Everyday Heroes

I was 17 when I met two particular cousins for the first time. Their mom had rescued them from a not-great dad and my uncle took them in as his own, gave them solid love and shelter, this during a 12-year period when I was separated from the whole family at large. All four made me feel extremely welcome (as did the whole excellent family) at a time when unfavorable high school dynamics had turned me socially inward. The cousins, being my age, took that opportunity during our somewhat-brief association, to respond to my demeanor effectively; with a slightly puzzled respect. They marveled at my "mellow" manner and interpreted it, whether mistakenly or strategically, as something rare to be applauded. When introducing me to their friends it was often revealed that the reputation they conceived of me had preceded the introduction, and not that of a "loner", as some kids mistook me as, but as more of a confident outsider, like a tame Clint Eastwood perhaps, minus all the guns and bravado! And though this interpretation was also off the mark, it no-doubt drove my social turnaround, at least initially. They were the first to coax me out of my shell, whether by fluke or by design. I never did ask; never got to speak my loving gratitude.

Meanwhile Aunt K, who I was only just meeting, accepted me at once like family. I remember her saying "You are welcome in our house ANY time!" I've never been specifically told that before or since.

The boy, who struck me as an extremely pleasant and friendly dude, had a tragic knack for trouble of the wrong-friends variety, and gradually dissolved into some underworld apart from my understanding. In hindsight I would gladly go back in time, and decline that gift he gave me, if only I could trade it for the privilege of supporting him instead, and boosting whatever strength he needed so that he did not need the support of his unworthier allies. If only I could have helped tip that equation. Maybe we'd still be friends. I don't even know if he's alive.

"I hope he stays out of trouble now," said his sister to me one summer day in our youth.

'He will!" I said, like it was obvious.

She laughed. "You're so confident!" But I was a fool. I also later assumed she would defeat her breast cancer. She did not.

I was told there was no funeral and not told of a memorial celebration that happened later. I was very disappointed. If it was too late to praise her for her kindness, I wished at least to tell her loved ones.

Years went by, never getting to see Aunt K. I wanted to. I wondered if she was upset with me (and other family) for not supporting her daughter enough. K's absences from small family gatherings were always attributed to the great physical suffering she'd been enduring.

The other day, as I pushed my walker up the ramp to the little handicap bus, I sensed another guest on board. Sometimes we share.

"Hi Rich," she said. I looked up, but already knowing that lovely gritty voice. I was completely disarmed, as if caught in a long long exhale.

"It's so good to see you," I managed to say. Such an understatement. It was so good to see her I could barely form the words.

She did not seem upset with me at all. We caught up in a hurry. I was teary. There was a hug of sorts, as much as possible given the logistics. I got the chance to praise her daughter. It didn't surprise her. She knows her daughter. The pain of losing her... I can't imagine.

But she continues to put one foot in front of the other, as hard as that must be at times, or maybe all the time.

 

Going places

Dear Diary:

I thought about getting out of bed eventually, and then finally did. I'd showered and laundered yesterday so today would be a breeze. And only one bus to take. Well, two if you include the little DARTS bus.

I'm in clean clothes with Jim Morrison shirt anchored under my Jabba-the-Hut belly. Got my standard gear, two bottles of wine, birthday card, notebook, pens. Forget the coat; its like summer almost. And forget my Presto (transit) card because it's lost and therefore I must buy a GO ticket from a machine and swiftly because DARTS was 22 minutes late picking me up. But both machines at the GO station reject my purchase attempts (three times each) and I can't seem to stop myself from loudly cursing though I've no wish to draw attention. I cannot miss this GO bus! and at the last minute I'm on it and pleading my case to the driver who lets me in with no ticket.

Another nice man gives up his roomy front seat so I can sit there with walker before me, clinging to it, even with its ornamental "brakes" supposedly engaged, trying to keep it from crashing around the wide aisle as the bus careens around corners.

My folks and I converge at the park-and-ride and they haul me and my gear to brother's house where we celebrate Pops' 76th birthday with booze, nibblies, excellent coffee and of course a hockey game on the toob. And eventually dinner and cake. The niece is two now and starting to gab, and its a joy to finally communicate with this beautiful creature. I gape and snicker at anything she does and she giggles at me delightedly.

The boy is now in grade one and a veritable encyclopedia of animals and dinosaurs. He reads me a simple story about fire trucks before springing into his typical hyper hijinks. Mom, Dad, Grandpa and Nana all take their turns admonishing him and on some occasions he seems hurt. I never do that. Surely we need at least one good-cop; no?

He squeezes onto the couch between my mom and I while she reads a storybook aloud. I make one teasing gesture at him and he's off on a wrestling/boxing campaign against me. I do my best to survive for some time and then beg a reprieve. Dad barks at him. "It's my fault," I say. "I wound him up."

"Stop trying to take the blame for my kids' behaviour!" he says. I didn't know I'd done that before.

The night gets on and the boy wants me to come see his room. I remind him that Uncle has bad legs. He suggests I could at least try. And I do. I climb the damn stairs and arrive at his room. "I have to sit!" I say.

"He points at the comfy armchair; he and mom's reading chair, and says, "I have a chair for people with leg problems!" Later the others would have a great laugh at that.

Soon its time to leave and I struggle and rise. The boy looks sad and presses his cheek to my hip. I cup his shoulder. "I'll see you again soon. Okay buddy?"

The bus home features a more typical arrangement at the front. Two trios of inward-facing seats which are hinged. One set is up, out of use and blocked by bulky luggage. On the other is a young white athletic man, a black woman and a little girl of middling complexion, my niece's age. I cannot possibly sit on my walker seat or leave it alone to become a loose cannon. And I cannot fit it down the narrower aisle toward the rear where there might be a couple available seats. I hesitate and look around.

"I'll move," says the black woman and she jumps up and moves a few strides down to the first empty seat.

"No, I don't want to split you up!"

"It's okay," they say. Their stop is coming up soon. I sit down gratefully and try to rein in my mechanical beast.

"That's what these seats are for," says the guy, nodding at the beast, his daughter on his lap.

I nod at the stroller and say, "Well you've got your burdens too." As if to explain, I then add, "I just came from my brother's place. He has a girl the same age." Dad and daughter have much fun together and I am very happy. These colourish kids strike me very dearly. It's like looking into the future. It's like they carry the flame for a better humanity one day. 

At the end of my ride he wishes me well and I can't resist touching him on the shoulder and saying, "You have a very beautiful family." He thanks me and his expression is that of surprisingly real gratitude.

Not a typical hide-at-home Saturday morning

I managed to snooze for a couple or three hours with Seinfeld providing a soothing white noise. I have to go pick out a goofy tie, perhaps a tie clip, maybe even a ring. Have to give my hair and beard a trim, spiff up some goodish shoes, shower and brush. Lay on some Old Spice (or is that Olde?)

Pack a small briefcase with my relevant notebooks, crossword mag, wallet, keys, mask, pens.

Get dressed, and lumber outside and sit on my rollator walker seat for about 11:15AM to soak up some fresh air before the DARTS bus comes to pick me up.

Catch the train out of the harbour station. Transfer to local bus, exit a couple blocks from the church at about 2:25PM which gives me an hour to migrate the two blocks on foot to get to the 3:30PM wedding.

Remember Rockin' Roddie anyone? He's finally marrying his sweetheart after fifteen or twenty years of dating. Crazy kids.

Knowing Roddie there will be very decent red wine and scotch on hand so I plan to drink like an absolute boss monster and catch a morning train home again. I'll figure it out as I go. It'll be an adventure. I got $20 in the bank and another $25 in my Presto (transportation) account. I can't imagine anything going wrong.

Cheers

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:

This finally

Uh. Hi. Anyone still coming around here?

Lets try to make this quick. Here's what I've been up to in 2020:

- Had to give up my security gig at the War Lab because of increasing pain/mobility issues.

- Ceased working at the welfare office when it closed mid March due to Covid. That same day my Poseidon Security-provided cell phone went tits up. With no home phone I went into complete isolation.

- The War Lab brought me back to work in their small Toronto location where they didn't particularly care if I did patrols or not. Their camera coverage is excellent.

- Developed a subconscious anxiety around my breathing which has been chronically hampered by sinus issues but which had never posed much of a problem before. The CPAP machine is absolutely critical, treating my severe sleep apnea by forcing me to breathe only through my nose. After several virtually problem-free years suddenly I could rarely remain asleep more than a second. I would immediately wake up in a brief panic attack thinking I was suffocating. This became the norm night after night. It was absolute torture. I began avoiding sleep as much as possible to avoid this torture but that became a torture of a different sort. My physical issues and my brain suffered in extreme sleep deprivation. I seemed to know with certainty that I would be dead soon and I welcomed it. I never considered suicide, only a certainty that I could not survive this way and that I did not want to. Working in Toronto paid very well but I was a terrible danger to myself and others by driving in a sleep-deprived state. I had several tricks to manage this without disaster. I was desperate for the income. But it was wrong of me.

- A friend - we'll call her... Julie, was certainly of clearer mind than I and gave me a cell phone so I could get back in touch with my doctor, dietitian and Cat Man, my counselor. I begged them to get me into an institution full time. It was the only way I would survive.

- The doc insisted I give up the Toronto gig if I wanted to keep my license. I did not argue for a moment. 

- An institution was probably not going to happen but the doc put me on a miracle drug. Miraculously: I seem to be breathing a little better. The suffocation anxiety has almost entirely vanished. I sleep plenty now, albeit in erratic short stints day and night; an imperfect but utterly joyful improvement. And my monstrous appetite has been cut in half. And this drug is not even expensive.

- I have a walker now. It's the only way I can get around for more than a few steps. Hopefully I will not need it for long. Physiotherapy is available to me when I am ready.

- I began enrollment in a bariatric program at a clinic which will closely monitor my diet and exercise for a year and a half followed by surgery which will dramatically reduce the size of my stomach.

- I am still on the books for two security companies but inactive and juggling disability, EI and welfare balls trying to get some kind of income.

- I have a shitload of work to do to get my life back. And the false starts are over. I am one hundred per cent committed to this. I did not think I'd ever see November. I will do the work. Covid did not infect me but it pushed me to the bottom of the barrel finally. And finally I'm on the way back up.

Hey blog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG6ZlCpfVvU

Mystery Guest!

Hey kids! It's Game Day here at the A-to-Z and today's game is called Mystery Guest! The mystery guest rolls into your own home town. I'm going to describe the scene and you guess who it is, okay?

So the street is blocked off as if for a parade. Plenty of law enforcement managing things. And now the arrival: two cars resembling unmarked police cars with some colorful flashy lights happening. They are the:

Route Car and Pilot car

They are checking and analyzing the route and considering options if necessary. They are in radio contact with their followers who are about a minute behind them and they are:

The Sweepers

These appear to be motorcycle police; a half dozen or so, and they are another layer of intel and communication. They are also regulating the speed of this whole affair. Behind them by another minute:

The Lead Car

I know. They don't seem to be in the actual lead, do they? But they will take over if certain kinds of shit were to hit the fan. This, and most vehicles which follow, will be of the black, tinted windowed, extra large sport utility type deal. Right on their asses:

The Limousines.

While the limos will carry significant persons, most are playing decoy roles. One anonymous version will be called:

The Stagecoach (or the Spare)

And herein rests the Mystery Guest! Have you guessed who yet? The Stagecoach limo is prepared for every contingency imaginable, including breaking free and going it alone if certain particular brands of extra-shitty shit hit the fan. One of the contingencies on board is a supply of the mystery guest's blood type.

This vehicle is fully armored, with bullet-proof glass. They call such vehicles Beasts. And if you live in a particularly bad neighborhood, many, or even all of the vehicles in the caravan will be Beasts. Next in line:

The Halfback

This one is definitely a Beast and contains some of the most elite security specialists anywhere. They are armed to the teeth and a third row seat will be facing the rear with hatchback wide open and guns undisguised. Next:

The Watchtower

This is a van and you never saw so many bleedin' aerials. This is the radar-equipped, laser-equipped communications hub.

Control and Support vehicles

These are high-ranking VIP's and their own security details. The Mystery Guest's doctor will be among them. Okay we must be done now, right? Not even close.

The Hawkeye Renegade

This is the counter-assault fleet; basically a team full of action heroes trained in every conceivable tableau who are prepared to jump into action and go to war at the drop of a dime.

ID Car

Intelligence Division vehicle. Another communications hub. Also known as the Department of Redundancy Department.

Hazard Material Mitigation Unit

This is a truck equipped for nuclear, chemical or biological attacks. In such an event it will presumably burst like a pinata full of thousands of band aids.

Press Vans

Communications Agency Vehicle (you can never have too much communication)

Ambulance

Rear Guards (generally local police)

So there you have it. Did you guess M.C. Hammer? Jesus? Both good tries. No, it's actually the president of the United States. What can I say, it's an important position. The only person in the world definitely more important than that...

is my mom.

And she gave us today's topic:

Motorcade

Five super-shocking unexpected facts!

So I push the unlock button on my key fob but I don’t hear any faint clicking in response. Usually this means I’ve absent-mindedly tried to use it on the front door of the house instead of on my car but not this time. This time I did in fact point it at the relevant target and the car door opened when I tried, so it must have worked but quietly so. Right?

Wrong. I almost started cluing in when I tried to squeeze my ass into the driver’s seat and it wouldn’t fit.

I discovered that the driver seat had been moved all the way forward. This is odd because it’s an electronic control. I fingered the button to try to correct it while wondering what sort of electrical weirdness could possibly have caused this to happen on its own.

A while back I gave Long Time Companion a boost and he crossed the terminal connections. Since then the beast has suffered a bevy of off-and-on electrical glitches including lights not working for various durations.

The button wasn’t making the seat move so I tried putting the key into the ignition to access battery power but lo and behold - I had no ignition cylinder any more. It was missing, and being the eagle-eyed Sherlock Holmes that I am, I was finally starting to suspect foul play.

It seemed none of my paltry possessions were missing nor were there signs of forced entry, however it’s a very easy car to jimmy; I know. Apparently though, it might not be the easiest model to successfully hot wire. Or maybe this particular thief was a special brand of idiot. Or maybe LTC’s electrical bamboozlement had inadvertently thrown a monkey wrench into the beast’s stealability and he actually did me a favour!

And now as a public service I present:

THE TOP 5 SUPER-SHOCKING UNEXPECTED FACTS CAR THIEVES SHOULD KNOW!

ONE: The most ancient jalopies on the street are generally the least valuable cars on the street. This will negatively affect your profit.

TWO: Due to some peculiar as-yet-understood phenomena, there is evidence of a firm link between personal income and personal purchasing power, which fairly reliably results in fact number three:

THREE: The oldest car on the street is likely owned by the poorest dude on the street.

FOUR: Poor dudes do not make the gamble of buying insurance premiums against theft or vandalism because: A) they are least able to afford it and: B) they don’t expect thieves to target the least valuable car on the street. This is for much the same reason you don’t expect a shoplifter to infiltrate a liquor store for the purpose of pocketing a ten-dollar bottle of Alcool.

and finally FIVE: When you steal or vandalize the oldest jalopy on the street you are generally doing the worst possible damage to the victims who have the least capacity to cope with it, and will suffer the most. In other words, you’re not Robin Hood. You’re kind of the opposite of Robin Hood. You’re basically just a horrible person. Thanks for everything.

Infrastructure

April A-to-Z:  A Celebration of the Automobile! (If You’re the Devil)

Life in Southern Ontario works pretty much like I expect it does in just about every corner of Fabulous North America Ass-Kickers Of The Woeful World: Our loathsome bottom-feeding politicians and our loathsome bottom-feeding corporate elite, with their hands deeply buried in each other’s pants (and from precisely the same community of good ol’ boys) run everything precisely the way they want it, while the rest of us dull helpless mewling sheep either keep their mouths shut about it and enjoy the comfortable temporary benefits of temporarily-upper-tier slavery (most of the people I know) or somehow remain ignorant of this most basic structure of our society (most of the people I generally avoid) or – three – regret the slightly-diminished complicity in our own individual personal circumstances, and often rebel in largely ineffective manners (myself and most of my favorite peeps); all of us having one thing in common: We all let our rulers run just about everything precisely the way they want it.

As such, the future of southern Ontario’s infrastructure is being mapped out with more and more semi-circular toll highways radiating into the countryside, killing farmland and precious biodiversity and paving the way, well into the future, for the proliferation of car culture, car manufacturing, gas stations, drive-thrus, public-raping toll consortiums and as much cash-in-the-pants as politicians and their gleeful gruesome sugar daddies can possibly fondle.

There are pockets of meddlesome opposition to their rosy plans; some of them making a laudable din about proposed mega toll-highway 413, to be built just a few kilometers alongside current mega toll highway 407. One particularly stupid and soulless cretin defended his political complicity in the scheme by claiming “Everyone knows that cars aren’t going anywhere [so we need to build more roads]”.

Of course there are many people who know damn well that cars will be going away, one way or the other, no matter how much we pretend otherwise, or how bad we fuck ourselves over (or rather our swiftly-approaching descendants by delaying this transition. Some are those who have a healthy curiosity for science despite formal education’s best efforts to make science a tortuous learning experience, and some are those who have a healthy awareness of the egoic corruption of the mind and the ubiquitous insanity of the modern human which convinces us that anything normal or common is automatically legitimate (which is pretty much never the case).   

Barring specific technological leaps, near impossible in the short term, Cars will indeed go away. It’s a logical certainty. In no way can the Earth possibly sustain them. But with respect to the A-Z format, that’s a story for another day.

Oh and yeah – It’s April 46^th in Fantasy Writer Guy land by the way.

Oh, and simultaneously it’s April 411^th 2016 with regards to last year’s April A-Z which I have also not officially given up on. It’s my blog. I make the rules. So there!

Health

I think the reason most bloggers do not blog every day is generally because they don’t have enough to say. Or else they think they don’t have that much to say.

I have more than enough that I wish to say (whether appreciated or not). One of my April objectives is to defeat the barriers which keep me from posting. One of them is this: If it’s too simple and obvious then I’m reluctant to say it.

Because A-Z is so structured I feel like there is no room to go exploring on the page until something subtle and useful comes out and thus the subtle useful thing must in this case be part of the plan. And for letter H this year, there is no such plan. But here: let me hold my nose and swiftly get this over with.

April A-to-Z:  A Celebration of the Automobile! (If You’re the Devil)

H is for Health!

When I spent two months between vehicles; after the banana boat was grounded, I found myself in a very joyful position. I was often walking downtown (not downtown Scooterville but rather the village area of our particular burrough) in order to run small errands. I was also taking buses and walking to the stops. I was getting exercise and doing a small favour to the environment. My circumstance was physically healthier and mentally healthier.

Unfortunately the unreliable nature of bus company logistics convinced me that, given my current roster of commitments, I needed my own car again in order to be sufficiently reliable.

There is little doubt I think, that in this chronically obese society, we’d all be getting more exercise and subsequently healthier if it weren’t for our personal cars. The problems with making yourself an exception to this norm include the above instability, which is less a problem in heavy metro areas and a progressively greater problem the less urban you get, as less and less participants (and smaller budgets) leave public transport a flightier prospect; a less-robust system.

Another problem with being the exception in your community is that walking or biking for health/recreation is wonderful on the trails, but doing so out of logistical necessity means you’re sharing auto routes and sucking exhaust fumes the whole time. Not a boon to health.

And that’s about all I have to say on that topic. Short and sweet. And it frankly could have been a lot shorter. I think it’s great to be concise. And I know I’m generally a more concise (and appropriately, more subtle) writer than many. But I have to convince myself that it’s okay to post small pieces. In fact I should try to make it more the norm.

Garages

April A-to-Z:  A Celebration of the Automobile! (If You’re the Devil)

When I was about nineteen and working an entry-level bank job for about 20K per year, I took my first car – a little Toyota Tercel into a Speedy Muffler King shop on my lunch break and reported a squeal which I thought must have been a brake-wear indicator. The slithery, slimy, kitten-eating cretin of a mechanic told me that indeed that was so and I needed new pads, rotors, shoes and drums immediately and to the tune of $1200.00 which was an unfathomable sum to me way back then.

I told him I didn’t have that kind of money on hand and needed to get back to work but that I would soon return. He claimed the car was unsafe to drive and had to stay until repaired. Being precociously skilled at diplomacy I talked him out of my car and fled the place like Luke-and-friends fleeing the Death Star in a squealing Millennium Falcon.

Shortly after I took the little Tercel (everyone always asked me, How’s your little Tercel! To which I finally started replying, It’s the same size as every other Tercel) – sorry. I took it to a little independent garage near my home which I’d never been to before. I think his name was Tony. Or maybe Mario. He gave it a good inspection, fixed the squeal which required no new parts after all, and told me that all the brake components were in such good condition that he would be happy to sign an affidavit guaranteeing that all my brake parts would last at least another year – in case I wished to pursue legal action against the Speedy Muffler King of Crap.

I was wildly angry at the time that this soulless bastard had tried to criminally steal from me and make a disaster of my finances. I went to the Better Business  Bureau and there learned that it takes a gargantuan effort to achieve any kind of truth or justice through the Better Business Bureaucracy and that I didn’t have what it takes.

Tony-Mario meanwhile had won my loyalty and I only took my car to him for the next year or two.

But I couldn’t help but notice that every time I went to Tony-Mario the bills grew gradually higher.

In the decades since I have noticed a rather consistent and interesting pattern. The newer I am to a garage the less my repairs cost and the longer I stay with someone the higher they grow. I have theorized that garages have a general strategy of sucking in loyalty by treating new customers with honesty and then gradually juicing you like a poor defenceless lemon the longer you are lulled into their warm sticky embrace.

A year ago I bought a 2002 Saturn, old but safetied by the selling garage – for $2000.00. I mentioned that I could hear a ticking kind of rattle during the test drive – coming from the front passenger wheel. They assured me it was nothing. I was so desperate for a car, so broke and barely employed at the time, that this deal was a major score and I was cornered into optimism.

The noise grew though, with time, until it could no longer be ignored. Knowing almost for certain I had been fudged with, in terms of a questionable, likely unlawful safety certificate, I took it back to the same place where the head dude, a young fellow whose personality positively dripped with venom, told me I needed new bearings on both front wheels. Hoping he felt guilty and/or scared in relation to the original deception, I hoped for a compensatory discount and appeared to get one: two new sets of bearings of the finer quality for a discounted price and no tax (and thus no receipt – wink-wink). Again I was desperate and accordingly optimistic. I paid the $500.00 knowing almost for certain I’d be getting the low-end parts instead from this lizard but satisfied that our verbal chess match had gone as much in my favor as I dared hope.

A couple months later at most, the noises came back and I took the beast to the garage of my housemates’ preference and there learned that I still urgently needed new bearings on both front wheels; the passenger side most urgently, and that it looked like someone had machined a “hub” in order to fit bearings onto my wheel which neither looked new nor were the right size for my car! And thus I now needed a new hub part as well.

 So I paid yet again for new bearings on the one side which I never should have needed in the first place and vowed to soon return to deal with the driver’s side bearings. I then plotted how I would return to the garage of origin and handcuff the slime ball to his hoist before burning his oily mechanical lair to the ground. “I’ll tell you what, Officer!” I would say. “Just let me stand here in the parking lot a little longer – until his screams stop, before dragging me away to jail – and I’ll sign a full confession! Deal?”

Since then a third garage – one I have pretty good reason to trust due to family-friend connections, indeed declared that I need bearings and on the driver’s side only.

These kinds of stories are everywhere. A friend when I was young was a mechanic and he told me one day, very defensively, that he only cheated customers as much as every other mechanic does and no more. I later stopped being his friend for several good reasons.

For the years that a pal of my stepdad’s took care of my cars – both sold them to me and fixed them – I paid next to nothing each year in auto repairs. Many problems were fixed without even needing new parts.

It’s pretty clear to me that almost universally, garages and their mechanics cannot resist the urge to cheat people for money. They have us at their mercy. I used to buy my own brake parts for the Tercel and fix my own brakes in the driveway. And with my uncle’s help and two years of high school auto shop learning, I even performed my own engine work. Today cars are complex and computerized and we are so dependent on mechanics that they are like evil wizards who will do with us as they please.

I sometimes think that if our society had any actual sane regard for truth and honesty that we would legislate small arena-like garages where mechanics, like surgeons addressing interns, would do all work transparently before our eyes and have to show us our damaged parts in comparison to the new ones and demonstrate the need for replacement and be obligated to answer any of our questions.

This over-replacement of parts is no help to the environment obviously. And the problem is further propagated by garages who give mechanics commission on replacement parts. How messed up is that?

Here’s some advice to consider: If you don’t have a mechanic you trust because either he’s a blood relative or you’re sleeping with him, or else you know where he’s been burying bodies – try going to a new garage every time and see how my Theory of Customer Newness holds up!

And two: Stay away from garages where there is little activity and they can always book you right in, spur of the moment. Because if they’re not busy they’ve probably been scaring customers away due to suspiciously high bills, and now being dormant, are more desperate than ever to jack up imaginary repairs and part-replacement needs.

Good luck. It’s a jungle out there.

Fire!

April A-to-Z:  A Celebration of the Automobile! (If You’re the Devil)

One day when I was a young man, living here in Scooterville, there appeared on the southern horizon a nasty dark haze which centred over the community of Hagersville; a small farming town about a half-hour drive away which is known for several things:

1. The birthplace of Neil Peart; drummer, composer and lyricist of Rush and the most significant musician since the birth of Rock and Roll by my own subjective accounting!

2. The birthplace of Jay Silverheels; the most significant actor to ever follow around a masked man, calling him “Kee Mo Sah Bee.“

3. The place where I lost my cherry to a married high school teacher. We don’t talk about that.

And 4… the place where thirteen million tires at the Tyre King recycling yard caught fire, burned and smoldered for seventeen days while heavily toxic fumes chased four thousand people from their homes.

Expert fire fighters converged from across the nation, employing 350 tanks of air per day and two water bombers normally employed against forest fires. The disaster loosed tonnes of oil into local groundwater and inflicted “rare and aggressive cancers” on many firefighters.

This “lark” perpetrated by five local teens cost ten million dollars and one year to clean up and remains the worst environmental disaster in Ontario history though I do not know by what criteria specifically. A scarred tundra the size of 18 football fields remains there today.

Tire fires, most of which are ignited through mischief or accidental mishandling of nearby legitimate combustion, are either occurring with increasing frequency or else are being reported with increasingly wider circulation. Reliably, two per year make broad headlines in this decade. The second of 2017 has already ignited on March 5th at the En Tire facility in Phelps City, Missouri and burned for days.

E-Tests

April A-to-Z:  A Celebration of the Automobile! (If You’re the Devil)

I left a prosperous I.T. career in order to embrace a simple, reflective, creative, charitable life. It was the best decision I’ve ever made. I work on a plethora of creative projects now; musical, literary and recreational. I do a lot of research and exploration, do some volunteer work and squeak by on a part-time low-income wage. I’ve never been happier.

Every four or so years I buy an old car for next to nothing and together we grow older.

And every other year the Ontario Drive Clean Program kicks the crap out of us.

Every twenty four months I must take my old car – not to the one garage where I trust the mechanic; a friend of a friend of my family – but to the licensed rapist of my choice; a government approved garage licensed for the Drive-Clean program. “Clean” meaning they take you to the cleaners.

Invariably my old car computer kicks out a trouble code or three; whether legitimately or because these strangers, alone with my car, out of my sight, have tinkered with something, I cannot possibly know for sure. What I do know is that I don’t trust these people who invariably deal with me with sharp no-nonsense voices and averted eyes.

Then the magical Drive Clean math kicks in and I end up spending precisely the $500.00 cap plus a little more in order to get a conditional pass (which allows me to renew my vehicle license), some $60 part I’ve never heard of and a baffling receipt detailing another $470.00 in taxes, fees, re-testing fees, labour for installing the mystery part, a perfectly-priced Eco-Check-up-and-Maintenance package(which means who-the-fudge knows what) and then some additional mystery labour for good measure.

I then get the car back with the same old throaty muffler I could have replaced had I not just been financially assaulted, and a mysterious new noise; a symptom of something new gone suddenly wrong with the car while it was behind enemy lines and which will necessitate another garage visit ASAP.

Let me be clear: I’m all for the environment. But every other year when this crap goes down, I could be doing a lot more for the environment with that $500.00 instead of spending it all on fees and taxes and imaginary services.

I get screwed. The environment gets screwed and the government and corporate-owned garages make a bundle of money for accomplishing nothing. In the name of the environment the poorest of us get hit the hardest while rich corporations continue to get away with murder, for instance: documenting their imagined worst-case-for-the-environment process scenarios and implementing their best-for-profit scenarios and claiming environmental reward money as if they’d done us a favour when they haven’t. The injustice always strikes me as deplorable and scandalous.

Drunk

April A-to-Z:  A Celebration of the Automobile! (If You’re the Devil)

 Many years ago – I was nineteen or twenty years old; the age when men think they know everything and if their lives go well, later discover they knew nothing  – I got into the habit of hanging out at a little bar across town. It was the local bar where Bio-Dad hung out every night and got completely drunk before staggering a couple blocks home. I tended to go on Friday nights. A group of five owned the bar and served as its main bartenders. We were chummy with all of them. They replaced my beers without needing to ask – until I stopped them, at which time we switched to vodka and tonics. And if the night grew long enough the vodka and tonics turned into shots of sipping whisky. Then when the bar officially closed at one thirty or so in the morning they’d lock the door and often a few of us would stay behind and help ourselves behind the bar for free.

Sometimes Bio-Dad and I cabbed it back to his place where I crashed on a pull-out sofa, or sometimes I would just retreat to the parking lot and crawl into the backseat of my Chev Cavalier and sleep off the worst of things before drifting home in the morning with a pounding head and a blood alcohol level likely still on the wrong side of the limit. I was not a big guy back then.

But then I ran into occasions where I would go there on weeknights – such as when the Blue Jays were busy winning post-season games every night en route to their first World Series championship. Everyone in the bar got a free shot with every Jays home run. And there were a lot of them. On nights like those I would slip out of the place at two or three in the morning with a work day ahead of me and a need for a short sleep and my alarm clock, and a strong sense of bravado and legitimacy: It’s the middle of the night. No one’s on the roads. Certainly no children. I can see straight. I’m walking in a straight line. There’s nothing to stop me getting home safe and sound. No big deal.

One night I even came out with keys in hand and my car in the rock star spot – right in front of the door. A cruiser with two officers on board sat parked one spot away from me – an empty spot between us, and with them looking on and my nerves tingling I smoothly slid my key in the lock, calmly entered the car, started it up and right before their eyes, calmly and smoothly drove away.

Then one night as winter had come and the roads were snowy and channeled by snow banks, I drove home from the bar in the middle of the night, confident in my mastery of the situation, and then discovered to my absolute amazement – that I was not in control. The lane I was presumably driving in (the lines were entirely erased from view beneath the tight packed shiny snow) was ending, becoming an extra left-turn lane, while I was going straight, and right directly in front of me was a snow bank and a towering steel lamp post.

I cranked the wheel, bumped off the snow bank and then repeatedly over-steered back and forth trying to gain control of the car. Eventually I hit another icy snow bank and came to a stop.

A motorist came by a few moments later and stopped beside me. “I’m fine!” I said with a wave. Soon after I restarted the car and continued home.

In the morning I looked at my car in the driveway. It wasn’t going anywhere. I’d be calling in sick. I’d done enough damage it would need repairs. My partner looked on beside me, knowing full well what sort of thing had gone on the night before. “What have you got to say for yourself?” he said calmly.

I’ve rarely felt so ashamed. All I said was: “I’m never going back.”

Bio-dad has passed away and the corner bar became a number of different retail joints over the years, including a music store for a while. I only ever went back there once: to buy guitar strings.

Carbon Dioxide

April A-to-Z:  A Celebration of the Automobile! (If You’re the Devil)

Heyo!

This should be an easy post to knock off quickly and we’ll let you get on with your day!

The average family passenger car or light truck (of the common combustion engine variety) in North America produces roughly 10,000 lbs (or 5000 kg) of carbon dioxide per year from burning gasoline. This is the most voluminous of my car’s exhaust pollutants which include carbon monoxide, mono-nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons. Yay!

You probably already know that carbon dioxide (CO₂) is a naturally occurring trace gas in the atmosphere which we and other critters exhale and which plant life, inversely, absorbs before spitting back oxygen for us. Very convenient! Yay!

And you probably know that there is way way too much CO₂ around these days and that that is a problem because though it is not the most severe greenhouse gas, it is currently the most voluminous and by most accounting currently the most significant.

Greenhouse effects are awesome! Without a substantial one the Earth would be more like Mars and humans would either not exist or we would have evolved into something more like a sandworm …(*) However…! When a planetary greenhouse system over-evolves you end up like the planet Venus did, where it rains sulfur 24-7 and where an evening stroll on the planet’s surface would pressure-cook you to culinary perfection in a matter of seconds. Yum! At one time Earth would have been on pace for such an eventual state in millions of years from now, however that pace is now accelerating exponentially. Buckle up!

Meanwhile CO₂ emissions from automobiles (with a little help from cement production) is largely behind our smog problems – omnipresent in essence but most noticeable in Los Angeles and  New York for instance (the immense Chinese phenomena stems more from coal burning) and is credited for causing and worsening our most common respiratory diseases and boasts many thousands of human deaths annually and is a fairly obvious major contributor to a rare little-known disease called… cancer.

And then of course there’s all the carbon dioxide emissions which come from the extraction of oil and ore and all the manufacturing and refining that goes into building roads and cars and delivering them fuel. Oh well! It’s been a good day in Hell! Thanks for stopping by!

FWG/New Day Rising

* [Editor's note: the author has no clue under which conditions humans might have instead evolved into sandworms, nor what the heck a sandworm is.] 

Busy Busy Busy…

April A-to-Z:  A Celebration of the Automobile! (If You’re the Devil)

“But there are positive things also,” said the Journeyer.

“About cars? Are you sure? Like what?”

“Like convenience. Like access. They allow us to get places efficiently. We can do more. We can get places we wouldn’t have time to otherwise.”

Those things are all true of course. And they are also all bad.

Everybody driving around in cars is either doing so in order to solve problems which are only created by the existence of cars in the first place, or they are driving in pursuit of something they shouldn’t be pursuing.

Captain Vino once objected to my criticism of long term regional planning around expansion of highway infrastructure and the ghastly proclamation from an idiot politician: “Cars are never going away!” by claiming cars were necessary for such noble purposes as his visiting his young daughter in a town sixty kilometres away; seeming unable to grasp that without the pre-existence of cars and car culture he never possibly would have ended up in this circumstance. His friends, his baby-mama and his daughter would all have lived in the same village as he, the precise experience of somewhere between 97 and 99.9 per cent of humans in history.

We live in a society almost completely absorbed in artificial needs. The existence of cars has allowed people, in their confusion and standard-norm insanity to imagine that their needs are best met beyond their own locality. This “car culture” breeds profit-driven priorities of centralization; the basis for corporate culture. For thousands of years people met all of their needs in and around their own village or on their own migratory path. This has always been possible – and – mentally healthy (I will get to that explanation in another post if not here).

The natural human appreciates and loves their neighbors, instead of regarding them with the repressed resentment which belies the ugly suburban attitudes and architectural trends of the day:  smaller stoops and front yards and larger walled-in backyards. The modern home is more a stronghold than a dwelling. Cars have made neighbors an optional feature of our lives. And overwhelmingly we tend to decline them as we whiz by them in favor of function-specific neighborhoods such as the super mall; the crown jewel of the auto's reign over our society.

Everybody’s busy busy busy… without grasping how artificial the vast majority of their business is. Most of our “needs” are imagined. We seem to need them because everyone around us seems to need them. The more we have the more we want. Technology, as predicted in the past, has indeed enabled a standard 2-hour work day. There is no doubt about it. But no matter how much technology improves efficiency we will keep working the eight-hour day – come ten hour with overtime born of slave mentality, reputation mongering and greed – come twelve hour with travel time. Because we’re blindly absorbed in ideas of capitalist competition which is pure unbridled insanity and contradictory to life itself  if you stop long enough to think about it (again I'll elaborate in another post).

Our needs are so much simpler than we imagine and much of them – the need to contemplate, learn (real learning – the acquisition of wisdom, not factoid collecting) and creativity – are wholly overlooked due to our constant distraction and addictions.

The car enables us to stay permanently distracted and permanently busy because we are insanely enslaved to greed and ego - to our vast detriment. The car brings too too much within our reach while we fail to stop and really look at the things around us; and so we never take the time to discover the remarkable essence of the supposedly simple things in our presence. We never learn to see things - or people - or ourselves - for what they - and we - really are.

Without the car and it’s unlimited access we would be far more inclined toward (and have the time for) the great human necessities of regular solitude, mindfulness, observation and deeper processing of contemplation. All of that is quite present in the prominent philosophical, poetic and religious texts of the world by the way – if you look for it.

The intelligence levels of average western citizens has been dropping alarmingly. We’re breeding cities jam packed with functional morons; instinct robots deeply disconnected from their potential humanity who imagine they are intelligent or cool or special or successful or normal because the inventions of our ruthlessly clever (and ruthlessly unwise) elite have mechanized us with iPods and cell phones and automobiles (and yes – my own laptop) which FEEL like our own extensions; which FEEL like something to our individual credit and which in no way are. They are chains which bind our minds to the matrix. And the thing about being an instinct robot is – our FEELINGS are almost always corrupt; almost always a placebo to lull our weak consciousness into dreamy comfortable submission, while our actions go about destroying us: our society, our planet and our arrested evolution. Because, of course, our instincts have barely evolved in the last hundred thousand years while technology has taken over the world and evolved our circumstances a millionfold.

You and I and everyone we know are Xboxes running on Pong software and this problem is in fact at the root of every problem you can imagine - from war to global warming to racism and to all the rampant - practically ubiquitous - superstitions which warp our minds and society into a whirl of delusion, vanity and accusation; 

We should ask ourselves how useful we would be, as an individual, without any of our tech gadgets – as if they all disappeared one morning. How useful would you be? Think about it. The answer is not simply hypothetical; it is crucial to our existence.

And now I must apologize. I am very tired (three hours sleep last night) and mentally sluggish. I've failed to contain the scope of this post and with no brain left with which to further edit it into something more fair and manageable to read, and the deadline upon us, I must now surrender this beast and collapse in bed.

With regrets,
FWG/New Day Rising

Anonymity

April A-to-Z: a celebration of the automobile! (if you’re the Devil)

Motoring is a lot like the internet.

Just as faceless internet users, be they trolls or often-nice-only-occasional trolls (and I should say “we”, not “they”) sit behind computer screens or cell-o-phones or whatever all you technofolks are using these days, sealed behind a barrier of anonymity, tenuously interacting with one another on the information highway, so do the faceless motorists interact on the oily black highway, sealed within their own metal boxes of anonymity.

When we bump into strangers in the store, on the hiking trail, in an elevator, at a large party perhaps, and with some cause to interact, face to face, eye to eye, we find that ninety nine per cent of the time, we are kind to one another; polite by default, demonstrating that we are nice people; respectful; deserving of our good reputations.

And whether we behave this way because we’re just plain super duper or because we depend on that reputation; that social currency, is a question not often pondered it seems; not aloud anyway. Much safer to just assume we’re indeed super and duper.

Yet if we’re so super duper, why then is the internet a giant cesspool of deplorability? Why are YouTube comments an endless litany of stupidity, hate-mongering and reckless, mindless  insult and accusation?

And why are half the drivers on the road so evidently selfish; loathing to share the road; not bothering to signal intentions, intent on one’s entitlement, blind to opportunities to more effectively use the road to everyone’s advantage; openly resentful of other drivers’ presence? Where did the ninety nine per cent rule go? And on the semi-frequent occasions where drivers are polite to one another, gracious and deferential as I will boast I most often am, are we doing so out of love for our human brothers, or to cajole our own ego, to assure ourselves that we must be super duper?

Again I will boast that I do so out of the former causality, but only sometimes and only since the latter quarter of my life.

The automobile, if I may indulge, is a window to the soul of sorts: this is how we behave when there are no social consequences. This is who we are when no one sees our face. And as I look around at rows of the immovable; intent on owning one’s lane, one’s right of way; adjusting only to further one’s own interest and almost never in order to provide opportunity to another…  the view is rarely flattering.

No. No you didn't

The Toyota Motor Corporation should be given an award for being the most dedicated mockers of people’s intelligence.

Right on the heels of their recommendation that we buy a camera-studded Rav4 in order to turn parking into a video game where we must avoid carnivorous shopping carts on the loose – Oh,  and presumably more realistic parking hazards such as – well: dancing fire hydrants maybe? Evil lance-brandishing gremlins riding giant rats? Am I missing something?

So right on the heels of this indulgent farce; this gratuitous tech-nonsense which no one has ever needed unless they’re such an incompetent driver it is scandalous they have a license, they come out with this possibly-most-belligerent claim I’ve ever heard:

“Can you make joy?” They ask. “We did!” Then you see an image of their shiny car scooting down the road with the label Joy.

I can’t think of a more ignorant message.

A whole lot of people will go through life without ever experiencing a moment of legitimate joy but could any be so hopelessly removed from the possibility as automakers?

And by automakers I mean the masterminds who shape our culture: our car culture. I’m not talking about the people who are trapped within that culture with me and who happen to be employed in the car industry because they require employment.

Joy is a product of truth, beauty and love. Three things which automobiles fiercely oppose.

You know what? Come back in April! I have decided on my next April A-Z topic: Twenty six important perspectives on the automobile. And I promise I’ll try to be polite about it!

The origins of a TV commercial

Scene: Toytoyo Auto Corporation, head office executive boardroom, Tokyo Japan

Present:
Chairman: Dudley Warbucks
President: Akary Toydoyo
Executive Vice President: Macrame Nekktai
Executive Vice President: Screwge Makduk
Director of Innovation: Ernst Bloefeld
Director of Shizzle: Simian Scythe
Director of Plebe Manipulation: Hachiko Tigama

Toydoyo: Listen up, homies: I’m having some cash-flow concerns. I’ve only got sixteen swimming pools across 14 of my mansions. I need more and of course more staff to care for them. I’ve got mistresses in twenty eight different countries who all want a raise and higher credit card limits. All my private planes are more than five years old and need replaced and Satan has upped my monthly payments again. We need to invent some new consumer needs to fill and fast! What have you got for me?

Bloefeld: We ran out of believable ideas a long time ago!

Scythe: For the domestic market; yes, but not for the Western market. They’ll believe anything. They watch dum dum television all day and night.

Bloefeld: Ah, yes. For the western market; we have many ideas.

Toydoyo: Give me your best two!

Nekktai: We’ll choose the most believable.

Makduk: No. We’ll choose the most profitable!

Warbucks: We will make… the most profitable… the most believable.

All others: Ahhhh!

Warbucks: Won’t we, Tigama?

Tigama: Of course.

Bloefeld: (tapping his laptop keys) Okay. Here is the idea I like best: We appeal to their environmental sensibilities. We make a commercial telling them how driving from west to east is causing friction against the Earth’s spin, and how that friction causes heat which contributes to global warming!

Scythe: Are you crazy, Blofeld! Do you know how much money we’ve spent shutting people up about the global warming contribution from autos! You’ve come off your noodle, sir!

Bloefeld: But wait! We then introduce our new anti-earthspin friction condenser! It fights global warming!

Nekktai: Climate change. Not global warming. Climate change sounds less dire, and kind of fun.

Bloefeld: Of course. Of course. (taps a few more keys) We’ll option it on all models. Big money.

Makduk: It doesn’t sound believable at all.

Tigama: The Yankees will fall for it.

Scythe: Yes, and then the Canadians and Europeans will fall right in line. They copy the Yankees in everything now.

Toydoyo: What will this condenser equipment actually do?

Bloefeld: It will make the air conditioning work better. They’ll feel cooler which will ensure them they are fighting global warming!

Warbucks: I don’t know about this. The environmentalists are pretty smart. They might kick up a fuss about it; launch a campaign.

Nekktai: Our advertising budget is a hundred thousand times what theirs is.

Makduk: The greens are not so smart anyway. They think that recycling and windmills will save them.

Toydoyo: (looks confused) Well, won’t they?

All others: (stare at Toydoyo, aghast)

Toydoyo: (falls apart laughing)

All others: (fall apart laughing)

Scythe and Tigama: (fall off their chairs laughing and have to re-seat themselves)

Makduk: You had us going there!

Toydoyo: (wipes tears from his eyes) What else have you got, Bloefeld?

Bloefeld: Okay. I warn you: this one is even crazier. You ready?

Toydoyo: Go on.

Bloefeld: You know the camera we have on the back of some models? For backing up?

All present: (look around at each other and then start to giggle)

Warbucks: That’s one of my favorites!

Toydoya: Did we come up with that?”

Scythe: I wish.

Bloefeld: I think it was a Yankee. They put them behind their giant campers because they couldn’t see behind them and they’re too lazy to go look in person before getting into the driver seat.

Toydoyo: How did we convince them they needed a camera behind a Rav 4?

Tigama: Commercials that said the devil will steal your soul if you look in mirrors too much.

Warbucks: Excellent!

Bloefeld: Now we will tell them that one camera is not enough! We will put cameras all over! In every direction! And then turn the windshield into a solid widescreen TV instead!

Toydoyo: Genius! We can partner with Netflix.

Warbucks: Stop it! You people got that idea from the car in the Daybreakers movie!

Bloefeld: No! This is different!

Nekktai: Why would they want these cameras all over? How do we convince them?

Tigama: They’ll want them. Westerners are lazy. They hate the idea of having to turn their head to look at side mirrors or out windows. They find it unbearable!

Makduk: I don’t know. This may be too much, too soon.

Warbucks: Agreed. But what if we leave the windshield alone for now? And just add the 360 degrees camera system option?

Tigama: Make it 380 degrees. Sounds better.

Nekktai: Some of them will know there are only 360.

Scythe: A small minority.

Tigama: We tell them the Earthspin friction has caused a rift which accounts for twenty new degrees of direction.

Warbucks: No! We’re choosing one innovation here. Not integrating both.

Toydoyo: That’s right. So now we choose.

Makduk: The Earthspin story is far more sensible. The camera thing is strictly nuts.

Bloefeld: But the camera thing is more profitable.

Toydoyo: Then that is our answer. We need a commercial that will convince them they need the extra surveillance!

Scythe: Imagine this scenario: we have a married couple in a Rav 4. They’re backing up and almost hit a homeless person!

Warbucks: No homeless people! Don’t remind them of charity! We want them spending all their money on cars.

Scythe: An unwashed hippy, then?

Tigama: They call them hipsters now. And that won’t work. Our target market would just as soon run the hipster over. They don’t like hipsters.

Toydoyo: Why?

Tigama: They mistrust everyone who’s different. I guess they don’t understand why anyone should have different priorities. Plus they’re secretly resentful I think. They have a vague notion that the hipsters are kind of smart and more responsible; socially and environmentally, and they're afraid of looking selfish in comparison, I guess. I don't know.

Toydoyo: I don’t like it. Keep the hipsters out. No allusions to responsibility! I want them thinking about buying shit!

Scythe: How about a living shopping cart then? Or a robot shopping cart? One that will be their shopping agent and help them buy lots and lots of shit really efficiently! People would love that! But they wouldn’t want to back into one. It would scratch their paint. And every westerner knows that a pristine car finish means a pristine soul!

Toydoyo: I like it!

Warbucks: I love it!     

Tigama: Me too! And we’ll make it a nice red Rav 4. Red makes people hungry or angry! And angry hungry people want to buy more!