Media Pork-Assters Still Calling it Swine Flu

Two days ago it was widely reported around the world that "Swine Flu" was a misnomer and that a new name "H1N1 flu" (Heeny-Flu works for me) would hence be used. Ironic that it was the Sensationalizing Media which reported this World Health Organization switch in labelling and it is those same people, programmers, editors and reporters still using the Swine Flu Nom-de-Boob while that practise they know full well is devastating the pig farmers around the world - because the uninformed still believe one can contract this flu by eating pork. NOT SO.

The Porkers here are particularly the reporters who clearly aren't worth their salt while they ignore how much they are jeopardizing the innocent people invloved in the pork industry trying to sustain their livelihoods and their families while under the gun of these lazy reporters who refuse to change the terminology some idiot invented and they persist in promoting. After all, these 'reporters' by their repetitiousness have created a spectacular brand.

I'll take salted pork over their rot any time.

It's simple: SWINE FLU doesn't exist in the way it has been so irresponsibly misreported.

At Last. To breathe with love.

The words of power are the same every generation which may be spoken by anyone at any ‘time’. It is the Word which was made flesh and ultimately there are few words we need to know, to breathe with love. And be affirmed by nature.


The following is the lead editorial of the first hard copy of The English Bay Banner to be published this summer, and every three months after with a whopping 32 pages plus, supplemented by weekly posts on this site. Go baby go.

LITERACY IS YOUR FREEDOM

You would not be called onto the carpet or shoved into a closet with a dunce’s hat if you were to ask, “Has the whole world gone to hell?” Just check your TV guide.
Is teenage suicide becoming a rational act? Are the hearts of men being inhabited by something insidious? Just watch those video games your son is playing.
War is the way we measure our history.
It appears that even educators have lost interest, except on the picket lines, and eight year term leaders clearly evacuated their moral basis - embarrassingly so to their constituents. Fodder for pope-bashing Jay Leno of the Holy Handshakes but no help to young minds.
Lifestyles of Celebrities are ruling the airwaves with vulgarity and a kind of self-assurance that is repugnant to a decent person. Who would want to be King of this current snakepit?
The “Look-at-Me Industry” is alive and functioning in Vancouver pouring cash into vanity while intellectual life is lost in the anxiety and chaos of banality and competitiveness.
Our society here in this city has been transformed in a bloodless revolution ever since the federal government started selling citizenships to the wealthy, who did not necessarily bring any interest or compassion to our spiritual environment. In our history the newcomers have expressed very little interest.
While our awarenesses fluctuate and hover like bees attending the matters of their existence – nevertheless flying the way they do defying gravity – so indeed may we, across the dimensions of meaning imbued as we are with spirit and in that experience decry the mundane.
Clearly we can’t be flying all the time, our minds constantly exalted, as it is equally important to witness a first step, to take our own and even to experience frustrations and difficulties through which we persevere. Philosophers and avatars throughout the ages have challenged our minds to step up and view the broader horizon where clean winds blow, perhaps to clear the dust accumulating on the soul rendering it again translucent.
The mood of the philosopher is always inculcating him to face the onslaught of time and his selected words may consume or create (or both simultaneously) to reform the context, possibly even to renew the human atmosphere urging each individual to regain their sight of the original, their membership in the living.
Do we need to reexamine the importance we attribute to our memories, to our failed relationships; to witness that original transaction which permitted the festering illusion? Shall we empty this box of mental baggage that we may allow the refilling of our inner sanctum with unadulterated energy, driven by goodness? Maybe.
Can you afford to judge another human being or is the inherent cost of that mental affair your own freedom?
These are the questions which The English Bay Banner will continue to examine every issue. In keeping with the thought of Socrates (see unhappy face), a man who managed to mention before he chose suicide, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

posted by Harry Langen | 6:03 AM | 0 comments

Casting Diamonds

Sweet prince, I ran across the
lakes on the sun,
casting diamonds
into its mirthful sky.
All this time in holy ascension
I prayed your name and danced
in happy apprehension.
Alone I stand
in the pastel shadows now,
Keeping my breath to
a delicate rhythm,
Awaiting the familiar sound
of your footfalls
across the solitary landscape
of my love-pierced heart.
Take my hands, both of them, and
like wet clay press them
to your precious face...
no lonely day then
nor trembling night near, will I
be without a fond reminder
of your tender grace.
Sweet dear darling prince,
these hands unworthy though
Stay here guarded at my side,
Abiding only your sweetest
command, make me obey...
and obey I gladly will
what your love has beckoned.
- r. h. langen

My Brother Comments
The Pressure of Words
All writing, as you know, is a tentative contract of sorts with an imagined reader. Poetry is the toughest contract. The writing itself is the most demanding, absolutely the hardest to do; and finding the reader, who must be extremely discerning, is a great challenge also. Your writing, I have always found, is most effective in the public sphere of rhetorical commentary - at its best, in my experience, in pithy letters to newspaper editors. But there is a poetic background to it - perhaps a spiritual background - which I see operating in what you have shown me. I don't think I've seen poetry from you before.

Here's my brother holding a picture of a war hero, our dad.
I have never imagined myself a poet. I don't think I am one now. But I have of late been feeling the pressure of words. I respect the fact that you are my brother and have been feeling the same pressure also, probably for a lot longer than me.

Thank you for sharing.

April*Bonked and Book*Whirled

On Good Friday after working up some Easter stew with my boyfriend I was knocked down on the sidewalk close to my home and left there bleeding from the crown. By my by-then ex-boyfriend. He was angry, infuriated actually, that he couldn’t stay with me past the curfew of 3:30 pm. imposed by the building management; imposed because of his previous violence against me. Someone escorted me back to my building entrance and the cops and ambulance appeared very soon as I continued bleeding. I deferred going to the hospital for a couple of stitches choosing to go upstairs to bed. I didn’t want Stephen persecuted by the system; but since then he has shown little remorse and made no contact except to ask me to take him out for a beer.

Meanwhile, I was happily contemplating the article about my book to be written by Chris Keam for Alan Twigg, the publisher of B.C. Bookworld, offering 100,000 readers. A measly 1200 words was the assignment but the readership claim was substantial.
Keam, after interviewing me and commenting, “If I can’t write this story I’m not worth my pen” did not read the book, The Dead Sea Revelation, and actually phoned Twigg and pooh-poohed me. Thanks Keam for your sloth. Since when is it correct for a freelance writer to trash a B.C. author to the publisher of B. C. Bookworld? Since, I suppose, the publisher permits such nonsense, being the author of these words: “I have determined he (Keam) is not sufficiently confident that your perspective is as viable as you feel it is, and he is no longer eager to proceed.”
Huh? I am a writer of ideas and use fiction to enchant the reader. The reviews have been entirely favourable (www.deadsearevelation.com) but here we have two ‘professionals’ who don’t even read the text before condemning it. So much for Vancouver’s typical support of writers. Writers are our only hope to justify theater and art. Goodnight to April.

AND TO ALL WRITERS RE THE BOOKSTORE: Hang on. Still checking the numbers re feasability. I am thankful for the thoughtful support shown by so many.

April*Fooled

The following letter went out to major newspapers (of the 'common media' type) after an article appeared in the Vancouver Province edition of April 1st about how the Inukshuk monument was leaking poisonous goop into the soil on the beach by English Bay. The fact that it was Fool's Day escaped this scribe and thus the laugh was on me. Faithful readers of The English Bay Banner will note that I critiqued this pile of rocks before a variation of its form was (mis)chosen as the symbol for the Olympics.

Dear Editor,

Not only is this misplaced pile of rocks a pox on the earth, it's also toxic visually.

Excuse me for sounding politically incorrect, but last I noticed, we are Vancouverites, not Eskimos. On this ground, why not commemorate the courage of Captains Vancouver and Cook, or Francis Drake? These men had guts and their images should be right there on the beach, one of many where they may have strolled. Or why not erect a statue of a defiant Chief Khatsalano who was evicted by whiskey-swilling road builders from his dwelling at Lost Lagoon? His iron countenance windblown, facing his namesake, Kitsilano, as the breaking waves tell his story yet.

Any sculptors out there on time for 2010?

Bullying Clouds

If a morning could be pitch perfect this is one. Cool and sunny and at last the various tree buds are coming back, following the delicate but dependable cherry blossoms by one week. Despite the gloom and doom on the global economic scale and in the various stock markets, on my stroll this billowy morning I didn’t spy anyone leaping out of windows and I could actually detect a spring in the step of some people exhibiting spontaneous optimism under bright blue skies barreled into by whopping cumulus stunners. Trumpets anyone?