Guy Fawkes Night

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd (or by God's mercy)
With a dark lantern and burning match.

The Gunpowder Treason

There was a movie that a friend of mine lent to me while I was living in London that had some really interesting things to say politically, morally, and ethically. The movie, V for Vendetta is made from a graphic novel (an adult comic book) and is very much in the style of movies made from such sources, it is dark, highly stylized, and does not follow normal rules of physical motion (people appear and disappear without moving, return from the dead, seem to fly across great distances in no time at all, etc.).

The movie is set in a modern day London which is ruled by a harsh, authoritarian government which comes to power through questionable means and which maintains power through the use of fear and brutal enforcement of draconian laws. Personal freedoms and human rights have all but disappeared in the wake of the horrible events that gave rise to a highly nationalist and xenophobic government.

Into this hellish world comes an avenger. V, as he is known, is a crusader who has come to remind his fellow countrymen what they have surrendered to the powers that be and to let them know that no government has the right to rule through fear and oppression. V is only ever seen in the guise of Guy Fawkes and the British Celebration of Guy Fawkes night features prominently throughout.

There are shades of Thomas Jefferson in the quote most people remember from the movie:

"People should not fear the government. The government should fear its people."

Now, I was living over in the UK during the later years of the Bush-Cheney administration so I saw this not so much as an indictment of the the British, but more as a general warning about letting your government take away from you the rights that we have fought against those in power for so many years to win! I was constantly being asked how I could countenance the erosion of personal freedoms that were being foisted upon the American people.

We were being spied upon by the government, we were being lied to to induce us to allow the administration to start two ill-conceived and unpopular wars. (Okay, there was general consent that we should attack Afghanistan after 09/11, but the reasons and the support for invading Iraq was never as clear.)

The result of the November elections of last year should have been a turning point. It seemed to be. "Change" was what we were promised. Unfortunately, that change has been neither as copious nor as rapid as one might have hoped. I do not in any condone or support violent revolution, but a revolution is what is needed nonetheless!

A revolution of fed-up Americans who do the unthinkable: that get active in local affairs, an American public who take a genuine and active interest in politics, an American public who can be bothered to show-up at the polls and voice their opinion.

As Thomas Jefferson said:

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

Wherever you are today, I hope that you will find some peaceful way to at least give your government a brief pause for thought!

Don Bergquist - November 05, 2009 - Lakewood, Colorado, USA

Guy Fawkes

Happy birthday to my friend Gayla

Happy anniversary to Gwen & Dale

ADOLAT

This weekend I stopped into a shop to pick-up a couple things I needed and there was this cool little doo-hickey on the counter that caught my attention.

It was a disk made of cardboard with a swirl pattern printed on it. On top of that was a sheet of some sort of Lucite or plastic or something that had a different kind of a swirl pattern printed on it. Set in the middle, serving as a pivot for the two was a faceted piece of plastic or Lucite or something that you could look through to get a sort-of bug’s eye view of the things around you.

Or you could spin the two discs relative to each other and get psychedelic patterns to show. It was pretty cool looking and I played with it a while and then put it down. Then while waiting for the clerk to finish ringing-up my order, I picked it up again and played with it some more…

My reverie was interrupted (when I had picked it up for the third time) by the voice of the clerk. “Ohh! Shiny. You want me to ring that up? You obviously want it!”

“No, just looking at it.” Was the lame response I gave.

“Yeah, I have been doing that all day myself.” he confided. “It must be my ADOLAT.”

“Excuse me?” I asked puzzled.

“You know: Attention Deficit” at which point he turned and looked suddenly at the back of the store as if I had been forgotten “Ooh! Look At That!”

I have to admit. It was one that I had not heard before. We chuckled, finished the transaction and I left; a new thing to snicker at occasionally in my bag one-liners.

Wherever you are today, I hope that you have something to chuckle at!

Don Bergquist – November 02, 2009 – Lakewood, Colorado, USA

Happy birthday to my cousin Michael

Happy birthday to my uncle Richard

All Souls Day

Halloween Costume

Every year I try to make my Halloween costume something humorous; a visual pun, a political statement, something unexpected. This year in planning my costume I had thought about going as Sarah Palin’s speech writer.

The gag was that I was going to go with a bag full of slips of paper, each with a random comment on them: “I don’t want to talk about that let’s talk about energy,” “I can see Russia from my house,” “Lipstick,” “I’m a maverick…” that sort of thing. Then when ever anyone asked me anything I would reach into the bag and grab a handful of them and read them off as my answer.

Unfortunately, it was pointed out to me that with speeches as rambling and poorly constructed as he has there was no way she used a speech writer so the gag kind of fell apart.

Then, talking to my sister on afternoon, we hit upon a new idea. Off to my scanner and PhotoShop I went. After scanning and altering some Monopoly® money with pictures of myself (and Saga for the Million-Dollar Bill) I printed off stacks and stacks of money which I gave out freely at the party I went to.

“Buy yourself something nice, like a car company.” Was one of my lines I used. “Here’s your bailout fund. Pay it back when you are back on your feed. (Nudge. Nudge. Wink. Wink.)” Was another.

My costume? Timothy Geithner.

For the people who knew who that is, it was a pretty funny costume. Oddly, it was the children who liked it most! One little girl kept coming back asking if she could have some more money. A future CEO, no doubt!

Perhaps I went a little overboard, though. I am not at all sure that I needed to print a full ream of paper into money. I still have a good portion of it left over. (And when have you ever heard that about a government program!?)

Wherever you are today, I hope that you’re having a lovely day!

Don Bergquist – November 01, 2009 – Lakewood, Colorado, USA

Happy birthday to my friend Heather

Happy birthday to my friend Terry

All Saints Day

Fall Back

I hope you remembered to set your clocks back! (Unless you live in a portion of the world that didn't go to Daylight Savings Time back in the spring.)

Most of the US "Falls Back" to standard time effective this morning. Enjoy that extra hour of sleep! (I don't, personally, set my clocks back until today... that way I get my extra hour of sleep tomorrow morning and I can enjoy it on a work day!)

Don Bergquist - November 01, 2009 - Lakewood, Colorado, USA