Sheep & Goats (Full Moon).

Lookout! The living-dead are on the loose!

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Indeed, on the 17th will begin the Chinese lunar Year of the Sheep, Year of the Goat, or Year of the Ram - as you like. In Portuguese, however, 'carneiro' is specifically a male sheep or ram, with 'ovelha' for the generic, 'bode' for billy goat and 'cabra' for nanny goat. One of those little linguistic cracks that let in the light. :-) [Letting in light for the dim dills eh? As usual I've got it wrong and make little or no sense. And yet, all pretentions revealed ... even imagining these cracks is a comfort.]

And worse still considering the likes of Canada's Ludicrous Left which is as much behind building pipelines as the rest of the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers. There is a HUGE turd coming down the pipe (followed by many more), officially unacknowledged and popularly not hardly understood, but it's there on the periphery of the Zeitgeist and soon to be a central feature (and soon after that 'the' central feature). It's in the consciousness and no accident that Gwynne Dyer began to take the environmental catastrophe seriously when he noticed his chums in senior security positions doing so.

Most of you will make out the fellow to the left as a Republican, but some of Joep Bertrams' acronyms may not be familiar: Pegida, PVV, FN, and UKIP. And there are others popping up every day (reminiscent of Edward Lear: "And thick and fast they came at last, and more, and more, and more!"). Neo-Nazis of one flavour and another, Stephen Harper's Conservatives of course, and whatever Tony Abbott's party is called. It would be bad enough if these were nutbar fringes, but it's mainstream in Canada & Australia and increasingly so elsewhere.

 

Belt tightening in a home economy, at the scale of one or several individuals or a family, even some certain small neighbourhoods, can be accomplished without immediate blood letting. At larger scales I think not. At larger scales it's police and the army and vigilantes and gangs of thugs. A suite of Laerte on the general theme (a ram in this case): What cracks nuts: Nutcracker! Nutcracker! Speak to me nutcracker. The magic is gone. Will it be the year of the ram? The Ram - One Act:         Study         Pain         Applause         Immortality The Ram - Second One Act: EMPOWERMENT STATION      Fill the tank.      More!      More. The Ram - One Act No. 3:             Do the possible and you will get the probable. The Ram - One Act IV:             Forgetting the causes does not cancel the effects. The Ram - One Act Vol. 7:         This is the historical moment. This is the historical place. I just don't feel like it.   The Twilight Zone (indeed) I:

Brian Gable's effort comes from 2013 - so, a perspicacious fellow then, is Mister Gable. Watching the whole State of the Union speech several times I see a good man, worn out and looking for a Flander's Fields moment. No one in sight to pass the torch to though ... Oh well.

The Twilight Zone (indeed) II: Why do we hate the politicians (when we do hate them) so viscerally? Is it that they (the ones we hate) lie so transparently and so continuously that our psyches are forced into a lower register? The phrase 'dead cat bounce' turned up in The Globe and Mail. Quite forthright talk for Crowley or whatever his name is to permit on his pages. See: Crude oil prices gain for second day: A bottom or a ‘dead cat bounce’?. 'Hog cycle' is another one: Oil's 'hog cycle' smacks Canada but in this case the columnist is touting the Bank of Canada deputy governor, Timothy Lane. I am hoping that his 'hog cycle' analysis is optimistic and that the decline hovers just above drop dead until the greed heads have squandered all their cash and wind up in the welfare line (with me). It hardly got started ... ... and 2015 has already crashed.   But Adão exaggerates. It hasn't missed, yet. 2015 is the last chance saloon sure enough but it's got some months to go. Gonna be what they call in the trade a 'cliff hanger'. (David Wilson)   I wonder if readers find this blog irritating in the way that I often find Doctor Who irritating?

 
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Oh k-k-k-Canada, they've got you upside down.

Doolally tap.
Up-a-daisey! 

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[Who says no good comes from TV? The phrase 'doolally tap' is used in one of the silly soaps I spend my life watching these days. Deolali is a British army camp in India from the time of the Raj, not far from Bombay & Bhopal. Tap, tapa is Persian & Sanskrit for 'fever'. 'Doolally tap' then, is British army slang for 'going postal' (or simply mad).]

 

Not EVERY Canadian. Try this:                                                                       Who's gonna stand up?    Other versions: orchestral, With Crazy Horse, and solo.       A-and: Fork in the Road.

We can quibble if you like over 'save the earth', 'save ourselves', 'save humanity', whatever. Here's a series you won't soon guess: 7, 11, 13, 17, 22. Seven & eleven are lucky numbers, thirteen is normally an unlucky number but maybe not for those born on that day, seventeen is a prime number I happen to like, twenty two is the top of 22/7 an approximation of pi (the number that contains all numbers). Taken together they are the dates on which the blog will be published this month. See how simpleminded it's become. :-) Found in an OED citation:   "The most labyrinthine acrobatic choreography — a tortuous series of slithers, blind leaps, upsy-daisy lifts, and ass-over-heels floorwork." (The New Yorker, 1984) Confession: (I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK.) Darling, I have to tell you something. I'm not a lumber-sexual. I'm just a wood-cutter. "Faire is foule, and foule is faire." Canada is upside down, inverted, backwards, fucked-up: Our governments don't give a rat's ass for the environment or for us. What they do care about is anybody's guess - probably continued affluence and hope for the odd blow-job. Speaking of which: All levels of morality are given lip service and no more. On November 11 shortly before noon we stand with tears in our eyes - and that's the extent of it. You may wonder how the demise of the CBC is related. We might say good riddance to bad rubbish as they simultaneously implode and explode (much like a kicked-in TV tube). Fact is the information deficit might have been alleviated, mitigated by a public broadcaster worthy of the name. Barbara Frum was one of those but she and her generation are long gone. It's Hamlet ("to be or not to be") AND Macbeth ("faire is foule, and foule is faire, houer through the fogge and filthie ayre") all rolled up into one.   Exeunt. Always keep in mind that these pipelines are not designed to bring oil to Canadians: The jobs that are supposed to come from all of this ... are grossly overestimated & exaggerated by proponents as is the resulting prosperity 'human flourishing' and what not. The unions are (quite naturally) trying to hang on to more than their share. Government propaganda (lies) is identical with corporate rationale (lies): I've looked high and low and cannot find the "seven criteria for the Energy East pipeline" laid out by Quebec and endorsed by Ontario ANYWHERE. They are mentioned and loads of pundit jizz are spent in the general area but no actual expression of what they are. Kathleen Wynne has already begun to backtrack apparently. If anyone reads this who knows where the seven pillars of this wisdom can be found please let me know. Given all the hyperbole, some sensible talk about oil prices from Mark Jaccard is in order. And some more-or-less enlightening remarks - if mostly by reflection, and after you discount that the author wants it both ways. Both of these bits are in the Globe, Imagine! The UN flogging a dead horse (at great expense):

A problem not to be solved by national governments & bureaucracies nor by international governments & international bureaucracies. Surely this has been sufficiently demonstrated over more than two decades. Jim Hansen sounded the official warning in 1988. It was well understood years before that. Let's say thirty years of official incompetence (greed, inertia, complacency, wishful thinking, diplomatic forbearance ... whatever). Well then ... what kind of thing could possibly solve it? [When I ask this question people back away from me holding their fingers crossed in front of them, and as soon as I begin sketching out the hypotheticals I'm able to imagine they turn and leave.] If there were time then the adoption of renewable energy (which is already more than doubling every year) combined with drastic birth-rate controls and effective (Fee & Dividend) carbon pricing could do it. But there is neither political will nor time. What else? 1) Economic collapse. 2) Plague, pandemic, what you will. 3) Widespread and general sedition, revolt, revolution. A-and, it's got to be sooner rather than later. These are all projects beyond planning & executing. Anyway, the Black Death reached England in 1348, more than thirty years before the Peasants' Revolt in 1381 and the revolt did not succeed nevermind we don't have thirty years. Take Canada (Please! :-). A national election is coming, possibly within a year. But both of the main alternatives to Stephen Harper's Conservative sleveens - the Liberals with Justin Sinclair and the lame left with whazizname Tom Mulcair - endorse similar energy & economic policies including tar sands development and pipelines. Jobs! and Growth! One could wish for some electoral miracle that would give control to Elizabeth May and Bruce Hyer. But I went up during the last two elections to visit the Green candidate(s) in my riding ... and neither of 'em understood the kind of jeopardy humanity is facing, or if they did their policies didn't show it. Say something! Tell me I'm crazy.         I wish I were.

How ridiculous! The [drug] traffic controls all of society. We're hostages. They control cities, corrupt the authorities, murder innocent people with impunity ... Burn busses, bring down military helicopters ... There are even people who promote the legalization of drugs as the only way to stop the traffic. Really?! Nonsense! Who could believe that? A bunch of idiots who want to take the country into anarchy. [The Brasilian pronunciation of 'absurdo' includes a kind of silent 'i', the stress is on the long 'u', and there is a tiny roll on the 'r' - so it sounds like abiss-ÚÚÚrrdo. Delightful!] THIS is the future we are passing to our children and theirs:

 
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