A tutoring no-no

When the student’s mother called Martin for an appointment for math tutoring for her son, for whatever reason she told Martin she was divorced. Martin was a little confusd as to why she felt the need to volunteer the information, but he ignored it, and asked for her address. She lived on Toronto’s west end, [...]

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How To Be a Self-made-man with no choice

There are the Horatio Algers of this world, who have built for themselves a high degree of success by hard work. Such examples are rare. There are others, however, who have no choice, and have to build their lives up from scratch. They just come from negativity and have nowhere to go but in the [...]

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A NatLamp article at a White Supremacist site

I have been a fan of the National Lampoon since I was a teen in the 1970s. One of the most shocking articles for me to read in the mid 70s was P J O’Rourke’s “Foreigners From Around The World”, which appeared in the National Lampoon in May, 1976. The article is really a heap [...]

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Debt freedom is a lot of work

A while ago, I posted that I finally saw, for the first time in 5 years, $0 owing on both my credit card and my line of credit. The battle is never over, however. Unless I want to completely free myself of the luxury of a credit card and line of credit, there will always [...]

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Story fragment #1

Philo was working late again. But the payoff was that he could have the next day all for himself. He wanted to beat his next-day deadline and have his sales forecast all ready by the this evening. He put the finishing touches on his spreadsheets, and imported the tables to word preocessor.  Then, after emailing [...]

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The eternal sunshine of a spotless debt record

A few minutes ago, I finally, after about 5 years of trying, paid off my debts with the bank, including my line of credit and my credit card. There were times the debt climbed to a nearly unmanageable $10,000 dollars, but after working like a bugger to pay it down, it finally got paid down, [...]

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Murder at the hot dog carts

Well, I was making a bit of money selling hot dogs at one of those portable vending units near some night clubs. One night, Daryl and Morton, two regulars I knew came outside and stood in line up for a hot dog, then decided to fight over this girl they met while inside. Neither guy [...]

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How the war on terror was won

The whole thing began in 2001, when the largest nuclear power the world has ever known was brought to its knees by a bunch of guys weilding box cutters and exacto knives. Yes, in the post-nuclear era, countries with the power to evaporate entire populations will have the back of their power broken by a [...]

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Learning in its purest form

Once I romanticised learning in its purest form as being a learning done for the pure love of it. I would like to think of my childhood as being like that. But I know that the reality of my childhood was characterized by being one of intellectual vapidity outside of my pursuits, so that my [...]

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Some of what I do here

Some of what I do is to fictionalise my past and make it less boring and more spicy and readable. I find this blog to be a vehicle for practising this craft of writing fiction.
I am 45 years old, so a lot of my past have faded into a dull memory. Even reading diary entries [...]

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Completely believing people’s wildest stories

I’m into totally believing every story people tell me about themselves. Sometimes, when people tell me their problems, it’s complete horse-crap, with only the flimsiest relation to reality. But I sit in wide-eyed fascination of these artistic bullshitters. I’m just along for the ride, and sitting and listening to these tall tales aren’t really going [...]

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Friends and friend-oids

I have a lot of “friend-oids” and few friends. I think that is like most of us. If we are honest, we may have a friend — two or three if we are very lucky — I think I have two if I count my wife.
Others live on the periphery, and they are people that [...]

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A not-so-strange strange stranger

We were sitting quietly in the waiting area, waiting for legal aid. At first, I didn’t recogsnise her. She was tall, her long legs made to look even longer in her high-heel patent leather boots. She also wore tight black jean slacks, an old fur waistcoat, and way too much makeup. That, along with the [...]

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Tammy and I had a couple of things in common

We both wrote — she wrote poetry, and I tended to write prose like this. I found her interesting in a way. But there was something dull about Tammy; something wishy-washy. It infected her poetry and her music. Yes, she also played guitar better than I could, and sang quite well. But her emotions were [...]

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These are the good old days

Worked myself nearly into delirium today, and decided to go home and do other things rather than being driven to distraction by work.
These are the good old days. Other people have them in the past, but I have them now. I see it
in the smiles and hugs I get;
in the smiles and hugs I return;
in [...]

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Threes (by John Atherton)

I think that I shall never c
A # lovelier than 3;
For 3 < 6 or 4,
And than 1 it’s slightly >.
All things in nature come in 3s,
Like ∴, trio’s, Q.E.D.s;
While $s gain more dignity
if augmented 3 x 3 –
A 3 whose slender curves are pressed
By banks, for compound interest;
Oh, would that, paying loans or rent,
My [...]

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My Geo-Trig Poem

You take tan b and ×
sin(cos(q+y))
and just to make it more complex
÷ cot(Δx)
And so then by csc(Θ)
× angles π, ρ, η
and show that they continue on
by proof with δ - ε.
Once tidied-up you then inspect
and find the answer incorrect
So then you do the question over
Once it’s right you then discover
You were to do the even [...]

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King Lear

Lear knew he was getting on in his years and asked his daughters Goneril, Regan and Cordelia for their proclamations of love so that they may deserve an inheritance. Cordelia takes the moral high ground by being sincere and in her sincerity she had nothing really to say, since it would not come from the [...]

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Potter and the Common Man

To add to the “Welcome Back Potter” idea, there may also be students in Harry’s class that, you know, may be into illicit “elixirs” or maybe they bought a “potion” they weren’t supposed to have from some wicked witch down the road. There would be cases of potion abuse that would likely involve administrators and [...]

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Fortune Cookie Generator

Anyone who had used a UNIX operating system might be aware of some of the fun things on it. Such as a command called “fortune”, which generates short aphorisms and quotations similar to ones found in fortune cookies. Except some of these are funny, witty, sarcastic, satirical, and so on. I use a Linux system, [...]

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