Received our first rejection slip this morning.  In publishing, that is.

I am no stranger to other kinds of rejection, of course, but literary rejection is different than personal, romantic, employment, school, team and familial rejection.  Publishing rejection is so impersonal. “We don’t like you or what you have to say!”  It hurts, but somehow it is NOT personal.

Hmmmm……it is a bit like asking a pretty but disinterested girl to dance when you are 18.  She doesn’t even look up as she barks out her epithet to “F-off!”  After awhile, there are no more tears.  It is just the way it is. Yeah!  That is what rejection slips are like.   Exactly.

Mind you, we submitted first to the LBGT press and then added the Q to the second entry. Our seventh submission was to the LGBTTTQQIAA press and so we still have a chance in that nothing-wrong-with-that publishing sector.  We have high hopes for that one.  We belong there.

We would have submitted to Penguin, Harper-Collins, Mother Earth News, Oprah, Harlequin and Time-Warner but we think we are too cutting edge for those mainstream publishers.  Too avant-garde.  Too hip.  They just wouldn’t get it.

Seriously?  We’re going to eventually end up with Vanity Press.  Have to.  We know that. And there is nothing wrong with that.  My only regret?  Sal edited all the kinky stuff out of Tales From Off the Grid.  We might have had a chance with LGBGTQRSTUV otherwise (S stands for ‘seniors’.  Can’t tell you what the ‘U’ stands for!).

The book, it seems, is done.  Tales From Off the Grid.  Sal has sent it off to the publishers even though every pass at editing – including the last few over the past week – resulted in even more changes, mistakes found and gaping holes revealed.  We are just not very good at this writing thing.

What are the chances the publishers will love it?  Answer: we are really planning on self-publishing and, even at that, keeping to an e-format.  Excuse: to save trees, of course!

I say ‘we’ because, even though I wrote it, Sal worked it and worked it and worked it. Honestly, it is like I chopped down the tree and Sal built the house.  Still, it is my name on the cover.  She’ll accept only acknowledgments (and has also been expressing relief lately that her last name is different than mine).  Make no mistake – Sal doesn’t WANT her name on the cover.  THAT should tell you how good she thinks it is.

Two hundred and ninety two pages culled from 1500 rough, ragged pages of disconnected blah, blah blog.  Three thousand if you counted all of them but the book is taken from the first part of what we fully expect to be a series.  Chronicles, maybe.  A trilogy at the very least. Tales From Off the Grid is the prequel to: Lord of The Decks.

But it is not easy.  Building a book from a blog is like making handbags from pig’s ears. NOT easy in any kind of literate way, anyway.  Maybe impossible.  I would certainly advise any aspiring writer to start afresh rather than try to make something out of something else.  Maybe learn some grammar first.  Take a course.  It was like a mechanically challenged old dork and his wife trying to build a tractor from a pile of old cars.  What we eventually ended up with starts and runs but does it do the job?

Hmmmm…….that gives me an idea for the next project……… 

Of course, we are way too close to the blog-book to really know but I know ugly when I see it and I know amateur when it read it.  Having said that, even Steinbeck had to start somewhere, right?  No one wrote like Hemingway from the get-go.  Give it time.  With all her efforts on this, I fully expect Sal to get better.

Me?  I have a welder and methinks I am better off melting steel than writing.  I’ll still do it, of course, but like my welding, I don’t expect it to ever get good enough to stick together or look good.

We’ve decided to price the hard-cover, coffee-table version of the book at $795.00 a copy. In that way we can always claim – if we don’t sell out the initial run –  that it was just too far ahead of it’s time or we missed the market or it was mis-priced by the marketing department.  Or something.  We may discount it later but we want the initial demand to make us rich.  You know, right after the appearance on Oprah?

E-copy version?  Under $5.00.

And it is that kind of logic that has us in this OTG position in the first place so we are simply living our reality.  It’s a plan, anyway.  Aside from this self-deprecating effort at promoting the book, what could possibly go wrong?

As regular readers know (all 6 of you), I have branched out recently to vent, rant and comment on what I see as colossal social urban and cultural malaise or dysfunction in well, just about everything. I have even alluded to a personal tendency towards conspiracy theories.

There is the distinct possibility that I may be getting weird.

That’s kinda good for my spleen and other internal systems feeling choked and stressed (probably caused just by having to drive so much in city traffic these days) but it is not overly interesting in the long run nor is it particularly helpful to others.  I can’t really apologize (and still be honest about it) but, once again, I am going to try to put some limits on it. I am going back to OTG issues.

OTG living is about independence, nature and skill building. If you have a partner, it is also about personal relationships and, if you have any kind of community, it also emphasizes traditional relationships with neighbours and any people nearby.  And therein lies the first irony – people are the real grid.  More people = less off-the-grid.

A few hundred years ago some independent, skilled and adventurous people struck out to live in an OTG kind of way in the new world.  They came from Europe’s cities. They went forth in North America and found fertile soil and clean water and, perhaps, fruitful forests from which to carve out an existence.  They were OTG but they went for the easiest-to-homestead places first.  And that observation was not lost on others.  Pretty soon our OTG forefathers had neighbours and then they had villages and eventually cities evolved. In other words: where the cities are is where the best OTG places are (or were).

Almost by definition, living OTG today is usually far away from the cities and the best climates, soils and conditions to serve the lifestyle.  At least in any popular way.  Living OTG in the 1700’s was simply a precursor to future population density.  Living OTG today is almost guaranteed to remain that way.

Look at our place.  And the places around us (say, 100 square miles).  There is precious little arable soil.  There is likely more than enough for us and maybe twice as many of us but, after that number is reached, there is simply not enough arable soil.  No one can farm. They grow gardens but they don’t farm.  Or ranch.

Nor is the climate ideal.  The Gulf Islands of BC are notoriously lacking in fresh water. The islands get plenty of rain but the topography and the rocky nature of the geography is such that not a lot is retained.  The summertime is often dry on the Gulf Islands and, of course, summertime is growing season.

There are some areas of the Gulf Islands that are exceptions but they are no longer OTG and are highly valued.  Bottom line: the best conditions for living OTG are found in the lower Fraser Valley. Vancouver.  And we have high-rises and high density there now.

This observation is not just mine.  The Agricultural Land Reserve, an august body created by the NDP in the 70’s, was intended to preserve as much arable soil as possible in an area that was rapidly being paved over.   So, the double irony is that the ideal living condition seems to generate growth to the extent that what made it ideal is destroyed by the people moving there.  Simply put: they paved paradise and put in a parking lot!

“So, what are you saying, Dave?”

I am saying that OTG living is not easy for a number of reasons but, if you go back to the original OTG’ers, they would never have picked the places we have available now.  All the easy places have gone urban.

Of course, we have other ways to compensate for much of the difficulties of the past. Transport, technology, communications, job specializations, grocery stores and all that. But when you choose to go OTG today, you are choosing a new and complicated lifestyle, not recreating an older, simple one that comes to mind for the uninitiated.  Forget the Whole Earth Catalogue.  Like everything, even OTG living has evolved.  It is much more complicated than it appears.

Yes, you enjoy and acquire much of what the original OTG’ers were looking for, freedom, independence and nature but you are getting there an entirely different way.  Just a ‘heads-up’: don’t think of the OTG lifestyle as back-to-the-land, minimalist or simple.  It simply isn’t simple anymore.

Harper just signed a secret deal (not made public, anyway) with China to share customs and import-export information. Not unlike our previous deals with the US to share all Canadian information. The ENTIRE population of Canada is barely larger than ONE of the largest metropolitan cities in China (Chongquin).  So how does their national import and export information benefit us?  How does giving the US our information make any sense?And the US/Canada security industry monitors every single phone call and e-mail and text message in all of N. America all the time….?

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party (and usually spot on), has asked Parliament to investigate the myth of 911.  Apparently there are some people in Canada that doubt the official story of 911.  And she wants to get to the bottom of it.  Any person with half a brain knows that the official story of 911 is false.  So, why pose the question?  Do you actually WANT more lies? And why is Canada posing the question? Why Elizabeth?  How does raising that question in 2014 (begun by any sentient witness in 2001) make any sense?

Five or six cops jump and kill a large black man (the latest of many) in New York who is NOT resisting arrest and their grand jury does not see grounds to indict the cop with some kind of criminal charge.  “There may be a case (in tort law) of negligence but there is not a case for criminal prosecution.”  Doesn’t that mean that any cop at any time can kill anyone for virtually any reason at all and they will never be charged with a crime?

And aren’t they actually already doing that….?

Christie Clark just ‘gave it away’ and Petronas still doesn’t want to ‘take’ our natural gas.

As CO2 emissions strangulate us, the price of oil has plummeted to half the market price just a year ago.

“The economy is strong!” says Harper and Clark and yet interest rates remain at record lows and individual Canadian debt is at record highs.  And the cost of living is increasing . The province of BC owes billions!  All the while child poverty and homelessness is reaching epidemic levels.  Health Care and Education are crumbling.  Gambling and prostitution are now legal and Heroin is being dispensed by the government.

China is the largest economy in the world (just announced) – an economy built on exporting junk.  The US, second – an economy built on importing junk.  The rich are still getting richer.  And ordinary Canadians can’t afford to own a home.

ISIL nut-bars are proliferating – or so they say – in Syria and Iraq – and Canada is flying sorties against them.  Traffic accidents and mental patients are characterized in the guise of terrorism.  So are 15 year-old petty thieves.

Ban Ki-moon (UN secretary General) is speaking bluntly: “We MUST address climate change or else our species is in peril!”  He is twenty years or more overdue, of course – late, like all so-called leaders – but he has dropped ‘diplomacy-speak’ and is telling it like it is. It seems no one is listening!

The police are killing citizens willy-nilly, the planet is dying, our Prime Minister is signing secret deals with the largest junk economies in the world.  Canadians are being ripped off at every level.  The climate is changing.  And we are celebrating war, of all things!  That which we have paid through the nose for (oil) is – all of a sudden – cheap and that which was offered too cheap (LNG), no one wants.

And I am currently working in the city – mostly by sitting in traffic and talking on a phone…….does any of this make any sense to you?  Is it not all illogical in the extreme?  Is it not all incredibly mad?

Answer: yes.  It is mad. Well and truly insane-making mad.  And, consequently, I am getting madder every day.  I may go home.

We have a Pathfinder.  1996.  Almost 200,000 kms.  It starts.  It goes.  It carries.  In fact, except for the usual suspects (brakes, exhaust, bulbs, belts and tires) it seems to be pretty much all one could ever need in a vehicle (‘cept for the odd rodent).

It ain’t shiny. It ain’t pretty.  It’s got more than few wrinkles and bumps to mark it’s life here on earth but, all in all, it wears a coating of dirt as well as any other vehicle.  I like it.  Sal likes it.  Fid knows ‘his’ car in a parking lot.  The old Pathfinder seems good for another 100,000 kms.  Except…..well……

Landcruiser sounds better…….G-wagen sounds good, too.  So does crew cab.  I’d love to find a slightly larger, maybe more macho SUV.  Black.  Ya know?  (on Natural gas, of course).  I keep filling the old PF to the rafters and then spilling on up to the roof rack. Sometimes we have even filled the old utility trailer past the maximum rating by scary amounts, too.  And then pulled it behind the stuffed PF. There have been times when you couldn’t have squeezed a loaf of Wonder bread into the vehicle it was soooooooo loaded up.

So….do I need a new vehicle?

I don’t think so.  I really don’t.  I only need to get from A to B now and then and to carry a whole lotta crap while doing so.  And I am doing that quite well, thank you very much.

Sooooo…….why am I feeling as if I need to buy?

I don’t think it is peer group pressure.  If PGP had any effect on me, I’d be slimmer and more polite, at the very least.  I’d dress better, for sure.  It ain’t status.  I can assure you of that.  Mostly because I equate more status to an old vehicle in good nick than what a tub full of cash can buy off a showroom floor.

It just MIGHT be the moving cornucopia of ‘sexy’ cars and trucks out there, tho.  They do look good compared to Ol’ Poofy, I’ll give you that.  But, seriously…….

I had an hour to kill and went to a Chinese foot massage place (always a treat) and got mildly tortured by a nice monolingual Asian woman just a smidge too keen on upgrading me to a full body massage.  I resisted her fetching smile with remarkably little difficulty, actually.  But I got to talking to the guy massaging the person next to me.  He is a recent Chinese (mainland) immigrant.  He works 7 days a week starting at 10:00 am and not quitting until 11:00 pm!  “Why the hell, William, do you do that?  That’s no life!”

“Aaaaahh……I know!  Car payments!  Gas!  Bills.  Gotta pay the bills, eh?”

“You buying a house?  In this market!  You can’t rub enough feet to buy a house in Vancouver, man!”

“No!  No house! (recent immigrants often speak with exclamation marks at the end of their sentences for no real reason that I can discern). I just buy ‘spensive new car!  Car cost money. Lots of money!  I pay for car!”

“Shoot!  What kinda car you driving, dude?”

“Lessus!  Leck sas?  Luk sis?”

“Lex-us, William.  Lex-us.  You better keep rubbing, William, old boy.  And welcome to the wonderful world of consumerism.  You’ve got a lot of feet in your future and a long, long way to go.”

I walked out of there with nice feet and no desire for a shiny car.  What a deal!

In town a month already.  Getting acclimated.  Driving faster, getting impatient.  Needing car repairs.  Using enough fuel to warrant a protest group of my own.  But….it’s good.  It’s all good.

You know…feeling and being alive….doin’ stuff….writin’ about it…?

Car repairs?  Well, that’s a weird one – a mouse, rat or squirrel made a nest on my engine at some point (URBAN RODENT!) and chewed on the distributor cap and wires to ‘settle in’ and, because of that, caused the car to miss and flash warnings.  $500 later and a stray cat strapped to the air cleaner and we are good to go.  Cat’s a bit noisy but so is the whole of the city – you just have to learn to tune it out…ya know?

I am ‘doing business’ and it feels a bit like old times.  I even bought a couple of dress shirts.  But there is no going back.  I don’t fit.  Not really.  Still, I am accepted as an older experienced guy in the role I have now and people sometimes say ‘sir’ and that sort of thing.  It’s weird but it is also illuminating to learn that so much that one has learned over the years is actually NEWS to young people!  Simple, basic lessons on life, business, whatever, still has to be passed on to the next generation and, for the last forty years, I WAS that next generation.  Now I am the GRAND or ‘last’ generation.  Now I get to pass stuff on.

‘Course none of it is necessarily correct, true or even relevant to what they are asking about but I pass it on anyway.  One of the nice things about getting old is you don’t really care all that much about what you say.  I can tell the younger ones anything!

No sexual advice, tho.  That topic has gone way beyond me.  I don’t get it.  50 shades of grey?  I am still trying to be a good missionary.  I am way out of it!

Some of my advice will work, tho.  I am pretty sure.  Maybe half.  About the same as a coin toss, actually.

One odd feeling: I may have done my last mediation……it was good.  I liked them.  They got sorted.  It was a good experience all around.  Friends were made.  All good.  But…well, hard to say, really…..I charge $300 an hour and it just wasn’t worth it…NOT for me, anyway.  It wouldn’t have been worth it at twice that.  TIME is what I value now.

I dunno….I never really became a mediator for the money and I only raised the rates to ‘cut back’ on the work but no one is worth $300 an hour in a world like ours (especially me) and that includes the Sedins (both of them!).  There are people who don’t make that in a year!

And Harper should be paying us!

I usually do about five hours of work to bill one hour but, even at that, I am NOT working for the money.  I work from interest.  Always have.  Most people do when they think about it.  And I am no longer that interested in the ordinary disputes in life and small business and that was my area of expertise as a mediator.

And if you are not interested, you are NOT good.

It is time to quit unless something BIG comes along.  I’d go to Syria.  I’d go to Ukraine.  I’d even go to Hong Kong or Ferguson, MIssouri but nano-disputes no longer turn me on.  I need a war or something.  And, to be frank, I’d be too scared to be much good mediating ISIL maniacs or Boko Haram, so my curiosity is way, way larger than my courage.

Time to retire again, I guess.  I’ll be checkin’ out again as soon as these current young people I have bamboozled catch on……

Issues come and go and that is to be expected.  We don’t have long attention spans in a world full of attention-getting advertising and news delivered in 15 second dollops.  We have been acculturated to mentally move on if, for no other reason, there is so much drivel backed up waiting to be downloaded into our brains, we have to.  We are being force fed infotainment.  I came to know that profoundly while living off the grid.

Living off the grid was always busy for us.  Always.  We had things to do and they all required learning and doing and physical work (which takes us longer as we age).  Our days were full but were never jammed or hectic mentally.  Our days were relaxing even when physically challenging.

Our days were also pretty balanced.  We had first to dream, to think, prepare, work, maybe clean up and then review and then (often) repeat the process just to get the simplest of things done.  The only demands were self-imposed. It was a natural pace of doing things.  The big difference: we were only REACTIVE after we had had a chance to do it once.  And, even then, our ‘reaction’ required re-thinking as well.  And, even then, we reacted at our own pace.

The city is different.  Most of the time you are instantly REACTIVE in the city.  You are ‘reactive’ to schedules, traffic and, of course, the incessant demands of others for your attention. You do not take time to think.  There is no time.  Having a chance to think is, surprisingly, an option or a luxury – something that seems to disappear with urban immersion.  Even the urbanite’s weekends are filled with ‘catching up’ on chores or social engagements. Spending time ‘contemplating’ becomes so rare as to disappear for many people.

I know that, for myself, I spent the bulk of twenty or thirty years in ‘reaction’ mode and my idea of ‘turning it off’ was to turn the TV on.  And then I would ‘react’ to what was being aimed at me.

And again – in the city, at this writing, I am now almost fully booked for the next three weeks.

If you have any doubts about all this, ask yourself the following question: “What were the ten biggest news stories of the previous year (2013)”?  Name one from 2011.  Ask yourself what you did six months ago that was ‘different or out of the ordinary?”  I hope you have some semblance of answers but most of us are on cruise control and it all blurs into a morass of nothing.

Well, it did for me, anyway.

But when you write a blog (or, better put: when I write a blog) I always start with, “What is in the back of my head?”  I know what is up front and demanding but I want to consider what is still there and yet NOT getting my attention.  Today it is police behaviour.

I think police behaviour has gone way, way out of control.  And that is, collectively, an insidious act of social change – but we hardly notice.  And that is just plain weird.  I am making a guess here but I would opine that more people are killed by the police than by criminals in Canada.

Some old lady police protester in Ferguson, Missouri was quoted as saying, “The police are the biggest single danger to the security and safety of the populace in the USA!”

The other day the Vancouver police shot and killed a 57 year old man wielding a two by four standing in the middle of an intersection.  Clearly mad.  Admittedly, they first tried to subdue him with bean-bags from a shot gun but then they just shot him dead.  What kind of ‘training’ is required if they resort to killing at the drop of a hat?

Then there was the 12 year old in some US city playing openly with a BB gun (pistol) and the police arrived and shot him dead within a second of their arrival.  Seriously.  NOT two seconds.  No talking.  No ‘get on the ground now!’ crap.  They just pulled up and shot him from the car.  Dead.

And that is something to think about.  THAT is really something to think about.  Why are ordinary men (they must be to get in to the police force, one should think…..) killing unarmed citizens to such an extent that it is creeping up the consciousnesses of even old ladies?  And me?

More to the point – ask yourself how close you are to being screamed at (GET ON THE GROUND NOW!) and, not having a clue as to why the officer is ‘out of his mind’, responding with “what is the problem, officer?  I’ve done nothing!” …..and then…..being shot?  The possibility of that kind of madness is increasing.

If a Hell’s Angel walks up to you and appears angry, you might get a beating.  If it’s a police officer, you might be killed.

Does that make any sense?

OK…this is unexpected, I am sure.  But I have to say it: Kangaroos are here and having their way with us! Kangaroo courts beget lynchings and we are definitely watching lynchings and letting them happen.  Therefore…watch out for kangaroos!

What I mean by that: allegations are not fact.  Allegations can be just gossip.  If someone alleges a crime was committed, an investigation should take place and a proper trial convened.  The alleged victim has to come forward. Evidence has to be presented. Anything else is just rumour or gossip, however compelling the story.

The above is written knowing full well that alleged victims can be telling the truth but are hesitant to come forward and often for understandable reasons.  Women are especially reluctant to describe personal violations even if the intimacy was not wanted or expected. It’s embarrassing at the very least.  It can be traumatically scarring.  Fraud victims feel similarly.  They feel stupid for being so naive or trusting.  Their wounds can be more than just financial, too.

But others cannot pay the social and legal price for a crime they may not have committed. That is blatant injustice and, to my mind, that kind of injustice trumps embarrassment, humiliation and monetary loss. As I write this, the current rash of accusations serving as judgments is a travesty of any kind of justice and we are now all accomplices to that very real crime if we don’t at least speak out.

I am not alone in thinking this way – it is the basis on which our criminal legal system operates. It is a fundamental premise in all law.  Proof is required. The accused has to know the accuser.  It’s tough for everyone but so was the alleged crime and so is the possible judgment.  Crime is not nice and no amount of dancing around it or coddling will make it better.

All of the above, I believe, will be agreed to by most thinking individuals but I want to considertwo other elements as well.  Time and changing standards and basic primal motives – the kind that no laws have effect on.

Firstly, what constitutes sexual harassment today was considered normal behaviour less than thirty years ago. Women were subjected to sexual inequality in many ways and it was the norm.  That does not make it right nor does it make it better but what might constitute a crime today may have been just considered a ‘pass’ or ‘naughty behaviour’ a few decades ago.

And men make passes at women all the time.  It is natural.

For instance: forty years ago a man might pat or pinch a woman’s bottom as she walked by.  That might have been pushing the social envelope even then, but it seems to be an indictable offense today.  Whether it was as bad or damaging as currently alleged by feminist politics is not the point – the point is social behaviours change.  People change with them. Something viewed in retrospect misses the context.  And context counts.

The longer the time interval the less credible the allegation.  Another basic premise in law.

Mind you, rape is always rape.  Child molestation was and always will be a crime.  Some things have no statute of limitations.  But sexual harassment does.  Or should.  Hell, there was not even such a term forty years ago.  We have come a long way, baby!

Which brings me to my most contentious point:

By and large (although not so much today) men pursued women and women allowed themselves to be caught.  Or not.  Women attracted as many men as possible and then rejected the ones they didn’t want.  It was the natural order of things.  But what that meant was that an attractive woman would attract some (if not many) unwanted suitors and sometimes they were unwanted because they weren’t very nice.  Society had norms and standards for that and sometimes even chaperons.  The sexual ‘danger’ an attractive woman was in was well understood.

Muslim cultures even clothe women from head to toe in black blankets because of it.

But (here it is) why is it that men aren’t nice?  Why did we and why do we still operate as if men are a danger?

Answer: because we are!  Men are trying to get into the gene pool any way they can.  It is natural.  It is instinctive.  It is the way men are wired.  And some men try harder than they should or than is expected or wanted.  Some go to unacceptable lengths.  It is the way of us.  ‘All men are pigs’ is an expression meaning simply that they are driven by their hormonal urges and, to a women, that can be and is a danger.  It’s not nice but it is natural.

We may even deem it illegal and socially unacceptable a lot of the time but it is still mostly hormone-driven (yes, there are some guys who are just nuts).  So the point…? Behaviour has to be regulated for a society to function but, perhaps, ruining a person (and their family) for succumbing to primal biological urges is an over reaction.

And ruining a person for an allegation is just plain wrong on every level.

Consider the justice or injustice being played out lately in Canada by our politically correct politicians (but this has been going on for decades in so many venues.  One of the most memorable for me was the SFU coach who was accused by Rachel Marsden who then went on to accuse others of the same thing only to eventually be proven completely mad. She had a mental problem.  Not them.  But the men accused were ruined for a long time).

Ottawa: Two women were allegedly sexually assaulted some time in the past.  It must have been horrible for them but they managed to recover to the extent that they have normal lives today and are even successful. They are so successful they are MPs in parliament. They are OK by societal standards – they have the votes to prove it.  At some point they decide to tell their story but do not want to go public.  They need to talk about it. Fair enough.

Justin Trudeau is told the story and decides (after consulting with senior lawyers in his cabinet) that if the allegations are true and he does not act, he will be vilified.  So he literally ‘outs’ the accused MPs.   He knew the difference between a political rock and a hard place but that is clearly all he knows.  And he acted out of concern for himself – not on behalf of all women.  Nor on behalf of justice or the accused.  Nor on our behalf.   In that way, he failed all of us except himself.

The two accused MPs are ruined.  They have no forum in which to be heard.  They have no one to appeal to.  They are punished well beyond the scope of the alleged crime.  We left them to be convicted by kangaroo courts.

Justice and the law have been rent asunder.  Trudeau is ‘believing’ the words as they were told to him on a bus without the proof, without a trial, without the accused having a chance to defend.  No cross examination.  No hard questions.

And we, the people, are accepting of that?  We who have tried to live within the law are accepting of some blatant kangaroo court conducted in the media!?

What the hell is wrong with us?

Part two.  Some of the problem is that even I believe the allegations a bit.  Why?  Because ‘piggy’ behaviour is essentially part of the male human animal.  Plus we seem to have a lot of such stories lately which may say something about the media as well.  Mostly it speaks to the human condition – whether we like it or not.

Men have an XY chromosome and, if you read about it, the weird Y is a miserable little mess of things compared to the female X chromosome.  Someone born with two X chromosomes is much more likely to behave like another 2X person than are two people with XY chromosomes.  XYs are different because the Y’s are kinda whacked.

I know that the above can read like an apologist point of view and that it will be condemned roundly for seemingly condoning bad male behaviour.  That is not the intention.  The intention is to point out that bad male behaviour has been with us for a long, long time and it is – whether we like it or not – to some extent natural.

I have no idea why we weren’t created with a consent-first gene but we weren’t.  I think we might be evolving to one as we continue to live (as a species).  Or maybe there will always be bad boys trying to enter the gene pool without permission.  I dunno.

But in the meantime, it seems only right that we at least adhere to the laws of the land as we allow some time for the species to evolve.  If we don’t, we will be over run by kangaroos called Justin.

Off The Grid is, of course, about living OFF the grid, not ON the grid and, since I am currently ON the grid, I should stop writing under this blog title.  But I can’t.  Writing is a habit.  A man’s gotta vent his spleen.

I won’t bore you with the basic urban traffic story anymore.  It is as bad as it has been described in the past and seemingly getting worse.  What a colossal waste of time for everyone.  It took us over an hour to cross the Lions Gate Bridge the other night.  At minimum wage and factoring in gasoline prices, it cost close to a gazillion dollars in wasted time, auto depreciation and operating expenses not counting pollution.  Maybe closer to two gazillion.

We took Fiddich for a walk on the seawall (off-leash section) this weekend (both days) and it was almost as crowded as a Hong Kong sidewalk.  That’s weird.  Dog walking is supposed to be relaxing  – not like commuting in traffic.

Yes, you’ve sensed the theme of today’s post: urban life is crowded, polluted and requires you to smell the butt (or exhaust) of the entity ahead of you while experiencing your butt being too-closely explored by those behind.  Fiddich and I are not amused.  Fiddich, especially, seems put off by all the butt-sniffing going on.  As a dog, he should be ‘into it’ but he is more than hesitant, he is literally shocked at such coarse behaviour.  Walking on the sea wall, for him, is a just one long moving violation.

I feel the same way about traffic.

And I can see why everyone is freaked out by ‘talking-on-the-cell-phone’ all of a sudden.  I have had a car-phone/cell phone since the mid eighties and I just couldn’t understand why all of a sudden it was such a big deal.  But my cell phone was (before I left the city) simple. As in ‘dumb’.  Now the phones are smart and require your complete focus.  Driving and phoning is easy.  Driving and smart-phoning is a major challenge.  Mind you, I am doing it. Like everyone else.  But it is NOT surprising that people are generally unaccepting of that. I am, too.

Even as I do it.

I am, of course, back to filling my car up every other day.  $60-70.  Ka-ching!  That gets old fast. And that’s closing on $750.00 a month!  $1000 before taxes. That cuts into my consulting fees!! The rat race is insane!

But we are ‘restauranting’ again. A bit.  Interestingly, that habit maintains it’s cachet for us and will for a while.  So far, so good.  We’ve had some really good food these past few days and I am not opposed to doing that a few times more.

Our Wfer’s came to join us at the site.  They had been on their own for the last two months on other Wfing gigs.  They got work cleaning up.  They are happy.  Canada has been good to the ‘boys’ and their memories will be good.

Sally has been content to shop, cook, walk and do quilting.  Wants me to pick up some bon bons for her next time I am out.  It is a bit of a vacation for her.  And that’s good.

All in all it is a back to the future kinda thing.  Deja Vu.

Preamble: Part of my management style (*most important part – always do what Sal says) recognizes that people are generally followers.  Especially employees. Leaders cannot lead except by example and the choice to follow or not is made by the people themselves – NOT by the so-called leader-in-gold-braid. If you want to be a leader then initiate something and then get that something done. Someone may help and thus become a follower. They may not.  Either way, you got something done.

And we had to practice what we preach when we were building.  Even tho we had no followers except each other!!  Thank God for our last ten years! Hands-on constructing helps keep it real.

I remember working in offices downtown.  They weren’t quite real.  I wore a suit, a tie, shiny shoes and carried a cell and a briefcase and considered it ‘work’.  And it was in a weird kind of way.  Mental work.

But, if there were a dozen cardboard boxes that needed to go to storage, they just sat in the hallway until ‘someone’ came to get them. Maybe a ‘mover’ had to be called. The truth is just about every office I ever worked in had strong healthy adults working there, too. Some of them fitness buffs.  But no one would move the boxes.

Moving boxes to storage was somehow ‘beneath’ their station.

I am consulting with a firm right now for a short period.  Very short. A bit of a re-org. Change: how to get things done (they seem to be a bit slow to take action).  Been there a week.  “So, I’ve known you guys for over thirty years and the plants in the office are exactly as I remember them.  Are they real?”

“Yes.  And I hate them.  OMYGAWD I hate those plants.  Always half-dead, always the same.  Aaaaarghhh!”

“So, why not chuck ’em?”

“I have given up asking for that to happen.  Been asking for years.  It never gets done!”

“But you want them out?”

“Yes!”

So, with that, I went to the closet to fetch the little trolley I knew was there, came in and wordlessly loaded the two half-dead plants and trundled them to the elevator.  I took the elevator to the basement and re-orged those corn plants into the dumpster.  Yes, I was dressed-for-success but my tie did not get in the way.  The plants were light enough.  I did not get dirty.  Ten minutes. Done!

When I came back the office was abuzz.  People I hadn’t seen were vacuuming up the shucked and fallen leaves.  Furniture was being rearranged.  My guy had a smile on his face. Someone brought me tea.  A secretary volunteered to get new plants for the office first thing next week.

“So, I said, now how about those twenty cardboard boxes at the other office that have been sitting in the hallway for six months.  Gonna get ’em done?”

The guy looked at me.  And smiled.  “Let’s go get ’em together. They have REALLY been bugging me!  Let’s go now.  I’ll get the key to the storage.”  When he went to the guy who had the key and had NOT moved the boxes in the last six months, that guy insisted on joining us.  Three guys in suits and ties went to the other office and in one hour had ‘gotten the ‘job’ done’.

“Today was a good day!”

Consulting, eh?  Who knew?