this story, check it out, and feel free to smack your head against something hard in confusion, frustration and shame. No way at all to justify it. A senseless death that the families hope can be investigated with enough integrity and sense of justice to prevent anything like it from happening again.

There are accusations that the former Premier had ordered the police to "get those fucking indians out of the park" a mere hours before a police sniper took out George (and then fellow officers beat band councilor Slippery George to within an inch of his life for trying to talk the police into stopping the raid). (and for more on the police' real attitude towards the events, check out this site and this site and wonder why the punishment hasn't been more severe). (and check out the "backgrounds" on the right side of some of these pages for more on the story in general).

But you know, regardless of whether Harris used these exact hate-filled words, he did order the police to raid the park, he was not enough of a good and responsible leader to bring this to a peaceful settlement, so he is ultimately responsible whether he likes it or not. The blood is on his hands and on the hands of everyone from him on down the chain of command to the officer who fired the gun (who got a mere two years community service btw!!! WTF!!!????) So, in this sense, it was a legion of people that killed George, not even a one on one shoot out (though he didn't himself have a gun), and it was our votes that killed him, it was our society that killed him for not electing better, visionary leaders and holy crap we have to take responsibility for it. Our leaders should know that with power comes responsibility, intelligence and accountability. In every situation where the use of force is an option they should know that if it isn't damn clear that is was required that they will pay a price for exercising it without due cause. Otherwise, those who seek office or employment in policing will always be free to be tempted to abuse it. The use of force against citizenry is not a light issue and we need to demand that there are steeper penalties for its abuse. Okay, I'm straying, but this is way bigger than one dumb cop going all SWAT sniper macho on some unsuspecting peacenik. This is a clear example of how the same racist, euro-supremacist values that leveled this country into a parking lot waiting to happen are alive and kicking today and channeling the psychopathology of that long dead wacko Pedro de Alvarado (see Ronald Wright's Stolen Continents for his take on this supposed military genius of the Spanish invasion of the Americas).

Anyway, here's to hoping justice prevails and that someday soon, though not soon enough, we come to terms with our deadly stupidity and ignorance. (oh yeah, and that Mike Harris goes to prison for the rest of his life with no chance of parole or golf!)

Tag! I'm it!

2006-02-10T15:19:00.000-05:00

A reason to do a new post! Seems I've been tagged which after some questions to the "tagger" I've come to understand means I'm to create a post answering some questions/make some lists and then tag four other bloggers/blogs in an attempt to get them to do the same. So here it goes!

FOUR JOBS I'VE HAD:
-paper boy
-carpenter's helper
-library assistant
-film/video editor

FOUR MOVIES I CAN WATCH OVER AND OVER:
- Badlands
- Star Wars
- Blue Velvet
- Incredibles

FOUR PLACES I'VE LIVED:
-Owen Sound, Ontario
-Peterborough, Ontario
-Vancouver, British Columbia
-Montreal, Quebec

FOUR TV SHOWS I LOVE:
- Daily Show
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Colbert Report
- Curb Your Enthusiasm

FOUR PLACES I'VE VACATIONED:
- Cote D'Azur
- Maritimes (New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia/Cape Breton)
- Oregon/Northern California Coasts
- Vancouver Island

FOUR OF MY FAVORITE DISHES:
-plate
-saucer
-bowl
-serving tray

but if this means "food combinations", then I'd go with
FOUR OF MY FAVORITE DISHES:
- Shish Taouk
- Anything Indian
- Vietnamese grilled chicken and vermicelli in a bowl
- A good club sandwich, hold the bacon, with a mountain of fresh cut fries (from L'Avenue, Montreal)

FOUR SITES I VISIT DAILY:
- Legends Action Figures
- Guardian
- Blog Monkey's blog (cause he'll hit me if I don't!)
- Rhodian Attic (and I'm not just saying that cause you tagged me)

FOUR PLACES I WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
- Oregon Coast, on my bike, camping near the dunes just outside of Florence
- Summer, cottage, Lake Nipissing near North Bay, Ontario
- Menton, France
- 1977

FOUR BLOGGERS I'M TAGGING/SLIGHTLY ALIENATING:
- the Procrastin8r
- Blog Monkey (yeah, I know he's already been tagged but maybe this will put pressure on him...plus I don't gots many friends...sniff, sniff)
- Darth Serious (does it count if you tag your alter ego?)
- Cafe DA

Thanks Blog Monkey!

2006-02-09T17:24:00.000-05:00

Got me a new banner to match me new blog colours! All thanks to the blog monkey who has adopted me like a captive ape would a stray kitten, or in this case, abandoned poultry. He is a skillful beast! Whipped this up in minutes! But it wasn't exactly a favour. With him there's always strings attached. Sick, slimy strings, twisted to ensnare and make you do his god awful biddings!

Just a Book Plug

2006-02-08T10:33:00.000-05:00

Not really much of a post, just wanted to recommend a good book.

I'm about 20 pages from finishing it and it has been quite an experience.

It's called A Scientific Romance by Ronald Wright (a novel). It is part hommage to H.G. Wells (he also makes a brief appearance in the book) and part fictional rendition of current thought on where our species is going and what could happen even only a short time in the future. Wright has also written other non-fiction books about the rise and fall of civilizations and the history of the colonization of the Americas (I've also read his A Short History of Progress, also very good, highly readable). This one is basically about the end of our current civilization and its aftermath. Kind of depressing I suppose, though not sure that it will end that way (I can't really see a light at the end of the tunnel however). It isn't as dark as say "1984" but just as shocking (in some ways because it seems more plausible and less metaphoric). A reminder why the presence and experience of works of fiction and the imagination are important and necessary to contextualise the works of non-fiction and the bare facts.

Since we're admitting to vices

2006-02-06T00:12:00.000-05:00

I've been inspired by a recent post by Kathleen over at Rhodian Attic to post photos of my own little vice/collection. I too collect books, not as many as she and I collect comic books and until recently DVDs got the better of my wallet. Then, for some odd reason, I went apeshit for, well, you can see for yourselves I suppose....

Not sure if and how it can end as there are many "new releases" coming out in the next year!

No name calling or finger pointing please. Only civil inquiries seeking facts will be responded to.

Oh yeah, and these are older photos, the collection is about a third bigger now! If I hadn't spent all my money on these and had bought myself a digital camera instead, well, I suppose I could be taking pictures of empty shelves, but what's the fun in that? (And how d'ya like that twisted, self-serving logic?)

(Help!)

Commuting Thoughts 2 : The Anti-Life Movement

2006-02-01T16:09:00.000-05:00

The problem with the state of things in a nutshell is that the major religious forces that are antithetical to life have dominated our cultural development for well over two millennia. Their influence has seeped even into aspects that do not claim to have direct ties to religion (consumerism, capitalism, technological advancement, science and that harder to define general sense of life by the common 'man'). These types of behaviour, perception and thinking have been made possible and bloomed, for the most part, out of the manure of organized, Judeo-Christian religious forces. We may feel that the yoke of superstitious religion has been lifted from the shoulders of the world to some degree, but we see that organized religion is still blatantly pushing to influence the direction of the world even today (the USA's religious rights foray into politics and the media, the Islamic world's pushing back with terrorism against, from their side of the fence, these godless heathen). I would argue that the more insidious forces at work in the culture of consumerism, of urban being-ness, of virtual transgressions of the material and biological world through the use of electronic information technologies, are actually more frightening for being taken as inevitable, natural, scientifically supported, or what have you, and being more difficult to question for they seem to have no obvious underlying philosophy or dogma supporting them (though they do). It may seem inevitable or in our nature to undertake the destruction of our environment, that our appetites are merely too ravenous and our vision too nearsighted as a species, but I think it is more likely that the heavy influence the philosophy of these religions have had on the ages is still being felt and has not been analyzed enough to allow us to see it for what it truly is and how it has operated on our lives and our perception of the world/self dynamic.

The trick of time, our lifespan, our difficulty in maintaining a perspective on a larger picture may make what I'm saying seem ridiculous. It may seem that the path we are currently taking is the good one, the better one, a path that seems to have been leading us out of darkness and into some kind of superior status vis a vis our world and ourselves, fighting and resisting the darker angels of our nature (and in part it is, and we could also very well stumble upon a better way of living from out of this mess, but not without some deep and radical intentional or accidental alterations of the foundations of our perspective). But what I am trying to argue is that there have been and still are intense anti-life forces at the heart of our cultural achievements. While we may feel a sense of advancement, achievement, and progress, this current state of things is likely but a blip on our evolutionary radar and may very well do us in. In short, the experiment of the anti-life movement in human culture hasn't been going on all that long given the overall timeline of our existence, we have little to compare it to (though many smaller examples of the collapse of civilizations can be looked at for parallels: Mesopotamia, Rome, Aztec culture). Unless we analyze it for what it is and resist and change it we can expect the experiment to end badly.

The anti-life movement began at a time when humanity probably felt a burning need to try to see hope beyond the immediate, material circumstances of existence. To deny this time and place and the life it supports as merely a test, a game, an illusion, a preliminary state of being before the eternal and virtual existence of the soul in heaven, is to allow us to treat the world as expendable, as ours for the using, as, ultimately, not the be all and end all of existence. By embracing this view, it ignores the human to need to connect to the world and the mystery of existence without recourse to an afterlife. It is shortsighted, selfish and banking on a myth that can't be proven (but which can easily be cast into doubt by the very fact that history and archaeology shows us that the Bible, the Torah and the Koran are all just examples of cultural documents humanity has conjured up out of their imagination and that they are relative to the culture that produces them and therefore not inevitably true).

Terrence Malick's The New World

2006-01-28T08:50:00.000-05:00

photo: Lake Nipissing summer 2005

Five hundred years on and still it brings me to the verge of tears when I imagine or I am shown a depiction of what we've lost, of what our ancestors crushed. There are those that would find it trite, overly sentimental, pining for a lost paradise that never was a paradise, they would scoff, ridicule, mock, taunt but what should that matter to me? Why should it be of my concern, their reaction to these same images, these same facts and this same legacy and their reaction to my own? Why, if they cannot comprehend my sorrow, or think it ill advised, repulsive, not pragmatic or just generally contradictory to their own sense of the "way the world works", should I attempt to retreat, retract, rephrase or rethink what I feel to be true and right? I have "rethought" much, and in the end there is nothing I can change, nothing I should change, of how I react to these things, how the shortsightedness of our ancestors' actions have lead to so little, are leading us to a dead-end. In short, why should the emotional reaction and response to these facts by others that do not share my wish that things could have been different become somehow my responsibility to explain or challenge or acknowledge? It is a way in which we can get derailed from thinking along the good path. They should look at themselves and question their own reactions and not demand that I do so. They do not know me. They do not know how I arrived at my own conclusions and way of seeing. I believe in many cases the antagonists of the world know that this works, that attacking those who do not agree with harsh words will often cause them to react and defend and be on the defensive and spend energy simply on reiterating opinions to those who do not listen and do not care when that same energy could be used elsewhere to better ends.

History teaches us nothing not because it cannot but because, for the moment, we have little more than the word history, as well as a misunderstanding of how to study it and to what ends. We also lack the ability to comprehend how it is still with us. We are and have been repeating what was left behind in Europe; we are becoming what our ancestors, in part, believed they were fleeing. We are mutilating even the very sins of our fathers and mothers. And we are doing it at a time in the phase of human techno-cultural means that will see us enslaved in ways that could render us incapable of survival without them. Today, if I did not have at least the change in my pocket, with the skills I possess I would be dead in less than a month.

I walked home on the same earth depicted in the film, with those same horrifying trees lined out in rows as they were in horrific England. I walked across places where forests had stood for millennia, where hunters hunted and people worshipped and made love and fought and died and wondered at their existence. Now there is a grid of streets bearing the names of saints and politicians and long dead public figures whose stories no longer mean anything to us and perhaps should not. There is no New World, only a corpse dressed up in European garb.

The editing was a dance and a dream, obeying no rules of classic continuity. I watched thin strong leaves augment the light of the sun and pages turned with the wind of a breath. Some will no doubt find it hard to endure, as did the giggling girls a few seats over from mine, but I believe this form was conducive to the theme, the collision of one way of seeing with another and the tantalizing disorientation that can ensue. It also works to keep it ethereal, somewhat impossible to possess, to own, to claim to know. It is about loss after all, an immense loss that we cannot truly comprehend and shrink from attempting. It was less about the facts (though they were there) than it was about the human reaction to the world and an homage to this moment when the opportunity to come to know and be in the world was there before Western man. A moment that was so quickly lost and may never be repeated. I want to see it again and again, and at least once more on the big screen, for there are still questions, not questions of plot or story but rather questions of meaning, of how to take in the work as a whole and how it should inform and alter one's life. There is no one making films like this man anymore.

PS: sorry Blog Monkey, I just decided on the spur of the moment on the way home from work to go see it, but I'll see it again with you, honest I will!

Commuting Thoughts 1

2006-01-24T22:51:00.000-05:00

1. To avoid mob rule, a democratic society should always steer as clear as possible of monolithic generalizations. It should aim, instead, to approach the threshold of what might be called or thought of as something like individual law, a form of justice that seeks to protect the right of every individual to be unique, indefinable, without absolute category, then pull back just enough from sinking into something incomprehensible and chaotic. I believe this is what law intends to do, in theory, though some politicians and citizens would wish it were otherwise. It is only those who cannot tolerate question, difference, risk, and actual freedom who would find this incomprehensible. Anger would most likely be their reaction, for something has come up against the simple view they have of how things ought to be and their inability and lack of desire to try to see anything from anyone else's perspective, and possibly let a new idea enter their minds, terrifies them, frustrates them, drives them to hate without limit.

2. The first order of business for any being that finds itself in the midst of existence should be to protect the 'ecological capital' of the world, preserve it for the untold billions to come, rather than selfishly use more than we need at the expense of future life. To do any less is to be complicit in a type of mass murder that only disasters of a cosmological scale are supposed to inflict. The second order of business is to do all one can, make the constant effort, to take responsibility for the growth and evolution and continuation of the concept and state of freedom, never tiring of fighting the good fight, to never think one has done enough, to know that to enjoy freedom now without making the effort and recognizing the responsibility one has to future generations is, again, incomprehensibly and irrationally selfish. It is to spit in the face of the untold millions who toiled to bring us the opportunities we enjoy and face today. It is to turn a blind eye to the billions yet to come into a world that could be made better, that could speak of heroes and the benevolent societies that came before them, as they donned the mantle of responsibility of this proud tradition. Of course, there is still the intriguing problem of creating a common understanding of the sanity of these two principles.

3. Never judge a person until you've truly, truly walked several hundred kilometres in their shoes. That is, value the power of empathy. So many proponents of certain hard-line ideologies claim to be able to speak for the so-called "bums on welfare", claiming to know, with god-like omnipotence, what goes on in their heads, generalizing to such an extreme that you'd think a concentration camp of some sort wouldn't be good enough for them all. To do this sort of judging is not only irresponsible, without merit or evidence, but is ultimately a sign of a hate filled and diseased mind, one that has lost all sense of compassion except for what is already their own and will never stoop to empathy, entering into what is probably the early phases of a sociopathic personality. The day we cease to be moved by the plight of even one of us is the day we cease to be human and become little more than a part of an inhumane and inhuman machine.

4. Never lose hope. This is what they want us to do. Lose hope and enter into a state of permanent fear. Fortunately, as history shows us, these sorts of rulers don't tend to endure, but even the short term is too long for them and the price paid is always too high.

5. Do your best to love life, but do not be afraid to risk it. Life is not lived without it. Avoid or question and challenge those systems and forces that seek to distract, defocus, confuse, over stimulate and enslave. We all suffer at the hands of these apparent ways of accomplishing through purchasing or wiring ourselves into some larger sphere of communication. But unless handled with skill, these methods lead to a thinning, a dilution of thought, of will, of life. They offer only a ghostly substitute for something they usurp and replace. I remember only a short 20 years ago how the world felt. It was different, more solid, and more alive and I wanted to be in it, out in it, seeing it, knowing it, walking it. Now, it feels hollow, harder to connect to, ironically, and smaller. I spend most of my time staring at screens such as this one. This may sound paranoid or reactionary but it is not. It is testimony from a witness to this change, one who has, like so many of us, seen and experienced the radical shift, untested, unprecedented, that computers and other technologies have inflicted. My mind is different now and not, I fear, for the better. Perhaps we should have been more critical of the introduction of certain methods of making sense of our lives. The word 'cyborg' comes to mind, unpleasantly.

With Headlines Like These....

2006-01-24T11:59:00.000-05:00

Read 'em and weep.

World Gloats Over Canada's Stupidity

The only good thing about this election is that it might finally force the Liberals to clean house and come out as a revamped and appealing option in the future. What is probably just as likely is the Conservatives work hard to convince us they're doing a good job, get a majority and then slowly start to destroy anything resembling democracy, freedom and hope using deceptive and subtle Straussian techniques to mask their intolerance, hatred, bigotry, and desire to crush difference, social progress and real thought. And the longer they stay in power the more likely it is that we'll get cozier and cozier with Republican lead America and who knows what that kind of intimacy can lead to. By the headlines above you can tell this is the kind of possibility that gets the rest of the right-wing world slavering like rabid dogs.

And if anyone needs a reminder of why we've been duped read the full transcript of the speech Stephen Harper gave in 1997 to the American Council for National Policy that I found on this guy's blog.

Meditations on Freedom (sort of)

2006-01-23T09:38:00.000-05:00

Ah, the commute to work. What better place to let the mind wander and ponder! Finding itself in the perfect millieu to meditate upon the common fate of us all, as we jostle together along the subway tracks, packed like the proverbial sardine in a tin can (though this tin can happens to be hurtling us at breakneck speed not only toward the work-a-day portion of our existence but also, therefore, towards the end of the line, the end of the self, the big D, the big D that follows the big R, that is if we've planned right and put enough away not to find ourselves falling into the big P!).

So today, being election day here in Canada and all, I found myself trying to, yet again, stave off a sense of hopelessness and despair in the face of what appears will be a Conservative minority if not majority win. Even though any rational human might look at a few widely publicized news items and realise what a Conservative vote might mean, it would seem we have not. One, as I reported earlier, was when Harper was quoted as basically admitting that, even if elected, we need not fear they will be able to do all the nasty things we suspect they will do because right now, for the time being at least, there is a Liberally appointed Senate and bureaucracy to stop them (i.e. "watch out you ignorant pricks if you actually give us power long enough for some of these suckers to die off and be replaced by our goons!") Two, on the weekend, the Conservative party began refusing any interviews or contact with the press and media for fear of, well, let's see, not being able to bite their collective tongues any longer and go off like a sixteen-year old's pocket rocket on a first date? I mean, are they really that giddy about the fact they might get more seats than they've had in years that they think one of them is going to blow his load in front of a camera or microphone and let loose a wad of "holy fuckin' shit are you guys stupid we're gonna so fuck you up and Jesus is gonna be shoved so far down your friggin' throats you're gonna be literally puking up faith and spewing it all over this great land of ours and screw gay rights and abortions are illegal now and the environment can go fuck itself and I like to eat babies for breakfast even though that makes me a hypocrite because I'm supposed to be opposed to abortion and suck me and go to church heathen!" Or something in that general, dilapidated ballpark?

All this got me thinking, as I watched those faces staring at their dim reflections in the glass of the subway doors: At least we're free to screw up. At least we've got the freedom to make mistakes. But why do we screw up and make uninformed, dumb decisions? In part it's because we're complacent about our freedom, which in a way is a good thing. It means we take it for granted, we think it should always be there, should come naturally to human society and we go about our day to day lives knowing we've got this security. It allows us to feel secure enough that we don't go around blowing up things in the name of some cause or other. Of course, it's a false sense of security, but isn't it sweet that we think it will endure for all time just because? So we're free to shoot ourselves in the foot and we're free to be lazy and that's pretty much what's wrong with freedom. But is this complacency and forgetfulness an inevitable consequence of freedom? When did we forget that we need to be vigilant in protecting it? When did we forget that freedom must extend to all members of a society and that minorities cannot have their freedoms stifled at the hands of a moral majority? When did we forget that with freedom comes the responsibility to maintain it for future generations? I'm guessing that went out the door as easily, and perhaps nudged by the same corporate hand, as did our sense of responsiblity for the state of the environment as well for future generations. I'm also guessing that much of our laziness and complacency comes from a channelling of our energies and attention into other, simpler, more easily consumed activities such as shopping, DVD renting, internet surfing, and all other forms of current, Western cultural activities that mostly center around the dispensing of cash in order to get a quick sense of accomplishment or connection to the larger world.

So we get what we deserve. It's just too bad that there are a few of us who don't deserve it and are about to suffer because of the collective laziness of the many....or perhaps we all deserve it, but for slightly different reasons. Those informed few who actually vote with their brains and their hearts connected are probably the best of the worst, at least they are doing, with all the attention and care it deserves, that one action that democracy asks of them. But they are still not guiltless, in that, if they are truly as enlightened as they make themselves out to be, they should be out there on the campaign trails, working their asses off to make their voices heard, or trying to reform voting methods, or even just sharing ideas on a non-partisan level, and even if against seemingly impossible odds. That includes me, by the way. It is at election time that my own laziness is most keenly felt. This blogging at the mouth does take some effort but mostly it almost instantly disappear into the cacaphony of individual voices ranting and raving and pretending we're a community on the internet and yet again, we scratch an itch, doing something that's this close to nothing, typing away on the ether as if that could make a difference. And meanwhile, those who know that it takes practical actions to make a real difference have mustered up the corporate sponsorship and are out there almost literally pulling the wool over our eyes for their own shortsighted or selfish gains.

Somebody Took the Hand Out of the Puppet's Ass!

2006-01-18T10:13:00.000-05:00

Stephen Harper, leader of the Canadian Conservative Party and all-round creepy person, recently took George Bush's cock out of his mouth and to get quoted as saying, "What I can say is that there will be a Liberal Senate, there will be a bureaucracy appointed by the Liberals....So even with a majority, it's impossible to have absolute power for the Conservatives. There are checks and balances, and that is the reality."

Does he not realise what he just said? He basically admitted: "We are ultra-right wing, hate-filled and dangerous! Oh but not to worry, there are still some semi-sane people working for the collective good to keep us in line, dammit all!"

Now if only people pick up on this oopsy-daisy of a talking point maybe we could avoid a major fiasco and at worst re-elect a government that only tried to keep the country together in a scandalous way rather than tearing it apart and all we stand for surreptitiously and deceitfully with Jesus in their hearts (or some version thereof)!

This election might just do me in! My heart is hurting, physically.

little people making a big stinkie

2006-01-18T00:41:00.000-05:00

I may regret this in the morning though I'm pretty sure most of us are immune to this kind of crap simply by the fact that we have a shred of humanity left within us. So I know that by reading material at this site

http://www.godhatesfags.com/main/

nobody who isn't already insane is going to be a sudden convert to this whacko cause. Thanks to Kathleen Callon for the link and it's sobering look at the bottom rung of the evolutionary ladder. And don't worry, she isn't a supporter. I believe she's as stunned as anyone is that these people are for real and call themselves a church.

Don't bother sending them any hate mail, seems the FBI is on their side! Says so in their FAQ! Hee hee heee ho ho ho hahahaha ahhhhh....cute.

And be sure to read other shit in the FAQ, even if only for the amusement park ride-like terror it induces. I'd do it especially for their irrationalizing of why it's right for them to hate soldiers and be glad they die in Iraq. Honestly. That's something they hold close to their cold, deluded, Xtian heart-substitutes.

Oh yeah, be warned, it's pretty damned hateful. I feel like puking actually.

Slow Down You Move Too Fast

2006-01-17T13:31:00.000-05:00

The Fook sent me a link to this really nice article. Made me want to turn....

Japan Grows A Beard

And here is the list (though it is also hyperlinked in the article):

The practice of the "Slow Life" involves the following eight themes:

SLOW PACE: We value the culture of walking, to be fit and to reduce traffic accidents.

SLOW WEAR: We respect and cherish our beautiful traditional costumes, including woven and dyed fabrics, Japanese kimonos and Japanese night robes (yukata).

SLOW FOOD: We enjoy Japanese food culture, such as Japanese dishes and tea ceremony, and safe local ingredients.

SLOW HOUSE: We respect houses built with wood, bamboo, and paper, lasting over one hundred or two hundred years, and are careful to make things durably, and ultimately, to conserve our environment.

SLOW INDUSTRY: We take care of our forests, through our agriculture and forestry, conduct sustainable farming with human labor, and ultimately spread urban farms and green tourism.

SLOW EDUCATION: We pay less attention to academic achievement, and create a society in which people can enjoy arts, hobbies, and sports throughout our lifetimes, and where all generations can communicate well with each other.

SLOW AGING: We aim to age with grace and be self-reliant throughout our lifetimes.

SLOW LIFE: Based on the philosophy of life stated above, we live our lives with nature and the seasons, saving our resources and energy.

ahhhhhhhh.......

Dear World (Holy christ am I stupid!)

2006-01-16T15:13:00.000-05:00

(blog monkey sent me a link to a "great" blog, from someone calling themselves a "new christian". I found it very inspirational. But it was kind of cryptic, that is, it was phrased in such a way that it only barely managed to conceal the face of a raving lunatic behind a mask of calm serenity. Allow me to nudge it out into the open with a bit of transubstantiation:)

Profile:

Location: Bumfuck USA

Me: I am a nondescript Caucasian female, totally shallow, oh and gullible too! Please love me!

Dear World:

Before I found my current fuck friend Stan I was a major whore. Whoo boy was I ever! I mean I've got this kid and I think the father was this guy that I was working with at the time, but I'm not sure, but I've heard that you're not supposed to beat yourself up over that kind of stuff so I don't, I've just kept working at being a single mom, with everything going for me! I mean I've got it made right? Funny thing is, no matter how hard I tried to put out, Stan wouldn't go for it. I thought maybe he was gay until he told me he has devoted his life to Jesus, and even then I kind of had my doubts....

Anyway, he didn't pressure me about going to church, much....well, okay, so every conversation we ever had slowly came around to the subject of my heretical ways, but honest, he was so nice about it, he never once called me devil-spawn or harlot or Satan's love-child or anything else I could read in his eyes.

Then one day, after I just wanted to shut him up, he invited me to something called a "Harvest Party". At first I thought, shit, now it makes sense! They're an alien race that culls the herd from time to time! And I've been invited to their not-so-subtly named feast probably as the stereotypical "guest of honor/main course"! Turns out it was just a brainwashing shindig hosted by a bunch of Stan's overzealous, life-hating Christian pals! I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure they spiked my food with something, or maybe it was the fact that the party lasted 7 days straight with almost nothing to eat and very little sleep. It's all a blur really.

Shortly after this wonderful event that I loved with all my heart absolutely voluntarily, I went to his church.

Now remember: I had nothing but TV, a shitty minimum wage job, cigarettes and almost zero education before I met Stan. And I was a single mom with a daughter that would some day no doubt be the greatest little gangster a mother could have! I guess you could say I had everything going for me so there was no reason I should need anything else, right? That's why I found it so strange that when I got into the church, and when this huge group of people (who seemed to have their shit together, and were dressed so nice and had a live in husband, 2 cars, 3 or more well-behaved children and friends) started hugging me and showing something akin to actual human emotion, it got me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, but there is absolutely no reason that I should have felt this way, remember, my life was complete and I had it made! Oh yeah, and they hung out in this massive building, lavishly decorated that was meant, architecturally speaking, to inspire awe, but you know something, it inspired this feeling of awe in me for no reason I can think of....must have been something metaphysical I guess, whatever that means, like a divine or holy ghost, maybe even Jesus himself! I mean it just had to be! The next week I went back, totally of my own volition and NOT because I had finally felt like someone loved me for more than a night. I went again and again and each time I went the pastor asked those of us who were desperate fools and new to the church to come up to the alter to receive the holy ghost through the equivalent of spiritual hazing. I was scared shitless, trembling like a ninny, my pits were swamps, I could feel everyone's eyes on me, I wanted to run away, I was a bundle of confused emotions and again, that's why it was so inexplicable that I would suddenly feel different up there, that I would suddenly feel the need to scream out in incoherent sentences as if reaching for some kind of orgasm of release or escape. I'm pretty sure I didn't go insane at that moment or just do something that would allow all this self-hating torture in front of the judging eyes of the congregation to end. It's much more likely and believable that a supernatural entity entered my body and is now residing there. Really. He's there. He tells me things. I am no longer fully responsible for my own thoughts and actions because the lord now tells me what to do (through the more influential members of the church can still also tell us what to do. But they, coincidentally, happen to have a much more open channel to God than the rest of us. Weird eh?)

So now I'm a new Christian because I realise that even though my life was so great and I had no reason to be out looking for something a tad more meaningful I was actually a bad person, bad I tell you, terrible and this is the way I'm correcting all the problems I had before, the ones that I didn't even know I had. Sure I'm not getting a real education or finding my own meaning in the universe and growing as a person but I am having a bunch of stepford wives tell me how great the lord is and why the earth doesn't mean shit, even for my daughter who is about to inherit it and that there is a mansion for me in heaven! A mansion! Can you believe it! And I'm sure I'll have lots of time to go out shopping to fill it full of stuff, yeah, it'll be heavenly stuff made mostly of sublime vapours and whatnot, but stuff all the same; the type of stuff I just couldn't afford on my minimum wage salary (and can't possibly afford now that I have to give some of it to the church)! Thank you Stan, thank you for showing me the light....oh and Jesus, thank you dear Jesus for giving me this type of overly simplistic bliss that even the numbing love of TV couldn't quite achieve. Praise be to God and this one single idea I can focus on effortlessly! It's so easy! Don't knock it til you've tried it!

Signed,
E.Z. Pickins

(All I can say is: I really need to start a church.)

Will Democracy Fail (or has it done so already)?

2006-01-16T12:00:00.000-05:00

Given the relatively short history of democracy and ideas such as individualism, freedom, human rights, it is my sincere hope that the current ugliness creeping up on Western democracies, and the fallout it is having across the rest of the globe, is but a blip on the historical radar. I'd like to hope that it's a kind of concerted last gasp effort by the forces of oppression (ie the psychopaths who can't stand the thought that anyone else out there has a thought or does something that contradicts their own narrow and constricting world-view. It's called 'tolerance' and 'sharing', penises! Look it up!). Since learning recently that the Conservative Party of Canada consists mostly of those educated in the warped, elitist views of Leo Strauss and his school of thought (as are Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and that happy bunch) and that their goal is regime change -and not just in dictatorships but here at home, especially here at home, insidiously using fear and lies to gain public support for policies that seek to homogenize society into uninteresting and lifeless forms- I have found myself looking at this 'annoying' election here in Canada a little more seriously. Wait. Who am I kidding? A lot more seriously. Sleeplessness type seriously. And being the one little person in the scheme of things that I am, I find myself seeking thoughts that can help counteract the darker ones that threaten to paralyze me with dread if they get elected. One of those 'helper thoughts' goes something like this: Even if this gets worse before it gets better, we can always hope that things have progressed far enough by now that we will see more clearly, and quickly, through the lies and spin when push comes to shove. That if individual freedoms continue to erode under such governments, that some threshold will be reached at which point most people will stop and ask what's going on. Let's just hope that we would do this before a threshold of a different sort was crossed and it was now too late without a bloody, disruptive civil war. Oops. Darker thought just crept up and stabbed poor, little, naive, helper thought in the back!

Okay let's go with some darker more paranoid ones then, just to get them out on the table and expose them to the light:

Question: Will Canada be hit by a terrorist event if the Conservatives are elected? If so, why? Because terrorists don't like conservative values? Yeah right! I guess what I'm asking: Does Canada need a terrorist fear-inducing event to create a similar milieu of fear that now currently exists in the US and allows the current administration and law enforcement organizations to trample on the constitution with no immediate repercussions? (Leo Strauss would think so.) And, if so, why would it happen when the Conservatives get elected? Hmmmm? (god I hope I'm just a bit paranoid and not right on this!)

What might be done by such a government for the sake of supposed fiscal reform, tax cuts, necessary spending tactics that would actually be a way of so eroding our society's ability to prosper and evolve socially, such that we may be incapacitated us from rebuilding what we lose? I don't have any answers for that, really. And besides author Jane Jacobs in her rather hopeful book, given it's title, Dark Age Ahead, can do it infinitely better than I ever could hope to, and without the taint of paranoia.

How will the very identity of 'being Canadian' be radically altered and denigrated on the world stage by the actions of a government who would have sent troops to Iraq, helped back missile defense and wants to scrap our commitment to Kyoto?

When I'm asking "will democracy fail" I'm not only or even specifically talking about this time in this election. What I'm wondering is if it will fail totally and completely in the future because of things we do now, because of what we allow to happen now, because of our laziness and stupidity even in the midst of such apparent freedom. And if it is heading toward failure, at what stage of the game are we today? Are we only at the beginning? Can what happens now determine the outcome no matter where we are at? Are things already very much in motion to see it mutated into something that is 'democracy' in name only? Is it too late? Was democracy a 'necessary evil' so that a new type of monarchy could emerge from out of the ashes of the dark ages? Or is democracy truly the ultimate challenge to the age old problem of tyranny? And the crisis stems from the fact that only the would-be tyrants have infiltrated the systems we designed to try to keep democracy from harm and have subverted them, surreptitiously, to their selfish, hateful, anti-life delusions? (Okay, so that was a loaded question bordering on rhetorical....)

Can't really think of how to end this so I'll just ask a question that's more of the moment: Why is it that when we get disillusioned with government we don't want to go over to the 'good', self-less side of the political spectrum but, rather, we get all angry and intolerant and freaked out or something and put up our collective "dukes" and vote conservatively!? It is so disheartening and, well, confusing. I mean just look at the recent polls! Sure the conservatives are ahead but their leader is almost the least popular (just above the guy who represents the party we're all sore at)! Now if that doesn't seem like a schizophrenic way of seeing the political landscape I don't know what is! We want change. W get pissed and our anger seems to breed collective intolerance, insecurity, and I don't know what happens exactly but we suddenly start to vote for the guys who seem angry just like us even though we don't actually like them or have much else in common. Christ we're stupid sometimes!

A Question About Winter

2006-01-13T10:49:00.000-05:00

If the weather is so goddamn nice today, why do I want to kill myself? Because it's January in Montreal and for some reason it's above zero degrees Celsius and the birds are singing an untimely song that might just trick the trees into blooming so early that all the bumble bees will die! This is not how it should be! Something's not right! Everything's not right! Please, for chrissake! Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it be so friggin cold I can gleefully bitch about how hideous it is outside and how much I hate winter! At least then I'd know that a natural springtime is just around the corner and not some sort of ecological doomsday! Oh, but maybe it's only an anomaly, maybe it means nothing....Right! How many of the warmest years on record have been recorded in the latter half of the last century and the early part of the present one? Seems there was a blip like this in 1950, 10 plus degrees Celsius. Was that too early to be global warming? Was that a blip whereas this is a symptom? How can we be sure it's not? Whatever happened to better safe than sorry?!

By the way, get out there an enjoy, it's really nice outside today!

In the mean time....

2006-01-13T10:16:00.000-05:00

I've not been too inspired to write lately, or, rather, perhaps overstimulated and unable to focus on a single topic that doesn't get me frothing at the mouth and incoherent. I want to write something soon, I'll try to focus on something shortly even if it might be of interest only to me.

In the mean time, you MUST check out these documentaries.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=461187809452836609&q=adam+curtis

It's called the Power of Nightmares And the other 2 parts can be found on the same site, www.video.google.com, by typing in "adam curtis" in the search box. He's the director. Also did a great, hard to find series called The Century of the Self about the birth of public relations and the ways in which human beings have been recast and controlled throughout the 20th century (and into this one).

Enjoy!

People Are Stupid

2006-01-10T09:02:00.000-05:00

Gone are the days when one could write out a political diatribe in the form of a poem (and no not a clever, dumbed-down limerick) and have people not only read it with enthusiasm but understand it and allow it to inform their opinion of current events. Yes this was the same era when it was considered normal to dump buckets of sewage from a window and into the street but is dumping massive quantities of our feces directly into lakes, rivers and oceans really any more bright or enlightened? But I digress. All I'm saying is that, as everybody by now knows, but really doesn't fear enough, is that our attention span craves the succinct and vapid headlines and catchy sound bytes that media organizations, run by mega corporations, generate ad infinitum.....So, no politically insightful poem. Not even an attempt to outline, in only half decent prose, why our society allows itself to be misinformed, self-centred to the point of a collective neuroses, shortsighted, all-consuming and emotionally challenged, yet ruled for the most part by this same knee-jerk handicap. Nope. Just an attention grabbing and grade-school simple title : "People Are Stupid" (thought it might be more "grippy", as Stephen Colbert might put it) followed by a heart-felt rant.

I guess stupid people deserve a stupid government. Which is what will happen if what current polls are predicting comes to pass and the choice is made here in Canada in the coming days to elect the Conservative Party. Yes we are all pissed at the Liberals for being arrogant and scandal-ridden but are the Conservatives really the only viable alternative? Ask yourself: Do they make the best choice for a protest vote? If they do get elected we're in for bad times of a different sort all together (not to mention that they themselves would in no way be immune to similar scandals as have plagued the Liberal party). Because remember this is the same party that has publicly declared being open to support Bush's and the Pentagon's idiotic and thus far ineffectual missile defense program (forget the moral implications of joining in, I'm sure at some point down the road we'd have to contribute big bucks too); they're 100 percent pro-business (okay, not so different from the Liberals actually, but it's the kinds of business they'd be in bed with and the fact that they wouldn't temper their relationship with at least a smidgen of humanity) which means the average person's needs as well as the needs of the environment get placed a dismal second, or even lower if the need for a better second arises that would help business and politicians other assorted buddies.

And of course, we would have gone into Iraq had the Conservatives been in power, meaning the Government of Canada would also, like Britain and the U.S., have broken International Law, ignored the will of the United Nations and made us even more of a terrorist target than we already are for being in Afghanistan. We'd be forking out tax dollars and the lives of Canadian soldiers for an illegal, ill-conceived and unwinnable invas....I mean "war".

Let's see....

What else?

Oh ya.

Harper and Bush are buddies and share an ultra-right wing, neo-con, Creationist, Christian ideology... 'nuff said.

Okay, not enough. Read this and tremble:

Harper, Bush Share Roots In Controversial Philosophy

Anyway, I've got to get back to work. All I'm really trying to say is people need to think a bit more clearly and inform themselves. If they want to kick the Liberals out yet have any sort of progressive continuity in terms of the direction of our nation is currently taking then vote for the NDP. Yes they'll have a hell of time (remember what happened when they got elected in Ontario) but at least you can be sure they are trying to help us and do the right thing for everyone even when they stir shit up and probably end up stumbling. But they aren't in bed with any big business because they are anathemical to those would-be kings and I'd like to see someone in this country, even if they fail, try to show some backbone in the face of tough issues like health care, corporate tax breaks and loop holes, education, urban development, the environment, defense and human rights. All the other parties seem to be talk tough then back down when a fight is required. The Liberals took some stands on some controversial topics, on which the Conservatives would have caved, which unfortunately is what still makes them a better alternative to the Conservatives. But if we want to give them a collective kick in the pants right out the doors of parliament Hill let's do it by grabbing those benign yet inexperienced bunch of clip-on tie wearing ex-hippies called the New Democrats and hoist them onto the hot seat. At least the headlines that will trail their actions will be a bit more spicy and just plain new!

Simple Math

2006-01-06T12:33:00.000-05:00

Watched that clip from the Daily Show again yesterday and on the way home I was thinking: Bush took questions, unscreened questions, at a press conference of some sort and was asked how many he thinks have died so far in Iraq. He casually put the number of dead in Iraq (the way one would estimate the number of jelly beans in a jelly bean jar, is how Jon Stewart put it so well), to date, including civilians (though when he answered he said "the number of civilians" alone) at 30,000!

Let's overlook the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and go on the assumption, as horrifically ridiculous as it is, that the reason the US is in Iraq is to somehow prevent another 9/11 (remember when it was about weapons of mass destruction and not freedom? And all that other blah blah blah?). Okay, so how many died at the WTC? Officially it's put at 2,986, including the hijackers. So, by their logic, in order to "prevent further deaths" the Bush administration has killed over 30,000 people, mostly civilians, even by their own admission. So...Um....does anyone else's brain instantly scream WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!

And does anyone else not feel the earth trembling with an angry vibration as the victims of 9/11 collectively roll over in their graves? I mean, the suffering created that day from that attack is now being felt in Iraq on a scale that, even if we just do simple math, get yer calculators out if you need em, (30,000 divided by approximately 3000), is ten times greater! Justice? Righting a wrong? Highly debatable. The most obvious way to look at it is that the Bush administration is -by a calculation a grade school student could do with one eye on his/her PSP- 10 times more violent, cruel and just plain deadly as those who committed the 9/11 atrocities. At least by my reckoning. Not to mention that the deaths continue unabated in Iraq and show no signs of decreasing any time soon. Let's face it, this isn't a one day only event like 9/11 was. Also, a terrorist event is done outside the law and yet is somehow, on a very odd level, more honest: they may be wrong and crazy but at least you know they meant to do the damage they did, that they wanted to inflict maximum carnage. With Bush and co., they say one thing, do another; they spout ideology that isn't reflected in their actions. It is all the more maddening for being so out of touch with logic and reality and just common human decency. In my opinion anyway. If I could choose, I'd rather have an enemy tell me he hates me and try to flat out kill me rather than one that tells me and those around me that he's helping me and has my best interests at heart, even as he hacks my family into pieces and then looks up with a you're-next-gleam in his eye.

And it all ain't even over yet.

For everyday in which more people die Bush et al get further and further ahead of the actual terrorists in the "I'm more capable of dealing out death than you" game. Of course this is nothing all that new (though one can wish that by now it would be getting a little old for our species). Most times when one country goes after another, the eye for an eye mentality goes a little haywire and an exponentially higher number of people suffer revenge for something that was originally a little smaller in scale. Ah but no one counts coup anymore the way the supposed "primitives" used to do in less civilized times.... Anyway, the war is just so wrong on so many other levels that perhaps this simple mathematical exercise is pointless or redundant. But I'm just saying that even on the simplest level, this ain't even an eye for an eye...and besides, if one really truly values life, then there would be no way in the world they'd allow harm to come to an innocent, an Iraqi family that they are trying to "free" for example. The equivalent, on a personal scale that would seem utterly insane to most (I mean all those not already considered insane) would be to try to go after someone who has wronged you, gravely, "an eye for an eye", then take the eye of the next person you bump into because he was in the way of your getting to the person from whom you really want to carve out that orbit! And then keep doing this until, no matter how many sightless innocent folk you leave in your wake, you maybe, if you're not too exhausted by the time you reach him, get to the guy who maybe deserved your wrath but who most likely should go on trial, just to keep things a bit more within reason and civil and well just plain lawful between us all, regardless of the arbitrary value one might like to place on the colour of a skin, a nationality, or one's just plain not being an American.

Argh!

My 2006 "To Do" List

2006-01-03T11:16:00.000-05:00

-Figure shit out.

-Stop having delusions that any one reads this.

-Be more like Jesus, except for the dead part.

-Focus on the positive, though I doubt that's possible.

-Fight terrorists where they live, even if that happens to be in grandma's basement.

-Pack lightly.

-Stop putting off calling for the results of that MRI.

-Do not miss your chance to blow, This opportunity comes once in a life time, yo.

-Buy a good quality bean-bag chair and turn it to face the wall.

-Focus an energy beam into the form of a sword and wield it with stunning grace and precision.

They Still Blame the Sea

2006-01-01T10:05:00.000-05:00

This is the inevitable New Year's post. I tried to avoid it. But I keep feeling it tugging so why fight it. Last night someone in the small cluster of relatives I was spending the eve with asked, basically, what do we expect of the year 2006? After we all half-heartedly made a few attempts at mustering up something positive out of that old repetition of adding 1 to our previous year's date, someone said to me, "Hey, you'll be 35 this year, that's only 15 years away from 50!" I'd always felt myself prepared against and somewhat immune, in a very dishonest way I now see, to the impending crisis of middle age (and to be even less delusional, middle age is a tad closer than 15 years away), but with those simple words I found myself suddenly at the event horizon of the black hole of regret, sinking, quickly and well in advance, into a veritable panic striken morass of self-doubt and disappointment that instantly overrode anything positive and worthy of appreciation that my life had forged thus far.

But this was good.

(Though it didn't need to be New Year's that brought it on. It's ridiculous to think we need such flaccid events as this to make us question the meaning of our lives. It just so happens that because of the mystique of January 1st, the question came up from the aforementioned train of thought.)

And while at the time it didn't feel all that good, I knew something good could come of this darkness if I critiqued my own reaction to these words about my inevitable approach to the half century mark. Why did it fill me with terror to realise I was aging and that time was passing more quickly each day? What was it about my life or life in our culture in general that seemed to have tricked me into a complacency and laziness that was suddenly slashed and torn open, bleeding like a wound?

What in my life should I have done differently?

What could I change now so that from here on in I do things right?

What projects had a I put off long enough?

What good things could I try to nuture and make even more fruitful?

Was there really any hope of staving off crushing regret or was it already too late?

Maybe I should just give up, lay down and die a slow, hopefully forty-years-away-minimum, death and try to wear a smile so as not to disturb the others around me who might still have a chance of making it work for them even under the spell of their own personal delusions.

Of course, this fundamental questioning of life direction wasn't new to me at all. I'd thought about it before, discussed it with a handful of friends, you know, the idea that our own life and the way we see it, not to mention the way we see the world and understand our place in it, is at the mercy of perception and socio-cultural discourse and paradigms. But what is the best way to perceive it? That is the real question. Which way of seeing one's life would not be a convenient slight of hand trick just to make things easier? Which way would not simply allow us to avoid the pain and difficulty of a more truthful way of seeing it? And which way, though it may seem to offer us that tough-love with its screams of "You've failed! You're a big nothing nobody!" is equally dangerous for it's insistence on a rare or impossible to achieve state of success and happiness? Basically, what I think it comes down to, is how to determine the right way of seeing one's life so that it is neither too "I'm okay, you're okay, let's all go for ice cream" nor making such demands that will paralyze one from doing anything productive or worthwhile at all for being so massively difficult to achieve and visualize from the outset.

Oh but these are cliched, yet fundamental problems for any semi-conscious human being!

And just previous to the mention that in a relatively short period of time I'd hit the big 5-0, we'd all been watching a documentary in which the testimony of several survivors of last year's tsunami framed images of destruction and chaos. And though it may seem clear (and maybe I'm being generous here) that it was not an act of god meant to strike down sinners, and was, rather, a natural disaster that was made worse by a lack of infrastructure to warn inhabitants and tourists of such a freak event, almost everyone in the documentary seemed to blame the sea for "the death it had wrought". Some said it was a friend before and an enemy now, projecting the failure of government to create safety mechanisms onto a body of water that cannot care whether or not we see it as friend or foe. Others stated that we must have somehow deserved it, brought it on ourselves (true, but not because of a sin that offended god but, again, only because we weren't smart enough to put in the failsafes that were necessary and do exist in other parts of the world). The handful of Westerners who were interviewed were a bit more mute on the subject. Most focused solely on their personal experience of it and in the end acted more as camera or storyteller rather than as way of coming to an understanding about the event itself. The most surprisingly clear statement came from the natives of the Nicobar islands on which every member of their communities had survived. And though they too had a culturally-based, even religious explanation as to why it had happenend (the Sea and the Land are in constant battle over boundaries and thus everything is subject to change, and something too about the world being situated at the top of a tall tree that the gods shake every now and again to test us), they were able, because they knew their world and their place in it, to see the signs that something was coming and they needed to act in a very specific way to survive it. They saw, just as the home video taken by tourists shows, that something unusual was unfolding, the sea receded suddenly and then a giant wave built up on the horizon and came in to shore rapidly. But whereas the tourists and even some local villagers waited until it was all but too late (one person caught on video even stood stock still and faced it in his speedo never flinching even as the wave overtook him and he disappeared), these long-time inhabitants of the islands of Nicobar simply understood, based on traditional teachings, ancestral knowledge and a firm sense of their place in the world, an identity. They knew what to do. They needed to find shelter and fast and that all would be good and continue on after if they did so. They had the confidence of their perception of the world that allowed them to continue to live another day. There was no way they were caught standing staring into the face of death and wishing they had a camera.

The man who told this story walked along the shore with his 3 children and an ethnologist. He carried one child on his back supported by a strap around his own forehead. As the interview ended he walked off down the shore. He had no questions to ask of the ethnologist. He went on his way and left us behind, staring.

Thought for the Holidays: December 22, 2005

2005-12-22T16:58:00.000-05:00

We fail the children constantly. We fail the child in each of us that millions toiled to give the chance to be alive and to LIVE. We betray the entire concept of child and we betray those very real ones whom we ourselves have the audacity to bring forth into our confusion and laziness. Even the best of us do this in ways that remain as if pre-denied and invisible. Happy Holidays!

Thought of the Moment: December 20, 2005

2005-12-20T11:49:00.000-05:00

Cluck cluck.
(followed by darting, lightning-fast peck at something crawling along sink edge)

Thought of the Night: December 20, 2005

2005-12-20T00:24:00.000-05:00

What, again, is the nature of this overriding need we all exhibit that most anything across the spectrum of human activity -from meaningful, perhaps even complex, societal paradigms on one end all the way along to vacuous, pervasive, ubiquitous modes of distraction and delusion on the other- can fulfill, even if only fleetingly? What sort of appetite is this? Constant? Yes. Primary? Perhaps. Underrated? It would seem so. The word ritual springs to mind...

Thought of the Day: December 19, 2005

2005-12-19T11:03:00.000-05:00

A lack of perspective shall be what destroys us.

Online

2005-12-13T22:30:00.000-05:00

Now that I have been offered a connection to the World Wide Web, I have happily accepted to partake in the form of communication called weblogs (though my other options are somewhat limited given my confinement and ungainly physigonomy). I was introduced to this practice by a rather abrupt chap, posessing an odour not quite as foul as my first house guest (see previous post). He has decided upon the nom de plume, for reasons known only to him, Blog Monkey. The details of our first encounter need not be sketched out at this time, suffice it to say we became fast friends, at least from where I sit, and after some queries on my part, that seemed lost on him, and strange demands of future promises on his, he provided me with a laptop computer, which, as the name suggests, conveniently rests quite securely and comfortably upon my crossed-legs. He also allows me internet access. I took naturally to the keyboard and now here I am, with you, whomever you are, perhaps no one is listening? (No matter, it is as if now I were that radio upstairs that I have lived with since before I could support my own enormous head, chattering away to anyone or no one without possiblity of ever having a sign that I am being understood.)And here I shall stay until fate throws me another curve pitch and I find myself hurtling off down another serendipitous avenue, meeting yet another facet of the Universe and Its mysteries, all from the confines of my trusty sink (have sink, will travel?). Please read something from Blog Monkey's blog at www.chimpzilla.blogspot.com (this fulfills one of the promises he made me swear to). I have placed a link on the right hand side of this page so that you may find him with the click of your mice (yet another of the 27 promises to check off my list already!). He believes himself rather drole, so please resist your fear of his evident viciousnes and try to laugh alongside him from time to time, or at least when he is within earshot.

Events As Of Late (or: a look into my world)

2005-12-13T12:53:00.000-05:00

So I'm sitting in my sink the other day, as I have done for most of my oft-sited, unnatural existence, when suddenly there is a knock at my door. This was a rare occurrence indeed, unique one might say, in that it had never happened before. Having never learned to walk, I called out to whomever it may be not to be shy and please, please do come in (though since I have no human vocal chords it probably didn't come across quite as comprehensibly as I make it sound – and though I cannot speak, I can type at around 70 wpm; so we should have no difficulty in communicating, you and I, dear reader). Perhaps this is the perfect moment to pause and explain why I did not rise to answer the caller myself. You see, I've been in this sink since I was but a sinkchick, my birth-mother having died while bathing me one autumn morn, collapsing to the kitchen floor where she has lain ever since. Over the years, in the different qualities of light that the changing seasons call their own, I have witnessed her slow but inevitable decay as she returns to the cosmos, never averting her tender gaze from where I sit, no matter how many times I have begged her to do so, not even when I wake to find her staring at me in the middle of the night bathed in the harsh, revealing light of the moon...

We've had many stimulating conversations she and I, or rather, she has listened intently as I have worked myself into a benign frenzy over various subjects that “come to me” from the faint voice of the radio she had left tuned in upstairs in her bedroom before her unexpected demise. There is a lack of clairty to what I hear, my only access to the happenings of the world beyond my porcelain abode, but it is enough to stimulate me intellectually; and using my imagination and the power of free association I have come to know an outside world, as subjectively delineated as it may be, that seems to me to be full of both pain and wonder and endless potential! I had thought that soon this box would be my only companion as my mother completed her return to the ether and that I would have to be content with having inner monolgues until death comes for me as well (luckily, for the time being, the insects that I feed upon seem plentiful and water is always close at hand). That was my fear until today, but then, after all these long years, as I had begun to recount, someone came knocking at my door.

I believe that my clucking must have sounded sufficiently inviting, for the stranger did eventually begin to cross the threshold, hesitantly at first, craning his neck inside, obviously in an effort to determine exactly who or what was attempting communication with him. I seized this moment and called to him again, come in, come in my unexpected friend, let us meet and begin, if it be at all possible, an aquaintanceship. And at this unintelligible prompting, he stepped into the halflight that is my world. I have to admit, I must have presented an intriguing sight! From what I know of the outside world, it would seem that a sinkchicken is something of a rarity, no mention of any others has been made by any DJ or announcer or talk show guest on the radio above. Mouth agape, he approached me, not even noticing that he helped my mother on her journey to nothingness by walking heedlessly upon her fragile bones, pulverizing them to a fine powder that quickly mixed with the dust of her flesh and organs and finally, yes finally, helped her to look away from me, forever. Goodbye mother.

Having committed this mixed blessing, he stopped just there, where my mother had fallen, and studied me. Now, I have not had any visitors with whom he could be compared but his appearance seemed to me somewhat...unkempt. He smelled horrific, though his odour offering up as it did a change to my olfactory landscape, was strangely satisfying. His clothing looked as my mother's had before it itself had crumbled from her frame and his skin hung loosely from wherever it found itself exposed to the elements, especially around his jowls. He rubbed his eyes with both hands and then looked me up and down before uttering but two words: “Well, shit!”. He seemed disinclined to begin discourse with me and after a period of further staring began instead to busy himself with rifling through the drawers and cupboards in the vicinty. He seemed to find nothing to his satisfaction until he came upon a bottle in the “adults only” cupboard up high above the refrigerator. This discovery caused him to cry out with glee and quickly he downed the brown liquid, throwing the bottle when he'd finished just past my head where it shattered against the wall, raining shards down upon my frail person and into my sink. I managed to avoid all but the most minor of wounds and promptly cleared my home of as much of his joy-inspired shrapnel as I could. Just then he froze, standing perfectly still for a moment as if an idea had come to him or a rather trickly problem that he wished to work out before moving an inch further. His deliberations ended with a loud belch. Then he vomitted. His discharge contained a fair quantity of what was most likely blood. He started to moan, clenching his stomach and stumbled off into another room where I heard him crashing about into mother's worldy posessions, now wailing in what was evidently severe and utter agony until with a final, underwhelming thud, silence returned. Oh dear mother! The timing of your absolute departure could not be more ill-conceived! How I long for your hollow-eyed presence! The discussions we could undertake! This strange turn of events in the quiet tedium of my existence begs for analysis and critical understanding! Mother, dear mother! O but you had lingered long enough! Be at peace at last, you who brought me forth so!

Several days have since passed and I fear that this potential friend has met a not dissimilar fate as befell my mother. You would think this would be a mournful turn of events but no, for at least now I have hope! Hope that there will be others to come! Others like him, and hopefully others very much unlike him, beings who will startle me with the brilliant impossibilty of their most singular qualities! And so here I sit, picking the occasional missed piece of glass from my basin, and somtimes from my tender white underside, remembering mother and listening to the faint whispers coming down to me from her bedroom above the kitchen, whispers of a complex and surprising world right over there, just beyond the threshold of my now open door...

Happiness is a lie

2005-12-12T11:47:00.000-05:00

It's really only spelled with one "p"! No joke! Think of all the time you've wasted, that you'll never get back by the way, having taken that extra moment to include that extra, mendacious "p"!!! Good god! How many times as a child in some classroom or other did you use it while writing a description of your xmas holidays, summer vacation, best grade 3 friend with whom you enjoyed climbing all over them monkey bars!? You've been duped big time! No wonder you've been so unhapy! Time to blow the lid of this etymological conspiracy and enjoy true HAPINESS! Come on, come on get HAPY! Get ready for the Judgment Day! (And yes, that means it's also really pronounced "hay-pee-ness", all part of the lie it was and a small price to pay to live in the PRESENCE OF INEXORABLE TRUTH!)