Wednesday – Expecting Weird Weather –

Wednesday, February 24th, 2016 — -4˚C / +25˚F & snowing @ 11:50 am in Atlantic Canada —

Orange cat in a little bit of snow.

Moe – The mischievous orange ‘Cat and a half’ escaped for a couple seconds this snowy morning, explored something he’s probably been obsessed with for weeks, decided he’d had enough and hurried back to where I was waiting at the door. “This isn’t ‘outside’ – This is Snow!” he seems to say.

— We’re supposed to get about 10 cm / 4 inches of snow before the precipitation turns to a projected couple hours of freezing rain and then transitions to a lot of rain later. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be +12˚C / +54˚F & might have more rain in store for us.

Moe inspecting the wood shed in the snow.

“But – But – There might be mice in there!” The object of Moe’s consternation, in spite of the morning’s snow – is our new side additions to our steel garden shed. The side additions now house cut and split firewood, nicely stacked and covered with plastic to keep the weather away from the wood. Moe has always been an expert mouser. I remember my sensitive step-daughter screaming when she saw the cats torturing a mouse. Moe’s reaction? When the mouse was no fun to play with any more – it disappeared in two bites and a swallow. Chomp chomp, gulp – yum?

— This time last year our driveway had about four or five foot high walls of snow around the area we had cleared with our snow-blower. This year we were day dreaming about an early spring. People on the radio keep arguing whether global warming or climate change is a scientific reality. Here in the ‘Real World’ our escapee cat loves the fact that he can dash out past who-ever just opened a door and run outside and smile at the grass instead of trying to keep his feet out of the white stuff.

Moe hurrying to the warmth and dry safety of our porch.

“Okay, Been There – Done That – & I’ve had enough of this cold wet white stuff!” Moe turned around and hurried back to the safety of the nice warm enclosed porch a split second after he decided that there weren’t any mice in the wood shed.

— We do have another pet. Jassper, the perennial puppy dog (Black Lab) who doesn’t understand that he weighs five times as much as Moe, and wants to sit on my lap, or jump on my chest any time he sees the cat get away with that. Jassper was out and about this morning, slipping and sliding around in the shallow snow over slick ice from recent thaw and re-freeze cycles.

Jassper in the snow of the dog run.

Slightly tipped photo of Jassper (shot through the door’s insulated glass window) out prowling around, slipping and sliding, and probably disappointed there was no one about to bark at, nothing to “Boof!” about. Three dogs from the house shown down the hill there sometimes hang out in that fenced in area. Last year at this time we knew the brown hound-type dog was in there only by seeing her head moving back and forth in the groove she wore down between the three feet deep untouched snow on both sides.

— And here we are, watching the weather – expecting it to turn treacherous soon, waiting to grit our teeth and hope Cathi gets home all right, knowing she’s found the safest route from where she works to here. ( There are steep hills in Town -)

— Other than that, I’ve been hearing weird “boom boom boom” sounds all morning, thought our neighbour might have been unloading large logs from the back of his pickup truck, but no – nothing is happening there. These booms are mildly shaking the house every time they happen. — Weird ? —

— And – um, That’s probably all for now –,

~~~~~ Jim

Monday – Um – Winter Is Still With Us –

Monday, February 22nd, 2016 —  -6˚C / +21˚F & Sunny & Bright in Atlantic Canada @ 12:42 pm // Where it was -11˚C @ 7:00 am this morning //   It’s Cousin Lori’s Birthday 🙂

Foggy Golf Course with no snow on the grass on February 20th of this year.

Local CBC Morning Radio And TeeVee News Person Terry Seguin took this photo on Saturday when he discovered that the golf course near his home was uncommonly bereft of snow for this time of year. The CBC’s morning meteorologist said he would fix that in a couple days 🙁 😉

— Yup, after a couple days thinkin’ the local groundhog with the unpronounce-able name might have been right and spring just might have already arrived here – This morning’s -11˚C temperature was a bit of a rude surprise. But I guess that isn’t too bad – we are enjoying life here in New Brunswick – for the most part – & No, I won’t mention neo-fascist federal schnarr from the previous government trying to ruin everybody’s picnic but their own – that would be just plain mean.

Sculpture of a Moose paddling a blue canoe.

Cathi and I finally found the legendary “Blue Canoe” restaurant south of us here – And captured this happy view of Bullwinkle, paddling or steering a blue canoe – not with a flying squirrel – but with a Beaver paddling at the front. What an amazing work of sculpture.

— And Cathi said, “We finally found our truck-stop restaurant.” With Genuine Home-Cooked flavours and a pretty good ambiance inside. It was a bit unnerving to feel so many people inside staring at me like they were sure they knew me from somewhere and wondered why I wasn’t saying hello on sight-

Beaver and moose Sculpture, paddling a blue canoe.

Here’s the entire Sculpture, or – as much as you can see from one angle –

— As we got closer to the door into the restaurant we discovered another work of sculpture –

Sculpture of a Comical fisherman with a lobster and a jumping fish in a blue rowboat.

I can’t read the plaque from here, (bad me) but I would guess this was the same sculpture artist who sculpted the moose and beaver in the canoe – Cathi had me jump into the photo for a couple inspired takes of her own – I’ll snitch one from facebook and add it here –

— This was yesterday, the 21st of February, with the uncharacteristic ‘No Snow’ on the ground look for this area.

Fisheman and me.

Cathi’s photo of the fisherman acknowledging that he and I are probably somehow related. 😉 – on facebook Cathi gave this photo a caption saying I’d found my long-lost uncle. 🙂

— So Yesterday was cloudy and warm and today is sunny and cold again – And I better get on to things I have to do as I’ve already spent at least twice as much time on this as I expected –

— Happy Fishing? –,

~~~~~ Jim

Saturday, Snow, Then Rain, Then Snow Again ?

Saturday, February 20th, 2016, —ƒƒ— +2˚C / +36˚F & raining at the moment in Atlantic Canada @ 1:11 pm  —ƒƒ— Kathy Krafchick’s Birthday ( & Patty Heart’s too) —ƒƒ—

light dusting of snow on trees and stone wall

– Um, I took this photo about an hour ago. It was still snowing then, but lightly. –

— “Yooks Yike another weird weather day in Atlantic Canada” It began with a light snow falling, the Weather Network expects we might get a centimeter – and then they expect rain ( they were right on that ) And then they expect the rain to turn back to snow –  I don’t think they wanted to guess how much snow we might get on the second round of white stuff, but they thought we might get “≅ 10 mm.” [ almost 10 millimeters ] of rain – But they only expected the temperature to reach 0˚C / 32˚F and we’ve already gone past/above and beyond that.

Crow in a tree against a grey (snowing) sky.

Two Crows were scolding me – When I picked up the camera and aimed at them, one flew away. If you can see the crow in this photo we’re both lucky. Yeah, I think I got him – Upper third & Right third of the photograph. I know what I was looking for.

— Yeah, Crow is one of my ‘totem animals’ – but I’m not about to call myself “Jim Crow”, or ‘Jim Mountain Lion” or Owl or Wolf or Turtle or Swan or Skunk – There’s a Dog in the mix too, and I think Possum shows up to protect my inner child by deflecting threats away – You can read all about that in “Medicine Cards” – don’t google it – go to smartpage dot com and protect your privacy –

 

Dusting of snow on a stone wall.

And This is the part of the stone wall that caught enough of this morning’s dusting to look interesting, at least to me.

— And while I was uploading photos from the camera’s SD card I realized I hadn’t uploaded the couple of photos I took during our latest visit to the north side’s Pizza Delight, ether on Maple Street or St Mary’s (street or road?)

Cathi in our Pizza Delight restaurant.

I might have mentioned this before, Cathi had some modeling experience as a teen-ager And she looks like a slightly different person in almost every photograph I’ve seen of her. I egged her on to pose for this one, Don’t know whether she’s putting on a modeling face of thinking I’ve lost my mind again for asking her to tip her head forward and look up at me. Almost every model I’ve ever talked to wished that professional photographers were a lot more human than they pretend to be.

— Yay? I should quit while I’m ahead –,

~~~~~ Jim

“This Week’s Surprising News Story? Apple Versus The F.B.I.? With Apple Sticking up for Consumer Privacy?” -from —jda—

Copied & Pasted:

= = = = =

Friday, February 19th, 2016  §§ — -7˚C / +19˚F — Clear with a nice warm sun om Atlantic Canada @ 10:45 am  §§  —

People demonstrating against Governments hacking their iPhones.

CBC Radio One News this morning aired a discussion between Those who believe that Apple would give away too much if they caved in to the F.B.I.’s demand that they hand over code to help the F.B.I. crack into the iPhone of accused Terrorists in the recent California mass killings & Those who claim that this would only be a ‘one-off’ event.

— The guy who was arguing that the F.B.I. should be able to protect civilians from terrorists scoffed at the ‘slippery slope’ argument that if Apple gave government agents any help in cracking into their iPhones Then nobody’s privacy would be protected. He called Apple’s argument ‘disingenuous’. — The other side in this discussion did not mention anything about the idea that Government should be the servants of the citizenry, not despotic dictators who believe they should control everything and everybody and should have the right to snoop on everybody’s private thoughts, words and deeds. — The weird thing was, as a kind of aside in this discussion, it was mentioned that young people don’t believe their potential lack of privacy is as big a deal as do older people.

"Truth is Treason in an Empire of Lies"

And – “[Telling The-] Truth is Treason In An Empire Of Lies”

— Whistle-Blowers are often stunned by the revelation that the people they believe they are protecting and defending by maintaining their high level of ethics don’t appreciate their efforts. — I remember hearing one US citizen announce that if he ever saw Ralph Nader crossing a road on a dark night he would not hesitate to attempt vehicular homicide. — This person bought the propaganda put out by the auto industry saying that automobile prices had to rise astronomically because of safety legislation brought on by Ralph Nader’s revealing that the industry knowingly sold vehicles that were “Unsafe At Any Speed”.

— Several Earthquakes in the past couple weeks have also caught my attention, and Earthquakes and Volcanic eruptions were accurately predicted by Astrologer Dr. Luis Turi.

— This will have to be all for now. I have some ‘Real World’ commitments to fulfill.

— jda —

=====

—Thank you, —jda—,

~~~~~ Jim

The Weather Network Says the Polar Vortex Is Back ?

Friday, February 12th, 2016 — -10˚C / +14˚F & Clear with Very Bright Sunlight reflecting off about a foot of snow on the ground in Atlantic Canada @ 3:15 pm — Today is Charles McCauley Sr’s Birthday — Yesterday was my good friend Pamm F.M.’s Birfday — The 10th was good friend – Richard Galdrian’s B’day — The 9th was Richard’s Daughter Chiara’s B’day  & The 9th was also our good friend Audrey M.’s Birthday —

Bright Sun Cold Air

Bright sun shining on a cold day in Canada –

— Cathi and I spent Wednesday evening stacking a cord of firewood in the still unfinished home-made (palletwood) extensions (wings?) of our steel garden shed.

Stacked firewood under plastic.

This is the side of the woodshed where Cathi stacked a lot of firewood. The plastic covering the wood is there to keep snow and other wetness from the sky from messing up the fire-ability of the wood.

— I probably shouldn’t publicize the photo Cathi took of me after we finished stacking the wood.

Jim & Jassper after stacking firewood.

I didn’t recognize the guy in the mirror after I took my hat off when we were finished stacking our firewood. Jassper looks like he wasn’t quite sure I was me.

— Yes, I was clowning, but the dog looks serious. He was probably worried that an evil twin might have taken my place, and he might not be able to con that guy into quite so many treats as he’s been able to manipulate me into giving him.

— Yeah, it’s cold today, but it’s been a lot colder, and the nice warm people and pets around me can make me forget how cold the ‘real world’ has gotten lately.

~~~~~ Jim

Winter 2.0 ? Microsoft executives should rot in boiling pools of festering sewage in hell –

Saturday, February 6th, 2016  §§ -4˚C / +25˚F with Very Bright Sun Shining @ 2:00 pm in Atlantic Canada §§ My Aunt Phyliss’s Birthday –

Snowy Yard

“It” snowed yesterday. Forecasts ahead of time thought we might get anything from less that five Centimeters (2 inches?) to 20 even 30 cm – (8 to 12 inches?) And there might be more white stuff coming at us Sunday night / Monday morning – We actually get a little bit of winter this year.

More later –

— It’s Later — ( We went out for brunch and to get a couple things, got back home after 6 pm.)

Cathi with a real coffee mill/part of one behind her.

Cathi at our late brunch today at the Coffee Mill. This was probably around 2:30 pm.

— Tried to pick up a replacement computer yesterday. Got one at the friendly neighbourhood upscale pawn shop / used stuff store. & I got a pretty good buy from somebody who knows what he’s doing. — $175.00 for a Refurbished computer that’s pretty much the same make & model as the one I bought in 2012 — Remember? When the world was supposed to end, I think – at least three times? And that computer, back in 2012, cost five times as much as this one. 

— I got the computer home, put 10 more Gigs of RAM into it, plugged it in, turned it on — it fired up and smiled at me – and to make sure it worked okay for what I need it for (game design work) , I loaded a game onto it and played it, got frustrated with inconsistancies in that commercial game and gave up, quit the game, told the computer to shut down. But the computer told me, “You can’t tell me to shut down, I’m busy installing 220 updates and telling the NSA all about everything on this computer, where it is, who you are, where you are – what you dreamed about last night and all sorts of stuff that is none of their bleeping business. —

— And then, this morning, after snowblowing the driveway clear for the second time — I turned the computer back on and tried to bring the game up and it told me, “Access Denied” / “Please login with administrator privileges and try again.”

— Schnarr! —

— But anyway, stupid me, after trying to reinstall that stupid game half a dozen times this morning and early afternoon, I’m sitting her thinking I just might try again from a different angle here.

— What’s the definition of insanity? — But — But — I am not attempting to try the same thing over and over again with exactly the same procedure — each time I tried something different —

— AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa —

— *** Update *** —

— System restore worked. For a few scary moments I thought the unwanted updates had installed Windows 10 on me — Micro-sh[censored]t is threatening to do that — Which would go along with Jesse Ventura’s warning through twitter a couple hours ago “Fascists have taken over your government -” —

— But the System Restore worked (after I told it not to go with its suggestion but to back up to yesterday before the bloody freakin updates hijacked the computer).

— And by the way, It’s not connected to the internet until I manage to make sure I can get legitimate updates and not the bull-chips.

~~~~~ Jim

Wednesday – “Winter Today – Springlike Tomorrow” ?

Wednesday, February 3rd  ∞  -9˚C / +16˚F & snowing in Atlantic Canada @ 11:11 am ∴ I think it might be Ian Anderson’s Birthday ψ

Walking Dogs in Snow Photo

The CBC – Canadian Broadcasting Company – encourages regular people to send in photos and videos. I hope this is not to cut down on the number of employees they might otherwise  need to pay to do that.

— It just took me two hours to wade through a lot of beautiful and sometimes disturbing tweets. Eek.

Jefferson versus Corporations.

– Thomas Jefferson – Author of many famous quotes, including “Banking Establishments are more Dangerous than Standing Armies.” Who’d’a thunk an Aries could be so prophetic?

— I was the recording engineer for an interview between Dr John Battista – a Psychiatrist and Green Party Activist in Connecticut – and David Cobb – a Texas Lawyer who was part of a group that had researched the history of corporations in the United States – and that group was fighting against Corporate Fascism – David Cobb, I do believe, ran for President of the USA as the Green Party Candidate in 2004 – After I had followed my heart to Canada and was trying to first become a permanent resident, and later, a dual citizen of the US & Canada. In 2004 I couldn’t leave Canada – unless I wanted to start the long and expensive process of applying for permanent residency all over again.

— & speaking of evil corporations – Canada has ruled that cable teevee providers must offer channels that they currently only offer as part of bundles – and so lower the cost that consumers need to pay to get what they want. Rogers Cable is blitzing the airwaves with propaganda commercials trying to lure customers into falling for their – “Get our packaged bundles now and lock yourself in to wonderful lower prices for three years!” b.s. — And Bell Aliant – who promised us three years of low prices and later informed us that we misinterpreted what they told us – had MTV in our channel line up on Monday, and no MTV was there on Tuesday, when the Shannara  Chronicles air. So I guess that proves that Bell is definitely on the side of the demons that the ‘Druid’ and the three young hero types in that series are trying to defeat. Yup, Bell is probably one of the bad guys.

Michael Moore advertizing his newest movie.

Michael Moore has another movie about to come out. He’s gotta be one of my favourite people.

— The Mouse that Roared? In Reverse?

Ground Hog Against the TPP

– Well, a groundhog with a social conscience? – Hmm – Don’t’cha wish the politicians and oligarchs who want to rule over you and run your life had as much intelligence and compassion as this guy? 😉

— Your government is lying to you. They want you to voluntarily give up every right and privilege you have. They want to say you voted away your rights. They want to be able to point their fingers at you and say, “They made me do it-” & When they get to Hell, they want to show the devils there that they really were on the side of darkness and deceit, so they can get a job as one of the demons torturing the decent folks they deceived into backing policies and programs that drove other good people into despair and economic slavery.

Fredericton Skies this morning.

But New Brunswick had a spectacular sunrise this morning, and this person from Fredericton caught it digitally on her camera.

— Today’s weather report, “Well, this afternoon we will experience Winter and by tomorrow it will feel like Spring.”

Opportunity or obstacle?

And here’s a bit of daily inspiration from Roy Bennett.

— I do like to have at least something positive to add any time I go through the trouble to write up what I see coming at us via the ‘Tweet-Us-Sphere’ and in real life beyond.

Very interesting waterfall.

And if thoughtfully reassuring words can’t inspire you right now, maybe a photo like this can –

— Looks like another place I’d like to visit and stay for a while.

— But I have other real world stuff to attend to, so I better end here – Have a wonderful, spiritually enlightening day –,

~~~~~ Jim

Ground Hog Day – 2016

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016 — -6˚C / +21˚F — Sunny & bright, clear, and colder than yesterday in Atlantic Canada @ 9:11 am — Birthdays today: Close Friend Lisa and Cousin Lyn in Connecticut 🙂 & I think our friend Angie ( née Shean ) up here has a birthday too – 🙂 —

"Icebergs"

I don’t know if this will be readable – but a friend impressed me by doing this on an obsolete computer with an obsolete operating system and an obsolete photo program.

— Draelen Shantivarta ( ‘Somewhere out west’ -) managed to download a screen shot from the game that several of us are still working on, and, using a G5 Mac running OS X 10.4-something which supports OS 9 “Classic”, where he used Photo Deluxe, a program from the early 90’s, to import, trim, and write every line ( one at a time ) then drag and resize the text (one line at a time). & to tell ya the truth, the screen shot looks like icebergs are floating close to shore somewhere.

Bernie and Barbara.

Barbara Walters interviewing Bernie Sanders before anybody had any idea that he could do so well in Iowa

— A lot of people were buzzing this morning about how well Bernie Sanders did in the Iowa Caucus yesterday. He started out polling in single digits and ended up in a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton, who is backed by big money and a powerful political machine.

Caucus Results

Hillary received 49.9% of the Democratic Votes tallied in yesterday’s Iowa Caucuses, Bernie received 49.5%? That should scare a lot of the wrong people. And six of the delegates were awarded by a coin toss?

— Hillary’s supporters were tweeting up a storm yesterday while Bernie had Michael Moore and a handful of activist celebrities ( including Susan Sarandon ( “Dammit – Janet!” ) and Wil Wheaton? – ( Wesley from Star Trek Next Generation? ) Plus a lot of dedicated grass-roots people. Exit polls cited by the BBC said 84-91% of voters under 30 years old voted for ‘The Bern’

California Bridge over shallow water stream

– This is in California? Wow –

— & As for me, I think I’d like to be in a nice warm place like the photo above right now. The person who tweeted it said, “California”? Must be upstate, north of San Francisco?

Water falling lazily around an old castle somewhere?

– And I have no idea where this is, but I do believe I could live there and love it. –

— Looks like the inspiration for the Elven City of Rivendel, as portrayed in The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings Movies.

Bridge over a river somewhere.

– And this is another beautiful, intriguing place that I think I’d like to at least visit –

— I think my friend, Draelen, knows more about where this photographer/Tweeter is from, I think he told me she’s from Germany – But wow – what a beautiful world we live in. I think somebody tweeted a photo of Leonard Nimoy as Spock with a quote that went something like, [ understatement alert ] “Anybody who would destroy their home planet – is illogical.”

— I spent yesterday doing carpentry stuff, reinforcing the wobbly legs to a computer desk, and then brought an overheating iMac back from its most recent ‘near-death-experience’, caught up with a couple of friends on effbook and twitter, and watched ‘Supergirl’ and ‘X-Files’ before making sure computers were still okay and hadn’t blown up yet and forgot to take one of my medications. ( And No – I’m not one of the people doug otterson cited as needing to self medicate after seeing the photograph of an upright black cat playing a guitar – 😉

— And – I’m still wracking my brains over how to handle difficult passages in a novel that I’m trying to finish.

— Happy Ground Hog Day!

~~~~~ Jim

Sunday –

Sunday, January 31st, 2016 -( +1˚C / +34˚F — Cloudy with about a centimeter of fuzzy new snow coating everything and the sun’s trying to come out in Atlantic Canada @ 8:45 am )-

Snowy night with a bridge and a large building.

Looks like someone captured a snowy night somewhere – looks peaceful. I’m not sure where that is.

— Okay, so once again I spent the whole night fixing things on computers. Trying to get things to work that wanted to be left alone –

Stones with carvings.

– Interesting carving on stones in Scotland – One of several photos tweeted by Aillish Sinclair this morning. –

— Google’s Chrome browser informed me that it will no longer support any mac versions hosted on computers with ‘obsolete’ operating systems. – Like OS X versions 10.6 and 10.7 – Somebody needs to take them down a peg – or maybe throw them off the top of a pyramid in Central America and watch them bounce all the way down – Grrrr.

— Oh dangit, I’m trying to remain positive here.

— Jesse Ventura tweeted a schnarr photo of D. Trump and said he feels kind of good about Trump destroying the GOP the way he is. 🙂

Lynx sheltering in a snowy tree stump.

– And I think the person who wrote the companion book to ‘Medicine Cards’ said that people who resonate with Lynx-es are rare. – Actually the text describes ‘Lynx People’ as being people who have Lynx spirit guides. If I ever figure out whether anybody or everybody has Spirit Guides hanging around them disguised as Animal Spirits I’ll let you know.

— Um, that’s probably enough for now, Haben Sie einen guten Tag.

~~~~~ Jim

Wednesday – “Please play with your food”-?

Wednesday, January 27th, 2016 -( +5˚C / +41˚F — Grey skies & damp in Atlantic Canada @ 8:00 am )-

Schnarr!

Corporate Welfare? In Canada, ‘Fossil Fuel’ Corporations get $34 Billion dollars in Taxpayer funded subsidies – In the UK, Google gets a sweetheart deal, which, when found out leads to a hand slapping pittance in back taxes. -Meanwhile- Provincial Governments in Canada, Crying poverty, are trying to convince taxpayers that they need to pay tolls that could cost heavy commuters $1,000.00 to $1,500.00 more every year?

— Economic Warfare —

— The oil and gas industries received $34 Billion dollars per year in taxpayer-funded subsidies? Mid-priced Electric cars cost about $31,000.00 Canadian Dollars. They figure there are 9 million families in Canada?

New Brunswick 'Strategies'.

– So the ‘government’ of New Brunswick has been ‘studying’ how to fraudulently fleece the citizens of New Brunswick and reduce the health care and other services New Brunswickers are entitled to. And from this photo (above) it looks like they think they can get away with that. –

— The Province of New Brunswick, crying poverty, has told the people of New Brunswick that their ‘duly elected government’ is trying to decide how to institute tolls on New Brunswick’s highways to raise money because they’re not bringing in enough tax revenues? ***Why don’t they raise taxes on the corporations that have been getting away with downsizing, knocking hardworking people from their ability to pay those taxes, which may be fraudulently reported to the media which, in turn, ‘report’ those fraudulent figures to the news-consuming public.

— Walter Burien of cafr1.com [ (CAFR+the number 1) dot com ] is an investment counselor who has been trying to explain that virtually every level of Federal, State or Provincial, County, and municipal government has more income streams than they admit to, that tax revenues amount to one third of their actual income, and if they’re not receiving two thirds of their income from non-tax revenues, well then, shame on them for being incredibly stupid – Mr. Burien has been trying to explain this for years, has been politely screaming at seemingly sleeping citizens who, apparently, would much rather plug their ears than listen to him.

pipeline map

The existing pipeline would be ‘upgraded’/converted to carry oil instead of gas through lands threatened by possible Fracking and extended to where the crude oil could be shipped away from Canada to where foreign jobs would either be created or insured at the expense of possible Canadian jobs. Renewable Energy development would create a lot more jobs for a lot less money.

— The proposed Eastern Pipeline upgrade would bring oil from Alberta to Saint John, New Brunswick, not to be refined here, an operation which would create Canadian jobs, but to be loaded on ships and carried off to refineries in the USA, where US citizens would have job security that is lacking in Canada?

— Meanwhile, Facking has been shown to create earthquakes. Earthquakes endanger pipelines. Oil pipelines that split open poison groundwater. Poisoned groundwater forces humans to pay for water that isn’t poisoned, and it kills animals. Animals that die from poisoned water include farm animals that people eat, and pets, and wild animals, like the Beluga whales in the Saint Lawrence River/Seaway.

— When the Mayor of Montreal cried out against the pipeline, he was first accused of being selfish, then accused of trying to divide Canadians along East Versus West, or even Anglophones versus Francophones lines. Then, after a talk with Justin Trudeau, the Mayor of Montreal clarified that his stance against the pipeline was not against economic opportunities, but against the shoddy inability of watchdogs to insure that the pipelines would be properly built, properly inspected, and properly maintained. Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, for his part, has announced that he is not a cheerleader for this pipeline project, or any other pipeline project. First Nations/Native Americans – the people whose country was stolen out from under them by Europeans who claimed they were saving the aboriginal citizens of the ‘Americas’ from ignorance and poverty, have been fighting pipelines both in the east and in the west. They have also been fighting against the practice of ‘Fracking’, which threatens their drinking water and the stability of their lands.

— Canadian ‘Law’ sees mineral rights as belonging to the ‘Crown’, land owners have been shocked and dismayed to discover that their property has been invaded by somebody who dug a hole, searching for possible minerals or other exploitable resources, & left the ‘exploratory’  holes open and dangerous to children and other living things. And then the property owners discovered that (1) they are powerless to stop this sort of thing, (2) if anything valuable was discovered on or under their property, they would not benefit from that discovery, or its exploitation or development – at all, and (3) they just might have to pay the cost of filling any dangerous holes left in their own property.

— First Nations people have been fighting for centuries to keep their land and mineral rights, citing the fact that they never did sign away their mineral rights. Miners want to be able to walk onto Tribal lands and poison and ruin the area, grab whatever minerals and ores they find there, cart the valuable substances away and gesture obscenely as they ‘laugh all the way to the bank’ and capitalize on what they’ve stolen.

Google Tax Dodge.

Meanwhile, in the UK –

— Corporations have also been getting away with not paying their fair share of taxes in the United Kingdom. Google, which ‘mines’ information from the browsers of anybody connecting to their ‘services’ has recently been slapped on the wrist and asked to pay a pittance to cover back taxes while taxpayers in the UK have been discovering that they are being charged unbelievably ridiculous new taxes that sound more like a Monty Python routine than anything like a real tax that any government in the Western ‘Free World’ would have the gall to suggest.

Schnarr Corporations.

Corporations were severely limited in the United States from the time of the Revolution until their lobbyists basically pooped all over the 99%. Originally, corporations were only granted very limited time charters, & after their time was up, their assets would revert to public ownership.

Slavery in the fishing industry.

Nobody wants to support an industry that exploits slavery.

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch is raising the alarm about governments using the politix of Fear to avoid the annoying problem of respecting the Human Rights of their own citizens as well as refugees.

Tanuki

2016-01-27-Tanuki-RacoonDog

This Japanese “Raccoon-Dog” called a ‘Tanuki’ is neither a raccoon nor a dog and is not recommended as a pet. Sounds like a shame, because a dog that cute would probably be fun to share your life with.

See Ireland.

& this, like all the graphics & photos included here, does not contain a valid link. You might be able to copy and paste something from the graphic itself. or you might have to ‘google it’ or more safely: look it up at startpage dot-com. But yeah, I think I’d rather be watching the sun rise in Ireland than letting myself become upset / depressed by the latest mass media news.

— & On the Ethics front: In France, the Justice Minister resigned her post in protest over the new French law that strips citizenship from those accused of terrorism. So human beings with their humanity and moral values intact actually still do exist as of today, the 27th day of January/janvier, 2016. Of course, the newscast that announced this brave and ethical act went on to tell us that the Justice Minister who resigned had already been replaced by a schnarr ice-hole of an Elitist shill who was firmly in favour of advancing himself without regard for ethical behaviour or the health and well-being of anybody else.

— And so, sadly, tragically, that is a snapshot of this morning’s schnarr from Atlantic Canada.

— Hopelessly remaining optimistic –,

~~~~~ Jim

Monday, Monday –

Monday, January 25th, 2016 -( -13˚C / +9˚F with clear blue skies & bright sun after the just-past-full moon set maybe two hours ago and the temperature dropped two degrees Celcius in Atlantic Canada & now it’s 9:34 am )- Today is Ed Ferko’s Birthday.

Moon over New Brunswick

This was a couple hours ago. The moon was still up.

— Um, I keep finding more things that irritate me about facebook. The Elitists’ spy agencies favourite site? Schnarr-

— & Duh- I’m feeling like my mind is on hold right now, input challenged?

California Coastal Preservation.

This world seems to be in a constant state of warfare between the people who want to make sure there is breathable air, non-genetically-modified/poisoned foods, and drinkable/non-poisoned water Versus those whose agendae do not include the best interests/health & well-being of anybody. — Schnarr! —

— Somebody tweeted that Fracking in Wales has been delayed for at least ten years because of the drop in oil prices. Fracking should be outlawed everywhere due to the fact that it poisons ground water, causes earthquakes, and can not be made safe for any reasonable length of time no matter what the pro-fracking liars tell you.

Frederick Douglass Pro-Union Quote.

Frederick Douglass was a pro union philosopher? Why does it come as a shock to me now that no one taught this when I was in school?

— Yeah, the fact that positive information is withheld is depressing shouldn’t be all that surprising.

Will Smith Quote

Quoting Will Smith? Yeah, hey, why let people who mean you no good hijack your peace of mind? Thank you Will, Thank you Roy Bennett.

Miscou Island Lighthouse, beach and shoreline.

& Maybe we can energize by reconnecting with nature? Interesting to see what is probably salt water frozen enough to hold a bit of snow while the shore doesn’t show any at all? Or is that just ice out there? I don’t go for enough beach walks these days.

— We survived the mega blizzard –  Didn’t see a single flake – Farther south, – in Nova Scotia they received as much as ten to 12 inches in the far southwest with Halifax not getting much. -What? maybe 5 inches?

— Sigh –,

~~~~~ Jim

East Coast U.S. Bracing for Mega-Blizzard?

Friday, January 22, 2016 -( -12˚C / +10˚F — Sunny & bright in Atlantic Canada @ 10:30 am )- Today would be my cousin, Kathy Conroy’s, birthday –

Evening skiing scene with snowy trees.

Photo of someone skiing in a park in or near Moncton, New Brunswick. Tweeted by “See New Brunswick”.

— The East Coast of the U.S.A. and expecially the Washington D.C. area is bracing for a scary winter storm that is threatening to dump 60 centimeters / 2 feet of snow during a 36 to 40 hour storm duration.

— Up here in New Brunswick, Canada, we had a couple killer storms that dumped almost that much snow more than once in the last two years.

— But Washington D.C. is facing the possibility that the area might be completely paralized.

Pupeteer Media Magnagtes

Meanwhile – In Canada – a lot of people are upset about the fact that most news media are controlled by a small number of corporations, which are in turn controlled by a smaller number of “Puppeteer Media Magnates” / nasty rich men with not so user-friendly agendae.

— And I’m feeling kind of world-weary/punch drunk (?) from a barrage of news that I could swear was calculated to suck the optimism out of everybody silly enough to pay attention.

Gibran Quote.

How about an empowering quote from Kahlil Gibran?

— So I’ll leave you with something positive and uplifting.

~~~~~ Jim

What’s Goin On? Ekonomic Warfare?

Thursday, January 21st, 2016 -( -10˚C / +14˚F with clear blue skies ahead in Atlantic Canada @ 7:00 am )-

Snow people with shovels and other wintery objectsl.

Looks like a family of snow-people – Optimistic and ready to play? This was a morning tweet.

— Once again I suffered through another round of propaganda in the news this morning. New Brunswick, crying poverty, has their spokes ‘people’ out explaining their options RE: three models of imposing tolls on New Brunswick highways.

Mind Control versus personal empowerment / liberation.

I can’t blindly ‘buy into’ everything that Alex Jones has to say, but much of what he says rings true. Darnit! 🙂

— The ‘Social Pyramid’ is a total fabrication, People who believe they are ‘the top of the social food chain’ – can only maintain that illusion if those they have convinced are ‘beneath them’ continue to believe that lie.  —  Every Economy on this Planet is Based on Deceit and Manipulation by the ‘Banksters’  — The U.S. Revolutionary War was fought against the Bank Of England’s demand that the colonies pay taxes in Bank of England’s bank notes, which were nearly impossible to obtain in the colonies and thus inflated their tax rates beyond anything that reasonable men [ in those days, sadly, it was only men who held the power ] believed they should have to pay. —

— Meanwhile, too many young friends up here need all the nurturing and empowerment they can get.

— There are a series of ads on television up here describing how when Unions were strongest, the economy was also at its strongest. And when the anti-union propagandists convinced enough people that unions were wrecking their economy, in the early 2000’s, the Elitists began ransacking local economies all around the world, lying about all governments’ income streams, fraudulently claiming that they couldn’t afford the Federal, Regional, County and Municipal services they’d been supplying and raising taxes all around.

— I remember when I was covering the Town Council Meetings in Arnprior, Ontario, Canada. We were told that the Provincial government was forcing all municipalities to charge taxes they’d never needed before and informing those municipalities that if they did not comply with this they would would no longer receive their share of Provincial matching funds for any pre-approved projects and/or highway upkeep, and all those ‘revenue sharing’ programs like Health Care and Welfare.

minimum wages benefit everyone.

“Who benefits from higher minimum wages?” – Everybody. This cartoon is fighting the insidious propaganda machines that routinely dis-inform anybody they can about ‘entitlement’ programs and try to divide and conquer us all with lies that the richest 1% can’t afford to pay the other 99% any more because minorities and unwed mothers and illegal foreigners have bankrupted the system. If the ‘system’ is bankrupt that would be because the top 1% have plundered it.

— I think it was my friend, Doug Otterson, who first said, “All economics are Voodoo Economics.” after replays of George Bush The first’s anti Ronald Reagan speech were broadcast by Anti George Bush forces while I was living in the Ithaca, New York area. And that was before a lot of people began to point out that ‘Banksters’ are creating imaginary money every time anybody uses one of their credit cards, and Banksters are the ones who ‘create’ the economic atmosphere, and pull the plug whenever they want to manipulate those they have conned into accepting their deceptive practices into believing they are in financial difficulty so the Banksters can try to convince everybody that we should accept their vision of economic slavery.

Lies. damned liked, corporate lies, media lies.

While Media controlled by too few monster conglomerates keep trying to blast lies into the public ‘consciousness’ – & here’s an example tweeted by Glenn Greenwald – One UK Newspaper is forced to retract a false/misleading statement. So then an another UK Newspaper tries to run the same false statement.

— But, We are much stronger than ‘They’ want us to believe. And at least one Scientific Futurist whose methods have proved to be extraordinarily accurate has forecast that in the year 2019 – the last Banksters will meet a horrible death at the hands of those they tried to control and beat down all these years.

— I just wish there was somebody like Gandhi who could guide us through a quick and easy, relatively painless process to get us to the Heaven On Earth we all deserve without going through the hell and suffering that is probably going to force us to wake up and seize control of our own lives.

Photo of hikers obscured by interestingly highlighted snow falling from trees.

& Here’s an interesting photograph that doesn’t come loaded with anything like a negative comment, which, I’m sorry to say, I have been much too full of today.

— Optimistically yours –,

~~~~~ Jim

Tuesday – Brrrr –

Tuesday, January 19th, 2016 -( -13˚C / +9˚F  With Wind Chill around -26˚C/ -16˚F  — Greyish and cold in Atlantic Canada @ 7:16 am )-

Tweet about Dawn Photography

CBC New Brunswick Tweeted a link to this Photographer’s Twitter Account. Twitter seems to be encountering difficulties this morning – might be overloading with activity? I tried to follow this acct. and got an “Ooops-” message.

— There are weather warnings out there this morning. Wind Chills below -20˚C — which would translate to -4˚F — But – The latest possible Nor’Easter that is worrying meteorologists in New England and Nova Scotia will probably remain far enough south so Most of New Brunswick might get a repeat of Last Sunday’s storm here. — Nova Scotia got 40 centimeters / 16 inches of snow while we only got maybe two inches / 5 cm?

— One candidate has declared himself in the running for Fredericton’s Mayoral position. Apparently the sitting mayor has not clearly announced whether he wants to be the Mayor for another term or run for a seat on the City Council. One thing the mayor said about labour negotiations between the bus company and its drivers might either bite him or win him points with voters (or both – earn him some votes from some voters and earn his oppositions candidates voters from pro union voters. When bus drivers said they wanted their pay to be equal with what drivers in Moncton get, the current mayor said, “If they want to get paid what Moncton drivers are paid – they should move to Moncton.”

— Local / municipal, county and Provincial governments all around Canada ( and the rest of the ‘Western world’ for that matter ) have been crying poverty and claiming they have to cut back on programs and cut down on the number of people they employ because they just don’t have the money. I have been asking reporters and other newsy types to investigate the claims of CAFR1.com for a couple of years now – since I heard Walter Burien, an investment counselor, explain that virtually every level of government in the USA and almost all of the USA’s allies follow a model developed by the Rockefellers, in which all levels of government have several income streams but only let the public know about what they get from taxes. Mr Burien claims that all levels of government in the west here could stop collecting taxes and provide more and better services than they do now. And the message seems to be, “If these governments are not following this model, well then shame on them.” If this is true, and I do not have the resources or expertise to properly investigate this, myself, then all levels of governments here in the ‘free world’ are engaged in a monumental fraud. And, if this is true, it lends a lot of credibility to the claims of many Conspiracy Researchers that Elitists, who are trying their darndest to manipulate and control everybody and everything, are using “Need to Know” information with-holding as one of their ‘tools’ to deceive the rest of us, the 99% of us that the 1%-ers want to control. Their other tactics include using Intelligence Gathering Operations like the C.I.A. and MI-6 to recruit, train and secretly control ‘Terrorists’ like Al-Qaeda and ISIS – in order to maintain an atmosphere of fear and anxiety because fearful and anxious populations can be convinced to surrender their rights and freedoms in favor of promises of safety and security. The fact that governments use Anti-Terrorist legislation to turn their guns on their own citizens does not become immediately apparent. Police disguised as rioters have been ‘outed’ in areas where G-20 meetings supposedly drew a lot of civil unrest and lots of peaceful demonstrators were arrested and later had charges against them dropped. This happened in Toronto, Ontario, Canada a couple years ago. And it’s happened in too many other cities around the world.

— “Governments have killed more of their own civilian populations than all the Wars in the Last Century.” —

— In other, possibly more hopeful news, Anti-Terrorist Laws in the UK have been found to violate fundamental rights by failing to protect the rights of journalists and labeling journalists who criticize their governments as terrorists. I haven’t seen anything in the mainstream media about this here in Atlantic Canada, but the “Tweet-Us-Sphere” has been buzzing.

— Another thing I’d like to research today is a job opportunity here :

Jobs article.

The wording of the “Cyber-Psyc” opportunities has me wondering if it’s true of double talk – Are they looking to offer people stress reduction? Or are they trolling for signs that people on-line may be becoming a problem along the lines of ‘Minority Report’ where law enforcement shock troops arrest, detain, and ‘deal with’ people who just might commit a crime – or protect themselves from Gestapo like tactics used by Government Forces?  I’ll have to re-read this a couple more times to be sure.

— Okay, I’ve probably done more than enough damage here today – Think Positive – We are evolving, The bad guys will kill each other off in their insane power struggles and leave the rest of us free to discover what the “New Heaven – New Earth” might be like.

~~~~~ Jim

 

Thursday – Looking Forward to Heroes Reborn & Blacklist?

Thursday, January 7th, 2016 -( -1˚C / +30˚F — Sunny & bright @12:34 pm in Atlantic Canada )-

George Orwell -Telling the Truth when Deceit is the Norm.

George Orwell – Telling the Truth when deceit is the norm. — I’ve seen better photos of this guy.

— Mercury is retrograde and has been since the 5th. During the last couple of Merc-Retch stretches I felt moved to do more work on novels and other stories that had become bogged down in semi problematic philosophical swamps. These last couple days have been more like pins and needles in my cranium, with me wondering if anything I’m trying to create might generate more heat than light. My ‘inner editor’ is constantly working overtime, playing with plot twists and encountering didactics and messing around with inner dialogs and realistic slings and arrows of outrageous social pressures and stuff like that there.

— Thousands of channels and nothing worth watching, so I tuned in to ‘On Demand’ and watched Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ for I think the second time in my life and sat there wondering what the overall message of that film actually was. Was it designed to fire up our will to resist the evils of ‘modern society’? Or did it leave us all shell-shocked and resigned to giving up and submitting to a near-future dystopia? & How prophetic might it have been? Cops and jack-booted black uniformed fascists beating up on unarmed citizens? disenfranchised unarmed kids and members of the general public with nothing to lose resorting to rioting and smashing institutionalized symbols of mind-numbing lowest common denominator schooling and then they symbols of ‘consumerism’? Does anybody out there remember when Spiro T Agnew spouted that the youth in the 1960’s were protesting their own lack of creativity? That was before he got caught stealing from the taxation nation’s cookie jar and had to resign in disgrace.

— Yet I still believe we will come through all this and slowly create a better world than the mess we inherited.

— Sigh, but then again WordPress is doing another round of automatic updates today.

— So I guess that maybe if our own governments (who have killed more of their own citizens than all the wars in the last century did-) don’t butcher us – then maybe they’re hoping we’ll be frustrated to the point where we don’t have the strength so resist their insane attempts to turn us into good little zombies who march happily down the conveyor belt and dive into the meat grinders and turn ourselves into hamburger?

— Shudder –,

— Gee, I wish I had a more positive vision to elucidate today.

— I did appreciate the company of my hundred and twenty-five pound – four-legged Labrador buddy while the second viewing of ‘The Wall’ was more disappointing than the first.

— Give me something positively inspiring to fill my mind and life, never mind North Koreans with supposed H-bombs and Manchurian Candidate ‘Terrorists’ around ever corner.

— God, You did give me that vision of the world splitting into two separate dimensions, with the positive people waking up in a healthier, happier place — and the not-so-positive types waking up in a continuation of this nightmare, thinking they won – for a reason, right?

— Don’t let them wear us down to utter despair – Help us find the optimism to go on and keep trying–,

~~~~~ Jim

Wednesday, 06 January, 2016

Wednesday, January 6th, 2016 -( -7˚C / +19˚F with bright sun shining in Atlantic Canada @ 11:18 am )- Today is my friend Kay’s birthday, & Yesterday was Paramahansa Yogananda’s Birthday.

Babji

We could all use a little more light and inspiration.

— I was updating my prayer lists and feeling bad because I couldn’t remember the names of some friends I haven’t seen in a while. I can see their faces and hear their voices and feel their senses of humor, but their names are just beyond my reach at the moment. (sigh, maybe I’m trying too hard.)

— It’s chilly out there in the real world and I didn’t believe I had a lot to say that was worth broadcasting/sharing with anybody – I had a wicked headache yesterday and took some aspirin to deal with that.

— So I checked facebook and one of my friends posted something about not wanting to read any negative rants about the world coming to an end – I took that to mean that she didn’t want to read anything expounding on the terrorist-boogie men who replaced the communist boogie men that too many of us used to believe were hiding under our beds.

— And I tried to remember the lyrics to a song from what? the 50’s? “Forget about the killin and the dyin and the lyin and the cryin and the fella with the switch blade knife – Just think about livin, and think about life.” and it worried me that I wasn’t a thousand percent sure that I had the lyrics right.

— shrug –,

Lahiri Mahasaya

So I believe I will take this opportunity to sit back and thank my lucky stars and especially thank all those whose love and guidance have been with me all along, no matter how egotistical or just plain stupid I acted. — Thank You —

~~~~~ Jim

Earthquakes in the News :

Saturday, January 2nd, 2016 -( -1˚C / +30˚F & Sunny @ 11:11 am here in Atlantic Canada )-

Earthquake map.

Map pin-pointing the epicentre of Wednesday Evening’s quake.

— On Thursday Morning, December 31st,  CBC News reported that an Earthquake measured at 4.3 by Canadian Standards & 4.8 or 4.9 by US Geological Survey people, had shaken several people awake in Victoria, British Columbia. The quake was centred just off the coast of Vancouver Island, between islands in that area. They also reported that the quake happened at about 42 kilometers deep underground where plates were moving under one another. The Canadian earthquake measuring people later adjusted their estimate and reported they believed the quake weighed in around 4.7. The US Geological Survey also reported that they believed the epicentre had occurred at more like 52.5 km deep.

USGS map.

This is the USGS map of Earthquakes that measured above 2.5 in the 24 hours leading up to 10:15 am on Sunday, January 3rd, 2016, with the largest quake measuring 5.0 near Fiji out in the Pacific Ocean.

— On New Year’s Day, Friday, There was a four point something quake reported in Nicaragua.

— Saturday morning, January 2nd, CBC started off reporting a 5.3 quake in Afghanistan and then reported 4.3 quake off the coast of California. Afghanistan had previously reported a 6.3 quake on Christmas Day.

— And Nicaragua is back in the news this morning with a 4.5 quake while Attu Station in Alaska had one that measured 4.7 and Fiji felt one that measured 5.0.

— Oklahoma had a cluster of at least 7 smallish quakes that have been blamed on Hydraulic Fracking.

— Looks like 2016 is off a start that could be summed up in early Rock And Roll lyrics as “Shake, Rattle and Roll”.

~~~~~ Jim