Bachelor Survival.

You need the sort of girl who likes primitive weapons.

by Ian Cooper

If you’re going to survive as a bachelor in the topsy-turvy world of the 21^st century, you’re going to need certain skills.

Cooking: learn how to use a microwave, and the second rule is learn to eat any kind of crap without letting it define you. You don’t want to cook, right, you can’t expect gourmet meals, right?

What have we done to earn it anyway, most likely not a thing, and so a bowl of cereal for dinner is fine.

It’s not like we’re going anywhere.

A good rule for bachelors is to keep a lot of milk in the house. Milk is great for a hangover, and you can use it in cereal.

After a while you should be able to go all day on a handful of rice and half a canteen of paddy water. 

Bachelors need to be tough. The whole world conspires against us. All of your cooking gear should fit in one box, by the way, because as a bachelor you can move as often as you like.

You might find a need to. Sooner or later you probably will.

Staying out of trouble. For the most part, this involves staying out of other people’s lives. Kind of a no-brainer there. This is where avoidance techniques come in real handy, more on that later.

Maybe even some other time as we got a lot of material to cover.

(See that, ladies and gentlemen—an avoidance technique. – ed.)

How to drink. You’d think instructions would be unnecessary, but surprisingly many people really don’t know how to drink. Get a book, read up on it. You’ll thank me in the end. Anyway, you don’t want to waste your time on cheap rotgut when you can achieve a much higher quality time with better liquor.

Get a little black book and write down all the money people owe you. When they ask for a loan, tell them you’re not their sugar daddy and pull out that book. Seize the moral high ground and immediately imply the thing in sexual terms. That makes them real uncomfortable. Odds are they still owe you from last time anyways. You could also put phone numbers in such a book. In case you need to borrow money or something.

(Some bachelors even use them for the phone numbers of members of the unfair sex.)

(Ian would never do that, ladies and gentlemen. – ed.)

(I might if I knew anyone, particularly someone skilled in primitive weapons.)

Everyone thinks single people are rich, and they think men are richer than women, on some sort of intuitive statistical basis.

Learn how to say no. Figure out how to recognize that what sounds like a good idea at first can often just be a way of getting you to subsidize half the costs of their sudden urge to take a trip.

Oh, never mention it if you’re going on a trip, and that way you can avoid people who think it’s a wonderful idea to invite themselves along.

Try not to get overworked.

That’s a tough one. People think lonely, scruffy old bachelors have nothing better to do, right?

Well, they couldn’t be more wrong. We have to, ah, shave the bottoms of our noses, and the tops of our ears, and dig wax out, and pull lint out, and buff off those ugly bum-calluses from pursuing our, ah, literary pursuits. And all that sort of thing.

You know what I’m talking about. What the hell, some guys are into sports on TV, some guys like basketball on TV, you know what I mean.

Otherwise they suck you right in and the next thing you know you’re babysitting their kid or the dog while they go off to Las Vegas to get married or something and you’re spending more time on their problems than you are on your own.

And we all got problems, right?

I couldn’t tell you how many times in a year I could adopt a cat if I wanted one. People are shoving kittens in your face, ‘and you get the pick of the litter…come on, come on, there are only three left.”

Hurry up and slice my throat in other words.

People try to give me TVs all the time.

I tell them to take the thing to the dump or the recyclers or whatever.

“Why’d you get the new one?” I ain’t so dumb.

The old one’s a piece of crap, right?

They want to palm that little job off on me, as if I don’t have enough to do cruising the internet, reading books on everything from genetics, or behavioral science, Byzantine mosaics, I mean whatever. I spend a lot of time studying wildlife. I read stuff on economics—I kid you not, ladies and gentlemen. I like to go and walk through the mall without buying anything.

(Drives ‘em nuts, I kid you not.)

I also have a Sydney Sheldon novel and a Jack Higgins, and one or two other novels besides.

Try not to get involved.

I don’t want to join a bowling league, I don’t particularly want to volunteer for anything.

You know what they should have? Some sort of hooker lottery. You know what I mean? Buy a ticket for three bucks, and, ah, you know. Somebody’s got to win, right?

I kind of like my freedom, which should not come at the expense of my dignity.

Being a successful bachelor over the long haul requires self-sufficiency in the emotional sense.

I guess that’s what I was really trying to say.

But if you think you’re going nuts, you can always sort of weasel yourself back in, by that I mean reintegrate with society.

And after a short while, you might just remember why it was that you left in the first place.

I’m just kidding ladies and gentlemen—I like people just fine, but on my own terms, otherwise they tend to define me using some unfamiliar set of arbitrary characteristics for a relationship and I like things just the way they are now.

END

Economic Justice off the Radar.

Matthew Samuel Spurrell. (Wiki.)

by Ian Cooper

One reason there are so many poor children in this country is because low-paid parents have to spend so much of their income on rent and utilities. There is little left for food, clothing and other necessities. Public, geared-to-income housing is non-existent or there are such long waiting lists that people don’t even bother applying.

A third of all Canadians earn less than poverty-level wages. Millions aren’t covered by employment standards, and do not qualify for unemployment benefits.

If wages had kept pace with rising productivity, wages would have been an average of $200.00 a week higher in 2005 and a total of $10,000.00 higher on a yearly basis.

See this document from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives to see the full impact of these programs, for surely all of this is a result of policy.

In 2006, wages increased marginally to 50.6 percent of GDP. This was down from 55.4 per cent in 1992. Yet corporate profits over the same period increased from 4.7 percent of GDP in 1992 up to 13.9 percent of GDP, the highest in history.

The Vanier Institute reports that since 1990, average after-inflation wage increases for the typical Canadian family rose a whopping ten cents. Statistics Canada defines low wages as those paying less than ten dollars an hour. About 1.3 million Canadians held full-time low-wage jobs; women are twice as likely as men to hold these jobs. Many are single moms, surely one of the most maligned groups in history! But just listen to the rhetoric and you’ll see what I mean. I’m not talking on the floor of Parliament either—this nonsense has trickled down to the kitchen table and doughnut shop level of minldess, people-bashing rhetoric.

University of British Columbia economist Robert Evans notes that between 1976 and 1990, the per-capita average income of Canadians was stagnant, but the top 0.01 percent of Canadians saw their incomes nearly double.

The Globe and Mail reports that Canada’s CEO’s saw their pay increase 39 percent in just one year, 2005; while the average Canadian worker got about $38,000 a year, minimum wage workers subsist on less than $16,000, which is below the poverty line.

Multinational corporations have the ability to shift investments around the world. This pressures governments to reverse reforms associated with the social safety net. Trade is international, but unions are nationally based. Business has less need to compromise with government and labour, the power of workers to negotiate fair wages and benefits is eroded.

The issue of economic justice and income distribution is totally off the radar screen, leaving huge numbers living in poverty. The minimum wage has been allowed to fall in after-inflation terms, despite the fact that it plays a key role in social justice and anti-poverty issues. Trust me, Canadian journalists are good enough to know all about this. Why isn't it a bigger issue?

Almost 1.2 million Ontario workers have to live on wages of less than ten dollars per hour. The only countries with lower minimum wages than Canada are Poland, the U.S., the Czech Republic, Japan, and South Korea. There are no provinces in this country where minimum wages even come close to the poverty line.

Among the developed nations, Canada has the second highest percentage of low-paid workers, exceeded only by the U.S.; our minimum wage is lowest of all the OECD countries.

Some reasons for this are the ignorance of the media; who sweep the issue under the rug, the smugness and mealy-mouthed hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, and the vicious greed of the corporate-sponsored Conservative and Liberal governments of some provinces and this nation.

END

De Comburendo Heretico.

"And pity, like a naked new-born babe, / Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd / Upon the sightless couriers of the air".

“Who among us would not prefer to read one of Shakespeare’s plays, where not one rule of the theatre is observed, rather than some more modern production, where not one single rule is broken?” – a rhetorical question designed to provoke an indignant and very negative reaction.

And the unwritten rules of society are enforced by group pressure.

I am paraphrasing something I read once, here. And I guess that says a little something about me, in that I couldn’t find the talent to do it myself. And I guess we’re all products of our environment. But…

“At one time art reflected aristocratic taste and interests. The spread of modern industrial mercantilism created a new bourgeoisie; sufficiently strong to assume the role of nobility in the sponsorship of art.”

“Societies motivated by profit, power, greed, and luxury have little use for artistic integrity and imaginative creativity.”

“Artists are sought who can translate values into art, thus giving rise to a school replete with banality and vapid themes; a saccharine romanticism. A certain degree of originality is tolerated and accepted, but only if the artist doesn’t transcend the boundaries of conventionality.”

 

How are we to translate middle-class Western values into art?

“No artist can escape the age in which he lives. At best, he can reject it. It has ever been the pastime of academies to create the illusion of preserving a cultural heritage. The public wants the familiar, the soothing, comforting reassurance of having its taste confirmed and certified by a higher authority.”

“The public does not want to be surprised. It hates the unexpected. It fears being duped or mocked or satirized by the artist. Tradition is by no means synonymous with repetition; but its self-appointed guardians invariably equate it as such. The official arbiters of art decide who will be punished, and who will be rewarded.” They are making money off of ‘what is,’ and so why change it?

“Stupidity and narrow-mindedness reduces the artist to a craftsman”—as in Canadian journalism, for example. Writing has been reduced to a trade. For thirty-five dollars an hour and a dental plan; I’ll write anything you want. If you study the news media, sooner or later, if you are a thinking person, you will come to the conclusion that it is mighty short on facts. What you are looking at are opinions. No one wants to talk about this. I guess that makes me an idiot.

If you put forty monkeys in a room full of word-processors, sooner or later, they will not write one single line of Shakespeare.

“Cezanne was wise enough not to adopt the conventions of the Renaissance. ‘I am old,’ he said, ‘I can only show you the road, younger men will have to follow it.’”

“The Greeks of Constantinople, after purging away the impurities of their vulgar speech, acquired the free use of their ancient language, the most happy composition of human art, and a familiar knowledge of the sublime masters who had pleased or instructed the first of nations. But these advantages only tend to aggravate the shame and reproach of a degenerate people.”

“They held in their lifeless hands the riches of their fathers, without inheriting the spirit which had created and improved that sacred patrimony: they read, they praised, they compiled, but their languid souls seemed incapable of thought or action.”

“In the revolution of ten centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity or promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea has been added to the speculative systems of antiquity, and a succession of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers of the next servile generation. Not a single composition of history, philosophy, or literature, has been saved from oblivion by the intrinsic beauties of style, or sentiment, of original fancy, or even of successful imitation. In prose, the least offensive of the Byzantine writers are absolved from censure by their naked and unpresuming simplicity, but the orators, most eloquent in their own conceit, are the farthest removed from the models whom they affect to imitate.”

“In every page our taste and reason are wounded by the choice of gigantic and obsolete words, a stiff and intricate phraseology, the discord of images, the childish play of false or unseasonable ornament, and the painful attempt to elevate themselves, to astonish the reader, and to involve a trivial meaning in the smoke of obscurity and exaggeration.”

“Their prose is soaring to the vicious affectation of poetry, their poetry is sinking below the flatness and insipidness of prose….the minds of the Greeks were bound in the fetters of a base and imperious superstition, which extends her dominion round the circle of profane science.”

“Their understandings were bewildered in metaphysical controversy; in the belief of visions and miracles, they had lost all principles of moral evidence…their taste was vitiated by the homilies of the monks, an absurd medley of declamation and scripture.”

“Even these contemptible studies were no longer dignified by the abuse of superior talents...alone in the universe, the self-satisfied pride of the Greeks was not disturbed by the comparison of foreign merit, and it is no wonder that they fainted in the race, since they had neither competitors to urge their speed, nor judges to crown their glory.”

A number of sources were consulted or quoted  in the writing of this missive:

“Cezanne, father of modern painting,” by Frank Elgar.

“The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” by Edward Gibbon.

*the author of the first quote is unknown to me.

Editor’s note:

Mr. cooper is probably the greatest living artist of his age who is presently living and working in Canada, and not making a dime off of it, and it is undoubtedly true that he will die alone and in the most abject poverty. He accepts this, although he doesn’t like it very much.

“You guys are all fuckin’ crazy,” he says. “I wouldn’t swap places with you for a million bucks.”

Future Not Bright.

A Feng-Shui spiral. (Arnold C.)

No economy can remain static. It’s either growing or shrinking.

Our way of life is based upon constantly expanding markets. The notion that we can continue to improve standards of living while lowering production and consumption flies in the face of everything we believe about market capitalism. And in fact no one has had this notion. I think I’m the first!

When you consider that I dropped out of school (upon request) about halfway through grade ten, then that’s really saying something about the intellectually sterile environment we’ve created in Canada.

Every business person realizes that if revenues are capped at $100,000 then the only

way to increase profits is to cut costs. But that is an assumption. You could sell fewer

units, while still generating the same revenue—simply raise prices and lower production.

But no one ever thinks of it that way—lower costs by creating efficiencies and driving up demand by reducing the number of available units.

Yet this is all indicated by the currently-accepted theories of economics! And I’m not saying that all the theories are self-justifying bullshit. It’s just that one of the things a philosopher does is to invert things—and see what falls out of its pockets.

And in this society at the present time, consumption drives production, which drives employment, which drives taxation. That is one reason why we now have half as many people living in homes that are twice as big as our parents lived in. In some ways we are a victim of our own efficiency. The housing industry is so competitive, that there is little profit in a 1,200 square-foot home, once the risk, liabilities, capitalization and time factors are put into the equation. Why would a builder waste six months to earn a profit of ten thousand dollars? He wouldn’t be able to live in the very houses which he builds for others. It is far better to build a 4,500 square-foot home, make fifty to a hundred thousand in profit, and at that rate, not only can you afford to do it again, it’s even worthwhile. It still takes six months of his precious time. The lot represents a fixed cost, so the bigger the building, the greater the profit.

So the real problem is how to maintain standards of living without conspicuous consumption, without over-production and without stagnating wages and profits—because apparently the only path to prosperity for the greatest number of people is to constantly expand consumption and production.

How is it possible, in a nation with a constitution and the rule of law, to compel the rich, the powerful, the corporations and institutions to make do with less? They don’t respect the law or any kind of morality—they never have.

How can a CEO tell the shareholders, “We must lose money (or reduce our expectations of profit,) for the next five years in order to make these changes?”

Stock prices will fall. The CEO has ‘damaged’ the company and the shareholders.

According to shareholders, “Surely it is not our responsibility to save the world?”

(I say it is, actually, but no one listens to my absolutely fantastic long-term investment

strategies. But then they want ‘big profits right now.’)

Only the poor can be compelled, for they don’t have the ability to resist. Price increases affect them first, and the most, but they don’t have the resources to invest in

newer, more efficient technologies.

Hydrogen-powered cars have been announced as being just around the corner. Yet

a different source says, ‘They’re just a myth.’

In order to make hydrogen; ‘You have to burn methane,’ i.e. a fossil fuel. And electric vehicles are really only about 30 % more efficient than comparably-sized fossil fuel vehicles. In ten years your town will be spewing out just as much pollution as it ever did…we’re trying to sell more cars, after all, in order to employ more people to buy more cars, and homes, and electricity…we must expand to increase profits…it’s a vicious circle generated by conventional thinking and people and corporations who inevitably put their own interest first, ahead of all other considerations; including species-survival.

(Not just our own species, but every species.)

Battery-powered electric cars hold promise, but the required increase in generation capacity must almost inevitably come from nuclear technology, with all of its attendant problems.

Ford and GM and Chrysler do not want to build small, efficient cars because there is

no profit. It starts to look like a very expensive little car, in a very competitive market niche. To re-tool for hydrogen cars will take billions in new investment. And the car

companies create unionized, middle-class factory jobs. This makes for a nice block of

middle-class voters; all of them afraid as hell to rock the boat or upset the status-quo,

which after all makes their own smug and comfy existence possible.

It is a fact of human nature, “Those whose livelihood is involved, cannot see the

problem.” And if you can’t see the problem then you can’t even conceive of a solution.

They are simply unable to perceive the evil that they are doing, by their persistence

and insistence on continued conspicuous consumption, for surely a Hummer or a Ford

F-150 are nothing else. Most of those vehicles still have one occupant and never carry a

serious load in the entire life-span of the product. It is so much about status and so little

about utility that it is a kind of indictment of middle-class ethics and morality.

Oh yeah, the middle class wants change, just don’t ask them to contribute, or don’t put it in their neighbourhood, or both. One lady objected to a solar farm due to ‘transformer

noise,’ yet one wonders if that farmland wasn’t noisier with the trucks, tractors,

mini-bikes, flocks of blackbirds…worms digging in the soil. She was simply an idiot. Her kitchen clock makes more noise! A middle-class Canadian idiot, and we have many of them.

Where are you going to put the next nuclear reactor? I have a couple of concerns as

well. These include the ‘not in my backyard’ syndrome, and the usual cost overruns

associated with any project organized around government patronage. In Sarnia-

Lambton, a petrochemical company was assembling a piece of land for a refinery. No one

had any real environmental objections, and people were disappointed when it failed to go

ahead. One wonders how they would have felt about nuclear power.

We already have nuclear waste trucked down local highways, and ending up in provincial landfills. We try real hard not to think about it too much.

Local food production would reduce the carbon footprint of our diet. For every ten

units of food energy, a hundred units of carbon are released by the transportation and

processing of food. Local food production might employ a lot of people, and that sounds

good in the middle of a depression. The problem is that historically, we haven’t paid

folks like that enough to afford $400,000 homes. And it begs the question of how can we

compete with a sixty-five cent New Zealand apple, shipped and trucked twenty thousand

kilometres.                

For some reason it’s called ‘global warming,’ but the problem is really about our selfish lifestyles. Talking about waste isn’t sexy. It’s pretty square. We have such great expectations for ourselves, but the changes our world is undergoing carry a strong risk of the mass migrations of peoples, war, revolution, famine and endemic disease. All of our standards of living are going to fall. That is the big secret that no politician has the courage to talk about, in fact they will tell you, “There’s nothing wrong with our lifestyles.”

Middle class wages have been stagnant for about fifteen years, the working poor have seen incomes fall over the same period. Only the rich are doing well. So if our lifestyles are not going to fall, why are they in fact falling? How do you explain it?

“Oh, I can assure you it’s not a conspiracy,” you might say.

I never asked about a conspiracy. You brought that up all on your own.

If our lifestyles are killing the planet, then they are simply immoral. That’s pretty

tough to accept. To call for a ‘carbon tax’ is politically unpopular, but no one thought to

call it a ‘pollution tax.’ (I would call it an ‘ignorance tax.’) The biggest shortage in this country is leadership, with any kind of firm resolve, or clarity of vision. And the truth is that a lifestyle based on greed, consumption and conspicuous waste, has become kind of immoral, and some people are becoming quite alienated, like a kind of subculture.

The government is in no position to provide moral guidance, and guys like me are in no position to run for election. I guess we’re pooched.

Now, in the perfect economy of the future, an artificial and theoretical construct; all (or most) products and services will be intangibles, such as financial planning, wellness consultation, motivational speaking and literature, news-casting, e-publishing, etc.

What this means is that Canadians will be able to enjoy a high standard of living without the need or benefit of unions, as everyone will be self-employed. They will make good livings, based on the provincial $10.25 an hour minimum wages, and they never have to cut a tree down, skin a beaver, dig up coal, put out a fishing net, or do any of the traditional resource-export-based things we did in the past.

Once you get your head around this notion, then you will quickly see that the perfect economy of the future is perfectly designed for constant expansion of productivity—all products are useless and therefore luxuries and therefore desirable, like a thousand ‘apps’ for your text service provider’s ‘free phone,’ and oh! What a surprise when the monthly bill comes in and it’s six hundred dollars.

I’ll be selling essays, or better yet, bartering them for aromatherapy or feng-shui classes, getting my colours done and using my cell-phone apps to keep track of my pedicure appointments, or my reservations at ‘Grille 23.’ The pemmican is great, you should try it sometime.

In a world where ignorance is popular and superstition sells, a bullshit-peddler like me or that nice Mister Kevin O’Leary on CBC should make out all right.

Mr O’Leary and I agree on one thing for certain: people are basically pretty stupid.  

I guess the only solution would be a long-term program of mass education by a disinterested and highly-honourable consortium of mass media. Oh, sorry—we already have that. Right?

Anyhow, I'm off to class. At least now I know what a Feng-Shui spiral is.

END

On Church and State

Epicurus: 'Why does evil exist?'

We don’t really have separation of Church and State in this country, even though the claim has been made that we do. 

There has never been a church that revolted against this state, and the state has never represssed a single religion. 

Well--maybe a few. Maybe just a little bit--but they came around in the end.

To the state, all religions are equally useful.

They keep the people placid, and that’s good if you want to exercise power over them. Once the truth has been revealed, it is unchangeable—an important element in any system of beliefs.

The truth is unchangeable. Truth comes from somewhere far above you.

Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, these are all state and religious holidays. People who haven’t seen the inside of a church in years for any reason other than the wedding of a friend or the funeral of a relative celebrate religious holidays with an inconsistency that to me seems schizophrenic.

Religion is an excuse to have festivities.

The state itself rests on some religious foundation. The Queen of England, the titular head of our constitutional monarchy, is also the titular head of the Anglican Church. We have Henry VIII to thank for that, when all he wanted was to appoint his own friends to benefices that were up for grabs, (and the income derived from them) which up until then were strictly Catholic. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen—Henry VIII was a Catholic. Some would argue that all he wanted was another divorce, and the pope at that time refused.

It was a power struggle, nothing more, and I don’t think Henry VIII had any great theological arguments to back him up. So in that sense, it really wasn’t about the Reformation or Protestantism per se.

No one wants to talk about this. We prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. I’m just supposed to accept things and keep my mouth shut—because you guys have given me freedom.

And you’re not going to give it up—or the power that goes with it, anytime soon.

What a ludicrous claim. You have given me my freedom.

No one can set you free, ladies and gentlemen.

You must free yourselves or be perpetual slaves in service to your corporate masters.

Personal freedom requires the individual to take full responsibilty for themselves—and responsibility is hard.

Before each session of the Legislative Assemby of Ontario, the proceedings are opened with a prayer.

It is true those dummies need all the help they can get, for surely one or two of them had some vision…before they got elected, and had hopes of making some sweeping social progress in the context of this century, a hope that will be quickly pounded out of them by ‘realities.’

I’ve never actually heard it, but it’s likely not the Roman Catholic version of the Lord’s Prayer that they use. 

They had to pick one, and only one, of several creeds.

In fact, when I switched from a public school to a Catholic school back in the 1960s, the words of the prayer were slightly different. The hair-splitting of theology is legendary.

One syllable, one wrong word, one wrong inflection or accent and the transgressor is immediately condemned to everlasting hellfire. Since I’ve uttered that prayer both ways, it’s difficult to see me as anything other than but one of the damned.

The trouble with atheism is of course morality.

Without a God, one socially-acceptable to my neighbours, where can morality possibly spring from?

What if I agreed that murder, theft, arson, violence of any sort was wrong?

Would you doubt my word, even though these things are first of all illegal, and secondly, they are impractical methods of conflict resolution?

Ah, but Ian, where are you getting all of this? Surely a man, a normal man, is incapable of figuring these things out without some miracle of divine intervention, a lightning bolt, a splitting of the Earth, or even just a stork leaving town in a hurry—a flock of birds behaving strangely, or perhaps the meteors of the air, showering the world with sparks and pestilence…but I digress, ladies and gentlemen.

Where do atheists go on Halloween? Because we don’t believe in the supernatural, it would be hypocritical to dress up as a ghost or a goblin; or to indulge in superstition such as reading the horoscope, crossing our fingers for luck, or throwing a penny into a wishing well.

Atheism, in order to be valid, must be supremely rational, and that is also its greatest weakness.

That’s because none of us are completely rational beings.

We cannot escape our upbringing. From our upbringing stems all prejudice, for we were born a clean slate with no rational thoughts at all.

Atheism takes power away from Church and State. No longer is there a fountainhead of morality, one that all can recognize and agree to, even if it is only as a legal fiction.

Atheism empowers the individual. It empowers them to be free.

I say the power to govern stems from the people, but in the maternalistic political world, the people can‘t be trusted and so we need a Queen. And in order to justify one person being Queen over some other choice, a person equally or perhaps even better qalified to be Queen, we must accept their ‘Divine Right of Kings.’ 

We must accept the prerogatives of birth and blood, their pedigree. We must accept not only history as it was written—mostly by educated males of the ruling class, but we must also accept that it can be no other way. We must accept the tyranny of past precedents without question.

Otherwise there is no legitimacy, and that includes the legitimacy of elections based on historical precedent, which is the only argument that you have when God is taken out of the equation.

Our ancestors fought for those rights for sound personal reasons.

Personal reasons, and today we can only speculate as to what they may have been.

***

You could try speaking to me in purely practical terms, but I think you incapable of actually doing it, without quickly running out of arguments and falling back on tradition.

Genetically, we are asked to accept that the blue-bloods are not just morally superior in that they have the right to govern, it seems we must also accept their genetic superiority! Something that has not been scientifically proven seems to be an unwritten law.

Otherwise, the only other possible argument is that they are rich—or that they have a monopoly on truth, one which stems from somewhere far, far up above the common man.

Objectively speaking, if we did away with Queen Elizabeth II, would the country collapse of its own internal moral inconsistencies?

(But of course you don’t see that we have any moral inconsistencies.)

Of course not. Someone would find the justification to continue with our present system, with absolutely no changes (or disruption,) at all. Anyhow, they always have another king or queen waiting in the wings to take over, don’t they? If you follow the genealogy of the Royal Family, it goes all the way back to Wotan—the god of war, whose effigy was placed on a wagon and drawn through the camp of the barbarians before battle in order to remind those savage warriors that the gods were on their side and that Valhalla awaited the heroes who gave their life for their king and country.

It would seem that either they were wrong or now, in the present day, we must be wrong. For now all religions are equally valid before the law.

We have changed religions many times over the last two thousand years, and in fact Christianity itself would be almost unrecognizable to Jesus in the unlikely event he should be ressurected and return to Earth for a quick look to see how things were going.

Our ‘belief system’ is irrational, and even more so, it is perpetuated by an unwritten code of bigotry and prejudice, a system of checks and balances to keep us from asking all the wrong questions.

It must be based on a system of unconscious assumptions.

It has to be unconcsious, it has to be unwritten, and it has to be accepted by all, just like the emperor’s new set of clothes, for to question it is to unravel the whole fabric of our society, very quickly, and in the interest of order, we prefer not to do that.

We simply must have order.

To an atheist, the whole basis of Canadian law and government is irrational—because it is based on assumptions of the divine, the revelation of religion, which oddly enough always seems to favour the predominance of the rich—and the well-born—and it is really nothing more than a way of squelching dissent from ordinary people, most of whom do not have time for great philosophical debates.

They’re too busy struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads.

I have no doubt most of them have an opinion, one which no matter how loudly shouted, bears little evidence of actual thought, any real practicality, or any real usefulness at all.

I don’t really have the right to say this. Freedom of expression is in the Constitution? Yes it is, but then the neighbours also have pitchforks and unlit torches in the back closet, just in case something goes terribly wrong and another belief system comes along to threaten their comfortable assumptions.

You see, since atheism is not a religion, my belief system is not protected by the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion. It most definitely does not guarantee ‘freedom from religion,’ because Canadians ‘don’t want that.’

They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be left alone and not to have to think too much. 

They want some nice Christmas gifts, they want to eat turkey and give thanks for not being Americans—how many times have we watched Canadian journalists on TV, who report on the U.S. with such smug and self-righteous glee.

“Thank God we aren’t Americans.” How many times have we heard it?

To an objective observer half a world away, Canadians and Americans are almost indistinguishable.

But it means so very, very, much, to a Canadian, not to be an American.

Because Americans are unwashed. They are loud, boisterous, obnoxious people with a little too much power around the globe and a little too much money to spend at home…unless they’re here as tourists, in which case, ‘Bienvenue.’

Welcome to Canada, eh. The home of peace, order and good, rational government, a government of the people and by the people—well, two out of three ain’t so bad, eh?

And it is the home of an irrational system of beliefs which justifies much.

I hate justification. I think justification would suck a basketball through a garden hose if you gave it half a chance. In that sense, justification is much like assumption.

I hate assumptions, for they are a form of limiting beliefs.

If this nation really has a moral system of beliefs, a moral system of government, one which takes into account more than just the ignorances and prejudices of the loudest mouths, would someone please tell me why the disabled must live thirty or forty percent below the poverty line; a situation which has persisted for decades, and which will go on for the forseeable future?

But you can’t do it, can you?

Religion, morality, tradition, none of that can help the true hypocrite explain a situation that is intolerable to any thinking person.

Maybe that’s why I became an atheist.

You simply couldn’t satisfy my inquiries. And now I have become like the state—I see all religions as equally valid, or perhaps vapid would be a better word.

The state sees them as useful, a fundamental difference of philosophy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism

Sort of Unethical for One Such As I.

Go ahead. Make my day.

I know, I know.

Make me feel like a perv.

But it looks like I got my cover shot for 'Two on One,' which is due out any day now but I would have to check my calendar.

It's like waving a fucking steak around in front of a drowning man.

(Can you talk to me later, ladies? Like when I got money and stuff?)

I'm just kidding ladies and gentlemen, I joke, I joke.

But this is the worst fricking job in the world sometimes, I really mean that.

Here we got signed model releases and everything, which looks good for me and all that, but it would be, ah, sort of unethical for one such as I to call them ladies up and sort of ask for a date, right?

God, would someone please come around here and kill me or something.

Holy shit, you could say I was feeling my oats. And my inadequacies.
The whole point of this is that my short story, ah, what the hell is it called. Oh, yeah. 'Two on One.' I forget what it's about. But it will be coming out soon. If you got a gun or something, that would be good.

END

A little sponsorship.

Jenson Button for Prime Minister. Photo by Ryan Bayona.

Dear editor;

Sometimes, when the cost seems a little too much to bear; you might need some sponsorship.  If the trend towards privatization is to be successful, it must be employed across the board.

Sammy’s Police Services, Achmed’s Fire Protection (2004) Ltd; Bob and Doug’s Welfare Office. Hank’s Jail, Acme Hospitals Inc., RJR-Macdonald Cancer Clinics, Timmy’s Soup Kitchen. (Poor people could drive through in their 4X4’s.)  McDonald’s Elementary Schools. Coca-Cola emblazoned on the tail fins of CF-18’s.

Bids for cabinet positions are now being tendered. And they’ll be wearing Nascar-type coveralls splattered with sponsor’s patches.

“Join the Intel/Pentium Navy and see the world.”

Oh, yeah, eh, I hear the Royal Bank/Kia Canada/NAPA Auto Parts/ Gov.Can.Com Legislative Session will be running this spring. Looks like we got us a game. How can you tell when a politician is lying?

Their lips move.

And what if smart bombs demand better contractual conditions? Chrome tail fins and a racing stripe, a retirement plan? It’s the least we can do for them, if they agree to carry our corporate logo.  Hey: a new career path might open up: ‘Unexploded Bomb Negotiator.’

“Hey, little buddy…you know you want to do this…it’s your destiny…of course you’re scared…who wouldn’t be…”

If all them little drone aircraft attempt to bargain collectively for bigger engines, higher octane fuel; let’s label them “terrorists” and shoot ‘em down ourselves. We created ‘em, you know.

Don’t ask what you can do for your country. Just go to Disneyland, spend lotsa money. War is heck, eh?

But if we can consume stuff faster than everyone else, we win.  And we had a lot of spare bombs laying around gathering dust. No good to anyone.  But I have other worries, too.

Remember that Canadian cabinet minister, boasted to the microphones, “We broke the secret Afghan code!” (This was some time ago. –ed.)

It’s called, ‘Sanskrit,’ buddy. Here, this stone tablet holds an important clue. Take it firmly in both hands and whack! Yourself in the freaking head with it. Now  promise me you’ll never, ever, ever tell anyone you broke the secret code…if you can remember.

It wouldn’t confuse most of us if the cop cars had ‘Labatt’s’ or ‘Frank’s Red-Hot Sauce’ painted on the doors and hood.

“Hey! I put that sh** on everything.”

(Promise you won’t monkey with the restrictor plate. That’s cheatin’.) Guess if we wanted to save money real bad, we could always try a little harder. There are lots of ways to save money. Put a couple pounds more air pressure in the tires.

Clean some of the useless junk out of the vehicle.  There’s never any air in the spare so why carry it around?

When you search someone’s vehicle, keep all the winning tabs – you know, like…winning tabs…?

Someone said they didn’t want to fight over oil. I got an idea. Why don’t we fight over something sensible…like religion?

Like that Noah guy coming down the mountain: “I bring to you direct from God Himself these Fifteen (Kersmash!) Oops! I mean Ten Commandments…”

It caused a big controversy at the time.

End

Wartime Propaganda in Canada.



Is it really news or are you trying to send a message?



In World War One and WW II our free and open society used propaganda to forward the war effort and motivate the Canadian people. Most readers would agree if they’ve ever read any kind of book on the subject of Canada at war.

Propaganda was carried out by the mainstream media of the day, which included newspapers, magazines, books, newsreels, radio and speeches. We’re all aware of the propaganda by Nazi Germany in the period 1933-1945, and Soviet propaganda machines.

So it would appear that if we are indeed at war in Afghanistan, then perhaps it’s not such a giant intuitive leap of the imagination to ask, “Is there propaganda in the data-stream coming out of the media?”

The answer is self-evident, but we’ll ask the following questions on behalf of today’s young men who apparently have some kind of a literacy problem, good educations notwithstanding.

What form would it take? What would it look like? Who would be doing it? Why are they doing it? What is the purpose? How is it being done? What effect is it having? Who pays for it?

If every TV journalist in the nation starts wearing a poppy in late September and keeps it on until early January, is this a free choice, or some kind of policy? Please state the message in exact words. I don't find the symbology valid anymore.

When a CTV Newsnet journalist looks a guest advocating withdrawal from Afghanistan in the eyes and asks, (we had about 38 casualties at the time,) “Did they all die in vain, then?” that’s pretty heavy stuff.

The only time they ask tough questions is when dissent is offered? Nice.

The propaganda is out there once you become aware of the possibility. It’s not seamless, not unless you accept it as the truth without question.

“Perception is reality.”

If you believe it to be true, then it becomes truth. In the end, truth really doesn’t matter. What matters is public opinion. And that can be ‘managed,’ from time to time.

The first law of human communication is this: “No matter who you’re talking to, you’re only getting half a story.”

The second law of human communication states: “The government will tell you what it wants you to think.”

The third law of human communications states, “The mainstream media of the day are either self-regulating, or regulated by the government. It’s their choice.”

The fourth law of human communications goes like this: “You don’t have to believe everything you read in a newspaper, hear on the radio, see on TV, or get off the internet.”

I’ve just scooped all the mainstream big-bucks media in the land on this wartime propaganda thing.

We all have our little role to play.

Anyhow, to engage in idle speculation is the mark of a free man. (And never try to argue with an idiot.)

I often thought I’d make a good propagandist, but you really need to get inside the subject’s head. In order to do that you need to understand human nature. You also need to understand his culture, his attitudes. You have to know what makes them tick. All human beings have a sense of justice, and a sense of humour. Virtually all men like true words, honestly spoken with a flair.

My problem as a Canadian, is that I kind of got used to trying to make informed choices. Well, the fog of war is legendary—it’s also true. If our own government is generating a big smokescreen, I have to ask why? Where is the threat? Where is it coming from? What is its nature? And why should I care? I got enough problems of my own to deal with.

I see Mr. Harper’s government as a kind of tragicomedy of errors. Mr. Trudeau’s government will be a light slapstick comedy with a host of zany characters. Just what the viewers need to wind up a long and interminable interlude. And let’s try to have our boys and girls home by the year 2014. Uh, that’s Christmas, 2014.