Putting Tigers In Their Tanks

I know very little about the Tamil protests currently taking place in Toronto beyond the headlines and single paragraph summaries on news sites. I don't understand the issues or the situation in Sri Lanka, and have no particular intention of getting informed on the matters. The world is too big, and life too complex, to understand everything, and figuring out who the bad guys are in that mess just isn't going to make anywhere near the top of my priorities anytime soon.

That cheerfully admitted, the protests give me a good segue to talk about protests and demonstrations in general.

First up, I'm all for the right of people to freely assemble and engage in nonviolent demonstrations and protests. However, that doesn't always mean it's a good idea. Sometimes groups of which I'm a member hold public events like "Walk for Life" or other such parades. I agree with their goals, and sometimes even participate, but I'm often unsure that it does any good.

Do people change their minds on issues based on seeing a parade go by? I'm far likelier to be annoyed by any traffic interruption that may result and lose sympathy for the marching group. Maybe it's just a matter of letting people see that there's an organized movement on an issue, which may get them thinking about it, or even inspire them to join in if they already agree but weren't actively involved.

From the little I've bothered to read about the Tamil situation in Toronto, it seems well past "inconvenient" for anybody who's just trying to go about their business in the affected areas. I'd lose sympathy for the cause fast if I had to make my way through throngs of protesters to get to work, and even more so if they were aggressive or deliberately obstructive when I tried to pass.

Second, although I'm not sure who the bad guys are in Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers are considered a terrorist organization by the Canadian Government. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are. Just ask Maher Arar. (Although recent developments make me wonder whether the CIA knows things about him that the rest of us don't yet...)

However, the Canadian government's designation of the Tigers as a terrorist group may be a wisp of smoke that implies an underlying fire. I'll give CSIS the benefit of the doubt. So, here's a thought. There are probably a lot of people at these protests who are in Canada illegally, or on a temporary basis, or with credentials on which the ink is still wet. And here they are, taking part in a disruptive protest, largely in support of an identified terrorist organization. Apparently some Tiger fundraising has gone on, which is explicitly illegal. Is it just me, or is this an absolutely perfect opportunity for the guys at Customs and Immigration to practice their deportation skills? There must be cargo ships heading to Sri Lanka (or whatever other countries these protesters were born in). Load 'em up.

That, of course, assumes that the Tigers are the bad guys, that the protesters support the Tigers, etc. It may not apply in this specific situation. However, the principle holds. Where were INS personnel during all the illegal alien rallies in the States last year? There's no shame in shooting fish in a barrel if your problem is that the barrels are too full of fish.

Finally, some of the protesters have taken to hunger strikes.

I really don't get hunger strikes. Although you might not think so if you only know me from reading this blog (and maybe not even if you know me in real life), I actually have some compassion. I don't like people being victimized (really victimized, not made uncomfortable). If A is hurting B without a really good reason, and I can intervene to make them stop, I will. However, if B is deliberately hurting themselves, and they seem to be of sound mind otherwise, then I see no reason to be sympathetic.

I don't understand how "Do what I want or I'll hurt myself" is supposed to be persuasive. My answer is pretty much always going to be, "Ummm... go ahead." Not only does it not persuade, it hurts your cause by making you look childish. There's a very fine line between a protester on a hunger strike and a toddler threatening to hold their breath until they turn blue if they don't get a cookie right now. Threatening a hunger strike lets me file you under "Silly person, safe to ignore." Threatening others is reprehensible, but at least it gets you taken seriously. Holding yourself hostage just implies that you've seen Blazing Saddles.

As a punchline, the article I linked to above says that one of the hunger strikers was hospitalized after complaining of - wait for it - "stomach pains." What exactly did this genius think would happen after a few days without eating? I don't know who the good guys are in the Sri Lanka situation (assuming there are any), but I'm getting an idea who the smart guys are.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of Hostage Bunny in an undisclosed location.

Fireproof

Sorry I haven't been around much lately. I spent much of last week setting up a computer that I bought for my parents as an anniversary gift.

I could get a story or two from that experience, if I was hard up for material. Suffice it to say that if you're buying a computer from a reseller and it says that it comes with a Windows XP "COA" (that means certificate of authenticity, or in other words a legal XP licence), it may not have Windows preinstalled or an installation disc included. Then, when you ask the reseller about it, they may suggest that you "just go download a Windows CD off the Internet", and act surprised when you tell them that's illegal. They then might get a lot more cooperative when you mention that Microsoft's customer support operators were intrigued by their suggestion.

So, the XP snafu combined with my thinking for some reason that my parents' anniversary was a week later than it actually is led to my spending a few late nights watching installation progress bars creep across the screen.

And speaking of long marriages...

My wife and I recently watched Fireproof. If you've even heard of the movie, then I'm not really spoiling anything by telling you that there's a happy, marriage-affirming ending. Yes, you know how it will end pretty much from the start, but that's true of most stories in any medium. The interesting part is seeing how you get there.

This movie is far, far better than I thought it would be. It's genuinely funny in several spots (not just "for a Christian movie" funny), and not nearly as emotionally manipulative as most movies. It's definitely worth watching.

It stars Kirk Cameron. Move past that. He's actually a talented actor, despite being best known for having starred in one of the worst sitcoms ever. He's completely believable in this role, and it's clear from some of the outtakes, especially the "pranks" reel, that he doesn't bring any ego issues to the set.

Going into this movie I expected that the marital problems of the lead couple would be the man's fault. That's The Law of Modern Relationship Storytelling: if a relationship is unhappy, it's the man's fault. He's insensitive, he's distant, he's aloof, he's a workaholic, he's any of the other seventy or eighty other awful things that used to just be called "a man".

This movie holds true to that, but it's so well written, and Cameron is so good, that I bought it. The state of this marriage at the outset of the movie is his fault. An early scene showing the two bickering seemed at first to show that she was as bad as him, but as the movie progressed I realized that she had only become that way as a result of his behaviour over the years. Since I'm something of an antifeminist male chauvinist pig by the standards of modern society (again, what used to be called "a man" before the Great Castration), it's tough to sell me yet another relationship story wherein the poor set-upon heroine's suffering is entirely the fault of the brutish lout she had the misfortune to love, but this movie did it.

I'm not surprised that this movie wasn't a box office smash, but I'm certainly glad that the filmmakers didn't compromise. The Gospel is explicitly presented more than once, and Scripture is not only quoted, but shown onscreen. The people that made this movie clearly get the principle that if your relationship with God isn't what it should be, then it's easy for the rest of your life to follow into disarray. I studied psychology a couple of lifetimes ago, but abandoned it as a career option when I realized that. It's tough to make a living as a counsellor in the secular world when your first recommended treatment for almost any addiction, relationship problem, or emotional issue is Jesus. That's not always where the treatment ends, but for best results that's where it starts.

The reviews of this movie from the secular world were not kind. It has a 37% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and I read several of the reviews and comments. Interestingly, many of the negative reviews weren't really reviewing the movie so much as the worldview it presents and defends.

I especially enjoyed a comment on one site (unfortunately I read it over a week ago now, don't remember which one it was, and am not going trudging through again to find it) that said something to the effect that "the Bible goes on and on about wives being submissive, but doesn't say a single word about how husbands should act."

Really, now, it's in the next freaking paragraph. You probably don't even need to turn the page. How lazy, both physically and intellectually, do you need to be to remain that willfully ignorant?

Here's Ephesians 5:22-33, with some edits to tighten it up but leave the point intact. If you think I may have snipped out bits that talk about Christians wanting to set up theocracies and round homosexuals into work camps, click the link, or better yet crack open a dead-tree Bible, and read the full passage for yourself:

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy... husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church... each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Nope, nothing at all about husbands in the whole Bible. Yeesh.

In fact, to really get what that passage is saying, you need to back it up one more verse to include Ephesians 5:21:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Unfortunately, many Bibles have the text divided into thematic sections and leave that verse at the end of the preceding section. My current primary study Bible does, but has a footnote saying that this verse "goes equally well with both the preceding and the following sections, but it is especially basic to the following paragraphs." The editors correctly figured out that this verse should go at the start of the "marital obligations" part. It's an introduction to this new topic, not the conclusion of the previous one. So why didn't they put it there?

Verse 21 states that both the husband and the wife are to submit to one another. The following section, quoted earlier, expands on and clarifies that idea. You may still not agree, or not like it, but at least try to understand it. Husbands are actually called to greater responsibility and greater personal sacrifice. If you're offended by the idea that wives are to submit, with no reciprocal obligations from their husbands, then you're offended by an antibiblical idea and I agree with you.


Back to the movie.

Although this movie deals with deeply personal and mature issues, there's nothing in it that's inappropriate for children. The filmmakers were very careful in choosing the words and images used. I especially like how they handled a discussion of Cameron's character's web-surfing habits. Adults will understand exactly what they're talking about, and the implications of the argument, but it would all sail over the heads of young children.

I also liked the portrayals of the counsel offered by friends of the husband and wife, because they were so realistic. The man's friend advised him to smarten up and start being a better husband. The woman's friends squawk about how she should leave immediately, she'd be better off without him, etc. In my experience, this is how it works in real life. In general (maybe I should put those words in a large, all-caps, bold font for emphasis), the male idea of "supportive" involves urging and assisting people to do what is right even if it's painful, difficult, or not what they want to do. The female idea means, "whatever you say (or want) is right." The male concept is based on honour and duty, the female on emotion.

I said, "in general". The exceptions you know are exactly that.


Hmm. I hadn't expected this discussion of a movie to turn into a treatise on gender differences. Perhaps I should move on before this degenerates further.

The movie is not perfect. I would have cut the scene with the doofus talking to the mirror. On my first viewing, that scene seemed to go on forever. On a second look, it's actually quite short. The theory of relativity in regards to time ("One second with your hand on a hot stove lasts as long as an hour talking to a pretty girl") holds.

I would also have cut two stereotypes. Yes, stereotypes sometimes become stereotypes for a reason, but there's no need to encourage them.

First, early in the movie, one firefighter is dressed down for poor performance. He's later made the butt of a practical joke. He seems a bit slow. And, of course, he's overweight. There seems to be a shorthand in movies. If you want to show that a character is incompetent and probably not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, make them chubby. Too many casting directors think that "fat" equals "stupid".

While we're on the topic of practical jokes, although the mild one played on the slow character is a bit cruel, I have no problem with the harsher one played later on the mirror-talking doofus. It was a targeted attack on his raging ego. I like to see people being taken down a notch when it's called for, and this one was.

The second stereotype I would have avoided came from the two black nurses. I wish all black actresses would instantly reject any script that calls for them to raise an eyebrow and say "Mmmm-HMMM!" For that matter, if the casting sheet describes your character as "sassy", walk out of the audition and fire the agent who sent you.

In conclusion, Fireproof is well worth seeing, even if (maybe especially if) you have doubts about its "religious" content. Yes, it's predictable - you didn't really think they'd be divorced at the end, did you? However, it takes a few interesting twists, foils some expectations, and says several very interesting things along the way. And watch the extras, especially the Pranks section.


Enough rambling. Here's another picture of my dilapidated roof. Same board, opposite end.

Canada's Racist Firearms Act

The Firearms Act, the law that regulates just about everything to do with civilian firearm ownership in Canada, contains several clauses pertaining solely to aboriginal peoples. This is, of course, racist on its face. As a refresher, I define racism as interjecting ethnicity into situations where it is not relevant. Since freedom of expression is sacrosanct around here, you're free to disagree with that definition. If you choose to do so, I am in turn free not to care.

I explained that definition of racism in this post, way back in May of last year. In that post I also said that I intended to write this article "soon". That says much about my sense of time's passage.

It's unsurprising that this Canadian law contains provisions for specific people based on their genetic makeup. Canadians, being open-minded, liberal, well-meaning folks, frequently try to enshrine helpful exemptions for the "disadvantaged" in law. However, given the barely concealed contempt for aboriginals that Canadian legislators demonstrate as often as they get the opportunity (see this article for a horrifying example), it's also unsurprising that the "Aboriginal Adaptations" are offensive and insulting to aboriginal people.

There are five ways that the Firearms Act treats Aboriginals differently. I said four back in May 2008; I was mistaken. I've edited a correction into that article. Revising history is fun when you're the one who gets to do it. We have always been at war with Eurasia.

I need to say at the outset that I'm going to have trouble linking to original sources for these. The RCMP took over the Canadian Firearms Program a while back, and a lot of the web links have been redirected or just no longer exist. You can find most of this stuff - maybe all - if you dig through the RCMP's current Firearms Program info page for Aboriginals, especially the Fact Sheet, and this now largely obsolete PDF booklet on the Firearms Act that was prepared for distribution to aboriginal peoples. The quotations I provide below are from one of those sources.

Let's start by listing the five provisions, and explore them each afterward:

1. Service in a language other than English or French (i.e., a traditional aboriginal language).
2. Possession Only Licence eligibility without owning a firearm.
3. Minor's Licences for children under 12.
4. Safety training exemptions.
5. "Recommendation for approval."

1. Service in a language other than English or French (i.e., a traditional aboriginal language). Canada has two official languages: English and French. If you want to deal with the Canadian government in any way, you better know one of them. However, although no promises are made, the Canadian Firearms Program (CFP from here on, because I'm tired of typing it out) says in that PDF booklet that aboriginal people may be able to take the normally prerequisite firearms safety course in their own language.

I don't care about this one, and wouldn't care even if the CFP's language was stronger, using terms like "make every effort to accommodate". As long as no actual obligations are taken on by the CFP (or any other government agency) to provide service in languages other than English and French, I don't care if they have somebody at the office who happens to know another language and is willing to talk to citizens in it. Same goes for Chinese, Italian, or any other language. This one's boring, but since it exists I wanted to list it. Let's move on.

2. Possession Only Licence eligibility without owning a firearm. Here's where the Act gets a bit complicated. There are two kinds of firearms licences: Possession Only Licences (POLs), which let you keep any firearms you already have but not get any more, and Possession and Acquisition Licences (PALs), which let you keep what you have and get more.

A POL is normally only available to people who already own at least one firearm. In fact, a POL is not available at all anymore to anyone who doesn't already have one, because all firearms in Canada were supposed to have been registered by a deadline some years ago. The legal logic was that anyone who already owned firearms should have already had their licence by then, since you need a licence before you can register, so in theory on the registration deadline there was nobody left in Canada who owns a firearm but doesn't have a licence.

It also seems logical on its face that if you don't own a firearm, you don't need a POL. So, the law says that if you don't own a firearm, you can't have a POL.

Unless you're an aboriginal person. You see, the law figures that aboriginal people might have access to and want to use communally owned firearms. Davis (from Corner Gas) may not personally own a rifle, but his aboriginal community might have one that he wants to take out once a year or so to hunt. Perhaps the Canadian government figures that aboriginal society hasn't quite reached the level of the whole "private ownership of property" thing.

I actually don't have much problem with this adaptation, aside from the snarky aspersion in the previous sentence. I'd call this what it is: letting someone who doesn't own a firearm get a POL so they can borrow firearms that belong to someone else. Their band office, their neighbour, their cousin, whoever. The problem is that this option is not available to anyone who isn't aboriginal. If I want to get a POL just to borrow firearms, the CFP shuts the door in my face and tells me to get lost. It's a PAL, which means I have to take a safety course that isn't required for a POL, or I can go hunt ducks with a slingshot.

3. Minor's Licences for children under 12. Here's where things start to get really ugly. From that official RCMP - CFP info page I linked to above:

In most cases, the minimum age for obtaining a Minor’s Licence to borrow non-restricted rifles and shotguns is 12 years old. However, there is no minimum age for Aboriginal children who take part in the traditional hunting activities of their community.

Got that? Most kids have to be at least 12 to get a Minor's Licence (which allows them to borrow and use, but not take ownership of, firearms). Aboriginal kids have no minimum age limit.

Translation: "We wouldn't let prepubescent white children play with guns - their lives are valuable and filled with limitless potential. Aboriginal kids, on the other hand..."


Time to state a principle, while some readers are off looking up a phone number for the Human Rights Commission complaint hotline to file their complaints against me, thereby proving that irony is not dead.

I seriously doubt that any legislators consciously held that intention. Their intentions were probably good, although misguided and condescending. My interpretations are informed by my steadfast beliefs that (a) all human beings are created equal, with variations in skin colour ultimately being about as significant as those in hair colour, and should be treated as such under law; (b) failure to uphold such equal treatment is prima facie racism; (c) all human beings are inherently flawed and prone to doing wrong, stupid, and / or evil things. Yes, very much including me. This idea used to be called "original sin". These days it's called "nonconstructive thinking" by aromatherapy devotees and other deep thinkers.

So, while those legislators didn't set out to be vile racists, they crafted some vile, racist policies because they didn't agree with (a) and didn't think themselves subject to (c). Seeing it that way is all a matter of interpretation. As we'll be discussing more in future articles, the same facts can often be interpreted in very different ways depending on one's underlying beliefs, or worldview. Which interpretation is correct depends on which underlying worldview is correct. My worldview includes the three elements stated in the previous paragraph (with (c) as the foundational bedrock). I'm not aware of a single good argument against any of them. Your evaluation of any such arguments may vary depending on your worldview.

And yes, I'm deliberately presenting the most provocative interpretations I can here, to make the point. However, this is sincerely how I see it. Furthermore, I don't see any way you could cast these last three adaptations in a positive light, at least without tossing the three beliefs I outlined above.

4. Safety training exemptions. Time for another principle that really deserves its own entry. In fact, I started drafting one last June or so, and still have the first couple of paragraphs saved on my hard drive, but never finished it.

Here's the principle, stated very (probably overly) simply: when you see statements about (or references to) some identifiable group, try changing the identifiable group, preferably to its perceived opposite, and see if your feelings about the statement (or reference) change. It's easiest to do with gender or "black" and "white", but any group identifications work.

Some examples might help. Try reading a transcript of an interview with Al Sharpton or Spike Lee. Forget who the speaker is, and while reading switch "white" and "black". If it makes you really uncomfortable and sounds like a speech that could be given at a Klan rally to thunderous inbred applause, that means you get it.

Try these on for size: United Caucasian College Fund. Health clubs specifically forbidding women to join. An all-white awards ceremony instead of (or alongside) the NAACP awards. White Entertainment Television. Men's drinks half price at the local bar. "It's a white thing - you wouldn't understand." Stuff Asian People Like. "I accept this award on behalf of white men everywhere!"

Some of those may bother you more than others. Some may not bother you much at all. If none of them bother you, you probably should be bothered by that.

Which brings us to the problem with the safety training exemption idea. As noted earlier, you need safety training to get a PAL. However, one of the Aboriginal Adaptations exempts Aboriginals. It's not a rubber stamp - they still have to request and justify their exemption. However, the underlying logic is that using firearms is part of aboriginal culture. Put more bluntly, the assumption is that it's in their blood.

Let's do a little substitution. Instead of "Aboriginals generally know how to handle firearms - it's part of their culture", try, "Young urban black males don't need to take handgun training. It must be part of their culture. (After all, the statistics show that they already know how to use them.)"

This is how Canadian legislators think. People aren't individuals - they're only members of their group.

5. "Recommendation for approval." Pasted from the RCMP's site:

Background checks are performed to ensure that licence applicants are not likely to be a danger to themselves or to others. In some cases, the Chief Firearms Officer (CFO) may issue a licence but place conditions on the licence that would limit the licence holder’s ability to use a firearm.

Aboriginal persons who are concerned that they might be refused a licence or that conditions may be placed on their licence may ask an Elder or leader in their community to sign a declaration on form CAFC 1016 to confirm the importance of their being able to take part in traditional hunting activities of their community. The CFO must consider such recommendations from an Elder or leader before refusing or placing conditions on the licence of an Aboriginal person.

The Chief Firearms Officer is the government agent in charge of actually deciding yea or nay on any given person's firearms licence. If a person is refused, a cause must be given. It's usually because the applicant's history makes them look like a public safety risk: a criminal record, mental problems, substance abuse, a history of violence. A person whose application is refused has a right of appeal.

This "recommendation for approval" is nothing but a preemptive appeal. The nice folks who wrote this law figured that so many Aboriginals would be refused and wind up needing to appeal that they might as well just get the appeal started right off the bat. After all, everybody knows that Aboriginals all have criminal records, mental illnesses, and / or substance abuse problems, right?

It's part of their culture.

This is how Canadian legislators see Aboriginals.


I know I shouldn't have to close with a disclaimer, but I have visions of some of my statements in this article being taken out of context. So, for the record: there are passages in this article where I employ a literary technique known as "sarcasm". I am not saying that I want aboriginal children playing with guns, that all Aboriginals have criminal records, etc. I'm trying to make the point that the Firearms Act was apparently written by people who believe these sorts of things, consciously or not. Those legislators would no doubt disagree with my interpretations. I think they would do well to take a long hard looks inside themselves and at the Act before trying to argue the matter.

For that matter, where are the protests from aboriginal people?


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of part of the roof of my house. I'm currently wasting a lot of my time chasing contractors to come replace that board. That's a whole other article, maybe a series. I could try replacing it myself, but by the time I was finished my lack of any useful physical skills whatsoever would probably manifest as a large crater where my house used to be.

The True Identity Of Jack The Ripper

Here's what my brain did to me today.


The identity of the Whitechapel murderer, popularly known as Jack the Ripper, has been a mystery for over a century. Many have tried over the years to prove that one suspect or another was secretly Mad Jack, the sociopathic killer. No one has ever conclusively proven their case.


Until now.


The true identity of Jack the Ripper was, in fact: Muppeteer Jim Henson.


It seems obvious now that it's been pointed out, doesn't it? I bet you feel really stupid and inadequate for not having realized it sooner. Suddenly, life makes sense.

What better cover for a methodical serial killer than to become a beloved family entertainer? No one ever suspects the guy with his arm up Kermit the Frog. Being born decades after the Whitechapel murders was a masterstroke of misdirection. Very clever, Mr. Henson! But not quite clever enough.

Consider: not a single prostitute murder in the Whitechapel district has been attributed to Jack the Ripper since Jim Henson passed away in 1990. There are also no published memoirs of Victorian-era prostitutes recounting tales of meeting Jim Henson. This can only mean that he left no witnesses. Not a single Victorian-era prostitute saw Jim Henson's bearded face and lived to tell the tale.

When this theory occurred to me, I first considered Walt Disney as the possible culprit. I was forced to abandon that path of thought because it hit a little too close to home. I'm really not sure about old Walt.

I have developed an elegant proof of this theorem, but unfortunately this Internet is too small to contain it.

Oh, all right, I'll try to cover the high points. You should be able to fill in the details for yourself. Suffice it for the moment to say that an irrefutable mathematical proof of my theorem exists, wherein we begin by letting X = "Jim Henson" and Y = "Jack The Ripper". Before long, X equals Y. It all hinges on the remainder left when 5 disemboweled Victorian prostitutes are divided by "Gavin McLeod".

As opposed, I suppose, to being divided by the Ripper's sharp instruments.

I would have liked to include some diagrams to support my theory, diagrams being an excellent way to sanitize complex mathematical concepts for the consumption of the unwashed masses. Maybe some pie charts. Everybody likes pie charts. But thinking about that got me to thinking about pie, so I went and looked in the kitchen only to find no pie, but I found some strawberry shortcake shells and some strawberries, but no whipped cream, but we had some whipped cream mix so I mixed that up and had a nice strawberry shortcake and by the time I was finished I had forgotten all about pie and Jim Henson being Jack the Ripper.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son (at left, in camo in case his keenly honed survival instincts compel him to take cover in a wooded area of the mall), Pastor Derek and Homeschooler's daughter (in pink) and two innocent bystanders, mere moments before the situation turned ugly.

Snow Day

We got thwackhammered by another snowstorm starting late last night and continuing well into this afternoon. My son and I got to skip school and work respectively. I don't quite feel like starting into a real entry, so I'll just make a few quick notes.

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Our roof is leaking. Thankfully it's confined to an entryway, not a main living space, but it's still troublesome. You could take a shower by walking through that area just a bit slowly. The worst of it is that it'll be at least six weeks before winter has passed enough for a roofer to even consider taking a look at it. Then, we'll need a contractor to come in and replace a chunk of ceiling where the drywall panel has gotten soggy and begun to sag. Apparently there's a reason it's not called amphibiouswall.

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I'm not complaining about the amount of snow I've shovelled this year, for one simple reason: I remember last year, which was much worse. There may have been more total snowfall this year - I don't remember the snow reaching the roof of our shed last year - but if so, it's been paced much better. Last year we had a long run of snowstorms every two or three days. I wouldn't even have finished cleaning up after one before the next one hit.

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Another major difference in my shovelling this year: I haven't been the least bit sore the next day, even once. Before this winter, each snowstorm left me stiff and barely able to move for several days afterward. This winter, no problem (yet). That may be because I bought a new "ergonomic handle" scoop this fall, but I prefer to credit the exercise regimen I started in early 2008. It's laughable by the standards of anyone who's actually the least bit interested in fitness, but I guess any (regular) exercise is better than none.

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My wife and son spent most of this Free Bonus Day working on a Beatles jigsaw puzzle. It includes the cover of Let It Be, so I thought it appropriate to put that album on for them (him, really) to listen to while they worked on it. He liked it, and spent much of the day hollering "Nothing's gonna change my world!" after hearing Across The Universe.

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We went to visit Pastor Derek and family on Saturday. We had a nice but very short visit, although oddly we never did see the newborn boys. They're in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and there are very strict visiting requirements. Between our tight schedule and not wanting to bring more germs than necessary in around them, we stayed outside the unit while Homeschooler went in to do the feeding and whatever else goes on in there. Then we had lunch at a mall food court (swanky!), let the kids play for a while in the mall's play area, and came back home. Not an ideal visit, especially since Homeschooler was so busy with the boys that we barely got to see her, but far better than none, and probably the best we'll be able to fit in for a while. Adding two newborns to the mix will not simplify their family's social calendar.

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Why do people always talk about the weight of newborns, anyway? I can only see two reasons for concern with something's precise weight: either you're planning to put it in a box and mail it, or you're calculating its cooking time. Call me old-fashioned, but I just don't think either of those should apply to newborn babies.

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Even with the paucity of posting hereabouts of late, I'm averaging better than a post every four days so far for February. Not what I might have hoped, but I'm not terribly disappointed with it.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a courtyard at the Holy Land Experience.

This Too Will Change When I Am King

So Barack Obama has admitted that despite campaigning on a pledge to shut down the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention facility ASAP, it might not be a priority once he actually takes office. He's using the usual types of dimwitted political excuses, mumbling about the situation being more complicated than he had realized. This always translates to, "Turns out the people who were actually doing the job understood it better than I did. Oh, well, as long as the voters are as uninformed as me, I win!"

CNN is spinning furiously on the matter, with a current front-page headline reading "Obama will act fast to close Gitmo, sources say." As throughout the election, CNN has two journalistic priorities: making sure no one questions the infallibility of the Obamessiah, and making sure no one questions their objectivity.

Bill Clinton pulled a similar stunt sixteen years ago, and I've thought ever since that he owes George H.W. Bush the mother of all apologies. During the 1992 campaign, Clinton bashed Bush for expanding trade relations with China, citing China's atrocious human rights record. This is one of those rare occasions when I agree with Bill Clinton. China is run by thugs and barbarians, and we need to stop giving them money to use against their citizens.

Well, I need to revise that. I'd agree with Clinton on this point if he had actually meant it. Instead, once he took office, he adopted a policy of licking China's boots at every opportunity. He extended their Most Favored Nation trading status with the U.S., justifying it on the grounds of the situation having been more complicated than he had realized. I have a feeling that the menu at Denny's is too complicated for Bill Clinton to understand. I'm not questioning his intelligence, but his mental prioritization. If that Denny's menu had pictures of Catherine Bach circa 1980 (the only real Daisy Duke) on it, Clinton's cerebral cortex would be all over it.

Bill Clinton owed (and owes) G.H.W. Bush a large apology for continuing to do exactly what he'd condemned his opponent for. And in a few months, Obama will owe G.W. Bush a large apology for the same reason unless Guantanamo is closed. That's not the policy I would prefer, but it would show me a bit of integrity from Obama, which I haven't seen yet.

If I could reform the democratic system tomorrow (and I might), the first change I'd implement would be to require all candidates running for any public office to write and sign a list of their campaign promises. This written list would then be a contract. Once in office, the successful candidate would have one year to at least attempt to implement everything on their list. If they fail to do so, then a new election is held immediately.

The "at least attempt to" qualifier is there because in a system of checks and balances, the candidate may not (and should not) have carte blanche to do whatever they want. Therefore, a reasonable attempt to keep their promises, for example, by proposing a bill, even if that bill dies somewhere in the process, would suffice. Unfortunately, there would need to be some sort of bipartisan (or nonpartisan, if such a thing could exist) committee formed to determine what constitutes an honest attempt, but I think that adding one small component to the government bureaucracy would be a very small price to pay for being able to hold lying politicians accountable.

A candidate could easily avoid writing such a list under this system: just don't make any promises. A candidate could still spell out what they hoped to do, or what they would try to do - the only danger to them would come when they say, "If elected, I will." They could always decline to sign a binding position list. Of course, I would expect their opponent to get great mileage from their unwillingness to risk their position for their principles. "My opponent will not commit to action. How can you trust them about anything?"

I've had people hear this proposal and disagree with it because "then the candidates wouldn't promise anything."

I'm pretty sure that's exactly the point.

I try not to use the word "promise", or any other words that unconditionally commit me to an action, with my son unless I'm sure I can follow through. Politicians should show the electorate the same respect.


(Quick sidebar: the "When I Am King" in the subject implies that this change will come when the system of government in one or more nations is changed to monarchy with me at the top, meaning that "democratic reforms" won't actually work. Fear not. My last act as King, probably within hours of coronation, will be to abolish the monarchy and institute representational democracy.)


To her great credit, I can think of one politician who has shown the integrity to do this on her own. Sheila Copps, a former Canadian Member of Parliament, ran on a party platform of abolishing the GST (a federal tax that adds 7% to the price of most goods and services in Canada). She said publicly that she would resign if her party won and didn't follow through. They did, and then didn't. Jean Chretien, who wouldn't make my list of favourite Prime Ministers by any measurement, hauled out the usual line about the situation being more complicated than he had realized, and the tax stayed.

Ms. Copps showed a backbone and stood by her word. It may have taken a little prodding, but she resigned her seat and a by-election was held. Her constituents re-elected her despite the broken promise, which would always be a possibility under the system I propose. I don't agree with her on much of anything, but I respect her integrity.

If Guantanamo is still open when Saint Patrick's Day rolls around, we'll find out if Barack Obama is as much of a man as Sheila Copps.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture taken at a "peace" rally in San Francisco (surprise!). It should come as no shock that crazy people are often illiterate as well. Nice to see Mom teaching good old-fashioned values like Free Expression, Civic Awareness, and Kill The Jews to her younglings. Thanks to Zombietime, always a great place to go see some good crazy, for the picture.

Another Reason Why People Don't Talk To Me

Today at work I handled some correspondence from a client in Germany. The envelope had a logo on it reading "Luftpost". That amused me in and of itself. It probably just means "air mail", but I prefer to think that it's the name of a courier company. Of course, I was then compelled to think of some marketing slogans for a courier company called Luftpost:

Your mail arrives at Blitzkreig speed!

Or...

Luftpost: The Final Solution for all your delivery needs!


I occasionally get a "tsk, tsk" and a head-shake for doing German / Nazi jokes. The way I see it, if you set out to commit genocide and darn near succeed, wiping out several million people and starting a World War in the process, you're fair game for some good-natured ribbing. People make O.J. Simpson jokes, after all, and he only killed two people.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the stuff my son got for Christmas (closeup view of the ends of the boxes).

Day Of Auld Lang Syne

That's pretty much it for 2008. As usual, I finished off my annual reading through the Bible in the last few days - this year it was on December 29, to be exact.

I've done that every year since somewhere in my late teens, so for... well, a long time now. It's actually not difficult. Reading three chapters each day from Monday to Saturday and five chapters on Sunday will take you through in a year. That's not nearly as daunting as it sounds when you consider that many chapters, especially some of the Psalms, are quite short. Yes, some are quite long, too, but I'm trying to be encouraging here.

Of course, I don't necessarily read each chapter in order each year - in fact, I don't think I've ever done that. My program for the last year has been to follow the daily reading in the Our Daily Bread devotionals, published by Radio Bible Class. They're available online at the link, but I prefer the pocket-sized printed booklets. I read the entire chapter for the devotional passage, not just the indicated verses, and then the daily Bible-in-a-year reading (in years that they have it; some years they have another program).

Each year, I keep track of my reading using a checklist of all the chapters in the Bible. For the past couple of years I've been using the one available from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, available in PDF from this page. Be forewarned, it has an odd quirk - for some reason, it lists Isaiah chapters 51-56 twice. I didn't notice that last year, and wound up doubling my reading on those chapters (not that that's such a bad thing). I think that for 2009 I'll use the version available from the Navigators U.S. Metro Ministries of Detroit, available in PDF here (the Bible Reading Record link).

Whenever I read a chapter for any reason, I check it off. When I get to a crossed-off chapter in my Bible-in-a-year plan, I skip it as already done. Most years I wind up falling behind over the summer, and catching up in the fall or later. There have been a couple of years where I spent New Year's Eve reading Revelation or Ezekiel, which for some reason tends to often be the last book I have left to finish.

I don't mind spending New Year's Eve that way, since I don't like going out that night anyway. (Warning: topics may shift without notice!) As I've said before, my only concern with New Year's Eve is that it entails a slightly higher than normal chance of getting taken out by a drunk driver, making it an excellent evening to stay home and off the roads.

Which brings me to one last point about New Year's Eve / Day: resolutions. I don't make 'em, and generally don't believe 'em from other people.

Like everybody, I've got a mental "to do" list of things I'd like to accomplish before shuffling off this mortal coil, many of which have been nagging at me for years. Some will get done this year, many others won't. As always, the ones that don't will be skipped because other things, some foreseen and some not, take precedence. "Resolving" that this is the year for these lingering projects won't change that.

Many people make the type of resolution that I don't believe for a second, to quit some bad habit - smoking, drinking, overeating. I don't believe these for one simple reason. While I believe that people can make positive changes in these areas, if they really meant to do it, they wouldn't wait for a calendar page to turn. I never, for one second, believe anyone who says they're going to quit smoking at a specific future point. If they really meant to quit, they'd do it now, not later. I don't know who they expect to fool with the "I'll do it soon" routine. Probably themselves.

2009 looms. I'll try to do better, in as many ways as I can, in that year than I did in this one. No resolutions, though.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a bird. Although I got some nice shots of my family (most of which I won't be posting here), this may be my favourite picture from our recent vacation. It loses a lot by being resized. Click on it for the bigger version.

How I Spent My Saturday Vacation

Sorry for the dearth of updates around these parts of late. I'm probably going to wind up with fewer posts this month than last month, and I was out of the country and offline for half of last month.

The doctor's being kind of hedgey now on whether I have (or had) pneumonia. All I know is that the cough is still hanging on after over a month. The antibiotics seemed to help, for the week that the prescription lasted. I also have some Coactifed that I'm supposed to take "when or as needed" to settle the cough down, but I've taken very few of them. They've got a narcotic component, and I'm not a big fan of anything that impairs my faculties. I outright refuse to take one if I'll be driving in the next twelve hours or so, and try to avoid taking them before or during work. Those two conditions cover pretty much all the time.

The most noticeable lasting effect of my cold (or whatever it is / was) besides the coughing is lethargy. I have several fairly substantial posts in various stages of draft, and ideas for a bunch more, but can't quite muster up the gumption to finish any of them. So, since this blog is a self-indulgent personal journal as much as anything else, here's how I spent the last 36 hours or so.

Not long after I got home from work yesterday, Dad came by to pick up my son. The grandparents offered to take him for the night so my wife and I could finish up our Christmas shopping. We were almost done anyway, but that let us finish it off.

After that, I laid down on the couch around 8:30. I woke up to see Jay Leno doing his monologue, which means it was 12:30 (I'm in the Atlantic time zone, as my membership in the New Brunswick Blogroll implies). My first priority was getting the TV switched over to Letterman ASAP. I once went about seven years (ages 14 to 21-ish) without missing a night of Letterman's show. Not an episode - a night. Including repeats. I got over that a long time ago.

After watching Jerry Seinfeld come out and do his bit, I went to bed. I had occasional coughing fits through the night, but eventually crashed out solidly and didn't get up until after noon.

This seems to have have helped my cold more than any of the medications. I feel better today than I have in several weeks. Over a dozen hours of sleep is a great healer.

Since my son was still with his grandparents and our errands were done, my wife and I spent the day defining the word "puttering". She crocheted and watched whatever happened to be on TV. I cleaned the basement up a little (although it still looks like it's been ransacked by a horde of barbarians), scanned a bunch of papers, and tagged a lot of audio files.

I listened to the last section of Ann Coulter's newest book, If Democrats Had Any Brains They'd Be Republicans. I love Coulter's books, but the audiobook seemed more like a disjointed series of one-liners than a cohesive work. Only at the end did I notice a credit for "abridgement"; if I'd realized it was abridged, I wouldn't have bothered listening in the first place.

I'm not a big fan of audiobooks in the first place. I like the idea, they just don't work for me. I get engrossed enough in books, including audiobooks, that I don't like doing anything mentally taxing at the same time. If I could devote the attention required to listen closely, then chances are I could be doing something more productive with that time, so I usually do that instead. That includes reading an actual book. I read much faster than an audiobook's narration, so I can plow through a print edition much faster than an audiobook.

I'll embrace audiobooks wholeheartedly if I ever have long stretches of time where I'm doing something relatively mindless - a long solitary commute, perhaps. For now I walk to work every day, only about ten minutes each way, and I'm never in a car by myself long enough to bother starting into an audiobook. They just don't fit into my lifestyle, such as it is, for the time being.

I also read some comics. I'm reading my way through a nearly complete collection of Knights of the Dinner Table comics. They're great stuff if you're at all into gaming. I've never been much of a role-player, but I play pretty much any other type of game whenever I get the chance, and I've spent lots of time hanging around role-players, so I think this book is terrific. If you aren't a gamer, let me assure you that the characters, situations and dialogue are eerily accurate. The guys who make the strip are gamers themselves, and have captured the culture very well.


I assembled and burned a mixed CD today. Dad called me a couple of days ago and asked me to put "John Lennon's 'So This is Christmas' " on a CD for Mom. Being a huge Beatles nerd I corrected him on the title, Happy Xmas (War Is Over), and asked if that was the only song she wanted.

"She wants some background music for Christmas dinner," he answered, "and that's the only song she mentioned. You could repeat it a couple of times if there's room on the CD."

Instead I assembled a full CD of Christmas music, putting the Lennon track first. When I started out I thought I'd have trouble filling an 80-minute disc. As it turned out, I had to edit ruthlessly to get most of the tracks I wanted. I started searching my collection and found entire Christmas albums by Ringo Starr, Phil Spector and associates (very few of whom he's since shot), City On A Hill, Steve Lukather, VeggieTales (two, actually), the Muppets (also two), the Chipmunks, Amy Grant, Barenaked Ladies, and several more. I also had a few various artists Christmas compilations, lots of classics like Bing Crosby's White Christmas, Chuck Berry's Merry Christmas Baby, and a whole lot more. The compilation turned out much better than I had expected, although I already handed it off and didn't save a copy of the final track listing. It ended with a choral recording of the Hallelujah Chorus.

I've identified prima facie evidence that most Christmas music isn't very good: nobody listens to it anytime except at Christmas. If we actually enjoyed it on its own merits, we'd be as likely to listen to it as anything else in our music collections, at any time. My wife argued against this theory by saying that since a lot of "Christmas" music is actually more about winter and snow in general, it just doesn't cross our minds during the rest of the year. To that I respond, people still listen to the Beach Boys in January.


I got a lot of scanning done today. I'm a pack rat, especially when it comes to documents. I still have all the financial records from the business I owned (and closed almost a decade ago), all of my tax returns and bank records ever, etc. A couple of years ago I embarked on a long-term project intended to cut down on my document retention: scanning and shredding. Every once in a while I grab a pile of papers, feed them through a scanner (these days that means my Kodak Easyshare 5100), then after the scans are verified and saved (with backups, of course), shred the originals. Today I scanned such irreplaceable documents as the records from my year as a life insurance agent (1998), my car registration from 2005, and my minutes from a Sunday School teachers meeting in 2005.

Yeah, it would be a real shame to lose any of that stuff. You never know when I might need it.


Oh, and I also prepared the one Christmas card it occurred to me to prepare. The future recipient is probably reading this. It hasn't been mailed yet because, since I never mail anything, I don't keep stamps on hand.


While engaging in all these other minor activities, after the Ann Coulter audiobook was done I listened to some more audio files for tagging purposes. One of my pet peeves about filesharing is that very few people tag their files well, so I almost always wind up redoing it. I'm really glad I eventually found MP3tag. I spent a whole lot of hours over several years manually tagging and naming each individual audio file in my collection before I stumbled across. Now I consider MP3tag indispensable; it's one of the first things I install whenever I reformat or set up a new PC. Anybody with a collection of more than a few audio files (it handles pretty much any format, not just MP3s) should check it out.

Today I listened to and tagged some Beatles bootleg stuff (documentary tracks from a "1978 Earth Day News" series, whatever that was) and a bunch of tracks from the Hanna-Barbera Cartoon Classics and Wacky Sounds box set. I'm into the third disc of the latter, which consists mostly of sound effects that will hurtle most listeners back into childhood. I'd love to see some sort of documentary showing exactly how they made some of those noises in the studio.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son gazing into the aquarium. Beware doing so. Sometimes when you gaze into the aquarium, the aquarium gazes back into you.

Male Mentality

Here's a transcript of a conversation I recently had with my son about the bedtime story he had selected. Looking at the cover of the book, I said, "I hope this story has monkeys in it." (It was a Clifford the Big Red Dog story which I already knew to be monkey-deficient.)

Him: "No, there are no monkeys in this story."

Me: "Too bad. Monkeys make any story better, don't they?"

Him: "No. Explosions."


The logical conclusion is that a book about exploding monkeys would be the most awesome bedtime story ever.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a topiary Mickey.

Post-Election Hooptedoodle (U.S. Edition)

Got some more election / U.S.A. politics stuff to purge. This is a long one, so I might have gotten it all out of my system for a while. Or maybe not. We'll all find out together.


Just after the election, some of my co-workers were discussing what the future holds for Sarah Palin. "Rehab, probably," said one.

I asked them, more sharply than they expected, why they would say that. I added, "Just because you don't like her doesn't make her a junkie."

Taken aback, they stammered out something like "going to rehab doesn't mean you're a junkie" (Right. It means you sold the most Girl Scout cookies of anybody in your whole troop) and tried to get out of the conversation. I let it drop.

Thinking about it later, I tried to figure out why their remark, among all the ignorant leftist gloating that was going on in that room, was what I responded to. I think I've got it.

I wasn't being particularly protective of Palin. Worse things were said about her without my batting an eye. However, it frequently occurs to me that most of the people who call her stupid - the most common comment I heard about her during and after the election - are far less intelligent than she is.

I was being protective of comedy.

Good comedy tends to reside at one end of the spectrum or the other: either completely absurdist or shining a light on some truth. A "Palin in rehab" joke is neither. Because it is neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, then it should not come out of anyone's mouth. Lukewarm comedy is lame and sad, although judging from talk show monologues it sells well.

Instead of suggesting that Palin will wind up in rehab, put a spin on it. I hear that her husband's been known to enjoy a few drinks; say that she'll be spending 2009 as his chauffeur because of his suspended driver's licence. Children of famous people are under even stranger pressures than most adolescents, and often make disastrously bad decisions about what to put into their bodies; say that she'll spend the next few years visiting the kids in rehab.

To say she'll be in rehab, with no context or justification of any kind, is offensive because it's so lazy. If you're going to make jokes about someone, put a modicum of effort into it.


Someone else came over to me the day after the election and, clearly hoping to gloat, asked what I thought of the results. I said, "What a horrible, humiliating night...for Obama."

Their eyebrows shot up, and they asked how I could possibly say that.

"Easy. After Bush's two terms, given his incredibly low approval ratings and popularity, the Democrats should have been able to nominate a lava lamp and get almost 500 electoral votes. Obama's under 400. His winning by that close a margin is like me playing one-on-one against Michael Jordan, and his winning by ten baskets to seven. Nobody expected me to win, but the fact that it was that close is embarrassing to him."

They blinked at me a few times, said, "You're unbelievable", walked away, and left me alone for the rest of the day. I call that a win.


It was clear by early 2006 at the latest that the Republicans had essentially no chance of winning the presidency in 2008. Being a Republican in 2008 was a lot like being a fan of a lousy sports team. Some years you take the pennant, and other years are "building years." That's fan-speak for "We fully expect to get the tar knocked out of us this season, and we're making our excuses now."

McCain had to have understood this. It speaks well of him that he agreed to be the one to jump under the bus. I keep trying to explain to "non-political" friends that he wasn't liked by the Republican base; they didn't want to waste a "good" candidate on the 2008 suicide run. Note that a common theme on conservative blogs on November 5 was "At least now we can go back to not liking McCain."

In a sense, this election was a no-win scenario for the American people. They had to choose between a RINO and an empty suit. The fact that McCain came as close to winning as he did shows that the American people as a whole were deeply ambivalent about Obama.

Vocabulary sidebar: despite how you hear it used all the time, "ambivalent" doesn't mean "indifferent." Far from it, in fact. It means something closer to "pulled in two directions simultaneously". The word is formed by joining "ambi-", meaning "both" (think "ambidextrous"), with "-valent", meaning movement. To be ambivalent about something means that you can see both sides of the matter, find aspects of each side attractive, and are torn between them. End sidebar.


As I've said before, America will survive this. Although if Obama is as soft on terrorism as it looks like he intends to be, some individual Americans may not. Ask the families of 3000 or so people who didn't come home from work on September 11, 2001 what happens when the administration doesn't stand up to terrorists (and, just in case you didn't read that last link, I'm not talking about the Bush administration here).

I hope and pray that nothing so awful happens to America again. One of the few consolations is that another attack would at least remind people that there are actual serious bad guys in the world, and they need to be dealt with. If 9/11 could make Dennis Miller accept that, then another attack might even jolt a few Code Pink members to sanity.

Incidentally, that "serious bad guys" bit in the last paragraph is how I explain terrorism and war to my young son. He understands it. Why don't some politicians?


The people who lost out the most in this election were the peaceful majority in Iraq. He already seems to be hedging, but if Obama carries out the plans he hinted at during the campaign, then he'll be abandoning them to slaughter. The power void left by a sudden withdrawal of U.S. forces guarantees that Iraqis will suffer a massacre the likes of which they haven't seen since... well, since Saddam was in power.

During the campaign McCain should have continually hammered on the theme of wanting to bring American troops home as soon as possible, but not at the expense of leaving innocent people to be slaughtered. That could easily have been explained to the American people, and would have resonated, but it needed to be explicitly laid out at every opportunity. Instead it was only mentioned occasionally, almost offhandedly.

If Iraq is abandoned, then several years from now the world may get a reminder that there is no enemy more bitter than a former friend. Remember when the U.S. stopped supporting the freedom fighters in Afghanistan, and one of them (a guy named Bin Laden) was a little miffed over getting dumped like a Hugh Hefner girlfriend on her thirtieth birthday? What ever happened to that guy, anyway? He probably calmed down once he had time to cool off and think it over, and never did anything drastic, right?


Hopefully this defeat will re-energize the conservative movement (not necessarily the Republican party, although right now they're the only viable national-level game in town). Take hope, Americans, and remember that four years of Carter wound up getting Reagan elected. I've seen a theory that America decides to elect an unabashed liberal every sixteen years - that may be how long it takes people to forget how idiotic and ineffective liberalism is - but I'm not sure that three times constitutes a cycle. Check back here in 2024.


I've often been asked why I'm so interested in American politics, especially since until the last couple of elections I had minimal interest in the politics of my own country (that has changed).

Imagine that you're at a boxing match. You have a choice: you can either watch the shadows of the boxers, or look up and see the actual action.

That's why I follow U.S. politics instead of Canada's.

Plus, American politics are far more entertaining. Polarization makes for good television. During an election cycle we get to watch heartless greedy Nazis versus mindless tree-hugging surrender monkey potheads, or so the media (including blogs of all stripes) would tell it.

In Canada, everybody's pretty much in the centre. By American standards even our "Conservative" party would only be considered slightly to the right (and I would debate even that). All our other national-level players are centrist or off to the left by varying degrees. In recent years some of the minor national parties have drifted steadily further left, which is fine with me. It means they fragment the liberal vote even more, giving me hope that one day an actual conservative party will come along to win elections while they squabble over the global warming acolytes. (As always when I'm writing about Canadian politics, whether the words "liberal" and "conservative" are capitalized is deliberate and significant.)

It's also indisputable that American policies affect Canada deeply - sometimes more than the policies of our own government. The U.S. is our largest trading partner, greatest ally (despite the efforts of Canadian liberals - including Liberals - to poison that relationship in recent years), and we share the longest undefended border in the world. That's something to be proud of and to attempt to preserve.


On a related note, a lot of Canadians think it's funny that some Americans don't know much trivia about our nation. Rick Mercer strolls around California with a microphone and proves that Americans don't know the capital city of Saskatchewan, and Canadians point and hoot.

I don't find that funny in the slightest, and I certainly don't find it insulting. You have 300 million people, we have 30 million. Your gross national product is measured in trillions, ours is measured in moose pelts. There's no reason for an elephant to care much about the flea on its backside. Why should the average American know, or care, about Canadian minutiae?

For my part, I like to wait until some yokel has just snorted Tim Hortons coffee out their nose because somebody in Burbank doesn't know how warm Yellowknife gets in July, then ask them to name the capital of West Virginia, or the third president of the United States, or the year that the Alamo fell. When (not if) they don't know, I say, "Wow. I guess you're as stupid as an American then, huh?"


One final note. I watched the 2006 disintegration of Cynthia McKinney with great amusement (although I don't know how far down she had to fall to reach the lowest pits of crazy). As soon as I saw that Cracked.com was running a feature on The Most Insane People Ever To Run For President, I knew she had to be there. I was not disappointed.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of former Democratic congresswoman, Green Party presidential nominee, and race-baiting, cop-slapping, raving loon Cynthia McKinney at her finest.

I Am Wikipedia

This story was in the pipeline anyway, but the passing of Jerry Reed brought it to the top of the list.

This, like many of my stories, is both a True Story From One Of My Jobs and quite possibly Another Reason Why People Don't Talk To Me. As regular readers may have surmised, I don't much leave the house through the week except to go to work, and there's no shortage of reasons to avoid talking to me. In fact, doing so is highly recommended, not least by me.

This tale takes us back to my days working beside Alex in the IT department of a large office. The majority of our staff did not have Internet access on their desktop computers. Officially, for security reasons, the IT staff didn't have it either.

Officially. In practice, when your job is guarding the henhouse, you can have all the drumsticks you like.

So, it wasn't unusual for employees to come into my office (actually, the windowless, concrete-walled room in the basement where Alex and I sat surrounded by piles of electronic debris) to ask for something to be looked up online. "Bet-settler" should have been included somewhere in my position title.

To avoid attracting attention - there were other people monitoring the firewall logs, and excessive traffic could have been noticed - I sometimes tried to dissuade people from wanting things checked online. Fortunately, my squandered youth and largely-squandered adulthood has left my skull stuffed with vast amounts of utterly useless information, so I can often answer trivia questions without going online. Today was one of those days.


On a side note, I was once discussing the concept of "trivia" with a friend. In debating the utility of having a wide variety of superficial information at hand, I said that you never know when a specific factoid might come in handy. My exact words were, "Sometimes trivia becomes useful."

My much wiser friend replied, "Ah, but as soon as it becomes useful, it ceases by definition to be trivia."


Back to that day in our concrete bunker.

An employee came in, asking me to "check something on Wikipedia" for him. First I asked what he wanted to know.

It happened that a conversation in the next room had turned to the stars of days gone by, and the question was: who were the main members of the Rat Pack?

I rattled off a list of all of them except one. I knew I was one short, but the name wouldn't come to me, so I turned to Wikipedia and found that the missing name was Peter Lawford. (The fellow who came in had already known all except Lawford and Joey Bishop.)

Then it got weird. Our visitor asked, "OK, one more thing: who played the Snowman in Smokey and the Bandit?"

Without hesitation, I replied, "Jerry Reed."

It felt surreal, almost like an out-of-body experience. Even as I spoke, I had absolutely no idea where that information came from. I haven't seen Smokey and the Bandit, or had any interest whatsoever in it, since perhaps seeing it on TV in the early 1980s. Had someone asked me two minutes earlier, I'm certain that I would have had no idea who Jerry Reed was, or even that there was a character named Snowman in the movie. But when I was asked the question, there it was.

This is why my brain has no capacity for remembering things like my wedding anniversary or my own birthday (which I have honestly forgotten on at least one occasion, needing to check my driver's licence while filling out a video rental club's membership form). All my neurons are occupied with data concerning the films of Hal Needham.

Amused by my obvious shock, my co-workers laughed, and Alex said, "Who needs Wikipedia when you're around?"

Trying to regain my composure, I replied, "I am Wikipedia."


There remains one crucial difference, though: I am very rarely altered by anonymous editors.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a river.

He's A Real Dead Mother

Popular wisdom (one of my favourite oxymorons) holds that celebrity deaths usually come in themed sets of three. Remember that; we'll come back to it in a few paragraphs.

I'll start with a look at Isaac Hayes. Yes, he was the man who wrote and sang the Shaft theme, and he was of course Chef on South Park, but to me he'll always be The Duke of New York! A-Number One! (This should be said in as deranged a voice as possible, à la Donald Pleasance holding a machine gun.)

CNN's initial report on his death (now taken offline, apparently) said that he was found "near a treadmill." There's a lesson here, kids. No good ever came from getting too close to a treadmill.

Another entertaining element in CNN's initial report - and the giveaway that the original report has been taken down and replaced with a gentler revision - was the inclusion of Matt Stone's hilarious takedown of Hayes for quitting South Park over their mocking Scientology: "He has no problem - and he's cashed plenty of cheques - with our show making fun of Christians."


Then we have poor old Bernie Mac.


Really, I've got nothing here. I have no opinion of Bernie Mac's work, never having seen any of it that I can remember, nor of his personal behaviour.

I'll just digress to say that it's almost extra-unfortunate that he died of "complications from pneumonia," if only because that used to be journalism-speak for AIDS. I'm pretty sure it's never used that way these days, if only because newspapers don't seem to report AIDS deaths anymore. Nobody famous enough is dying that way, I guess, so it's off the radar.

On a related note, for the few blissfully non-jaded souls who didn't already know it, whenever you see a report that a celebrity has entered any sort of care facility for "exhaustion", that means rehab. (Shattering innocence is what I do. You're welcome.) Exhaustion is treated by going home and taking a nap. A month in an undisclosed private facility means detox.


Now, as mentioned, celebrity deaths are supposed to come in themed sets of three. Given that two popular black entertainers have passed, it seems obvious to me that Morgan Freeman was not meant to survive the car accident. From this point on, his life will be like one of those Final Destination movies, only with far better scripts. He'll need to be very careful - the shower curtain will probably try to slither around his throat in the near future.

Apparently Morgan is also getting a divorce. This leaves open the possibility that his survival of the car crash means that his wife won't be paying the other half of the money to that mechanic who "adjusted the brakes".

I've never understood people getting divorced once they've reached a certain age (and at 71, Morgan has reached a certain age). If you and / or your spouse are in (or beyond) your seventies, doesn't there come a point where you just wait it out?


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the stuff I got for Christmas, 2007.

They Trot Out Some Pocketbook Philosophy

I used to get frustrated by thinking of a joke when I wasn't in a situation where I could get it written down before forgetting it. But when that happens now, I just remember this bit of wisdom:

If you love a joke, set it free.

If it doesn't come back, then it wasn't really funny in the first place.

Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my nephew climbing into a chair.

Criminal Mindlessness

I've long held that, for the most part, criminals simply aren't the smartest people. Let's look at this guy, for instance:

A host of child pornography-related charges have been laid against an employee at a school on a native reserve south of Calgary.

Turner Valley RCMP launched an investigation on June 13, after "questionable" photos were found near a printer, at Eden Valley School.

I can understand the logic of a pedophile seeking employment at a school. It's truly loathsome, but logical.The Child Protection Policy at my church has a preamble to the effect of, "Whereas we understand the possibility that predators may seek access to children through the children's programs at this church..." for exactly that sort of reason.

However, consider for a moment how dumb you would have to be, and how badly you must at least subconsciously want to get caught, to follow this process:


(A) Print out kiddy-porn pictures on the printer at work, then

(B) (This is the really dumb part) Leave them there to be found.


The fact that bad guys do stuff like this on a semi-regular basis gives me continued hope for the good guys.


Enough rambling. Here's another picture of a chain-link fence in closeup. And pants.

The Epitome Of Canadian Terrorism

Yes, these terrorism suspects were definitely Canadian. From an article talking about how wiretaps were used to eavesdrop on conversations between people who were allegedly (that word inserted for the lawyers in the audience) plotting to blow stuff up and cut off heads in the name of... I forget. Buddha, maybe? Anyway:

Another wiretap played in court Thursday featured a discussion on the possibility of being tortured. The conversation, in which one adult suspect says he'd rather kill himself than endure torture, ends when the car they're travelling in goes through a Tim Hortons drive-thru and the suspect orders a hazelnut smoothie.

"Yes, the filthy infidels must die... but, man, do they make a fine pastry!"

I really hope the reporter who prepared this story understands how funny that sentence is. I'd hate to think that it was intended as straightforward reporting of the facts.

It pains me not to correct the spelling in the quotation, but here at the House Of Zirbert we strive for authenticity. Note to reporters, editors, and signmakers everywhere: There is no such word as "thru." Inability - or unwillingness - to spell correctly is a move down the slippery slope toward illiteracy.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of ducks eating from my wife's hand.

Hail, Hail Freedonia (More Racism Stuff)

Time for a little more background on racism before I get into the Firearms Act issues.

First up, I was mistaken about a number when I started this series. Canada's Firearms Act has five provisions that only apply to aboriginal peoples, not four as I wrote last time. I'll discuss all five when I hit this topic in detail (soon).

Second, I forgot to make another general philosophical point about racism / prejudice: facts cannot be racist. Of course, the interpretation and analysis of those facts may be, but the facts themselves are morally neutral.

I'll give an example. Let's say that first-generation Freedonian immigrants make up five percent of the North American population. However, survey results show that they comprise sixty percent of the people who put the milk carton back in the refrigerator when it's almost empty, resulting in the next person who wants some milk slamming the carton against the top of the fridge when they pick it up.

There is no anti-Freedonian bias in reporting these two statistics, together or separately. And, yes, these facts taken together indicate that a randomly selected Freedonian is statistically much likelier to put the milk back empty than a randomly selected non-Freedonian. There is no Freedonianophobia involved here, just logic.

We can even speculate as to why this might be before getting into wrongful discrimination. We could examine aspects of Freedonian culture and environment, and even genetic factors that may be prevalent in Freedonia. Still no bias.

Of course, this can be taken into prejudicial territory. Assuming that any given Freedonian will be an empty-carton-putter-backer would be wrong. Assuming that they do it because they are somehow "inferior" would be wrong. (Side note, from Logic 101: "different" does not necessarily mean "inferior".)(Unpleasant realization that most people won't admit, from Logic 202: sometimes it does.) Suggesting that Freedonians be forbidden from buying milk in cartons as a preemptive measure would be wrong.

As long as we stay in the realm of empirical fact, though, or non-disparaging speculation as to root causes (with an eye to ameliorating them), then we are only being logical.

If only the people who demanded Lawrence Summers' head on a pike had been logical enough to understand this simple principle.

Incidentally, the quoted reaction of one of the critics to Summers' remarks, in the linked article, cracks me up: 'if she hadn't left, ''I would've either blacked out or thrown up." '

Bear in mind that this was in response to a completely non-offensive - to a rational person - question being raised. This lady was so deeply offended by Summers even noting that there are fewer female scientists than male that she had to leave before she became physically ill. She was so upset by her unfounded perception that he said something critical of women that she nearly fainted.

Think about that for a second, if your irony detector hasn't already overloaded.

If you still don't get it, imagine your reaction if a male scientist had said the exact same thing: that he was going to faint or vomit because someone suggested that men and women may be different.

No matter how modern and liberated and enlightened and politically correct and metrosexual-friendly you may be, you'd think that guy was a wuss.

So, anyway, my point is this: stating empirical differences between groups (always looking at the aggregate, as such things must) does not imply bias toward or against any member(s) of any of the groups under discussion. That's all I'm trying to say here.


Still to come: more institutionalized racism from the Canadian government!


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a chain-link fence in closeup, with some sort of large fowl (I think) beyond.

One Giant Leap For Comicsnerdkind

On Tuesday, May 27, 2008, a day that may very well live in some sort of minor shadow of a concept not entirely unlike infamy, Scott Adams managed to get words onto the comics page that I never thought would make it past an editor.

Dilbert described his co-workers as "a bunch of selfish tools." Given that editors and syndicates are normally extremely conservative in what they'll allow in the funnies (I remember Gary Larson writing that calling a character a "dork" stirred some controversy), I was quite surprised by this.

As long as the link works, you can read the strip in question by clicking here.

Oh, and if you want to read Dilbert on a daily basis, you should always go to www.dilbert.com/fast. The main Dilbert site has become a bloated, unwieldy mess. Adding the "/fast" at the end takes you to a page where you get exactly what you came for: the newest strip, no muss, no fuss. I don't know how long that site will archive them, but you've probably got at least a month or so before the link to the May 27 strip dies.

I'm surprised that I haven't seen any discussion of this anywhere else yet. I'm sure that someone, somewhere, will argue that this is the downfall of civilization.

Whatever other fallout may come from this strip, it's pretty well guaranteed to help Dilbert's popularity in Canada. Far more than a love of hockey or Tim Horton's, the prime defining characteristic of Canadians is an abiding belief that it's funny to refer to people as tools.

(Yes, I enjoy the irony that the joke in the previous paragraph comes in the middle of a series of posts about prejudice and stereotypes!)


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my shirttail.