Old Dead Drunken Authors and on Writing while (somewhat) Impaired

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with fools. -- For Whom the Bell Tolls  

What the hell do adults do alone in Saskatoon after 10:00 PM on a showery May evening: something that's somewhat stimulating outside of the regular home life, yet not too abnormal? If one isn't into the NHL playoffs and generally dissatisfied with all other television programming, plus no appetite to speak of, with the bookshops being closed (not that I'm really in the mood to read anyway); when one doesn't care to waste coin visiting bars, or a cacophonous casino; when the cinemas have nothing special to show, and when it seems too late and unsettling to abuse caffeine and sugar at donut and dessert shops, there really isn't much else to do by oneself at this hour enduring sleeplessness*. So, one tours around cyberspace, while at the same time retreating inside one's own head; it's doing me no favours. It seems to be too busy in there as it is. I only have more insomnia to contend with later it seems: if I don't do something about it. It's times like these when I reflect and speculate on what notable people did in the past: those who didn't have such options for entertainment and yet were creating it for others, and who have suffered relatively more than I have. The topic is also spurred by a strange fact in a posting thread I read earlier, and stunning myself with noticing strange connections.**

I couldn't think of much else to do for now but to remain at home; propping myself in front of my computer keyboard, with a tumbler glass full of whiskey, starting this entry, and perhaps pretending for a while that I can pull off a Hemingway, i.e. having something profound exit my mind and onto a page whilst I'm half lit, that is if I am not made sleepy first by my libation. Whatever gets crafted as a result afterward, for better or worse, I'll credit to the liquid inspiration. As much as I choose to avoid drunken outlandish storytellers in bars, I am however intrigued by some of them when they end up committing their words to paper

Ernest Hemingway could at least verbally draw something fantastically vivid out of a scene that others would ordinarily find trivial. The copious amounts of alcohol he used for fuelling his process was his gimmick modus operandi. The question about whether he was a writer with a drinking issue, or a drunkard with a writing issue, still remains debatable amongst his critics. One can't fault Hemingway much for becoming a drunk though. After all, he did witness the worst of the resulting suffering from the savagery along the frontlines during the first World War as an ambulance driver, until he was wounded himself. Booze was probably the most convenient tool around for dealing with what was called "shell shock" at the time. I suppose he made the best with it as he could.

Edgar Allen Poe is another example who comes to mind, who has my respect as being another writer, who was a hopeless sot, yet who was still able slap together sentences well enough to make them stir one's senses with eloquent, yet macabre, diction relating to things intriguingly mysterious. He was a sickly and melancholy fellow for most of his forty odd years of an odd life. Drinking lots surely didn't help him, except only to be probably more disinhibited to find the right words for him to express with ink and pen. To write literature well, I suppose some sorts need to reach a certain degree of pathos. There's no shortage of that stirred up from excess imbibing of liquor. There's a fine line as to when it turns from a help to a hindrance.

It's interesting, and yet kind of sad, to know just how many of the best critically acclaimed literary works out there are products of someone's neurons being basted in ethanol, or other narcotics and psychedelics. Perhaps, when it comes to writing on a level that's appealing and impactful to all sectors of society, it's just proof that if you are intelligent and keen enough to use grammar effectively, one has to contort the mind such chemically to observe how weird, warped, and surreal the rest of society is as to give it a fair and accurate commentary as well. Probably that's what Hemingway was alluding to in the quote above. He also said that he drank for the sake of making other people look better. That definitely doesn't work for me. It's not the kind of writer I'd want to be. Again, using the examples of Poe and Hemingway: Poe ultimately died alone and penniless, wearing someone else's clothing under mysterious circumstances, and Papa Hemingway sank to such a low that he cancelled himself off with shotgun blast to the head. There's no glamour there I must say.

My whiskey is finished . . . enough about that. I'm not so seasoned as either a hardcore boozer or a writer, so I'll choose to stick with just this one glass. After reviewing what I just wrote, I still seem to be rather lucid.

This reminds me that the Top of the Hops season approaches, and I'm debating if I should go this year. For now, I see no reason to this time.

*- My only other feasible entertainment options for the evening were non-adult things: like videogames. We laugh at our house pets and think how kooky it is when we pull out a laser pointer and make them chase a projected dot, but isn't that what we ourselves are essentially doing when we try to chase and maneuver around sets of pixels on a screen with some control interface? In that perspective, playing videogames isn't exactly very creative or intellectual either. Contraband things could then be listed after this I'm sure.

**- An article about E.A. Poe, and about how he sort of predicted a shipwreck with the name of one of his characters in one of his stories (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket) being identical to one of the victims who suffered the same fate under the same circumstances in real life (cannibalized on a lifeboat) occurring several years later. The name of the character was Richard Parker. It struck me then that it was also the same name given to the tiger on the lifeboat in Yann Martel's book Life of Pi. This wasn't coincidental. I found out that Yann Martel purposely chose that name for the tiger in his story based on these uncannily identical, yet temporally separate literary/actual events. It's like Poe time travelled.

Winter Solstice 2016

It's the day with the longest night of the remaining year, which has only 10 days left in it now. I still haven't made any significant effort to do any gift shopping yet for Christmas . . . shame on me. I thought I'd procrastinate yet some more with making another entry. I thought the previous one would be the final one for the year, but instead I'll make it the penultimate one. I sheepishly admit that I woke up right at sunrise (9:15 AM here) on what is already the shortest day of the year. Judging on that, I guess I'm already not too ambitious to do much with the rest of this day. After a copious volume of coffee just to open my eyes, I then finally finished the last stages of piecemeal piddling around with catching up on correspondence, and re-integrating the rest of my digital music library to cloud storage to play with all my Bluetooth devices (whoopy-doo). While doing that, I found some celebratory music for the day. The perfect sort of musical selection I picked out to make a uniquely sort of pagan-esque Canadian celebration of the coming of this solstice day is the progressive rock album 2112 by Rush  (21/12, today's date, get it?). The word "solar" is uttered a few times (in a voice that isn't in Geddy Lee's regular constricted-genitals sounding timbre) within the opening 20 minute overture. It seemed appropriate given that today marks a solar phenomenon.

It makes me wonder, how we (we, as in people like me who are of Northern/Central European heritage) would celebrate this time of year if Christianity, or any of the other two Abrahamic religions, didn't dominate or influence the ethno-cultures of this part of the hemisphere, and we remained true to more pagan beliefs*. The Celtic, or Germanic tribal holidays, like that of Yule (Jul) probably would take over. We've already incorporated so many of those pagan traditions into the Christian Christmas ethos. Like the author Jared Diamond**, I'm a believer in the theory that we are like any other animal: our biology and geography is our destiny. I believe that it would be just an automatically instinctual thing to build on traditions to make things look greener and brighter to counter the dullness, cold, and darkness of the year, to decorate such that it makes things look more alive and life-giving. We'd do what we could to get extra calories and fatten up for the colder season; we'd feast a lot. We'd drink more, play games, and do whatever it took to make more social merriment and fellowship, just like we tend to do now to stave off and slake away boredom and depression through the cold and darkness. I speculate that there would be very little difference in the appearance of the solstice holiday from what Christmas is now throughout these colder, darker latitudes of the Earth. If Christmas, or its precursors, never existed at all, given the environment we are in, we'd be doing a lot to make up some sort of winter festivities in lieu of it.

It also makes me wonder: if attempted European colonization was destined to occur on this continent in this alternate historical timeline, where Christianity wasn't an affixed part of Occidental culture,
would there have been other or better attempts to integrate solstice traditions with the Aboriginal cultures here, with the spirit of that we all live under the same sun, or would those native traditions be swept away like so many others with the rise of colonialism? It makes me wonder what that would look like. The Vikings*** who settled at L'Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland around a millennium ago, probably were the closest historical precedent for this paradigm (in this country, if we indeed became a country) in which they were the primary holders of such traditions. However, that didn't go over so well, and no (accurate) written records exist about the process of the settlement. Their colony collapsed: either by famine, disease, or from conflict and hostilities with the indigenous people, who may have eradicated the entire Nordic settlement, or other maladaptive factors, before it could have a chance to thrive and evolve. This sounds like a theoretical element of the PC game Civilization VI to test, play out, and observe.

I explain it this way to my readers who aren't Canadians. Making this land we call Canada a more tolerable and habitable place to endure throughout the winter with festivities has been a natural and necessary thing to do to as a cultural meme for European colonization to have a foothold here throughout this nation's history: from the times when the Voyageurs and Coureurs du Bois established L'Ordre de Bon Temps (the order of good cheer), that is to make provisions for the means for social recreations a mandatory thing by the fur trading companies, to quell the rigours of winter. to hockey leagues and curling clubs, right up to general making a prolonged Christmas season compared to most other nations.

I didn't realize just how deeply Canadian I was, a true product of my environment, until I spent my first Christmas in a tropical country. It was just too weird and unnatural for me to process for that season. It made me feel quite homesick back then. I was getting strange looks and responses from people, who never experienced a day colder than 25 degrees Celsius, as I explained them how much I was missing my sub-zero temperatures, and the snow and frost covered vistas, as I sat on some beach or drank at some outdoor café. I couldn't find a way for it make sense to them, or to myself either for that matter. I really do need my cold and snow for the yuletide season. Winter, as much as I can hate it at times, is just engrained in me that much. It makes me think of the new immigrants, who are coming from mostly the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, from desert, tropical, or more equatorial latitudes who are having the same degree of challenge of adapting to this climate and holiday season.

So, for those who celebrate whatever cultural event or religious holiday amidst or surrounding the solstice season, like Christmas, Hanukah, Aboriginal/Wiccan Solstice Day, the release of another Star Wars movie****, etc., take care, have a blast with it, but also be responsible.

*- I should add that thoughts like these have been prompted by entertaining myself with more than one alternative history scenario with a.) playing the Wolfenstein: The New Order video game, with a storyline where the Nazis end up taking over the world, and b.) re-reading 1984, by George Orwell; though fictional, it's a sobering book everyone should read and to note the parallels that are occurring now with the manipulation of the truth in the media, the end of privacy, and the assertion of a military-industrial complex moving toward totalitarianism keeping us in a state of perpetual war and conflict. 
**- His book, Guns, Germs and Steel, is the best book ever written for a concise overview of cultural anthropology, and global human sociological development and evolution of civilizations: from our rise as homo sapiens, to our continental migrations and colonisations.
***- Watching tonight's episode of Vikings and the debate between King Egbert and Ragnar about Heaven and Valhalla was also a prompt for me to write these thought experiments with alternative histories that model/result in a non-Christian medieval Europe.
****- It's valid to include that. There are a lot out there who (sadly) are going to find a more spiritual experience for themselves watching this modern folklore than appreciating the other traditional holidays.

A Road Trip to 65 MYA

There should be no way that I should be disliking any of my vacation time; yet I have been. Four days passed into my stretch of time off, and I was finding it all pointless. The weather forecasts since Canada Day have been a 100% chance of cloudy/rainy suck-ass, as well as tornado watches in effect at times. Although I’ve been eating well, one can eat only eat so much, accounting for only a small fraction of a day. Medications disallow me from drinking the necessary volumes of booze that would actually put me in my happy place. I can only drink so much coffee at the coffeehouses that I feel very little need to frequent: just sitting there, watching other people brood about things has no entertainment value. I was becoming angered with getting interference from what are still work related calls over last weekend. I dipped into what is my all-too-massive personal syllabus of reading material (science and non-fiction mostly); I overdid it and consequently suffered too much eye strain from having my nose in too many books.

I spent most of the following Monday feeling wounded, the source of that being from having a dental appointment that morning. I didn’t have the sense to book a time outside of my vacation days. As per usual, the dental hygienist performing the cleaning service managed to poke at each and every special acupressure combination of nerve endings along my gingiva, which made me feel like I was being repeatedly struck in the face with a pick axe throughout the ordeal. A migraine ensued after and stayed with me for rest of the afternoon. More time wasted; not a good vacation day. I suppose it wasn’t enough to already feel like a luckless loser for the day. I went to the casino later in the evening to have it confirmed. I lost most of the small stakes that I thought acceptable to part with, and that time passed quickly. I realized then that I had to do something else with myself than handling kitchen knives, reading/screen-watching, or waving bye-bye to my hard-earned money at the slots and roulette table. I saw that another staycation was going to shove me into a pit of misery. Lunch with my friend on Tuesday gave me a little time to decompress as I examined my situation. I was made to see afterward that I have always been shirking travel off in the guise of being responsible. Another reason is that there isn’t much fun doing it alone anymore; or I’ve been hating my own company enough to the point where I am starting to bore myself: a symptom of something very wrong, I think. Whatever the case, I found myself really having to leave this town, badly.

I packed a few essentials; Ella happily joined me in the car. As I didn’t have any real plan, I chose to visit my folks first. If I got nothing else done, I would have at least spent some time with them. Wherever else I decided to go to, the Battlefords is not too far out of the way as a jump off point: a better one if going north was feasible, and an acceptable loss in highway time if I had to retrace any route back through and past home. I used Wednesday afternoon, watching the news and weather channels, formulating things. The process for narrowing down my destination decision was as such:

1.       The Weather Corridor – Forecasts for rain were for the north and east, and I was getting chased by funnel cloud warnings from the southeast. That left me with west or southwest if I wanted to find someplace without inclemency.

2.       Geographical Variation – the idea of a vacation is going to someplace that doesn’t look like home. Some people are content enough with walking into another room for a change of scenery. Other people, like me, need the entire landscape to change to feel like they’ve gotten away and escaped to someplace. That’s a tough deal when one has been an inhabitant in an area smack dab in the middle of the Canadian parkland/prairie . . . a region that’s so expansive. There is the Boreal forest, but as I said, weather wasn’t making going north an ideal choice, neither was my lack of camping gear. The next closest options for going southwest were: Cyprus Hills (with an elevation as high as that in Banff), or the Badlands. Next factor . . .

3.       My Six Hour Driving Radius – six hours in a crammed in a vehicle in a day seems to be my absolute limit. After that, I start having some adverse psychological effect from it, especially when I’m the one driving. If I have bad company with me as a follow passenger, then it’s triply worse. They risk being punched out and then abandoned in some ditch in the middle of nowhere if they exhibit too many marked signs of stupidity or impudent assholery for each and every minute approaching hour six, crammed in a vehicle with me. Life is short. I travel to see new places and experience new things; so sitting in a metal box (with toxic people), like a goddamned trapped rat, longer than necessary, is wasted time. The trip between Saskatoon and Calgary is an example of the longest one I can endure by car. If longer than that, then I fly; using only three hours or so to take me to places in this country much further away with less overall cost, hassle, and energy needed to attend to driving. I’ll happily spend more money to buy more time to stay off a road. The whole issue of me now being more prone to idiopathic thrombosis and blood-clotting makes the matter of prolonged periods sitting/immobility a more genuinely serious reason to avoid extra long of car rides. Cyprus and the Badlands fall within that six-hour radius from the Battlefords.

4.       An Act of Rebellion Against Ignorance – as I sat with my Dad, switching to the channel with Wheel of Fortune for him to watch (and Jeopardy for me after), I caught the last few minutes of the CBS nightly news which showed a story that disgusted me as a person who appreciates progress and education in science. I watched this story about some guy in Kentucky, who built a supposedly full scale replica of Noah’s Ark for an amusement site. It cost millions to get this thing made. The guy who founded this project is a self-proclaimed Creationist, who truly believes that the Earth is only 6000 years old or so, and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed together. He actually has models of dinosaurs penned up along with other contemporary species in this excessively ridiculous display. He, as an employer, actively discriminates by making the workers there sign some sort of “statement of faith” to prove that they are “Christian” enough to work there. He goes so far as to say that evolution is a “junk science”, and this crazy tacky spectacle is the length he is willing to go to refute and take a stand against it. You may just say “pshaw . . . whatever, it’s just a goofy spectacle”. I would agree too if it weren’t for another crazy issue about this damn stupid boat. The most disturbing issue of it for me was that some of the millions that he used to build this wretched monstrosity actually came directly from the state government of Kentucky itself, i.e. the Kentucky taxpayers were pitching in a fortune to have this idiotic thing built. It’s bad enough seeing that Kentucky is regarded as being one of those have-not states in the USA and suffering for it, with fewer resources for better healthcare, and an adequate education system*. To see this kind of insane amount of money (in the high tens of millions) being squandered away by their state government to sponsor the creation of something that takes away from science education and promotes more ignorance to suit the whim of a lobby of biblical-literalist right wing nut jobs** goes far beyond obscene in my mind. How did this guy manage to con some government official to permit him access to this kind of money for such a moronic endeavour? I admit to having some moments of a fantasy after I saw that story - it was that of Neil Degrasse Tyson himself, going over there to pop a cap in the ass of this ignorant bastard perpetuating this nonsense. Thinking about Richard Dawkins storming over to this ark thing, and then beating seven shades of shit out of this fundamentalist huckster with one of the limbs torn off of the animatronic Noah mannequin was an entertaining visualization too. It helped, in a way, to settle the question as to where I was going to go then for my holiday for my narrowed down options. I chose to take a stand! I’d then make a pilgrimage to the Badlands to use my tourist dollars to support science. So, Drumheller ended up becoming my chosen destination.

I heeded my Mom’s advice. She told that I really needed to take some time for myself. It meant surrendering the dog to her care as I went on this trip: so I had one less thing to tend to, and fewer problems, like finding lodgings that take pets. My car stereo quit working, meaning that I had no tunes, or CBC radio to occupy my mind as I drove for so long. I was a sort of on a true pilgrimage: just me, without my dog, driving for a long time, no distractions, being alone with my own thoughts. Stray thoughts slipped into my mind about those of whom I’d love to have riding shotgun with me on such a venture. I thought about where I would go to in the US if I ever took a spontaneous turn to head to the border (that is, if I hadn’t procrastinated and gotten a valid passport). Given the current political mayhem going on down there, the current currency exchange rate, the obscene amount of (recent) gun violence, and the reflection about the types of mindsets I’d be dealing with, like those who would allow and support something like the bizarro Noah’s ark down in Kentucky, any curiosity about finding anything interesting to do in the states extinguished pretty quickly. Those same reasons I just gave for not heading over the border maybe are the same ones as to why I saw so many vehicles with American license plates around where I was touring.

I went to Drumheller a couple times before in my life: once as a kid who was awestruck with dinosaurs, and again as a twenty-something with university classes in zoology still fresh in my head to make me appreciate the experience even more. Now, with a little more life wisdom and knowledge at this stage of life, and some more conscientiousness of how to put big concepts in a whole new perspective, I thought it would do me well to see the place again before I become a fossil myself. Given the things I said before, what else can a nerd who is travelling alone with limited time really do?

I eventually made it there, and after touring the Royal Tyrrell Museum, and scrambling around the Hoo Doos for a while, I went to the first hotel I could find – more accurately, I went to the first hotel I spotted that didn’t look like it was slapped together with pieces of flotsam from a shipwreck. I passed by three other places that fit such a description. This place was a short walking distance from a place that sold cold off-sale beer - a nice bonus. I managed to claim the last of the vacant rooms there. I was given a whole room with two double queen beds. I guess, to the clerk, I looked like the sort that rolls around a lot. I discover that the day after was an event called the Passion Play of the Badlands, happening the next day: apparently, it is an affair that attracts more fundamentalist types from all over the continent, and such goers to this sort of thing snapped up most of the rooms. Aw Shit! Religious nuts to contend with?! I couldn’t help but to be bewildered by the irony of it all: a place with the richest bed of fossil evidence of dinosaurs in Canada, confirming their existence and extinction 65 million years ago, scientifically proving the workings of evolution; being swarmed by a clique of religious people, many of whom still believing in this myth of creationism, like that knob in Kentucky. They probably show this religious theatrical production here, just because out of all the places in Canada, this one perhaps has what looks most like the natural scenery of Golgotha of ancient Judea.

I couldn’t stay to be bothered by all this to witness how cheesy and tacky it would all be. I thought about proceeding to Calgary, but then realized that the Stampede starts the day after. I wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of finding a hotel room. Just as well, because my time wasn’t going to be used mingling around in a place celebrating country music and cowboy/rodeo culture***. I spent what little time I had left wandering the hills in the early morning, contemplating and meditating: about the massive explosions of both life and death that occurred here, captured in the layers of sandstone throughout this valley that act as chapters of a book capturing the history of all life on Earth in this region for many aeons. I thought about how I wouldn’t even have been here to witness all this if it weren’t for an asteroid wiping out these monstrous creatures 65 million years ago. If that rock was even a small percentage larger, the likelihood of any life existing on this planet today would be zero. The intricacies of cause and effect being quite overwhelming, as I sat on those rocks, thinking about courses of natural selection and what comes about for each beings’ evolution. All this was pondered, plus a great myriad of other things involving the natural catastrophes involving extinction . . . that are a hell of a lot more interesting and rational than some story of a flood and an old dude on a big boat full of animals.

I returned back to the Battlefords after another long drive. I was happily greeted by my own little dinosaur who was missing me: attacked with eager kisses from the Ellabooboosaurus. I stayed long enough for a reprieve from driving, and helped to do some DIY electrical work installing new fixtures in my folks’ home. I returned to my own place later that evening, happy to use my own bed.

More holiday time is due to me in August, and I’m debating whether or not it will be worth booking a flight somewhere east (if there are any cheap enough); it would be a thing I genuinely would like company for though. The places I have in mind are walking and bike tour intensive.

*- I found an infographic recently on Mental Floss, which compared the education level of each state in the USA which similarly corresponded to the level of education with a world nation on the United Nations Development Index. Kentucky's education level was most similar to that of Honduras.

**- I’m not bashing all religious acts. Pray if you like to: if that, or meditation, really gives you a centred mindset for empowering yourself to do better for yourself and others, I’ll even encourage you to do such things. It all costs nothing to do, and it’s harmless while you are sitting there still and silent doing it. However, when huge sums of government money are being used for propagating mythology as fact, instead of fostering true science education, and being diverted away from more socially valuable “Christian” ways of helping people, like for instance, supporting and equipping care homes for the elderly, sick, and disabled, it obviously becomes an evident problem for everyone. I guess there is no such thing as separation of Church and state down in Kentucky.

***- Some people want to relive the bloody Wild West. I believe in living in a progressive, civilized, and educated one, if you haven’t figured that out already.

Canada Day 2016: Whiskey vs. Schnapps

My stretch of holiday time officially began at 4:05 PM yesterday. It was the kind of day yesterday when all I could do after coming back home, and briefly allowing my dog outside around the block, was to flop on my chesterfield and forbid myself any movement. The hour long nap I was hoping to get at the very least only lasted for about eight minutes after interference by the rudest and most obnoxious of nuisance alarm noise that came from someone’s car, and wouldn’t stop. As it is, I’m already convinced that it was Satan himself who invented the car alarm to begin with; and this one was malfunctioning. It kept switching itself on and off steadily for 20 minutes before I abandoned all hope that the neglectful idiot who owned this particular vehicle would show up to disable it, so I took off out of my place frustrated; trying to use my time a little more fruitfully without anymore annoyances and contention* for the rest of my day.

But today is Canada Day, and a time to reflect on the nation in comparison to the rest of the world. The morning greets me with a bit of a chilly breeze, and a sky full of dark clouds and possibility for rain later. A disagreeable state for this special day for sure. I started off making breakfast the most Canadian way I could: pancakes and bacon; only for the reason to have it serve as a platform to use maple syrup. I don’t really fancy pancakes all that much, but it’s only thing I could make with what I had around here right now. If I could have my patriotic breakfast of choice for the day, if such things were available, given my true appetite (for something less greasy), I would have been more content with some local homemade Saskatoon Jam on some Winnipeg rye toast, maybe poached eggs for protein, and some double-double coffee, perhaps about four cups of it if I want my brain to fly straight right now.

My mind drifts again to subjects of contention. In regards to our nationhood, I reflect on something that really took me totally by surprise. As a Canadian, I’m rather ashamed to admit that I’ve been ignorant about such a matter; it being unbeknownst to me until like just a week or so ago. Recently, I had read a post on Facebook from one of my Danish immigrant friends about how Canada and Denmark are currently, and have been for some while, involved in some sort of conflict. “What?! How so?”, I wondered. How, for shit’s sake, did all this come about? It sounds too crazy to even contemplate! Both Denmark and Canada rank highly as being two of the happiest nations on earth, I believe ranking first and second respectively according to one list. Both are reasonably progressive, I’m sure, in some other human development/social well-being indices. I always thought that there was a good political rapport between us as far as relations between nations go. How could one nation that does delightfully ingenious things like taking its power grid off of fossil fuels, making wonderful beer and cheese, and manufacturing Lego, the best toy ever, get into a snit with this other nation that initiated the idea of a peace-keeping force in the UN, sired Rush, the best power-trio progressive rock band ever, and perhaps even had a hand in helping to liberate the other nation in WWII?

Well . . . it turns out that Denmark and Canada are both trying to lay claim to some frozen rock up in the Arctic Ocean: a place called Hans Island, lying somewhere between Ellesmere Island and Greenland. This silly little island is probably no bigger in area than the schoolyard in my neighbourhood, except it has a lot less on it. It serves no apparent practical use whatsoever, unless for Canada, it may be a great observation point for tracking migrating narwhals and walruses, or else perhaps the Danes secretly found some sort of radioactive isotope on there that would permit them unlimited energy for manufacturing Lego blocks. Whatever the case, possession of this barren little speck on a map is somehow a big enough deal for both nations’ respective royal navies to send patrols up there to secure this place since 1973. The way this dispute is occurring between forces is weirder still. Canada’s navy plants our red and white flag there and leaves behind a bottle of whiskey to stake this place as our territory. Then the Royal Danish Navy comes along, takes down our flag and then props up their red and white banner, taking away the whiskey and leaving behind a bottle of Danish schnapps as a claim to the island, which the Canadian sailors clear away later, and the process is repeated. This place must be really remote and insignificant for Arctic dwellers, even for the Inuit, to bother visiting, because if they knew that there were bottles of booze just lying around on this island, and if it was more accessible, they would be invading the place for sure**. Both nations seem to be opting for the same strategy: of either somehow making the other opponent sailors too pleasantly pissed to want to fight, or just dulled into indifference to care about a stupid chunk of Arctic rock out in the middle of nowhere. As far as conflicts go involving military engagement between nations, it is a strange little affair, and I am l relieved to say that it is as such. It probably makes for the friendliest sort of “battle” for a patch of land that’s currently happening on this Earth right now. It makes one think that if this battle were to escalate or intensify, the resulting dead flesh amidst this conflict of nations would probably (hopefully) just amount to an exchange of Canadian bacon and Danish ham along with the spirits.

There sometimes is a perplexing vagueness involved in trying to find out what it is that gives us as Canadians our own unique national identity. As a natural born citizen here, I still struggle to find all-encompassing adjectives to describe what and who we precisely are. However, the paragraph above is fine example of how things are approached when it comes to conflict here compared to other nations: stand your ground when you must; try to settle things kindly when you are allowed to do so. I’m happy that my greatest nuisances are akin to the noises of car alarms blaring off accidently, or the fireworks bursting off later this evening that will terrify my dog, rather than the sounds of bombs going off around me. In viewing the news as of late, I’m glad that we are a lot luckier in this respect than a lot of other nations.

Tonight, as I view the fireworks from my balcony, hopefully without any rain, I’ll raise one of my glasses of whiskey to any Danes out there and wish a peaceful resolution between us, one way or another, and hope there’s some Dane out there raising their shot of schnapps on his or her national holiday wishing the same. Right now, no one is really hurting from this little conflict, and I hope it stays that way.

*- For the benefit of my friends who use English as their second language, a note about how stupid this language sometimes is. If you are content, it means you are pleased and satisfied; yet if you have contention, it is the complete opposite of that, meaning that one is involved in a dispute, or becoming upset by a disagreement.

**- Let's not kid ourselves: regardless of ethnicity of the people living up there, the higher rates of alcoholism and substance abuse, and fewer available resources for intervention, continue to be the worst of the social ills in the remote and isolated Northern and Arctic communities.

The Power of a Prisoner with a Nail

I should be trying to sleep for longer, but finding a moment to sit outside on a wonderfully calm and peaceful Sunday morning in early summer is the next best thing. It sets a fine stage for a lot of mental clarity, so I thought I would write. It has been a long lapse since I wrote anything on this blog. I’ve had nothing that I would have cared to come forth with and share for a long while. I’ve been working a couple of months now in a position in which the daytime hours are much more agreeable to my physical and mental constitution. Before that, I was suffering all sorts of things between last entry and now that I would rather not post. Thankfully, most of those conditions from back then have since improved.

I accomplished a goal a couple days ago. I managed to commit to learning nine language modules each day: one for each different language I’m learning, for a hundred days straight. It is a sub-goal to apply to the greater mission; that is to get to tour Europe someday* (without the insanity of being confined in a bloody tour group). As for now, I’ve only been able to apply them to the odd text now and then, and answering questions in trivia games now and then. Retaining absolutely everything that I’ve learned is doubtful. The real prize is knowing that I’ve been able to get this far into it. I’ve been able to translate some foreign phrases from Facebook posts more instantly in my head with less effort; even in Russian, the hardest (I find) of the set of languages I’ve been trying to learn. I caught myself even dreaming in Spanish one night. Hopefully that’s a sign that some things are being integrated mentally and thus sinking in; but more likely, it is probably because it is the only other language, besides French and German, with which I have had the most practical experience in using.

The new position is a bit more rigorous, but I have no complaints about it. The extra rigour prompts me to think of how to do things more efficiently to save my energy. Thoughts of exercising efficiency along with improving skills with hacking languages has prompted interest in me to start thinking about ways of hacking other things that are more practical and applicable. Learning, applying and entertaining myself with tricks and shortcuts for mental arithmetic is becoming a renewed fascination for me. It comes at an emotional price though. When I review them I get extremely pissed off when I find brilliant hacks and mnemonic techniques, some of which are actually centuries old, that were never shown to me during my elementary/high school/university years which could have made life so much easier. I hate the so-call modern education curricula because so many things that are truly practical and brilliant to learn are rarely included in them. These tricks and hacks become repressed because it conflicts with what is institutional. It’s a sign of a system that really doesn’t want you empowered; just controlled and conforming. After entering “mental math hacks” in a search engine, I found links to the Trachtenberg system. I tried out a few tricks with it, and I must say that I’m impressed (and I don’t impress easy). As interesting and unique as the techniques for calculation are with this system, the background story of its creator is far more intriguing. I’m pleased to say that I have found a new hero who merits his story being shared. It’s like a story akin to something that Ian Flemming could have wrote. It’s a story of a heroic champion nerd who challenged and came out on top of defying the worst of the “schoolyard bullies”. The next couple of paragraphs is my precis of it**.

Jakow Trachtenberg was an engineer by vocation, an aspiring and brilliant one, who began of his career soon after the beginning of the twentieth century in a shipyard in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, which was then ruled by the Romanov dynasty of Tsarist Russia. During his rule, Tsar Nicolas II was very intent on having a modern navy, and Trachtenberg was put in charge as Chief Engineer of this project, managing up to 11,000 workers to build those ships and their armaments. Despite this particular assignment, he was a dedicated pacifist, going so far as to found a society of Good Samaritans when World War I broke out: preparing others for the care and treatment of the wounded. All of that changed though. The course of his life was interrupted by the Russian Revolution in 1917. When the Communists took control of Russia, and all the lands within its empire, Trachtenberg soon found himself out of work because their mandate didn’t include building ships (or perhaps it was just because since it was the former Tsar’s plan, they had to be contrarian to it). Being appalled by the violence of the revolution, and the brutal and widespread killing of the citizenry, Trachtenberg became quite an outspoken critic against the Communist regime. As this choice act clashed with Communist ideology, it pissed off the respective authorities enough to make him a target dissident whom they were going to detain and most certainly do harm to. They had already killed some of his family members. So, under disguise, he fled to Berlin to make a new life. There, he managed to have enough charm to woo and then marry a woman of aristocratic status; he applied his intelligence into developing an inventive system for teaching foreign languages, and also started to publish a pacifist magazine. If he rolled any dice for deciding to move to Germany, he wouldn’t have guessed that he was going to crap out given the way its history was about to unfold. It undoubtedly seemed like a good idea at the time, since Germany had just ended a horrible war that cost them millions of lives, and the folks there might be interested in learning a thing or two about how to live in peace. However, the National Socialist Party that was coming into power under Hitler had a bit of a different take on such things.

Trachtenberg, once again, found himself falling ass-backwards into bad luck by preaching peace and non-violence under the watchful eye of the wrong sort of political opposition. Being some kind of guy who was doing all this crazy-talk about peace, which conflicted with the crazy-talk of a dictator who was planning for world domination – well, it kind of brought him under a lens of suspicion at that time. Strike one for Jakow! Doing that as an Auslander (foreigner) no less in the beloved Fatherland no doubt didn’t sit well with the new Nazi party either. It was probably perceived as a lot more intensely negative being that such a foreigner was originally from one of the lands east of Germany, which were supposedly full of those inferior Untermenschen, like Ukraine was regarded to be in the propaganda. Strike two for Jakow! And just to be really screwed with bad luck, the fact that Trachtenberg was ethnically Jewish had thrown another few shovels full onto the shit pile of trouble that he was already buried neck deep in with the Nazis. A smart fellow like Trachtenberg saw that he needed to make some tracks . . . right the hell out of Germany. So, he fled to Austria and worked with a science magazine there for a while; but then the Nazis started the Anschluss, annexing Austria into the Third Reich, so that had him on the run again. The Gestapo and the SS had sought him out everywhere, as his reputation put him high up on Hitler’s shit list of people to be arrested and detained. Although he did his best to evade them, he was soon captured in Yugoslavia, and then was shipped off to a Konzentrationslager.

During that time of his imprisonment, to keep his sanity and wits about him, while witnessing and enduring the despair, and the horrific ruthlessness and brutality of the concentration camp, Trachtenberg mentally retreated into the abstract world of mathematics and numbers. They couldn’t take that away from him. Possession of paper or writing implements was risking severe punishment or worse by the guards, as well as having any other arbitrary thing that could be assumed to be used for forbidden communications. Since he didn’t have any access to even simple materials to help him make complex calculations, he devised his own system of algorithms that he could use to make mental shortcuts to compute large numbers mentally. The only other calculation instrument he had (besides his brain) was a nail he found somewhere in the camp, which he used to scratch in the dirt, or on wood, to do ciphers and devise his theoretical algorithms. He regarded that nail as his best friend and his salvation while he was in that camp. When he did find paper to write on, it was bits of wrapping paper and old envelopes, and because it was so scarce, he used it only to secretly record his finished theories of his method.

His real salvation to escaping that camp was the action of his aristocrat wife, who managed to bribe a guard to get him out. It happened just before he was given a death sentence. Long story short, he managed to escape with his wife to a refugee camp in Switzerland. He and his wife remained there after the war, and established a mathematical institute in Zurich, based on the theories and mental shortcuts he devised when he was in the concentration camp. He began teaching it to children who were once failing miserably in classes based on the traditional math teaching methods, who then began to excel at solving math problems using his system. He instructed children who were deemed “mentally retarded” who, after being taught his system, were doing arithmetic that challenged most average adults. His institute was highly regarded as the best the place to be if one wanted to pursue an advanced career in architecture, engineering, and anything else math related in Europe since its founding in the 1950s, at least until the tech and computer revolution.

It’s a shame that this triumphant bit of history isn’t more well known. I guess that’s why I chose to share it here. My youngest nephew will be graduating soon, and going into post-secondary education program in the fall that will be more intensive for learning maths and physics. I hope he has the sense to do his own bit of hack-seeking, to find out what works best for him mnemonically, and in practice. He should be at least thankful that he has more than a nail at his disposal.

*- Knowing so many languages might be a bit impractical, I am not OK about touring any place where I’m plunged into an environment where in essence I’m rendered functionally illiterate; no matter how well I’m accommodated with services in my native language. Misunderstandings will inevitably occur: one should know some manners and polite greetings, and basics at the very least to help smooth things over when that happens. Numbers are an absolute must to learn, since math and counting money is universal.

**- Given that it’s close to the anniversary of D-Day, sharing something that is somewhat of another victory during World War II seems right as well.

Post Funeral Reckonings

I just returned home from a funeral. I don't believe in publishing the name of any deceased person within my circle of acquaintanceship, nor the details of their passing away, without formal permission from their family to do so first, so I've withheld those details. But what I will remember and say of this person is that it was someone who believed in living honestly, dutifully and working toward virtues, and seeing that this person was so welcoming and respectful to me and my family, and always treated me kindly when I visited her, it made me feel assured that she perhaps saw some of the same qualities in me as well. I am also grateful that it was someone who was a supportive and dear friend to my own Mom; who sadly was a witness to the critical incident that eventually claimed this person's life. Looking aside from the death itself, I am comforted a bit in knowing that she was spared from suffering for very long, and mostly good things seem to be going on in the lives of her surviving children and grandchildren, and that they seem to be prospering well enough. I wish better for all of them in the times ahead.

My mind has been thrown on a bit of an emotional roller coaster as I sit here and reflect about not only the passing of this person, and with all who I spoke to and saw during course of the day, the most salient things being:

• memories that were tagged to some of the guests there who were indirectly a link to the past bad memories from my old home town I grew up in. The case today was that I met the sibling*  of someone else who put a lot of effort into attacking my self-esteem and psychologically bullying me through any opportunity they had throughout my school years. Through our discussion, I gained a clearer picture today as to why that person had used so much energy in directing this abuse at me: it stemmed from their own selfishness and insecurity; nothing really to do with any flaw I had (something I wished I had the sense to learn and accept a few decades ago). I should feel more secure in myself after knowing this, but I only feel despair and regret. After all these years, I'm still angry to depth of my core about how I allowed the antics of a pathologically hyper-competitive, sanctimonious, spiteful, asshole who thrived on schadenfreude, to scar my self-confidence/esteem so deeply, which has affected more than one aspect of my life for so long. I'm ashamed to admit this, but it is true.
• in the scope of things, I'm realizing just how I've been limiting myself and treating myself badly. Worse than even being enslaved by some sort of addiction, is failing to reach one's real potential, and failing to see that one deserves better and to live with dignity, and to not waste any more time suffering fools.
• it's overwhelming and incredibly hard to meet people after not seeing them for five years or more, and being pressed to try to share a summary of my own life details, or to get a concise precis of theirs. Part of my failure for this is not being available socially anymore, and seeing how much time has past in between is a hard way to be struck back into reality.
• the general overall reminder about how life is too short, and how it can vanish away in a blink of an eye; and I'm forced to think of the ways that I'm squandering away my own talents, resources, and energies . . . maybe now more than ever I must stop and wonder, and ask myself at this stage of it, the question: "Is it really meaningful for me anymore?

When arriving home and checked messages, it was almost as if it was a sign from above, given the course of this day, that I found this link sent to my Facebook feed. I am sharing it here as well: On The Shortness of Life: An Introduction to Seneca. Thanks again, Tim!

*- He's an honestly decent and good person, with whom I never had any qualms with. I regard the same of the parents of them, which makes me wonder what the hell went wrong with this other person.

Seeking Answers for the 13th Game

I did a night shift last night, the first time after many months. I should have made a date with a whiskey bottle when I got home, or used some other means of hardcore sedation. Instead, I rode along with the momentum of residual anxious restlessness doing all sorts oddly random household chores: from fixing furniture, to troubleshooting tech components, to laundering non-clothing items, to making perogies and meatballs.*

The only good thing I can say about the night shift is that I endured it, but as always, there followed bad physiological effects, and a mind that gets warped into making strangely random observations and weird connections, especially when I start touring around town. My impulse control gets drastically lowered. For some strange reason, when I wandered by some place, and with my insomnia-addled brain, I somehow was triggered to remember that it was the same spot a while ago where I saw Yann Martel . . . If you recognize the name, yes, it's the same Yann Martel who is the author of Life of Pi. He resides here in Saskatoon, and I see him around from time to time; as much as I admire his work as an author I chose not to bother him, or impose upon his time.** After that day of seeing him at this one particular place, I was compelled to read another book he wrote: Beatrice and Virgil.*** Like  Life of Pi, animals are used to add an allegorical element about the human condition in the story, this one is centred around the Holocaust. I don't wish to spoil the story for anyone, but I will say that at the end of the book, there is a set of "games": really a series of questions related to deeper themes of morality centered on stuff people actually faced in the Holocaust. The last question, Game 13, is simply a blank page for you to fill in after you've deliberated all the dilemmas and ethical issues from the previous twelve, and you are left trying to figure out what your consequential place is in the scope of this most horrendous human tragedy. So now I'm sitting here blowing off the dust of some of the junk in the attic that is my insomniac mind by means of writing, re-examining the 13th game.

I only came up with a single word as a broad query for Game 13: a name of a place, Drohobych. Attached to it are a lot of "what if" questions. I found myself getting hung up on this particular word when I thought of the history of World War II, the Holocaust and the stuff dredged up in that book Yann wrote. Drohobych is the name of town in what is now western Ukraine. Historically, throughout the time since its founding sometime in the fourteenth century, it has been claimed and conquered numerous times by various Eastern European empires and nation states. According to my findings in Wikipedia, in 1939, the census showed that almost 40% that town's population was Jewish. During Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, this town was seized by the Nazi troops, and the Jewish ghetto there was liquidated. Thousands of these citizens were rounded up and shipped off to the Bełzec extermination camp in Poland. The census information of that place afterward in the 1950s then had only 2% of its population listed as being Jewish.

Why is this of significance to me? On a formal level, I studied some of the broader historical patterns of force from that country when I used to work in one of the Ukrainian cultural centres here. On a personal level, it was out of genealogical research. This is the community where my grandparents came from before they immigrated to Canada. Originally, they didn't leave there with the intent to escape anything they foresaw as a prelude to war or oppression, they simply left to try to prosper and garner a new life in Canada. Luckily and thankfully, they managed to get out of Drohobych before the Soviets/Nazis set foot in there. If they hadn't done so, of course, I wouldn't now exist. Had they remained there though, in what would become such a volatile and hostile place, they could have been damned to subjugation or slaughter by tyranny under either fascists or communists. They themselves weren't Jewish, and may not have been overtly targeted for extermination, but it is just as awful of a thought that if they had remained there, that they could have lost their humanity from being swept up in the insanity of that time and place, and could have been pressed into being servants who either actively or indirectly took part in some role the purging of the Jews in that region.

It was a doomed place, where higher ideals of justice and right and wrong were erased by the more immediate need for self-preservation. There seemed to be no right side to be on during those times as a Ukrainian, and it was worse if you were Jewish. Before the Nazis came, Ukraine already suffered a man-made famine under the Stalin regime, known there as the Holodomor (it roughly translates to murder by hunger), where the land, grain, and food was confiscated.  Millions died, and the living got starved into submitting to the Stalinist authority. When the Nazis came a few years later, many Ukrainians welcomed them as liberators from this regime. However, to avoid being slaughtered off by these new invading overlords, people were forced to comply with measures which meant that maybe only a few of the surrounding neighbours they knew got shipped off someplace on a train, never to return. Being put in that dilemma, it was comparatively better than watching you and all your family and neighbours being executed, or starved to death, for non-compliance. It was a shameful tragedy all around.

I have no contact with those who are blood relatives who still live in Ukraine; who may possibly still inhabit Drohobych. The decades of political and social isolationism through the communist years effectively severed such ties with our families. I have been ignorant of their histories and accounts of who they were as people living through such an ordeal and how it made them what they are today. If I could speak with any of them who witnessed such stuff during that phase of history, for the sake of gleaning answers to Game 13, I would be asking them things like:

• What happened with the family during the years of the Holodomor?
• Was anybody in the family in the military during WWII? If so, which side were they on? (Red Army, Nazi collaborators, independent partisans?) 
• What did you do when they came to round up the Jewish citizens in the village?
• How did you reconcile with all these things afterward?

I'm sure a lot of the answers would be disquieting and unnerving. I'd probably be better off not knowing some of them.

I don't know why these reflections of such morbid things strike me now. Perhaps it's a consequence of the stress of the series of negotiations I'm involved in, which seems to be wearing at me as we'll. Perhaps it's because I'm going through something like what they did in Drohobych during the war years, minus the matter of life and death urgency: having the back against the wall and the only options given seem to be just different entrances into hell; dealing with powers of authority who are indifferent about anyone's welfare. Maybe the thoughts of my grandparents' courageous choice to get out of the old country is a prompt for me to think more seriously of making some sort of exodus of my own: before seeing things taking a turn for the worse.

*- Two foods commonly found in the community Fall suppers that happen in October and November in the rural towns of Saskatchewan. Perhaps I was getting nostalgic.
** - I'm not divulging when, where, and what circumstances it happened, I see no need to violate any aspect of his privacy. Sure, it was tempting to gush, and accost him with praise, platitudes, comments and questions about his work, but acting like a star-struck groupie isn't respectful, nor does it make for a good first impression to someone whom you regard, even indirectly, as a mentor. I'll leave my appreciation for his brilliance as a writer to be reflected here while still respecting his peace. It was enough that we just exchanged good mornings with each other as civilized men, as we each went about our separate ways to attend to our own affairs.
***- Stretching leather while fixing my furniture today made me think of taxidermy, which was probably another prompt to remember the book. You'll have to read it to get it.

In Remembrance (추억의)

For this time of the year, I felt a need to share this memory from an experience I had last August. I was riding home one weekend afternoon. I spotted a young Asian woman trying to wave down motor traffic from the side of the street. When she saw me approaching, she dashed out onto the road in the path of my bike; forcing me to stop. She was a bit flustered and anxious, trying to explain to me in broken English that she was lost and trying to find a local address. Once she calmed down, and was more readily able to understand me, I managed to draw her a crude map on the back of an envelope to show her where to go. I asked her where she was from. In her reply, it wasn't what she said, but how she said it that struck me to the bone. She told me that she was from South Korea, drawing out extra emphasis on the word "south". She said it very deliberately and adamantly, like she had to make it clearly known to me that she wasn't one of them, as if to completely disassociate herself from something very vile and evil. I came to realizing on that late summer day that this year would be the 60th anniversary of the end of hostilities of the Korean War*.

It's a bloody shame that there is still this despicable geopolitical abomination on this planet called North Korea, with its six decade long dynasty of wicked totalitarianism. The notable tone in that young lady's response was a mixture of both pride and gratitude of who she was, and of a sorrow laden shame that there are these people who are ethnically identical to her, but have been perverted and corrupted culturally and politically; rendered into some sort of sub-species without rights or freedoms. These same people could be directly related to her, but at the same time conditioned such that on a simple order, they may be turned against her to kill her and her loved ones without any second thought. As bad as that all sounds, it could be so much worse. That entire peninsula could have been overrun by the Communist forces, and there would be about another 50 million more Koreans today being starved, oppressed and subjected to the depraved indoctrination by the Kim legacy. That would be 50 million more Koreans under this type of dictatorship: a number 10 million greater than the current population of Canada; and we have our veterans to thank for not allowing that to happen. Had the political entities on the side of South Korea, with any real interest in democracy and human rights, during that time had foresight into what North Korea would eventually be devolving into, there probably would still have been fighting going on until that peninsula was entirely liberated.

We have failed for a long time to take a better reckoning of this fact. We have been more dismissive of this time, and undervaluing our veterans' role during that point of history, somehow putting it behind our nation's victories and sacrifices in the European theatres of battle in scale, scope and significance. The media and political forces have stooped to calling our military presence on the Korean peninsula a "police action", or simply terming it the "Korean Conflict"** That has made us ignorant of the not only the real historical impact it had, but also in terms of the suffering and horror soldiers and civilians alike endured. Sadly, our perception of that period only gets viewed most commonly through dark comedy reruns of M*A*S*H. I would never insult or disrespect our veterans who were involved there by diminishing it with lesser labels; by calling it something other than what it was. It was indeed a war.

This is my special thanks to those men and women, to the Canadians and other UN force veterans, who served for that critical time in history. I'm sure the same appreciation comes from that young lady I helped in August, and the remaining 50 million free Koreans, who are prosperous today in comparison to their subjugated northern neighbours. Peace be with you all.

I see the greeting of "Have a Happy Remembrance Day" being shared on signs and posts on Facebook. I know people mean it as a good intention, or are at least grateful for a statutory holiday, but I think the more correct and appropriate greeting we should share is: "Have an Appreciative Remembrance Day". War, or memory of it, shouldn't exactly incite the feeling of "happiness", except for its ending. We have to be wary of the fact that the rights and freedoms we have today didn't come to us cheaply. Let us rightly honour those who gave some sacrifice, either in deed or in blood, in order that our generations in peace time have rights and freedom.

*Technically, the war between those nations hasn't ended: no official peace treaty has been signed between the two nations; it has been just been a prolonged cease-fire.
**- When you have a nation as large as Communist China, backed with a million man Red Army, involved as an oppositional force, there is no way in hell you can trivialize that situation as a "police action" or a simple "conflict".

Second Lives: Part II

Continuing from last entry, Second Lives: Part I . . .

To say that humankind was destined to develop and incorporate virtual reality as part of our evolution is perhaps a very fair and sound argument. It could be said that it all began happening as early on when the first hominids began to develop and use language to the degree of sophistication where vocabulary, grammar, and syntax could be used to describe things outside of the present tense*. Think about how revolutionary of a leap that was during our course of evolution! It really put us apart from other animal species: to be able to share and communicate ideas about things that weren't actually happening or existing in the here and now**. It ultimately gave us the ability to better develop our memory, to learn and share knowledge from stories (and successes/failures), to speculate and plan on seeking resources and avoiding disasters, and to be creative. It was essentially the development of this "software" that allowed us to create ideas for an abstract "unreal" world which impacted motor behaviours and sensory experience in this one. Slapping that talent together with tool-making hands to make simulations and extensions of things essentially began and fueled our endeavors to create virtual realities. Then along came art and music, to give our senses a pleasant break from being constantly vigilant in a more hostile natural world. Those things were blended with dressing up in distinct costuming and decoration, using psychoactive botanicals, special rituals and ceremonies, and building special monuments, mostly for the purpose of trying to transcend into other places beyond this realm. Thus, the earliest vehicle thence used to search for these other "virtual realities" came when our early ancestors began formulating religion.

Taken in that context, there might be a valid reason to be suspicious of "virtual realities". Throughout thousands of years of inquisitions, witch trials, dogma and dictates of authoritative caste systems, and judgements from theocratic regimes, millions of people suffered when they were suspected of not playing along in the virtual reality of religion properly. They were either enslaved, ostracized, imprisoned, tortured, or executed as infidels, witches, blasphemers, and atheists; or else, for the sake of playing the game properly in some cultures, many were splayed out on some altar and offered as a blood sacrifice, given a bodily mutilation, or even obligated to commit ritual suicide*** to placate some mythological being or force of a "virtual reality". The virtual game of human development I play, Civilization V, is a hell of a lot tamer by comparison than real human development when religion becomes factored in.

It's ridiculous when I see the juxtaposition of those heavily immersed in religion and those over-enthralled with playing around in modern day virtual reality/gaming environments, and then see the sides actually actively arguing and clashing about who is more knowledgeable about reality, because one is no better grounded in actual reality than the other: they are both trying to find improvement by using escapist means to avoid the harsh, oppressive or "sinful" world they see today. It's a funny irony to see that many who are most reactionary and opposed to the development of game based virtual reality also make some claim to being religious. They believe in preaching to people to stop interacting with other in a false world of a game environment and use energy to gather together more often and talk to, and listen to stories related to the existence and will of a great big invisible man in the sky. At the same time, especially in the USA, those same people who associate themselves with a conservative right wing religious "moral majority" who want to further restrict or outright ban simulated game-based violence in MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games), most likely are the ones lobbying for the right to tote around real flippin' guns. Equally though, VR players who are spending most of their waking daily lives in front of a screen, are becoming more disengaged from actual real world interaction, are becoming increasing more socially maladroit nerds and thus have no ground to stand on for sanctimoniously judging others who are opting to bravely engage more with the real world. The VR people are likely to smugly brand the reality-based people as "Luddites", "low-techs", or with some other label that brand those apart from them as technically ignorant and primitive. This all just brings more chicken and egg questions to light that I have no time to explore and answer. All I know is that I don't want to side with, or get involved too deeply, with either camp.

The most deluded and pathetic of all people who are overly-engaged with their little realm of virtual reality don't even have to use computers, or a place of worship. They are the "super-fans" of sports. Jesus Christ, I hate these idiots! The ones who are constantly glued to the games and stats reports on the sports channel on TV, and would stay that way if they could, the one who makes paying for season tickets a priority over paying for food and shelter. I'm talking about the real intense ones. The assholes who are too much emotionally dependant on the success of whatever team they are following, like the entire world is dependant on it. If the team wins, they are on cloud nine, in a weirdly maniacal way; if their team loses, super-fan gives himself (and it's 99.9999% a guy thing) some special license to lash out and be dramatically and dangerously angry: to be a hooligan, to riot and loot, to drink himself stupid and to abuse others or beat his wife and kids****. It's a bloody insult to humanity to channel behaviour like this something that "comes out of passion". The negative outcome of a simple "virtual" game translates to real-life losses from their drastic and thoughtless violent and destructive behaviour in the real world. These are the guys who may jeer and laugh at the nerdy types who play role-playing board and computer games, but some of these same guys will turn around and drop everything at an instant to play fuckin' "fantasy football", or "fantasy draft picks": things which basically equate to being Dungeons and Dragons for dumb jocks. That's even going into whole new level of stupid when put into context of virtual worlds: a virtual reality based on a virtual reality*****.

I mentioned before in my last entry that the list of things in our lives not related to using virtual reality would be shorter than the ones that did. I challenged myself and made my list of things that I enjoy doing that I consider are completely apart from any virtual reality or media. Instead of escaping into the virtual worlds, I believe the brain needs to be pulled away from there and re-booted with good dose of reality. Basically, one has to think of things that don't involve computers, looking at screens or pictures, intoxication, listening to music/recordings, playing games, or creating abstract thoughts from reading, writing, doodling, and making calculations. It really is a short list. The items in it are:

• sleeping
• eating
• drinking various beverages
• cardio vascular exercise (without earphones, that gets me to an actual destination, no treadmills or stationary bikes)
• cooking
• talking face to face with friends and family (and the odd stranger . . . and believe me, I encounter a lot of "odd" strangers)
• scavenging and foraging (not shopping: using money is a grey area to classify, but let's say that for now that it's an abstraction: exchanging currency, or 0's and 1's through card transactions for goods actually counts as a form of virtual reality)
• sitting/meditating in a park, or by calm water
• cleaning and organizing my living space (this mood rarely strikes me, but it happens)
• fishing
• watching wildlife
• tending a garden space
• walking/petting/playing with my dog

I dwelled too much on this topic already. I fixated on in a little more because I just watched some snowflakes fall here in my real world outside, thus comes the season where I'll be tuning in more to the "virtual" realms. These places won't be found in Second Life, nor will they be found through perusing chapters of a holy book or scriptures; they certainly won't be toured through by loyally spectating the progress of any team. They will be toured through anything else that makes me wonder about the peculiarities of the human condition . . . perhaps for the sake of feeling some relief or amazement when I realize I've survived this long in the "reality game" amidst all the stupidity I sometimes witness by being immersed in it.

*- Communication in higher animals is pretty much restricted to stuff happening in the present tense. Signals and gestures from fish to mammals are limited to being prompted by what is happening in the immediate environment they are currently in.
**-[a bit of a digression] This is not just a thing we should just assume happens naturally and automatically in the basic development of any human language. There are some languages that don't have clear cut sets of grammar or syntax for expressing exact conditional or future tenses. Even English itself technically has no concise "future tense", in the sense that the verbs in a future tense don't neatly conjugate into a precise single word, as compared to some other languages. There's "I walked to the store yesterday." but there is no, "I [single word to describe a future action of "to walk"] to the store tomorrow". It has clumsily jumbled in modal auxillary verbs with the infinitives to talk about future things. The modal "will" itself derives from the verb "to want," or "to wish", and the modal "shall" strangely is derived from "to owe". Even as our vocabulary advanced through the ages, the concept of tense and time is abstract enough that we often are limited to describing the dimension with the some of the same adjectives we would use to describe physical space. Even some modern languages don't even have separate words to further differentiate the next day after the current day, and the general early time of day: like Spanish and German, both use same word to mean "tomorrow", and "morning".
***- Rituals like: the Aztecs cutting hearts out of people, circumcision (male and female), scarification in rites of passage in Africa; the suicidal ones like suttee in India, suppuku/hari kiri in Japan; more historically recent, the Jonestown, and Heaven's Gate Cult massacres.
****- When working at another past vocation, being contracted through the provincial Ministry of Justice, I encountered a domestic violence case where woman had most of half of her face beat in by her husband in the presence of their kids. His reported excuse as to why he did it was: "Oh, it's nothing. I just got a little mad because the Flames lost."
*****- All contact and field sports are simulated forms of battling and warfare, therefore an artificial world; if you aren't actually involved with actually playing it, and only spectating it, that only makes it a virtual reality to you, one in which your degree of interactivity is just limited to cheering, screaming and yelling at the field or screen like a moron.

The Smells of Autumn, Ignore The Media Day

It has registered to me that it is officially Fall today. It's not the sight of the turning leaves that's the signal; it's what my nose tells me. It's the effect of that optimal amount of briskness in the air that condenses the aromas in it just a little more, cleansing the smell palette, giving scents a significantly more animated play on the mind, and the memories they instantly conjure up; especially during the cooler evenings.

It was great to cycle back home tonight and breathe in the air and the smells in it. Riding down a street through the smell of birch wood burning from one of the last pit fires that someone will have for the year in their backyard was intoxicating. It instantly made me feel comfort on a deep visceral level. Cruising past one of the seniors' complexes on my route homeward I caught that exact smell, wafting out of some open window, that matched one of my earliest memories of the aroma of my Baba's* delicious cabbage rolls being fried and browned with that perfect dose of finely minced onions and salted lard. That memory struck me as if I were hit by that very grey speckled enameled frying pan she used to fry them in after I smelled that. There is a signature note as the plants begin their respiratory phase in the evening, a sweeter tea-like one coming from the neighbourhood gardens, as extra sugars, starches, and life energies are being used and infused into the last of their fruits and seeds; they are labouring to do their best before the killing frost arrives, which could be any day now. If that's what the smell of plant sweat is, it's a welcome one. I wonder if this sense of smell intensification is an evolutionary thing: a prompt for us to start eating more and fatten up for the coming winter. There are some unpleasant odours that become intensified as well, like that of the migrant skunk wandering around somewhere around my block, and other people's BO, but for the most part they are clean and refreshing. This magical effect that the air has now, during this week or so just before the actual autumn equinox and the frost, is what makes this my most favourite part of the fall season.

Yesterday was September 11th. It too was a very pleasant day. What helped make it a good day was a mindful choice. For about eleven years now, I have informally adopted and endorsed a personal tradition for that day I now term "Ignore the Media Day". Everyone should give it a try. It generally goes as such:

• You avoid the newspapers and all news related programming; better yet, just don't watch TV, or tune into the radio, or surf the Internet at all. Don't worry. . . you will survive!
• You consciously opt to wake up and start out the day by making it better for yourself and others in the present, instead of listening to some talking head on a news program regurgitating stories about a woeful past, or ones that spark fear about the future.
• You don't let word of negative events and propaganda at home, or from half a world away, control you, or let it determine what kind of 'mood' or 'day' you should have. You, and you alone, are solely responsible for that.
• Realize that all national and global news you watch and hear, no matter if it's mainstream or alternative, from CNN to Al-Jazeera, is broadcast to satisfy a broader political agenda: to influence and control you with uncertainty, fear, and your own sense of outrage. The corporate interests then attack you with ads so you can quell these fears with mindless consumption.
• Realize that there is something really pathetic about someone who sits around watching news all day indoctrinating themselves with political claptrap, and then acting like a self-righteous intellectual, yet who but never goes outside of their little room to interact with the real world.
• Dare yourself to try something creative and original for a change for some progression toward your own betterment and inner peace rather than immersing yourself in the details of someone else's meme warfare.
• Wave you nation's flag less, and wave hello to your neighbour more.
• Try reading something more rational, and completely unrelated to politics, economics, and religion: things which are most likely to create civil unrest and wars.
• Avoid online discussions about 'this day in history', or any other so-called 'related current day events'. It is said that time heals all wounds, but not when you are exposed to a constant stream of depressing stories that keep ripping off the scabs. Do you automatically remember the details of the Blitz in London during World War II? Of course you don't. Thousands more innocent civilians died in a single day during those times, and a lot more historical and cultural edifices were lost than a couple of skyscrapers, but there wasn't the constant memorializing and intensifying of the tragedy with constant replay of events in the media, depressing and demoralizing people; the prevalent simple, more positive message, was "Keep Strong and Carry On." People actually got on with their lives, and worked for the better.
• Avoid those who always try to find some soapbox to stand on. Generally, I find those who are constantly pontificating their opinions about world events they can't control continue to blame others for their personal problems that they are perfectly capable of fixing themselves, but choose not to; constantly externalizing their flaws. They may also try to con or guilt you into believing in taking ownership of some of those problems that, in reality you have no part of. Like the news, they try to involve you unnecessarily. Avoid these morons like the plague, along with other such nagging personalities. Be courageous enough to enjoy peaceful quality time alone rather than hanging around these sorts of people.
• Get outside and enjoy the beautiful fall day. Get some exercise, eat some real food, and most importantly, breathe in and savour the air.

*- Baba = My Ukrainian grandmother; and no, she never hit me with frying pans, she was a loving person. That was hyperbole.

Slow Healing, Going Shack Wacky, Dry Streak

Thursday, April 11

I definitely have to force myself to use a full rest day today. I'm healing slower than I thought I would be; that's my own damn fault.  Despite the fact that I've been more idle than usual, I've still been using my injured foot more than necessary in the past couple days by looking around at cars and attending to some other appointments for this week. I only have enough tolerance to go one other outing that I have to do today, otherwise the new snow coming down today is pretty much a prompt that I need to keep myself planted in one spot for the remainder of the day to allow the swelling to subside. It's in these moments of sitting still that I become quite grouchy and frustrated; sitting here miserably brooding over the fact that I've rendered myself half-crippled out of my own clumsiness and stupidity.

Thus, I retreat into writing. I've been getting really bored, and it doesn't help that I have the disposition to automatically start pacing when I do become bored: it's like the use of my feet are a critical part of some function to get me mentally unstuck. So now, being stuck on a couch seems to be further driving my mind into limbo. I can think of a thousand things to do, but they most of them require me being able to freely stand and walk. The pain-killers have been dulling my senses so badly: anything I try reading from books, or from online is pointless as it ends up being just lost in brain fog; plus they're ruining my appetite with the side effects of dizziness and nausea. Watching too much TV is rotting my mind as well: I keep flipping through channels, but I can't find anything but depressing news*, and there seems to be nothing else intellectually stimulating, engaging, or entertaining.** However, the cane has been a source of entertainment for Ella. It serves as a makeshift hockey stick, to put a little more speed and action on her toys when she wants to chase them around and pounce on them. At least one of us is easily amused. After a while, the insipid little game apps I've found made me feel reduced to a level of a cat chasing a dot from a laser pointer around the floor.

Friday, April 12

Spirits lowered even more: I learned about a death in the extended family, my cousin and uncle have my sympathies. I'm still useless and hobbling around, and can't follow a bead on anything mentally; so I caught a ride with my folks, and ventured out of town with them to watch my brother perform in a dinner theater play. He did a fabulous job with his role, and the production was very entertaining. The setting was about a small rural Saskatchewan farming community in the 1980's, during those bad drought years. It brought back lots of memories, plus their characters in the play were the perfect representative archetypes of the kinds of people I grew familiar with from that time: the stubborn, conservative old farmer; the younger generation, either willingly or reluctantly, pushed into seeking prospects outside of farm living, the free-thinking outsider with ideas and opinions that clashed with the culture at the time . . . it was a great comical story and a fine snapshot of what people were facing around these parts during those times. The play was called Dry Streak, and I would have gave it an award if I could have. I wish the pictures I tried taking of it turned out. I'm grateful to have seen it, and to have a little reprieve from the pain and negativity.

Saturday, April 13

I've been able to get around little better, relying less on the cane for support. The last of my pain-killers will be used today, so hopefully I'll soon be rid of their wretched side effects. If this rate of recovery continues, I hope to be back running again (within 5 km) by the middle of next week.

*- The Rehteah Parsons case in Halifax (so tragic that it's hard not to dismiss the thought using vigilante justice against those who bullied her), and the craziness happening in North Korea, being the most prevalent stories upsetting me most.
**- Actually, that's not 100% correct. I started watching Hannibal. They did well by casting Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen for the roles of Will Graham and Dr. Lecter respectively.

Future Thinking and Running Again

I'm so glad that February is finally over, but it didn't end without strain. I spent the last two nights of it, each one until around 3:00 AM, immersed in paperwork; preparing stuff for deadlines due on March 1st. It's like gambling under duress. The resulting headaches from all the analysis and reorganizing of things have been so brutal, and didn't fully disappear until today. My head has been made too numb with fatigue. Dealing with stuff for investments inevitably leads me to think of questions and speculations about the future. Not really financial or economic ones per se, but ones leaning more toward possible social, environmental, and geo-political changes, and ramifications*. It is from this where some of my current angst and unrest probably comes from: in not being able to foresee much in the years and decades ahead beyond something bleak and dystopian, on several levels ranging from the local to the global. No matter what avenue of investment I take, it would be seemingly pointless in the long run if it ultimately will be lost some way, or doesn't garner me any means of future happiness, or any protection from socio-economic and environmental factors and failures that are beyond my control. Thus, being engaged with such decisions becomes draining, and mentally taxing for me.

I finally began running outside this morning: for my first outdoor run of the year 2013. It was only two kilometers, but enough to reintroduce my leg muscles to such rigour now that there is enough ice free street surface to stride out across, and just long enough to re-acclimate my lungs properly, and to trigger them and my sinuses to rid themselves of a winter's worth of respiratory stagnancy. The skiing has been helpful, but it's not an accurate physical substitute, or facsimile, compared to running. With a reminder from my friend, it has struck me that my half-marathon that I signed up for is less than three months away. I'm trying to be mindful to temper my regenerating sciatic nerve slowly and properly.

*- Things like disturbing facts regarding: Education - Almost 70% of this globe's population believes in the ridiculous meme of creationism instead of the scientific evidence supporting evolution; Resource Management - It has been estimated that the energy equivalent of 4-6 barrels of oil is used to draw out just one barrel of it out of the Earth (If I said that I was paying 4-6 dollars to work for every one dollar I earned, I would be called crazy); Social Justice - This past exposure of the ignorance, corruption, and racist agendas on both sides of the fence of the "Idle No More" movement is probably a small glimpse of the unrest that's coming ahead in this nation; Agriculture - Farming is done by only (an aging) 2% of the growing global population, on increasingly depleted land, and yet the amount of industrial scale food production/processing waste is alarmingly increasing; Population - There are seven billion people living on a planet with, given our current rate of wasteful/inefficient resource usage, a carrying capacity of less than four billion, while at the same time, some religious institutions are still maintaining political influence/lobbying in many nations for preaching against and outright forbidding of family planning/birth control. These are only a few of the things that bother me about mankind. With such ignorance, impending limits and shortages, and uncontrolled growth, we are due for a worldwide collapse of civilization very soon. I can only hope that some definitely major paradigm shift is happening ahead to intercede.