Remember when drugs were illegal and homosexuality was a vice?

The good old days! I got turned on to the weed 'o wisdom in my mid teens by Bernie Marquardt and Brian Vollet, when we were all pumping gas at John's Supertest, out on Waterloo Ave in Guelph. For most of the half century and then some that has passed us by since, I've been on the side of drug legalization. In principle, I'm still there, but in reality, what I'm seeing on the streets today is so far beyond hopeless that we gotta snap back to some sort of common sense right smartly, and fast, or we are seriously fucked! The other learning experience that sprouted outta my John's Supertest years was my introduction to gay culture. We were a gas station in Guelph, circa 1970, and we were selling gay porn! Turned out Brian's older brother was a locally famous poofer, and he offered his personal collection of hard-core gay porn for resale right there alongside the 10w40 and the windshield-washer fluid in our front room at John's Supertest. The drugs thing has gone totally out of control. I was happy enough that they stopped weed possession being a criminal offence, but I was very dissappointed that Justin gave the entire game over to his, or more accurately, his advisors' Bay Street pals. As for the so-called revolution in gay rights, I'm not sure if the rights gained compensate for what's lost. There was a time homosexuality was considered at least mildly subversive. Gay rights crusaders worked tirelessly to normalize homosexuality. And they largely succeeded. Nobody bats an eye at gay marriage anymore, and why should they?... On the other hand, nobody bats an eye when alleged homophobe DJT surrounds himself with Zionist billionaire advisors living in same-sex relationships... and why should they...

The John Goobie Boogie Woogie

As an old guy with nothing much to do other than wander the various overgrown pathways of memory... not so much overgrown as forgotten, I just came off a bit of a blues bender. Yup, I got Smokestack Lightening coming through the headphones right now! You know how it goes... a toke or two and a coupla shots with beer chasers, and before you know it, you're... having a fucking nap! Be that as it may, I had a very pleasant afternoon with Clarence Gatemouth Brown and ZZ Top. No, they weren't in the same music video, but they shoulda been. I was looking for some live footage of a ZZ track from the '70s, and while I never found that exact tune, I got a shitload of related stuff that set aflame the memory banks. For about five or six years of my childhood I was forced to take piano lessons. I had zero desire, interest, or aptitude, but my mother, having come of age in a refugee camp in Denmark post WW2 where she was denied the opportunity for piano lessons, was determined to provide me with the opportunities she had missed. My piano teacher was a dude originally from Newfoundland (I think) who had a bronze bust of Ludwig v Beethoven in his studio along with two pianos, one for him and one for his unsuspecting victims. My half-hour a week piano lesson was an exercise in utter boredom. The highlight was reading the Punch magazines he had in the anteroom. I mean, John mighta hailed from Newfoundland, but Punch was high-brow Brit Lit. Anyway, as I worked my way through the various lesson books, we eventually came to one titled "Jigs, Reels, and Boogie Woogie." I'd been practicing my first boogie lesson for a couple of weeks, and my teacher was getting a little pissy. He was shaking his head and muttering no, no... finally he cuts me off. Then he tears into a boogie tirade that woulda had ZZ struggling to keep up. Holy Jumpin' Jehosaphat, as we used to say... John pretty much set the piano on fire! That John Goobie boogie woogie rocked out like nothing I've heard before or since! Too bad he limited himself to giving piano lessons to no-talent dorkshits like me... he coulda been a somebody!

Happy May Day!

Traditionally, May Day was a day widely presumed to celebrate the working class. In North America May Day was seen as a little too sympathetic to European-style democratic socialism, which is why the powers that were soon cancelled May Day and gave us Labour Day instead. This May Day I scrolled through a few of my usual daily news sites, including CBC, CNN, and Fox, and found not so much as a passing reference to May Day. Even more shocking, most of my usual alt-news sites didn't have anything either! Pretty much had to wait till I got to the WSWS before I found out that millions had taken over the streets and capitalism was on its last legs for sure... Ya, I don't know what's become of the working class. It ain't what it used to be, that's for sure. When my father's generation got off the boat they knew who they were; the working class. They say your personality is fixed in the first five years of life by what you saw your parents doing. My father had one of the best jobs in the factory when I was a kid. All I ever aspired to, as a working class kid, is the best job in the factory! Of course, that all went for a shit when Dad ditched his own working class roots and embraced the manifold opportunities afforded by this great country we'd landed in. Suddenly, the "best job in the factory" wasn't good enough anymore... and for good reason. Between when we disembarked at Pier 21 in the 1950s and what the working class looks like today, things aren't looking great... but they've been worse! Happy May Day!

Canada's new "sovereign wealth fund" lacks key ingredient - wealth!

In theory, a sovereign wealth fund husbands a country's financial surplus for a future rainy day. The problem with the Canada Strong fund Carney just announced is that, lacking any financial surplus whatsoever, the entirety of the $25 billions in seed money has to be borrowed. Poilievre is correct when he says it would more appropriately be called a "sovereign debt fund." This continues Carney's string of headline-grabbing announcements which don't withstand a second glance, let alone close scrutiny. Carney gifted us the Major Projects Office, the mandate of which is to announce major projects, not to build them. He's gifted us a new Defence Investment Agency, stacked atop the existing bureaucracy, because everybody knows the Canadian Forces procurement challenges are due to a lack of management personnel. And don't forget Build Canada Homes. That new bureaucracy was intended to build new housing at scale, but actual housing starts are either stagnant or in decline since the inititive made big headlines almost a year ago. Maybe Mark can't find the necessary trades... oh-oh... here comes the next wave of TFWs!

Lithuania can teach us how to stand up to bullies

That's according to Murray Brewster, the CBC's military affairs expert. According to Murray, the speed at which the Baltic statelet ditched cheap Russian pipeline gas for far more expensive American LNG was an inspiration to the whole of the Free World! I don't know about that. Anytime a government makes a political decision that will immiserate their people, is that really the sort of "courage" we should emmulate? Beyond that, the comparison of our countries seems a little forced. Since independence, Lithuania has lost 40% of its population,which wasn't even the population of Toronto to begin with. Canada has gained 50% in the same time. GDP per capita is almost double in Canada. Lithuania is clearly a nation in decline, sputtering listlessly towards extinction. Canada's birthrate, one of the lowest in the world, makes us an "ultra-low fertility" country. Lithuania's birthrate is even lower! The other bully Lithuania has put in their place is China. While it's true China got a liitle huffy back in 2021 after the Lithuanians allowed a Taiwan "embassy" to open in Vilnius, that tiff seems to have passed. Here's a quote from Google AI; "while trade plunged dramatically in 2022, recent 2026 data shows Chinese exports to Lithuania surging by 98%." While Brewster doesn't spell it out explicitly, the bully we're concerned about today is the country both Lithuania and Canada looked to for protection and leadership until Trump unleashed his tariff rampage a year ago. Here's a thought; instead of joining forces with pipsqueak non-entities like the Vilnius regime, how about both our counries join up with Xi and Putin to put an end to Washington's global terror campaign.

American Empire facing multiple vortices of doom

You have to give credit to Bibi and Trump; they've succeeded in leading two nuke-equipped nations to defeat by a non-nuke nation! It's hilarious to watch Pistol Pete Hegseth, aka "Greasy Pete," standing in front of TV cameras claiming one victory after another. Every victory so glorious the entirety of human history has never seen anything like it... Ya... or maybe not. I gotta say, from my perspective, looks to me like the towelheads have got Uncle Sam over the proverbial barrel- the barrel of oil, that is. Not only are they giving Team Trump the finger re: his various ever-changing demands, they're still shipping boat-loads of oil out the allegedly-blockaded Persian Gulf. And when they let foreign ships through, it's only after they've paid a juicy toll in something other than USD. There goes the petrodollar! American cred in the military sphere has already gone for a shit. In the first place, US tech is distinctly over-priced and underwhelming. Billion-dollar AD systems taken out by a drone swarm that doesn't amount to $100k. I'm no expert, but that doesn't strike me as a formula to win a war. And our "Israeli Allies" have truly become the albatross around America's neck. They obviously can't get anything serious done on their own. They've been waging total war against Hamas for the better part of three years and everybody knows Hamas is nowhere near defeated. Even their genocide requires non-stop American support. Americans are turning away from Israel's war crimes like never before.

Premier Ford buys private jet to get closer to common folks

Here's a true fact; 90% of Ontario's voters live within a 3 hour SUV ride of Queen's Park. But Doug Ford needs a private jet, presumably to hit the population centres beyond the reach of a government Cadillac Escalade and the inevitable escort of several dozen black Tahoes and Suburbans, not to mention the OPP air fleet that keeps watch over Doug from above. Like Thunder Bay for example. That's a fourteen hour drive from Queen's Park on a good day. Give the man a private jet already! The voters in Thunder Bay will be thrilled to see him. The biggest problems in that city over recent history revolve around the toxic drug crisis, homelessness, police corruption, and, obviously related, the rapidly emerging crisis of Indigenous alienation. Everybody gonna be thrilled to see Dougie flying in on his new airplane! A huge part of the rationale offered by Team Ford revolved around his need to travel to the USA. After all, he just did a round trip to Texas on a leased private jet... Seems to me you can boil this controversy down to the age-old question of leasing vs. buying. I must say, the 30m price tag looks like a goodly discount on the 120 or so for a brand new one. And it was only lightly used in its previous life in South America, where it was owned by a little old lady who only used it for regular runs from Bogota to a small church near an obsure airstrip in Arizona every Sunday.