Cabin Pleasures vs. Cabin Fever

I have taken this day off as my New Year’s statutory holiday. A good day to recover from a lot of skiing and committing to starting a lot of other things on my resolution list for the New Year. Committing to my resolution of doing an archiving project, as I said I would do in a recent entry, was one of them. Monitoring the moving and copying of a couple of terabytes of data to sort through later was beginning to be a bit of a monotonous process; filled with snags. So, on the side, I’m doing a bit of writing as a practical and meaningful diversion, as I watch things close by. I have purposely kept the TV and music off for the sake of being free of distraction.

Despite being struck with a big cramp in my foot today from starting all this off a little too eagerly; I’m still thankful that I’ve been able to get out and do some skiing. I sure wasn’t able to last year. The absence of the noise, with technology being a pain in the ass right now, and being grateful for the fact that I ski this year brought me around to exploring a challenging question that came to me recently. I don’t usually pick out subjects from Facebook or other social media to give an in-depth commentary on, but this particular one captured my interest. Perhaps some of you saw, or even commented on it. I don’t know what was more poignant: the challenging question, or some of the answers people gave for it. It was the Cabin in January question that has been getting a lot of attention in Facebook. It was presented such that it looked like a probe for auditions for a reality TV show offering $100,000.00 in prize money. My response I gave was initially for the prospect of easy money, but I realize that this was a rash answer. After some introspection, there is more to it than that. I had to get real with myself and remember how much of a trial it was for me last winter when I was incapacitated for much of it: unable to walk outside in the chilly air without extreme risk and discomfort, or even inside without feeling like I was going to collapse. Thus, I was forced to be a shut in for more than a month; left to deal with my own unwelcome isolation. Even with the company of my dog, and being surrounded by all sorts of technology and the amusements of games, puzzles, media, and literature that it could provide, I realize that I didn’t manage very well when the solitude was too prolonged. It was quite a miserable situation. So, would I really have it in me to last in a cabin by myself in the middle of nowhere, even it was for a modest fortune? I realized the hard way that it takes health and energy to deal with and endure isolation. The thing that majorly made it so bad was the fatigue and lack of energy depriving me of even the ability to focus and think straight. That was the most dreadful thing to deal with, plus being drained all the time by both anxiety and depression. I was left fearful and wondering what I would be doing with my life if the recovery stalled at point where I was going to be chronically disabled, and if that would be the limits of the energy I’d able to muster for each of the remaining days of the rest of my life. Thankfully, I’ve come around to being healthier than that, I can re-access and review why I think it would be a good, if not entertaining or interesting, exercise to do. Moreover, to do it by myself. It’s ironic that I dwell on the subject of coping with winter isolation with contrived conditions of scarcity, while I’m trying to deal with the mediocrity of it here, using technology within the comforts of modern civilization.

There are a lot of valuable disciplines and lessons one should achieve with this challenge of coping with isolation away from a noisy, instant gratification society if one does it right. The ones I see that are the most valuable that appear off the top of my head are these things

1. Lagom:  to gain a sense of that nice, concise word, invented by the Swedes: to instill a value of learning how to consume or use just enough; not so much to be wasteful, and yet not so little as to feel deprived. I would think that after a while it would change how you direct your energy for real living. I had spoke more about lagom in a past entry about Sweden and Unions (Learning what Lagom Is). Given that you have limited to the things in your cache of supplies here, and no option to just dash off to a store, learning to ration and make the more out of your materials is critical.
2. To be Grateful: a cabin without electricity or access to media is about as bare essentials as you can get, but realize that so many in the world have even less than this. What is even yet more profound is that among the many of them who do have less than this, there are those who are able to find happiness and gratitude.
3. You May Find Out What your Authentic Self Is: once you take away the trappings of this material world, or at least get put in a place where such things have no practical use, or where there is no one else around to admire them, or be impressed or covetous of them, you may be forced to see that knowledge and skills, not things, are the real treasures. I think that this would allow one to realize exactly what kind of skills one would inherently want to have. This brings me to the next point . . .
4. You May Find Out What You Are Truly Lacking: without interference from the rest of the outside world trying to sell you shit, or adverts trying making you feel like less of a person just because you aren’t consuming and hoarding more junk, you might tune into the qualities you wish you had instead of quantities of stuff you want that go obsolete and out of fashion quickly
5. You May Soon Discover That Most of the Stress You Have Living in a Modern Society is Artificial, and Ultimately Trivial: I’ll leave this one open for debate.

The ideal location options I’d like for this cabin (if, as in the picture, it is indeed in a Boreal location):

1. Definitely out of Saskatchewan, unless it was by a lake with a good ice-fishing. Maybe somewhere else in Canada, like probably Northern Ontario or Quebec, (BC is too alpine for me; I don’t fancy avalanches). The hint that reveals that this cabin in the picture is somewhere in North America is the sign with the English word “Welcome” over the door.
2. If in the USA, hopefully in a northern state by some (unpolluted) lake.
3. If in Europe: I’d opt for either Norway, or Sweden, or Finland (because there’s a good chance then that I might conveniently have a sauna nearby to use).
4. The lowest I’d stoop to is this . . . Russia, that is if this place is situated close to the borders of Western Europe. I’d hope to hell not in someplace inside deep in the Siberian regions of Irkutsk, Yakutsk, or Omsk. It’s fucking insanely cold over there! It’s often such that the coldest places on Earth in January are within those regions. Too cold for even me: one who is usually well adapted to it. That would make it a very hard earned $100,000.

The 15 most basic tools that I would hope were provided for me:

1. An Axe
2. Matches
3. Candles
4. A sighting compass, with both degree and mil readings, plus a map including the area within a 10 km radius of the cabin
5. A good hunting/filleting knife (with a sharpening stone)
6. Fish hooks and fish line (at least 20 lb test) if near a lake or river
7. A good length of rope (15 metres)
8. A shovel
9. A bucksaw
10. Snowshoes or skis (depending on the terrain)
11. A camping lantern (with spare wicks/mantles and a good supply of fuel for it)
12. A kettle
13. A wash basin
14. A cast iron frying pan
15. A bucket

If there is absolutely no electrical power in said cabin, what things would I have with me to keep myself mentally stimulated? (Let’s say I was limited to five)

1. A set of writing instruments and paper - I grouped this to be one thing, as each is useless without the other. The paper would be in a ruled notebooks and blank sketchpads. Journaling, listing, cartography, schematics, calculating, for the practical side. Creative writing, sketching, calligraphy, origami for the recreational side.
2. A Carving Knife/Blade - with an abundance of wood around it would be a practical implement. I'd use it for carving utensils, harpoon points, snare trap riggings and such if I wanted/needed extra protein beyond the provisions. Also, for crafting an abacus/Napier bones (a non-electrical homemade computer for the sake of saving paper while doing complex calculations). It would probably be more likely to be used for whittling figurines for something leaning towards the recreational.
3. A novel – I couldn’t guess which one right now would be the perfect one to include with this experience, but it would certainly be a long one.
4. My Guitar – It would be an ideal time to re-acquaint myself with it, and try to master it better. The bright side is that there would be no one around to complain. A chance perhaps to compose a song for someone special. If worse comes to worse, i.e. I lost my all my food somehow and was starving, and I have no firearm¹ for hunting, the strings could be used for snare wires, or a fashioning a crude bow.
5. Ella, for an animate form of companionship to talk to (and to give her the job of being my alarm system, and helping to keep the bedding warm).

Assuming that food was indeed provided, but there’s actually no power keeping anything preserved in a freezer/fridge, (or no meat, butter, cheese, or other goodies frozen and cached in a cellar pit dug into permafrost) here’s what I’d hope to at least find as essentials for dried or canned stores in the larder:

1. Dry pasta of various types, and tins of sauce (not my favourite, but it at least has some vitamins and serves as good energy)
2. Packages of Instant porridge (slow-cooked porridge is better, but instant needs less water and heating to prepare)
3. Canned evaporated milk
4. A few jars of assorted sour pickles, including sauerkraut
5. A couple jars of jam (at least one of them strawberry)
6. Olives
7. Crackers
8. Jerky/dried sausage
9. Tins of corned beef (I’d just have to mash in some olives and pretend that it’s pâté)
10. Canned ham
11. Tins of smoked oysters
12. A bag of flour (so I’d be able to at least make bread, or bannock, or if I’m desperate . . . crepes!)
13. Yeast (at least enough to make a sourdough starter)
14. Nuts, or dried fruit of some kind
15. Soup stock powder/bouillon cubes
16. Various pulses, legumes, and grains (like Lentils, Chickpeas, Beans, Rice)
17. An assortment of spices and seasonings
18. Salt
19. Sugar
20. Baking Powder

What I would hope not to find in there in abundance:

1. Canned Salmon
2. Sardines
3. Instant Coffee
4. Turnips
5. Rat turds

If I were permitted five creature comforts for this adventure, they would be:

1. Tea
2. A large bag of Jujubes, or other candies to suck on
3. A sizeable bottle of either Jägermeister, or some other form of spirit/sipping whiskey (for medicinal purposes)
4. Dog chow and a rawhide bone (not for me; for Ella)
5. A picture of someone I really love

Media and technology I would I really happy to be without:

1. Receiving 20 junk e-mails for every one I get that’s useful
2. Requests for games I don’t play
3. Any political news from the United States, especially about Donald Trump
4. Any news about terrorism, and the constant fear-mongering related to such things
5. Political opinions on Facebook from sanctimonious assholes who think they know all the answers, but who spell and use grammar at the level of fifth graders in their comments

Media I would miss during this time:

1. News feeds and humour from my genuine friends on Facebook
2. You Tube
3. iTunes
4. TED talks
5. Netflix

Five useful apps that I would miss for a month:

1. Duolingo (my language learning app)
2. Google Translate (for testing myself in composing non-English sentences after learning some new vocabulary)
3. iPhone Camera
4. Note/Evernote/OneNote
5. Weather Network

Television series I might miss:

1. Jeopardy!
2. The Walking Dead
3. Vikings
4. The Big Bang Theory
5. The X-Files (new series)

The things I’d most likely enjoy and value about the experience:

1. Adjusting to a more natural rhythm for my waking hours of the day, no alarm clocks
2. Free to use my energy to its fullest when I have it, rest at my leisure when I don’t
3. Watching nature and the wildlife
4. Complete freedom of other distractions, to get a more honest peek at what I place down on paper, and to come back with a sounder idea of an ideal career and lifestyle change
5. Far away other peoples’ negativity, and hopefully a chance to smarten up about dealing with my own
6. An extra 100 G’s baby!!!!

1 - Despite growing up in the Central Parkland of Saskatchewan, I never really coveted firearms, nor needed to prove my manhood through big game hunting. I know how to use a gun; I just do so with greater discretion and practicality. It doesn’t thrill me to kill animals for sport; I’d use one only in absolute desperation as a last resort. I won’t bother to own a gun if I don’t actually need it, and using the reason of defense to keep one is a bullshit excuse. I lived this long without one, so I don’t need one now. Even in this scenario of being alone in the middle of the wilderness, if my food is already provided, I’d see little need to keep a one handy. I’ll use the fish hooks first. Again though, it depends on where this cabin was. Some places have wildlife that is a little more nutritious (or savage) than others. The gun I’d have around in this cabin would probably be just a plain old .22 calibre repeater, with a simple telescopic sight (to compensate for my bad eyesight), and a 10 round magazine: for scaring off varmints, and picking off the odd hare, or game birds like partridges, grouse, or ptarmigans (if I was way up north). I’d probably really only take advantage of using it to entertain and test myself with creating my own winter biathlon course, shooting targets along with the skiing, in a remote place where I would have less of a risk of accidentally shooting someone else, or their property. The only other gun I might consider keeping around for a risk of more serious action in a scene like this is a semi-automatic Russian SKS carbine. It’s relatively cheap, rather crude, and utilitarian. I find those qualities of it fitting.  It isn’t fancy or pretty to look at: it’s simply a tool. I don’t want aesthetics, nor would I pay a lot for something I rarely use. I want just basic function and economy. To be deriving any pleasure, fixation, and fascination in admiring the aesthetics of an object which has the sole purpose of killing other things verges on being both disturbing and creepy. It’s actually an archaic-looking military carbine, using the same 7.62 x 39 mm ammunition as an AK-47 assault rifle takes, meaning that it should be adequate enough in dropping something that is as big as I am, or larger. The ammo can be bought in bulk by the thousands in shabby looking wooden cases at Cabela’s, also for super dirt cheap. I’d need a lot of practice shots. The model I’m thinking of even has a fold out bayonet, and it’s so heavy for its size that could be used for a melee weapon to bludgeon something to death, and still be able to shoot afterwards. Options to consider because again, I have bad eyesight, and would probably miss something fierce like a cougar or wolf charging straight at me. I would hope that things would never get that drastic.

Year's End Evening 2015

The year 2015 ends with me sitting in my humble dim living room, by my fireplace that was lit and kindled with the old calendars, sipping on a Scotch* on the rocks, reading and reviewing my chronicled entries I wrote throughout this year that has passed, and writing this current one. I really can’t find the will to be around any other company, despite feeling somewhat more alone than usual right now. The playlist generator app I switched on in iTunes guessed and programmed the perfect set of songs for what’s rolling around my mind right now. The ideal title for this particular playlist would be It’s There and Real. I wish it could be shared with the one I’ve been thinking about.

I was sort of lamenting earlier, as I wrote my last entry, about how 2015 did no special favours for me as a year of good fortune, and I’m at the point where I’m begging for some better karma for 2016. It seems though lately like even a small bit of good luck is a huge thing to ask and pray for. Even when good luck does come there now seems to be a catch, or a caveat. It seems to find a way of short changing me the chance of any complete potential, or the fullest scale for total happiness. Shortly after posting the last entry a little more than a week ago, I received a revelation that stunned and shook me to my very soul. I’ve been in a strange place ever since then, one in which I waver between states: where on one hand I feel like my heart wants to explode with joy, reveling in news that a guy like me would equate to winning the lottery . . . twice!  Then, I find myself falling just as suddenly to the other extreme of wallowing about in a fog of despair because the timing, distance, and other circumstances leave me powerless to be able to do anything more to make the reality of the situation less complicated and conflicted. It's like holding a winning lottery ticket . . . and being unable to collect the prize. A promise of discretion keeps me from explaining anymore about it; I could never betray the trust of the person who told me the facts. It’s something that I couldn’t ever forget anyway, and thus it's not necessary for me to record more here in great detail for the sake of my memory. All I can say is that I really wish I had the ability to clone the dearest people in my life. 

I have set no resolutions for this upcoming year: at least none which I could proclaim openly. My last meal of the year was nothing monumental. I worked this evening with no special ceremonies, struggling hard to find and recall any other special moments of the year for myself, other than what I just mentioned. It was futile. My last purchase of the year is a 3 TB cloud drive, for the arduous task of archiving and organizing my digital life so I can attempt to move other mountains. The recent effort of trying to recover some old photos showed me how urgently this needs to be done. It was bought out of necessity, not desire. It’s for preserving other work I have for the vain hope that it may get published some day. The threat of my laptop crashing any day still looms. Dealing with that may be my next issue.

I just glanced at a clock to see that I’m 40 minutes into the new year. My glass is now empty. Ella’s fear of fireworks was triggered from the bursts and shock waves from outside, and I suppose I have to coax her out of her hiding place. I suppose I should be thankful that throughout this past week, I’ve got real with myself after being sort of jolted and then coaxed out of some hiding places too.

Welcome 2016! Please don’t be as cruel of a year as 2015 was.

*-Single malt, 12 year old Auchentoshan . . . excellent stuff.

Winter Solstice Eve 2015 (Chance Rolls)

I have been doing my usual annual round of avoidance of the insanity of shopping the weekend before Christmas routine, and tried to keep this a low-key weekend at home.  It is the Eve of Winter Solstice*, and it seemed like a fine enough reason as any to relax by the fireplace and reflect. Finding it in me to make entries for the past couple months since the election hasn’t been there. There has only been drama-laden news and negativity charging at me from all sides since all the tragic happenings in Paris and San Bernardino, the ongoing debate about the refugee crisis, plus the fear-mongering stupidity abound stemming from creeps on social media to the campaigning in the States. Adding my input or other comments about these salient things one way or another doesn’t make for a course of relief from it all, nor changes the hateful idiocy of others who are making such crises worse.

Someone else who is just as unwilling as I am to get out of

bed on these dim and dark winter mornings.

I’ve been reflecting on the other 354 days of this year that have passed. I suppose 2015 for me will be known as “The Year of the Great Weakening”. I’ve come to face to face with working through a lot of denial about how much of a toll last year’s suffering really took on me, and what kind of impact it has left, and how it still affects me today. I didn’t think it would have amounted to affecting me so chronically. I’m sick of realizing how much it all has physically aged me in such a (relatively) short while: a notable and pronounced loss of resilience. I re-entered work this year with not only lots of upheavals regarding my personal health, but also wading hip deep into problems and challenges affecting not only me, but my co-workers and people I serve, and with my role in the Union. Holiday plans were ruined by fires throughout the summer, more injuries through late summer and fall, and then the other tragedies pouring through the news from late October onward. It hasn’t been what I would call a fun year to say the least.

Sure, there were lots of hard lessons to learn, but I didn’t need the pain, stress, and anguish; I’d benefit more from them if some element of fun or a lighter side was present. That didn’t happen. Life became too serious for my liking; nothing I’d want write about. It has been bad enough that I decided to suspend my more analytical and logical modality of problem solving thinking recently. It has been helpful in guiding out of problems, or at least taming down sparks to prevent bonfires, but there has been nothing that I would call feeling better with a sense of satisfaction or interest in doing so. So, just on a whim while Christmas shopping for others, I thought I would seek out a small inexpensive something that I would identify with as a “lucky charm”** for a more acceptably benign form of exercising superstitious thinking for myself: by consulting some form of oracle. I realized that the perfect sort of rosary objects or gris-gris for me is a set of dice. My threads of “logic” for making them significant totem objects are as follows:

• I like simple and symmetrical geometric shapes; dice have that going for them. It’s a reminder to seek out the most fundamental and simplest solution to a problem first and to take a balanced approach to tackling it.
• Dice are linked to gaming (my favourite dice games are Backgammon and Yahtzee, which I’m becoming addicted to playing online); a reminder to try to find some way to approach a difficult situation by making it entertaining enough to keep it at least interesting to follow through with dealing with it.
• Often my biggest problem is analyzing too much, and slapping down too many options and approaches in my own private sessions of brainstorming. Paralysis by analysis happens too frequently. Dice would be practical tools to help me speed up decision making and to settle on single options.
• Dice are mathematical instruments, which appeals to me when I want to entertain that geeky side of myself. I mentally retreat sometimes into thinking about the world weighed and measured in numbers to help myself be less bored or depressed.

Most importantly, a six sided die is a mnemonic representation of all the dimensions and elements of what depression or boredom is, or their flipside. Boredom = (energy) – (interest) – (attitude) – (knowledge) – (imagination) – (focus). By default of existing, one has a physical mass that works and interacts within the dimension of time. That is Energy (remember E=mc²). Unless you are in a freaking coma, or sick to a point close to dying, the powers that be gifted your conscious self with some physical/mental abilities to use for the waking hours of your day, and the choice of how, or whether or not, to use them for your and/or others’ benefit. How present or absent the other five factors are that play on your energy will dictate how bored you will or will not become. It’s even hard talk about, or write out what boredom is and to somehow make it a subject of serious interest. That is until you see what happens when you add plus signs to all of those variables following energy. Then what you have is its complete opposite: creativity. If you have little or none of those things in that set, you simply have to get real and honestly ask yourself why those variables are depleted, or outright absent, for each or every one of them; that keep you shackled to a mindset of boredom, and impedes your approach to something more creative.

If I were to create an official national holiday marking winter solstice in this land, the celebrations would include a lot of dice based games, candles/lights/fire to brighten things up, and of course drinking. There would be no obligation to exchange gifts; just share good company. Sounds like a good start anyway. Who knows, if Trudeau the Younger ends up legalizing marijuana, the trend might naturally flow to there being a reversion to some more hippie neopagan-esque celebrations that would mirror things like this anyway.

An addendum paragraph to this entry the day after. The question about what my plan for 2016 was brought up to me by a friend over lunch hour. I was lacking in speculation and answers. It may involve more of what rolls of the dice have to tell me. If they break horrid spells of indecision and, if I gain a course of action and commitment from using them, it is all fair game.

*- I always wondered why we haven’t made more generic holidays and celebrations here in this nation for both solstice dates of the year, like they do at least for the Summer Solstice in Scandinavia. We are multicultural society in Canada, and we all live under the same sun. It wouldn't then matter who you were racially, ethnically, culturally, spiritually (or not). It would be somewhat uniting I’d think. I’ll always welcome another statutory holiday.

**- If you want to get judgemental and think that this is all very silly, let me remind you readers that people use such symbols, charms, and trinkets all the time, and it is more common than you wish to acknowledge. It usually comes and is possessed in the form of jewelry. Think about the multibillion dollar industry happening alone just for the sake of procuring an outrageously expensive shiny rock affixed to a ring just to show off and symbolize engagement or marriage. Others get more and extreme and tap ink into their skin permanently to express their totem symbols in tattoo form on impulsive whims (which they may regret later). Surely, my choice is no weirder or more extreme than any of those things.

Eleven Weeks Plus A Day: Afterword

The federal election is finally over with for this country, so is the longest stretch of campaigning I have experienced in my lifetime. I’d like to say that it was an easy process for me, but I’ve taken the affair of casting a ballot a lot more seriously than I have in past elections. Social media has evolved such that information overload is everywhere and it becomes hard trying to decide which matters are the most critical to give weight to. It was shameful to see how much trivial crap was dumped into the mix to distract and obfuscate stuff of more importance. I’ve not taken a proactive stance on supporting a favourite. It has been a question of rising against, and not tolerating anything else more corruptive and insidious that has been already going on within the federal government over these past 10 years. The senate scandals, the slashing of services, the disrespect to our veterans, threats to our privacy and civil liberties, the attacks against Unions and organized labour, moves that cripple our Healthcare system, the unprofessional, tactless, and indelicate way aboriginal and other minority issues have been addressed; their being caught in the act of illegal activities in trying to rig the last few elections, are part of just a small sample of it. Our scientists have been basically given gag orders regarding any findings related to climate change under the Harper regime. We, as a public, have been deprived of critical decision making information from Statistics Canada. Harper cut the staff there and lied about the reasons for abandoning the long-form census. My opinion is that when you are in a position of power and become an opponent to data-gathering, objective analysis, and silencing progressive scientific reasoning and inquiry, you are then an enemy and a menace to everyone.

There was something very telling about Harper in some of his words of his final speech at the end of the election night, and the inevitable discord and chaos he could have led this country into with the mentality he had if he was in for four more years.  It is not an exact quote, but his words were in the tune of “. . . We wanted to handle the [government] money as well as Canadians do for themselves.” Those are scary words coming from a Conservative Albertan; I’ll show you why in a minute. He wants to portray that we are stable because there was budget surplus, but with savings shrinking and debt climbing on a personal level for the average Canadian, and climbing steadily during his watch for the past 10 years, that portrayal of economic stability is a total myth.

I don’t like it when people are criticizing governments for going into debt, and yet don’t shine that light on themselves for their own personal financial situation. Citizens and corporations carrying obscene amounts of debt are much of the reason why governments are in debt. Whether it is on a personal or corporate level, people go grovelling to the government, no matter what political stripes: for start-ups, or to bail them out when such ventures fail. It is a simple fact that we, in general as Canadians, have become just greedier, more covetous, and more fiscally irresponsible in the past few years on a personal level. Either that, or we have genuinely come to more dire straits with wages not keeping up with inflation, and then have to rely on incurring debt to bail us out of emergencies. There is validity in both reasons in varying degrees. We have been declining and losing our ethic and ability for saving money since the eighties. With a hint, or even the myth of prosperity, and with a promise or reality of a better income, people don’t save; people instead get more overconfident and reckless about personal spending, relying more on, and abusing buy-now-pay-later strategies. Alberta is supposedly the richest province in Canada; people are making good money there, and yet it is Albertans who hold the highest average household debt out of all the other provinces in comparison: almost double that of the national average from the graph of the 2014 numbers below.

Thus, it pisses me off when Conservatives, especially Albertan ones (like Harper is) are trying to sell the rest of us in this country as to what the economic plan should be. If Harper really wanted to show up at a rally for the interest of being some moral authority and demonstrating fiscal responsibility, he should have went back to his home province, and used his cheesy ‘cha-ching’ sound effects to show what happens every time an Albertan whips out a credit card. Therefore, I really don’t want a prime minister who says he wants to model government spending on that of what the average Canadian does now, because on a whole, the average Canadian is getting progressively worse at managing money . . . especially in Alberta*, where they seem to really suck at avoiding household debt! If he is that out of touch with that fact about what's going on with the average Canadian, a supposed economist no less, it is best that he is gone.

Even though trickle-down economics has been shown to be a complete myth, the Harper mandate endorsed it. Only a bigger wedge gets driven between the rich and the poor. CEO salaries are going up, while more working people are relying on soup kitchens and food banks. On a global level, the news just a few days ago announced officially that the richest 1% of the world’s population now owns more wealth than its remaining 99%, yet we have a Prime Minister that seems to want to support and perpetuate this trend by doing things like sealing the tax files of the wealthiest people in this country. The answer of is simple in regards to the question of “Do I want to see four more years of Harper leadership?” The simple answer is “NO”!

As to the question of who I want representing me for our riding, it was made it easy to eliminate at least one option too. The choices were between four people: the NDP candidate is a lawyer and a community activist, the Liberal has credentials including an award-winning distinguished career in mental health services, the Green Party representative is an actual scientist, who is a consultant for green building projects, and then there is the Conservative runner . . . a friggin’ sportscaster. Can you guess which one I didn’t vote for when considering the serious business of helping to run a country?

My duty is to vote and be wary of what happens after. I earn the benefits if it goes well, and the right to complain and fight for my rights and freedoms to do so if it doesn’t. All I can do is my best to deal with and adapt to the aftermath later. It’s still better than being apathetic and opting not to vote. To not be an active part of democracy is to surrender and be a willing pawn to the whim of a dictatorship. I vow never to let that happen.

I’m glad and proud to say that we as Canadians have collectively gained the sense to drive Harper out of power and bring an end to his tyranny. Harper is out, and Trudeau is in; and now Mulcair and the rest of the NDP have been shorted many seats in the commons. Instead of going on a rant and trying to drum up a witch hunt, or whine about the how the NDP will be more of a loyal opposition than the Conservatives** ever would, I will just say congratulations to the young mister Trudeau, I really do wish him the all best, and hope he and his team at least learned from his father’s, and other predecessors’, mistakes and use those lessons for better governance of the nation. Let's just do what we need to do to reconcile things, so we can move on and have the thing we wanted most when we voted . . . change.

*- I worked and lived in Alberta briefly, long enough to observe that there was definitely a more pronounced gearing towards affluence, and a keeping-up-to-the-Joneses attitude was more visibly and prevalent than what I witnessed at home. Sadly, that same attitude is contagious, and is appearing more and more here in Saskatchewan. So people there generally charge for stuff before earning and then spending. Now oil prices have fallen drastically and layoffs are happening, and now people there who were relying on the one trick pony of the oil-patch are feeling the hurt for their ridiculous over-spending. They really can’t blame their past/current provincial government for it, just themselves and their own greed on a consumer level, although the hard core Conservatives there will try to twist this into some story of villainy due to the action of either the federal Liberals, or provincial NDP governing them now. If Saskatchewan doesn’t smarten up, we’ll feel it too, if we aren’t already.

**- I intentionally dropped the word from their formal title, the “Progressive” Conservatives, because they never really did anything progressive for these last 10 years.     

The Science Geek Kitchen

It’s the first weekend of what we would call the beginning of late Fall in this territory. The glimpse of the mostly denuded trees, and the past two days’ drizzle has snuffed out the fizzle for anything more adventurous that I may have had in mind. I’m definitely done with dealing with cooking projects for a while. The freezer is full now, and I ran out of containers. I’m starting to putter about with the chore of packing away some my summer apparel and utilities. I get to see just how well the hammock frame I built in spring optimally tucks away with a minimum of space consumed in a closet once it’s disassembled. I’m also mulling over a design in my head for simple collapsible wood crib that I can construct for storing a larger stash of fire wood with the remaining scraps of short planks I have left over from that last project; reclaiming more space given my deck’s limited girth. I’ll be (at least I hope I’ll be) a lot more active this winter than I was for the last one. Given the observations I was making through my depressing infirmity and forced idleness and confinement through last winter, I thought I should do some planning on improving my home’s interior. The hammock project was an eye-opener as to how I essentially doubled my sleeping space with minimalism and modular component fabrication. Unlocking and freeing up space while making the most out of storage is a theme that has become a real mindworm for me.

I watched a bit of a “tiny home” marathon the other day on HGTV; studying the brilliant means and methods some people are using to get the maximum benefit out of a minimal space. That fuelled me with a bit of inspiration as well, and reminded me that I’m still ultimately the master my little realm, and that I’m fortunate enough to have the space that I do, such as it is. My office and kitchen are the biggest targets when it comes to wanting to create effective usage of storage and space, each room with their own different respective issues. I’m concentrating on my kitchen first, as it is that place of the two rooms in my dwelling that is used most and has the greatest play with possibly conserving energy. I also think ahead to the future in terms of what will change socially and environmentally for this region, and how one should prepare for that. I speculate the following things:

·         Population growing faster than the infrastructure is to support it. Resource drains or taking things offline to rectify the problems may be more frequent.

·         Water becoming scarcer, as the city expands, or if droughts become more frequent, and more advisories to conserve water are more likely to happen. Water utility bills go up.

·         Energy costs in general going up, that is if we don’t make a better effort to exploit solar and other alternative energy sources.

·         More costs for waste disposal as our landfill areas become overtaxed. More costs for disposal, waste quotas, and then subsequent penalties for excessive household refuse.

To cope with dealing with those things in the future, it is best to practice and get into the habit of preparing for them now.

Overall, the trend of today in this city, as elsewhere, is having new houses being built with fewer people living in them, and having ever more expansive kitchens where people are generally doing less and less cooking in them. Some people who think they know me would guess that a big kitchen is one thing that I would dream for and covet, but to be honest it isn’t. It may impress others, but not me. It’s a pathetic irony and a stunning inefficacy and burden for me to see: all this wasted space just to be used for mostly just opening tins of soup, making sandwiches, or using a counter to throw take out containers on, because no one seems to have actual time to do real cooking anymore. They are elsewise too busy trying to build and secure a high paying career to pay a sky-high mortgage, which includes this feature kitchen that only serves to be a white elephant. I reflect back on the days of watching my Mom do the crazy amount and output of cooking and food processing that she did in our simple little  kitchen when we lived on the farm: one that was spatially about as big as mine is, if not relatively smaller. I suppose it served as a good example as how to manage my own. In the past few years, in terms of my culinary talent, I have been growing in both skill and desire for more daring experiments on the wild and radical side of food and prep techniques. I now feel a stronger need to set up a proper kitchen space that logically reflects that. Mentally, I’ve been putting a wrecking ball through it, and trying to figure out how to make things ideal from the floor up.

The elements of time and energy constraints for single occupants are also the variables in the equation of my idea of a perfect and efficient kitchen space that are often overlooked by architects and designers. Being reduced to the sole manpower of a single occupant doubles or triples maintenance and cleaning time and labour. Having a larger kitchen space is senseless; keeping a smaller, efficient, better organized one is an absolute must. The only sound reason for needing to have the kitchen size that I do have is the fact that I do a lot of home brewing. Unfortunately, the processing and storage of large quantities of liquids/alcohol consumes relatively a lot of space. I also have some stranger things that most other single men wouldn’t think of getting, like pickling jars and canning pots. I do the best I can with what I have, but I’m not exempting myself from trying to learn more about things that I could do to improve. I have a lot established already. To watch me operate my dwelling’s kitchen, my methods most look pretty eccentric or radical compared to most other average bachelors’ homes. No matter how radical it seems, my method in my BACHELOR kitchen (as mentioned in an earlier post, about another episode of kitchen space reclamation) most certainly edges toward the practical and scientific for the sake of all dimensions of time/space/energy/cost efficiency. Here is what I mean:  

Steam and Pressure – For making flavourful concentrated broths in a fraction of the time instead of conventional boiling and reduction, nothing beats a pressure cooker. I love this thing. It’s great for small scale canning also, using a tenth of the water volume and less than a quarter of the time to sterilize and seal jars compared to conventional boiling immersion method. I’m surprised that, despite the more modern built-in safety features that they are now crafted with, there are a few professional chefs out there who are still too chicken shit to use these things. They do require a bit of close-up monitoring, hard to do in a busy and distraction loaded commercial kitchen I guess, I’ll give them that. Mine cooks at a pressure of 10 atmospheres before bleeding out steam, equating to

So far, I’ve been lucky and
 nothing has yet went KABOOM!!!

about 100 metres under water below sea level at 16.5 degrees Celsius (coincidentally, my preferred room temperature).  It scores big with me for the factors of reduced time, hence reduced kilowatt hours, and ultimately good if you are genuinely concerned about conserving/rationing water (see further below about emergency preparedness). I always thought that in terms of giving true aid to people in third world countries, education and technology is sometimes better than straight up food and healthcare. I think of the scene of the Nepal earthquakes in the recent past as an example. In such impoverished high altitude zones with inclement climates and scarce growth, in like the Andes or Himalayas, where you have to burn more fuel for reaching adequate cooking temperatures using water at those altitudes, aide should entail air dropping pressure cookers to these remote places. The problem in such regions sometimes isn’t a question of a shortage of food, but a scarcity of wood or other sufficient combustible material for cooking and preserving it properly (to prevent disease), which leads to wastages and then the consequential shortages. Another problem is difficulty to access to water if there is no convenient infrastructure to get it directed to homes. Using less water, and less time to boil it, means less energy to use. Less cooking time plus wasting less water means less trekking to get a sufficient amount of it. Children are often used for such tasks, hauling water and collecting sticks and animal dung to burn for fuel, and if the labour of subsistence and toiling for essentials becomes greater than time for schooling, these kids are becoming more deprived of an education. Having a simple pressure cooker in such households could help limit all that. Just a theory of mine. 

The quintessential wok with bamboo steamers. A good ploy for
maximizing verticle space while reducing the work of
four burners into one Depending on what I steam, my trick is to
collect the drippings, and cook Ramen or Udon noodle soup
 in the wok's water while I steam the other goodies above it.  

Chinese (Asian) Practices and Methods – I don’t mean to specifically stereotype the Chinese, or to stigmatize them; I am referring to any of the kitchen practices of the people of the Far East Asian nations living in modernity (South Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc.) who live with the stresses of over-population, and yet can produce amazing things with limited space and resources. I just assume that the Chinese, the ones with the largest population, who have historically endured more adversities involving invasions and war, famine, and more recently, shortages/rationing wrought by the Maoist regime and overcrowded urban living, have had a longer time and a lot of practice in adapting, and even prospering with such restrictions than anyone else of that region. Learning from the solutions they have created to endure such ordeals seems rather relevant. In Korea, a typical “large” kitchen is probably runs between a half and a third of the size of mine. And then there is Japan: a place where they invented capsule hotels, and have formed and grown cubic watermelons* for ease of shipping and storage. In places like the Shinjuku district in Tokyo, there are entire sushi and cocktail bars squeezed into spots that are less than the size of my kitchen and dining area combined. Going that small is a bit ludicrous and nothing to really aspire to, but therein are the lessons of reducing the need for more single-purpose small appliances for food prep, exploiting more vertical space on one cooking spot (like with the steamer), learning few more of their fancy cutting tricks with my BSFCC (big sharp fuckin’ Chinese cleaver) and using overall less of energy and space. Using all that with current surface area of the counter that I have makes for a more comfortable and effective theatre of operation. 
 

It looks like a collection of
parasitic round worm
specimens from a high school
biology lab, but it's actually
shredded parsnips pickled in
lime, ginger, and garlic

Incubation Environment- I have already expounded enough on how fermenting and pickling at home is for the greater good in stopping needless waste. My kitchen is a fermentation kitchen, meaning that I have to make it easy to sanitize and control the temperature accordingly to make my critters in the carboys, crocks, and jars do their job happily. A cluttered kitchen with hard to clean surface areas is a no-no. There is to be a minimal of any decorative things in here, because all they do is collect dust and thus the kind of crap that would risk contaminating and infecting my living cultures. The larger the kitchen space, the harder it is to be able to prevent this. The kitchen garbage containment is purposely left small, so that it is taken out more frequently to prevent the invasion of mold and fry fruits.

Emergency Rations – If you truly have any scientific/rational mind at all, then you should always be grounded in the reality that some natural disaster at some time has the potential of popping up at any given moment, depriving you of the conveniences that you are commonly used to. Keeping, at the very least, four days of worth of canned food and hydrating fluid around the place for God-only-knows-what kind of shit-storm you may have to deal with (thinking of a worst case scenario of a really bad long weekend when emergency services might be delayed: from a Friday to a Monday). It’s rare that any severe weather related impacts last beyond that. In my region around my home, things like mega-lightning storms, or possibly a tornado, or an ice storm/blizzard, or super-cold snap that knocks out the power, creates water line breaks, and makes it too fierce to navigate outside safely are the most likely weather scenarios that could keep me homebound and stranded. A good measure is having food around that is pre-processed, nutritious, and doesn’t require power to cook it, or some means available that allows you to cook and boil water without electricity, like using a portable butane burner/camping stove (with extra gas canisters) like I have. The water reserve system I have is unique and practical (hint, it doesn’t require me being stupid and buying and storing bottled water, and involves stuff that I can recycle at home for no money), but I’ll elaborate on that another time when it becomes topical.

Nesting Bowls – In a smaller kitchen, my adage of “If it don’t nest, it don’t pass the test” applies.
This ten bowl set here has a collective total capacity of 14 litres (depending on what’s in it, flour/dough can pile up; liquid doesn’t). It all tucks away within a 0.005 m³ space. Packing things within things, like a set of Russian matryoshka dolls, is my more favoured way of organizing and freeing space.

Inert Energy Food Storage – I always have dried foods or canned foods around and keep them in reasonable plenitude. Pantry space for that is always important. They can not only serve as emergency rations, but the other nice feature about them is that they don’t need any more power to keep them preserved, unlike relying on a fridge or freezer. Dehydrated food is shrunk and thus economizes on space. Jars are reusable. Buying bulk food to fill them is cheaper, reduces packaging, and is ultimately better for the planet. 

Ferro-Magnetic Induction –This latest little acquisition of mine is the new boss in town out of all my

 

small appliances: a portable induction cooktop. It’s a misnomer to call it a burner, because it itself emits no heat. The only heat on the surface of the cooker is that which is absorbed from the cooking pot. It can bring a litre of water to a full boil up to eight minutes faster than the highest setting on my conventional electric coil burner on the stove top, with less power! It’s even faster at boiling water than my electric kettle. I’ll have more precise digital temperature control when heating stuff in a range below boiling for culturing. It’s perfect of singles like me who only are only cooking with one pot or pan anyway. To put it bluntly, my electric range is a piece of shit in comparison, and microwave ovens never heat evenly. I’m curious to see how many kWh will be peeled of my next utility bill as I use this thing more frequently instead of my regular stove. It’s easier to clean, greener, super-efficient, safer to use with safeguard technology programmed in it, and plus it’s just cool to say that I can cook with freakin’ magnetism. No self-respecting science geek gourmand should be without one. However, because it functions with magnetic fields, it only works with iron or stainless steel cookware. See next point.

Iron (or Stainless Steel) –I will keep only cast iron or stainless steel in my kitchen, and avoid the fancy-schmancy pots and pans with non-stick coatings as much as I can. When those coatings chip, flake, or get scraped off because SOME ASSHOLE WAS USING A METAL UTENSIL ON THEM!!!!!, destroying the surface and thus depleting it of its purpose**, they obviously get into our food, and they are proving to be toxic compounds. More and more studies are suggesting that these “state-of-the-art” pan-coating chemicals are linked with things like certain cancers and creating obesogens: compounds that trigger cellular metabolisms to produce more adipose tissue. I’m more prone to being genetically predisposed to obesity as it is, and I need no extra help from that shit. Once the coating is gone, they are useless and need to be scrapped, therefore wasteful, adding another toxic thing into a landfill. A good cast iron or stainless steel pot or pan will last longer than I will if treated and seasoned right. In general, it’s probably a good idea just to avoid space age coatings, plus plastics all together for stirring and serving utensils too. If you wouldn’t eat a cheap plastic spoon for fear of it being somehow toxic to you, then you shouldn’t be dipping and gradually dissolving bits of it into your hot food while it cooks. There are already warnings about microwaving food in plastic containers. A metal spoon/ladle or spatula will last longer many times longer with only a slightly higher relative cost. Wood or bamboo are other options too if one is into cheap and renewable.

**Nothing screams out attention to detail for conserving and efficiently using space than using science to take a thing that naturally grows round and making it square.

**-You know who you are, person(s) at work (no names mentioned)!

Labour Day Weekend Bucket Dump

A combination of rainfall from outside and my pooch snoring at the foot of my bed woke me up this morning. It rained buckets overnight. I would have went back to sleep if I wasn’t immediately seized by overpowering leg cramps soon afterward. I couldn’t think of much else to do since 5:30 AM to quietly take my mind away from the pain, except to write. I realize that it is somewhat ironic that I am finding myself starting off this day stuck in bed, trying to unlock and unfold myself from a fetal position, because it is my birthday. It will be nothing significant or monumental. It’s forecasted that it will be drizzling and gloomy all day, and all the people I’d like to share this day with have their own long weekend plans, or are out of town or province, or out of the country. It’s the kind of day where I definitely feel I’ve grown a lot older, but not much wiser or better; hardly worth celebrating. The only special thing I can think doing is to try to move soundly enough to make some coffee and my breakfast of choice, and to tour around the world a bit from the armchair: reading online travel guides, and articles and posts from the Quebecois and European news sources*. Beyond that, my motivation and speculation for activities for the rest of the day is as dull and grey as the sky is now. All I know is that suppressing aches and pains, being forced to sit still, staring at screens, and perusing lines of text isn’t the ideal way to spend this day.

But hold on a second . . . I just caught sight of a blog entry from Tim Ferriss. It is about bucket lists. It occurs to me that I don’t officially have one. Given that it is my birthday, it should be the gift I give to myself. If I can do nothing but sit around, retreat into my own head, and write, I might as well devote some time and serious thought and focus to this instead of being depressed and watching it rain buckets. I won’t be sharing it: it’s too personal. I will divulge that:

·         I’ll shoot for about a 100 things. That alone could be challenging enough to be classified as list item # 1. It was hard enough just to think of one thing for the  "Before I Die I Want to . . ." Wall I mentioned earlier.

·         Skydiving won’t be on there. It's a ridiculously cliché thing that a lot of other people put on theirs. A bucket list, in my mind, is about the things you want to do to make you feel alive; not doing things that would kill you in such a way that there would be nothing left of you except stuff that can only be scooped up and put in a bucket. I had to return to this point to edit this a bit. It's not like I'm advising against it to those who really want to try it out, just make sure that it's the last thing  on your list . . . unless you are a real asshole to everyone, then please do us all a favour, and make it the first thing to do on your bucket list.

·         No experimenting with drugs, nor anything else illegal, will be on there. I prefer lucidity, and not risking wasting any of this precious lifetime I have left behind bars.

·         It won’t involve any buying anymore gadgets and or computing technology. It will be about shifting from the virtual world to more engagement with the real one.

If anything, I hope it sets me on a course of being more energized and motivated for the day and beyond, and not victimizing myself with too much boredom during this day of solitude.

*- Aside from the actual news, I do it more so to help me retain some of my secondary language skills. Reading the translated versions of my own blog entries, on subjects that are of interest to me, and which stem from my own original thinking, is another useful learning and retention technique that I also exploit. I’m still lousy at oral communication: in that I usually don’t easily comprehend what is being spoken to me. Transmission OK; reception bad.