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.