Queen Victoria's Health & Beauty Tips for the Poor and the Irish

TVFP is pleased to welcome Queen Victoria as our new Lifestyle correspondent. Victoria Regina writes:

     We are an enthusiast. That means when we do something we do it with gusto. We are very modern in this as we find many people do things but do not do them with gusto and therefore they cannot be enthusiasts although they might say they are enthusiastic we think they dissemble. One must not dissemble. One must tell the truth.
     Now we have it on good authority that the poor do not always tell the truth. Everybody knows that the Irish are liars as well as laggards, drunkards, thieves and for the most part papist scum. This notwithstanding we feel it is our God given duty to uplift both the poor and the Irish.
     We do this not for one's self but for the Empire and the greater Glory of God, of Whom we can tell you runs a damn fine operation up here in Heaven, although Mary, the Mother of God Mary does try my patience on occasion. Those dreadful peasant sandals!
     Now, before we move on, the answer to your unspoken question is, you are absolutely right, there are no Irish in Heaven, not even Protestant Irish, thanks be to God and we have it on good authority that the Irish, whatever their stripe, are not well thought of in Hell.
     Now, are you paying attention? Good. One must always pay attention when something of importance is about to be told to you otherwise you'll remain stupid. One of the characteristics of the poor is that they are, invariably, stupid. The first step in overcoming poverty is to pay attention. There is no known cure for being Irish.
     The modern foundation of good health and a healthy complexion is one's own urine. This was confirmed to me in a conversation with Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt with whom I share a personal affinity and a lovely view of eternity.
     Now, whilst on Earth, I drank a demi tasse of my own urine every morning. I do not recommend drinking one's urine during your menses as this will cloud the efficacy of the procedure. Thus it is necessary to husband one's urine. I recommend containers of the finest bone china.
     Now a little urine perhaps mixed with a drop of brandy or if brandy isn't available a sharp dry claret. After consuming one's own urine breath deeply four times. The number four is an efficacious number. As Saint Irenaeus himself said while all about him the godless Romans were butchering good and saintly Anglicans, there must be four Gospels because there are four corners of the Earth.
     Thank you and God Bless you.



TVFP on Occupy Toronto:

      It is now a week since the Occupy movement put its roots down in Canada. Everyone it seems has an informed opinion. As well we can hear the shrill cries: send in the yellow jackets and the janitorial squad and clean out the Saint James Park! We need to walk our dogs!
      TVFP is reminded of a parable from the Gospel of Thomas: The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us what Heaven's kingdom is like." He said to them, "It's like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky."

Please visit me at:

www.jimread.ca

for links to my eBooks, Facebook Page, Poetry on Twitter, as well as a short bio and pic.

Pic of Vickie courtesy of Wiki Commons.

TVFP on Occupy Toronto / Mary Dowser on Don Juan

TVFP walked in the protest march to St. James Park and stood in the crowd as the event unfolded. He writes:

      The march was about two city blocks long. The crowd at St. James hovered around 2000 people. It was peaceable. For the most part everyone seemed at ease.

     Upon arrival at the park core elements were soon busy setting up tents, a first aid station and a food distribution centre. Everybody, it seemed was looking for, or meeting friends and comrades. Everybody had a camera. There were some speeches, predicable and encouraging.

     The yellow jackets kept a low profile at the corners of Adelaide and Church and Jarvis and King; no evidence of their black garbed counterparts from the dark side of police headquarters.

     The one odious moment that I witnessed occurred when Bob Rae showed up. He was loudly and I think appropriately heckled during his several interviews.

     So what did I make of it all? The Occupy Toronto movement, in its essence, is about people getting together and realizing that in solidarity they can move the agenda forward. The physical numbers are less important than we are led to believe. The established media, though out if force, have already been out flanked.

     As well the pundits have got it wrong, as have the experts and your locally elected creatures, when they say that the movement lacks focus, as if this were some sort of sales blitz or a military operation. The Occupy movements recognize that everything is broken. The issues are painfully evident, the agenda is mercilessly simple; end the suffering of our brothers and sisters, save the world!

Mary Dowser

The imaginatively fragrant Mary Dowser has written to TVFP:

     Don Juan is a Yaqui shaman. The Yaqui tribe is from Sonora in northern Mexico. Don Juan tells me that the Yaqui were never conquered by the Spanish.
     He has taken me through the peyote portal. We have walked together in the dream world. We go through as the rush kicks in. Oh, oh, I cry out.
     He shows me how it was. He takes me for a ride on the back of the Turtle. He introduces me to the tribes as they were in all their glory before the conquerors came.
     I see humanity streaming up from a hole in the ground. We eat maize cooked over a crackling fire. There are fire birds in the trees. He introduces me to Coyote.
      Coyote has stolen Farting Boy's asshole. Coyote, bad boy, has raped an old woman. That Coyote! He reminds me of someone.
      We move deeper into the north where I meet new gods and spirits. We have a tea made out of tree bark with Kitchi Manitou. The Great Manitou says to me, I made the world from a dream.
     I to him, I am in a dream now. He replies, the dream comes before truth. Is the truth for me Marie Driscoll?
     Don Juan and I come south again. We spend a little time with Quezacoatl, the red headed god. He is really a dragon. He tells me a joke.
     He says, there is a handsome man who is very poor and there is a rich widow who wants to marry him. The young man declines, saying to her, you are old. If you were older I'd be interested.
     Quezacoatl is full of laughter. I like him best of them all.
     These adventures leave me exhausted and I have not been as productive as I would have liked with my memoir, Notes from the Quick Fingers of a Championship Typist.
     No word from the Zapatistas. Perhaps it is but a vain wish to serve the revolution. My Spanish is improving although I do not like my instructor.
     Oppressive heat. Broken fan. There is a feral cat in my garden that I have given a little milk. I have named him Mighty Jack. He appears whenever he likes and mews at my window. Yesterday I had no milk for him and I felt his malevolence.
      I am out of sorts. I feel that I am drifting. I feel that I am marooned. There is a little wire in my ear that vibrates so finely that I do not notice it until I have stopped pacing in my room. Who is Marie Driscoll? Will I ever meet her again in the dream world?
     Mighty Jack is perched on the edge of the bird bath. I feel he is taunting me. I am a little bird. I should be away, but I cannot or Mighty Jack will eat me. I hate him. I bring him milk. I love him. In him I see all the violence of the world. I give him milk. I am feeding all the suffering that is in the world.
     Don Jaun is calling to me. There are flowers at the door. The jaguar, the beast is coming for me if I sleep. I must not sleep.

Please visit my website: 

www.jimread.ca 

There you can find links to my eBooks, entertaining fiction for not a whole lot of coin, as well you can link to my Facebook Page and my poetry on Twitter.

An Important Announcement and Mary Dowser's Report from the Yucatan

The ever fragrant Mary Dowser has written to TVFP, but first we have an important announcement! After prolonged negotiations with Buckingham Palace TVFP has secured the Canadian rights to Queen Victoria's new column, Health & Beauty Tips for the Poor and the Irish. The the old girl's column will, we hope, become a regular feature, along with Charles the Silverback Gorilla's City Hall: the Inside Poop! As well coming soon, Charles interviews City of Toronto Councillor George Mammolliti's Brain!

For Posts involving the awesomely odoriferous Mary Dowser please see:

Ted's Kitchen 6/9/11
The Parkdale Liberation Front 7/3/11
The PLF: Commander Annie 7/10/11
The PLF: Asst Commander Tess 7/17/11
Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Parkdale Part I 7/31/11
Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Parkdale Part II 8/7/11
Giorgio Mammolliti's Brain 8/18/11
The Parkdale Liberation Front Lonely Hearts Club 9/4/11
Changes at The View 9/18/11

Mary Dowser writes to us from the Yucatan:

This is my dream from the last night. I wrote it down half asleep with the scent of the jaguar still upon me. My hand shook as I wrote and I have had difficulty deciphering the scrawl and entering it into the laptop computer. The child came to me in the dream. She was an old woman. Behind her were the smoldering remains of the conflagration that had taken away her City, the City of the Saint. She began to tell me her story. I am Marie Driscoll from County Cork. She was speaking in Gaelic, but somehow I understood. She was a ghostly figure, tiny, ephemeral, a faded yellow rose behind her left ear. I felt my blood run cold.

     Marie Driscoll was my name when I came out of Ireland in 1847. I came out of Cork on the coffin ship Ramses and we were almost two months crossing the ocean after some distress during a storm and then arrived in Canada and anchored off a place called Partridge Island which was close to land and a great city that was called Saint John and there by the City of the Saint we were to undergo the quarantine. I did not know whether I would live or die but my father and three brothers were dead before we were halfway across the ocean and my two sisters were dead of the fever after the first week in quarantine. There was just my Ma and me. Before that I lived near the village of Knockgraffon and grew up in sight of the great Motte that is like a hill and not mountain and made by the hands of men although who I cannot say and I was never told. I would not have come to the coffin ship Ramses but my mother hid me by the old wall that went back to the English who first enslaved us or so I was told. My father was after selling me to one of the Lord’s men as I have been cursed with uncommon beauty such was rarely seen in the village or in the pitiful hovels of mud where we lived our lives such as they were. Things were going poorly with us then, though not as bad as elsewhere I was told as we were not starving though there was blight again on the potatoes and we had no livestock to kill as our pig was stolen by a Blackfeet man my father said and the other was taken to pay the Lord’s taxes and we had but a few chickens and there was no work to be had on the roads that went nowhere and some if not all of us would starve before winter’s end and so to raise money I was to be sold to the Lord’s man. But my mother would not have it and she said we would take the Lord’s offer of passage and land and go away and so my mother brought me to the wall and I was hidden and I was a young girl and had just begun to leak blood out of the gash between my legs. As the moon rose over the Motte I saw the Manson brothers come out along the wall and it was strange to see them for they had been dead two years for they were sons of Blackfeet and I was told it was the sons of the Whiteboys and Levellers that killed them and others but I do not know for sure. I might have been afraid for I had never seen the dead before or the Aes Sidhe that are said to inhabit the Motte and other places, but I was not afraid because I knew the boys when they were alive and they never meant me any harm. They asked me to sing for them to ease the loneliness of the grave and I said I could not sing aloud for fear of being discovered but I would sing for them in my heart if I could. And so I did and sang for the two dead boys the few songs that I knew and it seemed to please them. I sang on and on and as I did other children came out of the graveyard and the graveyards for miles around and many of them I knew had died of the starvation and they were sad to look upon as I remember them them walking about the land as skeletons before ever they were dead and so I sang and soon there were many gathered around my hiding place and I sang to them in my heart. It was a cold night and I was hidden for another day and another night before my mother convinced my father to come to this land and I was not frightened nor truly cold because I had the dead children of Ireland to comfort me.

For a profile of yours truly and to sample and purchase my short stories please visit my website at

www.jimread.ca

Changes at The View & Mary Dowser Reports

The awesomely fragrant Mary Dowser.

Stories are important, stronger than truth!

                                                                                                   Friar Tuck

TVFP will be undergoing some changes. We are feeling a bit stagnated and in need of a cliche to explain everything. A change is as good as a rest! What does not change is change itself. You can lead a leopard to water but you can't change its spots. Hmm, I might have got that one wrong. Nevertheless, a change is in the air.

The Blog author (aka Ourself) is acknowledging the need to concentrate more fully on literary projects, including a new novel and marketing our short stories on-line. We will continue to contribute to the Blog, just not on a weekly basis. Fortunately the awesomely fragrant Mary Dowser (Ted's Kitchen, June 19 and Ernesto Guevara's vacation from Hell, August 7) has agreed to send periodic updates on her adventures.

Assistant Commander Steve

As well Assistant Commander Steve of the Parkdale Liberation Front has offered
to help with the occasional Post.

We will also see, we hope, various guest contributors. (As an aside we are currently in negotiations with, amongst others, Charles, the Toronto Zoo's Silverback gorilla, who we hope will host a series interviews to be entitled, City Hall, the Inside Poop!)

To date this Post, during its brief life, has received over a thousand page views. Thank you and thank you and you and you! It sure helps to know that we are not speaking to the abyss.


Mary Dowser writes:

      The Yucatan is a place I would choose to live were it not for the many complications in my life. Hugh Firmin once said to me that in the West we are addicted to Happiness while in the East it is Opium. Both are doomed to end in sadness. Of course he was speaking in and of a different time. Hugh was guilt ridden over his failure to answer the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. He was, poor man, in love the Consul's ex-wife Yvonne. Perhaps that is what drew us together, the shared sadness of unrequited love. I shall never know. He has faded from me now, as I knew he would.
      Merida is a busy city of almost a million souls. The Spanish here is uniquely accented and Mayan influences are abundantly in evidence. The climate is serene, although one is liable to get blown away by a hurricane or swamped by a tidal wave. Still, for now, it suits my restless spirit, to sojourn here, to stay for awhile. The Santa Anna is wonderful and there I buy whatever I need to sustain myself.
     I rise early, with the sun and bathe while my coffee steeps. There are birds in my small patio and I must learn their names. I wonder if they are like me restless and yet resting here awhile. What shall I write, I say to myself? I shall write what I shall write whether it be trite or bright or simply nothing at all. Perhaps there might be some small pearl of wisdom or some anecdote of interest. If so all the better for I fear that the worst sin of the writer is to be found boring.

      My purpose in stopping here is to learn Spanish. Hugh suggested it. My plan is eventually to continue on to Chiapas. I have written the EZLN, that is the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, to offer my extraordinary word processing skills to the revolution. I desperately await a favourable response. In the meantime I occupy myself with my Memoir (Notes from the Quick Fingers of a Championship Typist) in the morning, my Spanish lessons in the afternoon. I shop daily in the Santa Anna.
     In the evening a certain man by the name of Don Juan Matus sometimes comes to call and if he does not a bouquet of flowers appears at my door. On those nights a jaguar haunts the borders of my dream land. It is black as the deepest night and in its eyes I see all the suffering of the world.

MD

Pic of Mary Dowser by TVFP

Pic of Assistant Commander Stever by TVFP



Jack Layton 1950 - 2011

LXIV

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

                                                                     WS




(This image, which was originally posted to Flickr, was uploaded to Commons using Flickr upload bot on 02:27, 30 April 2011 (UTC) by Connormah (talk). )

The Parkdale Liberation Front

(I am, as ever, indebted to the always fragrant and ever resourceful Mary Dowser for the transcription of this conversation held on a park bench somewhere in Parkdale. Assistant Commander Steve is, of course, a pseudonym. He is in his mid-thirties, slim, athletic. His responses were spoken with a world weary wryness that I found appealing.)

"From a long term perspective it's  .  .  .  .  the people who are really powerful!"

Mao Zedong

TVFP:       Am I correct in assuming that Assistant Commander Steve is based on Subcomandante  Marcos of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation?

ACS:         Yeah, no. He's cool though! Seen the Nettie Wild doc. Awesome.

TVFP:        So who’s in charge? Presumably the Commander.

ACS:        Right. Annie.

TVFP:      Is it possible to speak to Annie?

ACS:       Well right now she’s got a bit of the G-20 blues. Her doctor just told her the arm didn't heal properly and they'll have to re-break and re-set it. She got kettled during a peaceful demonstration and when she objected one of the Bill Blair's Serve and Protect kiddies slashed her forearm with his night stick. I'm the default spokesperson for the PLF.

TVFP:      How did you arrive at the name? It sounds rather ominous.

ACS:       We were having pints over at the Cadillac after some tennis and then when the sun came  out we moved across the street for lunch on the patio at the Rhino. So that was the idea. Have some libations. Think of ways to get our share before the real GRAVY TRAIN leaves the station.

TVFP:      By the GRAVY TRAIN you mean over paid, lazy City workers.

ACS:        No. I mean the REAL GRAVY TRAIN.

TVFP:      Could you explain?

ACS:        It’s not about respect for the tax payer. That’s the scam, the shell game. The poll looks you in the eye, smiles and hands you the  means to impoverish yourself. Hello man, you've just joined the race to the bottom. You see it’s about the redistribution of wealth. The sixties and seventies in reverse. The money is gonna walk. In this case in a limo right up the 400. Private Benjamin as your neighbour. America, the new sweatshop capital of the world. There are people here can't wait to earn 8 bucks an hour, live in a third hand trailer, drink dirty water, watch their children grow up to be crackheads. That's where the Parkdale Liberation Front  comes in. Direct action. Siphon off some of the dough, keep it local. Improve the neighbourhood. Water slides for the kids. That sort of thing.

TVFP:       John F. Kennedy once said: those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

ACS:        That’s good. I like it. Who did he play for?

TVFP:       Do you have a manifesto?

ACS:        No, but we have some ideas that rock!

TVFP:      Would you care to share any of them?

ACS:        Car turnstiles on the Gardner Expressway. That was Annie’s idea. Hundreds  of

thousands of cars going through Parkdale every day. Direct action.

TVFP:       Car turnstiles?

ACS:        Awesome!

TVFP:      Charging how much?

ACS:        Buck a pop.

TVFP:      That would generate a lot of revenue.

ACS:        Except for queue jumpers. I hate queue jumpers. You jump the

queue. Ka-pow!  Paint ball splatter all over your windshield. Serves you right man!

TVFP:       So the PLF is prepared to take violent action.

ACS:        Yeah, even as we speak, we’re settin up a top secret water balloon factory!

(At this point in the conversation Assistant Commander Steve is interrupted by a call on his cell phone. It readily becomes apparent that he is talking to Commander Annie and that he is in some sort of trouble.)

ACS:        Okay, where were we?

TVFP:       You’re not really a revolutionary movement are you?

ACS:        You don’t think car turnstiles on the Gardner Expressway is revolutionary?

TVFP:       I suppose no more than collectivization or junk bonds.

(Note: I actually got it about 2AM and had a little chuckle as well as a sharp elbow from my transcription provider.)

ACS:        Right, got to go. Boss needs to be obeyed.

TVFP:      When’s the next meeting?

(Assistant Commander Steve laughs. He leaves the park bench, turns and shambles off and then begins to move at a faster pace. The dollar store toque comes off, the sunglasses go into the back pocket of his shorts. Then he is moving quickly, the long elegant lope of a distance runner. He turns and waves over his shoulder laughing and then kicks it up a notch. More to come on Assistant Commander Steve, Commander Annie and the Parkdale Liberation Front.)

Reseach assignment: Passport to Pimlico

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kErQAo5qlds

Research assignment: A Place Called Chiapas

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4513202692382805096#

Homeless Shelter Part I

     This cosy little nook is right in the heart of downtown Toronto on University Avenue just north of Queen. It is on the east side of the street next to two Temples of Justice; Osgoode Hall and the Court House. It is just a stone’s throw from the local Seat of Democracy, Toronto City Hall. As well it is close to a Palace of Culture, aka the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, # 5 on Christopher Hume’s ugliest City buildings of the 21^st century. It is just across the street from that Bastion of Wealth, The Canada Life Building.

     This functional homeless dwelling, with cardboard flooring, makes clever use of an existing structure, in this case a park bench, to create a rain and wind proof shelter. This is a cocoon that will stand up to Jack Frost. The blue tarp contrasts nicely with the sandstone exterior of the Court House. The conical shape of the structure creates a harmonious counterpoint to the negative space represented by the pedestrian sidewalk and the jarring verticals of the fire hydrant and garbage bin.
     Variation: a little further north, just south of Dundas, we have the opportune use of black plastic garbage bags and nylon twine. A very snug little niche.

     Variation: for a fair weather version of the above, behold a little corner above a stairwell, adjacent to the City’s great concrete icon of mediocrity, the CN Tower.

     Canada's homeless population is somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 people, while another 1.7 million residents struggle with "housing affordability issues," says an analysis of the latest research on shelter.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2007/06/26/shelter.html

What country has the lowest percentage of homeless people?

- It has to be Alaska North and South Pole because it’s so cold over there that people must live indoors.

- I am not real sure but I read something the other day about this and it is either Norway or Sweden because of the Government plan of giveing everybody a way of life to the point to where no one is working, something like what “They” want to do here in the USA. If “they” support the many poor then it is the same as ruleing them, a dictatorship at the least, because “they” can tell you what to do, when to do it, and have to have no reason why. Freedom isn’t Free.

- .  .  .  .  homeless people would die off during the winter season in most part of Norway and Sweden. That would annually decrease the population of homeless people – like a culling of sorts. It’s not considered a nice thing to let people freeze to death so, being a bit well off, there are relatively strong institutions for taking care of the homeless in those countries. I would guess the Vatican is a safe bet at 0%.