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It's an instinct...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2978
It's an instinct, this treasure hunting.
And the garage sale season having passed, a short season this year, hampered by finances and transportation, the instinct seeks its outlet.
I take the children to a riverside park in the neighborhood to look for stones for their rock tumbler.
And sorting through the gravels, the abundant pebbles, we're surprised to find an old indian bead.
Small, perhaps an inch and a half, with a perfectly bored hole straight through it.
And it triggers the instinct.
There are no buried treasures in Alberta, well, very few anyways. There's the Lost Lemon Mine, if you credit the legend, and undoubtedly more than a few mason jars filled with farmers life savings buried under fence posts, but there's none of the classic treasure hunting raw materials, gems, gold, sunken ships.
But there is history, in it's way a sort of treasure.
Before I go too much further I should note that it's illegal to look for archeological artifacts in Alberta. If you see or spot an archeological artifact you are supposed to call the provincial museum and leave the site undisturbed. All artifacts are property of the state.
Now, on paper this is ideal. It speaks to our highest and noblest selves, our shared history is our shared property to be preserved for future generations.
But like many laws that at first glance look good on examination we can discover that it lacks both teeth and foresight. We think nothing of building entire neighborhoods (In Calgary, think Bowness, Crescent Heights, Mount Royal, Hawkwood, and many, many more) over Native sites. We build highways over them, farmers rearrange the stones on their field, taking apart medicine wheels, teepee rings, burial grounds are buried beneath parks, golf courses and basements. The vast majority - over 99% of the paleo and archeological history of Calgary - lies buried under suburbs, or has been churned by bulldozers and ploughs destroying any contextual value the sites may have provided.
We turn a blind eye, or excuse it with "You can't stop progress".
Which is true, but laws that allow and encourage laypeople to collect, document and report finds and artifacts would would save much of this.
No government could ever afford to staff a province or even a country the size of Alberta with the number of archeologists we would need just to keep abreast of progress. Of the expanding highways, cities, suburbs, oil sands.
It is, upon examination, an idiotic law that is in its way far worse than having no laws at all. The kind of law that is intended to reassure the people that "we're protecting our history" when in fact we are systematically destroying it. Destroying it through ignorance, through "Let the experts handle it", through progress and neglect. Presumably countries that don't have similar laws have no valued history, you only need to look at countries like the US or Great Britain to see how their lack of competent legislation has destroyed their history....
I digress, but I will return to this theme again and again.
So we discover the bead, and search through the gravels but find nothing more, some fossils, other stones that might look good polished, but that is all.
But the seed is sown.
Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1627
It's rare that they make a good film out of a book. Rarer still they make a great film out of a book.
Usually, they take a great book, and make a "Long and boring" film out of it. Or three of them. Think Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings.". Or Harry Potter.
Or, in the case of the "Titanic", they don't even use a book, just a scrap of toilet paper the director made some notes on, maybe an old Reader's Digest to do their fact checking....
"Fight Club" is a great book. And it was a great film. And, oddly enough, (perhaps because I saw the film first), the one didin't ruin the other. Yes, they were close enough, but there were enough differences that you didn't feel you were simply seeing the film again. There were twists, director's interpretations, things in the film that were changed to make it tighter....
But the book is good too. Great even. It's a wonderful rant, a spit and jab at the world of commerce and social expectation, an anarchist's Bible. A well reasoned, well written invective on the futility and emptiness of modern life. A sort of real life self help book.
Goodbye Pumpkin
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2059
It had to happen. I knew, hoped, waited patiently for the day, and my daughter has come back from her vacation and retrieved her cat.
I was worried, perhaps they were having too much fun without him, perhaps they'd just let me look after him for the rest of the summer, what if they had an accident and Pumpkin became my ward?
I was right, somewhat, they were back, but in no rush to recover their cat. But a deal's a deal and finally after much negotiating they showed up to reclaim him.
He looked a bit confused, like he didn't really want to go, but I went out of my way to help him into his carrier...
Finally.
I mean, and I know it's true, this is entirely a matter of personal prejudice. 100%. For some reason I just didn't click with him. I liked him, well enough for a cat, although he annoyed me with the games he played with Princess, sitting in the front doorway with his head lowered and growling so she couldn't get in, staking out my bed so she couldn't curl at the foot...
Sometimes she'd just have enough and there'd be a fight, she'd win, he'd back down, go and hide, but usually she'd just avoid him. Couldn't be bothered.
He's a good cat. True, weighing in at over 20 lbs he might be considered a trifle obese, but what's that? He was affectionate. If you like that.
And by affectionate I mean this is a cat that should be brought round to cancer wards to cuddle with terminal children. They'd love him. They'd never have seen a cat like this before, and could spend their days cuddling and petting him and marvelling at the resemblance to Garfield (less, of course, Garfield's meagre wit)...
He'd love it too. Being petted all day long, the center of attention...
2 weeks I've had him. Evey night he surreptitiously slips into my bed, bringing with him that unwiped-cats-ass smell, his matted fur with the bits of kitty litter clinging to his butt...
If you got past the unchanged litter box smell there was another smell, "Highlights" they call it in the cologne industry, of damp wool overcoat.
I have to wash the sheets on my bed.
Every night he'd sit in the living room, pretending to be sleeping on the sofa while I worked on the computer. And when I was done I'd shut it down and try to stealthily slip past him, he'd continue pretending to be sleeping while I brushed my teeth, but when I went to the bedroom I'd find him already curled up on the bed. Looking at me expectantly. And when I lifted him, shoved him over, he'd crawl back again, head-butt me, try and sit on whatever book I was reading, try it again and again until maybe I'd give up or maybe he'd just give up and poke his head under my arm as if he were reading along....When I was done reading it would be time to play, he'd purr loudly and writhe obscenely upon the bed, like an expectant lover, on his back, legs splayed, on his side and batting my face with his paws, licking my face, my arms, my hands and my feet....
It was disgusting.
If I was up late he'd come in, mew to distract me, bang his head upon my arm (there was no way he could leap upon the desk..), try to climb into my lap and be petted. If I let him he'd sit in front of the computer as well, (having to reach around his ponderous bulk to the keyboard), put his chin on the desk and gaze boredly at the screen, occasionally using his paws to swipe at the keys or mousepad....
He definitely thought he was a person. And I can totally see it, although I'm stumped wondering who....
Occasionally he'd go outside. Not often, just once in a while. Sitting in the garden sniffing flowers, as if trying to convince me there was a poets soul there.
Or mealtimes, going to his dish, from behind his fat frame and striped tail made him look like a giant racoon....
In the kitty litter box, or half in, as he never could fit, not at all shy, scratching the litter all over the hall before searching me out, mewing at me to be petted some more, brushed, tickled....
He was insatiable.
I wish I could say that I'd miss him but somehow I'm glad he's gone. It'll be a lot more peaceful here. And there's Princess, sadly neglected, when petting her always aware of his suspicious, hissing stare from across the room. Head lowered, eyes big and glowering.
Goodbye Pumpkin!
Of me & Brad Pitt
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1929
Probably this is related to the book "Fight Club" I picked up at a garage sale yesterday. I started to read it last night, Pumpkin (my daughters cat) had other ideas, after a couple of firm "No"!'s I exiled him from the bedroom and read the first couple of chapters. So far it reads well.
In the middle of the night I had a dream, I woke, made some mental notes, fell back asleep, and now will recapture what I can remember of it....
Me and Brad Pitt were picking up our kids from some Camp in the South West. I don't know what city, just that we were in the South West and we lived in the South East.
It was a Zoo camp, they had converted a giant wave pool to hold hippopotomases and other animals, giant atriums ... At night, when the kids were all out of the pool, done playing with the animals, they filled it with lentils and beans, these would germinate into sprouts by morning and be used to feed the wildlife...
It's dark outside and we've missed the bus, just him and me, somehow the kids must have caught it because the pool is deserted and so we have to set out to home on foot. I offer to help him find his way, I know where he's staying, he explains, it's by a client of mine in the country and I think that "damn, that's a ways" but I don't want to let him down, so we start walking, looking for a place where we can hail a bus....
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