Thursday, January 28, 2010
Techo-Warp
Technology!
I recorded and thought that I uploaded almost 5 minutes.
What you get below is only 2:12.
Go explain.
What should follow should be obvious.
The message is that evil such as this cannot be forgotten. Nor is it to be forgiven.
It is to be clearly and painfully remembered.
Do not denigrate words by calling a local politician a "Hitler."
Hitler was unique.
There is evil before and after him, but no one like him.
And the ordinary citizens who helped him carry out his mad plans are you and me.
The Holocaust calls for vigilance and remembrance.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Eye Opener
David;
My wife's employer is shutting down the office for two weeks during the Olympic event because customers are afraid to drive to town; afraid to find parking and are now canceling appointments en mass.
This means the practice will be closed and the 6 employees including the owner will not be paid wages, yet rent is still due and bills must be paid.
This means our family will not have holidays this year, nor will we be able to afford such niceties as swimming lessons for the children.
Our family are not the only ones affected.
So when those many politicians take taxpayer paid for tickets to watch a taxpayer paid for event, think of the thousands of taxpayers who have been negatively affected by the games.
Does VANOC have a conscience at all; does Furlong give a damn? Does Gordo?
Olympic Update
1) Of course, many cities and municipalities are spending tax dollars on tickets for their councillors, employees, friends and family members.
Of course, this is wrong.
Read the story here.
2) Don't know how to smile?
No problem.
Vancouver has produced a 128-page etiquette guide.
Hahahahaha...
The world's coldest, most unfriendly city is going to huggy-bear, kissy-face up overnight with a Warmth for Dummies manual.
Hahahaha...
Someone worked for months on this idiocy.
Someone paid for it.
You!
On Monday, I smiled at a woman who was standing on a corner in my neighbourhood and daringly said, "Good morning."
She glared at me, as she was obviously assaulted by an unsolicited greeting.
Look it up in the criminal code.
Violation 32B11-14.
I added as I passed, "I am truly sorry for saying good morning."
She probably wrote the guide.
3) A friend told me yesterday that she knows someone who is being paid by VANOC to be a sort of traffic cop in BC Place.
Ready for the wage?
$45/hour.
Yes, that's correct.
$45/hour.
Multiply that by a few zillion employees and you'll begin to understand why the Games are so expensive.
The amateur sporting games.
Oh, there is more.
Just because BC Place isn't quite ready for the throngs just yet, don't think that our friend's friend is not being paid.
She is.
She is now being paid $45/hr. to stand by.
4) And finally, the good news.
A friend has forwarded the following:
See below for a list of free or low cost events and exciting venues to check out.
Contributors
I cannot find the photo on the Globe's website.
Thus, all I can do is report what I saw this morning.
On page S3 in the Globe BC section, the paper is carrying a story about how Vancouver police will not be rushing to arrest too many people for smoking marijuana during the famous Games.
O.K.
But was it truly necessary to run a half-page photo of someone smoking a joint?
No doubt this is highly amusing and knowing for everyone.
It is also irresponsible and destructive.
Ha ha ...pot is so cute, so benign, so acceptable.
Heck for many it is a cause and a life's devotion and they are seen as cultural heroes.
This half-page photo is simply a small and thoughtless part of the whole ugly drug story.
Dodge City
Poetic irony.
Who knew that drug smugglers had such a deep literary understanding and sophisticated taste. Maybe they all hail from Burnham Wood?
Some geniuses just sent a tombstone from Iran to Vancouver.
The stone was hollow and it contained many, many kilos of opium.
They fools were caught.
Not to worry.
Their lawyers will get them off on a technicality and they will be awarded a national Comedy prize.
Acquisitions & Mergers
Warren Buffet, eat your heart out.
I've just bought Saab and I'm bringing the whole operation to Burquitlam.
There are 12,000 jobs up for grabs and if you're a former bureaucrat or Cambodian refugee, come see me.
So many of my friends and family have asked me, "But why, Dave?" "Why, Dad?"
Simple.
I like a car company with feeling built right into the name.
"Hey, Dave, what's your ride these days?"
"Thanks for asking, Buddy. It's...it's...huh, ah huh, ah huh, oh...it's just Saaaaaaaaaaab."
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Pet Peeve Day
A reader has asked that I designate the odd day - and certainly this day qualifies - as "Pet Peeve Day."
O.K.
Send me your pet peeves, please.
I would love to get the ball rolling and set a good example.
But it's impossible for me to name a pet peeve, other than I am peeved by other people's pets.
You see, I am a cantankerous, grouchy old jerk, who is irritated by practically everything.
My favorite quote comes from Jean Paul Sarte.
"L'enfer, c'est les autres."
Hell is other people.
Almost everything and everybody annoys the beetlejuice out of me.
Especially young people and drivers and government and book agents and my best friends, who are consistently maddening.
Now...
That doesn't mean that I'm not great coffee company or a barrel of laughs.
Just don't be late or comment on my clothes or take a call on your effing blackberry or tell me that in addictions we need a "continuum of treatment."
And while you're at it, ask that 11-year old girl who invented coffee if we can have some more brown sugar over here at this table by the drafty door.
Ggrrrhhhhhhhh...
Fighter Jets to fly over Lower Mainland this week
No kidding.
Yesterday, I was strolling in the 'hood and suddenly I thought I was in a Bruce Willis movie.
See this baby?
He was following me around.
Or so I felt.
Or imagined.
I do have an elevated sense of my own importance, I know, but really, kids!
Enjoy life in Gamesistan.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Rare Good News
School or jail.
The choice seems obvious.
Yet it is only now that a local court had found the way to offer some people who break the law a chance to really change their own destiny.
Fourteen people to get a shot at a new life
Three schools offer courses for Judge Gove to allocate in court
This was the story in The Province over the weekend.Read it and be cheered that we are at least trying something positive.
Then, follow this tale over the coming months and see how many have succeeded.
For this is only the offer and the first step, and many will fail.
But that is life and that is human endeavour and if one person succeeds, we will have done something.
Grief
The news and the stories and photos from Haiti are relentless.
So too are the "good" stories of a world jumping in to help - money, aid, supplies, food, clothing, the adoption of children and plans to try to rebuild a much better community.
But how can one absorb this idea - bulldozers pushing 90,000 dead into newly dug mass graves in the Haitian hillsides?
All praise to those who are helping in any large or small way. If you want to send a dollar, just Google something like "Haiti relief" and I am sure you will find a toll free number or website.
Here at home, I returned from a week of work in Winnipeg to learn that a lovely young woman in our neighbourhood had died.
She was the daughter of a local shop owner.
I scarcely knew her, but I knew her pop and I stopped in to see him.
There were 90,000 and they are real.
And there was one and she was real.
Grief is local and it is universal.
Familiar Ring
I confess ignorance here.
So you will forgive my being shocked by the revelation today that Canadian banks are buoyed by enormous support from me and you and our tax dollars.
At the end of 2008, the latest figures we have, CMHC had $149-billion of investments in mortgage-backed securities on its balance sheet, up from $96-billion the previous year.
Nice.
Does anyone remember what happened not too many miles south not too many months ago?
Text Me
Last night over dinner, a friend pointed out that he knows many young people in their early twenties who text between 200 and 300 messages a day.
These important communications, he added, are typically of the order of "sup?"
Which roughly translated means, "And so Reginald, how is life treating you exactly these days, and how pray tell are you filling your ample time?"
The Globe editorial this morning leaps madly into the fray by suggesting that our youth are
Mesmerized by screens
Well, duh...
What, the writers ask, has ever happened to free play?
What, indeed.
Oddly and happily enough, there are more children than ever going to libraries and soccer practice and ballet lessons and the like.
But that doesn't change the fact that most people under the age of ...40?... are addicted to their cells and blackberries and TVs and computers.
Maybe they're just great at multi-tasking.
Rare Talent
Jean Simmons was one of my favorite movie actors and stars.
She died Friday at her home in Santa Monica at the age of 80.
Simmons was impossibly beautiful and she had the most lovely speaking voice.
And she was unforgettable as Sister Sharon in "Elmer Gantry."
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Quick Court
Justice is supposed to be swift.
That notion has pretty much gone the way of the long bow and the noose.
But never fear.
VANOC conquers all.
Tourist courts to open for Games
Minor charges to be heard within 2 weeks
Which is all well and good and perfectly sensible.But excuse the rude question.
If it was so darn easy to get all the court and police and justice ducks in a row so quickly so as to not inconvenience some drunken scofflaw from Amarillo, why can't we make that effort 365 for our own citizens?
A friend was involved in December in a comically outrageous run-in with highway police somewhere between Seattle and Portland. Guns were drawn. Not my friend's. He no pack.
He has now returned to the scene of the crime this month and must attend once more in early February.
I don't really care berry much if a law breaker guest from Allentown, PA has to get his sorry ass back here for a court appearance.
But I would like to see local cases cleared with the same enthusiastic dispatch.
By the way...
Does this mean there will be a big new neon sign at YVR - owned of course by the local native band - screaming
COME ON IN BREAK THE LAW GET OUT QUICK
WELCOME TO THE FRIENDLY GAMES
Leaping Lizards
My friend, Bob Ransford, contributed an excellent and thoughtful piece to the Vancouver Sun yesterday on the need for better planning in Greater Vancouver.
Give it a read.
Then, explain this mystery to me.
Two friends of mine - one lives in Shaughnessy in half a beautiful old mansion, and the other lives on 4 acres in the Gulf Islands in a log house he built with his own hands 40 years ago - have had their property assessments jump 60% this year.
That's right.
60%!
Short of discovering crude in the back yard, what could possibly justify this unholy demand for more tax money.
60% raise in one year?
They can't afford that and both are contesting this arbitrary and cruel "adjustment."
I can't.
Could you?
Should we?
The Devil's in the Details
Yesterday I wrote about City hall laying off workers - the wrong workers.
Today, our friendm Martin, shares the gruesome details:
-
The thing that bugs my wife the most about this is that not one person called or even asked what she does in her job. She oversees the busiest community centre in Vancouver (Kerrisdale) with the most programs. She is constantly overworked, with endless committees to attend, and always took on more responsibilities with a smile on her face.
Without her, there is no way to continue with the amount of programs that are currently running, which will inevitably lead to cuts. And the people who will suffer are the good taxpayers of Vancouver, who depend on their community centre to enrich and educate themselves/their children. To a lesser extent, the Community Centre suffers too, as they will lose revenue that gave it the ability to offer programs at a discounted rate to seniors and school age children.
The worse part of all this is they still expect her to represent the City of Vancouver at one of the LiveCity sites with a smile on her face. She become so cynical the last 48 hours that she thinks she'll have to resign from that, which stinks considering she supported the Olympics from day one and wanted to do her part to represent the city she was so proud of. She even turned down a great volunteer position with VANOC since the City asked that she represent the City for this event.
At the very least, the City should have hired an independent auditor who actually went out and found out what people did in their job...not some fatcat at City Hall who just wanted to balance the budget in order to keep their job.
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