Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Olympic Torch passes through Brighton, Cobourg, Port Hope



Produced by chadwicke0719


produced by NFOLDCA: "Apologies for poor quality - this was live streaming video from an iPhone. I just wanted to try that." 15 December 2009 04:59PM - Captured Live on Ustream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/northum... with the Ustream Mobile App


Produced by DEFOZZE.


Produced by NorthumberlandView.Ca


Passing through Port Hope, produced by ROBBOB6000

Produced by KIWANA28 (Brighton)


Produced by COLMMAHER1:


Produced by YORKBELLSMITH


Produced by TVCogecoOntario

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Your Imagine Nation or Your Life

Your Imagine Nation or Your Life: this young poet has some serious issues to face. Not all young poets make it through these difficult years. The worst find themselves abandoned on the streets of the Dominion of Bland Gland, unable to explain how they got there.

If you see a troubled poet, key THE-911-POET. At the sound of the beep, press the GPS key. That's all it takes to rescue a vulnerable poet from a fate worse than mediocrity. Poet Polls released a 5-year study last spring, revealing that the most vulnerable poets have had a chapbook published, but nothing since. The first five years after a first chapbook are the most dangerous for poets.

"It's just a culling of the poetic herd, removing strains of pulp friction."

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Canadian Cowgirls Perform @ Royal Agricultural Winter Fair 2009


This is my video of the Canadian Cowgirls who are performing in the Coliseum at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. I recorded their performance over two days from two different locations and assemble-edit them together.

I apologize for the amateurism. It’s a low quality camera, and the zoom is difficult to manipulate. The video editing was done using a freeware program, the lowest form of software. The editing was done in Java House, an eclectic restaurant on Toronto's Queen Street West.

I hope that in spite of my shortcomings, the sprit and talent of the Canadian Cowgirls will shine through. Here is a YouTube video of the Canadian Cowgirls performing in light last year at the Royal. Watch this Cowgirl do the stand up for 9 seconds

I also hope that it will generate interest in attending the Royal Fair where Canada’s farmers bring the best of the country to the city.

Enjoy.

REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER


Cobourg's Pete Fisher presents a video tribute to our fallen.


A Remembrance Day tribute by "koreanincanada"


Author identified: Credit to igleniglen. This video is a Remembrance Day Tribute to Canadian Forces. There are a few versions of this floating around. This is the one that I like the best.

Friday, November 6, 2009

"DEEP HATRED OF WOMEN" Personal Slur made by Debbie O'Connor

Debbie O'Connor wrote on Ben Burd's blog:
"It is very clear to me that you have a deep hatred of women, and I hope I never run into you in a dark alley somewhere, I would be terrified."
--Thursday, August 13, 2009 7:51:00 PM EDT

Prince Charles & Camilla Open The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair

It has been my pleasure the past ten years or so to work up in the control booth at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, programming and controling the text for the jumbotron in the Coliseum. These pics were taken from on high.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Graffiti Stroll Down Queen Street Alley

This video presents a fraction of the grafitti to be seen in the back allies along Queen Street West.

Contrary to the personal smear by Cobourg's self-appointed poverty activist, Debbie O'Connor, asserting that I hate women so much that I might beat them up in back allies, I have taken several out-of-town women for tours of the alley. They appreciated that I was there to provide them with the comforting security to tour such back allies in a big metropolis. (Pat Steer, Kathryn McGlynn and Judy Sinyard are three such women that spring to mind that I escorted down the alley without beating them up. )

These are the alleyways that Rick Mercer has often used for his rants. The whole alley system is a mere two blocks from where I lived for 27 years.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Welcome to my neighbourhood

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Wednesday, Nov 4, I return to Toronto, the city that the rest of Canada hates. The hate is held mostly by a small town mentality of petty bigotry, otherwise known as snobs.

Toronto is a poetic verb, whereas Northumberland is largely rolling nouns with rivulets of prose flowing inbetween.

I will not be returning to Cobourg until the end of the month. In the meantime, I thought I'd like to put my Toronto experience (past & present) on my Cobourg blog. After all, Toronto was the playground for my imagine nation for over 35 years. It plays a big part of my life, especially culturally.

It has always been interesting to compare that experience with my small town upbringing. Life in a metropolis provides the benefits of social anonymity, whereas life in a small town brings the benefits of social intimacy. There are cheerleaders to either side of the zeitgeist, and those who live both in parallel-simultaneity.

Today's story is about a February 20, 2008, fire; the Queen West burnout which was happening a block and half away from where I lived.
I woke circa 6am, showered, dressed, went out to Bathurst Street to catch the streetcar that wasn't coming. A swarm of red lights were swirling at the intersection of Queen, si I walked towards the light to see what was happening.

Below was what was happening when I turned the corner. Flames weer shooting out of one store at ground level. I stood there mesmerized for about five minutes before walking back to side streets to get to Spadina Avenue to catch a streetcar.

The residuals of the fire followed me all the way to Spadina; black ashes and some still glowing were raining down on the old neighbourhood. The extent of the smoke-out can be seen below.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Friday, October 30, 2009

Al Gore Rhythm

Winner of the Halloween pumpkin carving contest at TD Waterhouse, Toronto, 2007

Thursday, October 29, 2009

PETER KOLISNYK, MINIMALIST & SUBVERSIVE

PETER KOLISNYK passed from this world last Thursday, October 22, 2009 at Northumberland Hills Hospital in Cobourg, Ontario. (Obituary)

He is remembered by family and friends for living his life with gusto, for his extravagant creativity, for his artistic energy to assist others, especially for the youth of Cobourg. He was not reticent to invest his artistic cred by designing the cover of Phoenix, a newsmagazine put out by Cobourg youth in 1969. On another occasion he contributed a cover design to Refraction, Vol.3, an anthology of poetry by Cobourg young people. The Cobourg Sentinel Star, June 18, 1969, published this review of one his art shows.

I was a pimple-faced hippie when Peter inadvertently became a life/art mentor to me. I recall many meetings in his studio where he tore strips off my poetry and me. He recognized pretentiousness, affectation, didactic posturing and diluted creativity in an instant. He knew when I was sloppy, when I was lazy, when I was slacking, when I was mediocre, when I was being moderate, and called me on it every time. It was a strengthening experience.

Peter’s work delved into the minimalist and conceptualist world, and his attention to detail was excruciating. It was inspiring to watch him set up an expectation and meet it. Many of the manifestations of his creativity can be seen at the Canadian Art Database at the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art.

Peter lived and worked in Cobourg for many many years. The Art Gallery of Northumberland has a number of works by Peter in its permanent collection. Unfortunately Cobourg never took a shine to erect any of his sculptures in the public domain, but Cobourg’s loss, is the gain of many other communities. Here is an example of one of Peter’s works on Queen’s University campus. For the 35 years I lived in Toronto, it was a pleasure to sit in one of his minimal frames at Harbourfront.

I was a teenage hippie when I wrote this inadequate poem about Peter, however, I eventually reached some of his standards and wrote a piece worthy of a literary/arts journal,
IMPULSE, Vol. 2 No.4, Spring 1975.
Click on image to enlarge

LEAF IT TO ME

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Merriam-Webster Dictionary: ALLITERATION, the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables (as wild and woolly, threatening throngs) —called also head rhyme, initial rhyme


Towards the Barren Lands

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Saturday, October 24, 2009

POET TREE DEBRIS

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Thursday, October 22, 2009

Victoria Park Collage (written 1967)

VICTORIA PARK COLLAGE

The foghorn moans like a taken virgin

I'm here
sitting on a bench
facing Rochester
wondering
where that old man is
I saw here last year
the one whose ragged pockets
contained long-gone tales like lint and dust

Like a serpent the fog steals up the beach
a threat between its teeth

The sounds of somersaulting
sand-throwing children
bounce off the blue-bell waves into the trees
like a happy plague of bees

Hey Bobby: Bobby!

Mom! Mom! Billy Just.

Mom! Mom!
Look at me mom!

MOM! LOOK!!

The fog is harmless
Sandburg knew that
I should have remembered

From the water-works
to the coal-coated piers
like a beautiful necklace
the lovers murmur their private psalms
their eyes happy
as children on swings

The foghorn moans like a taken virgin

Then there are the freaks
stoned
scattered
on the green-wave knolls like autumn leaves
They all have an excuse
each one different
each one sufficient

The wind is perched waiting in the trees for unaware children

The lighthouse like a messiah draped in a toga
of white-washed metal
stands gathering waves
around its concrete knees
I am sure the gulls are parables

Near the shoreline waves curl around splinters of sun

No one here knows
I am engraving their faces
in a Book of Earth
Even if they did
they wouldn't care
And besides
I would have it no other way

The foghorn moans like a taken virgin

Leoore Kandel; one of my favs

Lenore Kandel hung out with Beat poets and was immortalized by Jack Kerouac, wrote a book of love poetry banned as obscene and seized by police, and believed in communal living, anarchic street theater, belly dancing, and all things beautiful.

Ms. Kandel, a lyric poet and one of the shining lights of San Francisco's famous counterculture of the '60s, died on Oct. 18 in San Francisco. She was 77 and had been diagnosed with lung cancer two weeks earlier.

More here

by IRVING LAYTON

“…creativity is antagonistic, is in eternal opposition to everything that would destroy creativity and introduce those lifeless structures that are inimical to growth…"

The Malahat Review, October 1972

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Monday, October 19, 2009

Old Man In the Park (written 1968)

Click on image to enlarge
OLD MAN IN THE PARK

In shy Victoria Park
where the only life left
in decaying October
are dead leaves littering
well-abused lawns
and a lone old man
sitting on a despondent bench.

With an old tweed cap
from the Salvation Army
resting like a bad habit
on his wrinkled head
he sits meditating memories
across the horizon
across writhing Lake Ontario.

Watching from the street
I wish like a child
to sit on the lap
of that magnificent old man
with white whiskers
like thinly spread frosting
on his history-worn face
and listen to the tales
I’ve heard that old men tell.

Conviction by United Way in Cobourg

Saturday, October 17, 2009

JAIL & BAIL for the United Way, Cobourg, 2009

Call It Like It Ain't or We Blow You Up

Meanwhile, a Taliban group also sent two letters to the Lahore Press Club – one on October 12 and the other on October 14 – warning that if the media “does not stop portraying us as terrorists ... we will blow up offices of journalists and media organisations”.
MORE...

Somali Islamists Whip Women Wearing Bras

MOGADISHU, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Somalia's hardline Islamist group al Shabaab has publicly whipped women for wearing bras they say violate Islam by constituting a deception, north Mogadishu residents said on Friday.

The insurgent group, which seeks to impose a strict form of sharia Islamic law throughout Somalia, amputated a foot and a hand each from two young men accused of robbery earlier this month. They have also banned movies, musical ringtones, dancing at wedding ceremonies and playing or watching soccer.

Residents said gunmen had been rounding up any woman seen with a firm bust and then had them publicly whipped by masked men. The women were then told to remove their bras and shake their breasts.

"Al shabaab forced us to wear their type of veil and now they order us to shake our breasts," a resident, Halima, told Reuters, adding that her daughters had been whipped on Thursday
MORE ...

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Kite Krazy On Cobourg Beach

The uTube commentary by Ms Chief 770: "My hubby flying his custom made stunt kites.(all "stunts" preformed by Wayne)" Extraordinary stuff done April 17, 2007.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Richard Norlock Works(?) the Standing Committee of Human Rights, October 5

Richard Norlock, Conservative MP, was a working member of the Standing Committee of Human Rights reviewing Section 13 of the Human Rights Act, the so called `hate-speech`provision. Monday, October 5, Ezra Levant, the only person in the Western world charged by the state for publishing the notorious Danish Mohammed cartoons., and Mark Steyn, columnist for Macleans magazine. The Honourable Norlock distinguished himself by asking no questions whatsoever. Hmmmmm.
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Horny Shieks Extol Islam


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Monday, September 28, 2009

ENRAGED WIND WOMAN BATTERS COBOURG WEST PIER

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Sunday, September 27, 2009

Night Out @ Timmy Ho

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So it's Saturday in Big Smoke. I walk towards home after submerging myself in a 40 minute speech from Ezra Levant. He had been addressing Federal and Ontario Libertarian members. It's late, and a coffee seemed appropoetic to assist in some post-midnight Photoshopping, so I open the door and lo & behold ... "I'll have a large with one milk, thank you."

Friday, September 25, 2009

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Poets Head to the Garrets

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News @ 11

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Monday, September 21, 2009

NDPers Join FREE SPEECH movement?????

Once upon a time (early 60's) at UCLA, a large portion of the student body affiliated with left-leaning politics went on a march to advocate FREE SPEECH. Many documents and photographs can be found at the Free Speech Movement Archives.

But that was the early 60's, when leftists rose up to throw off the repression of The Establishment, to liberate the literary and artistic imagination from oppression, from the general zeigeist to the residual attitudes of the House Committee on Unamerican Activities. "FUCK OFF" became a profound political statement. No longer would great literary talents such as Norman Mailer be compelled to write war novels using the weasel word FUG. Real soldiers say that?

Sadly, the enlightened left who broke down many barriers of censorshit, have morphed over recent decades to become the body that now enforces consorshit via the campaigns of political correctmess, especially establishing Human Rights Tribunals to enforce that censorshit. Nowadays, the FREE SPEECH movement has been appropriated by the right-wing. It doesn't have to be this way. FREE SPEECH belongs to every human being on this planet, right, left, centre, far out, commie, nazi, socialist, capitalist, etc. etc.

The pressure against FREE SPEECH serves no purpose other than to weaken the fabric of our culture and our future. But there is hope. A group of NDPers have mercilessly realized the threat that the Human Rights Commissions have in Canadian Society and wrote their first screed against that threat:

"That said I would like to draw your attention to a truism , also called common sense, “the road to hell is often paved with good intentions”. You do realize that your very actions ensured that these bigots received more publicity than they could have ever dared hope for."
Hopefully, the local Gordon Gilchrist screamers and whiners will realize the greater consequences of their censorious actions, and instead of calling for odious voices to be censored, take the FREE SPEECH road to make arguement against those voices they find disagreeable.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Negro Boy Captured In Cobourg



From the same neighbourhood (Corktown) in Cobourg where the lilly-white whiners demonize the off-white VISITORS.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Robert Paul Young

Click on image to enlarge
Robert Paul Young (Younger as his friends called him) passed away at Northumberland Hills Hospital Sunday morning, September 13, 2009.

Born September 9, 1950, friends remember him as a drummer in a local band, but especially as the handsome and lithesome athelete who wore white shorts. Robert, a student at Cobourg District Collegiate Institute, West, had won several awards for outstanding athletic feats. Those close to Younger know his famous story of swimming the Rio Grande.

Robert is survived by mother Irene Young (nee Scott), brothers Scott Young and Jay Young and sister, Sandy Hegarty.


Sketch (1972) by Anita Vader

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

JIM CORCORAN'S INQUISITION

Jim Corcoran, on JIM’S BLOG, MUSINGS OF A SPA GUY , began his latest posting thusly:
“This past week was a little stressful as one of the respondents to the HRC case decided to use his office and all of the Catholic Churches in the Peterborough diocese to establish his authority, and my guilt, and to spread his version of recent events that is substantially different than what I perceive the facts to be (sound familiar?).”

Visit Jim’s Blog and click on the phrase “(sound familiar)” and it will take you to a web site describing the infamous Inquisition. So poor widdle Jimmy feels absolutely persecuted and tormented and being prepared for torture and execution by the evil powers of the Roman Catholic Church. That’s what the Inquisition was all about back in the dark ages. Jim Corcoran wants everyone to be convinced that this is what he is currently feeling. This is a man without a sense of proportion.

Corcoran starts off his opening paragraph whining about the week being “a little stressful” and finishes the paragraph by linking to the Inquisition no less. Should school students learn from this that the infamous Inquisition was an historical event that was a “little stressful” for the inhabitants of the dark ages. Is that what it was all about – a little stress? Really!

Jim Corcoran, recall, laid Ontario Human Rights charges against 12 parishioners and the local Bishop. Corcoran’s very public complaint against the Bishop was very detailed, extensive and thorough. How dare the Bishop respond ("spread his version of recent events") to Corcoran’s charges in public and to do so as the Bishop.

Yes, think of the Inquisition wherein the accused, the Bishop, has no right to face and question his accuser. Corcoran thinks that the Bishop should have no right to reply publicly to charges made in public. Corcoran also believes that the Bishop, charged as the Bisphop for Bishop duties should have no right to reply in public as the Bishop.

What planet of injustice is Corcoran living on?

People complaining against others via the Human Rights bureaucrazy, do not have to risk their financial livelihood. If Corcoran loses his case, he doesn’t have to pay court expenses, as is the case in civil courts, real courts, not tribunals. The taxpayers are picking up the tab for a human rights case about gay discrimination, that Corcoran himself has admitted is not the “central point.”

If there is an Inquisition here, it is coming from Corcoran and his merry band of politically correct inquisitors, the ones who swarmed Gordon Gilchrist in the recent past, now swarm around Corcoran chanting, “more power to the state.”

Monday, September 7, 2009

THE BLONDE BITCHES OF BLAKE

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THE BLONDE BITCHES OF BLAKE

Ten years ago, a ménage a trois of bitches became renown throughout the imagine nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry for saving 20,000 annotated anthologies of William Blake’s Collected Poetry from a fate worse than mediocrity.

In the heat of Word War 738, the main library of Poempeii had suffered a major airstrike from Bland Land and collapsed. Bills of lading indicated that the platinum-printed Blake anthologies had been delivered the day prior to the strike. The anthologies were nowhere to be found in the lightly-damaged shipping & receiving depot of the library. No other evidence was available to indicate the location of the books in the vast complex of the library, so Honey, Sugar and Ginger were called in.

. . . . . . .. . . HONEY . . . .. . . . . . . SUGAR . .. .... . . . . . GINGER

The collapsed library was fragile and perilous. This fine family of bitches consisting of a mother and two daughters, were undeterred and sniffed out the precise location amid the rubble. Their sense of scent was so highly developed that the bitches needed only a single line of “Tyger, tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night” to trace the whereabouts of Blake’s glorious illuminations. A brigade of Virility Verb Volunteers from the National Bard excavated the area and rescued the buried anthologies not ten minutes before the ground gave in, swallowing high literature in a single belch of banality.

Throughout the imagine nation, the poetariet celebrated; units of verse of the unitverse gathered in a Million Muse March to pressure the Poetburo to designate the trio as the Blonde Bitches of Blake. The following year later the bitches were promoted to the honoured poetsition of providing escort services for visiting artist dignitaries from other creative sectors of the imagine nation. The bitches began their careers in Poettsburgh, Poemsylvania distinguishing the distinctive scents of ubiquitous free verse, the boozy breath of limericks, the delicate fragrances of rhyme schemantras and the brittle odour of aging sonnets. Their tight familial bond provides a visceral collaboration that transcends all previous pack conjunctives.

They achieved the highest level of success for the Lost and Profound Dep’t of the Poetection Agency of Poempeii where they had been employed for the first half of their career. There are numerous instances each year of poetry and portions of poetry being windnapped out of a child’s careless hands. Random breezes will swipe a first draft rhyme, as easily as a fully developed sonnet.

Poettsburgh authorities released incident reports for 2008 revealing that 16 limericks, 4 quatrains, 2 rhyming couplets, and an entire sonnet had been swept away by wind. The Blonde Bitches of Blake were known to be able to follow the traces of imagination regardless of where the poems had been flung by intransigent gusts.

The bitches also served in the Sub-verse Dept for a handful of years. This is an odious but necessary service for the imagine nation – the search and seizure of doggerel from the pulp friction industry.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

More On Corcoran Human Rights Whine

The Catholic Register - A scandal worthy of Stalinist Russia

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“I wonder if Corcoran reads The Catholic Register,” I mused. “It bangs on about how lousy the human rights tribunals are for freedom of speech and religion. Someone dragged up Catholic Insight magazine before one because it kept writing against homosexual practices. Someone dragged up some Knights of Columbus because they wouldn’t rent out their hall for a lesbian wedding. Someone dragged up the Anglican Church, claiming it wouldn’t ordain him because he was Sri Lankan. How do you prove that, I’d like to know. Meanwhile, the process is a punishment because, no matter what, there are lawyers to pay.”

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Monday, August 24, 2009

Gordon Gilchrist vocabulary sanitizers run amok

Quangos blackball ... oops, sorry ... veto "racist" everyday phrases - Times Online

Among the everyday sayings that have been quietly dropped in a bid to stamp out racism and sexism are “whiter than white”, “gentleman’s agreement”, “black mark” and “right-hand man”. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has advised staff to replace the phrase “black day” with “miserable day”, according to documents released under freedom of information rules.

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Friday, August 21, 2009

VICTORIA PARK DAMAGE "NOT" DONE BY THE VISITORS

Below are photographs that Northumberland Today and the Rotary Club do not want anyone to see. The agenda of both was to bash THE VISITORS.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE TO ACTUAL PIXELS

Diana Storen lead the charge with her centre feature screed in the regional newspaper (There is no Cobourg newspaper) which includes scurrilous hearsay that has little purpose other than to fan flames of prejudice. She writes, "One woman told me she never lets her children play in front of their own home unless an adult is present." Really!? Have there ever been any incidents of VISITORS kidnapping or molesting our children?

Other letter writers to the local version of the Toronto Sun lite, similarly bash the VISITORS, and in severasl cases, praise the Rotary Club for cleaning up the garbage from the large areas that that been occupied with Ribfest. Generally speaking, citizens of Cobourg rightfully complained that VISITORS to the park should leave it in the condition in which they found it.
Below are several of many photographs I took in which the Rotary-sponsored Ribfest failed to leave the lawns of Victoria Park in the same condition as they found it. This is a dereliction of good citizenship.

The photographs clearly display just how the lawn has been scarred. Many places were desecrated with cooking oils, grease and grunge, which seep into the ground. The garbage that the VISITORS left behind was cleaned up in a day, but the damage done by the Rotary-sponsored Ribfest is much more long-lasting.

The photographs were taken three days after Ribfest left the park. The desecrating scars will remain in that park for many more days to come, perhaps for the remainder of the summer. Pete Fisher, the Northumberland Today journalist was so focussed on the agenda of VISITOR bashing to the exclusion to the damage done by the HOME TEAM, that one wonders just how deeply Northumberland Today is beholden to the Rotary Club.