adios 2015

it seems like yesterday that we were welcoming 2015 and now we're saying goodbye. 2015 was one of the worst years of my life. i was prepared to say it was the worst but upon reflection, i had no interaction with the police and didn't die, so things could have been worse.

i'm big on new year's resolutions and 2015 was a spectacular success. on january 1 2014 my resolution was to regain a little of my youth through push ups. i started at ten and it hurt like crazy but i had this insane idea that if i kept pushing myself, the body would heal itself and life would be good. well, somewhere in the low twenties my shoulder blew up and that was the end of the push ups but i really, really hate to lose and i wasn't about to let some fucking push ups get the best of me. i resolved to win the battle in 2015.

around mid november 2014 i did one push up and continued to do one push up per day for a few weeks and then graduated to two push ups per day. i kept adding one push up every few weeks until i hit twenty in august. twenty was a struggle so i slowed down the rate of increase and now sit at twenty four. on a good day the first ten are like floating on air. the best part is there were no set backs with the slow increase and that made every day a success! it took me sixty years to learn this lesson; a series of small victories is better than a few large victories intermingled with a few failures. i can say with 100% certainty that a sixty year old body is seriously lacking regenerative powers. somewhere around fifty five it went to shit.

now it's time to settle on a resolution for 2016. i've been retired for 4 months and haven't straightened out the pension and finances so that might be a resolution. i could write a book on my pension fuck ups over the past few months but i don't like to dwell on failure and the pension has been a giant failure so far. maybe i'll teach rip some basic mathematics.

yesterday marked six months since my buddy committed suicide. most suicidal people are lonely and commonly believe "they'll miss me when i'm gone." i had the task of calling his former co-workers and friends to break the sad news and almost no one said, "what a shame, he was such a nice guy." the common reaction was, "what a selfish prick." maybe not those exact words but almost everyone was angry at him for taking the easy way out and most people said "this must be hard on you." fuck, it wasn't hard on me. one fucking idiot even suggested that i see a grief counselor.

i hope everyone has an excellent and prosperous 2016. i'm looking forward to the world cup.

i love you sons of bitches.

xmas

xmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. please put a penny in the old man's hat.

in the past, before i retired and ceased my daily pilgrimage to the downtown core, i would go for a lunch time stroll and hand out money to the panhandlers. i'm thinking about doing it this year but it depends on the weather. yes, i'm a fair weather philanthropist. a few days ago i gave 5 bucks to a panhandler outside the mall. big deal.

more importantly than xmas being around the corner, the days will start getting longer and as they say, the trend is your friend. it's always a good thing when you know that tomorrow will be a better day. christmas is basically a pain in the ass to me. in dr suess' how the grinch stole christmas it was said that his heart grew three sizes that day, but in my pessimistic view of christmas, many people's carbon footprint grow three sizes as they purchase massive amounts of decorations and gifts that aren't needed. seeing new growth on a cedar tree is a much more spiritual event than sitting around and listening to people either boast or belly ache or looking at 3 dudes in robes bring unneeded junk to a baby.

on the 26th i'll sincerely say, merry thank christ it's over day.

now to the fun. last year i said that the pouges' fairy tale of new york was my favorite xmas carol but this year it's the 12 days of xmas. rowdy roddy passed away this year but his spirit lives on:

on trafalmadore, this is our national anthem. we play this version for all holidays and every sentient being from every galaxy that i have encountered both in the future and the past cannot suppress a smile upon hearing it. so enjoy the moment, they call it the present because it's a gift!

i love you sons of bitches.

god's kid

i have thoughts and that can really fuck the faith thing, just ask any catholic priest.(lewis black)

need i say more? shall i pen a position which i would be obligated to defend?

no and no but what the fuck, it's xmas so i'll toss in my two bits worth.

what brought this to my attention was reading the figures on % OF AMERICANS SELF IDENTIFYING AS AETHEISTS. i was astounded by the fact that only 3.1% of respondents self identified as aethiests. upon further reading, the figure of non believers or skeptics is probably over 20% based on figure of 22.8% of respondents classifying themselves as "unaffiliated." i would also guess that the figures are skewed by the wording of the question but only 3.1% identifying themselves as aetheists was still a head scratcher.

as a 60 year old man i had to go through an elementary school system where we had to say the "lords prayer" every morning and at assemblies etc. for a few years they succeeded in instilling the fear of god into me. a six year old is conditioned to believe that adult authority figures speak the truth and i didn't want to be responsible for my parents rotting in hell. basically the pricks scared the shit out of me which i consider to be their basic modus operandi when dealing with children.

here's what set me on the path to enlightenment. it had been drummed into my head that god was some dude up in sky perched upon some beautiful nimbus cumulus cloud keeping track of everything we kids do and and the son of bitch had a memory that would put an elephant to shame. that might be the common thread to all religions, you can't see the diety but he/she will occasionally communicate with our priests etc so you better listen to those pricks on sunday.

then one day us puny humans sent men into space and fuck me, there was no god or heaven on those beautiful clouds. zip, dick, nada! it was a scam. the guys running the planet saw those pictures back in the 1940's but they weren't broadcast on television to us common folks until the 1960's. when i saw those pictures, i was no longer susceptible to the fear mongering.

there are times when i'm envious of people who truly believe. it might be a nice crutch to lean on from time to time but an honest cost/benefit analysis puts religion into a negative proposition for those rubes choosing to kick back 10% to their spiritual godfather. and the asshole demands 10% of your gross, not 10% of your net. the son of a bitch understands accounting and cash flow.

so that's it, merry bloody xmas.

i love you sons of bitches.

the enemy

we have met the enemy and he is us

it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that we in the west are indeed our own worst enemies. we don't have to look in mosques or synagogues, we merely have to look in the mirror. that son of a bitch looking back at me in the mirror is getting pretty old and wrinkled. i winked at the prick and he was kind enough to whisper his plan into my ear:

Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will strangle your cities with traffic. We'll draw you into fighting useless wars. We'll send in developers to ravage your land and replace your individual farms with corporations. We will force your citizens into the slavery of credit card debt. We'll send gangsters into your schools to sell your children drugs. We'll replace each of your meals with empty junk food. One way or another, you'll see who comes out on top.

i suspect he borrowed a lot of ideas from the nixon-khrushchev kitchen debate but regardless of where the idea originated, you gotta admit it's been very successful so far. our great leaders have been onto this plan for many years but rather than bring an end to the cunning plot, they decided to spread this man made disease to the rest of the planet. our leaders have been so successful at spreading this disease that the dumb sons of bitches in the developing world are not fighting back, in fact they're paying us for the privilege of being poisoned by junk food and industrial by-products.

now someone just has to tell those nogoodnik muslims to relax, they don't have to shoot us or blow us to smithereens, we'll take of it ourselves.

or maybe we should just apologize to the muslims and call the whole thing off.

i love you sons of bitches.

if

if i had something intelligent to say, i'd probably say it. but there's a good chance i'd be so enamored with it that i'd put it away for safe keeping.

the climate change talks drag on in paris with most world leaders patting each other on the back and saying what a great job they're doing. yeah right.

whilst we in the west are facing carbon taxes those lovely folks in china are CONSTRUCTING 155 NEW COAL FIRED POWER STATIONS. and india is trying her darnedest to catch up. we in north america pat ourselves on the back for stopping new construction of coal fired power plants but we continue to sell coal to china! so it goes.

we hear a lot about climate change but not enough about our dying oceans:

The Earth's dying oceans threatened with mass extinction

but what the fuck, it's almost xmas so let's have some fun and resolve to fix all this shit in the new year.

i love you sons of bitches.