Pleasant Surprise

I've been dreading this hydro bill.

Our "smart meter" was installed well over a year ago. Smart meters are supposed to encourage you to shift your electricity consumption to 'off-peak' hours and penalize you if you don't.

Weekends are off-peak year round, which suggests to me that homeowners are bearing a burden meant for factories, but whatever. I've got nothing against conservation.

Problem is, I've been hearing stories about people's hydro bills doubling or worse. We're told hydro prices are going to rise by something like fifty percent over the next five years. This strikes me as being monstrously unfair...but whatever.

As I've said before, this house has electric baseboard heating. That's one of the most expensive means of heating a house, though one advantage is you can shut off the heat to vast swathes of your home. We do this; we like it cold in here. My attitude is, if I'm cold I'm either not dressed properly or not working hard enough. We investigated ducting the place and recoiled at the price: somewhere between $7000 and $12000, and that was five or six years ago. Given that our hydro bill is, on average, about $30/month higher than yours if you live in a house like ours except with forced-air gas...it's not even close to worth it. The ducting would pay for itself, all things being equal, in twenty or thirty years.

So rather than duct, we've spent money leakproofing this place. All new windows, plus a brand new roof. Both made quite the difference in our bills. But time-of-use rates, so far as I could tell, threatened to financially undo all our effort, and worse.

The system finally went live two months ago and we just got our bill today. Here are the figures for June 8-August 9:

Off peak (7pm-7am, plus weekends) 1508.82 kWh @ 5.9 cents = $89.02

Mid-peak (7am-11am, 5pm-7pm, M-F) 331.51 kWh @ 8.9 cents = $29.50

On-peak (11am-5pm, M-F) 297.68 kWh @ 10.7 cents = $31.85

--------

$150.87

That's two months of usage. Not bad, says I.

Unfortunately, the bill didn't stop there. Behold:

"Delivery" $82.93

I can pretty much assure you it didn't cost Waterloo North Hydro anywhere NEAR this figure to transmit energy to my home. I'd be surprised if it cost them a hundredth of this figure, in fact

"Regulatory Charges" $14.40

0.63 cents/kWh to cover somebody else's costs (boy, there are a lot of fingers in my power pie!) and subsidize power delivery to rural and remote locations

"Debt Retirement Charge" $14.38

This one really rankles. It's anticipated we'll be paying it until 2026. Don't you love how massive debts always end up trickling downwards? Americans, take note.

Total Miscellaneous Hosedowns: $111.71

...or 74% of the consumption bill

giving me a subtotal of $262.08

This reminds me of nothing so much as the travel section of the newspaper. "Look here, honey, we can fly to Orlando for $99 each! Oh, wait, add this and that and the other fee and, forget it, $417."

Personally, I'd much rather pay higher rates and not see all this gobbledygook at the bottom of my bill telling me there's a 74% surcharge. Likewise, I'd prefer this magnanimous gesture be instead incorporated into my bill:

The Ontario Government has taken 10%

off the cost of your electricity bill to help

you with the costs of building a clean

energy future.

ON Clean Energy Benefit - 10% ($29.62)

Especially since you just KNOW they're going to turn around

and hit you with

Harmonized Sales Tax $34.07

(which, incidentally, never used to apply to electricity!)

Okay, so we've credited the homeowner, but we've made sure

to claw all that back and more. On consumption of

$150.87, the total owing is $266.53

I'm pleasantly surprised this isn't four or five hundred bucks. What does that tell you about my "tax me, I'm Canadian!" mentality?

The Green Thing

Posted direct from the mailbox. I LOVE this.

In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."

He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.

We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.

We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Goodbye, Jack, Part II

"We can do this, we can be a better people. We've seen how to try"

--Rev. Brent Hawkes

Reading what I wrote a few days back, I feel a little guilty. I feel like I wrote a standard eulogy for a standard man, not the standard bearer that Jack Layton actually was. I won't delete my prior effort--I don't do that, ever--but I'd like to refine it in the wake of watching his wake.

We're told Jack died listening to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" performed by k.d. lang.

I can think of few better songs to die to.

"Why do you want to watch this funeral?" my wife asked me. I struggled to answer. After all, I didn't know Jack, nor ever even meet him. It was hard to reconcile that with the profound sense of loss I have felt since he died. I feel, quite frankly, as if we have lost in Jack Layton a rare breed of person, let alone politician: an eternal optimist and a bottomless fount of compassion and caring.

Not everyone feels this way.

There has been a remarkable level of vitriol on display this past week, starting with Christie Blatchford's anti-elegy before the body was even cold. Christie was a paragon of civility compared to the vile spewings of any number of anonymous posters elsewhere. My jaw has dropped so often it's gone numb: the hatred is palpable. If Layton wasn't already dead, you get the distinct feeling some people would have been all too happy to kill him.

Whence came the hatred in Canadian political discourse? Has it always been here, and I've just been blind to it? Left or right, it makes no matter: there is little tolerance for opposing viewpoints and less for those who hold them. An honest debate very quickly degenerates into name-calling and worse. And saddest of all, it seems that for every person mourning Jack Layton, there is another glad he's dead and happy to say so.

Personally, I shared many of Jack's beliefs. I share his idealism, and on some level, his optimism. That so many Canadians obviously don't means that there remains a great deal of work to be done. It distresses me that so many have been hurt so badly they see no other way to heal themselves than to hurt others. That's certainly not what Jack was about, nor is it any way to build a better Canada.

Why, why now, or why Jack. Some of those questions...will have no answer.

The reality is not why, but what now?--Rev. Hawkes

That sermon was perhaps the best I've ever heard in my life. I'll freely admit to a need for occasional spiritual sustenance, and don't care if you think it a weakness. Rev. Hawkes' homily was a feast of uncommon richness. (Link to transcript here).

Few who ever met Jack. by all accounts, will ever forget him. I hope that his life's work continues now that his life is done. I hope I can help advance it in some small way.

I hope.

RIP to "One Of The Good Guys"

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful, and optimistic. And we'll change the world." --John Gilbert "Jack" Layton, August 20, 2011

As recently as three years ago, I dismissed Jack Layton out of hand. There was something smarmy about him, I was convinced: he had the aura of a used-car salesman. His personality screamed politician. As in, he said all the right things, they way they all do...but without a trace of guile. Nobody's that idealistic, I thought. He's in this for himself, just like everybody else. He echoed many of my own beliefs, and I resented him for it.

LOVE IS BETTER THAN ANGER

Except Layton was that idealistic. He infamously suggested we negotiate with the Taliban, earning himself the nickname "Taliban Jack". Some of us laughed, derisively, knowing the Taliban for the terrorists they were and are. And yet...we've now pulled out of Afghanistan, leaving it--sorry to say--not overmuch better than we found it, and at the cost of 156 Canadian lives (our highest death toll since the Korean War). Would negotiation have lessened that grisly count? Quite possibly.

HOPE IS BETTER THAN FEAR

Jack beat prostate cancer once, and he did it in fine style. U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson characterized Layton as "the happy warrior". I wrote about Jackmyself in 2008 without knowing, at the time, I was doing so. It's no coincidence Layton resonated so strongly with youth, the people who haven't had the hope beaten out of them.

I've little doubt Jack Layton felt fear. Probably a great deal of it. But he didn't choose to show it. Instead, he showed hope. Hope and determination. That carried him and his party a great distance in a relatively short period of time. And, tellingly, his final message to Canadians is laced with hope.

OPTIMISM IS BETTER THAN DESPAIR

Whatever your politics, you can't help but respect Jack for making politics itself interesting and, dare I say it, noble again. Unlike many politicians whose principles are for sale, Layton never deviated from his one iota. It took Canadians, myself included, some time to grasp this, but when we did we grasped it with a will. Layton was the first politician I have ever voted for without hesitation--not because of his party's policies, some of which I strongly disagreed with, but because Layton himself embodied the respect I yearned to see in a political leader. He pressed for electoral reform even though at the time it would have substantially eaten into his party's seat count. He welcomed Elizabeth May and her Green Party on the scene despite the prospect of her splitting the vote.

And now he leaves behind a party he uplifted to Official Opposition for the first time in its history. It's full of green MPs that have already made their share of public gaffes. Many have already written them off. I'm not so sure that's a good idea. Not if they take Jack's message about optimism seriously:

SO LET US BE LOVING, HOPEFUL, AND OPTIMISTIC. AND WE'LL CHANGE THE WORLD.

Poetry Break: It Only Rains Outside!

The world is not a happy place

For those with an ideal

It's beastly hard work to replace

Your dream with what is real.

And when you do, you're apt to find

The colour's been bleached out:

The sounds of life within your mind

Are whisper-quiet without.

Nothing holds your interest now.

No wonder, when it's all

So drab and dull and silent. How

Can you see through the pall?

Is life worth living? Maybe so--

But is this living life

If all inside has ceased to grow

And all outside is strife?

And people say "feel better, chum!"

As if it were a game...

"Snap out of it", they say, "ho-hum!"--

Do they not know your name?

I do. And I can understand

The hell you're going through.

I know the layout of its land

For me, it's nothing new.

I could just say "this too shall pass"

And shrug away your pain...

That's not in me to do, alas:

I can't but share the rain.

Remember who you really are.

You're more than what you see.

Much more. In fact, I'd go so far

As to insist you be

An angel. "Oh, no" you'll say,

And tell me you don't feel

angelic--even human!--Nay,

you're nothing 'til you heal.

But that's not true. I know it's not,

Because you've got it turned around.

It's what's outside that's gone to rot:

The inner you's still solid ground.

It may not seem so. It may seem

As if you're in a mental quake.

That's when the walls twixt life and dream

Can tumble down. And it might take

That tumble 'til you finally see

The nightmare you were in

For what it was. Believe you me,

That once you do, you will begin

To understand that there is naught

You have to do now. You are free

No need to refight wars you fought,

To build anew. You'll only see

What I've seen all along: that you're

Above all that on wings of gold.

You'll be awake, and living for

Yourself, inside, safe from the cold.

Enjoying the ride?

Millennium Force at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, is just that...a force. The roller coaster is 310' tall, propels riders at speeds up to 93 mph, and will cause the faint of heart to stain their underwear.

Kind of like the stock market, lately. Let's ride it together, shall we?



This coaster is different from others in several ways. The lift hill starts the instant you leave the station, and it's unnaturally steep. Intamin uses a cable lift system to pull the car up at a 45-degree angle (and believe you me, you'd swear it's closer to 65 degrees...at fifteen miles an hour.

Fifteen miles an hour may seem sluggish. It isn't. You're over three hundred feet in the air in twenty five seconds flat. By comparison, the Magnum XL-200 at the same park, using a traditional chain lift system, requires over twice as long to pull the train up 205 feet.

Millennium Force's relatively speedy ascent can only be accomplished with technological help: in this case, a cable that is much lighter than the usual chain used on most coasters. Likewise, the ascent of the stock market since 2008 could have only been accomplished with the infusion of vast sums of something I'll call "mun".

"Mun" is different from "money" in that it is, in effect, lighter. It's printed out of thin air, usually in quantities too large to be grasped by most imaginations. It's backed by nothing other than a promise...something that may not be overly comforting when you're dangling 310' in the air overlooking the relative stability in Canada (which, incidentally, you can actually see from the top of Millennium's lift hill).

Standard and Poor's is the first to question the validity of that promise, and they surely won't be the last. Canada lost its AAA rating in 1992 and it took ten years of diligent governance to regain it. "Diligent governance" does not exactly describe the current state of U.S. affairs. In fact, I get the feeling that if guns were permitted in Congress there'd be a bloodbath.

Pulled up by all that mun, we find ourselves at the peak, 310 feet in the air, or 12,876 stock points. Notice how while we were climbing, it was very easy to maintain the illusion we'd climb forever. But as we crest the hill (a titch slower now, without the mun to buoy us) we're buffeted by wind and holy shit it's a long way down.

The descent is precipitous: 80 degrees, or over a thousand points in the last seven sessions. Looking ahead we can see an overbanked turn some wag has nicknamed the "Dead Cat Bounce"; beyond that, we'll only know when we get there. But, this being a roller-coaster of historical proportions, we can expect a few things.

1) Airtime. On coaster tracks, this is the sensation of weightlessness, of being pulled out of your seat by zero or negative g-forces. It can cause you to lose your lunch. In the U.S. right now, airtime is what's being consumed by both parties in a frantic effort to affix blame, rather than fixing the problem. The air here is almost all of the "hot" variety. This, too, can cause you to lose your lunch.

2) Dark tunnels. On coasters, people like to scream in these. Ditto in stock markets.

3) The most certain thing we can assume is that we will finish this roller coaster ride at a considerably lower altitude than we were at its peak. Some people will undoubtedly lose wallets or portfolios.

Most of us will disembark this bugger shaken up. Some will vow never to ride again. Others will get off and head to some other, putatively tamer coaster, say blue chip Blue Streak. Let's just hope that we can learn to sort out money from its lighter counterpart. Because if the speed gets too high, we'll fly right off the track.

Keep your head back, your arms and legs inside the train at all times, and enjoy the ride...

A Paean to a Personal Panacea

KB was weaned on KD.

For my American friends, KD is Kraft Dinner, what you call, with typical American literalist panache, "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese". (The most popular food in America for many years was the tuna fish, as opposed to tuna chicken and tuna cow.)

Kraft Dinner has been the most popular meal in Canada for at least a generation. Pundit Rex Murphy has said that "Kraft Dinner revolves in that all-but-unobtainable orbit of the Tim Horton's donut and the A&W Teen Burger. It is one of that great trinity of quick digestibles that have been enrolled as genuine Canadian cultural icons." Maybe it's because the founder of Kraft was born in Ontario. Maybe it's because, as Douglas Coupland notes, it "so precisely laser-targets the favoured Canadian food groups: fat, sugar, starch and salt." Or maybe Canadians are just favourably attracted to florescent orange. That might explain the NDP's surge in popularity, too.

My love of Kraft Dinner has been truly lifelong. KD was my mom's pregnancy craving, and I can only assume that's because I was demanding the cheesy pasta shapes in utero. Everyone has that one meal they could live indefinitely off of: KD is mine. '

As such, each bowl provides a heaping helping of memories and proto-memories. I was too young to recall my father hurting himself quite badly preparing this dead-simple dish, but the tale has been told often enough that I can vividly imagine it. Dad was doing just fine boiling the macaroni: when it came time to drain it, he inexplicably held the colander in one hand as he poured the boiling water from the pot with the other.

(This tale is proof positive, if any is ever needed, that I am my father's son. I have never done this myself, but it's something I might do in the same sort of daze that has me come downstairs of a morning with my shirt on backwards. Or inside out. Or both. One time I arrived at breakfast in a dress shirt I had put on inside out and buttoned up. Try that some time, I dare you.)

Then there was the time, many years later, when I almost burned Macdonald House at Wilfrid Laurier University down preparing...you guessed it...Kraft Dinner.

I can count on the fingers of one thumb the number of meals I prepared in that residence kitchen, despite being there for eight months. Part of it was profligacy: I arrived university flush with cash but with no idea of its value. Years of discipline evaporated in a heartbeat: eating damn near every meal out was the biggest reason I finished first year flat broke.

I have no defence, except to note my peers were just as free with their money. OSAP, the Ontario Student Assistance Program, was at the time better known as the Ontario Stereo Acquisition Program and many of my dorm mates seemed to be majoring in beer-soaked frat parties.

The residence common kitchen was a pigsty. On second thought, scratch that: pigs wouldn't choose to live in it. Dishes mouldered for days on end. The microwave broadcast the cloying odour of synthetic butter far and wide, as popcorn was about the only thing ever prepared in it. At the end of the year, several households worth of pots, pans, and assorted kitchen paraphernalia went unclaimed. Short-sighted, every one of us.

One night I got that telltale rumbling of the tummy that only a box of KD would cure. Kraft Dinner being one of those things not generally available on restaurant menus, I ventured across the street to Forwell's Super Variety and procured a box and some margarine. Fifteen minutes later, I set a pot of water to boil, and retreated to my residence room to find the perfect book for the cooking occasion.

(That last probably sounds weird if you're not me. If I'm going to be alone and forced to stare at nothing for a period of time, there simply must be a book to fill the mental space. What sort of book? I'll know it when I find it. Unless I don't, in which case I'm apt to soil myself looking for bathroom reading. Luckily, there are Bathroom Readers to fill the voiding void.)

I was still looking for that elusive Perfect Book To Accompany The Cooking Of Macaroni Noodles when my reverie was abruptly interrupted by my residence don, Craig, shouting 'BREADNER!' in exactly the same tone of voice that Fred Flintstone shouts 'WILMA!' That was accompanied by an odd kind of scurry-stomp as he hustled down the hall.

Craig was built like a fire hydrant. I had already by that point seen him pick up a guy who had six inches on him and throw him across a room. Hearing my name shouted out like that did not exactly fill me with warm creamy noodles.

I gingerly poked my head out my doorway only to be snatched and dragged back the way Craig had come. Finding my feet, I ran ahead of him, did a one-eighty into the floor lounge...

...and found the stove element merrily belching flames.

I am not generally the person who keeps their head in a crisis. My head is usually off and rolling all over the room at the first sign of trouble. This time, I'm happy to report, I managed to reach round the little campfire I had going, turn the element off, and then grab a fire extinguisher and discharge it...the first time I ever used one of those, and the last, knock on something that isn't flammable.

Disaster averted...but I never did get my Kraft Dinner that night. It turned out somebody had spilled some oil down into the element well and hadn't bothered to clean it up until I came along to burn it off. This is, of course, the sort of thing that only happens to people named Ken Breadner,

The prospect of a bowl of Kraft Dinner fills me with a warm glow. It's comfort food, a link to my childhood, and something I can make myself without too much trouble (unless I'm setting a kitchen on fire...) Many people add all sorts of things to their macaroni and cheese: wieners and ketchup being the most popular. My mom likes to put pepper on hers; I've also consumed it with hamburger and peas. But I'll always prefer mine plain, prepared exactly as the directions on the box indicate, save perhaps for the addition of a wee bit more margarine than is called for.

Kraft Dinner: another way I'm quintessentially Canadian.

The Rise Of American Fascism

"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." -Abraham Lincoln, Lyceum Address 1838

Prescient, that man Lincoln.
A tiny downgrade in one's credit rating from the highest possible score to the second-highest can not, in and of itself, be proof positive that a country is failing. But when that credit rating has stood since 1917, and when one reflects on the political crapfest that precipitated that credit downgrade, one certainly can't help but wonder if America understands the perils of the road it is travelling.

I, for one, think not.

The vitriol spewing out of various Fox-holes...well, Lincoln would have recognized it for the variation on mob rule it seeks to foment. There is a long and storied tradition in America of populist leaders emerging out of relative obscurity, urging the population to rise up in revolt against elitist, statist masters. McCarthy. Malcolm X. Michele Bachmann. For that matter, President Obama himself has repeatedly used the highest pedestal in the land to incite class warfare; his elites are the rich corpocrats. He is either frightfully naive or willfully ignorant: corporations have running Skyscraper America from its lobby for decades now.

The Left and the Right used to be two parts of the same body politic. In America in the second decade of the twenty first century they can't be said to inhabit the same reality. Twenty years ago I thought David Frum leaned so far right he was in danger of toppling; today he sounds almost like a Democrat. Believe me, it's not because Frum has mellowed. Rather, the United States started running into right field a few years back and is now so far out there it can't even see home plate anymore.

I don't see how this is correctable. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, we will see the rise of American fascism.
Sinclair Lewis, the first American to be honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature, once said that "when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." We see in the Tea Party a patriotism that borders on the fanatical (and which, of course, comes with its attendant branding of anyone not of the Faith as "un-American"); the cross surely need not be explained.
This article, originally written in 2009 as the Tea Party was gaining in popularity, argues the U.S. is already pulling into the parking lot of Fascists 'R' Us. It's not tinfoil-hat territory: truly, it's worth the read. It defines facism thus:

"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline."

Here are what it posits as the three signs of fascism in formation:

1. Are [neo- or protofascisms] becoming rooted as parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on the political scene?
2. Is the economic or constitutional system in a state of blockage apparently insoluble by existing authorities?
3. Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

The recent debt ceiling debacle illustrates point 1) perfectly. America now has two parties: Democrat and Tea. The Tea Party, while not explicitly fascist, certainly fits the definition above in that it faults liberals and liberals alone for the decline of America and seeks by means increasingly foul to restore order both fiscal and social. That they portray themselves as innocent VICTIMS is telling.

The answer to 2) is an emphatic yes. The Democrats have historically disagreed with Republicans on just about everything, but at least they used to be able to make themselves understood and occasionally listened to. Today, the political system is all but paralyzed. So is the economy. It's only in the last ten days or so that the stock markets seemingly have deigned to recognize there is an economy outside their bubble, and that bubble is in the process of going pop.

And as to 3)...let the economy fester much longer, as it probably will, and we'll just see what unholy alliances those traditional elites cook up to maintain their grip on power.

For nearly ten years now I have worried that America would get around to posing a Muslim question in the manner that Germany once posed a "Jewish question". I am still worried about this. The United States persists in overstating the strength of al-Qaeda for political ends, and Muslims are thus widely distrusted; it would not take overmuch to reach a tipping point. But now I'm starting to wonder if the scope of my worry is too narrow. It seems to me that the Tea Party has a very strong opinion on what it means to be American, and an even stronger opinion on who doesn't qualify. They have a real bee in their bonnet over "illegals"; ironically enough, people who escaped utter misery in Mexico for what they imagined to be a better life in los estados unidos. The Tea Partiers like to lump them in with the "bleeding heart liberals" who, they imagine, are conspiring to destroy "their" America.

The truth is that America's rightward drift is what is destroying America. Impoverish the middle class and keep the lower class down in the name of LOW LOW TAXES and eventually that lower class, not to mention much of what used to be the middle, will get desperate enough to listen to anyone with a solution. In normal times, Michele Bachman's proposal to eliminate the minimum wage would cue fits of hysterical laughter, as would her assertion that her having run mental health clinics qualifies her for the Presidency of the United States of America. (Those mental health clinics, by the way, have been accused of performing 'conversion therapy'--seeking to change homosexuals into heterosexuals...which would also be funny if it wasn't so scary.)

Michele Bachmann has a decent shot at being the next President. If that happens, the Tea Party's apt to get...raucous.

Tales From Aisle Ten (V)

"Why Juice Boxes Are 10% Smaller But Still Cost The Same"

Article here.

Because us grocery clerks love to screw you over, that's why. We cackle with glee each and every time one of our esteemed customers chooses to assume we and we alone are responsible for shrinking the cereal boxes and juice cartons and...well, hell, everything. The groceries we shrink at night, using dark retail sorcery. Then we shrink your wallets by day. It's soooo much fun, especially since we don't buy groceries ourselves. Did you really think we need to eat? Pshaw.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Grocery stores don't generally gouge their customers. I know you have no proof of this--until the world finally gets around to putting costs as well as retails on price tags, anyway--but trust me. There are exceptions (the produce department has some *huge* margins), but on many items in dry grocery, we make pennies; on sale items we almost always lose money, sometimes quite a bit of it. Somebody may well be rolling in it, but it ain't us.

Crop failures obviously drive price increases. Just two days ago, the retail on a kilogram of McCain red bag fries went from $1.99 to $3.67 in one leap. This actually didn't surprise me overmuch, because I've been told potatoes of any quality at all are somewhat hard to find right now. The same thing happened with grapefruit juice a few years back when Florida was temporarily a hurricane playpen. For over two months we had no grapefruit juice at all. We *could* have offered it, but we chose not to: our cost was something like nine bucks a carton. Then, when grapefruits started to show up, so did the juice...at substantially higher retails than people were accustomed to paying. It took over a year for the price to fall, and it didn't fall by much.

Milk just went up, too. We're at $4.67 right now for a 4L bag of 2%, 1% or skim. That's subject to change at any moment, depending on what the competition does or doesn't do. But, as I tell everyone who complains about milk prices, they've gone up by fifteen percent in fifteen years. That's *well* under the rate of inflation. Plus, we lose money on every bag of milk we sell.

As for the shrinkage...it's happening everywhere. As the linked article above states, people would rather pay the same for less quantity than pay more for the same quantity. It's not a trick: it's market research in action.

Do bear in mind, too, that most people, yours truly definitely included, eat too much food. Here's an experiment to try: one day, eat only the "suggested serving" of whatever you consume. Good luck with that. I freely admit I can't do it: when I'm hungry, I want to EAT, damnit. None of this "quarter of a box of Kraft dinner" or "eleven potato chips" or even "a quarter sized piece of meat." If you're just going to tease me like that, let me starve already.

That all said, maybe, just maybe, smaller packages are good for you. It sure beats the trend we had in the eighties and nineties, to super size the hell out of everything.

I agree, some of the packaging reductions are kind of insane. When I started in May, 2001, a 2L tub of Nestle Confectionery ice cream--Rolo, Smarties and the like---went for $4.99. The package has shrunk three times since then and the price continues to rise: it's now a 1.5L tub and it's $6.99. Little wonder nobody buys it unless it's on sale.

That's an annoying thing from our perspective: nobody buys ANYTHING unless it's on sale. That's maybe a bit of an exaggeration...but not as much of one as you'd think. When you have twelve different grocery chains to choose from, everything is on sale somewhere. So if you're ever wondering why it's the last day of the ad and we have no sale product, it's because anything we're stuck with at the end of the ad, we're STUCK with. I still have frozen vegetables from the first ad we ran as a FreshCo, week ending April 28. Good thing they don't expire until late next year.

Stop the Gravy Train Before it Derails

Last Thursday into Friday, the right-leaning Mayor of Toronto ran a marathon committee meeting: twenty one hours and ten minutes. The purpose of the meeting was to gather public opinion on what services should be cut to make up a $774-million hole in the city budget. (Municipalities in Ontario are required, by law, to table balanced budgets.)

Predictably, Ford and his committee were told, over and over again, not to cut anything at all. Also predictably, the mayor was and continues to be a target for a CN Tower full of hatred, much of it irrational and visceral. Yes, Rob Ford and his brother Doug are right-wingers with little patience for things they don't use themselves. (Doug, a city councillor himself, made waves last week telling Margaret Atwood, of all people, to get herself elected or shut up. Atwood had leapt to the defence of Toronto libraries, which are possibly on the Ford chopping block.)

It remains to be seen what Ford will actually cut. He was handily elected last year promising to "stop the gravy train" at City Hall...and now people have figured out they like gravy...All that said, how many mayors facing similar budget shortfalls would actually seek public input to this degree? Damned few of them, I'm thinking. Dismiss the meeting as political theater if you must, but Ford doesn't strike me as the kind of person with much patience for theater, political or otherwise.

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

There's another entity facing a budget mess just across Lake Ontario from Ford's fiefdom. Its elected representatives are also working around the clock to avert default. That entity wields just a titch more clout in the world, mind you. If the United States actually defaults on its debt...well, truth is, nobody knows exactly what will happen, but it ranges from "not pretty" downwards.

I still think, or I'd like to think, that the United States will come to its senses at the last possible minute. Of course, it's a fair argument whether the Democrats and Republicans in Washington have any sense left between them. One side refuses to budge off its insistence there be no tax increases, while the other side is more interested, at least publicly, on heaping opprobrium on the opposition than in putting the country's interests first.

Raising the debt ceiling used to be a meaningless ritual. It's been done 74 times in the last 49 years, rarely with any fuss or muss whatsoever. This time, things are different: the government is virtually paralyzed. Which makes me wonder how they'd face a real crisis...

Now, don't get me wrong. The United States debt is a train rapidly getting out of control. You can call it a "gravy train" after Rob Ford if you want, but be aware that Americans define "gravy" differently from us Canucks. (For one thing, they look at you funny if you ask for it on your fries.)

WHAT'S DRIVING U.S. DEBT?

War.

It's really that simple. The Department of Defense budget for 2012 is well over a trillion dollars, and that's just the money that's explicitly allocated. Doubtless there are countless billions being thrown at the military from other accounts. Cuts to defense spending are a political third rail in a country embroiled in the amorphous 'war on terror'. Were I an American, I would be afraid to even mention the prospect in a blog, lest I land on some shadowy list somewhere: the idea of even reining in defense spending is nothing less than traitorous.

Yet the U.S. is currently engaged in combat (of a sort) not just in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but also in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. These wars--every single one of them--are ultimately unwinnable. Every terrorist killed begets more terrorists; ten years in, Afghanistan is no closer to U.S. style democracy. Nor, truly, is Iraq.

The U.S. maintains over a thousand military bases in well over a hundred countries worldwide. Including over two hundred bases in Germany alone. Are these strictly speaking, necessary? Germany hasn't been a threat to anyone for nigh on seventy years.

So: cut the military back a bit. But they shouldn't bear the austerity alone. The U.S. is, contrary to popular citizen misconception, among the least taxed wealthy countries on earth. Many citizens like to think that their low taxes are the source of their wealth. It ain't true. Canada's standard of living is the same or higher, and our taxes would make citizens of many states (not all) blanch. And taxes in Scandinavia, which is not under the toxic Euro-cloud of debt to its south, are considerably higher than those in Canada.

A couple of years ago, General Electric paid no taxes to Washington on revenues of $10.3 billion. That was accomplish through sleight-of-hand accounting, which really should be made illegal. A law taxing overseas gains at the marginal rate when they are offset by U.S. losses should do the trick. Truth is, there are many corporations in U.S. avoiding taxes while reaping ridiculous profits (even now, when the real American economy is sputtering and guttering.)

Raise corporate taxes. Institute a VAT (the U.S. is the only wealthy country without a national value-added tax of some kind). Do all of this in combination--or even some of it--and you'll avert default. But most importantly, STOP THE GODDAMN BICKERING. It's childish, it's unseemly, and it doesn't accomplish anything at all.

Oh, and I do agree with the Tea Party on one thing (wonders never cease): a balanced-budget Constitutional amendment. Raise the debt ceiling just this once more...and never again. A city or a country can not be run the way a household is...but excessive debt is just as poisonous no matter if your nation is the Land of the Free, the Land of the Fords, or the Land of the Breadbin.

Utøya Horror

My heart grieves for the families affected by the atrocities in and around Oslo, Norway.

As with any terrible occurrence, be it a natural disaster or a cold-blooded murder spree, the meaning is up to those who survive and those who look on. In this case, I find it more than a little unsettling how quickly so many media sources assumed Islamic terrorists were behind what is turning out to be a politically motivated hate crime of the highest order.

We can deduce from social networking clues that Anders Behring Breivik, aka "Andrew Berwick", considered himself to be a force. Indeed, his one and only tweet, posted the day before the massacre, is a quote from John Stuart Mill: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests."

What were Breivik's beliefs? Do you want the long version, which runs over FIFTEEN HUNDRED PAGES, impeccably organized and endnoted, a compendium astounding in its seeming respectability through very long stretches? Or do you want the short version, which can perhaps be summarized thus: Marxism is evil, Muslims are evil, multiculturalism is evil, and "armed resistance is the only rational option" (pp. 791 et seq.)?

Here's something in between the two...

What I find most terrifying about this compendium is how coherent it is. This isn't random gibberish. In fact, I have heard most of this argued before. It is something of a dark irony that many of the people I have run across on right-leaning forums--the ones who unfailingly blamed Islamic terrorists before the bullets had even stopped flying--would likely have embraced Breivik and his hateful ideology: he reads in many places for all the world like Mark Steyn.

There are, I fear, a great many American citizens who would empathize with Breivik's cause. I suspect you'll find quite a few in Arizona, given the outrage there over a perfectly ordinary Arabic word--haboob, the actual meteorological term for a dust storm. This, too, scares me. It's not near as far a road as you'd think from banning words to burning people. Especially in times of stress, like, say, what America's going through right now.

Now, granted, Islam is not exactly the religion of peace it claims to be. And anyone suggesting one crazed Christian/white supremacist somehow "makes up for" over 17,000 known Islamic terror attacks in the past decade is just being foolish. But people, whatever their faith or lack of it, are individuals and should be treated as such. We need to be vigilant against those of whatever religious or political stripe who would kill to advance their cause, while bearing in mind that such people represent a tiny minority. If we overreact, then, to borrow somebody's phrase, "the terrorists win".

Electronification

I've been thinking about getting an e-reader.

Most of the people I know who own one are rabid converts...including people who swore up and down that they'd never buy one. Some of the things I've heard:

"The printed page is so yesterday. It even smells musty!"

"I can carry an entire library around with me anywhere I go!"

"I used to read a book a year, now I'm reading all the time!"

Retailers are hyping the things to the high heavens. "Our latest model provides you with extra-long battery life, the ability to read in direct sunlight...and it has a 700 book capacity!"

Humph. My inner curmudgeon has a response at the ready for each selling point.

What if I LIKE the smell of books?

I typically read one book at a time. You know, since I only have the two eyes, and they work together.

I read considerably more than one book a year, my wife outreads me by a wide margin, and everything we read is printed on dead tree.

Battery life, eh? Well, my Eye-Book beats your iBook there. I doan NEED no steenkin' batteries. And I can read in direct sunlight all...I...want.

The e-reader craze is simply the latest attempt to force consumers to BUY AGAIN.

"Buy Again", I am convinced, is the Philosophy of the Age. It's the only reason we still have something resembling an economy...people have to keep making stuff to sell to other people whose stuff is...gasp...OLD. Cue Ron James, one of Canada's best comedian-wordsmiths:

"A Model T Ford is...old. Benjamin Franklin's printing press: old. The sandals of Jesus...OLD. Purchased five years ago for forty-five hundred bucks...fairly new!"

We're in the process of being made to buy our movies for a third time, our music for a fourth or fifth...now they've stumbled on a way to make us buy all our books again. That's aside from the planned obsolescence that characterizes the devices we play all this media on.

And really, is Blu-Ray THAT much superior to DVD? You could certainly make the argument for DVD over VHS, but c'mon, to really appreciate Blu-Ray, you have to invest in a home theater system and a high-definition television. More money. For those of us who just want to sit back and watch a movie...why bother?

Music is a teensy bit more defensible in that each iteration of playback device has large and inherent technological advantages over its predecessor. A cassette tape is much sturdier than an LP; a CD has only one side and much better sound quality than either, and digital music is infinitely more portable than anything that came before.

(And yet you can still buy vinyl. That's like going into a telegraph office instead of a Bell Mobility kiosk, but whatever.)

But I will maintain to the end of my days that Blu-Ray is pretty much indistinguishable from DVD. And even if it isn't, what happened to music is BOUND to happen to movies, sooner or later and probably sooner. It already seems like most people don't watch TV on their televisions any more, and a sizeable number of people download whatever they watch. It won't be long before shelves of DVDs or Blu-Rays belong in a museum, not a private dwelling.

Back to e-readers.

Books are fundamentally different from music or video, in that they require no playback device to enjoy. If you have functioning eyes, you can read a book. There's no need to shell out a couple of hundred bucks first. No batteries required.

There are two arguments I can make for e-readers over books. One is the ease with which you can purchase new product. The other is the backlight that would, I admit, make it easier to read where I do most of my reading: in bed.

Are these two arguments enough to convert me? Not even close, because of my biggest complaint....

My biggest complaint about these things, aside from the "batteries to read a book? Really?" is simply this: they're unitaskers. Eva has taught me to mistrust unitasker kitchen devices, and I don't need her to tell me that unitasker electronics are just as crappy. Sure, each device does one thing and does it well, but...I only have so many pockets. This is why the iPhone is such a success: it's also an iPod. Of course, unless you have the eyes of Superman, your iPhone will never make a decent e-reader, and unless you figure out a way to stuff a tablet in your jeans pocket, your e-reader will never be quite as portable as you're led to believe. True convergence is a ways off...if it ever happens at all.

But I reserve the right to be wrong. Should a device emerge that functions well as a telephone, a music/book/video storage machine, and a minicomputer, I'll be all over that thing like white on rice. Call it a PMC: a Personal Media Companion. In the meantime, though, leave me alone with my chunks of dead tree.

Harry Potter and the Daunting Plan

We went to see the final installment of Harry Potter last night. Eva had procured tickets through her work to a special showing at 6:30 p.m. (the movie technically opened at midnight). We were advised to be there by 5:30. Really? I thought. An hour before curtain drop? That seemed odd to me, given that we didn't have to worry about the theater selling out--our group had the only tickets.

We actually got there well before 5:30...and we were lucky we did, or we might not have managed to snag two adjacent seats. Any later than, say, 5:45 and it would have been impossible to get two seats in the same row.

I hesitate to even write this...I can hardly believe it...but there were at least sixty people lined up for the MIDNIGHT showings when we got there. Almost seven hours in line. There is nothing on this earth I would line up seven hours for. Nothing at all. Leaf Stanley Cup Final tickets? Screw it, I'll watch it on TV. Sexual favours from (insert fantasy-women here)? The real fantasy is not having to wait seven hours!

I've noticed that nearly everyone I know, upon entering a stadium style theater, makes a beeline up. We don't. We go for the front row. Not the front front row, mind you...the row you first stumble upon when you enter the theater and turn around. Lots and lots of legroom there. You're less conscious of the press of humanity. And sitting close immerses you in the movie.

I managed to get the two seats adjacent to the far aisle in that front row. Even better: Eva had to contend with one person sitting on her lap, and that person was me.

Concessions in movie theaters have gone from obscene to almost inconceivable in price. Two pops and two popcorns with extra butter: $25. (Extra butter because otherwise your popcorn might as well be plain. I don't know about you, but personally I have an aversion to eating little bits of styrofoam.)

Wouldn't have mattered, anyway. The popcorn was actually cold by the time I dug into it, and if that was "extra butter"...then I was actually eating styrofoam. Yum.

I don't know whether it was the styrofoam, the Coke Zero (dear Coke: can you please try and produce a diet cola that doesn't taste like goat-spit?) or the endless wait, but I was kind of soured on the movie before it even started.

Don't get me wrong, it was a fine and fitting spectacle and a worthy end to a great franchise. But the 3D was totally unnecessary...it's only a means to extract more money from us moviegoers. I found the audio mixing to be slightly off: for the first time over the course of eight films I occasionally had trouble deciphering dialogue. And the pacing is...unusual. Frantic action for thirty seconds or a minute, then everything jars to a halt for some drama, then back to the action. It's not the weakest of the set--Half Blood Prince takes that title by a landslide--but nor is it near the top of the heap. At least as far as I'm concerned.

Harry Potter is all grown up. As for me...

Acting on doctor's advice-cum-orders, I have joined a gym for the first time in my life. It's the same gym that Eva belongs to. Put it this way: I'd rather spare myself Dad's heart attacks if I can help it. (He's looking fitter than he has in many years, down a considerable amount of weight and several inches. Besides, he feels great, exercising four or five times a week.

Part of me--the childish part I still struggle to quiet--is skeptical. Exercise has never felt good to me. Exercise is that thing that makes you stiff and sore for hours afterwards. Then you do it again and you're even more stiff and more sore. I'm given to understand that after some unknown number of repetitions, you become less stiff and less sore...but I'm less stiff and less sore sitting here in my chair. Besides, I'm further told that if you don't "feel the burn", you're not doing it right. Well, doing it wrong doesn't HURT! "No pain, no...pain! Duh!"

And then, at the end of your hour, you've done...what, exactly? You haven't gone anywhere or experienced anything other than rapidly increasing stiffness and soreness.

Against all odds, I might enjoy myself and become this guy in a couple of years:

Okay....

I'm going to try, damnit. Whenever I feel my resolve faltering, I'm going to think of my dad coming very near to death in his hospital bed, victim of a leg cramp that suddenly and without warning became a heart-cramp. (And by the way, his son gets leg cramps, too. Entirely too many of them, almost always in the left leg, sometimes high, sometimes low, always excruciating.)

How I wish I could just wave a magic wand. On the other hand, maybe after enough of this rigamarole I might be able to do new things. Like stand in line for sev-- No, not that. Never that.

Not Funny

"I can pee clearly now, Lorena's gone..."

No, she's been reincarnated as Catherine Kieu Becker. Now, as then, the predominant reaction among both genders (after the males are done cringing) is some kind of dark hilarity. "She cut his weenie off, hahahahahaha."

Why is this funny?

Let's switch up the genders here: if a man mutilates a woman's genitals, is that funny? "He threw her itty bitty clitty in the garbage disposal, hahahahaha." No, that's not funny. That's monstrous. So why the double standard?

"Payback's a bitch", Eva said in response to that question. I'm pretty sure she was mostly joking herself. But statistics show women are pretty much just as likely to be perpetrators as victims Moreover, men are actually slightly more likely to be seriously injured or killed, probably because women tend to compensate for their lack of body strength by various means. Becker, for instance, used drugs to incapacitate her husband before the knife came out.

This is not something we're supposed to talk about. There's an interesting, if hideous dynamic in play here, similar to the common reaction that rape victims "had it coming" because of their prior sexual history or the manner in which they were dressed. Male victims of spousal assault "had it coming" because, well, obviously, they must have deserved it. Men are scum, right? If he wasn't abusing her himself, he was probably cheating on her, and every woman knows that aggravated assault is the only sane and just reaction to being cheated on...right?

And just as women often refrain from reporting rape because they're ashamed that they "let themselves be raped", men tend to avoid reporting being abused because men are supposed to be able to take care of themselves, physically. Which goes against the four-word dictum most of us guys learn in childhood (NEVER HIT A WOMAN). I still remember asking but what if she deserves it?

Doesn't matter, was the reply. Which is another way of saying she doesn't deserve it. And that's true. No matter what the provokation, it's never okay to assault a woman. Her miniskirt is not an invitation to rape.

But that knife cuts both ways, or at least it should. And nobody should laugh when that knife touches skin and starts sawing. It's just not funny.

Kai Nagata: I Respect This Man

You don't often see people quit their jobs voluntarily in this economy. Especially if they are high-paying jobs with prestige and perks. But Kai Nagata did quit his job as a Quebec City-based television journalists, and the reasons he gave are eloquent and compelling. His essay is very much worth the read. I have the same issues with news in general, which is a very big reason why I have never pursued a career in it.

"TV news is a curious medium", he writes. "You don't always know whose interests are being served--or ignored." We have come a long way from the days of Walter Cronkite...a long way downhill. Once upon a time, and it really does seem a fairytale to say so, TV news anchors were amongst the most trusted individuals in the country. Canadian TV has lost several such individuals to retirement recently, among them Kevin Newman and Lloyd Robertson. Peter Mansbridge at the CBC soldiers on, practising his craft in an atmosphere that has rapidly degenerated. The set of The National looks like nothing so much as a game show. A Canadian game show, where five-time winners get a camera.

Nagata writes he "felt a profound discomfort working in an industry that so casually sexualizes its workforce. Every hiring decision is scrutinized using a skewed, unspoken ratio of talent to attractiveness, where attractiveness often compensates for a glaring lack of other qualifications..The idea has taken root that if the people reporting the news look like your family and neighbours, instead of Barbie and Ken, the station will lose viewers."

Bingo. This even extends so far as to cover your voice. An example: NTV, in Newfoundland. None of their news anchors, to my knowledge, have any more than the barest hint of a Newfie accent. Almost every viewer has a Newfie accent. Rightly or wrongly, I'd trust the news a titch more coming from somebody that sounded like me, but what do I know?

And of course, this sexualization extends to the stories covered.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge just wrapped up their honeymoon here in Canada. They were, of course, beset by packs of slavering journos everywhere they went. Republicans--which up here means anti-monarchists--among us were quick to say "this is not news!". I disagree to an extent--Wills and Kate really did serve themselves and the monarchy very well here: ask anyone in Slave Lake. The town was gutted by a raging wildfire a few months ago. It was not on their itinerary, but they cancelled a day off to go there and raise morale. They were spectacularly successful. I admired both of them for that and a host of other gestures, large and small, that they made while in this country.

But who gives a flying fart in a windstorm what Catherine Middleton wears? Is that important? Is it necessary to know who designed each outfit, how much it costs, and where you can get something similar? Judging by the tone of the coverage, this fashion bullshit is absolutely crucial and must be reported. Every day, every outfit. Meanwhile, important news is happening all over the country and it's ignored by directorial fiat. "William is young and Kate is pretty, let's lead with that."

He gets into politics a little further on in his essay, and suggests that there, too, he felt stifled, unable to report what he saw as serious, even critical issues facing the country. It is his belief that there is a "war on science" in this country. Actually, that's not so much a belief as it is a fact, and every action of the Harper government bears witness to it: the hamstrung census, the massive cuts to Environment Canada, the bullheaded opposition to InSite in Vancouver despite numerous studies showing how many lives it saves. If you want to get Harper to do something, anything, all you need to is produce a study showing the opposite.

Regardless of your political beliefs, a government that ignores and ridicules research at every turn is news. Important news.

But Wills is young and Kate is pretty.

I would like to see TV news modeled on newspapers. Report the news, factually and as objectively as possible. Take as long as necessary to cover each side of the story. Then, after a commercial break, editorialize in a segment clearly marked "opinion". Have people square off in a debate...not a trash talk, an actual debate...on public policy. Done properly, that would actually be informative entertainment, not the fluff that currently dominates TV news.

Nagata closes with a statement I frankly find inspirational:

I’m broke, and yet I know I’m rich in love. I’m unemployed and homeless, but I’ve never been more free.

Everything is possible."

Indeed.

Debt debt debt dash dash dash debt debt debt

(or Save Our Solvency)

[...] iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli / uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim / imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se / continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, / panem et circenses

(… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses) Juvenal, Satire 10.77-81, ca. 100 CE

------

August 2. On that date in 1776, the U.S. Declaration of Independence was signed. (How many people think that happened on July 4th?)

On that date this year, unless they do something, the United States will be in default. Perhaps they'll sign a Declaration of Dependence. You think?

But don't worry, they're doing something. They're arguing. Endlessly. The sticking point seems to be...doing anything other than arguing endlessly. It's fun to argue...you can score lots of political points. Then, later, after you've gathered up a boatload of them, you can take your political points down to the food bank and try and exchange them. You won't get any food, but hey, the exercise is good for you.

Ordinary citizens are doing something, too, at least according to Google Trends. Go ahead, check it out. Odds are that no matter what date you read this listing of What Americans Care About Right Now, nothing of any consequence whatsoever will show up on it. Least of all the word "debt".

No surprises here--Neil MacDonald, in the link above, expresses disdain and, reading between the lines, some species of shock that the average American citizen doesn't appear to notice, or care, that his country is going down the toilet. The disdain is understandable; the shock, not so much. As the epigram at the top of this blog demonstrates, "bread and circuses" is not exactly a new concept, and America has taken things considerably further in the "circuses" department than your usual Christians eating lions. Meanwhile, the debt drum beats on. Boom, doom, boom, doom, boom... hey, it's got a catchy beat and you can dance to it!

So what happens before August 2nd? Something's got to. My guess is that they'll agree to raise the debt ceiling at the last minute, in exchange for a package of half-assed measures that will only postpone the problem until sometime after the 2012 elections. And the chief concern will (of course) be who gets to take the fall.

Well, I can save them some posturing on that. America's taking the fall, and at this late date I'm not sure the brakes even work, anymore. The edge of the cliff is within sight, now...economic driver Tim Geithner cites it as August 2nd.

August 2nd. Hang on out there.

Holidaze

I've been off since Canada Day and I go back to work tomorrow. Which is probably why it's 2:30 in the morning and I'm awake: I'm loth to lose overmuch of my last day of respite. Also, despite every effort made to eliminate work from the run of my thoughts, it has crept in. Being texted or called three times over the past week hasn't helped. C'mon, guys, do you really need me that badly? Apparently so.

I spent five days at Rose Point in Britt, with my rejuvenated father and ever-gracious stepmom. It may sound like a blasphemy even to suggest such a thing, but I have to say Dad's heart attack is one of the best things to ever happen to him. He's down 27 pounds and three inches around the waist and looks fitter than I can ever remember him looking. He goes to three organized workouts a week and does a lot more at home besides.

No fire calls...not unless you count this:

seen on our way up, south of MacTier. A police cruiser was passing us when Dad spotted the smoke a few klicks ahead: it was at least ten seconds before said cruiser suddenly took off towards what turned out to be a trailer full of "solar equipment" on fire. No injuries...apparently the driver just looked back to discover his trailer was merrily burning away...

I spent a good deal of time reading, and a goodlier deal of time trying to resist the pull of the Internet. Not even remotely successful there--I'm at least as addicted to online life as my wife has been to cigarettes--though it actually helps that their "high speed" connection...isn't. There's no point surfing too widely when YouTube videos buffer roughly forever and even Facebook pages won't load completely.

But, see, Ken, that's supposed to be the whole point of up north...to get away from all that.

I know, I know, and hey--I did manage to read something like seven hundred pages of A Storm Of Swords. Count me as yet another of George R.R. Martin's obsessive fans. This is fantasy for people who don't like fantasy. Characters so real you think you know them, situations so shocking you'll feel at times like pitching the book through a window...only to pick it up ten minutes later.

I stayed, for the most part, around house and dock this time....

Dad and I, with Jessie comfortably ensconced

...revelling once again in the peace and tranquility of the Magnetawan River. I try to edit out the houses to either side of Dad's and concentrate on the shoreline opposite, which looks as primeval as it would have a thousand years ago. Sheer bliss.

And I even got a wee dip in the river, dodging the possibly mythical Snapping Turtle That Lives Under The Dock and the definitely NOT mythical Water Snakes That ALSO Live Under The Dock. I'll admit to some misgivings sharing swimming space with such creatures. It's kind of like the way my wife feels about the ocean. That's the shark's house, says she. The shark doesn't bother me in my house, so I won't bother him in his house. But I was spared...this time.

Dad and Hez, thanks once again for having me. It's always a pleasure and a half to get up there.

Wasn't that a wedding?

Congratulations Jim and Ally Hopf. My wife's brother, or 'Dude' as he is affectionately known, tied himself in a big ol' knot yesterday, at his place out in the country between Stratford and Mitchell. Married in the front yard and party in the backyard, how cool is that?

Just cool enough, as it turned out. It was a good thing the ceremony didn't happen today: 42 degrees with the humidity and thunderstorms this evening. Yesterday was sunny and warm but not hot, and the extensive fireworks display put a fitting cap on a fantastic day. Even if one of the buggers did go sideways and light a hay bale on fire: Ally, if you didn't know it before, you now know your husband can flat-out MOVE when he needs to.

It was a day some people (most notably Jim himself) thought would never come. I'll spare the personal details...let's just say I can remember a conversation I had with him about a decade ago, soon after I had married myself. He swore up and down and sideways he'd never marry. Never, never, never. I told him repeatedly not to say that, because I was sure he would and who knows what the future holds? Turns out his future held Ally. It took her a while, but she wore him down through a deep abiding love and bullheaded stubbornness in equal measure. And Ally, from what I know of the family you've married into...those two qualities mean you've been a Hopf in all but name since you decided you were going to turn "never" into "forever".

The service was short, sweet and to the point. There was one prayer for the churchly folks, but that was it: from procession to registry in ten minutes flat. The rest of the day and night was one big party: food a-plenty with two BBQs going full out, lots of music, a roaring bonfire and the aforementioned fireworks/hay bale blaze. Ally looked radiant and Jim relieved, or is that the other way around? A good time was had by all, and I'm glad I got to share in the day.

Every wedding I attend, I make a point of noting the music. And let me tell you, Jim and Ally's first dance song really spoke to me..

"All that I'm after is a life full of laughter, as long as I'm laughin' with you..." That's what it's about. Congratulations again, you two. We're so happy for you.

Gay Pride and Rob Ford

So Rob Ford is snubbing the gayfolk. Did anyone seriously expect different?

This is a man who once said "if you're not gay, you won't get AIDS, probably"; he's also suggested that gays could "dismantle civilization". Standard garden-variety homophobe, in other words. Why would the gay community want somebody like him marching in their parade?

He's not. Instead he'll be engaging in a family cottaging tradition far, far away from anywhere the gay cooties could possibly get him. You know what? That's fine. Better he stay away than be coerced to attend, is my view.

There are a great many people of Ford's generation who are acutely uncomfortable with in-your-face displays of homosexuality (or heterosexuality, for that matter). Most of them have made an uneasy truce with gay marriage and gay people in general, so long as they keep themselves below the radar. This attitude is called "tolerance".

There has been a remarkable campaign to shift the meaning of "tolerance", to imbue it with a degree of enthusiasm it was never meant to hold. I don't have to love you to tolerate you. I don't even have to particularly like you. I might prefer it if you'd stay away from me, in fact. Maybe you could take your reprehensible mayoral views and go jump in a lake somewhere up in the back of the beyond. Should you wish to stick around, though, I won't keep you away. Your presence can be tolerated.

Truth be told, I know several gay people who keep well away from Pride events, not because they're ashamed to be gay, but because they feel no need to sensationalize it. They never saw public nudity as a condition of gayness. Quite frankly, I don't either. You can show pride in who you are all you want: most of us straight folk don't feel the need to do so with garish non-costumes and low-hanging fruit.

Let me be clear: I personally have no problem with Gay Pride as it stands, even with the flaunty jaunty full monties on display. Nudity doesn't bother me in the slightest: it's just skin and as I've said before, if God had meant for us to walk around naked, we would have been born that way. So let it all hang out if you want, but don't for one second tie your exhibitionism to your homosexuality and insist that everyone gaze on you adoringly. And while you're not insisting, try not to insist that everybody be totally smitten with You And Your Cause. Sometimes the best you can hope for is that they leave town and let you have the run of it.

Bicycles are not toys

Regular readers will know that I do not drive, nor do I have a license. If I wanted to, I might be able to get a driver's license...my vision is just barely acceptable for the purpose...but I don't want to. Mostly because my vision is just barely acceptable for the purpose. I have convinced myself, and raised that conviction to an ironclad certainty, that sooner or later (probably sooner), I'd kill somebody and/or myself behind the wheel of a car.

Driving, that thing the civilized world takes entirely for granted, scares the shit out of me. I mean that quite literally. If you put a gun to my head and told me to drive a car, I might be able to do it for a time, but I would soil myself in the process.

As you can imagine, my lack of a driver's license has impacted my life in many ways, some of them unexpected. It has of course limited my pool of potential employers (I'd make a hell of a retail sales rep, but for my inability to get from store to store); it has dictated exactly where I can live (a public transit route is of paramount importance); it has affected my ability to shop for groceries or anything else. And let's just say again how lucky I was to find my wife. There are a dozen dozen reasons why, but for the purposes of this blog, a big one is that she's willing to cart me around. I don't think there are many women out there who'd have no problem doing all the driving, let alone women with Eva's pedigree.

I live approximately seven kilometers from where I work. It's not exactly walking distance (though I have walked it, once). It's about a ten minute drive. Unless you're on a bus: then, depending on time of day, it's anywhere from 35 to 75 minutes. The bus ride is an inconvenience that I simply factor into my life. I imagine it's a tiny bit like the way parents of small children must budget triple the time they once did to complete any least task.

I can bike it in 25 minutes if I push myself, and if the wind co-operates. (It rarely does: one of the axioms of cycling is that the wind is always against you. Another is that what goes up never seems to come down.) Weather is an issue, too: I've yet to see a rainproof bicycle. My bike has fenders, of necessity: I don't particularly need a stripe up my back. But for some reason, there doesn't seem to exist a bike with (a) fenders and (b) thin, ten-speed type tires. My bike is a clunker. A nice clunker, but a clunker. Spandex-bedecked people can coast by me while I pedal in top gear.

I don't mind getting wet on the way home--a little water never hurt anybody--but being as I work in coolers and freezers, even a chance of rain in the morning means Eva gets to drive me in and I get to bus home.

The route to work is an easy ride, for the most part. There are bike lanes for the first three hundred meters and the last fifteen hundred. Another two klicks are on residential avenues. The rest of it is on a major artery, and it's here that I've had a few close calls.

Nothing too close, I hasten to add. I've only been run over once, and that was by a uniformed police officer: it was also entirely my fault. But I still get the odd motorist who either doesn't see me or doesn't care that I'm there. Cyclists call it a "brushback". I'd personally rather experience baseball's version.

Despite occasional nerve wracking moments on the roads, I absolutely refuse to ride on the sidewalk. The vast majority of cyclists I see are on sidewalks, and I have nothing but disdain for them. I want to shout out first time without the training wheels, buddy? every single time. They don't call it a "sideride"...the only bicycles that belong on sidewalks are the toys of six year olds.

The law, incidentally, backs me up on this: bicyclists have the same rights and duties as operators of motor vehicles. I've had more than a few drivers tell me to get back up on the sidewalk "where I belong", and my reaction to those drivers is strikingly similar to my reaction when I see cyclists who think they belong on sidewalks.

Every once in a while, I read a story like this one that chills my blood. Here's the official report (bold mine):

"THE CYCLIST WAS WEST BOUND ON MS50 NEAR THE TRULOVE LOOP INTERSECTION. V1 WAS WEST BOUND ON MS50 APPROACHING THE CYCLIST FROM THE REAR. THE FRONT OF V1 COLLIDED WITH THE REAR OF THE BICYCLE. THE IMPACT THREW THE CYCLIST INTO THE AIR BEFORE LANDING ON THE HOOD OF V1 AND ONTO THE WINDSHIELD. V1 CONTINUED FOR A FEW FEET BEFORE COMING TO A STOP. THE CYCLIST WAS THEN THROWN TO THE ASPHALT WHEN V1 STOPPED. THE DRIVER OF V1 EXITED THE VEHICLE AND OBSERVED THE CYCLIST WHILE TALKING ON THE PHONE. D1 THEN REENTERED HER VEHICLE AND RAN THE CYCLIST OVER AGAIN BEFORE BEING FORCED FROM HER VEHICLE BY WITNESSES. V1 CAME TO FINAL REST FACING WEST IN THE WEST BOUND LANE ON MS 50 JUST METERS WEST OF THE TRULOVE LOOP INTERSECTION. THE CYCLIST CAME TO FINAL REST NEAR THE RIGHT FRONT TIRE OF V1."

When will it be my turn to face a psychotic driver?

Driving is already off limits to me, by my own choice. I can't allow that niggling fear a foothold in my mind, or I'll end up housebound.

The fact is, for me and people like me, bicycles are not toys, whatever drivers may think and however many may think it. A bike is a perfectly legitimate means of transportation, and I'm entitled to ride mine on city streets.