Give Us This Day Our Daily Fears

Give us this day our daily fears

And forgive us our thoughtcrimes

But Deliver us from believing

Give us the highest perch in a room

So that we may judge Others

Lead us not into addiction, for misery loves company

But help us scrape off the bottom of our shoes

so that we may walk gently upon the poor, disabled, and uneducated

For where will we get our news if not from Facebook or Google?

Thumbs up, thumbs down- our opinions matter

But how do we “ like” when we don’t really care?

Who are the people? That is a critical question.

Is freedom still a word that means what we thought it meant?

It’s like the junk drawer.

If you don’t know what it is, it goes in the junk drawer.

If we say it is true, long enough, will it be true?

Is this a poem?

Is it an Advertisement or an advertorial?

What is Misinformation, Disinformation, and Malinformation?

Why does the government now have special departments dedicated to those three “ formations” ?

What the hell happened to the old word lies?

Should anyone be in charge of regulating speech?

Can Artificial Intelligence decide what is hate speech and what is a thought crime?

Would it be simpler to just roll the dice?

When I was a young boy, I would make up lists of the world countries, leaders, capitols. I hungered fir knowledge. I read encyclopedias under the bed covers with a flashlight.

During the past week, I have had to record in detail what I drank, what pills were taken, take my temperature, blood pressure, record by heart beats per minute.

I couldn’t remember if I had taken a 12 hour time release before bedtime. Now I had to wait, as though I had taken it, until 11 in the morning. The background to the waiting was the roiling stomach of nausea, which started in the evening about 9, which by morning is boiling like cowboy coffee.

I dream of the day when I wake up and feel hunger, not nausea.

There was a need to write this down, before I became distracted and forget.

It all must be recorded, if only to be able to look back and to know what happened. Please understand the precarious nature of my reporting, as any recording of facts is limited by the truthfulness and memory of the record keeper.

As I said, this love of statistics goes way back to when I was a child using graph paper.

I would make up lists of all the world countries, leaders, and capitol cities.

Then as boys will do, I would roll the dice. The results would send these countries to war against each other. The winner was chosen by the simple roll of the dice. It was simple. If your number was higher, you won. If the number was lower, you lost.

So today, we go to war with dice.

Today’s Dice War: ANDORRA VS CANADA

Could Andorra really defeat Canada?

drum roll as he rolls the dice……..

Well yes, 12 to 4.

Sorry Canada. The roll of the dice is final. Andorra got boxcars, and you only rolled two-twos

.

Andorra triumphs in rare roll of dice

Mass confusion ensues as no one in Canada knows how to speak Catalan, now the official language of Canada.

What do we even know about Andorra?

Quick research provides the following:

Andorra is a tiny, independent principality situated between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountains. It’s known for its ski resorts and a tax-haven status that encourages duty-free shopping. The Capital of Andorra la Vella. It has boutiques and jewelers on Meritxell Avenue and several shopping centers.

MEET YOUR NEW LEADER:

Our new Prime minister:

Xavier Espot Zamora

Total Area of Andorra: 467.6 km²

Total Area of Canada: 9,984,670 km²

And yet, with no blood shed, we have a winner in the great Andorran-Canadian War.

It was over in seconds. No nukes, not even any bikes. No chance for US black ops.

Meet The Loser:

Prime minister: Justin Trudeau

Meet our loser, Canada. Canada is a country in North America, with ten provinces and three territories extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's second-largest country by total area, with the world's longest coastline.

Sorry Canada. I didn’t make the rules.

( Full disclaimer: I did make the rules, but in my defence, I was only eight.)

Canada has lost the roll of the dice, and everything in Canada now is the rightful property of Andorra. Even Alberta.

Good News: Andorra is one of the safest countries in the world. There is no homelessness, the level of crime is very low and they have an efficient police service. In the event of an emergency or accident, contact the rescue teams led by the Andorran Fire Brigade.

Is Andorra a wealthy country? Andorra has a developed economy and a free market, with per capita income above the European average and above the level of its neighbors, Spain and France. The country has developed a sophisticated infrastructure including a one-of-a-kind micro-fiber-optic network for the entire country.

Do they have healthcare? Hospital visits are typically covered up to 90% and services such as dental, GP, and so on are covered up to 75%. Giving birth in Andorra is 100% covered, so too are work-related accidents. An interesting fun fact: They have one of the highest rates of smoking in the world, with their number one crop being tobacco.

But would I like being an Andorran?

Smithsonian travel says this about Andorra:

One might say that Andorrans have done the best with what they have—a river canyon cut into a steep and largely rocky mountainside. I’ve seen official documents that call Andorra’s terrain—98 percent of it, to be exact—unsuitable for agriculture, but let’s keep things in context: That land is also unsuitable for perfume outlets and duty free liquor and jewelry shops.

And so the Andorrans have crammed all that they hold dear into the available land that flanks their one major highway, which careens at a 10-percent gradient in places from the high pass all the way to Spain. Along the road’s shoulder are chain-link fences and concrete barriers. There are several picnic pullouts which have been carpeted with plastic turf.

Billboards and name brands scream at travelers from every direction—McDonald’s, Pepsi and all the rest. But besides commerce, there are resident people here. About 90,000 people enjoy the privilege of calling themselves Andorran. They live in scab-ugly apartment buildings, smog-gray and five stories tall and which permanently block the sunlight from the streets below—which are remarkably noisy for such a small country.

Here, Andorrans walk about briskly, attractive and slim as Italians, people who dress sharply, carry glitzy shopping bags and always, it seems, have somewhere to go. There is virtually No unemployment in Andorra. It’s a country both blessed and blistered by prosperity—and they can have it. I had a glance, I had the glory of climbing 6,000 vertical feet to see it, and now I’ve had all I wanted. I am sitting in an Andorran coffee shop now, looking at my map of Spain.

So now that we know more about Andorra, perhaps we are not as excited about becoming Andorrans.

Perhaps Canada would like to roll the dice again?

Thankfully no human lives were lost in the dice war. It was quick, and it was relatively pain-less.

What we now call Canada is said to be country of 4 solitudes:

1. First Nations

2. English settlers.

3.French settlers.

4. New immigrants - New being the salient word. Anyone who is not English or French is new. New can go back hundreds of years.

If you are in group 1, then everyone is new.

If you are in group 2, everyone who moved here in the past 140 years is new.

If you are in group 3, everyone who doesn’t speak French, not real French but our special Canadian French, is not worth speaking to, new or not.

If you are in Group 4, you are left wondering how many years before you are either accepted by 1, 2, and 3, or will there come a day, when through greater birth rates and immigration. Group 4 becomes the dominant group, surpassing them all in population and assume control.

Or could there ever be a way that we all united together into this melange we call Canadian?

With roll of the dice, all these questions of ice are moot. All of these sensitive nuances are on hold now, as the populace struggles to speak Catalan.

Pierre Pollievre is very confused by because his entire strategy for winning was based on battling Justin Trudeau.

With the roll of the dice, all that changes. He needs to learn that they are both losers.

ALL HAIL ZAMORA!