Another Game I'll Probably Never Play

I picked up Trivial Pursuit, the Saturday Night Live DVD Edition, at a local dollar store (although it cost three dollars, constituting blatant false advertising). My wife, much to her credit, agreed to try it with me. That had no chance of being a fair match, since I watched SNL faithfully for over twenty years, whereas she only saw an occasional few minutes and was never a big fan.

The game seems fine for what it is, although it's far more difficult than I had expected. I guess if you want to write thousands of SNL questions, you have to start referencing some of the more obscure material. My wife and I played for about an hour, and Denny Dillon's name came up twice. That qualifies as getting obscure.

I'd definitely recommend the game to even casual SNL fans, if only for the player tokens, which are miniatures of popular characters. I can't even stomach most of the chosen characters (Mary Catherine Gallagher, Mango, Will Ferrell's cheerleader, etc.), but the inclusion of a land shark and Belushi's samurai make it worthwhile.

I had hoped to see the game going for decent prices on eBay, because that dollar store still has a big shelf full of them and I could have bought some for resale, but no such luck. Lots of people can't find bidders at ten dollars, and even some people who are willing to start at a buck aren't getting buyers. So much for that college fund idea.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a big ugly big. This picture was taken right after he and Godzilla flipped a coin for the right to crush Tokyo.

Where In The World Is Zirbert Sandiego

By the time you read this, I'll already be gone.

On vacation, that is!


Now I see why the Simpsons writers keep using that joke over and over. It's more fun when you're the one doing it.

Anyway, I'm on vacation in a undisclosed location. I'll talk about it when I get back. This post, and some other recent ones, and maybe some yet to come, you'll just have to wait and see, are being written in advance and posted using the Blogger post scheduling function. Hopefully it's working correctly.

I may be (and may have already been...) checking in here while away, but I didn't want to spend my vacation time hunched over a computer writing posts. See you soon with new stuff. And maybe even before that with more pre-written stuff...


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of something they did recently to an apartment building in my neighbourhood. I thought maybe they were putting in a moat, but to my disappointment they filled the trench back in a couple of days later. I had hoped for a drawbridge, and maybe some crocodiles.

Lead Me Not Into Temptation

My son has an ear infection. Definitely not the first, and probably not the last. Saturday night I wound up visiting the emergency room at 11:00.

The antibiotic they gave him didn't soothe the pain he was in for long, so I wound up driving around at 4:00 Am looking for pediatric painkillers. I finally found an all-night gas station that had some children's Tylenol in a display behind the counter. After asking about it, I finally had to get the two clerks to hand it to me to read the box. Neither of them could confirm whether the words "pain relief" appeared on the packaging. Not a word of lie, I honestly think that both of them were illiterate.

The best part of this story, though, came when I went to the pharmacy the next day to get his prescription for Amoxycillin (a frequent guest in our home) filled. Here's the actual conversation I overheard between the two pharmacists. Or pharmacy technicians, or whatever - all I know is they took the little piece of paper away then brought me a bottle of medicine:

"This Amoxycillin smells so good. I could just drink the whole bottle."

"That would probably kill you. You're really allergic, right?"

"Yeah, but it smells so good."

"You probably shouldn't even be handling that."


For some reason, this pleased me for the rest of the day.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of something else my wife made out of fluffy string by using pointy sticks. She informed me after the last one of these I posted that the sticks are, in fact, hooked. Such subtle distinctions are lost on me.

Reading Log: Sweet Thursday At The Movies

Sweet Thursday is the fourth of John Steinbeck's books that I've read, after Of Mice And Men, Cannery Row, and The Grapes Of Wrath (in that order). I haven't done a writeup yet on Grapes, but I own that one and Sweet Thursday is already overdue from the library, so it moves to the front of the line.

I've also watched the movie adaptation of Cannery Row, which is apparently being released on DVD soon. I'll be discussing it along with this book. You may be wondering why I'm lumping the movie Cannery Row in with the book Sweet Thursday; it's because, despite its title, the movie is actually an adaptation of the later book.

Fair warning: there will be spoilers from here on in. If you don't want to know what happened in a half-century-old book or its quarter-century-old movie adaptation, then get thee to a nunnery. Or at least quit reading this entry.

Sweet Thursday is a sequel to Cannery Row, set in the same place about a decade later. Some characters have gone, new ones have entered, and some have been through life-changing experiences. The gap between the books included World War II, and at least two characters from the first book have stories of their wartime military service told.

Sweet Thursday is much more linear and cohesive than Cannery Row. The first book was largely a series of related but independent scenes, many of which had little connection to each other and could have been told in a different order without harming the overall work. Sweet Thursday has a unifying plot.

The plot is a fairly clichéd and predictable love story, but it's well told. It's your standard boy-meets-girl. As per the formula, they take an instant dislike to one another, but you know all along that they'll wind up together in the end. The familiar plot can be excused, because it's pretty well established that there are really only so many plots in all of literature (and any other media). Complaining that a novel has a familiar plot would be like complaining that you don't like a new song because another songwriter already used D minor.

Sweet Thursday succeeds because the characters are as likable as the ones in Cannery Row (no surprise, since many of them are holdovers), the side stories are entertaining, and the whole book is quite funny. Cannery Row had a sense of resignation about it. This book, although it shares the same setting, has a sense of celebration.

From the introduction, in which some of the derelicts from Cannery Row break the fourth wall to discuss their misgivings about that book, it's clear that Steinbeck intends Sweet Thursday as a comedy. That introduction also made repeated use of the word "hooptedoodle", so you can blame Steinbeck for the titles of some of my recent posts. The comedy works, and there are two scenes, both near the end, that made me laugh out loud: when it becomes clear how Hazel intends to help Doc get Suzy's attention, and when we find out that Suzy can't drive (after she's already agreed to drive Doc's car on a long trip).

Sweet Thursday is light entertainment compared to the deeper themes of Steinbeck's other novels that I've read, but it works very well on that level. In those other books, Steinbeck wanted to make the reader think about the human condition. In this one, he wanted to lighten up and make the reader smile. It's a credit to his ability that he succeeds at both goals.

As for the movie, although it's called Cannery Row, as far as I could see it's based entirely on Sweet Thursday. The opening credits say that it was based on both books, but I can't remember a single line or scene that was specific to the first book. I can only assume that the studio considered Cannery Row to be the more marketable title. Perhaps they thought that a few literate moviegoers (they still existed back then) might pass on a movie called Sweet Thursday because, recognizing the title, they would think they had missed the first movie. Shades of "But I haven't even read Henry The Seventh yet!"

I would not recommend the movie, and I certainly wouldn't want anyone to judge the book (or any of Steinbeck's other work) based on this mediocre adaptation.

For starters, I didn't buy Nick Nolte as the intellectual Doc. Although a capable actor, he simply doesn't have the air of a genius. It's worth noting that in a monologue where Doc states his actual IQ score, the movie lowers it considerably from the book. The IMDB Trivia page for this movie speculates that the producers did this deliberately to avoid stretching the audience's credibility past the breaking point.

Nolte is too rugged and rough around the edges for Doc. He would have been perfect for Mack, though - in fact, when I first heard that Nolte was in the movie, I assumed that would be his role. Jeff Goldblum would have made a good Doc, I think. I also never pictured Doc as dressing like Indiana Jones.

It was cool to see Mrs. Roper as the brothel proprietor, though.

The movie moved both too quickly and too slowly. Perhaps it was a result of the compression necessary to turn a novel into a film (or in this case two novels, although as noted they dealt with that by ignoring the first one), but some of the character development seemed much too fast. In the book, I believed Suzy's acceptance of her new lot in life at the outset of the story. The movie had her making the transition from waiting tables to prostitution just a bit too quickly and smoothly for my way of thinking. Perhaps I travel in the wrong (or right) social circles, but that doesn't seem like a casual career switch to me.

However, the movie bogs down in other scenes. There are two in particular, neither of which have any basis in the book: an interminable and torturous dancing sequence, and a baseball game that seems to take longer than the actual pennant race.

The baseball game brings up another sore point for me with the movie: there was no need to add the silliness about having been a baseball player to Doc's backstory. The books had no hint of that, and it doesn't fit the character that Steinbeck created.

Worse, the filmmakers then used that nonsense to tie Doc's backstory to the backstory of the Seer in the most trite fashion imaginable. In the book, the Seer doesn't get or need an explanation; he just is. He exists and relates to the other characters entirely on his own terms. The movie takes away his mystery, destroying everything interesting about him in the process.

The other changes were a mixed bag. I can almost buy Mack being a boogie-woogie piano player, but I can't understand why the screenwriters decided to cut my favourite line of dialogue from the book, from very near the end:

She was headed for the door. She whirled and faced him. Her brows were straight and her mouth taut. Then she took a slow breath and her lips became full and turned up at the corners and her eyes shone with incredible excitement.

"Brother," said Suzy, "you got yourself a girl!"

Instead, the filmmakers chose to frame this scene just like the ending of almost every other romance movie ever made. Violin swells, a long wordless kiss, blah yadda blah, and roll credits. This movie would have been much better if the director had been willing to take some risks instead of using the same cookie-cutter as every other hack in Hollywood.

The bottom line is that I'd definitely recommend the book (as long as you read Cannery Row first, of course), but the movie is only for fans of mediocrity.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the view from my bedroom window. How bad can life be?

Best Report Card Comment Ever

Courtesy of my son's gym teacher:

"He has difficulty moving his body through space safely and with control."

This demonstrates reason # 352 why I couldn't be a gym teacher. I would have cut to the chase and used the phrase "careens like a drunken pinball."


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son about to careen down a slide like a drunken pinball.

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.

Remembrance Day

I'm no poet. I have no great eloquent way to express my gratitude toward those who have put on uniforms and taken up arms to protect others. All I can say is that I kind of wish that I knew some surviving veterans well enough to go over and give them a hug without getting a punch or at least a bewildered look in return.

My attitude toward the military has shifted dramatically over the years more than once. My worldview has gone though a few major upheavals.

In childhood, during those prepubescent years when we first begin to form (what we think are) our own opinions on important matters, I was a pacifist. I remember writing a speech in the fifth or sixth grade on the terribly original subject of War. I researched and reported on the human and economic costs of war, coming to the terribly original conclusion that war is bad. It costs a lot of money, and people die.

The idea that there are worse things than war, that nobility and sacrifice are virtuous, that right must sometimes take up arms against wrong, never occurred to me.

My teacher ate it up. She led the class in giving me a round of applause, and offered me a chance to present this speech publicly in some silly forum or another. There I would stand a chance to win a ribbon or perhaps even a certificate with my name embossed on it.

I declined the invitation, taking the excuse that I would be too nervous. At the time I probably believed that, not yet understanding that my personal shyness does not translate to stage fright. I realized before much longer that I'm perfectly comfortable getting up to speak in front of groups of any size. I only panic once I set the microphone down, walk offstage, and need to try to make conversation with a single human being. Audiences are easy to deal with - actual people aren't.

My pacifism was eventually replaced with a strong militaristic streak. A couple of years later I was reading magazines like Gung Ho and Soldier of Fortune, planning to apply for ROTC with hopes of getting into the airborne and jumping out of planes, and thoroughly romanticizing all aspects of military life.

This too had faded before it actually came time to start preparing for adult life. By the time early adult life rolled around, I was back on the pacifist side of the fence, but this time because I had become a Christian and thought that Jesus demanded pacifism of his followers. I no longer think that, having since studied the Scriptures and theology in some depth. I still don't think that Christians are ever called to be aggressors, but I don't think there's any moral problem with taking up arms in defense of yourself or others.

I now think that devoting yourself to the defense and protection of others is laudable, and I deeply appreciate those who do it. I include police officers in this as well as members of the military, and think that soldiers who have never seen combat are as much to be admired as those who have. By enlisting, they are offering themselves up and saying that they are willing to die if called upon to do so.

To all those who have volunteered to protect and defend in uniform, thank you.

As for that stupid kid and untrained Christian that I used to be, I apologize for them. Not only did they not know what they were talking about, but they were each really, really sure that they did. I'm glad they had the opportunity to survive and learn, in no small part thanks to you whose service we remember today.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son pointing at a squirrel, who seems to be trying to hide from either him or the camera.

The Case Of The Missing Jump Drive

I like that title because it sounds like a Hardy Boys book. Although in my youth I always preferred the Bobbsey Twins.

Yes, I'm secure enough to admit that.

I had a puzzling computer problem yesterday. Here's what happened and how I eventually fixed it. This will be deathly dull to non-techies, and only slightly better for those who understand what I'm talking about. Those in the latter group will see the end of this story coming long before I get there.

As background, I have a home LAN with two PCs, Rueben (misspelled, I know, but I'm too lazy to do the work that renaming it would require) and Simeon. Simeon, the newer PC, had mappings to the four logical drives on its big brother Rueben, showing up in Windows Explorer as G, H, I and J.

I had just put another hard drive, a 40 GB IDE drive that had become surplus from another machine, into Simeon. Everything seemed fine, until I plugged in my MP3 player last night to reload it and it wouldn't show up in Windows Explorer (WE from here on, because I'm already sick of typing it out). I got the "Donk" noise of Windows detecting it, and the USB connection icon in the system tray, but nothing in WE.

I tried a jump drive - same thing. "Donk", system tray icon, and nothing in WE. I tried the MP3 player with a different connector cable, and I tried different USB ports. Same thing. I tried plugging my other USB devices (printer, mouse, Plextor ConvertX video capture box) into different USB ports, and they all worked fine. I tried plugging the jump drive into Rueben, and it worked there. The MP3 player has never worked in Rueben, who's simply too old and cranky to deal with these newfangled digital audio players.

So, by process of elimination (the PC troubleshooter's credo), I determined that the jump drive and USB ports were not the problem. As noted, I couldn't rule out that the MP3 player and/or both of the connector cables I tried had gone bad, although that wouldn't explain why the jump drive worked in Rueben but not in Simeon.

After working on this throughout all the commercial breaks in The Simpsons, King Of The Hill, and Family Guy, I had a breakthrough during American Dad. Even before installing the new hard drive, Simeon already had logical drives named C and D (only 1 physical hard drive, but I practice safe partitioning in case I need to reinstall my operating system). E was the DVD-RW drive, and as noted I had mapped network drives in slots G to J.

When I installed the new hard drive, it was assigned the letter F. That means that every letter from A to J was in use (with B being reserved for a 5 1/4" floppy drive, which even I don't use anymore). When I tried to plug in a USB drive, for some reason it was trying to use G, instead of going to the next available letter. Since G was already in use, WE couldn't figure out how to show me the USB drive.

I tested this theory by disconnecting the mapped G drive. Lo and behold, the USB drives would then happily grab that letter and show up. I wound up simply reassigning the mapped drives to letters further down the alphabet, and my LAN lived happily ever after.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son doing some supersonic headbanging. Stryper's Reborn album rocks mightily.

Mygazines Is Dead

A little while back, I wrote about a website called Mygazines, where you could read scanned magazines online, quite without the permission of their publishers. I predicted the site had a very short life expectancy.

I tried to visit them today, and here's what it says on what used to be their login page:

Due to monetary reasons and the state of the global economy, we unfortunately must close mygazines.com.

I assume that when they say "state of the global economy", what they really mean is, "there wasn't enough money in the world to pay off the lawsuits headed our way."

Too bad. The site wasn't perfect, but I liked it. Back to the library's periodicals section and torrented PDFs, I guess.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son noticing a squirrel.

Election Day In The U.S. Of A.

Once again, random political thoughts groping wildly for an editor. Buckle up and enjoy the ride. Keep your hands and feet inside the blog at all times.


Let's get this out of the way now: there will be no Sarah Palin Pictures in this post. Not even any Sara Palin Bikini Pictures, and certainly no Sara Paylen Nude Pics (as the search queries get tawdrier, the spelling gets sloppier).


The Electoral College, like most policies intended to right some inequality, actually makes matters worse (or at least absolutely no better), just in the opposite direction.

I get what the original idea was. Since the population if the United States is disproportionately concentrated in a few areas (New York, California, the gas station men's room closest to Clay Aiken's house), the fear was that national political candidates would only bother campaigning in those places. If you can get a majority of the nation's votes by visiting five states, why go anywhere else?

So, the Electoral College system said that each state would get so many votes. (Quick civics lesson: there are 538 people who actually get to vote on the Presidency. The rest of you Americans are kidding yourselves by casting a ballot.) Smaller, less densely populated states received more Electoral votes, proportionate to their population, than larger centres. This was to make sure that, for example, a North Dakotan's vote wasn't "worth less" than a Manhattanite's.

The problem is, there's no reason why the Manhattanite's vote should be worth any less, but it is under this system. To figure out what your vote is really worth, divide the number of electoral votes your state has by the number of eligible voters in that state. Then do the same for a bunch of other states. If those quotients don't come out exactly equal - and they won't - then the system is fundamentally unfair. All people are not equal under the law if my vote counts for one ten-thousandth of an electoral vote but yours only counts for one fifteen-thousandth.

The Electoral College has to go. It's just another case of institutionalized discrimination. People in Montana aren't worth less than people in Hollywood, but they aren't worth any more either. One voter, one vote, and the majority wins. If that means that Hillary won't visit Alaska in 2012, so be it. If Alaskans are that upset about it, they can always move to Chicago.


Some of Obama's unthinking support (which may be redundant) is really scary. Check out the lady in the video at this link, over on Cassy Fiano's site. Here's a transcript of what she said (with some editing to give her the benefit of the doubt on spelling): “I never thought this day would happen. . . . I won’t have to work on putting gas in my car. I won’t have to work at paying my mortgage. You know. If I help him (Obama), he’s gonna help me.”

WHAT. ON. EARTH. do these people think Obama is going to do?!? Do they think he has a magic Money Wand that means nobody will have to pay for anything ever again?

That video was one of the most frightening things I've seen this year. If I were American and inclined, even slightly, to vote for Obama, this lunacy would have driven the thought from my mind.


One of my many political pet peeves is this whole misbegotten notion that the President / Prime Minister / Grand Poobah is somehow personally responsible for the economy of their nation. They aren't. They are government representatives, and the government's involvement with the economy should extend no further than providing a framework and infrastructure. Beyond that, the government should stay out of the way and let the people take care of their own business, which is what the economy boils down to.

That said, "the market" is not entirely rational. People do indeed invest differently based on the political climate, because they (wisely) don't trust politicians to stay out of their pockets. I'm convinced of the theory that the American market is down largely because large-scale institutional investors (the backbone of the stock market) have already considered what Obama will try to do (although he shouldn't - see my last paragraph) to the American economy. He may introduce a high federal minimum wage; forbid secret ballot union votes, meaning corrupt thugs always get their way through intimidation; exorbitant new energy taxes; exorbitant payroll taxes to fund socialized health care; etc. Check out this page for a fantastic analysis.

I'm planning a trip to the States in the not-terribly-distant future. I'll want some U.S. currency for pocket money while I'm there. I'm trying to time when I should buy it to get the best exchange rate.

If Obama wins, I expect the U.S. dollar to jump in value in the immediate aftermath of the election. Foreign nations are far too optimistic about his performance prospects, and so the U.S. dollar will momentarily look great to most of the world. Momentarily. Once Obama gets in and starts nibbling at American productivity and efficiency like a termite in a log cabin, the greenback will suffer and be a bargain purchase. The only question is whether that process will begin even before my trip.

If McCain wins, the opposite will happen. Foreign markets will be too busy calling Americans stupid (in a variety of languages, most of which sound suspiciously like Ewok) to bid up the value of their dollar. It'll drop in the sort term. However, as the world realizes that McCain is neither Bush nor a communist, it'll rebound.

It's all in the timing. If McCain wins, I'll buy my U.S. cash this week. If not, I'll wait until the last day before I cross the border.


That's all for tonight. I've still got some more Sarah Palin bits to write up, but they'll work as well after the election as before. Maybe even better, depending how things go.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my son crowding my sister-in-law's dog.

Pre-Election Hooptedoodle

This is the U.S. of A, edition, of course. The article that I posted on the night of Canada's recent election saw a traffic spike of over ten times this blog's usual daily readership, beating my old one-day traffic record by almost five times. I don't expect a repeat of that performance. There's just a wee bit more competition in the field of snarky political analysis on the American side of the Parallel. In Canada, it's me or the CBC, so I get hits.

Once again, disjointed thoughts ahoy. We'll be listing to starboard 'till morning, following no set course. Where'er the wind and currents lead, there shall we go.

Yarr.


About 24 hours from now it'll all be over and we'll know who the next President will be. I'm interested, but not worried. I have faith that America will survive no matter which candidate wins. Neither one will be a disaster in and of themselves. There are too many checks and balances in place, and the office of the President is not a dictatorship. Just because the President wants something doesn't mean it automagically happens.

Of course, having wacky-at-best Pelosi and friends littering a perfectly nice Congress doesn't help keep things under control. If elected, Obama may be able to get some schemes through that wouldn't have survived a less hysterical House and Senate. For instance, he's admitted that electricity prices are going to skyrocket under his administration, and that he'll tax any attempts to build new coal-based power plants into oblivion. Unlike Bush's inexplicable dreams of handing U.S. port security over to Dubai, Obama may be able to achieve his fantasies.

Sidebar: I've decided that for this entry, I'm going to skip linking to sources for most (but not all) of this stuff. I certainly could, and will look them up if any are requested in comments, but for the sake of expediency I'm going to mostly let the reader do their own Googlin'.

Overall, instead of utter devastation, I picture an Obama administration as more a live-action adaptation of Goofy Minds The House. Yes, a big noisy mess may get made, but eventually the adults will return to put things right.

I just hope that the mess doesn't include nuclear ash because of Iran getting to finish building their "peaceful purposes only, honest, not for bombing infidels at all, and like the Democrats we have no idea what Taqiyya means" reactors.


Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, is comprised of far more charisma than substance. I hope Obama doesn't juggle and deflect as well as Clinton did, so he only gets the single term that Clinton should have. Clinton won a second term by managing to distract the masses with bread and circuses. Meanwhile, as people amused themselves to death, the DMCA passed, two of the Supreme Court justices who supported the Kelo decision slithered onto the bench, and the groundwork was laid for September 11 and the current mortgage crisis.

America, if you elect another Democrat, please pay closer attention this time.


One way that Obama could do serious damage is with his Supreme Court nominations. Joe Biden, when asked in the VP debate for an issue where he has changed his position, actually said that he used to think that judges should be picked based on, you know, their abilities, but now he understands that judicial picks are really all about politics and ideology. I was stunned that anyone would admit that, and even more so that no one picked up on it. I expected the moderator to say, "Wait. So you're saying that used to hold a mature position on the matter, but now you look at it like a toddler?"

Anyway, everybody let it pass, although for me it was one of the most telling moments of the entire campaign. Presumably Obama holds similar views, or Joe wouldn't have been allowed to say it.

Everybody with a conscience knows that Roe v. Wade was one of the worst judicial decisions in history. Even liberals who applaud its results will admit, once they've had enough drinks to start being honest, that it was a fraudulent act of sheer arrogance on the part of the Supreme Court.

As an avid pro-lifer, of course I want Roe v. Wade overturned. However, at the same time, I recognize that the real problem behind the abortion tragedy is not legal but spiritual. We need to change hearts, not laws, to protect preborn children. Even if abortion were outlawed tomorrow, some women would still find ways to commit it, and some men would be perfectly happy to take their money to help. Pro-life laws, in and of themselves, are not the answer to the abortion problem.

That said, I wholeheartedly support pro-life laws (or anti-abortion laws; that term doesn't scare me, since it accurately describes my position).

Yes, changing hearts is more important that changing laws, but unless and until we can manage the former I'll take the latter. Think of it this way: in the long term, Germans of the 1940s needed to understand that rounding Jews into ovens was wrong, and morally repent. I'm happy that Auschwitz got shut down anyway, though, even if it happened before all the German people were on board with the change.

If I had more readers, especially of the leftist variety, I'd be expecting some righteous indignation over "comparing abortion to the Holocaust". That objection always cracks me up. Hey, pro-abortionists: if you don't like being compared to Nazis, then stop advocating the murder of people you've decreed to be sub-human despite all scientific evidence and moral arguments to the contrary. The main difference between a Nazi and a pro-abort is that the pro-aborts have been far more successful, probably due to better marketing.

Wow, did that one ever wander off on me.


An insightful friend (who really needs to get his own blog going, so I can quit stealing his stuff) made a really good eschatological point about Obama in an e-mail to me. He said that if you think Obama is charismatic, wait until you see the actual Anti-Christ. (And yes, this does mean that I specifically object to any claim that Obama is the Anti-Christ. This is as close as I can come to giving him an endorsement.)

Note carefully that despite their very similar sounds, the words "eschatological" and "scatological" have nothing to do with each other.


It amazes me that some American voters still haven't made up their minds. Apparently a large number or voters routinely make their decision only when in the actual voting booth. Obama has a definite edge there; he looks more like the movie President. Any movie. Anytime a movie made in the last fifteen years showed a fictional President of the vaguely near future, they were either black or female. I think a bylaw got passed by the Screen Actors Guild or something. Anyway, since Obama fits the casting call better than McCain, he gets an advantage.


You know, if Hillary Clinton's supporters had actually followed through with their threats to support the Republican nominee instead of Obama, it would have been their first smart decision.

You see, if Obama gets elected, there's a good chance he'll hold onto the office until 2016 (bread and circuses, bread and circuses). By then, she'll be pushing seventy. Still younger than McCain is now, yes, but maybe not so interested in running for office. There's also the distinct chance that everyone will have gotten bored and forgotten about her by then.

However, if McCain wins, there's - let's face it - a pretty good shot that he won't go a second term, for various reasons alluded to in the last paragraph. That gives Hillary a fresh shot at it again. Her odds would be much better in 2012 against a Republican incumbent than against a wide-open field in 2016.

Her supporters absolutely should have been out there doing everything they could to get McCain elected. Of course, if they honestly believed their own rhetoric about McCain, it would mean they were willing to inflict horrible damage on their country (according to their peyote-fueled "prophetic visions" of McCain's performance) just to get another shot at getting their own way down the road.

Sounds about right for Democrats.

I'm not sure whether I'm happy or sad that Hillary's supporters haven't been smart enough to realize this. I note, however, that on the Saturday Night Live Presidential Bash opening monologue I just watched, Amy Poehler, playing Hillary, made a lot of "subtle" hints toward hoping that Obama would lose, for this exact reason. Rats. I came up with this bit a while ago but didn't write it up until now, and now even I feel like I'm ripping off the SNL writers.


You know what? I'm stopping for now. I've got some more election stuff, but I think it'll keep for a day to keep this one to (maybe) readable lengths. (Let's see, checking my notes... economy, scary Obama supporters caught on tape, exchange rates, why the Electoral College stinks... yeah, this can all wait a day.)


Before I go, though, I need to mention someone. She's terrific for bringing in search engine hits, but her name hadn't come up naturally in the course of writing this entry. So:

Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin. Too bad I don't have any pictures of Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin pictures are great for generating traffic.

There. That should help.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the ceiling in my computer room. In the lower left, you can see a bit of my Crisis on Infinite Earths poster, painted by Alex Ross over George Perez pencils. If you had already recognized it, chances are you're a huge nerd.

Trick Or Treat Tally

This year we got exactly nine trick-or-treaters at my house. One of those was the daughter of friends who specifically drove her over, well out of their own neighbourhood, so a more honest count would be eight "wanderers".

I note this solely because every year I try to remember how many we got last year, and how many we usually get, but never have a clue. By posting it here maybe I'll be able to find it when I start wondering next year.

For similar reasons, I note that last winter was extraordinarily harsh, and this summer was unrelentingly cold, grey and wet. It rained almost every day from mid-July to late August.

There. When I'm an old man waxing nostalgic about the winters, summers, and Hallowe'ens of yore, I'll have something to back me up.


(Update: I edited this column after posting it to change the number of trick-or-treaters from seven to nine. My wife tells me there were a couple that came and went without my even noticing later in the evening. Anyone who saved a copy of the original version of this article is now in possession of a surefire collector's item in the vein of one of those "Dewey Defeats Truman" newspapers.)


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a big ugly bug. To get a sense of scale, each of the rocks over which he's crawling is approximately the size of a Hyundai.

Let's Mock The News

In a new attempt to seize the coveted world championship belt for chutzpah, a convicted murderer is arguing that if only the police had caught him sooner, he would have received a lighter sentence.

Vito Rizzuto is suing the warden of his U. S. prison in a bid to shave more than two years from his sentence for three gangland murders.

Rizzuto, 62, named as the boss of the most powerful Mafia organization in Canada, says the way the U. S. Bureau of Prisons is calculating his sentence is unfair, violating his constitutional rights and robbing him of more than two years of freedom.

The Montrealer was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison for his role in the murder of three mob rivals in a Brooklyn social club back in 1981.

He now argues that he should be eligible to receive the far more generous parole allowances that were in place at the time his crime was committed instead of the harsher rules of today.

Apparently it's all the fault of the police. If they had brought him in sooner, then he could have taken advantage of the early bird discount. Too bad he wasn't tried and sentenced in Canada, where we have a Kill One, Kill One (Or Two, Or Three...) Free program.

Here's a tip for Mr. Rizzuto: if he wanted to be sentenced under the terms in place at the time he committed his murders, then he should have turned himself over to the police immediately. By eluding capture, he left himself eligible for whatever was in place at the time of his eventual arrest and conviction. I hope his claim gets laughed out of every courtroom available, and that each judge involved adds another year to his sentence just for the irony.


Here's a thought: since lying in court is itself a criminal offence - it's called "perjury", for those of you who remember the Clinton years and so had to live through that term being shamefully distorted - then perhaps an additional charge should be laid against some convicted criminals. If you entered a plea of "not guilty", then turned out to be guilty, then you lied to the court by definition. Tack on a perjury charge. If you plead "not guilty" to that one and are found guilty, lather, rinse, and repeat until you learn better.

Note for clarity: I'm not seriously suggesting that. I know it's hard to tell sometimes. I'm dead serious about Mr. Mobster serving as long as possible behind bars, though. He can walk around society as a free man again just as soon as his victims are able to do the same.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of something my wife did with some balls of yarn and pointy sticks. I am in awe of this ability.

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.