Shoures soote. A (vernal) toss-up.

(The voice of the turtle revises all.)

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Who knew that French cartoonist tOad had visited Toronto since John Tory was elected mayor? (Image right.) Dreading the coming of spring all winter. Then there's some mild weather and the grackles arrive squabbling outside the window one morning in early March (coming in like a lamb). Back to sleep and wake with 'Masters of War' playing on the inside radio. A short step to "April is the cruellest month," but morning coffee and a smoke comes back, counters with "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote," and it's a (vernal) toss-up. 'Soote' is still in the OED. Imagine! I hope that you die And your death'll come soon. I'll follow your casket On that pale afternoon. I'll watch while you're lowered Down to your death bed And I'll stand over your grave Till I'm sure that you're dead. DON'T EVER LET THEM SAY WE DIDN'T KNOW. WE ALL KNEW. AND YOU KNOW THIS IS TRUE         TOO. Then herself sings 'She Moved Through the Fair' and it all shifts into a minor key where it has stuck these several weeks. And no aides memoire to be had from Sinéad O'Connor nor Loreena McKennitt and their fuckin' echo machines. And it's not even April yet. The chief boo hoo mucky-muck over at The Guardian is retiring and, concerned about his legacy has begun (what I think he might call) a 'serious series'. One can at least applaud the forthright transparency of his faulty far-too-late rationale. Intro. Alan Rusbridger March 6; 1. Naomi Klein March 6; 2. Naomi Klein March 8; 3. Bill McKibben March 9; 4. George Monbiot March 10. Bill McKibben still claims he wrote the "first book," or he cares who wrote the first book or some fuckin' thing. I have yet to read anything by this man in which he does not mention this lie but it is just as untrue (and irrelevant) as it ever was. Oh, and he presents yet another positive spin-cycle, raised in a laundromat perhaps, or reading too much Paul Hawken. If wishes were horses beggars would ride. Whatever is driving Alan Rusbridger seems to run its course and lose headway, drift off into an eddy. He shifts gears and promises another series - podcasts this time. The whole presentation is strangely disorganized, unfocussed; as if he's literally winging it. Very odd. The links in the emails don't seem to work properly. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt - perhaps he sees what's called for - massive civil disobedience mobilization, call it CD+ - and just hasn't got the balls to say it; perhaps he's retiring because he's ill. Who knows? He's been head Guardian goombah for two decades - most likely he's feeling guilty for having warmed the chair for so long. And so are we all if we're honest. He didn't do it when he had anything to lose though. I believe people who behave like that are known as dilettantes by the educated, and fuckin' booge-was wankers by arseholes like me. George Monbiot talks about "intelligent, educated, well-paid and elegantly-dressed people wasting their lives." I know I will never be forgiven for wondering if this editor and these writers and associated stoop&fetchits are doing the same. Oh sure, another welfare-case nutbar, another crazed angry old man best ignored.

OK. WHOA! HOLD ON A SEC HERE. Years ago (it seems) I chase the United Church on fossil fuel divestment and get nowhere. Their justice focus at the time is all about Sid Ryan and boycotting Israel. It's so ridiculous. I meet Desmond Parsons. Who can bear talking with these people? Their moderator flies to Durban in 2011 and comes away praising Peter Kent (see here). Doh! Then last summer Trinity St. Paul's (TSP) United Church achieves some kind of divestment success (see here). I go along to the local church and get turned off, turned away, something like that. I email the guy at TSP but he mistakes me for a person of my name who edits the UC Observer and when I clear that up he lets the conversation drop. I mean to find out more, visit the church, but never get around to it. Now, despite initial skepticism, the Guardian initiative is looking more-and-more real: they (we?) are taking on Bill Gates and the billionaires; Ed Davey looks like he's on board; 100,000 petition signers within just a few days. Wowzers! It comes to me that divestment could be exactly the movement-building tactic that's needed, simply because there are possible, small, intermediate victories. Positive feedback! It could even (could it?) grow so quickly in the few months remaining as to overcome. Holy Shit! On Paddy's Day evening I go up to the East End Against Line 9 meeting (they've been praised here before) because I want to be sure they know. I get the bum's rush and stumble out and I'm not laughing. I walk most of the way home in a terrible state, awful, and when I wake in the night for a piss it's shin splints and I nearly pitch into the tub headforemost. It might be a near-death experience. This turns to good though. Just what the doctor ordered! Just the ticket! Now I'm laffin'. SO. I'm gonna leave Alan Rusbridger here for for a bit. He seems to've made a close alliance with Bill McKibben. This may be a mistake. Time will tell. I think I can survive on food-bank & welfare through April so there's a month to play with. I'll go up to Sunday service at Trinity St. Paul's. Even the new-age wanks (still) shove in the odd Wesley hymn sometimes and they probably (still) offer coffee & cookies afterwards. See where it goes and if they need any help. I'll contact the woman at Beaches United again with a qualified apology, and then see if there can be a renewed conversation. See if the UofT divestment committee holds meetings. A three-point plan.   :-)   (Plus the search for the Green Party already underway. The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew. I'll leave what was already into this post where it is - for perspective - and, report back after a while, at the end of March.

Just listen (even if it chokes you) to Chris Hedges talking with Abby Martin and then show me how to realistically walk around what they're saying. Gus Speth in the last chapter of 'The Bridge at the Edge of the World writes in 2007:         It is easy to push these challenges out of one's mind. Life for many of us is comfortable, and dwelling on such disturbing material is painful. Indeed, one still hears with regularity that it is a mistake to stress these gloomy and doomy realities if one wants to motivate people. In The Death of Environmentalism Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus remind us, for example, that Martin Luther King, Jr., did not proclaim, "I have a nightmare." My reply to them was that he did not need to say it - his people were living a nightmare. They needed a dream. But we, I fear, are living a dream. We need to be reminded of the nightmare ahead. Here is the truth as I see it: we will never do the things that are needed unless we know the full extent of our predicament. He is a lawyer and yet, as this last sentence is brief and unequivocal it merits repeated savouring: Here is the truth as I see it: we will never do the things that are needed unless we know the full extent of our predicament. Or, as the Christians like to say, "The truth shall set you free." But he evidently thinks we have more time than we do; and he, like McKibben, thinks the 'transformative process' is slow and gradual - never having considered (apparently) how long it took the Cuban Special Period to kick off, or never having played crack-the-whip as a kid. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. Two articles by Gwynne Dyer: How far will oil prices collapse—and for how long?, October 2014; and, How long will the oil stay cheap?, March 2015. He thinks (or wishes he thought) the drop-dead date is twenty-five years away and I think it's this year. I've put this here because we agree that our eminently venal governments will do what it takes to keep the frackers fracking (and the pipe lines piping and the train bombs bombing). Two books, both from the 70s really though one is published only in 1985: Ecotage! Sam Love and David Obst, 1972; and, Ecodefense - A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, Dave Foreman & Bill Haywood (editors), 1985. No copies of Ecotage anywhere that I can see. Ecodefense you can still find on-line as of this posting. But really, you don't need 'em anyway. There's been enough articles and enough books and well more than enough. I was there at the time but on the other side - setting chokers for MacMillan-Bloedel & the IWA. I was there and missed my chance (like Lord Jim on the Patna though out of concupiscence not fear). In the 70s, 80s, even the 90s, we might have turned it around that way. Now gentle reader I sincerely don't believe there are any more realistic chances. Now the Tragedy of the Commons becomes the tragedy of everything. The end. Oh sure, I could be wrong. Apaga la tele / Turn off the screen [and find something else to do, alone if necessary].

Noght o word spak he more than was nede, And that was seyd in forme and reverence, And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence. Souninge in moral vertu was his speche, And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

The Tyger Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire in thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, and what art? Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand, and what dread feet? What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb, make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

 
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Aha! It ain't necessarily cyclical!

It's a cook book!                           
(Costing not less than everything.)

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The rainman gave me two clues: (and I, jumped right in) 1) A conversation overheard:   Walking down the street just before Christmas two people are discussing 'Inherent Vice' - the film! One says to the other, "No one thought anything by Pynchon could ever be made into a film ..." 2) Finite tilings:   Extending the edges of polygons generates tilings in which some regions are bounded and some are not but where the number of regions is finite. Two lines which are not parallel cross only once. These models do not require fastening but ¾" clips are useful during construction, as is carpenter's white (beige) glue at the outer crossings if you want them to last when handled (although they tend to stay together if left clipped for a day or two until the weave sets firmly in). Coffee stir-sticks only serve well up to 7-gons. After that they must be spliced which makes the models less pleasing (to me at least), less ... appealing. The 9-gon/nonagon/enneagon may be of particular interest to Bahá'ís in light of the new temple nearing completion in Chile. Also interesting in containing three triangles - equilateral triangles in the case of a regular nonagon.

3 7 1 +   6=3*2 4 9 1 +   8=4*2 5 16 1 + 5*1 +  10=5*2 6 19 1 + 6*1 +  12=6*2 7 29 1 + 7*1 +  14=7*2 8 33 1 + 16=8*2 +  16=8*2 9 46 1 + 27=9*3 +  18=9*2 10 51 1 + 30=10*3 + 20=10*2 11 67 1 + 44=11*4 + 22=11*2 12 73 1 + 48=12*4 + 24=12*2 13 92 1 + 65=13*5 + 26=13*2 14 xx 1 + xx=14*x + 28=14*2

Of course there must be a formula to get these numbers - but the squash is not equal to such a task anymore (if it ever was). The models can also be fun as frisbees - tossed at the wall they ... explode. Delightful! :-) These next few are examples of what I call flags, banners. What they are are variations on the minimum stable possibility - four struts - and worth remembering simply because they are limiting cases. I like 'em. I have one in the back window. My son, looking up from the lane, saw it there - and he likes it too. 3) "Fish-fingers and custard" (Amelia Pond): I could be wrong, there might've been three clues. The yam started six years ago - a volunteer sprout on the kitchen countertop as it was waiting to go into the soup. I bought a largeish rectangular pot to fit on the windowsill and stuck it in. It gets water from the aquarium and the odd flick of cigarette ash - and a few verses of 'Sisters of Mercy' once in a while (elas vão prendê-lo com amor que é gracioso e verde como um caule). At first it grew vine-wise: the topmost leader feeling around for something above it and when I put a stick there curling and climbing on up. Over the years it grew many times back and forth over the window but the climbing behaviour slowly reduced till in September a new leader began as a stationary clump. I thought this change meant impending death (truth be told) but as you can see it's still going. There are many cycles we normally know - day, month, season, year, sometimes longer (june bug flights, cicadas' singing &c.), human generations: brothers & sisters, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, as well as age-groups in tribal cultures - and others we have stumbled upon scientifically - el niño/la niña, lunar (19 years) and solar (28 years), Milankovitch, glaciation, elemental geological cycles of carbon & phosphorous, ice ages and geological epochs. It's enough to imprint cyclic events into the central symmetry processing circuits, dominantly. There are Northrop Frye's modes. I can't remember if they repeat. Are there three or four? Or six? ... metonymic, hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic? (It has taken weeks of mental Aikido for these terms to float up out of the molasses murk.) Then ... Anne Tyng's historical spiral (which happens to be where this misbegotten string of thoughts actually began). Now, a spiral is somewhat but not strictly cyclic. More along the lines of comme ci, comme ça and que sera sera. Teilhard de Chardin's development from geology to the Noosphere isn't even a spiral - it's ... linear. Same goes for the entire myth-of-progress-and-human-perfectability shebang - straight line. Lines is one thing - first coming, second coming and eternity for the elect - but lines that end? Uh oh! Planets go approximately round and round, comets elliptically ... asteroids? Some of 'em end as shooting stars and some as craters don't they? Curved line with a full stop. Life has been evolving on the planet for four billion years or so (in a universe 13 billion years old - they say). The estimated planetary lifetime is twice that - about eight billion years (dependent upon a relatively local fusion reactor), but the planet itself goes on, or at least the matter in it does. Waddabout the Big Bang? Is it a BANG-whoosh-whoops-wheeze-BANG-whoosh-whoops-wheeze- sorta cosmic Model A kinda sorta thing? Or is it a k-k-k-crank-KAPOW and Riddley Walker's 1 Big 1, a single backfire? The natural macrocosm might be cyclic (even though folks like our Northrop will tell you that's just a metaphor, a fabrication, an artefact built for comfort not accuracy). A microcosm lifetime definitely isn't. It may have been a grave mistake to get so ... (what to call it?) 'involved' (?) in thinking about the environmental Armagedd-i-on catastrophe, even if it does mean extinction. Demonstrably better (by far) to indulge & pursue well-founded self-interest, cash for dental emergencies, megabucks even, blow-jobs at the ready, choice & flexibility ... mmmmmmm ... Easy to make a mistake. Easy to confuse & get things turned 'round backwards: vitiate (viciate) from latin 'vice': to render incomplete, imperfect, or faulty; to impair or spoil; to corrupt, deflower or violate; to render of no effect, invalidate either completely or in part (legal instrument or force); to render inconclusive or unsatisfactory (argument); to adulterate; to alter feloniously. enervate (a 'nerve' being first a sinew or tendon and only later an electrical canal): to cut the tendons of, to hamstring, hough (a horse); to emasculate; to weaken physically; to impair the strength of; to weaken mentally or morally; to destroy the capacity for vigorous effort of intellect or will; to destroy the force of (argument, testimony, &c.); to destroy the grounds of (doctrine, opinion); to render ineffectual (law, an authority, an opponent's efforts, etc.); to disparage the power or value of. For, say, vitalise and energise. If only: If only it were limited to the NSA & CIA, or even America, or even ... North America, or the 'western' elites, or ... or, or. But it's the whole fricken' shebang, the whole shitteree. I think this is not misogyny at all but (has become) misanthropy, a more general kind of (mixed) feeling having nothing at all to do with sex. "The answer is that these imbecile words are euphemisms for manic-depressive highs and lows, and that anyone who struggles for sanity avoids both." I had this message from him years ago. You'd think I might've heard it by now eh? Mind you, he was talking about 'some contemporary situation' and while this environmental catastrophe is definitely a situation, and contemporary in a way, it is not necessarily a cycle and so perhaps ... different. UNFCCC UNFCUC UNFUCT UNFCOF! [Realizing that it may not be cyclic feels something like the first reading of A.S. Byatt's 'Ragnarok', mixed with the horror of watching a Twilight Zone episode 'How To Serve Man' in 1962 (when TV was still new) and she calls to him as he walks up the ramp into the spaceship, "It's a cook book!" It used to be received wisdom that adolescents (and then twenty- and then thirty-somethings) are immortal, an almost sentimental philosophy. Now death is officially become a professional event, put so far away that the notion of actual or 'real' mortality is (even as observed here a year ago) interpreted as obscenity. The tune emerges over several weeks, almost a month (believe it or not), at first just a rhythm - dah dah dum dum dah dah dum dum dah dah-dah-dah dah-dah-dah dah dum dum - which resolves with excruciating slowness into 'Christmas in Killarney'. At first I think it's to do with 'Brigadoon', download and watch the film, a week spent just in that. Brigadoon, 1954, with an already complete myth of New York City as poisonous & effectively defunct. Someone who actually knows anything, say, Noam Chomsky or Jakke Straw, might laugh and say "1954!? It was well before that you silly wanker!" I'm afraid the human world is ending. Easy enough to say, "Well, your world certainly is," and leave it at that. Maybe add, "Good riddance!" or better still ... shunning & silence with no comeback, and good of a certain kind to be had in schadenfreude (taking malicious pleasure in the misfortune of others). A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one. I am increasingly overwhelmed by grief and particularly (I think, because) I am grieving alone. ]

 
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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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