Author Archives: Raymond Alexander Kukkee

About Raymond Alexander Kukkee

A published author and freelance writing professional, Raymond lives and writes in Northwestern Ontario.

Life: Climate-change Liars and Deniers

Posted on June 8, 2014 by Raymond Alexander Kukkee
©2014  Raymond Alexander Kukkee   [caption id="attachment_2739" align="aligncenter" width="448"]Winter Sunrise ©2013 by r.a. kukkee Winter Sunrise                                ©2013 by r.a. kukkee[/caption]    

The Climate-Change Conundrum

I don't know about anyone else, but it seems to me we have been fed more than  enough lies, deception and denials about climate change. We're interested, open-minded,  and we try to keep up and stay  informed to enable reasonable conclusions.  We weigh facts,excuses, lies, crap and creative discussions. One thing is clear. Extreme weather change is obvious, but acid reflux continues to flow unabated from political and corporate  lobbyists  and climate-change liars and deniers.  Common sense evaporates.  

 "Let's pretend political ideology is  responsible for bad weather"

  Dreamland suburbia. Neighbourhoods shredded  by tornadoes,  homes flooded to the rooftops. Disasters.  Nations shattered, seemingly  irreparably by  extreme  'events', earthquakes, Mother Nature's best. She is clearly becoming increasingly testy with our blatant stupidity and foolishness, yet politicians, lobbyists, liars and deniers brazenly continue to explain away reckless  agendas of exploitation and destruction. There must be a more intelligent explanation for disasters than political orientation and partisan ego, but ask  "average Joe'  who somehow confirms  the agenda of the  "other" political party or ideology is responsible for the destruction, mayhem,  or environmental disaster. We jest . Perhaps not.   "Is it really global warming?" You ask naively. "Oh, no,"  smartass wise lobbyists, climate-change liars and deniers offer; profusely, deviously, incredulously,   "that's not warming, 'they' have done studies, it's proven".  Profiteering corporations "do studies" to promote, 'prove the safety of '  and enable their agenda, but let's not go there, not today. Today we're watching everyone  play games. Alas, even political  liars and corporate CEO's will have to breathe deeply in in choking smog and bring themselves up to speed with reality.   That's worth repeating, 'bring themselves up to speed with reality.'  Gasping for air does that.

 

Deluded Liars and Deniers

Politicians, lobbyists, liars and deniers,  apparently,  do not require food in  la-la-land. Devastation and floods are encouraged to miss homes of partisan  liars and deniers. A tradition.  Flood waters part where there's a BMW,  and  "tornadoes go round and round"  the house of The Three Little Pigs.  Cute. In la-la land, that is.  No kidding. Get real.    

The Coffee Shop

But let's not inject climate panic into favourite coffee-shops. Behind the counter  the apocalypse is only  "tree-hugger coffee-talk" — tornadoes in coffee mugs,  you get the drift.  Real issues are disguised like a grandé latté with plastic foam on top, expensive ideological whitewash camouflaged  with  pre-purchased   political decisions gleaned from official corporate reports. Nice.   We the 'ordinary', passively entertained, get real coffee, double-double.   We are supposed to believe LL&D  rhetoric, and unbelievably, we are encouraged to  want to believe it.  Logic suggests we pick and choose.  We`re encouraged to disbelieve  "scientific fact or base-line scientific data that our  leaders have stupidly and arrogantly dismissed  like a stale doughnut. We, the Timmy's crowd, after all, know stale doughnuts.       The Harper government ignores historical,  scientific baseline data at their convenience,  eliminating meaningful comparative data. They gut environmental legislation.  Never mind that.   The government wants YOU to believe  "shiny new, modern scientific data" gathered from operating sites by corporation should be used to enable, unnoticed,  "wise puppet policy" recommended by endless corporate reports printed on shiny paper.  Uh, huh..quite a cool show, isn't it?     Loyal readers and thinkers may ask why would average Canadian coffee-drinkers  concern themselves? After all, " hamburger jobs" are created and  the economy is "under control".   Yes, we are  controlled by  'the wise', manipulators, the political, the 'corporateaucracy', the elite, the rich, the profiteers, the exploiters. The corporateaucracy  controls everything including pulling the strings of  their political puppets. We, the ordinary, are —on a 'need to know' basis.  We get it. Gag the scientists, the real ones —and offer lies from  partisan politicians, paid lobbyists, liars and deniers instead.  "Oh, yes," we whisper at Timmy's. " the elite and rich know, that makes them qualified to run everything to a state of disaster."   Really?  No. There is no alternative world to live in after "the wise" destroy this one.   Yes.  Average global temperatures swing wildly, and centuries-old glaciers are melting; the Arctic is melting, unprecedented weather events proliferate,  carbon dioxide levels are higher than they have been in 800,000 years. All are proven, scientific fact, yet are labeled partisan rhetoric, Houdini magic science, and  scare tactics.  Coffee-shop people need oxygen to breathe, clean water to drink, and food to eat,  do we not? —or is that just another scare tactic  to be  ignored at the clever advice of devious lunatics?

 

Liars and Deniers Persist

No matter; partisan or not,  every human being on earth is playing catch up with reality which approaches quickly.  We're told to vote for a profiteering corporateaucracy.   Stubborn egotistic leaders insist we must be satisfied with hamburger jobs and  silently allow international corporations trillions upon trillions in profits as they exploit finite resources, destroying the environment we need to survive. "Cars in China now produce oxygen?"  "Contaminated, condemned  oil lands now produce food?"  "Oil spills are good for the economy"? The liars and deniers keep at it. We laugh raucously. Lobbyists, climate-change liars and deniers passionately dismiss humanity itself. They are the partisan ''wise". Something is amiss in the coffee-shop. We can do better.  Yes, that we agree on, we need a refill. What do YOU think? Have you had enough of the reckless corporate agenda, destruction of the environment for profit,  political puppets, and  climate-change liars and deniers?    Is that Incoming I hear? ©2014 all rights reserved
Posted in Business, Ethics, Life, Major Issues, Nature, Reflections, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Go to a Book Swap and Make the Big Time

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Raymond Alexander Kukkee

© 2014  by Raymond Alexander Kukkee

[caption id="attachment_2662" align="aligncenter" width="640"]Books from the Gillies Community Book Swap photo by wlk Photography Books from the Gillies Community Book Swap    photo© 2014  by wlk Photography[/caption]

Would you venture out on the highway in bad driving conditions to go to any book event?  Should a late spring, blinding snowstorm on April 19th, 2014 be reason enough to miss a scheduled book swap and make the big time?
Up the rural highway almost devoid of traffic, we discover that with care, life is passable.  Soft, wet snow. Instant road slop, slush, four inches, with freezing rain.  Slipping, sliding, so what, book lovers persist, anything to get to a community book swap.
For this event four bags (the reusable cloth shopping- kind) chuck full of well-read, used books were hauled down the highway. Some books were obtained at previous events, some gleaned and weaned from our own eclectic collection. No matter. Up the mile hill we slipped in to the ancient community center in South Gillies, Ontario.

Community Book Swap: How does it Work?

It’s a simple process.  Come and see. Haul used books to the swap, and return home —with just as many or perhaps more ‘new and different’ books. Keep them for a month or forever if you wish.  Read, enjoy, give them away, lend them to others, or haul them right back to the swap, your choice.
Creating an endless supply of excellent reading material, used books are living fuel for a healthy book swap.  Books for exchange; want one book? Ten? A hundred or more every month?  Go for it. Swap. Take’em away.   Books of every description,   Cd’s, music and movies, and older VCRs are there too.   New or used, worn, dog-eared,  some never cracked to the curious eye,  ancient,  deeply enjoyed or skimmed. Perhaps some pocket westerns narrowly missed being tossed into someone’s woodburner, —but now rescued they’re all  treasures equally tossed into the swap instead.  Each and every book can be recycled—to a new reader, a new, proud owner.  A new bookshelf, a new home.

Book Swap Rules

The rules of the community book swap are simple, smart, and green.  Every book is free.  Bring books or not, you may also make a donation, but only if you wish. It’s a kind gesture, the swap is a lot of work setting out tables, boxing, handling and displaying so many books. A whole library’s worth.  There’s a gallon pickle  jar  handy with a handful of coins,  a few loonies, crumpled fives in it, so toss in dimes, nickels, folding money, whatever you wish,  no expectations, no obligation assigned. Help yourself. 

[caption id="attachment_2667" align="aligncenter" width="640"]Community Book Swap photo by rakukke Gillies Community Book Swap   photo © 2014 by rakukkee[/caption]

If you’re looking, the neat organization and layout of hundreds of books on endless tables arranged by the two wise and helpful, gentle organizers is impressive and eases the burden. The highly-dedicated gray-haired couple seems to have every book  in the right place,  some memorized, too, believe it or not. Mainstream fiction?  Right there. Bird identification books? Over there. Diet books?  Downstairs, there are cookbooks too, last table at the end.  You get the idea.

Get to the Book Swap and Make the Big Time

Here’s the best part. Great titles of every genre are available, reference books, poetry, fiction, instruction books, textbooks, soft-covers, hard covers, literary, the weird and wonderful,  New York best-sellers, you name it, they are all free for the taking, first come, first serve yourself.  Works by authors,  the incredibly famous to the eclectic,  virtually unknown  and insignificant are equally available.  Hemingway,  Shakespeare,   King,  Burton,  Christie,  L’amour, Gray,  Irving, Dostoyevsky,  Harper Lee,….and…I.

Yes, you heard it here first.  Browsing casually with her reusable cloth shopping bag, among a thousand other books, she discovered it. The better half found a signed copy of  The Fires of Waterland, 1st edition.  Laying there with Hemingway, Shakespeare,  King,  Burton,  Christie,  L'amour,  Gray,  Irving, Dostoyevsky, Harper Lee, and I.  My own novel.   Right there at our community  book swap, and during a snowstorm too.   Imagine that.

I showed it to the old guy and his wife.  Upon previous visits to the swap I had told them I was a writer and a published author.  I told him  the 2nd edition of The Fires of Waterland was soon going to print.  A new publisher.  “Oh my!”  he  said, beaming, as he thumbed through the prized find.

“You’re one of the authors making the big time at the Gillies Book Swap”  the old guy observed, smiling widely, —and smartly tucked The Fires of Waterland into his briefcase.

I was delighted.
Imagine that.  Going to a book swap and making the big time.

 

Is that Incoming I hear?

photo credit © 2014  by WLK Photography  all rights reserved.

tags:  book swap, The Fires of Waterland,  make the big time, Gillies Community book swap, authors,  books

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Posted in Life, Writing Life | 4 Comments