Sabbatical Ending/National Holidays/Luggage Flags

Canada Day came and passed rather uneventfully. I worked that day, and I didn't partake in any of the local festivities. I arrived home in time in the evening to watch the dog dash under the furniture with fright once the fireworks stared blasting from close by Diefenbacher Park. The park bustled with a lot more noise and people than usual for the occasion due to the fact that the holiday fell midweek this year, limiting time for most folks to head up to cabin country or camp at the northern lakes. Travel out of town to places south and east of here was made difficult and limited due to the flooding disaster there, so more people were compelled to stay in town and gathered around here. It's Friday today, and I've noticed people packing up their picnic coolers and camping gear to escape the city for the weekend. Since Canada Day is also the official start of the next six months of the year, it's also a day where some reflection and reckoning is done, and a mark to use as a reset point whenever I feel I veered too far away from some ambitions and other things that I had resolved to do back in January.

Fitness climbs back into place as the number one priority. I've been noting that I'm probably at least seven kilograms* heavier than I was at this same time in the season last year. I was also noticing from glancing in the mirror how sickly I'm looking. The rainy month of June has left my legs and torso, which are usually fully tanned by late April or early May, looking too freakishly white, like I was rolling around in flour. The lack of vitamin D for so long would also explain why it has been so hard to bounce back from my lack of resilience lately. So, I decided to end my sabbatical from running. It has been five weeks since I last ran. I probably would have ended it sooner had it not been for the fact that I gibbled up my knee a while ago. Maybe it's still a bit premature to get back into it considering that, but I'm desperate. I picked the wrong day, and time of the day, to hit the trails too. It reached up to a 36 degree humidex reading by the time I got back in from doing it today. I somehow survived the almost 6 km trot. Today's sweaty spell in the heat and humidity maybe did a lot to finally reset my metabolism closer to its normal summertime mode. Today was the first time I actually used the air conditioner in my suite for the year. I'm now indulging in the long lost simple pleasures of listening to music, and of course, writing. I don't have any energy left for much else.
I've also been dwelling on the East Coast weather for the whole continent, as I have a couple of cousins who live in the path of Hurricane Arthur in their respective regions. Between that, and the recent flooding southeast of here, any complaint I have about the humidity earlier today here is trivial in comparison. After following a thread from the one living in North Carolina, who is experiencing the American Fourth of July holiday, her comments about it made me pause for thought about how different each of the cultures are about celebrating nationhood. It's a bit helpful for giving me a base for an explanation to my foreign reader(s) who put forth the question to me as to what I thought were the differences between Americans and Canadians. Since our respective national holidays are so close together, I thought I would entertain the question. I still don't know if I could comment fairly, but I'll try. 

Of all my wishes to travel, the curiosity to go to the states and see what was involved in a Fourth of July celebration has never really been there. I'm very uncomfortable being around and amid rallies where brazen displays of patriotism are everywhere, like the way the Americans seem to prefer to do it. It seems like there is more noise and spectacle involved to try to sell the idea to people that America is such a great place to live in. It's just not done the same way here in Canada, or it is at least not done here to the same degree. Here, you are permitted to just quiet down and be more reflective and appreciative of what you have and who you are for living in this nation. More people here tend to opt for being around someplace peaceful, like a park or around nature for that; not marching around in a noisy parade down Main Street. It's just a general opinion of mine, without an intent to stereotype. There are probably a lot of Americans who do prefer a quieter and more low-key holiday.

Just because I'm not appreciative of the American manner of celebrating nationhood doesn't automatically mean that I'm completely spiteful toward Americans, but it brings to light the whole issue regarding national pride that makes me mindful of the kinds of Americans that I really do dislike, and how they offend me as a Canadian. One example is in regards to "flag abuse". It's when those "proud Americans" who travel abroad**, the kind of really overly-patriotic ones who aggressively and obnoxiously tout how great and wonderful their country is while belittling the other cultures they are visiting, the ones who even go out of their way to do their own bit of Canada-bashing, but yet have no qualms about usurping the Canadian flag to sew and tag on their luggage in hopes to avoid getting swindled, assaulted, insulted, and ignored for service. Goddamned hypocrites! One minute, such people are ready to verbally piss on our heads, and then the next they are willing to use our flag like some sort a get-out-of-jail-free card in Monopoly when shit hits the fan. Sadly, such people usually do inevitably attract a lot of negative attention. When they use our flag, and yet continue to behave boorishly, arrogantly, and ignorantly to other people of other nations, that is a problem for me. It's like a less-criminal, but just as disrespectful, form of identity theft; it's because they actively misrepresent what Canada really is, all because of our flag being on some stupid and rude American's backpack. I'll admit that we as Canadians aren't all 100% polite and worldly people, but we certainly don't need to be giving the rest of the world the impression that we are actively adopting more of these sorts as our own, as if we have some sort of commitment or obligation to fill our national "asshole per capita" quota for the tourism industry. If I ever get on with pursuing any future dreams of traveling abroad, I really hope that I'll arrive at places serving North American tourists that have enough savvy for distinguishing the difference between the real Canadian tourists and the posers. I really wish and hope that I won't need to play the game of having to wear my nation's flag on my gear just to be treated respectfully. It shouldn't have to come down to all of that when you make an effort to behave with civility to begin with.

*- I'm noticing that when I gain weight I tend to use metric, and then switch to pounds when I start shedding it. Probably because the number for the gain is then smaller than that of the pounds lost. One of the more creative ways I choose to delude myself.
** - Again, not to generalize. Not all Americans are "bad" tourists. I feel sorry for the "good" ones who are automatically cast into this stereotype and preyed upon.

Leaf Cutters and Bitcoin. . .WTF!

It's only two days away from the solstice, and it aches my spirits knowing that so far almost every day off I've had since the first week of May, including today, has been either too cloudy/gloomy, or chilly, or rainy. The downpour this morning prompted the dog and I to go out only far enough for some of her relief essentials during her walk before she quickly dragged me back in; so she could then burrow and crawl back under my bed sheets to find that token warm spot she left. It was tempting for me to do the same thing, and just swear today off as another wasted, lazy, unenjoyable day for this season. Any day during the summer season when I can't start it by enjoying my breakfast and coffee on my balcony in the fresh air and sunshine seems like the beginning of a lousy day. I could have followed the dog's idea, but I have too much on my mind to allow me to rest. I decided to divert myself and escape from all that mental clutter and noise by writing here.

I sense now more than ever, after being so cooped up because of the dreariness and rain, how desperately I'm missing and being estranged from traveling, and just freely being able to walk around in nature and being bedazzled by brand new places. I realize that it's been more than a year since I just simply went fishing. I spent much of my evening last night in my armchair exploring destinations and favourable lodgings in Bing Travel and AirBnB. I also studied and tried to make sense of some literature on Bitcoin* and other digital crypto-currency movements that are happening, and all the unique options, securities, and freedoms they are allegedly supposed to allow when booking online and traveling abroad. More comments about that down the page.

With the setting being so gloomy and dreary for this time of the year, outside it seems almost too green. Normally, that wouldn't ever be a complaint from me around here (It's certainly better than when it gets too grey and white around here), but with the absence of sun, there has also been a sparseness of any flowers and blooms, making it look barren in another special way. Walking down the street under the canopy of thickly-leaved elms in the gloom and rain, I was struck with a special memory: of the insect nature, of all things.
 
More specifically, the verdant trees and the early day gloom triggered and took my wanderlust stricken mind back to a time when I was trekking through the rain forest, along some jungle trail that cut through some foothills near the coast when I spent time in South America**. On that excursion, something caught my eye on the trail. At the first flashing glance I had of the movement, it struck me that there was a little reddish-brown and green snake crossing the path slowly. However, on closer inspection with a clearer view, I discovered that it was really a dense column of ants carrying bits of fresh leaves on their backs. They looked like little surfers heading towards some beach carrying along their little green longboards, all in unison at a perfectly synchronized rate of marching in one direction to make them all look like one organism. This was my first encounter with leaf-cutter ants.
 
As strangely interesting and fascinating as they were to me at the time, I still didn't hold them in any special regard in the grander scheme of things that were happening in and beyond that jungle. I had enough of my own challenges I was going through in trying to adapt to that environment and the social scene of the nation I was in back then. However, later on I did gain some perspective of this creature's role in the interdependent symbiosis of that particular ecosystem. It turns out that this seemingly insignificant ant and its bizarre behaviour is greatly responsible for being a balancing component for keeping an entire forest system alive.

Most of us, who appreciate biology, are already familiar with the intricate role of honeybees, who work symbiotically as nature's reproductive postal workers/surrogate penises for flowering plants. The leaf-cutter ants are just as critical as an element of a life support system in a rain forest. The leaf-cutter ants act as a soil conservationist, habitat builder, gardener, and farmer. The leaf-cutters trim the leaves from select trees in the upper parts of the forest canopy. The consequence of billions of them trimming away these leaves is that it allows more sunlight to penetrate onto the forest floor so other smaller species of plants below can then photosynthesize and survive, and hence introducing more food and habitat, allowing more animal species to thrive in the middle and lower parts of the forest matrix. The ants take the fresh leaves back to their colony, where they are used not to directly feed the ants, but to nourish a specific type of fungus which is grown on the cut leaves. The fungi consuming the leaves is actually what the ants and their larvae feed on. The fungi also work in a copacetic union with other microbes to then accelerate the decomposition of the leaves which greatly helps to replenish nutrients and minerals the rapidly depleted/leeched topsoil on the rain forest floor. It's an intricate and sensitive system that has cycled for millions of years. Even though the ants have an important and integral role in it, they are not its most dominant force nor its weakest link. The system they interact in, without any one dominating power, is self-sustaining, interdependent and completely de-centralized. I reviewed this process, because it was supposedly important to know before I could try to get the gist of what the Bitcoin author was trying to explain.

By coincidence, the author of this Bitcoin book was trying to explain its workings by trying to use the life dynamics of these particular ants as an example. I was eager at first for the comparison, since I was indeed awestruck by them when I first saw them working, and I thought the author could actually somehow use these very same creatures as a relatable, comprehensible, and meaningful example to me to posit his analogy to the workings of Bitcoin. His leaf-cutter ant metaphor involved the establishing and creating a functional new digital currency, where there is no real direct intervention or regulation by any one national government authority on settling on what the value and potential transaction opportunities/limits can be for this type of crypto-currency, and the actual bottom-of-the-pyramid users generate and control this self-sustaining transaction system instead. Did you understand any of that? Who knew that social insect behaviour and digital currency macro-economics were so much alike? I sure didn't, and do you know what . . . I STILL F*&^%ING DON'T!!! I feel like my time was wasted now for reviewing something so bizarre, and I failed to anchor any of this crap to a workable concept that's meaningful to me. I confess that I'm no stranger to at least trying to study and attempt to understand some pretty wild esoteric ideas in a lot of fields, but the one that makes me want to gouge out my own eyes when I glance upon it is the subject of economics, and the words of people who think they have all the answers about it, and can't produce an intelligible and tangible example to explain so abstract. I don't know what qualifications you need to write a textbook explaining economics which now include more abstract computer coding for transactions and more esoteric tech-lingo, but after reading this stuff, I think it involves going to whatever school it was that Nostradamus went to, or whatever one the crazy old bastard who wrote the book Revelation did. I only got to wondering afterward about what it was, and much of it that he had actually smoked from some bong while he wrote that stuff. I don't intend to bash the guy who wrote this book too harshly: he did openly declare that it was his raw, unfinished copy, meant for more editing. I'll give him some great credit for daring to do his best to make describable a technical phenomenon that is itself changing very quickly in leaps and bounds as app development for it gets enhanced. It's still all gobbledegook to me. The comparison to Nature's ecology with human economics doesn't help me much either. I tend to think that Nature didn't account for human stupidity and human greed in her design, which the real workings of human economics is full of. Look how she is suffering now because of it. As a result, his example became nullified for me. Trying to follow any economic trend or related news just disturbs me, I can even see the result of doing it reflected by the quality of my own writing now. Rambling and discordant; lacking of a real central theme: just as I find regular discussions about the dynamics, theories, and policies in this field.

Between the two subjects of the ants and crypto-currency economic practice and theory, one had me a bit enthralled and interested; the other put me to sleep in my armchair. Hint: I didn't wake up with drool rolling down my chin, as if coming out of a coma, after reading about the ants. The subject of economics, especially as it is today, is all too cryptic, complicated, boring and nonsensical for me. It's all loaded with a bunch of cold and prickly theories which have more to do with making hyper-competitive businesses and corruptive governments flourish, and less to do with satisfying the real and current needs of the human condition. Google defines it as: the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. It sounds sweet and simple, but it's a little too general, and it also has too much wiggle room to allow for doing perverse, greedy, and unethical things as options to gain wealth. My personal simplest, yet exact, definition of economics (or at least as to how I try to apply it in my own life) is: the knowledge, practice, and study of managing and transferring given resources, assets, energy and time in a responsible, practical, effective, efficient, and ethical manner. The inclusion of the words "responsible" and "ethical" alone to the definition of economics shows you just how screwed up this world is when brought to light in the way we are living in under today's current actual economic system realities (or I should say tyrannies). My idea of what economics should mean doesn't jibe well with that used by most of the rest of the world. Maybe that's why I've been a poor student of it, or maybe I'm just pragmatic, and don't want to really waste time learning any more about a convention that really hasn't been working well for us to begin with. 

When it comes to Bitcoin, I can see now how those in power in institutions that are too archaic to readily adapt to this (like most governments) being really scared of it, along with those who are without technical savvy. Black market activity is not as easy to do with Bitcoin as people think it is, so those who are trying to sidestep accountability and transparency will have even more difficulty doing it as the technology evolves. Those digits still leave trails. I wonder what other propaganda wars/changes will ensue as it becomes more established. Boning up on some knowledge of Bitcoin is something not I'm really doing out of real interest; I'm just regarding as a necessary labour/evil because I might someday be forced to use it and comply with its terms; plus I may at the very least need to learn how to avoid being screwed over by it.

If we already avail ourselves to use some sort shopper's card for collecting 'points' for discounts and freebies from our favourite retailers, a casino card, or some means for collecting Air Miles® or any facsimile thereof, we are already resorting to de facto alternative forms of digital currency with an arbitrarily assigned value. So, why should we really be surprised, or feel so threatened that such a thing is Bitcoin has come along? We already seem to not mind too much about blindly feeding our personal information and data about our shopping and consumption habits for the fungus that is the market researcher to gather and exploit whenever we use such points cards. Using Bitcoin may actually lessen some of this sort of intrusion. The threatening thing I suppose is that it's a lot more abstract and more technical than other forms of payment that we use, but that's the way money has already been constantly evolving through the decades and centuries. Money, in any form, will always be used in corruptive ways so long as greed, waste, and stupidity in people exist. People might actually have to try to be a little less ignorant, and make an effort to actually tune into markets, and learn how to read candlestick charts and conversion tables to protect their interests as this digital convergence with money happens. I can see how that is intimidating for some, especially those who just want simple. All I know is that: a. there will be a huge powershift that will arise from this, and b. that for now I'll be studying the degree of convenience, security, and volatility of the Bitcoin system a little more before I commit to changing my dollars to binary digits in a QR code.
    
*-The weird and seemingly unrelated imagery on one of the EPUB books I was reading about Bitcoin also no doubt compounded the thought-triggering (it was a picture of a leaf-cutter ant).
**- Cue in me mimicking David Attenborough's voice and accent here . . .
 

Crash Habits

I realized that it has been some while since I wrote here. Nothing eventful has happened between now and my last entry that is really notable except for the fact that I've decided to take a sabbatical from the long-distance running to let my bones and joints heal up properly. I'm substituting in more cycling for fitness. I opted out of the Saskatchewan Marathon this year, as well as the Bridge City Boogie that is scheduled for today. I'm stuck in the midst of the second day of trying to resolve computer problems, and today I took the radical step of doing a total overhaul of my operating system.
My Sunday so far has gone as follows:
Stage 1: Start reinstalling Windows 8.0 operation system, since all my free time yesterday was used in vain and wasted effort desperately using whatever help advice and fixes I tried to deploy.
0% installed . . .
Showering, hygiene and grooming . . .
10% installed . . .
Prepared and had breakfast (scrambled eggs with onions and jalapeños and salsa, hashbrowns and coffee; loaded and turned on dishwasher
25% installed . . .
Go for another walk with dog to kill time between software loading, get rained on, return home quickly. I'm kind of thankful for the rain to make me feel less regretful and having an excuse for being cooped up inside to attend to the configuring . . .
33% installed . . .
Cleaned kitchen and sweep floors . . .
54% installed . . .
Folding laundry, changed bedding, and cleaned/dusted/vacuumed bedroom, groom the pooch . . .
67% installed . . .
Made more coffee, chatted with my Mom for a bit on the phone . . .
89% installed  . . .
Start praying to Jesus, Buddha, and whatever other patron saints and deities there are for restoring system crashes who'd care to listen to my plight. Twelve minutes later, a successful installation occurs. On to Stage 2 of this soul-crushing operation. Ella pokes me with her paw to get my attention, and then jumps up on my lap to try to comfort me from my noticeable unrest from this irritating fiasco.
Stage 2: Begin downloading and installing the layer of Windows 8.0 updates necessary before I can ever tack on the latest Windows 8.1 upgrade (92 needed).
Start a new blog entry on desktop (this one) . . .
0 of 92 downloaded . . .
I unload my dishwasher and started preparing stuff for lunch. I then begin reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, by the late Douglas Adams, feeling about as useless, surreal, and absurd as the Electric Monk introduced in chapter 2 of the book through the flow of this process. A half hour has passed by, then I see . . .
0 of 92 downloaded!!! . . . <a myriad of expletives at this point> . . . oh wait, holy crap it finally took some action to install updates. Loading and configuration seems like trying to escape a Black Hole at this point knowing that I'm not even half way finished of what I need to do to correct all this.
I think the point of how aggravating I find post-crash massive scale installations has been made, and this is probably the main reason why I would hate having an IT career as a tech support worker. I couldn't handle dealing with the levels of livid pent-up frustration while talking myself through a task, I'm sure my impatience would only get worse when dealing with someone else. If I were tied to a desk incapable of hastening the process, and couldn't make the busywork, or anything else constructive or productive for things like what I just described to curb this aggravation, I'd be totally at my wits end.
It's my own damn fault that this has happened. A complete refreshing install once a year is what I would recommend for anyone who uses their system at my degree of usage, but I follow my own advice rather poorly. I haven't performed any maintenance like this since I purchased my laptop a few years ago.
Being that we are now so interlinked with technology, this all leads me to wonder if there could be an entirely new psychological profile inventory made solely based on a person's ability to organize, attend, adapt, and using time-passing habits through the tedious process of recovering from a computer system crash and other monotonous first world problems: much like the formal stages of dealing with the news of hearing that one is approaching their mortality in a short given time (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). It's being affronted by the irony of taking so much lagging time is used to set up things that are supposed to process all the other things in our lives in nanoseconds.
I forgot how long and agonizing this process is, and if I were more prudent I should be given myself more substantial things to multitask at while this was happening, like planning a manned mission to Pluto or something . . .

. . .It's now 3 days later, with one night shift, one migraine, two excruciatingly sore eyeballs, and cruddy weather within that time. I have my system up and running again. I plugged in the old apps I had (actually used), leaving the rest in the digital oblivion to prevent them from cluttering up my hard drive; one of them was probably responsible for this trouble to begin with. I also took advantage of rigging this baby up with the newest version of MS Office: to crawl out of the primordial ooze of what was Office 2007, and start crawling on solid ground with more cloud-capable features provided with Office 365. It's a hell of a jump, and I'm ashamed I waited this long to come to this point to do this enhancement, and I'm thinking more that my crash that forced me in this direction was a blessing in disguise.

I'm so far impressed with the new features. I'm testing Word's capability of uploading my entry directly to my blog, right now. Office 2007 had the same feature, but it calved on me for some reason ages ago, and I just didn't bother coming back to it. I like the fact that I have more formatting options and better correction utilities at my disposal now. Maybe someday I'll manage to actually get creative with them.

The Future(s) That Didn't Come

"To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." - R. Buckminster Fuller

Ever since last week, as the comic con geeks and sci-fi nerds were celebrating Star Wars day around the globe (May the Fourth be with you), I've been dwelling on the not-so-fiction based topics centred around the future and human society. I got to thinking about the ideas I had formulated back in the days of my youth about what I imagined the future (this present) would be like. Helping a friend re-organize and add fixtures to her garage over this weekend drew me to thinking about and the subject of the futuristic architecture and living space again; put into the context of the stuff of what I had envisioned decades ago in my teen years.

I wasn't very hopeful in those formative years that we would ever survive as a society, or that I would even survive to adulthood given that the media was always reporting on the sabre-rattling between NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations, spelling out that the Cold War was going to turn hot any second with little or no warning. It was depressing knowing that the most radical advancements in technology then always seemed to be in the hands of the military, which made it feel even more like the race toward Armageddon seem inevitable. There was more than one teacher I had tuned into reminding us of all that gloomy business. I got into reading magazines like Omni*, Popular Science, and Popular Mechanics when I was about twelve or thirteen, more to escape that fear than anything: to turn toward looking into some sort of future that didn't involve some sort of annihilation. Back then, I was actively being a 'futurist': actively speculating what the future technologies and society would be like if we survived, or altogether managed to avoid such destruction. I'm, of course, thankful that events occurred where the scenario of being reduced to a pile of ashes or stricken with the lingering torturous suffering of radioactive fallout never happened, but sadly, neither did the better future that I was preparing for come to fruition either. The forecasted future(s) of technical innovation and social evolution that was to provide enough for every citizen on this planet to live comfortably with an abundance of energy and material resources for physical and societal well-being never came, nor is development coming quickly enough for such possibilities. It's great to see that for the most part, we have been able to stamp out and hamper hard-core global Communism to allow ingenuity, technology and efficiency to thrive. Now all what we have to do is stamp out and hamper hard-core global Capitalism and religious theocracies, and the respective crushing poverty, oppression and ignorance it brings to billions. All these radical systems I mentioned do nothing good for the ecology and environment of this planet.

I was very intrigued back then by the work and writings of Richard Buckminster Fuller. He was such a brilliant man. He got me turned on to his version and vision of applied geodesic geometry, the concept of tensegrity, and synergetics. Also, it was he who got me absolutely hating my geometry class in high school at the time, which seemed in comparison so backward, so primitive, so dull with all the in-class recitation, and rote learning of proofs that we would never have practical use for in the real world. There was nothing creative about it; learning from a teacher who didn't do much more than regurgitate from an antiquated textbook from the 1950's. Each minute in that class felt like a step backward into some sort of intellectual retardation. I dropped it. To do that for an entire school year was hell to me.

Today, I'm very disappointed to see that geodesic dome designs aren't more commonplace for being used as self-sufficient homes, or at the very least ones that are used as greenhouses for local sustainable food growth to avoid the cost of shipping. I'm upset that there still isn't a pan-global hydro line network, lines across the Bering Strait to make a Trans-Siberian/Trans-Manchurian hydro line that switches energy from one continent to another at times when low night time use occurs the surplus production gets diverted to the other side of the globe when and where the need is high during their respective daytime hours, thus making the use of that water powering turbines more effectively and efficiently, thus relying less on other more destructive and wasteful power production. It angers me that South Korea and China have more Mag-Lev bullet trains than this continent, a supposedly more technically advanced one. As a citizen of Earth, I'm pissed off that there is money galore to peck into pristine spots on the Earth to access oil and natural gas with methods that contaminate and pollute the water, but isn't yet an established infrastructure for a cleaner hydrogen economy.

The one established trend that I'm glad was predicted correctly by Becky Fuller and is the phenomena he coined as "ephemeralization" or dMass: the trend of being able to do more with less energy and material** and resources. Think of the mass of material that a smart phone has been able to do away with as computing memory capacity with a given amount of chip-space gets ever more faster and powerful as it falls within concordance with Moore's Law. I attached a You Tube video which gets the point across better than I can.

Another great thinker I respect is Jacque Fresco who was a peer to Bucky Fuller, the founder and creator of the Venus Project. He is a (yet) living contemporary architect and social engineer for resource-based synergistic systems.

 

 

In regards to having a better future all comes down to being a depressing realization that lot of great systemic things have not come to fruition because they fly directly into the face of people who are stupid, greedy, incapable of using common sense, and can't fathom what a paradigm of interdependence looks like, and the ideas are supressed because of some institutional propaganda, promotion of omni-ignorance and pervasive poverty in places; not allowing a better systems to get a toe hold to begin with. I'm still lost in wondering if I should be hopeful for a better future or not.

Buckminster Fuller would be rolling over in his grave if he knew that the average schmuck with a cellphone or tablet, something that has manifold times the computing power that was used to put a man on the moon, is using an obscene amount of time doing nothing more with it than trying to reach a next level of Candy Crush instead of using an app or apps to actually make a difference in their lives.

*- Omni was a futuristic magazine, but unfortunately, it itself didn't have a future. It stopped publication in the early 90's. However, I heard rumours that it may be revived in a digital edition. Omni is an interesting title, because as it relates to Fuller, it was frequently used as a prefix by him in a lot of his visionary writings.

**- Bucky would argue that there really is no such thing as solid "material", but rather "energy-events".

Under-Stimulated/ The Art of Manliness/Emasculating Waffles

You would think that I would be grateful to have a Saturday off after working them for two weeks in a row, but for this evening I'm in a mood that is beyond depressed and bored. The past five days of dull gloomy grey skies and occasional rain/wet snow have dulled all the edge off any wits I had left in me. The only thing I could think of doing for "shaking it up a bit" was trudging out to get an actual shake (an exotically flavoured one) at Jerry's Food Emporium, and heading back home*. I'm so appalled, saddened, and somewhat disturbed at realizing and admitting that this was the only wild idea I could come up with. It was a double coconut gelato milkshake, and I would like to think that it would be a worthy rival of say the legendary, yet fictitious, five dollar shake at Jack Rabbit Slim's in Pulp Fiction. Maybe it was, but my spirits were too low to register it; I still returned back thinking that my time could have been used more wisely.

After I came home with my big cup full of drinkable instant heart attack, and gave some thought to going to the casino south of town for a thrill, and just about caved to the idea to hitting the Blackjack tables. First, I drilled and tested myself as a refresher with table strategy and card counting with a Blackjack app for almost an hour. I played 98% of my hands correctly with using orthodox basic play strategy (including for doubles, splits, and surrenders), but I only did an abysmal 47% with correct tracking and counting with the high-low system on a six deck shoe, only putting me at a 51.4% win ratio (pushes included) whilst sticking to minimum bets, and I wouldn't call it a lucrative trip there unless that figure could get above 60%**. I don't imagine I'll do any better with the extra noise and distractions over there. Even with boning up on things mnemonically, I figured the house would still have too much of a statistical advantage over me. I'm in too much of a funk to do anything that mentally intensive. Mathematical reasoning beat out my reckless impulsivity, and I instead opted for the safer way of doubling my money: folding it over once and then sticking it back into my pocket. I stayed home just watching comedies on Netflix. That didn't even do much to cheer me up.

As unmanly as I feel for being an adult spontaneously running out in the middle of the evening to get a PG-rated calorie bomb to slurp on, and shoving aside the thought of casino gaming; the one thing that would make me feel even more embarrassed to admit to doing as a man, if I actually wasted admission money to attend it, is going to the actual MAN SHOW 2014 that is happening this weekend at Prairieland. My commentary in my entry about MAN SHOW 2013 pretty much sums my attitude towards all that. It's one thing, as a guy, to just feel down, unimportant, rejected, and powerless at times, but it's a whole other realm of stupidity happening there when you are constantly doing too much going over the top to over-compensate for all that. The Man Show is there to exploit the real dummies for that. They just run short of trying to peddle pecker pills and codpieces to them there. It's that kind of testosterone-driven shit show stupidity that I just don't want to have any part of. I'll be better off with the milkshake, thank you. If I really am so depressed, this aorta-clogging concoction may at least kill me quickly.

It's not like I have to "go back into training" for knowing now to be an average guy, but I was curious to see what was out there on the net in this regard. I found the ART OF MANLINESS website, and started to peruse it. "How to Tie a Tie" . . . great to know, "10 Worst Products Invented for Men" . . . educational and hilarious. This site almost had my respect and almost sold me that this could do wonders for re-instilling my manliness . . . that is until I discovered the waffle recipe on one of the links.

WHAT!!!???

I don't care if they are the savory kind instead of sweet, I don't care if they are being served with some wild rabbit that you trapped and killed yourself with a snare line fashioned out of your own plucked and braided chest hair. In my mind, waffles ≠ manliness. This man site instantly turned into Chatelaine once I spotted that. I am a guy, and (unfortunately) I already know how to make goddamned waffles, thank you very much. I would count this as actually one of the more emasculating talents that I have. I don't ever make them for me, because really I hate the fuckin' things. They are made by a bulky space-consuming appliance for that singular specific use only, and it if doesn't work right, you feel doubly screwed. Finding that recipe there was also a funny juxtaposition to have as a "manly" food along with all the other manly food fare that you supposed to be able to kill, catch, and prepare with just a gun, fishhook, or a knife. Waffles do nothing for me except be preparation intensive (lots of prep time for very little), attention demanding and finicky to work with (like working around drama-queens), bland, and stupid dimply things that you can't spread stuff evenly onto. Eat some toast for Crissakes! The only time ever I make them is for someone else. The people (who by now know how much I hate making them) that I serve them to don't ever give me enough thanks or anything else in return for doing so*** , and thus it's a very unrewarding thing to do, so I feel exploited; and the one of the main rules of manliness, I'd presume, is to never let yourself become exploited. Therefore . . . waffles do nothing for my manliness!

I hope Sunday has a lot more coming to me for something for more engaging stimulation. However,I expect it will be windy and rain (again). Maybe I'll be a bit sharper mentally and actually try out the casino, or at the very least encounter something else crazy to attack and apply reason to.

* - Woohoo, I know . . . so manly <sarcasm>, but it was a better option for me at the time than drinking alcohol, as I had no wish or mood to make my brain operate with anymore impairment than I think it already has.

**-  Nine possible hand playing strategy outcomes, in Blackjack game theory: 1. Hand played correctly/beat the dealer - orthodoxy pays off, 2. Hand played incorrectly/dealer still loses - you're just a lucky bastard, 3. Hand played correctly/dealer still wins - it sucks, but it happens, 4. Hand played incorrectly/dealer wins - you are just playing stupidly, 5. Correct play/tying (push)with the dealer - wasted time, 6. Incorrect play/push with dealer - you were stupid, but the fates have forgiven you, 7. Blackjack/ automatic win - most desirable, 8. Correct play/surrendering- Oops, too bad, 9. Incorrect play/surrendering - stop playing immediately when you turn into this kind of idiot. The real money is made with opportunities for doubling and splitting cards and knowing when to take them. I don't bother pissing around with the insurance bets, or else there would be eleven outcomes. The betting strategy with the card counts taken into consideration is too complicated for me to explain.

***- If you're a woman and really want me to be genuinely happy to make &#^%in'  waffles for you, you better be prepared to clear your calendar for a whole weekend of doing stuff with me that would make Caligula blush!

The Passion of the Yeast/Pseudo-Lent/Vegan Stupidity

It's Easter weekend, and I'm stuck with working throughout all of it. I just arrived home tonight after work; welcomed by the pleasant sound of my latest creation coming alive. I mixed together a batch of beer (real ale)* wort early yesterday, Good Friday, and now the yeast is doing its thing. I hear that lovely sound of respired CO₂ thumping and pulsating from the air lock of my closed primary fermentation system. It has a smooth and relaxing steady rhythm like that of a human heartbeat at rest. It reminds me of, and is putting me in the mood to listen to, the opening track of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album. Brewing seemed to be the proper thing to do given the occasion. Taking and blending these ordinarily inert ingredients together to make something that starts to foam up and emit heartbeat sounds is the closest thing I can do to perform something that resembles some sort of resurrection.

I'm reminded that the Lent season is ending; not that I really practice any such thing myself. It just brought me to thinking about voluntary dietary restrictions in general and the (mostly superstitious) reasons that people do such things. I was also prompted to think about the subject of meatless eating because I realize that I absent-mindedly forgot to pack up some steaks that someone gifted to me before I came home, and I'm in the middle of kicking myself about it. I began contemplating about my own eating habits, and how unwittingly they have become quite erratic for me as of late. I have no meat left now, and I'm down to my last few containers of frozen homemade soups, homemade pickles and other canned preserves, plus another few options of what I have stored in my pantry. My intentional restriction to eating just this stuff to the point where it's running out is sort of a pseudo-Lent: it's a purposeful reduction and elimination of my stores to make it easier in having less things to muddle through once I progress to the arduous task of taking my spring cleaning into the kitchen, and for the ease of re-organizing and re-stocking with healthier stuff later. I'll be resuming a high protein-slow-carb diet for my training season.

Overall, I try not to be a fussy eater, and I get adventurous enough to try something new out at least once. However, the thing that I know that I could never get into is total vegetarianism; more specifically veganism. I actually do eat less meat than I used to, but the reason is stemmed more out of economy. I really do seem to need some form of animal protein each day, at the very least in the form of eggs or milk. I did go through a fasting spell once where I gave up eating all forms of animal protein (meat, fish, eggs and dairy) along with refined flours and sugar for a week for the sake of following a strict body cleanse regimen I was performing at the time. During that week of this special diet, the only thing that I lost was seven days of energy and sanity. I was very miserable and lethargic throughout that ordeal. Sure, it could be argued that it was the result of going through some sort of detox process, but given the way I felt through it all, and the very unnoticable 'improvement' I sensed afterward, I doubt if it was giving me any benefits. The only time I felt better after it was from eating a chicken dinner when it came time to finish the damn thing.

Being an occasional quasi-vegetarian isn't an entirely repulsive thought to me, or at least I'm not completely opposed to the idea. I do find myself enjoying more varieties of veggies and salads than I ever have, and I know and respect that there would be some significant benefit ecologically for this planet if we halved our intake of meat, or else just excluded animal flesh even for just one meal each day, or exclude it for one entire day of a week. The vegan meme though to me is a whole other issue of mindless extremism. Of all the real life people I've encountered who professed to me to be practicing vegans, very few of them struck me as ideal specimens of health (or sanity for that matter). They sure as hell didn't look like any of the models that PETA exploits for their campaign billboards. They either looked quite sickly, weak, and anemic; or else they fell on the other end of the spectrum of being (surprisingly) grossly obese. These latter people seemed to have over-compensated for the lack of protein by boosting and bulking up their intake of sugar, highly-processed hydrogenated plant oils/trans-fats, and excessive salt for flavouring. They looked like even more abnormally misshapen blobs possibly due to water-retention, probably suffering liver** and pancreatic issues or God knows only what other metabolic problems because of insufficient enzymes, or perhaps they were becoming hormonally screwed up from the onslaught of phytoestrogens from an excess of soybean products.

Some aspects of a strictly all vegetable diet are no better for you than having a high meat protein diet. There are lots of unhealthy fast/snack food around that would comply with a "vegan" diet, e.g. french fries fried in soy/corn oil, potato chips, and palm oil based dessert whip. There are no animal products at all in the beer I'm making, so technically it's vegan fare too. Even though a pint of beer and a plate of chips at the pub may qualify as vegan friendly, no one can say that it's the healthiest thing for you.

It's the personalities of these vegan-folk that bother me the most. I haven't yet met one of these vegans who didn't have a sanctimonious attitude about their chosen lifestyle, and felt some need to preach about it, while belittling others who do eat meat and are content with just being their natural omnivore selves. I have to laugh at the ones who endeavour to be so particular, and take such a hard core stand about having no "disgusting meat" enter their bodies, but have no such restrictions or concerns about smoking***. I saw an all-vegan recipe book in a book store, with the woman author on the front cover who had both her arms permanently covered and sleeved with a bunch of skank-ass tattoos. No "poisonous meat" for her, but it's evident that she never gave any second thought about how many toxic compounds were in that ink that she chose to inject and impregnate her skin with. Someone like that just strikes me as being just another annoyingly ditsy hypocritical shit-head. Just like the fashion dummies and celebrity spokespersons who gain publicity by admitting that they just can't bring themselves to eat those sweet little cows, but apparently have no problem with buying, wearing, and hoarding shoes and purses made from the their cute little hides, or tucking their asses into the seat of a Mercedes or Bentley made with the same leather.

The vegans and vegetarians who are so because of their religious beliefs have equally annoyed me as well; just the ones who claim that they have a "better religion and society" because they are vegetarian, with a "respect for all life". One woman, a new immigrant from India I met, was trying to explain all that very same bullshit to me some while ago. I held my tongue, but I could have been really tough and cruel on her, by bluntly and unrelentingly lambasting and pointing out that their largely Hindu vegetarian society hasn't prompted enough of a "respect for all life" to stop all the gang rapes that have been reported there in the last while, nor does it seem to be doing anything to curb the alarming number of female infanticides that regularly occur there (so poor families won't be forced later to pay some ridiculous customary dowry to get a daughter married), nor does it do anything to fully extinguish the segregating caste system that they still have, where such incidents have occurred where the impoverished Dalits (the so-called "untouchables") are sometimes beaten to death for doing something as minor using the "wrong" well for fetching the life essential of water. If I did get around to saying all that, without even mentioning the grinding poverty there and the lower life expectancy, I would have ended by asking her that if her "society and religion" were so much "better" there, then why in the hell did she bother to move here? Oh goodie for you if you were born and raised in an ancient culture living on a tropical subcontinent with a convenient year round growing season for fruits and vegetables. In a climate where dead flesh would spoil and go rancid in minutes without proper refrigeration, and where there is no clean enough water to process it, vegetarianism was/is a sensible and practical lifestyle there. This person didn't think at all, before she made her ethno-centric judgement, that hers was not a cultural paradigm that jibes well with living in a region where early settlement needed to account for only a four month growing season, extreme winters, and a need to can, dry, freeze and preserve food; which degrades the nutrient content significantly. Having fresh meat, poultry, or fish available was necessary for society to establish itself here. People must be cognisant and appreciative of that before they criticize. I'd like to see her and the other ignorant vegan dummies go up north and try to argue with the Inuit about meatless eating and social betterment with that kind of stupid self-righteous attitude.

The evolution of hominids into Homo Sapiens wouldn't have happened at all if our brain growth wasn't accelerated and fostered out of the necessity of trying to survive through an Ice Age by eating meat from hunting. Otherwise, we would have turned out to be not much different than pot-bellied ruminating gorillas who need to use most of their time foraging and eating to acquire their protein. Even within the perspective of modernity, if everyone was to spontaneously become a vegan here (as the more radical ones wish would happen) in this region of Canada, that means extra taxing and exploiting of the land and water resources in some other temperate/tropical agriculture zones somewhere else to grow more, and use more fuel for importing and shipping of this perishable nutritious living produce that we couldn't up grow here to sustain us for eight months of the year. We weren't made to live strictly on grain, which is the plant based thing we could do for a local homegrown vegetarian option throughout the winter months if we were to actively limit energy and costs for shipping. Furthermore, the grain-based diet itself has undergone lots of negative press in the past decade.

The other ignorant criticism at the global level that bothers me is the blaming of Western nations for not doing enough agriculturally to promote conditions more conducive to freeing the world from eating so much animal protein, and growing more protein rich crops. There is a real failure to note the interdependence. Canada (specifically here in Saskatchewan) is already the largest producer of lentils, a protein rich pulse crop, in the world; it's the Middle East, and other regions of Africa and South Asia where they are most frequently exported to, with India being the largest consumer. Ironically, our lentils are being shipped to places where climatically they are even better suited for growing such crops if their resources were managed better. I heard it speculated that if the entire pulse crop production in Saskatchewan alone were to totally fail in a year, there would be a real possibility of widespread famine and/or violent unrest due to hikes in food prices in those regions populated by those on strictly vegetarian diets. The real points of shame are that these nations and regions are not committing themselves to enough of an effort for a peaceful and stable political climate to enable themselves to establish their own sustainable agriculture systems, infrastructure, and practices to allow them to produce enough of their own food locally. The other great shame is ultimately the higher cost and fuel waste for us to be transporting this stuff half way around the world for them, as fuel prices go up due to terrorism threats from some of these very regions who demand this stuff, and there is added inefficiency due to skirting around and avoiding dangerous shipping lanes, like around the horn of Africa, where piracy is a real threat.

I don't have all the answers on how to live rightly, but I do know that being a vegetarian/vegan doesn't automatically make you a better person, although those who are would like us to believe it does. A lot of people have forgotten, or don't realize, that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian.

* - Hydrometer reading: 1.043 for the original gravity. I speculate a 5.2% alcohol by volume end result, barring stalls and accidents.
** - The Dalai Lama even eats meat on occasion, more so to settle and remedy a pre-existing liver condition he has. Being a Buddhist monk, he is a vegetarian at heart, and not tuned into making other beings suffer, but he's also not so foolish about it as to compromise his own health. 
***- Tobacco and "other-than"

Re-Purposing Litter: A New Type of Green Justice

We took a great big giant stride into spring this week. I halted any full-scale spring cleaning for a while because it was pointless to do while all the dust and debris was being tracked into the place, and blown around with all the vicious wind we've been having lately. It's hard to scrounge up energy for it also after runs in such wind. The absence of puddles and road slush finally got me ambitious enough to fix up my bike. I accidentally destroyed two inner tubes getting it done (due to a tire defect), but it's done. I'm so much happier to finally see some green grass peeking and poking up above the dead mulch. I also gleaned a small profit in refunds since the thaw started.

I have a ritual, once spring thaw comes, of being proactive with doing something about some of the litter that's exposed once the snow recedes; as a winter's worth of evidence of morons rambling through the neighbourhood gets revealed on the sidewalks, the streets, the alleys, and the nearby parks. Waste and litter (and those who pitch it) sicken me. I wish there was a solution getting rid of these ghetto-scum idiot culprits with the stupid and lazy mindset that perpetuates all this, but that will have to be a topic for another entry. I could bitch and moan about the problem, or I could turn the lemons into lemonade. I clean up some of it. It's just a passive and casual thing I do when I walk the dog in the morning and evening.  The pitched coffee cups we find are reused for cleaning up after my own dog during the walk, and are disposed of properly, and we collect the bottles and cans we come across for recycling. This habit started back in the days when I tended a garden space on another property I was living on, I would do the same ritual every spring and throughout summer. This spot was in the centre of the "party district" in town, so there was always a substantial enough mass of strewn-about recyclables left behind. Enough such that after I collected and took all this junk to SARCAN, our provincial recycling outlet, I got enough from the refunds to use for purchasing my seed stock, and other gardening supplies; the amount from the refunds always completely covered the costs for doing all of that.

From the commercial side of the alley, I reclaimed the wood from broken and discarded shipping pallets, and built composters and bedding frames from them. It all yielded to me some fresh homegrown organic produce in the fall, and I even had enough of a surplus a couple times that some was donated to the local food bank. I called this activity 'Operation Green Justice'. Even now, if someone were to play a random word association game with me, my automatic response to "plastic bottle" would probably be "tomato seedling". The upside is that it's an effort of being a good steward to the community and the environment, I didn't need to join any special club to give me license to do it, and I learned and applied a useful hobby like gardening. The downside is that I'm probably often looked at, by those who witness me doing this, as some sort of vagrant scrounging around for enough of a refund to fritter away on booze, smokes, or on some other confection for sin and vice.

Using my energy this way to convert trash into nutritious produce won't serve to build me any sort of fortune or empire soon, but it is an effort to transform negatives to positives, and I'd like to think that it will somehow create some sort of better karma later on. My motives are still purely selfish.

I don't really have a garden to tend anymore. Since I've been living here, my effort to do some container plantings on my deck has been all in vain. I never had a substantial yield of anything. I tried to set up some passive hydroponic experiments, but to no avail; there were just too many shortcomings to allow for it. There are also no bees around to pollenate the plants properly. Even with setting things up to have hanging planters and growing things vertically, the space is too limited; and I have no convenient outdoor watering system. I'm pretty much limited to producing a few pots of fresh herbs and that's it. I think it's more worth my while to retire from the gardening, and thus re-purpose the SARCAN money for another noble pursuit. . . probably another couple of fermentation projects. The refunds I collected so far amount to enough for a couple of beer kits: that's 46 litres worth of beer (132 - 330 mL bottles, or 22 six-packs); in which the expenses for it don't really come out of my own pocket.

I guess, like some vagrant, but in a more indirect way, I'll be using my money for confections of vice after all. The difference is that I won't be giving any extra money away for sin taxes. A cleaner park and street to look at as I sip my homebrew from my balcony is ultimately the reward for doing all of this. I'm curious as to what else I could 'seed and grow' with any other surplus of this can money: both for me and the common good.