Category Archives: Oblivous

Oblivious Canadian stories about navigating the world.

Pondering About Aliens

Posted by Nukes of Knowledge on

Suppose extraterrestrials have visited since we humans evolved. It makes sense, really. They being able to travel so aeronautically impossibly dictates a higher order of tech that must presume to be older than us.

Whether or not they had a hand in our creation is beside the point; they certainly affected our cultures at a minimum as an ancient cargo cult.

It’s the height of human hubris to assume we are the primary object of curiosity on this planet. These ships have been reported traversing into and through water as warm and buttery as they shift through the air and into space.

The STS-75 Tether incident is not a video found easily online anymore; the above slice of newsfeed from AP is about it. The hundreds of ships are called debris. Those things are intelligently piloted. That broken tether is miles long; how large does it make those perfect circles? Some of those perfect circles flash like a moody octopus.

Perhaps earths’ sea creatures are more interesting and unpredictable than us to the otherworldly observers. Given that we know more about space than we do our own oceans; perhaps the visitors have found the impassable depths of our oceans to be more fascinating than the highest peaks and our most innovative forms of art and technology, terra firma.

Surely, we have found stranger things in our oceans than we have on land or in space. Odder, scarier, more fascinating and unfathomable forms of life exist in our oceans at different depths and pressures; even in volcanoes and extreme anerobic or arsenic based environments; than we have ever confirmed on land or in space.

Perhaps life is as rare as we have always collectively thought it is; and our Earth fascinates the heck out of other advanced life-forms.

Maybe they made us and that’s God… or maybe we all evolved the initial spark of life independently and that’s why the abundance and variety of life on earth intrigues them so; as it certainly would us if we found ourselves in their proverbial shoes.

Such an understatement to refer to Earth as an ant farm.

More-so a multi-level community combination aquarium-terrarium freak-show mosaic displayed in a magnetic spherical gaseous fishbowl that post-1800 moonlights as a certifiably delusional chain-smoking composter.

Fascinating stuff. Huge ratings. Yuge ratings!

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Interesting Relevant Videos

This conference happened on May 9th, 2001 – discussing trillions of dollars in black budget UFO projects and disclosures by military officials about our relationships with extraterrestrials.

On September 10, 2001; US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced trillions of missing dollars from the Pentagon.

The next day, September 11th of 2001, something huge happened where all the evidence was destroyed at the Pentagon and everyone forgot about the trillions of dollars missing. In turn they signed a blank check to the military industrial complex; directed by former Haliburton CEO and US Vice President at the time, Richard Cheney; that enabled two more decades of unaccounted-for spending.

Cockfighting is Logical: Perhaps Ethical

Posted by Nukes of Knowledge on

As the manufactured falsepocalypse transpired; I among others obtained chickens. The evolution and urgency in local Kijiji ads this past few months indicates a multitude of new chicken owners. As mine grow from babes; some of them are certainly dudes. I promised my daughter after much consideration that I would not kill and eat the ones that cannot stay.

All of the ways to resolve this gender balance had been pondered over. Outright execution and consumption seemed most logical. Second most logical is giving away. Which is likely what will happen. So an ad was considered; so many for young roosters were found. Owners requiring a ‘good home’. Nay, new chicken person. In the factory world these things get killed before they grow up. Just because your baby chicken is a baby rooster doesn’t mean you get away with skipping the deed if the homes run out. Half those folk taking your pet would eat it. Why else take a rooster; honestly? Unless it’s one sexy damned rooster that some fancy breeder wants laying chicken-pipe in his egg-birds.

I am left to wonder about thousands of generations past; cohabiting with small amounts of personal chickens to feed ones family. The same gender balance of all creatures would be then as now. What to do with the excess?

Human creatures kill each other for fun and sport as well as war. PTSD was the descriptor of nearly every generation to some degree until very recent in our species’ past. The logical deduction of a generationally-shell-shocked species noticing how the spare cockerels fight is being entertained by it. Perhaps abhorrent to some modern sensitivities; death was common from a young age for many of our forefathers. From waking up to the rooster you eat later that year; to hunting as a necessity; or as far as witnessing war as a necessity. The world before our modern one was not that pleasant to exist in by modern standards. Shit, much of our planet is currently at war or unjust. Slavery exists now. Rape as a tool of war exists now.

Chickens aren’t people. If our world is one in which Epstein can exist; one in which the worlds strongest nation can use the destruction of two insured financial buildings to justify the destruction of two complete countries – one could reasonably argue that a human channeling their primal simplicity at chickens fighting to the death is a logical and inconsequential derivation of the human animal. Anyone who wastes their time arguing otherwise is a child, a vegetarian, a hypocrite, or a coward. I watched a cockfight in the mountains of the Dominican Republic. I own chickens now, because apocalypse. Some chickens are absolute assholes; some are cool. Fucken let’em fight. Let dudes pimp their cocks.

My position is that when viewed relative to the things that our power structures allow and has allowed to exist since time immemorial; cockfighting is one of many logical ends for a simple minded mass of humans farming chickens. I am sure if ancient humans could have convinced pigs or owls to fight; they would have.

Canada, Inc. Part 9 – Health, Business, and the Environment

Posted by Nukes of Knowledge on

Greener cities; more exercise, healthier food.

We all need need these things. If the energy grid ever went down and we relied on fossil fuels in a post-apocalyptic world (something like Aleppo or The Walking Dead); without any sort of government structure in place; we’d soon run out and go mad. The chronically out-of-shape would perish almost immediately.

The time to be proactive is now. Solar panels on every roof. Windmills in every yard. ‘A self-sustaining micro-grid’ must be the descriptor of every community. Many communities that have poisonous industrial dangers (like Northern Pulp in Pictou County, NS) often have higher incidence of cancers (also like Pictou County, NS).

The individual writing this is in the beginning stages of his third tumor in ten years. When surgery comes, it will be number 5 was pretty darn scared a few months ago about this growth in his face that resembled a previous facial growth. Got way worse since it started this time around. Then I ate a pound of weed and it got better (or so it seems?). Weed works.

The last two tumors were not cancerous, so I was told. The surgery for each included nerve damage and has crippled me; to a minimal degree, ensuring constant pain and unbalance. The first tumor was in my right foot (a benign spindle cell tumor). Since the three surgeries for it; I limp; have constant leg and back pain; I trip over and fall a lot; and it takes me a lot longer to do certain things than it does other people. Sometimes I’m incredibly spry. I bounce and run and jump steps or shoot hoops for hours or do a half hour of cardio at the gym.

Those are times I have smoked cannabis. Period.

My second tumor was in my neck; in my parotid gland. The doctor sliced my neck and moved my facial nerves aside to slice out part of my face that was underneath… and part of my neck… and some lymph nodes. Turns out it wasn’t cancer, so they said.

Now, when I get sick, the left side of my throat doesn’t swell. There is nothing to swell. My right side though; aches. It debilitates me. My head feels like it was cracked with a hammer every time I get sick. I bite my lip. I get neck/muscle twitches; and the uneven nature of my neck muscles is the only thing about which I am self-conscious.

I grew up within aeration distance of Northern Pulp in Abercrombie, Pictou County, Nova Scotia. I also spent 7 months living downwind of the burn pits on Kandahar Airfield during some of the highest troop concentrations of that war. Every scrap of waste was burned. Mattresses; bottles, and body fragments included. Two carcinogenic pesticides were sprayed on every road every week to prevent malaria.

In addition to living near that pestilence; I was also a cleaner. Some of the sand in Kandahar is as talcum powder. Shortly before I came home; I found a document outlining the two types of pesticides they sprayed on the roads twice per week to kill the malaria mosquitoes. Both cancer causing. I had spent almost every day of work for 6 days a week for my first four months in theater in enclosed spaces sweeping up talcum powder dust that had been twice weekly dusted with carcinogenic pesticides without any sort of breathing protection.

So. Here is me. Finally with everything I have ever wanted in my life currently in my hands.

Poof.

Tumor number three. On the opposite side of my face as it was last time. Exactly the same place. It’s more painful this time. Different. This scares me. One of my eyes hurt.

Where do I turn?

Everybody in Pictou County is in the same risk over Northern Pulp as one another; so that brings me no help.

My time spent in Afghanistan was as a civilian contractor working for a large Canadian contracting company well entrenched in scandal. I was not a member of the military. I do not have a service number that entitles me to call Veterans Affairs for any sort of help. Given how the government has treated actual veterans, even if I did have a service number I can’t imagine they’d jump on board to help little old me with what is our generations “Agent Orange”. To be clear; I was not given protective equipment or informed of the risk. I found the MSDS for the pesticides on a whim and by chance.

There was a lawsuit in Florida that I tried to take part of a few years ago against KBR (Kellogg Brown and Root). KBR was responsible for burning the garbage in Kandahar; along with a lot of other bases during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. That lawsuit failed. The plaintiffs were a group of veterans who developed rare cancers and neurological issues after service. Their sicknesses are similar to the kinds of illnesses that 9/11 first respondents developed.

See… KBR is a subsidiary of Halliburton. Halliburton is the multinational oil company that former Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of immediately before becoming Vice President in 2000. Immediately before the September 11th attacks. Shortly before the incredibly profitable (for KBR) invasion of Afghanistan. Somewhat before the even more profitable invasion of Iraq. See… these wars were wars of profit. Unfathomable amounts of government money being paid to corruptly connected companies for very fathomable amounts of work/products.

In the case of all of the garbage being burned; Kellogg Brown and Root bid on the contract to dispose of the waste at the cheapest rate for a specific period of time. They burned it; and poisoned us all. The government let them.

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This is but an even grander macrocosm shining-example of what happens in the oil patches of Alberta; or the gold mines in Central and South America; or the chocolate slaves in Africa; or the indentured servants in Saudi Arabia, or the environmental racism directed at the Pictou Landing First Nations; or almost all of the rapes and pillaging of humanity over the course of human history. Well… at least since we came up with the concept of currency.

Almost everybody has a price and the ‘big winner’ is usually the guy with the most disposable cash.

Money talks. It ends every discussion. It makes people blind. It eliminates their empathy.

Most importantly, it buys influence.

The world we live in today is one in which a significant portion of the population stares into a small rectangle for most of their waking hours while they tap the front of it for dopamine shots.

All anyone has to do is pay a few dollars and target a message at generally where people are and they can’t help but see it. Imagine having unlimited money to dump subtle messages into the magic-hypno-cube of any and everyone you ever want to. Half the population is divided on an effluent pipe? Use marketing money to pump propaganda to confuse and divide people at a time when political advertising laws are not up to date with the ever-changing technology.

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To create a healthier population; we need to prioritize health over profit in every situation.

Things like subsidized healthcenter memberships and mandatory access to healthy food. Subsidized self-sustaining gardens for every household. Solar panels and windmills for everyone.

It also includes things like choosing technologies and situations that will be good for us in 50 to 100 years not acutely profitable now (for example Northern Pulp). By also changing other things at the same time, like ensuring we are all eating fresh healthy food that doesn’t cause cancer. Things like guaranteeing we all have opportunity for exercise and education on being healthy.

We also must reduce the impact of harmful industries collapsing. The big fear of families that rely on horrible environmental disasters for income have is that they will not be able to pay their bills and feed their kids. Why can’t the government eliminate that fear for everyone through legislation?

  • High-speed internet should be a human right (but it’s not because somebody profits from it)
  • All transportation should be emission free (but it’s not because somebody profits from it)
  • Every community should be able to completely produce it’s own food inside a government subsidized food greenhouse. Every family should be given the tools to grow food on their own property or in their own home (but it will never happen because food companies like profit and drug companies want us sick)

These are a few simple examples. The illustration I wish you to see from all this is that all of these issues we face in our time affect each other; they are not stand alone. The common denominator is some dickhead in a corner office reaping the profits of our un-wellness.

All that dickhead and their arsehole comrades need to do is maintain the status quo. That’s it. Do nothing.

Having just one of these issues fixed appropriately would make an almost unimaginable world of difference for people in our country. People like me would hail it as an incredibly just victory. Much like we all thought we were doing with marijuana legalization. That itself is a shining example of a century of nonsense propaganda being proven wrong and conveniently never ever addressed afterward. Nor was the credibility of all those fighting against it’s legalization ever questioned; nor were they personally about how deeply and horribly wrong they were.

Their willful destruction and theft of the lives of people incarcerated for nonviolent cannabis offenses since it was prohibited has never been publicly addressed with anyone in the Conservative party. We just keep on rolling as we stare at our rectangles.

The difference is this; our side would consider the government guaranteeing that every roof in Canada has solar panels on it would be a monumental victory for the continuance of our species. As a contrast; our deserved victory would be nothing but a larger-than-usual-yet-still-brief-dip in the value of those dickhead’s and arsehole’s investment portfolios.

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Part 10

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Oblivious in Sosua: Part 7

Posted by Nukes of Knowledge on

Waterfall jumping was on the menu for the day. My crippling fear of water was covered a few days before; why not handle the heights as well. The water itself was not as deep; and the waterfalls not as dastardly high as I had expected. The elevation was alarming; but after reaching the summit – we descended as if sliding down a watery staircase.

On the hike through the jungle I got to know the shorter, hotter, more confident, and most socially powerful member of the group of women that were staying at my resort. All my age. All attractive; from the plump sisters to the toothpick socialite I was lagging behind the group with.

‘Never fuck on the road’ is a mantra I adopted while travelling across the United States.  Surely my foremost rule about entering strange women shouldn’t be ignored. I had nearly crossed that particular line earlier in the week.

We walked and talked on the swinging foot bridge; a hundred meters or so behind the group. She was less on-guard than when her friends were present. I tend to have that effect on people. Disarming their defenses and momentarily caressing their souls.

She cared too much about what they thought of her; she had to be dominant in every situation in which they were present.

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PART 8: REFLECTION

Oblivious in America: Part 8

Posted by Nukes of Knowledge on

Portal, North Dakota

Sitting in the drivers seat of my car; three vehicles deep; waiting to speak to the border agent at the drive-through window. Stuffed beneath the center console were a few extra packs of cigarettes; in addition to the second full carton hidden in my suitcase that I had no plans to declare.

Passport, please.

Three and a half days of stubble on my face; tanned from the springtime sun; I hand the melanin-positive-female-passport-gestapo my passport… the one with all of the squiggly stamps on it. She asks if I have anything to declare. I declare the first carton of cigarettes; and 40 ounces of my 66 ounce bottle of brandy.

Pull into the garage, sir.

Was it the squiggly airport stamps or the visa from Afghanistan, I’d wondered.

I sit on one of my suitcases; my sand-colored flight bag to be precise. At present; it was the only bag to have been completely searched by both border agents plus the dog. My car doors are open; the hood is up; the trunk is cleared; and the spare tire is out.

The dog is running coordinated paths around, under, and inside of my car. He’s standing on the engine, sniffing under the hood. I just smile. This is fun. How much trouble can a bloke get into for a carton of Pall Malls?

You didn’t declare this, sir.

He found the second carton of cigarettes; my Pall Malls. I declared my Marlboro’s. Neither the male; the female; nor the pooch mentioned diddly-dick about the extra 26 ounces of brandy.

I smile.

You missed some smokes, eh.

The pretty lady guard smiles.

I pop the center console and produce 6 extra individual packages of Marlboro’s that I’d picked up along the way.

What now?

The guy tells me that I have two choices. My first choice is to go pay the tax on the additional carton of cigarettes and leave with a good story to tell at some un-determined time and place in the future. My second choice was that they confiscate my contraband and I get put on a special list of people that border guards have; but I wouldn’t have to pay the tax.

I choose the former; and here we are.

Onward to Estevan.

Oblivious in America: Part 7

Posted by Nukes of Knowledge on

On a hill in Northern Minnesota

I exit the roadside dive and hit the road. This state is home to my hero; Bob Dylan. I hit North Dakota and head North to Saskatchewan. The beautiful rolling buffalo grazing hills of North Dakota were one of the most pleasant landscapes I have encountered until crossing into Alberta from the Southern Interior of British Columbia several years later.

Roaring down the highway, between hills of green, I can’t help but think of bison hunts; men riding on horseback with musket in hand – laying waste to this land’s population of both man and beast.

“Discovered” and “uncovered” America did you? Hah!

The same shit-stain capitalists that simultaneously monopolized trade and labor at the turn of the 19th century by driving down their own costs by lowering wages and cutting jobs; are the same shit-stain capitalists that crashed the stock market in 2007 and received Taxpayer money to bail their corporations out of the shit-hole of Taxpayer debt that they created by being dishonest shit-stains.

My hope was that the rolling hills and pump-jacks would continue into Canada. The  most unique sight I found traversing North Dakota was the abundance of pump-jacks; oil pumping machines; in the backyards of farmers.

Capitalism screws up the landscape.

Alas, the Canadian border is approaching.

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Part 8

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Oblivious in Dubai: Part 17

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It’s time.

We land in Canada; Montreal to be specific; and part ways.

No more war. What was I thinking? Fuck.

My friends pick me up at the airport on my final trip home; three heavy bags in tow. I give them pashminas from the bazaar. It’s two in the morning when we arrive at their house. We smoke. I sleep soundly on the couch.

I wake to an empty house; they’re both at work. After showering, I sit on the stoop smoking a cigarette.

The significance of the feeling of the grass between my toes was something unfathomable moments ago.

He notices each cold and individual blade of grass touching the soles of his feet.

Every car seemed to be speeding past the house. Conditioned to hover at a constant 15 kilometers per hour in his bongo or his right-hand-drive, navy blue, SUV; he’s caught off guard by the constant flow of traffic running perpendicular to the walkway leading to the house connected to the stoop on which he’s sitting.

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Sheeeeeit.

I need a Tim Horton’s coffee and a shower.

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My first shower back in the world was awkward. Since my last trip home; this is the first shower I can recall taking in a tub-sized shower stall. My body; mannerisms, actions, instincts; my sense of self and situational awareness; were completely bombarded with new sensory input that I found frightening. I found it frightening that I found it frightening. This shower belonged to 20-something female friends of mine. Every ledge, every corner was full of bottles. Every color of the spectrum was squeezed into the limited ledge-space available in their tub.

I kept knocking things over. Every turn was stressful. My elbows hit things I should have known were there. My mind was screaming, “Oh shit. Oops. Crap. Oops. OUCH. Damn it,” for the duration of the activity.

The level of anxiety I felt while completing the most basic of daily tasks foreshadowed the inevitable fall from grace that was to come.

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Fall I did.

As we all must.

Until the birth of my child; the destruction of my ego was greatest gift I had ever received from the universe.

The most troubled among us are often not prepared to completely change our ways; sometimes we have to be pushed.

 

 

Oblivious in Dubai: Part 15

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Salazar brings a serving tray to our room with twelve bottles of Budweiser atop it. A tip, a handshake, and he was gone. He did request, though, that we not let anyone see the beer.

My comrade had paid for the hotel and the beer; but I had to leave shortly to catch my plane.

We get into the beers then start talking about life and the state of the World’s affairs; talking about how we each just left an active war zone in which we were doing otherwise ‘normal’ jobs.

I don’t remember much after that.

“Nothing is true; everything is permitted.” – Assassin’s Creed maxim and primary guideline.

I recall the conversation being honest and eye opening; but I shall not reveal the nature of that discussion here.

The world is an interesting place. As long as you’re polite; most of the time you’ll be alright. Somehow I made it to the airport; though I don’t remember much of the trip.

Following along sequentially; the things I recall are still-images. Images flash of the stained-wood walls of the lobby; a snapshot of my Comrade carrying one of my bags to the taxi; a parting hug; and then of regaining coherence at the check-in line at the airport.

Familiar Canadian Comrades were also waiting to check in. Beverages were had once we traversed through this exceptionally large line. To Frankfurt and then to Montreal before we’d part ways.

Most of the rest of my journey is a blur until shortly before landing in Germany at six o’clock in the morning. The time of day is largely irrelevant while travelling over 30 hours in one shot; it just affects what’s found on the menus of the places you stop to eat. The blur, after analyzing my previous behavior and looking for patterns; was probably filled with tasting the beers of the world until I passed out and pissed myself on the plane.

At least I thought I’d pissed myself.  I’d not pissed myself before; so there was no reason to believe my bladder would cave for no reason.

Perhaps it was the cabin pressure?

I found a can of beer on the floor that had spilled all over my pants; alongside it a couple of empty Coors cans… and a full one. Sweet, I’ve got another beer.  I crack the beer and drink the Gravol; the plane should be landing soon.

When in Deutschland; eat what the Germans eat.

Sausage, beer, and a few tabs of Gravol.

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PART 17
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Oblivious in Dubai: Part 14

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The final trip home. The end of the line. The end of the contract.

They wanted me to extend; and I admit that I was tempted; but I missed home.

I knew I’d miss it; knew I’d want to go back; but I had to see home. I had to feel the grass between my toes and see the hills of green. Pine and Spruce trees covering the hills along the highway home was what I longed for after months staring at a mountain from which rockets were hurled.

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We approach the plane on the Kandahar Airfield Airstrip; watching Filipino men load our bags into the cargo-hold. Front of the line; first on the adventure I was. I walked up the stairs from the tarmac, leading to the plane door, and turned around. I turned around to do what I had planned to do seven months previous.

I turned around and extended both arms into the air with my index and middle fingers extended on each; waggling my hands like Richard Nixon.

My mate was behind me and pushed me, “Get fucking going”, as I was holding up the line of people waiting to head back into the world.

It was important that I did the Nixon. I’m not sure why. Knowing basically nothing about Richard Nixon other than the fact he’s a bastard; there’s no reason for me to aspire to do the Nixon as I boarded the aircraft; but I was compelled to.

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We land in Dubai, mid-afternoon.

Our belief was that our company had booked and paid for our hotel; and a rich hotel it was. We arrive by taxi; enter and try to check in. The hotel staff are expecting payment in full for the room. Turns out the hotel was booked but not paid for.

We break at the poolside bar in the courtyard to mull over our predicament.

The man I’m travelling with is two and a half times my age. I’d spend my twentieth birthday in Afghanistan just a month before; so this seasoned tradesman knew he was dealing with an oblivious young man at the height of his un-mindfulness.

Or so he thought.

We considered our alternatives; one of which was crashing the hotel of a fellow Canadian, unannounced. After two beers each and a few delicious cigarettes, we call a cab.

We jump in the cab and twenty-year old Oblivious says, “I know a place.”

Bullshit calls my friend and confidante.

Pulling a business card out of my wallet and handing it to the driver, I smile.

The smirk of calling a young bucks bluff is written all over his face.

“I’ve got a place; they’ll set us up at a fair price.” I tell him.

Disbelief and amusement strewn across his face.

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A few minutes later we open our doors and hear, “HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!” from Salazar, with his arms extended and in the air.

“Salazar!” I exclaim.

We shake hands and embrace.

A smile and a  laugh of disbelief and amusement from my elder compadre.

Told you, this is my place. That’s Salazar.

The time of year happens to be Ramadan; fasting and alcoholic-abstinence in this city. Having an inside man at the hotel; I knew I could get at the stash.

_______________________

Salazar, this is my friend. If you can swing it, get us twelve beer.

Take care of my friend; women, more beer, anything he needs.

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 Part 15

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Oblivious in Sosua: Part 3

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So much rum; before, during, and after snorkeling on a coral reef for hours upon hours surrounded by beautiful tropical fish.

There were three Americans, several Dutch, a lone German and then myself. Two and a half hours in the back seat of a van en route to the reef can make a man thirsty. We disembark for our boat ride in a small fishing village of around one hundred people. I walk into the nearest bar and order a beer for the boat.

Quesero una cervesa, por favor.

We haggle over the price for a moment; they open my beer and I leave with the group. Three US Dollars for a forty-ounce bottle of Presidente; not bad, I guess.

I finish it by the time we get to Paradise Island; that’s when Ramon (our tour guide) takes a large bottle of Brugal rum from his bag and starts pouring drinks.

“Rum makes the fish bigger.” he says.

It makes the fish something, I thought. Not sure what. Perhaps it just lowers our inhibitions enough that we’re indifferent to the fact that a shark could tear our fucking legs off. With this, the rum helped. I’ve never been a fan of dark and deep water. Not because I can’t swim; but because I’m hyper-aware of the unknown creatures that lurk beneath.

Some of them are beautiful; but realistically, some of them are deadly.

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Part Four

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