Wednesday, December 29, 2021

I get it, Metro. I'm irrelevant.

December 20, 2021: Nothing in my kitchen but Kraft Dinner and soup. I place a $226 order with Metro Ontario Inc supermarket for delivery December 21, 6-8PM. This leaves $2 in my bank account.

December 21, 2021: I sit at the front door in my walker waiting from 6PM until 10:30PM. No delivery ever arrives. I go to bed with very little food and no money

December 22, 2021, 6AM: I submit a problem ticket through the Metro Inc. web site help centre.

December 22, 2021, 9:06AM: Metro acknowledges receipt of problem ticket "Delivery Late Order" and promises "our Customer Care team will review your request and happily assist you within 24 hours."

Not 24 hours later but 49 hours later:

December 24, 2021: email from Metro reads "Unfortunately the store has asked for a rescheduling on this order so, we would ask you to contact us toll free at 1-866-595-5554 to confirm a timeslot. 

We will send you a promotional code for 25$ by email to be use on a next online grocery order. You should receive your promotional code within a week. Don't forget to check in your junk mail folder."

I reply as follows:

I am having difficulties with my phone.
I am home ALL the time. I can receive an order any time. Can you please send my order, or else refund it, ASAP? I have no money and almost no food except what you possess. Please. I am disabled, on social assistance and desperate. 
Rich Landriault

December 25, 2021: Metro delivery service is now closed for the holidays. Merry Christmas

December 26, 2021, 10:50AM: Metro informs that my order has been cancelled and my account "will be refunded." Furthermore: "We’d love to hear from you! Share your thoughts about your online grocery shopping experience and you could be eligible to win $1,000 in free groceries! "

Well, that's fucking super. While you are totally victimizing a marginalized person, you're planning something real super nice for some random dude. Well, that just warms my heart y'all mutherfuckers!

December 27, 2021, 5:35AM: I post to the Metro Ontario Food & Beverage Company facebook page:

I am disabled and trying to live on $700/month. I spent my last $226 on groceries, with my shelves bare, on Dec 20 for delivery Dec 21. No groceries have been delivered nor any explanation why not. I begged for either my food or my money and got no reply. Yesterday you cancelled my order and still I have no refund. I have spent my holidays going hungry. How can you do this to someone? I AM HUNGRY !!!!!!!!!!! "

(I'm not actually hungry because I have friends and family who have taken care of me but that is not to Metro's credit. They do not deserve to know that.)

I added this comment: "ORDER 94516646. I am not available by phone at this time, due, essentially, to financial challenges."

December 27, 2021, 7:21AM: email received from Metro: "We are sorry that you were not completely satisfied with your online shopping experience. This email is to confirm your refund on order 94516646RO. The total amount of the returned items and/or service fees will be credited to your account."

I keep hearing about this "refund" concept but I don't know what they mean by that word since to date it has not manifested in me getting my money back. To their credit they have surrendered a reply to my facebook post:

Metro Ontario

Hello Rich! We are sorry to hear about this situation. For any request for a refund of a product, you can fill this document, one of our agents will evaluate your request and will carry out the refunding for you in the next days. This can be done within 14 days of the purchase date: https://www.metro.ca/.../help-center/reimbursement-form-qc. Please be advised that your concerns will be forwarded to Metro management. In order to restore the situation as soon as possible, we also invite you to contact the dedicated online grocery service at 1-866-595-5554 #3 for any other questions. Thank you very much and once again, we are sorry for this situation!

Well, the product refund request is completely inappropriate, as is the offering of a phone number after what I just said. But at least I know they are pursuing "the restoration of the situation" which means absolutely nothing but thanks for hurling a couple words at the wall to see if they stick. They didn't.

December 28, 2021: One full week later and still no food and no money. But I am seeing the beautiful subtext of their facebook reply. Here is their reply in other words:

Dear human: We are a corporation and so we make all the rules which govern our interaction. You are just a measly human product. In order to make this perfectly clear we give you a response to your adorable mewling; a response so utterly inappropriate in every line as to make you certain that no actual human employee wasted any of our time actually comprehending anything you have to say. Your resistance is futile. Maybe you'll actually get that "refund" some day. Maybe you will even get that $25 voucher that we conveniently packaged in a junk-mail trigger format so that it will hopefully go missing.

Well fuck you, Empire! As the great Princess Leia said: "Take your broken heart, turn it into art." I give you:

Every Corporate Apology Ever



Monday, December 27, 2021

Ladyhawke Revisited? Maybe?

Apparently I viewed the film Ladyhawke (Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Broderick, Rutger Hauer)way back in 2008 and belched out a snotty insincere review of it, just for a cheap laugh. More than a decade later I received this thoughtful response by someone operating under the username Aframe:

15 yrs since u posted this so I am sure you have watched it a few more times and come to appreciate the work of art that it truly is. How could any movie be terrible with Rutger, Matthew, Michelle and greatest of all John Wood aka Dr Falken (war games…. See what they did there. Falken Ladyhawk . Clearly a aviary theme. Yes it’s campy 80’s but it’s one of the better ones and is just plain simple fun. Enjoy it without expectations.

Well, the only responsible thing to do is see it again and figure out just how guilty I should feel. And since yesterday was the scene of my epic Christmas journey to the family farm and my body is destroyed, it's clearly the right time to stay in bed and track her down:

Fasten your seatbelts, folks! We're about to enter the ethical and intelligent realm of movie mongering!

Netflix: Doesn't have it. Doesn't pretend to. Three stars for honesty!

Prime: Says they have it but oops! No. Gotta pay an extra subscription for STARZ.

Crave: Says they have it but oops! No. Gotta pay an extra subscription for... What? STARZ again? Are these all the same company, taking multiple subscription fees with a different extra-extra subscription fee for every movie? I guess this is what the super-intelligent modern North American desires in a movie monger. Hurray for that. But zero stars

YouTube: Will rent for $4.99. Alas I have only $2.24 in the bank on account of Metro Inc supermarket company taking my last $226 on December 20th and keeping my food AND my money. Neat-o mosquito! Who knew you could get away with something like that? Well of course you can, as long as you're a corporation and not a human being. Maybe I'll find the responsible manager at Metro and execute them in order to go to prison so I can get a meal. I hope it's a quick trial. But I digress.

Video Detective pretends to have it by conning Google with a fake full-length video result but it turns out they just want people to visit their web site to feed their ads from iTunes, Google Play and Amazon. Tricksy little Video Detective. You get zero stars.

iTunes (via Video Detective): Not available in my country.

Google Play: I can rent for the low low price of $3.99. Not low enough today.

Amazon: I can rent for the low low price of $3.99. But there is no button to click what says [collect rental fee from Metro who stole all my money] so I'm outta luck for now.

Plex: pretends to have it by conning Google with a fake full-length video result but it turns out they just want people to visit their web site to feed their ad from AppleTV which dumps you in a page with no working links. Zero Stars.

Mojo Movie: pretends to have it by conning Google with a fake full-length video result, "watchable for free" but the play button just sends you to Google.ca and the other play button sends you to google.ca and the download buttons send you to... anyone...? Yes, google.ca. But wait! There is a [trailer] button! I can at least watch a trailer!? Nope! Google.ca! Zero stars.

Kanopy: No results. Three stars for honesty.

WAIT! Hold the presses! There is some extra fishy shit going on over at Mojo Movie where the Watch For Free promise is popping up in pop-ups which are not google.ca but the start of a streaming movie identified as Ladyhawke even though the music is a James Bond theme!! I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation. Oops. The playback has ceased after a few seconds. Apparently I need to SIGN UP FOR FREE in order to WATCH LADYHAWKE FOR FREE. Well okay then! Now we're on to something! Yeah, yeah. I know what you're thinking. They're going to want my credit card details in order to process all this free stuff, just for shits and giggles. But nope...!!

Google.ca!

Hoopla: No results. Three stars for honesty.

A HA! Someone named Orlando Samuels has posted the movie in three parts on dailymotion.com!

We're in! This dude has over 200 movie vids posted, with ads to some degree, which is fine with me. I need some way to pay. But he only has 33 followers? Well okay then. See you on the other side!

Friday, December 24, 2021

Thursday thoughts: Cosmology

I did not choose this topic. I have about 80 or 90 of them to address for reasons I will spill at a later date. Maybe next week.

Cosmology

Well... according to Oxford:

noun
  1. the science of the origin and development of the universe. Modern astronomy is dominated by the Big Bang theory, which brings together observational astronomy and particle physics.

Is the bang theory really a theory? Perhaps it is rather an observation. It seems that we are observing the expansion of the universe; that we are still banging; not quite done exploding. To surmise that the objects in the universe came from the place at the rear of their direction of travel... seems fairly obvious? Are we not still experiencing the big bang as we speak? 

Do I personally witness this motion; this travel? I'm not sure I do. I would have to rely on the testimony of the astrophysics community, along with their other conjectures.

Or do I? I know for sure that something is "true" if I consistently experience it, or if I very carefully, without error or omission, assemble logic built from guaranteed (personally experienced) truths and/or other items of assembled unerring logic, which we can collectively call dogma.

Testimony: noun

  1. a formal written or spoken statement, especially one given in a court of law.

I'm defining testimony as anything I've heard which I have not personally verified through experience. In other words, the above definition but without formal/informal differentiation. Is there some other word for that which I should be using instead?

Dogma: noun

  1. a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.

I'm defining dogma as any assembled truths which we can, going forward, rely upon without re-analyzing or re-proving, because we have completed all the work. In other words, our own clean database is the only authority, which is infinitely more reliable than the words of priests and politicians, who make the newspapers every day for their scandals, and whose unreliability is in fact inconvertible for their failure to agree with one another on what the clean facts are.

I'm suggesting that these Thursday articles represent a clean new database of information, unlike the internal databases which most of us carry around, full of the "dogma" which we inherited through church and parents and teachers and everyone else of influence, and of course the dreaded media, much of whom, are extremely suspect, and owned and operated by power-mongers with known agendas.

So the big bang must remain testimony, and shall not be filed as truth, but rather as useful testimony, because the sources which provide it are those possessing a very good reputation all around, and provide much other testimony or dogma which we can, and have, consistently verified in our living experience. Concepts such as gravity for instance.

So we have spilled that most dreaded word here, the one I try to never use if possible: truth. There are always ways of questioning truths, no matter how reliably; how integrally; how courageously formed, because one can always find ways to question reality.

And I propose to define truth as the unvarnished facts which exist in reality.

And reality is the bonified state of things, as applies to our living experience. Meaning this: one can question such things as time for instance. Physicists might say that time is an illusion; that spacetime is something different than what we perceive, but here is what's important to me:

The reason we need truth is to fix the problems which riddle our living experience, and hear this testimony from me: that their are solutions for everything, but don't believe that yet. We are many steps away from turning that into dogma! Now, in my living experience there is a proven consistent perception of time: a linear inertia from which there is no known escape. In order to solve problems relating to our living experience, the truths will be those "proven" to be consistent in our living experience. Thus time is exactly what we all know it as. Time is true for all intents and purposes (at least so far).

Understanding the physicist's view of spacetime is not going to help you get to work early enough to placate your boss.

In order for the most basic general cosmological testimony to be untrue, meaning the reliability of scientists' own reliable personal experience, rather than our own, there would have to be a very wide-scale conspiracy at work, one too large and too long-running to be logically plausible. So such basic cosmology as the accretion of stars and moons and planets, all the same thing really, different in size and composition, is not truth, not proven to me, but reliable enough to me as unproven testimony to be useful (ah useful. Such a useful word!) because of the earned reputation of science, because of the support of my own observations through my own senses in all applicable matters of physical science, and also because of the lack, at least so far, of importance. The origin of the cosmos is not necessarily, as yet, critical to our solving the great problems of society here on Earth, and making our lives better.

And that is what it's all about for me. Why I write, research, contemplate, discuss... in order to pursue better lives.

Now Eckart Tolle might ultimately disagree with that; the relevance of the cosmos, but we are not there yet. One step at a time!

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Aw crap. Apology required:

Kamal Khera or staff: 

First thing of three: I have no idea if anyone actually reads emails such as these.
Secondly: I feel compelled, regardless, to issue an apology for my email from earlier this morning which was facilitated by OpenMedia.org and which bears my own comments at the closing which suggest (with all honest intention) that the addressee is a purveyor of lies and such an enemy of humanity as to deserve no consideration as being included within the species.
However I was only thinking of the prime minister as being the message's target and not yourself (Kamal) until I received the autobot response. I voted liberal in the election which introduced the current PM to this role and am ashamed of that. I have never in my life probed Canadian federal politics with such tenacity until that day and the days since then, and I have never been more abjectly horrified at the state of humanity on this abysmal continent (where I was born) and the wretchedly duplicitous nature of Canadian political agenda and its current occupying government. That said, I have no direct accusations toward Kamal Khera personally.
I am content to assume you might have no knowledge of the slithery nature of this place you find yourself, or more likely that you do know but are trapped in effect and hoping to make things better somehow, or, rather improbably I concede, that you are an agent out to destroy the trudeau/Liberal anti-humanity profit-funneling machine from within! And none of this is to suggest that any of you do not take opportunities to make some kind decisions and create some noble structures when your sugar daddies allow or when they're not looking.
So I now feel better for apologizing. Not that I am suddenly a saint. I realize my own complicity in all that I hate about your ruling kin.
And lastly, if you are reading: I have long had a great interest in, and much respect for, various Asian histories, cultures and philosophies, India paramount among them, and I endured perhaps the most lasting heartfelt and warmly tearful experiences of my life studying the Gita as taught in English by guru Sri Aurobindo (along with the novel Siddhartha by the way). Both documents spoke of things I'd long felt but never heard from a person's lips, or thought I could ever realistically bring into conversation, and I just wish to say that I am grateful for Asian presence in this land and by your inclusion in the political landscape - so long as I don't go on to learn terrible things about you! I hope your spirit; your soul perhaps, survives your experience here.
I also hope that you and your family have a peaceful and joyful holiday season with much quiet time for contemplation, and perhaps some good wine, and a gathering fortitude such that you might return to work with an unflinching integrity, however new or established!
Sincerely,
[New Day Rising]
[Scooterville, ON]



In which NewDay confronts his dark evil enemy and keeps his rage in check a little bit

Hurray! Democrazy in action!!

Dear Prime Minister and Members of Federal Cabinet:

Despite your government’s 2019 promises to fix Canada’s Internet and cell phone affordability problem, our prices are still some of the highest in the world. Consider this your wake-up call: Canada needs you to take real, immediate action to lower our Internet and cell phone bills relative to other countries, starting with reversing the CRTC’s Internet price hikes.

Improving telecom competition and choice is the clearest and most efficient way to bring down prices across the board, but it won’t happen without concrete action from the federal government. As the first of many steps in this direction, I’m calling on Cabinet to reverse the CRTC’s 2021 Internet wholesale rates decision. This ruling isn’t compatible with lowering Canada’s telecom bills; it directly led to Internet price hikes and made it even harder for smaller Internet providers to compete against Big Telecom. Reversing this decision would be a critical first step towards guaranteeing affordable connectivity.

It’s not enough to make our prices “better than before”; Canada needs you to bring down our rates to keep pace with the rest of the world, not just beat our own poor past performance. There is a lot of work ahead, but as Prime Minister and Cabinet, it’s your responsibility to follow through.

Hey why not keep a promise every blue moon or so just to fool some of us losers you own that you're actually worthy of being called human beings?

Very sincerely,

[New Day Rising]

Part of this is a canned message facilitated by OpenMedia.org and part of it is my own contribution. There are no prizes for correctly guessing what's what.

This is a fun game you too can play, right from your own home!



Friday, December 10, 2021

My first shot at animation sort of

Hey there. Well I need to post three more times in order not to have the second-worst calendar year in the entire - gasp - sixteen years I've been blogging, however occasionally of late. Meaning the second fewest posts. 

I probably should have had the most ever in 2021. I've been lounging in bed at home every day, just me and my useless legs. I've decided to start physiotherapy just as soon as my disability benefits start kicking in. In January?

My writing buddies are encouraging me to finally get writing again, and getting my shit together blog-wise might be just the starting point.

Meanwhile I mostly make videos now. This one is getting rave reviews at Poetry Club and at a church Christmas celebration where it was played to a live crowd just this evening. Yes a church! I wasn't there but I was told the audience howled. To be honest I don't entirely get its appeal. I was just screwing around! Meanwhile the stuff I do that I think is hilarious often goes unnoticed. Oh well. What do I know?

I actually wrote this years ago and posted it here but the so-called animation is brand new. I'm pretty sure I'm qualified to work at Disney now:



Thursday, October 14, 2021

My sh*t has eyes!

The Smosh folks are a full time comedy operation who pump out heaps of videos across three YouTube channels; my fave being Smosh Pit. There's also a smosh.com which I have never visited. Their humour is pretty juvenile most of the time but I have room for it.

They don't copyright anything. They like fan fiction and fan compilations which they often interact with for more video material. So I gathered my fave smosh segments and it looked to be about 2 hours of material so I divided into six episodes, loosely theme-related, and polished and published Part One a week ago. It sat dead for five days and then quickly jumped over 400 views in a couple days. I'm not surprised.

It drew fifteen likes and one dislike. Ninety per cent of the traffic is through browsing, which bodes well for the future episodes as that's how they would be most likely discovered.

This first episode is super high on the potty humour so... be warned.


Sunday, September 26, 2021

Baby, you're the best!

Here's a video I put together which was removed by YouTube and actually earned  a strike against my channel because it violates child safety policy. Any video showing young people (not even children, necessarily, but young adults) engaged in dangerous behavior is considered a violation under the theory that it entices children to emulate the behavior.

What is interesting is that FailArmy and other big-money sites seem to get away with this all the time but I guess they are profitable to YouTube so.... too bad, kids. I guess you'll have to rely on your parents being remotely competent human beings in order to keep you safe. But someone like me who gets almost no views for the most part, does not target a child audience, actually includes warnings to kids not to engage in this behavior and actually SHOWS clips of some subjects being clearly injured, is somehow the bad guy. Welcome to the ass-backwards world of corporate-owned North America. Enjoy the fucking Kool Ade y'all.

The joke is that all of my clips which they deem unsuitable for YouTube, were downloaded from YouTube to begin with. And when I cast an appeal, stating this fact, I just get the canned response stating that my material was verified to be in violation and I am banned from activity for 30 days or whatever. Further more, three strikes and my channel gets shut down - or something like that.

Oh well. Whatever! 

Let's see if it gets by the Blogger firewall. I suspect it will not and not because of child safety hoopla but because there is probably no license agreement which will allow me to use popular music, which YouTube does thankfully feature. I'm fine with using popular songs and letting the rights-holders monetise my vid for their profit. I would never try to profit from a vid which borrows other peoples' work.

Here goes:

Nope. Maximum file size exceeded. It's a five minute vid and not even HD. Oh well. I already know it won't get by the DailyMotion copyright blocker. I'll give Vimeo a shot.

HA!! Thanks Vimeo:

Baby, You're the Best!


Tuesday, September 21, 2021

My friend, the Ponderer

 Just a shout-out today, to one of my fave pals, The Ponderer, and her favourite band:




Monday, September 20, 2021

Guaranteed smile!

I've been putting a lot of videos together; carefully edited compilations for the most part. The goal here was to be as cute as possible!


Sunday, September 19, 2021

Onward and upward?

I got some good chunks of sleep last night and in positive spirits today have been energized. I hauled three bags of chillable groceries upstairs to the fridge, planted some laundry in the washer, boxed a load of booze bottles (mostly the housemate's actually) which have lingered in the kitchen for months, and swapped a full blue bin out for an empty one with two days until collection.

I also had a productive chat with the housemate and surrendered to a couple swarmings by the doggo.

By noon this was already rendered the most productive day in memory.

I've paced myself very well with frequent short breaks and suffered no physical breakdowns, panics or hyperventilation.

At the genesis of this is a discovery by a bariatric clinic dietitian who I conferred with for the first time on Thursday.

There are three great hurdles on this journey of which I have often said, "I still don't see the complete path to recovery, but I see the landscape, and I trust in the many professionals who are guiding me; doctors, nurses, dietitians and counsellor." The discipline to stick to the intricate diet structure, the physical stamina to stick to the very demanding logistics of the diet structure, and the challenge of somehow needing to improve health prior to surgery (which was supposed to be the initiating event)

With all this in mind the new dietitian suggested I could come off of the surgical route and go on to the non-surgical route for one full year, and then... have the surgery. In other words, all the best of both worlds. This is amazing to me. It never occurred to me such a full service was even available.

As long as the doctors approve this change, I will go on a much stricter diet which given my particular issues will actually be easier to adhere to, logistically simple and almost guaranteed to promote significant weight loss prior to surgery which should help me gain mobility and help me convince the surgeons I am an acceptable risk. Currently they judge I am not.

I am now, finally, seeing the path.



Friday, September 17, 2021

BIG mind, little mind

Something got me thinking about that old conundrum again; the annoying observation that the one thing the human mind can't bear to contemplate is the human mind.

But I recall trying to explain to Aqualad why it sparks small terrors when I catch glimpses of my inner mind; how it feels like a crack in sanity when in a fugue, for instance, I catch little dreams which one should not see when awake but only in sleep when dreams come conveniently packaged with eraser pills so that you forget.. Little waking dreams which reveal that my brain is still busy trying to solve yesterday's dilemmas but sampling the wrong realms. Like trying to find my lost bottle of pills but searching my minecraft world for them. Mixing real life with a video game. That "error" should not scare me. That should not smack of mental deficit or craziness. I understand why these things seem to happen; how a mind can work through metaphor, or how my interpretations are lost in translation.

But it does torment a little. Not playing too much Minecraft might have dismissed that particular issue and so might getting enough sleep but that doesn't answer the question. Why does it push my buttons?

Today I'm inclined to think that it's not the subject matter of inner mind that spooks but simply proximity. I spent earlier years swiftly collecting revelations and small enlightenments and assuming there might be much to come in that journey; that a unity of mind was possible. And that set me exploring many things, like poets who seemed to speak of such oneness; such evolution.

But now I feel that unity of mind is the very thing we fear most of all. It is clear the instinctive mind is vastly more powerful than consciousness. Today I surmise that that imbalance is so tremendous that our real mind must protect consciousness from itself. Because there is some independence of course. The inner mind cannot control this new thing called consciousness; only influence it by playing tricks on it. But wait. Haven't I come to these conclusions before? And to imagine that consciousness might control inner mind is even more far-fetched.  

Oh well. The point is: I don't feel today that it is evidence of an inner mind's flaws that is so scary but merely the presence of the inner mind itself; even just a glimpse of it. It is like coming face to face with God.

And suddenly seeming... utterly... powerless.


Today is quite possibly a landmark day in the final accounting of my life, for reasons having nothing to do with the above thoughts so far as I know. I hope to return tomorrow and tell you about it.


Saturday, June 05, 2021

A Habs fan defends the Leafs

mean to assume that anyone has been missing me in the lost land of Blog World. Ithat  I'm sorry to myself for not having my shit together. Not blogging is the most obvious indication that I am not functioning properly. Oh, by the way, my space key, backspace,I have determined that my keyboard is physically broken. It's definitely nt a driver or software issue.n external keyboard for the time being id I can find one. I'm sure there are a couple around somewhere... Oh for fuck sakes. I'll have to switch to a andcursorionkeys are all misfiring. My directinmeanthSorry I haven't posted in a while. And by that donn't 

Thursday, May 20, 2021

Rooing and Roaching

Hey hey. Remember me? It's April 50th and I'm right on track with regards to April A to Z!

Rooing: Not sure if this precisely qualifies as onomatope but a roo is when a dog makes a "roo" noise. It's more than a wimper and less than a howl. It's common in greyhounds and so, by the way, is:

Roaching: the manner in which a dog, a greyhound especially, lies on its back, usually sleeping, with its legs in the air, kind of like a prone cockroach, though I prefer to think this is not the source of the term, because greyhounds are adorable and roaches are disgusting beyond words according to my completely arbitrary sensibilities.


Question R: What RETAIL store would you choose if you could shop there for free?

The liquor store. Just kidding! The grocery store. Just kidding! The liquor store.







 

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Quibblings

QUIBBLINGS: alternate for of the word siblings, which accounts for the sisterly tendency toward minor (hopefully not major) arguments.

My brother and I seem fortunate in that we get along pretty great. Disagreements are rare. More common is his tendency to interpret that I have insulted him in some minor way when in reality I intended nothing of the sort. He does seem more sensitive than most toward imagining slights however there is a definite body of evidence to suggest that I am, or else have been, of that same tendency, even though I do not feel that I am.

My nephew of four is a loud little guy, always gabbing exuberantly or singing or droning while stomping around in circles. The niece, Claire, at the final turn of year-one, seems to adore her brother, or at least finds him an engaging entertainment, and lacking the language to fully participate, has adopted a loud drone of her own which her loving parents kindly refer to as the most annoying sound on Earth, often referring to her as Clairodactyl.

I predict they will do very well as siblings. He showers her with regular affection. I'm still immensely impressed and proud at what a great dad my brother has turned out to be. His generosity as a family man is... inspiring.

The close-quarters Covid environment seems a threat though, as Dad tires of the constant pandemonium while working a sensitive career from home. I hope he can bear this assault without too much backlash at the kid, who will no doubt receive plenty of that from teachers as well. He is a very gregarious and loving boy and it would be a tragedy to crush that spirit. A real tragedy.


Question Q: If you could learn the absolute truth about one thing, what QUESTION would you ask?

Well that's a trillion dollar question. The origin of the universe?

Is it applicable to say I would like to meet the Buddha and/or Jesus of Nazareth and learn the truth of their stories behind the suspicious literary tales; their real origins and methods which led to their wisdom?

 

Sunday, April 25, 2021

Pupparazzi

PUPPARAZZI: Independent furry four-legged celebrity-hounds who take every opportunity to hassle, hamper, trample, torment (and mostly lick) their target of the moment; namely myself. Specifically they are:

Pupparino: (top/right) A.K.A. River, Chicken Wing. 

Pupparoo: (bottom/left) A.K.A. Jetzia, Jet, Munchkin, Wee Monster, Monkey, Turkey, Whackadoodle, Barky McBarkenheimer, Poodella-Queen Of The Floor


Question P: Your favourite PET you've had.

Blue of course. Short for Bluejay. I'll never know a finer dog. Through Covid I have missed her more than ever, and dreamt of her occasionally.

Ovaltine

OVALTINE: a whey-and-egg malted milk drink brand anglicized from Ovomaltine (Latin for egg and malt) by process of human error. I drank it as a kid, adding the powder to milk and fighting to blend the stubborn stuff, because my mom had been a fan of it in her childhood. At the time my friends were unfamiliar with it but now as adults, maybe everyone's heard of it?

Like the more popular Nestle Quick chocolate milk mix it hails from Switzerland. Of course Ovaltine's real claim to fame arrived in this 1974 theatrical masterpiece Young Frankenstein with Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman:


Question O: What "OLD-person" thing do you do?

I forget shit all the time. Such as doing my daily A-to-Z. I'm a week behind. Time to get crackin'.

Thursday, April 22, 2021

Neography

NEOGRAPHY: the new but familiar landscapes I inhabit, to varying degrees as I suffer my good and bad days. The world looks entirely different when you have unlearned in a wholesale way in a real courageous pursuit of truth and in the course, gained a ridiculously rare appreciation for causality, illusion and human duality which should be compulsory to the human experience, the absence of which being close to the root of near every problem imaginable, great or small, and the root of foolishness in all our great collections of naive solutions which distract and divide us and stroke our preposterous egos and will never work.


Question N: If you had to move to a different NATION, which would you choose?

India, Cambodia or Vietnam, all for one shared reason and each for a unique one. It is only love for friends and family that keeps me in this place where I basically approve of nothing that goes on here!


Mindcrack

MINDCRACK: another term for Minecraft; a game addictive to the brain; the hyper-real lego game where the blocks come with their own reliable chemistry and physical properties so that you can combine them into new blocks. For instance, you mine stone and build a furnace. Mine coal and iron ore and produce iron ingots in the furnace. With iron and other materials you can build armor, weapons and tools... You can build practically anything. Someone built a working computer in Minecraft although in game scale it was probably the size of Belgium.

What makes the game work so well is that this basic model of Earth, equipped with minerals, plants and life forms is so logistically generous you can build large complex things in no time. Most flora grows from seed to maturity in a (ten-minute) day. You can move any object instantly and effortlessly and carry enormous miniaturized inventories, and most transformations (recipes) are instant just by adding the right components to your workbench (called a crafting table) or loom, anvil or other such facility.

Teens tend to play the game for the community factor. They can be a sentient adult, easily form a profitable business (or two or more) and start buying, selling and pursuing the largest bank account.

I play because it's a wonderland of creativity and in terms of community its an opportunity to more easily live out your dreams than in the (ultra-fake) real world!


Question M: If MARS were inhabitable would you accept a one-way ticket?

Quite possibly. It would depend on more criteria then we want to get into today.

Dr. Pi: parrot therapy



Friday, April 16, 2021

Letterfettered

Welcome back to my pitiful April A-to-Z Blogging adventure, where I'm slowly trying to build a daily writing habit so I can get back to crafting fiction again...

Letterfettered: This is an inevitable A-to-Z blogging experience; where the alphabet blocks your every move. For example you want to do an article on cow's breath but you've already published Chi-Chi Rodriguez so you're looking at H for Halitosis but you'd have to switch the Hasslehoff article to D for David but where would you then move the Didgeridoo piece? So you decide on M is for Moo Breath instead and move the More Than a Feeling piece to B for Boston - no wait. B has already been published. Okay, G is for Guitars Galore and I'll move the Giddy-up article to H is for Horse. Done. No, wait. I needed H for Halitisos. Then you say fuck it, and play Minecraft instead. 


Question L: What LAW would you create if you knew everyone would be forced to obey?

I don't know. Laws don't seem to be the genesis of real change. But okay; just for fun: No guns. Ever. For Anyone. Ever.

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Karakurbagasi

KARAKURBAGASI: a Turkish toad. And by that I mean it's just Turkish for toad. And by that I mean that this is a totally random word and I have no idea what I'm about to say. And by that I mean that this will be the worst blog post ever. 

Let's see if I can dig up something short and sweet and get you out of here so we can both get on with our lives:

Here we go. A turkey/toad chimera for your enjoyment.

Now, if that looks to you more like a bat/squirrel/ram chimera that's because you need glasses.

Hey! What's that behind you!

(runs away)


Question K: What do you miss most about being a KID?

Playing street hockey. I was damn good but its just playing I miss, rather than the recognition. And also the innocence. I assumed the world of adults would be sane and I would fine comfort in growing up. But not so.

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Jobvious

JOBVIOUS: This is where you need income but can't figure out what to do and then it turns out that your favourite hobby has become a marketable talent and people are trying to hire folks with your experience and having trouble finding available providers but somehow you don't know what you should do.

Case in point: I love to Dungeon Master D&D games and consider myself pretty advanced at it. Almost unbelievingly, it turns out that while the participation rates of D&D players is growing the number of willing DM's is not keeping up, and yes, people are paying well for DM service! And yet I feel reluctant to look into this as an income opportunity. Why not, you ask? I don't even know.


Question J: What JUNK food item could you eat every day?

Easy: a large Dairy Queen blizzard: the cookie dough variety with add-on Reeces PB cups. I've never ordered any other kind for twenty-five years and I remember being tickled to see Jack Nicholson's character order the exact same concoction in the quirky entertaining film About Schmidt, where one of his other special treats was getting to see Kathy Bates stark naked!


Some-Idiot

Some-IDIOT: this is a sort of safe word used in place of the dreaded T _ _ _ p word; the unspeakable name of the great orange psychotic pea-brained narcissist who was recently granted the largely-ceremonial role of President of the United Semi-automatic-gun-peoples of America (a.k.a.: USA) by a minority voting contingent comprised of gullible morons; filthy stinking racists; redneck gun-humping fucknutters; the criminally rich and other miscellaneous confused scaredy cats, along with an exceptionally goofy antiquated system known as the Exceptionally Goofy Antiquated Electoral College, or Electoral College for short, who's job it is to inflate the voting power of slave states through a mind-boggling patchwork of qualifiers, legal ambiguity and an approval rating among American citizens which has lingered in a decided minority since your grandparents first danced the jitterbug.

Basically it artificially stops the more-popular Democrats from keeping power and creates a flip-flopping two-party experience which nurtures enough hostile tribal delirium among the peoples that they won't be inclined to stop and think about who the real enemy might be, because THAT would be holy-shit-bad-bad-news for the wee horde of miscreants who have been getting away with gleefully running (or owning as they put it) the country and stuffing their pockets under cover of a maelstrom of misdirection and fear-mongering for an
absurdly long time.

Uggghhhh!

Why

The fuck

Are we talking about this?


Question I: What IDIOSYNCRASY or INSIGHT has been useful to you, either overall, or on a particular occasion?

The habit and talent for detecting ILLUSION. Which is everywhere, by the way.

Friday, April 09, 2021

Hoarderline Personalities

Hoarderline Personality Disorder: This is where your lives are in disorder because there is too much shit in your house. Not like the super-hoarders I've heard about on the glass tit machine but borderline hoarders, with more shit than the average citizen (with average hoarding tendencies) but less than the professional hoarders who's walls you never see.

Even living in a hoarderline situation is a bit dangerous. There's more than a few slippery slopes lurking about the dense landscape. The good news is that I was able to gently confront the roommate about it and it seems we're both on the same page after all, in wanting to do something about it.


Question H: How would people celebrate a HOLIDAY named in your HONOUR?

Well it would have to start on New Day Rising Eve when friends and family gather in large groups to smoke cigars and drink scotch. The children would get coke, candy and Kraft Dinner (sorry, cola I mean) and be sequestered in another space, let's say a finished basement, for a slumber party of their own design and management while the adults challenge themselves to identify the hidden realities of their lives and the major problems inhibiting their happiness.

Off to bed. No alarm clocks. The first one up checks on the children to make sure no one needs rescuing from whatever Lord of the Flies scenario they've devolved into and then starts making gallons of coffee.

French toast, OJ and champagne for breakfast and Irish coffee through the morning. Everyone dresses up as Gandalf except for that one weird cousin who dresses as Gollum.

Board games, cocktails, imported cheeses, pate...

Steak and red wine for dinner. Someone tops up the mac and cheese downstairs and confiscates any sticks sharpened at both ends.

Cigars and cognac in the evening and thoughtful discussion on how to resolve problems and live better lives over the next year.

Too bad I'll be dead before all this comes to fruition.


Thursday, April 08, 2021

Gillooly

GILLOOLY (verb): to gillooly someone is to sabotage or attack a victim in some way which benefits a third party. The term's genesis comes from the name Jeff Gillooly, the former moniker of psychopath, accused rapist, deranged idiot, famed bludgeoneer and shambling mound of inhuman excrement Jeff Stone who changed his name after being released from prison for being the primary psychopath, accused rapist, deranged idiot, famed bludgeoneer and shambling mound of inhuman excrement who conspired to have figure skater Nancy Kerrigan attacked with a police baton in order to cripple her so that she could not interfere with Super-Moron Tonya Harding's figure skating career by being better than her, this after Kerrigan was accused of muttering "I could beat that Harding skank standing on one leg."

It turns out she was correct, winning silver in the following Olympics while Harding finished eighth.

This particular shambling poo mound only served 6 months of his adorable two-year sentence due to the universal opinion of American judges that "...prisons are not a place for monsters. They are a place for poor people who may or may not have committed a crime; who knows; who cares? Not me. They're just black people. Pass the caviar."

Since his release the Great Gillooly-come-Stone has remarried and taken ownership of his idiot bride's children after she committed suicide according to popular opinion (by beating herself repeatedly with a police baton, you ask? -- I don't know. Probably.) Reports indicate that the children are in good hands and will learn the best techniques available for beating and raping women.


Question G: What GIFT have you re-gifted? If none, name a gift you would re-gift, if received.

I surely must have re-gifted something at some point in my life but I honestly can't think of anything. If I received the gift of a police baton I would give it to Jeff Stone I guess. Preferably I'd give it to him right through his piece of shit cranium.


Editor's Note: The rather indulgent preceding diatribe was not well researched. At all. Like he didn't even bother to watch any of the collection of Tonya Harding movies.

F'LOG

F'LOG: a contraction of "food log" where you record every detail of every meal you eat for your team of dietitians and then try to resist flogging yourself for the litany of errors and failures of discipline it memorializes.


Question F: Which FILM could you watch over and over?

I'm compelled to be indulgent. As one who's watched close to three thousand films in my life, including mini-series and shorts, I'll permit myself three categories; 1--theatrical; 2--based on a true story, and 3--documentary.

1: Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship. Seen it at least a dozen times, often with commentary enabled because it's the best story ever. Possibly you disagree that it's the best story ever. That's okay, but if I find out I will see to it that you disappear without a trace.*

2: Moneyball: It amazes myself how often I spontaneously watch this. Seven or eight times. As a storyteller I find it addictive just to observe how well-crafted this piece is, specifically as a "true story." And I know that there are factual cheats at play which make it a more compelling story to absorb specifically in movie form but that is part of the craft which I speak of, Also I adore Brad Pitt and Philip Seymore Hoffman as actors.

3. Blackfish: Four times minimum. Probably five or six. Again I'm just super appreciative of the craft here. I can't imagine how this tale could have been told more effectively. As with Moneyball it's easy to give the film a click just to take another peak at their effective openings but then never get to a dull spot and think of turning it off.

*just kidding.

Wednesday, April 07, 2021

Exosculation

Exosculate: This is a dictionary-sanctioned word. But rather than explain it I shall point you toward the following obnoxious video. There are no rewards for watching the whole thing to the end (other than, it improves as it goes along), but if you're watching this during the Time Of The Great Plague... you possibly have nothing better to do. 


Question E: What is your most EXCELLENT memory? 

This is really tough. All my best memories are too intimate for - well, not for the internet, but for such spaces as this which serve ordinary decent people who respect ordinary decent superstitions around love and physical affection.

As for printable great memories: there are a few heroic sports moments; some vacation adventures; many family celebrations on the farm; a hundred good times with my best friend; cuddling on a park bench with I. S. watching the moon, snuggling with my dobie, Blue on my bed on weekend mornings, my first Rush concert, finishing my first novel... I can't pick one.


The vid was a hatchet job. It'll be messy:



Tuesday, April 06, 2021

Drummerboying

Drummerboying: This is where you give a gift that is probably useless but its the only thing you have to offer. For a while now I've been working on a gift for a special friend who is really under the gun currently and could use a doctor, a maid, an errand boy, a PSW, some cash and some new body parts. Instead she's getting a video.

Pa rum pum pum-pum.


Question D: Your favourite breed of DOG?

Doberman. Because Blue was a doberman. But I have been very enamored with greyhounds lately, So much so that I would say they're a very close second. I think Dobermans are primarily an off-shoot of greyhounds anyway.


Here's a sneak peak of the video's opening sequence:




Saturday, April 03, 2021

Camp NaNo

Camp NaNo: November's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) light versions, held every April and June. Writing goals can be personalized, as low as 10,000 words. I am an April Camp NaNo rebel this time around. My goal is simply to write every day. So far this has not extended beyond Blogging A-to-Z in which the vague theme is simply unfamiliar words, some of which I'm making up myself on the spot!


Question C: What did you think was COOL when you were Young, and now: not so much.

James Bond (the movie versions; i.e.: Sean Connery and Roger Moore) And I still kind of love them but I know these characters are ridiculous and can't possibly defend them against criticism. 



Friday, April 02, 2021

Benko

Benko: The Benko Cup is the trophy awarded annually to the playoffs champion of the Strat-o-matic Hockey League of which I was a member for about twelve years. I made it to the finals four times, was statistically the favorite to win every time and didn't finally win until the fourth time.

I miss my Strat-o buddies. I have kept in touch with them, showed up to hang out every now and then on league nights and participated muchly in their off-season board-gaming nights, which have been Covid-curtailed of course.

Benko is the surname of the man who originally introduce the league's founders to the strat-o-matic game back in their university days. I never met him.

Dungeons and Dragons is the "Strat-o-matic" of fantasy role-playing and I have added Benko to my DnD names database. This means that a non-player character might be assigned that name at some point in my campaign-building endeavors. At this time I am not building a campaign per se but I am building and collecting tools for such. I'm looking forward to playing again; possibly online.


Question B: Favourite BOOK ever read

I really want to say Siddhartha because I think it was the deepest most meaningful connection ever made but really, instinctively, it was the genesis of Dungeons and Dragons in my interpretation, both personally, and societally: The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien) which thrills me the most. 




Thursday, April 01, 2021

Agendocide

Agendocide: This is when an entire population of healthy goals and planning and diarizing gets gunned down by a lazy slob - or by someone who is hampered by serious medical and mobility issues but who is never entirely sure if they might actually secretly just be a lazy slob.

This one is celebrating Agendocide Day with a pretty serious bout of productivity:

I brushed my teeth today, spent some time outside, had a coffee, engaged in numerous phone calls in response to urgent affairs in Grampa Munster's corner (more on that later), spoke to a Health Network to clear up some medical needs and schedule an occupational therapist assessment, worked on an important video (more on that later) and did a little planning with a great pal with regards to April Camp Nano and April A-to-Z blogging.

And yeah: welcome to A-to-Z blogging! I'm gonna be busy plopping posts on this page six days a week. Sorry about your luck.


Question A: What non-traditional ANIMAL might you like as a pet?

Hmmm... honestly, a Bengal tiger because I could make him a mascot of the lacrosse team. I think he'd help draw a pretty good crowd. And hopefully not eat them.


Saturday, March 20, 2021

Coming Soon...

 



Friday, February 12, 2021

Court rooms and crapshoots

I recently survived a long bout of crime/courtroom real-life Netflix drama. Oh boy. What a grueling bout of prosecutor and cop corruption and flagrant miscarriage. And this is with my BS filter on high alert with a close eye on the method, apparent intent and biases of the filmmakers.

What is soon apparent is the horrible realization that not only is justice a deeply slippery intangible ambition but the formula we've concocted to find it is like a four-lane bridge with a three-and-a-half lane gaping hole in it.

There is an assumption that the court system is designed to discover the truth, but if such a blueprint was ever devised we can't possibly be following it.

Cops are definitely not responsible for truth, and no offence intended. That is not at all their job. They perform their job tactically in accordance to situations. Cops reasonably assume that the truth is the objective of prosecutors and court rooms, after they've jailed a suspect. 

Prosecutors have very little incentive toward truth. They are judged, rewarded or reprimanded by their ability to settle cases by one means or another. And for those cases which make it to court it is not their job to find the truth but to win. One way or another. And by the way the temptation to cheat and the opportunity to cheat, are both immense. And to sweep those realities under the rug we sanctify their positions and pretend that they are above reproach, for no precise reason at all.

And where they might be inclined to turn on their too-cozy relationship with law officers in any pursuit of truth they face the frightening monster that is cop solidarity. Find me a cop anywhere - anywhere! ...who is more loyal to the people they purport to serve or to truth or to justice than they are to each other.

And this phenomenon is too universal to blame on individual cops. It's there because of the paradigms they are bred in. Their jobs are dangerous and bloody difficult in ways that don't resemble other jobs. They will naturally lean hard on one another for support and survival.

Witnesses are examined without proper regard for the realities and flaws of human memory and they are put under such scrutiny and threat that they are almost certainly scared into regarding their own safety above the pursuit of truth, not to mention the biases they come pre-equipped with.

When we're talking about the most perilous cases, they are jury-decided and there things really pour down the rabbit hole. Judges have very limited opportunity to guide juries or to guide lawyers. They are auditors of process. The one player who might actually be equipped to finding truth as well as devoted to it, at least at a conscious level, the judge, is removed from the ultimate decision.

As with every (or nearly every) institution or organization, the fatal flaw in the courtroom design is that their rules, process and philosophies rely on illusion, They fail to recognize basic human nature. Human beings will behave in ways that best appear loyal to law, rule, and loyalty to the organization but secretly bent toward the selfish wishes of their egos; secrets often not even privy to the individual's consciousness; the main reason all organizations are to some significant degree corrupted.

Part of the problem with ego in this environment is that egos fool most of the people in a room into thinking that they alone are the smartest person in the room. And everyone involved in a court case; lawyer, witness, judge, jury assumes much too early that they know the truth about unproven elements, and they will espouse those presumptions and resist new evidence to the contrary.

And once juries are left to their own devices, they are almost always immediately split, and not with logic then paving the way to consensus but with subservience to the more persuasive personalities among them.

I never met the lawyer, poet and writer, Ed Wildman. He sadly departed before his friends became my friends. But he was known to say that there was more justice on the streets than in courtrooms: "In the street men generally get what's coming to them. In the courtroom it's a crapshoot."

Of course there are forces in the courtroom that are anything but random. Such as who has the most resources. Whether corporations or individuals, rich defendants have a great track record in courtrooms, and lets face it, in this society there are very few truly lawful ways to get rich.

How to stop the rich from buying legal victory by out-spending the poor? Here's a suggestion:

A court case combatant (plaintiff/prosecutor/defendant) can hire/employ pre-trial counsel and/or investigators as desired but trial lawyers are assigned by the courts. Trial lawyers would be financially incentivized by receiving ratings based on their performance and seniority, paid accordingly, and assigned to cases relative to a simple case-rating system. Cases with the most at stake (dollar amounts/maximum sentences) receive the highest-rated lawyers - on both sides.

Junior lawyers start out serving as assistants to mentoring high-rated lawyers on high-rated cases thus employing defense teams.

Successful claimants and defendants declared innocent pay nothing for their trial lawyer(s) whose performance-based incomes are generated by a tax on the damages and fines paid by the guilty.

With lawyers not being paid directly by their clients it enables this important game-changer:

A lawyer's objective is then not primarily to win, and their score-carding system will reflect it: A lawyer's job is then to seek the truth, each beginning from the perspective of their "client." But their loyalty, as with the judge, is first to justice, truth, and the people.

Another thing: Cop solidarity must be bred out of the system. It is one of the most problematic corruptions in our society. At the least, shouldn't individual police positions be rotated regularly so that familiarization does not take hold? Perhaps a cop's partners should always be newish. I'm sure there are many other ways to support them and fight the problem if we think about it.

With juries I am deeply suspicious of this consensus rule. Where juries are split for a long long time can we not drag some common sense into the equation? Can we not infer that no obvious truth has been made apparent? Can we not then look at liability and guard against the worst possible scenario perhaps?

Look at the case where the defendant spent more than a decade in jail for murder before being discovered innocent thanks to the maturation of DNA evidence technology. Almost miraculously, a bitter cop community soon tried to pin another murder on him where court proceedings pointed at a host of holes in their case. Despite this, eleven gullible members of the jury put him behind bars again following the drawn out bullying of the lone member initially leaning towards the guilty decision.

In that case here was the worst possible scenario consideration. If he was truly guilty but declared innocent, he'd be freed but after spending two decades in prison and detention; thus he already served a 20-year sentence for one murder anyway! Almost zero jeopardy!

Instead they probably re-jailed an innocent man who then spends almost his entire adult life in jail for no reasons. Probably the most tragic jeopardy imaginable. And this is what they took a chance on. To this day people and organizations devote their lives to trying to free this man. What a human catastrophe. They chose to risk the worst possible scenario.

Even when juries are removed from the system I know there are problems. I 've been personally involved in three court cases without juries and every one was a complete debacle.

1. The defendant presented his case to the duty counsel who walked into court, entirely forgot every promise to the client and basically tied a ribbon around him and made a gift of him to the prosecutor and the judge, who seemed thick as thieves. The latter ridiculed the defendant, forgetting he was a judge and not the world's lamest shock comedian. 

2. The court failed to allow a mentally challenged man to get the assistance he required in order to assemble a competent counsel and was easily bullied into complete submission by his opponent.

3. The defendant's documents which proved him innocent or at least 99% so, were of no interest to the busy prosecutor who warned he should accept a deal on a lesser charge and pay $200 instead of risking a $1500 fine plus further tribulations if he risked going before the judge. He could have read the documents and came to the obvious conclusion to drop the case. The defendant, not imagining how he could possibly come up with $1500 complied and went home $200 poorer and his dignity pulverized, this after the deal was finalized by the judge goading the baffled defendant into lying in court in order to justify the details of the artificial arrangement. It all came down to governmental financial management with no regard for truth.

Oh by the way, the great lion's share of USA's two million inmates are poor black men who balked as per above principal and are jailed without trial but through intimidation and the threat of much longer sentences if they don't accept the plea bargain. Logic dictates that the number of incarcerated innocent in the USA is overwhelming. 

I'm glad I almost knew you Ed. Crapshoots indeed. Let us all remember that and guide our affairs accordingly.


Lawyers in Love

Oppose the growing entitlement and presumption of corporations for government hand-outs in favour of equality and support for the poor.