Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Baroque Bach on a Glass Harp

Or otherwise known as "Tickling the Wine Glasses". An absolutely commanding performance of Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis 565 by the Glass Duo.


Toccata in D-, BWV 565


Fugue in D-, BWV 565

Thanks to my "brother from a different mother"...Paris Saizan who originally found this.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

I Believe In Father Christmas (Greg Lake)



Pretty much sums up Christmas for me. It's become too commercialized in my viewpoint.

People pissin' on seats. Ah Fuck The Cutesie Rhyme.

Screw the cute sign on the wall...here's the one that's going up in the bathroom wall...if I had a public use restroom.

"If you sprinkle when you pee
It's the grossest thing you'll see
Don't be a filthy pig, be sweet
F*ng goddamnit; wipe the seat.
Cause if you don't, you're a jerk
Make the cleaners have to work
You chose to skip it, you ugly troll.
They should shove your head in the toilet bowl!!!"

Friday, December 9, 2011

Internment, Confusion and the Japanese Apology to Canadian Veterans

Japan Apologizes for Treatment of Canadian Prisoners of War

Ignorant Dumbfucks on Yahoo Canada who commented about Japanese Brutality and then proceeded to tar Canadians Interned in Interior and Ontario Internment Camps with the Same Brush

Even after 70 years and incarceration in Slocan/New Denver etc, etc...to white people, we're still "Japs". The whole goddamned Japanese apology to Canadian soldiers brought out a mountain of hatred towards Japanese of all nationalities, whether we were born in Canada or elsewhere. Things haven't changed worth shit. It doesn't matter that I've spent the entirety of my life in Canada (I was born in Edmonton), to most white Canadians, I'm still a JAP and when I get little ol' white ladies telling me how good I speak English, it makes my blood boil.

What white people don't seem to get is that we were Canadian citizens. It wasn't the fact that Canada interned Japanese...they interned Canadians. What the Japanese did in the Pacific, what Japanese did in Burma, China, Korea and the Philippines was reprehensible, but it has no bearing to what Canadians did to other Canadians whose only difference was that we had olive complexions and slant eyes. We Canadians had nothing to do with it. And people need to stop the comparisons. The only connection that we had to Japan's atrocities was that our ancestors came from that country and that's a pretty tenuous connection indeed.

The Americans of our extraction got a chance to prove their loyalty in the end. They had their 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the 100th Battalion. They rescued the Lost Battalion in Italy. They received 21 Medals of Honor (the single highest number for one battalion), won 52 Distinguished Service Crosses less the 19 that were upgraded to the MoH. 1 Distinguished Service Medal, 560 Silver Stars of which 28 had oak leaf clusters (2nd award), 22 Legion of Merit Medals, 15 Soldier`s Medals, 4000 Bronze Stars including one that was upgraded to the Medal of Honor) and of those 4000 Bronze Stars, there were 1200 Oak Leaf Clusters for a second award) - one Bronze Star was upgraded to a Silver Star, and 9486 Purple Hearts. They bled and died for the United States of America, all the while their families were being treated like criminals for the crime of looking like the "enemy".

The Canadian government didn't trust us one single bit. Do you think for a single moment that there wasn't anyone of the internees who didn't try to sign up and fight for their country and what I mean "their country" was Canada? Did you think that for one single second the anger and bitterness felt by those Canadians you called Japs wouldn't have resulted in a single battalion with so many Victoria Crosses that it would make your head spin? The 442nd RCT would have been eclipsed by a battalion with less manpower. But no. The Canadian Government didn't trust us Japs one bit. Better to stick 'em in tarpaper shacks with no heat and let 'em freeze to death. At least we weren't stuck in baking ovens and gas chambers.

The prime excuse that it was war, it was excuseable is a complete and utter copout. There were signs that said "No Japs from the Pacific to the 400 mile limit." When you have Conservative MPs like Charles Green spouting what amounts to white supremacist talk, there's an atmosphere of hatred that people like my relatives had to put up with every single day. It also dehumanized the people and made it easier to commit the wrong.

The other excuse that they didn't know what Japanese were faithful. Not one single case of espionage among Japanese ethnic Canadian Citizens was ever really accounted for. All it was, was an economic grab and the bare fact of it was that Pearl Harbor was just a convenient excuse to grab for themselves what the whites thought should be theirs. Sure, why not take their houses and their possessions, they're worth money and we're losing tons of money in the war effort and we can't determine if those slant-eyed Japs are trustworthy. Hell, the Japs were making money hand over fist and they were taking your jobs. Yeah, it was justified. Sure those slant-eyed sewer monkeys weren't human, let 'em die out there in the bush.

My grandfather, grandmother, uncles and mother were interned in the bush in Slocan. My uncle nearly died out there of pneumonia. My grandfather had to restart his life when he was 60. One of my Canadian realtor friends of my ethnicity also ended up with his family interned in New Denver. Each and every one of those families sacrificed their family and community unity. We're all spread out now. None of us are rich and we all get by and contribute to society, no matter how much society has wronged us.



I've tried to put the past behind me. I'm married to someone I care about who is the daughter of a Burma US Army WWII Veteran who despite having fought against the Japanese would have had the intelligence to determine that I wasn't the same as a Jap soldier and would have welcomed me with open arms. If there are veterans who can't and won't look at anyone who has the slightest hint of Japanese extraction without fear, loathing, and outright hatred, then that's their problem, not mine. But believe me, I will return their hate ounce for ounce, pound for pound. My relatives nearly paid with their lives when all they were trying to do were to be proper Canadian citizens and that I can never forgive. There is a distinct difference. To those who fought and picked up arms...you had the opportunity to fight. We Canadian citizens would have been shot like dogs if we had defended our property from seizure. So we went like faithful citizens, locked up and corralled like cattle in horse stalls at Pacific National Exhibition grounds, while people taunted us and called us "Dirty Japs". If it wasn't for the RCMP, they probably would have rounded us up and killed us.

And we have yet to learn from our lessons from WWII. The Americans are all ready to incarcerate all Arab-Americans because they look like the enemy, just like they incarcerated all Japanese-Americans in WWII. At least, I know that if they ever come for me again in a war against Japan, my wife will join me in incarceration and that would be an insult to her late father, a loyal veteran of the United States Army in WWII who fought so that freedoms could be enjoyed by all citizens, no matter what ethnicity. Frankly there is no such thing as true freedom. We're only allowed to think so, until the next round of atrocities is committed and then excuses will be used to turn around and revoke citizenship and freedom of mobility. We paid for that with our so called freedom after Pearl Harbor and some of the Japanese-Canadian internees paid with their lives.


Hear the grief in David Suzuki's voice when he says: "I thought I was just a Canadian Kid...but to see this...we were really Japanese..." This is the legacy of betrayal by a country that we Canadians thought that was their own.

And if you think for one single second that Canadians of Japanese extraction have to apologize for the atrocities that the Japanese committed during the war, you deserve to get told unapologetically "FUCK YOU!" Go to HELL!!! We were never Japs, We were faithful Canadians, we were wronged and as Canadians, we deserved compensation for those wrongs. The day that families of Canadian WWII veterans stop comparing us with the Japs who committed the crimes overseas is the day those wounds will finally start to heal. If not, then FUCK YOU TOO!!!

Thursday, December 1, 2011

About Ready To Go Apeshit!!!

I have to be grateful for the two boys that I've got. They watched over Storm while I tried to get as much stuff as I could get done. The living room was starting to look like hell. So I needed to try to get this straightened out. The floor is now clean. The jackets are hung up where they need to be. I have to do some major dish-washing...to get it to where it's supposed to be.

I had a bit of a financial scare two weeks ago where I didn't know what was happening with the FBAR and FATCA situation and I just about nearly went into an emotional tailspin. But things are better in that I'm able to handle it now.

I need to make sure that Storm is doing well and on the curve. So this pay period, I'm going to be working on getting the rest of the damned house done; including cleaning up Heather's side of the bed as well as her folding and putting away her clothes because if I don't it's NEVER going to get done...shredding receipts...and other numerous tasks while trying to also get the dishes taken care of...as well as doing 3-4 feedings of little Stormi. She's OK, right now...though she doesn't seem to want to eat a third feeding because the ones that I've given her were rather large. It put about .8 of a pound on her. Because she was 18.8 according to the scale this time around.

Frankly, what I want is for my wife to not ever let it get to this point again. I'm enlisting the help of the kids to get this done. Because if I don't, I'm going to over-exert myself and wipe myself physically out again. And they are young and have plenty of energy.

In the middle of dishes. 1/3rd of the way done. I want to make sure that they're all done because I need to be able to spend the time with Stormi that I need to. And in order to do that, I need a clean house. I've got three months to make some serious headway on two things. I need to get her talking about 16-25 words by 21 months.

I'm going to need some serious help with teaching Stormi how to talk. I've been reading to her, but, I'm wondering if anything is getting through. With my own learning disability, even understanding what to do to help her learn to talk is difficult. But the only thing I can do is try my best. I just don't need multiple government assholes breathing down my neck. It's hard enough trying to stay on top of things and keep it at an orderly pace so that I make progress on all fronts. It's like trying to fight a multiple front war to win. The creep in WWII tried a two-front war and got his ass kicked. Trying to fight a multiple front war and achieve success is not a given. It's a matter of luck and right now, it feel like my luck sucks royally. But I'm not going to throw in the towel because the stakes are too damned high.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Save Riverview??? Bullshit!!!

When the subject of Riverview comes up, there is a hue and an outcry coming from people who want to keep those buildings up as a testimony to the help that the Government of British Columbia gave to the people who were mentally ill. This makes me turn purple with rage. My viewpoint is that the buildings responsible for the incarceration of dozens of people who were kept medically sedated with pills because the staff there didn't want to actually have to do anything, should be torn down, razed completely to their foundations. And nothing should ever be put there again other than a monument to those who died there at the hands of the BC Health Care System.

I remember 5 years of terror, this was when I believed in my mother and wondered every day why she was going crazy. The infamous Crease Clinic was a staple of my life for five years. Constant visits to my mother. The brief lucid moments that she had in between doses of barbiturates, and her pleading and begging that she wouldn't have any more of these psychotic episodes. My mother was bipolar and had these hysterical self-harming episodes or she would flip out and go batshit crazy and start hitting anything close by her. These were scary times for someone who had to deal with his mother going f*ng insane from the age of 8-12. I wouldn't wish this on any other kid. My fellow friends never knew this. This was our dirty family secret that was never to be aired. At 12 I had to go toe to toe with a doctor 45 years my senior demanding that my mother be taken off barbiturates because they were doing absolutely no good. My mother also went through shock therapy to make her mind "all straight again". That did NO good whatsoever. And electro-shock therapy back in those days was a barbaric procedure. There was torture done in those buildings in the name of "mental health...CARE". Bullshit! Care wasn't even in their lexicon. They came to the building did their work, and the sadists who comprised the staff thought it was a good day when the inmates didn't "ACT UP"!

All Jensen Ackles has heard of was rumors and perceived impression that he had met up with ghosts during his filming there. Yes, there are people who died there. Crease Clinic is not merely entertainment for the masses. How many families have suffered at Crease Clinic and Riverview? How many families wondered if their loved ones would ever see the light of sanity again? How many families lost hope? And Hollywood uses these buildings as a form of entertainment? They make money on the memories of pain and suffering of countless families who shudder every time they see the buildings involved because of the years of suffering that they had to go through? And that's appalling.

I've said before that I want to see the buildings razed to the ground. And I will hold that stance to the day I draw my last breath. Those buildings, after what went through behind those walls, don't deserve to stand as a monument to what atrocities stood for healthcare back in the early days of psychiatric medicine.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Family Like This??? Who Needs Enemies!!!

I cannot stand my maternal relatives. Evidently, I've become the black sheep of the family and frankly, I don't care. My oldest uncle is egotistical because he was 2nd in BC writing the provincial exams and he became an oh so-glorified, "my shit don't stink" statistician for the Canadian federal government. My 2nd uncle tends to be the "I'm going to follow whatever my sister and older brother says" type of person. If you don't have a backbone, then don't bother talking to me. Evidently, he doesn't think that I'm a "relative"...so to speak, but frankly, who gives a shit. Then of course he has the guts to tell me to my face: "I hope you're not here to cause any trouble". On top of that he's said some nasty things about my dad and about my dad's family. And if he's going to play that game, he'd better hope to hell I don't find his ass around my neck of the woods. Because he'll be wearing his ears as trousers.

And of course, everyone knows my innocent as a saint mother (spits). My mother has the only connection that I have to my father's side of the family, and she's going to take that information to her grave. The conniving bitch. I'm sorry to have to impugn my beloved grandmother, but my grandmother gave birth to the most conniving, egotistical assholes this side of Conrad Black.

The only person who I gave a shit about on my side of the family was my Dad. And if I don't get the information to track down my relatives in Japan, I won't have the opportunity to ever again. I don't want the information for myself: I want it for my kids who deserve to know more about their family than they know. They don't need to know about their asshole "wanna-be royalty" maternal side: (as far as I know, they were farmers and vegetable pickers) all because one of their ancestors was the Lord High Executioner (he was a burakumin despite his high and mighty title whereas the Chikamori were samurai and well respected).

Right now, my kids know more about their mother's side of the family than their dad's. My kids have a right to know their family in Japan. And my mother really doesn't want to get on my wrong side when it comes to knowing Dad's family. She will give up that information before she dies...one way or another.

I have no desire to know any of my relatives on my mother's side. Not a single iota of a chance. As far as I'm concerned, the family ended with my grandmother and grandfather. And my uncles and my mother can go to HELL as far as I'm concerned. Spit on my father's memory and they are as good as dead in my books.