Signs of Spring (...and honesty at Costco)

It's March 20th, the time of the Spring Equinox, and the signs of a new season are around us.  The first migrating geese of the year, the first glimpse of snow mold on last year's lawn,  the unique smell of the first of the thawing dog doo emerging from under last winter's blanket of snow...

...and since Christmas, my first honest gasoline pump. Yup.  It's March 20th, and this is the first honest gas pump I've seen in nearly three months. I was so excited I took a picture of it.

See the sticker? There's a Federal Regulation that requires all Service Stations and Gas Bars to have their gasoline pumps certified according to a set schedule. Since I gas up at least twice a week that's at last 27 other times I could have been gouged at the pump.

Seeing as how the oil companies have already been manipulating the cost of oil to gouge us honestly at the pump this little bit of extra larceny on the part of the retailer just pisses me off.  One time last month, at a highway gas station between Fort Saskatchewan and Lamont, Alberta, the pumps didn't even have the old, outdated certification stickers that showed they'd at least been certified once in the past. I went into the store and complained to the elderly lady ( I thought she was the owner/manager) behind the till about her pumps not being certified. Even though I had heard her speak to a customer ahead of me, she pretended she couldn't speak or understand english well enough to answer me.

I'll be gassing up at the Costco again in the future. 

A stolen blonde joik.

I stole this joke from Grumpy old Cripple:





During a recent password audit, it was found that a blonde was using the following password:
"MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento"

When asked why she had such a long password, she said she was told that it had to be at least 8 characters
long and include at least one capital.

New Education Act an Attack on Parenting

A New Education Act will likely become law this week that STEALS your Parental Right to teach your kids as you see fit, and gives it to the STATE. The Premier, Allison REDford, has tried to say she's not doing that, she's just putting into law a requirement that we teach our kids 'Alberta Values', specifically, the Alberta Human Rights Act.

Why? The Provincial government already sets the curriculum. They don't need a new LAW for that.

Yet by definition, as Albertan parents we pass on to kids our Albertan Values anyway. So why do we need a LAW? We only need a LAW if Premier REDford or some of her bureaucrats have think they know better than YOU which Values are in their view more Albertan than others.

The fact that the Alberta Human Rights act and it's Starchamber Tribunals have been used repeatedly by activists to ruin people's finances and careers was completely glossed over. Rather than tolerance, they seem motivated by a desire to wipe out all opposing viewpoints and punish anyone who dares voice a point of view other than their own.

 But this is not about an anti-gay agenda. Yes, this mostly concerns Homeschoolers, many of whom are Christian. That doesn't necessarily mean anti-gay. It does mean that we're the canary in the coal mine folks. Every new law steals away a little bit more of your freedom. Every time.

We need to call the Premier's office and the Sinister of Education's office TOMORROW to register our opposition to the new Education Act which will most likely become law Monday or Tuesday this week. (The phone numbers are Minister of Education, Mr. Thomas Lukaszuk at 780-427-5010 and then the premier, Allison Redford at 780-427-2251) Call them. You don't have to know what to say, they're just counting calls over there, anyway.

 Link:  Ottawa Citizen   Link:National Post

(Thanks to my friend Paul Nawrocki for the email about this.)

"Belogging" Again.

A few friends have pointedly asked me why I'm not blogging since my facebook updates have taken a blog-like bent of late. The facebook updates I dislike the most are the spam-type messages that are selling a person, product, thing, or poolitical point of view.  ...ok, those and the chain-letter ones. I once said I'd never do that to my friends and family, but I made one this evening. So here I am to post it instead here in my dusty little corner of blogspace...

My son Mark's death in 2010 pretty well derailed both my writing and my blogging, but I'm finally ready to follow my last post.


...in my next one.

A Birthday today, remembered.

Mark would have been eighteen today. But that will never happen. Mark is dead. I have to accept that. It still seems dreamlike that he could be so, is no longer among us. I still expect him to enter the room at odd moments, and when I catch myself, I cry.

My son my son, oh I miss you so. Your mother speaks of her dream, where you came up behind her, and hugged her, giving her the comfort of your embrace. I am so envious of her, that she has once more been able to touch you; hold your hand, and hug you. To feel you hug her back, not a little boy’s hug, but with the wide-shouldered strength of the man you had just so recently become. Oh Mark, I was so so proud of you.

Each night I go to sleep hoping that you will come to me in my dreams, that I could hold my son in my arms again, and in the dream at least, have the experience having you with me one more time..

I miss you boy. I miss your voice, your words, your smile. I miss you so.

You would have been eighteen today.

I love you son.

Midstream Media Defames the Pope

Over the last month the Midstream media has, in accordance with it's established gutter standards in news reporting, been fanning the flames of controversy with stories that the current Pope helped to hide priestly child molesters from justice.

More specifically, the former Principal of St.Johns School for the Deaf, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a Father Laurence Murphy.

The New York Times, AP, etc. have inflamed public outrage to the point where thousands have signed petitions in England against a future visit from the pontiff, and caused various legal types to ponder publicly, whether legal action could be taken against the head of the Catholic Church.

Now the Priest who sat as the ecclesiastical judge in the Murphy case has come forward, complaining that not only has he been widely misquoted and falsely quoted in the New York Times and over 100 other publications, but that the accused molestor died in 1998 just before the case could come to trial, and had never been referred to the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at all.

Writing in the Catholic Anchor, Father Thomas Brundage, JCL, says he was never once contacted by any of the news organizations who so widely misquoted him, and that he would have gone all the way to the Pope at the time, John Paul II, in appealing any instructions to refrain from Judging the case against Father Lawrence Murphy.

Now dear reader, you know most of the people in our media could not be bothered, obviously, to follow the link to Father Brundage's story, nor trusted to believe him. -After all he was only an eyewitness at the center of the events of the day. Far far better to take a juicy story that attacks the present Pope and run with it.

(ADDED ON APRIL 6TH)

The New York Times antipathy or possibly, antagonistic attitude towards the Church is no secret. One example I remember, was in the mid 1990's when the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic Men's Fraternal society, had to threaten legal action before the NYT would publish a Paid-for full-page KofC advertisement in the paper.

Earth Hour

The taxpayers in the City of Edmonton should be happy to know the idiots in the city administration are blowing tax dollars advertising the hell out of Saturday's Earth Hour.

Yup, they're exhorting the ignorant masses to shut off all their lights Saturday night for an hour to help curb greenhouse gas emissions and thus do a bit to save the planet.

It's all B.S. so I'm going to protest in my own way. I've set up some hi-power halogen spotlights on my house for this event so that I can consume extra electricity to help take up the slack in demand from all the soft-headed types who're planning on shutting their lights off.




How do you make yourself feel good doing nothing about climate change? Earth Hour!!!!

To hell with that shit. My lights are ON.

The Ungrateful Profs

The pinko socialists who've dominated Saskatchewan's indoctrina- er, I mean, educational system for upteen years, are showing their asses to the world again. Only a bunch of old hippie has beens (or their heirs) could a come up with a zinger like this.

A Four-Year scholarship program for the children of Dead Soldiers has gained the support of colleges and Universities across Canada except at the University of Regina. Sixteen Professors who enjoy life on the public tit, who are allowed the freedom to teach whatever anti-west swill they please because of the freedoms earned by our military, have signed a letter protesting the University's decision to honor the scholarship because they feel it glorifies militarism.

What a bunch of sorry short-sighted out-of-touch ivory-tower fucks.

I wonder how long they'd last if they were trying to teach their pie-in-the-sky worldview under a Taliban regime?

Art imitates life

I've enjoyed Scott Kurtz's work for years. His Webcomic, PvP (Player vs. Player) is about the staff at a small magazine dedicated to computer gaming. The current story line is about how two of the staffers decide to make love on the boss's new D&D gaming table and get caught.



I laughed; thought, "c'mon Scott, no one would actually do that..." and then remembered how, twenty-two years ago my then brand-new bride and I were almost caught doing the same thing late at night in a basement office at the second radio station I'd ever worked at, CFOK radio.

Zombie Bite Calculator

Politically incorrect doesn't' even come close to describing the Oatmeal. Damn. I really liked the "How Twilight works" and "How everything goes to hell in a Zombie Apocalypse."

Moose in my back yard

Woke up last Monday morning to the sight of two moose in the back yard. The neighbors told us about all the wildlife we'd be seeing when we moved out here a year ago, but this is only the second time we've seen Moose. Our place is only a few miles outside of Edmonton City limits.

One wag asked me why I hadn't shot the Male, as I would be able to 'get away with it' with my Metis status. I had to tell ol' 'Hunts at Safeway' that I'm too damned citified to do all the bloody, heavy work involved in gutting and dressing a moose all by my lonesome. As for the shot, I'm as proud of my marksmanship as the next guy, maybe moreso, but there's a safety issue because of all the houses just the other side of the trees behind the Moose, and probably a violation of local ordinances to boot.

Besides which, I don't consider myself a subsistence hunter at present.

Saving Local Television

The actual issue is an attempt to make viewers pay for something that they've never had to pay for before. Local TV signals.

As broadcasters catch up with digital and high-definition technologies, the old style analog television transmissions will disappear.

The current campaign by Canadian television broadcasters asking viewers to demand the CRTC force Satellite and Cable Companies to pay for local stations' content is pure misdirection. The Broadcasters would have you believe that the issue is fairness; a need to make the cable companies pay for the use of the local stations they carry.

Bullshit. That's just a strawman.

1. First off, Despite their protestations to the contrary, if the broadcasters succeed in forcing the cable and Satellite providers to pay for the use of local stations, the costs will be passed directly to the consumers.
2. Secondly, the Parent companies of the local tv stations, companies like like Canwest Global and Quebecor, own a significant portion of the Cable and Satellite Providers own part of or in some cases all of the specialty channels that consumers are paying the cable companies to access. Asking consumers to pay again is almost like asking them to pay twice for the same damn thing.
3. Third, the cable and satellite companies include the local tv stations in the basic access packages they force every customer to buy before we can get access to the specialty channels we REALLY want to watch. I suspect that were some of the local stations to go under, the basic packages would remain largely unchanged, just carrying more of the alphabet networks' different regional feeds.
   
4. It's a changing marketplace. If local tv stations and their parent companies can't keep up and adjust to the new technologies, it's not fair to have the government (in the guise of new CRTC regulation) force consumers to keep the dinosaurs alive.
   

As a consumer, I gave up on local TV over a decade ago. There are perhaps twelve specialty channels I wanted when I ordered my satellite TV system. But I am forced to pay for hundreds of signals I NEVER WATCH in order the get the few I am interested in. Were the satellite and Cable companies serious about providing content choice they'd let us order the specific specialty channels we want to see.

The last thing I need is another bullshit charge added to my bill.