Today's the Day the Timmy Hoes Have Their Picnic

Today was the First Annual Something Or Other Picnic. A good time was had by all. Well maybe not all. I wasn't everybody so I couldn't say what the other people had but I had a good time and I'm all that really matters, now, aren't I?

There were games and prizes and food. Most importantly food. Free food helps define whether a man will do something or not.

There were sumo suits. Billy and I were signed up for that but he didn't feel up to by the time we could. Granted, it was thrity degrees out and the suits were reported to be "smelly" at best.

There were hula hoops. Turns out I don't know how to use one.

There were three legged races. Turns out I had no desire to repeat a distressing childhood game.

There were prizes for those who guessed the numbers of jawbreakers, jelly beans and jube jubes. I got them all exactly right, of course. But to spite me they gave them to three different people. Ces't la vie.

There were bouncy castles. I'm a little too old of heart for that. But Tabi wanted her turn which she never actually got.

When I got my camera back, it turns out Lilybit was the star of the party. Lilybit is Tabi's new puppy. Only five weeks old. Of the forty-four pictures on, Lilybit was in about forty of them, posing with the various people from work, including my bosses.

Real men carry puppies.

And my personal favourite artsy pic of the day.

I managed to stay burn free thanks to my trusty SPF50 Coppertone sunblock. Most people use SPF 15 or 20. Not me. Come hard or don't come at all. 50 is the way to go. Without it, I would be as red as a lobster who wore a fur coat to a PETA convention.

Super Mecha Baby Carriage!!! Ahhh!!!

I was riding the bus today. Two women with baby carriages got on at the station. As luck would have it, we happened to be riding one of the newer buses in the fleet as opposed to the majority of 1960's Orion class that dominate the lines. You see, it's a good thing it was one of the newer buses because the newer buses have seat that lift up in the front. They are, officially, for the purposes of wheelchairs. But in a pinch, mothers have been known to dock their strollers in the same spots. Each of these two strollers took up three seats. Not that the bus system in town is so terribly taxed that anyone was forced to ride in the aisles. But still.

What are these monstrosities we call baby carriages these days? They look like something a Japanese animator dreamed up. Some kind of mechanical robot with lightweight aluminum struts, painted grey and storage racks up the wazoo. In the next decade they'll have rainbow stobe lights and rail guns. You know, to ward off kidnappers and politicians.

Back in my day, strollers were tiny affairs. The same ones used for dolls were used for babies. They looked like collapsible lawn chairs. A steel A-frame and a bag for the baby. That was all. Or in the pram tradition, a basket on four wheels. None of this Transformers shit. Since when do babies need their own personal SUV? You know there are parts of the world still where mothers have nothing more than a blanket slung around their shoulders in which to hold their babies. These Mad Max inspired air conditioned baby mobiles are an affront to to such parts of the world where cosumerism hasn't yet run rampant. Babies need love and care, not the trappings of
of a soccer mom with a platinum card.

Time For Nothing

A calendar has 12 months in it. The same 12 months every year. For those of us checking our Gregorian calendars at least. Seven days each week. Twenty-four hours every day. We put things into cycles. When one period of times ends, we start the cycle again. We eat lunch at noon one day. When twenty fours have passed, we do it again. We do our laundry the same day every week. We celebrate our birthday the same day every year.

For the most part, these little cycles are normal. Our bodies run on Circadian rhythms approximating twenty-four hours each cycle, dictating when we eat, sleep, and feel most energetic.

The planet spins on it's axis once every day. The planet orbits the sun once a year.

Yet these cycles are still somewhat artificial. Circadian rhythms for most people actually run slightly less than twenty-five hours. This is due, if I recall, to the seasons. After all, it's dark at 5pm in January (where I am) but there are still four hours of light to go in July at the same time. Technically I guess it's because the earth is tilted which also happens to cause the seasons. The planet spins on it's axis in twenty-three hours, fifty-six minutes and four seconds. The planet orbits the sun in slightly more than 365.25 days. Such distinctions of time are arbitrarily imposed by man. Time as far as the universe is concerned is absolutely meaningless. But for our everyday lives, a little order must prosper.

How far must these impositions go? Are we truly obligated to celebrate our birthdays every year? Many people would rather not. Realistically, one year from the day you were born is nothing. It's probably just a bunch of other people's actual birthday. You might as well celebrate your birthday every week or day or minute of your life because there is nothing special about that particular day every year. It just happens to be 365 days later. A rather peculiar number, wouldn't you say? It is to my metric mind. And suspiciously close to the number of degrees in a circle. Know why? Phoenicians. Yes, Phoenicians. With the basic instruments available at the time, they measured the year to be about 360 days long, give or take. Three hundred and sixty just happened to be a little more conveniently divided by two, three, four, six, twelve.... Handy numbers in the great scheme of things.

My guess is that that's where the idea of circularity popped up. It's something that has stuck with us. And yet it is entirely artificial. Time is not circular though at a glance it might appear so. Thursday the 12th of May will not be a Thursday the next 12th of May. But eventually it will be again. Still. But have you every seen one of those... I don't know what you call them. The best example I can think of is a dietary wheel. A few circles of paper overlap, with each circle getting smaller and all pinned together in the middle so that each circle can rotate independently of the others. You can rotate all the wheels in any direction you like at varying speeds of which you like. Select one particular position where they all line up and keep on moving them. Eventually they will all line up again. Keep doing it and they will eventually line up yet again. This does not mean that everything works in cycles, only that circles revolve. Time is not cyclical, it is linear. Time progresses at approximately (for us on Earth) the same speed at all times. If time was the truck that painted the lines on the highway, it would just keep going straight, hopping the curb at the first bend in the road.

So when that next birthday or anniversary comes along, are you celebrating 365 days of surviving your circumstances? Or the circumstances themselves? What does it really mean to be 365 days older or to have been married for another 365 days? Does it mean anything more or less than having been married 12 days? Or 1000 days? The fact that people choose this particularly odd number to make into an occasion every year suggests they celebrate more the number than the circumstances. After all, if it was the circumstances, why not celebrate every day?

It's not always happy things that we mark by time. Sometimes it's the unhappy things like the death of a loved one. But the same logic still applies. Why that day? Certainly we can't go mourning our losses every day. We do it when the mood strikes us and that is reasonable. What difference does a year make? In the progression of time, only time is lost. In the progression of time, only experience is gained. And you will never be at the same point in your life ever again.

... Unless time travel really is possible and you can go back and visit yourself in some kind of paralell time dimension where it is 20 years ago. But that ain't likely.

Big Rock Challenge

I have long wondered at the power of small things and their ability to gain momentum. Those annoying chain letters for instance. You'd think the first person to get it would just throw it out. But somehow they perpetuate themselves.

A couple of years ago, I heard the feel good story of the year about a man who through a series of trades, turned his little red paperclip into a house for himself. The story caught the public's attention as well as mine. I was fascinated by it. Not the trading or the man. Merely that such a small thing turned into something huge and a national phenomenon.

Since then, I've wanted to do something that would be the next hot ticket. The next Burning Man. Well, ok, not Burning Man, but something just plain stupid that catches on.

And this is my idea. It's not yet put into practice. I want to find a rock. Just a plain old average rock. I call it the Big Rock Challenge but it can't be that big a rock. Preferably one small enough to carry in one hand. A fairly flat surface on one side would be ideal as well. I want to write on that side "Big Rock Challenge: Leave this rock somewhere else. Log on to www.bigrockchallenge.net (or whatever it will be) for details."

That's all there is to it. People pick up the rock and leave it somewhere else. They can go on the website to leave hints about where they left it and the details of where they found it. Maybe my rock will make it across the nation. Maybe the nation will start looking for it. I have this vision that imitation rocks will start popping up across the globe. It will be an international phenomenom. The media wont know what to make of it. Psychologists will be baffled. It's stupid. It's silly. It's inane. It's just a damn rock. But it will catch on. Oh, yes. It will catch on.

Mirror, Mirror

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" the evil stepmother asked of her magic mirror. Or so the Disney version goes. You likely won't find that line in any other versions considering few are written in English. Why does that line stand out? Probably because it rhymes. It's amazing the way the human psyche works. You can't remember to pay your bills on time but you can remember a phrase because it rhymes.

But Snow White isn't about Snow White at all. At least, Disney's version isn't. It's about the queen. Snow White is just another girl. She has no real dilemma to overcome. She naps through the story. The queen on the other hand - like most proper villains - appeals to the inner thought processes of the average person. Inside is the darkness that haunts us. The queen pours forth her evil, lets out the darkness and shows us what we are capable of if we let ourselves.

That's the significance of the mirror. It's a plot device for Snow White. But for us it reflects things we may not otherwise be able to see. Perhaps you've heard of "residual self image." That's what they call it in The Matrix. You keep a mental picture in your head of what you look like. Further, you keep a mental picture of who you think you are; your ambitions, your goals, your abilities, your memories, your powers, your traits, your beliefs, your concept of the world at large are all filed away for instant reference. The human failing - perhaps what makes us human - is that this self image rarely measures up accurately with reality.

Most famous painters have done at least one self portrait. Every writer puts a little of his own life into his best novel. The artist believes what he creates is an image of himself. But put the image and the artist side by side and everyone will see a difference. The similarity is perceptible but the differences are there, too. Van Gogh, after all, isn't made up of a bunch of swirls of paint. Only an impression of him is. I've asked to draw Tabi and she's willing though we never get around to it. She wants to see herself as I see her. She'd be better off looking at a good photo as my drawing skills are only mediocre at best. Yet she recognizes that her self image is different than the way I see her.

The way I see things is usually much different than the way that most people see them. In fact, I tend to piss people off with my vision of the world and my habit of speaking straight. I tell it like it is, as they say, without the sugar coating that most people are used to. I prefer the gritty truth to empty euphemisms. The truth is a mirror that we can choose to look into. Few like what they see and refuse to look twice into the mirror. They create alternate realities for themselves where the harsh shadows and crows' feet of life have already been botoxed. To voice a few examples: I've already written several times about my views on war. They aren't popular views. No one likes to hear that war is good for the economy and keeping the population down. Conversely, they don't like hearing about my lack of support for foreign wars and how I can understand the enemy. Certain dog lovers don't like the reality of pit bulls. Lovable pets, they feel and they can be right. After all, I know a pair of lovely pits and one hell raising Pomeranian. But try to tell them that pits have been bred into existence specifically for the purpose of violence (the bull part of pit bulls refers to bull-baiting - the dogs were bred to fight and latch onto bulls as a "sport." Horrible but true), and they get defensive. My views on religion, nations, and women tend not to be very PC. In fact, I'm just generally not a very PC person. And I don't care. My views are only views and may not be the whole truth but I'm inclined to say they are far less clouded than most peoples'. The mirror I look into is distorted, inclined to warp things and bend things towards each other, connecting things together that others wouldn't see. But at least I choose to look into that mirror instead of covering it with a curtain. I want to know the horrible truth, wrinkles and all. Perhaps one day when the images are identical, the mirror will shatter for there can be only one. Perhaps that day will be the day that the truth will be set free. We will accept it and cherish it and stop all our little quibbling about borders and gods and superiority. We won't fear death and we wont make excuses for our bad behaviour. If this magic mirror of ours really is our failing as humans, with the shards of silvered glass, perhaps we will become something more than human. But first we have to pick up the jagged little pieces and survive the cuts.

Walking 'Round in Women's Underwear

I hear they're comfortable. Tabi always looks so embarassed when I try to put hers on. She's considerably smaller than I am so they don't fit past my knees, of course. But it's amusing to see her snatch them away from me. Secretly I think she's a little turned on by the fact that I try them on. I do it for a farce, but she's convinced I'm a closet cross dresser.

Recently, someone I have come into contact with - a male - has decided to live life as a woman. I made mention of this to some female friends and they asked what the appeal of being a woman was. You'd think being women they would have a better idea about that than I. After a second's pause to think, my only response was "fashion." I then went on a rant about how men's fashion for the past three years has been dominated by pastel colours. Most men don't actually look good in pastel colours. Who came up with this idea, I don't know but they should really be fired. Women's fashion is considerably more varied than men's. Men basically have two options: formal or casual. Formal means a suit. Casual means jeans and a t-shirt. Then again, every man looks good in a suit. Hell, even women look good in a suit.

But it was a valid question. What does cause a man to want to live as a woman? For that matter, what makes a woman. I would have to argue that a vagina does not a woman make. Certainly it isn't the boobs. Perhaps it's the ability to bear a child. Though I can't imagine that's what's going through this particular guy's head. It's never going to happen anyway and I'm sure that must have been an obvious reality for him. I suppose it must be a feeling. It's an issue of identity. He simply must feel like he was meant to be a woman.

I think it was Freud who came up with penis envy. How many jokes have been made at his expense because of that little faux pas? There's probably a little truth to it. Just a little. But I suspect vagina envy is far more likely though few men would admit it. How many of us are absolutely fascinated by such things. Mostly because we don't have them. After all, Dom has his fake boobs - not implants, but breast forms - and everyone wants to play with them. They may not be real. But that's what they're there for. To play with. While having a vagina doesn't make one a woman, it would be nice to have one to play with whenever one wants to.

It's got to be more than that, of course. The identity thing again. To walk down the street and have people look at you and treat you like a woman. It's a different thing than it is as a man. Men don't get looked at twice or whistled at. Men tend to get better service and higher paying jobs, too though. It's never going to be quite the same for Dom, though. As miraculous as his partial transition has been so far, there is probably always going to be evidence that he was once a man. The five o'clock shadow and the Adam's apple are pretty dead give aways. I suppose the shadow can be dealt with though.

As a side note, I don't like that word "underwear" as applied to women's underclothes. There is something entirely unsexy about "underwear." It's very masculine sounding, especially as opposed to the dainty sounding "panties." Tres francaise. Along with brassiere. So much more fun. It rolls off the tongue and hopefully off the body.

Me... personally I would miss the luxury of standing up to pee too much.



As a final side note... You know, this is the new millenium. We've been through women's lib. Why do men have to put the seat down. First of all, we check that it is up before we go. Where's the challenge in checking to make sure it's down before a woman goes? I've had that argument with several women. Not one of them has given a decent answer, only eye rolling. If you want equal treatment, take it and stop complaining about getting it.

Lego My Art

Those who know me know I like my LEGO. Those who don't know me, I like to ask them if they would like to see my 12 inch Yoda. It's made of LEGO. Great ice breaker at parties. I'd like to brag that I have several thousand dollars worth of LEGO though in today's economy, that doesn't go too far. For comparison, let's say in the neighbourhood of fifteen to twenty large kits and about as many of the small ones (a vehicle or some such thing). It's an impressive collection. I long since stopped feeling guilty about ignoring that 12-14 age recommendation on the box. I'd love to get my hands on the $400 Star Wars Star Destroyer kit. As a youngster, a natural offshoot of my desire to be an architect was a desire to be a LEGO architect - to build toys and statues out of LEGO for a living. They call them engineers officially but lets not split hairs. I had even hoped to visit the original LEGOLand in Denmark while I was there. But it was late in the season and rainy and rather out of the way. Maybe next time. To feel like a giant among tiny plastic people...

Anyway, I recently picked up a copy of the LEGO Indiana Jones video game for the PS3. Having played the two Star Wars versions in the LEGO universe (who can forget LEGO Vader holding up a family picture of him and young LEGO Luke?), I was looking forward to the game which would combine what is probably my all time favourite movie franchise and my all time favourite childhood toy (yes, even more than GI Joe). Though it was really just more of the same on the Star Wars model, it was an enjoyable play though no more enhanced by the PS3's capabilities than it would have been for $20 cheaper on the PS2.

In any case, in the castle scene The Last Crusade, I noticed a painting haning on the wall of the castle. It was, suspiciously, the Mona Lisa. I say suspiciously because the painting was not hanging in Mayen at the time. Anyway, the thing that struck me about the painting was not it's suspicious location but rather the subject of the painting. While it was quite obviously the Mona Lisa, it was a LEGOcized Mona Lisa! That is to say, Mona has a round yellow head with painted on smile and beady little black eyes and a shiny black mop of hair. Brilliant, I say! I had to have a copy for my computer, whether for my MSN picture or background or whatever. A quick search of the web did not find the specific picture in question but it did find a few similarities.

It seems I'm not the only adult with a LEGO fixation. I knew this, but I was unaware of the extent. I'd seen life-sized LEGO men built from LEGO bricks in shopping centres before. But never had I dreamed of the fabulous statues that some people can create. I had also never considered the other artistic use of LEGO. That is to use LEGO to recreate existing art. Youtube for one has a section of LEGO enacted movies, something I have longed to do since my highschool experience in stop-motion animation. The Monty Python sketch involving Camelot and the Knights of the Roundtable is probably the most famous though I have seen some daring James Bond enactments along with a hoard of cheap Matrix ripoffs and independent projects.

But the specific art I'm talking about is the use of LEGO to recreate paintings a la Conan O'Brien's regular segment involving the posing of guests to match a photo. One of which was the Mona Lisa. Others are perhaps not as famous yet still remarkably well done. Have a look. Photos are the property of their respective owners. I use them only with the sense that anything already on the web is public domain. Except what I write. Everything else is fair game.

Racism Alive

I'd like to say racism is dead. I'd really like to believe it. But though we've made a lot of progress in the last century, it's still alive and kicking. We don't see people as subhuman anymore. They aren't chattle to be bought and sold. They aren't less than us. We tend to see people with different skin tones as merely... not as good as us.

Racism against Asians seems to be on the rise in this area. Likely due to the higher immigration of such people to an area that previously had seen nearly none. Attacks on Asians were reported because they were supposedly fishing illegally. Fishing illegally? Is that a reason to commit a hate crime? I know a lot of white people that drive with a hunting rifle behind the seat of their pickup trucks and wouldn't think twice about popping a passing dear on the backroads off season.

I come from a small town that had a handful of black people and only one middle eastern family. Cultural diversity wasn't an aspect that town had a lot of. Moving here, however, I see a lot of different faces. For the most part I don't even notice anymore. Aside from the time I hopped on the bus and was the only white kid with a dozen or more Asians and a couple of blacks. For once I knew what it was like to be a minority. Even then it didn't really bother me. Though when I first moved here and even back in my hometown I feared whenever I saw someone different that they would think I was staring, that I was a racist. I am a little racist but I'm not proud of it. It is one of the few things about myself that I'm actually ashamed of, even. I was naive then. For some reason I had this odd idea that other races had all kinds of rage built up inside them. I thought they were all looking to blame me for the way the world is. I don't know why I had that idea. Turns out the only person that really wants to blame me was my white sociology professor. But then, she wanted to blame me for everything because I am white, male and between the ages of 18 and 45. Anyway, it seems to me now that other races have handled their history a lot better. There is pride in who they are. There is no blame, only sadness at the way things once were. But day to day is the same as anyone elses.

Yet here I say racism is still alive. I don't hear the slurs too often anymore. But they're there. Wispered in the background. Concealed shadows of human deficiency lurking in the cobwebbed corners of our minds.

In my last weeks of school I had time to waste before classes and roamed the eery empty halls. On the cork board where people post rooms and books and classes and events, it was barren but for one post. Evidently for a room given the layout and phone number cutouts. But the entire thing was written in some Asian language, a Chinese dialect from the best of my slim knowledge of Asian languages. And I thought it rather racist. Obviously the poster was looking for Chinese roommates. And only Chinese roommates. I'll admit it's possible that the poster only speakers Chinese but I find it unlikely. Attending a school that teaches only in English, it would be difficult for that person to learn anything, wouldn't it? They must have a least some knowledge of English, even if only enough to get a friend to translate it for them. Because really, this is an English speaking place and if you want to do business, advertise in English. Not that multiculturalism has no place. But you limit yourself when you can't address the widest audience. In this case, I feel fairly certain though, that the poster was looking for a specific crowd which strikes me as racist given that it is only a room for rent.

It works both ways though. Walking past a Chinese restaurant the other day, I noticed some grafitti on the side of the builing. An unpracticed hand had written in a nasty green spray paint - a colour surely only produced and used for grafitti - "tentacle porno." Not the cleverest of jibes but then people who use grafitti tend not to be the cleverest people.

Though there are plenty of educated "foreigners" in this country, in this town, how often do you see one in a job they aren't typecast for. The few Indians I've seen tend to work in Indian restaurants. The Middle Easterns tend to work the convenience stores. The Chinese in their restuarants. Natives in construction or day labouring. What chance do these people have? It isn't that they aren't educated. As I said, Trent has a lot of exchange students from around the world. They are capable, competent, and even proficient in other fields. But the big bosses are old school. They still consider foreigners lazy and stupid. So they are forced to rely on their ethnicity in order survive, becoming some kind of perverse tourist attraction in thier own country.

I suppose it will take some time for this kind of racism to come to a stop, if it ever will. I hope it does but I don't see it happening in my lifetime. The save the children commercials are disgustingly close to colonialist missionaries. The wedges of nationalism and religion still drive us apart. When one day we see that the power of unity is greater than the power over one another, there will be ticker tape parades around the world and the confetti will be every colour of the rainbow.

God I Am, God I Be

There is a concept that has become increasingly popular with the rise of the internet. It didn't originate with the net. In fact, it is likely a centuries if not millenia old game. It's called the chain story. One person begins a story and then stops at a given point, usually some kind of climax or the middle of a sentence.

I recently read about such a collaboration in the paper a few weeks ago. Two young women just into their twenties met on a message board, started a story and popped out a novel in just fourteen days; they wrote back and forth between work. In fourteen days. After being rejected by a dozen or so publishers, one (Random House, I believe) finally picked them up and even signed them on for a sequel. I find it awfully unlikely that such a work is actually any good. In only fourteen days there could not have been much revision let alone a single vision to begin with. Reportedly, the two women are having much more difficulty in writing the sequel.

But that's beside the point. What I would like to say is that this process of chain letters is very similar to life. No one person writes my story. Each day is a day in the life of written by someone different. And in turn I write the stories of others. Mostly I write Tabi. Sometimes I write Mother. Sometimes Dad. Sometimes the girls at work or the boys from home. Different days of my life were written by different women and I wrote them. But there was someone writing them before and for the others (other than Tabi), someone writing them after me. I wrote only a chapter of those lives. Someone else will write the endings. I think most people's greatest fear is that their ending will go unwritten.

Every writer is a god. He gives birth, creates and moulds his characters, gives them opportunities, jobs, families, lives, deaths. He knows their every detail. He is, if he chooses, omnipotent even if his narrator is often not.

I, however, am not omnipotent. Not in real life. Not in these stories that I write everyday with the characters that were born of others. Yet I am a god. I have limited power over myself and others. Life isn’t what I make it. It is what others make it. There are more powerful entities out there. People who know more than I. People who have created more. But I don’t claim to be God (despite my title; it’s just catchy), only to be a god. Note the indefinite article and lowercase g. We are all gods. We have power over ourselves, each other and our surroundings. The power to choose. The power to make a difference.

It’s a touchy topic so I’ll offend here - Christians specifically. Christians believe in one god. God. Clever name. To call myself a god is blasphemous. But then, these are the same people that believe in the Holy Trinity, that God is three things. I’m always amazed by Christians’ ability to turn the other cheek on their own hypocrisy. One of those ten commandments goes something like “thou shall not worship false idols.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a crucifix – Jesus on a cross – a false idol? Don’t people pray to Jesus and not to God? I get the idea that we are all God’s children and some abstract sense therefore all God. But I’m pretty sure Jesus was a separate entity. Or at least that’s what the Good Book tells us. Good Book? Great book. But just a book. Written by men. Mortals. And a little after the fact at that. You can’t believe everything you read. If everything in print was true, I would apparently enjoy having my penis twisted in opposite directions as Cosmo magazine put in ink. I’m unwilling to test the theory but I’m pretty sure it’s not true.

Those Ten Commandments aren’t exactly ringing endorsements either. In the beginning there was nothing and God created man. Told Adam he had free will. Can do whatever he wants. Just don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Ignorance is bliss. What’s that? You already ate from the tree? Then I guess you realized that there was really nothing special about that tree; I was just testing you. Then again, maybe you don’t realize it. It’s not like you’re any smarter. But now I have to punish you. Well, not you, really. You just can’t ‘round here no more. The old lady doesn’t like it when you eat from her garden. But Moses in a couple of thousand years, man, is he in shit. He’ll be the chosen one to lead my chosen people. And then... – and this is pretty mean to do my chosen ones who didn’t even do anything - I’m going to make them wander the desert for forty years then give them a list of things they can’t do which is in direct contradiction to what I said about being able to do anything you want. Except what I told you you can’t do, of course. That’s a bit confusing isn’t it? You’d think God would make a little more sense.

Where did God come from? In the beginning there was nothing. Except apparently God. Just hanging out in non-space for a few billion infinity. Guess he got bored and decided to create this dreary little soap opera called Earth. But when you write the plot twists, it can’t be that entertaining, can it? Maybe God created himself. Well, maybe. But no. The baby can’t be older than it’s mother, can it? We aren’t meant to understand God, you say. Well it’s half right. I sure as hell don’t understand him. But how do I know I’m not supposed to? For that matter, why not?

And quite honestly, Christians, how do you account for the fact that your religion is kind of the latest one to hit the scene? Maybe God is so cool that party doesn’t get started until he arrives. But there were a lot of other gods long before Jehovah “accidentally” spilled his drink on Eve’s shirt. There used to be gods for everything. For sex, fertility, grain, dirt, water, the sun and the moon. Not just the old Greek and Roman gods. The Mayans, the Aztecs and the Native Americans all had some kind of god system. Maybe I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure Shiva and Vishnu were hobbling on walkers long before J-Dog was suckling at infinity’s tit.

My father is a Catholic. My mother is a Protestant. I was, I believe (but can’t say for sure), raised as a Unitarian. I don’t even know what that means. Reuniting Catholics with Protestants, I would venture to guess. Christianity is all a little muddled, after all. But that is the restriction on my beliefs. I was given them. Either I could accept them and put them up on the shelf for visitors to admire but not allow them to examine them very closely because they are fragile and thin and would break if handled or I could reject them and find my own beliefs. I give the much maligned high school history teacher credit for my belief system, which, like everyone else, I believe to be the true one. History is by no means a science. Yet it was Mr. Cox who taught me the scientific principles that govern my life. He taught me to ask questions and never assume. Ok, actually it was Benny Hill that taught me never to assume. But big Billy Cox drove the point home. That everything is subjective. That history is written by the victors. So while I can’t point out the glaring logic problems of various other religions such as Shinto or Hinduism, I have managed to take the best parts of the religions I have at least been exposed to and combine them into one mostly peaceful existence. I, along with other people who recognize this line of thinking, call it “Freethink.” That is to say, we don’t read one book and call it gospel. We are open to interpretation. We draw on the themes of religion and apply them to our own lives, write our own rules and abide by them. There is no organization, no hierarchy and no one truth. We just try to be good people.

I’m not a religious person by any means. You can have your God and eat him too. But as I’m trying to point out, I am a spiritual person. I don’t have all the answers. I didn’t create the universe. But I am my own god. And you are my god. But don’t expect me to drop to my knees and pray at your feet. I don’t believe in a higher power. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in something I don’t understand or can’t touch. My moral system is derived heavily from humanism, Buddhism, a social consciousness and totemism. All religions boil down to those pretty basic concepts one way or another anyway. Be a good boy or girl. Don’t kill or steal. Respect one another and try and get through life as best you can.

Religion is an eminently useful and wonderful thing. It makes us good. Organized religion is the bane of civilization. What is civilization but a system of moral beliefs that aren’t quite the same as your neighbours, those immoral bastards? Organized religion drives a wedge between friends and neighbours and makes them... in a mind boggling kind of way... ignore their beliefs in an effort to uphold their beliefs. Organized religion causes war. Lots of wars. I’m willing to bet that religious wars have killed more people in the course of history than any other cause besides natural. “God is on our side” is about as meaningful as “supercalifragilisticexpialedoticious.” But a teaspoon of sugar helps the medicine go down, doesn’t it? A little of God’s endorsement goes a long way towards justifying murder for profit. Especially if you can get someone else to do the killing.

Organized religion is about excuses, not a way of life. It’s about power. And yet, the more power you have, the less likely you are to believe in it. I’m reminded of the good old days before the Reformation. Johnny Pope put a pike in Peter the Apostle. Ok, that’s a meaningless sentence but it has some nice alliteration. And it does have a point. Back in the middle ages, popes tended to come to power by physically eliminating the competition. Murder on the Middle Eastern Express. Illegitimate children, mistresses, murders, political job placements, incest, theft, bribery... the CV of a pope used to look like the rap sheet of a 50 Cent. Not really the kind of upstanding citizen you would expect God to put in the pulpit. A little carte blanche here and a little absolution there though and any action in coming to power was entirely justified. How full of it do yourself do you have to be to be pope? Back then, anyway. I’m willing to admit things have changed. A little.

All this isn’t to say you aren’t entitled to your beliefs. Quite frankly, I don’t care what you believe. You can believe in singing, dancing, pink elephants if it makes you feel better. All I’m saying is that you need to evaluate those beliefs for yourself and not accept them at face value. And more importantly, whatever you do accept as your truth, accept it as your own, not as someone else’s. And for the love of God, don’t go damning people in someone else’s name. Let others believe what they want to believe and try not to kill each other over it. God – no god, any god – does not approve.

The Battle and the Damage Done

To paraphrase Kilgore: "I love the smell of sulphur in the evening.... Smells like... victory."

Between the shadow black leaves of silhouette trees I see the lights rise and fall, raining fire from the sky in a thousand sparks of brilliant coloured light. A trail of wispy smoke drifts off the battle field across the sky. Wispy though it is, it doesn't seem to dissipate, only drift off the field of view. Smells like sulphur burning, sulphur burned. Nostrils burning. Eyes burning. Rat-a-tat-tat. BOOM. Shells exploding in irregular rythym. Vague screams and shouts of distant people far below.

And what's the difference between fireworks and artillery shells anyway? One explodes a little earlier and results in bright lights. The other explodes a little late and results in bodies. Funny the way they are connected. Fireworks came first. Ancient Chinese secret. Some European thought they could be useful in other ways. We use the gunpowder to fight wars and win nations. Then we celebrate those nations with gunpowder. Smells like victory? You better believe it. Granted, in this nation of mine, we did it without the war. But you gotta wonder about that.

Anyone who has ever said that Canadians aren't as proud of their country as American's has never been to Canada. We fly our flags. We sing our songs. We take pride in our people and our inventions and sometimes even try to appropriate such things as our own (i.e. basketball, the telephone, radio, etc.). On Canada Day we wear red and white and even flags as capes and we march the streets waving flags and drinking Molson Canadian beer. We travel the world and wear our flag on our backs and people love us. I have taken worthless Canadian coins oversees and given them as presents and people love them.

This is true of many Canadians. I wouldn't, however, say I was one of them. I beg to ask, what is Canada? Define it for me. A set of beliefs? That's awfully abstract and different from one person to the next. A government? I care less for my government than I do for the American government (though it makes infinitely more sense to me). A people? If a Canadian is someone from Canada, it's hard to say that Canada is made up of Canadians. That is to say that Canada cannot be defined by it's people if its people are defined by the country. Is it a flag? Is it a piece of dirt with imaginary boundaries? The last seems the most likely.

So what's so special about this particular plot of dirt? Well, it's fairly temperate at least. Aside from being very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer with some severe winter storms, we aren't prone to tornadoes, hurricanes, high winds, torrential downpours, drought, flood, mudslides, earthquakes, etc. So that's kind of nice. But other than that, it's pretty much like any other piece of land. And why should I hail it? I don't. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather live here than pretty much any country in the world. We have health care. We have polite people. We have streetsweepers. We have electricity and indoor plumbing and food for (almost) all. All in all it's a pretty good place to live. But I refuse to pay allegiance to some abstract idea of what a country is. A country is nothing more than a way to seperate us from our neighbours.

Imagine a world that wasn't divided by shells but brought together with fireworks.