This country’s big anniversary draws near and one wonders how to approach it as a subject in a blog such as this.  Many summations of the various great historical accomplishments and achievements of the nation will soon be broadcast and otherwise bandied about.  Given the upcoming and naturally patriotic, sentiments of all, including those in the various forms of media, it could turn out to be a national event celebrated by all as we look at this country at 150.  I will certainly raise a glass.
 
Still, it might as easily become quickly forgotten by a cynical public, in this ever changing world.  The idea of ‘tradition’ where our relatively quiet history is concerned when celebrated, sometimes seems bland, overdone or even downright maudlin to the point of being comical in the resulting hype.  A little nationalism goes a long way; too much sometimes goes too far.  It’s a matter of degree: just look south.  Paeans will be no doubt be sung far and wide, but in the unfortunate event that the whole extravaganza becomes somewhat passé, less than advertised or even dull, I thought I’d get a word in about a thing or two in advance while hoping the aforesaid doesn’t happen.
 
Americans have generally fervently maintained that they are responsible for inventing every single modern thing back to about the wheel and most of them truly think it’s a fact, but there are actually some real exceptions and a few of those were actually thought up here or down there by Canadians.  Basketball (James Naismith 1891) is one example.  Another big one is the telephone, since A. G. Bell worked both in Canada and the U.S.A. and had considered the idea in the former location before its completion in the latter.  As to nationality, I think Bell would most likely say he was a Scotsman.  Superman would be a dual citizen given the citizenship of those who created him.
 
Other little items were definitely of Canadian design: egg cartons, five pin bowling, garbage bags, pablum, paint rollers, peanut butter, snow blowers, snowmobiles, snow…(etc. ad nauseum) along with Trivial Pursuit and the zipper are perhaps not pinnacles of achievement, but some are unquestionably worth honourable mention.  Amplitude Modulation, a.k.a. am radio would be one and IMAX another in the field of communication and artistic expression.  Banting and Best’s discoveries regarding insulin as a treatment for diabetes have helped countless people and electric wheelchairs have too.  The railways around the world could not have been co-ordinated without Fleming’s Standard Time and International Space Station probably could not have been built without the Canadarm, as it’s known in this country.
 
But all in all, it’s probably only about beer, hockey and generally trying not to make things too difficult for those around us, because as Canadians we realize that they’ll most likely feel the same way and return such sentiments.  

Having just finished three of the seven volumes which make up ‘A la Recherche du Temps Perdue’ or ‘Remembrances of Things Past’ as it’s usually known and bringing my progress through the saga to 1676 pages I feel sufficiently content and entitled after some reflection to brag a bit about it publicly.  It is something of a colossus.  Many readers avoid the tome altogether, explaining it away for many reasons that may or may not be true.  Some state that the work is simply too long at 3424 pages* in the 3-volume set that I am reading or 150 hours in the available NAXOS audiobook.  Others say it is too deep or heavy a read, which may be true since when bound in a set of three the weight of each is twice as heavy as a normal book. Still others will start the piece only to feel dragged under by the ‘stream of consciousness’ style of its protracted sentences and paragraphs that are often a page or more long.  In part 3 ‘The Guermantes Way’ chapter 2 begins on page 358.  And paradoxically, while some may argue that they haven’t the time required to do this massive novel justice, the French title literally translated means ‘In Search of Lost Time.’ 
 
No one could likely value the pen and paper that I had handy more than myself after I began to turn the pages of ‘Swann’s Way’, the opening segment of Marcel Proust’s epic unless they had attempted to read it themselves.  These scribbling tools I always have nearby in case of sudden literary inspiration, but more often to make note of things needed from the mall or the grocery store that might otherwise be forgotten.  In this case, not many pages into part 1, I decided to jot down the numerous words I didn’t recognize or understand in order to find their meanings at my leisure.
 
I didn’t bother with the assorted and unfamiliar botanical or floral names I encountered, let alone the various art oriented references that act as a motif throughout the piece, but confined myself to more general words that might actually be used aloud when one wished perhaps to appear more intellectual than one actually was.  Aphasiac, catechumen, crepuscular, integument, matutinal, neurasthenic, peripatetic, preterition and unctuous are a few actual examples.  Such research is best done in batches, since in looking up each of these odd words in a dictionary or online, one loses one’s place on a page which may contain the continuation of a paragraph begun the page before and that continues on to the next, compelling one to retrace his or her ‘steps’ by going back to the beginning of a sentence that inexplicably could easily be or at least seem several times as long as this one, each time, just to put the newly deciphered word into context in an effort to glean the most precise meaning of the thought the author wished to convey.
 
I’ll read the whole tale. That much is a given,  though I think it may be best done in batches as well and I may read something a little lighter and completely different next before continuing to plumb the depths of Proust’s unrestrained narrative.

*Wikipedia  lists the total number of pages  as 4215 with a word count of 1,267,069.

Lately there’s been a lot of talk about pot, in print, on TV, on social media and even in some blogs. It was in the air yesterday too, even with all the rain, its unique fragrance easily detectable and no doubt noticed by those inside the television station adjacent to Yonge Dundas Square here in Toronto.
 
I’d taken the subway south and around the loop at Union Station.  Three stops later at Dundas the first thing I sensed when I detrained was the undeniable aroma of marijuana, in the station itself, below ground, on the platform.  I took a nearby elevator to the street that on the surface opened almost directly into the square itself landing myself almost right into the thick of clustered groups toking.  Had I fortified myself with a puff, a drink or both before heading downtown I might have immediately recognized those before me as bohemians, but the fashions including some facial paint and hairdos were new to me so it took some moments longer.  But they didn’t notice: their focus was on the weed that was there to see, to buy and to do at will.  I was immediately offered some for sale by a fellow who had his price list conveniently printed right on his T-shirt.
 
The Cops detailed around the perimeter seemed like a civilized lot too who discreetly ignored the drug use, foul language and boisterous behaviour ‘right under their noses’ and killed the time casually relaxed in their waterproof gear.  It was Police and potheads, side-by-side, almost entirely indifferent to one another.  What a difference a few decades make.
 
I’d wanted to ask questions, get an opinion or two and what more I couldn’t say, but the police and the pot people seemed to be in orbits of their own that were best left undisturbed.  I listened to one act on stage, a girl named Charmie who sang and played a guitar, backed up by a drummer.  Then the show went on with a contrasting variety of performers and speakers.  And I checked out the booths and the head shop tents that lined the square.  It was all Ok.  Usually I only remember the event after missing it, so I had been determined to bookmark it this year like a valid resolution.  I wasn’t about to forget, didn’t and didn’t leave empty handed when I did, a bit before the oncoming rush hour.
 
Given last week’s official announcement of legalization in Ottawa, the surrounding news stories and other recent speculations, many are still left wondering both publicly and privately how the whole legalization process could unfold, including regulation, distribution and taxation while even trying to digest the whole idea of ‘edibles’ in order to unwind a bit as well.  For the most part I think that those in power need only copy and apply the existing Provincial regulations governing the use of alcohol.  Leave the ‘edibles’ off the shelf and up to the individual.  The whole thing doesn’t have to be that terribly complicated if it’s considered reasonably.

‘A Clogged blog!  You must leave the apartment immediately and for at least 6 hours,’ he was told by one specialist.  And when he did, it worked.  Once back home with a bag full of newly bought used books, his head had cleared and the blog was too, but that newly available space hadn’t been filled anything novel, not then.
 
He knew he was late with the monthly blog and the increased (probably repeat) website traffic showed that at least some who followed it were aware of the fact too.  But current events hadn’t seemed appealing subjects even with the possibilities that they might inspire.  Besides, he was tired of debunking the usual Trumped up falsehoods or the prime suspects behind them.  So after some thought, he took another approach.
 
‘Try a few beers,’ he’d heard before.  ‘Then add some pot,’ also echoed in his mind - like a broken record - from a more distant source.  ‘And mix in some Rolling Stones,’ he added himself, for good measure.  That seemed like a good start anyway. ‘And if it doesn’t work the first time just remember that the more you keep trying the more likely you’ll find a solution.’  So he gave it a go, although after a while it sounded exactly like the proverbial gambler’s reasoned belief that one more throw of the dice could change things and win back everything he’s lost.
 
Still, Einstein always debated random chance, quantum weirdness and all that stuff, arguing that: “God does not play dice with the universe.” Just how he knew that fact wasn’t explained.  He’d also said that doing the same thing  repeatedly but expecting different results was insanity.  If that was true, then so much for games of chance or ‘If at first you don’t succeed.’  No one since Big Al seemed capable of proving whether he knew what he was talking about or not, as if it were all voodoo physics or scientific mysticism.  With one roll of the dice things could be true or false or constantly changing, with no one knowing at any given time what might be the case for sure, if examined closely or stepped aside from and viewed from afar.  Of course all those theories might be just bullshit anyway.  Perhaps physicists simply made these things up for kicks or to be popular with the girls, like Bert was, he thought.  Maybe nobody really knew for sure; it was all relative, as they sometimes claimed.
 
- And that’s more or less what I got from my own reveries too - after trying his solutions.  But the only excuse for my blog delay is that I’ve been ploughing my way through Marcel Proust’s seven-volume stream of consciousness recently and while its length does not deter me, reading it does addle the mind enough to make constructive thought difficult afterwards.

MARTHA. Truth and illusion, George; you don’t know the difference.
 
GEORGE.  No; but we must carry on as though we did.
 
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  by Edward Albee 1962 (Act 3)
 
 
Recently on social ‘media’ someone posted an item regarding the dangers of alcohol and opined that it was perhaps the most dangerous drug in existence.  A Facebook friend of mine submitted his view that marijuana was far safer to indulge in or something to that effect. I tried to indicate in a comment that pot was not without its own drawbacks and that people often “cough themselves purple” using it, for which I was quickly and tersely upbraided with the reply “More people will die from alcohol this weekend than have ever died from smoking pot.”  I think that’s verbatim, but while I may have slightly - and accidentally - misquoted him here that was the ‘substance’ of the statement.
 
As far as accidents, injuries and deaths go, they happen all the time, in all manner of ways, even to people who use marijuana or to people who drive or to those who do both at the same time.  In such catastrophes one generally hears a news statement from police stating that ‘drugs may have been a factor’ and that’s all that’s said because a lot of drugs are still too difficult and/or expensive to test for in each instance.  Some may suppose that they refer (not reefer) to ‘drugs’ other than weed, but to imply or argue that because there are few statistics on the subject it doesn’t happen is borderline sophistry or self-delusion at best.  M.A.D.D. includes ‘drugs’ along with alcohol in their television ads now. 
 
Little more needs to be said.  I might have been ‘inspired somehow’ and made this small rebuttal a couple of weeks sooner, but I’ve been recuperating after surgery for multiple hernias during the time since those postings appeared. Believe me, you don’t want to do a lot of coughing in those circumstances.
 
And I’m not just talking through my hat about the ganja either because I’ve smoked pot for about the last 44 years and my friend - let’s call him ‘Paul’ - knows it because some of the first marijuana either of us ever smoked in our lives was passed back and forth between us then and I haven't been idle since!  Still, one wonders why some remain so  defensive and insecure about the subject after all this time.  Could it be some loss of memory or the paranoia that’s to blame?
 
 
‘But why say blame? Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed the illusion and put truth in its place?  For truth . . . those dots mark the spot where, in search of truth, I missed the turning up to Fernham.  Yes indeed, which was truth and which was illusion?  I asked myself.’
 
- A Room of One’s Own  by Virginia Woolf 1929 (on WW1, pg. 12 in my copy)

I had already decided to devote this installment of Nonsensical News-makers  to Kevin O’Leary even before he stopped dilly-dallying and finally admitted his latent conservativism.   But revealing a 'new-found' passion to play in the pool and the polls with the other right wing hopefuls he suddenly  dove in to the upcoming conservative party leadership contest.  Still,  I tried to research him a little in order to give him as fair a hearing as I could before pointing out the obvious similarities with - you know who.   And they are sure to appear regularly in the coming months.
 
It won’t compare with the freak show that went on south of the border of course; this is Canada – land of the sane.  After a look through the web I found some bits about him (some pro - some con) in terms of his history and it’s right out there for anyone who is interested.  I hoped to find that the similarities between him and that demagogue beneath us were limited at best.
 
There were some interesting details, like the fact that early on O’Leary had seen a lot of the world travelling with his parents while growing up.  One would think that would add to a person’s perspective. Later, he apparently considered photography as a career, but he continued his education in a less artistic but more entrepreneurial direction instead.  even so, that might have boded well.  But the further I looked, the more disappointed I became.
 
He had ups and downs too.  But success came and it hasn’t dampened his all too evident ego since making his money.  The resulting sneer he has grown, nurtured and exhibited for years on television wouldn’t seem to enhance his chances for office though and neither will his know-it-all attitude either, in my opinion. That pissed me off the first time I saw it.  Oh, I forgot: he has no plans to run for a seat in the House of Commons, yet somewhere I heard something about selling seats in the senate.  Granted, I thought: he’s new - really, really, really new to politics and it shows, but finally when I saw and heard him interviewed on CBC earlier this week I had to say to myself: what a whining little rich wimp.  And I also realized that what we have here is a genuine blowhard; the reptiles of that blue right wing morass will probably eat him alive anyway.  It’s swampy waters out there.   A.K.A. Problem solved.
 
Yet there seems to be little difference between the words entrepreneur and exploiter these days.  At least it seems so to the people who consider unbridled Capitalism ‘the be all and end all’, along with all the money and  resulting power.  When the very rich start meddling in politics it can become something of an Oligarchy.  Look the word up!   Look at Russia.  Look at who courts Russia?  Who’s rich?  Take a guess.
 
I have no time for copycats.  One trump is certainly enough for this continent at the moment and as far as that goes - for the entire planet.  Disappear Kevin O’Leary and enjoy your life; you’ve got the money.  Why make an ass out of yourself?

​The applicable definition in The Oxford dictionary for the word ‘entitlement’ and more particularly ‘a sense of entitlement’ is: The belief that one inherently deserves privileges or special treatment:
 
            But the question might be asked: who feels this way?  The answer is simple: everyone in the western world - from what I see - because it is a fundamental part of a consumer society. Look around.  Everyone, these days seem to think that they deserve every single thing there is to own that’s out there, from the big shots to the ‘average folk’ simply because they saw it on a TV show or heard about it from some dickhead acquaintance of theirs who did.
 
Probably everyone else in the world with access to a television and/or the Internet feel they deserve a piece of the pie too.  Third World countries, especially in the Far East, Africa and South Asia are beginning to get the idea.  ‘Greed is good!’ as Gordon Gecko said. It is certainly the mantra of every corporation. Profit - provided it can be made just within the proven legal limits is the sole and only objective without regard to any other considerations.  Where money is to be made pump up the production and forget the pollution.  As for the poorest on the planet that don’t buy anything, well they don’t really count do they?  “I gave five bucks to some charity at the office!   Now hurry up with my tickets to Vegas.  Besides, I work hard - and I’m worth it.” 
 
But maybe they’re right; DT would say so, because the system allows those like him to get away with everything from cheating on their taxes to climate change denial allowably and justifiably.  Sophistry works.  It is a code of ‘honour’ to take as much as possible and a part of a long enshrined fiction generally acknowledged as accepted behaviour, proper in the blessed halls of big time lawyerland. That’s all there is to it. They believe they have the right to flex the muscles of commerce and capitalism as rigorously as possible without giving a shit who gets fucked.  Hey - it’s just business - survival of the fittest, natural selection, in the genes and all the rest of that BS. And when the little fishes in the pond look around they consider every extravagant piece of conspicuous consumption or waste politically correct because - ‘Everybody else is doing it.’
 
So all are sucked into it.  Multitudes of unnecessary and whimsical products, services and other assorted rubbish appears on the shelves or on the net annually at this time of year in one big hustle.  Marketing departments, paid to be adept at convincing the public of where their real holiday needs are and where the best buys can be found know their stuff and earn bonuses by using all the usual gimmicks, like creating crazes,  offering free giveaways through the media, the best shopping ‘tips’ and other typical fictions spread since advertising began on the air. It's not  called  TV programming for nothing and it begins at a very young age when toddlers first see what’s out there.
 
Of course this is Canada so it’s a bit tamer or at least more polite than in other ‘developed’ countries.  But it’s bad enough. Good thing people have or find all this money (or credit) to spread around lavishly through the holidays to help keep their minds off the unseen but real problems elsewhere that they don’t wish to face.

11/17/16
 
I know I’m a little bit overdue in putting out the blog this month.  Lately, for some reason I’ve felt a little unsettled, had trouble sleeping and had nothing but rather surrealistic dreams when I did.  Of course dreams are often inexplicable and everyone’s are unique.  Troublingly, mine have recently been ‘big-budgeted’ and filled repeatedly with what I can only describe as a quite ugly and loud buffoon or some unsightly sideshow geek.
 
Clowns are meant to be funny or at least harmless, but everyone is different:  some think they are entertaining and some don’t.  Some find them ludicrous, others take them seriously and the timid even find them frightening.  This one paraded egotistically around with a funny goose-like-step as if he’d drunk too deeply at some nasty nazi party. And when he defecated racist and sexist shit out of his pouting, pursed up little anus of a mouth it did nothing to alter that impression.
 
It’s true that his overblown, pink and puffed up appearance with that laughable hair and his gaudy, cheap foreign ties were vaguely humorous in a vaudevillian, low comedy way. Those in the dreams those who knew anything about style laughed at him.  I even did too.  But he drew lots of attention through these very characteristics.  A very large fan club composed of the duller, cruder, uneducated wastrels: those unable or unwilling to find gainful employment with nothing better to do but follow him on television as if it was reality, while blaming society rightfully or otherwise for their woes.  To losers he had just the right stuff - like some winged deliverer who would bring new life to the ‘party’ and make things great again for those who agreed with him!  Any who didn’t would soon find themselves rounded up, resettled elsewhere and walled off where they would no longer be a burden on the state - or something to that effect.  The tone had a vaguely familiar ring to me for some reason.  He seemed sure that no one would care what became of them after that and that he’d be able to do whatever he wanted to in general.
 
A kindred group of cronies clustered closely around him in public - as if lost - and looked like flawed carbon copies of him.  It was suggested that they were related in some way or even his offspring, but the general consensus seemed to be that they had to be the result of failed genetic or cloning experiments because he was well known to have certain appendages too tiny for them to have been conceived in the usual way.  But one could sense a common purpose among the clones that buzzed like a hive.
 
One would have thought it was the “D.T.’s”.  But while my head is clear, I notice that since I’ve been ‘out of touch’ a lot of folks appear to be upset about something themselves.  Perhaps they’ve had trouble getting to sleep too.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
More of the same at my website blog: http://www.authorrobertmuir.com/blog

I’m going to ignore that bald-faced sniffler to the south and confine myself to a more literate theme - as opposed to his illiterate one - again, for this month at least.
 
This is the question: Is it right to print unfinished works of dead authors even when they’ve specifically asked for those writings be destroyed?  Eg. Franz Kafka.  I’ve lately been reading his early and unfinished work ‘Amerika’.  To me it reads well, so for me it’s apropos that I’m asking that question now. 
 
Jane Austen (Sanditon), Charles Dickens (Edmond Drood), F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Last Tycoon) and Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast, Islands in the…etc. etc.) all left this sphere with works in progress and that’s just a sampling of the many authors who have.  Others put works aside purposely because they were unfinished and somehow unsatisfactory in the author’s mind for public consumption.  Kafka kept virtually everything he wrote from the public and when near death from a particularly nasty type of TB ordered his friend and executor Max Brod to burn it all unread, upon his demise.  For Kafka, his works were his to do with as he pleased.
 
Eventually all these half finished efforts by all the above-mentioned authors ended up coming out anyway.  In some cases the reason for doing so may have been praiseworthy.  Kafka’s friend went against his wishes in order to honour his memory by presenting them to the public and leaving them for posterity.  In other cases it is less clear.  When Brod died in 1968, a mass of other Kafka papers were squabbled over for decades with motives appearing more opportunistic than altruistic.
 
Take Jane Austen as an example; her fans number in the millions - perhaps tens of millions and most of them likely wish there was more material from her and I wish there as too.  But the posthumously published Lady Susan (64 pages) has recently been released as a movie called Love and Friendship.  Depending on its financial success, the unfinished Sanditon (62 pages) will no doubt follow soon, much ‘enhanced’ by screenwriters.  Then, her juvenilia 16 stories (ranging in length from 1 to 41 pages) will probably be scanned for exploitation.  Can Seth Grahame-Smith’s comic novel - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (319 pages) - be that far from hitting the big screen too?

As far as that goes, some books have been always been lampooned or satirized especially if they are highly successful.  It’s been the case for a long time.  Henry Fielding’s satire of Richardson’s Pamela with a piece named Shamela comes to mind.  Once  anything is public - it's fair game.
 
Finally, look at the ancient classics. There’ve been centuries of debate by all the usual ‘scholastic experts’ of every cogent age since then that have been judgmental as to their merits, their values and often their morals. And what about the ‘famous’ Hollywood ‘adaptations’ of such masterpieces?  They are even more vaudevillian, if not downright cartoonish.  Do you think the authors and playwrights of the past would like the way they’ve been treated?  Would they be eager for royalties, threaten to file lawsuits - or both?  Which would spin angrily in their graves and which would laugh their skulls off over at how they’ve been interpreted with the passing of time?

The election looms nearer and nearer south of the border, but one elephant in the room is becoming so puffed up or bloated that I think I’ll ignore its pink or rather its more purple complexion with only a shake of the head in that direction this month. It’s time to talk about something more constructive and more becoming to this blog for a change.  Besides, as one from an author’s website it should perhaps occasionally centre on writing, at least once in a while.
 
The early novels of Dickens were serialized magazine stories that required considerable diligence, since he had to meet a monthly deadline punctually with fresh new material that advanced the plot of the ongoing tale.  Sometimes he was still finishing one when he’d already started the next.  Perhaps the youthful theatrical productions he dreamed up during his troubled childhood or the hectic pace of his first professional writing as an untainted and youthful political journalist had something to do with it.  He could and did meet those deadlines and the resulting novels became almost instant classics.  And he was by no means the only nineteenth century author who did it.  Thackeray liked to knock off about four or five hundred words each day right after breakfast as a rule, just for the hell of it.  Those two and others seemed to literally pump out prose on demand and it shows in the volume of work they published.  They weren’t alone either; many others had the same ability.  Across the channel Balzac, Hugo and Zola mass-produced literary works that have stood the test of time as well.  I can’t match their output or even come close, but many famous authors did.  They did it in ink, on paper and usually in one draft with very few corrections (because paper was expensive for budding novelists) in a time before typewriters, let alone personal computers, word processors or spellcheckers.  That’s real inspiration.
 
At times I was stymied about how to progress The Dive when I was writing it so I laid it aside sometimes for weeks until something came to me.  Call it writer’s block.  Now I still worry about finding a topic for the next monthly blog as its usual time approaches.  Of course there’s always some clown in politics to lampoon, but it gets tiresome writing about these crooked or lying politicians and their onstage antics.  When I do get inspired, the idea seems to come from right out of the blue and almost seems like some divine guide is supplying the words.  They come quickly and easily and a blog like this can be finished in very little time.
 
It is generally agreed that the notion of there being ‘Muses’ - three or nine - depending on which source one believes, goes back to Hesiod, the ancient Greek poet from the seventh century B.C.   Homer, Virgil, Catallus, Ovid, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton all invoked one Muse or another in their works, so it’s no wonder that the idea of them persists to this day, especially by those with writer’s block – and all the more when it passes suddenly.