Or so I thought

I didn't go away, I just went over there

2009-08-05T10:57:00.000-07:00

For those of you who may have been looking for me here I must let you know that I still exist, but just in a different neighborhood. After some glitches in this realm, for reasons best known to blogger, and still unknown to me, this beloved blog was frozen in time and I had no idea when and if it would be coming back. So, as in the case of a love gone bad, I moved elsewhere and am happy to be there.

So, then they brought it back, again with no reason given. Sorry honey, but we're separated now and I've got a different girl.

So, please come and check me out at http://mrwriteon.wordpress.com/. Same old stuff in just a different format and template.

Meanwhile, I'll check in here periodically to see if anybody is still dropping around.

#comments#comments

2009-07-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

#comments#comments

Thanks for visiting my blog and I am delighted I found yours. I'll establish a link with mine. Cheers.

The electric car is a great idea, except --

2009-04-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

First, a question: Why does it seem that those who might be in love with the concept of those ugly and expensive energy-efficient, albeit awash in mercury, fluorescent light bulbs that governments are threatening to make mandatory, are also the same people that think electric cars are the bees’ knees?

About those awful, epilepsy-inducing lightbulbs, I’ve already stated my case. On the other hand, I’m pretty soft on electric cars. I think the idea is superlative if there really was will applied to rendering the concept realistic. Electric vehicles are quiet, non-polluting, and have been too long neglected. If you would like a taste of what an electric vehicle society would be like, and are in the area of Southern California, take a nice day-trip across to Catalina where the internal combustion engine is largely outlawed, and everybody zips around in golf carts. It’s very cool – and quiet.

Back to the lightbulbs. Let’s take a city the size of LA. Greater Los Angeles has a population that is literally half that of the whole of Canada. It is also one of the most vehicle swamped cities on the globe. If you’ve ever driven on an LA freeway, you will know what I mean.

Now, let us say that LA were to take all those hydro-carbon consuming behemoths on those freeways and replace them with electrics. Heavenly. The loss of the noise alone would be worth the price of admission. And, no crap would be spewed into the atmosphere and the carbon footprint of the megalopolis would be reduced substantially. We all would win – right?

Well, not exactly. If you have electric vehicles you have batteries. And for batteries to do their job, they must be charged regularly. Could you imagine the impact on the power grid with 15 million battery chargers doing their duty each and every night. I’m afraid those nasty little lightbulbs wouldn’t balance the thing out.

At present California is power starved and it purchases power for its grid from all over, including British Columbia with its hydroelectric dams. In fact, we sell to California and make a nice penny from it. So, back to reality. California would literally not have the power at present to charge all those batteries.

So, how are they to do it? How are any of us to do it, working from the assumption that electric transport really does catch on? Conventional forms of power generation are all under the gun these days. And, largely they should be.

Hydroelectric, for example (which is dear to the corporate hearts of this part of the world), is clean, but it drowns huge valleys, decimates wildlife, severely impacts salmon runs, destroys forests, and messes up the natural courses of rivers.

Much hyped wind power – go to Palm Springs if you want to see it in a brave new world manifestation – is also clean. But, it’s unreliable and can cause surges and huge strains on electric grids, and don’t even go to the toll those big fans take on birdlife. It is not pretty.

Tidal power seems appealing, but too little is known about its environmental impact on marine life. In my opinion, any innovation that causes greater environmental impact than its use justifies, is to be avoided. I move intellectually and emotionally more in that direction all the time. We’ve been too damn wasteful and heedless for too long, and are paying the price.

Solar power, especially in sunny climes, is great for heating the bath water, and in that regard should be embraced. For operating a mass of computers and TVs, however, not so great.

Thermal? Nice if you’re in Iceland. Not too practical in many other parts of the world.

Coal and oil generation are much, much cleaner than they used to be, but you are still burning hydrocarbons and if the causes of global warming really are caused by this, then you may as well keep internal combustion engine vehicles.

That leaves us with nuclear – or ‘nucular’, as Homer Simpson and George W. would have it – as a considered option. Nukes, of course, cause all sorts of paranoia and people are left with visions of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Hey, accidents do happen, and sometimes with ghastly consequences. The bugbear with nuclear is disposal of both the ‘hot’ water and the nuclear cores. At the same time, however, it is virtually non-polluting, highly efficient and is already widely used. Even some noted environmentalists have suggested that nuclear might ultimately be the way to go for energy hungry contemporary societies.

Otherwise, there’s that old Eveready Bunny. Hey, he can even power intergalactic space ships.

Ultimately, I would be delighted if electric vehicles were to prosper but I cannot for the life of me see how.

Definitely not the easy way out

2009-04-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck. If you live through it, you start looking very carefully to the right and to the left.
- Jean Kerr

I only mention the topic because I just read last week that my own community, the Comox Valley, has a much higher population of divorced folk per capita than larger centers like Vancouver. In fact, we are in the top five of marriage dissolution survivors (or victims) than is found in the mainstream.

I like to think it’s something to do with the climate, or maybe the ennui of smaller community life. Or maybe we’re just a thoroughly irresponsible lot who just don’t have the gumption to stick to a commitment for life.

Whatever is the case, I honestly don’t know many people in my circle who haven’t been divorced at least once. Yet, very dear old friends in Toronto of the same age attest that virtually nobody in their circle has made any divorce lawyers richer. I almost find that weird and highly unimaginative.

I jest, of course. Divorce is a horrible thing to go through and it takes a very long time to make the emotional adjustment to the sense of failure that transpires, not to mention the overweening sense of loss. Divorce bites and all levels, even though it is sometimes necessary. And sometimes it is.

As follows are some thoughts I had on the matter a few years ago. It’s very small excerpt from a book I wrote as a guide to middle aged men as they deal with, well, middle age. The book is as yet unpublished, but that is mainly because I haven’t pushed diligently or even hysterically enough. But, as a survivor of breakup I felt I had some insights to offer. So, here are a few scattered musings:

On a dismal and damp morning, a week, a month, six months after the divorce, you awaken after a fitful sleep (all sleeps are fitful these days), and you realize as you've never realized anything before, that you are alone. You are utterly alone. You are isolated-sans companion-desolate-remote-detached-forsaken-solitary-solo-you-and-your-shadow-an-island, and lonelier than you could ever have imagined was possible.

Welcome to the world of despair. How could it have all gone so wrong? This isn't what you'd fantasized divorce would be like. Your fantasy called for -- after the unpleasantries of the separation period were completed – a bevy of ladies, young, exquisitely beautiful, and extraordinarily uninhibited. You would finally get to participate in 'all tomorrow's parties', in which the strong drink would flow with no fear of a disapproving look; you'd live in a condo that would be a dream bachelor domain with soft Florentine leather furnishings, a king-size bed with black satin sheets, a bar stocked like an upscale liquor store with fine vintages, imported beers and velvet-on-the-tongue cognacs; there would be a mammoth ice-dispensing refrigerator, containing only T-bone steaks and lobster tails, sitting next to a Jenn-Aire range (both appliances in burnished stainless-steel; and parked in the driveway, next to the Range Rover SUV would be that '58 Corvette you've always cherished.

What you didn't imagine is what you've got: a dingy, drab, roach-infested one-bedroom flat in a down-at-the-heels and violent neighborhood, with your recently-purchased rusted '92 Tercel sitting in the parking lot, next to a long-abandoned K-Car with a smashed windshield and missing front wheel. That's where you are because your fantasy didn't take into account that divorce is, in the early stages at least, ever so much more costly than being married. You will have more than just the material losses you to contend with, however. You will also have the emotional stuff. If you didn't think before that you actually had emotions, you are now realizing you were living a lie. You are wounded, grievously wounded. If you're in denial about that, you aren't going to grow at all.
But, if you are a mass of weeping, festering wounds, then you're normal. Apply some bandages and be prepared to face one of the nastiest ordeals of your life to date. If you are on your way towards the divorce court, be forewarned, this is not a day that will enchant you. But, you have to do it. And you’ll survive. Thousands before you have. Just go with the flow and remember that statements made in the heat of the moment are not necessarily a reflection of the baseness of your character. Or, maybe they are, but you’ll still survive if you have the will to do so.

Having had too much personal experience I this regard, take it from me, it gets better, and it gets ‘different.’ It’s in the differences that life can eventually gain a little of the enchantment that it lost during the conflict.

My suggestion is to live for the day every day in the early stages. You won't see a big change in your feelings immediately, but eventually, in small increments, the days do improve and, if you're playing your cards right, one morning you will awaken and find your life is more positive than it has been in years. That's if you've gone about it in the right way. If you haven't, then you can't avoid becoming a divorce statistic. Did you know that divorced men have the highest premature death rate of all creatures in the known universe? I exaggerate, but it is much higher than the rate for married, or long-term relationship fellows. I hate the fact that divorced women have a really low death rate, but that's another issue entirely.

All things considered, by this point in life, and being very happily married (finally), if there had been any way to avoid the pain of divorce, I would have definitely done so. Neither of my divorces was without agony, either for me or for my spouses. It is never a matter to be taken lightly. As I say, it has all worked out for all of us, but Jean Kerr's 'Mack Truck' reference is well-founded.

Sometimes it's better to just shut the hell up

2009-04-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

My paternal grandfather was a lawyer. He was also a very bright, well-read and cultured dude. And there was nothing my grandfather liked more – except for listening to the opera on the radio on Sunday afternoons – the entire goddamn opera, if you will – than a good argument.

And, he couldn’t stand losing an argument. Well, that was the lawyer and logician in him. Arguments to him were intellectual calisthenics. Didn’t matter what the subject was, he would persist with his points and with steely logic defeat his adversary.

When I got into my late teens I came to appreciate the process. That was around about the time I actually, momentarily, considered the law myself. The idea of me joining the ranks of the barrister/solicitor contingent appealed to my grandfather greatly. I obviously never went in the direction of .the bar – the bar of jurisprudence, that is.

Regardless of the direction of my professional aspirations, my grandfather did teach me how to argue a point and he would remorselessly shoot down any violations of the process. If I was to stand up against his points I had better come well-armed because he afforded no compassion for pikers in the realm. I needed facts and, if losing, I must never resort to ad hominem insults. If A equaled B, and B equaled C, then I’d better be able to prove that A also equaled C, or give up the fight.

By the time I was in university I’d gotten pretty good at the process. I recall one argument that took place when he was visiting my parents for Sunday dinner. I don’t remember the topic but for the first time I knew I’d gotten the old guy good. I was firm in my resolve and with the smugness of youth I rejoiced in the fact I believed I’d won. While I hadn’t exactly left him sputtering, I did give him pause. The pause seemed like victory to me.

After he’d left for the evening I felt good. I had, I thought, earned my stripes. I had defeated the old master and that, I was sure, gave me some sort of master status. It would never be the same now that he had come up against a foe such as I was at the age of 21 or something equally ridiculous and callow.

I was wrong. The phone rang at 10 o’clock that night. It was my grandfather. He told me that he knew I was wrong but hadn’t been able to find the documentation to validate it. Back at his home he’d found it and shot my illogic to shit. He was prepared to admit, however, that he should have been better briefed before going into ‘court’ that evening.

Regardless of all of that, I have always taken pleasure in reasoned argument and debate and have only tempered that feeling later in life when I came to realize that not only do some people dislike argument for argument’s sake, but they find it somehow confrontational and disruptive of polite discourse. And some people are also given to personalizing arguments with such retorts as: “Oh yeah, sez you, shithead!” Such interchanges truly destroy the intellectuality of the exercise.

I also eventually came to realize that some arguments cannot ever be won and that there is no point in trying to win them, despite the facts that politicians and advocacy groups tend to do this all the time.

Unwinnable arguments are those that call to the fore human feelings, intrinsic beliefs, bigotries, and plain boneheadedness, regardless of how firmly the arguer believes in his stupid damn ideas.

Yes, argument is a study in logic. When you pour in some human sentiment, then you spoil the broth irreparably and the issue will go nowhere.

Consequently, I have a mental list of subjects not really worthy or winnable of argument. They include:

- The death penalty for certain crimes: I’m still primarily opposed, but I make exceptions I realize. I shed no tears for Ted Bundy, nor did I think the State of Florida was in any way remiss for frying the bastard.
- Abortion: I learned long ago to never venture into this realm. It’s much too personal and, as a male, I don’t feel I have any right unless I personally know what it’s like to be facing an unwanted pregnancy.
- Homosexuality: I am not gay, but I have always – not just recently after it became trendy – believed that we find love where we do and who am I to judge or argue the point.
- Drug Legalization: As an addictions counselor and one who has seen the addicted sitting across a desk for me, or going through the agonies of withdrawal (not a soothing sight) I have strong opinions about this. Others have differing opinions. It’s one I have had to learn to live with.
- Teenage sexuality: At one level, I think a healthy expression of sexuality is part of the human condition and who am I to stand in the way of a behavior that is intrinsic and was certainly very much a part of me when I was young. On the other hand, if I were the father of a teenage daughter (which I am not) I would be: “Not with my daughter you don’t, you little bastard!”
- Religion: To indulge in such an argument is always presumptuous and also insufferably arrogant. Whatever the tenets of the beliefs of another is never anybody’s business, and to try to dissuade somebody from the articles of his or her faith is stupid. You may take exception to Tom Cruise’s Scientology, but it remains his business. Go ahead and poke all the holes you want in what he holds dear, but you are wasting your breath. The number of wars throughout history that have been based on violating the religious beliefs of others are innumerable, and they still go on, as we all know. This is probably the most dangerous realm of argument of all.

As I suggested, it is not really worth anybody’s while to debate about the foregoing. At the same time, we shouldn’t avoid honest debate. It can be enjoyable and I have also found that if an argument mounted to counter my thoughts on any matter is well enough founded, I can even be persuaded to assume an alternate point-of-view.

Give a little back so we don't have to leave

2009-04-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

Dick Cheney refuses to call it a day

Hands up, how many of you watched Life After People on the History Channel Sunday evening?

What an ideal precursor to Earth Day was this intriguing and beautifully produced offering. Basic premise was, if the planet is messed up, then we are responsible. Added to which, should we all go away, then literally within days, the place would start rebuilding itself, and within centuries, and assuredly millennia all vestiges of us would be forever gone. See, all we have to do is, like Elvis, leave the building. This was all manfested via advanced computer technology that showed our cities and towns deteriorating as nature took its own back.

It has been said before that if humanity were wiped off the face of the earth, the planet would just keep moving along. But, if bees or earthworms left, the place would be doomed. Puts it all in perspective.

None of this is intended to suggest that the attainments of humanity have all been amiss. I generally like the trappings of civilization, just as much as I revere nature in its fundament. But, I would find it difficult to live on a planet that did not have a London, Paris, Florence, or the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. One glimpse of Michelangelo’s David may not prove there is a God, but it goes a goodly stretch in that direction. Hamlet’s soliloquy answers some pertinent questions and the New Testament raises some other ones.

So, no, I would rather we had sufficient wisdom to both keep us from leaving and to also do a much better job of maintaining what we have – for the benefit of all creatures and assorted bits of shrubbery.

One of that statements made on Life After People pertained to the oceans of the planet. It noted that within mere decades vast quantities of marine life would be well on their way to returning to their status of centuries past, before we exploited them so horribly that within my own lifespan I have witnessed ghastly changes. But, what else? The program pointed out that we have come to treat our oceans in two ways: As food sources for our gaping and greedy maws, or as toilets. That about sums it up.

Yet, the oceans are so vast, surely we can’t have damaged them so. I have flown across the breadth of the Pacific. I have stood on the other side. At more than 500 mph for 10 hours we still hadn’t reached our destination. How can something that big be so vulnerable? But it is. Horribly vulnerable.

So, as a coastal person, my Earth Day concern is of a soggier sort than plain old dirt, not that the dirt isn’t vital, too. But, my primary concern is the oceans and waterways that are the source of original life on the planet.

I recall a time in early adulthood when I lived on the beach in this area and I could ask my wife if she fancied barbecued salmon for dinner. If she replied that she did, I would take the boat out and within a half hour return with a fish. They were that plentiful. Abundant enough they were that I would regularly watch them finning the surface of the water. Long, long gone are such days, and this within an expanse of time that is frighteningly short.

Personally, I’d like to see the following transgressors summarily deleted from our seas:
- Deep net fishing fleets
- Whalers
- Industries that spew their crud into our rivers and oceans
- Cities that dump raw sewage into oceans, lakes and rivers
- Absolutely anybody who would dare to throw a plastic bag into the ocean
- Dirty marine engines that spread oil and other fuels into the seawater
- Logging operations that ignore the vital roll of spawning beds in coastal streams to the well-being of the seas.
- Negligent fish farm operators.

Oh, I could go on and on with this rant.

Whatever the case, do whatever little thing you can on Earth Day to make the terra firma and the waterways a bit healthier.

I think it's called taking ownership of your problem

2009-04-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been much of a gambler. I’m the planet’s worst poker player, blackjack and I are not good friends, I don’t understand roulette, and a Vegas vacation would divert me for about an hour and then I’d want to move on and look at Hoover Dam.

I buy the odd lottery ticket when I remember it, even though I know that the odds my winning are less than my chances of being teletransported through the time-space continuum or having a carnal date with Scarlett Johansson after she’s called me up and just begged for it.

As Fran Leibowitz once opined (and who could ever refute the wisdom of Fran?), your chances of winning the lottery are about the same whether you do or do not buy a ticket.

So, it’s not entirely fair for me to judge somebody with a gambling addiction problem.

That’s why the woes of Peter Dennis, and his consequent actions, piss me off. Dennis, of North Bay, Ont. Has mounted a $3.5 billion class-action lawsuit against the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. on behalf of more than 10 thousand ‘problem’ gamblers.

Seems Dennis is addicted to games of chance and has lost all his life’s savings, alienated his family, is in debt up the yin-yang and sold his teenage daughters into white slavery. Oh, not the latter. Then that speaks well of his sense of responsibility.

I have a problem with this whole scenario. My problem is that Dennis is trying to hand over the solution to his boneheadedness to somebody else, rather than taking personal responsibility. He is not unlike an alcoholic who wants to sue the Seagram’s folks or the local saloonkeeper for his alcoholism. Where in the picture does personal responsibility enter? Why can’t Mr. Dennis say: “I fucked up bigtime and I guess I have to bear with the results of my stupidity.”

He says he can’t. He can’t because he’s addicted. Fair enough. In my counseling training I took a two-day, intensive course of study on compulsive and addictive gambling. So, I know that for some, gambling is an addiction and one that is every bit as disruptive as alcoholism and drug addiction. In fact, the suicide rate is higher than it is for substance addiction.

So, I am not trivializing here.

What I am doing is exhorting Dennis and others like him, to take some ownership rather than blaming others. This is no defence of casino-culture, because I find the whole concept distasteful and greedy and certainly casinos prey on the compulsives because they’re the ones who really lay on the bucks. That’s similar to the understanding that distilleries and breweries would go out of business if it weren’t for the lushes that consume 80 percent of the good stuff. Regular tipplers are not good for the profit margin, so feel free to indulge a smirk when distillery ads exhort people to drink responsibly. If people drank responsibly their stock shares would plummet.

But, eventually it comes down to the ability of Mr. Dennis and others to simply say ‘no’, just like Nancy suggested. By saying ‘no’, that means get some therapy, get into a 12-step group like Gambler’s Anonymous, and work your program every single damn day just like thousands and thousands of successful former drunkards and drug addicts have done – a day at a time.

There are temptations in the world. Lots of enticing lures can suck us in. It is up to us how we respond. If we respond in a thoughtless way, whose fault is it? I’m sorry that Mr. Dennis is broke, but I don’t really have that much sympathy. He made his choices and he gets to pay the piper.

Keep a spot on your bookshelves for this puppy

2009-04-16T16:08:00.000-07:00

I have a lovely friend who is operating a half-way house for recovering addicts and alcoholics. She is a personal hero even though she is about 20 years younger than I am. She makes me just a little (sigh) ashamed of myself. She makes me feel ashamed because she is giving so much of her, while still remaining a delightful person to be around, with a nice and positive outlook on life.

It’s not that I have a lot to feel ashamed about. At least not much these days. Hey, I learned my lessons a long time ago. But, sometimes I feel ashamed when I don’t see myself embracing who I am and where I am in this life – and to be anywhere in this life is better than not being in this life – I think.

Anyway, why I am feeling like this is simple. Over the last week I have embarked on a new book-length writing project. I mean, I already have two unpublished manuscripts kicking around, and I will definitely send both out again. They haven’t been abandoned. But, this one has currently caught my interest and has added a little verve to creative enterprise.

I like to think it’s going to be good.

I could be thoroughly, even laughably wrong about that.

So, it’s in that realm that I envy my friend. What she is doing is something of tangible worth. I am doing something of nebulous worth. You can see what she is doing. You can only hear about what I’m doing – from me. But, for all you know, I might be spending my entire day surfing porn sites or making spurious connections on Facebook.

When I was younger I had romantic visions of what it would be like to be a professional writer. It was indeed something I had always wanted to be. I went into the newspaper business primarily because I thought being a journalist would almost automatically qualify me to be a writer of books. Those romantic visions included:

- living in a bed-sit in Chelsea or a NYC walkup.
- Having intimate liaisons with young and highly impressionable college girls.
- Scribbling notes in smoky cafes in Paris and contributing to that smoke with my own Galoises.
- Drinking excessively to mask my personal pain. All writers got personal pain.
- Siring assorted children with assorted people.
- Being insulting to guys like Salman Rushdie at fancy-ass cocktail parties. You know, calling him a “sellout” and stuff.

You’ll notice there is not much mention of actual writing in that scenario. That’s because the actual writing is the hard part. Well, not really the ‘hardest’ part, the hardest part is the selling of something that contains droplets of your blood.

What I will say is that the actual writing is the loneliest part of the process. I now have the freedom to do what I always wanted, and sometimes it’s scary. Mainly it’s lonely.

In that I don’t mean lonely in the sense that I want a lot of people hanging around when I am ‘in process’. Indeed I do not. If I need a people injection, I can go out for a coffee. No, the loneliness comes from the process of my connecting only with what is going up on a little rectangular screen. Zappo, my thoughts are transferred to that screen.

But, what if the thoughts are no good? What if they are badly expressed? How can I know that? ‘I’ can think they’re good. But somebody else has to think they’re good. This is especially true if the writer is not some disgraced celebrity, for example. Those people always get book contracts and it doesn’t matter what crap they spew to their ghostwriter, their musings will be on a Barnes & Noble shelf in no time. True, they’ll all end up in the remaindered bin in three months, but at least they’ll be out there.

Enough about my angst. Suffice it to say I am doing something about putting into written form something about which I know something. It’s a project that has been in the offing for about seven years. It’s about my work counseling addicts and running a rehab. I want it to be succinct, scrupulously honest, candid and sometimes even humorous. That’s what I want. I have no idea if I’ll succeed.

Wish me luck, give me a hug, and I’ll keep you informed about the process as time goes by.
-

The days when women were fettered and trussed

2009-04-15T10:26:00.000-07:00

“Ooh, a panty-girdle,” I exclaimed, maybe a little too enthusiastically during a scene in which a woman was disrobing in an episode of Mad Men a while ago.

“I thought you told me you hated panty-girdles,” Wendy replied, looking ever so slightly askance at me.

“Pure nostalgia,” I said. “I did hate them at one, obvious, level but the scene still had some sweet associations.”

The sweet association being that if you had come to the realization your date was trussed in a panty girdle, you had actually made it past 2nd base. Revelation of undergarb was, in the context of that day, early 3rd base to be sure.

The ‘nice’ girls of the 1940s generally wore panty girdles, ‘50s and early ‘60s. They were something of a combination of chastity belt and fashion statement. As fashion statement (as opposed to chastity belt, to which I’ll attest was their primary purpose) they were deemed desirable in that they were slimming. In truth, which is why they were favored by parents of young females, they were intended to be an anti-aphrodisiac in that the wearer was rendered from behind with the appearance that she had only one bum cheek with no suggestive cleft in the middle.

Panty girdles varied in fortifications. Some were pinned up with wire and bone and were virtually impenetrable, alas. Others were a little more welcoming, sometimes even cute, but they still gave an artificial appearance to the wearer and did thwart amorous ambitions if they became too overt.

According to one girl friend they were also a bit on the impractical side in times of dire urinary emergency, in which it was sometimes difficult to get them down quickly enough.

My first steady girlfriend wore a panty girdle always. While she was quite ardent in physical affection, she would not remove the garment or choose alternative garb for dates. Frustration prevailed – as it should have, no doubt, in the days before the birth-control pill.

My second steady began with a panty girdle when we were first dating, but ultimately abandoned it. This was reflective of two things. One was that change in fashions that was manifesting in the 1960s, and the other was my plaintive and whiny entreaties.

“Why aren’t you wearing your panty girdle these days?” her mother once asked when she was emptying the washer.

“Because Ian doesn’t like them,” she replied, unthinkingly.

“HMMM!” responded her mother, a little too loudly.

The panty girdle died a deserved death from the mid 1960s on. It died for a number of reasons, but the first one was fashion. The mini-skirt came into vogue, and simultaneously, so did pantyhose. The old-fashioned garters and stockings (the only ‘good’ thing about panty girdles) were relegated to past tense.

It was also a more sexually liberated time, thanks to the pill and changing mores in those pre STD days. If a girl had a pretty bum she wanted to show off both cheeks of it. Thoughtful of them, I’d say. Furthermore, despite the minis, girls regularly were decked out in jeans by that time, and panty girdles just looked plain silly under jeans.

I welcomed the change, as did most females. But, you’ll forgive me for the tiny nostalgia pang with that Mad Men episode. Those ‘weren’t’ the days, but they had their moments.

Bidding adieu to the good folks of Dog River

2009-04-14T14:34:00.000-07:00

I am not very familiar with Saskatchewan. I’m not ashamed to admit that, it’s just a fact of life. I’ve gone through it on the train and have flown over it a few times, but that’s about it for me in terms of the place. I know a few things about Saskatchewan, however. Such as:

- it’s very flat.
- It has grain elevators
- It’s horribly cold in the winter
- It’s hideously hot in the summer
- Mounties train there
- A lot of people are ‘from’ there, like my first wife.
- Oh, and Corner Gas was set there.

Corner Gas probably did more to familiarize folks with Sasklife than anything else has in the past. From CG we learned that in this particular part of Saskatchewan

- it was never stinking hot;
- it never seemed to be winter;
- one episode once concerned mosquitoes but they didn’t seem so very terrible;
- the sun was always shining.
- there was no bigotry against native Canadians in that part of Saskatchewan and the top cop was aboriginal but never-ever nodded to his heritage;
- nobody seemed to do much of anything but they got by;
- nobody ever had a life-complicating relationship;
- there was no smut and seemingly no sex;
- no crime;
- no violence.

In other words, as television goes, CG had all the makings of a failure. Yet it was a huge smashing success. That’s an anomaly for a Canadian TV show, especially a comedy.

Canada has turned out some fine TV over the years, but mainly in the realm of hard-hitting news and advocacy stuff, and we have much to be proud of in that regard. But drama, and especially comedy was often sorely lacking and drew viewing audiences of like nine people. That’s despite the fact some of the top comics and comedic actors in the business originated north of the US border, like Martin Short, Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Mike Myers, Jim Carrey, Leslie Nielsen, Michael J. Fox, Matthew Perry, Dave Foley, Tommy Chong, etc, etc.

See, we have to be funny because the winters are so long.

Yet, TV comedy never served at a level commensurate with those foregoing talents. Until Corner Gas, that is.

CG was the brainchild and creative endeavor of the marvelously named Brent Butt. Even he thinks the name’s funny. This once and future standup comic created the tales of the teeny town of Dog River, Sask. And based it loosely on the hometown of his childhood.

The rest, as they say, is history.

CG sold widely throughout the world and many people loved its kind gentle and funny view of the world. In that, Dog River is like Sheriff Andy Taylor’s Mayberry, that North Carolina hamlet that could never have really existed any more than Dog River can really be found in the harsh climate of Saskatchewan.

But, in our hearts in a harsh world, the Dog Rivers and Mayberrys give us a bit of hope about the essential goodness of folks.

Corner Gas aired its final episode last evening. It was purposely killed by Butt himself, who wanted to go out on top. I, for one, will miss them.

C'mon everybody and do the mashed potato

2009-04-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

Just to show you what a non-judgmental and fair person I am, I happen to think that Sling Blade was one of the finest films to have been made in recent years.

The fact that the 1996 cinematic masterpiece was written by, directed by, and starred Billy Bob Thornton is testament to his skills as a creative master when he chooses to be. And, fairly enough, it comes as no surprise that Billy Bob is a trifle on the eccentric side. Creative geniuses often are. And considering the fact that he included the beautiful but mildly scary Angelina among his 217 (or so) wives, is also reflective of his less-than-pedestrian view of the world and life.

So, I’ll forgive BB for being flaky – he used to carry a vial of Angelina’s blood around his neck for crissake, and has a phobia about the color orange – but I won’t be so quick to condone uncalled-for rudeness by a guy with his head maybe just a little too far up his own ass. Being a so-called star never excuses you for being a jerk.

So, on a tour of Canada last week ‘musician’ Billy Bob was interviewed on CBC Radio by some guy named Jian Ghomeshi and the ‘interview’ went from bad to worse as BB decided to go all Joaquim Phoenix on Letterman weird during the interview.

Now, I am not familiar with Mr. Ghomeshi. I do listen to CBC Radio once in a while, though less than I used to, mainly because CBC Radio is less than it used to be. But, in the opinion of Mr. Thornton, Mr. Ghomeshi was an “asshole” primarily because he made oblique reference to the Thornton acting career as opposed to his burgeoning music career. Kind of a natural ‘mistake’ one might think.

Of the BB musical contribution he ‘was’ touring Canada with his group The Boxmasters, along with lovable old stoner Willie Nelson and others. So, I guess that was what he wanted to talk about. OK, fine. And maybe the interviewer wasn’t considerate of the BB wants and needs.

But, evidently, his commentary during the interview ranged from the virtually non-communicative to the weird to the just plain rude.

And now all sorts of loyal Canucks are bent out of shape about some of the
Thornton observations on their home and native land, such as:

“Canadian audiences seem to be very reserved. We tend to play places where people throw things at each other. Here they just sort of sit there. And it doesn’t matter what you say to them …. [They’re like] mashed potatoes without gravy.”

Mashed potatoes without gravy? Hmm. Maybe tell that to Canadian Neil Young. In context of his statement about bland mashed potatoes Canadian audiences, maybe they’re just stoned? About the same time as his radio diatribe the sensibilities of obviously very delicate and pure Britney Spears were tested sufficiently that she walked off the state at a Vancouver concert for 40 minutes due to the volume of ‘wacky terbacky’ fumes wafting through the air from that Canadian audience.

Or, maybe with mashed potatoes he was just referring to Toronto audiences? That would make sense to anybody who lives in the wooly west.

Anyway, Thornton got a lot of heat as a result of his boorishness and as a result of a surfeit of mashed potato backlash, he hightailed it back stateside and left Willie to complete the tour without him.

Frankly I think the whole thing is kind of hilarious and equally frankly, I don’t give a flying ‘fig’ (see how politely mashed-potato Canadian I can be?) what he thinks about Canadian audiences. I hope he is happier being back where audiences throw stuff. That’s classy.

But, I stay firm in my belief that Sling Blade is a fine movie.

Happy Easter to one and all!

2009-04-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

I do know that in the Christian scheme of notable holidays (holy-days) that Easter and the whole Easter weekend thing are much more important than the often vulgar and over-commercialized Christmas. I didn’t pay a lot of attention in Sunday school but I did pick up on that bit of lore.

Easter is, for Christians, all about the resurrection and the divinity of Christ.

OK – that’s the God stuff out of the way. Now, back to Easter. At least, Easter for a kid.

When I was a child I saw Easter as a kind of lesser Christmas. You know, you got stuff, but not a whole lot of stuff, and not big-ticket stuff. In fact, kind of stupid little stuff all in a dorky yellow and purple woven basket.
So, there would be chocolate eggs and jellybeans and little toy baby chicks, and that was about it.

Also, on Easter, we all ‘had’ to go to church where a family service would be held and there would be much talk about the true meaning of Easter, most of which I found rather abstract and too metaphorical for my tiny ears.

The Easter highlight always was the dyeing of hard-boiled eggs and the subsequent egg hunt. We’d gather a truckload of neighborhood kids around the kitchen table, pass out the eggs (only white ones) and dip them into containers of food-coloring and vinegar. My parents would then hide them around the big yard, and we would have to ferret them out. I don’t recall any prizes involved with this ritual, but it was simple fun, regardless.

It would also mean egg-salad sandwiches for the next many days.

OK, that is all I have to say about Easter, other than to hope you all have a very happy one.

The continuing saga of 'Tall Guy'

2009-04-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

I’m a relatively friendly soul. I have my boundaries and I don’t spread myself around like a low-rent taxi-dancer (at least I don’t think I do. God, what if I’m wrong?) When I am dealing with others I come across during my day.

But, for example, when I’m out for a walk and pass somebody on the street I generally smile, nod, and even say ‘hi’ or ‘hello’. I think such agreeability is a mark of being civilized. And, this is the sort of community in which such things go on. I like it.

Consequently I am always a bit dumfounded when I come across somebody with no loquaciousness. I am especially piqued when this individual is one a person comes across all the time.

We have a favorite local coffee joint. It’s a nicely appointed and invariably friendly place. We both like it very much. We know the baristas and have come to know most of the regulars. Indeed, are on a first name basis with most of them. I mean, it’s just a big and contented family getting th3eir morning caffeine fixes while they nod at one another, say ‘hello’, ask about the family and with the closer coffee co-conspirators even exchange the odd hug. Sort of like the Cheers bar minus the suds, as well (blessedly) Norm and Cliff.

But, there is one guy who breaks from the pattern. He has been going there for years but is yet to smile, nod, pass the time of day or acknowledge one’s existence. He is very, very tall. I don’t know how tall. Maybe 11-foot-three or something. Well, from my vantage point of 5-foot-nine-ish-sorta, anybody over six feet seems mighty elevated. As an aside, I once dated a six-foot tall girl. Was she ever nice to slow dance with. Now, moving right along. Since this guy is so tall we have, with much originality and honesty, christened him ‘Tall Guy’.

So, I have played a few games with Tall Guy, or TG, which I have shortened it to – again with the originality, I know. I have tried to lean waaaaaaay back and establish eye-contact with him. Nothing. I’ve smiled. Nothing. I’ve nodded. Nada. I’ve even said ‘hi’. The salutation is not returned.

I don’t think his reserve is because I am shorter than he is, because he’s like that with everybody. Mind you, most people are shorter than he. Maybe he does suffer from munchkinophobia?

Anyway, not only is TG very tall, I have never been able to figure out his story. What does he do? He looks to be in maybe his early 40s but apparently doesn’t need to be anywhere during the day in terms of working. He’s always there. It’s a guarantee. Also, he is never-ever with anybody, male or female. Certainly doesn’t seem to have a lady friend or spouse. Or, if he’s gay, he doesn’t seem to have a close male companion or partner.

He walks to the place, because I have seen him on the street. We walk there as well, since it’s only a couple of blocks distant. He, of course, accomplishes the walk in about 17 lopes.

Anyway, I am not about to challenge TG in his isolation. It’s his right, despite my curiosity. I just wonder how somebody goes through life never choosing to interact with others.

Of course, it’s probably absolutely none of my business, but what the hell, I wasn’t a newspaper reporter at various times in my life without having something of a sense of curiosity. Maybe someday somebody will crack the TG story.

Now, on an entirely unrelated topic. Yesterday I had a nasty virus strike my cute little laptop and she is feeling unwell. Hugely unwell. So, she is in the infirmary and I am pinch-hitting on Wendy’s when I get access. But, of course, all my stuff, notes everything is on my own and, of course, I had nothing backed up and filed elsewhere.

Hopefully she will be back later today and then I have to re-insert all the programs.

So, if I haven’t been around your blog in the last little while, that is the reason. I still love you. Really I do, but when hi-tech becomes ailing-tech there is little a body can do.

There's always room at the Cocky-Locky Inn

2009-04-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

The current vogue is to refer to upscale hostelries as ‘boutique’ hotels, giving the desperate-to-impress traveler visions of shopping on Rodeo Drive or some other equally posh Mecca of extravagance. The word boutique is simply French for small store, or department within a larger store, but it exudes, in translation at least, a hint of having arrived. Something very important to arrivees. ‘Arrivee’, by the way, is French for pretentious bastard with more money than sense.

A few years ago hotels and motels (which used to be called auto-courts until the owners of such decided the term was a little too reminiscent of images of the Joad family making their way to ‘Californy’) came to be called ‘inns’. Actually there are still a lot of inns around. Most of the places that aren’t boutique hotels still stick with the nomenclature.

A couple of years ago we stayed in a boutigue hostelry in Palm Springs. We loved it. The place was a completely revamped and redecorated 1950s motel, but now boasting king-size beds and lots of other fancy-schmantzy accoutrements like Jacuzzis, etc. It was wonderful and we would stay tthere again and immerse ourselves in its retro ambiance willingly.

But, I say call hotels, motels, or flophouses what you will, they are ultimately just places that for a certain paid sum, one can hit the sack and hope for a reasonable night’s sleep, without being too distracted by noisy guests in adjoining rooms, drunks in the corridor, sirens in the streets, screams in the streets, or developing obsessive thoughts about just how stained the mattress might be beneath all this seemingly spotless linen. Oh, and why should items in the mini-bar cost more than a case of the stuff in a liquor store?

The less expensive rooms of my experience are basically cookie-cutter in accoutrements. They all generally have the same chenille bedspread, with the only variation being in color, as long as those colors are pink, white or beige. They will also have the same vinyl headboard, simulated wood desk; orange, yellow and brown curtains that invariably fail to keep out the flashing neon light of the bowling alley across the street. There will also be a few questionable, though not horrific, stains on the carpet. Oh, and there will be a fake oil painting of a quaint bucolic scene bolted to the wall. As if anybody would actually steal one of those hideous things. Oh, and a TV. A TV for which the remote, as often as not, won’t work.

Each time I enter a new room I follow a basic routine. My first stop is the bathroom, sometimes out of necessity, but more usually out of curiosity. I flush to make sure the mechanism on the john works. I regard the bathtub, usually with certain dismay, since they are invariably midget-sized. I scrutinize the toiletries, the little shampoos and soaps just to see if they will be worthwhile pilfering. There is always a shower cap. I imagine few shower caps get ripped off.

My next stop is that aforementioned television. Have you ever noticed that motel and hotel TVs are often some obscure brand like ‘Eddie’s?’ Expensive rooms have big flat screen top-end sets that make one feel a bit cheated upon returning to the crappy and archaic home TV. Cheap rooms are better in that regard because you don’t suffer TV envy when the vacation or business trip is over. A lot of hotel/motel TVs have extra-cost cable connections that will bring you relatively recent motion pictures or sleazy porn right to your own home-away-from-home. Some sort of a nod to contemporary mores, more for the lonely commercial traveller than anyone else, I suspect.

Oh, and I always check the bedside table drawer to see if there is a Gideon Bible present. While not being a man who is known for his religious devotion, I invariably feel more secure if the Bible is in place. For some reason I think this will protect me from being murdered in my bed. “Wait – don’t shoot! You wouldn’t shoot a man who was holding a Bible, would you. If you do it will mean you are definitely going to Hell when you die.” Works every time. Or so I tell myself.
I never really bother much with the ‘in case of fire’ escape routes. If there is a fire, I am going to be in such a blind panic that I won’t remember the diagram, in any case. I just know one rule, therein. Don’t take the damn elevator!

Mini-bar equals rip-off. Designed only for those too lazy or afraid to go down to the lounge, or for those who were silly enough to no bring their own supply at a fraction of the cost, or for alcoholics who have finished all their own stuff and who are still not ready to call it a night. Lushes are notoriously bad planners.

As I suggested, my observations, and in some cases, caveats, apply only to the middle ground of hostelries. I have stayed in some really crummy places, rarely, and some very high end digs, equally rarely. We stayed once, at off-season rate, at a very, very posh Waikiki hotel. My basic feeling was I didn’t even want to hit the beach. I just wanted to stay in the room. It was a room that put to the lie my long-held belief that a hotel room is just a place to lay one’s head, so why pay the big bucks? I know now that if I had the big bucks on a regular basis, I would go top-drawer all the way. But, I digress.

But, even with cheaper forms of accommodation, I do have my standards. When I am paying hard-earned money to avoid sleeping rough on a park-bench or in a railway station, I expect a basic value in return for my expenditure. For example, I would never think of staying at the following places:

A room with more than three beds. One of which seems to be already occupied.

A room with bullet holes in the wall.

A room in which the door to the hallway only locks from the outside.

A room with no window. Even if it overlooks the local stockyards, I demand a window.

A room in which there is a gas heater that suggests ‘Use at your own risk.’

A hotel or motel with hourly rates.

A hotel of which the clerk at the travel agency has told you: “Well, if there’s nothing else available, we can always get you into the Buena Vista. You do not want the Buena Vista, believe me.

A hotel of which, when the address is given, causes a cabbie to shake his head with dismay.

A hotel that asks you to leave the names of next-of-kin when registering.

A hotel in which the fire-charred areas above the windows have been inadequately covered by cheap paint.

A hotel in a foreign country in which the chambermaids speak English as a first language, and look suspiciously like North American College girls, a little the worse for stress.

If you should receive a message saying “help me,” scribbled in eyebrow pencil on the napkin that comes with your morning coffee realize that you finally know what ‘white slavery’ truly means. Do not let your female companion out of your sight at any time.

So, one April day we went and tied the knot

2009-04-02T16:13:00.000-07:00

When Wendy and I decided, after some deliberation -- after quite a lot of deliberation, in fact – that it would be pleasing at many levels to set up housekeeping under the same roof, and to share bed and board, we neither was prepared to couch any discussion of formalized matrimony.

That is, we didn’t want to get hitched – either then or at any point in the foreseeable future.

We had both been down that perilous matrimonial path before and we knew it was dotted with pitfalls and, at the outset at least, unforeseen hurdles that can ultimately prove insurmountable.

Ironically, when we had started dating, a few months prior to the time we decided to shack up, we had come into the fledgling relationship with a number of criteria concerning what we would be looking for, and what would not be acceptable by the same token. To our astonishment we found that our personal criteria were virtually the same.

Initially I was wary about even living together. I had a nice condo apartment, and Wendy had a very appealing townhouse. We overnighted on a fairly regular basis before we shared digs – OK, Ma, I confess, I was intimate with this lady – and that was working out OK. But, we finally decided to take the plunge and to not have to drive across town to see each other.

But marriage? Marriage was a big thing and we were shy about it. My second marriage was a rebound made in hell, for both my ex and myself. I’ll take full culpability for my role in the rapid break-up that followed. Whether she acknowledges her role would be for her to decide, and I wouldn’t dream of going there. As for Wendy’s matrimonial experience, I won’t go there either. That’s hers and not for me to elaborate upon.

We did come to know during our first few months together that we were pretty stable people and virtually no glitches manifested themselves. We’d learned from our bad experiences and we really were doing it differently this time. And, by God, it was working. We realized we were mighty happy together and adored each other’s company.

As time passed we realized instinctively that we were compatible at virtually ‘all’ levels, the fun ones and the serious ones. I know for me that my first marriage, while based on what I thought I knew about love – and I didn’t know a great deal about it at the time; nobody in their early 20s does, despite how much they might protest to the contrary – and also by the conventions of the day. The ‘expectations’ of the day, if you will, was ultimately doomed to fail.

My second was an emotional rebound and was hugely influenced by sheer animal lust. Great fun with a person who seemed to be a delight to be with. It would have been a fantastic affaire de coeur, but nothing more than that.

This one was different and very much better. And we just came to a mutual understanding that we were prepared to give this thing another shot. We also vowed that this one would be a keeper. This one would be the one we should have had all along. We also felt that the level of commitment demanded by marriage would cement it all in place.

So, we did it. We exchanged vows. Vows uttered with the utmost of sincerity.

That was 10 years ago this month.

And I still wouldn’t change a thing.

Rah for us!

Humor in a Jugular Vein, indeed

2009-03-31T15:31:00.000-07:00

Resentments over past losses are a magnificent waste of time. The time wasting aspect arises from the fact we can’t do anything about the loss, since it is in the past. The magnificence stems from the fact that if we let the resentments have their sway they can become so powerful that that will dominate our lives. How stupid is that?

So, my resentments over marriages and relationships lost, as well as having been saddled with amazingly unfeeling parents have, for the most part, in my moments of sanity, put on a back burner to maybe never go away, but at least to simmer gently.

But, there is one resentment I have that thoroughly pisses me off to this day. Pisses me off because if history had altered I might be a relatively rich man today. “Thanks, Mom,” he said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

You see, when I was about 14 my mother strongly suggested I should burn all my old comic books. I had outgrown them, she adjured, they were taking up space, and so they must go on a bonfire. I balked, but then foolishly thought she was maybe right. I would soon be ready to enter man’s estate, and comic books just wouldn’t fit into a mix that would shortly include (no doubt) the New Yorker, Atlantic and Harpers. And, I must be candid, the undraped tits in Playboy appealed just a bit more than the shenanigans of Little Lulu and Tubby.

So, in total at that time I had over 200 comic books. And they ‘all’ went into the conflagration. (sob!) Have you seen what even single issues of those things are worth today if they’re in good condition? The collection probably would have bought me a condo in Dubai.

For some reason, however, three tomes escaped the conflagration. One is a Walt Disney Comics and Stories from 1953, another is a Bugs Bunny from 1955 and the third, and most prized of all, is a Mad Magazine from September 1956. The Mad is the most prized of all. I grant it is in ratty condition, but it’s all there, and it is only the third magazine-format Mad to be published. Therein in lies a bit of the crux of my creative life as it has unfolded.

One day, a couple of years before my mother exhorted me to burn my comic books, my same age cousin showed me two or three ‘comics’ he had found. I’d never seen them before. The books were called Mad Comics. Standard comic book format were they, with the colors and frames, but contained therein were spoofs of established strips. But, rather than cheap throwaways, the lampoons of popular strips were beautifully drawn by established artists like Will Elder and Wally Wood, among a host of others.

What struck me was the fact that not only were the spoofs of Archie, Superman, Prince Valiant and others screamingly funny, they also metaphorically gave the finger to everything. I had, ladies and gentlemen, found satire for the first time. I never looked back. They were irreverent, rude, crude, and sometimes lewd with a lot of very big-boobed girls in the renderings, hilarious and took the constipated society of the 1950s to task. I was in heaven with this stuff.

Down the years I ran along with Mad. Within a couple of years it went to magazine format and in its prime, before it became a tiny bit lame and predictable, it held down the satirical fort. There were facsimiles, but none came close to the original as published by William M. Gaines (a former purveyor of horror comics from his EC stable).

We, of course, grow out of everything. And, just at the right time, when I was young and feeling a little rebellious, the National Lampoon came along. This was more brilliant, more irreverent, dirtier and funnier than Mad ever was in its wildest aspirations.

Again, some brilliant, brilliant folk were involved, like the late Doug Kenny, PJ O’Rourke, Ann Beatts and so many more I could not begin to mention them all. Much in the same vein as Second City, the original (and best) Saturday Night Live, and SCTV; National Lampoon came about in the age of Vietnam and profound irreverence and cynicism.

The premiere issue was known simply as: 'The Sexy Cover Issue.' I own it, I am proud to say. Indeed, I own the entire first year of National Lampoon. That was arguably the best year as well. It was fresh, shockingly smutty, brutal in its politics, often cringe-inducingly sophomoric in its themes, it still reflects a time. The classic cover during that year is the one pictured here – the worried looking dog and the revolver. I was especially struck by that cover since the dog pictured is the spitting-image of my beloved and still lamented border collie, Murphy.

It was around this time that I first turned my hand to putting together some satire of my own. I was still teaching high school, and one of the projects that I got my senior creative writing class to turn their hands to was the creation of an anti-yearbook spoof. And we did it, and it was very funny considering it was put together by me, a group of high school seniors. Two years after that the National Lampoon did their inspired and brilliantly done yearbook spoof, but I like to think we did it first.

After I left teaching shortly thereafter I became a newspaper columnist. My columns were almost always irreverent, and I was periodically chastised by my editor for coming too close to the line. But, I also won a couple of major writing awards for the paper, so he didn’t balk too much. I continued with my satirical column for nearly 20 years, and can honestly attest that – especially before I developed my own style – that Mad and Lampoon had roles to play.

At the same time, I am still pissed about having to burn those comic books.

Keep the yogurt away, and we shall be fine

2009-03-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

Sweet and innocent child being forced to consume yogurt

Has it struck you that there is an inordinate amount of television advertising for yogurt/yoghurt (your spelling of the substance will depend on your provenance)?

I do. I’d go so far as to call it wretched excess. I mean, it’s only yogurt, it’s not as if it were something important like coffee, beer, or Swiffer dusters.

I don’t much like yogurt, but normally, about three times every half hour of broadcasting I am bound to hear the expression ‘probiotic’ and to see a number of women reaching virtual orgasmic heights over the virtues of one brand over another. Rarely men in the dialogue, you may have noticed.

A particularly disgusting advert has a woman in the yogurt section of the supermarket – arguably the most boring section of any market after catfood – clandestinely guzzling down (with revolting gurgling noises) a mini-container of her favorite milk-bacteria concoction in the manner of a crackhead who cannot wait to stoke up after he has scored.

Now, don’t get me wrong about yogurt and indict me for not savoring a particular confection that is also ‘good for me.’ Just because something is good for me doesn’t mean I have to favor it.

Popular mythology holds that yogurt – a perfect substance for our fear-of-death obsessed society – has huge life-giving and longevity encouraging properties. We are all familiar with the tales of venerable Azherbaijanis or some other trans-Caucasus sorts who exist on diets consisting exclusively of yogurt and who live to remarkable ages, like 523 or something.

In fact, some proponents maintain that a diet high enough in yogurt – a gallon or so a day – will override all your other health-destroying habits so that you can know go back to smoking 3 or 4 packs a day and maybe take up heroin if you’ve always been curious.

Of course much of what I just wrote is balderdash, but I do known that yogurt fanatics swear to its amazing properties and I suspect that much like anything that tastes evil being remarkably good for one, the claims for yogurt hold water – or putrefying milk at least. Funny how things that taste wonderful like crème caramel or strawberry shortcake are merely coronaries in a dish.

So, yogurt is good for you. This leaves me with a couple of questions. In the first place, if it is so excellent, why is it necessary to advertise the crud so much? I mean, shouldn’t everybody just know that? Secondly, if it is so good, why is there any necessity to have more than one brand? Isn’t yogurt just yogurt? I mean, nobody pretends one brand of 2 percent milk is better than another, so why with yogurt?

I said two questions, but actually I have a third. That is, if yogurt is so goddamn wonderful, why is it necessary to disguise it with all sorts of fruit flavours – you know, to ‘candify’ it? This leaves me with the sneaking suspicion that a lot more people than me think it is sour and evil to the palate and nobody would touch the stuff unless they disguise it. You know, it’s sort of like fancy-ass cocktails designed to disguise the taste of plain old booze.

Anyway, I am unrepentant in my aversion to the stuff. I don’t care what you tell me about its virtues, I will never like it and refuse to consume it. I’ve tried, but it was a failed experiment. I eat all my fruit and veggies, and keep red meat to a minimum. I hardly use any salt, and butter is just a dab for me, and transfats are taboo in our house. I’ve paid the price. So keep damn yogurt away from me.

And cut down on the TV advertising, can’t ya? Or, at least create some with imagination and honesty that suggest: “We know it tastes horrible, but it’s so good for you!”

It's easy to get lost in 'Lost'

2009-03-26T11:21:00.001-07:00

I’m not really what you’d call an inveterate television viewer. There are literally dozens of programs currently on that I have never watched, nor do I have any intention of watching them. No particular reason for that; I just haven’t gone there.

For example, I have never watched any of the so-called and completely misnamed ‘reality’ shows. I don’t like seeing nasty people at their most base. I can see enough of that watching the news – which I also rarely watch. Any of the ‘idol’ programs are well beyond my radar. Why do I want to watch predominantly talentless people being judged by equally talentless jerks?

I’m not judging those who enjoy the foregoing. Television is at best a diversion, so chacun a son diversion.

But, there is one TV series that consistently sucker-punches me. That one is Lost. Each year I vow I am not going to be dragged back onto the ‘island’ and each year I invariably am.

Right from the beginning I believed Lost was doomed to a premature demise. It would, like a couple of much-hyped predecessors that also started with promise, lose its mojo along the way and just become stupid. So far, that doesn’t seem to have happened.

The most egregious example of what I am saying is Twin Peaks. Great first season. Amazing cast. Absolutely gripping theme music. Wonderful first season. But, that was it. Then it was all downhill into inanity and contrivance. Northern Exposure was another serialized epic that began with promise and, despite a great cast and terrific first season writing, lost its way. And lost me. For those reasons I scrupulously avoided X-Files and 24.

Yet, right from the beginning, Lost pulled me in and it seems to have kept going. Confusing as hell it is, and even more convoluted but, for some reason, I still care about the people who were on that Oceanic flight into something or other.

It always helped for me that it is filmed on Oahu and the Hawaiian scenery eases something in my soul. It also boasts some striking women, like lovely Evangeline Lily and (for me especially) Yunjin Kim, the amazingly striking Korean cupcake who plays Sun.

Actually, a high point in my jaded life was in 2005 when we stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and the entire cast from Lost came around to call one afternoon. And there they were, Sun and Kate, talking and laughing with each other. I fell instantly in love with both of them, and especially Kim who is just amazingly stunning in real life.

For Wendy it was sufficient that ‘Sawyer’ and ‘Sayid’ were there. Oh, and our man, Hurley, who is as girthful in real life as he is in the series.
Anyway, I think from that point we almost felt an obligation to continue with Lost because we had, you know, a ‘connection’. They were real people to us.

So, last evening we watched Lost’s offering. I asked Wendy if she found it confusing. She conceded that she did. I asked her if she wanted to stop watching it. She replied in the negative, but did sometimes think it was kind of like mastering a course of study in which you have to draw in earlier knowledge you have acquired.

“Sometimes it’s too much work,” she suggested.

Not many network TV productions could earn that criticism.

This cougar, she can have sharp claws, too

2009-03-25T15:56:00.000-07:00

“You know,” I said to a colleague recently at the business office at which I carry out my addictions counseling gig, “in all the tramping around I’ve done in the woods, I’ve never seen a cougar.”

“Hmm,” she, an attractive mature woman said, “You just may be talking to one right now.”

“Aha,” I replied (I’m quick on the uptake, I am-I am), “We’re talking about two different orders of cougars, and I must confess I prefer your kind.”

“Oh,” she responded with a laugh, “we can be every bit as lethal, and just might have sharper claws.”

So, nothing amiss here at all. She is happily married, I am happily married and we were just semantically goofing around during a lull period at work.

But, the ‘cougar’ concept is an interesting one. A male-dominated society traditionally held that it was both acceptable, and perhaps even desirable for some old geezer (usually a rich one) to take up with a little love muffin decades younger than he. Even respectable males could get away with this. You know, ditch the ‘old’ wife and acquire an immediate post-pubescent babe. So, you had Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Charlie Chaplin and assorted females barely out of diapers, and even Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and his sometimes pantiless Margaret.

Somehow this all seemed perfectly normal and such men were subjects of even a weird admiration and envy by many of their own sex.

I recall an incident involving a conversation with the second wife of a neighbor of my parents. He was a millionaire; very charming; very dashing; quite handsome (he looked like Larry Tate on the old Bewitched comedy); and he was married to a hottie (oh, she was) who was my age. I was in my mid-20s at the time. He had, by the way, ditched his contemporary wife a few years before.

So, we went to their astonishingly appointed antebellum house (the house was so splendid it was used as the mansion in the film Cousins of a few years ago) for drinkies one time when I was visiting my parents. I was recently married to my first wife.

At one point Darlene (the younger 2nd wife of the rich guy) said: “Now, if you kids would like to do such and such ….” She was, of course, seeing herself as being the same age as her generation older husband, and my parents. Her patronizing comment pissed me off.

“Come off it, Darlene,” I said. “What do you mean ‘you kids’? I happen to know you’re the same age as I am.”

My comment offended her and she walked to the other side of the room. I was, on the other hand, rather proud of myself.

Anyway, back to cougars. A cougar is as follows, according to on Internet definition:

"I have recently encountered the words 'Cougar Women' - a term dreamt up by some male or possibly jealous young female to describe an older woman engaged in a relationship with a younger man. The description 'Cougar Woman' infers a predatory mature woman (35-50+) who hunts, stalks, lusts after and imposes her attentions upon some innocent, inexperienced young male."

That’s right, a reversal of the time-honored. And in that I say, why not? Why should a woman ‘of a certain age’ settle into ‘frumpdom?’ So, the cougar is a predator just like her randy male counterpart and she is attesting: (Older) girls just wanna have fu-un!

Some, of course, even go so far as to marry a younger man. And sometimes those marriages actually work out quite splendidly. Sometimes they don’t. Marriage is a crapshoot at any time, as many of us can attest to.

But, the taboo is still there. There was considerable tumult in the ranks when actress Demi Moore took up with her young bucko. Yet, if the situation had been reversed, such as Harrison Ford with his ‘Stick Insect’ there was scarcely a murmur.

In considering such a societal phenomenon we must be careful to not confuse the Cougar with the MILF. The MILF (and I won’t spell out the acronym for the sake of propriety in my blog, you know, tiny tots and all – are there tiny tots that still know how to read? If they do, they know what MILF means in any case) is younger than the Cougar and often arouses salacious thoughts in contemporaries, older males, and stripling lads. The Cougar, on the other hand is invariably older and in the finest sense should have money and influence.

Her ‘toyboy’, however, is not to be confused with the old fashioned gigolo. Gigolos call the shots and the older woman is at his behest. The Cougar, on the other hand, is very much in charge and knows what she is doing. And, she could just as easily shuck her lad as the gigolo could shuck his older inamorata.

In any case, I quite approve of the switch. I have always found mature women to be attractive as hell -- I mean 'some' mature women, not 'all' -- and in that I concur with Benjamin Franklin who also sang their praises. Something to do with experience, I believe.

But, to end it all, really what I was talking about was the mountain lion type of cougars.

From them to me and from me to you

2009-03-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

The wonderful Deb Sistrunk recently stroked and stoked my ego and flattered me greatly by granting me the Premio Dardos Award for my scratchings in this space. The award coming from her was immensely gratifying since I regard her as a consummate pro in the field of communications, so thank you, Deb.

What’s the Premio Dardos Award?Premio Dardos means “prize darts” in Spanish. It is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing.What do you do once you’ve received one?There are some rules to be followed.

• First, accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and link to his or her blog.

• Second pass the award to another 15 blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgment. Because I am a bit pressed for time today and also because I know some people don’t like being tagged, I am merely going to list those I think are worthy of the award and they may either accept or pass it on. OK?

Who are the next recipients? After giving it a lot of thought, I’ve chosen 15 bloggers, listed below in no particular order. If you wish to check them out all you need to do is refer to my blogroll.

· Dr. Deb Serani
· Jazz
· Voyager
· CS
· Heart in San Francisco
· Thailand Chani
· Andrea
· Merely Me
· Pearl
· Leslie
· Liz
· Dumdad
· Meggie
· Wolfgirl
· Lady MacLeod

Congratulations to these talented bloggers and again I could get on a roll and name virtually everybody on my personal list!

A new reader of my blog – or at least a new reader to bring it to my attentiont that she was a reader was ‘Down Under’ blogger Suziii. And she in her kindness gave me an award and I thank her profoundly for considering me worthy. She stated her choice this way:

“Was reading all my favourite blogs this morning and realised there are some blogs that I just have to read each day or at least each day that I log on; like a morning coffee they have become part of my morning ritual. There are probably a few dozen blogs I simply can't miss.”

Her premise was to go to the first five blogs she couldn’t miss each morning and to grant them this award. I won’t follow suit with this one because my five (and others) would be included in my initial list in this posting. So, if you were selected for the first award, please feel free to take this one as well.

I know it's very indolent of me to not make all the links here but, as I said, I am on a tight schedule today and I assure all of those listed that I will be notifying you. I don't think that's too much of a breach of protocal. But, if it is, then I guess we shall all have to live with it and move on from there.

BIG EMPTY SPACE FOR REASONS BEST KNOWN TO THE GODS OF BLOGDOM. I KNOW I DIDN'T ORDER IT UP!

A fullsome fifty favorite things (not that movie, by the way)

2009-03-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

The world has been filled with an unnecessary amount of doom-and-gloom of late and I, like many others do, tend to lose heart just a little bit if I let myself.

But, it’s all in the state of mind and if we permit negativity to prevail, then we reap negativity. The media fills its pages and screens with portents of economic collapse and then pundits wonder why in the hell consumers aren’t buying. That’s because they are lying in wet panties under their beds awaiting the next blow to any sense of well-being.

Bearing that in mind, I have decided to accentuate the positive by listing 50 things that either make, or have made, my life just a little more worth living. Things, in no order whatsoever, that give me sufficient hope to want to see what tomorrow may bring. The choices range from the ridiculously simple to the sublime, but they all work for me.

What ones work for you? I would love to see your lists.

1. Springtime (since it’s the first day of spring, even if it doesn’t feel like it)
2. Seafood
3. Pancakes
4. The London Underground
5. Mussels in Brussels
6. Browsing for gifts in lingerie stores
7. Miss Peggy Lee singing Manana
8. A morning shower rainbow off Na Pali, Kauai
9. The view from my living room window of the Comox Glacier
10. Sex
11. Taking the T-roof panels off my car for the first time each spring
12. Looking at the tiny sneer on the rosebud mouth of Deborah Harry
13. Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street
14. Bogey’s magnificence in the Caine Mutiny
15. First robins of spring
16. The trumpeter swans of the Comox Valley
17. King-size beds
18. Joshua Tree National Park
19. Killarney, Ireland
20. Good conversation
21. Good strong hugs
22. Cheek kisses (giving or receiving)
23. Sexually attractive older women
24. The throb of a marine diesel on a tugboat
25. The underappreciated comic genius of poor, sad Tony Hancock
26. Nat King Cole singing Nature Boy
27. Close dancing at a high school prom to Misty
28. Don Knotts in Andy Griffith
29, Take a Walk on the Wild Side by the Velvet Underground
30. Sending off an invoice for a well-earned large sum
31. The fragrance of pillow cases that have been dried outdoors
32. Green sea turtles
33. The bum from behind of a Rarotongan woman on a moped
34. Chuck Berry’s ‘duck-walk’
35. French kissing
36. Nude swimming
37. A book or film that lives up to all expectations
38. Reading at bedtime
39. Drinking café au lait at an outdoor table anywhere in France
40. Pastries from the Bon Ton in Vancouver
41. Stanley Park
42. Lee Remick in Anatomy of a Murder
43. Sunsets and sunrises
44. Tropical snorkelling
45. Coconut palms
46.The laughter of tiny children
47. The society of dogs
48. Fireplaces and wood stoves, beachfires and campfires
49. Crème brulee
50. Afternoon naps

I realized that I could have found 50 more, so maybe the world’s not such a bad place after all. If the powers are willing, I think I’ll stick around for a while. Give this a shot if you are so inclined. It’ll boost your spirits.

'Helloooooooooo -- is anybody out there?'

2009-03-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

Humans have wondered since the beginning of time – or at least since the beginning of HG Wells, and maybe Orson Welles, and possibly even Mel Welles, an obscure actor who was in such epics as Attack of the Crab Monsters and the original 1960 version of Little Shop of Horrors (worth the price of admission just to see Jack Nicholson long before he became Jaaaaaaack!) – whether or not we are alone in the universe.

The possible existence of occupants on other planets is an issue fraught with debate. Primarily, there are those that believe, and those that think it’s all bullshit. I have always been of the school that holds “of course there are.” They are there, I have deduced via mathematical logic, but just not in the immediate neighborhood.

My mathematical logic holds that since it is believed there is an infinite number of galaxies and an infinite number of solar systems, and we live on a planet that is occupied by folks, ergo there must be an infinite number of planets upon which creatures of some sort have set up housekeeping.

For a long time I was one of the decriers about extraterrestrials, and that was despite the fact I had actually seen a UFO. I thought the Roswell fanatics were utter flakes. Come to think of it, I still do. Further, I don’t believe for a second that anybody has had a close encounter of the third, let alone first and second kind. And those who claim to have had sex with aliens I believe are people who don’t get to have sex with anybody human.

But, back to the possibility of aliens. Recently released have been the possibilities offered by the new LOFAR space telescope. In other words, rather than just relying on the mental meanderings of wackos and ET junkies, we have some serious professional geek input on the matter. To wit:

ASTRON is researching the potential role of the LOFAR telescope in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). This initiative has been taken by Professor Michael Garrett, General Director of ASTRON and professor of radio techniques in astronomy at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Researchers from all over the world will contribute to this effort to find ways in which LOFAR can be used in the search for extraterrestrial life.

There are about 100 thousand million stars in the galaxy and most of these are expected to harbour planetary systems; some of these planets might actually be suitable for life. Many scientists believe that life is probably wide-spread across the galaxy, although technically advanced civilisations might be relatively rare or at least widely separated from each other.

So, what else do we need? I believe that the foregoing thoughts will suggest that there is life on approximately 37,964 planets, and we’d better get ready for some visitations.

Or not.

Science guys, being science guys, look at all aspects of the scenario, which is called either ‘scientific method’ or ‘raining on your romantic parade’. What they point out is that these solar systems are so damn far away that we will never physically connect with us, or we with them. Or, they could be civilizations that have come and gone well in to the past. Or, they could be totally primitive and lacking in the means of communication. Or, they might be so advanced that they would find us unspeakable primitives with poor social graces and would want nothing to do with us. OK, I made the last option up, but the others are legitimate considerations by the science boys and girls.

There is also the fact that even should life exist, it may be in a form that we cannot relate to. You know, the Planet Gzrk17b may be just primeval forms of life. Not the sort of inhabitants familiar to us other than in the odd bar at closing time, or in the political mutterings of Rush Limbaugh.

So, in concluding I will ask: Do you believe other planets in other solar systems are inhabited? Do you think we will be in contact with them in your lifetime? If they don’t actually come to call, do you think they might at least write?

By golly, I'm a virtual paragon of healthy living

2009-03-18T10:22:00.000-07:00

When I was in school it was relatively common practice for teachers with shoddy mastery of disciplinary fairness to punish the entire class for the misbehavior of one knucklehead. I’d like to think that no longer goes on, but I’m sure it still does.

I guess there is some merit in invoking blanket disciplinary decrees for the sake of a few miscreants, though it grates on me. Ninety percent of us would never dream of screaming through a school zone at 80 mph (273 kmh in metric, I think), but for the 10 percent of morons who would, there must be school zone laws and speed-traps. Other laws and restrictions work in the same way. Rules are in place because of society’s morons and felons. I guess we have to live with it, but it pisses me off.

A year ago I’m standing at an elevator in the Victoria apartment Wendy and I lived in part-time for a couple of years. An elderly lady is standing beside me and she is reading a notice on the wall. It is yet another restriction in block. Another restriction posted by the new and controlling building manager. The lady sniffs in indignation when she finishes reading: “I hate being scolded,” she says.

I too hate being scolded. So, as kind of a postscript to my most recent blog I have to say that I took the matter of the imposition of draconian laws governing trans-fats as a case of official scolding. I added later in my comments section that I was being tongue-in-cheek about it all. I was doing so because, let’s face it, any of us with a lick of common sense will try to live as healthfully as possible, and we don’t need some bozo in a legislative office to tell us how we ‘must’ live our lives. At least 'I' don't think we do. Probably I'm wrong.

So, you read it here first: I do eat my veggies and my fruit. We try to have fish at least once a week (though now they tell us fish isn't all that good, and here I've wasted decent meals by eating $#@% fish), and a meal without meat does not terrify me. I have good vegetarian friends at whose homes I have pleasingly dined. I don’t choose to embrace their lifestyle, but I applaud them if it works for them. Raw food diet? Forget it. I happen to 'like' food and regard it as more than just mere sustenance. That's on a par with suggesting (as some do, the idiots) that sex is just for procreation.

I also mentioned that while I get significantly irritated by self-righteous anti-smoking crusaders, I am in full approval of restrictions on the places in which one can indulge an unhealthy habit. I think smoking restrictions became such a pain in thee ass that many people chose to give up the fight and reached for the Nicoderm patches in lieu. Now if the crusaders would just shut up, then I would be happier.

Otherwise, I walk when I can avoid driving, I recycle, I drive an unthirsty car, and I think the level of public transit in North America is appallingly lacking when compared with Europe. And, I absolutely no longer use plastic shopping bags.

If such sterling behavior doesn't get me into Heaven, I have no idea what will.

But, I adamantly hold to the belief that people who try to control the behavior of others are not going to get into any Heaven I subscribe to.

Please, Lord, protect us from ourselves

2009-03-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

I don’t know what a trans-fat looks like. Wendy, who was once in the culinary trade, attempted to explain it to me -- something about ‘hydrogenated’ oils or some such -- and then my eyes glazed over as it often does about matters scientific, and I wondered if there was still cake left over from the previous night’s dessert. Cake would be nice. And ice cream.

At the same time, I don’t know what a vitamin looks like, either. I know lack of this indescribable entity leads to conditions like scurvy, beri-beri, yaws and ungulate fever and other unspeakable things, so I guess they’re real enough.

Probably trans-fats are, too. At least that’s what the government is telling the people of British Columbia, so who am I to quibble? You know I always adhere to the tenets of do-gooding officialdom.

But, where is it going to end? Are we soon to expect brown-shirted ‘enforcers’ telling us what we must and must not insert into our gaping maws? Will we be dragged off at 3 a.m. due to a neighbor reporting we were seen sneaking out of McDonald’s with a container of fries? Will child turn against parent? Will Mel Gibson get pissed up again and blame it all on the loss of the Latin Mass?

Truly, those who ‘know better how to take care of us than we do’, have already rendered public smoking a virtually capital punishment offence. And there are many screeds against the evils of second-hand smoke (I don’t necessarily disagree, I just detest the heavy-handedness), and now, if you haven’t heard, it is third-hand smoke. I’m awaiting the arrival of prohibitions against fourth-hand smoke, which is, I believe, those cases in which your great-grandmother once dated (but did not marry) a rakish Yale lad in 1927 who was given to sucking on a meerschaum periodically.

Meanwhile, pregnant women have been exhorted for ages to stay away from the booze due to the possibility of fetal alcohol syndrome (fair enough), but a recent Oxford study states quite emphatically that the fairer sex shouldn’t ever indulge in even a small glass of plonk since any consumption whatsoever of alcohol will lead to breast cancer, and assorted other cancers.

And now, cut out those damn trans-fats and the BC government has decreed (just so we might not notice there are other social issues that maybe, just maybe deserve to be addressed) that we will be a trans-fat free domain henceforth. What remains of my beleaguered heart swells with pride at how our dauntless leaders are protecting us. We will be the first geopolitical enclave in North America to be trans-fat free. I am not making this up.

Burger and fries, pshaw, we will give you carrot sticks, celery and radishes and you will ultimately thank us for it and you will disregard the fact that those streets that are not crawling with homeless, abused children, gun-totin’ criminals who will never feel the force of the law, due to your infatuation with a benevolent government that will protect you and your arteries.

For indeed you are not sensible enough yourself to cut out eating shit like hotdogs at ballgames, pizzas before the Superbowl, or nachos at the pub on a Friday evening, ‘ve haff vays of makink you do zo!’, or words to that effect.

Personally I believe this is a vast conspiracy designed to appeal to certain obsessive women who are determined to get men to eat veggies, so they will get officialdom to help them out. Nothing like storm-troopers to get the point across. Most women no longer accept male protestations that ketchup and relish are vegetables, even though menfolk persist in adhering to such beliefs. I mean, if the ketchup thing was good enough for Ronald Reagan, who are we to disbelieve?

Actually, there are two other vegetables I embrace: corn on the cob, and potatoes in absolutely any form. Both actually taste like real food if slathered with the right condiments.

Oh, and as far as corn goes, I think I am on the winning side here. No trans-fat laden margarine for me. I am a butter man all the way.

There was a reason for this

2009-03-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in a pub known as The Feathers. It's situated in the Great Yarmouth, England suburb of Gorleston, a place I had called home for nearly a year.

That particular day I am in a funk and in an emotional impasse. Soon my wife of the day and I are slated to return to Canada. My emotional angst stems from the fact I do not want to go back. I do not want to rejoin my life as it was. For a number of reasons, including some of which I am not proud, I do not want to rejoin my marriage on the other side of the Atlantic.

I sit quietly nursing my pint of Norwich Castle Bitter and somebody strides over to the jukebox (they had those back in 1981). He inserts a coin and hits his selection. It's Gerry Rafferty's almost agonizingly (for me) poignant piece Baker Street. The saxophone riffs in that song devastate me if I am in a down mood. It also captures so much of what I have been feeling about giving "up the booze and the one-night-stands, and maybe settling down in some quiet little town and forgetting about everything."

Ultimately I did go back to my own little town, and my dog Murphy who inspired me to return more than anything or anyone. I was finding it painfully sad in terms of what had happened to the hopes and dreams of a marriage and a lifestyle. So, dutifully I guess, I went back.

But, ever afterwards a hearing of Baker Street takes me back to that rainy afternoon in a Gorleston pub.

Life is so very much better now, but the pathos still hits.

Life's like that.

Enjoy the music.

Gerry Rafferty Baker Street

2009-03-13T13:12:00.001-07:00

Bring on the clowns

2009-03-12T13:58:00.000-07:00

There’s an old and cynical jape that holds that all the people who call the shots in the world are former C students.

In recent months (or maybe years) I’ve concluded that the statement is too complimentary. I think it’s the C-minus students holding control over our destinies and the future of the planet. That’s chilling, but I am not seeing much these days to convince me otherwise.

Oh, and those C-minus students are arrantly corrupt.

Make you feel better? Me neither.

Now, as a possessor of many good and gentlemanly Cs during my student days I not only resent those who were greater slackers than I filling out the power ranks, but they scare the bejesus out of me.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, goes the adage. And absolute power in the possession of really dumb guys and girls is the most corrupt of all.

There’s nothing new about this reality. Go back through history and you will find many examples of stupidity prevailing and becoming the inspiration for policy decisions.

Take World War One, for example. A fat, buffoonish heir to the vile imperial throne of Austria-Hungary gets blown away in Sarajevo one bright day, and the next four years saw decisions being made to send literally tens of millions of young men all over Europe and elsewhere on the planet to premature graves in the ghastliest conditions to that the remaining fat-ass elites could retain their vile thrones and remain in power.

In power without the best-and-brightest of the next generation there to take up the slack.

And then 20 years later they did it all over again. They had to. Those C-minus students had set the scenario in place.

This is not to say there haven’t been some supremely intelligent individuals at the helm over the years. Go back a number of years and you can certainly cite Roosevelt ad Churchill as shining lights that guided us through perilous and terrifying times. Bill Clinton, Rhodes Scholar and astute politician tended to think more with his dick than he should have, but was generally effective. Margaret Thatcher, love her or loathe her, brought the UK out of economic chaos, albeit with a social cost. Currently President Obama seems to hold huge potential in terms of intellect and we can only hope skills at unheralded levels.

There have been other capable and extremely intelligent individuals who while they may have had the IQ qualifications, didn’t necessarily have the political acumen to be effective.

Jimmy Carter was a bright man and hugely compassionate, but was generally a poor politician who paved the way for the dubious-to-disastrous two terms of Ronald Reagan, who paved the way for Bush Senior and eventually Bush Junior. Enough said about that.

In Canada Pierre Trudeau was intellectually brilliant, but left in his wake a house hugely divided. Divided, in my esteem, so that he could assuage an eccentric ego as big as his intellect.

But, it isn’t the boss men and women I am talking about in terms of the C-minus student fuckups who suck hope and inspiration from our societies. It’s the underlings; the toadying little jackals that wield far too much power and hold leaders in their sway. Those are the buffoons of the bureaucracies around the world; the banking and investment cartels; the weasels of the legal profession and judiciaries, broadcasting and media, and for some ungodly reason, entertainment, who set the patterns we must adhere to.

Who do you think has kept, and will continue to keep the people of the United States from quality and equitable health care? Not your leaders, or even George W. during his dubious, inept and scary tenure, but the self-seeking lobbyists and bureaucrats in health care. Those who have theirs are not about to share with the unwashed. Do I oversimplify here? Probably. You can do that with your own blog. This is a rant, after all. But, seriously, why would a political leader want to keep you or Aunt Hattie from reasonably priced meds or therapy? To accomplish this would be a wonderful legacy. For vested interests, the C-minus students in morality at least, not a chance?

In one of my own fields, addiction, there is an inexcusable lack of subsidized treatment available for those that want it. At the same time we soil ourselves about the derelict addicts on the streets. But, addiction isn’t sexy so politicians are persuaded to go in other directions. Directed by people who know literally nothing about the realities of addiction, and I include some C-minus medical practitioner advisors in that realm of interference.

Oh, I could go on and on, but I won’t.

That enlightenment -- it don't come easy

2009-03-09T16:31:00.000-07:00

If you have reached middle age and have not experienced some personal hell,then you either haven't been living life to its fullest, in all its colors and perversities, or you have been preternaturally blessed. Or, you could be lying. If you haven't yet reached middle age, think what you have to look forward to.

I prefer to deal with and socialize with the flawed amongst us -- those men or women who are marred by a bit of spiritual scar-tissue. It means they have suffered, but have hopefully learned, and have come out the other side with maybe some of wisdom. People who learned nothing from their direst mistakes have forsaken life's most splendid opportunities for growth.

Also, such people are rarely very interesting.The cliché holds that the most important lessons in life are the hardest ones. As clichés go, it's not a bad one. Significant deterrents can only be found in happenings that have had at least a smattering of emotional trauma connected with them. If the trauma hadn't been there, you'd have kept on doing the thing you were doing that put you in a bad spot in the first place. That’s no damn good. Pain can set you free if you regard it in a judicious way. Once something hurts too much, those who are blessed give it up and move on. Speaking of clichés, there is another one that says: The definition of insanity is to keep on doing something destructive in the belief that this time the outcome will be different. It never will be.

By a certain age most of us have been forced to deal with suchunnerving stuff as illness and death, injury, family calamity, marital strife and in some cases maybe even break-up, emotional crises and collapse, cruelty, abuse, abject loneliness, crime and at an extreme maybe even incarceration or institutionalization.

Yes, into each life a little shit must fall. It's an ugly and scary world out there, and what can go wrong sometimes does.Do you ever have those dreams where you are in a specific situation, maybeflying on a plane, and you think, my God, I hope this plane doesn't crash? The moment you think the unthinkable the dream-plane goes into a spin, which sends it plummeting to the ground four miles below. Unfortunately, sometimes that happens in real life. Our worst fears can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Screamin' Jay Hawkins has "put a spell on you." It's only coincidence, but it doesn't seem like it at the time.

Take the guy who professes to love his wife with all his heart, and who regularly ruminates on his greatest fear: that the light of his life and fire of his loins might someday leave him. How does he deal with such an anxiety? Why, by doing the opposite of what he should have done to keep her safe and happy with him. He boozes, he screws around, and he is abusive to her and the kids at every turn. One day she packs her bags and walks out the door, never to return. He's devastated. "How could she hit me with my worst fear?"

Easily. He set the process in motion. He unconsciously pushed the relationship to the limits just to see how far he could take it. To see how much she really loved him. And then he found that there were limits. She would only take so much. Leaving him to self-righteously exclaim: "Aha! I knew she couldn't be trusted -- the bitch!"

This sort of thing happens a lot in marriages and long-term relationships that aren’t based on trust and honesty. We've all pushed when weshould have opened our arms and embraced.The man who has learned nothing from such misfortunes then falls back on tried and true reactions of resentment, disappointment and anger, and like Miniver Cheevy in the E.A. Robinson poem, keeps on cursing and "(keeps) on drinking," or whatever he does that keeps the family lurching from crisis to crisis.

The seeker of enlightenment, on the other hand, is the guy who approaches such a situation with more honesty, and a genuine quest to understand whyhe did what he did, and to figure out how he can keep from doing it again.

To die, to sleep, to sleep perchance to dream ...

2009-03-08T09:38:00.000-07:00

I found this meme at Chani’s thought-filled blog (if you are not a regular reader of hers, then you must give it a try) and since she invited anybody who wanted to take part to indeed take part, I decided to do so.

It’s all about sleep and some of its realities for us as individuals. Here are my thoughts on Zs bagging.

1) How do you sleep at night? Is your sleep affected by the national angst? Do you drop off easily, as you always did? Or does it take a while to get to sleep?

I recite in my mind the Serenity Prayer. ‘Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” And then, after reading for a time, my eyelids get heavy and usually I nod off to sleep quite quickly. Sometimes I’m feeling more hypersensitive and am impacted by any noise or movement by Wendy. Then I get keyed up. Simple solution, since there are only two of us in the house, is to depart for the other bedroom, which has a beautiful brass bed (headboard and footboard are brass, not the bed itself because that would be very uncomfortable) and a fine duvet, and I usually then go to sleep quickly. As for the national (international) angst, of course it makes me anxious and I feel greatly for those who have been displaced, but I can do nothing about it other than ride it out and accept the fact that a big chunk of my retirement investments have been royally screwed up the backside. C’est la vie. At least we still have our home.

2) What strategies, if needed, do you use to get to sleep?

I read. I must read. Usually non-fiction. Often true crime a la Ann Rule or her ilk. I used to love forensics and detection and the meting out of justice when I did cop work by handling the police beat at my paper. Sometimes we watch TV for a half hour or so before turning to our respective books. To be candid, I used to like lovemaking. No, I still really like lovemaking, but not just before lights out time. The adrenalin rush is not conducive to sleep.

3) Do you wake up in the middle of the night, plagued by obsessive thoughts?

At one time I did quite significantly. I also suffered from bedtime insomnia. Quite frankly I found that cutting out alcohol enabled me to get to sleep more easily and sleep through the night. But sometimes, if I wake up at say 3 a.m. and need to pee I can then have a very difficult time getting back to sleep as daytime thoughts intrude and all my insecurities come to the fore. Indeed, many mornings I end up wandering around the house at 3:30 wondering if it’s too early to put coffee on.

4) What strategies do you have to get back to sleep?

I try to clear my mind. I change rooms. If I go to the other room I sometimes turn on the light and read for a while. If nothing works, I just get up. No point in lying there and getting more fretful. Anyway, an advantage of working from home is that I can always nap in the afternoon.

5) Are your dreams affected? Are they more anxious than before? Do they wake you up in a sweat? Or are they peaceful, innocent, undisturbed by the general malaise?

Not really. I have good dreams for the most part. Sometimes adventurous. I do a lot of traveling in my dreams. Sometimes they’re sexy and I have had amazing encounters with people with whom I have never had such encounters. Sometimes they are nostalgic and will include people like former wives, lovers or friends. Sometimes I am extremely sorry when I awaken to find that the dream was not true. I used to have a lot of such dreams about my stepdaughter in which we were reunited in a warm and loving way. Those aren’t happening as much now. I never really analyze my dreams or discuss them with others. Mainly my dream life is an escape from reality. I like that about the process.

So how are you doing? Tell me your experience. As was the case with Chani, I am not going to tag anybody with this, but would be delighted to read your tale. If you decide to do it, please let me know so I can read your responses.

Taking issue with toilet tissue

2009-03-06T14:15:00.000-08:00

Perhaps one of the good things to come out of the economic meltdown is that the public is finding itself forced to be a trifle less self-indulgent and perhaps we will learn to be more accepting of a few inconveniences and discomfort.

And in that the self-righteous crusaders at Greenpeace are way ahead of you. You see, Greenpeace cares about how you wipe your bum.

For centuries human beings had been driven by a desire to find an ideal way to, ahem, clean up after answering nature’s inevitable call. In none of this do I intend to be indelicate, by the way but, hey, we all do it. Even the Queen does it. It’s that great human leveller. Winston Churchill once suggested that the ideal way to rid yourself of stage-fright if you are called upon to speak in public is to picture your audience, no matter how distinguished it might be, naked. I’ve often thought that even better would be to picture those people moving their bowels or urinating.

But, dignity aside, the quest has always been one of dealing with the realities of the situation in the most comfortable way possible. That is delicate territory down there and we naturally seek a way to deal with the situation that reflects that delicacy. Even back in Renaissance times bawdy old writer Rabelais penned a tale of Pantagruel trying to find the ideal means of, you’ll pardon me, wiping his ass. He finally settled on the soft feathers to be found on the neck of a goose – still attached to the living goose, by the way. He doesn’t suggest what the goose thought about this, but for Pantagruel it worked.

Down all the years people have made do in many ways, including the time-honored Sear’s catalogue hung up in the outdoor biffy. Travelers from North America to the UK in the old days were often horrified by the quality and harshness of the toilet paper there (it has improved immensely, by the way) and some even took to bringing a few rolls of back-home softness on their travels.

The Continent wasn’t much better in those days. I remember some in Bavaria back many years ago that was literally the consistency of the crepe paper you’d use to decorate the gym for a sock hop.

Over the years, however, it got better and better both sides of the ocean. And that eventually brought us right up to today, and evoked the wrath of the Greenpeace prigs. There target is the Kimberly-Clark people who a few years ago began smearing lanolin or cold cream or something between the sheets for an even smoother and more comfortable ride on the porcelain throne.

It seems that the fancy bumf is environmentally unfriendly and takes thousands of years to break down in the landfills and lays waste forests all over the world for the sake of our bum comfort:

"We have this myth in the U.S. that recycled is just so low quality, it's like cardboard and is impossible to use," said Lindsey Allen, the forestry campaigner of Greenpeace.

Campaigners hope the guide will counter an aggressive marketing push by the big paper product makers in which celebrities talk about the comforts of luxury brands of toilet paper and tissue.

Environmentalists say those specialty brands that put quilting and pockets of air between several layers of paper are especially damaging to the environment.

Luxury brands such as three-ply tissues or tissues infused with hand lotion are now considered part of the fastest-growing market share in a highly competitive industry, according to paper manufacturers such as Kimberly-Clark.

The company’s latest television advertisements show a woman caressing tissue infused with hand lotion.

The New York Times reported a 40 percent rise in sales of luxury brands of toilet paper in 2008, and as the recession deepens, paper companies are anxious to keep those percentages up.

So, what’s our alternative? Go back to unfriendly single-ply coarse stuff with the odd wood-chip in the mix or keep pampering our pretty asses? Will eschewing the multi-ply softness drenched product of a wasteful society make you feel flushed with pride?

I have no answers. I mean, hey I use cloth shopping bags and drive an unthirsty car, I recycle all that can be recycled. Do I now have to feel guilt each time nature calls and I must fret over the fancy soft stuff we have?

I’m of two minds. I live in paper-mill country and these operations are closing down and throwing my fellow citizens out of work. My conscience tells me that bolstering my local economy should take precedence over Greenpeace’s angst about cutting down trees. Trees that were, after all, raised to be cut down and processed. Convince me, GP, that virgin forests are being laid waste to pamper our bottoms and I’ll switch to single ply. This works for me.

Otherwise, leave people to their morning, afternoon, or evening 'meditation' in comfort in these stressful times.

Guess what? Avalanches do happen

2009-03-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

I am not a winter sports person. I have no desire to ski, snowboard or indulge in any endeavor that involves cold and damp. My idea of recreational pleasure is swimming, snorkelling and gazing upon turquoise seas washing up on a beach.

Oh, and turtles. There must be endearing green sea turtles poking up their heads in those same azure seas.

So, why do I live where I do, you might be prompted to ask. Because, I guess this is where I live and people pay me money to do whatever work will enable me to bask down among the sheltering palms.

None of the foregoing is apropos of anything much other than to introduce the perennial winter topic in the chilly part of the world, which is: Morons ski and snowboard out-of-bounds, get zapped by avalanches or lost or maimed and expect society to spend great sums of money extricating them from the results of their sheer stupidity and self-indulgence.

Screw those people, I say.

I read in today’s local paper that a kid got hit by an avalanche on our local ski hill (which is a big, world-class one) and ended up having both legs broken. He was snowboarding out-of-bounds. To him I say: "Hard cheese and let that be a lesson to you. Be grateful it wasn’t worse."

Last week in a tragic incident two skiers from Quebec indulging in winter sports in the hinterland of this province were causes celebres in an awful story about yet another incident of RCMP failure to do what they are commissioned to do, which is to serve the public weal of this country. Anyway, the couple was in avalanche country. They were another example of folks cavorting in the fluffy white in an out-of-bounds area, and the woman ended up dying of exposure. Awful stuff, and the failure of the constabulary to heed an SOS stamped out in the snow is a disgrace at all levels. Yet mitigating this to a degree is that they were out-of-bounds. Why were they, who were not even familiar with that perilous turf, out-of-bounds?

And, if these idiots don’t get hit by avalanches, they get lost. And searches are mounted. Highly expensive searches in which the SAR volunteers put themselves at considerable risk. Sometimes they are successfully rescued. Sometimes it’s too late. But, the final point again is, always, they were out-of-bounds.

So look, egomaniacal boneheads who think you are the most adept skiers and/or boarders on the planet, temper that testosterone and realize those winter sports boundaries are there for a reason. If you choose to flout them then I say I don’t really care so much what happens to you.

But, here is my modest proposal. Those who venture out-of-bounds and get lost and must be rescued should have to bear the entire cost of the search and rescuer operation.

Those who consistently violate the out-of-bounds regulations should be banned from not only the winter sports facility from which they were originally booted out of, but also all others North America wide. Their pictures should be posted on the Internet and all other winter sports emporia should be notified.

You want to ski or board, idiots? Then good luck in finding a place to do so.

Extra! Maybe you won't be able to read all about it

2009-03-02T13:26:00.000-08:00

"All I know is what I read in the papers."

- Humorist Will Rogers

I can go on line and tap into any newspaper anywhere in the world. That is a wonderful thing. If I want to know the local spin on what is happening in London, New York, Paris or Tel Aviv, then I can be there in a trice.

The technology of access today is a marvel. It’s also increasingly exponentially and an almost terrifying pace. It’s excellent at all levels.

Except the consumer one. Especially for a consumer past a certain age who is steeped in habits that while they may seem antediluvian to techno-trendies, nevertheless constitute the person I am.

I mention this because I am aghast at what is happening to newspapers all over this continent and elsewhere in the world. The forces of ‘evil’, both technology and the marketplace, are killing them. This has nothing to do with not being moderately current with what there is, but I’m having difficulty with the idea of the printed journalistic page being relegated to some sort of fashion-dictated rubbish bin.

There are many factors leading to the demise of newspapers, including high production costs, newsprint costs (which are massive), levels of pay, union-dictated featherbedding of employees who should be redundant, loss of advertising revenue to television and the Internet, and loss of readership.

In the last while a number of papers have folded in the US and Canada and I couldn’t begin to list them all, but the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News out of Denver is publishing its last issue on Friday, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, nearly as old, packed it in last spring, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is on its last legs and under serious threat are the Hartford Courant, the Baltimore Sun, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. In Canada Canwest News Services, which publishes dailies in Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary and a few other spots is gazillions in debt with little hope of rising from the burden.

At the end of it all, maybe I am a relic of an earlier era. To me my news must come from the journals I browse every morning and night. I want ink on my fingers and I want to read stories at my leisure, in my living room, with a cup of coffee. I don’t want to read news stories of my computer at my fucking desk. I mean, I call up papers for research or information, but not for leisurely perusal. That is a different process.

And, I am old-fashioned in that regard and I resent the fact that a post-literate generation – products of hi-tech, crappy schools with diminished standards and stunningly ill-informed teachers – should be dictating change in society. Do I overstate? Probably. But, it’s my blog and I can do that. I can also say snarky things about teachers, since I used to be one and I know that I am not maligning good teachers, and there are such pedagogues, blessedly.

Yet, how many homes today get a daily paper? I will suggest a fraction of those that did 20, 30 or 50 years ago. And, the kids out of J-school, what are their journalistic aspirations? Television or some aspect of the electronic media. How many kids want to do newspaper work? Not much calling for ink-stained wretches nowadays. I grieve for that.

While not exactly in my dotage, I began my journalist career with a manual typewriter and turned out copy that would actually be proofread by people who knew how to string two words together. IN the papers of yore, not only were the scribes literate, everybody in the place was in pre-spellcheck days. That archaic process was only in the late 1970s, and it continued until the late 1980s, when we go our first archaic and unreliable word processors.

Anyway, cannot stand in the way of ‘progress’. I don’t even want to. Have all your hi-tech stuff, and I indeed have mine and wouldn’t be without it, but I wish you’d had the decency to leave me my newspapers.

Maybe we should go back to calling it 'rasslin'

2009-02-27T14:37:00.000-08:00

I find the idea of wrestling as an entertainment (or activity) completely repulsive. The idea of being up that close and personal with another male’s sweaty armpit turns my stomach. The fact that he would be perpetrating personal mayhem on my while my nose was stuck in his pit, or someplace even more repulsive really does make my gorge rise.

Maybe I could wrestle a girl? I have wrestled girls, in fact. But that was when both had an entirely other objective in mind. Enough smut. Let’s move back to the whole wrestling thing.

I have never been a fan of wrestling. I think it’s all fakery and despite arguments to the contrary its defenders’ll never convince I I’ll never be convinced it’s anything but a sham sport. Indeed, as a sport, I would put professional wrestling on a par with roller derby. Entertaining in its way, but still just an entertainment.

That is why professional wrestling has superseded real wrestling. If you were to watch true wrestling of the sort they do at the Olympics you would be comatose with boredom in short order. It’s all about assorted holds, and nothing much more. There is no yelling of epithets, no challenges to the spectators, no garish costumes. Just holds.

I used to watch wrestling when I was about 12, when we first got TV. We knew it was fake even then, but we were 12 and we found it a hoot. This was in the glory days of Gorgeous George with his peignoirs and blonde ringlets. There was also Mr. Moto, who was a Japanese guy who really played dirty pool in the ring. The war was still within living memory of the adult audience, so the rotten little (you’ll pardon the expression) ‘Jap’ was fair game as a villain.

Then there were also the midgets. They weren’t called ‘Little Persons’ wrestlers, just midgets. They were fun. And sometimes, just to confuse us, the lady wrestlers would come out. That was a whole different thing, and we found ourselves diverted, to say the least. But, as I said, we were 12. And 12 back then was 12, not something ‘going-on-25’. We knew nothing.

So, the movie The Wrestler was a big thing at the Oscars this year. I’m happy for Mickey Rourke. I used to like him as an actor in conventional vehicles like Diner, long before he went, shall we say ‘eccentric’. Then something happened to him and happened to his pretty, rather feminine (back in the old days) face. I don’t know what, but he looks entirely different. I don’t follow this stuff so closely so I can tell you no more than that.

Anyway, evidently he excelled in The Wrestler, and I am happy that he seems to be getting his career back on track, although I gather from my Perez Hilton that he is still a trifle on the bizarre side at all levels.

And that’s about all I have to say about wrestling.

I guess the beat still does go on

2009-02-25T09:50:00.001-08:00

In the Palm Springs air terminal there is a commemorative bust of one Salvatore Bono. That’s kind of nice. Sonny Bono was, of course, mayor of that lovely desert town for a while, then he went on to be a congressman. While his DC gig was was still in place he, sadly, lost an argument with a tree when he was out skiing.

I’m put in mind of this because a friend just took off today for Vegas.

“I’m not much for gambling,” she told me. “But, Cher’s performing and I’d like to see that.”

She probably wasn’t born in 1965 when Sonny and Cher’s signature song, I Got You Babe was a huge hit.

“How were Sonny and Cher?” I asked university commuting passenger one Monday morning in about 1966. She had just been to see them in concert in Vancouver that weekend.

“They were OK,” she replied. “But who I really liked was their opening act; two young guys named Simon and Garfunkel. They were really good.”

So, I was thinking about I Got You Babe and what a silly little song it was and who would have thought it would have become some sort of vintage offering that a person would still be hearing 44 years after S&C brought it into the world.

I think part of it is, it’s a likeable song. It makes no demands either musically or philosophically. Kind of in the realm of the Beatles’ All You Need is Love. Silly throwaways both but they evoke a kind of youthful enthusiasm. Compare them with the netherworld junkie realm of the Velvet Underground’s Sister Ray, or the Doors’ Light My Fire.

I Got You Babe is a 'ditty', pure and simple. A ditty performed by a couple of sweet kids at the time who were nutso in love with each other. That put me back in thoughts of the Sonny memorial at Palm Springs. For a kind of goofy little guy the man did well, and served both his town and ultimately his country well. And that’s a good thing. And Cher, well Cher has always been Cher in all her incarnations and God love her for that. Glad my friend is going to see her. If I were in Vegas, I’d go too.

On an entirely un-Sonny and Cher-ish

matter, the lovely Vivavoom accorded me this award and I am flattered and humbled to be held in such regard. Very thoughtful of a very thoughtful lady in all her Wonder Woman-ness. Thank you.

The Lemonade Award is for sites, which show great attitude and/or gratitude!

Rules for the award:

1. Put the logo on your blog or post.

2. Nominate at least 10 blogs, which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude!

3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.

4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.

5. Nominate your favorites and link to this post.

I need to nominate the blogs I find deserving of the lemonade award. But, this is a random choice because there are many others.

Here they are...in no particular order:

1. Jazz
2. Geewits
3. Get Off My Lawn
4. Deborah Sistrunk
5. Andrea
6. Leesa (told you I’d get you next time)
7. Leslie
8. Daisy
9. CS
10. Merely Me

I hate choosing names for awards because right now I could easily find 10 more and another 10 after that, and so on. So, if I didn’t choose you this time, I will next time around.

And then there was that 'love' thing

2009-02-23T16:49:00.001-08:00

Oh life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
-Dorothy Parker

Since my birthday is just past I am left with some thoughts about the passages of life and where one is at any given time, like right now. I should know by now. But truly I don’t. But here are some musings on a vital facet of life. My life, and the lives of many others, especially once we get beyond a certain age and acquire a tiny smattering of wisdom. Personally, I don’t think any of us are granted any more wisdom than just a tiny smattering.

Anyway, some thoughts on love.

I have been in love many times in my life. There was a time in my youth that I would fall in love four or five times between breakfast and lunch, depending on where I was and what I was doing.

Now content in a truly loving relationship that I hope is for life, I realize that my earlier infatuations, crushes, or infusions of sheer horniness were not 'true' love, even though they seemed, as an emotion, to follow the rules of the real thing as I understood love at the time. Mainly the females at that time only needed to satisfy in such scenarios as follow:

a) Would I like to be intimate with her?

Or

b) Would I object if she came up to me and said: "I'd like to have sexual intercourse with you, and eventually I want to bear your children. “

The female in question could have been a classmate, somebody I’d seen in a coffee shop or on a bus, or an individual in a short skirt riding up an escalator and flashing her undies. Indeed, I have fallen in love for the sake of a chance glimpse of silk on more than one occasion. “Love your panties, will you marry me?”

In terms of my veneration of the various facets of divinely-inspired female pulchritude, I am essentially a 'face' guy. If a female has an adorable combination of eyes, nose and mouth placement, the rest of the package is of much less importance to my enchantment.

Not, of course, that there is anything whatsoever on this earth that deducts from a shapely, rounded bottom, or comforting looking breasts, but if those elements are there in nice proportion, but the face doesn’t work for me then, I am very sorry, I do not want to be there.

Evidence indicates that men and women are different as far as love is concerned. For women, love is a serious business. It should be as they have so much more to lose if it turns bad. For them the commitment is a deeper thing at the outset than it is for men; at least than it is for men in the earlier part of their lives. There is a certain coming together later on and, while it's not a full convergence, at least men and women finally, from middle age forward, hang out in roughly the same amorousness ballpark.

When a man is young his biological imperative is to impregnate as many nubile females as possible. Not that he actually wants the impregnation part to transpire, he just fancies the process that can lead to pregnancy if it is so destined. In other words, young bucks like sex; a lot of steamy sex is cherished and/or fantasized about. Mainly fantasized about, if truth be known.

As it happens, most males spend their formative years biting their knuckles and having tears well up in their eyes due to all the pretty little things out there. Part of the tearing stems from rapture at the profound beauty of these distaff creatures. Another part (indeed the most part) of the tears originates with his realization that he cannot have them all. For, that is indeed what the young lad wants – ‘all’ of them. Some guys, of course, never lose that impulse, and as such can face many complications in their lives.

Of course, it’s a good thing that the quest for possession of all young females is a futile one, or there wouldn’t be any left for the rest of us. Anyhow, it’s the chasethat is of the essence. If your dog chases cars, the big question is always, what would he do if he caught one? If a randy lad of no sophistication chases a pretty girl, what is he to do if she turns around and says, "OK.”? He is going to be terrified, and likely muff his chances badly.

Later in time the boy settles down with his 'one-and-only', thoroughly convinced that this is indeed the real thing. She will be the only one for him for the rest of his life. The problem here is that in his early twenties he has no clue as to what sort of woman would be ideal for him for the rest of his life. This too can lead to complications a few weeks, months or years down the road.

Our divorce lawyers rub their hands each and every time they hear church bells on a Saturday afternoon in June, and not because they are incurable romantics.Fortunate indeed is the person who finds that 'soulmate' right off. I am acquainted with a few such people, and am amazed by both their staying-power and by the fact that they not only hit it right at the start, but that they have consistently been able to work it through.

It can't all be about love -- can it?

See the pyramids along the Nile, see the sunrise on a tropic isle

2009-02-20T13:10:00.000-08:00

I have a birthday coming up. Tomorrow, if memory serves. Can never be too sure these days. Just checked. Yep, I’m right. Tomorrow is the 21st. so please feel free to wish me Happy Birthday. I also want cake and ice cream and lots of hugs and kisses and large denomination crisp bills. OK?

I am being silly about my birthday because it is my little way of avoiding lapsing into profound depression at the unspeakable passage of time, or paroxysms of screaming-meemies hysteria at exactly the same thing.

But, I just read something that made me feel better. For years now I’ve been suffering from the realization that the incessant foreshortening of time is invariably going to preclude me attaining what I want in the days I have left. In that, I hope they are many, but ‘one never do know, do one?’ as the inimitable Fats Waller once said. In his case he only made it to 39, so I have a few years up on him. On the other hand he wrote and performed ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’ and that is accomplishment in life enough for any 10 people.

But, I digress. Last year there was a film called The Bucket List in which a couple of old farts, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, who knew they were dying attempted to get in whatever they had not yet done before they kicked the proverbial.

What they did involved all sorts of activities, some tasteful and some distasteful and considerable travel, too. Their quest was to fit it all in.

Now it is understandable to people past a certain age that youth is truly wasted on the young, and that if I were magically transformed to my misspent youth for another try, there are things I would have done differently. What might have been different were I operating from what limited wisdom I have acquired?

- I wouldn’t have married until I was at least 35.
- I wouldn’t have allowed myself to get stuck in a career that was ill-suited.
- I likely would have had children.
- I would have traveled, traveled and traveled some more.
- I would have pushed my creative endeavors to the hilt.
- And (perhaps this is the most important one of all) I wouldn’t have been afraid to do any of those things.

I had coffee yesterday with a young female friend with whom I have a slight mentor role. She is smart, pretty, ambitious and has the world at her fingertips at age 25. My basic message to her was, go for the gusto, girl, and don’t be afraid to do so. Don’t be limited by convention or the expectations of others. Be your own person and your life will be blessed. She agreed fully; verbally at least. I do hope she acts accordingly.

Back to the article I read that gave me a certain peace-of-mind. What it suggests is, ‘bucket list’ notwithstanding, a body cannot do it all. The writer said that he realized that he would never make it to Japan, for example. “Japan has gotten along fine without my presence for hundreds of years, and I think it will have to continue to do so.” He said he felt likewise about Egypt and Morocco, despite having in the past thought he would like to go to those places. So would I. But what he said was that when he came to that realization that he could not visit every place on his list, he felt “a great liberation.” He was free. Free of guilt and free of a sense of obligation to do it ‘all’.

I think his point is well taken. I asked myself if there is any place ‘new’ I would go to in preference to places I would rather re-visit, and the answer is ‘no’. Not an unqualified no, but a no after due consideration and qualification.

So, I would rather go back to England and Ireland, France and Italy, Belgium and Holland rather than go to Spain, Portugal or Scandinavia, and assorted other European spots that I either haven’t been to, or have no desire to revisit. I would always go back to Kauai because it’s a kind of spiritual home for me. I love the desert southwest of the US and would go back there again. San Diego is always on a ‘must’ list as is the Oregon coast.

But, I have never been to Asia, Africa or Down Under (except for the Cook Islands, which I adored and would go back to), and I just might not make it this time around. That’s OK. I can handle it. Thus far my life has been a good adventure and I hope it continues to be for some time to come.

Modest proposal to end a violent crime wave

2009-02-18T16:32:00.000-08:00

My city of origin, Vancouver, has become a bloodbath lately. Needless to say this is not the sort of news to cause a swelling of civic pride or to delight the chamber of commerce. In the last two weeks literally not a day has gone by without somebody being mowed down by one of the filthy drug gangs that has been festering in the place in the last few years. Drug gangs that are thriving thanks to inadequate policing and pathetic courts handing out lame-ass sentences for evil people.

Two days ago a young mother with her four-year-old son in the back seat was ‘executed’ at a stoplight. Needless to say, as tragic as it was, and despite the fact the kid will be traumatized for the rest of his life, Mom was ‘connected.’ You ain’t driving a big pearly-white Caddy in your early 20s unless you are connected. ‘Live by the sword, die by the sword, etc.’ I mean, it’s sad, but come on.

For some reason best known to them, governments at all levels don’t seem to be rising to the occasion. Oh yes, they are “decrying” violence, but they are doing effectively nothing to address the situation in any tangible way. Why is this? Do we wait until we become Mexico before we get off our sorry asses and do something?

Well, it has been suggested that maybe it’s a waiting game. If we let these bastards keep wasting one another then eventually they’ll all be gone. It’s a nice idea, but doesn’t work. Didn’t happen in Chicago in the ‘20s and ‘30s and won’t happen in Vancouver in the latter part of the first decade of the 21st Century. I mean, I like the idea of gangsters killing gangsters. At least it gets rid of some of them, and we can’t count on the courts to do it. We know that.

What will really work is for us to actually countenance the idea of getting tough. And to get tough we have to accept that gangsters are another order of creation and should not have the same civil rights as the rest of them.

Here’s my modest proposal:
- deny bail for anyone changed with a gun crime. You’re packing heat, even if you’re not firing it and haven’t been so convicted, you don’t get bail.
- If you are convicted of a gun crime you automatically get a dime. That’s right, 10-years for a fist offence, and that is even if nobody died.
- If you take a life in a gun crime you get life – full life – no hope of parole, ever, regardless of what sort of a model prisoner you might be, regardless of how many jailhouse programs you take. You are going away for keeps.

Of course we could always bring back capital punishment for such transgressors. But if you suggest that you get everybody’s knickers in a twist. It has been said that capital punishment is no deterrent to crime, and that is probably true. On the other hand, it does effectively get rid of some pretty awful elements in society.

But, and it’s a big one, what if you hang the wrong guy (or girl, we’re equal opportunity in our punishments)? It has happened and it could happen again.

Anyway, if we brought back the ‘long drop’ I don’t think we would be imaginative enough in our categorization of which crimes and individuals warranted summary execution. In the early part of the 19th Century there were more than 50 crimes that could lead to an appointment with the rope. Over the years the rules were tightened up and eventually, for those jurisdictions that have retained it, only murder (and sometimes treason) remain.

In my esteem this is not sufficient.

Sometimes if I’m feeling piqued I’d like to see the following follow the ‘dead man walking’ parade:
- investment fraudsters
- Ponzi scheme perps
- A whole lotta banking execs
- Reps of the petroleum companies who deny there is gouging or price-fixing (an act of penance could save them from the gibbet if they promise to stop lying to the consuming public)
- Airport security brownshirts

And if I’m really feeling cranky I might consider the fact the world would be better off without:
- Drivers who don’t activate turn indicators until they are actually in the turn.
- Drivers who lollygag when the light has turned green and I am behind them.
- People who take phone calls and chat with the person on the other end when I am in their office.
- Neighboring homeowners who operate chainsaws on a sunny Sunday afternoon when I am on my patio.
- Parents that let children run wild in stores or coffee joints.
- Store clerks that are more interested in chatting live or on the phone with their friends than they are in serving me.

Oh, there are more. Many more, but I’m feeling in a good mood today so shall refrain from extending further.

Better to have false hope than no hope at all

2009-02-16T15:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday it was spring. Actually, it was faux printemps, but that’s better than no printemps at all. Even though it is, like a sexual infatuation, bound to end in disappointments. But I have never had a sexual infatuation that I don’t cherish just a teeny bit in memory, and I have never spent a false spring day that betrayed me. Subsequent days might, but the day in question is always fulfilling and highly satisfying.

So, yesterday I got out into the garden fro the first time since back last fall when the 2008 garden had shot its bolt and had become humdrum and boring. But, 2009 was the beginning of a new love and that first date was gentle and delicate and never presumptuous. I just went as far as seemed prudent. The day seemed willing to go along with it.

So, I pruned and snipped and raked and looked with almost paternal pleasure on the crocuses in wondrous early bloom. The daffodils are turgidly thrusting through the soil, meanwhile and the tulip and grape hyacinth foliage has already been nibbled by the deer.

It wasn’t a warm day by any understood standards of warmth, but it was pleasing enough to wear a light jacket. The sun shone vibrantly throughout and taking a break on the front doorstep of a westward facing house felt benevolent and sensual. I could get used to this.

I know it can turn ugly, just like that metaphorical sexual encounter, and the smiles might give way to tears and anger, but just that one day, February 15th made me want to embrace and gently caress what might lie ahead for 2009.

And, it is still too early to have to cut the damn grass.

All the news that fits, we print

2009-02-15T11:57:00.001-08:00

I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning – well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and baseness and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization and cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race.
- Mark Twain in a letter 1899

In fact, Mr. Twain ran hot and cold on the papers of his day, depending on how pissed off he was at any particular time. He didn’t really want to bite the hand that gave him his start in the realm of words. At the same time he was distressed by the dreck that was pushed on an unsuspecting public on a daily basis.

I feel pretty much the same way. I have devoted much of my life to being a scribe and newspapers are very much part of who I am. The old timers used to say when I started that “newspapering gets in your blood,” and it surely does. At the same time I, like Twain (not for a moment suggesting I dwell in the same pantheon as he did) am often distressed and offended with what the papers have become.

I detest their pandering, I loathe their political correctness and refusal to waver from accepted, government prescribed party line – all papers were abominations during the Bush years – and their cheap tawdriness and flavor-of-the-moment catering in which they try to suggest, ‘Aren’t we trendy? Aren’t we hip?’

Let me suggest from my experience in the trade, daily papers are the antithesis of hip, and are invariably at least six months behind in virtually everything. They have to be. It keeps their advertisers satisfied and remember always that papers are first-and-foremost businesses and their primary obligation is not to you, the reader (because you are so insignificant to their bottom-line) but to the advertiser.

“Editorial content is the stuff that goes between the ads,” said old Lord Thomson of Fleet, and in that (cynical as it was) he was being honest.

So, I look at my weekend paper this morning – weekend papers are the worst in terms of crap content – and I am left disquieted. Nothing much there to cheer up any distressed soul.

The economic news is as depressing and distressing as it could be and you can see that we all are damned to an eternity of poverty. Nothing with a positive spin and the papers seem to have developed a fetish for assailing us with negativity on our tailspin into the abyss. That is so they can then write the headline (and accompanying story of sorts): ‘Consumer confidence loss hits the markets’ Uh –what else could it be?

Then there is the beginning of a series decrying the squalor of Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. offered in a sort of fundamental style suggesting that nobody has heard of how bad it is.

Inside we find stories on the pending Olympics and stories on the pending Oscars. I cannot decide which one interests me less – Oscars or Olympics? Probably the Oscars interest me less only in the sense I will end up paying for the damn Olympics if they lose as much money as anybody with any common sense knows they will. Ask the residents of Montreal if you don’t believe me on that score.

Other pieces include a profile of a lacklustre UK singer named Lily Allen who is, I believe, better known for her alcohol fuelled shenanigans (a fine role model for young females, not that it matters since most young people either won’t or literally can’t read a newspaper, leaving one only to wonder why the article on Ms. Allen even exists in the paper since most people over 30 would have no interest in her whatsoever) than any musical styling prowess.

There is also a piece on very expensive sex toys for rich broads. Nothing like a bit of suggestiveness to take a body’s mind off the recession despite the fact the article – replete with pictures of the gadgets – is appearing in a family newspaper.

Good, now that I’ve vented that bit of spleen I feel much better about the world. A feeling that was enhanced by a fine walk in the sunshine on this late winter day, and to realize that the world of news garnering and purveying has changed very little since the day of Mark Twain.

Using that other L-word

2009-02-12T19:15:00.000-08:00

What’s the biggest Hallmark seller after Mother’s Day? Of course it’s Valentine’s Day. Tomorrow. Or, today if you are reading this tomorrow. And Valentine’s Day invariably sends one the direction of thoughts of love.

Not love as in lovemaking, although that’s a darn swell manifestation of love, but more ‘love’ as a word and how we use it.

My handy online dictionary defines it thusly:

love
play_w2("L0262400")
(l v)
n.
1. A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
2. A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.
3.
a. Sexual passion.
b. Sexual intercourse.
c. A love affair

The foregoing definition works for me and covers the amorous ground, to a degree at least. And in looking at love from that perspective, I sometimes worry if we’ve cheapened the word in recent years by being too ready to use it for all occasions.

I was talking to Wendy on the phone and she told me she was going to lunch with a lady friend that day. I haven’t seen her friend for a long time and don’t really know her that well, but immediately said: “Well, give her my love.”

“I didn’t know you knew her so well that you had such an affection for her,” Wendy said.
“I don’t know her that well, and I couldn’t say if I would feel that way about her if I did know her better. But, you know, it’s just a throwaway. That’s what everybody says.”
“I don’t,” she replied. “I say it to you and that’s about it.”
“OK, I get what you’re saying. Uh – just say ‘hi’ for me.”

People tend to use ‘love’ quite blithely these days. Perhaps it is a sign of perilous and insecure times, or maybe it has just been cheapened. Sort of like the ‘F-word’ which hardly works as a curse any longer as it has become so ubiquitous.

I confess, I use ‘love’ a fair amount. I will call females of my acquaintance ‘love’ or ‘my love’ fairly blithely, though never in a creepy way. But, and it is a big ‘but’, I don’t use it cheaply. If it comes into a reference it is because I feel genuine affection for the individual. Not necessarily hearts-and-flowers, or “let’s leap into bed” affection, but human affection. I am an affectionate person and the world is filled with too much pain, torment and anger.

In that context, I am not offended by the concept of Valentine’s Day. I think it’s rather nice to have one day out of the year given over, if not to huge romantic love, then at least to human affection with no ulterior motive in mind. Unless there is an ulterior motive in mind, and that’s fine, too but it is something you’ll have to work out for yourselves.

‘Love’ in its broader context is like kissing. There are genuine and deep kisses and they are heavenly, and then there are light kisses. Even light mouth kisses. I only kiss three females on the mouth. My wife, of course, and two old female friends, and in their cases it is very light and fleeting kisses that are only set apart from cheek kisses (the next order in the scale) by the location of their destination. Cheek kisses (either given or received) are nice and also only for special people via some sort of mutual understanding.

To closer female friends I close personal letters or emails with ‘love’. Nothing to do with romance per se, but very much a sign of affection and trust. I email an old old friend whom I’ve known since first grade. When we began writing each other a few years ago she asked if I would object if she closed her letters with ‘love’. I said there was nothing I’d like more. It made me feel good.

Enough.

Happy Valentines Day and love to you all.

That's me. Ian Lidster, 'thousandaire'

2009-02-11T16:34:00.000-08:00

Pity the poor banking weasels who are now going to have to subsist on a mere half a million a year. What must that be like? I suppose if your sense of fiscal responsibility and entitlement is stratospheric, it must be a very bad thing to be forced into such penury.

But, it’s all relative. In the (unlikely) mind of a Paris Hilton, I suppose the thought – she has them, they say, though they often conflict with considerations of appropriate nail polish hue – would be a sympathetic one for those who will now have to struggle so.

I do not live in such exalted realms. I’m also a tight-fisted bastard. So, when I accrue a few dollars, I detest spending them. I like getting bank statements showing four (sometimes even five) figures. I detest debt and attempt to scrupulously avoid it. Right now Visa owes me $11.35. How cool is that?

So, by this stage of my life the only thing I want to spend money on is (aside from the obvious like mortgage, food, cable and transportation) is travel. That is never money badly spent.

So, you can imagine the joy in my acquisitive soul when blogger Leslie offered me a cool five grand. That’s right. In her tagging of me she said $5,000 would be laid on me; my personal bailout, if you will. All I have to do is respond to a simple question: What would you do if given $5,000? A nice little sum that. Not a half million, but tolerable. So, when she tagged me you can imagine how jubilant I was.

All I have to do to get my five grand is suggest a worthy use for it. Excellent.

It was only a while later that I realized that the sum was strictly symbolic and that no filthy lucre would change hands between her and me. I thought we were friends but I guess we just weren’t as close as I’d imagined.

Nevertheless, I want to play. The only criterion in my response is that my answer has to be sensible and worthwhile, not $5,000 worth of M&Ms, which was a concept she toyed with for a while.

So, here are some possibilities I might consider:

I rejected my initial response which was to lay the money on a friend of mine who is in the process of opening what she hopes will be the first legal brothel in Canadian history. No, my friend is not a ‘lady of the evening’ but she is an advocate for them. Well hookers get a lot of bad press, their lives are often wretched, and some of them can be very nice (don’t ask me how I know that), so the idea wasn’t a bad one. But, I pulled back on the idea because I think there remain too many legal hurdles. So, I move on. OK, now these are my serious suggestions:

1. I have a friend who operates a halfway house for recovering alcoholics/addicts. So often people complete a rehab program but end up having to return to some dysfunctional and shitty dive once clean and sober. This puts them in jeopardy. So, I would happily give my friend some of that largesse.

2. Leslie mentioned her husband suggested investing in solar panels. Brilliant. I could see doing that. A number of years ago when we were in the Cook Islands we noticed that many of the dwellings had solar panels. It made so much sense, and I could only think, what the hell is wrong with us that we’re not doing likewise? Those people are supposed to be primitive. We’re just morons burning up hydrocarbons like there is no tomorrow. Guess what? There isn’t.
3. Provide hypodermics for Type I diabetic children of poor families. In this weird society they give out free syringes to junkies. Yes, I know, it is to thwart the unwanted spread of HIV and Hep-C. Fair enough. Yet addicts are there by choice. Diabetics have no choice. And have no freebies.
4.Donate the bucks to the Island Corridor Society. This is the group that operates the little railway on Vancouver Island. They get little help (other than from loyal passengers, and there are many) from officialdom and deal with governments who want to pave the world into freeways and ignore the highly viable option of rail transit. The Asians and Europeans are about 200 years ahead of us in this regard. No wonder much of the rest of the world thinks North American attitudes are pretty pathetic.

5. Send Ian and Wendy back to Kauai (or the South of France, either will do nicely). You know, just to clean out our psyches so we might continue to contribute to society. Just consider it a body and soul investment. Well, it was worth a shot. The first four suggestions, by the way, are absolutely serious.

Who would I like to see do this? Well, absolutely anybody who wants to give it a shot. It truly does make one think. But specifically I will look for comments by:

Thailand Chani
Merely Me
Cs
Heart in San Francisco
D. Sistrunk
Acuity Todos

If your Mondays are awful (and everyone's are) blame the school system

2009-02-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

When I first awaken pre-dawn on a Monday morning I am struck by a brief (very brief) thought of maybe slashing my wrists.

It’s OK. I’m not really suicidal at all, but there is something about a Monday that brings about the impulse of not really wanting to face the realities of the day. Because, in so facing, one must also accept the realities of the week that ensues.

I think maybe more people off themselves on Monday than on any other day of the week. I have no statistics to bear this out, but it makes sense to me.

Two days of the week cause the greatest angst in western society: Monday and Sunday. And Sunday’s are truly stressful for many. Sundays can be tedious and, in a seeming contradiction, feel both long and short.

“There’s something about a Sunday that makes a body feel alone,” wrote Kris, and rarely has a truer sentiment been penned. Sundays are inclined to be lonely, especially for those who are socially isolated. Sundays also put us in anticipation of Monday, however, and I think that is the real vileness of the day.

Years ago I wrote a column no the wretchedness of Sunday; on the angst that starts to bubble up early in the afternoon and increases in magnitude as the hours crawl (or speed) by. Anyway for that virtually throwaway column I received more mail and phone calls than any other I ever wrote. Everybody, it seemed, could relate to it.

One guy wrote that the afternoons were so bad he found it prudent to begin drinking at about 2 p.m. so that by bedtime he was effectively numbed.

Yet all of this Sabbath distress, I believe, is due to Monday anticipation. Sunday before vacation for example, doesn’t cause boils in the soul. Such a Sunday can be a fine day. No, it is because Sunday is the day prior to the week’s demands.

Personally, I blame all of this adult misery on the schools. A word of advice here, if you are ever in doubt about something to blame for all that is wretched in your life, blame the schools. It’s an easy cheapshot and who could argue with you? Prior to being frogmarched up to first grade, most of us had decent Mondays, filled with play and frolicking. Then a hideous reality was imposed on us and life became less charming. It would always remain less charming. Yep, blame the schools and the ineffective farce of public education.

After that, Mondays are bound to be bad for the remainder of your life. Take my case, for example. Monday is essentially my least challenging workweek day. I don’t have to go into the office for client counseling until Tuesday, and I have a day before me in which I can catch up on writing projects, puttering in the garden, maybe planning something splendidly tasty for dinner, or having coffee with a friend.

My Monday is all of those things, yet I still have this big hand twisting my gut, just because it’s Monday. Monday merely reminds me of all the things I vowed to get to during the week and hadn’t addressed the previous week due to such important causative factors as laziness and procrastination. Consequently, my Mondays leave me feeling immersed in guilt because I know I will decide that the entire challenging Monday task I should address will be deferred until Tuesday.

So, here I am, late morning Monday, writing this blog rather than turning my hand to a freelance writing project that is three-quarters finished but that I don’t feel like getting back to, even though I won’t be paid until I finish it.

Goddamn Mondays.

I blame the schools.

Big girls don't cry. C'mon, don't cry, I said

2009-02-05T17:02:00.000-08:00

We know that people haven’t been hard enough hit by our staggering global economic woes if their primary obsession is that some D-list entertainer has turned into a lardass.

Some singer (or something) named Jessica Simpson is reported to have joined the blimpo brigade much to the consternation of those who have much too little to be actually concerned about. OK, I know who Jessica Simpson is, sort of, a singer of some kind, I believe. I just feigned ignorance of her presence on the planet to emphasize the point as to how little I care if she balloons up to 400 pounds and then explodes.

Anyway, piling on a bit of pork hasn’t hurt our Jessica too much. She is getting more supermarket tab cover space and ink than her previous (lack of) talents afforded her. No such thing as bad publicity, goes the adage.

What worries me about this societal obsession with excess avoirdupois – obesity is the new smoking – is that it suggests any sort of heft is by its very nature unappealing and no female should ever be more than wisp-like in bearing. In other words, what the tabs are telling Jessica and every adolescent miss is that plumpness equates with being a dog.

The odd thing about this is that males don’t really care all that much about a surfeit of female poundage that has gone beyond some mystically prescribed ideal weight. Where did that come from? Seriously. Give yourself one of those much-hyped BMI tests and I almost guarantee the result will show that you are too chubby.

Showing how fashions change, Marilyn Monroe by current BMI standards would be deemed obese.

Personally, I rather likes me a ‘well-built’ woman. But, I guess I am a product of my times. Me and Rubens.

Of course, there are health issues with extravagant adiposity, and they are not to be scoffed at. There is the huge increase in Type II diabetes for example. But, in my esteem that is more a by-product of the crud we eat rather than weight per se. Throw back items swimming in transfats and you are bound to pay the price. I cringe when I watch the TV commercial about the dutiful Mom who is feeding her kids goddamn Pop-tarts for brekkie before sending them off to school.

But, speaking of brekkie, I think that is one issue that might be addressed. I love breakfast and truly do feel it’s the most important meal of the day. I especially love those wonderful English breakfasts: Eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, fried bread, sometimes kidneys and kippers and even baked beans on the side. It’s a great deal if it’s included with your room rate. That way a body can skip lunch if traveling on a budget.

At the same time, I’m really only good for a couple of those per trip or I end up feeling bloated.

American breakfasts I find at times to be incomprehensibly large: Eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, etc. served in absolutely massive portions. Again, once or twice per trip. After that it’s a bowl of instant oatmeal back in our motel room to start out our subsequent days of travel.

Actually, oatmeal is God’s gift to sensible eating. It’s very good for you, zaps cholesterol, fills a body nicely and tastes great.

Try oatmeal, Jessica, it might serve you better if you’re worried about your zaftigness. Though, I don’t think you need to be.

Oh, and do you have a favorite breakfast? If so, please feel free to share it. My is good, old-fashioned eggs benedict, but on fresh prawns, or lox in lieu of ham or bacon.

Nope. So far no replacement for Bogey

2009-02-03T14:41:00.000-08:00

I got tagged by Alexandra for this one and since I am in a bit of an inspirational lull au moment, I thought I would do this. I mean, I’ve done a gajillion of these profile things before, but once more won’t hurt. Feel free to move on if you don’t care more than a fiddler’s fart about what makes me tick. Or, take it on yourself and see what you find out about you. However weird (or scary) you want to make it will rest entirely with you.

The object of the exercise is to list 25 things that are part of you. Maybe you alone, or maybe you and the King of the Belgians. So, here’s is a bit about who/what I am on this dreary February morning.

1.I used to suffer almost chronically from insomnia. I didn’t want to use drugs to deal with it, and using booze to sleep is a dangerous habit to get into. So, I developed a certain meditative ability to literally rid my mind of all extraneous thought. It works about 80 percent of the time, which is pretty good.

2. Episodes of Cold Case almost invariably make me feel weepy at the end. The stories are just plain damn sad.

3. Alexandra mentioned having synesthesia. Me too. Consequently, I see days of the week, months of the year, numbers and letters in color. In her case, she also hears in color. I don’t, but I can understand it. I also always dream in color.

4. I got my two best university grades in Slavonics Studies courses, both firsts. I speak no Russian and have never had even a slight desire to visit Russia, with the exception of St. Petersburg, probably. I’d love to see the Hermitage. In one class I sat next to an absolutely stunning and sophisticated and very smart older coed who professed to be a communist. For some reason that was an aphrodisiac for me and made her remote high-cheekboned aloofness even more erotic. She then invited me to go away with her for a weekend and I chickened out. Youth truly is wasted on the young.

5. I have been to one full opera (the lead was Joan Sutherland) and one full ballet in my life. That was enough. But I am happy to have had the experiences in both cases.

6. I have dreams about former cars I’ve owned. I go into a remote garage somewhere and there is an old Ian vehicle. For some reason I have a key for it. I fire it up and it starts immediately. I am delighted and prepare to take it home with me.

7. Speaking of dreams, when I was about 14 I kept a small flock of livestock fowl, chickens, ducks and geese. I still have dreams about them and I am wracked with guilt because I haven’t tended to their needs for so long and feel I must go and see to them, collect eggs and clean out their house. I get to them and they always seem to be OK.

8. One of the first things I do when I arrive at a new place is to get a local newspaper. It gives me the pulse of the place, the politics, the issues and so forth.

9. I studied the violin when I was a kid. I was never very good at it and gave it up after a couple of years. I now regret not being able to play an instrument, since I love music and would love to be able to make my own.

10. I’ve always believed that if I’ve had a romantic interest in somebody that the other person feels the same way about me. In other words, they have given off vibes indicating they are approachable. I still believe from experience that is true about 80 percent of the time

11. I have significant acrophobia. I detest heights and even find it difficult to watch films of high steel workers and rock climbers. Ironically, flying doesn’t bother me at all, even though being in a tall building does. If I am higher than the fifth floor I cannot go out on a balcony.

12. I’m not very mystical. I don’t really believe in fortune-telling, astrology and other forms of soothsaying. I’d like to, but I don’t.

13. Yet, I do believe in the power of positive thinking. I believe positive thoughts attract positives, and negative thinking leads to negative results. I honestly believe there is a cellular thing in all of this and I have seen it happen with myself and others.

14. Is there life on other planets? Of course there is. Indeed, if we accept the premise the universe is infinite in its magnitude, then there is life on an infinite number of planets. I don’t believe for a second we are alone in the universe. Why are we so arrogant as to assume that?

15. That said, I’m not much of a sci-fi buff. Fantasy tales in general leave me cold, for the most part. But, I am intrigued by the concept of time-travel and time-warps. Such sagas will set my imagination soaring.

16. I haven’t danced around the house in years. I used to, whether I was alone or not. Then it stopped. Why is that? It’s sort of like when children run for the sheer exuberance of it and then, in adulthood they don’t. Why do we stop?

17. Even though my financial advisor at my bank is easy on the eyes, charming and intelligent, I still hate banks and everything they stand for. Same with insurance companies.

18. I can say without fear of divine retribution that I have never stolen anything in my life. I think I was always afraid I would get caught. I once years ago ‘borrowed’ a guy’s wife. It’s a long story and not one I’m proud of, but I didn’t steal her.

19. I don’t trust guys who part their hair down the middle. It shows an inability to commit.

20. Pregnant women should not wear bikinis at the beach. Just a personal esthetic bias.

21. If a woman bends over and shows a great deal of cleavage all heterosexual men wiil look. So will a surprising number of heterosexual women.

22. I have never watched an episode of ER all the way through. I don’t find illness and injury to be entertainment. I feel the same way about House, though Hugh Laurie is superlative. No, give me old-fashioned crime saga any day.

23. And, while on the topic, I still miss Jerry Orbach’s Lenny.

24. I still think Billy Bob Thornton’s Slingblade is one of the best movies ever.

25. They haven’t yet found acceptable replacements for Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy or Bob Mitchum.

Rats. Just when I was getting on a roll I completed my 25. As I said, no tagging here, but it’s another one of those stream-of-consciousness relatively easy exercises. Try it, if so inclined.

Let the revels begin

2009-02-02T08:24:00.000-08:00

Today is Groundhog Day. To some this might mean little, but for me it is my chosen holiday of the year. No fuss, no muss, no gifts, no guilt, no anxiety, no overindulgence, nobody picking up a shotgun and wasting his family just because he couldn’t cope with the pressure of the occasion and was filled with resentments over Groundhog Days past. For, all GHD offers is a slight element of hope and a forecast that spring is on the horizon.

Today is Groundhog Day. To some this might mean little, but for me it is the best holiday of the year. No fuss, no muss, no gifts, no guilt, no anxiety, no overindulgence, nobody picking up a shotgun and wasting his family just because he couldn’t cope with the pressure of the occasion and was filled with resentments over Groundhog Days past. For, all GHD offers is a slight element of hope and a forecast that spring is on the horizon.

I’m sorry, but the topic invariably put me in mind of one of the most underrated film tales of recent years, the inspired and even inspiring Groundhog Day.

Feel free to cue Sonny and Cher’s I Got You, Babe.

I’ll begin by stating that I am an unrepentant Bill Murray fan. Any world that offers a place to Bill, and yet still makes room for a Howie Mandel or Adam Sandler is beyond my comprehension, but I have no power over that.

Of course GHD is an allegory. It’s a morality play. It’s a study of sin and redemption much as is Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – and arguably just as effective.

Aside from being extremely funny, GHD looks at how we fall into traps of our own selfish devising and lose touch of how we might extricate ourselves. Murray is jaded and cynical Pittsburgh TV weatherman, Phil Connors. He and a TV crew have been sent to the little town of Punxutawney, PA for the annual awakening of the famed local rodent of the groundhog sort, Punxutawney Phil. Weatherman Phil is insulted and bored by the gig, but sees it as a possible opportunity to get into the pants of pretty assistant, Rita (Andie MacDowell).

What happens, as we know, is a miracle of sorts. As weatherguy Phil is forced to relive what he has already deemed the worst day of his life, he eventually begins to assess where he might have gone wrong all along the way and that the wretchedness of his existence is of his own devising, and nobody else’s. What he ultimately realizes is that he has been undergoing the best of all humbling experiences. What seemed like a curse is really a gift.

Ultimately Phil has his epiphany and becomes a new and decent man and, incidentally, does get into Rita’s aforementioned pants. See, guys, as Otis Redding once said, sometimes all it takes is to try a little tenderness.

For me, this is one of those extremely rare films that I’ve actually viewed a number of times since its release in 1993. In re-viewing I live a certain Groundhog Day of my own with it because I find I get a little more from it each time.

As for the real Groundhog Day, it’s primarily a silly thing. The myth is that if Punxutawney Phil or any other groundhog actually casts a shadow on Feb. 2(which is meant to send him scurrying back to his burrow), we are due for six more weeks of winter. Eek. What a terrible thing. But, wait a minute, here’s the flaw in this. Whether or not he sees his shadow, we’re still due for six more weeks of winter because that time span will take us up to around March 21, the Equinox and hence the beginning of spring.

Oh well. Regardless of that, it’s still my favorite low-stress and expectations day.

Looking outside this morning, thought, I perceive scant chance of the little rodent bugger seeing his shadow in these here parts today. Yay! In six weeks it will be full-blown spring. The groundhog never lies. Come to think of it, we don't actually groundhogs in this area. Would a rare Vancouver Island Marmot do?

Grateful to have this happen in my lifetime

2009-01-30T16:12:00.001-08:00

Southern trees bear strange fruit

Blood on the leaves

Blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
- sung by Billie Holiday

“The accusations against persons lynched, according to the Tuskegee Institute records for the years 1882 to 1951, were: in 41 per cent for felonious assault, 19.2 per cent for rape, 6.1 per cent for attempted rape, 4.9 per cent for robbery and theft, 1.8 per cent for insult to white persons, and 22.7 per cent for miscellaneous offenses or no offense at a 11.5 In the last category are all sorts of trivial “offenses” such as “disputing with a white man,” attempting to register to vote, “unpopularity”, self-defense, testifying against a white man, “asking a white woman in marriage”, and “peeping in a window.”
- as cited in The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States,1880-1950

So, I have been around for a while. I have seen a number of things in my life. I’m not yet ancient, but I have been around for a while and I know what things were like, not so very long ago.

We think the world is going to hell in a handcart. We think we have entered into some sort of era of hopelessness and despair, whiners and pansies that we sometimes can be.

And then I turn on my television and I see a black man, and I hear him talking and I hear him described by the title ‘President’. This black man is the President of the United States! Sorry, but I still get choked when the realization hits me. Not because I am a wishy-washy liberal (I mean, I can be, depending on the situation, but can also be a wishy-washy conservative), or because I hero-worship, or fawn. I do none of the above because people are mainly just people, not gods. But, for crissake, A Black Man is the President of the United States! I find that amazing – and arguably and symbolically one of the most wonderful things I’ve experienced in my life.

I was a child in the comedy age of Amos ‘n Andy – loved that old Kingfish: “Holy Mackul dere, Sapphire!” Saw nothing wrong with it back then. The mindset was different. Jack Benny’s sidekick and retainer was lovable old Rochester with his gravely voice. Nat King Cole, as widely viewed as his delicious velvet voiced croonings were, could not get a sponsor for his show, so it was dropped.

“Mel Torme, Nat Cole and I walked into the bar at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco in the early 1950s,” jazz pianist George Shearing told me in a newspaper interview I conducted some years ago. “We were refused entry because Nat was with us. I never set foot in that hotel again.”

Uber white-bread singer Pat Boone sang sanitized versions of Little Richard songs and made more money than the original artist (and songwriter). “Can’t have decent white kids listening to them jungle beats, now can we. Who knows how may girls’ll get knocked up as a result.”

Reactionary sleazeball columnist Walter Winchell launches a personal crusade against Josephine Baker, forcing her to close in New York and go back to Paris, whence she stayed.

Singer extraordinaire Paul Robeson is accused of communism and his career is destroyed.

Eartha Kitt is refused entry by the front door of the White House.

English songstress Petula Clark gets viewer flack in 1968 for daring to affectionately place her hand on the arm of Harry Belafonte during a TV special.

And there was Selma, and there was Birmingham, and Little Rock and Rosa Parks and Authorine Lucy and top cop Bull Connors with his snarling dogs and Medgar Evers and, of course, Dr. King. ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ indeed, as much as I love the song.

And so it went.

And now the President of the United States is a Black Man!

Excuse me for being astonished.

And grateful. Hey, he may even turn out to be a lousy president.

That has nothing to do with anything.

It’s the everything else that counts. And, in my lifetime, yet.

Come on folks, just calm down, OK?

2009-01-29T16:45:00.000-08:00

Just when I thought it was safe to get out of the bathtub; that the world couldn’t get any more insane now, what with Dick Cheney having been secreted in a rubber room somewhere, and in this country, Stephane Dion having gone back to the monastery, then I learn about this.

A terrorism expert has advised the British Columbia government that a security person should be placed on the crafts of the BC Ferries fleet in order to offset any potential threat. Wow! There’s an item that I suspect brought a chill to the heart of Bin Laden in his cave.

“In the name of Allah, BC Ferries are putting security people on their craft, no doubt taking some of those insanely homicidal mall-cops and reassigning them. This spells the end for Al Qaeda!”

Are these people nuts, or what? Yes they are, and they’re nuts with our money!

But let’s say that some governmental moron (maybe redundant) decides this is a splendid idea. How is it going to work? Are they going to scrutinize every passenger and vehicle that goes aboard? Are they going to use the same officious base-pay high school dropouts that they have to do the screening at airports? I mean, hundreds and hundreds of people and vehicles board those ships every day of the year.

So, maybe such security checks are impracticable. Will they use facial profiling? Since half the former population of the Punjab lives in greater Vancouver, they won’t be able to base their scrutiny on questionable ethnicity like I have seen happen at airports (much to the mortification and resentment of all).

“He looks dusky, Fred. Better stop him. Terrorist if ever I seen one.”

Are they going to look in the trunk of every car? I mean, a guy could drive on with an entire trunkfull of high explosives, then head up to the lounge and prepare to detonate it remotely. “Ve are having the technology. Ve can do this!” Yes, they can. But are they going to? Are the BC Ferries really high on the international terrorism hit list? I choose to think not.

I mean, yes, there are circumstances under which strict security scrutiny is demanded for obvious reasons. Two years ago Wendy and I caught the ‘Eurostar’ train in Brussels in order to take it through the Chunnel to London. At the station in Brussels, there was no fooling around with the security checks. They were highly efficient, never abusive, but absolutely scrupulous. Of course they were. We were going through the Chunnel. What a terrorist target, no doubt.
But BC Ferries. Come on. That’s local ego gone mad. If I board a ferryboat in BC waters I’m more frightened of the idea of crew members who are supposed to be working on the bridge out in some back room screwing rather than tending to matters at hand. Hey, it happened. You can read about it. www.seanbuckley.ca/blog/2006/03/22/bc-ferries-queen-of-the-north-sinks/ -Big boat sank to the bottom of the sea due to a little inappropriately timed hanky-panky.

The whole terrorism thing is an industry. An industry that has asked us to be complicit in seeing our individual liberties eroded due to state-sanctioned paranoia. Yes, 9/11 happened, and it was awful. Yes there were the attacks in the London Underground, and the attack on the train in Spain. All hideous stuff. Lots of hideous stuff in life; it’s a scary business living. An attack could take place right where you are. You could also win $10 million in the lottery. In both cases it’s unlikely.

I lived in the UK at the height of IRA bombings back in the early 1980s. We’d go to London. There were periodic bombings. We’d still go to London. I was in Montreal in the late 1960s. An FLQ bomb blew out a shop a half block down the street from our hotel. Yes, we could have been walking by that shop, and yes we would have been blown to ratshit. But, we weren’t.

The more officialdom takes from us, the more they encroach on our freedom, the more they convey the message that we’re all in Depends due to fear then, in my humble esteem, the terrorists are winning.

Haggis and pipers? What could be better?

2009-01-28T11:14:00.000-08:00

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!

Really, I have come to the conclusion that you really don’t need anything else in your accumulated wisdom about life than to understand that brief quote from Scotland’s poetic folk hero, Robbie Burns.

The Scots around the world are making an especially big deal over Burns this year, since it is the 250th anniversary of the drunken, wenching bard’s birth. In fact, he was nowhere near the drunk his roistering fans suggest as they quaff back another ‘wee deoch’ in memory of ‘auld Rabbie’. Auld Rabbie, in fact, after his youthful foray into Edinburgh society, settled back as a rural tax collector, married Highland Mary, and kept his ‘breeks’ in place except for her.

I only know some of this stuff due to the fact I had a paternal grandmother who was almost a militant Scot and demanded I know absolutely everything about my north of Hadrian’s Wall forebears – especially since three-quarters of my heritage flowed from the predominantly English elements in m DNA.

I know it too because I was once called upon to offer the ‘Immortal Memory’ at a Robbie Burns Night celebration by a local Legion branch. So, in order to do that, I had to do a bit of research.

Burns Night, by the way, is a celebration consisting of (usually middle aged or older) lads and lassies of real or imagined Scots extraction to deck themselves out in kilts (or those lovely long tartan skirts), eat haggis (which is combination of rolled oats and sheep guts, which is surprisingly more agreeable than it sounds) and get ‘faced on single malt whisky (without the ‘e’, if you please.) And, the pipers. Always with the #@%&& pipers.

Anyway, I had to find out what I could about Burns and expand my knowledge of him to exceed a few poems learned in school or from my Gran, and to recognize that the Auld Lang Syne we drunkenly sing on NYE was written by Burns – and best performed, I might add, by Guy Lombardo who was Italian-Canadian, and had nae a drap of Scots blood.

Anyway, I did my research and decided – especially after a few drams of that single-malt (this was still in my imbibing days) -- to do the Burns quotes in Scots dialect. I did quite well, truth be known. Even real Scots commended me. But, I have a natural ear for dialects. I once spent 10-days in Ireland and could have put Barry Fitzgerald to shame.

It went well and was great fun and the organizers gave me a Wallace Tartan necktie to thank me. Appropriate since the Scots part of me is Wallace, as in ‘Scots wha hae …” and Braveheart.

I told my stepdaughter when we saw the video of Braveheart – she was about 13 at the time – that the film was about my ancestor.

“You’re related to Mel Gibson?” she asked, eyes lighting up.

I didn’t pursue the matter any further.

But, I am proud of the Scottish aspect of who I am. I have traveled in Scotland; I love Edinburgh and the Highlands are unexcelled in terms of natural beauty, though the roads are (or were when I was there) pretty challenging.

And Scots should be proud that for a country with a wee population, they have accomplished a remarkable amount in virtually every field throughout the centuries. They may be the heaviest boozers in Europe but they took some time away from the hangover to even invent television – just ask John Logie Baird about that, despite claims of others to the contrary.

Anyway, aside from that digression, I am left with the question: If we have Burns Nights all over the place every February, why don’t we have a Shakespeare Night, a Dickens Night, a Twain Night? I expect it’s something to do with the ‘whisky’.

Ain't your fault, Ma, it's all in that old cellular memory

2009-01-26T14:22:00.000-08:00

Last week I had one of those revelatory moments. Almost an epiphany in the sense it explained so much and left me with a bit more understanding about who I am and why I have done some of the things I have.

I have always had a memory with great longevity. To a degree I have a photographic (not to mention highly photogenic, my dears) memory. Not totally photographic but significant enough in impact that I see everything in pictures in my mind. That doesn’t mean, by the way, that I was a brilliant student. That was impeded by a strong element of lazy bastard-ness in me. I only remembered what I wanted to remember. And, that’s not really the subject of this essay, except in a peripheral way.

I also have a memory with great longevity. I remember back to the age of 2½ and not just as sporadic images but even sequentially to a degree.

Now, an attempt to tie this together. Last week I attended an afternoon long workshop for counsellors, social workers, shrinks and other such persons offered by the rather brilliant Dr. Gabor Maté, He is a man who tends to the wants and needs of the inhabitants of what is considered the ickiest bit of real estate in North America, Vancouver’s drug-wasted and tragic Downtown Eastside – a few square blocks of horror and tragedy that you will not find in any tourist guide. It’s a scary and sad place and that’s where Dr. Maté finds his client base.

Anyway, I was familiar with this dedicated man, and had interviewed him for an extensive newspaper article last spring. And, I had read his book. But, I hadn’t heard him speak and he was one of those speakers who was, in a word, riveting. The three hours passed like minutes.

Now, here is the revelation that ‘riveted’ me. He pointed out that we are all victims, more or less, of what we remember from our past. But, the information that took me to a place of revelation was that what we remember is different from what we recall.

Recollection is our conscious memory. You know, when I was five I had a red wagon. True memory is at a cellular level and begins, quite literally, at birth. We remember being thrust from the womb, as it were, but we are not conscious of it. And, what happens immediately after Mom’s final grunt to expel us sticks with us for the rest of our lives. And, if it’s not an ideal situation, for various reasons, then there is a penalty.

I have been bothered for many years by the fact I did not grieve for my mother when she died. I felt little emotion, but assumed it would come later after the news had sunk in. It never has. I have never, I am almost ashamed to say, missed her. I mean, yes, she was an alcoholic, an aloof and not demonstrative woman, she was immature, infuriating and all those other things. But, you know, she was my Mom, and that usually excuses a lot of stuff. Yet, when my grandmother died when I was 14, I was devastated. I still miss her. If there is a big reunion up in the sky after I leave the worldly scene, she is the person I want to see again.

Dr. Maté explained why. And the why is, my grandmother, as far as my little cells are concerned, was ‘my mother.’ Not as strange as it seems. Immediately following my birth, Mom came down with scarlet fever. She was put under quarantine for six months and my grandmother leapt into the breach. So, it was with her I bonded, imprinted, if you will and she was the one who in my vitals always filled the motherhood role.

I have written elsewhere that the happiest time in my very young years was when the family lived with my grandparents for a few months when they were building what would be our family home. As far as I was concerned, they needn’t have bothered because at my grandparents’ I was home. It was where I was ‘meant’ to be. The essence of my being told me that and I had no control over it. If my natural mother was anything she, through no fault of her own, was my adoptive mother.

It all explained a lot, not only my lack of grief for my mother, abandonment issues, and a seeking of numerous female liaisons throughout at chunk of my life, though not in recent years. I am with somebody whom I trust implicitly will not abandon me like my cellular memory told me mother had, even if she had no control over it.

Thanks, Dr. Maté for clearing that up for me. Makes it easier to move on with a little understanding and less guilt.

Oh, you're a lad, Harry Windsor. Keep up the silly work

2009-01-24T11:22:00.000-08:00

Harry and rich babe de jour

Uh-oh, Harry screwed up again.

Seems he (a few years ago) uttered a term that his critics deem racist. He referred to a fellow military sort as a Paki. Not quite as severe as the ‘N-word’ but not exactly considered a descriptive showing tolerance for ethnic differences.

Yes, it probably is offensive (though evidently his Pakistani soldier buddy didn’t take any umbrage) and Harry should know better. On the other hand, considering the verbal gaffes of his paternal grandfather, the kid comes by it naturally. Prince Philip has never been deemed a paragon of sensitivity. On him, people think it’s archaically quaint, on young Harry they attest it bespeaks loutishness and yobbishness. Maybe.

But, you know, if young Prince Hal is kind of a yob, it makes him rather endearing. He has spunk, like his late great-aunt, Princess Margaret and, I daresay, like his mother. He’s a hell of a lot more interesting than his bland older brother, William, who grows increasingly like his dull and silly father. It’s cool to be the ‘spare’ because you don’t have to tow the mark in the same way.

Anyway, as offensive as I find racism, I am neither condoning nor condemning the lad. That’s mainly because I don’t care.

I don’t care about the entire lot of this group of dysfunctional dynastic foreigners. The Brits pay for their upkeep and I, as a Canadian, remain antagonistic to the fact that the Windsor clan has any sort of even symbolic connection with my country, other than an historic one.

By this, I don’t mean I dislike the Queen. Everybody likes the Queen. She is a tirelessly hard-working woman well past the age most people have retired. She takes her role terribly seriously and serves her subjects superlatively. And, she’s kind of a mumsy old dear who I am given to calling ‘Mrs. Queen’ (not to her face, she doesn’t like that). But, to me, she is the queen of a foreign country, not my country. So, why is her head stuck on my money and my postage stamps?

Now, my heritage is purely Anglo-Saxon, English and Scots, a smattering of Welsh and, supposedly a bit of Jewish in that my maternal grandfather was distantly connected with Benjamin Disraeli, so none of this has anything to do with my forebears. I also lived in England for a year (and loved it) and have traveled there extensively, and have lots of relatives and even more dear friends there. I am an unrepentant anglophile.

But, and this is a big ‘but’, I am not English. I was born in Canada. My parents were born in Canada. My paternal grandfather came to Canada at age 12. That’s more than a century of my kin kicking up the turf this side of the Atlantic. The Queen is the Queen of England, Defender of the Faith and all that rot. She is also Queen of the Commonwealth, of which Canada is a part and this is supposed to give me a sense of connectedness. In that sense it means I am also supposed to have a sense of connectedness with Papua-New Guinea. That’s really kind of a stretch, culturally at least. There may be some rough sorts in the Canadian hinterland, but hardly any headhunters.

I truly don’t believe Canada will become a genuine grown up country until it chucks this archaic connection with a foreign family. Australia seems to have a significant republican movement that continues to gain momentum. What’s with us? Why don’t we have one? If anybody wants to trot out the illogical and sorry excuse that the monarchy is the ‘glue’ that holds this country together, then we’re a pretty sorry lot and must have no home-grown culture of which we can be proud.

Anyway, I say we hang in there until Mrs. Queen goes, but if anybody here thinks I am going to embrace Prince Chuck as my head-of-state, then I’ll seriously consider emigrating.

But thanks, tearaway Harry, for the entertainment.

What if the 'Reaper's' not grim at all?

2009-01-23T08:27:00.000-08:00

So, what are you afraid of?

- Flying?
- Relationships?
- Sex?
- Sharks?
- Poverty?
- Climate change?
=Loneliness?
- Illness?
- Humiliation?
- Beaking wind in public?
- That you’ll never catch up with those episodes of Lost that you missed?

Life on this planet can be a formidable challenge, even in good times. And fear is an element that dominates life so profoundly that some people are rendered immobile, and sometimes even invalided by their overweening sense of doom and destruction. Not that there is anything wrong with a slight sense of doom and destruction – it tends to keep us from making bonehead decisions. It’s all a matter of fight-or-flight survival.

But, at the end of the day, despite all our conglomeration of fears both big and small, there is one fear that overrides all others. Indeed, some schools of psychiatric theorizing maintain that ‘all’ fear boils down to one thing – fear of death!

Even our tiniest elements of trepidation ultimately flow through and pick bits of refuse along the way until they become cluttered with conditions that become increasingly life-threatening.

Death comes to us all and, no matter how much we might try to protest to the contrary, it scares the bejesus out of us. No matter how spiritually attuned we are, no matter how churchy we might be, it’s the end of that long and winding road that invariably gives even the strongest pause. We hesitate and are gripped with negativity because we don’t know what it looks like. Myth or even ‘belief’ to the contrary, nobody has really come back, as far as we know.

This blog was not prompted by the recent death of a friend, I’d actually begun it a couple of weeks ago. Mind you, his demise adds a certain poignancy to it all.

Nor is the blog intended to be dreary and depressing. Come to think of it, why do we consider death a depressing thing? Of course we miss those we love, but in a broader sense, why is it a depressing thing? I mean it happens to absolutely everyone, sort of like adolescent zits.

We find it depressing because we don’t understand what it is. I mean, we absolutely don’t understand what it is other than the cessation of life.

So, during our lives, and out of fear, we endeavor to keep death at bay. Sometimes we do it in inappropriate ways, like lots of boozing and doping and screwing and overworking and watching American Idol. Or, we do it in ways that we think are wiser, like taking real good care of our health and cutting back or eliminating our bad habits and watching PBS. Or, we pray our fool heads off thinking God will intervene and give us an understanding. Some even attest they have gotten that message. Maybe they have, but they’re still frightened, I've noticed.

So, that junkie or street rummy who keeps indulging in practices that will guarantee an early demise, why do they do it? Because, ironically, they’re afraid of dying.

I have no answers here. If I had, then it would mean I’d solved one of the universe’s great mysteries. It's not referred to as the 'Great Unknown' for no reason.

The only thing I can say is that as your cat or dog ages, that pet never thinks about death, nor is it afraid. The fools. Too bad they're not smart like we are.

Life flows and ebbs like the sea

2009-01-21T09:07:00.001-08:00

Death really can upset your day and throw your plans asunder.

I got up this morning after my typical lousy sleep, switched on the coffeemaker and then my computer, in my usual fashion. Then the coffee can be ready for when Wendy arises and I will be abreast of what is happening in the world – especially ‘my’ world.

One of the first things to hit my eye was an email message titled ‘How sad.” I felt my heart skip a beat. The two words were both cryptic and powerful. Something bad had happened overnight. My first thought was, especially after the Inauguration hoopla yesterday, was that something evil had happened to the Obamas, God forbid.

But, it was closer to home. Somebody had died. A friend. A friend not so very much older than I. This guy was also a politician. In fact, he was a high-ranking politician in BC government and was, in fact, a long-time member of cabinet.

So, I knew him as a politician. He was a good one who served his constituents well. Sometimes I agreed with him politically and other times, contrarian that I am, I thoroughly disagreed with him and couldn’t support certain stances that he assumed. That’s OK. He understood, that is in the nature of the political racket. I am cynical about politicians and politics. This fellow, on the other hand, lived and breathed the game.

But, my acquaintanceship with him, and unbeknownst to many others, was also at a much deeper level. At a time of unremitting personal woes more than a dozen years ago, this man reached out to me in friendship and support. He didn’t need to. He had nothing to gain by so-doing. His gesture was unexpected, and that is the best sort of gesture. It is also the mark of a genuine caring human being. I cherished what he did, and cherished the words he expressed to me. Indeed, they gave me more hope than a lot of the hollow platitudes that were passed my way at the time.

I have never forgotten what he did, and never shall. When friends and acquaintances would speak with disdain of something he had or hadn’t done as a politician, I would always say: “He was very good to me at a bad time in my life, and that really counts a great deal.”

And now he’s dead. Just like that. Massive heart attack took him out very quickly. That, in itself, is good.

His death isn’t. Right now I am trying to get my head around it. Throws a fellow’s other plans for the day all to hell.

Enraptured by raptors and an award, too

2009-01-19T13:55:00.000-08:00

Who's a pretty boy, then?

I have a number of bird feeders in the back yard. During the cold months I like to see the little guys well-stoked on foodstuffs otherwise they die of hypothermia if they can’t get sufficient provender.

I also have the feeders because I like to watch all the little sparrows, chickadees, juncos, towhees, house finches Stellar’s jays and so forth as they flutter around the feeders and the alphas battle the betas for dominance. Finally, I have the feeders in hopes of attracting something rarer than the commonplace. And, I’ve had a few, a lazuli bunting, a few semi-resident flickers, and even a pileated woodpecker.

Yesterday I got a prize.

I was sitting reading in the living room in the mid-afternoon when something caught the corner of my eye. I looked over towards the grape arbor outside the dining room window, and there he was: A large and amazingly impressive Cooper’s Hawk. He was a magnificent specimen.

Hey, I thought, the feeders do double duty. They feed the little birdies in the cold months and, aha, they also act as bait! Trolling raptors can come and scope the scene and then take their pick. Nature in the raw is much more difficult than this setting out of an avian smorgasbord.

I suppose part of my problem in this regard is that I really like the esthetics of raptors. Bloodthirsty carnivores they might be, but they look so magnificent and they’re such astute killing machines.

I like them all, and like them more because I know that they, like all big predators, are threatened. Raptors are among the smartest of our avian fauna and are also possessed of amazing instincts and eyesight. Fortunately, living where I do, they are around in abundance, though the Cooper’s Hawk was a rare treat. Our regular visiting hawks are the little and very pretty sparrow hawks, also known as the American Kestrel.

But, what we mainly have is eagles. Bald Eagles. Bald Eagles as common as sparrows and so ubiquitous that we rarely look when they are aloft above one unless they are doing something dramatic, like being engaged in alpha male conflict with another of the species.

So, sorry, little birdies, but I have to make room for the hawks, too.

On an unrelated topic, I got an award. And it shows cute li'l penguins rather than big, mean predators. It was given to me by the wonderful, creative and very courageous and sometimes heroic Diane at Merely Me. She said very flattering things about me and I am not vain enough to repeat them here (you’ll have to check her blog if you are curious.)

In fact, check her blog, anyway. It is brilliant and it shows how one very gutsy broad deals with things that would make many of us just fold our tents rather than offering excellent life hints for others who suffer from assorted afflictions. So, knowing some of her realities, I feel doubly-honored to get an award from her.

Girls gone mild

2009-01-17T12:15:00.000-08:00

This recession is cutting deep into the well-being of many people in contemporary society and it comes to light that even the paparazzi are suffering and that layoffs are imminent for the slimy camera wielders. That’s just not right and for that we can only blame the subjects.

To the professional Hollywood slutbunnies all I can say is, come on, people, folk are trying to make a living out there and you, in your normal self-indulgent and heedless ways are doing your level best to make things tougher.

Take a look at the horrors that are abroad with certain broads and you will see what I mean:

For the last six months Britney has only removed her undies in private like the rest of us do. No leering camera fodder in her limo exits these days.

Paris is continuing to be moronic and wasteful, but she is doing it fully clothed and if she is coiting anybody you’re not going to find documentation on Youtube.

Amy Winehouse (the only one of the crew with discernable talent, and she has a lot of it) has supposedly shunned drugs and is trying to heal, so no more topless antics in the streets of Chelsea at 3 a.m.

Lindsay is still kind of carrying on. But, she is professing sometimes that she is gay (a kind of Ann Heche situational gayness maybe) and is in a committed relationship, and sometimes she isn’t. Who cares? Probably somebody.

There is some sort of child person name Miley Cyrus who is about nine, I think, and is of absolutely no interest to anybody with a lick of taste or maturity. She is, I believe, the rather pedestrian looking daughter of the Achy-breaky Heart guy. Nuff sed?

No, it’s the mainstream bimbos who are letting us and the economy down. Britney, Paris and Lindsay, come on girls. Get drunk, throw panties aside and screw like there’s no tomorrow and you will do more for the state of international finance than any bailout will do.

You’ll also do a great deal for all the “I may be bad but I’m better than that trash” people who glean the supermarket checkout for smutty tab stories. In other words, what are those aforementioned tabs going to write about other than Oprah’s weight woes and whether or not Laura is chucking 'Dubbya' out this week for boozing and fornication? Boring. Yetm one discarding of her Haines for Hers by any of the babes can keep these mags from going under.

And think of the plight of poor old Perez Hilton. How long is he going to be able to survive trotting out bite-after-bite on sinewy and obnoxious Madonna, willowy patrician but utter bore Gwynneth, or the even more tiresome ‘Brangelina’ co-creature, with whom Perez seems to be inexplicably in love and assumes everybody else is? As for Tom Cruise tittle-tattle, well everybody thinks he’s nuts and nobody cares.

But, the point is, babes, if Perez goes under, so goes much of the mindless gossip industry. Then what happens to the economy of a society whose cultural interests sometimes seem to run no deeper than the wit and wisdom of Adam Sandler? How on earth else can we otherwise explain the fact that the execrable (un)funnyman Howie Mandel has not only one, but now ‘two’ TV shows?

Get out there and doff nether garments for the sake of the economy, I say, and give Perez a reason to go on living while you’re at it.

Treat your children well

2009-01-15T11:14:00.000-08:00

I don’t mean to be a hardass about this.

Wait a minute, yes I do. I do despite the fact then sentiments I will express will fly in the face of whatever libertarian impulses I might hold. Impulses that suggest that the state should fuck off out of interfering in people’s life as much as it does.

But, I have to say this.

I think the state should seize all children living in drug-addicted or alcoholic homes in which no attempt at rehab has been undertaken.

This isn’t a new thought for me, but it is one that came back the other day when I learned that a client had lost custody of her daughter to the child’s father.

Now, Mom is a very pretty and stylish woman in her early 30s. She is bright and very articulate and looks like a model – which she has been at times. She has a little girl, and mother and daughter are thoroughly devoted to each other.

Sounds OK, no?

Except for one thing. Mom is a crackhead and has been for many years and, as is the case with drug use, her centre is beginning to fly apart. More recently the child’s father had applied for custody of the kid, citing what he regarded as an unsafe home environment.

In that, he would be right. In the home would come dope dealers. To call dope-dealers unsavoury sorts would be to state the case mildly. Yet the child lives in that home. How Mom gets the money to pay for her substance, I don’t really want to ask. Yet, the daughter lives in that house. Mom, sometimes out of it (probably oftimes out of it, since drug users are ‘always’ liars) doesn’t get out of the sack on time to get child to school. School complains. Yet the child continued to live in that house.

Until Dad and the courts intervened. They found that Mom had not been vigilant in working on herself in terms of keeping counselling appointments and she, like Amy Winehouse, categorically refused to go to rehab. Client actually didn’t even bother to get a lawyer, believing (for some remarkably idiotic reason) the court would find in her favor.

It didn’t.

I’m glad it didn’t. Maybe this will be the two-by-four to the head she needs. Maybe this will knock her out of denial. Or maybe it won’t.

I do feel bad for her because I like her. But I am also happy for the kid, because she will be away from the insanity that drug addiction invariably brings about.

So I say, if a home is a threatening situation for a child, then the child should be removed until parents can get a grip on their personal demons and take charge of their lives. Until they can take charge of their own lives, they have lost the right to be in charge of the lives of vulnerable youngsters.

In this I don’t just include drug houses, but also alcoholic houses. I grew up with an alcoholic parent. Mom was a subtle lush and never beat us or was overtly cruel. But, the inner cruelty stemmed from emotional neglect and loss of trust by children.

That causes mucho damage. My brother and I have worked diligently throughout the years, and not always successfully, to surmount the damage done. We’ve both made it, but it took a lot of work and also took a toll not only on us, but on those we loved. Bro and I have five marriages between us, and there are only two of us. It shouldn't have been like this. The third brother never has picked himself up from the emotional morass and has remained a highly dysfunctional human being throughout his life.

When I was a boy we used to drive past an orphanage on the way to my grandfather’s house. I would see the children at play on the grounds of the orphanage. They looked like they were having fun. I kind of envied them, in truth.

That kind of gives you an idea of what I mean. Children in addicted homes are cheated, and ultimately society pays the cost of that.

OK, next blog will be light-hearted, I promise.

Ian Lidster: THE INTERVIEW

2009-01-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

As follows is a series of five questions posed to me by Down Under blogger Meggie at Life's Free Treats. If you would like to be interviewed too, it's quite simple. Just do the following and I will custom design questions for you. Here are the steps:

1.Send me an email or a comment saying ‘interview me’.
2.I will then email you five questions that I choose.
3.You can then answer them on your blog.
4.You should also post these rules along with an offer to interview anyone else who emails you or comments that they want to be interviewed.

Here are my Five from Meggie:

1. Who, or what, from your childhood can you look back on with fondness, or happiness?

My maternal grandparents especially, both of whom I adored and felt closer to than my parents. I was also very fond of, and as I got older, closer to my paternal grandfather. Assorted aunts and uncles also meant a great deal to me.

2. I know you have an old dearly loved cat, who may not be too much longer for this life. Will you get another cat, once you dear old pal is gone? Or would you consider a dog, & if so what type? Or both?

I got my cat, Griffin, when I was ‘between marriages’. I wanted some sort of companionship because I didn’t want to rush headlong into a relationship at that time. Anyway, if a relationship with a cat goes awry it's much less expensive than if a marriage does, beliee me. So, that was back in early 1997 that I ‘adopted’ him. I was told that he was six or seven at the time, yet he is still going strong. It is going to be a shock when he goes, I realize. I had never truly ‘bonded’ with a cat before him because I had always been a dog person. I still miss my old border collie, Murphy, who was a wonderful companion and terribly clever. As for the future, we’ll probably get something. Wendy would like to have a dog, as she has never been a dog owner before. We shall just wait and see.

3. Apart from Hawaii, is there anywhere else you would love to spend huge chunks of time?

Well, we loved the Cook Islands when we visited there early in the decade, and would certainly go back. I love the tropics and Polynesian attitudes. But, because of their size, I found Rarotonga, for example, limiting. I also love the south of France, southwest England (and I lived in the UK for a year and feel very at home there), the west coast of Ireland (a ‘terrible beauty’ indeed), and southern California, especially San Diego and the desert around Palm Springs. The coast of Oregon is pretty darn nice, too, but quite similar to the coast of BC. I like change when I travel.

4. I know you love to write. Is there any other job, or employment that has given as much satisfaction?

Probably addictions counselling. I am not even sure why and in a way it ties in with writing in the sense I like to hear people’s stories. If I can give them any actual help, so much the better. I think I am an effective counsellor, so it doesn’t come too difficult for me. Years ago, when I was a secondary teacher, I loved the teaching part and the young people, but I detested the politics and bureaucracy of the job. I decided life was too short to keep compromising what I believed in.

5. This may seem flippant, but is there anything about your physical self that you would want to change? Don’t get me wrong, here, you look perfectly fine to me, but we don’t always see ourselves as others do.

I would like to be 6-foot-2 (I’m 5/9) and would like to look just like Cary Grant (I do have the same hairline) and have his charm. An interviewer once said to CG, “I always wanted to be just like Cary Grant.” Grant replied, “So did I.” But seriously, I am generally pleased with what I have and in my life I haven’t really jarred too many people (either male or female, with females counting more for obvious reasons) with my appearance. I’d like to be a little trimmer at the waistline, but wouldn’t we all?

So, that is me in a nutshell.

'Wot'll yer 'ave, my luv?

2009-01-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

I wrote the following piece a number of years ago for a UK paper when I lived in England for a year and it is my homage to a wonderful Brit institution. It was written back in the days when I still partook of their offered elixirs of malt and hops. I haven't so done for many years now, but I still respect the institution for what it means and offers and felt it deserved a revisit. I hope you enjoy. When I was last in England in 2006 I actually went back to my local just to see what it felt like to revisit the place. The experience was a bit like a timewarp and the barmaid who poured Wendy's Adnam's Bitter and my Coke was likely not born when this was written the first time. But, even with a clear head, the visit was a delight.

If we were to get our priorities right, we would do away with psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, group therapists and others in the ‘healing’ trades, and replace them with genuine English barmaids. At least those genuine English barmaids of my recall.

An understanding that recently came to me was that a couple of blissful hours at the pub can do more to relieve the cumulative pressures of a day or a lifetime than any hundred psychoanalytical breast-beatings and primal screams. And the beer was only a minor part of the therapy.

Like royalty, dog-racing, stiff-upper-lips and page three girls of certain newspapers, the buxom barmaid is a traditional and distinctly English institution. Other nations, including Canada may have comely lasses purveying potations behind the beer taps, but hey are pale colonial imitations of the real thing.

The true barmaid (at least as she was, and I presume still is) is a combination Wife of Bath and Sigmund Freud, with a liberal dollop of Dolly Parton thrown in. From the good Wife we get the life-experience, from Freud, the understanding, and from Dolly the sense-of-humor and the bodacious cleavage. There is no question that the cleavage and that which makes the cleavage are both essential. All barmaids from eighteen to sixty-five have cleavages. But, the cleavage should not, and indeed must not be construed lewdly. It is merely part of a general bearing that suggests the ideal blending of the bountiful earth-mother with the subtle eroticism of that which may be admired but not touched. Sort of a vestal Dolly Parton.

That is not to say that barmaids are never ‘touched’ in their private domains, but it would be construed as a frightful breach of form to make such an attempt while she is in the line of duty. She belongs to all patrons, friend and stranger alike, when she is working. Even barmaids' husbands and boyfriends are cognizant that they are no more important than any other customer who is ordering a drink and hoping for a kind word.

I recall a pub I recently visited in Exeter and it provided the perfect example of a barmaid who understood her role perfectly. I was a stranger to the house, having just arrived from a road trip. The few other guests on this chilly February evening appeared to be regulars. As I approached the bar I noticed that the barmaid -- a pneumatically vivacious and very pretty thirty-ish lady called Mandy -- was being chatted up by a patron who was devoting his time to caressing her hand as he chatted with her. He had the appearance of a traveling salesman, bad suit and surfeits of lonely drinks over the years. Mandy was smiling tolerantly, appearing to be listening to his tales, and granting him the time because nobody else was at the bar

I approached, and as I opened my mouth to give my order, Mandy smiled at me and asked, "Would you like to hold the other hand?"

You see, even though it was the first time I had ever paid a call to that particular hostelry she was not about to have me feel that I wouldn't get the same service as anybody else. Needless to say, I graciously accepted her kind offer.

So, there you have it. Even though she will not sing for you or give you a bath -- at least not in the pubs I have visited -- the role of the English barmaid is not unlike that of the geisha. Her duty is to make the paying customer feel that for those few moments that it takes for her to draw his pint that he is the only person in her life, and she will see to it that he is well cared for. As she chats she will refer to the customer as "love," or "dear," or, in ever-to-be-savored instances as "my love" or "my darling." Could such personalized, even possessive endearments mean that you are uniquely special to her? Was there not a hidden message that flashed from her eyes to yours at that moment? The answer is negative to both queries.

She will move on to the next customer and verbally fondle him in exactly the same way. But, such is her expertise at her trade you will finish your drink and go home firmly convinced that there indeed was a special frisson happening and that you now have a warm little secret tucked in your pounding heart.

If you avail yourself of her services often enough, you may be able to
throw away your pills and get out of group therapy, because your ego will be bolstered and your loneliness abated. You will not feel the need to go up on the roof and spray the street with an automatic rifle because everyone you've ever known in you life has rejected you; for just that very night a barmaid has called you "my love."

Or, I could just bang on the drum all day

2009-01-08T08:57:00.000-08:00

“Are you one of those guys who plans to work until he’s 80?” asked a friend the other day. She asked because I told her I wouldn’t be able to meet her for coffee the following day because I had to work. As to her entreaty, I suggested that if she would like to lay some huge sums of money upon me I would happily retire tomorrow – I think.

So, I still work. Albeit on a part-time basis, and that is reality. The people of my age who don’t work are those ‘elites’ like politicians and bureaucrats who take full-advantage of an odd dichotomy in our society that deems that some – in the employ of the government, hence those who make the rules – are worthy of handsome pensions. Others, like the rest of us, are scum and unworthy of public purse supplements. We only get to pay for those pensions for the elite via our taxes.

About that two-tiered society, all I can say is WTF? How did that come about? How was it deemed that a collection of drones who probably don’t provide so very much get to spend their later years in luxury?

Oh, don t worry about it. I’m not bitter. I mean, when I got divorced the first time I was fully entitled to attach half my schoolteacher wife’s pension (she retired at 55, BTW), but pride forced me to refrain.

God, I’m a noble bastard.

Since my second wife had scarcely a pot in which to wee there was nothing I could attach from her. In fact, she still owes me, but that would be quibbling on my part. See ‘noble bastard’ reference.

Whew, now that I have that off my chest, let’s go back to the whole retirement thing. On this particular day, February 8th, 2009, I am too young to be retired, and have nothing but contempt and pity – yes, pity – for those who embrace that Freedom 55 myth. You people have lots of talent and education and if your health is good, get your asses out there and do something useful. Wandering a golf course all day, every day, just to put in time until Happy Hour does not qualify as useful.

Am I disparaging these people? You bet I am. I have the right. It’s my blog and I don’t get one of those big pensions.

I used to have investments for my ‘golden years’. I mean, I still do, but I’m afraid to ask what they look like. So, I still work at both counseling and freelancing, and frankly, I like it. Part time gives me freedom to work on my own stuff and, considering the state of the economy, Wendy and I are still swimming in good fortune -- as long as she keeps working, that is. But, she's a whole lot younger than I am, so you see that was part of my retirement plan, too. I didn't suggest I was 'completely' noble.

Yes, that is the truth. I am either very warped or utterly conditioned, but I like suiting up and getting out once in a while. It keeps me vital. And, the fact that there are those who still believe I have marketable skills – and I do – validates me.

I don’t mean to disparage all of those who get those big, fat %$#@&& princely government pensions. I know of people, and respect them hugely, who have taken those pension bucks and run off, no not to the south of France or Tahiti, but to Africa and other third world spots and are giving of themselves unstintingly to better the lives of those in need. One woman I know (and I think she and her husband should be sainted, and could be since they’re both good Catholics) uses her retirement resources and her husbands Air Force pension to finance her work in orphanages in Romania and the Ukraine. She is in her mid-70s.

What I do mean is that life is not over at a certain age, so I, as long as health permits, will be happy to do a bit of work. I also want the freedom to also head off to the south of France, should finances permit. God, that big pension would sure help there.

So, back to my friend; she suggested that she too would likely be working until she was 80 then, when she retires, we’d finally be free to have coffee whenever we chose.

“You’re 20 years younger than I am,” I said. “Will you help me get to the coffee joint? Provided I’m not still working, that is.”

My views on the 'dubious' year just past

2009-01-07T10:13:00.000-08:00

Every year for probably the last 20 the newspapers for which I have worked have exhorted me – ‘exhorted’, I tell you – to do my annual Dubious Achievement Awards article. And now, even though I no longer work as a regular newspaper employee, the request is still there.

I don’t mind. It earns me a few bucks, keeps my hand in, and allows me a curmudgeonly venting that maintains my sanity. So, without further ado, here are my ponderings about the year 2008. Of course, even the title is a blatant rip-off of the long-running Esquire Magazine feature that used to come out each January, and of which I was very fond. But, I assure you that all that follows is original. A lot of it is local and a lot Canadian, but I also attempt to go international with it, always. I hope you enjoy.

The following appeared in the Comox Valley Echo edition of Jan. 2, 2009.

Whew – what a year it has been! It started out well enough, but by the end of 2008 most people didn’t know if the finale was a bang or a whimper. Whatever the case, it wasn’t good, and whimpers can sometimes hurt more than bangs.

In that sense the Comox Valley building bubble was showing signs of stress by year-end, and economic woes were hitting the forest industry in all its manifestations. This is not welcome news for the community since the forest sector is one of the few employment options that had, heretofore, paid anything much above minimum wage in a community that doesn’t offer too many options for those who want to be gainfully employed and to earn enough to actually continue to live here.

But, to not dwell on the negative we still have been blessed with sufficient jesters and jackanapeses in the public realm to both infuriate and also to keep us amused. To be fair, some of those who direct our lives are as much victims of circumstance as the rest of us, but others deserve their lumps and we are happy to accord them in the 2008 version of the Comox Valley Echo’s annual Dubious Achievement Awards. Enjoy.

Boys (and girls) in the ‘Hood

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board. (Mark Twain): It was not a year that ended well for the Comox Valley’s school board. It should have been obvious to all the trustees who embraced so-called reconfiguration and the closing of schools that hubris and ‘motherhood’ do not mix easily. May all the turfed trustees go on to bigger, better and ‘different’ things in their desire to serve their community.

Comox Valley: “Land of Plenty”: Turned out that some of our plenitude included ‘plenty of homeless folk’ in disproportionate numbers for a community this size. To give credit where it is due, however, a vast array of caring residents mounted an extensive homelessness survey, to which erstwhile Courtenay Mayor Starr Winchester lent her name, with a desire to ‘do something’ that might allow us to live up to that motto. A recent check in, however, indicated that no municipality has yet coughed up some land to actually build some low-cost housing. Talk and studies are easy, but the problem persists.

The times they are a-changin’: Some long-time Comox Valley politicians were cast out by the voters in November, including Courtenay Mayor Starr Winchester, RD rep Barbara Price, and some former politicians tried for a comeback, such as Dennis Strand in Comox and Don Davis in the same community, as well as Norm Reynolds and Erik Eriksson in Courtenay and Rick Grinham in Cumberland, but learned there sometimes are no second acts. But, maybe more importantly, some politicians didn’t get chucked out even though their ouster might have pleased many.

Some are just more dubious than others:
Thine and mine insurance company, ICBC, was pilloried for running what was, in effect, a chop-shop as a sidebar business. This is a practice that is deemed illegal in most quarters. So, the corporation fired a bunch of the perps, but also gave them big fat severance packages due to their (huh?) “dismissal without cause.”
Beastly Ferries: Aside from the Queen of the North debacle, which may or may not see any genuine blame levelled before the end of this century, there were the fare hikes, which rendered Vancouver Islanders virtual prisoners on this here rock. Then it was discovered that diminished numbers were actually riding the barges, so the fares declined – slightly.
VIHA, which seems to operate under the premise of “why not continue to give the public what it ‘doesn’t’ want; why break stride? Oh, that and the sensitive idea of distributing crack pipe mouthpieces to those poor souls suffering in Nanaimo. Without consulting Nanaimo itself about the matter, it might be added. Just don’t be giving those whining diabetics free needles, on the other hand.

Not the Everly Brothers, either: Just to clarify, Comox councillors Tom and Ken Grant are not the same person. If the ‘clothesline’ issue comes up again in council then scrupulous identifications will be vital.

Where are they now? Comox Valley MLA Stan Hagen is currently Minister of Agriculture and Lands, just in case you’d lost sight of where he was without a scorecard.

Déjà vu all over again: John Duncan was returned as MP for this riding. See Hagen and scorecard.

My Baby Takes the Morning Train: Actually, if my baby could take a ‘morning’ train the E&N might be put to even more practical use. However, the morning train leaves Victoria, arrives in Courtenay at 1-ish, and then carries folk south to Victoria just in time for all businesses and offices to be closing for the day. Oh, and the BC government has ordered a ‘study’ of the viability of the line. Don’t hold your collective breath. Bureaucratic studies take a while to prove something isn’t viable. We demand that they do find it viable. We loves us our little train.

Beyond the ‘Hood

Phew! Just when the motoring public was heading out to acquire torches and pitchforks from Canadian Tire after the Premier announced his (to the delight of drivers of overpriced hybrids and Greens who wanted to see somebody on their side who was actually in office) much-reviled gas tax, the insanely inflated price-fixed tabs at the pumps began to decline. Maybe that will save the day come spring, although the collapse of the forest industry just might sting a bit.

But, with an ally like this, who needs a platform? Gordo’s best friend in public office is the amazingly unprepared Carole James. If he can’t beat her, with her assorted gaffes and bits of illogic, he doesn’t deserve to win at all. We can be sure the NDP leader is a very nice lady. Margaret Thatcher, on the other hand, wasn’t a very nice lady, but she did have actual leadership skills. Ms. James is, well, just nice and a virtual guarantee that the prov-Libs, as lacklustre as they’ve been in this last term, will likely squeak in.

The Dick Cheney school of PR: 2010 Olympics Grand Potentate John Furlong suggests that Vancouver simply close shop while the Olympics are on so that visitors to the games won’t be interfered with in their movements. That’s right, take a few days off work in a recessionary time to accommodate those who are coming to an event that 98.4 per cent of the people who will end up paying the bills when they are over couldn’t possibly afford to attend. By the way, tickets are selling for a fortune on EBay

Way Beyond the ‘Hood

So, the Vladimir Putin School of Human Resources Training Program didn’t quite work out: Canada’s recently re-elected Tory PM, Stephen Harper was not seen as Mr. Congeniality, especially by adherents to political parties that have little credibility this side of Thunder Bay. Many Westerners, on the other hand, are inclined to refer to Mr. Aloof as ‘Cuddles.’ Possibly humbled by the attempted coup, it may be that Harper has come to appreciate the folly of prodding a bear with a sharp stick.

So near, Smilin’ Jack; so near and yet still so damn far: Jack Layton really thought he would finally have his one (and likely only) shot at sitting in Cabinet with the enthusiastically-embraced Coup, pardon, Coalition concept. You know, the one he sucker-punched Stephane Dion into endorsing. Needless to say, Dion crony (sorta) Bob Rae showed his good NDP roots (all the while pretending to be a Grit) by practically wetting himself in his enthusiasm for the concept. Iggy? Not so much.

Stephane we hardly knew ye: Bizarre choice Liberal candidate polled fewer votes than most Rhino candidates did in times past during the last election. Grey in demeanor and professorially aloof in manner and a testament to the fact that lack of bilingual skills works both ways in this country. Of the Grits, one can only be moved to ask: What were they thinking? What country did they think this was?

I like McCain French Fries: But, McCain Presidential Candidate, not so much. The old warhorse fought the good fight but made a series of lethal miscalculations. The worst of which, of course, is deciding to find a female running mate who just might attract the distaff voters who would have voted for Hillary. So, he chose unarguable hottie and inarticulate reactionary beanbrain Sarah Palin. Huh? Now, Sarah did attract some voters, but not liberal-leaning females, but reactionary redneck males who, when they saw Sarah, immediately began thinking not with the teeny brains they were given, but with quite another brain.

Barack can walk upon water, I tell you!: Well, maybe not, but he is testament to the fact that people can set aside their prejudices and just maybe, just maybe, vote for the best candidate. After eight years of pillorying the Americans for their appalling former presidential choice, smug Canadians might want to take a look at the bozos at our helm and question just what we might be doing wrong.

Happy 2009!

What a difference a mere century makes

2009-01-05T16:38:00.000-08:00

What a difference a century makes. This piece was recently sent to me and was originally designed to mark the centenary of the Model-T Ford, which first rolled down the line in 1908 and changed everything. I’ve added a few editorial comments of my own.

Not that the Tin Lizzie was the first automobile as such – they’d been around for more than a decade – but it was the first ‘everyman’ car and as such inspired other manufacturers to produce equally inexpensive conveyances.

So, what was life like back in the day of that first Model T. Mainly what it was like was amazingly different from what we have come to accept as being the norm in our society.

So, taking a look at 1908 – and it serves well to remember there are people still walking the planet who were actually around at that time – what did it look like?

In North America:

The average life expectancy was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

In the US there were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in 1908 was 22 cents per hour.

The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year.

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births took place at home

Ninety percent of all doctors had no college education. (but they did make house calls). Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and the government as 'substandard. '

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month (eww), and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo. Imagine what that smelled like by the end of the month. Don’t think I’d want to be doing much hair nuzzling.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason. (I believe there are people who yearn for such a thing to return, alas – screw them old huddled masses. Anyway, that Statue of Liberty sentiment was in the US)

Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.

The population of Las Vegas was only 30. Lots of room at the Blackjack tables and no Celine Dion, as far as we know.

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn't been invented yet.

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write.

Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.'

Of course, considering the fact that dental care was brutal and inept a body can understand why hard drugs had a certain appeal.

And, while on the topic, people – men especially – consumed much more alcohol per capita than is consumed today despite handwringing over alcohol abuse. Indeed pre-prohibition boozing levels have never been approached since repeal.

On the other hand, there were no rehabs and no AA.

Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.

There were about 230 reported murders in the entire US. Today a death toll of 230 would represent a slow weekend.

People actually wrote letters rather than emailing.

Women could not vote and wouldn’t be able to for another decade.

Jim Crow laws were fully in effect, and not just in the South.

Property developers reserved the right to be exclusionist in terms of race or creed.

There was no genuinely effective birth control other than abstention.

Only the rich traveled and the average person lived his or her life in the town of birth and many in their lifetimes journeyed no more than 50 miles from home.

On the whole, I think I'd rather stick with what we have now. As screwed up as we are, at least we have a little more comfort.

That was the year that was -- it's over, let it pass

2009-01-02T13:15:00.000-08:00

Is it Tina or Sarah?

The year has come and gone and it behooves me to consider what the preceding year meant. Actually, I lifted this from blogger Me and included some of my own thoughts, for what they’re worth. It’s kind of a fun little exercise if you want to give it a shot.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before? Had an ultrasound. They’re not as much fun as they’re cracked up to be.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? As I said before, I do ‘intentions’ not resolutions, and I realized that I had attained three in 2008. Well, 3 ½ to be precise.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Not that I am aware of, and if so it definitely wasn’t mine.

4. Did anyone close to you die? An increasing array each passing year with two valued, albeit older, friends shuffling off this mortal coil.

5. What countries did you visit? The United States or, as I like to call it, the Great Kingdom of Hawaii where Queen Liliukalani. rests with Pele throughout eternity. Aloha Oe’

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? To have gone back in time by a year, like Benjamin Button as long as that wish doesn’t mean I have to be saddled with Angelina and the brats – well maybe her alone for an afternoon and evening.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? June 20 when I had my health scare incident and Sept. 5 when we took off for and landed on Kauai for 10 days.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Going back to my addictions counseling career on a part-time basis and realizing I still had the skills and actually could get a great deal out of doing it for others.

9. What was your biggest failure? I had none. No, I lie. I haven’t yet entirely quit smoking, although my intake is minuscule and diminishing all the time. This is my quest for 09.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Yes, as indicated. Awakening with a completely numb and useless hand is a frightening thing. Fortunately it passed with no residual after-effects.

11. What was the best thing you bought? Nothing really noteworthy was purchased. I’m kind of proud of that. Oh, well except for the trip to Kauai.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? My own for taking proactive control of my health. And Wendy for proving the true meaning of ‘helpmate’ in a time of duress.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? The bastards who pass themselves off as political leaders in this country.

14. Where did most of your money go? Paying bills to keep solvent.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Wendy moving back home full-time from Victoria. Was a wonderful thing.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008? Probably Fiest’s 1-2-3-4. Not because it’s a great song, it’s just kinda cute and stuck itself in my mind for a while.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:a) happier or sadder? Happier.b) thinner or fatter? Thinner c) richer or poorer? Financially better off (for now).

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Made love, but I always wish that. Life is short.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Smoking.

20. How did you spend Christmas? A quiet Christmas at home with no fuss, no muss and it was peaceful and serene.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008? I must always be in love.

22. What was your favorite TV program? Probably 30-Rock. And especially that for wonderful Tina Fey who, with no shame, has admitted she was a virgin until age 25.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? Nah, I don’t do hate, just detestation.

24. What was the best book you read? I read so many that I cannot narrow it down.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery? Not much in the way of discovery. Contemporary music continues to deteriorate hideously and I keep wondering what has happened to female vocalists (not wailers). But, if you haven’t happened upon screwed up Amy Winehouse, give yourself a musical treat be cause she is remarkably good, and just hope the stupid girl gets well rather than killing herself.

26. What did you want and get? For Wendy to stop having to do the Victoria commute.

27. What did you want and not get? Soaring investments rather than the opposite.

28. What was your favorite film of this year? I do videos not new films. Once the films of this year are out on video I shall let you know.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?Nothing I recall and I’ll only say that I am old enough and not yet too old.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? A month rather than just 10 days on Kauai.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? One of general disregard other than to dress appropriately for the occasion. A sweatshirt and jeans do not do it for a funeral, slobs. Show some respect. Otherwise I don’t follow fashion fads but love classics.

32. What kept you sane? Letting go as much as I could.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Maybe this should read: which celebrity/public figure repulsed me the least.

34. What political issue stirred you the most? Probably the US presidential election and the victory of Obama.

35. Who did you miss? Those that have passed beyond this sphere.

36. Who was the best new person you met? Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside sawbones and compassion guru, Dr. Gabor Mate.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. It’s a good life if you don’t weaken, as my Cockney landlady used to say back in Great Yarmouth in 1980.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

”You can’t always get what you want.
But if you try sometimes, you just might find,
You get what you need.”

Musings on the Eve of 2009

2008-12-31T07:40:00.000-08:00

Myself and Colin (at the dawn of time) being smart and good looking

While 2008 has had its up-and-down moments; my particular annus horribilis was 1996.

Lost loves are meant to stay that way.

If there were a single word essence to my philosophy it would be ‘forgiveness.’

In one of her drunken rambles my mother once said in reference to two of her sons (both of whom were present): “You were always the smart one and Colin was the good looking one. Thus damning us both. Forgiveness still comes hard for this one. Maybe someday.

I love my brother, Colin, dearly. And he me. We both cherish that and need it.

Ants are intriguing. They ‘speak’ to one another. There are more of them than there are of us. They are likely more important.

Because I was ‘too talkative’ in my third grade class the teacher banished me to sit on the ‘girls’ side of the room I was in heaven. I suspect that was where it all began.

Maybe I was a class clown, but never thought of myself as such. But I was funny. I know that now.

A kid in junior high once asked me how I knew a particular fact. I said I had read it. “Is that all you do is read?” he asked disdainfully. He became a plumber. He probably made more money than I ever did.

The stupidest waste of a year of my life came when I, after I got my degree, decided to take secondary teacher training. It was all inane. You either are a teacher or not, and no half-baked pedant can teach you to be one.

I was a good teacher and a popular one. I hated it. In retrospect those eight years were not happy ones.

Good reporters follow the wisdom of the old guys. Read some H.L. Mencken and Ernie Pyle and you don’t need much more.

In loving ‘more’ is not necessarily ‘better.’

Every man should someday meet with a femme fatale. You learn from that – if you survive.

Drug addicts have found their ‘happy place’, but it is a brief one punctuated by depravity, dishonesty and despair.

I believe in God but I don’t need somebody in a white backwards collar to interpret God for me.

A friend went on three spiritual pilgrimages to India in vain attempt to find his true spirituality. Eventually he found it was inside himself all the time and he could have saved the airfare.

Vancouver likes to sell itself as a ‘world-class city.’ It is nothing of the sort. True world-class cities (and there are others) that I have spent time in include London, San Francisco, Montreal, and Dublin. Dublin may seem like a bit of a backwater, but there is more history and soul (albeit often misguided) on a single block of O’Connell Street than in the whole of Vancouver.

The best Chinese restaurant I ever visited was in Honolulu’s Chinatown.

I got Griffin, my cat, at the beginning of 1997. He is now old and spare of shank, yet he somehow seems wise. I don’t know how I’ll take it when he goes.

I rarely cry. I mist, but rarely cry. But I did in early 1997. Great racking sobs that lasted hours. I think it was needed.

Love may keep us together, but money seems to be a vital part of the equation, too.

I’ve had many crushes in my life. I always remember them, and sometimes they have lasted down the years. They must never be realized. That destroys the mythology.

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions, but I do ‘intentions’, as in this might be attainable or not. But at least I’ve tried. Each year we write out our intentions on a sheet of paper, and as the new year comes in we take them outside and burn them; turn them over to God, or whatever cosmic muffin might be listening. And, I believe He/She/It is.

Oops -- hold your water, dear

2008-12-29T10:47:00.000-08:00

Regardless of how you look at it, all it takes is one little glitch, a tiny bump, to throw your life into complete disarray.

Wendy and I were snuggled all comfortably in our bed on a Sunday night (yesterday, in fact), and she was reading “her Emily Dickinson, and I my Robert Frost”. Well, not really those tomes, but it was pre-lights-out reading time. It was all ever so nice. Then, Wendy said she could hear a hissing. It sounded like water running, she said. Normally I might suggest she was imagining it, or just hearing a night noise. But, this time I could hear it too.

We arose and went through the house checking all faucets and turn-ons and nothing seemed to be amiss. Then, on a hunch, I lifted the trap door to the crawlspace. And there it was. It wasn’t a hissing sound like a lady having a pee; it wasn’t a trickling sound like a babbling brook, it was a bloody torrential, Nile cataract sound. Uh-oh!

We went down and it was pouring out all over boxed papers, old computer bits, chairs, items of cabinetry currently redundant, and other stuff that had been stored away. It was a low-grade disaster to punctuate the end of our weekend.

I called an emergency plumbing service number. I was told I’d have to get the town to shut off the water before he could do anything. I called their after-hours number and a guy came out. And, in one of those rare happenstances, this fellow was a gem. He was wonderful, conscientious, caring and rapidly became a god in our books. I want to leave him something in my will, so impressed was I. How often does a body get that from a civic employee, especially when the time is nearing midnight in raw weather? He looked through everything, got thoroughly soaked, realized he had to go to the street and find the main shutoff. It took ages for him to get there, and he had to dig down close to the netherworld before he actually found the shutoff. But, he did. And we were able finally to hit the sack for real.

Fortunately, we did have the foresight to plan ahead before the water was shut down for the night. We filled a bunch of buckets and the laundry room washtub so that we could dump buckets into the potty tank and avoid that disagreeable inconvenience. We also set the coffee maker up to go in the morning, and filled a pitcher with drinking water. Very clever we were.

This morning a plumbing guy came and rectified the problem. The water was turned on. It was a return to paradise, we could shower, use the toilet, and so forth. It was all a reminder of how much we come to count on relatively simple things – simple things that would be regarded as a luxury in many parts of the world.

At the end of it, we were kind of grateful for a number of things. As said, we weren’t away from the house at the time, and we were served well by a couple of really thoughtful guys, one from the town and one from a plumbing company. We’ll now have to see if our insurance company is as obliging.

And my shower this morning was heavenly.

Back to the future, or is it Forward to the past, or just time present?

2008-12-27T11:17:00.000-08:00

Maybe it’s much too early in the game,
Gee but I thought I’d ask you just the same.
What are you doing New Years – New Years Eve.
(Treacly old song sung by a loser)

Wendy keeps asking me: “So, what do you think 2009 will be like? What would you like to see happen?”

I hate that sort of question, and usually respond with some smartass quip like: “I’d like to keep breathing,” or, “I hope I can continue to look at the blossoms rather than the bulbs.” In other words, I don’t like making future plans. This drives her nuts. She likes to speculate on what she would like to see fall into place.

Nothing wrong with that, per se. But, I think it’s a mug’s game. I subscribe, tiresome bastard that I am, to the philosophy that holds: Expectations are premeditated resentments.

Wendy hates that response even more than I hate questions about future fortunes, or lack thereof.

You see, I learned long ago that virtually nothing turns out the way you expect it will, or hope it will. It simply turns out the way it does, and I have no control over that.

I used to have expectations and fantasies about my future. I wanted to be ever so well respected in whatever I turned my hand to; possibly even slightly famous. I wanted to be well-loved and even revered. I wanted to have pots of money that would have been earned only by me doing something I loved. I wanted to have yummy sex with whichever females I fancied. I wanted to meet the ‘one-and-only’ then and fall agonizingly in love with her and she with me, and to live happily ever after with this one person. I then wanted to die at an excessively advanced age having been the picture of health and virility all my days up until then.

That was what my expectations looked like. I then adjusted them over the years when things didn’t seem to be panning out in the manner I’d ‘expected’. And at different times nasty things happened, and that ‘one-and-only’ was nothing of the sort, so then there were ‘others-and-only’, but they worked out even worse and even the sex wasn’t quite as ‘yummy’ as it was in my imaginings. Eventually I ended up deflated and depressed at the way life had unfolded. It looked nothing like I imagined it to hold in store when I was 20.

But then I discovered a great secret. That secret was to have no expectations whatsoever; to just let the days unfold as they will. I don’t mean to suggest that life should be utterly irresponsible with no look to the future. You know, you’ve gotta pay the bills; get the car serviced, and put a new roof on if one seems to be needed. I do look to the future in terms o maintaining what must be maintained, including the serenity of the household and the well-being of my beloved ‘current-and-only-life-partner’.

But otherwise, I let it unfold. It’s kind of fun. It makes life more of a great mystery, which is really what it is – and what it should be if you just let it.

So, what do I expect to see happen in 2009? I have no idea. And I am happy about that.

What am ‘I’ doing New Years Eve? Giving thanks that whoever controls this stuff allowed me to get another year in, and has left me with the slight hope I get a further one. This works for me.

Blessings of the season to all my friends hither and yon

2008-12-23T07:54:00.000-08:00

I have stuff to do over the next little while, so I flagrantly purloined this from Jazz who lifted it (for much the same reason as I did) from A Little Off Kilter. Thank you, ladies. No wonder I hold you both in such high esteem.

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? I’m a guy. Guys don’t gift-wrap. At least they don’t gift wrap in a manner that suggests some sort of esthetic grace. So, gift bags for sure. Actually, this year we are going ‘green’ since I heard that gift wrap does not break down nicely. So, we’re using newspaper. Aren’t you proud of us? Me, I just got a letter from Al Gore praising me.

2. Real tree or artificial?I love real trees, but a few years ago we opted for a smallish artificial one and I’ve never really regretting the decision. Less mess and it looks fine.

3. When do you put up the tree? About a week before the 25th. And keep it up until Jan. 2nd.

4. When do you take the tree down? Oops, just answered that one.

5. Do you like eggnog? I don’t mind it, but the commercial stuff compares not at all with good homemade. My Aunt Freda made the finest eggnog on the planet, all with whipped-cream and other artery clogging substances just designed as a gift for family members who felt their cholesterol count was too low.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? For Christmas when I was 5 I asked Santa to bring me a windup paddlewheeler and a flashlight. I have no idea why. Yet, I still remember those specific gifts. I also remember I was sick for the kindergarten Christmas party that same year so Santa came by – in full regalia – driving a Chev. No sleigh at all. That was disappointing.

7. Hardest person to buy for? Wendywendywendywendy. Not that she’s pernickety, I just know that she is a woman of strong tastes in certain directions and I hate to disappoint.

8. Easiest person to buy for? In past context, my ex, Trudy. Anything girly and outrageously expensive worked for her.

9. Do you have a nativity scene? Nope.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail to friends far away. Email or nothing for close-at-hand. I still like getting cards.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? There have been some that I haven’t cared for all that much, or that I didn’t really like at the time. My stolidly and hypocritical Presbyterian paternal grandmother was great on religious treatises like a Bible, prayer book, etc. Charmed me little. Yet now I rather value having them.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? The 1950 British film of A Christmas Carol (called Scrooge in the UK) staring the inimitable Alastair Sim as the old Christmas curmudgeon himself. Nobody was ever better in the role, and it has been a must for me every Christmas since I was about 10. I also like (but am tired of) It’s a Wonderful Life. I do a killer Lionel Barrymore impression from that film. There is also a British film called The Holly and the Ivy which concerns a Christmas gathering of dysfunctional adult children. It’s kind of grim in essence, but ultimately a strong message comes through. And, A Christmas Story especially for Darren McGavin.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? As close to the day as I can get away with. Like most males I detest Christmas shopping, the crowds, the acquisitive stupidity and so forth. It holds no pleasure for me.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Not that I recall..

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Not turkey, which I think is highly overrated and nasty to digest. Last year we did prime rib, which was heavenly. As a nod to the francophone side of this country, I love tourtiere. And Wendy makes a killer crème brulee, which I begin to anticipate in about October. And, if I have been to Hawaii the previous year I always bring back a can of Ed and Don’s macadamia nut brittle which I save for Christmas.

16. Lights on the tree? Of course. A combo of little fairy lights and some more recent small LED lights.

17. Favorite Christmas song? I am so tired of Christmas songs by this point that I am almost ready to puke if I hear another. Traditionally, though I like the classical Christmas carols by the Kings College Choir of Cambridge, or some other wonderful choir and a mammoth pipe organ must provide the music or it’s no good. Otherwise, I like Bobby Helms’ Jingle Bell Rock, der Bingle’s White Christmas, the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York (featuring the heavenly and adored voice of sadly lamented and loved Kirsty MacColl), and Elvis’s Blue Christmas.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Would kill to be away at Christmas. Someplace warm where Christmas is not a big deal. Family gatherings out-of-town? Not so much. Now that Wendy and I are both orphans we don’t need to do that any more.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's? Of course I can, but I’m not going to bother. But, let’s get one thing straight. I saw one of them in an advertisement referred to as ‘Donner’. It’s DonDer, folks. Buncha morons, I tell ya.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? An old Father Christmas kind of guy with a long white beard and golden robe.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Morning, always. My ex was Swedish and they did it Christmas Eve. I thought that sucked because it made Christmas morning an anti-climax. Mind you, life with her was kind of an anti-climax anyway, but enough about that.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Virtually everything I can think of except for the things I like, which I have already indicated. Yet, I long for Jan. 2 so that all the nonsense will be over.

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? Some things we’ve picked up on our travels. Otherwise, they don’t excite me too much. Wendy has a snowman kind of home craft thing that I utterly detest. But, it gets trotted out regardless each and every year. That’s OK. Wouldn’t be Christmas without that ugly bit of crap.

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Virtually anything but turkey, as I have indicated. I must confess, though, that I love turkey sandwiches and turkey soup. This year we are doing Cornish game hens. And I already mentioned the crème brulee.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? Survival. Except for that, we both have pretty much all that we need, and considering the bleak existences of some, we have way more than we need, or even want. I do try to share, but probably don’t devote enough time to so doing.

Merry Christmas and/or Happy Hanukkah to all my blogger friends wherever you might be. Follow your hearts and have a blessed season.

Little known myths and truisms about the Yuletide season

2008-12-21T14:19:00.000-08:00

Just when you thought life was too dangerous to be bearable, I am here to offer you some comforting news, just as a kind of Christmas gift from me to you.

An article in a recent issue of the Globe and Mail offers the reader a bit of enlightenment that has come about due to legitimate scientific experimentation. Consequently, you are now free to do away with some widely held myths this Christmastime.

Here are the results of the G&M study:

- Poinsettias are not poisonous: Poinsettias are at worst widely overdone at Christmas and are really not all that pretty and should best be studied in the places where they grow, like Mexico, Hawaii and other tropical climes. But, there is also a longstanding belief that even a nibble on a petal would result in immediate and agonizing death. In fact, recent studies have shown you could scarf a boxcarload of them and suffer no ill-effects. Such a finding, however, does not make them particularly beautiful.

- Suicides are not more prevalent at Christmas: Newspaper folks, cops and medical parishioners have always been in accord with the poet who attested that April is the cruellest month. In truth, the desire to off oneself comes with the balmy days of spring, for whatever reason. While the Christmas season may bring about some genuine despair, the final solution seems to be rarely sought.

- Sugar does not make kids hyperactive: It rots their teeth and can expedite Type 2 diabetes, but if they are tearing around the house and damaging the bric-a-brac it is probably because they’re undisciplined little jerks.

- There are magical hangover cures: There are not, period. The only cure is time and by God you will suffer during that time. Self-inflicted injuries have penalties, so live with it or learn to drink moderately.

- You do not lose the majority of your body heat through the top of your head: Everybody believes this one, but it just ain’t so, say researchers. If you went out in sub-zero weather with a hat on, but no pants, you would lose just as much body heat through your legs. You would also probably be arrested.

Space limitations precluded the G&M covering ‘all’ the myths and misapprehensions that about this time of year. So, as a service to my faithful readers, I am about to fill you in on the items that did not make it. Consider if you will (said in a Rod Serling voice, if you choose) the matter of the following:

- Simply three successive playings of the Twelve Days of Christmas has been proved to render laboratory rats suicidally depressed. However, the Little Drummer Boy need only be played twice to render those same rats insane.

- Commercial eggnog is passed by food safety inspectors provided it contains not in excess of 28 percent industrial waste.

- A sex act with a non-spouse if carried out under mistletoe does not constitute adultery in the eyes of some churches. Federal law, however, forbids the naming of those churches.

- In Belgium it is illegal for children to arise earlier than 7 a.m. on Christmas morning. The state can seize children who violate this regulation, and their parents can and will be arrested.

- It is common knowledge that there exists in the world only one certifiable Christmas cake, and that it has been sent by mail from recipient to recipient throughout the western world since 1627. At the end of the Yuletide season it is returned to the Tower of London where it is kept next to the Crown Jewels until the following October. In 1747 one Percy Warbeck of Coventry was beheaded for slicing off a little chunk and suggesting he actually liked it.

- The Queen’s favorite Christmas song is the dogs barking Jingle Bells and she demands that it be played at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Eve. The dogs are, of course, all corgis trained by Her Majesty. Refusal by an archbishop to carry out this mandate can and has resulted in beheading or banishment to the Antipodes.

- The actual Little Town of Bethlehem in Israel is also known as the Cleveland of the Holy Land and was, prior to the rise of computers, the Wite-Out manufacturing capital of the world. Computers are still deemed blasphemies by the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce.

- In Britain, Canada and much of the Commonwealth, December 26th is known as Boxing Day. This is a day devoted to unfettered brawling in the streets and pubs with no penalties. It’s a great stress reducer.

- In the State of Pennsylvania it is mandatory for families to invite the most loathed members for Christmas dinner and it is also compulsory to bond and fake having a good time. If said good time does not ensue, the loathed cousin, aunt or whoever, can report the family which will be forced to forego all Christmas activities for the ensuing five years.

There are no doubt more popular myths and also a few truisms about the season that I've missed. Whatever the case, may you all have a wonderful one.

-

Just leave Father Christmas alone you PC weasels

2008-12-18T11:57:00.000-08:00

As far as important dates in the Christian calendar are concerned, Christmas was always well down the list. In that respect people shouldn’t get excessively distressed about the secularization of the December 25th season. Those early monks and martyrs paid it no heed but instead saved their fealty energies for Easter. Easter and Good Friday are the genuine biggies for those who believe in the Christian story.

In fact, Christmas as we have come to either love or loathe it really doesn’t go back much further than Victorian times when Teutonic consort Prince Albert brought a lot of German traditions across the Channel.

It was given a further boost by Charles Dickens with A Christmas Carol. Good old Ebenezer, the only guy in the tale with any gumption, and he’s the one that gets reviled. Oh, well. Anyway, the fact that Scrooge pays no heed to Christmas was not out of the ordinary in the England of 1843, when the book was published. The fact that whining Bob Cratchit wants the ‘whole day’ off would have been quite out-of-keeping in most workplaces of the time, so Scrooge was probably possibly correct in being contemptuous of his seemingly indolent clerk.

As we know, once the Christmas concept was marketed it simply took off. Churches, of course, attempted to quell the rampant commercial extravagance of the season by reminding their parishioners and others of the ‘true’ meaning of Christmas, which was a celebration of the birth of Christ. Yes, the Christ thing was nice, and the Three Wise Men, and shepherds watching their flocks and all, and pretty, semi-sacred songs, but what most people really embraced was the Teutonic Kris Kringle thing. Yes, Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Jolly old St. Nick, and stockings hung by the chimney with care. That was really what all and sundry came to cherish.

At the same time, there arose a grumpy-pants battalion of those who felt Christmas, as we’d come to see it was nothing more than a testament to greed. Parents and others were driven into penury trying to satiate the gaping maws of greedy kids who wanted more-more-more. Newspapers came to be filled with heart-rending tales of poor families in which the kids weren’t getting’ nuthin’ and for which you should feel really bad and cough up a few toys and a few bucks, and then with clear conscience you could forget about them for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile, there have always been those individuals whose memories of Christmases past were not cheery. They recalled nasty times of alcohol abuse, family rows, never getting the toys requested, and so forth. Crisis lines exist for those people, as do chock-a-block filled shrink wards, detox facilities, and jails.

Do my comments suggest that I want to kill Christmas, too? Not at all. While there are aspects of the ‘season’ I detest, there are others that I value. Periodically I have even been known to attend a church service on Christmas eve because I love carols by a choir and some of the pageantry of it all. In that I wish we had a cathedral in our town with a massive pipe organ. Powerful organs (of the pipe variety, that is) can bring a tear to my eye. Anyway, I think in a world of too much weariness and travail, we need whatever festivities we can muster, and Christmas is one of those festive things that can take us from the mundane.

But, there are those who carry it all to an extreme. I read of a bunch of elementary teachers in England who want to obliterate all references to Father Christmas, not to mention any Christian messages in order to avoid offending ethnic minorities. To them I would ask, did any of those minorities actually ask you to do this? Furthermore, do you also refrain from references to Ramadan and Passover? I bet not. Situational PCs are offensive to all concerned, so get a grip.

Secondly, and more importantly, I will offer a suggestion. If Christmas means nothing to you and therefore gives you leave to steal it from children, why do you take that Christmas vacation? Why not give it up and just go to work as you normally would.

Bunch of killjoys and PC fascists that you are.

Call them what you want, they're still the best harbingers of Christmas

2008-12-17T14:52:00.001-08:00

In those days they didn’t show up until around the beginning of December. The marketers hadn’t yet succeeded in pushing yuletide merchandizing back to mid-October.

As it was then, Christmas was Christmas and like all good things you were expected to wait and wait. Not always so easy for a kid. But then, in the first week of December grocery stores would suddenly be filled with little pinewood boxes. Within those boxes (that made wonderful kindling when chopped up later) was row-upon-row of turquoise paper-wrapped seasonal citrus delights.

Now, I must confess something here. There was no such thing as political rectitude when I was a kid. The use of certain terminologies didn’t immediately label one to be bigoted and nasty. Couldn’t have in my case. My parents, to my ongoing gratitude did not have a racist bone in their respective bodies, and to speak disparagingly of someone due to their heritage meant that severe punishment would be meted out. If the ‘N-word’ was to ever be uttered, that was deemed worse than any profanity. For their stance I am grateful.

At the same time, I am referring to a period not too long after World War Two. Consequently, the fruits to which I am referring were always called ‘Jap Oranges’. We knew no other term. Well, maybe Japanese Oranges, but usually Jap Oranges. “Ian, go down to the box and get a Jap Orange for your school lunch.”

Later, at university, I asked a Japanese-Canadian friend what they called them when he was a kid: “Jap oranges,” was his reply.

Later, of course, they were christened ‘Mandarin’ oranges, and even Satsumas. And now not all Mandarins come from Japan, but many are from China, and some even Korea. I think the Korean ones should be called ‘Hyundai’ Oranges.

And now, as I said at the beginning, the damn things appear in the stores in October, even September, so that bit of seasonal sparkle ahs been taken away. They are now in crappy cardboard boxes, and the individual oranges are no longer wrapped. Just not the same.

Not the same except in taste and aroma; they taste like Christmas. And the fragrance is only to be surpassed by the Noel-like pong of a freshly cut fur Christmas tree. And, as compared with regular oranges, they peel ridiculously easily. I might also mention, as a little-known Mandarin factoid, if you squeeze the peel and hold a match under it, you can light the oil that squirt out. Maybe this might be suggested as an alternative fuel?

Because of those things, I only acquire my Mandarins after the first of December regardless of when the stores want to push them on us.

Some things are too sacred to be trifled with.