A friend of mine recently commented on Facebook about the possibly sexist attitude of the media when interviewing female athletes at the Olympics as well as the questionable benefits of the competition in general.  I am generally inclined to agree with him on the first point.  It might have been meant to contrast the always-unflattering photos of sports participants that appear when photojournalists attempt to capture the struggle for victory or the heat of the moment, but most likely it’s only indicative of how shallow parts of the media have become in recent years.

​Regarding the second point, the Olympic games are certainly an enormous expense.  Most host countries might put such funds to better use, given the total cost of the spectacle, even if they do end up with all the athletic venues and added housing for use afterwards.  Then again, there’s the underlying nationalism.  That often brings the sportsmanship of some participating countries into question and tends to tarnish the real value of the resulting medals along with the reputation of the whole affair.  Yes, I’m talking about - RUSSIA - for one!   And yes, there are others, but if those in the west are playing similar games they must know how to cheat with more effective and less detectable drugs.

​ As to the value of the Olympics overall, I have a passing interest as a Canadian regarding our place in the medal standings, but other than that my main question is how they will disrupt more important TV viewing (eg. Coronation Street - or almost anything else).  And as for sporting events in general, I usually think that the best start for eliminating the questionable nonsense is with the fossil fuelled varieties.  Take your pick; there are lots of them.  Or all that aviation fuel being wasted getting fans to and from the Olympics for that matter.
 
P.S. This year of course, there’s the added bonus of the resulting Zika babies from cabbage-headed expectant parents who don’t know enough to stay away from a country where no regard is shown for safety or the environment.  That’s a gift that’ll keep on giving for a whole lifetime and won’t even need to be explained to the recipient: they won’t have the capacity to understand anyway.
 
On a lighter note, don’t you wish you were making the money that the unshaven travel guy or the one in the tinfoil suit get in commercial royalties from TV ads?  Hopefully they have good contracts because they’re likely going to be typecast forever if they don’t watch out.  Someone should roundup all the actors seen in all the grossly overplayed commercials and create some silly reality show full of familiar faces for a change.  It might work.  Later, the goofiest one may think it’s a good idea to run for political office.  It wouldn’t be the first time recently that some loser has tried it.  And loser is the key word in that last sentence.

This last Monday Mona and I finally got downtown with a camera.  It was an attempt to get photos of those places that I used in the book, which still remain after nearly thirty years.  Almost all of the locations  were real; that’s one reason why the novel is subtitled ‘A Toronto Tale’.  Much of the core continues to change  as many once familiar - if not historic buildings are torn down in  the ongoing building boom, but the ones I found I have placed on ‘The Scene’ page of this website.
 
Just within the last year the bar that I based ‘Porters’ on was demolished and the entire southwest corner of that intersection is now no more than a cordoned off field of rubble.  Some of us who drank there always wondered how the place made money and remained open for so many years.  The property taxes alone must have been colossal due to its location and the amount of business it did never appeared that significant.  We always quietly assumed there was more to the place than met the eye and that something much more lucrative went on elsewhere in the building.  Now that mystery will remain unresolved and the site may soon become home to the tallest tower in the country.
 
After Pat Coady’s Place closed, only the broken yellow and black sign out front identified where it was and the small building has stayed vacant ever since.  Now it is finally  being turned into a fitness centre. Many who staffed and frequented the bar are gone now too, so I can only speculate what its  'spirits'   might think of the changes occurring after all this time.
 
A couple of blocks southeast of there, the flophouse I knew now looks much improved on the outside. I suspect that it has been yuppified inside too and turned into more desirable lodgings.*  Like Coady’s Place the lot isn’t large enough to be developed so it remains there still, although it must have been fully gutted within to exorcise all its  resident   ghosts and their baggage.
 
At first glance Greenwin Square mall seems unchanged. Then one realizes that the usual wastrels bumming money for booze and bullshitting each other outside have vanished along with the Liquor Store - whenever it did - and are no doubt now  outside it -  wherever it is -  occupying themselves in their usual fashion .
 
And the Howard Restaurant closed too, years ago.  The building still remains, but only its shell will escape demolition  according to a recent announcement.   Another condo tower will rise, behind the facade.
 
I wrote The Dive with as many real locations as possible.  Now so many have gone that the book may in some ways become a historical reference for places past as well as some of the seedier spots still present.  I’ll continue trying to capture more of them on ‘film’ sometime soon.  Of course readers will best understand  what all this means if they know something of Toronto  or  give The Dive a try. 

*​07/30/16

 I stand corrected; I guess it hasn't changed that much after all.  See my  News page for details.
 
 

Last weekend Mona and I had a pair of old friends over for a visit and during it we made use of the balcony to enjoy the fine weather.  As we shot the breeze I mentioned one of the free and regular little entertainments that can be witnessed from there and that regularly play out down in the street.  It goes like this.

A couple of blocks from our place stands a city subsidized high-rise tower full of the poor, the aged and the disabled.  And among the latter are the usual assortment of ‘characters’ and those ‘not crazy enough to be kept locked out of sight’.  At election times the building is used as a polling station and those residents hold doors open for voters or act as guides in general as if they were part of election staff.  It seems very appropriate in a way.  Whenever one sees eccentric or offbeat types, it’s a given that they’ll be headed to or from there and no one pays them much further attention.  If there ever was a NIMBY movement over their presence it must have died out before I moved into the neighbourhood because they’ve been there a long time and are generally just shrugged off by people in the barbershop, the supermarket and elsewhere locally.  But they’re a playful bunch and aren’t without a sense of humour.

About twice a month a fire alarm gets pulled inside and then the fun begins.  Now I know that fire alarms aren’t that much fun in themselves because they’re typically noisy enough to wake the dead and disturbing to those who aren’t already disturbed.  But it’s the resulting noise and activity outside that is.  Sirens are soon heard approaching throughout the neighbourhood and it’s only a question of how many vehicles will arrive.  If it’s done right police cars, fire trucks and ambulances all show up, lights blazing and sirens blaring.  People will appear on balconies too for a look because it’s often as interesting as anything on the tube.  One or two firemen will look inside and confirm that there’s no smoke and the rest will socialize outside, asking about each other’s families and their holiday plans.  When everyone gets caught up with things the show is over and they all gradually drift off to their stations to wait for the next alarm.

​The result is this. If the price hasn’t gone up, building owners in Toronto are fined after the first two false alarms: $410 per fire engine, $130 per police officer and $45 per ambulance separately by those respective services.  In the case of subsidized housing, the bills are simply passed from one department to another at city hall.  It all keeps some employees there on their toes and creates paperwork for others.  And it’s all a waste of time and energy too, but those pranksters have one thing right anyway: for fun and games - you can’t beat city hall.

By the way, about an hour after I told that tale, one of our guests  watched it played out a little distance  before him  live, from our balcony

I won’t keep rambling on about The Zika Virus this time except to notice that instead of going away it continues to crop up in more places such as Puerto Rico.  If it continues to steer that course sooner or later it will encounter Americans on their home turf.  And in some instances its effects there may be less noticeable among the populace and soon forgotten.
 
After all, I seem to remember a time when killer piranhas were supposedly migrating north and expected to consume vast numbers of North Americans after eating their way through the Isthmus of Panama and the rest of Central America.  I don’t know what happened to that crisis.  Maybe the poor in the region ate them.
 
Then there was - The African Killer Bee - scare of the early eighties.  In this case I think they must have been either somehow assimilated into  Borg-Hispanic beehives or exterminated by the locals using pesticides illegal elsewhere as they migrated north, because no one ever talks about them much any more.
 
Anyway, the effects of the virus might be minimal in a country where the voters have already shown such a surprising decrease in mental acuity of late.
 
Now down there in the land where political animals of all sorts rear their heads, a ‘new champion’ has surfaced through the miracles of television and real estate - all knowing and wise.  A lot mistakenly believe that if he’s elected they’ll soon be able to keep nasty things like Zika, piranhas, killers bees and Hispanics out of “The Land of the...”.  And if the already mentally challenged have their way in the next American election, they’ll soon be magically building a wall, reneging on their gargantuan national debt, cancelling decades of free trade deals, blaming the Chinese for global warming and then everything will be like the good old days when Americans could do anything they wanted.  No one will even notice all the bullshit.
 
It’ll be as real as Hollywood - and that’s saying something!  Because it’s true: there’s an American born every minute.  And if I haven’t been clear enough about it and you don’t understand the gist of this little rant you probably live south of the border.  If Zika strikes the U.S.A. no one will notice the difference in the next generation and by then maybe - as some have already suggested, Canada might consider building a wall as well to keep certain undesirables out.
 
I thought I’d seen the apex of inanity when the ‘W’ was re-elected after he and that Dickhead hoodwinked their nation into a second armoured visit to Iraq with its resulting mess. Now I’m beginning to think that it might just have been some portent, perhaps foreshadowing further new pinnacles of absurdity.  Of course it is for the Americans themselves to decide where the truth-lies, if they can. 

 Yesterday, I found a line I’d jotted down earlier this year about the Zika virus.  That problem has disappeared now from the media and hence the public eye because the snow birding season is over, but it’s still worth a passing mention.  At the time, it occurred to me how much it takes to change people’s habits.  The winter holiday in the sun has become so ‘traditional’ and ‘necessary’ now that almost no risk is high enough to warrant a cancellation.  The exchange rate doesn’t matter, the pollution from excess air travel doesn’t matter and even the threat of brain damage to one’s impending offspring doesn’t matter.  Let’s all go play on the beach.  Everyone else is doing it and besides – we’re worth it.  And that’s probably true because natural selection always filters out the retarded in one way or another.  Of course one is free to waste one’s hard earned money any way one wishes; it’s a free country.  As the British philosopher David Hume observed in his Treatise on Human Nature – we are governed more by our passions and by self-interest than by reason.
 
As far as the environment goes, in a clip seen  regularly   on the Love Nature Channel  one senior TV meteorologist  claims that it's too late and that we're just going to have to accept global warming and adapt to it, as if mitigation of the problem wasn’t worth considering.  And other than him, I haven’t heard any ‘weather men’ mention climate change or global warming in a long time despite the obvious and unpredictable irregularities happening around the world. The increasing frequency of drought, extreme temperatures, high winds and ‘seasonal’ storms like typhoons, hurricanes, tornados and ‘nor-easters’ are given no attention or explanation even though there must be ample statistical proof available.  Another weather sage, seen nationally in the a.m. flies back to his home province on weekends as regularly and nonchalantly as if it was a trip to the local variety store.  Television meteorologists ignore climate change so completely that you’d think they’d been issued a gag order from somewhere on the very subject of their supposed ‘expertise’ – the weather!
 
I jotted down the thoughts on Zika when the topic was hot.  Recently, I came across those scribblings again while starting to organize some collected notes for a new novel. Its working title is Nothing But Bullshit. Those who doubt that the world is changing are free to consider this blog just that, but they do so at the risk of own and their descendants' future.

9:10 PM

In what is a complete coincidence, I see that the Zika virus is once again in the news.

This is one of those months where I  haven't found a central theme, but there are a few things I'm not going to enlarge upon. I’m not going to talk about Justin Trudeau’s imminent media event or whether the Americans expect Kim Cattrall to be in attendance.  South of the border, the ongoing presidential reality show continues to garner more media attention than its TV rivals, but I won’t touch it either, though somebody should find the gong.   And while all of the confusion surrounding Toronto’s continually changing transit plans and proposals have some locals tearing their hair out – I have no wish to join them right now.  I’m not even in the mood to rant very much about how the federal PCs now hypocritically clamour for quicker action on issues that they ignored or opposed for a decade while chewing their cuds in power.  Neither am I going try to explain the Hunter S. Thompson-like metamorphosis that I’ve recently noticed that same opposition making into a more slyly reptilian form. Concerns that would never have been mentioned in the house before, are now, like infrastructure, aboriginal injustices, refugee resettlement and a host of other issues as if their previous incarnation as the government had been only a bad dream.  They hiss quite freely and even slip in green references when pushing blue issues like pipelines.  Have these lizard people finally shed their bovine skins to reveal their true colours now that the old silver back is now longer the alpha male?  Or will they mutate into a television reality show of their own?  Whatever!   I’m not going to get into that or any other current crap today so
 
I listened when   Coby the black cat intimated that we should sit out and enjoy the weather.  The sheltered southern facing exposure of our balcony in the full sun often produces a greenhouse effect. Today that effect made it seem like May instead of March.  And because of climate change, in one of its rare and more appealing manifestations the day felt like spring even though it wasn’t.  A memorable one and the first this year that I could actually sit out and relax comfortably for a while with a pleasant little beer buzz, but
 
I'm afraid it’s late now and I’m still not going to discuss any of today’s current events or any other inanities.  It’s been too nice a day to close reflecting on what’s out there beyond the view I saw earlier and the accompanying fair weather – regardless of global warming and the lizard people.

A lot of people everywhere are waiting for spring.  That’s to be expected - especially in traditionally cold climates like Canada.  Here, the season also brings the annual federal budget and this year there are probably more than usual waiting for it as well. 
 
Last year, the conservative finance minister was a long time trying to jig the numbers so a balanced budget could be produced; the smoke and mirrors involved required considerable manipulation and choreography to make the whole show appear plausible.  And the strain involved must have been enormous, because he disappeared immediately afterwards and wasn’t even seen during the election.  I know, because he was my member of parliament then and his campaign was nonexistent. The anticipation this year is due ​more to the national perception that little of a concrete nature has been done by the new government yet.  That’s not entirely true and honeymoon may not be over, but the waiting populace naturally expects more action in the budget than consultations and talk.  With the election, the country decided that despite all the TV ads ‘the government’s inaction plan’ wasn’t working and something needed to be done.
 
Today the new P.M. finally cleared the air over one item on his agenda: in the mission against ISIS the F-18s will be grounded.  And while not clearing the air about why this promise was originally made as well, he has at least followed through on it.  More humanitarian aid and training will be supplied in lieu of air strikes.  Those like the new opposition who have barked for more bombings will doubtlessly be saddened by this turn of events and worry that their armaments stocks will go down, but they needn’t.  There are always enough buyers of arms and munitions to keep those investments secure and profitable.
 
I will confess that I have never thoroughly ​scoured the Internet or other sources for progress reports of the bombing mission, but none have ever been broadcast regularly or made easily available.  Neither has any account been given of the effectiveness of the mission or the enemy casualties.  We just pay the bills and the bombs keep falling.  A lot of non-combatants are no doubt being killed. As in other wars they are quietly listed somewhere as ‘Collateral Damage’ and brushed aside by the usual bullshit about precision bombing.  Military strategists have been claiming pinpoint accuracy since WW2 when a hit within a several hundred-yard radius of the target was considered good.  Granted the technology has been vastly improved, but just take a look at the facts from the two Iraq wars or even Vietnam and try to find the true number of civilians liberated - by death - during those conflicts. The numbers are staggering.
 
Maybe the new Prime Minister isn’t comfortable spending our tax dollars to rearrange the sand dunes while killing innocent civilians just so Canada can be considered a member in good standing of the proper political clubs and international associations.

13/02/2016

It should be noted as well that wars are won by ground troops, not air strikes. That was shown in the afore mentioned conflicts. Hence, our increased role in the training of such forces may eventually show Canada to have been in the forefront of efforts to resolve this one.  

​

The new government in Ottawa made enough resolutions during the election to keep it busy for its entire term, let alone the new year.  In the unlikely event that attempts are made to honour every promise made during the campaign they will have to be resolute indeed.  Undoing the misdeeds of the previous regime might have been enough to satisfy a public too often ignored altogether when not subjected to foreign policy fear mongering that is better suited to America than Canada.  But the party now in power is young and fresh and optimistic and not bound by the dictates of its leader, like the last one.
 
One promise is to recall the F18 jets currently conducting air strikes against ISIS.  The conservatives advocated ‘staying the course’ even though few if any details about the mission or its progress were ever publicly released by it.  The Department of National Defence website reported nothing except the number of sorties made by Canadian aircraft.  The fat little weasel who ran the DND declared everything about the deployment top secret in the interests of national security.  "Trust the government," they implied: big brother knew best.  Even the true cost of the operation was conveniently stamped classified, but estimates place it around $500,000,000.
 
Trudeau doesn’t go far enough in my opinion; I’d scrap the whole operation.  Our contribution to the coalition amounts to about 2 percent of the total effort.  That's negligible even if the new opposition and some in the media carry on as if a change in policy would jeopardize the coalition mission, show Canada in a bad light and somehow allow ISIS to conquer the world.
 
That entire region has been fragmented by different ethnicities, religions, values, customs, cultures and assigned borders since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following WW1.   All of the various factions have been at odds with one another ever since with  none there are  ready for  change yet.  It is hypocrisy to pretend that human rights issues are the motives behind the west’s military interference.  Since the 1973 oil crisis  the main concern  has remained maintaining the uninterrupted flow of oil from their wells to the gas tanks of the world.  Canada however, has the third largest oil reserves on the planet and needn't worry about supply.
 
Still, the last government insisted that we had to join the fray to protect us from foreign terrorism.  No one likes bombings - including those in the Middle East - and nothing is more likely to provoke terrorism here than our interference there.  Such foreign adventures are among the reasons why America is now so well loved around the world.   A lot of the trouble there now is the result of the U.S.A.’s ill-advised invasion and consequent destabilization of Iraq.  Let them resolve it or leave it to the area’s well-armed locals to fix.

Canada is not a military power and we shouldn’t pretend we are.  We can provide an example of real humanitarian aid simply by allowing a place of refuge here   for those inclined, away from the destruction  and the squalor of camps over there.

 It’s that $pecial time of year again.  What time you ask?  It’s time to spend money and I don’t mean rationally.  No, I’m talking about that point in the annual cycle where common sense is suspended and all credit cards are maxed out a.s.a.p.  It’s a form of contagious mental illness that infects consumers nationally like a  virus and those with anything to sell use the resulting impaired judgement to separate those afflicted from their cash.   It’s the holiday season and besides, it’s only money.

After years of whining about poor sales between Labour Day and December the retail sector got a break.  In 2008 big business decided that big discounts were the way to keep cross border shoppers here.   It would also help get credit card holders used to pulling out the plastic while forgetting the budget for Xma$ and other celebrations too.

​That’s why Black Friday was imported: to fleece Canadians early and ready them to be fiscally stripped naked during the holiday season when ‘everything has got to be just right' for the kids, the family  or friends in one big commercial con.  It fooled the Americans so it was sure to work here. We are basically as gullible as they are, even if we don’t want to admit it.  Advertisers insist that the bargains are unbeatable and a way to prepare for: (insert your own holiday or excuse).  Besides, it’s tradition and a time when everyone is either being taken or doing the taking.  ‘It’s the most wonderful time of the year.’  

Every year it’s the same and every year people get sucked into wasting money exactly like the year before.  Just watch the advertising pitches on television.  Sometimes even those who report the news anxiously salivate and drool almost visibly while reading all the special and festive treats one can buy, clearly wishing they were out lined up with the rest of the lemmings. They extol the specials before, during and after the season without mentioning the financial burden this behaviour will lead to when the bills finally arrive along with the midwinter blah$, after the parties are over.

It’s all right though and nothing new. When those bills do come, the lemmings will accept their resulting fiscal situation because it’s the custom and the natural order of things.  Others also perceive it as common ground gaining them acceptance in society.   The banks will increase credit card limits and everyone will pay even more interest on their debt or borrow more while tightening their belts and living poor to make the increased payments.  Then at this time next year after scraping to balance their books they will be taken in again as easily as marks gulled at a carnival.  Ho F$cking Ho!

​The election is over and one former leader was last seen quietly slipping out the back door of parliament while another has gone to ground, so we can perhaps train our eyes to things farther afield or even skyward briefly.
 
During 'the sixties’ that were my formative years Star Trek was new and NASA wasn’t much older. Many things were changing and the atmosphere was positive especially in Canada where the cold war, Vietnam, racism, civil rights and all the other social issues of the time had less impact than they did south of the border. Space was the final frontier, at least for those like me. No one cared if the space race was just a big PR contest between the superpowers or that all those early manned rockets were really repurposed nuclear missiles. There was optimism in the air and anything seemed possible.  I was swept along by all the hype just like lots of others and when the moon landing took place I was perfectly ready to believe the ‘authorities’ when they said that we’d be living on the moon soon. A manned mission to Mars was expected to take place in 1983  after that!
 
Now it’s late 2015 and talk of manned space exploration is usually reserved for American state of the union addresses where it’s purpose is to convince audiences that America is still number one. So when I heard in the media that NASA had a major announcement pending about its Mars MAVEN project I thought it would merely amount to one of those noncommittal press releases. You know the ones about finding some new evidence indicating life on Mars, or not, but maybe, but don’t quote us because it’s all speculation so far. As it turns out this one might be more than that.  It might even lead to some serious thought.
 
The upshot of the announcement was that the solar wind is blowing away Mars’ atmosphere and has been doing so continually for millions of years because Mars hasn’t the protection of a magnetic field.  If that is true, it will put the kibosh on any plans for terraforming and\or colonizing  the red planet because any new atmosphere would be stripped away too. That leaves only the moon within reach, which has no atmosphere either.
 
The human race has often been responsible for parasitically occupying one place until they’ve drained its resources, polluted and generally laid waste to it. Then, leaving the mess behind they repeat the process in another pristine place.  It’s the nature of the species.
 
In the fermentation of alcoholic beverages, the process stops when the alcohol produced by the yeast itself reaches so toxic a level that the yeast cannot survive.  Likewise, we may have to stop shitting in our own nest and start looking after it instead,  because it is the only one we’re likely to have. Someone may yet come up with those unlikely or magical warp engines that Sci-Fi enthusiasts dream about, but more likely the ‘powers that be’ have made warp drives and the problems of interstellar distances  sufficiently challenging  keep kids like us in our own back yard indefinitely, for the well-being of ourselves and others in the cosmos.