Perfectly Ordinary Shirt Day

I'll put my hatred of bullying, and contempt for the bullies themselves, up against anyone's. I have a visceral reaction to any abuse of power or authority.

This holds true whether we're talking about bullies on the playground, or anywhere else in life. Members of Parliament who intimate that objecting to their proposal implies you're in league with child pornographers, thuggish cops whose first interaction with a distraught foreigner is to taser him to death, teachers who run screeching to the police to arrest a man because his four-year-old daughter draws a picture of a gun, or people who think it's OK to kill babies in the name of convenience, and hey, it's not like they can fight back - they're all cut from the same cloth as playground tyrants, and I want them all knocked off their high horses. Hard.

However, as much as I deplore bullying in all its forms, I won't conform for the sake of an empty gesture.

Tomorrow is Pink Shirt Day, intended to demonstrate opposition to bullying. There will probably be millions of people, including lots of them at my son's school and my workplace, wearing pink shirts under the delusion that a momentary meaningless gesture of solidarity will dispel the satisfaction that bullies get from exercising brute force. Their intentions are good, but on Thursday they'll be dressing normally and the Nelsons of the world will resume business as usual.

This display will do nothing to dissuade bullies, mainly because bullies aren't very smart. If they were, they'd be far more frightened of possible consequences of their behaviour, like the school shooting currently playing out in Ohio. Interestingly, earlier today I saw reports saying that the (alleged...) shooter was a favourite target for his school's bullies. Those seem to have now been scrubbed offline.

That's the sole upside of school shootings: the hope that somewhere a bully will furrow their unibrow and wonder whether that little spaz they torment might do the same to them if pushed too far, and back off. I'd rather they back off out of personal growth, but in the interim fear will do. And no, that tiny upside doesn't mitigate the tragic downside.

Anti-bullying has entered the fashionable mainstream. That's only because now it's politically useful to some people to call attention to some of the victims. Kids have always been picked on by other kids. Some can take it, some can't (which is not meant to denigrate those who can't, because they shouldn't have to). The awkward kids, shy kids, tall kids, short kids, fat kids, smart kids, homely kids, and yes, those kids who don't conform to the mainstream stereotypes of masculinity or femininity, as the case may be, have always gotten picked on. The worst thing a kid can be in the eyes of other kids is different. And everybody tisked and muttered about how that shouldn't be, but it went on more or less unabated for millenia.

But now it's intolerable and the greatest scourge of our society because of the fashionable (take that as a pun if you like) victims.

"It gets better" is a message for all kids, not just those in trendy subcultures.

As for me, I will not be wearing a pink shirt tomorrow, partly because I don't own one but more because I'm largely immune to peer pressure. This is closely related to my near-total lack of social skills and inability to understand normal human interaction.

This immunity has some downsides. Sometimes it's wise to go with the herd, because there be tigers in the other direction. On the other hand, not caring (or often, even realizing) what everyone else is doing lets you skip over a lot of nonsense in life. I rather like it when I look at the magazines in the supermarket checkout aisle and don't recognize any of the people on the covers.

I'm actually hoping that one of our office cheerleaders calls me out tomorrow for not wanting to play this latest reindeer game. If and when they do, I'm going to make a loud spectacle out of asking them why they're singling me out for negative attention just because I don't conform to their expectations. I'll grow increasingly (mock-) distraught as I proclaim how much they're hurting my feelings by picking on me for dressing differently from them.

Then I'll abruptly shut off the histrionics and thank them, because I feed on irony. Their lack of self-awareness is like manna to me, the sweet nectar of paradise. I may lapse into a Montgomery Burns impression for this stage of the bit.

"But Z-Dog," you may interject at this point, "if you do this to some poor unsuspecting sap, won't that make you, kind of, well... a bully?"

To which I reply, "Don't call me Z-Dog. You sound like an idiot." Also, "Yes."

The best answer to bullying, unfortunately, is a bigger bully. We live in a fallen world, wherein every last member of the dominant species is corrupted by sin. The best of us isn't very good. The best we can ever hope for is that the bully at the top of the food chain is benevolent. This is why I'm quite content with America being the dominant world power for the last few decades. Yes, she occasionally throws her weight around, but virtually always with good intentions and often to good ends.

In summation, I hate bullying (but not the bullies themselves, a crucial distinction) of any sort as much as anyone, but I'm not interested in meaningless gestures that consist largely of leveraging peer pressure to force conformity, itself a concept dear to every bully's heart. I'll stick with knocking the feet out from under bullies at every opportunity, and encouraging others to do the same.

And I don't wait until the victims are a politically correct group.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of round Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger dolls that look like they could be wadded into balls for easy storage. I call them Poohkemon.

Springtime Comes Early

Today the skies are bluer in Canada. The clouds are fluffier, puppies can resume wagging their tails, the flowers can bloom again (in a few months, one presumes), and the coffee at Tim Horton's tastes a little better. Our long national nightmare is over. Last night I learned that I've been living under the crushing thumb of tyranny for the last decade or so. My goodness, I had no idea. Forget minor inconveniences like ethnic cleansing in Darfur - after listening to last night's speeches, I now understand that firearm registration was the true injustice of our time. Who knew?

Before we continue, a couple of housekeeping items. First up, I've written about my position on firearm registration before, and it hasn't changed. I'm in favour of it, because I'm in favour of firearms licencing and there's no effective way to separate the two. I've explained that before, and won't be doing so again here. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about registration, but understand its necessity. Bear in mind that I like guns - rabidly, by Canadian standards. I have a firearms licence that I carry in my wallet at all times, because you never know when you might need it. I believe that an armed society is a polite society, understand that violent crime rates drop as concealed carry permit holders increase (and more importantly, why), and am generally as big an all-round supporter of the moral right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms as you're going to find. This makes me something of an enigma on firearms matters, with various aspects of my position outraging zealots on both sides. So be it.


I'll also give advance warning of some language in this article that's a little harsher than I usually use. I figured the joke was worth it, especially since there aren't many in this post. The harsh language is nothing you can't find in the King James Bible. Oh, and I engage in a little comic-strip cussing in point 12, in case that kind of thing is too intense for your sensibilities. Be forewarned.

On to the actual topic at hand.


Canada's Parliament last night voted to pass a bill to eliminate the requirement to register non-restricted firearms, which means most rifles and shotguns. That's fine. Politicians bicker and laws change all the time, and the logical or reasonable position doesn't always carry the day.

My problem isn't with the outcome of the vote, which barely merits a shrug. My problem is that I made the mistake of tuning in the Parliamentary access channel last night, and heard some of the speeches given before the vote. Some Tories (members of the Conservative party, my usual philosophical compatriots) spoke on why the long-gun registry needed to be eliminated, and I can't remember the last time I endured such a pathetic litany of hyperbole and lies.

As a firearms enthusiast, I've made a point of educating myself on Canada's firearms laws. For the most part, they're pretty straightforward. There are some complexities and a couple of jaw-dropping idiocies (mostly loopholes) buried deep in the annals of the Firearms Act. Honest, good-faith arguments can be made against parts of the Firearms Act, but that's not what happened last night. I hate seeing bad arguments used even when I agree with the speaker's point, so listening to sheer babble about a topic on which I'm ambivalent tends to push me toward the opposite side from the speaker.

There are real arguments to be made, using real facts and logic, against long gun registration. There's no need to engage in the time-honoured rhetorical technique of Making Crap Up, but that's precisely what the empty suit opponents of registration did last night. Let's enumerate the lies and absurdities for the sake of my mental organization, which needs all the help it can get.


1. I heard a member of Parliament complain that he knows someone who was never sent notification that it was time to re-register his long guns, and so he "became a criminal" without doing anything wrong. OK, without knowing anything else about this claim, let's play fact-and-logic-check.

Q: How often does a firearms owner have to re-register their non-restricted firearms?

A: Never. Registration is a one-time process, valid for life. As long as you do not allow your firearms licence to expire - which results, logically, in your registration certificate being invalidated - you never need to re-register non-restricted firearms. Oh, and letting your licence expire while you still own firearms will still be a federal offense, even after registration is gone.

Q. OK, so let's say I let my licence expire and will eventually need to re-register. Will someone let me know?

A. Yup. By the time your licence expires, you'll already have been sent at least two previous pieces of mail: a renewal notice, including the application form, followed by a reminder a few weeks later. If you ignore both of those - and again, remember that this part all remains the same under the new law - your licence will expire, and you'll later be sent a letter explaining that because your licence expired, you'll need to dispose of your firearms (unless you get a new one).

If you get your new licence, you may later get a letter explaining that you now need to re-register your firearms. This is the only way anybody ever gets asked to renew their non-restricted registrations. Note that it requires that they ignore both of the first two letters about their licence being about to expire. It requires deliberate, active, assertive stupidity, not just an oversight.

Q: What if the MP just misspoke, and it was the licence renewal that didn't get sent to the client? Wouldn't that mean that his not renewing, and later needing to re-register, wasn't his fault?

A: First of all, if the MP was talking about the licence renewal, then his story had no place in a discussion of registration. They're two different things, and until you understand that distinction you have absolutely nothing to add to a discussion of Canadian firearms laws. Especially since, "he said yet again", the licence requirement isn't changing under this new law.

Second, no.

Any reminder sent to me that something of mine is expiring is a courtesy, not a legal requirement. If I don't receive it, it's still on me to make sure I follow the procedure to stay valid. I know it's not considered cool these days to assume any sort of personal responsibility, but a few of us still do. We're like the people at the Renaissance Faire, pining for a different era.

Q: What if he moved since getting his licence? Then it's not his fault that he didn't get his renewal form, right?

A: I can't believe I have to address a question this stupid (especially since I'm the one asking it to maintain the Q&A format), but I've actually heard this argument.

When you move, it's your (here comes that word again) responsibility to notify anybody who needs to reach you. And, lookie here, when you get a firearms licence it explains right on the letter that comes with it that you MUST, by law, report any change of address within 30 days. Your driver's licence probably came with a similar letter. I know mine did. Try moving without notification, having your driver's licence expire as a result, and explaining to the next policeman who pulls you over that it's not your fault that you're driving without a valid licence, because the DMV should have been able to psychically sense that you had moved. Good luck with that.


2. Some MPs bloviated about long gun registration treating all firearm owners like criminals.

Then motor vehicle registration treats all drivers like criminals. Unless you stand in front of the DMV whining and waving a sign about that, shut up.


3. Several references were made to "law-abiding" people who refused to register their firearms out of principle.

If they own unregistered firearms, then they are, by definition, not law-abiding. By that standard, Al Capone was a law-abiding citizen who refused to declare some income on his tax returns out of principle. He was probably protesting the war in Iraq well in advance. He had a lot of foresight, that Capone.


4. The same doofus as in point 1 said that he knows people who wound up criminalized over typos in their address or phone number.

First up, name some names or you're making this up. Second, nonsense. To be "criminalized" implies that you were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted. Find me one person who now has a criminal record over a typo in their phone number.


5. The point was made that hunters shouldn't have to pay these outrageous registration fees.

Q: How much does it cost to register a firearm?

A: That would be zero dollars and zero cents. Free, gratis, thank you, come again.

Q: What about when I transfer the firearm to a new owner? There's a charge then, right?

A: Nope.

Q: Ahhh, but I need a licence. Is that free?

A: Nope. $60 if applying for non-restricted firearms, $80 for restricted. Good for five years.

Q: Ha! Gotcha! Registration might be free and permanent, but if I need to renew my licence every five years, then I'll still have to pay -

A: Nothing. Renewals are free. You only pay for your first licence.

Q: Umm.... never mind.

A: Okey-dokey, then. Let's move on.


6. It was asserted that failure to file paperwork - for example, not registering a firearm - should not be a criminal matter.

Ahh, now we're getting somewhere. If you're arguing that an unregistered firearm should be treated as a much less dire matter than the Firearms Act allows, then we can find some common ground. Right now, you can theoretically go to jail for owning an unregistered non-restricted firearm. No one has, but the possibility is there. I'd have no objection to that being reduced to a fine with no criminal record, akin to a speeding ticket. If the firearm got used in a dangerous way, then that's a separate matter that can be addressed separately.

On the other hand, the "not bothering to file paperwork isn't a crime" argument may not carry much weight with, say, the Canada Revenue Agency, Internal Revenue Service, or Securities and Exchange Commission...


7. The Tories have long hammered on the program's cost overruns, and last night's speeches upheld that tradition.

No argument here. The program cost far more than it was initially expected to. Although the oft-quoted initial estimate of $2 million and final cost of $2 billion are both somewhere between guesses and outright fabrication, there's little doubt that the intial cost estimates were, shall we say, ludicrously optimistic.

However, that $2 billion, even if you believe that figure (which you maybe shouldn't), is over the 17 years since the Firearms Act was passed. Under $120 million per year. That's a rounding error in the federal budget. Besides, that money is spent and gone, and the fact that it was spent has nothing to do with whether firearm registration is intrinsically a good idea.

The question now is not "is long gun registration worth the money that was spent on it?" The relevant question now is whether it's worth the amount still being spent on it. The problem is that no one seems to know quite how much that is, beyond "not much".

Oh, and you don't get to complain about the cost of the program unless you also object to the fee waivers alluded to earlier. When the registration law first came into effect, firearms owners were supposed to pay for their registrations (a flat rate of $18, regardless of how many firearms) and licence renewals ($60 every five years). Spineless politicians decided to appease the scofflaws by waiving those fees, because we all know how well appeasement works. The waiver was originally temporary, of course, but it's been extended repeatedly, and there's no reason to believe that the fees will ever be reinstated.


8. I don't remember whether one of the MPs mentioned this - probably, it kind of blurred together after the first couple of hours - but an ongoing anti-registration theme is that registration is bad because, hackers. I know a Sun News correspondent claimed the other night that the RCMP has admitted that they don't know how many times the registry database has been hacked.

I've got a pretty good idea that, once again, that number is zero. I'm betting that if the Sun News guy actually bothered to ask the RCMP, the conversation went like this:

Sun News Guy: "How many times has the registry database been hacked?"

RCMP Guy: "None."

Sun News Guy: "How do you know?"

RCMP Guy: "The security logs don't show any unauthorized accesses, and there's never been any evidence of a breach. No unauthorized person has actually produced proof that they've gotten in, for example by posting something online that they could only have gotten by getting in."

Sun News Guy: "But what if the hacker was smart enough to get past your firewallmacallits without you even knowing, and they just never told anybody? Huh? What then? How would you know then, Mister Policeman?"

RCMP Guy: "I guess you have a point, kind of. Sort of like if I asked how you'd know if somebody broke into your house every night and replaced all your stuff with exact duplicates."

Sun News Guy: "Exactly! So you admit you don't know!"

More seriously, I used to work in IT. I know people who still do, and some of them work for government agencies. They get security bulletins about hacks and hack attempts. Some of them are in positions where they would definitely have heard about a major RCMP security breach. I've made the calls and asked. It has never happened, to the best of anyone's knowledge.

Oh, it's been claimed. A Canadian hacker website I used to read had a guy loudly announce, several years ago, that he had hacked into the registry. He said he'd post again soon explaining how, and proving it by presenting some of the data he'd accessed. He never came through with any such explanation or proof, and ignored questions about it afterward. He was lying.

When it comes to claims of the registry having been hacked, the correct response is Internet mainstay, "Pics or it didn't happen."

My personal info is in there - under my real name, even - and I couldn't care less.

And once again - it bears repeating, because so many people just don't get it - repealing gun registration and destroying the registration data doesn't get your name out of that RCMP database. As long as you have (or ever had) a licence, you're still in there. And you needed a licence to register. So, guess what, privacy freaks? This changes nothing.


9. Sing the chorus with me. Come on, we all heard it 736 times during these speeches, and continually from certain quarters over the last several years: "Criminals don't register their guns!"

The only problem is, sometimes they do. Criminals aren't your brightest specimens.

There have been lots of examples in the news over the years, for those who weren't blind to them. Here are three easy ones that spring to mind.

In Mayerthorpe, a couple of guys loaned James Roszko some registered guns and dropped him off to ambush and kill four RCMP officers. The presence of their guns led to their arrest and conviction as accomplices.

Guess how the police knew the guns weren't all Roszko's? Without registration, everyone would have assumed that all the guns at the scene were his, and there would have been no further investigation of them.

A smuggling ring was importing legal non-restricted receivers (actions - the actual workings of the firearm, that the barrel and stock attach to), then modifying them into illegal configurations by adding illegally smuggled short barrels, or illegally modifying the actions to fire as fully automatic. They were importing the receivers legally, registering them in the process.

When those illegally modified firearms started turning up at crime scenes, guess how the police were able to trace them to the initial importers?

Earlier this month, a gun store employee in British Columbia was arrested for embezzling firearms from his employer. He was transferring the firearm registrations from the business (which he was authorized to do as an employee) to himself, and taking the guns home for his collection, without paying for them of course. When the business owner figured out that a bunch of firearms were missing from his inventory, he called the police to investigate.

Guess how the police were able to figure out who the thief was and how many firearms they were looking for when they arrived with the arrest warrant?

There's a related issue in that sometimes formerly law-abiding people become criminals later. But we'll come back to that.

Of course, there is one element of truth in the constant bleating of "Criminals don't register!". Right, sometimes they don't. Habitually breaking the law, or at best picking and choosing which laws to follow, is pretty much a defining characteristic of criminals. Thinking that "criminals don't register!" is an argument against the idea of registration is like thinking that "Criminals still rob banks!" is an argument against anti-robbery laws. No. "Epic fail", as the kids say, and I could smack them in the back of the head every time they say it.


10. Let's move on to the related second mantra, heard again last night many times over: "Gun registration has never prevented a single crime!"

Good luck proving that negative.

I can easily disprove it logically, beyond any reasonable doubt. Before I do that, though, let's examine the logic of using that statement as an argument against gun registration. Once again, arguing against gun registration by claiming it doesn't stop criminals is a lot like arguing that laws against rape are pointless because rapists still commit rape.

The simple fact is that laws don't stop determined criminals. They deter casual offenders, give a legal means for penalties after the fact, and send messages about what we consider unacceptable as a society, but they do not stop determined criminals. This is true of any law.

This argument - "people are going to do it anyway, so legalizing it must the the right thing to do" - shows up all the time in discussions about drug laws, abortion, and firearms. It's mindless every single time. If you use it, please stop. If you know better than to use it, please mock those who don't until they stop. Even if you're on their side of the issue, shame them into using better arguments.

But let's move on to logical consideration of whether it can even possibly be true that long gun registration has never prevented a single crime.

First of all, we know it isn't true because of the examples I gave in the last point. Do you suppose that the firearm smugglers would have stopped on their own if the registry data hadn't gotten them busted? Or that the embezzling store employee was going to suddenly decide he had enough firearms in his basement?

Consider this scenario. Bubba the Good Ol' Boy registers his guns. He's an OK guy, maybe with a DUI or two, but not what you would call a career criminal. He would certainly never see himself as one. Bubba occasionally likes to shove the Missus around after a few beers. One particularly spirited Friday night, the cops get called. Eventually a judge decides that Bubba can't have guns anymore. The cops go by Bubba's trailer to collect them. His registration records tell them how many they're looking for. Without registration, they can only ask Bubba how many he has and take his word for it. If he "forgets" to mention that one 12-gauge in the crawlspace, well, too bad. Now Bubba has both a gun and a grudge.

Think this scenario is unrealistic, or too rare to consider? You're wrong. I was blessed to have grown up in a home that was nothing like Bubba's. However, I've known people who lived this sort of life. Bubba has kids all over, and some of them are friends of mine.

Now, do you really think that not one of any Bubba's family members, neighbours, or arresting officers have ever been spared a close encounter with a 12-gauge because the cops knew that it was there, and so they took it? The close encounter doesn't need to be someone actually getting killed. It can be as "minor" - the quotes really don't do the understatement justice - of Bubba reminding Missus Bubba that he's still got it handy in case she feels like getting mouthy again.

Prohibition orders, when a judge decides that a Bubba can't have guns anymore, simply cannot be enforced without registration. If the police don't know how many guns Bubba has, they can't be sure they got them all.

At this point, if you're reading this and thinking, "Nuh-unh! Bubba might have only registered some of his guns, so the cops don't know to take the unregistered ones", scroll back up and start re-reading at point 9. When you get back here, if you still don't get it, repeat until comprehension dawns.

Oh, and a fun response to this argument is that fire hydrants have never prevented a single house fire, ergo we should get rid of them. Just as hydrants prove their worth after a fire breaks out, firearm registration is far more useful as an investigative tool than as a preventative tool.


11. This relates to points 9 and 10. A nitwit MP from Manitoba said, and I quote (don't ask me how I can remember this verbatim, it's uncanny), "Criminals don't register their firearms." A minute or so later, after changing focus somewhat, he rather proudly announced, without a hint of irony, that he refused to register his own firearms.

Dude, you totally just called yourself a criminal. Explicitly.

That would be embarrassing to a person smart enough to be capable of self-reflection. Fortunately for you....


12. "Registration is always a precursor to confiscation." Again, I don't remember any specific MPs saying this last night (and if they did, I doubt they used the word "precursor"), but it's one of the standard Bad Arguments Against Gun Registration.

My reply to this is always the same. I've said it to so many people in so many situations over the last decade that I can say it all in one breath now. My wife calls it Standard Rant # 53.

My car is registered. My house is registered. My freaking dog is registered. In fact, I have to re-register the car and dog on a regular basis, and pay for the privilege. And yet, no one has ever once shown up to confiscate my car, my house, or my dog. Unless you stand outside the DMV whining about vehicle registration, shut the *&%^! up about the evils of firearm registration.

Yes, at some times, in some places, under some circumstances, registration of various things has lead to confiscation of some of those things, but it's certainly not a universal maxim.

This leads nicely into point


13. "Hitler liked gun registration."

Yup. He liked dogs, sunsets, walks on the beach, and tall men with straight teeth and a good sense of humour too. Your point?

Firearm registration has sometimes been used as a precursor to governments doing Very Bad Things. So have curfews and restrictions on speech that the ruling elite don't like. The (urban legendary) "fact" that Hitler made the trains run on time doesn't make adherence to transit schedules the work of Satan.


That's the end of my points. I could, believe it or not, write a lot more on this topic. I'm an obsessive geek who likes guns, so I know a lot about them and the laws pertaining to them. I could go on about legitimate arguments against firearm registration, why Canada's firearms law failed, and what gauge shotgun makes the loudest BOOM when I pull the trigger, but those are all for other days. On to the conclusion. You're welcome, dear reader.


These speeches were absolutely appalling. Not because I disagreed with the basic philosphical positions of the speakers, but because they were using criminally stupid arguments. The ignorance expressed should not have been tolerated in our national Chamber of Parliament. The speakers, legislators who have a moral duty to understand the facts pertaining to the subject of their voting, were wrong about basic, easily verifiable facts. The logic on display wouldn't pass muster in a kindergarten discussion of which Pokemon is most awesome. No one who actually knows anything about Canada's firearms laws would have been able to sit through those speeches without having their blood pressure raised enough to burst a few capillaries.

I have to wonder whether I was seeing the chicken or the egg. Were these Honourable Members just pandering to the assumed pre-existing ignorance of their viewers, or were they actively fueling it? Either way, was it inadvertent or deliberate? Did they honestly not know any better themselves?


Dear reader, if you want to know the truth about anything, please choose your sources wisely. Don't listen to the loudmouth at the barbershop, the sensationalist "reporter", or the pandering sycophant in the legislature. Certainly don't blindly trust some pseudonymous Canadian dork with a blog. Check facts. Go to original sources.

In the case of Canada's firearms laws, it's pretty easy. Although they aren't much help with statistics or philosophies behind the law, the folks at the Canadian Firearms Program have a toll-free line (1-800-731-4000) and a website complete with an e-mail contact form (www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp). One call or e-mail to them from one of last night's speechmakers would have demolished the first point I railed against above.

For me, I have a set of rules for debating Canada's gun laws with someone who wants to argue (as opposed to actually discuss, and - gasp! - maybe learn something):

-If you don't know the difference between licencing and registration, don't waste my time.

-If you want to talk about the financial costs but don't know the price (to the applicant) of licence renewals and registrations, don't waste my time.

-If you think it's somebody else's fault that they couldn't reach you after you moved without telling them, don't waste my time.

-If you think it's anyone's responsibility but your own to keep track of when your licence (or anything else) expires, don't waste my time.

-If you think that firearm registration is an infringement of your rights but haven't a peep to say about car registration, don't waste my time.

-If you think that "criminals don't register" or "Hitler!" are arguments against the idea of firearm registration, don't waste my time.

-If you don't get that "law-abiding unlicenced (or, until this bill passes into law, unregistered) firearm owner" is an oxymoron, don't waste my time.

In all of these cases, check some facts and take a basic logic course, then get back to me. Heck, I'm quite willing to try explaining some of these things to someone who honestly just doesn't know. In fact, I just spent 23,000 or so words doing it.


Let's close, for real this time, with a tasteless joke.

Vic Toews is one of the head Tory cheerleaders against firearm registration, and I've seen him use all 13 of the silly arguments above at various times. As background, after voting to pass this bill to overturn this very mild form of gun control, letting people sell firearms into the criminal black market at will and effectively removing all gun control as I mentioned way back at the top, he and many other MPs attended a self-congratulatory cocktail party to celebrate. I like to imagine that his day planner looked like this:

6:00 PM - Vote to repeal gun control

7:00 PM - Piss on the graves of victims of gun violence

Enough rambling. Here's a picture, cribbed from the Web, that eloquently expresses some of my other feelings about firearms legislation. Three cheers for acknowledging the complexity of multifaceted issues!

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.

Career-Altering Decisions

At my office, when someone dares to speak up about a bad decision made by management, it's described as "a career-altering decision". The term has become a reliably entertaining catchphrase. On a related note, I'm grateful and pleasantly surprised that they still employ me, since I'm not much more shy about expressing my positions in real life than I am when writing on this blog.

I fear that an Orlando reporter just made a career-altering decision. You can watch the hilarious video and read lots of great comments about it here.

I made the first link straight to a blog, because it's the source cited by the second link. The second link is there because I suspect that the video link in the original blog will be taken down shortly, because it's hosted by the TV station whose reporter dared commit heresy.

To summarize, a TV reporter asked Joe Biden some tough but fair questions. If similar questions were asked of a Republican candidate, no one would bat an eye, but you're simply not allowed to ask Democrats anything that strays from their talking points if you want to be (or remain) a professional journalist in America.

So far in this campaign, I'm aware of exactly two people having publicly asked the Democratic ticket candidates any tough questions: Barbara West and Joe the Plumber.


Sidebar on Joe The Plumber: it's simultaneously hilarious, depressing, and disgusting (which is incidentally my reaction to most of what I see in the world) to see the mainstream media's reaction to Joe's tough questions. The guy, an average - sorry - Joe, gets a few seconds of face time with a presidential contender, and dares to be blunt. The media, instead of discussing the actual question and its answer, attack him.

He doesn't really have the money to buy the company where he works. The company doesn't make as much as he said. He's not a licenced plumber. Heck, his name's even not really Joe.

Everybody who cares about those issues, listen closely. Maybe get up as close to your monitor screen as you can. Don't be afraid of leaving noseprints on the glass. They'll wipe right out.

None of that matters.

Whether he was actually describing his own personal situation, presenting a completely hypothetical scenario, or anywhere in between, makes no difference whatsoever. What matters is the content of the question, and more importantly the content of Obama's answer.

Can you imagine the mainstream media's reaction if someone asked McCain a tough question and the only response from the Republican machine was to dig into the questioner's background? "Never mind that! Answer the question!", in an endless loop.

Listening to the candidates speak late last week it occurred to me that you could have made a great drinking game out of taking a shot each time either of them invoked good old Joe.

Biblical sidebar-within-a-sidebar: Biblical scholars generally feel that the parables of Jesus often didn't refer to actual, literal individuals and events. Instead, they were deliberately designed to make philosophical points. It didn't matter whether the events had actually happened. His audience - then and now - understood that. Nobody yelled, "Hey, what was the address of that house built on sand? Why, I bet it never even existed, did it? You're a fraud, and nothing you say is worth responding to or thinking about!"

Yet the media cares deeply about Joe the Plumber's personal history. This may help explain the average mainstream journalist's disdain for Jesus.

/End Loop: Biblical Sidebar
//End Loop: Sidebar


Joe Biden's reply to a couple of hardball questions was fantastic. I loved seeing the frozen smile melt away as his composure began to crack. I especially enjoyed his parting shot, where he insinuated that anyone who wanted those sorts of questions answered has to be some right-wing extremist. Right, Joe. Anybody who recognizes socialism when it's staring them in the face is a fanatic. Certainly No True Scotsman would dream of asking such things. (I know it's actually more of an ad hominem response, but the Scotsman line rang funnier to my ears.)

Barbara West should probably start polishing her resume. Even though she's being backed by her station's news director, and may very well not have written (or possibly even wanted to ask) the questions, a sacrifice will need to be offered and she's the most visible candidate. The station is already under a Democratic embargo, at least until the Democrats get their panties unbunched. That could be a while.

If she's still on the air next time I visit Florida, I'll try to make a point of watching her station. Since it'll be later than tomorrow morning before I arrive, she'll probably be long gone. Hopefully everybody in that channel's broadcast range will take the opportunity to watch them now, before the inevitable neutering. Hearing leftist talking points challenged on the air would seem shocking at first, since we're all so unaccustomed to it, but it would be nice to have a chance to get used to it.


Enough rambling. Here's another picture from our our recent church-sponsored afternoon of trap shooting. This is a spent shell casing in the grass. It's the last of my pictures (that I'll be posting) from that afternoon.

Sermon Notes - Faith Needs An Object

This may or may not be the beginning of another wildly irregular series. I've intended to do this for a while, but we all know how that goes.

I often take notes during sermons. Our brains are wired to better retain information that we process in multiple ways. Hearing, seeing, repeating, writing down - these are all different methods of processing, and each one that we apply helps us better retain the information.

This is not by any means to claim that I normally remember many details of any given sermon after a few weeks (or sometimes hours). That's OK. That's how it works, and everyone, even the pastors who pour their spirit into presenting the Word, know and accept that.

Some say that means that a sermon is a waste of time. If the listeners don't remember the three points afterward, then what good did it do?

To that I respond, what did you have for lunch on August 23, 2002? Oh, you don't remember? Then that meal couldn't have provided you with any nourishment.

That point (hopefully) addressed, I would like to retain more of the preaching that I hear. So note-taking it is, both for the mental processing factor and the fact that I can refer to them later to refresh my weak memory.

Sidebar to pastors: if it's at all feasible, hand out sermon outlines with blanks to be filled in. Make your sermon a congregation participation exercise. I know you want those sheep fed as well as possible - get them to chew on the Word a bit so it'll stay with them longer.

Wow, that metaphor took an ugly turn. Let's put a stop to this sidebar and move on.


I've intended for a while to start posting these sermon notes on here. That way I get to process them one more time, refreshing the lesson, and I get them recorded somewhere where I can refer to them in the future. I also dare hope that maybe something I write will strike a chord for a reader or two.

Full disclosure time - getting people to think about matters of importance, specifically matters of ultimate importance, is my actual Big Picture reason for writing this blog. Yes, I also use it as an outlet for all sorts of silliness, self-indulgence, and irrelevancy, but what I really want is to get wheels turning inside people's heads.


My sermon notes usually aren't substantial. Often just a sentence or two, enough to (hopefully) jog my memory when I look at them later on. Time to put the psych degree to use again: these "triggers" work as a mnemonic device because our recognition memory is better than our recall memory. A key word will often spark up the neurons that store the rest of the idea, when we never could have pulled it out of storage otherwise.


This is all background that I hopefully won't go over again. After this time, "Sermon Notes" entries should be short, sweet, and straight to the point (at least by my standards). Assuming I write any more of them, the little bit of material appearing after this bloated intro is more like what they should look like.

Note also that some of what I say below comes from my own reflection on the sermon, not necessarily from what the pastor explicitly said. If that's an issue anywhere along the line, questions are welcomed.


My pastor recently preached a sermon on the topic of "faith" as a word and a concept. I took away one key point: faith is only as good as its object.

Many, probably a large majority, will say that they "have faith". The question must always be asked: faith in what? Faith must have an object. Without an object, the word is meaningless. If a person's faith is in anything but the one true God, then it is tragically misplaced.

The pastor cited Augustine: "If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself." That quotation can be found here, in the midst of lots of other powerful thoughts. Go take a look - any one sentence on that page is worth hours of grappling. I've got a new bookmark.

I'd like to have a primary source citation on the Augustine quote, but I'm not a scholar of his works by any stretch and two minutes with Google didn't turn it up, so we're out of luck. If you can remedy that, please do so in the comments.

My pastor then expounded on the obvious ramifications and extended meaning of what Augustine said: if you pick and choose which parts of the Bible you believe, then you are not treating it seriously as the Word of God. That's your free choice to make, but it's hypocritical to cling to some teachings (like forgiveness for your sins) but reject others (like the Virgin Birth) that come from the same source.

There's what I retain from that sermon, a couple of months or so later. It may not seem like much, but I'm actually quite pleased with it. If each listener retained that much from each sermon, then a single small congregation could transform their entire community.


Enough rambling. Here's another picture from our our recent church-sponsored afternoon of trap shooting. This is the manual launcher for the clay "pigeons" we saw last time. We used a gas-powered launcher for most of our shots, but this was an alternatve.

Journalistic Racism

I've noticed a tendency for journalists to describe various policies - especially "conservative" ones - as racist, without seeming to notice that while the policy is racially neutral, their interpretation is itself quite racist. Other people do it too, but for today I'm picking on the journalists because they really ought to know better.

Unless a policy (which I mean here as any law, regulation, etc.) explicitly applies only (or differently) to members of specific ethnic groups, it is highly unlikely that the policy is itself racist.

I qualify that statement with "highly unlikely" to account for things like voting being restricted to landowners in the immediate wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, which in all probability had the intention (and effect) of blocking the recently freed slaves from full participation in democracy. I can think of other far more recent examples, but those are for another day.

However, the vast majority of policies that get interpreted as "racist" are not actually racist at all. Instead, the interpreter is projecting their own racism onto the framers of the policy.

For example, let's say that a new law were passed saying that a ten dollar per day fine would be levied on anyone who hadn't bathed in the last week. Rest assured that editorials and blogs would immediately present rants along the lines of "this law is clearly intended to discriminate against Freedonians, because everyone knows that their hygiene is questionable at best".

See the problem? More to the point, can you identify the actual bigot in this scenario? If so, you're a large step ahead of most journalists, editors, and Democrats.

I've seen this principle at work many times. One of the worst was a feature in the August 30, 2001 issue (number 876) of Rolling Stone. As previously noted, I was an RS subscriber a couple of lifetimes ago, casting the magazine aside when I learned what "critical thinking" meant (shades of I Corinthians 13:11).

That issue had a feature article on how many states have laws restricting the right of felons (including those who have completed their prison terms) to vote. Two explicit arguments were then made, both of which I find very funny. I sometimes wonder if articles like these are satire written by conservatives, because the liberal arguments presented are so spectacularly stupid:

1. Laws preventing felons from voting, or making it harder for them to do so, are racist against black people. Subtext: black people are criminals.

2. Laws preventing felons from voting, or making it harder for them to do so, skew the electoral system unfairly in favour of the Republican party. Subtext: the terms "Democrat" and "sociopathic criminal" are largely interchangeable.

The sad part is that most readers, through a combination of politically correct sensory bombardment and apathy, won't even notice the switch. Many readers will go away from the article thinking that the author actually had a valid point and that other people are the bigots. After all, "they wouldn't print it otherwise", right?

Serious articles like this make it tough for those of us who are out here occasionally trying to be funny. It's tough to top genuine moral ignorance combined with a complete lack of self-awareness.


This all comes up because of an article I just read. I'm not above discussing a seven year-old magazine and calling it topical - in fact, I may do a lot more of it here in the future - but not today.

From the opening of an opinion piece by Douglas Cuthand published on October 23:

The re-election of a Conservative minority government could have a serious impact on First Nations and aboriginal people through the party's promise to get tough on youth crime...

While the article is mostly about other issues concerning Canada in general and First Nations peoples in particular, Cuthand returns to the youth crime issue before it's over. He holds his position: that toughening up youth crime laws will be especially bad for aboriginal communities.

I'd have a lot more respect for this kind of writing if the authors had the guts to come out and explicitly say what they believe: that aboriginal youth are congenitally criminal, that the Democratic party is full of sociopaths, that Freedonians are naturally smelly.

Unless you're prepared to say that there's something about Ethnic Group X that makes them inherently and irresistibly more likely to violate Policy Y, then Policy Y is not racist. And if you're prepared to say that, then the Ethnic Group X Anti-Defamation Brigade's lawyer is on line one. Good luck. And remember, there is nothing "soft" about the bigotry of low expectations.

A look around the Web tells me that Douglas Cuthand is of aboriginal ancestry himself. That doesn't change anything. People can be prejudiced against members of groups to which they belong.

I'd also like to note that in some cases, there may indeed be social factors that lead to members of Group X tending to wind up on the wrong side of Policy Y. That's a separate discussion that can and should be held. However, insinuations that the policy is intended to "trap" Group X'ers (with the everpresent nod-and-a-wink corollary that that was exactly the plan all along) don't help.

In the interest of full disclosure: I wrote this article mostly as another excuse to slander Freedonians.


Enough rambling. Here's another picture from our our recent church-sponsored afternoon of trap shooting. This is a box full of the clay "pigeons" we were using as targets.

Post-Election Hooptedoodle

With thanks to John Steinbeck for contributing such a splendiferous word to the lexicon.


Once again I present some disjointed thoughts on Canada's recent federal election. SPOILER WARNING for those of you who haven't yet watched the election night coverage recorded on your Tivo.


I was very pleased with the election results. In fact, if I could have scripted my ideal outcome, it would have been pretty much what we got. I certainly didn't want any of the opposition parties in power. While I'm all for carpooling, the benefit of all those clowns being able to travel to Parliament Hill in one Volkswagen doesn't outweigh the damage they'd do to my country given the chance.

That said, I'm glad Harper only got a minority. I like minority governments for the exact reason that it's hard for them to do anything. As somebody said at some point in history, "That government is best which governs least." When it comes to domestic affairs, at least, I want the government feeble, inert, and afraid of displeasing the electorate.

Plus, there was a much-needed change in my own riding as the incumbent got turfed in favour of a longshot newcomer. The one I voted for, in fact, and I'd like to think that my vote made the difference. Although mathematically it didn't. I'm happy to report that my election night negativity on this score was unfounded.


Time for an I-Told-You-So dance. The new voter identification rules did indeed cause uninformed people to miss voting. I explained why that's a good thing back in that other post (I just linked to it a couple of lines back; do I need to draw a map?), and I stand by what I said then. News stories like this one and this one warm the cockles of my heart, and we all know that nobody likes cold heartcockles.

Here are my favourite quotations from those articles (one from each - I have the same journalistic ethics as CNN. I'll present two opinions from the exact same ideological position and call it balance, as long as they come from ostensibly different sources):

1. Someone who was trying to get young voters to show up described them as "People who are, like, the toughest demographic to get to come out and vote."

Yeah, like, they totally are, right? And, like, they need to know that, like, voting is groovy.

The kids still say "groovy", don't they?

Ahhh, whatta they know anyway. I just wish they'd stay off my lawn.

2. One of those aforementioned young voters, after being told to go home and get her ID: “This (is) ridiculous. If they wanted this information from me, they should have asked for it ahead of time.”

Yes, that's right. Maybe they should have run some newspaper, radio and television ads explaining the requirement. Maybe they should have had an entire section of the Elections Canada website devoted to explaining the remarkably simple concept. Maybe they should have even spelled it out on the voter information cards that were sent out to (I think) all registered voters a while before the election, then put up big signs about it at the polling station.

Note for non-Canadian readers, who may not catch the sarcasm: They did all that.

Apparently if you don't stop by this young lady's dorm room and tattoo a reminder across her lower back, she doesn't consider it advance notice.

By the way, I inserted that parenthetical "is" into her sentence to make it coherent. I really hope its absence was a typo in the original article. I give the educational system a lot of grief, but I'd like to think that college students don't really talk like Tonto.

My dream scenario for the next election is that each voter be required, on arrival at the polling station, to recite the lyrics to any one Elvis Costello song. Promote the rule heavily, including sending a copy of This Year's Model - with lyric insert - to all households with at least one registered voter. Those who show up at the polls saying they didn't know about it will be required to give their vote to someone who gets why radio stations don't like playing "Radio Radio".


Since my prediction for my own riding was thankfully wrong, and the Canadian election turned out as well as I could realistically have hoped (although an Ezra Levant write-in landslide - for every seat - would have been nice), then I'm actually daring to hold out hope for what happens in my big friendly neighbour to the south on November 4th.

McCain isn't perfect by any means, but come on. Obama? Really? An avowed communist whose own supporters unashamedly use the phrase "redistribution of wealth?" (Tip: although his supporters deny that he's a communist, the whole "redistribution of wealth" thing makes him one, no matter how much they try to weasel around it.)

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, I really like. I freely admit that she may lack some of characteristic slickness common among career politicians, but I consider that a point in her favour. The operational nuts and bolts can be learned pretty quickly. Character and integrity can't.

My real hope for the U.S. of A between now and their election is that a whole bunch of people in both parties wake up one morning, say "Wait a minute. We nominated these two? What were we thinking?" and start the whole process over from scratch. There's still plenty of time to hold primaries and a campaign of non-nauseating length, and the two new nominees could hardly be worse. A Palin / Joe The Plumber ticket would have me looking into immigration options. (Legal immigration only, of course.)


The Hey-Let's-Break-Up-The-Country Party got 50 seats. Oh, for the good old days when treason and sedition were rewarded with a noose, not a seat in Parliament.

More seriously, while I'm pretty much an absolutist for freedom of speech and would not advocate criminalizing any speech short of direct incitement of violence, how insane and selfish is it that people vote for a separatist party just because they think that party will extort more out of the rest of Canada for them?

The Bloc and their supporters remind me of the captured Russian sailors in The Hunt For Red October. They're on the deck of an American ship, watching depth charges go off. They cheer. "Yay! The captain is fighting the Americans!" I kept waiting for one of them to turn to another and say, "Umm, Boris... aren't we on one of the American ships we're rooting for him to sink?"


Now that the Liberal party has figured out exactly what most of Canada thinks of Stephane Dion, I've heard rumours of Justin Trudeau, son of longtime Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, stepping into the leadership void. If only the Liberals had noticed the leadership void in their party during the months leading up to the election, things might have gone differently.

The day after the election, some of my co-workers were speaking enthusiastically about Justin T. taking over the big chair. I offered, "By all means, he should. If we've learned nothing else from the Bush family, it's that being the son of a leader automatically qualifies you to be a great leader."

Disclaimer: despite that joke, I mean no disrespect to President Bush (either current or former). However, the people to whom I was speaking don't think very highly of "Dubya", so it was a cheap and easy way to make my point and I ran with it.


Lots of people think that there's some shady connection between Stephen Harper and American interests. I've heard tinfoil hat models talk about him being supported by everyone from the NRA to the aliens in Area 51 (and possibly Area 52, the even more secret one). These folks like to talk about foreign interference in Canadian elections being illegal, immoral, and a major contributor to childhood obesity. They would like Harper impeached (or perhaps exiled) based on their suspicions.

However, I haven't heard a word from any of those same folks about Michael Moore campaigning with and for the NDP. Odd, that. It's almost as though they apply different standards to candidates that they happen to like.


Harper may be cockier now. I hope so. I like my Prime Minister to have a little bit of swagger. It was Pierre Trudeau's one redeeming quality.

I just saw a newspaper editorial (in a dead-tree edition - sorry, no link) that called Harper's threats to make votes into confidence motions a "dirty trick". (A "confidence motion" is one that if voted down triggers a new election.)

What? That's the way the system is supposed to work. When that editor used the phrase "dirty trick", they demonstrated that they don't understand what at least one of those words means.

If I were in Harper's shoes, I'd immediately pick my pet issue that I thought would be toughest to get through Parliament, have a bill written up, and make it a confidence motion. Here's where we find out whether he's really serious about things like getting rid of firearm registration or revamping the Young Offenders Act. If he is, then they'll be on the agenda very soon, as confidence motions.

That's not a dirty trick, that's having the guts to call the opposition's bluff. "You don't like it? Then vote against it, and we'll see what the Canadian electorate thinks about it."

This is Harper's chance to show what he really wants to do. I expect the answer will be "not much".


Enough rambling. Here's another picture from our our recent church-sponsored afternoon of trap shooting. Once again, pastor on the left, attorney on the right.

Generosity With Other People's Money

I don't like being accosted for charitable donations. And whereas I'm an introverted, socially dysfunctional misanthrope, when I say "accosted" I pretty much mean "personally solicited".

I've noticed a trend recently in charitable fundraising efforts. Maybe it's not new, but I hadn't noticed it much before, and something about it didn't sit well. Today I realized why.

The trend is for businesses to try to guilt-trip their customers into supporting causes directly related to that business. Think supermarkets promoting food banks, or sporting goods and tire (if you catch my drift - especially you Canadians) stores urging people to donate to charities dedicated to helping underprivileged (meaning underfunded) kids get sports equipment.

Now, there's certainly nothing wrong with those causes, although I must admit that with people starving to death in the world, I have a hard time getting upset that some kids' parents can't afford goalie pads. Still, there are plenty of good causes, and everyone has their pet issues, so I try not to trivialize other people's concerns with "there are more important issues".

Anyway, toward the point. These businesses are attempting to motivate people, strictly through guilt (the omnipresent TV ads about the sporting goods charity are blatantly manipulative), to buy stuff from them and give it to charity. That sounds fine, at first. Any donated items need to be purchased somewhere along the line, so I can overlook the possibly self-serving charity selection.

However, I've just realized what puts it over the line. Let's take the campaign from the sporting goods / hardware chain urging people to buy and donate sports gear. We'll call the chain, oh, I don't know, National Carwheels (NC for short).

NC wants you to buy stuff from them, of course. Their contribution consists of paying for the charitable ad spots (which mention NC's name and display their logo prominently), and maybe serving as dropoff points or somesuch. That is, you can come into the store, buy something, and just... leave it there.

I don't expect NC to just donate all the needed equipment. I understand how business works, and that's just not feasible. However, I think that their current charity model, presenting themselves as some sort of partner with the donors, is a cynical sham.

If they really want to be a partner, and really be charitable, here's what they should do: offer to sell the donated items at wholesale. I don't expect them to give the stuff away, but selling it - for charity, remember - at full retail betrays their real motivation. The charity angle is just a sales promotion. Not that there's anything wrong with sales promotions, but it's a bit sickening to watch them get wrapped in claims of altruism.

Set up something whereby my $50 donation doesn't just get $50 retail worth of gear for underprivileged kids, but $50 wholesale. I don't know what NC's profit margins are, but I'm guessing that the difference would be significant.

If revealing wholesale pricing like that is too much exposure of privileged information, then give a discount that puts it somewhere in the middle. That could even be promoted as a "matching" program of sorts: "For every $100 donated, NC will provide an extra $20 worth of equipment!"

Again, note for the record that I have no problem with business trying to get some promotion out of their charitable activity. Just don't try to amass guilt sales while contributing essentially nothing. I can tell when it's something other than rain hitting my leg. As long as these businesses are making no sacrifice - not even a discount - then they're just trying to encourage generosity with other people's money.


Enough rambling. Here's another picture from our our recent church-sponsored afternoon of trap shooting.

Election Day In Canada

Today is Election Day here in Canada. I have a few disjointed thoughts in honour of the occasion.

First up, a quotation from former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker:

I am a Canadian,
a free Canadian,
free to speak without fear,
free to worship God in my own way,
free to stand for what I think right,
free to oppose what I believe wrong,
free to choose those who shall govern my country.
This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold
for myself and for all mankind.

This is being blogburst (blogbursted?) by many Canadian bloggers today. I found out about it from Kathy Shaidle's blog, where she added some great commentary:

Note to belligerent Muslims and other professional victim groups who are using the Human Rights Commissions to "oppose what they believe is wrong":

The operative word in that composition is "free". You are NOT FREE if you are using agents of the state, and other people's extorted tax dollars, to fight your foolish battles. When you do that, you are a PARASITE. Parasites are not free.

I'm no cheerleader for Stephen Harper, but the other candidates for Prime Minister are absolute jokes. Today someone told me that they think Stephen Harper "has a secret right-wing agenda". Apparently as soon as he gets his majority, Canada will be transformed into Ayn Rand's fantasyland. Ignoring their delusional paranoia, I replied, "As an actual conservative (I pronounce it with a small 'c'), I can only hope."


I see a lot of sites warning commenters not to post election results until after the official sanctioned time approved by Elections Canada. This makes me wish that I knew some election results now, so I could post them in deliberate defiance. I should just make some up.

Elections Canada has to understand that communication is now global and effectively instantaneous. There's no logistic way to prevent people in British Columbia from finding out what's happening in Newfoundland (hint: not much). Nor should there be. The breakdown of communication barriers is one of the wonders of the modern age. I consider the efforts of Luddites to hinder it not only futile but possibly immoral.


This just in - the Green Party has taken Prince Edward Island in a sweep! They got the support of all ninety-four eligible voters and most of the potatoes!


We now rejoin our regularly scheduled rant, already in progress.

This isn't even a matter of joining the twenty-first century; the technology was in place before the end of the twentieth. Why do so many insist on staying mired in the nineteenth?

Furthermore, if anyone in a western time zone would alter their vote in any way (including by choosing to vote or not vote at all, when they had previously intended to do otherwise) because of what they heard happened back east, then they shouldn't vote to begin with. If you're not informed, committed, and willing to stand behind your ballot, then do everyone a favour and stay home. There must be something good on MTV tonight to keep you amused.


Canada's voter identification rules changed this year. Now voters need to bring identification to the polling station. I don't have an opinion one way or the other about that requirement, but it may have a positive side effect. I heard speculation today that it'll cause some people to get frustrated and not vote when they show up at the polls without the required ID and get turned away. Instead of going home, getting what they need, and coming back, they'll stay home and pout. (Hey, is that The Real World?)

That suits me just fine. Once again, the people turned away would be the least informed voters. Uninformed people should at least be responsible enough to refrain from introducing noise into the system with their arbitrary ballots. If you vote based on which candidate seemed "nicest", which party your parents / grandparents / whoever has always voted for, or (for crying out loud) the information you gleaned from campaign ads and mainstream news coverage, then your staying home constitutes a public service. Take a small deduction on your next year's taxes and put in a note in your return saying "Zirbert said you could".


I voted right after work. According to the advance polls for my riding, it was probably a wasted effort. But then, that's exactly what the nice folks tabulating and reporting the poll results wanted me to think, so I'd stay home and not mess things up for the candidate they had pre-selected.

Remember what I said a few paragraphs back about not letting previously announced results sway your vote? It goes for advance polls, too. It's quite entertaining to watch the American media try to convince McCain supporters not to waste their time showing up in November. It's blatantly obvious, and the sad part is that it'll probably be effective.


Enough rambling. Here's another picture from our our recent church-sponsored afternoon of trap shooting.

Reading Log - Of Mice And Steinbeck

John Steinbeck and I go way back.

My parents were always very indulgent of my love of reading. When I was in elementary school, Mom and I would go to the mall almost every day after school, and almost every day she'd buy me a paperback. I would read it that evening, and be ready for another the next day. I went through almost everything published under the Dell imprint. It never occurred to me that Judy Blume's books were meant for girls, although it was several years later before I figured out what "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" was about.

I remember a big, unsorted bin of paperbacks in a local discount department store. They all had the same ugly, nondescript brown covers with swirling patterns. You had to read the title off the spine to tell them apart. I got several of them over the days and weeks that followed, but I only remember two of them, and only still have one.

The one I remember but no longer have was Jaws by Peter Benchley. The other, which I still have after all these years, is John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men. I don't know exactly when I got it, but my paperback copy is a 60th printing (collector's edition!), with a note that the 59th printing was done the year I turned five.

Based on my memories of this book, I was probably around eight years old and in the third grade when I read it for the first time. I did a book report, possibly my first, on it while still in elementary school. I thought nothing of it at the time, but in retrospect that must have seemed a bit odd for my teacher when most of my classmates were probably writing reports on more Seussical works. I kept that report for many years after (I got a good mark and some surprised-sounding margin notes), but I think it's long gone now, probably lost in my post-idealism purge of all mementos of the public school system I grew to hate.

My other distinct early Of Mice And Men memory comes from my first few days in the fourth or fifth grade. The teacher tasked us with writing an essay on what the classroom would be like if we were in charge. As a budding nerd, I was mostly concerned with a well-stocked bookshelf. I specifically named Steinbeck as an author who would be well-represented. I remember exactly what the teacher wrote: "I'm impressed, especially with the fact that you like John Steinbeck." This pleased me immensely, because I still liked impressing teachers. That too would be lost before much longer.

From that early age I considered Steinbeck one of my favourite authors. That makes what I'm about to say all the more strange: almost thirty years passed before I actually read another of his books.

I'm not sure why. I've never stopped reading. I've slowed down from my childhood book-a-day habit, certainly, but I maintained a book a week for many years, and still manage several each year. However, my book purchases tend to be haphazard. I go to library book sales and load up my "To Read Someday" shelves, and when I finish one book I go to the shelves and grab another. I just never happened to find any Steinbeck under those circumstances, and I was too busy with the books I already had to go looking for him specifically.

That changed a little while back. I found some cheap Steinbeck volumes, added them to the collection, and eventually they worked their way to the top of the pile.

I started with Cannery Row, perhaps because it was closer in size to Of Mice And Men than The Grapes Of Wrath, which I (correctly) figured would represent a longer commitment.

Cannery Row has no overarching plot. It is about people, rather than events. There is no great conflict, except perhaps the universal conflict of people struggling against their own worst tendencies. The villains of the book, if there are any, are the classic Deadly Sins, with Greed and Sloth heading the pack. The characters know what they ought to do, but all too often find it more expedient to do something else.

The book is a series of vignettes of people living in a poor seaside neighbourhood. Most of the characters are drunken reprobates with the best of intentions. They are all well-drawn and very likable, and the reader quickly ends up caring what happens to each of them. Even the gang of bums who live in a shed and lie, steal, and brawl more out of habit than necessity come off as people you wouldn't mind knowing.

I was not disappointed. It was a quick, easy read and assured me that my childhood admiration of Steinbeck was not misplaced. Cannery Row spawned a sequel, Sweet Thursday, which I promptly borrowed from my library (where I was surprised to find an excellent Steinbeck selection) and a movie adaptation that reportedly combines elements from both books. The movie is evidently unavailable on DVD, but is readily available on AVI, if you know what I mean, so I'll be watching it as soon as I finish the second book. I've been making Sweet Thursday a pretty high priority, which is part of why I haven't written much here lately.


Enough rambling. We interrupt our regularly scheduled series of pictures from our recent church-sponsored afternoon of trap shooting to bring you something that's actually relevant to this post. Here's a blurry picture of my battered paperback copy of Of Mice And Men. Better focus would not have made the cover pattern any more attractive.