The Halmanator

Unplugged

2012-01-14T16:27:00.000-05:00

I must have been one of the last hold-outs when cell phones started to become omnipresent. This may seem strange, considering that I work in the technology sector. The thing is, I don't agree that being reachable at all hours wherever I happen to be and no matter what I happen to be doing is necessarily a good thing. Even back in the day when cell phones were still considered "car phones", I didn't particularly want one. For one thing, I was never much into status symbols (which is mostly what they were back then) and my attitude was "Anybody who's trying to reach me will simply have to wait until I get to where I'm going".

I finally did cave in and got a cell phone, when I decided that having one in the car, for use in emergencies, might not be such a bad idea after all, but my cell phone is a very basic one. It's not a "smart" phone. I have no texting plan. I have a minimal plan that gives me 60 minutes of calling time per month and I never use all of those. The phone stays in my car at all times; I don't carry it around with me. If I'm not at home or at work or in my car, then I'm out doing something and I probably don't want to talk to you (unless I happen to be with you, of course).

The first cell phone that I bought had no camera. My current one does because it's impossible to find a cell phone these days that doesn't have a camera. But I'm a simple soul. I don't want to take pictures with my phone, or shoot video, or play music, or send or receive e-mail. I just want a phone, plain and simple. If I want to take pictures, I have a camera for that. If I want to play music, I have an iPod and a CD player for that. I just want my phone to be a phone.

I'm particularly irritated by people who constantly have their noses in their smart phones or iPads. The implication is that my company isn't quite stimulating enough so they need some other distraction to stave off the boredom. I know people who can never seem to just sit and watch a show or a movie on TV. They always have to be texting or e-mailing someone at that same time. Some call this "multitasking". When did doing three things at once become a good thing? I think there's a lot to be said for focusing all your attention on one thing at a time.

I've noted before on this blog that I refuse to be assimilated into the Facebook continuum, and I continue to resist. I don't need to know what every passing acquaintance is up to at every moment, and I don't need everybody knowing what's happening in my life. In a world so outwardly obsessed with privacy (even your garbage collector probably has an official "privacy policy" for you to review if you only ask him), we sure do willingly surrender our privacy pretty easily these days.

My daughter once posted on her Facebook wall that, on her birthday, the first thing that her grandmother did was to call her a slob for not brushing her hair. I didn't read this myself. It got back to me via an in-law who heard it from a second cousin. I couldn't for the life of me understand why Jessica would want to broadcast that sort of thing to the world. It reflects poorly on both her grandmother (who comes across as an insensitive nagging harpy) and herself (a slob who apparently doesn't brush her hair, not to mention a whiner). I feel justified in mentioning it on my blog now, considering the whole world apparently already knows anyway (yes, I know you what you were thinking!)

The internet and wireless technology have made the world a much smaller place. Global communication can be almost instantaneous. This has its advantages. But, in such an environment, we need more than ever to be mindful about what information we're broadcasting to the world. There are some things that are best kept to ourselves, or at least within intimate circles. And there's something to be said for unplugging from the collective (at risk of overusing an admittedly nerdy Star Trek analogy) from time to time and taking time for some reflection, meditation or even just some intimate one-on-one time with a close friend or loved one.

911 Calls

2011-12-31T12:36:00.001-05:00

In my more cynical moments, I sometimes suspect that the human species as a whole is getting dumber and dumber as time passes. Think of the great minds that have furthered our knowledge and our capabilities throughout history; Socrates, Plato, Sir Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Alexander Fleming, Benjamin Franklin, James Watt, Marie Curie, George Washington Carver and Christiaan Huygens, to name but a few. Whom do we have today to compare with intellects such as these? Stephen Hawking perhaps? For all his mathematical and physics genius, even he has been known to show signs of narrow-mindedness.

But it isn't the apparent dearth of modern mental giants that occasionally fills me with dismay, so much as the plethora of modern fools. I offer into evidence this article which recently appeared in my local newspaper concerning insipid calls made to 911 emergency hot lines in my province during the past year. It only lists the "Top Ten" although the article notes that, with a little less self-restraint, authorities could easily have published a "Top Twenty" list. Here they are, verbatim, just in case the above link ever stops working or for readers who can't be bothered to jump around between web sites. This is obviously not my work; I'm only passing it along.

Number 10:
During a snow emergency in early February, a woman called police to complain that snowplows were cleaning her street and making too much noise.

Number 9:
A 17-year-old called police to seek advice. He wanted to know if he could disown his mother because she wouldn’t give him money.

Number 8:
A man called police because he found a roll of carpet on his front lawn and wanted an officer to attend his residence. He cancelled the call when he found out his wife put the carpet there.

Number 7:
A woman called 911 after being denied entry to a nightclub. She forgot her identification and wanted an officer to attend to verify her name and prove to security staff that she was of legal drinking age. When she was told police don’t do that, she argued that they should.

Number 6:
A man called 911 to request an ambulance for a friend. Before the call ended, a man was heard in the background saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of the dope.” Police were dispatched to the location but were unable to find any drugs.

Number 5:
A man called police when he saw a “small lion” cross the road in front of him. He was also quick to point out that he had not smoked any drugs — “that day.”

Number 4:

A woman called police to have a man removed from her residence. She no longer wanted his company after they were sharing a sofa to sleep on. She wanted the other end but the man wouldn’t switch.

Number 3:

A man called 911 to report that his vehicle was just stolen from his driveway. He provided a description and the direction of travel. Officers scoured the area but were unable to locate it until they attended his house and found it right where he left it. It turned out the man saw a vehicle just like his drive by his house and jumped to the conclusion his had been stolen.

Number 2:

Police responded to a 911 call when screaming was heard in the background. The investigation revealed that a couple were arguing because the man wanted to play Xbox while the woman wanted to play Nintendo Wii. The breaking point came when the man opened a new pack of cigarettes while another package was already open.

And last, but certainly not least, the Number 1 idiotic 911 call (at least in Ontario) for 2011:

A woman (who needs to be slapped repeatedly until she finally smartens up) called 911 because her cats ate her Whopper and she wanted another one.

The other thing that almost all these people have in common, aside from being singularly stupid, is a level of self-absorption that would make Spongebob Squarepants envious. To tie up an emergency hot line (thereby very possibly delaying the response for people who are actually in real need of emergency assistance) because "My boyfriend won't switch sofa sides with me" or "My cats ate my Whopper" betrays a "Me First And To Hell With The Rest" mindset that actually becomes quite disturbing once we finally stop laughing.

Games Unplayed

2011-11-12T20:57:00.001-05:00

I've mentioned before in this blog that I'm a computer gamer. Well, actually, I used to be more of a computer gamer than I am now. Somewhere along the way I became halfways responsible and I spend a lot less time playing games on my PC than I used to, mainly because annoying distractions such as work, family and my home (i.e. the maintenance thereof) tend to place demands on the time that I used to spend playing games.

But I still do like to tinker with them from time to time, and I'm a pack rat when it comes to computer software. I keep everything! Others play games and then, when they've finished them or they tire of them, either throw them away or give them to friends or sell them or something. Not me. I keep 'em, and collect 'em. Incidentally, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool PC gamer. I own no gaming consoles, nor to I plan to get any. "Give me a game that requires a keyboard and mouse!" I say.

Even when I used to spend a lot more time playing computer games, though, I failed to finish them, more often than not. Over the years, I've collected a lot of games. There's a post on this blog entitled "Clutter" which shows some pictures of my little attic retreat, whence I go to play games, post to my blog or just get away from the world for a while. Said pictures include a shot of my main computer game shelf (I say "main" because that's not all there is by any stretch of the imagination). Click here for a look. As your eyes scan the boxes and their various titles, know that I have not finished most of those. Know too that, some of them, I haven't even started! I picked them up because I'd heard good things about them and/or they were being offered for what seemed like a bargain price, but I just never got around to trying them.

I also used to read computer gaming magazines fairly regularly. My favorite was the now-defunct Computer Gaming World (or CGW for short). I found a really cool web site called The CGW Museum, where you can view or even download almost every issue of CGW that was ever published in PDF format. Being the nostalgic fool that I am, I'm gradually downloading the whole collection.

I was browsing through the October, 1986 issue this evening (the pleistocene era using the computing time scale). The inside cover featured an ad for a game called ROADWAR 2000. "Hmm," I mused, "I think I might have that in my collection somewhere". I seemed to recall purchasing a copy of something called "ROADWAR" several years ago, at a small computer store that was moving and therefore selling off their older inventory at bargain basement prices. So, you see, ROADWAR was already dated even at the time!

I scanned my gaming shelf and, sure enough, there I spied a pale yellow box with the title ROADWAR emblazoned on its spine. Interestingly, it said only ROADWAR, not ROADWAR 2000, so I pulled it down for a closer examination, in order to determine whether this was the same game that was being advertised in CGW back in October of 1986 or something different. Well, it turns out that what I've got is ROADWAR BONUS EDITION, which includes ROADWAR EUROPE, ROADWAR 2000 and something called WARGAME CONSTRUCTION KIT. Inside the box are three 5¼-inch floppy diskettes for IBM PC-DOS or MS-DOS PCs. Yes, I said 5¼-inch and, yes, I said DOS. And, yes, you guessed it, I have never tried these games even once. And, yes, I still intend to someday.

P.S. - For those of you not in the know who are now protesting "But today's PCs won't run those games anymore!" I say, that's what DOSBox is for!

What did we ever do before the internet?

Browsing Through Chapters

2011-11-05T16:48:00.000-04:00

My wife, my daughter and I are three very different people, but one thing that we do share in common is a love of books. Of course, our individual tastes in books differ, but at least we all like to read. For that reason, family outings to our local Chapters book store are not uncommon.

Because we happened to be near Chapters recently, my daughter suggested we go in to browse for a bit. There was nothing in particular that anyone wanted or needed, you understand. I'm always wary when Jessica suggests that sort of thing, because it invariably means that I'm going to end up buying here something. Still, sometimes one has to bend a bit, so in we went.

As I wasn't looking for anything in particular, I just sort of sauntered around looking at the various covers. Randomly browsing book covers can be an amusing experience. Conrad Black has released an autobiography called "A Matter of Principle". I smirked at that. From what I've read of him, Conrad Black is the very last person who should be talking about principles. What's next? "Simon Cowell: I'm Okay, You're Okay"? "Dr. Jack Kevorkian: Choose Life"? "Adolf Hitler: Mazel Tov!"?

In the Self Help section, there was a book entitled "DO IT NOW! How To Stop Procrastinating". I didn't see the need to even open the cover of that one. The title kinda says it all, doesn't it?

Speaking of procrastination, on the magazine rack, my eye fell upon the latest issue of Maclean's which featured a picture of the recently departed Steve Jobs, alongside the headline, "Let's Go Invent Tomorrow". "That was the problem with Steve Jobs...", I mused to myself, "...always putting things off. If he hadn't been such a procrastinator, he might really have been somebody!"

Speaking of magazines, I have in my collection a special issue of Time entitled "Your Brain: A User's Guide". I highly recommend this one, and I really wish a lot more people out there would read it; especially certain politicians and so-called world leaders. Here's a tip: Defrag every so often. It does wonders!

Having seen three titles outside of the humor section that made me chuckle, I wondered what other unintentionally amusing or ironic titles there might be out there so I turned on my computer and consulted that font of all knowledge, Google. Not surprisingly, I quickly found several. Here's a short list of some of the better ones, with links to their sources (credit where it's due):

A children's cookbook entitled "Cooking With Pooh". (Ewww!)

"The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush". This one goes side-by-side with Conrad Black's book.

"How To Avoid Huge Ships". Paddle To The Sea should have read this one.

Here's a link to a web site featuring several titles that sound more suggestive than they're meant to.

There is one other intersting title that I personally stumbled upon, not at Chapters but at Cole's some time ago. It was a journal, of sorts, entitled "F_ck You And Your Blog" I suspect I'll be receiving several copies of that for Christmas.

Time Travel

2011-10-22T16:26:00.000-04:00

"Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward? That's the trouble with time travel, you never can tell." - Dr. Who, The Androids of Tara

Since the days of H.G. Wells (and probably before that) dreamers, idealists and lovers of science fiction and fantasy have speculated about the possibility of travelling backward in time; revisiting people, places and events that have gone, or at least changed.

The very concept immediately raises several questions. If it were possible to go back in time, could we only do so as passive observers or, as Charles Dickens put it, "shadows" that could watch history unfold without being able to affect it, or might we be able to interact with the past and possibly change the outcome of events? If this were possible, all sorts of paradoxes come into play. If we could change the outcome of historical events, would it not also change the future? Might we find, upon returning to our own time, a radically changed world? What if we were to meet an earlier version of ourselves, or somehow prevent our parents, grandparents, or any of our ancestors, for that matter, from conceiving the children that they did. Would we suddenly disappear?

These questions have been amply considered by a myriad of fictional works (and that's only counting the Star Trek series!) but it's still fascinating to ponder on the nature of time, and how it works. This is not just the province of dreamers and science fiction writers. Much less fanciful and more learned intellects, such as Albert Einstein and Dr. Stephen Hawking (to name but two well-known examples) have theorized on the subject.

Einstein put forth the remarkable premise that time is relative to each of us, and is affected by speed. The faster we go, the more slowly time passes. If you could travel at, or near, the speed of light, theorized Einstein, several thousand years might seem as only a single year to you. You could traverse the galaxy for one year (or, at least, half a light year's worth of it, allowing for time to return) and, upon returning, you'd find that the Earth, and everyone on it, had aged considerably more than you.

Dr. Stephen Hawking agrees with Einstein's theory and concedes that it makes it possible to travel forward in time if we could only go fast enough. He asserts, however, that it would not be likewise possible to travel backward in time, because it "violates a fundamental rule that cause comes before effect."

I realize that I'm going out on a limb here, disagreeing with an intellectual giant the likes of Dr. Hawking, but I'm going to do so anyway. I suggest that travelling backward in time would not violate the "fundamental rule that cause comes before effect", because there is no direct relationship between time and events. Allow me to explain using something that I like to call the "Garden Hose Analogy".

Using a garden hose as an analogy to explain what time is and how it works is by no means an original idea of mine. It's been used before, often to explain the concept of "SpaceTime", which brings physical space into the equation, suggests a relationship between space and time, and generally makes the whole concept very weird and confusing.

My analogy is a simpler one, focusing only on time and leaving space out of it, in the interest of simplicity. Think of time as a garden hose, and events as the water running through it. The hose itself is always there, and certainly it's possible to travel through it in either direction (assuming you're small enough), but the water passes through it but once, and is gone. You could certainly go from the hose's end to its source (effectively travelling "backward" through it), but you'd never find the water that had passed through it before. It's gone. There is no connection between the water and the hose, save that the hose acts as a conduit through which the water flows.

By the same token, I believe that we make the mistake of mentally linking time and events when, in fact, there is no direct relationship between the two. Time, like the hose, is a conduit and it may be possible to traverse it in any direction, but events, like the water, come and go. You might be able to revisit Kittyhawk in 1903, but you'd never meet Orville and Wilbur Wright. They're not there anymore. They have passed through the conduit of time, and are gone.

But what if the water is still flowing? Surely we would still find water there. True, but it wouldn't be the same water, it would be new water, which brings us to the ironic possibility of future events unfolding in the past; a strange concept at first blush, but not so strange if you accept the premise of there being no direct link between time and events.

And what about travelling forward in time? What if we were to move down the garden hose in the same direction as, but faster than, the flowing water. Then we would find nothing, because the water hasn't arrived yet. We would be in a void, of sorts, until we slowed down and waited for the water (or events) to catch up to us.

And how do I reconcile these concepts with those of scientists much more learned than I? Well, let's apply my analogy to Einstein's theory. If a bit of the water suddenly flowed much faster than the main body, it would travel down the hose more quickly. In so doing, it would arrive at the end of the hose long before the rest of the water. Put another way, the main body of water would "age" much more by the time it reached the end of the hose, than the bit which sped up. So the analogy still works.

These are the sorts of thoughts that flow through the inscrutable mind of the Halmanator, as he stands in his back yard, idly watering his flower bed, on a midsummer's evening.

"But surely it's late October!" I hear you protest.

What can I say? Apparently the water flows through my hose somewhat more slowly than through yours.

How To Save Money Harper Style

2011-09-25T11:27:00.000-04:00

Someone once said that a consultant is someone who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets the watch and bills you. Whoever said that must have had experience with consulting firms like the one recently hired by the Canadian government.

Global News reported this past week that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's conservative government is paying consulting firm Deloitte Inc. the sum of $90,000 per day to ... are you ready for this? ... advise them about how to save money.

Okay, let's get the obvious sarcastic retort out of the way. "You want to save money? Here's an idea; stop paying consulting firms $90,000 per day!" Whew! I feel better now.

The opening paragraph of the news story reads "The Harper government defended paying almost $90,000 a day to a big consulting firm for advice on how to save money, saying it can't do the job properly by itself." Apparently not. That has to be the most self-validating statement of all time!

All sarcasm aside, let's grant that there may be some validity to the concept of spending money in order to save money. Ninety thousand dollars a day is an awful lot of money to spend. That's $450,000 a week, $1.8 million a month. What value will the Harper government be getting for this money? What will Deloitte be doing that's worth $90,000 a day? Writing reports? It had better be some report! What are the odds that Deloitte would have accepted the contract had they been offered $45,000 per day, or even $10,000 per day? That's still pretty good revenue by most business standards. How did the Harper government and Deloitte arrive at $90,000 per day? Did the conservatives approach any other consulting firms? Was there any sort of tender or competition?

Until recently, the Harper government had a knowledgeable, experienced consultant who provided many sensible suggestions for cutting waste and saving money. Her name was Sheila Fraser. She was Canada's Auditor General up until her recent retirement and, while she was no doubt well-paid, I suspect she didn't make anywhere near $90,000 a day. Unfortunately, the Harper government chose to ignore pretty much everything she ever suggested.

I wonder what will happen should the ultimate irony unfold and Deloitte advises the Harper government not to throw away $30 billion for stealth fighter jets that aren't even suited to the Canadian Forces' requirements, or that there's no need to spend $4.4 billion on expanding prisons when stats show that the crime rate is diminishing, and there is no evidence that longer incarcerations are any sort of deterrent to the criminals that are out there. Both of these projects are near and dear to the conservatives' hearts, and they've clung to them stubbornly despite strong public opposition and hard data showing both to be questionable initiatives at best. What if their expensive new consultants agree that these are bad, financially wasteful ideas?

I started this post with a quote. I'll end it with another from George Bernard Shaw who said "Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." The Harper government has validated that observation as well.

Coolest/Worst Album Covers

2011-09-03T18:55:00.000-04:00

CDs are better than vinyl records. They're smaller and therefore take up less shelf space and they're not affected by minute flaws like the old vinyl was. Unless you have a very bad scratch, a ten-year-old CD sounds just as clean and pristine as the day that you bought it, unlike vinyl records, on which a speck of dust in the wrong place could mar your music with an unwanted pop or click. No matter how carefully you looked after them, vinyl records tended to deteriorate with time. Even if you were able to keep them 100% clean and scratch-free, the physical dragging of the stylus over the vinyl bumps and grooves tended to wear them down gradually, causing the sound quality to deteriorate ever so slightly with each playing. Unlike two-sided vinyl records, which necessitated pausing and turning the disc over half-way through your favorite album, CDs store all their content on a single side, so that you can listen to an entire album without interruption. Direct digital track access makes specific songs much easier to find and queue. Yes, CDs are superior to the old vinyl records in almost every way.

For all that, there is one thing that I miss about the old vinyl records; well, two things really. The first is the supplementary material that was often enclosed along with the record itself; large photographs, lyric sheets, extra artwork and so on. The second is the large, cardboard jackets in which the records were stored. These jackets were often adorned with colorful, imaginative graphics. Many of the most memorable album covers were arguably works of art in their own right.

Of course, these are usually represented, in a much-reduced size, inside the fronts of CD jewel cases, but it's just never the same as having those nice, full-size, 12.4-inch-square jackets. What`s worse, I fear that iPods and digital music players and the growing trend toward electronically downloading music is quickly making even CDs a thing of the past and, with them, any sort of album cover artwork at all.

Of course, not all album cover art was good. There have been many examples of mediocre album covers, and a few that were just outright bad. So today, I'd like to pay tribute to some of the coolest, and worst, examples of cover artwork ever to enclose an LP record. Of course, I`ve posted pictures of all the album covers listed so that you can enjoy them for yourself. Clicking on them will give you a much larger image that you can admire at your leisure. These, incidentally, have been mostly copied from various web pages and it goes without saying that the copyrights belong to the original artists, publishers or distributors.

The Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd

You don`t always have to be flashy to be interesting. Pink Floyd`s landmark ``Dark Side of the Moon`` is simplicity itself - a prism on a black field with a white beam of light entering one side of it, and the refracted rainbow colors emerging from the other. This is arguably one of the most instantly recognizable album covers of all time.

In Through The Out Door
Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin`s ``In Through The Out Door`` bears the distinction of being one of the more imaginatively packaged records of all time. It originally came wrapped in an outer sleeve that looked like a plain brown paper bag. Inside the paper bag sleeve was one of six different pairs of album covers (one for the front and one for the back) each of which depicted the same bar scene, but from a different perspective. Because of the paper sleeve, the buyer never knew which cover artwork they were getting.

Finally, for the proverbial icing on the cake, each scene featured a lighter-colored brush stroke across its middle, as though the jacket were dust-covered and someone had wiped away a section of dust. If you moistened this ``brush stroke``, it became suddenly colorized. Try that with a CD! Here are some of the versions of the inner album cover.

Sticky Fingers

The Rolling Stones

Also in the category of ``creative packaging`` we have The Rolling Stones' ``Sticky Fingers``. The original ultra-suggestive vinyl album cover featured a working zipper and mock belt buckle. When you pulled the zipper down, you could even see cotton briefs behind it. This album cover was apparently designed by pop art legend Andy Warhol (you know, the ``Einstein sticking out his tongue`` and ``technicolor Marilyn Monroe`` guy), supporting my earlier observation that some of these album covers could be considered art in their own right.

Tubular Bells

Mike Oldfield

I couldn`t call myself a Mike Oldfield fan if I didn`t include the cover of his seminal album, ``Tubular Bells`` in this collection. This is right up there with Pink Floyd`s ``Dark Side of the Moon`` on the recognizability scale. The bent tubular bell has become Oldfield`s de-facto personal logo over the years and will be forever associated with his unique ambient musical textures.

Eve

The Alan Parsons Project

Alan Parsons must have been very disenchanted with women when he made this record. The title recalls the Biblical woman who was, ostensibly, responsible for man`s fall from grace. Song titles such as ``You Lie Down With Dogs`` and ``Ì`d Rather Be A Man`` are anything but flattering to the fairer sex, and the cover certainly completes the message. This is one of the all time great double-take photos. At first glance, it simply looks like a pair of high-fashion ladies. Then you look closer. Wait a minute! That spot isn`t on her veil, it`s on her face! And that`s not just a shadow, it`s a crease! Even the title`s lettering degrades and decomposes. Unnerving, a little repulsive, but very nicely done.

Long Distance Voyager
The Moody Blues

I once had a large wall poster of this album cover artwork. It`s only when viewing a very large print of this that one can properly appreciate the subtlety and detail in it. The artwork encompasses both the front and back covers of the record jacket. You need to open up it and lay the cover face down, so that both front and back are facing upwards, to take in the scene in its entirety. This scene ostensibly depicts a travelling musician; a one-man band, as it were, performing for the townsfolk of a small community during the Victorian era. A closer examination reveals a myriad of subtle details. The track list (complete with song lyrics) that adorns the inner face of the album cover associates each title with a section of the blue-tinted, pointillistic scene. To wit...

The Voice

Talking Out Of Turn

Gemini Dream

In My World

Meanwhile

22,000 Days

Nervous

Painted Smile

Reflective Smile

Veteran Cosmic Rocker

and, yes, that is the Voyager space probe that you see incongruously floating in the sky over this Victorian scene, just underneath the album title (you caught that, right?)

Sgt. Pepper`s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles

No list of classic album covers would be complete without ``Sgt. Pepper`s``. Featuring the Beatles, dressed in psychedelic military uniforms and standing amonst a host of life-sized cardboard cutouts of famous people including the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Mae West, W.C. Fields, Bob Dylan, Marlon Brando, H.G. Wells, Shirley Temple, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, several Indian gurus and wax models of themselves in their usual garb, this album cover truly deserves a place among the classics.

Whipped Cream And Other Delights
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass

My personal pick for the coolest album cover ever would have to be ``Whipped Cream and Other Delights``, by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Taken at face value, the titular ``Whipped Cream`` is, of course, the name of the album`s title track; one of the Tijuana Brass`s best-known and most popular songs, and the ``other delights`` would be the other songs on the album. However, the album cover, which features an attractive Spanish lady, covered in whipped cream and, apparently, nothing else, gives new meaning to the term ``double entendre`` not to mention casting a whole other light on those ``other delights``, all of which make this, in my humble opinion the best album cover EVER!

So iconic is this particular album cover that it has inspired several parodies, a few of which I offer here. (Thanks to the Unified Manufacturing blog, from which these images were borrowed).

Okay, since we`re getting a little silly, let`s move on to some of the worst album covers of all time. Before continuing, I wish to make it clear right here and now that none of the following are to be found in my personal record collection, so I can`t offer an opinion on the music itself except to say that, if it`s anywhere near as bad as the jacket cover that encloses it, best leave it be!

On this Spanish album cover, Anni-Frid, Benny, Bjorn and Agnetha look like they`re out on a day pass from some federal penitentiary.

If I worked for the Hawaiian Tourist Board, I`d lobby to have this record banned.

Memo to record distributors: Naked fat guy wallowing with a pig under a title that screams of beastiality does not generally boost record sales.

Jesus to The Faith Tones ... ``Er ... pass``.

If you really feel that you must...

Now don`t go giving Latoya any ideas...

If this is a childrens` album, some poor little tykes are liable to be scarred for life!

Just because they can does not mean that they should!

No! No no no no no no no no no no no! NO!!!

I don`t have anything to add to that.

The only thing scarier than the religious right is the religious right wielding an axe.

Much Ado About Jack

2011-08-28T13:13:00.006-04:00

For the past week, Canadians have been inundated by media coverage of the death of Jack Layton.

For any non-Canadians reading this who may not have any idea who Jack Layton was, he was the leader of the Canadian NDP (New Democratic Party) and, as of last May, the leader of the official opposition party in Parliament. He passed away last Monday (August 22), having succumbed to cancer.

Being a leftist pinko in my heart of hearts, I was always somewhat sympathetic to Layton's party and, by extension, to Layton himself. Even so, I think that the media frenzy surrounding the man's death and the pubic display of grief has been just a little over the top.

A lot of it has had to do with a final letter that Layton wrote, literally on his death bed, addressing his party, his caucus and Canadians at large, in which he expressed his hopes for both his political party and Canada in general. You can read the text of the letter here.

This is not to say that I count myself among that small group of Jack's most critical detractors. There has been the odd columnist, mostly obviously right-leaning editorialists, such as Christie Blatchford, writing for conservative-minded publications such as The National Post, who have dared to speak ill of the deceased (or, more correctly, the politics of the deceased). Blatchford dismissed Layton's parting letter as being "vainglorious" and "full of sophistry" and alleged that the words were not those of Layton himself, but that it was written with the help of some of his closest advisors.

Like many others, I consider Blatchford's labeling of Layton's final words as "vainglorious" to be unduly harsh. The man was dying. It's understandable that he would want his final words to carry a certain amount of gravity. "So long, it's been fun" just wouldn't cut it, somehow. Cut the man some slack.

I don't know whether Blatchford has any facts to support the allegation that Layton had help from his closest advisors in writing his letter but, even if true, so what? Political leaders often - in fact, usually - rely on advisors and speech writers to help deliver their message in exactly the way that they want. The conservatives, including Stephen Harper, also do this. Why take Jack Layton to task for it?

One of Blatchford's colleagues, Jonathan Kay, has accused the Canadian media covering Layton's death and funeral of lacking objectivity. "The entire Canadian media has given a free pass to Jack Layton's widely published deathbed political manifesto," he wrote, "which promiscuously mingled laudable paeans to love and optimism with not so laudable snipes at the Harper government . . . " I've read Layton's final letter twice now, and I see not one single mention of either Stephen Harper or his conservative government. Perhaps Kay takes exception to Layton's appeal that Canada should share its prosperity more fairly, assume a greater responsibility for protecting the environment and restore our sagging international reputation. No-where in there does Layton accuse, even indirectly, either Stephen Harper or the conservative government of lacking on any of the aforementioned initiatives. If Kay perceives that Layton is pointing a judgemental finger at the conservative government, all I can say is "If the shoe fits..."

Another of Layton's minority detractors, open-line host Dave Rutherford, tweeted "Today I said Layton should be remembered for the coalition threat and his death bed diatribe against Cons." Rutherford conveniently forgets that it took three parties, not just one, to theaten a coalition, and that the reason why those three parties chose to unite as they did was because of Stephen Harper's ham-fisted attempt to put them at a financial disadvantage in future elections; a move which he wasted no time in repeating as soon as he had his majority.

Blatchford, Kay, Rutherford and all those who shake their heads at the seemingly over-the-top national reaction to Jack Layton's passing forget that other Canadian politicians have died without sparking such a loud national expression of sympathy and regret. We must ask ourselves, why this man? I would suggest, perhaps it's that both the Canadian public and the Canadian media perceive that he was different from your average politician. There was something special about him; something that set him apart from the rest. Maybe that "something" was that he genuinely cared. That's something that people can sense, even without knowing it to be a fact.

Far from being a "death bed diatribe against the cons", I found Layton's final words to be uplifting, positive and optimistic. I wish that more politicians would promote love, hope and fairness instead of the usual empty promises of fiscal security, lower taxes and material wealth.

That having been said, I must admit that, every time I witness someone publicly weeping crocodile tears over Layton's untimely passing I'd love to ask them for whom they voted in Canada's last Federal election. All those nouveau Jack Layton fans can't possibly have voted NDP. If even half of them had done so, Canada would now be in need of a new Prime Minister, rather than just a new opposition leader.

Undriver = Unperson

2011-08-20T19:43:00.008-04:00

A few weeks ago, I came across something rare indeed; a news story about a government initiative that actually makes sense and has the potential to make a lot of peoples' lives just a little easier. The Ontario government had announced that it was offering photo ID cards for people who don't drive.

Because most adults in North America do drive, many may not understand the impact of this announcement on those that don't. The driver's license has become the de-facto standard form of identification for most undertakings that require identification. Some form of photo ID is required if one wants to open a bank account, rent an apartment, vote, stay at a hotel, board a plane and so on, and the most commonly accepted identification is the driver's license.

But what if you don't drive? What if you're handicapped, can't afford a car or, like my wife, simply never learned to drive? Well, my friend, in that case your options get quite a bit narrower. The Canadian social insurance card doesn't work, because it doesn't include your picture. A passport is usually good, but not everybody has one of those either and even those that do don't always carry them around on their persons. Even if you do happen to have one handy, a second piece of identification is usually required because the passport doesn't give your home address. The fact is, for people who don't happen to hold a driver's license, proving that they are who they are is much harder than it should be.

Apparently Ontario's Minister of Transportation, Kathy Wynne, recognized this fact, and decided to do something about it by introducing a photo ID card for those who don't drive. What's even more amazing is that, as far as I can tell, this initiative came totally out of left field. I'm not aware that there was any kind of public lobby urging someone to do something about the situation. Those who lacked a driver's license, like my wife, apparently coped with the nuisance in silence and got by as best they could.

So I applaud Kathy Wynne for taking this refreshing initiative. I don't know who or what it was that brought the matter to her attention, but she has pleasantly surprised this somewhat jaded citizen by doing something about a problem that isn't very high profile and, after all, affects a minority of voters.

Shirley Rieck thought it was an excellent idea too. The seventy-five-year-old pensioner doesn't hold a driver's license and has encountered many of the frustrations that I've already outlined when it came to proving her identity. So she rushed right out to get one of the new Ontario photo ID cards. She brought along her birth certificate, her Ontario health card and an old age security card that included her social insurance number. They weren't enough.

Okay, let's all stop to think about this. She couldn't get the photo ID card because she lacked the appropriate ID. Or, put another way, she couldn't make it easier to prove who she is, because it was too difficult to prove who she is. Somewhere along the line, somebody forgot that people like Shirley Rieck are the very reason why this new ID card was launched in the first place! It's like that old aphorism which says that the only way to qualify for a bank loan is to prove that you don't need it.

It's not like Mrs. Rieck didn't come prepared. The list of cards and documents that she took along with her certainly sounds reasonable enough to me, and I would have thought they'd be sufficient. Unfortunately, the birth certificate wasn't acceptable because it bore her maiden name (she hadn't been married yet when she was born, you see). It also didn't show her picture and, even if it did, I'm sure it wouldn't have looked anything like her. The Ontario health card wasn't any good, because the Ministry doesn't like to ask for that, since it can be used to access confidential health information. You can volunteer it anyway but, even then, they want a second piece of ID (I guess the birth certificate and old age security card don't count, though). The news article through which I discovered all this didn't explain why the old age security card was no good.

Well, hats off anyway to Kathy Wynne. At least she tried. Unfortunately, in the end, bureaucracy won out again.

Better News

2011-08-06T11:10:00.019-04:00

Does anybody besides me find the news more and more depressing these days? Great nations (including the United States) mired in debt, economic turmoil, joblessness, climate change, crazies like the tea party calling the shots, no tax hikes for the richest of the rich and no aid or respite for the poorest of the poor... it's enough to make one want to find oneself a nice, quiet cave somewhere and retreat from society. That's why I was so refreshed to find three news articles in my local paper this past week which, although I wouldn't call them "good" or "happy" news per se, at least brought a smile to my lips.

The first item had to do with a new theory that has been gaining acceptance among astronomers that our Earth may once have had two moons, which collided and the victor of that cosmic fender bender was the moon which we see in our night sky today. This theory, which astronomers playfully dubbed the "Big Splat", supposedly explains why the far side of the moon, the side that we never see from Earth, is more mountainous than the side that we do see, making our satellite just slightly lopsided.

"Why would that make me smile," you ask? It's the analogy that's used to describe the collision. The theory says that a smaller moon trailed along behind our surviving, larger moon, the larger satellite's gravity pulling it gradually closer and closer, until the smaller moon finally rear-ended its larger sister. Because both moons were travelling in the same direction, the speed of impact would have been relatively slow (a mere five to six thousand miles per hour which, of course, has been proven to be emminently survivable by countless crash test dummies used by all the major auto makers) so, instead of the cataclysmic explosion that one would normally expect as a result of two planetary (or moonitary, if you will) objects colliding, the effect was more akin to the larger moon getting a "pie in the face". In fact, an artist's rendering (that's the picture at the above left, not the one to the right) really does look something like a freeze-frame of someone getting hit in the face with a pie. Now that's funny! Perhaps legendary silent film director Georges Méliès wasn't so very far off the mark after all!

The second headline that attracted my attention read "Swedish Man Arrested for Splitting Atoms In His Kitchen". Now there's a headline you don't see every day! I, for one, didn't realize that there was a law against that. Apparently Richard Handl, the amateur nuclear scientist in question, also known for composing the famous opera, "Messiah", if I'm not mistaken, didn't either, but he decided to inquire about it with his local police, and was immediately arrested for his trouble. Seems that Sweden, at least, does have laws against possessing nuclear materials, which are sort of necessary if you want to split atoms.

It turns out that Handl is nothing more than a well-meaning hobbyist who even blogged about his activities. I can understand the Swedish authorities becoming somewhat alarmed upon learning that some do-it-yourself-er had been working on a miniature nuclear reactor in his kitchen, and I certainly can't fault them for wondering where he came by the uranium and radium that he used for his experiments, but I would suggest that terrorists don't generally blog about their activities and aren't in the habit of inquiring about legalities with the police. From the pictures in the news story, I would suggest that Handl's greatest crimes were slovenliness and chain smoking.

On the other hand, Handl (on the other Handl?), whom one article aptly describes as "Quite reckless and kind of awesome", admits in his own blog that he has had the odd mishap, like the time that a mixture of Americium, Radium and Beryllium in sulphuric acid exploded on his stove top. If he lived in America, he could have immediately sued the stove manufacturer for failing to affix a bright red warning label on the control panel that reads "WARNING! THIS APPLIANCE IS NOT INTENDED FOR COOKING NUCLEAR MATERIALS! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO HEAT ANY INGREDIENTS THAT END IN THE LETTERS 'IUM'"

The final item to warm the cockles of my heart wasn't really a news article at all, but rather an interesting photo depicting a military vehicle rolling over a parked Mercedes with the heading "Parking Wars". The caption beneath the photo read "Vilnius, Lithuania, Mayor Arturas Zuokas drives a tank over a car parked illegally on the city's main street. Zuokas became infuriated with motorists parking their luxury cars illegally around the city".

I'm sure that many of us can sympathize with the sentiment. Some arrogant yuppie doesn't think the rules apply to him or his Mercedes. Let's give him a little something to make him think twice next time. Reminds me of that delicious scene from the movie, "Backdraft", where the Beemer is illegally parked next to a fire plug that's right next to a burning building, so Kurt Russell happily smashes in both the driver and passenger windows with his axe and runs the hose right on through the car.

Just to ensure that the hapless driver really gets the message, Mayor Zuokas should have left a note under the Mercedes' windshield wiper (or what was left of it) that read something like "Terribly sorry. I was on my way to quash an uprising and your illegally parked car got in the way of my tank. Nothing personal". Or, better yet, leave a parking ticket and a bill for repairs to the tank treads. Or maybe just a note that says "Next time, you'll be towed!" There's no end to the fun you can have with this type of situation! And why aren't there more politicians like Mayor Zuokas? If I lived in Vilnius, he'd sure have my vote next time around!

Who's Your Favorite Batman?

2011-07-24T10:55:00.026-04:00

So there I was, sitting in my hot, stuffy little attic office, scratching my ... head, thinking "Man, I should really post something new to my blog". It had been a while and, once again, I was short on inspiration.

It didn't help that my attic office, being an attic office, is the coldest room in the house during the winter time, and the hottest room in the house during the summer time, and we've been in the grip of a record-setting heat wave for the past couple of weeks. I do have a portable air conditioning unit for when it gets really bad but, electricity rates being what they are (especially now that the new "Smart Meters", which should really be called "Gouge Meters", have been implemented), I try to use that as sparingly as possible. But there I go making lame excuses again.

Finally, I decided to browse through the annals of my very own blog for ideas. One thing I've got to say for myself, I'm prolific! I sure have written a lot of blog posts over the years!

Eventually, I stumbled across the most obvious idea in the world. About two years ago, I asked you, my faithful readership, which actor was your favorite in the role of Batman's arch-nemesis, the Joker. Well, I never asked about Batman himself, did I? How'd I manage to overlook that idea?

Okay, so here it is. Who's your favorite Batman? We'll leave out voice characterizations for animated shows. I want to know who, in your opinion, can dress up like an overgrown bat with any kind of credibility. I humbly offer the following list of contenders:

Lewis Wilson/Robert Lowery

Although I'm feeling older and older with each passing year, I've never seen either Lewis Wilson's or Robert Lowery's portrayals of the Dark Knight, as they came a bit before my time (Wilson in 1943 and Lowery in 1949). Therefore, I'm afraid I can offer no opinions or comments on these performances. If anyone reading this can, please feel free to comment. I will say, however, that the costumes are almost painful by today's standards. When I was a kid, my mom once made me a home-made Batman costume which I swear would have given both the costumes pictured above a serious run for their money. And I thought West's costumer was bad! Speaking of which...

Adam West

Sure his portrayal of the Caped Crusader was campy, kooky and often just plain silly but many would argue that West remains the one and only original Batman (he himself certainly would!) He was the first to have some real fun with the role. If he (or his writers and directors) decided to go for camp, perhaps it was because they figured that the character could only be taken so seriously, and that tongue-in-cheek was therefore the best way to go. I further suggest that Adam West's Batman bore the distinction of being the only one that appealed to both children and adults on two whole different levels and for very different reasons.

Finally, West's Batman delivered some of the most memorable, laugh-out-loud funny lines I've ever heard coming from a costumed crime fighter in the most dead-pan serious manner imaginable, which made them even funnier.

"It was noble of that animal to hurl himself into the path of that final torpedo. He gave his life for ours." (Said just after having been saved from an oncoming torpedo by a dolphin that intercepted the projectile.)

"Not you, Robin. They have strict licensing laws in this country. A boy of your age is not allowed in a drinking tavern." (Said just after Robin eagerly prepared to storm a tavern).

And later...

"I'm just going to hang around the bar. I don't want to look conspicuous." (Spoken while in full Bat-garb).

Robin: "You can't get away from Batman that easy!"
Batman: "Easily."
Robin: "Easily."
Batman: "Good grammar is essential, Robin."
Robin: "Thank you."
Batman: "You're welcome."

And who can forget...

"Just a second while I retrieve my beanie, my hair, my tweezers, and my notes."

Man, that utility belt carried absolutely everything! Okay, so he may not be the most credible of all the Batmen but, for pure entertainment and a hardy belly-laugh, it's hard to beat Adam West.

Michael Keaton

You'd think that an actor who first made his bones as a comedian would try to steal Adam West's thunder and go for a few laughs of his own but, no, Michael Keaton decided to play the role in a serious manner, and pulled it off handsomely. Any humor that he did allow to slip in was extremely subtle and delivered without even a smirk, such as the scene in which Vicky Vale and Alexander Knox are wondering between themselves about one of the outlandish costumes in Bruce Wayne's personal armory, at which Michael Keaton (as Bruce Wayne) states, very matter-of-factly, "It's Japanese". Knox, not yet realizing who Bruce Wayne is, asks how he would know that, to which Wayne replies, just as matter-of-factly, "Because I bought it in Japan," resisting what must have been a very strong temptation to add "Duh!"

Keaton brought pathos to the role. He almost made it possible to believe that dressing up in a black rubber bat suit is a perfectly natural reaction for a man who's tormented by an inner duality brought on by an early childhood trauma, and happens to have way too much disposable cash.

Finally, Keaton had the facial features for the role. I've always suspected that the costumers must have used a cast of Keaton's furrowed brows when making his scowling bat cowl.

Val Kilmer

When Michael Keaton decided that he didn't want to play the caped crusader for a third time, Warner Brothers turned to Val Kilmer to don the mantle. At first glance, Kilmer seems a good choice for the role. He's young (or at least he was at the time), handsome, athletically built and an actor who has shown that he can play a great diversity of roles, from Top Gun's no-nonsense, by-the-book, somewhat condescending "Ice Man" to the flamboyant, rebellious and somewhat disturbed Jim Morrison in "The Doors".

As Batman, Kilmer stayed true to Keaton's portrayal, both as Bruce Wayne and his costumed alter ego, playing the roles with a serious, almost pious air. Behind the mask, Kilmer was, in my opinion, the poutiest-looking Batman of the lot. From a purely facial perspective, if I hadn't known better, I might have mistakenly thought that they recruited Corey Hart for the role.

Kilmer had the dubious honor of taking the young protegé, Robin (played by Chris O'Donnell), who had been absent since Adam West's retirement from the role, under his bat-wing. Unlike television's dynamic duo, Kilmer's and O'Donnell's pair didn't always see eye to eye. Kilmer's Batman only accepted his young would-be partner somewhat reluctantly, and O'Donnell's Robin iwas much more headstrong and rebellious and much less conciliatory, than Adam West's young partner. This gave Kilmer's Batman a whole new set of both opportunities and problems. I'm not sure that he fully capitalized on them.

Batman's costume tended to change from film to film, often even while the actor wearing them remained the same (with the noteable exception of Adam West), but Kilmer was the first Batman whose costume changed within a single film. Kilmer's Batman, like Jack Nicholson's Joker, seemed to have different looks for different occasions. After all, Batman wouldn't want his costume's novelty appeal to start wearing thin now, would he?

George Clooney

In my opinion, George Clooney, as an actor, seems hard to dislike, though I can't say I've ever met him personally. He brings a certain easy-going coolness to every role that he plays. Yet herein lies part of the problem. Perhaps Clooney was simply too big for the cape and cowl. Even in full bat-garb, one could somehow never forget that it was George Clooney under there. Keaton and Kilmer managed to lose themselves inside the costume. (West, it might be argued, was the costume). Clooney never quite did.

The second problem is that Clooney, for whatever reason, tried to bring some of West's Campiness back to the character with lines such as "This is why Superman works alone!" (spoken after petulant Robin complained that he wanted his own Batmobile, because "Chicks like the car.") In one of the most painful examples of dialog in the movie, Clooney and O'Donnell, in what I can only assume was intended as an ill-considered homage to West and Ward, uttered the following exchange:

Robin: Holey rusted metal Batman!
Batman: Huh?
Robin: The ground, it's all metal. It's full of holes. You know, holey!
Batman: Oh.

I can almost hear even West's Batman tut-tutting; "Really Robin. Bat puns?"

Like Kilmer, Clooney's Batman seems to have an array of different costumes, one of which comes complete with Bat-nipples. Really Batman? Nipples? Didn't you and Robin get enough suggestive ribbing when you did the '60's serial together in tights?

To be fair to Clooney, I think his Batman was more a victim of poor writing and directing than poor acting. I saw him in an interview about his films during which he commented, in his usual easy-going manner, that he felt that the star of "The Perfect Storm" was not he, but rather the "great big rogue wave" (i.e. the special effects). Immediately afterward, he added with a shrug that, on the other hand, he took the fall for 'Batman and Robin', so he didn't mind taking the credit for 'The Perfect Storm'.

Christian Bale

Christian Bale, like Val Kilmer, is another actor who has shown himself capable of playing a wide range of roles. He's certainly the grittiest, most intense Batman, in this blogger's humble opinion. He admirably re-introduces pathos to the character, accepting the label of "outlaw" (in "The Dark Knight" for the greater good of Gotham City.

He's also the only one who attempts to change his voice when wearing the cape and cowl so that he doesn't sound like Bruce Wayne. Unfortunately, the raspy grunt that he chooses for his mode of diction when costumed makes him sound like someone who's about to pinch a loaf, somewhat detracting from the seriousness of the character.

I personally dislike his cowl. The ears are too short for my liking, making him look more Doberman Pinscherman than Batman, and the hood is solid, rather than flexible latex. I don't know why that just seems wrong, but it does.

I think Bale takes himself just a bit too seriously as an actor. His Batman movies, while entertaining to watch, are just never going to be high art. Sorry Chris.

Oh yes and, last but not least, there is, of course....

me.

So there it is. Obviously, I've hinted at my own preference. If you think it's all poppycock or want to sound off on the matter, please feel free to do so in the comments. Who's your favorite Batman, and why?

O Canada

2011-07-01T12:37:00.010-04:00

Today is Canada Day.

Although I was born in Austria, I grew up in Canada, having immigrated at the tender age of three, and I consider myself to be a Canadian, proudly and unashamedly so. And so, to honour my adopted homeland on her 144th birthday, I offer the following list of reasons why it's great to be Canadian.

Smarties, Crispy Crunch and Coffee Crisp are three of the finest chocolate bars (not "candy bars") in the world. All are easily found in Canada and none are available in the U.S.A. For that matter, Americans seem confused about their chocolate bars in general. Their Mars bar, which was also completely unavailable from 2002 until just last year, includes peanuts. Canadian Mars bars have been peanut-free since 2006. The U.S. Snickers bar is actually closer in its ingredients to the Canadian Mars bar, albeit not as sweet, but it is decidedly different from the Canadian Snickers bar, which is closer to the U.S. 3 Musketeers bar. And don't get me started about Kinder Surprise Eggs. Not only are they not available in the U.S.A., they're actively prohibited, having apparently been classified as weapons of mass nougat!

The Canadian football field is both longer and wider than its American counterpart (110 yards long by 65 yards wide) and yet Canadian teams have only three downs to cover ten yards rather than four, meaning that Canadian football players are probably generally more fit than their American cousins, since they have to cover more distance in less time. Our balls are bigger as well, as is the regulation pigskin.

Baseball, the "Great American Game" is actually Canadian. One of the earliest recorded games that bore a closer resemblance to modern baseball than to the U.K.'s Cricket or Rounders was played in Beachville, Ontario in 1838, a full seven years before Abner Doubleday supposedly invented the sport in 1845. Mind you, there were five bases (called "byes" at the time) as opposed to three (there's that Canadian penchant for doing everything bigger again) but the game was clearly an ancestor of modern baseball.

As long as we're appropriating long-standing icons of American culture, apple pie was originally an English dessert and, as Canada maintains closer cultural ties with the U.K. than does America, I maintain that apple pie is much more Canadian than it is American.

No matter what our cultural, political or philosophical differences, be we anglophone or francophone, Christian or Muslim, male or female, black or white, rich or poor, there is one thing about which all Canadians can agree, and that is Tim Horton's Donuts. "Timmy's" is the institution which bonds and unites all Canadians. It's not just a place to get our morning wake-up jolt of java. We meet there socially. We commune there. We discuss sports, politics, family and the economy there. In 2001, Krispy Kreme Donuts made an aggressive move into Canada. Speculation was rife as to whether Tim Horton's might actually be facing some serious competition. Even Tim Horton's itself showed early signs of nervousness as they switched their traditional "shoe box" container, which used to hold a dozen of their donuts, to a wider, shallower box designed to imitate Krispy Kreme's. Today, of the 18 Krispy Kreme stores that opened in Canada, out of 32 planned, 4 remain. Tim Horton's never even broke a sweat.

Music. Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Anne Murray, Bryan Adams, Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman, Neil Young, Rush, Trooper, Celine Dion, Ian Thomas, Carol Pope, Shania Twain, the Rankins, Gino Vannelli, Bruce Cockburn ... the list goes on. Canadian musicians and singers rank right up there among the world's finest, and they have to work about ten times as hard as their American counterparts to get exposure. As Ian Thomas once quipped, being a Canadian performer means never quitting your day job.

While Americans were still whuppin' slaves, Canada was smuggling them out of the U.S. and welcoming them as citizens.

Canadian kids can play road hockey on ice skates.

Only a Canadian can take a pack of canines that are capable of killing and devouring a full-grown human being in under three minutes and get them to pull him and his belongings through the snow on a sled.

Canadian strip joints have no compulsory G-string law.

Canadian inventions include snowmobiles, jet-skis, velcro, zippers, insulin, penicillin, zambonis, the telephone and short wave radios.

Our currency, which some Americans ridicule as "Monopoly money", is a lot harder to counterfeit than American currency.

Our elections are always resolved within a day.

Canada boasts the only French-speaking soldiers who never surrendered to Germany, or anyone else for that matter.

Finally, those Americans who today look upon Canada as their "poor cousin" have obviously forgotten the war of 1812, when Canadians sacked Washington DC and burned down the White House, then left. We weren't really invading you see; we were just making a point. America had pissed us off by attacking Toronto (known as York at the time) so we went down there, gave them a good bitch-slapping, and went back home to finish the Eaton Center, which was still under construction at the time.

Canadians are a mild-mannered bunch. We don't toot our own horns. We just do what we do and let everyone else get on with their own lives. "Live and let live" is the Canadian way. We may have our quirks, but I can't think of any other country in which I'd rather live.

Happy 144th, Canada!

She Came In Through The Bathroom Window

2011-06-19T14:49:00.007-04:00

Yesterday, I returned home with my family, having been out shopping for wedding dresses for my wife and daughter (that is to say dresses that are appropriate for attending a wedding, not the white ones generally worn by the Woman Of The Hour) to find the neighbour lady, Diane, wandering forlornly between her house and ours, looking somewhat distressed. As we got out of the car, she approached us and explained that she had locked herself out of the house. She had stepped outdoors for just a moment and a self-locking door swung shut behind her. All of her other doors happened to be locked as well.

Diane explained that her bathroom window, which could be slid open and had a fly screen that could be removed without even so much as a screwdriver, was the most promising point of entry, but she herself was unable to pass through it. With the lower pane slid upward as far as it could go, the window offered a rectangular opening roughly two feet high by three feet wide and Diane, being a rather portly woman, couldn't even lift a leg up over the lower sill, which hung some three feet off the ground, let alone fit through the opening.

I tried to climb through. I did somewhat better than Diane, as I was at least able to get a leg over the lower sill. Although I don't exactly boast the most svelt of physiques myself, I might have been able to squeeze through if I could have somehow levitated myself feet-first through the opening in a prone, horizontal position. Unfortunately, I'm also not the most limber of people. Once I had one leg over the sill, I found it absolutely impossible to bend my torso in such a way that it would fit through the opening without contorting my leg in a manner that would have resulted in dislocating my hip joint.

So I called upon my daughter, Jessica. Now, the open window was small enough to pose a challenge even for a seventeen-year-old teenage girl, especially one who's in no danger of becoming anorexic herself it you take my meaning. Robust waistlines appear to be a common trait in my immediate family. Even our cat is fat, although I do grant that she could have easily fit through the open window. I had considered tossing her inside but it's extremely unlikely that she would have obliged us by unlocking the front door for us. More likely, she would have raided an open pantry or amused herself shredding Diane's finest woolen afghan (yes, she still has her claws) or perhaps she would have simply contented herself with a general exploration of Diane's unfamiliar dwelling but I can assure you that the purpose for which I sent her into the house in the first place would have been the farthest thing from her feline mind. Cats are self-absorbed like that.

So it fell to Jessica, as I say, to climb in through the window, with a little help from myself. She lifted both legs up and through the window, so that she was sitting on the lower sill and then laid back her upper body in a horizontal attitude, with me supporting her, so that she was able to slide the rest of the way through. It was still a tight squeeze, even for Jessica, who later commented that the narrow lower sill of the window had cut into her back most uncomfortably, but she made it inside.

I wonder if the Beatles realized, in 1969, that they were writing about my daughter, who wouldn't even be born for another 24 years?

So Learned, Yet So Misinformed

2011-05-28T07:18:00.013-04:00

In Dale Wasserman's book, "Man Of La Mancha", Dr. Sansón Carrasco attempts to cure Don Alonso Quijana, who believes he is a knight-errant named Don Quixote, of his "madness" by pointing out that there have been no knights for nearly three hundred years. Don Quixote's reply: "So learned, yet so misinformed".

"These are the facts," insists Carrasco.

"Facts are the enemy of truth", counters "Quixote".

Dr. Stephen Hawking, renouned physicist and mathematician, widely acknowledged as one of the world's greatest intellects since Albert Einstein, announced In a recent interview with Britain's Guardian that heaven is a myth; a "fairy story" for people afraid of death.

During his interview, Dr. Hawking made it clear that he does not believe in a god, a heaven or hell, or even the concept of a soul. We are, says Hawking, nothing more than a collection of neurons and synapses firing off in our brains. When our brains die, we cease to exist. The end. That's all she wrote. Thanks for coming out.

Before continuing, let me assure you that this is not going to morph into a rant about the folly of secular pagans who refuse to believe in God and the Holy Bible. Those who know me know that I am not a particularly religious person. I question everything and I don't believe that any one religion or philosophy has a true understanding of the mind of God. I don't even necessarily think of God in the traditional sense; a mystical, all-powerful being who created everything and who manipulates events according to some Divine Plan. On the other hand, unlike Dr. Hawking, I do allow that there are probably things about which I not only have no knowledge, but which my mind may be completely incapable of even imagining or comprehending. I don't assert that Hawking is wrong about there being no heaven, no afterlife and no soul. I do, however, suggest that it's a little arrogant of him to insist that his opinions are unassailably correct.

I do agree with Hawking's suggestion that our time and energy might be better spent improving the world that we live in and the lives of those that live in it, rather than living only for some nebulous promise of eternal bliss once this life has ended. What if Dr. Hawking and his ilk are right, and we really do cease to exist, completely and utterly, once our brains have stopped functioning? That would mean that this life is all that we have. How sad to waste it in the vain hope for something better.

My criticism of Hawking, isn't about his rejection of religious philosophy so much as his refusal to consider that there may be forces and phenomena which he simply does not understand. The fallacy commited by many scientific minds is an adherence to the belief that "If I can't see it, detect it, measure it, quantify it or explain it, it doesn't exist". By insisting that there is an explanation for everything, science does not allow for the notion of miracles.

Ironically, some may argue that Hawking himself is a living, breathing miracle. The motor neurone disease, which has confined him to a wheelchair for most of his life, was expected to kill him within a few years of its original diagnosis. That was over 49 years ago, yet Dr. Hawking still survives.

Certainly, science must get some of the credit for this. Without the advanced medicine and technology that helps him to communicate, to move from place to place and even just to eat and to breath, Dr. Hawking would surely not have lived nearly as long as he has. The trouble with intellects like Hawking is that they give all the credit to science and technology alone, not allowing that there may be something greater, something more intangible and impossible to measure, record or even detect, at work as well.

Most of us are familiar with the old paradoxical riddle that asks, if a tree falls in the middle of a forest with no-one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Dr. Hawking, pondering this question from a purely scientific point of view, might accept this answer; as the falling tree strikes the ground, the impact generates sound waves. The fact that there are no ears present to detect these sound waves is immaterial. From a strictly physical point of view, the tree has indeed made a sound.

If we accept this, let us then change the question slightly. What if a deaf person is in the vicinity of the tree when it falls, and what if that person is not facing the tree? Let's assume that it's a small tree, too small to cause any vibrations that the deaf person might feel when it lands. This person would be completely unaware that a tree has just fallen over, yet the event has surely occurred. The person's inability to detect the sound waves made by the tree does not invalidate their existence.

Scientific minds like Dr. Hawking make the mistake of assuming that they know all that there is to know. They don't allow that there may be phenomena that science is, as yet, unable to detect, record, measure or study.

So learned, yet so misinformed.

I Have No Topic And I Must Blog

2011-05-21T12:25:00.006-04:00

I realize, faithful readers, that my blog posts have been increasingly "spotty" of late. There are several reasons for this. In my last post (three long weeks ago) I wrote of how, having thought that my computer had died, I had ordered a new one, only to resurrect the old one afterward. This small victory did not instill in me any sense of obligation to cancel the order for the new computer, however. Far be it from me to forgo a perfectly good excuse for buying myself a new toy, even if that excuse becomes technically invalidated!

Since then, my new computer has arrived and there was a certain amount of disruption caused by the necessity of setting up the new machine and moving all my old files over. However, truth be told, I had the new box up and running, with internet access, the very day that it arrived, so all that hardly prevented me from blogging. It would be more honest to say that I've been more interested in showing off my new toy to myself than I've been in blogging. (Let's see now, I have an hour to myself, during which I could post something to my blog, which I could do perfectly well using my old PC, or I could take a virtual aerial tour of Seattle with the graphical detail turned up to "full". Tough call...)

There is, however, a secondary reason for my protracted silence. I've been suffering from a case of "Writer's Blog", if you will. Somehow, no topics have managed to inspire me over the past few weeks. This is where writers such as myself walk a fine line. As I've said before in this blog, I'm of the opinion that, once one decides to blog, it behooves one to post on a fairly regular basis, lest one's readers lose interest and stop returning. On the other hand, writing is sometimes like speaking. When one has nothing to say, it's often best to say exactly that ... nothing.

I always knew the day would come when I would lack for blog ideas. One strategy that I use to avoid, or at least minimize, this eventuality, is to jot down notes for future reference whenever possible ideas occur to me. These often germinate into respectable blog posts. Unfortunately, I currently have a plethora of random, unrelated ideas that neither promise to flourish into respectable topics in their own right, nor can they be combined into any sort of intelligible whole. Some humble examples:

Under the category of "Things That Bug Me" (see also "Andy Rooney Impersonations)"; Tim Hortons coffee lids whose plastic tabs refuse to stay down once bent back. They invariably pop up while I'm trying to sip my coffee, forming a small, brown, plastic, Hitleresque "moustache" beneath my nose.

Under "Editorials", a news item that I once read about a University of Waterloo professor who noted that about 25% of high school graduates that enter university are failing basic literacy exams, and that includes students who were scoring between 80 and 90 percent averages in high school English. I can only conclude that certain high school English teachers are either incompetent or, at the very least, disengaged.

Staying with literacy and writing, and under the category "Life Imitates Art", I've mused privately about the eerie similarity between acronyms used in e-mail and texting ("OMG! ROTFL! CU L8TR!") and Orwellian Newspeak ("reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unperson rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling"). Both are equally incomprehensible to the normal reader and both share the dangerous characteristic of suppressing the expression of intangible concepts by robbing the English language of expressive words and phrases (not to mention robbing their writers of their grammatical and spelling talents).

Under "Random Musings", I found myself playing a computer game at one time whose typically unimaginative introductory narrative reported that the enemy had developed "The world's most advanced weapons system". My immediate reaction was "What, another one? That's the fourth one this month!" World's most advanced weapons systems are becoming somewhat like PCs. It seems they're obsolete by the time you get them home and unpack them from their shipping crates, having already been replaced by a new "World's most advanced weapons system".

Intriguing ideas, all, yet none independently capable of standing as a blog post in its own right. However, rather than disappointing my readers by greeting them with "It's Alive!" for yet a fourth week, I've seen fit instead to offer up this buffet of bite-sized samplings from the Halmanator menu. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm suddenly feeling hungry...

It's ALIVE!

2011-04-30T13:33:00.006-04:00

"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining."

-- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal

Last weekend, I had a little "computer incident" that immediately reminded me of Mr. Raskin's observation. I climbed the stairs to my attic, as I usually do, pressed the power switch on my Dell Dimension 9200's console, and was rewarded with nothing but a blank text screen with a blinking cursor at the top left-hand corner. This is not abnormal, except that it normally lasts for only a second or so before the computer proceeds on to the usual BIOS startup blurb, memory test, etc. This time, this did not occur. The blank screen just sat there, impudently blinking its cursor at me.

I wasn't concerned. This sort of thing happens once in a while. Some part of the boot sequence doesn't quite kick in at the right time or in the right way and the whole thing just hangs. I call it a "hiccup". The normal solution is to just kill the power and try again, and that's just what I did. I pressed the power button, held it until the power was cut, waited about 30 seconds, then pressed the power button again.

The console lights came on, the hard disk indicator blinked briefly, I could hear the whirr of the cooling fan, but the monitor stayed black. This time, there wasn't even a cursor. You know how most monitors go into a sort of low-power "sleep" mode when they don't detect any signal coming from the computer? Mine does that. You can tell when it's in that mode because its power indicator light changes from green to orange. Well, the monitor's power indicator light stayed orange, which told me that the computer wasn't talking to it at all, in spite of the fact that it was running. Hmmm... curious.

I tried cycling the power again, with the same result. Now I was becoming concerned and just a bit frustrated as, without any kind of monitor display, diagnostic options become very limited...

...but not non-existent. The Dell Dimension 9200, like most desktop computers, has an array of diagnostic lights on its front console for when something is really out of whack with the hardware. In the case of the 9200, these lights consist of the numbers "1" through "4". When all is well, all four numbers are dark. When a problem is detected, different number combinations light up, depending on the problem of course.

That's why it's a very good idea to keep that owner's manual, folks! Oh, sure you could call Dell Support, but we all know what that's like, don't we? First of all, Dell usually publishes their call center number either on-line (to which one hardly has access if one's computer isn't working) or somewhere in the owner's manual which all too many people discard or lose.

Even if you do have the call center number, then you're going to "talk" to an automated attendant, press 113 buttons on your touch tone number pad before the automated attendant finally understands that you want tech support, then sit there on hold for at least 68 minutes listening to Mantovani's instrumental rendition of "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" while periodically being told (again by the automated attendant) that "we are experiencing a higher than usual volume of calls" (Really? You mean half of North America's Dells have decided not to boot this morning? Maybe it's sun spots or a big solar flare) and being assured that "your call is important to us" and heaven help you if you hang up in frustration because the next time you call back you're gonna have to do this all over again, bucko!

If and when you finally get a live tech on the line (most likely with an accent that convinces you that Mahatma Gandhi is alive and working at a Dell call center) and you explain to him that your computer won't boot and there's nothing on the monitor, he'll ask you probing questions that would never in a million years have occurred to a lay person such as yourself, such as "Is the computer turned on?" and "Is the power cord plugged into an electrical outlet?" Eventually, he'll finally get around to having you look at those diagnostic lights on the console and, if your lucky, he'll know what they mean (only because he still has his copy of the manual there in his cubicle). Trust me, it's a whole lot faster and easier to just keep that owner's manual and look it up yourself!

I don't mean to denigrate Dell's support staff. I'm sure that most of them are knowledgeable professionals with a sincere desire to help and a voracious appetite for curry. To be fair, being a computer-literate techie myself, I probably know at least as much as most of the people I'd get on the other end of that phone line. For those of you out there who think that a POST is something that holds up a fence, maybe you'll find it helpful to talk to these people. I'm usually better off looking into it myself.

Anyway, sure enough, two of the diagnostic numbers on my console were lit up; "3" and "4" to be precise, and I did happen to keep my Dell owner's manual. Unlike all too many owners' manuals, whose idea of in-depth technical information is to tell you where the power switch is, my Dell manual actually has a lot of good, useful information in it, including a trouble-shooting section that covers those diagnostic lights, what they mean, and even what to do about it when they light up. The "3,4" combination, as it turns out, means "Memory modules are detected, but a memory failure has occurred". Damn! It looked like one of my memory chips had died on me.

The manual went on to suggest, very sensibly in my opinion, that I should remove all the memory and then re-insert the modules, one by one, until I found the bad one. My PC has only two memory modules; each with a capacity of 1 gigabyte. So I shut down the computer, opened the case and pulled the second memory module, leaving only the first.

Here's where those less technically-adept and adventurous than myself might get a bit skittish and, indeed, I would not recommend ripping things out of your computer's motherboard without at least a rudimentary knowledge of how things are put together. It should go without saying that, if you're going to try this sort of thing, always kill the computer's power first. In fact, you may want to unplug the electrical cord, just to be safe. Unplugging and plugging componets into a powered circuit board may well fry the component, the circuit board or, in a worst-case scenario, you. Always remember the Seventh Commandment for Technicians:

Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in other ways.

That having been said, removing and inserting memory modules on a motherboard is a relatively simple affair. They tend to be held in place by two plastic clips; one at each end. Just gently bend back the clips, firmly grasp the chip, either in the center or at both ends, and pull it straight out. To re-insert it, line it up carefully with its slot (there should be a notch that prevents you from accidentally inserting it "backwards") and, applying even pressure at both ends, press it straight down into the slot. The locking tabs should click into place on their own.

You should also know that memory slots need to be populated in a certain order and memory modules need to be paired in certain ways. I won't go into all that here. My owner's manual explained that very nicely. Hopefully yours does too, or you can look it up online. Again, if you're not sure what you're doing, it might be better to spend some quality time with Sandeep and the automated attendant after all.

Having removed my second memory module, I restarted my computer. The "3,4" diagnostic code remained and the computer still didn't boot. Okay, it looked as though the first module was the bad one. I'd have to replace it. Bummer. For now, though, a gigabyte of RAM should hopefully be sufficient to check my e-mail.

I shut down the computer again, pulled the first memory module and replaced it with the one that had occupied the second slot. Then I powered up the computer again ... and watched in dismay as the numbers "3" and "4" lit up yet again. This would suggest that the second memory module was also bad but I "knew" that the situation was actually much worse than it seemed. It's extremely unlikely that both memory modules would die at the same time. And there was this nagging question about why the computer wouldn't talk to my monitor. Even if the memory was bad, there's no reason why the BIOS shouldn't at least display an error or something to the screen. I concluded that the worst-case scenario had come to pass. The memory was probably fine. It was the motherboard that had fried. That's why it was unable to properly communicate with either memory module or the monitor. My computer was dead.

At this point, I could have acquiesced and called Dell support after all but I figured they'd just take me through the process of doing exactly what I had already done and reach the same conclusion in the end. My computer is well out of warranty. They might be able to refer me to a service depot but, if the motherboard is gone, you may as well just buy a new computer.

That's what I decided to do. I was happy enough with my Dell that I decided I'd order another one. I like ordering computers from Dell. You can configure them with exactly the hardware and options that you want and they custom-build your machine especially for you, only after you've ordered it. They're like the Harveys of computer retailers. The only problem is the inherent wait while Dell custom-builds and then delivers your system. It looked as though I was computer-less for at least a couple of weeks.

If you don't see how that's a big problem, then you obviously don't know me. I live on my computer! It's how I spend most of my leisure time. I seriously wondered what I would do with myself for the next couple of weeks. Pathetic, isn't it?

Then I got to thinking, maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Maybe "unplugging" for a while might actually do me good. Maybe I could, I don't know, go outside or something. Maybe I might wind up like the Springfield kids in that video that I put in a recent post. I wondered if anyone in my neighborhood would know who I was, or realized that I lived among them. Maybe they knew exactly who I was. Maybe I had become a local legend, like Boo Radley in "To Kill A Mockingbird". Maybe they'd all point at me and speak in hushed whispers as I walked by.

The next day I was trying to think of something to do, but apparently really thinking about my computer, because the thought occurred to me, for no apparent reason, that I hadn't tried booting my PC with no memory modules at all. Now, I realize that this concept may seem a bit daft at first. Even if it boots, a computer "sans memory" is hardly going to do anything useful. It would be sort of like trying to drive a car whose engine runs perfectly but that has no wheels. However, it occurred to me that doing this might at least persuade the diagnostic console to display something other than "3,4". And so, because I had nothing to lose, and because, apparently, even tinkering with a dead computer is more enjoyable for me than, you know, getting a life or something, I went back into my attic, opened the computer, pulled both memory modules, and turned it on.

Sure enough, the diagnostic console had changed. Now, only the number "1" was lit up. Going back to my owner's manual, I looked up the code and, unsurprisingly, learned that "1" means "No memory modules are detected". Well. It had that one right, anyway. Now I began to second-guess my earlier conclusion that my motherboard must be dead. I mean, it remained "lucid" enough to know when it had no memory.

For no logical reason, I plugged one of my memory modules back into the first slot. I know, I know ... at this point even the not-so-computer-literate out there are thinking to yourselves "Well, wouldn't that just make the '3,4' code come back?" Yep. You'd think that, wouldn't you? But I tried it anyway, turned on the computer ... and it booted. The monitor came up, the computer went through its POST routine (which means "Power On Self Test", by the way; no, I didn't throw it through a fence) and then beeped a couple of times and displayed a message something to the effect of "Oh my! The amount of memory appears to have changed!". That's two it had got right. This machine was getting smarter by the minute. I, on the other hand, just stood there with my arms outstretched, shouting maniacally, "It's alive! It's ALIVE!!!"

I could have just pressed "Enter" at this point and let it boot with half of its former memory, but now a sort of inkling was growing in the back of my brain, like some kind of alien parasite, ready to burst through my skull like in that movie. Instead of continuing, I shut down the computer again and inserted the second memory module. I turned the computer back on, and now the code "3,4" returned. Normally, this would suggest to me that my second memory module was bad. However, my earlier diagnostic work had suggested that both memory modules were bad, and I now knew this to be untrue.

Growing ever more suspicious, I once again pulled both memory modules, rebooted the computer back to the "1" code, then shut down again and this time inserted the second memory module (the one that had caused the "3,4" code to reappear) in the first slot, leaving out the other module for now, and turned on the computer again. By this time, I wasn't even all that surprised when it booted.

Now it appeared that both memory modules were fine on their own, but caused problems together for some reason. Perhaps the second memory slot was faulty? That would actually be a reasonable hypothesis at this point, but I had another idea. I booted "sans memory" one last time, then shut down the computer and reinserted both memory modules before powering up again. Sure enough, the computer booted, and has been running completely normally ever since. I even ran a full hardware diagnostic scan on both the memory and the motherboard, using Dell's built-in diagnostic tools, and both checked out 100% error free. Go figure.

I don't know what caused the original failure. I suspect that my PC may have temporarily overheated, as it was warm up in my attic last weekend and I did notice, when opening my computer's case, that the air intakes had gotten clogged with dust (a situation which I quickly remedied, but which did not, in itself, revive the computer). Whatever the cause of the failure, it seems that the computer needed to be started without any memory in order to clear the problem before it would boot normally again. This makes very little sense but, then again, neither do shoes that explode every Thursday when you tie them in the usual way. Like Jeff Raskin says, computers are just like that.

One last thought; I don't want to seem blasphemous or anything, but I find some significance in the fact that my computer died, and then came back to life, over the Easter weekend.

Hallelujah!

Star Wars Art: Visions

2011-04-16T08:26:00.028-04:00

I'm a big Star Wars fan. Says so right there in my profile. And, if that doesn't convince you, there are always my past posts about my Lego TIE Interceptor and my voice-command R2-D2. And I haven't even told you about my Star Wars Pez Dispensers, my Darth Vader coin banks (yes, that's plural), my voice changing Darth Vader helmet/mask, my Luke Skywalker Force FX lightsaber, My AT-AT "minature" game piece (which stands about 13 inches tall!) or my Darth Vader Mr. Potato Head yet!. I mean, I wouldn't want to give anyone the impression that I'm some kind of geek!

That's why a book entitled "Star Wars Art: Visions" (© 2010, Lucasfilm Ltd., published by Abrams, New York) caught my attention at a nearby Chapters book store last Christmas. This book is the realization of one of George Lucas' many "Star Wars" ~~money-making merchandising schemes~~, er, that is, "projects". In this case, he decided to commission some of the world's most recognized artists, including names such as Syd Mead, H.R. Giger and Aoi Mishimata, to render their visions of the Star Wars universe. They were given a wide leeway to create whatever they wanted, the only stipulation being that their work had to be in "the spirit of the movies". The book showcases their work and it is indeed fascinating. The renderings range from straightforward homages to the poignant, bizarre and just plain off the wall.

As I leafed through the pages last Christmas, I smiled, I chuckled, I raised an eyebrow and rubbed my chin thinking "Interesting" but I didn't think I was quite interested enough to justify the book's $48 price tag, so I finally set it down and moved on. Unfortunately, it was too late. The images that I had browsed had gotten under my skin and continued to tug at my mental sleeves. Every time I've returned to Chapters since then, I've caught myself looking for the book once again, unsuccessfully (as there was only one copy when I first found it) ... until yesterday. Yesterday I once again found myself at that same Chapters bookstore and, this time, the Star Wars art book that simply refused to leave me alone since last December, was once again in stock. What could I do but to finally acquiesce and purchase a copy?

While some of the artwork therein depicts scenes straight out of the movies, such as this...

DAVID PALUMBO - "Escape"

...and this...

JACOB A. PFEIFFER - "Luke's Lesson"

...my favorite works are some of the more whimsical and avant-garde offerings. Here are a few samples.

When Darth Vader saw the Batmobile, he must have said to himself "That is SO cool! I need a car like that!" So he set his Imperial designers to work and they finally came up with this:

DOUGLAS FRASER - "1/24th Scale"

Wookiees have an undeserved reputation as brutish barbarians who can't even get through a friendly game of holographic chess without pulling somebody's arms out of their sockets. The truth is, they're among the most gentle, domesticated creatures in the galaxy, as evidenced by the charming family portrait below:

MAYA GOHILL - "Wookiee Family Portrait"

Our next exhibit depicts a tribe of frontier-era American Indians paying homage to Seythreepaya, the Sun Spirit:

GARY CARTER - "Untitled"

Why are there so many songs about Sith Lords and what's on the darker side?
Sith Lords are fearsome, but Jedi are heroes and Jedi have nothing to hide.
They crave not glory, adventure, excitement, serious their ponderings must be.
Some day we'll find it, the great Force connection, the Sith Lords, the Jedi and me.

PETER DE SÈVE - "Easy Being Green, It's Not"

This next one looks like something that Norman Rockwell might have painted. I'm certain that it must once have adorned the cover of the Naboo Evening Post:

ALLAN R. BANKS - "Freedom Day"

Dave Nestler apparently thought about what would happen if someone were to cross "Star Wars" with George Lucas' earlier film, "American Graffiti", and came up with this:

DAVE NESTLER - "Double Cheeseburger with a Side of Crumb"

Even Darth Maul was somebody's baby once as this next painting, which has almost religious undertones, proves. I've often wondered whether more than just his head was tattooed. I guess now we know:

WILL WILSON - "Dawn of Maul"

This somewhat (ahem) "erotic" painting of a Twi'lek dancing girl looks like something out of some Star Wars geek's wet dream. If this painting turns you on, seek help! (And don't infer anything from the fact that I happen to know that the race is called "Twi'lek" even though it's never actually mentioned in any of the movies).

JEREMY LIPKING - "Yobana"

Didn't Toto have a hit song about her?
All I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is see your eyes
Yobana, Yobana...

But my personal favorite from the entire collection is the one that was chosen to adorn the book's cover. I think this cuts through Darth Vader's cold, unfeeling facade and poignantly depicts his inner sadness and loneliness. He may have shown no visible reaction when Obi-wan called him "More machine than man ... twisted and evil" but deep down inside it hurt, friend; it hurt.

MASEY - "Regrets"

Finally, I wonder if George Lucas, watching Chuck Yeager make his cameo appearance as the bartender at Pancho's in "The Right Stuff", thought to himself "Hey! I wish I'd thought of that! I could have made an appearance in the Tatooine Cantina; you know, like Hitchcock used to do in his movies..."

PAUL G. OXBOROUGH - "The Mos Eisley Cantina with George Lucas as the Bartender"

Paddle To The Sea

2011-04-10T11:17:00.006-04:00

One of Canada's cultural treasures, in this Canadian's humble opinion, is the National Film Board (or, for those francophone Canadians out there, the Office National du Film). The NFB/ONF was first established in 1939, its goal being “….to make and distribute films across the country that were designed to help Canadians everywhere in Canada understand the problems and way of life of Canadians in other parts of the country.” Since that time, the NFB/ONF has made over 13,000 films, most of them short (running for 30 minutes or less) including documentaries, educational films, animated shorts and their famous "vignettes". NFB/ONF films tend to have a uniquely Canadian flavour and perspective.

I recently discovered that the NFB/ONF hosts its own web site, where one can view (for free) and download or purchase (relatively cheaply) most of the titles in the prodigious NFB/ONF collection. Among my personal favorites are "The Sweater", Sheldon Cohen's animated version of Roche Carrier's classic short story about his boyhood idolization of the Montreal Canadiens and Maurice "The Rocket" Richard in particular (charmingly narrated by Carrier himself in his heavy francophone accent) and "Paddle To The Sea".

I first saw "Paddle To The Sea" in elementary school, when my teacher played it for the class as an educational film intended to teach us about the great lakes and the St. Lawrence seaway. Paddle To The Sea is the name given to a wooden carving of an aboriginal Canadian in a traditional birch canoe. He is hand-whittled by a young boy who lives in the Nipigon country on the northern shore of Lake Superior. This talented young boy wants to see the ocean, but can't, so he carves "Paddle" to make the journey in his stead. Paddle does eventually reach the ocean, but not before evading or overcoming a number of obstacles, as one might imagine, including being beached, beset by seagulls, a snake and all manner of aquatic wildlife including a young child who fancies him an excellent toy, getting frozen in an ice-covered lake and almost being puréed by the propeller screws of several very large ships.

This film appealed to my boyhood self on several levels and therefore made an indelible impression and sparked a lasting fondness that finally resulted in my happily paying to download it and add it to my personal video collection these many years later. For one thing, I was filled with admiration at the craftsmanship with which Paddle was carved and painted, since making miniatures (albeit plastic model kits in my case) was a favorite hobby of my own in those days. Oh how I would have loved to add something like Paddle to my collection of display pieces! And herein lay the second source of my fascination with the story. Had I actually the talent to create such a carving myself, I'm sure that I could never have parted with it, consigning my long hours of painstaking work to the whims of the currents and the tides, never to know for certain whatever became of it or, indeed, whether it actually reached its destination.

The whole concept of tossing a canoe into the water and then simply following its progress to see what becomes of it without actually intervening in any manner was equally intriguing to me. I've noted before in this blog that I seem to have this unusual fascination with just sitting and watching things unfold of their own accord.

A small creek ran parallel to the street where I lived during my pre-adolescent years and, after watching "Paddle To The Sea", I'd often go there and toss all manner of items into the water, wondering how far or to where they would drift. I'd often see them snag on a tree branch or clump of grass or stone before travelling even ten yards. Oh well. "A thousand mile journey begins with a single step" someone once said. A pity they didn't mention that it often ends there as well.

This leads me to the one thing about this film that really sparked my incredulity. When I tossed things into the creek, I would at least watch the start of their journeys, wanting some idea as to whether they got anywhere at all. However, the young boy who made Paddle To The Sea doesn't do that. He doesn't even put him in the water! He simply perches him at the top of a snow bank, and leaves him to sit there until the spring thaw sends him into the river. In other words, he can't even be sure whether Paddle's journey ever began! Oh, certainly he could return in the springtime to find Paddle gone, but this doesn't necessarily mean that he made it to the river. Some other person or animal might have come upon him and simply carried him away. To summarize, then, this young boy spent countless hours, painstakingly carving and painting this beautiful miniature brave in a birch canoe, then took it to the river bank, set it in the snow and walked away, hoping that it might somehow find its way to the ocean.

And I thought that I was an optimist!

A Royal FUBAR

2011-03-26T12:56:00.008-04:00

I'm not a big fan of the Royals. Heck, I'm not even a little fan of the Royals! So, for the most part, I really can't care less about the upcoming wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and I wish the press would find something more interesting to write about. I must admit, though, that news link that I recently glimpsed while browsing through online news stories that read something to the effect of "Major Gaffe With Royal Wedding Souvenir" aroused my curiosity enough that I had to click it to find out more.

The link took me to a story about a souvenir mug, commemorating the upcoming Royal Nuptials. The mug, which is pictured in the news story, is a very handsome, ornate-looking bit of memorabilia, if you like that kind of thing, featuring colour portraits (British spelling purposely used as it seemed appropriate in this context) of the Happy Couple along with the sorts of flourishes and embellishments normally associated with the Royals. Just one little problem, though. The portrait of the groom-to-be is not that of William, but of his brother Harry! Oops. Somebody is so fired! Actually whoever designed the mug was probably somebody as disinterested in the Royal Family as myself, who therefore wouldn't know Prince William from Harry or even Andrew. It would have been even funnier if they'd accidentally posted Charles' mug (pun intended) next to Kate's!

The story makes no mention of any plans to pull these erroneous cups from the market, though. Too bad. If only a few of them got out, they might even become an expensive collector's item; you know, like those stamps with the upside-down airplane on them. (Incidentally, thank you to the Philatelic Tidbits blog for wrecking my attempt at appearing knowledgeable and well-informed by telling the world that just about everybody knows about the infamous "Upside-down Jenny" stamp - even boorish, low-brow Simpsons fans, like myself.)

Well, at least I can amuse myself with imaginings of Prince William grabbing his little brother by the scruff of the neck whilst snarling "Oy! Wha's all this then that I 'eres about you and me missus, eh?"

At risk of going off on something of a tangent in the interest of inserting just one more cheap joke before wrapping up this post, I got a huge laugh out of a one-liner attributed to actor/comedian Jimmy Fallon recently, who mused aloud, with regard to the upcoming Royal Wedding or, more specifically, Prince William's bachelor party, that "It's got to be weird stuffing money into some stripper's bikini when every bill has a picture of your grandmother on it!"

Ronald McDonald: Would You Like To Downsize That?

2011-03-13T12:27:00.007-04:00

I heard this past week that McDonald's is looking to change their image, shifting to "healthier" foods, such as salads and smoothies over hamburgers and soft drinks. This also means targeting the older crowd rather than kids, as has been their strategy thus far. They're even talking about phasing out Ronald McDonald as their official spokesperson!

It makes a certain amount of sense. Let's face it, the general demographic is aging. Smart marketers have to pay attention to the older generation. But I'm a little worried about Ronald. What's he going to do after McDonald's hands him his pink slip? Let's face it; it's a tough economy out there these days. Jobs are scarce and, as I commented in a recent post, a clown's career options in particular are somewhat limited. I'd sure hate to see Ronald McDonald, sitting on some street corner selling pencils from a (recyclable) paper cup five years down the road! That'd just be sad!

Worse yet, what if he becomes embittered about being put out to pasture after so many years of faithful service and, being unable to find any legitimate sources of income, turns to a life of crime? Suppose he joins forces with his old nemesis, the Hamburgler, and the two embark upon a crime spree unprecedented in the annals of fast food? Think it couldn't happen? Just remember, Ronald McDonald wouldn't be the first clown in history to turn to crime!

War and Peace

2011-03-05T14:35:00.008-05:00

Some time ago, I wrote in this blog about my thoughts on the book "Moby Dick" and I mentioned, too, that I had planned to tackle "War and Peace" next. In fact, I'm still reading it. I'm about half way through. I could have finished it by now, in spite of its notorious length but, like many substantial literary works, it starts out slowly, setting the stage and establishing the characters, and it can take a while before it really begins to capture the reader's interest. Consequently, I had set it aside for a while after starting it and, even now, I read only a chapter each day, and the chapters are short, though numerous.

Even so, I must say that I'm enjoying the book considerably more than I did "Moby Dick". Leo Tolstoy, the author, has woven a fascinating tapestry of aristocratic families made up of interesting characters whose lives and fates are interwoven against the backdrop of Imperial Russia's war with Napoleon. Tolstoy also displays a keen understanding of the human condition, as evidenced by the following paragraph.

At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second.

A most astute observation, and I paused to think about why this is. I think that it's because our individual problems are our own. Since they affect only ourselves, we know that it's up to us to solve them. When a larger problem threatens society as a whole, everyone hopes that someone else will solve it. I think that's what's happening with the issue of global warming. If the climate is really changing, we may be witnessing the genesis of an unprecedented disaster; one that threatens not only all of mankind, but every living thing on this planet. At the very least, it would mean starvation, famine, war and death on a scale never before seen. So some choose to deny that the problem exists, and even the majority of those who do accept that there is a threat leave it to others to deal with the problem. I would argue that this was at the heart of the failure of the Kyoto and Copenhagen conferences on climate change. Every participating nation felt that the problem was the responsibility of the others. None were willing to stand up and declare "The buck stops here!". Meanwhile, the problem continues and no meaningful action is taken. I can almost hear Tolstoy muttering "Я сказал вас так!" (or, since French was apparently very much in vogue in Imperial Russia, at least among the aristocracy, "Je vous ai dit ainsi!"

Tolstoy also presents us with this second insightful bit of analysis:

On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.

What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.

Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich, Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for Napoleon to have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"- and there would have been no war.

We can understand that the matter seemed like that to contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the war was the Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

I wonder what this world will be like 100 years hence, and what the historians of that time, if indeed there still be any historians, will have to say about the actions and motives of those who steer the course of history today?

Social Networking ... Old School

2011-02-27T13:01:00.006-05:00

"We had social networking when I was a kid. I think it was called 'Outside'".

This witty comment, which I came across recently, has inspired this week's post. Ironically, the term "Social Networking", meaning FaceBook, MySpace and any number of other internet chat forums is, in a sense, an oxymoron. It might be argued that those who spend a significant amount of time "networking" with others via this medium are actually losing the ability to network in person. Put some of these people in a room with other flesh-and-blood human beings and it becomes painfully apparent that they have no idea how to interact with others who are standing right in front of them. Perhaps a more appropriate term might be "Anti-social Networking".

I once saw an episode of "60 Minutes" which examined why young children nowadays seem to have lost the ability to create their own fun. To be fair, the feature wasn't talking about FaceBook or even computers in general. It was talking more about modern parenting styles. Many parents enroll their children in any number of recreational programs; anything from pee-wee sports to dance to general fitness to French immersion to computer camp. These programs, while well-meaning, are so structured and controlled by adults that the kids who participate in them need not exercise any kind of spontaneity. They simply follow the schedules and participate in the routines. Put one of these kids outside by themselves and simply say to them "Go play" (you know, the way parents used to do back in the seventies and earlier) and they (the kids) are at a complete loss. They have no idea how to begin.

Admittedly, this is slightly beside my original point, but electronic media only exacerbates the situation. Many kids have gotten to the point where they're practically incapable of amusing themselves without the aid of some type of electronic gadget. There was an episode of "The Simpsons" (a television show which is widely acclaimed for its thought-provoking social commentary) in which Marge Simpson managed to eliminate all violence from "The Itchy and Scratchy" cartoon show. The result was a cartoon that was so bland and boring that the kids didn't enjoy it any longer and, consequently, they stopped enjoying television in general. Without the medium of TV, they suddenly had to find an alternate form of entertainment, and this happened...

(c) Twentieth Century Fox, 2001

Hard though it may be for the younger generation to believe, this is what childhood used to be like (although I admit that the May Pole may have been a bit over the top). I lived in a neighborhood with lots of other kids when I was a boy, and most of those kids played together outdoors. Of course, there were the usual matches of sandlot baseball and street hockey, but I was never much of an athlete even in my tender (and thinner) years.

I recall one of the rare times that a few of the older boys let me join in a game of street hockey with them. There was one particularly stocky kid by the name of Nicky who had a notoriously wicked slap shot (for his age, at least). Every goalie within a six block perimeter knew and feared Nicky. He happened to be playing on this particular occasion. At one point, I happened to be standing between Nicky and my team's hapless goaltender when he (Nicky) wound up and let loose one of his infamous canons. I was unable to move out of the line of fire in time and so the Indian rubber ball smacked the blade of my stick with full force and ricocheted off to Scranton, PA or some equally obscure location.

You'd think I'd have been fine, having blocked the shot with my stick the way one is supposed to, albeit completely by accident, but the impact sent a tremor up the shaft of my stick and through my forearms that made me feel like Warner Brothers' Wile E. Coyote after whacking a petrified rock (that was meant to be a Road Runner) with a club. In the cartoon, I believe he disappeared down the road, still vibrating as he went. That's how I felt.

Because of experiences like this one, I preferred to participate in less sports-oriented games; the kind of games that kids used to invent on their own back in the old days. Games like "Mother May I", "Red Light/Green Light" and "Red Rover". Remember those?

For the benefit of the under-forty crowd who may not, in fact, remember those, let me give you some idea of what I'm talking about. "Red Rover" was always a favorite in my neighborhood. You needed a minimum of six kids to play it; ten or more was better. The kids would form two teams with the same number of kids on each side (if there was an odd number of kids participating, it was okay for one side to have an extra member). Both teams would form a line abreast, each facing the other, join hands and take turns calling a member from the other team with a sing-song chant that went, for example, "Red Rover, Red Rover we call Johnny over!" The kid whom the other team had summoned would then have to run full-speed at what he perceived to be the weakest link in the chain of joined hands and try to break through it. The calling team, on the other hand, would try to stop the summoned kid without him breaking the chain. If the runner managed to break the chain, he could return to his or her team. If not, he had to join the other team. The game ended when one team had acquired all but one player (yes, you could have a "chain" consisting of only two kids).

Needless to say, the smallest, slowest, lightest kids tended to be called first but, eventually, there was no choice but to call the "canonball" kids; you know, the big, burly kids who looked like the Tasmanian Devil as they approached; nothing more than a whirling dust-cloud with the occasional arm or leg appearing and disappearing around the perimeter, while each kid in the chain hoped that he wasn't heading for one of their hands.

These were the types of games that kids used to invent when they had no electronic gadgets to keep them entertained. Don't get me wrong. I'm not vilifying electronic amusements. I enjoy a good computer game as much as the next person, and I realize that criticizing social networking may come off as a tad hypocritical coming from someone who's busily posting on his blog. However, it's hard to deny that all this technology has robbed kids of the opportunity to create their own fun through sheer imagination, and it has greatly reduced face-to-face social interaction. The sad result, I think, is that kids have lost one of the real joys of childhood without even realizing it.

Keep Your Justin Bieber - These Kids Were Really Keane!

2011-02-12T19:42:00.007-05:00

Being Canadian is a funny thing. I live in a country that designed, produced, and then scrapped (for no readily apparent reason) the most advanced fighter-interceptor the world had ever seen. We fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the British, French and Americans against totalitarian regimes in both the Great Wars. Canadians have improved the quality of life around the world and changed the very fabric of society with contributions such as insulin, the telephone, the snowmobile, the IMAX camera, the space shuttle's Canadarm and, of course, the Blackberry. But what's the first thing that everyone, including Canadians themselves, associates us with? Bob and Doug Mackenzie, and the Great White North ("Coo-roo-koo-koo-coo-roo-koo-KOOOO!!! G'day! How's it goin' eh?)

Similarly, Canada has made some fantastic contribution to the music industry over the years; Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, Burton Cummings, Anne Murray, Bryan Adams, Geddy Lee, Ian Thomas, The Barenaked Ladies... the list goes on and on. So it's completely beyond my comprehension what this fascination is with Justin Bieber; a kid who looks more suited for a career as a L'Oreal model than as a singer. Honestly, world, we really do have so much more to offer, eh?

Understand, it's not that I have any sort of bias against child stars. Michael Jackson's star shone brightly at an early age and he went on to prove in adulthood that he was more than just a flash in the pan. Donny Osmond showed his talent not only on radio and television but even on Broadway. And then, of course, there was the incomparable Jack Wild, who played the Artful Dodger in the Columbia Pictures musical, "Oliver!" and starred as Jimmy in the Rankin and Bass kids' show "H.R. Pufnstuf". I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge pre-pubescent greatness when I see it. But I've watched Justin Bieber's performances on YouTube and, I'm sorry, I just don't see the fascination. His voice, while not terrible, isn't outstandingly good either. I suppose I'll have to reserve my final judgement on that point until it actually changes. His stage presence seems just a little too scripted and rehearsed. In the trailer for his new movie, "Never Say Never", the little black kid that introduces him has, in my opinion, more charisma and presence than does Bieber himself. Most of it appears to be just lights and hype and throngs of shrieking tweenie girls in the throes of "Bieber Fever"; an appropriate aphorism, as only a serious fever-induced delirium could explain such behavior.

Back in 1976, I saw a young duo who, in my opinion had real talent; the Keane Brothers. These kids, aged 11 and 12 at the time, were 4 and 5 years younger than Bieber is today. Now, granted, the fact that their father, Bob Keane, happened to be a well-known music producer and owned his own record company probably didn't hurt their chances any, but I saw these kids perform on "Cos" (Bill Cosby's hour-long variety show) back in the day, and I was blown away by their act. They were like Journey, only half the size! Heck, they even sang in Steve Perry's key. They also had their own short-lived TV show, which finally managed to unseat that ratings hog, "Wonder Woman". I think that credentials like that speak for themselves. But don't take my word for it. Listen to them for yourself.

Where are they now? Well, they went on to successful careers as song writers and music producers. As for Justin? While I wouldn't wish Jack Wild's fate on him, I'd have a hard time suppressing a sardonic smile if that's what the future should have in store. But I'd feel really badly about it afterward. Honest!

Chinese Air Force: The New Top Gun

2011-02-05T09:57:00.020-05:00

There has been increased speculation since the turn of the century that China is fast closing the gap between itself and the United States and may be emerging as the world's next great super power. The Chinese have their own space program, their military power is growing in leaps and bounds, and their economy is growing, even as America's economy falters. In fact, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently referred to China as "America's Banker".

So it would be understandable if a recent Chinese state-sponsored video depicting China's state of the art J-10 fighter obliterating some hapless enemy aircraft caused concern at the Pentagon. That is, it would be, if the video hadn't been ripped off from a Hollywood movie.

For all its political and economic clout, China has apparently not yet learned that you never, ever try to put one over on internet users. Believe me, this blogger has long since learned his lesson about the folly of trying to fool the online community! It wasn't long before several sharp-eyed web surfers, bloggers and Comic Book Guy type geeks noticed a suspicious similarity between the fireball resulting from the J-10's fearsome missile and a fireball from the Hollywood movie, "Top Gun". In fact, the two appear to be identical.

Needless to say, the incident has left China a bit red-faced. (Get it? Red! China! Red China! I made a funny!) But, you know, they may just be on to something here. Perhaps other governments, even the United States, could make themselves seem more intimidating by passing off Hollywood footage as their latest military arsenal. Here are some modest examples for your consideration:

To begin with, Russia could follow suit with footage of their own next-gen fighter jet:

As an added bonus, the pilots all look like Clint Eastwood. Who wouldn't be intimidated by that?

The U.S. might unveil its latest "Star Wars" anti-missile defence satellite:

After that, they won't need their bureaucracy any longer. Fear will keep the local countries in line. Fear of this killer satellite!

The Afghan troops might show off their latest all-terrain troop transport:

Heck, if it can withstand a nuclear holocaust, it can certainly withstand the occasional IED.

How about the latest military attack helicopter?

I understand it's equipped with a forward-mounted, twenty-millimeter electric cannon. Its six barrels are capable of firing four thousand rounds of ammunition per minute. And that, gentlemen, is one hell of a shit-storm in anybody's language!

Or they might claim that they're taking soldiers out of harm's way entirely and replacing them with new robotic soldiers:

Or strike fear into the enemy by threatening to use their latest heavy artillery guns:

This idea needn't be limited to the military. Police forces might demonstrate their newest tactical armored vehicle:

You get the idea. The list could go on and on. Why squander military and/or law enforcement budgets when Hollywood has already spent the money for you? It's faster, cheaper, and will probably get more peoples' attention in the long run.

Those Chinese, they're not so dumb!

Censorship For Nothin'

2011-01-29T15:36:00.006-05:00

According to a Canadian Press story, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has banned the song "Money For Nothing", by Dire Straits, from airplay in Canada following a complaint, received from St. John's, Newfoundland, from an anonymous radio listener who took exception to the following phrase from the song:

That little faggot with the earring and the makeup.
Yeah, buddy, that's his own hair.
That little faggot's got his own jet airplane.
That little faggot he's a millionaire.

Of course, it's the derogatory term "faggot" that got the knickers of both the complainant and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council all bunched up.

One of my personal pet peeves, besides the gratuitous use of alliteration, is runaway political-correctness, and this ruling is a prime example of what I mean. To begin with, it all started with a complaint from one single listener. To the best of my knowledge, there was no groundswell of indignation against the song among the gay community at large, although EGALE Canada has since come out (if you'll excuse the term) in defence of the ruling. Since when does a democratic society make policy decisions based on a complaint from one overly-sensitive malcontent? The album "Brothers In Arms", which included the offending song, was released in 1985. Several songs from the album, including "Money for Nothing" in particular, have proven extremely popular and have been getting a healthy amount of air play all over the world for over 25 years. In all that time, nobody has had a problem with the lyrics. But one person complains, and suddenly censorship is called for?

To be fair, the complaint has since found more supporters. "It perpetuates the stereotype," declared EGALE Canada's director, Helen Kennedy, "It's negative and offensive."

Apparently, neither Helen Kennedy, EGALE Canada, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council or the original complainant would recognize sarcasm if it came up and bit them in the ass (hint: That was an example right there.) The point that all of these politically-correct reactionaries appear to be missing completely is that the song itself is a musical caricature of a certain mentality, and not a flattering one at that. Songwriter Mark Knopfler was clearly lampooning the sort of ignorant, blue-collar mentality that would make such a statement. He wasn't poking fun at gays, he was poking fun at the speaker.

In fact, Knopfler has long ago explained that the song was inspired by an actual conversation that he overheard in an appliance store one day. One of the store's employees was watching MTV on one of its many television monitors and carrying on with a comrade in much the style that is presented in the song. Knopfler found it so amusing that he took out a pad of paper and started scribbling down notes. He later turned it into a song. He was ridiculing the guy.

If everyone was going to get offended from taking everything that they hear and see at its simple face value, then pop stars should be boycotting the song, because it seems to be declaring that they don't really work for a living ("That ain't workin'. That's the way you do it. Money for nothin' and your chicks for free.") Ah, and women should be boycotting the song because the line "chicks for free" surely implies that most females are whores who charge for their services.

The CBSC has since modified its position, agreeing that the song can be aired as long as it is edited; in other words, you can't say "faggot" anymore. I'll go out on a limb here and assume that "homo" and "poofter" are equally verboten. So what do we substitute? We need a two-syllable word that's somewhat derogatory, but not too derogatory. Might I suggest "Newfie"?

In hindsight, it's a good thing that "Les Boys" never received a lot of airplay!

U.S. Customs Confiscates Bird's Egg

2011-01-22T17:15:00.008-05:00

I'm surprised that not one newspaper thought of that headline. I'm referring, of course, to the recent confrontation between the U.S. Customs service and Canadian Lind Bird, after a random search of her car, as she attempted to cross the border into the United States, uncovered dangerous contraband.

Was it weapons? No.

A bio hazard? No.

Terrorist propaganda? No.

The Yusuf Islam record collection? No.

It was (insert strident orchestral chords here) a Kinder Surprise Egg.

For those who don't know (and who haven't yet clicked on the above link), Kinder Surprise Eggs are chocolate eggs which contain a two-piece plastic container that opens to reveal a tiny toy. A television ad produced by the treat's Italian manufacturer, Ferrero, sums it up nicely. Kinder Surprise Eggs combine three of a child's favorite things; candy (chocolate), a surprise and a toy. Some of the toys are quite imaginative and many require assembly. I've often been fascinated by some of the engaging novelty items that Ferrero has managed to cram into their diminutive treats. In fact, they've become collectors' items in their own right.

What fascinates me most about the chocolate eggs is that their outer shell is regular, brown milk chocolate, but the inside of the candy shell, once you crack it open, is white chocolate. How do they do that? It's the grandest mystery since Cadbury's Caramilk bar!

Unfortunately, the U.S. Customs service does not share my admiration of Ferrero's creativity. They seized the candy as illegal contraband, and advised its would-be "smuggler" that she could have been fined up to $300 for trying to take it across the border. Apparently, Kinder Surprise Eggs have been banned in the U.S. because they've been deemed to present a choking hazard to small children.

Now, let me begin by acknowledging my agreement that the tiny toys that come out of these chocolate eggs can, indeed, pose a choking hazard to small children. So can lots of other things. Gum balls, pens, coins, flash memory sticks, paper clips, bottle caps, key fobs, laser pointers, nail clippers... I could go on, but you get the idea. Is U.S. Customs going to start fining people hundreds of dollars for taking any of the above across the border?

Okay, so let's grant that Kinder Surprise Eggs are specifically targeted toward children whereas most of those other items are not and, as such, they may have a higher probability of winding up in the hands (or mouth) of an unsuspecting youngster. But nobody said that Bird had any plans to give the offending treat to a minor. Maybe she was planning to eat it herself. Some grown-ups like them too you know. (I know I do!) In any case, she was clearly unaware that the seemingly harmless eggs were banned in the States and therefore had no knowledge or intent of any wrong-doing. Given that, a $300 fine seems just a bit of an overreaction.

Seems the U.S. Customs service is pretty serious about keeping these malevolent threats out of the U.S. of A. though. This isn't the first time they've stopped one at the border. Officials boast that they've seized over 25,000 of the treats in over 2,000 separate seizures. Well anyway, now we know what they're so busy doing while boxcutter-wielding maniacs stroll unimpeded across their borders.

In a fine display of bureaucratic flare, the United States government has since sent Bird a seven-page letter formally asking her permission to destroy the seized Kinder Surprise Egg. Now, I admit that I have a predilection toward verbosity, but even I would be hard-pressed to fill seven pages asking for permission to destroy a chocolate egg. Maybe they listed all of the possible means of destruction that they would not use; you know, just to reassure the egg's former owner that its final destruction would be humane, painless and quick.

I wonder what the black market price for Kinder Surprise Eggs is in the U.S.? It probably dwarfs even that of other Canadian confections that you can't get south of the border, such as Crispy Crunch, Coffee Crisp and Smarties (which, incidentally, might also present a choking hazard).

What's In A Name?

2011-01-07T20:45:00.015-05:00

Here's an interesting comment that I encountered this week:

"It isn't really necessary to specify 'The Clown' after the name 'Bozo'. I mean, what else would he be? Bozo the gynecologist?"

Point well taken. I immediately thought of several other unlikely possibilities, including:

Bozo the neurosurgeon

Bozo the physicist

Bozo the mortician

Bozo the librarian

Bozo the accountant

Bozo the hit man

Constable Bozo

Special Agent Bozo

...and so on.

Let's face it. People have been contemplating the importance of names at least since Shakespeare. I'm of the opinion that one's name does colour peoples' perceptions of the person. That's why Norma Jeane Mortenson changed her name to Marilyn Monroe, and Bernie Schwarz became Tony Curtis. Then there are those who employ reverse psychology, such as Arnold Dorsey, who changed his name to Engelbert Humperdinck.

One of my favorite Bloom County comic strips reveals Berke Breathed's take on the subject (click on it to make it larger):

One last thought: Just as it's not necessary to append "the clown" to the name "Bozo", it is probably equally unnecessary to add the name "Bozo" before "the politician".

Your Plastic Maid Who's Fun To Be With

2010-12-31T07:24:00.007-05:00

No, this isn't about an inflatable sex toy. It's about a robot. I'm paraphrasing Douglas Adams who wrote, in his seminal work, "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy",

"The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."

For Christmas, I got my wife (according to the late Mr. Adams) a "plastic pal who's fun to be with". Gee, now it sounds as though I got her a sex toy, doesn't it? Seriously, though, I got her a robotic floor cleaner, also known as a "Roomba". I suspect that this thing must actually have been created by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, because it sometimes really does seem endowed with their infamous GPP (Genuine People Personality) feature. Since Roomba's purpose is slanted more toward cleaning than friendship (it's hard to foster a meaningful relationship with a talking Frisbee^®), it's more of a plastic "maid" than a plastic "pal", but it is still fun to be with (at least it is for lonely, friendless geeks like me).

Roomba has become popular enough that, by now, most people need no explanation as to what it is but, in case you do, Roomba is, as I said, a robotic floor cleaner. It's a plastic disc on wheels, approximately 12 inches in diameter and 3 inches high. It cleans all types of floors including hardwood, laminate, vinyl and also carpeted, even adjusting itself for pile height. It can be programmed to clean at specified times, up to seven times per week. When it does its stuff, so to speak, it cruises the floor, looking for dirt and navigating around obstacles, before returning to its base to recharge.

Roomba derives its name from the words "Room", which it navigates and cleans (at least the floor part) and "ba", which is a sound that sheep make. Hey, it makes sense - at least, to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation¹.

Before continuing, I should point out that Roomba, like most technological contraptions, comes in various models. Ours is a model 550, which is one of the newer 3rd Generation (3G) models. Features and behavior of other models may vary.

Roomba's cleaning tools include a vacuum, a rotating brush, a rotating squeegee wheel (you know, with the rubber fins as opposed to brushes) and a sideways-rotating brush for cleaning along walls or base molding. The vacuum isn't very powerful, somewhat comparable to that of a hand-held DustBuster ^®, but it's augmented by the brushes, which act to loosen dirt from the floor and carpets and also to sweep it under Roomba, into the vacuum's suction range.

Watching Roomba navigate the floor is almost worth the price of admission in itself. It starts with a criss-cross pattern designed both for covering the maximum possible area in its search of dirt and also discovering walls and obstacles. When it hits an obstacle, or "sees" it with its infra-red (IR) sensor, it backs away, pivots, and heads off in a different direction. When it finds a wall, which I assume it recognizes as a straight-line obstacle that seems to go on in the same direction for a ways, it turns itself so that its side-rotating brush is facing the wall, and then runs along it in order to clean the floor perimeter. It "sees" when the floor suddenly disappears in front of it, and therefore will not go tumbling down the first set of stairs that it encounters. Most amusingly, its dirt sensor, aside from simply looking for dirt, also detects especially heavy concentrations of dirt. When such a concentration is detected, a little blue Filthometer² light comes on, and Roomba spirals over the spot in two or three tight circles in order to give it a specially thorough scouring.

Roomba does take considerably longer to clean a floor than one would take doing it manually with a vacuum cleaner or mop, owing to its having to navigate the room and find all the dirt but, since it's relieving my wife and myself of that chore, it can take all the time it needs, especially if programmed to clean the floors during the day, when everyone is away at work and/or school. The only one whom it might annoy is the cat, and we don't much care what she thinks. Besides, as the video below demonstrates, the cat might not mind it as much as one might think either.

The above video also demonstrates one of the many ways in which you can "yank Roomba's chain" so to speak. I can just picture its robotic brain thinking "There's some cat hair on the floor. Got it! Better go back to check. Hey, I missed some! Got it that time. One more pass... D'OH! More cat hair? What gives???"

Roomba's instruction manual (yes, I actually do read those) recommends that it be confined to a single room, but it will do multiple rooms on the same floor if given free range. Of course, on its maiden voyage, I decided to really put it to the test and gave it free access to most of our main floor, including a carpeted living room, a vinyl kitchen floor and hardwood hallways and dining room. I kept it out of the bedrooms, or it would still be working. If it got into my daughter's room, it would probably disappear, never to be seen again.

Roomba admirably, navigated its way around table and chair legs (no, we didn't bother to do it the courtesy of putting the chairs up on the table) as well as other obstacles. A number of times, it temporarily got "trapped" between a myriad of legs, but it always eventually found its way back out again. It did tend to revisit areas where it had already been. I'm not sure whether it was simply double-checking for missed dirt, got disoriented, or simply liked certain areas for whatever reason. Only once did I ever see Roomba get so completely stuck that it needed help. That was when it blundered under our Christmas tree and got hopelessly tangled in the tree skirt. After four or five unsuccessful attempts to extricate itself, it finally emitted a plaintiff "Error! One left." (yes, Roomba talks too) and simply stopped. I'm still somewhat mystified at the meaning of "One left". One what? One more error? Was it warning me that if I let that happen one more time, it would go on robotic strike and stop cleaning our floors? (This is where the GPP feature comes into play!) My wife and I have agreed to leave Roomba off until after the Christmas tree is down, just to be safe.

One of these days, I intend to unleash both Roomba and my voice-command R2-D2 simultaneously, and let them "duke it out" for floor supremacy. Of course, Roomba is at something of a disadvantage, since it lacks Artoo's "electro-arm" for zapping its antagonists.

Roomba has a base to which it returns when its job is finished or when its battery is in need of recharging. The base plugs into a standard electrical outlet, of course, and emits an IR signal to help Roomba to find its way "home". Finding an appropriate place for the base was a little problematic for us. It needs to be in a fairly open, accessible area. If you wedge it into a cubbyhole somewhere, Roomba may have trouble docking with it, even if it does find it. Of course, it needs to be within reach of an available electrical socket. Finally, it needs to be placed against a wall or other heavy object, because it's very light. Without some sort of brace, Roomba tends to just push it away when it tries to dock.

Somehow, we had some trouble finding a spot that satisfied all of the above criteria. I also added an extra criterion of my own. I would have preferred the base to be in some inconspicuous spot, rather than having Roomba sitting out, as if on display. Unfortunately, "inconspicuous" and "easily accessible" seem to be mutually exclusive terms. At one point, I hit upon the "bright" idea of placing it under the couch. I figured that, at the designated time, Roomba could come out from under the couch, clean the floors, and then quietly disappear back underneath the couch, out of sight and out of mind. Aside from the fact that our couch has legs so short that Roomba didn't actually fit underneath it, the other problem with this idea is what happens if Roomba fails to dock properly for whatever reason. Its battery would eventually die and there it would sit, under the couch, gathering dust (but not in the intended manner), forcing someone to crawl under the couch to rescue it. Even if it unerringly found its dock every time, its dust bin, which is fairly small, needs regular emptying and its brushes need regular cleaning as well. Again, one would have to crawl under the couch in order to retrieve it for maintenance and cleaning. No, hiding Roomba under furniture is not recommended.

Should you be considering getting a Roomba for yourself, the final, and most important, question is, of course, "Does it work?" or, rather, "How well does it work?" My conclusion is this: Roomba is a good maintenance cleaner. It's designed to pick up light dirt before it develops into heavy dirt. Can you throw out your vacuum cleaner after getting a Roomba? No. You'll still want to clean your floors manually every so often, but those cleanings will be fewer and father-between, not to mention easier.

Here's a more serious video of Roomba in action:

¹ There is no such organization as the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. Roomba is produced and marketed by iRobot Corporation. But if they don't sue me for misappropriating the credit for their product to a fictional robotics company, I won't tell Arthur C. Clarke that they stole his book title for their company name.

² Filthometer is not an official term used by the iRobot company that produces and markets Roomba. I made that up myself, but it does seem appropriate!

Christmas Eve 1968

2010-12-24T10:38:00.012-05:00

In Austria, where I was born, Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve, as it is in many European countries. Presents are opened on the evening of the 24th, friends and relatives visit each other and the festivities go on late into the night. Christmas morning is almost anti-climactic.

Even after immigrating to Canada in 1965, my family continued to observe the Austrian tradition of celebrating Christmas on the evening of the 24th. It made for some amusing cultural encounters, such as the time when one of the older neighborhood kids tried to shatter my youthful innocence by telling me that there was no Santa Claus. I, still being a Believer, refused to listen.

"Oh yeah?" challenged the boy, "Why do you think your parents make you go to bed early Christmas Eve?"

"They don't," I replied matter-of-factly. "In fact, we usually stay up late on Christmas Eve."

"You mean you're still up when the presents are placed under the tree?" asked the incredulous boy.

"Sure we are," I replied with a self-satisfied smile. My interrogator was at a loss for words.

In Austria, it's the "Christkind", or "Christ Child" that brings the presents. Santa Claus does not figure prominently, although St. Nicholas' historical significance is recognized earlier, on the 5th of December. However, my parents had reconciled the cultural discrepancy by explaining to me that, at Christmas time, St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus, became the Christkind's helper. I didn't bother elaborating upon this to my elder acquaintance, because I had learned, by that time, that Canadian children didn't know about the Christkind, and I wasn't inclined to enter into the long explanations and elaborations that would be required to enlighten the poor fellow.

The other detail that I neglected to elaborate upon was that the Christkind, and his helper, Santa Claus, always appeared in our living room while my sister and I were shut out behind closed doors, with our mother. Early in the evening, just after supper, the door to the living room would be shut, and my mother would stay with us while my father waited in the living room to greet the Christkind. Unlike our uncouth Canadian neighbors, we Austrians were not so rude as to go to bed and leave the Christkind or Santa Claus or whatever benevolent visitor chose to enter our homes to simply deposit gifts and then leave, unwelcomed and unthanked. No, it was only right that father, the head of the household, should be there to welcome our guests, offer them the refreshments that we had set out, give them a full report regarding how good or bad we children had been since the previous Christmas, and then see them out again with the appropriate thanks. Just before leaving, the Christkind would ring a bell, signalling to my mother, my sister and myself that all was ready, and then would swiftly make his escape before we could enter the room to see him.

The Christkind brought everything; not just our presents, but even the Christmas tree! That's right. Believe it or not, every December 24, in the early evening, after dinner time, I would watch my father shut himself up in our plain, unadorned living room and, when that magical bell sounded, between one and two hours later, he would again open the door to reveal a fully-decorated tree with presents beneath it. In retrospect, I have to admire the man's fortitude. To set up and decorate a Christmas tree by himself, on the very eve of Christmas, with two impatient children waiting just behind the next door, it's a wonder that I don't recall hearing him curse at the Christkind and his helper.

One of the most memorable Christmas Eves of my childhood was December 24th, 1968. That was the evening that the astronauts of Apollo 8 accomplished the first manned lunar orbit, and it was the first time that a human being saw our Earth from the moon's perspective. I remember the broadcast appearing on our old black and white television as we celebrated Christmas that evening and dreaming, as only a six-year-old boy can, of what it must be like to fly to the moon in a rocket ship.

1968 was not a great year, for the most part. The war in Vietnam had reached its apex and American troops took heavy losses during the January Tet Offensive. The American public increasingly questioned the justification and ethics of that conflict. In April, Dr. Martin Luthor King was assassinated on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. In June, Senator Robert Kennedy was likewise assassinated.

None of that registered on my six-year-old radar. I knew nothing of Vietnam or Dr. Martin Luthor King or American politics. But I did know about rockets, and astronauts, and space, and I watched in wonder.

As the crew of Apollo 8 watched the distant Earth rise above the moon's horizon, the three astronauts, starting with Bill Anders, and followed by his crew-mates, Jim Lovell and, finally, Commander Frank Borman, read from the book of Genesis. The passage must have seemed appropriate to them. Borman ended the transmission with these words:

"And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with goodnight, good luck, Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you; all of you on the good Earth."

NASA later had to defend itself against a lawsuit launched by Madalayn Murray O'Hair, an atheist who took exception to the reading of biblical passages by the astronauts and who, in this blogger's opinion, completely missed the message behind the transmission. For the first time, men had literally removed themselves from all borders, cultures and beliefs and looked upon our home planet, and saw that we are one species, living together on one planet. From lunar orbit, no national boundaries were visible. No evidence of mankind itself was visible. All of our reasons for hating, fighting and killing suddenly faded from significance.

Our world today is, in many respects, similar to what it was in 1968. Once again, America is embroiled in not one, but two foreign wars. Once again, countless American soldiers have died as a result and, once again, people increasingly question the justification and the ethics behind these conflicts. The September, 2001 attack on New York's World Trade Center has seriously shaken America's self-assuredness. Fear and paranoia over terrorist threats, some real and some imagined, have caused a rift between Islamic and Christian cultures. International travel has been significantly hampered due to security concerns. Peoples' privacy and civil liberties have been eroded in the name of national security.

The world economy has been shaken by the 2008 Wall Street collapse. Joblessness and poverty are on the rise and entire nations stand at the threshold of bankruptcy. At the same time, the gap between the richest one percent and the rest of the world continues to widen.

We now face a new threat which has never before been seriously considered; the threat to the health of our world's climate and the natural systems that sustain us and give us life. We see increasing evidence that our habitat is changing for the worse, but we seem unable to mobilize ourselves to counter this trend. Some argue that we can't justify the expense involved, some insist that the responsibility falls on others, and some continue to deny that there is a problem at all.

Perhaps most dismaying, to me, was the news earlier this year that President Barack Obama has canceled any plans for Americans to revisit the moon in the foreseeable future. Obama's explanation is that the priority has been shifted to sending a manned mission to Mars, but this will not happen in the foreseeable future either, and many argue that the best way to reach Mars would have been by using the moon as a staging base.

As I celebrate Christmas 2010 with my family, on Christmas Eve, just as I always have, I turn on my television set and search for some message of hope, or words of encouragement. It would do me good, this Christmas, to hear any of my brothers and sisters, wishing all a happy holiday, regardless of culture or faith, and reminding us that we are all still one family living together on this good Earth.

Digital Physiognomy

2010-12-11T14:55:00.016-05:00

Last March, I wrote about a program for removing unsightly power lines from digital photos which I'd downloaded from Giveawayoftheday.com. Today, GOTD offered another of their more unusual software titles; Digital Physiognomy.

Physiognomy refers to the profiling of a person's character based on their facial features. In other words, contrary to the old proverb, physiognomy proposes that one can, indeed, judge a book by its cover. This pseudo-science apparently originated in India and spread from there to Iran, Rome, France, my computer and, finally this blog.

The program profiles character based on facial features. You compose a portrait by selecting facial characteristics (forehead shape and width, eye shape, nose position, ear type, hair, etc.), much like a police sketch artist. You're also given the ability to load digital portraits for reference, and even overlay them with the sketch to check accuracy. When you're finished, you have a sketch which hopefully bears a reasonable resemblance to the subject. The program then analyses this sketch and spits out a character profile.

Being a sucker for all things novel (did you know that my Star Wars name is Halan Steiz, and my hobbit name is Mungo Dogwood of Shadydowns?) not to mention all things free, I couldn't resist downloading the program and putting it through its paces.

I decided to make myself the program's guinea pig because, after all, who knows me better than I? I felt that it would be a good litmus test of the program's accuracy. Here's the self-portrait sketch that I came up with:

To begin with, although this is the closest likeness I could wring out of the program, I can't honestly say that it looks like me. Although it does reflect my features in a very general sense, the caricature that adorns my Blogger profile is a much better likeness than this. Nevertheless, here's what Digital Physiognomy has to say about The Halmanator, given the above sketch, with my own comments interspersed:

Bright extrovert is characterized by outgoingness, activity, and the ability to make quick decisions. He/she is often too talkative.

Bright? I'll accept the compliment.

Extrovert, characterized by outgoingness? Not really. I've said before in this blog that I consider myself to lean toward introversion. However, I can be extroverted around those with whom I feel comfortable, and I can and often do act extroverted around those whom I don't know as well, if only to mask my inner insecurity.

Often too talkative: Guilty as charged, although my wife would challenge that.

Predilection to shyness. Suspiciousness is possible. Poor vigor and sluggishness.

Predilection to shyness? I thought you just said I'm an outgoing extrovert! Make up your mind!

Suspiciousness is possible: Actually, no. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, until they give me a reason not to.

Poor vigor and sluggishness: Again, didn't you just say in the previous bullet that I was characterized by "activity"? But, yes, I'm a sedentary individual who likes to sit around a lot, and I'm often slow to get moving, so I'll give you this one.

Irreparably pessimistic relation to life. The person feels doomed, often dissatisfied, hopeless and lonely.

Now, that's a little severe. I'm not that much of a downer! I will admit, though, that although life's been reasonably good to me, I secretly live in constant fear of seeing it all fall to pieces on me.

Predilection to disputes and adventures, aggressiveness and light-mindedness.

Disputes? Hardly! I pride myself on being one of the most conciliatory people you'd ever want to meet! In fact, if anything, I'm a bit of a doormat sometimes. I'm not terribly adventurous either, except when I go canoeing, I suppose.

Light-mindedness? I'll challenge that too. I spend a lot of time meditating and brooding over things. A "light-minded" individual would occupy themselves with shallow distractions (not that I don't do my share of that).

Egocentricity. This is usually an unripe person with low aesthetic concerns. Often has difficulty in making contacts.

I'll confess to a certain degree of egocentricity. I'm not sure what an "unripe" person is, but I don't mind being categorized as one. I've met a few "ripe" individuals in my time, and it wasn't pleasant.

Low aesthetic concerns: Well, looking around at the cluttered state of my attic office, I can hardly argue that point! I will say, however, that I can also be quite picky about how things are displayed or arranged. It just depends what mood you catch me in.

Often has difficulty in making contacts: True but, again, I thought you said I was an extrovert?

Frank attitude to the people. Skill to perceive others and receive criticism. Indulgent.

Oh, so we're finally saying something positive about me now, are we? Well thank you very much!

Frank attitude to the people: Yes, I'm pretty much a "What you see is what you get" sort of guy.

Skill to perceive others and receive criticism: I like to think of myself as a good judge of character, and I can take honest, constructive criticism. I'm probably my own harshest critic, and I revel in self-deprecating humor.

Indulgent: Yes but, once again, didn't you say, just before, that I have a "predilection to disputes"? I'm not indulgent enough to overlook direct contradiction, bucko!

Normal functionality. Patience. Predilection to study.

Normal functionality: Just a moment...

Whirrrr... click-click-click... BEEP! click-click-click... Ka-CHUNK!

SELF-DIAGNOSTICS COMPLETE. ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONING NORMALLY.

Yes.

Patience: Yes, but here's a funny thing. I can be infinitely patient and calm in the most difficult of circumstances, yet go to pieces and curse up a storm over some trifling inconvenience, such as having misplaced some unimportant item.

Predilection to study: This makes me sound like more of a scholar than I really am, but I am one of those people who actually reads the instructions. In fact, I learn a fair through reading, so I'll give this one the nod as well.

Fairness. Sometimes ruse, slyness. Usually executes his/her promises and is not capable of betrayal.

Fairness: I really like to think so.

Sometimes ruse, slyness: Only when it suits my purposes (nya-hah-ha!) But, seriously, I can be a frighteningly good liar if I want to.

Usually executes his/her promises: I'm old-fashioned enough to want my word to mean something.

Not capable of betrayal: I like the way you put that. I've never, to the best of my recollection, stabbed anybody in the back.

The capacity to generate ideas is possible.

I should hope that I have the occasional original thought. On the other hand, I've known many much more forward-thinking people than myself.

Self-confidence and self-control in complex situations. Also concerned about others' opinions.

Self-confidence: Not always, although I generally try to convince myself that I'm equal to most situations.

Self-control in complex situations: See? Didn't I say that before myself? Just don't let me misplace my screwdriver!

Concerned about others' opinions: Depends on what, I suppose. I'm very (perhaps overly) concerned about others' opinions of me. I do try to give others' views a fair hearing, even if I don't necessarily agree, and I accept that not everybody sees things as I do (which brings us back to "indulgent", I suppose).

Capability to influence the acts. Sometimes he/she is more exacting to themselves than others.

Capability to influence the acts: I don't consider myself a very influential person, but my daughter has proven me wrong about that. It's frightening how often I've seen myself mirrored in her, and not always for the good!

More exacting to (my)self than others: This is worded ambiguously. It could mean that I'm harder on myself than others are on me, or it could mean that I'm harder on myself than I am on others. Either is true.

Seldom makes jokes.

Now that's just wrong. So horribly, horribly wrong! You were doing so-so, but now you've blown yourself right out of the water!

Seldom will miss the chance.

...to do what??? I really want to know!

Excessive sex adventures.

Once again, horribly, horribly wrong! (Unfortunately).

The program guessed, correctly, that my astrological sign is Libra and suggests that I'd make a good artist or actor.

And, look! It even came up with graphs of my most likely Myers-Briggs types. Seems it has me pegged as a likely ENTP (which, interestingly enough, was what one of my readers guessed as well). In fact, when I took the test, I came up INTP, which also came up fairly high on the probability list. Apparently, I'm nothing like an INFJ, though, which is how most authors appear to be characterized. So much for my fantasies about writing the Great North-American Blog, I guess.

The program comes with a gallery of famous (and infamous) faces, complete with profile analyses. According to the software, Adolf Hitler is hostile, clever and diligent, and would make a good military man. Before you say "Duh!" and assume that the authors simply made the profiles fit the personas, it also describes Adam Sandler as hostile, clever and honest, and says he would make a good scientist. Babe Ruth is a pessimist, diligent and volitional, and would make either a good worker or an "official" (though it doesn't specify official what). Bob Dylan is sanguine, an egoist and diligent, and would make a good physician or teacher.

One other interesting feature that the program offers is the ability to compare a sketch with others in the database in order to find faces with similar features. The people in the database whose features are apparently most similar to mine include:

Evita Perron (similar eyes and lips with an overall similarity of 35.5%)

Paul Lynde (similar nose and eyes with an overall similarity of 35.5%)

Gary Becker (similar lips and eyes, with an overall similarity of 34%)

Peter Lawford (similar lips and eyes, with an overall similarity of 32.5%)

Dick Cheney (similar lips and eyes, with an overall similarity of 32.4%)

The verdict? Well, I'm not exactly a convert to physiognomy just yet. Some of the points are accurate, some aren't, and some are just plain contradictory. A lot of them are generalizations that probably apply to just about everyone. Still, the program does make for an interesting conversation (or in this case, blog post) starter.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to have some excessive sex adventures.

How To Be A Rock Star

2010-11-28T11:45:00.017-05:00

Ever had dreams of becoming a famous rock star, up there on the stage, guitar in hand, idolized by millions? Many of us have.

It takes a convergence of many important talents including musicianship, showmanship, music composition, poetry (lyrics) and, yes, even a certain amount of business sense (rock and roll is a business, after all). All of the most famous rock stars since rock and roll's early days have demonstrated the above talents in varying degrees but there is one secret that seems essential to success. One characteristic seems indispensable if you're going to make it in the "vicious game" that is rock and roll, as April Wine's Myles Goodwin so aptly put it. All of the rock legends that you see below had it. Can you guess what it is?

Billy Joel

Bob Dylan

George Thorogood

Jimi Hendrix

Mark Knopfler

Mick Jagger

Ringo Starr

Steve Tyler

That's right, it's a full set of large, meaty lips. I'm not completely sure why this is, but it probably has to do with the proper enunciation of the word "Baby".

Sour Limes

2010-11-20T14:01:00.006-05:00

On October 26th, Lime Group was slapped with a court injunction to disable the file sharing and peer-to-peer networking functionality in its popular LimeWire file sharing software. The upshot of this, of course, is that the LimeWire software can no longer illegally download files (especially music and videos).

Horrors! You mean the free ride is over? The gravy train has left? No more free music? This is an outrage! The public has rights! It's undemocratic! It's unconstitutional!

The court injunction was, of course, driven primarily by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) who have seen file sharing services like LimeWire as a stone in their corporate shoe for several years now. Let's face it, if everybody downloads music without paying for it, the music industry must eventually collapse. If the music publishers and distributors make no money, they can't afford to pay the artists and performers, who then also make no money and can't afford to continue exercising their creativity (except, perhaps, in their spare time, outside of their day jobs and, even then, it would have to be strictly a labor of love).

The RIAA's web site claims that illegal downloading of music globally has caused economic losses of about $12.5 billion per year in lost earnings, lost jobs and lost tax revenues. I tend to look at this type of argument with some skepticism. What they're really saying is that, if every single song that was downloaded illegally in the past year had been paid for, the music industry, its artists and performers and the tax man would now be about $12.5 billion richer.

First of all, let's remember that this is just an estimate. Nobody can realistically say exactly how much music was illegally downloaded last year. Even granting that the estimate is reasonably accurate, those making the estimate appear to assume that those who downloaded music illegally would have downloaded that music even if they had to pay for it. This fails to consider that there is still the third option of simply not downloading at all. I suspect that the majority of the music that was illegally downloaded would not have been downloaded if there was no choice but to pay for it. Just because I'm willing to take something for free doesn't necessarily mean that I'm also willing to pay for it. That's a logical argument, not a legal or a moral one. It does, however, challenge the premise that the music industry should, by all rights, be $12.5 billion richer today than it was at this time last year.

I think that one of the main reasons why people download music illegally is because there's a perception that the music industry is full of mega-rich stars who don't need the money anyway, and so illegal downloading is seen as a victimless crime. Michael Jackson's estate alone is said to have made more that $275 million last year. Not bad, for a dead guy! This in spite of the fact that many people surely downloaded Jackson's music illegally. It's hard to sympathize with someone who cries that they only made $275 million when they really should have made, say, $500 million. In that context, it becomes understandable that many don't feel a great deal of guilt about not tossing another ten bucks into the huge money pot for their copy of "Thriller".

Of course, for every Michael Jackson out there, there are hundreds of lesser-known, struggling artists who can't yet afford to quit their day jobs. On the other hand, not many people download their music, because they're not as well-known. Ironically, this poorer class of artist is often happy to allow people to download and distribute their work for free in the interest of getting increased exposure.

Another rationalization that's sometimes used to defend music piracy is the argument that the music industry has already reaped the profits from the music that it offers and shouldn't be paid for it again. The music industry is notorious for re-releasing the same work multiple times under different packaging. Aside from "Greatest Hits" compilations, there are the "Extended" or "Deluxe" editions of albums, which are often simply the original albums re-packaged with an extra track or two included.

I'll pick on one of my personal favorite musicians in this regard. I've been a huge fan of Mike Oldfield's music since my college years. I've legally purchased most of his albums twice, first on vinyl and then again on CD. Of course, the digital CD format is of a higher quality than the old vinyl. It's reasonable to pay for the upgrade, although one could make the argument I shouldn't necessarily have had to pay full price the second time around. Why not offer me a discount for proof of purchase of the older vinyl pressing? Unfortunately, music industry marketers have never been known for this sort of forward thinking, which is largely why the digital revolution caught them so unawares. But I digress, as usual.

Even allowing that I was willing to pay a second time for CD versions of Oldfield's music, he has re-released and re-re-released his seminal work, "Tubular Bells" so many times now that it even makes me groan "Enough already Mike!" "Tubular Bells" was originally released on vinyl, both in stereo and quadraphonic formats. A re-mixed version with an out-take that had been dropped from the original release was included as part of a boxed set (appropriately entitled "Boxed") along with re-mixes of several of Oldfield's other previously-released albums. Of course, all of the above were eventually released on CD as well, and some even on DVD.

Then followed several sequels to the work including "Tubular Bells II", "Tubular Bells III" and even "The Orchestral Tubular Bells" but these, although variations on the original theme, were new recordings and therefore qualify as new material, rather than a simple re-packaging of previously released work. There was also "Tubular Bells 2003" which was a complete re-recording of the original work but at least it was a re-recording rather than just another re-mix or remastering.

In contrast, the 25th Anniversary Collector's Edition CD release, was the merely the original Tubular Bells, cleaned up and re-mastered and re-packaged yet again. Segments of the work have appeared on compilation albums such as "The Complete Mike Oldfield". In 2009, four physical variations and two digital variations were re-released in the U.K. and Ireland, and five physical variations were released in the U.S. and elsewhere. These include a new stereo mix, a 5.1 surround mix (entitled "The Deluxe Edition") and an "Ultimate Edition" which basically contains all of the previous editions plus extras. All of these are nothing more than re-mixed and remastered versions of the same work that Oldfield first recorded in 1973. I'd say he's milked his Tubular cow for all it's worth, and then some!

Incidentally, I was dismayed to discover that some of the CD releases of Oldfield's albums were missing material that had been included with their vinyl brethren. The CD version of "Crises" lacked the song "Mistake", which appeared on the vinyl album, and the CD version of "Incantations" seriously abridged one of the tracks, fading it up a good two or three minutes into the piece as compared to the vinyl version. Given that a compact disc is capable of storing more music than a 12-inch vinyl disc, I see no excuse for these omissions. In this regard, it might be argued that Oldfield or his publishers stole from me, and from all of his other fans that purchased the CD versions of those albums. So I put this question to you; if I were to find those missing tracks on LimeWire or some similar file sharing network (and, make no mistake, there are others), would I be justified in downloading them for free?

I'm not arguing in favor of illegal downloading of music. As I said, if everybody did so, the music industry would collapse. The RIAA is well within its rights in fighting music piracy. I'm merely pointing out why it's understandable that some people do illegally download music without feeling that they are committing any great wrong, and I question whether music piracy has really hurt the industry as badly as the RIAA would have us believe.

The Great Programmer

2010-11-06T12:53:00.004-04:00

In his blog, Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert, for those of you who have been holed up in a cave) has, on occasion, mused that we may be nothing more than an elaborate hologram or computer program created and run by some higher being. In one example he cites having had a vision, earlier in life, about becoming famous which, in a very real sense, he did. He postulates that he may, in fact, be nothing more than a holographic self-portrait of the higher being that actually created him.

I like Adams, but many of his theories evoke a decided "yeah, right!" from me. This one certainly did. Until I started watching nature shows.

Ever since I got a wide-screen, high-definition TV, I've really gotten into the BBC Earth documentaries such as "Planet Earth" and, most recently, "Life" (the version narrated by David Attenborough, not Opra Winfrey, thank-you-very-much!)

If you'll bear with my going off on a tangent for a moment, I can't resist noting that my dad, who enjoyed all kinds of nature shows, would have loved these documentaries, especially on high-definition display technology. It's a shame he didn't live to enjoy them.

Getting back on topic, these nature documentaries have reminded me of something for which I have no rational explanation, nor has anybody else as far as I know. More incredibly, extending Adams' theory that humans are nothing more than computer programs to include the animal world as well would provide as credible an explanation for this phenomenon as any other. The phenomenon? In a word, instinct.

"The Pocket Oxford Dictionary" (which happens to be the only dictionary that I have handy while writing this) defines instinct as the "Innate propensity, esp. in lower animals, to seemingly rational acts; innate impulse or behaviour; intuition". In other words, it's that "magical" gift that animals have for knowing what to do and how to do it, without actually having to learn it. All cats wash themselves regularly. Momma cat doesn't have to teach them this. It's an instinct.

That was a simple example. The Monarch butterfly provides us with a much more incredible one. Each fall, great swarms of Monarch butterflies fly from southern Canada, across the North American continent, over 3,100 miles, to converge in a small town in Michoagan, Mexico, where they mate. In the spring, their offspring migrates northward, back to Canada. Since the lifespan of a Monarch butterfly is only a few months, none of them ever make the trip more than once. Each makes a one-way trip, then spawns and dies. So how does each new generation know exactly where to go, or how to get there?

The male garibaldi (no relation to Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian political activist), an orange, tropical fish that looks like a goldfish, prepares a nest, entices the female to lay her eggs in it, and then fertilizes them and chases her off, since she's likely to eat the eggs if given the chance. How does the male know this? And why isn't he tempted to eat the eggs?

We call it instinct, but I can't help noticing that instinctive behavior of this sort is very similar to the behavior of a computer program that's been hard-coded to perform a given function. The computer isn't taught by other computers. It doesn't take it upon itself to search Google for instructions on how to open a window or play a video or send and receive e-mails. Some programmer has given it those instructions and, as a result, it simply knows. Electronic instinct.

Maybe Scott Adams' idea isn't so far-fetched after all. Maybe there is a Great Programmer, and the reality that we perceive is just His program, executing its routines. On a darker note, as I observe the world and I witness the on-going unrest in the middle east, the increasing economic disparity between the wealthy few and the proletariat masses, and man-made ecological disasters such as last summer's BP oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, I can't help but muse as to whether we share more in common with software bugs and computer viruses than we do with useful programs.

Sucks To Be Right

2010-10-31T10:54:00.007-04:00

In last week's post, I commented on my local mayoral candidates, speculating that one of them, who hadn't done much campaigning on the advice of his doctor, was liable to "keel over and die" within his first year in office, even if he did win. Well, thanks to alert reader "Tubes", I learned that he did just that - on the day of the election, no less! Damn, it sucks being right all the time!

My first reaction on learning this news was to feel like a bit of an jackass for denigrating the poor man just before his death. My second thought was ... "What the HECK is the guy doing running for mayor if he knows he's that sick???"

My third thought was realizing that, even if this candidate, who came in second by the way, had won the election, our incumbent mayor still would have re-taken the office when the winner died, assuming that he would have been the next runner-up.

So here's a man who had only two competitors for the mayor's office, neither of which provided serious competition, and only one of which could have actually ousted him for good. How badly would you have to suck to lose under those circumstances?

I hope he isn't patting himself on the back too hard.

Halmanator For Mayor

2010-10-23T17:06:00.005-04:00

In a couple of days, most Ontario communities will be holding municipal elections. Municipal elections are notorious for producing the smallest voter turnouts. This is probably because many deem them to be of lesser importance than federal or provincial elections, since we're not voting for a Prime Minister nor even a Premier. It's just a bunch of city councillors, some school trustees and ... oh yes ... the mayor. Who cares, right?

In many ways, the people who prevail in municipal elections affect our daily lives much more directly than does either the Prime Minister or the provincial Premier, so we really should care. Our property taxes, leaf collection, snow removal, fire and police services and access to community services, not to mention the general quality of life in our home towns, are directly affected by the decisions made by these people. Still, I can't entirely fault those who fail to vote.

Unlike federal or provincial elections, where one votes for a party moreso than for an individual, municipal elections are very much contests between individuals. There are a lot of people running and, although the local newspapers and the internet try to provide coverage, most of us don't know all the candidates or their backgrounds and researching them takes a significant amount of time and energy. Thus, sadly, many either simply don't vote, or those who do simply vote for names that they recognize, which means that the same people keep getting elected over and over again, regardless of their suitability or lack thereof.

It becomes even worse when you live in a town like mine. I have a choice of three people when it comes to choosing our next mayor. One is the current incumbent, with whom I'm not particularly impressed and whom I would love to see replaced.

The second, according to an article in my local paper reviewing the three candidates, is a fifty-eight-year-old "former manager in the manufacturing sector who has worked as a consultant on local political issues and helped with a local business since closing his own home-renovating business more than a decade ago". Okay, so he has some practical business and management experience - that's good - but a spotty success record - not so good. He further promises to "re-evaluate the salaries of city employees when contract negotiations come up". Sounds good at first first blush, except that this could easily mean that he intends to freeze the salaries of city employees, some of whom actually earn their pay, while doing nothing about his own over-inflated salary or those of the city council members. He proposes to find the savings necessary to minimize municipal tax increases by possibly trimming back the number of community centres. That may sound like fiscal responsibility if you happen to agree that the city has too many community centres ... unless, of course, the one that you like to use happens to be one of those that gets shut down. Finally, the news article notes that this particular candidate "has not done much campaigning this election on the advice of his doctor". Great! So, even if I actually like him, he's liable to keel over and die on me within a year of taking office. Next!

The third candidate is a 46-year-old who is "currently on disability and has been receiving assistance through Ontario Works for the past several years" and apparently didn't even own a phone before deciding to run.

"I'm just a regular guy," he is quoted as saying. "Any person in this city could be mayor. I truly believe that and I think our mindset has been befuddled into thinking you have to have certain qualifications. That's not the case. It's all about your heart." Translation: I have no particular qualifications for the job, but please vote for me anyway. This candidate promised to freeze taxes and "only keep a portion of the mayor's annual salary." I guess he figures that even just a percentage of the mayoral salary has got to be an improvement over welfare, which is what "Ontario Works" is.

So I'm left with a choice between an incumbent whom I'd like to vote out, a business manager with a questionable track record who might not be long for this world, and a welfare bum. Given choices like these, it's easy to understand why so many don't see the point of voting. Maybe I should run for mayor next time around!

Wrong Decade

2010-10-08T20:06:00.009-04:00

After typing out last week's post about Battling Tops, I turned to Google's image search, as I usually do, in search of an appropriate graphic with which to dress up the post. Whilst searching for pictures of the Battling Tops game, I came across pictures of several other games from the same period. One of these was the sixties version of Milton-Bradley's Battleship.

You've gotta love that! Dad and "Junior" getting in some quality male bonding time over a friendly game of Battleship, while mom and sister smile approvingly from the background as they do up the dishes like good wenches. Man, I was born in the wrong decade!

Incidentally, I've updated the Battling Tops post with a couple of embedded YouTube videos. One shows the original seventies TV commercial, and the second shows four grown men playing the game, and totally getting into it. I think the latter really captures the flavor of the game. Check it out!

Battling Tops

2010-10-02T12:37:00.006-04:00

If you're part of the baby boomer generation (like me), you likely remember a host of games from the seventies by Milton-Bradley, Mattel and Ideal such as Battleship, Don't Spill the Beans, Ants in the Pants and Ker Plunk! These games tended to feature some kind of gimmick; a plastic case containing a grid full of ships and pegs, a large pot on a swivel that you filled with beans, a plastic pair of pants into which you flicked colorful plastic ants or a transparent plastic tube full of holes into which you stuck colourful straws, atop which you piled marbles and then proceeded to pull out the straws one-by-one trying not to drop any of the marbles. These "games" were essentially built around interesting toys and very much targeted at younger kids. One of the most memorable, for me, was a weird little game called Battling Tops by Ideal.

Battling Tops was a game for two to four players that featured a circular, slightly concave arena with four gates or corrals at the top, bottom and sides. Each gate or corral belonged to one of the players, who would wind a little plastic top into it using a string with a finger-loop at one end. A quick yank of the loop would unwind the string and send the player's top spinning out of its corral and into the arena, where all four tops would collide and bounce off each other. Eventually, of course, the tops would lose their momentum and fall over. The last top left spinning was declared the winner. Each top bore a sticker eblazoned with a funny moniker such as "Hurricane Hank", "Dizzy Dan" and "Twirling Tim".

This sort of game provided endless hours of entertainment to one as easily amused and as transfixed with spinning objects and buttons and gadgets as I. Once in a rare while a collision between two or more of the tops would pop one up into the air and right out of the arena (I recall the TV commercial for the game showing just such an occurrence). But I recall one incident in particular that was so bizarre that I wouldn't believe it myself if someone related the tale to me, yet I swear that I am absolutely not making this up (® and TM Dave Barry Enterprises, inc.)

One evening, while playing Battling Tops with my sister, my mom and my dad (yes, back in those days, families actually played games together sometimes) my hapless top did get knocked out of the arena, just as described above. Surprisingly, it landed upright on the table, outside of the arena, still spinning.

Amused, I decided to let it go and continued to watch it. As it shimmied slowly across the table, its base hit a seam (this was one of those extendable tables, you see) which caused it to pop up into the air, right back into the arena, where it landed, still spinning! The moment this happened, the other three tops, which were also still going, converged on the upstart survivor, as if to punish it for its audacity, mercilessly beating it to the ground. My top didn't win, but it sure did try!

Faith and Hope in Charity

2010-09-26T12:51:00.008-04:00

I support a handful of charitable organizations. Each month, I try to make some room in the budget to support some worthy cause for the less fortunate and disadvantaged. I'm not all full of myself about it. I just feel an obligation to help out those less fortunate than myself, because there but for the grace of God, as they say. I should know. I've been there myself. I used to have a developmentally challenged son who was afflicted with cerebral palsy and, earlier this year, I got a taste of what it's like to lose my job and a sizable portion of my family's income. When shit happens, it sure is nice to come across somebody with a shovel.

I've noticed, though, that the more I give to charities, the more of their unsolicited mail fills my mailbox each week. That's because most charities have an irritating habit of sharing their mailing lists with other charities. It's like feeding seagulls at the beach. You start by tossing a few tidbits to one or two gulls and, before you know it, you're swarmed by a whole flock of them, some of which crap on your head.

I understand that the charities do this to make a few extra bucks. I also know that most charities provide an opt-out check box in itty-bitty little fine print on the reply form that you send back along with your cheque, that tells them not to share your contact information with others. I do suspect that at least some charities don't actually check whether their supporters have checked this checkbox when checking in the cheque, because I make a point of always checking it, yet I still get reams of stuff from charities that I've never heard of, and have never supported. Even if they do honor the opt-out check box, I still say "don't be punishing those who are good enough to support your cause by encouraging others to flood their mailboxes with junk". At most, there should be an opt-in box, asking donators to specifically give their permission to share their info, and that info should not be shared unless said box is checked.

My other bone of contention is the silly "gifts" that many charities send in hopes of encouraging people to support them. By "gifts", I mean the calendars, the note pads, the greeting cards and the return address stickers. Oh my gawd, the return address stickers! I have a whole freakin' drawer full of return address stickers! I'd better not move for the next ninety-two years!

The greeting cards are the next most common irritants, especially around Christmas time. In the past week, I received no less than four envelopes stuffed with Christmas cards from different charities. I didn't need them, even though a couple of sets were, admittedly, quite attractive, because I have two shoe boxes full of charity-provided greeting cards, most of them for Christmas, that I've collected over the years! I'm flattered that you think otherwise, but I'm sorry to have to admit that I just don't have that many friends! I'm covered until Christmas, 2061!

I shred all the stuff that I don't keep, partly because it has my name and address, etc. on it, and partly because it takes up less space in my waste basket after being shredded into tiny strips of paper, yet I completely filled an entire waste basket with just one week's worth of charity Christmas cards. I pity the trees that died in vain.

Some charities go completely over the top. I've received tote bags, pens, desk calendars and even an umbrella for cryin' out loud! I can't help but wonder how many of these packages these charities mail out and how much it costs them. Why don't they just keep their junk gifts and put the savings into their cause?

As it happens, at least one charity which writes me regularly must have heard this very question from others like me, because they've explained it. Quite simply, they say that it works. Sending out this crap seems to increase donations, and the extra money that it brings in more than offsets the money that they spend in sending it. In my case, at least, they sort of shot themselves and their peers in the foot by admitting that because I've since resolved to stop supporting any charity that inundates me with junk gifts, now that I know that rewarding the behavior only encourages more of it.

I don't mean to denigrate charities or to discourage my readers from supporting them. Charities rely on generous donations from their supporters, especially in economically challenged times like these. I personally intend to continue donating regularly to those charities that I support. But, if you're reading this and you happen to be in any way affiliated with any charity, please take this rant to heart, and point your superiors at this post. I support charities, not because I need calendars or address labels or greeting cards or umbrellas, but because I just want to give a little something back. I suspect and hope that others like me feel the same way. Don't alienate us by punishing us for helping out.

Tub Door Installation Tips from Mr. Handyman

2010-09-12T10:56:00.010-04:00

Yesterday, I hung a new set of tub doors in our bathroom. "Big deal," you're probably thinking. Well it is, considering that this is me we're talking about. I'm a man of many talents, but handyman skills are not among them. I'm much more comfortable with a mouse (the computer variety) in my hand as opposed to a hammer or a power drill. In fact, I've whacked my fingers with enough hammers in my day that I can safely say that I'm often decidedly uncomfortable with a hammer in my hand. This is in keeping with the natural order of things. I think that there are people who are good with tools, and people who are good with computers, but it's unnatural for anybody to be proficient with both. As someone once correctly observed, beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers!

To give you some idea of my degree of hardware competence (or lack thereof), I'll note that I bought one of those home handyman books full of "how-to's" for just about any home improvement or repair project that you can imagine. The chapter about hanging tub doors estimated that the job should take about two hours for a professional, three hours for someone who's "handy" and four hours for a novice. It took me the better part of four days; something like 20 hours all told.

In my own defence, there were certain factors that the book did not take into account. The first was the time needed to remove the old tub door. Why is it that D.I.Y. books always seem to assume that you're building a house from scratch and there's nothing old that first needs to be removed, scraped away, ripped out or otherwise mangled? They further assume that all materials, surfaces and tools are clean and new.

In my case, they score one out of three. My tools are, indeed, clean and new, because that's how rarely I use them. My caulking gun gleams pristinely, completely unmarred by any stain or dried caulk. I think the price sticker is still on it. Heck, up until a few weeks ago, it had never come anywhere near a tube of caulk and, when it finally lost its virginity, so to speak, it was only because somebody borrowed it (yes, my caulking gun sleeps around!) Yet, I've owned it for years, even though I never use it, because real men own caulking guns. Heaven forbid I should find myself sitting around enjoying a beer with the boys when the conversation turns to home improvement and I have to admit that I have no caulking gun! At that point, I may as well just don and apron, pick up a feather duster and start dancing around in a pink tutu!

Speaking of tools (and getting back on topic), here is a list of the tools that you'll need if you ever consider hanging tub doors (speaking from experience):

Level

Tape Measure

#2 HB Pencil

At least 15 erasers

Hacksaw

First aid kit with plenty of gauze

Miter box

Hammer

Electric drill

Cordless telephone with 911 on speed dial

Caulking gun

Caulk for caulking gun

Caulk remover

Screwdriver

Duct tape (this is of course, standard equipment for any D.I.Y. project)

Websters Dictionary of Expletives and Vulgarities (as is this)

To work out how much caulk and caulk remover you'll need to buy, use this formula:

Tubes of Caulk = ((Length of area to caulk in feet ÷ 10) x 0.2 litres x 3) ÷ Tube Volume

Tubes of Caulk Remover = ((Length of area to caulk ÷ 10) x 0.2 litres x 2) ÷ Tube Volume

I didn't think that taking down the old tub doors would take terribly long, because they seemed to be falling apart on their own, without any help from me. That's why I needed to hang new doors in the first place. One of the rollers had rusted through and broken off. I figured if I just blew on them hard, they would simply disintegrate into a pile of dust.

Not so! One of the first laws of home repair is that things tend to deteriorate only to the point of non-functionality, at which point what remains stubbornly refuses to be extricated. Like a senior public servant, my old tub doors had become functionally useless, yet nearly impossible to replace with something that works. The main problem was the base channel that guided the bottoms of the doors. It had been caulked to the top of the tub wall, apparently with some brand of mutant, super-grip caulk that binds to tub walls at the molecular level. I darn near broke my screwdriver trying to pry up the stubborn bit of metal, and I was only able to finally remove it by bending it into sections beyond all recognition. When I put it out on my curbside, it was immediately snapped up by a modern art collector who saw it as a representation of the juxtaposition of the urban philosophy over an existential zeitgeist.

The other reason that I took so much longer than the estimated time in my D.I.Y. book is because the book failed to factor in the time required to take down the first tub door that I purchased after having installed it, pack it back up, return it to the store and exchange it for another which actually works. The first tub door that I selected was the Tub Door from Hell, apparently designed by a twisted individual who takes some sort of perverse delight in watching do-it-yourselfers waste half a weekend trying to erect a sliding door which is never, ever going to work.

My first clue that I was about to fight a losing battle should have come when I opened the box after lugging it home, only to find that someone had apparently already tried to install this tub door and given up, as evidenced by the fact that there was dried caulk all over the frame. Now, most people, upon seeing this, would immediately pack the damaged goods back up and take them straight back to the store. But not I! Oh no! For one thing, I couldn't abide the thought of having to pack everything back up again, tape up the box and lug the unwieldy hulk all the way back to the store. For another, this particular door had been the only one like it in stock, so I knew that I couldn't exchange it for a similar, but unused, one. Since the dried caulk was on the underside of the frame pieces and the visible parts seemed more or less unmarred, I unwisely decided to simply scrape away the dried caulk as best I could and then go ahead a install it myself. Big mistake!

What I had failed to consider was that the previous purchaser of this particular set of tub doors probably returned it after unsuccessfully trying to install it for a reason. Oh, something along those lines of reasoning may, in fact, have vaguely entered my mind, but I, ever the optimist, immediately dismissed the thought, surmising that the previous purchaser was probably an incompetent noob who didn't have a clue what he was doing, and that I would surely prevail where he failed. In retrospect, the "incompetent noob's" name was probably Bob Vila, and even He could never have successfully installed these particular doors!

While installing the first set of doors, I encountered and worked around several problems, including missing pieces (such as the plastic wall anchors, which were probably still firmly lodged in the previous owner's bathroom wall but, no matter, I had a few leftover ones laying about) and a base channel that didn't really fit the top of my tub wall. Each of these obstacles I grappled with and overcame (amid much cursing and hair-pulling) but the death stroke, the "coup de grace", as it were, came when I finally had the frame installed (against all odds). I've heard it said that confidence is that feeling that you get just before understanding the full extent of the problem. I figured, at this point, that the worst was behind me. All that was left to do was to hang the doors in the frame. I carefully manoeuvered the first door into position, only to see it sit firmly on the base channel while its rollers hovered about a quarter inch above the top tracks. At this point I realized, to my horror, that the doors were too tall for the frame. I assure you that this was not due to any mistake on my part, given that I had not cut or modified the side brackets in any way. They were simply too short, right out of the box. It was then that I finally admitted defeat. Tears were shed, more expletives were spoken, and I dejectedly took down the frame, tried to clean the pieces up as best I could, packed everything back into the box, loaded it into the car and drove it back to the store.

On the bright side, the the nice lady at the customer service desk gave me no trouble about returning the goods, even though they had clearly been used. In fact, she didn't even open the box to inspect the merchandise. She cheerfully refunded my money, after which I'm sure that she just as cheerfully had one of the stock boys put the box right back into stock to await the next hapless customer.

The next set of doors that I chose were much more intelligently designed than the previous ones, and I was able to successfully install and hang them, but it still took me about five hours; an hour longer than my D.I.Y. book's "novice". Here's a picture of my handiwork.

Now, if you'll pardon me, I really need a shower!

Money Matters: Part 3

2010-09-04T19:35:00.009-04:00

I recently speculated that we may someday witness the end of money, as electronic commerce seems to be increasingly replacing the exchange of physical cash. Within a week of that post, I read this news article announcing that Passport Canada has stopped accepting cash. The article, which features a photograph of Santa Claus trying to purchase a Canadian passport with a $50 bill, reports that Passport Canada has decided to stop accepting Canadian currency as payment for the passports which it issues. The agency apparently wants to reduce the risk of theft by preventing its employees from handling cash. Apparently, screening potential employees so that only honest ones are hired is too much trouble.

If I may digress for a moment, I would also like to point out here that this issue pretty much settles the on-going dispute over Arctic sovereignty between Canada, Russia and sundry less important nations. Everyone knows that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole. If he wants to purchase a Canadian passport, he clearly considers himself a Canadian citizen, which makes the North Pole and surrounding territory Canadian soil (or ice, as it were).

Moving toward the other extreme, I came across an editorial article, still more recently, written by a young woman who prefers paying with cash over plastic (credit or debit) cards because it helps her to budget by making her more conscious of her dwindling savings. The author further notes that an increasing number of restaurants are apparently no longer accepting plastic cards because of the built-in transaction fees. It seems even the legendary Bob Dylan refused to allow promoters of a recent show that he gave in California to sell tickets, insisting that all tickets be purchased at the door and that "E-e-e-verybody must pay cash" (to paraphrase one of his better-known lyrical phrases). Of course, this policy does generate a slight risk of a repeat of the tragedy at the infamous 1979 Who concert during which several fans were trampled in the mad rush for seats but, hey, far be it from me to ask Bob Dylan to compromise his principles. Better men than I have tried and failed, I can assure you.

Finally, if that still wasn't "out there" enough, there's the curious story of Mark Boyle, "The Moneyless Man". As incredible as it may seem, Boyle has managed to live without earning or spending a red cent since 2008. He lives in a trailer that was given to him for free, he grows or barters for his food, he uses a solar shower and even makes his own paper. He's written a book about the experience and how he managed it, entitled "The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living" (a title with a delicious double-entendre - er, was that "Freakonomic" living, Mark?) According to Mark, he's never been happier and has no plans to return to a dependency on money. Now, I don't like to question another's motivations but Mark's surname, and his accent in the accompanying YouTube video, suggest that he's of Scottish descent, and we all know about the Scotts' notorious reputation for frugality!

But seriously, I feel nothing but admiration and awe for Boyle, a man who has proven that my idealistic fantasy of a moneyless world could be a reality if only there were more people like him.

Centennial Post

2010-08-28T21:22:00.008-04:00

When I first began toying with the idea of starting my own blog, I shied away from it, primarily because I couldn't imagine what I would blog about. I was inspired to blog largely by my best friend, Mart, who had started his own(now defunct) blog before me. His blog was largely about his personal life and his family. I recall musing aloud to him in an e-mail once that, were I to start a blog like his, a typical post might read something like "Went to work again today. Nothing new or interesting happened. Went back home and spent the evening as usual." (Admittedly, this hypothetical post was conceived during one of my more sullen, cynical moments). How amazing that, having finally opted to actually try my hand at blogging, I find myself at my keyboard this evening, tapping out my centennial post!

Yes, Dear Reader, in the 22½ months since I started this blog, one hundred posts have sprung from the mind and the fingertips of The Halmanator. That's the equivalent of over a thousand Twitter tweets!

I've made a point of attaching labels to each and every post, right from the very first. You can see them at the bottom of this, and all my posts. Click on one of the labels, and you'll get a list of all the other posts to which that same label is attached. My initial reason for doing this was to give readers who enjoy any given post a quick and easy way of finding other posts on a similar topic or with similar moods or themes. I soon discovered a secondary benefit to doing this, however. Blogger.com tracks the number of posts with which each label is associated, and this makes for some fascinating statistics. Before proceeding, let me clarify that the stats which you are about to review do not include this post, as I've not yet attached any labels to it at the time of this writing.

The label which is far and away my most prolific, being attached to 65 of my 99 prior posts (just a smidgeon short of two out of every three) is "humor", and that is well. My primary intent in maintaining this blog has always been to amuse and to entertain, with an emphasis on "amuse". To steal a line from my favorite musician, Mike Oldfield, "It's something that makes you feel good, because there are enough things in the world that make you feel terrible." That, first and foremost, is what this is supposed to be.

My distant second place tag is "Personal" (41 posts). That's just under half. Like many people, I suppose I like to talk about myself. More to the point, I often like to connect personal references and observations with whatever it is that I'm writing about, in order to show my reader why the subject has meaning for me.

I have to admit that most of my regular readers are personal friends of mine and I like to think that, through this blog, some of them have perhaps gotten to know me better. When I write, my target audience, the reader whom I picture in my mind, if you will, is a stranger who doesn't know me at all. I have the odd (and sometimes unsettling) ability to conveniently forget, while I'm blogging, that my writing will be read by friends and family. Because of this, I've caught myself writing things that I wouldn't necessarily say to a close acquaintance, friend or family member. It's a round-about way of opening up. It may also be, in part, that I'm subconsciously emulating Mart's blog, which was pretty much 100% personal, to some degree.

In third place, we have "Editorial", connected to 33 posts; exactly one third of them. I really never meant for this blog to become a soap box. However, I have do have strong opinions on a number of subjects and I simply cannot stifle myself when I feel that something must be said, not that I suspect anybody really cares what The Halmanator thinks. Happily, I'm not well-known enough to seriously offend anyone.

Interestingly, fourth place is a tie between "Politics" and "Work" (15 posts each). "Politics" is strongly linked with "Editorial". Many of my editorial posts involve politics, and therefore carry both tags. The fact that "Work" figures fairly prominently probably has a lot to do with me having been laid off late last year. Losing one's job is never easy, and it was pretty much the first time that it had really happened to me, so I exorcised my demons through my writing. In this way, "Work" became tied in with many of my "Personal" posts.

In fifth place we have "Music" (10 posts). I'm a great lover of many different kinds of music. It relaxes me when I'm tired and lifts my spirits when I'm sad, worried or fearful. My wife and I like to spend between 30 and 60 minutes most evenings doing nothing other than reclining in our easy chairs and listening to music. It's not just background noise to us; we really listen, taking in each note, each lyric, each nuance. I suspect that not many people do this anymore. I think that more people should try it.

I won't dwell on the tags whose number of uses can be counted on the fingers of both hands (except for music, I suppose) other than to note that there are a large number of tags that appear only once. These tend to be very specific, such as "Bettman", for example. I mentioned Gary Bettman in exactly one post (Whoops! Make that two!) and I wouldn't give the man the satisfaction of wasting a lot of ink (or, in this case, bits) on him.

Having posted 100 times, I consider myself an experienced enough blogger to offer sage words of advice to any fledgling bloggers or to those who may be contemplating starting blogs of their own and have stumbled upon this post whilst still deciding on whether or not to take that Great Leap.

First of all, know your purpose. Whether your blog is to revolve around a theme or whether it is to be more random in nature, such as this blog, be clear about why you're blogging. To paraphrase a line from Oliver Stone's Talk Radio, "The world is listening; you'd better have something to say." Do not attempt to make an easy buck by festooning your blog with ads. It only annoys your readers and I'm convinced that the only people who actually draw a large enough readership to make any kind of money from people clicking ads on their blogs are celebrities. Scott Adams is one example, and even he admits that the income that he receives from internet ads on his blog is negligible (by his standards, anyway).

Have some idea of how frequently you intend to post. Will it be daily? Weekly? Monthly? At random intervals? Posting frequently can be difficult. It can be hard to keep thinking up new and interesting topics. While you may have a handful of ideas at the start, ask yourself how easy it will be to think of more once you've used them up. Ask yourself how much time you can realistically devote to blogging. It's not uncommon for me to spend between one and two hours composing a single post. (I proofread and re-word a lot). How frequently can you afford to spend that kind of time on your blog? On the other hand, if your posts are too infrequent, your readers may get tired of seeing nothing new and stop returning. If you review my previous posts, you'll find that I usually tend to post once a week. That works well for me.

Use a stat counter to track your visitors so that you have some idea who's reading your blog. I use StatCounter.com, which is free as long as your blog is getting less than 250,000 hits per month and, if you're getting that many, you can probably afford to pay for the service. (Also, if you're getting that many, you may disregard my advice about not putting ads on your blog).

Don't get discouraged if you have few or even no readers at first. It will take time for people to find your blog and not everyone will enjoy it enough to keep returning regularly. After almost two years of blogging, I'm just a shade under the 250,000 monthly hits that would put me over StatCounter.com's "pay" threshold (I get about ten to fifteen hits per day on average), but I also know that I have about ten regular readers, and some of them are people whose identifies I have yet to deduce. A few of them may quite possibly be people whom I don't even know. I like to think so.

If you're just starting out, a good way to get people visiting your blog is to spread the word among friends and family. Word of mouth is a wonderful thing. I have a tagline beneath my signature at the end of every e-mail that I send which advertises this blog. It serves as both an invitation to those who have never visited by blog, as well as a gentle reminder to those who have visited before but may not have checked back for a while. One of the things that StatCounter.com tells me is how people are finding this blog (i.e. where they're coming from) and this has confirmed that several people have come here by clicking on the link in that tagline.

Finally, there are a number of widgets out there that you can attach to your blog and the posts therein which help people to spread the word if they like what they see. The "Share" button at the end of this and all of my posts is a good example of same.

I'd like to close by thanking my readers, once again, for sticking with me. If nobody were reading this blog, it would no longer exist by now. As every late-night radio announcer knows, everyone who talks likes to know that somebody is listening. If you like what you see here, or on any other blog or website, do the author a favor and spread the word. I also encourage you to post comments. Feedback is a powerful motivator, and a great way to say "I'm listening, and I'm interested in what you have to say."

The Fountain

2010-08-22T12:03:00.010-04:00

My local grocery store has a bargain bin full of cheapie DVD movies. It's one of my personal weaknesses. I simply cannot go to the grocery store on even so simple a mission as acquiring a loaf of bread and a bag of milk without being drawn, as if by some invisible, irresistible force, to the DVD bargain bin.

Being a "bargain bin" after all, most of the offerings therein tend to be of the variety that a regular video store couldn't give away, including such titles as "Old Yeller - The 'You Shot My Dog' Edition" and "Barrie the Barber - Uncut".

You can imagine that such stimulating titles as that tend to stay in the bargain bin for week after week after interminable week, so it's not as though I'm likely to find anything new from one visit to the next. I know this. My rational intellect explains this to me each and every visit. Yet my feet stubbornly insist on moving toward the DVD bin, almost of their own accord, because one never knows what bargain-priced gems one might uncover if one but digs deeply enough into the bowels of the collection. (Let me take this opportunity to assure my fellow shoppers that I do tend to make the DVD bin my last stop, as I'm not so thoughtless as to handle food intended for human consumption after immersing my hands in the ick of some of the titles to be found therein).

In my own defense, I have rescued a handful of palatable titles from the quagmire in my day, and have even uncovered the occasional, albeit rare, gem. It is most likely this that keeps me going back. Ever the optimist am I. Still, most of the titles that I've acquired in this manner are passable at best.

The store management, having apparently entered into a partnership with Satan, have deviously priced their bargain bin movies at $7.99 apiece, or two for $10.00. This means that, should I happen to stumble upon the occasional title that actually interests me, I invariably feel compelled to include a second selection, because it apparently makes more sense to me to shell out an extra five dollars for a title in which I have little or no interest than to pay an extra $2.99 for something that I actually want. It is in this manner that I came into possession of "The Fountain".

"The Fountain" (© Warner Brothers, 2006) directed by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) and starring Hugh "Wolverine" Jackman (X-Men) and Rachel Weisz (The Mummy), is not a movie that I particularly craved for my collection. I'd never even seen it before purchasing it, nor had I even so much as seen a trailer. I only purchased it as a "second" to bring down the price of something else that I actually wanted from $7.99 to $5.00. Still, the cover artwork and the short write-up on the back cover sounded mildly interesting, so I decided to take a chance. Here's how the writers of the jewel case copy sought to tantalize me (please feel free to read the following aloud in your very best "Don LaFontaine" voice):

"Yesterday, today, tomorrow. Past, present, future. Through time and space, one man embarks on a bold 1000-year odyssey to defeat humankind's most indomitable foe: Death.

Hugh Jackman plays that man, devoted to one woman (Rachel Weisz) and determined to protect her from forces that threaten her existence. His quest leads him to a Tree of Life ... and to an adventure into eternity."

Sounds fascinating, no? A "1000-year odyssey" certainly sounds epic! The reference to the "Tree of Life", combined with still shots of Hugh Jackman dressed up as a Spanish Conquistador conjured up images in my mind of Ponce de Leon and the mythical Fountain of Youth. Yes! That must be what the "Fountain" in the title refers to! The bit about "one man, devoted to one woman (being) determined to protect her from forces that threaten her existence" sounds disturbingly "chick-flicky" but, no matter, mayhap this might entice my better half to watch the movie with me.

Having since watched to movie, I'm reminded of a scene from "The Simpsons" in which Bart, Milhouse and Nelson" see "Naked Lunch", apparently mistaking it for an adult film, and emerge from the theatre some time later, looking very disappointed. Nelson quips "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title!". After viewing "The Fountain", I shared Nelson's sentiments. I'm not certain exactly what the titlical "Fountain" refers to, but I can state categorically that there is no fountain to be seen anywhere in the film. Not a one. Not even so much as a lawn sprinkler! Well, okay, there's a sort of pool of water with a tree growing out of one end of it, but it's not what I would call a "fountain" by the strictest definition of the word. This is just the first, and most obvious, indication that "The Fountain" is to be anything but straightforward. On the up-side, it's certainly no chick-flick either.

The movie begins, promisingly enough, with Hugh Jackman, as a Spanish conquistador, in an South American jungle with a band of his fellows, preparing to infiltrate an Aztec pyramid on a quest for ... we don't know what at this point, but it seems to have to do with a woman (perhaps a queen?) and a ring. Predictably, a trap is sprung and the hapless handful of Spanish soldiers find themselves surrounded by hordes of Aztec warriors. Equally predictably, Jackman's "stalwart" companions immediately turn tail and run, leaving him to face the horde alone. He, of course, puts up a valiant fight, taking out several warriors before being relatively quickly overcome. Somewhat formulaic so far, but good, solid "guy" fare nonetheless.

Rather than killing him immediately, as one might expect, the Aztecs prod him to climb the pyramid, which he of course does (no doubt thinking "Well why didn't you say so? That's what we were going to do anyway!") only to find an Aztec priest awaiting him at the top. The priest inserts a ceremonial dagger into Jackman's abdomen, crying "Death is the road to awe!" (why don't you try it yourself if you think its such a trip?) and then, just in case the dagger doesn't do the trick, swings a flaming sword, at his neck.

Jackman cries out (well who wouldn't?) except that, suddenly, he's no longer a conquistador. No, he suddenly finds himself as hairless as Patrick Stewart, sitting in a lotus position, floating amidst the stars inside of a giant glass bubble which appears to be racing toward a giant nebula and which contains a large tree. It is at this point that one begins to suspect that this movie may be better appreciated after ingesting your favorite mind-altering substance.

Approaching the tree, the monk-like Jackman reaches out to touch its trunk, which appears to be covered in fine hairs, not unlike the hairs found on human skin, which seem to stand up as if drawn toward his outstretched fingertips. He whispers something inaudible to the tree, then scrapes off a bit of its bark and eats it. Suddenly, a woman appears who looks remarkably like the one who sent him on his Aztec quest. He asks her what she's doing there. She beckons him to take a walk with her, and the scene changes again.

Now they're in a modern, 21st century home. Jackman now looks much more contemporary having regained a full head of hair (but not the conquistador's beard). He is a young doctor, we learn, and he is summoned to a lab where a Reese monkey is being prepped for brain surgery. The nature of the monkey's ailment is not made clear, but it is clear that his chances of survival are not good. A sudden flash of inspiration causes Dr. Jackman to inject the monkey with an extract from some exotic Guatemalan tree. Predictably, the monkey later makes a miraculous recovery.

I certainly don't want to give away any spoilers for those of you who may be intrigued enough to see the movie at this point so let me just summarize by saying that the rest of the movie continues to jump around between Spanish conquistador, 21st century and cosmic space bubble. Along the way we follow several seemingly disjointed yet strangely connected plot points involving a wedding ring, a dying star and an unfinished book. The only constants are Hugh Jackman, the woman (Rachel Weisz) and, of course, the ubiquitous tree. The overarching storyline involves the quest for immortality.

While I certainly wouldn't rank it among my top ten, or even top one hundred, favorite movies of all time, "The Fountain" is not what I'd call a bad movie; just a bewildering one. I suspect that another viewing or too may reveal subtleties that I missed the first time around. The fact that I'm willing to endure same in the interest of finding out if I'm right is probably the best testimonial I can give the work.

Grass

2010-08-08T11:07:00.005-04:00

"...Neither be cynical about love, for in the fact of all aridity and disenchantment, it is perennial as the grass."

- From the Desiderata (Anonymous)

It's summer and, most anytime one ventures outdoors in my neighborhood, the drone of a lawnmower can be heard somewhere. That's how people in southwestern Ontario spend their time during the summer, especially on weekends; tending their lawns.

Lawn care was never one of my favorite chores. Some people seem to enjoy it. There are some who absolutely obsess about their lawns. One elderly lady in my neighborhood spends hours literally crawling over her lawn, plucking each unwanted dandelion by hand. I swear she keeps a pair of hand clippers on her person with which she trims any blade of grass that has the audacity to stick up more than a quarter of an inch higher than its peers! Her lawn looks immaculate, to be sure! Golf courses envy her. However, I for one just can't bring myself to devote that kind of time or energy to grass. After all, it's grass! It's supposed to look after itself.

It doesn't help that I'm horticulturally challenged, to put it kindly. I actually have, in my personal library, a book entitled "Lawn Care for Dummies". Mind you, it's a fascinatingly informative book. Did you know, for instance, that Kentucky bluegrass isn't something that you play on a banjo? Who knew?

The book also goes a long way toward easing the consciences of those of us who admit to less-than-perfect lawns.

"A completely weed-free lawn is impractical, if not impossible," it consoles. "Go take a look at the best lawn in your neighborhood. Take a real close look, on your hands and knees if necessary"

(uh, scootch over a bit there, will you Mrs. Martin?)

"What do you find? Some weeds? Now back away from the lawn, and what do you see? The weeds are gone, at least to the naked eye."

Okay, let's review. What have I learned so far?

Even the best lawns have weeds.

If you don't look too closely, you won't even see them.

Cool! I think I can close the book right there. Just ignore the weeds. Works for me.

Wait a minute! On my lawn, I can still see the weeds, even when I back off! In fact, I think I need to get up close and personal with my lawn in order to spot the odd healthy blade of grass! Don't blame me, though. It's the government's fault.

The Ontario government irritated the heck out of many suburban home owners this year by outlawing cosmetic pesticides. In their defence, they only acted out of a concern for public health. See, chemical pesticides pose a serious health risk, especially to young children and pets. At least, Ontario's control-freak premier thinks that they might pose a serious health risk. No scientific studies have ever shown any confirmed correlation between pesticide use and health problems of any kind. I, however, can categorically state that, ever since the pesticide ban took effect, I've noted a marked improvement in the health of young dandelions and grubs all over my property.

I also have to concede that the provincial government has shown some flexibility on this issue. For example, the pesticide ban does not apply to agriculture, forestry or golf courses. So... we can't put weed killer on our lawn, because it might be unsafe, but go ahead and spray it all over the produce that goes to our supermarkets for human consumption. And, while public health is important, let's be reasonable! This is golf we're talking about! Let's keep our priorities straight, shall we?

Okay, this is starting to sound a bit "editorial" now, and I promised myself I was going to lighten up a bit this week. Reviewing my last couple of posts, this blog has been getting far too serious for my taste, lately. This is supposed to be fun!

Hey! I just found out about another cool book that I must add to my library...

No, I haven't read it yet. How'd you guess?

The End Of Money

2010-08-02T11:55:00.005-04:00

When I was younger, and much more idealistic than I am now, I used to imagine how wonderfully Utopian our world might be if we could only do away with money. Imagine a world in which nobody has to pay for anything. Everyone contributes according to their talents, and takes only what they need. Crime and poverty are non-existent. People are more fulfilled and happy in their work, because they do what they enjoy and what they excel at, rather than what pays the most. Gone is the society in which a privileged few enjoy obscenely ostentatious lifestyles while the unfortunate live in unspeakable poverty. Everyone enjoys a lifestyle that's comfortable, but not extravagant.

Before I go all John Lennon on you, let me assure you that I fully understand why such a system could never be. One problem is greed. There will always be those who crave the lion's share; those who, for some reason, feel entitled to more than the rest. The other problem is laziness. There will also always be those who want to enjoy the fruits of others' labor without contributing themselves. In order for my Utopian society to work, everyone would have to make a genuine effort to contribute to the best of their abilities and learn to be content with a common standard of living.

On the other hand, it seems to me that we may be evolving to a version of my money-less society. I rarely use cash anymore. Almost all of my payments are either by debit card or through on-line banking. I likewise almost never receive cash either. My employer pays me by automatically depositing my salary into my bank account. There's not even a cheque to deposit. I can see society moving to a point at which all transactions are electronic and no actual money ever changes hands at all.

This ties in with my recent post about money having no intrinsic value in and of itself. First, we did away with the gold backing the cash. Now we're eliminating the cash itself. In a sense, you might consider an electronic commerce system as dealing in "points" rather than cash. Each of us receives 'X' number of "points" for whatever contribution we make to society, and we use those "points" to acquire the things that we need and want. The "point" system gets us around the problems of avarice and sloth. It's not exactly the Utopian society that I imagined in my younger days, but perhaps is as close as we're ever going to get.

Stone Washed

2010-07-18T10:48:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, I went canoeing for the second time in my life. Our group followed the same course that I blogged about the last time around; a twenty kilometer run from Cambridge to Paris, Ontario.

My wife and daughter did not accompany me this time as the bad taste from our last expedition still lingered in their mouths, and neither was much in the mood for a swim, if you get my drift. Instead, my rowing partner this time around was my good friend, Michael Feeney; an avid outdoorsman with previous canoeing experience. He even brought his own wooden paddle, with which he would whack me every time I mistakenly referred to it as an "oar".

Having Michael in the canoe with me was a refreshing change from my previous company. It was nice to row with someone who worked with me, rather than having to constantly struggle to counteract what the other person was doing, or having to periodically exclaim "Okay, stop rowing for a moment ... no, just stop. Stop! Just stop I say! STOP!!!"

Michael and I worked well together and made very good time. By the halfway point, we were far ahead of the rest of the group. We enjoyed the peaceful, natural surroundings and caught many a glimpse of nature's wonders, including two cranes, a muskrat, and a young fawn.

The fawn was a special treat. It stood there on the riverbank, watching us curiously, apparently content that the water people seemed comfortably distant enough to be unable to harm it. Then Shawn, my cousin's eighteen-year-old son, who followed a short ways behind us in another boat, spied it. Shawn is ... how shall I put this? Not exactly the sharpest knife in the proverbial drawer. The moment he noticed the fawn he crowed "HEY DAD! DEER! LOOK DAD! IT'S A DEER! DAD LOOK! HURRY DAD, IT'S RUNNING AWAY!" And thus was our admiration of the young fawn sadly curtailed.

Our canoe trip was a spur-of-the-moment idea, agreed upon because it looked like a splendid day for one. The morning was brilliant and warm, with nary a cloud in the azure sky. Naturally, while we were on the water, huge gray clouds sprang up literally from out of nowhere and rained down upon us; not just a gentle, pattering rain, mind you, but a full-blown thunderstorm with sheets of water cascading down on us! As if nature were rubbing it in, my wife reported later, when I returned home, that she had seen no rain at all. No, apparently, it only rained where our group decided to go canoeing. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that it did not, in fact, rain anywhere other than along the length of the Grand River. The clouds probably went out of their way to follow our boats and relieve themselves upon us, not that I suffer from any sort of persecution complex. Perhaps the Great Rainmaker reads my blog and remembered my earlier post romanticizing rainy days. "So you like rain, do you?" I imagine Him chortling to Himself, as he began conjuring up a collection of thunderheads.

In spite of Michael's superior canoeing skill and the improvements to my own skills from the lessons learned on my previous trip, our journey down the Grand River was not completely without mishap. Our canoe did get upset just one time, as we tried to negotiate a fast-moving current over some particularly jagged rocks. Our boat came up against one of the rocks and listed seriously to port (he said, in his most convincing "Old Sea Dog" voice). We managed to counter-balance and avoid tipping, but the incline had been enough to allow a large quantity of water to rush into the boat. By the time we were righted, the boat was low and heavy, and water was still sloshing in over the sides, not to mention the fact that we were still being jostled about by the rocks. I just had time to shout "We're not gonna make it!" before we listed again and capsized.

Here's where I made my mistake. I instinctively tried to stay with the boat. Before we disembarked on our trip, our guide had cautioned us never to position ourselves downstream from the canoe should it tip, as a water-logged canoe can weigh as much as two thousand pounds, and getting pinned against a rock by that kind of weight can totally ruin one's day.

I quickly learned the truth of this as I did, indeed, find myself on the downstream side of our overturned craft. I tried to stand up and hold the canoe in position with my torso, only to be unceremoniously pushed back as my legs splayed out underneath the canoe. Remembering the guide's warning about getting pinned against a rock, I wisely moved aside and allowed the boat to float past me, so that I was now upstream of it.

This is where I made my second mistake, deciding that, if I couldn't brace myself in front of the canoe, I would grab onto its stern and stay with it as it floated downstream. Well, stay with it I did (for a few brief moments), with the boat dragging me along behind it, over many a large, jagged rock.

After a few painful bounces, I wisely let go and tried to plant my feet on the riverbed and stand up, but the water was high and the current was strong from the rainfall. I couldn't find a level footing because of the many jagged rocks, and the currently simply buckled my knees and pulled me down. I flailed around among the rocks for several frightening moments, swallowing large mouthfuls of water, coming up just long enough for a desperate gasp of air before tumbling under again. Now I know how laundry must feel in a front-load washer, except that the walls of a front-load washer drum are at least relatively smooth! Stone washing may be cool for jeans, but not so good for shins and kneecaps. Somehow, I managed to hang onto my paddle throughout the ordeal, which is a very good thing. It did escape me a time or two, but I always managed to grab it again before it got out of my reach.

As the current tossed me helplessly about, I had the presence of mind to worry about dashing my head against one of those jagged boulders. Had that happened, things might have gotten seriously ugly. Equally worrisome was the realization that my strength was failing me from the exertions of trying to steady myself. The longer I tumbled about, the more powerless I became to regain control. Fortunately, I cleared the rocks just then and floated into a river trough that was so deep that I could no longer touch bottom with my feet at all, but at least it was calm and, thankfully, I was wearing my life preserver. I bobbed there, limp in the water, allowing myself to slowly float downstream while I caught my breath and collected my wits.

Not long afterward, my feet touched ground again. In the meantime, Michael had caught up with our canoe and one of the guides helped him to right it, after which we pulled it to shore and collapsed in the tall grass. My knees and shins looked like something out of Mel Gibson's "The Passion Of The Christ".

Now here I sit, bruised, scabby and sore, but happy to be here to tell the tale. Here are a few tips for anyone who may someday decide to go canoeing, especially in a fast-flowing river, from one who's learned from his mistakes:

Try to place any belongings that you bring along in water-tight bags, preferably something that can be clipped, tied or otherwise attached to the canoe in some fashion.

If you capsize, don't panic. It will happen from time to time, just as skiers or snowboarders will wipe out from time to time, but it needn't be traumatic unless you lose control of the situation. Keep your head about you. DO hang onto your paddle, DO NOT worry about the canoe. The canoe may float downstream a ways but it likely won't go very far, especially if it's water-logged. You can catch up with it later. If you've attached your belongings to it as I suggested, you'll catch up with them too. Your paddle, on the other hand may quickly disappear downstream and you'll need it.

Financial Cognitive Dissonance

2010-07-10T17:34:00.005-04:00

One of the nice things about this blog is knowing that my readers (or my regular readers, anyway) are intelligent people who don't need me to explain that cognitive dissonance refers to the stating of a given belief but acting in a manner contrary to that stated belief. That's probably why my readership is so small.

The G-20's call for austerity, the burgeoning global debt and Greece's recent financial crisis have got me thinking about money, lately. I wonder how many of us recall that paper money has no intrinsic value in and of itself. Paper money is nothing more than a fancy I.O.U.

In medieval times, people would trade goods and services for other goods and services; "you give me that ox, and I'll give you twenty chickens" or "you give me a room and a bed for the night and I'll plow ten furrows for you tomorrow".

Trading literal goods in this way was somewhat cumbersome and arbitrary. Precious metals, such as gold and silver, were far easier to carry and exchange than oxen, and their value was more easily standardized; easier yet if those precious metals were stamped into light-weight, standardized coins.

One of the earliest examples of this originated in the Bohemian city of Joachimsthal in 1518, where a silver coin known as the "Joachimsthaler" or "Thaler" (pronounced "Tahler") for short was minted in large numbers thanks to the rich silver deposits to be found near that town. In fact, the "Thaler" is the origin of the North American "Dollar's" etymology.

Eventually, the world came up with something even lighter and easier to exchange than gold and silver coins; paper money. The idea, originally, was that each dollar (for those of us living in North America) was really nothing more than a government-issued voucher for an equal value in gold; in other words, each paper dollar represented one dollar's worth of gold stored in Fort Knox or some other such place of safekeeping. Rather than lugging around heavy gold coins or bars, people simply exchanged these paper vouchers instead.

In the early seventies, then President Richard Nixon stirred the financial porridge, so to speak, when he decided to kill the gold standard; in other words, he decreed that the U.S. dollar need no longer be directly convertible to gold. Why? Well, because the United States' ill-considered conflict in Vietnam plus increased domestic spending had created these pesky fiscal and trade deficits. Nixon's solution - no problem; we'll just start printing lots more paper money and do away with that inconvenient rule that it be backed up by something of real value.

You'd think that the rest of the global financial community would cry "foul" or something but, oddly enough, they did the opposite. Gradually, country after country began to follow the United States' lead and started printing currency willy-nilly, beginning with West Germany and followed by Switzerland and, eventually, the rest of Europe and, of course, Canada. Because of all this, today international currencies are valued based on their projected future value rather than the amount of gold that they can buy; in other words, currencies today have no real intrinsic value, other than that assigned by speculators.

In an earlier post, I wondered aloud whether the amount of money that is owed by Canada alone, to say nothing of the rest of the world, actually even exists. I suggest this answers that question.

I wonder what would happen if the majority of the world's financial institutions realized that simple fact tomorrow? More interestingly, if we assume that the world's financial institutions are governed and operated by basically intelligent people who already understand this fact, then we can only conclude that they conveniently choose to disregard that knowledge, and carry on as though money were still backed up by something of value. Now wouldn't that be a fascinating example of financial cognitive dissonance?

A Black Mark on Canada

2010-06-27T11:00:00.021-04:00

Dr. Paul Williamson, the father of a Kent State student, once wrote in a letter to his son, "Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you." After witnessing the anarchy that erupted during the G8 summit yesterday, I can understand his point of view.

Toronto resembled a war zone yesterday as windows were smashed and police cars were burned by a group of anarchist thugs known as the "Black Bloc". Let's not make the mistake of giving these goons the respectability of labeling them "protesters". The legitimate protesters demonstrated quietly and peacefully, as one would expect from any self-respecting Canadian. The legitimate protest parade was already "fait accompli" by the time the black-garbed, masked hoodlums began their vandalist spree. The only thing that they were protesting was peace, order and the rule of law.

Sadly, it's precisely these types of hooligans that enable our government leaders to justify the expenditure of a mind-boggling one and a half billion dollars for security. Even the harshest critics of the G8 and G20 summits can't deny that a gathering of all of the world's major leaders in a single location makes a tempting target for any fanatical whacko with an agenda of destruction to which he believes to have been ordained by The Almighty Himself.

Ridiculous fake muskokas aside, I would argue that getting the world's leaders together to talk about the many global challenges that we face today including economic, political and natural, can only be a good thing. The jaded may argue that these summits are nothing more than pointless photo ops for a group of talking heads. There may even be some truth to that point of view. But would it be better if the nations of the world simply threw up their hands and didn't even try? Would it be preferable for every nation to focus solely on its own interests rather than trying to work together to find common solutions?

Regardless of what we may think of these summits, I think that most Canadians will agree that nothing justifies what happened in Toronto yesterday. Broken windows and burning police cars are images that we might expect from the streets of Tel Aviv, Belfast or even Paris, but not from Toronto. Canadians are better than that.

The Fathers' Day Present

2010-06-19T12:08:00.008-04:00

The Fathers' Day that stands out most clearly in my memory is the one from 1967. I was four years old at the time, and not yet a father myself. But I had a father, who smoked at the time, and who had expressed an interest in a certain lighter that he had seen in a store during a recent shopping expedition. So mom decided that she would get him said lighter as a Fathers' Day gift, and that she would take my two-year-old sister and me along, partially because she had no sitter for us and partially so that we might feel that we had participated in getting dad's Fathers' Day gift.

"Big deal," you may say. I agree it may not seem like one, until you understand that:

a) The store at which dad had seen the lighter was a considerable distance from our home.

b) We had only one car, which dad had taken to work, and mom didn't drive anyway.

So we took the bus, but even that entailed a fair bit of walking, both to get to the bus stops and because mom didn't remember exactly where the store in question was, having been there only once or twice, and never having navigated her way there on her own. You know how it is; when someone else is driving, you don't always pay attention. Besides, the buses almost never take the same route as one would take by car.

Still, mom was confident that she could find her way there and so off we went, the three of us, leaving home at some time between 9 and 10 am. We started off in the best of spirits, but young children tend to tire easily. By noon or so we still hadn't found the store, we were getting hungry, not having had lunch, and my sister and I were both getting hot, tired and cranky.

Not long after that, we finally did find the store that we were looking for, and our spirits lifted slightly, both because our goal was finally within reach and because we were finally able to get some lunch.

Once inside the store, mother was just as vague about exactly where dad had seen the lighter as she was about the location of the store itself, so we wandered around searching for a bit until mom finally gave in and asked a store sales clerk. Unfortunately, we had been in Canada for less than two years at the time, having immigrated from Austria in 1965, and her mastery of the English language was far from refined, so she mistakenly asked the sales clerk where we might find a "flashlight", which she thought was the english word for an instrument that lights cigarettes. The sales clerk, of course, very helpfully took us straight to the sporting goods department, where there was a wide variety of flashlights to choose from, none of which, unfortunately, produced enough heat to ignite the end of a cigarette.

We stood there, somewhat befuddled, for a few moments. Mom did not want to explain to the sales clerk that this was not what she wanted at all as she already felt stupid enough. She didn't want to have gone to all that trouble for nothing either. So, after a little more unsuccessful searching around, she finally bought herself a pair of gloves for forty cents, and we headed home. By the time we finally arrived back home, it was about 2:30 pm. Exhausted, we all went straight to our rooms where we slept until almost dinner time.

Dad never did get his lighter; in fact, he eventually gave up smoking entirely, which makes his premature departure from this life seem all the more unfair. When mom later told him of our adventure, he laughed and told her that she'd better mount and frame those gloves.

Happy Fathers' Day, dad. I miss you.

Entitlement

2010-06-12T11:40:00.006-04:00

Those who know me well, and even those who just read this blog with any sort of regularity, know that one of the things that I despise most is the stuffed shirt or fat cat; people with far more money than any one person needs or has a right to; especially people who came by that money through dumb luck or through family or social connections, as opposed to having earned it.

Understand that I have no quarrel with someone who happens to win a lottery, as long as they don't start acting as though they somehow deserve their good fortune. What really raises the temperature, not to mention the pressure, of my blood the most, is people with a false sense of entitlement; those for whom no extravagance ever seems sufficient; those who seem to perpetually want more, no matter how much they have already. Eleanor Clitheroe appears to be that kind of person.

Eleanor Clitheroe was vice president of Ontario Hydro from 1993 until 1999, when the Ontario government restructured the bloated, inefficient utility, already mired in debt, splitting it into five companies, one of which became known as Hydro One. Eleanor Clitheroe became Hydro One's president. She was paid a salary of over $2.2 million in 2001, which included $174,000 for a car and $172,000 in vacation pay.

In 2002, Hydro One's Board of Directors moved to fire Clitheroe, citing misuse of company funds, including personal club memberships which she charged to her corporate credit card and $40,000 worth of renovations which she had Hydro One's service providers make to her home. She eventually repaid the renovation money, but not until after she was caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar. She wound up quitting to escape the humiliation of being fired.

Since her deservedly disgraceful departure from Hydro One, Clitheroe has been collecting a monthly pension of $25,000. My keen sense of math tells me that's about $300,000 per year; a comfortable pension even by Canadian politicians' standards. But not enough for Eleanor Clitheroe, apparently. Last year, she petitioned the Ontario Superior Court to raise her monthly pension to $33,000 - that's almost $400,000 per year - claiming that her constitutional rights had been infringed when the Ontario government passed legislation that significantly reduced the $6 million severance which she had negotiated into her employment contract to a "paltry" $3 million. To its credit, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that having a grotesque severance cut in half after being fired for incompetence and embezzlement is not an infringement of a person's constitutional rights. This month, Clitheroe is back in court appealing the decision.

Eleanor Clitheroe is the reason why every Ontario family is now required to help pay down the enormous debt that Ontario Hydro and its offshoot, Hydro One, ran up under her watch. If you're a resident of Ontario, check your next Hydro bill. It's right there in black and white; "Debt Retirement Charge". In 2006, Ontario's Auditor General, Jim McCarter, confirmed that $127 million of that deficit came from "questionable" charges to corporate expense accounts, with few receipts to justify them. What's worse, we're given no idea how much of the debt has been paid down, and how much remains; in other words, how long we're expected to continue paying for the incompetence and excesses of Clitheroe and her executive cronies.

I'm not suggesting that Clitheroe is solely responsible for the Hydro debt, but I'm singling her out for her greed and her lack of empathy with the common ratepayer. In an economy in which many are unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, and many have lost jobs without receiving a cent of their modest severance entitlements, as often happens when companies go into receivership, Eleanor Clitheroe feels no shame in suggesting that a monthly pension that's more than three times the average working Ontarian's salary, to say nothing of the average retired Ontarian's pension, is insufficient.

If I were given any say in the matter, I would not only deny Clitheroe's bid to increase her pension, I would garnishee the pension that she is receiving so that she can personally help pay down the hydro debt.

Oh, and here's the icing on the proverbial cake. These days, "Reverend" Eleanor Clitheroe has become an Anglican priest. It would seem that the Anglican clergy aren't required to take a vow of poverty.

The Cover-up

2010-06-06T10:29:00.007-04:00

My mother owns a very attractive living room set. The couch, chair and love seat are upholstered with a white fabric embroidered with a floral pattern, and the armrests are accented with teak wood. At least, that's how I remember it. I rarely actually see the upholstery or the teak accents, except on special holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, or perhaps when mom has special visitors, such as her Austrian relatives. I don't count as a special visitor. Neither does anybody whom she sees more than twice a year. The rest of the time, mom's living room furniture is covered with a checkered cloth cut from an old bedsheet and sewn to loosely fit over the various pieces (mom's something of a seamstress, you see).

The old bedsheets are there, of course, to keep the furniture's fabric looking nice. If someone should thoughtlessly sit on the furniture with dirty clothes, or if food or drink should accidentally be spilled on the bedsheets, they can be relatively easily removed and washed. Let's face it, white tends to stain pretty easily.

While visiting mom earlier this week, I noticed that her living room chair happened to be uncovered (I suppose the bedsheet cover was being washed or something) and I was struck by how much nicer the chair looked than did the rest of the furniture. Herein lies the fallacy. Mom covers up her furniture to keep it looking nice but, in covering it up, she hides its beauty. Personally, I'd be inclined to leave the furniture uncovered, to be admired by others and enjoyed by myself, even if it means risking the odd stain. I can deal with that if and when it happens. There are a lot of effective upholstery cleaners available these days.

Those who protect the fronts of their cars with vinyl "bras" commit the same fallacy. The bras are there to prevent stone chips and keep the finish looking shiny and new, except that you can't admire the shiny finish since it's covered in vinyl. I think it would make more sense to eschew the bra, show off the finish while it lasts and, once it gets marred by the inevitable stone ships, then cover them with a bra.

I've heard it proposed that it's foolish to save things for special occasions, because the special occasion may never come. More to the point, why can't the special occasion be right now? Let's try to remove phrases like "some day" and "one of these days" from our vocabularies. Let's make today the day. Don't save your best perfume or cologne. Use the good china. And lose the crappy bedsheets, mom. I promise to put on clean jeans before I come over.

Slipping On The Noose

2010-05-29T10:07:00.008-04:00

About six months ago, I was unceremoniously introduced to the world of the unemployed. I blogged about it at the time, as I do regarding most significant life-changing events. Last week's post contained a less-than-subtle hint that I've since managed to find new employment. Allow me to make it official and announce, formally, that I am indeed working again. Hooray for me!

My new employer requires that all male employees wear neckties. It's a technology company that services external customers, some of whom occasionally visit our offices, so the owners want everyone looking professional. Fair 'nuff.

I once read a quote (whose source I, unfortunately, don't know) which declared that neckties are for "compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-trained" (and who) "carefully line up pencils on otherwise clear desks." Is that the image that we want to project to our clientele, gentlemen? Do we want to look like a bunch of wieners? Hmmm?

I haven't had to wear a necktie at work for over fifteen years. My very first job was with a very small startup venture whose offices were inconspicuously located in a tiny little rural town above a Stedman's store. Most of the employees were kids fresh out of college like myself. It was a very informal environment and we didn't get a lot of outside customers visiting us so we dressed casually.

My next job was with a medium-sized appliance manufacturer. It was a much more formal environment infested with V.P.s, managers and human resource wonks who all apparently placed a fair degree of importance on employee attire, so the men were expected to wear collared, button-down shirts, creased pants and, of course, the ubiquitous necktie.

My next two or three jobs also required me to wear a tie ... at first. Around the mid nineteen-nineties, however, business attitudes in general began to relax somewhat. More and more companies began to abandon the archaic insistence on the necktie in favor of a new standard of attire that became known as "business casual". Men were still required to wear shirts with buttons and collars, but the necktie was no longer mandatory and the pants need not be creased (although blue jeans were still considered "pantalones non grata"). The nicest thing, to me, about losing the necktie was that I could now wear short-sleeved shirts on warm days. You just can't wear a necktie with a short-sleeved shirt, unless you want to walk around looking like NYPD Blue's Andy Sipowicz.

Trends tend to be prone to a slippery slope effect and so, for the next few years, office dress codes continued to relax even more. By the time I returned to the aforementioned appliance manufacturer for my second tour of duty in 1999, office staff were wearing jeans and T-shirts to work. I'll concede that the workplace dress code pendulum may have swung a little too far in the opposite direction. The main problem here is that there will always be that small contingent of people with no sense of style or taste. You know what I'm talking about. The Wal-Mart crowd. They cause offense or embarrassment (for the human race in general), co-workers complain to management and management responds in the same way that they always do; with knee-jerk overreactions. Rather than dealing with the small handful of offenders individually, they pass sweeping policies and, before you know it, everybody's wearing neckties again. I've noticed a gradual shift back toward more formal office attire policies over the past five years or so among companies in general, not just my former employer.

What's the deal with neckties anyway? What, exactly, is the appeal of this decorative bit of silk (or polyester for the budget-minded) hanging from a man's throat? They have no practical purpose. They're not wide enough to be effective bibs or, if they are, you shouldn't be wearing them. They make you hot in the summertime, yet they really don't warm you up in the winter; not like an ascot, which is practically a scarf!

I did a little research on the history of the necktie. Seems that men have found it necessary to wear some form of ornamental decoration around their necks since ancient times. The ancient Egyptians, the Chinese and the Romans all wore ornamental neckwear that resembled ancestors of the modern contemporary necktie. These generally indicated social status in some manner, which explains why, even today, the higher one ranks on the corporate ladder, the more likely one is to be seen wearing a tie.

Since it's been so long since I've had to wear neckties on a regular basis, many of the ties that I still had were showing their age, so I bought some new ones. The other day, during an idle moment at the office, I took a moment to examine the tie that I was wearing a little more closely. "Montebello", read the label, "100% silk". Ooh! Italian silk! Classy! Then, underneath that, "Made in China". Ah! Apparently, this is a product of those well-known Chinese silk traders, the Montebellos, not to be confused with the notorious Sicilian Yuang family.

I once had a debate with a former work colleague about not just neckties, but office attire in general. The company for which we both worked at the time still required men to wear neckties. I, being always a bit of a rebel, had expressed a desire to dress more casually, especially since we never had external customers in our offices at the time. "Who were we impressing?" I challenged, "Each other?"

My workmate countered with the premise that one's attire affects one's work ethic. He seemed to be suggesting that, if we were to dress casually, our work habits would likewise become increasingly lax. What nonsense! I pointed out that, if he truly believed that, then he would be obliged to dress up when he had to come in to the office on the occasional weekend, as sometimes happened, or even if he were to work out of his home. He conceded that he wouldn't likely take the philosophy quite that far.

On the other hand, another gentleman whose acquaintance I recently made expressed the opinion that our attire affects the attitudes and demeanors of those with whom we come in contact. The example he gave was that of walking into an everyday coffee shop and, here, I'm talking about a real coffee shop; a Tim Horton's, not some pretentious Starbucks or William's. If you walk in wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a ball cap, you'll likely be greeted with something akin to "Yeah, what'll ya have?" Walk in wearing a dress shirt, pressed pants and a tie, on the other hand, and you're much more likely to hear "Good morning, sir, how can I help you today?" Here, I'm inclined to agree. Our appearance has a decided impact on how people regard us.

Being a little older and, hopefully, a little wiser than I was when I had that debate about office attire with my old colleague, my rebellious attitude toward neckties has mellowed somewhat. I no longer detest them quite as much as I used to. Heck, I even have a little fun with them. This past week, I walked into the office one day sporting a plain but very bright canary-yellow tie against a dark mauve shirt. An exercise in contrast. The following day, I wore a tie whose color matched that of the shirt that I wore so closely that, at first glance, you almost couldn't tell that I was wearing one (a tie, I mean, not the shirt). Yes, I've learned to accept the necktie, although I'm still no Bryan Ferry.

The Speed of Thought

2010-05-22T15:36:00.011-04:00

Last month, when I posted The Genius of Pac Man, I didn't realize that Pac Man's 30th anniversary was only a month away, else I'd have saved it for yesterday. No matter. If you haven't already read it, feel free to click the link above in honor of the anniversary.

Do you think in sentences? I sometimes like to take a walk in the early morning, before work. The weather is nice this time of year, and it's quiet, and it gives me a chance to reflect on "things". As I allow my thoughts to roam where they will, I find myself thinking in sentences.

"I should wash the car this weekend."

"What can I blog about this weekend?"

"Get a load of me! After being unemployed for five months, I've only been back at work for four weeks, and I'm already obsessing about the weekend!"

As I mentally formulated these sentences in my mind during recent walk, I suddenly realized that this is a redundant mental activity. I had already finished the thought long before I'd finished mentally assembling it into words.

I believe that we think in concepts, not in language. Language is a tool for communicating the concepts to others. The concepts themselves don't take nearly as long to formulate as it takes to communicate them.

Before Firefox became an alternative web browser, it was a fictional fighter jet that Clint Eastwood stole from the Russians. Remember that movie? If you saw it, you may also remember that one of the features of this cutting-edge Russian weapon was thought-control. No cumbersome pushing of buttons or pulling of control sticks. The pilot merely had to think what he wanted to do, and the plane would do it. The only problem was that, as it was a Russian aircraft, the pilot had to think in Russian. At one point, Eastwood's character couldn't seem to launch any defensive missiles because he was thinking about launching them in English. Realizing his mistake, he repeated the thought in Russian and launched the missiles just in time to avoid certain disaster.

How ridiculous! We don't think in words! As anyone who has ever looked at an E.E.G. readout will tell you, we think in little squiggly lines! A mental image of an airplane launching missiles would be neither Russian nor English.

The advantage of this advanced thought-control technology was supposedly speed. A pilot could launch a missile much more quickly by just thinking about it as opposed to having to think about launching the missile, then remembering what control makes that happen, and then physically activating that control. I could see this advantage backfiring, though. It may well be that thoughts are a bit too immediate. If a pilot encountered an unknown aircraft, simple paranoia might cause him to instinctively think about shooting it down. By the time he had a chance to identify it and realized that it was, in fact, a friendly fighter jet, or a Boeing 747 full of tourists, he might already have launched six missiles at it. Or what if you had a somewhat dyslexic pilot in the cockpit? As the plane approached a particularly high mountain peak, it might nosedive straight into the ground!

Exploring this idea a little further while taking my walk, I made a conscious decision to stop mentally formulating my thoughts into sentences. Sure enough, I found that an unending stream of concepts, perceptions and emotions suddenly flowed through my brain very quickly. But I also found these concepts, perceptions and emotions to be very fleeting. It seems that, for me at least, mentally formulating my thoughts into sentences helps to solidify them. It makes them more substantial and lasting. Without some sort of structure, thoughts become almost dreamlike; all jumbled and disjointed.

This post was mentally conceived in about 0.7 seconds.

Paralyzed by Choice

2010-05-16T10:29:00.010-04:00

I recently ventured into my grocery store's "health and beauty" aisle on a quest to acquire a tube of toothpaste. Doesn't sound like a great challenge, does it? After all, there's lots to choose from. Too much, in fact. That's the problem.

To begin with, there are, of course, several brands to choose from. Crest? Colgate? Closeup? Aquafresh? Ultra brite? That's to be expected. Then I need to decide if I want a paste or a gel, or maybe one of those swirly paste/gel combos. What really drives me nuts, though, is the plethora of specialties within each brand. Do I go for tartar control? Cavity prevention? Whitening? What if I want all of the above? What if I want to control tartar, prevent cavities and whiten my teeth? Fear not! They've thought of that too. There's "Colgate Total" or "Crest Multicare" for demanding bastards like me who have to have it all. Of course, this does beg the question why anybody would buy one of those one-trick-pony toothpastes rather than the one that does everything. They generally cost about the same amount. Maybe some people just don't need all of that. Maybe there are people out there with dingy, yellow teeth who just never get tartar buildup or cavities, so all they need is whitening toothpaste. I don't know.

It's the same with over-the-counter cold medications. I recently went to get come Contac-C. I didn't have a cold, but we were low and I like to have some around for when someone does catch a cold. There's a Contac-C for sinus congestion, one for runny noses, one for coughs, one for colds and flus, one for sore throats, one for fevers and let's not even get into night-time or non-drowsy! What if I buy the wrong one? What if I buy the Contac-C for colds and flus and then get a sore throat? Boy, wouldn't I feel like an idiot! Knowing me, I'd wind up with a medicine cabinet full of six different kinds of Contac-C that cure every ailment except for the one that I happen to have.

Excuse me sounding like an old fart but my life is complicated enough without having to stress out over which toothpaste or cold remedy to buy. I just want a toothpaste that cleans my teeth, okay? That means whitening, tartar control and cavity protection. The same goes for cold remedies. Just give me something that relieves the usual cold symptoms. You can even drop the night-time versions. Just because a cold remedy is "non-drowsy" doesn't necessarily mean that it will actually keep me awake if I take it at night, does it? If I happen to take it before bed, I'll get to sleep on my own.

Obviously, there are costs involved in developing and creating all that varied packaging for essentially one product; both the cost of creating the packaging itself and the marketing costs involved in researching and developing it. Why not keep it simple, and pass the savings on to consumers?

Lego My Tie Interceptor!

2010-05-08T16:30:00.006-04:00

My nineteen-year-old nephew, Jonathan, was doing a little spring cleaning in his bedroom recently. While cleaning out his closet, he came upon a model of a TIE interceptor (from Star Wars for you non-geeks) made out of Lego. He had bought the miniature starfighter when he was twelve years old, had patiently assembled it, and it had adorned his bedroom for several years before finally being relegated to the closet. Now, he decided that he had finally outgrown it, but it seemed a shame to simply throw out the replica which he'd spent so many painstaking hours assembling and which, for that matter, had been not inexpensive when acquired, especially for someone with the income of a twelve-year-old. But what else to do with it?

Why, give it to his forty-seven year old uncle Andy of course! It would look right at home next to his voice-command Artoo-Detoo, his die-cast Titanium series Millennium Falcon, his Darth Vader chopper toy, his AT-AT walker, his vintage battery-operated tin airplane, his latex Batman cowl with matching Batmobile and his large collection of Simpsons paraphernalia, too numerous to list. And indeed it does!

Truth be told, I don't really have an appropriate place for the thing myself, especially considering that it's not exactly small! It measures about 15 inches long by 10 inches wide by 11 inches high. The only place that my wife will let me keep it, of course, is in my already cluttered attic but, what with all that other stuff, I've run out of free surfaces. Still, my inner nerd absolutely refused to allow me to turn it down.

On a slightly more serious note, let me say for the record that I've always liked the look of the generic TIE fighter ever since they were first introduced in the original Star Wars movie (now commonly known as Episode IV: A New Hope). It was refreshing to me to see a spaceship design that abandoned the stereotypical rocket ship or flying saucer look. Heck, it doesn't even look aerodynamic which, of course, is completely unnecessary for a space vehicle. The large solar panels are a semi-credible means of collecting energy for power generation (at least within reasonable proximity to some kind of star) and its small size and unusual shape gives it a tiny profile, making it a tricky target to hit, at least from the front or back.

Of course, I do see some practical problems with the design. Between the forward-facing-only window and the huge panels on either side, the pilot's field of vision would be extremely limited. If you're anywhere other than right in front of him, he can't see you. I wonder how many TIE fighter pilots have died, never knowing what hit them?

The Empire seems to have some kind of hangup about limiting their soldiers' field of vision in general. Those stormtroopers probably don't have much of a peripheral vision inside those helmets of theirs either. That's probably why none of them can seem to hit the broad side of a bantha with those blasters of theirs. Darth Vader himself could sympathize with their plight, since his helmet and mask caused the same problem. I've worn a Darth Vader helmet and mask (a confession which I'm sure hardly shocks you at this point) so I know whereof I speak! The Dark Lord of the Sith needed his Force powers just to figure out who was standing around him!

Anyway, practical design flaws aside, I still think that TIE fighters are cool and, dammit, one way or another, I'm making room for my new toy in my attic. Thanks Jonny! You're my favorite nephew!