Tuesday 28 September 2021

First Year University, and the Snowflakes are Experiencing Meltdowns

The university grounds are covered in slush -- left over from melt-downs of all the snowflakes in First Year. First Year students, so the journalists tell us, mark the beginning of the fall term by having a "difficult transition" from high school. They are "encountering obstacles" and must "manage stress not previously experienced". They must "make personal decisions not part of the high school landscape" and "do a lot of reading" with "unfamiliar words and complicated sentence and paragraph structure". (Yes. Really.) They will need help from an Academic Adviser, say the media advice-merchants, if not also therapy and medication. 

Baby-boomers were so lucky. For us, transition to University was liberation. We wouldn't have gone near an Academic Adviser. Our parents never set foot on campus until the day we graduated and got a degree.* Nobody told us we were going to have "obstacles and difficult transitions" and "stress not previously experienced" … so we didn't. What we experienced was adulthood. (And maybe a bit of S,D & R&R -- but that's a different topic ...)

And we already knew how to read. It started with "phonics" back then, and left most of us quite used to "complicated sentence and paragraph structure". That was what grade school used to teach -- not inclusion, diversity and victimhood lessons. 

Here's the paradox: it seems kids who have grown up in daycare since birth, spending little time at home or with parents, often not knowing grandparents who got lost in the step-family roundabout, have ended up without independence. They're without the emotional hardiness of past generations like their ancestors who made it through World Wars I and II, surviving bombing, poverty, immigration, and learning trades (or becoming scholars) to become financially independent. (Did today's kids got lost in a virtual digital video wilderness?)

Of course, every generation says how great the earlier fore-mothers and -fathers were ... but we do have to wonder what's going on when the media make "starting university" sound like transportation to an Australian outback prison camp in the 18th century. 


* SEE ALSO: https://satiricalscene.blogspot.com/2020/09/first-day-never-do-anything-by.html

Wednesday 15 September 2021

Colonies and Canadian Indigenous Groups

Recent Social Studies Essay Topic in BC Schools - Impacts of the
Colonial Era on Indigenous Canadians

Proposition: No positive impacts resulted from the colonial period of Canadian history*, so discontinuation of institutions and services originating in colonial times, and eviction of descendants of European settlers, is advisable. DISCUSS.  

Describe your vision of Canadian life after the following colonialist institutions are banned:

Legislative assemblies, Parliament, elected representation

Courts of Law, trial by jury, equal rights legislation, Legal Aid

Land Title Offices and property acquisition (except through raids and warfare)

Income Assistance/welfare 

ferry service (e.g. BC Ferries)

trains

cars (and everything else involving wheels)

electricity

building maintenance

road maintenance

banks

farms (food henceforth to be gathered, dug, or killed by spear)

wineries, breweries, pubs, orchestras

dentistry, surgery, medical imaging, pharmacies, painkilling pharmaceuticals

schools, universities, professional degrees, science labs

books, publishing, literacy and computers

Supplementary Question: Should governments dictate the Correct Study of History, and the content of school curricula?


* "Mother Fuming" -- https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/prince-george-school-assignment-colonies-indigenous-1.6176059



Sunday 12 September 2021

Muses File Complaint Against BC Museum


Royal BC Museum apologizes "we are not the museum we should be", after racism and discrimination complaint was filed (Times Colonist, June 29, 2021). In November, 2021 it vows to "decant" its galleries and "install" exhibitions of anti-colonial history around Victoria. May 13, 2022 it announces closure for cultural-sanitation for the next eight years.

*

Responding to the filing of museum employees' human rights complaint, the nine classical Muses have accused the Museum of racist discrimination against THEIR heritage and culture: “As our home (“Seat of the Muses”), a Museum should be sheltering and protecting us, not throwing us to ethnic and identitarian wolves”, says Calliope, Chief of the Muses.

In a document crafted by Melpomene (Muse of Tragedy), Thalia (Comedy) and Polyhymnia (Rhetoric), the group charges that they are victims of hate speech and ethnic cleansing.

“Clio, Muse of History, is the particular target of hate speech." Many people have already claimed that “History Is Dead”, and now they wish also to eradicate History's mother, Mnemosyne (Memory).

Although Clio's enemies try to “disappear” her she keeps recurring. “History is what it was,” she assures supporters. She leaves a trail of documents, letters, songs, memoirs, statues, gravestones, globes and charts so that scholarly detectives can still trace her to places where her enemies have imprisoned her. These scholars often work under cover, secret-agent style.

The Muses, filing their complaint with the Rights Agency, have documented civil rights abuses by chapter and verse, confirms Euterpe, Muse of Verse.

“We will not let the judge dance around the issues,” vows Terpsichore, Muse of Dance.

“We'll sing our own praises,” add Erato and Melpomene (Song and Speech).

Their children (Orpheus and the Sirens) will with their world-music band of that name mark the launch of the Muses' Rights Complaint with a celebratory concert at Mount Olympus Park. The human race is invited to attend.




Tuesday 7 September 2021

Change of Vocabulary, Post-COVID


We hope we've inoculated COVID away,

and want certain phrases also not to stay


Let's hear no more of “vaccination”,

“plexiglass” and hand sanitation


Don't say “lockdown” or mention a mask,

and who's been vaccinated let's not ask


Don't say “challenged”, don't say “bubble”,

all reference to “distance” reminds us of trouble


Let's stop saying “tunnel”, with light at the end of,

or planks or curves we flattened the bend of


Don't say “essential” of services or workers,

or visitors, travel, or "virtual-shirkers"


Don't say “needle” or even “arm”,

which reminds us of horrors and causes alarm


Hospitals: stop saying “herd immunity”

and “respirator” with impunity


To skip all reference is wiser,

to Astrazeneca, Moderna and Pfizer


The very mention of a vax passport

often causes nothing but a very loud snort


When we hear “pivot”, “variant” and “surge”

to cover our ears is an overwhelming urge


If COVID really ends these words will melt away,

we'll choose other language, having other things to say


Maybe something eloquent without a silly rhyme?

Let's save that habit for another place and ... day. 






Wednesday 1 September 2021

We otter do better with birth control

 

“Weaker Penis Bones in River Otters Linked to Oil Sands Contaminants" – CBC News, Nov., 2020

Does the oil industry hold the secret to human over-population control?

In case you weren't aware: the male river otter's penis bone is long, curvy and slender. Daintily referred to as a “baculum”, it has become even daintier in Canadian otters thanks to contaminants produced by Canada's oil sands industry. Noting that otters living close to sites of fossil fuel extraction have the most brittle penis bones, resulting in smaller otter families, scientists see a clue to solving human over-population – almost eight billion – which is a greater threat to the planet than are fossil fuels.

Some biologists are concerned about otters' (family Lutrinae) reproductive success, while others are interested in human contraceptive success. Entrepreneurs are looking at ways to market the softening oily by-products to humans who prefer chemical to surgical birth control (vasectomy).

“Snake oil,” respond researchers, when asked about this marketing initiative.

“Greasy anti-life opportunists,” accuses the Catholic church, stiffening its opposition.

“Fossil Age thinking by the pope,” respond pro-choicers.

Oil sands extraction will continue to fuel controversy. As for the human overpopulation crisis, most conservationists agree “we otter do better”.

 

 

 

Monday 30 August 2021

Designer Traffic Jams

Construction of Obstruction and Traffic Constriction -- Victoria, BC

Although since COVID more people than ever are having goods delivered to homes and offices, the vehicles delivering them are being blocked by street design in Victoria, creating fantastic Designer Traffic Jams.

In the ever-growing ocean of traffic that grows with population, instead of crossing streets a pedestrian (or car or truck) is ship-wrecked on traffic islands in the middle of intersections, and must dodge through a tangle of bike lanes blocking the flow. In the middle of the road they will find “community spaces” when all they want is traffic space, so as to get from A to B without exhaust-spewing start-stop delays. 

This traffic restriction is about ideological strictures against automobiles. “Stricture” is related to the Latin word “strictus” (strict) -- and “stringere”, to tighten, which is what the City is doing to roadway access. “Strait” too comes from “strictus”: in oceanography a strait is a narrow marine passageway. In urban crossings too we find ourselves driving in straitened circumstances, where we used to have relatively wide open seas to navigate. No one is benefitting, not even the cyclists it's all supposed to be for, who spend more time trying to decipher traffic signs and figure out the meanings of flashing lights and which green light is whose, than zipping along the curbs in the simple old-fashioned way we used to do. 

Snarls-by-design create loud vocal snarling as well. Hate speech is okay, if directed against drivers. Yet if you don't drive, it's only because you out-source your delivery of cargo to others, professional and gig drivers who have to deal with anti-car street-design aggression every day.


The Waste Scream

 

The municipality is building a team for the Waste Stream Restructure Program

“It's a 270-step process,” announces Chief-Bureaucrat-in-Charge, “according to our newly-purchased tax-funded SafeWaste Digital Modelling APP.”

Estimating a twenty year completion time-frame, they are hiring several dozen new staff. Why will the project take so long, ask Taxpayers' Representatives?

“We can't begin until after the two-year comprehensive analysis of existing services.”

“Why so long for that?”

“The time frame's only an estimate at this point, as we're still in the pre-planning stage, before we get to the planning stage.”

“Oh. And in the distant post-planning future, what then?”

“Well, then we'll be do evaluation, estimation, consultation, designation of de-marginalization ...

“And for the public ... information?”

“About what?”

“About, say, a completion date?”

“Completion will depend on the pace of upgrades to international Climate Change Protocols, plus consultation with stakeholder, racialized, indigenous and trans groups regarding equity, inclusion, diversity and of course the building of a de-colonization checklist in partnership with our advisors from the university's new Faculty of Dynamic Indigenized Gender-Free Social Equity.”

“Oh. Well, getting back to the waste-stream ...”

“The what?”

“The stream of waste, isn't that what the project's about?”

“Oh. Yes.”

“Will you be able to marginalize and exclude harmful plastics from re-usable organic materials?”

(Pause) “Umm ... Well, of course I couldn't say, at this point in time. We need to take a deep dive into consulting, partnering, de-gendering, evaluating, assessing, sustaining and ...”

“So, my as yet un-born children will have graduated from university before your program graduates to any actual separation of plastics from organics, if anything organic still exists in the world by then, and ...”

“Okay, just hang on there, don't raise your objection at me Pal, we have rules around abusive questioning of members of Protected Public Employees Category A, and ... Why are you screaming? Do you have PTSD? Has something triggered you? Do you need an ambulance? Wait ... I'll text them ...

Sorry ... can't. Their message says 'LA-LA-LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU ...'”

 

 

This story is reproduced from LITERARY YARD, www.literaryyard.com, 2024/02/10 It's a common fairy-tale theme -- imprisonment in a tower ...