SAINTS PRESERVE US

W(h)ither Alberta?

Oh, for Christ’s sake. What now?

Alberta premier Danielle Smith last week announced a provincial referendum about holding another referendum. Their subjects are secession. Should Alberta exit the Canadian federation, cede its place in a wealthy G7 country imperfect as every other member of the club?

Smith’s United Conservative Party is a big top operation. The circus analogy is not unwarranted. The blue and white pavilion with its rodeo dirt floor harbours fiscal and social conservatives, special interest groups, “lake of fire” evangelicals and a lunatic fringe who fret about gun laws, chemtrails and replacement theory. Alberta separatists constitute a fifth column within the UCP. They have infiltrated the party, riding associations, Smith’s caucus and ministerial staff. This is all well and good except that separation (or its chicken game threat) was not a UCP platform plank during the last provincial election. Voters may have wished to have been informed. Elections are not raffles, hastily scribbled policy slips drawn from a cowboy hat.

Compare Alberta’s UPC to Quebec’s separatist Parti Quebecois. The PQ does not obfuscate its agenda. The electorate is aware of what is always on the table should it grant the party the privilege of governing. The PQ’s argument is a complaint of distinction, a different nation trapped within a larger one. Very Balkan. The UCP’s fifth column whinge is, in this sense, meritless. Both groups, eastern and western, revel in victimhood and they share words like “oppression” and “humiliation.” Their common enemy is Ottawa. Perception is everything.

Confident and competent governments should just tick along like a home furnace in the dead of winter. It does its job, no fuss, nothing to notice or worry about. Sound policies address the issues of the day. Really good governments may even look beyond the fortunes of the party and the election cycle. Incompetent governments distract from the pressing unaddressed issues of the day by conjuring political phantoms and foo fighters only to botch their needless solutions. Smith leads a party and a government devoid of a single core competency.

Smith is a proponent of “direct democracy.” Referenda circumvent the democratic system. The pro argument is that the people are heard at a pitch beyond the tenor of their legislative assembly member. As Brexit has shown, the people know. Here in Alberta’s capital city, casual morning bus stop conversation always touches on the linguistic nuances of the British North America Act and Statute of Westminster. And federal transfer payments and the fucking hockey team. Madam Premier covers it all on her weekly radio call-in show, unconstitutional plastic straws, encroaching bicycle lanes and everything.

Smith is one of those politicians who transform engaged citizens into cynics. She is a party-jumper and a floor-crosser. Her Quebec counterpart is former PQ premier Lucien Bouchard, once a trusted consigliere of former Tory PM Brian Mulroney’s. Shiny objects, brass rings, are so alluring to political magpies. The penultimate prize, heading a province but not the country, demands backroom politicking: patronizing, pandering and promising.

One suspects Smith is more DENSA than MENSA. She would play Russian roulette with five bullets in the chamber of a six-shooter. The bold timidity of staging a referendum about a referendum to appease the backrows within the circumference of the UCP circus tent suggests some midnight parsing of an AI-generated overview of Machiavellian machinations although dithering and symbolic dog-whistle bones may preclude updating her C.V.

UCP president Rob Smith, no relation to the Banshee of Invermectin, has been quoted in the press as saying the Party has to official stance on a potential Albertastan. The UCP does not stand for anything apparently, ill-conceived and uninformed direct democracy excepted. He was confident that a majority of its members will vote for separation.

The immediate goal of Alberta’s separatists is a Czechoslovakian-style “Velvet Divorce” delivered at Amazon Prime speed. That will never happen. And should this disparate menagerie of malcontents present however unlikely as a unified bloc, the ultimate goal is full admission in to the corrupt and decaying empire south of the Medicine Line (it is easier to move bitumen north-south sans the irksome formalities of international borders). Perhaps they would settle for becoming a US territory, Guam North.

The future is unwritten and often surprising. But the likely outcome of this divisive and nonsensical ploy is the disintegration of the UCP as a viable political entity. And that will be on Smith’s watch. And that will be a good thing for forward-thinking, progressive Albertans.

            

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set! 

THE HUMAN RACE

A Substack Publication

Disruption is a universal constant. Always has been. Even though we have an inkling we never see it coming. A blindside hit. In human terms, it pairs nicely with death and taxes and there aren’t enough tea leaves and gypsy crystal balls in the world to predict its aftermath. Digital technological disruption now hits us harder and faster than “Rip This Joint” (side one of Exile, second song).

Me? I’m still trying to get a handle on why the promise of the internet went nipples north. As for the lightning flash advent of Large Language Models or Artificial Intelligence, I read about it in my morning Globe and Mail and my weekly Economist. Tactile print, how quaint. AI is either a Star Trek boon of ingenuity or Promethean fire. My mind drifts to Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison and weirdly, Dolly the cloned sheep. The prevailing view depends on the day and what section of which publication. This compounds my existing nonfungible token and cryptocurrency mystification; why are there Bitcoin ATMs in fortified liquor stores and shabby little depanneurs that sell cigarettes and lottery tickets? That's some kind of blockchain.

My grandfather Leslie Moore was a very British man, well-spoken though usually quiet, always dignified, very precise. A little Charlie Chaplin moustache – white throughout the twenty-four years I was lucky enough to know him. He emigrated to Montreal in 1912 in search of a career. The family business, a millinery in the Bristol suburb of Fishponds, had been disrupted by the introduction of a bus route to downtown and more shops and more variety. Papa was a Bell Telephone lifer who earned his McGill engineering degree at night. Papa learned French by reading La Presse, the Francophone equivalent of the morning Gazette and competing evening Star; a Larousse by his side.

Nana’s and Papa’s apartment was halfway between my elementary school and home. I ate lunch there frequently because the food was better (Sorry, Mom). I always used the tradesman’s entrance, up the wooden stairs at speed to their kitchen door. One noon hour I trudged up. Nana and Papa asked me why I was so glum. I’d had a brutal grade three morning. Arithmetic class had progressed beyond reciting multiplication tables and drawing upside-down long division Ls. Fractions! Papa sat me down at his drop-down secretary with a pad of graph paper and a blue fine point. He taught me fractions in two-thirds of a minute from over my shoulder. I was so relieved.

IBM introduced the Universal Product Code shortly thereafter. An utterly staggering innovation with no unintended consequences to speak of. One lunch visit Papa’s secretary was down. The pad, a hard lead pencil, a steel ruler and a slide rule were out. And an assortment of UPCs. There must be an obvious relationship between the human readable numbers and the sequence and varying thicknesses of the vertical bars. Perhaps the patterns weren’t discernible to the naked eye? An infrared code. There would be technical journals at the public library.

What Leslie Moore did because of his own interest and curiosity was research. Grunt work. What he couldn’t do at the time and what he wouldn’t have done even if he could’ve is now referred to as “cognitive offloading.” A pithy keystroked answer less the who, where, what, why and how would not have sat well with him. He certainly knew of Alan Turing’s Bletchley Park bombe and IBM’s UNIVAC. He was an analogue empiricist; the mechanics of progress warranted study: circuitry, vacuum tubes and punch cards. Applications and consequences (predicted and otherwise) demanded contemplation. Progress had to be thought through. I frequently wonder what he would make of the advanced digitized dross of the Information Age. Is there any practicality or substance to the function?

Leslie Moore died before Time magazine named the personal computer Machine of the Year. The elasticity of time is important here, in the context of life and the exponential acceleration of technology. I have known my friend Jim Gibson for more than twice as long as I knew my grandfather. Jim wrote a book called Tip of the Spear (I read through a couple of early drafts). Picture a crossroads at twilight, it’s not dark yet but it’s getting there. From one direction comes human culture and behaviour – which ceaselessly mystifies economists, historians, politicians, pundits, artists, members of the clergy, friends and relatives, family pets and sundry wildlife. Heading for the same intersection is (glibly) Silicon Valley, whose high-tech apostolates remind me of America’s nineteenth century robber barons and the bankers on Tom Wolfe’s Wall Street: adherence to laws, regulations, principles and ethics may be deferred (point and click on the X). Our high school math word problem subjects are travelling at different speeds. How far apart are they before they collide? Jim’s overarching message was straight from The Beatles: “Dear Prudence.”

Last week two Ukrainian AI-enhanced military drones programmed to attack Russian energy infrastructure lost the plot. Disrupted by enemy jamming, the drones decided a similar facility in neighbouring Latvia, a NATO country, would do just as well. Close enough for rogue robots, like horseshoes and hand grenades. A Brave New World. Fuck me; my neighbourhood cannabis shop has yet to stock soma. My grandfather was with me the other morning when I took Tip of the Spear down from the shelf. I simply sought some informed context, a foundation to help me get my head around the news story (and the porn industry’s embrace of AI and its early adoption by criminal scammers; the insane possibility of der Trumpenfuhrer spouting truth about fake news; the means of production without actual workers; a dystopian future of machine overlords breeding humanity’s next evolutionary step – whoops! I’ve circled back to porn). Jim’s book was published in 2017. The crossroads are still there, but the signposts (those reflective yellow diamond warning ones) have gone missing.

Jim and colleague Laura Haynes constitute the team behind The Human Race on Substack (Laura narrates The Human Race podcast as well). I’m now living in a world I could not have imagined at the turn of the century. This ain’t no meme. Google Chrome nudges me incessantly to introduce myself to Gemini. Astrology is bogus. Anyway, I’m an Aquarian and so predisposed to discussion and debates that hold water. AI is multivalent. It is quantum, at once elegantly Einsteinesque and batshit crazy. Substack’s format allows Jim and Laura to rationally assess AI (and all of its digital baggage, consequences, implications and unknowns) in real time. They’re constructing a “framework of hope” together. Could be Babel, could be truth, I’m not sure, but they're buffering all the white noise. I do know that The Human Race, whether on Substack or alive in the world, is a subject worthy of at least a modicum of contemplative thought. And a little research. Possibly more than that – just a hunch – because the future has just hit us like Saturday night on a Sunday morning.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. And while you’re there, listen to some Muster Point Project music. 

HUMAN WRECKAGE

300 Club Confidential

Four-sixths of the 300 Club reunited in the ritzy wilds of West Vancouver last week. If I remember my geometry correctly, I believe that integer may be rendered as two-thirds. Jim, Marty, Tim and I rented a somewhat sprawling, gated, split-level Brady Bunch house nestled on a slope in a cul-de-sac. The view through the window above the kitchen sink was striking. Lush, manicured greenery in the foreground. Water beyond, unladen freighters in the inlet patiently awaiting their turn beneath the port gantries. The horizon was the silhouette of the University of British Columbia’s main campus. The sky was the shade of blue I picture when genuinely settled enough to appreciate “Wish You Were Here.” Cortez the Killer and JB007 were MIA, otherwise AWOL.

Friends all for some 55 years (at least). Our group’s average age now is 66, 65 the fading median on this particular trip. Functionally efficient, well-oiled.  We shared the errands and chores: shopping, meal preparation, clean up and general housekeeping. A very socialist gathering. The sole unaccommodating aspect of our accommodation was the coffeemaker. It was one of those single cup things, four courtesy plastic pods beside it; all the rage. Enough for the first one up. We’d brought a proper package of coffee expecting a proper maker. Christ, back to Safeway to be gouged. Marty did a walk through of the place, recon. He, uh, finessed his way into a secured supply closet. Coffee on the house. Tim and I followed his example: we were deviously clever, concealing evidence of our high school habit on a nonsmoking property.

Jim and Marty are clean livers. That’s to say their livers are unscarred. They went for hikes every morning while Tim and I drank coffee and smoked on the covered and concealed patio outside the sliding doors to my downstairs bedroom. An idyllic interlude with an old friend is always pleasurable. Quiet conversation or comfortable silence, sometimes both, just being, sharing the other’s presence.

Our evenings were mildly regressive. The Negroni, an aperitif, might be Italy’s greatest gift to the world because not much else happened there. Jim was the toxicologist. Listen, bud, if you hold a Negroni up in a sunbeam, you’re examining a sample of Spider-man’s radioactive blood; Madame Curie’s got nothing on you, oh no. West Coast cocktail hour dovetails nicely with EDT Montreal Canadiens playoff games. And Negronis pair well with edibles. Lacking the expertise of Cortez the Killer and JB007, Marty, seeking sterling customer service, said to a pot shop clerk, “My friends and I used to smoke a lot of hash back in high school. What do you recommend?”

Maybe it came with the rental, but I believe Marty had a natural instinct to pack a wireless soundbar along with a cooler and a barbeque. Jim showed me how to swipe songs onto a custom iPhone playlist – three times. We needed an old song soundtrack to tell new stories; all of our lives are very now: death, disease and grandchildren. No more clock-punching unless we want to. And replicating the past, as fondly recalled as it may be, is insanity; we’re all still too young for dementia – excepting gummy induced early onset.

Two, perhaps three bottles of an impertinent if indifferently robust red with legs and a surgically altered nose suggesting delicate hints of leather and tobacco with dinner. Maybe a few were organic white flavour because Jim stirred up a delicious paella one evening. Befitting our vintage, supper was followed by a board game. Marty, this event’s Shitshow Ringmaster, had rustled up a used edition of Trivial Pursuit with a set of updated general knowledge cards. Tim shuffled the deck with a set of Beatles Trivial Pursuit wildcards; they made for a hard day’s night.

I believe I know as much about the Beatles as I do James Bond in the sense that admiration and questing curiosity have eaten up hours of leisure time in a brief and absurd life. I’ve read books and magazine features. I have Anthology of DVD and a pile of other video besides. I have stereo editions of every UK album and more than a few “posthumous” releases. But I’m not nutcase hardcore. I’ve neither the mono boxset nor the American Capitol releases or the Tony Sheridan stuff from Hamburg. Paul McCartney could not win Beatles Trivial Pursuit; the questions might as well be about astrophysics. Actually, it would be fun to play against him: “No, that’s wrong. I wrote it;” “No, that’s wrong. It was my idea;” “No, that’s wrong. I was the avant-garde one.”

(My newish friend Kevin – we’ve been acquainted for a mere 36 years – he of The Muster Point Project, gave me a Rolling Stones edition of Trivial Pursuit I can’t remember how many years ago. It’s still in the cellophane. Not that I’m a hardcore nutcase, a freakazoid, but no one in my circle of family and friends has ever consented to play against me. They’re all too aware I’m capable of kicking even Glimmer Twins ass.)

After the game had been put away and the losers duly shamed and humiliated, plans were hatched. Montreal in the autumn of 2027; a complete quorum required: the 300 Club is going back to high school 50 years later for remedial classes in regressive personal growth. A dog-ate-my-gummy – strike that – homework! excuse to come together again.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set!

SAINTS PRESERVE US

His Holiness quotes His Bobness

Recently the United States Secretary of Defense, a man who changed his title on his business cards to “Secretary of War,” quoted “Bible” verse as recited by a hitman in Pulp Fiction to members of the US military. Reality is now a nebulous concept, having plunged into some heretofore unimaginable thirteenth circle of Hell far beyond the realm of satire. And I thought actual theocrats were bad dudes.

Meanwhile, his boss der Trumpenfuhrer took on Pope Leo XIV, a fellow American. President versus pontiff! A holy smackdown! A gilded cage match! The odious vulgarian’s Truth Social opening salvo was a pretty good one. The Bishop of Rome is “WEAK” on crime. Fair enough. Every venerated and long-established institution has proved incapable of policing itself. Paradoxically, the Roman Catholic Church, whose rock-solid central tenet is love and mercy, has historically been fanatical in its persecution of heretics. “Thoughtcrime” warranted numerous clauses in the First Papal Bull(shit). The last national leader to grapple with a pope was probably Britain’s King Henry VIII who demanded the Holy See expedite a niggling bit of post-nuptial paperwork.

A war of words or weapons demands an answering salvo. Globe and Mail headline, Friday, 17 April: “Pope denounces ‘tyrants’ and ‘masters of war’ during tour of Africa.” I thought, “My God, Leo’s quoting Bob. It can’t be.”

Dylan released “Masters of War” in 1963. It’s no coincidence that the Second Vatican Council sat from 1962 through 1965. Actually, it is and maybe I’m just messing around... wait for it... But seriously folks, Dylan mines the classics for source material, just as Shakespeare did. Only the future is unwritten and when it happens, chances are you’ll have read it all before. I’ve always assumed Dylan borrowed “masters of war” from an ancient primary text or some oft-quoted colloquialism. I became curious about the phrase’s origin.

My volume of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (third edition) was a gift from my father, Christmas 1982. His inscription reads in part, “Best wishes for 1983. Regards, Dad.” The Moores are not a particularly warm family. And yet, the care and attention devoted to the brief note is unmistakable. The block printing is precise enough to have been set in lead type. A steel rule was employed and a disposable ballpoint just wouldn’t do (I’ve since applied this same discipline to family records). I went through the book’s index with my drugstore readers angled on the tip of my nose. Nothing. My next reference source was his father’s volume of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (tenth edition). Still nothing. My last resort was a reluctant nod to modern times: I scrolled Wikipedia; further investigation uncovered text unworthy of even an inattentive scan.

Vatican II changed the tenor of Catholic ritual. Latin and formal choirs went out the stained-glass window. The “folk mass” was in ascension. My childhood parish was Annunciation of Our Lady. Father Moyle who baptized me, and whom I habitually lied to at Confession, was the top gun priest. The other man was Father Schnell (I’m guessing at his surname’s spelling – I’ve no idea), younger, hipper and given to pinstriped suits. He must’ve been the Svengali behind the parish folk group which was mostly comprised of high school seniors with acoustic guitars. I joined it – this was before my voice broke into its endearing and enduring cigarette croak. I figured hanging out in the choir loft during 11 o’clock mass was a better deal than going mental in the pews down below. I gleaned this from my big brother who had been an usher. He was able to be present but not really there, hanging out in a backroom as opposed to the altar boys who always had to be on.

I can’t recall what the folk group sang with earnest inexpertise to warrant a weekly glare from the pulpit, followed by a back-handed compliment and then a mic’ed throat-clearing. Pete Seeger and spirituals I suppose; psalm sing, sing song sing, good morning starshine, turn, turn, turn. What I do remember is the group’s leader’s anger after Father Moyle banned all songs written by Bob Dylan and specifically “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”

Irony.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! My latest novel Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set!