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.

Green eggs on face

Just in case you're still wondering about so-called "climate change," there's an informative recap of the whole sordid business here:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/ipcc_international_pack_of_cli.html

What's shocking to me is seeing people like Dr Suzuki, who was once a scientist and should therefore have retained some small regard for facts, still desperately clinging to the AGW story in the face of all the revelations of rank stupidity and downright fraud. He must have been making very good money off it all along. Makes me wonder who's been signing his paycheques. Could it be some of the same people who bankrolled Obama's affirmative-action career through Harvard and the US Senate to the White House? There's an eerie similarity in the passion both have for pulling a lot of wool over many eyes, not to mention their willingness to let truth fall away in the service of ideology.

A rose: such a clatter

Heard The Last Rose Of Summer on Radio Swiss Classic the other day (this being the radio station I happily discovered when the CBC acquired a permanent case of dysentery a little over a year ago). I remember being at the piano while an aging mezzo demolished that one. Renee Fleming, with orchestra, was much more palatable. However, I object strenuously to the lyrics, the gist of which is, that the poet sees a rose blooming alone on the bush after all the others are dead, and to save it from being lonely, he rips it apart and throws it down. This horrifies me. Suppose that rose wanted to bloom by itself, without any competition? Suppose it had been saving itself all summer long, waiting for just the right moment to be the final crowning glory of the blooming season - and along comes this gumbooted halfwit who trashes it, then goes and makes flimsy excuses on paper. A horrific and senseless act, justified in the mind of the perpetrator.

Come to think of it, that sounds like most of humanity.

Speculation and implications

After much careful research, including but not limited to the invention and manipulation of data, I have succeeded in reconstructing a typical day in the life of an acolyte in the Temple of Climate Change. He begins early, rising with the sun, although not paying any particular attention to it, because, after all, the sun never changes, and he knows for a fact that nothing about the sun could possibly affect climatic conditions on Earth. He gathers with other devotees before the graven image of Mike Mann nailed to a hockey stick, and they spend an hour or so chanting, "The science is settled. The science is settled." After a meal of grass and rainwater (because he believes in "eating locally" and nothing else grows here at this time of year), he sits down at his computer and plays with temperature graphs, flattening bumps and raising dips with the fervour and conviction of an Old Testament prophet ("Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low"). Having coaxed all his raw data to resemble the Divine Hockey Stick, he then forwards it to a select group of cronies for that process of dedicated and thorough rubber-stamping known as "peer review," then it's off to the useful idiots of the mainstream media, who will unquestioningly publish it with headlines including such hot-button words as "crisis," "urgent," and "emergency." Should anyone have the temerity to challenge him on the validity of his work, or to suggest - horrors! - that it may be somewhat lacking in such minutiae as truth, fact, or reality, he simply calls them nasty names and reverts to chanting his mantra: "The science is settled," along with its variants: "The evidence is overwhelming" and "Thousands of scientists agree..." - knowing that scientific fact is, of course, established by consensus.

After a long day of such arduous toil, he can relax, watch the weather forecast ("record cold") and possibly toy with his latest grant proposal, although this is a mere formality, since the Temple clearly has the UN in its back pocket, along with such credulous nincompoops as the President of the United States, as well as the tinpot dictators of sub-Saharan Africa, who don't give a flying poop about the climate, or their people; they just want our money and this seems like a remarkably easy way to get it. (Is anyone gullible enough to believe that Mugabe, for instance, is going to spend money on infrastructure? Give me a break...)

What makes me laugh, albeit sadly, is that, having thrown out God and replaced Him with science, we then foolishly expect our new idols to exhibit the same integrity and righteousness as the God of the Bible. Why should scientists be any less fallible than politicians, CEOs, cult leaders, or used-car salesmen? We routinely expect lying and cheating from these others; why are we so shocked when scientists do it, too? What happens when the academic community, the repository of vast amounts of specialized knowledge which the rest of us lack, turns to forwarding a totalitarian ideology?

Afterthoughts

Now that the provincial election is over, and the Legislature once again reinvented in much the same configuration as before, and both interest and tempers have retreated from their peak of lukewarm, I feel safe injecting insight.

With regard to the Green party, it seems quite clear that their status as a "viable third option" is a figment of the media's imagination. The Green party is nothing more than a single-issue fringe group, with more candidates, but not more credibility, than the Sex party or the Marijuana party or others of that ilk. Toward the end of the campaign I was driving to work one morning and a downtown intersection was peppered with Green supporters, most with anachronistic amounts of facial hair, dancing around and carrying placards. "Gracious me," thought I, "the responsible and productive members of society are at, or on their way to, work at this hour, and here are these people with leisure to stand around and wave signs. Are they all independently wealthy?" We wonders, yes we wonders.

As for the NDP, they valiantly kept the wind blowing, but, having offered nothing, achieved nothing. Just as well. They're dandy in opposition but clueless in government.

And so we're in for another four years of business and bellyaching as usual...

Bara-a-ack

It should come as no surprise that the new administration in the US continues to pay lip-service to Christianity while opposing, in its policies, many of the most basic principles thereof. That kind of thing goes back at least as far as Constantine. What saddens me is that people are so easily taken in by it - "people" meaning genuine, sincere, well-meaning Christians who fail to do their homework with regard to Obama's positions and policies, and instead, allow themselves to be carried along and lulled by his impressive speeches. Because the man can speak. No doubt about it. He is a master of crowd manipulation. But then, so was Hitler. There's not much point in talking about human rights as long as we continue to rip apart, suck out, and incinerate the most helpless humans of all. There go your much-touted future generations, sir.

Those with eyes to see should consider carefully whether we are watching this scenario unfold: "...he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest....given power to take peace from the earth, and to make men slay each other...'A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages,and do not damage the oil and the wine!'...given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth." I don't think it's likely that Barack Obama is THE antichrist. But don't forget that the spirit of antichrist is already active in the world. And our job is what it has always been: pray for those in authority. Hold out the Word of life. Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

On the off chance that I'm being a little harsh (today is, after all, his second day on the job), I will say this in favour of Barack Obama: he has the best name EVER to burp to.

Truth will out

For someone who is overwhelmingly a non-watcher of TV, it's surprising how ads (that run during the news) will catch my attention sometimes. Before advertisers start rubbing their hands in glee, however, I hasten to point out that their efforts pique my interest for reasons far removed from what the creators intend. Case in point: the Lotto Super 7 ads lately - one with a woman on a massage table, and another with a man and a bunch of vehicles. Have you noticed that there is no one around these people other than paid flunkies? Not a soul. They have all the toys, but no real relationships. And this is supposed to make me want to buy lottery tickets? Yech.

Nice to see some truth in advertising for a change.

Cold comfort

Got a new fridge a few weeks ago. This is a good thing. The old one had taken to peeing on the floor. When cats do that I have them put down. However, the job of cleaning the floor fell to me. And as I scoured on bended knee, I ruminated (okay, snarled) thus: Put a man on the moon, we can. Sent an unmanned probe to Mars, we have. But after six thousand years of technological progress, what is a woman still doing? SCRUBBING THE FLOOR, THAT'S WHAT! All those billions poured into NASA, and they still haven't come up with an unmanned probe that does housework. Now THAT would be useful. That would begin to justify the ridiculous amounts of money they suck up. Honestly, those guys are supposed to be so smart, but they can't seem to see the foolishness of looking on lifeless planets for clues to the origin of life. Since life is clearly confined to the earth, it's a safe bet that it originated here. Why not check out the historical evidence? Genesis chapter one...Come to think of it, life used to originate in my old fridge from time to time. But I threw that stuff out.

On being a dad, although I'm not

This being Father's Day, I'd like to dedicate this post to my friend and fellow-musician Dave. I read an article the other day summarizing a lot of research on the importance of a father to a child. In a nutshell, a dad who's around, and involved, has a positive impact on every imaginable aspect of a child's life. Dave is 40-something and has three school-age kids. He spent their early years with booze and cocaine as his companions, so he has some catching up to do and some long odds to beat. And he's determined to succeed. He's been clean and sober for more than a year now, and he's working hard, paying off his debts, taking parenting courses...most of all, he's being the stable, dependable father every child needs. And he knows God is on his side, too.

My prayer is simply that, having put his hand to the plow, he will not look back. Run the race with patience, brother. Keep your eyes on the prize.

NIMBY

Been following the MacLean's/Mark Steyn fiasco?

Geez, these days I don't seem able to step out of the house without committing a hate crime - MARK STEYN
http://www.macleans.ca/canada/opinions/article.jsp?content=20080604_84794_84794

Maybe it would be best if we lost this battle - At the tribunal, there's no defence of fair comment, or good faith, or even truth - Andrew Coyne
http://www.macleans.ca/canada/opinions/article.jsp?content=20080604_37964_37964

Mark Steyn says he wants to lose human rights case
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080606/macleans_article_080606/20080606?hub=TopStories

Let's be clear, now, this is Canada, not Nazi Germany or Stalinist USSR. Canada. Peace, order, and good government. Wake up, sleeping giant, before you bleed to death from gnat bites.

Gleanings

Here's some lovely inflammatory stuff to get your dander up. Wasabi for the mind.

http://www.leaderu.com/jhs/lively.html

http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=876

An adventure

So, here it is the end of May, and while the weather has warmed up somewhat, it has not yet succeeded in drying out. Hope springs eternal. More emphasis on "springs." As in "fountains." Not to mention squalls, downpours, cloudbursts...this must be the west coast. I haven't been here for a while. I spent the first 3 weeks of May rolling across this great land and singing: activities pleasant enough on their own, but, in combination, unmitigated ecstasy. The tour was that of the UVic Chamber Singers, and the timing exquisite. Canada in springtime is worth seeing. The weather was gentle and warm, the hosts were wonderful, the concerts hugely successful, and I managed to cram an amazing amount of sightseeing into a few days between Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa. We performed in Parksville, Comox, Langley, Penticton, Castlegar, Medicine Hat, Regina, Winnipeg, and Toronto. Here are some things that stuck in my mind: Langley: Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church has marvellous acoustics - the sound had a brillliance and clarity that was unmatched by any of the more venerable churches we performed in. Penticton: expecting to be billeted that night, instead we got put up in a hotel that had a pool and hot tub. Nice. Castlegar: borsch, baby, borsch, served up by local Doukhobors, a cultural enclave that has reinvented itself as a vibrant and welcoming segment of society. Regina: Holy Rosary Cathedral has about a 3-second decay, which doesn't sound like much until you're singing in it. Very cool. Winnipeg: six of us were billeted at an upscale B&B on the river, a splendid old house of similar vintage to my grandmother's, only this one was spit-polished and furnished with antiques. Gorgeous. Had two days in Toronto and squeezed in the Royal Ontario Museum, some ethnic eating, and a trip to Niagara Falls. Had a day and a bit in Montreal and went on a kamikaze walking tour of churches and other architectural landmarks, shopped in Chinatown, ate smoked meat at Kraussman's, did one floor of the Museum of Fine Arts, and loved the city and everyone in it. Had half a day in Ottawa and did similar things, including "Canada's biggest 2nd-hand book store" (four floors). I managed to get through the fantasy and murder-mystery sections, and that was it. Went up the Peace Tower, walked along Sparks St Mall to see where the CBC early-afternoon show comes from, poked through the Byward Market, and popped in to Notre Dame Basilica which is similar to the one of the same name in Montreal. Gothic design, Baroque decor. You walk in and your visual cortex threatens to shut down from sheer overload. You have to remind yourself to breathe. We don't put up buildings and decorate them to the glory of God these days, because we know that the church is not made with hands. But what are we doing instead? What do we produce, in our Christian communities, that so obviously points to the beauty and majesty of our God? Is there anything? I wonder. And sometimes we sneer that all that gold could feed a lot of hungry kids, but is that where we put our gold? What did Jesus say to the Pharisees? "You ought to practise the one, without neglecting the other." I think we could learn a lot from those who poured their resources into building for God's glory - whether or not we copy their actions, we would do well to emulate their hearts.

A renewable resource - no, really

I read an article recently about some dude somewhere who has come up with a way to create fuel out of biomass. Mind, we're not talking about turning grain into oil here, but, potentially, compost into gasoline. The inspiration? The guy was watching cows graze and listening to them fart. It dawned on him that cows must have some micro-organism in there that consumes grass and belches out methane. Methane and gasoline both being hydrocarbons, it's not unreasonable to think that a certain amount of interference with the bacterial genome might result in an organism that eats yard waste and pees gasoline. And then, oh what an era of economic and political stability would dawn...no more appeasing the Middle Eastern nut cases just because we need their oil...why, we could end hunger in the developing world and glut the Western appetite for fuel at the same time: just round up starving people wherever they be, and offer them all the beans and cabbage they can eat, in return for having their gut colonized with designer bacteria and promising to excrete into a gas can. Utopia, here we come...

Don't light a match.

Remembrance Day

Having read and heard a wide diversity of views on war, peace, peacemaking, and state-sanctioned violence around Remembrance Day, I feel a need to respond so as not to fester.

Let those who hold to positions of pacifism, conscientious objection, etc. remember that the very freedom to hold and express such opinions is won and maintained for them by those who do not refuse to bear arms, and who pay a terrible psychological price for their involvement in conflict even if they escape physical damage. They, too, are victims of war, and it is entirely appropriate to call them “heroes”, as they freely choose to put themselves in harm’s way on behalf of all of us.

For a civilized nation, the impetus for war is not imperialism, but defence of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The quarrel is an ancient one, and the foe an ideologically-fuelled hatred that would impose totalitarian oppression on one people group after another, taking away each individual’s freedom to think and choose for him- or herself. Religious freedom would be among the “collateral damage.” Furthermore, if such oppression is not kept at bay in Afghanistan and elsewhere, it will most assuredly come to our own doorstep. In fact, for those with eyes to see, the war is already all around us, but it is, so far, being fought on a political, rather than military, level. Hatred takes myriad forms, but comes, ultimately, from one source. “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Nor is it in error that the apostle Paul uses military metaphors: “Put on the full armour of God…for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Instead of engaging in petty denigration, let us boldly hold our government accountable (another hard-won freedom), and ensure that the wars our country fights are not squabbles over territory, resources, or culture, but a reluctant and well-considered defence of the (biblically-based, don’t forget) ideals of a free society.

Human nature being what it is, is anyone really, really a pacifist, through and through? I strongly doubt it. And it’s also clear that peace – the real thing, not some variety of ceasefire - can only take root when everyone gives up the desire for domination, which will happen only with the advent of the Prince of Peace. And even the One who bears that title “will rule them with an iron scepter…dash them to pieces like pottery.” And only then will they “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” May that day come soon. In the meantime, may we not fail to stand firm for what we know is right.