Get ME thinking about lazy recipes?

The easy part, believe it or not, is simply roasting the pork to begin with.

You've just got to rub that roast with all manner of seasonings – mainly coarse salt - before sticking it into a roaster lined with bacon fat.

Chuck-in a half-a-pound of butter for good measure, and then add all your favourite girly fruit-cuts you like, like pomegranate lobes, minced broccoli hearts, or weinestle root. Personally, I find parsnips go good/best with any bestial variety of a properly prepared roasted-beast presentation.

Minced or crushed and sautéed garlic can never harm a dish in my opinion - unless you're weaving it into some fantastically unthinkable dessert - tricky chefery to be sure!

Rock & Roll 101

I'm mainly a guitar player who in my late teens happened to have a set of drums. I paid for them using workers' compensation money after sustaining a workplace injury.

It was the late nineties. Word gets out in a small town (a drummer who actually HAS a drum kit?) and I agreed to try my hand at percussion for a couple of local older cats, they were businessmen brothers who's repertoire seemed heavily influenced by the Rolling Stones.

I enlisted my best buddy to play bass, and we'd typically sneak a spliff before practice not knowing whether these grown-up electric guitar playing siblings would approve of our delinquent behaviour or not... small town and all. Both university educated and well into their thirties, they had a bit of a school teacher aura to them, and we juvenile pot smokers liked to keep our marijuana cigarette smoking habits on the DL.

Let me tell you, esteemed reader, the whole routine of showing-up to practice freshly baked always made for a most ultra-trippy occasion. Practicing rock and roll numbers in a band was far cooler than just staring at the lake or watching TV while pie-eyed - not that that's not a special kind of simplistic and introspective thing to do unto itself or anything. I imagine a good many geopolitical puzzles were solved in just such a fashion throughout the modern era.

These guys had Fender Jazz Master guitars, Fender Stratocaster guitars, AND Fender Telecaster guitars. Our jam spot was a tiny house across from the marina. The elder brother who resided in the lakefront cottage was in the midst of preparing some couscous upon our arrival. This was like 1997 in a small northern town. Couscous? How exotic it seemed to us back then.

The younger brother played rhythm guitar and handled the vocals. Mr. X, the elder brother, played lead. They emphasized the importance of creating a foundation in rock music: bass and drums need to lock-in so as to leave a bit of leeway for the rhythm guitar player, which provides the lead guitar player with a platform to strike-out in any direction – subsequently steering the established rhythm section.

The profundity of this simple approach to a four piece band has remained nested in my mind ever since. My first rock and roll classroom experience.

Why Canadians Should Stop Filing Income Tax

Canada's tax legislation is an archaic pile of nonsense and a monumental waste of working people's time in my opinion. I just quit bothering with the whole shitting mess of it.

Like I'm going to hunt-down six years worth of god damned tax slips just to retroactively claim what won't even amount to five grand... in Canadian dollars no less. To hell with it. They can go ahead and audit me to discover I'm owed money if they want.

We live in an age where an artificially intelligent, self-learning system can dynamically generate web content catered to individual tastes, and sort through billions of list items by using powers of thirty-one, but the Canada Revenue Agency can't ascertain how little I make in a year to cut me a check? And that's a whole other pile of stupid: you fill-in the boxes and submit the forms, and, if the information is inaccurate, the CRA will correct it anyway. So why go through the motions? Is it just an honesty test or an intentional waste of resources?

The only stipulation behind lower income Albertans receiving a carbon tax (wealth transfer) rebate is that a candidate has filed their provincial tax forms. If they think someone like myself has the time to engage in a correspondence war with the CRA over $400 worth of rebates, they should think again. I'm too busy doing things like writing this article to start bothering  former employers for T4 slips dating back to 2010.

As someone who completed a tax preparation course provided by H&R Block in 2000, I feel for small business owners having to jump through the hoops or hire an accountant only to realize less savings than the fees charged by the accountant! My own taxes have always been straightforward as I've always been a single guy who works crap jobs.

In the past, I've only ever needed about eight of the dozens of line items to calculate my rebates. I'm not disabled, I don't have a spouse or dependents, I don't see any capital gains or derive any income from foreign places. I don't live in Quebec and I don't earn gratuities or make charitable contributions. No I don't run a business out of my home to write-off square footage. Every year it was the same tedious dance to complete my forms: yes I'm applying for the GST credit, $13,254, dash, dash, dash, dash, dash, dash, ..., $13,254, dash, dash, dash...

I've had enough!