To thine own self be true

one could probably stay home, change lightbulbs, shovel snow, and cut grass to pass the time away.

that witnesses in the Georgia Trump case probably committed perjury. Trump made lying and fake news fashionable in the U.S, with his 4,000 or so lies and misrepresentations during his 4-year term as president. His lying set the precedent for autocrats and political leaders around the world.

This is why the world’s biggest problem now, for some time, has been lying getting the ascendant and upper hand over truth just about everywhere in everything. Trump made it ok, fashionable, and desirable to lie about much of what is really going on in the States and the world. He is The Most Dangerous Modern Man who has ever lived.

in hate, only love.

The individual is perpetually and repeatedly in conflict, innerly and externally with others and Nature.
Peace and peace of mind have long been difficult conditions to arrive at or achieve in our fast-moving, chaotic world.

that evil politicians use bureaucracy and red tape as a smokescreen to delay, thwart, and circumnavigate the laws and justice. Bureaucracy, as in K’s case, can also destroy, torture, and kill people. It still happens everyday in North America and elsewhere.

*We see this happening currently with the many legal cases against Trump. The bureaucracy is meant to serve autocrats, politicians, and the well-to-do, leading to unequal, biased, or no justice.

has become very fashionable for redneck politicians thanks to Trump and the GOPs who have turned it into a totally unaccountable ‘art’.

Greasy-faced Danielle Smith’s ignorant revisionist history of Canada that settlers and Indians united to develop this country is an egregious crock. (She also has no Indigenous blood in her background as she shamelessly claimed.)

She remains the most dangerous politician in Canada giving money for oil-well cleanup instead of investing it in health care and much-needed medical funding. No common sense and letting oil companies who made their millions from abandoned wells off the hook.

As his driver had suggested, he didn’t die of cancer, but rather was likely poisoned with botulism, possibly by Pinochet’s gang when the latter took over Chile.

On the other side of the coin, feminists have called out Neruda out for a rape he committed around 1930 and for the abandonment of his daughter born with hydrocephalus.

These days icons can’t win for losing, especially on Valentine’s Day if one is the world’s most famous love poet. Warts and all.

Not to be outdone by B.C.’s incredibly stupid, defeatist drug laws, Edmonton City Council has been happily providing needles and pipes at local LRT stations. A public service to increase ridership?
Common sense does not live here anymore.
Of course, more druggies will flock to stations in search of free stuff and havens to ‘do up’! Can you imagine the dangerous druggie garbage strewn all over the platforms as drug-free riders try to access transit and get hit up for spare change by desperate beggars? Is the LRT really for minority druggies or for typical, law-abiding, paying transit users?

(The most prescient novel ever created about the destruction of the individual by intrusive, secretive, and corrupting bureaucratic autocracies; a 1925 classic incredibly relevant today still; also, one of Orson Welles’ best films–the 1963 classic starring a dreadfully nervous Tony Perkins following his turn in Psycho)

As I swoop through another day, connecting with Orson Welles and Franz Kafka in pursuit of the best and greatest art ever created in Western civilization before it fell off the radar for millions of North Americans. [If people wish to reconnect with it, one reference point to start is with Rick Steves’ Art of Europe series, currently online, free.]

My life continues to be about aspiration–“A man’s reach must exceed his grasp”–Browning and “An unexamined life is not worth living”–Socrates.

My curiosity leads on to new insights in the kingdoms of immortal Art. I continue to seek for new information, more connections, and more appreciations from the works of creative geniuses in all artistic mediums. Why live life daily at the level of the lowest common denominators?

5 decades of over 70 memorable, hummable, singable hits by hundreds of artists!
Burt Bacharach (aided and abetted with Hal David’s supporting lyrics and Dionne’s rapturous voice).
We will never see his like again.