Remember When You Were Young….

I appreciate all kinds of good music. "Good "is defined as what I like, and what I don't like is stamped as "Bad".

My band is Pink Floyd. I liked the revival Gilmour lead 80s-90s stuff, certainly a good show, but the real Floyd ends with "The Wall" in 1979. The final cut..well….

I worked with a young musician in 2005 when the Geldolf live aid concerts were done, and he was even blown away by the one-off throw together concert the Floyds did with the more accessible songs like "Money" and "Wish you were Here". I laughed, and said yeah, I did not expect them to play "Careful with that Axe Eugene", in which Waters whispers then screams at the top of his lungs for the several minutes.

One's appreciation of art and music is entwined with one's emotions and state of mind at the time you read/listen. I re-read Tolstoy and loved every bit of it. I tried to re-read Dostoyevsky, and couldn't do it. Mr D could write, I just wasn't into it when I tried to re-read it.

Waters took over the band – you can hear the exact point – on Animals during "Dogs" when he takes over lead from Dave in the line "gotta admit…..". Now I know "Dogs" is 17 plus minutes long, but he kept the stick for the rest of the relay. I was very mad at Roger for a very, very long time. In 2005 I figured if Dave, Rick and Nick could forgive Roger, maybe I could too. In the winter of 2006, I re-considered it all from The First album on…and I was back!!

Now leave it to me to chose, as his favourite band, one where the founder went totally off, having fried his brain on LSD, and where the eventual new leader went almost as badly off into a bathos that was simply not listenable.

My dearly departed best friend of 25 years who left us in august 2007 attended the 1977 Montreal Olympic stadium concert where the band pretty much imploded as a live act, collapsing under their own weight of self-absurdity. She had a bootleg of that concert and the tender, loving anthem of "Echoes" was differently presented as, since it was at the end of the tour, Dave and Rick's voices were shot to hell and instead of a few mellow hippies singing about labyrinths and coral caves, it sounded like Johnny Rotten and Iggy Pop in a duet. It was also where Roger spat at the audience, something that Mr. Rotten did, and was a Rotten thing not a Roger thing. Of that friend, my tribute to her is, and shall always be, from "Shine on you crazy Diamond", Roger's tribute to Sid:

Pile on many more layers, and I'll be joining you there.

Next Week: How Jethro Tull helped me lose my religion.

Tom

A Process

This did not have a happy ending. But the ending is another thing all together.

I do have a fair bit of experience with the Ontario health care system as I had a close family member who was ill off and on for over 35 years (the one I am talking about here). She was in very poor health the last few years of her life. Also, I worked in a non-medical role in 2 different, large hospitals – one in 1999, and another in 2001-2.

In July 2008, I was thrust, along with other family members, into the position of being in a hospital to provide support for major surgery to a close family member. On the day of the surgery we first sat in a pre-check in waiting area still with the patient herself. After check-in, we went to wait for her in the "waiting to be prepped, but has already been admitted" waiting room. Again the patient was still sitting with us. Then, she was called to be prepped. When she had been prepped for surgery, we remained in waiting room #2. Then, we were told she was prepped and we went to waiting room #3, in the "prepped, but not yet in surgery" waiting room. Here you could go two loved-ones at a time to see her in the prep room while she was waiting to be wheeled into the OR. Then, when she was off to the OR we were sent to another floor completely. We remained there in the "while the operation is in progress" waiting room.

One miss-step had occurred – she had gone for full blood work at a clinic the day before. Those results had been sent like lost luggage into limbo. It's as if the tests had never taken place. So, if the stress of surgery wasn't enough, they did an entire new set of blood tests on the cusp of he surgery. That could have gone better.

Waiting in the surgical room: Well, this was like enduring a missed or delayed flight connection at an airport, but with the added bonus of having a close family member having a serious operation! We had to push to get the first update. Finally a nurse or surgeon came to tell us there had been a delay as they had to fine tune the machines that collectively go "ping" to be in working order for the surgery. We were treated very well as this person left the OR to talk to us and that was helpful. When it was completed the head surgeon talked to us and filled us in, and stayed until all of our questions were answered. We were very, very well treated and informed.

It was a very structured process – not simply for the patient, but also for the loved-ones. I did simply not expect that kind of rigid structure. It seemed to be well thought out and probably well evolved since the bleeding with leeches era.

If you watch Grey's or House, let's say that what goes on as portrayed on television is done so for dramatic purposes. Reality is very different from drama. Since I have a B.A. in English, hopefully this is not something I only recently discovered. I also side with Alfred Hitchcock that drama is real life with all the boring parts cut out. On TV, the waiting room seems to be near the emergency entrance, right out in the open. I suspect this helps segue to plot B where the car crash or shooting accident victims come blasting through the doors and words like "Stat" and "GSW" are yelled out. We were far from any madding crowds on the 3^rd floor, nowhere near any main door. If I may use the term, we were in a place that seemed sterile.

I watched Michael Michael Moore's "Sicko" and while one must obviously take into consideration "Moore's Law", that he is going to wildly twist his thesis to suit his conclusion, I get the impression that in The United States, underwriters determine the course of a patient's treatment in many, many cases. I did not get that impression from my experience – that the hospital administration was on the phone to OHIP to approve treatment. I got the impression that the medical people made the medical decisions. Billing comes later. Our way is better. Period.

George Carlin

"The Greatest thing since sliced bread". So this is it, huh folks? The Pyramids; The Great Wall of China; Even a lava lamp, to me is greater than sliced bread. You got a knife, you got a loaf SLICE THE FUCKIN' THING!!

I think he was a great social commentator in the vein of Mark Twain (not the novelist but his public persona) and Will Rogers. In my case as a North American, Irish, Catholic, Atheist, I understood his perspective.

Most people get lower key when they get older. George got angrier. He was willing to take on religion in a country where you are pretty much not allowed to do that. Where the most idiotic idea, if it's author calls it "religion", gets you on CNN during prime time. There is no other 1^st world nation where that happens.

As Jon Stewart said, the good thing about George is that he left us thousands of hours of video.

In all that video and audio, one really always makes me chuckle. The famous 7 words lunched a law suit. One minister objected to them being aired. At some point during the process, George said:

Hey Reverend, the radio has two knobs, although I am pretty sure he is uncomfortable with anything that has two knobs. But, the first knob changes the station. The second one TURNS IT OFF.

What was also amazing is that I even missed the first decade and a half of his career, due to my age, yet he was a comic presence from my teens until my mid-forties. He never caught on as an actor, like other comedians, but he did do a children's show!

Along with Richard Pryor, and even before them Lenny Bruce, he expanded the boundaries of what was acceptable in stand-up comedy. But like a Picasso of gags, George knew the rules he was breaking. A lot of today's comics are obscene and vulgar, but far from Picasso-like, they are monkeys flinging paint at canvas.

George, as much as any single performer, actor or individual artist, seemed to take my brain where it was going to go anyway – but he paved the way.

Unfortunately, unlike Twain, rumours of his death were not at all exaggerated.

RIP You irreverent old Hippie!

Tom

Hardship

“Rich people are different”
“Yes, they have more money"
- The Great Gatsby

An article in today’s paper, begins:

A number of charity and awareness walks may cause some serious traffic congestion in the city today.

Um, ok, factual and practical – but it kind of shows what priorities people have these days, or perhaps, have always had. It must be hell for a hung-over rock star puking in his limo to be held up by people out walking to raise money for children with autism.

After my “80” in grade 13 economics, my knowledge of the subject has been on a downward bust cycle, no booms. But I once heard that when the employment rate goes up, stocks go down. Isn’t that awful? Mr. and Ms. Suburbia have to wait another month to re-model the breakfast nook because some low-life jerk gets herself a minimum wage job serving coffee.

It must have been a strange world to live in – czarist Russia, where 97% of the people were serfs living at bare subsistence level, and 3% of the people owned everything. At least in our world I think that 1% own 90% of things at least there is 10% left for the rest of us to fight over.

Intersting Observation

I was waiting for a subway train at union and I had some gum I wanted to get rid of. Then I remembered hearing that I would not find a garbage can (and I DIDN'T) as they are really neat places to hide bombs and IED's. I forget if that was a post 9/11 change or a 7/7 one. I do recall some Jewish fellows all named "IRA" placing bombs in garbage cans in the 70s in London. So I spat the gum on the tracks which i assumed would not result in a derailment.

TF

Eight Belles

A horse finishing second then breaking both ankles and having to be euthanized right on the track is a nasty thing. Barbaro died of injuries sustained in 2006. I first remember this happening in 1975. Another Filly, in fact the most successful Filly of all time, Ruffian, broke a leg and later had to be put down. I had followed this horse’s career for some time. I never really followed racing again because this broke my heart. I had to be taken aside and told she had been put down like an aunt had died. I am actually unofficially named after an ancestor who was a harness racer.

Garth Woolsey in today’s Toronto Star asked the same question I had asked myself: Is this a cruel sport that should be banned? Well, certainly as in any sport, such as getting rid of rug turf in football that injuries (which with horses usually means fatalities) must lead to changes in safety.

Joe Theisman broke his leg on national TV, but he ended up in the broadcast booth, not in the ground.

Ray Chapman was killed by a pitch in a 1920 game between Cleveland and New York. This lead to major changes in baseball.

An outcry has likened racing to cock or dog fighting. We find these "sports" to be repugnant. We don’t mind it when people fight. But then again, people choose to do it.

No, it is not the same as dog fighting, as horses naturally run.

As sad as I am at another beautiful animal dying for money and entertainment I am going to go with the theory that what happened Saturday is rare. We don’t hear about the thousands of daily races where nothing happens. We don’t hear about planes that don’t crash, bridges that don’t collapse or people who did not get murdered.

Being a race horse is much, much safer than being president of The United States. There have only been 43 of those and 3 of them were murdered. Reagan came close, and shots have been taken at many more. But we don’t ban this job.

Tragedy yes and, I hope very much, rare.

Tom.

A Stan Rogers Line

On a Stan Rogers Live album, as he is introducing a song he says "Ontario is now a 'have-not' Province". 35 years later that phrase was used all over the place. I am not going to get into the actual condition a province has to be in to officially be one, nor am I going to actually learn what it means. The spirit does fine for me.

There was an editorial in The Toronto Star recently. I think it was abour how EI differs between provinces. The Star pointed out that these decisions are made as if there are still tons of jobs in Ontario. There aren't.

There aren't

TF

A Decade Since

These days when I am at work doing tech support, if I want to feel/act very old I’ll throw in the phrase “hey, I go back to the punch card era!”. I guess I am only a few cranky rants away from wearing my pants under my armpits.

I have been using the internet since 1991 before there even was a WWW. Newsgroups were where scientists exchanged information about particle physics. Ok, in my case it was the latest episode of Star Trek! But I won’t even go back that far, let alone to punch cards (and Van Halen and The original cast of SNL, work boots worn to school….).

Let’s go back to say 1998: An even decade. By then almost everyone I knew was using computers and the internet either at home or at work. E-mail had become an acceptable way to communicate with others. But everyone was still on dial-up so downloading music or full-length videos was in its infancy. Yahoo was the number one search engine. If you wanted to hear a radio program you had to, well, listen to the radio or record it on to a cassette. You could buy CDs but few could make them themselves. DVD players were around if you were rich and no way anyone was ever going to make them themselves (what do DVD-Rs go for now – 40 cents?).

Most people were still learning from things called “books”. Now it so happens in that year all my books were about computers as I was a tech student at tech college.

Yes, it was a very primitive world. You were lucky to get 75 channels on your tv! If you even had a cell phone you could not get an e-mail there. AND you had to make phone calls from a phone and not your computer. That’s right you had to use your radio for radio, your phone for phone calls and your computer for emails. What the fuck?

Camera’s used something called “film” and unless you had a neato Polaroid, you had to pay someone to develop this film. Only then would you find out that 11 of your 12 pictures completely sucked! (There was no “delete” button).

When you rode the bus, or drove your car, you had to play a CD that you actually had to buy, or deal with the performance loss of a cassette player if you wanted to cheap out and record other people’s CDs. Anyone with a laptop on the bus was actually WORKING and not watching Season 4 of “Corner Gas”.

And while there was spam, it did not comprise 95% of all e-mail.

Today I got an e-mail from Stanley Kowalski. That’s right – Spam is now so bad even fictional characters are sending it!

STELLA!!!!!.....HEY STELLA!!!!!!.....

TWF

Naval Holiday

Wanting to write just comes and goes for me. I haven't posted much for about I guess 18 months.

It's not that things stopped pissing me off - being French-Irish I wake up pissed off, just that nothing new has really pissed me off, or in a new way that I wanted to write about.

The criticisms I have of Harper were there before he was even elected and he is still him. At this point it's like making Lincoln top hat jokes. (K what WAS up with those hats? I think that's when we started to poke holes in the ozone layer). Ditto Bush and they have fallen.

The major change is having a job where I am not only allowed to think, but expected to do so. So in most of my previous jobs I had to put my brain on stand-by at work, and to paraphrase the brat pack, "do my thinkin' in the evenin' time". Now, I have to power on and go through the boot process to go "live" at 2:30PM when my shift begins.

And since I talk on the phone to anyone in the world who can speak English, life is laaaak a baaaaauxxx of choclaaaaaaatttts. I have no idea what is coming up next.

For instance:

A caller was in London but he was an Italian fellow who bought his stereo equipment in Milan. European electricity and stuff works differently from North America.

a French guy from Paris was living in Hong Kong.

A very sweet 85 year old woman was in England. And she said that when it comes to technology her knowledge was like "that of the apes". I burst out laughing.

Oh, oh and the American customers. Apparently my vowels, especially my "o"s give me away.

"Where are you", one guy said.

I replied:"Just outside of Toronto".

"Canada? Jeez, what are you French or something?"

Well... actually...hee hee....

I did inherit the wine and cheese gene for sure!

Viva La Canada Libre!

TF