An Open and Fetching Letter to the Lonely Hearts Club, Vancouver Branch

With all this Vancouverite loneliness being discussed and restaurant owners plotting ways to introduce strangers to each other and all that useless texting and hopeless, anxiety-driven cell phone calling, and given the absolute popularity these days (witness our sidewalks) of the dog, I suggest a resolution to once and for all settle the issue of the lonely hearts club, Vancouver Branch. Date your dog.

The Noble Pooch. Just imagine. Well I did and here’s my list: Smoochie Poochie picnics in off-leash zones; Pedicures for all fours; Dog salon visitations to experience intimate de-licing techniques; Dog-breath sunsets; Panting salivations to accompany Al Green serenades on the dance floor; Slop tongue remedies for facial hangovers (and acne); Doggie instructions on how to catch the poop; Shopping for new boots to fit nipped ankles; Speed-dating with Greyhounds; Binge-drinking with St Bernards; Double-dating with underfed pitbulls; Watching Sylvester Stallone movies with 101 Dalmations; Powdering your Silky Terrier’s nose; Lap-dancing with your Pomeranian; Tickling the chin of your beloved Shih Tzu;

Private lessons in removing Shih Tzu teeth clamped on bleeding nose; Naked Tummy Rubbing Competitions at Wreck Beach for the salacious entertainment of the RCMP; Fetching sticks (quickly) for your occasionally misbehaving, irritable Doberman; Playing Frisbee with your Japanese Spitz Fire. A photo album to die for – oh, and speaking of which, there’s always taxidermy. With science just purring along these days it won’t be long before you can just wind up ol’ dead Yeller and take him on that heavenly stroll down memory lane, being kept of course on a long leash so all and sundry can swoon and gander, and pet and tickle your fur-shedding zombie pup.

THE DILEMMA OF THE COMMON MEDIA

Postmedia, a giant in the newspaper industry in Canada, has recently announced that it is revolutionizing the make-up and presentation of some of its primary metropolitan newspapers. There will be a new focus on internet news reporting for transfer to mobiles and tablets and such. As with any corporate announcement this decision is money driven and is accompanied by a note that advertising revenues have been falling off the scale dramatically since the rise of the net; and the arrival on our cyber-doorsteps alternate sources of entertainment information and news.

Read all about it! The newspapering formula seems to have flopped.

In my view it flopped a long time ago. About when the editor’s pen was handed to him every morning by the advertising department head. Editorial integrity died unceremoniously without the hint of a somber parade, piping dirge or modicum of witty repartee at the scribe’s saloon.

Blaming the global demise of the newspaper industry on the mildewing and blowing away of advertising sources is disingenuous in the extreme. Once the editors began kowtowing to the advertisers, they betrayed the trust of their readership. And a readership, as any editor worth his ink should know, is built painstakingly article by article, editorial brick by brick, with scribes on the front lines and in the back rooms armed with torches and recorders, pens and notepads poking about at all hours to get to the bottom of the story to get their lead ‘tits above the board’ - on the top half of Page One and in those glorious days when even contemplating selling any ad space on Page One would have gotten you a free one way ticket to obscurity.

But alas, the ones who were eventually assigned their place in the annals of the obscure were indeed those very those editors who balked at publishers who insisted on a servile, obsequious approach to those wizards behind the curtain, the bland CEO’s of the mega-corporations. Those faceless bean-counting button-pushers controlled the movement of mountains of advertising revenue, squeaked out every three months at significant discounts for being such ‘loyal’ newspaper supporters.

Conrad Black’s old partner – you know the one, that Radler guy who back-shanked little boy Black when their shell game got tougher to hide behind the smoke signals - knew all about firing writers and editors who stood their ground in the integrity department. The shame being: they are probably still unemployed, wasting away on a tab in the scribe’s saloon but at least their last laugh was well-earned, toasting their old bosses decked out behind bars.

When independent ownership of newspapers in Canada dissolved into those mega-corporations (as did most big city dailies anywhere in the world) we could pretty much kiss the editorial life of that paper a long good-bye. And now those newspapers are distressed trying to establish themselves once again as being even the least bit relevant let alone of any editorial bone whatsoever.

TAKE NOTE PUBLISHERS: You can’t betray a readership twice. Loyalty doesn’t offer itself up to your corporate footballing. You’ve priced yourself out of the market because you obliterated that market with your high-handed mediocrity.

By suck-holing to the advertiser in the first place, you strangled the editorial interest of your own paper. You've spilt the juice.

The irony would be exquisite and worth a cackle or two except for the grim fate assigned to those heroic chain-smoking writers of real integrity upon whose backs were written those cheques which inflated those newspaper barons.

The English Bay Banner does not, never has and never will depend on advertising to serve its readership. The last of a dying breed? You bet.  

Sketchy Memories and Mirror Neurons

Mirror neurons. That’s what I’ll blame. For all those cockeyed screw-ups, impulsive decisions with sober consequences. Trying to keep up with everyone else’s version of wealth and happiness. We all reflect each other at times. We are so intimately connected sometimes we mirror each other.

At other times we may stand alone and actually show some courage or a moment of true principle. How easily I can intellectualize the righteousness and morality demanded of a circumstance; but I notice I’m not experiencing much of anything. Reminds me of the Dalai Lama’s answer. Some impertinent reporter put the question to him: “Are you enlightened?”  Well, excuse me, but that stopped the train. A sacred hush descended upon one and all like a flock of dead doves. Our holy man of that giddy giggling (should get betrothed to Desmond Tutu?) did seriously pause and entone, “No.”

But for some reason my major moral misfires have been visiting me of late. Raise money for a project. Great excitement. Jubilation. Run out of money and raise some more. Do that more than a few times and you have entered into a habit worse than addiction.

Being nickled and dimed to death doesn’t work either for an entrepreneur of grand schemes – and the word ‘schemes’ does not necessarily infer conniving or duplicity. One needs a scheme to win a chess game. And a scheme to best an immoral employer.  When a great idea works, it works big. I was accused once by a former editor of a local Vancouver rag that I had great ideas almost every day of my life.   

But alas: the square holes and round pegs bewildered me. And cost others. Darts anyone? Maybe with a picture of Ponzi front and centre. 

In all of these remembrances of backstroking through cesspools, trying to dredge up enough detritus to haul oneself out of financial mire, I am fondly reminded of attending Mass every Sunday and really listening to the sermon. That weekly occasion of standing, kneeling and singing and praying shoulder to shoulder was more critically important than I could have realized. That one hour connected me once a week to all those other desperate people and a brave priest fumbling about with us tinkering faithfully with our moral compasses; and there we mingled with all those tricky mirror neurons, trickier even than the spooky house of mirrors at the local carnival all those bumper-car-crashing decades ago.  

And I for one could survive with increased comfort hearing words well spoken of love and the magnificence of Man every day.  

Bang, bang, You're dead! Or not.

Why do we call it the “big bang” theory when no one was around to hear it? Creation, while fierce, is a quiet wind impregnated with myriad souls, each eternally reflecting facets of the endless fountain, all full of colour and breathing forms. Each form, each body a reflection of perfection.

“Nothing in the human body was designed to cease functioning.” Ted (Sideras) Pirtle, 1979.          (Artwork: Steve Cross of Melbourne)

A lot of wrinkled people know this inherently. That’s why they keep saying ‘I feel young! I don’t feel old. I don’t feel the way I look in the mirror.’ They mean it. They want to be accepted for the way they are and were when they were young – because they are young. But today’s youth – in their wisdom – seem all to be judging the elderly by their ‘covers.’ What hopeless snobbery. And this judgment, so common and overbearing, is ultimately dissuasive of the older person’s optimistic self-assessment.I envision within the next few generations (if we don’t succumb to crack addictions et al) that the life span of  those who have sustained a simple healthy lifestyle, and a diet and exercise regime will easily crest 150 to 200 years. Science is quite reassuring even now. Genome analysis; stem cell cures; respiratory remedies; organ transplants etc. etc. 

The other component to long life is right-headed thinking. One’s belief system needs to be more than belief. One needs to know that one’s energies may flow freely from spirit to mind to all corners of our biology. As we are affirmed per footfall and per syllable by the surrounding nature, our bodies will act as though thankful and live up to their infinitely expressed designs. I envision people living within their enlivened spiritual bodies which then are sustaining the perfect health and vigor of the carnal hosts. One’s gait becomes a dance; one’s voice a source of melodies; of meaning. One’s utterances the conductors of new genetic streams, engineering enhanced spiritual fields.

What peace then knowing this when all but 20 years old. What bliss. What happy anticipation… all confirmed per sunrise by the personality of the infinite.

"Imagine if you can..." Living as co-creators and being created daily by that which one hears, sees, smells, touches, tastes and experiences. Even our most intimate rhythms and far-reaching observations and the hearing of Kepler's skies all set out in that one divine exhalation, on-going yet.