115 days

Three months is all it takes to throw the world upside down – what with natural disasters, economic turmoil, a ravaging war and a Dear Leader who continually loses and finds his marbles. A summer where our collective psyche pounded with newscast after newscast: London, Baghdad, Gaza, New Orleans. Three months where the hard questions of life were pondered: Jacko’s supposed innocence, holidaying teenagers going AWOL, countless celebrity shenanigans.

To paraphrase an English poet: People, people, wherefore art thou insane?

Idiocy ran rampant through the streets of my adopted home, as if the sudden hail of bullets created a new paradigm: the bodies pile high as gun-related crimes besiege Toronto scream the critics. Alas, poor misguided fools - violence is a fundamental aspect of humanity. When we became cognisant of what is “mine” and what is “yours,” the seeds of wanton desire were planted. Our ingenuity to utilise tools to placate the hunger ultimately leads to a symphony of destruction. The stagnant and humid air that hung heavily didn’t dilute the continuous howl of sirens that pierced our subconscious; instead, it became a welcome environment for nervousness to flourish.

We are living in tense times – the rat race that threatens to consume our very essence blinds us to truth. On a planet that will nonchalantly wipe out a swath of houses, homes and habitats; in a society that teeters dangerously at the precipice of utter chaos; in an age where the most powerful resource available to mankind is routinely censored, filtered and re-interpreted a hundredfold – endangered no longer applies to cuddly koalas and grandiose gorillas.

I make my not-so-triumphant return to the blogosphere ready to take on our ever-shrinking world with my Rant-o-matic5000 rested and refuelled. Batten down the hatches, boys and girls, a new wave of pomposity is on the horizon.