TubaOrNotTuba

This sounds like something I would tell my children. Back in the day I used to go to the cinema. Not for the popcorn. I like to watch movies. Mind you, the TV only had two channels which meant that the cinema was a good way to be distracted on an evening. Anyhow I haven’t done much of that is last while. I can still handle sitting and watching something for 90 minutes. Proof he said I watched a documentary today, for that amount of time about the changes in the business of cinema today. And then I started to think about when was the last time I actually went to a movie. This is not a reason but it took me 24 hours on a boat to get there. And in the movie that Potter kid was married with children. Do you get a time frame yet. Over the last decade I have not gone to the cinema a single time. But our culture depends upon us knowing about what is in the theatre and what people are saying about it. Even I have heard about Barbie. There have been a lot of great movies during my lifetime and no, I am not going to start listing. I think the first one involved a shaggy dog which should give me the credit for how many years I’ve been doing this. No, we are now a TV family and even there I watch fewer movies than before. Eyesight. But as I said this is a cultural thing and it is important to know what is going on on the big screen. I think they’ve stopped making those Potter movies and I have never seen anything involving a Spiderman. I am glad that I watched the documentary about cinema. It will give me talking points the next time the subject comes up. And I will not have to admit that I never went for the popcorn to anyone else. As for watching videos we no longer own a VCR, a relic from a past age.

This might be an important news story. In central Ontario, not far from the 407, the roo was recaptured. Based on the standards of Canada this is akin to capturing a Unicorn. And there’s video to back it up. During a routine inter-zoo transfer the attention of the guardians slipped. The marsupial jumped over their heads and headed on down the road. Like something from a fever dream. Three days were spent trying to recapture the got away. Wisely the search teams would stop for darkness. And sometime yesterday they recaptured the errand marsupial. The teams have been briefed about the proper technique. Grab him by the tail and hang on. And someone did. I do not know if there was any wrestling involved but one of the game wardens was punched in the nose. It fits with every cartoon I’ve ever seen except that this was real. I should probably download some of that video footage for my own archives in training. After all Ontario has no corner on the strange market of refugees running from captivity. From what I’ve learned roo is on his way to a new home in a small private zoo. And the guard is expected to recover from his injuries. His pride might take a little longer. I’m sure that when he went into his wildlife management course this was not something on the list of training episodes. But sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. And I have no doubt that a comedy show is going to add this one to their routine. Come on who would have thought in the land of ice and snow a rampant roo.

Have you considered the risks of living on earth if you are a Flat Earth person? For me the thought that I could fall off the edge if I walk far enough is terrifying. I am so glad that gravity exists. I have found another odd way of imagining your place on earth. For brevity, let us refer to them as sovereign citizens. This is a belief that laws do not refer to you. Happily it seems to come into play most often win stop for traffic offences but I digress. From what little research I have taken, it seems that the belief is that once upon a time in law, someone wrote that the law lasted forever. I want that simple word with all its magical powers, others have decided that laws can either be altered nor repealed again as it refers to them. An odd view of your place in society to be sure. Some individuals go to great lengths to prove that they are not subjects. They memorize long passages of old documents. Or, they place fake license plates on their car in the mistaken belief that the authorities will never notice. Given the number of videos available that is a misconception. A decision to not pay taxes also cause trouble for you further down the road. As I said, I am not someone who believes in these things. The earth is round which is why I have never fallen off and I am definitely not a citizen of my own world. But it is fun to watch how others will bend reality to try to prove their mistaken belief. I have too much time on my hands obviously which is why I can go and discover about silliness. It is fun though. Imagine how boring life would be if all you had were volumes of statutes. Oh wait, is that not what lawyers do? Glad I dodged that little rabbit hole.

There is a certain truth to the idea that once you stop looking you will find it. A common theme in adventure games. And in our backyard. Today our first male northern cardinal. A red one just like in the pictures. Stayed just outside the window all afternoon. I still don’t have my penguin but I have my cardinal. One of our neighbors stopped by to find out how you hook up your printer to your computer. To me that is a totally open-ended question akin to how do you make cookies. The ones you eat. Without knowing a whole set of details there is no way to give a recipe for success. And so, he now has our phone number and he will go home and look at his printer and try to decide what is actually there. Better him doing that than me making a road trip. It will probably be easy turn everything on sit back and applied your own success. But, maybe not. As I said earlier too many variables. We have a love hate relationship with our printers. Plural. We recognize things as being in equilibrium and we try not to tilt the table. In printing like so many other things gravity is a factor. I am glad that when I bought toner for the laser all those years ago I bought plenty. We have not run out yet which will mean we do not have to go and buy something new. We no longer print as much as we used to and so we should be good for another long while. Still more practical than finding a pencil and copying out things longhand. I can remember doing that.

Like about half of mankind I have a beard. Not much of a beard. Enough to be noticed but not enough to be praised. From time to time I attack the growth with one of those little plastic razors that you buy at the pharmacy. It takes time but there is rarely any blood spilled. Which leads me into an area where I have no personal experience. The cult of the straight razor. I have never used one although I know how to identify it and I realize that you can do serious bodily harm with one. I’ve seen those movies. However my father did not use one and although I suspect my grand father did, it is a certain thing that my great grand father never had such a tool. He comes from the time when the straight razor and the strap to sharpen it or common. What little I do know about straight razors and their use comes from a cousin of my mother. He was a professional barber and at one point he explained about how you learned to be a Barber. It involved balloons and shaving cream. Again I have no personal experience but he explained that you put the leather on the balloon and then you remove it using the razor. Sharp side out. And you practiced until you got it right. That is no explosion. Perhaps that’s what kept me from never trying to use such a tool on myself, not the movies not the cult, rather the fear of an explosion and air leaving the balloon too quickly. I had an image of my own throat cut at my own hand and I never went there. Now, those little plastic razors we buy at the pharmacy are hopeless it takes almost as long to shave as it does to grow the original hair. And yes I do use the sharp edge of it. There has to be a better way. I think this explains why so many old photos showed men with whiskers. They, too realize the danger and facial hair was not that big an issue. Oh well the weekend continues. Down in town they’re having a parade and I will hear all about it later. That parade features a fellow with whiskers apparently.

I’ve been sitting here thinking about my job history. Across a lifetime I have been a wage earner in a number of specific sectors. I managed to avoid health unlike the rest of my family but I did do things like agriculture manufacturing lots technology. Was any sector better than another? Hard to judge. I don’t think I ever had a really bad job. Somewhere less than glorious and glamorous but I muddle through and I still don’t know how I avoided across all those years getting into retail. In fact I don’t think any of my siblings fell into that trap either. My children? For sure. And now I realize that I will not have to go back to work. There comes a point where you are past that best before date. In the same way that I will never be called up for military service I will never have to go and make a hamburger for a line of customers or try to make proper change. Those are all jobs from someone elses life now. I wonder what it would be like to sell big ticket items? Things like homes or luxury cars, or airplanes. I would love to try and sell an airplane. How hard can it be? You check to make sure that they have their license and then you take them out and do the walk around and then you put them in this file this chair and you watch them fly away hoping they will return to pay their bill. Maybe I should have made movies about jobs I never had. That could be interesting. Anyhow I have no tails to tell of getting a line of burgers out on the counter and that might be a shortfall in my life story.

Sometimes a task can seem too large. Think back to being in school when reading that term paper was almost too much to take on. I have one of those tasks right now. No term paper involved. Some time ago I discovered a broken string. On my guitar. The one I rarely play in part because it has a broken string. Now I have the new string and I have the tool required to pull the peg and get the job done. The tool is in one of three places. A familiar theme to anyone who knows me. All I have to do is go and get the tool from where I last they’re getting distracted by everything else along the way. I have worked through the task in my mind’s eye many times. And my boat of getting it done is bug in the unseen sands. It all might go well. I might go to the first place and find the tools there and come over and just change the string. Or I might not setting off a long chain of where should I look next events. Right now I would prefer to go and shovel the driveway although there is no snow. Just a simpler task. Or I could admit defeat and go with the guitar and string in hand to someone who does this professionally. I will explain why I need their assistance to perform what is actually a very simple task. And they would laugh and I would laugh in 5 minutes later I would have a six-string guitar instead of the current 5. But ideally I want to complete the task using a lifetime of skills. I want to find the tool that I purchased for this task and simply get it done. Is this what they mean by procrastination? So far I have done nothing other than plan for a job that has not begun or begun. Something like that. I can request assistance but then I would have to explain the task in all its glory. I wonder if I can ask Alexa? Something simple like Alexa where is my peg puller. Alexa would know this I think. And so another day goes on. Maybe tomorrow.

During a recent trip in another province we happened to use a new highway. I understood that the highway was not exactly public. The term used elsewhere is toll road. Except that we never saw a toll booth or any other way to pay the small fee required. Instead several months later in the post we received a bill and this is where things get muddy. The stated toll for the highway was $1. Seems fair. But given that they took a picture of our vehicle license plates the added some additional fees. Little more than $4 to take that picture. A couple more dollars in processing fees. All in all before payment we had gone over the $9 mark. And there was a slight update that if we were to do this more than six times per year we could then purchase a transponder and do things at a rate that seemed better for everyone involved. My guess is that they are quite happy to take pictures automatically and swell the cost of travel by several 100%. Yes I realize the total bill was not that large but there were no signs to tell us we were going on to a toll road and there was no tollbooth and no other way of knowing that we were facing fees other than to wait for an unexpected paper in the mail. This is probably how a lot of economy is going to go in future. We used to say nickel and dime people. The price is much higher. I would love to have a camera that could capture an image at high speed and turn it into my name and address. The highway authority has to pay for such things so I guess swelling from $1 to nine makes perfect economic sense. I do miss the old way you threw a coin at a basket and waited for the light to change. A bit like a game in an arcade. We were offered none of that pleasure just the privilege of paying a bill to an unseen face in another province. Also almost every highway in that province is public with this small exception. Someone is making money otherwise it would not exist. And I say that living in a province separated from the outside world by a toll bridge. Tolls are insidious.