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Other than a couple of obscure references in Job, and one notably bright star leading three wise men to a manger, both the Hebrew and the Christian Bibles spend very little time naming any stars. I promised last week to suggest the 2nd reason the constellation Orion is important. Here's what got me thinking about this a few years ago.

There is a documentary called Occupation Dreamland, where U.S. soldiers (through an interpreter) were gathering intelligence from normal Iraqi citizens. The average citizen's speech patterns puzzled me. Soldier: "Hello ma'am. How are you today?" Iraqi woman: "Praise be to Allah, we have come through another night safely." Soldier: "We saw men coming and going from your house. Were these insurgents? As God is my witness, no insurgents came into my house last night (as we are watching night vision film of men coming and going from the house). Were they family members? No man came to our house last night. I swear to God, may he strike me dead if I am lying, praise be to Allah." And on and on. Every response, every sentence, every thought, was a reference to her deity. I understand the momentary "call to prayer" happens five times daily, but then you go back to normal, right? Does every thought have to be expressed within the rigid framework of a book? A book written by a man? Is every action, driven by a fealty which, in too many cases, is used to remove freedom of action from another group. When a religion, any religion, is taken to its fundamentalist extreme, I think this might be what happens. A thousand years ago, Iraq was the cultural and cerebral centre of the world. Libraries, medicine, universities, architecture, art, agriculture, standard of living ... and astronomy. Go back and look at the names of the stars in Orion? Mintaka, Alnilam, Saiph? They all have strange names to Western ears? It's because they were all named by Arabians. Europeans were huddled in mud huts while Iraqis were naming the stars. Go walk the streets of Baghdad today (if you dare) and view a society that might have been a thousand years ahead of the West going into the 20th century. What could have happened to drag them back to the Stone Age and keep them there for ten centuries? There are probably multiple reasons, but religious fundamentalism is on the list. I am confident that churches (all churches) bring tremendous value to the communities they serve. However, when the tenets of those churches move into politics, public policy, the courts, the schools, we travel a dangerous road. How will we know it might be happening? What might serve for us as the canary in the coal mine?

The repression of science.

You might hear politicians suggesting that the chemicals that were banned fifty years ago really weren't that bad. That burning 30 million years of stored carbon in one century is OK. Catch phrases like ... "drill, baby, drill". You are to ignore the hurricanes, the melting glaciers, the floods and wildfires. Climate change is a myth. Tightly packed populations really don't need the protection offered by vaccines, and no one should be forced to take one. This is all happening on our southern doorstep right now. It's not happening here yet, and I thank God for that. Five times daily.

Mmmm

Arsenio Hall used to have a bit; Things That Make You Go Mmmm? I had one of those moments last week when getting SWMBO coffee (and a butter tart). The Tim Horton's kiosk downtown on Wellington is on that brief stretch between Gordon and Wyndham. It has been under construction for what feels like the entire summer. Now our fine city has no problem hiring out to giant conglomerates such as Uncle Lou's Landscaping (both his nephews have new wheelbarrows) if they see an opportunity to crush sixty businesses for an entire summer. That for another day. For this project, I see new pavement, heavy equipment loaded on trailers, marks for line painting. Can this nightmare for local businesses really be ending? I pull into the drive-thru, and there is a new sign up beside the speaker. We will be closed next month for renovations. WHAT? I would never question the business acumen of Tim Hortons, but if the street in front of your store is going to be closed for two months, and you have a renovation requirement ... Mmmm?

My Optimum Week

First things first. Here's how to get twenty-five dollars for five minutes of work. Go to CanadianBreadSettlement.ca Fill out the form. Give them your email address. Hit submit. A nice man named Galen Weston will send you $25 for colluding with the bakeries on bread pricing. Walmart, Giant Tiger, Sobeys and Metro are still negotiating how much they are going to send you. Come back when you are done?

Meatball Math

Just like George Springer, I hit three doubles yesterday. That PC meatball deal was even better than I had thought. First, it was all four flavours. The boxes were 907 g and have sixty meatballs in each. We got three. Regular price is $19. They were on for $13 and you got 5000 points. So, a quarter pound meatball serving for me, half of that for SWMBO (eight and four meatballs respectively), cost us a grand total of $1.47! That's for both of us. Meatballs in a can of soup. Meatballs in spaghetti sauce. Meatballs in a crock pot with "Memories Of" peanut sauce. Meatballs over rice. Meatball subs. I can just hear SWMBO thanking me now for all the meatball dishes she is soon to experience!

Other than a couple of coleslaw requirements, I didn't need to shop this week. I steamed a head of cabbage and got ten big leaves off the outside. With that, I made suicide low carb cabbage rolls (brown rice, grated carrots, lean ground beef, hot peppers, jerk seasoning and lots of onions). Then I grated the rest and made my Aunt Glady's coleslaw recipe. As mentioned, I did close the meatball and grapeseed oil points offers for 17K; otherwise, I mostly golfed. I played six, nine hole rounds and shot 47, 50, 48, 45, 43 & 44. There is still a 39 out there somewhere in my future? SWMBO and my putter are skeptical.

This week, we saw the normal mid-month blues with a "just OK" flyer and offers. One thing that stood out was yard waste bags at sixty cents each with points. That is 2/3 of the current Homeless Depot sale price of $9.13 for 10. Ten percent continuity is offered at $200 but I am scrimping for one more week. I have meatballs. Here are the other deals I would add to your fridge list this week:

What I'm Reading

Mitch Fountain’s review of Odyssey (The Academy, #5)

5/5: Well well well. After trashing most of his previous works for always having the fatal flaw of boundless stupidity driving the plot, this book breaks the mould. Marvelous twisted plot, dense characters and a riveting ending. I could not put this book down. I suppose physicists doing collider experiments, which could end the universe, qualifies as stupid, but the odds are one in a billion. Lucky for humanity, an alien intelligence knows we are about to lose that bet. If only we weren’t enacting our own little scheming, money grubbing endeavours, the message would have been much more obvious.…

GoodreadsJack McDevitt

Mitch Fountain’s review of This Immortal

4/5: Earth has a problem. Well, actually it has many, mainly because it is a shell of what it used to be, following a nearly total nuclear exchange. Humanity is scattered among the stars, serving on the lower rungs of a caste system to a powerful alien empire. Earth has become an oddity used for alien vacation resorts and tourism. Now a powerful envoy has requested a tour of ancient Greek sites, but there is resistance faction that believes his mission will ultimately harm what is left of humanity. Their tour guide is an ancient mutant who must decide whether to protect his charge from this fact…

GoodreadsRoger Zelazny

We Are Watching

Invasion is just OK. Alien: Earth is just a notch better. Foundation has run out of gas. The Morning Show has settled in. Wire In The Blood on Britbox continues to impress.

Lynley on Britbox - Based on the Elizabeth George novels, this is BBC's second run at this material. A successful previous series ran from 2001 to 2008. This is a full reset, generating serious chemistry with tried-and-true actors in the lead roles. Also in a lead role is his car, a Jensen Interceptor, one of the most successful British car failures in history. I'll explain that next week. Rabbit hole alert.

... and finally

My Great Aunt Gladys owned and ruled (with an iron fist) a family restaurant called the K&W in Minden, ON during our teenage years. I worked there peeling potatoes and washing dishes during the summers I was fourteen, then fifteen. My sister worked there for the following two summers. Standard family fare, everything was wonderful. This recipe has survived for the fifty years since. Oh, and creamy coleslaw sucks.

3 lb shredded cabbage

2 large onions, thinly sliced

1 pepper (pick a colour) finely chopped

2 carrots grated

1 hot pepper very finely chopped (I added that)

Toss the above ingredients with 1/2 cup of sugar and rest for 30 minutes. While that is happening, in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil:

1 cup of vinegar

1/2 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon each pepper, dry mustard & celery seed

1 tablespoon of salt

Let that cool just slightly, then pour over the slaw and refrigerate for up to two weeks. I now cut the wet ingredients in half and simply add an 800-gram tub of store-bought coleslaw. There is some unpronounceable chemical in there that is delicious, and it adds a nice green tinge. Not a sentence you read in most recipes? Do not get the creamy slop! Selection (Food Basics) Traditional Coleslaw is vinegar based and works well. It's the ultimate diet food. Now we are going to have to make some pulled pork sandwiches. I hate when that happens.

Mitch and Maddie