The Breadbin

We're having a(nother) yard sale tomorrow, trying to sell off five years (or more) of accumulated STUFF. (George Carlin intrudes from beyond the grave: "Y'ever notice how other people's stuff is shit and your shit is...stuff?")This one's bigger than the last one, on account of there's about two wardrobes of clothing being put out for sale. And that on account of my wife having lost almost forty pounds over the last three months. One of the side effects to the new drug she's on is appetite suppression, and wait until the diet industry gets hold of that info. In any case, Eva's feeling great, and clothing that used to be tight on her won't even stay on her any more. There are also a number of books going bye-bye that I never thought I'd part with. I'm finding as I age that I'm less and less inclined to read the same books over and over. With certain authorial exceptions, I'd rather read something new. (Those exceptions, if you…

I posted a little while ago about my friend and colleague Justin, and mentioned in passing that I've been timekeeping for a little four-team ball-hockey league he had set up. I had a lot of fun just being around the game...hockey is hockey, whether it's played on a floor or a rink: to my mind, the best game going.Just managing the clock was, at times, challenging, especially after Justin slightly pulled a hamstring and had to bow out of refereeing the games. The guy he enlisted to replace him is a certified ball-hockey referee...and a stickler who would flag the slightest infraction. Justin had let most of the little stuff go. Sam at one point had five guys in the penalty box at once, and let me tell you the arena computer was groaning under that strain. So was the brain of the guy at the timekeeper's bench trying to input it all. Especially in the heat of that bloody arena...some weeks it was easily 30+ in there.
One of the teams--the Choppers, fittingly enough--was largel…

"I came to Canada as a refugee. Forty-five years later, Canada is a refuge still." --Joe Schlesinger, quoted by Donald Sutherland at the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver
I have to admit I was depressed to read the rantings of the vast majority of cbc.ca respondents in the matter of the MV Sun Sea and its human cargo, which is currently being "processed" in Esquimalt, B.C.
Depressed, but not surprised.
The boat set sail from Thailand three months ago, loaded to the gunwales with Sri Lankans, whom our government would have you believe are all terrorists simply because there exists a separatist movement (the "Tamil Tigers") which has resorted to violence in the face of attempted genocide. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, of course: a point that is often lost on our government.
Now the ship has docked in Canada, and the refugees are touching off a firestorm of vicious and self-serving vitriol that, dare I say it…

..."Dow futures down 120 points on news the economic recovery is not proceeding as quickly as investors would like"...
Does anything proceed as quickly as investors would like?

Deja moo: the feeling that you've heard this bull before.
Or bear, as the case may be. How many times have we heard this justification for falling stock prices? About as often as we've heard the opposite assertion made, that stocks are rising on news the economic recovery is taking hold. Make up your mind, already.
Or is it that nobody has the slightest clue?
To me, the stock market is one of the most irrational contrivances our world has ever come up with. Never mind long term thinking, the market is collectively incapable of even short term thinking or indeed any thinking at all. It mindlessly responds to any piece of news, good or bad, most of which could have been easily foreseen days, weeks, or months ahead. Worse, it routinely can'[t decide whether a given situation represents good or b…

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." --Douglas Adams

From the age of about seven through my teens, I fit in much better with adults than I ever did with kids my own age. Friendships were rare and exquisite things, like priceless figurines in a china shop, and I either handled them with kid gloves or inadvertently bulled around smashing them to smithereens. The sort of easy camaraderie I observed in my schoolmates proved elusive; it was much simpler to retreat into my bookish world, where characters were two-dimensional and predictable. With a few cherished exceptions, this state of affairs persisted well after I crossed the threshold of adulthood. In my secret heart, I believed that anyone who would befriend me was obviously at least mildly crazy. They had to be: look at how most of the "normal" people treated me.
It's passing strange that now, at 38 years of age, I should find myself fitting in better w…