TubaOrNotTuba

How can anyone be bored, when there are so many fascinating things to discover? Seriously, we live in a world where Wikipedia can give you random facts for the day, and where an astonishing array of government documents and forms can provide some of the finest puzzles ever created. In fact, forget Gordian knots and Mynoan mazes; let’s just spend a little time looking at something as simple as international travel regulations. I’ve got that “centre of the universe” mentality that marks me as a Canadian, so your mileage/kilometrage might vary.

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I have enjoyed some wonderful times at the beach. Days and nights where the world shrunk to a small area of sand, surf and a campfire created out of recycled storm wrack. If I was given to superlatives, I might even refer to some of those places as a bit of paradise, within the limits imposed by my own experience and organized religions. But, what if that paradise was also a description of Hell?

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We’ve been busy medically around here for the last couple of days and nights. Following the protocol outlined by the resident student and then amplified and ventilated by two surgeons, our team is dripping drops and smearing salves and popping pills into me. Currently, there are 77 separate interventions, at a frequency of every 25 to 3o minutes (which makes me remember a great tune by Chicago, 25 or 6 to 4, buts that just the ramblings brought on by the varieties of cortisone. I think.

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Based on the last couple of days, I’m revising my list of favourite songs. Newly added hits include that one by the Beatles, the one that goes “Cluse your eye and I’ll kiss you” as well as an old marching song, the one that starts “My eye has seen the coming of the glory of the Lord”. On second though, after watching the Bill Mayer documentary Religulous, the second one is perhaps too much based on man and his imperfections.

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While violence continues unabated in other parts of the world, here in Canada we stand in witness to attacks on the helpless (fill in the blank). Let’s see: in Halifax, a bus driver attacked a helpless toy seal. Here in my neighbourhood, police are on alert, because someone has been shooting helpless bus shelters.

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Was that a bird? Or a plane? Under the “cover of darkness”, it may well have been the ISS followed by an eager Shuttle. Oh, the stories I’ll be able to tell my descendants, as we sit around whatever technology supercedes the family hearth in decades to come. Next time, I should bring someone with better eyesight and a deeper familiarity with heavenly bodies than the one I received during an audited astronomy course with “Whistling Earl” back in the last century at UPEI.

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Any lie when caught out; that fits the current government. Right now, the minister responsible for culture at the federal level is trying to explain how less is really more, when it comes to investment in anything that falls under his purview. After all, when a country is in tough economic times, the only thing that really counts is Big Business; think banks, automotive manufacturers and oil. Everything else is frivolous. I can barely listen to such inanities, except that the questions are coming from an interviewer that isn’t “strongly onside” with our present gang of goombahs. Maybe, perhaps, enough people will see that the emperor and his retinue really don’t have any clothes.

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This afternoon saw me out trying to buy little things. Stuff like headphone adapters, that stores such as Radio Shack would have had by the boxload only a few years ago. Now, the orphan child of that venerable chain is about to be sent to a new foster home, where only telephones will be given a place in front of the fireplace. The clerk knew what I was looking for (he’s older than you might think), but that doesn’t change the way stock is now allocated. If you’re looking for little stuff, grab it while you can, because “the times, they are a changing”.

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Tonight was, if you will, a celebration of technology. After seven years of use, our videoconference camera has served us well, but the shortcomings were outshining the benefits, so after several months of research, installation and testing, a new system was given it’s “baptism under fire” this evening. And, after the fact, I think we left the customers satisfied.

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Like the rest of you, I listen to the news, I read the news, I avoid being the subject of the news. The rules are clear. But from time to time, my cynicism increases, nourished by the content. Take, as an example, a trial that’s winding down in the US, involving  a huge case of investor fraud. I can’t comment on the veracity, but I can comment on the voracity of one of the parties involved.

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