IT's A DONG SHOW!
Tomorrow, July 1st, is Canada Day.
*Loon calling in the distance

Last year I celebrated Kinada Day by talking about my visit to the Austraileeyer exhibit and so this year I'm going to rave about Japan!

Why? Why not? It's not just because Canada is of little interest to outsiders it's mainly because a friend sent me an email about Hōnen Matsuri with all these great pictures attached.



March 15 is the date upon which the festival of Honen Matsuri (Boner Day) is celebrated in Komaki, Japan.

This is the time of year when ordinary folks can swig on all-you-can-drink sake and release their inner Dongzilla!

Why? Did I mention Free all-you-can-drink Sake?




Plus it's an excuse for old farts to ingest Viagra like candy and celebrate fertility, renewal, a good harvest, yada yada yada, but mostly get hammered on all-you-can-drink sake and parade around with giant boners!



For one day everyone can enjoy having, sharing, worshipping, and receiving, Happiness from your their Japenis.

Do any of you remember the 80s tune Turning Japanese by the Vapors?

I'm turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

(duh-nuh nuh-nuh nuh nuh nuh)

I'll bet that the local bands fueled by all-you-can-drink sake tweak the lyrics a bit..

Honen Matsuri

I am loving my Japenis

I really think so!

(dun-nuh nuh-nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh)

We are SPECIAL :)

As a species (special) we Homo Escapeons been around in our present form for at least 200,000 years...which is not very long compared to most of the animals so actually, we are sort of special.

According to most Paleo-Anthropologists our ancestors migrated out of Africa in a series of waves and eventually occupied nearly every corner of the globe.

Five thousand years ago, having decided to abandon the insecurity ridden life of nomadic hunter gatherers, Homo Escapeons settled down in large numbers and invented Civilized Empires. These days the vast majority of us are dazzling Urbanites who are sold on the whole "economy of scale" thingamabob.


Most of us realise that it really isn't 2,009 A.D., utter rubbish, and so are all of the other Calendars....since we or our brains (same thing) have not changed one iota in 200,000 years, this should be referred to as the year 200,009.


The Human "World" on Earth is basically a hodgepodge of 200 countries (Tribes), the vast majority of which have little or no effect on the whole of mankind. There are a handful of Super-Corporate/Military/Political Entities that control the majority of us.

We are all slaves to the capricious actions of a handful of powerful men who are deluded enough to assume, that they deserve to manipulate the great unwashed. Thank heavens that their ginormous egos prohibit them from uniting because the rest of us would be totally f*cked if they ever joined forces.

Many of us believed/expected that after 2,000 Centuries Homo Escapeons should be far more advanced and living in a "kinder-gentler" global village. The real miracle is that we haven't eliminated our species.

Compared to other species we really are SPECIAL because our brains find ways to circumvent many natural corrections that would normally limit our numbers. By the year 1800, make that 201,800, there were One Billion of us!



Another paradox is that WE are our own worst enemies. Two hundred thousand years later the most "advanced" one third of our species are voluntarily killing themselves by consuming mass quantities of a nutritionally bankrupt diet which precipitates major health issues.

Then we invent ways to prolong and extend our lifespan so that we can continue to overindulge in self destructive behavior.
Go us!

We invented a system of producing mass quantities of junk food but our genetic programming is still operating as if we were half starving hunter/gatherers mode.... 95% of our time has been living hand to mouth and our brains are telling our stomachs the same thing it did out on the African Savannah. EAT! This could be your last meal for a while.

So 200,009 years later and we still have the same old program operating our brain. That's why we keep repeating the same mistakes and I keep writing the same posts over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over....

FOR THE RECORD..

Billie Jean KING

Oh like it never occurred to you?

Billie Jean... the King of Pop.. c'mon!

Nobody?

"IT" doesn't matter,
Who's Wrong Or Right

Yesterday I left a comment on a Blog posting dedicated to the passing of Farrah Fawcett. The texan beauty whose wholesome face and feathered blonde hair were made famous by her ubiquitous bonerific 70s poster made her rich N' famous. Farrah lived her life and her final showdown with Cancer out in the open.

She was 62.

I stated in the comment section that once MY cohorts (50ish year old celebs born 57.58) start expiring, then I'll start to feeling mortal. The two shiniest stars in my age bracket are Madonna and the most famous person on the planet, Michael Jackson..

shown here as he should have looked at our age.

Some of my other cohorts are:

Sharon Stone, Annette Bening, Madeline Stowe, Holly Hunter, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rachel Ward, Andy McDowell, Jennifer Tilly, Daniel Day Lewis, Gary Oldman, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Bacon, Viggo Mortensen,Christopher Lambert, Tim Robbins and Spike Lee, Prince, Kate Bush, Simon Le Bon, Donny Osmond, Sid Vicious, Joan Jett, Neil Finn, Grandmaster Flash, Paul Weller, Sheila E and Belinda Carlisle, Ray Romano, Jon Lovitz, Denis Leary, Ellen DeGeneres, Bernie Mac, Megan Mullaly, Keenan Ivory Wayans and Dan Castellanta (DOH!) and Osama Bin Hidin.

Then I learned that the frail, tortured, gloved-one had beat it.

Michael was as gifted as he was cursed.

One look at his Father (JW) Joe, a clinic in his own right, and it's easy to see why controversy would shadow his career from the getgo.

A few days ago I had tossed Michael's name in with other famous Bad Dads..mainly because he dangled his child over a balcony...

I should have included his monstrous stagedad!

I prolly got more schadenfreude from Britney's very public meltdown (shame on me) because at least for a while, Michael was a genuine musical phenomenon and trendsetter...thanks in large part to the brilliant Producer, Quincy Jones.


You have to admit, that as far as having "IT", few other performers in the 2oth Century could compete with the innate charisma of Michael Jackson.

Jackson's life has all of the important ingredients required in creating an icon although he would have been better off had he passed after Thriller.

At that point he was still hip N' happenin', before the scandals and scalpels era which has overshadowed his showmanship for well over a decade.

Timing is everything in Show Biz/Life.

A huge part of being an Icon is the whatif factor...

what if James Dean had made 4 movies?

What if Marilyn wrote a tell all book about the Kennedys?

What if Martin Luther King had to face the music about his adultery?

Humongous Elvis trolling around the slot machines in his jumpsuit...we don't want the truth..we can't handle the truth.

These STARS should have been taken down a notch that's what! Their stock should have dropped when all of the evidence is in right?.

Most people assumed that Jackson was descending into weirdness even if he had soldout his London concerts. Most of us figured that he was "done" and headed for his Vegas-Elvis stage...wow that would have been a perfect ending :)

Unfortunately Reality dillutes the Fantasy.

Icons, are essentially a Lie.

We choose to believe and cherish the good stuff.

The empathy factor overrides the culpability and voila..a teflon icon is born.

Thanks to the Internet, the frail bleached performer will become an instant Icon, in the truest sense of the term. Unlike most of the present I-Cons who are fabricated pretentious poseurs or I-conjobs (infamous for trying to be famous) Jackson actually deserves to be famous.

I wonder if Michael had any real friends who looked out for him?

Maybe Liz Taylor?

Taylor certainly knows how fickle fame can be. She was also a child star who was later villified as a slut and then reborn as an Aids crusader.

Being a Celebrity SUCKS.


The troubled man who never had a childhood, and chose to live as a child in his adult years (because he could afford to do it) won't need to worry about what other people think about him anymore.

The great thing about being an Icon is that we, the great unwashed, remember the good stuff...it's called selective memory. Jackson will now take his rightful place in the pantheon of the American Iconosphere.

You either have IT or you don't and his lyrics in the song Beat It testify...

IT doesn't matter,

who's wrong or right.

TO HEGEL AND BACK

Which part of LIFE do you find more disturbing..

that random acts of suffering can strike you at any time, the tragic finite certainty that we will die, or that e-gadfly Perez Hilton is still on the radar?

I've been rediscovering my appreciation for the Philosophers..those who boldly stuck out their necks on the chopping block betwixt Science and Religion searching for Reality and Truth..if either really exist?

Have any of you seen Ape Genius on PBS? One question that intrigues me is why Chimpanzees, our nearest lifeform (98% of our DNA) never made the next step to what we term creative thought. Chimps can organise information and solve problems but their "brains never left the launch pad".

Humans are learning animals..we thrive on acquiring and exchanging information. The problem is that now we are concentrating on INFORMATION instead of KNOWLEDGE.

The Internet offers us an unimaginable opportunity to share knowledge but we opt for viewing Perez Hilton whinging about being popped by the manager of the Black Eyed Peas.

To my way of thinking this is the nadir of Modern Culture..a no talent hack who weasled his way into celebrity by being a bitchy little gossip. I think that his Warholian installment of Fame is way past the 15 minute mark and about to be cancelled. It's about f*cking time! Read it HERE


Last night on Frontline there was a doc on how e-garbage (old computers) are being dumped illegally in Africa, India, Vietnam and China. There in primitive garbage strewn ghettos criminals gather personal/financial information on discarded hard drives...credit card numbers, wedding photos..you name it. Information can live forever :)

So here we are at the start of the 21st Century. On one hand the internet is working by informing the world about the cultural revolution in Iran. Like the Dark Ages in Europe, the Middle East has been ruled by theocracies for generations but many of those countries, like Egypt and Iran, have huge populations of young people under the age of 30.

This gives me hope because if they can avoid getting caught up in the frivolous addiction to Entertainment those young people can lead a neo-renaissance and end the Dark Ages.

Which is ironic because during the European Dark Ages the Muslim world flourished under the influence of the rediscovered Philosophers of Antiquity...which of course the Popes had banned. When Spain was reclaimed from the Moors the Westerners re-discovered the forbidden Libraries of the Philosophers and this kick started the Renaissance.

Hegel's immortal line the "History teaches us that people have never learnt anything from history" may not be entirely true.

It certainly is mostly true but somehow Humans have managed to evolve and build on the advances of the previous generation. Then they make the same mistakes (War) and the next generation moves forward. Chimpanzees have never been able to do that. As frustrating as our progress is there is the knowledge that some people will live in a better world than their parents did.

BAD DADS

There are plenty of Worst Dad EVER lists out on the Interwebs and it would be hard to choose #1.

Personally I would give First Place to that psychotic asshole monster Josef Fritzl,

but the other mainstays are all deserving of our contempt;

Darth Vader,

Bing Crosby,

Marvin Gaye Sr.,

Joseph Goebbels,

and Michael Jackson.

I was lucky to have had a great Dad. He would have turned 75 this June.

Although Dad passed away in 1980 while in his mid forties, he is still the most influential man in my life. Something I need to be mindful of because I have four children. A friend sent me a great quote the other day.

"My Father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."
Clarence B. Kelland

Happy Father's Day :)

AREYOUGEDDON TO HEAVEN?



It wouldn't be Spring without finding a warm invitation to learn about the end of the world in the mailbox. This little piece of sunshine was left by the local grey haired, greyish hued people in the grey suits..I call them the Grey Dubyas .

I am usually home on Satudays when the Grey Dubyas drop by and for the past several years we've had playful discussions about how whack their theology is. I don't even bother mentioning all of the times that they predicted that the world would end..1914, 1925 and 1975, OOPS!

The greyish couple, who could be in their 50s, 70s, or 90s (it's impossible for me to tell) seem to enjoy my humorous approach to poking holes in every single bloody thing that they say. Why they keep coming back is beyond me but I admire their tenacity. The phrase masochism does come to mind.

Now sure back in the 80s when I was a Pentechostile smugly perched at the top-of-the-Christian-Fued-Chain I would have eaten their spiritual lunch. Now that I am but a simple Agnostic meandering about the sidelines of the Supernatural World, I realise that their spin isn't really any crazier than any other makebeology...

well maybe a little?

Some of you might be aware that this particular sect have a different "take" on the Bible than most of the other mainstreamers. It's all about market share now isn't it so you can't blame them for proselytizing...they're scared to death!

Personally I do have reservations about worshipping a Creator who designs an ever expanding Cosmos but forgets to add a few extra bleachers in Heaven for the people that he likes. D'OH!

I think their angle that there are only so many seats available in Heaven gives the message more of a sense of urgency don't you?

They even dreamed up an actual figure..144,000..and through some fancy schmancy decipherin' beyond my computational skills, when the sh*t goes down, these elite 144,000 get to go to heaven with Jesus, whom they believe is actually the Archangel Michael. ..

yes the dancing Angel that looks like John Travolta.

In a nutshell "all faithful Jehovah’s Witnesses not chosen to be among the 144,000 elite that go to heaven (those joining the after 1935) will spend eternity on earth. All other people on the earth will be destroyed at war of Armageddon here on earth." You can try to figure it out HERE :)




I don't know about you, but hearing the GOOD NEWS (Gospel) of the Grey Dubyas gives me the warm fuzzies all over. Nothing says Peace On Earth and GoodBye to Mankind like talking about the near-complete anihilation of our species during Armageddon.





I know that I sound like a broken record but what a wonderful world it would be if only the Rastafarians went door-to-door eh?

A FAMILY OUTTING WITH PRIDE

Today we went down to the Legislative grounds to take in the Pride Day Parade. Believe it or not my homewtown of Whateverpeg was the first large North American city to elect an openly gay mayor back in '98.

Today was a beautiful sunny afternoon full of colour, music, and the perfect way to kick off Summer. I had my youngest son with me (nurturing an open mind) and we met my oldest daughter on the grounds of the Legislative Building.

We (and about 5000 other folks) listened to a beautiful selection from the choir and heard an inspiring speech about the '69 Stonewall Riots in New York. Forty years ago this month marks the defining moment in the birth of the Gay Rights movement in North America.

I have a few openly gay friends and family members, in my case some cousins and an aunt but for me it's just another part of who they are. We're all complicated mixtures of charm and tedium..I can't believe that in the 21st Century we are still stuck with religious fanatics trying to pigeonhole this as a "personal decision" to commit a diabolical sin? Imagine..in this day & age?

It was quite moving to see all of the supportive parents marching with their kids. There were so many young people walking with pride...our society is far more tolerant and accepting than when I was turning 12 back in 1969.

I learned a new term today. In the parade there were marchers from the aboriginal community known as TWO SPIRIT people, wouldn't it be easier to be referred to as Gaytive North Americans?

There is still a long way to go to reach full equality throughout North America. Hopefully in 40 more years when my little guy is my age this won't be much of an issue...

but the parade will prolly be just as fun as you can see from these pictures.

Yes that was a chocolate treat passed out by marchers, quite good actually and no I didn't let my son see it :)

He-LLO! it's perennial crowd favorites "Pictoria & Gloria" in this year's fabulous ensemble.




Gloria was kind enough to pose with me after the parade..sort of Dr Seussian eh?
:)

Baitballing = DUMBOCRAZY!

I just read an interesting article by Wildlife Biologist Robert Alison on the the inherent wisdom of group decisions.
You can read it here.

Alison wrote about Cordocet's Jury Theorem which was first outlined in 1785 by oddly enough some Dude known as the Marquis de Cordocet. It's fundamental presumption is..wait for it...

that the many, are more likely to make a collective correct choice, than the one or the few.

"Group decison making is common in animals"...

Hello! Especially during those spur-of -the-moment incidents of sheer panic and utter terror!

Geddit? I just happen to believe that most people are bewildered by politics and the media and so they vote based on what they have heard, rather than what they Gnow.

"According to Krishna Ladha of Washington University, a majority of any group of people, when selecting between two alternatives, is more likely to make the "better" choice than any one member of the group. Recent studies show that the larger the group, the more likely an optimal result will occur."

If by optimal they mean that some other poor bastard will get eaten instead of you then Yes, they are right.

"Many animal groups routinely make consensus decisions jointly," confirmed Jinhu Lu of the Institute of Systematic Science. Research by Ashley Ward at the University of Sydney shows that quorum decisions shape collective movement patterns in fish.

Yeah? They're called baitballs and predators purposely make them bunch up because it's easier to eat them. All of the prey try to hide in the middle where you'd think they're playing the better odds but that is exactly where the predators charge!

The pathetic reality is that poor little bait fish (like us) are doomed if they are caught out in the open... so we actually are better off in a baitball.

"The outstanding complication regarding very large groups is that their consensus decisions tend to oscillate, resulting in an inconsistent analysis of the same facts in separate, even consecutive, sessions.

Conversely, human group decision-making is comparatively new, having occurred only in the past 300,000 years, which makes them more prone to incorrectness due to relative infancy. One main problem is the tendency among humans to rush decisions. "

Another flaw in the human group decision-making process is that majority choices can be wrong when subgroups form alliances with conflicting agendas. Coalitions tend to make the Condorcet jury theorem inoperable; the result is the "Condorcet paradox."

"Mathematicians agree that although group-made decisions are more often correct, compared with individual decisions, and that adding more voters to the process increases the probability that a majority decision is correct, the effect is most dramatic if decisions involve only two choices, such as in jury trials.

Decisions made by groups are no better than individual choices when there are more than two options at issue."

Is there such a thing as Common Sense?

Doesn't it feel as though we live in one giant baitball?