Leftovers - turns on a hair.

Up, Down]

I'm junk; But I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet. Leonard Cohen, 'Democracy'   Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labour, and my leisure too, For his civility. "Death - Emily Dickenson

------------------- If and when this post shows up - then I've either figgured out something fundamental and decided not to tell you about it, or been overtaken by events. I do, strongly, recommend a serious listen to some of the early Bob Dylan albums: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, John Wesley Harding, & Blood On The Tracks - and the others as well of course :-) Be well gentle reader. Other notions considered:

   • 'I'm sorry' repeated endlessly: I'm sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry I'm sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry I'm sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry I'm ... ... sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry ... (Oh!) ... I'm sorry.

 

   • vaginal wrench: ... in the 60s women begin to talk to one another, network, smoke dope together, and up spring approximately two feminist narratives: one broadly humanist and the other bitter more-or-less-concealed revenge, that the revenge might be justifiable (not justified but -able) is neither here nor there and the humanists 'understand'     Meanwhile, men continue to suck it up, become solitary alcoholics and die young leaving Royal Bank & Exxon shares in trust funds to support their (erstwhile) princesses become vicious & heartless crones disguised as fairy godmothers.     In the 80s & 90s it's payback time, Bobbit loses his knob, many others their children and homes, descent into bureaucratic slavery, woe betide if you demur at the feminist loyalty-oath rallies.     But there's guilt involved (guilt on one side, shame on the other), most of it can neither be stated nor acknowledged in public or anywhere else, no problem: create an ideology of perfectly unctuous correctitude & brutally enforced positive thinking, and ancillary structures like 'don't explain, don't complain' and it all goes quietly under the rug and into a new millennium.     The environmental apocalypse is underwritten by psychosexual collapse and related consumerist compensations (Corvettes & frozen food sections in supermarkets with lasagna cheesecake & Häagen-Dazs). And yes gentle reader, it is an existential conundrum. See 'In Watermelon Sugar' & consider Brautigan's suicide.

 

   • toilets: (porcelain) flush toilets don't fricken' work (!) and neither do the official alternatives (which are bollocks!) - 'The Challenges of Urban Ecological Sanitation: Lessons from the Erdos Eco-Town Project' Arno Rosemarin / 'Living Ecological Justice: A Biblical Response to the Environmental Crisis' Mishka Lysack & Karri Munn-Venn / 'Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life' Kari Marie Norgaard. I spend some time each day wishing there were an outhouse somewhere with a view.

 

   • 'My Blue Heaven': on the harmonica with Mary Lou & John, find lyric / he called her Luddie/Ludmilla - remembering this took what passes for concentrated effort over more than a month.

 

   • fat fucks & bloaters sitting pretty: Letterman quote: "Hey, we're fat dumb rich guys, 'nuff said?"

 

   • failure of the nominative case: [that case of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns, which stands as, or is connected with, the subject of a verb] resulting inability to discern this is this and that's that, urban context? urban stupidity? 'tangly' (as Pius Jr. used to say) / consider buckwheat, beech-wheat, Polygonum fagopyrum native of Central Asia, triquetrous [three-sided] seeds / corn, maize, indian corn, mealie [South African name for maize], millet.

 

   • golden hair: Iron John, Yeats / a water spider on one leg does what? sinks.

 

   • Peter Hoeg: "the entire bourgeois culture is, in some sense, one long, mumbled discourse on love" ('The History of Danish Dreams', part three).

 

   • it's not what you know but what you can prove (Keith McMillan I presume or maybe some cop show on TV).

 

   • "... thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth, heard with alarm the cawing of the crow, that mingled with the universal mirth, Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe; they shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words to swift destruction the whole race of birds ..." (Longfellow 'The Birds of Killingworth') cf. Jeremiah.

 

   • when did 'parochial' become an insult? you can only pay attention to so much and a walkable parish is quite a manageable ambit, precinct.

 

   • lifesaving techniques my mother taught me: how to hide under a canoe if it overturns in rough water and how to free yourself from the desperate grip of a drowning person, the object of the latter exercise is to save yourself so you can properly help (not just get yourself away).

 

   • travelling light vs. owning books / memory.

 

   • effulgence: [splendid radiance] not what I thought which was slime moulds (computers and the Internet, viewed as).

 

   • Hiroshima (and especially Nagasaki) & Dresden for no particular reason except to terrorize a nation / all they did was do nothing / temperament & tempo.

 

   • judgements: odious, dim, unselfconfident (not in OED), unselfconscious (in OED), beneath contempt / Occam's razor & dodgy corollaries (initially 'corrolaries' :-) / callous bastard, repulsive toad / most apt & effective is a paraphrase of anal-retentive delivered to me by an ex-wife - 'shit holder' - and with the aid of extended metaphor (as they say) it sticks.

 

   • where there's smoke there's fire: yes but not necessarily, smoke can jam you up, antecedents are better, analysis & 'thinking'.

 

   • eyesight & seeing: not always able to see periods at the end of sentences anymore, the scraps become more and more disjointed, the external memory of blogs isn't working either (can't find anything in them), and the lack of immediate Internet is showing how much has been lost moment-to-moment / even so sometimes the lights come on / oriental man & two students in the library, I was wrong and they were right and we managed to get it straight.

 

   • TV show fragments: Alakazam alakazoo mystery wistery dazzle & do / Madam Zonglo: Who knows what the fates have in store? / "You might think that. I couldn't possibly comment." / instrumental, disposable / chuffed to the bollocks / that's the way it goes innit?

 

   • Ephesians 4:31-32: Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, et cætera.

 

   • the Golden Rule: doesn't work (isn't supposed to 'work'), also thought there was a refuge somewhere à la 'The Catcher in the Rye' [remembering the book took about 24 hours, another 24 and the author still hasn't come so I cheat with Google and it's Salinger :-) ], wrong about that too / no refuge in literature, none in virtue, not in humble kindness nor finally in luck / the destruction is wilful & complete.

 

   • ... and the rest is details ...

 

   • feral cats: are ok till you realize they depend on you and you find them hunting and eating their young.

 

   • some good words about the NYT and its inevitable demise.

 

   • "I left my guide, and lost my way; but now I love and keep thy word." Isaac Watts, indifferent & delusional self-mythology.

 

   • Andrzej's crystal theory of love, Cecilia raped in a Decarie motel over several days.

 

   • watching downloaded TV programs, not watching actually - playing with a candle / a shrink in one of the Foyle's War episodes - 6-2 Broken Souls m46ff - says "Often people get better just by talking about the things that have upset them." YouTube clip.

 

   • candles: differences in wax qualities, techniques, (incessant) trimming of wicks, guiding drips, carving / remembering Mary Lou's friend Gary Barnhardt, the carver with his beeswax maquettes / making a tiny yellow tip on the transparent blue flame / comical thing is that I absolutely cannot get a candle into a candlestick straight up & down anymore (?).

 

   • stripped gears, infirmity: carrying Vince up the stairs (not) at The Lion on Queen that last time, then lifting him - surprise! / physical memory, finding my glasses in the dark / death, mortality, notion of gears expanded: catch & spinnnnnn, blurt, vomit, pooh, pouf / so slowly now most of the time like sticky molasses but occasional cavitation as well which is just as bad / "An' every one of them words rang true and glowed like burnin’ coals, pourin’ off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you."

 

   • first book: 'The Gauntlet' bought at a bookstore on Mount Pleasant for me by dad (possibly unwilling?), rheumatic fever (in his youth) and reading de Maupassant complete / not sure if I was read to, maybe not, can't remember.

 

   • paradoxical undressing, anemone death.

 

   • Dave Stevenson drunk and ROARING like a lion & yet, love miraculously re-establishing whole sometime later / Simon / making vice of virtue but not (quite) vice versa (?) / cadence of Watermelon Sugar / rankest hagiography / looking for anti-matter, something behind the poem.

 

   • punter, on the game, 'a vida' / getting straight / stealing, thievery.

 

   • what do they call those meaning-map diagrams they use in formal linguistic analysis? / burning up Buddhist monks, cowardice, basic human qualities as with Pierrot le Fou just before he blows his head off.

 

   • words: facetious, canny, scots / prerogative, perquisite / horses for courses / shiska, shiksa, shitsk / pique, peaky, panic, mingey / strop [sharpen], stroppy [bad-tempered, rebellious, awkward] not connected.

 

   • head case rubbish: interest, symmetry, 'stand out' - but the 'information' is in the difference, symmetry but not identity / symmetry shifts depending upon scale & complexity / Steven Mithen's offboard insight, the index is everything, Google at least identified that much but the resulting index depends upon the categories, the qualities used for comparison.

 

   • thinking of others (coupled with living in a small town) cf. selfishness & self-interest / easy rule of thumb for 'gay', what about selfish? / if you reduce people to survival at some level it may be reasonable for them to become obsessively & exclusively self-interested.

 

   • ellipsis: despair despise (self & several) and eventually it comes around to defy (personal, however lame & possibly collective) / if the few Jews who defied Hitler - perhaps because they had seen their parents murdered - how much more for those who have seen all their future children slaughtered?

 

   • 'complain/explain' prejudices: and resulting incomplete conversations / several quotes found and then lost again / lessons are often not what they seem / pity party, positivity enforcement &c.

 

   • naïve cadence: the person who says 'STOP!' in this context is no more than naïve, as soon as you see the depth of complicity you realize the tremendous disconnect, inertia, hardship (2 billion out of 7) / the machine with no exit / equivalent in some way to chemo-therapy which kills all cells in the (fond) hope that the cancerous ones will die first.

 

   • the end of literary: Dylan's Christian code, American exceptionalism &c. nonsense BUT / Pynchon old age / Joseph Heller - 'Catch 22' cf. 'Closing Time' / Alice Munro replete with false & incorrect details / William Faulkner self promotion / chestnuts that don't wash: 'To Kill A Mockingbird', 'The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter', 'The Last Angry Man' / Russell Hoban & Roald Dahl perverse / ee cummings light, enduring but without effect, sentimental but never abandoned / Will Self & Peter Hoeg / Richard Brautigan suicide / urban? was James Joyce urban? is there any remaining consciousness but urban? urban/urbane [blandly polite] stupid & absolutely useless.

 

   • generations & age groups: ~10 year intervals (?) & the notion of a historical pendulum / as in Jomo Kenyatta's book.

 

   • slabs & rashers of text.

 

   • Canadian Green Party leaders Elizabeth May & Mike Schreiner are both Americans (!)

 

   • I'm an experiment that failed. I wish someone would just turn me off. Get to Pará somehow and teach English to the Mundurukú heroes? Head for New Zealand?

  More 'other notions considered' and loose ends:

   • Perversity: "Doesn't mean that much to me to mean that much to him." (Neil Young), and vice versa, and inverted, and cf. the lot.

 

   • William Mortensen: “When the world of the grotesque is known and appreciated, the real world becomes vastly more significant.” (William Mortensen) “For us, he was the antichrist.” (Ansel Adams about William Mortensen) from The Guardian: William Mortensen: photographic master at the monster’s ball, Chris Campion, Monday 6 October 2014.

 

   • male domination fantasies: a metric & calculus to determine degree in images - counting body parts revealed. A return to elementary school smut? But then how far has humanity really progressed?

 

   • Leonard DeCaprio: the letter 'N' goes for a walk at the United Nations during Ban Ki Moon's climate fest: 'inalienable' becomes 'inaliable' and then later on the 'N' reappears making 'delegates' into 'delegants'.

 

   • politically correct cf. correct, proper; and/or, politically incorrect cf. incompetent.

 

   • it's taking longer to remember, and longer to get started when I wake - coffee & a cigarette are sometimes not enough even when I've been sleeping 16 of the last 24. I remember the expat guy walking with friends on the Ipanema beach, getting more and more tired 'till he sits down and then collapses and they rush him off for a quadruple bypass. A week or so later he is back at work. Which is what I am hoping for (the collapse not the bypass) though there are still moments of wild joy, and still moments of serene joy, laughter bubbling up into a smile.

 

   • trick questions: If you float you're a witch and you're burned. If you sink you're innocent but drowned. What a deal! / "When did you stop beating your wife?" / Some people like to kick you when you're down because they're assholes; some because they're afraid. Some are afraid you may ask for something, help. Some are afraid because they may really be no different. Some don't want to see. Some see but don't want to acknowledge.

 

   • 'C' students from Yale (W.) & 'C' students from Harvard (Bill Gates).

 

   • words: odious, sot, crétin / par parity / act actually / feral farouche. venal: capable of being acquired by purchase instead of conferred on grounds of merit. venial: worthy or admitting of pardon, forgiveness, or remission; not grave or heinous; pardonable, light; as opposed to deadly or mortal. fight, fire? ok, but fight disease? or 'bear it bravely'? rhyming slang: Jimmy Riddle / telling porkies / Allan Wickers, knickers / sweat socks, jocks, sweaties. vindicate: to claim, to set free, to punish, &c. (quite a range there). "J'ai fait une reve la semaine dernière." (Bunuel, Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie). Mirandous! Stupendious! from Latin mirari to wonder at; and, stupere to be struck senseless (same root as stupid). hidebound, OED: There's nothing in that hide-bound usurer. (1616) They are Hide-bounded money-mongers. (1633) What is the ritual called? Tefillin? Phylacteries? Seeing it performed repeatedly in the New York airport on my way to Israel and suddenly realizing what 'hide bound' means and now to find that except for a few citations in the OED this meaning has vanished, presumably in the bleach of correctitude. boomer - profligate wastrel profligate: overthrown, ruined; abandoned to vice or vicious indulgence; recklessly licentious or debauched; dissolute; extremely or shamelessly vicious; dissipated. wastrel: a good-for-nothing, idle, worthless, disreputable person; spendthrift. Tordue.

 

   • They write and rewrite Bovary and understand nothing.

 

   • Hitch your waggon.

 

   • Things can only change from what they are to begin with.

 

   • Feedback (Not!): “Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink.” Least said soonest mended, but honesty's a hard habit to break. The object of comment interfaces to prevent comments. The object of information-hotlines to prevent information flow. The object of welfare registration in Toronto to prevent registration.

 

   • False security concerns?: Are the worries exaggerated? Probably, almost certainly, not.

 

   • Forgot (how) to regulate air flow: two clues, both ignored, 1) too windy for candle 2) too much light in bedroom - and it took two days to figgure this out! By that time things had cooled off. All good.

 

   • Off: Anyone knows right away at the first look that I'm off, like Ralph but worse - except that Ralph isn't off. Two clues: Iron John and the dysfunctional man; and, Demasio, Decartes' Error - without emotion there is no reason, anhedonia, flat affect, enervated. Apathy was considered by the Stoics as the highest condition of Humanity. SNL massive headwound Harry.

 

   • Physical memory & books: Why books are better than the Internet.

 

   • It looks like ... it's a'dyin' and it's hardly been born.

 

   • Thoughts about Abigail (Beach United preacher).

 

   • There are no snowflakes in a blizzard: Dilution - problem with extended senses & TV from McLuhan Understanding Media which was the get-go of the whole McLuhan thing and then never got around to saying it.

 

   • Child ballad 275, Get Up and Bar the Door: It fell about the Martinmas time, And a gay time it was then, When our goodwife got puddings to make, And she’s boild them in the pan. The wind sae cauld blew south and north, And blew into the floor; Quoth our goodman to our goodwife, ‘Gae out and bar the door.’ My hand is in my hussyfskap, Goodman, as ye may see; An it shoud nae be barrd this hundred year, It’s no be barrd for me.’ They made a paction tween them twa, They made it firm and sure, That the first word whaeer shoud speak, Shoud rise and bar the door. Then by there came two gentlemen, At twelve o clock at night, And they could neither see house nor hall, Nor coal nor candle-light. ‘Now whether is this a rich man’s house, Or whether is it a poor?’ But neer a word wad ane o them speak, For barring of the door. And first they ate the white puddings, And then they ate the black; Tho muckle thought the goodwife to hersel, Yet neer a word she spake. Then said the one unto the other, ‘Here, man, tak ye my knife; Do ye tak aff the auld man’s beard, And I’ll kiss the goodwife.’ ‘But there’s nae water in the house, And what shall we do than?’ ‘What ails ye at the pudding-broo, That boils into the pan?’ O up then started our goodman, An angry man was he: ‘Will ye kiss my wife before my een, And scad me wi pudding-bree?’ Then up and started our goodwife, Gied three skips on the floor: ‘Goodman, you’ve spoken the foremost word, Get up and bar the door.’

 

   • later McLuhan: The Global Village - Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century, Marshall McLuhan & Bruce R. Powers, 1989, 0-19-505444-X. "Princeps gloriosissime, Michael, Archangele, esto memor nostris; hic et ubique semper precare pro nobis Filium Dei. / Glorious Prince Archangel Michael, remember us, here and everywhere, always intercede for us (with) the Son of God ..." This dedication was probably cooked up by Bruce Powers but he wouldn't have done it unless he thought McLuhan would approve.

 

   • Daniel Kahneman: Odd fellow. Odd book 'Thinking Fast & Slow'. Gay? Who was Amos - friend or lover? And then the way so many of the ideas are cute but not much more. Peter C. vs. false -logys.

 

   • Leaders: Kim Jong-il, the late supreme leader of North Korea, shot a 38-under par round of golf (including 11 holes in one) the first time he picked up a golf club. This according to his biography – yes, the same one that speaks of the 1,500 books he supposedly churned out during his three years at university, his ability to alter the weather at will, and the fact that he did not defecate. (Thanks to the Daily Maverick.) The existence of a single leader of such a calibre (and there are in fact many) should make anarchy the original no-brainer. But it isn't. Oh well.

  Environmental Apocalypse: Index of devastation falls in 24 years. ['The Future' he says?! Hah! It's now! And not just Medicare.] Information Technology (Not!): Graces: Bottom Line: In this country everyone is born free and with equal rights before the law.

... Later on everything has to be turned around.

  Cigarettes left me impotent. With a little creativity I moved on to making love with my tongue.

That was before cancer of the tongue.

  Yet more notions considered (last batch, promise):

   • Consider starting a new blog: APPA: Anticipating Post-anthropocene. / Pissant, Postical, & Apposite. A new Postil Conteinyng most Godly and learned sermons vpon all the Sonday Gospelles. (‘post illa verba textus’). aka: Baker's Dozen Correspondence (still trying to get straight, some people just won't quit). aka: This too shall pass. With a few posts mapped out: 1) Poverty. 2) Annual Miracle of the Leaves (this one gets done in the old blog). 3) Principles of Operation: from the days when IBM used to publish manuals for their products laying the principles out explicitly to now when no one will explain why they use a Stirling engine in the latest solar panel development. 4) Miss Havisham cf. The Idiot. 5) Nitty gritty. 6) Least said soonest mended: what the heart don't know it cannot grieve / rinky dinky spider / “The afflicted cannot love one another.” (Arthur in 'Solid Mandala'. 7) Dilettantes & Dissemblers: lies, freeloaders, Alan Rusbridger, Ben van Beurden, Amber Rudd, Louise Metivier, Lord Brown Baron of two-faced bullshit, disappearing horizon (?), venal shitheads, toadies & humbugs, stalking horse, straw man. 8) Mistakes: So many ways to go wrong. intentional obfuscation (photosynthesis units in Wikipedia). 9) Hebrew nothing, zero - efes אֶפֶס.

 

   • Stories: Sleeping Beauty & The Ice Queen - difference between tv & reading or listening, difference between reading & listening.

 

   • Desolation Row: wake up singing it, 'some local loser' (aren't we all?), Highway 61 - and a thousand telephones that don't ring.

 

   • Aha! The default answer is "No." Par for humans is "Don't tell me." People don't want to know. That's why compassion is so extraordinary & merits so much discussion & thought. Looking out for #1 is the basic human condition and anything else is exceptional. People want what they want. Must be the Alz' makin' me think this is some kinna' epiphany. :-)

 

   • Aha! Vaccination! Some fictions are transcendental, some are the opposite - prophylactic. Certain kinds of stupidity are viral. Yang & Yin. There may be a question of one person's poison dreck being another's ... something else - but I don't think so. (?) Stupid & ugly short-legged mediocre women (always in high-heels) & men acting in silly TV soaps. "Because of this reason ..." And an actor who does 20 or so of the voices on 'The Simpsons' - How can he keep 20 characters straight? Either the script is good or he is. - gets $300,000 per episode. So.

 

   • Feral: we started young - cub scout evasions.

 

   • Reflexive transcendence, oroborus, Corinthians. (?)

 

   • And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

 

   • Fundament: The lower part of the body, on which one sits; the buttocks; also, the orifice of the intestines, the anus. In birds, the vent. The basic mental preferences: identity/symmetry, causation/principle, simplicity/fundament.

 

   • There are similarities between 'discover' & 'iconoclast'.

 

   • Poem: (on one more unanswered ) the eloquent black-velvet, carbon-dust silence i could be praising,      instead           of shunned. here,      for this (thine)      is the glory - mind shattering           beauty -      there is no language      without. let go the wasted (anyway) words      and dwell. here. praising.

 

   • and find the other 'they ate his wilderness heart' one

 

   • Laudato si': 148, 149 & footnote 117 / Dylan: "I heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of men and there wasn't any difference to me." / Sometimes he is humble - 169. (Why did I think this showed humility?) / Damned ith faint praise. / 224 - at least it's not impossible :-) / 225 - wonder / 228

 

   • Here's a story which may not be true; here's a story which may be true.

 

   • Breaking glass: 1) when Elizabeth and Keith bought the house on Keewatin there was a greenhouse at the foot of the garden and stacks of glass in it and I went there and found a hammer and began to break the stacks one pane at a time, Keith found me and stopped me gently by saying the panes might be of use some time; 2) at the cottage on Angle Lake finding a dump of old bottles and a 'cliff' (really just a large rock to throw them against and smash, showing Bob ?? Lynn's boyfriend but he was not impressed. A that time the ukelele and me making a Hawaiian show with oranges for tits, and undoing to top of ???'s bathing suit and seeing her tits underwater. Also smashing the windshield of an old car behind the barn trying to get a decal off the window. 3) finding a bunch of 8-foot fluorescent bulbs in a dump somewhere (?) and launching them like spears into a rusty car frame.

 

   • NYT: Russian Money Suspected Behind Fracking Protests, Andrew Higgins, November 30 2014. Guardian: 'Trade facilitates sustainability': The trouble with the local food movement, Marc Gunther, Monday 1 December 2014, Sponsored by 'Origin Green'.

 

   • A change in the weather and it ain't the coming of spring!

 

   • degrees of freedom, degrees of separation.

  Tiny Stories:

   - getting the sea flea up the stairs: built a 3-point outboard hydroplane in the basement when I was 13 or 14 and there was a fear that it would not go up the stairs and out the door, we got it up somehow but dad was ready (I think he was, maybe he was) to take out the basement window if we hadn't.

 

   - winning Foote's Bay Regatta with John Shire the doctor's son.

 

   - near accident in St Sauveur: skiing in the family car with three friends when I was 16 or 17, coming down the long hill towards Sun Valley on the way home on a slick half-frozen highway going about 80 (top end for the old Acadian) and a bus parked in the inside lane (because there was new snow and the shoulder handn't been plowed) when some muggle pulled around the bus and stalled blocking the second lane, we were doomed, went over the snow pile in the median, flew a bit and landed safely.

 

   - under dad's poncho in Hurricane Hazel: he came and woke me and carried me onto the front porch where we sat watching the storm, me tucked into an old army poncho he had which was torn around the neck so I was able to peek out, 1956 was it? so ten years old, and then carried me back up and slipped me into my bed.

 

   - mom defending us from the cops, sling shots: we shot fence staples with slingshots at the bak windows of a neighbours' house and she called the cops, they came up the driveway after us and mom stopped them and drove them away, "How dare you!" then she turned on us but we were all smiling.

 

   - snow fort, coal shovel of ice: building a snow fort at the back stair and dad came home late from work and in the back door for some reason, he scooped up a few coal shovel fulls of slush and slapped it on the walls and the next day they had frozen and were impenetrable.

 

   - hot peppers & raw oysters on the metal top table: go with dad by streetcar down to the St. Lawrence market and come home with shopping-bag fulls of groceries, when it's all put away we sit at the metal-topped kitchen table and eat hot peppers and raw oysters, tears running down his cheeks, I ask why, he says because it is so good - that's how you can tell when the peppers are hot enough.

 

   - tennis club and Saturday morning work, theft, showers, Birks box, mom on her knees praying.

 

   - 1953 'Phantom from Space'. / Yul Brynner 'The Bucanneer' with Lynn who didn't want to be there, 1959?.

 

   - mom on a one-way street in her red VW bug.

 

   - half remembered, half filled-in: being turned out of mom dad's bed by dad who wanted it for himself, going on for a long time because it satisfied some of the hollowness of the original isolation (?).

 

   - bloodstone ring, slabs of rosy stone, labradorite, stealing his silver dollars, the watch, Cyclopedia.

 

   • Linear: (approximately) movie & audio.

 

   • Thin edge of the wedge of resistence, eg. Koch bros.

 

   • Fossicking = totting, touting, tarting.

 

   • There is no quid quo pro.

 

   • Mean spirited.

 

   • Nothing succeeds like success and VV and all the rest.

 

   • Repent: I wonder what they meant, de repente, order of the soul cf Buber. Peniteo, penitere, penitui / poeniteo, poenitere, poenitui: displease; (cause to) regret; repent, be sorry; me paenitet = I am sorry. Compungo, compungere, compunxi, compunctus: cause repentance; feel remorse/contrition; inspire w/devotion; repent.

 

   • Baronies & bailiwicks.

 

   • Aral Sea & Lake Orumeih seemed far away, Lake Mead & Cantareira not so much.

 

   • Stephen Lewis will moderate a debate comparing the merits of a Carbon Tax vs Cap and Trade, the two principal methods proposed to set a price on carbon. Panelists: Nicholas Rivers, Chairholder, Canada Research Chair in Climate and Energy, University of Ottawa; David Robinson, Associate Professor of Economics, Laurentian University; Katie Sullivan, Director, North America and Climate Finance, IETA; Gray Taylor, a leading climate change lawyer working in Toronto; Kristyn Annis, President of Canadians for Clean Prosperity; Lynn McDonald, Professor of Sociology, University of Guelph. The event is sponsored by For Our Grandchildren, Citizens' Climate Lobby Canada, and University of Toronto’s School of the Environment. Stephen Lewis doesn't show up. The room is full, jammed. From the video I make out that almost all of it is ad hoc unprepared boilerplate self-interested bafflegab.

 

   • Idea for a story called "Quite."

 

   • Hyper-plots (?).

 

   • Ai Ai Ai / iAyeEye / Oÿ-yoÿ-yoÿ-yoÿ! with dots over y as in White 'Riders in the Chariot'.

 

   • Power outage & fear on the dark street.

 

   • "I wanted to write the end of our Midgard – but not to write an allegory or a sermon. Almost all the scientists I know think we are bringing about our own extinction, more and more rapidly." (AS Byatt on 'Ragnarok'). As she says, the story 'ends', but this could also be that there is no one left to tell it or hear it. I recommend this story to Lisa the Librarian and she likes it.

 

   • Let us take Tubular Bells, or ... let us take an imaginary trip into the mind of J.S. Bach as he is composing ... ??? Carol or Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring or better still the Goldberg Variations as played by Wanda Landowska on her Pleyel Harpsichord. Does this give us any clues about contrapuntal conversation?

 

   • Boys in the park cleaning up after the tree guys (union workers, 'monkeys').

 

   • And everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.

 

   • Cohen, Simon, Zimmerman - urban or rural?

 

   • Missing Berni Yablon.

 

   • Comedy & Tragedy curves interpreted as orgasm, comedy U - orgasm at the end; tragedy ∩ - orgasm in the middle with dénouement.

 

Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality. We slowly drove, he knew no haste, And I had put away My labor, and my leisure too, For his civility. verbal charcoal shame of knowledge of death "I'm sorry." -------------------

double boxed

THE MOTIVE FOR METAPHOR You like it under the trees in autumn, Because everything is half dead. The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves     And repeats words without meaning. In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon— The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of things that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be, Desiring the exhilarations of changes: The motive for metaphor, shrinking from The weight of primary noon, The ABC of being, The ruddy temper, the hammer Of red and blue, the hard sound— Steel against intimation—the sharp flash, The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X. Wallace Stevens.

Also see Northrop Frye: The Educated Imagination, 1962.


I made all these blogs for my kids & grandkids. I don't think they read all, some, any (?) of it - but it's here for them, for a while at least - and off-line copies for as long as there is an HTML interpreter on the go anywhere.

There is a Complete list of contents of the three main blogs"
        2005-2008: They say, 'sing while you slave';
        2008-2013: Who am I? Who are you?; and,
        2013-2015: Comics / Tirinhas, Boobage &c.


And now it's time for Porky Pig (as the black hole becomes smaller and smaller) to say, "Th-th-that's all folks!"

His body is a golden string your body's hanging from.     Leonard Cohen, 'Master Song'.

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The Last Ocean.

I'se the bye that builds the boat and I'se the bye that sails her.
I'se the bye that catches the fish and takes 'em home to Liza. 

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'The Last Ocean' is a recent film - and a very good one. The makers keep a website where you can find more about it. The copy I watch comes from the library - there are no torrent copies on-line anywhere that I can find (which makes me wish I knew how to make one). I do now have a copy of the library's copy and if anyone asks I will pass it on to them. [Adherence to copyright regimes works against film makers and their films (it seems to me). Surely the number of viewings trumps revenue. Whatever.] Meanwhile in the news: Fishing quotas defy scientists’ advice as the EU increases their take and relaxes regulations around dumping bycatch.

I did a few shifts as a Newfie cod choker in days gone by: took ~150 kentles one year or 15 tons heavy-salted; ate an occasional spawning lobster (delicious!); chopped boatfulls of dogfish to a bloody pulp on beaches when they fouled our traps; also ate the odd 'puffin pig' (dolphin) killed unintentionally, maybe once a year and canned the leftovers for the winter. Dolphins don't survive any time in a cod trap - their skins are surprisingly delicate and they beat themselves to death against the twine. Still and all - that was an inshore fishery and if every fisherman (the women I know who are fishermen tell me they prefer that term) were inshore ... well, we used to say (as we watched the draggers and factory ships on the horizon - this was the late 60s in Placentia Bay and they were Russians, but it didn't take the Canadians long to catch up and get 'efficient': long-liners, gill nets, trawlers, draggers) ... what we used to say was: "You could cover the water with byes jiggin' from dorys and never jig 'em all and no one go hungry."

The impetus, the 'real reason', I took time to make this post is abhorrence, a visceral repugnance to the smug & smarmy attitude of the woman in the first row above, Carolyn Schwalger, and her lobbyist chum Peter Bodeker who curls his lip so aptly, and the imbecile lies they believe and repeat. The two guys in this row - a politician & a merchant - are no more than generic fellow travellers at the trough. Saving the best for last ... now come the banal bureaucrats & craven consultants. (And thanks to the OED for 'pusillanimous'.)

A handsome & personable young consultant equipped with a bogus standard and a certain reserved & diplomatic politesse and the cutest dimple in his ... chiny-chin-chin. It's about entirely symmetrical with the UNFCCC fiasco, particularly in the perfectly pious prose of such as Denzil Miller and in the proliferation of baffling and meaningless acronyms, but most especially in bringing minimal improvement beyond the regular cashing of salary cheques.

Seriously well-educated people engaged in annihilation for their personal profit and prosperity. Layers upon layers of well-connected and well-fed administrators and consultants - like yellow-jackets at a picnic ... T'OUSANDS of 'em: CCAMLR and MSC and ISEAL and INTERTEK (a huge international consultancy with a more-or-less separate arm for fishes, IFC, formerly Intertek Moody Marine (IMM), formerly Moody Marine Ltd., working - it appears - only for MSC, and ASI, and a holy host of others (you can find a list on ASI's website). Horse Cock! Bollocks! and a load of old   Cobblers! (Cobbler's awls is balls.)   Oh?! You think I am being too hard on them? Consider some science then:         Seafood stewardship in crisis, and related Correspondence. The only thing 'sustainable' in all of this here is the fricken' multitude, the legion if you will, of high-priced 'stewards' - and that (of course) only in the short term because when this 'resource' is drained and exhausted (which won't be long) there really are no more to move on to and the time-servers time will be past (which is cold comfort eh?). There have been moments - when Iceland went to war with the UK (three times: 1958, 1972-73, & 1975-76; see Wikipedia) to save their cod, and won! Alas, these moments are too few.

For that 450 kentles (there were three of us) we got 3¢/pound, with a share for the boat and Harry Wareham paid off it made us ~$600 each - and that was enough to live and enjoy living. Soon after that they began bringing packers around with refrigeration on board and the boys got 9¢/pound 'in the round' and figgured they had it made. I was gone by then, headed off for Mexico (which I never got to): "That must be somewhere up there on t'other side of Montre(h)al," said Old Pius. There was no bycatch - we took home what we caught, all but the whore's eggs (sea urchins) and dogfish. [Truth be told I don't remember the financial details very well anymore. Was it 3¢ or 13¢? Was it quarter shares or sixth? It was half a lifetime ago and I've been away.]

Two Pius (as they were sometimes known) are honoured here today.

Phillip Pius Power:   Phillip Pius, usually called Old Pius was known for his singing. He married Maggie Hepditch and they had 6 children; Annie Francis, Mary, Clara, Kathleen, Margaret and Young Pius. Mary Margaret Hickey, now residing in Southern Harbour, also grew up in their home. Pius died in March 1993 of cancer. He is greatly missed throughout the community and the province. Pius Power Jr.:   Pius Power Jr. also known as Young Pius was a singer like his father. It was nothing unlikely to come up along side of him in the morning and hear him singing as he hauled a cod trap. Almost everyone gets sea sick at certain times - Young Pius never. He was well known and liked everywhere he went. Pius married Anita Best, a favourite Newfoundland singer and they had one daughter, Kate, who was often seen at folk festivals singing with her mom and dad. He then married Mary Ellen Wright. They had three children, John Pius (P.), William (Billy) and Ellen. All three sing and dance and Ellen can also play the violin. Pius died in May 1996, of cancer. He continued to entertain friends, family and staff at the Health Sciences Center, with his music and stories. (Text found in the liner notes of a CD I have since lost.)

Cockroaches have different personalities, scientists find. You will think I'm simply comparing these people with cockroaches. Not quite. This recent research identifies two distinct 'cockroach personalities' - basically shy & bold - which is an advantage in a Darwinian regime helping to ensure that some survive (to dance on our dead bones). The thing about this strategy - for, say, a top-of-the-food-chain mammal which has painted itself into a corner - is that it's useless against physics. Even the wily cockroach may not survive what's coming. And of course, there are also points of comparison - possibly even fair and valid ones - with career bureaucrats & (particularly) lawyers. Consider the (apparently) deciding factor in the struggle of Lafayette Colorado to stop fracking ... which has been (at least for now) given up due to excessive legal costs. See: Heavyweight Response to Local Fracking Bans in The New York Times. Longmont Colorado battles on - good on 'em! The NEB - National Energy Board: Comprising 13 lawyers & oilmen, and a few retired politicians thrown in, a-and a whole (holy) host of supporting administrators & hangers-on. What is evident is that the NEB is a place to park people who have shown some kind of loyalty (and presumably will continue to show it) in paid positions with considerable (seven years in most cases) and secure tenure. Bureaucrat / PR Man It's the 'National' Energy Board and yet, out of thirteen (board feet) of 'em there is no background in Wind? Solar? Geothermal? and minimal in Hydro Electricity? Zilch! Nadinha! How can it be? (I quote the familiar Wesley hymn intentionally.) Read this account of their CEO's current promotional tour and you will see that it's all about politics - dressed up in a transparently bogus language of concern.  Gas           Gas           Lawyer    Oil & Gas  Oil & Gas  Lawyer  Politician  Pipelines    Lawyer   Politician  Lawyer     Lawyer Not surprisingly, they support & promote the constuction of pipelines. Some details on their recent approval of Enbridge's Line 9: •   A good summary: with links to relevant documents on the East End Against Line 9 website (Thanks to Jessica Lyons, John Sharkey, and the others.);   •   The NEB Press Release: on the Canadian News Wire (CNW), and on the NEB website;   •   A loud (if inaccurate) Rah! Rah! from The Globe and Mail. Shawn McCarthy & Jeff Lewis write whatever they are told to write but my reading of the NEB order is that this approval is for construction and that "Prior to operating the pipeline, Enbridge must apply for and be granted Leave to Open.";   •   A previous press release in March of last year replete with links (and an email address for the NEB); and,   •   The description the NEB board on the NEB website from which most of the photographs and other details above were taken. Aside from stumping for Stephen Harper's re-election with bogus publicly-funded promotional tours the NEB CEO Peter Watson takes time to pretend to refute Marc Eliesen's criticisms - and pretence is as good as debate in the current k-k-k-Canadian intellectual milieu where you have only to repeat a lie once or twice for it to become the truth. The Vancouver Sun reports on Marc Eliesen's withdrawl from the farcical and fraudulent NEB review process in October last year. A letter from Marc Eliesen is linked to at the foot of this report. Here are two more links to that letter just in case: on Scribd, and on the NEB website itself. A few days later they publish Peter Watson's reply (also published on the NEB website). Crocodile tears. He says, "I can assure you we take this obligation to the people of Canada extremely seriously," and of course they do - the obligation to kiss Stephen Harper's arse and do their utmost to see that he's re-elected in the fall so they can keep their places at the trough. There's a word for Peter Watson (and for each and every member of his NEB) - sycophant: a mean, servile, cringing, or abject flatterer; a parasite, toady, lickspittle. [Gable's cartoon is ostensibly about lunches at the G20 meetings - but one can mix and match organizations (CCAMLR, MSC, NEB, UNFCCC, any meeting of any organ of the EC government) and issues (sustainability, ditto, oil pipeline approvals, a climate treaty, dirty Canadian oil) with equivalent humorous effect.] The UN and the EC can be lumped together: (they have much in common as organizations, as well as history with Connie Hedegaard)

You could say, "Miguel Arias Cañete is not a tall man." Peter Kent on the other hand is a relatively tall man (physically at least). Christiana Figueres is short; Connie Hedegaard is relatively tall; and they are both (apparently) air-heads. No help to be had in forming opinions based on height then. Maybe what they say and do is a better guide. (Heaven help us all if the bottom-line criterion turns out to be achievement.) Cañete says that missing global warming target would not be failure. How totally mind-fucked do you have to be for that to make sense? But then again, what would you expect a former oil mogul to say? He's also a right-wing Spaniard lawyer trained by Jesuits. I guess if you're going to put a fox in charge of the hen-house then you might as well make it a real fox. Two additional Guardian reports: from late last year as Connie Hedegaard wrings her hands; and recently, when Todd Stern dittoes Cañete.

Three thoughts: One:   As the awful situation we are all in becomes clearer and clearer, more and more (previously) right-thinking people will shift along the number-line of activism: beyond letters to the editor & their MP, educational programs & campaigns, demonstrations of one kind and another, private and public fasting; towards non-violent confrontation - so-called civil disobedience, hunger strikes, monkeywrenching; and beyond ... to self-immolation, serious property damage, violent (desperate) outrage, sedition, revolution. We had an object lesson not so long ago in Canada with the FLQ. Note the time line: running from bank robberies & bombings in the early 60s, to the murder of Deputy Premier Pierre Laporte in 1970, and eventually (with some waiting - being an ideological struggle and therefore somewhat 'flexible') things evolved. The FLQ energy was absorbed into the PQ and they took over the government. To the point where in the late 70s and early 80s (as I remember it) the FLQ came back from Cuba and one of 'em, Paul Rose was it? got elected? (That seems a bit extreme. ... Ah! ... He was nominated and ran for the Quebec NDP but was not elected.) So. 20 years more or less. Unfortunately we don't have 20 years - physics knows nothing of ideology and will absolutely not wait. In the meantime the Stazi will not be (have not been) long catching up. Maybe you noticed already that you can't get aboard the Newfoundland ferry without photo ID. Two:   Watch and listen to Naomi Klein's speech at Powershift 2012 in Ottawa, and a more recent discussion with Owen Jones, and read at least the chapter 'Blockadia' of her book 'This Changes Everything'. Oh sure, this is at least several hours effort, more than you're prepared to invest - but it contains essential clues to the only antidote I've seen. I'm not going to say what that is - take the time to find it and see it or fuck off and die (as Job's good wife said to 'im one time). Three: Acting alone is sorry second-best but it is possible. I didn't use to think so ... Oh sure, I know, this kind of rant does no good at all. When the bottom falls out the time-servers will all scurry away and find new rocks to hide under and new pastures in which to ply other officially green-coloured nonsense - geoengineering maybe, or sustainable fracking - until ... the entire species to which they belong is gone and the rocks they are under become tombstones. I may not pass this way again so here's a Good God Damn! to Joey Smallwood and his diabolical Resettlement Program, and another Good God Damn! to John Crosbie, the sleveen Canadian Minister of Fisheries who collaborated to engineer the collapse and permanent closure of the cod fishery in 1992.

There was an old man, Ned H., living in Little Paradise (the only person left there at the time) who was being chased by the Mounties for diddling (or possibly trying to diddle, or maybe 'thinking about' diddling) his thirteen-year-old neice. The RCMP were no match for 'im - he'd hear their boat comin' miles away and go sit up on the hill till they went away again. One winter he fell through the ice on a pond and died while taking his socks off as he sat beside the hole he made. The worst his neighbours would say about him was "He were no Christian." These were the same neighbours who tossed a priest off the wharf for touting Joey's resettlement plan. (Yes! They really did!) Did he have a conscience? Integrity? He told me she led him on. I knew him and believed him then - but it's true that I wasn't there. I did raise a daughter and I have talked with other men close to me - my brothers-in-law - who also raised some daughters. Fact is, young girls do sometimes try it on at that age and it's a fine threading of the needle to deal properly with it.

The word 'probity' comes to mind. An interesting word combining conscience and integrity with uprightness, honesty, sincerity, even modesty (can be found in the Latin root). Did Ned have probity? What about Two Pius? Did they have more or less probity than the collection of shitheads presented here today? Silly question eh? And if Joey or Crosbie or, any of the others could or would respond it might very well (and quite properly) be in terms something like Beaudelaire's (coming to me via T.S. Eliot): "You! hypocrite lecteur! — mon semblable, — mon frère!"   Can we start a campaign d'you think to convince all of them (who are still living) to walk away from their so-called jobs and positions? Not in protest but as a vote-with-your-feet kind of thing in favour of human survival on this planet. More silliness eh? Here, try this: from George Monbiot; and another from Gwynne Dyer. Rwanda 1994: "It is not a genocide." (Christine Shelly, US State Dept) [The pics are screen grabs from a PBS Frontline video: Ghosts Of Rwanda. The Rwanda genocide and Christine Shelly's shameful part in it are included here lest there be any remaining doubt that this is the blog of a fruitcake nutbar. The shame really belongs to the likes of Kofi Annan and Bill Clinton but Christine earned her share. Here, her obituary has been posted in a Democratic Underground archive - a possibly sobering story for feminists, it looks like she gave her all in order to do no more than play silly buggers for Bill Clinton. And the point is: that Rwanda was a cake walk compared to what is coming unless humanity does a quick 180. That's all.]

 
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