Oh no! Is the U.S.A. trying to kill off its Tourism? Canadians came in for a total shock today upon learning that everybody here now has a VAT to our VATS and that it will now cost us $5.50 more over and above all the rest of the hassles of crossing the Border. Haven't watched the early News but will the 11 PM News. We are being nickled and dimed to death. This is the way Americans treat their best friends? With friends like that....??? Oye. Next time the U.S.A. needs our help, we'll charge them a fat surtax for every little thing. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. ::: That's pathetic, America. You've never had a better or closer friend on the entire planet than Canada. ::: Barf.

That photo blog I refer to below with all manner of confusion and spattered here and there without a single original thought of the owner's, epitomizes what I so dislike about blogs filled with photographs ripped off the internet. Could have named their blog: "My Messy Messy Bedroom" :: Blogs full of fuck and half empty. And the latter sentence doesn't mean at all what your twisted mind thinks it does. ::: The vacuous triteness of it all: suggestive poses of women, infants, babies - at times the naked women are posted right above the infants and babies, suggesting what? - animals of every kind, guys in suggestive poses, landscapes, flowers, interspersed with quotations of dubious origin of a whole variety of the living and the dead. On and on and on and yawn... In 2006, informing my sister that I had begun a blog: "Ohhh no! I hate blogs. And I hate people who blog even more." Yup. Some photo blogs look like the inside of the blogger's brain. That's too close for me.

Same photo blog: Another one: Quote: "Do you ask enough questions? Or do you settle for what you know?" ::: How do I know what I don't know, until I find out? But I'm sure you will tell me. Very soon. There's a question in there, somewhere.

Another gem from the same photo blog below: "I would rather fight with you than make love to anyone else."::: Must have been the moonstruck observation of somebody on their honeymoon. Nothing like hot, angry sex eh? :::

Just came across this "wise" bit of fluff on somebody's blog: ::: Quote: "Never give up on someone you can't go a day without thinking about." ::: Oh my god! That's not love, it's a neurotic obsession, which if allowed to fester can turn into blind jealousy, possessiveness, and some have turned it into stalking the object of one's desire, at its extreme expression, homocide! ::: We all need spaces between each other while we get on with the dailyness of our living. ::: Being a Velcro human will never do it for me. I can go an entire week without thinking about you. Doesn't mean I've given up on you. It means I love you enough to let you run.

To borrow from a friend: welly, welly, welly, welly, wellly...here we are...Monday, October 24th - ["D" day] ... nobody died...some just faded away....they would have anyway...I'm missing that Volcaic Rat and his Flea-bitten Dog. Carry on regardless...oh sorry...wasn't that a Britcom? Peter Sellers? He be gone too. I am not. Hemingway is. So is Plath. Never does stop, do it? ;-)

......CAUTIOUSLY....YOU ARE GOING TO GET CREAMED!

HOARDING ::: I subscribe to the Animal Planet Channel on cable. I did it originally for Laddie. He loved watching television as all Westies are famous for doing. He could sit for hours watching TV. I thought it was funny. ::: I also get TLC - The Learning Channel. I like learning new things. Never mind that I was wrong about that channel. But it's part of the package and we have damned little to subscribe to in this very French province where there are way more French channels here than there are English Canadian channels. ::: I'm setting you up. I digress. ::: It's about "hoarding". People who hoard animals. Personally I think they are deranged in their misguided belief that they are doing 'good', but that's just me. ::: Well, my mother was a "hoarder". Uh huh. No cure either. What did she hoard? CHILDREN. Yes, children. There was Elizabeth, Paul, Peter, Louise, then when Peter was killed at age 8 years - my mother's favourite - I think she just didn't "lose it", she totally went to pieces. So she took in Vincent from a large family of children in New Brunswick when that family split up, and Richard from a northern Province in China who at age 9 had the worst bad habit of smoking like a chimney and would smoke cigarette butts off the street. Blaggghhh! Then there was Wolfgang and his brother Peter from Germany. My Dad adopted both Vincent and Richard as they had no mothers. I loved Wolfgang and his brother Peter who had great parents, they just needed a 'temporary place' to live while looking for work and a place of their own. Then there was Vera and her kids, Claire and Peter. Yes, yes, I know what you are thinking: PETER? How many 'Peters' were there? I don't know, never crossed my mind until just now. Too many. ::: We would often be as many as twelve sitting at our dining room table on any Sunday when everybody was at home, together. In one room. ::: Well, for some odd reason, I've never understood, I always ended up still being the "baby of the family" no matter how many kids my mother hoarded. ::: One day, the straw broke my back when in came a family from Guadaloupe. Mother and three kid kids. OYE! ::: I lost it. ::: One afternoon coming in after school, there was Maria and her three kids. Other than Louise nobody else was at home. Well, I went to pieces. I screamed at Maria: "Get OUT of MY house! Immediately!" Oh my God. That is exactly what Maria did. She packed, grabbed her three kids and left the house. I went to our room and waited. Terrified! Beyond my wits! What would my mother do when she got home and no Maria? Ooooh. I knew I was in trouble. Louise just stood there in the middle of our bedroom looking scared, not saying a word. ::: Well, there were no more kids after that. That was the end of the road to this hoarding business. I had had it of constantly seeing total strangers come into our house, eat at our dining room table, sleep in our bedrooms - the list was endless of my infantile list of grievances. I was about eight years old. All I wanted was my mother and father to be my mother and father - full time. None of this "sharing" stuff. ::: After that, I don't remember what happened that day, that week that month, that year.

LIFE IS NOT FAIR. ::: Life has never been "fair". It has never been meant to be fair. Life is a struggle. That is all that it is meant to be. ::: Life is about learning. Lessons. A lot of lessons. Every day. ::: That's the deal.

When I was very young, I mean very young, I couldn't afford to buy food. I had a full time job. It didn't pay enough to cover much more than a roof over my head. Couldn't even afford a bed. I ate dog food. Dry kibble, which I mixed with a bit of watered down orange juice left over from who knows when, mixed it all with a bit of warm water from the sink in the bathroom. Ate it all. I could spell it all out for you in a lengthy ten page description of the circumstances and in fine detail. What I have just written is enough. Was I "poor"? No. I was not. Not if I had a bathroom. Not if I had dog kibble. I must have been in a building with a roof on it. (I was) I didn't think for a second I was poor back then, and never have since. I can't always afford three square meals a day today. Am I poor? Nope. ::: When I was born my parents were poor, it was war time, nobody had any money to pay for my father to do surgery on them, so he worked pro bono for years. ::: My parents couldn't afford a crib for me. So, they put me in the bottom drawer of their dresser in their bedroom. Were we poor? Nope. :: My father could have been a very wealthy man. Could have been. He raised seven children, five adopted. He died intestate, half of the city of Montreal owed him money for the work he never charged them a penny for because they couldn't afford it. He didn't think he was poor. ::: We never did. ::: I rest my case.

"POVERTY" - "DESTITUTION" - are Westerners insane? Can't tell the difference between those two adjectives. Westerners are not "poor". Let alone "destitute". ::: Not even the poorest of the poorest of Westerners can make the case for crying "poor". Yes, there are people living in unenviable conditions, but it is all comparative. Obviously if you live in broken down shack in the middle of an urban city of several millions, and somewhere up a few blocks away someone else is living in a cottage with a fence around it and a car parked in the garage, yup looks like you might be "poor". ::: Not my definition of poverty. ::: My definition of poverty is the family that lives under a tent with ten members of their family all squeezed into an impossible living space, no clean water, no place to go have a shit except in a hole in the ground you dig yourself, no shoes, not even one meal a day, no bed, nothing but the cold hard ground, sub freezing temperatures at night, ravaged by disease and illness and death around you, flies all over your stinking body, lucky if you even a piece cardboard over your head, dirty polluted water running under your naked feet, no mother, no father, no relatives, no nothing, not even hope... I want to be sick and vomit when anybody dares throw the words poverty and destitution around like it was manna from heaven. ::: I would say, "Go to Hell". Instead, I'll just say: Go to Haiti! Not to be confused with Hell's Kitchen, the Bronx. ::: Be my guest. Make my day. But you'll never hear me cry "poor".

Cough, cough...just happened by a cyber-friend who lives in Athens railing about her country's bankrupt condition while the rest of the Western World tries desperately to figure out just how to bail Greece out of its own greasy frying pan. Why the Greeks are crying in their home made soup is beyond me. I've been to Greece and Crete, beautiful places. Nice climate. Stat for Italy, Spain, the list of mismanaged countries is a mile long. I can say one thing about them all, with a straight face. Canadians didn't get them in the mess they are in. We are trying to get them out of it. And are the ones who are going to pay the price, individually. ::: Will people never learn that the cost of personal greed is bankruptcy? That blindly following the "leader" and doing it again and again and again, is passive suicide. ::: Greece the center of civilization. ::: Can't spend all of Eternity resting on those laurels. ::: Rome wasn't built in a day. But when it burned, it burned fast. And Nero, demanded his tear glass, and played fiddle. ::: Fuddle duddle.

Two year old dead babies are not the only things that occupy my empty skull. Trust me on that at least. I feel in a constant state of outrage, disgust bordering on cynicism that scares even me. How did we all reach this point of losing the social moral compass that divided so clearly that which was right and that which was wrong. Clearly. I don't mean "religious" or "political" right and wrong. I don't give a sweet damn about either of those two. They are perverted anyway. I mean something far more profound that separates what makes us human and what makes us animal. That fine distinction called "morality". The one we all know instinctively says: Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods. The 'Thou Shalt Nots', The natural laws humans created for themselves that had nothing to do with religion or politics but practical survival techniques. When did we throw them all out? When? I want an answer. I am not more Catholic than the Pope, but I sure as hell did not grow up in this kind of world where anything at all goes.

Is there never going to be a day in which human beings do not prove just how outrageously bad we can behave? I wish I could no longer be "surprised" at the depths of depravity to which we humans will sink to. I wish. Then, just as I think I've imagined we could be worse, along comes even worse stuff. ::: I am talking now about a News item last night about a two (2) year old baby killed on the street of it-doesn't-matter- where while people stood around and did NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. On a crowded city street. The two year is old is dead. ::: These sorts of things are not new, but they still make my blood turn to ice and my temper blow sky high in outrage. ::: I'm sorry if what I am about to say may offend your sensibilities. It offends my own. But after hearing about the two year old having died of her injuries, what kept running through my mind was "Dammit! Why the Hell can't we just blow up the whole god damned planet and rid ourselves of ourselves!!!!"? May as well do it all at once and be rid of the most dangerous thing on the planet: Homo Sapiens. US. ::: We are doing it anyway. Slowly. ::: They shoot horses don't they? :::

Pity, I didn't think of it: I should have called my weblog "The Bitching Post" as written by "The Bitch".

STUMBLE UPON ::: My favourite whipping boys these days. ::: In one of their many infamous "Newsletters" these millionaires from Calgary, Alberta, relocated to San Francisco, that bankrupt State, gall me about how CHARITABLE they are because they give money to Africa. What a damned novel idea! Bragging rights. It has become the hoof and mouth disease of the decade to outright BRAG about things that in past generations were kept private under the name of altruism and humanitarianism. In other words: what I donate to "charity" is none of your god damm business! It is so declasse, the nouveau riche 30-somethings who are the loudest braggarts of them all. :: Personally I don't give a flying sheep that you give food to poor little Africans. The line forms to the rear. Half the civilized world is doing the same. Big deal. ::: Get out of your air conditioned offices in The Valley, get off your duffs, and spend two years in East Africa working - pro-bono. Then you can tell me about your "contributions" to the poor, little African kids starving over there. HYPOCRITES ALL. :: Tax deductions. Doesn't cost you a god damn cent. ::: When I was an under grad I spent two years in Ghana teaching English as second language with C.U.S.O. Zero pay. Came down with malaria that damned near killed me. The after affects last a lifetime. There is no cure for malaria. ::: I BELIEVE in putting VERBS behind my ADJECTIVES. ::: I received today in my email the following information: (American, again): "Every month, we send a full year of sponsorship to a different child. Your contributions in October are helping us to sponsor Alberson Alexan, a four-year-old boy from Guatemala. Children International channels development aid from donors to Alberson Alexan and his community. We also sponsor kids through Save the Children." ::: No kidding. ::: This company is using MY money to support THEIR cause. ::: There has never been a day in my adult working life that we have NOT been solicited for money to support every damned "cause" on the planet. I have my own personal "causes" which I do support with verbs behind my adjectives. I come from generation upon generation of humanitarians. But we do it SILENTLY. :: I truly object to all this public display of hypocrisy. Reminds me of Jesus amongst the Pharisees in the Temple when he lost his human temper for once. :: Today I am an Owl. Leave me alone. My rabies vaccination is not due until next month. ::: Grrrrrr...bite, bite, bite...grrrrrr...bite...bite. bite...grrrrrr...

BULL BAITING ::: I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. Ready, willing and able to bait bull. You know, "I sold my cow yesterday, I don't need your bull today?" ::: Heard form four people, wrote back, cut, copy, DELETE ... Poor babies wouldn't have known what hit them. Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete. All four. ::: They were all of them contentious. I am ripe for contentious arguments. Like picking flies off a bar stool. ::: Sometimes I just force myself to SHUT UP!

Trouble in Paradise ::: Inquiry into Quebec's Construction industry. Two years, going back fifteen years. Oye vey. ::: How do you spell M-a-f-i-a? ::: Fanstastic Judge has been selected. Like the Mounties, she always gets her man! ::: It's never been a State secret that the Mafia has infiltrated the construction industry here, what may be surprising will be the naming of names. ::: Oye!

COLD PRESS ::: You might ask, "What is a 'cold press"? ::: The simplest explanation is that it was a newspaper's Typesetter's term when newspapers the world over were set by hand in tiny individual letters engraved upon metal slugs, which were of course cold. It was a painstaking work of manual labour getting all those slugs lined up correctly and in order, then sent down to the printing presses which then rolled out the day's paper in print form. These were eventually replaced by a compugraphic machine which was not all that different than looking at a precursor to a kind of "computer". I remember one newspaper I worked for in the early days where I was sent to take a course through Compugraphic Canada Ltd. by my then Editor as I was the only one on the staff who knew how to use an electric typewriter. That's the short of it, hence Cold Press.

Darn! ::: Didn't make it to the short list of the Man Booker Prize. Underachiever that I am. ::: No Nobel Prize in Literature either. Maybe after my death...the 'Great Canadian Novel'...been writing it for over ten years now...sitting in boxes right next to my typewriter which is on another desk in this office...a three generational thing... optioned rights too. ::: Good thing I have a couple of generations of kids to leave it all to. ::: Do I have five more minutes? (grin) ::: I never felt a burning desire to finish it.

woot! hoo weeeeee... "1500 pages views." Now! What does it mean? I don't even know 1500 people. Or do I?

WHEN SOMEONE CLOSE TO YOU DIES: The most sincere and simplest thing to say, when you don't know the berieved personally, I learned by the age of five. "I am sorry." That is all that is needed, all that is understood. Three words.::: RE: Letter of sympathy #1, below: There are 168 hrs in a week. 63 hours, based on 9 hrs +/- spent sleeping. 7 hrs for meals. Leaving 98 hrs a week for everyone and everything else. That is a heck of a lot of time in one person's weekly life.::: "I know what you mean." 1) Assuming. 2)Presumping. 3)Devaluing. 4)Negating. We all laugh in the same way, no two people can experience their own pain in the same way? It becomes a giant pissing match ensues. "If it is any comfort...." Now this is where we get into big trouble. It is a common non-statement of a false kind of empty 'sympathy' by the socially inept. "Everybody has their cross to bear." The clunker. Except for Jews, Athiests et al who don't bear "crosses"? Falling right into the political social hot tub. Plop! But "have a happy (fill in the blanks). "I'm sorry." Full stop.

WHEN A LOVED ONE DIES WHAT DOES ONE SAY? Well, this morning, I received in quick succession the following: Hello Gwen, Thank you for your beautiful message and your kindness. I know what you mean. Everybody has their cross to carry. It is horrible what happened to you. If it is any comfort, you had all those amazing people in your life. I have no siblings, never had a husband, nor children, not even a boyfriend; I mean now, not never. Don't have time for friends, so they are slowly moving away and there is nothing I can do. I work very hard, 9 hours a day, 6 days a week. But it's nice to know there are people who care. Thank you Gwen. Have a happy Sunday and see you around. ::: COMPARE, IF YOU WILL: Gwen dearest, My heart goes out to you. These 18 months you have walked a painful path indeed. I cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like to say farewell to so many loved ones in such a short space of time, the vastness of the empty spaces they left, how very lonely you must feel. I hope, that in the stillness and quiet, you will in time receive the benediction of peace. I must admit that lately I find myself reflecting on the impermanance of all things quite a lot. Hugs, ::: Oh boy. To me it was ironic, more than "horrific". Life falls down in mid-flight. Live long enough, we all get there. Relatives, friends, pets, live long enough, they do go. I learned that lesson by age 5 when our "perfect" little brother Peter, then age 8, was instantly killed by a drunk driver. My parents, although devastated of course, turned Marcel the driver of the truck, into a lifelong family friend. It wasn't until many dacades later, in an odd twist of Fate, that Marcel whom I did not know at all, the Editor-in-Chief of a trade school magazine gave me my very first magazine job with my own by-line. Unheard of for a female in those days. I didn't learn who he was until my late 40s when I happened to mention in passing to my California sister, that Marcel had once been my boss which made her do a triple-take as she told me who he was. ::: That is irony.

...and how is your day going? Working for you? Take a break: watch that little "slide show" to the right, up top. And, have a good day.

TECH HELL: I have to laugh. My Printer has always "hated" me - printers are reasonably cheap, at least in the States, but hooooeeeee it ain't the printers, it's the INK that here costs an arm and leg - which is why I stopped using it at all; my Sony digicam "hates" me; my two cellphones definitely always "hated" me, one is "M.I.A." may have been stolen without my knowing it - never mind, wasn't using it anyway. Don't even ask about cellphone service in Canada, you'll get an earfull. Most expensive in the world.; my year old Win 7 computer "hates" me after using WinXP and OE for ten years - it's my fourth; now my new telephone "hates" me. Something wrong here. LOL. ::: Batteries and light bulbs - I "hate" them. I've gone bankrupt just buying new ones all the time. A fews year back I replaced all the light bulbs in the house with those newfangled ones - haven't been able to see anything since. LOL - My little camera, which I never much used anyway - well, I did buy a battery charger since they are li-ion batteries which are, unlike me, rechargeable. Life has become too complicated for me. Don't understand a thing anymore. ::: No, I do not live in cave somewhere in the Himalayas. I live in huge cosmopolitain City which hates me too. (laughing). ::: I kept receiving these SHARES in SU re the "Wall Street" movement which has spread faster than any wildfire around the globe. That sender, god bless her cotton pickin' soul never sent me a SHARE about a single thing that interested me. She is in the Phillipines. Maybe she should be out on the street with the rest of the Angries - demonstrating - instead of trying to preach to the annointed. I carefully explained to her yesterday, most politely, after that first SHARE about the demonstrations and that, 'yes, I am quite aware, thank you very much', only to be sent the whole darned thing all over again today. Are we thick? End that charade once and for all today. Sheesh! ::: It is pourring rain, extremely windy, freezing cold here and Montrealers - about 200 of them in total - are holding their own "Wall Street" protest...why, I do not know. Well, yes, I do...something about "poverty". ::: You know what I think about "poverty"? Goes like this: anybody in the world who owns a comptuter and has access to the WWW, a cellphone, an Ipad, Iphone, I-anything, is not POOR. ::: If you want to know what poverty is, go to Haiti. The poorest Nation on the hemisphere. Go to almost country, in eastern Africa. That is poverty. Not even the poorest of the poor in North America are "poor". It's all relative, isn't it? ::: As I sit here at my computer, with all those toys that "hate" me, crying in my soup, I may not be in that 1% obscenely wealthy list, or ever made it to the Forbes 500, but POOR? ::: What we are? Spoiled brats. Belly ackers. Disgruntled with the very systems we each of us have created through, either sins of ommission or commission most certainly by selective blindness, sitting in our comfortable pews right here in North America. Suddenly, we come face to face with our own petards. ::: Nothing in our disposable consumer society is working any more. EVERYTHING is disposable...even people, by the millions and millions. ::: Nobody ever envied the poor because they could not be robbed. "The meek shall inherit the earth." God forbid. They never wanted it to begin with. ::: Homo Saps, since the industrial revolution and the invention of Ford's automobile, has screwed up everything on the planet it has touched. Any wonder Homo Saps has turned on itself. ::: "Take what you want," said God "and pay for it."

CAN YOU CURE A BROKEN HEART? My heart has been broken into tiny pieces. (Not to be confused with clinical depression. I am a Clinician and would be the first to know the difference.) No, I have a broken heart, and There is no cure. I'm going to GRACELAND. No diamonds on the soles of my feet.

THE WANDERER A band of wanderers became lost in a deep, dark forest. They chanced upon a shaman who had been lost even longer. Unaware of his helplessness they ask him to show them the way out of the woods. He told them, "That I cannot do. But I can point out the ways that lead further into the thicket and after that let us try to find the way together."

THE SORROW TREE On the day of Judgment each person will be allowed to hang all of his/ hers unhappiness on a branch of The Great Tree of Sorrows. After each person has found a limb from which their miseries may dangle, they may all walk slowly around the tree. Each is to search for a set of sufferings that s/he would prefer to those s/he has hung on the tree. In the end, each person feely chooses to reclaim their own personal set of sorrows rather than those of another. Each person leaves the tree wiser than when they came.

Progress: (laughing) Finally got all my telephone numbers programmed into the "Phonebook". Now if only I can luck in and get the darned date, month, year etc programmed. What a joke!

TECH HELL Forty-seven (47) pages read, and studied, for that new telephone of mine and I still can't programme it. Can't even get the date, day, time in. All those miniscule, squiggly icons informing me of nothing. They should have included a dictionary of what they symbolize. I'm not a piccy person. I looked them up in my Funk & Wagnalls and my Le Petit Larousse. Nope. Notihing there either. I am not kidding. 47 pages! Squigglies. I press "CID" - on the "soft touch" pad. Up pops: "Requires subscription to Caller ID" . Say what? It's the one service I have always had on my phones. I press "MENU" - Caller list; I keep pressing "MENU"...; Hopeless. I'll wait until some savvy person phones me at Christmas. hahahaha...just had a quick look at the back cover: MADE IN CHINA No SURPRISE - which I why I didn't bother looking at it to begin with. The whole damned manual was written in Mandarin.

I like a dreamer. Reminds me what in inferior bean I am.

What a day it was yesterday. Walked on over to my regular hairdresser and had her shave off most all what's left of my hair. Might even have encouraged her to shave it all off and then be able to walk around not only air condtioned but as bald as a billiard ball. Lost my nerve, so left about a less than a half inch all over. Now I feel five ounces lighter, as if I needed it. Not. One of the things I loathe doing is going shopping for anything. Specially if it involves going into any shopping mall. Managed to stay out of those, but still ended up at Future Shop looking for a new telephone. Wish I'd invested in telephone manufacturing companies when I was young. I'd be rich. Took me all of five minutes to buy the phone and ten minutes to listen to the sales guy who insisted on having me listen to his spiel about purchasing a two year Warranty. After I'd said, "furgit it". Given that thse guys work on commission, what the heck. Let him have his buck. So now I am the proud owner of a sexy new Panasonic phone that comes with not one but two cordless phones. I've owned Panasonic before and they worked just fine - without warranties - get home, unpack the darned thing. Set it all up, have to wait 7 hrs for the cordless to charge. Sit down and start reading the "User Manual". I am at page 26 and still don't know what the hell they're talking about. Haven't got to page 47 yet. I gave up. The damned thing is so complicated that I need an electronics engineer to come programme it for me. w00t! Oh well, must work because I picked up the handset and dialed my own telephone number and it was busy, so I hung up. Nobody home, I guess. lol Hey, this thing has an answering machine. Whoopie! As if I need it. No, I do not. The price was the same, so who cares, eh? Maybe I'll figure out something along the lines of, "Nobody here but us chickens. Go away!" Have to get back into Bell Tell Hell which I have purpsosely been putting off until I can pretend a modicum of civiliity after my last forage into Bell Canada Repair Service in July when my phone went deader than a dodo for ten whole days and had to harrass them until they got so sick of my phoning them that when a Bell Repair Service Tech - haha some joke - finally showed up ten days later, he did his utmost best to hoodwink me into paying $99.00 + taxes on taxes for the the service call by blamiing me for Bell Canada's crappy wiring repair which they did a year ago. Like hell, I told him. It's your frickin' wiring, not mine. I ain't paying nada, your wires, you fix it! The nerve. Not done with that he then threw insult after injury by informing me that my telephones were "cheap". CHEAP? Jesus Murphy, I bought my cordless phone from - you guessed it - Bell Canada! rolf So he effectively told me that Bell Canada sells cheap phones. Two hundred bucks ain't cheap, peoples. I said nothing to him. I was already steamed, I didn't need to blow more. I just wanted him to fix the damned problem and leave! You would think that solved everything, right? How wrong you are, Fuzzy Breath. A few weeks later I discover that the intercom that connects to my phone doesn't work at all. It was fine and worked for years before Mr. Hotshot showed up. It's been disconnected now for over a month. To hell with it. I just think Bell Canada Repair Service and I explode! I am in no mood to spend another ten days gettting them to come and fix the mess they made in July! Hello Vonage! Yup, I am at that point. Over half a century with Bell Canada and this is the state of Bell's "customer service". Did I say Vonage? I did. It is Thanksgiving Day on Monday...dear Lord, thank you for all the blessings you have bestowed upon me. My gratitude knows no bounds. I'm changing religion too. Going to join the Rastafarians. Wherever you are in Canada: have a good one. God bless us everyone.

That's quite enough messing around.

You can have any colour at all. As long as it is black. Every mature woman ought to have at least one classic "little black dress" in her wardrobe. That way she is ready for anything...Town or Country, casual to formal, she will always be well dressed.

Holy smokes! I just coincidentally stumbled my own weblog in SU and got the shock of my life. I hadn't the slightest idea of who it has been who has taken a peek at COLD PRESS. How often do you look at your own press clippings? I don't even read them, let alone look. What a wonderful world it sometimes is. Aline, thank you my dear friend for touching my heart with your note. Vous etes la seule. C'est encouragent. Quoi d'autre a dire? "Merci!" Gwen Beauregard

I feel much better now that I've given up hope.

I always follow myself. How else am I supposed to know where I am? My synapses just don't fire as fast as they used to.

Synapses

Phew! Almost done with Fall CleanUp over at SU. Coming down to the wire...win, lose or draw. October 1st tomorrow. Whoopie! 23 days and it's all over. Tra la lal la la.

Eyes wide shut.

Wish I had it within me to feel charitable but I have run plumb out of kind words for the VEEPs over at StumbleUpon. Hello Cold Press and Catagorian.

Yes, the photo up there in my Blogger Profile is as much me as is the one above, except that the one of to the left was photoshopped (definitely not by me) while the one in profile is unadulterated. My hair has always been short, it is more brown salt and pepper and not either white or silver. I don't change fast physically, genes from my father who never looked his age either. My weight never fluctuates by much more than 10 lbs up or down not because of any sort of "diet" because I've never been on one, but because I have never been in love with my fridge. Wish I could do something about being vertically challenged, but alas I am what I am. Short. Half blind and getting deafer by the year. What has never changed is that I laugh freely and easily and only rarely lose my temper but when I do, I blow sky high. Then like all sudden storms, it is over. It just takes me a very long time to get to that stage, I have to be pushed into a tight corner before I lower the boom. I was born with sun in Taurus, Pisces as my ascendent, moon in Taurus - for you astrology buffs. That is one heck of a lot of Bull. Thank the gods for Pisces, eh? Earth needs water. Water needs earth. If I think of something I may add it. Or not.

A slow, labourious process: I am releasing from StumbleUpon almost, if not all of the Stumblers whom I have been "subscribed" to within the the past year. Not to be confused with the Stumblers who have been mutual "subscribers", although majority of those will have to go given that the majority of them have never even once communicated with me over the years. Which is fine, but not too useful. ::: I can be found here on Blogger or else on Catagorian (Beauregard or The Hungry Eye). ::: To those to whom I have given permission to use my private email address, just in case it is so in your mind to, there you have the choice. ::: It has been my personal experience with Stumblers since 2006 that when given my email address almost no one has ever made use of it which has never been all that much of a revelation to me about the nature of Stumblers within the StumbleUpon framework with its Toolbar and Private Messaging and forwarding of Stumble messages in PM. ::: Personally, I rarely use email for communication as we have a quaint bit of electronic equiment aptly named "telephone". A little Canadian invention, if I recall. It still works. And of course, there is my favourite: Canada Post. Nothing can be more delightful than receiving a real letter, written by hand, on real paper, in a real envelope with a real postage stamp. Kind of warms the cockles of my heart and I save every handwritten letter and postcard I have ever received since 1900. Or thereabout. Close enough. Back to the StumbleUpon Fall CleanUp grind. The wheels of the gods grind slowly, but they do grind.

THE QUESTIONS THAT PLAGUE US ALL IN UNSTABLE, UNCERTAIN TIMES::: Is the world economy going to impact on Canada's own economy?:::The follow up question: How is the global economy playing out in your own particular situation?:::Then: What are your neighbours and friends thoughts on the matter?:::My final question: Where to now?

I think I've had enough of this nonsense. It's time to go do something mindless: a bit of tv fluff might do it. It's all fluff. G'nite.

JUST FOLKS::: It matters not whether one has "scads of wealth", or is ragged and homeless. Whether one is in a desert or on a mountain top. In a palace or in a hovel. Whether one has never known illness or is dying as the result of an illness. Whether one is in prison without windows, or in a room of one's own with walls of windows. Whether it be Spring, Summer, Autumn of Fall the only mammal on this earth that has the vocal capability of griping about every twist and turn, every hangnail, every justified, unjustified, real or imaginary sense of entitlement is Homo Sapiens. We gripe, fight, argue, go to war against each other with abandon every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day, of every week of every month, of every year, of every decade, of every century, of every millenium for all of Eternity. None the less.

The eye does not see what the mind does not know.

THE TERRIBLE PEOPLE By Ogden Nash::: People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it. And I wish I could afford to gather all such people into a gloomy castle on the Danube and hire half a dozen capable Draculas to haunt it. I don't mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it, But I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it. But no, they insist on being stealthy About the pleasures of being wealthy, And the possession of a handsome annuity Makes them think that to say how hard it is to make both ends meet is their bounden duty. You cannot conceive of an occasion Which will find them without some suitable evasion. Yes indeed, with argumets they are very fecund; Their first point is that money isn't everything, and that they have no money anyhow is their second. Some people's money is merited, And other people's is inherited, But wherever it comes from, They talk about it as if it were something you got pink gums from. Perhaps indeed the possession of wealth is constantly distressing, But I should be quite willing to assume every curse of wealth if I could at the same time assume every blessing. The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can't cure, Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor. Certainly there are lots of things in life that money won't buy, but it's very funny... Have you ever tried to buy them without money?

Very cute::: Couldn't resist capturing Google's animated "Jim Henson's 75th Birthday" tribute.::: How many generations of children have grown up watching The Muppets? The children learned their primary numbers with the gang. Relative things like "near" and "far". They learned about playing well with others. About friendship and sharing. And giving and receiving. That every child is a "special child". That having a fight with your best buddy doesn't mean being mad forever. That cookies are yummy for your tummy. But not too many. That the colour blue is okay, so is yellow and green, and all the lovely colours on earth. I liked the Cookie Monster, but most specially Oscar the Grouch. Most of all I liked Jim Henson for having such a wonderful vision and being able to remember what it was like to be a little boy and never grow up.

STUMBLE UPON::: It's not dead, not even close. ::: It reminds of the infamous OOPS! moment Obit:- "The rumour of my passing is greatly exaggerated." :::March 10, 2006 - October 24, 2011 I have nothing to say. Which is why I say it so well. - Gwen Beauregard (2011):::

LAD-A-DOG: HIS STORY::: Laddie was the personification of a true working dog: a dog with a job. The pure definition of the meaning: companion dog. He was not a “toy” nor a “pampered pet.” Laddie was first and foremost, a dog. Laddie’s incorruptable temperament, untiring patience and tolerance, loving and loved by all who dealt with him daily on a personal basis be it at home, in Seniors’ residences, Kindergartens, The Montreal Children’s and Ste. Justine’s hospitals Oncology Departments where he served from age two years to age ten when he retired from Service. Laddie loved everyone and absolutely everything, and trees! He was heard to bark only three times in his entire life. Each of the three times it was a clear and present danger. Laddie didn’t need to be “taught” anything, show him something once, twice he got it: uncanny. He was as as fearless as he was brave. He would never once start an argument, neither would he back away. He was from a working Westie background, tough, with stamina, sometimes expressing opinions of his own, without any bad habits often associated with the West Highland White. What he may have lacked in Show quality ‘pizzazz’ he more than made up for in sound health, personality and a clownish character. He was a fun dog and pleasure to own and work with. Laddie was more of a ‘teacher’ than a ‘student’ of anything. In his own way he taught life lessons better than most human beings, without ever having to utter a word. He did it without any mistaking his intent. He was an honest broker. His life was not lived in riches but his life was rich and rewarding to all. For all those reasons, Laddie is sorely missed. A much abused word, it was true: Laddie was unique in the history of Westies. Held in my arms Laddie died within seconds, peacefully and without any sign of trauma by lethal injection on Friday, September 9, 2011 at the Laurentien-Keller Animal Hospital, Montreal.

SOCIAL NETWORKS::: Implicit is the tacit understanding that, within the framework of all of these sites, there will be charlatans, shysters, miscreants, the hunter and the hunted, the disgruntled, the mad and the maddening, the rabble rousers, the confused, the extremists, the pretenders, the pretentious, the soul-catchers, the long suffering, the nihilists, the hedonists, the self-absorbed, the exhibitionists, the lonelyhearts, the diehards, the cynical, the maladroit, the fanatics in extremis at both ends of an endless spectrum, the sincere alongside with the insincere, the critics, the misunderstood, the foolish and the wise, the genius residing side-by-side in an unending parade of characters, from bathos to pathos, and just as in real life itself outside the borders of the confines of something we have come to know as "Social Networking" we come upon the eternal optimists - and we are blessed for they are the believers and the poets who write words upon the winds of change. - Gwen Beauregard ~ (2011)

An old friend, P. J. Hammer,
dropped by today and left a kindly and uplifting message
for me.

This is the sort of thing that can feed upon itself and
give one hope that all is not for naught. It is always
inspiring to hear from people for whom one has respect
and admiration.

Thank you Pete.

Thank you ever so much for your kind words.
Much appreciated.

- gwen

Love and Marriage...like a horse and carriage...

A MODERN LOVE STORY

I was waiting for my time to give birth. I had a long wait.

Outside the door to my hospital room, in a convoy of babies
born that day, were being wheeled in their tiny, clear plastic
cribs on their way to the Nursery. They had just come from
being fed by their new mothers. I asked one of the two Nurses
in charge to stop for a minute as I had, out of the corner of
my eye, seen this absolutely gorgeous, cute, tiny little head
of wispy, black tufts of hair belonging to a most adorable
little baby girl. Oh my God, she was most beautiful baby I'd
ever seen. Huge dark pools for eyes. All dressed in pale pink
with pale blue ribbons. What a sight! I never forgot her. I
followed them right to the Nursery, and through the glass
watched silently at that one crib and never let my eyes wander.
A routine I would do every day after feeding time for Moms.

That evening in an emergency last minute turn of events, I
gave birth by C-Section to my son Iain Christopher at precisely
8:20 PM.

The years and decades passed and Iain grew into an interesting
adolescent with periwinkle, flashing blue eyes that could be used
as Stop lights, flaxen blond hair, with a wonderful smile that
somehow made him look like he was doing an imitation of Donald Duck
- that mouth of his! It was cute and always made me smile. He was
the most natively intelligent, gentle, quiet, somewhat reserved
young man, with a wonderful sense of humour. The sort of kid you
could sit down with and have a real conversation on any number of
subjects. Iain's insights were as startling as they could be
devastating in one so young.

Memorably he did have this one girlfriend when he was in his first
year of high school. Johanne Bergeron, a classmate, whom I always
called "Yohanee" much to his chagrin. "How's Yohanee?" I'd laugh.
"MOM! Stop that. Her name is JOHANNE, not "Yohanee"!", he'd reply in
frustration. "I don't know, sounds like Yohannee to me," I'd feign
Ignorance. "Well, just don't call her 'Yohannee' when she's here,
or I'll die of mortification." Johanne was a quiet, serious, smart,
tiny very cute brunette from an ultra Pentecostal family. How those
two happened forever remained a mystery to us. But we liked her.

Fast forward, Iain was by now in Toronto working full-time at his
job as a photographer and photo-journalist. He was sharing his
apartment with a girl. They'd been living together for some time. He
was totally smitten wih her...loved her to pieces. Very obviously a
"keeper". I teased them both, a lot. I liked her immediately. One
Easter when they came to Montreal for the week-end we were standing
in the kitchen and I asked her if she loved Iain and without any
hesitation she looked me straight in the eye and replied, "Yes, I
love him very much." I liked that she was so focused, more mature,
more stable, more of a lot of qualities and always felt and told Iain
that she was the best thing that ever happened to him. Out of Wendy's
presence I asked Iain the same question I'd posed to her, "Do you love
Wendy?" I needn't have asked. Together, they complemented each other
in every way. I was happy for both. They lived together for eight whole
years. I kidded Iain on his trips home about that too. "Honey," I'd say
to him, "living in sin are you? I know a little church up the street..."
The usual: "MOM....!"

It wasn't easy for them as they struggled with their lives together,
their careers, their hopes and dreams for the future. The love of Iain's
life was always Wendy. There had never was any girl in his life whom he
loved quite so much and with such dedication as to Wendy from the get-go.

Here's the kicker:

Iain and Wendy met each other in downtown Montreal quite by accident
when Iain was then age 16.

Wendy was born in Montreal, St. Mary's Hospital, May 7, 1963, 8:00AM
Iain was born in Montreal, St. Mary's Hospital, May 7, 1963, 8:20PM

Mother's day that year, fell on Sunday, May 9th - which was also my
21st birthday.

What kind of odds are those? The Fates would have it.

Iain and Wendy were married to each other, moved to Seattle, Washington,
and have two beautiful children - a girl: Bronwyn; a boy: Lucas
(pronounced "Luka).

They both have active careers, are wonderful parents who love their
children more than anything. I'm happy for them all. No parent could ask
for more.

Wendy still remains the sun, the moon and the stars around which his
world revolves.

Wonder what became of 'Yohannee'? ha ha ha...

THE TWO SOLITUDES

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Irving Layton on Irving Layton

"It is as dangerous to overestimate the goodness of people
as to underestimate their stupidity."

"My neighbour doesn't want to be loved as much as he wants
to be envied."

"When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them
of only one thing: they are as clever as you."

"God is indeed dead. He died of self-horror when He saw
the creature He had made in His own image."

"If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened
to someone who studies the passion stains on the bedsheets."

"Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except
madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and
self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope."

"Everything except writing poems and making love ends up
by finally boring me."

"Blake was right; praise is the practice of art. Joy,
fullness of feeling, is the core of the creative mystery.
My dominant mood is that of ecstasy and gratitude. To have
written even one poem that speaks with rhythmic authority
about matters that are enduringly important is something
to be immensely, reverently thankful for - and I am
intoxicated enough to think I have written more than one."

"Idealist: a cynic in the making."

~*~*~*~

THE WOUNDED CHILD

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