Tuesday 17 April 2007

Voices from the past...

Here's an introduction to how my mind works:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
- William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice
Question: Was Shakespeare writing about all politicians, just about neo-conservatives, or about Stephen Harper in particular?
Note: The emphasis in the last line of the quotation is mine, not the author's.

And these:


"I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance."
- Christopher Marlowe, 1564-93
The Jew of Malta, 1588


"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully
as when they do it from religious conviction."
- Blaise Pascal, 1623-62

"Man is a religious animal.
He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them.
He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself
and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight."
"O Lord our Father
... help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
... help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain;
... help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire;
... We ask it in the spirit of love, ... Amen."
- Mark Twain, 1835-1910

Who am I?

Born in Germany, I grew up in Montreal, and, after graduating from McGill University with an honours degree in political science and economics, spent seventeen years in the Canadian Army, leaving for civilian life in 1978 with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

Between 1988 and 1998, I was Managing Director of Dancemakers, Toronto's second oldest contemporary dance company. It was during the financially lean and often stressful times there (particularly during the post-1995 neo-conservative period which for a time threatened to destabilize Ontario's society), that I began my "pre-occupation" with computers, web design among other things. My latest enthusiasm is for computer-based video-editing.

What else ... oh yes, I like classical music, jazz, literature, the visual arts, film, computers, web design & video-editing! And I'm a proud and nationalistic Canadian, who abhors the modern day curse of neo-conservatism, a failed political ideology that, so far, refuses to die!

Upon retirement from the daily rat-race, I listened to the siren song of close friends on the West Coast and, in 2005,
abandoned the permanently polluted air of Toronto for the anticipation of the occasional earthquake on Vancouver Island and moved my many books, recordings and DVDs, and some furniture, to beautiful Victoria, BC, the most perfect little city in the world.

(I know one other paradise-like location on earth, and that's Norfolk Island in the South Pacific. I'll get around to telling you about that at another time.)

Here are a few pictures of me through the ages... :)


Victoria, May 2003


Anticoli Corrado, Italy, 1978


Quebec City, 1976


Bayreuth, Germany, 1972


Cabot Trail, Nova Scotia, 1962


Montreal, 1954


Essen, Germany, 1941
(Even at this early age I knew how I'd feel about Steven Harper much later!)

Why this Blog?


If you have to live on this planet, then there's only one place to be ... Canada.

This blog will be my way of keeping in touch with family and friends who are scattered all over the globe. It's also for anyone else who comes across it while wandering through the 'net. There will be lots of opinion on a number of mostly unrelated things that are probably of interest only to me. Among other things, I'll be using it to get some things off my chest about what's being done to our planet and to our country. So, please read this as a sort of cautionary statement.

If you're a neo-conservative and/or a fundamentalist of some sort, this is not the blog for you. I have nothing but contempt for you and what you're trying to do to the world. Nor am I going to be necessarily politically correct. So, for the overly sensitive of you, you can't say I didn't warn you!

Monday 16 April 2007

I set up my Blog

This is the first post to George's Ranting & Ravings. It has no meaning except that there has to be a first post in order to be able to preview the blog and to tweak the blog template.

Besides, I like the picture... :)