On November 11

I confess with shame that I'd never been to the Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph before today.  I always thought it a good thing to do, but allowed other things to put me off.  However, a pair of terrorist killings of Canadian Armed Forces members, on Canadian soil, in recent weeks, ramped up the priority of that service for me, and, apparently, for many others as well.  That, and clear skies, brought out a crowd of thousands.  (What a marvellous opportunity for intercessory prayer - people who wouldn't normally darken the doorway of a church showing up with soft hearts and joining in prayers and hymns.)  I did my best to sing the anthems and hymns, in spite of being half-strangled by a throat bug, and silently asked God for mercy on the souls of the dead, and salvation for the living.

The era of peace and safety is over.  We who cherish freedom and human rights can no longer relax and enjoy what others have paid for with their blood.  We are an island of light and truth in a rising ocean of chaos and darkness, and we have yet to acquire the habit of vigilance.  We have had it too easy for too long.

Oh, Canada!  The barbarians are at the gates.  The choice before us: stand and fight to the last man, or be overrun and enslaved.  And if the deaths of Nathan Cirillo and Patrice Vincent achieve the awaking of the Canadian people from complacency, they will not have died in vain.

We will remember them.

Fare thee well, my ferry fey

So, the Duke Point ferry terminal is up and running again at last, after, what, 4 months, and $2 million or so in repairs, and all, I hear, because of a relatively inexpensive electronic component.  Ad nauseam, we are the hapless hostages of technology.  But I have, once again, come up with a Most Satisfactory Solution.

BC Ferries should fit out all vessels with banks of oars, like the Greek and Roman galleys.  Not as the main power source, you understand, but as a backup in case of engine failure.  Man the oars with able-bodied welfare recipients, of which there is NEVER, EVER a shortage here in Lotusland.  Pay them welfare + 10%, to take care of employment expenses, and a fat cash bonus anytime they actually have to row.  Since they will only be called upon to do any real work on the rarest of occasions, they should be perfectly happy, since that's what they're doing anyway.

Round up the Occupiers and toss them in, too.  They'll love it.  They'll be out of the rain and getting money for nothing, which is all they really want, as far as I can see.  And their parents will then clean and remodel their basements, generating no end of economic activity, and maybe even go on extended vacations, boosting the tourism sector.  The possibilities are endless.  Everybody wins.

Which is why, of course, nothing like this will ever happen.

Epi-pensive

I read, sometime in the retrievable past, that the current proliferation of allergies in Western society is suspected to be due to our unusually (compared with most of human history) hygienic environment: the immune system doesn't have enough to do, so it goes a bit squirrelly and starts fighting imaginary invaders.

It occurred to me, sometime around May 1, that the Occupy movement is something very similar, on a political and sociological level.  We've had peace and safety for two generations now, and nothing loftier than our own comfort and convenience to work for.  Sounds lovely, but, being human, we languish without something bigger than ourselves to give us purpose.  How many imaginary crises have come and gone in the last few decades?  Remember the hole in the ozone?  Y2K? SARS?  Global warming?  And now we have the intellectually and morally bankrupt Occupiers, who don't seem to know what they want, other than to be free of the behavioural norms of civilized society.  And to get everything for free.

Sadly, the only thing likely to cure these yutzes is a major war.  A real war, a clear and present threat to their physical safety.  Their heads would snap back into common-sense mode pretty quickly.  Or they'd be conscripted and end up as cannon fodder.  Either way, the whining would stop and the streets would be clean.  But it's bitter medicine.

The 5% solution

After the consistently, continuously crappy weather we had up until a couple of weeks ago, there was some noise on the media about overbreeding mosquitoes. And I have come up with a Most Satisfactory Answer.

Everybody should stay unspeakably drunk all the time. That way, any mosquitoes who bite people will die of alcohol poisoning before they have a chance to reproduce. If any do survive long enough to lay eggs, the larvae will be afflicted with Larval Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (LASD) and probably won't make it, since mosquitoes, lacking opposable thumbs, have never developed the technology necessary to support special-needs larvae. And if they do live, they won't be able to bite for themselves and will have to go on blood stamps.

I wouldn't be surprised if Obama or the UN is, even now, creating a new bureaucracy for this very purpose.

Death and taxes

Why, O why are we making such an overweening fuss about the HST, a perfectly sensible consumption tax, levied only on disposable income, and only at the point of disposal thereof? If you don't want to pay HST, stay away from the mall. Drive less. Buy second-hand. Grow food. Shouldn't we be doing all those things anyway?

And why, O why do we silently suck up an ever-increasing "carbon" tax, a cash cow based on fraud, junk science, and the irresistible inclination of government to take shameless advantage of the profound gullibility of a public softened up by alarmist propaganda? Since carbon is the basis of all life, those who think it's bad can eliminate their guilt by offing themselves. And the rest of us are now being TAXED FOR EXHALING. Welcome to BC. How long can you hold your breath?

"Stupid" bomb

One small carelessness or stupidity can touch off a chain reaction of untoward events, culminating in endless inconvenience and frustration. This is a trite statement, and easily dismissed, until you're actually at the frustration end of things. A small package, sent via Fedex, failed to appear at my door last week. After several emails back and forth, we discovered the shipper had incorrectly entered the address: 2149 instead of 2140. Perfectly understandable, since the two digits are side-by-side on the keyboard. However, the good folks at 2149 have denied all knowledge of said package and claim never to have received it. And the fallout: my homestay student is out several hundred dollars and doesn't have her tickets to the NBA game she was planning to see when she travels to New York on spring break.

All because somebody hit a wrong key and didn't bother to proofread.

Reminds me of an old chant in House-That-Jack-Built style:

For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,
...blah, blah, blah...the kingdom was lost,
And all for want of a horseshoe nail.

Sigh.

Photeugenic

Some people photograph well. I am not one of them. I had every intention of blowing off the new church photo directory, but the secretary called in her SWAT team and I was taken by the arm (resistance is futile, remember) and dragged over to the sign-up sheet. So I thought I'd be a good sport and go along. Mis. Take. Did my best imitation of a pleasant, friendly smile for the camera, and the result looked like Don Knotts playing an axe murderer. How any human face can succeed in resembling both a hamster and a bullfrog at the same time is beyond me. I was particularly taken aback by the maniacal eyes. Horrifying. I was, once again, forcibly reminded of the reason for my aversion to being photographed. Years ago I would have flung myself onto my bed and sobbed for hours, but having discovered that said hours of sobbing do nothing to enhance an appearance that already qualifies as objectionable, I gave that up. I did feel vaguely nauseous for a while, though. I'm grateful that none of my kids got visited by the Ugly Fairy in their cradles.

And so the challenge is once again before me, of rebuilding my shattered self-image and, to make it resilient, basing it not on what I or others see with eyes, but what God sees. And what might that be? "Beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair." Not only that, but "Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised."

Works for me.