Ravings in July

Have been doing some wash. I have a long-sleeved T with an Orange stain mid-chest. Perhaps rather than attempt to bleach it I should have tie-dyed it. 

Is it just me or have there been a lot of iconic people we grew up with popping off lately, and more disturbingly, a lot of them younger.

Since I've been back home I've been looking through my cupboards. Back when I picked up a small container of Freeze-Dried Red Rose Tea that obviously didn't catch on. It's freshness date is 1993, it's over 23 years old!

Just got a friend request on Facebook from an unknown female. Before I had a chance to check it out the profile had been taken down. Must have been another one of those come hither sirens trolling for victims.

In America the separation of church and state is supposedly enshrined in the constitution "In God We Trust" on coinage notwithstanding. In Ontario Separate (Catholic) Schools are supported by the province. In contention right here in Halton Region where I live is a conflict between provincial policy on gender identity and orientation and Catholic Church Dogma on Sexuality. And in other news Ontario is removing gender from Driver's lincences and health cards. 

The Donald: the Joker's Wild. 

Senator Mike Duffy was found "Not Guilty" on all charges relating to his expense account spending. One suspects the original charges to have been politically motivated. Who is guilty of the greater crime, Senators for fudging their accounts or those who prompted the spending of millions on prosecuting these individuals to no result? Could not a less expensive means been found to tell politicians that business as usual was no longer acceptable? 

Another Tarzan movie hits the big screen proving naked torsos and yodels a great movie do not make.

Just thought I was tuned into the wrong radio station when a jarring commercial aired and was about to switch stations when I suddenly recalled that CBC is now reduced to airing commercials. Add to this the fact that CBC 2 is reduced to airing only 4 or so hours of Classical Music weekdays. What is the world coming to?

Ah, the joys of transgender politics. Would you rather she hoiked up her skirts to use the urinal in the men's or tinkled in the ladies'. Neither? In Quebec matters are far less circumspect. In most campgrounds I've stayed at everyone uses the same facility. The water-closets and showers are behind locked doors and everyone uses a common washup area. 

More ravings

Donald Trump is rich enough to be able to afford his appetites and convictions and the hell with the rest of the world. No one earns that much money without exploiting thousands and stepping on the lives of hundreds more on the way to the top. What bothers me is not the wacky unsupported rhetoric he spouts but what it says about America that so many support him. Does anyone think he really has their best interests at heart. Just how does he define making America great? Will it do anything for the common man? Remember trickle down Reaganomics? 

It takes a disaster to unite people or in many cases to get them to meet their neighbours. Too many don't truly feel alive unless they face the threat of losing that life. Without that adrenaline rush life just doesn't seem to have meaing. Witness the nostalgia Londoners felt for the blitz or the let down vets feel when they return to civilian life from war. Have we become a society of adrenaline junkies? It is the search for that high that motivates many to join the military and re-up for additional tours. Some get it through virtual reality and violent video games. In Nova Scotia teens have been climbing hydro towers without safety harness. Today comes word that someone jumped from a plane at 24,000 ft without a parachute. From that distance the net he landed in was a mighty small target. 

Civility on our highways seems to have descended into fits of road rage. In the last 8 years I've drivens 100,000 miles through 48 states and 10 provinces and been witness to much. Our highways are not a racetrack but too many treat them as such. I too have pet peeves but getting off on them is not good for my health or raod safety.

1.Lane hoppers

2.those who leap frog in front of me at a traffic light particularly when they compromise my braking distance
people who feel they have to pass and then drive slower, especially those who speed up at passing lanes on two-lane highways or jump in front and slam on the brakes to make an exit

3.left lane hogs especially when there is no other traffic.

4.tailgaters, I once took my foot off the gas and had dropped to 20 mph before the idiot got the idea, there was no other traffic for miles and it was a dark rural expressway

5.drivers who fail to enter the lane they need to make an exit until the last second and feel other drivers should brake to let them in.

6.the circus that is a traffic jam and often caused by the rubberneckers gawking at the collision in the opposing lanes or the officer who pulled over a speeder.

7.Construction zone speed restrictions where no work is being done. There should be fines for leaving those signs up.

8.Speed zones that don't seem to mean anything particularly when there are frequent changes. So do you become a traffic hazard by driving the posted speed or go with the flow?

Leaving in time to arrive early or at least on time without running traffic signals and getting all tense is a lost art it seems. Stopping on an amber light, it is the law, will put you in danger of being rear-ended. Before the local police station moved by a cop--they seem to be among the worst drivers. Parents driving their chldren to school or other events teach them that stop signs are optional. Leave a safe stopping distance between you and the car ahead and some yahoo will feel obligated to fill it. Some even seem to feel you should tailgate the car ahead just as they do and get incensed if you let someone into traffic slowing them down. 

It has been proven that in heavy traffic emergency vehicles running lights and sirens make no better time than if they went with traffic. Lane hoppers gain only seconds but run the risk of causing collisions. There are very few true accidents but many collisions. Drivers who make sling shot starts and slam on the brakes at traffic lights waste gasoline and cause brake wear. They obviously never drove on icy highways.

When was open season on pedestrians declared?

Most cities were not built to accomodate bikes. Creating bike lanes on narrow winding roads, insantiy. 

Profanity adds nothing to civil discourse. Children who use it appear less, not more mature. One may expect it from sailors, street urchins, and dock workers but why would others want to appear course and common. Its use in print media, online, and on TV serve to enure the public in the same way that constant exposure to aggressive behaviour and violence in video games, social media and film makes it seem acceptable and everyday as well. 

True beauty needs no make-up to enhance it. Body art was once the pervue of sailors and remote tribes and practised in back alleys and sleazy joints. Tattos, body piercings, and even brandings, no longer restricted to cattle, seem to have gone mainstream. Why anyone would want to emulate the likes of Justin Bieber or Marky Mark is beyond me. Young men who spend years in a gym honing a ripped physique and shave their body hair to show it off mystify me when they hide it with extensive bodyart. Grafitti is grafitti whether on the wall of a building or your skin. 

Thoughts on Islam

Deuteronomic in nature. System of laws for right living the faithful are expected to live by ignoringt them at their peril. Faithful act out of absolute obedience, submission, not out of response to a loving god.

No sense of humour, can't laugh at itself.

In prayer prostrate themselves like slaves in supplication to a master. God is to be feared and obeyed, not loved.

Muhammad may have been an illiterate prophet who served as Allah's mouthpiece but his leadership and that of his relatives descendents is honoured. His word as revealed in the Koran is the final word on all things.

Shia—dogmatic, hierarchical. Imams are often political as well as spiritual leaders whose word is final and beyond debate

Sunni—adopt a more collaborative community approach.

Sufis are ascetics.

A religion that should appeal to fundamentalist inclined persons who want to learn all the answers and submit to its dogma. Does not supply an approach to looking at the questions but the final word on all things. 

Separates men from woman in worship and casts them in a subserviant role much as does the Roman Catholic Church or the Mormons. 

Disney

George of the Jungle is an example of a movie so ridiculous it's good. It glories in its own hyperboly. Riffing on older examples of feral children such as Tarzan and Mowgli it anthropomorphizes animals and pokes fun at modern society and its values. The less successful portions of the film are those shot in LA. Is George's intelligence related to the number of trees he smacked ino? Since we meet young George later on we know that part of him works. It ends by invoking the symbolism of the presentation ceremony at Pride Rock in Lion King another Disney production. 

Whereas George is a cartoonish live-action film Lion King is an animated adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Here animals behave as humans often ignoring the anatomical limitations of their species. Certainly they can't talk or walk upright but elephants can't run. An elephant stampede is little more than a stately trot. This is a musical where the storyline is interrupted for production numbers that rival Fantasia. 

Disney has now taken on Kipling's Jmgle Book twice. First in live action and latterly in animation. Not only do the animals here behave in human terms but the adaptation does violence to the original on which it is based.

The Curmudgeon Rants

Schools and Learning

The North American School System seems to be more about regimentation and regurgitation than critical thinking and life-skills. Just look at the fuss over sex education and creationism, censorship and testing. Children are kept dependent and out of the workforce for twelve to sixteen years in a regime designed to prepare them for a 9-5 work experience that to a large degree no longer exists. Driven everywhere for their own safety they don't even learn how to navigate their own neighbourhoods without a GPS. Not allowed to walk to school where frills like phys ed, libraries, and music programs are dropped for economic reasons they are over-weight and culturally deprived.

Raised in a permissive system where self-discipline is lacking and self-expression trumps grammar and spelling recent generations use a calculator to do basic math and a hand-held device to communicate with the world. With the demise of newspapers social media sites spread fads such as Pokemon Go at the speed of light—or fibre optics if you will. Camera phones and social networks spread sensational events unfiltered instantly as they happen. Violent video games and America's preoccupation with guns and the false sense of security they feel they provide have led to a sense of unease and schools monitored by marshals where children pass through metal detectors.

The military establishment has trained killers and returned traumatized vets to a society with which they seem incapable of coping. The costs of all these guns in the hands of PTSD sufferers has become very evident of late. A history of racism and class struggle has impacted schools where parents have moved their homes to avoid the wrong neighbourhoods and forced racial integration—busing. The discontent, lack of critical thought, functional illiteracy, and dependence on social media for social interaction has enabled a Donald Trump to co-opt the primary system and present the RNC with a candidate few want but are powerless to resist. And we thought having a president who declared war on countries he couldn't find on a map was bad!!

 JulySoapbox

If the president's wife is the First Lady does that make her husband the First Man?

The Toronto Cop who pumped 6 bullets into the dead body of the disturbed teen his first 3 had already killed was sentenced to six years in prison. What is significant about this is that Canadian Law is so written that this makes it the first time a cop here has been convicted of murder while on duty. His ultimate trial will be surviving prison. If this makes police anywhere think twice about the use of excessive force.... Those who wear the uniform may have a different take on the matter. In Dallas, Moncton, Mayerthorpe.

Cross Country Checkup gets new host. I'm not generally a fan of the hoi poloi and talk shows which elicit the opinions of the great unwashed. Perhaps it's the kind of cranks that tend to be attracted to call-ins.

Healthy bacon is healthy because they removed all the flavour so no one would eat it.

Birthday Rhetoric

Is there a better time to stage a diet cheat day? I’m about to have cake, ice cream, and jam. Tomorrow morning bacon and eggs whenever it is I finally stagger out of bed. Many more birthdays and I’ll be an old curmudgeon, I already have the curmudgeon part down.

Visited Swiss Chalet today and will probably not be going back. In Canada a waiter should be fluent in at least one of our official languages. Cantonese is not one of them. Service was slow relieved by the fact that I was able to use Wi-Fi. My beer had set in the drum too long was foamy and on the way to getting skunky. My chips were remnants not fresh from the fryer.

At Longos I got a glimpse of my possible future. At the checkout the older gent in front of me took ten minutes to fumble with the credit card machine while four people checked out in the next line. While his Care Van Driver waited he fumbled for his grocery bags then left his cart blocking the lane. Almost out the door he remembered he came in with a walker that he couldn’t manage to place at this point having used the grocery cart to manoeuvre the aisles.

Later in August

Cost of a cheap pair of distance glasses to see me through the next year: $315.00.

Ahead, the hottest week in the GTA ever. Number of Days over 100 in Austin Texas in 2015: 5. Number below 100 this summer, about 5. Any connection with the amount of hot air Trump is spewing?

Poverty and ignorance are the greatest causes of the spread of disease. Because Moslems resist vaccination Polio was not wiped from the face of the earth. A false medical report led parents to refuse childhood vaccination. Childhood diseases such as Measles and Chickenpox have seen recent outbreaks.

Use of DDT may be banned in Canada but it is still the world's largest producer of that insecticide. Our songbirds over-winter in Central American countries where it is used to fight malaria. Hence birds further up the food chain are still exposed.