Enough!

The last time I blogged was January, 2021, like most people I have been busy finding my mask, walking back to the truck for my mask or washing my hands. 

I don't care about masks or conspiracy theories or whether or not Bill Gates is planning wholesale  population reduction to save good old mother earth.

Failure to deliver on your obligations:

What I care about today is the apparent solution you elected foks have prescribed and the complete and total lack of leadership,  provincially and federally that we are seeing in getting it.  We are told the vaccine is the cure, yet none of our leaders, not Justin Trudeau, Peter O'Toole, Jagmeet Singh, Jason Kenney or even  Rachel Notley have delivered or attempted to work with anyone else to get it done.

They are too busy in their own myopic little worlds to dare join forces and deal with the issue.

I read a statistic today that Canada has provided first immunization to 16% of it's population and the USA has provided immunization to 32%. So we are half way there, well no, we are not. 

In the USA they have approximately 331,000,000 citizens so in round numbers 100,000,000 have been immunized. Compare this to Canada where we have a population of 37,000,000 people of which, again in round numbers 5,000,000 have been immunized.  This doesn't even jive with what they tell us about how much vaccine we have.

Canada's response can only be generously described as awful, because what is forgotten is that  when someone's death is attributed to  Covid, they are first and foremost a person not a statistic and as often as not somebodies Grandma or Grandpa. 

Now onto death: 2,001 people have died as a result of this disease in Alberta, which means each Alberta MLA is complicit by their inaction in the death of 23 people. In Canada 23,141 people have died which makes each MP complicit in 68 deaths. 

Because of the way party politics work, Jason Kenney is responsible for 2.001 and Justin Trudeau for whole 23,141. 

At what point does this become serious to these people? At what point do our elected officials stop behaving like dogs humping a football and get to work? 

So where are the vaccines in Canada? Well apparently, aside from the ones we borrowed from the Congo, Justin Trudeau forgot to place an order, maybe his visa was maxed out I don't know, the point is we went to the third world for help because our leaders were too ill equipped to see the crisis coming. Who does Justin blame? Brian Mulroney for starters, then Stephen Harper and I think he went as far back as Sir John A MacDonald. 

Jason Kenney blames Trudeau, Notley blames Kenney. The federal Conservatives and federal NDP did nothing to help with this, they just spent their time like dogs humping those footballs, felt good but accomplished nothing. 

So I say unequivocally, regardless of your party affiliation but if you are a provincial or federal elected official you personally are accountable for the deaths of over 20,000 people from Covid, now lets talk about the rest of the damage you have done.

Other damage you have done:

While people are surviving on CERB and welfare,  not a single elected official in this country has lost dollar one during this pandemic. You still have your travel card, your free car washes and your salaries all intact, just so people can hear your say "we are all in this together". Bullshit.

90% of you have never signed the front of a pay cheque, nor struggled to find work, you drive around in  a  pickup truck to pretend you are one of the 'aw shucks" common folks. But like Napoleon said; "while I intend to  govern fairly, I intend to govern" and like Napoleon you are terrified that Covid might be your Waterloo and yet you remain undoing and hope to distract us with bullshit or bribe  us with our own money come the next election, an election all of you deserve to lose.

I was elected to the Alberta Legislature in 2008, I ran because I have a great deal of respect for former Premier Ed Stelmach. Ed was and is a farmer, he lived  the struggles of the early 1990's with low commodity prices and 22% interest rates on bank loans.  He came within a hair of losing the farm his parents homesteaded at Andrew. He knew real pain and struggle and  because of it had genuine compassion for his constituents.  I served one term, that was lots.

Party politics is dirty and ultimately as a back bench MLA, one is largely  responsible for making speeches and handing out giant plastic cheques. The real decisions are made by the Premier/ Prime Minister and his/ her cabinet, but ultimately the Premier, or Prime Minister's  only real qualification is the ability to sell party memberships and get votes out during leadership races.  Nobody dares ask if they are smart enough to do the job.

So now we have unemployment numbers not seen since the great depression,  new carbon taxes and interparty fights over the dumbest shit imaginable. And yet, people continue to die, go bankrupt or lose their jobs while you  argue about dinosaurs in the new K-6 curriculum. It's a good thing financial planning is in there because some kid in grade two is going to inherit this mess and I really hope that kid is better with decision making than you are.

760,000 Canadians deferred mortgage payments in 2020 (cbc 11/16/20)  

The unemployment rate is 7.5% in Canada, in Alberta it's over 10% (economic dashboard Alberta) TEN PERCENT! how many MLA's or MP's are in the group? ZERO percent.  And this does not tell the tale, I know of a place where 30 people are waiting to start work but can't,. It's not just those 30 people, it's their partner, their kids, the guy at 7-11, who are affected by this because you cannot get vaccine into the arms of people so they can go back to work.  You tell us it's the solution yet you are incapable of delivering it.

So I lay before you, the wreckage you have inflicted on your constituents because you are too arrogant to actually sit down with each other and do what is best for the people you serve. If as, you claim, vaccine is the cure then where the fuck is it?

As leaders, I know you forget this sometimes, it is after all a trifling detail,  but your job is to serve.  What we have instead are elected officials of all parties whos hands are covered in the blood of the dead because you are either incapable or unwilling to serve your constituents and get them the thing you say they need. 

You are  Willy Picton on a grand scale. He fed dead prostitutes to his pigs in Abbottsford BC   and for years and those little piggy's all went to market.  

Bacon anyone, anyone? 

Your crime is no less heinous, actually it's worse, because you are supposed to be the people with foresight who do what's best for their constituents and you fucked it up royally. 

Get  this job done, or admit you can't do it and get the hell out of the way of those who can.

I will wear a mask when I have to, maybe we should all drive to Great Falls Montana and get the covid vaccine at the Walgrens for $10.00 ($13.00 Canadian)  because they seem to know how to get it into peoples arms. Unlike our elected officials here who are too busy not telling people what's really in the pork chops. 

I am a contemporary barbarian

 

I've done remarkably well not commenting on the current state of municipal, provincial and federal politics both here and due south. I have, like everyone, opinions about these things but for the moment I will ask to be humored while I  express  my truth.

I am a contemporary barbarian.

I don't need to google how to change a tire, I can determine a right angle using the Pythagorean theorem or the 4-5-6 scale. I can wire a lamp and thanks to the OBD2 reader my grandson got me for Christmas I can turn off the check engine light in your car.  

I can also cook, sew,  type about 60 words a minute. About the only thing I can't do is swim.  I try very hard to keep my promises and prefer not to make them if I know I can't keep them.

I was elected to the Alberta legislature for a little while, and the big lesson I learned from that particular experience is that our provincial and federal politicians get elected in a democracy but they do not work in one.  

The leader of the party; be it Premier, Prime Minister  or President is the ultimate overlord.  He or she will surround themselves with "loyal" supporters and then spend a great deal of their time trying not to be too embarrassed by the things these supporters do. 

Case in point, Paul Rehn, MLA for Lesser Slave Lake, whom Kenney was forced to remove from caucus in order to placate a constituency  smart enough to know they had no representation.  Only because it was so blatant and public in the media did Kenney act. He did not act because it was the right thing to do.

I applaud his action as people who are driven by their base instincts, left unchecked and without discipline, can hardly be counted upon to preserve the liberties of the nation or province they serve.  

In other words Paul Rehn might be the poster child for everything that is wrong not only with politics but possibly also the weakened social construct we call society.  

The man violated the trust of everyone who cast a ballot, abused his position, ignored those he was elected to represent and even violated a common sense health order not to travel. "We are all in this together" I can hear him say "Well except for me of course." It is better to have character than be one, Paul, but thanks for clarifying what you are truly all about.

Instead of seeking representatives who's character is based on action and results we align with representatives who's character  is based on charm.  We elect the prettiest show pony and are then shocked and dismayed to discover that the show pony is of no use in battle whatsoever.

Where are the virtues of honor, service, duty and courage?   

Who breaks into the Capital Building dressed like Chewbaca? 

The problem is not that Chewbacca supported Trump, the problem we now live in a world where Chewbacca gets his 15 minutes of fame and the virtues of honor, service, duty and courage are left at home, if they even existed there. We can't tell leaders from Chewbacca because for all we know he was the ring leader behind the riot on Capital Hill. 

We have lost our ability to be self reliant,  A person used to build a house as a means of providing shelter for his family. now it is considered a herculean effort if they build a shed or a flower box outside the mortgaged McMansion. 

We yell at each other in forums and with language we would not dare use face to face, lest the conversation be interrupted by a swift uppercut. We attack character because we have no ability  to draw our own conclusions or consider an argument that runs counter to our own preconceived notions. 

Then  legislators chose as a priority the task of the  eliminate words like "man, woman, mother, brother, father, sister" as though these words were somehow guilty of some form of assault.  These terms do not separate us, they unite us and provide each of us with the opportunity to have an identity. 

Without identity you no longer exist. 

I fear though that for many,  the decision to cease to exist at least as thinking adults', has already been made. 

We are, at best, going through the motions to show that we have some value all the while turning our backs on those values that got our society to where it is today: Honor, service, duty and courage. 

By handing  freedoms and responsibilities over so freely to the charming people we elect it reinforces the very nature that the superficial is all that matters. 

One should not look behind the curtain lest we discover the wizard is just pulling the levers of social media with no interest whatsoever in being of service to those who elected them.  Case in point is Tracy Allard posting Christmas pictures from the legislature while she is in Hawaii. Smoke and mirrors all.

It is about  power and control, that's all it is and the longer we forget that virtue is indeed a necessary virtue, the greater power and control will be centralized and largely forsaken to the so called special interests.

Every time I hear the phrase "special interests" I know that my interests are not being considered. I doubt very much that yours are either.

We gave it away, we literally gave it away to people in leadership roles who could not possibly be less deserving, we elect drama teachers and career politicians, we elect people who are at least as incompetent as we are. 

Stop asking leaders to tell you what you want to hear, start demanding the truth whether you like it or not. It'll soon change the fabric of leaders from show pony's to people of substance, people with idea's, skills, knowledge and most importantly, a commitment to the people who elect them. 

Show me one, show me  honor, service, duty and courage. 

I'll wait......

Tested for the "VID" results in under 24 hours

I tested negative, AHS woke me up at 08:00 to tell me my result, that is pretty good service!  

Since I know the name and address of the bastard (aka friend) who infected me, I know how long I have to quarantine before I am safe for public consumption.  

This is good, unfortunately  the guy who infected me,  had to cancel a flight home to Ontario. 

Normally I think cancelling a flight to Ontario is a win and wish that some day we had to go through border security to fly there, but for now it's doubly sad because the government tells us  99.6% of people who get Covid survive, and according to Alberta's Premier this deadly disease is less deadly on airplanes, where for some reason the recirculated air manages to filter out the disease, so why I ask aren't we all on planes?

Alberta's Premier, obviously knew this when he launched a program to save his MLA's and WestJet by sending his people all over the globe to keep the airline viable, with pretty much  the same result as the  incident involving a former  Cabinet Minister who, when caught with a prostitute in his car said he was "conducting research study into prostitution."  It was a government owned car, which I understand was immediately sent to auction.  I'd use his full name but Graham is 90 years old and really, who cares.

There is no word on whether or not WestJet has scrapped the offending planes used by the caucus, but I see today WestJet laid just everyone off, so I guess that Jason managed to save neither the airline or his team with his  "Covid safety on airplanes research". 

Job loss, whether a prostitute, cabinet minister or flight attendant is not funny it's quite serious actually and I should be struck down for sharing and comparing the deeds of the modern and vibrant UCP with the deeds of an old Lougheed era  cabinet minister, who was at best really a liberal anyway. 

In this world of "do as I say not as I do" I will be staying home for the requisite incubation period of 14 days, this means I have about seven days to go since I saw the bastard who infected me last week.  I say bastard in the most loving way possible as "Typhoid Morris" is a good friend.  

And onto Washington:  I understand complete order has been restored with the Ewok and Chewbacca having gone back to Seattle to do warm up exercises for their next Antifa sponsored insurrection.  These two clowns now famous for their tattoos on their hands of the  Marxist Hammer and Sickle have been spotted at numerous Antifa events. I really doubt anyone who's seriously MAGA would be a member of the Karl Marx fan club.  It is details like this however that distort the narrative that  Trump supporters were there to do damage.  I understand the guy who broke Nancy Pelosi's Scotch decanter was found hiding in his Grandma's basement  after the FBI pinged his cell phone, no word on his tattoo, but his proximity to Nana  speaks volumes.  I do hope the FBI remembered to wipe their feet on the way in and say thank you on the way out. Hey it's somebody's Nana, it's not her fault her grandson is an idiot, show some respect.

So was the whole thing really a contrived conspiracy designed to end democracy and herald in a new era of socialism?  Well as I said yesterday I doubt my friends in Texas are very worried and would likely welcome Chewbacca with open arms should he choose to come visit  wearing that helmet with the horns on it, I'd strongly suggest a trip to the hill country in October, keep the fur too, it's chilly. 

Trump, who enflamed rioters by telling them to go home, and the Capital Police who moved the barricades to reduce tripping hazards for the protesters clearly are all  bad people, the only good ones that I can see were Chewbacca and his Ewok who were probably getting something above minimum wage  and a few selfies for their efforts. Nancy Pelozi was  there somewhere, yelling at her hairdresser.

If you doubt any of this, go look at the video footage of the event. It's quite interesting.

Stolen election conspiracies aside, I suspect law and order has been restored and the visitor galleries on capital hill will soon be filled with bus loads of very bored school children watching grown ups behave in such a way the kids instinctively know would get them spanked at home.  

And the world turns: Trump needs to admit he's out of a job, get the movers lined up, the utilities switched into Biden's name and hopefully his new house in Russia will be out of escrow before he gets there.  

As bad as things are for Trump however, I understand outgoing Vice President Pence is unlikely to get his damage deposit back because he smoked in his house and is probably going to take his sweet time moving out just to annoy incoming Vice President Harris who has her U-Haul rented by the hour.   But it's nice to see  politicians living in public housing like the poor. 

Of course, none of this actually works like this: Trump will have a Secret Service detail by his side for the rest of his life (lucky guys) and the Federal Government will be responsible for things like cars, drivers, food, housing, medical expenses, Botox for the Mrs. and ringette lessons for the youngest kid.  So if Trump is broke  he's still better off than 90% of his supporters.  

I find it so ironic that in a country where health care is not a public institution, the members and staff of the senate and congress have the best medical and dental plans money can buy, after all people who take the humble salaries of these two chambers have only their PAC's and undocumented donors to make them rich. This is how, on $175,000.00 a year Hilary Clinton, in eight years in the Senate, was able to save enough  food stamps to raise her net worth from $2.3 million to $40 million.  

Although  the democrats do have way better sex scandals, I half expected an Obama/ Oprah thing to pop up and nobody ever thought Nixon or Reagan or Bush 1 was much in the "ladies man" department.  This they left to Bill Clinton and his cigars, and JFK and well,  everyone who wore a skirt  in 1961. I think Jimmy Carter was just too pure to be caught with his pants down, his brother Billy however, all bets were off.  

Democrats, who would never steal elections or get rich being bought off by their PAC's and donors, can be forgiven for  thinking with the "little head" more than the big one, although notable exception is made for Bill Clinton and stated earlier JFK. I was going to make a comment about how JFK and Margaret Trudeau had Cuban missle crisis's about ten years apart, but it seemed funnier in my head than on paper.

It's a problem of what I will call populist tribalism and we have it in Canada as least as much as they do down south, our own Prime Minister, who thinks he is something of a "ladies man" when he isn't trying to impersonate Al Jolson is completely out of touch with the average Canadian and isn't likely to have anyone in his rolodex with a area code starting with 204, 306, 403, 587 or 780. He might have some 604 or 250 numbers, but only because the conservatives in BC call themselves Liberals for some unknown reason.  Trudeau does not have a PAC so he has to launder his illegal donations through his family and a bogus charity run by twins. and supported by the international massage parlor, SNC Lavalin.  

In Alberta, we have two machines of roughly equal size pushing around the piles of dirt they have on each other, yet neither really addresses, in an earnest way the issues of their constituents because that sounds like it might involve shoveling. 

Impact of the "Vid"

 

I've heard covid  called the "Vid" by people younger than me who don't have time to use real words, this is the same generation who call 7/11 the "sev" and McDonalds, "mickeyD" although that last one really isn't any shorter. 

Today I went for my nasal brain swab to see if I have the "vid" I don't think I do, given that 

a) I am not micro-chemophobic 

b) I probably swallowed enough alcohol based products in my life that everything is pretty well germ free.  

But I am not doing this for me.  I'm doing this because I have three wonderful grandson's, who would give me serious shit if I ignored the issue and because there are people who could get very sick or even die if I inattentively were to infect them.  

I went  to the Hazel Bluff community hall, which is about 5 miles west of town,  and waited exactly zero minutes for the lovely nurse to stick what felt like a ski pole length swab up my nose to take a sample of my cerebral cortex, then tell me to go home and isolate until I get the text with my results. 

My daughter Rebecca, who lives closest to me and who happens to be home, immediately sprang into action and brought Dad groceries and dish soap.  So I am set. All I need to do  is renew my Netflix membership and my life will be golden, I shall wake up late, feast on Salmon steaks and binge watch Longmire, (again).  

I really like Longmire, although I am surprised that Absaroca County, Wyoming seems to have no crime except murder,  it does sound like a great place to drive very fast,  generally Wyoming is that indeed: In 2008 whilst I held a public role, Barb and I went to Thermopolis Wyoming for a holiday and as I'm tooling down the interstate in her new BMW, 3.0 liter  twin turbo SUV at a very irresponsible  200 km/h, (124 miles an hour) the state trooper who pulled in behind us, saw the Alberta plates  and proceeded to blow past us like we were standing still. 

Ever since then I have wanted  a Crown Victoria with that cop spec 4.6 V8. See, unlike Idaho where I a got a ticket for doing 75 in a 55 in my motorhome, the cops in Wyoming, are just really happy to see out of state traffic on the interstate and this might explain why Walt Longmire never has any petty crime in his county, except for one episode where a prize chicken went missing but was later recovered and reported to be "quite tasty".

The motor home ticket did result in me having to call the Governor of Idaho's assistant because, well I forgot to pay it and they issued a warrant for my arrest. I did pay the fine and the Governor's assistant laughed and laughed. I did not go to jail, which was a good thing because I was still in public office at the time. 

Now that we are in this weird sort of voluntary/ mandatory lockdown and no longer have a BMW SUV, I have to settle for my Buick Le Sabre which is by no means a slow car, (the supercharged 3.8 V6 is a time tested bullet proof engine) I can't go to Wyoming and play in traffic because, well it would be stupid to do so, especially since everyone else is managing to stay home. 

Except of course for the people who keep telling us to stay home: like Allard, Huckabee and Liepert. Although in fairness Ron, isn't a provincial politician. But since I don't want to flaunt my freedom in the face of people who sacrificed things like their grandson's first Christmas and worse funerals,  I will stay home. My Buick shall have to wait until the restrictions lift before it sees the happy side of 200 km/h in Wyoming, I am betting I can get about 230 out of it and until then I shall have to be happy making vroom vroom noises while I watch Walt Longmire solve another seemingly perfect murder.

If you have never watched Longmire or are a vegan opposed to concealed carry or open rifle carry by guys with big hats you have no idea what you are missing. I skipped gingerly over the whole Kenney debacle because, well, it's stupid. Indeed today I am more concerned about parts of the United States that are either mad because Trump is insane or  mad because Mitch McConnell is now wallpaper. 

Never in my life did I expect to see Ewoks and Chewbacca break through the doors of the Capital and break stuff like Nancy Pelosi's scotch decanter.  Democracy has been set back at least 15-20 minutes and now the only real question is who is the next crazy leader? We still have that guy in North Korea, but I understand he's an NBA fan and can't be all bad.

I'm not impressed by Joe Biden, but Vice President Harris has a few things going for her one including a well orchestrated opportunity to demonstrate some serious national rebounding from Trump. Gun sales are up about 1,000% in Texas, so I am not too worried about a wholesale erosion of democracy. My concern with Biden is the guy has never actually had a real job, he went from articling law student to Senator about 50 years ago. Harris who is similar to vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin only in gender is a smart person, I also think she is sane.

The Democrats of today are not that dissimilar from the Republican's of the 1870's when my great grandfather was involved, you may recall that Lincoln was Republican and took on the Southern Democrats in the civil war to end slavery. So really he was kind of a social progressive and the Democrats were the social conservatives which proves I guess that pendulums swing both ways and sometimes more than one pendulum is swinging.

None of this forgives Donald Trump or Chewbacca for the gong show or broken crystal, but is does say that the Republican loss of the presidency is not the problem people think it is, indeed it's only a problem if you interpret it as such. Texas is the only state in the union with the right to secede with a simple majority and while I don't think my friends are weaponing up to make that happen, it's comforting to know they could. In Texas it is generally accepted that "An armed society is a polite society" and while New Hampshire has a cooler motto "Live free or die" the end result is the same.  Harris is the deciding vote in Congress, which means that the Republicans' and the Democrats have an equal shot at screwing things up or at actually working together. 

Time will tell I suppose.

Meanwhile in Alberta: that spot of unpleasantness in Washington DC should not cause us to lose focus over the behavior of our own elected officials,  in this age of social media when so many careers are ended by texting dick pics to the wrong people, it takes about five seconds for the oppositions war machine to find out and broadcast them far and wide. Now maybe dick pic is the wrong thing but there was one picture from Mexico that definitely had a dick in it, he was standing in from of a piñata or something. 

Such irresponsible power hungry people. I really feel like I'm caught  between the fiscally bankrupt and the morally bankrupt, neither evil is acceptable and people like me who are very pragmatic about how you live your life as long as we don't spend too much money on it have no place to go, or do we?

Day one

My choice of names for the twelve Edmonton wards

There is a plan afoot to rename Edmonton's twelve wards, I'm concerned about this because I don't think using Aboriginal names are really going to address the ongoing issues each ward represents and I most certainly do not want anyone thinking any of the aboriginal people who lived here first are responsible for the mess. 

We live in a time of citizens cutting grass in public places, of randomly placed pylons  disrupting traffic and priorities that nobody but the elected officials comprehend. If there is truth in politics, a statement I highly doubt, then I will put forward my choice of names for the new wards, because nobody who works on any city committee can be happy with something as simple as a number. 

Changing names will require new letterhead, business cards and signage all of which are good for the economy.

12 wards, which start out clockwise then veer off as only a drunken committee could think effective is bad enough, it's almost as though the planners were trying to confuse the public but we all now the real reason was to ensure they would continue to get paid to rework the boundaries.

Anyway the names and the rationale:

Ward One:  PortaPotty Yellowhead speed trap. 

In recognition of the gagging smell from the compost plant and the permanently parked photo radar trucks. 

Ward Two: Paved sloughs, big churches and  endless municipal wasteland

Since this area is all about paving sloughs to build distribution centers and big churches, lets just call a spade a spade, this is home to most of the vacant land in Edmonton that people continue to prove they don't want to live on, unless they are in a tent

Ward Three:  College Woods having neither

This one has a big sign for the new College Woods subdivision which has neither a college nor woods, all it really has is a bunch of McMansions up against the Henday with the inevitable call for a sound berm. It is also home to the worlds dumbest looking police station.

Ward Four: Tornado Alley

Attracting all the recent tornadoes this ward should reflect the City's neglect in making sure residents of the area actually have  passable roads to drive home on instead of the debris strewn byways they currently navigate. 

Ward five: Loud voices

The home of NIMBY, this ward is best recognized for it's history of shaking off all industrial development and complaining about congestion on the Henday, not to mention scaring away power lines.

Ward Six; Katz/ Mandell

Named after two people who with joined hands managed to build some of the ugliest buildings on the planet and then actually expected gamblers to pay for parking. Since this ward is also home to some of Edmonton's most expensive homes you'd think the city could cut the grass in the parks and give the folks who pay ten grand a year some sort of services.

Ward Seven: Middle earth

This ward best represents the strong history of pre and post settlement in Edmonton. It's home to all and all are welcome, except of course the City bought  and bulldozed everything interesting to build a very stupid looking bus depot with dents in it that turned out to be too small for the current buses to get in. This latter little known fact was discovered by accident, literally.

Ward Eight: Oh that smell 

Thanks to the waste water treatment plant, you know you are here as soon as you arrive. 

Ward Nine: We don't have enough

Say what you want, folks who live here woke up one day and realized they don't have any schools, parks or recreation facilities which bodes the question: why'd you buy?

Ward Ten: Bastion of higher learning

All the really serious academic brouhaha is located in this ward, hence the need for vegan crosswalks and 33' wide bike lanes, cars are viewed as evil, except for Uber and Harley Davidson motorcycles which is viewed as essential.

Ward Eleven: DIY land 

Many of the houses in this ward were owner build and only randomly inspected during construction, it is a veritable birthday for basement waterproofing contractors

Ward Twelve: Go Away

Still pissed at ward 5 (loud voices) for sticking them with the power line, this ward just wants to go away. They are thinking of seceding to Sherwood Park  or Beaumont where the roads are smooth and the grass is actually cut. 

When anger died

Wise people will say that alcohol causes more pregnancies and divorces than anything else and I admit, that while I never got pregnant while drunk, it did cause more than one relationship to end; usually in a gigantic ball of rage and determined rightness, broken things, third party interventions and the like.  Not everyone who drinks suffered this fate as often as I did, some people have allergies and break out in spots, my allergy to alcohol used to make me break out in handcuffs.

Oh, the wonderful boundless energy of the alcoholic mind, the delusions, grand designs, dreams and skirts to chase. Me, I spent most of my time being delusional and chasing skirts, I had designs and dreams too but mostly of the unattainable kind  because I let life interfere. Being sober when you are an alcoholic is BORING, dealing with the job, the cable bill and a relationship are just too much to bear, so drinking, either to enhance the dreams, performance or to sedate become the norm.

There is a  point at which alcohol enhances performance and a point at which the desire increases but performance decreases.   Nothing wrong with either thing really and I'm not here to get all preachy about what's right and what's wrong. I think being a drunk is fascinating  and, honestly, I'm not the least bit ashamed of it. No more than I would if I had prostate cancer.  I don't brag about it, but I recognize that a simple chemical can so completely fuck up my perfect life. 

I don't miss it. Almost eight months without a drink, lots of opportunity to drink, but I don't. The reason I don't is very simple, I quit drinking, I quit being mad.

So really I quit two things: being mad and being drunk. I was never one of those happy black out drinkers, even when drinking alone, which was most of the time, I'd find some excuse to be angry at SOMEONE! Somebody had done me harm and God Damn it I was going to show them.  When I quit the booze, and eventually stopped being an asshole a whole brand new world emerged. 

I found Karma.  Nothing in the spiritual world, and the difference between spiritual and religion is: Religious people are trying to avoid hell, spiritual people have already been there,  has ever been a better relation for me than this concept, which, in my case comes from the teachings of Tibetan Buddhists as translated and interpreted by Koshok Lobsang here in Edmonton and by the writings of Thubten Chodron, a Buddhist monk in Washington state. I did not have to go to Tibet to find an answer that made sense, I went to  the Gaden Samten Ling (GSL) Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Society, I took a course from my old friend Kushok on how to meditate. It was awesome.

 

When I was in politics I helped GSL get some money to build the center, a quarter million dollars if I recall and I honestly think it was the reason I was elected. I didn't know it then but recently when a friend asked me why I would run again in 2019, as in, what was my motivation? I meditated on the question in class one night and realized in a flash of insight that GSL was the reason I ran in 2008 and maybe there was no reason yet shown to run in 2019.

This aside from the problem of what party I would run for, since the UCP and NDP don't  appeal to me, I said publically that I'd only run if I could be in opposition and it would be very cool to be speaker, but these are not enough reasons to run, so I'm probably not going to. 

Now Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)  believes that one has to turn their life over to God, as you conceive him to be,  if they are to be successful staying sober and Buddhists believe there is no single God as we Catholics know him, rather they believe  consciousness is eternal and much like how the bible doesn't talk about what Jesus did in retirement, the concept of "eternal" is  a mystery.   Like all good mysteries, belief is an adequate substitute for data. 

So in my AA journey, I turned my life over to God and in turn have morphed into turning my life over to consciousness and  the Buddhist precepts. Now some of the precepts are pretty basic: show compassion for all, don't kill, don't steal, don't drink, stay celibate, etc.. If I were getting graded on killing bugs or celibacy, for example, let's just say "I'm not a monk".

What I like about Buddhism, like all faiths, is that it is subject to scorn and oppression, check with the Chinese government on this if you have any questions, which says to me that if the people in power are afraid of it,  something good must be going on. 

AA is not aligned with anything; no religion, politic or philosophy beyond the importance of sobriety and the ide that while drinking was the public manifestation of a problem, the real issues are much deeper and if I am going to stay sober I have to go there too.

So, about not being mad anymore: 

AA has a prayer, called the Serenity Prayer and we have all heard it:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

The courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference

I say it, sometimes a hundred times a day, it helps me deal with the people who are not conforming to my world view, despite the fact it is obviously what is best for them.  I found the prayer lacking because, while I do have to accept certain things as being the way they are, I do not like to see people suffer, standing idly by has never been the hallmark of an old volunteer fireman.  We tend to rush into things whether we are in harms way or not. Its a hard habit to break, but break it I must if I am to achieve anything like a calm inner demeanor.

This is where I think the Buddhist philosophy came to the rescue.  I still have all my hair and I don't wear robes or shun worldly possessions, these things I leave for the more devout, but there are some great ways, in meditation to deal with anger and the concepts of compassion, the following quotes sum it up real well:

"Rather than going to the extreme of despair over the state of the world, we generate compassion for all sentient beings thinking "How wonderful if they were free from all unsatisfactory circumstances and their causes."" (1) 

This is another reason  why running for public office might be off the table, this does not appear to be the platform of any party, quite the opposite actually. Maybe I could change that from inside, but what I know of caucus discipline, I doubt it. 

Compassion is a very cool thing, very cool indeed. Service to others with little or no regard for reward is enlightening. There is nothing more enlightening than thinking "I can help this person" helping them and then getting shit for it. It's enlightening because it says more about me than them. It's a tough nut to crack. 

Make no mistake, we are all self centered, and the more people say they aren't, they are.  My favourite Weird Al song line, from the song Amish is "I am way more humble than though are" kind of says it all. 

Being self-centered is ok to some extent, If you are actually conscious of it, alcoholics aren't usually conscious of much, let alone being the center of the universe, but any decent alcoholic or addict does have one trait: The sole concern of their next drink or high, it is a completely self-centered disease.

Until I recognize a pattern, it will continue.  The use of depressants or stimulants to counter deeper psychological problems is the study of masters.  The masks I wore either while drunk or looking to get drunk, or to justify being drunk, where phenomenal in their scale. I mean really fucking outlandish and the damage I caused to so many people, myself included forced me to take a completely different path. 

Human beings are nothing if not resilient, changing a way of life, thought or deed is possible and very useful.  I first recognized there was something wrong with the old way. If I don't think I have a problem, then no early power is going to convince me otherwise. 

So yes like everyone I have problems, but I wake up now and am happy that I am doing so, there are still elements of my life that need compassion, but none so much as before, because now I can see the reality of my own limitations and I am not afraid of them.  I am. for example, no longer frustrated that I will never be a jockey. 

None of this is easy, but things that are worthwhile seldom are:  let forth the light that shines within you, that you might take the darkness from others. 

(1) Good Karma, Thubten Chodron, 2016 

I don't care who stole the little library, I'm just going to replace it.

A family in the west of Edmonton had their little library stolen:  a nice little box designed to hold books that people could exchange, borrow, read and pass along. I like books and I like libraries. I don't own a kindle, I don't listen to on line video streaming, I read, so when it was reported that the little library was stolen, and presumably not for it's cash value, it pissed me off, because as the news article stated, the Dad built it and the kids decorated and designed it.  

I will not bother to analyze the motives of the thief, I don't care, what I will do is replace the stolen library and if possible build a few more that we can spread around the town. Dar and I are going to put one on our lawn here on Ada and I imagine I'll find a home for one or two others, don't care if we build a hundred if people enjoy them for what they are, which is not firewood.

Years ago, my partners and I built two inner city rooming houses out of concrete block because we knew that durability was more important than expecting people to change their behaviours, our motives in 1991 were to build durable structures that would look good, be cheap to maintain and stand the test of time. If you drive by 9526-103 Avenue today, it's still the best-looking building on the street and has housed 16 residents for over 25 years. 

As my own career morphed from Consultant to Politician to HR VP, I admit that I never did feel the sense of pride or permanence as I did when Pam Barret, Jim Spinelli and I cut the ribbon on that first building.  Today, as the Handy Kinda Guy, my business model is based on permanence and what Stewart Brand would call the "Long Now". I fix things, and in this case, I am going to use my skill and fix the obvious problem of a stolen little library.

I spent a lot of my life chasing exactly the wrong things, many of them pretty blondes and now that I am out of that habit, I am at liberty to focus on what makes me feel good about life. 

We all have our struggles about which others know nothing, indeed, no matter what the demon we face, be it booze, dysfunctional relationships, fear, loathing, or in my case all the above, change happens if we admit a couple of things:

a)    We admit we are powerless over our problem

b)    We realize that no human intervention is really going to fix it

c)    We accept that God can and will if he is sought

This is about as religious as I am ever going to get in my blog, mostly because, while God has lost some public popularity, how people interpret, like, hate or ignore it is an entirely personal thing so if you don’t like my motivation or opinion, don’t hire me to work for you, if you do like it, then feel free to call me for a price or advice.

In either case, I am absolutely confident that I will make a good living, providing a needed service that is also work I love to do. 

In reality, it goes way beyond that, it’s fun. Oh, I get that we might define this differently, you might not think dealing with smelly old rotten things as fun, but it’s a real challenge sometimes to solve a problem, to be the big guy with the big truck and the long ladder, who says, “sure we can fix it”

I hope only that everyone is at sometime, as blessed as I am to realize that life will humble you, but in humility comes an almost unlimited amount of strength, I can’t fix the whole world, but I can certainly work on my own little corner of it.