Get off the Pot

Are you a pot activist? Are you disgruntled that your letters cannot get any positive feedback from the members of parliament that you send them to? If so, I have some advice for you.

Stop being an idiot.

Yes, you are an idiot.

I know you are an idiot, because you said that the Canadian government was "Cock-Blocking" the weed-needing population of our fair country from their much deserved Mary-Jane.

Let me quote again, "Cock-Blocking."

Not only am I offended that one would dip their pen in the dumbass inkwell to write to their elected representative, I'm offended because the usage of the term is not only unrequired, it's entirely incorrect. The "cock-block" is the action of preventing a male from consumating a relationship with his object of affection. Here is an example of proper usage:

"I cock-blocked Curtis for the entire party because he is a vile and wretched creature who should be prevented from ever having intimate relations with any woman, ever, in fear of him procreating."

The Canadian Government is not attempting to have any sex with anyone. The potheads of Canada are certainly not attempting to romance their weed, unless of course their addictions have taken on a sexy yet disturbing new turn. In any event, you can not use the term "cock-block" in reference to government policy. It's just plainly inaccurate.

Also, when you use sexual vernacular in your letters to your Member of Parliament, I throw it away.

I've been throwing away a lot of letters recently.

Eight Minutes on Google

I was having breakfast at my local greasy spoon today when I heard Meat Loaf's operatic-rock-opus "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights" playing on the local rock radio. Have you ever heard "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights?" It is eight and a half minutes long. There are some who say that the ideal length for a radio song is two minutes and twenty seconds. That means you could have three normal-length songs in the time it takes to play "Paradise."

What else could you do in that time? Let's ask Google.

- go on a date in Edmonton
- lose two pounds a week
- Walk from 7 University Ave. to the University Center at the U of Guelph
- take a survey
- eat 67 hamburgers
- get a university degree
- get media coverage for your humanitarian disaster
- watch the heavy-handed and cliched start of a documentary on Hanson
- get hit by a tsunami
- watch the history of the internet in gif images (in true internet fashion, pretty much all content is objectionable, and I wouldn't have it any other way.)
- learn HTML
- rid yourself of erectile dysfunction
- sell out the rugby world cup
- screen new clients
- fail to get Radiohead tickets
- get an ambulance
- make a disgusting looking pizza
- meditate
- die
- improve your PR department
- present your paper, Frederick
- improve your golf swing
- travel from the sun to the earth at light-speed
- find happiness (or, alternatively, get cheated out of ten bucks on a crappy book)
- ride the train to Falmer Station from Brighton
- put on your makeup
- impress the whole world

All things considered, Meat Loaf was eight minutes well spent.

Things that Happen in Saskatchewan

Less than 24 hours after arriving in Saskatchewan I was riding around Saskatoon in the box of a truck. Something about this felt very right. Don't worry, all the seatbelts were used, so it was perfectly legal. This is actual law in Saskatchewan, and if it isn't then everyone at least thinks it is.

Coffee with the extended family took a turn for the memorable when my cousin looked at me and said, "We made some swords out of rebar. Wanna go have a swordfight?" I said yes, obviously. When things got bloody, which didn't take long, the comment was made, "Please tell me none of us didn't see this coming." Thankfully we all did. Shortly thereafter, there was more rebar-swordfighting. Sometimes the only thing you learn from your mistakes is that they are very fun.

We were sitting down to lunch, and conversation turned to another small town and where it was. To illustrate the location of said town, Garrett grabbed a rectangular napkin and said "Pretend this is the map of Saskatchewan." It wasn't difficult to do - a square napkin is a map of Saskatchewan.

The drive home from Saskatoon is the least-interesting way that has ever been devised to spend three hours. I dispise it, which makes it a shame that I had to do it four times. It was worth it to help make my brother appear on our parents doorstep when he is really supposed to be in Ireland. He's calling it International Peekaboo, and I intend to start playing. Look Out.

I went to a lunch buffet, and one of the items was gravy. This was disturbing because I didn't think that there was anything else on the buffet that called out for brown sauce. Was it a dish on its own? Are they using gravy in new and bold ways out here? Are they just putting it on foods that would make it disgusting? As it turns out, it was the third option.

I flew here via Winnipeg. I have to fly back via Winnipeg. This has only reaffirmed in my mind that the Winnipe airport is an absolute hell-hole, just like the rest of the city. Winnipeg, if you steal my luggage again we are going to have to have words. By words I of course mean harsher ones than usual, which is saying something.

Wrath

It was a hot, cloudy, humid day today. The kind of day that makes me feel like the sky itself is pushing down on me and the whole world is under pressure. Days like this put me on edge and shorten my fuse, so I was hoping against hope that the idiots of the world called in sick today and that nobody "got up in my grill" as they say in the west.

Unfortunately, some idiots did get up in my grill. Approximately two thousand of them, in the form of a pro-life rally on the front lawn of Center Block, with propaganda spreading tentacles that snaked throughout the streets of downtown Ottawa.

Pro-life rally, all that I wanted to do today was go to the hill and take some pictures of the tulips so I could prove to my mother that they were, in fact, blooming. Unfortunately, this wonderful photo opportunity was obscured by a couple thousand walking examples of the reason a woman should have the right to choose, all shouting slogans and singing songs about banning abortion and other neolithic activities. Safe to say, this brought me down.

If you're a new reader to the blog, a warning: anger is coming.

Pro-life rally, you have incurred my Wrath. Yes, it is worthy of capitalization. To punish you for ruining my day, I will pour out my venegance upon you in the best method I can think of: Pithy Criticism.

Point One
The rally spread out into the streets of Ottawa, and in my particular case four blocks down Bank Street with people of all generations holding giant full-colour pictures of the most graphic images of abortion that they could locate and handing out pamphlets to any who did (or didn't) wish to take them. I'm pretty sure that the restaurants of Bank didn't do very good business today, because those four-foot-tall pictures of bloody aborted fetuses were enough to put anybody off their lunch. The irony of it all is that if images of equal graphic content were shown on prime-time television the very same God-fearing christians standing on the street would take it upon themselves to write strongly worded letters to the network for their lack of shame and morals. They might even organize a rally. Of course, when these images can be used to their benefit, they'll print them off with their own money and stand on the street personally thrusting them in the face of passers-by, adult and child alike. I could taste the hypocracy in the air, and it was bitter.

Point Two
Lets forget for a second that the tactics of the rally were hypocritical. I was put off more by how stupid they were. Bear in mind, I don't enjoy using a term such as "stupid" to discribe anything when I'm trying to level well thought-out criticism at an object of my hatred, but this time it sadly applies. The people on the street were very specifically attacking the Morgentaller decision of the Supreme Court, the decision that legalized abortion. Unfortunately, it appears that very few of the protestors have read or even understood the Morgentaller decision. The Supreme Court legalized abortion based on the fact that once something exists, you cannot make it un-exist. If abortion is outlawed, it does not stop it, it just forces it underground, and you know that it's not going to be licensed professionals performing these underground abortions. Johnny Malpractice is going to set up shop in the basement of a crackhouse and stock up on coat-hangers. If he has a 50% success rate, the other 50% can just get tossed in the river and he can keep on doing business. He will keep doing business too, because once people know that abortions exist they will try to get them, and poor teenage mothers-to-be are going to wind up getting thrown in rivers a lot more than they do now. Long story short, Morgentaller was decided on the basis of public health. Keep that in mind: on the basis of public health.

The pro-life crowd can get on their high horse, thrust bloody billboards into the face of the public, and invoke the name of God until the cows come home, and it will always, always be a stupid course of action. It's stupid because making moralistic arguments against something that was decided for pragmatic reasons is not an effective way to make a point. If I own a particular car because it's good on gas, I'm not going to trade it in because you don't like the colour. If you want me to get a new car, find me one with better mileage. If you want to end abortions, give us a better option. If you want to educate the public about contraception, I'm right behind you. If you want to provide better single mother support services, great. If you want to hurl scripture at the problem then you're accomplishing nothing. Don't get up in my business with holier-than-thou bullshit, because it's a waste of your time and mine. You're not contributing anything to the debate, you're simply whining as loud as possible. It's embarrassing your children.

Point Three
When 2000 people from (apparently) all parts of the country can afford to take a thursday off work and school to come down and make a meaningless protest on Parliament Hill, it only serves to prove that we are already overpopulated. We do not need extra babies!

Point Four
Imagine for a second that you do succeed and abortion is outlawed. As previously mentioned, this will result in a lot of unfortunate young mothers dying in botched illegal abortions. It will also result in a lot of young mothers having children that they don't want and can't take care of. It will also result in further burdening an already strained child welfare system. Of course, none of that will matter, because those poor helpless babies aren't getting killed anymore and you can sleep comfortably in your suburban home. I'm pretty sure that the pro-life supporters wouldn't work half as hard to help support single mothers as the're working to make more of them.

Point Five
Songs about abortion suck. They are really, really bad. Not much rhymes with abortion, and if you could sing or play your instrument well, your gig this month wouldn't be the pro-life rally. Do our fair city a favour and leave the guitar at home. Please. We didn't do anything to you, so don't hurt us any more.

Goodbye Technology

Technology, you and I have always got along well. You've given me years of gainful employment, and I've always done my best to remedy you when you were feeling buggy. I consider you an old and dear friend, which is why it hurts me so much to have to say this:

I'm breaking up with you. You've gone too far, technology, and I just won't take it anymore.

Why am I so pissed off at you? Like you don't know. You know that me and printers don't get along well, but what you've done to me over the last two days has just been cold. Ice Cold. I want to print invitations. I want to use the manual feeder tray. Don't tell me that my one page document is two pages. Don't tell me that there's no standard letter size in tray two. It is one page, there is letter in tray two. Don't Lie To Me. Moreover, don't make me stand there and constantly press the over-ride button so you can keep rubbing your dirty dirty lies in my face. I have spent half an hour just standing at that printer looking like a loser because of you. That is unforgivable.

It's not just the printer either. I know you're fucking with my MSN. I've uninstalled, I've reinstalled, I've unpatched, I've repatched, and yet you persist in being bat shit loco. When I first found that I could run MSN on both my computers simeltaneously, it was a curious bug that I found humours. Now I'm doing it just to make it work properly. That's not just mean, that's plain sick.

Speaking of sick, why didn't you involve anybody with english as a first language in the construction of my router? After spending an hour trying to upgrade my security setting on it, I gave up, because all of the documentation is in Engrish. Want to know what Engrish is? Go to any free online translator, type in any sizable amount of text, translate it into Japanese, and then translate that back into English, and you get Engrish. Not only was the router made by Engrish speakers, I think it was made in Engrand. Technology, you have screwed me on the printer, you have screwed me on MSN, and you have screwed me on the router.

Technology, it is over between us. Come and pick up your t-shirts and your Black Sabbath albums. Take those mixtapes you made for me too. They sucked. When I said that I liked them I lied. Who makes a mixtape that is only Kraftwerk anyway? Get a life! When I see you on the street, I don't know you. Just keep walking. You've changed, technology. We had something beautiful and you ruined it.

I'll never love again

Wacky Morning Show

I was just attacked by a local radio morning show.

I know that I have a reputation for embilishment, but the above statement is total fact.

Checking the mail has always been one of my favourite office activities. It gives me a chance to go for a walk, see the other political drones in their day-to-day activities, and of course interact with the post office staff. What I have learned in my short time on the hill is that the post office is the nexus of all information. If you need to know something, ask at the post office.

Second mail check (I don't have much to do today) turned up nothing, but there was a crowd larger than usual gathered around the mail desk. I was turning around to head back to the office when someone points me out to the crowd and tell them who I work for. All of a sudden I'm getting attention from these strangers. They turn out to be the morning show hosts on 98.5 "the Jewel". They try to con me into requisitioning for them a couple of parliamentary speech folders, but I split the difference and got them some slightly less cool but free surplus binders that we had in the office. All in the name of getting our inventory down to managable levels and giving the office some good press.

Of course, giving radio show hosts freebies means that they shove a micropohone in your face. This is a bad thing. They give people intensive media coaching so they don't say stupid things to the media, and I have had none of this, and at the best of times I have an inclination to say very stupid things. I used the tried and true tactic of praise the boss and say nothing else for "purposes of accountability." I think that they turned my accountability paranoia into a bit.

Anyway, if you're listening to Ottawa radio tomorrow morning, you may hear my panic-stricken voice trying desperately (and failing) to not say anything stupid. Incidentally, this will not be my first time saying stupid things on the radio. The last time I said stupid stuff on the radio it dealt heavily with fish. But that's another story.

The very definition of Awesome

So what is Awesome?

Childhood memories are awesome, when they involve aliens that are protected by their lips.

Pop-culture cliches taken too far have the capacity to be awesome.

Latvia might be awesome, and I intend to find out. (More on that in the future.)