Ugli. Produce of Jamaica.

In Canada it's mid-winter. Wild berry season is faint memory. Nothing succulent will bear on bush or tree for months to come. For those of us raised on the perpetual bounty of the tropics, finding familiar fruity favorites can feel like a Survivor quest.

Just as the spice trade of yore seduced European tastes, so too does NAFTA's econo-facilitation of exotic imports, from unfrozen parts, keep mouths drooling when farms and farmers freeze up north.

Enterprising brokerage, serving Canadian multi-cult reality, augments produce shelves in supermarkets. The ubiquity of Jerk condiments simply isn't the whole food story, so I, for one, choose to head for the fruit displays. My new Bodum juicer has been working overtime since Christmas, and it's kept me in a citrus frame of mind.

I target various types of Orange, Grapefruit, Honey Tangerines, even Tangelos. This time the scavenger hunt yielded Ugli.

No surprise, this fruit is named for its appearance. The somewhat scrotal crumple of the external rind may be visually unbecoming, but it's an easy peel, and, nectar within is touted as being more sweet than tangy.

Ugli is a unique hybrid of Grapefruit, Orange and Tangerine. I'm told it's now grown Down Under, but this is another of those Jamaican originations the world has taken to, and a Jamaican company remains the primary patented producer.

Clearly I'm not one to ignore analogy. I find it difficult to resist extrapolation - beyond reproductive innuendo, into the realm of cultural association itself. As Jamaican in metaphor as it is in genesis, perhaps there is philosophy bred into this fruit.

Out Of Many, One People is Jamaica's motto, mirroring the composite chromosomal makeup of Ugli. Similarly, aspects of Jamaica's socio-schizoid geneology can give one impression while being something else entirely.

Fortunately, stripping away superficial layers ultimately reveals a thing of beauty. The smaller of my two fruit, suitably splayed to expose a suggestion of proto-labial fecundity, cried out to be instagrammed atop Uncle Rick's hand-crafted cake-stand. The larger one I juiced and guzzled, despite finding it not quite as sweet as propaganda promised.

Citrus lends itself easily to grafting, to wit, it's not unusual to pick Oranges and Lemons from the same tree. Come to think of it, this does beg comparison to certain complexities of the contemporary Jamaican zeitgeist.

The good. The bad. And ... the Ugli.

It's Apophis. Did You Miss Me?

Ackeelover Chronicles boasts more than a passing fraternity with the mind behind the campy malevolence of the larger-than-life figurehead Apophis. Fans of Stargate SG-1 know this.

It's a-propos therefore, that this is the established bulletin-board for his intergalactic communications whenever he's in da 'hood, or just feeling the need to talk, as Gods sometimes do.













I read the news today. Oh boy. There it was in black and white. Potentially Dangerous Asteroid - Apophis Bigger Than Thought. But then, I could have told you that. Try nuh miss the memo.

Apophis writes ...

"Nok tel Tau'ri ... it's no secret, having appeared in your global press, that I'm preparing my 2036 assault on your planet. At the moment this involves careful reconnaissance consisting of a series of orbital fly-bys, starting with the one today, should you care to look. Now showing in select skies near you.

My plan is a work-in-progress. Tactics have been altered a bit, since Americans always seem to be able to figure things out. I'm aware that proximity of my orbit has set Australia ablaze yet again, a consequence of having to dodge a careening North Korean satellite. Some people shouldn't be allowed to drive.

It amuses me no end to see the enduring fascination you have with the stars. Star Wars sequels and Star Trek icons Kirk, Spock, Sulu and Uhura. Of course there's Stargate too, what with tweeting O'Neills, an undead Daniel Jackson, pin-up Samantha Carter and that Dark Knight shol'va, Teal'c.

So, prepare for some Goa'uld revenge. The right to carry semi-automatic assault rifles can't avert this strike. Apophis is not scared of Bruce Willis ... and as an unrelated sidenote, since Kanye West has implanted his symbiote in Kim Kardashian, another suitable vessel is needed for my dynasty to continue.

Kree, hol shek ... Apophis (on twitter @actualApophis)

Every effort has been made to preserve veracity in translation. No liability accepted on the part of Ackeelover Chronicles. Any resemblance to persons living or dead purely coincidental.

Don't shoot the messenger.

New Year, 2013 Style.

"(If you) don't know your past, y'don't know your future, ..."

That light-but-heavy hook-line from Tomorrow People by The Melody Makers, along with New Year's Day, the soaring rock standard by U2, always feature high on my January playlist.

Time didn't stop last year. We're all still here, with apologies to Syria, Cote d'Ivoire and Sandy Hook. I'm home, with my customary Ackee and Saltfish, while America stares down a rapid-fire succession of fiscal cliffs, and Canada sees past, future and protest in Theresa Spence.

2012 turned out to be The Year of The Gangnam. A Psy tsunami soaked the planet in a smile, and Canada came good again; leave it to Bieber - and Mark Carney. It's a good thing predictions are speculative 'cos what comes next could be even sillier than my reggaefied Gangnam to di dollarstore, Party-Castanet Riddim.



Yes, I've seen the signs. An overdressed monkey roams Ikea in Toronto. Siri usurps social intercourse, and "Christianmingle" could become a recognized English verb, via tele-advertising.

Dictionary: "to Christianmingle" - the act, or sound, of religion and social-networks merging with the-urge-to-merge.

My parents met in New York at a New Year's Eve party in 1953. It could be said this represents my earliest genesis, and each year with a 3 since has proved prosperous, with Positive Vibration. Kismet. Numerology. Superstition. Obeah. Callitwhatchawill ...

 

Today, 2013 already has me feeling like a sweepstake-winner. 



Little toy store.

It's that shop you can't walk by without further investigation.

This community calls itself a town, and in most ways it is. There's a Walmart (a sure sign of commercial critical-mass in North America), two dedicated supermarkets and an equal number of pharmacies. The Salvation Army runs a high-turnover thrift shop and parking meters get converted into free Holiday gifts.

A lone McDonald's duels with two vibrant Tim Horton's, and a similar number of Chinese restaurants offer prosaic Asian comfort food. There's a cosmo-style sushi joint, a branch of most leading Canadian Banks, and main street has at least one of every other establishment typical of such locales.

But in other ways the town is more like a bigger village. You get that sense coming to the occluded streetfront window. Fresh. Innocent. Exciting. The little toy store represents everything that's charming about a place with a population of 16,000 and the magic only gets more palpable at Christmas time.














Where there are children there should be beehive destinations like this. Inside, a honeycomb of busybees doing what comes naturally. Wide-eyed and laughing. Playing. Praying at Santa.

Maybe my sentimentality this Xmas has been keened by the prominent portents of impending apocalypse we see around us. Gunned down six-year-olds is not only good for the hyperbole business, but also for the business of dreams.

Y'see, adults now have added reason to contemplate the blessing of dreams as motivation in young lives. How much doesn't happen if lives end at six Christmasses?

Magnetic slime. Themed Jigsaws. Dolls. Trinkets. Games, and children to verify their gravitas. For me, that's this Christmas, and my wish for all who read here. May everyone look around through the eyes of a child these holidays. And hug a lot.

Guns and culture.

I started writing this particular post over a week ago, but found the acceleration of time which comes with an approaching yule too intrusive to continue, so it simmered in my drafts folder awaiting revival. And, sooner than expected, here we are.

On that day, NBC sportscaster Bob Costas used his halftime slot to weigh in on the perennial polemic of America's gun culture. Result? Tweeps go apeshit in a manner unseen since the recently concluded, culturally bruising presidential election.

Scant days later America is further traumatized and desensitized by twenty dead toddlers and the latest armed malcontent.

Last week, the gridiron couldn't escape the pall of the public murder-suicide involving a player and his girlfriend. This week, first-grade schoolrooms make an even more shocking pallette. Yet another gun-related tragedy breaks the collective heart of people everywhere, and also, spurs a recurring loop of righteous indignation as the obdurate NRA lobby braces for more heat.

Michael Moore's 2002 docu-treatise "Bowling For Columbine" remains on point in the face of sanctimonious invocations of the 2nd constitutional ammendment. This 18th Century edict is what enshrines and justifies American rights to bear arms today.

It's worth noting, that when said parchment was penned, little was deadlier than a musket and a reload. This elementary school assailant had a Glock handgun, a Sig Sauer, presumably for his second hand, and a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle. Superfluous, considering  one man has only two hands.

Societal history of weapon proliferation is mostly understood. What is harder to accept, in 2012, is the imperative to protect every individual's inviolable right to wield death.

There are some fantastic opinions bouncing around. "Arm all teachers," "More guns." ... Really? Has the United States become a society of double-0 operatives with licenses to kill?

Special dispensation, while people still get locked up for selling Cannabis seeds and certain kiddie bon-bons remain verboten.















Kneejerk logic sure speaks loudly. It reveals social fears which deeply underpin the constitution rationale. Immutable defense of gun ownership rights reminds me of the intensity around other hot-potato topics, like voter registration, affirmative action or institutionalized Confederate flags. Hmmm.

"They want to take away our culture. Take back America."

It's no accident that the G.O.P., clearly based in Southern State traditionalism, is aligned firmly in favor of firearm freedom. What else does the old-guard have, if not weaponry, to lend some sense of security to its phobias?, though, in fairness, there are also Democrats who dearly defend a damsel's right to a Derringer.

This isn't just political. Pandora is out of the box. The die is cast. American culture is John Wayne, Smith, Wesson, Bonnie and Clyde. Here, the shooting of a leader can morph into romantic lore. Honest Abe, himself felled by a gun, is the Spielbergian subject of big Oscar buzz. Stand Your Ground makes a legal defense but somehow it's tough to find French Brie de Meaux outside of a Zabar's or a Dean and DeLuca delicatessen.


















 Which further fuels my lament. More Limburger, less Luger.

If that seems light, and cavalier, please consider these are words, not bullets. They are meant to stress a cognitive dissonance.

Yes, we all reflect our varied histories but, as times change, it's in our best interests to ammend and update strategies in going forward. This is as true for community as it is personally.

Besides, whatever their use, continuing to treat guns as sacrosanct offers greater opportunity to unstable, trigger-happy personalities, the criminally motivated and the violently inclined. The grief we feel over the Newtown massacre was inflicted by an individual who was all of the above. Legal guns were his tools.

To be sure, it's not only the U.S.A. where this argument rages. Canadians acquire guns too and manage to defy the national stereotype on occasion. And Jamaica, my island of origin, has its own peculiar, illbegotten enamorment with the steel bore. Unsurprisingly, politics is culpable there as well.

 

 

Even One Love talisman Bob Marley, who famously, but figuratively, Shot the Sheriff, and survived a gun-blazing Ambush in the night, curiously assessed some replicas.

Impossible to know for sure what ran through his mind in that moment, but informed imagination tells me he would've given a thoughtful Rasta response to any question of gun culture ...

... "gun culture? guns nuh have no culture."
 

Win. From the pen of Pin.

To say Winston Rekert (1949-2012) had a big life before he met me is a self-centered way to start this remembrance, but the times I worked with Win altered the tone for what has become my life.

In fact, he was one of the first cultural touchstones I identified in my early years in Canada. Before I knew what all the fuss was with this Wayne Gretzky guy, I was ardent about Adderley.

Win's charismatic presence and sense of humor overcame the limitations of a nascent local television industry and made him cool enough to want to emulate. Canadian, yet still, more.

When I met Win in that hotel audition-room I remember being star-struck, but felt little pressure. Odd to say, but I felt as though it was he who knew me 'cos I watched his show.

 

As it happened, this was a threshold to my personal reinvention.

Neon Rider legend has it that it was Win who ammended my character, conceptually, from a Latino named "Chico" to a Jamaican called "Pin." I will always applaud that foresight.

What other show would encourage my Jamaican accent, hand me a cricket bat, dress me in black with a Lion Of Judah emblazoned on my back, run me against Ben Johnson and let me grow dreadlocks on TV over five seasons?

(Bizarre perhaps, but I been lookin' fi anadda gig like dat since.)

I didn't see too much of the hype-side that Win loved - never even sat in the Ferrari or the Lincoln, but I did know his fatherly, and dedicated, thoughtfulness. There were many hours spent in a defunct North Vancouver gym with Win and trainer Dave, learning how to improve myself through physical effort.

Win moved seamlessly from stage to screen to directing, to teaching - passionate as ever, this was the role in which I most recently saw him. His class was enacting a Neon Rider theme and I went along for the day. I happily recall that this exists somewhere on video. Maybe we did get our sequel after all.

His longtime brother and symbiotic crony, Danny Virtue, says Win gave half the people in Vancouver's film industry their start. If you consider the intangible "ripple effect," I'd say Danny makes a very conservative estimation.

Winston Rekert had a big life after I last saw him too, and by all accounts he had battled his cancer nobly and bravely.

 He was most definitely loved and his legacy liveth.

It's gonna be a long, long winter, for me.

Up around the bend.

Before snow settles on Great White North,

a sunny day pictured, may flatter warm. 

Bright perspective. Ambitious roadside grass,

could too, in the heat of your car,

trade winter-weary wonderment for arrid solstice.

It's good to throw evocative image at the soul,

keep blood flow to tropics of imagination.

Temperate lobes need massage too.  

Leaves on the ground.

Spent verdancy. Can't see forest for bare trees.

Carpet-floor, mossy-rock green. Anticipate a layering blanket.

Then. Remembrance Day scene. Normandy newsreel.

Alice In Wonderland snowball bauble.

Foreboding, even to look outside.

It's gonna be a long, long winter, you see,

as Wailers homage Impressions in

select soundtrack this season. Cold, and dreary, and blue.

 

A longer longtime coming. Simply safe and secure.

Roofs cave in winter without a strong heart.

But turnaround is still fair play,

and full lives continue to grow,

through rotating deep freeze. Long.

Just long enough, 'til time for Tamarack to rewake. 

White house. Black house.

If caution is a characteristic of conservatism, then I must own up to that side of my personality. I sometimes yield to chicken-shit tentativity when expressing observations on the racially polarised landscape we find ourselves living in. But not today.

As one who is given to frequent rumination on such issues, from a perspective of cultural complexity, I'm understandably drawn to, and opinionated on, this discourse - despite assuming a position high above the fray as a proud proselyte of an (admittedly) idealistic tabula rasa (Rasta?). The One Love philosophy.






Racism is the polar opposite of this stance, being based in bias; i.e. the principle of any race's intrinsic preferability over another. Bio-specific minutiae, such as variability in skin-tone and sundry genetic distinctions, are the props it's built on, but racism's broad purview includes cultural corollary to this precept.

Acknowledging that there's a case to be made for racism being a natural characteristic of the human species, there can nevertheless be no doubting that colonial expansion over the last five centuries, for all the wonderful countries founded, also compounded the issue and extended hegemonies, via empire.

In the United States, and other post-colonial societies with historically race-based beginnings, race is a DNA factor that colors culture and political affiliations. Variants apply but this view is through black 'n' white specs.

Sensitivities surround the word racist, even when used as mere explanation. It tends to trigger soul-denial, and render generalization and selective memory powerful psychological tools in the struggle for representative power.

This has fostered a proliferation of codified, and not so codified pejoratives. The establishment of an African-American POTUS has laid bare nerves beneath a filmy epidermis of equanimity, as this remarkable democracy seeks to retain its ascendancy.















"Communist," "dictator," "terrorist," "thief," are nouns from only one comment-thread, in one disaffected right-wing article parsing the 2012 re-election result, but I've seen several such. The same thread is decorated with adjectives like "evil" and "ruthless," with more than one bright spark styling Barack Obama as "Anti-Christ" ("read your bible") and "Son of Lucifer" ("666 - The Beast").

I'll deliberately avoid rehashing cretinous diatribes on magic negroes, bones in the nose, monkeys, makers/takers and nooses. 

So help me Jah, I couldn't make this stuff up. Wry smile. More.

One of the things I grapple with in this climate, is the reluctance of so many white American voters to draw the connection between a Republican vote and a racial slap-in-the-face. In light of palpable idiocy and ill-concealed hatred from right-wing ranks, I'm ecstatic at G.O.P. misery at the polls. Even if Mitt Romney was a financial magician, it would've been regrettable to empower the social luddites and those who refuse to take them to task.

For sure, there is no economic prosperity worth sacrificing social propriety for, and none achievable without it.

The sting in the tail here is, if anyone points out how suspicious this vitriol is, toward Obama's frequently referenced heritage, the charge of racism gets defensively leveled at them.

















Let's get one thing straight. Racists tend to use the unqualified term "reverse racism" with impunity. It deflects the onus of understanding by identifying pushback as the primary impetus. This only serves to perpetuate ignorance and impasse.

"Liberal" and "conservative" are not bad words, nor mutually exclusive from racism, but it does seem difficult for the latter to transcend or decry bigotry. So much so that Obama optimists get accused of being divisive and disingenuous when it's patently clear who really is. Witness voter allegiance.

It's sad, demoralizing, polarizing, undignifying, yet still, somehow fascinating and instructive just how much adrenaline an American election can inject into this dialectic. Nearly all of old Confederacy voted Republican, and a vast majority of non-whites ("minority" is a misnomer now) voted Democrat.

Americans, of the United States, deserve less entrenchment.