Trifecta, Week 48 -- Sinister -- UPDATED

I'm back with another offering for this week's Trifecta Challenge. This week's word is:

SINISTER

3: singularly evil or productive of evil

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Politics as Usual

I've been watching the American elections more closely than ever before. What can I tell you, it is quite entertaining.
 Which is not a good thing. Say anything you'd like about entertainment, it does not propel us forward. Sure I have lightbulb moments that help me with my angst and love life, but mostly I'm just trying to avoid doing stuff: Cleaning my house, weeding my gardens, teaching my kids, advocating for change.


Today on CBC Radio's daily newsmagazine, The Current, I learned something sinister: those American (inter)nationally televised presidential debates are run a private, non-profit corporation, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), owned and operated entirely by the Republican and Democratic Party. I mean Parties. And their budget is courtesy of for-profit corporations and their lobby groups. Who own the television networks?

Oh.

I see.

This explains why the candidates’ parties are allowed to stage their positions and audience questions, control the moderators and the camera angles, and keep all other possible candidates far away from the podium. Seriously, how do these debates prove adequate knowledge to voters? Most Americans I know are completely engaged but can't get answers to their deep concerns about the choices being made on their behalf in their country.

The debates may well be a staged fraud, and Americans are only now waking up to realise they've been conned since the birth of their modern nation.

And why, you might ask, would this Canadian be so riveted by the manipulation of a few to continue to hold power when it is not my country?

We have it here too. The lies, the choices that don’t exist. The colonization of our minds.
In Canada as everywhere, the stakes have never seemed higher. Unlabeled GMO foods. Factory farming. Pipelines and tankers carrying bitumen oil, perhaps the most impossible thing to clean up from proposed remote riverbed, mountain range and sea paths. Global warming? Compact florescent lights, anyone?

We are in the same leaky bloody boat.

Solidarity?

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The radio broadcast referred to above can be heard at The Current: Are the US Presidential Debates broken?

Update: Here are three parts to a story carried on PBS about this story.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

I said it once, and I'll say it again. Canada's election process and debates are pretty much the same disaster as those in the USA. We are in the same boat. We may have to work together to right this wrong and be governed by people who want to govern all of us, and not just control us.

These are the rules for playing at Trifecta:

• Your response must be between 33 and 333 words.
• You must use the 3rd definition of the given word in your post.
• The word itself needs to be included in your response.
• You may not use a variation of the word; it needs to be exactly as stated above.
• Only one entry per writer.

Trifecta's Trifextra, Weekend Thirty Eight -- Three wishes, and a price paid

This weekend's Trifecta challenge is to write 33 words of my own of three wishes asked for, and the high price those wishes extoll upon the wisher:

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My three wishes were for us to stop endangering plants and animals, to eradicate the senseless global economy and to finally achieve world peace.

Mother Nature did her best work and devoured “civilization”.

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Trifecta, Week (Holy Cow) 47 -- Black

This is my entry for this week's Trifecta Writing Challenge.

As usual, we are using the third definition of a word selected by those crafty-but-cute Trifecta editors. I personally picture them with dancing around a cauldron.

This week's word is black.

BLACK

3: dressed in black

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Sartorial Therapy

I wear black. Not sometimes, all the time. Pants, shirts, dresses, coats, skirts, tights, socks and shoes. Black. Sure I have this one bulky hot-pink woolen scarf I knit myself for really cold days, and I did wear a red skirt once. But black is it, down to my pajamas and undergarments.

It may surprise you to know, like the childless and unmarried, one who chooses to wear black is endlessly grilled on why, when will this change, what's wrong with you. Heads shake. I would say "nothing" but that is not entirely truthful. It’s just, you know, what right have you to ask?

Listen. I am colourful enough. I spout opinions, don’t know how to keep quiet. I am loud; I call attention to myself by default. I stick out like an infected, inflamed cuticle.

I don’t need colour.

More significantly, when I was a child, another mercilessly critiqued my wardrobe misfires and the unique items that I wore -- lilac shoes, peach pants, a puffed-sleeved, pinstriped blouse that buttoned up one side of my newly-developed bosom. I still hear that kid’s taunts, others gleefully joining in. That was just the tip of my life of being bullied.

That child is now adult, and wishes I would "stop calling attention to myself" for suffering her behaviour. That was then, this is now, get over it.

But my childhood scars are no different than those of a woman who has had cancers cut from her body: scar tissue left behind hardens over time and irritates the flesh around it. The remedy is for a surgeon to score the tissue with a scalpel. My own remedies are to stand out less or to scratch at the memories 'til I bleed.

My predilection to black drives some people to distraction. On that single day I sport my scarf, they effuse over colour’s cameo in my life as if it changes the world. They present me more colourful items; my rebuff bites hard.

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The rules:

• Your response must be between 33 and 333 words.
• You must use the 3rd definition of the given word in your post.
• The word itself needs to be included in your response.
• You may not use a variation of the word; it needs to be exactly as stated above.
• Only one entry per writer.

This week's word is black.

Trifecta Weekend Thirty Seven -- On the Count of Three ...

You know how life can steal your breath away? Sometimes it's thrilling, like a super passionate and unexpected kiss and your stomach drops and you feel so light that you could soar away. But other times it's more like the wind is pummeled clean out of you and you have to struggle just to pull in that next breath and sort out which way is up.

That is what happened to me this year, and I feel like I'm just peeking out from under my turtle's shell now. Sure, occasionally I've peeked at your blogs to see how you are, but rarely have I been able to summon up the confidence or ... something ... to comment. I can't lie, sometimes I even type stuff up only to delete it and slink away.

I figured one way I can ease back into some good old muttering, if only for this (temporarily bedridden) moment, would be to Trifecta (trifecticate?).

While I've missed the camaraderie, I have not been able to read any of the often inspiring, thrilling and hilarious work that is posted twice weekly at Trifecta for forever, triste, but I'm trying to just be okay with this strange place I'm in.

I'd love to say I'm back, and better than ever, but instead I think I'm okay to say I'm popping by today with only the best of intentions to write a piece and check out everyone's work once I post this, and maybe, just maybe to hobble back again midweek.

I'm not giving up and going away, but maybe I'm gonna be unreliable for a bit. I can promise nothing better.

And so, without further ado about nothing, this weekend's Trifecta challenge:

 -- 33 words of my own, building upon but not counting "On the count of three ..."

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Bang!

Shriek!

Shhhhhhhhhh ...

Okay. Stop it! ... Any moment now ... Hank, ready to light the sparklers?

Bang!

Shrieeeek!

You guys! ... Shuuuuushhhh!

I hear a car ... it’s slowing ...

They’re coming up the walk ... the stairs ...

On the count of three ...

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