Letter to MTS

What can I say, I'm a letter writing machine today. Here's another one with respect to an unresolved problem with my phone service, sent via MTS' internet "Contact Us" page.

(Dear MTS,)

Your lack of response to my previous communications is starting to feel very personal indeed. In fact I have hesitated to pay my bill (although I know I am only hurting myself in the long run) out of my disgust at the poor service I have received with respect to my previous (and still unanswered) inquiries.

This email will mark the third straight month I have attempted to contact your large and disinterested organization with respect to a computer glitch that makes my phone ring every other morning at 2:30 am (adjusted for the ending of daylight savings). Frankly, I'm beginning to feel like one of the characters in a Kafka novel.

When it says "Does your Comment or Question require a response?" and I answer yes only to receive no response it makes me wonder if there is someone there who is crafting the very best and most through response of all time to my important query (one that like a good dissertation will take months to compile and defend), or if you just don't regard my interrupted sleep as enough of a concern. At this point I'm going with the later, but my goodness wouldn't I be pleasantly surprised to receive a thoughtful response that went something like this:

"Dear Mr. Kinrade,

After several months of in-depth investigation into your most unusual and fascinating case we have discovered that it requires our immediate attention. By golly it is something we are committed to resolving with all the powers at our disposal. After all we are not just an ordinary telecom services company sitting on it's duff waiting to be pensioned off, we are your friendly and accountable provider MTS, the pride of Manitoba.

Please accept our apologies for having taken so long and having robbed you of many a night's decent sleep. To make up for it we have decided to discount your bill $10 a month retroactive to the month you first reported this incident in 2005 (only to be rebuffed by one or more surly CSRs, all of whom have subsequently been sent to grueling construction camps to build cell towers in Flin Flon, Thompson and other godforsaken corners of this great province.)

A cheque for $340 along with our thanks for your patience is in the mail, and our technicians will get no rest until we are assured that you are getting yours.

Sincerely,

X. X.

MTS Customer Service Demi-god."

Letter to the Editor

A letter I submitted today after having read a column by the delightful, but IMHO sometimes mildly misguided, Marlo Campbell.

The inconvenient truth that leaders of the Climate Change movement are also perpetrators of crimes against the environment aught not to be as easily set aside as columnist Marlo Campbell would have it be (Call off the hounds -- green messengers are OK, Mon. Nov. 12, 2007). Mr.’s Gore and Suzuki are both extremely wealthy and respected men who, despite their posturing, have not made the sacrifices to lifestyle they demand of humanity in general. Should the rest of us practice austerity because it is good for us while our multi-millionaire prophets and their cohorts continue to live large? Real leaders set examples with their actions rather than relying upon heart-felt words and vainglorious endorsements from other elites to make their point. They do this because they realize that blatant hypocrisies are an invitation for all to doubt their belief in and commitment to the message they bring.

The Dali Lama Sells Out

I wrote something about a picture in today's paper on the ALFA Blog earlier. For the benefit of those who don't follow ALFA (although lord knows you should) here's the link: http://alabelforartists.blogspot.com/2007/11/dali-lama-sells-out.html

Musings on the Music Industry

This is an article I am going to submit unsolicited to the U of W Student Newspaper The Uniter in response to an opinion piece in last week's edition.

Musings on the Music Industry

Last issue's Uniter featured an article that attempted to defend the roll of the recording industry in the wake of Radiohead's recent label-free, pay-what-you-want release "Rainbows". Although it raised many valid arguments it failed to mention what may be the most fundamental point about the business of music in general. Namely: that until about 100 years ago there was no such thing as a recording industry. Although publishing sheet music and composing were a source of revenue for some, most musicians then, as now, made their money by touring. Thus the current woes of the major labels are no great threat to the great cultural gift that is music. While it is often said that a band tours in support of a current release, from the perspective of the working musician it is quite often the reverse.

There's no denying that the recording industry has brought to our attention many stupendously talented artists for whom we should be eternally grateful. But let's not forget that the industry is also responsible for the awful crap that constituted "Can Rock" in the 1980's; an era of shame that we get to live over and over again thanks to the omnipresent 92 CITI FM. Kim Mitchell anyone? And let us also remember that it was the record industry who, without justification beyond greed, gouged us more seasoned record buyers when they decided that CDs should replace LPs at nearly double the price, despite the fact that production costs were the same or lower for CDs. Should we accord these scoundrels any quarter now that the shoe is on the other foot?

New technologies have found the soft underbelly of the once mighty corporations that made a mint off of recording the talents of others, and I for one couldn't be happier. Now it is possible for bands with a bit of know-how to make their own records and decide their own fate. If it means that less musicians get to own private jets and live the celebrity life of a Radiohead or Led Zeppelin it's quite alright with me. Fame is overrated anyway.

Indie Rock, and Canadian Indie Rock particularly has seen a great rise in prominence and record sales since the 1990's. Not only are these acts as talented as the ones who pack stadiums worldwide they are often far more accessible. Bands like The New Pornographers, Arcade Fire and Winnipeg's own Weakerthans play shows at smaller, more intimate venues where the object is not to witness a spectacle but to hear great live music.

Indeed this is the kind of music one should be supporting with one's wallet. Who cares if The Rolling Stones ever make another cent on anything they do? Does Jimmy Eats World need my $20? Those guys are doing just fine last time I checked. And what about the schmoozers that acted as A & R reps for these bands? Should I be paying for their champagne breakfasts in the Bahamas? No. I should be at the Zoo banging my head to Priestess or at the Burt singing along to Tegan and Sara. Acts I didn't hear about in the latest issue of SPIN, acts I got to know because they have actually been across Canada a number of times and attracted a following. That is how musicians made money before there was a cigar chomping executive cutting the cheques, and that is how they should be making money now.

I urge record buyers to lay the boots to antiquated notions of what supporting the artist means. Copy as much of EMI's catalogue as your conscience dictates, anything older than 15 years aught to be public domain anyways. Feel free to follow my motto: "if an artist (or band) is dead, just go ahead." And for God sake, don't pay for punk, it's anathema. However, make sure you go to lots of shows and buy something off the merch table, and/or buy a new, undiscovered record or two from an indie label every time you need to give a gift. Your friends and friendly neighborhood musician will thank you.

Scrabulous Junkie

I've got eight Scrabulous games on the go right now. Everyday when I come home from work I check on which ones have the little green go light. Same thing in the morning before I leave, and also check regularly through the evening if I happen to be at the computer. I'm sucked right in. Maybe it's because I won like the first six in a row and now I get that gambler's high, like I'm gonna win everyone and somehow prove I am a person of superior intelligence and gamesmanship. Unlike the gambler though, there's no money on the line, and that's not really a place I want to go.

I like that they have the chat application front and centre now though because what's cool about Scrabulous (aside from the fact that I can use the dictionary at will in most games and that no-one gets mad if I take to long to plot my perfect moves) is that I can actually carry on a bit of a conversation with a far away friend.

I've also joined an online chess thing at chess.com (I think) under the name Wassily Kandinsky (you fans of Modern Art out there will know who I'm talking about). I'm not sure how much I'll get into that whole business, because my chess skills are pretty average and I've never been able to delve deep enough into the math of it to get too excited. Plus I used to get really hyped up and I was a bad looser (perhaps because I associate it with some kind of intellectual prowess that I know I am inferior with) so I'm not sure it's all that good for me to be getting back into it. For example, in the first game I made a dumb mistake on my second move and lost a pawn for nothing. No big deal one pawn, but I was down on myself already.

BTW: My best Scrabble so far (or Bingo in Scrabulous' non-copyright infringing lingo) is UNvEILS (where "v" is a blank tile) for 86 points, and my favourite is URINATED for 68. I have also learned of the existence of the Super Scrabble word "OXYPHENBUTAZONE" which nets a bonus of about 1500 (but can probably only be played by players who are cooperating. Pretty damn fascinating, non?

The forgotten blog

Seems I'm not taking much time to write anymore. I'm not sure why, laziness maybe? Anyway I only work six hours a day so I should have plenty of time for writing, etc. but nothing's getting done. I have been playing a lot of Facebook Scrabulous lately though. I don't think I can claim to be doing anything literary because of it, but here is a pictue of an interesting game I just started.
I have had two Scrabbles (0r Bingos as they are called in Scrabulous terms) in a row. On the second scrabble I used the word LUNGE to make PLUNGED which coincidentally turned the word LUNGE into another PLUNGE. If I were a superstitious person I would be seeing a clogged toilet in my very near future. Anyway, not that this post is particularly useful or thought provoking, but it's a small sample of the kind of minutiae that is keeping me from more important thoughts. If someone knows how I can get my groove back I 'd be glad to hear about it. In the meantime if you want to play some Scrabulous then just challenge me baby.

Letter of the Day

This is today's Winnipeg Free Press Letter of the Day as written by yours truly (with some minor edits from the WFP):

The new Wi-Fi deal struck by the City of Winnipeg and MTS is a terrible deal for Winnipeggers. In exchange for a portion of the revenue -- ostensibly to pay the mere $23,000 it cost to install the system in 20 library branches and one public pool -- the city gave MTS five years to charge $3 per hour for the service. In addition to the fee, MTS also benefits by having exclusive use of city-owned property to hawk its wares and recruit new business.

Three dollars an hour is a gouge. An entire month on a private plan from MTS costs around $41 for speeds higher than most users can realize with current wireless technology. Allowing a private firm to control and profit from an information service offered within publicly owned libraries undermines the goal of these institutions, which I always assumed was to provide such services free of charge (or at least paid for by civic taxes).

With reference to the new service fees Mayor Sam Katz cynically pronounced: "There's no such thing as free service." Now, granted no library is under any obligation to provide a free wireless service, but given that Winnipeg libraries already provide free Internet to patrons with cards and enough patience to wait for a terminal, why should it not strive to provide a wireless signal for free to people who have their own equipment? If it was not possible to provide wireless to all city libraries due to budget constraints, would it not have been preferable to build these capabilities into the main branches first, and then later equip the satellites, as funds became available?

The mayor said that part of the reason the city did this was to be "hip." How hip is it for Winnipeg to charge an inflated $3 per hour for what many other cities in North America offer for free?

Find Me, Fine Me, Fire Me

There's been quite a bit of buzz lately about people who are dumb enough to put incriminating stuff on Facebook and then get caught. Underage drinking, rushing the field after a football game, setting up a white supremacist group "as a joke." It's hard to have sympathy for anyone dumb enough to let the world search his or her profile for these incriminating tid-bits when it's so easy to set your privacy at a more discreet level. Although it sucks when you have done so and someone else hasn't, and they've got a picture of you spraying graffiti on a public monument or something. Still, I have no sympathy. Protect yourself, know who your friends are, and if you don't, don't let them snap incriminating shots of you, or wall stuff about how you cheated on your exams, taxes, etc. End of story.

Modern Austerity Rant: Turn off your damn TVs.

Many people I know spend a great deal of time watching television, until I was in my later 20’s I would have fit this category too. In fact in my youth I probably watched more TV than anyone. There was no restriction on my viewing habits, no commands to complete homework. If I wanted to I could watch TV well into the night, and I often did.

Maybe that’s why I don’t even keep a TV plugged in anymore. I haven’t had cable in more than a decade, except for the time Shaw tired to hook me in with a three month trial. I know there are good shows in the world I’m missing, and spectacular news footage that will have people buzzing at the water cooler for days. I am far removed from the celebrity break-ups and make-ups, distant from the latest reality show results and probably considered a by freak most of my urban contemporaries; but frankly, I don’t mind.

After a while you forget what it’s like to need that thing in your life. Of course you never real forget about it, it is omnipresent in our society, and there are important NHL playoffs going on every spring to jog one’s memory.

In the end it’s kind of like giving up smoking, another vice I have been lucky to have the fortitude to overcome. At first all you think about is that thing. It’s everywhere you look, and all your friends are still indulging. You start to obsess: what will happen in all the serials you’ve abandoned? What peril awaits at Season Finale? And all those glitzy music and film awards, the documentaries, the nature shows, Pop-Up Video...

But when you’re no longer shaking and sweating, when the last of the shooting pains has ceased, you find a little space in the world that’s not explicitly trying to sell you something. A place where you don’t need constant injections of entertainment to wash away the dull and mundane.

People have always enjoyed entertainment; history is full of examples of fulfilling this basic human need. The Roman Coliseum stands testament to it, so too does Kabuki theatre and classical music. But never in history has man had so much time to percolate. To just sit around, long after the sun has gone down, bathed in electric light and utterly bored.

The television would appear to be a near ideal solution to this dilemma, and it’s popularity since the 1950’s is ample evidence. It has linked us to events around the globe, brought directly to our living rooms by some cheerful and heavily made-up Ken or Barbie with a clip-on mike. By way of compromise we need only suffer a few zillion ads and oblique product placements, sometimes cleverly hidden within the news as reports.

On the negative side TV tends to make people a lot stupider. The proliferation of tabloid news programming and celebrity worship rags on the newsstand is just the tip of the iceberg. A closer look reveals people who believe what they see (even in this age of image manipulation), who view the value of things cleverly advertised as status items as self-evident. People who’s opinion about the world is shaped by a Ken or Barbie journalist that is really just the mouthpiece of a sour old fart who doesn’t believe in anything.

Certainly this is not the case for everyone, and there were probably a lot of easily manipulated sorts in the golden age of radio and beyond. But seeing is believing, and critical thinking is no longer in vogue.

Most people I know are figuring out ways to get their hands on bigger and skinnier idiot boxes, rather than admitting they have a problem. And I suppose it’s a bit hypocritical of me, the ex-TV junky to preach austerity. But it’s a bit like the ex-smoker being the loudest voice in the room when someone lights up.

My mom used to embarrass me when she became an ex-smoker in the 80’s, making a big stink over someone else’s stinky butt. Now I get it, and I’m not afraid to say it: Turn off your damn TVs.

First Day of School

Yesterday was my first day back at University in more than 13 years. I decided to take one course with the intent of boosting my GPA while at the same time earning a credit towards a "teachable minor." The course I ended up with is "Islam and the West" a second year History course that explores the development of Western (i.e. Christian) and Islamic cultures comparatively from the fall of Rome. In the first class the Prof. talked mainly about Rome and the crisis that led it to Christianity, followed by the loss of it's western portion two centuries later. He also touched on the Persians, the great near-eastern civilization at that time, the Germanic tribes (aka Barbarians) and the Huns, both of whom were responsible for the fall of Rome. Hopefully this course will not conflict with my intended profession of Educational Assistant, but I can't be completely sure of that yet. The course starts at 4pm so hopefully most of my sub postings will be over by then?!

Marx Bros. Interlude

I've never really checked out much Marx Bros. but they are some pretty amazingly talented dudes. Here's a little quick piano piece by Chico.

Ode to My Last Day of Work

Yesterday I wrote a poem/comment on the ALFA blog, click here to read it.

Glorious Feedback

These are letters published in today's Free Press refuting the commentary I had in Sunday's paper. This is the first time the paper has published letters based on an article I've written. Frankly, I'm a bit tickled. Here they are:

Letter of the day

Wed Aug 22 2007

Car thieves aren't victims

Re: Persecuting and Prosecuting Children, Aug. 19.

Ryan Kinrade equates children as equal victims in instances where they are objects of sexual attack and also as youthful car thieves causing willful damage and even death to others. I respectfully beg to differ.

A child who is the victim of a sexual attack is the target of a predator who is searching for someone who is less powerful than he to exercise power over. The perpetrator may have been the victim of some past injustice himself. In our society this does not entitle him to act out his resentment and frustration on an innocent human being.

In the same way the youthful car thief aligns himself with the sexual predator. The car thief may have been the victim of some sort of crime, but he is not entitled to steal and damage the property of others, or to maim and kill innocent third parties to empower himself or relieve his frustrations. The unfortunate victim of the car thief stands in the place of the child sexual assault victim in Kinrade's parable.

I do agree that child car thieves need to be treated differently than sexual predators, but when murder by motor vehicle results from car theft, the punishment needs to reflect the seriousness of the crime. Every perpetrator of every crime suffers from lost innocence. That does not excuse them for their willful and destructive behaviour.

I am extremely tired of the "everybody is a victim" culture, which I feel may be encouraged by Kinrade's musings. In some ways we are all victims of something in our pasts, but we can never use that as an excuse to victimize someone else with our own destructive behaviour.

WILLIAM D. WATSON

Winnipeg

---

Excuses, excuses

Re: Persecuting and prosecuting children, Free Press (Aug. 18). Ryan Kinrade's article says the reason so many of these kids steal cars is because they are in impoverished environments. I beg to differ. As long as people make excuses for these kids they will keep doing it.

I grew up with two verbally and physically abusive alcoholic parents. I grew up in the north end in the 1960s. I used to roam the streets sometimes until 2 a.m. but not to vandalize or steal. I was on a mission. That mission was to find enough pop and beer bottles to cash in so I could buy milk for my baby brother. I also went to bed many nights where my supper was a bowl of milk and a slice of bread broken up into the milk.

I never used my childhood problems to steal anything, including food. I weighed 69 pounds when I graduated from high school. Please quit giving the kids of today a cop out. It won't help them in the end. The poor-me attitude will only get them so far and it probably shouldn't get them anywhere if they want to grow up to be productive members of society. One last thing, I am a proud Metis so don't think I'm being prejudicial.

Sandi Miller

Winnipeg

FP Article

I previously reported that this article had been rejected, but it appeared in today's paper, so if you've read it already it's nothing new, only difference is it's status has changed from "unpublished" to "published."


Two separate but equally devastating crimes that have captured the attention of Winnipeggers recently point to what a paradoxical pursuit Justice can be in the case of children.

In one case we have a man who’s sexual urges are reviled by society, who is judged by the masses as a monster, and who, if the common man had his way would likely be castrated or worse.

Liberal as Canadian society is in matters of sexual preference, we draw the line at children. We do so because we don’t believe kids have the gained the knowledge to appreciate the value of their sexuality, and are in general far more susceptible to manipulation from adults who would abuse their trust. We believe that an adult has an obligation to respect the innocence of the young, and to know the boundaries, liberal as they are in Canada, in which “consensual sex” is legally considered consensual.

However society does not afford children who commission motor vehicles for the purpose of joy-riding the same measure of innocence. Indeed, when a child--who is perhaps just old enough to consent to sex--steals a car he is no longer a child, but a “youth,” and as such is subject to the all disapproval and bloodlust an enraged citizenry places on it’s most hated criminals.

Tragic results, such as last week’s death of an innocent cyclist, seem to further mobilize public support and government musings on the redrafting of laws, intended to protect youth, to reflect a desire for punishment in the name of public safety. Only by strong deterrence and proper detention—so the theory goes—can we hope to end the madness that has threatened our property and our lives.

There is little discussion about the lost innocence of the perpetrators of these crimes. We have no tolerance for those who would know right, and do wrong, and not much interest in why they would choose wrong over and over again. Apparently, to most it is simply a matter that bad behaviour that goes unpunished will not be amended.

But I see a substantial amount of hypocrisy in our desire to protect one group of children from harm on the one hand, while seeking punishment for another group of children on the other. Are not all children equally worthy of our protection? Is it not the indifference and callousness that we as a community have showered on these persecuted children and their families that has caused them act as they do?

A typical young car thief in Winnipeg is most often the product of an impoverished environment. He is the possessor a stolen childhood lived out on the mean streets of our city, in neighborhoods most people do not live in or visit unless they are forced to. What his crimes indicate above all is the failure on the part of our society to shield it’s most vulnerable citizens from the harsh realities that come as a consequence of poverty and an interminable cycle of despair.

In 1989 the Federal House of Commons promised to: “seek to achieve the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000.” Seventeen years later we are no closer to closing the gap, and providing this city’s unfortunates an opportunity to engage in activities and a lifestyle that most would find preferable to stealing cars and living as a pariah.

My guess is that few thieves, even the most chronic among them, would wish to be feared and reviled, if other forms of respect were available to them. If they could find a sport, or an artistic outlet or a hobby that could bring pride to themselves, their families and their neighborhoods would they feel the need to inflict hurt on society over and over again?

We must take greater pains to understand how our indifference is paid back in crimes of property and violence, rather than insisting that more severe punishments will restore order to the streets (which they most certainly will not). Only then will we be closer to finding the answer to what to do about these spectacular crimes—which seem to be the only indication of the epidemic of poverty and despair that better-off citizens pay much attention to these days.

The One That Got Away & Other Fish Tales

Yesterday afternoon I got back from a two day semi-annual fishing excursion with my long-time brother-from-another-mother Dr. Steve. This year we hit Dogtooth Lake which is accessible from the Rushing River Provincial Park (about 20 minutes outside Kenora).

Steve and I paddled his canoe out of Rushing River on Thursday afternoon towards the meeting place of Dogtooth and Kilvert Lakes (about a 7 KM journey). We had a very strong wind at our backs most of the way, which was fortunate given that we did not arrive at the boat launch until after 2pm. On the way out we stopped to fish a couple of bays and I was lucky enough to bring in a decent sized bass that we cooked for supper that night.

We spent all of Friday fishing the bays around the fabulous campsite we found on an island close to the opening of Kilvert. Unlike the Manitoba campsites we are used to from years past this site was completely unmarked by map or landmark. The area we camped in is a part of a proposed Provincial Park, but as yet is mostly undeveloped crown land (with a few notable exceptions in the form of some nice cabins along the way). Anyway, the island had been used previously and a decent fire pit existed, along with a fairly flat clearing in the middle that was perfect for pitching our tent.

The weather was ideal for the entire trip; hot and sunny with just a bit of a breeze. I managed to get a fairly embarrassing sunburn on my chest where I did not do up the shirt I was wearing. Currently I am sporting a rather nasty red stripe from the nape of my neck to the top of my shorts.

Back to the fishing. Our quarry consisted mainly of small to medium sized Large Mouth Bass. I had great success using two classic Rapala lures which happened to be swimming at just the right depth. Steve had a bit more trouble finding a killer lure, but between us we managed to catch a decent amount of fish. I did happen to catch a couple of Walleye while casting with the Rapala. The first one was a very nice sized fish (2 to 3 pounds) that I brought all the way into the boat only to loose while trying to put it on a stringer. Unfortunately I didn't even get a good shot of me with this beautiful specimen, so you'll have to take my word for it. The other Pickerel was a tiny, tiny little fellow, hardly worth mentioning. Of course there were a few dinky Jack to be had as well. All the fish fought well (especially the bass) and it was a pleasure to catch and release them all.

On the Friday afternoon just prior to catching the Walleye that got away Steve and I noticed a huge Bald Eagle in the bay opposite our campsite. S/he followed us around that afternoon as we fished getting up and flying overhead whenever we got too close, but always sticking around. I called her/him our Spirit Eagle and wondered if s/he was not responsible for finding us a good spot to camp and fish. We were also treated to some spectacular loon songs a beaver sighting and some amazing sunsets.

In short, a wonderful time was had, and we got to immerse ourselves in the natural wonder that surrounds us if only for a brief few days. Sadly the Lake of the Woods region is over-runneth with float-planes and powerboats during the summer season and Dogtooth Lake is no exception. However there were plenty of moments when one could imagine that there was nothing but wilderness and loon song, and star filled skies above.

A previously unpublished rant

This is something I wrote a few weeks back, kind of similar in theme to the article below. I thought I had posted it already, but I don't see it on the blog. So here it is:

It's funny this world of convenience we live in. For example, imagine the amount of energy and material it takes to make every plastic water or soda bottle you buy and casually dispose of. Little toxic bombs in everybody's hands. But there is no complaint about this phenomenon. When the price of gas goes up a few cents, or when the average temperature of Earth goes up a few degrees there is hysteria and global conferences called. What is really going on is that people are not spending enough time thinking about how they are living. A few cents more at the pumps doesn't add up to too much, no one's a hundred percent that fixing the carbon problem will reduce the temperature, but goddamn it if we washed a glass or a fork once in while would it kill us?

Sometimes I like to think of how people fit in the overall plan of evolution. Where are we compared to the dinosaurs and the death of the Sun. Will other beings someday mine down to our civilization, using are garbage dumps as an energy source in a time where the Sun's rays are starting to ebb a bit. Are we just some wonderful interim experiment of what happens when you take the two elements of life--the Adam and Eve, if you will--and cast them into an environment such as our own.

What puzzles me a bit is our insistence that for in order for intelligent life to exist on other planets they must have conditions like our own. A stable atmosphere, a moderate temperature, water. Well what if the seeds that scatter to those stars become other beings; what if they adapt to rivers of lava and million mile an hour winds. I tell you something, we wouldn't stand a chance against those boys if they decided to wage intergalactic war.

I can see how some people just don't care that much about what they do. Their lives are consumed by who they will be, rather than who they are. I suppose it is a perfectly natural, and perhaps essential trait on the grand scale. But the problem is that there are so many good people trying to be more than they aught, and too many great brains out there bent on convincing them. If there was half the energy it took to tell people to buy Gucci or Baskin Robbins put into a campaign about how all bottles should be reused as often as possible, it would be topsy-turvey and insane, but I for one would like to see it.

Right now I am drinking a bottle of 7-Up, one of many I have consumed over my life time. I think of the massive populating of this place over the last 200 years. How it has become profitable to put a soda in a plastic bottle designed for disposal. What a short and crazy trip from staking claims to living in big urban centres. That's what Canada is, the great land grab. A new land, claimed by a shrewd crew of English traders and an hearty bunch of French settlers. And then of course there are the founding peoples. A diverse group of nations, many of whom were subjected to harsh forms of cultural, if not actual genocide, that live among us today. When one adds the many Asians, Africans, Arab and Island people that come here it makes for quite an international stew.

That is what we should be proudest of. Not our seat in the exclusive G7 club, not even our hockey championships (although we should be damn proud of those). What we should be proudest of, and work hardest at, is the fact that we are all people from different places. And assuming our species can weather a few extra degrees, and the continuing possibility of all out nuclear holocaust, in a few hundred years we'll all be Irish-Polish-Tahitian-Jamaican-Tasmanian-Burundi-Cree-French-Korean and so on.

Now we are all here in this new free for all land that no one really knew was here (except for the original peoples of course) a land that is full of resources and so much space. Endless space with a great big Jambalaya of humans who like to drink soda from plastic bottles and drive cars. Most of us live in a few very concentrated spots near the southern boarder and would never dream of doing otherwise.

But being a pissy-pants about how other people live gets boring sometimes. It's not easy being a curmudgeon. Sometimes I like to just live too. Like yesterday when we took the holiday Monday and went to the beach. Those are the days when I can just hang up that bitter old critic and dig into life. Watching people, playing Frisbee having a mini barbecue on the grass at Bird's Hill's fake lake. That's what life is all about, the rest, quite frankly is nonsense.

The New Asceticism

I’m not much of an admirer of the current “Climate Change” fever that has politicians and popular personalities of all stripes singing and dancing for massive change. My much vilified university professor, Tim Ball, taught us to be skeptical, if not downright hostile, to the doomsayers of Climate Change, and though I am no-one’s toady or disciple I will admit that my skepticism continues in the face of considerable public sentiment to the contrary.

The earth has seen massive climate change before the industrial age, and in all likelihood it will see such changes again in future eons when our species is no longer dominant. It is possible that the carbon we produce so much of these days is a significant factor in the Earth’s warming, on the other hand, no-one is sure what the weather will be like next Wednesday, so who’s to say what really causes weather, and what doesn’t. Climate scientists may claim to know what is going on, but the priests and sages of eras past have spoken with as much authority only to be debunked.

However, to me the most interesting thing about our current green obsession is not what we believe is happening to our earth, but the way in which we frame how we will make changes to prevent disaster.

For instance, we insist that there must be other ways to produce energy efficiently and are so eager to believe this that we invest in dubious technologies like bio-fuels. Currently bio-fuels consume tremendous amounts of farmland and tax dollars to produce a negligible benefit. Perhaps in time we will master the extraction of fuels from plant-life, but so far it has proven to be a wasteful and expensive dream. Nonetheless bio-fuels remain a portent myth in the race to solve the climate change riddle.

The one, most obvious, solution to this problem however gets very little ink, and virtually no sound-bites. It is an idea that is as old as civilization itself, something that has been practiced by people of all times and ages whether by choice, or far more often, by necessity. It is called: living with less. Whereas virtually every argument one reads for the adoption of green technology contains some nod toward sustainable growth there is barely a soul alive who would propose that we move toward sustainable shrinkage.

The orthodoxy of modern economics posits that a civilization, in order to be successful and relevant in global terms, must continue to grow at all costs. Even as populations shrink in the nations most guilty of carbon spewing (with the noted exception of the United States) we continue to obsess over how we can go green and keep growing.

Here’s a radical thought. Why don’t we see what it would be like to not be so fixated on our status. How about we build homes that are affordable to heat and cool rather than massive, energy sucking monuments to our own perceived greatness and success. What if we had say one vehicle per family that reflected our needs rather than our annual salaries. Could we get by without lettuce in the dead of winter, and extravagant trips to foreign climbs? If we made more of an effort to live within our means would we still feel the guilt and doom of a future with no polar ice-caps and a prolonged hurricane season?

Like so much of what appears to be relevant today Climate Change is a product of hype and is mired in hyperbole. I am all for changing the way we live on Earth, for using less, working more on ourselves and less for our economies and for spending more time getting to know this fabulous biosphere we call home. But I don’t want to do it because jet-setting millionaires like Al Gore, Bono and Leonardo DiCapprio think it’s a good idea, and I don’t want to do it so Ford can sell me a new car that runs on rabbit food. I want to do it because I believe that our lives are about more than what we have owned when we die, and because I believe that a good, moral life is worthwhile despite the presence or absence of God(s), contrite politicians, Hollywood celebrities or speculative science.

I want to do it because I believe future generations have the right to enjoy the bounty of this planet, but should do so believing that the greatest imperative is take what is necessary and not more. If global warming continues to happen apace it will probably be the most valuable lesson we could learn.

HTML lesson from a know-it-all

Hi Ren,

I know I told you how to make a link on blogger, but I'm a bit of a know-it-all, as you may recall, and I like to show off my nerdy prowess. As a consequence of my peculiar vanity I thought I'd take a second to explain a bit of HTML. When you know how to do it manually you can leave links in the comments section of ALFA and impress your friends in other important ways.**

• First you use a triangluar bracket: "<" these brackets are always used in HTML to indicate that the text inside is a command, not an actual bit of text.
• After the bracket you type an "a". The "a" stands for Anchor--not entirely sure why Anchor, but it helps to remember the "a" if you know what it stands for.
  
• After that you leave a space and type "href" where "h" is short for "hypertext" and "ref" is short for "reference".
  
• Then you put an "=," for equals.
  
• After the "=" you must place a quotation mark otherwise the link will only refer to another page from the current web address no matter what you type as your link.
• Then you enter your address.
  
• Behind the address you place another quotation mark, and a closing triangle bracket ">" to close that portion of the command.
  
• Then you type the text you want the viewer to see eg. "link".
  
• After this you must end the command. You do this by putting another triangle bracket, then a forward slash "/" with an "a" meaning "stop anchor", then a closing bracket. After this all your text will be normal again.

It should look like this:

<a href="http://www.geostationarybananaovertexas.com">link</a>

The result is this: link

**Relevant, if useless, tidbit: I first gained entry into the inner sanctum of ALFA when I revealed this bit of web wisdom to Dave in a comment.

p.s. I have also blogged this email on the disclaimer.

Your Banner Ads Suck

A little bit of hate mail for the editors of the Free Press's on-line edition:

Dear Web Masters,

Do you know how distracting it is to read any of your paper on-line? Have you tried to read an article with all the banners that flash around the corners of your eye? I had forgotten just what a pain in the ass it is until I decided to try a new browser that I have not installed an ad-blocker on. It is in fact a mild form of torture. Were it not for the fact that your banners are animated to an annoying extent it is possible that I would never have bothered to seek out an ad-blocker for my previous browser in the first place. Static ads aren't that troublesome, they are far easier to ignore, they may even be something I read from time to time. But animated banners are an entirely different matter.

I don't have any statistics on how effective animated ads are vs. static ones, but for me personally I am far less likely to purchase a product or service from an advertiser who annoys me. I urge you to read a few articles in your paper with ad-blockers off just to see what I mean. Perhaps you can launch an unofficial poll to see what readers think. My guess is that the majority will agree that animating banners is bothersome and distracting and not very effective in terms of sales.

Untitled

tossed hither in surf
all I have known
eaten away
now just a pretty shell
washed up
on the beach

my precious meat
dined upon by time
and discouragement
a decoration
for your sandcastle
with nothing true to say

thought I had
so many things to relay
my ideas were going to
light the way
now I swim in darkness
words break like waves
on dikes of dithering indifference

Oh Fickle Google

My 15 minutes of fame on the Google Image Search Engine are up. My usurped image of Santana at Woodstock no longer even places in the top 5 pages. I don't know what changed my fortunes, perhaps the link is just too dated to be relevant anymore (it is a couple of weeks old now, a lifetime it seems in this torrid age of information.) Now it's back to obscurity for this humble little blog, no more daily visits from foreign climbs, no more ill-gotten notoriety. Just you my loyal readers, just you.

It's a bit humbling to realize the power of the search engine, it's capacity to bring eyes from all over the world to a little out of the way blog like this. It's kind of like when the Madonna appears on a piece of toast in some Arkansas backwater and it somehow makes it on to CNN. Next thing you know the whole American Media Circus is on your doorstep to take pictures of your miraculous breakfast and the defective toaster that spawned the graven image. But when interest dries up you are left with a trampled lawn and a dried out piece of toast which hopefully you can get a few bucks for on e-bay.

Oh well, it's back to the drawing board I guess. Hopefully I won't be consumed with posting pictures that have provocative and/or popular search terms attached to drive traffic. Although I admit it is a bit of a jolt to have all those people watching I doubt many of them stick around to digest the real meat of the matter. In fact sometimes I wonder if you do dear readers, I haven't had a comment in many moons.

Now On Facebook

Okay so I joined the Facebook thing. I'm not sure why, it's not like I spend a whole lot of time on-line, and not as though I am looking to get more into it, especially with summer in swing. But I suppose I am curious about this entity called Facebook, and it seems like an interesting (if mildly addictive) way to keep track of people who are far away or seldom seen.

Whatever, check out my profile and invite me to be your friend. Let's do cyber coffee sometime.

Cats in the Hood

Last year we had one kitten from next door who wanted us to adopt him. His name is Buster, and I have probably mentioned his name before. Buster is all grown up now, although he is a very small cat, and he must have a hard time making it on the mean streets of the West End. There are a lot of big tough cats in this hood without a really good home, cats like Buster himself, only bigger, and meaner. The proof in the toughness of young Buster's life is that the last time I tried to pet him he got all squirrelly and hissed at me, whereas in the past he was eager for a good petting. He has a hard time trusting now, and is not the love cat he once was.

Enter this year's crop of kittens. One is a smoke gray kitten who looks a bit too much like the neighbors gray cat (named Smoke). Is it a family connection, or merely a coincidence? One can never know in the crazy mixed up world of cat sexuality, but I do know that Buster still has his boys and so perhaps Smoke is likewise endowed. In any case this younger Smoke, despite being very curious about us and our home seems to be a kept cat since s/he has a collar with a bell.

The other kitten looks a lot like our cat Merlin (Joanna has dubbed the cat "Mini Mer"). In fact, if I wasn't so sure that Merlin was an indoor cat who had himself fixed eons ago I might give pause. In any case, both these kittens are full of love and curiosity not unlike Buster was before the harsh realities of life in a poor neighborhood with a family who only has passing interest got the better of him. What will become of these little kittens? Will they survive their first years among the cars and tough cats that cruise these streets? Will they become the jaded and distant adult cat like Buster, who longs for good love but cannot trust anyone?

The Response(s)

Jun 6 (1 day ago)

Hello Ryan. Sorry for your bad trip to Olympia. I am going to see if I can locate a rock lock for the older

Trek helmets. They are a bit hard to find but I will make it work.I am the same as you,I like to keep my



stuff in good shape and for as long as possible. I to have heard the 5 year limit but if the helmet is in good

shape I would still wear it. Again,sorry and I will make it up to you.

It would be great to have your phone number?

Take care , Scot.

6:05 pm (3½ hours ago)

Ryan, Scot here again. I have some of the rok locks coming in so I will email you when they get here.
It won't cost. Thanks Scot.

9:23 pm (24 minutes ago)

Thanks Scot, but I'd like to pay for the part if possible.

It's like this: I didn't buy the helmet from your shop in the first place (I got it from Olympia on Pembina). The first time I broke it you had one in stock and replaced it for free.

I feel like I should give you something for your trouble this time; it's honourable, and I am an honourable person.

Here are my particulars (I would prefer "light mail" if it is an option):
351 Home Street R3G 1X5
783-4807

(p.s. My last email was probably a tad dramatic; it's a bit of an occupational hazard. I was just trying to burn off some of the frustration I felt in that moment; I wasn't truly outraged or anything. So, uh, thanks for listening.)

The Letter

Earlier today I ranted a bit about an experience I had in a bike shop today. It promised action, and here it is in the form of an letter sent to the store's e-mail address.

Hello Scot,

I was in your store this evening looking to replace the Zip Tite bracket that had broken on my Trek bike helmet. My helmet was manufactured in 2004 (purchaced in Feb of '05) and you previously replaced another broken Zip Tite (free of charge I might add), but this time your staff informed me that I ought to replace my bike helmet every 3 years and left it at that.

Being someone who likes to keep things for as long as possible if they are still useful (not because I am cheap, so much as I am in favour of re-using, recycling and not creating more waste than I need to) I was skeptical about the idea that a three year old helmet that looks to be in good shape should automatically become a candidate for replacement. Several opinions I have read this evening seem to offer a more reasonable lifespan of 5 years per helmet (barring any damage), others say a modern helmet should be constructed well enough to last even longer. In short, there is no consensus on when an undamaged helmet should be replaced, and what amounts to a refusal of service based on a suggested date of replacement displays little in the way of class.

I can respect the fact that your people want to make a sale, and if it were a matter of the part no longer being available I would be forced to concede that a new helmet was necessary. But having looked at the new Trek helmets in your shop I noticed that the Zip Tite, despite being a newer rendition, seems clip on in the very same manner it did previously, so that does not appear to be an issue. Perhaps you no longer carry spare Zip Tites, and a broken one automatically means it is time for a new helmet (in which case I suggest you no longer carry Trek helmets, because this part breaks frequently). But that is not what I was told. What I heard was: "your helmet is three years old, you need to replace it." After which I was told to check out the "Universal Fit Helmets" and dismissed so the person who was "helping" me could chat with her friend. With all do respect, my helmet does not need replacing, it needs a part (which one hopes will cost less than $15) and someone who is willing to sell it to me. Since you are one of the few Trek dealers in town, and the one nearest me, I was hoping to be as well served as I was last time I had this problem. I was sorely disappointed.

When to Replace Your Bike Helmet

Today I went to replace the brace in my bike helmet that had broken (for a second time). The first time I had it replaced the guy gave it to me for free. This time I was told, by people at the same store, that my helmet is too old and should be replaced.

According to the somewhat snooty mechanic who helped me a helmet should be replaced every three years because some of the plastics etc. break down. Now obviously the brace breaks down, but that's because it was poorly designed--too thin at the stress points--but the helmet itself is made out of fairly solid stuff, and has not been in any accidents.

I know the smell of horseshit, and in this instance it is the odor of a fresh dump. Clearly the call to replace a helmet every three years is brought on by the marketing departments of major manufacturers (Bell for instance). There should be no good reason that a modern helmet, designed to high standards, needs to be replaced just because of some arbitrary best before date, I mean c'mon.

I didn't tell the girl that she was feeding me a line of crap, but I looked around at the other Trek helmets and noticed that they still use the same kind of brace (although now it is a zip-trak version II), so they couldn't argue that the part was not available. I don't know what to do now. Do I cave and buy a new helmet, or stick to my principles and write a letter to the store owner and complain that his staff was selling me a line of BS. Actually, I know just what to do, I am the disclaimer after all.

From the Site Meter Files

I am fascinated by the "Site Meter" and the people who visit this site and for what. Unfortunately I haven't given people much reason to visit lately (lest they be interested in the archives), but one "recent" post has drawn a lot of traffic.

The picture I used of Carlos Santana has drawn more than a hundred hits from all over the world. "Woodstock 1969" or some variant thereof, turns out to be quite a popular search. Most people are Google Image searching, as I was when I found this shot.

Actually I just punched in Woodstock 1969 into Google image to see where I was placing in the search and came out #20 out of 48,900. This image came from another source (although specifically, I was looking for "Santana Woodstock") and now I've jumped ahead of that original shot and into a first page finish on Google Image. That's just crazy. (The Hendrix picture featured here finished 4th).

Only five of the last 20 visits from Winnipeg. There have been seven from the U.S., two unknowns, one more each from Canada, Germany, Mexico, Spain, France and Australia. Damn, I gotta get some Google-vertising up!

In honour of a wedding

I was totally inspired by the wedding of Grant and Alice yesterday. It was a beautiful ceremony, and a hell of a party for two fabulous people that I am lucky to have as friends. It left me feeling all romantic this morning so I dabbled in some poetry by making revisions to an older piece from a journal. Here is the result:

You are the one I love
the one I dream of.
No other soul can fulfill me
the way you can.
Others have been loved by me
but never have they lived in me.

You inhabit all of me
your smell, your eyes, your laughter.
You are every song I sing with feeling
the star of my wildest imaginings.
You are cinnamon sunshine and curry moon-glow
I want to taste every part of you.

Oh how I wonder what it would be like
to kiss your lips every day and night.
I have tried so hard to drown how I feel in beer
or chase it off in the pursuit of other women.
But it always boomerangs back to you
the sweetest, sexiest girl I have ever known.

Would You Trust This Face?

I got a call from Passport Canada the yesterday questioning the authority of my Driver's License Photo. To be fair, I can see how my dark hair and beard may look somewhat jihadish but it's a government issued document for god sakes. Earlier in the day they called my guarantor with what I assume was a similar line of questioning. The word of this mostly respected and almost entirely moral character (who will occasionally partake in highly immoral activities such as high-speed boat jousting during our annual fishing trip) was obviously not authoritative enough for Passport Canada, and so they had to call me and ask me if I had ever dared cover such a handsome face with an unruly beard.

"Yes," I told them, "there was a time when I was convinced that I wanted a hippie chick, and only a hippie chick. So I grew my beard and bathed a little less than was my previous custom. However realizing my folly (and the fact that I like women who smell good) I eventually shaved it off and have been far happier (and luckier) since." This answer seemed wholly satisfactory to the inquisitor and she promised I'd have my Passport in a few weeks. Grand Forks here I come!

Giving the Bank Shit, Again! (Happy Earth Day)

An email I sent to my bank today, having reached the end of my patience with the amount of advertising I receive with my monthly Visa bill.

This is just a note to let you know that although I have signed up for "paperless record keeping" I still receive a monthly bill for my Visa. Perhaps this is a legal requirement, but I must say that I object to the amount of advertising that comes with my monthly bill and the wastefulness of this unwanted annoyance.

This month's bill included a "Save on long distance..." sales letter, one of many such I have received since signing up for your Visa. I have never shown the tiniest bit of interest in an offer of this sort, and quite frankly, I never will, yet I continue to be pestered.

The other side of this page was blank and yet you included another piece of two-sided preprinted paper to tell me that someone from Lumby, BC and another person from Dartmouth, NS won some contest.

You could have published this information on the blank side of the page with the "Save on long distance" ad saving the printing costs, paper and ink that will now go into recycling without having had any effect on my motivation to purchase more things with my Visa. Better still you could have made use of the "Message Centre" in my online banking to make me aware of these things or published them in a online newsletter that I am free to sign up for or reject.

As far as I'm concerned, if someone signs up for "paperless record keeping" it is akin to putting a "no flyers" sign on one's mailbox. In other words: I do not want your advertising. If the law requires you send me a hard copy of my bill fine, but let that be all. I don't care about your Scotia Star network, most of those retailers don't exist in Manitoba anyways, and I don't care to join in any deals you are offering in conjunction with other companies. You're wasting paper and time with these pointless ads, and your are pissing off customers like myself with your thoughtlessness in the process, please stop.

Musical Thought

I’m reading a really interesting and well written article in The Walrus magazine right now about a classical musician and her (second) journey to Rwanda. She hauls around an electric keyboard and plays Bach and other classical music for various populations in Rwanda.

The author of the article at one point begins to expound on how music is a reflection of thought and can act as mirror to the ways in which we create and process meaning. By way of example she looks at the way African and Western music compare. Western music is based on resolution, it is structured like a story to create a narrative through melody and rhythm, that almost always resolves satisfactorily (or at least in keeping with the accepted scales and time signatures that define Western music.)

In contrast African music is not structured by way of resolution. It is more or less spontaneous and “organic.” There is no defined ending, no grand scheme, as one might expect in Western music. Similarly, the author postulates, our modes of thinking are structured differently.

She explores this further by taking the daily life of a woman in Kigali who pushes her bicycle up a mountain every day, rain or shine, to carry a load of goods. It is a Sisyphean task she can’t imagine enduring herself, and yet for the Rwandan woman it is a fact of daily life, and not measured in the same terms as it is in Western eyes.

I begin to understand that the reationship to time, to value, to purpose, to ourselves—Our basic existential tooling—is not a god-given inheritence but is, like music, a cultural construction. And this leaves me profoundly confused, dangling between two great fictions of existence: mine, in which there is no meaning without resolution, and hers, in which the idea of resolution has no meaning.

This speaks to the power of music to influence thought, much as it does the power of thought to influence music. I am interested in the idea that a lot of the obsessions and behaviors within our society are controlled by our culture, because we seem to place such a high value on what is inherent (and thus unchangeable) about our actions relative to what is produced by way of culture and perception. Stranger still is the possibility that revolution can really occur within art and music, and new ways of feeling and thinking are far more possible than I have realized before.

Incidentally: I was looking for a picture to go with this post and a shot of Carlos Santana came up. I immediately thought about his performance at Woodstock, which absolutely blew my mind the first time I saw it. It was so unbelievably inspired (and inspiring) to see this young group of musicians jamming out these amazing grooves (the drum solo by the kid who was 16 at the time is monumental). Talk about music that caused a revolution.

Bring Your Own Bag

Here's an article I submitted to the Free Press yesterday. Today's paper contains an article by Tom Ford on the very same subject in a very similar vein, so it seems unlikely that I will be able to collect any cash for this effort. Here it is anyways.


Although I own enough cloth shopping bags to match every outfit in my wardrobe and try to refuse plastic bags whenever they are offered—which in case you haven’t noticed is virtually every time you purchase something irregardless of quantity or size—I still have a massive cache of shopping bags, representing a wide range of retailers, under my sink. I can only swoon when I consider how many more reside in the broom closets of less fastidious people.

On April 2nd the Manitoba community of Leaf Rapids became the first in Canada to implement a radical remedy to the almost pathological way in which plastic bags are shoveled at shoppers by imposing an all out ban. Unsurprisingly, given our current penchant for environmental issues, this news has met with great interest across the country. It has even prompted the Canadian Plastics Industry Association to develop a damage-control strategy, as was evident in a recent letter published by one of its executives in Saturday’s Free Press.

The industry claims it is doing society a huge favour by providing us with so many “kitchen catchers.” If not for the zillions of light weight bags they so generously supply we’d be buying heavier gauge garbage bags which, according to their studies, will produce an even greater burden on the environment. Counter-intuitive as it sounds they actually claim that banning the wind-blown blights, which currently decorate the treetops of communities from coast to coast, will result in more plastic being sent to the dump.

Questionable industry-sponsored studies aside, this by-law is still highly contentious. The legality of imposing a ban of this sort on retailers, some lawyers have suggested, is beyond the jurisdiction of municipalities and would likely not survive a court challenge. In the context of Leaf Rapids a suit seems unlikely, especially given that the town of 500 received a donation of 5000 reusable bags from an Ontario manufacturer. But as larger communities look to enact similar legislation it becomes a very significant point.

Having government dictate how businesses can treat their patrons goes against the very nature of the free-market, and our freedom of choice. However, our compulsion to consume goes hand in hand with a sense that it is convenient, so the incentive for retailers to curtail the shopping-bag insanity simply do not exist. While environmental issues are gaining traction everywhere, retail is an industry where personal and courteous service are king. Offering a bag seems like a friendly gesture, whereas suggesting that one bring one’s own, no matter the good intentions, is offensive to many customers.

Waging war on the plastic bag pestilence that gnaws at this nation—trivial as it seems in comparison to a great many graver environmental concerns—is a worthwhile pursuit. Shopping bags swirling on the sidewalk are a powerful symbol of the obliviousness we show towards our wasteful and ecologically unsustainable patterns of consumption.

Drastic measures like banning plastic shopping bags help us question the wisdom of automatically plopping an already amply packaged item into another layer of plastic for the sake of convenience. If we had a few dozen less “kitchen catchers” on hand and actually ran out occasionally we might take time to consider how much trash our lifestyles produce. Perhaps, if there were fewer bags to carry all our purchases home, we might even be tempted to bring home less stuff.

Personally, I look forward to the day when I don’t have to say: “No thanks, I’ve got my own bag,” before the first item is even scanned, in order stay a clerk’s robotic impulse to bag.

The Babe

Just a little illustration I did with my stylus when I was in the mood to paint.

My E-Portfolio

About two weeks ago I put together an electronic portfolio for a job I was applying for. I never did get a call-back, but it's still up there. So take a look at if you want, and then let me know (back here at the Disclaimer) if there is something I should do to make it a lot better. Also, if you know someone who's looking for a guy, send 'em to my page. You know I would do the same for you.

http://rkinrade-eportfolio.blogspot.com/

Semantic Assult

Recently I had a war of words with my good friend Sky over the difference between a company and an association. This was fueled by a post on the ALFA blog Sky added which referenced a vote for America's most hated company. The winner of this informal poll was the Recording Industry Association of America. I argued that the RIAA could not be seen as a company whereas Sky posited that there is little difference between what I define as a company, and the work of the RIAA. Read the entire post here, and let me know what you think.

The Spam Heard Around the World

A while back I posted a bit of junk email regarding the UK Lotteries International Prize, an obvious scam which I thought was at least novel and a bit amusing. Turns out this has become the most popular search leading into my blog since I posted it.

As my long-time readers know I tend to keep tabs on who's visiting by regularly checking on my site-meter (or spy-meter as I like to call it). Well turns out a whole lot of other curious souls out there got this email and were interested on finding out more. I've gotten hits from 4 separate Nordic nations (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland) several of the United States, France and "Serbia and Montenegro" (sic). Most of the searches involved the phone number, some of them the name of the contest. I too Googled a bunch of the information from this particular e-mail, not because I thought it was legit (okay, maybe I hoped it was just for a few seconds) but mostly to see if anyone had reported it as a scam. What a bizarre world we live in where someone can send you a piece of junk mail and you can post it, only to have people from all over the world visit you to see what you've written about it.

Also from the spy-meter files, another topic of interest lately has been a picture of a donkey that I used as an illustration for a piece I wrote in January of 2006. For some reason this picture came up in four separate searches from Spain, South Africa and the U.K. within a couple of days of each other—having never been, as far as I know, queried before. How weird is that?

Finally someone from Toronto today searched "Steve Demmings Idiot" and came across a letter I wrote condemning Mr. Demmings editorial in the Free Press last year that bemoaned Manitoba's missing the boat with respect to becoming a world-class call-shop haven. He or she wrote a lengthy comment on Mr. Demmings who has since become a consultant for the city of Thunder Bay. Since I doubt anyone will ever happen across that letter by accident I will publish the comment below. (Here's the link if you want to refresh your memory about what I wrote.)

After 'poisoning the well' in Manitoba in his Winnipeg Free Press puff-piece entitled: Manitoba's lack of motion Province missing boat attracting high-tech jobs, in which he was highly critical of the Manitoba government, Steve Demmings has been hired as Founding CEO by the Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission (CEDC). His solution to the ailing Thunder Bay Economy: Low-Paying Call Centre Jobs.

In a recent edition of ExportWise published by Export Development Canada, Steve Demmings was quoted as advocating low-paying call centre jobs in replacement of high-paying resource-based jobs such as those until recently plentifully available in Thunder Bay’s forestry and pulp and paper sectors.

The article entitled ‘Call Centres: Ringing in Profits’ reads as follows:

According to Site Selection Canada [Demmings’ personal consulting firm], in the last three years 166 call centres were established in Canada, creating about 50,000 jobs. Of these, 60 per cent were smaller call centres located in tier two and tier three cities, with up to 300 employees. This would indicate an emerging opportunity in the smaller centres such as Thunder Bay, Sault Saint Marie, Bathurst and Sydney.

"We have a strong infrastructure and a growing reputation for delivering quality service at an affordable price. The next step is to focus on education and training, especially in those resource-based communities where industries are dying. This is a great opportunity to build our skill level and give people meaningful jobs at decent salaries of $40,000 to $60,000 a year," says Demmings.

I don’t know what I find more reprehensible, the fact that Mr. Demmings clearly doesn’t understand the fact that call centres only pay their employee operators between $8.00/hr and $11.00/hr (i.e. $16,640 and $22,880 per year respectively based on a 40-hour work week), or the fact that notwithstanding Mr. Demmings’ palpable lack of understanding of the economic development needs of the City of Thunder Bay, that the CEDC has nonetheless hired Mr. Demmings to lead Thunder Bay out of economic decline. From 'Call Centre Salesman' to 'Chief Economic Development Officer', this bubble-blower's product is still the same old snake oil.

SOURCE: http://www.edc.ca/english/publications_10819.htm

Seems that someone out there has a bit of a bone to pick with Mr. Demmings. All I can say is that I'm glad he's someone else's problem now. Good riddance!

Stolen Cars

Here's another article I wrote for submission to the Free Press. I don't know if they will publish it, there were already two good opinions on this topic in Sunday's paper, so maybe it will just be for the exclusive pleasure of the readers of The Disclaimer.

Two separate and spectacular incidents of “joyriding” last week have me thinking a lot about the nature of these crimes and wondering what it all means.

In the first incident, involving two Cadillac Escalades, I was tempted to see a twisted form of divine justice—poor kids getting even by smashing up two luxury vehicles. I hate big ostentatious automobiles with a passion, the motivation to own such wasteful spectacles, to me, is a clear indication of a society whose values are seriously wrong-headed, The very idea of celebrating and displaying one’s status by owning an SUV worth in excess of $75,000 is utterly abhorrent to me.

So though this spree caused a host of incidental damage I was captured by the idea that these were the actions of some hopeless bunch of kids who had no access to a strong role model at home, who didn’t see the point in playing by the rules of a society that seemed dead set against them, and who ended up taking their frustrations out on a pair of well-to-do Winnipegers with repulsive taste in transportation.

Of course I had no way of knowing who these kids were, or what their circumstances might be. My reflections on the injustice of life in a city where chronic poverty is routinely ignored by latte slurping, SUV driving yuppies are not based on hard facts, they are merely unfiltered judgments I am guilty of indulging in. For all I know these could have been bored sub-urban kids encouraged by too many violent video games.

Yet I clung to the idea, in spite of the nearly universal cry for stronger youth laws and harsher punishments, that somehow we were reaping what we had sown. As if fêting one’s wealth and advantage in the form of a modern day gilded chariot was a form of hubris the gods had finally decided to punish.

Then I read about an incident involving a stolen Sunbird trying to run down a group of early morning joggers. The perpetrators of this incident were not merely reckless, they were downright pathological. Again the facts in this case are few, but one must imagine these guys were high on something, how else to explain such irrational and inhuman actions?

I was forced to reconsider my natural “soft-on-crime” instincts. This act had finally angered me and let me see the red that most of Winnipeg was already seeing. What on earth would cause someone to steal a vehicle and attempt to play chicken with a group of innocent strangers? How could the moral fibre of any human person be so thinly weaved?

The compassionate instincts of the current justice system are well and good, but because they are not re-enforced by a caring and nurturing society they end up being completely misplaced and useless. Those who cry for vengeance in the face of crimes like these—and I admit that in the second case vengeance starts to seem like an appropriate response—are often unwilling or unable to recognize their own culpability; but it is equally true that those who commit these offences do so seemingly without fear of consequence, and must be held in check somehow, lest we all learn to live in fear.

Our laws seem to view our society as being more mature than it is, which is noble, but unfortunately not a remedy for the realities we live with. We are a highly individualistic and often indifferent people who quite naturally breed defiance among the mostly forgotten multitude of dispossessed youth who have no appropriate role models, and no way of understanding or expressing their circumstances.

The lawlessness that results from our ailing social order is not a product of soft sentences, but it is clearly not helped by them. So reluctantly, I am starting to realize that punishment and long term incarceration are the only possible options. After all, rehabilitation and redemption can only be accomplished in societies that believe that humanism and social justice are more worthwhile goals than glorifying the right to drive golden carriages.

Another Internet Scam

Okay, this isn't a very original post, but I find these scam e'mails really amusing, and I'm kind of glad to finally be getting some. They are far more clever than your basic Viagra spam, and yet fake in such an obvious way so as to be funny. I don't remember entering a lottery for an international prize in the UK, so unless some kind citizen bought a ticket for me and knew my e'mail well then... it can only be bullshit. Having said all that, anyone who reads the e'mail and wants to collect my prize is more than welcome. I might reply just for fun again.

FROM: THE DESK OF THE PROMOTIONS MANAGER,
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT,

REF: UKNL/26510460037/07.
BATCH: 24/00319/IPD.

ATTENTION: Sir/Madam
RE/AWARD NOTIFICATION: FINAL NOTICE
We are pleased to inform you of the announcement
Today, 7th March 2007, of winners of the UK NATIONAL
LOTTERY, THE UNITED KINGDOM INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS
held on 1st March 2007 in Croydon,London.
You email address was attached to ticket number
023-0148-790-459, with serial number 5063-11 drew
The lucky numbers 43-11-44-37-10-43, and consequently
Won you the lottery in the 2nd category.
You have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay
Of 500,000.00 British Pounds(GBP) in cash credited to file REF
NO. UKNL/26510460037/07. This is from total prize money
Of 2,000,000.00 British Pounds(GBP) shared among the four
International winners in this category.
To file for your claim, please contact our fiduciary
Agent;

NAME: DAVID WOOD.
#247 Edgware Road,
London W2 1EY
United Kingdom.
TELEPHONE: +447031923807
+447031972486
FAX: 0044 871 715 1331
Email: davidwood79@yahoo.com.hk

Congratulations again from all our staff and thank
You for being part of our promotional lottery program.
Sincerely,
Dr Leon Ethan
Zonal Co-ordinator

Practicing What I Preach

Here is an article I submitted today after stating my duty/goal/desire (in the last entry) to write more:


Last week it was revealed that the Employment Insurance fund contained a surplus of $51 billion. There wasn’t much of a brouhaha over this astonishing number, largely because it has been accumulating for years, and perhaps because in times of prosperity no-one seems to want to think too much about unemployment.

I for one have been thinking about unemployment quite a bit lately. Every day in fact. Actually unemployment and its near relation under-employment have been ongoing themes in my life ever since I entered the workforce as a burger flipper and potato peeler nearly 20 years ago. Despite having acquired a handful of post-secondary credentials, and a record of being agreeable and reliable on the job since then, the labour market and I have never been much better off as friends. Right now we are barely on speaking terms.

In my time I have had the rare luck to collect Employment Insurance on a few occasions. Though the qualifications have grown increasingly stringent and the benefits progressively paltry, I am living proof that some people actually do make on to the rolls of EI from time to time.

Of course the selection process for this stipend is rigorous and painfully slow. It has been designed to weed out anyone who might conceivably be considering it as a holiday from a hectic life, or escape from a dismal and unfulfilling work environment. Quitters and part-time workers are not welcome, and anyone who can supplement the basic amount they receive is penalized to ensure they remain wanting while at the behest of the government dime. Judging by the current surplus Employment Insurance laws have been extremely successful in keeping all but the most determined and desperate Canadians off the rolls, even in times of need.

For those whose stars happen to align in favour of EI benefits, a whole new course of delightfully archaic procedures awaits. Despite the truckloads of money this program provides to the federal government through premiums, finding current and useful resources within the governing Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development— especially those provided by a live person—remains elusive.

The talent for gaining appropriate council while collecting or awaiting Employment Insurance is a bit like having a knack for receiving favourable advice from Delphic Oracle. Many intricate rituals, mostly involving a specific sequence of numbers entered into a telephone keypad must be followed. Enduring long periods of sacrificial waiting for the next available agent to the tragic wail of some horribly mutilated one-time pop hit are required. Failure to ask the right question can result in a confusing and often misunderstood riddle as dispensed by a distant operator. Only when one has made a genuine dedication, can they obtain an in-person prophecy from on of the mysterious sages that preside over the HRSDC alter, and even then the news can be less than auspicious.

The adoption of the Internet has added a whole new layer of complexity and non-human interaction to the mix. Now you can be thoroughly confused and disheartened in both official languages without ever stepping foot inside an HRSDC office or listening carefully to all the available options. The complete canon of baffle-gab is available through a labyrinth-like series of links, the main advantage being that it does not require the purification ritual involving screeching violins and melancholic Moogs bleating out tributes to The Beatles and CCR.

Unfortunately the majority of criticism regarding the current surplus—estimated by senior bureaucrats within the department to be approximately $36 billion beyond what is needed to ensure the stability of the program—has focused on the opinion that EI premiums should be significantly reduced in the coming Conservative budget. This may be so, but it is also true that the program as a whole needs to be redefined. Employment Insurance should be rededicated to bringing more high-skilled and motivated workers into the economy by helping Canadians overcome their struggle to find consequential careers, rather than acting as a Kafkaesque castle of indifference where one’s grave and pertinent petitions are treated like prayers being carelessly shovelled into a great beyond.

New Poem

As I typed this it started to take a shape, so I've uploaded it is an image to preserve the spacing of the original. It will probably be easier to read if you click on the picture to get a bigger image.

Get the Greens into the debate

Today I received this link from a friend. It is from the national wing of the Green Party of Canada encouraging citizens to sign a petition in favour of allowing the Greens to participate in the next round of televised pre-election debates. If you agree that the Greens ought to be invited click here to sign the petition.

The Ethics of Meat

I’ve flirted with vegetarianism in my past. At the time I stopped eating meat it was an issue of economy more so than ethics. It was just cheaper to buy beans and tofu than chicken and beef.

I have since re-embraced my inner meat-lover, even though I am barely better off now than I was in my starving post-post-secondary years. But the more I read about how animals are farmed, the less likely I am to eat certain kinds of meat.

An editorial in Sunday’s Winnipeg Free Press opined that those who call for the ethical treatment of livestock are really just acting as a front for those who wish to end all livestock production. But this seems like a ridiculous argument in light of the fact that most humans continue to eat meat, and will continue wanting to no matter what strategies fringe animal rights groups bring to bear on public opinion.

It is possible for meat eating consumers to embrace the concept of free-range eggs and open hog barns without siding with the maniacs at PETA. It is in fact a highly logical and ethical stance to take. No one should begrudge farmers their living, but at the same time everyone should concern themselves with farming practices that seem cruel and poorly conceived.

I am not a wealthy person, but I won’t blink an eye when I spend an additional eighty cents to buy eggs that are “free run.” I have this idea that an animal who is raised in a suffocating and stressful environment is in someway unhealthy, and to eat the flesh or offspring of such an animal is unhealthy too. I have no way to prove my concerns scientifically, but intuitively it makes sense to me. I’m not sure to what degree an animal is aware of it’s being, but I am certain that no living thing, especially one destined to end up in my gullet, benefits from a life in a steel cage without any chance to roam and forage.

Like all sectors of our economy the agriculture business has become obsessed with the ideas of cheaper, faster and more. But while the widget factory may benefit from a streamlined production cycle, cutting corners in food production is illogical. Developing genetically similar pigs to better suit mechanized slaughter houses and then stuffing them with antibiotics because they have no natural resistance to disease seems like a really bad idea. Likewise farmed salmon aside from being less tasty than the wild version also threaten local populations with sea lice and competition for habitat when they escape their pens. That seems like too steep a price to pay for a slightly cheaper salmon steak.

Farming advocates can dream up all the conspiracy theories they want as to who is questioning their production methods and why, but the truth is that these methods do require scrutiny. In the end it is consumers who will decide what processes are ethical enough to support, and which need to be amended or abandoned altogether. However in order to make these decisions we must know how our food is being produced, and the real price we are paying for cheaper meat products.

An opinion on racial profiling

Today I sent a letter to the editors of the Free Press with respect to one they had published.

Original letter:

Life in the 21st century

Re. Humiliation in the name of public safety, Feb. 4.

Perhaps Janine LeGal missed Sept. 11 a few years back. Yes, racism is ugly. Death is uglier. Once again someone is crying foul because we have the audacity to attempt to protect ourselves from "marginalized groups from certain countries" that simply want us destroyed.

It is extremely unfortunate that her friend and others are subject to this scrutiny, but how do we protect ourselves against a cult of death that has brainwashed some Muslims into thinking that we of the West are not worthy of life? It is a fact that immigration is a positive for this country, but we still have to be aware that the world is not safe or fair. I believe that LeGal's friend's inconvenience is a small price to pay so that his/her fellow fliers can get on a plane with some sense of security that they will actually get to their destination without becoming collateral damage in a senseless war of ideology.

This is life in the 21st century. Deal with it. It's not going to get easier.

My response:

Far more disturbing than the remote possibility of another 9/11 is the idea that every North American who is dark and Muslim should be subject to degradation and suspicion every time they pass airport security.

Letter writer Gary Billson opines that in the 21st century racial profiling is in the interest of public safety, however I would argue that air travel is already significantly safer, and the odds of someone commandeering a commercial aircraft for an act of terror in this post 9/11 world are as slim as they are for getting a bomb in the cargo hold after Air India.

Sensible, one might say hyper-vigilant, controls have been put in place, and every new perceived threat is met with even harsher restrictions (witness the ban on liquids). In fact it is probably more likely that one will be killed in a school shooting or a Picktonesque act of serial murder than in an air terror incident. The practice of isolating and interrogating Muslim Canadians is far more of a threat to our nation then the possibility that one of them may be planning—let alone capable of—carrying out an act of terror on a domestic flight.

9/11 was a tragedy, but it was also an anomaly. It should never be used as a justification for turning fellow citizens with a different skin colours and/or religious background into assumed enemies of the state without a lick of due process.

Rick Mercer Photo Challenge Entry

Here is an image I created for Rick Mercer's Photo Challenge today. The original picture is here. Not sure who the political figure is--perhaps someone who watches TV might inform me--but the body of the picture belongs to Iron Maiden's lead singer Bruce Dickinson.