Gratitude

 
I've been looking into preparing a last will and testament, preparing funerary instructions, and preparing a living will. I've also been debating whether any one of my friends deserves, despite the offer of assistance, the task of acting as executor.

I'm not fond of letting the state carry out my wishes. They can't secure my airports, deport illegal visitors, host a G8/G20 without a riot, or understand citizens should be more important to them than lobbyist dollars. Why would I trust them to carry out my final instructions?

Equally, some of my instructions are fairly particular. I don't think anyone not conversant with my hobby activities could successfully see to the disposition of some of the goods without a "Subject Matter Expert (Games)".

And I don't know much about how Trusts are or can be created here in Canada. If planning a wedding can take a year and involves two people, I figure planning my departure thus probably will take six months to get all the ducks in a line. Hopefully its not half as expensive as the average wedding or I'll end up owing someone just for the priviledge of shuffling off this mortal coil.

I'm not really in a rush to do that nor am I really expecting it. But I live a moderate risk lifestyle and life has a sense of humour one could best call 'actively macabre'. So I figure I could go anytime. Heck, by my early life accounting, I've been living on borrowed time for at least 5-10 years. I always figured I'd *be* one of those statistics you read about, the ones where you said "He was so young..." or "He was too good to come to such an end...".

As it turns out, I'm getting old and we know what Billy Joel said about who it is that dies young (hint: old folks don't get to stay good).

All that is bureaucratic and involved. But you know, the process involved has driven my mind to further shores. It seems to touch on matters of what you'd like to leave to who, final messages to each, what you'd like your headstone (if you have one) to say, any sort of memorial donations you'd like to make, the method of your 'preparation/disposal', and so on.

And that's the good part; When I found myself thinking about my friends (Dear Lord, the notification list for my passing will be long....), I once again reaffirmed my conviction that my life has been rather splendid.

Being born in Canada has certainly helped. It's like winning the lottery as far as places to be born and live to be born here. Can't fault my luck there none.

And parents? Got great ones - tough, pragmatic, compassionate, enduring, and unafraid to speak their minds (And how! Oi vey!). Can't find faults that matter with either of them and got a good deal from them as far as a start in life goes.

Then come the friends. I think of them as a great, big extended family. I've got so many good friends I can depend on, I can confide in, I can talk to, I can game with or otherwise have fun with, and whose lives I am genuinely interested in and whose fates I care greatly about. By this accounting, I have truly been a wealthy man in the only really important sense of wealth in this life.

And then there is my Godson. That's a blessing the like of which any man is lucky to have. He's the closest thing I have or may have to my own young one. That's a gift so precious I can't really find words to do it justice.

I've been debating what words I might like on my headstone. I think that's going to take some thinking. So many good quotes, so many parting lines....

Maybe I should just stick with "Blessed with the best friends a man could ask for."

 

Perspective

This month has been a trying month.

• I'm late with my taxes. The tax folks have some form of annoyance with me that I haven't even had the time to investigate. 
  
• I'm working on a very big, complex task for my client's client's client's client. It is technically challenging and there have been exacerbations - incorrect direction, stumbling blocks from their R&D folks (not bad ones, but stumbling blocks nonetheless), a lack of subject-matter expertise for quite a time, network outages at their place, our move back to the office of my client's client, more service interruptions on that side from both a switch malfunction and some firewall rules knocking out the VPN tunnel, and so on. All in all, the stuff of grey hairs, ulcers, and heart attacks.
  
• My Godson's little brother arrives 12 weeks early by emergency C-section, playing dice with his own safety and the mother's. And he ends up with a bowel problem an an ileostomy... at under 3 pounds in weight. He has had great care at CHEO, but he's got a ways to go yet before he gets a normal, safe life. I've been worried about my friend, his wife, my Godson, and his new little brother Alexander. A strong name for a small one confronted with such a hard start to life, but so far he seems to be struggling his way along despite the hurdles. Still, I worry.
  
• Dad spent 3+ weeks in the hospital getting a vacc treatment on his ulcer. That had me visiting or talking to him every day. I must have spent 20 hours a week doing that in addition to my work. It was good, but tiring. He's home and things have dropped back to reasonable levels. But it was a stressful from a schedule perspective and worrying about Mom being home alone and her having some breathless spells that are probably heart function related. More stress there.
  
• I had a minor dust up with a friend over some sort of misunderstanding. I don't think either of us came across clearly, but the whole event caused me great anguish. I wish that particular episode could have been lived out differently.
  
• Tonight, my cousin in Missouri informed me that his mother, in Motherwell, Scotland (my Mother's sister) was admitted to hospital with a lung clot after having had what they thought was a persistent lung infection. Everyone is quite worried about Aunt B. I know it has me worried. I'd go to her if I could. Not that I could do anything, but I feel for her and really hope she is getting good care. I'm not sure what to think of the British medical system.

Anyway, having said all of that....

Life is not easy, nor simple, nor does it progress smoothly, nor end in a dignified, orderly, scheduled fashion, nor does it begin in a dignified, orderly, scheduled fashion... 

... but it happens. And it perserveres. And it persists. And we fight and we do what we must, whether we are 78 or -3 months old. 

There are a lot of things in life that could make one despair, lament, or just simply tire out and give up. But we soldier on and try to make the best of a tough hand, hoping the next deal will be a bit better and we can grow our stake. 

In a perverse way, I think that's optimism. I think that's the quality that makes me understand that nothing confronting humanity today will be our death knell. In every age, there has been challenge, horror, and stalwart and intransigent refusal to give in to the dark parts, to let the candle of hope go out. 

I don't actually believe that every day in this life on this side of the daisies is a good one. I've seen proof of that. But I do believe that where there is life, there is hope. And with life and hope, their is a beauty, a purity of the human spirit. 

When people you love are suffering, you suffer with them. When people are in need yet their is naught you can do for them, you feel diminished. Yet from their courage and from their forbearance and from their simple endurance, one can take solace and perspective. 

What matters in life isn't the worst of days, or the least of days, nor the number of days. What matters is not solely the quality of life or the material goods that we accumulate. What matters is not that we suffer, that we feel pain, or that we sometimes give in to desolation. 


What matters is that we remember the good moments. We hold onto hope and to beauty. We hold on to courage and try to encourage it in others. We hold onto love and to family. We hold onto friends. And we hold onto the conviction that there is good in the world and that it matters more than all of the dark, parlous times. 


We hold onto the candle that gutters in the night but does not go out, a light in the darkness - perhaps dim, but shining on. 

"When you can't run, you crawl. When you can't crawl, you find someone to carry you." 

-- Firefly TV Series, episode titled The Message (and so it is!)

  

Recreating a 3,400 year old Mesoamerican Beer

Part food science, part archaeology, all excellent!


Beer from chocolate....

Burger Recipes: Lamburger, Porkburger, and other fun things

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/dining/26mini.html

Non DRM Video, Audio, Books....

Some interesting examples of non-DRM video....

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/30/eztakes-5000-strong.html

http://openflix.com/


http://www.archive.org/index.php

Some of these contain more than just video (archive.org especially). Documents, books, audio, etc.

Some of us have a hate on for Mr. Jobs and his DRM. Some of us have a hate on for Mr. Balmer and his DRM. Some of us have a hate on for all of Sony and the DRM. So here are some alternatives, including some odd quirky pieces. I like to support such efforts because they are headed in a direction I think we should be headed, rather than in the direction Corporate Powers think we should be headed.

I'm not a Commie pinko and I do want to see worthy art lead to rewarded artists. But I do object to presumptions of the value of art (it has none just because someone created it or just because someone tries to assign it a value - if nobody is willing to pay that, it does not have that value). I object to assumptions about what I should or should not pay for a priori, sight unseen, and simply because someone else thinks so.

Beyond that, I object to limitations on format transference and personal use. Books must really piss off some of these modern sources of media - they want paid for every view (including multiple views by the same user or views by multiple viewers such as a home presentation of a DVD or loaning a friend a good book). I'm afraid they are not the sole voice in this debate and they don't get to choose the definition our society accepts of the value of media, of art, of fair use and fair dealing, and of just remuneration for artists and for the corporate combines that power distribution.

This is a dialogue our society needs to have. We need to define our boundaries and not let lobbyists and corporations do so. Most of us acknowledge we do want to see reasonable recompense for musicians, movie makers, authors, designers, artists of all forms. There may be some argument as to what just compensation is.

There is no argument that corporate interests have a finanical motive to constrict and restrict our use of various forms of art, trying to repeatedly sell us the same thing, trying to sell us things we cannot share even though such sharing may well lead to greater aggregate exposure and sales for the works.

The dialogue needs to be had and the politicians and legislators need to listen so that whatever protection systems we have in law for intellectual property rights are useful to us as a society and aren't strictly to benefit corporate interests. The government is still voted in by the people and paid for by the citizen's taxes in large part.

So, go take a look at some of the alternatives to paying iTunes, Sony or Microsoft or the MPAA or RIAA a boatload of your money.