A humble aspiration.

When I got to a certain age, I began to reflect on some of the things that I had missed over the years. I'm convinced this is a common failing among men, but be that as it may, I came up with the proverbial 'bucket list.'

It was a time of introspection and self-examination, one not recommended for light entertainment.

Okay, so I never got married, never had kids, never had a long-term full-time job that lasted more than two or three years, and I still don't have any real prospects, and while I don't necessarily regret not being married, I do see the way parents look at their own children, with love and a kind of pride in their eyes and I sort of get it...no, really, I do.

It's just something that I'll have to get over. But there were certain things on the list. For one, I would like to get laid again before I die. Is that so bad? Seems pretty humble to me. Almost practical really, for all the guys that go postal and wind up in the news seem to be dealing with a kind of unspoken frustration, perhaps status-related.

At the top of the list, was a bicycle. That's right, a bicycle. That seems like a pretty humble aspiration, but another common failing is the longing, or the attempt to recapture lost youth.

I'll be honest with you, a bicycle is not very good for picking up chicks, but that wasn't the real purpose, although I may have joked about it from time to time. It gives people something to talk about.

In some ways it actually worked, for I did things and went places that I wouldn't have otherwise.

At about $400, to own one nice new thing, is not unreasonable. It really is better to ride a bike two blocks to the store once in a while.

On this particular day, I probably rode about twenty kilometres. I found the big tree I like, and said hello. I stayed away from the house for two or three hours, and sometimes that's important as well.

My needs are simple, and my wants are not complex.

Was haben wir diese Woche gelernt?

What did we learn this week?

Shyness is fear of social rejection.

Amazon is an awesome marketing machine.

Human beings need sleep.

Was haben wir diese Woche gelernt?

Schüchternheit ist Angst vor sozialen Ablehnung.

Amazon ist ein furchteinflößend marketing-Maschine.

Menschen brauchen Schlaf.

Block paragraphs and semi-colons.

Chapter 5 of Tom Clancy's 'Net Force,' from the 1999 volume entitled 'Hidden Agendas.'

c2012 (S)


The first thing I noticed was the first paragraph of each chapter was a block paragraph without any indents, whereas all other paragraphs whether exposition or dialogue are indented.

The other thing I noticed is that the book, which is fiction, has a few semi-colons.

Imagine my dismay, for at least one book rejection I received included the statement that I had 'too many semi-colons.' Lately I don't put any semi-colons in a story, and when I rewrite a story, I always take them out!

As far as format or layout goes, there is some variation in the way books are laid out, in the chapter titles, in the paragraph layout, etc. It's not that there are no rules, far from it, but the number one rule is clarity for the reader.

When it comes to criticism, it pays to take a moment and figure out who's talking, and whether they are competent, and what they are really saying, and why they are saying it.

Some of them might have a few hidden agendas of their own.

Long term care in crisis?

c2011 (S)


My dad has been moved from a retirement home to a long term care facility. The reasons are simple. The retirement home, while it offers certain services to the elderly, simply could not give him the level of care and attention he needed. They have two staff during the day and one at night, and he required help showering, going to the bathroom, getting to the dining room, and dressing.

The long term care facility has a lot more staff to help him and the other residents.

Still, the difference is stark. Before, he had a private suite of about 600 square feet, with a bedroom, a living room, and a bathroom of about ten feet by ten feet. Now he shares a space less than half that size.

All of this is useless to someone who is completely immobilized by Parkinson's disease, or any other serious affliction.

The long term care room is semi-private, and the bathroom is about five by six feet. It is shared by four residents. It has two doors, one on each side. There is no way I can maneuver my dad on and off the toilet, and in fact they have a lifting device not unlike a drywall lifter to get him up and down.

He hates the place, understandably enough. We are getting him a better wheelchair, as the one they found for him is downright dangerous. The thing almost fell over backwards yesterday.

"I've never been so humiliated in my life," he told me after two nurses helped him go to the bathroom.

This morning he told a nurse that my sister 'abandoned me here, and left me all alone.'

When I went in to visit, the nurse found him sleeping with his face jammed down onto his coffee cup in the dining room...

It's not good. Everything in the place seems small, cramped, and more than anything badly designed. He's on a waiting list for a bed in a more modern building, and hopefully he gets in there in the next few weeks or months.

In the meantime, the elder care crisis just gets worse, and with a recession that never seems to end, and governments tightening up all around, there is clearly no end in sight.

With a falling birthrate, and some pressure to limit immigration, we just aren't making new taxpayers fast enough. With capitalists thinking that keeping wages low is a substitute for investment in newer, more productive processes, we can't expect much help from the economy any time soon, either.

As for Canada's much-touted economic recovery, they've been telling that big lie for over three years now.

A big snake.

c2011 (S)


About thirty years ago, a friend and I were kayaking on Lambton County's Bear Creek a couple of kilometres upstream from Wilkesport. We saw a very large snake swimming on the creek nearby. It looked to be four or five feet long, and we wondered if it might be a Timber or Massasauga Rattler. I remember the distinct markings on that snake, and it fits into the proper range, etc. One possibility would be the northern water snake, which gets up to 135-140 centimetres in length.

http://canadianbiodiversity.mcgill.ca/english/species/herps/herppages/Ner_sip.htm

The only other possibility that I am aware of, and it's an even bigger animal, would be the Grey Ratsnake.

While there are no recent or historical sightings in Lambton County, Bear Creek is only twenty or thirty miles from areas of reported sightings. It's the same Carolinian habitat, and the temperature ranges, and available prey animals are similar. So it's not entirely out of the question. The real problem with snakes is that they are often communal breeders. Once a colony has been wiped out, it could be decades or centuries before another is established. All these years later, I guess we'll never know what kind of a snake we saw, but a new species for the area was discovered a decade ago. That was some kind of poplar tree more common to the Ohio valley and elsewhere. The Gray rat snake can get up to anywhere from 1.7 to 2.0 metres in length.

http://nature.ca/notebooks/english/brsnake_p0.htm

Objectivity.

c2011 (S)

It is difficult to be objective about the times we live in, especially if one isn’t doing too well.

But a historian living in the year 2110 will have an abundance of information and an absence of reliable facts to deal with, in assessing the period 1990-2010. That’s because all the sources are essentially corrupt. None of the data is trustworthy.

None of the conclusions drawn and stated at that time may be trusted. They are completely erroneous for unknown reasons. Certain inescapable facts remain.

What truly stands out from this perspective, is that middle-class wages were essentially frozen in terms of real purchasing power. What stands out is that working-class wages were reduced, with barely a murmur; by an estimated thirty to forty percent. What stands out is that the poor plummeted towards third-world status and stayed there.

What stands out is that the ethic went from savings to easy credit. Thrift and prudence shifted to waste and crass hedonism. The Free Trade Agreement was sold by government and media as, ‘good for all Canadians.’ It was also sold as, ‘Good for all Americans.’ How could it work both ways? It was good for the rich and the big international corporations. The national economies grew by leaps and bounds—at the expense of fundamental social values. Exports grew. And consumer debt grew. Bank profits grew.

What stands out is the pervasive and pernicious influence of the mainstream mass media. What stands out is the dis-education of the populace; in spite of rising professional standards of educators, and what stands out is the sheer economic and political weight of the teacher’s pension fund. What stands out is that no one seemed to notice the results of these monopolistic trends. What stands out is that no one cared. What stands out is that species-survival took second place to next quarter’s bottom line. What stands out is that nothing has really changed; in at least two or three thousand years.

Ultimately all archaeology is subjective, although we would like to think of it as pure science.

We impose our own values upon these imposing old ruins. We interpret them as best we can.

What destroyed this civilization? Did they learn nothing, in spite of their metaphysical certainties?

The pseudo-revelations of the mouthpiece economists, all paid and purchased opinions? Did they tell the customer what they wanted to hear? Like pollsters? Did it collapse of its own sheer top-weight? Its own fallacious mythology? Surely it did not collapse from greed, ignorance, decadence and corruption?

Did it collapse from sheer stupidity? The technology of the times would indicate otherwise.

The ancient philosopher once said, “One gets out of it what one puts into it.”

What did he mean by that? And why carve it on a rock in the public square? The end was near. Why bother? And what was meant by, ‘globalization?’

When archaeologists truly understand what was meant by that most mysterious of terms; then perhaps we will be a little closer to understanding what actually happened here.

Until then, keep digging. You never know what might turn up.

I once dug up an entire set of Elvis collector plates. They’re in the Imperial Museum.

Perhaps you’ve been there? That’s how I got appointed a priest in the temple and now I’m set for life.

The only constant in the cosmos is change. Except for human nature. It is unchangeable.

The God-King has decreed it, and the media has proclaimed it.

But what really strikes home about this micro-epoch is that the paradigm shifted.

No longer did the state exist to serve the people, or even in its most extreme application; to serve a few highly-privileged individuals. At some point the individual existed to serve the state. That was the tipping point. Enlightened self-interest was no longer possible, for it no longer paid any dividends to the
individual. The state became an insatiable sponge, sucking up all surplus. It became a moral deadweight, perpetuating itself at the expanse of the life-force of the weltfolk.

This was not a conscious decision, on the part of society, groups of people or individuals.

It was an intuitive, collective decision; a phenomenon of mass hysteria, a kind of fin-de-siecle feeling spread by mass media and example, word of mouth and the slavish imitation of one’s peers. It was a mob.

When there was no longer any incentive then there was no longer any effort, and the disintegration of society was complete. That was the tipping-point, and from that point onward, society was doomed.

Coming Soon.

Marketing image prototype by Louis.

'The Shapeshifters'