I May Not Always Be Right, But I'm Never Wrong

Sure I've tossed the odd cigarette butt onto the avenue outside of a bar on occasion, but more often than not, I make a point of seeking out a trashcan or public ashtray to appropriately dispose of the wretched smelling things if I'm smoking as I'm walking along some sidewalk. I'm the sort of person who will seek approval from those around me before lighting-up. I like animals... people even more, and I'll go out of my way to help an old lady across the street... even if it'll make me late for work.

Work. I finally have a job again! In fact, I almost look forward to this particular job because it's the kind of job I call a work-job. Though it doesn't pay much, and the tasks expected of me are often menial, it's with a busy Mom & Pop outfit... the kind of outfit where it doesn't go unnoticed when I go the extra mile. Unlike a corporate environment, there's a real humanistic understanding to the ongoing's - as opposed to a mandated simulation of "we care" written into organizational policy. 

When you're employed as a time-unit liability within a corporation, everything becomes secondary to the corporation. They don't see you as being late because you helped spare some hopeless drunk a shred of dignity by helping him out of the gutter and onto a bus bench on your way to work- if you're just a mere foot soldier in the ranks, they only see you as being late. Indeed, the corporate entity often has its own separate division to show especially just how much they... really... care. In this way, they only need to care when caring can be recorded in the ledger. "Viablecorp" expects... yea demands recognition... and tax credits for any and all time spent caring. By no means am I anti-corporate or anything like that. I understand and even sympathize with the ever changing complexities - the onus of responsibility - that large, publicly traded organizations are forced to contend with in a global marketplace... unfortunately to the point that it requires a sickening level of micromanagement just to    

compete when your firm is saturated to the level of corporate crotch-rotch.

Of course, even Mom & Pop have their bottom line. Fortunately, as a part-timer, it's easy for me to exceed expectations without getting burnt-out, and I feel like a real team player these days. Very much unlike my experience working for Canada's Department of National Defense where the operating budget seems to magically appear, efficiency is encouraged and idleness is frowned upon. It's just an honest to goodness enterprise that like me, (or anyone else) has its imperfections and idiosyncrasies. 

Such natural elements of life are inherent under any context where interpersonal interaction need present itself- a reality that not government, nor corporate, nor private enterprise could ever hope to immunize themselves from. Unpredictability - the human clause.

  

   

It'll Never Happen To Us

Oh... it'll never happen to us!

The good people who built this country need to get serious about defending it from the growing ranks of useless trashbags populating the streets of this once relatively safe land.

  

Seems some old folks are oblivious to the desperation lurking around every corner in today's society. For the cost of a dog house and some table scraps, you've got an effective security system in the form of a German Shepherd or Rottweiler. A peephole at the front porch might have allowed this nice couple to see that it wasn’t their son coming to visit, but a strange miscreant having no business being on their property.

It's really too bad, but peaceful Canadians need to get vigilante. These kinds of cowardly crimes will only escalate until a strong message is sent... in the form of criminal brains being splattered by shotgun wielding grandmothers, or the legs and necks of desperate piece of pukes getting ripped apart by family pets. 

Legislators need to step-up and table bills that will help to indemnify property owners who are simply defending all that they have worked a lifetime for. The justice system doesn't seem to be concerned enough with creating disincentives. In Canada, we've seen punitive measures exacted against good people simply because they weren't willing to lie down like victims and let some group of fuck-sacks throw firebombs around their back yard. These types of repeat offenders seem to like being in prison a little too much. I say it's high time we let Smith & Wesson reside on the bench!  

Fatty-Acid Deprived Bitchcraft Network

Alex Jamieson vs. Fatty Acid-Deprived Bitchcraft Network

I can almost picture the teeth grinding behind pointed goatees as monocles popped out of their deep eye sockets! The thin, emaciated fingers unable to keep up to the turbidity of rage sparked by one woman who suddenly realized that it’s not a crime to put a bit of feta cheese on her pasta salad… might even brighten her day and improve her overall health!     

After eating a couple of pieces of toast covered in a three-meat homemade chilli with mozzarella cheese melted on top, I caught a moment of Charles Adler discussing the backlash over Alex Jamieson’s recent switch to camp omnivore - where the food is more satisfying, and the constituents more easy-going. Myself being a proponent of the ‘your own body knows best’ approach to diet and nutrition, I relished in learning of the explosive outrage from members within the anti-meat sect over one former vegan’s decision to begin reintroducing animal products into her diet. Before this afternoon, I hadn't heard of the lady.

Just because I have always been someone who eats basically whatever looks or smells good at any given time – as often and as gluttonously as I like (listening to my own cravings as it were) - does not incline me to feel even the slightest shred of hostility toward someone who sees fit to avoid animal products at all costs. It’s up to your own personal tastes, and your particular physiology will usually tell you if something’s amiss: gee, that artichoke dip never seems to sit well in my stomach; or, gosh, too much hamburger always makes me feel tired and bloated. There exists a complex symbiosis between the plant and animal kingdoms, and all foods don’t harmoniously jive with all people. Paul McCartney claims to have a strict vegan diet, and he seems to be charging into his 70’s in good health, and with vigour to spare.  

Experience has shown that for some people, relying on the bounty of the sea for the bulk of their nutritional needs will see them to a ripe old age. For others, dietary staples might be primarily comprised of bugs and wild berries. For me, everything from shrimp to almonds to wild game and everything in between is on the menu. There’s likely some sound biologically explicable reasoning behind choosing foods according to the traditions of one’s ancestral geography.

Prairie people have for generations thrived on cattle, wheat, and corn as the modern Inuit people still stay warm and happy eating whale and seal meat as their ancestors always did. Is such an obvious logical approach to dietary requirements so hard for the vegan agenda to fathom? Would they feel better about themselves if they persuaded the great hunters of the arctic to put down their harpoons and spend a several hundreds of millions dollars to drill hundreds of feet into the defiant permafrost to build geothermal greenhouses so they might more correctly subsist on sprouts and mushrooms?  

This article wasn’t cooked-up to impart any dietary advice, but to point out the broad base of intolerance toward individuality in the online community - as evidenced by the trove of hate mail our hero Alex purportedly received after her 180º dietary approach was made public. I haven’t seen any of the sentiments directed at her, but I can imagine they stem not from a genuine subjective disagreement over dietary choices, but rather from a mindset that embraces ideology out of condemnation for the mainstream: most people include meat in their diets, so I’m going to distinguish myself from most people by publicly attacking them for their ordinary choices and making life difficult for myself.

It tickles me to think of all those hard-line vegans who idolized Ms. Jamieson when her stance most conveniently helped facilitate the advancement of their secret communist plot under the guise of anti-meatism - how they now must feel a sense of ultimate betrayal! It’s hilarious to think of the ensuing panic leading to outrage over one spokeswoman’s change of heart, isn’t it?

The backlash only suggests to me that the vegan community must be short on adherents articulate and charismatic enough to make the movement seem fashionable. It makes you wonder if veganism is even a worthwhile pursuit when so many of its practitioners seem so broke, miserable, and incapable of lifting anything weightier than a bag of pre-washed carrots if their life depended on it.

Though I like to think that a strong majority of non-meat eaters are well-adjusted, happy people who would never chastise someone for sitting down to a plate of asparagus and mashed yams because it also includes a medium-rare steak au poivre, a little hyperbole to illustrate archetypes; while completely imaginary, are fun to concoct, and indeed plausible enough:

  

I can vividly picture some smarmy twerp with non-existent biceps, angry about his student loan for feminist studies not quite covering the cost to fill his pantry with enough couscous, walnuts, and granola to last until his first pay check from Planet Organic. The dried apple chips and granola bar he had for breakfast didn’t even provide him the stamina to make flax seed porridge at noon. Too tired and hungry to care, he glances over his shoulder and skulks into a Wendy’s franchise. Directing his mounting frustrations at the Wendy’s counter attendant he delivers a chirpy discourse in the evils of agribusiness before oh-so reluctantly ordering… a fish burger. He slinks low in the plastic seat, praying to Guyana that one of his vegan peers from neo-nutrition class doesn’t catch him in his cantankerous moment of weakness. He strolls through the park on his way back to the campus. Our fictional Marxist now has enough food-energy to muster a good long sneer at a happy family innocently eating cold-cuts and cheese at a picnic. It’s going to be a long four nights with only three sachets of alfalfa tea left!

Sitting In My Tin Can

I didn’t spend all my time sitting before a computer screen when I was a kid, but let me tell you, my Commodore 64 home computer was truly a fixture throughout my preteen life. The depth and complexity of some of the software titles defied programming logic of today by their astoundingly efficient design, and made for endless hours of intrigue and entertainment due to the ingenuity of their programming.

One such program I remember vividly was “Project: Space Station”, a multifaceted simulation of sheer brilliance that was somehow crammed onto but a single 5 ¼ “ floppy diskette. For those of you younger than thirty years old, a 5 ¼ “ double density floppy diskette could hold about 700,000 bytes of data. To put it into a more modern context, an optical CD-ROM has the data storage equivalency of about 600 of these now obsolete magnetic media units.

    

From keeping your rocket-bound shuttles on invisible rails throughout the launching, to determining which materials and personnel are crucial to the continuance of your orbiting research facility, Project: Space Station put you in the Chief’s chair. For me, the most fun was to be had in arranging the various modules in space using the “Orbital Constructor Pod” – a one-man vessel that gripped the pieces and maneuvered around by farting-out nitrogen. Solar panels, habitation quarters, radiator panels, and laboratories could be connected like Lego blocks in arrangements limited only by your imagination… and most importantly, your budget. Keeping everything within the money was the most challenging aspect of all, and rightfully so – as for any viable, worthwhile simulation, approximation of reality is the penultimate ideal.    

Seeing the awe-inspiring and surreal treatment of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” as performed by Canada’s own Chris Hadfield reminded me of Project: Space Station. There he is, “sitting in a tin can” for real! Being a guitar player myself, it was evident that Mr. Hadfield knows his bar chords, and his vocal performance was indeed, out of this world. It was nothing short of beautiful. Project: Space Station was beautiful in its own right for being ahead of its time. Looking at the International Space Station, I can’t help but think that its designers must have tried their hand at this astounding piece of software history.  

Those old stone and brick educational edifices of the past aren't crumbling fast enough. As a province with a progressive mindset, we should take a more ephemeral approach to the school buildings themselves.

The building of new schools in Alberta should be approached considering their eventual dismantling and ease of disposability in mind. As they continue to stand, old schools in old neighbourhoods pose a significant threat to Alberta’s progress by their very defiance to crumble over the centuries. They make our modern structures with their space-age materials and cookie-cutter designs look cheap by comparison.

In light of dwindling student enrolment in these old neighbourhoods, we face the risk of seeing empty schools hijacked by community leagues as desirable and cost-effective public meeting spaces. We need to tear them down before it’s too late – before too many young professionals and growing families begin to see the merit in establishing themselves in old, centrally located, “walkable” communities.

If Alberta is to move forward and truly embrace the 21^st Century, we need to keep the heavy machinery running at all costs. I propose that the ideal lifespan of any school structure should be no more than seven or eight years - to avoid stagnancy in the growth of Private Public Partnerships. Building contractors love building and demolishing schools, and they're not shy about making political donations. Is it not it time for disposable schools?

  

   

Korean Telecaster Copy - No Strings Attached

Korean Guitar: No Strings Attached (until I came along)

It’s a great day for a barbeque, and I can’t wait to have a big juicy burger with all the fixings. By a landslide, today has so far been the very warmest and the very sunshiniest day.

Dad’s in charge of the grill, and I just returned from the almost stifling atmosphere inside the two-car garage. It was so hot and stuffy inside that stick-built structure I figured all the mechanisms of my vintage Olympia typewriter must be more than sufficiently thawed to endure hammering-out a few dozen, unfrozen letters. It’s probably not a good practice to subject a good many things to freezing and thawing conditions, especially things with complex allotments of intricate parts like typewriters, and even more especially those spools of inked ribbon that carriage key style typewriters employ. Yet I’m pretty sure it survived the near-arctic temperatures from inside the unheated garage. It’s a tough old bird, that German made, multi-colour Olympia fully mechanical typewriter.

Okay… this article was originally supposed to be about my new electric solid-bodied Korean-made guitar. It’s been my thing lately: finding stuff in the garage to take digital snapshots of for an online show-and-tell. I didn’t find this “SLEDGEHAMMER” guitar in the garage, but I did find some acoustic strings to string it up with.

As far as I am concerned, there is only one correct way to wind the string of a stringed instrument onto its peg, and it’s a somewhat exacting thing to do -- in that you don’t want to “wind-up” with too many or too few complete wraps around the post when the string becomes taught. Overlapping a string in a pointless attempt to, “lock it into place, man” is beyond the pale to anyone who knows better, and stubborn people who cannot grasp the sensibility of not ‘locking’ a string - by stupidly overlapping the windings (tension continuity and freedom of movement) are just the sort of guitar players who fruitlessly, unwittingly perhaps, insist on keeping their guitar strings in jail… locked-up. It’s not my bag, dig? Any serious jazz guitar player will agree, and it’s my charge to bring other guitar players to the light when it comes to metal dynamics.

Even a super-expert like me slips up sometimes, but that’s a good thing for the illustrative purposes of this article. I just about nailed the E-String with three complete turns around the string. The A-String has too few, and the D-String is overkill. More than three complete turns is just an overkill of kinetics, but too few complete turns can be sketchy:

While it might be true that I may not be the best guitar player in Canadian Canada, other people would consider me to be very, very, very good at playing guitars really, really, really well. For your listening enjoyment, I have included an off-the-cuff video of my new electric guitar being played acoustically... plus me: badly singing a little impromptu verse at the end!