Well, I did say this year would bring some changes, didn't I?
Is it the winter blahs or something? I can't find it in me to get too worked up about anything, not even Stephen Harper shuttering Parliament for the second time in a year. I know I should be outraged, but I just don't have the energy. Besides, have you ever actually watched Question Period? Believe me, it's not like we'll miss it.
(Still find it rather amusing that Harper's trying to kill the spring break because "there's a lot of work to do". I haven't seen that level of two-faced audacity since, well, Chretien. That's a depressing thought.)
On the tech front, news is out today that we'll soon be able to get Skype on our iPhones, enabling us to call anyone likewise equipped, anywhere, anytime, for free. (And landlines and cell phones, anywhere, anytime, for something like $40 a year.) I live in Canada: I'll believe that when I see it. The CRTC will doubtless step in and protect li'l ol' Bell, Telus, and Rogers, as is its sworn duty.
Mind you, I do think we're evolving towards free communication, anywhere, anytime. Twenty years ago, my phone bill averaged $300 a month. I never called anyone further away than Winnipeg, not once out of country, and very rarely during the day. Today, I could talk to twice as many people for ten times as long and pay maybe a quarter of that. Less if I invested in Skype. Who knows where we'll be in another twenty years?
This has been the wussiest winter I can recall in my life. Even Environment Canada, which now trumps up weather warnings at the slightest flurry or puff of wind, has only managed a few of them this season, and we haven't had anything even remotely resembling a snowstorm. I have to say I'm actually happy about this, as shoveling the driveway is not one of my favourite tasks.
On the reading docket: I'm meandering through GALORE, by Michael Crummey, which evokes rural Newfoundland in all its medieval splendor. That got interrupted by the unexpected library availability of this: JULIAN COMSTOCK: A STORY OF 22ND CENTURY AMERICA, by Robert Charles Wilson (author of the excellent Spin). Fifty pages in, I knew I'd be buying myself a copy. This is superlative sf written as historical fiction. And frighteningly plausible.
Not much else to write, here, so I'm going back into hibernation. Keep on truckin', everyone: summer will be here before you know it.
3 comments:
technology, finally got a 'smart' phone and wow, what a change.
Your buddy Dalton is shutting down Queens Park very soon, and buddy Bob did it four times as Ontario Premier. It is a parliamentary procedure and perfectly legal ... Libs have to find something else to bash about ...
Anon, Dalton McGuinty is no buddy of mine. I've never voted for him and sure as hell won't next time out.
It's not that Harper's proroguing that bugs me. It's why he's doing it--to stack the Senate he wanted either abolished or elected, and to avoid nasty questions about Afghan detainees. And what *really* buggers belief is that he would turn around and try to get rid of the spring break on the grounds that there's "so much work to do". That'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.
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