A glimmer of hope: truth is stranger than Seuss.

One bike two bikes

 red bike

 blue bike..

Some are old and some are new and some are very very cool.

I hate it when people ask who my favourite author is, because if I reply truthfully, it speaks to my level of maturity. It speaks volumes.  It's embarrassing.   Honesty is something I've loved and admired my whole life.  Truth is a noble pursuit.  I  always aspire to be honest - with myself and others - but it's an uphill battle. I am a great liar. I own it.  I'm a natural. Born to it, you might say, and steeped in it. When I was in grade school in the seventies we lived in a campus residence while my parents attended law school.  The things I saw...! :O

It was enough to warp any young mind.

It was Mad, man.

Lying does come in handy on occasion.  Like occasionally at Christmas... "Oh!  It's beautiful!! Thank you! I LOVE it." It's probably ok to lie when a friend asks your opinion of their mangy new boyfriend, too. Other than that, lying is a very bad idea so I do try my best to be honest despite my natural inclinations.

Which is why if you ask me who my favourite author is, I'll resist the urge to reply "James Joyce," and will sheepishly admit that though it's a close contest between Tolkien, Rowling and Seuss, Seuss wins every time, and not just because he writes for babies, either.  He's my kind of king of the mountain.  He's just like Willie the Shake, with his uncanny insight into the human condition tucked neatly into catchy words, rhythms and rhymes.

He sure has my number. On Mulberry Street, stern ol' Dad might as well be talking to me when he tells the kid to

"Stop telling such outlandish tales.  Stop turning minnows into whales."

 "Dooooooo de doo," (me avoiding eye contact)

Everyone gets Green Eggs and Ham.
"You do not like them, so you say. Try them, try them, and you may.  Try them and you may, I say..."

Ride your bike for thirty days and you will simply be amazed at how hot and fit you are. 

You won't even want your car. 

But I'm a liar, don't trust me...

Try it for yourself and see.

foodwithkidappeal

There are eleven years between things one and two in my branch of this large, twisted, blended and extended family tree, so I've read Seuss' masterpiece, the Lorax, enough times now that I know it off by heart. Which is really saying something because most days I have the memory of a small Koi. When you're stressed you regress, did you know?  (My therapist said so and she's smart.) If you ask me on a bad day, I may succumb to my weakness and wax lyrical about Ulysses.  Don't take it personally. Truth is a beautiful thing, so I usually come clean sooner or later.Typically sooner than later, in fact.  You can expect to wait three minutes or so - just enough time for me to forget the lie.

Truth is like fine art - it's the gold nugget left in the bottom of the pan once time has washed the dross away.

Beauty is truth and Seuss speaks it. He speaks to me, too. His ability to infuse a kid's book with potent messages in a delightfully cheerful fashion is absolute genius.

We like our bike.  It is made for three.  Our Mike sits up in back, you see.  We like our Mike and this is why:  Mike does all the work when the hills get high.

sfbp

If you've got a great looooooooooooong way to go every day, the electric assist makes a little sense, but don't hum and haw and sit there on the fence.

                     Hop on your bike. Go for a ride.  Before too long you'll feel fanfuckingtastic deep down inside.

(Do you like my gratuitous skin shot? I call it Mike, and not because it's blurry.  Mikes aren't blurry, unless you've had a lot of beer.  I call it Mike because those are the legs of Mike who hauled two boys up and over the hills valleys and mountains of coastal BC, over the span of two decades, first in trailers and then on trail bikes.  I like Mike. I like bikes. And I like Mike in those shoes.  Mike rides a bike I like in those pretty shoes.)

Yertle the Turtle is about equality, fairness, and the power of protest. Poor squished Mack at the bottom of the pile has the temerity to stand up to the king. Everybody else is just blindly accepting their place in the pile, but Mac, who has more vision than all the other turtles combined, including the turtle Yertle, shares a new, true blue vision with everyone else. He has an idea.  He speaks up. And things change.

 "There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come."Bucky Fuller

Horton is all about integrity.  If only our elected politicians lived by his guiding principle: "I meant what I said and I said what I meant..."  the world would be a very different place.  Actually, it would help if our elected officials had any principles at all.  You know it's election season when politicians start making wild promises to the electorate.  Romney is promising to lower taxes twenty percent!  Does that mean that he will be eligible for a six percent refund on all of his investment accounts?

Gordon Campbell had to depart suddenly, and the first thing BC's interim premier, Christy Clark did was to get rid of Air Care.  Playing nice. That's the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia's emission screening test which your car has to pass before it can be insured.  Of course, everybody is celebrating, because Air Care is a great big, ginormous, expensive, time-consuming and annoying pain in the posterior. Fair enough, but that stuff spewing from tailpipes is truly noxious, and anything that reduces the amount of it in the air is a good thing.

"Let me say a few words about Gluppity Glup," says the Lorax.  "Yeah, like he says," says the girl who plays in traffic. "Gluppity Glup."

They're famous last words, too, uttered moments before the last truffula tree fell.  You've gotta love Seuss.  The Lorax is a furry little David Suzuki warning humanity of the error of its ways. Sadly, both are equally ineffective against the rolling swell of our insatiable appetites. Lily Allen said:  "I am a weapon of massive consumption. It's not my fault, it's how I'm programmed to function." Aren't we all?

Necessity is the mother of invention because we're not going to do anything meaningful until we absolutely have to, are we?  That's why we are going to risk our greatest national treasure, our clean water, for Hexxuss of the tar sands. (Not surprisingly, I am also a fan of Fern Gulley.)

Do or Die Time.

Saudi Arabia may become a net oil importer by 2030 says Citigroup. Then what?!  That's not very far off. If that doesn't scare the bejeezus out of you, then we live on different planets.  And  HELLooOOOOoo?  Can you think of a single place better suited to harnessing solar energy? A smart Saudi prince would be on a jet plane miles ahead of the bandwagon.  He'd be setting up enormous solar capture systems so he can sell sunshine to London.

 sun sneeze

                                          (humble apologies... no photo credit)
                           Do solar panels capture more energy during a solar flare??

 "Nothing is going to get better, it's not, until someone like you cares an whole awful lot." 

It doesn't have to be this way.  We shape our world in many ways, in what we do and what we say, in what we buy and how we play.  There are simple solutions close at hand which make it easy to enjoy this land.

Like what?  Well, like the vertical gardens Easy Park is installing on the top floor of one of their parking lots - and you'd be surprised at the amount of food you can grow in a vertical space.  It makes me happy that men like Mr Chris Ng of Alterrus are here, making the world a better place.  (Dear Higgs, I would a smaller version of this, with fish in the water tanks.  The fish poo will feed the plants and the fish will feed me.)

It's a Jesus-moment type of advance in the progress of civilization.  A miracle of modern technology, a fishes and loaves feeding of the masses.  Like Dr Seuss' work, its beauty lies in it's sweet simplicity. 

Like a bike!  And the reason this garden will be so?

Thanks largely to Mikes and others on Bikes,

Our parking rates are now so low

this is the best way for Easypark to go.

Can you believe it?  Sometimes the truth is better than Seuss.

     

My brain is fried, my eyes screwed tight,

and now it's time to say goodnight.