Turns Out The Batusi Is Not The Sign For Anything

It's probably wrong that I think this is hilarious:

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - A man who provided sign language interpretation on stage for Nelson Mandela's memorial service, attended by scores of heads of state, was a "fake," the national director of the Deaf Federation of South Africa said on Tuesday...sign language experts said the man was not signing in South African or American sign languages and could not have been signing in any other known sign language because there was no structure to his arm and hand movements.

I used to think finding stuff like this funny made me a jerk. Now I realize it's just a symptom of the underlying condition.

I need to update my will. I hereby request that at my funeral, somebody who doesn't know sign language should stand up at the front making random gestures as people speak. Rudeness is encouraged. If at all possible, work the Macarena in there somewhere.

We can only hope this episode inspires a new fad on Youtube: superimposing fake sign language interpreters at famous speeches. Imagine having someone standing to the side looking like they're playing charades and/or having a petit mal seizure (a fine line, that) as Reagan talks about tearing down this wall, or King talks about having a dream this afternoon (it's always a good idea to catch a nap before giving a big speech), or Obama lies through his teeth and says you can keep your plan if you like it, or Walter White proclaims himself The One Who Knocks. Internet, make this happen!

The Gettysburg address would be a good one, but for some reason I can't seem to find it on Youtube. With all those people gathered to hear the president's big speech, you'd think somebody would have brought a camcorder.

At first I assumed that this was a prank that got way out of hand. Maybe the guy was one of Johnny Knoxville's buddies, or one of Ashton Kutcher's Punk'd accomplices. Maybe the ghosts of Dick Clark and Ed McMahon are orchestrating bloopers and practical jokes from beyond the grave. The fake signer probably thought that surely somebody would call him out before the event actually got rolling. It wasn't until showtime that he finally decided between fake sign language and an homage to Garrett Morris's assistance for the hard of hearing.

Or maybe it was a wacky misunderstanding, like that time a cab driver got shanghaied into appearing on the BBC as a computer expert.

But no, turns out this isn't the fake signer's first time to the rodeo:

The man also did sign interpretation at an event last year that was attended by South African President Jacob Zuma, Druchen said. At that appearance, a deaf person in the audience videotaped the event and gave it to the federation for the deaf, which analyzed the video, prepared a report about it and a submitted a formal complaint.

Seriously, guys, checking references isn't a bad thing. Next time at least Google the name of your prospective hire.

At least this kind of thing is too ridiculous to be a widespread problem, or even a regional one.

Wait, what?

 Bogus sign language interpreters are a problem in South Africa, because people who know a few signs try to pass themselves off as interpreters, said Parkin, the principal of the school for the deaf. And those hiring them usually don't sign, so they have no idea that the people they are hiring cannot do the job, she said. "They advertise themselves as interpreters because they know 10 signs and they can make some quick money," said Parkin.

This reminds me of Marge Simpson's plan to give piano lessons despite not knowing how to play the piano: "I just have to stay one lesson ahead of the kid."

I have a nephew who lives in South Africa. I wonder if he can account for his whereabouts on Tuesday. Assuming he wasn't involved in this fiasco (which is probably the case, given that he's seven), I have a moneymaking suggestion for his future reference.

This situation has only gotten funnier / more disturbing as more information has come out:

The man accused of faking sign interpretation while standing alongside world leaders like U.S. President Barack Obama at Nelson Mandela's memorial service said Thursday he hallucinated that angels were entering the stadium, suffers from schizophrenia and has been violent in the past.

Thamsanqa Jantjie said in a 45-minute interview with The Associated Press that his hallucinations began while he was interpreting and that he tried not to panic because there were "armed policemen around me." He added that he was once hospitalized in a mental health facility for more than one year....

Asked how often he had become violent, he said "a lot" while declining to provide details. Jantjie said he was due on the day of the ceremony to get a regular six-month mental health checkup to determine whether the medication he takes was working, whether it needed to be changed or whether he needed to be kept at a mental health facility for treatment.... He said he has previously interpreted at many events without anyone complaining.

...

......

......... Anyway, that's a thing that happened.



As for Mandela himself, I have no opinion. I used to think he must have been a great hero, because Rolling Stone magazine said so. There were even songs about him, and surely bad people never have songs about them released on major labels. However, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 13:11, I've long since stopped blindly believing what the media tells me. The death of my former liberalism was the inevitable result.

My travels around the Net leave me unsure what to think of Mandela. Sorry, no links because I didn't keep track. However, you can probably type "Nelson Mandela" into a search engine as easily as I can, or even easier since you can just copy and paste it from where I just typed it. Looks to me like he was a communist sympathizer (at least), explicitly refused to renounce violence while in prison, and didn't even qualify for any sympathy from Amnesty International.

Standing up against Apartheid is certainly a huge point in his favour. He also seemed to keep things pretty peaceful once he was in power. If there was a lot of revenge-fueled racial violence in post-Apartheid South Africa, it's been kept pretty quiet (which is a distinct possibility).

However, Mandela was also a mover and shaker within the ANC, which has used some pretty questionable tactics over the years. I have a hard time endorsing the organization that invented necklacing. The enemy of my enemy can still be pretty reprehensible.

I was discussing this uncertainty with a friend who said, "You have to respect his spending 27 years in prison."

I replied, "Manson's been in longer than that. You may want to chose a different yardstick."




Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the patio stones in my back yard.

See Saw, Qtractor's a DAW

I bought a new saw. I hadn't intended to, but I was roaming the aisles at Canadian Tire and found a nice Mastercraft brand hand saw, regular price something around $15.00, on sale for $3.00. At that price, you may as well have one for every room of the house! I already had several hand saws, but they all represent the finest southeast Asian craftmanship that the dollar store carries.

It has teeth that are sharp-edged in both directions, so it cuts whether moving forward or back. The label says that it's an "aggressive" saw, but I find it evenly tempered.

You know that saying that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail? Turns out that when all you have is a saw, everything looks like it needs amputation.

The dog is avoiding me today.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son's science fair project. Note that the flowers are slightly different colours. That's transpiration, and transpiration is science.

Today We've Got Time For Tim Hortons

Friend o'this blog RebelAngel raised questions in a comment on my last entry that call for a substantial response, so here goes.

"Everyone from Canada talks about Tim Hortons. What are we talking about here? coffee shop? doughnuts? cafe? We will be in Canada in a few weeks and I wonder if I should pop in if we drive past one, just to complete the Canadian Experience. (Well, as complete as a Canadian Experience can be in late Spring rather than mid-Winter.)"

Tim Hortons is a coffee-and-doughnuts (or "donuts" if you're in a hurry) chain that's ubiquitous in Canada. It's pretty much impossible to be more than a five minute walk away from one unless you're at sea or hopelessly lost in the forest, and in the latter case, you'll probably still stumble across one shortly if you just keep moving in a straight line. Or just hold still for a minute, in which case a new Tim's (the usual affectionate diminutive - "Timmy's" is also acceptable) will probably get built around you.

Their omnipresence is similar to that of Starbucks in the U.S. of A. If you're driving more than six feet - sorry, 1.83 metres - in Canada, you will drive past one. In some urban areas (of which we do have a few up here), you can actually see more than one Tim's from a single vantage point. My impression is that Tim's is a bit downscale from Starbucks. I can't say for certain, because I've never actually patronized a Starbucks. I've seen a few from the periphery - they're located in some bookstores that somehow cling to life - but wasn't prepared to get any closer. I wasn't sure how the inhabitants would react to a visitor without a goatee, a MacBook, or the capacity to give two hoots what Oprah says about anything, so I thought it best not to upset their ecosystem.

Tim's is probably closer to Krispy Kreme, Dunkin' Donuts, or some other grammatically iffy fast-foodish establishment. Although they're trying to break into the pretentious market with cappuccino (you better believe I had to look up how to spell that), frappuccino, zappuccino, and schmappuccino - I may be misremembering some of those names - their main stock-in-trade is plain old coffee for a buck and change.

I'm told that their coffee is good. I couldn't say, having had my most recent cup a few decades ago when I was around eight years old. I also don't drink tea, and last tasted alcohol not long after my 19th birthday, over half my life ago. I stick to hot chocolate (which I get at Tim's once or twice a week), pop, milk, and juice. What I'm trying to say is that I don't drink like a grownup.

My Dad used to drink several cups of Tim's coffee each day. His office, like every office in Canada, was located in a building with a Tim's franchise on the first floor. He once told me that he got a headache if he didn't have a cup of their coffee by mid-morning; that would be my signal to never consider drinking another cup of the stuff. I think he's cut back somewhat but still indulges.

Some time ago I noticed that my local Tim's had several big signs up announcing that they now offered "steeped tea". This was apparently something that one was expected to care about, so I asked some tea-drinking colleagues what it might mean. Here's how that went:

"It means that your tea is already brewed and ready to drink when they give it to you."

Genuinely puzzled, I asked, "So what do you usually get when you order a regular, 'non-steeped' tea?"

"A cup of hot water and a teabag."

This seems to me like ordering a hamburger and receiving a live cow and a hammer. The entire point of going to a food service establishment is to avoid preparing my own food. If I have to contribute more to the process than shoveling the order into my gullet (and if the waitstaff would help with that, that would be just super), then I'll just stay home.

All of this is to say yes. If you're visiting Canada, a stop at Tim Hortons is pretty much mandatory. It's part of the quintessential Canadian experience. Visiting Canada without going to Tim Hortons would be like visiting New York without getting mugged. It would be like visiting France without surrendering. It would be like visiting Germany without rounding up any Jews.


If you think that was too far, you should hear the ones I decided actually were. Please feel free to add your own "It would be like visiting [X] without [Y]" jokes in the comments!


Oh, and RebelAngel - let me know if you're going to be anywhere way over on the right-hand side of the map. Probably not, unless you're very lost and/or hoping to find stray lobster. I'll warn you, they tend not to be found running wild, or even as roadkill.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of something else my wife prepared, photographed, and ate. It's important to get those steps in the right order. I say "prepared", rather than "cooked", because I'm not sure this was cooked. I'm also not sure whether it's solid, liquid, or some combination thereof. I frankly have no idea what it is. Anyway, she ate it.

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.

It's Funny Because I Didn't Know Her

Turns out that maybe Amy Winehouse should have gone to rehab after all.

I'm proud to be the 13,264,179th person in the world to do that line. It's a really cheap, easy joke, the kind I never feel really good about. It's the sort of obvious joke that I can imagine Jay Leno doing in his monologue, and it kind of depresses me when I write one of those. However, if Leno were to come out and do this particular joke this week, it would go a long way toward letting me respect his work again.

In that spirit, I'm hoping that I'm the first person to do a Winehouse joke other than the painfully obvious one. Let's give it a shot:


Right now, the Grim Reaper is berating one of his assistants. "You got the work orders mixed up! Winehouse wasn't until next week - you were supposed be at Charlie Sheen's place! This is almost as bad as that time you wrote down the wrong address and went to Phil Hartman's house instead of Andy Dick's!"


There. I feel better now.


Enough rambling. Here's another picture of my new dog back when she weighed less than sixty pounds, lo so many months ago.

Wednesday's Title: Avoid Me

I'm still living in Chaosland. Not a place I enjoy.

The title is a Newsboys reference, by the way. I frequently refer to Breathe as "my daily devotional song". It's one I need far too often.

Ever have one of those days where your contempt for humanity festers and grows to such an overwhelming degree that you can't stand to deal with other human beings for another moment, and you start planning ways to completely isolate yourself from society? I have days like that eight, sometimes nine times a week.


Oh, all right, maybe it's not that bad most of the time. But sometimes it is. I had one of those days on Wednesday, the culmination of the last couple of weeks. I've spent too much of my time lately in limbo, waiting for other people to do something or at least tell me something. As an Olympic-level curmudgeon with an advanced degree in misanthropy, I don't relish dealing with other people at the best of times. I go into overload very quickly when I'm stuck depending completely on those other people - which I strenuously try to avoid - and they leave me dangling in the wind, which happens almost every time.

I don't often agree with the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, but "Hell is other people"... yeah, I'm all over that one.

Most of the problems have been professional. Stuff at work, and stuff with the prospective new job I recently mentioned. Those wheels are still turning, although they were mired in some pretty deep mud for a while this week. Others are personal. Remember that contractor who was coming to look at my house? I was very pleasantly surprised when he actually showed up.

Once.

That single visit ended with a promise to come back in a few days with a ladder to look more closely at the roof. It's been over a month. He hasn't been back, and he doesn't return my calls. I've left him voicemails, and left messages with a nice lady who answers his phone. Good thing I didn't give him any money yet, although I'd happily hand over a stack of twenties and fifties if he'd show up and do his job.

I've given up on him. I sent out a team of cryptozoologists to see if they could confirm another sighting, and although they tell me there may be a plesiosaurus in the drainage ditch out back, they couldn't find a trace of this guy.

So, I started calling other contractors. Each number was answered by a very pleasant and enthusiastic lady who took down my information and promised that somebody who knows something would call me back ASAP. Nobody has called back.

I'm planning a full entry one of these days on the history of trying to get people to come fix my house in exchange for money. I've been taking notes over the years. This is not that entry, and I'll stop now before it turns into it.

Anyway, yesterday and today have been much better. It's even been relatively safe for people to speak to me. However, I have to get on a plane this weekend. Let's see what dealing with the airlines does for my view of humanity.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the second shelf down, left side, on Bookshelf # 1. Another slushpile. This one is a complete mixed bag of books both read and unread, among other debris. Highlights include C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas Hobbes, Sigmund Freud, doctrinal volumes from religions other than my own (The Book of Mormon, The Catechism of the Catholic Church), and a Late Night with David Letterman mug full of writing implements. The colourful cellophane-wrapped package in the upper right is a bundle of apologetics tracts from Catholic Answers. I may blog my way through them one of these days if I feel like alienating a whole lot of people. Suffice it for now to say that I've read their arguments and given them careful (and prayerful) consideration, and the reasons why I've chosen Protestantism remain.

Marital Mathematics

It's very close to my wedding anniversary. My wife’s, too. What are the odds of that? This anniversary is a round number, one of the Big Ones. My wife likes to call it “Ten down, two to go!”

The actual anniversary went by very recently. Or it might be coming up very soon. I forget. It might even be today, which would plausibly explain all the people in my house and possibly the balloons. However, I still haven’t gotten a satisfactory explanation for the streamers. I’m pretty sure they’re unrelated, and reject all claims to the contrary.

This is the kind of occasion when one reviews and takes stock of their life. In my case, it makes me wonder about a specific statistic. This is a delicate matter, but it should be clear from this blog that any aspect of my life, no matter how intimate, is fair game for discussion. Well, except for anything that’s actually personal.

Anyway, I got to wondering about, shall we say, “relations” statistics for my wife and I over the course of our marital career (sorry for the vulgarity, Mom!). If we appeared on baseball cards, this is the kind of thing I’d like to see on the back. So, I ran some numbers to estimate how many times we’ve (THIS PORTION OF THIS BLOG HAS BEEN REDACTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF MORAL STANDARDS ON GROUNDS OF GENERAL ICKINESS) over the last decade.

Ten years is 520 weeks, or about 3,640 nights. So, divide that out, carry the eight…

Four times. Yep, that sounds about right.

No, wait, three. I forgot that 2000 wasn’t a leap year.

In other news, reliable reports indicate that Michael Jackson remains dead. However, several witnesses claim to have seen Generalissimo Francisco Franco at the 7-11 in Des Moines, Iowa on Monday. There was a special on Slush Puppies.

We have received no new information on the whereabouts or condition of Hostage Bunny. Our prayers tonight are with Mrs. Bunny, their 74 children, and their innumerable grandchildren.

Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a finished frog pinata. Sadly, no photos were taken of the smashed-to-bits frog pinata that came to be soon thereafter. There was green paper mache and months-old candy (mostly hard candy wrapped in cellophane, so no worse for wear) everywhere.

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.

Legend Of The Five Rings

Apparently the Olympics are coming to my nation.

Whee.

I think the Olympics, no matter where they're held, are little more than an embarrassing orgy of nationalism (hey, remember way back when I posted this?). There's no one whose ability to play a game impresses or even interests me. I think that we as a society should be ashamed to spend a dime on Olympic spectacle while there are still real problems to be solved and better uses for the ridiculous amounts of money that get poured into watching people lift things, jump over stuff, and whatever else they do at the Olympics.

I admit to one exception to my lack of interest: the luge is fun to watch, because those people - who are ballast, not athletes - are clearly out of their minds. Rational persons do not wish to go tobogganing at those speeds.

All that stuff a couple of paragraphs back having been said, I wouldn't bother actively opposing the Olympics if they were entirely privately funded. Get corporate sponsors, charge a fortune for admission and broadcast rights, merchandise the daylights out of it, rake in the cash, and keep your hands out of the taxpayers' pockets, and I have no objections. And the Olympics do all those things, except that last one. I'm pretty sure a chunk of my tax money will be paying for some people to jump, swim, and hop, and for other people to watch.

If the Olympics were privately funded, then they would not concern me overmuch. I'd still think they were silly and a waste of money, but I have no right to forbid other people to be silly or waste their money. I'm free to think their decisions are irresponsible, and say so, but my freedom of expression in no way overrules their freedom to be foolish.


Quick sidebar: it often occurs to me that I should be downright ashamed to have a penny in the bank (and I have a couple, albeit not many) if there is one person anywhere who is genuinely suffering solely due to poverty. There was a famous Christian of some years back who expressed this same idea, saying something like, "If I die with a penny to my name then I will have lived as a thief." I can't remember the exact quote, or who said it. Anybody out there know?

I rationalize my material comfort by choosing to suspect that few, if any, people in developed nations are really suffering due to poverty - they may have to drive an old car, or rent instead of buy, or live with a basic cable package instead of having HBO, but that's not suffering. And most of the suffering in the developing world cannot be resolved by simply throwing more money at it. Freighters full of donated food show up at ports in starving nations, and thugs with guns confiscate it all for the treasuries of their warlords. The problems are political, not financial.

This justification allows me to live with having cable television, a high-speed Internet connection, and a whole bunch of junk I don't need.

Don't burst my bubble. I'm not sure what's inside.

End sidebar.


So, totally privatize the Olympics and leave me, and every other taxpayer everywhere, out of it. I'll still ignore and / or mock them, but I won't consider them evil because they're funded by taxation / extortion.

This is all preamble to something I read today about the Vancouver Olympics security costs (which will be sucked out of my pockets as a Canadian taxpayer. Did I mention the problem with that yet? Oh. Never mind, then.). The funny part is in bold:

The federal government will pay $647.5 million, as well as cover any unexpected costs. British Columbia's share is equivalent to $252.5 million, but only a fraction of that will actually be spent on security.

Instead, the two sides struck a deal that sees Ottawa pick up a greater portion of the security tab but give B.C. less for new buildings and roads over the next three years.

Excellent negotiating, B.C.! Not long from now when the law of entropy rears its ugly head and your roads are in dire need of repairs, you can take solace in the fact that just a few short years earlier you got to watch people ride bobsleds. Good call!

I don't understand why any city (or nation) would want to host the Olympics. I've been paying a little attention to Vancouver's preparations, and it seems like a huge inconvenience for the administrators and a borderline nightmare for the city's residents. If I lived in Vancouver, I think I'd plan to go visit distant relatives during the games.

The problem is that the Olympics are essentially a giant party for athletes and their groupies. Imagine the loudest, most raucous parties you ever saw going on at the jock dorms on a university campus (or ever saw in a TV show or movie). Yeah, they look like fun, but would you want to host a party like that at your house? The Olympics mean all the top jocks in the world hanging out at your place. And they each brought two bimbos and a keg.

My condolences, residents of Vancouver. Remember to turf the city councillors who invited the football team to crash at your place when the next municipal elections roll around.

Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the train station at Disney World, as seen from the street below. Regular viewers of my photos will notice that a way to adjust my camera's shutter speed woud be helpful.

A True Story From One Of My Jobs

One of my jobs involved handling deceased clients. That is, when our organization found out that someone with whom we had dealings had passed away, I was the guy that took care of getting all the loose ends tied up and the client's file closed. I saw a lot of death certificates, and got even more informal notes or phone calls stating that somebody was dead, which meant I had to investigate further.

In a revelation that will surprise no one who either knows me or has read this blog's archives, I frequently encountered things in these duties that I found funny. As I've said before, you can either laugh at life or cry about it, and I made my choice a long time ago.

Today's story came about when I received notification that one of our clients who we hadn't heard from in a while had passed away. Specifically, he was killed by an animal. More specifically, the notification I received said, and I quote because I must, that "he was stampled by a bull."

That's right. "Stampled."

I take this to mean "half stomped, half trampled." I hope that the bull was merciful in deciding which half to stomp and which half to trample, but deep down inside I know he probably wasn't.

Most people who heard about this assumed that the unfortunate fellow was some sort of farmer or rancher. Oddly enough, he was an accountant. The bull came in for help with an audit, and lost his temper when he heard that some of his receipts weren't deductible.

The person who notified us seemed a bit too certain about the cause of death. Was anyone around when it happened? If I were a bull planning to "stample" somebody, I'd try to make sure there were no witnesses. Then when the investigators showed up, if they so much as glanced at me, I'd accuse them of unfair profiling. "Oh, sure. Every time somebody turns up stomped into a puddle in my neighbourhood, and I happen to have a little blood on my hooves, it's the same old story: blame the bull." This is the classic defense strategy known as "playing the bull card."

For a while after we got that notice, whenever one of my colleagues announced that they were going out and added the standard "I'll be back (whenever)", I replied, "Unless, of course, you get stampled by a bull. There's a lot of that going around. It's a full-fledged bull-stampling epidemic. Or half-fledged, at the very least."

The person was usually long gone before I finished. Sometimes they were already back.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son in Minnie Mouse's fireplace.

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).

Shrek IV: Installing The Ogre

I just resolved another minor technology crisis. As I've done before, I decided to write it up in case anyone else has the same problem (or in case it happens to me again and I forget how I fixed it).

My son got Shrek's Carnival Craze Party Games for Christmas from his uncle. It's a DVD-Rom PC port of a console game. I haven't had enough interest in the game to play it much myself, so there will be no review forthcoming from me, although my son seems to quite enjoy it.

My role in the process was getting the game installed and running on one of our computers (Simeon). As experienced PC users know, getting new software working isn't always a matter of sticking the disc in and running the installer. This game was no exception to Murphy's Law.

The installer said that I needed DirectX 9.0c, and offered to install it for me. I already had DirectX 9.0c installed, and verified that with DXDiag, so I declined. The game seemed to install, but failed to run. I kept getting an error that a file named "d3dx9_37.dll" was missing.

Strike one for Activision, the game's publisher. My system met the requirements stated on the package, but the game didn't run out of the box.

I uninstalled, rebooted the PC, and reinstalled. This time I let the installer go ahead and install its DirectX version. That filename seemed pretty likely to be a DirectX component, and my system already contained plenty of files with similar names (just the number at the end was different), but not that one. When it finished, the exact same thing happened: "d3dx9_37.dll" was still missing.

Strike two for Activision. Their own installer didn't do the job.

I turned to Google for advice at this point. I found lots of sites offering free downloads of assorted malware packages named after that DLL file (security tip for the day: don't download system files from random websites, kids), but most discussions of the matter agreed that downloading the latest DirectX update straight from Microsoft is the way to go.

For various reasons, some of which may have to do with my Windows XP key and the word "activation", I don't tend to frequent Microsoft's website. Even assuming that I'm legit on all my software licencing, I don't like the steady intrusion into what I do with my PC that Microsoft and their pals so enjoy. Sony's rootkit debacle marked the end of my allowing any Sony product, hardware or software, into my home. Microsoft is one "phone home" applet from the same treatment. When - not if - I switch completely to Ubuntu for everyday use, the ultimate reason will be Microsoft's mistaken assumption that they, not I, own my computers.

The next thing I tried was browsing into the DirectX folder on the DVD itself and running the Setup.exe therein. Lo and behold, a different DirectX installer launched. I ran the Shrek game installer again, and this time everything worked fine. I'm tempted to call this strike three, since requesting DirectX installation from the main menu should have installed the same thing as the Setup in the subfolder, but I'm willing to let this one slide. Activision made it through - just barely.

This demonstrates two things for me. First, the primary advantage of consoles over PCs: in general, if you buy a game for your console, it just works. Console manufacturers are trying their hardest to eradicate this advantage with the recent spate of "basic" and "deluxe" versions of their machines, but they still hold an advantage over PCs.

Second, and closely related: Joe and Jane Average simply will not be able to get this game (or many others) working. When I think down the list of my friends, relatives, and acquaintances, very few of them would have been able to troubleshoot this problem and get the game working. In fact, pretty much the only ones who could have are those who have worked on computers for a living at some point. All the rest would have given up on it and either tried to return the game to the store as defective, or (more likely) put it on a shelf, never to be looked at again.

Wait, I forgot one other option: almost all of them would have wound up calling to ask me to come fix it.


This is why (a) I don't answer my phone, and (b) I encourage non-techies to buy consoles if they want to play games.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a waffle shaped like Mickey Mouse. I assume the restaurant's management pay proper tribute to Disney's legal department.

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.

This Is Not True At - Well, Maybe A Little.

Here's something that I like to do each year as the holidays approach. I've come to think of it as a yuletide tradition.

Any time you manage to get your hands on a child's letter to Santa (volunteering to empty the big bin at the mall is a good idea), give it back to them with "Return to Sender - Addressee Nonexistent" stamped on the envelope.

You'll cherish the memories for years to come!


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

Another Reason Why People Don't Talk To Me

Hey, kids! It's time for Another Reason Why People Don't Talk To Me!


"Well, thanks for your input, Dick."

"I prefer Richard."

"I didn't know your name was Richard."


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the structure from which we did some of our shooting.

Freedom Of Expulsion

My favourite graffiti to write in washroom stalls: "It smelled like this when I got here."

Speaking of public washrooms, George Michael was just arrested in another one. You'd think he would have learned by now to hold it until he gets home.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of some of the guys at our recent church-sponsored afternoon of trap shooting. Buckle up, kids, we're starting another photo series!

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.

This Is Not True At All

I don't get the big deal about parking in handicapped spaces. The way I see it, if you're in a wheelchair, the fact that I'm in your parking space is the least of your problems.


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

Another Reason Why People Don't Talk To Me

Hey, Kids! It's time for Another Reason Why People Don't Talk To Me!


Random Co-worker: "Remember, there's no 'I' in 'team'!!!"

(Yes, they said it with three exclamation marks.)

Me: "No, but there are four in 'platitude-spouting idiot'."


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of... something... in my kitchen. Whatever it is, I'm guessing it's got Cthulhu on speed-dial.