Sunday, January 31st, 2016 -( 0หC / +32หF — Dark and fairly warm for this time of year in Atlantic Canada @ 8:37 pm )-
— I spent too much of last night trying to undo weird glitches on my laptop – Then I switched to this computer to look up “How do you delete a user account that isn’t working right on a Mac with OS X 10.9.5?” ( It won’t accept its passwords – and nobody logged in and changed those passwords, so I haven’t the foggiest what might be going on there. )
— But ya know what? There’s a lot of back and forth grumbling about politiks, especially back in the “States” where the Iowans are about to kick off another round of Presidential Election Season maneuvering.
— Michael Moore has been poking holes in a lot of arguments about the Republicrats’ race to the White House, including citing poles that say that Bernie can’t get enough Democrats’ votes to beat Trump – But when Independent voters are figured into the mix Sanders clobbers Trump – But Hillary wouldn’t.
— A lot of people are now openly calling ex-Prime Minister Stephen Harper a Corporate Fascist.
— [ ‘Carers’ listed above would be ‘Home Health Care Providers’, as in: someone taking care of a sick parent or relative, or foster child, etc. ]
— How about, “The problem is that Sensitive People take their time to think about the consequences of their propsed actions while Belligerant people turn their minds off and charge straight ahead swinging virtual and verbal clubs and axes at anything in their way.” ?
— This is probably enough damage for anyone’s peace of mind to suffer through tonight –
Friday, January 29th, 2016 -( -2หC / +28หF — already dark & snowing lightly here in Atlantic Canada @6:51 pm )-
— Um – after reading a delightful ‘friendly warning’ message in the new wordpress blog I was tricked into signing up for – “From time to time we may need to [ stick ] ads [ into your blog messages ] to keep your blog free [ hint – hint – send us money ] ” – I went and downloaded, activated another blog with the intent of copying everything from the one I didn’t want in the first place, and, after messing around with settings etc. I learned that it’s really hard to get your favourite fonts ported over into your self-hosted blogs – And – while I was changing fonts in the “Appearance / Editor” css coded listing – the whole freakin thing went bonkers like it decided I wanted it to look like something that could fit on an iPad or my Sweetie’s Tablet – I ended up wasting an hour trying to find a place to click on “I do not want this to look like no stupid mobile device blog” before I deleted the theme I started with and imported a new instance of that theme (“Twenty Sixteen” – you are probably looking at it right now.)
— Um. It took me all freakin afternoon to ‘create’ the blog, copy and paste maybe 5 articles/posts – and I was about to start writing my hopefully uplifting novel when I foolishly checked email and twitter – and – oh well –
Jefferson Airplane guitarist and co-founding member Paul Kantner has died. Kantner died Thursday (Jan. 28) of multiple organ failure. From 1965-1972,โฆ
yahoo.com
Jim WellingtonNo way I can “Like” this. Dangit. Too many people I looked up to are leaving the planet – Um, maybe some of them finished their job? raised the planet’s vibrations to the best of their abilities and it’s time they got a rest?
Jim WellingtonYou got that right – Some sources say that a lot of very good people have given all they had and moved us a little bit closer to “Heaven on Earth” – but have burnt themselves out in the process, and/or even very good people who can’t let go of the past won’t be able to face the kind of ‘Brave New World” they dread might be ahead of us. Me? I know I’m seeing very positive spiritual progress in the right direction, even while the ‘dark side’ is throwing their most desperate last gasping dis-heartening weapons at us. They can’t win. There are too many of us. Hug everyone you care about and know we are amplifying each other’s love, compassion, prayers and intentions and inspiration and sending that on to whoever needs it or wants it or can value it. – Every morning the light is a little stronger and everything coming toward us is singing, “You are Loved!” & “Thank you for being there!”
— & so – tired as I am, I needed to write a little more here to share with anyone who might care before I go knock myself out working out the tougher mind-bending plot twists in a novel that’s supposed to make everybody who reads it feel happy they’re alive and at least trying to be nice to each other –
— I took screen shots of several hopeful photographs from quite a few tweets I read this late afternoon, and I think only one or two of them are about to find their way into this little article here-
— But I wanted this to be an almost entirely positive article – dangit –
— Enough for today? I’ve gone beyond and have almost nothing left to write my soul saving novel with – It is now 9:43 pm. –
Jim W. posted this on “Latest News From Arendel” – Copied and Pasted below:
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Wednesday, January 27th, 2016 -( +5หC / +41หF — Grey skies & damp in Atlantic Canada @ 8:00 am )-
— Economic Warfare —
— The oil and gas industries received $34 Billion dollars per year in taxpayer-funded subsidies? Mid-priced Electric cars cost about $31,000.00 Canadian Dollars. They figure there are 9 million families in Canada?
— The Province of New Brunswick, crying poverty, has told the people of New Brunswick that their ‘duly elected government’ is trying to decide how to institute tolls on New Brunswick’s highways to raise money because they’re not bringing in enough tax revenues? ***Why don’t they raise taxes on the corporations that have been getting away with downsizing, knocking hardworking people from their ability to pay those taxes, which may be fraudulently reported to the media which, in turn, ‘report’ those fraudulent figures to the news-consuming public.
— Walter Burien – of cafr1.com [ (CAFR+the number 1) dot com ] is an investment counselor who has been trying to explain that virtually every level of Federal, State or Provincial, County, and municipal government has more income streams than they admit to, that tax revenues amount to one third of their actual income, and if they’re not receiving two thirds of their income from non-tax revenues, well then, shame on them for being incredibly stupid – Mr. Burien has been trying to explain this for years, has been politely screaming at seemingly sleeping citizens who, apparently, would much rather plug their ears than listen to him.
— The proposed Energy East Pipeline upgrade would bring oil from Alberta to Saint John, New Brunswick, – reportedly: not to be refined here, an operation which would create Canadian jobs, but to be loaded on ships and carried off to refineries in the USA, where US citizens would have job security that is lacking in Canada?
— Meanwhile, Fracking has been shown to create earthquakes. Earthquakes endanger pipelines. Oil pipelines that split open spill poison into the groundwater. Poisoned groundwater forces humans to pay extra for water that isn’t poisoned, and it kills animals. Animals that die from poisoned water include farm animals that people eat, and pets that people love, and wild animals, like the Beluga whales in the Saint Lawrence River/Seaway.
— When the Mayor of Montreal cried out against the pipeline, he was first accused of being selfish, then accused of trying to divide Canadians along East Versus West, or even Anglophones versus Francophones lines. Then, after a talk with Justin Trudeau, the Mayor of Montreal clarified that his stance against the pipeline was not against economic progress or opportunities, but against the shoddy inability of industry controlled watchdogs to insure that the pipelines would be properly built, properly inspected, and properly maintained. Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, for his part, has announced that he is not a cheerleader for this pipeline project, or any other pipeline project. First Nations/Native Americans – the people whose country was stolen out from under them by Europeans – who claimed they were saving the aboriginal citizens of the ‘Americas’ from ignorance, eternal damnation and poverty – have been fighting pipelines both in the east and in the west. They have also been fighting against the practice of ‘Fracking’, which threatens their drinking water and the stability of their lands.
— Canadian ‘Law’ sees mineral rights as belonging to the ‘Crown’, land owners have been shocked and dismayed to discover that their property has been invaded without their permission by somebody who dug a hole, searching for possible minerals or other exploitable resources, & left the ‘exploratory’ย holes open and dangerous to children and other living things. And then the property owners discovered that (1) they are powerless to stop this sort of thing, (2) if anything valuable was discovered on or under their property, they would not benefit from that discovery, or its exploitation or development – at all – and (3) they just might have to pay the cost of filling any dangerous holes left in their own property, or be held financially liable if the next trespasser looking to make money at the property owners’ expense fell into a hole and injured their precious selves.
— First Nations people have been fighting for centuries to keep their land and mineral rights, citing the fact that they never did sign away their mineral rights. Miners want to be able to walk onto Tribal lands and poison and ruin the area, grab whatever minerals and ores they find there, cart the valuable substances away and gesture obscenely as they ‘laugh all the way to the bank’ and capitalize on what they’ve stolen.
— Corporations have also been getting away with not paying their fair share of taxes in the United Kingdom. Google, which ‘mines’ information from the browsers of anybody connecting to their ‘services’ – and selling that information to the highest bidder – has recently been slapped on the wrist and asked to pay a pittance to cover back taxes – while ‘common’ taxpayers in the UK have discovered that they are now being charged unbelievably ridiculous new taxes [ like a bedroom tax? ] that sound more like Monty Python routines than anything like a real tax that any government in the Western ‘Free World’ would have the gall to suggest.
— And so, sadly, tragically, this has been a snapshot of this morning’s schnarr news of the world as perceived and shared from Atlantic Canada.
— & On the Ethics front: In France, the Justice Minister resigned her post in protest over the new French law that strips citizenship from those accused of terrorism. So human beings with their humanity and moral values intact actually still do exist as of today, the 27th day of January/janvier, 2016. Of course, the newscast that announced this brave and ethical act went on to tell us that the Justice Minister who resigned had already been replaced by a schnarr ice-hole of an Elitist shill who was firmly in favour of advancing himself without regard for ethical behaviour, due process of any law, or the health and well-being of anybody but himself.
Sunday, January 17th, 2016 -( -6หC / +21หF — Cloudy & grey in Atlantic Canada @ 8:30 am )-
— It’s “The Atrocity of the Day” show in main stream media.
— Yesterday, If anyone asked me what Burkina Faso was, or where it might be, I’d admit ignorance and guess it might be a city or an island and might guess it would be in the Pacific, somewhere near Singapore?
— Today, it looks like Burkina Faso has been firmly put on the map, just south of Mali in Africa. 28 in a luxury hotel dead –ย from 18 countries, including 6 from Canada? All of the Canadians were from Quebec?
— I have several friends who follow Conspiracy Investigators. Many of them believe that Al-Qaeda and ISIS were deliberately created by the C.I.A. and/or M.I.6 under orders from the ‘Elite’ who want to control everything and everybody and have learned that if they can keep the general population of this world in a constant state of fear, they can con anyone who believes they live in the ‘Free World’ into voluntarily surrendering all their rights, privileges and freedoms in the name of a ‘National Security’ – which then turns their own governments guns around and points deadly force at their own foreheads.
— I have heard radio interviews with lawyers and psychological ‘de-programmers’ who say they have evidence that ‘dark ops’ groups – break off ‘rogue’ units of especially US Armed Services have been ‘targeting’ individuals, kidnapping them from their homes, taking them to places where they are conditioned using “MK-Ultra” techniques, brainwashed into becoming “Manchurian Candidate” type assassins who have been hypnotized and had their memories wiped, but who can be contacted and activated any time by their handlers, had the right word whispered in their ears and sent out on a suicide mission to kill as many innocent civilians as possible and hopefully get themselves killed in the process so nobody can hypnotize them and learn what has actually happened. The Conspiracy Investigators say this has been happening since the Texas Tower killer in the 1970’s and maybe before that. Sirhan Sirhan, who was charged with assassinating Robert Kennedy, was supposed to be one of the victims or this kind of programming, and eye witnesses have testified that Sirhan Sirhan was ‘glassy eyed’ and fired his gun at nothing while the real assassin was somebody wearing a security officer’s uniform who stepped up behind Senator Kennedy and shot him in the back of the head. Other victims of that kind of conditioning include the Unibomber, the guy who shot John Lennon, and maybe most of the recent mass shootings in the USA and around the world, including the guy who shot up the six-year olds in Sandy Hook (Newtown), Connecticut – The guy who shot up the the theatre in Colorado, and others – & I have deliberately not included a few of these mass killings because I’m not sure they quite fit the profile.
— I can’t endorse my friends’ theories one hundred percent, but every time another atrocity like this hits the main stream media and tries to shock the world’s state of mind off-center to make everyone more manipulate-able, I begin to wonder again, if maybe they just might be right.
— Maybe we never left the Age of Superficiality. Maybe it’s always been with us. But was it always so glamorized? Never mind ‘Glamorized’ – it suddenly seems canonized.
— Maybe I didn’t pay attention to a lot of things in the last few years. Maybe I dismissed mindless ‘entertainment’ and ‘infotainment’ as if was totally insignificant. But wait โ Somebody is paying attention to this stuff. There are way too many programs celebrating celebrity. Reality TV shows look too much like they were designed to convince us that housewives in every city in this world, especially housewives who believe they are rich and powerful โ are complete idiots โ and not just idiots, but mean spiteful egotistical bitches who believe they should be able to kill and eat their neighbours as long as some good conservative party member makes a profit in terms of votes for their candidates – or better yet, gold and silver in their untraceable emergency escape fund.
— Remember the song โDirty Laundryโ bu Don Henley? I thought it was brilliant. I thought I could laugh about dumbed down television news and walk away from that and never be bothered by its mindlessness again.
— But now the ‘Bubble headed bleached blondes’ are everywhere โ and they’re not necessarily blonde any more – sometimes they are wearing grey hair like badges as they try to get you to spend your hard earned money to buy more life insurance (that the insurance companies welcome as ‘free money’ โ maximum input with minimum output for them). – Buy more life insurance than you’d ever need so you can die with a smile on your face, safe in the illusion that your grandchildren will have hundreds of thousands of dollars to deposit as a down-payment toward a multi-million dollar education as the universities of this world become more and more greedy and less and less effective? Remember when we thought that a university education would teach us how to think effectively? Did they ever teach us how to see through shuck?
— Maybe I was able to tolerate the superficiality of many things because I thought they had no impact on the vast majority of the human race. Maybe I believed that average humans were much more intelligent and much more wise than the ‘pundits’ of Madison Avenue gave anybody credit for being. Was I wrong?
— And why, all of a sudden, with the beginning of this New Year โ has it become so painful for me to sit in front of a television monitor and see smiling faces of attractive people as they try to appear completely guile-less while they attempt to deceive anybody stupid enough to believe they might be telling the truth as they read their news or sell the garbage we never wanted and never believed we needed until some hyper-attractive young member of the opposite sex smiled at us with his or her eyes dilating at the prospect of engaging in possible sexual fulfillment with the proud owner of whatever it is that they’re trying to sell you at the moment?
— Or am I completely insane to believe that, if for instance, you want to do something for the good of humanity, like feeding starving children in third world countries โ or smuggling innocent followers of non-sanctioned religions out from under the military dictatorships in countries where the ‘leadership’ believes they have every right to vivisect anyone who doesn’t follow their proclamations to the letter and then sell their precious bodily organs to the highest bidder –โ you should do that anonymously โ and you should do it because you know that it pleases God and strengthens everything that makes life on this planet worth living? The fact that you would be doing something selfless and good for the benefit of all life on this planet is one thing. Handing somebody a huge cheque on television, more concerned about how you look while you’re doing it and ‘who you are wearing’ at the time the cameras are rolling is not what charity is all about. Is it?
— And like I hinted at a couple paragraphs up. Why has knowing that this kind of activity is going on become so much more painful in the last two weeks? Have I given up believing in the sanctity and sovereignty of each and every human being on planet Earth?
— Or have I just watched too many television commercials lately and taken them much too seriously?
Tuesday, January 12th, 2016 -( The calm before the storm? )-
— This might contain information you might not feel comfortable about:
—Okay, I haven’t been very busy with this blog in the past couple days – Due to a minor health scare, & the shortage of family doctors where I live, I went to a health clinic last July and was referred to a specialist who, in September, performed a couple tests, found a Bladder Stone and noted that I had an enlarged prostate. The specialist scheduled a CT Scan to make sure there was nothing else going on in my digestive tract, and then told me he recommended a couple procedures, that he scheduled for late in October, which involved blasting my bladder stone and performing a ‘Green Laser’ technique to reduce the size of my prostate, both procedures were accomplished on the same day, I was sedated so I don’t know how complicated this might have been or whether the Doctor had to use two separate high-tech sets of instruments – or what – This was not exactly pleasant, and the weeks after this procedure during which I could not work were a bit on the scary side. And then I got the notice to report for the CT scan.
— Today was the date set for the scan. Before today the only things I knew about CT scans were (1) they were often used check for Cancer; & (2) they were also referred to as ‘Cat Scans’.
— People in my family die from heart attacks more often than any other causes. An aunt who drank a lot, and an uncle-by-marriage who also drank a lot, developed Alzheimer’s Disease and that was probably a contributing factor in their shuffling off this mortal coil. A great uncle I barely remember, died of Cancer ‘with a cigarette in his mouth’ in the late 1950’s.
— And one of my sisters developed an aggressive Cancer in 2006 and only lasted about six months after being diagnosed. She told us that she suspected that her ‘Medical Professionals’ – in Vermont – when she’d seen them – complaining about back pain – acted like they thought she was lying or exaggerating her back pain in an attempt to have them prescribe powerful pain killers. When she convinced them that there really was a problem and they looked a little deeper – it was already too late, they didn’t bother with the ‘Cat Scan’ – the Cancer had already spread too far and all they wanted to do was make her as comfortable as possible and twiddle their thumbs for a couple months. (“Grrrrrr!”) A couple of us were able to cheer her up by joking along the lines of, “What were they going to do? Kill a cat and stare at its entrails before deciding which Witch Doctor mask to wear while they got stoned and danced around chanting nonsense words from dead languages?”- So I guess I might be at least sub-consciously a bit uneasy with ‘Cat Scans’.
— I had lost a little weight between July and September, and then made it a point to make sure I ate a little better than I had been eating, and I’m pretty sure that is working- I do not look like I’ve just been liberated from a concentration camp these days.
— So today was the big day – my significant other took the day off and drove with me to the hospital where we arrived almost an hour early, found the X-Ray and MRI area, took a number, waited about ten minutes to be signed in and told to ‘sit over there’ until somebody called my name and told me what to do from there.
— A nurse called my name and said ‘Follow me’ about an hour and ten minutes after we got there, which isn’t too bad, since they had signs up all around the waiting room asking patients to be patient – “In case of Emergencies taking priority here – you may have to wait longer than you think-” The nurse had me change into two ‘Johnny Coats’ – one typically open in the back and the other as a cheap excuse for a bathrobe, after instructing me to ‘take off everything but your underpants, socks and shoes’ – them meet her up around the corner at the first examination room on the left. There was a young woman sitting in the examination room looking glum, and no nurse in sight. I walked up and down the corridor for a couple minutes, then stood outside the ‘first examination room on the left’ for a couple more minutes before the nurse came back from somewhere, pointed into the room – where the glum young woman in her double Johnny Coats was sitting, “Lay down on the examination table, I’ll be right with you.” – I felt like that would be a violation of the glum woman’s space and maybe even scare her into believing that I was about to show her my private parts, so I sat on the table. The nurse walked up the corridor and came back after two or three minutes and told me to lie down. – I gave the glum woman a worried glance and carefully climbed up on the table and lowered myself, making sure I was covered. The young woman continued to stare down and away, as if she had more to worry about than what I might have beneath my stupid hospital gowns.
— The nurse came over and sat beside me, described in detail how I would go into the Cat Scan room, lie down with my feet toward the machine and my arms over my head. There would be a quick scan and then I would be injected with Lasix (sp?) and then they would inject me with dye. She explained that one of those injections might make me feel like I wet my pants, but that probably would not be the case. [ I managed NOT to say, “Oh – Great!” out loud. ] I would then have a slightly longer scan, and all of this would probably take about fifteen minutes. Then she got out the I.V. stuff – and I’ve had I.V.s before – no big deal? Ouch! this one stung – When I winced she said, “Yes, this is a pretty big needle.” She got it in place then taped me up and sealed off the end of the tube which would be connected to whatever I would be injected with later. When she was finished and made sure I was not squirting blood all over the hospital, she told me follow her down the corridor a bit, take the seat she pointed to, and wait until somebody came to get me. She handed me two paper cups of water, told me to drink them both, and not go to the washroom until I was called to go in for my scan. People working in the hospital walked up and down the corridor, talking to other patients who were sitting around waiting in their hospital gowns for something or other, smiled and said, “Yes, we’re kind of busy in here today, aren’t we?” I sat there for probably half an hour. The glum woman came out of somewhere, maybe had a Cat Scan ahead of me, and was told to take a seat a couple chairs up from me. The nurse removed the glum woman’s I.V. – put a bandage and tape over the point where the I.V. had pierced her, told her apply pressure for five minutes, (“There’s the clock there? See?”) and, “If you’re not bleeding after those five minutes, you can get dressed and leave.” – This was maybe ten minutes into my half hour wait.
— When I was called, after I peed, I was led by a pleasant younger woman into the scan room. She had me lie down on a thin table with my feet toward a big open circle in a weird machine that looked like something from an old Science Fiction movie.
— The first few passes through the circle were pretty quick. The table I was on moved my feet through the circle, I could see something inside the circle – through a glass or plastic window – whirling around for a couple seconds before the table began moving again. A recorded voice told me to breathe in, hold my breath and then breath again during each pass.
— The pleasant young woman (technician?) told me I was about to be injected and could bring my arm that did not have the I.V. in it down if I wanted. I noticed that my fingernails were darkened, looked purple to me. My thumbnail looked more grey than purple.
— The nurse came in and hooked the I.V. up to something I couldn’t see, maybe just her syringe? She told me the Lasix was coming and I might feel cool as the stuff went through my veins. Then she told me the dye was coming and I might feel warm as that stuff was coursing through me veins. Ouch! That stung- I did begin to feel warm, and was surprised to feel the warmth in and around my head. So I guess blood still does get to my brain whether it is filled with dye or not. ๐
— The technician told me we had to wait a couple minutes and showed me two L.E.D. readouts that were counting down and told me the numbers I could see were the number of seconds I had left before my next passes through the circle began. I suddenly began shaking all over – it felt like chills without actually feeling cold. I mentioned that – the technician said it would all be over in a couple minutes, so I guess maybe it isn’t that unusual for patients to experience shaking like that.
— The pleasant young technician told me she had to check to make sure the X-Rays that were taken were clear enough. I mentioned the shaking I had experienced and told her I’d been worried that maybe I’d be unable to hold still enough for her to get a good picture- a couple seconds later she said, “Nope – you’re good-” and then came back from her shielded room and unhooked me from the I.V. line and pushed foot pedals that moved me away from the X-Ray circle and lowered the table I was laying on. She told me I should go back out in the corridor and find a seat and somebody would come along soon and take the I.V. thing out of my arm.
— I told her I had to visit the washroom and she told me I should do that and did not make me feel like it was foolish to mention that, but I guess I had been impressed by the fact that the nurse who had handed me the two cups of water had told me not to go to the washroom until I was called in to the scan room.
— I did go to the bathroom and was impressed by the impression that I had peed clear liquid plastic – Then I sat down and waited a couple minutes for a nurse to come along and take the I.V. needle out of my arm, tape a small bandage over the puncture and tell me to hold pressure on it for five minutes and then I could go. I think I stopped shaking some time between my trip to the washroom and when the nurse came and pulled the needle out of my arm. I thought it was a good thing I hadn’t lapsed into a zombie-like mode in which I followed all instructions literally, I might have tried to walk out of there in my double hospital gowns.
— As I watched the five minutes ticking away I realized we had been in the hospital for three hours since we got there early. As soon as I was dressed I knew I had to visit the washroom again.
— My spouse smiled when she saw me coming and asked, “Hungry?”
— I nodded and said, “Starving!”
— She smiled and put the book she’d been reading away, handed me the valuables that signs all around the waiting room warned us not to leave in our lockers when we changed into the hospital gowns.
— I was slightly disoriented. I was very happy that I had somebody with me to guide me through the labyrinth of hospital corridors.
— We made it out through the hospital’s front doors and I felt like I was more vulnerable to feeling cold than when we got there. We decided to go to a Pizza Delight and chowed down at their buffet, topped it off with a slice of lemon meringue pie and a scoop of good vanilla ice cream.
— On the way home we stopped at a supermarket to pick up a couple things. I needed another visit to their washroom while we were there.
— Shortly after we got home I began having muscle cramps and ‘charly horses’. Iย had been told that I should drink a lot of fluids to get the dye out of my system, so we had me drink a lot in the hopes that that might make the cramps go away, also took an extra Calcium+Magnesium pill in the hopes that it might improve my muscle health.
— It is now a little after 11:00 pm. I’m still feeling cramps and charly horses, maybe not as intensely as before, but they’re still with me.
— And we’re looking forward to a possible blizzard hitting us over night and dumping as much as a foot of snow on us between now and tomorrow evening.