To thine own self be true

Money.

The hard-working 7-11 family-man-immigrant clerk who got taken out this past year by a robber. He was working the late shift for money. The robber wanted quick, ‘easy’ money. The store’s management didn’t have an extra employee because it “couldn’t afford it”. Money again.

Think of all the spouses and elderly parents ‘taken out’ because of spousal and adult children’s greed. Money.

Almost all the non-charitable agendas via solicitations involve money, i.e., extracting it from you, the unsuspecting phone- and door-answerers. Often threats are made of the bogus variety as in the CRA scams which governments have completely turned a blind eye to. (Give us your money now.) “A warrant has been issued for your arrest.” Even utility companies issue threatening notices days after an overdue bill.

Yup. all of us are living in a Great Age of Fear and Intimidation. We’ve got some money and property, and some evil scum are trying non-stop to extract it from us and they will say and do anything.

This line of attack has a long history through insurance deaths and agendas behind personal relationships. Like who can you trust anymore, eh?

Continued:

So later this morning I got my monthly Visa bill to find $1100 in bogus charges on one day from Michigan! Fortunately, there was no problem with the fraud help folks and the charges were not billed to me. My old card is now deceased and I have a new one coming.

Read your bills out there, people! These crooks are getting sneakier and are counting on you being careless, uninterested, and paying your bills without looking.

Anyway, this episode yet again proves the relevance and truth of this entry’s topic. It’s constant war on everyone everywhere you are. And it’s all about the money and sticking you with whatever bill!

pps/ BTW the fraudsters had a wicked sense of humor. One of their charges was to Richard’s Take Out! Well, they sure did take out some dough “on me”.

There is not a lot in our society today that supports and inspires very young people. Many kids have been left to the wolves and their own survival mechanisms. There are too many parents who have failed or ruined their kids as well. Real heroes and role-models are conspicuously absent. The result is a generation which knows nothing (thanks to parents’ and contemporary education’s failures) and which has unrealistic expectations. Nice kids quite often, but dumb, naïve, and not embarrassed to share their ignorance with many others either. The main dream of many kids today is to strike it rich and/or become a celebrity. They have learned their lessons well from media and ubiquitous advertising and its unquestioned lies. The idea of actually working is a foreign concept to many except immigrant kids.

It’s been comin’ for some time now what with talk that more transgendering training and compulsory Aboriginal studies for one and all is what’s really needed to push AB Ed ahead. Who needs all those damn useless science courses, facts, empirical knowledge, research, and medical developments?
And so with no great surprise, research science jobs are being eliminated. Poof! Who needs innovation in health research? Who needs opportunities and programs for research and for medical science training? Who needs funding support from the feds, industry, and non-profit organizations? Who needs high school students, u students, grad students, post-grads, and profs working in these useless areas? The NDP sure doesn’t.
This is only the beginning of an assault on education, higher education, true and practical learning, programs, and all learning facilities, and on anything fact-based, empirical-based, or utilitarian. This is a government which has zero interest in seeking truth or wisdom. The Great AB Dumbing Down will gut whatever’s left of successful and meaningful education approaches and subject matter. The AB NDP has no interest in anything academic, just politicized bathrooms and native political agendas.

ps/ Watch, too, the great watering down of whatever dumbed-down curriculum for non-English speakers. Canadian-born kids who already know the language will be held back significantly and less curriculum will be taught to all while delivery systems become the main focus, not subject matter. The old traditional sense of common-ground and common experiential context for learners and common standards of evaluation just went out the window. Now everyone will be passed for trying to do the best in their school-honored cultural context. Objective testing and results just dropped several notches again. Education has completely entered the Twilight Zone of subjective positive reinforcement for one and all. And who needs any archaic external exams anyway, eh?

The Album of Our Time capturing the atmosphere of the daze.
Major experiments and successful choices in music, sound, and lyrics.
This album is a major game-changer, not unlike Graceland.
A delightful, thought-provoking, mood-evoking classic, landmark album.
A Masterpiece.
if you buy, get the deluxe version with extra and live songs. (Concord Records CD)

Paul Simon has maintained and extended his status as the (Other) Great Songwriter of Our Time (the past 40 years, along with Dylan). No one else has maintained the integrity and high standard that these two guys have repeatedly set successfully and popularly. This album remarkably reflects our times and the moods of our culture and world.

Excellent supper in about 20 microwaved mins.
Beef, pork, onions, spices, carrots, corn topped with mashed potatoes.
A real tasty winner.
Surprise, surprise. Made in Edmonton!

A beautiful hour-long 2015 PBS documentary without audio commentary of the splendid Oregon coast. A must-see for anyone thinking of travelling to that scenic state. Highly recommended. You’ll want to live there after seeing it!

(backyard, last two days)

(with Bloomsbury bedsheets and pillowcase)

(the 2 Macmillan dust jackets: left: 1st Canadian, 1951, illustration by Leo Manso; right: 1951 UK ed., design by Aleksander Werner)

1951 Governor-General’s Award winner. Recommended for its being the first novel in English Canada to deal with race relations between white and black. Characters are believable including the journalist-protagonist Jim who wants to save Peggy, a young white woman who hangs out with black jazz musicians in Montreal clubs of the ’40s. Her story ends tragically because she has no distance on her innocent, obsessive attraction to black men who misunderstand her attentions and intentions. Recommended and quite different for Callaghan, though his protagonist resembles himself and other decent white protagonists of his other stories and novels. Good conflicts and suspenseful plot and atmosphere.

Poor Kris Kristofferson suffered for 14 years with what seemed to be Alzheimer’s, then got a second diagnosis that attributed his health decline to Lyme disease. He likely got an infected insect bite from lying on a forest floor in a movie!

Dumb luck. One day he told his wife “I’m back” and is mostly recovered now. Amazing story. Yeah, get the right diagnosis the first time, eh?