A Black Mark on Canada

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?