Life and Other Passions
Yep, I finally got my latest novel published!
My usual fun and crazy stories – this time about tigers, plutonium and stealth jets. Yep, only I could put such things together and make it all work.
Just click on the image or you can check it out here on Amazon.ca
Yep, this is it, my first video blog of absolutely no consequence, about mostly nothing, just to get familiar with a new camera and a new way of doing things.
I deliberately did not edit it. I think it better looking kind of amateurish.
I had written a funny script, but life being what it is thwarted my following it, and I had to ad-lib my talking points. As I mosied around I encountered dogs who wished to sniff me out. Then a big garbage truck appeared and roared into my footage and clanged around containers.
It was a beautiful morning of -13 degrees with a nasty wind. The ground was mostly ice. I froze my fingers (you can’t use gloves on a touch screen) and the first three video takes, I had the camera on photo, not video.
I think it would have been funnier to watch me navigate all this.
Anyhow, have a look. Click on line below.
When I was young I gazed through a little telescope at the moon for hours many nights. Looking at that orb scared me quite a bit. At my young age it was hard to fathom the logistics of something so far away now being so close I could discern the details of its surface.
I soon discovered that looking through the wrong end of that telescope yielded a wildly different perspective.
It got me thinking.
If you have a problem and the solution you have conjectured causes way more problems, perhaps you are looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope.
For instance, today we seem to think that our government is overspending and is bloated. We have a huge debt problem. The solution? We’ll cut the programs and employees and thus cut the expenditure.
Hmmm.
So now we increase poverty by leaps and bounds. We double the amount of people not earning money and cut back on the programs that help the needy survive and provides things that gives everyone a better quality of life (like healthcare, education). Don’t you think this might be more of a problem? And exactly where is this money we are going to save coming from? And where do you think it will go? To the national debt? Ha. Ha. Ha.
Now flip the telescope around.
What we have is not an expense problem. We have a revenue problem.
If we increase the money coming in to fund our worthwhile government programs, it benefits everyone. We employ more people. We can improve our infrastructures, healthcare, social programs, upgrade our schools, provide less expensive higher education. We can maintain the laws that protect us, the codes that ensure buildings don’t fall down, cars are safe to drive, restaurants are clean enough to eat at, medications don’t kill us. I think we need a clear definition and understanding what a democratic government is. The government is not a business, it is a system designed for the people. The money that comes in goes back to society. (Yeah, we sort of need to make sure the bucks don’t fall into greedy politicians hands too.)
So where does that money come from?
A lot of it from taxes.
When I started working and hated paying taxes, my Dad explained to me what they are for and how I benefit, and to rip off the government is to rip off myself. I had a pretty smart Dad.
It is kind of sick for society to praise tax dodgers and emulate their ways. There is nothing wrong with being rich, even filthy rich. But there is everything wrong if you are just taking and not giving back. You are expecting others to support you and your lavish lifestyle with nothing in return.
We currently have a situation where the rich do not pay their share of taxes, and the burden falls on the poor. How shameful is it that companies like Amazon pay zero taxes and some poor fellow flipping hamburgers contributes a third of his income to taxes? I think this, just maybe, causes some problems.
Me, personally, don’t care how big the government is. It means many people are employed. These people are contributing to society. They are paying taxes. They are buying things. Money is flowing. There are more programs and help we can provide. Sure, we could make the programs easier to access and use, but that usually takes more people to implement. That is fine.
We need to increase the money coming into the government. Fund the programs that benefit everyone. And that money needs to come from those people and companies who can afford it the most.
They need to pay taxes. Big taxes. Way more than the guy at the hamburger joint.
Why are we so against the institution designed to help us? Why do we worship greed?
To destroy a democratic government leaves a country wide open to be ruled by a few rich individuals.
That should be a lot more scary than looking at the moon with a telescope.
Or paying taxes.
The weeks are flying by as I approach the end of a 17 year job.
It is the end of an era.
To anyone that I have interacted with who actually had enough nerve to view my posts, then I say to you, how much I am going to miss you all!
You have been my extended family, since mostly my life consists of Sam (my cat), me and a very good friend in Toronto.
Many things have ended in my life. The longer you live, the more endings you endure, until your end has arrived. But I’ve had just as many beginnings, as I am having now.
Thanks to all who let me yap, yap, yap to you while you waited for your appointments.
I love you all.
I’ve been asked a lot of times what a technical writer is, since I, in my advanced age, have enrolled in a certificate course of such an endeavour.
Basically, I suppose, a technical writer takes a complex idea and makes it simple, in words and pictures.
I had a very limited idea what technical writing was when I signed up, I was perhaps even a bit naive. In hindsight my ignorance was a blessing, otherwise I would have been too scared to tackle it. It is a huge field. However, I absolutely love it. It is the best thing I have done for myself in decades.
My goal was to write non-fiction articles that do what I claim a technical writer should do. Take complex ideas and make them simple.
But I fell in love with making videos.
Uh oh.
So, stay tuned, because next year I will be posting videos of me and my stories. I’ll have lots of fun making them, and you will have lots of laughs watching them.
In addition, I will finally publish my latest novel, Monochrome.
Cheers!
As I watch homelessness increase in my city, and along with it, drug addiction, I say once again, give people money first and foremost, along with a place of their own and mental and physical help.
Give people money. Every month. No questions asked. In conjunction with social guidance.
Let people make their own choices.
Of course, politicians and corporations do not want free minded people. People who can now choose not to work for next to nothing, to be slaves to companies and individuals who treat them as disposable and worthless.
Money gives people options.
It is simple. It solves very complex problems.
The money is there. I say again. The money is there.
It has been proven over and over and over again that basic income works. Don’t make this complicated. Give people money, enough money to live on.
Damn it, this makes me so mad.
When people have enough money to have shelter, food and medications they then can move on to bigger and better things, like improving their lives so they can get better jobs, better health, and contribute to society. In combination with social programs to help them get out of the terrible rut that poverty brings and all the stigma attached to that, people become valuable members of our society.
Basic income also provides a buffer, to get you through those sudden, unexpected losses of income that if you live long enough, you probably will experience at least once. People spiral down very, very fast when they find they don’t have enough income to support themselves. How quickly life can pull the rug out from under your feet if you lose your job, your health, your home, or your spouse to a younger lover. Knowing you can afford the rent, buy food and necessities and keep your pet while weathering the sometimes brutal realities of life is not only beneficial to the person suffering, but to all society. It cuts back on hospitalizations. Suicides. Poverty. Addictions. Crimes.
Give people basic income. No questions asked. I am sick of the waters being muddied. Just do it and see how this eliminates poverty, addiction, and sickness. Money gives people autonomy. Dignity. Options. HOPE.
Oh, sure there are always going to be people who will not do anything. That won’t change. And there are people who genuinely cannot work for whatever reason. That won’t change either. People should not be excluded from money or help based on perceived or cultural merit. I believe the vast majority of people do want to improve their lives if given the chance and should not be judged by their present circumstances. Basic income gives them that chance. And it helps not just individuals receiving the money, but their families and all of society.
F off with building more houses that only the rich can afford. F off with social programs that interrogate and shame people. F off with privatizing our health care system so no one can afford it.
Money is the answer. People are not lazy. They are money poor. Simple.
GGGGRRRRR!
How can this be?
I love cars. Especially ones that have nice lines, are well designed, sexy and powerful. I have never driven a V-12, I only drool over photographs of beautifully constructed automobiles. I love design, things that are crafted well.
I only ever got to drive one powerful, sexy car ever in my life – a Corvette, once, way way back when Corvettes were quite the status symbol. In my younger days I hung around with mechanics and race car drivers. I loved the fast and the furious, even if I never drove above the speed limit or had my hands on the wheel of a 600 horse. I never wanted to experience all that power personally. I was instead, enthralled by how all these mechanical parts; pistons and valves, camshafts and carburetors so seamlessly fit together in a big iron block and were so neatly concealed inside a sleek outer shell that made everyone look twice as you passed by. Oh, and the sound of a well tuned engine – my cat’s purr magnified a thousand fold.
So I see James Bond’s Aston Martin and I swoon. I went to an auto show years ago and fell in love with a Jaguar. It could be any well designed automobile, SUV, truck or even airplane (how could you not feel moved by the sight of the Blackbird jet?) and I’d get goosebumps.
So when you ask, how could I possibly be concerned about the environment when I love these gas guzzlers, it is because to me you are comparing apples and oranges.
I love design. When I look at a V-12 Jag or Aston Martin, pollution is not even remotely on my mind. My eyes are dazzled by beauty. I don’t have to drive them, I can just gaze at them. Just as much as if I see a field of wildflowers.
I care deeply about the environment, even if I am not an activist throwing soup at priceless paintings, or joining Greta Thunberg at a protest. I follow the Ocean Clean Up and other environmentalists and conservationists actually doing something other than writing or talking about our problems. I do what I can about my carbon footprint and I cry a lot when I see what we have done, and are still doing to our beautiful, priceless Earth. As someone who couldn’t afford a foot powered scooter little on a V-12 I don’t think I make much of an impact. As an aside, it is actually manufacturers that are the huge polluters, not the average citizen.
I have hope that great design can someday not also be a great polluter. Mankind is not likely to give up great design, nor horsepower for the environment, and I don’t think we will have to. The ingenuity of mankind is greater than that.
Some advice to the young, which they don’t want, but here it is.
Develop as many skills and learn as much as you can about a lot of diverse topics, while you can.
Because no matter what you do in your life, either your job will become obsolete, or you will.
The more skills and education and experience you have in all manner of things, the greater your chances of being employed and earning money all your life.
You’ll also have more joy.
Keep yourself open to life.
NO.
Don’t equate a degree with employment potential.
It often does not match.
What counts is what you learned while getting your degree. Not what the degree is.
In my day, experience counted for a lot more than education. It was your education.
Now I would say, a good combination of both experience and education will make your life better. Not just for the money.
I had a lot of growing up to do when I quit my very secure, very well paying government job to pursue a Biology degree. To say I suffered a shock at that transition is an understatement. But it was the shakeup I needed. I was an emotional mess when I started university at the advanced age of 25. That experience matured me quite a bit and boy, did I need that.
It didn’t solve all my problems, but it set me on a better path in many ways.
And I NEVER made the money, nor had the security I had in that government job ever again.
I always had a lot less.
But what I gained mentally can never be equated with money.
I confess, when I was young it was not only OKAY to read books, but they were part of our school studies. We were encouraged to read everything.
Imagine that, we could read whatever we wanted.
And we did.
I remember books and the subsequent classroom discussions of them that had a huge impact on me. That made me THINK.
That is what the written word does. Makes you think.
Some of those books would never be in schools today. In Cold Blood. Catcher in the Rye. To Kill a Mockingbird. Of Mice and Men. Flowers for Algernon. Twelve Angry Men. Romeo and Juliet (Our teacher even took us to the theatre to watch Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, where, gasp, there was brief nudity).
The list is extensive. I was fortunate to have teachers not only present us with these, but discuss them as well, and let us decide for ourselves what we like or don’t like.
My parents had a huge library of books and none were off limits to me, from the day I could read. I read Benton’s Row. A Clockwork Orange. Valley of the Dolls. There were also lots of non-fiction in my house, Time Life Books, Reader’s Digest, National Geographic, and a plethora of physics, mechanics, biology.
At lunch time at school I used to read automotive mechanics. Can you imagine me doing that today?