Laughter isn’t an easy thing to characterise, especially across cultures. I’ve spend enough time in non-English speaking places to realise that I’ll never really understand their humour, but I’ve spent far more time in English speaking places and still even there, I know that I have a different sense of what makes me laugh. Actually the more time I’ve spent in different places, I believe, the less I laugh – I mean an outright guffaw, a good solid belly laugh, an uncontrollable rollicking snort. I still find humour in lots of things – even more than before – but the burst of laughter that I would have served up as a kid no longer comes up.
Continue reading “Guffaw”Dead presidents
The global financial response to the slowdown in economic activity has been nothing short of extraordinary. In the United States, over $3 trillion in money supply has been created, with a further $3 trillion in fiscal activity. Overseas, in China, in the UK, in Canada, in the EU, similar levels of new money have flooded the money system, courtesy of central banking policies tailored to system: quantitative easing in open monetary systems, reduced capital requirements and increased access to money creation programs for banks in closed systems paired with aggressive foreign exchange management. There is a lot more money in the system, but the implications of that are diverse, more so than the commentary one reads on Bloomberg or in the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal.
Continue reading “Dead presidents”Dead places
I live in a neighbourhood of Scarborough, Maine, called Blue Point. “Neighbourhood” is probably the wrong turn; to me, that inspires thoughts of a high street with shops that you walk to, corner stores and pocket parks and three-decker houses with three families per deck. Blue Point is a village in the old English meaning of the term – a collection of houses, with a few places of business and a church, between other villages, some of which might merit the title of town or borough, or might not. Blue Point is a village, and interestingly, it’s one of the many sites of the genocide of native Americans hundreds of years ago.
Continue reading “Dead places”Finding a soul
There’s an old aphorism, variously attributed to Edmund Burke or Clemenceau or Churchill or any of a dozen others, saying that if one is either a conservative or at the very least not a socialist (or communist, or liberal, or insert era-appropriate label for the elevation of the common good over individual benefit) before the age of 25 (or 20, or 30, or whatever), then one “has no heart.” The punchline, of course, is that if one is a socialist or at the very least not a conservative (or a Republican, or reactionary, or insert era-appropriate label for the elevation of capital and the individual over the common good) after the age of 40 (or 30, or 29, or whatever), then one “has no head.”
Continue reading “Finding a soul”Wilderness or lack thereof
Yesterday was one of those annoying rainy days. Good rainy days, in my opinion, are just rainy the whole day through – maybe not pouring rain, but at least a good pestering drizzle from (ideally) before you wake up until after darkness falls. On good rainy days – and keep in mind yesterday was a Saturday – you can sleep in without feeling guilty. Even the dog doesn’t really want to go out; sure, she may need to relieve herself, but who relishes the prospect of pissing and shitting while you’re getting cold and damp in the outdoors, while your feet are sinking into a coalescing mud? No one, not even a good dog. So she’s willing to hold it in until it’s a necessity, versus her normal desire on a sunny day to get up immediately and enjoy all there is about the world, and also have a good BM while she’s at it. No, yesterday was a lousy rainy day. The dog and I got up early, had a forty minute walk and then it started a half-hearted drizzle and we made it back to the house without too much of a soaking. Then it rained for six hours – from 8am to 2pm – and then stopped. While it was raining it was a downpour, but it stopped quickly.
Continue reading “Wilderness or lack thereof”