Our youngest daughter Andria just went through the unenviable predicament of being pregnant in the summer.  It wasn’t the hottest summer or anything, but it was enough to keep her hot and irritable for a few months.  Finally, on 18 September 2017 she ended the misery – just as the misery was ending on its own in meteorological terms – by giving birth to a boy, Kingston.  We teased her for months about naming the boy Gordon, Gord or Gordie, but her and her guy weren’t having any of it.  Instead, they named him after the town our favourite Gord, Gord Downie, is from.

Close enough!

It’s times like these that make you consider the bigger picture.  My grandpa Don Davidson was born in June 1899.  In his lifetime, the changes he saw were staggering.  At his birth, there were no airplanes, cars were invented but were owned only by a few rich people with resources to burn on such wastes of money.  He would be married with kids of his own before cars overtook horses as the most common ride to town.  Almost no one had a telephone.  Recent wars were being contested by armies with horses and single shot rifles.  Queen Victoria was old but humourlessly in command.  Rates of child mortality and death during child birth were, by our standards, astronomical.   Most of those births took place at home, and most doctors didn’t have a medical degree.  According to one source, there was a grand total of 10 miles of paved roads in America!  The changes my grandfather saw in his lifetime, which ended in 1997, were mind boggling.  He died in a world of lasers, space travel, heart transplants, the internet, genetic engineering and instant global communication.
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What changes little Kingston is going to see in his lifetime remain to be seen, but they could be enormous.  We look back one human lifetime ago, and the world seems closer to Medieval times than to now.  Years from now, when little Kingston is an old man, the world of today will probably seem like a primitive, inhospitable time.  He will get to bore his grandchildren with stories about the astonishing lack of technology and backward social thinking that were prevalent in his youth.  Look around you.  Most of the crap in your house will be rustic antiques by then.

I would like to try to guess at some of the things that might be invented by then, but I’m not sure I could.  Only know this: they never intend to let us own flying cars.  They have already been around for 60+ years, and they are going to take off (pardon the pun) in ‘the next year or two’ at every point in time since.  Maybe when the self-propelled cars become a mainstream technology they could let us have self-propelled airplanes or helicopters, secure in the knowledge that Joe Sixpack and his violent tendencies aren’t zooming around trying to bully other commuters in the air.  Or that the crotchety old prick from up the street isn’t going for a speed limit minus 20 km/h scenic Sunday drive in the fast lane during rush hour.

My guess at what the world of 2100 will look like is this.  Much like the life expectancy seems to have peaked, and the next generation is expected to live shorter lives; and like the level of education is steadily declining, so I would expect the rate of technological change to slow too.  Thomas Edison doesn’t exist any more.  Inventions are made in company laboratories and the patents are owned by giant corporate conglomerates.  The US military gets to review every new patent, and anything that looks like a way of killing the opposition is snatched up.   A number of interesting ideas die here.  Nuclear fusion might squeak through.  T-shirts with animated designs are probably not that far off now.  In a similar vein, TVs might be able to encompass entire walls with circuitry overlaid with paint-thin reactive panels.  They could invent a device that mutes molecular excitement, cooling things down very quickly – the opposite of the microwave oven.  Canada will win Olympic gold medals in hockey in perpetuity when sports officials secretly begin breeding Mario Lemieux with Hayley Wickenheiser.  Space travel will get going in earnest with speed of light (or close to it) vehicle speeds.  Space tourism may become a big deal, and Kingston may well leave the planet at some point in his life.  Domed cities seem to be a future thing of the past, as they would have unintended greenhouse effects and block a lot of the vitamin D that was destined to enrich the people living under the dome.  Maybe people will explore the idea of living below ground part of the time, especially since any two-bit dictator can get his hands on a nuclear recipe online.  Sci-fi movies predict that aluminum foil clothing will become popular.  What would be an enormous help to future generations would be finding some way to get the idiot religious leaders to tolerate each other before they end human civilization over some 2000 year old book.  The Price Is Right will continue unabated as foreseen by the Barenaked Ladies.  A time out will need to be called to pause the following for some years: over fishing vulnerable species; over breeding various dog species into retarded, ornamental blobs of barking plasma; genetically engineering food which can survive huge doses of insecticides but pass the poison on to the consumers; and allowing any Kardashian access to vanity surgery.

I have only one beer glass that’s worth a dipper of piss.  It’s a glass I got from the beer store one time when there was some promotion for Molson Canadian on, and they gave away a big glass with “Canadian” (surprise, surprise) and some maple leaves etched into the side.  It’s the one glass I own that not only holds a full beer, but also has a little extra room for clam juice – or foam, if I’m in the state of being in which I no longer pour carefully.  My glass and I are a team on the weekends.  Oh the fun we have!

Enter the kale-guzzling, wheat germ drinking, yoga pant clad kids.  They need to stay hydrated at all costs.  So they open up the cupboard and rummage about for  a suitable vessel from which to quench their thirsts.  They push aside all the lesser glasses, ones that could easily hold enough water to replenish their needs from their latest zumba class, pointless kayak adventure or hike up the Chief.  But NO!, they dig in the cupboard where my one hefty mug is cowering in fear in the back row, like the tall kid in the elementary school class picture, and fill it with filtered water.  Then, to add insult to injury, they take a couple of timid sips and leave it on the counter, three quarters full and dirty, where I have to come along and put it in the dishwasher for them.  Of course, that wasted water goes on my semi-monthly water bill, too, if you want to split hairs.  If this scenario had only happened once or twice I could let it go, but it’s become a regular thing.
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Let this be a lesson: if you get all worked up, for god’s sake use a condom.  You will thank me later.  Or buy a second good beer glass, whatever works for you.

Condoms are cheaper.

Well it’s been another six months since the last update on the Twilight Zone-esque winning streak of Burns Lake, BC in the BC 50/50 lottery, and it’s time for another look in.

I am writing this a week and a bit late because when I was at a recent wedding – our oldest daughter’s – I was talking to some people who were going to Burns Lake.  I was hoping they would do a little journalism for me and ask around about the 50/50, maybe visit the black hole of BC lottery, the Burns Lake Husky station.  It turns out they weren’t interested in the job.  They only wanted to do fun stuff with their family.  How selfish!  Anyways, I know nothing more about the crazy winnings there than I did before.

2107 started out with 7 50/50 wins for Burns Lake in January, netting the town $21,372.50.

February was an atypically slow month with only 3 wins for $7,066.50 – although 3 wins in 112 draw is still about 60 times more than they should win based solely on population.

March was back on track with 4 wins for $18,542.50, including a $12,192 win.
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April was the best month of the year so far, 9 wins for $23,030.

In May they won 3 draws but only won $7,430.

June picked up a little with 4 wins and $9,255.50.

Grand total for six months: 30 wins, $86,697.

I don’t think there’s anything crooked going on, although I have been made aware of certain people writing the BC Lottery Corporation to complain about this little village of 2,000 winning around 100 times more often than their population would suggest they should.  Each time someone wins over $10,000 the BCLC photographs the winner for its website.  So far, no picture of the winner of the $12,192 from March has been pictured.  Either that prize hasn’t been claimed yet, or the winner avoided getting photographed.  I was hoping to see if it was the same man and woman who won during last November’s Grey Cup, but I guess I’ll have to wait.  As for complaining, I won’t.  If it turns out to be the same couple (or friends or whatever), I say good on you!  Maybe when the province isn’t quite as on fire as it is right now I’ll drive up and do my own journalism.

My wife has been going to a clinic in Vancouver that specializes in hormones.  It is called the Westcoast Women’s Clinic.  Turns out they also deal with men who aren’t smart enough to be put off by the name.  Yes, she talked me into going there to discuss my middle aged hormone levels with the all-female staff.  The first step, which happened a couple months ago, was I had to spend a 24-hour period peeing in a plastic bottle.  Then I dashed off to UPS with my frothy little jug and mailed it to a lab in the states.   Today’s trip to the clinic was to go over the analysis of it.

The staff probably looks forward to dealing with male patients as an opportunity to get even with us for all the sins of our gender.  They looked pretty harmless with their free tea, their impeccably clean washroom and twinkly music, but there was a sinister undercurrent brewing.

My consultation was moving along in a cordial fashion as we discussed this and that hormone level, when suddenly my doctor dropped the bomb:  “I’m going to have to give you a prostate test.”  To which I explained that I already had a blood test that showed I was the owner of a happy, normal, non-troublemaking prostate.  This didn’t satisfy the villainous she-devil.  “Those tests aren’t that accurate and it was done several years ago,” she retorted, adding “I can’t prescribe anything without knowing if your prostate is healthy.”  I tried bargaining, offering to sign – even write for her – a waiver that would not hold her responsible for anything that resulted in not screening my happy little prostate mechanically, but she said that was “bad medicine.”

Common symptom of testicular cheap viagra without prescription cancer is a painless lump or swelling in the testicles. So, what is the solution? Getting rid of an erectile dysfunction is not an easy task, and no one should make it seem otherwise. cute-n-tiny.com levitra sale Men with ED are unable to achieve or maintain adequate amounts of blood cialis online http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/top-10-cutest-baby-tapir-pics/ in the penile tissues. Tiredness connected with depression viagra online consultation may outcome with impotence. She led me, continuing to bargain and bribe, to a small room with an examination bed, and was told to strip naked and get under a flimsy sheet.  Sensing the situation was becoming helpless, I complied.  She came back into the room when I was done undressing and started by listening to my lungs and heart.  Then came the order “lay down and face the wall,” accompanied by the cruel snap of a latex glove.

At this point, reader, I was viciously violated.  Her finger was amazingly strong, pushing me to and fro on the bed as she probed about with a force and vigor such as one might use to operate a jack while changing a tire.  I continued  to try to strike a deal to no avail.  Then she left, no doubt to celebrate her conquest with an office wide round of high fives or other secret sisterhood rituals, leaving me sore and bow-legged in a little puddle of lubricant.  This was not my finest moment.

What do you know?  After all that, it turns out my prostate is happy and healthy, not causing anybody any trouble, just like I told her.

 

Well, it’s tax season again.  Time to wonder where all that money goes.  Income tax on individuals only came into being as a ‘temporary’ measure to help finance WWI.  Prior to that, taxes on businesses kept the government running, usually with a surplus.  Of course, in those days there was no enormous bureaucracy built around the collection of taxes, so they could get by with less revenue.

I thought it would be a simple matter to pore over the data and find how much of our tax dollars are spent paying the wages, benefits and retirements of those who collect the taxes.  I could find the Canada Revenue Agency’s operating budget and number of employees, but – as an example – nothing concrete relating to heating and maintaining the stone edifices of Gatineau, Quebec and an office building in every major centre of the country.  If someone would like to crunch those numbers, have at ‘er.  The point is the CRA is a monster.  I found a report that says the CRA costs $4.2 billion a year, but the verbiage of the passage is so wrapped in bureaucratic mumbo jumbo and accountant phrases that, with my non specialized vocabulary, I can’t fully comprehend what we’re getting for our $4.2 billion.  Does that include wages, bonuses, benefits, retirements etc of all the employees?  Is that the hydro bill?  People like me can’t figure it out, and I’m pretty sure that’t the point.

I heard an idea that I think is worth repeating.  I would love to pretend it was my idea, but it wasn’t, and I came across it long ago enough that I don’t remember where I heard it.  If I ever find out (or remember) I’ll get right back here and credit the owner.  The idea is that the country could replace the CRA (the original idea was American, so the IRS) with a very small streamlined office handling taxation.  Every transaction would be taxed at say 20% without any income tax taken off your paycheque.  The tens of thousands of highly paid bureaucrats sucking at the tit of the old system would be weaned off to find other work; the hundreds of edifices could be sold off or made into affordable housing.  Suddenly criminals and churches would be paying tax too, and with so much more of our money left to spend, the economy would flourish.   The monster would die, and our hard earned tax money could efficiently get to the hands of the government.

On July 1st, 2016, I wrote about the little town of Burns Lake, BC and how the provincial 50/50 lottery was being won by its residents at over 100 times the rate it should, based on population.  In June the town won over $20,000 on 13 individual wins, a staggering amount for a town with 0.05% of the provincial population.  Since the previous story, “What’s Going on in Burns Lake?” goes into more detail about the statistics, I will simply give you the facts on how the town made out in the remainder of 2016.

July               5 wins       $9861.50

August          3 wins       $4552

September   3 wins       $4043

October        9 wins     $23,179

November   8 wins      $39,839.50

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Total, last 184 days of 2016:  33 wins,  $89,413.50

Ave win, month:  $14,902.25

Ave win amount:  $2709.50

Ave won per day, including days with no win:  $486

These numbers are slightly skewed by the fact that the largest prize awarded during that six months was won in Burns Lake on Grey Cup Sunday, November 27 – $28,523.  In the first six months, their average win was around $1600.

The BC Lottery Corporation prints the picture of all winners over $10,000, so I was excited to see who won the $28 k. A week or so after the win a picture showed up.  It shows a young man and woman, and they look very happy.  I don’t have any rights over their names or photo, but you can go to bclc.com and see them if you’re curious.  I would be interested to know how much of the town’s winning they are responsible for, and how much they spend to make it happen.

Hello reader, today I am going to muse about my working life and you can read along and provide me a therapeutic ear.
You know? I’m a pretty loyal employee. I take my jobs seriously. I am punctual, and I take great care to do a good job and act in a way that reflects nicely on my corporate masters. Which is why I feel sort of crappy today. You see I have been contacted by another potential employer who may want to hire me, and now I feel like a disloyal traitor. I guess I should forgive myself, at least partially, as they contacted me, and it is a better deal than what I have now.
Looking back I sure have had an easy time finding work. My first job was working in a little mill and it was set up by my mother. Easy peasy. After college I got a job in another mill which hired me on the spot because of the other mill experience. When that company went tits up another mill called a bunch of us for a meeting and hired us. More easy peasy. They turned out to be a band of crooks so I got out of there. I went to the employment agency and read the job board. The process was you found a job that interested you then you filled out a card and went home and waited for a call. That seemed inefficient, so I got the phone number of the place, found it in the phone book and went there. They would have hired me on the spot but I didn’t have a lunch and agreed to start the next day. That was making spiral staircases. When they got slow I found another mill and they hired me. I really like that job and the owners, but I got into an argument with a supervisor about taking a day off to play in a chess tournament, so I stormed home, printed one resume and took it to another mill who said they weren’t hiring. By the time I got home the owner of that mill had called to hire me. I worked there for 10 years and had a great time.  Along came the part time gig reading water meters which has turned into 16 years with the same little group of people. And now the city has reached out to me, saying they are looking for my resume and it might be wise to submit it. Ultimate easy peasy, except for the nagging feelings of sadness and betrayal.
Many medical professionals believe that exercise is low price levitra also coupled with a good diet. Statistics have shown that almost 50% males in the world combat with the condition viagra sales uk bought that and Kamagra is the choice for you. We at Hypnotherapy Sydney cure depression by consultation, levitra generika meditation and hypnotism. If you are experienced in order viagra from canada a certain aspect of Internet Marketing and you download and buy information about that expertise that allows you to move forward. Is it some stupid ego thing, where I think I’m so valuable that it will hurt the company? That probably isn’t it. There are better people at doing maintenance than me. Do I think I’m so popular everyone will be crying when I go? Pretty sure that isn’t it! I guess part of it is comfort – just knowing where I am and what my parameters are.  After all these years I just blend into the background and have no one checking up on me.
I haven’t even been offered anything yet so I might as well relax until that happens. The big dangling carrot in this upcoming job is it comes with a pension. At my age, knowing someone is going to send me a monthly cheque to keep the fridge full is a really big deal.
Thanks for the therapy! (If you’re still reading) I feel strangely better having written that out.

There’s something L Ron Hubbard-ish about announcing you think there ought to be a new religion.  Maybe religion is a little harsh.  Maybe it would be more of a philosophy with moral implications.  The fact is, if I was serious about getting a religion started, I would do it some other way.   It’s just that the old established religions are mostly outdated and full of localized tribal thinking, and it might be time to step things up to reflect the smallness of mankind and the fragility of our extistence and the fragility of our environment.

I took religion in school for 12 years.  I had a lot of time to think this stuff over, and I apologize if any of it sounds preachy, because that isn’t my intention at all.  I am not a church goer, and I never raised my kids to be religious either.  It’s out there if you want it, and there are plenty of eager beavers ready to reel you in.

In the context of my proposed new “religion,” people could still have Bar Mitzvahs and Ramadans and Buddhist prayer wheels and pope-mobiles.  Have at ‘er!  Take a break on Sunday or Saturday or Tuesday morning, it doesn’t matter.  It’s just time to lose the dark ages thinking associated with cheering on the bearded guy in the clouds while hating the tribe next door doing the same thing slightly differently.  If he is up there running the universe, he better not be spending precious time worrying about what it is I’m doing.  I hope He’s keeping both hands on the cosmic steering wheel and giving my existence the zero attention it deserves.  And if He really is desperate for our love and adoration, He probably likes all the existing religions about equally.  Why would He only like the adoration from Muslims or Baptists or whoever?

The main tenet of the new “religion” would be that humanity is a single organism, constantly being reborn and renewed, and you are but one cell in its body.  Suddenly hating other people wouldn’t be as appealing.  There is some scientific merit to this point of view, too.  Divided, we all have our own beat, but when people are together, their  heart beats, breathing, walking strides, menstrual cycles etc all synchronize.  Like little cells in a petrie dish, our metabolisms connect, and connecting with others is hugely important to health and happiness.

The next big idea that would maybe get religious people to stop bickering would be if we assumed that mankind was going off to be judged on our morality after we die, just not as individuals, but as a whole.  That is, Bearded Dude makes one judgement that covers his overall impression of the human organism’s morality.  That would make charity and helping others very appealing.  Besides, it would be helping yourself in a roundabout way.  As a side note, if this is what anyone’s God had in mind, I’d hazard a guess that humanity is in enormous trouble so far.

Of course, some people would take all this charity and abuse it and laugh at it.  Murders would still happen, rapes and robberies would continue.  Assholes would continue to enslave others and wreak havoc on the environment to line their own pockets.  The perpetrators of such behaviour would be akin to cancer cells in the new model.  Their removal from society would be a form of quarantine.

Since all people from all times are connected gentically, time could be seen as a complex illusion in which we are present in the past and the future.  I am a middle aged man, my body no longer contains any of the cells I was born with, but they were the cells whose division and renewal begat me as I am today, and as I will be for a short time to come.  Slight alterations in the straight continuity of time seems likely anyway.  It would explain a lot of premonition-psychic-remembering the future stuff.  I vaguely remember reading something about DNA transferring memories, but I could be mistaken and I frankly don’t feel like doing the research to find it.
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Our modern DNA is passed down from a tiny sample size of people – maybe as few as 20.  Every person on earth has the DNA of kings, queens, murderers, saints, artists and madmen.  We are all relatives.  I guess what I’m driving at, time-wise, is that although my actual cells may come and go, my DNA is eternal.  It is the same genetic lego blocks the cavemen were passing around.  Although I have shuffled off a few mortal coils since, my DNA, and yours, was right there building the pyramids.

Just something to think about.

 

 

 

 

I have been told that I should write a post about some of the silly dreams I have.  Quite often I wake up laughing in the middle of the night about something crazy I have dreamt.  Other times I do odd things while I’m alseep.  One time I crawled along the bed and quickly snatched the pillow out from under my partner’s head.  She just told me calmly to give it back, at which point I woke up.  Another night I had a dream I was tossing a football around the backyard, and in reality I had my partner’s elbow in my hand and I threw it like a football which woke both of us up.  In a dream not long ago, I got to laughing when someone in my dream said something was as impossible as “farting oneself to the moon.”  A couple nights ago in a dream I watched a boyishly dressed woman go into a store called “Western Lesbian Outfitters” to go buy some more butchy clothes.  Mostly vulgar, usually dumb.

This post is going to deal with three dreams which are pretty similar in some ways.  They all involve female singers who are not exactly attractive.  Why?  Who knows?  If Dr. Freud was still alive, maybe I could get a little insight into what the connection is, but for now I’ll just have to guess.

Dream One:  Mama Cass Elliot

In this dream I met Cass Elliot on a bus.  We got to talking and we were getting along really well.  I could tell she was interested in having things go a little further, and I was looking for a graceful way out without doing anything to hurt her feelings.  My great line to get out of an awkward situation?  “It’ll never work out, you’ve been dead for 40 years.”

Dream Two:  Rita MacNeil

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This dream was similar to the Cass Elliot dream in that we were chatting and the singer in question was becoming interested in me.  Here I never got a chance to escape the situation.  Rita was getting pretty worked up, so she unbuttoned her blouse and showed me a boob.  Trouble is, the boob had four nipples like an udder.

Dream Three:  Adele

Well that’s about it for romance.  In this dream I was moving along a buffet smorgasbord in a restaurant.  I was plopping dollops of this and that on my plate, getting together a nice dinner.  I came up to the lasagna tray, and there in the steaming metal table under the hot lights was the very last square of lasagna.  I put it on my plate and started to head to my table, when all of a sudden there was a snorting commotion as Adele rushed me with nostrils flaring, in a frenzy about that final piece of lasagna.  She full on tackled me, and my dinner went flying.   I have been traumatized, as I bring this up every time I see lasagna.

I think the Rita dream was sort of sexist and vulgar, comparing poor old Ms MacNeil to a cow.  Likewise, the Adele dream was cruel as it depicts the ‘big boned’ Adele as a food-crazed eating maniac.  Do I really think these things?  I don’t think so, but those ideas are lurking in my sleeping mind, ready to become crazy little movies when I least expect it.

Ok, I’ve been putting this blog off for a long time, mostly because it’s bound to be a dull topic for most people.  I can see that it needs to be written to get it out of the way so my life can continue without its presence, so bear with me.

For most of my life I have loved chess.  I was fascinated as a kid by the shapes of the pieces and the unique properties they all had.  I read a book or two on the subject and I became an adequate player.  On rainy days, me and my little neighbourhood buddies would play each other for hours.  Aside from my family – among whom I am the only player – I really grew up believing most people could play chess.  As a teen I came 2nd in a tournament held in my high school, and I won a prize playing a master who was travelling around shopping malls playing simultaneous games with 20+ opponents at a time.  In my early 20’s I joined the Langley Chess Club, and over the years I have represented it in club matches many times, have been its secretary, treasurer, tournament director and seven time champion.  I have travelled far and wide in this country, playing in the national championships, usually finishing right around the middle of the pack.  In the past half a decade or so I have been directing larger tournaments with 50 or 60 players, and I’ve even been written to by the national chess federation to be thanked for my “contribution to chess in Canada.”

Meanwhile, my feelings for the game have been changing.

I used to be excited to play other players.  It was my version of the gun slinger’s showdown, and I know my opponents felt the same way.   There was respect and comradery and occaisonally hard feelings, but nothing that lasted long.  In the same way that many kids I had fistfights with became my friends, so did many of my toughest opponents become friends.  Once you’ve taken a measure of your adversary, fought against his strength whether in the school yard or over a chess board, respect came naturally.  That’s how it was.
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Now, I play against opponents who are prepared with computer analysis of my games, who know exactly where my dark squared bishop is going on move 6 of the Trompovski Attack, who know how to exploit the subtle weakness it creates, whose coaches have shown them the best long range plan in that position.  They are usually kids with their parents watching intently, armed with granola bars and juice boxes.  It isn’t a battle of gun slingers in the dusty streets any more.  It has turned into an impersonal battle of computer preparation and coaches.  Rarely do we sit afterward and talk through the games, and even rarer do we leave feeling any respect or warmth toward the human being we just tangled with.  The families are often involved heavily in the chess careers of the children who play, but they seem only to learn moves and positions, not the good stuff about giving and gaining respect or friendships.  Or maybe I’m a cranky old man who imagines things were better years ago?

Maybe among the kids who have taken over the tournaments and their hovering families there is respect and personal feelings.  I’m not in a position to know.  Another thing that bruises my ego is that after some kid, his family, his coach and his computer have beaten me, I get the I’m-smarter-than-you look.  I have to remind myself that being classy is another lesson they will hopefully learn one day, but it isn’t the first step they take.  Of course, I mentally float away to an alternate reality in which I am kicking the kid over a fence into a yard full of hungry dogs, and it helps a little.

If I quit playing, and I might, it will be a sad end to one of my favourite things.