Thinking back again on another tangent, I believe I had kind of a naive impression of him more than an opinion based on any solid info. I didn't know very much about him. I like to look things up about favorite bands or musicians, actors, or authors. Important people. Real people I find interesting, or creative, or who had done great things. He lacks all of those things, so I knew only the basics about him. Like I knew he had a lot of money (that turns out he didn't earn), and a terrible show that didn't interest me even slightly. He and his family made the news a bit while they fumble fucked their way through their miserable lives.

I also have a very distant and vague memory of my father laughing at him when he saw him on the TV. Not in the way a person would spontaneously laugh over something funny. Laughing at how over the top ludicrous of a human being he was. The way someone would laugh at an inappropriate offensive joke, or if the person walking beside them stepped on a fresh dog turd.

Those are memories I have of him in my household from when I was quite young up until he swindled his way into politics. I would say that to me he was sort of a caricature of a human being that appeared on the TV screen from time to time. Once he was gone from the screen I never thought about him at all until next time he did something stupid enough to be on TV.

Instead of succumbing to the needs of his toxic narcissistic tendencies, he could have lived out the end of his failure of a life, shitting himself and mumbling nonsense in the shadows of some gaudy abandoned rundown skyscraper. The T fallen from the sign long ago. No one left in his life but maybe a flunky or two. Or better yet, he might have been incarcerated for the heinous crimes he has more than likely committed. In the end, his death would have been barely noticed. Would have been one of those, oh shit, I didn't even realize that guy was still alive! A front page sidebar headline for a day, at best. Maybe a brief story in the back pages about what a fucking piece of garbage he was. We can only dream of alternate timelines.

https://thingsleftunsaid.ca/grateful

I bet most of what they have been working on as a team has been based on the assumption that it would turn out exactly this way. I picture them maybe briefly pondering the possibilities of a logical and fair deal for both countries, but likely not wasting too much precious time on it.

They would have been like, ok then, now that we've figured out what would be best for both countries, lets forget about that, and move on to things more likely to occur with this fucking failure of a regime.

We sent the best of our best to the table, to meet with the worst of their worst. Our people went there to make beneficial deals. They met with our (supposed) allies who were sent to the table only to take and take. Likely a bunch of unqualified bootlicker morons like most in the regime. Their boss says, lick, and they say, where exactly would you like the licking to occur (wink wink), oh glorious bully, and for how long shall our licking go on?

Forever subservient to the dilapidated old clown who really needs to specify which Americans he means when he says America First. He certainly doesn't mean, and has never meant, the majority of the American population. America First is not about the working class consumers who suffer the most for his endless failures. Most likely, like everything else he has ever done, it is all about the top one percent, the richest of the rich. They come first, above all. Or maybe to him there really is simply no one other than them.

America First also means, fuck (over) everyone else on the entire planet. A fair deal is a fail. Generosity is a fail. Helping is a fail. Really anything contributing to the success of humanity, that a real world leader in his position should be striving to achieve in 2026, is a complete fail to him. The deal has to be maximum taking, taking, taking, for himself, the regime, and for the billionaires they serve, or no deal at all.

I've noticed quite a lot of similarities between what he is trying to 'accomplish' in America, and what The Taliban has 'accomplished' in Afghanistan. He wants to be dictator of an isolated and feared country that chooses warfare over diplomacy. Bombs for the enemy, bad deals for the ally, and fuck all citizens worldwide, including those he claims to be 'a leader of'. He wants 'those people' to be desperate, endangered, broke, uneducated, silenced, hungry, diseased, scared, and to be stripped of all their rights.

And yet he still has supporters. ? ? They must be excited about the ballroom they will never get near. The ballroom with a million dollar cover charge, mandatory orifice and strip search at the entrance for staff and guests. How much are they spending on gold paint? Will they make the statue of him look as though he's healthy, or will they make it look like the unhealthy sagging blob that he actually is? Have the designers and builders ever designed and built anything before? Are they familiar with 1940's Germany decor? Will the merch table be in the lobby or in the corner of the ballroom? Fucking ballroom. Who even uses that word anymore? Like, what next, will there be a cotillion in the ballroom? Is there really a secret bunker under it? A gigantic sealed tomb for the scared man-baby leader to hide in. If it's secret then why does everyone know about it? How thick are the walls? Will it have a door like a bank vault? Will they sneak him in there in a catering truck?

Even when presented with solid evidence; deny that more of an iceberg exists beneath the surface than what can be seen. View life as either black or white with no in between. Cancel critical thinking. Don't listen. Don't read. Ignore, hide, or change the data.

Measure success by how much Power and The Dollar Almighty a person has taken, by any means. If you haven't achieved this (false) success for yourself, admire those who have, and elect them as your leaders. Let them decide who should have, and who should have not (if you're not a billionaire it won't be you that they consider worthy of having anything). Completely ignore how much pain and suffering their leadership causes.

My event is getting quite close. Some time ago I decided to do the 5k this year instead of the half marathon, so I changed my registration. I guess decided is not entirely the right word to use. Had to decide to. This will be my first live event 5k.

Back when I first started running, when everything was shutting down for covid restrictions, I did some virtual 5k events. Register, get a running kit and finisher medal in the mail, then do the run whenever wherever, then submit tracker data to them to prove you ran. Be in the stats. It was as ok thing for a beginner runner I suppose.

Not at all like lining up in person with a crowd of people. Pictures and video being taken by photographers on the ground, and with a drone whizzing overhead. Lining up at the start line instructions being spoken through a speaker (that no one ever seems to even hear, let alone care about or follow). Music blaring.

The gun goes off.

Some oblivious dude you are passing blows their nose on your leg. Smelly people. Extremely fit and fast, wrinkle free young people, floating along effortlessly at an unreal pace, like they are made out of liquid. They look like they are in a picture in a fitness magazine or a shoe ad. Groups of slow people blocking most of the road, who have to talk to each other the entire race. One of them is wearing fuzzy deer antlers for some reason.

There is always a handful of runners who look like they might die from exertion less than 1/2k in after the gun. They registered and showed up with zero prep because 'running is easy' or 'I ran all the time in high school'. That's always really insane to see when they are wearing a full or half marathon bib.

Police and event volunteers on bikes directing traffic because a lot of locals can't just stay home for a few extra hours one Saturday morning a year. Crowds of cheering people on the edge of the road with signs. Dodge a puddle of vomit. Some guy pissing into the ditch. I haven't seen anyone shit themselves... yet (myself included… lol). Yes, virtual race is not like an actual race.

Not like going for a 5k before sunrise by myself.

omg that sounds so unappealing and not fun... lol. Why the hell am I doing this? I don't know. Because I'm 50+ and I can, I suppose. It is out of my comfort zone. It actually is fun. It is the reason we began heading north for vacation once a year every year since 2021.

I got a virus some months ago. The illness had only minor symptoms, so I never went to the doctor or got tested. I think it was covid... again. Slight sore throat for a day or two, occasional coughing spell for some days. Tiredness beyond normal. Then I started to really struggle with running. I was becoming terribly fatigued and out of breath long before I should have been. I was doing 5k runs every other day all winter. Running is never easy, but I could finish a 5k without too much difficulty. When I had that very minor illness suddenly I couldn't manage 2k without feeling like I had to sit down. I was having to walk to catch my breath, especially on hills. It was frustrating more than anything. It lingered for a long time. I do feel better now. The reason I had to change my event was that I felt like it was getting too close to get in enough prep to be ready for a half.

My prepping for this event is quite different than prepping for a half. It is sticking to the eating plan, and is about intensity more than endurance. For a few weeks now I have been doing all cardio wearing a 12 pound weighted vest. It forces me into good posture, and good running form. Engages core. I intend to keep wearing it for all cardio things until near mid September. Then I plan to do a few 7k runs with no vest. Then no running at all for a week before the event. My hope is that I get used to the extra weight. My body will physically adapt to that extra weight, and get stronger. And I hope there will also be a mentally getting used to the extra weight. This is totally an experiment, and I have no idea what the outcome will be. No idea how the race will go.

I failed so badly at provincial politics that the only way I knew what was going on at their meetings was from bootleg recordings. Me and the leader of the conservative party would sit in his car listening to them. Then I quit. I have nothing better to do right now, so I decided to try and get my silly old job as mayor back. I just need something to do while I sort out what it is that I really want to do with my life.

I should be able to distract the voters easily enough. Make them forget what I did last time. Everyone who isn't me has the IQ of sloths, and the attention span of fruit flies. I will blame everything on the woman who took over the job after I abandoned it. Like the failing economy, even though that is a worldwide issue caused by an unstoppable unnecessary war started by a withering senile dictator, and his incompetent cartoonish war department leader. I will blame her for the housing crisis even though that is something that has been slowly and steadily creeping up over the horizon for decades, and everyone in all levels of government ignored it.

I won’t even need to learn anything about politics. Me and my people will get A.I. to figure out what people want. Then we can use that information to fabricate half truths about my opponents, and create lofty goals that I'll never achieve so I have things to say at my loyalist gatherings and press conferences. The possibilities are endless!

I'll ride the Liberal wave that is sweeping the nation right back into my old office. I'll be a celebrity!

p.s. my enemy just endorsed my opponent, and gave me a popularity boost! omg I love me. <3

I didn't believe it at first. I treated the stories as though coming from an attention starved weirdo with too much money buying his way into the spotlight. I thought the news was as fake as his trillionaire status was. But it turns out that some of their space junk actually did hit the moon. It wasn't a planned impact. Maybe they should never be allowed to launch anything into space ever again. Like what are they going to 'accidentally' hit next?

South of the border it seems that the leader of the department of health has slightly altered his idiotic views on the MMR vaccine. He must have learned things about how the vaccine works. Perhaps someone told him it is the reason measles was on a decline from the 60’s until recently. In the future people in top level government jobs should know things about the job they are taking on.

But hey, he now has a cooking show. I wonder if he will point out (with that almost angelic magical voice of his) that if he was doing his fucking job instead of trying get likes on Youtube maybe the salad he wants you to make wouldn't give you diarrhea. Omg I wish someone would make a song, or at least a montage, with him saying diarrhea.

The elderly hypocrite suddenly became mad at how oil companies are profiting too much from the war that he shouldn't have started and now can't stop. Was saying things about how it is effecting the price at the pumps. Does he even know what a gas pump is? I have doubts. I have no doubt that his soft little hands have never touched a gas pump.

Oil companies have been robbing nearly everyone on the entire planet for decades. Seems weird that he is suddenly pretending to care about it. What about all the other corporations and billionaires (himself included) that are stealing from the poor for their own profit every second of every day, and have been for decades?

Him suddenly noticing the price of gas could be just more evidence that the dementia is getting closer to the point where they will no longer be able to stuff his gelatinous tired old body into a chair, and then prop the whole mess up behind a desk in front of the cameras. The shit that spews out of his miserable old face has been hovering around 80-90% incoherent for a decade or more. There will come a tipping point when the unstoppable progression of dementia causes that typical (mostly incoherent) to become 100% gibberish. But the race is still close? He and his incompetent regime could still have total control after November?

Most days when I listen to music on the way there I usually end up with one of the songs stuck in my head. One morning I had a rather strange and unexpected thing happen. When I got to the edge of the parking lot at work I decided to sit for a moment on the picnic table and finish the song that was playing, which happened to be Empty by Metric.

I removed my phone from my pocket before sitting down. Right after I sat down I unlocked it with my fingertip so I could check and see how much of the song was remaining. Just as the screen illuminated a lyric in the song played, “ask the line on your face what the line on your hand meant”. Not only did I hear it as it was playing, but the lyrics were also showing up below the little picture of the album cover. I also read the words while hearing them.

I had heard the song likely a hundred or more times over the years but I hadn't heard it in awhile. All day at work I could not stop thinking about that one lyric. It was not something that ever stood out to me on previous listens, and I found myself wondering if it even would have stood out this time if I hadn't sat down just then and read the words on my phone while they were being sung.

The lyric seemed to have an implication that maybe (most likely) it would not have had to me earlier in life. Sort of like regret, or like I had missed something fundamental along the way. At the same time though I felt a kind of freedom in knowing there is fuck all I can do about any of it now. The past can haunt me all it wants, but I can't change it. I can only live with the consequences of my bad decisions and enjoy the rewards of the good ones. Try to learn from all of it, and hopefully use what I have learned to make better decisions in the present.

It is funny to me now when I think back to my life in that tiny village. It sometimes feels like I'm recalling a dream, or like past life regression or something. It is just so far removed from my life now here in the city, and is now so far back in time. Another lifetime. Back to a time before the internet existed. Back before cable TV, Nintendo and cell phones. I think back sometimes to that time in general, and recently to one night in particular.

Me and a couple of other boys were all the same age. We would meet up regularly, and find things to do. I was always the quiet one, and I was smaller than the other two. Added to my being small and quiet, the contrast seemed more when they occasionally could be kind of loud and hyper. Sometimes troublemakers. Gave me a feeling a lot of the time that I was along for the ride more than a participant in the action.

The night in particular that I was recently thinking about was sort of an unusual one. We had learned earlier in the day that there was going to be a meteor shower. It was mostly just a typical night, but when sunset began we were riding our bikes around the edge of the village trying to find an open space suitable to watch the meteor shower. Everywhere we tried seemed too near to tall trees, or to sources of light.

One of my friends suggested the field that was just beyond his backyard. We made our way back to his place, and let our bikes fall in the grass before proceeding from the yard out into the field. Daylight was almost entirely gone from the sky by then.

The field had been plowed a few days prior to that night. The furrows cut into the soil were deep even ruts like waves on a lake. They were cracked and hardened from sunny dry days after it was plowed. There was not even a slight breeze, and not a cloud in the sky. If the moon was illuminated that night it would have been less than half, or just a sliver near the horizon. I do not recall. I do recall it being exceptionally dark that night. The kind of deep darkness that can only happen when the moon is either not in sight at all, or not visible enough to be obtrusively bright. Conditions could not have been a more perfect for a meteor shower.

When I got about twenty meters or so out into the field I felt, and said it seemed far enough. Being the smallest of the three of us, traversing over those deep furrows was tough going. From farther out in the field they called me names and laughed (lightheartedly really), and urged me on. It was not as hard for them, and they always had the tendency to take things to another level I suppose. They were likely far enough, but went farther anyway.

The field was not huge, but was big enough that when we got to where they stopped, which ended up being about the middle of it; the lights in house windows and street lights just looked like tiny dots of light on the horizon. I looked back, but couldn't pick out the backyard that we had entered the field from. It made me slightly uneasy.

A few minutes later I rejoined them. They were sitting on the crest of a furrow. I was out of breath at that point, but it settled fairly quickly. Then one of them had the idea to lay right down with the back of his knees over top of the crest of one furrow, and then the next furrow became a backrest. It was perfectly designed for us to lay in. So there we were. Three young boys laying in the middle of a plowed field in the dark, staring up at the sky while chattering away. Young boys being boys, as they say.

Then the first meteor silently cut through the sky almost directly above our gaze, and then disappeared as quickly as it came.

All three of us instantly went silent, and became completely still. That silence and stillness is the most thought provoking part of this memory. Like our breaths slowed, and perhaps we were not even blinking as much for fear that we might miss one. It could have been the first and only time we were together and were still and silent like that. When I think back to that moment in time from now I feel like it held a deeper meaning than we would have been able to articulate, or even be aware of.

To us then we were just boys having an adventure, watching a cool thing happen in the night sky. But when it silenced us, and stopped us, it was like we forgot ourselves for however long we remained there that night. When I look back I see those three young boys laying together in a field in the dark, held to the surface of this planet by gravity. Literally, on the edge of, and gazing into infinity, watching ancient objects from cold dark space violently burning up when entering our layer of atmosphere. I couldn't even take a guess at how long we were laying out there that night, or how many we saw. I do know though that we were transformed for the moments we were there. We had forgotten ourselves, and had become part of something much larger than us.