All I Need Is The Air That I Breathe

 Sometimes when people get disenchanted with the capitalist system and its inherent unsustainability, you'll hear someone say something like, "Before too long they'll be charging us for the air we breathe!" I've said before, a few times in these pages, that with the absolute screwing we line up to get from our various (but not various enough) telecom providers, the air is already being sold to us. Twice now, once last December in Sokcho and once yesterday I have felt like I may have forgotten to pay my air bill. 

Those were my last two colds. While in Sokcho working for the scam school there I lived in the dorms. One night, the second or maybe third night of a cold, I woke up in my bed unable to breathe. I felt like one of the three companies in Korea that control the air, SK Telecom, KT, or LG, had found me delinquent in payment and shut off my air. I jumped out of bed to get upright, tried to concentrate on breathing while at the same time as suppressing the panic of suffocation, and take a very small breath which I used to cough. That cough got some of the crud that was blocking my lungs out so I could take a bigger breath. Then another cough and soon I was breathing again. During the coughing there was a period of dizziness and I saw a few stars but I didn't pass out. If I had, I would have fallen to the floor where I would have been in a lying down position and could conceivably have died. 

The reason I immediately jumped out of bed, and the reason I say I could have died in a lying down position is reflux. GERD, excessive stomach acid, whatever. I've had it virtually my whole life. Burping in the trunk of a car while sneaking into a drive-in movie and stinking out the whole vehicle. An amusing anecdote courtesy of my gastrointestinal weakness. In my university days my girlfriend used to lay with her head on my stomach (my ripped 6-pack abs) and listen to all the action going on inside. Even in my tip top physical shape I had stomach issues. Over the years they've gotten worse but I'd say that I fit into the pattern that is pretty widespread: stomach acid problems have been on the rise. In the 70's, 80's, and 90's GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease) went up by half in western nations. I was just a part of that half. From the 90's to 2021 it doubled again and today there are over a billion people who suffer from GERD. Considered rare 35 years ago it's now the most common upper gastrointestinal disorder. Why? 

Well the reason I brought up my super conditioning in the previous paragraph is the belief some people have that it's caused by obesity. The increase in obesity and the pressure it puts on the stomach causing acids to back up through the esophagus is impossible to discount, but it's not the only reason. Other changes in lifestyle have contributed as much. Our love of highly processed food, carbonated beverages, alcohol, late night eating, larger portion sizes, and some other factors come into play. As do modern chronic stress levels. There's even a bacteria, a good bacteria, that modern hygiene and antibiotics have killed. The H. Pylori bacteria used to damage the stomach's ability to produce acid. We inadvertently sanitized it out of our lives and replaced it with increased stomach acid. 

It doesn't sound like too complicated a problem to solve, does it? Re-introduce H. Pylori, inhibit the proton-pump from pumping so much acid into our stomachs, regulate the overprocessing in the food and beverage industries... Oh now hold on there! They're just trying to make a buck. To regulate them would be unfair, wouldn't it?

Well, as you might expect, if you track the increase in GERD and its parallel rise in obesity, guess what else has risen right along side of them. Overprocessing. I don't think people realize exactly what this can mean. Using industrial fats, refined grains and sugars, genetically modified frankenfoods isn't the only thing we mean when talking about overprocessing. It's a bit more devious than that. One example is what is called "vanishing caloric density," which helps food break down faster so more of it can bypass fullness cues our bodies give us. That's right, food companies are making us eat more. So that accounts for a bit of the extra obesity... and stomach acid... and GERD. It also directly parallels the rise in type 2 diabetes. 

Add to this the dramatic cultural changes like most women now working, inflation so bad that even WITH double income it's hard for families to make ends meet, brilliant consumerism technique advancement to make us NEED the latest Iphone or whatever, and the bazillion other things that add to general stress levels and, if any or all of them were contagious, you'd have a virtual pandemic in gut health/weight/diabetes. But they're only socially contagious so we can't call it that.

As tough as it is to tackle this problem by fighting the food and beverage industries, there is another massive industry that, by no coincidence, is profiting from all of this: Big Pharma. Why is it so tough for the medical industry to make a pill that regulates stomach acid? Is there a really great proton pump inhibitor out there? Oh there are dozens of pills that lower it for a while and there are some that need to be taken permanently, but I have yet to find a pill that works for me. I believe there is, and probably has been for a long time, a pill that can work for anyone. But I doubt it's on the market. The reason it's suppressed is probably because it's dirt cheap. In fact if you made dirt into a pill it might lower stomach acid. This stomach acid thing with all its drugs and procedures to treat it can get expensive. There's a great bit a comedian does about the endoscopy. He says that's when the doctors put you to sleep and they put a tube with a camera on it down your throat and look around your internal organs to see if they can find $3,000 in there. 

How many of us have successfully gotten a doctor to prescribe a "prazole" or a proton pump prohibitor without having to go through one of these first? Every time I bring up my reflux to a doctor he/she immediately jumps right to the endoscopy. Those machines don't just pay for themselves! What they're searching for is polyps, blood, ulcers none of which I have or I would have died from them by now. My reflux is not short-term. But you can't reason with the doctors. They think they know your body better than you and they have to play with their expensive toys. I looked it up and there's nothing they can find that will make them say, "Well it's a good thing we did that endoscopy! Now we KNOW we can't give you a PPI (proton pump inhibitor)." But you have to pay the ferryman. 

So you get one and the doctor says there's nothing, being sure to add that there COULD HAVE been. Then what do they do? They prescribe a pill. A PPI. Usually people go through several before they find the one that's right for them. I'm on omaprazole now but I stopped taking it cuz it just makes me shit. I wouldn't even believe it WAS omaprazole if not for the other symptom, a symptom a lot of proton pump inhibitors have, it's called RAHS but it's nothing to cheer about. It's rebound acid hypersecretion. That is... when you take these pills, you gotta keep taking them cuz if you stop - bam - even more stomach acid. So you have to take these little things forever. That too can get expensive. But nothing compared to the alternative.

I've already mentioned the link between GERD and diabetes but did you know that everything the pancreas produces is burned off by stomach acid? All the digestive enzymes and insulin just get burned up. When food doesn't get digested properly the body doesn't get the nutrients it craves so guess what it does - it makes you crave more. The previously mentioned "fullness cues" are not just given when the stomach is full. They also depend on sufficient nutrients. 

I don't know if Big Pharma is quite this evil... YES they are... but treatment for type 2 diabetes is expensive and it just never ends. I've been undergoing it for about 6 years and in all that time only one of my doctors gave me a pill that stimulates insulin production in my own pancreas. HOW THE FUCK is that possible? And as yet exactly ZERO of them have mentioned this connection between GERD and diabetes even though I told them all about it. Most ignored it while others said I'd need to talk to another doctor who without exception wanted to snake the 3 thousand dollar tube down my throat.

I just need a good GERD drug. I can almost guarantee there's one out there for me. Until I can find that elusive, unicorn doctor that can just fucking prescribe me what I need, things like the following are going to continue to happen to me:

I woke up feeling like shit Oct. 8 but went to work anyway. I had worked security at the Oct. 4 Sarnia card show where the Polish hall was crowded to capacity (300) for hours and pretty full the rest of the time. I was there walking around amongst all the people from 8:30 to 5 and probably caught something from one or more of them. I had been dreading my next cold for a while. In fact just Sept. 27 when I called my brother Jeff on his birthday we were complaining about doctors who don't listen and I told him about the time I nearly died in Korea. I told him already I'd been told by my family doctor, three of his proxy docs (he's never there in person), and my diabetes doctor that I'd need to make an appointment with a doctor to get him/her to make an appointment with a doctor who will give me an endoscopy and THEN (and only then) we can talk about my GERD. I told one of my family doctor's proxy docs about 4 months ago that I need to do that and he said he'll get it arranged. Later on my next visit to my family doc, who again wasn't there, I told a different proxy doc, who said the same thing. On my most recent visit I told yet another proxy doc the whole story of Korea and almost dying there and she said we'll get an appointment set up. That was over a month ago. Still nothing. They keep sending me to Life Labs on the guise that they need to give blood work to a prospective gastrointestinal doc and I keep going but I don't know what becomes of these bloodwork reports. Or all the blood! They take a LOT!

Anyway, I said to Jeff that if I get a cold and can't breathe I may have to just die or go to the hospital cuz the doctors around here are treating my more fashionable problem - the diabetes, but they don't seem interested in the MUCH more serious and life-threatening problem I have. It was just shortly before that cold in Korea last year that I basically gave up trying to sleep lying down. I just wake up, cough, go back to sleep, wake up, cough, go back to sleep, about 30 times a night. It's not good quality sleep to say the least. In fact, when I first got back from Korea I visited Jeff and he told me that when I was sleeping on his couch I was making "muppet noises." That's what he called it. When my airway gets blocked by what my stomach pushes up into it, it makes musical noises in various keys all night. 

Anyway anyway, I wasn't sleeping or laying down, I was walking to work Oct. 8 and coughing, wheezing, and making those noises. Luckily it was a vessel shift where I don't have to walk the full patrols, just up and down the dock checking the moorings and such. But I still did a good 12,000 steps during the shift. Normally it's 25,000. I had bought a bottle of Buckley's and it was keeping me from coughing too much, but I had sneezed, blown my nose, and coughed up buckets full of clear liquidy crud during the shift. I knew I wasn't bringing up the good stuff. I wanted thicker, yellow or green stuff and got none. A few times I was talking to people from the ship or to my cross-shift and couldn't get the air out to talk. Many times I tried to unclog my nose or spit and couldn't produce enough air to get the projectile where it was desired. Instead it just ran down my face or nose. Two hours before the end of my shift in my personal record book I wrote "Can hardly breathe." Then when I was relieved at 7 PM Jessica, my relief, was saying that she had the same thing and had trouble breathing. 

I had decided to stop by a drug store on the way home and get some kind of expectorant like Mucinex so I could cough up the lumpy crud. I didn't even make it to the drug store. I got to Centennial Park, only a few steps off the Cargill property and was having such a hard time breathing I actually saw a few stars. I thought again of passing out and being in a non-upright position unconscious. It would be the death of me. So I panicked and dialed 9-1-1. As the operator talked to me I was reminded of Malcolm In The Middle. "911 What is your problem?"

That's honestly how I was talking! The ambulance was taking a while and 3 times I had to talk to the operator and RE-describe where I was. "I'm at... Centennial... Park. At... the... sign." "So you're at the intersection there on front street." "No... I'm on... Ex... mouth... Street." I saw the ambulance turn onto Exmouth down the street, then turn OFF Exmouth and go down another street. I called her back after going to the parking lot abutting the park. "I'm in... the Sar... nia... chiroprac... tical par... king lot." Anyway they finally found me and it was two young girls. By the time they got there I noticed I had started breathing a bit better. Probably because I'd stopped walking. But I figured maybe I could get something in an inhaler to clear my lungs like asthmatics use and MAYBE if I'm super lucky I can get a doctor at the hospital to give me something for my GERD.

After untucking my uniform, shaving my chest like the 40-year-old virgin, hooking up monitor cables, clamping something to my finger, testing my blood pressure, testing my oxygen, getting my health card and a list of meds, and asking loads of questions, we drove to the hospital. The EMT's were actually good. They figured it was a chest infection, old pneumonia, or reflux complications. They also had me inhale albuterol from an inhaler. It was really slow and made talking difficult but it may have helped. Throughout the whole ambulance ride I sounded like a set of bagpipes but by the time I got to the hospital I was breathing better. 

When I got there I HAD to go into a wheelchair. Rules. They checked me in by asking the same questions the girls had already asked. I was doing another 4 hits of albuterol. Might as well get it while I can. Still wheezing and droning though. Then they sent me into a room close to Emerg where I was put on an almost flat table (heavily reclined) and a lady put a bunch more of those stickers on me to which they attach the wires. I think it was an EEG. It was fast. Then I got wheeled to a room. Then I finally met my doctor. I'll call him Dirk Clutter MD. He had some kind of accent I couldn't place. I probably could have figured it out if we talked but all he said was take off the shirt, pants can stay on, put on the gown, we're going to give you a chest x-ray. Then he disappeared. A little while later another lady came in. She was a Filipina I'm pretty sure. She took several vials of blood. Then another lady took me for chest x-rays. I waited quite a while for the doctor to come back. I was all ready to tell him my medical history like I had done with the EMT gals. 

I reckon the whole procedure didn't even take two hours. When the doc finally came to the room to talk to me he said, "It's just a virus so we won't need antibiotics. The virus is pushing your lungs together and restricting your air. Here's a script for more albuterol." The pushing lungs together was almost verbatim what I had told the EMT's when they (unlike Dirk Clutter) asked me to describe my symptoms. So I think he talked to them rather than to me.

I said, "Well I've had hundreds of colds, only one was anything like this and that was in Korea last December. That's when my reflux started getting really bad. I can't even sleep lying down any more. The cold complicated by reflux caused the respiratory issues. Are you saying this has nothing to do with my reflux?"

He said, "Nope. They are completely unrelated." Then he started inching his way out of the room. I was saying that I was hoping maybe he'd prescribe a proton pump inhibitor like (and I was looking it up on my phone) ... he was out of the room before I could say, "Prevacid." As he walked down the hall in a voice that was trailing off in volume he said without turning back to look at me, "You'll have to arrange with your family doctor to see a specialist and get an endoscopyyyyyyyy..."

Okay. Well. I sat on the edge of the bed in the "room" which was just one of a few made with curtains in a bigger room. Now what? Do I go somewhere to get this albuterol? Does this hospital have a pharmacy? Can I put my clothes back on? Which way to the exit? What hospital am I even IN? (Cuz remember I was brought to the hospital in an ambulance so I didn't see where we were driving.) I got dressed and went out into the hall looking as confused as I could and an orderly or hospital employee of some sort asked if I needed help. She told me I'd have to find a pharmacy to get the prescription filled but it was 9:30 or 10 PM so that was out. She also directed me to the nearest exit. It took a quick Google Map search but I figured out that I was luckily at the hospital close to my apartment. However, the walk home from that hospital was longer than the walk that had triggered my suffocation. I decided to start walking and if the breathing got too laboured I'd call a cab. Luckily I made it home without passing out on the side of the road.

Hampton et. al. (1975) and Peterson et. al. (1992) are classic evaluations that show medical history alone accounts for 76-83% of final diagnoses. Exams, labs, imaging tests, bloodwork, etc. account for only 9-13% of competent medical diagnoses. In the first paper a physical exam was useful in only 7 out of 80 patients (11.4%) and by getting the patients' medical history alone doctors were able to offer proper diagnoses. It wouldn't have taken me more than a few minutes to offer Dr. Dirk some information that could have improved his diagnosis and helped me considerably more, but he was not interested. He seemed in a hurry. This is the same fast food, assembly line medical treatment I have received from every doctor I've seen here except for Shetty my diabetes doc. I'll be visiting him in 10 days and you can bet I'll tell him this tale. With a bit of luck, he might be able to give me what the vaunted Canadian medical system is too abysmal to manage. 

As always, I guess we'll have to wait and see...

Social Credit or Antisocial Punishment?

 Here's a video well worth watching:

At this point in my life I have still not completely ruled out working in China again. Luckily for me I think China and its ESL racket have effectively ruled me out. I think it is mostly because of my age but for all I know it could have something to do with their social credit system. There is a GLARING weakness to this system and I have fallen victim to it in every country I've lived with the possible exception of Japan. I didn't live there long enough.

Take a look at my recent posts and experiences right here in Canada. Also, while watching the above video I thought of some of my experiences in Korea. China may believe they are way ahead of other countries in their social credit technology but in my opinion they are simply the only country that is comfortable sharing it with its citizens. And when you look at the stunning nonchalance with which Lulu, the videographer's wife, took the news that facial reading technology had been widely set up with HER face, without her permission, you see how The Party has efficiently socialized citizens of China. In common non-Party reasoning a person's face belongs to that person. No company has the right to use it in thousands of ID systems around the country despite how convenient it may be to get water from a vending machine by only scanning your face. This is not Shi Jin Ping thought. It's the sort of thinking that can cost you social credit points.

But is China the only country that does this? I doubt it. Let's go to the beginning. When the uni prof is interviewed he states that China wondered how there could be more fraud in China than the west and found that it was because of credit rating. If you have read my two posts about credit rating and how thoroughly corrupted it is in Canada you will know the giant flaw in the social credit system, but let's hold off on that for the moment. Credit ratings are generally accepted and a more and more accessible and widely used indicator of honesty in Canada. They used to be accessible only to certain organizations like banks or institutes where people can borrow money, but now any Joe Blow who wants to rent you a room in his basement can pull out his phone and get a sort of Canadian social credit score, can't he? You ask the average Canadian and they will give you a similar reaction to Lulu and say that this keeps people more honest in Canada. Does it? Does the social credit system in China keep people more honest like they assure you it does in the video?

NO.

The glaring flaw was illustrated quite clearly in my recent attempt to clear my credit rating here in Canada. You can read about it in the posts Give Me a Little Credit Will You? and Give Me a Little Credit Won't You? A major company like Telus, one of the Triumvirate of Evil, along with Bell and Roger's that hold an illegal but allowed monopoly on telecom in Canada can easily exploit and manipulate credit ratings and make life difficult for anyone they want. They are not questioned by credit rating companies and credit rating companies are not questioned by anyone either. What I'm saying is there is no regulation and despite the history of disaster in Canada when things become de-regulated, this is the direction we're told our people want to go. And... again... this will lead to disaster. 

But back to China. Rather than making their country more honest and/or reducing fraud, all they will find the social credit system will do is move it upward in class and without much exposure to Shi Jin Ping thought, it would be a very difficult task to convince me that this is not and intentional part of the whole social credit system of China. 

Go to the part in the video when the uni prof does a credit check on Lulu's phone and tells her that she could stay in certain hotels without paying certain fees AND she could have an easier time with immigration in countries like Argentina, Latvia, and... CANADA! This instantly made me think of all the trouble I had at immigration offices in both China and Korea when I stayed there. It was as if the opposite of what Lulu had done to get an easier time at immigration offices had been done by me. But what could that have been? Telecom again. I bought 6 months of phone/internet from Hanaro Telecom when I worked in Mokpo at Mokpo National University. The lady at the Hanaro office said other teachers had done it for 6 months, she promised that there would be no locking me into longer term contracts like a year or two years, that it was month-to-month and I could cancel when I left. She lied. It was her JOB to lie. And when I tried to protest, she looked me right in the eye and denied saying any of this. Then she had a nice meal and slept soundly I presume. 

Even though Hanaro is now out of business; even though they were found to be defrauding customers; even though there was a well-publicized class action lawsuit against them for sharing sensitive information of 6-7 million customers; even though they were also sued for price fixing; they just merged with SK Telecom making the Korean telecom monopoly more effective. I probably could have gotten in on that class action lawsuit and participated in suing Hanaro ffs! But even though the company is clearly and thoroughly corrupt, I try to get internet from any of the Triumvirate of Evil in Korea (KT, LG, or SKT) and they refuse because I didn't pay Hanaro for 6 months of service in Mokpo when I was no longer living in Mokpo 18 years ago or whatever it was. I am pretty sure my consistent trouble with immigrations were the result of being flagged too and the Hanaro incident no doubt factored into that. Am I saying Korea has a social credit system of its own? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. If you had been in Korea right when the pandemic started you should probably think so too. But even in Korea people can see things happen that should cause them grave concern over rights and freedom violations but they shrug them off like Lulu. 

There was a guy found to have Covid 19 in Korea. A gay guy. A foreign guy if I remember correctly. Within hours EVERY person in Korea who had been in the same establishments as him was contacted by phone and given a message to immediately get tested. They HAVE a social credit system in Korea. They just don't tell the citizens about it so that they'll THINK they have more rights and freedoms than the citizens of China. 

Then there was China. They have 4 big banks but it doesn't seem like it. ICBC, the world's largest bank, is the one everyone uses. The others are mostly industrial. Again a monopoly so again they get away with whatever the frig they want. I've blogged about it before - they have the only cash machines in the world that are set up to make you leave your card in them. You get your cash before you get your card back. You actually have to press more buttons to get your card back after you have the cash. If you don't, the machine eats your card, your bank account gets FROZEN, and you can't get your card back unless you go to the bank and basically start a new account all over again. This too is by design. It gives the bank an excuse to find out what you're up to and for foreigners it's more important in case you're transferring too much money out of China or other suspicious activity. Most people have this happen to them at least once if they stay in China awhile. It happened to me five times I think? For this I was probably flagged and paid extra attention to. 

What about Canada? We definitely THINK we have more rights and freedoms than the folks in China, but do we? I STILL get ads for the X Files on my phone because when I was visiting my brother Jeff in March, half a year ago, we watched a few episodes of it. Don't kid yourself, nothing you do in Canada is private either. Don't forget what I found out and blogged about only a few months ago: I was flagged for not using my social insurance number. FLAGGED. I was told as much by the worker at the office where they flagged me. What happens when you're flagged? Government websites don't work. They don't tell you, "Hey this is your government. Why aren't you using your SIN?" They just make your life a lot more frustrating. I'm not convinced my troubles with immigration overseas didn't also have something to do with that as well. We are monitored just like the Chinese. And if we're playing the game, we get rewards. If we're not borrowing money, building credit, paying taxes, making ourselves easier to monitor, we get punished. 

Big companies will exploit and manipulate people, innocent and honest people, by using the social credit system of China to punish people for not giving their companies enough money. They are already doing it. It is literally impossible to get a bank account without a phone in China. So there are two companies (most likely ICBC and China Mobile (about a billion customers)) who you have almost no choice but to use. Woe unto you and your social credit score if you miss a cell payment or get an insufficient funds charge. It is still possible to live a life without a car loan, house loan, credit card, line of credit, or things like these but you have to be weird to do it. Wonkda in Korea. Basically antisocial in North America. But what's to stop the credit and loan companies who are absolutely notorious for cheating customers... from cheating their customers MORE? Once they have to protection of unimpeachable honesty gifted by the social credit system, why wouldn't they just create bullshit charges for people who they feel aren't being good enough customers? The folks will pay or their social credit scores will be affected. The companies cannot be questioned because they are controlled by unregulated bodies - in China the CPP, everywhere else unregulated private entities - so they will either get your money or kill your score. Pretty sweet for THEM and pretty sucky for US the little guys. 

The video about China is tagged as a "dystopian reality." It's just a reality. Life is already dehumanized, fearful, and wretched for everyone but the super rich. Dystopian. It just becomes more so every day. How long before people hack this system and if I'm one of them I can just punch a few numbers into my phone and affect someone else's credit score? Someone I like or someone I want to cause problems for. Is it already possible? I think it is. And that is scary. If someone doesn't like you because you slept with his wife, or you parked in his favourite spot, or you are a foreigner, all he needs is fingerprint or face and he can make it look like you crossed the street on a red light. I'm sure it can be a helluva lot worse than that too! I don't think there's much futuristic about this, I think it's widespread already, it's just not hidden in China. And all the talk about making life more harmonious and honest is pure nonsense. This is nothing more than another way to enrich the already rich and impoverish the already poor. And a communist country is bragging about it! Shame on China... and the rest of the world. 

The Importance of Being Art

 Art. 

In the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde makes the final statement that "All art is quite useless."

Here's a guy whose greatest gift might be the contradictory epithet writing a piece of art whose primary use is the description of the concept that art is useless. Oxymorons, inverted epigrams, contradictory epithets... these are the soul of Oscar Wilde's art. They are his stock in trade. Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray said he could believe anything provided it is quite incredible. "I can resist anything except temptation," said Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere's Fan. Indeed the eyelid half closed, opium-soaked, languid rhetoric of the upper class dandies Wilde obviously admired and worked hard to portray, and from whence most of his clever witticisms are derived, was effortlessness that could only come from a great deal of hard work and study. Hard work disguised as leisure that could only be enjoyed by the upper class since "work is the curse of the drinking class."

We need to consider the source of this preface. At the risk of putting words in the artist's mouth or being Caliban viewing his ugly reflection, I believe Wilde is saying art is useless because it's the most useful thing in the world. Art is life and life's ugliness revealed is a beautiful thing. He said in De Profundis, "I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction... I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram."

So rather than the masturbatory exploration of whether or not art is quite useless, a statement made by an artist who probably felt the irony could therefore be assumed, I think it might be more fruitful to explore whether or not it is the most useful thing in the world.

First things first, it's not easy to just make art. Imagine the struggle of the painter trying to portray life's ugliness in something beautiful. And speaking of masturbatory, how many of us have witnessed to critic or the plebeian trying to convince others that he/she sees the art or the beauty in something most consider inartistic or ugly. If you have a chance watch this. It is art itself!

It's the story of an old lady, a trucker by trade and member of the drinking class, who bought a picture as a joke gift for a friend, its hideousness being the humour, only to find that it might be a genuine Jackson Pollock worth millions. How much did she pay? The saleslady asked for 8 bucks but settled for 5.

If you want some art, go to the 8:40 mark or so and watch the art "expert" view this painting. It is absolutely hilarious! He looks at it upside-down, sideways, plays peek-a-boo with it and comes to the conclusion that it's "superficial and frivolous" and is NOT a Jackson Pollock.

To make that even more hilarious, here's a side-by-side comparison of a Pollock that sold for over 100 million and the one Teri Horton bought for five bucks. Could ANYone, even Jackson Pollock himself, explain 100 million dollars worth of difference? If so, THAT, my friends, THAT would be some art! Are these Pollocks or just bollocks? In my opinion the latter. I think, like Wilde, Pollock was satirizing the world of art. When asked how the layman should look at modern art Pollock said it should be enjoyed like music. Look at the painting and try to receive what it has to offer. After a while you may like it or you may not but it's important to give it a chance. The genius here is the appeal to the vanity of art critics and the subtle insinuation that if you cannot receive the "art," the problem lies with you, not the painting or the music. This is how you get the hilarious theater of rubbish justification. Pollock could literally sell his oversplash catcher or brush cleaning rags for millions. The art here is in the supreme satire that has led to wildly fanciful descriptions of splashing and blobbing identical to kindergarten classes and the outrageous price tags attached to these fraudulent pieces.

Before you object, let's use Pollock's example of music. The irony is that Jackson Pollock HAD talent. He could make a picture that looked like something. But he became famous for making works of "art" that don't use that talent. It's like if Eddy Van Halen went on stage and brushed, swept, tickled, and whacked his electric guitar with a broom then told the audience to try to receive what that music had to offer. Do you think THAT would outsell the other Van Halen albums? I guess it depends on how badly the listening audience wanted to appear like they understood the art of the revolutionary new form of guitar playing called "sweep strumming."

I went to an Indonesian traditional play that was an old folk tale involving magic, dragons, witches, etc. The costumes and acting were great! There was some humour to it as well. But I said to my guide that the music was annoying. He told me that it's just musicians randomly banging on their instruments depending on the gods to make it musical. Well that day the gods were not cooperating. It was just plain noise. To admit that I must be a Philistine, right? An art hater. Well, I'm okay with that. But I'm sure there are people in the traditional art world of Indonesia who make their livings convincing others that they can "hear" the music in that random bashing and blowing. In my opinion, if you pay a thousand bucks for a recording of that noise, or millions for a Jackson Pollock, it is a fitting punishment for your hubris.

Deriving beauty from the hideousness of even a genuine Pollack takes some artful dodgery, but let's go in the other direction. Teri Horton in the movie says that to her art has to look like something, like a Norman Rockwell painting. Well, here's a classic:

It's Triple Self Portrait and I defy you to find any ugliness in it without going beyond the superficial and the frivolous. He has pictures of his influences tacked to the corner of his painting, Rembrandt, van Gough, Durer, and Picasso (I learned from looking them up). Consider the darkness in the lives of those men. Rembrandt was considered a difficult, arrogant, and litigious man. Vincent van Gogh, a great admirer of Rembrandt, was described as socially abrasive, exhausting to live with, and mentally unhealthy. Albrecht Durer painted a portrait of his lifelong friend with Greek text along the edge that translated to "With the cock in your asshole." Pablo Picasso was a deeply flawed, manipulative, cruel, and misogynistic individual. As you might expect, even Norman Rockwell's life was far from the idealized vision of America he created in his art.

In Somerset Maugham's The Moon & Sixpence a novel partially inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin, the narrator suggests that the subject of the work, Charles Strickland, an artist with few if any redeeming social characteristics was a tortured soul who had something profound that needed to be shared with the world and the price of his struggle to somehow do that was being a misunderstood outcast.

Can artists, for this reason, be forgiven for their abhorrent behaviour and are their works necessarily artistic in direct proportion to the depths of their social depravity? Does biographer and public exegesis - critically deep interpretation of their art - tend to become eisegesis in proportion to their popularity? Do we tend to read our own biases and opinions into artist's work? Let's go back to Oscar Wilde's preface. In it he says that the highest as well as the lowest forms of criticism are modes of autobiography whereas he says that to reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

From this we are to understand (superficially) that it is all in the mind of the critic or the reader if they find any of Oscar Wilde himself in the pages of his literature. This smacks of a court hearing defense rather than a legitimate fact and to anyone familiar with Oscar Wilde, it should read as nothing more. His comment in Dorian Gray that the more insincere the man is the more purely intellectual his ideas will be and completely uncoloured by wants, desires, or prejudices was 0% autobiographical? Was it just Lord Wotton who believed that conscience is merely the trade name of the firm of cowardice? Was it merely an entirely intellectually created character who believed in the Hellenic ideal - the harmony of body and soul - to be a man who lived his life not adhering to blind dogma but completely indulging every feeling, expressing every thought, and making every dream a reality? Was it only a character he created who compared the moral self-deprivation that comes with modern ethics to savage tribal self-mutilation like tattooing or scarring? I think he would have preferred this to be the case at his hearings, but there were some in attendance who knew better.

Yes, Oscar Wilde got in trouble for his art not being completely non-biographical and useless. BIG trouble. I don't know how accurate it is but if you watch the 1960 movie starring Peter Finch as Oscar Wilde called The Trials of Oscar Wilde, go to about 8:30 and you'll hear, "I consider that to conform to the narrow moral standards of this Victorian age the grossest form of immorality." A gutsy thing to say in the rather demure social environment of his times. In fact it is quite well known that Wilde relished the idea of being a martyr and being taken down for standing against what he (and a LOT of his characters) considered to be social, particularly sexual, foppery. Many believe his entire purpose for taking the stand was to create a real time work of art in which he dissected the restrictive laws of English society, cut the attorneys' arguments to ribbons with his razor sharp wit, and in the end got what he eventually ended up getting for the cause of progressive thinking.

I'm torn on the two sides of Oscar Wilde's story. On the one hand his sentence of two year's hard labour broke and eventually killed him. He was 46 when he died of complications related to the hard labour for which decades of leisurely, languid living left him uniquely unprepared. Who knows what masterpieces he might have composed had he been, I dunno, more Hemingwayish? On the other hand, he absolutely WAS the sodomite that he was accused of being so despite the idea that it shouldn't have been against the law, (was in England till 1967 in fact) his whole case was a lie. He even began the trial by lying about his age to give you an idea of how seriously he did not take this trial for his life.

Do you know that after he was accused by the Marquess of Queensberry he was so scared that he went on a lavish, romantic trip to Algiers with his beau (and son of the Marquess) Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas? During the trip they met French author Andre Gide who said that Wilde seemed to be a man aware that his tragic fate was approaching. When people warned him to be careful Wilde's response was that that would be a step back. He had determined to go as far as possible even unto death. The events of the trip included the exploration into the seedy underbelly of Algiers were just useful fodder for the opposing attorneys during his trial.

So in answer to the question of whether art IS the most important thing in the world, it is pretty clear that it was to Oscar Wilde. Contrary to his statements that art should be no reflection of the artist, he was determined to live the life Lord Henry Wotton described to the young Dorian Gray flouting dogma like social convention and laws and devoting body and soul to the indulgence of dreams and desires. He was a devoted aesthete to the end. I can't decide whether this was more heroic or tragic.

There is a kind of mythology that people are wont to create around those who show any aptitude for art. Somerset Maugham writes that the faculty for myth is innate in the huma race. Do we seek out people who have at all distinguished themselves from others in some way, invent legends about them, and attach fanatical beliefs to these legends as they grow? I have to believe this to be true, perhaps more true than for anyone, about Jackson Pollock. It seems there are an awful lot of artists that were secretly horrible people. Could it be then that their gift of artistic talent, their insight into the most important thing in the world, is such a heavy burden that it drives them to become so? And if this is true, should we forgive them their transgressions as the cost of their art?

Whether art is the most important thing in the world or not, am I willing to forgive character flaws in great artists such as Oscar Wilde? Gauguin left his wife and five children to go to Tahiti where he married multiple girls, all under the age of 14. Though Wilde was blowing huge wads of cash in his beautiful Bosie, in the end he neglected his wife and kids. Is their art more important than the lives they destroyed? What about other authors, painters, singers, or other artists?

I'm going to have to land on I don't know. What do you reckon?

Past Peg-Pulling Time?

 I'm going to begin by referring to my previous post and, regrettably, I have to suspend my license to practice medicine for the moment. The one I bestowed upon myself last post. I can re-bestow it if I want. You're not the boss of me. 

I read a bit further on the subject of the little-known SECOND job of the pancreas, the EXOcrine as opposed to the ENDOcrine functions we're all familiar with. Turns out that PERT (pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy) could actually RAISE blood sugar by causing foods to be broken down more rapidly and, uh, turned into glucose. The enzymes help in proper digestion which includes improving the absorption of carbs and starches, or more to the point, the glucose they become. 

However, I have so much stomach acid, which is destroying the limited digestive enzymes my pancreas produces anyway, and this can cause both reflux and malnutrition. I may be eating more than I need to get the nutrients I need. It seems to me that (and again I may be making assumptions here) my stomach acid is working so hard BECAUSE of a lack of pancreatic digestive enzymes. My stomach is trying to do the job they're supposed to be doing. So maybe PERT might still be worth a try. Maybe if I introduce more of the enzymes my pancreas is producing too few of (do we get these from pigs too?) my stomach might go back to producing normal levels of acid and my reflux won't be such a huge problem. I might even get more nutrients and feel healthier. And if we're going to dream big, maybe if the PERT increases my digestive efficiency, maybe I won't feel like I need to eat so much. If this all happens, I'm officially giving myself back my license to practice medicine. I'm still going to suggest it to my diabetes doctor when I visit him next month.

But I still have doubts about convincing him to try it. I find talking to doctors very similar to talking to Trump supporters. It's like they have one foot pegged into the ground like circus elephants and they can only talk, relate, (dare I even say reason?) within the circle to which the peg limits them. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again and again until I'm dead: What we need is for the whole world to collectively realize what our individual pegs are what are preventing us from making this whole world the relatively happy place it should be. The resulting stampede would crush a few rich, greedy asshole plutocrats but it'd be well worth it. 

But, like this poor elephant in the picture who would probably let people spray her with water, throw rocks at her, take her baby, starve her, and possibly kill her before she just plucks that peg out and attacks, what are the lengths we are willing to endure before we pull pegs and attack? I am daily affronted with new examples of these seemingly limitless lengths in news stories and most of them are from just one country. I'll give you a few. See if you know what country they're from.

A woman strangled her kids (5 years old, 3 years old, and 8 months old) then jumped out a window. It's okay though, her husband forgave her. I say if a guy is a murderer when he drinks too much then kills someone in a car accident, YOU are a murderer if you have a mental condition, don't take your meds and then kill someone. But then in even a halfway normal world would we even be here? How many times a day do YOU ask that question?

The supreme court of that same country recently ruled that since AI-generated child porn does not depict real persons, (even though it's generated using real pics of real kids) it's okay. 

Any guesses yet? What "civilized" country is this? In case you think the protection of kids in the country you've guessed is the only problem there, the country in question is quite international in its neglect of the vulnerable who are in need of adult protection. A rapper got kicked off the tour of an even MORE famous entertainer recently for declaring that kids in Gaza shouldn't be slaughtered. I had to use a link from reddit because Facebook has blocked this video of Gaza kids telling the artist to stay strong and thanking him for doing the grown-up thing that is outside of other's circles who have Israel as the spikes in their feet. Israeli attacks in Sept of 2026 included an 11-year-old boy in a "safe" zone in Gaza. But the country is not Israel if that was your guess. Just spiked to them ironically through a religion that spiked its saviour to a cross. Ostensibly. 

I better be careful or I'M gonna get blocked like the above rapper. The CIA might send one of their beastial, beastly, beastiality agents after my ass. I might be labelled a terrorist for condemning terrorism.

And if they don't get me, tech experts from this country say that AI will end ALL of humanity within a decade anyway. 

Pssst... it's the U.S. If you haven't followed any of the links above. The United States. You've heard I'm sure how the US is sometimes called the greatest social experiment the world has ever known. Here's an article that shows how the successes of capitalism are the very reasons that the social experiment that is America has failed. And while reading it, remember it's over a year old and think of all that's happened just in the past year in the U. S. of A. and adjust every statistic to make it worse accordingly. It's time to pull the peg, or the plug, on that experiment. Long past. And given the effect America has on the other countries of the world, I'd say it's long past peg-pulling time all over.

It's fall. While death is not always nice, I could add to my favourite smell list the pleasant aroma of dead leaves I get while strolling through my new neighbourhood. I passed this house just yesterday.

Yeah, I think that'd be a case of premature e-Jack-o-lantern. But it's getting close to the glorious month of October, isn't it? In October here in Canada we have Thanksgiving and then in November we honour our fallen war heroes on Remembrance Day. This is the time of year when I think we should give the greatest consideration to what we've done with our countries (or allowed to be done TO them) and whether or not our "Greatest Generation" foreparents would be happy or tell us to pull our pegs out and stomp the shit out of the people who've made things the way they are. 

You know what I think. What do YOU reckon?

Dr. Dave's Self-diagnosis

 I feel like this post has been percolating inside me smelling up the room and now it's time to pour it out. Percolating. Anyone remember those old coffee pots with the glass part at the top you could see the coffee bubbling up into? And the smell of it? 

Coffee wasn't a thing in my house growing up. My Mom never drank it and while we were young we only experienced that major part of Canadian culture when we went out. I recall one thing more than any other about my Mom's best friend when I was a kid - Verna Fletcher - and that was the smell of coffee that hit you like a bean bag (full of Columbian coffee beans) the second you entered the Fletcher home. I think the Fletchers had some of these 

Or some of these

to drink the coffee from. I actually don't remember seeing her without a coffee actually. I wonder if she had a problem... Things you just don't think of when you're a kid... 

Anyway, I think it might be the infrequency of that smell for so many years as a young kid that makes it so special to me now. I just brewed a cup in my Keurig and can smell it a little in my apartment. It's one of the better smells in life IMO. Popcorn, grass, bacon, old timey gasoline with no additives, lavender on the right person, KFC in the winter, Vick's Vapo Rub, freshly baked white bread in a paper bag, A535 on the rugby bus, cigarette smoke - but not just a burning cig - I mean the kind that has been inhaled then exhaled, campfire smoke on clothes days after the campfire... I could go on and on.

But that wasn't what I'd planned to blog about. I gotta try to avoid words like "percolate" or I might go off on a trundle like that again. I wonder if I've done this before. Off on a tangent and I haven't even started with the main topic. Maybe it's age. Tell me THAT wasn't revealed the second I talked about the percolator coffee pots! ha ha ha. I wonder if I could even buy one nowadays.

Nevertheless, the doctors, pharmacies, and general medicine supply chain in Ontario sure have a sweet thing going for themselves! Segue? What's that? I gotta believe it's the same in every province but since I'm here in Ontario I'll concentrate my stream of vituperation. 

I was living in Cheonan teaching at Gongju University there. I believe it was 2020. The Fam had come from Pyeongtaek to have a Sam Gyup Sal feast with me at a restaurant near my apartment in The Love House on the campus of Gongju U. Heather had been testing her blood sugar because it was low and she said we should use her equipment to test mine just for fun. My blood sugar level was 542 or something outrageous like that. So began my days as a conscious diabetic. I don't mean that I've ever been an UNconscious diabetic although I have since thought about a blackout or two that I blamed on alcohol which might have been attributed more accurately, or at least equally, to the diabetes. I mean that I was a diabetic for many years before I was aware of it. How many years, I couldn't say. 

Being employed in Korea while diabetic was a definite plus since basic health coverage made the cost negligible. Virtually everything was covered. YES all you misinformed people, it's MUCH cheaper to be a diabetic in Korea than in Canada - a country that has long been resting on free health care laurels that it no longer deserves. As a point of fact, I visited The Fam for 6 months in 2024 and I paid less for insulin other diabetic supplies in the USA than I do in Canada! THAT'S how bad things have gotten and THAT (finescally) is to be the meat of this post.

I've been getting my drugs and stuff since around April of this year from the pharmacy attached to the walk-in clinic where my doctor is here in Sarnia. I've been to that office a half dozen times or so and only seen this doctor of mine once. He doesn't work at his office I guess. I saw a young male intern, a rude, inattentive, obtuse doctor a few times, and most recently a young female intern. They all want to give me the meds I was on in Korea, or their Canadian versions, which is fine, but in the 6 years I've been treating my disease, I haven't made much progress. A few things have been tweaked, for example, I was on Metformin and it just made my guts go super garburator and give me emergency toilet sessions that I thought endangered the structural integrity of the porcelain fixtures upon which I was blasting out the said guts. I got a substitute that is better called Sitaglipton. It's much more expensive than Metformin. I thought maybe this is why it was readily substituted, but then the doctor (my new diabetes doctor Dr. Shetty) did the opposite. After 6 years of injecting insulin and juggling different meds, some of which I never needed such as the blood pressure medicine I got prescribed because of a flawed BP testing machine in Korea, which I finally put a stop to just a few days ago, I was prescribed this wonder drug called Taro-Gliclazide. 

To give you an idea (now using the western scale for blood sugar) I have been hovering around 10 for years. When my blood sugar goes over 10, like to 12, it's high. When it goes below 10, like to 9, it's good. I have never been in the 8's or 7's regularly. Since starting this Gliclazide I'm in the 7's and 6's! NORMAL blood sugar is 5.5 and 7.8 two hours after eating. I'm practically at a normal blood sugar level! Where was this drug for the last 6 years?

When I took the prescription to the pharmacist, you should have seen him! He asked if I was positive this is what Dr. Shetty prescribed. I said yeah why? He said it's strong stuff. I said so what does that mean, I've been on weak stuff all this time? He chuckled but I wasn't joking. 

As you know, I have the time that most folks don't to research things. I got online and found out a little bit of the history of this drug. First of all, we know who Banting and Best are, don't we? I'm sure it's not just because they're Canadian that I know they're the two dudes who isolated the hormone insulin. They knew the discovery was too valuable NOT to give to the world so they sold it to the University of Toronto for a buck if I remember correctly. Somehow it's now $120 for a box of 5 pens here in Ontario - the same province where it was GIVEN away! Again I am trying not to Google everything so I can maintain a little memory so I think it's pig insulin we get in those pens. 1921 the discovery was made and since then diabetics have been squirting pig hormone into our bodies. Nothing better has happened in science since then? 

Au contraire mes amis, in 1942 (in France) a guy named Marcel Janbon was researching typhoid fever and by accident discovered that a medicine he was using lowered patients' blood sugar dramatically. It was discovered a few years later that this medicine stimulated the pancreas to MAKE MORE INSULIN. Well DUH! This is exactly the drug we need for diabetes, isn't it? But we don't know Marcel Janbon, do we? Do you know what a sulphonylurea is? No. I think this might be because they're dirt cheap. Remember what I said a month's worth of insulin cost me? That's what a YEAR'S worth of this wonder drug costs. 

It doesn't work on type 1 diabetes because it requires a functioning pancreas, but instead of just squirting expensive pig hormone into my body, wouldn't it have been a good idea to see if Gliclazide or some other sulphonylurea worked? I wonder now if I had known about this drug and asked for it, maybe I could have been taking it all this time. And maybe I could have been paying less all this time. But since it's so cheap I guess the doctors hang on to those pills like manhole covers. Just a theory.

OOOORRRRR... since for 6 years I have also been complaining to my doctors about extreme reflux and stomach acid problems, you'd think that maybe one of them might have clued in to the connection between pancreatic digestive enzymes being destroyed by stomach acid and high blood sugar? There's a treatment called PERT Pancreatic Enzyme Replacement Therapy during which replacement enzymes are given through meds like Creon, and proton pump inhibitors like omeprazole or Prevacid (lansoprazole), which I plan to request from Shetty next time I see him next month, are used to make sure the stomach acid doesn't destroy the replacement enzymes. Now, Creon can be a couple thousand bucks a month so this makes me think that none of my doctors even thought about it as an option. Perhaps Shetty HAS thought about it and since he is the one who gave me the cheap pancreas stimulator, maybe he is leery of prescribing Creon because he knows I'm paying out of pocket. BUT, there are alternatives like Pancreaze or Pertzye that can cost... $154 a month. About the same as insulin. 

I requested a medicine for my reflux and Shetty prescribed rabeprazole, which just makes me shit 5 times a day, but I've heard from a few people who have found good reflux meds that they went through a few "prazoles" before they found the right one for THEM as well. 

So I'm thinking Pancreaze + Prevacid PERT treatment would be perfect for me. Or it might be worth a try. By the way, a month's worth of Prevacid is about 20 bux. Would I pay $174 a month to have normal blood sugar and be able to sleep lying down and go through a day without coughing 1500 times? Hell yes! Are Pancreaze and Prevacid pills that pharmacists hold on to like manhole covers? I guess we'll see when I go to see Dr. Shetty next month. And I wonder how the pharmacist will react if I manage to get the cheap drugs prescribed. Just as an aside, the same pharmacist who hesitated to give me the wonderdrug Gliclazide put my prescriptions together again for this month. I checked the bag of pills after paying and, what do you know, no Gliclazide. I asked him and he acted like he didn't know what it was. I told him to check what he'd given me last time. I didn't know the name of it at the time but I said if he showed me and I could smell it I'd recognize it. He showed me some that had no smell and then the right stuff and immediately I recognized it. Why hadn't he just given it to me? Why had he been reluctant the first time? Probably because it's so cheap. So I can just imagine what he'll be like if I end up doing the PERT. I may not even NEED the other drugs! What if I can stop using the Metformin replacement drug and the insulin? I hope to find out someday.

Should I be the one diagnosing my own health problems here? Especially now that I'm back in Canada where we are practically synonymous with stupendous healthcare? No! It's shameful that I am doing this. But that's the new Canada. If there's a way to do something cheaply you just can't expect the experts to tell you what that is. You gotta figure it out on yer own. 

Now, I fully expect Dr. Shetty to shoot down this idea when I suggest it to him. But if he doesn't and if it works, what does that say about doctors, pharmacists, and the whole medical profession here? This is going to be interesting folks...

Averaging Disagreement

 What does the word "omnibus" mean to you? Maybe nothing. You might be lucky enough to have never heard it. To me it represents the evil at the heart of politics that makes me sick as a dog, both literally and figuratively, when I think of them. Canada has a long history of omnibus bills being part of politics that dates back to the year after confederation - 1868. Did you know that? Do you know what these things are? Not really? Well of course not really - we're not really supposed to know.

Think of the last time your pet was sick. I'll use a dog for my example because, as Groucho Marx says, "Outside of a dog, books are man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read." He was a brilliant man but even his brilliance was not enough to illuminate the inside of the dog - presumably a St. Bernard or Newfoundlander or one of the roomier species - where he tested his theory. But I digress.

Maybe we should read more as Groucho's pithy little saying would imply. Inside or outside of any animal, if you read more, you might learn things like the thing I'm about to teach today. What politicians do is analogous to giving medicine to a sick dog. We wrap it in bacon or squash it into a piece of pizza or just jam it into the dog's kibble and say, "Mmmmm... yummy! Who's a good dog? YOU'RE a good dog! Here's a nice healthy piece of bacon/pizza/food to reward you for being so 'good.'" I enclose the word "good" in the single quote marks (or whatever they're called) because in this case the words "dumb" or "gullible" or "stupidly trusting" might convey a more accurate meaning. But let's not be so hard on our best friends. At least the dog isn't as dumb as us. At least it's getting something that will make it better and not something that will make it sicker.

You see folks, when a politician draws up an omnibus bill and says to the Canadian people, "Mmmmm... yummy! Who's a good consumer? YOU'RE a good consumer! Yes you are! And here's a nice french-fry wrapped in Canadian bacon, smothered in gravy, and sprinkled with maple syrup. You've EARNED it by being so 'good.'" I enclose the... etc., etc. We're MORE gullible than the dog and after 159 years of falling for this same old trick I can safely say we're more stupidly trusting as well and you know what makes that literally and figuratively sickening? The fact that what our politicians have concealed in our favourite foods is not medicine to make us better, it's something that will make us, as a people, sicker. 

Before you get swept up in a love affair with Doug Ford for opposing Trump like the WWF wrastler he resembles, and with about the same amount of veracity, let me give you one specific example from just about 7 years ago. If you carefully read the linked article you will notice the typical Fordian support of Canadian BUSINESSES not Canadian workers. This is something awfully Trumpian and, indeed, the gist of the example I will now describe. And rest assured, this is a microcosm of Canadian political work. It's what our politicians do.

Anyone ever heard of Bill 66, the "Restoring Ontario's Competitiveness Act" of 2019? It was an omnibus bill in that it covered a wide variety of diverse and unrelated topics sold to GOOD GOOD Ontarian girls and boys as a YUMMY way to cut corporate "red tape" to lower the cost of doing business and stimulate job creation. Now I've talked about Canadian politicians taking one 30-dollar-an-hour job, dividing it into 3 10-dollar-an-hour jobs and calling it "job creation" before. The aspect of Bill 66 I'd like to focus on today is much like that.

Have you ever heard of an averaging agreement? I think I probably should have enclosed the word "agreement" in single quotes (or whatever they're called) because the words "demand" or "imposition" or "hoop-job" would convey a more accurate meaning. It's an "agreement" to which no worker has ever willingly agreed. It's a do this or you lose your job type of "agreement." I think you know what I'm driving at here. It's something that has recently become common in security work and, despite the reported membership in the United Steelworkers union (which I have yet to confirm) my current job includes. You will understand my skepticism about union membership after I explain what an averaging agreement is. It is the very apotheosis of what unions were designed to fight. Any union that would allow one cannot rightfully call itself a union. It is, and has consistently been ruled on in labour arbitration in Canada, businesses stealing money from their workers. 

I guess I should explain how it works. Okay, if I work three 12-hour shifts one week, that's 36 hours. If I work 4 12-hour shifts in the following week of the pay period, that's 48 hours and in Ontario where a worker gets 1.5 times his/her normal wage for any hours after 44 in a week, that worker is due 4 hours of overtime pay. What the averaging agreement does is exchange reality for fraud that benefits the company. Instead of recording the hours as they were worked, the company and the worker "agree" to pretend that those 4 extra hours worked in the second week were actually worked in the first week. They WEREN'T but let's go to the land of Make Believe for the benefit of the companies. These are often companies paying their workers minimum wage or very little more. RICH companies that need this overtime money FAR less than their struggling employees. So now that we have averaged out the hours, our worker has worked 40 hours in week 1 and 44 hours in week 2 and the company gets to avoid the "red-tape" of paying overtime wages that makes the cost of doing business higher.

Doesn't sound as good when you find out what the words of the politician actually mean, does it? And when I said that arbitration had repeatedly ruled on averaging agreements as stealing money from workers, I wasn't kidding. Before Bill 66, any company in Ontario who wanted to sodomize its workers with one of these "agreements" had to justify it through an application to the government Director of Employment Standards. This was the arbitrator, the regulator, the overseer of business in these matters. The DES had to evaluate whether there existed a legitimate business need or a mutual benefit for employer and employee to the averaging agreement. Aaaaand the number of times that was ruled to be the case? Zero. It's just stealing money from your workers. Despite the creative explanations I'm sure the companies devised to try to convince the DES that they were NOT just breaking overtime pay laws, the employers never won. So the obvious solution from the business standpoint was to get rid of this arbitrator. Well when Doug Ford's government introduced Bill 66, under the guise of making Ontario's businesses more "competitive," they eliminated this whole procedure. By the way, when you hear a politician using the word "competitive" to describe business, he/she means tilting the competition even more in favour of the business and screwing the worker and the consumer. Doug Ford is in favour of rich companies stealing money from their employees. So he may not be as different from Trump as he's trying to appear.

But where did this rule of getting paid overtime after 44 hours come from? Where did the rule of 8 hours off between shifts come from? Or the 11 consecutive hours of free time every 24 hour period? These are all established labour laws in Ontario and these laws were brought to us by that generation we call the Greatest Generation. They weren't just great because they fought in wars. They were great because they also fought for our rights. I get really angry when I see Canadian politicians and lawmakers, at the behest of big business who control them, chipping away the rights and freedoms that our forefathers fought and died for. We ALL should get angry when we see this! But that's the tricky part about these omnibus bills. They hide this. Bill 66 allowed businesses to open faster. It increased childcare options and flexibility for parents. It mandated filters on school computers blocking things kids shouldn't see. This is the bacon, poutine, and maple syrup of the omnibus bill and even though it attacks Canadian workers and endangers nature, some people are like Quickdraw McGraw's dog Snuffles begging for that dog bis cue it. Sigh... I'm old.

The other day my employer called me up at 2 PM for a shift from 6 that night to 6 the following morning. I have been hired on a "casual" basis. "On call" is another term they use. What this means is that I will be judged on whether I accept or decline shifts. The idea that they are offering me a shift and I have the option to take it or not is much like the "agreement" of the averaging agreement. My employer pressures me into granting their unreasonable requests by granting or withholding future work to/from me. This is the sort of stuff that unions USED to fight. Now it's becoming more and more common because our labour rights are being eroded in the exact same way we in Ontario got averaging agreements reinstated. I had been up since about 6 that morning. If I took that shift I would have been up for 24 hours straight. What would I do the next day? Sleep? Try to stay up? Besides, I am moving. I had things I needed to do. During daylight hours. I would have had to stay awake even longer to do them. So I turned down the shift.

I don't think employers should have the right to compromise the health of their employees like that. This is the reasoning behind the 8-hour break between shifts and the 11 hours of free time every 24 hours. But we just don't have the type of people we had in the days of the Greatest Generation, or the unions, that would fight for things like these. Because of this we will continue to get omnibussed right back to the days when kids worked 18-hour shifts in the factories for room and board. And because of this, I will probably get fewer shifts at my job. Leastaways, that's what I reckon.

Give Me A Little Credit Won't You?

 I can't say I'm surprised at being refused an apartment due to my bad credit score. As established in the previous post, that's just the way things are done 90% of the time now in Canada even though it don't make no kind of sense. But then a whole helluva lotta things we do in Canada, banking is high in the running for best example, don't make no kind of sense. 

During my research for my last post I learned that there are two places - two private, for profit businesses (not government agencies, boards, or commissions) that compile debtor data and establish credit scores. These scores have somehow become cherished and protected bits of bogus information that we all protect like they are pets or children. Anybody remember teachers back in the day who, faced with the realization that the student was not being intimidated by them any more and would continue to misbehave would say, "That will go on your permanent record!"? The gasps and exclamations of terror from anyone within earshot represented the sum total of the power of the mystical permanent record in that it existed only in the minds of the dumb schmucks who fell for the con and the grifters and scammers who were perpetuating the myth. Our permanent records were nothing but carefully manufactured records used by people in authority to scare us into behaving like obedient students. 

Folks, I am starting to believe that credit scores are not a whole lot different. They're just carefully manufactured scores compiled by entities who want to scare us into behaving like obedient consumers. We're trained to believe that they reward honesty and punish delinquency and cheating but in my experience I have found evidence that they are exactly the opposite. Because the institutions that compile and calculate the scores are private businesses they operate under the same auspices as other companies that not only don't punish unethical behaviour from their workers and customers (creditors) but can actually reward it. 

I explained my situation in the last post in which Telus made it impossible for me to cancel. Recently there have been efforts by the CRTC to force the big three telecom providers to allow people to cancel more easily but those efforts are no damn good to me now are they? They're about three or four years too late, as it were. I have a bad credit score and a $550 debt because Telus took advantage of impotent laws that were not being enforced that WERE on the books saying a company has to make cancellation as easy as signing up. We've always had these laws across Canada but this is the kind of law you can get away with breaking if you are a monopoly. Telus broke the law, made it impossible for me to cancel, actually sent me fraudulent bills even after my account with them was zeroed out, sent those fraudulent charges into collection, and caused my bad credit score and $550 debt. Those are the facts and they are not disputed. 

But in my last post I speculated that calling the credit dispute lines that Equifax and TransUnion have would most likely be an exercise in futility. Since I'm off today and just doing laundry I figured I'd put my theory to the test. I called 1 800 871 3250 and after the requisite phone gymnastics I was shocked to receive an option to press 2 and speak to a representative. It wasn't more than 5 minutes on hold either until I got my phone call answered by a human being. He didn't even have an Indian or Filipino accent! Was I wrong? Was I underestimating Equifax? This was intriguing...

So I got the usual introduction: My name is flabbetyfuckfuck and I will be assisting you. Nobody enunciates their names when their job is working for a helpline the purpose of which is to offer anything but help. So right there I lost a bit of the flash of hope I received when a human answered. I said, "What did you say your name is, Raoul?" He paused for a long time and said, "Yes." So it WASN'T Raoul but the name he was working under today was something that sounded like Raoul. Although, he had a French accent so maybe it was. It doesn't matter. You see, I don't care that much about the identity of the person on the other end of the phone when I am trying to do something about a fraudulently acquired debt and credit score. Unfortunately, Raoul took a familiar tack, one I've experienced with a few Canadian government organizations and consumer help lines I managed to reach humans on: the old we cannot help you if we can't verify who you are ploy. 

I gave Ben a few pieces of information and he was able to get my credit score and tell me how much I am on record as owing. I gave Raoul so many different pieces of information about myself over the next 25 minutes that there is nobody else on the planet it could have been, but without a utility bill or a piece of ID with my current address on it, Raoul was not satisfied that he knew who he was talking to. 

He told me I needed to write to National Consumer Relation Box. That was confusing. What the hell is a consumer relation box? I said, "Do you mean organization or agency or something like that?" "No, box." "Okay whatever. Continue the address." "190 Montreal, Quebec.H1S 2Z2. So it was National Consumer Relations Box 190... you greasy Frenchman. I wish I'd said that but didn't. 

He said I need to send them the front and back of my health card and passport (which don't have my address), a bank statement with an address on it and a letter stating that I want to update my address. Include Social Insurance Number, date of birth, phone number, and address. And here I said, "And then tell them what I just told you about Telus and how they cheated me and that's how I have bad credit?" He says no, just ask them to update your address so they can verify who you are. 

I said at almost the 30-minute mark, "Okay stop right there Raoul. IF you were able to verify who I am, or IF the people at the Consumer Relation Box were able to verify who I am, would I get any help? For instance would anyone be able to contact Telus and ask them to verify my account there and see if what I am saying is true?" "No, we were unable to verify your identity so I would suggest you contact the collection agency or contact Telus and make the payment or get a statement from them stating that you do not owe them. We have received this information that you owe from creditors." I said, "Yeah, who lied. And you believe them. So there's nothing you CAN do is there? Except get me to pay Telus who I don't owe anything. What I want to know is can you make this right, not can you make me pay. It's not right for me to pay. I don't owe Telus anything. Can you believe me instead of believing Telus?" Raoul says, "We would require letters, okay?" I respond with, "Well as I've been telling you I can't contact Telus. The only time I was successful they told me I don't owe them anything, yet here we are." "In that case sir I'm very sorry to inform you that this is the best that I can do for you at this point in time." 

So then I gave up trying to be nice. I said, "Well that's about what I expected. You're not really legitimate, are you? You believe the corporations and not the people they're screwing." He then says, "You can get in touch with the legal department..." Right! I can't even get in touch with the BILLING department who fucked up my bill! The person I got in touch with and told me I owe Telus zero asked me for the email of the assholes who kept sending me bills and even SHE was throwing around the word "fraud" when referring to them. She said she'd report them to the Telus fraud department and get things straightened out, but I guess she never did. I continued, "This is fraud, I hope you know this. Your organization is supporting fraud." He then says to me, "You can contact the legal authorities for this, okay?" I said, "I guess that's all I can do isn't it?" He then asked if there was anything else he could do at this point and I said, "No. There's nothing you can do. You did your job." And I hung up.

So it's pretty much exactly what I expected. At "Equifax" there is no equality and they don't deal with facts. The Creditors are never doubted and the debtors are guilty until proven innocent. In order to clear my credit I need to get a letter from Telus saying "Yeah, we sure did break the law and block you from discontinuing your service. Hell, we also fraudulently charged you for two extra months after your internet was switched off. And that ain't all, we charged you a shit ton of interest on the charges we fabricated! We screwed you good boy!" 

These collection agencies are just corporate shills helping businesses keep Joe consumer in line and their help does NOT confine itself to the legal limits of Canada. Which begs the question, why the fucking fuck are people falling all over themselves to take these things seriously? Why have we allowed them to become so invasive? I need to find a place to live. Do I have to go out and get a fucking credit card so I can do that? How is this system any different from this shit:

I'm almost proud to have a bad credit score. Maybe I'm a bad Canadian citizen. The way this country is going, maybe I should be proud of THAT too.