Lifes Lessons, Sport

A Boxing Death In 2025

We are not evolving as human beings. I suspect we are actually regressing in intellect and in conscience. I have never paid to see a boxing match except for Rocky in the theatre as a child. I did see a nephew once in bout. I don’t understand an effort of beating someone up as sport. If I was accosted physically by someone on the street, I would see this as a perfect place for inflicting utter harm on another but not in a ring surrounded by spectators. The martial arts have a strong modicum of respect and conduct entrenched and disciplines are oriented around self defense. In other words, boxing and martial arts are two different things.


In a core subject within my Physical Education discipline back in the early ’80’s we had taken up the merits of boxing in a debate. My position then was as it is now. Don’t do it. Don’t support it. It doesn’t serve society or the individual. There are so many other ways to compete physically and mentally which don’t have the end goal of uncivilly harming someone else’s good health.


Why do we pay to watch? Why do boxers pursue the sport? Do men and women box and pay to watch boxing because of some neanderthal like instinct of survival where fighting is perceived as a means for self sufficiency and perhaps expressive toward the onlooking female as way to gain favor. Of course, this motive contrasts with the cooperative ideal of a civil society whereby conscience in a higher form may morally restrict unleashing unnecessary physical harm on another human being.


In our quest for freedom, do we act beyond the conscienable? Do we exempt moral suasion in the face of a perceived overriding freedom and quest for profit? Do we actually possess intuitively the capacity to empathize wholly with the plight of another when another is carried from a ring on a stretcher? Can an individual be guided intuitively at all by an awareness of spirit extending beyond the self or is any effort only fictionally derived from parent / teacher coaching? If we are more than blood, bone, and water….where from do emotions such as guilt, greed, and love manifest? What must we think of the love lost by the death of a boxer? Having paid to watch boxing where a person dies, what are we to think of ourselves?


The fellow who recently died was an Irishman named John Cooney aged 28. It’s very sad. Thinking of all who knew him today and all his good deeds throughout his 28 years.

Politics

Trump I Told You So II

I was at a dinner party at a friends house at around the time when Trump was campaigning for his first term. Having listened to him closely through the media, and having watched his conduct via “The Apprentice” (accounting for any perceived thoughts that acting within the role may or may not have been apparent) I gained a feel for the man. I started to generate an opinion in regard to his utter essence as a human being and I’ll tell you frankly, I was very unimpressed.


At the dinner party… the evening was winding up and Trump’s name came up. I said – watch. He will align with Putin and coordinate a strategy to walk right into Canada via Alaska and the Bering Strait. Of course the statement should have been perceived as “ridiculous”. My friend’s reaction was neutral but the other dinner party guest was understandably aghast that I should state such a thing.


Where are we now? Through all the turbulence of his first days in office, there has been no talk of Putin and Ukraine and how peace is being delivered to the region. Why has Trump not ever exclaimed in absolute terms that Putin withdraw from Ukraine? I will leave that speculation up to you. What could the U.S. possibly offer Russia for concessions?


Now we have Prime Minister who has come to conclude Trump’s unspoken agenda (absorbing Canada) with respect to Canada. He was caught on a “hot mic” speaking his instinct when his instinct could have been made readily available to Canadians should he have deemed his insight material.


This backdrop is one which supports my opinion that no political leader should be meeting in private with Donald Trump in quarters other than officially sanctioned governmental institutions. Danielle Smith was so naive that she had even brought along a character presumed similar in financial stature to the kinds of people that Trump is now installing to lead his “Project 25”. Ironic or not, since her Trump visit with Kevin O’Leary, Smith is now in hot water at home with allegations of conflict within her department of health at Alberta Health Services (AHS).

Philosophy, Politics

Trump The Benevolent Soul In Gaza

So Marco Rubio (remember the guy with the small hands), the new Secretary of State, suggests that what Trump meant was that Palestinians could move temporarily until the U.S. pours American treasure into cleaning debris and rebuilding so that then the Palestinians could come back home to livable conditions. That’s quite the offer and set back for the U.S. taxpayer. Trouble is that Donald Trump is a proven liar. You see….that’s one good reason in an of itself why you don’t elevate a guy like him to a position of political power. Imagine what these people must be thinking given what they’ve been through!


Articles of Impeachment are now being drafted yet again for Mr. Trump – this time in near record time having taken back the Office of the Presidency. Congressman Al Green is citing “ethnic cleansing” for suggesting that the U.S. move them from their home and taking “ownership” of their land. It was a nice job of oration amongst a near empty Congress today while city streets are filling with protesters.

Lifes Lessons, Philosophy, Politics

Donald Trump – I Told You So

Finally those Canadians with financial and social stature have come to the table wholeheartedly to denounce Trump. If it’s taken you this long….we needed you in 2014/ 2015. We needed you to speak out emphatically that a man of deviant morals and conduct unbecoming of political party leadership could not ascend to a position of political power. However; most of you were mute. You didn’t want to ruffle feathers. You didn’t want to leave any kind of perception with others that you empathized with his policies and that you could rationalize his character in favor of Republican ideals. You may have been fearful of retribution. I say this emphatically now if you were mute – shame on you!!


Shame on you if you bought into some conspiracy theory about the “deep state” without presenting proof. Shame on you if bought into his lies and deceit. Shame on you if you were so naive that he had nothing to do with the Capitol attack on January 6th, 2021 especially in lieu of his conduct on that day and a reference to a vigilante group of whose name he was familiar. Shame on you if you thought that all women alleging sexual assault conspired together for financial gain by falsifying claims of sexual assault. Shame on you if you discounted the 3,500 – 4,000 lawsuits for which he or his companies were cited in lawsuits as standard practice for business. Shame on you if you believed that he had every right morally to withhold presentation of his tax returns upon request given a quest for the Presidency. Shame on you if you had normalized in your mind a fabrication of Barak Obama’s birth records. Shame on you if you normalized a a man with a tawdry record as his 2016 campaign manager. Shame on you if you had watched episodes of “The Apprentice” and had not picked up samples of his character flaws. Shame on you if you hadn’t surmised that bankrupting companies would correlate with mismanaging a government. Shame on you if you were indifferent by his indifference toward Russia invading Ukraine. Shame on you if you believe that the fabrication of real estate’s market value is an innocuous clerical mishap in the context of a loan application. Shame on you if you believe that paying money to a pornstar in order to conceal a perceived character flaw is all good campaign practice. Shame on you if you believe that engaging in acts of deceit is what can be expected of a Presidential candidate.


Now Donald Trump near the date of his second inauguration has appeared before the media handling a question about whether he would annex Canada by force. Imagine that. Here we are. Canada’s relationship with the U.S. has been severely damaged by the imposition of tariffs and the abrogation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. He is referencing Canada as a “failed state”.

Music

A Complete Unkown –  Movie Review

A Complete Unknown was released on Christmas day 2024 and it’s getting four stars out of five across the internet. As a guitar player myself, naturally I’m interested in the evolution of Bob Dylan’s early days so here I sat in Calgary’s Chinook Theatre for the 4pm Tuesday cheap seat.

Imagine being tasked the role of an eccentric who plays guitar but you don’t play guitar. You go to work and this is exactly what Timothee Chalomet had done very well in my opinion. He would have looked to the charisma or lack thereof in Dylan while researching his character. This of course was the most intriguing aspect of the movie for me. If you are familiar with Bob Dylan, you know of his monotone raspy delivery while being succinct in words. Bob Dylan has not been awarded a Nobel Prize in literature because of unpurposeful  rhetoric. It is because of a capacity for drawing meaning from few words.

Critics may claim that plot was lacking but the appeal is in the persona. That is, that character who sits in the back corner of a bar with sunglasses on hoping to catch a nugget of inspiration from a mysterious fellow musician he had just met.

The volume of work is extraordinary and young ones bred on rap and raves stand perplexed by the intrigue but weren’t exposed to the political and social rawness of summer ’68. Folk was culturally more relevant then when metaphors were moving and norms had been evolving. This movie provides an imaginative glimpse into what it might have been like when a creative young man questioned values and tradition through song.

Time well spent in my opinion….but heh – I play guitar.