Best Computer News I've Heard In A While

is right here, folks: the Google operating system!

I bet Microsoft's shitting peachpits right about now.

I use Chrome almost exclusively: it's by far the best browser I've ever seen, and I've tried a few. Yes, all the power users out there employ Firefox, and I don't blame them: it's endlessly customizable and it runs quickly. If you're the kind of brainiac who loves tweaking things, Firefox is tailor-made for you.

I'm not that kind of person. My computer life has three overarching principles. In order of importance: simplicity, stability, and speed. Chrome embodies all three.

Simplicity: the home page. It's simply clickable thumbnails of your top nine most visited sites. Which is only logical...you can't surf the web by staying "home", after all.

This home page is unique in my experience, and highly desirable after just a couple of sessions. One of my father's friends sent me a link to the latest version of Safari; immediately after install, I was greeted with...a blank page. Well, that's attractive. Upon further review, I noticed it wasn't a home page at all but a "bookmarks menu". So I looked for the button to bring me home.

It didn't exist. It doesn't...freaking...exist. EVERY browser has a little house you click on to bring up your home page. Except Safari. Whatever.

Back to Chrome: the stability is appreciated. If one tab crashes, you can close it out and keep surfing like nothing happened. Try that in Explorer.

And speed: Chrome may not be the fastest out there--depending on your benchmark, Safari can outperform it--but it's plenty fast enough. In real-world application it's a shade quicker than a 'fox and moves at light-speed compared to Explorer.

There's no place like Chrome...

And that's just a web browser. Every other application I've seen from Google has something, or several somethings, to recommend it. From Google Earth to Google Books (drools) to the new Android, this company doesn't seem to miss a step.

Which raises some thorny ethical issues. I wrote a story a few years ago in which Google ran the world. At the time, I meant the conceit facetiously. Now, it looks uncomfortably close to the unvarnished truth. I can see how this would bother people.

It doesn't bother me. If it wasn't Google, it'd be some other company...and I have a lot of respect for any company with the informal motto "Don't be evil". They've reacted to pressure re: Street View and blurred faces "to protect people's privacy", even though privacy in a public space is patently ridiculous. The EULA on Chrome was another flashpoint until Google fixed it. I knew when I first read that agreement it was a mistake, and unenforceable in any case, because the code for Chrome--as is the case with this new OS--is open source. In short, my default position is to give Google the benefit of most doubts...and it seems the market agrees with me.

I can't wait for this shiny new OS to land. It sounds like it will take up dramatically less memory (always a good thing...just because you have umpty-terabytes available doesn't mean you have to use it all). It should also run more stable and faster. Like Chrome. Bring it on.

This is why I can't vote for you, Mr. Harper

It's not that you're a control freak. Chretien was a control freak before you; he was just a lot better at masking that aspect of his personality with le p'tit gars de Shawinigan charm.

It's not because of any of the little scandals that have bubbled up here and there under your watch. Scandals come and scandals go, and all of yours put together don't even approach AdScam, as far as I'm concerned.

It's not even that you're Conservative. Although I don't vote Tory by default, the way I did when I was younger and had a more black/white view of the world, I can still be swayed to. It just might take a little swaying, is all.

No, the reason I can't vote for you is because of your mindless hatred of anything and anyone that doesn't share your philosophy of the world. That doesn't play well in a country that itself embodies most of the world.

It started with the round of attack ads on Mr. Ignatieff. You'll forgive me, first of all, for missing the election call. I didn't realize there was a campaign going on requiring the use of Parliamentary resources (four million dollars' worth!) to attack other Members of Parliament. That such monies are being spent now, in a recession, is all the more concerning. But the content of the ads is perhaps more so.

Michael Ignatieff has, indeed, spent some time away from Canada. Your ad says 34 years, which is false: 1978-2005 only makes 27. Still, that's a long time to account for, isn't it? What kind of Canadian would spend so long abroad? What the hell was he doing all that time?

Well, the man has eleven honorary doctorates, to go with his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University. He's an accomplished writer, broadcaster and filmmaker. He's held teaching positions at universities all over the world.

Egghead.

This attack ad is really nothing more than your Tim Horton's/Starbucks strategy resurrected. It plays well in the hinterlands, I'll grant you that, but a great many Canadians saw the ad for what it is: provincial and anti-intellectual.

That ad was bad enough. This one is much, much worse:

"Your Bloc MP has voted against the protection of children"

The Bloc is rightly furious. What they voted against was mandatory minimum sentences for child trafficking. And not because they're a bunch of perverts: it's because mandatory minimums don't work. A Bloc MP even said as much, several times.

Mandatory minimum sentences are no deterrent to crime. In order to impose a sentence, a criminal must be caught, tried, and found guilty--and most criminals don't believe they'll ever be caught, let alone tried, let alone found guilty. Also, the prospect of prison doesn't scare many. Several states in the U.S. are repealing mandatory minimums because they've had no effect on crime. So why would we want to go down that road?

The aforementioned Ignatieff is standing with the Bloc on this.“I’m in politics to defeat the Bloc Quebecois with real arguments, rather than slurs and vicious . . . personal attacks", he said. "This is unworthy.” In French, Ignatieff said “I will never descend to that level of attack because when we do this, we fragment our country, we divide our country. We create suspicion and fear and hurt, where there has to be healing.”

And that's why I'm not voting for you, Steve. You're all about fragmentation, division, suspicion, fear, and hurt. Your Canada doesn't include the two million Canadians who have spent time abroad and returned. It doesn't include anyone who's inclined to think past whatever message you're sending.

What we need in this country is consensus. We need someone willing and able to bridge gaps between East and West, French and English, urban and rural, right and left, and whatever other gulfs you, Mr. Harper, have sought to exploit and widen.

Three Quick Hits

First of all, a Happy Fourth to my American friends.

Going through the papers today, I find a few things worth remarking upon.

1) Tim Hudak, the new Conservative leader in Ontario, is supposedly the second coming of Mike Harris. The Star is, predictably, full of vitriolic letters to this effect. Mike Harris. Remember him? Architect of the "Common Sense Revolution?" A politician hated so much that he...won back-to-back majorities? Whose party only lost its grip on power when he left politics in the middle of his second term and was replaced by the much more moderate Ernie Eves?

How convenient it would be to forget a lot of people liked Mike Harris, and before him, Brian Mulroney. The two are held in such low regard by the punditocracy, after all.

I'll give Hudak some advice, gratis, unlikely as he is to ever see it: maintain the integrity of Harris--say what you'll do, and then do what you say--and try to be a shade less confrontational than Mike was...and you'll win the hearts and minds of most of the province. Oh, and promising to repeal the HST wouldn't hurt, either.

2) Afghanistan: "IEDs (improvised explosive devices) are the tools of cowards", says Brig-Gen. Vance of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Uh, not really. They're the tools of a fighting force that's outnumbered and vastly inferior to what we're throwing at them. The jihadis know that in any face-to-face encounter, they're likely to be slaughtered. So they don't do face-to-face. That's not cowardice, it's sensible self-preservation.

3) H1N1: Okay, this is getting ridiculous. When this virus first appeared on the scene, you could glimpse the end of civilization lurking just between the headlines. The mediots went absolutely nuts with it. And comparatively little happened. Then, aside from a few doomer-type articles saying just you wait, the real outbreak hasn't happened yet, the papers subsided into a somnolent buzzing, lulling the readership to sleep.

This site details the spread of H1N1. It's not pretty. There are four columns of data for each country, territory or area: a cumulative total of cases reported and deaths, also the number of new cases, and deaths, confirmed "since the last reporting period".

"The last reporting period" was two days ago.

May I draw your attention to the bottom of the graph, after you've checked out the stats for whatever country you're in, of course...

Total number of global cases: 89921

Deaths: 382

Cases newly confirmed in the past two days: 12720

Deaths in the past two days: 50

Now, the mortality rate is nothing to be terrified of...a measly 0.0042%. For now: I caution you, we're not in flu season and the virulence could well intensify. What has me worried isn't the prospect of imminent death...it's the prospect of approximately one third of the North American population getting sick. Better minds than mine have crunched the numbers and come to that conclusion, which is curiously being underplayed in the media. In short: if you don't get this flu, you will know people--multiple people, and probably a goodly number--that do. For those of us who work with the public, the chances of contracting H1N1 are very high.

This sucker is spreading and spreading fast...a titch over 14% of the total number of cases have been confirmed since the first of July. Even a mild illness that affects that many people would utterly wreck our economy, the same economy we're trying like hell to resuscitate. And that's just for starters. I think we'll see schools shut down for long periods; businesses forced to run with skeleton crews if they can run at all; hospitals in lockdown...let your mind run wild. And that's, again, assuming H1N1 stays mild. If it gets more deadly, all bets are off.

Canada Day In Hockey

[Note: Everything I've said here...and here...and here...still applies. As I posted on Facebook, to all Canadians, a happy Canada Day, and to all those not so lucky, maybe in the next life...]

For a hockey fan, the draft (last week) and free agent day (today) are the equivalent of Christmas and New Year's, respectively. On draft day, you unwrap shiny new talent that hopefully makes your team better; on free agent day, your GM makes some resolutions public and (hopefully) gives your team an even more tangible sense of renewal.

TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS 2009 DRAFT

Thirty GMs wanted John Tavares. Only one team--the Leafs--made a point of announcing, weeks ahead, they wanted John Tavares. The Islanders had no intention of dealing the first overall pick, much less to Toronto. Burke's strategy was thus immediately questionable.

Another plan, also trumpeted with some fanfare, was to trade up two or three spots and acquire the services of one Brayden Schenn, brother of Luke "The Human Eraser" Schenn. Burke made no secret of how much he coveted the younger Schenn, and so, quite predictably, other general managers asked for the moon and stars in return for that pick. Burke balked--rightly so. But he has only himself to blame: had he kept a little quieter about his intentions, he probably would have had no trouble advancing the two or three spots necessary.

Burke, stuck in the seven hole, approached Ottawa, who was scheduled to draft immediately after Toronto, and inquired as to whom the Sens were targeting. Informed they were high on Nazem Kadri, Burke said "we're taking him" and proceeded to do this that. This little spike of Ottawa-Toronto rivalry was the only bright spot on an otherwise dismal draft night for Brian Burke.

Oh, nothing against Kadri, who has the potential to be a pretty decent impact player. (The Toronto Star, again predictably, went absolutely nuts over Kadri. Not because the boy can play, but because he's Muslim, don't you know. Multiculturalism will always trump talent--or indeed, anything else--within the boardrooms of the Star.)

But whatever Burke may have said to Duthie on the draft floor, Kadri was at best Plan C for the Leafs, and that C doesn't mean "captain".

After a bit of handwringing on Leafs forums that the team didn't get the first overall pick, or the fourth, things settled down as we all awaited what Burke would do on free agent day.

The team named after Canada's national emblem has, historically, been very active on Canada Day. Trouble is, the free agents the Leafs have historically signed have almost always been on the downslope of their careers, and have brought the team absolutely nowhere.

Well, I'm here to tell you that today we can start planning the Cup parade. For Burke has boldly reached out to nab that preeminent talent named Colton Orr.

As Howard Berger rightly notes, Bobby Orr, even at 62, has more of a hockey skillset than Colton. But the one thing Colton does is fight, and by God he does that one thing well.

We can beat around the fistic bush again if you like: for the record, I'm in Don Cherry's corner (and Burke's) in believing that fighting does have a place in the game. As such, and until they outlaw it, I feel each team needs a...how shall we say it...presence. The Leafs especially: last year was painful to watch. The fighting was divided between Hollweg (at first) and Mayers, both of whom were basically punching bags. There's no point having a fight if you can't win the damned thing, and so most of the Leafs (Luke Schenn aside...man, I love that guy) folded like a cheap tent when the going got rough. Orr will change that, which is a good thing in my books. And $1M per over four years is cheap for the new fan favourite.

Next move: Kubina and Tim Stapleton to Atlanta for Garnet Exelby and Colin Stuart.

Definitely a theme going here. Exelby is tough as nails, and dirty as, well, dirty nails. Scores all of a point every ten games, and got, wow, two whole goals last year. But mean. Real mean. Only to be expected when you name your male child after a friggin' gemstone. One thing I'll say right now: the Leafs better improve their penalty kill next season, because so far they've added a good 200 PIMs, not to mention sacrificing a bunch of scoring off their back end. Stuart, incidentally, is very much incidental. Put it this way: Atlanta got all the skill in this deal.

Oh! Mike Komisarek is a Leaf! Okay, he's actually one of the people I'd hoped Burke would target, and he got him at $4.5M/year--a bargain, considering other teams were offering $6M+. Komisarek is also pretty tough, but his best assets are his defensive awareness and shot blocking capability.

Not a bad first day's work for a man determined to put his bloody stamp on a team. But it's only a first day. Consider: the Leafs now have no fewer than nine legitimate NHL defensemen. Only six are strictly necessary, and I have to wonder where the surplus guys are going to go. In fact, I have to wonder who the "surplus" guys even are.

More, obviously, to come. I'd sure like to see a little skill, now...

Obligatory Michael Jackson Entry

"Michael Jackson's dead," my wife said.

"WHAT?!"

"Michael Jackson's dead. Heart attack."

I thought for a second. "Well, he was bound to bleach himself out sooner or later, wasn't he?"

Eva stayed silent. Oh, come on, that was good for the ghost of a smile! And on short notice, too!

Still silent. The temperature had dropped a few degrees.

I furiously ransacked my brain, looking for whatever it was I was supposed to have said. All that came to mind was a seemingly endless procession of jokes, increasingly tasteless. I'm sure you've heard a few of them over the years.

Okay, maybe it's inappropriate to joke about a man the day he dies. But then, for something approaching twenty years, this man had been an inappropriate joke. Worse than that, a walking scandal.

Did he transform the face of rock 'n' roll? Absolutely. Did he almost singlehandly usher in the video age? Positively. Was he a brilliant artist, a consummate showman, a phenomenal musician? Undeniably.

Twenty years ago.

Yes, once again I've completely misjudged the zeitgeist. I'm really good at that. Did you know Thriller was, as of this morning, once again the best selling album on iTunes Canada? I didn't, and when I found out, I was incredulous. Uh...why? Surely anybody who ever wanted that album has got it by now. Am I supposed to believe people are buying a second copy just because the artist is dead? 'Cos I don't.

Wrong again, Ken.

Reading through page after page of reaction--everywhere! In authors' fora! In hockey fora! EVERYWHERE!--I found myself eyeballing this (and sorry, I can't find it again, whoever you are):

"'Rest In Peace' seems more than appropriate in this man's case. Michael Jackson never had a moment's peace in his whole life."

Then, this from my mom this morning:

This might sound strange but I just have to tell someone how devastated I am about the death of Michael Jackson. You remember how much I loved his music and adored his dancing. His moves will forever be a memory of mind. I never did judge him in his personal life – after all, I never knew the “rest” of the story, HIS. I am truly saddened and I hope the media allow him and his to rest in peace.

These reactions served as a stern rebuke, even though nobody (aside from my wife) knew my uncharitable thoughts at the time. So what if I believe him to have been guilty of child molestation? I still can't bring myself to defend pedophilia, but it certainly would be understandable in Jackson's case. The man had a brutal childhood, and he spent the rest of his life trying to create, and then retreat into, an idealized youth. I'm firmly convinced he never had a hurtful thought. And I've gotta say his fame and money may well have made him a target. Perhaps, just perhaps, some of the allegations against him were, how shall we say, overblown? Even if not--even if every allegation was true and more besides, he was the furthest thing from a predator.

And there's the matter of the music and the dancing, which made Mr. Jackson the most famous man in the world for a period of several years. In this hyperspeedy culture, it's hard to fathom the staying power of an album like Thriller--eighty weeks on the charts, 37 at #1. Whatever else Michael Jackson was or was not, he was a rare and prodigious talent. And this omnipresent mourning is only his due.

Why, indeed?

I have a knee-jerk reaction when I hear the word "strike": it's to jerk my knee right into the privates of strikers. Every once in a while I find myself siding with the union in a strike...but not often. My attitude is summed up in ten words: you knew what the job was when you took it.

Perhaps I'm not being fair, but screw it: life ain't fair...I learned that in kindergarten.

Often, I'm accused of envy whenever I union-bash, particularly since I make a fraction of what unionized employees most often do. I will relate the following anecdote to refute:

An old girlfriend of mine called me one day--a little over a decade ago--to tell me she'd landed a job as a grocery store cashier, making $23/hr. To start. Holy crap, I thought, from the depths of my $8.55/hr job doing pretty much the same thing. Maybe I oughta get this place unionized!

She started on a Monday...and Monday night she called me in tears. "Yes, I'm making $23/hr", she said, "but I'm only scheduled for three hours this week and four next." She told me she had tried to pick up some shifts, only to have other people laugh at her. "You don't pick up shifts here," she was told. "If someone doesn't want a shift, we ask the next senior member on staff. If she doesn't want it, we ask the next most senior. And so on. Odds of a shift trickling down to somebody who's worked, let's see, two hours? Pretty much nil."

I've never forgotten that phone call. It was maybe the first time, as an adult, the truth of TANSTAAFL was driven home to me: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

The city of Toronto is currently experiencing a municipal workers' strike. Garbage collection, city-run day camps and daycares, and numerous other services aren't being provided. Needless to say, there's a heat wave: 34 degrees (94 F) with the humidex today. These strikes always seem to happen in the summer, the same way school strikes never do.

What are the issues?

The first one is a sick leave bank that workers are fighting to keep. Municipal workers get 1.5 sick days a month; if they don't take them, they go in the bank, to be paid out as a nice tidy bonus upon retirement. Quoting from the above link:

It's supposed to be an incentive not to take sick days.
The thinking is that employees who are entitled to sick days that evaporate every month will just take them, whereas employees entitled to bank their sick days will only take days off when they are really sick, and save the rest.

For the record, I get five paid sick days a year. No matter. Five days or eighteen, sick days, by definition, are for when you're ill. My employer trusts me, and so I'm not required to furnish a doctor's note if I take time off. But they're well within their rights to demand one if they believe I'm playing hooky, as it were. And if I dare to play hooky, and get caught? I believe Donald Trump says it best.

That's not envy. That's real-world.

The other issues are (of course) wages and job security. The union is saying all it wants is a "fair contract", akin to what other unions got last year without a strike.

I'm puzzled at this use of the term "contract". Of late there has been much concern about full time permanent workers being replaced by those "on contract". Typical contracts include no benefits and expire in six months or a year. That, to me, is a contract--and I disagree vehemently with it.

But union contracts are a breed apart. They contain all manner of benefits and they run for two to five years...after which point a new contract is sought (and if not awarded, often the union votes to withhold its services until it is). I don't get this. What's changed about the job since the last contract came into effect? Why do you need a raise beyond the cost of inflation? Have you merited one? All of you? Really?

See, here's how things would work if I ran the world. A "contract" could be said to exist between employer and employee: the employee shows up and discharges her duties in a satisfactory manner, and thus is paid. Additional benefits would be detailed at time of hire, subject to the firm's ability to pay them and the employee's continuing deservance of them. Wages would be tied to inflation; any additional raises or bonuses would be on merit alone.

Such contracts would not expire. Any employee choosing to withhold her services for three consecutive days would be assumed to have quit, and a new employee would be found to take her place.

Wait a second. Save for the "wages tied to inflation"--something I'd like to see included so that one's real purchasing power doesn't decrease over time--those are exactly the conditions I work under...here in the real world.

David Miller, the mayor of Toronto and easily the Canadian politican I most despise, has a message for the citizens of Toronto, doing the city's job for it by bringing their refuse to waste transfer stations, only to be blocked by picket lines: "It's becoming clear there is a small group of people who are taking advantage of this strike to use Toronto as their personal dumping ground," he says. "We will not tolerate this kind of activity." City bylaw officers (what, aren't they on strike too?) have been seen rooting through trash in search of names and addresses. The fines run from $380 to $50,000.

Well, I guess we know whose side the Mayor's on. It's really a wonder somebody hasn't dumped a huge heaping helping of stinky trash on the heads of some of these picketers. After removing anything that could identify himself, of course.

"But these are entitlements! We signed the last deal in good faith! How dare they rip up our collective agreement?!"

They have a bit of a point, only because Miller's been free and easy with the city's money ever since he got elected. Now that he's spent it all and Toronto's on the fiduciary ropes, it's perhaps understandable that people are trying to draw blood from the stone broke. That's Miller's problem, and it's a doozy. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now.

Meantime, if a settlement isn't reached--and most accounts say it won't be--one will be legislated. Which begs the question: why can't they just legislate these things before the strike, saving millions of people undue hardship and hassle?

Why, indeed?

Got Milk?

Sorry for the unscheduled blog break. There may be a few more of these throughout the next few months as our store undergoes some much-needed renovations.

It was touch and go for the first year our store was open. (Then they hired me and their future was assured, ha-ha.) No, seriously, most people thought University Price Chopper wasn't going to make it. I knew better: there was a 7-Eleven across the lot.

Southland Canada doesn't close 7-Elevens often. I'd been the victim of one such closure, the year before, but even so I knew the phenomenal amount of market research that company puts into new store placement. If you see a 7-Eleven going in, it's a very good bet the area around it--whatever it might look like at the time--will be booming in five years.

And so it was. And so was the Price Chopper. Last fiscal year it was official: our store sold more per square foot than any other store in the chain, an award that came as absolutely no surprise to us.

We've been labouring in a store built for approximately half the volume we do. It has forced us to get creative. Milk is a good example.

A reminder that Ontario, by the standards of most of Canada and all of America, is weird: our 4L milk comes to us like this

...in milk bags, packed four to a crate, and 54 crates to a pallet. Because my cooler only holds eight pallets total, I'm often forced to pull all 54 crates off each pallet and handstack them eight crates high. This is, technically speaking, a safety violation: it's too high. No kidding, I tell every health and safety inspector who dares mention it. But the only alternative is storing some of this milk out here in the back room at room temperature...which seems, to me, to be a considerably larger health and safety issue. At which point he or she nods and walks away.

The biggest pet peeve working in a place so cramped is that you almost invariably have to move two, or three, or five, things to get the thing you actually need, after which you have to put everything back the way you found it, just in time for someone else to come along looking for the skid you just buried. There are times when I'm stricken with an urge to just start throwing things.

Anyway, five years ago we had an opportunity to expand--and our parent company balked at the price. A day care center moved in next door. Now their lease is up, and we jumped in. Renovations are slated to start in two weeks. No one knows when they'll finish, but when they do, I'll have almost double the space.

----------------------

Meantime...milk. (I knew I brought that up for some reason.)

Our gallons of milk retail at $3.97. I'm told by every American I see (and I see a surprising number, considering we're nowhere near the border) that this price is insanely expensive. It's actually pretty cheap, considering (a) it was the same price a decade ago and (b) each 4L bag costs us nearly $6. Nevertheless, that price is now standard across the city. Our only competitor, just down the road, is the only holdout at $4.49--and even they are losing a great deal of money at that retail.

Why do we choose to make milk--a staple item nearly three-quarters of our customers buy--a loss leader? Because (almost) everyone else does. Why does everyone do this? Because Wal-Mart does. Why is everybody so petrified of Wal-Mart? Damned if I know.

Digression: seriously, damned if I know. We don't have a SuperCentre anywhere near us, and Wal-Mart's overall prices (even at SuperCentres) really aren't anything to cheer about. And I will never understand the appeal of buying, say, a television where you get your groceries. For one thing, they don't make carts near big enough.)

Where was I...oh, yes, milk. We held out as long as we could at $4.29, still less than the Zehrs down the road, but higher than everyone else, including the drugstore two doors down from us. And practically nobody bought milk at that price. Then one week it was in the flyer: MILK $3.97 BUTTER $2.97 EGGS $1.97 BREAD $1.47...and our milk, butter, egg and bread sales doubled overnight.

Months ago, they came down with a new planogram for our milk counter. I took one look at it and snorted: they wanted me to take each individual 4L bag out of the crate and handstack it. Since these bags come four to a crate, complying with their wishes ensured it would take four times as long to stock milk.

The plus side: it supposedly increased profitability 25% (though I seriously doubt they factored increased labour into that calculation). It also gave me more capacity on my counter...always a good thing.

After an interminable delay getting new shelves, I went in last Wednesday on my day off and completed the planogram. One week in, I hate it. Oh, it looks great. But it takes so bloody long to fill it up!

Now they're enacting "phase two"...planogram to come down Friday. Oh, joy, I get to do this all over again. They've delisted 1L (roughly a quart) contains of regular milk. Now, if you want 1L of milk, you've gotta buy the filtered stuff, which regularly retails at twenty cents more. They've tried to ease the transition by putting the filtered milk on sale for six weeks, but in the end we're forcing consumers (usually seniors, who can least afford it) to abandon the milk they've been drinking for years and pay more for a different kind. I'm so sure this will go over well that I'm planning to call in sick every day for most of the next year.

In the meantime, blogging will be sporadic at best for the next while.

I've gotta go now, and stock some milk.

Wow--A Catholic Church Impresses Me!

Received this in my email today and had to share. Whoever the Father is at Our Lady of Martyrs, I'd like to shake his hand.





Incidentally, any heaven without dogs (or cats) in it isn't worthy of the name.

According to Catholic doctrine, body and soul are indivisible, thus one does not "have" a soul (or a body...one is both soul and body. This is perhaps the only belief both Catholics and New Agers share.)

Catholics--nearly alone among mainstream Christians--do not make a distinction between the chay nephesh (Hebrew: "living soul") possessed by man and that possessed by other animals. Other sects of Christianity will grant you, if pressed, that animals have souls...but not immortal souls.

Pope John Paul II, speaking publicly in 1990, said "animals are as close to God as men are." This is the same Pope who announced that Hell was not a literal place. Try telling that to your evangelical friends.

Why is this such a big deal? Because Christians the world over have justified all manner of animal cruelty by their Bibles, which (they believe) say not only that animals don't have souls, but that we are to have "dominion" over them.

I'm not re-embracing my Catholicism here--not even for the free dog soul!--I'm just saying it's nice to see a Catholic Father with (a) a sense of humour and (b) a willingness to stand up for animals.

Non-Nuclear Isotopes. Oh....kay.

Let's just let our Minister of Health speak for herself.

"Through this funding, we hope to research into alternative, non-nuclear isotopes that could supplement or replace Tc-99m in certain medical imaging procedures."

She and Gary Goodyear oughta get together, whaddaya think? You remember ol' Gary, don't you? The Science Minister who doesn't believe in evolution?

What's next, I wonder? Maybe a Prime Minister with two degrees in economics that doesn't know jack shit about the economy? No, wait, we've got one of those, too.

*sigh*

Electile Dysfunction

Here we go again, I thought. Michael Ignatieff's going to hem and haw for a while--"should I arrange an election? Should I not?--just before he's stricken by a massive attack of indecision...if he's ever forced off the fence, he'll just go find another fence. In the end, he'll say "Canadians don't want an election" and Harper will live to blight another day.

Iggy? There are pills for your problem. Little blue pills that might grow you a pair.

To be fair, summer federal elections are exceedingly rare in Canada. We've had three: in 1930, 1953, and 1974. As a summer-hater of the first order, not to mention a person who believes voting ought to be compulsory, I personally have no problem with taking ten minutes out of my life to cast a ballot. But enough people do have a problem interrupting their precious summer vacations that calling an election this time of year is even more of a gamble than it usually is.

And I get Ignatieff's strategy, sort of. He's putting conditions on Harper every chance he gets, taking great pains to make it look like he--Ignatieff, not the control-freak PM--is in control.

But the format grows tiresome. Do this or I'll go to the polls. Don't do that or I'll poll-axe you. You're on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION.

Don't get me wrong: I like Ignatieff, what I've seen of him, and I think he'd make a pretty fair PM, certainly a lot more approachable than the current model. But at some point he's gotta stand up and say "enough". Maybe if we all get together and whisper sweet majorities in his ear...

Three Totally Unrelated Posts In One!

First off, the last bit of hockey news for two weeks (the draft is coming! The draft is coming!)

Congratulations to the Pittsburgh Penguins on their Cup win. They earned it.

Even though I picked the Pens in 7 in the pool at work (which landed me in third place, the same finish I managed last year), after Game 2 I regretted making that prediction. When the Wings are on their game, they're unflappable and unbeatable. That the Pens got Detroit off their game in four of the next five games is most impressive.

Congratulations to Evgeni Malkin, the first Russian to win the Conn Smythe. One of these days somebody will recognize that the great Sidney Crosby isn't even the best player on his own team.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Before I launch into this next topic, I'd like to state for the record that I am extremely sensitive to cruelty in all its forms, but perhaps most especially to cruelty against animals. This is a trait I've always had, but ten years with Eva has hardened it into an absolute. I don't mind admitting that violence against, or neglect of, pets pretty much unmans me. To perhaps give you an idea of why, I'd like to relate an anecdote, attributed to Dr. Robin Downing, DVM.

Being a veterinarian, I had been called to examine a ten-year-old Irish Wolfhound named Belker. The dog's owner, his wife, and their little boy were all very attached to Belker and they were hoping for a miracle. I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I told the family there were no miracles left for Belker, and offered to perform the euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their home.

As we made arrangements, the owners told me they thought it would be good for the four-year-old boy to observe the procedure. They felt he could learn something from the experience.

The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat as Belker's family surrounded him. The little boy seemed so calm, petting the old dog for the last time, that I wondered if he understood what was going on.

Within a few minutes, Belker slipped peacefully away. The little boy seemed to accept Belker's transition without any difficulty or confusion.

We sat together for a while after Belker's death, wondering aloud about the sad fact that animal lives are shorter than human lives.
The little boy, who had been listening quietly, piped up, "I know why."
Startled, we all turned to him. What came out of his mouth next stunned me. I'd never heard a more comforting explanation. He said, "Everybody is born so that they can learn how to live a good life - like loving everybody and being nice, right?" The four-year- old continued, "Well, animals already know how to do that, so they don't have to stay as long."

I am thoroughly disgusted with the Toronto Humane Society. My only direct dealings with them were most unpleasant for all involved; now stories about just how inhumane the place actually is are in wide circulation, thanks to a series of investigative reports by The Globe and Mail. They have a strict "no-kill" policy...only defensible to those who think sickness and suffering without hope of healing is likewise defensible. And the most recent installment shows the powers that be at THS know how wrongheaded their policies are. (An employee tells the Globe that when a van full of OSPCA investigators "raided" the shelter, front desk staff hid sick cats from view. He himself was asked to assist, and he declined.)

In the wake of these allegations, which come from more than just the one staff member, a spokesman for the THS said no animals were moved during the inspection. True. They were moved just before the inspection and again just after. "If there were any animals that were moved", he said, "it was part of daily operations." Yeah, as in: here's the handbook detailing SOP for when OSPCA investigators come calling.

Sickening.

-------------

On the same page of today's Globe there's a story called "Brunch is hell". The executive chef at the Air Canada Centre is quoted as saying "everybody wants to go to brunch. Nobody wants to work it."

And why not?

One reason is cited by a co-owner of another restaurant in Toronto. "I hate not being able to go out on a Saturday night," he says. "If I do, I just watch the time tick over until 3, knowing I have to get up at 8".

There are so many things wrong with this sentence I hardly know where to start. First, the speaker is the co-owner of a restaurant, which tells me (a) he's probably not nineteen years old and (b) he understands better than most the vagaries of the service industry, having invested a career in it. I would expect that little speech from a teenaged waiter; perhaps this gentleman should consider selling his stake.

And who puts the gun to his head and forces him to stay out until three in the morning? You party animals out there, can you explain this line of reasoning to me? I mean, at some point between seven in the evening and three in the freakin' morning, don't you think it'd go through your head that hey, I have to get up at eight? He even admits as much!

Pshaw. Get up at eight. I get up at FIVE.

Something about this reminds of of the cashier who called in one day to say he wouldn't be coming to work "because it's raining." Like I say, we get a lot of this in retail...either work ethic wasn't installed in many of today's teens or a grocery store doesn't count as a real job, I'm not sure which. (Me, I've always thought if you're paid, it's a job, and you show up and you do it to the best of your ability, but what do I know?)

Bettman and Balsillie, Round II.

(Round I back here)

Prediction #1: Jim Balsillie will lose this fight. If not in Judge Baum's courtroom, in the next...or the next...or the next. Bettman will not accept the Research in Motion CEO into the coterie of NHL owners under any circumstance.

It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad. Balsillie was already approved by all 29 owners when he attempted to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins a few years ago. At the very last second, Bettman seemed to realize Balsillie's intention was to move the team to southern Ontario...and he slapped a clause into the deal prohibiting Balsillie from moving the team, no matter how much money it lost. Balsillie walked away from that deal (wouldn't you?)

Then he tried again with the Nashville Predators. Depending on whose side you're on, his tack of selling season's tickets to the "Hamilton Predators" showed either Balls or Sillieness. . It sure pissed off the Weasel-in-Chief. B..b..but he didn't even own the team! runs the little codicil every time Bettman mentions the matter. Responds Balsillie: I was merely showing there's great interest in the Hamilton market area...which, last I looked, was a condition for relocating a team there.

The Predators' actual owner, Craig Leipold, inexplicably accepted a comparatively piddling offer from someone else, shutting Balsillie out. A very short time later he found himself miraculously extricated from that money pit and owning a profitable franchise in Minnesota. Hmmm. How'd that happen?

Undaunted, Balsillie waited for the next franchise to fall. It just happened to be the Coyotes, coached by some guy named Wayne Gretzky--you might have heard of him--who's on record as saying a franchise in Hamilton would be "tremendously successful".

Just not his franchise, apparently. The Coyotes have lost well over $300 million over the years and ranked 28th (out of 30) teams in attendance last season, but there seems to be no shortage of people lining up to buy the team, keep it in Phoenix, and lose lots and lots of money. News of these suckers prospective buyers only surfaced after Balsillie's bid went public. Hmmm. How'd that happen?

Then the nose-lengthening contest began.

"It's not personal": Bettman.

"It's not personal": Balsillie.

They kept repeating that over and over, those noses growing at a phenomenal rate until they met at center ice and commenced to bitch-slap each other. Judge Redfield T. Baum has done his utmost to ignore the bitch-slapping noses and concern himself with the matters at hand, to wit: (a) who actually owns the Coyotes and (b) who should.

You'd think (a) would be a simple thing to determine, but it isn't. The NHL has kept the Coyotes on life support for so long (while publicly denying it was doing any such thing, of course) that it argues it actually owns the team. Jerry Moyes, who has sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into the team and whose name still figures prominently on team letterhead under "Owner", begs to differ.

And (b) is a fiendishly difficult decision to make. Ostensibly, Baum's sole concern should be maximizing monies to secured and unsecured creditors. On that basis, Balsillie's offer meets every criterion you can name, and it should be a slam dunk case. However, Balsillie's offer is conditional on relocation--which Baum may well decide he has no authority either to force or deny.

In which case, he'd probably take the next best offer, shutting Balsillie out once again.

We know very little about the four other offers the NHL claims are on the table. One of them's from a current minority owner of the Coyotes. One of them is anonymous pending the NHL's due diligence. The other two are considerably more interesting.

Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner of the Chicago White Sox, has an offer in. Speculation (and that's all it is) suggests it's in the $165 million range. He has said he wishes to keep the team in Phoenix. Fair enough, I suppose, since his White Sox train a mile away from the Coyotes' home rink. And hey, it's only money, right?

The other offer comes from Howard Sokolowski and David Cynamon, who currently own the (ahem) Toronto Argonauts of the CFL. They, too, claim they'll keep the team in Phoenix. My guess is they'll change their mind just as soon as they can get a new arena built in Toronto, but hey, what do I know? They've doubtless watched RIM's CEO trying to Jimmy the back door of the NHL ownership lodge (if not break a window) and they certainly won't make the same mistake.

Prediction #2: One of those final two offers will succeed where Balsillie fails. I wouldn't put it past Bettman to advance Reinsdorf enough money to put his bid over the top. I remain firmly convinced that Bettman has no interest in a team encroaching on Leafs Nation (to say nothing of the Buffalo Sabres!)...neither of those teams are anxious to see competition, let me tell you.

Which leads to prediction #3: Balsillie will withdraw, make a few more tens of millions of dollars, and then come back in a year when Atlanta, or Tampa, or the Islanders go belly-up. And then we'll go through this whole foofarow again. Because prediction #4: there will be a second team in southern Ontario within ten years. There has to be. The Leafs have been permitted to exploit the hockey community for far too long, and I say this as a lifelong Leaf fan.

Pity about poor rich Jim, though. He so badly wants a team and is so completely opposed to the notion of kissing ass to get one...

The Northern Experience

Anyone who's read this blog for any length of time knows how I feel about "up north". Going to my dad's place has always meant relaxation. Of everything: rules, restrictions, limits of time and space...tensions of every sort don't stand a chance in the magnificent isolation of Rainbow Country.

I just got back from five days up there. As usual, my feelings are mixed. I'm very grateful to be home--there are a few somethings to be said for sleep in one's own bed, and a great many more to be said for sleep and wake time with one's own wife--but if I could just transport bed, wife and home back up in the general area whence I just came...

I didn't do much up there. That's kind of the point, for me. The area around my dad's place has great fishing and hunting in season, the outdoors beckons, every season. To those who are susceptible to its call, it's pretty much paradise. I'm an indoors kind of person through and through, and it's pretty much paradise for me too. The sounds alone are intoxicating: the soft soughing of the wind through the trees on the far shore of the river; the trickling interplay of the wind over the water; the occasional call of a loon (or, if you're lucky, a wolf); even the boat traffic isn't as jarring as, say, the sound of a transport truck going by on your street in the city.

If the sounds aren't enough, there's the sights:

At Wright's Marina, just upstream

The mouth of the Magnetawan River

Along the Magnetawan

And the smells, which can't be adequately conveyed using mere words. Suffice it to say that the air in Britt is pure enough to be invigorating...and yet a day in it is, oddly, exhausting as well.

On Wednesday night, Dad enlisted me in the Britt Lions' can brigade. They collect pop and beer cans for the scap aluminum, which pays for a good deal of their community service through the year. I have to say I was stunned speechless by the sheer volume of cans, which have built up since January. I can tell you in words (sixteen hundred beer cans and probably close to ten times that many pop cans)...or I can show you:

Beer. Smells and tastes just like moose piss.

This was only the pop cans, and only the first batch.

The other highlight of the trip for me was a visit to French River Provincial Park. I came here last time up only to find the state-of-the-art Visitors Centre had closed for the season the day before. It was open this time:

So serious...

The history of the whole area is something else that grips me. The French River, which is not too far north of my father's place on the Magnetawan, is one of Canada's Heritage Rivers. It was a bustling freeway thousands of years before the white man came in the 1600s and made it a linchpin of the fur trade. Sitting alone along the shores of these northern rivers it is all too easy to imagine those earlier times. It's almost like time travelling.

Time itself is elastic here. The city, with its rigid deadlines, might as well be on another planet. That goes double with my dad, who in his capacities as cop, volunteer firefighter and Lion has come to know just about everybody in town. He can hardly venture out of his driveway without meeting someone who wants to chat. As a child, I used to marvel at how many people my father could meet in the course of running one simple errand. That hasn't changed at all in thirty years.

And Dad's house could be a bed and breakfast establishment. It's practically one now: I'm far from the only person who values the company and the setting. My stepmother has been dubbed "the Martha of the North"...for good reason. Her cooking and hospitality are legendary.

I had, as always, a perfectly lovely time. Thank you, Dad and Heather, for the opportunity to take a break from life and spend some time with you.

North Country

I'm headed up to my dad's for five days of R and R. A blog entry is extremely unlikely, as (a) it's dial-up up there and (b) I'm shutting the world off...or at least turning it down.

Have a good week, everyone.

The Long Arm of the Law?

See, every now and again there appears a story that gives me gibberbrain.

Here's today's.

Briefly, Michael Mineo, 24, is suing the NYPD for $220 million after cops allegedly beat him and sodomized him with a baton in a subway station.

You can almost scratch the 'allegedly'...Mineo's DNA was found on the baton, and one of the cops faces charges of aggravated sexual abuse. Two others are charged with obstruction.

When I first heard mention of this on television, I joked to my wife that for $220 million, I'd pull my pants down and assist the police in their inquiries. She answered "yeah, but I don't think they offered him $220 million beforehand."

Then I researched it, because gibberbrain kept stuttering "ya g-g-gotta b-blog this!" Google's first link (and mine, above) is to the New York Post, which makes the Toronto Sun look staid. Despite their scandalous reputation, they tell this story straight. Beyond the actual incident--which, I really must say, isn't funny at all--the marginalia in the article left me speechless.

For instance, the third paragraph:

The claim is more than NYPD abuse victim Abner Louima asked for in his 2001 lawsuit.Louima demanded $155 million after cops brutalized him with a broom handle in a station house. He ultimately won $8.75 million.

This has happened before. Remind me, next time I'm in New York, not to piss off any cops...and if I do, to pack the K-Y.

So what did Mineo do to deserve this, you ask? Ask and the Post shall answer:

Mineo claims cops beat and sodomized him in the Prospect Park subway station last Oct. 15 after accusing him of smoking pot.

Jesus, overreact much?

If this is proven true, I'd like to see these cops sentenced to a week each in jail. In general population, no concessions. If they last the week they can go free.

They won't.

Hit list

If I had magical powers...

ONE PRODUCT I'D ELIMINATE:

Bottled water, in anything less than water-cooler-jug size.

Right off the bat, that'd make me mighty unpopular in these Tri-Cities: we consume more bottled water than any other area in Canada. One sip of our tap water will tell you why. But there are alternatives much more environmentally (and economically) friendly than those damned plastic bottles. I'm thinking Brita filters. Or water coolers.

ONE COMPANY I'D ELIMINATE:

Depends how selfish I'm feeling. On my do-the-world-a-favour days, it'd be Monsanto. On my do-myself-a-favour-days, it'd be a shady outfit called Universal Power. These guys come to my door at least every other week trying to sign me up for electricity at twice the rate I'm paying. No matter how many times they're rebuffed, they keep coming back. Sometimes they pretend they're from my legitimate energy supplier and ask to see my bill (at which point they'd get my account number and sign me over without my knowledge or consent.) If this practice isn't illegal, it should be.

ONE COMMERCIAL I'D ELIMINATE:

That effing Juicy Fruit jingle from my childhood's back, slightly cleaned up but as annoying as ever. The singsong used to go, in part,

take a sniff

pull it out

the taste is gonna move ya when ya pop it in your mouth...

...which is just sick, if you ask me.

Now...

it's a song

sing it loud

the taste is gonna move ya when ya pop it in your mouth...

The gum is a song? O....kay.

As usual with annoying commercials, this one's in heavy, heavy rotation. Personally, I think there oughta be a law: 100 showings of your commerical, that's it, you're done, back to the drawing board.

ONE TELEVISION SHOW I'D ELIMINATE:

Jon and Kate + 8.

Look, all so-called "reality" television nauseates me. This show is simply one I'm seizing on right now because it's in the news.

My parents had their family tree diagrammed out. It hung in our front hall for years. I distinctly remember different branches of that family producing parents with 12 and 14 children. Granted, never six at once, but still...I bet if you go back through your own family tree, you'll see this sort of thing was quite common only a century ago. Now, having eight kids makes you a celebrity. Not to mention every least whim those eight kids have is paid for at network expense.

Spare me.

ONE PHRASE I'D ELIMINATE:

"That's sick, man."

Ten years ago, if you wanted to say something was good, you said it was wicked. Now it's sick. I bet in another decade kids will be saying that's dead.

What's on your hit list?

The Name's Prufrock...

I am sooooo predictable.

Up in the morning at 5:13. Why the odd time? It gives me a minute to rouse myself enough to find the TV remote, switch on the television, and select channel 958 in time for 5:14, which is when 680 News recaps the top three things that dared to happen while I was asleep before launching into the sportscast at 5:15.
As soon as the sportscast is over, I roll out of bed, hop in the shower and set it to "parboil"...and then usually just stand there, bovine-like, for what always seems to be eleven minutes exactly. Then I'm out in time to catch the weather forecast and a little more in-depth reportage on those pesky news items while I get dressed. Then I'm downstairs for two cups of coffee (and I'm given to understand the unit of measure called a "cup" bears no resemblance whatsoever to an actual cup of coffee). And so on and so forth. I can even set my bowels by the freakin' clock.

My day proceeds as if on rails, and anything getting in the way of the routine is slightly (or not so slightly) resented. Oh, I don't have CDO...at least, I don't think I do.

(CDO...it's like OCD, but the letters are in alphabetical order. As they SHOULD be.)

But what the hell is wrong with me?

I think it's just that I'm old before my time. I've been old since about age six, but it's getting ridiculous now. There is no hour too early at which to eat supper, for instance. I like having dinner out of the way by 5:00 or 5:30...more time to relax and let the food digest before bedtime. If circumstances force dinner at 6:30 or God forbid later, it's a sure bet I won't be having breakfast the next morning, on account of still being full.

Usually, this kind of thing doesn't bother me. As the sweet potato philosopher once expostulated, I yam who I yam. Sometimes, though, I wish I could inject some spontaneity into what I'm sure everyone around me thinks is boredom to the power of twiddledythumbs...but I don't know how. The best I seem to be capable of is to mix up the routine a bit--shuffling the deck chairs on the geriatric cruise ship. Shove something entirely new into life's equation and I'm apt to kack on the calculation.

That's when the rip in my mind surfaces...the child-rent. On one side of the tear, I'm happily adaptable, having learned very quickly under the tutelage of a squalling baby that the only constant in life is change. In that sense, I can understand what people mean when they say "children complete me". And I really do believe it could have turned out that way for me...kids would grant me a second chance at childhood, which I'd gladly take without trying to steal theirs.

On the other side, I never got over resenting the chaos and it turned me ugly. That's not something I like to contemplate for long, but if I'm honest with myself I have to admit it's just as likely to have turned out that way. My stomach churns every time I see a child misbehaving (which, given that I work where I do, is fairly often). I was nobody's perfect little angel when I was young, but the kind of tantrums I see today were nipped right in the bud thirty years ago, let me tell you. Those of us of a certain age can remember "stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!" That threat usually worked with me. I'd like to think it wasn't just because of the implied spanking, but also because what I was crying about wasn't really worth crying about. I'n not sure my reasoning was up to that level so young, but I wouldn't put it past myself.

Anyway, the old crotchety geezer in me does look back at growing up the seventies with a species of reverent nostalgia. Life was simpler then. Of course, life's always simpler for the child than it is for the adult. But life in general was simpler then, for everybody. The change curve was still fairly linear. These days change is almost beyond exponential, to the point where things I can't even imagine one month are commonplace a few months later. I think I've adopted my strict routine as a kind of defense against what I perceive to be revolutionary change in society.

I've heard all my life that change is good. All my life I've chafed against the implacable way people say that, and noticed the "good" change they go on and on about is, more often than not, change for change's sake alone. I'm not too keen on that. I'm of the firm opinion that if something ain't broke, why break it?

I sympathize with conservatives, because I can deeply understand their fear and distrust of change. I feel it myself, and often. It can be a hard thing to work through. But I like to think that in the working through, I grow a little.

But sometimes, oh, sometimes, I flash back to the poem I took every...single...year in high school, thanks to three moves and a curriculum change. I loved this poem more with each successive reading. Something in it resonated, and still does. An excerpt:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

Take Me Out To The...Shell Station?

That day did not go exactly as planned.
In related understatement news, a car with no transmission fluid doesn't travel very well.

So my friend Craig and I decided to attend the Jays-White Sox matinee today. He's a huge White Sox fan, there being no accounting for taste, and Roy Halladay was starting, and it was Alex Rios bobblehead day, and hey, I haven't seen the Jays live for something like twelve years. I was really looking forward to spending some time with Craig, and then rubbing in the Jays' inevitable victory all the way home.
Before we left, Eva gave me her cell phone "just in case." We hardly ever use the thing...in fact, it took some effort to find it.

JUST IN CASE

Things started out great. We got out of town in plenty of time to be two of the first ten thousand fans into the Rogers Center (can you say bobblehead, boys and girls? I knew you could!)

So could the car. Craig's car chose the moment we hit the 427 to enact its best bobblehead imitation, bucking ahead and slowing down, bucking ahead and slowing down, and forever refusing to find a gear. We managed to get off the highway and coast most of the way to


here...the Applewood Shaver House.

I didn't know what this place was at first, of course, and didn't care. In its parking lot, we diagnosed a slow leak in the transmission fluid line. It didn't look too bad...there wasn't a puddle or anything, just a spritz of droplets on the pavement. Get some transmission fluid in her, we'd be on our way, probably still getting there in time to catch the first pitch.
I walked a couple of blocks to a convenience store in search of said fluid. My hopes were not high. I worked at a 7-Eleven for years. We stocked tranny fluid, but I knew from serving a few distraught customers that most mom-and-pops don't.
"Do you have transmission fluid?", I asked the man behind the counter.
"Trans...mission?" He stared at me blankly, then waved a hand in the general direction of, well, most of his store. Seeing no help there, I sought a corner, where I found two jugs of windsheld washer fluid (good to -40) and a single bottle of 10w30.
Nope.
I went back to the man, who was staring at me as if I was too paleskinned for his store. "Do you know," I asked, enunciating carefully, "where the nearest gas station is?"
He waved right.
"How far?"
That was too much English for him. I went outside and peered off to the right, not seeing anything.
I trotted back to Craig. Lo and behold, there was another car in the parking lot of the Applewood-Shaver house. A pair of ladies who were old enough to have built the Applewood-Shaver house were inside. At Craig's urging, I asked them if they knew where the nearest gas station was. They did. Not only that, they offered to take Craig there.
En route with their captive audience, they gave Craig the kind of history lesson that only sesquicentennials can, making him swear he'd read the historical plaque on the Applewood-Shaver property.
Craig and his chaperones had to visit two gas stations before he managed to procure transmission fluid. Before he poured it in, he made a point of examining the historical plaque I'd read several times, there being nothing else in the parking lot to read.
The fluid poured in with a flourish, we got back into the car.
"Let it work through the system", he muttered as we circled around the parking lot, gradually building up confidence before exiting on to the West Mall.
The car balked and bucked and bobbled. A sharp stench that put me in mind of frying hair made itself known. Uh, Craig? You might want to get this off the road pretty quick.
As luck would have it, we managed to coast right into a Shell station/garage.
As our luck would have it, the garage was shut up tight. Sunday of a holiday weekend....a holiday weekend that was looking less and less like a Halladay weekend every minute.
The gas station lacked a few things. No bathroom, said the convenience store worker's twin brother. Which is against the law, but I wasn't about to argue the finer points of jurisprudence with a man whose vocabulary in English only slightly exceeded mine in Urdu. No phone, or indeed phone book, either. The man behind the counter knew his garage was closed, and he didn't know any that were open.

Better and better.

TOW TRUCK, TOW TRUCK, ANYONE SEEN A TOW TRUCK?

Across the road we went, hitting a No Frills for some blessed bladder relief (I was starting to wonder if piss would serve as transmission fluid) and a drugstore for its phone book. I, meanwhile, dragged out my wife's cell and attempted to call her.

The phone was completely out of transmission fluid. No power at all. Dead as a certain Chrysler Neon.

I borrowed Craig's cell and called Eva in some agitation. I could get myself back to Kitchener, no problem. But I wasn't about to abandon Craig, and he wasn't about to abandon his car.
Craig called a towing company and inquired how much it would cost to tow the car back to his home in London. Six hundred bucks, came the reply.
At that rate, we could stay in a hotel for a couple of nights and get the car fixed Tuesday.
"Do you know of any garages that are open?" Craig asked.
"Well, sure, Canadian Tire's open."
Finally! Some good news! We got the number out of the book and called.
They didn't pick up the phone. Craig let it ring and ring and ring...nothing.
The second picked up right away and said they were open until 5:00. They'd look at Craig's car if he could get it towed there.

So began the wait. We flipped on the radio and the White Sox starting scoring two runs immediately. Of course, I thought. THEY'VE got transmission fluid.

Time slowed. Baseballs and tow trucks chased each other behind my brow. Four innings later a giant baseball rolled to a stop in front of me and resolved itself into a tow truck, whereupon two men got out.
"They never told me there were two of you", the driver said. "Let me run this trainee back to base. I'll shoot right back and get you."
"How long will you be?" asked Craig.
"Ten, fifteen minutes", he said.
Half an hour later the truck was back and we were en route to Canadian Tire, hoping like hell it wasn't too busy and they'd get to see and attend to the car before they closed.

STEEEEEEEERIKE THREEE! YEEEEEEEERRRRR OUT!

The tow truck driver took us to Canadian Tire by the shortest route. He told us as we came into the lot that so long as there was an open bay, he was going to back us right in...and proceeded to do just that. Craig and I exchanged smiles.
"I like this guy," I said.
"Me, too."
"You can't do that!" I piped, mimicking the mechanics inside.
"I just did", Craig answered.

Craig had warned me he didn't have his credit card on him, and he'd exhausted most of his cash paying for the tow. Not to worry, he said, his girlfriend had her card--he'd call her and she could give them the number over the phone.
No can do, they said. We need an actual card to swipe.
He pleaded. They refused. He explained our situation. They refused.
Oh fuck we're fucked went the voice in my head. (I've cleaned it up for this family blog.)
Craig started calling around, hoping to track down family or friend that could bail us out. I, meanwhile, went across the lot in search of a pay phone and called Eva collect. "I can get home easily", I repeated. One bus to the subway, the subway downtown, a bus home, I even have a Grand River Transit ticket on me."
Nonsense, she said, she was coming to get me. And Craig, if need be, she'd take him home. The car, though...there wasn't much we could do about that.
I told Eva the address and let her Google Map it--I'd lost all track of exactly where I was as the tow truck twisted and turned.
"Okay," I said. "I'll go back across and talk to Craig. If you find both of us here when you get here, I guess we're going to London."
I then trudged back across the lot.
"Any news on your end?" I asked Craig.
"Yeah, it's all good. They're working on it now."

?????

I found a supervisor and put it to him. It took some convincing, but I told him I was pretty sure it was a cheap fix. It is. They let me use the card over the phone."
"Let me call Eva back. God, I hope I catch her in time."

Nope.

She's gonna kill me, I thought.

The bill reads
Parts: $13.98
Labour: $90.00

I'm in the wrong friggin' line of work.

Craig stayed with me after the car was repaired, until Eva arrived to bring me home. We got some catching up done. So the day was far from a rainout. Actually, all things considered, it was a pretty good day. Some total strangers really came to our rescue, restoring a smidgen of my faith in humanity. And hey, it could have been a lot worse. We might, for instance, have been in an accident.

Oh, and the Jays? They came back to win, 8-2. So all's right with the world.

Thanks, Craig. It didn't turn out like we planned, but it turned out okay in the end.

So here's today's question

Is there, or ought there to be, a minimum standard of living to which everyone should be entitled, simply by being born?
I say yes. There are quite a few out there, it seems, who say no.

I got to debating this the other day. Probably shouldn't have bothered, but then, I'm a masochist. I set forth my position, which is that food, clean water, and some kind of shelter should be granted everyone and anything beyond that subsistence level should be earned. A man calling himself "ScottSA", with whom I've locked horns before, retorted

People's "birthright" is to be born, Ken. Nothing more. Everything else is situational.

On the issue of clean water, he expounded:

The people who don't have clean drinking water are acclimatized to not having clean drinking water for the most part, Ken, which explains why the terms "Delhi belly" and "Montezuma's revenge" came to describe the intestinal problems unacclimatized visitors have when visiting there, and NOT to the people who live there. Yes, there are occasionally cholera and other epidemics, usually during the monsoons when no water source is safe, no matter how many Starbucks bottles are sold to hempen clad latte sippers, and yes, down by the auld Yangzie River the chemical seeps are atrocious, but for the most part "clean water" is a function of relativity for all the difference it makes.

And he finished up with this:

But you know what makes it so funny and entertaining to argue with you Ken? Because inside the whirlwind of straw you insist on covering everything with is a black and white world in which one is either a scrooge or a mahatma and ne'er do the twain meet. If I object to paying for your "birthright," it suddenly becomes "greed" and is tantamount to me riding a gold plated elephant howda through the slums of Bombay, tossing pennies to the urchins. You make of yourself a laughing stock, sir.

Oh, by the way, why are you trying to force your opinion on my wallet as the "One true Way?"

That kind of set me on edge.

I responded:

I'm not trying to "force" anything, Scott, least of all my opinion. I'm looking to see if there's some minimum standard of living that you find acceptable. There isn't. That's okay. Just be aware it says a lot more about you than it does about me.

By the way, you might wish to compare infant mortality rates between Canada and a place like Sierra Leone. If indeed being born is one's birthright, it seems we have some work to do. It'll cost, though. Still think being born's okay? Or should we just sterilize the Third World? Wouldn't that solve some problems, eh?

Re dirty water: perhaps while you're checking out the infant mortality rates, you can also check out the life expectancies in such places. You can find them in the same place. You'll note that those life expectancies are consistently lower than ours, often by quite a large margin. Hmmm. Might be (in part) something or somethings in the water, do you think?

I know, any kind of life expectancy--any kind of LIFE--isn't part of the agreed-upon birthright. Just being born's okay, right? So...are you for infanticide, and if so, what methods do you prefer? Or are people perhaps entitled to a wee bit more than just being born?

It's been two days. He's posted a myriad of things since then, but hasn't addressed any of my questions. Perhaps he feels they're stupid questions. Personally, I think it's stupid to grant someone life but not make any provisions whatsoever for that life after the instant of birth.

I'll be honest here...my ideal world includes a maximum, as well as a minimum, wage. The notion of a maximum wage absolutely infuriates many conservatives, who resent any ceiling on compensation for their hard work. My response: it is nothing short of immoral, in a world where many have next to nothing, to have a superabundance; to have such a superabundance and still require more is proof of a mental disorder.
(And again to clarify: my idea of a "superabundance" is arbitrary. If I was to pick a number out of a hat, it'd be five million dollars per annum, but I'm open to suggestions. The idea is a number sufficiently high so that anyone insisting they need more to live would be considered quite insane.)
But we have a long way to go and many paradigms to shift before we can even begin to address this rampant inequality of opportunity. Right now, we're at the stage where I say something like "everybody should have, at a bare minimum, x" and the immediate, and howling, response is "but x will cost me money!"
(This is yet another thing world government would...will...solve. Give us a few centuries. If we haven't blown ourselves up, we just might evolve to it.)

In the meantime, do you believe in a subsistence standard of living for all? If not, why not?

A Day at the Hospital

Please pardon the ick.

My wife, Eva, has been suffering for some time now from persistent, excessive menstrual bleeding. 

Since that comes with the usual array of symptoms, not to put too fine a point on it, but I've been suffering too. PMS is a real joy, particularly when the P stands for Permanent.

We've long suspected various hormonal imbalances a hysterectomy would correct, but it turns out there aren't any significant imbalances and a hysterectomy is horribly invasive, especially for women like Eva who have not had children. 

So today Eva had an endometrial ablation.

Her surgery was scheduled for 2:30. We were told it's a simple eight-minute procedure. So of course we were at the hospital from 10:30 until almost 5:00. 

There is so much about the world of health care I don't understand. I don't know why our health care system continues to swallow entire stimulus packages worth of money without any noticeable effect on wait times. I saw probably a dozen computer terminals sitting idle...and also couldn't help but notice patients still have "charts" written on dead tree that lack critical information, i.e. where the hell the patient is. Seriously, once Eva was wheeled out of the third waiting room, it was as if she'd fallen off the face of the earth. Two and a half hours passed--for those of you keeping score at home, that's nineteen eight minute procedures--before I got worried and frustrated enough to ask where she was. A deskbound nurse (who, in hindsight, was really quite nice to me) promised to find out. Fifteen minutes later (and let me tell you, that fifteen minutes felt like two hours), she came back to inform me "they were really backed up" in surgery. Really? I'd never have guessed.

"So...she hasn't gone in yet," I said. Thinking: I'm going to be here until midnight. I gotta get home soon and let Tux and Georgia out, but if I leave, sure as shit they'll let her out and I won't be here and THEN what?

(then you lose any and all husband points you've accumulated for the last decade)

"I don't know, I'm sorry. All I know is she's not back yet."

Really? I'd never have gu--oh, never mind.

By this time, totally irrational thoughts have begun to spin out of control. Eva had let it slip that she was concerned about the anaesthetic. For a girl her size, general anaesthetic can be dangerous. So of course that little nugget got stored away in my subconscious, only to start playing peek-a-boo as the minutes dragged on. Peek-a-boo, Eva's dead! Wonder which one of these old battleaxes is going to tell you?

(WHAMMO)

I slapped that mutinous thought down and buried my head in my book again. Beach Music, by Pat Conroy, probably the fifth time through, but the first in five years at least. I was just getting to the part where the matriarch of the family passes away. Fuck, I thought, and slammed the book shut, reaching for my iPod.

Music wasn't even helping. No matter what the music was. The slow stuff sounded like a dirge and the funny stuff sounded fake and the heavy stuff was too loud and--

"She's back", a nurse popped her head in to say.

"She's back?" I repeated, dazedly. Turns out that's the effect when you've been holding your breath for over an hour.

"She's back," she said, smiling.

She was. Eva and her doctors had decided against the general anaesthetic, and as I found out later, the "eight minute procedure" doesn't count *any* prepwork or recovery time. 

Which is just stupid, in my book. Look at this souffle recipe and ask yourself: how long does it take to make a souffle? It says "bake for 30-35 minutes" near the end, but if you think that's how long it takes to make a souffle, you'll find yourself sadly mistaken. If they had only said okay, the eight minutes is for the chisel and blowtorch routine, but before we can use the chisel or the blowtorch, we have to yadda yadda yadda, and then afterwards blabbledy blah blah, then I would have contentedly passed the time without a care in the world.

Oh, how you kid. Ken, you're a damn worrywort, and you know it, and nothing's gonna change at this late date.

I was so relieved to see Eva safe and relatively happy that I actually thought I was going to be sick. Meanwhile, she'd gotten through the whole thing much easier than she'd expected to. The hospital robe actually fit her. She was only moderately hot (and if you've been around my wife for any length of time at all, you know that's a medical miracle...seriously, while we were still waiting together, nurses kept coming in and offering warm blankets. Eva thanked each one and waved them away, saying "see my portable fan?" To one, I cracked, "now if you have a cold blanket, that we'll take."

We're home now, and my wife is safe and sound, and I'm very glad.