Maintaining Mortal Meaninglessness

 Perhaps only one thing is worse than dreaming one’s way through life and that is the brain bomb that the dream IS life. Love, friendship, education, politics, religion, professional wrestling, most sports probably, even science the discipline that wears its concrete, imperialism like a badge of honour laying claim to the veritable opposite is, in the final analysis, yet another triumph of imagination over intellect.

“Nebulous at best.” That was word for word what the most relevant quantum physicist I have ever known said about the very building blocks of science, in particular scientific method. It is in essence what a bright young student of IT said to me about the cyber-universe recently; it is what my experiences in the world of academia have taught me in no uncertain terms; it is the ultimate absurdity that comprises the basics of a shockingly comprehensive list of what we tend to consider the most meaningful things in life!

Oh to regain the joys of youthful ignorance! This is no aspersion, slight, or disparaging of those who wear the protective cloak of ignorance, nay, there just might be wisdom in their folly.

Today my mother put some bags inside of a shopping bag I had hung over the others empty and ready for easy access when I needed it next. I knew it would be soon. This should not have upset me, but it did. The simple act of taking the other bags out before using my preferred shopping bag is compounded by other ills my mother has perpetrated upon me in the past. Why don’t good things come to mind? My mother combed my hair when I was young. Not just enough to tidy it but excessively. I know, to this day, of nothing more relaxing and I know that that is why she did it. Was it an act of apology for the whips and scorns of time into which she had ushered me? Or even those she thought she would cause me?

My mother is a trip! I can think of few citizens more esteemed and loyal to the world of mindless folly over reason nor better suited to be its travel agent than my mother. More than once daily she proudly utters the phrase, “I have no idea (about that).” Proudlyl! She doesn’t consult a dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, or (perish the thought) the internet to maybe gain SOME idea about that which she has none. Never. It could almost be said that she is well versed in only ignorance. She is row, row, rowing her boat gently down the stream of a life that is but a dream.

But does a thorough education in fantastical heaven prepare a person better or worse for the shocking specter of hell? If I were to take after my mother in this trait, could I blame her? I think not. Preparation cannot be left solely to the parent. No matter how soothing the comb, or the memory of it now that I no longer require one, the responsibility of maintaining memories falls on my shoulders. I choose the good or bad to dwell on and even the most hopeless of parenting provides a child with both. I choose to think negatively and compound the simple act of rearranging the shopping bags into something more annoying than it would be if I chose to remember my mother’s ASMR triggering hair combing. I seem to recall her being a back scratcher too, which, for me, had the same effect.

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. Simple. Problem solved, right? Or is this in itself just a variant pathway to that land of ignorant bliss? Intelligence shows me daily that negativity cannot be glossed over successfully with positivity without sufficient swings of the dumb-hammer to my own head. Maybe that is the root of the issue. Is the dumb-hammer medicine or poison? This question applies to the list at the start of this rant and every single entry on it. Ignorance makes them all more palatable and that can be viewed from both positive and negative perspectives. Indeed both can be found within each entry. I’ll start with religion.

Matthew 18 is where Jesus said that having faith like a child will make one the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. But it’s easier to forgive as a child. They’ve only been lied to a few thousand times and betrayed a few hundred. As those numbers increase the child grows up and its faith is tested. Accentuating the positive in overwhelming negativity may just be what separates children from adults. After all, every adult has something beyond the fear of death that keeps them from throwing themselves off of tall buildings or taking a few extra sleeping pills. Is it then just the discipline of pinpointing those things and being ever-mindful of them? Again, too simplistically escapist.

Before I mention Buddhists spending their lives in meditation trying to accomplish exactly the above, let’s see what Jesus says in Luke 7 about childishness. He said the people of this generation (and presumably all since) are like children who are never satisfied and can see the bad side of everything. John the Baptist didn’t eat bread or drink wine, and he was called a demon. Jesus did both and was called a glutton and a drunkard. Worse, he was called a friend to tax collectors! I love that! Tax collectors were the worst back then and all that has changed is the explosion in the percentage that they collect.

But concentrate on the seeming contradiction and in it you will find a fine example of the nuances that make life the challenge so worth accepting that it is. Don’t you see this all the time? In yourself just as much as others? I think I see it in myself MORE than in others. I can get used to/tired of anything and the older and more used to/tired of life I become the shorter this process is. If I could somehow convert my “take-for-granted” gene into a “be-happy-in-what-I’ve-got” gene, I might just have life figured out and I could die a truly happy and satisfied man. But just to illustrate how far I am from attaining this impossible dream, I hadn’t even finished typing it before reproducing and selling that gene came to mind. Being unsatisfiable and always wanting more is actually compared in the Bible to trying to catch the wind.

On the other hand didn’t Jesus himself preach against complacency and teach his disciples to constantly strive for improvement? Hasn’t ambition, desire, envy, even greed resulted in great achievement and accomplishment? So what the hell, bro? Is it good or bad? Who am I to say?

But back to comparing the wisdom of being complacent in ignorance vs. being greedy for knowledge. Or should I say satisfaction in simplicity vs. striving for advanced intelligence. They can both be bad or good, can’t they? What about the concept of just acting intelligent? Knowing everything became impossible long ago if it ever were but since new knowledge by the brainful is created every day, it’s just getting harder and harder to know enough about everything to be considered smart. I believe even knowing a little bit about everything, even just one fact about everything is even impossible. Yet there are many who would like us to think they know a lot about everything. When does the desire for knowledge intersect with vanity? Is it when a person is loathe to admit to ignorance in something or when a person is loathe to admit to ignorance in anything? I don’t know the answer, I’m just asking. It is most likely neither. Maybe it’s when we start creating our own facts because we just don’t want to do the hard work of finding the real ones. That ring any bells??? It’s everywhere isn’t it? It’s one of the most annoying things in the world and one of the most dangerous. Yet, it can be fun, beautiful, even therapeutic creating worlds of make-believe.

Seymour Glass might be my favourite character in all of fiction. In Salinger’s short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” he convinces an innocent girl of the existence of bananafish. The girl manufactures the bananafish in her vision as well as her faith exclaiming, “I see one!” The Jesus-like Buddhist character Seymour’s reaction to this was to go back to his hotel room and blow his head off. Is creating beautiful fancy in a world of squalor noble or evil?

I watched the movie “Babylon” two nights ago. Lead characters Manuel Torres and Jack Conrad have opposing epiphanies to these respective effects. Jack too blows his head off.

I can’t claim to know the answer and although I may be getting better at describing this, the enigma of my life, I admit to being no closer to its solution, perhaps further from it than when I was a child. Maybe death, or non-existence, holds the solution and being closer to it as kids we maintain some knowledge however subconscious of it. Should it or shouldn’t it follow, then, that as we get older and closer to re-obtaining that knowledge that comes through non-existence, that we should subconsciously or even consciously remember it? Seymour and Jack didn’t want to hang around and find out, rather they hastened their passage to that undiscovered country to which Hamlet didn’t have the balls to travel. Am I saying suicide is strength and remaining in a life of futile suffering is weakness? Maybe if the futility can be proven and the only solution lies in the ultimate solution, but, as yet, I have found no such evidence. So for those who accuse me of cynicism, HAH! My insistence upon maintaining this mortal meaninglessness is evidence to the contrary.

Nellie LaRoy never feared death and it found her young. I am guessing it was tragic too although the movie leaves us guessing. She epitomized the joy of youthful ignorance of which I write. Who of us would not consider it a satisfactory cherry on top of a life well lived to attend a gathering of the pompous patrician perfumed aristocracy and puke on the proceedings AND the chief poseur among them? Aye, tis a consummation devoutly to be wished! How often I have pondered the abandonment of my intellectual search for meaning and truth for the idealization of hedonistic enjoyment! In truth it may only be finances that have kept me from the pursuit of worldly pleasures and the abandonment of intellect altogether. For the time being I shall count the failure of the lottery to match my numbers as my chief muse though there remains some question in that sentiment. How can I know but through experience? I can read of Sidhartha Gautama who renounced hedonism for a life of asceticism that ultimately led to enlightenment. But reading is not experiencing. Now, as promised, on to the Buddhists.

“Life IS suffering Highness. Anyone who tells you different is selling something,” said Westley to Buttercup. This, though few make the connection, was quite a Buddhist concept. I belittled them a while ago when I said they were spending lifetimes in deep meditation and self-sacrifice trying to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. However, the Taoist tenet of joy and suffering being two parts of the same cloth is central to the philosophy. There’s a Taoist allegory that comes to mind. There always IS! Lol I love that about Taoism actually although, if you are sagacious you will see that the little stories are not always as wise as they sound.

Okay, a Taoist master was known to tell his followers that “Life is suffering. We are born only to grow old then die. The things that we want, we never get. The majority of the things we get we never wanted. Life is suffering.” His followers couldn’t get this out of their heads. In fact it weighed on them heavily. They started shirking their studies and just lying around in morose lethargy. The master noticed and decided to take them on a journey to a beautiful and pristine lake. The spirits of the master’s followers improved but still the suffering of life remained foremost in their thoughts. One apprentice approached the master and asked if he could further explain the statement. The master produced from his knapsack a cup half filled with salt. He instructed the young learner to fill the rest of the cup from the lake. After he did so the master instructed him to drink it. The apprentice drank and spat the water out. It was an affront to his tastebuds, and he poured the majority onto the ground. The master produced a second cup only this one was filled with salt. The student feared punishment for wasting the contents of the previous cup, but the master said, “Now, go to the lake.” The young learner stood in the lake waist deep and waited for further instructions. The master then said, “Now pour the salt into the lake.” The apprentice did so. The master then said, “Now, drink from the lake.” The student drank from the lake and the salt could no longer be tasted. The water was pure and fresh tasting.

The master explained, “When you experience suffering as an individual it is more concentrated and painful. But we are all part of each other and the rest of nature. When we train our minds to commune as one with all of nature our personal suffering is just a small part of the whole.”

Great story, right? PPPPbbbtthhhtthhbbbttt! If I were the student I would have kicked the master in the nuts and told him to train himself to think of his personal suffering as a small part of the whole of nature. And such it was with my mother and the shopping bags. If I could train myself to think of that action as just one in a lifetime of actions in our coexistence, or even the whole family’s existence, and if all the good and bad deeds could be piled upon each other in one good pile and one bad pile, surely the positive pile would be higher than the negative pile! I know that but it doesn’t seem to do much good. Maybe the concept of proximity comes into play here. What have you done for me most recently? The pain from a kick in the balls is immediate just like the nuisance of having to reorganize the bags just before going shopping. Life happens chronologically and I would love to be able to take it in on an astral plane in which I could reckon time holistically rather than lilnearly, but I can’t. And I don’t give a shit HOW long you’ve studied at the Shao Ling Temple, YOU can’t either.

So here we are again at the truth being compared to make believe. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to believe all the mythology of the ages old teachings about Kung Fu masters who flew through trees and cured cancer by massaging a person’s baby toe? I just have a distinct preference for facts.

Now, you probably knew this wasn’t long in coming, let’s talk about Trump. He is now the president of the United States. Scroll back to where I asked if any bells were ringing and when I referred to making one’s own fantasy world as being something dangerous I’m sure that the Make America Great Pumpkin came to mind for many of you. There WAS a time when we needed comparisons, analogies and allegory to talk about Orange Mulius but we don’t have to anymore! I used to say his government was LIKE the WWE but he now literally HAS Linda McMahon the WWE co-owner and ball-kicker in her own right IN his cabinet. I think at one time I warned that if Trump was elected president he’d help the filthy rich and leave Joe average American out in the cold but look at the ludicrous display that was his inauguration. If I could be granted the ability to collapse ONE building in my lifetime… But life is suffering. What we want, we don’t get and what we get we don’t want. With the possible exception of those inside the Capitol Rotunda…

I watched a movie last night too. Maybe the best movie made in the last decade or two. “Don’t Look Up.” Like “Idiocracy” I expect that movie to become more a documentary with each passing day of the next 4 years. Well, save for the meteor part. The space ship at the end – Trump’s inauguration – the list would vary only slightly. And like the heroic spaceman sacrificed for humanity in the movie I think the good people in the Rotunda would chain the exits shut and go down with the ship. Anyway, I gotta get off that. I’m spending a bit too much time. I could get flagged and put in a car full of FBI agents with a bag over my head. Lol

That was a reference to the movie. I think we’re in for 4 years of “Don’t Look At America” instead of “Don’t Look Up.” There is going to be some world record breaking obfuscation, exaggeration, sophistry and prevarication. We will, to borrow an oft-heard phrase, have no idea what the hell is going on in America for the next four years. Now, will that be good? Probably. Will I still want to know what is really going on? Absolutely!

I have no doubt and few qualms about the conscious choice I have made against the passive acceptance of ignorance in favour of the heroic search for truth. In THAT at least there is no confusion. But confusion arises when I start fact finding. There is so much misinformation out there it’s hard to know whether you’re finding your way to the truth or just obtaining a harder earned and less passive version of the prevailing ignorance of the time.

Fortunately, I have found some trusted sources of knowledge, and I believe that I am on the side of good. I may be no closer than any other dreamer or no less self-delusional than a cult member or devout political or religious believer. I may be more trapped than someone in a bad marriage or friendship just going through the motions even though my heart is no longer in it. I might even be like a scientist or a Ph.D. candidate slowly coming to realize the folly of my chosen field but pressing on long enough to pay off my student loans before I regret my choice too much. But for all I know, I write about the truth, or more accurately the dream that has become truth to me, and I thought I would make this an extra special post because this is the exact point in time when that truthy dream is going to get bumpier than ever. Short of repeating the Colbertian term “truthiness,” I think I will call it maintaining mortal meaninglessness and much of the ensuing posts will consist largely of it.

Canada IS Evidently for Sale

 Read this carefully. It is evidence of Canada's long-term economic subservience to the US in a couple of major areas: automobiles and the fuel they run on. You come to a province like Alberta and you can see every effort being made to force citizens to drive vehicles and burn fuel. Sidewalks are disappearing, city transit is getting worse and long distance buses are practically things of the past. You wanna go somewhere? Drive a whole vehicle by yourself. Make it an SUV or a full sized truck. Why not a Hummer or a van or, what the hell, just go all the way and finish the cycle of absurdity, why not just drive your own fucking bus? Oh Canada! Shit yeah!

For as long as I can remember we've been exporting 99% of our crude oil to the US. That's mostly in the form of bitumen from the oilsands in Alberta. In October of 2024 (and for hundreds of months before that I'm pretty sure) it topped the list of exports from Canada to the US at $10.9 billion. What is next on the list? Sounds like the same thing but it's not. It's petroleum gas which is compressed petroleum or (in Canada's case) natural gas. $3.52 billion. So to simplify that's almost 11 billion in tar sands bitumen and 3 1/2 bil in natural gas. 

Next, oddly enough is cars $3.35 billion worth. Then even oddlier REFINED petroleum cuz, YES, Canada has finally done the obvious and started building its own oil refineries I guess. $1.84 billion. And finally car parts. $1.3 bil. 

Now, what is it that we are so hooked on importing from the US that we would be willing to suffer 25% tariffs that are being proposed by His Florida Orangeness? Cars $1.61 billion, refined petroleum $1.43 billion, car parts $1.41 billion, delivery trucks $1.34 billion, and crude petroleum $ 1.15 billion. 

This is just one month. I don't think all months are the same so this is going to be simplistic economics but bear with me cuz it serves a purpose. Let's start with cars. Canada gave the US $1.74 billion more in cars than they gave us. So we can eliminate that trade and import more Hyundais or Kias or Ladas or Tatas or cars from any other nation. The cars built here are American Chevy, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, GM, and Lincoln, Japanese Honda and Toyota or Lexuses anyway. Lexii? We're good for cars without the States.

We give them .41 billion more in refined petroleum than they give us so fuck 'em, we'll keep all that in Canada which we should have been doing a long time ago anyway. 

We can surely live without the .11 billion more in car parts that we import from US than we export.

Anywhere in Europe where Gazprom is holding the monopoly on natural gaz I am sure we could wheel and deal for 3.5 billion bucks a year. That would ease the Gazprom (Putin) foot on the neck of European fossil fuel control somewhat. 

What does that leave us with? The massive $9.75 billion dollar difference in favour of the US in crude oil being shuffled back and forth. What have I been saying for DECADES? We need to build more refineries and refine it ourselves for our own use instead of sending it to the US and China! 

However, this is all just to illustrate that we don't NEED the trade we have with the US in our top 5 products. Forget about delivery trucks, we use them to deliver shit to the US anyway. We could get by without them in the top 5, who's to say we need them in the rest of our trade? I mean it seems odd that we trade the same stuff back and forth doesn't it? Maybe "odd" isn't the right word. Maybe "fishy" is a better word or "fraudulent" or downright "diabolical." 

So when the His Impending Doomishness proposes 25% tariffs on ANY trade commodities, given the increasing diversity of the global economy it would seem blatantly obvious what the prudent response would be from Canada, wouldn't it? Just say, "Okay, we'll shop elsewhere for that. Smell ya later." RIGHT?

Well, wrong. Because when you have been engaged in the longest international screwing of the consumer partnership in the world, you don't do the obvious... it would be too obvious. Sure enough turn on the news in any Canadian household and you will see Canadian politician Doug the Macho Man Ford, not to say Macho Camacho from Idiocracy, doing his best pre-bout trash talking wearing a "Canada is Not For Sale" cap in lieu of wrestling tights and threatening retaliatory tariffs. 

If you haven't read my (and some Nobel Prize-winning economist's) explanation about how tariffs work, see my blog entry entitled "WTF." No company pays tariffs. Some companies who don't want to pay tariffs attached to goods commit customs fraud. For instance if I want to import 1000 Chinese made TV's I could stamp "made in Mexico" on them and have them re-routed through Mexico so the customs agent can match the manifest with the goods. (or just skip all that and bribe the customs agent) What a GREAT time to be a customs agent the next 4 years could be!!! I think I'll apply tomorrow!

But most companies do the easy thing and for some reason the LEGAL thing and just jack up the prices. And I don't need to say it again but I will: nobody but NOBODY jacks up the price just enough to cover the tax or tariff or whatever, they jack it up that much and then a little more. So let's give these sheisters more credit than they deserve and say the Canadian consumer will inherit 110% of the 25% tariffs Trump is imposing on imported American goods. This COULD hurt the company. It COULD. But only if the customer stops buying after the price hike. And we are good little consumers in Canada. We won't. We'll just bitch a bit louder about inflation, take our Soma, and go on consuming making the companies even richer. 

The tariff money goes to the American government which, no doubt, they will use to help out the citizens of America who voted them in.

No that money will go to the rich in the form of tax breaks or whatever and many of the owners of the companies by which the tariffed material is produced will actually benefit from the tariffs on their own goods! And it will go exactly in reverse for Canadian government and corporations. They'll put retaliatory tariffs on Canadian goods that will make them more expensive for the consumer and make all the rich richer in America too. 

But they can't act like it. They have to convince the Canadian and American people that they are outraged at the damage tariffs will do to what they laughingly call "the economy." Every industry could be making record profits and they'll still be crying the blues about the ailing economy. In reality it's the best example I've ever seen of Jonathan Swiftian war politics to date. We might just as well be arguing over whether to crack our boiled eggs at the big end vs. the little end or whether to wear Slamecksanian low heels or Tramecksanian high heels. This shit has been going on since the 17th century folks and I'm pretty sure Jonathan Swift didn't make it up.

Watch the play acting on the news. I can't cuz it drives me to drink. But observe how they feign outrage and how they borrow gestures and phraseology from professional wrestlers. When the shit hits the fan these people who are playing with lives like Risk tokens will have destroyed and even ended many but they'll have their ill-gotten gains to comfort them. 

I thought maybe there might be a chance the government, business and banks of Canada would be smart enough not to fall for such a simplistic ploy offered up by such a simpering simpleton but this has made it crystal clear once and for all how deeply committed Canada is to enriching the few at the expense of the vast majority. The worst of it is how this betrayal, this outright treason will be supported by many. Indeed, this will probably increase Canadian pride. It already fucking HAS!

In this war of tariffs I can foresee no upside for any but the rich. They are certainly not doing something I would call "winning" the war or something that is in any way beneficial for either country. War is always like that. My favourite quote about that is from Bertrand Russell: "War does not determine who is right, only who is left." 

Just Me and IT.

 Art's funeral is over and I am with my Mom back in Canada for however long it takes. I'm not holding out any hope for long term residence here based on past attempts... but you never know.

This is Calgary where my brother Mark and sister-in-law Sherrilyn's HUGE family enjoys tobogganing from time to time. It's just a small hill at the school at the end of the road where they live. Because of that I was pretty certain I could participate injury free.

I didn't go over the jump. I didn't hit any of those trees. I didn't crank my back in any uncomfortable direction although I felt every bump as I went over it. I actually came off the hill unscathed...

... until we took a shortcut through a neighbor's back yard. There was a tree in front of the fence door and because I had my hoodie hood up a branch from that tree seemed to jump right out at me and scratched my face! My glasses came off and you know those oooohs and aaaahs people make when old, feeble folks slip on ice or fall down for some other reason in lieu of laughter? Those sounds were made.

But who cares? Look at us! We were having fun! That's my niece Elanor wearing the hat I got her for Christmas last year. Isn't she cute? Their whole family is cute. I had a lot of fun staying with them. Sherrilyn's dad George was over and we played Euchre every night. It's an Ontario thing. 

During the day we played games too. One day Gwennie decided to hide at bed time. Everybody was searching the house for her until I checked the washing machine. There she was, squeaky clean and dizzy. Hah, no, just kidding. It was latched somehow, but it wasn't washing.

I decided to get some steps one day and I walked down the street to the 7-11. I planned to get some chicken wings and some munchies for Euchre later that night. I had just started out when I heard pitter pat pitter pat pitter pat getting louder and louder behind me. It was G-dawg (Gwennie) coming on the walk with me dressed in her red and black plaid onesie PJ's, gloves and boots. Luckily the jammies had a hood so she didn't get too cold. About half way there I asked if she'd told anyone she was coming with. "No," she replied. So I called Mark and told him she was with me and nobody needed to check the washing machine.

I didn't say that but I wish I had. 

Despite the sad circumstances, Art's funeral turned out to be a largely positive experience... although you might not know it from the pics. What are you supposed to do? Smile? Cry? Frown? I wasn't sure but I hadn't planned on looking ANGRY! It just worked out that way I guess. 

I know, I know, the spellings are different. I am happy to remember the names. I'll work on the spellings later. 

Andy is from Victoria. His twin boys (30 years old now) Tyler and Dylan, and his better half Linda did not make the trip with him. Jeff, who lives in Calgary, had to stay home too but it's the most people from my family we've had in a photo in... maybe ever. 

I'm not even gonna take a stab at ages. You can guess.

We had a nice little weekend. We all did some catching up; we at lots of junky food; played with the kids; Andy and I went fishing, and we did a bit of preparation for Mom's future life without her husband of 25 years. Art was a wonderful man and we'll all miss him but he took very good care of my Mom and I am sure she will miss him most. I'm going to stay with her for a while and, as much as I can, ease her grief and transition to Calgary where most of her family now live. If you have ever read this blog you might be wondering why she might put herself in such a precarious position and, suck a bag of dicks but you'd be right. 

Andy had just left and for the first time Mom and I were alone in her and Art's house to start our adventure together. And start auspiciously it did NOT. Well what did you expect from this blog? I went downstairs to go to the bathroom and the toilet was clogged. I got a plunger and plunged until I was getting fountains of water in the shower beside the toilet every time I plunged. Mom flushed all the toilets upstairs and ran the sinks but everything was going straight into the shower. We had to bail poopy water out of the shower and throw it on the front lawn. It was about 1 AM by the time we had determined that we were not going to fix this problem so we waited till morning to make some calls. Long story short, we set up a bucket and a lid in the back shed until the next morning when Shirley the next-door neighbor allowed us to use her basement facilities until ours were fixed. Luckily the plumber came next morning at 7:30 and drilled out the clog. When I say "drilled" I mean there were tree roots coming out. Things are back to normal now but it was a shitty start to operation "Move Mom to Calgary." 

Just about everything we've done so far has been a big ordeal but that was expected. I couldn't find a decent deal for internet or hijack the neighbors' so I added data to my phone plan and am typing this on a hotspot. Hopefully the 100 gigs will meet all of our needs, particularly when I start doing my final M.Ed. course. You would not BELIEVE the hellish internet/phone gymnastics I had to go through to achieve THAT goal. It is an entire blog post itself. I had seen an ad for a position in Trail/Montrose here as an educational assistant and was unable to apply cuz you need to complete your entire Indeed or whatever middleman site it was to apply and even though all the blanks were full they kept telling me my profile was only 80% complete and I could not apply for that reason. So I called the board of education directly and was transferred to Monica with whom I left a message and it wasn't answered. So I sent another email to 4 people in the education system here and got referred to a website call "Make a Future." It didn't work. I called the help line. They filled in everything exactly as I had and it worked for them. My site still had the cancel button clickable but the "finish" button was all greyed out. So anyway, I was then in and I searched for that job and found it. BUT I couldn't apply for it cuz I had signed up as a teacher but the job was inexplicably listed under "support." Well it turns out that you need to go through all the application steps all over again to apply for a "support" job. SOoooo I did it all over again and got a greyed out "finish" button again, called support again, they filled in all the blanks identically and it worked for THEM again. So after only 6 hours of THAT, I had applied for one job.

That's just me and IT. 

Anyhoo, I gotta watch Wheel of Fortune with Mom and maybe yell out some answers on Jeopardy. We have already started packing but the first thing we tried to do was take a couple beds apart to make more room to pile and pack but the garage door was locked so we couldn't get a wrench we needed to even do THAT. But that has since been remedied and we started packing today.

So we're off to a flying start. More to come...

Everything is NOT Amazing

 Look, I've said it here before but I'll say it again: aside from any of what we call "under-the-table" transactions, the government of Canada, like the government of the US, knows about every dollar that passes through our hands. Our governments are businesses and THAT is what they make their business. They really WANT to know about the other money because they believe that too is any of their business... which it isn't. They have slowly but surely made inroads into all commerce in the country to cut our "under-the-table" transactions and make people who engage in them feel more and more criminal, but to this day it remains none of their fucking business if I want to sell you my car. However, in most cases they've managed to stick their noses into our private business. We now need 1. a bill of sale, 2. an application for transfer that must be included in the vehicle registration, 3. a vehicle permit, 4. proof of ID (not just ID). To be safe you also might want to include in the transaction an "as-is" report; a safety recent inspection; vehicle history; maintenance records; warranty documentation; and a record of every time you drove it and where you went. WHO DOES THIS??? Are we supposed to live our lives like the anally retentive busybodies at the government expect us to? No, we are REQUIRED to live our lives this way! 

As you might have guessed it's my recent tax issues that have inspired this entry. To begin with, read this article and it will give you a bit of an idea of how put upon we already are every year at tax time. They KNOW what we make and don't need us to do our taxes. Folks it's unnecessary, it's unnecessary, it's unnecessary! Return-free filing is long overdue in our countries and you can blather on about how some people's taxes are more complicated than others but the biggest reason the government has made an art out of making taxes complicated is so that we will do them. Can you think of any more diabolical subservience hoop jumping to maintain citizen control? I can't. Our taxes every year are just penance to our masters.  We still call them "government" but just think about that. I won't rehash how broken our electoral process is, you all know most of it, so you know we don't legitimately elect our leaders. Why we even still use terms of respect they don't deserve to refer to them like "governers" is probably just habit. Governors are meant to be elected. Trudeau's approval rating is about 33%. Governors are meant to be respected and elected through our respect for them. I don't know how closely approval and respect track but I can't imagine a third of Canadians actually respect that dumbass not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of other people in government who look like they govern us or the holders of the majority of Canadian funds who REALLY govern us.

You may ask the obvious question: why??? but I've posted about that too. H&R Block alone is worth over 7 billion. They spend a lot of that money lobbying our government to NOT use return-free filing that is successful and well loved in all those wonderlands we frequently read about who are not (yet) totally beholden to their currency and the people who control the largest amounts of it. Germany, Japan and the UK are mentioned as places where return-free taxation has proven to be successful. Intuit and TurboTax are also powerful lobbyists according to the article. 

The writer of the article, Marty Smith, offers a solution: just don't file for several years. He says the IRS will file for you. The CRA (Canada revenue agency) is evidently less prompt. In my recent stint overseas I went 9 years without filing and the CRA did not do the job for me. I went to H&R Block because knowing the depths of its depravity, I can't spend too much time on my yearly taxation supplication to the masters of money because adhering to the tenets of this national brainwashing revolts me. "If you don't file your taxes, you are not a good Canadian." Get thee behind me you impudent flunkey! Let me give you an illustration of the indifferent public servants who handle our taxes in Canada and the methodology they employ.

I filed sometime in late March or early April. Because the taxes for 9 separate years included benefits like sales tax, child and carbon tax rebates the money started getting deposited into my account a little at a time. I was out of the country so you might think I don't deserve any of these and you'd be right - for the child rebates. People who are temporarily overseas (like me because Canada has no good jobs for me) still have expenses they pay in Canada like bank fees, storage fees, property fees etc. I was paying money so the GST/HST which are attached to everything we buy in Canada (almost) were attached. There is a minimum rebate and I qualified for it. As for the carbon rebate, I emitted ZERO carbon in Canada so I should get that too. Anyway, H&R Block told me, to my surprise, that I qualify for that money for all nine years. I thought there was a 5 year limit but the person who did my taxes told me that was no longer true. 

I didn't receive the full amount calculated by my tax return preparer when suddenly on May 23 I received an audit letter stating that they needed some info about my residence since returning to Canada and proof of that info. They also said in the letter that they would be "withholding retroactive payments" until I did so. There was a number with that letter and I called stating that I could not provide driver's license, utility bill, or any of the other proof of my residence asked for. I also asked if they wanted my residence info for the time I was away from Canada. To my relief the lady said no. Just send the info of where I've lived since Feb '23 when I came back. So I did and I texted it to her. She said (untruthfully) that she could not receive the info thru text. I tried to send it on the website but like all Canadian gov't websites it was shit and purposely so. I couldn't send it and explained the loop I got stuck in when I tried. She said, "Then fax it to me." So I faxed the info. Done, right?

Oh no! I had just begun. The deadline was July 9th for submission of the info. On July 5 I received a letter stating that since I had not submitted the requested info I would have my account adjusted. This could require repayment of money that had already been sent to me. So I started sending emails to every online site I could find that might help. The first was the CRA website, which, as I mentioned before, is shit. They ignored my explanation that I had indeed sent the info requested and that the remainder of what my H&R Block return was calculated to be (2-3000 bucks) had still not been deposited into my account. There was another place - the office of the minister of revenue or some shyte like that to which people were prompted to send other complaints if the CRA was ghosting them. So I sent my explanation there. ANOTHER month went by so I wrote to the office of the ombudsman. I received some FISHY correspondence from a lady there named Ms. Johanne Poisson. She wouldn't give her last name at first, then wouldn't answer calls and dodged messages I left. Finally she sent a message through some user-unfriendly Canada Post private internet communication system. Eventually she too said that if I'd contacted the office of the minister of revenue there was nothing she could do to help. 

Today I had a two-hour phone call with some people at Revenue Canada named Crista, Amy, and some Indian name I did not hear respectively. I gave the usual information to confirm I was who I said I was to all three separately. Crista had the same dox I have. All the letters are on my file. So she saw my confusion but said she'd have to refer me to someone in "benefits." That was the better part of an hour. I got Amy in benefits who also had all the documents on her screen and who ALSO could not figure out what the hell had happened. She brought up what I had feared from the beginning, that I would be told that I don't get benefits like GST/HST etc. while overseas. But the letter had said, "retroactive payments." What would they be if there were no benefits? And she actually looked through and saw that I had been given some GST/HST and CCR (carbon rebate) for some of the years between 2013 and 2023. So there MUST have been payments available to me. In the end she told me that maybe the confusion arose because I had not told Revenue Canada where I was during all that time.

Let's recap. I left the country and Immigration knew. That's the government. I only told them because I had to. Since returning home I had told H&R Block and all of the various agencies where I had been. I didn't give them addresses for the overseas places but who cares? I also didn't feel like they needed me to give them my addresses in Canada because THEY ALREADY KNEW THOSE TOO. They were on my T4's. That's NOT immigration, that's CRA. Those are the papers you include in your taxes that have your pay, name and the place your worked on them. But all three people I talked to today and all the people I've been communicating with are trying to pretend like it's a big thing to find out where I'm living in Canada. If they can't wait till tax time, they can ask immigration. That's the government too.

Anyway, the Indian gal went through the usual ID crap then started telling me that I need to go to a website and fill out this and that form to let CRA know where I'm living. She also said that it was MY responsibility to do that when I was overseas. She said that I was not eligible for the benefits I received while overseas and... the news I had expected... I would probably have to pay back some of the money I had already received. 

So then she continues saying here's how we want you to fill out more forms giving us information that is none of our business and that will cost you money you've already been given...

I told her that maybe they ought to look into making this THEIR responsibility, not mine, and that maybe I don't really want to help them steal money back from me to add to the money that they were already withholding from me to extort information. Or something to that effect. Then I hung up since the phone call was almost into the third hour. 

To recap, again, I am constantly going overseas to work. I have never before provided Revenue Canada with information on where I'm living or any of that. Didn't know I had to. Don't think I SHOULD have to. Particularly since THEY KNOW. Just as well as they know all the money I'm making. Even when I'm outside of Canada. They have pension arrangements with the countries where I've taught. I pay taxes in the countries where I've taught. Return-free taxes btw. They don't need any more information from me. I probably can't give them any information about me that they don't already know anyway. Maybe the whole point of asking is to make me think that's not the case. 

So that's where things stand. I still don't know why H&R Block told me I was entitled to those benefits while I was overseas if I actually wasn't. I also don't know why the CRA actually PAID me some of those benefits if I wasn't entitled to them. Why the ghosting? Why the misinformation? Why tell me I was overdue before I was overdue? Why tell me they hadn't received information that they HAD and later admitted they HAD received? Why the colossal incompetence? And finally, why would I want to be governed by liars, cheaters, and idiots like these? Why would ANYbody?

I'm back home in Canada to get this settled and to live with my Mom while we figure out what she will do, where she will live, and how we will make that all happen now that my stepdad Art has passed on. He was a great guy and he was a wonderful husband to my Mom. So it's gotta be tough for her to figure out what she's going to do without him. But we'll get 'er done. 

The distraction of this tax clusterfuck is particularly unwelcome at this time. However, I am in the last week of my penultimate course in the M.Ed. Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to find decent employment in my own country finally and avoid tax shenanigans such as the above. But probably not. I've got some prospects already but most of them are overseas. 

Further updates as event warrant.

Everything is Amazing

 To what have we allowed ourselves to become accustomed? Only at divorce time do I ask this more than I do during the Christmas/New Year's season. I have not had the chance (and that word was chosen assiduously) to become accustomed to marriage or its spouse divorce but had I done, I am almost certain that I would have contemplated this question to distraction. Legally it should never come to bear given that to all outward appearance it is within the human nature to become accustomed to wild and obscene extremities like cohabitation and all of its trappings with ONE person for the majority of one's life, having a billion (or to my mind even a million) dollars, or behaving in customary fashion and observing the same customs every day, week, month, year, or lifetime. Why, I guess I'm asking, has it become customary to largely forego the customization of our existence and make customs customary?

Existence is a funny thing, isn't it? We don't exist for an eternity, then we exist for a blip of time before we return to eternity. We're dead forever, live a short time, then we're dead forever again. Life, then, is a miraculous, unfathomable break or separation of eternity. In our mortal minds it would seem impossible to reach the end of an infinitely long road or put a tail on an infinitely long snake or find the beginning or end of a circle. Yet here we are doing it! We're privileged to be experiencing something insanely paradoxical as a break in eternity. The beginning of the solution to the bewildering enigma of infinity has been gifted to us and what have we done with it? What do we do with our victory over the tens to hundreds of million fellow swimmers who accompanied us to the egg and said, "No, you first. I insist." Maybe those aquanaut acquaintances thought we were ready for this. Were they right or wrong?

But back to marriage. Or more to the point the end of it because despite our best (or sometimes our second, third or hundredth best) efforts, unlike that infinitely long snake, most marriages have a tail end. The end of the tale of romance, whatever we customize that custom to be, that comes in a courtroom surrounded by legal representatives whose business it really ought to be none of but who have made it theirs and have made their business indispensable. What the hell can any mortal being do anymore without an attorney? So to borrow a poignant phrase from the movies, the law firm of "This is Mine and That is Yours" tries to judiciously (or if they're not proud (which I mean - ppfffttt - they're lawyers!) GREEDILY) decide to what exactly the victorious party in the proceedings has become accustomed. That REALLY should make us all go "Hmmmmm...." and marvel at this custom to which we have become accustomed. How have we gotten into the custom of accepting anyone, or worse, ourselves saying, "I want the single life that was my former custom, but I want to customize it with as many of the customs to which I have become accustomed during marriage as I can." Just one of the myriad oddities of our customary lives of acquisitiveness I suppose. 

Which leads us to Christmas. If you are not Christian, and to a lesser extent even if you ARE, Christmas, you gotta admit, is an oddity. This holiday season we refer to as "merry," "joyous," even "gay" not long ago though that has become uncustomary, seems to be a yearly heaping of responsibility, expense, traditions, and customs upon ourselves that has snowballed so far out of control as to sap a goodly chunk of that merry, joyous and gay positivity right the hell out of it! 

"Should we have ham or turkey or both; what's ___ getting me; what could I get ___ of equal value; what could I get ___ of lesser value; where can Gramma and Grampa sleep; will they bring their cat; how will their cat react to our dogs; will ___ make her disgusting Jell-O mold; where could I put this garland; where could I put this ribbon; where could I put this wreath; who could I re-gift this fruitcake to; should we visit Uncle ___ and Aunt ___; will I get a Christmas bonus; will I get paid before Christmas; will I be able to work overtime during Christmas; what Christmas movies should we watch; is "Die Hard" a Christmas movie; what about Rambo; who's playing football; who's playing hockey; should I put apples in the stuffing; should we have a real tree; would ___ be offended if we had a real tree; how can I polish the good silver; will ___ notice if we don't dust; how much will the electricity bill be; how are we going to fit everybody in the car; is this custom really worth it any more or should I just go Buddhist??????????

The pressure we put on ourselves! You know who would undoubtedly tell us to relax before we start stroking out? Jesus! Right, the Christ from Christmas. You KNOW he would! While shaking his head and smacking his forehead at how much further from the original observances, traditions and CUSTOMS Christmas can be pushed this year. Has it become a custom to make Christmas more UNcustomary every Christmas?

Over my many years I have observed almost a step-for-step parallel to THAT custom but in reverse. Something that we have made a custom of making MORE customary every year is our use of technology. Is it too soon to refer to it as our "dependence" on it yet? I am starting to think not. I was recently talking about the internet with a young man who has made IT his career goal and is studying it in university now. He reminds me of two quantum physicists I met while working in Victoria. They regularly had coffee and chatted with me. They both realized that the more they learned about the physical world, the LESS they understood. They told me they had originally assumed that studying matter would lead to a greater understanding of everything but for both it led to a greater awe at the miraculous and UNexplainable nature of everything. The one take-away quote that I have mentioned in many a conversation from these two physicists was, "The very rudiments of science are nebulous at best." Today this young tech-savvy student told me that the very building blocks of the internet are just as shaky. So enjoy reading this while you can!

This got me to thinking about what we would do without it. It gave me a warm and cozy feeling all over. I can't say the same for the other participant in our conversation. This is a person who wakes up to her phone alarm, turns on a podcast and listens to it through her Bluetooth earbuds while she pours herself a coffee from a coffeemaker that is synched to her device to brew 10 minutes before her alarm. She texts and answers texts while putting on her makeup. She then loads her son into her vehicle with climate control, tire pressure sensors, back-up cam, semi-autonomous center line and ditch reading and adjustments, and computers controlling everything else right down to the headlights. She programs their destination into the GPS and takes her son to school where he learns from smartboards, computers, and tablets for a few hours. Upon arrival back home she logs on to work where she accrues bits of information and stores them on the Cloud. In her spare time she plays games on her phone and watches TV shows on her TV that has a dozen remotes for routers, boxes and soundboards that are all cyber connected somehow. When I said it would kinda be nice to lose the internet she disagreed. I said I'd miss a few things that I had become accustomed to like one of the phone games we both play, but I thought fondly of the days when people did not need to take their vehicles to a mechanic who was also a computer tech. In fact, some of us could fix our cars ourselves. 

As I reminisced my conversation partner seemed to get more and more freaked out. She was not so young that she had missed the days before our tech dependency but she had become so accustomed to it she seemed to have forgotten those days. She actually asked me how I would print things out without the internet. It couldn't have been more than a decade ago that Bluetooth became mainstream for printers. They still HAVE printers connected to computers by wires I think. I questioned why anyone would want to trust the "Cloud" when they could store stuff on their terabyte hard drives but she disagreed with that idea too even after what the IT student had said, ready to cling devotedly to the technology she had had no need for for the majority of her life. It makes me wonder how crippling it would be to the younger generations who have never known lives without computers or the internet.

At contemplative times such as these I am often reminded of comedy and things that my favourite comedians have said. Louis CK once talked about being in a plane and hearing an announcement... well, I'll just use some technology and upload the clip right here:

Maybe we need some time where we're walking around with a donkey with pots clanging on the sides. That's precisely how I was feeling during the above conversation. "How quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago." This I perceive to be the problem. We have developed our abilities to become accustomed to things WAAAY too fast and we've become less and less grateful. We just advance too fast to give us time to become grateful. 

To sum up, maybe we need to customize our accustomization to customs. How long do we need to do something before it becomes a custom? I think we become accustomed to things before they even become customs. Everything right now is amazing and we don't have time to stop and appreciated it enough. So my message in this post is simple: In the words of Jesus Christ during this Christmas season, "Relax before you start stroking out for my sakes!!!"

Have you ever thought of giving up the internet? Look how it affected Louis CK's daughter. Maybe we could have such an impact on others. Don't go cold turkey or they won't be able to call you in to work when someone fakes sick. Get your hit from the web occasionally but limit yourself from the things Louis talks about. You have experienced them too. Talking to someone who is on their phone or who is just waiting for you to stop blathering so they can get their fix of screen staring. Louis and Conan describe it as one person thinking they are connecting and then dying inside when you cut off that connection in favor of your device. "They just disappear."

I sometimes approach friends who have headphones or earbuds on and their listening to audiobooks, music, podcasts, whatever and I know that if I want to communicate with them their first one or two words will be "What?" So I have to prep myself to repeat what I want to say at least once. Over Thanksgiving how many of you were slaving away in the kitchen doing pies, turkeys, casseroles, veggies and all the customary trimmings? And how many of you time maximisers had your ear pods in? And how many were approached by someone else in the house like, "Hey, Mom. What can I do to help?" "What?" "What can I do to help?" Takes out ear pods. "Sorry honey I can't hear you. What do you need?" "Never mind..." Then you went back to furiously cooking for the whole house and cursing the custom wondering how it became customary for the women to work and the men to play on this holiday and adding sententiously that it sure would be nice if the ungrateful kids would offer to help? And how many, I'm sure we'll never know, of us haven't had such an encounter simply because somebody knew you were listening to your stories?  

I'm not saying that this isn't a bit of fantastical thinking. I see people reading this going, "Yeah that'll be the day! My kids offering to help at Thanksgiving." But you never know if you can't hear them. I see others reading this saying, "Yeah they only do that to cover their asses. They KNOW I'm listening to my music and take that moment to make an offer of help knowing I won't hear it but also knowing that during my upcoming stressed-out rant about how nobody pitches in during the holidays they can honestly say, "I offered to help but you didn't hear me," with angelic, holiday grins. 

See how it happens? See how the stress builds? I'm not even including the ear pod zombie as one of the many ways the internet and technology have made us less empathetic and less appreciative of genuine human contact. I'm not even including this as one of the many ways the relative anonymity of the internet has made us less courteous or even downright rude. But we are becoming accustomed to behavior that borders on the antisocial. 

Nothing against the antisocial, we need them. We need them to fix and maintain the machines that do the antisocial, repetitive, mind-numbing work humans hate. But our future careers, and our kids' future careers lie in the soft skills - the social abilities that computers will probably never become as good at as humans. The tragic irony is that with increased exposure to the internet and technology comes decreased abilities of problem solving, mediation, creative thinking, critical thinking, teamwork, leadership, and other things we learn from being with other people. We are creating customs, and becoming accustomed to them very quickly, like sitting in groups silently staring at phones, texting someone in the next room, spending several hours at a time with online friends instead of real friends and we may be subconsciously excluding ourselves and our kids from experiences that will be extremely valuable to our futures. 

Imagine a future in which people from what used to be called "developed" countries" have become incapable of living with each other and they need to hire (at great expense) social arbitrators who grew up in less technologically advanced countries to solve the problems we create with our silly bickering. It's coming folks. We may not be able to avoid it but we might delay it a bit by slowly weaning ourselves off the internet. But who knows? Maybe it'll come crashing down like the house of cards it is and save us all. 

We shall see how amazing everything really is shan't we? 

My Troubles Are Over

 Like many Americans and Canadians one of my best good friends Heather and I have been trying to solve our cashflow problems and so far our best idea has been the lottery. I've inspected the local lottery and even bought a few tickets. They have more numbers down here! It's HARDER! So that has not proven fruitful.

Our most recent idea has been something called NaNoWriMo. It's an incentive website where people form writing groups and upload their progress on their novels during the month of November. We're already both behind and with my 11th and most intensive M. Ed. course beginning tomorrow, I have my doubts that my book, "The Last Dreamer" is the working title, will ever be completed. Since nobody really reads any more and when they do, it's so often on a device that can play a movie anyway, I see the ultimate goal of novel writing to be having your book bought by Hollywood and made into a movie. In fact I'd settle for Bollywood turning my book into a music and dancing movie, I'm not picky. 

Even though my novel is set sometime in the future when humans have lost the ability to dream and even though it's about a young boy who has miraculously retained this gift and even though it's set in Canada where the Canadian government has set up companies to make fortunes from broadcasting this boy's dreams onto computer screens, interpreting them, and selling the best prognostications to countries that could be impacted by them, I'm finding it difficult to keep current events out of my story. For instance even though "proggers" are about 75% accurate, a recent "prog" proved to be wrong and Hurricane Juan swept across Florida demolishing Mar-a-Lago, the former residence of the originator of K.A. (The Kingdom of America). What has yet to be written is that progging is really 100% but errors... DISASTROUS errors are allowed in order to increase the market value of dream prognostication. But THAT concept is hardly futuristic...

See what I mean? I always seem to circle back to the impending doom that will only make Heather and my cashflow problems worse. So today I got to thinking... 

You're probably thinking I should be writing a fantasy like Lord of the Rings or a children's adventure tale like Harry Potter. A superhero book might sell well while they're hot although the bottom of THAT barrel has been scraped pretty clean. Squirrel Girl, Arm-Fall-Off Boy, Maggott, Bird Brain, Glitter Girl, Door Man, Dog Welder, and maybe my fave, Matter-Eater Lad. Check them out. These are not made up! The Simpsons superhero Lard Lad could be the next successful Simpsons spinoff! I haven't read any Matter-Eater Lad but I imagine if there's something the matter, he'll just eat it. He'll be a massively obese Everyman sort of hero. lol And how super could Arm-Fall-Off Boy be? I gotta check those out!

Sure enough, Arm-Fall-Off Boy's arm detaches with a "plorp" and he can beat opponents with it. To be fair, he WAS rejected by the Legionnaires...

No, my idea is even more super than Arm-Fall-Off Boy who, tell me if you agree, looks like he's old enough to be Arm-Fall-Off Man doesn't he? At any rate, I won't take off my arm and beat you about the head with this side-idea any longer. My REAL idea came to me this morning when I heard that Marco Rubio was chosen to be Trump's Secretary of State. Trump calls Rubio "Little Marco" and makes fun of his big ears. Rubio calls Trump vulgar and offensive and makes fun of his little hands. A match made in Heaven to be sure!

JD Vance, Trump's vice called him a "moral disaster," "reprehensible," "cultural heroin," "total fraud," "cynical asshole," and  "America's Hitler." Vice President Flippety Flop. THERE'S a good superhero name!

Kristi Noem, who Trump might nickname "Killer Noem" had a dog named Cricket that she called "untrainable" in her book. So she shot her dog. Now she'll be in charge of homeland security. Anybody caught crossing the border more than once might be considered by her to be "untrainable." Who knows?

Robert F. Kennedy called Trump a "terrible human being," "unhinged," "barely coherent," and "probably a sociopath." Trump called him a "radical left lunatic." Kennedy said that under no circumstances would he join a Trump presidential ticket. Buuuuuut Trump promised to let Kennedy "go wild" on healthcare. 

You may know Kennedy as that roadkill guy or the one with a worm in his brain. Now he's likely to become - you guessed it - a member of the Trump presidential ticket. My favourite quirk about Kennedy is not those two stories or his ideas of making vaccines a little less "sciency," it's his anti-fluoridization stance. I can't help thinking that maybe Kennedy has seen the following speech one or two times too many. Hell he even has a striking resemblance to Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper! Do you suppose he blames the Russians for contaminating our "precious bodily fluids?"  

I'm telling you, if this wasn't all so tragic, it'd be fucking hilarious! Soon Trump will appoint as secretary of education someone like Alfred E. Newman, Beavis or Butthead, Curly or Larry or Moe, Don Quixote, Jar Jar Binx, or... ummmm... Betsy Devos. Soon he'll appoint Jimmy Kimmel as his secretary of pro-Trump propaganda. Soon he'll appoint Secretariat as his secretary.

Well I'm not going to sit back and let this opportunity pass me by. Neither is Heather. We have abandoned our fledgling novels in their infancies to embark upon more modern and lucrative enterprises. Nobody reads anyway. We are going to start uploading vids absolutely slagging Trump. It's something we're already good at. It's always fun. And we're both constantly in front of our computers anyway.

This is a cinch! First we will need to get Trump's attention. We'll need a good jab like Kimmel's "Isn't it past your jail time?" We'll know we've been successful when he gives us nicknames. Nothing too clever, but something just a bit beyond "Poopy ca-ca head." I imagine he'll call me Dummy Dave or Dopey Dave and Heather will get Hosebag Heather or Heather the poopy ca-ca head. Yeah, I change my mind. He's NOT beyond Poopy ca-ca head.

So then we can update our YouTube handles in ironic reverence to his nickname prowess. We'll get more followers. Some who like us and some Magaflakes who hate us. Then the money will start coming in. YouTube will recognize our popularity with small cash rewards. 2-12 bucks for every 1000 views can really add up!

Once we're established we could even make vids as a team. Join forces and increase our viewership. We might even be so hated by the new administration "Season 2 of the Celebrity Appotus" that we will receive financial backing from liberals and left-wing activists. 

The ultimate goal, and I see this as being a lot more achievable than a successful novel, would be for Trump to hate us SOOOO much, he'll give us cabinet positions. All we'll need to do then is completely flip-flop, start cranking out theater like all the flunkies currently associated with him (except maybe his wife. Models seldom make good actresses.) and we're on Easy Street.

I'd better get busy. Forget this blogging shit, there's vlogging to be done!

WTF

 The first thing I want to say is:

I remember having faith in the people of America. Maybe because I have met some Americans who are above average. Turns out I didn't know how far above average they were. I say this with the tiniest morsel of respect that is due, you fucking, fucking morons! You got the leader you think you wanted. I'm talking about the vast majority of the people who voted for this convict out on bail. "I voted for the convict." "I'm voting for the convicted felon." The hats and T-shirts are selling like hotcakes to those who are not taking this election seriously. They like this orange meatball because he pisses off people they don't like. Well THAT'S worth a vote isn't it? Fucking cretinous numbskulls. Soon they won't have the spare cash to buy that kind of merch. But they'll blame that on Biden I'm sure the same way they blame the Trump Covid crash on Biden. This was the largest single day drop in the history of the DOW. March 16, 2020. This made the rich richer and Trump will do it again. This time he won't have a pandemic to blame it on, but he's got more power now so he doesn't fucking care! Trump vs. the United States saw to that. A supreme court that he had previously loaded voted on making it okay for the POTUS to fracture a few laws here and there. 

The only people who voted for Trump intelligently are the super rich. They should have been the ONLY ones voting for Trump. Why? Because he's gonna crash the economy. You know this "plan" he has been hinting at? The one with tariffs? He'll put huge tariffs on anything foreign (except his Trump Bibles and other merchandise made in China of course). There is no doubt about the effect this "concept of a plan" will have. Take it from some Nobel prize winning economists:

Next year when you are dumpster diving and collecting food stamps, at least you'll be able to have a good laugh at the vote you cast for this con man convict. You might even still have the T-shirt. Most likely by then you'll be so mad at Trump you will want to have him thrown in jail... which is where he WOULD be if he hadn't been elected you witless buffoons! 

I was watching the election coverage yesterday and it was repeatedly reported that the number one and two issues on voters' minds were the economy and democracy. I ASSUMED the electorate were going to be smart enough to vote for the candidate who would have been far and away better for the economy... but I was wrong. I saw a couple with a few kids and one on the way interviewed after voting. The husband was a business owner and he said he voted for Trump because his business was struggling during the Biden presidency. Probably blaming Biden unfairly and he probably jumped on the Covid supply chain excuse bandwagon and raised his prices knee-jerkily right into a downturn in profit. Probly blamed THAT on Biden too. And his wife was nodding and agreeing and his 4 kids will likely be told how Biden hurt them. You think you have hard time NOW.... you stunned schmucks!

And how about democracy? The guardrails of government that protect democracy have been removed. Trump doesn't like neutral rules of governance. They obstruct his ability to rule like his non-democratic heroes Shi Jin Ping, Vlad Putin, Kim Jung Un, Hitler, and the late great Hannibal Lecter. Here's a vid that explains it well. Particularly the last parts labelled "tariffs" and "government." 

This guy who should be in prison is going to run the US like a dic(k)tator and he's got the power now to do it. "Only he who does not desire power is fit to wield it." This guy has broners for the dicktators who have most irresponsibly abused power AND he needs the power of the presidency to keep himself out of prison. Does anyone desire power MORE? He'll probably pardon himself. And maybe other co-conspirators. Then imprison his detractors like a good dicktator. Maybe he'll remove term limits like his buddies Putin, Shi, and even Orban. He'll probably invent new ways to abuse his power. The effects will not happen in a vacuum. The US, like it or not, has the most influence of any country on the rest of the world. I can foresee little to no positive influence forthcoming, but maybe I'm just thinking negatively. 

Anyone see an upside to this? 

Addendum: I usually remember my dreams. They never have any real significance. Like the other night I dreamt Kelly handed me some butter that was soft and I told him to put it on the middle shelf in the fridge which was completely empty. You KNOW that was a dream! lol But I am living with an American family that is fortunate and smart and hardworking enough to have a constantly full fridge. So maybe that dream DID have some significance. 

 I got up at my usual 4:30 early thinking/writing time today, the second day after Doomsday, after having a dream that was not really a nightmare, just a feeling of frustration and helplessness that shocked me awake. I was in a theater or an auditorium somewhere and I was the only one making any noise. I was talking or breathing or something and noticed that the hundreds or even thousands of people surrounding me were dead silent. I mean I got the feeling they COULDN'T make noise. It was so strange! Not just the alienation of being alone in a huge crowd but the correlation to real life I almost never get from my dreams. THIS is the feeling I am having right now. It's like I'm the only one taking this election of Trump seriously. I know I'm not and I'm with other people who recognize the gravity of this election, which is comforting, but that seems all we can do: huddle together and comfort ourselves while the thousands of voiceless zombies around us go down with the sinking world we're on. Is this too dark and pessimistic? I don't think so, but maybe I'm wrong.

I saw Jimmy Kimmel trying to make sense of this and like my other news anchors, Seth Rogan, Stephen Colbert, and the crew of the Daily Show, he just couldn't. Then he went out to the streets and interviewed the public asking, "Today, November 6th, are you going to vote?" and "Do you think Biden or Trump will win?" We don't get to see how long it took for his crew to find these clueless folks but it would probably be depressingly fast. They had people saying they were going to vote and they walked past the line-ups at the polls and they think Biden will win and they wish Kamala Harris well and how important it is to get out and vote because there are a lot of rights on the line... 

If you know me well enough you know I do not believe the lesson we should be learning from this is that we should vote. It IS the lesson many will try to derive from this state of affairs, but it's the wrong one. There was one tattooed kid with big O's in his earlobes that said, "I don't believe in voting because it's the higher-ups on Wall Street that run the show." They made a joke by saying, "And they don't listen to us, right? They need bigger ears." ha ha ha. The thing is, that kid is right. When you have a feckless, soulless husk of a man who could be the author of the end of the world running for the most powerful position of leadership in that world and all you have to combat him is an almost completely disempowered vote, you realize there needs to be a better way of doing things. But that's the noise I have been making since I started this blog and it has made me feel like I felt in my dream. A lone voice in a sea of apathetic silence. Here's the Kimmel:

And here's a quote from Noam Chomsky, "An uninformed electorate votes against its best interests." Is that what happened? I'm not even sure of THAT. Here's another statement that was made by someone we all know - can you guess who said it? If there were fair elections the Republicans would never win. I can't put quotes around it because the person probably didn't use those exact words. I'm quoting another person quoting him. It was Donald Trump. This didn't stop him from crying foul when he lost, but I don't hear him crying foul now. 

Elections in general and particularly the ones in the US are too important for the rich to leave to the electorate. There is no way that Trump in the Whitehouse is what the majority of America sees as a good thing. I just can't believe immigrants are voting for a guy with KKK in his blood and his henchman from the country of apartheid who will cut 2 trillion in unnecessary programs from the federal budget. They may be uninformed, but not THAT uninformed. I can't see women voting for a guy who has pledged to take their rights away and is an infamously misogynistic scumbag . They may be uninformed, but not THAT uninformed. But that's what their owners are giving them and telling them to like. "Nothing like this happens in functioning, developed countries." Maybe it's time for America to face the hard fact that it is NOT a functioning, developed country. It goes so far beyond the vote! Fix your broken democracy that is all about greed and money and power that comes with wealth and THEN the vote will mean something. I am not the only one who feels this way. Here's another voice in the silence:

This is what Noam said back in Trump's FIRST stint as president. I can only imagine how he feels right now. 

But back to that family... I love them very much and felt gutted when I woke up to the news that Trump had been placed in the position of power he so richly does not deserve. Of all the families I know, this family will be most impacted by this tin pot dictatorship. Jobs will be erased by Elon Musk's "fat" trimming, careers will be destroyed before they start, health will suffer due to pre-existing conditions, and the economy crash on TOP of all that... this is hurting my friends. Directly. I think there are few people who DON'T have loved ones that will be hurt by this. Votes have proven impotent. NOW what are we gonna do about it? Does ANYbody really believe the country of America that is SO proud of their "freedom" and "democracy" said, "What the heck, let's try this strongman thing."??? Come ON!!!

Rachel Maddow has some advice for practically the whole world, not just the Americans who are going to get fucked by this crap. Time to be frickin' pirates. And THIS is what I've been saying for years. Maybe it's starting to sink in...