Triple D

You don't have to be dorky to be a Dave, but it helps

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#whatdoisee (at Victoria, British Columbia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmDr1mqLiQj/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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Today's #bread #wednesday #whole #wheat #rye #wildwestkitchen #d-triple

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Grey days are still great beach days

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My first blogging badge

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Island View Beach with Logan and somebody else

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Vistas

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I'm not sure I can take it anymore ...

Before seeing The Counselor on a recent plane ride, I was going to post about many things that had been bugging me over the last month. Lots of stuff, should be writing about it (there are reasons …), so here goes.

So many things are moving faster than I can keep up with:

-          Oysters and scallops are dying in very large numbers in the waters around Vancouver Island. Climate change is to blame – warming water, acidification and changes in the food supply. Headlines describe the deaths as a “mystery”! Apparently because the deaths can’t be pinned on a single cause.

-          There are water shortages all over – Australia, US, parts of Africa. And Canadians are just beginning to experience shortages with greater regularity. The US situation is putting huge pressure on Canada to export water, and once that starts, there will be no ending it, given NAFTA and other bilateral and international agreements. <link to Mason commentary>

-          Some of the water situation is apparent in rapidly falling lake levels, including the Great Lakes. And US politicians want to draw even more from the lakes to meet their community water needs. The biggest concern about this at the moment seems to be economic! That is, tankers will have to lighten their loads, driving up the cost of the transportation of goods on the Great Lakes.

-          Inequality is OK! It’s natural! Well, only to that hack of the status quo, Margaret Wente. It’s those Americans who are now more progressive than us <link to Senate video> <Stiglitz NY Times piece>. This stuff is another post and another and another … maybe a life cause is a better description?

-          Ol’ Harpo and the gang keep us on our toes, as well as out of the game. I can enumerate, but it’s too depressing, so save all this for other posts as well. <The Fair Elections Act, Robocall, Aga Khan, climate change deniers, political mentors/Australia, etc., etc.>

OK, so, I’m yelling out the window, like Peter Finch in that old film, Network. “We’re in a lot of trouble! I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!!”

Are we cowards? Do we have to become hunters? Is the slaughter inevitable?

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Cowards?

Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor is another very bleak take on our societal state of affairs. McCarthy wrote the script for the 2013 movie. Apparently panned by critics.

I have never read any of McCarthy’s novels. I did see another movie treatment, No Country for Old Men. An extremely bleak and disturbing state of affairs.

In the movie version of The Counselor, the character played by Cameron Diaz has a conversation with her banker before they order lunch. This is the ultimate scene in the film.

The banker asks after Cameron’s pets, two leopards (oh, OK, sure …). Her response contains the following statements:

-          The hunter has grace, beauty, purity of heart

-          Faintness of heart has driven us to the edge of ruin

-          Nothing is crueler than a coward

-          The slaughter to come is beyond our imagining

Sheesh, what?!? It’s only a movie, but we are screwed …

Geoff Pevere described The Counselor as depicting a descent into hell that you can’t get out of. Watching the movie you never really like any of the characters. Their lives are dangerous and depressing but they are living the choices they make. Perhaps we have some sympathy with Penelope Cruz, as her only choice was for love. Or so she thought?

In the end the story of The Counselor is all about greed. Life, for too many, is about greed. And greed leads to a hell we cannot escape.

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Head bashers and scratchers

Some things are too much. It is incredible how the life can be sucked right out of you by some ridiculous situation. It can take minutes, to never, to get back that part of your life. 

Went to the theatre tonight. A "controversial" play! Commenting on politics and political leaders in Canada is controversial!

It was a Belfry production of Michael Healy's Proud, a play that "explores the corrosive nature of the politics of division".

Billed as a satire, with moments more like black comedy, the play is on the surface about politics and Stephan Harper (ol' Harpo). Fundamentally, the play is about human well-being.

Self-reliance, resilience and independence get long-winded support. And rightly so. The audience is asked to remember, however, that you're likely going to need part of someone's liver one day (metaphorically for sure, literally perhaps). Even ol' Harpo (the character, anyway), sings the praises of interdependence. And of an engaged citizenry, believe it or not. Ol' Harpo saying these things even has a certain logic to it.

What is hilarious - and on reflection, provokes despair - is how mixed up politics are, whatever goals are being pursued.

If you're an ol' Harpo lover or leaver, Proud is a very worthwhile 90 minutes.

I'm in a league. Not the NHL, but a different one. The league of bald-headed men.

We BHM get up to lots of head bashing, and we don't like it. Almost makes us want hair, but not quite. Comb-over? Toupee? No way, we have a lot of damaged real estate instead.

We cut our own hair. And we live in fear, OK, mock-fear really, that this will be exposed. 

BHM have hair cutting chats:

"I'm using no. 2 all over, no. 1 on the sides."

"Really! I'm no. 1 all over. And recently I cut without anything, so had to cut my whole head! And nobody noticed!"

Family laugh at us! At our pain. At our vanity. And we have to laugh too.

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Loggin' In

Been meaning to write for awhile. Lots of writing in my head, lots to talk about, write about. A long time between posts. 

Life is good. I'm a lucky guy.

Status quo defined, and excuses out of the way.

I have a list as long as my arm of topics to write about. It has taken inspiration to put hands to keyboard.

Two inspirations. One, the fact that life is so amazing. So many things to talk about, share, discuss, despair, rejoice. So many beautiful things. So many ugly things. So many, many absurdities.

Two, that yes, it is worth writing about. People do it, and do it well. The blog at angelinhotpants.com is one long laugh. A laugh at life. A laugh at family, at politicians, at pets. At yourself. At who we are. At who we want to be. At truth. At uncertainty. Overall happiness. And overall despair. And always smilin' through it. A good way to manage life, if you can.

Logan is our dog. A small, white terrier. Logan is all that is implied by his breed. We have many adventures, Logan and I. We both like the beach.

A recent adventure, mini-adventure really, was a foray into a neighbour's backyard. We had just returned from an early morning airport drop. Out of the car at home and what do we both see? A lovely hopping rabbit zip out of our yard across the street. Logan was off. Logan and I met again in the very big backyard of the across the street neighbour. The rabbit was long gone to my eyes, but not to Logan’s nose. I hit my head on the top frame of the very large backyard compost bin (what could they possibly put in there?) and only partly suppressed my pain expression, being 6:30 am, and still dark.When I hit my head, therein is an expression for all to see, until it heals. Hardly any of our adventures end this way. More are like the photo above. 

Logan is a proud Scot, from the west highlands. We met up with Logan at the Humane Society in Ottawa. We hit if off and Logan joined the family. Logan came by his name after my sons and I went through the lexicon of Scottish names, trying them out from Alastair on down. No hesitation when we hit Logan. Logan turned his head to confirm.

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Guns

“Are You Kidding Me?!” This was the subject of a note from a friend with a link to a NY Times story on the NRA statement post-Newtown. Essentially, the NRA message is be prepared, and the most sensible preparation is to adequately arm yourself.

While the message is ludicrous to many, including me and my friend, the NRA’s argument is a completely legitimate perspective within the moral, ethical, constitutional, legal, political popular, etc. context of US society.

And within that complicated context, there are a fair number (an increasing number in fact) of people that see arming themselves as the most effective and efficient way to protecting themselves (the NRA argument makes it sound logical and rational).

And because the context is so complicated, gun laws are but one among many publicly contentious measures needed to change that context.

So a fair amount of public dialogue is needed to make constructive changes that bring perspectives together.

To avoid blame and ill-considered changes that can drive perspectives apart.

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Gifts

"That was not a very nice note you sent." So my son said to me after I reflected on the family gift exchange in an email to my two sisters.

The exchange "rules" are thus: you get someone's name in an annual draw; you give them a gift; gift value to be $65. 

Over the years it has become OK to ask for cash towards something you want because "you can't get anything really good for $65" and it relieves the giftee of getting something they don't want. 

This is also supposed to be easy for the gift giver. No muss, no fuss. And we get the comfort of contributing towards something the giftee "really wants". 

I have a different vision of the whole gift-giving process. As the gifter, I want to put some thought into what kind of gift would be my expression of something I think the giftee would like. Perhaps something creative, practical, fun, frivolous, whatever. And as a giftee, I want my gifter to do the same.

My email note was in response to receiving a "gifts wanted" list from my sister. The list included three gift ideas, all $200++, one for each person in my sister's family that three members of my family were giving to. So my family's gift-giving became sending an email transfer of 3 x $65 to my sister. 

My son insists that the "send me cash" gift request is entirely legitimate, and merely part of the many "perspectives" of what gift-giving can be. I think it is essentially thoughtless, and as the giftee's only option I am forced to be thoughtless and obligated to hand over the cash. 

So that's what I said in my note and concluded that maybe it was time to rethink our system, or perhaps simply end it.

Considering what I think about the legitimacy of different perspectives (see Guns), it's time for dialogue. This time, of the family kind.

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View from McMicking Park to Trial Island to the Olympic Mountains

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Public Choice Economics

"Hey, should I enter this?"

My son was asking. He was browsing for scholarships and competitions to get cash for university studies. He sent a link to a video contest in public choice economics. Fraser Institute Contest

Yuk, yuk. Those jokers over at the Fraser Institute ... 

First off, Fraser lets you know that you are misguided in thinking government is anything about the public good. Hey, hey, no, no! Not according to "public choice economics" ... You know, the theory (ideology ... ) that says the self-interest of participants is so fundamental as to have the "inevitable consequence" of making the whole system an "inefficient and wasteful mess." (Uh, really? Makes one wonder about the "inevitable consequences" of other self-interested human systems ... ?)

Anyway, after stringing together all that could be bad about government systems, and attributing this inevitability to a legitimate and causal explanation, i.e. public choice economics, Fraser encourages student contest entrants to submit video documenting government failure. And ipso facto -- government failure is evidence of public choice economic theory. A classic tautology.

Fraser creates a "contest" and dangles cash in front of poor and desperate students. The contest is really a training exercise for student desperadoes to become Fraser-directed "thought leaders". Reflecting and reinforcing perspectives (ideological, tautological or otherwise) to convincingly lead the thoughts of others ...

The idea that this is legitimate -- logically, academically or any other way -- is ridiculous. And troubling. Leading with ideology can only paint you into a corner with no way out. And you'll look kinda foolish ...

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