Work in Progress

brotip #344

 

Found this site, Brotips, yesterday.

More of these will be posted going forward but, really, I had to start with this one, didn't I?

Pardon the profanity. Or don't.

44

In his column today, Steve Rushin of Sports Illustrated looks at the end of the line: 44

This is the number at which even the greatest athletes have to hang 'em up and make room for the next generation.

Rushin makes a pretty compelling case against athletese and after that... he moves on:

It isn't only athletes who hang it up at 44. Sedentary artists, faced with the impossible tasking of trumping their own achievements, have also left the stage at that age. Gary Larson stopped drawing "The Far Side" at 44. Billie Holiday retired from life at that age, as did F. Scott Fitzgerald, for whom there really was no second act in American life.

To the rest of us mortals, 44 doesn't seem so large a number. At least not usually. My fellow 44-year-old scribe Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times, did point out to me the indignity of computer pull-down menus. When an airline asks for your year of birth, and you're forced to scroll down -- and down and down -- to find it on the website, it's like falling down an elevator shaft. As the years fly by with the speed of numbers on a gas pump, you are watching your life pass before your eyes.

None of this is a lament. Aging is a privilege. But in a big week for the 44th president, this 44-year-old man who has lived most of his life on the northern 44th parallel -- the part in Minnesota, Wisconsin and New York, alas, not the part along the Mediterranean -- 44 has been on my mind.

Most of us, whatever our age, don't have the means, or often the desire, to retire at 44.

We'd do well to heed the words of Henry David Thoreau, who wrote: "Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still."

He was a wise man, Thoreau, and packed a lot of life into his 44 years.

Read the rest here.

That is, if you still have the energy. This 44 year-old is going to have a nap.

Actually, the question that will keep me awake is how someone so notionally old has managed to remain so irredeemably immature.

 

Pakistan's military? Oh, they know nothing, they see nothing.

 

Funny, I always thought this was a show about WWII.

Who knew?

Peace

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.  

John Donne, Meditation XVII

We awoke to a world with one less evil person in it today.

The President is right, justice, or rather Justice has been done.

We all remember that awful day, when it seemed all the good in the world was at risk. Still, I don't rejoice as much as feel a profound sense of closure.

Ten years later, we are older and, I hope, wiser.

Peace.

pure class

   

See you in the fall, boys.

Go Habs.

I think it's what I want to be

I'm getting old.

What's more, I'm getting old fast.

I used to be so passionate about politics; I loved a good debate about policy & I could play it either way: want to talk big picture? I would argue over philosophy. Want to talk reality on the ground? I would discuss tactics.

But today, I'm old. I have lost all patience for it. All of it. I don't watch debates or read about the campaign issues for two reasons: first, the level of discourse is an embarrassment to adults and children everywhere. Second: it doesn't matter all that much, does it?

The Tories have been in power for the past 5 years and their economic record, other than a couple of mis-steps like cutting the GST, for example, has been sound.

On the other hand, the blatant contempt Prime Minister Harper has for everyone, and I mean everyone, is beyond creepy. The man whose government was found to be in contempt of Parliament has campaigned in a way that extends that contempt to the electorate. 

The Liberals & NDP are essentially the same left-leaning party, with different coloured posters. Merge, already. There may have been some small differences on how these folks would have guided Canada through the financial crisis but we are talking shades of grey at best.

I don't see enough daylight between the parties to engage my interest on the minutiae. 

My lack of interest in the main political parties is not completely cynical, though it contains an admittedly healthy dollop of this. It's also because, like I said, I'm getting old. I'm not so worried about myself anymore.

I'm more concerned about the state of the world we are leaving our children. I want it to be better than it was when it was left to me & my cohort; right now, I don't think it is.

I think we need to make the state of the planet a greater part of the discussion than it is today. We need to consider the health of the environment to a larger degree.

I've become a one-issue voter because, in the end, I think it's the only issue that matters: I'm voting Green.

 

(In case you're wondering, I've tossed in the video for the simple reason that I like it a lot)