Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff and Insights - 2006 archive Quarter 1 a

My project this week might be to finish the assembly of a model Zero airplane, but I think I don't have the tissue covering that will be needed. I remembered to grab the dope [glue] but no paper, unless it's in the box still. Painting will have to wait for another time when I either find the right stuff at home, or find a model shop with the right paints, in Yorkton or online. After about 12 years, it seems unlikely that the tube of glue will still work for the bit of assembly left, although I do have carpenter's glue on hand which ought to work well on balsa wood. And the tool most important that I will need to improvise on, would be an xacto knife. I think my swiss army knife is sharp enough and ought to do the trick if I have any more pieces to cut out.

I planned out more of my Summer trip to Ontario and the Maritimes, tonight. The Canada Pass for Greyhoud that lasts for 10 days is my best option, and it's only $379. I'm flying back home in July on Air Canada from St. John's.

National "Be Glad You're not Cheney" Week. Let me guess, during the week, the population will be encouraged to bag a lawyer to trim the herd down to a less litigious size? Lawyers running across the freeway after ambulances, have bcome a major safety concern around some parts. An open season might be just what nature needs to put things back into balance.

I drove home to Yorkton from Wood Mountain today, ending up for supper in Moose Jaw with my friend. We went to Wayne and Lavern's and stuffed ourselves on the buffet which was Italian themed today. I ate pizza without a fork and knife even, to much surprise, but hey it wasn't falling apart because the pieces were small enough. I filled up in Melville, running on a very low tank when I rolled into the Mohawk. And I added a spider plant to my fish's water which will spruce up his bowl a little bit.

Yorkton has a Blog site now. I might decide to write some stuff for there in the future.

Poor crazy baseball player. Daulton was a player against the championship Blue Jays of 1993, in the World Series. It's sad to see someone so famous, so delusional, unless he's that way just to "convince" others of his doomsday scenario for some unknown purpose. Sure I might be advertising a foil hat for pets on this webpage, but that doesn't mean I actually THINK that the government and aliens are reading kitty's mind. Although I have told Springfield, IL through WMAY radio that I do think that, but they knew I was kidding.

I watched "Catch Me If You Can" [8/10] tonight, and found it to be really entertaining. I also learned how to make a wireless router work on dialup, I just needed to set the Windows sharing IP address as the DNS server for the router, and presto the webpages worked on the wireless laptop. I taped "Cast Away" yet another Tom Hanks movie and will watch it [again] later. I first saw the movie in 2003, when I was travelling North America, and it was in the tape collection of a friend in Oregon.

Happy Birthday to Michael Jordan, Richard Karn [Al from Home Improvement], Luc Robatille of the Kings, Denise Richards, and Rene Russo. And Clair and Evan too, since they know who they are.
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"But Lisa, that's the beautiful part of the plan... When Winter comes the apes freeze to death." You've just been subjected to an obscure Simpsons quote with Principal Skinner outlining the town's plan to control one pest with another predator animal. It seems Australia forgot to make its toad-killing Winter backup plan.
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The Feb. 9 2006 Western Producer has an article about my hometown:
Clay mine possible in southern Sask.
Subscriber Content
A proposed $15 million kaolin mine near Wood Mountain, Sask., could be the first step toward revitalizing the community of 20 people.
Unfortunately it's a subscriber magazine though, so the body of the article is hidden to us. The part that I do know is that the mining operation is based in Georgia USA where kaolin comes from in spades. They'd like to use a rail line to transport the white chalky clay, but CP Rail plundered Wood Mountain's branch line years ago, and the only steel still in the bed is the occasional lost spike, and 1km of stranded track running through the village of Wood Mountain where the municipal government took a legal stand against the CP pirates. If the mine does get rolling, no thanks can go out to the RM of Old Post, and the Sask. NDP who let our ecologically friendly infrastructure be ripped away without a fight. It was torn out less than two decades after the federal government used Canadian tax dollars to upgrade the quality of steel in the rails. Guess who got to profit when the high quality rails were taken away, and your hint is it wasn't the Canadian taxpayer?
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    I was in Moose Jaw today and saw the two Tunnel tours. The Chicago tour was more interesting to me than the Chinese tunnels, mostly because one was glamourous with funny acting from the male tour guide, and the other was about racism against Chinese immigrants. At one point I saw a wood stove in the Chinese tunnels that was nearly identical to the wood stove in my parent's kitchen [which they don't use as anything but decoration]. In the Little Chicago Tunnel, a '20s barmaid took the tour group to a secret door and told a little boy the secret knock of "four knocks". Well we didn't get in right away because the kid knocked about 10 times. Then we almost all were shot when the barmaid slipped up and asked the guard to "take care of us", then corrected her mistake before he went to get his Tommy gun.
    The most interesting thing I learned on the tour was that the Tommy gun was invented for the Great War [WWI] as a trench spraying gun, but was never used for that, then was hardly sold because of its poor accuracy. Capone bought some for about $2000, and history was made.
    When the guide once asked what we were all there for, and I excitedly spoke up, "Booze!" that prompted giggles from some ladies near me. I also got asked to look into the secret hideaway fireplace to "check that no one was coming".

While I was in "The Jaw" I had a tour of Palliser Regional Library headquarters, including their dog trick course downstairs from the library. Lunch at Mr. Sub, a -30 drive past the abandoned hospital and CCSchool, and watching "My name is Earl" TV show, and "Kinsey" [7/10] rounded out the weekend vacation in "The Jaw" with my friend. I then drove home to Wood Mountain and had rabbit stew for supper, and rhubarb-strawberry pie for dessert.

It's a wickedly cold day today, and my car made bad cracking thud noises when I hit potholes or manholes on the way to work this morning. Even though I had plugged in the car, it still had to turn over twice to start, when usually it starts instantly. I'll have to put gasoline in the tank for my trip to Moose Juice tonight and hope that it warms up to the promised -26 instead of hovering at the current -32 at lunch time.

Canada might end up with a silver and a bronze in women's short track speed skating because the current silver medalist lifted a skate to an angle at the finish line which isn't allowed. I don't like to DQ someone on a technicality when she was clearly faster, but I don't know the sport well and if it's a rule it should be the law. There is video review in the sport, and the judges missed the obvious call for some reason, so a protest is in order.

Also, Don Cherry has made a point that Canada's women's hockey team is not doing themselves a favour by playing hard and running up the score in their lopsided games. By embarrassing the European teams, the IOC will vote women's hockey out of the Olympics after the Vancouver games, like they've done with softball and baseball for London's 2012 games. I agree with his reasoning, which doesn't happen much with me and Grapes.
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The RIAA [and by extension the Canadian RIA] wants it to be illegal to use our CDs with our iPods or other MP3 players. That's not surprising since they would like us to buy the songs we hear each time we hear them. They must have cried a river when jukeboxes stopped being popular because that's a business model they can relate to: no music until they see the coin. And really, if owning a CD doesn't give you the legal right to listen to the music now in their opinion, then what will? Do they even want people to play their CDs anymore if the player is a DVD player, since that's another digital format and we haven't paid again to use our music on that format if we use our CD? Why aren't they offering DVD versions of all of our music CDs?

Do you think it's reasonable that Canadians shouldn't be permitted to put a copy of their CDs onto their computer for personal use? You shouldn't have to go out and buy a 50 CD jukebox to have modern access to the songs you've paid for. The RIAA is smoking crack if they think that people will gladly pay for a CD, then pay AGAIN to download the song into iTunes for their iPod portable music player. Anyone from a 12 year old to an 80 year old grandmother could easily figure out how to put their CD music onto an iPod, unless Sony has broken their computer with a DRM rootkit I suppose. The RIAA's greed has passed into the absurd many times before and this time is just yet another attack on their customers.

It will take many millions of customers and forward thinking artists like Steve Page of the Bare Naked Ladies standing up against the CRIA and RIAA copyright amendment , to keep our current freedoms intact. I'll keep you posted with simple ways you can get involved and make sure that Harper's government doesn't cave in to lobby pressure from businesses that would tell you that putting music from your CD onto your MP3 player is an offense that could cost you thousands of dollars in court.
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I'm in the middle of some computer adjustments, so my blog isn't being updated quite as regularly. Plus I have been spending weekends with people in the "real" world, which believe it or not, takes me away from blogging a bit.

I've been adding most of my new content on www.saskboy.blogspot.com if you want to read there before I post it over here like I normally do first.

More updates are coming tonight, if I don't freeze outside when I go to plug the car in. It's going to be -41 with the windchill. What's windchill you might ask if you're not from Canada? Well it was invented by Sir. Windston Churchchill as an attack threat index during WWII. The more likely we're to be attacked by the Axis of Evil, the lower the windchill value. Tonight the threat index is high, thanks to rumblings from Iran. North Korea is also peeved they've not won any Winter Olympic medals yet too, and have threatened to stop importing James Bond movies to feed to their cattle.
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Heritage Canada's mission statement:
Canadian Content - Promoting the creation, dissemination and preservation of diverse Canadian cultural works, stories and symbols reflective of our past and expressive of our values and aspirations.
Hopefully they will realize that things like DRM and stricter copyright laws which the CRIA favours, are a hinderance to both dissemination and preservation of Canadian digital cultural works.
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Computer User Secrets is a blog in the top 100 most popular by "links-to" and it's pretty easy reading aside from the flood of ads they feature everywhere. They don't appear to get very technical, so it may be good for beginners interested in learning a few new areas of computing.
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I just wrote Blogger support and asked them how a "spam blog" managed to have a blogger site without a "flag this" report button at the top. It was going to be the first time I'd ever use that button - and it wasn't there! Here's what I wrote:
"beforexjobs.blogspot.com
This spam blog doesn't have a Flag button at the top, how did they remove it? The blog is gibberish with only links to poker sites." I'll let you know if Blogger responds with an answer, or possibly a bugfix.
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Fighting for Taxpayers: The tale of two Daves
Taxpayer Federation's topdog Dave is indicating that David Karwacki and the Sask Liberals may be contenders in the next election. I think possibly the Liberals will be cutting out the NDP seats in the cities while the Sask Party takes many rural seats.
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Sorting mail on the train stopped happening in Canada in 1971, after happening for over 100 years since the 1850s. I was going to guess that door to door milk delivery stopped in 1971 across Canada, but I probably would be wrong. It might even be going on still today in select regions.

Happy Flag Day, by the way. Time to replace that tattered old thing you might have fluttering in your front yard, and show your Canadian pride by buying a new flag [made in China of course, home of modern communism].

Mouseland needs SK Liberals; Wonderland gone, UK kicks the butt

Reinstalling Windows XP - oh joy!

I finally had 5GB free on my computer so I decided to take the plunge and install Windows XP on another partition in the hopes of starting fresh and cleaning up:

An update this morning in Gretzky news. Chris from the blogosphere pointed out that the wiretap revealing Gretzky knew about the gambling ring, was done after the news started to break around him, and not a month ago.
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John Gormley of CKOM.com has fawned over Harper's cabinet picks before.
Gormley's "60 Seconds" bit today was laughable. While he's pushing that the big bad liberal media fawns over "Canada's natural governing party - the Liberals," he's ignoring that his natural governing party is the Conservative Party and he puts his own fawning support behind it with the same kind of blind and emotional loyalty. "Harper hasn't yet begun to rule, and the media is already saying he's lost our trust. What if he brings in the Federal Accountability Act?" Yeah, what if he does that? So what? He's already broken two or three cornerstones of his campaign platform with his bungling of cabinet appointments. If he can't be expected to work under his own "government accountability" conditions, then why should he inflict that untenable law on the next party to govern? He can't even live by his own promises, and own laws, so what does that say about his governing skill, and his truthfulness?

On the topic of Conservative flip-floping, Skelton has pulled away from her position that floor crossing makes her "sick". Oops, that link is from a liberal media source, so it must have an agenda against the truth. Quotes are hard to get away from though, but remember according to Skelton, "It's one of those matters that is debatable ... And there are benefits to both sides of the [floor crossing] story." The benefits being saying one thing gets you elected, and doing the other when elected keeps your government in power.
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Friday afternoon I had off work, and I went to the Yorkton art gallery on Smith St. with my friend Ashley and we got an impromptu tour by the curator of an art exhibit that was opening that night. We weren't able to make it to the 7pm wine and cheese opening with the presentation of the artist who's from Alberta. The topic of the display was the female body, and in the middle of the room were bronze and other castings of pregnant torsos. The walls were covered with torsos made of real lichen from Ontario, and plaster and paper mache which was quite disturbing with fake stitches mimicking an old mummified body. There was also an ancient wax painting technique with magnified skin from knuckles and scars.

On Friday night I watched "Interview with a Vampire" [8/10] which was very good and worth a 9 for some parts, and just a 7 for others. On Saturday I watched "Cheaper by the Dozen" [6/10] with Steve Martin and no Oprah when they said she was appearing later in the movie, but apparently were just using her name as a plot ploy. Then I saw "Starship Troopers" [7/10] which I'd seen before many years ago, but this time caught all but the first few seconds of the show. It has some very good special effects, and political propaganda humour.

I ate supper in Melville at Dairy Queen and had a Choco Cherry Love Blizzard which was very good. The roads were a little icy from the blizzard we've had the last 2 days, although today was nearly perfect for driving.

I watched some of the Olympics today, including short track speed skating. Canada has a gold medal in moguls, and a bronze in short track.

On the bus home from Regina, I was talking a bit about movies with the guy sitting next to me (the bus was so full some seats were two people side by side) and we both thought there's been no really good movies lately. I didn't even want to see anything at Rainbow today, so instead Rob, Brien, Peter and I went to Walmart and bought playing cards and poker chips, cleaned off the kitchen table, and played cards for an hour. I learned Texas Hold'em Poker, and Rob learned Poker, period. When we came out of Walmart, a Snowbird buzzed the parking lot, which was super cool, and I had to kick myself a little for not having my camera out and ready to take a picture of the lot like my spider senses had been telling me once I got outside.

On John Gormley Live, which by the way has new craptastic theme music, he asked if the SGI rebate is good. I sent this email:

Hi John,
The SGI rebate is a good thing I think, after all who doesn't like getting money in the mail? What bugs me a little though is that we could have this 8% discount all of the time if people would simply be safer drivers in the Winter.

Not much later in the open line show, a thoughtful caller made a point about how so many parents don't discuss biological sexual urges with their children, and the children then develop sexually in a physical way and have no reassurance that they are normal and aren't "sleazy" in their thinking. Subsequent callers who felt their ant hill of ignorance was being kicked, totally missed the mother's point, and were saying, "you can't compare people to animals with urges, we have minds!" and, "the rest of a girl's body isn't ready for baby making if they have just started menstruating, and girls are smaller these days than they were 100 years ago."

Women in most cultures, are actually taller these days, unless the caller meant that because girls are menstruating earlier then it stands to reason they'd be smaller at a younger age. They missed the point that a girl's MIND must be given input to develop the way their parents are hoping for. Caring parents and teachers have to reassure a child that they are normal by telling them about sex and how to deal with sexual feelings properly. If a 13 year old child learns that they are physically able to have a baby, and that it might hurt to, they would probably take steps to avoid hurting themselves.

Sweet! Money in the mail from SGI coming soon. Now if only people would be good drivers more often, and we could always have this 8% rebate, and fewer medical bills to pay for too. SLOW DOWN! I'm talking to you. Yeah you in the fast car skidding up to the red light which has been red for the last 5 seconds.
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Ever seen an email from a Nigerian scammer? Have you ever replied? This person, Sam, replied and looks to be having some fun at the scammer's expense in "Scam Busted".
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Well, the "Great One" is starting to look like he might be in hot water. Could he become the next Pete Rose by "not" betting on baseball? I'm hoping the facts don't show that he was involved in Rick Tocchet's gambling ring, because we still need sports heroes that haven't tarnished their name. See: McGuire, Sosa, Palmerio, Rose, hmm Baseball players are a theme. Could they be why the IOC has pulled baseball [and poor ol' softball] from the 2012 Olympics in London? Oh wait, there's McSorely, Brasheer, Federov, Tocchet [conviction pending] of the hockey world with a touch of scandal around them too after attaining fame in their game. Speak of a scandal and what shall appear? Theodore tests positive for banned hair drug/steroid masker. Good thing Canada didn't go with him as their stopper for the Olympics.

Beckie Scott, Canada's golden skiier from 2002, only won gold after the first and second place finishers were booted from the race for obvious cheating using drugs. Hopefully she'll bring home another medal, and won't have to fight for what's rightfully her's. Why do so many cheat in pro sports when they know they'll be tested?

From Daring to be Remarkable's website I found the link for terrorism signs. Don't get confused, be ready when that radiation hits your groin region for 5 minutes and 12 seconds.
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I spoke to a helpful person at ViewSonic [it's about time!] in their call center at Raleigh, North Carolina. He was able to get a replacement monitor for one that broke and was sent do be repaired back in NOVEMBER, slated for shipment to me by next week. The previous call center person needed the tracking number of my shipment, even though they had the RMA number and everything else they'd need to have confirmed that they did have the monitor still. ViewSonic is such an awful pain, please don't buy from them.
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Don't forget to be an organ donor - Tell someone you know that you want to donate your organs, and sign a note in your wallet. And hey, if you don't want to save kids from organ failure, at least donate them as food? Your organs, not the kids.

I like stories like this one, it's like time travel almost. An antique camera had undeveloped film in it, and a historical society had it developed which revealed a picture with an old man on a ladder. With a little work they found his name and some of his history in the Piapot and Yorkton regions of the province.
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Sharks with poor vision are reportedly thrilled by this news. This is a great idea. Lasers in the eyeball? What could go wrong? Seriously though, this is cool stuff. But also, seriously, it'll go wrong.
The hope is that people with poor retinas might be helped by this auto focus technique also used to compensate for atmospheric disturbances when pointing a telescope through the air. As someone on Slashdot pointed out though, people might use this as a vision crutch, weakening their eyes for normal use when not wearing their vision device.
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Saskatchewan's Smartest radio listener contest from CJME.com:
Q) It was a cold February long ago when Saskatchewan first had this?

A) The children from Borden school who always call in guessed the coldest day, but Saskatchewan in 1946 had the first air ambulance in the world.
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Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The only problem for Stephen Harper, is that he DOESN'T have absolute power, so what's his excuse? How can any clear thinking person support his campaign promise breaking on day one before things even put pressure on him? I thought he was supposed to Stand up for Canada, not put down the idea of accountable democracy on day one.
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Who knew that there was more than one God, and they pay for doing surveys for them? Why don't they know the answers, is the bigger question.

Will the snow stop please? I actually had to shovel out my parking space a little yesterday for the second time this year [plus a ploughing of the lot]. What is this, Winter or something? It's February now, so it's traditionally supposed to be +6 in a week or two right after Valentine's Day.
Speaking of which, who's got a jump on their Valentine's Day plans? Is it like Christmas where you're supposed to prepare around the time of American Thanksgiving or sooner? Should guys be putting up decorations? Should I be asking all these questions?
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If you need to burn CDs or DVDs, but don't want to copy software, or pay mega dollars, you can use CD Burner XP Pro 3 for free.
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Did you miss the Super Bowl and the famous ads? If you have highspeed Interweb, you're in luck because iFilm has the consumery goodness ready for digesting.
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Apparently, a squiggly drawing on a petroglyph is rock solid proof that Native Americans were alive 65 Million years ago. I knew that Native Americans had been in North America for possibly 10,000 years, but who'd have thunk that some Young Earth oddball would give them several million years prior claim to this land we all call home now. Oh, wait, maybe that's not what they were getting at.

I could draw a picture of Abe Lincoln, but that doesn't mean I was alive when Honest Abe was. Or I could sketch a parakeet/robin/kiwi, but does that mean I am drawing a picture of an extinct dodo bird? I guess when one rejects logic, it's easy to get carried away and figure that everyone else is also incapable of telling facts from fiction. That would explain why there was such a push to banish Harry Potter books. Modern fiction written by a woman = evil. Ancient fiction written by old dead white dudes = sacred.

What's most depressing about this bible.ca site, is that I saw a huge ad for it on a university educated Saskatchewanian blogger's site. It wasn't there for satirical purposes either, which is the only plausible reason I can think of for an educated or religious person to give it any publicity. After all, who would want their religion to be dragged down by associating with a half wit web site featuring only arguments attacking scientific theories like carbon-14 dating, and well tested sciences like geology, astronomy, biology, and chemistry? Is this the Middle Ages again where some Christians are trying to whip up support to burn the heretic scientists?

Shouldn't all educated Christians be trying to distance themselves from crackpot theories and web sites by calling publicly for logic to prevail? After all it's not like science is a threat to religion. No scientist has ever burned a bible at the stake, forced a priest to publicly recant his faith in God or Jesus, or demanded stickers be put in every Bible saying, "Jesus being mankind's only saviour is just a theory. For alternate theories on salvation, see your local library for books such as "Stephen Hawking's Universe: The Cosmos Explained", or "An Introduction to Buddhism"." Sure, the destruction of Western society's education system isn't as dramatic as burning down embassies with an angry mob, but it could hurt society even more. And who really deserves more scorn in the world: An uneducated eastern Muslim man who is told his religion is under attack by western countries, or an educated western Christian man who concocts lies about science to attack our education system?
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

*Cross posted to Life of BRex.
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Do you like Bill Clinton? He's going to Regina to give a talk about Canadian and American relations. I'm thinking I'll go to moon him.
I'll wear a blue dress, then bend over and pull it up. Maybe I won't bother, since I'll have to take up cigar smoking for full effect.

...Greatest American President of the last 15 years.

It was a wild day in politics with David Emerson crossing the floor of the House to sit as a Conservative MP from the Liberals. He did exactly what so many Conservatives said was unfathomable for an honourable MP to do after Belinda Stronach left their party last year for a Liberal cabinet job waiting for her. The Conservatives now have 125 members, and the NDP 29, giving the two parties 154 seats, only one shy of a majority coalition. Oh look, there's an Independent MP in Quebec looking to change the CRTC [an organization friendly to the CBC]. Hmm, can anyone see oddball partnership coming along for the House?

In a bizzarre attempt to add to the irony of the day, Harper appointed a non Member of Parliament to a cabinet post to represent Montreal, and stuck the guy in the appointed Senate which Harper had vowed in the campaign to make an elected body of government. And who said before the election ended that Harper would go back on his word about an elected Senate? It was probably me, but let me check on that and get back to you.

[I checked, and I said on Dec 16: "Especially amusing on The National tonight was word that both Harper and Martin have promised an elected Senate. While Harper might be serious, the idea that Martin is telling the truth is laughable. Months ago he appointed 3 Alberta senators, and none of them were from the elected group that Albertans chose in a democratic fashion. Actions speak louder than words, and Paul Martin does not really want an elected Senate." Oops, I guess I was wrong, and Harper is simply imitating his idol Mr. Martin. I was thinking of this quote I wrote on January 24: "Harper might actually enact parliamentary reform, so that our senate will be elected, and elections called on a fixed schedule {which I have mixed feelings about}."] It's too bad that Harper couldn't even last one day as PM before appointing someone unelected to the Senate. What's next, handing out actual beer and popcorn to parents instead of their $1200? Oh how the mighty Conservative ideals for accountable democracy have fallen. Big surprise that was, eh?

Adding to the roundness of cabinet, Bev Oda the potential Heritage Minister that got legal money contributions from the CRIA is now in a role to scratch the back legally of the music and other copyright cartels. Oh goody. And SK got a female cabinet minister, which is good, as long as she turns out and does a good job.

On Sunday I wandered around the UofR campus for a few minutes and stopped by the site of the new Lab building. Ralph Goodale would be sure to note it as one of his accomplishments for the improvement of Regina's university grounds. It seems unlikely to me anyway that without his input as Finance Minister during Martin's government, that we'd not have got the funding for a construction project like that. I ended up in Luther College and played a few games of pool with a film major I knew from a few years ago, and he's almost finished his degree.
I walked through the Library hallway, and there are locked display cabinets with photos of dignitaries lining the walls. Some saucy chap had slipped a contraband poster into a case, advertising a truly Saskatchewan product, but they left their phone number off the poster for some reason:
Dirty gitch joke

Now that's what I call, a dirty joke. By the way, on CJME the dictionary lady guest they had on the air the other day identified 'gitch' and 'gotch' as uniquely Saskatchewanian words, possibly with a Ukrainian origin. Although in Alberta the words 'ginch' and 'gonch' replace the 't' sounds with 'n' sounds.

Manitoba Museum has a planetarium I hope to visit again one day. The last time I saw it I was probably only about 12.
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Yes, I've not written anything in almost 3 days now. I was taking a welcome break from the computering/blogging lifestyle for a few evenings. And I had a good Groundhog Day, eating a nice meal at Mano's in the Parkland Mall with a friend who was visiting from Moose Jaw. I spent Thursday in Quill Lake where a router decided to up and die by inches and I used advice from long ago and used another port on the wounded device and was able to avert a loss of Internet service on the computer I had gone to stop from crashing.
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I'm now in Regina, and went to "Syriana" [5/10]. It was a creative problem, to a simple solution of a movie. Actually it was interesting about a 1/10 of the movie, and the words "political thriller" lived up to their boring potential. I gave it a five out of ten because it showed really interesting views of the Middle East even though nothing was tied together very well in the end.

Here's a picture of me with Canadian Member of Parliament for Yorkton-Melville riding, Garry Breitkreuz. Garry's against the gun registry, which I agree is a fair position considering the massive waste it has been, but he's also against gay marriage, and also apparently against answering my emails regarding the failed Bill C-60 which was to "modernize" Canada's Copyright Act in favour of media cartels. He'll get a 4th chance to respond in the coming weeks when I send him another email to the address I got from his campaign office in the mall during the election campaign.
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I'm headed to see "Flight Plan" tonight which looks good, and can't very well be a worse choice than Syriana was last night. For now I think I'll get some bike quotes to finally get my favourite mode of transportation ready in the Spring which ought to be coming soon according to many groundhogs.
So much for bike quotes. The cycle shop I was going to go to wasn't open today, so me and my friends went to Casino Regina. I took $10, and was up to $15 after a few minutes at the slots, and left with only $6 and a couple tokens as souvenirs. I gave a quarter token to one friend who wasn't playing, and he won 5 quarters and returned the one I'd given him. Another went down $3.25 from his $10, and the fourth played nothing. After losing our shirts at the slots, we all went to The Last Spike restaurant beside the old dining rail car, and I had a buffalo burger and we all split a couple plates of nachos which were very good. We were going to fill out a comment car, but there was no pen provided, so Brien took a toothpick and poked out the letters N O P E N in the center of the card and deposited it in the comments box.

"Flight Plan" [6/10] was definitely better than Syriana was last night. I enjoyed it, and would recommend it if you're looking for a scary movie. We left the apartment on Angus St. at 9:28 after getting a call from Rick at the University, and went to pick him up. We were driving before the door was latched all the way, and pulled into the Rainbow parking lot at 2 minutes past the advertised movie start time. After finally finding a place to park, getting our tickets and making it to the theatre door, there were still 2 previews to watch before the movie started 9 minutes after 9:40.

David Karwacki might run in Weyburn-Big Muddy for the SK bye-election, however I don't think he will. He's hosting a meet and greet in Weyburn this Friday morning - 9:00 a.m. at the El Rancho Restaurant.
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Sask. Smartest Radio Listener was on CJME.com today.
Q: The last time this occurred in SK was February 20, 1946.

A: It was the last execution in SK at the Regina jail. He was killed 7 months after the crime was comitted. He was 28 years old, and had killed, as well as stole $350.

After the contest there was a doctor from Toronto talking about the risk of acquiring Hep A or B while in Mexico or other developing countries. He placed the risk of exposure to human feces in food at almost half of the travellers going, and recommends taking antibiotics along for cases of bowel distress and getting vaccinated for life for $180 against Hepatitis A and B.
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    An Anonymous poster was trying to convince people of something he obviously knows nothing about and is parroting the "slippery slope" cliche from lame "talking points".
""Same Sex Marriage has not destroyed the Canadian social order or resulted in the collapse of our culture"........yet. It's a slippery slope, now the Justice dept recommends legalizing polygamy, what's next, beastiality?"

    What's scary is that there are people actually talking like that. I wonder what's it like to give your brain over for someone else to speak through it?

    How does gay marriage bring about laws favouring polygamy, or animal cruelty? We have laws against child marriage, which is the biggest strike against polygamist places like Bountiful B.C., and laws against harming animals which by law can't consent to abuse since they aren't possessions so much as minors of a pet owner or rancher. It's as nutty to say that a change in the tax law leads to pro-bestiality laws, as it is to say gay marriage rights leads to pro-bestiality laws.

    Stop saying everything's a slippery slope as if it's a bad thing. You know what else was a slippery slope? Women getting the vote. That lead to women MLAs, and then women's rights regarding property in cases of divorce, which lead to more divorces, which lead to fewer women feeling trapped and unhappy in dangerous or unpleasant homes. And you can't have women running off from their men, now can you? The law HAS to protect us fragile men from that!

    "Using your 'doesnt hurt anyone reasoning', how would me having two wives that I can love honor and support, hurt anyone. I can already live common law with a whole housefull, so why not marriage. I see a parallel between [Same Sex Marriage] and polygamy."

    To that I'd say that polygamy doesn't hurt consenting adults obviously. The key is that they all are consenting to the multi-person relationship. Although there is no mainstream Canadian church that will marry polygamists, I don't think it's super-important for Canada to have a law banning it. It just doesn't have to require its marriage commissioners perform X-way marriages. If 3 people want to marry, then they'll just have to do it the sensible way and get married in a triangle to create as many legal partnerships to a maximum sum total of 100% legal responsibility to every one they are married to. A-B B-C C-A would all get legally married for a 3-way marriage, and there'd be 3 Marriage Commissioner's fees due, so the government wins. You could legally require the partners to draw a diagram of their legal partnerships, which ought to deter the lazy or mathematically incompetent ones anyway.

    The downside to removing the law barring it, is it gives the legal system one less reason to deny potential creeps access to Canada, and one less way to throw the book at cults like the famous one in Bountiful B.C. Polygamy is good for the male [assuming multiple wives is the standard fare, and not multiple husbands] but bad for a populous society. The reason the Church got involved in marriage about 1000 years ago was to control the population: If only married people can have a legitimate child, then it can deny marriage to people it doesn't want producing children.

    Does Canada want one man to feel free to marry 4 women who could in theory produce 15 children each with him? The implications of one man with 60 children could be profound in several ways. The political system alone could be hijacked legitimately in some ways through his influence on his children, just as an example. We also tend to loathe deadbeat Dads, and how is one man going to feed and care for 60 children to a standard we accept as "loving".

    I think even though the idea of polygamy makes most of us uneasy, most of the uneasiness is our own fault for being unfamiliar with it because it's just not a part of our society. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and isn't normal in many places, for various reasons. Many people for instance get squeamish at women breastfeeding their babies in public, when to react badly to that sight is just senseless ignorance/prudishness. Is our squeamishness about polygamy based in reality [It's a real threat to our offspring?], or prudishness [We hear everyone say it's disgusting, so we don't analyze why it would be?]?
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Rural policing is getting more expensive according to the RCMP. The price of gas has gone up, but the money that Rural Municipalities get hasn't I'd be quite certain to say. I know my hometown has a dispute right now with Sask. Justice for the policing bill they get. They are billing the community for twice as many residents as there actually are, because they are billing based on a faulty or old census. It's not hard to do a head count and that's what the village did and paid for that number of people instead. For the roughly 10 hours of policing a year that the village gets it doesn't seem fair to be over billed by more than two times their fair expense.
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There was some snow and cold weather -10C in Yorkton today. Tomorrow I'm planning on driving up to Quill Lake which is about 2 hours away, so I'm hoping for good roads after it stops snowing tonight.
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I thought I should check on Rick Mercer's petition for Beer not Kids, so I looked up the total signatures:
6167
The less popular Kids not Beer total signatures:
4122
Canada, I'm sorry, but beer beats kids.

Why are prisoners allowed to use a restricted drug not essential to life, at all? Just who's in charge at a prison anyway? If guards feel they are in danger by enforcing the rules, then changes should be made to make them safe to enforce the rules.
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    Employees at Hewlett-Packard and Canada's Department of National Defence (DND) were charged stemming from a 2 1/2 year probe by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police into shady billing and work done by HP at the DND in Canada's nation capital.
    "[An employee] Mr. Champagne was fired by DND in 2003 over alleged billing irregularities involving supplier Compaq Canada, which was later acquired by Hewlett-Packard. The company repaid the government $145 million and launched a $107-million lawsuit against Mr. Champagne, accusing him of theft and fraud. None of the allegations have been proved in court. The civil action is still before the courts, the RCMP said."
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    Mr. Bean is speaking out against censorship. One of his funniest routines is his depiction of new arrivals at Hell, where he playes the Devil, and I think he's concerned the sketch could be outlawed soon. "Would the male adulterers please line up in front of that small guilotine?"
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Esterhazy is one place I travel to for my job. Here's a picture of a potash mine north of the town, possibly the K2 where the accident occurred [otherwise it's another potash mine close to K2 which I know I've seen before during my drive out there. There are several mines in the area around Yarbo.].
Esterhazy K[?] mine

The 72 miners trapped after a fire underground, are now safely on the surface.
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It wasn't an ad on one of my pages, but on a news report where a Penn. supermarket's sealed soup can contained a sewing needle, there was this Google ad: "Buy Huber Needles here". Tasteful.
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I was on John Gormley's show for the first time today as a caller for a topic. The topic of the show was TV in 2012, the "Death of TV as we Know It". I'll try to record it when it's replayed tonight, and give you a transcript here. I got to bash the CRIA's dirty lobbying of potential MPs destined to run Heritage Canada and introduce DMCA type copyright legislation, and plug watching VHS through my 17" LCD computer screen.

Ha, someone [Mike the Greek, the fellow who tipped SK off as to the China Lilly Soya Sauce "crisis"] who called after me said that if someone wants to watch a reality show, they should open their window and look out at the people outside. "It's craaaziness!" he intoned, and remarked too that he got rid of his cell phone and he's the only business man he knows who's done that. He had his "best year ever", from doing it. I don't own a cell phone either, although I have one for work emergencies that I've used about 5 times in almost 2 years. Even most pay-as-you-go phones are not cheap, they cost about $200 a year after taxes and cards per month with only minimal use.
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Rank: 29,240 (70 links from 66 sites) my stats on Technorati have improved a lot since last time, I've moved up more than 10,000 in rank in just one week. At this rate I'll be number one in just 3 weeks, har har.
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I am what I eat, and I think too therefore I eat.

Profound, no?

Well, it's a mathematical proof sadly, it just kinda slipped out into a conversation I was having.

We think, therefore we am.

We am what we eat...

Therefore we think what we eat.

Andre Arthur the Independent MP in the House, was a "shock jock" for a Quebec radio station. He was blasted especially over his comments about "Africans" at least that's what the main stream CRTC abiding media let everyone know. In reading his quote posted on Wikipedia, it appears that the one particular comment his station lost their CRTC license over, wasn't racist. It is certainly controversial, and would qualify as bigoted perhaps since it stereotypes all African students at Laval as coming from unethical and wealthy families, but I'm concerned that it might hold a bit of truth. What he said, and I'm paraphrasing, is not that "African students at Laval are cannibals," but rather that, "The African parents who can afford to send their children to Canadian schools, do so to train their children in the dark art of business so that they might better oppress and cannibalize their fellow Africans wealth when they return home." It's not a nice way of saying that Canada is complicit in exploitation of desperately poor Africans by taking [potentially ill gotten] tuition money from African despots. It's not a view you'd hear the happy go lucky Sandi Ronaldo telling Canadians about on the 11 o'clock news, ever. And if what he says is the truth, then it hurts, as a Canadian.

I stumbled upon Alberta Blogs today. As a member of SK Blogs, I wonder how long it will be before every SK blogger is part of AB Blogs once the NDP clean out this province? Manitoba Blogs can be seen here.

My cousin Brex has started his own blog for the first time. Life of Brex ought to be interesting and funny when it gets rolling. I'm a contributor to the site, so I can make entries to help boost its content.

Here's part of why I like to look at Fark.com, the dark puns: "Roof collapse in Poland injures 500. You'd think 500 poles would be enough to hold it up".

I shovelled snow out of my parking space for the first time today, and also did some laundry, but the drier was still full of clothes and there was no laundry basket to put them in so I ought to go up and load up the drier to finish that chore up now.

According to my calculator, if I blogged as much as I have in the past two days, including this sentence too to this point [here], then I'll have written at least 168,500 words by the end of 2006 on this blog site alone. That's not counting comments or other typings like titles and HTML code. At 500 words a day, I'd churn out 182500 words a year, meaning by the time I'm 40, at this pace I'll have written well over 2,000,000 words into this blog site. I didn't even think it was possible for someone to write 2,000,000 purposeful words in their lifetime while still maintaining a life [I assume I have one, perhaps mistakenly], and certainly never read that many words. I started "blogging" back when it didn't have that popular name to describe it, and with the original intention of informing my family, girlfriend at the time, and friends of my adventures and pictures from Ottawa and eastern North America in 2002. The side benefit I thought was that I could keep track of things like when I had my last hair cut, which movies I had already seen and if I liked them, and just reading back into the past as I often like to do with historical documents or anything I come across while looking to entertain myself reading something. Now after crunching the numbers, I'm thankful for the occasional day skipped, or entry that is no more than a line or two, since it ought to bring my future archive of bloggings down to a more managable read of just 1 Million Words. Thank goodness for skimming and search engines, eh?

Since I enjoy my good ideas most when they are implemented [even if not by me], someone should create one of those "Interweb memes" which has someone enter their recent syndicated weblog entries into an online calculator, and it would tell them how many words they'll write by the time they are X years old.
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On TotallyStupid.com I saw the link for VeggiePets a horrid pet food site where people go to get information on how to "ethically" mal-nourish their pet in the unnatural vegetarian way. These sellers and buyers must be the same twerps who propose giving wild carnivores a lifetime supply of tofu rodents to survive on. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Also on a food note, and just as stupid, but hey this time it's funny, is The Toast Shop. These British blokes at the Shop stole my idea though, since I'd sold toast on eBay several years ago to a couple happy customers.

Again from TotallyStupid.com is StuffOnMyCat.com where people submit pictures of their cats, with stuff on them. Fortunately these loving pet owners don't put heavy things the cat doesn't like on top of them, because that would be a bad idea. Well, it's arguable that anything on top of a cat is a bad idea, but who's to say where the line is drawn if kitty doesn't object?

And in other senseless news, the ad for a Regina restaurant where the narrator of the ad describes himself in nothing but "a gitch" because he's had his meal delivered, is back on the air. I heard it on CJME radio's evening show the other day. Why would a restaurant want to associate its food with the word gitch [which means tight men's underwear]? Stupid, stupid, stupid...
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Ukranian church graveyard south east of Insinger, SK.

Jenkew was wondering today what music I'm listening to these days. Mostly it's whatever I've put on my computer from CDs, and it ranges from country by Sara Evans, to free indi-pro rock by Harvey Danger. There are some good Top 40 country tunes again this season, and the morning radio is worth leaving on GX94 and leaving off Fox 94.1. When I was on the road today, I was longing for a good CD or two, since the commercials just keep coming, and even with a choice of over 6 [yes count them and weep] radio stations they all run commercials or news on the hour after I've heard the news 4 times already that day and nothing's changed. You'd think there'd be more news than just what Stephen Harper said to Wilkinson nearly two days ago to look tough for Canadians.

The most interesting radio today was right around noon hour on CJME when Gormley had a sex therapy couple Bill and Carolyn Chernakoff on his program to dispel 10 sexual myths ["What you don't know might hurt"]. The ones that I remember them going over were:
10. Men need sex to live.
9. Masturbation is bad.
8. Foreplay always leads to sex.
7. Withdrawal is effective birth control.
6. Men shouldn't express their feelings.
5. Lovemaking will be wild all of the time.
4. Fantasies are best acted out and shared.
3. If the sex were better, the relationship would improve.
2. Simultaneous orgasms should be the goal of sex. [The lady's one word summary of simultaneous orgasms: coincidence.]
1. The male will know what to do to turn the female on. [The therapists have encountered some guy who said, "I'm such a bad lover, I think I gave my wife an anti-climax."]

[... and I missed the other five because] I forgot to turn the radio on when I went into work in Spalding Library. [UPDATE: I caught the replay of the radio show tonight.] But I did learn while there that Kari Matchett the leading lady of the TV shows Invasion and Power Play was born in Spalding, SK and moved to Alberta when she was 7.

Watson's santa and elevator are shown here. Watson has Santa Claus Days that's why they have a big Santa.

And just 3 months ago today, I got to use crutches for the first time after being run over [ok, into] by a van while I was biking. I tried returning the crutches two days ago at the hospital for a partial refund, but they wouldn't take them and also give me a refund for returning them after business hours. And it was the last day I could return them during business hours, and I had got there in time but they kept me a long time sitting in emergency waiting for a vaccination so I had the ER nurse write me a short note I'm giving to the business office on Monday to give me a refund even after my 3 months to return the crutches is up.

...more entries at blog archives linked below...

November 9, 2004 Nov 9 lights

Early morning I took this Northern Lights photo, looking north west.

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