the gummy.

certain folks, not surprisingly, were offended by what i wrote about the truckers during that memorable episode. it doesn't make me giddy with happiness to know i've upset people, nor does their lack of appreciation keep me up at night. the stupid prostate takes care of that just fine. i did delete the postings from facebook after, posted them yesterday on my blog-site for safe-keeping: artdelapaix.ca. 

one of the more colourful messages i've received, for example, went like this: "i've thought about learning meditation from you for some time. but your posts on facebook regarding the freedom convoy has turned me right the fxxk off. you call yourself a fxxkin man of peace and then you write angry shxt like that? fxxk you! i will not be joining your upcoming fxxkin meditation course." my immediate response, obviously, went like this: "who told you i'm a fxxkin man of peace? i've never said that. actually, i'm a fxxkin cranky old man. so, although i'll be fxxkin sorry to lose what would clearly have been your valuable input, i'll try my best to stay the fxxk calm and carry on." the fact is we've pulled the plug on my upcoming sessions anyway due to there being too much illness floating around at the moment.

i've held several private sessions in the last few months. and one young couple, who came most recently, generously brought a bag of 'happy goat' coffee and a tiny package of candies. upon handing me the candy, the lady mentioned that they're edible, which i thought an odd thing to say. i also thought it was odd that there were only two in the package, but i simply figured they must be quite special. and i discovered just how special a little while after scoffing one down the very next morning. 

it was delicous, thought about immediately eating the second, only by then i had recognized the familiar pot-plant motif on the package. not wanting to overdo a good thing i got busy and actually forgot all about it, until i realized i had the munchies. still, i really didn't think much about it and, after half a can of peaches, i took off to 'canadian tire.' but somewhere around 'cross-loop' i knew i was stoned. in fact, i was shxt-faced. it was remarkably strong, unsettling. i pulled off into the 'iga' parking lot and sat in my truck, waiting. as an old hippy, the feeling was not entirely unfamiliar in spite of it having been about fifty years since my last spliff. the problem was that i had absolutely no idea if there was more to come, so to speak, how fxxked up i was gonna get.    

the very first time i ever smoked a joint, in a friend's downtown toronto apartment, i kept insisting it wasn't affecting me. all i remember now, so many years later, is that i was leaning way out a window while my buddy held my legs, and i was hollering: 'this shxt's useless' over and over again. i recall that, a little while later, i was standing on a stool at a counter in a 'mr. donut' shop. and in my best w.c. fields voice i was hollering at the waitress: 'come over here my little apple fritter, my little vanilla cupcake.'

anyway, that was then and this is now. and i wondered: what's the difference between then and now? i really wasn't enjoying the fact that i was not in control of my being. that stuff was intense. but why did my buddy paul brown, just for example, end up in jail for a couple years. and how is it that now the stuff's considered medicine? in my day that was a hash brownie. now it's a gummy. but they both fxxk you up. 

i waited at the iga for about fifteen minutes before deciding, what the heck, and took off. i was able to buy what i set out to buy at 'canadian tire' without doing anything inappropriate. only i scraped the heck outta the side of my truck on a railing beside the carriage stand as i pulled out. and it occurred to me that i might've appreciated the truckers' convoy a heck of a lot more if i had simply eaten a gummy or two at the time. 

the fuggers' convoy. 6.

 

6. here's where we are.

it's both unsettling and exhilerating to watch events unfold pretty much as i expected. and of course i'm not the only one, just the only one in this room. now it's becoming more and more about trudeau and, as i've heard the term used so eloquently lately, his henchmen.

you surely can't still believe this trucker's convoy was ever about the mandates. you surely can't still be thinking they drove hundreds or thousands of kilometers because you lost your cushy federal job. which btw you lost because you stubbornly refused to accept an overwhelmingly safe and effective vaccine offered free to help save your life and the lives of people around you. you surely can't still think it was ever about truckers needing proof of vaccination to re-enter canada when they wouldn't have been able to go into the u.s. in the first place. come on: this was always going to be about trudeau. 

as an extremely normal shmo, i'm assuming i'm not privy to bits of information that government officials and others might have. but, i'm sure as hell privy to at least as much information as all the other shmos have. and i have no doubt that research i've tried to do over the past months and years has been far and away more objective, diverse and comprehensive than the shmos sitting in their trucks on wellington street, not to mention, with all due respect, you and so many other shmos. 

i've also been a pretty uninvolved observer as trudeau and his henchmen certainly seemed to be sincerely trying any way to save lives from a virus that claimed millions upon millions world-wide. they financially supported most everyone in the country through the worst of it. receiving a couple thousand bucks per month was no doubt ok with you. but, when he made coffee-shops inaccessible to the unvaxxed, that was not ok and he morphed into a nazi. you got angry at that point. it became a human-rights issue at that point.

i'd rather not be entirely misunderstood, if at all possible. losing your job did not sit well with me. whether justifiable or a governmental over-reach, it did not sit well with me. vaccine passports for unessential services: i was ok with that. but as much as it pissed me off that you wouldn't just this one time during a fuggin pandemic let go of your holier-than-thou attitudes and get the jab, i just didn't feel ok with you losing your livelihood. i wanted there to be another way. and if you had protested that, i wouldn't have written a word against you. but this mess, this perversion of the word 'protest', this abomination of the word 'freedom' was never about your job or the mandates. oh, maybe it was for you. but for the real 'patriots' this was always going to be about trudeau.

now while the mandates are swiftly disappearing the truckers are not. why not? why not claim victory and drive home, sit in front of their tvs, watch 'trucker' carlson and guzzle beer? because they've been waiting for this very moment, waiting to honk and jump around and yell: 'hey look, fuggin trudeau's tryin to be dictator! we told ya! we gotta save yous all from that immigrant-lovin bathdurd and his frickin henchmen!' in fact, this was probably never even specifically about trudeau.

so where do we go from here? 

the fuggers' convoy. 5.

 

5. in regard to one of the messages i've received following my previous posting, i must say that i highly doubt my opinions matter to many folks or influences any. 

that being said, i'd nevertheless like to clarify that i personally do not care whether you've been vaccinated against small-pox, cholera, polio or berry-berry. in regard to the pandemic we've been living through these past two years, i believe that refusing the vaccine a spectacularly selfish position to have taken, but i don't hate you for it. and hopefully it'll soon be less of an issue. if, however, you think what is happening in ottawa is a wonderful event, i believe you are at best a naive fool and at worst a racist bully. you don't seem to care that you're joining a group of people who are torturing residents and who basically are holding the city hostage under an obvious threat of violence.

of course, again, everyone is sick of lockdowns and of course nobody likes the mandates. but it is super curious that, just at a time when things were opening up and mandates were obviously going to loosen, that a group of hateful people organized an anti-mandate 'protest' that has shut the city down again. and you think that a few hours singing 'we are the world' makes it ok.

good luck with that. ps; don't forget to donate so the organizers can further their causes. i presume you know what those are. 

the fuggers' convoy. 4.

 

1. 4. if it weren't so unfortunate, support for this occupation by members of the so-called wellness community would be laughable. i mean, it's a little bizarre watching a well-known local environmental activist dancing wildly in the midst of diesel-choked downtown air. it's just weird to know people, who make their living supposedly helping folks become healthier and happier, essentially facilitating humongous hardships. every time i see one or another meditation teacher, ayurvedic healer, masseuse or whomever, laughing and dancing on their live-stream videos from downtown or expressing their support on facebook, i shake my head.

it's well known that there's a large percentage of 'wellness' folks who are vaccine-hesitant. and, other than while in the throws of a deadly pandemic, i could hardly care less. may you all live long and prosper, has always been my attitude. and if it were under those more normal circumstances, i would understand anger toward such a thing as a vaccine passport, although in fact that's always been a thing. i could understand protesting against mandates they feel infringe upon rights and freedoms. that being said, i suppose in that case i might maybe possibly and perhaps bend my head around understanding those folks having an initial innocent, illogical, naive and ill-conceived support for the convoy. 

however, to STILL be supporting the current protests here and on the bridges is truly unbelievable, reprehensible, not to mention somewhat moronic. did i say that out loud? i meant to just think it.

it is doubtful that there exists many or any governments around the world today, totalitarian or democratic, that would show as much restraint as ours has. even though i'm pretty darn sure there's a core group of protesters wanting violence, whose sole real purpose has always been to simply destabilize, i certainly would've called up the military by now, were i in a position to do so. and i've been a bonafide card-carrying member of the so-called wellness community for at least fifty years by any definition. 

those who profess to champion peace and love, environmental awareness, well-being and oneness, who STILL believe the cynically-named 'trucker's convoy of freedom' is a wonderful historical happening, are frankly themselves unwell.

the fugger's convoy. 3.

 

3. i skimmed through a bit of the emergency debate today. it must be said that it wasn't what trudeau said that bothered me. i agreed with everything that i heard him say. what bothered me was what he didn't say. i again have to mention that i only heard parts, so correct me if i'm wrong. but i heard nothing really conciliatory, certainly no plan even generally regarding the lifting of mandates, vaccine passports and such going forward. he spoke eloquently, but honestly, i didn't hear him say anything particularly helpful. am i wrong?

for what they're worth, my posts have been specifically regarding the protests in ottawa. if one were to take the organizers at face value, or even if you don't, (i have serious doubts, don't really believe a word they say,) trudeau may have missed an opportunity to diffuse the situation. he simply could've, as other governments have done, OFFERED at least some sort of a PLAN for the lifting of mandates going forward. he could've offered SOMETHING. he could've emerged, covid-free, and shown actual leadership.

the fugger's convoy. 2.

 2. posting as a reaction to a few private messages:

for the past 2+ years I've listened to so many people talk at me in regards to the vaccines and mandates. I have rarely if ever offered opposing views, and often agreed with points being made. i rarely disagreed fundamentally because I'd rather not. also, nobody has asked. 

many, btw, are folks who at one time or another seemed to think that i might be of some help, that my knowledge might be of some benefit to them. and yet I cannot recall a time in the last couple of years that any of those same people have really been open to my views in this regard. 

so this one time I've boldly expressed my views, on my own fb page, precipitated by the current so-called demonstration in town. these are my views. up until now i've never unfriended anyone, been pretty definite about that. if i've lost friends now, due to my expressing my opinions, so be it. i've actually lost a couple of friends because of covid in the only way that actually matters. 

the fuggers' convoy. 1

1. i've heard some pretty bizarre, laughable ideas and theories over the past couple of years. but right now, as huge trucks driven by small people hold ottawa citizens hostage, one refrain i've heard a few times by anti-vaccinated, anti-mandate people is: 'it's an historic event.' that line represents to me the very essence of the mentality of those people applauding the so-called and ludicrously entitled 'freedom convoy.' 

this is undoubtedly an historic event. it just doesn't happen to be a nice historic event. and the people who happily proclaim it as such are essentially proclaiming themselves to be what they are: selfish, self-oriented and ignorant people. they're illogical, ill-informed and apparently more than willing to align themselves with racist bullies if they're not themselves racist bullies. 

nobody loves vaccinations. certainly nobody likes lockdowns, shutdowns, wearing masks or whatever else has been introduced in an attempt to keep people alive. what everyone needs to decide is whether these measures, imperfect as they may be, have indeed been put in place to help. or has it all been to take advantage of us.

if those clearly misguided folks actually looked objectively at credible information, the science and data, they might still demonstrate, for one reason or another. i might even join in. but they certainly would not be supporting a 'demonstration' which is effectively, clearly the opposite of freedom.