cktimes.ca Archives for Notes from a Garage


Notes from a Garage

With John Gardiner

Doing good deeds, good news from the front, new fangled technology and a little confusion on my part

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

I got into an interesting conversation with my sister's boyfriend over the holidays. Told him about my belief that we're all here to try to make the world better for others. I'm not sure he understood me, but I really do think that's what it's all about. It's like my good friend Maureen Geddes who got the ball rolling on the Pay It Forward campaign of a few years ago. You do something nice for someone and they pass it along and they pass it along and they pass it along – and so on and so on. It's a really good plan. Too bad we didn't really get it going here in Chatham-Kent. Too bad we didn't let those good deeds just go rolling out around the world and just keep spreading and spreading. It's sort of what I'm trying to do with cktimes – create positive vibes and let them ripple out across the globe. Wouldn't that be nice.

You know, I heard the mother of a Canadian serviceman who's serving in Afghanistan on the CBC recently. She wondered why the media are so quick to report on tragedies associated with the peacekeeping mission, but are much more reticent to report on the good things our soldiers are doing in that war torn country. I mentioned this to my wife and she said it's too bad we couldn't get "good news" stories from Afghanistan into cktimes somehow – just to show that it's not all doom and gloom. I know things look bleak in many parts of the world, but there are good things happening there – you can be sure of that. Because sometimes when things are at their lowest, that's when the human spirit rises to the occasion and makes good things happen. I believe that and wish I could make cktimes rise up and out of Chatham-Kent to spread its good news message to a troubled world.

So, we finally took the plunge and traded in our 30-year-old TV for one of these new fangled ones making the rounds these days, and, believe me, it'll take me the next 30 years to figure out how to work it. And it took huge research to make this TV purchase because you no longer just buy a TV. There are literally hundreds, dare I say thousands, of types of TVs on the market – a dizzying array of makes and models and plasma and LCD and HD and digital and 1080p and 1900dpi and heaven knows what else. It was truly a mindboggling experience. And as I'm checking out all these TVs, I notice that they all have this pixelization thing going on – in other words, you can sort of see a trail across the screen when the picture changes from one image to another. I ask the saelsman about this. He says it takes the new TV sets a tiny amount of time to refresh their picture and that's what you're seeing. Funny, I remark, I haven't noticed anything like that on our old TVs. "Oh, the old vaccum tube TVs don't have to refresh," he says. Hmmmmm. And the new TV will last 10-12 years, while the old one lasted 30. Hmmmmmm. And who's hornswaggling who here? Seems to me we're taking a bit of a step backwards in technology here, but what do I know? I think if we'd all been using e-mail and someone had invented a telephone, we'd have been amazed. But we're a strange bunch – that's for sure. And you likely didn't read that here first.

As I grow older, many things about our world confuse me. For example, how did some people end up being owners while other people are just tenants – some are bosses while others are workers – some are rich while others are poor. I sort of understand how this happened historically, but fail to understand why we allow it to continue in this day and age. In the old days, it all depended on who was physically strongest. In ancient societies, for obvious reasons, the strongest was the boss and was rich. But in today's world, I don't get it. When some megalomaniac like Adolph Hitler comes along, how does he get people to support him? And when he starts really veering out of control, why don't the people around him just refuse him? After all, Hitler was a relatively small man – he couldn't have very well beaten the crap out of everyone around him if they said no. Same with any of these dictators or other bad people. How do they gain control and keep it when they're so obviously out of control. I don't get it and suspect I never will. Anyway, just another of life's little mysteries.

I hope 2007 is off and running for you. I find it weird to even write 2007. I mean, I used to write 1967 and 1977 and that seemed more reasonable. Pretty science fictiony writing 2007. Anyway, hope you're well and that things are going okay for you. Take care and remember, "Hew to the line; let the chips fall where they may."




John Gardiner is a 25-year-veteran of the community newspaper business, but he is also a prolific writer of moralistic short fiction he refers to as "emotional thoughtscapes" or "adult fables". Samples of his fiction can be found at:

He has also produced a noteworthy piece of humanist philosophy which can be found at: http://www.xs4all.nl/~aboiten/ad502.htm He welcomes comments on his work.