This is the first time I've had two straight days off this year. Oh, the joys of working retail. Of course, I spent most of yesterday doing today's and tomorrow's work. Oh, the freakin' joys of retail.
Water on sale this week: 30-packs (15 L total) of other peoples' tap water for $2.97. Given that the national average price for tap water is $1.14/1000 L, 15 L for $2.97 is a rip-off of truly epic proportions. Which is probably why we sold 98 pallets of the stuff this past weekend...enough to fill an average swimming pool. And that's just one store.
It takes 17.5 kg of water to produce 1 kg of water bottle. Not to mention oil, which (of course) those bottles are made from. Oh, yeah, like that's sustainable.
Especially when up to 80% or even more of these bottles are not recycled.
(If you click here and look at the red counter at the top of the page, you'll see a running total of how many beverage bottles and cans are landfilled, littered, or incinerated in the U.S. so far this year. It's a big number, believe me, and the rate at which its getting bigger is almost unbelieveable.)
People. I'll never understand them: sometimes I wonder if I actually am one of 'em.
--------------
Lately the TV meteorologists have been collecting accolades for the "lovely weather" we've been experiencing here in Southern Ontario--highs between 16 and 21 (60-69 F) and mostly sunny conditions.
Bah, humbug.
I hate spring. Partly because it heralds the approach of summer, which is far and away my least favourite season. I remember a sign that used to grace the billboard outside the Dairy Queen in Parry Sound, Ontario in midwinter: "Closed For The Season. Reason? Freezin'!" One of these days I'm going to erect a billboard on my front lawn that says "Closed For The Season. Reason? Heat's In!"
But the biggest reason I hate Spring is summed up in the opening lines of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot:
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Look outside, everyone. Don't look up at that yellow ball in the sky whose season of worship is approaching: look down, instead. Note the mud and muck, the dead land, and further note a season's worth of detritus revealed in all its shabby glory as the last of the snow melts. Scraps of soggy paper everywhere, discarded Timmy's coffee cups--if you're not Canadian, think of all the garbage you see from any six fast-food chains. And, hmmm, water bottles. The residue of road salt mixes with the mire, turning everything a filthy gray.
Gross.
-----------------
The Olympics should never have been awarded to China in the first place...and I'm not saying that because Toronto lost out to Beijing. Toronto, for entirely different reasons, doesn't deserve the Olympics either.
But China? Who had that brainwave, anyway?
Now that the mistake has been made, however, we're sort of stuck with it. I appreciate the concerns of all these protesters who are impeding the international Olympic torch relay--do I ever--but I don't think they've thought their actions through. Neither have those who call for a boycott.
The Olympic torch signifies peace and brotherhood. By extinguishing it or blocking its progress you're basically announcing to the world that you're against those concepts. As for boycotting the games, all that does (besides deprive many athletes of a lifelong dream) is hand the host country more medals. Is that what we want?
------------
So now they want to ban food advertising aimed at children. I love this country, but sometimes it drives me right 'round the bend. Yes, childhood obesity is a problem; yes, advertising undoubtedly contributes to it. But I am sick to death of our governments trying to play parent.
They especially like to do it with television, have you noticed that?
"But Mom, I want to watch HBO!"
"Jenny Canuck, if I've told you once, I've told you a kilotime...that's un-Canadian of you! Why can't you watch CBC? Or, if you absolutely must abandon your Canadian heritage, just watch Showcase, instead! You'll only have to wait a year or two for all that Yankee crap you like, and waiting nourishes the Canadian soul! Just look at our health care system!"
"Dad, how come drug commercials in Canada are so screwed up?"
"Well, son, the government doesn't trust us to know what's best for our own bodies. So it allows commercials to either say the name of the drug or what it treats, but not both. Which means you'll see commercials that are almost impossible to decipher, as well as spots that highlight a condition and advise you to 'see your doctor', which you were probably going to do anyway."
Now they want to ban food ads aimed at kids. I'm sorry, but do they not have the slightest inkling of psychology? The more inaccessible you make something, the more you increase its allure. That's pretty basic. To think, under the previous government, we were all set to just hand our kids over into a national daycare program practically out of Brave New World. And all because the government knows how to raise your kids better than you do.
Somebody's been drinking the Kool-Aid. Or is that just bottled water?
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rant. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Earth Hour: Save The Planet!
So there was David Suzuki on TV reminding me to turn all the lights out last night, although he was kind enough to tell me it was okay to leave the TV on.
I wasn't going to bother with Earth Hour. I feel the same way about flicking all the lights out for an hour as I do about wearing a poppy. Symbolic gestures like this are so often hypocritical, done for public consumption and little else.
But then I fell for the flip side: if I don't turn off all the lights, people around here will think poorly of me. I'll be branded an Earth-raping planet-killer. They'd be wrong, of course, but they'll all be so sure they're right that being wrong won't really matter.
Peer pressure. It's kind of a shock to see that I haven't completely outgrown the juvenile desire to fit in.
So all the lights went off. The Leafs-Habs game stayed on, per the aforementioned special dispensation from David Suzuki, conveniently beamed to me just prior to 8:00 p.m. As I watched that game, I kept thinking about how my television draws considerably more power than all the light bulbs in my house (all but one of them flourescent) put together. And hey, if I turn the TV off, I'll still be using three-quarters of that power unless I actually unplug it too. People don't realize that: if you go a month without turning anything on in your house, unless it's all unplugged, you'll only reduce your power consumption by 25% or so.
Halfway through Earth Hour, I went outside to survey the street. The houses on either side of me were lit up like Christmas trees, but the rest of the street was quite a bit darker than usual.
I couldn't help but notice all the street lights were still blazing merrily away, though, and mentioned that to my wife upon coming back in.
"Well, they can't sacrifice safety", she said, or something to that effect. Big-city crime is just starting to appear in this city that thinks it's a village. Not for the first time I wished I was born a few generations ago, in a time when they could have turned all the street lights off, if they had wanted to. Cars have headlights, don't they? And back then, for the most part the worst hooliganism you could expect would be the egging of the odd house.
Really, it's startling how many street lights there are. Toronto has more than 160,000. Imagine the savings if they were extinguished or even dimmed.
It'd never happen, not voluntarily, at any rate. Our society has far too much invested in turning night into day. I'm looked at strangely when I say I'm abed at 9:00 most nights; for most people the average bedtime seems to be 11:00, midnight, or even later. But hey, I'm doing my part. Our lights are out much earlier than most people's. Every night.
The Toronto Star, predictably, devoted most of its paper to Earth Hour. I have to admit the pictures were interesting. Toronto's skyline had darkened considerably. There were still many, many lights on in skyscaper offices, which I for one have never understood. It can't be security: anyone willing to scale sixty stories of masonry should just be handed whatever they came for. Surely there aren't that many people working in these offices at eight at night. So why haven't we followed Europe's lead and put motion sensors everywhere? The lights only come on if there's somebody in the room. If there isn't, why the hell would you need light?
That's only one of a whole host of pro-environment measures we can and should take. There are devices called thermocouplers that regulate the temperature of water, so you don't have to waste a gallon or so every time you're waiting for your shower water to warm up. Are they installed in the average bathroom? Of course not.
And just look at how energy-inefficient the standard kitchen is. I'll quote here from Spider Robinson's "The Crazy Years" (ISBN 1-932100-35-0):
The largest two items in the room are a heat-making machine and a heat-losing machine. They sit side by side--and yet...they are not connected in any way. Hmmm.
Let's look closer. The heat-loser is--bafflingly--designed to stand on its end, so that you MUST spill money on the floor every time you open it in access or even inspect its contents. And they put the coldest part ON TOP.
The heat-maker is complementarily designed to spill money on the ceiling. Not just the four elements on top...the central module...has a door which--inexplicably--opens FROM THE TOP, so that you cannot touch the contents during cooking, even momentarily, without wasting ALL the heat. The whole unit is utterly unprogrammable, and lacks even the simplest temperature readouts: everything is done by guess.
All that may sound trivial, but multiplied over pretty much every kitchen in the Western world, you end up with a profligate waste of energy resources. Besides, it all stems from a mindset we seem to have carried with us since the dawn of civilization: energy's infinite, earth is infinite, and all of it's ours for the taking.
Human waste would make ideal fertilizer, but we've found a better use for it: none. We flush it down the crapper, wasting gallons of potable water every time we do so. All the garbage we generate--and even with raised awareness, it's a ridiculous amount--could be incinerated, quite cleanly, yielding energy in the process. But that's horrible for the environment, don't you know. Better to bury it in landfills where it can fester for centuries.
Never mind all that: If we're really serious about greenhouse gas emissions, where are all the nuclear plants?
And please, for the love of Gaia, stop telling me I've got to save the planet. According to no less an authority than George Carlin--and when you finish reading this, you'll recognize him as a consummate authority--"The Planet's Fine". This is excerpted off the album "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics".
We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet?
I'm getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day, I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!
We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.
You wanna know how the planet's doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet's doing. You wanna know if the planet's all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kiluaea, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole.
On that note, I'm gone. Would those still in attendance please remember to shut off the lights?
I wasn't going to bother with Earth Hour. I feel the same way about flicking all the lights out for an hour as I do about wearing a poppy. Symbolic gestures like this are so often hypocritical, done for public consumption and little else.
But then I fell for the flip side: if I don't turn off all the lights, people around here will think poorly of me. I'll be branded an Earth-raping planet-killer. They'd be wrong, of course, but they'll all be so sure they're right that being wrong won't really matter.
Peer pressure. It's kind of a shock to see that I haven't completely outgrown the juvenile desire to fit in.
So all the lights went off. The Leafs-Habs game stayed on, per the aforementioned special dispensation from David Suzuki, conveniently beamed to me just prior to 8:00 p.m. As I watched that game, I kept thinking about how my television draws considerably more power than all the light bulbs in my house (all but one of them flourescent) put together. And hey, if I turn the TV off, I'll still be using three-quarters of that power unless I actually unplug it too. People don't realize that: if you go a month without turning anything on in your house, unless it's all unplugged, you'll only reduce your power consumption by 25% or so.
Halfway through Earth Hour, I went outside to survey the street. The houses on either side of me were lit up like Christmas trees, but the rest of the street was quite a bit darker than usual.
I couldn't help but notice all the street lights were still blazing merrily away, though, and mentioned that to my wife upon coming back in.
"Well, they can't sacrifice safety", she said, or something to that effect. Big-city crime is just starting to appear in this city that thinks it's a village. Not for the first time I wished I was born a few generations ago, in a time when they could have turned all the street lights off, if they had wanted to. Cars have headlights, don't they? And back then, for the most part the worst hooliganism you could expect would be the egging of the odd house.
Really, it's startling how many street lights there are. Toronto has more than 160,000. Imagine the savings if they were extinguished or even dimmed.
It'd never happen, not voluntarily, at any rate. Our society has far too much invested in turning night into day. I'm looked at strangely when I say I'm abed at 9:00 most nights; for most people the average bedtime seems to be 11:00, midnight, or even later. But hey, I'm doing my part. Our lights are out much earlier than most people's. Every night.
The Toronto Star, predictably, devoted most of its paper to Earth Hour. I have to admit the pictures were interesting. Toronto's skyline had darkened considerably. There were still many, many lights on in skyscaper offices, which I for one have never understood. It can't be security: anyone willing to scale sixty stories of masonry should just be handed whatever they came for. Surely there aren't that many people working in these offices at eight at night. So why haven't we followed Europe's lead and put motion sensors everywhere? The lights only come on if there's somebody in the room. If there isn't, why the hell would you need light?
That's only one of a whole host of pro-environment measures we can and should take. There are devices called thermocouplers that regulate the temperature of water, so you don't have to waste a gallon or so every time you're waiting for your shower water to warm up. Are they installed in the average bathroom? Of course not.
And just look at how energy-inefficient the standard kitchen is. I'll quote here from Spider Robinson's "The Crazy Years" (ISBN 1-932100-35-0):
The largest two items in the room are a heat-making machine and a heat-losing machine. They sit side by side--and yet...they are not connected in any way. Hmmm.
Let's look closer. The heat-loser is--bafflingly--designed to stand on its end, so that you MUST spill money on the floor every time you open it in access or even inspect its contents. And they put the coldest part ON TOP.
The heat-maker is complementarily designed to spill money on the ceiling. Not just the four elements on top...the central module...has a door which--inexplicably--opens FROM THE TOP, so that you cannot touch the contents during cooking, even momentarily, without wasting ALL the heat. The whole unit is utterly unprogrammable, and lacks even the simplest temperature readouts: everything is done by guess.
All that may sound trivial, but multiplied over pretty much every kitchen in the Western world, you end up with a profligate waste of energy resources. Besides, it all stems from a mindset we seem to have carried with us since the dawn of civilization: energy's infinite, earth is infinite, and all of it's ours for the taking.
Human waste would make ideal fertilizer, but we've found a better use for it: none. We flush it down the crapper, wasting gallons of potable water every time we do so. All the garbage we generate--and even with raised awareness, it's a ridiculous amount--could be incinerated, quite cleanly, yielding energy in the process. But that's horrible for the environment, don't you know. Better to bury it in landfills where it can fester for centuries.
Never mind all that: If we're really serious about greenhouse gas emissions, where are all the nuclear plants?
And please, for the love of Gaia, stop telling me I've got to save the planet. According to no less an authority than George Carlin--and when you finish reading this, you'll recognize him as a consummate authority--"The Planet's Fine". This is excerpted off the album "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics".
We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet?
I'm getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day, I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world save for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!
We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.
You wanna know how the planet's doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet's doing. You wanna know if the planet's all right, ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. Or how about those people in Kiluaea, Hawaii, who built their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole.
On that note, I'm gone. Would those still in attendance please remember to shut off the lights?
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
I Wanna Retire
Every so often, circumstances at work drive me to drink. This would be one of those weeks.
The ad this week is one of those infamous "dollar days" jobbies that strike fear into the hearts of grocery store workers everywhere. Although this particular flyer threw a couple of new wrinkles at me. More like crevasses, actually.
Okay, let's start with the NESTLE REAL DAIRY FRENCH VANILLA or SMARTIES ICE CREAM, 450 ml for $1.
A couple of weeks ago, when I found out we were running this item, I reacted with exasperation. You're kidding, right? See, the last time we had this stuff on sale (same price, roughly the same time of year, and--well, okay, only the French Vanilla), I went through one of the biggest runarounds of my career. My head office wanted to send me nine skids--which would have filled my walk-in freezer to capacity. I kvetched and moaned and we settled on seven...1920 units to a skid...13440 units. I was told I'd run out. I felt otherwise. Especially after I saw the product for the first time as seven skids landed in my freezer.
450 millilitres is not a lot of ice cream. It's smaller than a Haagen-Dazs tub.
Well, this flopped like nothing before or since. I watched countless people approach my huge display of ice cream, pick up a tub, note its almost total lack of weight, and put it back. I'm not paying a buck for a spoonful of ice cream!
We sold 1843 units, less than one of those pallets...for the week. I was stuck with the rest of it, despite repeated--like, every day--calls for somebody to relieve me of this white elephant taking up my freezer space. Six weeks later, I still had two full pallets left, which were FINALLY moved to stores in Toronto.
Three years later, and here it is again. Well, at least this time they've got Smarties ice cream too...I bet I'll sell twice as much of that. But still, I ain't takin' the four skids they want to send me. I took 3920 units, fully expecting to be left with a skid at the end of the ad.
Gone Saturday, two days into the ad. All of it. Sold.
Now I ask you, how the hell was I supposed to predict this? And will I have time to explain to every second customer that we sold more than twice as much in two days as we had in a full week last time it was on sale? Would anyone believe me when I tried?
I managed to get another shipment delivered yesterday. Hopefully it lasts the rest of the week.
AUNT JEMIMA WAFFLES, $1. This is another item we don't normally carry, although it's in the flyer every other month like clockwork, always at $1. I had to book this product six weeks ago...and I furthermore had to take the whole week's worth of sales on one delivery. Can't say I was overly impressed with this.
Especially when that amount, which had always lasted me the week, was sold out Sunday, with no more available anywhere. Gee, it almost seems like I'm deliberately trying to piss people off, eh?
But those two things pale in comparison to the fiasco that is 1L MILK for $1.
It seems like I just wrote about this when we had 2L cartons on sale for $1.88 all of a month ago. Well, this presents all the same challenges, multiplied beyond belief because this time, chocolate milk is included.
Ever heard a war cry? Ever wondered what the warrior would say if he had to put it into words? I know. He'd say this: CHOCOLATE MILK IS ON SALE!
Literally thousands of people who have not the slightest interest in chocolate milk at regular price will bathe in the stuff when it's on sale. Nobody buys one or two cartons: the minimum seems to be four, and many people buy to get twelve, sixteen or even more.
My cooler is meant to hold nine pallets. I somehow--I'm still not sure how--managed to cram sixteen in there last Thursday, and still ran out of chocolate milk sometime Saturday. Short of getting twice-a-day deliveries (for which we're charged a great deal of money), I'm not sure what else I could have done.
I worked Saturday, the busiest day we've seen since Easter 2006. I was off Sunday and damned glad to be. Except Sunday night, I couldn't sleep. At all.
There's no milk in the store!
Sure there is, you ordered lots. Remember how much was still there when you left yesterday?
Yeah, I do. And it's all gone now. You're going to walk in there tomorrow morning and there won't be a drop of milk in the whole effing store.
Okay, Ken, I lectured myself, this problem--if it is a problem--is going to be there (or not) tomorrow morning whether you sleep or not, and you'll face it a whole lot better if you sleep.
Sure, my mind agreed. I'll go to sleep. Just so you know, though, there's no milk there right now. I'm sure of it. The boss is on holidays this week, his flight to Vegas leaves sometime tomorrow, but you can bet the house he'll pop in first thing to fire your ass.
Shambling in like something out of Shaun of the Dead Monday morning, I put off actually touring my dairy department for twenty minutes. That's how scared I was. When I finally went down there, I found the following:
--yes, I was out of chocolate--but I was out of chocolate before I left Saturday;
--the homo was a titch light (hard to guess how many people will switch milk preferences just because the whole milk represents a better deal)
--the 2% and 1%, which were what I was really afraid of, were perfect
--I actually had too much skim milk.
All in all, not bad. Now if only my cooler were three times the size.
God, I'll be glad when this week's over. Except next week's ad is almost as hot. Here we go again.
The ad this week is one of those infamous "dollar days" jobbies that strike fear into the hearts of grocery store workers everywhere. Although this particular flyer threw a couple of new wrinkles at me. More like crevasses, actually.
Okay, let's start with the NESTLE REAL DAIRY FRENCH VANILLA or SMARTIES ICE CREAM, 450 ml for $1.
A couple of weeks ago, when I found out we were running this item, I reacted with exasperation. You're kidding, right? See, the last time we had this stuff on sale (same price, roughly the same time of year, and--well, okay, only the French Vanilla), I went through one of the biggest runarounds of my career. My head office wanted to send me nine skids--which would have filled my walk-in freezer to capacity. I kvetched and moaned and we settled on seven...1920 units to a skid...13440 units. I was told I'd run out. I felt otherwise. Especially after I saw the product for the first time as seven skids landed in my freezer.
450 millilitres is not a lot of ice cream. It's smaller than a Haagen-Dazs tub.
Well, this flopped like nothing before or since. I watched countless people approach my huge display of ice cream, pick up a tub, note its almost total lack of weight, and put it back. I'm not paying a buck for a spoonful of ice cream!
We sold 1843 units, less than one of those pallets...for the week. I was stuck with the rest of it, despite repeated--like, every day--calls for somebody to relieve me of this white elephant taking up my freezer space. Six weeks later, I still had two full pallets left, which were FINALLY moved to stores in Toronto.
Three years later, and here it is again. Well, at least this time they've got Smarties ice cream too...I bet I'll sell twice as much of that. But still, I ain't takin' the four skids they want to send me. I took 3920 units, fully expecting to be left with a skid at the end of the ad.
Gone Saturday, two days into the ad. All of it. Sold.
Now I ask you, how the hell was I supposed to predict this? And will I have time to explain to every second customer that we sold more than twice as much in two days as we had in a full week last time it was on sale? Would anyone believe me when I tried?
I managed to get another shipment delivered yesterday. Hopefully it lasts the rest of the week.
AUNT JEMIMA WAFFLES, $1. This is another item we don't normally carry, although it's in the flyer every other month like clockwork, always at $1. I had to book this product six weeks ago...and I furthermore had to take the whole week's worth of sales on one delivery. Can't say I was overly impressed with this.
Especially when that amount, which had always lasted me the week, was sold out Sunday, with no more available anywhere. Gee, it almost seems like I'm deliberately trying to piss people off, eh?
But those two things pale in comparison to the fiasco that is 1L MILK for $1.
It seems like I just wrote about this when we had 2L cartons on sale for $1.88 all of a month ago. Well, this presents all the same challenges, multiplied beyond belief because this time, chocolate milk is included.
Ever heard a war cry? Ever wondered what the warrior would say if he had to put it into words? I know. He'd say this: CHOCOLATE MILK IS ON SALE!
Literally thousands of people who have not the slightest interest in chocolate milk at regular price will bathe in the stuff when it's on sale. Nobody buys one or two cartons: the minimum seems to be four, and many people buy to get twelve, sixteen or even more.
My cooler is meant to hold nine pallets. I somehow--I'm still not sure how--managed to cram sixteen in there last Thursday, and still ran out of chocolate milk sometime Saturday. Short of getting twice-a-day deliveries (for which we're charged a great deal of money), I'm not sure what else I could have done.
I worked Saturday, the busiest day we've seen since Easter 2006. I was off Sunday and damned glad to be. Except Sunday night, I couldn't sleep. At all.
There's no milk in the store!
Sure there is, you ordered lots. Remember how much was still there when you left yesterday?
Yeah, I do. And it's all gone now. You're going to walk in there tomorrow morning and there won't be a drop of milk in the whole effing store.
Okay, Ken, I lectured myself, this problem--if it is a problem--is going to be there (or not) tomorrow morning whether you sleep or not, and you'll face it a whole lot better if you sleep.
Sure, my mind agreed. I'll go to sleep. Just so you know, though, there's no milk there right now. I'm sure of it. The boss is on holidays this week, his flight to Vegas leaves sometime tomorrow, but you can bet the house he'll pop in first thing to fire your ass.
Shambling in like something out of Shaun of the Dead Monday morning, I put off actually touring my dairy department for twenty minutes. That's how scared I was. When I finally went down there, I found the following:
--yes, I was out of chocolate--but I was out of chocolate before I left Saturday;
--the homo was a titch light (hard to guess how many people will switch milk preferences just because the whole milk represents a better deal)
--the 2% and 1%, which were what I was really afraid of, were perfect
--I actually had too much skim milk.
All in all, not bad. Now if only my cooler were three times the size.
God, I'll be glad when this week's over. Except next week's ad is almost as hot. Here we go again.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
The Evolution of Godwin's Law
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."--Mike Godwin, 1990
Godwin's Law originally applied to USENET, but now it's seen anywhere three or more people gather to discuss anything that could possibly be controversial. The argument grows warm, then hot, and before you know it Nazis are jackbooting across your screen.
Some online forums have a rule to the effect that whenever Adolf appears, the debate is over, and whoever brought him up is declared the loser. It's a good rule.
Of course, by the time Hitler comes up, I'm long out of the room with the door shut. Arguing's great, but arguing with a fanatic is pointless.
Ask my parents: I used to be about the most closed-minded, black/white, I'm-right-you're-wrong person on the face of the earth. It dawned on me one day that many other people are just as closed-minded, black/white, I'm-right-you're-wrong...and they see things differently than I do. From there it was a short (albeit painful) step to admitting that sometimes I'm wrong, and damned if I'm not wrong a lot these days. I'm a husband; it comes with the territory.
Anyway, I like to argue politics or philosophy or what have you: it exposes me to different ideas and ways of seeing the world, and that's always a good thing. I don't mind different thoughts, but I have a real problem with different thought processes. Which is why I distrust radicals of any stripe: you can't trust them to keep the argument rational. Sooner or later you're being compared with Hitler.
Or being threatened with jail for your "intergenerational crimes".
I lost what little respect I had for David Suzuki when he came out with that the other day.
Oh, I know how blasphemous that is, for a Canadian to suggest that David Suzuki is full of greenhouse gas...almost as blasphemous as suggesting that our health care system could use a major overhaul, come to think of it. Suzuki's everywhere these days, fancying himself some sort of expert on climate change. As if anybody is. Memo to Dr. Suzuki: you're a zoologist.
I SAY THIS THREE TIMES I SAY THIS THREE TIMES I SAY THIS THREE TIMES: I consider myself environmentally aware; I believe in global warming; and I also believe that we're causing this latest go-round with it to at least some degree. What I do not believe is that anybody can reliably predict the climate fifty or a hundred years out. Feed all the data you want into all the computers you can find: I contend there are way too many variables and things we simply don't understand right now for the output to be worth anything more than sheer kaka. Computer modelling looks like science, but it's just a bunch of people playing with very expensive toys.
"They" know this, too. Almost all climate change predictions are for a date so far in the future as to absolve their predictors from any responsibility.
For Suzuki the zoologist (Ph.D: University of Chicago, 1961) to suggest we should be jailing people who disagree with him on something as monstrously complex as climate borders on criminal itself, as far as I'm concerned. It's certainly un-Canadian.
But I won't say he's a Nazi. I won't.
Godwin's Law originally applied to USENET, but now it's seen anywhere three or more people gather to discuss anything that could possibly be controversial. The argument grows warm, then hot, and before you know it Nazis are jackbooting across your screen.
Some online forums have a rule to the effect that whenever Adolf appears, the debate is over, and whoever brought him up is declared the loser. It's a good rule.
Of course, by the time Hitler comes up, I'm long out of the room with the door shut. Arguing's great, but arguing with a fanatic is pointless.
Ask my parents: I used to be about the most closed-minded, black/white, I'm-right-you're-wrong person on the face of the earth. It dawned on me one day that many other people are just as closed-minded, black/white, I'm-right-you're-wrong...and they see things differently than I do. From there it was a short (albeit painful) step to admitting that sometimes I'm wrong, and damned if I'm not wrong a lot these days. I'm a husband; it comes with the territory.
Anyway, I like to argue politics or philosophy or what have you: it exposes me to different ideas and ways of seeing the world, and that's always a good thing. I don't mind different thoughts, but I have a real problem with different thought processes. Which is why I distrust radicals of any stripe: you can't trust them to keep the argument rational. Sooner or later you're being compared with Hitler.
Or being threatened with jail for your "intergenerational crimes".
I lost what little respect I had for David Suzuki when he came out with that the other day.
Oh, I know how blasphemous that is, for a Canadian to suggest that David Suzuki is full of greenhouse gas...almost as blasphemous as suggesting that our health care system could use a major overhaul, come to think of it. Suzuki's everywhere these days, fancying himself some sort of expert on climate change. As if anybody is. Memo to Dr. Suzuki: you're a zoologist.
I SAY THIS THREE TIMES I SAY THIS THREE TIMES I SAY THIS THREE TIMES: I consider myself environmentally aware; I believe in global warming; and I also believe that we're causing this latest go-round with it to at least some degree. What I do not believe is that anybody can reliably predict the climate fifty or a hundred years out. Feed all the data you want into all the computers you can find: I contend there are way too many variables and things we simply don't understand right now for the output to be worth anything more than sheer kaka. Computer modelling looks like science, but it's just a bunch of people playing with very expensive toys.
"They" know this, too. Almost all climate change predictions are for a date so far in the future as to absolve their predictors from any responsibility.
For Suzuki the zoologist (Ph.D: University of Chicago, 1961) to suggest we should be jailing people who disagree with him on something as monstrously complex as climate borders on criminal itself, as far as I'm concerned. It's certainly un-Canadian.
But I won't say he's a Nazi. I won't.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Naivete
I'm naive, sometimes. Actually, a lot of the time. On matters big and small.
Matters small: the Writers' Guild strike still all but paralyzing television. It's hardly affected my viewing habits (the Leafs still lose two or three times a week, and news still happens), but many people are missing their favourite shows. Including, until recently, all those late-night shows airing long after I've retired: Letterman, Leno, and the like.
That surprised me. These people have writers?
The Sunday edition of the Toronto SUN prints what purports to be the funniest excepts of the week from each of these shows. They rarely elicit more than a chuckle (if that) from me, and I think my wife has laughed once in seven years of Sundays. Now I find out that Letterman, Leno, Colbert et al can't even claim this dreck as their own intellectual property; it rightly belongs to writers the names of which you never hear. What I want to know is: if none of these late-night hosts are smart enough to write their own material, why are they being paid millions of dollars?
(Because they're actors, Ken. Just actors.) Yeah, but people are actually tuning in to these shows to find out what's going on in the world. I find it actually rather frightening that at some point, somebody had a brainwave. "You know what newscasts need? More cynicism!" And that other people agreed.
Naive. I have this naive belief that honesty is the best policy. Having been a chronic liar in my childhood and having had every last lie of mine found out eventually, I've come around to thinking that the truth shall set you free.
Except when it doesn't. I naively put all my cards on the table when we went to adopt kids and the table collapsed. I watch in election after election as people do everything possible to avoid telling the truth, even if it means telling blatant lies. And these people get elected. It's the people who speak straight that get punished for it.
Why is that? Because people don't want to hear the truth if it's bad. See, I don't think like that, myself. I'd rather hear the worst possible news than no news at all, and I certainly don't want it sugar-coated. It doesn't take long for the underlying bitter taste to register, all the more bitter for the ersatz sweetness.
Honesty may make the best policy, but it makes the worst politics.
Matters large: At work the other day, I got into a rather heated three-sided debate on privacy issues specifically RFID microchipping. I found it hard to keep an even keel. On one side, I was facing a man who seems to believe in every last conspiracy theory out there ("The Illuminati caused 9/11! I saw it on the Web!") On the other side was a person whom until that point, had never revealed her fundamentalist Christian beliefs. (At one point, she blurted out "oh, why should we listen to you? You don't even believe in the Bible!")
Anyone who's read more than, say, ten posts of this blog can just guess my internal reaction to that.
My position is quite simple, really. Some would probably call it naive. It's this: we microchip our pets because we care about them. We don't microchip our kids because...why, exactly?
("Because our kids have souls!" shouted the fundamentalist. "It's in Revelations! It's the Mark of the Beast!")
("Because the government can track your kids everywhere they go!" shouted the Conspiracy Theorist.)
Knee jerk reaction: It's Revelation, no "s", and why should I believe anyone who doesn't get that simple fact right? And...if there is such a thing as a "soul" (something I personally do believe, but I can argue both sides at will), who says animals don't have 'em? You? Oh, then it must be true.
Ken, beset on both sides, really needed a few extra hours and a captive audience. Because I have read Revelation, and researched it extensively. As I said not too long ago, the Christian people I hung around with when I professed that faith were obsessed with three things: Genesis, Revelation, and sex, especially gay sex. (And no, smartass: I didn't research all three of those things, only what the Bible said about them.)
A quick and dirty summary of theories about the Mark of the Beast can be found here, for those who are interested. You'll note that a RFID chip is merely one theory of a great many, and one of the more recent theories to boot. The fact is nobody really knows for sure what's being referred to here...which puts it on a par with much of the rest of Scripture, incidentally. I wouldn't put my money on the interpretation of the Left Behind folks, myself.
As for the government tracking my kids, if I had any: well, yeah, that's kind of the point. Should they become lost or kidnapped, it would certainly be nice if agents of the government (also known as "police officers") could track them down. As I said, we do it to our pets without a second thought.
"But what gives somebody the right to spy on you?" said the Conspiracy Theorist the next day, after tempers had cooled.
Now this I had (naively) never considered, and I told him so. I've thought hard about it since, though, and now see the source of my blind spot: I've never framed this as a "rights" issue--perhaps because I've never recognized "privacy" as a right...didn't your parents ever barge into your bedroom when you were a kid? "Privacy", to me, is merely a courtesy...and courtesies are not obligatory, particularly when there is a larger issue (such as safety) at stake.
"But the media work hard to engender a culture of fear, so that people can be controlled!"
On this you'll get no argument from me. (Man, do people in a debate ever hate it when you agree with them. It throws them right off stride.) I have no doubt that people are living in fear, and most of their fears are practically baseless. But not all of them. You can't possibly tell me pedophiles are a media invention, for example. If there's a pedophile living in your neighbourhood (and I'm sad to say it: no matter where you live, there probably is), does that mean you shouldn't leave the house? Of course not. But it does mean you should be aware of your surroundings, you should be streetproofed...and, should the unthinkable happen, you should be protected, say by means of a simple RFID chip.
If that makes me naive, I'm glad to be.
Matters small: the Writers' Guild strike still all but paralyzing television. It's hardly affected my viewing habits (the Leafs still lose two or three times a week, and news still happens), but many people are missing their favourite shows. Including, until recently, all those late-night shows airing long after I've retired: Letterman, Leno, and the like.
That surprised me. These people have writers?
The Sunday edition of the Toronto SUN prints what purports to be the funniest excepts of the week from each of these shows. They rarely elicit more than a chuckle (if that) from me, and I think my wife has laughed once in seven years of Sundays. Now I find out that Letterman, Leno, Colbert et al can't even claim this dreck as their own intellectual property; it rightly belongs to writers the names of which you never hear. What I want to know is: if none of these late-night hosts are smart enough to write their own material, why are they being paid millions of dollars?
(Because they're actors, Ken. Just actors.) Yeah, but people are actually tuning in to these shows to find out what's going on in the world. I find it actually rather frightening that at some point, somebody had a brainwave. "You know what newscasts need? More cynicism!" And that other people agreed.
Naive. I have this naive belief that honesty is the best policy. Having been a chronic liar in my childhood and having had every last lie of mine found out eventually, I've come around to thinking that the truth shall set you free.
Except when it doesn't. I naively put all my cards on the table when we went to adopt kids and the table collapsed. I watch in election after election as people do everything possible to avoid telling the truth, even if it means telling blatant lies. And these people get elected. It's the people who speak straight that get punished for it.
Why is that? Because people don't want to hear the truth if it's bad. See, I don't think like that, myself. I'd rather hear the worst possible news than no news at all, and I certainly don't want it sugar-coated. It doesn't take long for the underlying bitter taste to register, all the more bitter for the ersatz sweetness.
Honesty may make the best policy, but it makes the worst politics.
Matters large: At work the other day, I got into a rather heated three-sided debate on privacy issues specifically RFID microchipping. I found it hard to keep an even keel. On one side, I was facing a man who seems to believe in every last conspiracy theory out there ("The Illuminati caused 9/11! I saw it on the Web!") On the other side was a person whom until that point, had never revealed her fundamentalist Christian beliefs. (At one point, she blurted out "oh, why should we listen to you? You don't even believe in the Bible!")
Anyone who's read more than, say, ten posts of this blog can just guess my internal reaction to that.
My position is quite simple, really. Some would probably call it naive. It's this: we microchip our pets because we care about them. We don't microchip our kids because...why, exactly?
("Because our kids have souls!" shouted the fundamentalist. "It's in Revelations! It's the Mark of the Beast!")
("Because the government can track your kids everywhere they go!" shouted the Conspiracy Theorist.)
Knee jerk reaction: It's Revelation, no "s", and why should I believe anyone who doesn't get that simple fact right? And...if there is such a thing as a "soul" (something I personally do believe, but I can argue both sides at will), who says animals don't have 'em? You? Oh, then it must be true.
Ken, beset on both sides, really needed a few extra hours and a captive audience. Because I have read Revelation, and researched it extensively. As I said not too long ago, the Christian people I hung around with when I professed that faith were obsessed with three things: Genesis, Revelation, and sex, especially gay sex. (And no, smartass: I didn't research all three of those things, only what the Bible said about them.)
A quick and dirty summary of theories about the Mark of the Beast can be found here, for those who are interested. You'll note that a RFID chip is merely one theory of a great many, and one of the more recent theories to boot. The fact is nobody really knows for sure what's being referred to here...which puts it on a par with much of the rest of Scripture, incidentally. I wouldn't put my money on the interpretation of the Left Behind folks, myself.
As for the government tracking my kids, if I had any: well, yeah, that's kind of the point. Should they become lost or kidnapped, it would certainly be nice if agents of the government (also known as "police officers") could track them down. As I said, we do it to our pets without a second thought.
"But what gives somebody the right to spy on you?" said the Conspiracy Theorist the next day, after tempers had cooled.
Now this I had (naively) never considered, and I told him so. I've thought hard about it since, though, and now see the source of my blind spot: I've never framed this as a "rights" issue--perhaps because I've never recognized "privacy" as a right...didn't your parents ever barge into your bedroom when you were a kid? "Privacy", to me, is merely a courtesy...and courtesies are not obligatory, particularly when there is a larger issue (such as safety) at stake.
"But the media work hard to engender a culture of fear, so that people can be controlled!"
On this you'll get no argument from me. (Man, do people in a debate ever hate it when you agree with them. It throws them right off stride.) I have no doubt that people are living in fear, and most of their fears are practically baseless. But not all of them. You can't possibly tell me pedophiles are a media invention, for example. If there's a pedophile living in your neighbourhood (and I'm sad to say it: no matter where you live, there probably is), does that mean you shouldn't leave the house? Of course not. But it does mean you should be aware of your surroundings, you should be streetproofed...and, should the unthinkable happen, you should be protected, say by means of a simple RFID chip.
If that makes me naive, I'm glad to be.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Star-Cross
Call me a masochist: I still pick up the Toronto Star every Sunday. Their "Ideas" section is precisely the sort of thing I look for and rarely find in a newspaper: in-depth articles on interesting topics. Unfortunately, before I get there I always detour through the front section, specifically the editorials and letters to the editor. The Star generally treats the two things as being one and the same: that is, it cherry-picks its letters to support its editorial stance. (It's also abandoned a column that used to elevate its op-ed page slightly, one in which a left-wing and a right-wing columnist argued a given topic. I suspect that somewhere in the bowels of Star headquarters it was decided that featuring even one right-wing columnist exposes its readers to alien, un-Canadian--or at least un-Torontonian--ideas. Can't have that!)
Today: not one, not two, but three letters to the editor that raised my blood pressure. I will reproduce them in toto here and respond to each in turn...because somebody's got to, and I'd bet the farm the only letters referencing these to be seen in future issues of the Star will be congratulatory.
First, a letter from Damir Karaturovic from Burnaby, B.C. Please take special note of his location as you read the following:
While the federal government's reduction of the GST may not have been sound economics, the greater yet more unheralded tragedy is the fact that many provinces did not take the gift granted to them and raise their own consumption taxes. Ontario alone could likely have directly collected at least $3 billion a year--surely enough to provide the economic stimulus Ontario so desperately seeks.
Okay, I'm back now with my response.
NNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!
Oh, I'm sorry, was I supposed to argue rationally? Yes? Okay. Just let me calm down a little, first, here.
No quibble with the first bit of this letter: many, if not most, economists agree that consumption taxes are better than taxes on income. The GST is sound economics: give Mulroney and Mazankowski credit. I'll even give the Liberals their due for breaking a promise and not scrapping the thing.
That doesn't mean the GST needs to be 6% or 7%.
Mr. Karaturovic dramatically parts ways with my reality when he calls it a "tragedy" that the provinces didn't take this "gift" and raise their own taxes to compensate. Has he been into some of that fine Burnaby bud, or what?
To be perfectly honest, I had forgotten that Harper had cut the GST a point until I noticed a slight reduction in the cost of food for Tux and Georgia the day after New Year's. When I realized the source of my extra ninety cents, I cheered a little. It wasn't that I was ecstatic about a tiny reduction in my daily tax load (although when you add up all the GST you pay in a year, one percentage point is still a tidy chunk of change). No, I was just happy that taxes didn't go up. Because that's what taxes do, don't they? Municipalities frighten their voters with threats of tax hikes totalling five times the rate of inflation to make their eventual tax hikes of two or three times the rate of inflation look good. And the sort of shell game Mr. Karaturovic is proposing is standard government behaviour most years: the right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away. To quote an important (and oft-forgotten) maxim: THERE IS ONLY ONE TAXPAYER.
I still have this attitude (disgraceful, I know) that money I earn is my money. It seems Stephen Harper agrees with me: unusual. In past years I've had to be shipped off to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau National Reprogramming Centre in Ottawa for extensive lobotomization: of course, it's all government money. They just let us have some of it. I' come out thinking of taxes as "gifts", or even better, "entitlements". If they overdo the dose at all I'll even suggest that a tax is an "economic stimulus"--whereupon right-thinking people such as my wife will bop me on the head and restore common sense.
Taxes do not stimulate the economy. Taxes kill the economy. For proof, look no further than the places corporations (you know, those things whence come all the jobs) choose to set up shop. Check out the mass exodus of head offices out of Toronto, where they've never met a tax they didn't want to marry.
Allowing people to keep more of their money is what stimulates the economy. Because they turn around and spend that money...which spins off into more jobs.
Should Stephen Harper have cut income taxes instead? Probably. Am I going to quibble because he cut something else instead? Don't think so. Am I going to suggest that Mr. McGuinty would do a better job managing my tax dollars? Not a chance in hell.
Moving right along (and if this blog entry stops halfway through this next letter, it's because I exploded and little Ken-gobbets are raining everywhere):
The Conservative government's GST cut is nothing short of a joke and shames us as Canadians. While nearly two-thirds of the people on this planet live on less than $2 a day, here's Stephen Harper smiling while announcing a tax cut that will save the average Canadian a couple of bucks purchasing what most likely will be more junk we don't need. All the while his government quietly decreases its contribution to foreign aid.
This GST cut could effectively save thousands of lives in countries not as fortunate as ours. Our country's wealth is unprecedented. It's time we woke up and proved to the world that we see the lives of distant others as valuable as our own. Shame on Harper and his government.
Bob Salveda, Toronto
Whew, that was close.
So, Bob--may I call you Bob? Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you seem to be saying here is that in the best Canadian tradition, our government shouldn't be limited to running our lives from cradle to grave...it should also be saving the lives of thousands of people worldwide?
Hmmm. I must be due for some more reprogramming: I'd forgotten that was in the Constitution someplace. Seems to me--silly, I know!--that there exist these things called "charities" that serve that function already. In fact, I'm pretty sure these "charity" things exist, because they're all over my television and telephone looking for money. Hey! I've got an idea, Bob! Why don't you give them some of your money and cut out the government middleman? If most of us did the same, I'm sure we could prove to the world "that we see the lives of distant others as valuable as our own". And our government could stick to, uh, governing.
Finally, a letter from Norm Beach, also of Toronto, and I'm going to let someone else type this because if I do it, I will blow up.
Mike Mays asks, "Who will trust our word on the world stage if we don't honour our commitments?"
He applies this to Afghanistan, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper so often does, but I can't see how moving troops out of Kandahar at the end of our scheduled rotation next year violates any promises. Yet there is a much more significant commitment our government has turned its back on, in the form of an international treaty that Canada signed and ratified, but our Prime Minister has repeatedly said he will not honour. When Harper says Canada can't afford to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, but can afford to spend billions of dollars to fight Afghan insurgents, he is really signalling that only certain international commitments matter--the ones made to George W. Bush. Can't he see that our children and grandchildren will pay the price for this shameful toadying, as a rapidly deteriorating climate provokes the biggest wave of species extinctions in history?
Yet he persists in the delusion that being a dependable U.S. ally is more important than passing on a liveable planet to our kids.
Thanks, Tux.
Look, I'm STILL not sure how I feel about the war in Afghanistan. I do know our soldiers are accomplishing a lot of good, to steal somebody's phrase, "in the lives of distant others". I also know we're not in Kandahar at the behest of the United States, let alone George W. Bush. Nor has Harper anything to do with it. We're in Afghanistan honouring an obligation as a member of NATO.
I do know how I feel about Kyoto: it's dead. And rightly so. As I have argued seemingly every other week for about four years, the Kyoto Protocol wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, not as long as the United States didn't sign it and, more importantly, China and India were exempt from it.
And then, of course, there's the inconvenient truth that Kyoto's a drop in the bucket compared to what really needs to be done...if you believe the computer models, which I, frankly, don't. (Any computer model's output is automatically suspect on the "garbage in, garbage out" principle...and have you noticed that by the time these predictions are verified or debunked, those who made them will be safely dead?)
I also know Canada has taken a leading role in getting the U.S. on board with some kind of agreement with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. And last I looked, something is usually better than nothing. So I say it's demonstrably incorrect to suggest Harper is "toadying" to the United States, and irresponsible to print and propagate such nonsense.
But I've learned to expect no better from the Toronto Star.
Today: not one, not two, but three letters to the editor that raised my blood pressure. I will reproduce them in toto here and respond to each in turn...because somebody's got to, and I'd bet the farm the only letters referencing these to be seen in future issues of the Star will be congratulatory.
First, a letter from Damir Karaturovic from Burnaby, B.C. Please take special note of his location as you read the following:
While the federal government's reduction of the GST may not have been sound economics, the greater yet more unheralded tragedy is the fact that many provinces did not take the gift granted to them and raise their own consumption taxes. Ontario alone could likely have directly collected at least $3 billion a year--surely enough to provide the economic stimulus Ontario so desperately seeks.
Okay, I'm back now with my response.
NNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!
Oh, I'm sorry, was I supposed to argue rationally? Yes? Okay. Just let me calm down a little, first, here.
No quibble with the first bit of this letter: many, if not most, economists agree that consumption taxes are better than taxes on income. The GST is sound economics: give Mulroney and Mazankowski credit. I'll even give the Liberals their due for breaking a promise and not scrapping the thing.
That doesn't mean the GST needs to be 6% or 7%.
Mr. Karaturovic dramatically parts ways with my reality when he calls it a "tragedy" that the provinces didn't take this "gift" and raise their own taxes to compensate. Has he been into some of that fine Burnaby bud, or what?
To be perfectly honest, I had forgotten that Harper had cut the GST a point until I noticed a slight reduction in the cost of food for Tux and Georgia the day after New Year's. When I realized the source of my extra ninety cents, I cheered a little. It wasn't that I was ecstatic about a tiny reduction in my daily tax load (although when you add up all the GST you pay in a year, one percentage point is still a tidy chunk of change). No, I was just happy that taxes didn't go up. Because that's what taxes do, don't they? Municipalities frighten their voters with threats of tax hikes totalling five times the rate of inflation to make their eventual tax hikes of two or three times the rate of inflation look good. And the sort of shell game Mr. Karaturovic is proposing is standard government behaviour most years: the right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away. To quote an important (and oft-forgotten) maxim: THERE IS ONLY ONE TAXPAYER.
I still have this attitude (disgraceful, I know) that money I earn is my money. It seems Stephen Harper agrees with me: unusual. In past years I've had to be shipped off to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau National Reprogramming Centre in Ottawa for extensive lobotomization: of course, it's all government money. They just let us have some of it. I' come out thinking of taxes as "gifts", or even better, "entitlements". If they overdo the dose at all I'll even suggest that a tax is an "economic stimulus"--whereupon right-thinking people such as my wife will bop me on the head and restore common sense.
Taxes do not stimulate the economy. Taxes kill the economy. For proof, look no further than the places corporations (you know, those things whence come all the jobs) choose to set up shop. Check out the mass exodus of head offices out of Toronto, where they've never met a tax they didn't want to marry.
Allowing people to keep more of their money is what stimulates the economy. Because they turn around and spend that money...which spins off into more jobs.
Should Stephen Harper have cut income taxes instead? Probably. Am I going to quibble because he cut something else instead? Don't think so. Am I going to suggest that Mr. McGuinty would do a better job managing my tax dollars? Not a chance in hell.
Moving right along (and if this blog entry stops halfway through this next letter, it's because I exploded and little Ken-gobbets are raining everywhere):
The Conservative government's GST cut is nothing short of a joke and shames us as Canadians. While nearly two-thirds of the people on this planet live on less than $2 a day, here's Stephen Harper smiling while announcing a tax cut that will save the average Canadian a couple of bucks purchasing what most likely will be more junk we don't need. All the while his government quietly decreases its contribution to foreign aid.
This GST cut could effectively save thousands of lives in countries not as fortunate as ours. Our country's wealth is unprecedented. It's time we woke up and proved to the world that we see the lives of distant others as valuable as our own. Shame on Harper and his government.
Bob Salveda, Toronto
Whew, that was close.
So, Bob--may I call you Bob? Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you seem to be saying here is that in the best Canadian tradition, our government shouldn't be limited to running our lives from cradle to grave...it should also be saving the lives of thousands of people worldwide?
Hmmm. I must be due for some more reprogramming: I'd forgotten that was in the Constitution someplace. Seems to me--silly, I know!--that there exist these things called "charities" that serve that function already. In fact, I'm pretty sure these "charity" things exist, because they're all over my television and telephone looking for money. Hey! I've got an idea, Bob! Why don't you give them some of your money and cut out the government middleman? If most of us did the same, I'm sure we could prove to the world "that we see the lives of distant others as valuable as our own". And our government could stick to, uh, governing.
Finally, a letter from Norm Beach, also of Toronto, and I'm going to let someone else type this because if I do it, I will blow up.
Mike Mays asks, "Who will trust our word on the world stage if we don't honour our commitments?"
He applies this to Afghanistan, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper so often does, but I can't see how moving troops out of Kandahar at the end of our scheduled rotation next year violates any promises. Yet there is a much more significant commitment our government has turned its back on, in the form of an international treaty that Canada signed and ratified, but our Prime Minister has repeatedly said he will not honour. When Harper says Canada can't afford to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, but can afford to spend billions of dollars to fight Afghan insurgents, he is really signalling that only certain international commitments matter--the ones made to George W. Bush. Can't he see that our children and grandchildren will pay the price for this shameful toadying, as a rapidly deteriorating climate provokes the biggest wave of species extinctions in history?
Yet he persists in the delusion that being a dependable U.S. ally is more important than passing on a liveable planet to our kids.
Thanks, Tux.
Look, I'm STILL not sure how I feel about the war in Afghanistan. I do know our soldiers are accomplishing a lot of good, to steal somebody's phrase, "in the lives of distant others". I also know we're not in Kandahar at the behest of the United States, let alone George W. Bush. Nor has Harper anything to do with it. We're in Afghanistan honouring an obligation as a member of NATO.
I do know how I feel about Kyoto: it's dead. And rightly so. As I have argued seemingly every other week for about four years, the Kyoto Protocol wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, not as long as the United States didn't sign it and, more importantly, China and India were exempt from it.
And then, of course, there's the inconvenient truth that Kyoto's a drop in the bucket compared to what really needs to be done...if you believe the computer models, which I, frankly, don't. (Any computer model's output is automatically suspect on the "garbage in, garbage out" principle...and have you noticed that by the time these predictions are verified or debunked, those who made them will be safely dead?)
I also know Canada has taken a leading role in getting the U.S. on board with some kind of agreement with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. And last I looked, something is usually better than nothing. So I say it's demonstrably incorrect to suggest Harper is "toadying" to the United States, and irresponsible to print and propagate such nonsense.
But I've learned to expect no better from the Toronto Star.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Stupid Is As Stupid Dies
Y'know, people probably think me heartless.
Maybe I am, at that.
It's just that when people get injured--or die--as a result of their own stupidity or reckless disregard, I just...can't...bring myself to feel all that sorry.
There's been a spate of such incidents this week. A mother lost a second son to gun violence in Toronto the other day. Confronted with the writeup in the Star here, it's hard not to feel some measure of sympathy. But then, the Star specializes in sympathy: its columnists even admit as much. In a recent radio campaign, one of them said "my job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted": the Toronto Star in a nutshell. Funny, I thought a newspaper's job was to report the news.
Anyway, it falls upon the sloppy, sensationalist Sun to
pick up the slack and note just how well Karim Rashid Ata-Ayi was known to police. It appears this young man had been running with the wrong crowd for quite some time. I don't see his death as a tragedy: more of an inevitability.
Incidentally, in all the reporting of this story I've seen (Sun, Star, Post, and Global National last night--nobody ever mentioned the word "father" anywhere. That word was most conspicuous in its total absence. It's almost as if people are afraid to mention it...just like they're afraid to mention that it always seems to be the Karims and Kwames and Jafars that are shooting each other, rarely the Pauls and Jims and Jasons of the world.
Growing up fatherless in a culture that glorifies gun violence, it's little wonder so many of these kids wind up dead. At this point it's hardly news anymore when one of them is killed. And that is sad--very sad--but it'll never change if the root causes (a pet phrase of the "comfort-the-afflicted-and-afflict-the-comforted" set) are ignored. Those root causes, by the way, have very little to do with poverty: there are hundreds of millions of children the world over growing up in far greater poverty than anyone in Regent Park can even imagine...and they're not mowing each other down like weeds.
Moving on...just down the road a piece, and still in Toronto...we have the townhouse that burned to the ground just three days before Christmas. Three kids were able to escape; two others died with their mother in the flames. Sad story, yes?
No.
As reported in the Post here, it turns out the smoke detector had been deliberately disconnected, presumably by the mother, some time before. Apparently this is quite common: "People see them [smoke detectors] as a nuisance, not a life-saving device . . . (so) they find ways to get rid of them or de-activate them", says Kevin Nakamura, the chief operating officer for Toronto Community Housing.
Yet another example of the whole notion of consequence being thrown out the window in this latter age. You disconnect your "nuisance" smoke detector and then die in a fire, that's natural law asserting itself, nothing more. Just like what happens when you choose not to wear a seatbelt, then get ejected from your car and die in a bloody heap by the side of the road. On some level--and I know just how foreign a concept this is, lately--you're asking for it. Begging for it, even.
If it turns out that teen who
died at the San Francisco Zoo actually did taunt a 350-lb. Siberian tiger (and I must stress that this allegation hasn't been proven), then he surely wouldn't have been all that surprised at the reaction. And yes, I know zoos are supposed to keep their human patrons and animal charges separate. That said, many different animal species are notorious escape artists, and no environment is ever, or can ever be made, wholly safe.
That's one of the dominant illusions of our time: that the environment can be made utterly safe, and that such safety is eminently desirable. The truth is, without exposure to at least some danger, children grow up thinking they're invincible, lacking the skills to recognize and cope with danger when it shows up.
But you see it everywhere, in the aftermath of almost every incident where someone is hurt or killed. Pickup truck slides off the road? There should have been a barrier to prevent it. Kids getting fat? Ban trans fats, that's the ticket. After some gun murders, you even hear calls for the banning of guns...which are already banned.
Look, there are cases, many of them, where people do everything "right", where they don't act like idiots, and still end up hurt or dead. And in those cases I still have the capacity to feel sadness. But I stopped grieving the endless stupidity of the human race a long time ago. Right about the time I realized it was endless, in fact.
Maybe I am, at that.
It's just that when people get injured--or die--as a result of their own stupidity or reckless disregard, I just...can't...bring myself to feel all that sorry.
There's been a spate of such incidents this week. A mother lost a second son to gun violence in Toronto the other day. Confronted with the writeup in the Star here, it's hard not to feel some measure of sympathy. But then, the Star specializes in sympathy: its columnists even admit as much. In a recent radio campaign, one of them said "my job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted": the Toronto Star in a nutshell. Funny, I thought a newspaper's job was to report the news.
Anyway, it falls upon the sloppy, sensationalist Sun to
pick up the slack and note just how well Karim Rashid Ata-Ayi was known to police. It appears this young man had been running with the wrong crowd for quite some time. I don't see his death as a tragedy: more of an inevitability.
Incidentally, in all the reporting of this story I've seen (Sun, Star, Post, and Global National last night--nobody ever mentioned the word "father" anywhere. That word was most conspicuous in its total absence. It's almost as if people are afraid to mention it...just like they're afraid to mention that it always seems to be the Karims and Kwames and Jafars that are shooting each other, rarely the Pauls and Jims and Jasons of the world.
Growing up fatherless in a culture that glorifies gun violence, it's little wonder so many of these kids wind up dead. At this point it's hardly news anymore when one of them is killed. And that is sad--very sad--but it'll never change if the root causes (a pet phrase of the "comfort-the-afflicted-and-afflict-the-comforted" set) are ignored. Those root causes, by the way, have very little to do with poverty: there are hundreds of millions of children the world over growing up in far greater poverty than anyone in Regent Park can even imagine...and they're not mowing each other down like weeds.
Moving on...just down the road a piece, and still in Toronto...we have the townhouse that burned to the ground just three days before Christmas. Three kids were able to escape; two others died with their mother in the flames. Sad story, yes?
No.
As reported in the Post here, it turns out the smoke detector had been deliberately disconnected, presumably by the mother, some time before. Apparently this is quite common: "People see them [smoke detectors] as a nuisance, not a life-saving device . . . (so) they find ways to get rid of them or de-activate them", says Kevin Nakamura, the chief operating officer for Toronto Community Housing.
Yet another example of the whole notion of consequence being thrown out the window in this latter age. You disconnect your "nuisance" smoke detector and then die in a fire, that's natural law asserting itself, nothing more. Just like what happens when you choose not to wear a seatbelt, then get ejected from your car and die in a bloody heap by the side of the road. On some level--and I know just how foreign a concept this is, lately--you're asking for it. Begging for it, even.
If it turns out that teen who
died at the San Francisco Zoo actually did taunt a 350-lb. Siberian tiger (and I must stress that this allegation hasn't been proven), then he surely wouldn't have been all that surprised at the reaction. And yes, I know zoos are supposed to keep their human patrons and animal charges separate. That said, many different animal species are notorious escape artists, and no environment is ever, or can ever be made, wholly safe.
That's one of the dominant illusions of our time: that the environment can be made utterly safe, and that such safety is eminently desirable. The truth is, without exposure to at least some danger, children grow up thinking they're invincible, lacking the skills to recognize and cope with danger when it shows up.
But you see it everywhere, in the aftermath of almost every incident where someone is hurt or killed. Pickup truck slides off the road? There should have been a barrier to prevent it. Kids getting fat? Ban trans fats, that's the ticket. After some gun murders, you even hear calls for the banning of guns...which are already banned.
Look, there are cases, many of them, where people do everything "right", where they don't act like idiots, and still end up hurt or dead. And in those cases I still have the capacity to feel sadness. But I stopped grieving the endless stupidity of the human race a long time ago. Right about the time I realized it was endless, in fact.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Oh, bother
We've entered the silly season.
Our store's going franchise again this Sunday, meaning another inventory. Eva's in the middle of, last I looked, entirely too many projects to count, working twelve hour days. Life is, in short, once again interesting.
And the blog has suffered a tad, for which I apologize.
Peter over at Dodosville recently compiled a list of things that irk him. Being in something of an irksome mood lately, I thought I'd do the same.
Before I get to that list, I'd better qualify it a little...because chances are just about the entire human race fits into this thing someplace. Including me. Sometimes especially me. So just because you recognize yourself in a point or two doesn't mean I think you're evil--or an idiot. (I do stupid things sometimes, but I don't believe that makes me stupid.)
Without further ado:
Telemarketers. Look, I know it's a job, but can you please find another one? Easily ninety percent of the calls that come to this house are unsolicited. Thank God for Call Display: it saves me from picking up the phone nine or ten times a day and swearing into it.
Forget just during supper. The phone starts ringing here at eight in the morning and doesn't stop until 9:30 or even 10:00 at night, long after we've retired. Saturdays and Sundays no exception.
The same firm will call eleventy-dozen times: gee, buddy, after the first hundred calls, don't you think for a second that maybe nobody here is buying what you're selling?
If I'm already your customer, a sure way not to keep me is to call me and ask how you're doing, because my answer will be "just fine, up until you decided to invade my home and interrupt what, for all you know, might have been extremely important."
A couple of subvarieties deserve special mention. One is the company that pretends to be doing market research (a legitimate activity, as far as I'm concerned--I worked in it for a time myself) but that is really trying to sell you something. That's called "sugging", for "selling under the guise", and it's against the law.
Another is charities. Now I'm sure many charities do a fine job (though let's be honest here: how many are really in the business of perpetuating themselves?) But do they need to call you every week looking for cast-off clothes? I can see one call to let me know that the Society for the Prevention of Brain Farts is looking for my used lacy underthings. Maybe even two, to remind me they're there--because let's face it, most people don't associate used lacy underthings with the prevention of brain farts. But every week? I just don't have that many lacy underthings to give away, you know?
As far as I'm concerned...never mind the "no-call list" that's been promised for years. I want telemarketing made illegal.
Door-to-door salespeople. See above, although this is even worse. I can answer the telephone without having to restrain two moderate-sized dogs. If I'm home alone, the door doesn't open. Period. And it is my firm belief that unless you've been personally invited to my home, you're trespassing. (Friends and family: you have a standing invitation. You knew that, right?)
The subscum here that really gets me are the Direct Energy people and their ilk. We've had three doorknockers on the same day, two from the same company, trying to get me a great rate on natural gas I don't use. (We have electric heat.) We've had people from "Universal Power" who claim they're actually from Waterloo North Hydro and ask to see our bill. The next one who tries that will get to see the cops instead.
Oh, and memo to Jehovah's Witnesses: according to your own beliefs, only 144,000 people will get into heaven. There are several million of you already. Don't bother diluting your heavenly chances any further by trying to recruit me. Okay?
Whiners. Yeah, we all do it sometimes. On some level it's even kind of necessary: shared suffering is lessened, says Spider Robinson, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. What I mean here are the sort of people who employ what James Redfield called a 'Poor Me control drama'. This is your basic victim/martyr stance, characterized by a predominantly negative attitude towards just about everything, including the self. (Especially the self: criticize these people at all and they'll assume they're worthless and that nobody cares. Poor, poor pitiful them.)
Like any control drama, the poor me has its uses, or people wouldn't employ it. But even a year of "how dead is my garden"--especially when they prove they'd rather complain than water the garden (or water the garden and then bitch about all those damned green plants)--that gets old.
Know-it-alls. Special exemption given to those people who really do know it all. But most of you know-it-alls actually know very little. The way to tell the difference: "know-it-alls" broadcast far and wide about how competent they are, whereas the really smart people stay quiet and let their actions speak for themselves.
Fundamentalists. One naturally would assume I mean religious fundamentalists here. And I do. But I also mean those people who believe strongly that any aspect of their lives is the one, sole, right and proper way to live. There are atheist fundamentalists who chafe against the mildest expression of religion or spirituality, and they bother me just as much as the holy-rollers. Ardent vegetarians who shun me because of my burger...people who say George W. Bush is the living antichrist...People who say Michael Moore is the living antichrist...
In fact, most fundamentalists these days are political, not religious. Sure sign you're one of them: if you only see two sides to a given issue, yours and the wrong side. Another: you consider it your sacred duty to show the world how wrong they are. I like how Neale Donald Walsch describes his Conversations with God books and the philosophies therein: "Mine is not a better way: mine is only another way."
Snobs. My life has no less (and no more) value than yours simply because I work in a grocery store. I'm an eyewitness to this sort of snobbery almost daily. A woman who worked in our deli was driven to tears by the actions of one mother, who pulled her daughter aside within earshot and said in an overly pointed tone, "See, dear? This is why you should stay in school. You don't want to end up like her." Carrie (not her real name) was so stunned she couldn't articulate her thought, which was lady? I have two degrees and a diploma, and I work here because I like it.
You see the same thing routinely directed towards fat people, and that galls me even more. I may be fat, but you're ugly...and I can diet.
Often the snobs are also
Monarchs. Not the real ones, the people who act as if they are. The ones who roar past you at twice the speed limit because their time is so much more valuable than yours. The ones who demand servitude from every least peon they meet, or simply ignore them. (I once had five customers in a row enter the store, buy their items, and depart, all without saying so much as one word in response to my greeting, suggestive selling, thank-you and farewell. After the fifth one, Mental Sarcastic Bastard busted loose and said that's funny, I didn't know there was a convention of deafmutes in town. I got a couple of dirty looks and one guy invited me, under his breath, to perform an anatomically impossible act.)
Various and sundry other species of ignorance, for which I'm too lazy to coin a one-word name:
--those who treat the assorted utterances of a Hollywood celebrity or sports figure as if they had a degree of importance. I blame the media for bothering to report these things.
--those who believe government is the solution to anything that ails this country. Reagan had it right: government is not the solution. Government is the problem. But this disease of government dependance is endemic here in Canada. From insisting government should raise our kids to calls for more and more laws to ban any and all behaviour somebody finds questionable, many Canadians are very sick, to the point they rely on a government crutch to tell them what and how to think.
--Anti-Semites. I take back what I said above: if you think Jews are running the world/primarily responsible for the mess in the Middle East/planned 9/11/ exaggerated the Holocaust/drink the blood of Palestinian babies...well, then, you are both evil and an idiot.
--those people who think homosexuality is a sin
...because it's not "natural" (when dozens of species from birds to dolphins engage in homosexual behaviour)
...because it's in the Bible (right next to that passage prohibiting shaving)
...because they're "recruiting" (go ahead and try and "recruit" them right back and see how far you get)
...because they are "anti-life" or "anti-human". (Yes, I've actually heard that said aloud, the reasoning being that they can't procreate. Neither can many "straights"...are they "anti-life" too?)
--those who think that because I wrote the above, I must be a closeted queer. Hey, I'm not arguing for homosexuality, either. One's sexual orientation is not open to positive or negative moral interpretation. It simply is. One's sexual behaviour can certainly be moral or immoral, according to however you define "morality"...adultery within a committed relationship is generally seen as immoral, for example. That you cheated on your wife with a man instead of another woman is no less (and no more) reprehensible.
--People who abuse animals. Spiritually, I know "all attack is a cry for help", that those who hurt animals do so because it's the only way they can feel powerful. Rationally, I don't give a shit. I favour the Code of Hammurabi ("an eye for an eye") for those who abuse or neglect animals.
Our store's going franchise again this Sunday, meaning another inventory. Eva's in the middle of, last I looked, entirely too many projects to count, working twelve hour days. Life is, in short, once again interesting.
And the blog has suffered a tad, for which I apologize.
Peter over at Dodosville recently compiled a list of things that irk him. Being in something of an irksome mood lately, I thought I'd do the same.
Before I get to that list, I'd better qualify it a little...because chances are just about the entire human race fits into this thing someplace. Including me. Sometimes especially me. So just because you recognize yourself in a point or two doesn't mean I think you're evil--or an idiot. (I do stupid things sometimes, but I don't believe that makes me stupid.)
Without further ado:
Telemarketers. Look, I know it's a job, but can you please find another one? Easily ninety percent of the calls that come to this house are unsolicited. Thank God for Call Display: it saves me from picking up the phone nine or ten times a day and swearing into it.
Forget just during supper. The phone starts ringing here at eight in the morning and doesn't stop until 9:30 or even 10:00 at night, long after we've retired. Saturdays and Sundays no exception.
The same firm will call eleventy-dozen times: gee, buddy, after the first hundred calls, don't you think for a second that maybe nobody here is buying what you're selling?
If I'm already your customer, a sure way not to keep me is to call me and ask how you're doing, because my answer will be "just fine, up until you decided to invade my home and interrupt what, for all you know, might have been extremely important."
A couple of subvarieties deserve special mention. One is the company that pretends to be doing market research (a legitimate activity, as far as I'm concerned--I worked in it for a time myself) but that is really trying to sell you something. That's called "sugging", for "selling under the guise", and it's against the law.
Another is charities. Now I'm sure many charities do a fine job (though let's be honest here: how many are really in the business of perpetuating themselves?) But do they need to call you every week looking for cast-off clothes? I can see one call to let me know that the Society for the Prevention of Brain Farts is looking for my used lacy underthings. Maybe even two, to remind me they're there--because let's face it, most people don't associate used lacy underthings with the prevention of brain farts. But every week? I just don't have that many lacy underthings to give away, you know?
As far as I'm concerned...never mind the "no-call list" that's been promised for years. I want telemarketing made illegal.
Door-to-door salespeople. See above, although this is even worse. I can answer the telephone without having to restrain two moderate-sized dogs. If I'm home alone, the door doesn't open. Period. And it is my firm belief that unless you've been personally invited to my home, you're trespassing. (Friends and family: you have a standing invitation. You knew that, right?)
The subscum here that really gets me are the Direct Energy people and their ilk. We've had three doorknockers on the same day, two from the same company, trying to get me a great rate on natural gas I don't use. (We have electric heat.) We've had people from "Universal Power" who claim they're actually from Waterloo North Hydro and ask to see our bill. The next one who tries that will get to see the cops instead.
Oh, and memo to Jehovah's Witnesses: according to your own beliefs, only 144,000 people will get into heaven. There are several million of you already. Don't bother diluting your heavenly chances any further by trying to recruit me. Okay?
Whiners. Yeah, we all do it sometimes. On some level it's even kind of necessary: shared suffering is lessened, says Spider Robinson, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. What I mean here are the sort of people who employ what James Redfield called a 'Poor Me control drama'. This is your basic victim/martyr stance, characterized by a predominantly negative attitude towards just about everything, including the self. (Especially the self: criticize these people at all and they'll assume they're worthless and that nobody cares. Poor, poor pitiful them.)
Like any control drama, the poor me has its uses, or people wouldn't employ it. But even a year of "how dead is my garden"--especially when they prove they'd rather complain than water the garden (or water the garden and then bitch about all those damned green plants)--that gets old.
Know-it-alls. Special exemption given to those people who really do know it all. But most of you know-it-alls actually know very little. The way to tell the difference: "know-it-alls" broadcast far and wide about how competent they are, whereas the really smart people stay quiet and let their actions speak for themselves.
Fundamentalists. One naturally would assume I mean religious fundamentalists here. And I do. But I also mean those people who believe strongly that any aspect of their lives is the one, sole, right and proper way to live. There are atheist fundamentalists who chafe against the mildest expression of religion or spirituality, and they bother me just as much as the holy-rollers. Ardent vegetarians who shun me because of my burger...people who say George W. Bush is the living antichrist...People who say Michael Moore is the living antichrist...
In fact, most fundamentalists these days are political, not religious. Sure sign you're one of them: if you only see two sides to a given issue, yours and the wrong side. Another: you consider it your sacred duty to show the world how wrong they are. I like how Neale Donald Walsch describes his Conversations with God books and the philosophies therein: "Mine is not a better way: mine is only another way."
Snobs. My life has no less (and no more) value than yours simply because I work in a grocery store. I'm an eyewitness to this sort of snobbery almost daily. A woman who worked in our deli was driven to tears by the actions of one mother, who pulled her daughter aside within earshot and said in an overly pointed tone, "See, dear? This is why you should stay in school. You don't want to end up like her." Carrie (not her real name) was so stunned she couldn't articulate her thought, which was lady? I have two degrees and a diploma, and I work here because I like it.
You see the same thing routinely directed towards fat people, and that galls me even more. I may be fat, but you're ugly...and I can diet.
Often the snobs are also
Monarchs. Not the real ones, the people who act as if they are. The ones who roar past you at twice the speed limit because their time is so much more valuable than yours. The ones who demand servitude from every least peon they meet, or simply ignore them. (I once had five customers in a row enter the store, buy their items, and depart, all without saying so much as one word in response to my greeting, suggestive selling, thank-you and farewell. After the fifth one, Mental Sarcastic Bastard busted loose and said that's funny, I didn't know there was a convention of deafmutes in town. I got a couple of dirty looks and one guy invited me, under his breath, to perform an anatomically impossible act.)
Various and sundry other species of ignorance, for which I'm too lazy to coin a one-word name:
--those who treat the assorted utterances of a Hollywood celebrity or sports figure as if they had a degree of importance. I blame the media for bothering to report these things.
--those who believe government is the solution to anything that ails this country. Reagan had it right: government is not the solution. Government is the problem. But this disease of government dependance is endemic here in Canada. From insisting government should raise our kids to calls for more and more laws to ban any and all behaviour somebody finds questionable, many Canadians are very sick, to the point they rely on a government crutch to tell them what and how to think.
--Anti-Semites. I take back what I said above: if you think Jews are running the world/primarily responsible for the mess in the Middle East/planned 9/11/ exaggerated the Holocaust/drink the blood of Palestinian babies...well, then, you are both evil and an idiot.
--those people who think homosexuality is a sin
...because it's not "natural" (when dozens of species from birds to dolphins engage in homosexual behaviour)
...because it's in the Bible (right next to that passage prohibiting shaving)
...because they're "recruiting" (go ahead and try and "recruit" them right back and see how far you get)
...because they are "anti-life" or "anti-human". (Yes, I've actually heard that said aloud, the reasoning being that they can't procreate. Neither can many "straights"...are they "anti-life" too?)
--those who think that because I wrote the above, I must be a closeted queer. Hey, I'm not arguing for homosexuality, either. One's sexual orientation is not open to positive or negative moral interpretation. It simply is. One's sexual behaviour can certainly be moral or immoral, according to however you define "morality"...adultery within a committed relationship is generally seen as immoral, for example. That you cheated on your wife with a man instead of another woman is no less (and no more) reprehensible.
--People who abuse animals. Spiritually, I know "all attack is a cry for help", that those who hurt animals do so because it's the only way they can feel powerful. Rationally, I don't give a shit. I favour the Code of Hammurabi ("an eye for an eye") for those who abuse or neglect animals.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Impound Found Sound: "Son, You're Grounded!"
An aside in my last post mentioned the new Ontario law permitting police to impound your vehicle on the spot if you are clocked at 50 km/hr or more over the limit. Your license is suspended for seven days and you are assessed a fine of between $2000 and $10000 as well.
When this law was announced, I have to admit, I cheered a little. Only a little: in my world, the punishment for such asinine behaviour would be considerably more severe; but at least the law's heading in the right direction.
Which is why I suspect somebody will soon challenge its constitutionality, on the grounds that police are acting, in effect, as judge, jury, and executioner. I've seen several letters to various editors in this vein: every single one prefaces the concern with something along the lines of, "while I do not support reckless drivers..."
I'd like to meet the people who write these letters, so as I can slap them upside the head.
Police are occasionally required to act as judge, jury, and executioner...sometimes literally. Suppose you are a police officer and you are called to a bank robbery in progress. Upon arrival, you confront the robber, who is waving a gun around and firing wildly. Do you
(a) write the lad a ticket, requiring him to appear in court at some later date, and throw it in his general direction, hoping he might stop firing; or
(b) remove the imminent threat to innocent bystanders and yourself?
To me, the answer's obvious. So the next question is: do you see reckless driving as an imminent threat to innocent motorists, or a mere misdemeanor?
Now, I'm not suggesting the police should just start killing anybody they pull over. (Though I'm pretty sure that would reform people's driving habits in a hell of a hurry.) But I fail to see how removing the threat--the car--is anything other than a reasonable response.
Perhaps it comes from my having a cop for a father, but I tend to look at police officers as the parents of us all. If your child is playing with matches, no amount of lecturing about the dangers of playing with matches will have any effect if you don't take the matches away. If your child is using any toy in a dangerous manner, it's only natural that you'd remove the toy--even if only for a short time.
To a sizeable segment of the (especially young, and especially male) population, a car is nothing more than a big toy. If you don't believe me, watch a young child with his Hot Wheels some time, and then compare it to the behaviour you see every day behind the wheel. More than half of the cars impounded on Thanksgiving weekend were driven by males 18 to 27 years of age. Little boys with big toys. Speeding and reckless driving are a predominantly male things. Next time you watch a car peeling away from a red light, check the gender of the driver. It's usually a guy. Only a certain kind of male would believe there's something inherently impressive about pressing an accelerator pedal.
I'll tell you how to solve the problem of street racing: remove the ability to race. Give me one good reason why pedestrian cars (by which I mean non-emergency vehicles) should be able to achieve speeds of 160 km/hr or greater. I can't think of one, but I'll consider any passed my way. Until I hear one, I propose all cars manufactured after 2008 be equipped with a device governing speed. I'll leave the exact speed up to a panel composed of police officers and people who've had family members and friends killed in street racing incidents.
And in the meantime, let's see if this law has any effect. If not, the next step is to permanently confiscate vehicles and sell them at book value. Proceeds to the victims of crime.
The hell of it is, even measures this draconian would only be a first step towards changing the driving culture. I've written before about what I consider to be the insanity of piling distraction after distraction on to the laps of drivers, and of drivers actively courting distraction. I'd be no different if I actually drove: show me a screen, for instance, and there's a good chance I'll look at it, even if only fleetingly (and with my luck, it'd be in that fleeting moment some kid runs out in front of me). Hell, I'm famous for being distracted to the point of trance by a simple radio. I may be an extreme case, but sitting in the passenger seat of our little Echo, I see me in microcosm everywhere I look. Cellphones are the paint on the asphalt. People eating, doing their makeup, fiddling with their iPods, who knows what else: driving with half a finger and less than half an eye, trusting other people just as distracted as they are not to hit them. Tell me again how sane this is.
It's bad enough that there are so many people careening around blind, and blind to their own blindness. Add in a few guys in their Civics-cum-Lamborghini Testosteronas and the wonder is there aren't more "accidents"...
When this law was announced, I have to admit, I cheered a little. Only a little: in my world, the punishment for such asinine behaviour would be considerably more severe; but at least the law's heading in the right direction.
Which is why I suspect somebody will soon challenge its constitutionality, on the grounds that police are acting, in effect, as judge, jury, and executioner. I've seen several letters to various editors in this vein: every single one prefaces the concern with something along the lines of, "while I do not support reckless drivers..."
I'd like to meet the people who write these letters, so as I can slap them upside the head.
Police are occasionally required to act as judge, jury, and executioner...sometimes literally. Suppose you are a police officer and you are called to a bank robbery in progress. Upon arrival, you confront the robber, who is waving a gun around and firing wildly. Do you
(a) write the lad a ticket, requiring him to appear in court at some later date, and throw it in his general direction, hoping he might stop firing; or
(b) remove the imminent threat to innocent bystanders and yourself?
To me, the answer's obvious. So the next question is: do you see reckless driving as an imminent threat to innocent motorists, or a mere misdemeanor?
Now, I'm not suggesting the police should just start killing anybody they pull over. (Though I'm pretty sure that would reform people's driving habits in a hell of a hurry.) But I fail to see how removing the threat--the car--is anything other than a reasonable response.
Perhaps it comes from my having a cop for a father, but I tend to look at police officers as the parents of us all. If your child is playing with matches, no amount of lecturing about the dangers of playing with matches will have any effect if you don't take the matches away. If your child is using any toy in a dangerous manner, it's only natural that you'd remove the toy--even if only for a short time.
To a sizeable segment of the (especially young, and especially male) population, a car is nothing more than a big toy. If you don't believe me, watch a young child with his Hot Wheels some time, and then compare it to the behaviour you see every day behind the wheel. More than half of the cars impounded on Thanksgiving weekend were driven by males 18 to 27 years of age. Little boys with big toys. Speeding and reckless driving are a predominantly male things. Next time you watch a car peeling away from a red light, check the gender of the driver. It's usually a guy. Only a certain kind of male would believe there's something inherently impressive about pressing an accelerator pedal.
I'll tell you how to solve the problem of street racing: remove the ability to race. Give me one good reason why pedestrian cars (by which I mean non-emergency vehicles) should be able to achieve speeds of 160 km/hr or greater. I can't think of one, but I'll consider any passed my way. Until I hear one, I propose all cars manufactured after 2008 be equipped with a device governing speed. I'll leave the exact speed up to a panel composed of police officers and people who've had family members and friends killed in street racing incidents.
And in the meantime, let's see if this law has any effect. If not, the next step is to permanently confiscate vehicles and sell them at book value. Proceeds to the victims of crime.
The hell of it is, even measures this draconian would only be a first step towards changing the driving culture. I've written before about what I consider to be the insanity of piling distraction after distraction on to the laps of drivers, and of drivers actively courting distraction. I'd be no different if I actually drove: show me a screen, for instance, and there's a good chance I'll look at it, even if only fleetingly (and with my luck, it'd be in that fleeting moment some kid runs out in front of me). Hell, I'm famous for being distracted to the point of trance by a simple radio. I may be an extreme case, but sitting in the passenger seat of our little Echo, I see me in microcosm everywhere I look. Cellphones are the paint on the asphalt. People eating, doing their makeup, fiddling with their iPods, who knows what else: driving with half a finger and less than half an eye, trusting other people just as distracted as they are not to hit them. Tell me again how sane this is.
It's bad enough that there are so many people careening around blind, and blind to their own blindness. Add in a few guys in their Civics-cum-Lamborghini Testosteronas and the wonder is there aren't more "accidents"...
Nope, I think it's only fair that people who use their toys to threaten others have those toys taken away.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
High Pressure, Cold Front
All I want is normal weather.
No, check that, I also want an acknowledgement that this run of hot, dry weather we've been experiencing in Waterloo Region since, well, June--is not a good thing.
Unlikely I'll see that, though: every TV meterologist beams like the sun. "It's going to be hot hot hot", says Global TV's resident weathernerd. "Record breaking heat. Get out there and love it up."
No, thank you. I get worried when the high temperatures are twelve degrees Centigrade above normal and the lows are what the highs are supposed to be. That's not right, people.
We've had less than half the normal precipitation. As far as most people are concerned, this seems to be good news. I'd be concerned about this even if I didn't like rainy days. Rain, in case you have forgotten, is kind of necessary for most crops.
This is why Canadians will never care or indeed notice global warming until it's far, far too late. I'm not even sure when that will be. I saw footage of people out sunbathing all over Europe this past summer in the middle of a killer heat wave that took hundreds of lives; obviously death alone won't do it. Maybe when people start spontaneously bursting into flame.
But in the meantime, winter's coming. And anything that postpones or mitigates winter is surely a good thing, right? Maybe the roads will stay ice-free this year, making it easier to drive with one finger while chatting to your friends on the ol' cellphone. Ice is just so inconvenient, you know? How dare anything even try to distract you from your phone conversation?
Maybe there won't be any snow to shovel. Wouldn't that be lovely? All that dead, desiccated and dreary gloom everywhere, instead of a pristine coat of white. Kids will have mudball fights and go out rollerblading instead of skating. Saint Nick will arrive in a hula. And wait for it...next spring, when the farmers are relying on runoff to irrigate the ground, there won't be any! So the price of everything from the ground will skyrocket! For everyone!
But hey, you didn't have to don a winter coat. Let's not lose sight of the real important stuff, here.
Yup. Give me normal weather, or failing that, at least cease and desist with the raucous crowing about how beautiful it is out there. Like you're responsible or something. Hey, if that's the case, at least we'll know who to sue.
No, check that, I also want an acknowledgement that this run of hot, dry weather we've been experiencing in Waterloo Region since, well, June--is not a good thing.
Unlikely I'll see that, though: every TV meterologist beams like the sun. "It's going to be hot hot hot", says Global TV's resident weathernerd. "Record breaking heat. Get out there and love it up."
No, thank you. I get worried when the high temperatures are twelve degrees Centigrade above normal and the lows are what the highs are supposed to be. That's not right, people.
We've had less than half the normal precipitation. As far as most people are concerned, this seems to be good news. I'd be concerned about this even if I didn't like rainy days. Rain, in case you have forgotten, is kind of necessary for most crops.
This is why Canadians will never care or indeed notice global warming until it's far, far too late. I'm not even sure when that will be. I saw footage of people out sunbathing all over Europe this past summer in the middle of a killer heat wave that took hundreds of lives; obviously death alone won't do it. Maybe when people start spontaneously bursting into flame.
But in the meantime, winter's coming. And anything that postpones or mitigates winter is surely a good thing, right? Maybe the roads will stay ice-free this year, making it easier to drive with one finger while chatting to your friends on the ol' cellphone. Ice is just so inconvenient, you know? How dare anything even try to distract you from your phone conversation?
Maybe there won't be any snow to shovel. Wouldn't that be lovely? All that dead, desiccated and dreary gloom everywhere, instead of a pristine coat of white. Kids will have mudball fights and go out rollerblading instead of skating. Saint Nick will arrive in a hula. And wait for it...next spring, when the farmers are relying on runoff to irrigate the ground, there won't be any! So the price of everything from the ground will skyrocket! For everyone!
But hey, you didn't have to don a winter coat. Let's not lose sight of the real important stuff, here.
Yup. Give me normal weather, or failing that, at least cease and desist with the raucous crowing about how beautiful it is out there. Like you're responsible or something. Hey, if that's the case, at least we'll know who to sue.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Identity? Pul-LEEZE.
"Shhh, do you know you're actually yelling?" my wife said to me.
Well, no, I didn't realize I was. But I guess I'm not surprised. Every once in a while, I hear something on television that pisses me off.
In Delcambre, Louisiana, it is now a crime to wear baggy pants that expose your underwear. The penalty is six months in jail and up to a $500 fine.
That wasn't what pissed me off. Granted, the punishment's a bit harsh, but then again, if you want to look like somebody who's in jail, maybe you belong there yourself.
No, what pissed me off was some talking head getting onscreen and saying "this is no big deal to youth. It's fashion. They're...
(oh, shit, here it comes, he's actually going to say it!)
...searching for their identity."
Cue the boiling of the blood.
Searching for their identity? Why do so many adults say this about teenagers? Straight out of the southern end of yonder bull, that is. Teens--most of them, at any rate--have zero interest in their own identities. If they did, they wouldn't all look the same, now, would they?
Believe me, I know this from personal experience, being one of those kids who existed on the outside of every inside there ever was. You're punished for daring to assert your own identity. You're punished even more harshly if you try to fit in, say, by wearing whatever label is "in" this year, which presents a pretty little conundrum for kids like me.
Being a teenager hasn't changed much. On the surface, it's changed a lot, of course. Once upon a time, there was no need for "grief counsellors" whenever trauma befell your school; it was assumed you knew, by the age of thirteen, what death was and could probably cope with it on your own. Then, for a time, they brought in the grief counsellors for everything, "traumatic" or not--and street racers getting killed isn't traumatic, it's Darwin at work. (Street racers killing others, mind you...)
They're still trying with the grief counsellors, but teens are overwhelmingly rejecting them in favour of Facebook. Which probably strikes the adult mind as utterly bizarre. I can only reiterate what I've said about online relationships: it's very easy to feel very close to a great many people online. There's something about a screen that encourages the baring of one's soul.
Digression aside, the teenage tightrope hasn't changed, at root. Adults can say it's a search for identity--they say it often enough that most teens will agree with them--but it's really a search for conformity and approval. For some reason that escaped me at the time (even as I tried like hell to fit in), it's seen as positively vital that you win the approval of your peers. The approval of your parents is probably a worthier goal to shoot for, particularly when your peers are up to no good. But just try saying that to a teenager. You'd better start running halfway through the sentence.
Maybe that's why I couldn't fit in. God knows I tried. I went through a period in grade nine and ten when pretty much everything I wore was an exact copy of something I'd seen someone else, someone cool, wearing. My outward appearance was therefore passable, but inside I was always rebelling...against the groupthink so common and so demanded. That gave me the mark of Cain as far as most of my peers were concerned.
If baggy pants had been "the fashion" when I was in high school, I do believe my parents would have enforced a different fashion on me. Not that they would have had to, of course. Why would I wear something that doesn't fit? Isn't that the first thing you need to concern yourself with when it comes to clothing, at least if you want to look respectable?
That's just it, though. These kids don't want to look respectable, at least not in the sense adults mean when they say the term. The whole nature of "respect" has changed, probably irrevocably. Respect is no longer earned, for one thing: it's expected. Teens have taken the old-fashioned notion of respect and infused a great deal of fear: to disrespect someone, say, by looking at them wrong, looking at them at all, or maybe not looking at them, can get you killed. It's up to you to determine the correct protocol.
In short, teenhood has taken on a prison mentality. I'm not sure how or why this happened, or if it can be changed. But we probably shouldn't be surprised that teens want to look like convicted felons.
Well, no, I didn't realize I was. But I guess I'm not surprised. Every once in a while, I hear something on television that pisses me off.
In Delcambre, Louisiana, it is now a crime to wear baggy pants that expose your underwear. The penalty is six months in jail and up to a $500 fine.
That wasn't what pissed me off. Granted, the punishment's a bit harsh, but then again, if you want to look like somebody who's in jail, maybe you belong there yourself.
No, what pissed me off was some talking head getting onscreen and saying "this is no big deal to youth. It's fashion. They're...
(oh, shit, here it comes, he's actually going to say it!)
...searching for their identity."
Cue the boiling of the blood.
Searching for their identity? Why do so many adults say this about teenagers? Straight out of the southern end of yonder bull, that is. Teens--most of them, at any rate--have zero interest in their own identities. If they did, they wouldn't all look the same, now, would they?
Believe me, I know this from personal experience, being one of those kids who existed on the outside of every inside there ever was. You're punished for daring to assert your own identity. You're punished even more harshly if you try to fit in, say, by wearing whatever label is "in" this year, which presents a pretty little conundrum for kids like me.
Being a teenager hasn't changed much. On the surface, it's changed a lot, of course. Once upon a time, there was no need for "grief counsellors" whenever trauma befell your school; it was assumed you knew, by the age of thirteen, what death was and could probably cope with it on your own. Then, for a time, they brought in the grief counsellors for everything, "traumatic" or not--and street racers getting killed isn't traumatic, it's Darwin at work. (Street racers killing others, mind you...)
They're still trying with the grief counsellors, but teens are overwhelmingly rejecting them in favour of Facebook. Which probably strikes the adult mind as utterly bizarre. I can only reiterate what I've said about online relationships: it's very easy to feel very close to a great many people online. There's something about a screen that encourages the baring of one's soul.
Digression aside, the teenage tightrope hasn't changed, at root. Adults can say it's a search for identity--they say it often enough that most teens will agree with them--but it's really a search for conformity and approval. For some reason that escaped me at the time (even as I tried like hell to fit in), it's seen as positively vital that you win the approval of your peers. The approval of your parents is probably a worthier goal to shoot for, particularly when your peers are up to no good. But just try saying that to a teenager. You'd better start running halfway through the sentence.
Maybe that's why I couldn't fit in. God knows I tried. I went through a period in grade nine and ten when pretty much everything I wore was an exact copy of something I'd seen someone else, someone cool, wearing. My outward appearance was therefore passable, but inside I was always rebelling...against the groupthink so common and so demanded. That gave me the mark of Cain as far as most of my peers were concerned.
If baggy pants had been "the fashion" when I was in high school, I do believe my parents would have enforced a different fashion on me. Not that they would have had to, of course. Why would I wear something that doesn't fit? Isn't that the first thing you need to concern yourself with when it comes to clothing, at least if you want to look respectable?
That's just it, though. These kids don't want to look respectable, at least not in the sense adults mean when they say the term. The whole nature of "respect" has changed, probably irrevocably. Respect is no longer earned, for one thing: it's expected. Teens have taken the old-fashioned notion of respect and infused a great deal of fear: to disrespect someone, say, by looking at them wrong, looking at them at all, or maybe not looking at them, can get you killed. It's up to you to determine the correct protocol.
In short, teenhood has taken on a prison mentality. I'm not sure how or why this happened, or if it can be changed. But we probably shouldn't be surprised that teens want to look like convicted felons.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Election follies (I)
The Ontario election campaign is in full riot mode all around me. I know negative campaign ads work, but boy, I wish they didn't. McGuinty's getting hammered left and right (on the right, it's a literal hammer: every Conservative commercial features at least three panes of glass breaking, each symbolizing a broken promise).
The thing is, I knew long ago that I wouldn't be voting for Dalton McGuinty. I almost voted for him last time. He seemed so sincere when he said "I won't raise your taxes, but I won't cut them either. Our schools and hospitals need every penny of that money." Wow, I thought. That sounds so honest! In an election campaign! That's probably the first honest statement I've heard since Kim Campbell's infamous "An election is no time to discuss serious issues."
(Incidentally, the same John Tory that's currently running for the Premiership of Ontario ran that campaign for Campbell. He was behind possibly the most notorious attack ad in Canadian political history, making fun of Chretien's facial disfigurement. That alone probably cost Campbell the election: as it was, she ran the Conservatives into the ground.)
As I was saying, I won't, can't, vote for McGuinty. To do so would be to ignore countless broken promises, not the least of which was the biggest tax hike in this province's history, enacted almost immediately. I could almost hear the guy laughing. Suckers. That'll teach ya to listen to politicians!
There are (or at least I'd like to think there are) a few million more like me out here. And all of us would like to know where to park our vote. We don't need to be reminded that Norman Bates (he really does look like Norman Bates) lied with nearly every word. What we, the electorate, need is a reason to vote for somebody.
I, personally, will not vote NDP. Probably ever. While I agree with their outlook on many social issues, I'd honestly like to keep my job. You want a reason not to vote New Democrat? Toronto's city council is run by a bunch of dips, er, Dippers. The city's nearly bankrupt and all they can do is whine and moan about all the money they're not getting from other levels of government. God forbid they'd ever look at trimming the obscene amount of fat clogging their administrative arteries.
Normally, I'd vote for Tory's Tories, but the only plank of their platform the media's seen fit to show me amidst all the McGuinty bashing concerns funding for faith-based schools. Separation of church and state, anyone? I don't even think the Catholic school board ought to be publicly funded. At least one Catholic agrees with me: there was a letter to the editor of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record the other day basically stating that parents shouldn't be expecting schools to teach religion...that's what parents and churches are for. How many kids attending Catholic school go with their parents to a Catholic church every Sunday? Not a whole hell of a lot.
Does Tory have more to offer? Probably. But where is it? I want to see his mug on my TV telling me what he'll do for the province, not what McGuinty failed to do. (Then again, given that Dalton laid out some two hundred promises, then did his damnedest to break every one of them (hell, he broke his promise to close our coal-fired electricity generation stations, what, twice? Three times?--maybe it's not a good idea to promise anything at all.)
Anyway, since the media have been rather remiss at letting me know where everybody stands, I've had to go a-hunting. Behold, the fruits of my labour:
Liberal Party platform
Conservative Party platform
The NDP platform does not seem to be out yet. For reference, their site is here.
Finally, the Green Party.
As I've said before, I'm pretty sure I'll be voting Green. It's admittedly a wasted vote, as they have no hope of forming a government, but I like much of what I've seen from Frank DeJong. His campaign vehicles are a bicycle, a Prius, and public transit. That may smack of gimmickry to you. To me, it says this guy puts his money where his mouth is. I would urge everyone, even if you have no intention of voting for this party, to at least go look at what you're rejecting. Because unlike the other two parties running against McGuinty's Liberals, the Green Party has next to no budget and is again being shut out of the televised debates. This last is criminal, as far as I'm concerned...and I'd say that even if it was the Communist Party of Ontario that was garnering ten percent of the vote each election. Trust me, the day this party's allowed to play with the big boys, their popularity will spike.
--------------------------------
We're not just having an election here in Ontario, we're having a referendum on how future elections will be conducted. Details, for those who care, are here.
In brief, we're being asked to consider whether we should stick with our first-past-the-post system or move to something called Mixed-Member Proportional. This would give you two votes in any election: one for an MPP, conducted exactly as it is now, and the other for a political party. This second vote would basically ensure that each party's percentage of the seats more or less lines up with their percentage of the vote, something that never happens now.
One reason I like this system is that it allows me to elect a local member whom I feel is doing (or would do) a good job...and vote for a party which may not be the same party my local member represents.
Anyway, I know all this stuff is fantastically boring to non political junkies. And completely irrelevant to those of my readers outside this province. Please forgive me, folks. I promise to write on something more universal next time out. And unlike a certain Liberal premier, I keep my promises.
The thing is, I knew long ago that I wouldn't be voting for Dalton McGuinty. I almost voted for him last time. He seemed so sincere when he said "I won't raise your taxes, but I won't cut them either. Our schools and hospitals need every penny of that money." Wow, I thought. That sounds so honest! In an election campaign! That's probably the first honest statement I've heard since Kim Campbell's infamous "An election is no time to discuss serious issues."
(Incidentally, the same John Tory that's currently running for the Premiership of Ontario ran that campaign for Campbell. He was behind possibly the most notorious attack ad in Canadian political history, making fun of Chretien's facial disfigurement. That alone probably cost Campbell the election: as it was, she ran the Conservatives into the ground.)
As I was saying, I won't, can't, vote for McGuinty. To do so would be to ignore countless broken promises, not the least of which was the biggest tax hike in this province's history, enacted almost immediately. I could almost hear the guy laughing. Suckers. That'll teach ya to listen to politicians!
There are (or at least I'd like to think there are) a few million more like me out here. And all of us would like to know where to park our vote. We don't need to be reminded that Norman Bates (he really does look like Norman Bates) lied with nearly every word. What we, the electorate, need is a reason to vote for somebody.
I, personally, will not vote NDP. Probably ever. While I agree with their outlook on many social issues, I'd honestly like to keep my job. You want a reason not to vote New Democrat? Toronto's city council is run by a bunch of dips, er, Dippers. The city's nearly bankrupt and all they can do is whine and moan about all the money they're not getting from other levels of government. God forbid they'd ever look at trimming the obscene amount of fat clogging their administrative arteries.
Normally, I'd vote for Tory's Tories, but the only plank of their platform the media's seen fit to show me amidst all the McGuinty bashing concerns funding for faith-based schools. Separation of church and state, anyone? I don't even think the Catholic school board ought to be publicly funded. At least one Catholic agrees with me: there was a letter to the editor of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record the other day basically stating that parents shouldn't be expecting schools to teach religion...that's what parents and churches are for. How many kids attending Catholic school go with their parents to a Catholic church every Sunday? Not a whole hell of a lot.
Does Tory have more to offer? Probably. But where is it? I want to see his mug on my TV telling me what he'll do for the province, not what McGuinty failed to do. (Then again, given that Dalton laid out some two hundred promises, then did his damnedest to break every one of them (hell, he broke his promise to close our coal-fired electricity generation stations, what, twice? Three times?--maybe it's not a good idea to promise anything at all.)
Anyway, since the media have been rather remiss at letting me know where everybody stands, I've had to go a-hunting. Behold, the fruits of my labour:
Liberal Party platform
Conservative Party platform
The NDP platform does not seem to be out yet. For reference, their site is here.
Finally, the Green Party.
As I've said before, I'm pretty sure I'll be voting Green. It's admittedly a wasted vote, as they have no hope of forming a government, but I like much of what I've seen from Frank DeJong. His campaign vehicles are a bicycle, a Prius, and public transit. That may smack of gimmickry to you. To me, it says this guy puts his money where his mouth is. I would urge everyone, even if you have no intention of voting for this party, to at least go look at what you're rejecting. Because unlike the other two parties running against McGuinty's Liberals, the Green Party has next to no budget and is again being shut out of the televised debates. This last is criminal, as far as I'm concerned...and I'd say that even if it was the Communist Party of Ontario that was garnering ten percent of the vote each election. Trust me, the day this party's allowed to play with the big boys, their popularity will spike.
--------------------------------
We're not just having an election here in Ontario, we're having a referendum on how future elections will be conducted. Details, for those who care, are here.
In brief, we're being asked to consider whether we should stick with our first-past-the-post system or move to something called Mixed-Member Proportional. This would give you two votes in any election: one for an MPP, conducted exactly as it is now, and the other for a political party. This second vote would basically ensure that each party's percentage of the seats more or less lines up with their percentage of the vote, something that never happens now.
One reason I like this system is that it allows me to elect a local member whom I feel is doing (or would do) a good job...and vote for a party which may not be the same party my local member represents.
Anyway, I know all this stuff is fantastically boring to non political junkies. And completely irrelevant to those of my readers outside this province. Please forgive me, folks. I promise to write on something more universal next time out. And unlike a certain Liberal premier, I keep my promises.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
School Daze
Teacher, teacher, listen well
My lessons all to you I'll tell
And when my day at school is through
I'll know more than aught I knew.
--Anonymous
Today's the first day of school for many children of all ages. I'd know this just from a look around our neighbourhood, which has shed its summer torpor and become a bustling hive of activity and garbage generation. There are many tradespeople who live by this time of year (notably bread salesmen) and just as many who loathe it (at least I would if I had to stuff all this garbage into a truck!)
So begins another nine months of our driveway being used as a turnaround point for those parents who drop off their little darlings up at school and pick them up later, which is pretty much all of them. One of the things we hadn't bargained on when buying this house (and remember, this house was bought with children of our own at top of mind) was the sheer number of cars on this street at the end of every school day. When your arrival home coincides with the arrival of a long line of cars, some of which park so as to block any hope of entering your driveway, and whose drivers resort to middle-finger waving if you make any effort to access what is, after all, your property...well, it gets old pretty quickly.
We have only ourselves to blame, of course. It never fails to amaze me when people move next to an airport and then bitch incessantly about the noise from the planes. Did you, uh, look around at all before you moved in? We hadn't thought it out, true, but in our defense, we grew up in an age when a kid being picked up at school would have been called a mama's boy to start with and beaten up shortly after. Sometimes--well, okay, often--we forget that time has passed.
As early as grade four, I was walking about a kilometer (a little more than half a mile) each way to school. And yes, it was uphill both ways and barefoot through ten feet of snow. Seriously, though, in high school, that walk nearly doubled in length and I don't remember ever once complaining. No, wait a second, that's not true. The first time I ever had to walk to school--grade four--we took a long, meandering walk through the neigbourhood one evening before school started. My feet were killing me when I turned to my stepdad and asked if I had to do this every day. He laughed and said no, there was a much shorter route, which he then detailed out (walk down here, turn left, then turn right, then turn left again, turn right and you're there. "Picture it like stairs you're going down," he said. I've never forgotten that. To this day maps turn themselves into flights of stairs.
A ride to or from school was a rare thing indeed, and I wouldn't have had it any other way. There were times (when a girl was on my arm) when that walk was entirely too short.
At least the public school across the street from me still has recess, or the generation of kids coming up through the system today would be getting no exercise at all.
Last weekend we had a lovely time at our friends' cottage in Wasaga Beach. We got to talking about their child, who's entering grade two this year and who loves school. "Of course, the homework got to be a little much last year," the mother said. "We'd deal with it right away, as soon as he got home, so we could get on with the evening."
"Back up," I almost shouted. "Homework?! In first grade?!"
"Yep," she said. "He had to read a book a night. Now these were little eight-page jobbies, not War and Peace. But still, between that and the math problems and what have you, it could take up to an hour."
If my jaw had dropped any further I do believe a Mack truck would have come rumbling out of my mouth. I tried to remember the first time I had homework. I'm pretty sure it was grade four--and that wasn't a daily thing, not even close. It was more like occasional research projects. The first one I ever did was on Toronto and its history. Jeesh, but I was a little geek. Daily homework? Probably grade six or so. It wasn't until high school that an hour's worth of homework became unremarkable.
"It makes you wonder what they're doing while they're at school," I said, "when first graders are getting an hour of homework."
What they're doing at school is more of the same. I really do expect to see a large number of kids exhibiting all the symptoms of burnout before they graduate high school.
Here is an interesting article concerning, in part, a school in North Yorkshire, England that has abolished homework altogether. Neither the students nor their parents seem to have noticed an academic decline when homework was replaced with various clubs and activities.
This remains a minority view, however. According to the article, the British goverment deems homework "the equivalent of an extra year's schooling" and "an important home-school link."
To which I say, bollocks and poppycock. Homework may indeed equal an extra year's schooling (I had about that much in OAC Geography alone). But is that really such a good thing? As for the home-school link, point taken, at least for those few parents (bless you) who still care what their kids are doing in school. These days, it seems the only thing many parents of even university-age children (and I use that word deliberately) care about are their final grades, which are to be automatic A's, of course.
There is a widespread latent feeling, exploited quite successfully by the Mike Harris government in Ontario several years ago, that teachers live on easy street, what with their summers off, their supposed 9-3 workdays, and a "cushy" job, to boot. It's fair to say that people who feel this way are not, and do not know any, teachers and have forgotten any decent teachers they ever had.
If you think it's so easy to be a teacher, go try it for a week. You're in for a rude, rude awakening. Odds are better than even you'll be sworn at, possibly even assaulted, before that week's out. You'll find that cushy 9-3 workday is just the beginning. You'll discover that legions of parents demand you assume the roles of psychiatrist, mediator and, not to put too fine a point on it, parent while still making sure their little Johnnies can read and write. And you'll very quickly realize that most of those little Johnnies have not the slightest interest in reading, writing, or anything else you might have to say. That doesn't excuse you.
It is my view that teachers are in fact drastically underpaid, and should be compensated on a level similar to that of professional athletes. (I feel the same way about doctors, police officers and firefighters). In a sane society, your job would be called your 'contribution' and I must say teachers contribute a great deal.
Finally, slightly tangential to this topic is the whole 'back-to-school' commercial frenzy. There was one shoe store manager on television last night saying that the Labour Day weekend was the busiest time of the year for them. It's reported--with a straight face!--that parents spend somewhere between $800 and $1400 per child on back to school items...creating the expectation that all parents should spend that much.
I get the clothes, I guess--kids, especially younger kids, have outgrown last fall's apparel. There are ways to cut your clothing costs significantly. If they were my kids, they'd either be spending their own cash, or they'd have an intimate acquaintance with Value Village. The law says I'd have to keep them clothed. It doesn't say anything about Tommy Hilfiger.
And nowadays I understand kids have to buy all their own school supplies, even in primary grades. I'd really love to know how that came about. We used to get our own notebooks and pencils and I don't know what-all else. But okay, there's another cost.
But a new knapsack? If last year's is so worn out, you really have to get on your child's teacher's case about excessive homework. A new cellphone? Hello? Count me among that number of people who don't think children should have cellphones until--well, at this point I can maybe make a case for them in high school. Maybe. Generations of people survived without them, as far as I'm concerned, and there's no need for them in class--which is where your child is going, right?
My lessons all to you I'll tell
And when my day at school is through
I'll know more than aught I knew.
--Anonymous
Today's the first day of school for many children of all ages. I'd know this just from a look around our neighbourhood, which has shed its summer torpor and become a bustling hive of activity and garbage generation. There are many tradespeople who live by this time of year (notably bread salesmen) and just as many who loathe it (at least I would if I had to stuff all this garbage into a truck!)
So begins another nine months of our driveway being used as a turnaround point for those parents who drop off their little darlings up at school and pick them up later, which is pretty much all of them. One of the things we hadn't bargained on when buying this house (and remember, this house was bought with children of our own at top of mind) was the sheer number of cars on this street at the end of every school day. When your arrival home coincides with the arrival of a long line of cars, some of which park so as to block any hope of entering your driveway, and whose drivers resort to middle-finger waving if you make any effort to access what is, after all, your property...well, it gets old pretty quickly.
We have only ourselves to blame, of course. It never fails to amaze me when people move next to an airport and then bitch incessantly about the noise from the planes. Did you, uh, look around at all before you moved in? We hadn't thought it out, true, but in our defense, we grew up in an age when a kid being picked up at school would have been called a mama's boy to start with and beaten up shortly after. Sometimes--well, okay, often--we forget that time has passed.
As early as grade four, I was walking about a kilometer (a little more than half a mile) each way to school. And yes, it was uphill both ways and barefoot through ten feet of snow. Seriously, though, in high school, that walk nearly doubled in length and I don't remember ever once complaining. No, wait a second, that's not true. The first time I ever had to walk to school--grade four--we took a long, meandering walk through the neigbourhood one evening before school started. My feet were killing me when I turned to my stepdad and asked if I had to do this every day. He laughed and said no, there was a much shorter route, which he then detailed out (walk down here, turn left, then turn right, then turn left again, turn right and you're there. "Picture it like stairs you're going down," he said. I've never forgotten that. To this day maps turn themselves into flights of stairs.
A ride to or from school was a rare thing indeed, and I wouldn't have had it any other way. There were times (when a girl was on my arm) when that walk was entirely too short.
At least the public school across the street from me still has recess, or the generation of kids coming up through the system today would be getting no exercise at all.
Last weekend we had a lovely time at our friends' cottage in Wasaga Beach. We got to talking about their child, who's entering grade two this year and who loves school. "Of course, the homework got to be a little much last year," the mother said. "We'd deal with it right away, as soon as he got home, so we could get on with the evening."
"Back up," I almost shouted. "Homework?! In first grade?!"
"Yep," she said. "He had to read a book a night. Now these were little eight-page jobbies, not War and Peace. But still, between that and the math problems and what have you, it could take up to an hour."
If my jaw had dropped any further I do believe a Mack truck would have come rumbling out of my mouth. I tried to remember the first time I had homework. I'm pretty sure it was grade four--and that wasn't a daily thing, not even close. It was more like occasional research projects. The first one I ever did was on Toronto and its history. Jeesh, but I was a little geek. Daily homework? Probably grade six or so. It wasn't until high school that an hour's worth of homework became unremarkable.
"It makes you wonder what they're doing while they're at school," I said, "when first graders are getting an hour of homework."
What they're doing at school is more of the same. I really do expect to see a large number of kids exhibiting all the symptoms of burnout before they graduate high school.
Here is an interesting article concerning, in part, a school in North Yorkshire, England that has abolished homework altogether. Neither the students nor their parents seem to have noticed an academic decline when homework was replaced with various clubs and activities.
This remains a minority view, however. According to the article, the British goverment deems homework "the equivalent of an extra year's schooling" and "an important home-school link."
To which I say, bollocks and poppycock. Homework may indeed equal an extra year's schooling (I had about that much in OAC Geography alone). But is that really such a good thing? As for the home-school link, point taken, at least for those few parents (bless you) who still care what their kids are doing in school. These days, it seems the only thing many parents of even university-age children (and I use that word deliberately) care about are their final grades, which are to be automatic A's, of course.
There is a widespread latent feeling, exploited quite successfully by the Mike Harris government in Ontario several years ago, that teachers live on easy street, what with their summers off, their supposed 9-3 workdays, and a "cushy" job, to boot. It's fair to say that people who feel this way are not, and do not know any, teachers and have forgotten any decent teachers they ever had.
If you think it's so easy to be a teacher, go try it for a week. You're in for a rude, rude awakening. Odds are better than even you'll be sworn at, possibly even assaulted, before that week's out. You'll find that cushy 9-3 workday is just the beginning. You'll discover that legions of parents demand you assume the roles of psychiatrist, mediator and, not to put too fine a point on it, parent while still making sure their little Johnnies can read and write. And you'll very quickly realize that most of those little Johnnies have not the slightest interest in reading, writing, or anything else you might have to say. That doesn't excuse you.
It is my view that teachers are in fact drastically underpaid, and should be compensated on a level similar to that of professional athletes. (I feel the same way about doctors, police officers and firefighters). In a sane society, your job would be called your 'contribution' and I must say teachers contribute a great deal.
Finally, slightly tangential to this topic is the whole 'back-to-school' commercial frenzy. There was one shoe store manager on television last night saying that the Labour Day weekend was the busiest time of the year for them. It's reported--with a straight face!--that parents spend somewhere between $800 and $1400 per child on back to school items...creating the expectation that all parents should spend that much.
I get the clothes, I guess--kids, especially younger kids, have outgrown last fall's apparel. There are ways to cut your clothing costs significantly. If they were my kids, they'd either be spending their own cash, or they'd have an intimate acquaintance with Value Village. The law says I'd have to keep them clothed. It doesn't say anything about Tommy Hilfiger.
And nowadays I understand kids have to buy all their own school supplies, even in primary grades. I'd really love to know how that came about. We used to get our own notebooks and pencils and I don't know what-all else. But okay, there's another cost.
But a new knapsack? If last year's is so worn out, you really have to get on your child's teacher's case about excessive homework. A new cellphone? Hello? Count me among that number of people who don't think children should have cellphones until--well, at this point I can maybe make a case for them in high school. Maybe. Generations of people survived without them, as far as I'm concerned, and there's no need for them in class--which is where your child is going, right?
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