2023-09-23 18:56
SEEING YOUR SOUL FORESTI was wondering what kind of hook I could hang this second instalment on when a former colleague commented "I don't think there's a single person that knows me as well… Read More
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2023-09-19 23:42
Every once in a while, when I'm straight and flying right, people say things to me that I struggle to credit. They talk about a divine love and a sense of power they feel from and in me, and… Read More
2023-09-16 17:31
Source material for this post"Hey, do that thing I like."(puts up with me)oh thank God(random unattributed Facebook meme)I'll get where I'm going, but I'm gonna start here.My parents d… Read More
2023-09-09 23:45
"It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired." - Robert Heinlein"You're under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago." - John Roedel"To gain… Read More
2023-08-22 16:31
There's an article in the NYT that is too important not to share. Facebook doesn't care: just another corporation refusing to pay its externalities, nothing to see here, ho-hum. Google… Read More
2023-08-12 00:49
People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe. -Andy RooneyI have a feeling that the truth is never told in the nine-to-five hours… Read More
2023-08-06 01:39
DAY THREE: Greater Sudbury - Little Current - Kagawong - Gore Bay - Sheguiandah - Little CurrentAnother eventful day. We were up and out early for our day exploring Manitoulin Isl… Read More
2023-08-05 17:39
NOTE: Kathy has already done EXCELLENT recaps of this trip on Facebook. These blogs from my perspective are not meant to supplant, but to complementDAY ONE: Woodstock/Waterloo - Parry… Read More
2023-07-31 13:04
I did not want to blog today. I got shit to do, man. Road trek tomorrow. But sometimes you just gotta. Sometimes something comes along so mentally stimulating, you gotta share it so oth… Read More
2023-07-03 23:24
I've known since before this blog started that sooner or later I would have to write this post. It doesn't make it any easier to write. Not one bit.I met Eva in January of 1999. We mov… Read More
2023-05-22 22:15
"You can take me anywhere the wind blowsRight into the great unknownWe can throw our hands up out the windowThis is what we live for..."American Authors, "What We Live For"Kathy has al… Read More
2023-05-07 22:35
I want to make something very clear going in. These are my rules. They work for me. If they work for you, too, great. They may not, and that's okay too.I say this because people like Jordan… Read More
2023-05-07 02:47
Administrivia: this is NOT the Very Important Blog I referred to earlier today on Facebook. That blog will arrive in due time, and that could be some time off.I feel introspective… Read More
2023-04-30 15:04
The Toronto Maple Leafs have won a playoff series for the first time in this blog's history.Ludicrous statement. This blog was born in May, 2004. The Leafs had beaten the Ottawa Senato… Read More
2023-04-22 14:26
(blows the dust off)(shakes the cobwebs out)Hi, howaya, long time no write. __________I had one of those wide-ranging deep convos last night that sustain me. This was a highlight:… Read More
2023-02-11 18:28
“What chatbots do is scrape the web, the library of texts already written, and learn from it how to add to the collection, which causes them to start scraping their own work in ever en… Read More
2023-01-21 01:36
I came across a list of "30 Random, Weird Questions To Get To Know Somebody Better". Random. Weird. No kidding. But it's been a while since i have done one of these, or indeed anyt… Read More
2023-01-09 05:17
"Maybe he just doesn't like you no more." --Siobhan Súilleabháin"Some things there's no moving on from. And I think that's a good thing." --Padráic Suilleabháin… Read More
2022-12-31 22:46
It's been a year, hasn't it?It's said 2022 was "2020, too", and that feels about right. At the beginning of this year -- it feels so long ago -- the capital of my country was overrun b… Read More
2022-12-18 04:47
It's nearly Christmas. I feel less Christmassy with every year that passes, and I know I am not alone in that regard. Crass commercialism lost its appeal a long time ago, and it's… Read More
2022-11-07 05:03
I've said some uncharitable things about the Premier of Ontario. I have been far too kind.-----------There once was a time -- it wasn't all that long ago, really -- when our socie… Read More
2022-10-25 22:48
I should be an old hand with these accreditations by now. I've been through five of them: order support tier one; chat; order support tier one again; order support tier two three days… Read More
2022-10-10 02:14
We'd been looking forward to this little road trek for nearly as long, and nearly as much, as the bigger trek we did in July. Fall colours, baby. Ontario isn't quite as world famous as… Read More
2022-09-25 18:15
Hey, you. Been a long while since I logged into Facebook. I will offer a genuine apology, but I mean that in the "defense" sense and not the "I messed up" sense. I'm truly sorry… Read More
2022-09-19 01:12
To the readers who share my whiteness: have you ever been somewhere where you were the visible minority?It's only happened to me once, on a band trip to Toronto back in high school. (Ot… Read More
2022-09-09 01:06
I'm tired, I have a crazy work day waiting for me in the morning, and this is the last thing I wanted to do tonight.Which is why I'm doing it. Pretty sure Her Royal Highness did things every… Read More
2022-09-05 16:40
We need a Universal Basic Income (UBI).To counter the inevitable the fuck we do from the people who loved their own suffering so much they delight in spreading it around: (a)… Read More
2022-08-28 02:06
I was talking with a former housemate of mine named Remi about Costco. I love Costco. It's far and away the cheapest place to get anything to do with dairy, any sort of pharmaceut… Read More
2022-08-20 01:21
I've written so many posts examining and lamenting what I can't help but think is people's predominant thought of me, which is "what a waste". It feels cocky and arrogant to even public… Read More
2022-08-06 23:29
In the last two weeks,someone I have never met, whom I am unlikely to ever meet, sent me a pair of tickets to see Jake's Gift in November;a friend made reference to "somethin… Read More
2022-08-04 17:29
Warning: this blog is likely not at all what you're expecting from its title. Second warning: you're gonna think Ken is fuckin' nuts. ****SCIENCE: "the intellectual and practical a… Read More
2022-07-30 20:41
Day 3: Midland-CollingwoodFirst stop today is a place I've been wanting to see for a while: Sainte-Marie-Among-The-Hurons. This is a painstaking recreation of the first European s… Read More
2022-07-30 19:46
DAY 1: Woodstock/Waterloo - MidlandThis was supposed to be a more ambitious road trek for Kathy and I. We had intended to do a great circle to Tobermory, Manitoulin, Sudbury and h… Read More
2022-07-20 05:30
I don't ask very much of my readers...especially when it comes to current events. There are so many fights to be fought, and nobody has the energy or the resources to fight them (by design)… Read More
2022-07-03 02:16
We had the opportunity to get out and about today, and took full advantage.First up, an attraction that's less than a six minute drive from my home, but which I didn't even know existed unti… Read More
2022-06-28 04:14
I knew it was coming, but I didn't expect it quite so quickly. Nor did I expect the palpable glee. Here's what I thought would happen this past Friday: the Supreme Court of the Un… Read More
2022-06-19 20:10
"Remember, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."--StepI was doing one last Facebook crawl late one night recently, my eyes heavy. I had posted a… Read More
2022-05-28 18:17
I have written -- I don't care to go back and look how -- many blogs over the years in the wake of American gun atrocities. This will be the final blog on this topic. Not for the reason I'd… Read More
2022-05-21 16:54
If the polls are to be believed, the Ford government is going to win a second majority. I do not for the LIFE of me understand why. And while I know I'm saying that a lot just lat… Read More
2022-05-15 14:25
And so, once again, a team with seemingly more than enough talent on it has been eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs without winning a round.There are two types of Leaf fan, I hav… Read More
2022-05-09 20:37
That's from a 1987 novelty song by The Firm. It's our unoffical road trekkin' anthem. It's been a long and dark winter.The forecast for this past weekend spun like a roulette… Read More
2022-04-30 19:15
As I mentioned on Facebook, I use edibles to help me sleep. Most of the time they turn my thoughts into entertaining sludge, but occasionally they seem to bring a weird green clarity t… Read More
2022-04-30 04:31
...but this is my 1967th entry since I started this thing almost eighteen years ago. That means I have to write about the Leafs again. Sorry, folks: I can't change the rules here. &hell…Read More
2022-04-26 13:30
"There had better not be a scandal involving Elon Musk," I told Eva a few years ago. "Elongate would be really long and drawn out."Little did I know.I had a Twitter account, once. It s… Read More
2022-04-04 06:09
ADULT MATERIAL NSFWYou know right away what's coming: an instinctive moué of disgust. Even saying those words out loud makes me cringe. I find them highly offensive, and people make a… Read More
2022-03-29 05:06
So many layers, so many perspectives, so many takes, both hot and not. I've been reading and digesting it all today, and I'm more muddled now than I was when I first learned what "Will… Read More
2022-03-26 21:17
I have struggled with this long-promised blog because Spider Robinson is a man I must do justice to -- and when I describe him and his work, you're likely to ask why that is. He's… Read More
2022-02-20 19:37
First they compared their "suffering and segregation" with the Holocaust...while standing next to actual neo-Nazis. They demanded to meet with the Prime Minister, and jeered him w… Read More
2022-02-10 04:15
I have tried three times to write this blog. One of the efforts ran to seventeen paragraphs before I killed it. I am angry. I am, in fact, righteously PISSED. Not near as angry as… Read More
2022-02-06 05:27
This number is different somehow.I've never had an age freakout before. Of all my birthdays only 16 was treated as a milestone: I can't even remember many of the rest of them. I certainly do… Read More
2022-01-08 19:46
I'd like to talk about the world we find ourselves in as the Year Of Are Bored 2022 begins. On the surface, it is depressing and frightening. But the biggest reason it's the way it is… Read More
2022-01-05 17:24
One year ago tomorrow, the President of the United States incited a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the election he handily lost. On that day, five people died;… Read More
2022-01-02 17:39
Welcome to The Proofing Drawer.This is the next iteration of The Breadbin, a blog I began in May of 2004. Rather than start an entirely new blog, I've decided that I would keep The Bre… Read More
2021-10-24 17:50
(boo: from the Latin for 'I alarm') His name was Kieron.I don't even remember anymore how it was we became friends, probably because it happened so quickly and naturally, with zero effo… Read More
2021-10-17 22:52
You know how people say Schindler's List is a hard movie, but a necessary movie? A film people need to see, even though it's tough to sit through?Yeah. Like that.The subject matte… Read More
2021-09-27 03:01
ADULTS ONLYVery interesting piece in the New York Times about porn, the problems and perils of. It sounds as if the lewd and licentious pendulum is starting to swing back tow… Read More
2021-09-18 21:30
I wasn't going to write this blog.I promised it back at the beginning of the campaign...and then the campaign happened, and it was even uglier than I expected it to be. I've been saying for… Read More
2021-09-07 03:22
This time we went southeast.The idea, as usual, was to stay away from crowds. I'm not scared of C19 for the moment but still feel prudence is called for when things get sardine-y… Read More
2021-08-18 17:20
I said this on Facebook recently:From now on, before I engage in any argument either online or off, I'm going to ask one question: "What evidence might it take for you to change your positio… Read More
2021-08-18 03:27
Administrivia: It occurs to me, at this late date, that there are all sorts of books, movies, and music I've championed through the years, but I haven't really offered too many reasons… Read More
2021-08-08 21:51
sunrise and sundownthe moon rolls through the night timetil the daybreak comes aroundall my life's a circleand I can't tell you whyseasons spinning round againthe years keep rolling by… Read More
2021-08-02 21:25
Day 3: Parry Sound - Minden MIDLAND(little in-joke there: Kathy kept getting the two confused, eventually deliberately. Kind of like this.)A cold front has swept throug… Read More
2021-08-02 01:02
DAY ONE: Woodstock/Waterloo-BracebridgeWe lit out just after 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday. I had barely slept not just Tuesday night, but Monday night as well: excitement. This trip has been on th… Read More
2021-07-26 17:33
I've had a couple of people refer to me as "autistic" recently, like, in the last week. I'm not -- officially. I don't know whether I am or not. I don't know if I should care whet… Read More
2021-07-25 05:34
I've lived online for more than thirty of my almost fifty years.When I left the booming metropolis of Ingersoll for Waterloo back in 1990, I felt more than a little like Tom Wolfe's creation… Read More
2021-07-24 17:41
On my first day of vacation, I am thinking about my job.You're not supposed to do that, obviously. Once that quitting time whistle sounds, you slide down the dino's back and land in yo… Read More
2021-07-12 17:48
I'm not a doomer. ...said Ah-nie in Kindergarten Cop. (I'm paraphrasing.)In a slightly different universe, Eva would be a prepper, one of those people with a fully stocked bunker. She s… Read More
2021-06-20 14:57
Before everything, before all else in my universe, there was my dad. One half of The Stuff That Made Me. My earliest memories of him are fragmented but oddly specific: the exact s… Read More
2021-06-06 16:25
So there's a song out that has "broken the Internet", It's by a white Canadian named Tom MacDonald, it's called "Snowflakes", and the man thinks he's the new Eminem. He ain't. I checked… Read More
2021-06-06 00:19
I can usually tell you where my eccentricities come from. My absent-mindedness is genetic: my dad, in a major hurry to get to a fire (he's a volunteer fire captain) backed through his garage… Read More
2021-05-30 16:54
They lost last night.Of course they did. They were up three games to one in a best of seven series. Now it's one game, winner take all...and I'm in more trouble than they are. To… Read More
2021-05-29 07:23
So this is something I believe: I could never act rich.I could be rich, sure. (Not too rich, though--hell no.) But I could never act rich, because it's just not me. What… Read More
2021-05-20 04:58
Source material for this postThe title of that linked column -- which is actually the transcript of a podcast -- is "Status Games, Polyamory and the Merits of Meritocracy". There… Read More
2021-05-17 01:19
(Source material for this entry is this very long interview between Ezra Klein and Agnes Callard)There is just so much meat here.Callard relates an anecdote about her middle son:[… Read More
2021-05-15 22:42
I have raved before about my dollar-a-week subscription to The New York Times. I get considerably more than a dollar a day's worth of enjoyment and edification out of it. The price wil… Read More
2021-04-27 16:00
People tell me I should have been a father. Likely because of the jokes. I have an inexhaustible collection of Dad jokes. I keep them..in a dada-base. I'm looking at a collection of the… Read More
2021-04-24 18:02
The title of this blog is also the title of what is, lyrically, my favourite song of all time. And more: it is a song I wrestle with, on so many levels. My ideas on love and life… Read More
2021-04-17 06:02
I am stressing. Like probably everyone I know who shares a province with me.Oh, how the worm turns. It wasn't three months ago I was full of pity for the United States. Now I'm full of… Read More
2021-04-13 04:32
Forgive me, I am a little giddy.Every year, I hold out hope that the Toronto Maple Leafs will end the Stanley Cup drought that's been ongoing since five years before I was born.I am no… Read More
2021-04-09 05:33
My former colleague Liam posted one of those Facebook surveys called "Brutal Honesty Hour": the idea is supposed to be that his friends give him a letter, and he comes back with a correspond… Read More
2021-04-07 05:02
...was a big steaming pile of nativist hate mail. It's distressing me, because it came from family. I've stewed and stewed over it all day long. Normally, people who insist on sha… Read More
2021-04-03 00:41
I am very angry right now about restrictions both in the real world and in the virtual. Let's start with the real world, on account of (a) it's real and (b) it affects more than just m… Read More
2021-03-29 23:22
Miss me? Friday morning. Friday is my Monday; I work at 9:30 a.m. My internet is dodgy. It won't stay connected. It cuts out, I relaunch my VPN and get logged in at 9:32 -- the fir… Read More
2021-03-20 02:28
So much to talk about lately.It's more than a little distressing to find friends echoing Fox News talking points verbatim. One of my friends shared a "Skunk's Lives [sic] Matter! Save… Read More
2021-03-18 06:36
This one is in firmly adult territory, folks. If you're not comfortable reading about s-e-x, best go find something else to read.As always when I choose to write about sexual/relationship ma… Read More
2021-03-08 01:57
In the last 24 hours, I have had discussions with friends that trembled on the edge of becoming heated. I've read numerous screeds that have caused my blood pressure to skyrocket. I ha… Read More
2021-03-06 01:04
Never say never, Ken.Sorry, folks. I know what I just got finished writing that I hadn't shared anything poly-related in over a year. I stopped because I was banging my head against a… Read More
2021-03-05 00:27
I saw a post the other day that I did NOT share on Facebook.You laugh. You have seen my Facebook feed, and find it hard to believe there's something I didn't post. But when you see this, you… Read More
2021-02-22 23:52
I've been doing a series of UU-inspired Lenten bloglets on Facebook, one a day, each centering on a single word. Today's word is POETRY, and here's a topic that really should be fleshe… Read More
2021-02-11 18:30
...for two reasons. One, you've seen the essence of part of this blog already. Two, I'm going to break a promise I made when I posted my last blog that the next blog wouldn't be a… Read More
2021-02-03 22:47
The quintessential winter comfort food.Growing up, the best soup in the world was "Gramma-soup", served by my Grandma Breadner when we went to visit her in Parry Sound. She died in 198… Read More
2021-01-28 05:20
I never thought I would be. Go back into ye olden times on this blog and several times you'll catch me saying I would never get a cell phone, and now the damn thing may as well be surgically… Read More
2021-01-24 00:56
Like many, I watched Joe and Kamala's inauguration with a sense of relief and gratitude. I have no intention of writing the name of the previous occupant of the White House ever again… Read More
2021-01-13 19:50
...or at least not going any further insane.1) News, limiting of: As much as I'd like to step away from it, it's a little too newsworthy right now. I'm hoping after the 20th thin… Read More
2021-01-02 00:55
There's a word missing there, of course: you spotted it by its absence. We've come to spot so much by its absence in the year gone by. So much. Remember when we celebrated birthdays by… Read More
2020-12-29 05:29
One month ago almost to the minute, I took my last chat at work. The client decided to amputate chat from the campaign at our site. We were given the choice of moving to Order Support… Read More
2020-12-07 14:12
No, for a change this isn't about my life, which despite reports has not reset just yet (and that's great). No, this is about the world after COVID-19. It sounds like a conspiracy… Read More
2020-12-02 01:48
I'm actually not crying.Not right now. I have, and likely will again, but I'm not crying right now and I'm kind of proud of myself for that, to be honest.Kathy and I have mutually decided to… Read More
2020-11-01 23:32
Hi, everyone, he says, sheepishly. Long time no see.Nine weeks isn't that long in the scheme of things, but it's far and away the longest I've gone without blogging since this page wen… Read More
2020-08-23 01:44
Sixteen years and three months is a long time to keep a blog.I have outlasted every single blogging friend I have, most by more than a decade. I am far from proud of every post. Many of them… Read More
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