To the devil with ye, vile annum

Hey everyone, the final day of the year has dawned and is rapidly unspooling. I'd better write a final missive, one for the ages, so that a proper adieu is given to the year that was 2009. And what a year it was! Things happened, other things also happened, and all this happening amounted to a full year of things happening. Let's recall some of the best times: I remember well going to my local grocers, and as usual I made a bee-line for the place where pomegranates were most likely to be stored. Wonder of wonders, not a humble wicker basket held these arcane fruits but a gigantic cardboard box, so numerous were the pomegranates in their plenitude. I could not see clearly but for the tears which were amassing in great pools along my eyelids, and so quickly evacuating not an inconsiderable quantity of that saline potion which represents my salty emotions, I wiped my eyes clear and beheld all those many pomegranates with greed. I even bought one.

Oh what a day! But what of the many others? Well, there was that time that I was walking towards the pharmacy, as it was there that I would find a throat lozenge for my throat which was croaking and quivering, making it hard to properly enunciate the finer examples of my considerable vocabulary. My pace? Furious. My gait? Efficient and manly. If anyone had seen me, and no doubt many strangers were both alarmed and impressed by my speed and focus, they probably remarked, "My what a furious pace that man is keeping, at once efficient and manly." I myself was not ignorant of the distinguished qualities of my determined stroll, one foot after another quickly and without fail replacing its former in perfect form. Ah, yes it was a walking for the ages! But what sorcerer's enchantment was this, it turned out that, alas, I was not progressing towards my goal, that place wherein therapeutic lozenges were stored, but away from it! The world had been flipped, turned asunder, and I had been deceived by a cohort of the devil! As usual, a despairing hopelessness clouded my meager logical abilities, but then an angel of clarity descended and produced in my mind the idea that I need only to turn around, and by doing so I would soon be on the correct path. And so it was! In no time the lozenges were mine.

To conclude, 2009 was indeed a profoundly memorable year.

Egad! I don't know what to think anymore!

I've always loved Howard Bloom. For some reason, he just seems to make sense. In a world dominated by ridiculous pessimists, Howard can cut through a load of shit and still sound optimistic. These days however, Howard is starting to scare me. A lot.

Over the last ten years, he has started releasing articles that have to do with climate change, consumerism, capitalism and our role in the future. All that stuff with solar panels in space directing us energy, Mr. Bloom was there years ago. His recent articles are a far cry from The Lucifer Principal, which could either be the greatest book ever written, or the poorest. These days he's starting to make a great deal of sense, but there's a problem. In the respects that I must agree with him, I really don't want to.

His newest article should prove to be something that may drum up some form of discourse on Knowing,Doing.com

Article Here. Be warned, this blindsided me.

Thoughts, anybody?

Issues that require large banners

It is true that this morning I mistook a fragment of bellybutton lint for an insect. I'm not proud of this misunderstanding, and I'm feeling especially sheepish because when my eyes alighted on the small creature I wheezed in fear and pulled my hand back at an alarming speed. Alas, it was only the beginning of my embarrassment. The bug was small and black, and when I couldn't find its legs I speculated that the brute was deliberately trying to deceive me, pulling its legs under itself to appear like belly-button lint. "Foolish insect," I said aloud, "You've met your match this time." I then took one of my drum sticks and began constructing a simple rhythm on the cushion of the couch we were sharing, hoping my funky vibe would confuse it, forcing it to reveal its hidden legs (1-2-3-4-5-6) and scurry away. Fact: Soulless beasts cannot stand soulful beats. Of course such bravado merely cloaked my own debilitating terror, as I was certainly not this lint/insect's match.

Various scenarios raced through my mind: The bug would suddenly jump at me, biting, scratching and defecating on me until finally burrowing into my left eyeball to lay her eggs. Or she would take off flying and I'd lose track of her. Unbeknown to me, the clever strumpet had long ago made a home out of one of my pillows. From there she would dispatch her hoards of offspring to climb on and in me through the long, cold night. The bolder of the youngsters no doubt showing off by successfully navigating the gates and corridors of my sinus system. Here she would be waving on the threshold of my nostril, skilfully balanced on a long nose hair, only to disappear for a time, then suddenly reappear creeping out of my mouth. Restless dreams would plague me within. A few others, no less bold, but perhaps with no taste for public spectacle, would quietly sneak off behind my face, up the back of my neck and into my ears. No doubt the romantic ambiance of that waxy, dank cavern would encourage ravenous love making, and my dream-scape would be made even more inscrutable by the high-pitched shrieks of enraptured insects.

Woe betide me! But I resolved then and there to take action. My first inclination was to paint a message on a large banner that I would then dangle in front the camouflaged creepy crawler. What an action that would have been! My banner would hang mercilessly for a time, the bug's kaleidoscopic eyes soaking in the hard truths, the hard imperatives. "Bug Action Now! Action Now Bug! Bug! Now! Action! " No doubt that would have been awesome, at once expressing my forthwith intention to act on the problem and my commitment to insectival justice in our time. "413! uh, 350! hmm, 227 bugs per million! Justice against the arthropods!" What an action that would have been. But I wanted to do something more dramatic, something that would haunt my minute adversary for the remainder of her 17 days. I was going on a hunger strike.

At first all went well, 1, 2, 5 minutes passing without so much as a grumble or mumble from my tummy. "Let's do this Erasmus," I thought I heard my tummy say, but I was too focused on my action, too in the game to be certain of the distractions outside it. 7, 8, 11 minutes. It was then that I hit a road block. I was starving! My tummy ceased being a tummy and became a stomach, I was on my last legs, I had lost a lot of weight and was feeling so weak. Should I have kept going, hammering the nail in the coffin that was my action? Should I have martyred myself for the cause? Would my hunger strike have reached proverbial heights, declaring to any and all, "No more bugs!" I'd like to think that it would. I like to think that my bold action would have been noticed by someone, and that they would have said, "There's a guy who really tried to act on the bug problem."

Well, I'll leave such speculation to our future historians because in any case, just a few seconds shy of a full 12 minutes without eating, my hand made a dart for the little insect beside me. "It's full of life-giving protein," I reasoned. No sooner had I grasped the thing then I realized that its armored body was in fact soft and spongy. I dropped it in shock. Took a deep breath and said to myself, "Hang in there old boy, action is required." I picked it up and drew it close to my face. It was then that I realized my error! It was no bug, and something about its shape gave me cause to wonder, "is this of the bounty of my bellybutton?" I brought it to my tongue and realized at once that it contained oily flakes from that umbilical vestige. What folly! "Get back in there, you devious ball of lint, lest I am stirred to unleash yet another devastating action upon you!"

To be a bee, to be a paperweight

The sun has risen as have important thoughts in my mind. One is an echo of an intuition, perhaps I dreamed of it, that in a previous life I performed the duties of a paperweight. A half moon, something of a partial marble, I lorded over stacks of parchment. There my owner would perch me so to prevent my great enemy, the wind, from scattering them. I'm not sure but I suspect that this happened a long time ago because marking the pages with a succession of numbers had not yet occurred to anybody, so it was crucial that I lay atop the papers day and night, until that time that they were bound in some manner. I'm not able to recall the language of the missives - I was a paperweight for god's sake! - but it is safe to say that this was not a scrolling culture. Rather, independent and rectangular sheaves were the preferred medium, so my services were crucially necessary, especially when the stacks reached formidable heights such as two or three inches off the surface of the table. It was then that I would shine!

Though I could not see, I felt the presence of the others: the ink well, the small receptacle which held the writer's quill, a bag of pistachios. Occasionally eye glasses would be lain on the table. Myself and the others would wince in jealousy over the great prestige of the eye glasses, for really, if not for them where would the rest of us be? I would still be in some quarry or another, merged forever with the rest of the simple rocks and minerals. Thanks to the skilled lens grinder though, I too provided a function to the world. One time I was resting upon what I gather must have been a french translation of those Arabic folk tales known as 1001 Nights. The scribe was endlessly giggling and banging is fist against the desk, stopping only occasionally to partake (I suspected from his grunting and moaning) in the practice of onan. What else should we expect from that heathen celebration of sin? So I have a feeling that the years passed in this manner, I sitting atop a steadily growing stack of parchment, my comrades quill, inkwell and pistachio near by, our owner either slamming his fist down in mirth or masturbating, also in mirth.

The trail ends here. I have no further insights into the existence of an old paperweight. Ah, but what dreams. Were it not that I could provide such a function in present times. It would be of more value than my present labors. Currently I provide something of the services of a worker bee, endlessly excreting sugary beverages, cleaning excrement and carrying off the carcasses of my fallen colleagues. Occasionally I spot the queen and her arrogant court, always scuttling about the hive, always capriciously, and of course being just a short-lived minion, it goes without saying that I must stop what I'm doing and get out of their way. Once I was busy on a project, building a modest hexagonal cell to partake in the wonder our comb, when out of no where that beast of a queen shows up, plops her vast abdomen into my partially built chamber and lets drop - wow, what do you know? - yet another confounded larva! Another bastard for the colony! As if we didn't have enough already! The courtiers murmur some praise ("A most excellent birthing your majesty!") and her lordship saunters off without so much as a glance in my direction. Well, I can accept my lot, only because I know that in the life that comes after I might return as a queen myself, or better still, a paperweight.

Probably the least relevant thought in the history of the universe

What is up with the obnoxious drama of inanimate objects? Just this morning I was cleaning the kitchen and wouldn't you know it, when I tried to lift a pot off the teetering pile of glistening, pristine and flawlessly washed dishes, a glass fell, making an absurd spectacle of itself as it crashed on the floor. Could it have been any louder? No. Could the shards of broken glass have sprayed outwards at a greater speed or reached a vaster diameter? No and double no. It seems to me, and I've thought a lot about it, like, really scratched my head over the issue, that inanimate objects can be exceedingly dramatic at times. "Really, little cup, is the ferocity of your demise truly necessary? Couldn't you have broken with a little less fanfare? Something more in keeping with your supremely forgettable and infinitely replaceable existence?"

Of course it could of, but the arrogant little goblet had other plans. It knew full well that I had perhaps stacked the exalted pile of sanitized kitchenware just a tad too high, and that though at its core, the pots and plates, spoons and strainers were indeed arranged by an expert hand (my own) according to an expert design (my own), the pile was an inanimate babel, objects arranged so to convene with the heavens. Ah, but Newton's cursed formulae, his regulations for the right conduct of all matter, know of no exceptions and coyly tugged at my teetering pile. Gravity captured it in its droning grip which always tries to dispatch a wobbly wok, a careless straggler, to a useless oblivion. Then that little ass of a cup got the idea that a glorious jump and fall, followed by a spectacular disassembling, would impress his earthenware comrades. I for one am not impressed!

Why do objects with no pulse, with no complex of doggedly busy cells, insist on cracking the calm of our days and nights with their noisy, attention-seeking drama? Calm down idiotic objects! You cannot fool us into mistaking your final death spasms as life!

Fact: There are many things in the world

Last night I cleared away empty wine glasses and crumpled napkins which were the detritus of this year's esteemed Munk Debates, held at Toronto's lovely Royal Conservatory. The topic under "debate" went something along the lines of "Be it resolved, climate change represents the greatest challenge facing humanity." Yawn. The speakers at the event came from around the world, at least three of whom are no doubt making quite a living to speak in front of affluent and doubtless passionately concerned audiences such as this one.

Two panelists argued that yes, the rise in global temperatures warns of the coming end times, lest of course the wealthy and enlightened countries reach some sort of consensus and pledge their worthy names to a binding treaty. The other two panelists say nay, there are other equally if not more pressing concerns for the human community than pinning down the precise quantity of carbon molecules allowable under the lower rungs of the earth's several atmospheres. Human poverty was the major talking point for the nay-sayers, who emphasized that several billion of us have daily concerns ranging from whence to find a grain of rice and drop of water, how to avoid hacking machetes and murderous bullets and where to die in peace from easily preventable diseases. A majority of the world's population couldn't care less about the terrifying worries and bold predictions of well-sheltered, clothed and fed experts.

The one issue that struck me, as well as at least one other service staff attendant, was that the "debate" framed the issue as though yes or no were the only responses possible. This form of "debate" has its roots in the theological/philosophical habits of medieval monks (please note the clever pun). Back then, robed and bearded men thought that all that could be said about the world had already been said by the wise ancients. It was left for future generations to distill their arguments into invincible formal logic. When these monks gathered to debate, they showed their skill to the extent that they successfully parroted the logical skeletons that under lay whichever topic. The point was to follow as closely as possible the logic of the reasoning, and the most legendary orator was he who could dress the expected arguments up in the pomp and splendor of rhetoric. Nothing new was expected, nothing new was offered. Debates were mainly and merely exercises in formal logic.

So too the debaters last night were guilty of trotting out the well-worn issues readily found in the books they regularly publish. The highs and lows of the night's "debate" depended on the volume and quivering emotion evinced in the speaker's voice. Each side was guilty of that most modern of comic absurdities: Issuing forth statistical quotations as though these stood as "facts." Laughably, each of the four interlocutors would peer into their satchel of facts, bringing them out one a time, like a precious object in an Indiana Jones movie. The only truth contained in these exceedingly particular and ephemeral "facts" was that each speaker had his or her own favorites. It amazes to see intelligent human beings not blush at the irony.

The sooner the issue over climate change is recognized as having profoundly emotional, perhaps even spiritual, origins for those involved, the sooner these debates will quit with the asinine cliche and reach the blood and guts and carbon molecules of the thing.