Restless Browsing

This is not good. It's only 11 days into winter and I'm already climbing the walls. The good news is that I managed to cram and jam my skis in this new car despite it's smaller interior space. The bad news was that after doing that, and cruising to the ski trails, I found out that they were still lacking enough snow depth to be groomed properly. I went home disappointed, forcing myself to do responsible adult stuff when I returned there.

As much as I abhor giving patronage to any shop on Remembrance Day, I cracked - after being penned up inside, constraining myself to focusing on household tasks for the entire day, seeing that I couldn't go skiing. By the time evening came, I needed to flee from here.

The problem is that there's nowhere to really retreat to at night when lots of businesses and restaurants are closed, even when a statutory holiday falls on a Saturday. My appetite was sated and I was full and had no need to eat anywhere, but I found out that Indigo was open, and my restless mind was hungry; so I stepped into there. I just purged my place of a huge whack load of books, but I couldn't resist seeing what I would alternatively collect for my shelves. Touring the bookstores and libraries isn't just a quest for good material to read; it's an effort to discover the kind of book I'd like to write. This entry is a visual collection and reflection of what my literary tastes and other entertainment modality was shifting to as I browsed the store.

The book best suited for me

on this kind of evening.

A cookbook that I should be

learning from

The kind of cookbook I should

be writing - Sample 1

Another sample of the kind of 

cookbook I should be writing.
There is more profanity in this
one book than what I think I
used in my entire lifetime.
It gets the point across though.

Three books I'd want for a prolonged

trip to my desired European destinations.

The Joy of Less appeals to my philosophy of minimalism.

Another alternate form of porn
of stuff I'd lust for, besides for
whatever's in the Best Buy flyers.

The poetry I might be able

to appreciate.

A comical journaling

exercise book  in a format

that I wish I dreamt up of first.

The magazine I should be reading

A preformatted checklist that I

should have. However, the items on it

aren't 'weird' enough for my place.

There were also games I noticed that I'd be interested in collecting too . . . from old school to ancient school.

Ultimately though,  I ended up shaking off the urge to do any mindless consumption, realizing that what I probably most needed to do was retreat into re-reading and reviewing my own journal notes: ones loaded full of half-cocked plans, semi-mapped ideas, hair-brained schemes, and other lists that I wouldn't share here and the beginning of solutions to other challenges I may have ahead.

5Q5A: Summer Holiday Stretch 2017 (Part 1)

For the past while it seems, I’ve been becoming very paranoid every time I book holiday time: because it feels like I’ve been jinxed or cursed, for the past few times in frequent succession, by something that either afflicts me negatively health-wise, or else presents itself as some other crisis to respond to that gouges away at me financially, robbing me of funds to do anything more adventurous. As a result, lately I haven’t been too committed to even make any travels or definite plans for extended leave, just out of pessimism and cynical belief that some recurring pattern of this will happen: with something coming along and ruining things for me anyway. So far, this time around, some whammy, bad karma, or some other force of malevolent juju hasn’t befallen me (yet). However, now I’m deprived of anything of novelty to do, and starting things off in this suck-ass rainy weather of today doesn’t help. I turn to writing as my last resort to noodle things out, and to try to put things into perspective in 5Q5A format, to also hopefully prevent me from rambling on too much.

Q1. If I can’t away anywhere, what things can I do to at least “mentally vacate”?

A1. My regular weekend routine involves just doing my own laundry/housecleaning, or hacking food

My favourite thing to do alone as a kid was

assembling model airplanes. Here's what I

walked out of that store with: a cheaper

than plastic option, and a whole lot

more to build for a cheaper price.

to pieces and applying some form of heat to them, and maybe preserving this stuff. All still labour-intensive projects; all still a lot of work, and it’s certainly not 100% leisure. I thought I was going to try to test how far I could still run with my infarct-afflicted lungs. Of course, that didn’t happen given the rain. One other thing I thought of doing was taking a prolonged break from all this “being-an-adult-with-responsibilities” bullshit. The trick then is to think like a kid. With me not being, or having been a parent, I have never had many opportunities to view the world vicariously through the eyes of a child: watching them grow, or interacting with them as an adult through play. If brought up right, kids are usually uninhibited in using whatever creativity, wonder, and genius they have: before too much progressively invasive adult reality dulls that shine away from them. To get back that quality involves finding some place where adults go to supply themselves with stuff to exercise some new creativity, and the place to spark that kind of stuff was Michaels art supply shop, to find some sort of craft supplies. I did find something that tickled my fancy, and made me a bit nostalgic of my own childhood. My next stop will probably be at Lee Valley, to collect some precision tools, if making little airplanes isn’t going to entertain me.

Q2. What was the thing that came closest to being bad juju then at the beginning of this holiday?

A2. My beloved coffee grinder, one that was gifted to me over 20 years ago, finally kicked the bucket - a bad omen perhaps. It served me well. I always have whole bean coffee here; never that stale pre-ground crap. There is no shooting off into new realms of inspiration or creativity here from ground control without the right kind of caffeinated rocket fuel early on in my day. And with nothing else to grind my beans, that is a problem. I tried using my blender for grinding them, but unfortunately, the resulting grind was too course and it just couldn’t do the job right. Thankful, I found a replacement for a bargain.

Q3. If expense and travel time weren’t factors, what would have the plans otherwise been?

A3. Something like the list of the following things, on some madcap adventure throughout Northern Europe spending time:

·         Exploring the local castles

·         Picking random stops along the London Underground, and just wandering around for days staring up at the architecture

·         Cycling around Copenhagen and Amsterdam and taking in the outdoor markets and cafés

·         Touring the Viking Museum in Roskilde, Denmark

·         In a jacuzzi full of Swedish bikini models*

·         Gorging myself on fresh seafood in some seaside bistro along the Brittany coast of France

·         Visiting the D-Day battlegrounds and memorials (Juno beach)

·         Having my ass-end warming some barstools at various pubs in Dublin, and in other Irish communities

·         Doing whatever else Anthony Bourdain would be doing in those regions, and taking time to write some memoirs of these jaunts (He’s a lucky son of a bitch, and I am so envious for the job that he has!)

Q4. If then resorting to cheap(er) thrills, what are they?

A4. Not exactly a cheap thrill, but being in a rut of boredom, depressed by the dark sky and rain, and otherwise void of inspiration, I made a trip to the casino, and thankfully won a little money, just enough to cover some of the cheap thrills I bought throughout the day. The beer I brewed last month has cellared long enough to sample; I’m at least well-stocked with that. The best score so far for this early part of holiday time in terms of simple things (apart from a bargain priced new coffee grinder, and model plane book), has been an ample supply of . . . super fresh Black Mission Figs. The first time I ever had a fresh fig in my adult life seemed like a religious experience**.

Foccacia Bread baked with fresh figs, unripened goat cheese,

and seasoned with mint, pepper, and a little drizzle of salt

and olive oil. This, plus some olives, and some wine cured

dry salami as some chacuterie was my lunch. The rest were

just simply eaten raw, and some were reserved to be pickled

in balsamic vinegar.

That happened several years ago in St. Catherine’s, Ontario. For that I thank a certain Mr. Testa, an old gentleman Italian immigrant, who is also my cousin’s father-in-law, who offered me the experience of what one of these things actually taste like in their perfection: fully ripened, and eaten within seconds after being plucked off of its tree proper. Simply amazing! The fig tree he had grown and husbanded himself was his personal treasure. It stood only about two meters tall, sheltered in the very centre of a very orderly greenhouse, as if presented there in a shrine-like display, surrounded with all the other pots of herbs, pimento peppers, and various other plants he used for crafting his own homemade canned antipasti. The tree was itself a product of carefully and mindfully placed grafted scions, according to some tradition of his Old Country, which gave it a perfectly sculpted symmetry. It was like an oversized, fruit-laden, Bonsai tree. Amidst the branches of this tree were smaller pots of soil, tied and secured to them. The soil surfaces in these pots were contacting the bottoms of the crooks of the smaller boughs. These pots were triggering root growth on those nodes of the branches, which when established, he would then cut these rooted branches away from the main tree body. It was his method of propagating new cuttings, which he either further nurtured separately, or sold as new little fig trees; I was very impressed with this resourcefulness. The tasting a fresh fig now always reminds me of this sort of ingenuity and pride. The same kind of pride my Dad had for his blossoming apple tree earlier this spring. Fresh figs are a rare find in this town, so scoring some by happenstance was a real bonus. So, I grabbed up as many as I found practical to use, given how perishable they are.

Q5. What is the next thing to invest in for having a decent summer holiday locally?

A5. Given that I’m conveniently only a block away from the riverbank, I’d really like to explore the

city, and the southern riverbend, from rowing around on the South Saskatchewan itself. The only watercraft that I might be able to carry there and back by myself is a shorter (2.5 - 3 m) kayak. The only things that keep me from outright getting one is the question of storage space (it would have to be hung from the ceiling of my balcony, a possible condo regulation infraction), the question of how to transfer it safely in and out of the building (I mentally engineered a pulley system from my deck, like casting away a lifeboat), and the fact that if I capsize the thing, my own comfort and ability to swim equates to that of a thrashing, drowning cat - even with a life jacket on.

Although thankful that I won’t be at work for a while, it feels like the grip of boredom and a mindset dulled and numbed by previous stessors has to be shaken off me in a drastic and desperate manner: like Houdini escaping from a straight-jacket in a tank of water kind of deal.

I have eight more days to reckon with all this.

*- I struck this out, not because it was a thing I had already accomplished (I’m sad and sorry to say), but because, if I weren’t travelling alone, if I ever did reach Europe, I’d ideally be traveling with a female companion, and I wouldn’t think she’d approve of this sort of frolicking and cavorting on my part. Secondly, of all the things on that fantasy list, this one would probably be as likely to happen as me being struck by lightning not just once, or twice, but thrice!

** - Buddha himself allegedly found enlightenment just sitting meditating under a fig tree, so perhaps it’s not some sacrilegious hyperbole to say such a thing. It makes me wonder if he indeed partook and relished in eating its ambrosia-like fruit.

The Ukrainian Project/Український проект:Day/ День 60, Fluency/Швидкість 8%

Український дуже складна мова. Це найважчий мову, який я вивчаю. Я знаю тільки прості речення. Найголовніше про це в тому, що вона вчить мій розум читати інший алфавіт.

Translation: Ukrainian is a very difficult language. It is the most difficult language that I am learning. I only know simple phrases. The most important thing about it is that it teaches my mind to read in a different alphabet.

It is near the end of the second two month period of learning another language. This time, I chose the hardest of my set of six to practice. It is strange to progress from the easiest (Swedish) to the hardest in the repertoire, but that's how the random selection worked for me; plus, all the other remaining ones in the set would look easier after doing this one. So, why is Ukrainian one of my target linguistic ambitions? Like for the last language project (The Swedish Project), I provide this summary of reasons:

1. It's one of the languages of my heritage - One weird fact about me is that I taught myself how to read Ukrainian alphabetical script before I ever really learned any of the language. My grandmother used to share our family's post office box with my parents, and after she died, her issues of the "Ukrainian Voice", a Ukrainian language Canadian newspaper, still came in our mail. I figured out the alphabet by myself when I was in a more precocious phase of my adolescence, merely out of the interest of being sneaky and trying to "break a code". And I did it, using only a copy of this newspaper and a bit of pattern recognition (I was a weird kid!). As for learning to actually communicate the language, it was sadly lost upon me. I never got to learn and understand anything from my paternal grandparents, and by the time I started getting a better aptitude for it, sadly, both of them had already passed away. Even if they were still alive when my interest in learning the language may have peaked, they weren't exactly scholars themselves, and I don't think they would have had the patience to teach me at that age. I do this to sort of honour them. It's a shame that out of all their grandchildren, I'm probably the only one who could find their tombstones in the cemetery they are interned at, since the engravings on them are all in Ukrainian. This leads me to the next point . . .
2. To not lose my knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet - I find it strange that my Dad, who was immersed in Ukrainian in his youth as his first language, can read cursive written Cyrillic script but not the alphabet printed form itself (or it at least doesn't come to him as instantly). He may have once, but somehow it didn't imprint itself well enough, and it became lost in the lapse somewhere between his ages of eight and his eighties. I suppose it's proof of the adage, "If you don't use it, you'll lose it." I hope not to have that same deficiency as I age. This is the practice I need to avoid such illiteracy. Personally, I really like the Cyrillic alphabet for the fact that all the consonant sounds in Ukrainian are presented with single letters; no strange couplings or illogical looking diphthongs, or tricky silent letters are there as in English (ch, sh, th, kn, ough). You'll realize how superior it is to the Latin alphabet when you compare it to a Slavic language that doesn't use it, like Polish. The consonant sounds made in Polish sometimes need up to four Latin letters strung together (like "szcz") to represent the same sound that is written with one letter (Щ) in Cyrillic. That, plus along with using the horrendous montage of accented characters Polish has would make typing it a nightmare. Polish and Ukrainian, given that they are neighbours geographically, have many similar cognates, except the same sounding word in Polish may be written with eight Latin letters whereas the one in Ukrainian could probably be spelt with four in Cyrillic. Ukrainian has a tough vocabulary and a bitching hard set of grammatical rules, but once one is acquainted with the alphabet, it becomes at least a relatively easy language to spell despite some of the tricky pronunciations. For me personally, knowing this alphabet has already been useful in garnering employment in the past, working at a museum and cultural centre, so it validates and verifies to me that it's not such a useless thing to learn.
3. It's a true survivor - It's impressive and simply amazing that this language still even exists at all given the tumultuous history of Ukraine itself. The etymology of the name of Ukraine itself derives from a something akin to meaning "borderland". The region has long been a route for traders and invaders, given its ease of access with much of it being flat steppe land, meaning that it has long been a disputed land and a target for conquest from the early Eurasian groups like the Huns, Mongols, Tatars, Turks, and other Eurasian steppe tribes , to the Vikings, Poles, Lithuanians, to this last century of Austro-Hungarian Imperial rule, and of course ending off  with Russian Communism, and hostile Russian expansionism up to today. So many of these empirical forces, coming at all sides of it from Europe and Asia, either by brute force, or slower forms of assimilation, could have washed away this language off the face of the Earth and making it extinct, like what has happened with so many aboriginal languages on this continent. But, the Ukrainian language remains alive, despite all the historical upheaval of conquest and subjugation of the darker political forces. The resistance and resilience of the people and the culture and language of that region pretty much sums up what Skinny Pete said in the movie, The Italian Job, that being: "If there's one thing I know, it's never to mess with mother nature, mother in-laws, and mother freaking Ukrainians".   
4. For simplifying and softening the introduction to Russian - Ukrainian is closely related to Russian, which is one of the other of the six language modules I'm learning this year. Russian is the more unfamiliar one. I'll explain more as to why I'm learning it in the entry I'll give about the future progress with that.
5. To have an avenue of some connection with potential ancestral ties - It's doubtful that I'd ever step foot into the "Old Country", given the political unrest occurring there, even for the sake of taking a genealogical tour to get to sense of what my roots of one half of my heritage are. I'm far too estranged from whoever there are left of the relatives that live there now. That's a real shame. The insular nature of Communist rule severed the contact we could have had with each other. However, I won't discount the chance to somehow reconnect with any relations there, just as there is some contact made with my Mom's relatives in Britain now.
6. Learning tough grammar cases helps to better learn (or at least question) those noted in my own language - The sobering revelation one [an Anglophone] gets through learning a language like Ukrainian is understanding how stupidly ineffective and imprecise English can be in comparison, and how dastardly difficult it is for others to learn it. There is lots of English grammar that is technically imprecise, and heavily reliant on context. I cite this following example: if you were Ukrainian  and just learning English for the first time, and heard the spoken words "mother's milk", what must go through your head if you had an especially analytical mind?* First of all, just hearing (not reading) the words "mother's milk" with the Ukrainian ear isn't enough for this listener to define which case is being used. It could be: 1. mother's milk: (singular genitive) - like the mammary secretions from a nursing mother, 2. mother's milk - like a glass of milk belonging to mom that is going to be used instrumentally for consumption, 3. mothers' milk (plural genitive), milk from more than one mother, (except in Ukrainian it may be corrected by perhaps pluralizing the word milk to "milks" because logically, more than one mother doesn't make the same milk in one collective breast), 4. mothers' milk - where more than of a set of mothers share the same container of milk to use, 5. same case as 4. except there is more than one glass of milk involved, and then 6. let's not forget that milk is also a verb in English, so another question that can brought to mind to the Ukrainian listening is, "What are the mothers milking?". All those noun cases can be indicated with the single oral utterance of "Mother(')s(') milk**" in English, but yet the words are not orally/aurally differentiated to represent each one of them accordingly. However, in Ukrainian, that isn't so: the declension of the nouns between singular and plural genitive, instrumental, accusative, dative, locative, and vocative cases make each one of those situations I mentioned a lot more defined and accurate grammatically, or at least pertinent enough to better distinguish whether it's some mother's glass of milk, or her actual breast milk on the table, along with a more exacting degree of plurality. Out of all the languages I'm learning, Ukrainian has the most (confusing) case declension forms to deal with. It's very daunting, I must say.

The things I find challenging and difficult about Ukrainian is a very long list and would be too exhausting to explain. I will focus on the positive though. For now, at least I can: a.) readily identify if something written in a Cyrillic alphabet is Ukrainian or not (as opposed to Russian, Serbian,  Kazakh, Belorussian, etc.) b.) figure out the verb conjugations with a bit more intuition, and c.) at least know enough for a few manners, to explain that I don't understand well, and to politely ask a person to speak slower.

Now for the list of my favourite words, or at least the one's in Ukrainian that I find interesting. I'll transliterate them to the Latin alphabet for your ease of reading:

1. Туман - Tuman - It means "fog" or "mist", but more colloquially, I learned from my parents that it's also a word used to mean something like "fool" or "dummy" (they didn't use it on me as far as I know). I would guess that the relationship is derived from the same sense as we would say in English that we are trying to think with a "foggy mind".
2. Птах - P'takh - It simply means "a bird" or "the bird"***. It's funny to me because, if you are acquainted with the Star Trek universe as I am, you'll note that it's pronounced the same way as a frequently used Klingon insult. If you ever saw the comedy film, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, the same sounding word, presumably from Hebrew, was used to suggest some context or action involving the union of genitalia. Ukrainian takes a word that sounds profane or vulgar in other languages (fake or real), and makes it mean something a more neutral and natural.
3. Пю - P'yu - The first person present conjugation of the verb "to drink", as in "Я пю" (I drink, I am drinking). I like it because it's one of the more useful and shorter words in Ukrainian, like "go" and "do" are in English, despite the fact that with my English speaking brain, it sounds like you are doing more stinking than drinking. It's probably purposely made that way as a matter of convenience, and thus indicative of how drinking is a culturally popular thing for Ukrainians to do.
4. Дякую - Dyakuyu - It simply means "thank you" (it literally means "[I] thank").
5. Літак -Litak - A very unique word meaning "airplane". Unique, as in most European languages borrow and incorporate the common initial word (Like airplane/aeroplane/aviation, or things like telephone, or computer) to describe some invention or machine that is so relatively modern in relation to the language. The word for air is in Ukrainian is "povitrya" ([stuff/substance] of the wind), and the word for craft or vehicle is something else very long; they don't compound together to make some single word to mean aircraft. The only other unique language variants for airplane of my set of languages I'm learning that I know of so far that isn't derived from scientific Latin (air/aero/avian/aviation), is flygplan in Swedish, and German's Flugzeug (literally meaning "flight tool")
6. Розумний/Зрозуміти - English kind of denotes the verb "to understand" and the adjective "smart" as two different concepts. However, Ukrainian somewhat depicts them as sort of stemming from the same thing. Rozumniy (розумний) means "smart", and the verb Z'rozumity (зрозуміти) actually means "to be (become) smart with . . . " to reflect and equate to the infinitive of "to understand". "I want to be (become) smart with Ukrainian", does essentially mean the same thing as "I want to understand Ukrainian."
7. Сто - Sto - My favourite Ukrainian numerical word: a nice short word one meaning a hundred, having as many letters to spell it as the number has digits. I just wish the rest of the numbers in Ukrainian were so short with non-tongue-twisting syllables.
8. Хочу, можу, буду - 'I want', 'I can', and 'I will', respectively. Three modal verbs, when followed by a verbal infinitive, save me my lots of time and agony struggling to think of the correct conjugation, and allow me at least limited ability to express future tense.
9. У мене є - oo meneh yeh - It's a rather peculiar alternative way of saying "I have". Я маю машина, literally means "I have a car" whereas the other form (у мене є машина) roughly translates to "(in/at/of/for) me [there] is a car. Weird stuff there.
10. Голодомор - Holodomor - Like on my last language project list, I reserve spot number 10 for the most foul and depraved words, in my opinion, of that language. Even though it technically isn't a form of profanity per se, the word for "famine" draws up a perverse and horrible historical memory in this culture. When this word is said, it instantly is associated with the man-made famine, in the 1930s in Ukraine, imposed by the Stalin regime in that region that killed millions, some speculate even a number equal to that of the number of Jews killed in the Nazi death camps. The word doesn't just mean famine, it means something more akin to "murder by hunger". What could be more profane than a word expressing a political will to reduce millions to starvation by confiscating all their food? The fact that Ukraine at that time was part of the Soviet Union made awareness about the event virtually unknown to the West, either because of the insular and secretive nature of Stalin's brand of communism, or there was no interest or collective sympathy for any human beings living under communism, or because the Soviet Union was needed later on to take pressure off the western expansion of the Nazis, and needling Josef Stalin about this issue at the time wasn't a good measure of diplomacy to gain his involvement as an ally. So, attention about the matter of Holodomor in the Ukraine was purposely and conveniently kept out of the news to placate the tyrannical bastard, who throughout his life, was responsible for exiling and killing more people through his rule, mostly his own citizens, than his rival, Hitler. 

The adventure of learning and collecting new words continues from here onward. In summery, between learning Swedish and Ukrainian, I've been practicing one or more language modules each and everyday since the New Year began, roughly 120 days straight. I've just opened an envelope and revealed to myself the random pick of the next intensified language project to do. The next two month quest for improved linguistic proficiency . . . German! Thankfully, it's something a little more familiar, with the advantage of me knowing someone who could tutor me through some conversation.

*- Looking at language learning through this reverse perspective, I'm a lot more forgiving to my paternal grandparents for not learning very much English. They didn't have the advantage of something like an Open Door Society at the time when they immigrated. Knowing this, I am more empathetic to other newcomers here whose language is vastly different from English, and who are trying to rebuild their lives away from something oppressive.
**- I just noticed that putting the apostrophes in parentheses makes them look like a couple of upside down breasts with an "s" between them. This milk example is creating an obsession.
***- Like languages like Latin, Russian, and Chinese, Ukrainian doesn't use doesn't use definite or indefinite articles like "the" and "a/n". It's convenient in some ways, but not for others.

Time and Lifestyle Revision

Making an entry just before, during, or shortly after the Spring Equinox rolls around has become an annual habit for me. However, I have nothing exceptionally notable to speak of about it though, because winter continues to domineer, pushing spring out of the picture. The only significant thing going on with me since my last entry is adapting to new rigours and cycles of a full-time position line. New freedoms, gains, and openings for opportunities are countered with just as many new restrictions, disadvantages, and losses. The positives and negatives have been balancing themselves out to a zero sum after putting weight to them. I can't get too comfortable with this because it seems that things are in the works where I'll have to make more re-adjustments to my life on account of a new schedule coming to play. Any previous plans and changes I made to organize my own calendar for the rest of the year have all been in vain. I'm stuck now with the dilemma of trying to decide which new line would best suit me, and what I'll have to book off just for the sake of bargaining in the near future. I'm not going to comment anymore about it. My comments and criticisms about my job stay at my job. I can only say that I'm trying my best to not allow what is bad to become worse. My writing time here is for honing my lexical sword; to clear my head and escape from work related stuff rather than get more absorbed in it.

I drift now to being thankful for any schedule stability, and to the subject of "time" in general. I reflect on how hellishly complicated it was back in the day of tracking of my part-time/casual activity: to formulate and re-formulate equations that calculate time for automating the schedules in a spreadsheet, and how lucky I am for not to get swamped with dealing with that situation again. Even with a substantial set of intricate pre-formatted functions to use in Excel, it still is tricky business that totally warps the mind, with all the multi-variable base unit/numeral conversions, fourth and fifth degree nested conditionals, and other weird and sloppy things involving Boolean algebra that I formulated, all for the sake of it having some veneer of something customized that looks outwardly "simple". I confess, I've had several brushes of coming close to buying a one way ticket to Loonyville while trying to program such a thing. It was like the modern equivalent of handling that legendary ancient book of secrets in alchemy which supposedly drives a person irreversibly crazy if one attempts to read more than one page of it at one sitting while trying to pursue such intellectual prowess.

One remnant of eccentric appreciation I gained after doing such a feat was thinking about alternative ways to measure time. Working at unconventional hours already prompts me to think about time in stranger metrics by default, but messing around with various time calculations accentuated it. I worked in a scheduling office, where I was responsible for overseeing multiple streams of time. I frequently ponder time-related thought experiments perhaps more than most: some realistic, some nonsensical, involving time zones, especially while I travel on long trips. Time travel science fiction intrigues me. Although I rarely choose to wear a watch, I've become an amateur virtual horologist: a mental collector of watches*. I developed a fancy for those with unique dials, settings, complications, and readouts. Maybe it stems from an inherited taste for such things, as one of my Dad's hobbies is making clocks. However, he just prefers to work on the casings rather than dealing with the instrumentation. My own obsession with time has been further provoked with the will to start running again, and with my own recent trial of fixing my own battered sports watch by cannibalizing pieces from another of the same make. ** I'm also one of those weirdos who has an instinctual practical understanding of how the tachymeter dial actually works on the bezel of a high end timepiece, beyond it just being decorative. Of course, such a feature is rendered now obsolete with GPS-equipped cellphones and sports watches. Given that digital chronometric precision is getting cheaper, and with the functionality and multi-tasking of what a wristwatch, like the new Apple watch, can do today, it makes opting to wear an analog watch seem as anachronistic as wearing a top hat and spats.***

But I still love classic watches. It's the only fashion accessory/jewelry I would bother with wearing****. I remember how getting a watch for my twelfth birthday made me feel a little more manly and mature, because it felt like I had to be more responsible with minding the time: something that a kid doesn't normally have to do. And given that I've been quite preoccupied with the subject of time as of late, I thought I would share at least one example of a watch that is in my mental inventory that I would indeed consider getting in material form; one of them that is perhaps an honest reflection of my character in both form and function. Is it a Rolex? An Omega, or a Cartier? Nope, far from it. Those ones I mentioned are nice and elegant, but I don't believe in putting on airs to display some sort of pretentious bullshit elitism. Is it the equivalent of a Swiss Army knife in terms of number of functions? Again, nope. My watch of choice is more like the AK-47 assault rifle of wrist watches*****. It is a Russian model, or to be more accurate, a Soviet model. The watch I'm talking about at first seems rather plain, but yet it is incredibly unique in looks and function. It is surprisingly very low-tech in comparison, and yet durable enough to endure the ends of the Earth . . . literally, in two different meanings.
 


A model with cities as time zone
markers. Luckily, I can read Cyrillic.

The timepiece I'm mentioning was initially especially designed for submariners, and for enduring scientific expeditions in the Arctic/Antarctic. It is unique in that the dial is a representation of the actual 24 hour day. It isn't powered by any fancy-schmancy long-life batteries, or a solar cell, or eco-drive technology. You have to physically wind it like an old time pocket watch. It sounds stupidly primitive, but it comes to be truly practical when you're stranded in a remote polar region, or stuck in a metal tube undersea for months: environments with little or no light for a solar cell. Whether you're under the ocean depths, or near one of the poles of the world, thousands of kilometers away from a convenient place to shop for a replacement battery for a more modern/digital/smart watch, this feature is seems pretty sensible. The other practical, yet ominous, advantage about having a wind-up watch, is that as a submarine crewman: someone who is responsible for either delivering, or being a target of, some big bad nuclear boom-booms, is that a battery powered watch becomes useless once it's struck by the electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) from an atomic blast, while a hand wound one doesn't. If a watch is designed to survive and work through Armageddon, it might be able to endure the rigours I can put a watch through. The unconventional 24 hour dial face also has advantages. It makes calculating differences in time zones easier to do at a glance. When one has to be responsible for tracking military activity and communications of a nation that spans across 11 time zones, or computing targets in an entire hemisphere, it's kind of an important feature to have. The polar advantage is that you don't have to pull off mitts to press buttons to get such a reading. If you are wandering around somewhere remote and then get lost, the watch can also serve as a crude compass, at least during daytime. It is conveniently configured such that the hour hand follows the sun, so point the hour hand towards there and then the 24 hour mark on the dial points to the north (the 12 noon mark points south). Given what I already said, this is exactly the kind of watch you'd want to have if you are enduring a zombie apocalypse or something.



The Submariner Model

I'm certainly not appreciative, or waxing nostalgic, about the time when Communism was a dominant force in this world and a real threat to be reckoned with; me liking this watch this isn't at all an endorsement of that. However, I am appreciative of the ways where low-tech stuff has a practical use and a place, and I'm respectful of common sense and the power of how far one can go by taking a seemingly counter-intuitive action by designing for simplicity in response to some things. Sometimes we get too caught up in the pissing contest of over-developing technology to do simple things, and to be over-reliant on it can come to the point where it becomes almost shameful and embarrassing. For example, back in the days of the space race, the Americans spent a hefty sum and used a lot of engineering manpower to develop a pen that could write in zero gravity. The Russians used their own approach to solving this writing implement problem . . . it was called, "using a pencil".

*- Watches have a short live span whenever I wear them. The one actual, non-sports watch that I do have is 14 years old and I've replaced the band on it four times already. I see no need to put them through abuse unnecessarily, and it would just be wasteful and covetous to keep hoarding them as material things. It is enough that I have a large inventory of the ones I like in my mind alone.
**- I was unsuccessful. I neither the tools, nor keen eyesight, nor steady hands for such a repair. An eleven dollar purchase from Amazon may help with this. It beats getting another $170.00 plus smart watch. Frugality rules!
***-My apologies to those who like Mr. Peanut and Scrooge McDuck.
****- Watch Pulp Fiction again to understand how important the sentimentally of a watch is for some men.
*****- A related entry, The Thing That's Too Well Built..

Boxing Day Sale Shopping/Being a Decorum Dummy

I've recovered enough to at least arrive at a place to be of better humour. Recently, I was educated more about the Aboriginal shamanistic ceremony of "saging" a home. That involves the burning of a bundle of dried sage grass to produce a smoke smudge used to purify one's living space; to cleanse it of negative energy, and to drive out any unwelcome evil spirits. I learned about this by the way of someone I know, who chose this practice to close off this year: a more unfortunate one for her, and to prepare to open their home up and invite something better to come in the New Year. The Japanese also have a custom of welcoming the incoming New Year by cleaning their homes near the end of the old one: every room, from ceiling to floor. This is done to welcome the presence, and good favour and fortune of their kami, the god-spirits of the Shinto religion, into their dwellings. I have my own pre-New Year habit that is similar to that of the Japanese one. I've been cleaning in my own place as well: not so much to invite the right kind of benevolent spooks and divinities in here, but more to be mindfully organized, and to clear and set a stage for efficiency and order that will hopefully help to attract some form of prosperity, of any kind, in the New Year. Given my condition, I started today to break the process into modular phases. It should all end on New Year's Eve. I don't give much credence into stuff like conjuring up spirits, feng shui, or anything else that is as oogity-boogity. However, after this latest bout of events closing my last month and a half of this year, if rearranging furnishings and scrubbing things down coincidentally helps to rid this place of any lingering bad karma around here, I have no objections to it. I don't have any sage; I do have some sandalwood and musk incense though. I started to burn that too, just to cover my ass.

I also have another custom in my home as I organize stuff: not done so much out of superstition, but out of prudence and frugality. If I bring in a new furnishing, appliance, or technical fixture into my home, I'm relegated to clean at least the whole room where it will be stationed or stored, and then sell off/repurpose/donate/throw out the same volume of stuff (if not more). Such a ritual prevents me from accumulating clutter; and encourages me to be more thoughtful about balancing my living space, to avoid being wasteful, and to seek practical alternatives (if any). Knowing that there is ultimately an obligation (or penalty) of having to press myself into some distasteful task of cleaning later also psychologically prevents me from buying anything rashly and impulsively. Thus, to be effective and efficient, I tend to do my home furnishing shopping near the end of the year when the Boxing Day and Year End sales are on, when prices are slashed, and I'm when scheduled to clean anyway.

I looked in my living room, and said
 "I gotta have more cowbell!"
 However, that didn't happen.
Instead I did the next best thing
 and found more cowhide. Ella isn't yet
 sure if she likes it.

That past month and a half of being stuck in here and staring at my mostly naked walls has been a real sobering revelation as to how much my own condo really isn't my vision of what I would think of as a truly comfortable home. It's actually very devoid of any reflections or signatures of my true personality. Most of the time, it is just a glorified dog house, as it is in fact Ella who is the being that spends the most time inside here, strewing her chew toys all about. For me, because I spend the majority of my week at work, this place ordinarily is just utilitarian space where I sleep, bathe, do laundry, and cook and eat the occasional meal. With having all this time off, I was dumbstruck after realizing just how little time I actually spend living in here while I'm on my regular work schedule. The decorum, or rather the sad lack of it, is a true reflection of that. I realize that because of this I'm kind of reluctant to invite other people over. It's no wonder I've been staring at screens all this time, because I really don't consciously want to look at anything else around here. A few other things also prompted me to think that I should put more thought into making this a place more personalized with creature comforts, and less like a place where it looks like Value Village busted in here, drunk in the middle of the night, and vomited up random junk in every room. Things like, receiving some pictures of my brother's family in the mail, they deserve to be hung in special places. I made myself a promise to keep junk off my kitchen table and actually use it for eating my meals, instead of plunking down in front of the TV and eating mindlessly. I have a nice new(er) rug now to dissuade me from doing that, because I don't want to risk getting it soiled. Rather than collecting a new piece of technology, like I initially planned to do, I instead chose to go on the grand adventure of at least window shopping for decorum for my place.

So, I ended up taking a trip to HomeSense where, as per their moniker, I thought they would have a lot of obvious things to make a house even more homelike. To be honest, I was in a loopy/crazy disposition for much of the day, perhaps due to being (finally) hungry and having low blood sugar, right along with my already impaired uptake of blood oxygen, so my observations tended to get a little weird and skewed toward the realm of the right-brain. I made handy use of the camera on my cellphone to serve as a visual memory aide. I'll declare and affirm right now that I'm by no measure any kind of expert on home decorum, but I am wise enough to see and know what kind of crap is out there that doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. I found a lot of instances where the store should have been renamed HomeNonsense. The following paragraphs and pictures I've listed are the random observations, home utilities, objectives for my own place, fancies, and other home-oriented concepts that made me wonder what kind of dope various artisans and craftsperson were smoking after viewing some of the stuff I saw there.

Observation: The Mega-Pot – I stumbled across a kitchen pot that would be every hard core home brewer's wet dream. The damn thing must have had at least a 120 litre capacity, a larger capacity than the fuel tanks of many half ton trucks. Being shocked and surprised, I was being silly and flippant at the moment when a young girl of seven or so, and her mother walked up to stare with awe at this strange anomaly along with me. I like kids at that age because their questions and answers are imaginative and spontaneous. Just to see the reaction, I turned to the young girl and said out loud:
"I wonder how many babies you could pack into that sucker?" She began to laugh and giggle uncontrollably, and I chuckled along right with her. Her Mama however didn't seem to appreciate this moment of levity, and kind of began to usher her away from me. At least the daughter had a sense of humour. The presence of this thing begs me to question: what kind of home is out there in which the wholesale purchasers of HomeSense thought it would be a perfectly sensible move to market a friggin' 120 litre cooking pot? This thing was made of stainless steel, and already heavy by itself.

Filled to capacity with liquid, it would easily crush my average-sized stove, that is if I could have ever got it on the damn thing! I guess this thing must have been there for that exact instant when a Hudderite colony should wander into their store looking for something to adequately cook all their borsht for them (for a whole bloody month!), or if the Jolly Green Giant comes along looking for something to steam his peas. I was going to get the young girl to stand by it to get a sense of the scale of this thing when I took the picture, but she and her mother already left, probably looking for Security. HomeSense 0, HomeNonsense 1.

Objective: The far wall opposite of my entrance at the end of my hallway – Initially, I thought I would hang a mirror on this wall space, to give it an illusion of greater space and depth. Then I thought again about when I'll be arriving home after work at night, and how I really don't want to have an instant reminder in seeing just how ghastly, disheveled, and bedraggled I look after an eleven hour day when I come through the door. I would want something a hell of a lot more welcoming than that. I may have to get creative and try to paint my own picture to hang there, but I think so far I like this one. HomeSense 1, HomeNonsense 1.

Objective: a utility, Drink Coasters – How is it that I'm using a drink coaster all the time when I'm at the bar; and yet I'm not so civilized enough to have them handy around my own home? Lord knows I do most of my serious drinking here at my own abode. Maybe I just don't set my glass down long enough around here. Apparently, throughout all this time, I've been one of those innovative bachelors who has figured out that any corner of a newspaper, or a DVD case, or the open end of one of my socks to slip around a drinking vessel works well enough to keep condensation rings and dribbles off my coffee table.

As eccentric as I am, I don't really use this kind
of makeshift coaster, but I was curious as to
know what the visual actually would look like.

However, that just doesn't work if I'm endeavoring to attract and keep a more sophisticated ilk of company. So, I decided to get some coasters. After looking around there without any success, I finally approached one of the stock clerks at the store: a somewhat scrawny, yet strangely attractive and comely young blond woman.
"Excuse me, where would I find the drink coasters?" I asked plainly. The look on her face after my query was one of an attempt to stifle bemused astonishment.
"We have no drink coasters here." she replied with a thick Slavic accent, sort of almost half spitting the answer at me before she turned away. I couldn't help but to react like this was the stupidest thing I ever heard. How in the hell can an establishment, dedicated and devoted to decorating a home with ornaments; a place that sells seemingly endless varieties of stemware, cocktail glasses and coffee/tea cups; a place that sells a plethora of tablecloths, trivets, place mats, napkins, throws, slip covers and other surface protection paraphernalia not have a single goddamned set of drink coasters in its whole entire massive inventory?! I'm being led to believe that there are dinner parties out there in this town where even the more elite homes are having their guests using magazines or their own socks slipped on their wine glasses to protect the furniture because there were none to be found anywhere. HomeSense 1, HomeNonsense 2.

Observation: Ridiculous packaging – Selling bottled water here in Canada apparently wasn't already a stupid enough idea. Unless you were going to a place with an actual tainted water supply, there is no need to buy bottled water here. Now, I just found something that trumps even that for marketing imbecility. Yes, that is, A BOX OF WATER!!! . . . a 5 litre box of water,

They actually have to add the
word "Happy" on the label
to encourage the miserably
stupid people to buy this.

packaged like it was exotic bulk wine from Chile or Australia. It's not even imported from some exotic locale, it's from right here in Canada sitting on that shelf. . . WTF !!! I was tempted initially to pick it up and check and see how outrageous the price was for such a thing, but then that impulse was quickly halted by the self-conscious fear of having some onlookers watching me handle it, and thinking to themselves, "Look at that stupid fucker over there, he is actually thinking about buying that BOX OF WATER!!!
 
Another thing that pissed me off and made me think about how affluence is making us devolve into something that is so much stupider as a society is what is in this next picture. Look at it. Kinda pretty, isn't it? Is it some finely-crafted chocolate bon-bons from Switzerland? . . . Nooooo! Is it an intoxicating fragrance from some boutique in Paris? . . .Nooooo! Is it a package of high-quality rolled up silk handkerchiefs? . . . Again, Noooooo! This is actually a package of plastic bags for collecting DOG SHIT!!! Why is it packaged like this? Is it to give people a fleeting window of appearing superior to someone else when they whip one of these out and bend over to pick up after Rover? I began looking for some gold-leaf embossed toilet paper there after I saw this. HomeSense 1, HomeNonsense 4.

Objective: Decorative, yet manly – Adjectives for things that I will not have in here: frilly, ephemeral, sparkly, pink, yellow, lacy, chiffon, fluffy, sheer, silky; that already eliminates about 40% of the merchandise in HomeSense. There are some things there that would suit me, but would go out of style too quickly as I mature. There are some definitely non-feminine, testosterone-charged things that guys embrace a little too willingly to use as ornaments in their homes, like antique license plates, sports memorabilia, heads of antlered beasts, or even the more ridiculous collections of swords and battleaxes. Unless there is an impending attack by a horde of Visigoths over the hill, I really have no need to keep medieval weaponry around the place. The same goes the relic pieces of vehicles: if I don't want that crap cluttering up my garage, why would I then draw it into my actual living space?

The weird manly things I'd probably have around here are wood carvings and figurines of animals, mathematically complex sculptures, hand puzzles and classic board games, and signs in tasteful calligraphy that reflect a simple personal philosophy, like what is seen on this serving tray. HomeSense 2, HomeNonsense 4.
 
Observation: HUH?!?! – And finally there is home ornamentation there that I just have no words for, as it just boogles my mind as to what kind of home these things would actually belong in. HomeSense2, HomeNonsense 6.

The perfect something for the gay cowboy/cult leader in the family

I don't know what this thing is supposed to
represent, but I can think of a few people
I'd like to have sitting on it.

A house is just walls and a roof, but a home is defined by the characters in it, which in turn are often reflected by the objects and artifacts that they chose to include in it and collect. Sadly, today's shopping trip was a reminder that there will always be people stupid enough to buy water in a box in a nation where it's free on the tap, and others who are pretentious and idiotic enough to by dog shit bags designed by Gucci. I wish all it took to cleanse these sorts of people away from me was burning some sort of herb. If I had only one wish for the New Year, it would be to encounter fewer and fewer people with this degree of stupidity. If that happened, about 90% of my problems in life would probably disappear.

Addendum: I at least managed to find some bloody coasters. I went to Pier One (a place too dangerously close to the Future Shop) for them. This time, I was helped by a stunningly beautiful store worker . . . another one with a thick Slavic accent coincidentally, but this time with some very pleasing proportions. They are of a black alligator skin texture (the coasters I mean, not the physical assets of the woman I mentioned). Nothing too pretty, and yet nothing too corny and cheesy: something you'd expect to find in a more sophisticated man cave.

Hunkering Down between Covers

For me, the most unwelcome sign that marks the first day of when Old Man Winter comes to stay is not the actual sight of the snow, nor any characteristic of the chill in the air. It's from something like being awoken in the morning, like I was this morning, to the wretched sound coming from outside of ice being chipped, and scraped off from encrusted windshields in the parking lot or from the sidewalks, especially when the snow follows a soaking rain, like it did last night. I can detect other's frustration, loathing, and negativity surrounding the ordeal by the force and rhythm used with their scraping tools along these slick and pebbly surfaces as they are smacked with the disappointing reality of having to chisel and rasp away at their ice-encased vehicles just to get into them. It is a sound representing things grinding down to a bleak despair for most, in knowing just how much extra effort and energy it takes to just move around and do even simple tasks for the next few months.

From that noise alone, even while my eyes are closed in the dark of my room, with my curtains drawn, I can readily form a perfectly vivid and exact picture in my mind as to what the actual scene outside looks like as to: how much snow fell, where it blew in and accumulated, what its exact texture and moisture composition is, and just how bad the conditions of the roads and streets are, all before I even try to move out of bed . . . which by then, I don't want to do. I wish I could impress you with some intricate and elegant Sherlock Holmes-ian style and manner of deduction for determining how all this happens precognitively, but it really doesn't involve anything that intellectually sophisticated. It's an instinct that one eventually gets after living here in this particular region, as a Canadian; enduring too many years of long harsh miserable winters. One innately develops an instinct for sensing accurately how inclement the weather gets out there without even making direct contact with it; with even the most minimal of sensory input. It becomes a feature of the mind that one doesn't want to admit or appreciate having: since once this instinct is triggered, a long depression tends to follow.


A small sample of some of the other covers that I like slip
 between other than the ones on my bed. If the books in my
entire collection of digital editions were physical hardcopies,
they would make every shelf in this place buckle and break. 

After getting up and glancing outside out the window to discover how accurate and correct my suspicions were, I sadly stowed my bike away, and started rummaging around my storage spaces for my woollies, skiing equipment, and block heater cords. I also uncovered and sorted out all the remaining physical bits of reading material I own. It reminds me that I've been going into a slump with that too: acquiring and reading the "right" books for my personal hardcopy library. There are books that can be read over and left hidden away as digital copies, and others that somehow merit some distinction of what I'd like to incorporate as concrete physical features in my dominion: ones that are true representations and summations of my personal character and identity. E-reader apps and tablets are wonderful things, which I will always use, but they lack the ability to project an air of your true passions and interests in an organic fashion and fusion into your living space that books with actual physical covers do. It's kind of the same way for people who collect album covers/sleeves to reflect their musical/artistic tastes, even though current digital audio technology has left analog LP records in the dust in terms of sound fidelity ages ago. It's sentimentality: something in people who need, or long for, a physical object or icon to make abstract things of thought and memory coalesce together.

Here is a small list of some of the hardcopies of fiction and non-fiction I'd proudly have in my home library that I have yet to collect:

• The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Complete Works of H.G. Wells
• Moonwalking with Einstein - Joshua Foer
• A Clockwork Orange - Antony Burgess
• Gulliver's Travels - Johnathan Swift
• Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
• Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
• The Alchemist - Paulo Coello
• Life of Pi - Yann Martel (I had one, but Ella chewed it to pieces as a puppy. . . BAD GIRL!)*
• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
• Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson
• Seeing Farther - Bill Bryson
• Physics of the Future - Michio Kaku
• Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond
• The Origin of the Species - Charles Darwin

*- Perhaps another advantage to having an e-reader. . . unless your dog starts to chew on that too.

Early Snow, Combo-Abundance, and the Hell of Clothes Shopping

As I mentioned in one of my postings, I'm finding it a bit of a downer after the dump of snow we received a couple days ago; knowing that if it remained until spring thaw, we would be having nine more weeks of snow coverage compared to last winter, when we didn't get a lasting snow until sometime between Christmas and New Year's Day. Of course last year was an abnormal winter in its lateness, just as this year is abnormal in its earliness. Nature, I guess, is just balancing itself out. Normally, for this region in Canada, the snow that lasts through all the winter season arrives in mid-November, and remains until around the end of March. There is a small chance that this recent snowfall might still disappear, but with the temperatures predicted to drop to minus 15 ºC overnight this weekend, I highly doubt that it will.

The coming of this early snow is prompting me to think and do several things that work interdependently and consequentially with each other:

1. I dig through my closets to switch over my clothing for the season (also see point #10).
2. I pitch out, or put aside to donate, clothes which are overworn, or which don't fit or suit me anymore.
3. I'll be taking my clothes to one of local thrift stores, which would be having a higher business volume now due to Hallowe'en coming next the week.
4. While there, along with contemplating the irrationality of having a traditional observance in the year where we celebrate the supernatural, superstitions, and stuff that scares us, I calculate the degree of waste occurring when we buy 'ceremonial' clothing or costumes that we only use one day within a year (or in our lifetime) to wear. 
5. After donating my old stuff, I'll be forcing myself into the arduous task of shopping for the list of clothes and winter gear that I may lack.
6. I think about how much of a pain in the ass it is for me to shop for clothing (leading to point #9)
7. With the coming of the snow, it triggers me to wonder how close to Christmas it actually is (exactly two months from today I realize), and hence make it a point to try to procure some extra savings for the holiday.
8. I monkey around with figures more to avoid depriving myself before and after the Chistmas holiday.
9. I'll willingly opt to stay inside more, giving more attention to my home environment (convergence at point #12).
10. After digging through my closets, and knowing running outside isn't very safe anymore, I pull out my home gym equipment, and try it out (more to ease my guilt about buying this stuff, and yet not using it on a more regular basis). Also serves as a reminder to not let myself balloon out of the few well fitting pants I have because of more physical idleness during winter.
11. Thinking back to point #7, I spend more time thinking about what practical things I could use around here which I could get on the Boxing Day sales. Skip to next point.
12. Being inside my place more leads to more tinkering with things and cooking (as home economics projects to save some money, point #7), and playing around with more puzzles and number games to quell boredom. I also resolved to use this winter to read more, and re-learn things about science and advanced mathematics (and making practical use of them, as the case through exploring and answering point #14).  
13. Thoughts of avoiding a sense of deprivation (point #8), rummaging through my closets and drawers (point #1 & #10), clothes shopping (point # 5), messing around with recreational mathematics (point #12), add to that the ridiculous manner of consumption and hoarding I have been witnessing a few people partake in, leads me to think about the last point as a open ended question about other psycho-social problems regarding greed and coveting things:
14. Why can't people use more common sense, arithmetic, and logic to determine:
1. The possibilities and abundance they already have through the application of probability and statistics?
2. How much is 'enough' before wasting more time, money and energy on items that become insanely superfluous and turn into a ridiculous collected/hoarded surplus?
3. The most efficient way to shop for stuff, and how to sense better about which things are 'wants' and which are 'needs', especially if one is already the sort that is on a fixed income*?

Let me provide an example, especially relating to 14.1 and 14.2. Suppose all your clothing vanished from your closets except for eight of each garment of your basic essentials**: in this case (thinking as a guy), they would be eight pairs of shoes, eight pairs of socks, eight pairs of undergarments, eight pairs of bottoms (trousers/jeans), eight belts, eight T-shirts, eight overshirts, and eight outerwear garments. Let's also suppose you have the right style going for yourself with each garment (i.e. each pair of pants will suit well with all the shirts you have, all socks go with the all the shirts and shoes you own, etc.). Thus, you would then already have 8⁸ ,or 16,777,216*** different possible permutations to wear as ensembles out of just this bunch of clothes alone. Supposing even that you eliminated choices by a wearing fresh ensemble of each kind of clothes item each day of the week, after randomly picking out your first outfit (as per the conditions of the ** footnote), within those seven days you still have 7,907,396 possible ensembles to choose from through the whole week(7,907,395 choices technically, since you would be reduced down to one pair of shoes, one, pants, one belt, one shirt, etc., by the last day so you would really have no choice left to make to dress yourself) even as you eliminated options by tossing each ensemble set in the hamper/not using them for the rest of the week after you wore them for a day.**** Knowing this now, how could you ever feel deprived if you stopped and looked at your closet with even more stuff in it than what I just gave as an example? The fashion police, compulsive clothes shoppers (whose delusions I just torched), and a few teenage daughters, are still already probably plotting to put a price on my head for mentioning this. Mugatu has probably already selected and trained the assassin to do it. I'll probably be strangled with a piano key necktie in my sleep (see Zoolander, hilarious movie).

If this is what's possible with just eight shirts, eight pants, eight pairs of underthingles, etc., can you imagine what goes through a mind like mine when I'm faced with the challenge of gazing at racks loaded with clothes in a store, and having to pick out something? Option paralysis takes over, and that's why I need the assistance of a female friend with a keener sense of my sartorial style than I have, to help me with colours, cuts, patterns and whatnot; to at least help pick out one item out for me and to provide a foundation to shop around, or else I'd be forever wearing jeans and plain T-shirts.

For regular day to day affairs, so long as what I have on fits right, feels and smells clean, and doesn't brand me as being some sort of friggin' redneck/cowboy or any other kind of hoodlum, I could care less about what I'm wearing, or having matching tags, or comparing my wardrobe to what someone else has on. To be honest, the famous people I have most respect for are those who coincidentally use the equivalent of plain brown wrappers as garb. Billionaire Warren Buffet, the Wizard of Wall Street, being as rich as he is, got away with wearing unpretentious simple cotton shirts, slacks and a blazer for a long time before finally being pressured by some cohorts into "looking respectable" by moving up to wearing $1,500.00, off the rack, Zegna Italian suits to work. Steve Jobs' business attire was a black turtleneck, jeans, and Nike runners. Mahatma Gandhi got by with even less. Their wisdom overshadows any flaws in dress and appearance they may have had. People who constantly have to overdress*****, to me, are doing their damnedest to try to shield some insecurity, or other major defect in their personality. I sure as hell won't trust some guy wearing gold jewelry, or a $3,000.00 suit, who is begging for money for a ministry, that allegedly preaches the words of wisdom of a Jewish carpenter who did his mission by wearing only a simple robe and sandals.

*- Like those reckless spenders I've been watching.
**- By essentials, I mean the kind of clothing that you walk out of your house looking presentable and feeling comfortable in 95% of the time. I'm being generous here with the number eight, that's one of each item to wear each day of the week, plus one extra to have on stand by should you have to change once midday if you slop something up, or to have something to wear while you are using one of the days in the week to launder your other outfits (unless you do your laundry naked, but that's your business). For the sake of a little more simplicity, I eliminated null options (going without a jacket, sockless, beltless, or going commando), or else there would be nine options for each respective clothing article.
***- Another way of looking at this: if each and every day you tried to wear each one of those different combinations of that given set of clothes, without repeating any one ensemble exactly, you'd have to live roughly 45,933.5 years (leap years accounted for) to do it.
****- [number of choices for each item]^{(number of items in ensemble)}, therefore adding the remaining possiblities made by each elimination for each day throughout the week, ( 7⁸ + 6⁸ . . . +1⁸ ), yields the remaining possible permutations. I was totally wrong earlier with a posted answer using a factorial analysis. This entry may yet need corrections. This is exactly the point of my wanting and trying to learn advanced math. I know do well enough that the answer is a hell of a lot larger than 23. It's a number still large enough to challenge the status quo about how one can have tremendous outcomes with relatively few options.
*****- This includes overdoing it with the makeup for women.