Test Pattern

Yes Yes, this is the longest I've gone without writing an entry...

It's strange how much stuff there is to do around the house when you don't have a job to go to every day...

:-)

I don't want HAL 9000

Wednesday, Lunch, Shoeless Joe's in Brampton

I'm having lunch with real-world buddy Paul, who's been reading my blog for a short while now. General chit chat, blah blah as the meal goes on and then I pop the dreaded question:

"Do I write like I sound on my blog? I mean, does it sound like me?

"No you're much more coherent on your blog," Paul says without hesitation.

note: I decided not to hurt him at this point, but Paul, I do know where the skeletons are buried. I will be writing about you in the future.

But this did get me thinking...

I can't write for shit without my word processor. Those promised voice activated computers that have been talked about since I was 6 won't do me any good. I think on the keyboard. If I had to actually talk to a machine, I doubt if I'd want to write anything.

I hate my speaking voice. And besides, if you had to talk to your machine to write, wouldn't everyone know what you're writing about? What happened to privacy and private activities? (no, not THAT activity!) Anyone else in the room would KNOW if you're writing about them, wouldn't they?

I'll throw this out to any passers-by that happen to be reading this right now (Dear God! Don't you have anything else to do?)

Do we really want to TALK to our machines? Or is the keyboard good enough for the foreseeable future?

I mean, I like my computer, but it's not like I want to have meaningful conversations with it...

Sometimes I think of nothin' but the Monkey Man...

Your soul is bound to the Fifth Totem, Homid:
The Monkey.

Homid appears as a viridian monkey. He embodies
intelligence, potential, understanding, and
skill. He is associated with the color
viridian, the season of spring, and the element
of fire. His downfall is pretentiousness.

You are most compatible with Owls and Tortoises.


Which Animal Spirit Totem Are You?
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via Ghost of a Flea, source of all my better quizzes, and one stop shopping for Kylie Minogue worship...

Quit

Well I did it yesterday at the end of business-

Heard those magic words out of Bosslady's mouth: "I've gotta go, like, in ten minutes and I still have to get the wire transfers done..." She rushes to her office. I follow, letter in hand...

"Bosslady, something else needs to be talked about."

In response to this I get the deer in headlights look of fear.

"This is a resignation letter." I hand her an envelope. To my amazement she visibly relaxes! The buggers were trying to figure out how to sever me before Monday!

"OK," she says quickly turning back to her computer screen.

As I back away towards the closed door: "If you wish to talk about this tomorrow..." before I finish the sentence I'm already standing in the doorway.

"Yeah, OK."

And I put on my jacket and leave, leave, LEAVE!

'cause I wasn't too much of a jerk I gave them notice 'til this Friday, the original last day when I told them I wanted parental leave.

We'll see what kind of interesting response I get when I walk through the door this morning...

Stay tuned.

To Quit, or...

I think I'm gonna give my notice tomorrow. I've had enough of the adrenaline pumping through my body, waiting for them to decide if I can or can't take leave.

Truth be told: if we weren't planning on moving I would've been searching for a better job from week one...This place just isn't me.

It doesn't matter anyway. Parental benefits are the only EI benefits that you don't lose by quitting, so I'd rather take my own destiny in my hands and quit.

I've never been fired before in my life. I don't like the idea of starting now.

Conservatives are U2 fans too...

More of this "natural ruling party crap" as the Liberal Party takes over CTV for several boring hours of patting themselves on their backs...

Pretty regular stuff really, until fuckin' Bono shows up...

(singing to myself) One of these things just doesn't belong...I'll give you a hint. It starts with a C. The one starting with a T wasn't that good either, but at least he was entertaining.

Bono apparently thinks that he should somehow have some kind of influence over our government. Great. Who the HELL elected Bono?

Am I the only one who just wants to hear him sing?

Oh, I thought it was corruption and a total disregard for human and individual rights that allow brutal dictatorships to arise, and then that natural discontent is funnelled against the most prosperous western nations because that's always a convenient excuse for the lack of progress these backwards nation produce.

But I'm sorry. I forgot the prevalent belief that if we just listen to overpaid rockstars, all the problems of the world will be solved...Right? RIGHT?

Bloody 'ell

You are

Spike

"I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."

What "Buffy" Character Are You?

Via the Flea.

Nothing worth fighting for

Fall 1979, Scarborough Ontario.

I get jumped in the schoolyard - I'm in a fight with three other boys. Must be Monday. This always happens on Monday.

I was stupid. I wandered out for recess thinking that the teacher supervising the playground would be there. Stupid me. I learned that day that the teacher usually took 10 minutes of the 15 minute recess to go get her coffee and gab with the other teachers about their boring teacher lives...instead of doing their damn jobs.

Any one of these kids I could probably take on my own- but they've banded together and are trying to win by using that time-honoured tactic of hit from behind and then run away. They're too fast. I can only play defense: exchanging glancing blows, keeping them from hitting my face...

They're making me madder...So mad that tears of rage are gonna flow: I hate that. Crying on the playground is a sign of weakness, but when it happens to me I feel anything but.

The rage flows. I focus on the ringleader and chase him down. I get five good shots in to his two. His buddies are hitting me from behind. His nose is bleeding and he gives up and has enough. I have a half-second's desire to kick him in the ribs as I turn to his friends...

...who are being held by the now present teacher. She's doing that superior teaching scowl that's supposed to tell me that I'm in big trouble now.

"Office." she snarls at me. She turns to the ringleader of the happy little gang who started things. "Let's get you to the nurse so she can take care of that." My stomach lurches as I realize what's happened. The teacher had only witnessed the end, when I was pounding the "poor wittle wingleader" into tenderized beef. I'm now the bad guy...

Principal's office.

The former principal had retired after 20 years in the same school. My 25-year old brother (he's 16 years older) still cringes in fear when his name is mentioned. The new principal is a touchy-feely music teacher who inspires no fear in the student body. How can you fear a man who taps a triangle and sings "LAAAAAA!" for thirty seconds before repeating it again. But my parents were old-line Germans who grew up in central Europe in the 30's- they had instilled a fear of all authority and job titles. I'm very nervous...but hopeful. At least I can explain my part and how the teacher wasn't there.

Instead I'm told to shut up. I'm told that fighting is wrong. That I should've ran and told a teacher.

"THERE WAS NO TEACHER!" I scream.

"Nonsense, Mrs. Collins was there the whole time and says she saw you attack Mark and keep hitting him after he gave up. That's very violent. I've called your parents."

Shit.

"She wasn't there until the very END! She didn't see Mark and Pete and Roger all jump me the second I walked out!"

He looked at me gravely: "You're not helping your case by lying. Pete and Roger say that you came up and called Mark's mother a name. Then he called you a name and then you punched him."

He hesitates. A look that I didn't know until I thought about it years later crosses his face. I think now that he believed me. But still he said something that revolted me like nothing that was ever said to me before at that time.

"Even if your version of the story were true, you should've run and told the teacher...there's nothing worth fighting for. Detention: 2 weeks. And I'll talk with your parents."

Nothing worth fighting for. He believed that too. I could see it.

Which is why he looked like a complete hypocrite at the school assembly the very next week talking about the "noble sacrifice" of our veterans during the Remembrance Day celebrations:

"Freed us from tyranny..." (nothing worth fighting for...)
"Protected our lives..." (nothing worth fighting for...)
"Fought and died for us..." (nothing worth fighting for...)

There were many other teachers just like him that espoused pacifism above all other values. I've met many of them.

• Gulf War 1 was wrong. It's all about the OIIIIIILLLLLLLL!
• Vietnam was wrong.
• M*A*S*H told us that being involved in Korea was wrong (Hey, those Commies are people too! Even though the results of their belief system was a higher death count than Hitler's!)
• World War 2: well that was an unambiguous "fighting evil" kind of war, but war is still wrong.
• World War 1 was the pacifist poster-child war. Wasteful, solved nothing. Much poetry about dying in horrible ways. Endless songs with the word "Woops!" in them. The war that put the first nail in the coffin of the "Glorious Adventure/Noble Bravery" image that war had up until that point.

So what's this got to do with me getting beat up all the time when I was nine? Not much really. If it was a movie, I'd have had one glorious final fight where I vanquished the bully, got the girl and won the respect of my peers. In reality nothing like that happened. I fought one pointless fight after another, got my teeth messed up more times than I care to remember, came home with bruises and blood on my clothes. Getting home unscathed after school was quite an adventure. I wasn't undefeated, but I wasn't conquered either.

The only way that others avoided the daily beatings I got was to join what was forming into quite a vicious gang. To give in. To do what others told them to do. To take the path of least resistence. Not to fight. Because to them it wasn't worth fighting about it.

I don't know if I was right to fight back every single time; I don't know what I'd tell another kid in my situation. It almost got me killed.

We moved away after my dad witnessed me calmly disarm a kid who'd pulled a knife on me and was about to stab me in the back with it. Rather than get a teacher I stared the scared kid down until he ran away, then calmly walked over to a nearby sewer grating and dropped the pocket knife in. I walked over to my Dad, who'd been waiting off school grounds to give me a ride home.

"That was your friend Scott." he said in a slightly dazed voice.

"Yeah. David Fuckface told him he'd get the beating of a lifetime if he didn't stab me. The knife's his Dad's. He'll probably get beat up and get in trouble with his Dad, too. That's why I didn't hit him. Should I have?" I looked at my Dad, who'd turned white with fear. Later he told me it was fear of what he saw me becoming...

"No. I...I don't know. Why didn't you get the teacher?"

"What teacher? Do you see one?" I looked around. "Besides. They don't believe me anymore...I could've kept the knife, but then, that's stealing, isn't it? I like it where it is."

"Will your friend Scott try that again?" my Dad asked.

"I don't know. I told him that anything David Fuckface would do to him was nothing compared to what I'd do to him if he came anywhere near me for the rest of the year. He was my last friend here..." At that point I started to cry...

(Humourous note: Scott's dad tried to make my dad pay for the pocket-knife. Fuckin' lawyers...)

We moved away from Scarborough four months later...

So, you ask me, what's the fucking point? What have I learned? It's wrong to ALWAYS fight. It's wrong to ALWAYS not fight. There is a PRICE to be paid, ALWAYS. Sometimes that price is worth it, sometimes it's not. Once paid, that price has a value, both to the persons who pay that price and beneficiaries of what that price has purchased.

By degrading all wars as wrong, pacifists devalue the price paid during those wars by the soldiers who fight, usually not out of choice, but out of a sense of duty, honour, and code, by devaluing what some of that spilled blood has bought us: freedom to speak, freedom to choose, freedom to live without the fears that others live in every day.

Jingoistic, ultra patriotic warmongers devalue the price paid because they are willing to spill blood over the most trivial of causes without thought or consideration.

And we devalue the price paid by pretending that this can never happen again and that we don't need to remember those that paid the price so that our lives are better.

Aftermath

I would've lost that bet. Nobody took me aside to "talk" with me. My boss avoided me like the plague. Three words exchanged all day: "Hi." "Hello." "Um."

Very, very strange. I've deleted all personal content from my work machine. The snacks in my desk have been moved to my car. The cheapie radio that I was using to combat the incessant easy-listening shit has been removed from my desk and taken home. I guess I'm preparing for the escort from the building...

There are nine more days and I'm either being totally ignored, or they're a lot more subtle than I would've thought. I'll bet on the former.

Just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you...

Drastic Actions

...are being taken to preserve my sanity.

On Friday I stalked into my boss's office and gave notice of my intent to take parental leave. My normally yappy, can't shut her up, let private things slip superior is totally silent.

So am I.

She asks me "what I expect of them." (Ontario labour laws say that no company has to keep a position open for someone who takes parental leave unless they've worked for the company for at least 13 weeks. They are quite safe from me.)

I sense that I'm now in a poker game, 'cause she's now staring at me, awaiting my response. It surprises her.

"I know the law. And I know what your obligations are." She flinches! She doesn't know and is expecting the worst! That I'll hold up a position in her department for the full 35 weeks of leave that I'm entitled to. This is just too rich!

"I'll expect the company will do what it's allowed to by its policies and the laws of Ontario." I worked that statement out in the van during lunch hour. I'm quite proud of it...

She makes some noise about shuffling some of my tasks before I go...

I make ready to leave.

"I don't think we were asking too much- working you too hard?" She looks up, trying to probe for weakness. She really doesn't know me. In all honesty, the company has been fair, if a little cheap. They didn't really earn my loyalty, but they didn't earn my wrath either. I felt a little guilty, but as soon as I lie down a bit the feeling goes away.

"I'm entitled to take it. And the situation at home is personal" (true, if a bit nebulous on my part) "and I have to make a choice." (there is no choice actually- they were gonna lose me anyway when me, Rue and the kids uprooted to B.C...This way I get a break and can help my wife with the terrible twosome while getting the house ready for sale in January (yes, mid-November was a bit optimistic.)

I love how she's insinuating that it might be MY weakness, and how I can't hack it. Ten bucks says that I'll be taken aside Monday morning and grilled about why I'm leaving.

The truth, gentle reader, is that I hate my job and envy my wife who sees the incredible kids my little ones are becoming...

Lips aren't my only hot part

via the Flea

Where's my tinfoil hat?

The signs are up all over work for the flu shot.

Brochures are being distributed.

The executives have prominently signed their names at the beginning of the signup list to encourage us peons to follow suit. People are asking each other "why haven't you signed up yet?" as they pass each other in the hall.

And people are asking why I haven't signed up yet...

Even old friends like my buddy Paul (who I was best man for) are trying to tell me I should get shot. Paul, if you're reading this, because you've allowed the government to inject you with their tracking devices and/or spyware (c'mon, why else would the government be sooooo hot and bothered to get everyone a flu shot?) you will no longer be privy to any juicy secrets that I might want to pass along...I don't need "the man" to find any skeletons in my closet...

You are now cut off.

Seriously though. You have to wonder why healthcare workers in general are so opposed to this. The paramedics in Toronto were close to going out on strike last year when mandetory injections were attempted on them last year.

You have to wonder what they know that we don't. My wife (a Registered Nurse) has told me quite directly that it's within my rights to refuse ANY invasive procedure. And she says it in that knowing voice that tells me there's more to the story and I should just walk away.

You gotta wonder why the peer-pressure from workplaces though. Have they bought the government position hook, line and sinker? Or is this part of some grand conspiracy to track office supplies?

I need to speed construction of my tinfoil hat...

Funny, I'm usually not the one screaming...

Congratulations! You're a screaming orgasm!!


What Drink Are You?
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Double Standard

One of the things I hate is the double standard applied to child murderers. When the usually nameless father kills his wife and/or kids and/or self, society has very little sympathy. The guy was a prick, bastard, loser who "couldn't hack it" in real life and great pains are taken to show how big a loser the guy really was.

To be honest, I agree with this approach. Family violence should not be condoned, or "explained" by the situation. The perpetrators should be put under the microscope, judged and punished to the full extent of the law. For someone like a Paul Bernardo the law doesn't go anywhere far enough...

Why the outrage? An article in the National Post.

'I have to do what's best for you'

Oh, and I thought the first duty of motherhood was to safeguard the wellbeing of her child. Silly me.

Pretty hard to fight for justice for your murdered son and grandchild when the killer takes her own life, cheating the justice that the Bagby's deserve. It's sad, but the Bagby's will never get justice for this, unless evidence of Dr. Turner rotting in hell can be produced.

Let's first make the assumption that there is an afterlife, that burial remains mean something after we're dead, that the soul of a one year old is aware of what has happened to it as it's existence is ended. Would it really want its remains tied to the person who killed it? This is so wrong.

Painful as it is, "Mom" killed this child. She is a murderer. She should not be buried with the remains of her victim, because now she wins. She has him forever. Yes, I know. The family chooses how to dispose of its loved ones, no matter how inappropriately.

No one thought that an accused murderer shouldn't be looking after a baby? Even her own?

How nice. Too bad she killed him.

This proves she's out of touch. She was accused of MURDERING THEIR SON. And she's surprised? The whole incident was to keep CONTROL of her baby; this whole stupid "she loved her baby so much she couldn't bear to part with him" crap is so fucking wrong. Parents who love their children would do anything for them, not to them.

And out of the woodwork come the neighbours/relatives/bystanders:

I love how they always write this in sympathetic articles. Like it's some big tragedy that the MURDERER has fallen so low. Plenty of people grow up this way. They don't kill their own children.

Oh, so this was all about SOCIAL CLIMBING!

Why? Because SHE KILLED SOMEONE. The poor single mother thing wasn't an accident, wasn't some kind of random happening...She killed a man, and was going to be found guilty of MURDER. Who the hell wants a murderer as their doctor? Oh, sorry: accused murderer. No committing murder = no welfare mother situation. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Why is this in here? To elicit sympathy for the poor woman who decided to KILL HER BABY!

Oh, no premeditation there! What the fuck did she do this for? To strike back at something, anything out of spite? She was losing CONTROL, which is what this was all about in the first place. Control of HER baby.

And what the fuck is this "when she died, when she died" crap? Like it was something that happened to her, not that she chose it. The author is showing where her sympathies lie.

And, oh she cared so much for her children! She had two others that she obviously "took care of"

Gee, thanks Mom!

Why the rant on this particular woman? I don't have a particular grudge against this woman. This story just illustrated my problem with how society and the media portray female murderers.

They always look for root causes: she was battered/abused, she was a trapped welfare mother, she was depressed. On and on. Many in society suffer these "root causes" without killing the innocent.

Susan Smith kills her two children by drowning them in her car, frames every black man in the state because of her lie about a supposed "car-jacking" and everyone starts making justifications because of past sexual abuse trying to spread the blame over everyone else in her life. Except her.

A different crime, a different trial. I remember Bernardo's trial and the "news blackouts" that restricted public information. I remember how willing everyone was to believe that Paul Bernardo beat Karla Homolka into submission, that she was an unwilling participant, that she wasn't as bad as he was...It was generally accepted that he was much much worse than she was - until the tapes came out.

Then the [gasp] shock and outrage! that a woman could be capable of this...

Call me a feminist, but I believe that these women should be subject to the same contempt and justice as any man that commit these crimes. Too bad society in general is still looking for excuses rather than confront these monsters with pretty faces.

On a more personal note...

Just an update (for the one or two who care...)

• Still hate my job
• Still cooking a plan to move out west
• We took delivery of our new Honda Odyssey yesterday. We're now a one-vehicle family. Damn it's a nice vehicle. Rides like a sedan. We're still thinking about a name for it. Current favourite is "The Mystery Machine", mostly because our dog's name is Ruby, aka Ruby-doo!, which makes us the Ruby gang...
• still trying to get started cleaning up the house for sale

It's just so hard to get started...

I Want My Girls to go to this school

...even though I'm not Catholic. My wife is a lapsed one, so maybe Boo and Punkin' can get in...At least for the hand-to-hand (or should I say foot-to-groin) combat training. And then we'd have to live in Philly, too...

Girls pummel man who exposed himself

Good.

20 enraged schoolgirls could take down just about anything I could think of...

I wouldn't either, but in the litigious climate that is the States these days, Mr. Robert Lemons has just painted a bullseye on his head when the pervert decides that he's suffered "abuse" at the hands of the neighbours and schoolgirls and finds a slimy lawyer to shake down the participants.

I hope those girls got enough shots in to make him sing Soprano the rest of his life.