These are the things you should invest in

Most people buy things they don't need with money they don't have to impress people they don't like.

Not that I wish you such a misfortune, but let's imagine for a second that you lost your job, status, money and all physical possessions: house, car, clothes, accessories, etc.

What would be left? Would you still be you?

The answer lies in what cannot be taken away in such a sweep:

1. Your physical health
2. Your good memories
3. The sincere relationships you have with decent people
4. Your knowledge and skills

These are the things that truly make you YOU.

These are the things that you carry along when the rest has been taken away.

These are the things you should invest in.

The Forgotten

I am not sure that Watchmen is that great of a movie, but I sure like the camera works and imagery. Oh! And the intro  to the Dylan song The Times They are a changin is awesome.

Made me wonder about alternate past and futures as Richard Bach liked to call them, but most of all about everything we forget so fast and how the little we remember is warped by the passage of time.

As Chuck Klosterman said: the strength of your memory dictates the size of your reality. 

Twiggy, 1967

Here's a quick list of people and things buried by the sands of time. Do you have any to add?

Supermodel
We already barely remember Cindy Crawford and Elle McPherson, supermodels of the '90s; but who can remember Twiggy? Yet she was the first international supermodel and a fashion icon of the '60s and '70s.



Scientist
R. Buckminster Fuller as you certainly don't recall, was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. He published over 30 books, invented the geodesic dome (you can admire on in Montreal by the way - the Biosphere on île Ste-Hélène was designed by Fuller as the US building for Expo 67) and was awarded an incredible number of patents. His book Critical Path remains a must read by any serious thinker.


Car

Duesenberg, 1935

The lavish Duesenberg was among the most popular luxury cars of the '30s as well as a status symbol in the United States and Europe, driven by the nobility, rich and famous like Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Al Capone, Greta Garbo, Howard Hughes, Mae West as well as members of the European royalty such as the Duke of Windsor.


Book
She, published in 1887 by British novelist H. Rider Haggard is a classic of the lost world genre. It sold 83 million copies in 44 languages, that's more than Da Vinci Code and twice as much as Harry Potter. Have you read it? Take a look at the most popular books of all time.


Music Band
The Backstreet Boys were all over the place in the '90s, and where are they now? Ok, ok, I know, they are on tour with fellow '90s boys band New Kids on the Block and they're even coming to Montreal on June 7th. But hey, it's an anecdote. Back in the days, these teens sold 130 million albums! 130 million f**ing albums!! That's more than Billy Joël, Britney Spears, Bryan Adams, Depeche Mode, Guns'N'Roses, Kiss, Pavarotti, Mettalica, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Scorpions, Eminem, The Doors, Iron Maiden, Prince, Van Halen, Bob Dylan, Coldplay, Duran Duran, Lady Gaga, Motleÿ Crüe, Oasis, Nirvana, Pearl Jam or REM...

Airport
50 years ago, Gander Airport in Newfoundland was the busiest airport in the world and was lavishly renovated in 1959 to be Canada's flagship airport and impress the rest of the planet. Today, it sees only cargo and local flights. See my previous post The Forgotten Airport

Sea

Remains of the Aral Sea

The mighty Aral Sea in Central Asia was once the 4th largest lake in the world. In the 1960's the soviets decided to divert its waters to grow cotton and cereals in the desert. Today, it lost 90% of its surface while its salinity increased exponentially. The surrounding landscape is littered with dying land and rusting ships clouded in dust storms.

Billionaire 
Andrew Carnegie was a steel magnate who dominated the US business world of the late 19th and early 20th century. Technically, he was not a billionaire, but his fortune evaluated at $485 millions would be the equivalent of roughly $300 billions in today's money. A Scottish immigrant who started from scratch, Carnegie rose to success through his intelligence and hard work. At a very young age, he decided that he would spend half his life amassing wealth, and the other half giving it all away. And he did! Those having read Napoleon Hill's Think & Grow Rich will remember him talking profusely about the old Scott. He is also mentioned by Jim Rohn in his book Living and Exceptional Life, but the vast majority of the world has no idea who he was.

Actress

Ursula Andress

Ursula Andress was the first Bond Girl. She played alongside Sean Connery in the iconic Dr. No (1962). Although Jean-Paul Belmondo is one of my favorite actors, I must admit I am quite jealous of the sabbatical he took to sail around the world with the beautiful Swiss actress and her famous white bikini.

Author & Journalist
Joseph Kessel was probably the most influential writer and journalist of the French speaking World during the 20th century. The guy was everywhere: The Irish Civil war, WWI, with the artists of L'entre deux guerres in Montmartre, the Bolshevik tide and the fall of the tzars, the rise of Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, WWII, the French Résistance, and any significant event of the 20th century. Hell, he even managed to get the 1st visa ever issued by the newly formed state of Israel. Yes, he was first there too. He was elected at the prestigious French Académie Française and published over 80 books. At one point in time, he had met everyone that mattered and rubbed elbows with the stars, royalty, spies, army officers, artists, chefs and of course, renegades, mobsters and outlaws. Personally, I consider his classic Tous n'étaient pas des anges one of the best adventure books of all time. Yet, try to find any of his work in bookstores today. Good luck.

Airline
Pan Am (Pan American World Airways) once was a cultural icon of the 20th century and the unofficial flag carrier of the United States. It went bust in 1991.

And there are thousand other kings, queens, cities, cultures, civilization, languages, empires and conquerors once believed to be eternal and whose names are now forgotten.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away". 

- Percy Bysshe Shelley (and it was quoted in Dead Poets Society, another forgotten movie).

It has been said that we are alive as long as other people remember and tell our stories.

What about you? Who will remember you? 

Reverse Thinking on the Stolen Day

Let's say that instead of having a normal day today, you just didn't wake up this morning and slept until tomorrow morning. Or that some kind of Adjustment Bureau folks just erased the whole day.

Ultimately, what kind of a difference would that unique stolen day make in your whole life? After all, if you live to be 80 years old, that makes a total of 29 220 days.

I think this one should be analyzed in reverse.

If removing a single day from your life doesn't make a difference, then you're not living intensely enough.

Life is just that: a sum of individual days.

If every day is awesome, it is impossible to have a bad life.

So, make every single day count. Starting today.

How good is your coffee?

Every time you visit a business, be it to buy a product, sell your services or apply for a job, it is always a good idea to try to read between the lines and feel what the people you meet aren't telling you.

Take a look at the employees: Young? Old? Cheerful? Tired? Looking at the carpet?

What does the place looks like: Old dusty furniture? Ugly expensive stuff? Bland and corporate? Messy or structured in an obsessive-compulsive way?

I could go on and on, but there's one easy and fail-safe way to judge a business: its coffee.

Trying a company's coffee is akin to visiting a restaurant restroom to get an idea of its kitchen salubrity.

If the coffee is bad, it can only mean 3 things: 

1. They hire dumb people. I mean, how hard is it to make relatively good coffee?

and/or

2. They tolerate mediocrity and don't care about drinking bad coffee all day. It's just the way it is.

and/or

3. They are cheap bastards saving nickels and dimes on the coffee they serve their employees and clients.

In any case, it's off to a bad start.

***

For all of you coffee lovers, go and raise the bar.

If you're a small group and want to simplify your life, try small automated machines like the Nespresso or Jura.

If you're purists, get a real espresso machine, a water filter and some great coffee in beans.

Here in Montreal, the best place to get great coffee and espresso machines is Terra Café. Carlo Granito, the owner, is not only a real coffee aficionado, but his passion is contagious and he gives really good service.

Ugly People All Over The Country

 

We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter--exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place--the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.
 - Mark Twain

It's election time again in Canada. 

What a great moment to ponder not only about the broken promises of so many politicians, but even more so about the fact that the vast majority of voters don't remember (and don't care) what those unkept promises were. The best argument against democracy, said Winston Churchill, is a 5 minutes conversation with the average voter.

This year again, I will vote for 2 reasons: The first one is that I'd rather cast my vote for what I consider the best part of a bad choice (selecting the tallest midget) rather than trust the rest of the population to do it for me. The second and most important one is that it will give me the right to bitch for the next 4 years or so. Because if you don't even care to vote in a democracy, you don't have the right to complain. 

There's one thing that amazes me though and that is, in my opinion, a powerful testimony to the fact that our politicians are old timers stuck in the past (even the young ones) and that the voters are a bunch of sheep (I was about to say morons, but I'll keep it to myself): those damn blue, red and orange placards all over the country. 

My God! How low can we go? Ugly people's faces placarded from Newfoundland to Vancouver. All of them with fake smiles, lousy haircuts and cheap three-piece suits. Beyond the visual pollution and the insult to our intelligence, what a f**ing waste of money and unnecessary pollution.

Let me finish by quoting H.L. Menken:  « Democracy is also a form of religion ; it is the worship of jackals by jackasses. »

Clown Country

I am in the process of reading The Post-petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook by Albert Batès. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there, even if I don't agree with the author's vision of the World that I find a bit simplistic. But hey, I don't have half his credentials so who am I to judge?

I couldn't resit sharing this quote I found in the book: 

The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet its inhabitants are strikingly unhappy. Accordingly, we present to the rest of mankind, on a planet rife with suffering and tragedy, the spectacle of a clown civilization. Sustained on a clown diet rich in sugar and fat, we have developed a clown physignomy. We dress like clowns. We move about a landscape filled with cartoon buildings in clown-mobiles, absorbed in clownish activities. We fill our idle hours enjoying the canned antics of professional clowns. We perceive God to be an elderly comedian. Death, when we acknowledge it, is just another pratfall on the boob tube. “Bang! You’re dead!” – James Howard Kunstler, 2005

Oh, and for my fellow Canadians always looking for ways to laugh at the Americans (little kids always bitch about big boys - usually behind their backs), we're not  that better here than in the States.  

The Love Brigade in NYC Subway

Hats off to these guys.

I'm seriously thinking about buying a megaphone and having the same kind of fun every morning on the Montreal Subway.