Carassius Auratus Paeluis

 

This isn’t so much a blog as it is a memorandum for the remnant. The world is changing and it’s hard to just sit by and watch it fall apart. I don’t care what your opinion is on the matter… it’s wrong, plain and simple. There are probably people who have and will be able to predict what is about to happen with some degree of accuracy, but that is as good as it’s going to get.  

Self-sufficiency, anti-fragility, and resiliency are the buzzwords of the day. Each one of those things would inspire the world to action if it weren’t for Anne Frank. Locked down for years, eating nothing but beans only to be hauled away and burned. If the earth is flat or round it doesn’t much matter because you can’t fly around or across it right now without your immunity badge pinned to your sleeve anyway.

Someone was trying to sell a guestbook the other day. I picked it up on the cheap, so if any of you all are planning to visit this year, I’ll be in the log cabin outback. - Social distancing measures may or may not apply, check with your health minster who may or may not be on vacation in Costa Rica.  

Here’s to another year… oh the joy oh the bliss.  :P

Falcipennis Canadensis

It’s probably not a good idea to start writing an article that will never resolve itself. Isn’t content creation the art of pawning off honey flavoured spread? Just like the prairie chicken that visits my yard each and every year, I can’t help but feel like even the best ideas are permeated with undesirable regurgitations.

Why do we pay eco fees on bottled water, when the bottles are made from recycled material? It seems as though this big push toward sustainable living is mostly theory riddled with impracticalities. Youtube provides a small glimpse into the lives of many of these adventurous types, but in recent days you’ll discover that they’re starting to drop like flies. They blame it on burnout, and the decreased revenue from their channels since the tube has been restructured. Keeping those sponsors happy, must be awfully stressful; maybe life on the grid wasn’t so bad after all.

What I’m trying to say is that I have quite a bit of respect for the people who post great content without any regard for whether or not they stand to profit by it. Anyone who says that they are passionate about educating people… is really saying they are in the business of monetizing their product. Not much different than televangelists if you ask me. It's not that I have a problem with upgrading to 4K, and I understand that you can only do that if you are generating revenue.I don't much appreciate the notion of catering to an agenda.

I also watched part of the grey cup game today, and got thinking about the millions of dollars that our province pays our team to keep losing every year. I couldn’t help but think that even though its “unsustainable”… and finding a free online stream took quite awhile. Nevermind. Haha

This blog post will mark 10,000 views. Most of which come from our good friends in Russia, apparently.

 
Привет а также благодарю вас.

 
Thanks everyone for your encouragement, and for taking the time to read my ramblings.

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https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-finances-deficit-blue-bomber-loan-1.4839478

Obsequious Hubris

It seems like it has been an awful long time since I have had a chance to sit down and write anything that is worth showcasing. I’m not yet sure what I will talk about today, but in the spirit of the holidays I will try to keep it short and sweet.

I went downtown on Dec. 26^th, thinking that I could maybe pick up a few Christmas lights at a discount, but all of the stores were closed. I guess that’s one of the realities of living in a small town. Family is more important than the biggest retail sales days of the year. - Either that or everyone is at home digging into the homemade eggnog.

One day I happened to walk by the TV, when a caller addressed the hosts of the show with “Merry Christmas, and I don’t care if you’re Christians or not.” It’s one thing to choose tradition over political correctness; it’s quite another to rub it in someone else’s face.

I’m not much into making New Year’s resolutions, but I do have a friend who made it their goal to read 60 books each year. I decided to attempt half of that. I usually come close to hitting my goal, and it helps to keep me on the hunt for new and interesting books to read.

I’m beginning to suspect that 2017 will be the death of Facebook. *When you post a status update of 35 characters or less, the update is assigned the larger font by default. Lovely.   -Everything else is just advertisement, but you don’t need me to tell you that.

Twitter will survive, because Trump won’t without it. -America won’t be great again, and it likely won’t get any better, but perhaps I don’t care anymore.

I’ve just about run out of predictions, which is fine, because it reduces the odds that I could be wrong.

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There is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agenda-less kindness.  - David Foster Wallace

Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations. - Alan Watts

Presidential squabble, gobble, gobble.

Clamshells open, fingers fly, good ones here, bad ones there. 

It wasn’t all that long ago that I happened to be at the local grocery store, and just so happened to witness the craziest thing. There was a customer who had opened 5 or 6 cartons of blueberries and was picking out all of the bad ones from the carton that he had decided to take and was exchanging them for better ones that were in the other boxes.

This is only a rather disgusting story by itself, but if I add a few more details it becomes much more interesting. It’s not the sort of thing I would do, but from a consumers point of view it's somewhat understandable. However, this particular individual also happens to operate a local media outlet. Which begs the question, what kind of news does he/she choose to broadcast/publish? If he/she only chooses the juiciest berries, would it not also be plausible that the intended audience never really sees the whole picture?

Coincidentally the final Presidential debate will air tonight. It will be an hour and half spent talking about nothing. Yet, you can’t say that government doesn’t have a role to play. It’s just that nobody really cares about infrastructure, until it’s in a state of disrepair or about unemployment numbers until they’re out of work.  

Having said all that… it’s thanksgiving weekend… so relax, eat well, and buy frozen blueberries next time you decide you’d like to make a pie.   

Exeleutherostomized Coprolalia

I haven't watched the Force Awakens yet, it's not that I won't, but I really don't like the idea of adding my hard earned pocket change to the billions of dollars it has "forcibly convoked" so far. You would think that Disney's stock price would continue to climb, but, so far, it has done exactly the opposite. They are losing ESPN subscribers at a very alarming rate. They blame the millenials for cord cutting, which could very well be partially true, but I think they have a much larger problem on their hands. It's much more probable that the reason that they are losing customers has more to do with marketing overkill than anything else. Who really wants to watch 40 minutes of advertising for every 20 minutes of game time. Who wants to watch all stars, who are often paid an annual salary in the millions of dollars, pump themselves up with every sort of drug imaginable? What about the families that are affected by chronic traumatic encephalopathy?

The most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about - David Foster Wallace

When a husband says that his wife is a terrible mother...it makes everything Trump has ever said seem less maniacal. It isn't my place to say how anybody else should raise their family, but it is terribly upsetting to see an egoist claim that he's a "great father"in the very same breath. O'Leary might have earned his place on Santa's Notley list, but at least he recognizes that it's important to have (business) partners whose strengths compensate for his weaknesses. - It's a rather amusing reflection; even if it's marble topped, there are still some things that money can't buy.

Together we can face this wildness and walk hand-in-hand into the etcetera. - Margaret Laurence

Today's blog entry will be short and sweet, and might even end happily ever, but that would be too predictable. Instead I'll leave you with a beautifully tragic alternative, and we'll try to forget that global warming might very well spin out another Death Star.

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Under a Streetlight

She could have had
Anything she wanted
My heart devoid of care
She set my soul on fire

She used me up
She left me drunk
On the cold cement
I could not speak a word

She left me
In the depths of my depravity
There was a sadness all around

My skin crying for a touch
No matter how cold
To bring feeling back

If you ever wondered
I'm right where you remember
If you ever wanted
To take my breath away - K.B.

Gridlock

It’s not the deep dark secrets that haunt you; it’s the awareness that sharing the things in your head is as ridiculous as trying to walk with stilts on wheels.  Anyone can write about happy things, but a writer sees more than that. It’s not very often that one wakes up to see hoarfrost on the spider webs and finds peanuts in places where the clever old blue jay had hidden them for the winter. - It’s rather odd to think that atypical weather patterns might very well be the new normal. 

     

I’m not exactly sure how history will remember Trudeau the 2^nd… but so long as twice the fool doesn’t become thrice the dunce...   but one thing is certain he’s making some of the things happen that he said he would, which was something governments aren’t usually known to do.

Trump says all sorts of things that he has absolutely zero intention of doing.  The part where he isn’t writing the script is rather remarkable. Somewhere along the way… his team of tycoons has convinced America that Patriotism always wins. – It’s not difficult.   The current administration is spending $1.6billion every single day on military operations; just think how many miles of fence that would build. He gives the illusion that democracy is working, and recognizes that people will do anything you want them to… so long as they believe that it was their idea.  Yes, his tactics are unconventional, but I predict that his presidential run will only be cut short by one of two things… assassination… or if the media refuses to give him any air time.

It’s rather unfortunate that racial and religious differences never seem to make it past the debate stage. The CBC recently announced that it will not allow any online comments on Indigenous issues.  I certainly recognize and understand why they have made that decision. However, I also think that despite the fact that certain comments and remarks are inappropriate, it doesn’t mean that they are necessarily wrong. We’ve all heard the phrase “We just want to bring attention to the issues that our people are facing.” Yet, somewhere along the way adjustments have to be made.

CBC Indigenous Commenting: Editors Blog

CBC closes comments on indigenous stories after 4th comments moderator dies

Political correctness only works until the people realize that the emperor doesn't have any clothes. Merkel is on the cover of time magazine today, but it won't be long before she is ushered out the back door.  - Trudeau was recently featured in Vogue so you need not despair.  

Jeremiadically Loquacious

One of the problems with reading really beautiful authors, is that it leaves you feeling like there’s no point in even trying to match them. It’s not that they don’t inspire thoughts, idea, and a million fragments of possibility, but it seems they escape the mind far too soon to be useful. 

Given that I also have the inexplicable tendency to voice that which is beyond comprehension; I’ll share  a previously unpublished notation: If it is possible to fathom the possibility of anxious lovers contending over an individual, then it is all the more likely that the said recipient may at some point reciprocate.  

Supposedly an adult makes thousands of decisions every single day, but nobody ever talks about the millions of sub-conscious assumptions that are made.

Wisdom grows out of being handed just the smallest sliver of emotion.    - Michael Ondaatje

Sometimes I make speculations about the most innocuous things. It seemed logical to me that the likelihood of blinking would increase whenever there was a natural break in concentration. So, I did a little bit of research and found that my theory was at least partially confirmed by a previous study: The synchronized blinks occur at “non-critical” points during the movie - at the conclusion of an action sequence or when the main character disappears from view.

… I can't trust that we do not extend beyond our persons because 

memory is a fickle, rudimentary executioner…  - wordofthewillow DA

Did you ever marvel at the fact that an outdoor trampoline is targeted by birds large + small alike? It's an anomaly that closely mirrors demographically targeted advertising. Just ask Kellogg’s to verify if in fact they sell more cereal because it’s the #1 fibre to promote your digestive rhythm. (Senior citizens will still have the majority... even when Harper doesn't.) 

I’m still not sure if it was Chad or Avril who wrote “ thought we were meant to be”… but clearly his someday somehow mantra wasn’t cutting it any more…. so much for the Pez dispenser.