Failure to Re-Launch?

Okay, so this is my first post in a month or so. I'm running into unanticipated difficulties.

1) Work.
My current job demands that I awaken at four-thirty, or possibly five, or three-thirty, or sometimes one, a.m. Then I work eight, six, ten, or nine hours at work that is sometimes extraordinarily physical (i.e. lifting five hundred garbage cans weighing between five and twenty-five kilos) or stultifyingly not-so (sitting in the passenger seat of a dumpster truck, occasionally pulling a bin out).

This leaves me in the early afternoon with no desire or motivation higher than a beer in front of the tube and an early night. Yeah, I apparently have become one of those three-B guys. Beer, Boob Tube, and Bed.

2) Personal life.My personal life is complicated. Not in any serious way--Mme Metro and I just celebrated over a decade together. But in a way that requires planning and co-ordination between a number of people, mostly because of my:

3) Social life.
For the first time in many years, I have most of my evenings free. This is due to relocation. I used to occupy my time with jam sessions and acting both are on hiatus because see #1. It's hard to commit to a schedule of rehearsal when you might arrive home at eleven having to work at three the next morning. The days when I drank 'till four then went to work at seven are kind of behind me.

However, evening commitments are creeping under the door. You know the way of it. You meet people, you like them and are interested in them, you share an interest, and join a community, and next thing you know you're chairing the Thursday night meetings ...

4) How far do I wish to let you in, O Avid Fan?
I am not the same Metro who started this blog. I am no longer pseudonymous to a number of people out there, and that can constrain what I want to write publicly. In fact when I am having an experience I consider writing-worthy, I now seem to think of the experience in three categories:

• Open: Anyone could read this. Fit for consumption by the general public. Mind you, if Glenn Beck is still seen as fit for public consumption ...
• Semi-private: My friends and Avid Fans are unlikely to judge me too harshly for this. Not for sharing with strangers or co-workers.
• Private: I might mention this to Mme Metro. Other than that, forget it. I am a great fan of the quote "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." (B. Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack), and am equally sure the compulsion to "talk it out" is usually little more than an ego-driven vice that makes a virtue of hurting someone one should know well enough not to hurt in such fashion, or even have a reason to do so in the first place.

Part of the problem is deciding what filter I let things pass. Obviously most of my life is fairly public. If I were outed from the house-tops I doubt most of the people who know me even in passing would be astounded at the content here at the Ol' Metroblog. But I still dither about posting some of it.

But I will persevere. I believe the cure for the after-work flops is exercise. I'm taking up swimming. It's a good fit for my body type (Whales swim, right? Not many of them do a lot of weightlifting or aerobics), and it's relatively low-impact. I also find I have a bit more energy in the evening after a swim, and that I sleep very well too.

Likewise, I believe the cure for Writer's Rust is the same as the cure for most rusty things: Apply lubricant and exercise the moving parts. Alcohol is considered an excellent lubricant for most related purposes.

People say "Write what you know." I'd rather write things I know to be fiction. But I'm back to baby steps, clinging to the couch or coffee-table of certainty for support. But I expect it's like riding a bicycle.

Not the classic aphorism about never forgetting. Rather, think back to the time you first rode a bicycle.

And with that, I have an idea for my next post.

So Much to Blog, so Little Time

My Avid Fans (all four of you) may as well chat amongst yourselves for a while. I'm a bit busy right now. I'm also trying to calm down enough to blog rationally about the recent developments on the free speech legal front in this country.

I'm looking after a housefull of teenagers. They're fun to have around, and generally polite and well-behaved. I'm clearly building a rapport, too. The youngest yesterday showed me pictures he posted online of the pot plants he grows hydroponically at home. He says his parents don't notice because his marvellous tomatoes cover the smell. He got the seeds by mail.

Part of me says I ought to rat him out. But the other part says that if his parents are ignorant of what he's up to, then they clearly don't care. I guar-an-friggin'-tee you that my mum would have discovered pot plants if I had been raising them in my closet. Or even if I'd constructed a carefully-concealed cultivation bunker under the compst heap. She has, to this day, hearing described by health professionals as "batlike." And from experience she could see the contents of a desk, school bag, or laundry basket even when she'd never ever looked inside of it (so she told me herself. And she's my mother ... you want me to believe she was lying?) One day I'll tell you why my sister tore up the signed picture of the stripper.

Mme Metro fled to the city yesterday, leaving me to cope with three teens and two cats, one of whom is allegedly ill and the other of whom is malevolent toward me, on my wits alone. It's a wonder no-one's starved to death yet. Mme says it has something to do with a medical appointment, but I don't believe her--the timing's too convenient.

Before leaving, she tried to instruct me on how to deliver a pill to the digestive system of a cat. In the case of Brown Cat, one simply seizes his head, covering his nostrils with a finger, and shoves another finger in between his teeth. This causes him to gape repeatedly, like a baby bird, at which point one is supposed to shove the meds down the hatch. However, I've never been able to get past the whole "teeth" thing.

So I adopted a subtle approach. After several unsuccessful attempts, which seemed to stress Brownie out almost as much as they did me, I brought to bear the full might of my intellect. I'm dead certain I have at least six IQ points on that cat ...

So smuggling it must be. We tried wrapping the half-tablet of kitty drugs in a sliver of roast beef. It almost worked, but the tablet squirted out when he bit down. Both cats willingly eat cheese, but they like it in such fine portions that concealing the tiny pill inside it wouldn't work.

Eventually, I bored a hole in a kitty treat and shoved the pill into the hole--a sort of cat Certs, if you will. I gained Brownie's trust by feeding him a couple of undoctored ones, then abused it utterly.

He didn't seem to notice. I fed him one more to take the taste away (I don't know, but my experience makes me think that there is no medicine with a nice taste [unless your owner is dosing you with salmon oil and you happen to be a cat, I guess]).

This morning I repeated the joke. He mowed down three treats, then I fed him a stuffed one. I put down two more and waited. He licked one of them, then sniffed them both with deep suspicion. But eventually he ate them.

I'm counting on his fuzzy brain having little by way of enduring memory to speak of.

Blackie is far more forthcoming. Upon Mme's departure she expressed her feelings about the state of affairs in her usual way: She urinated on everything in sight. And probably several things that aren't in sight too. This morning the black bitch was up at 5:45 loudly informing me that the recession was hitting home and stocks of readily available tuna had plummeted to the point where a cat might soon get thin and waste away. Truly an excellent jest.

At the moment it's running about fifty-fifty on the question of whether Mme gets a new pair of fur-lined slippers for Christmas.

Hot Chick With Hairy Beaver! Bikinis and Wet, Oily Beaver! Beaver Eating!

Okay, Maybe Not. I think the beaver's just having a nice cuppa tea with a special friend.

The Metro Institute for the Promotion of Perversion is well and truly up and functioning. It's plunging in and out of the internet looking for tight little numbers like this.



I found the links over at the Pharynguloid posting documenting the threat to America from the terrible Canadian Dodecapus--or possibly tentacle porn (jury's still kind of out on that one, but hey, for a certain segment there isn't a lot of difference), it's from commenter Cowcakes.

I suppose I'm not too busy to slap the stats around a little today. Besides, I've just discovered that my IT work requires me to personally peruse almost all of over 11,000 articles in which apostrophes, dashes, ellipses, and the like have all been converted into question marks. So this isn't exactly an afternoon's work.

Blogging is So Damn Difficult These Days

I wish my workplace would plump for a new computer ...

Seriously, the 228K of RAM (no, that's not a typo, regrettably) that my machine brings to the table is now officially insufficient to even let me do my work.

Said work consists of, by hand, doing the crap the our IT department thinks is beneath them. That involves combing through some subset of the 11,000 articles my workplace keeps at various online locations and categorizing them, which involves, essentially, opening the back end of a web page and ticking one of a selection of boxes. I also correct the titles and punctuation. The apostrophes, in particular, seem to have met with a series of unfortunate accidents during the Great Server Rollout Malfunction, Physical Hard Drive Crash, and Mass Migration Back To The Old Site But On a New Server.

Or as IT would have it, the "Product Launch".

I don't mind, it fills up the days and although it's tedious as hell, at least I know it's being done right. I'm convinced our IT experts are all English as a Second Language students. They can give you the alphabet in two or three goes, but they'll have to refer to their character maps ....

My computer can't handle the website, which is quite simply a variant of a popular blogging site. I type a sentence, go for a coffee, and return in time to type the next sentence.

So my boss told me to do it from the disused Dell two workstations away. However, there are a couple of interesting issues with this:

1) The new computer is throttled--for some reason I can't access my email account from the damn thing. No Yahoo mail, no Gmail, no nothin'--bastards.

And that IS a work issue--I sometimes work from home, or send myself different versions of documents I'm working on. And I don't use Outlook when I can avoid it.

2) My boss doesn't want anyone to know the unused computer exists. She's afraid someone will declare it surplus to requirements and take it from us.

I'm worried that if I get the Dell, which is running XP, then I'll miss out on the big shiny new computer I'm supposed to get when the company perforce has to upgrade from Win'00 to XP next year. That is, since I'm already running it on the Dell, I won't get a new machine.

Which would presumably come with censorware prepackaged, I guess, bringing us full circle to #1.

Anyway, here's a great video about how to get those gays to stop harping on about gay marriage.



Stolen from the occasionally violently funny Margaret Cho, who is God's bitch.

A Clarification

On my last post I expressed that I wasn't sure how news of Webster Cook's theft (or misappropriation if you prefer) of a communion wafer became public knowledge.

It turns out that a member of the congregation stopped him as he tried to sneak out with it and asked him for it back. When he refused, she tried to grab it back, but he apparently bravely fought his way free, clutching his prize.

"When I received the Eucharist, my intention was to bring it back to my seat to show him," Cook said. "I took about three steps from the woman distributing the Eucharist and someone grabbed the inside of my elbow and blocked the path in front of me. At that point I put it in my mouth so they'd leave me alone and I went back to my seat and I removed it from my mouth."

A church leader was watching, confronted Cook and tried to recover the sacred bread. Cook said she crossed the line and that's why he brought it home with him.

For my Avid Fans who may not know: it is not unusual for churches to have the ushers watching for precisely the sort of stupidity Cook comitted.

Because though they are far outnumbered by their fellow-delusionists who follow other religions, there are such deluded fools as devil-worshippers. Not many, but enough. And one thing the Catholic Church has had to do is keep careful track of hosts.

Because Satanists, and members of other sects, including, I have it personally, Protestants and similar heretics (Isn't religion a terrific unifying force? You can just feel it doing you good, cantcha?), like to take hosts for purposes other than simply eating them.

Just in case you worry that ol' Metro has gone off the deep end with all this talk of Satanists and devil worshippers, let me restate my position on religious faiths of all natures: They're all nucking futs.

But they exist, and that's how Cook came to public notice.

You Catch More Dog Turds With Honey Than Vinegar

Avid Fans (all both of them) will recall I do not, as the transatlantikers say, "go a bundle" on dogs going a bundle on my yard, sidewalk or, indeed, on my planet.

So yesterday I was mortified to watch an overweight middle-aged brass-haired trailer troglodyte, sweating in her canvas shorts and flowered blouse, tug her wee little dog along the sidewalk on The Main Street, with Fido cheerfully shitting every five feet for roughly half the block.

The output was so disproportionate to the outputter as to invite inadvertent and unwilling comparison to a video of a python swallowing a pig, shown in reverse.

The owner, looking exasperatedly at the animal, looked up and spotted me. Our eyes met and she turned away, dragging the animal to its next drop. Which turned out to be five feet from the door of a business I'll call K9 Kollege. It's primarily a grooming studio. And it was the destination for the turd parade. On the door I noticed adverts for dog obedience training. None on owner obedience training.

I felt really mad about this. I dislike litter of any type, but when it's somebody's pet's effluvia, I find the whole business stomach-churning. I wish there were a way to force dogs to crap indoors, so that we'd have a guarantee that at least 60% of owners would clean up every time.

But instead of raising the issue, I decided that perhaps the woman, whom I now saw busilly chatting with the salon's owner, was asking for a plastic bag. Of course, it was a vain hope: we all know that the bag is, these days, simply a badge used as camouflage for all those people who simply tie the bag to the leash and leave it there forever. But this woman hadn't even gone that far.

Still, rather than ratchet everyone's tempers up (besides mine own, which was winched to about 140 ft-lbs), I walked down to Timmy's and got a coffee.

As it happened, I met a co-worker and returned via a different route. So the issue remained unresolved. But I had deep faith that Trailer Trog had left the precious bundles of joy to delight and amuse other patrons of the sidewalk.

Today as I headed for Timmy's I noticed the wee doggie spa across the street (I was unconsciously avoiding any leftover doggie land mines) and determined to say something. I imagined berating the shopowner and venting my spleen across her floor the way her customer or employee had allowed her pet to shit across the sidewalk.

Then I stopped. There's really enough aggravation in the world. Why I would actually cause any more of it is beyond me. Not that I don't sometimes enjoy the idea, but really we have to live, all six billion of us, in a relatively small space. When you adopt the enemy's aggressive offensiveness, you can easily become what you hate most.

So I went in.

"Can I help you?" quoth the owner, scanning for a terrier at my feet.
"I just wanted to say thanks," I lied convincingly. I still had no idea whether the outsize dog bombs were lying on the sidewalk still or not.
"Sorry?" she apologized instinctively.
"Well yesterday I followed a customer of yours, and about every five feet her dog would have a crap, then she'd pull the leash and drag it another five feet. She turned in here. I was pretty put out by the dog turds on the sidewalk, but today I noticed they seemed to have disappeared, and I just wanted to say 'thanks'."

Now she was contrite:
"Jeez I'm sorry. I hate it when the customers won't walk their dogs and they crap all over the floor. It's happened twice today," she said, indicating the general area where I was standing.

"I just wanted to thank whoever cleaned that up," I said, lying only a little.

"Well it wasn't us," the owner sighed, "But if you ever see that kind of thing again, please, let us know and we'll clean it up. It's so embarrasing."

And off I went, with a little of my faith in humanity restored. I do like good neighbours.

So, Happy Canada Day, Eh?

I love my country. For all I bitch about the current government; with all the venial, short-sighted, grasping, greedy, blackhearted fellow citizens I have to share it with; for all that much of our industry has evaporated overseas or over the border. There's a lot of it to love.

In no particular order.

Big damn place.

We have gay marriage. No "civil union" wordsplitting, not "justlikemarriages." Marriage.

A constitutional monarchy: the best form of government there is. The monarch and the people are each empowered by the constitution, and the constitution is protected by the monarch and the people.

A relaxed attitude to vice. Pot is illegal, but tolerance is high. Prostitution is legal (though negotiating the transaction isn't).

We have free speech, and hate speech laws. Because we recognize that the two aren't mutually exclusive, and that rhetorical effect is a real force.

We're the first civilized nation trying to do anything about carbon emissions. Happy Canada day to British Columbia, where prices jumped two-point-four cents at the pump, and everyone got a cheque for a hundred bucks--including my 6-month-old niece, who is not known to have much of an opinion on the price of gasoline.

Single-payer health care (not "universal", not "socialized"). I have yet to hear of a better system.

We give awards to abortion rights pioneers.

Our musicians are pretty damn good. Here are some:




The original Lunatic Fringe



David Wilcox: Canada's Hot, Hot Papa

And what Canadian lineup would ever be complete sans the Tragically Hip? Here they are with "In View". In which Gord Downie resorts to desperate measure to find a phone that works, triggering a sort of Asian zombie chase.



Happy Canada Day! Don't you wish you lived here? I do. Then I could buy you a beer. But I hope you'll take the thought for the deed.

Oh, and how could I forget Stompin' Tom?

Sometimes the Headline Just Writes Itself

I suppose one could also have made the classic "roll-on, roll-off" joke.

The rubber truly hit the road yesterday when two tractor-trailers collided on Highway 401 near Ingersoll. One, carrying thousands of condoms, jackknifed and flipped onto its side, blocking east lanes and snarling traffic for hours.

Yeah, that's what happens when you flip 'er on her side. Not that I'm speaking from experience.

Feeling Pretty Damn Good Today, Overall

It's raining here in Hometown. I still haven't gotten the garden fenced, however I bought a 1/2 litre of wolf/coyote/cougar urine to keep the deer off.

I do have one minor gripe lately. It's about the price of gasoline. Simply put, I'm sick of hearing people whining about it.

{rant}
Most particularly, I'm sick of hearing the following people whine about it:

1) The dude with the enormous Dodge pickup that never carries more than his skinny ass to and from work. Substitute your favourite vehicle and other person. If it's travelling empty, or nearly so, you're wasting fuel in anything with a motor bigger than 1.8 litres.

2) Anyone in real estate development. You people made possible the growth of enormous subdivisions without a single grocery within walking distance.

3) The girl at work who shamefacedly admitted last week after complaining about $1.35-a-litre gas that she drives to work from a house that's roughly 800 walking metres away, but twice that distance by road.

And lastly:
4,5, and 6) The @$$#013 who was at the Canadian Tire gas bar last week bitching about the price to the harried worker at the till (who presumably didn't actually set the price personally) while holding three bottles of water he was purchasing from the cooler.

If you're willing to drink bottled municipal tapwater, which you can get for pennies, and pay more than the price of gasoline for it, then you should simply STFU.

{/rant}

Otherwise, things are pretty peachy. My roomates are finally making money, so hopefully we can start charging them rent soon (more on them perhaps later).

I'm on schedule to finish my plywood duck racer in time for the race. The hull was built by a friend, and last year I trained her in sailing it. She went off to the Big Smoke and so left it with me. As she was an enthusiastic but not excessively skilled carpenter, I am essentially patching all the holes. This meant tearing the bottom off. I've stiffened the hull and will be painting it inside this week. Then I'll glue the new bottom onto it, seal all seams with glue and paint the exterior. I'm also adding a larger sail and trying for a jib sail on the front of her.

I've been looking into fuel injection for my dirty little Yamaha U7 scooter. It looks like a relatively simple business if I can find an electronic injector of the right sort. The bike's a two-stroke, so I can save about 25 percent of my fuel if the project is successful.

The garden is shooting up green stuff, which I think is generally good. Now if we can weed out what's a weed, she'll be right. Though I do observe that last year's potatoes have gone feral--there seems to be one rogue potato plant in every row.

The sunflowers amuse me--they look like tiny little Atlases rising into space holding the remnants of their shells above them on their slowly-separating leaves.

And finally, the rain held off long enough for me to get some yard work done and work on the boat. Now it's pouring down and I'm indoors at work.

I should really go and do some.

A Surreal Moment From Metroland

Yesterday I was speaking with a colleague at work when she interrupted the conversation:

"I'm sorry," she said "I have to go move my car."

To which I wittily replied: "Huh?"

"I'm in a two-hour zone, so I have to go move my car."

O Avid Fan, weep for us. The city of Hometown contains fewer than fifty thousand residents. There's ample, nay, abundant street parking within two short blocks of the building. To put the formaldehyde-soaked maraschino cherry on this sundae of surrealism, the lot directly behind the building next door, once a thriving grocery store complete with parking lot, is vacant and daily full of cars belonging to those who work in the area.

Why in the name of the FSM would you park in a two hour zone and have to rush out three times during your working day? I asked her if it was for the exercise.

"No," quoth she. "If I arrive early I always park on X St, that way I don't have to walk so far."

"Saves wear and tear on the wooden leg, eh?" I asked with only a slight trace of snark.

Avid Fans and Others, I am Reminded

By a post over at the online residence of the sodden madonna of the internets, of an incident that happened shortly prior to the end of my military career.

I was working with a summer staffer from the Canadian Forces Reserves. They are often employed to shore up mnumbers during the summer on training bases, where the active season co-incides with the student schedules of major institutes of learning.

My job, as driver for the Company Sargeant Major or CSM, involved fetching forth food and drink thrice daily for staff. Additionally, I shipped the sick, lame, and lazy to their doctor's appointments, stopped at the on-the-way store and bought smokes for any as needed, and generally did whatever damn dogsbody thing was believed necessary by my boss. Because, in case you don't realize it, the CSM is god.

So Pte Slouch, a skinny, slightly pretty, rather hard-of-thinking girl from an area near my hometown, came aboard that summer. Being of the male type, and having as my goal the maximization of contact with female types of people with the minimization of clothing, I made sure to try and endear myself to her. Said attempts were greatly hampered by the presence of a buffoon from her home battalion, with whom I shared a mutual loathing, and my general state of sobriety when off duty (none to speak of).

She was a provincial little thing, but oh she had big problems. Her parents were separating. Her brother was an uncontrollable danger to himself, into drugs and drink, and inclined to lose control. She herself seemed to suffer repreat cases of the galloping heebie-jeebies or possibly the crawling crud or some such affliction on a basis that became repetitive. Some said she was just lazy. Given my motivation, I didn't care what she was. She was a target, and I was, in the finest military tradition, determined to acquire her with all due speed.

As the CSm's driver it was my prerogrative to choose whatever victim was currently un-tasked to help me load up the 5/4 ton truck with haybox rations and assorted other junk.So on this day, Pte Slouch was beside me for the smoke-n-choke run to the kitchen, and as was customary we stopped in at Base Transport for the mail.

I have no idea why mail-call is supposed to be such a big morale booster. Surely the field cannot be such a misery that the arrival of another overdue notice from Zellers is a happy event? Still it was, as I said, customary.

Pte. Slouch went inside for a while. When she returned, she looked very stressed. Her eyes were red, and water was leaking from them.

"My brother was in a car accident," she said "He's in a coma in hospital and they don't think he's going to live."

Naturally I was shocked.

"You better talk to Chimp (our section commander) and get some compassionate leave right away." I replied.

"Oh, no." she said "Mom says there's probably nothing to be done. I'll stick it out here"

Still I persisted, and by the time we were back at camp she seemed to be persuaded to at least take some time off to visit her family.

So she returned with me for the breakfast run the following day, and I was informed that she was staying on base until transportation home could be arranged for her.

At lunchtime I was required to take my boss, Chimp (he was husky of build, with a low brow and heavy jaw), somewhere. A hundred yards from Transport, I asked him how Pte. Slouch's brother was making out.

"Huh?" he said.
"Well," I answered, not yet picking up on the cognitive dissonance, "It sounded like he was pretty badly off."
"Huh?" he said, again.
I repeated myself.
"Waitaminit," he said, furrowing his honest brow, "She's going home because her parents are divorcing or something ..."

There was some brief confusion, which resulted in me turning the truck around and heading for home. Chimp went into his office and made a phone call. Immediately thereafter there there was a short, intense meeting between Pte. Slouch and Mcpl Chimp.

Pte. Slouch was confined to quarters. As she was a reservist she wasn't charged, just shipped home with the equivalent of "Not wanted on voyage" marked in her personnel file and an injuction, essentially, against her coming within a mile of the base for whatever length of time her military career would endure. She was still in the reserves two years later.

On the day she left, I was given the task of driving her to her departure point. I had met with her once since the big blowup, and she had asked me in all angry sincerity why I'd felt it was my business to enlighten the army to the fact that she was pretty much trying to rip them off.

I answered that if she'd been a half-decent liar she would have stuck to one simple story.

But I really kind of sympathized. I had once (albeit with slightly more honesty) parleyed my dad's hiatus hernia into a week's vacation at home. Perhaps I'll tell you that one sometime.

For the kiddies who may be reading this post (for I think a blog post should always have some moral lesson to impart to the tiny tots) the moral lesson of this post is:

"Keep your lies simple. It makes it far less likely you'll be caught out."

Words to live by, from your best friend and mine, Metro.

Blogroll Additions, and About Time Too

I've finally gotten around to adding Vlad the Impala of Northern Planets to the blogroll. I haven't yet added his wordpress blog, also Northern Planets. Nor his uncensored Northern Planets Uncensored.

But via The Questionable Authority, I have found a wondrous blog of things tentacular and poetic. Fans of that squid-squeezer Raincoaster will doubtless enjoy the poetic cephalopodcasts of The Digital Cuttlefish.

Go and read the post about English and creationism.

Carbon Tax? Do We Need a Steenking Carbon Tax?

Well why not?

Our provincial government yesterday announced a budget that included a carbon tax. The tax comes in the form of a 2.5¢ tax on fuels. This includes gasoline, other motor fuels and home heating oil.

FSM help me, I think this government finally made a move I can support! They imposed a tax on fuel and lowered personal income taxes for those earning less than $70,000 per year. Which is in fact most of us.

Yet most of the reaction I've heard has been whingeing about the increase in the cost of fuel.

This is silly. Whether or not you believe that global warming is an issue, a consumption tax on the number-one source of airborne pollution in this country is a good idea.

First, I support consumption taxes. Our pandering, poll-sniffing, pols in the federal government recently whorishly dropped the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to encourage people to spend more.

The average Canadian family is $23,000 or so in the hole. It would be one thing if this were for needful items, but most of it is consumer debt, that is, money spent on acquiring crap that they mostly don't need. We didn't need a sales tax reduction, but an income tax reduction wouldn't line the pockets of the conservatives' moneyed interests, or the feds' coffers.

Consumption simply for the sake of consumption has bad effects the world over, and most of those effects don't figure into the cost of consumer goods. In the case of fuel, until now, there has been no accounting for the environmental effects.

When consumption becomes an expensive choice, though, many people will choose to save money. Yes, the rich can afford to continue to consume, but nothing was going to change that anyway.

Second: The tax cut for someone earning the poverty-line $23,000 per year (anywhere in BC but Vancouver, where it's about $50k) is 5 percent off the current rate. The current rate is around 30 percent (probably less, but it's hard to pin down).

So this year you'll get about $400 back. Obviously, the more you earn, the bigger the rebate. At 2.5¢ per litre, you'd have to burn 16,000 litres of fuel to match that $400.

If your car gets 10 km/l (and most get much better mileage) you'd have to drive 160,000 km in a year to burn that rebate. I've owned my car for four years and I've put just over that many kilometres on it.

Now I don't feel this is a perfect plan. I'd rather have seen the income taxes drop a bit less, and have the money stuffed into subsidizing transit. It's hard to argue that someone should ride the bus when the bus simply doesn't get you where you're going, won't get you there in time, or, as in the case of Vancouver, costs five dollars each way to cross the three poorly-laid-out "fare zones". Most Canadians drive to work. Some are driving because they have no choice. We need to make more choices available.

I don't mind the heating fuel rise. Mme Metro and I have managed to argue our way to keeping the heat around 64 Farenheit (about 17 Celsius). My choice would be about 62, but the lady doth protest too much. So we have an automated thermostat that keeps the daytime temperature at 60-62 when we're out of the house or asleep, and at 64 when we're home in the evenings. And hey, it wasn't as though our rates were going down anyway.

In the 1970s, with the spectre of oil shortages and (FSM help us!) gas at 45¢ a litre, the nation adopted stringent measures:
If you're cold, put on a sweater, reduce unneccesary trips in the car, be wise in your use of things like dishwashers and washing machines, etc.

It's time for us to revisit these ideas.

Why? Well:
1)It keeps money in consumers' pockets
2) It reduces waste and extravagance at a time when everyone's $#17ting a brick about $100-a-barrel oil
3) It reduces our environmental footprint
4) It lowers pollution

This carbon tax is only a baby step. But it is, at least, in the right direction.

Well, I've Been Called Similar Names

I found this quiz languishing over at Raincoaster's, so I brought it home with me. I thought my result was sufficiently entertaining to be its own post.

You Are a Colon

You are very orderly and fact driven. You aren't concerned much with theories or dreams... only what's true or untrue. You are brilliant and incredibly learned. Anything you know is well researched. You like to make lists and sort through things step by step. You aren't subject to whim or emotions. Your friends see you as a constant source of knowledge and advice. (But they are a little sick of you being right all of the time!) You excel in: Leadership positions You get along best with: The Semi-Colon

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Something New

I don't glom onto memes as a rule. The new Metroformat might require more memes, I suppose. After all, I'm not yet so desperate that I'll stoop to endless quizzes, unlike some Raincoasters I could name.

However, while cruising my sadly-neglected blogroll today I discovered, over at Darren Barefoot's place, a meme I think is pretty cool:

Via Neatorama, you compose faux CD covers for imaginary bands using these three sources:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

I tried it twice:





As Darren points out, there doesn't seem to be much respect for photo copyright in the last step. Rather than blow the synergy by deliberately searching out creative commons pics, I would prefer to give credit for the pictures above to the proper owners. And I promise them a share of any profits I might accrue from this blog entry:

Pic 1 came from the Flickr photostream of someone whose name, alas, I have no idea how to pronounce: مبرووك عليكم المطر.

Pic 2 is by eyecatcher.

My Wikipedia pages got me to the general disambiguation page for , and the second from the page on "System of systems".

My first quote was:

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.

--Marie Curie

The second:

Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.

--Arthur Brisbane

What a good time

What a fine day
Giving the poor a coin or two
Charity's what we wealthy do on
Christmas eve
From the musical "A Christmas Carol"

So I said last post that I would give a bit of detail on our charitable saleslady.

My company has "adopted" a pair of "Christmas families". One is an elderly woman living alone, the other a single mum with a seventeen-year-old son and twelve-year-old daughter, whose family has apparently been stricken by illness.
I'm of two minds about this. I think it's a fine thing to support your community, but feel that really time is the best donation one can make (although I'm hardly at the forefront there). I also wonder whether it's really worth supplying people who have a roof over their heads and food to eat with, from the lists supplied:

Speakers for a laptop. The poor have laptops?
Two new pillows. You're telling me they can't plump for $12 at Zeller's?
A one-month gym membership, snowboard pants ... ?

I haste to point out that these families are asked to provide these wish lists by the agency concerned, so it's not as though they're turning their noses up at anything less. This is a wish list in the finest sense of the term.

Still--they seem to be fed and housed (itself no mean feat in our little town with its vacancy rate of 0.001 or so*). So the situation is presumably fairly stable.

Yes, charity at home is important too. Still, there are people in this world who aren't fed or housed, and I tend to feel they should get priority. Mme and I are making donations through UNICEF's "Gifts of Magic" programme, and we encourage anyone to do the same.

Unlike the Xmas family thing, the GOM gifts come with a tax receipt, for one thing.

Still, while I was attempting to decide what to buy for the Christmas family, or whether to give cash, we received several prodding messages from the boss' "executive assistant".

Then came "Comet". Comet wrote (I paraphrase):

Hey you guys! Come on! We can do better than this!

I'm going to buy:
{List of roughly $250 worth of stuff}
For our Christmas families.

I challenge each and every one of you to do the same.

I wonder what effect she thought that was going to have? You see, Comet works in sales. She just closed an enormous deal, for which she earned a bonus of roughly one-third of my annual salary. The gift list above represented about two percent of that bonus.

What she sold them was a package of printed and electronic media written by yours truly and his co-drudges. We live in the magical black box in the sub-basement that is the writing department, and like magic elves we take orders and turn them into words. Without us, Comet would have had nothing to sell. The entire frigging company rests on our skinny shoulders, dammit!

Last year there were discussions about whether the writers would get bonuses. We haven't, largely because management sees bonuses as a stick, rather than a carrot, and disapproved of us saying we'd like to see the money distributed equally to all. They seek to use money to divide us and drive us to work ourselves as near to death as possible while still turning out product. But the collaborative nature of the work we do means that the interpersonal relationships are important. Possibly even more so than money.

So, no bonus.

The along comes Comet and rubs it in our faces? Thanks a bunch ... ! I almost wrote her back:

Dear Comet:
I hereby pledge to match the percentage of your bonus that you contributed to our Christmas families with an equal percentage of mine. Thanks for the gracious reminder.

This, in a company that forces employees to work the Remembrance Day holiday in exchange for Boxing Day (which is in fact not a federal holiday, is a holiday in every other province, and is unofficially recognized by most workplaces here), is just the cherry atop the whipped cream on a horseapple sundae.

Oh--and it's worth mentioning that the boss gets an envelope with his name on it pointedly left in every department along with the broad hint that contributions are encouraged. My department, which consists of five people, gets one all to itself. So do the thirty people in telephone sales. So the executive assistant knows which department the skinflints are in, I suppose.

I am left with only one appropriate remark:

Bah! Humbug!

I love my work, but the company sometimes comes perilously close to self-parody.


*And while I'm on the topic, if any Hometowners know of a small apartment or suite suitable for a woman with a five-year-old daughter and renting for $650 per month or less, available in February, please contact me.

Via the Metro Creative Aquisitions Dept. (#2)

Originally aquired from Azahar. Sounds just like me, doncha think?

Your Superpower Should Be Mind Reading

You are brilliant, insightful, and intuitive. You understand people better than they would like to be understood. Highly sensitive, you are good at putting together seemingly irrelevant details. You figure out what's going on before anyone knows that anything is going on! Why you would be a good superhero: You don't care what people think, and you'd do whatever needed to be done Your biggest problem as a superhero: Feeling even more isolated than you do now

What Should Your Superpower Be?

Trouble In Reporting

From Editor & Publisher via Cliff Schecter

NEW YORK The great John Edwards-Ann Coulter feud took another turn on Friday, with the former senator calling the columnist/author a "she-devil" on a visit to Iowa.

Coulter had hurled a gay slur at Edwards earlier this year, and after more back and forth, his wife called her during a national TV appearance to ask some hard questions.

Edwards had reminded the crowd today in Burlington, Iowa, that his wife had challenged Coulter to stop "personal attacks." He continued: "We know these people. We know their game plan. They're going to attack us personally," Edwards said, according to an ABC report. "They attacked Elizabeth personally, because she stood up to that she-devil Ann Coulter."

Catching himself, he added: "I should not have name-called. But the truth is -- forget the names -- people like Ann Coulter, they engage in hateful language."

Clearly E&P has misunderstood the issue. Coulter didn't use a "gay slur". Being called gay is one of those insults that's like a drink: it affects one only if accepted. And the word "gay" itself is not a slur. Had Coulter said "John Edwards is gay" she would have been demonstrably, provably wrong, and she would have had to retract that remark, not because it was insulting, but because it was inaccurate.

But the words were chosen carefully, lest the harpy should have to eat them. What the shriek-speak Fantasy of the Fascists said was that she "was going to say a few words about John Edwards, but if you say the word 'faggot' you have to apologize" (I'm not sure of the wording, but I refuse to enter that dribbling loon's name into Google, lest it become more contaminated than it already is).

The issue was the word "faggot." In the mouth of the Coultergeist and her far-right-field friends it's supposed to be insulting, degrading, implying a lack of manliness. It also reveals their take on the minority they have been working so hard to alienate, disenfranchise, and assault.

Clearly they haven't been watching the performances of the Republican Party lately. Isn't Jeff Gannon manly? How about Mark Foley? Glenn Murphy? Or the endless other closet-case Repugnicans?

Of course, Coulter herself is very manly indeed, right down to the adam's apple and need to prove her machismo by using a word that is rapidly coming to sound like saying "negro" with two g's; well, in private, many of her supporters are quite fond of that word too, I'm sure.

So the issue here is about whether or not Edwards accurately described the beloved icon of hate as a "she-devil". I feel the terminology is wrong, and Edwards should reract it. The correct term is simply "devil". At least until some poor unfortunate soul sacrifices themself for the sake of biology by getting close enough to obtain a DNA sample to see whether she does in fact possess a second X chromosome.

However, Editor & Publisher owes the world an apology too, for calling Coulter an "author" and "columnist" without irony. I've tried to read bits of her books, and the hate-screed she writes could at best be described as the ravings of a deranged hag afflicted with the madness that accompanies late-stage syphillis. I'm considering a guide called "How to Read Coulter--If you absolutely must".

From Chapter One:

The best way to handle her books is to hang them on a nail in the outhouse.

So Very Stolen

Off the blog of M. Cliff Schecter, new to the blogroll but an old favourite.

I also added Mr. Anchovy's and Ration Reality in there. Well worth reading.

As for this? Well, as Schecter points out, it's hysterical 'cos it's how the people fighting immigration in the US really think.



If you want to realize how racist the "send-'em-back-where-they-came-from" side of that debate is, consider: When was the last time you heard anyone condemn immigration into the US from Canada?

Of course, most Canadians aren't working for $0 an hour at Wal-Mart, so they probably don't want to move to the US, with the possible exception of Stephen Harper and Stockwell "Doris" Day.

Snakes on a Boat

Via Boingboing

Okay, so we all know that anyone who voted for Bush Number Two at any time is probably dangerously unstable. We know that the Republicans have become the most immoral, corrupt government that ever infested the ruins of America.

But what we keep getting told is that these are fringe behaviours. That a few arrant spouters of loony nonsense, a couple of paedophiles, torture-lovers, racists, xenophobes, Christian fascists, and whoremasters don't represent the true nature of the conservative movement. And it's true. The real thing is a $#!7load more scary:

I adjust and stiffly greet the first man I see. He is a judge, with the craggy self-important charm that slowly consumes any judge. He is from Canada, he declares (a little more apologetically), and is the founding president of "Canadians Against Suicide Bombing". Would there be many members of "Canadians for Suicide Bombing?" I ask. Dismayed, he suggests that yes, there would.

Johann Hari took a $1200 cruise, organized by the "National Review" and recorded the experience; so that you won't ever have to.

Subtitled "What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren't Listening", the article gives an overview of how toxic concentrated "conservatism" is to human life and thought.

The unguarded moments are the prize. Eliminationist jargon spews from the mouths of starched American duchesses ("Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason"), Robert Bork says "We're doing an excellent job of killing them [in Iraq]," and the sole black man says "If the Ku Klux Klan supports equal rights, then God bless them."

If you value civil society and civilized discourse, go read the article.