So there was this form that the school sent home to give parents input about some grade destructing that is set to happen next year.
The form asked a few questions to which I was to agree to or not. I didn't feel represented by any of the options i was given, and so briefly i kind of lost my mind and decided to go, as they say... "rogue".
I don't necessarily agree that one method of learning is inherently better than another across the board and it irritates me that we get boxed into positions, drawing lines in the sand over these issues.
So i put some stuff that came out of me at the time, in ink, all over the lone form we have for the twins that is due tomorrow.
Good news for me, is that we have my wife who is a more sane and expert communicator than myself... "more" would be an understatement for sure come to think of it.
Bad news for me, is we only have one form. For a very brief time I thought my points were valid and I strutted into the room and announced "do you think this is insane?"... and then read what I just wrote, seeing for the first time that it is awfully clunky, terribly misguided, grossly ineffective and rather blindly arrogant. I kind of had my head down to read over the parts i had scratched out... when i looked up, there was a mixture of confusion and horror on my wife's face.
Obviously we can't hand that form in... i might keep it just to remind myself not to do those things... maybe i should just write a song and avoid answering school forms on behalf of our family.
Yes lets do that.
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Monday, April 03, 2017
Mom
When you were born you cried and the world rejoiced, live you life so that when you die the world cries and you rejoice
- Native American Proverb
Marion Yvonne Robertson's life found the sweet spot of that sentiment.
I remember one time not too long ago before one of our neighbourhood parties when my daughter told me the kids in the neighbourhood were getting excited because I might be making one of my "famous" cakes. They were of course my Mom's "famous" cakes from her recipe box that she collected from her life that I took from the house when she could no longer use them anymore. A little box of of ideas that when implemented brought joy and nourishment. Now it's my kids that eye the batter, lick the spoons, smell the baking, and of course sample the wares, like I did when I was young.
Our family was an "old fashioned family" where Father went to work and Mother stayed home and ran the house and raised the kids. Make no mistake, she was the glue that held the ship together, we would have made like the Titanic without her herculean efforts on the rudder. She loved it and thought it was a great deal (her words) and wouldn't change a thing if she had to do it again. That concept is evaporating these days, this was her job and she was going to damn well do it to the best of her ability and i don't think i ever heard her complain about it... that would show weakness, which was not allowed.
The chance to be around children was the greatest thing for her. She told me this many times when we would talk over the years... oddly I became a stay home parent as well and we talked about these things at length. She was really good about it, being a very private person herself she never told me what to do, she would never impose, but often said I was doing everything right... well I did learn from the master.
Family was everything to Mom, that's why way back around 1960 when she inherited some money
from her Grandfather she went out and bought a cottage up on Georgian bay. "I thought it would be a great place for all of us to get together", was her logic... and it was. It was never an investment or a place for her to get away, it was a place for everybody, and my uncles and father built it out with some comical disputes over various carpentry skills... cause that's what men do and Mom was just glad everybody was there doing it. I have heard many stories about how Mom would go take my cousin Irene (who was an only child) up to the cottage for some nice get-a-ways and I know it meant the world to the both of them. After spending the summer at the cottage I remember going back to school and all of the kids were a bit tighter with each other than my sister Anne and I were to our friends who had played together. I'm sure it was my mothers way of making sure she got to spend her time with her family.
While at the cottage we had some epic family card games at night... 4 wildly competitive card sharks all with their own cunning poker faces. Mom was no slouch in a card game... just a quiet person in the background while other feigned fear or confidence to gain advantage... all of the sudden she is up in points acting surprised like this was news to her. "Oh I just had a few lucky hands don't worry about that" as the family of wolves turned on their new sacrificial lamb... I recall her onetime saying to me "you wouldn't do that to your own mother" during a particularly vicious game of "Bugger your neighbour" a game we called "Grandpa's game" because our Grandfather taught it to us. Believe me we were savage, but I know she was happy we were all there together doing it.
Later at night when my Sister and I were suppose to be asleep, but maybe we weren't we could hear my Mom and Dad playing scrabble. Dad would come up with some obscure "science term" that maybe was or wasn't actually a word and hilarity would ensue... dictionaries would come out and sometimes be overruled in the name of science, and then Mom would ask Dad to use the word in a sentence, and he would and then laughter might come from the rooms where people were suppose to be sleeping... it was the whole package, never a dull moment.
Sometimes a bat got in that cottage... it would get in the vent of the stove oil furnace (you could hear it) and it would make it into the furnace, and we would open the door to let it out because of course bat's are good for the ecosystem. Now one time My uncle Wilf and Aunt Dorothy were up at the cottage and my Dad and Uncle Wilf had gone out fishing and a bat got in the cottage it was flying laps around the cottage and my Aunt Dorothy was under the kitchen table screaming and waving a broom over her head. It was utter chaos... I remember being so excited I did a flip on the couch. Eventually I grabbed a sheet to hold up to help get the bat out the door. Bat's use sonar to avoid objects so you can help direct them to a certain spot, you could also club them with a tennis racket but that was not the way we rolled. I remember after the bat got out the door Mom was red in the face and smiling one of the greatest smiles and said "that was great"... my Aunt was laughing then, and so was my sister Anne. You need a place, and you need people to be there to have memories like these.
Mom was an elementary school teacher before the kids came and she gave that up to be there for her family. I know she loved it because she loved teaching and she loved kids, but her kids came first always. Back then school lunch was an hour long and I went home to have hot soup and a sandwich while watching the Flinstones with Mom at the kitchen table. That was my memory but years later talking to Mom about this she said she would put a sandwich in my hand as I would pace around the kitchen. I might have been a hyperactive child... one that may have to be medicated in today's society but I remember her saying "well this kid needed to move around and as long as he was eating I was OK with it". It's fair to say that I wasn't the easiest kid in the world with my penchant for violence and destruction... in fact in my kindergarten report card which I have, and I quote "Mark is getting better at relating to classmates but still is quick to use his fists to settle disputes". She let me pace around the house while eating thinking it might get some of the jitters out of my bones... now that is leadership!
One of my Mom's greatest laughs was when I got one of those electronic board sets.. I can't remember what it was called but you could make a lie detector test so I made it and tested my Mom... I set her up in the apparatus narrowed my eyes (my Father was in the room) and asked her if she had "ever had an affair". She was on her back with her legs up in the air in a full fit of absolute laughter within seconds... now I think the way it works is that if you sweat the moisture will connect the current and beep, thus detecting a lie... which actually happened after insane laughter (which might begat sweat)... I noted this and scored a note in my science notepad that came with the toy... this of course caused more insane laughter. For me the question came out of the blue, I wasn't thinking that far ahead... Mom wasn't an "affair" kind of person, she was very happy with the family she had. She loved her husband, her daughter and her son.
When I was in High School and my Sister was off at University, Mom went back to work doing taxes at H&R Block. She was a good numbers person, which is good to have in the person running the household budget. I remember one night when I was woken up by my parents laughing out of control. I said "what is going on". Now H&R Block was running a commercial at the time where a scruffy guy walks in to the place and gets an instant tax refund and goes and buys a VCR... which was state of the art technology at the time. So apparently some guy walked into the office without any of his documents and accosted my mother wanting his cheque because he wanted to get a VCR like the guy in the commercial. This of course was hilarious to my parents who were rule orientated and massively fiscally responsible, Dad was gasping and tearing, Mom was guffawing and me being always up for a contagious laugh got into the action.
Me: 17, Junior Ranger... My Dad was a Junior Ranger, which we heard about often, so I should be... it was awesome. Unfortunately our society can't afford those kind of programs anymore... apparently. But my experience there showed me another thing about my parents... come parent visitor day (in Cochrane Ontario) my parents were the only ones who showed up out of everybody there. I always remember that and it has guided me as a parent... always show up for your kids, it makes a difference.
My parents always came to visit when I was in university, and when I moved out west they always came out to visit. They came to crazy parties in Vancouver, rock shows in dive bars in the seediest parts of town, engaging with hippie friends of mine and always stood tall as real people that wanted to be there with their son... they were out of their comfort zone but yet in it because it was in the comfort zone of their son.
One time my parents came out to Vancouver and I had just bought an 1969 Volvo so we could take a trip down to Mount St. Helens in Washington U.S.A. Now this car, being an older car, had kind of a gas smell... my Father was not gas fume friendly and as you may remember he could really harp on subjects like these. Now Dad of course always needs to sit in the front seat, and Mom does whatever is best for other family members so Mom was behind him, A few hours into the journey Dad's gas fume paranoia was getting a bit old and we had to gas up. As I gassed up I dabbed a tissue cloth with some gas and gave it to mom and she held it by Dad's head as we drove on.... now Dad of course flipped into a massive paranoia about this new more powerful gas odour while Mom held this gas soaked tissue by his head with a mischievous grin. The next stop she got rid of the evidence and in no short order explained to me that this was over, we had our fun and got away with it, and there was no way Dad could ever find out about it as he would be hurt if he ever found out. Her ability to find the line and ride it was extraordinary.
I remember Mom thinking she would never have grandchildren, and then within about 7 years she had six of them, I know it meant the world to her. Nothing brought her more happiness that being with her Grandchildren. One time she had taken her oldest Grandchild Lauren up to the cottage and when they were coming back it rained so hard they had to pull over by the side of the road and wait it out... she thought that was great, a perfect opportunity to have a moment with a child she loved.
She was a great cook, and there was never a time dinner wasn't ready at the exact time it should be. Make no mistake there was an exact time, Dad had probably read in some scientific report titled "Circadian rhythm monthly" that the best time to eat was 6:00 pm sharp. Now the number of rules we had to eat by was astounding... no salt, no fat, many multi-coloured vegetables, any recently included foods reported in the "health digest" portion of the news needed to be added aggressively. For perspective I make food for my family every night and they are happy, Mom made food and was psychoanalyzed.
Unfortunately as time went on health didn't go as planned and what my Parents thought might happen didn't happen. Through it all Mom sacrificed herself to serve her family as always... that's the way she wanted it and there was no telling her otherwise, she was a purpose person and that's what drove the wheels of her life, if she couldn't help her family there was no purpose, she burned out trying to do the impossible. I remember being a kid she told me she wasn't afraid of dying, I thought that was insane because I was afraid of being eaten by a shark in swim lessons in a pool... she said "that was nuts, no shark are in the pool", I asked when the last shark check was... she didn't have an answer, I did receive a loving whap on the arm however.
In the end it's all just memories, thanks for the memories Mom, thanks for the love, the guidance, the lessons in financial responsibility, the tolerance, the trust and the steady example of why it pays to be a good person.
I'll do my best to carry the torch for the next generation, I know that's what you wanted.
Rest in peace
A memorial service in celebration of Marion's life will be held on April 9, 2017 at 2pm at Mount Pleasant Cemetery and Funeral Center, 375 Mount Pleasant Road, Toronto.
- Native American Proverb
Marion Yvonne Robertson's life found the sweet spot of that sentiment.
I remember one time not too long ago before one of our neighbourhood parties when my daughter told me the kids in the neighbourhood were getting excited because I might be making one of my "famous" cakes. They were of course my Mom's "famous" cakes from her recipe box that she collected from her life that I took from the house when she could no longer use them anymore. A little box of of ideas that when implemented brought joy and nourishment. Now it's my kids that eye the batter, lick the spoons, smell the baking, and of course sample the wares, like I did when I was young.
Our family was an "old fashioned family" where Father went to work and Mother stayed home and ran the house and raised the kids. Make no mistake, she was the glue that held the ship together, we would have made like the Titanic without her herculean efforts on the rudder. She loved it and thought it was a great deal (her words) and wouldn't change a thing if she had to do it again. That concept is evaporating these days, this was her job and she was going to damn well do it to the best of her ability and i don't think i ever heard her complain about it... that would show weakness, which was not allowed.
The chance to be around children was the greatest thing for her. She told me this many times when we would talk over the years... oddly I became a stay home parent as well and we talked about these things at length. She was really good about it, being a very private person herself she never told me what to do, she would never impose, but often said I was doing everything right... well I did learn from the master.
Family was everything to Mom, that's why way back around 1960 when she inherited some money
from her Grandfather she went out and bought a cottage up on Georgian bay. "I thought it would be a great place for all of us to get together", was her logic... and it was. It was never an investment or a place for her to get away, it was a place for everybody, and my uncles and father built it out with some comical disputes over various carpentry skills... cause that's what men do and Mom was just glad everybody was there doing it. I have heard many stories about how Mom would go take my cousin Irene (who was an only child) up to the cottage for some nice get-a-ways and I know it meant the world to the both of them. After spending the summer at the cottage I remember going back to school and all of the kids were a bit tighter with each other than my sister Anne and I were to our friends who had played together. I'm sure it was my mothers way of making sure she got to spend her time with her family.
While at the cottage we had some epic family card games at night... 4 wildly competitive card sharks all with their own cunning poker faces. Mom was no slouch in a card game... just a quiet person in the background while other feigned fear or confidence to gain advantage... all of the sudden she is up in points acting surprised like this was news to her. "Oh I just had a few lucky hands don't worry about that" as the family of wolves turned on their new sacrificial lamb... I recall her onetime saying to me "you wouldn't do that to your own mother" during a particularly vicious game of "Bugger your neighbour" a game we called "Grandpa's game" because our Grandfather taught it to us. Believe me we were savage, but I know she was happy we were all there together doing it.
Later at night when my Sister and I were suppose to be asleep, but maybe we weren't we could hear my Mom and Dad playing scrabble. Dad would come up with some obscure "science term" that maybe was or wasn't actually a word and hilarity would ensue... dictionaries would come out and sometimes be overruled in the name of science, and then Mom would ask Dad to use the word in a sentence, and he would and then laughter might come from the rooms where people were suppose to be sleeping... it was the whole package, never a dull moment.
Sometimes a bat got in that cottage... it would get in the vent of the stove oil furnace (you could hear it) and it would make it into the furnace, and we would open the door to let it out because of course bat's are good for the ecosystem. Now one time My uncle Wilf and Aunt Dorothy were up at the cottage and my Dad and Uncle Wilf had gone out fishing and a bat got in the cottage it was flying laps around the cottage and my Aunt Dorothy was under the kitchen table screaming and waving a broom over her head. It was utter chaos... I remember being so excited I did a flip on the couch. Eventually I grabbed a sheet to hold up to help get the bat out the door. Bat's use sonar to avoid objects so you can help direct them to a certain spot, you could also club them with a tennis racket but that was not the way we rolled. I remember after the bat got out the door Mom was red in the face and smiling one of the greatest smiles and said "that was great"... my Aunt was laughing then, and so was my sister Anne. You need a place, and you need people to be there to have memories like these.
Mom was an elementary school teacher before the kids came and she gave that up to be there for her family. I know she loved it because she loved teaching and she loved kids, but her kids came first always. Back then school lunch was an hour long and I went home to have hot soup and a sandwich while watching the Flinstones with Mom at the kitchen table. That was my memory but years later talking to Mom about this she said she would put a sandwich in my hand as I would pace around the kitchen. I might have been a hyperactive child... one that may have to be medicated in today's society but I remember her saying "well this kid needed to move around and as long as he was eating I was OK with it". It's fair to say that I wasn't the easiest kid in the world with my penchant for violence and destruction... in fact in my kindergarten report card which I have, and I quote "Mark is getting better at relating to classmates but still is quick to use his fists to settle disputes". She let me pace around the house while eating thinking it might get some of the jitters out of my bones... now that is leadership!
One of my Mom's greatest laughs was when I got one of those electronic board sets.. I can't remember what it was called but you could make a lie detector test so I made it and tested my Mom... I set her up in the apparatus narrowed my eyes (my Father was in the room) and asked her if she had "ever had an affair". She was on her back with her legs up in the air in a full fit of absolute laughter within seconds... now I think the way it works is that if you sweat the moisture will connect the current and beep, thus detecting a lie... which actually happened after insane laughter (which might begat sweat)... I noted this and scored a note in my science notepad that came with the toy... this of course caused more insane laughter. For me the question came out of the blue, I wasn't thinking that far ahead... Mom wasn't an "affair" kind of person, she was very happy with the family she had. She loved her husband, her daughter and her son.
When I was in High School and my Sister was off at University, Mom went back to work doing taxes at H&R Block. She was a good numbers person, which is good to have in the person running the household budget. I remember one night when I was woken up by my parents laughing out of control. I said "what is going on". Now H&R Block was running a commercial at the time where a scruffy guy walks in to the place and gets an instant tax refund and goes and buys a VCR... which was state of the art technology at the time. So apparently some guy walked into the office without any of his documents and accosted my mother wanting his cheque because he wanted to get a VCR like the guy in the commercial. This of course was hilarious to my parents who were rule orientated and massively fiscally responsible, Dad was gasping and tearing, Mom was guffawing and me being always up for a contagious laugh got into the action.
Me: 17, Junior Ranger... My Dad was a Junior Ranger, which we heard about often, so I should be... it was awesome. Unfortunately our society can't afford those kind of programs anymore... apparently. But my experience there showed me another thing about my parents... come parent visitor day (in Cochrane Ontario) my parents were the only ones who showed up out of everybody there. I always remember that and it has guided me as a parent... always show up for your kids, it makes a difference.
My parents always came to visit when I was in university, and when I moved out west they always came out to visit. They came to crazy parties in Vancouver, rock shows in dive bars in the seediest parts of town, engaging with hippie friends of mine and always stood tall as real people that wanted to be there with their son... they were out of their comfort zone but yet in it because it was in the comfort zone of their son.
One time my parents came out to Vancouver and I had just bought an 1969 Volvo so we could take a trip down to Mount St. Helens in Washington U.S.A. Now this car, being an older car, had kind of a gas smell... my Father was not gas fume friendly and as you may remember he could really harp on subjects like these. Now Dad of course always needs to sit in the front seat, and Mom does whatever is best for other family members so Mom was behind him, A few hours into the journey Dad's gas fume paranoia was getting a bit old and we had to gas up. As I gassed up I dabbed a tissue cloth with some gas and gave it to mom and she held it by Dad's head as we drove on.... now Dad of course flipped into a massive paranoia about this new more powerful gas odour while Mom held this gas soaked tissue by his head with a mischievous grin. The next stop she got rid of the evidence and in no short order explained to me that this was over, we had our fun and got away with it, and there was no way Dad could ever find out about it as he would be hurt if he ever found out. Her ability to find the line and ride it was extraordinary.
I remember Mom thinking she would never have grandchildren, and then within about 7 years she had six of them, I know it meant the world to her. Nothing brought her more happiness that being with her Grandchildren. One time she had taken her oldest Grandchild Lauren up to the cottage and when they were coming back it rained so hard they had to pull over by the side of the road and wait it out... she thought that was great, a perfect opportunity to have a moment with a child she loved.
She was a great cook, and there was never a time dinner wasn't ready at the exact time it should be. Make no mistake there was an exact time, Dad had probably read in some scientific report titled "Circadian rhythm monthly" that the best time to eat was 6:00 pm sharp. Now the number of rules we had to eat by was astounding... no salt, no fat, many multi-coloured vegetables, any recently included foods reported in the "health digest" portion of the news needed to be added aggressively. For perspective I make food for my family every night and they are happy, Mom made food and was psychoanalyzed.
Unfortunately as time went on health didn't go as planned and what my Parents thought might happen didn't happen. Through it all Mom sacrificed herself to serve her family as always... that's the way she wanted it and there was no telling her otherwise, she was a purpose person and that's what drove the wheels of her life, if she couldn't help her family there was no purpose, she burned out trying to do the impossible. I remember being a kid she told me she wasn't afraid of dying, I thought that was insane because I was afraid of being eaten by a shark in swim lessons in a pool... she said "that was nuts, no shark are in the pool", I asked when the last shark check was... she didn't have an answer, I did receive a loving whap on the arm however.
In the end it's all just memories, thanks for the memories Mom, thanks for the love, the guidance, the lessons in financial responsibility, the tolerance, the trust and the steady example of why it pays to be a good person.
I'll do my best to carry the torch for the next generation, I know that's what you wanted.
Rest in peace
A memorial service in celebration of Marion's life will be held on April 9, 2017 at 2pm at Mount Pleasant Cemetery and Funeral Center, 375 Mount Pleasant Road, Toronto.
Friday, October 14, 2016
Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize for Literature....
Dave Bidini wrote an article in the Globe and Mail and took some hits for it... Dave is always good for generating comments, but then comments may have dubious merits. The point is I don't think anybody with a head on their shoulders would deny that Bob Dylan's lyrics are of the highest quality imaginable and that his body of work is nearly unmatched ( does Joni Mitchell win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?).
I have an idea... I know crazy old Robertson with his crazy ideas? Can we have a Nobel Prize for meaningful, inspiring and relevant song lyrics? God knows we could use it given some of the insipid words cobbled together and slapped on a loop and called a song these days. Imagine giving a shit about song lyrics? A friend of mine was in a song/band contest in Vancouver and there was a hundred thousand dollar prize, and you had to go to a boot camp and prove your worth and learn how it is done. I was quizzing him on things and was shocked to find out that according to this industry funded opportunity the idea of having good lyrics accounted for only about 5% of the focus for success. So literature has no place in modern music, according to the leading industry folks.
This is insane to anybody who has ever been truly affected by "Words and Music", which happens to be the motto of SOCAN the society of composers and authors... just savior the irony.
So yes we could perhaps use some inspiration on the lyric commitment, and if you want to aim for the sky then Bob Dylan is one of the highest marks without question.
But as to the point that I believe Mr. Bidini was making was that writing a masterpiece book is a different animal than writing song lyrics. Me, i have released a dozen albums worth of song lyrics and have plenty unreleased, and some I have laboured over and some came to me in moments of inspiration, but i have yet to write a book, but yet it is on my list, but i haven't mustered the courage to take it on. Why take a carrot away from one of the hardest things to do for people that basically get very little reward for such massive effort.
I wrote a eulogy for my father when he died, and it went over pretty well, and a family member who knew I was a stay home dad mentioned to me a perfect career I could have... become a writer. It was nice to hear that somebody thought I could do something, but I dismissed the idea with the logic that I would still have to sell some product to people. Given my massive failure selling words and music and the effort/ reward ratio was not conducive to me living a happy life and being a decent available father to my children and family. I'm in a good spot, our family is surviving nicely on the fact that my wife has a good career and our family has balance and a level of prosperity. Can i write a book? That remains to be seen, but the overwhelming chance that if I do it will be in obscurity is not lost on me. For the record I don't believe I would win a Nobel Prize if I did write a book, so this is not a "sour grapes" situation as some have suggested that Mr. Bidini's angle was.
Why not have a new category? "Nobel Prize for lifetime song lyric output" and then let the people who slaved over books to still have a shot at the "Nobel prize for Literature". Let's face it, another award ain't going to throw a rake on the spokes of humanity... we fucking love awards, and an award category for song lyrics might help raise the bar a bit as far as that is concerned. Give the book people a chance to shine, or at least a hope, or a mirage perhaps and this whole thing can be done with.
I can almost imagine the people deciding on this thinking they are so great thinking outside the box giving this award to one of the greatest songwriters ever. Neat idea given to a worthy candidate, but at some point they lost focus on what they were actually doing... there is a Nobel prize in Chemistry and a Nobel Prize in Physics, also one in Physiology and Medicine. These are all in the science field... there is not just one for science because they are all different, all meaningful and all important.
Books are important and so are songs, but they are different... Bob Dylan deserves a Nobel Prize for his lifetime body of work that has inspired the world to be better and more fair. So do many authors fighting in the tunnel where the light at the end just got dimmer.
I have an idea... I know crazy old Robertson with his crazy ideas? Can we have a Nobel Prize for meaningful, inspiring and relevant song lyrics? God knows we could use it given some of the insipid words cobbled together and slapped on a loop and called a song these days. Imagine giving a shit about song lyrics? A friend of mine was in a song/band contest in Vancouver and there was a hundred thousand dollar prize, and you had to go to a boot camp and prove your worth and learn how it is done. I was quizzing him on things and was shocked to find out that according to this industry funded opportunity the idea of having good lyrics accounted for only about 5% of the focus for success. So literature has no place in modern music, according to the leading industry folks.
This is insane to anybody who has ever been truly affected by "Words and Music", which happens to be the motto of SOCAN the society of composers and authors... just savior the irony.
So yes we could perhaps use some inspiration on the lyric commitment, and if you want to aim for the sky then Bob Dylan is one of the highest marks without question.
But as to the point that I believe Mr. Bidini was making was that writing a masterpiece book is a different animal than writing song lyrics. Me, i have released a dozen albums worth of song lyrics and have plenty unreleased, and some I have laboured over and some came to me in moments of inspiration, but i have yet to write a book, but yet it is on my list, but i haven't mustered the courage to take it on. Why take a carrot away from one of the hardest things to do for people that basically get very little reward for such massive effort.
I wrote a eulogy for my father when he died, and it went over pretty well, and a family member who knew I was a stay home dad mentioned to me a perfect career I could have... become a writer. It was nice to hear that somebody thought I could do something, but I dismissed the idea with the logic that I would still have to sell some product to people. Given my massive failure selling words and music and the effort/ reward ratio was not conducive to me living a happy life and being a decent available father to my children and family. I'm in a good spot, our family is surviving nicely on the fact that my wife has a good career and our family has balance and a level of prosperity. Can i write a book? That remains to be seen, but the overwhelming chance that if I do it will be in obscurity is not lost on me. For the record I don't believe I would win a Nobel Prize if I did write a book, so this is not a "sour grapes" situation as some have suggested that Mr. Bidini's angle was.
Why not have a new category? "Nobel Prize for lifetime song lyric output" and then let the people who slaved over books to still have a shot at the "Nobel prize for Literature". Let's face it, another award ain't going to throw a rake on the spokes of humanity... we fucking love awards, and an award category for song lyrics might help raise the bar a bit as far as that is concerned. Give the book people a chance to shine, or at least a hope, or a mirage perhaps and this whole thing can be done with.
I can almost imagine the people deciding on this thinking they are so great thinking outside the box giving this award to one of the greatest songwriters ever. Neat idea given to a worthy candidate, but at some point they lost focus on what they were actually doing... there is a Nobel prize in Chemistry and a Nobel Prize in Physics, also one in Physiology and Medicine. These are all in the science field... there is not just one for science because they are all different, all meaningful and all important.
Books are important and so are songs, but they are different... Bob Dylan deserves a Nobel Prize for his lifetime body of work that has inspired the world to be better and more fair. So do many authors fighting in the tunnel where the light at the end just got dimmer.
Saturday, May 07, 2016
SOCIAL MEDIA TO STINGING - random ideas of no particular importance
Social Media is becoming a weird dog... do people actually think they are accomplishing anything? Mind you a few are... i can think of one offhand. Now that is an incredibly negative thought that i just had... one that is surly to gall others should i decide to share it, and of course that said i didn't count myself as the one who is accomplishing anything. To be honest, i am very pleased with my insignificance... it's good stuff. Why comment then? Why fucking not, if it's just for kicks, complaints, and something else that might start with a "k" sound, if i wasn't too lazy to finish the sentence with some alliteration. Why get it right?
You start getting boxed in after a while... i believe that to be the general mathematics of the relationship of the being and the medium as they evolve over time in a synergistic relationship.
That was a pretty good sentence until the word "synergistic" popped up... that is a punch in the head for the author. OK i gave myself a stinger over the right eye... it's all good now.
Now don't get me wrong... the relationship between a person and social media is indeed a synergistic relationship. When a person posts something on social media, social media responds, and that response will factor in the decision making process in the next thing that person posts, and social media will respond in a different way. And that person's unique world... i use the term "unique" verry verry fucking loosely, so fucking loosely in fact that i added an extra "r" too both very's. Are you allowed to apostrophe s the word very if you refer to it as a noun? So confusing... but don't worry proper language use has gone the way of the Dodo. I'll tell you one thing you don't want to do... kill slugs at night with a headlamp outside a beehive. The headlamp will stimulate the bees, an organism that is not keen on being stimulated late at night when it's "hunker down in the hive" time. Now there is a saying in hockey "sometimes you have to take a hit to make a play".
Speaking of strange events involving bee's... I was at the beekeeping supply store the other day and the person at the cash could barely write because of a hand was all swollen to the size of a guinea pig... got stung by a bee. Actually when pressed about it one sting happened about 3 days ago and the other was just yesterday. Now me, I'm thinking that perhaps a career around bee's is not in the cards for this person... from the talk, it doesn't seem to have crossed the mind. With allergies, sometimes the reaction can get worse and worse over time, so you might not want to push getting stung. I wear gloves when i go into my hive... apparently this person doesn't because they consider themself an experienced beekeeper... so i hear. I was wondering if a prayer might help, but no for the record the person does not believe in prayer... there seemed to belief in Karma, fate and Omens, although for sure there was a bit of a problem with common sense and logic.
You start getting boxed in after a while... i believe that to be the general mathematics of the relationship of the being and the medium as they evolve over time in a synergistic relationship.
That was a pretty good sentence until the word "synergistic" popped up... that is a punch in the head for the author. OK i gave myself a stinger over the right eye... it's all good now.
Now don't get me wrong... the relationship between a person and social media is indeed a synergistic relationship. When a person posts something on social media, social media responds, and that response will factor in the decision making process in the next thing that person posts, and social media will respond in a different way. And that person's unique world... i use the term "unique" verry verry fucking loosely, so fucking loosely in fact that i added an extra "r" too both very's. Are you allowed to apostrophe s the word very if you refer to it as a noun? So confusing... but don't worry proper language use has gone the way of the Dodo. I'll tell you one thing you don't want to do... kill slugs at night with a headlamp outside a beehive. The headlamp will stimulate the bees, an organism that is not keen on being stimulated late at night when it's "hunker down in the hive" time. Now there is a saying in hockey "sometimes you have to take a hit to make a play".
Speaking of strange events involving bee's... I was at the beekeeping supply store the other day and the person at the cash could barely write because of a hand was all swollen to the size of a guinea pig... got stung by a bee. Actually when pressed about it one sting happened about 3 days ago and the other was just yesterday. Now me, I'm thinking that perhaps a career around bee's is not in the cards for this person... from the talk, it doesn't seem to have crossed the mind. With allergies, sometimes the reaction can get worse and worse over time, so you might not want to push getting stung. I wear gloves when i go into my hive... apparently this person doesn't because they consider themself an experienced beekeeper... so i hear. I was wondering if a prayer might help, but no for the record the person does not believe in prayer... there seemed to belief in Karma, fate and Omens, although for sure there was a bit of a problem with common sense and logic.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
My first swarm capture
It was a busy day and i was just going to relax tonight... and make some plans for tomorrow.
My bee's died this winter... it was unfortunate, but these things happen, and i actually am set to get some more on Wednesday... it's Monday night right now. So I have a friend who has a drip line irrigation system for me and i phoned her up to see if i could get that before i install my bees on Wednesday. She is telling me i can come and get it tomorrow, and then as a final note, rather casually mentions that in the giant Oak tree across the street there is a massive swarm of bees.
"The bee's are there right now" i say calmly even though my nervous system just kicked into hyper-drive... "oh yes she says". I'll be there in a few minutes. On the way down to get my beekeeping stuff i call my bee buddy Christof and we have the shortest conversation we have ever had..
-Hello
-Want to come and get a swarm
-Yep
click
All i had to grab them was a brew bucket and a heart full of hope... time is of the essence, nightfall is coming, for all i know another beekeeper is on the way to claim this bundle of gold. Christof is a more experienced beekeeper than myself and is slightly more prepared grabbing a large box and a light and some duct tape... i knew my friends who lived by the swarm would have some things, like a ladder and some tools that i could figure something out.
The swarm was actually 3 clusters hanging about 20 feet up in the middle of an intersection, not a busy one luckily, and my friends had an orchard ladder and a long pole tree pruner.
As it was getting dark it was harder to see the branch that the bigger cluster was on so he pulled the branch towards me and i got an hand on it so we could try to maneuver it better... it was shortly after that that the branch snapped and the bee's rained down, mostly into the box and on to my head... not the way we had it written up for sure... it was on the street so we could sweep a lot of the clusters up into a dustpan and get them into the box. Now the bees were very docile which was nice and they did head towards the box and some of the bees lined the perimeter of the box to fan pheromones outward... these are good signs that the queen was in the box, which is a very important piece of the puzzle... time will tell.
There was a lot of bee's, i would probably say about 15,000 and the weather report calls for rain tomorrow, so I'm happy the bee's are safe in a good hive right now. Two guys driving home in a van in bee suits and a box of gold in the back.
A swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly
-Beekeeping proverb
So a monster swarm in early April is the big time Jackpot! We put them in my hive and gave them some of the frames of honey that i had from my last hive to make their new home seem nice and beehive like.
Now about those bee's i have to go and get on Wednesday... I guess I'll be building some boxes.
You can never have too many hives right?
My bee's died this winter... it was unfortunate, but these things happen, and i actually am set to get some more on Wednesday... it's Monday night right now. So I have a friend who has a drip line irrigation system for me and i phoned her up to see if i could get that before i install my bees on Wednesday. She is telling me i can come and get it tomorrow, and then as a final note, rather casually mentions that in the giant Oak tree across the street there is a massive swarm of bees.
"The bee's are there right now" i say calmly even though my nervous system just kicked into hyper-drive... "oh yes she says". I'll be there in a few minutes. On the way down to get my beekeeping stuff i call my bee buddy Christof and we have the shortest conversation we have ever had..
-Hello
-Want to come and get a swarm
-Yep
click
All i had to grab them was a brew bucket and a heart full of hope... time is of the essence, nightfall is coming, for all i know another beekeeper is on the way to claim this bundle of gold. Christof is a more experienced beekeeper than myself and is slightly more prepared grabbing a large box and a light and some duct tape... i knew my friends who lived by the swarm would have some things, like a ladder and some tools that i could figure something out.
The swarm was actually 3 clusters hanging about 20 feet up in the middle of an intersection, not a busy one luckily, and my friends had an orchard ladder and a long pole tree pruner.
As we were getting ready the zipper on Christof's veil broke and we lost the last bit of daylight getting that fixed... for a moment i almost said "don't worry about it", which i thought might be kind of funny given it was getting dark and bee's tend to be a little more testy at night. It was a good thing we got it fixed for sure. The first cluster came down into the box really easy. It was on a little branch and the twig was cut easily with the pruning tool.
A swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly
-Beekeeping proverb
So a monster swarm in early April is the big time Jackpot! We put them in my hive and gave them some of the frames of honey that i had from my last hive to make their new home seem nice and beehive like.
Now about those bee's i have to go and get on Wednesday... I guess I'll be building some boxes.
You can never have too many hives right?
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Enlightenment is good, better when it comes before injury
We need to widen our dinner options declared a family one weekend, and the youngest one said "we can only eat what we know how to make"... and then the father true to his "maniac" way of doing things set off on some righteous sermon about how there is nothing we can not learn to do and do well... there was a paragraph titled "limitless potential"... scratch that as paragraphs aren't usually titled... bullet points might be... but now our story is getting irritating.
So the father declares "name anything and we will make it".
Sushi- We can do this... make some avocado rolls, some cucumber rolls, some deep fried shrimp rolls...
Within a small broken sentence our hero has now, even though he has yet to realize it, planted a seed in that little place in his brain that will cause the deep fry operation to overtake the sushi operation. Now as a natural maniac, and an older one... one who's brain is more accustomed to naturally justify this coming imbalance the Father triples the sushi rice recipe. Now lets change "the father" to "me", so i can be less confused and get on with things.
One of the justifications i used to myself at the time was "with more rice we can make mistakes and not go hungry", which is odd seeing that I had already committed to pot stickers and steamed buns as a backup. Now i did get the steamed buns and pot stickers frozen in the Asian market when i went to fetch pickled ginger and what turned out to be fire hot wasabi. I was just going to batter and fry some shrimp, yams and asparagus, but then i got fixated on onion rings, and everything else that could possibly be deep fried
So we have about 36 avocado rolls, 24 cucumber rolls, 12 dynamite rolls, 18 tempura asparagus rolls, 30 pot stickers, 8 steamed buns, a plate of red pepper tempura, and I'm trying frantically to push out a batch of onion rings so we don't starve to death. I ate my portion 15 minutes before going to yoga.
Now in Yoga often times your body wakes up and becomes aware and begins processing things... you breathe into spaces to open things up and push away discomfort. In retrospect it seems foolish to gorge back a deep fried feast and then go to yoga, but in life sometimes you are focused so heavily on another job, or you fall into a deep fry frenzy and all bets are off.
My neighbour's have a deep fryer, they want me to use their deep fryer... they are community foodies who believe a deep fryer is a good thing to have, and by me using it i am helping justify the roll... we understand this and are happy, mostly, that we do understand this.. I was thinking about the deep fryer (obviously), and it is that oil commitment that is the "economic saver mentality syndrome"... If i am going to spend a pot of oil, then spend a pot of oil. It's all decoys... there is always a reason to go insane, life is about finding the reason. As we speak my heart is kind of feeling a little congested, perhaps i can fix this with a few wind sprints up and down the street.
Post wind sprints - Ankle hurts, seeing mild stars, new sweat areas, fresh odours... most likely the second biggest mistake of the night... pulled hip muscle is kind of coming on strong now. What was that saying... "if you find yourself in a hole stop digging". Enlightenment is good, better when it comes before injury... not a bad quote to salvage from today's self induced carnage.
So the father declares "name anything and we will make it".
Sushi- We can do this... make some avocado rolls, some cucumber rolls, some deep fried shrimp rolls...
Within a small broken sentence our hero has now, even though he has yet to realize it, planted a seed in that little place in his brain that will cause the deep fry operation to overtake the sushi operation. Now as a natural maniac, and an older one... one who's brain is more accustomed to naturally justify this coming imbalance the Father triples the sushi rice recipe. Now lets change "the father" to "me", so i can be less confused and get on with things.
One of the justifications i used to myself at the time was "with more rice we can make mistakes and not go hungry", which is odd seeing that I had already committed to pot stickers and steamed buns as a backup. Now i did get the steamed buns and pot stickers frozen in the Asian market when i went to fetch pickled ginger and what turned out to be fire hot wasabi. I was just going to batter and fry some shrimp, yams and asparagus, but then i got fixated on onion rings, and everything else that could possibly be deep fried
So we have about 36 avocado rolls, 24 cucumber rolls, 12 dynamite rolls, 18 tempura asparagus rolls, 30 pot stickers, 8 steamed buns, a plate of red pepper tempura, and I'm trying frantically to push out a batch of onion rings so we don't starve to death. I ate my portion 15 minutes before going to yoga.
Now in Yoga often times your body wakes up and becomes aware and begins processing things... you breathe into spaces to open things up and push away discomfort. In retrospect it seems foolish to gorge back a deep fried feast and then go to yoga, but in life sometimes you are focused so heavily on another job, or you fall into a deep fry frenzy and all bets are off.
My neighbour's have a deep fryer, they want me to use their deep fryer... they are community foodies who believe a deep fryer is a good thing to have, and by me using it i am helping justify the roll... we understand this and are happy, mostly, that we do understand this.. I was thinking about the deep fryer (obviously), and it is that oil commitment that is the "economic saver mentality syndrome"... If i am going to spend a pot of oil, then spend a pot of oil. It's all decoys... there is always a reason to go insane, life is about finding the reason. As we speak my heart is kind of feeling a little congested, perhaps i can fix this with a few wind sprints up and down the street.
Post wind sprints - Ankle hurts, seeing mild stars, new sweat areas, fresh odours... most likely the second biggest mistake of the night... pulled hip muscle is kind of coming on strong now. What was that saying... "if you find yourself in a hole stop digging". Enlightenment is good, better when it comes before injury... not a bad quote to salvage from today's self induced carnage.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
The Defeat
The moment he was defeated was the greatest... a wonderful defeat- a hubris induced nemesis outcome... irreversible legacy damage. To a megalomaniac it would be the worst possible outcome... all the people jumping ship before the election... but you could only see you. I actually wouldn't put it past you that the "all the blame for this lies with me and me alone" line you uttered was a support line should you ever throw your hat back in the ring. You can hear the newsman say... "well by taking responsibility he has proved that he has changed"... right. I honestly don't doubt that this is a possibility... you will have to repair that legacy right?
Oddly enough you might have done the best possible thing for for the Country... put your party out of power against a majority government.
Could have stepped away and the words "you have been an unbelievable Leader" as uttered by one of the great sellouts of all time. Heck your Party might have even won again without you, the albatross, around it's neck. Certainly a delicious irony for somebody who has suffered as a result of the cruel and thoughtless policies that you imposed.
It's true the defeat was absolutely because of you... everybody can now get out their dissection knives and carve up the Goat to show how it was you and only you that was wrong with this incompetent government. Heck, the great foreign owned Newspapers might even run this stuff in an effort to purge the brand. Isn't there some court case going on where you might face charges? Who will lie for you now? If you were charged it could take the heat off others? It's just politics... nothing personal... every once in a while somebody has to get eaten by a shark, just to show how the game is not rigged
You can see why this gets better and better... Never poison the food chain for people that have things on you... most smart people know that, and I'm sure you did once too... it's good to relearn life lessons... it's like enlightenment: it goes when you know you have it.
Aloha sucker
Oddly enough you might have done the best possible thing for for the Country... put your party out of power against a majority government.
Could have stepped away and the words "you have been an unbelievable Leader" as uttered by one of the great sellouts of all time. Heck your Party might have even won again without you, the albatross, around it's neck. Certainly a delicious irony for somebody who has suffered as a result of the cruel and thoughtless policies that you imposed.
It's true the defeat was absolutely because of you... everybody can now get out their dissection knives and carve up the Goat to show how it was you and only you that was wrong with this incompetent government. Heck, the great foreign owned Newspapers might even run this stuff in an effort to purge the brand. Isn't there some court case going on where you might face charges? Who will lie for you now? If you were charged it could take the heat off others? It's just politics... nothing personal... every once in a while somebody has to get eaten by a shark, just to show how the game is not rigged
You can see why this gets better and better... Never poison the food chain for people that have things on you... most smart people know that, and I'm sure you did once too... it's good to relearn life lessons... it's like enlightenment: it goes when you know you have it.
Aloha sucker
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Robertson's voting in elections ideas
I always vote, i always loose, i have a long memory and a short fuse for bitter ironies... but this isn't about my disappointment in humanity, well i guess everything kind of is in a way.
- "it was a marvelous line, and it was written to blind, and now the end of the line... is ahead of it's time"
Roadbed (Last dance at the Shockcenter 2004)
I was referring at the time to a line some loathsome cretin said about how Global Warming was some crazy left wing conspiracy meant to steal money from the economy. Utter bullshit of course, but yet very effective in undermining scientific data for the good of partisan politics. So yea we lost that one a long time ago and the bill is coming due, and nobody could have ever expected it... right.
So yes, i am disappointed in humanity and I'm sure I'll die with that grudge on my shoulder... but i still vote... it's like there is bad and worse, but as we know (or we don't) worse can be really fucking bad.
I can accept corrupt politicians... power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely (Lord Acton). I would just hope that perhaps the corrupt person, just maybe every once in a while, if they had the chance might do something good for society. That is basically my high bar of hope for humans in power. I mean there have been corrupt Governments in power that at least left the Government in somewhat decent shape while serving themselves shamelessly. You could argue that American President Bill Clinton and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien both had problems with corruption, but yet both left office with their respective countries in relatively decent shape on the thing consumers seem to care about... that being the economy of course. Now don't get we wrong here... there is a lot of things that could have been done better in a lot of ways, but consumers.. i mean voters like a strong economy...
Now following discontent for these 2 North American leaders contested elections landed Geroge W. Bush and Stephen Harper in Power respectively (now the timeline was different of course and in Canada a dithering PM held power for a short while) but what did we see... corruption went up exponentially, surpluses turned to deficits and regulations were stomped on... wars based on facts that were untrue, wars on reason, focus on religious freedoms for some while religious freedoms for others were scaled back... lets just say the Countries went into the gutter where opportunities declined, the economy failed and divisions escalated. Now in the U.S.A. George W Bush's failure was so great that the country elected and eloquent speaking black man named Barack Hussein Obama on the hope for change ticket. Now once again for sure, change didn't come fast enough or far enough for many who had great hopes, but the facts don't lie... the American economy is doing pretty good right now... remember the consumers, i mean the voters... that is their top issue. Now considering he accomplished this while being opposed in every issue always as a matter of partisan politics every step of the way is kind of impressive. Sure i would like to see no war, clean energy, zero waste more reforestation... and all of the other crazy left wing pinko commie tree hugging ideas that try to enable the planet to remain sustainable, and i would argue that those positions are more attainable under and Obama Presidency than they were under a Bush Presidency... probably a Bush supporter wouldn't even argue that because the idea of a sustainable planet may seem like a stupid idea to a Bush Supporter from all i can gather from what has been said.
On Monday we will find out what direction Canada will go... now it's a bit of a different story because there are three parties with a shot at the title, and a newly introduced election law called "the fair elections act" which would pit a wry grin on the face of the late great George Orwell... almost as good as the "responsible resource development initiative" which basically said just let international corporations gut the country and to hell with what happens because we stomped out all of the environmental protection laws and anybody who protests well fuck you you are now a terrorist and we have an new law for you... am i going off again?
So yes i voted... will i win, probably not although the particular member of Parliament i voted for probably will win.
I did vote against Vancouver B.C holding the Olympics, mainly because i didn't trust a blank check given to development and i also was offended at the idea that offering better transit to a city was on the condition of holding a 2 week party. But in the end i had a good time during the Olympics and to the city's credit a fair bit of good did come out of it... clearly the affordable housing bait and switch was irritating, but i expected as much.
The thing i don't understand about elections is the run up to the elections... the political campaigning... it's asinine. You see i pay attention to things, and i know where i stand... i know what political values are closest to mine (they never go far enough for me by the way). Nothing anybody could have said over the period of the campaign while they were on their best behaviour could sway me to the direction that i want my country to go in... I have worked as a civil servant, and artist and a stay home parent, and i have never lived paycheck to paycheck. My time, the quality of the earths environment and the general human respect we have for one another are the things i care about the most. No load of crap somebody can read from a prepared paper in a campaign could ever make me forget the issues somebody stood up for when the cards were on the table.
And what the fuck is a swing voter? Some idiot that has no no fucking idea what is going on but at the 11th hour somebody says something that resonates with them so they go out and cast a vote for some idiot that really have no idea what they stand for and call it good? Are you fucking kidding me... elections are decided by these morons? I mean i would love to hear a really good rational argument on why i should vote for the person I'm not going to vote for... if it is a real argument and it makes real sense i will consider it... but "protect our economy" by an imbecile who has destroyed our economy is not one.
I'm all for putting your platform out on paper, people read the fucking thing and vote and if you don't carry out what you said you would you get publicly stoned to death. Seems fair to me... anybody caught lobbying gets a free lobotomy as well under my plan. At heart i don't think many people would disagree with that... but it might be considered a barbaric cultural practice.
- "it was a marvelous line, and it was written to blind, and now the end of the line... is ahead of it's time"
Roadbed (Last dance at the Shockcenter 2004)
I was referring at the time to a line some loathsome cretin said about how Global Warming was some crazy left wing conspiracy meant to steal money from the economy. Utter bullshit of course, but yet very effective in undermining scientific data for the good of partisan politics. So yea we lost that one a long time ago and the bill is coming due, and nobody could have ever expected it... right.
So yes, i am disappointed in humanity and I'm sure I'll die with that grudge on my shoulder... but i still vote... it's like there is bad and worse, but as we know (or we don't) worse can be really fucking bad.
I can accept corrupt politicians... power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely (Lord Acton). I would just hope that perhaps the corrupt person, just maybe every once in a while, if they had the chance might do something good for society. That is basically my high bar of hope for humans in power. I mean there have been corrupt Governments in power that at least left the Government in somewhat decent shape while serving themselves shamelessly. You could argue that American President Bill Clinton and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien both had problems with corruption, but yet both left office with their respective countries in relatively decent shape on the thing consumers seem to care about... that being the economy of course. Now don't get we wrong here... there is a lot of things that could have been done better in a lot of ways, but consumers.. i mean voters like a strong economy...
Now following discontent for these 2 North American leaders contested elections landed Geroge W. Bush and Stephen Harper in Power respectively (now the timeline was different of course and in Canada a dithering PM held power for a short while) but what did we see... corruption went up exponentially, surpluses turned to deficits and regulations were stomped on... wars based on facts that were untrue, wars on reason, focus on religious freedoms for some while religious freedoms for others were scaled back... lets just say the Countries went into the gutter where opportunities declined, the economy failed and divisions escalated. Now in the U.S.A. George W Bush's failure was so great that the country elected and eloquent speaking black man named Barack Hussein Obama on the hope for change ticket. Now once again for sure, change didn't come fast enough or far enough for many who had great hopes, but the facts don't lie... the American economy is doing pretty good right now... remember the consumers, i mean the voters... that is their top issue. Now considering he accomplished this while being opposed in every issue always as a matter of partisan politics every step of the way is kind of impressive. Sure i would like to see no war, clean energy, zero waste more reforestation... and all of the other crazy left wing pinko commie tree hugging ideas that try to enable the planet to remain sustainable, and i would argue that those positions are more attainable under and Obama Presidency than they were under a Bush Presidency... probably a Bush supporter wouldn't even argue that because the idea of a sustainable planet may seem like a stupid idea to a Bush Supporter from all i can gather from what has been said.
On Monday we will find out what direction Canada will go... now it's a bit of a different story because there are three parties with a shot at the title, and a newly introduced election law called "the fair elections act" which would pit a wry grin on the face of the late great George Orwell... almost as good as the "responsible resource development initiative" which basically said just let international corporations gut the country and to hell with what happens because we stomped out all of the environmental protection laws and anybody who protests well fuck you you are now a terrorist and we have an new law for you... am i going off again?
So yes i voted... will i win, probably not although the particular member of Parliament i voted for probably will win.
I did vote against Vancouver B.C holding the Olympics, mainly because i didn't trust a blank check given to development and i also was offended at the idea that offering better transit to a city was on the condition of holding a 2 week party. But in the end i had a good time during the Olympics and to the city's credit a fair bit of good did come out of it... clearly the affordable housing bait and switch was irritating, but i expected as much.
The thing i don't understand about elections is the run up to the elections... the political campaigning... it's asinine. You see i pay attention to things, and i know where i stand... i know what political values are closest to mine (they never go far enough for me by the way). Nothing anybody could have said over the period of the campaign while they were on their best behaviour could sway me to the direction that i want my country to go in... I have worked as a civil servant, and artist and a stay home parent, and i have never lived paycheck to paycheck. My time, the quality of the earths environment and the general human respect we have for one another are the things i care about the most. No load of crap somebody can read from a prepared paper in a campaign could ever make me forget the issues somebody stood up for when the cards were on the table.
And what the fuck is a swing voter? Some idiot that has no no fucking idea what is going on but at the 11th hour somebody says something that resonates with them so they go out and cast a vote for some idiot that really have no idea what they stand for and call it good? Are you fucking kidding me... elections are decided by these morons? I mean i would love to hear a really good rational argument on why i should vote for the person I'm not going to vote for... if it is a real argument and it makes real sense i will consider it... but "protect our economy" by an imbecile who has destroyed our economy is not one.
I'm all for putting your platform out on paper, people read the fucking thing and vote and if you don't carry out what you said you would you get publicly stoned to death. Seems fair to me... anybody caught lobbying gets a free lobotomy as well under my plan. At heart i don't think many people would disagree with that... but it might be considered a barbaric cultural practice.
Friday, September 18, 2015
It's not politics, it's sanity i strive for
Sometimes people say to me "Oh you are into politics"... the truth is i am into irony, as well as being fascinated by how fucking stupid human populations can be. I should come clean here... i believe as humans living on this closed system that is Earth... well, we missed it. I realize this is a depressing thought for some... like my wife for example who likes to think of herself as an "eternal optimist", and yes she is, and that's great... but i see it differently. I'm just a fact kind of guy, not a positive or negative thing, it just is what it is. So i believe the tipping point has been reached (a while back) and we are doomed... for some reason i am still able to get up and have good days and look forward to more good days. It's a weird skill, and one i am thankful for... i even have kids... i hope for them, but you know we still have that massive patch of plastic garbage in the middle of the fucking Pacific Ocean and there is very little political will to ban plastic, or the climate is changing and our leaders are arguing over whether that is true or not, and that we can't possible hurt the economy by addressing that.
The way i see it; the economy is bullshit, and the environment is the economy... i laugh as i realize this statement might make sure i never get elected should i ever make the mistake of running for public office. Now if you can't grow an apple because you have no fucking water because you used all the water to extract petroleum products, or you dammed all of the rivers, or you cut down all of the forests disturbing the hydrologic cycle... well then you can't sell an apple. If you can't make food because you killed all of the pollinators with insane management policies, then you can't sell food. So you can't make money AND you can't feed yourself.
I believe it was a Cree Indian Prophecy
That sums it up, but perhaps those with enough money and power will be able to survive longer, so our economic model might work still. Clearly there might be a chance for the rural farming hermit provided he could avoid the state safety officer's visits to relieve him of his produce.
So the irony of course is these insipid political debates we have to suffer through, and these long vapid campaigns that focus on this "economy" where candidates pledge "tax breaks" to stimulate growth and such. Now quick question... have you ever tried to claim a "tax break"? The forms make no fucking sense and then you have to hire an accountant and thus loose the money you made in the tax break. Obviously the Government tax agencies can help... you just have to call them, wait on hold for a fucking hour and then get some suspect advise that has been proven to be wrong more than 50% of the time. What's the problem here?
Now in Canada right now there is a thing called the Leap Manifesto which pretty much seems like the thing to do, however there is politics. It was probably 8 years ago that Liberal leader Stephan Dion ran on a platform of altering Canada's economy to one with a Green future, and by investing in green jobs (8 years ago), Canada might be at the lead in the future when the green revolution hits... like right about now. Now he was beaten like a mule at the polls as the Conservatives ran adds calling it the "green shaft" that would hurt Canada's economy, and was portrayed in attack ads as a weak leader. Even my own parents, who in reality would support such an idea, had they been in their right minds, were swayed by the commercials and avoided supporting this "weak leader". And here we are now. Will the Leap Manifesto help the most insane political party by adding to the fear of change with respect to the economy dialogue? Hey we can't change something that is clearly not working, and perhaps if we reiterate how something that is not working is actually working enough times people might actually believe it. Obviously it helps if you can limit real information that is gathered on how a society is doing and replace it with your own ideas no matter how baseless they may be.
Now this is the intrigue of politics fore me, how one can push off nonsense for fact and fact for nonsense to suit ones political needs. Remember political parties are machines to be elected... it has nothing to do with good governance, it's about gaining power. Obviously some are better than others, like the lesser of evils perhaps and the only victory is seeing some fucker go down, and on to some high corporate appointment.
My personal political affiliation was the Work less Party, but they fizzled out... apparently nobody is interested in a zero growth economy and more free time to spend with family and living life. We prefer a negative growth economy where people work their life away, as long as it is called in the ads and the debates as a growth economy.
So for the comedy? I mean it's not really funny, irony is a bitter pill best served cold... the talking points have grown stale and the result is old, but people cling to the life they know... "How do i do better or stay the same for me?" Maybe i should vote for X because i might come out a few hundred dollars ahead... that's how we think. Which of course is irrelevant if your government tanks the countries currency by 25% by making horrible decisions that nobody could have ever have predicted... except those that predicted it and were written off a lunatics.
The problem is that the lunatic never gets their day in the spotlight.... the person who said "this is an insane idea" never gets redeemed. Even as somebody who believes we are doomed, there would be a certain satisfaction if we could at least consider addressing the problems we face... then perhaps i might change my mind and believe in the impossible... that we could collectively change the course of our destiny. But of course reforesting the planet isn't even on the agenda when we need to deal with important things like Wars, clamping down on immigration, trade agreements, surveillance, chemical pesticide development... you know smart stuff.
If you want to really ramp up the insanity check out the American Republican debates... #unfuckingbelievable
The way i see it; the economy is bullshit, and the environment is the economy... i laugh as i realize this statement might make sure i never get elected should i ever make the mistake of running for public office. Now if you can't grow an apple because you have no fucking water because you used all the water to extract petroleum products, or you dammed all of the rivers, or you cut down all of the forests disturbing the hydrologic cycle... well then you can't sell an apple. If you can't make food because you killed all of the pollinators with insane management policies, then you can't sell food. So you can't make money AND you can't feed yourself.
I believe it was a Cree Indian Prophecy
Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
That sums it up, but perhaps those with enough money and power will be able to survive longer, so our economic model might work still. Clearly there might be a chance for the rural farming hermit provided he could avoid the state safety officer's visits to relieve him of his produce.
So the irony of course is these insipid political debates we have to suffer through, and these long vapid campaigns that focus on this "economy" where candidates pledge "tax breaks" to stimulate growth and such. Now quick question... have you ever tried to claim a "tax break"? The forms make no fucking sense and then you have to hire an accountant and thus loose the money you made in the tax break. Obviously the Government tax agencies can help... you just have to call them, wait on hold for a fucking hour and then get some suspect advise that has been proven to be wrong more than 50% of the time. What's the problem here?
Now in Canada right now there is a thing called the Leap Manifesto which pretty much seems like the thing to do, however there is politics. It was probably 8 years ago that Liberal leader Stephan Dion ran on a platform of altering Canada's economy to one with a Green future, and by investing in green jobs (8 years ago), Canada might be at the lead in the future when the green revolution hits... like right about now. Now he was beaten like a mule at the polls as the Conservatives ran adds calling it the "green shaft" that would hurt Canada's economy, and was portrayed in attack ads as a weak leader. Even my own parents, who in reality would support such an idea, had they been in their right minds, were swayed by the commercials and avoided supporting this "weak leader". And here we are now. Will the Leap Manifesto help the most insane political party by adding to the fear of change with respect to the economy dialogue? Hey we can't change something that is clearly not working, and perhaps if we reiterate how something that is not working is actually working enough times people might actually believe it. Obviously it helps if you can limit real information that is gathered on how a society is doing and replace it with your own ideas no matter how baseless they may be.
Now this is the intrigue of politics fore me, how one can push off nonsense for fact and fact for nonsense to suit ones political needs. Remember political parties are machines to be elected... it has nothing to do with good governance, it's about gaining power. Obviously some are better than others, like the lesser of evils perhaps and the only victory is seeing some fucker go down, and on to some high corporate appointment.
My personal political affiliation was the Work less Party, but they fizzled out... apparently nobody is interested in a zero growth economy and more free time to spend with family and living life. We prefer a negative growth economy where people work their life away, as long as it is called in the ads and the debates as a growth economy.
So for the comedy? I mean it's not really funny, irony is a bitter pill best served cold... the talking points have grown stale and the result is old, but people cling to the life they know... "How do i do better or stay the same for me?" Maybe i should vote for X because i might come out a few hundred dollars ahead... that's how we think. Which of course is irrelevant if your government tanks the countries currency by 25% by making horrible decisions that nobody could have ever have predicted... except those that predicted it and were written off a lunatics.
The problem is that the lunatic never gets their day in the spotlight.... the person who said "this is an insane idea" never gets redeemed. Even as somebody who believes we are doomed, there would be a certain satisfaction if we could at least consider addressing the problems we face... then perhaps i might change my mind and believe in the impossible... that we could collectively change the course of our destiny. But of course reforesting the planet isn't even on the agenda when we need to deal with important things like Wars, clamping down on immigration, trade agreements, surveillance, chemical pesticide development... you know smart stuff.
If you want to really ramp up the insanity check out the American Republican debates... #unfuckingbelievable
Tuesday, June 09, 2015
Sufjan Stevens Carrie & Lowell tour
Clearly I have been down on music for some time after a long period of locking antlers with the "what and why" with respect to my relationship with my music. In fact I haven't made much effort to seek and see music in this period.
Well a few months ago my neighbour came down and asked me if i wanted to go see Sufjan Stevens, and being a big fan of the album Illinois and Michigan i sad yes and we bought some tickets and i kind of forgot about it.
Now a couple of days ago i was reminded of the show and checked out the new album "Carrie & Lowell". I was actually painting that day and i hit the album about 4x in a row. By about the third listen i was hooked, you know that thing when you know you have a new favourite album, and you are going to get the chance to fall in love with it. It's moments like this is why we seek music... that high one gets becoming obsessed with a spectacular piece of art. I was warned that it is a "bummer"... but so is "Blue" by Joni Mitchell... i rest my case. I make this comparison not casually... but I'll put it there. Was i crying listening to it?... Yep, but it was a good cry, a beautiful cry, much like that time i was driving to the ferry on New Years eve listening to "river".
So i was primed for the show... the new album like a strong burning fire in my soul, and he played the whole thing. He didn't just play it, he killed it... probably one of the best shows i have ever witnessed. Clearly this show had special significance being that it was in Oregon, and that wasn't lost for a moment on the nearly three thousand absolutely enthralled audience members. Spectacular Oregon images broadcast on church window like screen panels and a minimal yet very effective light show. Five were on stage, but many times only Sufjan was playing ( basically any instrument and singing), and the others altered instruments and came in expertly when it was time for optimal effect. It was one of those shows that will go down for the ages, i have no doubt about that. It's not something that is easy to describe because sometimes words fall short or define too singularly.
If i had to I'd say... it was a heavy "love in" that demonstrated in no uncertain terms the power of music, and the possibilities within.
So i played some music today and for a while rediscovered the soul that drives the engine... And what's a bummer about that?
Well a few months ago my neighbour came down and asked me if i wanted to go see Sufjan Stevens, and being a big fan of the album Illinois and Michigan i sad yes and we bought some tickets and i kind of forgot about it.
Now a couple of days ago i was reminded of the show and checked out the new album "Carrie & Lowell". I was actually painting that day and i hit the album about 4x in a row. By about the third listen i was hooked, you know that thing when you know you have a new favourite album, and you are going to get the chance to fall in love with it. It's moments like this is why we seek music... that high one gets becoming obsessed with a spectacular piece of art. I was warned that it is a "bummer"... but so is "Blue" by Joni Mitchell... i rest my case. I make this comparison not casually... but I'll put it there. Was i crying listening to it?... Yep, but it was a good cry, a beautiful cry, much like that time i was driving to the ferry on New Years eve listening to "river".
So i was primed for the show... the new album like a strong burning fire in my soul, and he played the whole thing. He didn't just play it, he killed it... probably one of the best shows i have ever witnessed. Clearly this show had special significance being that it was in Oregon, and that wasn't lost for a moment on the nearly three thousand absolutely enthralled audience members. Spectacular Oregon images broadcast on church window like screen panels and a minimal yet very effective light show. Five were on stage, but many times only Sufjan was playing ( basically any instrument and singing), and the others altered instruments and came in expertly when it was time for optimal effect. It was one of those shows that will go down for the ages, i have no doubt about that. It's not something that is easy to describe because sometimes words fall short or define too singularly.
If i had to I'd say... it was a heavy "love in" that demonstrated in no uncertain terms the power of music, and the possibilities within.
So i played some music today and for a while rediscovered the soul that drives the engine... And what's a bummer about that?
Friday, June 05, 2015
Open stage
So i played open stage tonight... it was a good reminder to never do that again... will i heed my advice? Time is the hunter and it will show the truth. Perhaps i met a person that i might play music with... time will tell.
What did i learn from this open stage? The Cavilers can't score in overtime, and the catcher from the Tampa Rays wears a hockey goalie mask. Everything else i had already learned but needed to remind myself. Nobody gives a shit about about any artistic creation you may have made... and in the end it's all just memories.... right Mule.
It's unfortunate that music making has been turned into this 15 minutes of time to sell beers. But that is the game, if you don't like it leave it, like i did years ago. I needed to go back like salmon who spawns. It's more like a biological imperative... you have songs and you think you want to play them but in the end you are just a disturbance to the chaos that is happening in the bar. Whatever, I am more of a scientist checking out the moment rather than a songwriter trying to create a big break.
One thing i know for sure is that it is the storybook parade tomorrow for the elementary school. A chance to cheer the kids on in their costumes and everything will be OK. If the storybook parade was an open stage then nobody would go home with a sense of importance because nobody gives a darn about anything that they they are doing... it's the beauty of elementary school... you get cheered on for having cat whiskers and walking down a road.
This is good don't get me wrong, i can get behind cat whiskers, as long as they are not in my garden taking s shit.
I'm not a "this animal is cute" kind if guy... if the animal is a pain in the ass i hate it... it's a big picture kind of thing.
Obviously not everybody see's it this way, as i have seen from being on social media, but i can live with that.
There is a book out now called "your band sucks" by john fine... Smash sent me the link and Mule will soon review it... i haven't read it but it sounds like a book i am trying to write although i would shy away from the negative. My attack is more on the idea of the struggle of being in a band rather than attack the idea of somebodies band sucking. There is lot's of fodder there and as somebody who is less inclined to attack the notion of a band sucking but rather question the parameters of what a band is expected to do, I'll stick to my guns.
Imagine the idea of me hanging in a bar for 3 hours to play for 15 minutes to a crowd that has no interest in listening... and i did it to myself.
What did i learn from this open stage? The Cavilers can't score in overtime, and the catcher from the Tampa Rays wears a hockey goalie mask. Everything else i had already learned but needed to remind myself. Nobody gives a shit about about any artistic creation you may have made... and in the end it's all just memories.... right Mule.
It's unfortunate that music making has been turned into this 15 minutes of time to sell beers. But that is the game, if you don't like it leave it, like i did years ago. I needed to go back like salmon who spawns. It's more like a biological imperative... you have songs and you think you want to play them but in the end you are just a disturbance to the chaos that is happening in the bar. Whatever, I am more of a scientist checking out the moment rather than a songwriter trying to create a big break.
One thing i know for sure is that it is the storybook parade tomorrow for the elementary school. A chance to cheer the kids on in their costumes and everything will be OK. If the storybook parade was an open stage then nobody would go home with a sense of importance because nobody gives a darn about anything that they they are doing... it's the beauty of elementary school... you get cheered on for having cat whiskers and walking down a road.
This is good don't get me wrong, i can get behind cat whiskers, as long as they are not in my garden taking s shit.
I'm not a "this animal is cute" kind if guy... if the animal is a pain in the ass i hate it... it's a big picture kind of thing.
Obviously not everybody see's it this way, as i have seen from being on social media, but i can live with that.
There is a book out now called "your band sucks" by john fine... Smash sent me the link and Mule will soon review it... i haven't read it but it sounds like a book i am trying to write although i would shy away from the negative. My attack is more on the idea of the struggle of being in a band rather than attack the idea of somebodies band sucking. There is lot's of fodder there and as somebody who is less inclined to attack the notion of a band sucking but rather question the parameters of what a band is expected to do, I'll stick to my guns.
Imagine the idea of me hanging in a bar for 3 hours to play for 15 minutes to a crowd that has no interest in listening... and i did it to myself.
Monday, June 01, 2015
Leafs report 2014-2015 season... for JK
Fiasco
that's it.
It would probably be best to just stop there, for comedy and simplicity sake... a wise man once told me good writing is the most condensed version... i believe we were talking about poetry, and of course i had that saying once, that was kind of harsh and negative... it was "poetry is a jackass sport". The saying itself came to me while suffering an insipid poetry night, where the contestants were trying to "one up" each other in over descriptive, flowery word monologues drawing pictures i couldn't really see, and when i did see them they made me angry. Kind of like a pompous competition where everybody in the room is the loser and it just goes on forever... kind of like the Leafs season this year.
After an epic collapse in game 7, and then the following season where the "18 wheeler went off the cliff", there was hope that this season had to be better. The good news is that the leafs are drafting 4th, and then i think 26th. The other good news is that all of the scouts have been fired and Mark Hunter, an apparent scouting master is at the helm to rebuild the foundation of the drafting team.
Now there is a new coach, who comes with some excellent credentials: Mike Babcock is a trained sports psychologist and he has won a lot of things in his career. Indeed he took Team Canada to back to back Olympic gold medals... sure a team loaded in talent, as were the Red Wings when the won the Cup, but we have seen plenty of talent loaded teams underachieve and not play like a team.
In Toronto you probably need a sports psychologist running the team, because you know if they lose the first game of the season the Toronto media will be calling for heads and replaying and dissecting mistakes made by the players and questioning their commitment to the city, their team and the game in general.
Fragile is the word one would use to describe the Leaf team's confidence over the last few years, and rumors are that players don't want to come to Toronto to play. There is a saying in sports... there is always lots of room on the bandwagon... of course that's when things are going good. I would say that there is always lots of room under the bus in Toronto when things are going bad. They have this saying "he threw that player under the bus"... If a someone were to say "well a bad effort from this player cost them the game"... that would be throwing that player under the bus. In Toronto everybody is driving buses and there is like a big funnel in front of all of the buses trying to scoop up as many players to get under the bus. Angry arrogant experts, many with "little man syndrome" selling copy or airtime with their views on what's wrong and who is to blame and constantly speculating on who needs to go, and who needs to come to save the day. It's a whole other disease in itself, Toronto Maple Leaf-itus . So of course i was pleased to hear Coach Babcock say that he was going to work to make it "safe" to play here, which is a tall task, but it speaks of a real culture shift with respect to a rebuild. It appears also that the people running the show will be here to stay for the long haul, and they seem to be on the same page, and i would imagine they will bring in the people they want and have a real shot to build something.
The turnaround with respect to Leaf GM's, Coaches, Presidents... you name it has been far to rapid over the last decade. You can't build something and grow it if you keep replacing parts, mind you the parts they had didn't seem to be making things better. Perhaps knowing that the guillotine is set to come down on your head made people make foolish decisions to "speed the rebuild". We could list examples, but there is no point salting the wounds.
JK has been a solid addition to Leaf's Nation, even though Leaf's nation doesn't know about JK. It's coming up on half a decade that JK has been coming up with opposition team metaphor heckles, and this year when heckles weren't working JK thought perhaps it was the heckles that were not working and changed to haiku's to see if that could work. Given the considerable effort JK has made to the OMEN power one has to give JK some serious credit. I never mentioned the heckles or the haiku's over the past few years because i thought it might be bad luck... but perhaps that was the problem in the first place.
JK could be the greatest unsung Californian Leafs fan... read em and weep.
Way to San Jose?
Take 880, through that traffic.
Really not worth it.
that's it.
It would probably be best to just stop there, for comedy and simplicity sake... a wise man once told me good writing is the most condensed version... i believe we were talking about poetry, and of course i had that saying once, that was kind of harsh and negative... it was "poetry is a jackass sport". The saying itself came to me while suffering an insipid poetry night, where the contestants were trying to "one up" each other in over descriptive, flowery word monologues drawing pictures i couldn't really see, and when i did see them they made me angry. Kind of like a pompous competition where everybody in the room is the loser and it just goes on forever... kind of like the Leafs season this year.
After an epic collapse in game 7, and then the following season where the "18 wheeler went off the cliff", there was hope that this season had to be better. The good news is that the leafs are drafting 4th, and then i think 26th. The other good news is that all of the scouts have been fired and Mark Hunter, an apparent scouting master is at the helm to rebuild the foundation of the drafting team.
Now there is a new coach, who comes with some excellent credentials: Mike Babcock is a trained sports psychologist and he has won a lot of things in his career. Indeed he took Team Canada to back to back Olympic gold medals... sure a team loaded in talent, as were the Red Wings when the won the Cup, but we have seen plenty of talent loaded teams underachieve and not play like a team.
In Toronto you probably need a sports psychologist running the team, because you know if they lose the first game of the season the Toronto media will be calling for heads and replaying and dissecting mistakes made by the players and questioning their commitment to the city, their team and the game in general.
Fragile is the word one would use to describe the Leaf team's confidence over the last few years, and rumors are that players don't want to come to Toronto to play. There is a saying in sports... there is always lots of room on the bandwagon... of course that's when things are going good. I would say that there is always lots of room under the bus in Toronto when things are going bad. They have this saying "he threw that player under the bus"... If a someone were to say "well a bad effort from this player cost them the game"... that would be throwing that player under the bus. In Toronto everybody is driving buses and there is like a big funnel in front of all of the buses trying to scoop up as many players to get under the bus. Angry arrogant experts, many with "little man syndrome" selling copy or airtime with their views on what's wrong and who is to blame and constantly speculating on who needs to go, and who needs to come to save the day. It's a whole other disease in itself, Toronto Maple Leaf-itus . So of course i was pleased to hear Coach Babcock say that he was going to work to make it "safe" to play here, which is a tall task, but it speaks of a real culture shift with respect to a rebuild. It appears also that the people running the show will be here to stay for the long haul, and they seem to be on the same page, and i would imagine they will bring in the people they want and have a real shot to build something.
The turnaround with respect to Leaf GM's, Coaches, Presidents... you name it has been far to rapid over the last decade. You can't build something and grow it if you keep replacing parts, mind you the parts they had didn't seem to be making things better. Perhaps knowing that the guillotine is set to come down on your head made people make foolish decisions to "speed the rebuild". We could list examples, but there is no point salting the wounds.
JK has been a solid addition to Leaf's Nation, even though Leaf's nation doesn't know about JK. It's coming up on half a decade that JK has been coming up with opposition team metaphor heckles, and this year when heckles weren't working JK thought perhaps it was the heckles that were not working and changed to haiku's to see if that could work. Given the considerable effort JK has made to the OMEN power one has to give JK some serious credit. I never mentioned the heckles or the haiku's over the past few years because i thought it might be bad luck... but perhaps that was the problem in the first place.
JK could be the greatest unsung Californian Leafs fan... read em and weep.
Way to San Jose?
Take 880, through that traffic.
Really not worth it.
Kick them in the crown
jewels. Burn their castles down.
Revolt. Just some ideas.
Stuffed hawk for dinner,
should be the plan Leafs. Poultry
Tradition, X-MAS
Down the Flyers. Not
The planes I'm on today please.
The hockey team, Leafs.
In Dallas, the leaves
are still green. Thrive, Leafs in the
warm sun of north Texas.
now for a JFK haiku:
Ask not what you team can do for you but what you can do for your team
Saturday, May 30, 2015
The Manifesto
Social media has been around for some time and everybody has their own proverbial hornet's nest they step into every now and then... or all the time in many cases. I kind of find that i am less likely to write things and put them on the Internet as a result of my relationship with social media. I ask myself... Why is this? I'm not going to change social media, but i feel for my own reasons that i should spend more time at a computer working on conveying ideas than glossing tidbits of semi information.
When i first got a computer i refused to go on the Internet because i had things to do... i was trying to edit some Roadbed videos and didn't want to be taken off task. I go to the Internet now as a kind of habit and I'm not convinced that it is a good thing to do. You know the problem with community? It just takes one idiot to ruin everything and there is always at least seven. This is a very good example of an insanely negative statement written by myself. It was a joke.. but what does that mean?
let's take a dip into the paranoid pool by completely making up a scenario:
If i share [digital media] of my [insert something], it could be misunderstood, this misunderstanding might start some bizarre events, and then you change your perspective... you check yourself, you are maintaining an image like it or not. You run into people in real life that you also deal with in social media, which allows for a new layer of unwelcome introspection. Next thing you know you are writing and every sentence you write you start worrying about what something might trigger, who will think what. This is not a good perspective to write from... no it is not.
It's nice to know about things, sometimes, but knowing too much can be a harsher poison. I found that with music... the more i was aware of what people were thinking, the less i believed in what i was thinking. I promoted it so therefore i needed to hear people justify it for me so i could simmer that down into a one sheet that moved and conveyed my mission statement. But hey who's keeping track... besides me of course... and therein lies the problem.
just making points... nothing to see here... forget everything and go back into your rhythm
I was going to add some weird ad lib poetry on the end of this manifesto but when the dice got rolled the subject that came up was the perspective of a clay garden gnome... and that didn't have a lot of game in my head... probably shouldn't have even mentioned it... am i apologizing? I'm like 5 lines out of the manifesto and I'm already cowering like a ninny...
This might require therapy.
When i first got a computer i refused to go on the Internet because i had things to do... i was trying to edit some Roadbed videos and didn't want to be taken off task. I go to the Internet now as a kind of habit and I'm not convinced that it is a good thing to do. You know the problem with community? It just takes one idiot to ruin everything and there is always at least seven. This is a very good example of an insanely negative statement written by myself. It was a joke.. but what does that mean?
let's take a dip into the paranoid pool by completely making up a scenario:
If i share [digital media] of my [insert something], it could be misunderstood, this misunderstanding might start some bizarre events, and then you change your perspective... you check yourself, you are maintaining an image like it or not. You run into people in real life that you also deal with in social media, which allows for a new layer of unwelcome introspection. Next thing you know you are writing and every sentence you write you start worrying about what something might trigger, who will think what. This is not a good perspective to write from... no it is not.
It's nice to know about things, sometimes, but knowing too much can be a harsher poison. I found that with music... the more i was aware of what people were thinking, the less i believed in what i was thinking. I promoted it so therefore i needed to hear people justify it for me so i could simmer that down into a one sheet that moved and conveyed my mission statement. But hey who's keeping track... besides me of course... and therein lies the problem.
just making points... nothing to see here... forget everything and go back into your rhythm
I was going to add some weird ad lib poetry on the end of this manifesto but when the dice got rolled the subject that came up was the perspective of a clay garden gnome... and that didn't have a lot of game in my head... probably shouldn't have even mentioned it... am i apologizing? I'm like 5 lines out of the manifesto and I'm already cowering like a ninny...
This might require therapy.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
How to be happy, by a happy guy
Make good choices of course would be one of the key ingredients to happiness. For example i was about to write this blog about some crazy stuff that went down at the school last week, but then i came to my senses and realized that i would just be offending a large group of people that take themselves too seriously and are hyper-prone to losing their shit over the things i would end up writing. Why do that? Sure points could be made, but in some cases wounds are better left alone to heal rather than to poke at and ridicule.
So by choosing to write about ways to be happy i have almost guaranteed a better fate for myself and my person while interacting among an important community i am part of... right.
Choosing positive thoughts surly must beget happiness more frequently than mocking emotional mistakes made by others would, even if the sentence is odd. Which brings us nicely into another key to happiness.
It's OK to laugh at yourself, you are allowed to make mistakes and be foolish, and it's even better if you can see the error of your ways. You can't change what you are not aware of so witnessing your folly is half the battle, and forgiving yourself will repair most of the damage, and if you can laugh at yourself then you might just turn it into a net positive. I know i know, i sound like some new age jackass, but don't worry nobody reads blogs anymore... i read that in a tweet. Blogs are too wordy, we need to be on to our next packet of semi-information in under 10 seconds now... it's the new way.
I'll defend the blog format, for me right now i am not looking at the Internet searching mindlessly for something that i might find interesting... I'm in my head trying to articulate and understand what things i can do to be happy... some kind of interactive meditation practice. It's kind of leading us into another point that i didn't know i was about to make until just now when i saw it clearly... as obvious as a black hockey puck on a clean white sheet of ice. Why do you do things? If i was worried about who was going to read this, or even worse "will this reach a growing target audience", i would be in a completely different head space... the word "stress" comes to mind. Actually writing the words "growing target audience" took a bit of wind out of the sails, but then i remembered the context.
Doing things for the right reasons is a real big one... it kind of falls under the opening category of making good choices. Money is one of the bigger trip wires out there, because of course we all need money for sure. I'd like to try a world where it didn't work that way, and if everybody wants to give it a shot I'll give it my best 110%. Now we have moved on to reality... a good thing to be aware of for sure. Understanding reality has to be on a list of things to do to be happy... just don't take it too seriously, be willing to shift your reality, or perhaps corporate speak might coin a term "flexible reality"... almost tempted to Google that but that could send me on a wild goose chase that will have me watching legends of hockey on YouTube in 4 hours after another 15 beers... right.
On that note reality can be different depending on where you live so the "flexible reality" idea does have merit. I live in Portland Oregon in one of those "keep it weird" neighbourhoods... of course I'm from Canada where we put a "u" in that word, but lets say i lived in Texas or Moscow or Palestine or Kingston Jamaica... well my reality would be very different. When possible i would suggest living in a place that you really like. Often times people end up living in a place they don't enjoy and it's because of a job, or they are afraid to move, or they can't move, or they have some obligation. Some people live in the suburbs of Cities because they can afford a bigger house and then they spend their life in a traffic jam... their reality is constant commuting, which is a price i could never pay for a bigger house.
When i was 22 i taught Chemistry and Physics in a high school in downtown Toronto for the summer session (summer school) and i lived in my parents house in the suburbs (Scarborough). Twice in one week the highway (401) was completely blocked because a tractor trailer overturned... luckily the last time the car behind me had a football so we ran some plays for a few hours. But i remember that day very clearly where i said to myself I will never commute through a city in a car ever again... and i never have. I commuted by bike from downtown Vancouver to Richmond for a number of years but on a bike one can always beat a traffic jam. I don't commute, and i never will because i fucking HATE it... I'd almost rather hire a group of squirrels to leaf blow my yard than commute to a job as a matter of principle. So in my life the option of commuting is off the table... i won't do it, so i look for another solution. Now some people don't mind commuting, and that's good for them... their car is their happy place, with the music they love pumping away, and their little environment just the way they like it. They have a different reality than myself and that's all good, if they are happy I am happy for them.
Hey there is another point... be happy for people. It's amazing how infectious happiness can be... you could choose to be jealous of somebody who is set to fly off to Hawaii in January because you are stuck in winter, but then you are just jealous and that is kind of a negative emotion, an emotion where you feel sorry for yourself. How does feeling sorry for yourself help? Feel happy for that person and you will find that you just accidentally tapped into happiness, open yourself up to other peoples joy... there is nothing wrong with vicarious living if the dream is good... hot damn that's a good tweet! OK so i just tweeted that, but i didn't read any tweets and i got right back off the Internet to avoid distraction, cause this exercise is fun right... remember I'm talking to myself so no need to answer.
Sympathy... there is a time and a place for sympathy, but i think it's one of those things that kind of gets out of hand. There is a whole type of person who is constantly trying to garner sympathy... most of the unhappy people i know are constantly playing an angle where people should feel sorry for them because something happened to them. Never do i want somebody to feel bad for me because things went wrong. I kind of come from a family of people who are often lobbying for sympathy... it kind of drives me crazy. In truth i think it is rooted in the idea that somebody wants to be recognized for the amount of effort they feel that had to make, but like i said before if you are doing something with the idea of what people will think of you, then you are on the wrong track to happiness. The sympathy seeker will always inject something that they had to do that they didn't want to do that has put them in the particular mood that they are in in the moment. What kind of bullshit is that to lay on somebody... now you want me to feel bad for you? If i fill my being with sorrow you will feel better? Is that the deal? So if we are both unhappy then the field has been leveled? Don't get me wrong... if somebody has suffered a tragic loss, i do want to help to try and absorb some of the pain, and i will gladly be honored to be chosen as a person who could provide that in a case where needed. But i can't feel sorry for a person who is late because the got caught in a traffic jam coming back from a job they hate. It's wasted sorrow... right! My grieving can't solve the problem, because the problem is guaranteed to happen again based on the simple law of averages. I might be willing to help lead an intervention to help identify the source of this unhappiness, but there needs to be a willingness on the sympathy seeker's behalf to work outside their known "box". So lets put "Rejecting the need for sympathy" on the list of How to be Happy... get out of that pattern.
How about this one... Be critical. It doesn't have to embody the complete negative that is often associated with the word. Critically analyze things you are involved in with the mindset on how to make them better. Often we avoid critical thinking because we don't want to be critical... did i just smell another tweet? Where was I? Being sucked into the world of chaos against my stated better judgement due to lazy habits.
I got another one... Avoid Morons. Avoiding irritating people is a huge boon to happiness... it's massive. The curmudgeon may actually be a perfectly sane and happy person who just lost the will to suffer the tragedy of the human condition... did you ever think that?... i know i didn't before a few minutes ago when i thought it. I might be towing an empty boat on that one... it's a trap of course... because the curmudgeon lost the way to deal with his reality and failed to change it... right. I got a few more tweets out of this paragraph. Is tweet blogging a thing? I feel like I'm on to something, but I've felt that before only to be stopped like a bad check (see my music "career"). Remember laughing at yourself is one of the keys. Key...
A key will get you in
It's key what you give
Through a need to please
Honesty is the seed
Live life with the heart of a lover
Walk tall and you shall hover
Those are song lyrics i wrote... it's all the words of the song and it repeats 2x, the song is called "the key of 5" and it's on the 21 tandem repeats CD "No Junk Mail Please", an album that got savagely thrashed in the Canadian Music press in around 2008. It's good to release an album and take a beating in the press, it helps you develop a thick skin and challenges your resolve to do what you think is right for your reality, over what people might think of you. I wouldn't consider myself a famous person, unless i was writing a song challenging the idea of fame, but i have been written about in the press a fair number of times... i have had scintillating reviews and i have been shish kabobed. Neither praise nor flogging should affect one's will to pursue the path that they are on.
When i look back on one of the more negative reviews of that particular CD i recall something along the lines of "it would be nice if they pretended to care about enjoying playing music". Now at that time it's true we were focused on playing slower tempos... and i believe it was a reaction to others playing faster and faster to really "rock it". It takes a lot of focus to not to speed up when playing music... i needed to understand that dynamic. It's punk attitude going slow and soft in a town of loud and fast, which is ironic at best and shitty at worst. In the end i learned to play restrained in a scene where people had to play loud and fast to compete with the audience talking. If you are fast and loud you don't hear the audience talking, so it's an easy sell... but then you are part of the system... the one you are tying to break. Breaking things is great too... breaking rules is highly liberating, if it's a stupid rule all the better... stupid rules should be broken... it erodes their authority. But don't get that confused with fucking up people's shit, a rebel and an ass hole are different beings... don't be the latter because it will affect your happiness.
These are some things that might help with general happiness, don't thank me, i spent the last few hours thinking i was doing something i was involved in, and that's what i set out to do.
So by choosing to write about ways to be happy i have almost guaranteed a better fate for myself and my person while interacting among an important community i am part of... right.
Choosing positive thoughts surly must beget happiness more frequently than mocking emotional mistakes made by others would, even if the sentence is odd. Which brings us nicely into another key to happiness.
It's OK to laugh at yourself, you are allowed to make mistakes and be foolish, and it's even better if you can see the error of your ways. You can't change what you are not aware of so witnessing your folly is half the battle, and forgiving yourself will repair most of the damage, and if you can laugh at yourself then you might just turn it into a net positive. I know i know, i sound like some new age jackass, but don't worry nobody reads blogs anymore... i read that in a tweet. Blogs are too wordy, we need to be on to our next packet of semi-information in under 10 seconds now... it's the new way.
I'll defend the blog format, for me right now i am not looking at the Internet searching mindlessly for something that i might find interesting... I'm in my head trying to articulate and understand what things i can do to be happy... some kind of interactive meditation practice. It's kind of leading us into another point that i didn't know i was about to make until just now when i saw it clearly... as obvious as a black hockey puck on a clean white sheet of ice. Why do you do things? If i was worried about who was going to read this, or even worse "will this reach a growing target audience", i would be in a completely different head space... the word "stress" comes to mind. Actually writing the words "growing target audience" took a bit of wind out of the sails, but then i remembered the context.
Doing things for the right reasons is a real big one... it kind of falls under the opening category of making good choices. Money is one of the bigger trip wires out there, because of course we all need money for sure. I'd like to try a world where it didn't work that way, and if everybody wants to give it a shot I'll give it my best 110%. Now we have moved on to reality... a good thing to be aware of for sure. Understanding reality has to be on a list of things to do to be happy... just don't take it too seriously, be willing to shift your reality, or perhaps corporate speak might coin a term "flexible reality"... almost tempted to Google that but that could send me on a wild goose chase that will have me watching legends of hockey on YouTube in 4 hours after another 15 beers... right.
On that note reality can be different depending on where you live so the "flexible reality" idea does have merit. I live in Portland Oregon in one of those "keep it weird" neighbourhoods... of course I'm from Canada where we put a "u" in that word, but lets say i lived in Texas or Moscow or Palestine or Kingston Jamaica... well my reality would be very different. When possible i would suggest living in a place that you really like. Often times people end up living in a place they don't enjoy and it's because of a job, or they are afraid to move, or they can't move, or they have some obligation. Some people live in the suburbs of Cities because they can afford a bigger house and then they spend their life in a traffic jam... their reality is constant commuting, which is a price i could never pay for a bigger house.
When i was 22 i taught Chemistry and Physics in a high school in downtown Toronto for the summer session (summer school) and i lived in my parents house in the suburbs (Scarborough). Twice in one week the highway (401) was completely blocked because a tractor trailer overturned... luckily the last time the car behind me had a football so we ran some plays for a few hours. But i remember that day very clearly where i said to myself I will never commute through a city in a car ever again... and i never have. I commuted by bike from downtown Vancouver to Richmond for a number of years but on a bike one can always beat a traffic jam. I don't commute, and i never will because i fucking HATE it... I'd almost rather hire a group of squirrels to leaf blow my yard than commute to a job as a matter of principle. So in my life the option of commuting is off the table... i won't do it, so i look for another solution. Now some people don't mind commuting, and that's good for them... their car is their happy place, with the music they love pumping away, and their little environment just the way they like it. They have a different reality than myself and that's all good, if they are happy I am happy for them.
Hey there is another point... be happy for people. It's amazing how infectious happiness can be... you could choose to be jealous of somebody who is set to fly off to Hawaii in January because you are stuck in winter, but then you are just jealous and that is kind of a negative emotion, an emotion where you feel sorry for yourself. How does feeling sorry for yourself help? Feel happy for that person and you will find that you just accidentally tapped into happiness, open yourself up to other peoples joy... there is nothing wrong with vicarious living if the dream is good... hot damn that's a good tweet! OK so i just tweeted that, but i didn't read any tweets and i got right back off the Internet to avoid distraction, cause this exercise is fun right... remember I'm talking to myself so no need to answer.
Sympathy... there is a time and a place for sympathy, but i think it's one of those things that kind of gets out of hand. There is a whole type of person who is constantly trying to garner sympathy... most of the unhappy people i know are constantly playing an angle where people should feel sorry for them because something happened to them. Never do i want somebody to feel bad for me because things went wrong. I kind of come from a family of people who are often lobbying for sympathy... it kind of drives me crazy. In truth i think it is rooted in the idea that somebody wants to be recognized for the amount of effort they feel that had to make, but like i said before if you are doing something with the idea of what people will think of you, then you are on the wrong track to happiness. The sympathy seeker will always inject something that they had to do that they didn't want to do that has put them in the particular mood that they are in in the moment. What kind of bullshit is that to lay on somebody... now you want me to feel bad for you? If i fill my being with sorrow you will feel better? Is that the deal? So if we are both unhappy then the field has been leveled? Don't get me wrong... if somebody has suffered a tragic loss, i do want to help to try and absorb some of the pain, and i will gladly be honored to be chosen as a person who could provide that in a case where needed. But i can't feel sorry for a person who is late because the got caught in a traffic jam coming back from a job they hate. It's wasted sorrow... right! My grieving can't solve the problem, because the problem is guaranteed to happen again based on the simple law of averages. I might be willing to help lead an intervention to help identify the source of this unhappiness, but there needs to be a willingness on the sympathy seeker's behalf to work outside their known "box". So lets put "Rejecting the need for sympathy" on the list of How to be Happy... get out of that pattern.
How about this one... Be critical. It doesn't have to embody the complete negative that is often associated with the word. Critically analyze things you are involved in with the mindset on how to make them better. Often we avoid critical thinking because we don't want to be critical... did i just smell another tweet? Where was I? Being sucked into the world of chaos against my stated better judgement due to lazy habits.
I got another one... Avoid Morons. Avoiding irritating people is a huge boon to happiness... it's massive. The curmudgeon may actually be a perfectly sane and happy person who just lost the will to suffer the tragedy of the human condition... did you ever think that?... i know i didn't before a few minutes ago when i thought it. I might be towing an empty boat on that one... it's a trap of course... because the curmudgeon lost the way to deal with his reality and failed to change it... right. I got a few more tweets out of this paragraph. Is tweet blogging a thing? I feel like I'm on to something, but I've felt that before only to be stopped like a bad check (see my music "career"). Remember laughing at yourself is one of the keys. Key...
A key will get you in
It's key what you give
Through a need to please
Honesty is the seed
Live life with the heart of a lover
Walk tall and you shall hover
Those are song lyrics i wrote... it's all the words of the song and it repeats 2x, the song is called "the key of 5" and it's on the 21 tandem repeats CD "No Junk Mail Please", an album that got savagely thrashed in the Canadian Music press in around 2008. It's good to release an album and take a beating in the press, it helps you develop a thick skin and challenges your resolve to do what you think is right for your reality, over what people might think of you. I wouldn't consider myself a famous person, unless i was writing a song challenging the idea of fame, but i have been written about in the press a fair number of times... i have had scintillating reviews and i have been shish kabobed. Neither praise nor flogging should affect one's will to pursue the path that they are on.
When i look back on one of the more negative reviews of that particular CD i recall something along the lines of "it would be nice if they pretended to care about enjoying playing music". Now at that time it's true we were focused on playing slower tempos... and i believe it was a reaction to others playing faster and faster to really "rock it". It takes a lot of focus to not to speed up when playing music... i needed to understand that dynamic. It's punk attitude going slow and soft in a town of loud and fast, which is ironic at best and shitty at worst. In the end i learned to play restrained in a scene where people had to play loud and fast to compete with the audience talking. If you are fast and loud you don't hear the audience talking, so it's an easy sell... but then you are part of the system... the one you are tying to break. Breaking things is great too... breaking rules is highly liberating, if it's a stupid rule all the better... stupid rules should be broken... it erodes their authority. But don't get that confused with fucking up people's shit, a rebel and an ass hole are different beings... don't be the latter because it will affect your happiness.
These are some things that might help with general happiness, don't thank me, i spent the last few hours thinking i was doing something i was involved in, and that's what i set out to do.
Sunday, February 01, 2015
Superbowl review... for those with attention deficit disorder
So we were on our way back from clam digging in Long Beach
Washington, and i had promised John some clams... and since we hit the
mother load and they were fresh we decided to drop them off on our way
through town as he lives on the way. I had heard the game started at
3:30pm and it was about that time... it was a pretty safe bet that the
game would be on and a bag of clams would buy our way into the party.
Our arrival was timed perfectly as a batch of wings just came out of the
oven... I don't watch a lot of football, but when i watch sports i get
into the games.
I was rooting for Seattle on the basis of the geography rule and it looked like they were in tough... this New England team was moving the ball with precision but still not really scoring too much. Seems like the kind of sport where you want to get your points when you can (to state the obvious).
The Seattle attack was based on letting that beast guy run the ball or throw a long bomb and all in all the teams were matched point for point going into halftime.
The halftime show was reasonable for a lip sync effort making use of pretty decent graphics and dancing sharks... not really my bag but reasonably inoffensive and family friendly. One of my kids asked what lip syncing is and why they did that, and i explained that the artist doesn't have a choice... you have to lip sync at a show like that because they can't afford anything going wrong with respect to dancing timing, audio equipment, or god forbid some artist losing their mind and trying to go on some anti capitalism or anti war rant... imagine that! All in all good deal for the artist as they get some ace promotion and can sell sell sell!
Speaking of selling, i thought the commercials were to be really good in the Superbowl... I kind of thought for the most part they all really sucked pretty bad... no edge, nothing really funny. There was that real long bummer one that used "Cat's in the cradle" that must have gone on forever... i think the point was that if you miss you child's childhood because you are a race car driver then it's all OK if you pick him up from high school one day in a particular brand of car. It's true i don't watch TV so when i do and people talk about these "hyped commercials" i am sure to be left wondering what the hell is going on.
In the 2nd half it looked like Seattle had found it's mojo... they went up by 10 and seemed to be able to slow down New England's offence. In fact it looked like they were going to get another when the football slipped between a wider receivers hands putting an end to a drive that could have put a choke hold on the game. New England then smelt blood and poured it on bolting ahead so that in the final 2 minutes Seattle had to score a touchdown or lose. The QB threw to the beast guy and he made some yards and then the patented Seattle Hail Mary long bomb that looked to be incomplete but then bounced off a knee up in the air and into the arms of the receiver lying on his back. It was the kind of ridiculous play the the Seahawks won the last game on... i even used the "horseshoes up the ass" analogy... it was now their game to win. So they have the ball with a few plays to burn and under a minute left in the game... i was saying might be a good idea to give it to the beast guy as he seems pretty capable of running the ball in for a touchdown, but instead they threw a short interception and that was the game... lady luck left the building one play to early.
But then there was a fight... i take it some of the players were feeling a little frustrated. A note on concussions... smacking the side of a guy's helmet is a better way to give a concussion than punching somebody in the head straight on with a fist... i remember reading that very clearly on time. You rattle the whole head and more chance of the brain hitting the skull, as with a punch most of the trauma occurs on the bone at the site of contact... i noticed the hits the the helmet were very effective in this manor, almost exactly as the study i read demonstrated.
The QB for New England won the MVP, and that was probably the right call.
I was rooting for Seattle on the basis of the geography rule and it looked like they were in tough... this New England team was moving the ball with precision but still not really scoring too much. Seems like the kind of sport where you want to get your points when you can (to state the obvious).
The Seattle attack was based on letting that beast guy run the ball or throw a long bomb and all in all the teams were matched point for point going into halftime.
The halftime show was reasonable for a lip sync effort making use of pretty decent graphics and dancing sharks... not really my bag but reasonably inoffensive and family friendly. One of my kids asked what lip syncing is and why they did that, and i explained that the artist doesn't have a choice... you have to lip sync at a show like that because they can't afford anything going wrong with respect to dancing timing, audio equipment, or god forbid some artist losing their mind and trying to go on some anti capitalism or anti war rant... imagine that! All in all good deal for the artist as they get some ace promotion and can sell sell sell!
Speaking of selling, i thought the commercials were to be really good in the Superbowl... I kind of thought for the most part they all really sucked pretty bad... no edge, nothing really funny. There was that real long bummer one that used "Cat's in the cradle" that must have gone on forever... i think the point was that if you miss you child's childhood because you are a race car driver then it's all OK if you pick him up from high school one day in a particular brand of car. It's true i don't watch TV so when i do and people talk about these "hyped commercials" i am sure to be left wondering what the hell is going on.
In the 2nd half it looked like Seattle had found it's mojo... they went up by 10 and seemed to be able to slow down New England's offence. In fact it looked like they were going to get another when the football slipped between a wider receivers hands putting an end to a drive that could have put a choke hold on the game. New England then smelt blood and poured it on bolting ahead so that in the final 2 minutes Seattle had to score a touchdown or lose. The QB threw to the beast guy and he made some yards and then the patented Seattle Hail Mary long bomb that looked to be incomplete but then bounced off a knee up in the air and into the arms of the receiver lying on his back. It was the kind of ridiculous play the the Seahawks won the last game on... i even used the "horseshoes up the ass" analogy... it was now their game to win. So they have the ball with a few plays to burn and under a minute left in the game... i was saying might be a good idea to give it to the beast guy as he seems pretty capable of running the ball in for a touchdown, but instead they threw a short interception and that was the game... lady luck left the building one play to early.
But then there was a fight... i take it some of the players were feeling a little frustrated. A note on concussions... smacking the side of a guy's helmet is a better way to give a concussion than punching somebody in the head straight on with a fist... i remember reading that very clearly on time. You rattle the whole head and more chance of the brain hitting the skull, as with a punch most of the trauma occurs on the bone at the site of contact... i noticed the hits the the helmet were very effective in this manor, almost exactly as the study i read demonstrated.
The QB for New England won the MVP, and that was probably the right call.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Leaf report for JK... midseason
I take it you are starting to see a pattern when following the Leafs. Period of high hopes, perhaps some overachieving... followed by some mediocre results and then the proverbial "18 wheeler off a cliff" section that wipes most of the hope for the season off the board.
You get the media all witty and negative and the talk turns to how to "blow up the team". It's important to note that last time they blew up the team for the sake of blowing up the team they gave away Alex Steen, who seems to be a pretty decent player for the St. Louis Blues... cause they had to blow up the team... right.
Always a tough spot for the management... pressure to make moves makes one easy prey when the frenzy comes. Now there are a few players, if the right return were to come back, i would say do it... but you can't trade as a result of pressure. Some say trade and bomb and get a chance to get one of the top upcoming prospects (which are very good this year), but i never understood this logic. We are bombing just fine as we are... why risk changing a promising vector. Simple physics right?
Now you have probably heard about this "jerseygate"... fool fans with more money to waste than brains to access. First of all can we knock off this "gate" bullshit. Watergate was a crime who's wake might have altered the course of America for the worse, not some chuckle head throwing a $300 hunk of blue polyester on the ice. The real thing that i don't see mentioned a lot is that this time some idiot threw the jersey on the ice WHILE THE PLAY WAS GOING ON. There is a big fucking difference between throwing a sweater (as we call it in Canada, unless you are in TO you call it a jersey for some reason) on the ice while the play is going on. If you step on that while skating in the play you could get seriously hurt. Why our clever and alert media is not hammering that point is beyond me.
A sweater is like a flag... it shouldn't touch the ground, so yes it is disrespectful. But you can throw hats on the ice as part of a tradition if somebody were to score a hat trick... AFTER THE PLAY. If you are in Detroit in a playoff game an octopus might end up on the ice... and that is a good omen apparently. Clearly i don't have to sell Omens to you JK... you know what time it is.
Throwing a sweater on the ice is classless they say... people are always telling others that they have no class and it's this big insult. Humanity has so much class right... use to mean you were perceived to be higher than somebody else and therefore had a greater worth in society and were allowed more social graces... now if you feel you have been wronged you tell your opponent that they lack class.
Lets face it; Humans are a classy civilization... we rape the planet that gives us life and stomp on the necks of those that try to get in the way. People who's life work is to bring awareness to the dangers of the Planets declining ability to sustain life, are labelled terrorists by classy politicians who run commercials paid for by the people, all while espousing "working family values" in the commercials of HOCKEY GAMES. Yes Yes, we had to get back to hockey sooner or later... right after the propaganda piece we need a couple of alpha male sportscasters standing in suits against glittering backdrops yelling over each other on the virtues of class and what Leaf player should be run out of town for a bag of pucks.
Sports to me is a "hometown" gig... Dad taught me that one. When it was time for the Grey Cup, he would cheer for the team that was geographically the closest... unless of course it was a team in Quebec where the byline was that Quebec got more Federal tax money on account that they were threatening to separate which sort of put a burr in the side of the people in my parents generation generating an anti-Quebec sentiment, which was probably a well played hand by those leading the separatist movement. Anyhoo, my point earlier was that the way they market the NHL now is that everybody in the family is free to cheer for their favourite team and of course they can watch all their games on their own viewing devices... which is kind of odd, because Hockey Night in Canada was what use to bring us together. But since that swine bastard undermined the CBC cutting the funding so they they couldn't retain the rights (which will further impair them... good political move for sure) we have to put up with this glossy standing version where everybody can follow their favourite team.
I delivered Mail with a guy who grew up in Edmonton but was a Calgary Flames fan... i asked him "How did that happen?"... he said my Dad was a Flames fan so you follow that... it made total sense to me. What kind of a family pulls for different teams? Is that Classy? Maybe the NHL gets more money so they push that, but i would like to quote Burning Spear "My roots i never forget, i always remember the road i traveled"... cause that's class baby.
You get the media all witty and negative and the talk turns to how to "blow up the team". It's important to note that last time they blew up the team for the sake of blowing up the team they gave away Alex Steen, who seems to be a pretty decent player for the St. Louis Blues... cause they had to blow up the team... right.
Always a tough spot for the management... pressure to make moves makes one easy prey when the frenzy comes. Now there are a few players, if the right return were to come back, i would say do it... but you can't trade as a result of pressure. Some say trade and bomb and get a chance to get one of the top upcoming prospects (which are very good this year), but i never understood this logic. We are bombing just fine as we are... why risk changing a promising vector. Simple physics right?
Now you have probably heard about this "jerseygate"... fool fans with more money to waste than brains to access. First of all can we knock off this "gate" bullshit. Watergate was a crime who's wake might have altered the course of America for the worse, not some chuckle head throwing a $300 hunk of blue polyester on the ice. The real thing that i don't see mentioned a lot is that this time some idiot threw the jersey on the ice WHILE THE PLAY WAS GOING ON. There is a big fucking difference between throwing a sweater (as we call it in Canada, unless you are in TO you call it a jersey for some reason) on the ice while the play is going on. If you step on that while skating in the play you could get seriously hurt. Why our clever and alert media is not hammering that point is beyond me.
A sweater is like a flag... it shouldn't touch the ground, so yes it is disrespectful. But you can throw hats on the ice as part of a tradition if somebody were to score a hat trick... AFTER THE PLAY. If you are in Detroit in a playoff game an octopus might end up on the ice... and that is a good omen apparently. Clearly i don't have to sell Omens to you JK... you know what time it is.
Throwing a sweater on the ice is classless they say... people are always telling others that they have no class and it's this big insult. Humanity has so much class right... use to mean you were perceived to be higher than somebody else and therefore had a greater worth in society and were allowed more social graces... now if you feel you have been wronged you tell your opponent that they lack class.
Lets face it; Humans are a classy civilization... we rape the planet that gives us life and stomp on the necks of those that try to get in the way. People who's life work is to bring awareness to the dangers of the Planets declining ability to sustain life, are labelled terrorists by classy politicians who run commercials paid for by the people, all while espousing "working family values" in the commercials of HOCKEY GAMES. Yes Yes, we had to get back to hockey sooner or later... right after the propaganda piece we need a couple of alpha male sportscasters standing in suits against glittering backdrops yelling over each other on the virtues of class and what Leaf player should be run out of town for a bag of pucks.
Sports to me is a "hometown" gig... Dad taught me that one. When it was time for the Grey Cup, he would cheer for the team that was geographically the closest... unless of course it was a team in Quebec where the byline was that Quebec got more Federal tax money on account that they were threatening to separate which sort of put a burr in the side of the people in my parents generation generating an anti-Quebec sentiment, which was probably a well played hand by those leading the separatist movement. Anyhoo, my point earlier was that the way they market the NHL now is that everybody in the family is free to cheer for their favourite team and of course they can watch all their games on their own viewing devices... which is kind of odd, because Hockey Night in Canada was what use to bring us together. But since that swine bastard undermined the CBC cutting the funding so they they couldn't retain the rights (which will further impair them... good political move for sure) we have to put up with this glossy standing version where everybody can follow their favourite team.
I delivered Mail with a guy who grew up in Edmonton but was a Calgary Flames fan... i asked him "How did that happen?"... he said my Dad was a Flames fan so you follow that... it made total sense to me. What kind of a family pulls for different teams? Is that Classy? Maybe the NHL gets more money so they push that, but i would like to quote Burning Spear "My roots i never forget, i always remember the road i traveled"... cause that's class baby.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Champion Robertson
This is a News Story in whatever the hell era we live in now a days. The numerous insanities rain down like anvils in a 70's cartoon episode... but that was violent... we can't have violent cartoons... our kids might grow up to be idiots. Is it too late?
Basically the news story is saying a stupid idea is failing because people are getting wise to that kind of stupid, so we have to change the way we deliver stupid. It say's people are tired of seeing some lying jackass in a suit and briefcase push some cause that will put the public in great peril. Remember this is a big PR firm hired to SELL THE IDEA THAT A OIL PIPELINE IS A GOOD THING FOR THE PEOPLE WHO MAY ONE DAY NEED TO LIVE OFF THE LAND THAT IS BEING DESTROYED FOR SHORT TERM GAIN FOR A FEW.
Right the NEWS STORY is how some big PR firm is going to win the hearts of the citizens. Basically saying THIS IS HOW WE SHALL DUPE THE SHEEPLE.
First background checks on those who oppose you... well of course it is a "campaign-style approach"... perhaps if you can dig up something on somebody that liked a facebook page you could extrapolate that into a big story on how opponents to your great "family values" cause tend to be serial criminals.
The PR firm believes that there needs to be a "perpetual campaign to protect and enhance the value of their pipeline". You start to wonder if the taxpayers will be on the hook for any of this "perpetual campaign"?
Then you get the usual nonsense where they use the "three pronged approach" card... you know promote your angle, attack the opposition and then hire some shills to message on your behalf.
The real killer here is the "targeted messaging" section... this is where they will track citizens online behaviors and lead them to their individualized "trigger points" with the ultimate goal of turning them into activists, and then of course "champions". These people will then be willing to testify during hearings, or share their personal stories for various advertising campaigns. Believe it or not 50 people have already given "on camera" testimonials to this cause that a PR firm got them excited about by pushing their buttons.
You would think it would be amazing that a news story like this could exist, but these types of things are very common... hell it's on the CBC a bunch of left wing pinko's always trying to throw dirt in the wheels of progress. You can probably safely bet that anybody who reads the whole article, and understand it for what it is, is not the kind of citizen that the PR firm is targeting to turn into an activist and then champion... we need more buzz words around here!
It is terribly disturbing however to see that beyond a shadow of a doubt, wright or wrong, for good or ill, companies will do whatever it takes to push their financial interests. It's just a game and this is how we will win it... on a dead planet, money will be moot.
Maybe I'll just call myself Champion Robertson and skip on the button pushing and lending my person for an advertising campaign... yes yes that is much more sane, and you know I'm right.
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
Leaf report... for JK
Here we go again... another Toronto Maple Leaf hockey season is upon us, and the obvious question is... do we have faith? Well hey faith was made to be broken, so as per usual I'm all in.
I believe i can say with a very sane mind that this team is one of the better ones in recent memory... not that any Leaf teams in recent memory have set the record books on fire (in a good way), but i like the direction.
A young team gets a bit older, but yet there are decent prospects in the pipe, for the first time in ages there was no overpriced free agent "savior" signing in the off season, only a few decent players with hockey sense and possible upside.
We know that former Leaf Leo Komarov will hit every body in sight, and former Leaf Matt Frattin will do the same and has speed to burn... Mike Santorelli has put up good numbers and i thought had a great season in a disastrous Vancouver Canucks campaign last year. Daniel Winnik comes from a winning team where he played 76 games, put up 30 points and took only 23 penalty minutes... and he is from Toronto. It could be that the Leafs 3rd and 4th lines can play hockey and compete with other NHL opponents rather than take a shift here and there to try and intimidate the opponents. This could be huge... perhaps a line like those could play in the opposing teams end of the ice and wear them down a bit to give some space for the more offensive players. Remember that scoring goals has not really been a problem for the Leafs, rather the fact that they get scored on more often. It will be interesting to see what the smaller "spark plug" player Brandon Kozun will bring... he is 24, seems to possess a high hockey IQ, has speed and skill. Sometimes smaller players who get overlooked because of their size but have the heart of a lion, can prove to be great assets (see Martin St. Louis).
The absence of a pure enforcer currently on the NHL roster is an intriguing move, and one that might pay dividends... perhaps the Leafs will try to beat the opposition by playing hockey... one can only hope.
Of course as we mentioned before, the Leafs problem has been keeping the puck out of their own net with their patented "fire drill" defensive strategy. Hopefully the new forwards can help bring a hockey sense supporting roll to getting the puck out of their own end... but what about the defense?
Well Jake Gardiner and Morgan Rielly are a year older, and hey they are dynamite players, perhaps with some proper support they will be able to shine further. Roman Polak comes from one of the better defensive teams (St, Louis), so at least he has had some experience playing in a successful defensive system. What about the veteran Stephane Robidas? Perhaps a risk signing given he is 37 years old and coming off 2 bad leg fractures, but i believe his experience, competitive spirit and game smarts are just what the Leafs need if they want to try to turn the way they play defensively around.
Of course it is Toronto and the first mistake made by a player will be front page news, which makes it harder to shake a monkey Omen like that. If the captain and best player of the Nashville Predators makes a mistake in a game the world goes on, and if Jake Gardiner makes a mistake there will be poles in news stories on how soon should he be traded... And idiot readers will take the pole and leave their ass brained comments at the bottom of the article under some anonymous name... cause that's how we do it in Toronto. Remember this is the city that elected Rob Ford, a known partisan buffoon who claimed cyclists who got killed "had it coming" for using roads, and then opposed bike routes, and then got elected.
But i did make a grilled cheese sandwich and one could clearly see the image of the great Johnny Bower making a scintillating save... i was going to put it up on ebay but i was kind of hungry and i realized that if i ate it it might give me the power to "will" the team on to victory this year. Never take signs that come to you in the form of a grilled sandwich lightly.
This year of course the Leafs are using advanced statistics... it is the way of sports these days and you have to think of the old adage "if you can't beat them then join them". Hey when a certain player is on the ice our team has the puck a lot more of the time... this is a good thing right? Sometimes there are blind spots where you like a player, and are blinded to their weakness... but the fact's don't lie.
Say you were a partisan political coach and you believed evolution was a crock, and invading countries to secure Oil was God's work, and in no way was capitalism and industrialization responsible for the decimation of the planet and all those pinko tree huggers are a negative drain on progress. And say half your team believed that and the other half thought you were a brain dead bigoted loon. Well you might end up liking the players that shared your views and disliking the ones that didn't (that's how humans work), so perhaps you give more ice time to the players you like and less to those you don't... now perhaps the players that you are playing are not the best for winning hockey games, but you want them to do better so they can make more money to reward them for their belief system. In your press scrums you sight all kinds of remote bible passages that show that your decisions were the ones that needed to be made and you challenge any opposition to your plan as a terrible unpatriotic bias.
The along comes the stats, that show the players you are choosing for certain situations are not the ones that are yielding the best results... what do you do? Well i guess if you are a partisan political coach then you immediately challenge scientific method as a biased and erratic measuring stick, run commercials espousing "family values" and eliminate scientific funding... but alas you get the point.
For the record i like Randy Carlyle as a Coach, and in no way am i trying to say he is a partisan political coach... i just pulled an incredibly extreme and hyper hypothetical scenario out of my ass to try and make a point about the value of having a quantitative statistic on players value and considering it in your assessment of how the team plays. Obviously you need gut feelings and the opportunities to allow players to play through slumps and such, but the data doesn't lie... unless you can hire the stats keepers who have no data gathering experience, don't believe in it and just fudge the numbers (it would be like a stepping stone job to minister of finance).
But seriously, lets dream about the best case scenario... dreams should be fun right?
The JVR, Bozak and Kessel line continues to put up "world class" numbers, and the 2nd line of Lupul, Kadri, and Kozun gets even hotter glowing like a Blacksmith's poker in a kiln fire. Now should we have the 3rd line scoring every shift and the 4th line come out and rather than drop the puck the ref just throws it in the opposition net to save time on the clock... It's probably not going to happen like that, but remember we are in the dream part of the story. It's really not a good dream, because the real excitement comes winning close fought games where big plays are made at both ends of the ice.
Lets get er going...
Projected line up for opening night given injuries and such.
Forwards
James van Riemsdyk -Tyler Bozak - Phil Kessel
Joffrey Lupul - Nazem Kadri - Brandon Kozun
Leo Komarov - Mike Santorelli - David Clarkson
Daniel Winnik - Peter Holland - Matt Frattin
Defenceman
Dion Phaneuf - Stephane Robidas
Jake Gardiner - Roman Polak
Morgan Rielly - Stuart Percy
Golatenders
Jonathan Bernier
James Reimer
And so you know i wasn't making up the bit about Johnny Bower making a big save on my Grilled Cheese... don't want anybody to think I'm crazy.
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