Militant Unity

While looking for a place to have dinner in Oromocto, New Brunswick, I succeeded in getting myself caught in one of those goofy roundabouts that are supposed to slow down traffic. I was able to prove that it will often slow down traffic that is also coming in the wrong direction.  A kind community resident guided me out. When I professed my profuse embarrassment, he remarked that it was ok and just to drive safely.

In turning down a few more streets I started to try to familiarize myself with this close-knit community located just outside of Fredericton, and a short throw to Canadian Forces Base Gagetown. One of the parks I drove by was called “Family Park”. This provoked my thinking into how close these communities can be. November 11 reminds us that many lost their lives in the battles for freedom.

Recently with Canada seeing so many not return to their families in the Afghan mission, I was reminded of some of the horrendous news film showing grieving families as they would receive their loved ones off of Forces piloted planes. In many or most instances these families were often comforted by comrades of the fallen soldiers. Many who have walked the front lines will look out for each other and develop that inspiring second family relationship.

Military unity should be universal and extend beyond the boundaries of our uniformed soldiers and civilian workers who also collect pay from the Department of National Defence. Elected officials and all citizens should unite more behind our forces. It is not just about having top-notch equipment on the front lines. It should be about more respect and acknowledgment of the sacrifices made.

Even a few people who use their free expression to voice often disparaging remarks at soldiers need to wake up. If it were not for the people who fought those wars and took those hits, they would be absent of the right to the free expression which they are probably taken for granted. I am starting to think that every new vehicle in Canada should come with a Support the Troops Ribbon. I sure as hell keep meaning to get one.

Remembrance Day is all well and good. The intention is there. However one day a year should not be the single day that people recognize the sacrifices of our military.

Each time a person expresses a personal opinion. Every time a writer pens a potentially controversial point. Every time an action gives way to exercising a personal freedom.

It should be an expression of thanks for the freedom we have.

 

“Lack”

If you focus on what you lack, then what you have is instantly lost.

Most people may not realize this, but society runs on a constant journey of spirituality and self-enlightenment. Exploration is a constant trip. Sometimes its fun and sometimes it is a difficult passage of turbulent trial and error. But then again, so is life. You are supposed to learn. You are supposed to fail. When you do fail you are supposed to dust yourself off and try again. It is called learning the hard way.

How many of you can turn to social media to find a pristine example of people who are in a constant state of negativity? Every single person who uses Facebook has maybe one friend who does nothing but complain and search for a sympathy party. They spend too much time focusing on what they lack that they completely lose focus on the good of what is around them. It should be about what they have and the gratitude that goes with it.

Since I came out as an Atheist, I have been accused by readers of having “Lack”. I have been accused of lacking on God.  Lacking in faith. Lacking in any meaning in my life. The exact opposite is the real deal. While I still loudly maintain that everyone has their freedom with religion and spirituality, I equally promote the right to disagree with any opinion of religion and the fictitious pictures of paradise it supposedly offers. If you are into religion that is fine. But please, save your scripts for book publishers who might want to put something on a shelf with other fictional tales of the dead being raised.

When I finally decided I was done with the long transition out of religion I felt something that I never thought was possible.

Spiritual Freedom

The ability to realize that I can think for myself. I sure do not need any book to tell me what is wrong or right. Nor do I need to attend some building and confess any supposed wrongdoings. That life is worth living to the fullest and that I should not worry about an afterlife that according to science, does NOT exist.

My plan here is not to go on a long tear against religion despite the many pages that I could fill on that subject alone. The nail to be driven home here, is that life is not only good, it’s great and every second of it is valuable. If you are lacking something, then go and get it so you are no longer lacking in whatever it is. Pursue your passions as if they are easily within reach.

Live life to make yourself, (and those closest to you), the best it can be.

 

My Apology & Self-Evolution

I tend to make fun of myself. A lot. Sometimes to the point of where it may annoy people. But it helps me in so many ways. If you cannot make fun of yourself, you cannot improve on the faults you might be afraid to admit that you have.

There are days I look back on a given moment in time and I’ll say I did not like myself then. Since my departure from political involvement and my increase in reading more books, my beliefs have evolved. I am much happier because those beliefs have evolved.

In a Calgary College classroom, I stood before a class and worked a presentation about the political machinery in this country. Perhaps with a bit of a conservative leaning. As part of that presentation I attempted (rather badly) to defend “traditional” marriage and then hide behind my religious beliefs at the time as the reason for not accepting that homosexuals should have the right to marry.

That would be the last time I ever state such nonsense in any situation. In fact, it was not long after that classroom presentation that I saw one of my favourite comedy personalities in concert and he drove the point home rather brilliantly. Eric Idle said that gays and lesbians should have the right to marry because they should be “just as miserable as the rest of us.”

You get the idea. Eric’s point was one of equality.

Since then, I often thought of what would happen if I ever met some of the people I respect who are openly gay. Would I really be able to tell them I did not support equal rights while at the same time telling them how much I admire them?  Stephen Fry, Rob Halford, Graham Chapman (May he rest in peace), the list goes on.

When I left religion and political involvement, I left the archaic thinking behind with it. This includes my long-gone former position on the definition of marriage. Fact is I want peace and positivity for everyone around me.

I join the growing list of former Christians who loudly renounce the old-world views on marriage equality. I apologize to every single gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered reader, family member, friend and colleague. When I recently was made to feel that my wife and I were not a family because we did not have “human” children, I often thought of gay and lesbian couples who either do not have children or those who are fighting hard to adopt children into loving homes. You too are a family, defined as you see fit. No religious figure, no government, and no one has the right to define who you are and how you want to live your life.

Especially when most of us are trying to live life well, doing the right thing and respecting everyone else’s existence.

 

 

 

Titles and Transitions, Planned UnParenthood and Uneven Dice

We are in a transition and are in the process of packing up the household to move to my home province of Nova Scotia. I have missed contributing to these pages and working in general. Among the chaos there has been some clarity.

Planned UnParenthood, Creating a Life Without Procreating. I have decided to go it alone and self-publish this book. While I have no firm release date, I estimate by the early fall that I could have it ready to press. I intend to make it available for e-readers as well.  Planned UnParenthood is the work of almost 2 years of hardcore research and writing. The result is a great book that speaks to those who have chosen not to have children. It also reaches out to those who are unable to have children.  I take things one step further by reaching out to parents in the hope that more will understand and accept why people will make the decision not to have children.

Some of my favourite reading of the last several months has been the humour collections of Woody Allen. The painfully brilliant wit in his 4 main collections has been inspiring. So much so that within a short period of time I ended up writing a collection of short satirical pieces which I will complete over the coming summer. With reading the Allen collections I felt much more comfortable in developing character ideas I had been thinking of. The result will be a short collection of shorts called Uneven Dice. This will be released in e-book format only sometime this fall.

Although it is meant to be a satirical collection, there will be traces of reality throughout.  For instance “Chalkboard Nightmares” is loosely based on my experiences having to walk up to a chalkboard in Junior High Math. On the more downright funny side of things, readers will be treated to a One-Act Play based on three unlikely members of a Minnesota Amish Commune.

I am really excited to bring this work to audiences. Thanks everyone for your continued support. I love to work, and cherish being in this business. There is more good stuff to come. I look forward to continuing to work from my Nova Scotia base.

Defective Shelving Units

A few years ago I put up a shelf in our bedroom. On a slant. It sits a few things comfortably, at an angle. Thinking I’ll leave it as an artistic expression for whomever owns this house next. I could even name it something. I’ll call it “a seemingly wasted effort with meaning”. Ebay has all kinds of room for this sort of stuff. Someone could buy it.

My lack of any handy-man skills is something I have become quite honest about and accustomed to living with. To me, being handy is an acquired trait. There are few things in this life I seem to have little patience for. Elevator Music, Cribbage, and learning any handyman skills. At least I’m a wizard with housework. Gotta be good for something around the house.

One of my contractors came to visit us related to another project some time ago. When he came by, we showed him the magnificent defectively built shelving unit. We also revealed to him that a producer from reality tv show “Canada’s Worst Handyman” had been at the home. He spent the rest of his time at our house convulsing with random laughter. Could you blame him? I assisted him in when he re-built our back porch. It was a miracle I knew what a damn tape measure was.

What an interesting afternoon it was when the television camera was in the home. We didn’t have an immediate project on hand prepared. We had a window with no curtain. So we decided it was time to put up a curtain.

Great. Just great. We figured it was the perfect project to demonstrate to producers how awful my handy-skills were. For several minutes I fumbled through my attempt to put up a curtain rod. It went up….Eventually. The producer kept checking with me to see if I was getting stressed. I definitely was getting really wired up. By this point I was actually starting to get good with managing my frustration so perhaps it was not showing as easily as it used to.

Somewhere in the first few seconds of that season of Canada’s Worst Handyman, viewers could see me fumbling with this damn curtain rod for a brief bit.

Men are somehow always expected to be men of skill with respect to handy-work. I used to be seriously embarrassed by my horrible lack of skill. Over time I gradually just embraced it. I joke frequently about my perceived misfortunes which have all become lessons. I look at the basic tools we have and remind myself that at least I can barely use a screwdriver. Barely meaning I will still grab the wrong one that matches the even more wrong screw head, once in a while.

Once in a while though, I may get something right. I used to spend a few days every summer having to paint something. Whether a church foundation or a patio deck, there were a few paint jobs I managed quite well. At one of my previous day jobs in Calgary, the management of a construction supply store had me paint part of their entire showroom. That paint job is likely still there on that wall.

To other men who are sorely lacking in handy skills I would say acknowledge other areas where you might be strong. Never be afraid to learn. Try to learn, and learn to have patience. Embrace the perceived weakness and turn it into a strength. It does not happen overnight.

I’m still working on it.

 

 

Tale of the Type

My Dad’s basement also served as a rec room for many years. I learned table tennis and darts in this basement and would late use it as a jam space for myself and a few other musicians who would come down to the house and rock out.

One of my earliest memories of hanging out in the basement surrounds an old typewriter. I love the clicking sounds of the old machine and would really just hammer stuff out on it just for something fun to do. It used to sit in front of this print replica of the Mona Lisa. That picture really creeped me out. I was of the view that she looked like a broad having a reaction to smelling salts.

This old word-hammer was loud and felt like it weighed a ton. It sat down in that one spot for many years. Word Processing programs were already starting to replace typewriters by this point. Thanks to my school having some old C-64 computers, I was able to get exposure to some of the earliest word processing programs. Even though I really dug the idea of writing and just being able to print something, there was something still very cool about the sounds that come from a typewriter.

In my teens a friend gifted me with her old manual typewriter as she had bought an electronic one. I was really happy to get it. I remember it had a fairly fresh ribbon in it, so I wore it almost completely out.

That typewriter went missing sometime when I was moving residencies. My hope is that it will turn up during a search of the farmhouse where I believe it is hiding. I would probably fix it up or just have it as a piece in my home, when I have a bigger home.

The typewriter represents something classic.  It represents history in so many ways. It still has a devoted following of fans and writers who have refused to move over to word processing programs. Woody Allen apparently has written everything he has done on a typewriter and continues to work with one on future projects. Leonard Cohen is said to have written his masterpiece novel Beautiful Losers on an old Olivetti (I have a book that verifies this but right at the moment is in storage), then apparently has thrown that typewriter into the Aegean Sea.

In the brilliant romantic comedy “Love Actually” Colin Firth’s character Jamie is writing a novel pondside. When the wind takes his script and carries it into the pond he remarks “I really should make copies”.

If I learned to type on a typewriter first, then perhaps I would be less likely to make mistakes writing on computer now. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to get the exposure to the earliest word processing programs. Initially I was using the oh-so unfriendly old school WordPerfect (you know,,,the blue screen of nothing) then I moved on to much more structured programs like Microsoft Works, and then Microsoft Word.

At least by using these programs, I was not stuck having to make copies excessively or risk having something well-written ending up in a pond.

Despite never having written anything by water….

The Simpsons at 500

Many who know me, and many who read my work know that I am not a fan of television. I am loyal to a handful of shows that have made me laugh over the years such as Family  Guy, Kevin Spencer and Cheers. The Simpsons remains my absolute favourite sitcom. It is attached to many positive memories of my youth.

I’ll never forget it. A cold Friday night in downtown New Glasgow and this kid in my Martial Arts class was talking about this animated show and how brilliant it was. “A cartoon on a Friday night?”, was my reaction. “Yep” said this other kid who happened to shared the last name as the beloved animated family.

It may have been that very Friday night, or the Friday night a week later when I saw my first episode, “Bart The General”. It rang out to me especially as a victim of bullying. In this classic piece of American television, Bart teams up with his grandfather, local military antique dealer Herman and other neighbourhood kids to rail against bully Nelson Muntz.

In the following few Fridays I would see several more episodes of Season 1. I was hooked and entertained. The Simpsons were at the beginning of something really amazing. This was a revolutionary show that would push the edges of humour to a whole new level. Shirts started turning up in stores along with other merchandise.

You could only imagine my disappointment when suddenly the show was not on a channel we could get at the time. My theory is that the CBC received a ton of complaints from parents and religious nuts who completely failed at realizing it was comedy, so they yanked any airing of the show completely.

It would be quite a few years before anyone in Nova Scotia (and perhaps Canada) without a satellite dish could see more episodes. What a great time it was once we could see them! Once a few seasons were in the can, we could see more of them running in syndication every night of the weekday. Usually about an hour after supper I was able to catch up on the show. Eventually I was able to catch new episodes as they aired.

The Simpsons still are a great lesson in the ups and downs of a television series. I could go through different seasons and point out where I thought the writing was weak and attempts at humour were weak or even misguided. Season 2 remains my absolute favourite of the entire lot. Most of the episodes are absolute gems. Season 2 has the best written material and contained some of the most memorable moments in the shows history. When I re-visit an episode from this season sometimes I still find a new brilliant discovery within the dialogue, despite knowing much of it from memory.

When I ended up with a collection of episodes on VHS I was finally able to catch some of the initial shorts of The Simpsons which were on the Tracey Ullman Show. Anyone who has seen these (most fans now have) gets insight into the early introduction of the characters and the type of humour audiences would see.

No one really knows how much longer the show will be on the air. When it wraps, it will no doubt run in syndication for many decades to come.

Although this is not really in any particular order beyond my number 1 all-time favourite, here are my five favourite episodes in the show’s history.

5. “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson”. Home has to go to New York after Barney borrows his car and, well, leaves it there. the amount of amazing detail that went into capturing the City in this episode was nothing short of remarkable.

4. “Simpson and Delilah”. Homer bills the Power Plant Medical Insurance for a baldness cure. Harvey Fierstein appears in this episode as Karl, the motivating personal assistant to Homer who ends up throwing himself under the bus and taking the fall for the fraud.

3. “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish”. Mr. Burns runs for Governor, and his campaign is ultimately thwarted by Marge’s serving of a fish that suffered from radiation poisoning. Burns’s rambling drunk dialogue near the beginning of the episode is worth the weight in funny alone. This episode is arguably one of the greatest political satires ever written.

2. “Blood Feud”. Mr. Burns falls gravely ill but his life is rejuvenated by a donation of O-Negative blood from Bart. Home expects some great reward but is met with disappointment. At the end, Burns sends a rather expensive piece of art as a gift. All this after reading a rather cantankerous letter from Homer expressing his frustration at just getting a card.

1. “The Way We Was”. Homer and Marge recall the days of how they first met. After all these years this episode still remains my personal favourite. We get to see what Marge’s Dad was like, and get insight into “solid C student” Homer. This episode has wit, wisdom and whimsy.

The Simpsons has now captured the imaginations of a generation and is being introduced to new younger fans. Although the show will likely come to an eventual end, most fans would like to see the show eclipse Gunsmoke’s record of 635 episodes. It is true that The Simpsons has been on longer, but Gunsmoke shot more shows in a shorter period of time.

This Sunday, I shall raise a glass to my favourite show that still makes me laugh after all these years, and 500 episodes in.

#Letstalk

Depression and Anxiety Disorders leave an alarming number of people in dark places in their mind. Working to overcome these debilitating conditions is akin to forcing open a window that is cemented shut. One is always looking for a light and to have that light shine brighter. That window must open one way, some way. People want to break open that window at any cost.

For years I was one of those people working to force open that window. Starting in my childhood I fought with depression and generalized anxiety disorder, while trying to balance out obsessive compulsive disorder. I used to wake up in the middle of the night with terrifying panic attacks and feeling like a truck was driving over my chest. If you can think of a medication for these conditions, chances are I was on it at one point.

Opening that window has set me free. I reached a point  where I felt I had the strength to get through life’s obstacle course. Any energy I might have spent on feeling down has been re-directed to my professional and personal pursuits.

I did not do it all alone though. I reached out for help and surrounded myself with supportive people. Too often many people still do not reach out. With Bell’s #Letstalk, hopefully more people will reach out. More resources are becoming available and people need to be encouraged to pursue paths to recovery.

I hope that part of #Letstalk the over-prescribing of medication will be addressed. As necessary as medication is for treatment of symptoms, there are still far too many side effects from all of these meds. There is significant hope in knowing that researchers are constantly working to improve on treatments. My personal experience put me in a place where medication was just no longer an option. Tools I was given or discovered on my own, I ran with. Literally, I ran.

Willpower and a positive attitude are great, but may not be enough to treat these conditions. Build that support network of family, friends and healthcare professionals. It may be great to try to do it on your own, but having help along the way will be beneficial.

Getting to a point of freedom has been a great learning experience. I discovered more about myself and unlocked a greater potential for who I am and who I could be. I am in a constant state of gratitude for the live I have and the life I am living. Overcoming these disorders can and will take time and one will learn lots along the journey to recovery.

It is a journey to better health, and a better life.

Looking For Today

How appropriate that I should use a Black Sabbath song for a blog title. Won’t be the last time I assure you.

Friday’s for many seem to be the one day of the week where everyone finds themselves. Even for a brief few minutes or hours, everyone rides in the wave of relief that the opening of a weekend presents. A “Friday” does not necessarily have to be on the same day of the week. It is so associated with the end of a work week than many who work say Tuesday-Saturday (as I once did), would look at Saturday as their Friday. And so on,,,

Actually, for the longest time, I loved having Sunday/Monday off. There was something great about being able to stay up a little later Sunday night and not worry about rushing out with everyone else first thing Monday. It was a time when I worked a horrible labour job and would have been better off working the Sahara Desert as a flood watchman.

Last weekend I texted a family member that I didn’t talk to since Christmas. In my initiation of the text-versation what I was going to write was not really clear. So I found myself giving advice that could often be reflected in the mirror. When it comes to the weekends, own them. Make them yours for the taking.

The same really could be said for every single day. Why wait until the weekend to own more of the time you have for yourself? Reality is even if you slug it out in some drab cube somewhere mentally working to build a bridge to something better, or work the factory line willingly, or no matter whatever you do, you can still dream big and be in constant pursuit of a better life. I live and breathe every single day of my life knowing that in the darkest moments, somehow someway I have always found  glorious solitude.

A classic line from one of my favourite singers reminds me “If you feel alive, in a darkened room, do you know the name of your solitude”. That moment brilliantly captures the second when I feel like my thoughts have recovered from negativity.

Part of finding that solitude has been discovering how great life is. When I say people need to go looking for today, it means to acknowledge the present moment and all the great things within it. It can come in the form of a close embrace from your significant other, a smile from across a crowded room, a great meal you might have enjoyed, or even the freshness of crisp clean air. Looking for today will not take long. Find it, own it and make every day your day.

 

 

Pot, Meet Kettle…

http://bit.ly/yEJ3Ol

My latest short. This was an idea I wrote in August of 2010. I wrote out a description in the video summary.

There is no point in my getting into the description. It will speaks for itself. Enjoy. If you like it, send it to others who might need a laugh.