Category Archives: General

Goods and Services

By an odd comparison and perhaps shamefully I respond more acutely to a visit to the car repair shop than to my family physician. The reaction naturally speaks to the no doubt fleeting though momentarily surpassing penetration of my car to that of my corpus.  The damaged goods of my body are predominantly irreversible whereas the maintenance of my vehicle admits to predictable optimism and hopeful triumph. Incited by this consummate seduction I awoke very early this morning, drove to the dealership and was the first in line for what I reckon was equivalent to a psychiatric appointment with the service department under the auspices of the assiduous Shop Foreman Wayde Kingsley at Lincoln Heights Ford, Richmond Road, Ottawa.

Lincoln Heights Ford

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Down home

A glorious morning! There isn’t a clear sky nor dazzling sunshine, just a moody grey dome and a raw misty atmosphere. But I sensed something awesome. My exuberance was a whispered one, no more deserving than the triumph of a drunk having withstood excessive temptation. In point of fact my behaviour last evening was not entirely abstemious – I ended getting both feet into a jar of organic peanut butter. With a spoon. Sans bread. Peanut butter is a constant snare for me. I reckon that peanut butter – like beer – is loaded with nutrition, how else to explain its beguilement? It always leaves me replete and regretful. Yet after this morning’s 10 km bicycle ride – a venture in January in Canada I record for historical purposes alone – my penance has been performed.

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Journalism

Four years ago President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America began the studied and constant touting of an accusation of “fake news” from the mainstream media. Initially his incrimination was dismissed as the sour grapes of a disgruntled politician – who uncommonly for someone his age had a grip upon social media, Twitter in particular.  The charge has since transmuted to a mantra of the very radical element he appeared to fumigate against in others. Trump’s Twitter account has since been removed indefinitely.

“The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance. In that way we should arrive at the right proportion between information and publicity. Never did I find in that coarse bottle anything but ill-humour, boorishness, and folly.”

Excerpt From
Proust, Marcel “Swann’s Way”

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Getting to know you

But then, even in the most insignificant details of our daily life, none of us can be said to constitute a material whole, which is identical for everyone, and need only be turned up like a page in an account-book or the record of a will; our social personality is created by the thoughts of other people. Even the simple act which we describe as “seeing some one we know” is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we have already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him which we compose in our minds those ideas have certainly the principal place. In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen.

Excerpt From
Proust, Marcel  “Swann’s Way”

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An ideal day

The diaphanous air was crystal clear this morning when I launched my constitutional bicycle ride.  Today marks the end of the first week of the New Year – and the end of a raucous political week in the United States of America. No doubt many people are worn to a frazzle by COVID isolation, Trump’s buffoonery and the prospect of more winter. My bicycle ride by comparison was ideal.

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Who are the Trump supporters?

Hawley harshly criticized the decision, saying it “represents the end of the conservative legal movement.“

What more than anything gobsmacks me after yesterday’s storming of the Capitol building by Trump supporters is that it was based upon both factual and legal lies; viz., there was no voter suppression in the presidential election and there is no right of the vice-president to change the outcome. The interlopers had only moments earlier been prompted to do their dirty work by President Donald J. Trump who repeated both lies. The President’s henchmen Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley – both lawyers – reiterated their own version of identical lies in the Senate. Nor did they change their tune even after the mob was forced out of the Senate and the Senators reconvened.

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“irregardless of…” – Senator Josh Hawley

“Hawley was the first GOP senator to say he would back the attempts by Donald Trump to overthrow Joe Biden’s victory, after the president’s claims that the election was marred by fraud were rejected by numerous courts.“

Senator Josh Hawley has lately been very much in the news. And not in a good way.  His speedy climb up the ladder of popular attention is reminiscent of Adolf Hitler; namely, a disaffected orator from nowhere with world ambition. Already students at his former law school are championing his removal from office for having incited criminal activity.

“A native of small town Lexington, Missouri in rural Lafayette County, Senator Hawley graduated from Rockhurst High School in Kansas City.“

My interest in this peculiar nut case is that he has blatantly sought to follow upon and echo the cocktail of evil propounded by President Donald J. Trump.  Both are undisturbed in their overwhelming conviction to themselves at the cost of others. Both are mistakenly prompted by an erstwhile fortuity which for Trump at least has proven to be unsustainable. I predict the same evolution for Senator Hawley.

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General Donald J. Trump

“Protesters loyal to President Trump stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, halting Congress’s counting of the electoral votes to confirm President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory as the police evacuated lawmakers from the building.“

My guess at this moment is that Vice-President Mike Pence is not spouting his usual selective Christian demagoguery. The Capitol building of the United States of America  – whence he has been precipitously spirited for his own protection – is under siege. I will however assist Mr. Pence in this trying moment by directing him to the apt percept, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap“, Epistle to the Galatians, 6:7, King James Version of the Bible.

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Winter bicycle ride

Though I am not athletic, I have always taken pleasure in fresh air and moderate stimulation. Bicycling is my preferred exercise. In addition to being a long-standing habit cycling is no doubt an expiation of perpetual psychological accountability. Yesterday however we went for a very short walk instead in Insmill Park in Kanata. As we begin to bury ourselves deeper in snow I reasoned that walking was an appropriate alternative though I have always hated walking. As anticipated the exertion was painful for me because of my deteriorating spinal discs. So this morning I proposed to renew my preference for cycling.

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