I worry for iPods, and the iPeople that inhabit them.



It isn't like this is a big innovation, or anything. MP3 players have been around for a long time. When I ask iPeople about what is it that makes the iPod so special, the only thing they can ultimately come up with is the distinctive white ear-nubbins.

These 'ear-nubbins' (my own word, I am disinclined to expend the energy and time necessary to search the weeb for what they are officially called) are the kind of personal sound system that inserts directly in the ear. The result? Total blacking out of any real world aural awareness!

In the heavy traffic of downtown Toronto (well, heavy for Canada, anyway), I have seen people wearing ear-nubbins walking, on bikes, or worst of all, driving cars. (That way, they can't hear my screams!).

People that wear ear-nubbins in public in a large city, unless they are in a park or something, deserve mention in the Darwin Awards when they are inevitably killed in some senseless accident that could have been avoided if they were a little more defensively minded.

LESSON: DON'T DISABLE ONE OF YOUR PRIMARY SENSES IN DANGEROUS SITUATIONS.

There. I have said it.

What is it with Australians?

Is it just me, or are they way, WAY too happy? I was working as a breakfast cook at a hotel in Lake Louise, AB in the mid-90s, where a significant proportion of the staff were Australian. While the Canadians on the morning shift (6h00-14h30) were uniformly glum (and rightly so), the Australians were so uniformly cheery that I often had to control the urge to break a chair over their collective heads.

When they gathered as a group for social events, they reminded me of nothing so much as a pack of happy, hooting, rambunctious monkeys.

True, there was that one Australian dude a dozen or so years ago that went psycho and gunned down a bunch of his countrymen, but I consider him the exception that proves the rule.

They still seem like a group of happy monkeys.

Monkeys, I say!

Thanks to A-lo from Mäko Media for the new, somewhat macabre header image. As much as I like it, I am still finding it disturbing to confront first thing in the morning, when I am still "oot a' the pipes".

General Smedley Butler.
One of the Good Ones.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."

-Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler, War is a Racket

That Smedley Butler actually ever even existed gives me some hope -- maybe all the militarists aren't assholes, after all.

Butler was "the most decorated Marine in U.S. history", yet he wrote War Is A Racket, amongst other things.

A choice quote, written in an article for Common Sense magazine:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested."

Hey! Get your tongue out of there, fatso!

Will the humiliations never cease? First Canada sends our own troops as sepoys to Afganistan to help pacify the locals in advance of a new oil pipeline, then Stephen Harper starts quoting Bush and mentions Allah in his throne speech. (Whoops! Typo: it wasn't Allah, it was Jesus, or something).

Check out Canadian Ally, owned and operated by the government of Canada.

Apparently, "Canadian Ally" was put together as a reminder to our southern neighbors that we Canadians are their biggest ball-cuppers. So, at least until the new passport law comes into effect, we are desperately encouraging "Americans" to come up to Canada: debase our frenchie women at strip joints, drive poorly, and feel free to over-fish/hunt our natural resources. (How I feel? don't let the door hit your bums on the way out!)


Money talks, Liberal or Conservative. It is the stronger than normal obsequiousness that I find most disturbing.

This Afganistan thing, championed by the continued slavering, blathering bullshit of Marcus Gee on the editorial page of the Globe and Mail , along with "embedded" journalists like Christie Blatchford, seems like obvious propaganda. The majority of Canadians think we shouldn't be in Afganistan, but according to the Globe and Mail editorial page, this is because the Canadian public hasn't been "educated" on the topic enough. (BTW, I wonder which poor enlisted fucker has to "take a hit for the team" to keep 'Blatch' in line?).

We all know it is bullshit, except for iron-Maggie Wente. Her 'latte-land friends' are "in like with Stephen Harper", as opposed to "in love", you see.

Has the Globe been infiltrated from outer space??!? Seriously...

Another view of the LOST Hatch-map

(DON'T click on the image! I am still figuring out how to work with the blogger.com CSS, and all it does now is reproduce itself in a new window.)


This one has an overlay of the scrawled comments on the door, including a handy latin translation key.

If I had the time (ie. I was unemployed, or "at leisure", as they say) I would take the time to compare this overlay with the other versions of the map out there, just to make sure I wasn't helping to distribute disinformation.

For, now, however, I will have to accept this map as it is presented.