To thine own self be true

(entering the October rainy season)

via long-time, long-running political corruption, non-stop greed, outrageous elitist power-hunger, and the mindless worship of celebrities and wealth. The show–damnit–must go on until the country is totally divided, torn apart, deconstructed, and utterly gutted.

The last voice speaking from the ashes will be heard on a tv talk show saying “Pick me, love me. I am the Greatest.” And so it is that the media will inherit what’s left in the rubble for whatever remaining angst, blaming, abuse, and shaming. The country will be reduced to an endless sour-grapes 24/7 television broadcast. It will never recover, becoming the laughing-stock of the world–a travesty of its former greatness and American Dream promise.

A perfect script for an Oliver Stone movie, eh?

will all the guys playing Baseball 16 sending plays across the world notice or even care? Which global take will matter most in what still is a physically real world?

(signed 2002 autobiography)

(hilarious 1996 CBC VHS)

Obit Dave Broadfoot, 90.
Dave was thoroughly, charmingly witty and always had great imaginative jokes and perspicacious one-liners. His career started in the ’40s and included stints with the Air Farce on radio and tv. He even appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. I remember finally going to see him here in Edmo at the Jube when he had the audience in stitches; everyone left royally entertained and amused. I think he was on a par with Peter Ustinov and other greats doing stand-up. BTW/ he was very good with risque jokes without using four-letter-words or sexual language; never coarse or offensive and always clever with his imaginative puns. Some of his best work can be found and will be remembered in the two works above.

Paul Bernardo has a day parole hearing in March. As in the bungled justice for the dead McCanns and innumerable capital crime trials being cancelled, there is no effective or true justice in the courts of Canada. Yeats’ “The centre cannot hold” plays out over and over in our country.

U of M offering credits for how to shoot a goose from the sky and prepare a meal from it. This is definitely a death-knell for academic studies which are more endangered than ever before in schools and universities.

Likewise, the rise of gamification–the very thing some educators in the 2000s predicted would dumb down education. Reminds me of the old 1972 joke about American universities offering courses in basket-weaving.

No, education in schools and universities today is very lost, dumbed-down, and ersatz.

Making marijuana available in colorful junk food-looking form. The greed of the market and the selfishness and carelessness of user-parents should lead to a lot of kids’ hospital trips and, eventually, deaths. In the old Goofy cartoon, he said “Gotta have a smoke, smoke, smoke.” Now it’ll be “Gotta have a toke, toke, toke” irrespective of the dangers to kids.

And if a kid has toking parents, uh, what will they grow up to emulate in adult life? Doh. Mr. Sunny Ways was so determined to bring in what his father wanted to decades ago. Purely a selfish agenda. He doesn’t care about the young and vulnerable of Canada’s population or their families. Fact.

And if Dad or Mom do drugs, a lot of kids will go one better, shades of the harder stuff. I will blame and hold responsible Mr. Sunny Ways for the forthcoming drug epidemic.

contexts, different times. Everything in the past is judged as if it’s happening now, today.

The main interest many people today have in the past is that it’s just a potential conduit for lawsuits and money. Again, as usual, it’s all about the money, the milk train, and how one get rich easily thanks to p.c.

People seem to have lost the ability to make distinctions, especially re. timing and appropriateness. There is a difference between a bunch of women trashing Cosby while he’s still alive–appropriate and reasonably timed–vs. one person, Tippi Hedren trashing The Master long after he’s dead and gone, and can’t defend himself. I doubt that Tippi thought much about Hitch’s family and clearly chose to, unilaterally, trash his character and reputation as a significant director. That said, she is still free to express her opinions or truths, and has; none of this 1984ish censorship crapola as in the case of U of T on the professor who is defending academic freedom and free speech. Free speech, regardless of message, is still basic, de rigeur.

That I once stood with a bunch of Edmonton hippies inside a pot-saturated Kinsman Fieldhouse one summer, groovin’ to the Iron Butterfly’s only hit–the last song of the night, the psychedelic, catchy riffed “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vita” which runs about 17 mins. long with a 3 min. drum break. Title based on the Garden of Eden or Bhagavad Gita, the epic Hindu poem. Some kind of cathartic experience at the time if I remember correctly, even if I wasn’t cannabis-high like most of the crowd.

ps/ that’s probably the last time I listened to that song and group.