Saturday, October 28, 2006
Al Qaïda versus Canada - who would win?
Last July, on some website out there, in the vast wasteland known as cyberland, some component of the terrorist organization named after a Late Night/Late Show with David Letterman perennial staffer issued actual scary words towards the country that is known to some, half-jokingly really, as "God's Country"... Canada, eh? Yeah... (It reeks of the egos in sports entertainment: one is the Living Legend, the other is the Icon, the other is the Immortal one, the other is the Best there ever was... And so on. And, in the end, they are all fakes and bogus acts. Likewise, a bunch of nations proclaim God is in THEIR corner - and God Is, most likely, equally displeased with all of them! But I digress...)
So, Al threatened - and, slowly but so very surely, the fear is creeping up on all Canadi-ants... Or is it just the time of the year? Too many horror movies in one week? The scariest prospect of all (having to face hordes of trick-or-treaters soon) AND "o inferno do iverno" (another hellacious winter) BACK-TO-BACK... Whatever it is, peeps across the 49th parallel are sullying their panties and demanding that the U.S. government subsidiary (a.k.a. the Canadian government) pull out the local troops from "terre étrangère" (what little there is in Canada in terms of troops, military force, army, navy, marines, S.E.A.L.S. or anything of the kind... I mean, S.W.A.T teams there work only a few months a year - the summer months - and that is when they go after those criminal bar flies, carriers of the west nile virus among other viruses... But that is another, rather absurd story, yes...)
Hence, Al is taken seriously up in the "(not-so)Great White North", eh... On this Saturday, from coast-to-coast, Canada's major cities (in their own minds they are, anyway...) were the stage for meek demonstrations, weak "manifs" a.k.a. manifestations a.k.a. protests against the Canadian presence in Afghanistan... After all, Al clearly stated it in his threat to snow and "slotch" (which is the strange and all-together revolting mixture of snow, sleet, melted ice and, mostly, automotive vehicles' assorted wastes that plagues every last street north of that 49th parallel from November to March of every single year since about 1910...) that Al Qaïda has a tooth against Canada ONLY UNTIL the Canadian troops are pulled from Afghan country... Like a terrorist's word has much intrinsic value too, though... However, being a cowardly country in quite a lot of ways, Canada must think they will be "ok" if they pull out - that doing so will also take their name out of the "hit list" that Al has put together... Al's greatest hits so far are, of course, 9/11 (NYC, 2001) - 3/11 (Mad-rid, 2004) - and 7/7 (London, 2005)... Townships such as Toronto, Calgary, ED-monton or -eek- Montreal would look odd and downright out of place next to those three international glitzy spots (that said even though I think very poorly of the Spanish capital...)
Hmm... AL hitting on ED would be something I could see happening though... IN Mad-rid that is... But I digress...
To my amazement though, I received an invite to protest myself... A way-too-tardy one for it to have any merit whatsoever though, but still... It went like this...
Bonjour à tous les membres et sympathisants-tes de Québec Solidaire / Saint-Henri-Sainte-Anne.
Je vous fais parvenir en pièce jointe le tract que nous venons tout juste d'éditer à Québec Solidaire / Montréal. Comme vous le savez sans doute, il y aura une large manifestation organisée demain midi.
Venez rejoindre le groupe de Québec Solidaire sous sa bannière à 12h30 à l'angle des rues Peel et René-Lévesque et faisons en sorte que notre message soit entendu haut et fort ! Merci de diffuser largement à vos listes courriels.
" Tous et toutes ensembles et solidaires contre la guerre en Afghanistan ! "
Hmm... First of all, I am not in your town, solidary ones... I am not going to cross imaginary boundaries and leave my relatively quiet (emphasis on the relative aspect of that) and practically non-polluted (practically means close - but no cigar. Lots of cigarettes and CO2 though - arrrrghhh) city to wind up on the foul streets where you thread all the time, for a lost-in-advance cause to boot...
Secondly, I am not that solidary of your *usual* cause either...
Thirdly, a less-than 24 hour prior notice is downright rude...
And lastly, with the lousy weather, only nutcases will bother with these pointless exercises! The best tactic, as far as I am concerned, remains OCCUPATION - go into the so-called "high-ranked officials' offices" (the only thing high about them is their brow...) and take up residence there! In a non-violent way, it goes without saying... Be a nuisance! THEN they will start paying attention for real! Besides, this way you do protest, you do make some noise, you have a far greater chance of being heard AND you're doing it indoors too! Gluttons for self-torture that you are to do it out on the streets, like sharply-dressed, well-groomed beggars de luxe...
Oh - and my prognostics for this "menace"...
Al - in 7.
Link
So, Al threatened - and, slowly but so very surely, the fear is creeping up on all Canadi-ants... Or is it just the time of the year? Too many horror movies in one week? The scariest prospect of all (having to face hordes of trick-or-treaters soon) AND "o inferno do iverno" (another hellacious winter) BACK-TO-BACK... Whatever it is, peeps across the 49th parallel are sullying their panties and demanding that the U.S. government subsidiary (a.k.a. the Canadian government) pull out the local troops from "terre étrangère" (what little there is in Canada in terms of troops, military force, army, navy, marines, S.E.A.L.S. or anything of the kind... I mean, S.W.A.T teams there work only a few months a year - the summer months - and that is when they go after those criminal bar flies, carriers of the west nile virus among other viruses... But that is another, rather absurd story, yes...)
Hence, Al is taken seriously up in the "(not-so)Great White North", eh... On this Saturday, from coast-to-coast, Canada's major cities (in their own minds they are, anyway...) were the stage for meek demonstrations, weak "manifs" a.k.a. manifestations a.k.a. protests against the Canadian presence in Afghanistan... After all, Al clearly stated it in his threat to snow and "slotch" (which is the strange and all-together revolting mixture of snow, sleet, melted ice and, mostly, automotive vehicles' assorted wastes that plagues every last street north of that 49th parallel from November to March of every single year since about 1910...) that Al Qaïda has a tooth against Canada ONLY UNTIL the Canadian troops are pulled from Afghan country... Like a terrorist's word has much intrinsic value too, though... However, being a cowardly country in quite a lot of ways, Canada must think they will be "ok" if they pull out - that doing so will also take their name out of the "hit list" that Al has put together... Al's greatest hits so far are, of course, 9/11 (NYC, 2001) - 3/11 (Mad-rid, 2004) - and 7/7 (London, 2005)... Townships such as Toronto, Calgary, ED-monton or -eek- Montreal would look odd and downright out of place next to those three international glitzy spots (that said even though I think very poorly of the Spanish capital...)
Hmm... AL hitting on ED would be something I could see happening though... IN Mad-rid that is... But I digress...
To my amazement though, I received an invite to protest myself... A way-too-tardy one for it to have any merit whatsoever though, but still... It went like this...
Bonjour à tous les membres et sympathisants-tes de Québec Solidaire / Saint-Henri-Sainte-Anne.
Je vous fais parvenir en pièce jointe le tract que nous venons tout juste d'éditer à Québec Solidaire / Montréal. Comme vous le savez sans doute, il y aura une large manifestation organisée demain midi.
Venez rejoindre le groupe de Québec Solidaire sous sa bannière à 12h30 à l'angle des rues Peel et René-Lévesque et faisons en sorte que notre message soit entendu haut et fort ! Merci de diffuser largement à vos listes courriels.
" Tous et toutes ensembles et solidaires contre la guerre en Afghanistan ! "
Hmm... First of all, I am not in your town, solidary ones... I am not going to cross imaginary boundaries and leave my relatively quiet (emphasis on the relative aspect of that) and practically non-polluted (practically means close - but no cigar. Lots of cigarettes and CO2 though - arrrrghhh) city to wind up on the foul streets where you thread all the time, for a lost-in-advance cause to boot...
Secondly, I am not that solidary of your *usual* cause either...
Thirdly, a less-than 24 hour prior notice is downright rude...
And lastly, with the lousy weather, only nutcases will bother with these pointless exercises! The best tactic, as far as I am concerned, remains OCCUPATION - go into the so-called "high-ranked officials' offices" (the only thing high about them is their brow...) and take up residence there! In a non-violent way, it goes without saying... Be a nuisance! THEN they will start paying attention for real! Besides, this way you do protest, you do make some noise, you have a far greater chance of being heard AND you're doing it indoors too! Gluttons for self-torture that you are to do it out on the streets, like sharply-dressed, well-groomed beggars de luxe...
Oh - and my prognostics for this "menace"...
Al - in 7.
Link
Friday, October 27, 2006
Light... (s)... Camera - Action?!?
Are you a child of Light?
A "sort-of-a-blog-bulletin-thing"
shared by illuminaries such as
"Sea'lestial" and "Lightworker" -
to whom I say... thank you!
Read it - in the luminous comments section!!!
+++
Labels: Enya, music video
Link
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Insightful, if not needful, things...
What's the point of so much nitpicking, huh?
What's the purpose of all this "striving to be tops", eh?
Why do we bother with keeping up appearances so much?
There is nothing that lasts forever in our vicinity - then why take so much to heart such trivial things - for they truly are trivial, ultimately...
Now, for things that are NOT trivial...
We find, near the top of our short list, kindness and caring.
To take into account how others feel, what they feel and how they might be feeling at precise trying times in their lives - and we all experience those, sooner or later...
Next, and close enough to being the same thing, we have empathy.
The "power of understanding" it is...
Next time, when asked what super-power you would like to have been endowed with at birth or in the blink of an eye, go with that one...
For, with the power of understanding, you can truly do a whole lot of good around you - each and every day of your life! Understanding your fellow man's actions, reactions and every other conceivable type of action will go a long way towards achieving towards achieving that most precious thing called ACCEPTANCE... And either that or tolerance is the chief pre-requisite for the utopic dream of "world peace"...
So, to coin a luminous phrase, "inch toward empathy"... Heck, fumble towards it! Even that will be a step in the right direction - even if an awkward one, at first...!
And we must round out the true needful things with... philanthropic altruism - without ulterior motives now, please! Never to be confused with dreams of sycophantic nepotism or the lure of the quick gain! (Brings to mind my humorous character-find of yesteryear - the Sycophantic Psychopath! Aye, tis another story entirely... For another time!)
In the immortal words of my former English History teacher, Trevor Burridge, "we have to think of others" - and we have to think of them UNDER A GOOD LIGHT TOO!
Not easy to do some times / MOST times... I know...!
We have to try! Try and BE THE CHANGE that we want to see in this world...
In a society... Heck, in a world where it is all about "me, me, me" - this task is far easier said than done - WE ALL KNOW THAT!
Knowledge being power and assessing a condition being the first step towards full recovery, surely all of these *truly needful things* can be cast in the realm of the "possible" now... Hmm? Wouldn't you all agree?
Link
What's the purpose of all this "striving to be tops", eh?
Why do we bother with keeping up appearances so much?
There is nothing that lasts forever in our vicinity - then why take so much to heart such trivial things - for they truly are trivial, ultimately...
Now, for things that are NOT trivial...
We find, near the top of our short list, kindness and caring.
To take into account how others feel, what they feel and how they might be feeling at precise trying times in their lives - and we all experience those, sooner or later...
Next, and close enough to being the same thing, we have empathy.
The "power of understanding" it is...
Next time, when asked what super-power you would like to have been endowed with at birth or in the blink of an eye, go with that one...
For, with the power of understanding, you can truly do a whole lot of good around you - each and every day of your life! Understanding your fellow man's actions, reactions and every other conceivable type of action will go a long way towards achieving towards achieving that most precious thing called ACCEPTANCE... And either that or tolerance is the chief pre-requisite for the utopic dream of "world peace"...
So, to coin a luminous phrase, "inch toward empathy"... Heck, fumble towards it! Even that will be a step in the right direction - even if an awkward one, at first...!
And we must round out the true needful things with... philanthropic altruism - without ulterior motives now, please! Never to be confused with dreams of sycophantic nepotism or the lure of the quick gain! (Brings to mind my humorous character-find of yesteryear - the Sycophantic Psychopath! Aye, tis another story entirely... For another time!)
In the immortal words of my former English History teacher, Trevor Burridge, "we have to think of others" - and we have to think of them UNDER A GOOD LIGHT TOO!
Not easy to do some times / MOST times... I know...!
We have to try! Try and BE THE CHANGE that we want to see in this world...
In a society... Heck, in a world where it is all about "me, me, me" - this task is far easier said than done - WE ALL KNOW THAT!
Knowledge being power and assessing a condition being the first step towards full recovery, surely all of these *truly needful things* can be cast in the realm of the "possible" now... Hmm? Wouldn't you all agree?
Link
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Save the drama for your chihuahua? No, pal - you're barking up the wrong tree here...
MISTREATED ANIMALS ARE NOT A JOKE - WHETHER THESE ARE PETS WITH UNWORTHY OWNERS OR STRAYS TREATED LIKE JUST ANOTHER COMPONENT OF THE FOOD CHAIN... THIS MUST NOT BE TOLERATED IN A CIVILIZED SOCIETY.
Support groups and organizations such as IFAW, the WWF and Humane societies worldwide...
...
Link
Support groups and organizations such as IFAW, the WWF and Humane societies worldwide...
well then - these only alleged humans
will be suffering HELL ON EARTH, too
- when the law and, most interestingly,
"justice behind bars" catches up
with their misbegotten sorry hides
...
Link
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
This and That Tuesday - Take One
This classic song from a bygone, far more innocent era keeps resonating and reverberating in my head these days... "For everything - turn, turn, turn - there is a season - turn, turn, turn - and a purpose for everything under heaven"...
That commercial though, the one about "moments" that relates every imagineable kind of moment there is - from momentary lapses of judgement to 'senior moments', whatever those really are - now THAT commercial is royally ticking me off...!!!
This blogger here recognizes that there is a time, a season, a moment for EVERYTHING conceivable... Aye, there sure is...
However...
That is not a reason to justify just about any kind of behaviour one can dream of...! No way, Jose!
This latest example of a cheater in the so-called "grandest stage of all" (the 'World Series'...) is a good lesson for all would-be cheats out there... Kenny Rogers (the baseball pitcher, not the country singer) came clean in the second inning and did great while playing FAIR - and me, I thought only a second-rate spare such as Mike Myers (the baseball "not-much-relief" pitcher, not the not-so-great comedy actor nor the halloween guy...) or an over-the-hill closer would do such a thing...
But that is another story...
In other news...
This "let's lay off the excess baggage" trend is not a good omen for the end times... at all! Norsk-Hydro laid off close to 300 employees on this day -their excuse: they can't compete with the Chinese in their field, which is the production of magnesium- and even the mighty Bombardier laid off over a thousand employees in Belfast, Montreal and elsewhere...
These guys will now take up the spots that could have gone to youngsters & neophytes trying to break into the job market, by raking any other "available positions" there are elsewhere... Job offers can only satisfy so much demand... Then again, one tallies up 30, 35 years of loyal service to a company, only to be forgotten or laid off or dispatched into early retirement... No wonder the Chinese are hard to compete with! They, at least, treat their employees infinitely better - their entire philosophy is different! A job isn't "just a job" - it isn't just to earn a wage that they do it, it is a true vocation! And the employer has a very solid engagement to the masses of employees it employs - they are NOT just a faceless work force! Asians sure have "got it"... Just ask Jet Li! He is "THE ONE" after all - isn't he? ;)
(Ok - admittedly, he is also a Rogue -a forthcoming film- and, ah, 'Danny The Dog'... But those are other stories...)
I mentioned Montreal a moment ago - makes me think of its rats! They have rats in the chinatown there, the size of fat cats! These rats are found in the Old Port, in Old Montreal (which is so much like Europe - yet assuredly isn't) and on busy streets such as St-Laurent St. and Ste. Dominique St.
The latter used to harbor the local prostitutes, back in the sixties, without being a full-fledged red district per say... Last night, two huge rats were shot dead in an alley there, right behind a trendy lounge bar packed with 160 patrons...
That's an approximate!
These rats were really from the northern shore - from Laval - and they were involved in drug trafficking... One buzz and they were summoned to their deaths via their cellphones... Ah, cells are such a pleasant commodity to have...
And speaking of cells, I start thinking of stem cells - and stem cell research making everyone in the U.S. so troubled and bothered... The fact is, there is a tie-in with both rats and Montreal in there too! As reported by CNN, stem cell research, as controversial as it may be, has proven its efficiency already when it helped heal paralyzed rats in 2001 during experiments conducted in Atlanta... One paralyzed human who could have benefited greatly from this research and its applications to humans was Christopher Reeve - who, for some odd reason, loved Montreal when he passed by there in the eighties, during one of those F.F.M.s (Festival des Films du Monde...) thingies... He had particularly loved Old Montreal (although Old Quebec City is far more like Europe than it is there...) where the rats thrive today...!
Speaking of this, we wind up speaking of that, indeed...
That's it for this take on it...
Link
That commercial though, the one about "moments" that relates every imagineable kind of moment there is - from momentary lapses of judgement to 'senior moments', whatever those really are - now THAT commercial is royally ticking me off...!!!
This blogger here recognizes that there is a time, a season, a moment for EVERYTHING conceivable... Aye, there sure is...
However...
That is not a reason to justify just about any kind of behaviour one can dream of...! No way, Jose!
This latest example of a cheater in the so-called "grandest stage of all" (the 'World Series'...) is a good lesson for all would-be cheats out there... Kenny Rogers (the baseball pitcher, not the country singer) came clean in the second inning and did great while playing FAIR - and me, I thought only a second-rate spare such as Mike Myers (the baseball "not-much-relief" pitcher, not the not-so-great comedy actor nor the halloween guy...) or an over-the-hill closer would do such a thing...
But that is another story...
In other news...
This "let's lay off the excess baggage" trend is not a good omen for the end times... at all! Norsk-Hydro laid off close to 300 employees on this day -their excuse: they can't compete with the Chinese in their field, which is the production of magnesium- and even the mighty Bombardier laid off over a thousand employees in Belfast, Montreal and elsewhere...
These guys will now take up the spots that could have gone to youngsters & neophytes trying to break into the job market, by raking any other "available positions" there are elsewhere... Job offers can only satisfy so much demand... Then again, one tallies up 30, 35 years of loyal service to a company, only to be forgotten or laid off or dispatched into early retirement... No wonder the Chinese are hard to compete with! They, at least, treat their employees infinitely better - their entire philosophy is different! A job isn't "just a job" - it isn't just to earn a wage that they do it, it is a true vocation! And the employer has a very solid engagement to the masses of employees it employs - they are NOT just a faceless work force! Asians sure have "got it"... Just ask Jet Li! He is "THE ONE" after all - isn't he? ;)
(Ok - admittedly, he is also a Rogue -a forthcoming film- and, ah, 'Danny The Dog'... But those are other stories...)
I mentioned Montreal a moment ago - makes me think of its rats! They have rats in the chinatown there, the size of fat cats! These rats are found in the Old Port, in Old Montreal (which is so much like Europe - yet assuredly isn't) and on busy streets such as St-Laurent St. and Ste. Dominique St.
The latter used to harbor the local prostitutes, back in the sixties, without being a full-fledged red district per say... Last night, two huge rats were shot dead in an alley there, right behind a trendy lounge bar packed with 160 patrons...
That's an approximate!
These rats were really from the northern shore - from Laval - and they were involved in drug trafficking... One buzz and they were summoned to their deaths via their cellphones... Ah, cells are such a pleasant commodity to have...
And speaking of cells, I start thinking of stem cells - and stem cell research making everyone in the U.S. so troubled and bothered... The fact is, there is a tie-in with both rats and Montreal in there too! As reported by CNN, stem cell research, as controversial as it may be, has proven its efficiency already when it helped heal paralyzed rats in 2001 during experiments conducted in Atlanta... One paralyzed human who could have benefited greatly from this research and its applications to humans was Christopher Reeve - who, for some odd reason, loved Montreal when he passed by there in the eighties, during one of those F.F.M.s (Festival des Films du Monde...) thingies... He had particularly loved Old Montreal (although Old Quebec City is far more like Europe than it is there...) where the rats thrive today...!
Speaking of this, we wind up speaking of that, indeed...
That's it for this take on it...
Link
Monday, October 23, 2006
Formidable Forwardable ~ one that seems very à propos too at this time... Like a Light illuminating the cavern of rancor where I dwelt...
...
Friends are those who forgive you
- they have to if they are going to be friends. It is there
somewhere among all the unwritten laws that a friend
is someone you can rely on when there's no word, no
kept promise, no outward sign of "ali i", which is
friendship to the Cherokee. We can forget a friend's
birthday - and we can't say that about anyone else. We
can tell them our deepest, darkest thoughts and they
will take us to lunch. We may mistake them as our
keeper - but we never, never mistake them for some -
one ordinary. The hardest lesson we have to learn is
that everyone is not a friend. Not everyone sees us as
a child at times, needing support and comfort. But a
friend sees all and says nothing - until the right time.
And even then we are forgiven.
I guess finding this today in my inbox - and the mere intuition one of my better contacts had to forward this to me - it truly is The Lord telling me to forgive the turds, forgive the so-called family, forgive the so-called friends for whatever offenses they've perpetrated me or mine...
and/or forgive what is no more than the "unforgivable sin of... neglect"!?
Aye - I KNOW it is the Lord telling me to...
It simply has to be - for there are NO coincidences...!
...
Link
Friends are those who forgive you
- they have to if they are going to be friends. It is there
somewhere among all the unwritten laws that a friend
is someone you can rely on when there's no word, no
kept promise, no outward sign of "ali i", which is
friendship to the Cherokee. We can forget a friend's
birthday - and we can't say that about anyone else. We
can tell them our deepest, darkest thoughts and they
will take us to lunch. We may mistake them as our
keeper - but we never, never mistake them for some -
one ordinary. The hardest lesson we have to learn is
that everyone is not a friend. Not everyone sees us as
a child at times, needing support and comfort. But a
friend sees all and says nothing - until the right time.
And even then we are forgiven.
I guess finding this today in my inbox - and the mere intuition one of my better contacts had to forward this to me - it truly is The Lord telling me to forgive the turds, forgive the so-called family, forgive the so-called friends for whatever offenses they've perpetrated me or mine...
and/or forgive what is no more than the "unforgivable sin of... neglect"!?
Aye - I KNOW it is the Lord telling me to...
It simply has to be - for there are NO coincidences...!
...
Link
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Seven months now...
....
....
Seven months ago, to the day...
I witnessed a departure
A rebirth
The end of a terrestrial journey
And the true beginning of Life
Life Eternal
Though a separation - and painful beyond description - it is a source of joy too
For it is abundantly clear that I have an insider now
in the Kingdom of the Lord
Someone on the inside, at long last...
The only networking anyone will ever need.
And I have got it.
One more reason for my queer quarries (queer in the original sense of the adjective) to be mortified with jealousy of me...
Death will not be kind to you, quarries of mine...
Link
....
Seven months ago, to the day...
I witnessed a departure
A rebirth
The end of a terrestrial journey
And the true beginning of Life
Life Eternal
Though a separation - and painful beyond description - it is a source of joy too
For it is abundantly clear that I have an insider now
in the Kingdom of the Lord
Someone on the inside, at long last...
The only networking anyone will ever need.
And I have got it.
One more reason for my queer quarries (queer in the original sense of the adjective) to be mortified with jealousy of me...
Death will not be kind to you, quarries of mine...
Link
