The Standardizors Part II

 I suppose I need a part two to my previous post. I think this will have an even darker mood to it but it really shouldn't. Everyone who is not American repeat after me: I am not American though I watch them on TV and social media and may try to play one in my life... I am not American. We should be glad of that in a lot of ways.

I find that it's not just the people of the US projecting their values and the results of their culture onto others that makes some believe things in our countries and lives are just the same as they are in America, it's US. Not the US, US. Our own selves. We convince ourselves that we live in societies as (sorry my American friends but) fucked up as America. It helps that we are bombarded 24/7 with Americana but that's by choice. Isn't it? I am not immune to it. I see TV shows and without the makers of the shows putting on the hard sell I am convinced that I should have a new car, a big apartment, new clothes, holidays off, good looks, straight and glisteningly white teeth, and what's more, I should be able to go to a bar and order a beer, just a "beer" and not get a look of any kind from the bartender. I should also be able to leave the bar before that beer is half finished, maybe even 100% undrunk. That's what Americans DO! Well it's what TV Americans do. There's a difference. I live in Canada and was raised here and although it is common knowledge that US and Canadian cultures are very similar, there are some huge differences. I think sometimes Canadians give ourselves credit for exaggerated differences like kindness and super healthcare - we're not really much nicer and our healthcare is less and less super - but sometimes we also don't give ourselves credit for very real differences like not having the same level of problematic extremism that the American culture cultivates.

Our government and owners try their best to make us like Americans but ours is a muted Americanism. We have a two party system but it's not just straight contradictory tribalism like the American system. Our capitalism isn't as extreme yet either. We still have some remnants of a social safety net here. We have bigotry and prejudice (and as I previously blogged about the government is vehemently encouraging and enabling it) but it's more subtle and better hidden. More like discriminatory microaggression. 

Buuut then again...

Yeah, we're pretty fucked up too. Just not on the same level... yet.

Another such example is what I was talking about last post: education. Where to begin... I was recently told by my American professor teaching my American master's degree, citing a TED talk given by an American educator that "children won't learn to be accepting of other cultures and ethnicities unless we teach them to be." You go to about the 5 and a half minute point of this vid after she finishes her self-congratulatory applause baiting about how she tells her students to try new things and how she does so all the time too, you will get to the heart of the message.

Teaching is the only way to make kids diverse and inclusive. "If we want children to interact with each other and be friendly towards each other, we need to teach it." REALLY?

But what about

... and also

Are things so messed up in America that by the time kids get to school they're full of hate that needs to be de-programmed by teachers? Well...

But I'm sure these are the extremest examples of the extreme that are thereby most newsworthy, aren't they? Unfortunately it may not be. I might be wrong here. Do you suppose this is WHY, as John Oliver and so many others say, teachers are superheroes that should make a million dollars a year (16:20), yet they never seem to get raises? Is this by design? If it is, this might surprise you coming from a teacher but... GOOD! I don't want any greedy scumbags, people who got into teaching for the money, teaching my kids to be like them. Only one way to prevent that isn't there? And, I'm just brainstorming here, do you suppose this same strategy could be applied to people who have even more influence on the collective values of the country like lawmakers and politicians? And do you suppose if that were the case, maybe the kids wouldn't arrive at kindergarten in need of deprogramming. That really shouldn't be the responsibility of the teacher. The teachers don't know your kids and certainly don't love them. What I'm saying is the education system is not the problem here, it's the culture. What specifically about the culture? We all know it's the extreme capitalism and greed that is not only accepted but applauded in the American culture.

One more video:

You've seen this vid here before. There is a part (7:09) where one of the teachers talks about teacher training in the US and how the kids are all taught that they can be anything they want to be but that just isn't the case. In Finland it doesn't feel so false to say that. Louis Katz, (the best comedian you've never heard of they call him) says school in America was like being prepared for the Special Olympics then when you get out of school you are competing in the REAL Olympics. I'd say it's like that in Canada too but again to a lesser extent. And many other countries!

I guess what I'm saying in these two posts is that standardization is just plain bad and that has been exhibited and documented all over the world. But what most of the world tends to get are American stats and stories and we have a habit of jumping to the conclusions (the inaccurate conclusions) that our situation mirrors that of the US. I think John Oliver is probably right and the US needs a little bit of standardization to fight the horrific things their culture does to kids. Maybe Ilene Schwartz is right too but we shouldn't assume that we are in the same situation as they are in America. We also should have the common sense and wherewithal to realize that this is one of the side effects of dog-eat-dog capitalism where most of us are destined for wage slavery (not to be what we want to be) and school is just preparing kids for it while convincing them that isn't their destiny. The US is not ready to do anything yet to change the real heart of the problem. Band-aids on the education system will suffice until the country (if ever) realizes they are just too greedy and starts fixing that problem the proper way. I don't think Canada, and many other nations, are as far gone and we have the ability and the actual influence and freedom to attack the problem at the cultural level in combination with the educational level to really have an effect. 

But you all know how I have a bad habit of thinking positively. 

The Standardizors

 Why did the fly stop flying? a) Because she lost her passport. b) Because she ran out of air miles. c) Because she discovered the low cost comfort of rail. d) Because she was dead.

Which of these is funnier? Why? Would it be less funny if "because she was dead were the a, b, or c option? Is it funnier that the fly is referred to as a female? Would it be less funny if the pronoun used was the genderless "it?" Is this observational, anecdotal, situational, irony, farce? In my opinion the best answer to all these questions is the best question of all: WHO CARES???

I am a firm believer in the idea that analyzing humour is the work of soulless pedants and busybodies. The kind of people that force us to wear helmets on motorbikes, bicycles, skateboards, roller blades, and they're coming for us pedestrians mark my words! I think of Rainman memorizing the Who's On First routine and repeating it in humorless monotone cursed with the mystery of what makes it funny. I think of comedians who have written thousands of jokes and know the mechanics so well that there are few unexpected punchlines and humour has truly become work for them. Is this why so many funny people die tragically? 

I find myself wondering something similar almost every day about my chosen profession, teaching English, since I've begun my master's in education and much more so since I began the CLB PBLA training course for the acronym loving people at the Canadian Language Benchmark offices learning portfolio based language assessment. I even think I know what those good people who are attempting to standardize ESL teaching across Canada would like even better: pointing out the fact that I erroneously referred to CLB and PBLA as acronyms and they are NOT! I am WRONG! They are but abbreviations having no acronymity based on the fact that we do not read them as words, we just recite the letters. I'm pretty sure the word acronymity would stick in their collective craws as well. It's not a word. I am in error having used it. Period. But I kinda like it. I kinda like authors like Tom Robbins or Douglas Adams who have made the English language their lover, not their bitch and understand that it is a living being and it only grows through creativity and is stifled by standardization. But this sentiment is rife with inaccuracy and needs to be excised like the cancer it is! At least that's the message I'm getting.

Let me illustrate. This week we studied how to test for and evaluate comprehension of "receptive skills" which just means reading and listening but sounds more scientific and impressive and that is why the term is used and was invented I'm betting. We learned that studies show three levels of comprehension - literal which is understanding specific information, interpretive which is integrating information and making inferences, and applied which is using information from text to express opinions. This week we were assigned two tasks, one of which was creating 6 comprehension testing questions and specifying which of the three levels of comprehension they are designed to assess. The questions were all about a report card that the student was supposed to read and understand. One of my questions was "Which subject is Sabrina better at, Mathematics or English? Explain your answer." The level of comprehension I randomly chose was "applied" but it's really all three. Sabrina got two B's and an A in English. Numerically the B's are worth 3 points in that they place Sabrina in the category of meeting the standards of the provincial standardization organization mandates and the A is worth 4 points and puts Sabrina in the category of having exceeded the provincial standardization organization's expectations. 10 points for English. Whereas Sabrina got two A's and a B in Mathematics which works out to a score of 11. Hence, using literal understanding of specific information, Sabrina is better at Math than English. However, there were comments made by Mr. Cardinal - Sabrina's teacher in both Math and English, and the test taker might comprehend her superior skills in Math through inference based on Mr. Cardinal's comments in which case interpretive comprehension is exhibited. Conversely, it might just be the opinion of the test taker that two B's and one A is not as strong as two A's and one B. I think most of us might draw that conclusion and share that opinion, no? And that would show "applied" comprehension, right? As sister Mary Elephant said, "Class, class, class, cla - WAKE UP!!!"

Who does this? Who CARES about this? I'll tell you who - Lisa the standardization soldier and my "teacher" in the PBLA training I am currently plodding my way through. Each week we the students are tasked with assignments that are really just exercises in alignment with the CLB standardization rules and regulations. Every week Lisa finds things that are "wrong" with my assignments, gives me what is called "action-oriented feedback" but which is nothing more than she is right and I am wrong and I need to take action, which means I need to correct my "mistakes." I know next week she will say that example question was either literal or interpretive level of comprehension testing and she won't be wrong. It IS both of those. What pedants who want to standardize English and turn it into Math or Science don't seem to realize is it is an unquantifiable art, not math or science. We are talking about the mind and how people comprehend things. This is not an exact science but Lisa will force me to pretend like it is and correct my erroneous teaching like she does every week. 

What is Lisa doing? She's taking the fun out of funny. She's analyzing that which is rendered ineffective through analyzation. She is measuring teaching, learning, understanding, thought like they are conducive to measurement. They aren't. And every time she tells me I'M the one who's wrong she gets wronger and wronger in her wrongness. But Lisa has urged us students individually and as a class to understand the necessity of keeping our ESL teaching standard across Canada. Strictly standard. Like virtual lock step one with another standard. The most hilarious part of all this is that after talking about how important uniformity of curriculum is nation-wide, the CLB compliant standardizers and overlords assure you that they value learner-centered education because, as we all know, students are all different. THAT is the funniest joke in this post. Funnier by far than all the fly jokes put together in my opinion. Students are all different and for that reason we teachers should all be the same and our lessons should all be the same. 

Last week was week 6 of my 8th course out of 12 in my master's of education course. As part of my portfolio assignment in which I commented on the readings of the week I wrote this: 

The Lloyd article provided insight into teachers’ learning while developing curriculum adaptation skills. Again, I have significant experience in the use of various curriculums that have been provided for me and/or written by me so this information was not novel to me. However, it was particularly interesting to trace my own personal journey from “thorough piloting” as a new teacher and “offloading” curriculum materials unchanged in any significant way to “adopting and adapting” and using the curriculum as a guide using my own strategies and personal lessons to augment the curriculum more heavily as my experience and expertise grew to my current state in which, if allowed the autonomy by my employer, I take the “intermittent and narrow” approach “improvising” and using the curriculum suggested by the employer for “seed” ideas while relying almost entirely on my own resources and strategies (Lloyd, 2008). Unfortunately, my current employer, Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) does not afford me the autonomy I would like, and I have enjoyed in the majority of my overseas teaching positions. I am learning how lucky I was to have such freedom and that my personal satisfaction is greatly decreased when my job must be done in a highly structured, standards-based manner and not in the artistic, creative way to which I have grown accustomed. I may not work for LINC much longer. They provide a good curriculum with plenty of options a teacher can use to suit his/her personal teaching style and the learning styles of the students, but there is little to no room for improvisation or creativity. If I have a “duckweed” moment and an unexpected conversation captures the attention of my students, I am used to having the autonomy to ride that wave and save the scheduled lesson for another day. With LINC I would have to justify it against the strict oversight of the Canadian Language Benchmark expectations and mandates for acceptable lessons. This severely limits my freedom in planning and implementing my own lessons as well. I can see how teacher burnout might be a problem working for LINC, at least for me.

However, I am hopeful that LINC (which IS an acronym!) (that was what humourists call a "call-back." It was funny because it called your attention back to an earlier joke and you are "in" on that joke because you read the original joke that this new joke references) ppppppttttthhhhhhbbbbbbbtttttt!!!!! As I was saying, I remain hopeful that LINC won't be as overzealous as the erstwhile Lisa has been in finding fault with my half-hearted attempts at taking my quality teaching materials and watering them down by standardizing them and weakening them to align with CLB expectations. It's really not that important. REALLY. Canadian education is not standard. Never has been. It's provincial as Sabrina's report card illustrated. I went from province to province during my education finding out that what was being taught was drastically changed by something so abstract as a provincial border. Although I must have frustrated many a teacher's attempts to maintain standardization throughout my Canadian education, I turned out okay. I'm no dummy. I am living proof that standardization is useless. 

I'll go further and say that standardization is probably the worst thing that has ever happened to education. It's not bad enough in Asia that 18-year-olds suffer the traumatic stress of university entrance exams Suneung in Korea, EJU in Japan, the Gaokao in China, these are all words closely associated with high stakes and teen suicide in these countries. Now the 14 and 15-year-olds get a glimpse of the stress of do or die, hero or zero, success or utter failure, school closures, teacher firings, and it's all your fault, with the PISA tests. THIS is a nice evaluation of PISA tests and even it evaluates the whole experiment as a failure. THIS is not so nice but more accurate. Standardization leads to teaching to the test, cheating, stress, and horrible educational practices. It's not a secret. Why the hell it's being implemented in Canada by the ESL racket is anyone's guess.

However, it is on the decline. Hopefully the folks at LINC can recognize the error of using CLB standardization and do what most places I've worked (with the massive exception of the last place I taught in Korea - another abbreviation loving business called SPEP where they mistakenly refer to their name as an acronym all the time (if you are an ESL teacher and YOU have standards don't work for these jagovs)) do: they use a text or curriculum as "seed" material and allow teachers to teach. Some places let the teacher create his/her own curriculum. They actually TRUST the teachers! Hopefully LINC can develop this virtue and make me more comfortable in my new job. Otherwise, it may be yet another short lived position. 

Having said all this, I am finished week 4 (except for the inevitable corrections I will be forced to do to the assignment I've turned in to Lisa) and week 5 is the last week. Hopefully I will never have to deal with Lisa and the CLB standardizors ever after. We've been watching horror movies this month and if I were to make one I think that would be the title - The Standardizors. They would absolutely HATE that title! lol I will be starting a new semester with LINC November 15 and still have one class. Hopefully after the semester ends in March I will be more used to the LINC method and I will acquire more classes, more pay and maybe even some sweet benefits. I sure hope so! Wish me luck.

Having a Taxing Time of It

 It has been too long. But let me get you caught up: I moved to Calgary and have started a new job with LINC. That stands for language instruction for newcomers to Canada. And in my case FROM newcomers to Canada. Ar ar. I do feel like a newcomer again. In many ways. Today we are off work to honour September 30th's new holiday known as "National Day for Truth and Reconciliation." I had not heard of this before last week. 

Truth and reconciliation eh? How many ways can the Canadian government tell its citizens to just keep forking over the money and smile? There's temporary income tax that's well over 100 years old and getting larger every year that we stupidly pay. I've covered that thoroughly here. There's inflation that we just acquiesce to like the good little chattel we are. There are so many other bullshit taxes! And aside from these taxes, what do we non-native Canadians do for the natives we are being asked to reconcile with? Well they pay no tax on items purchased on reserves; they don't have to get fishing or hunting licenses; there is other funding provided by the Canadian government (That's the tax payers. Governments don't give away their own money.) such as direct payments, grants, revenue sharing for businesses that operate on "their" land (quotation marks because  of the absence of ownership so many tribes have as part of their heritage), treaty payments, access for status card holders to programs (our money) related to education, health care, housing, and social assistance; and it may have changed but flash a status card and taxes are dropped on purchases OFF the reservations as well. Every Canadian knows or knows of a native or two who has received some pretty awesome monetary bonuses from the government - our taxes. 

It's nice to have a day off, hopefully with pay, but I'm not sure this reconciles the Canadian government's unequal treatment of the natives with me. If the government wants us to treat them like everyone else, they should be treated by the government like everyone else, and they aren't. They get 1.75 times what the rest of us get from the government. And that's excluding non-monetary privileges and other payments our government who is so good at finding ways for Canadians to pay for guilt we probably shouldn't feel, has come up with. I'm not saying there was no discrimination, I'm asking how the Canadian tax payers getting shaken down for over 20 bill equates to "proper" or "fair" payment. We're not the ones who underfunded those kids. If this holiday were anything about TRUTH, we'd find out that these sorts of things are just government attempts to create discord, not reconciliation between natives and non-natives in this country. That's Truth and Reconciliation. So it would be nice to see the government working on that instead of just pulling a holiday out of their asses. I'm sure Canadians will agree wi----

This was at the Blue Jays game on Sept. 30th. Lots of orange shirts in the crowd. The broadcasters were all wearing them too. Chalk up another example of the Canadian public bending over and telling the government, "YEAH! Hit me again and this time put some STANK on it!"

But anyhoo, I walked to my bank today because my bank charged me money for not having enough money. Could there possibly have been a more capitalism run amok statement ever made? I have a payment coming out of my account because it's the beginning of the month. I left enough in the account to cover it, but when I checked the account balance yesterday, there wasn't enough in there. Of course! The fee for not having enough in my account. I forgot about that. So I walked to the bank to put in an extra ten bucks or whatever. It was closed For national Truth and Reconciliation Day. 

I sometimes feel like a stranger in a strange land back here in Canada! I still haven't paid a nickel in income tax, that won't be till April of next year, but I already miss the tax-freedom of Korea. Prices are absolutely insane here and with the high prices comes higher taxes (because goods and services (GST) and provincial sales taxes (PST) and do we still have harmonious sales tax? (HST) are all calculated as a percentage of the flimflamorious prices we regularly pay) which works out to 5%, 13%, or 15% depending on the province you're in. How could it depend on the province we're in? It's just some asshole in some province gauging us for more! There is no justification for saying that this bowl of poutine should cost $10.50 here and if I put my foot over the border between Alberta and BC it now costs $11.50 - BUT WE STILL PAY! We're phenomenal creatures us Canadians in our acceptance-after-surfeiture when it comes to tax! We've been past surfeit levels for decades! And you should see some of the hidden taxes our products have on them BEFORE we pay the 5-15% tax! Go to the reservation 7-11 and buy a pack of smokes or a tank of gas and you'll think you've gone back to the 80's. If I buy alcohol I could pay up to 31% tax on it! Not in good old Korea!

As I mentioned, and have written about before, the high prices are unnecessarily high due to nothing more than greed, but then when you go out for a meal with some friends or relatives, or when you order a pizza, or in MORE places than ever now, you HAVE to tip! So if you have a beer at a restaurant you pay 31% extra in tax, whatever percent the restaurant chooses to jack that price up AGAIN (usually they aim for 80%) and if it's wine... you might have to take out another mortgage, and then tip on TOP of that! These food and beverage mavens at your local Pizza Hut or Denny's expect us to then add another 15-18% but that was before Covid. Now it's over 20%!!! And as you know if you've done your homework, that is just the owner of the restaurant, the same person who is already massively overcharging you, making you pay the majority of his servers' salaries too. 

I remember Canada being a fun place where people, even before we had good jobs, went out and socialized. I initially thought, when I got home, that Covid had killed the restaurant and bar industry, but was it that or are we just getting overcharged? 

I kinda feel like just crawling into a bottle right now and sucking up some tax. Sheesh!

Butt Phrases

 My latest posts have been pretty melancholy, angry, depressing, not to say suicidal, not to say apocalyptic... That's a weird uh what would you call it a writing conceit? Saying "not to say" when your meaning is what you just promised not to say. It reminds me of those but sayings like, "I don't wanna play hard ball..." "I don't wanna complain..." "I'm not one to cause trouble..." "I've never been one to focus on the negative..." You know the ones. They're all suffixed with "but" and then the very thing the speaker seemed to be promising against. And since those are all really just some of the voluminous devices our deceitful culture has conjured up through necessity to make talking out our asses easier, let's just call them what they REALLY are, shall we???? - BUTT phrases. 

That was not a trundle. I have not forfeited my time-out by losing a video replay. I reserve the right to go on my one trundle per post at a later point in this post. I may not, but I might. I still get to. Because the butt phrase is a genuine part of my topic today, or rather the foil to the main character of this post, as it were. Now there! I could go on a trundle about "as it were," a fairly disposable phrase we commonly attach... never mind. I'll keep my trundle in reserve for the late stages of this game when I might need it most.

So in case you feel concerned about me losing hope in humanity, removing myself from it, or worst of all - gasp! - discontinuing this blog, have no fear dear reader. My hope in humanity is re-confirmed daily in so many ways! In fact it so spectacularly illustrates the spirit of this post that ANY of us can skillfully stave off the flow of positivity with which we are daily bombarded! "Okay, now he's gone too far. Is he saying this ironically? Is it time to alert the Funny Farm?" Do we still send people to the Funny Farm or is that a phrase that has been erased? Dare I say "cancelled?" I think if anything it's a term that has more and more relevance as we march confidently and defiantly forward to personal and global backwardness. 

I say this because if there existed an actual Funny Farm, I have to believe its denizens would be none other than the happiest, and most likely the funniest (in both meanings of the word) people among us. I don't mean to be negative... [I DON'T, honestly! Look at the way I started this post! I'm shooting for a glass-half-full topic today!] BUTT, I can't be the only one who is aware of the countless ways our "society" forces us to be dull, dreary, robotic, stay-at-home, do-as-we're-told, compliant, anal retentive, BORING consumers, can I?

A little frog philosophy for you... 

So, what am I talking about? What are these things that we overlook/ignore all the time that might make us feel a bit cheerier as we slouch about our self-imposed wage slavery? Geez, yer gonna hafta bear with me. I'm not the best at positive posts. It's my spiritual goal to find a way to take joy in my suffering as I've posted before, and I'm doing my best to explain a few things that help me, I just, like most of us frogs in pots, am being slow boiled into opposing mentality. Okay, a few rapid fire examples of what I'm talking about: As trite as it sounds, if we should learn anything by the time we reach adulthood it's that we should never trust anyone, right? It's childish. Naïve. Simpleton sort of stuff. It's the kind of stinkin' thinkin' that gets you taken advantage of. And rightfully so! Who can blame the first person who sees your trusting nature and exploits it for personal gain? If he/she didn't do it, someone else would, right? It's just business... right? Kindness = weakness - RIGHT? This is how the frog water heat goes up.

I say all of those rodent shit phrases are so common BECAUSE they are wrong. We trust a million people a day. It's what keeps us from Armageddon. If you describe your dull, dreary, inhumanly routine daily grind I am confident you will see what I mean. If you don't... YOU are the next contestant on Who Wants To Go To The Funny Farm? Since I don't know your routine, I'll describe what I did yesterday. I woke up, got out of bed trusting the carpenters who built the floor of my apartment believing I would not fall through the floor, step on a nail that hasn't been hammered down, or something like that. I turn on the light and exhibit the same faith in the electrician. I suppose in Canada I am also trusting the makers of the building codes and their enforcers too. Walking to the kitchen-same trust. I fill a pot with water trusting that the water that comes out will be potable. (I don't have a kettle) I boil the water trusting the manufacturer of the stove and pot. I put coffee and cream in a cup with complete faith that I won't be poisoned. That's high faith in a LOT of people and a cow if you trace the coffee and cream from origin to cup. Any of those people could have tampered with my coffee or cream along the way, but they didn't. Or the cow. She could have had a bad day. I've said it before, when are cows going to revolt? We steal their milk, we steal their babies... She could have just said, "That's IT, I've had it! No more poisonless milk from me humans!" 

I can say the same for the hundreds of people in the supply lines of all the food I eat for breakfast not to mention the insulin I inject directly into my system. That's extremely intimate stuff! We put food and medicine directly into our systems! And other drugs. Some people trust their dealers. And let's face it, if you can trust them... Are we foolish to trust all these people? Are we insane? We MUST be!

I walk to work and it has given me a lot of faith in my refusal to give up on people in general. While I am walking with traffic, not even facing the motorists, I have yet to get run over by one of them. So far nobody has said, "Screw this life, I'm tired of it, but I'm not going out alone" just as they approached me walking to work oblivious to their pain and my impending death. So far that hasn't happened. Not only that, the vast majority give me a little extra room by steering around me leaving their lanes to do so in most cases. And I would say on more than fifty percent of my walks to work I have been offered rides by friends, co-workers, and absolute strangers! Two yesterday. I'm not lying. Trust me  :-)  I tell you, it does me just as much good as the exercise to see the kindness of everyday people. And I don't wanna put too fine a point on this... BUTT this is when most everyday people are at their very worst. You put a windshield in front of most people and it's a lot like putting a computer screen in front of them. They discard about half of their common courtesy. Am I right? Don't take it from me, take it from my favourite living comedian, Louis CK:

The more I listen to that guy the more I love that overweight, ginger, stained shirt wearing, masturbating mothafucka! At the Dolby. It's his most recent and maybe his best. He's the guy Oscar Wilde meant when he said, "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh or they will kill you." You can't tell people they have road rage. But most of us have at least a little, no? Far be it from me to ruin comedy by analyzing it... BUTT is that what makes this so funny?

When did our culture become the stick-up-the-arse serious, defense mechanism laden spoilsports who can only admit to this voluntary state of being if a really funny joke is made about it? There's probably no anthropologist who can accurately trace its origin or progression, but it was not natural if you ask me. What we had before and what some cultures we call "primitive" have preserved in the face of global opposition... okay a little trundle. A mini one.

Do you suppose the word primitive suggests something from a time closer to the era of primates? I suppose it would be spelled primative if it did, but... Closer to monkeys? Maybe we should aspire to that. I don't know. Start by eating more bananas and regress little by little. 

Okay, trundle over. Now, take a look at this primitive little boy exhibiting primitive behavior. To be honest I was going to type "monkeyboy" but that's another example of our restrictive society. I didn't want to offend. Oh well it's out there now. If you want to believe I'm racist what do I care? 

What a weirdo eh? Now, if you're like me and well basted in the filthy western antisocial mistrust of others, you might be thinking something like, "Yeah, he's probably asking the cameraman to hold it while he finishes the other one." "The cameraman is probably the safest bet to not eat it while he's holding it for him." "Is that red lollipop smaller? Did he half finish it before handing it to the cameraman?" "He's just giving away the one he likes less." "Be careful little boy. How do you know the cameraman won't eat your red lollipop?" No? Just me? Am I that far gone?

I'm not a gambling man... BUTT if I were to bet on this pic, I'd say this is a little Zulu kid. Or at least an African kid practicing the Zulu Ubuntu philosophy. Yeah, another primitive, outdated, naïve, childish way of thinking. At least that's what most of the people in former Ubuntu cultures feel about it nowadays. "I am because we are." That is a rough translation of this silly old witchdoctor hocus pocus that could probably save our planet if it doesn't completely disappear. Read up on it, it's worth it. According to the article it's something that still exists in South Africa but is considered a bit of a dinosaur and a philosophy that is not compatible with modern life.

What do we have in North America that is similar? Hmmm.... I don't want to flog a dead horse... BUTT if there is one thing about native culture I wish we could revive it's the Wendigo philosophy. Natives of Canada and America believed (and rightly so) that the worst possible attribute, one that a person should be ashamed of and shunned if he/she had was selfishness. The Wendigo was a monster that personified insatiable greed. A MONSTER! Now insatiable greed is euphemistically called "upward mobility," "business savvy," "critical thinking," "street smarts," or some such positive sounding phrase. I remember  reading old books and Shakespeare plays in my salad days when I was studying literature and the word "ambitious" had a negative connotation. Ambition was that "lean and hungry look" in yon Cassius's eye. Member? The dude who hatched the plot to kill Caesar? But you'd scarcely find a villain more villainous than Richard III and ambition was his primary vice. It was uglier than him. This, my friends, is proper thinking. But what we have now is Wendigo psychosis. It's a positive we've turned into a negative. If you share like the little African boy, you're a psycho. Look it up. It's not really true. I just lied to you but look it up to make sure. Hee hee hee. Now you REALLY don't know what to believe.

But is our world a Wendigo apocalypse where there are only a few of us fighters with uncontaminated brains? I don't think so. That's the positive point I'm trying to make. I think we are being socialized to believe this sort of thinking should be reserved for the primitive, but I don't think we've abandoned it as thoroughly as our owners want us to. (The owners I've talked about in my latest posts)

So, I don't want to be a dimwit... BUTT consider this a red lollipop of philosophy I'm entrusting you with. People are not generally bad. We are good at heart and the world proves it every day. The monsters are the people who exploit the general kindness of people and while they are the ones who run this circus, they are not the norm. They are the zombies whose brains need a medical procedure you might call a cranial chainsawing. A cerebral axing. A shotgun encephalogram. Or maybe something a little less violent like people being nice to each other instead of being scared of each other or even worse, treating each other like possible patsies to exploit for personal gain.

I don't wanna preach... BUTT it's a thought...

Money From Nothing, Rodent Shit For Free

 When I got off the plane and set foot on my home and native ground in Vancouver Airport in March I needed phone service. The first thing I did after doing all the requisite information volunteering so that hundreds of agencies (and untold numbers of advertisers) know exactly where I am and what I'm doing at all times, was find a phone kiosk so I could get phone service and share all that same information with anyone who the airport immigration agents forget about. Also, I needed to call some folks.

The first thing I said when I made the mistake of getting Bell service on my phone was tell them I don't want any one-year or two-year contract. I have posted many times here how past phone service, gym membership, and cable hookup long-term scams have led to my opinion that they all should be illegal. The answer I got was surprisingly encouraging. The kiosk worker told me they weren't allowed to do that any more. I now know that they still DO whether they're allowed to or not, but at least a step in the right direction. 

However, ... there is still one group of people in Canada who still use the long-term scam maybe more than ever at without a doubt the worst TIME ever to do it. Can you think of who these scamsters are? You guessed it didn't you? Landlords. Here are a couple of stats for you: 1 in 4 Canadians can't cover an unexpected bill of $500. That's Statcan. Angus Reid Institute's independent research found that 51% of Canadians couldn't cover a $1000 unexpected bill. I don't remember a time when things have been worse for the poor half of this country and wonder if there has been one. We'll get to the big reason for that later. For now I wanna talk about my landlord, or really my landlord's father. I left a message with my landlord John who I talked with and did all the apartment business with. I still have never met his father. I tried to call John to let him know I am moving to Calgary and to work out what will happen with the lease, rent, damage deposit, tenants, and all that fun stuff. He didn't answer but I left him a message. I guess the father heard about the message and called me to inform me that I had committed to a one-year lease. While it IS possible, knowing me and how I loathe such things, plus the fact that I don't remember talking or reading about any such long-term commitment, compounded by the fact that my situation was nothing if not unstable and I related that to John in no uncertain terms, I have my doubts. 

Nevertheless, let's say I DID sign a one-year lease. What within the bounds of common sense and reason, does that put me on the hook for? I have paid 4 1/2 months of my 1400-dollar a month rent. I have 7-8 months left on my lease. That's about $11,200. In a country where the bottom half doesn't have an extra grand in the bank, mattress or cookie jar, in an apartment and location that will only attract members of that half of Canada, am I REALLY expected to be responsible for payment of the remainder of the year of rent because of a lease agreement? Let's call it what it is and illustrate why the Canadian government has (half-heartedly) cracked down on these things: What essentially is a one-year lease agreement? What are you forcing your tenant to do? Or at least what are you hoping your tenant will assume is their responsibility here? Am I supposed to believe I'm on the hook for 11 grand? Because of a lease which is in its mind boggling no shit essence an agreement for the lowly tenant to be held responsible for THE FUTURE in an economic climate in Canada where it has been more unpredictable than ever. This is why these horseshit long-term agreements shouldn't even be legal. Obviously nobody can predict the future. Even month-to-month it's hard to know for me and a lot of people in this country, how much money we will have and if it will be enough for rent.

Let me give you MY situation. I was hired to be a mobile security guard where I work. I haven't yet worked a shift by myself in the mobile truck because I don't yet have my driver's license. I failed twice because of BC politics more than anything. The fact is, the mobile job is a rip off and I never wanted to do such a complicated, stressful job for 18 bucks an hour. So it was a blessing in disguise failing twice. Now that I have put in my notice and my last day will be Sept. 1, I will have worked 4 1/2 months without ever doing a shift at the position I was hired for. Hee hee! However, because I'm just being thrown into whatever spots they can find whatever shifts they can find, I have a highly irregular schedule! I can work one shift one week and 7 the next. I can work weeks where I have to switch back and forth from midnights to day shifts two or three times. I never have a week that doesn't require at least one sleep changeover. With my home situation where sleep is hard to get at the best of times, and a company perilously close to losing the contract at Teck where I work, it's an employment and living situation that is unsustainable. Certainly not for an entire year. The point here that I am forced to make only because of the asinine acceptance that has been entrenched into the Canadian culture of the suspension of reality in which businessmen and women regularly, voluntarily and KNOWINGLY engage, is that nobody could have foreseen this. So can anyone tell me why the flaming fuck we allow anyone to exploit and cash in on the (ever increasing) uncertainty of the future? Unbelievably, I am getting to a far more jaw-dropping example of this very suspension of reality we engage in to allow our owners to steal our money. And it's worldwide. Wait for it. It's a doosey. 

I was told when I was hired by Safety Net Security that I'd start at 18 bucks an hour but after training it would go up to 20 or so and there were contract negotiations underway that were going to include a more substantial raise for all employees. I remember saying to John the landlord on the phone before I took the apartment and before I had even met him, "I could end up going on strike before I even start work!" I expected some instability but NOTHING compared to what the Fates orchestrated. As of today there has been no raise. EVERYBODY is mad because they've had this rubber carrot waved in front of them for longer than the 4 1/2 months I've foolishly believed the people I work for. We've gone through iterations of the raise story that have included statements as vague as "It could be 2, 5, maybe even 10 dollars an hour," to "The raise will be applied retroactively to every hour you've worked for the company since the contract was being negotiated." But every check we open with the anticipation of a child at Christmas time still has an 18 in the hourly wage column. People are leaving. This week one guy worked his last shift and another just blew off three shifts at the last minute. He likely won't get fired because the company is losing employees faster than they can hire new ones. Their reaction to this mass exodus has been to punish the workers with more tedious and unnecessary duties rather than reward us with more money. Make the situation worse much?

To put the cherry on top, this week an ad was found for a job that pays 25 bucks an hour, that's 7 dollars an hour more. The job is much easier than main gate or mobile positions at the site where I work too. It also included some nice benefits. We don't get any where I am working. Guess what company posted the ad. You guessed right again, didn't you? Safety Net Security. The reaction to this news could be, "Well now they're SURE to give us the raise!" I think, however, the more likely reaction will be a song I was absent-mindedly whistling on one of my walks home. It has been hot here and the mobile or a guard going to work has driven me to Teck 2 or my 3 shifts this week. At 6 PM it was 41 and 38 degrees the last two days. But at 6 AM it's a nice high teen temperature in which to walk home. The middle shift, the day it was 41, I started out on my walk whistling mindlessly. I do that while I walk. It wasn't till I was well down the highway before I clued into what song I had been whistling. "Take This Job and Shove It." I had a good chuckle at that! The next day I tendered my resignation a little less lyrically but quite a bit more professionally.

I would be gobsmacked if this company retains the contract for the duration of what would have been my one-year lease period. So in reality, my leaving is saving the landlord from having an unemployed tenant whose job disappeared because of bad management. This unpredictability of the job market can understandably be a source of stress and lease breaking for landlords. I get it. They don't like people leaving early. But on the other hand, it has created a situation in which there are a LOT of people without apartments so there will be no problem at all finding replacements for lease breakers. I had two co-workers tell me they know lots of people who would be interested in my apartment while at work yesterday. The mobile driver who drove me offered to take the lease himself. But I got home and talked to Fred, my roommate, figuring he should get the first crack at assuming the lease and he jumped at the chance. He doesn't want to move. 

I gave him the offer the landlord's father was not happy with: One month's notice and you can take my payment for next month's rent out of my damage deposit. That way he doesn't have to give me back the whole thing. It gives him a full month to find a roommate and in this market even a guy with a noisy, unfixed, male cat can find a roommate. So Fred will talk to John and his father this week. It'll be like Fred becomes me and the new person becomes Fred. There will be nothing lost by anyone but me. I'll be paying half a month's rent for a month I won't likely be here. I'll probably move to Calgary in early Sept.

So what was all the fuss about? I hate to say it but this is what Canada has become. Everybody's first instinct seems to be "How can I get money here that I don't deserve? How can I screw my fellow man?" The old first instinct of, "How can I work this out reasonably and equitably?" seems to have been lost in the pandemic. Maybe before that. I dunno, I wasn't here.

Now the other thing. You've heard about the central bank system but have you ever looked into it? It's not something that we teach in schools or talk about at social functions much. What do average people really know about it? It's something that has come up more since the pandemic and I thought that since I have no studying to do this week (master's course 7 is in the books) I'd use the vast reserves of information on the internet for something more educational than what I more commonly use it for. 

A few more quick stats for ya: All the money in Canada that ever existed in any form, coin, bill, electronic account entries, all that money... the Bank of Canada created more than that in the last 3 years. 

I think I've posted this vid before but it bears a repost:

Watch it. Seriously, watch it! I command you! It explains an awful lot. Now I don't know who this guy is or if he knows what he's talking about but at the rate I've seen banking officials scrambling to assure the public that they don't just print money out of thin air, I'm convinced that they print money out of thin air. This guy says before 2020 there was 100 billion in Canada. In 2022 there was 500 bil. Today, who knows? He also explains how printing money will disrupt the many years of steady interest rates in Canada that have not had much effect on mortgage payments when they had to be refinanced every 5 years. NOW if the interest rates go up significantly, which printing money always leads to, people's mortgage payments could go from 1000 to 3000. Member that extra grand that half of Canada doesn't have just hanging around? How about an extra TWO grand every month? This will cause the titular housing market crash or the "bubble bursting" that has been expected for a while. 

But if you're like me you've thought more than a thousand times, "Who are these people with the power to just pull money out of their asses? Did we vote them into their positions? Can anyone out there name even one of them? How about for the major international central banks in Europe, Japan and the US? Can you name any of these people with BY FAR the most power in the entire world? Well, I have a photo of them all. Here it is:

They are the tailors selling us emperors invisible clothes. It's not often we get compared to emperors, but in this case it's because of our astounding capacities to accept pure bullshit! Wait a minute here, it's time for a trundle.

Why does the bull get blamed for its shit so often? We talk about bullshit like it's the most toxic substance on the planet. I mean I just did it myself. This whole concept is immeasurable degrees of latitude beyond the toxicity of bullshit! I used "horseshit" above but even it is not bad. Bull shit is good fertilizer. It helps humanity. Same with horseshit. I'm not going to vilify the ability of central banks to create money nearly enough by calling it bullshit. What animal has the most toxic shit? How bout batshit, as in batshit crazy? Apparently bat scat can cause a lung infection called histoplasmosis. It's pretty toxic. Raccoon shit can contain roundworm eggs and can lead to irreversible brain, heart and eye damage. Ewww! Hippo shit sprayed in the water kills lots of people and aquatic life every year. Ever see a hippo shit? It's really cool the way they fan it out with their tails. But what animal's feces would be more suitable to describe the central bankers' secret power that is so toxic to the world that they don't want us to know about it and lie constantly about it? You've probably guessed this one too haven't you? How about rodent shit? Now I will say that The Plague and the Bubonic Plague - a specific type of the plague, were more commonly caused by fleas carried by rats and most commonly fleas carried BY PEOPLE, there are some deadly diseases like Hantavirus, Salmonellosis, and Rat Bite Fever caused by rodents and their droppings. They say wheat can contain 9 rodent poop pellets per kilo before the FDA bans it. So let's go with that shall we? Okay trundle over.

The ability of central banks to create money from nothing is rodent shit! But what gets MY nutsack into a triple twist is when they try AND SUCCEED to convince us that the central banks do this to HELP HUMANITY! You may believe they lend money to small countries to encourage industry and improvement in those countries. Yeah. Talk to the citizens of those countries and it's more like giving them loans they can never possibly repay to entrap them into endless labor largely characterized by exporting vast amounts of the small country's assets, resources and money to the lending countries represented by the central bank. You might be thinking, "Aren't you talking about the IMF?" I am. They are a central bank. But before we get too deep into this, we should learn a little about the corruption and rodent shit from whence central banks arose.

Here's Joeri, a guy who did something similar to me and ended up with the same unsurprised disappointment as I did. Sweden started it, England corrupted it and the US perfected it. On Jekyll Island! I'm not making that up. There's a book I wanna read called "The Creature From Jeckyll Island" about the Fed. It's not as good as the book, but here's a GREAT but long vid to watch:

The name "Jekyll Island" makes me think of slightly more sinister people attending the meeting. Like: 

So maybe the bankers that rip us all off and I call "our owners" because that's what George Carlin called them, have names like Mr. Pink, Mr. Blonde or whatever.

And here's some origin history:

So let's get back to the creating money from nothing, what Griffin named the Mandrake Mechanism after the famous magician. How can you do it without being detected? The old "baffle them with rodent shit" ploy. Think up some fancy jargon that people will either think they are too dumb to understand and believe you when you use it, or they will understand that you are feeding them rodent shit at which point you simply tell them they're too unsophisticated to understand. There's a term you've probably heard called "quantitative easing." What exactly IS it? Well the official explanation is when a central bank purchases government bonds or other financial assets to stimulate economic activity. Two questions: 1. Where do they get the money to do this, and 2. who do they buy bonds and other assets from? Answers: 1. They just make it out of Shakespeare's "thin air" and 2. Pretty exclusively banks, governments, and large corporations. Us regular folk can't sell bonds on ourselves can we? It might look something like this and we'd probably be thrown in prison if we tried:

Yet, this is MORE legit than the central bank money because it was created from SOMETHING, not nothing. Are you getting what I mean by the suspension of reality I mentioned us all performing?

Now, maybe a better question, How do the banks, governments and corporations pay the loans back? Have you ever known ANY of these three entities to EVER pay ANYTHING back? Of course not! Oh they could. They absolutely could. But why when you can pass it on to dummies like us the general public? Hence the uproarious laughter in the central banker portrait above. 

Financial experts constantly talk about these things like they are acceptable inevitabilities. These three entities do them like knee-jerk reactions so they pretty much ARE. When they are struggling (and don't let that term mislead you. The financial big league members' ways are not our ways. What they call "struggling" is making a few billion less than they did the year before. "Hey central bank, we could use some "stimulation of economic activity" over here!") The central bank loans billions to banks, governments and corporations and like clockwork interest rates, taxes, and prices go up respectively. That way us dummies pay back their emergency loans from the central banks.

Ummmmmmmm.... has anybody noticed interest rates, taxes and prices going up?

Why, we might ask. Covid. Supply chain. Ukraine war. 

RODENT SHIT!!! It's just pure greed run amok in our culturally entrenched central bank systems. You guys should see what happens to countries that DON'T opt for the central banking system. But this post is already too long. Maybe I'll save that for another day.

Ever feel like you've been lane 4ed?

 It's week 8 (the last week) of my 7th course in my master's degree and here's how I'm feeling:

and 

In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, "Let me splain. No, is too much. Let me sum up." This week's topic was technology in education. If ever you want to see an overblown, overpromoted, bandwagon to jump on, plus an easy week for almost every course of the 7 courses I've taken so far, it's technology and how it's the wave of the future in education. Well, as one of the sources we read THIS WEEK included in its well-written wisdom, "Technology in education is the revolution that has been just around the corner for decades and it's still just around the corner." We have started just saying it has arrived in education programs and TED Talks and academically influential places, ostensibly in hopes of hastening it, but realistically classrooms have not kept up with the technological revolution outside the classrooms and there are good reasons why. I am getting a little tired of reading about and hearing about how the reason schools are not fully high-tech already is slow-to-adapt teachers. Teachers who are used to the old ways. Teachers who are uncomfortable with change. That has not been my experience personally, nor have I seen these Luddite teachers. The teachers I know are trying hard to implement technology, we just haven't found it to be superior in many ways. That's all. We are not in need of "professional development." 

How many ways has the underappreciated teacher been patronized, disrespected, and (fake well) underappreciated? I HATE that I get jobs all the time (like the one I'm doing now) that require professional training because there are job duties that the worker needs to understand that could be incredibly important, but management says, "Ahh we'll just let the workers we've hired do the training. How hard can teaching be?" I can't tell you all the crucial parts of my training at this job, and many others, my trainers have neglected to teach me. Now this may not just be oversight or bad teaching, it can sometimes be that they don't WANT to lose their indispensability by teaching another worker something the company depends on only them to know. It's a common problem in security. "When this alarm goes off we have to call so and so cuz she's the only one who knows what to do." This is not a joke. Can you see how stupid that is? But it happens. A LOT of places settle for bad training.

Then I see this crap about technology being slowed in education because the teachers just don't understand education. That burns my arse! When will these asshole administrators start trusting the teachers and stop making them beg for their doggie treats and say, "Yes, master. We LOVE computers in our classrooms. We love tablets and smartphones. They are NOT distractions! We never have tech problems. Technology is superior, dependable, and better than us mere humans." It's almost like somebody somewhere WANTS technology in the classrooms of the world for some reason. Maybe because they feel machines can make the students better machines while us human teachers make them better humans? We'll put a pin in that.

I'd like to tell you I had faith in this class I am taking right now and its students having the balls to NOT be the begging dogs described above in this week's discussion assignment, but I fully expected it. And at the risk of losing a few points because peer evaluators think that giving good grades to a paper that doesn't echo the above mantra might cost THEM marks, I played the Devil's advocate. And, what a surprise, this is the first week I didn't receive a perfect 10/10 on my discussion post grade. However!!! Even though EVERY other student's discussion post was a big sloppy tongue kiss for technology, I received a few comments (at the deadline of course when it was impossible for anyone to respond to them or for the commenters to lose any marks for making them) saying that they were with me. This is how teachers need to reject technology from the shadows. Meanwhile all the education programs are cramming it down our throats and we want those degrees, we NEED those degrees, so it's in our best interest to choke it down. 

Why do we need those degrees? Take a look at the Somali child of privilege above running her 22-second hundred meter. The niece of the Somali national athletics federation chairwoman reportedly. The majority of the people reading this post (and the writer) could run a faster 100 meter! I feel like we've all applied for jobs that we were perfect for and didn't even get the old PFO (please fuck off) letter in response. I am sitting here with my BA in English Lit, 7/10ths of a master's in education, 25 years of ESL teaching experience and there's a place up in Fort St. John called the FSJ Literacy Society looking for someone to teach ESL to new Canadians who have settled there and for political reasons who are they gonna hire? Lane 4 baby! Sprinter number 4! There's a similar society right here in Trail. I live just upstairs for crying out loud! I applied and actually got in touch with a person, but, to make a long story short, they lane 4ed me. I have been applying to teach ESL in the local Selkirk College here in Castlegar from overseas and from right HERE. Ghosted for years! Lane 4ed for two decades!

We've all been there haven't we? How many of us have never looked at someone and thought, "How did that dunce get that job?" Come on now, you KNOW the obvious example I never turn down. If I'm understanding things correctly in just the most recent indictment of the idiot his own mother (never) said would be a disaster in politics, he is trying to say that he didn't understand his oath of office? He can't be indicted for crimes he committed while president because he is too stupid to be president essentially? Is this what he's trying to say? I think this is what he's trying to say. It rivals the absurdity of the "The president cannot be impeached because he's president" argument associated with him. Remember that gem? Whipped up by liar - I mean lawyer Bill Barr (who should never have passed the bar) who had formerly argued the exact opposite. Of course you don't remember. These things don't stay around long enough to be significant all at the same time or SOMETHING MIGHT BE DONE! Can't have something done can we? 

If I were not a "slow to adapt" teacher in need of "professional development," I might be better at video editing and I would put a little Trump head on the body of the Somali sprinter to make a new, even more hilarious video. Can you picture that all you Americans reading this who got lane 4ed from 2017-2021? 

At any rate, the prostitution quote... I feel like a bit of a whore sometimes buying into the hypocrisy of the master's degree I am taking. First of all, anyone who has taught as long as I have and is NOT a master of education already is probably the sprinter from lane 4. It's an unnecessary piece of paper. But it's made necessary by the hypocrisy that is the education job market. In order to avoid getting lane 4ed so frequently, I "need" this piece of paper. The thing of it is, even with this advanced degree, there's no guarantee I'll be employable enough to land a good job in education. I might have to get a doctorate! Feed the monkey even more!

That's how I'm feeling right now folks. But this down in the dumps post might have a happy irony in its conclusion. My sister is coming over from Calgary for the August long weekend. It's Terry Fox Day or BC Day or whatever the frig. Nobody cares cuz it's a long weekend in August! I think it's most commonly CALLED "August long weekend." Anyhoo, I think I'm gonna hitch a ride back with Jenn. While in Calgary I will visit some other family members, consider getting a place there (maybe even renting a room in my sister's new place), and investigate a few job leads there exactly NONE of which will be aided in any way by my education.

It's a long shot but there is ANOTHER chance for employment in, of all places, Fort St. John, and at least a place to stay with my long time buddy Ed. He and his girl have offered me a place to crash while looking up there and from what he is telling me, I could get some work that will pay exponentially more than any job I've ever had. All unaided by the 25 years of teaching or the, what, 9 years or so of post-secondary prostitution I've participated in. Unless I go into the Literacy Society and "outsprint" the person they've chosen for that job. Okay this metaphor might be wearing a little thin. But let's use it in the next paragraph just one more time...

As far as my education is concerned, I feel like it's yet another area where I've been lane 4ed. But, I have already passed course 7 and registered for course number 8. If I get work in Calgary or Frozen John, I'll probably just abandon the friggin master's degree cuz I won't have the time for it. But I guess we'll blow up THAT bridge when we get all the charges set, eh?

More news as events warrant.

Mirror Selfishness

 

It says it's 22 degrees Celsius in Trail right now but I call bullshit. I just walked to work and back cuz I had to submit my hours and can't do it from a home computer, only the ones at work. It's not even 9AM and it's gotta be close to 25 out there. But before you think this is in any way a complaint, it was 16 degrees last night. Unlike Korea, it gets cool at night. Actually, it was 37 at the hottest yesterday and actually dropped down to 12! That's 99 and 54 for you stubborn Imperialists. Summer's not so hard to deal with when you have cool nights and lower humidity. 

Another thing I am LOVING about summer here that I could say about ZERO summers I suffered through in Asia: NO mosquito bites yet! I've had more wood ticks than mosquitos on my body! This is awesome! Now I'm not getting out much. Haven't golfed or done much fishing. Don't have a hiking trail that I know of. But NO bloodsuckers yet! I say bring on the heatwave if it burns up the mozzies.  

So it was a pleasurable walk to work this morning. I wore shorts and tee shirt, not the uniform, and it didn't matter how much I sweat. I didn't have to sit through a 12-hour shift in my sweaty shirt. I could just go home and take it off. Which I did. I'm now in the air-conditioned comfort of my apartment drinking a Fresca and listening to the yowling of a cat that should never have been here. I'll get back to the cat. First another unusual thing about Canada.

A new paragraph and a new Fresca for this. When I walk to work it's up a hill. A substantial one but I'm getting used to it. I certainly don't huff and puff like the Big Fat Wolf when I walk up the highway to Teck. But I think that's it. I'm fat and old. I've never lived in Canada while being fat and old before. People stop to give me rides. Even people who I don't work with. Total strangers. And since I need a bit of movement before sitting on my can for the better part of the 12 hours ahead of me, I usually refuse the offers. This offends people. I swear to God they think I think they're gonna molest me I guess. I get weird looks and weird comments like one lady who said, "Don't worry, I'm not gonna bite you." The funniest was a guy who stopped ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD and yelled out his window that he thought I was his mailman or something like that. I couldn't hear over the traffic. He motioned "Do you want a ride?" and I motioned "No thanks I'm good." I guess he disregarded the no thanks shake of the head and wave of the hands and read the "I'm good" thumbs up to mean, "Shit yeah I wanna ride big fella!" So he dangerously U-turned and swung up beside me. Old white compact car with a cardboard sign with Selkirk Security stenciled on it blocking his back window. Amorphously obese guy taking the shape of his bucket seat and spilling out over the edges in some areas says, "Hey, you need a lift?" I said, "No thanks, man. I need my steps. I just work at Teck up here anyway. I was nearly at work by this time." He gets a puzzled expression on his face, reaches into a console pocket and pulls out a Selkirk Security logo. It looked like it might be a sticker or vehicle decal. "Selkirk Security," he says while proffering his evidence of trustworthiness." lol

It's odd. I imagine if I HAD grown old and fat here in Canada I probably WOULD have a vehicle and maybe even be able to afford insurance and fuel, but that not being the case, I guess people see me humping up the hill and their initial thought is, "Awww. Poor guy." Well they're not wrong about the poor part! But I often wonder if I did have a vehicle, would I still walk to work or would I just drive? I think the latter to save time, get extra sleep and try to make the auto insurance a better value. It'll never be WORTH it, but the more you drive, the more you get for the small fortune you spend on it. 

Today, however, wearing my hiking clothes, and not doing the hike just before shift changeover, I didn't receive any offers to get driven in the woods, roofied and left for dead. There WAS, however, some sort of senior ladies bike ride. I'm guessing it was from Trail to Castlegar. I passed one lady on the way up the hill and after submitting my hours and starting back down the hill I must have passed 40-50 ladies decked out in professional clip on cycling shoes, spandex shirts and shorts, there wasn't a bike worth less than a thousand bucks amongst them, even saw one tandem cycle with two ladies in identical cycling garb, most had gloves, cycling shades, all had helmets and numbers and all but a couple said, "Good morning!" to me. Bunch of nice old gals! Really made my walk a little more pleasant even if I was feeling like a flight attendant bidding passengers farewell as they deplane. 

Now, from those nice old gals to maybe the opposite. You know when you're walking down the streets of Trail and you're getting close to the homeless streetpeople area and you see one coming up to you, one who has approached you before, one you have been forced by your strong sense of common courtesy to talk with only to get what you dreaded most from them, "Hey friend, can you spare a few bucks?" This was not a problem when I last lived in this area. The streets of Trail had loads of pedestrians and few of them were begging or panhandling or on drugs. Well, except maybe pot. Now they've taken over. People get out of their vehicles only when necessary. Even eating outdoors in the summer at the Dairy Queen or drinking a Slushy outside 7-11 you stand a good chance of getting approached by them. They're like body snatchers only you don't have to fall asleep to get owned by them, just have to make eye contact. Do you know what I'm talking about? And it sucks being like that doesn't it? It makes you feel elitist. Kinda guilty for believing you are so superior to that other human being that you should just shuffle by them without making eye contact so you can escape a stop-and-talk and get on about your business. Are we assholes? I used to think so, but I'm gradually changing my mind. It's self-preservation isn't it. Now you can say that's just selfishness but that argument has lost its edge.

Anyway, back to the cat. That's how I am with the cat. Every time I have to go out of my room into the perilous living room/kitchen/bathroom area where the cat spends most of its time, I am thinking, "Don't acknowledge it, don't say anything to it, don't make eye contact, don't even look at it," and it comes out from where it was, purposely walks directly in your path meowing at you, sometimes dropping to the floor onto its back in an invitation to play, sometimes even clawing at you, "I'm almost there, a few more steps and I'll be in the kitchen, MADE IT!" He usually stays out of the kitchen while I make food. Maybe it's the lino instead of the carpet. Maybe Fred, the roommate who has underhandedly subjected me to this daily awkwardness, has trained it to stay out of the kitchen. I know that it will bellow and whine and meow meow meow the whole time I'm in there and repeat the whole process of trying to get my attention with even MORE gusto when I am on my way back to my room with FOOD, but at least I can cook in relative catlessness. If I make pizza or baked things I have been told by Fred not to leave them out or the cat might get into them, but most things I make don't require cooling in the kitchen.

You know what's even worse? I've become the same way with Fred. "Don't look at him, don't make eye contact, don't communicate, just get where you're going, do what you want to do and get back into your hole." The streetpeople, the cat, and Fred have one thing in common, well probably dozens of things, but there is one thing they have in common that elicits this behavior from me. They want me to do something for them and don't give a shit what they have to do to get me to do those things. They will lie, beg, bug, whine, follow, and pester if they are given any indication that any of those tactics will get results. The cat has balls and wants to go out so he can get him some (fake well) pussy. I can't blame him. Some of the homeless people are just down on their luck in a harsh economic climate, maybe the worst ever in Canada, so I don't blame them always either. But I blame Fred. Which makes it even harder to look at him.

You see, he was told that the former tenants had a cat and there was fur everywhere and I didn't want any cats. He said he had a quiet chihuahua and a cat and saw that I was going to say something like, "Not interested then," so quickly said, "But I can get rid of the cat. It's an outdoor cat anyway." I met the quiet Chihuahua, (I know, it's like a unicorn!) and got first month's rent and he started moving in. One night we sat down and had a few drinks together. Sorta made friends. Found commonality. You know bro-down. It might have been during that session or it couldn't have been more than a day later he dropped on me, "I hope you don't mind the cat coming to stay here for a few days." I immediately said okay. That's why I think I might have been drunk.

So the cat came to live with us. I was nice to the cat because I thought it was temporary. But it just kept BEING HERE when I got home from work. "I'll get rid of the cat Wednesday." Wednesday came and went. "I'll get rid of the cat Saturday." Saturday came and went. "I'll get rid of him tomorrow." Tomorrow came and went. The cat's been here almost two months. It was supposed to be a few days. Meanwhile the cat is clawing up the carpet around the doors cuz it's "an outdoor cat" and wants to go out and get laid. Not to mention meowing endlessly. Fred is a roofer and I'm working mostly midnight shifts. I KNOW he knows the cat is a constant pain in the ass meowing and howling the whole time he's gone. Its name is Pita. PainInTheAss! The chihuahua? Not a peep. Never bothers me, never comes into my room. Pita is an asshole. But only if he thinks you will do shit for him. He's nowhere near as annoying if you ignore him or be an asshole to him every now and then. Now I don't want to do this and it's against my nature, but I'm doing it. I really don't like being put into this position, but here I am. But I already know this manchild I'm living with will only dig in his heels and make his romantic fight against the racist, cold, cruel roommate all the more Shakespearian tragic IF I force him to get rid of the fucking cat. So this is what I have to do to cut my rent from 1400 to 700 a month. It's becoming less and less worth it every day.

What makes things even worst is Fred has told me on a few occasions how he's a great salesman. "I can sell ice to the Eskimos," he said at least three times. I've actually heard him use the word "Indian" to refer to Native Canadians too. He IS one. He played the race card once on me before he learned that shit won't fly. But he still believes he's the alpha male, has a big coffee mug that says "I'm the Boss," talks to his animals constantly and has brought up his alpha-male status to Pita 100 times, but the fucking cat has him tied around his little claw, and by extension me. A cat runs this apartment. A cat that was never supposed to be here. I wanted to shampoo the carpets. No use doing that now. Not just because the fucking cat is shedding on them daily but clawing the shit outta them too. Can't have windows open for fresh air cuz Pita will claw the screens. Can't have doors open for air flow cuz Pita will go out into the hall. Can't sleep without being woken up by either Pita meowing or Fred telling Pita not to meow. Fred even went to a funeral for a couple days (he told me it would only be one) and left me in charge of the cat. What the actual frig, man?!?!

I have to somehow convince him that I am not an Eskimo (or Inuit to use the preferred nomenclature that a half Native Canadian really oughtta know) and what he is doing to try to "sell" me on Pita is not being a good salesman, it's being a selfish dick. The irony of selfish behavior of street folk, cats, and roommates causing others to feel like THEY are the selfish ones I guess would be the bullet point, the takeaway, the moral of this post. It's like my "mirror selfishness" is not authentic, it's just an image cast by the true selfishness of the other party. How to impress that upon someone without conflict.... Aye there's the rub!

And if we extend this point to the second-hand guilt that is spread from citizen to citizen in Canada, maybe less than it used to be now that we have a PM who the Liberals and Conservatives can agree to despise, but still entrenched deeply in our culture... well here's a cartoon:

Right? There are still folks telling us there's plenty of work available if you're not afraid to work hard. And if you stick to it, maybe you can have a pyramid someday. I would have included in the conversation something like, "... and furthermore, you didn't vote, did you? So you don't have any right to complain about the slave drivers we've democratically elected, do you?" Or, something I hear even MORE nowadays than I used to, "Just keep your negativity to yourself," or "I am trying to keep toxic attitudes like yours out of my life." 

In the face of mounting negativity worldwide, it is becoming more and more frowned upon to express dissatisfaction with it. To the point where we are silenced by our second-hand guilt. Our lives are becoming shittier by the day because of selfishness and we're socialized to feel bad about feeling bad. Greedy landlords, shop owners, manufacturers all overcharging and we have to just say, "Well, that's business," while forcing a smile. Financial institutions printing money and raising interest rates to pass more riches to the rich and the payment to the poor and we shouldn't be thinking of it in such negative terms. Governments colluding with the rich to eliminate unions, the middle class, and democracy, but you keep that toxic attitude to yourself buster!

To me it just feels like a world full of bad roommates. There are a couple of solutions. We can have it out with the bad roommates but that won't accomplish much if anything. We all know that. We can organize and fight the bad roommates together but that is being phased out. So, the ultimate solution is probably to move out.

And in a related story... Barbie beats Oppenheimer. Start practicing your survival skills.

Just read on a friend's Facebook page, "Manipulation is when they blame you for your reaction to their disrespect."