Category: Politics

House buying

I have been watching the news, and paying attention to the details of my own life, and I am arriving at the sad conclusion that buying a house in Vancouver is looking increasingly like a stupid idea.  In fact, until the Olympics are paid off – and just as I predicted when we won the fool  things … how can you call it winning when it means grabbing your ankles first to be sexually toyed with and then to give your masters a convenient way of hanging you upsidedown to shake your pockets out – it’s turning into a black hole of corruption and price increases while Gordon’s chosen siphon off the goodies.

So local taxes will skyrocket – in the middle of a depression – and anybody left standing when the second and third waves of layoffs and downsizings will get to pay – and at the same time the government will use it as an excuse to avoid increasing services or even paying for them at all, and why not, everybody who belongs to a union is a socialist anyway, right?

I am going to buy something someplace else. I just haven’t figured out exactly where yet, or when, and there’s lots else I don’t yet know.

Peaceful

I really like this neighbourhood.

The crows didn’t cooperate yesterday.

Prime Minister Harper has just announced that Highway 11 between Saskatoon and Prince Albert is going to be twinned.  I’ve been up that highway to go here.

Keith slept over.  He really is one of my favorite people, and I love him more all the time.  It’s just the way he says things that gets me, the way he is so solemn and yet so cheerful at the same time, like a very secular monk.

Katie says she is coming with me to Grandma’s next weekend.  Whether this will happen I have no clue, but I’m going whether she does or not. She is still doing well in school but sometimes when she mentions Daxus I get a trifle annoyed and have to look the other way, metaphorically.  I don’t have any beef with Daxus currently.  The last time I saw him, he took one look at my face, gave me a hug, and took his leave of Katie thus allowing us to do girly things (actually I was consulting Katie about a personal matter.  It’s great when your kids are old enough to consult…)

I don’t want to waken the boys, but I don’t want to have breakfast too late because I’m off to a nice restaurant for lunch today with the Dunnetteers.  I am so looking forward to it, and Keith is going too!  I get to show him off, te he.

Today, pay rent, a quick tidy of the room, clean out the fridge (gah!) and other than that nothing but frivol and frolic.

Feeling better

Jerome and Shannon came over last night and GUESS WHAT!!!!

Yeah, well, what news would you expect from a couple who got married last summer.  They are progenizing, and Shannon looks glorious and Jerome looks pleased.  I hope they have a hundred fat children.  No, actually, I hope they do whatever they want and have fun doing it, and that seems to be a) how it’s been and b) the continuing plan.

I fed them spaghetti and they watched The Road to Guantanamo with us.  As we said to each other after we watched … Going to Afghanistan 3 weeks after 9/11 was their first mistake, and it got mistakier from there.

The crowd consisted of Paul (who had to leave for work at 7:30 and thus missed the movie, and brought the bread I made french toast this morning with as there was otherwise no bread in the house), Keith, me, Jeff and the developing duo.

I suppose I should say that after the best part of a year of saying, “Aw, c’MON – where do you get your goofy ideas about movies anyway??? Don’t you trust me?” Jeff talked me into watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Yes, I liked it.  Now, cleaning and tidying and working on Valentine cards and getting read to go to a dinner party tonight.  I’ve been asked to bring my mando.  Yee!

Sleep and food and Saturday links

Casting the witch in the Wizard of Oz.
 I heart Margaret Hamilton.

This is just freaky, but I’m only posting it because of the Firefly reference.

I was really suspicious of the do not call registry right from the beginning, mostly because after the gun registry debacle I didn’t think the Canadian government could organize something conspicuous in a camouflage store.  Now we learn, surprise! bafflement! that the government is SELLING the list at a nominal price to whoever will pay for it. Alas, Ottawa.

In about 2 hours I’ll be jumping on the transit for my coffee date.  Instead of swithering, I’m sorting laundry, acting as cat doorwoman, paying bills, cooking AWESOME split pea with ham soup, making breakfast for me and Jeff and answering emails.  I had a wonderful night of sleep – slept maybe 1 1/2 hours longer than normal.  I actually feel good.

Perhaps it has something to do with the departmental meeting with the new Ops great grandboss at work.  Like Holy Paradigms Batman.  I was buzzing like a thwacked beehive and dancing up and down like a little kid when I got home last night (met up with Keith at Brentwood station and the little bugger did a ninja on me, sneaking up behind me in the bus line up) because I was so happy with the meeting.

There are four priorities in the new configuration of the company.  Safety, Quality, Customer Service and Financial Results.  So I recited them to the dude to indicate that I’d stayed conscious during one of the town halls, and then I asked him to give me the matching 4 mantras of corporate culture.  In a very TED lecture kinda way, he said, “Respect, Metrics, Voice of the Customer and We’re Only in One Business, and that’s the Only Business that We’re In” (not phrased like that and over a much longer period of time) and gave examples to support it.  The previous group he’d been with had just sat and stared at him.  Patricia and I peppered him with questions until he told us (respectfully) to let the men get a word in edgewise (and just think about the state of the world that this would be the case… I love the 21st century).  Then I insulted his wife’s taste in sweaters (yes, I know, and I am going to be punished, I’m sure) and we went home.  It was supposed to be a half hour meeting and it took nearly two hours and the time FLEW BY.  My hopes and fears for the future remain the same, but my hopes definitely have my fears in a hammerlock.

I’ve been conversing with Deb about her daughter Jenn and her Pitbull rescue organization.  Here’s the link. Unfortunately it’s not possible to get a tax receipt for Canadian donors but I urge my American readers to make a donation if it meets their criteria for a worthy charity.

And tomorrow, time for a baptism.  Me happy.

the nut shot

Has anybody ever noticed that one of the enduring tropes of humour is the nut shot?  I’ve said before that anything can be explained by ‘following the genes’ and this one is pretty simple.

What makes a nut shot funny?  Well, it’s happening to somebody else. That’s pretty standard for all humour.  But notice the division of humour.  Men almost inevitably find the nut shot more amusing than women do.  Any action which potentially removes a rival from any activities resulting in offspring is going to be a-ok; if it’s accompanied by humiliation and dominance, that makes it even tastier.

I have heard some women remark that a man could use a good swift kick in the ‘nads, but it’s almost inevitably in the context that the guy is an asshole, the guy is abusing his power, or he’s sleeping around on his pregnant wife, an activity which draws a lot of heat even from women with a relaxed attitude towards sex.

Can you tell I’ve been living with Jeff for the best part of a year?  I’m enjoying it, even if it has me meditating on the nut shot at 4 am.  Not because I want him to experience one – I grew out of that 40 years ago – but because he laughs his ass off every time he sees one. Especially on Robot Chicken, which has a high NSPE rating (Nut Shots Per Episode).

This is how everybody uses a cell phone, including me.

Obama was inaugurated.  He’s doing something about Gitmo, and about bloody time.

Good bye speech to the Bushies

20 April 1653 Oliver Cromwell to the Long Parliament.

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.

Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do; I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place; go, get you out!

Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!

 

Good one, Oliver….

Back to work

I only have three days of work and then another 4 days off. I will probably have forgotten how to turn my PC on this morning it’s been so long since I looked at one.

The cats (or cat) peed and pooed on my clothing and bedding in Jeff’s absence, but all is forgiven; Gizmo grabbed my hand with both paws the other day to convey it to his head in the international cat sign language of PET ME YOU THUMBED FOOL!  (THUMBED being two syllables, natch).  Also Eddie did the same thing he did the last time he was talking to Jeff on the phone, which is to nuzzle the phone and start purring.

It was so slushy yesterday, it was like being trapped in a tasteefreeze machine that had run out of food colouring, except, well, iccky brown.

Sarah Palin, can you see Russia from your house?

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, Go Away.

a big stew of links and updates!

I won something worth $720 and I gave it to a coworker after briefly toying with the notion of selling it.

I support the United Way, which is I why I won the above noted item.

I’ve been up very early every morning since the time change.

Patricia and I brainstormed a problem at work and the results were high five worthy.

I’m shopping today for my France trip.

Haagen Dasz Mayan Chocolate ice cream is REALLY good.

I have a very long list of things to do.

Flying Spaghetti Monster made a Pastafarian out of me.

Can a squirrel be cute?

There’s a new Youtube video in my account of the little waterfall next to work.

It’s so rainy that it’s actively dangerous to walk anywhere except pavement.  Wet leaves, slick grass.

It’s so rainy that the ground is exploding.  What the hell is it?

I had to take shots from different angles.

Is it a Helvella lacunosa?

These guys at least are cute and not reminiscent of inimical alien brains.

Found art in the ladies can.  This one’s for daughter Katie.

Barack Obama’s family is going to adopt ‘a mutt, like me’.  bwa ha ha!  We’re all mutts, Uncle Rocky.

I already sent this link to Paul.  Folks like this should get taken out behind the hangar and shot.

Some people study psychopaths, and I guess that’s a good thing.

I have an offer of a weeklong stay in a bungalow in Belize, and I’m seriously considering it.

Eddie and Gizmo demonstrate vertical superiority.

Doug’s contribution to the art of pumpkin carving.

Sandy P at work took this awesome pic when she was in SF.

Death by black hole and other astrophysical meditations; I especially like the notion that Apophis could have been called Bambi.  A physicist explains it all for you.

I am just finishing making waffles.

We watched Objects in Space again last night.  Honestly, it’s in my top five hours of tv ever. (Along with Restless, Michael Moschen’s special, the moon landing, and the episode of Band of Brothers where they parachute into Normandy).

If fonts had personalities…..

I am messing around a lot with Garage Band.

I found the sound of a door on freesound that was so good I put in on LOOP and listened for half an hour.

My digestion is much better since I started taking acidophilus.

Keith is supposed to turn up later today.

Oh, Nutella, how you glisten!

We are very SF positive in New Westminster.

That should hold ya for a while, I guess.  I’ll be off shortly to commit myself some serious retail therapy.

all gone

I wrote a post and it vanished.  That always makes me mad.  I went back through my pages hit on and found this: Please Vote!

And Mars Mission news.

I have a coworker who is addicted to lip balm. He jokes about it.

I am at a super low ebb.  Everything takes a million years; I feel like I can scarcely move.  Fortunately, I have to get up and go to work, otherwise I’d just lie here and moan quietly.  Knowing this state of mind is entirely temporary is useful; I once believed that if I felt bad I’d feel bad forever, and now I know I’ll feel lousy for a while and then it will go away.  Also, I can think of at least three things, off the top of my head, that would make me feel better.  Obama winning, lunch at the Himalaya and seeing some critters.

I just managed four weeks without a single cigarette, not so much as a drag.  That’s the longest I’ve gone in probably 10 years. Unca Dave getting sick was the wakeup call I needed.

Since it takes a month to make a new habit, I’m now contemplating the next peak to conquer.  Hopefully I won’t need oxygen and a Sherpa.

Oh wait, banjo music!