Who the heck is Santa Clause ?

Ok. I understand this Saint Nicholes guy was a european nobleman who every christmas gave presents to the children of this town he owned and was lord of.

So how did we get from there  , to this coca cola swilling fat ugly beared old man selling everything from cars to sun tan lotion  , neither of which are likely to be of any use to someone puported to live at the north pole where there is little sun and no roads , and he already has a magical sleigh that can travel across the world in seconds.

When did this transformation happen , exactly ?

The answer is , slowly , and in gentle steps.

Jolly old Saint Nicholas lived in southwestern turkey in the 4th century. He was apparently a bishop of Myra and did a number of miracles involving sailers and children.


It should probably be noted that in the 4th century , a date had not yet been established for Christmas , or christ's birthday. Eventually it was decided to "celebrate it on dec 25" , a carefully phrased decision that hides the fact that they kept really terrible calenders at the time and no one knew when the heck the big JC had been born , that's just the day they're going to celebrate it on. However there were all these pagans they wanted to christianize  , and if they're at some big Christian festival on that date they can't be at their own pagen festival at the same time , can they ? So ..yeah , the decision of Dec 25 was made to help convert pagans , rather than out of any need for accuracy.

(actually, people picked up on the star that marked Christs birth  and , assuming it's true , there are at least three possible dates ranging from 4 years to 7 years BC . Which really shows how terrible they were at keeping time back then if they can't even get the year right. )

During a 16th century schism in the european church , the people of Holland started calling Saint Nicolos Sinter Klass, which of course , the americans corrupted into , you got it , Santa Claus.

in 1822 a biblical scholar called Clement Moore decided to write a poem , just for fun, for his children. He didn't really mean for it to get around , but it eventually was published anonymously . 

’T WAS the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that ST. NICHOLAS soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

5

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

10

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

15

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

20

“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

25

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

With the sleigh full of Toys, and St. Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

30

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,

35

And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

40

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

45

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

50

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

What a familiar looking story ?

Thomas Nast , a 19th century cartoonist , did a few cartoons of the fat guy , and added to the legend things like a workshop where toys were made and a book that seriously violated the privacy of the children of the world by detailing their names and whether they were naughty or nice.

in the 20th century the Coca Cola company is commonly cited as flooding America with ads of the fat man , usually drinking their product as he went about his business of inappropriately entering peoples houses and violating their privacy by keeping black lists that are quite frankly illegal in most countries.

After the Coca Cola company openned the flood gates, it just became good business to use this image painted in 1921 by Norman Rockwell to try and sell anything that wasn't nailed down.

To this day the Catholic church bemoans how the true message of christmas was lost in the noise of this Santa Claus figure , while conveniently forgetting that the very selection of dec 25 was used not to teach anyone accurate history , but to forward the cause of stamping out pagans. They generally ignore any suggestion that they are pimping out their faith for gain by pointing out that the local hardware store is pimping out a story they know to be false just to sell a few extra products. At least their version is based on truth , even if it got lost in the babble of 20 centuries of history.

So remember. Drink Coca Cola. It's Santa's favorite. Though I'm not sure what a 4th century Christian Saint from southern Turkey would have to say about that. 

And for all those nay sayers who still don't believe. I point to that unquestioned Bastion of Truth in Journalism, the new york times. 

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Report from the front : the shooting of 20 children

Maple Leaf Rag , our transplanted Canadian now living in texas , gives us his views on gun control and violence and the recent shooting of 20 children down there and what he thinks is causing it all. Since he actually lives down there every day , rather than just reading a few newspaper articals like the rest of us, I thought his opinion might be worth more than mine.

I remember you once asked me to give you some Canadian views of life in America.  Here's my view on America's reaction to the horrible massacre of little school kids in Connecticut by a mentally ill 20 year old who used powerful semiautomatic weapons.

First thing you need to understand is how incredibly polarized between Left & Right America is.  The Left and Right have moved to very far extremes and there is NO middle ground.  Each side dismisses out of hand everything the other says and insists that their way is the only way.  A President from one side gets in for a few years and undoes or tries to undo what the other party did.  Repeat every 4 to 8 years ad infinitum, and the two sides never work together. 

I don't know if it is that apparent from Canada's viewpoint, but I think if ranked on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being total peace and harmony and 10 being outright Civil War, the USA would sit at around 6.5 to 7 now.

About this mass murder (and the many many similar massacres in recent years), the Left insists it is entirely due to readily available guns and wants strict controls on them.  Good idea in theory as far as I am concerned, but there are so many guns and real gun fanatics in the USA I don't know how they would ever implement it).  The Right insists it is entirely due to lax morals, poor parenting and lax mental health laws and the spread of uncensored violent entertainment, which are all also very real factors.  Anyone with common sense would recognize that all these factors work together to promote these mass killing sprees. 

The Left Wing's leftover Hippie sacred cows of relative morality, "revolutionary" Baby Boom era lax parenting styles, lenience to criminals, the "rights" of mental patients to refuse treatment, refusing to accept media censorship, all these create the spoiled, desensitized, deranged young killer, who, upon hitting the hard brick wall of adulthood where trophies and awards are no longer given out just for showing up, decides he hates his life where he is not the star of his own reality show, and wants to take his toys and go home in the most outrageously violent manner possible.  Then, the Right Wing's pigheaded obsessive insistence that every American has the God Given Right to own high capacity military style firearms with little or no obstacles to obtaining them, enables the killers.

So both sides contribute majorly to the problem and utterly refuse to accept that their side has any guilt whatsoever.  I made a couple of posts on Yahoo News about how ridiculous this situation was and people from both camps immediately leaped down my throat.  Lefties called me a fascist, Righties called me a commie.  I call me sensible.

America's extreme political polarity has basically crippled its power to make any positive changes in its very sick society.  America will shout and rant and rave about doing something about this horrifying problem of mass killings, but nothing effective will ever come of it.

The Credit Card Scam

Article = none , personal experience


Here's how the scam works.

You work hard, you get a job , you're financially responsible , you get a credit card.

You're girlfriend wants to go to the casino and demands money off you , or she'll withhold sex. She knows you have a credit card , she knows you have it.

Your brother , every now and then , very subtly , asks you "So how much you have on that credit card ?" He's already twice borrowed money and never paid it back.

Your employer at your two bit company that only has three people decides that you can wait for your paycheck , because you have a credit card and can get by, the other employe doesn't , and can't wait.

and on , and on , and on it goes.

Next thing you know , you're 10 grand in debt , and you literally have nothing to show for it. No new car, no fully paid off computer , nothing. Everyone and the dog owes you thousands of dollars that you know you'll never collect on , but the bank fully expects to collect from you. And now it's time for the whole bankruptcy / garnashee of salaries thing.

And now all your friends and relatives are ticked at you because you leant them money when you were in trouble before , why arn't you lending them anything now ?

And your bank sends you to a credit counciling session that basically tells you "Pay us every single dime you owe us, including the 150$ / month interest that you can't actually afford. Beg, borrow, steal if you have to , just not from our bank. And if you owe anyone else money , pay us first because we paid to hold this credit counciling session and you owe us. "

Don't get a credit card. Especially not "Just in case" .

Don't tell anyone how much you have in the bank. Put money in a savings account and if anyone asks, you live paycheck to paycheck , and always gripe how you never have any money just before the next pay check.

It's none of their business, and them knowing it just opens the door to endless requests for money , and fights.

And if you can't tell anyone that you have no money , then don't bother saving a dime , because you'll never get to spend any of it on yourself. 

And todays privacy violation is ... Stalker Apps

'Stalking apps' could be banned in US

 

 It would also outlaw apps from collecting or sharing location data without the consent of the owner.

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"But right now, companies - some legitimate, some sleazy - are collecting your or your child's location and selling it to ad companies or who knows who else." 

 

The joy of it all. Your phone that you paid probably hundreds of dollars for (doesn't work on cheapie phones that can't run apps !) is probably spying on you. And your kid. Sometimes just for commercial gain (spamming you with ads) , and sometimes because your ex boyfriend / girlfriend is stalking you. 

Fun fun fun. 

 Don't you love modern technology ? It's no longer big brother you must panic over. It's now your ex's and your over bearing mother or father as well. 

 

  

Report from The Front : Texas Health Care

I asked Maple Leaf Rag how health care was in xx xxx ,  Texas, where he lived. And boy , did he have a few words to share.

I thought of some more aspects of the US medical system that you might find interesting, and that I have not heard discussed elsewhere.  These are my personal observations.

Whenever I got sick in Canada and decided I needed to see a doctor, I went in, the doc found out what was wrong, treated me, I got better and that was that.  OHIP paid my bill and I was happy.  On the other hand, when my cat, Wizard got diabetes when she was 15 years old, I took her in to the Vet, and as there is no OHIP plan for pets, and everything was coming out of my own pocket, the vet tried really hard to scare me and encouraged me to have them do some $2000 dollar procedure on Wizard or she would basically be dead within a week.  When I told them that I was completely unable to pay that kind of money and had tears in my eyes thinking that I would have to have her euthanized, the veterinary assistant took pity on me and mentioned as an afterthought that I could just start buying insulin and needles at the drugstore for 20 or 30 bucks a month and inject her 2 times a day.  I tried it and it worked.  She lived 5 more years.

American doctors operate on a profit basis much like Canadian veterinarians.  The more you see them, the more you pay them, the richer they get and as there is no OHIP to deny unnecessary procedures, they encourage all kinds of ridiculous tests, scans, & endless return visits.  They scare you with all kinds of hypotheses and frightening possibilities and drop frightening little comments and concerned looks and basically try to hook you like a fish and milk you like a cash cow.  You see their waiting rooms full of the same frightened patients week after week, going in for probably unnecessary tests and coming out with huge bags of pill bottles.  I got sucked into this a few years ago when I got a case of bronchitis that would not go away for months.  At my doctor it was "come back next week, take more pills, get more chest x rays, it's PROBABLY not cancer, etc. etc."  Finally, I took some different antibiotics my mother in law had gotten over the counter in Mexico and the bronchitis went away in a week.  Drugstores here have huge LED signs outside advertising vaccines against all kinds of diseases, from meningitis, to flu, to shingles.  Scary medical billboards flank the highways.  The USA is host to a culture of fear.  Fear of sickness, fear of crime, fear of terrorists, fear of social ostracism, fear of damnation, you name it, and it is all calculated to make you spend your money, whether on doctors, guns, deodorant, church tithes or whatever.

One of my xxxx sons has to see a shrink ever month or so.  His former doctor was a shameless pill pusher.  His waiting room was full of  people who were essentially junkies, asking the receptionist every 5 minutes when he would see them so they could get their allotment of the happy pills he threw around like Willie Wonka at the chocolate factory.  He gave my son these pills that seemed to work at first.  But after a few weeks, however, the kid started losing weight and displaying psychotic symptoms like cutting off all his hair and attacking his brother in his sleep.  He started to look like a skeletal Auschwitz inmate.   I checked into the pills online and it turns out the doctor had prescribed him what was basically speed, which apparently works on hyperactive kids, but NOT on xxxxxxx.  We got him to another doctor who seems a LITTLE more ethical.

Also, as it is all profit based, their offices and waiting rooms have this cheap, unprofessional appearance in many cases, because they skimp on anything peripheral to the operation of scamming patients.  I've been in waiting rooms that felt more like someone's den.  Better than Mexico though...  I once had a root canal and a crown done by a lady dentist down in Juarez who had her 2 year old daughter on her lap screaming PEE-PEE!  PEE-PEE!  PEE-PEE! in my ear for the whole time and her office looked about as sanitary as a bachelor's kitchen.  But then again, that only cost me $70 dollars.

A lot of American institutions seem to be run by the seat of the pants.  I blame the capitalistic profit-based mindset for this.  Very inefficient, very wasteful, very foolish due to poor decisions and trying to stretch the buck.  The xxxxx xxxxx that employs me, for example.  Several years ago they bought half a million bucks worth of some kind of hand-held data organizer and matching software for use by the xxxxxxx simply because they were on sale.  When they distributed them, they found that these things were totally unsuitable for their needs.  Whoops!  No returns on sale items.  Into the  warehouse they went, where they sit like the Lost Ark of the Covenant on a dusty wooden skid, gathering dust and getting more and more obsolete every day.  Not to mention all the corruption, misappropriation of funds etc. in local government.  In xx xxx,  it is commonplace for the FBI and Texas Rangers to step in and raid municipal government offices and local police departments in order  to arrest politicians and cops for corruption.  Recently, a County Commissioner was arrested for smuggling  thousands of pounds of pot from Mexico to northern cities.  I don't know if all this corruption is a result of being tied so closely to the thoroughly corrupt culture of our Mexican neighbors or if it is endemic to the entire US, but it is pretty much a Mickey Mouse outfit around here as far as local Government goes. 

 Ok. so ... my dreams of imigrating to the states are shattered. How about yours ?

Doctors that push pills rather than cure diseases ? Months with Bronchitis until you looked it up and handled it yourself ?

I have a real sickness (Chrones Disease) which means if I was an American I would either be hooked on narcotics by now  , or simply dead from endless misdiagnosis designed to enrich the doctor rather than cure disease.

If you do a better job looking stuff up on the internet than seeing the doctor ... something is wrong with that system.

For Maple Leaf Rag ...

For Maple Leaf Rag. A reminder of all that you left when you decided to fly south to warmer climes ...

Guard Rails

See the above picture ? Just a road, with guard rails right ?

I walked by and there were construction workers puting up guide wires and doing measurements, and no guard rails.

An hour and a half later , I walk back , and they just finishing up. And there were guard rails. Sunk into the ground, ready and waiting to be crashed into , the works.

An hour and a half ? Dang that was fast. I figured such a thing took days, not 90 minutes.

Weird.

This Week's Privacy Violations

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20155192

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15004063

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20461752

So , what do we have today to complain about in the way of personal privacy.

I see a school down in texas has decided to put sticky chips on the skin of pupils and track their every move on school property. Probably so they can't just take it off and hand it to a friend to "check in" for them when they're not actually there.

Has anyone considered that such things can be hacked, and your child can be tracked everywhere , by , say , the school bully, and thence become a target of repeated bullying with no place to hide ? I can just see hackers selling you subscriptions to the local weaklings location any time you like on your cell phone for a few bucks a month , and the bullies can ambush him any time they like.

Another brain dead ad for the "Internet of Things" (IoT) , whereby they put a radio chip in your jeans and now you can be tracked anywhere. Does anyone really want to sign up for that ? No ? What if they put it in every piece of clothing and there is no clothing for sale with out it ?

What if your job only hires you if you have your "Things" registered so they can track your every move , everywhere ? Think I'm crazy ? How many of you get asked in your job interviews for your face book address (and possibly password ) ? That many eh ? And you obviously don't get the job if you decline , am I right ?

Speaking of facebook , there's an article out there about how businesses should "carefully" go through applicants face book pages to determine if they are suitable employee's or not. Their only worry ? You might fake your public profile and make yourself look like a good candidate rather than tell the truth. Those who tell the truth about that night five years ago when you got really drunk and the police arrested you for piddling on the police cruiser while the cop was still inside ? Yeah , ever wonder why no one will hire you ?

I have a friend who thinks the whole world is spying on him. He is not far wrong. The whole world is spying on all of us. And it ticks me off that it's for the stupidest of reasons. It's because they think I might have a nickle in my pocket , and they want a slice of the action. They want to know my exact location not because of a vast government conspiracy , but because if I happen to be passing a pizza joint they want to send me a text message full of advertising for that place.

We are being robbed of our privacy. And it's for the dumbest of reasons you can imagine. And that is just so wrong.

Goodbye Wireless Toaster , Part Deux !

After spending the last month trying to convince me to move into the same building as himself, wireless toaster has now sent me a nasty email saying that he will call the police for stalking if I do so.

This is on top of endlessly talking about conspiracy theories about how the government is out to get him. And its the second time he pulled this stunt, the first time he accused me of working for the imaginary government conspiracy in his mind , but months later he came back and it was all a terrible misunderstanding.

I just looked up paranoid schizophrenia at the Mayoclinic.com . He's batting seven out of 9 symptoms.

Signs and symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia may include:
• * Auditory hallucinations, such as hearing voices - pass
• * Delusions, such as believing a co-worker wants to poison you - yes ..government out to get him does count
• * Anxiety - always
• * Anger - wants to kill our friend maple leaf rag
• * Emotional distance - he always was
• * Violence - did I mention he wants to kill someone ?
• * Argumentativeness - oh he will argue for hours
• * Self-important or condescending manner - More so that most of us yes, he thinks he's important enough for the government to be after him because he knows stuff , he can get them into trouble (which ,he already tried, and it got no where)
• * Suicidal thoughts and behavior - never asked.

Yeah , "Life Long Condition" (ie: there is no cure) and sooner or later he's going to either get tired of waiting for the imaginary government conspiracy to pick him up and start going after people ,or he's going to off himself.

And everyone around him is a government agent. Aha.

Goodbye , Wireless. Your condition has no cure it seems. Plus from the way you go on and on and on about the government secretly testing LSD on people , you took some didn't you ? The damage LSD does to your brain is also permanent , for the rest of your life.

I am getting old , and I don't have the ability to deal with a potentially violent person who might decide to stab me and then stand over my corpse laughing manically and shouting "He thought he fooled me ! But I know the Truth !" .

OK , maybe a little too much movie drama in that image. But you get the idea. I can't deal with him and no one can cure him. It's time to say goodbye.

I hate Wind

So ,here I am at the library , no internet again.

I hate wind. (my phone and internet data stick provider )

I gave them $67.80 on the 30th (yes ,I just looked that up , I really don't have a photographic memory) . This covers 25$ for my phone , and 35$ for their unlimited plan. And 8.50$ I presume to be tax.

So why is it on the 15th I'm staring at a web page that says your account is suspended add more money ?

so I phone wind up , and I get this long sad story about how your data stick the end of the billing cycle is the 15th and they want money.

but I just gave you 35$ on the 30th , thats only 15 days ago. I wnat to speak to your supervisor.

No dice. The supervisor demands 25$ , something about a minimum balance yadda yadda yadda. I tell her that the fact that her accounting system is broken and is eating my money is not an acceptable excuse and hang up on her.

I mean sheesh, they took 35$ for 15 days service, now they want another 25$ ... thats 60$ a month ! I can't afford that.

And these monkeys can't keep their stories straight , the last one told me I was good to the 30th thanks for your 35$ and now this one is saying more money , and it's all your mistake for not reading our minds and following our rules which we don't tell anyone about and don't publish anywhere give us more money.

so ... here i am at the library with no internet access.

And the internet access i did have was all crappy and you couldn't play online games on it anyways , my primary use for it.

I aint paying 60$ / month for a service that cuts out every 5 minutes and doesn't let me play online games. I will soldier on without it and use the money for something else.

On another note...the first time I walked all the way to the library i was totally beat. This time it was just a pleasant walk. I think I might be getting used to this whole early retirement disability business.

Except for the part where i can't eat anythign until i get back home. Travelling the world on an empty stomache to avoid ... unmentionables isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Valve's Linux video games plan described as 'unethical'

Article

To sumerize : Everything on Linux should be free ,and you should provide source code as well for it all , selling commercial products on Linux is an evil thing , yadda yadda yadda... . .

I have no problem buying useful commerical products and paying for them.

My problem comes from "the upgrade treadmill" that microsoft wants everyone on. Just how useful is the latest microsoft office compared to the one issued 20 years ago ?

You know ,they had perfectly usable spread sheets even in the 90's , and 80's, and the fancy new ones really don't add much. So why are people trying to charge me a couple of hundred dollars for something someone else wrote twenty or thirty years ago ?

And why am I forced, kicking and screaming , against my will , to upgrade to a new operating system when the old one is doing it's job just fine ? Why am I forced to buy a new computer with all new software , and it doesn't do anything any better than the old stuff ever did ?

That is what I have a serious gripe over.

I am happy to kick out 50$ for a new game.

I'm not too happy to have to kick out 2000$ every 3 years for a new computer and software that doesn't do anything the old one didn't do just as well.

Library internet

So here I sit in the Library , literally a one hour walk from home. And it's a hot spot.

Yep. Brought my lap top along and everything, and all you do is provide your library card number and your pin number for it and off you go.

No place to plug the thing in though , so I guess I have a two hour limit. And after a one hour walk to get here, I'm in no hurry to head off home right away. Think I'll stay a while and look around.

The cheap 15$ internet plan I was on was only good for one gigabyte. I watched an episode of a TV show on the internet , using that up. Thought they'd just slow me down , like they do for other plans but nope. The 15$ plan they cut you off until you give them more money. Well...end of the month.

McDonalds has a hot spot too, no password or anything required. I can just see me sneaking around back late at night , illicit lap top in my back pack , pulling it out at the back of the building when no one is looking and getting a little free surfing done , checking my email , before I skulk off into the darkness like some criminal. Hilarious.

Action Housing got wireless toaster a house within four years , which sound really terrible. But the last three months he was living in a mens shelter, so i think the mens shelter thing sped that up a lot. I'm going to apply in a day or two , maybe my application for disability will speed things up as well. Maybe even just being on Ontario Works will speed things up and I'll get something even if disability turns me down.

Wireless toaster lives in such a building and it's full of people on disability. He says it's really easy to get on , some people just get on because they drink too much. Not sure if I should believe him though.

Right now he's on a high because he's been writing a lot of stuff in his blog about how evil the chinese are and how they're spying on us and stuff, and the FBI down in the states just confirmed it all. Said Huawei , a company that is based out of china , has been caught spying and putting in back doors in communications equipment they've been selling , and trying to bid on contracts to build secure networks for the united states when those secure networks are supposed to be fighting off the chinese ... ha ha ha thats pretty funny.

Wireless Toaster is a wierd one all right. Most of his rants sound pretty paranoid, and then stuff like this happens and it looks like he was right on the money. Odd how things work out.

Ontario works Oct 3 - Cooking and Settling in for the long run

It's October 3rd. Dell will be looking in my old bank account for the payment for their computer. It isn't there. In a day or two they'll be phoning my old place, where my woman (ex-woman) will tell them I don't live there anymore she doesn't know where I live now.

They'll probably send it off to collections immediately. And put me on a black list to never buy their equipment again.

I walked to the mall again. Needed some shampoo. I couldn't beleive I was gone two hours. I just walked there and hung around a bit seeing what was on sale , and walked back.

It's wierd looking at your life and thinking you'll never work again. I joke to my friends that my schedule is pretty clear for the next thirty years or so.

I moved 50$ to my savings account. I figure over four years that will get me 2400$. Thats enough for a brand new computer every four years, plus if anything big breaks (microwave, rice cooker, electic razer , etc) I can just go out and get another immediately.

I am settling in for the long run here. I walked to the mall twice today. Probably took two hours the first time as well. I wonder how long I'm going to stay an overweight type two diabetic at this rate.

Cooking

--- ---

There's an "XSCargo" store in the neibourhood. I bought a rice cooker there, since my woman is a philipino and taught me how to use them. It's pretty simple really. One cup of rice. Two cups of water. Press the button , come back in 20 min. When the light says "Cook" , it's still cooking. When the light says "Warm" , it's keeping it warm. There arn't any other lights.

Rice is a "base" , in Philipino cooking. That is to say , you don't just cook a side order of rice like you do in the west. You cook up a larger amount of rice as the main dish , and you throw ...whatever's in the fridge , into the mix.

I fried up two eggs and a small "steakette" (looked like a hamberger to me !) chopped it up , threw it on the rice.

Two of those little cointainers that come with the rice cooker was too much. I left half in the pot, and even what I did eat , I'm still not hungry eight ours later.

EDIT: forgot to mention. Why the big deal about rice ? An 8kg bag of rice costs 12$ or so and will feed me AND my woman for 2 weeks. And there was some left over in the bottom. And we're both heavy rice eaters. Eating rice is cheap cheap CHEAP ! And you're never hungry.

Haircut

--- ---

In my time as an online gamer , I have made many many charactars , and I have tried the widest variety of hair styles you can imagine. And I have decided that , in real life, I will do the "goatee and pony tail" thing. I mean if Sean connery can do it , so can I. Besides, you save a ton on hair cuts. I mean you just look in the mirror , hey , the pony tail is longer than six inches , snip snip , no skill required, no paying a barber 20 bucks a month. An electric razer and a pair of scissors and you're good to go.

I'm poor, I have better things to spend 20$ a month on.

And I don't have to work. No one holds me to any uniform code. So why not ?

Internet

--- ----

My data stick (basically it hooks into the cell phone network and gives you internet that way) sucks. I'll never be able to play online games with it. I finally got a 10$ extension usb cable (at XSCargo..probably triple that anywhere else) and stuck the data stick way way up near the ceiling with a little duck tape, and I got 4 bars reception. And it cuts out on me every few minutes.

I spend a couple of hours trying in vain to play an online game, or even to watch a TV episode online. Kept cutting out , and the tv episode made you start all the way over at the beginning , and wouldn't let you skip the commericals, and by the time you got to part 5 of the episode (each part was 5-10 min long) , even skipping over the show to the next commerical , it cut out again.

I called up my provider and downgraded my internet to the lowest plan on that stick.

I tried talking to my brother about getting a real modem in at my expense. Plug it into the phone line ? you could see the panic in his eyes and in his wifes. Absolutely refused. But it will be in my name and ... no dice.

Makes me wonder who took them for a ride.

It was obviously a hot button issue for them , so I decided to let it slide. I would find other ways to pass the time . And my cheap , intermittant data stick would still be enough to check mail and look the occasional thing up.

The Long Run

--- ---- ---

I am debating how to spend my suddenly copius amounts of time. Learning french is a possibility , I've wanted to do that all my life. But I wanted to do it to help me get a job , and suddenly that is no longer a neccessity. Then again , even on disability , you're allowed to work a little bit, and being bilingual would certainly help me get a little extra cash here and there. Or maybe I'll get enough from disability that I won't care and won't even try to work ever again. I've heard estimates from 350$ / month + rent to 500$ / month + rent, the +rent part being where you move into social housing and Disability pays for it all. If I get five hundred, they can go whistle , I'll never even try and work again in my life.

Piano lessons are another possibility. I have an electric piano and the three main lesson books already , I just never had time to go through them. (Actually I went through all the way to the end once, when I was much younger many many years ago , and then forgot it all)

Or art lessons. I got a book on pencil drawing , and 500 sheets of el-cheapo no name brand blank printer paper is less than $6 at the local super market. (Weird place ...it sells food , clothing, electronics, even has a pharmacy at the back ... more of an everything store than a grocery store)

With the money I'm not spending on a high end internet connection (25$) I can probably buy a cheap second hand stand alone computer game every month.

I think I want a large bachelor pad at some social housing place. A one bedroom is simply too large, and larger places mean more mess you eventually have to clean up. Besides. I have two big shelving units that act as room dividers , so that bachelor pad is going to get chopped up into a (tiny) unofficial one bedroom anyways. And I saw a place that sells similar units relatively cheaply , in case I need more.

And if one of my relatives gets into trouble there will always be a couch to sleep on , or a spot on the floor at minimum. We're all getting older arn't we ? Sister's a type I diabetic and her feet are already numb soon she won't be able to walk , other sister in a car accident , brother's already had one heart attack. I forsee a string of people partaking of my couch in the next few years as they shift out of working for a living and onto disability or retirement.

Makes me wonder where I can get a cheap couch with a pull out bed in it.

So many decisions.

Well there's no hurry. I have time to think about these things.

Ontario Works oct 1

To all my friends and family , stop worrying.
I am now at my brothers place , and it's oct first so thats when Ontario Works figured they were going to start paying me for ,so I'm not breaking any rules.
Life is ok , free washer / dryer , I only had to abandon half my worldly possessions (it's amazing what you're willing to part with when you realize you are the one going to be lifting and moving it)

internet's a bit flakey , I have to take my lap top and come upstairs , but otherwise life is fine.

Post again shortly when I have somethign more to say than "I'm fine"

ontario works o

Morsi: Egypt will not be dictated by US rules

Article

US unpopular in region because of its 'very clear' biased position towards Israel, Egypt's president tells New York Times.

 

Morsi criticized U.S. dealings with the Arab world, saying it is not possible to judge Egyptian behaviour and decision-making by American cultural standards. He said Washington earned ill will in the region in the past by backing dictators and taking "a very clear" biased approach against the Palestinians and for Israel.
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"Successive American administrations essentially purchased with American taxpayer money the dislike, if not the hatred, of the peoples of the region," he told the paper in the interview published late Saturday, drawing a clear distinction between the American government and the American people.


 Reading this article is fascinating. The realization that this person who is the president of a nation has very different thought processes than we do.  It is an unquestioning part of his belief system that Israel is evil, and by extension anyone who helps Israel is evil. It is an unquestioning part of his belief that if you're not a muslim , you are scum. And he is now tired of treating scum as if they were real people. He's sick of it ,and he's not going to do it any more.

Oddly enough , he's not sick and tired that his religion is broken into three major factions, and they're all at each others throats. He's not sick about his own people living in poverty under one corrupt regime after another, when the solution (democracy) is staring him right in the face.

And he's not sick and tired that this religion he is defending meets the definition of Evil. It murders innocent people (it's own worshipers, wrong faction ...no matter what faction you are, you're the wrong faction to someone and you're going to get murdered by someone). It lies to it's own people. It claims Mohammad the prophet can see into the future (Hadiths , or sayings of the Prophet , that quote things that could not possibly have been known during his life span) despite the fact that Mohammad states in his Koran he is just a man when he isn't possessed by the spirit of the angel Gabriel.  That he can't even read and write without Gabriel possessing him (thus all Hadiths , which were never written down by Mohammad , are highly suspect).

Even if you accept their viewpoint that they need not keep faith with the faithless, that only Islamics count, they've been murdering and going to war with each other for decades.

But he's not sick of that.

He's only sick of it , when someone thinks they shouldn't step on their turf, when someone thinks you can piddle in your own pond and do whatever you like over there , but don't bring that mess over here.

That would be the only time he's sick of it.

Of course, he cannot see his own hypocrisy. If Hypocrites could see , they wouldn't be Hypocrites after all.

 

Aurora shootings: Survivors sue owners over security

Article

Three people injured in the Colorado theatre massacre in June are suing the cinema owners over inadequate security.

Cinemark USA "failed to provide for the safety and security of its theatre and its patrons," the lawsuit says.
Measures "would likely have prevented or deterred the gunman from accomplishing his planned assault on the theatre's patrons", it says.


 Some minimum wage employee (ha ! like a minimum wage actually exists in the USA) left a door open , is the basis of the lawsuit.

Why are they suing the theatre for some crazy gun man shooting the place up ?

Because suing the NRA wouldn't work.

Because suing every tom dick and harry that sells guns and ammo to anyone who wanders by wouldn't work.

Because the gun industry is so huge down there that they routinely spend millions covering up any reaction to someone dying because of their products, accuse you of having a political agenda, etc etc etc.

Because suing the movie theatre for one of their low paid employee's going on a smoke break might actually work , but suing anyone else wont.

Work at winning the law suit and getting money for the complaintants that is. I won't do a thing to prevent the next maniac who's decided to shoot some place up with a gun.

They say Quebec is an occupied nation of the Hells Angels. Well, I know for certain the USA is an occupied nation of the NRA. And they're not going to let go of that place no matter how many innocent people die.

There's just too much money to be made.

Outsourcing Goes Crazy

The workplace of 2025 will be wherever you want it

 

Ever wished you'd never met your boss and your colleagues were holograms?

Within less than a generation, it might be the norm.

The prospect of working with people you'll never actually meet and communicating with virtual colleagues are two of the potential scenarios identified by leading thinkers into how workplaces will evolve by 2025.

 Yadda yadda yadda , soon we'll be working from home and telecommuting everywhere. 

Where is home ? 

I will tell you. 

Home is wherever the lowest wage earners are. That means China. That means India. That means The Philippines. 

It does not mean the USA , or Canada , or most of Europe. 

This article , true as it is, isn't warning us of an incoming blessing. It's warning us of an incoming disaster. 

I remember seeing a breif ad like this from the 1930's. Capitalists would invest in manufacturing, workers would push a few buttons and mostly sit around doing nothing , items would be produced by mechanical robots, every one prospered. 

What really happened, of course, was that the workers didn't sit around doing nothing. They got fired. 

Virtual Office's are good for the Chinese. They're not good for us Canadians. The few people that have to be on the ground doing the repairs will be bossed over by cheap people from dollar a day countries. And then even that will vanish as the "on the ground" people are replaced by remote controlled robots. Remote controlled from the Phillipines. 

So how are we going to be able to afford all these services if we can't hold a job , because some guy in China , for a dollar a day  , is remote controlling a robot over the internet and has kicked us out of work ? 

We need "Protectionist" Legislation. We all do. There's a difference between letting forieners have a few of our jobs and we have a few of theirs , and letting them have all the jobs and leaving us with nothing. Thats just not going to work out.

 

Iranian university bans on women causes consternation

Article 

With the start of the new Iranian academic year, a raft of restrictions on courses open to female students has been introduced, raising questions about the rights of women to education in Iran - and the long-term impact such exclusions might have.

More than 30 universities have introduced new rules banning female students from almost 80 different degree courses.
These include a bewildering variety of subjects from engineering, nuclear physics and computer science, to English literature, archaeology and business.

 Thank you Iran for volinteering to cripple your work force.
While you have 74 million people and are trying to battle a nation with more than 300 million (the USA) , so you're already crippled, deciding to add to yourself an extra handicap of excluding women from being scientists and engineers means your population weighs in as if it were 32 million , compared to the american 300 million where females may be engineers.

In short, you have the population resource base of Canada , since you've deligated all woman to be stay at home mom's , and you're trying to take on the whole world in the name of your religion.

Truely , I am inspired by your faith and dedication.

Though perhaps not your intelligence.

Thank you kindly.

Uncle Sam is Watching You (Face Book Pictures)

Facebook: The challenges ahead for the social network

 

 

Facebook's acquisition of facial recognition software face.com is concerning from a privacy perspective for two reasons.
First, it is unclear what Facebook intends to do with the facial recognition data face.com collected. Face.com has stated that its database includes over 30 billion face prints. 
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The United States government regularly asks for copies of all photographs in which a user is tagged when it issues a warrant to Facebook. And government agencies in the States and abroad that are building out facial recognition databases have an interest in acquiring as many face images as possible.
Face.com and Facebook's combined data could become a honeypot for government if Facebook doesn't take steps to protect it properly. 


 In other words, Big Uncle Sam is watching you.
It is a trueism that if information is gathered, for even the most innocent of purposes, the Lawyers will issue supena's to get it and use it in law cases. Use it to build no fly lists , use it to deny insurance claims , use use use in a million ways you never intended when you put up that photo of Uncle Bob barfing all over the table that christmas evening when he had way waaay too much to drink last year.

Stories regularily make the news about employers demanding the password to your face book before they hire you , insurance companies turning down claims , and even just recently some guy made a cheap no-budget movie railing against islam and posted it on youtube.com and now the terrorists want to kill him and all the actors / actresses in that movie.

And what did the United States do to protect their own citizen who had exercised his rights to free speach ? They told the world his real name , tried to publish his picture (he got smart and covered it when he was arrested ) and now seeks any lame excuse at all to punish him for his "crimes" the crime of free speach , because it's inconvenient to them.

And good luck trying to get your face book account deleted . They flatly refuse to do that. You put something up , it's up forever.

My face book account has an ancient 10 year old picture of me when I had a full beard , and a few rants against what a security hazard Face Book is , and thats about it.

You wanna protest something or express any kind of radical opinion ? You wanna exercise your free speach ? Get an anonymous blog.  You want to put your photo's online for the whole world to see ? The whole world will happily miss use the information for their own gain. Don't be surprised if a dozen credit cards are openned in your name the next week , and a month later they all come knocking on your door demanding you repay them the 100 000$ you apparently blew last month on a wild shopping spree.

Kids care coming up posting their whole lives online ,and facebook and the gang are totally refusing to delete anything. And thats going to injure all of us, going to injure the next generation. And thats just not acceptable.

Ontario Works , sept 21 - Personal Message

Article = none

To my darling sister in toronto.

Stop panicking , I am not wandering the streets. I am in my current residence that I have been in for more than ten years, and I will be moving to my brothers place at the end of the month. There is no wandering the streets here ...except for my evening walk which I actually enjoy doing.

Stop panicking.

:)

Ontario Works sept 20

They mailed my health insurance card from Ontario Works (Welfare by another name) to my new address. And they wanted banking information to arrange a direct deposit.

 Guess that means I have been accepted.

Guess that means it's time to start planning my new life as a full time blogger giving my unwanted opinions on everything and the dog .

Now the only question is , how much extra do I get for having Type II Diabetes ... they never did say , they just said "a little more"

Ok. This "cute" picture I found on a lolcats site isn't actually as funny as you think it is.

Tigers eat people.

Trust me. They really do. And not just their owner. But people who come by to visit , an unexpected guest like a bill collector or salesman ... maybe you finally got a hot date ...

Tigers eat people. And you are endangering not just yourself and whoeever else is stupid enough to live with you in your tiger cage , but any random stranger just coming by to fix the plumbing as well.

If this picture is you , then you're exercising criminal stupidity. Call the pound. While you still can.

Could man linked with anti-Islam film be in trouble with the law? (+video)

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0919/Could-man-linked-with-anti-Islam-film-be-in-trouble-with-the-law-video

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man at the center of the controversy over an anti-Islam film, is on probation and has been questioned by federal officials. It is unclear whether he violated the terms of his parole, but if he did, he could face jail.

 

 

This happened in Canada.This sort of assault on peoples rights. Some students were legally protesting tuition hikes in Quebec, and so the Quebec government decided to revoke their right to peaceful assembly.  It didn't work out so well and the governing party lost the following election. 

The problem is you're taking away this guys free speach. Oh you're using the excuse he might have violated probation and stuff, but at the same time , in order to apease the Islamic's, you're making it crystal clear that you're really bowing to their pressure. 

In short , the American Government is tossing an American's right to free speach the moment it becomes inconvenient.  And that usually doesn't work out too well. You are elected to protect your people , not appease a bunch of guys that hate you and want you dead on the other side of the world. You need to do your job , or get out. 

 

 

 

 

Female U.S. war resister faces deportation today

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/09/20/kim-rivera-war-resister-deportation.html?cmp=rss

"The deportation order given to Ms. Rivera is unjust and must be challenged," Tutu wrote earlier this week in a commentary published in the Globe and Mail.
"It's in times when people are swept up in a frenzy of war that it's most important to listen to the quiet voices speaking the truth. Isn't it time we begin to redress the atrocity of this war by honouring those such as Ms. Rivera who had the courage to stand against it at such cost to themselves?"


We werent swept into war on a wave of propaganda.
The Terrorists blew up several buildings in the USA and openly cheered and identified themselves , and then threatenned to do the same for most every western nation in the world. I remember laughing because while they did mention Canada , they had placed Canada as last on the list of nations they were going to attack.

Ms. Rivera was a soldier in times of war , and instead of going off to war she fled. She fled to a country that was going off to the very same war , in fact. Which was kind of foolish since you're not going to find sympathy there.

If you're a peace activist , what are you doing joining the army ? Did you think they'd let you cut and run when the time came for you to do the job they'd spent a wad training you to do ?

I have sympathy for conscript troops. I have no sympathy for volinteers that cut out when the time to fight comes.

Egypt orders arrest of US-based Copts over film

Article

One woman and seven men, including Mr Jones, are accused of "insulting the Islamic religion, insulting the Prophet and inciting sectarian strife", according to the prosecutor's office.
It said international police agency Interpol would be notified of the warrants. A request will also be filed with US judicial authorities.
The office added that all the accused could face the death penalty if convicted.


Ok. Pausing so you can finish laughing.

Now then. I would like some warrents issued for the arrest every muslim Iman in the world for hate crimes against, well , any religion but Islam , not to be picky about it. Destroying Christian Churches. Ordering mobs to kill non muslims in various countries. Heck , these muslims don't even like each other there's like three major factions and they're all happily out there killing each other , so what the heck , lets throw Crimes against Islam into the mix as well.

And I want them all extradited to the USA , where they will be jailed with big honking black men called Bubba so they can be repeatedly sodomized over a 25 year period by their cell mates.

Are you laughing yet ? You should be. Both idea's are equilly ridiculous.

You can't enforce Islamic Law on a country that has outright rejected it. You kind of have to go to war and conquer them first before hand, and that hasn't happened yet. In fact, considering the state of the military in most middle eastern nations , that's not likely to ever happen.

Appreciate the joke. Put a smile on my face on this rainy tuesday.

Doesn't accomplish much else.
 

Hillary Clinton: Anti-Islam film 'reprehensible'

Article

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has condemned an anti-Islam video, which has sparked protests across the Middle East and North Africa, as "reprehensible."

Sometimes I wonder if there's a grand plan behind this all. And sometimes I think I'm just being paranoid. 

Case in point : Any kind of protest like this in the middle east , and the politicians here will denounce it , and the film (or other incident) that caused it. This is fairly predictable. 

And another point : Due to the terrorism , and the fact that the USA has kind of been at war with Iraq / Afghanistan for the last 10 years, anyone who even seems to support Islam might as well be named Mudd in the eyes of the US Electorate. 

Put these two points together ... if you could deliberately generate such an incident , you could cause your opponent in this election year to lose a lot of popularity , maybe even win an election you might normally lose. 

Do I have any proof ? No . It's pure supposition.  

But it's hard not to see the pattern.  

And that's my tin foil hat conspiracy theory for the day.    :)

Ontario Works sept 14

Should I actually title this Ontario Works ?
I'm not actually on Ontario Works yet, not until I move out at the end of the month.

Ran an errand on my bike to the hospital to pick up the paper work that says I have various debilitating conditions. Doctor only checked off Diabetes. Not Chrones Disease ? No , they wanted that only if I was losing so much weight (it didn't say over how long a period... I lost 25 pounds in the last 2 years does that count ? apparently not) . Well , that's understandable. Chrones disease normally occurs in the small intestine where it messes up your ability to absorb nutrition. Mine is in the large intestine where , among other fascinating topics that you don't want to discuss over dinner, it messes up the large intestines job of water absorption.

Well , such is life.

Getting better on the bike. Only rested once on the way there, and once on the way back.  Two days ago it was twice. Yesterday I couldn't bear to get on it my rear was just too sore :)

Wife decided to hit the Casino.
I have learned not to bad talk the Casino. It is her religion , trash talking it give her bad luck  and therefore it's my fault when she doesn't win. (Am I wacky or does this sound suspiciously like some kind of cult ??? ) She's ticked because she's going to have trouble making rent at the end of the month since I'm gone.

As if me staying and depending on her for everything is going to improve the matter.

She lost the money she brought , and then was angry with me on the bus home. She actually stated she came to the casino to win and solve all her problems , but since that didn't happen she was depressed. And it was all my fault.

Am I wonked for believing that if your monthly budget assumes you actually win at the casino you're doing it wrong ? Well , I can't even discuss it with her because it starts a fight because she thinks I'm giving her bad luck and causing her to lose.

and we're home again.

And I've learned to answer the question "How much money do you have" with "Not enough" and if she presses me "This money is my last. There is no replacing it. I'm sorry. "

and yes, she nicked me for 5$ because she saw I had a fiver in my wallet. And when she got home she decided not to repay me.

Love you dear , but you can be nasty sometimes.

Ontario Works - The First Three Days

Ontario Works, the Ontario name for "Welfare".

Day 1 : 

My unemployment has run out , and due to my several interesting and varied medical conditions I'm having serious trouble finding a job. I've applied for Welfare (ahem) Ontario Works, and we get the answer back today.

Disqualified.

My wife makes too much money . They don't care she's facing her second bankruptcy , or sending money home to the Philipines because she has a house there and a family she's helping out , including several (adult) children. They don't care what she's spending the money on , or that she had a sister go through Chemotheropy and we had to pay for it. She's making too much money. She should pay for my everything.

Tears. Sobbing. Mixed with demands that I pay for everything. Next months rent , grocieries, internet ..all of it. Which of course is not possible.

Day 2 : 

Now anger has set in. Now it's all my fault . I must be happy I'm now looking for another place to stay , she accuses me. Options are scarce. Looks like I'll be leaving a couple of rubber maids on my sisters porch for a year while I travel to the mens shelter and essentially lose all my worldly possessions. I'll be alive , and they'll cover medical (Ontario Works will) , but I'm guarenteed I won't like it. The shelter , by the way , doesn't give you a room. It gives you a bunk. In a communial room. There's apparently a lock up for your medical supplies, and a locker as well with your bunk. But think of it like summer camp. 100 guys in one big room. In at 9pm , kicked out by 7am to wander the city , back by 9pm .... yesh ...

A bit of calculation shows 100$ / month for a bus pass , or I could get a bicycle for 30$ at a "cycle salvage" place , they called it , down on bronson and gladstone. I get down there and the price jumps to 60$ , but it's still worth it.   2 painful hours to ride the bike home.


Day 3: 

Visit the hospital and drop off a form at the doctors office for "special diet" that might maybe get me a little more money from Ontario Works because I have Chrones Disease and Type II Diabetes.  Yes, I took my bike. Yes , it hurt my behind painfully and I stopped twice to rest there, and twice more back.

Did I mention the T-Shirt ?  I used to work for my brother , and his company used to work for another company called L****** . (yes, censored it out) . And they had a great idea they wanted us all to wear these puke green t-shirts with the L****** logo on them.  Then they found out that that would make them liable if we slipped on the floor and hurt ourselves or otherwise had an accident, and suddenly us sub-contractors who don't work directly for L****** are told not to wear the shirt. Ever.

I neatly fold this shirt up , and put it on my bicycle seat which as caused me so much pain. And I duct tape the heck out of it. You can't even see the shirt , you just see a huge pile of duct tape wound round and round and round. It's a little more comfortable now , thanks. 

Visit my brother , who's offering me a room. I'm desperate, I'll take anything. The room is not "Marketable" in that there's no door to close and lock , so you can't rent it out to anyone, but he's my brother , so I don't care.

Visit the local food bank. It opens it's doors at 7pm. I get there , after getting lost and asking for directions three times, at 7:40pm. The doors are locked and everyone's gone home, and there's nothing left but a few empty boxes marked groceries.  The place is also in the middle of a low income project with lots and lots of people and children running the streets. Obviously they lined up and emptied out the place as soon as the doors openned.  I go home with nothing.

This , it seems , is going to be quite the adventure.

VIDEO REMOVED BECAUSE I DON'T WANT SOME TERRORIST ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD SHOOTING ME :) JUST DO A SEARCH ON YOUTUBE.COM FOR "Sam Bacile"

Clips from Sam Bacile's "The Mohammad Movie"
The movie is strictly amature night. You'd swear some group of guys with a video camera and a computer made it.
The most insulting parts (to Islam) are when the actors suddenly are silenced , and a totally different voice is dubbed in to put words in their mouth. It's like they didn't even try to hide the fact they'd changed the actors lines without him knowing it.
Two things are obvious from this clip.
One : This is a really , really , terrible movie. You probably don't want to actually bother watching it. I know I didn't even bother finishing the 13 min clip.
Two : ... I don't know how to phrase this. One the one hand no effort was spared to insult Mohammad The Prophet Praise Be His Name (yes, that is the first time I said his name properly , but Sam Bacile's insults deserve a little counter balancing politeness I think ) , but on the other hand many of the points that the movie makes, in it's horrible unwatchable fashion, are actually true.
So what can you do ?
It is interesting that the only way certain things can be discussed is a direct attack on Islam. The convolutions you must go through to avoid insulting a whole religion ... that loses a lot in clarity. That hides a lot of things. When "politeness" enters the picture , too much is cast aside with a shrug and a "We don't talk about such things"
That's generally the part where someone gets upset about being muzzeled, and makes a movie like this.
This movie isn't meant to sell any tickets. It's meant to discuss the indiscussable. And failure to join the discussion means that everyone carries on the discussion anyways without you.

Sorry , Islam. But you wanted to be in the spot light, you wanted the world to see you and be aware of you and talk about you ? Be careful what you wish for.

Premier Jean Charest loses home riding of Sherbrooke

In honor of Premier Jean Charest losing his seat and possibly no longer being leader of the provincial conservatives, I would like to offer something to remember him by.

Eviction Notice

I should do this for real on someone.

Day 126

(hint ... one of them is a big cat not a zebra)

US resists control of internet passing to UN agency

Article

The US has confirmed it would resist efforts to put the internet under the control of the United Nations.

At present several non-profit US bodies oversee the net's technical specifications and domain name system.

They operate at arms-length from the US government but officially under the remit of its Department of Commerce.

The USA has clearly dropped the ball when it comes to the Internet. Microsoft dominates all , and various USA security departments demand all encryption have a back door so they can easily get in ... any data passing through the USA has to conform to US Laws, and they make dang sure all the data they can force passes through the USA ...

The best tactic is to simply start another internet , using the same technology, and deliberately exclude the USA from it. Give them no access to it , and no say in the matter, at least at the beginning when it first forms.

I'm certain a consortium of several western governments , limiting such a new system to their own countries and excluding terrorist nations and china and the like could run a fairly efficient "interweb" , as some science fiction movies have tried to rename the web. Even compartmentalizing it so you can select what countries you want to hook into and which ones you want to avoid, so you don't have to worry about chinese hackers all the time.

We clearly need to start again on this whole internet thing. The current one is far too large for it's design. Build a new one , slowly transfer over to it , and then abandon this one.

I forsee a new era , of national inter webs, and any data leaving from a national web is nicely tagged at the border saying "I came from this country" , at a level that hackers have no access to and can't manipulate. Of course I also see criminals setting up a proxy server inside one country to get around this limitation , and police chasing down those proxy servers and arresting everyone concerned with them. But forcing them to "conquer" one country at a time will put a serious crimp in their spam and porn industries anyways.

Where did all the guns come from ?

Ottawa police chief steps up fight against gangs, gun violence

Last Paragraph

Most of the guns on Ottawa’s streets are handguns — half were stolen from registered owners, the other half smuggled into the city from the United States, police said.

Some might go off on a tangent about thieves stealing the gun registry and using it to target these people , but that would not be correct. All guns in Canada are registered. So now matter how the thieves got the gun , it's a registered gun.

What is correct to say is that if you didn't have a gun , it couldn't be stolen , and there would be a lot fewer guns out there. Such a statement does make a strong argument in favor of gun control. The fewer guns out there in hands of people who don't need them (sports shooters) the better.

As for the ones smuggled into the USA , I think we need to talk to the companies making those guns and see if we can convince them to put a few ringers in with their regular gun shipments. Guns with some kind of micro sized gps tracking device , one with every other shipment kind of deal. Track those guns by satellite , find out what path they're taking into Canada , and start arresting everyone and the hot dog vender.

The Error of Islam

Article = none , personal opinion.

The Error of Islam and it's quest to conquer the world is actually very simple.

There's only one Islam. And after a 10 year war with them being in the news every day , most people are pretty familiar with it. And it's propaganda.

We're familiar with the usual Elders of Zion propaganda (no such book exists. All the muslim news sources quote from it , but they have no such book to make quotes from ... where do all the quotes come from , they're not just making them up out of thin air , are they ? )

We are now familiar with the usual claims of Israeli Occupation that follow yet another attack on Israel.

We are now familiar with endless stories of Islamic Radicals coming down out of the hills and punishing any kind of moderate Islamic for daring to try and come to a peace with the west.

We are familiar with more local stories of Iman's coming to mosques right here in Ottawa , and getting drummed out by the congregation for making up stories about Canadian troops committing various atrocities that obviously can't happen (female lead troops going out to rape villagers ? Come on ! Seriously ? )

It's a religion. And most religions , even The Catholic Church , they cannot stand the light of day. They can't stand the attention. Their every miss step exposed to the world and men that make up that religion shown to be greedy , cowardly, or just plain stupid ... No religion can stand that.

The more islam conquers all these little countries around the world , the more we have only one enemy to deal with. An enemy we are becoming intimately familiar with.

And as China has discovered in it's dealings with tiny little Taiwan , an army in running shoes, with only one gun every third soldier , isn't crossing any big rivers or straits to invade anywhere. No matter how numerous they are.

And one western soldier with a machine gun rifle and unlimited ammunition , as the west is want to equip it's troops with , is going to lay waste to a crowd of soldiers with only one rifle and a handful of bullets for every three soldiers. Iraq discovered that truth the hard way as it's troops fell , guns they'd never actually live fired in hand, or manning tanks they'd never driven before , never fired for real the main cannon before , against troops that practiced with live ammo every day for years ...

The Error of Islam is they're alone. There's only one of them. And they're spreading the same weak points everywhere. Learn to exploit those weak points, and you walk over them.

The error of The West , however is far worse. You can only back dicatorships across the world for so long before a popular uprising of some kind rises up and over throws them. No wonder the Islamics hate us. Who's the air head that came up with that plan in the first place ???? I'd like to shoot him myself and save the Islamics the effort.

Those Islamics are regular normal people. They should be on our side , not fighting us. Who screwed up and put us in this position ?