Flight

Anacortes, Wash.

Happenstances

The weather has been holding up astonishingly.  Today it was bright, brisk and breezy.  Since the dread gloom of daylight "saving" time is still a week away, it was also sunny into the late afternoon. (As it should be.)  So, i decided to pick up a roll of developed film and then take Nicki for a chuck n' swim.

He had already chewed his floating rubber balls, so on the way down i stopped off to buy another pair for 6.99.  Chuck-It balls don't come cheap. 

Oh goody! New Bals!!  <cab scamper><cap scamper>

As i got into the Jeep, Nicki immediately went for the balls.  You could see in his eyes the delight for new fun things. 

Nah... Nicki. Wait. 

If i gave him the balls now, they'd be punctured by the time we got to the bay.  At waters edge he's pretty decent about it.  He chomps hard on the ball when he retrieves it in the water, but drops it pretty readily when he comes to shore.  The ball survives.  On the back seat of the car, however, he will simply gnaw it to shreds. 

I gave him one his hard rubber non-destructible lacrosse land-bals.  He wasn't interested.  He wanted to gnaw the new ones. 

This was interesting.  As a spherical bouncy thing, one ball is as good as the next.  Nicki loves spherical bouncy things, but he draws a distinction between new ones and old ones.  New bals are more exciting. 

What is it about newness that increases interest and excitement -- that makes for "better"?

I think it is the concept of happenstance.  A ball is a good fun thing and, with the appearance of a new one, a good fun thing has reoccurred.  The happenstance makes for happiness.  This i think is the rudiment of what we humans call good fortune or blessing.

After picking up my film we headed toward the bay.  Nicki knows his locations and as i drove straight, instead of turning left, he started to paw my shoulder and whine and squeal.  As we got nearer he got closer to just plain bonkers and when we got there he bounded out the door and rushed toward the water.

I got the stuff together as quickly as i could and followed him over the dead tree trunks that mark out the beach.  He was already prance-hopping by waters edge and so as not to tease him any longer i hurried up and chucked the ball without hesitation or paying attention to what my eye actually told me about the "lay of the water."  

Dumb move. 

Breezy meant that the water was being wind-blown into little choppy waves moving away from shore.  I saw the where the ball landed and Nicki also got the general direction.  But the sun was in our eyes and as he got closer, the reflections and shadows off the waves hid the ball from his view. 

For a while i could still see where the ball was -- off to the right just a few yards further from where Nicki was.  But Nicki couldn't see it and paddled left... and further left.

On shore i walked to the right and called to him.  He saw me and turned around but then started paddling back to shore.  No! No!  "Gw'on, Nick." "Gw'on" and i made a direction motion with my arm.

Nicki knows that Gw'on means go ahead, and i think he's beginning to get what pointing is about.  So he started swimming out again but couldn't find the ball.  By this time neither could i and finding the ball became less a concern than Nicki's safety.

He of course was determined but i kept on eye on him and on how far out he was going as he swam around in circles in the Spirit of Labrador looking to retrieve the ball. 

It was a earlier and brighter when we were chucking

Eventually i called him back and he returned to shore, obviously disappointed.  I was curious as to where the ball might have been blown to and estimating from the direction of the waves, i thought it might have got diagonally to the rocks to the left of the U-shaped beach.   Nicki and i bounded the boulders along one side of the U until I got to a place to where the ball might have floated. 

Indian style i shaded my eyes and scanned for the ball to no avail.  As I looked down, i noticed Nicki staring expectantly up at me, waiting for me to give the whoop of joy.  He knows that i am looking and that having failed himself it is up to me to retrieve the day.

Not.

Sorry, Nicki.  No bal. 

An old geezer with a handsome cat, whom he called his baby, was watching us from his truck.  He smiled and said he couldn't see the ball either even with his binoculars.

There was no point loosing another new ball in these waters.  So i went back to Jeep where i found an old but intact tennis ball.  We went back to the beach, and this time i was careful to chuck the ball into a place to the right short of where the wind was kicking up the waves.

Needless to say, the tennis ball did not last long, but Nicki got maybe 10 swim n' fetches out of it.

Getting back to "truck," i fetched one of the hard rubber land-balls, which i chucked down the empty street, giving Nicki a several good hard sprints, before jumping into the Jeep and heading home.

Geronto Guilt

In the first two weeks of this month, i began to cut out from gym class -- in part on account of deadlines and in part on account of a low grade cold that was going around.  I made up the missed sessions but doubling up on the next work out.  Back at the gym, ran into one of the regulars.  "Where ya' bin..." yadda, yadda.  "Well i was missing the past two weeks but did make-ups."  "Ah...," he smiled, "working off guilt, huh?"

And that's about the sum of it too.  The body doesn't work that way; it is not a double entry ledger.  Really.  What the body wants is consistency.  Low grade consistency is actually happier for the body than a double dose make up that supposedly puts you over the top.   I mean duh.... 

Anyways... back to consistency (i hope).  

Dog in Mist

Squalicum Hill, Wash. (10/13)

I'm not practiced in black/white.   There's too much of a blow-out on the top centre.   But anyways...

Jazzing It Up North

Went to a Boogie Woogie performance at First United Church by my former neighbour, Dominik, who is an amazing pianist and has put together a bass, drums and vocalist ensemble.

As i walked into the narthex of the non-descript, ultra-functionalist 1950's building, my eye caught an elaborate parchment on the wall off to my left

FOR  KING  &  COUNTRY

listing the names of the fallen between illuminations of roses, thistles, and shamrocks entwined with the crosses of George, Andrew and Patrick.  It was not a one of those cheapy pre-printed jobs but a real, genuine illumination done by hand ... and rather well done at that. It was a bright contrast with the beyond banal boredom of the rest of the building...

...and with the pathetic excuse of a baptismal fount which was pushed into a shallow recess in the wall of the south (right) transept on which was painted the most god awful image of Jesus, who rather looked like Prime Minister Harper in a bathrobe holding an infant rag doll. 

I thought it was an incongruous venue for a performance which began with Aint Misbehavin' ... but the music (sample) was good.

The crossing north took forever because of all the Walmartians and Costcoans returning home from shopping expeditions. I guess the allure of cheap trinkets in a third world country is irresistible.  The idiots that really get to me (mostly Chinese) are the ones that "tank up" on cheap gas ... and by tank i mean three or four five gallon drums under the hatch and bundles of Pampers. 

Contrary to myth, the U.S. border guards are no less friendly than the Canadians.  The difference is more in body language than anything else, the Canadians being more relaxed.  I think the relaxation has something to do with the country not being protected by layers of scanning barriers.  Entering the USA has all the friendly allure of passing security perimeters to Deep Space Nine.  But the personnel are usually friendly.  One customs agent used to hand out treats for doggies.  :)

There is of course always the occasional grouch, like the one Canadian who got mad at me for not declaring "dog food" separately from "groceries."  But otherwise what set either group off are loose ends.  They are much happier when everything is simple and to the point.  As in,

"Anything to declare"

"No"

"Where are you coming from?"

[do not say: "that's my business, Jack."]

"From a concert at White Rock"

"Oh? Ukulele Concert?"

"No, Boogie Woogie."

"Ah..."

Who was giving a ukulele concert i wonder.

Yet Another Victim (Mexico) of Obambi's Promised "Transparency"

Der Spiegel :  Obama's "New Transparency" revealed to include spying on Peña Nieto's private email and all high-level intra government twitting..... 


Ja, ja, ja....   pero esto no es nada desconocido,

"Las colonias americanas han quedado independientes... este es mi dolor y recelo.  Esta República Federativa ha nacido, digámoslo asi, pigmea...  Mañana será gigante... y después un coloso iresistible ... y no pensará más que en su engrandecimiento."  Dictamen al Rey...etc. (1783).

Antes de poseer, la penetración; y después, igual.  Lo que me sorprende es que los caciques nacionales se engañaron en el pensamiento de que esto no pasaba.  Han de tener culos de fiero.

Comment - Whats So Hard About Home Economics?

RE:  Mother  Jones/Alternet  On How Big Food destroyed Small Home Econ.


I  donno... i mean how stoopid can people be?  When, at 21, i escaped from all the mental institutions to which i had been consigned, i started living on my own.  The first things i bought (with the help of Anne Strasbourg) were a skillet, a pot and a colander.  Then i bought the "Joy of Cooking."    :) 

It simply never occurred to me to buy crap-in-a-box.  In the first place, CIB was expensive.  You pay for the box and for the processing, ya know.  Although i was free at last, i was poor.  In the second place, crap in the box tastes like ... well... shit, to be frank. Did a Swanson's Hearty Meal ever taste like it looked on the package? 

I experimented with my own evolving culinary style which was kind of fun.  But for the most part i was busy with other things and didn't spend much time playing chef.  I worked out a set of standard of eat-byes which i could rustle up in 10 to 15 minutes max.  I won't go into all the details; but one fairly common standard was Slab o Steak N' Salad  with one full loaf of sourdough and real butter.  I mean what's so hard about that?

(Oh and the salad was with olive oil and vinegar or lemon -- not the bottled slime called "dressing".)

Comment - Dumping on Scalia

Commenting on Rochanna's repost from the Daily Kos fulminating over Scalia and his use of the word "blacks" ....

Oh bunkum.  I get tired of the "left" (as if) constantly dumping on Scalia without ever bothering to read any of his opinions.  (As when Maureen Dowd lambasted him for being anti-wimin because he dissented from an opinion written by The Great Mother Sotomayor ... forgetting to mention oddly enough that Justice Ginzburg (a woman last i looked) joined Scalia in the dissent).

Scalia is a legal formalist. That means that his opinions are (1) grammatically intelligible (as opposed to to Breyer's mush-brained incoherencies) and (2) legally guided by the ordinary sound and sense of words.  In other words, there is some "there" there apart from mere desire for a result. 

Law is not math.  There is no one way to add up words.  As a result i often do not agree with the way Scalia has added the words up.  Nevertheless i can still see and argue with the structure of his arguments which is more than i can say for others on the court who use words merely as a form of articulated howl. 

These "others" are usually the so-called "liberals" but not always.  Justice Roberts'  non-tax tax (in the decision upholding most of Obombocare) was an example of an articulate howl.  If you want to get a sense of Scalia's thought processes and scathing humour read his dissent.

Scalia has written some opinions with which i strongly disagree.  He has written others which have put teeth into basic fundamental rights: as the right to confront witness (and not some hearsay report written by a so-called "expert") and the right to have the jury (and not some state-paid judge) decide your case and what you are punished for.  These issues seldom make the front pages of the media.

As for his remark about the Fourteenth Amendment ... Scalia certainly knows that the Fourteenth Amendment was aimed at protecting blacks from Jim Crow legislation.  Those most important early cases on the amendment say as much as everyone in law school gets to learn.  Since then, however, the Equal Protection Clause has long since been extended to apply to everyone.  So what Scalia is criticised for saying is true.

As for his use of the word "blacks" -- i am up to my eyeballs with USians fetishizing about what to call its minorities.  Mexican-Americans, Chicanos, Lateeen-ohs, Hispanics,.... As for the former slaves, the approved appellation as gone from Colored, to Negro, to Afro-American, to Black, to now not black or negro but to African-American.  Who the fuck cares. 

I suppose someone should go back a re-edit all the supreme court opinions to make sure that they are updated with the correct label.

I don't like African-American because it's stupid.  Africa is not a nation like  Italy, Ireland, Germany, Mexico. So the nationality hyphen makes no sense.  The continent hyphen is inaccurate because Egyptians are semitic and not negroid, half of South AFRICA is white and North Africa is mostly Arab. 

Commenting

Just commenting on Morris'... post

It is next to impossible to talk to USians about fascism which has been turned into a post-rational shibboleth that immediately induces trembling, eye-rolling, frothing at the mouth and most of all knee-jerking. 

Fascism never went out style in Europe; it simply learned to be quiet around the usual suspects.  Almost as far back as i can remember, i have always run into fascists in Europe.  They are: culturally conservative, nationalistic, formally religious, anti-American, anti-Jewish, mostly anti-gay and more economically left than just about any US politician.

What we call the Second World War, they consider to be a war in defence of Europe on two fronts -- not just against USA and USSR but also against brutish philistine capitalism and brute atheist communism.  Generally speaking, fascism advocates economic self-sufficiency (autarchy) coupled with social rights (health care, education, paid vacations, wage and pensions).  This puts them at war with global capitalism. 

But because it is a hybrid solution to the political economic dilemma of industrial/finance capitalism, fascism tends to be at war with itself; i.e. its racio-cultural xenophobia & nationalism competes against its economic autarchy &"socialism".  Usually the simpler part of the equation comes to the fore.

Trail Dashing

Okay,  more in the dead leaf department....   I think Nicki's motto must be It's all good.  He bounces and bounds with exuberant energy just about anywhere.  But there are subtle differences.  Each of our walking places entails a different activity accent:  bal-spiel, sniff-spiel, oshin-bal-spiel, fuzzy frolic, trail dashing and so on.   I think the inter-urban trail is his favourite, at least when (as today) it begins with  bay-bal spiel and swimming followed by trail dashing and sniffing.   There was a time when i did path-dashing by the bay..... over the bridge and back too...  <sigh>  

JeePee

  

I got this Jeep Cherokee in 2006 virtually for nuthin' from Jerry Johnson's wife, Rosie, when my Ford Ranger blew its headgasket (which I succesfully rebuilt, by the way).

Since then Jeepee has served as a good first or second car, depending on the season.  It basically gets lousy gas mileage, but it has a dependable classic straight six engine that kind of ranks as a "tradition".   I like this model Cherokee 4.0 because it's still "basic" enough to feel Jeepish but is muted enough so as not to be classed as Urban Warrior reliving the Italian Campaign...

So I've decided to trick it out a bit, beginning with "rubberizing" the side moulding.  It's not black paint but thick spray bed-liner.  (I also re-did the bumpers.)  No... I will not add KC lights, but I will add a tow hitch and some kind of roof rack.   I still have to figure out what to do with the rims.

I know this is like totally fascinating.... you wanna see more dead leaves?. 

.^.

First They Came for Greece, but I didn't care.....

The problem with Greece is that they don't have an OBAMBI to dope them up .... [ READ ]

or

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/19334-the-tragedy-of-greece-as-a-case-study-of-neo-imperial-pillage-and-the-demise-of-social-europe

How ObumboCare Really Works

 Leave it to a bunch of stupid, seditious, atheist, sociolists to explain how Obumbo Care works.... and doesn't.

CLICK HERE  or  http://tinyurl.com/l9chdl7  \

As usual... America comes up with relief for the haves and grinds the face of the poor yet further into the dust.  

Clarity of Thought

  

"Never deceive yourself that the rich will let you vote away their wealth." ~
•
“The trusts will not allow you to vote them out of power because they are the power.

Lucy Parsons
(1853-1942)

 "It is pointless to protest to the person or entity protested against"  -- Chipster 2013

Scrawnyman!

So.... i call this Craiglist guy to come over and change pads and shoes on my brakes.  Twenty bucks an hour.  He arrives on time with a Bronco full of miscellaneous tools.  He's a scrawny 20-something with a handshake like a vice.

All i really remember is he was bended down on one knee  leaning forward with his entire torso twisted right over the raised knee and his arms swung over to the left gripping a lug wrench which he yanked and pulled in an arc to the right twisting his torso still more over his knee.

Then he stood up.

The fucker actually stood up!

Silver Pony Tails

Sometimes i think that Bee'ham is where all the old activists have gone to die.  On Fridays, the corner of the old post office, a building done in New Deal Palladio, is obstructed with painted signs, folding tables  and petitions kept in place by bricks. "We've been doing this every Friday for forty five years," an older man tells me proudly, his silver hair tied still defiantly in a pony tail. 

I stopped myself from saying, "Just imagine what the world would be like without your efforts."

Today as i am leaving the Community Food Coop, two women sit at a table covered with petitions.  One of the petitions is for the state's GMO labelling initiative.  We talk about Monsanto, corn and Oaxaca. 

The other petition is against Obama's desire to "fast track" the Trans Pacific Partnership -- an international trade deal which will triumph what its sponsors call the "corporate right to profit" ... at the expense of the environment, affordable drugs and sustainable wages, to say nothing of the miserable excuse of national sovereignty.

The silver haired woman who dates from the Sixties hands me a brochure with my Congressoid's telephone.  I take it and start leave as she thrusts her fist into the air and says "Power to the People!"

I know i've seen her before.  I turn, smile and say, "Right on!"

.

Rompunctious

   

Nicki was full of doggergy today, probably pent up from a week of rain diminished outings.  But today was sunny and brisk causing Nicki to be the same. 

On parking down by docks, Nicki bounded out of the Jeep and gave me spin around, bounce around hurry up looks.  I chucked his ball down the empty road leading away from the Bay.  It bounced forever on the pavement as Nicki enthusiastically chased after it and then came hurtling back.

In fact he kept on hurtling toward a beachlette on the Bay where, needless to say, we played Oshin-Ball forever.  He was tireless and impatiently insistent that i chuck the ball again and again and again.

After a while, i put the ball back into the Jeep and we headed over the tracks and up a closed road to the interurban trial to Ferndale.  It's a more or less straight trail cut into a bluff under the overhead road and over the railroad tracks by the shore.  Trees and brush line the trail. 

I think Nicki likes the tunnel effect.  At any rate he charged down the trail for about 150 yards before turning around and barrelling back at me.  He did this consistently throughout the walk, at varying distances, and between charging up or down ways into the brush.  He was simply tireless and happy to be bounding.

I was  pleased to note how he seems to have got over his flight-fight Indian circle dance with strangers. From time to time he came around back some walkers on the trail but only close enough to get a scent and move on.  Sometimes he didn't even bother and was undisturbed as well by bicyclists and children.

I was also happy to see how responsive he was to my few commands.  I called him back a couple of times when some oncoming pedestrian looked like a "not dog" person.  He returned immediately  and went on ahead when i told him "G'won."   I'm pretty sure Nicki has figured out the trade-off: if he obeys he gets to be off leash and, from time to time, maybe can get a chew chip to boot. ( I know he's figured out the second part.)

By the time we got home, my fall cold had hit and i was feeling woozy.  So after a quick chow for us both, we took a nap and i awoke to find paw over arm over paw. 

.

Truck

A Respecter of Opinions

An academic i know of recently penned a lecture in which he argued that the gridlock in Washington was the result of politicians having lost the "art of conversation."  Part of the loosing, he wrote, was entailed in the common but falsely tolerant statement  that someone disagreed with was "entitled to his own opinion." Not only did such statements debase the other person as not worthy of the time to be convinced, it negated the possibility of contending together toward a reasoned conclusion.     

I have my doubts as to whether Congress was designed as some sort of political seminar hall.  It was never intended to be a forum for "reasoned dialogue" but rather the counting house for the numerical valuation of interests -- plain ol' filthy lucri causa.  But as to whether people are entitled to their opinions, that is a different and more general matter.

     el martillo de los herejes, la luz de España, el salvador de su país, el honor de su orden

As a teenager, i was never entirely at ease with the hackneyed saw that everyone is entitled to their own opinions.  What if one's opinion was ignorant and stupid?  What sense did it make to say that one was "entitled" to be ignorant and stupid?

Nor did it make much sense to me to hold that while Jesus was the very Son of the Almighty God who madeth and ruleth everything that was, is and will be, seen and unseen, he could still be denied or denigrated. 

Think about it; if God is not only "great" but also necessary, how can we allow his necessity to be disparaged?  A part of me intuitively sympathised with the ancient Aztecs.  If heart ripping were a necessity to keep the cosmos afloat, how could one refuse?  One the other hand, if, as we conquistadores knew, heart ripping was a mortal error, how could it be allowed? 

Unlike my more "American" compatriots, i was never discomfited by Aristotle's theory of the "naturally stupid" or by Plato's outlawing of musical modes which were "inherently destructive" of all good order and virtue.  I mean... the mixolydian mode  is clearly depraved. 

LISTEN

It isn't also called the Moloch Mode for nuthin,

But over time, i lost my vehemence and came to accept the relativity and indifference of liberal axioms. All men were endowed by their Creator to be as stupid as their happiness allowed.  Who was I to criticise them?  After all, what is truth anyways?  Some great man said that, i forget who.

But i was never entirely convinced, just as i never accepted the equally stupid saw that "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me."  Odd how most people actually do feel really hurt by names; and when you think about it, it is not hard to figure out why.

People, especially academics of a certain sort, speak of reason as some sort of supra-physical thing that is at once loftier than mere flesh and at the same time incapable of injuring you... really.  Huh?  Who said?

Words are sounds.  Sounds are physical phenomena. They actually do penetrate into the aural canal as much as other things penetrate into other canals.  The sounds get inside the head where they "agitate" those "irritations" we call "thought."  This is palpable. 

And when those agitations change the manner and pattern of our thoughts (and from our thoughts our actual emotional and physical behaviours) they have effectively penetrated and punched us up with the "force" of their logic or rhetoric.  Sounds like a kind of intercourse to me; and of course the Great Plato was not so stupid as to think that any dialogue did not have its accompanying ergon which might be manifested by blushes or getting into lovely Theaetetus' pants or skirt or whatever it was.

So the notions of a "Platonic Relationship" and a "harmless" or "non-violent" discussion never made much sense to me.  Nor the notion that being homonoumenal was somehow morally superior or less offensive or less intimate than being homosexual.

After all, none other than the great but too little known Aelred of Rievaulx  (A.D. 1110-1167) argued that "carnal friendships" among his monks even if they might be considered vicious often ripened into truer more virtuous spiritual friendships which mirrored that greatest friendship of all and should therefore be accepted with patience rather than excoriated with violence.   Who said we had to wait for Tannhauser to get notions of "ascending love"?

But I digress.  If opinions have all this capacity for affective intimacy, we ought not to take them lightly or think we can be impervious to their ill effects.  We ought at least to accord the Index Librorum the respect it is due.  The Bible was high on that list, and for good reason, as the wretched "Reformation" aptly proved.

After a lifetime of languor, such thoughts were recently revived in me by a lecture i came across on You Tube given by one of the French priests at the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) -- the ultra irredentist, semi-schismatic Catholic society which hews strictly to the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent.

"Of course, we do not ascribe to religious liberty. The very idea is anathema.  We accept religious toleration; mais -- but that is a different matter." 

Ahhh... such a refreshing voice from the past of my youth!

I understood him to be saying that, up to a point, we should not fry our opponents at the stake of their petards.   But neither should we so disrespect our enemies as to treat them either indifferently or lightly. 

It was rather like the two GO masters who met on a road and recognising one another sat down off to the side with the board between them.  The first master place a single black chip on the board.  The second looked and paused, then stood up and bowed, after which both went on their way.

Sniff-Yum-Sniff-*??&^§¢@!!~*#!!!!

Why does this SOUND so familiar....