Inside the Hotdog Factory - Canadian edition

Unionstock: CUPE's holding a concert, and mayor's welcome

2009-09-15T11:16:00.003-05:00

From The Windsor Star:

CUPE's holding a concert, and mayor's welcome
"Honeymoon Suite is ... playing a CUPE-sponsored Rock for Public Services concert Saturday, Sept. 19, 2009, in Windsor."
...
Billed as the 'Rock for Public Services' concert, Honeymoon Suite and special guest Spirit will be rocking the Riverfront Festival Plaza this Saturday starting at 7:30 p.m. The free live concert is a non-alcoholic family affair open to all and being staged by CUPE.

Details of the union-sponsored event reveal that the bands will take a two-minute union-mandated break in the middle of each song, followed by a half hour break after playing the first 45 minutes. The time taken up by audience applause and cheering will be factored into the overall time-count for the concert, which may lead to the bands receiving overtime pay.

Ontario CUPE president Sid "sexy specs" Ryan says about the event, "I think we're seeing a paradigm shift with this event in how concerts will be performed and performers are remunerated."

Ryan, however, would not comment on how much in union dues CUPE was taking from the performers of Saturday's concert.

Jesus Christ, Judge Jestus and Canadian Judas-Prudence

2009-04-29T08:18:00.026-05:00

Tink Husbandblood did not relish giving the news to Judge Jestus: a suspect in the Luanne Balmer bludgeoning case had been caught, charged and was on his way to trial.

Upon hearing the news, Judge Jestus refused to rise from his oxygen tent. He then refused all meals for nearly three hours. Finally, though, Tink was able to reason with him -- or, at least, broach a plan for avoiding having to preside over the trial. With Tink's assistance, Judge Jestus juggled, finagled, jerry-rigged, flubbed, fudged and fiddled with his calendar, doing his utmost to be unavailable for the trial of the man accused of the murder.

"Why did she have to go and get herself murdered in the first place?" the judge cried as Tink worked on his calendar. "Clearly she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Does that mean this suspect has to be tried? Can't this be chalked up to bad luck?"

"It doesn't appear anyone took that into consideration when the Criminal Code of Canada was created," Tink replied.

"Short-sighted sons of bitches!"

As it turned out, the other judges were better at avoiding cases, and within the week, Judge Jestus was notified that the case was his. Once more, the judge refused to rise from his oxygen tent and turned away all meals for almost four hours -- that is, until Tink entered the judge's sleep chamber with a platter of oven-baked pizza pockets. No justice in the Canadian judicial system could say no to pizza pockets.

The preparation for trial was always a trial in itself; one that couldn't even be eased or mitigated by pizza pockets --

"If they're called briefs," Judge Jestus lamented to Tink, "then why do they take so long to read?"

-- So, Tink moved forward with Protocol B: he left the judge in his oxygen tent and did all of the preparatory work for him.

Trial day finally arrived. As Tink dressed him, Judge Jestus said, "I learned in law school that only a handful of human beings have ever actually, knowingly killed another person. Nearly every death is just an accident the deities allowed to happen. Who are we to meddle?" He paused as Tink pulled his robe around his naked torso, and affixed his faux shirt collar. "But still, there's always a chance an actual murderer might one day walk into my courtroom. They said in law school that I'd know a real murderer by the stench of brimstone and sulfur surrounding him. Is that true?"

"Murderers, your honor, are merely people who have killed other people. They're not monsters."

"I guess you're right. They're people who have done wrong, like burning pizza pockets or losing the cap to the toothpaste."

* * *

The first day of the trial, Judge Jestus entered the courtroom and saw no murderers present. More to the point, he didn't smell any present, which greatly relieved him.

Sure, there was the defendant, but he looked harmless and dapper in his suit. If anything, he looked pale; seemed to have the blues. He must suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, the judge thought, making a mental note to ask Tink if S.A.D. was a valid legal defense -- aside from being not guilty, of course.

The trial commenced and the pain-in-the-ass Crown Attorney bored the entire courtroom with his opening statement in which he made all sorts of scurrilous, slanderous and hurtful accusations against the defendant. It had been years since Judge Jestus overcame the tick of continually shaking his head when the Crown presented its case, but he felt it returning.

"The victim's blood was found on the defendant's shoes," the C.A. droned. "A club with the victim's blood and hair on it was found in the defendant's home . . . The defendant has given six different statements for his whereabouts on the night in question -- none of which meshes with any of the verifiable facts. . . ."

Most of the Crown's case was circumstantial. Nobody had seen the defendant commit the alleged murder. Anyhow, Judge Jestus had decided during the elevator ride to the courtroom on the first day that the case really only involved manslaughter. Somehow, the term manslaughter sounded worse than murder, but the judge clung to the fact that it was the tongue-lashing he bestowed upon the few people he actually found guilty that most mortified them. Prison time was incidental in the face of the judge's unalloyed disappointment in those roguish few and their devilish ways.

* * *

The worst part of the trial came on the third day when the victim's mother took the stand.

The victim's mother had found the body of her murdered -- Manslaughtered, Judge Jestus quietly corrected himself -- daughter. She had also observed her daughter arguing with the defendant -- who was, coincidentally, a former a boyfriend; boy, how the Crown just loved coincidences! -- two days before the crime.

The victim's mother kept it together for a few minutes, but the moment she was asked about finding her daughter dead, she began crying in a most undignified fashion. As Judge Jestus watched her weeping on the stand, he was silently disappointed that so few women cried like Julia Roberts or that Scarlett Johansson; whose large, beautiful eyes filled with tears like autumn rain, strangely accentuating their already perfect features.

The judge wasn't utterly without compassion. Losing a loved one was never easy. A prized fern of his had withered the year before and he'd walked around in a profound funk for days afterward. Judge Jestus was no stranger to grief. But it was really rather self-indulgent to carry on as though the world had ended.

* * *

Judge Jestus was determined that the trial would last no longer than a week. On the fourth day, the defense called its first and only witness: the defendant's mother.

At the mention of another matriarch taking the stand, the judge inwardly cringed. Mothers could be so sentimental. But the defendant's mother turned out to be very interesting. The counsel for the defense stated that she was not only psychic, but that she was also a medium. Judge Jestus loved astrology and attending psychic fairs -- and no one was a bigger fan of the mystical Sylvia Brown -- so this piqued his interest immediately.

If being a medium wasn't tantalizing enough, the defendant's mother claimed to channel one of the most interesting personages in the universe: Jesus Christ.

Although he was not a religious man, Judge Jestus understood the historical gravity of Christ's contribution to the court proceedings. In fact, he was almost glad he hadn't been able to slip out of presiding over the trial.

Since the defendant's mother was only a conduit to Jesus Christ, the bailiff waited until she had established contact with him before administering the oath. It made for an awkward few moments, having the proxy of Jesus Christ swear on a Bible to tell the truth -- essentially making The Lord swear to himself!

Then the counsel for the defense began: "Lord Jesus, is it true that you are omnipresent?"

"Yes," Jesus Christ said through the defendant's mother.

"And being omnipresent, did you have occasion to witness the actions of the defendant around the time in question?"

"Yes."

"Jesus, Prince of Peace, King of Kings, Lord of Lords," defense counsel said, "would you please tell the court whether or not you witnessed the accused committing the crime with which he is charged?"

An anxious hush took hold of the courtroom. Judge Jestus felt at that moment just as he had when he was a kid watching The Six Million Dollar Man battle the Sasquatch -- and had to wait a whole week for the "To Be Continued" to be continued. At least now he wouldn't have to endure so long a wait.

"No, I did not," Jesus said through the defendant's mother.

Sounds of shock and surprise erupted throughout the gallery. The judge rapped his gavel until his elbow hurt. "Silence!" he shouted.

"In other words," the defense counsel went on, "you're saying that the defendant is utterly innocent of all of the charges against him?"

"Yes."

"Do you know who did murder Luanna Balmer?"

"Yes."

"Would you please tell us, Jesus?"

There was a long, painful pause before Jesus spoke through the defendant's mother. Finally: "Someone else."

* * *

Judge Jestus napped on his hypoallergenic beanbag chair while Tink wrote up the official particulars of the judge's Not Guilty verdict upon the defendant in the murder -- manslaughter -- case of Luanne Balmer.

When he finally re-entered the courtroom, the judge was amused by the expressions of genuine anticipation on the faces of the gallery. He recognized a few journalists among them, and momentarily cringed knowing that no matter what he ruled in any given case, they would be unhappy and would write critical, stinging editorials about the case and the verdict. At the back of the room, the judge even recognized a particularly troublesome, noisome blogger. If it wasn't bad enough having to contend with the established, execrable press, there were now bloggers "out there" commenting on every twitch and furrowed brow displayed by the judge.

Why don't you go out and get a respectable job? the judge wanted to shout in the blogger's face. But then he knew the blogger was probably utterly incapable of holding any sort of regular employment, being such a loose cannon, so volatile and id-driven.

Judge Jestus passed judgment. Aside from the quiet, respectful relief demonstrated at the defense table, the boisterous response of the gallery was distinctly outraged. Leading the way with inconsolable wails was Luanne Balmer's mother. The judge made a mental note to ask Tink about barring the parents of crime victims from future court proceedings. They were so disruptive, but who dared ask them to be quiet?

The judge returned to his chambers anxious to check his eBay bid on a ship-in-a-bottle. How somebody could get a model ship inside of a bottle was beyond Judge Jestus. Technology was an absolutely amazing thing.

* * *

On his way out of the courthouse that afternoon, Tink Husbandblood was approached by a figure that made him cringe with loathing and exasperation: the blogger.

"Mr. Husbandblood," the blogger said, holding a portable MP3 recording device, "how in the world can Judge Jestus square today's ruling with the evidence presented during the trial?"

"I wouldn't expect a mere blogger to understand the unfathomable nuances and complexities of the law," Tink said, "so I'm unsure I can answer your question. All you need know is that justice was served."

"Served?" the blogger said, incredulous. "The Canadian judicial system is in dire shape! There is a growing and disconcerting disconnect between community values and the lenient, misguided judgments handed down by justices."

"Oh really," Tink said derisively, folding his arms. "Name one."

"Well, this case --"

"Name another one," Tink interrupted.

"OK, what about the child pornography case in which the judge stated a father who photographed his nine year old daughter's genitals had 'a sexual purpose'? The judge still found the man not guilty because the man had erased his hard drive before his wife could bring the charges against him!"

Tink uttered a braying laugh. "Are you serious? The man in question was charged with possessing child pornography on April 25, 2006. On that date, his computer was found to be wiped clean -- he had no 'knowledge and control' of those images at that time. Are you dense?"

"Come on!" the blogger said. "Forensic software found child pornography on the computer -- pornographic pictures of the man's own daughter!"

"But on the wrong date," Tink said. "On the wrong date."

"A crime was still committed! The judge all but stated that!"

"No crime was committed because the dates were wrong." Tink looked at his watch. "As I said, a mere blogger has no capacity to fathom the philosophical, spiritual and metaphysical intricacies of The Law."

"Even if that creep had been found guilty," the blogger sneered, "I'm sure the judge would've handed him a stiff sentence like ten days house-arrest. What a joke!"

Tink fixed the blogger with a withering look. "Everyone thinks they know the law; that they know what's fair. I will tell you this -- the purpose of a sentence is not punishment. The judge has the unfavourable task of delivering a sentence which will reform the criminal's behavior. Unless we were actually in the courtroom, with access to all the evidence, and with the education and experience of a judge, we cannot presume to think we know better than the judge. The idea that sentences should be a punishment/revenge or somehow based on the hurt inflicted on others is false." Tink walked away. "Good day."

* * *

Outside, on the front steps of the courthouse, Tink encountered another troublesome figure. He rolled his eyes with impatience as The Wallet Inspector approached.

"What is this?" Tink said. "My wallet was inspected only two days ago -- and I might add, my money was missing afterward!"

"Are you sure you didn't lose your money yourself?" the shifty-eyed Wallet Inspector said.

"Well, no," Tink conceded as he handed over his wallet for inspection. He didn't know anyone else who had to submit to these, but Tink wasn't about to question an official who was only doing his job. At least The Wallet Inspector was quick about it.

"You're free to go," The Wallet Inspector said.

"Thank you," Tink said.

As he got to his car, Tink remembered that he had to purchase balloons for the justices monthly water balloon fight set for the following day at the Whitely Judicial Retreat Compound.

On his way home, Tink stopped at a dollar store and picked up a few dozen balloons. At the check-out, he reached into his wallet and found that his cash and credit cards were missing. He looked at the stone-faced cashier. Tink's cheeks stung with embarrassment and shock. "Oh, gosh, I don't --" he muttered. "Do you have any Wallet Inspector reimbursement forms?"

The cashier looked at Tink as though he'd asked for a bar of Irish Spring soap with the Magna Carter carved into it.

"The Wallet Inspector caught up to me after court," Tink explained.

"We don't got any forms," the cashier said.

"All right," Tink said. "I'll see if the Post Office has any."

He left the store.

Best Buy: Helping YOU shop ELSEWHERE

2009-04-28T13:55:00.016-05:00

Best Buy picked the right place when it set up shop in Windsor, Ontario -- otherwise known as "The Millionaire Capital of Canada."

Windsor's economy is tied so closely to Detroit, Michigan's -- and that solid gold auto industry -- there's no question the citizenry has money to burn. Sales and coupons and "deals" and "best buys" are a waste of time among the monied. All we're concerned with is the most expensive item in the store, whatever the store. And thank Gawd Best Buy is here to do that for us.

Unfortunately for me, I am an abnormal Windsorite -- I am not wealthy.

A few months ago I was shopping for a laptop, and wandered into Best Buy. I had done months of Web research and had narrowed down on the laptop I wanted: a $499 Acer. When I approached a salesman at Best Buy and pointed out the machine I wanted, he immediately walked away, saying, "No, no, I'll show you what you want." When I insisted that I knew what I wanted, the salesman grudgingly went into the back to see if there were any models in stock. What do you know? They didn't have any left. I bought my laptop elsewhere.

Today, I went back to Best Buy with my dad who was looking for a laptop for my mom. We checked out all the models on display, compared specs, tabulated my mom's uses -- e-mail, writing the odd letter, a little Web surfing -- and narrowed on a $499 HP model. Luckily, Chris, the curly-haired salesman, was on hand to steer us away from what we wanted.

First thing he said when we indicated the model we wanted was that it was junk. He warned about its technology being five years out of date.

"So, Best Buy sells merchandise it thinks is garbage?" I asked, incredulous.

Chris vigorously nodded.

I couldn't believe it.

Then Chris inadvertently pointed out a discrepancy between that HP laptop's specs, which were printed on a card mounted on the counter in front of it, and those on the sign above it. The sign stated it only had a 1 GHz processor. The card on the front of laptop said it had 2.1 GHz.

I said, "So, without knowing what this laptop will be used for, you're instantly trying to up-sell us?"

To this Chris tried a crippled, left-footed tap dance that made all involved feel embarrassed for him. "This is what you buy for your kid when you want him off your lap," he said.

"You know, your spiel isn't making HP sound bad," I told Chris, mystified by his bizarre performance, "you're making Best Buy look bad."

To which Chris shrugged.

"Maybe we'll buy the laptop elsewhere," I said.

To which Chris shrugged again.

So, we left and bought a laptop for my mom elsewhere. No doubt Chris had a plethora of millionaires to whom to sell $2,000 laptops, game systems and big screen TVs. Clearly, we were wasting his time.

Shopping at Best Buy (the Bait & Switch Capital of Retail) is like trying to buy a quart of milk in Beverly Hills, California: it's not the errand that's unreasonable, it's the environment that's unreasonable.

Where does Best Buy get its sales staff? These guys should be ushers in a porn theater.

Scumbags in Spectacles -- groping for that modicum of respectability

2009-04-22T07:48:00.005-05:00

Attempts at re-spectable-ability among the scumbag set:

Maurice 'Mom' Boucher, Hell's Angels

Sid Ryan, CUPE

Ken Lewenza, CAW

Where are the adults?

2009-04-20T21:09:00.005-05:00

To a Member of City Council:

I'm a lifelong resident of The City. I was born here, I was educated here; I was married here and bought my first home here. My parents are lifelong residents, as well.

As the dominoes of the global financial meltdown tumble around my neighborhood, I need to ask someone -- shout the question aloud -- "What in the name of gawd has happened to The City?"

Another question that throbs in my mind all day long is, "Where are the adults?" Who is making the decisions that continually lead The City down blind alleys year after year? Have we simply had a string of terrible mayors? Is City Council as corrupt and dissolute and inept as its detractors claim? Are the citizens so apathetic, so fat, stupid and slap-happy that they don't ask more of their leaders? Have the best and brightest of The City simply left behind those who embrace mediocrity?

I am a writer and IT professional who has worked in Canada, Ireland and the United States. I'm educated, motivated and would like nothing better than to put my brains and talents to work for a local company. Aside from a miserable six-month stint at an ass-backward, hellhole of an office five years ago, I've never worked in The City during my adult life. I've submitted enough resumes to local businesses over the years -- to our newspaper, the art gallery, St. Clair College, the University, the few companies that need IT personnel, etc., etc. -- that I could probably cover the entirety of E.C. Row Expressway (itself an infamously and incompetently handled project) with the volume of pages.

So, I've worked in the United States -- most recently at WorkPlaceUSA in Boilston. Even that, now, has dried up and I am once again unemployed. For the first time, however, I am unemployed and wide awake to the fact that The City holds absolutely no promise for me. I have beaten my head against its unyielding concrete for most of my life, and I'm through with it.

Since no one in a position of power or responsibility in The City has ever seized the moment during boom times to plan for downturns, The City now teeters on the brink of an economic abyss. You know you're in trouble when the future of the city's largest industry is in the ham-hands of Flem Lewenza and the CAW. I understand that unions may have had a purpose at one time, decades ago, but as happens with most institutions, their purpose has been lost in a cloud of self-interest, greed, incompetence, ambition and arrogance. Seeing pictures in the local newspaper of CAW members burning copies of the email sent to them by the CEO of Chrysler Canada was painfully symbolic. I'm a front-line, low-level worker and I can sympathize with my peers in other industries who have to give concessions while their executives pull down exorbitant salaries, benefits and perks. I get it. But what in the hell led us here? The road we're on was so gawddamned avoidable, I'm aghast and almost laughing with shock that we are where we find ourselves.

My question and conundrum is much larger and far-reaching than Chrysler, the CAW and Flem Lewenza. There seems to be a constitutional resistance to success in The City; a cringing away from the challenges of hard, necessary decisions. Basing our economy on strip bars, bingo halls, the casino and the downtown bars that turn into a weekly melee with teenaged American drinkers is criminally short-sighted. It's insulting. No Cityite I know feels anything but embarrassment and disgust about The City's major economic pillars.

Gosh, I'll never forget when the casino first came here and our art gallery was kicked out of its building so it could house the "temporary" casino. I was in university at that time and people coming to campus from out of town laughed uproariously at that cartoonish turn of events. Like the burning of copies of the Chrysler Canada CEO's email, the temporary casino supplanting the art gallery was so gory and vivid in its symbolism.

Where are the adults?

Who in hell allowed that Dougherty character to leave that gaping hole in the ground next to the Compri Hotel for two decades? That's what I'm talking about.

And here I am, an educated, skilled, willing son of The City who has come to the point where I feel absolutely poisoned with my disappointment and anger with this bloody place. I can hear a balcony heckler shouting, "Well, why don't you run for office, smart guy, if you think you can run things better?" I'm not saying I could run things better, but I sure as hell thought the people for whom I've voted over the years -- and I vote every opportunity I get -- would run things substantially better than they have.

I spent this week in Toronto, sleeping on a friend's floor after days of looking for work. On a professional, economic, practical level, The City for me is a wasteland. I bet you I couldn't get a job as a bingo caller right now, and I have a wonderful speaking voice! In 2006, I wrote an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray for the stage. A prominent local artist and director produced the play. The day before Dorian Gray was to hit the stage at the Capital Theatre in March 2007, the theatre closed down. The day before. To hell with my disappointment, my heart went out to those wonderful actors who'd put months of hard work into the play. It was ultimately staged at MacKenzie Hall, but only after there was an enormous amount of confusion and doubt about where to find an alternate venue.

The City's in terrible shape, and the sad thing is, I don't think it would know what to do with a panacea even if one existed. The City has been turned so horribly inside-out by incompetent greedy swine that I don't think it could ever be hammered back into shape.

I guess what's motivating me to write this disjointed, pointless message to you is that during this economic disaster, I've finally seen the face of The City -- and it's the face of a stranger.

Where are the adults? They fled long ago. It's Children of the Corn here. We're led and bullied by insolent adolescents, regardless of their true chronological ages. We're led by Sandra Pupatello who commits the same sins she rails against in her ideological enemies. There's no right or wrong, only "our side" and "their side." Commit whatever sins you like, so long as you're on our side. And no matter what coherent, innovative, salvation-bringing idea they have, screw it, because it's coming over from their side.

Another question crosses my mind with increasing frequency: "Who gives a shit?" I used to. I always imagined our civic leaders did. There was evidence that friends and neighbors did. But more recently, the answer to that question has become as troubling and unsettling as the answer to "Where are the adults?"

Saying that The City's barn doors have hung open too long and its future escaped is not a fatalistic assessment. I believe a fatalistic assessment of The City is one that denies that truth. I'm as hopeful as the next guy, but more than that I'm a realist. Hope without realism is a hippie's dreamland.

I feel like a resident of Pompeii in the wake of Vesuvius' fury, except we haven't had the benefit of a dramatic demise.

Where are the adults? Wherever they are, I would like to join them.

The CAW has to destroy the city in order to save it

2009-04-17T14:31:00.011-05:00

The Canadian Auto Workers union, today, engaged in an impromptu sidewalk performance piece, demonstating their view of the future for the city of Windsor, Ontario:

Asked for comment about the dire performance piece, CAW leader Ken Lewenza said, "The CAW has to destroy the city in order to save it."

No criminal left behind

2009-03-23T19:14:00.005-05:00

Chatham-Kent police have released a surveillance photo of a man wanted in connection with the robbery of a Shoppers Drug Mart in Tilbury on the weekend.

Just before 10 p.m. Saturday the man entered the Shoppers Drug Mart on Mill Street West and demanded a quantity of prescription medication.

He left the store with a quantity of drugs.

If you know the whereabouts of this man, please contact police immediately. He must be found! With this alleged crime allegedly under his belt, this man is now entitled to a life-long government pension and subscription to Macleans magazine, as well as gift cards to Roots. If Canada is to remain the most civilized country on earth, it's imperative that no criminal can be left behind!

Bad Beard Books

2009-03-09T20:08:00.002-05:00

JACTOFF presents Kanadian Justice Kiosk

2009-02-09T09:06:00.034-05:00

Have you ever been arrested, maybe for drunk driving, fighting in a bar, beating up a spouse or sledgehammering a public toilet? Were you given a ticket by one of those troublesome "cops" demanding you appear in court?

Well, the Canadian judges' national body "Judges Acting Compassionately Toward Offenders' Future Freedom" (JACTOFF) is tired of the time-wasting bureaucracy that tangles up criminals after they've been caught.

Introducing Kanadian Justice Kiosk -- or, denoted for the illiterate by the following pictogram:

Kanadian Justice Kiosks are similar to those used by people to renew their driver's licenses or vehicle license plate tags. Kanadian Justice Kiosks are conveniently located in check-cashing depots, liquor and beer stores, laundromats, fishing tackle shops, bowling alleys, and of course, in malls. There are also a growing number of drive-thru kiosks -- look for one near you!

How does it work?

Say you're Biff and you've been ticketed for killing someone with your car while driving drunk. JACTOFF knows that "shit happens," so all Biff need do is go to a conveniently located Kanadian Justice Kiosk, feed his ticket into the ticket reader and follow the prompts on the screen.

The first and most important question is:

How do you plead: GUILTY | NOT GUILTY

If Biff presses the touch-screen NOT GUILTY button, he receives the following message: HAVE A NICE DAY! And he's free to go.

Now, if Biff touches the GUILTY button, he is prompted to answer another question (JACTOFF believes in thoroughness while dispensing drive-thru justice!):

Was it your fault? YES | NO

If Biff presses NO, he receives the following message: HAVE A NICE DAY! And he's free to go.

If Biff pressed YES on that last question, he'd then be prompted to answer a few more:

Did you mean to do it? YES | NO

Do you promise never to do it again? YES | NO

Please choose your sentence: 10 DAYS | 30 DAYS | 60 DAYS | 90 DAYS | 120 DAYS | SUSPENDED

Where would you like to serve your sentence? HOUSE ARREST | PRISON

Please provide your sweater size so that one of our caring judges may knit one for you (please allow 4 - 6 weeks for delivery):
S | M | L | XL | XXL | XXXL | XXXXL | XXXXXL | XXXXXXL | XXXXXXXL

Biff replied: YES, it was his fault; NO, he didn't mean to commit his offense; YES, he promises never to do it again; 30 DAYS as his sentence; HOUSE ARREST for the location where he'd prefer to serve his sentence; and XXXXL for his sweater size.

He would then return to his home and begin serving his sentence.

No more time-consuming court dates! No more boring court proceedings! Now Biff is ready to get back in action expressing himself in society as he always has done: under the influence of methamphetamine, committing petty larceny, weapons danger, trafficking controlled substances -- and driving his dead mother's car all the while!

JACTOFF has been looking out for the interests of criminals for 72 years.

No crime's too big, no crime's too small for Kanadian Justice Kiosk!

Canada's King Solomons

2008-12-09T16:09:00.012-05:00

It was very pleasant in the chambers of Judge Jestus. Amid the ambient whale songs coming through hidden speakers, a stereo played the song "Beautiful World" by Devo. When Tink Husbandblood, the judge's assistant, came in for him, Judge Jestus stood nude in his marble wading pool, his back to the door, arms raised, head bowed.

"Uh, Judge," Tink ventured tentatively.

The judge's body went rigid and he held up his right index finger.

Tink went to a mahogany throne Judge Jestus had had constructed in the likeness of King Solomon's throne as found in the Temple of Judah, and grabbed the towel hanging from one of its jutting, ornate flourishes. After a moment, the judge came out of the water and Tink daubed him dry.

"What adventures do I have today?" Judge Jestus said as Tink fitted the collar-and-tie bib around the judge's neck. Once clad in his black robes, the judge would appear to be wearing a shirt and tie, exuding the illusion that he was fully clothed beneath his judicial garb.

"Some vandalism, an assault, a few petty thefts, breaking and entering," Tink said.

The judge laughed. "You sound so glum!"

"Well, you're passing sentence today, sir," Tink said as he affixed shoes with sock-like booties to the judge's feet.

"Ah, everything will turn out all right," Judge Jestus said with a wink. "Just you wait and see!"

He and Tink walked to door leading to the courtroom. A few steps from the door, Judge Jestus suddenly dropped to one knee, bowed his head and clenched his eyes shut. "Lord, I pray that you give me the wisdom to temper justice with mercy. Amen."

"Amen," Tink echoed.

Outside the door the bailiff was telling everybody to stand so that the judge could tell them to sit down again. When Judge Jestus took his place at the bench, he beheld a courtroom filled with well-dressed people. Ah, if those wretched reporters and the even more wretched bloggers could only see the world from this vantage point for one minute, maybe all of the jaundiced vitriol they spewed about Canadian judges being soft on crime would dissipate like steam from the wading pool.

Judge Jestus turned his watery eyes toward the defendant: a slender man in an ill-fitting suit. He had sunken cheeks and angry eyes. The sight of the poor little ragamuffin reminded the judge of the Robbie Burns poem "To a Mouse", which he recited from memory in the alehouse each Burns Day.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.

The judge looked at the paperwork handed to him by Tink, which stated the defendant had vandalized his neighbor's car, bludgeoned his neighbor's dog with a broken step ladder, and then assaulted the neighbor.

Judge Jestus raised his eyes and regarded the ragamuffin once more. Pitiable little roustabout, he thought. Probably had himself a bad day. Probably feels that the world's all stacked against him. I don't need to look through these silly files to see that he has no education, no self-esteem. Why, I'd lay odds that neighbor of his goaded him into a confrontation. . . Ah well, I may as well make this look good.

"Would the defendant please rise," the judge said.

The defendant rose slowly, unsteadily to his feet.

"It's not nice hitting people," the judge began in a stern stentorian voice. "Hitting's not nice. But I have weighed the evidence carefully and I believe the odds of this defendant committing the same offense against the neighbor who lives right next door to him to be so remote that I sentence the defendant to six hours house arrest, to be served between the hours of midnight and six a.m.."

The judge banged his gavel, bringing on the next case.

The defendant was a nineteen year old girl charged with breaking and entering and theft. Says in this bloody file that the poor little waif's got a drug problem! the judge thought, glancing through his papers. Well, of course she's breaking and entering and stealing the property of others -- she's got a habit to feed! I've seen Reefer Madness, I know what it's like to have a monkey on one's back. He skimmed the file. Oh, well, ten other B&E offenses. This stray little kitten has just gone astray, that's all.

After requesting the defendant rise, Judge Jestus said, "Breaking and entering is bad. Stealing property that belongs to others is not nice. Do you want people to think you're not nice?" The waif made no answer; didn't even have it in her to shake her head. "No, I'd think not!" the judge continued. "I've weighed the evidence and believe that the odds of this defendant committing the same offense are so remote, I sentence the defendant to three days in jail -- suspended."

"You're honor, I must protest!" said the Crown attorney. "The Crown believes that some punishment is in order, given the fact that the defendant is a repeat offender!"

Judge Jestus turned his moist eyes in the direction of that tiresome little man. "One more outburst like that and I'll hold you in contempt!"

The bang of the gavel brought the next case.

The man who took his turn at the defendant's table looked like a tough cookie. He wasn't wearing a tie! He had clearly spent no time combing his bushy hair and he appeared to be unshaven. Judge Jestus looked at the defendant with a sense of wonderment that quickly melted into pity. Pathetic creature, he thought. Doesn't even have the wherewithal to look after his grooming. I'd bet a hot bath and a nice bowl of soup would rouse him out of that self-defeating trance!

The judge looked at the file before him. Clearly what he read was a misprint -- the file said the unkempt man was found guilty of Weapons Danger and Attempted Murder. Judge Jestus looked at the rapscallion once more. I'll have a word with the . . . whoever looks after these files! Can't even get their facts straight!

"I refer this matter for further adjudication," the judge said.

"Uh, your honor," the Crown attorney began, "This matter had been adjudicated."

"Well, I'm referring it back for further adjudication! Is that all right with you?"

"Your honor," the Crown attorney said in his patronizing tone. "The matter has been adjudicated adequately and the defendant is now here for sentencing."

Few times in his life had Judge Jestus been spoken to in such a hostile manner. He looked at the Crown attorney with a mix of bewilderment and fury. He rapped his gavel angrily. "Then I find the defendant 'Not Guilty'!"

"But your honor, you've already ruled on this case and found the defendant 'Guilty'."

"Did not!" Judge Jestus roared.

"I'm sorry, your honor, you did."

"Did not!"

"I'm sorry, but --"

The judge cut him off with a furious flurry of gavel-hammering. Judge Jestus jumped from his chair -- his chest suddenly hot; his cheeks flushed -- and bellowed "I demand a recess!" He turned and rushed into his chambers.

Right behind him was faithful Tink. As Judge Jestus threw himself into his King Solomon replica throne, Tink approached with the oxygen tank and mask. It had been days since he'd last required it -- right after he'd asked the court recorder for her bottle of Liquid Paper (because the judge had a file before him that was patently mistaken, stating that some harmless teenager had stolen a car) and she'd told him that she didn't have any. "Well, how in the name of Thor am I going to rectify this egregious clerical error?" the judge had yelled, his voice veering into the higher registers of hysteria . . . and then it was back into chambers, and the oxygen mask.

"I want . . ." the judge wheezed. ". . . that foul, foul man . . . stripped . . . and..." he couldn't continue.

"Just breathe, your honor," Tink said, hoping the omnipresent whale songs playing on the hidden speakers would do their soothing magic.

When the judge had regained his composure, he was led by Tink back to the bench. The sight of everyone in the courtroom standing upon his entrance made it that much easier. He paused for a moment before allowing them to sit down.

The next case before him was that of Jim Pitts, tried and convicted of arson. Judge Jestus was suddenly glad he'd been driven back into chambers for a sitdown and some oxygen. He knew this case. Ole Pitts had set fire to his apartment and ended up burning down the wretched little three-story rat-trap of a building. Nobody killed, nobody hurt. But it had been a few doors down from a jewelry stores owned by one of the judges shell corporations. He was fully insured and wouldn't have suffered a moment's inconvenience had the shop burned. But still, it might have. That had sent a jolt through Judge Jestus.

Fixing the defendant with his sternest expression, the judge commanded the miscreant to his feet. He would give this trouble-maker both barrels.

"Sir, you have committed a most grievous crime," the judge began. "Arson is not only not nice, it's very, very bad! You stand before me and before your community a bad-not-nice person." The judge waited a moment to see if the defendant would brace himself against the table after hearing such a harsh rebuke. The knave didn't even blink. Have it your way, the judge thought. Here it comes!

"You, sir, are hereby sentenced to thirty days in jail." He paused, sure the defendant would collapse. The hardened, rough-handed hound dog of a man just stood there. Made of stone, are you? "And two years probation. You have made your bed, now you must lie in it." The defendant was taken away, uttering ne'ery a protest or epithet. Deadened imbecile.

That evening, back at the judge's mansion, Tink fed him pureed bananas and butterscotch. Once ensconced within his oxygen tent and beneath his hypoallergenic duvet, Judge Jestus settled in as Tink read him a chapter from Private Troubles and Public Issues: Social Problems in the Postmodern Era, 1st Edition. When the chapter was finished, the judge yawned. "Please be sure to leave out my knitting needles when you go," he said.

"Certainly sir," Tink said, rising and turning out the light.

Two weeks later a package arrived at the jail for Jim Pitts. It contained an orange turtle neck sweater with a note and twenty dollars pinned to the front. The note read:

I hope orange is your color. I guessed at the size. Hope all is well.

Pitts tossed the note and sweater into the nearest garbage pail and pocketed the twenty dollar bill.

Canadian Judas-Prudence and its very real P.R. problem

2008-12-06T15:20:00.013-05:00

My good friend, Pryvett Rawgers, recently said to me in reference to himself: "I do not court popularity." The same could be said for myself.

I recently posted a blog about my disgust and disappointment (and unabashed bewilderment) with the Canadian justice system -- which I refer to as "Judas-Prudence", an expression I got from Archie Bunker -- and posted a link to it on Reddit.com. The specific case I commented on involved a man who got high one night and in a fit of rage, set fire to his apartment, leading to the destruction of the entire building in which he lived. No one was killed, or even injured from what I know. For this act of arson, the man was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years probation. This struck me as very, very light. Nowhere in my blog did I suggest the man be flogged or killed or jailed for 100 years. But for endangering the lives of numerous people, for the massive destruction of property he caused, it's my opinion the man should have been given at least a few years in prison.

Posting this on Reddit.com, I got what I was hoping for -- other opinions. And man, these were other opinions. Only five or six people read my blog and commented on it, but 100 percent of them sided with the arsonist and vilified me to varying degrees -- one going so far and delving so low as to suggest I read a social science book. The name-calling aside, and the questions about my intelligence and comments about my "high horse" aside, one thing remains clear: Canadian Judas-Prudence has a severe P.R. problem -- there are people like myself who do not feel well-served by our justice system.

My detractors in the Reddit.com post surmised that I have never "heard submissions" or "heard arguments made at the trial", both of which are true. I don't claim to be a lawyer or a judge, but I'd love to have heard the submissions and arguments in this arson case. I imagine Canadian judges existing in a parallel reality not unlike Jim Carrey's in the film The Truman Show, where everyone is polite and gracious and good; where people excuse themselves for farting even if they're alone in the house. And these judges are brought into our reality to hear cases and pass judgment.

I imagine defense lawyers going before these judges with expressions of gravity and sincerity, arguing and submitting, "Your Honour, my client had no choice in the matter of getting high on the night in question -- his girlfriend had recently left him, and the library was hounding him about late books that she had taken out on his card. While high, my client received a call from the library -- well, actually, he hallucinated a call from the library, but that's immaterial. And this call caused him great distress, distress to the point where my client believed -- actually believed that Satan Himself was in the room with him. Well, my client merely fell back on age-old wisdom he'd heard since he was a child: 'Fight fire with fire.' Since Satan's home is Hell, and Hell is fire --"

Crown Attorney jumps to his wing-tipped feet. "Objection your Honour! Hell is fire and brimstone. Let the record reflect that is not just fire!"

"It shall be so noted," the judge intones. To the defense attorney, the judge says, "Please continue."

"Thank you your Honour. As I was saying, my client believed he was being confronted by Satan Himself and sought to battle the Prince of Darkness with fire -- by burning up all of the underwear that his former girlfriend had yet to come back and claim. My client then sought to flee Satan and the fire, and the apartment unit became a conflagration, spreading to the rest of the building . . . I won't bore you with the details."

To which the judge finally passes judgement: "Although the defendant was battling Satan Himself while already suffering great emotional strain, I cannot overlook the loss of property, the endangerment of citizens and fire personnel. For this reason, I have no option but order the defendant be confined to a penal institution for a period of thirty days, as well as two years probation." After which the judge shakes with the adrenalin rush of wielding such god-like power.

The point of my blog was that as a layman, Canadian judges' handling of criminals does not make sense to me. I understand mitigating circumstances, I don't propose that defendants in court be given ten-minute trials and then be thrown in front of firing squads. I can understand everything about the trial process (as I demonstrate above) -- except the sentences judges hand out to criminals.

Some examples of what I'm talking about (by no means complete or exhaustive; it's the merest smattering):

Meet Pedophile DALE OSWALD

Ontario a man who was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman was given a sentence of thirty days house arrest

Out-of-touch Judges are to Blame for the Toronto Shooting?

A woman who admitted to concealing her pregnancy and later placing her newborn baby in a garbage bag was spared further jail time Thursday.

Canada Judas-prudence is based on clairvoyance

I don't live and work in a vacuum. When I'm curious about something, I ask others what they think about it. Everyone and anyone I've personally spoken to about Canadian court cases in the news, especially when a sentence has been announced, has expressed the opinion that the sentences are not only weak and lacking, but grossly lenient. Among the people I've spoken to are street cops. These are the people who catch the criminals, and often at great personal risk. Yeah, it's their job; they knew what they signed up for.

Law and order, a justice system, is the foundation of society. If people don't have any satisfactory recourse when crimes are committed against them, great roads, titanium sewers and world class schools don't mean much. Humanity has proven the honor system is dead. Fine. That's why we have laws. The laws are great. I remember taking a high school law class and hearing the maximum penalty for breaking and entering was life in prison. I thought to myself, Holy shit! I guess I won't be breaking and entering anywhere! Laws are great, but they're useless if they are not enforced, or are enforced in the most weak-kneed, wincing, hand-wringing way.

The startling thing I learned today was that there are people who are not only satisfied and happy with laughably lenient jail sentences, they're quite willing to defend the seemingly indefensible. As mentioned above, I do not court popularity. Clearly, my ideas about right and wrong and the need for deterrence in a judicial system are completely out of step with some of my fellow Canadians.

It would be interesting to put all these lofty, philosophical social science adherents to the test. I wonder how magnanimous they would be if the deities deigned that I stay in the same hotel in which they were staying one night. And if I were to get high at some point during the night -- not only high, but also very angry. And, if I somehow set fire to the hotel with such proficiency that everyone had to flee and all of their possessions were burned up (though with no one being harmed). And if I received 30 days in jail for my efforts. As a writer, I'd almost consider that a working vacation, though I'd insist on paying for my meals in jail so that I could claim them on my income tax.

Who needs the Magna Carta or the Code of Hammurabi when we've got social science books?

Update

After reading the comments posted on my Reddit.com link about the 30 day jail sentence given to a Canadian arsonist, not a single commenter offered a coherent justification for such a lenient sentence. Commenters offered insults, but no reasoned arguments why a person who purposely burns down an apartment building received a month in jail. So, I'm left to conclude that it was only a gaggle of cranks who fell upon my post; people who root for criminals. Which they're free to do, but Canadian Judas-Prudence's PR problem remains. Cheering for criminals is not the same as explaining or justifying the noxiously lenient sentences Canadian judges hand out.

I believe the most insulting commenter is either a pimpled 19 year old idealist who thinks the world has been explained in his first sociology class, or he's a 45 year old anal retentive who irons his underwear. Either way, he was uninteresting and gave no evidence to being the least bit informed about anything. But that's the Web.

Canada's Dragon Den -- The Pit of Businessman Cliches

2008-12-06T08:15:00.012-05:00

"Mean TV" is all the rage. Simon Cowell has made a career out of being an irredeemable cocksucker. Judge Judy has become a celebrity by demonstrating, episode after tiresome episode, that she's an irredeemable cunt. Show me a show where there are judges or a "panel" of some kind, and I'll show you a gaggle of shitheads working out their adolescent hostility because they weren't picked for the yearbook staff or didn't make the wiffle ball team in high school.

Enter CBC's The Dragon's Den on which Canadian inventors and entrepreneurs, as well as crackpots and morons take the stage, show their wares, air their money-making ideas, in hopes of impressing the panel of "dragons" -- successful Canadian business people -- to give them substantial dollars in venture capital.

I normally hate such shows, but found this one morning while channel surfing and thought it would be cool to check out some of the inventions and business ideas of ordinary Canadians. What I found, instead, was a painful, awful showcase of all that's worst and most hated about business people.

Right off, watching The Dragon's Den is like watching a series of job interviews. Yeah, there's something terrible and morbidly compelling about that, but if I want the morbidly compelling, I'll go to Rotten.com. On The Dragon's Den, I wanted to see some Canadian ingenuity. I didn't find any. What I did encounter was unneeded evidence that Canada's wealthy and successful can be just as shallow and nasty as people of wealth from anywhere else in the world. I wasn't seeking, and sure didn't need that confirmation. Having money doesn't make a person an asshole, but people with money are often all too happy to demonstrate their proficiency at being assholes. It's a rule like Occam's Razor.

Although the Plebeian money-seekers come out smiling and hopeful, some cocky, most deluded, most amiable and eager to please, they are uniformly received by the "dragons" as the producers had told the panel off-camera that each entrepreneur had raped the dragons' mothers and ate the dragons' family pets, raw, on a baguette.

I realize the name of the show is the The Dragon's Den and not Petting Zoo or Cavalcade of Tickling and Cookies, so the panel is doing their best to appear and conduct themselves in a manner deemed by the CRTC as "dragon-like", but really, they're only acting like a gaggle of douche-bags I usually have the misfortune of standing behind in line at Starbucks; who berate a barista for fifteen minutes because their Pseudo-Double-Spritz-Half-Caf-Soy-Sprinkle-Pedanticcino, had 0.002 less sprinkles on it than the one they had on Bloor Street four months ago. And then they proceed to pay for the $17.47 drink with a debit card that won't swipe.

Rather than being a showcase of Canadian entrepreneurship and innovation and screw-ball-invention, The Dragon's Den is a venal pageant of cuntery and douche-baggery. Doing their best, feeble impressions of the socially retarded talking heads on their favorite business TV shows, the "dragons" are forever snarkily interrupting the Plebeian presenters with sarcastic questions, acerbic, humorless guffaws and an assortment of other rude, parliamentary grunts, huffs and groans. When they're not asking questions-- like "Did a stupid tree fall on you as a kid and puncture your brain with stupidness?" -- they're being outright insulting, simply saying the Plebeian presenter's idea sucks.

I'm all for blunt feedback. I'm all for the unvarnished truth. But the The Dragon's Den offers cliched vitriol, middle-school snark and a solid gold example of rich people in love with their money, in love with themselves, doing what they do best: conducting themselves as complete and utter fucksticks. The Dragon's Den is a bunch of angry millionaires; that group in society with which more ordinary, television-watching people can relate and empathize: My gosh, the responsibility and weight of being a person so great that you've actually swindled, insider-traded, and bullied to get. The weight of being so important! Right.

Hey, if you're loaded and you've got some putz hitting you up for money, turn him down. It's your money; that's your right. If the putz gets pushy, sure enough give him the executive brush-off. If the putz is nasty, tell him to fuck off. But all this angry millionaire bullshit, all of this hating others because they're not as rich or dynamic or cutthroat and sleazy as you are to make a fortune is about as entertaining as Amish porn.

Dragons, you're assholes. You've got money. Great. You've some heartwarming "rags to riches" stories. Wonderful. Too bad you forgot what it is to be human beings. By the time you pass from this world into the next, I hope some investment bank or mutual fund manager has figured a way to send your assets with you. Because, left to your charm, charity and humanity, you're fucked.

In the meantime, I'll look for you in the line at Starbucks and hope that you're all audited by Revenue Canada in 2009.

Dion Debacle -- The Liberal Party is trying to press Play, but is stuck on Pause

2008-12-06T07:22:00.002-05:00

How Dion's address went horribly wrong

A Canadian voter's note to The Liberal Party

Excellent work on the Stephane Dion's address to the nation the other night! Are there no adults supervising you? Is there no one among you who is even the least media or technology savvy? Or, do all Liberals have VCRs at home with the time flashing 12:00?

Regarding the debacle of Mr. Dion's address, he is quoted as saying, "I was the most angry of anyone." That's not true. No one is more angry than the Canadian people watching a horde of monkeys fucking footballs attempting to derail our government.

I don't like Stephen Harper, and for this reason I resent the Liberal Party immensely because it's pushing me toward Harper's party. I think public funding of political parties should end -- yesterday. It wasn't until Mr. Harper spoke about this funding that I even knew it existed. Many people I know were in the same boat.

The Liberal Party is the party of corruption, patronage, incompetence, no accountability and higher and higher and ever higher taxes. The Liberal Party is a non-starter.

Mr. Dion's address to the nation -- and it's ridiculous, inexcusable lateness and its laughably poor quality -- communicated more to the Canadian public than any speech the Liberal Party could cobble together.

My recommendation is that you all give up and go home. Clearly, no one in the Liberal Party has a clue about what's going on.

Eh?-Coup-Tay Liberal Party -- No More Dions

2008-12-06T07:08:00.003-05:00

A Canadian voter's note to The Liberal Party

You are the party of Jean Chrétien, a hated, duplicitous politician who handed off the ugly end of his leadership to a bumbling, bewildered Paul Martin. After all the breaches of trust, after all of the scandals the Liberal Party has brought Canada, you then select as your leader the inarticulate, deer-in-headlights Dion. I've heard from people I trust that Dion is a brilliant man. Bogus. Truly brilliant people can articulate their brilliant ideas so that the less brilliant can understand. If an auto mechanic is worth anything, he can make me -- who is utterly ignorant about the workings of auto mobiles -- understand what is wrong with my car.

The Liberal Party proposes a Green Tax. Wonderful. As if Canadians are not burdened enough with taxes. Dion traveled the country looking as though he expected to be swept up onto citizens' shoulders for proposing a new tax. "It is green!" he trumpeted. Yeah "green" is in at the moment, but taxes never are.

Offsets, you say. The green tax would be accompanied by offsets? Right. And Jean Chrétien once promised to repeal the GST. You wave that away, I have no doubt, as one trifling example of a minor miscalculation -- and that's why your efforts to regain power continue to fail. The Liberal Party has a serious credibility gap that it's not addressing. We don't believe you. That's an important consideration -- probably the most vital facing the Liberal Party, and I don't think you're taking it seriously. I don't believe the Liberal Party has the maturity, integrity, or the insight for the kind of self-reflection it needs to do.

Personally, I hate the Harper government. Steven Harper's "every man for himself" brand of conservatism is an abomination. His distaste for the arts is inexcusable. His devotion to big business is ugly and unacceptable. His religiosity is intolerable.

And yet I prefer seeing him in power at this moment than the Dion-led Liberals.

Are you getting the picture?

Canadians are sick of Liberal hypocrisy, entitlement, patronage and especially the total lack of accountability the Liberal Party represents.

Now, as you seek Dion's successor, I can't wait to see the walking wounded you choose as leader. Is there no one in the Liberal Party with any sort of vision that rises above "tax! tax! offset! tax!"? Is there not a single Liberal who possesses charisma? Your Christmas parties must be murder! I'll tell you, I see no use for a political party that stores its brilliance within inarticulate, gray-upon-gray politicians who have all the charisma and personality of a parking meter; someone so dense and detached as to think a carbon tax "with offsets" would be embraced by a populace exhausted and outraged by the level of taxation it already suffers and the requisite incompetence and carelessness with which those taxes are wasted.

As the Knight Templar says to Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: "Choose wisely."

Another strike against Canadian Judas-Prudence

2008-08-17T08:47:00.004-05:00

Man torches home -- gets 30 days in jail

The Canadian system of Judas-Prudence utterly mystifies me. When I heard a Windsor arsonist recently received a sentence of thirty days in jail (and two years probation) for his crime, every particle of my common sense screamed, "Say what?!"

Thirty days in jail? What kind of punishment is that for torching an apartment building that not only endangered the lives of others, but left them without places to live?

What is it about right and wrong and the punishment for doing wrong that our judges don't understand? Thirty days in jail and two years probation is a joke. What message does this send to the community? It tells me that the gatekeepers of our justice system have no connection with reality.

If the criminals of the world ever figure out how soft on crime Canada is, we're going to be for some serious trouble.

For now, Windsor can shake its head at another unconscionably light sentence, and each of us can cross our fingers that we'll never be victims of crime -- because our judges have seen to it that the comfy chairs and buffet table of Canadian Judas-Prudence are set up for the lawbreakers.

"canada has that much spare time to put laws on visibility of things?"

2008-04-16T17:47:00.002-05:00

Provincial ban of cigarette packs from view

After putting bars and restaurants to the great expense of cordoning off smoking areas -- complete with their own, separate, ventilation systems -- the province then banned smoking outright in such establishments, making these alterations a complete waste of money. Now the province wants to banish cigarettes from view in stores. What's next? Making it illegal to say the word "cigarette"? Ontario's Nanny State must finally be slapped back from overstepping its bounds. Yes, smoking is terribly unhealthy and every smoker ought to quit. Obesity is also a health epidemic -- will stores also be forced by penalty of law to hide junk food from view? As the demand for personal responsibility evaporates in society, ridiculous laws such as this become more prevalent.

What is the ultimate state of being the province of Ontario wants for its citizens? A pink-lunged populace clad in padded haz-mat suits, protected from every outside influence, save the wagging finger of the Nanny State? Doesn't sound like much of an existence to me.

Failure in Canadian Life - Fallen Police Officer Chris Garrett Deserves the Cross of Valour

2008-02-02T10:20:00.000-05:00

Then go and sign the petition to the Governor General of Canada to have this gross miscarriage of justice righted.

Or email info@gg.ca, which I did:

To the Governor General of Canada:

What in the name of god has gone wrong in Canada when the arbitrary rules of gray-faced bureaucrats can deny the Cross of Valour to a brave police officer who died in the line of duty? I speak of the Governor General's office denying the Cross of Valour to Constable Chris Garrett because the trial of his murderer (who was found guilty) apparently outlasted the expiration date of officer Garrett's sacrifice.

Valour has an expiration date? The price Constable Chris Garrett paid has lost its value after two years?

In a free and civilized society, the rights of criminals have to be respected. I understand this. It makes many of us grit our teeth, but we know that it's necessary and right. But also necessary and right -- even more necessary and right -- is paying heed to the victims of crime, ensuring their rights have been respected. And when it comes to the brave men and women of the Canadian police services and armed forces, maybe more respect ought to be paid to their rights when they are wronged, or just flat-out murdered, by criminals.

Part and parcel of this, is awarding the Cross of Valour to someone like Constable Chris Garrett.

But it appears our Governor General and her staff of social calendar-keepers are too busy or not interested enough in doing right by a fallen police officer. Is the position of Governor General so an empty, ceremonial, and superfluous that we only grant it to empty, ceremonial, superfluous people?

So, who is there in Canadian life to take up the cause of Constable Chris Garrett? His fellow officers, certainly, but quite unfortunately it was not until This Hour Has 22 Minutes aired a commentary on this egregious injustice that I became aware of it. Which tells me the people whose jobs it is to work on behalf of the Canadian people -- i.e. the Governor General's office and its harem of do-nothings -- aren't performing this task, but a comedy show on television is.

How woeful, how shameful that the request for Constable Chris Garrett's Cross of Valour be treated like a letter from a motorist protesting a speeding ticket. Denied out of hand with the most lame and feeble of excuses.

Many Canadians -- myself very much included -- don't even believe we should have a Governor General any longer. We don't need another Canadian official infuriating us with the expense of needless travel, giving hollow speeches filled with tired platitudes to people around the country and world who couldn't care less, anyhow. But the one goddamned time we really need the Governor General, one of her paper-shuffling-penciling-pushing-NO-stamping gnomes declares on behalf of the office that the expiration date of Constable Chris Garrett's bravery and sacrifice has passed.

No. No way.

First, heed the wishes of tens of thousands of Canadians and award Constable Chris Garrett the Cross of Valour.

Then, ferret out the bureaucratic dullard who made this preposterous declaration that the valour of an officer of the law giving his life only has a shelf-life of two years.

God almighty, do the right thing!

O, Canada . . . stop doing business like this is still Russia (I mean you, Purolator!)

2008-01-11T17:03:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, the local Ontario Liquor Control Board consisted of a bare room at the end of which was a wire wicket window in a blank wall, fronting a storehouse of booze. Patrons used stubby golf pencils -- the same kind we use to vote with to this day -- to fill out small request forms that were printed in 5-point unreadable font. Then they submitted the form to the grim-faced bureaucrat in the wicket who retrieved the booze from the storehouse. After being charged an unconscionable amount of money, you were sent on your way with your purchase in a shitty brown bag.

When we wanted to buy sports equipment, we went to Consumers' Distributing. This was the absolute Black Hole of Retail; Nietzsche's Abyss. Consumers' had a great showroom filled with bikes and basketballs, jewelry, radios, weights and boxing gloves and heavy bags, baseball gloves; everything. They also published a huge catalog that found its way into virtually every Canadian home. When I wanted to buy a basketball, my parents took me to Consumers' where I flipped through a catalog that was chained to a desk in the center of the store. Using a stubby golf pencil, I filled out a tiny request card that was printed in 4-point unreadable font that had about a hundred different spaces to fill in. When I was finished, I gave the card to the gray-faced bureaucrat behind the counter. He went into the back and 99 times out of 100 came back and told me that specific item was not in stock. If I wanted to find out if any other brands of basketball or baseball glove or weights were in stock, I had to fill out another form for each. This was called commerce in Canada in those dark, dreary days. Usually, the next few basketballs I sought were also not in stock. There were outings to Consumers' where I would fill out a dozen cards and leave empty-handed. Nothing I wanted was ever in stock and there was never any word when it might be in stock.

That was the early 1980s when Canada was the western branch of the Eastern Bloc. Canadian businesses were run by Kremlin-trained, industrial-revolution-era managers.

That proud tradition of Canadian customer disservice lives on in 2008.

Case in point: Purolator Courier Ltd.

I ordered a laptop computer last week and tracked it online to my door today. I was at work when the delivery guy came to my house. He left a "We missed you!" card on my front door. No problem. In the past, I've gone over to Purolator to pick up my packages myself when the delivery truck offloads at the end of the day. After all, it's my property that's in their care and I want the goddamned stuff now.

Well, the good, old, reliable Devon Plaza pick up office of Purolator Courier Ltd. has a manager who's decided that the 1980s way of doing business was too good to let go. The manager decided that I -- and everyone else who might go in this evening to pick up their property -- must wait until tomorrow. Yeah, that whole allowing people access to their own property thing doesn't really work for this manager on Friday nights. It just makes life easier -- for everyone except the customer -- to close up and then offload packages that could not be delivered that day.

And Purolator Courier Ltd. is A-OK with this. Hey, this is just the sort of backward-thinking they seek in managers. I hope the idiot was given a mounted brass toilet in recognition for this fabulous regulation.

Canada, the Dark Siberian Days of Consumers' Distributing are gone. An invention called the World Wide IntroWeb has made it possible for consumers to deal with businesses who are in business to do business. When ordering my laptop, I had no idea Purolator would be involved with my order. Over the years, I have known several people who have worked for Purolator, and every last one of them was disgruntled down to their fungus-ridden toe nails. My personal dealings with Purolator as a customer have been similar to today's debacle -- my item is in the city, it's on the goddamned truck, but oh, oh, oh . . . I can't have it until Purolator's good and ready to relinquish my property to me.

Fuck you, Purolator. I will not be denied!

Update

I went and got my laptop. Contrary to what the poor, beaten, abused girl working the counter had told me on the telephone, apparently Friday is the only day of the week when patrons can come in and get their stuff the same day they missed the delivery to their homes. Whatever. I have my laptop and a renewed lesson with Canadian Commerce.

Canada's tallest man in danger of being worn out by Windsorites

2008-01-10T17:49:00.002-05:00

Read the Article

Emergency help requested for auto parts industry

2007-11-30T13:49:00.000-05:00

Emergency help requested for auto parts industry

Dave Hall, Windsor Star
Published: Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Ontario's minister of economic development and trade is calling on the federal government to partner with the province in providing financial assistance to the ailing auto parts industry.

Sandra Pupatello, who represents Windsor West, said Tuesday that her ministry "is 100 per cent behind" an industry request for $400 million in emergency funds for an industry battered by a soaring loonie, layoffs and plant closures.

I recently read in the Windsor Star that Sandra Pupatello is 100 percent behind an emergency $400 million bail-out request by the Auto Parts Manufacturers Association. I think this is a great idea, particularly if Ms. Pupatello would be kind enough to request $401 million. The extra million dollars would be for me. You see, I'm experiencing the same trouble as the auto parts industry. I'm an author who hasn't earned more than $100/year from my writing in the past decade. Like the auto parts industry, I've known for a long time that I should change with the times and update my skills, that I should be more competitive and innovative. And like the auto parts industry, I believe that would just be too much effort -- especially if it's possible to receive a tax-payer-funded bail-out. Where can the auto parts industry turn? It's not like there's any money in making parts for hybrid vehicles or parts for renewable energy sources, like windmills or solar panels. As the auto parts industry feels entitled to stay in business by making its same old products, I would like to attach my cause to theirs and take part in this bail-out. Because, what else is the Canadian tax payer working for if not to bail out industries that fail to move with the times? I will forward my banking details to Sandra Pupatello so that we can get this deal moving as quickly as possible. Just remember, nobody misses a slice from a cut loaf.

Retail Fiction: "Would you describe for me what Canadian consumers look like"

2007-10-20T18:45:00.001-05:00

A little dialog that should occur between Canadian consumers and Canadian retailers who continue to charge inflated prices even though the Canadian dollar has reached parity with the U.S. greenback:
___________
CANADIAN RETAILERS
I just want you to know how sorry
we are about how fucked up things
got between us and Canadian consumers.
When we entered into this thing, we
only had the best intentions --

As CANADIAN RETAILERS talks, COMMON SENSE takes out his gun and SHOOTS Roger three times in the chest, BLOWING him out of his chair.

Vince smiles to himself. COMMON SENSE has got style.

CANADIAN RETAILERS has just shit his pants. He's not crying or whimpering, but he's so full of fear, it's as if his body is imploding.

COMMON SENSE
(to CANADIAN RETAILERS)
Oh, I'm sorry. Did that break your
concentration? I didn't mean to do
that. Please, continue. I believe
you were saying something about
"best intentions."

CANADIAN RETAILERS can't say a word.

COMMON SENSE
Whatsamatter? Oh, you were through
anyway. Well, let me retort.
Would you describe for me what
Canadian consumers look like?

CANADIAN RETAILERS still can't speak.

COMMON SENSE SNAPS, SAVAGELY TIPPING the card table over, removing the only barrier between himself and CANADIAN RETAILERS. CANADIAN RETAILERS now sits in a lone chair before COMMON SENSE like a political prisoner in front of an interrogator.

COMMON SENSE
What country you from!

CANADIAN RETAILERS
(petrified)
What?

COMMON SENSE
"What" ain't no country I know! Do
they speak English in "What?"

CANADIAN RETAILERS
(near heart attack)
What?

COMMON SENSE
English-motherfucker-can-you-speak-it?

CANADIAN RETAILERS
Yes.

COMMON SENSE
Then you understand what I'm
sayin'?

CANADIAN RETAILERS
Yes.

COMMON SENSE
Now describe what Canadian consumers
look like!

CANADIAN RETAILERS
(out of fear)
What?

COMMON SENSE takes his .45 and PRESSES the barrel HARD in CANADIAN RETAILERS's cheek.

COMMON SENSE
Say "What" again! C'mon, say
"What" again! I dare ya, I double
dare ya motherfucker, say "What"
one more goddamn time!

CANADIAN RETAILERS is regressing on the spot.

COMMON SENSE
Now describe to me what Canadian
consumers look like!

CANADIAN RETAILERS does his best.

CANADIAN RETAILERS
Well they're ... they're ... gray --

COMMON SENSE
-- go on!

CANADIAN RETAILERS
... and they're ... they're ...tall --

COMMON SENSE
-- do they look like a bitch?!

CANADIAN RETAILERS
(without thinking)
What?

COMMON SENSE' eyes go to Vincent, Vincent smirks, COMMON SENSE rolls his eyes and SHOOT CANADIAN RETAILERS in the shoulder.

CANADIAN RETAILERS SCREAMS, breaking into a SHAKING/TREMBLING SPASM in the chair.

COMMON SENSE
Do-they-look-like-a-bitch?!

CANADIAN RETAILERS
(in agony)
No.

COMMON SENSE
Then why did you try to fuck them
like a bitch?!

CANADIAN RETAILERS
(in spasm)
I didn't.

Now in a lower voice.

COMMON SENSE
Yes ya did CANADIAN RETAILERS. Ya tried ta fuck them.

Dorian Gray program

2007-03-21T17:21:00.000-05:00

Dorian Gray will not die in Windsor, Ontario

2007-03-14T11:08:00.001-05:00

So, the bear-trap of bad luck snapped shut on my play Dorian Gray. The day before the play was to be performed at the Capitol Theatre in downtown Windsor, Ontario, the theatre closed; gone bust. The official nuts-and-bolts story is more complex than this, but the net effect is the same.

From The Windsor Star: Capitol cancels rest of season

The Capitol’s decision leaves several community groups scrambling to find venues for their events.

Canada South Performing Arts’ production of Dorian Gray, by local writer Matthew St. Amand, was scheduled to open Saturday.

Dispatch from Florida:

A good friend suggested that my next play be a Pinter-esque slapstick comedy about trying to get a play on the stage in Windsor. This is an idea worth pursuing, but not yet. Dorian Gray refuses to die in Windsor, Ontario. A new venue has been found -- Mackenzie Hall (Mackenzie Hall, 3277 Sandwich St., box office: 519-255-7600, tickets $20)-- and the play will be performed Friday March 16th and Sunday March 18th both nights at 8 p.m..

This is the second interruption in the play's schedule. It was first set to be performed in late October 2006, but the production was postponed with slow tickets were cited as the reason. When the Capitol Theatre closed on March 9th 2007, it was, for me, like becoming a widower for the second time. I can't imagine the level of disappointment that was felt among the dedicated and talented cast and crew who had put in so many long hours of planning and preparation. But there we were, a collective groom standing at the marriage altar with a second dead bride.

But there appears to be movement beneath the death shroud covering Dorian Gray. Dorian and his story will not simply fade away.

As Oscar Wilde was personally ensnared by the mores and politics of his day, petty municipial politics in the city of Windsor (recently maligned on national television by none other than Stephen Colbert as "the worst place on earth") have nearly driven a splintered wooden stake into the heart of Dorian Gray. Nearly. But art outpaces bureaucracy every time. The Windsor beancounters have put their crooked thumbprints all over this production and are probably as satisfied with having done that to the extent that their rats' value system can feel satisfaction. But the Windsor artists have prevailed in the more important arena -- their play is going to be performed.

From the play's director:

Canada South Performing Arts presents

Dorian Gray

by Matthew St. Amand
adapted for the stage from the Oscar Wilde novel

The show is being moved to Mackenzie Hall due to the closure of the Capitol Theatre

New dates are Friday March 16 & Sunday March 18 both at 8pm
Mackenzie Hall, 3277 Sandwich St.
Box office: 519-255-7600
Tickets $20
Limited seating

"SEE THE SHOW THE POWERS THAT BE DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE"

"CURSED? YOU DECIDE"

"THE BASIS OF OPTIMISM IS SHEER TERROR"

"ETERNAL YOUTH COMES WITH A PRICE - $20"

Return of the Pryvett

2007-01-28T20:07:00.000-05:00

Pryvett, the Alchemist of the Internet. His latest Web find: The Institute of Official Cheer.

Picture Pryvett: 1978, seventeen years old, his chestnut pompadour gleaming with brill, himself clad in jeans and a shirt that looks like the table cloth from the supper table in Little House on The Prairie; both trousers and shirt conforming to the cool of the time, sporting more rivets than the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a time when Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" was still clinging to life on the radio and Robert Redford was starring in the bizarre mainstream movie hit, Electric Cowboy. Rivets = cowboy and at that time and place cowboy = cool.

Pryvett was in tune with his culture.

This was the year Pryvett ran for leadership of student government at his high school. Among the multifarious points of his campaign platform, he promised that no more young men from the school would be shipped to Vietnam -- even though no young men from the school had ever been sent to fight in the Vietnam war; and in spite the fact that the Vietnam war had ended three years before, and that Pryvett and his high school were located in the non-Vietnam-war-fighting country of Canada. Pryvett's opponent in the election was a bubbly Doris Day clone who promised, if elected, to bolster school spirit and pride and good feelings. Teach the world to sing.

She was not elected.

Pryvett running for office was the joke. His putting forth a campaign platform was the joke. His speeches -- standing at a microphone before the student body, wiping his sweaty face with a handkerchief like some cut-rate televangelist -- was the joke. But the student body took Pryvett's joke and ran with it. They elected him leader of student government. Everyone outside of the joke -- teachers and school administration -- demanded a recount of the votes. The Doris Day clone cried unabashedly in the principal's office. The aged, fish-faced principal whom the students called "Uncle Pete" consoled her saying, "If there is the least hint of shenanigans having occurred in this election, you can bet your bottom dollar that I will make things right! Wrongdoers will pay!"

The recount found the ballots in Pryvett's favor.

A second recount was conducted, which also declared Pryvett the winner of the election.

A third recount occurred, which told the same story the other counts told: Pryvett had been lawfully elected leader of student government.

The message was clear: No more students would be sent over to fight in the defunct Vietnam war in which Canada didn't participate.

As the Doris Day clone was sedated with surgical-grade Thorazine in her pink, stuffed-animal-bedroom by a white-mustachioed country doctor who still made house calls, Pryvett gave his victory speech to the student body.

The school administration may as well have supported the initial ballot count because being leader of student government was difficult for Pryvett. Somehow, the principal, Uncle Pete, treated Pryvett like a confidential informant among the students. Whenever there was vandalism in the school, a mess made in the cafeteria, something off-color printed in the student paper, mass occasions of students cutting classes, Pryvett was immediately called to the principal's office to explain. He was the representative of youth culture to Uncle Pete, who was distinctly baffled by the youth in his charge.

"Now, why would someone spray paint 'Eat Shit' on one of the front doors?" Uncle Pete would ask.

Or, "Why would someone mutilate frogs in a biology class and strew their parts through the cafeteria?"

Why did male student refuse to flush urinals?

The weight of such questions were a cross to Uncle Pete. And Pryvett had no answers.

Sometimes an uncomfortable silence descended on Pryvett and Uncle Pete in the principal's office. Uncle Pete staring in the air, musing about some unspoken thing. There were moments when a wistful smile clumsily overtook his narrow, mirthless features, and he spoke of his military service in World War Two. "Right and wrong were simpler to decipher at that time. Black and white -- just like the pictures from back then," Uncle Pete said. "There was us and there were the Gerries."

One afternoon, Uncle Pete got carried away reminiscing those simpler times, and told about the time bagpipe music was played over the loudspeaker in the base camp and how he and his brother soldiers were so swept up by a sense of patriotism and the brotherhood-of-soldiers that they began shooting prisoners...

Uncle Pete then seemed to return to himself and he scowled at Pryvett, saying, "Don't you have a class right now?"

"You called me here."

"Well, then, OK. You're dismissed. Keep your eyes open and never stop taking names."

* * *

Uncle Pete and the high school administration were not the only authorities who regarded Pryvett with wary eyes. A few years back a theft occurred at Package Handling Company where Pryvett works as a sorter. PHC had a "zero tolerance" policy about such things. The item lifted from PHC's care was not some family heirloom, not a piece of high technology, nor was it a valuable gem or specialized medical equipment -- all of which would fetch insanely high prices on the black market. No, PHC's recent "heist" involved a DVD: College Girls Gone Wild.

With the item missing/stolen, it's hard to say how PHC knew exactly what had been taken. But PHC has it ways -- it knew exactly what was missing. And knew exactly how to handle the situation.

PHC employs an ex-federal law enforcement officer to conduct internal investigations, and when occasion necessitates, interrogations.

When the College Girls Gone Wild DVD went missing, Pryvett was hauled into a windowless cubby of a room, seated at a table and questioned by the RCMP-trained PHC investigator. The man was trim without the least appearance of being physically fit. He wore tight gray polyester pants and plain white shirt and had an uneven mouse-brown mustachio. There was a forced sharpness to the way he spoke, as though doing an imitation of an impression of James Cagney. His eyes twitched with a rapid blink, like he had his contact lenses in the wrong eyes.

"Those college girls," the blink-twitching investigator said, sitting opposite Pryvett, his feet up on the edge of the table, "they sure are wild." He smiled a "we're all buddies here" smile. "And college girls sure can be hot-to-trot." He sighed. "No doubt about that." He clasped his hands behind his head. "And what red-blooded man wouldn't enjoy watching college girls go wild." He chuckled to himself. "I'm married, but between you, me and the lamp post, I wouldn't mind watching some college girls go crazy. No-sirree-Bob."

Pryvett looked at him, nonplussed. The investigator may have been RCMP trained, but Pryvett had military training. He wasn't some rube sorter virginal in the ways of psy-op interrogation.

The following afternoon, Pryvett was called once more to the windowless room. He sat at the table. When the investigator entered the room a few minutes later, he no longer wore the "we're all buddies here" smile. He closed the door then whirled around and slammed his hand upon the table. "Do you believe in God?" he shouted.

"Yeah," Pryvett said.

"What do you think God thinks of people who steal?"

"That they're thieves," Pryvett ventured.

"Scum," the investigator seethed. "God thinks thieves are scum."

"Then what does He think about murderers?"

"What?" the investigator said, taken aback.

"If thieves are scum, then how do murderers rate? Are they like 'ultra scum'?"

The investigator narrowed his eyes on Pryvett. "What are you trying to say? Are you confessing to something?"

"No, you just said--"

"Only sinners dodge a question about God." The investigator planted both palms on the table and leaned toward Pryvett. "You got any sins you want to confess?"

Pryvett let the moment run on like a silent stammer. Then said, "No."

The investigator gritted his teeth and left the room.

The next day, following morning break, Pryvett was again brought to the windowless room. He sat down at the table. The investigator entered a few minutes later. The blink-twitch in his eyes was more severe that day, somehow signifying he hadn't slept well the night before. There was a DVD case in his hands. He slid it across the table at Pryvett, obviously hoping he would pick it up. Pryvett didn't touch it, though he saw by the cover it was a College Girls Gone Wild video.

"So, you're Mr. Hardass," the investigator spat. "PHC's got me down here in Windsor, away from head office, away from my family, just so I can play games with you. What's your game?"

"You called me here."

"Yeah, well that remains to be seen." The investigator chewed on the end of a pen.

After a moment, Pryvett said, "You know Biff?"

The investigator's twitching eyes widened. "Yeah, well no. I mean, what about him?"

"Before he quit a few days ago, he said that he should steal something."

"Something from PHC? Something -- ? What?"

"Ask him."

Pryvett was sent back to his station and a call was placed to Biff. To the question of "Did you steal a College Girls Gone Wild video from PHC?" Bill replied, "Yeah. So what?" The investigator attempted to threaten the wrath of God upon Biff, but in the end Biff couldn't even be bothered to bring the video back to PHC. The investigator was left to drive to Biff's house to pick up the heist item and the case was closed.

To this day, Pryvett has received no apology from PHC for its false accusations against him.

New Book

2007-01-21T10:41:00.000-05:00

Canadian police errors led to man's torture: Concludes an official inquiry

2006-09-18T18:54:00.000-05:00

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian police wrongly identified an Ottawa software engineer as an Islamic extremist, prompting U.S. agents to deport him to Syria, where he was tortured, an official inquiry concluded on Monday.

Canadian government -- particularly when it comes to the judiciary and/or high-ranking officials of law enforcement -- is where a dangerous nexus of stupidity, incompetence and general blunder-headedness merge in Canadian life. And the results are always devastating -- to the direct victim and to the confidence of Canadian citizens in the people who oversee our institutions while the rest of us are at work keeping the economy going.

Maher Arar, who holds Canadian and Syrian nationality, was arrested in New York in September 2002 and accused of being an al-Qaeda member. In fact, said the judge who led the probe, all the signs point to the fact Arar was innocent.

I have followed this story since the day it was first reported. Back in September of 2002 I remember wondering over the swiftness with which Maher Arar was deported to Syria, and the sheer spineless impotence of Canadian officials to prevent it from happening. Now, I see they made no attempt to keep it from occurring. Canadian officials, in fact, sped it into happening.

Justice O'Connor's three-volume report castigated the Mounties for slipshod work in the wake of the 9/11 suicide attacks.

It said the Mounties exaggerated Arar's importance and later asked U.S. customs agents to put Arar and his wife on a special watch list, calling them "Islamic extremist individuals suspected of being linked to the Al Qaeda terrorist movement."

To which the keen and sharp-eyed former Canadian Christian Conservative, Stockwell Day, responded: "What happened to Mr Arar is very regrettable. We hope ... never to see this happen again," he told reporters.

Here is the gross, tear-provoking disconnect.

After posting this blog I am going to write to Stockwell Day -- that hater of homosexuals and secularists, that Christian witch doctor, that chrome-eyed blindman -- and demand that the officials who gave the erroneous information that led to Maher Arar being deported by U.S. law enforcement be fired from their jobs and prosecuted for their gross negligence and criminal distortion of the sketchy facts at their disposal.

It's terrible that Mr. Arar underwent this ordeal. Syria remains a blight of cruelty and treachery; a junkyard dog as a nation state. But Canada cannot hold itself to be very much better than Ole Septic Syria if it does not punish the posturing police who thought they'd impress their American counterparts by sexing up the mundane facts of a law-abiding citizen's file.

Where were Canadian diplomats while this outrage was occurring? Where were Mr. Arar's MPs? Where were all of the bleeding hearts who bend over backwards to welcome miscreants and malcontents into this country, while shunning the travesty that befell Mr. Arar?

Yes, I know, the answer is to drink Ottawa tapwater for a calendar year and all of these mysteries will suddenly unravel for me. Not even cyncism or sarcasm can ease the rawness of this outrage.

Canada: Bureaucrap as Nation State.

More Public Airing of Pryvett

2006-08-05T11:46:00.000-05:00

I met Pryvett for the first time on New Year's Eve 1999. He was drinking beer and tequila and wine coolers and smoking a pipe. He was the friend of friends, and I never really caught the connection Pryvett had to them other than he had once "gamed" with them. This was a memorable New Year's Eve night. I was drinking Smithwicks and Gibson whiskey, and at one point re-enacted salient moments of my favorite TV show All in the Family using our host's Nativity scene figurines. Pryvett responded well to this. As the night wore on and outrage after outrage poured out Pryvett, my wife -- who was my fiance at the time -- kept asking (as other girls in the room were asking) "Who is this guy?!" One friend -- a very talented writer -- said to Pryvett, "You're like the love-child of Don Rickles and Andrew 'Dice' Clay!"

That night blurs into fragments: me doing my Riverdance with our host's throw rug over my shoulders as a cape, each of my ill-placed steps rattling the windows in the house; my wife -- who was my fiance at the time -- the unfortunate designated driver for the night, looking around at my friends, gape-eyed, watching the consumption of alcohol and the unending verbal-marking-of-territory.

And then Pryvett.

About four seconds after midnight, Pryvett rang in Y2K by lurching up the creaking staircase -- vomiting every step of the way -- lumbering toward our host's single bathroom to chortle one last coughing dry heave into the expectant toilet. Pryvett returned to festive living room some unspecified amount of time later, red-eyed, gasping, sweating, looking like he had just French-kissed the devil.

Pryvett once told me of the time a friend -- whose parents came from eastern Europe -- had an aunt come to Canada for a visit from that unnamed eastern Bloc nation. I guess the friend's father was a hardened anti-Communist and took every opportunity to show off the North American lifestye to his visiting sister. When he brought her to the A&P she refused to believe it was real. She believed it was a phony store, a set, built by the government to impress visitors from Communist countries. She was literally staggered by quantity and variety of food available; just didn't believe it was possible. On the way home after shopping, the friend's dad sought to drive-home a deathblow to his sister's illusions about Communism. As he navigated the family's enormous brown station wagon, he reached into one of the grocery bags and pulled out a turnip. Turnips were apparently the most sought after and enviable food in the country his sister came from. A single turnip would virtually be the entire meal for Christmas dinner. The dad took a huge sloppy bite of the turnip and then tossed the rest of it out the car window. His sister shrieked with horror and surprise at the waste of so valuable a food item. Satisfied, the dad grinned around his mouthful of turnip, and summed up all of his experience and knowledge of North America in a single sentence: "You see, in this country we can waste food!"

Pryvett is of Presbyterian stock, though his people have the hearts of Calvinists. The town from which Pryvett's father hails is called Orangeville, after William of Orange and the fun-loving Orange Order. Weirdly, the town was predominantly Roman Catholic. One day in the 1930s there was a commotion among residents when one of the devout churchgoing people lost his rosary. It was like the search for the tin whistle on the BBC show Father Ted. The town was turned upside-down looking for this rosary. Days later a Prostestant man carrying a shovel approached the shop where the lost-rosary-owner worked. The Protestant man held out the shovel with great distaste, as though carrying some particularly revolting dung. In the shovel he carried the lost rosary.

Of all of Pryvett's follies, his employment record is a particular sore spot to him. During his forty-four years of life, Pryvett has held about as many jobs. He's one of the only people I know who has been fired from more jobs than I have been. For instance, his lack of eye/hand coordination hampered his ability to fill beer cases with empty bottles at The Beer Store, so his career there ended in an afternoon. The eye/hand coordination also ended his career at a bagel shop when Pryvett proved incapable of producing a fully outfitted bagel sandwich in the allotted time -- as his boss stood over his shoulder with a stopwatch. As a waiter at the Olive Garden, Pryvett once dropped an entire tray of drinks on the table of people who ordered them. Being a man of prodigious carriage, Pryvett once worked in a Big & Tall clothing store in the mall. One day, as a female colleague was measuring the waist of a spectacularly fat man, she actually broke her measuring tape. Witnessing this, Pryvett broke out with spontaneous career-ending laughter. He was sent home and asked never to return -- even as a patron.

Focusing on Pryvett's hapless moments, however, does not do him justice. He is a cultured, enlightened person. He is an historian, first off. He has a tremendous love of books and film, and has put me onto countless classic movies I might not have ever seen without his prodding: the work of Werner Herzog, Ingmar Bergman, Chan-wook Park, the Ju-On series, and numerous other wonderful Japanese horror films.

Pryvett is also enormously generous with his meagre funds. He works his ass off at PHC, but is always ready to buy coffees or pay my way into a movie (my being a hopelessly broke writer). During the winter last year, he treated me to a fabulous 1960s samurai film at the Detroit Film Institute (a gorgeous oldtime movie theatre located at the Detroit Institute of Art). The film was excellent, and the experience all the more enjoyable due to the wonderful vintage movie theatre in which we sat. Pryvett even drove that night. It was a hell of a snowy night and the side streets had not been plowed. After the movie, as Pryvett made his way down the sloppy street, a huge fat guy in a parka dashed across the street in front of us. All in one multi-tasking moment, Pryvett hit the horn, hit the brakes, and uttered a sonnet of profanity. In my own cloud of surprise, I exclaimed, "Holy shit, five-hundred-pound guy was pretty ambitious!" And this has become a fun running joke with Pryvett and I -- commenting on 500-pound guys we see while out for coffee or browsing in the bookstore. We are both Rabelaisian figures, make no mistake, and so we experience added admiration and disbelief on viewing men who surpass our stout steerage. I've imagined creating a TV show called Five Hundred Pound Guy, and sing snatches of a theme song I have composed: "He's round, he's sly, he's five-hundred-pound guy!" Or, "He's hip, he's fly, he's five-hundred-pound guy."

When he stopped to get gas one night, I looked at the price total on the pump as he made his way inside to pay. The read-out said $6.74.

CDs found in Pryvett's car: The Pogues, Joe Jackson, the soundtrack to Clueless, In Yo' Face: History Of Funk Vol. I.

Check out Pryvett's blog: Going Postal with Pryvett Rawgers.

A Public Airing of Pryvett

2006-08-05T07:42:00.000-05:00

Pryvett is an improbable personage. At first glance, he resembles a melted snowman, a shapeshifter stuck between two ambitious shapes, but he is not to be underestimated. Watching him dig through a palmful of change to pay for his coffee -- glasses on the table, his nose nearly touching the coins, he is seemingly unable to distinguish between dimes and dollar coins, dropping pennies and quarters and nickels onto the restraunt floor -- one must never forget that Pryvett has fired automatic weapons, has taken automatic weapon fire, survived hand-to-hand combat with skinheads and militia members, frequented Detroit movie theatres and endured more than six years working for the fiercest freight shipping company in the region, PHC, where he has been busted down in rank three times.

Two decades ago when he was at college, Pryvett found himself in a Physical Anthropology class taught by a certifiable nut. He can't remember the prof's name, but vividly recalls the prof's pleas to the class: "Bring me roadkill!" The prof was all about fondling the denuded bones of the recently deceased. At one point during the semester the prof entered the classroom and spent the period raving about the injustice of the Kinesiology department receiving delivery of ten ape carcasses with not a one being designated to the Physical Anthropology department. The prof was rendered nearly wordless with the outrage. But he was not to be outdone.

That night the Physical Anthropology prof used his faculty keys to let himself into the Kinesiology department after hours -- long after hours. In the dead of night, he made off with two ape carcasses and returned to his rural home with them. There he boiled and flayed them, setting the skins out to dry and the bones to grow accustomed to the air. One or two nights later a couple of youths, high and seeking easy access to someone's liquor cabinet, broke into the prof's remote abode. When they came upon the ape skeletons and drying skins, all thoughts of booze and altered consciousness abandoned them. Suddenly sobered, they fled the house and alerted police. The authorities arrived on the scene and at first thought they had some sort of ritualistic murderer on their hands; a Hannibal Lechter of rural Ontario. But soon the prof arrived home and provided them with his incredible explanation. Tests verified the skins and bones belonged to apes, not humans, and the college chose not to press charges, feeling it best to keep the episode quiet.

Pryvett is an avid film buff. He speaks of a time when he brought a girl on a first date over to a film theatre in Detroit to view Cannibal Holacaust, an Italian film so graphic that upon completion the filmmaker was hauled into an Italian courtroom and told to prove that he had not actually murdered human beings to make the film. Pryvett's date had no idea what awaited her. As Pryvett parked the car he borrowed from his father, he noticed a car slowly approaching directly ahead. The person at the wheel appeared to be unconscious, and there was a man running alongside the car, with his arm in the window, shouting at Pryvett and his date, "Get out the way! Get out the way!" Just before they were to collide with Pryvett's father's car, the driver suddenly awoke from his stupor and cranked the steering wheel, sending the car into a lamp post. When Pryvett and his date got into the movie theatre, they found that Cannibal Holacaust had been taken off the bill and replaced with Fright Night. Having come all that way across the border, they stayed. Twenty minutes into the film there was a commotion off to one side of the theatre. Suddenly some booming music erupted. In the flickering light of the film, amid audience members shouting at actors on the screen, an impromptu breakdancing competition started up in a corner of the theatre.

During a bachelor party when Pryvett was in his twenties, he had gotten so drunk that he cut one of his hands quite badly while mishandling a set of darts. His unbandaged hand continued to bleed throughout the pasta dinner, during which Pryvett got most of the red pasta sauce all over his shirt. By the end of the night his hair and face were streaked red with blood and tomato sauce -- he looked like a Medieval warrior after battle; crazed, drunk, lusting for tacos, shouting obscenities, sweating profusely.

Pryvett is the unfortunate man whom I know that works at a package handling company: PHC. During the heat wave this week, he was telling me that it has been murder laboring away in the warehouse, where there is no air conditioning; not even fans to relieve the disabused hourly-waged workers. One day the load of packages that are set aside for inspection by Customs agents was piling up with no indication that they were being dealt with. My buddy asked what was going on, why the Customs agents hadn't come in with their drug- and bomb-sniffing dogs.

The answer: It was too hot in the warehouse for the dogs. And Prvyett was told to get back to work.

There was one day when Pryvett was inexplicably allowed to annouce breaktime over PHC's public address system: "All right, fellow slaves," he intoned, "you can't stop sweating your bags off for ten minutes and take a breather -- all except for Corky --" Corky is lumbering behemoth automaton in his early twenties who walks around the warehouse in elephantine jogging pants with a Big Mac stuffed into one pocket and fries into the other "-- Corky, you dogfucker, stay at your station, you don't get a break." To which Corky, a very tall hulk, as well as fat, let out an inarticulate shout and jumped up onto the conveyor belt in an effort to lunge into the office where Pryvett made his announcement. Corky was restrained before he could cause bodily harm to Pryvett -- but Pryvett was written up for his insult.

As young Pryvett, in his teen years, flush with a black pompador and a chrome polished liver, he was once a part of the military. Once, while on the rifle range being shown the finer points of automatic gunfire, Pryvett noticed something odd when he and his troop were finally allowed to fire their weapons: the grass in front of him was being torn up by automatic gunfire. When Pryvett looked up to see what was happening, he was met with the vision of one of his cohorts grinning maniacally, pointing his weapon down the line of privates, firing not at the target ahead, but over the other guys' heads. This lunatic was immediately tackled by a master sargeant and duly pummelled for his outrage.

A hearing was called to punish the miscreant private and Pryvett and his troop were made to attend. Any illusions Pryvett had about military tribunals was quashed when he entered the tiny windowless room in which an improbable number of people had been crammed. To add further to the black comedy, after the private was drummed out of the corp, the other privates -- of whom Pryvett was one -- were then ordered to march out of the room in "double quick time!" Which led to Pryvett and the privates comedically -- albeit unintentionally -- running into one another like a horde of directionless robots, as they tried exiting the tiny room.

Royal Commission Studies the Problem of Heat (or, more properly, the lack of air conditioning in civil service offices)

2006-08-03T05:43:00.000-05:00

A respondent wrote to me about how she and her colleagues were suffering with un-air conditioned office working in the British civil service. I responded with how Canada would effeciently tackle the problem:

A Royal Commission on Air Conditioning would have to be called together in order to evaluate your need for air conditioning. This Royal Commission would receive about $12 million in funding -- and would spend about $20 million, with no repercussions. This Royal Commission would also come together around December of 2012 and would study your need for air conditioning until about March. And their verdict or official conclusion would be "We the Royal Commission on Air Conditioning find no grounds for the request of air conditioning in the offices housing our civil servants. There is probably a need for increased heating as our civil servants were seen to move with the lethargy of snowmen in these offices that were distinctly cold, but since no request for additional heating was made another Royal Commission will have to study this need at a later time."

And so civilization marches forward.

Tribute in the Making to fallen Windsor, Ontario Constable John Atkinson

2006-06-13T19:00:00.001-05:00

10:07 a.m.

I live just outside of Windsor, Ontario -- dour, industrial, incongruous, much-vilified city that is the home of Canada's auto industry. We are located directly across the river from Detroit, Michigan, another oft-derided city with a crime rate straight out of a low budget action movie. Windsor does not share Detroit's massive crime rate. Where Detroit will have a few hundred murders in a year, Windsor may have as many as five. There is one reason for this: the Windsor Police force.

On May 5th of this year the first police officer to be killed in the line of duty in Windsor, Ontario lost his life. His name was Constable John Atkinson, a fourteen year veteran, and life-long resident of Windsor. He was shot to death by a couple of scum bags -- both under twenty years of age; neither looking as though they have begun shaving yet -- who were about to rob a convenience store. John left behind a wife and two young children.

My latest freelance writing assignment is to write a tribute to John Atkinson for The Drive Magazine. Yesterday I met with John's widow, a young woman by the name of Shelly who is the picture strength, grace and dignity. After all of the reporting on the grim details of her husband's death, it's my job to write about the man behind the badge. The weekend before my meeting with Shelly, I found myself unaccountably stressed at the prospect of interviewing her for the piece. Not that I feared she would view me as an intruder or that I might say something to upset her. It's just that this case has really blown my city apart. For as tragic and sad as John Aktinson's death has been, the outpouring of support for his family by fellow citizens and law enforcement agencies around North America -- including the F.B.I. -- has been breathtaking.

I happened to be in downtown Windsor the day of John Atkinson's funeral. Seeing the numerous squad cars from other cities on our streets, driven by officers who were filling in for Windsor police attending John's funeral, was a heartening-heartrending sight. There were police officers driven around in taxi cabs, looking after my city. Such tangible, selfless support for Shelly Atkinson and the city of Windsor brought tears to my eyes.

So, yesterday, Shelly shared some wonderful stories with me. She laughed at times, she teared-up at times, but during every moment of our chat she exuded a kind of human strength that defies my powers of description. She not only made me feel welcome, she made me feel like a friend. Although her feelings of grief surpass words, so does her feeling of gratitude to the support she has received in the last month.

I'm going to head into my living room and try to get started on this tribute on my laptop. I have all the material I need to write it, but feel haunted, hollowed-out by the horror at the sudden, senseless snuffing of John Atkinson's life, a life that touched and aided so many people.

I'll check back in a few hours. In the meantime, I'm going to put on the Beatles' Let it Be and pour some more coffee.

10:58 a.m.

I'm not sure the Beatles' Let it Be album is the best choice right now. I bought the CD in late 1994 mere weeks before a long-term relationship I had been involved in completely imploded. The first song, "Two of Us" is particularly poignant. The girl who had left me back then had been a girlfriend since high school. Of course the relationship was doomed. How could something like that last? Shelly Atkinson had gone to my high school, Assumption College School, graduating a few years ahead of me. John was her first and only boyfriend. They had been together twenty years. Such a startling number to hear from such a young woman. I'm used to my parents speaking in terms of decades -- or multiple decades -- not someone who is a peer of mine. John had attended Herman secondary school. Shelly told me that when the Assumption senior football team played Herman, she was in the stands cheering for John who played for Herman.

Here's what I have so far:

There is an unspoken truism among Windsor police officers: You know you've made the grade among your fellow officers when they give you a nickname. After six years of determinedly applying and reapplying to the Windsor Police, John Atkinson was hired at the age of twenty-three year. His first nickname was "Smiley," which straightforwardly acknowledged his love for his work and his positive outlook on the people with whom he dealt on a daily basis. Maybe it's a sign of how well-liked John Atkinson was among his fellow officers that he received a second nickname while working on the West End Patrol. There he was called "Sparky" for reasons humorous and better revealed on Cable TV.

The pillars of Constable John Atkinson's life were family and friends, his work on the police force, and his love of the city of Windsor. A life-long resident of Windsor, John attended St. Jule's elementary school, Herman Secondary School, St. Clair College, and the University of Windsor. After marrying his wife, Shelly, in 1992, they settled in the neighborhood where John had grown up.

"He loved the river," says Shelly Atkinson of Windsor's waterfront. "He was down there every chance he got -- even during thunderstorms. He loved looking over at Detroit." Sometimes when Shelly was with him they heard gunshots or sirens from across the river. She would ask John how it was that Windsor could be so close to Detroit and not share its crime rate. "Our gun laws," John would say. No question that was part of the story, but a more direct and tangible answer to that question would be: the Windsor Police force.

Shelly Atkinson was recently approached by a man whom she had never met. The man had known John. "He saved my life," the man explained. Mired in a life of drugs and petty crime, the man said that John was the only person who treated him with respect. "And I wasn't worth anybody's respect at that time," the man said. John gave his card to the man, saying, "Call me if you ever need anything. You're worth saving." Those few words impacted the man more than any amount of lecturing or sermonizing. And the man cleaned up, got his life back together, and states without ambiguity that had it not been for John Atkinson's intervention in his life, he would have been dead years ago.

Shelly Atkinson met her husband-to-be, John, at a Glass Tiger concert in the summer of 1986. Shelly was seventeen and John had just turned eighteen. Four years later they would be engaged.

"He proposed to me at Cedar Pointe," Shelly says, smiling. "I remember that he kept fumbling with something in his pocket, and I didn't know why he was so adamant about going over to the ferris wheel when we hadn't even gone on the Demon Drop yet." John finally got Shelly over to the ferris wheel, but the operator there said the rules of the ride wouldn't allow them to go up by themselves -- each car had to be occupied by four passengers. Shelly couldn't understand why John didn't want a couple of kids to be seated with them on the ferris wheel. "We were arguing as our car went going around to the top. Then John just looked at me and said, 'What are you doing for the rest of your life?' For a split second I didn't know what he was talking about, then it hit me -- he was proposing." As the ferris wheel car made its way back down, one of the bewildered kids in their car asked Shelly, "Did you just get married?" To which Shelly replied, laughing through tears, "No! I just got engaged!" True to his devious sense of humor, John later revealed that he had originally thought to propose to Shelly on the Demon Drop.

12:09 p.m.

Opted to listen to a Johnny Rivers mixed CD. I first heard his music back in the 1980's when I started writing. I was in high school and stayed up late on weekends working on a horrid DOS-driven IBM clone. Next to me was my radio tuned to Detroit's 102.7 oldies station. "Memphis, Tennessee" was the first Johnny Rivers song I ever heard. Most of his other songs had a tinge of Muzak to them, but rather than putting me off, this quality strangely lured me to his music. Johnny Rivers' only Top 10 hit was "Poorside of Town", which was released in 1966. That was the year my hero Lenny Bruce died, and the year my parents were married. In 1959 my father -- who was attending summer school in Toronto -- went with a friend to a midnight performance of Lenny Bruce held at a tent in the middle of nowhere of rural Ontario. So many years later, Dad still recalls Lenny's performance. I've often thought that for a birthday present to myself I would have my father hypnotized so that he could recount word-for-word Lenny's act from that night.

On the mixed Johnny Rivers CD I have his cover versions of Richie Valens' "Do You Want to Dance," which Johnny recorded as a wonderful melancholy ballad. Even the unabashedly hokey "Mountain of Love" is tinged with sadness, and his rendition of "Hey Joe" and "A Whiter Shade of Pale" are heartbreaking. Some writers I know listen to music that pumps them up. For whatever reason, sad or contemplative music greases the creative wheels for me.

Rivers' version of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" is playing right now. I forgot that was on this CD. Certainly apt for today's assignment.

Shelly and John returned to Cedar Point last October, making the rounds of all the rides. There were only two they missed: The Ultimate Dragster Racer and the Milliennium. Shelly revisted Cedar Point a few days. "It was hard being there again," she said. She made sure to ride the Ultimate Dragstar Racer and the Millennium in honor of John.

When asked how old John was when he decided he wanted to become a police officer, Shelly says, "When he was three years old." At the age of eighteen John began the process of applying to become a police officer, sending applications to departments across the country. During the six years it took to be hired, John worked as a security guard at the Devonshire Mall and for the legendary security company, Pinkertons. He also attended the Law and Security course at St. Clair College and took Criminology courses at the University of Windsor. John excelled in all of his jobs.

As a police officer, John had an uncanny knack for spotting stolen cars. It was not even his department, but he naturally spotted tell-tale signs that a car was stolen -- damage to door locks, damage to ignition consoles -- which he saw while driving in traffic with his family. His memory for license plates from department "hot sheets" was remarkable, recalling tags of stolen vehicles from six months previous. Even while on bike patrol -- John was the first police officer to take on this duty -- he was spotting and retrieving stolen vehicles.

John's career was filled with firsts: first officer on bike patrol, first on ATV (four-wheeler) patrol, and sadly, tragically, the first Windsor police officer to be killed in the line of duty.

"He died doing what he loved," says Shelly. "John always said, 'You know you love your job when you can do the Monday Morning Test: Do you wake on Monday morning, and get a knot of anxiety in your stomach when you think of going into work, or do you feel excited about going in?'" Shelly says, "John got excited on Sunday night about going into work on Monday morning."

From the beginning of their relationship, Shelly understood that she was "a cop's wife." She says, "I supported him all the way because I believed in his ability. John was a cop 24/7, but that's not to say he was always tense and suspicious. He was just very aware of his surroundings. No matter where we went, he always had an escape route. He always had a game-plan."

Before he and Shelly had children, John would joke that if they had twins, he wanted them to be named "Smith and Wesson."

7:27 p.m.

Struggled the rest of the afternoon to follow the narrative of my tribute to John Atkinson where it was leading me, but just could not pick up the threads. My relationship with the muses is acrimonious, both of us living by the credo: "Treat 'em mean and keep 'em keen." Listening to Sinead O'Connor's "I Am Stretched Out on Your Grave." Took a 10 KM bike ride to the library to pick up a book I had on hold there, Frank DeFelitta's The Entity, from which the masterful horror film of the same name, starring Barbara Hershey, was made. Swallowed my sleeping pill early this evening, looking forward to the slow-creeping lethargy as it takes hold. Not since St. Patrick's Day 1999 have I been able to enjoy a good drunk. I'll never forget standing in the Gingerman Pub in Merrion Square in Dublin, Ireland's city centre when "spontaneous remission" took hold of me. I had half a pint in my hand and two others on the bar counter waiting for, bought by friends, and suddenly the thrist-inside-the-thirst vanished with not so much as a flutter of wings. Since then, booze goes rancid in my stomach after two drinks. A harrowing state of affairs for someone who had a genuine lust for being drunk. So, it's either I now turn to opium or exercise. Exercise seems to fit best in my lifestyle these days.

Received email earlier from the daughter of a former professor and good friend who died last month. I had missed his funeral. In truth, I couldn't face the prospect of seeing my friend dead, so I opted for the coward's way and simply wrote a tribute to him on my blog. His daughter's note comes at a very opportune time, as I wrestle with my tribute to Constable John Atkinson. She wrote:

I shared your post with my mother. She was very touched. She said she felt so bad that she didn't know how to contact you when my Dad died. I hope you can forgive us for missing you in our haste and confusion. Your blog posting is probably the nicest tribute anyone could have paid my father. We are eternally grateful.

I'm a crumb causing my friend's wife a moment's distress in the days after her husband's death.

While interviewing Shelly Atkinson about her husband, the publisher of The Drive Magazine stopped at her house with a surprise from the fundraiser conducted for the family the previous day. He arrived with a bank draft for a donation made by a young girl who had saved up her allowance and donated it to the family: $2.00. Looking at the bank draft after Shelly handed it to me was one of those wonderful weighty moments that is inexplicably greater than the sum of its parts. Aside from all of the obvious emotions sweeping up Shelly Atkinson since her husband's passing, the most palpable sense was that of intense gratitude. She expressed this to me, saying, "'Thank you' just doesn't seem to be enough to say how I feel about all of the support I've received." Then she showed me a calendar created by her neighbors showing who in the neighborhood was cooking for the Atkinson family on each day. In the bottom right-hand corner was a small note typed in Arial font from the neighbors saying how much they loved Shelly and her kids, and how sorry they were for her loss, and how they hoped this small gesture would help them. Shelly looked at me when I handed the calendar back to her and I saw how overwhelmed she was by the outpouring of support from the community.

Then there were the innumerable cards and letters and posters made my school children. Shelly said she had received condolences from as far away as Japan and Rio De janeiro and countless other countries. Whenever possible, Shelly called people on the telephone to thank them personally for their wishes.

Our interview lasted two hours. I didn't want to leave. Shelly spoke with such potent and vivid memory and enthusiasm I could have listened to her stories about John all day long. But I wondered what the unseen toll of our chat might be taking on her. I have no idea how to approach grief. At the door, on my way out, I gave Shelly a hug. The last thing she told me before I closed my laptop was that she and her children were going to get through this time. They were sad, they were shattered, but they were strong. There was no question she was speaking the truth. Selfish as it might sound, I hoped that some of that strength rubbed off on me.

Now, to return to my laptop and search for the tribute's narrative thread.

Vigilantism -- What the Hell to do With Our Ire?

2006-04-17T20:52:00.002-05:00

The news coming out of the state of Maine today about 20 year old Stephen Marshall of Nova Scotia murdering two registered sex offenders whose information he gleaned from the state's online sex offender registry is shocking and compelling. When cornered by police on a bus, Marshall committed suicide. A tragic damned story every which way you cut it.

It raises in my mind the question of vigilantism. Does this case even "qualify" as vigilantism? Or, was it a revenge killing? There are few details about Marshall's motive for murder at this point.

I don't advocate violence in any form. If someone must fight or, hopefully not, have to kill in self-defence, that's certainly morally permissible. But violence wounds everyone involved with it.

That said, sex offenders are scum. It's a documented fact that pedophiles, in particular, are incurable. They are predators for life. Tagging sex offenders like the animals they are and informing the public of their whereabouts and movements is the least our flawed justice system can extend to society. For the damage and horror played out on the victims of sex crimes, I don't believe our courts take such crimes as seriously or with the amount of gravity they ought to. Speaking about rape, comedian Richard Pryor once said in his stand-up act, "I don't know how you could steal someone's humanity like that."

So, are people outraged about sex offenders living in our communities supposed to take up arms and mete out the justice they believe the courts were too flaccid and soft to administer? No. Nor do I think that sex offender registries should be used to "hunt down" sex offenders. However, there is a certain irony to sex offenders being tracked down in the same manner (the Internet) that so many of them find their victims.

If Stephen Marshall was a victim of one of the sex offenders he killed, that would certainly put a different spin on this story. Do victims have the right to go after their tormentors? Even after their abusers have been caught, sentenced, and freed? I wouldn't suppose to put myself in an abuse victims' shoes. If pressed for an answer, I'd have to say that as a juror I wouldn't vote to convict a person who took the law into their own hands and administered their own justice against a former abuser.

Forget Blogging the Old-Fashioned Way! Use BLARMS™

2006-03-04T01:38:00.002-05:00

"Necessity" may have been the "mother of invention" in the mothballed days of the quaint old 20th Century, but here in the chrome-sparkling über days of the 21st Century, irrelevance is the impetus for innovation.

Inspired by Margaret Atwood's groundbreaking invention -- LongPen machine -- the engineers at ZemhepCo Group bring you BLARMS™.

Are you the person among your friends who is slow getting the jokes? The one who's clothing is out of step with the times? Do you still blog the old-fashioned way -- "keying" by hand?

Then BLARMS™ are for you.

BLARMS™ are 100% titanium alloy. They affix to almost any torso (up to 108 inch chest) like a high-tech brassiere. Instead of comfy cotton breast cups on the front, titanium BLARMS™ extend from the chest. After snorting a wired electrode up each nostril -- which then affix to the frontal lobe of the brain with nano-technology grappling hooks -- you're ready to BLARM™.

Margaret Atwood has the right idea with her LongPen machine -- the more people can do to take the human element out of daily life, the better off we'll all be.

Why blog when you can BLARM™?!

If only we could take the human element out of Literature -- Margaret Atwood has!

2006-03-03T21:16:00.005-05:00

Hi, I'm Margaret Atwood. You know, being a bestselling author is a really super job. I have tons of money, people everywhere know my name and think I'm great. But for as much as I enjoy the lifestyle my bestselling novels afford me, it does have some drawbacks. Chief among them is the dilemma my peers and I face on a daily basis: "Gosh, I love taking my readers' money to fund my lavish lifestyle, but these goddamned Philistines are so tiresome, banal, and unwashed, I wish I never had to be in the same room with them again!"

Well, I have developed an invention that will make being a bestselling author just a little more livable -- The LongPen machine.

Sick of listening to droning fans tell you how much they enjoy your work? Tired of sitting at the head of long lines of admirers who bore you with their prattle? Weary of interacting with intellectual and creative inferiors? Then the LongPen machine is for you!

With the LongPen machine, you can sit in the lavish study of your gratuitous mansion, or by your Olympic-sized swimming pool, or perhaps on your magenta supersonic jet, and sign copies of your books for the masses without ever having to physically see another fan, reader, or admirer again... Shit, you can hire a staff to sign books for you -- who's to know it's not you? Best of all, you keep those dollars rolling in. The rabble have their heads patted, you sell a few more books -- it's a win-win situation!~

Follow-up by author Matthew St. Amand:

Maybe I am simply a neophyte, a rube from Onion Field, Ontario, so awed and blinded by the shine of my own books in print that I am unaware of the brass tacks of being a working, living bestselling writer. Call me crazy, I absolutely love interacting with my readers.

Are literary fans so bothersome that authors of Margaret Atwood's stature would prefer to use this Dr. Strangelovian device to autograph books? The derisive contrarian in me enjoys such examples of excessive, ridiculous uses of technology, and the satirist in me is tickled by Atwood's LongPen machine, but the human being booklover in me is appalled and disgusted. This is one of those overt examples of overbearing technology -- and the spooky mind behind it -- making the process it's seemingly simplifying utterly meaningless.

Call me crazy, old-fashioned, out-of-step, but the only signed copies of books I'm interested in having were once actually touched by the authors who wrote them.

Thanks, Peg, not interested.

Murder Pays in Canada -- The Lifeline Program

2006-02-23T23:14:00.000-05:00

The Lifeline Program appears to be a gift from the Mulroney government to Canada in 1991. The Donner Foundation paid for a "study" and even provided a grant to get the program off the ground.

If you can bear the outrage, these links will tell the story in gutwrenching detail:

What is that flushing sound?

Parolees get $41Gs to escort convicts

From Corrections Canada

Is there no civilization in this goddamned country?

From the Corrections Canada Web site: "It is a fact of corrections that the majority of inmates with life sentences will eventually be released on parole..."

Why? Are Canadian people so murderous that if our killers were not set free a sizable of our population would remain behind bars to rot?

I'm of the thinking that aside from cases of clear self-defense, murderers ought to be locked up in jail for the entirety of their lives. Yes, I realize that Canadian judges reason, "Well, the odds of the offender murdering the deceased again are so slim, the offender should eventually be released." No. Not at all.

Murder is such an aberration, such deviant behavior that the diseased few among us who engage in this heinous act ought to be removed from society permanently. The moment they take a life, the murderer loses his rights. I don't care how sorry they are after the fact. We're all sorry when we're caught.

If some murderers go on to be "model prisoners," great. Leave them in jail to be examples to others.

This foregone conclusion that murderers must eventually be released from jail is an insulting fallacy created by doe-eyed politicians whose closest links to crime are their white-collar-criminal golfing buddies. Our politicians must find other ways to assuage their consciences -- ways that don't put the rest of society at risk.

Being Part of Canadian Judas-Prudence Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry - Meet Pedophile DALE OSWALD

2006-02-19T01:40:00.000-05:00

"Neighbours of a halfway house that has become home to a long-term sex offender have put together a 450-signature petition to voice their fears to the federal government about the man’s proximity to their children."

"In the interest of community safety, the Kingston Police, and Chief W. Closs under authority of the Police Services Act of Ontario, is disclosing the following information regarding 33 year old Dale OSWALD."

"... Based on Bill 34, a man like Dale Oswald -- and I would have given you the complete article so you could have seen it -- joyfully admits he is addicted to the taste of young boys. That was in The Toronto Sun. He was considered a predator and a stalker."

"... [Oswald] was convicted in 2003 of a dozen offences, including assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm, uttering a threat, and assault resisting arrest..."

And Dale Oswald now resides in a halfway house a few hundred meters from an elementary school. He can see children at play from his window. This evening I saw a report about this situation on CBC Newsworld and was filled with the familiar acidic exasperation as some lethargic representative of Corrections Canada (named Gerry) verbally shrugged his shoulders over the community's fears of Dale Oswald living in their community.

From the Kingston Police Web site: "OSWALD is described as 6’ 7”, 350 lbs, Caucasian." At this size, he is a fearsome menace to even fully grown adults. But Oswald is unconcerned with adults. He targets children.

I am a believer in creative sentencing for non-violent offenders. I'm a believer in rehabilitation where it is possible. I am also for taking those few irredeemable people -- Paul Bernardo, Clifford Olson, Dale Oswald -- and locking them away from society until the end of their (un)natural lives.

Pedophiles cannot be cured. They cannot be rehabilitated into non-pedophiles. Pedophiles are like real-world vampires, often turning their victims into pedophiles. It's a diabolical fact that many people who suffer sexual abuse as children become abusers, themselves, later in life.

The representative from Corrections Canada, this evening, gave his final, laconic dig at the community in which Oswald resides by saying the offender can only be transferred to another community upon the offender's request. And foxes make honest, reliable custodians of henhouses.

When will people of conscience and conviction finally be in charge of offenders such as Dale Oswald? When will someone with the authority to use the laws that are already on the books in Canada, meant to guard society from those few violent, malformed, evil, sadistic, violent offenders and predators, finally stand up and put the rights and needs of society ahead of the miscreants who prey upon us?

How banal and offhand would Gerry of Corrections Canada be if Dale Oswald lived in his neighborhood? Maybe Dale Oswald should be moved there to see how he would fit in.

To my mind, when pedophiles are apprehended -- "pedophilia" being just another type of murder -- they should never see the light of day again. Anyone who preys upon those most vulnerable in our society in the most fiendish and sadistic manner ought never to walk among the rest of again. Period.

Final note: If you want to sleep at night, don't run a Web search on the word "pedophile" on any news site. The number and variety of stories is nightmarish.

David Emerson is EXACTLY what is wrong with Canadian politics

2006-02-12T11:46:00.000-05:00

Since I was a kid first learning how the Canadian system of government and politics worked, I've been amazed and disheartened by the way in which the system binds the hands of voters. Specifically: what if I like a candidate who is running for PM, but despise that party's candidate in my local riding? Or what if I really like the work of a local candidate, but find his party's leader to be completely unendurable? In either instance the Canadian system has me voting against my conscience.

Canadian elections are absolutely not about personalities of individuals. They are driven by anger against one party, hope for another, disenchantment with them all. But they are not about individual candidates. Elections are about party platforms, promises, and perception.

And so David Emerson demonstrates his Hindenberg ego stating time and again -- since his unconscionable defection to the Conservative party -- that voters voted specifically for him, and that he could join any party and still have won his election. The arrogance of the man is enough to make any voter gnash his teeth.

Emerson compounds his egomania by not only sweeping aside calls that he return campaign funds that helped see him elected as Liberal candidate, but actually states a belief that his name-recognition was responsible for the Liberal party receiving so many donations in the first place.

David Emerson believes himself to be the Justin Timberlake of western politics.

Worse yet is Emerson's stubbornness and unwillingness to acknowledge his voters' outrage or their wishes that he run in a by-election.

David Emerson embodies all of the odious arrogant, unresponsive, ego-maniacal, entitlement-driven, leprous traits of Canadian politics. He claims his move to the Conservative party was an effort to better serve his constituents. Well, the constituents he professes to love so much are calling for him to quit, to return money, to run in a by-election. He will have none of that. So, clearly, David Emerson's move was a completely self-serving power-grab; ointment for the ego after suffering with the three-wheeled bus that was the Paul Martin Liberals.

Emerson says that he's often thought of leaving politics entirely, as though that's a threat that should give voters pause. It doesn't. It's more hollow bloviating from a man with no ethics, no conscience, and not even the PR savvy to recognize the outrage his defection has caused among the very people who voted him into office.

The only consolation to be found in a person so deluded and self-absorbed is the fall they inveitably take when reality collides with their increasingly bilious fantasy world.

May Emerson take a long, Mulroney-esque fall from the top of his Tower of Babel. He'll be grabbing for dollars all the way down, but his reputation (already) will possess all of the phyiscal qualities of a used bedpan.

British Columbia Secret Police -- "It's your money, but you'll spend it where I say you can!"

2006-02-08T21:32:00.000-05:00

This editorial requires no further editorializing. The situation certainly reminds me of the days when Canada was first saddled with the GST. Living in a border city, everyone I knew (including myself) flocked to the United States to spend their money. Yeah, I felt a twinge of regret for Canadians business owners, but figured if they were so hurt by the cross-border shopping they should organize themselves and address the issue that was sending so many consumers south. But no, we had undercover cops lurking in parking lots of Michigan big box stores drawing with chalk on the tires of cars with Ontario license plates -- to ensure those recalcitrant Canadians weren't buying tires in the U.S. It's great to live in a society where law enforcement personnel had so little to do, but more than once I had to ask myself if I wasn't a citizen of the United Soviet Socialist Republic of Canada.

Charm, Compassion & Dr. Rathe - Niche Marketing Could Save the Day

2006-02-08T21:31:00.000-05:00

I once had what I considered a pretty good business idea -- I told a friend who is a terrible driver that he should open a taxi company targeting the niche market of "extreme taxi passengers." Surely there are people in the world -- in our city -- who actually enjoy riding with a crazy driver. I mean, there are people who do BASE jumping, surf in hurricane storm surges; people who drink their own urine and worship the devil. Extreme taxi passengers would sign an insurance waiver and a contract promising to pay for all of their driver's speeding tickets (if he received any) and away they go.

This is an idea that morphs from the old Lilly Tomlin joke about wanting to pair up all the stray crazy people in New York she saw talking to themselves so that they would appear to be having conversations with one another.

In the same vein (pun intended), Dr. Rathe of the article above could be physician to masochists. Considering there are people in the world who spend good money to be insulted, berated and beaten by a surly dominatrix (awkward grammar there because I don't know how to pluralize "dominatrix", surely Dr. Rathe could niche market himself to hypochondriac masochists.

Personally, I think this idea might make Dr. Rathe and his considerable verbal skills something of a circus act. What I really think the good doctor should do is be installed as the Official Physician of Parliament.

My Letter to the new Prime Minister

2006-02-08T17:17:00.000-05:00

Dear Prime Minister Stephen Harper,

Welcome to the Prime Minister's mansion. Beware of its rose-colored windows and funhouse mirrors, and the reverberating echo throughout the place, which combine to make occupants of this mansion believe themselves infallible, invincible; their sins invisible. Remember, these walls -- of your library, study, dining hall, bed chamber -- were once witness to the corrupt, snarling laughter of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrietien.

Conservative friends of mine tell me you and your party are the answer to the failure and disrepute of the Liberal party. Your first day on the job has not persuaded me that this is true. Accepting David Emerson into your party, much less appointing him to a cabinet post was a move dizzying in its hypocrisy and cynical timing. I mean, the conservative party had just run a campaign against that sort of skullduggery, so say members of your own party, and the rightly aggrieved voters who elected David Emerson as a Liberal MP. I know the taint of the Ottawa air, the discombobulating effect Ottawa drinking water has on the mind and senses, but surely you're new enough to your position to realize how this appears to Canadians -- as mud-stained "politics-as-usual." Mr. Harper, even the appearance of impropriety when dealing with the public trust is virtually as damaging as actual impropriety -- or, has it been so long since you were an ordinary citizen to recall that?

You have appointed Montrealer Michael Fortier to the senate. So much for an elected senate; meaning, an accountable senate.

You come at this situation not as a Canadian citizen, but as a politician, and herein lies our divergence. The things that cause me trouble as a citizen, are political currency to you: the HRDC debacle years ago, the Gomery Report, etc. The more corrupt and unresponsive the Liberal party became over the years only benefitted your cause. It has only harmed mine. As leader of the opposition in parliament, the more things the Liberals got wrong served you well. Each scandal, each betrayal of public confidence cost me and millions of others -- peace of mind, money, and belief that our political system might be salvageable. The more things went wrong in Canada, the brighter your political prospects became.

So, while you have gained all that you desired -- less the legislation you are set to propose -- I am one voter among millions who remains engulfed by doubt, pessimism, and acrimony toward the Canadian political system. I'm not saying you didn't win fair and square; we've not yet become America over here. No, I level the lowest and basest accusation against you (before you've even been a week in office): you are just another politician.

You wreathe your cynical cabinet appointments in language resounding with love of country. In my neighborhood, actions speak louder than words, and your actions so far leave me shaking my head. I believe that one embarking on an arduous journey ought to make their first step as solid and positive as possible. Your first step has been into the same old dogshit of patronage and political games.

I continue being troubled by the fact that the right-wing Christian neo-conservative ideologues in the United States cheer your election. Their support of your campaign -- in voice and shaking fists -- was worrisome. There is not a soul to be found among the sordid lot of them; not a shred of humanity among those war-mongering chicken-hawk imperialists who believe God Almighty appointed George W. Bush to the White House and commanded him to invade Iraq. Who believe whole segments of their society rightly go without healthcare, adequate education, and were bred for the specific vocation of wage-slavery or being made into cannon fodder. These Christian neo-con war-mongers believe they have found a kindred spirit in you. Have they?

Mr. Harper, I do hope you follow through with some of your campaign promises, though I admit to fears that you will follow through only in a manner that will please your constituency: right-wing Christian conservatives. I hope you prod Canada toward an elected senate. I hope you jostle us toward a more democratic process of approving persons for judiciary appointments. That you reduce, even eradicate, the GST. That you not institute "gun control", but "criminal control"; our judges are administering feater-duster spankings to violent criminals who ought to be locked away from society for years.

But I fear your crackdown on crime will center on marijuana smokers, rather than white collar criminals or gang bangers shooting up our metropolitan streets. I fear you will reduce our taxes to the great detriment of Canada's social services. I fear that fundamentalist Christianity will be the rudder guiding your decisions and legislation. You've already proven you can't be taken at your word by the appointments of David Emerson and Michael Fortier.

Doubtless the first casualty of my last stated fear will be same-sex marriages. Christian fundamentalists oppose gay marriage because in ten or fifteen years we will see that gay marriages will have outlasted so many so-called "traditional" unions. If the Christian right really wanted to make a move that would strengthen the bonds between husband and wife, they should consider banning celebrities from matrimony, as most celebrity marriages can be measured in hours rather than years. When celebrity marriages end, they are front page news. If you want to preserve the sanctity of marriage, steal Katie Holmes away from Tom Cruise (yes, they're citizens of another country, but consider it a "pre-emptive" strike for morality).

Welcome to your new home and job. A dubious lot has been where you are right now. Surprise us -- do a good job.

The Canadian Political System is Broken: Time for the Neighbour Party

2006-02-02T02:22:00.004-05:00

I'm starting a new political party -- The Neighbour Party of Canada -- which will be a radical departure from the business-as-usual politics in the petrie-dish-of-corruption, Ottawa.

At the risk of sounding like a doe-eyed granola-eater who might seem more apt to elect a sandal his political leader, I think it's time we get back to the idea that all Canadians are our neighbours -- not constituents, not underlings, not Rabble, not the Great Unwashed. Neighbours.

Neighbours look out for one another. If the car of my neighbour across the street is stuck in the snow, I help her push it out. If my neighbour a few doors up needed me to watch his kids one evening because he had to run off to some emergency, I'd do it. When my lawnmower broke, my next door neighbour offered the use of hers.

So, it's time the elected swine of this country get back to the idea that they are representing their neighbours, spending their neighbours' money, making policy that affect their neighbours' lives.

What would the Neighbour Party of Canada do if elected to power?

Establish Winnipeg as the capital of Canada, relocating the parliament, et al, to Manitoba. 'Bye 'bye lobbyists all cozy in your lavish condos and mansions
Outlaw the practice of "lobbying"
Replace "gun control" with "criminal control"
Designate all of Canada a "distinct society"
All Canadians will finally be equal -- outlaw "positive discrimination" practices and properly welcome aboriginal persons into the fold by having them pay taxes like everyone else in Canada
Abolish the GST -- Canada survived long before it and will survive without it
Simplify the tax system - flat tax of 10%, which every earner must pay
An elected senate
A judiciary appointed via hearings where candidates can be named by the prime minister, but are subject to MPs' questioning and approval
The mere appearance of impropriety on the part of any public servant will not be tolerated and will result in immediate termination
The term "public servant," laughable and inaccurate as it has become, will be replaced by the new term for people who work for the government "bureaucrap."
Terminate all bureaucraps from the top-down in all government ministries and replace their ranks with fresh blood. People cheating our system could not do so without these gray-faced, drone-like stagnant civil servant enablers. The front-line workers in our social services system might snap to attention as they watch their boss's boss's boss being handed his head by my plan
Put out a call among those cheating the welfare, EI, mothers' allowance, disability, and every other public assistance system, offering not only blanket immunity from prosecution for the first 250 who come forward, but jobs to them as consultants to help us stop and root-out all the other cheaters
Corporate crime will be punished by fining white collar criminals double what they steal. For instance, convicted thief Paul Coffin stole $1.5 million of taxpayers' money. Under my plan, he would be fined $3 million. What if he didn't pay or claimed he could not pay? Maybe five years in Kingston penitentiary gen-pop would encourage some financial creativity or jog his memory about where he stowed other ill-gotten gains
Completely overhaul politician salaries and pensions. The Canadian people are not only constituents, we are politicians' neighbours. Neighbours don't get rich off the backs of one another. Politicians will be given a pension of $1,000/year for every year they serve. So, if a politician served six years in government, that person will receive a pension of $6,000/year. Former politicians can figure out their finances from there. Since politicians refer to themselves as "public servants" they should be treated as servants -- they will be paid minimum wage
Drastically reduce college and university tuition for students maintaining at least a B+ average. If students want to party their years away or happen to be the dullard child of wealthy parents, their tuition will be doubled to pay for those achieving at least a B+ average
Creative, non-incarceration sentences for non-violent offenders. Stiff jail-time penalties for violent offenders

Stephen Harper, Promise Keepers, and "we might have a war"

2006-01-20T07:38:00.000-05:00

From the Globe & Mail: "... Mr. Harper was introduced at the news conference by David Sweet, the Tory candidate in Ancaster-Dundas- Flamborough- Westdale. Mr. Sweet is a former president of Promise Keepers Canada, an evangelical Christian organization that believes homosexuality is a sin.

"In a November, 2001, edition of Christian Week magazine, he wrote: '[M]en are natural influencers, whether we like it or not. There's a particular reason why Jesus called men only. It's not that women aren't co-participators. It's because Jesus knew women would naturally follow.'

"Yesterday afternoon, Mr. Harper shared the stage with Harold Albrecht, the Conservative candidate in Kitchener-Conestoga, at a rally attended by about 800 enthusiastic supporters.

"Mr. Albrecht is pastor and founder of the Pathway Community Church. In June of 2004, he wrote in a letter to a Kitchener newspaper: 'If one is truly committed to the marriage vows of fidelity, these same-sex marriages would succeed in wiping out an entire society in just one generation.'

"When reporters tried to question Mr. Albrecht about his views after the rally, Conservative handlers blocked them from getting close. Mr. Albrecht was hustled into a kitchen where he stood alone as the news media were told he was too busy to speak with them."

O, the Promise Keepers -- another wretched boys' club that appeals to all the venal, immature, crybaby whims of sophomoric male egos. These heroes are all into "manhood" and the subjugation of women, and simply being all-around unsmiling self-righteous pricks to their families. In the past year or two, I've known a couple of people who have had Promise Keepers in their lives, and these god warriors showed themselves to be nothing more than wife-beating assholes motivated by Scripture rather than beer. One of these gimps was a whore-monger who once chastized his brother-in-law -- my friend -- for saying naughty words while in traffic. My friend asked his Promise Keeper brother-in-law if he required the same of the hookers he frequented.

Where you have religion, you have the kindling for insanity. Where you have fundamentalist religiosity, you have the hell-bright flames of catastrophe.

From Rigorous Intuition we learn that "[l]ast night in an interview on CBC, Stephen Harper said he couldn't promise that a Conservative government wouldn't take Canada into deficit because "we might have a war." OK, it's not too late, we have finally learned behind which Christ Stephen Harper throws his allegiance -- and this Christ's first name ain't Jesus.

Before some knee-jerk conservative accuses me of being a "Paul Martin Liberal," let's take it from the top:

No party should govern for 12 years, I don't care who they are. The fact that it's the Liberal Party in question here makes this statement all the more true and pressing. The Liberals must go.

As for the NDP, their ideas about "positive discrimination" are positively racist -- against the caucasian people for whom they have such distaste, but even more so for the people of color whom they so fervently embrace. The NDP doesn't believe in filling government positions based on a person's competence. This is where their patent racism comes into the play. The NDP believes that caucasians -- white men, in particular -- are so superior to all other races, that the rules must be skewed and positive discrimination instituted to give inferiors a shot. This is outrageous. It's bullshit and it's insulting to people on every side of the political spectrum. As a Canadian citizen, I want to see the most qualified people working for the government. I don't care about their country of origin, their gender, their preference for music -- I want their competence. The NDP seems to think that running the government involves posing for rainbow coalition photo-ops all day long. It does not.

But Stephen Harper. O, Stephen Harper, you ulterior-motive, hidden-agenda, war-monger-in-waiting, conservative's Conservative. Somehow Canadians forget that it was a conservative government that saddled the country with the GST. Sure, those were other conservatives. So, if I run as a Liberal candidate in the next election, will this same rubbery logic allow me to say, "I'm the other kind of Liberal"? Of course not. Brian Mulroney and his mafia of swine set the tone for the Corruption of Chrétien. Tory Mike Harris treated Ontario like a Promise Keeper treats his wife, but Harris was one of those other conservatives.

At this point in time, Canada's greatest problem is its culture of corruption, incompetence and patronage in Ottawa. Our political process and machinations are a disgrace and an insult to all thinking people. Add conservatism to this steaming fecal stew and the country will be enveloped by a whole new stench.

"[W]e might have a war" says Stephen Harper.

No matter the results of Monday's election, I think Canadians should mobilize and surround Ottawa, carrying torches, rakes, and pitchforks, as villagers did when they converged on Doctor Frankenstein's castle in the old Boris Karloff movies. The horror in those old films was canned and cartoonish by today's standards. The horror festering in Ottawa is the Andromeda Strain.

Process of Humiliation

2006-01-13T09:48:00.000-05:00

That is what keeps decent people from running for politics -- that groping, pandering process of humiliation before voters go to the polls.

My opinons of the politicos running:

Paul Martin forever has the look on his face of a child being berated by a teacher. Who'd ever guess the man is filthy rich? But he does truly embody the unsmiling satire that is Canadian politics -- a former interest-conflicted finance minister who reflags the ships of his shipping company in order to avoid paying Canadian taxes. And who is there to call him on it? The Opposition? They have all the credibility of defense attorneys -- they'll cry "Nay" no matter what the person in power does.

Seeing those Liberal Party lawn signs with their tagline: "Paul Martin's Liberal Party" may as well read "E. coli's Hamburgers."

My problem with Stephen Harper? Purely physiological. The look of his pale face and bleached blue eyes has me convinced no blood circulates to his head. Blood is filled with ideas, and if the marriage of blood and brain is not consummated, you don't end up with a stupid individual, but a scary one. Conservatives are the ones who gave Canada the GST. We tend to forget that.

Jack Layton, purveyor of "positive discrimination," indiscriminant spender of those so-far-out-of-reach tax dollars, I applaud your applause for the Canadian health care system. Clayton reminds me of well-meaning clergymen who have never lived in the world, have all sorts of ideas about living in the world, who sit and rock themselves into oblivion in the shadows of their cat-pissing-smelling parlors.

Gilles Duceppes is like the little brother running after the pack of older kids, shouting, "Wait up, you's!"

Every Canadian election is an exercise in short-sightedness. The electorate is only concerned with "sticking it" to the ruling party, never giving a thought to the culture of corruption that exists in Ottawa. Remember during the 2000 American election and how George W. Bush promised to return integrity to the White House. Well, if you weigh W.'s sins against Bill Clinton's and still believe that dignity can be achieved with "daisy cutters", then you have the same spiritual compass as Savonarola and Pat Robertson.

Satire and vitriol aside, Canada doesn't need privatized health care or the privatization of its Crown corporations, but it certainly needs something from the private sector -- some expertise. The next Prime Minister of Canada should call appeal to the patriotism of the CEO of Tim Horton's, for instance, and other such successful, thriving Canadian corporations, and ask their input on how to liposuction the rotting bloat from the such institutions as our health care system, et al.

The question of this election in my mind is: How serious are Canadians about having their country run with a modicum of honesty, a tad of competence, and a smidge of vision?

The Bard of Jolly Crescent

2006-01-12T10:16:00.000-05:00

Leonard Cohen on the Late Irving Layton: "I taught him how to dress, he taught me how to live forever."

2006-01-05T21:51:00.000-05:00

Rest in Peace, Irving Layton

No poet ever thought more of himself than Irving Layton, nor more enjoyed being photographed shirtless.

First Whiff of Bullshit of 2006: "PM to get tough with gun-violence offenders"

2006-01-01T04:57:00.000-05:00

PM to get tough with gun-violence offenders:

Prime Minister Paul Martin has thrown his support behind a multi-government effort to keep those accused of gun violence in jail.

The onus will be on anyone accused of committing a gun crime to show why they should not be locked up until they are tried if a proposal by Mr. Martin, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Toronto mayor David Miller goes ahead.

Sounds great, doesn't it? But see how it will play in actual practice with our flaccid judiciary:

JUDGE (addressing OFFENDER at a "reverse onus" bail hearing): You are before this court to explain why you should not be locked up until you are tried for the crime of assault with a deadly weapon.

OFFENDER: 'Cause I don't wanna be in jail.

JUDGE: OK, that's good enough for me. You may leave on your own recognizance. (Pause) Uh, could you use some car-fare?

Canadian justice is dead in the water until we bring people to the bench who live in our communities, share our values, who believe crime is a crime and violent criminals are not lost puppy dogs.

The Enigma & Conundrum of Canadian Judas-Prudence

2005-12-30T16:15:00.000-05:00

I may have figured out the mystery behind Canadian judges' unwillingness to hand out just sentences to criminals.

A couple of outrages off the top of my head:

A year or two ago in Windsor, Ontario a man who was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman was given a sentence of thirty days house arrest. The victim in the case said the rights and feelings of the accused were at the forefront of the court's priorities at all times, while hers were ignored across the board. Now we have Yonge Street shot up by criminals, one of whom was just released from thirty days in jail for his role in a convenience store robbery.

Who in the world thinks such sentences for such crimes are just?

Which led me to wonder, Who benefits from crime?

Criminals do -- in Canada, at least. But who else? Security companies. I think a special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate how many Canadian judges hold investments in security companies. This is a clear conflict of interest, releasing repeat, violent criminals upon society, the reports of which send the sales of security-related items shyrocketing.

Are Canadian judges profiting from crime in this way? Someone should investigate.

In the highly unlikely event that such a conflict of interest is not proved, I think a further investigation should be made into Canadian judges: Do they tend to reside near chemical plants? Are they all emotionally remote sociopaths? Is there an inordinate amount of drug use in the histories of Canadian judges, accounting for their skewed and often dissociative response to real life and real events that enter their courts on a daily basis? Are Canadian judges brought into this reality from another realm through some weird membrane? If so, we must close that hole.

Is there any answer to why Canadian judges refuse to hand out just sentences to criminals?

Ask the Canadian Department of Justice

More Canadian Judas-Prudence: Out-of-touch Judges are to Blame for the Toronto Shooting?

2005-12-29T19:52:00.000-05:00

While we still may speak of the culprits in the Boxing Day shooting on Yonge Street as "suspects", it's time to look at the judges before whom these "suspects" appeared during their criminal careers.

From the Globe & Mail: ... Andre Thompson, 20, who was on probation at the time of the alleged offences, faces several gun charges, as does a 17-year-old male who cannot be identified.

The source said the men are both known to police.

... Mr. Thompson, who remains in custody until his next court appearance, was released just before Christmas from Maplehurst prison near Milton, Ont.

He had served 30 days for his role in a convenience-store robbery.

Thirty days for a convenience store robbery. Where is the deterent in that? If that's the going sentence for robbery, I might change careers and take this up myself. And I can just hear this hairsplitting old milkshake of a judge, in his nasally gobshite voice, saying, "Uh, in fact, Mr. Thompson was sentenced for his role in a convenience store robbery. His role." As though that makes any goddamned difference.

Canadian Judas-prudence needs a change. The role that judges play should be reduced to simply presiding over cases, ensuring only the guilty are found guilty. Once a "suspect's" guilt has been ascertained, I say that police officers or a committee of police should mete out the sentences. Christ, how frustrating and demoralizing must it be for cops to be catching criminals only to see these crooks greeted like prodigal sons by old milkshake judges whose only connection to the world is... well, I've yet to actually figure that out. These lames could be presiding over cases via satellite link from Venus for all of the real-world justice they're handing out.

For all of my sarcasm and vitriol, the tragic fact of the needless and senseless loss of life that occurred on Yonge Street on Boxing Day must be addressed -- and not in the usual plodding, confused Canadian manner. If Canadian Judas-prudence is worth anything, it must begin protecting law-abiding Canadians from the increasingly cavalier criminal element that has (hopefully temporarily) found itself a comfortable home in our midst.

Update 12/30/2005:

Dangerous U.S. child-sex suspect seen in Ontario

Law-abiding Americans like coming to Canada for our cheap pharmaceuticals. Criminals find in Canada a safe haven where there are no consequences for their actions; where judges will receive them like fathers' receiving their prodigal sons.

Merry Happy Xmas

2005-12-28T09:12:00.000-05:00

Ducking Bullets & Responsibility: "Canada blames U.S. for gun violence"

2005-12-28T09:08:00.000-05:00

From CNN.com yesterday Canada blames U.S. for gun violence.

"It's a sign that the lack of gun laws in the U.S. is allowing guns to flood across the border that are literally being used to kill people in the streets of Toronto," Miller said.

Miller said Toronto, a city of nearly three million, is still very safe compared to most American cities, but the illegal flow of weapons from the United States is causing the noticeable rise in gun violence.

"The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto," he said.

First, let's get one thing straight: Not all Canadians blame the United States for the recent gun violence in Toronto. Weak-kneed, spaghetti-spined Canadian politicians with their gag-reflex response to duck any and all negative responsibility may believe this. I, for one, blame the criminal who pulled the trigger. If any further blame need be cast, I cast it upon Canada's judges, those out-of-touch, rarified, philosopher-kings-of-the-bench who dispense feather-duster-spankings to criminals who come before them.

Toronto mayor David Miller says "... the lack of gun laws in the U.S. is allowing guns to flood across the border that are literally being used to kill people in the streets of Toronto..." If I'm not mistaken, the United States is not responsible for what comes in to Canada. Canada Customs and Canadian Border Services are responsible for that. The Canadian border is staffed with Canadian authorities. Whatever may be coming into our country -- be it ham sandwiches or hand grenades -- our people are allowing them in. If anything, maybe these services and agencies need more funding, more training, better facilities.

But more to the point -- what would make a criminal so brazenly act out his inferiority complex on a Toronto street with a hand gun? My opinion is that a complete lack of consequences is to blame for that. Sometimes I speed while driving my car. Do I do this because I'm a criminal who hates law and order? No. I do it sometimes because I think I can get away with it. And I do. Criminals in Canada know they face nothing worse than a stern finger-wagging-talking-to when brought before a justice. There are no consequences for breaking the law in Canada, and therefore criminals become more brazen and violent.

Paul Martin's myopic solution is to punish responsible firearms owners by banning guns or setting up an overpriced registration system. Responsible firearms owners are not the people committing these crimes in Canada. Why is it so difficult in Canadian life for the actual culprits of crime to be blamed for their deeds? Gang members are to blame in this instance. Crack down on gangs, not responsible citizens who follow the rules of firearm ownership. More to the point, crack down on Canadian judges.

America has its problems, but David Miller and Paul Martin are showing why they should hold positions of leadership by engaging in the usual shell-game of blame. Canada has suffered long enough under unimaginative, character-deficient, corrupt dodgers of responsibility. Problems are not solved by dodging blame, but by bringing wrongdoers to justice. Canadian judges consistently prove themselves unwilling or unable to protect Canadians from criminals. Canada not only needs responsive politicians, but responsive judges who share our values and who will act decisively and responsibly when violent criminals are brought before them. The rallying cry of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, "No justice, no peace," applies to Canadian jurisprudence. We won't see any peace in Canada until our judges begin meting out justice.

Backlash: Diskontent against Komtemp(tible)orary Musik Scëëne

2005-12-27T23:59:00.000-05:00

Doing a little cultural slumming last night with the remote control, I found myself watching MuchMusic, and witnessed an interesting phenomenon: They have wakened to the fact that the music they feature is shit.

I watched a show called Video on Trial in which a panel of mostly stand-up comedians no one has ever heard of before are shown a selection of popular videoes, and who proceed to beat the hell out of these videoes in much the same fashion as my friends and I would. Their comments were quite funny, sometimes insightful, and always negative. The songs and "artists" featured, for the most part, were pretty weak -- except for The Killers, whom I happen to like. But the videos featured were uniformly reprehensible. If one ever needed a measuring stick by which to mark the superficiality of contemporary music -- how utterly lacking of ideas it is -- one need only watch music videos. This lost, abused, misguided artform is an atrocity.

The Backstreet Knobs were among those skewered (actually, on more than one program). Britney, of course, along with Lindsay, and the redundant Velvet Revolver took a worthy drubbing, as well.

Then came Ed the Sock's annual Fromage countdown. Again the triviality of contemporary music was the target, and Ed the Sock's remarks were cutting and bang-on as ever.

Then there was some retarded segment about "famous fallouts" of 2005. As a side note: this was among the weakest programming I've ever witnessed in over thirty years of television viewing. The hosts were tirelessly boring and unfunny, their banter lame and contrived, and the general premise of the show more than a little dubious. I know this describes most television programming, but take the worst show you've seen, multiply it by ten and there you've got what I saw last night. However, once again contemporary performers (they're not musicians, they're not singers, they're not songwriters) were taken to task as the banal succubi they are.

There is definitely a backlash afoot. Certainly, nothing about contemporary music will change. There will continue to be this glut of shit, speckled with a few rare gems. Because the people who enjoy contemporary music are not interested in quality, they only care about chronology -- when a song was released. So long as that banal piece of shit song was released more recently than anything else, it will sell. The same ridiculous non-philosophy ruled the day when I worked at a video store while going through school. People never cared about what movies were good, all they cared about was what movies were newest.

Play Beethoven or The Who: Live at Leeds for one of these shallow bobbleheads and I guess their physiology would explode. So, to the leprous pablum they flock. They can have it.

My Encounter with the Genuine Article: Musician Jody Raffoul

2005-12-24T10:24:00.000-05:00

It didn't take Ashlee Simpson being caught-out lip synching on Saturday Night Live or the lame-o TV show Making the Band's cast of crybabies vying for a spot in the wretched "O-Town" to make me cynical about contemporary music. I have always been innately repelled by fakes, phonies, posers and frauds. In the video The Doors: Live in Europe 1968 Grace Slick quotes Keith Richards on the subject of poseurs, "Shave, and go home." No, music videos alone have been enough to sour me on contemporary music. This wasted, abused artform is the Grand Bandwagon where most musicians show themselves "being different... like everyone else," turning the spiritual experience that music truly is into something shat out by McWal-Mart.

But there are moments when my path crosses that of a Genuine Article. Like the day I first heard Lou Reed's song "Vicious," or U2's "Pride (In the Name of Love)." Hearing The Who's "Baba O'Reilly" for the first time. Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On?" Van Morrison's "St. Domick's Preview." Or, when I first listened to Sam Cooke's supernova performance on his album Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Club. Or, the time when I worked in a stockroom in the Devonshire Mall and heard a girl named Sarah singing some throwaway line from her favorite song. She didn't know anyone was listening, and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The Genuine Article. More than talent, more than a gift, even. Passion -- the bullseye of one's soul struck like a powerchord on Pete Townsend's guitar.

Last night I had the pleasure and privlege to see another Genuine Article perform. His name is Jody Raffoul, and he's got a sound that comes straight out of the left ventricle of classic rock 'n' roll. After eighteen years of show-by-show, city-by-city dues-paying, Jody Raffoul has released his latest album Like A Star.

The melodies and musicianship on this album caught my interest immediately, but hearing Jody's astonishing vocals stopped me in my tracks. Where voices like this come from, I don't know, but Bono has one, as does Smokey Robinson and Roger Daltrey.

Known for his acoustic performances, Jody's backing band provides him with a spare, stripped-down sound that strikes the bone on each album cut.

The tempos shift from song to song on Like a Star, weaving a mood and feel of great depth and complexity. From the flat-out addictive rock hooks of "Light of Day" and "Feel For You," to the meditative "Dreamer" and the soulful "Ten Times," Jody Raffoul's latest CD delivers a pile-driver rock performance.

On so many albums there can be such disparity between the "hit" tracks and those simply taking up space to fill out a CD (Sammy Hagar's I Never Said Goodbye comes to mind with its two great hits "Give to Live" and "Eagles Fly" and the ground sausage filler that rounds out the rest of the album). No such disparity exists on Like a Star. The music moves from the compulsively listenable "Light of Day" (which is currently enjoying quite a lot of radio play) to the soulful "Ten Times" through a highly personal landscape not unlike John Lennon's Milk and Honey.

Jody's cover of Jeff Lynne's "I Can't Get it Out of My Head" is one of those classic renditions where the musician paying homage injects a performance with so much of his own feel that he takes partial ownership of the song. Joe Cocker's cover of the Beatles' "With a Little a Help From My Friends" comes to mind as another such moment in music.

The track "Take Me Under" begins with a bluesy feel that quickly flowers into something with a psuedo-Beatles tang to it, but morphs into a solid pop chorus. Quite a musical feat, and clearly the work of a gifted artist simply following where a song leads him. During a conversation I had with Jody before his performance in Windsor, Ontario's Fidel's, he said that he only really hit his stride as a vocalist when a producer suggested to him, "Don't sing so much like a singer." Stripped of affectation, Jody's vocals are possessed of the unadorned energy of a natural singer. His meditative song "I Feel For You" is one of the strongest vocal performances on the album.

* * *

Having stayed at Fidel's much longer than I intended, I left the club after Jody performed a stellar version of The Who's "The Seeker." As I stepped out the door into the cold night, Jody launched into Bad Company's "Shooting Star." I stood there on the damp sidewalk, breath pluming before me, just listening... For whatever reason, I'm not much of a Bad Company fan, but Jody's cover of that song had it flexing and speaking in ways I had never considered before.

In a music scene cluttered by phonies and wannabes, Jody Raffoul is a Genuine Article in the mold of Pete Townsend, Bruce Springsteen, and Jimmy Barnes.

The "THROW THEM OUT" Campaign - Politicians must be made to sign a "Contract for Canada" contract in order to govern

2005-12-16T00:17:00.000-05:00

Abuse of the public trust is the insider pass-time among Canadian politicians, political appointees and government employees. Maybe they get the same rush we felt as kids building houses out of cards -- whose card will knock the whole thing down?

At the risk of sounding like a bad public service announcement, betrayal of public trust is no joke (regardless of the gales of laughter coming from Jean Chrétien's mansion).

For this reason I propose that Canadian citizens of every stripe insist that a standard, legally binding document be drawn up -- called the "Contract for Canada" -- to enforce ethics and honesty among our politicians, political appointees and government employees, by threat of real and harsh punishment to all those who fail to measure up to the contract's rigors.

I don't care what laws are currently on the books relating to this subject. These laws and the people charged to enforce them have failed Canadians. Up to now, Canada has been insulted by hollow apologies -- if that -- from politicians caught abusing the public trust. The Liberal Party "Sponsorship Scandal" replete with its feather-duster spankings for those few and rare found guilty of any wrongdoing, is only the most recent outrage.

(Or, remember when the HRDC "misplaced" $1 billion? Not a single person even resigned over that debacle. That kind of unresponsive government must come to an end.)

The tepid apologies and shrugs-of-the-shoulders of years past, when politicians, political appointees and government employees have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar, just don't cut it any more. From this point onward, when a hand is caught wrongfully in the public cookie jar, that hand should be hacked off.

So, among the punishments for any politician, political appointee or government employee abusing the public trust, there should be:

(1) Immediate dismissal -- not resignation. No one abusing the public trust should be given the courtesy of being allowed to resign. They must be fired. They will be fired.

(2) Immediate loss of salary and any and all pensions related to their so-called "public service.". No exceptions. In fact, if some wrongdoer attempts to make a claim that they are an exception to the rule, they will be forced under stiff penalty to repay their previous year's salary. If they continue to push the issue, they will be forced to repay every nickel they've ever been paid while on the public pay roll.

(3) Names and photographs of the guilty compiled on a Web site called "Throw Them Out." It would be tempting to bar identified and tagged miscreants from running for public office, but why deprive ourselves of such freakshows? Let these rotters run for office in the future, if they're so gluttonous for punishment. They will have to sign the "Contract for Canada" again, and adhere to increased monitoring of their conduct, including wearing electronic tethers. Hey, no one's making them run for public office.

(4) Incentive for politicians, political appointees and government employees to "rat out" one another. We need these people looking over their shoulders, feeling isolated and unable to trust anyone around them -- we must create an environment where honesty is their only option. Due to the obvious opportunity for abuse, incentives will only be handed out to those coming forth with clear, compelling, and credible evidence of another's wrongdoing. Or, if you're near retirement, rat your own self out. It's your choice. But for all of those slippery fellows who would seek to use this system of incentive/paranoia to merely sabotage a rival, harsh, harsh, harsh penalties await you. If come forward with anything other than ironclad proof of another's wrongdoing, you will suffer the consequences. What are those consequences? Try it and find out.

Politicians, political appointees and government employees must be made to know they are held in the greatest contempt by the general public. Since they can't be trusted to conduct themselves in an ethical manner, they must be compelled.

No one's forcing them to run for office. Maybe the idea of real, enforced punishment for unethical doings might finally draw people of integrity into the Canadian political process.

Who will be first in the Rogue's Gallery?

Near-Kerfuffle on Malden Road Right OUTSIDE of CITY HALL!!!

2005-12-15T20:23:00.000-05:00

Near-Kerfuffle on Malden Road Right OUTSIDE of CITY HALL!!!

Two men, one on a bicycle, were conversing on Malden Road early this afternoon when a male pedestrian approached from the south, and a female pedestrian approached from the north. The male pedestrian was heard to shout at the bicyclist, "No! Don't move! Don't move!" as the female pedestrian approached the bicyclist's blind-spot. However, disaster was averted when the quick-thinking bicyclist ceased movement until the female and male pedestrians passed by. The identities of the two men who were conversing remain unknown at this time. Nothing is yet known about their relationship, though they were each wearing red parkas, so possible Nazi and satanic angles are being investigated...

Freelance Writing is Like Working for the Bomb Disposal Unit

2005-12-07T11:44:00.000-05:00

Greetings from the most abused profession on the planet: freelance writing. People must think we're all descended from St. Matthew, and that our basic function on earth is that of a quasi-corporate Red Cross. To wit: that we work for free. Or, for table scraps. Or, for some unseen Zenful reward. Or, that it's some karmic work-release program; working off transgressions from a previous life.

None of these are true. I'm a freelance writer because writing is what I do best. Our media-driven world would grind to a halt without writers. A few years ago I watched actor Al Pacino receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Golden Globes. Without a script from which to work, the man was incoherent. So too is our media without actual writers -- the Internet, email, fax machines, print media, television would all be rendered impotent and dead without writers to make sense of the world for the Great Unwashed. A stark observation, but true nonetheless.

So, when I got a call from Carver Communication in Ottawa, Ontario to be a media monitor in the southwestern sphere of the provice, I took the job. But as it would turn out Carver is run by yet another necrophilic grave-robbing swine who seeks to pay wages that would insult a newspaper delivery boy.

From Ray Lauzon:

...[The job is] very, very straightforward. I think you'll do great. You sound like a very responsible person. With a bit of drive, the future is unlimited. Again, I started as a one person operation five years ago and now we have 30 people working around the country. Similarly, people started working part-time for us and now they're making great $$$$....

When it comes to describing what his employees will earn, Ray Lauzon is a fucking liar.

The job is simple -- I monitor television media in my area, write up summaries about stories that hit on key words or mention the names of Carver's clients. I was to get $1.25 per summary and $20 per item I sold. Ray Lauzon never explained what that meant or how it worked, but freelance work has taught me to be patient. And I was patient until I sent in 73 summaries and learned I would only be paid $91 for my trouble.

The notion there might be a problem with my compensation arose when I neared the end of my first two-week rotation of media videotaping. I saw I would soon be taping over material I had been told was a virtual sure-sell -- i.e. border issues in my area. However, these "sure-sell" items seemed not to have sold. If they didn't sell, that meant I would be hung out to dry for $1.25/summary. So, I wrote to Ray Lauzon, the boss, asking pointblank, how was this worth my while?

He asked what I wanted to be paid. I told him. We agreed on it. But when it came to actually paying me what we agreed upon, suddenly that pay rate wasn't retroactive. Time for the Carver Communications electric eel to violate my posterior. When I resisted this, ole Ray informed me that he was growing short on patience with dealing with me. Ah, shucks, these troublesome goddamned employees seeking to be paid a fair wage. Fuck.

If you're a freelance writer in the vicinity of Onion Field, Ontario, and see that Carver Communications is looking for a "stringer," please know that that's exactly what will become of you -- you will be strung along, and along. Get a route delivering the Pennysaver, instead. You'll earn more money.

If I were an unethical person, I might go after Carver's clients myself as I haven't signed any "non-competitive" contract. However, I wouldn't do such a thing.

A note I sent to the Labour Market Information (LMI) web site:

A company called Carver Communications (http://www.carvercommunications.ca/en_main.html) has advertised jobs on the HRDC -- I was briefly hired by Carver after applying to work for them via the HRDC Web site -- and I think the HRDC should know that Carver Communications completely misrepresents its pay rates and the amount of money contract employees will earn.

Carver professes to pay $1.25 per media summary submitted by one of its "stringers" -- the position I held. If one of Carver's clients buys one of these items, the stringer is paid an additional $20. The problem is, this does not happen. Ray Lauzon, the owner of Carver completely overstates -- and thus, fraudulently misrepresents -- what his clients are buying. For instance, I was told that border issues in my area were an almost certain sell. Among the 73 summaries I submitted to Carver, at least a dozen dealt with border issues. Yet none of these sure-sells sold.

Ray Lauzon can run his "business" any way he likes, but I think it's patently wrong that he fish for perspective suckers on a government of Canada employment database.

As anyone can see, there is no Zen to be found in getting ripped off.

Any balcony heckler reading this could easily make the accusation, "Well, sounds to me like you bring these problems onto yourself." And that would be wholly inaccurate. You see, some of my freelance writing gigs come off without a hitch. Some are even quite satisfying. When clients pay what they agree to pay, when they agree to pay it, things go very smoothly.

My most lucrative freelance gig has involved the writing of a full-length biography of a local industrialist. This has been, hands down, my highest paying gig by a long shot, and also one of the most satisfying and interesting experiences of my life. How does this differ from the debacles, such as I've experienced with drek like Carver Communications? Simple: I produce what I say I'm going to produce, and my client pays what we've agreed will be paid. And our relationship has grown and deepened, and been enormously beneficial on both sides.

Freelance work requires that I sometimes act in good faith. Meaning, that I commence work on a project before money has exchanged hands. And I do this. Carver Communications received top quality work from me. There was absolutely no complaint about the work I submitted. The only problem arose when I sought to be properly and fairly compensated. Short-sighted, tunnel-visioned greed-heads, such as Ray Lauzon, who cannot see past the end of their own wallets, don't understand why or how anyone would seek to be paid fairly. The sun and moon rise and set on their businesses. If they have to suck the marrow from my skull to make a few extra pennies, they will do it. They are confused and rankled by anyone who questions their conduct.

So, when my good faith is abused, I do not sit idly by. As a professional communicator, I make my feelings known -- quickly, vociferously. When I have been screwed-over, I get in the face of the miscreants. They never like this. Greed-heads detest being called on their greed. But they must. And I will continue to do this every time and everywhere it affects me.

Ottawa Breeds Corruption or Only the Corrupt Go There Via Public Office

2005-12-02T05:21:00.000-05:00

I don't honestly believe there will be any significant change in Canada following the next federal election. By this I mean I don't believe a new government will do things substantially differently than the Liberal Party has been doing.

I have few philosophical arguments with the Liberals. However, based on their stunning display of mangled ethics, I would like to see the party incinerated, prosecuted, and banished to Nunavut with copious amounts of tar and feathers awaiting them.

The fact is, power corrupts. In Canada, Ottawa corrupts. More accurately, the seeming free-for-all that is Canadian government corrupts. I'm sure if we elected Jesus Christ it wouldn't be long before he was flying his mother and apostles all over the damned place on private trips on the public dime. How are the morally questionable who always find their way into politics supposed to resist the temptation?

The Liberals ought to be swept out of office. I hope they go the way of the Dodo bird and the Progressive Conservative party.

The problem in Canada isn't high taxes or the GST or Quebec or growing discontent in the west. The problem in Canada is Canadians. The sorriest, most malignant among us are the only ones who seek public office. This is a reality, and our central pressing problem. These malignants then head off to The Happy Rubber Room Where All Dreams Come True (otherwise known as Ottawa) where they proceed to run amok like baboons on Viagra.

Why are only the worst among Canadians the ones who seek public office?

Until we answer this question, and solve its multifarious mysteries, Canada will continue down the road of flaccid tyranny, taxing its citizens to death, its government committing outrage after unaccountable outrage, only to be voted out and replaced by an identical shower of bastards who go by another name, but subscribe to the same base, gluttonous personal philosophy: "Everything for me. Nothing for you."

The only way to deter these malignants is through accountability -- something with which Canadian governments have absolutely no experience. There is much talk of this weighty word in government, but talk and action are mutually exclusive in Ottawa.

In fact, Canadian government and politics not only needs accountability, but consequences for bad behavior. The malignants who have passed through our government in the last few decades have left a slimy snail-trail by which all misdeeds magically turn into personal profit. We need some person, group or entity to cover this snail-trail with rock salt and to begin assigning highly undesirable penalties when wrongdoing is uncovered.

You know, like that concept of "justice" that is so reviled in Canada -- the notion of people taking or being forced to take responsibility for their actions.

Sounds sensible, but in a country where Karla Homolka is unleashed by a myopic judge and publicly funded defenders, this concept is easy to desire, but almost impossible to attain.

At this moment, every Canadian politician comes across to me as defense attorneys do -- as liars. Defense attorneys are not under oath. They win for their clients. Politicians are similarly not under oath. They win for themselves. They're all liars, thieves, miscreants, and rogues. And some gaggle among them will also form our next government. All the while making themselves sound like the Messiah.

The only way a politician (I say "a" because I never imagine there will be more than a single person who will attempt this) will have credibility in my eyes is when he/she proposes, institutes and enforces not only accountability, but severe consequences for betrayals of public confidence. Because betrayal of public trust is a serious blow to the national psyche.

It's a sickening cycle in Canada that fuels and empowers the malignants.

I believe nothing that comes out of politicians mouths. If one were to finally stand up and propose, institute and enforce accountability and serious consequences for misdeeds, they would have my attention, not my trust. My trust won't re-emerge until I actually see positive changes take place. Talk is cheap -- that's why we have so much of it.

The Iraq War Comes Home to Onion Field, Ontario

2005-11-30T12:44:00.000-05:00

Today the son of a friend of mine is being sent to Iraq. My friend's son joined the U.S. military months ago, and this is the culmination.

Also, I once knew one of the Canadians who was taken hostage in Iraq. His name is Jim Loney, and he was a good guy. I hope that he and the other hostages are returned quickly and safely.

Christian agency blames U.S. for kidnappings

Video

From my as-yet-unpublished novel -- an experience I had in New York City with Jim in the late 1980s when I belonged to a Christian youth group:

New York City, March 1988.

One afternoon, I found myself standing on the sidewalk of Times Square, with two alcoholic, drug-addicted teenagers—each a year older than I—wondering how the hell that came to be.

... Jim asked if I wanted to join him on a visit to “some radical Catholics” who ran a Catholic Worker House—a soup kitchen and neighborhood mission—on New York’s Lower East Side. Having spent the day with Gary and Reg, I needed a break from them, and from the cramped hotel room. I said sure. Around seven o’clock, we went out to the van, leaving Gary and Reg to play cards and watch TV in the room.

The ride to the Catholic Worker House was like a descent into the murkiest neighborhoods of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. From the van’s window, I watched with growing apprehension as the neighborhoods we passed grew increasingly grim, increasingly dingy and forbidding. I said nothing, though—the cornerstone of his beliefs was faith.

The Catholic Worker House stood in the most blighted, blown-out neighborhood I ever saw in my life. After Zak dropped us off, Jim and I inadvertently saw more of the neighborhood than we intended—it was only then that Jim told me he wasn’t sure of the address of the Catholic Worker House.

We stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the crumbling, weathered buildings before us, searching for a light, the flicker of a television, any sign of life. There was none. Few of the darkened doorways even had addresses. Finally, Jim and I walked down the block.

As he looked for the address we needed, I surveyed the neighborhood, and felt a sick-certain sense that the street was almost entirely abandoned: seeing crumbling staircases leading up to unlit doorways; garbage strewn in moldering, reeking heaps on the sidewalks, spilled across the potholed road; dented toppled-over trashcans; abandoned, stripped-down, burned-out automobiles parked partly on the road, partly on the sidewalk. The place stank of sewage and garbage and rot. Part of me wondered if the street even appeared on a map. Surrounded by the utter desolation, I thought of the squalor along the southern highways—all those tiny slanting shacks with their fields of busted refrigerators and stoves—as Zak and I drove to New Orleans the previous summer.

The wind picked up, and I turned up my jacket’s collar.

After fifteen minutes, which passed with the slowness of hours, we came to a doorway, above which was a nearly illegible sign: CATHOLIC WORKER HOUSE. We knocked on the door, and waited. No answer. We knocked again. And waited. An excruciating procession of seconds passed before we heard footsteps inside. A naked light bulb winked on above us. The footsteps inside stopped, and I figured that Jim and I were being scrutinized through the fisheye lens in the faded red door. Finally, the door opened and a tall, cadaverous man stood before us. He looked to be in his sixties, wore black-framed Buddy Holly glasses, and had gray hair hanging down to his shoulders.

“We’re closed for the night, boys,” he said. Although he spoke in a subdued, mellow voice, I was nonetheless startled—until that moment, I figured we were visiting people whom Jim knew; with whom he might have previously worked, or gone to school. This was not the case.

“We’re not looking for help,” Jim said, and introduced us. “We’re missionaries,” he said, “and wondered if we could talk to you about how you run a Catholic Worker House.”

“I’m Harvey, I run the place,” the man said, and stepped aside. “Come in if you like.”

The interior was bare and neat; larger than I would have guessed from outside. There was a grungy easy chair with a mismatched seat cushion in the sitting room, an old couch with a coffee can as one of its legs, and a stack of wooden chairs in the corner. Harvey led them through a large, paint-chipped doorway into the kitchen, which looked like an old restaurant galley. We sat at a lopsided kitchen table, on mismatched chairs.

“Will you have some tea?” Harvey said.

We said sure.

He shuffled to the far corner and ran the hot water tap in a large laundry tub. The water came in a torrent, and within seconds a cloud of steam wafted up. He filled a kettle, and from that he poured our tea. When he finally joined us, with his old, stained mug, Harvey and Jim spoke about the poverty in New York.

I sipped his tea, and looked around the room, through the large, paint-chipped doorway, and realized there were no windows looking onto the street. Just as well.

They talked for twenty minutes. Then Harvey rose from his chair. I feared he was going to walk us to the door, say goodnight, and leave us outside until Zak came.

When is Zak coming for us? I wondered, and realized he drove off before we discussed a time. Well, he won’t leave them out here all night, I thought.

“I’ll show you around,” Harvey said. “Not much to show, but you can have a look.”

The second floor housed two makeshift offices, with avalanches of paper overwhelming two slanting desks. We went up another set of stairs, to a third floor, which was a large, dark, unheated room. I was surprised to find people there, seated at a long foldout table, folding pamphlets. Harvey introduced them around. There was a couple who appeared about Harvey’s age, a tall, stocky girl who was about twenty, and a Puerto Rican priest in his thirties, who looked like a prize-fighter. They welcomed us in the same low-key manner as Harvey.

Jim and I sat down, and helped fold the pamphlets—Catholic Worker newsletters—working by the wan light coming through the windows from the street lamps outside. The Catholic Workers told them about their various missions in New York and abroad.

Around ten o’clock, I turned to Jim. “When’s Zak coming back?”

Jim looked at me, puzzled. “He’s not.”

I began to smile, thinking he was joking. Then froze. He was as serious as the night he and Zak asked me to go to Covenant House, posing as a runaway.

“Don’t worry,” Jim said. “We’ll take the subway back to the hotel.”

I blinked, as though flinching from a blow. “The subway?!”

“Yeah.”

The room around me seemed to tilt. “The hotel’s in New Jersey. Do you know how to get there?”

Jim thought for a moment. “No.”

The Puerto Rican priest overheard us. He rose from his chair, and took me over to a faded map of New York City hanging on the wall. He pointed to an area and said, “You ever hear of this place?”

He pointed to HARLEM.

I nodded.

“If you and your friend take the subway, you’ll go through Harlem. I don’t recommend you do that. It’s rough all the way, but Harlem isn’t the place for guys like you.”

I asked Jim to come over. The priest reiterated his warning. To which Jim replied, “We’ll be okay.”

“I hope so,” the priest said.

When Jim and I made our exit, the Catholic Workers wished us luck, and slammed the door. I heard bolt slide home. Then I zipped my jacket, turned up my collar. The wind had not abated. It was beginning to snow.

Walking through that decimated neighborhood, a helpless terror rose in my throat. I slid a hand in my pocket and confirmed a fear that had nagged me since hearing Zak wasn’t coming back for us—I only had a few coins with me; not even a dollar.

We passed an abandoned playground where four rimless backboards stood on a potholed basketball court. Through the fence, on the other side of the playground, I saw a man. He just stood there: a black figure under a lopsided streetlight, watching us.

It was three blocks to the subway, and the street was so dark and deserted we almost walked past the subway entrance. I looked down the stairs, at the dingy urine-colored tiled walls, and knew that every step would be an act of will. Halfway down the stairs, the stench of human waste hit us like a blow.

As we approached the token booth, I showed Jim the few coins I had. He pulled a five-dollar bill and bought our tokens.

Passing through the turnstiles, I glimpsed a transit cop off to the side, watching them with sullen disinterest. I didn’t figure he would be much help if someone robbed us—and wondered if he might not try it himself.

We went to the platform, and waited.

“It’s just like riding the bus,” Jim said. “We’ll have to change trains a few times.”

“Where?”

He shrugged. “We’ll ask for directions.”

I turned away, feeling his stomach sink. Our luck, hedge of protection, whatever, had run out. I was sure of it. There was no way we would get out of that subway alive. It was one thing to stumble into danger, but Jim may as well have led me onto the subway tracks, and started walking toward the growing circle of light at the other end of the tunnel. All I could think about were the hustlers, beggars, pushers, and freaks of Times Square, and I struggled to keep myself from imagining their subterranean counterparts.

And I could be sitting in the hotel room, watching TV, I thought. If I’d only said no.

Then I heard the far-off rumble of an approaching train. When it screeched into the station, we got on, and for the next two hours my thoughts and senses turned inward, readying for the moment we would be robbed, or killed.

I followed Jim without question. We changed trains several times, ran up and down flights of stairs in different stations, catching trains just as the doors were closing. I was not aware of passing through Harlem; it must have come and gone with the blur of place-names I saw in each station. We eventually came to a bus station on the New York-side of the George Washington Bridge.

There was some relief in seeing the bridge; our hotel wasn’t far from it. Just when I was beginning to believe we might survive that night, we were approached by a large man who looked like all the other street people I’d seen that week. I braced for him to ask for money; thinking, if it came down to it, Jim and I could probably take him. When the man smiled, it made no difference—I was terrified; suddenly closer to tears than I had been in years.

“You guys need help?” the man said.

Before I could utter a word, Jim said, “Which bus will take us across the bridge?”

“Most any,” the man said. I watched him. The smile on his face held. “Bus oughta be here in ten minutes.” Then he gave them a few bus numbers for which to watch.

“Thanks,” Jim said.

“No sweat.” The man walked away.

One of the buses he named arrived soon after.

Jim paid the bus fare used with the last of our money.

As we rode across the George Washington Bridge, I gazed at the light-spangled spectacle of Manhattan behind us. It looked vast and unapproachable, yet beautiful in the same dangerous way as spewing lava. Hemmed in by the night sky, and the dark body of the river, Manhattan looked like a constellation, and I marveled that not an hour before, Jim and I had been immersed in it.

The bus driver let us off at the foot of the bridge on the other side of the river. By then, my blood teemed with exhilaration, my head reeled with the sense of having dodged a bullet. Still, we had to find the hotel. There wasn’t even a quarter left between us to call Zak.

The snow continued, and the wind whipped around us. Soon, we began jogging. At one point, the sidewalk down which we ran came to an end. The road forked, veering into a darkened neighborhood, and dropping down to an empty expressway—the one we traversed every day heading to and from Manhattan. Without a word passing between us, Jim and I ran down the on-ramp. My enduring image of that night is the two of us jogging along the shoulder of that vacant thoroughfare, snow flying around us, wind screaming in our ears, the sky dark and indifferent.

We rounded a bend, and the hotel appeared in the distance. It didn’t seem real; part of me was still on the subway, sure I would never see another familiar thing again. We climbed over the concrete median, crossed two lanes of empty expressway, and ran up the access ramp.

As we jogged into the hotel’s parking lot, as we entered the building—where I nearly collapsed in its welcoming warmth—the night’s events suddenly accordioned in my mind. By the time we came to the elevator, I thought, Of course we made it back. What was I so worried about? I looked at Jim, and saw in his eyes a glimpse of realization—he knew we had dodged a bullet, too.

The Wind's at My Back - the Blowhards of Bull Sessions Past

2005-11-27T22:09:00.000-05:00

Going back to the theme of "Never mistake a drinking buddy for a friend," I remember all too well the painful conversations he and I so often fell into -- either drunk or suffering with hangovers. Being in one's "right mind" was absolutely not a prerequisite to these drone sessions.

For whatever reason, this drinking buddy was morbidly into "proving" that human life wasn't worth a shit. Or, had any of us lived during more heinous, turbulent moments in history (though the current one is pretty hard to beat on that score) we would have been conquistadors, Nazis, or torturers at Abu Ghraib -- because in that git's groping mind our inability to time-travel made it impossible to conclusively prove we wouldn't have been barbarians in another time.

To my shame, I sat through these dull, windy dissertations. Worse, I actually attempted arguments to the contrary. Christ, just feeding the fire.

During a time when I was reading about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the drinking buddy informed me that no single human life was of particular significance. Even that of a president. The conversation is somewhat hazy to me now, but I do recall bringing up the idea that surely someone like Jonas Salk or Albert Einstein were not insignificant (Jesus Murphy, if only I had been content to speak my thoughts plainly: no human life is insignificant!). Oh, how I misjudged the drinking buddy's infatuation with his pet theories. He explained that Salk and Einstein were entirely insignificant because it would only have been a matter of time before someone else made the discoveries attributed to these men.

Rest assured, the former drinking buddy does not work for a suicide hot-line. He could take the gem out of Gidget's donut.

My punishment for being unable to extricate myself from these wretched ramblings was having to sit through the myriad variations of "If you lived in Germany in the 1930s, there's no conclusive way you can prove you wouldn't have been a Nazi." Or, an Egyptian slave-driver, or a blood-thirty Inquisitor, or a village-burning grunt during the Vietnam War. Or, whatever.

When I think of the waste of mind behind such pointless, negative, shit-begotten theories, I again rouge-over with embarrassment at the thought that I sat through thirty seconds of such talk. But I did. O, me.

Well, hindsight and hindthought are upon me. I have finally extricated myself from the rubber-room of the ex-drinking-buddy's bilious theories and arguments.

The only satisfaction I have in retrospect is that, for some reason, the old drinking buddy never forgot an off-hand remark I once made about his cats being very narrowly removed from vermin. If he only knew that I am now the proud property of a cat, for whom I would give a kidney or an eye or a portion of my battered liver to keep her scampering through the house. She is a true friend.

Oh, How the Liberals So Don't Get Why People Are Pissed Off With Them

2005-11-23T08:13:00.000-05:00

Not that I want to provide one scintilla of help or advice to Paul Martin's Liberal Party, but I cannot help pointing out just how deaf-dumb-and-blind this shower of wankers really is:

Most Canadians believe the Liberal Party to be fiscally irresponsible. The Gomery Report illustrated (for anyone still requiring written proof) the Liberals' corrupt handling of public funds. So, what are the Liberals doing to make their case to remain in power? Doling out $10 billion in pre-election promises. Or, what we would call in my neighborhood, bribes.

The response the Liberals are hoping for (I'm guessing here, but I think it's a good guess) is that people will hear about all of this money being lavished on Canada, and say, "Oh, well, we've got to keep Paul Martin & Co. in office."

The way I see it, this spending spree by the Liberals only motivates me to vote against them. For twelve years they've proven they can't be trusted with the nation's purse strings, so I'm hoping the election comes in time to stop all or part of this spending frenzy.

Update 11/26/2005

Grits' spree: $2.6B a day: Poll finds 67% cynical about spending vows

Canada Topples Toward Polls - Another Excercise in Flaccid Tyrannical Shake-up

2005-11-22T11:34:00.000-05:00

So, Canada topples toward another federal election, and what the hell is the electorate supposed to do?

Go to any of the Canadian political party Web sites and you'll read how each of them believes they are the Second Coming of the Messiah. From the rumblings in the media, I think most voters are like me: they just want to see the Liberals out of power. After a dozen years of arrogant, unresponsive rule, pretty much everyone who isn't part of the Liberal Party has had enough.

While I respond well to fiscal responsibility as preached by the Conservative Party, I'm concerned that they will do for Canada what premier Mike Harris did for Ontario. I realize the Conservative Party aren't PCs, but much of the same "common sense" rhetoric can be heard from them as from the Tories who ransacked Ontario ten years ago.

I'm all for responsible spending of tax dollars and ending waste. Who isn't. But the Mike Harris government approached this like piranha on PCP. When Harris took power Ontario was like an overweight person who had to shed a few pounds -- the excess weight being an analogy for excess spending. Rather than systematically cutting back, the Harris government achieved its fiscal weight loss by amputating the arms and legs from the patient. Yes, Ontario had shed those unwanted fiscal pounds, but was definitely the worse for it. This is what I fear the Conversatives will do.

Plus, the thought of a gaggle of born-again Christian ideologues leading this country gives me the anxiety-fueled screaming-meemies. The only thing worse than Liberal corruption would be the crisp, doily-edged righteousness of right-wingers.

The NDP seem intent on turning the keys to Canada over to the tide of immigrants it lusts to entice and embrace. My family came to Canada as immigrants, so I don't have a bad thing to say about that -- that is, about immigrants who arrive here seeking to contribute. But with the chronic outsourcing of good paying jobs, what exactly are these new Canadians going to do for a living? I fear that the NDP would have us all working for Wal-Mart for starvation wages. Then to turn up the "Tax Treadmill" to supersonic.

The Liberals? Not even an option.

Parti Quebecois? I'm more apt to vote for the Liberals.

Not vote at all? I'm more apt to vote PQ than do this.

So, the funnel of my own rhetoric narrows painfully. Who the hell to vote for?

Immediately Remove Bureaucraps Who Abuse Their Power! Begin with David Marshall

2005-11-22T11:15:00.000-05:00

Ban on hiring white men overturned - Nov. 22, 2005. 01:00 AM

HALIFAX—Public Works Minister Scott Brison has overturned a short-lived ban on the hiring of white men by the federal department.

Last week, the department's top bureaucrat sent a memo requiring all new hires from now until April to be "persons who are visible minorities, aboriginal peoples, persons with disabilities and women."

Bureaucrats quickly leaked the memo to the media and the subject was taken up by talk radio stations.

Yesterday, Brison announced he had rejected the policy.

Deputy minister David Marshall should be immediately removed from his position as the miscreant who issued this ridiculous memo and policy.

Bureaucraps like David Marshall are the cogs in the flaccid tyranny that has become Canadian politics. The man should be terminated from his position and forced into the private sector where the arcana of his worldview will sink him like the Edmond Fitzgerald.

It's great news that this discriminatory policy has been quashed, but troubling that the mind that formulated it is still receiving government of Canada pay cheques.

Click this e-mail link and ask that David Marshall be terminated from his position immediately.

My note to Public Works Minister Scott Brison:

Mr. Brison, I am pleased to read in the Toronto Star today that you have rescinded the short-lived discriminatory policy created by Deputy minister David Marshall, regarding the hiring freeze on any and all white men.

I am writing to ask you to follow through on this move and terminate David Marshall, as he has proven himself wholly unfit to hold his position. It's good news his wrong-headed policy has been quashed, but troublesome that the mind that would conjure such a ridiculous solution to a perceived problem is still on the public payroll. He should be asked to step down immediately, as his presence in the Department of Public Works undermines the department's integrity.

Update 11/30/2005:

Response from the Department of Public Works:

On November 18, Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) issued a policy concerning a special measure to increase hiring of designated group members from outside the Public Service. While this was a short-term measure intended only to address current shortfalls in representation, it may have been perceived by some as being non-inclusive. This was not the intention.

However, as a result of the concern expressed in this regard, the Department has rescinded this special measure. We apologize for any confusion this proposed measure may have caused. PWGSC remains committed to having a representative workforce.

Working together with key federal departments and stakeholders, including the unions, PWGSC will put in place a comprehensive, long-term strategy to ensure that it is representative and inclusive.

Corporate Communications I Public Works and Government Services Canada
Communications ministérielles I Travaux publics et Services gouvernementaux Canada

Questions@pwgsc-tpsgc.gc.ca I 1 800 O CANADA (1 800 622-6232)
TTY/TDD 1 800 465-7735
Téléscripteur/ATME 1 800 465-7735

Racism is Always Wrong: White males need not apply - "Internal e-mail reveals hiring ban at Public Works"

2005-11-20T00:18:00.000-05:00

From The National Post: A major federal department has temporarily banned the hiring of able-bodied white men in an unusual move critics say could spark a backlash against the very disadvantaged groups it is meant to help.

I am sure there is someone (and fear there are many people) out there who could justify this racist policy up and down to me. I'm not interested in justifications. David Marshall, the deputy minister of the Public Works department should be fired immediately because he is not interested in seeing the most competent person for a job hired, but the most visibly politically correct person get the job. This is a policy that is as ludicrous as it is unhelpful and damaging to Canada.

The most acceptable prejudice to have these days is against white males. Sure, in the face of Nortel's implosion and Conrad Black's malfeasance, plus two thousand years of Christian atrocities, it's not hard to understand the backlash. But in this society that proclaims to be color/cultural blind, a policy of banning the hiring of any group is utterly and completely unacceptable. Our society is proving that it's simply blind, period.

Whenever I've had the misfortune in my life to deal with bureaucracy, I stop and ask myself, "Who the hell does this system fit?" It sure as shit doesn't fit me.

I honestly believe the only answer to Canada's lust for bureaucracy, and our continual mistreatment by bureaucraps is to systematically empty every single office and department in the Canadian government -- fire, terminate, release, sack every last employee of the Canadian government. Stories of politicians misusing public money are always fraught with outrage, but these desk-bound bureaucraps are truly the thieves of our tax dollars.

Every government employee in Canada should be fired by March 2006 (when David Marshall's racist plan is set to be reviewed), so that, for instance, every single gray-faced minion in the unemployment office will know the feeling of being on the other side of the desk. So that every bureaucrap in this nation will be subjected to the beast they have sustained.

And from this cleansed and purified "zero" point, the most competent people for each and every position should be hired.

Where should The Great Bureaucratic Culling begin?

With David Marshall, of course.

My note to the PM on this matter:

Mr. Prime Minister, I am a resident of Windsor, Ontario and I couldn't be more dissatisfied with the job you're doing leading our country. But that is beside the point of this email message.

I am writing to voice my outrage over the patently racist policy implemented by David Marshall, the deputy minister of the Public Works, which stipulates a hiring freeze on any and all white males. This is a ridiculous, insulting, counter-productive policy that is absolutely contrary to what Canada is all about.

Is Canada not about the most competent person for the job being hired?

Is Canada not about having government employees hired based on their qualifications, experience, and education?

Is Canada not about giving tax payers the most value for their tax dollars by having the most qualified people occupy jobs within the government?

The Canada that David Marshall would have us live in is more about public relations spin, and superficial appearances. It's not about competence and effectiveness, but about complexion, pamphlet photo ops, and political correctness.

You so seldom do the right thing, Mr. Prime Minister, but I hope on this matter you will put your foot down and not allow David Marshall to implement this ridiculous, racist policy. Be assured you would be receiving this note from me regardless of what racial group David Marshall sought to discriminate against. Racism is always wrong. It's an indefensible position from which to form policy.

Please ask for David Marshall's resignation immediately. In fact, do not extend him the courtesy or opportunity to resign from his job -- please terminate him as your way of sending a message across the country that racism in government (or anywhere) is not tolerated in Canada.

To David Marshall:

I am writing with regard (and with great angst and disgust) to David Marshall's racist policy to freeze the hiring of white males in the Department of Public Works until March 31 2006.

Mr. Marshall, it saddens and angers me to think that you need to be informed at this point in your life (and position in my government) that racism in any form is ugly, unacceptable, and a completely invalid position from which to form policy.

You, sir, are a public servant. As part of the public you serve, I tell you straight out that you are wrong in creating a hiring policy that does anything other than bring the most qualified person onboard for whatever job happens to be open. You seem to be more interested in pamphlet photo ops and presenting a superficially "acceptable" look to your department. This is rank and despicable. You appear to be more interested in a Canada based on public relations spin rather than having the most qualified, educated, experienced people take jobs in your department.

As one member of the public you serve, I request your immediate resignation. I have written to the Prime Minister asking him to terminate you outright because I don't even believe you should be afforded the courtesy or opportunity to resign.

Your racist policy is reprehensible, and I assure you that you would be receiving this message from me regardless of the group you sought to discriminate against.

It's clear you're in the wrong job. With your focus on the superficial and cosmetic aspects of commercial life, I think you would be much better suited to work in the advertising agency where you would have free reign to create the phony smiling society your heavy-handedly trying to create starting with you're department.

Update - 11/23/2005

Reply from the Prime Minister's Office:

Dear Mr. St. Amand:

On behalf of the Right Honourable Paul Martin, I would like to thank you for your e-mail, in which you raised an issue that falls within the portfolio of the Honourable Scott Brison, Minister of Public Works and Government Services.

Please be assured that the statements you made have been carefully reviewed. I have taken the liberty of forwarding your e-mail to Minister Brison, so that he too may be made aware of your comments. I am certain that the Minister will give your views every consideration.

P. Monteith
Executive Correspondence Officer
Agent de correspondance
de la haute direction

Today I Became a Verb

2005-11-08T18:06:00.000-05:00

A friend was being reamed-out at werk today by his boss -- a place where I once werked in the past. At one point, my friend's boss accused him of "pulling a Matt St. Amand"; as in not bending over and taking the corporate line up the ass.

How I imagine the interchange taking place:

BOSS (insensed): What do you mean you're not going to take the company electric eel between your butt cheeks?! You're either with us or you're against us!

FRIEND silently sticks to his principles

BOSS (spittle flying): You're pulling a Matt St. Amand!

Old Boss, from me to you:

Authora Non-Grata: The Local (F)Lit Scene

2005-11-06T09:50:00.000-05:00

There was a filthy, forbidden word in the English department from which I graduated almost a decade ago. This word was seldom uttered in the hallowed halls, only spoken by the uninitiated; rubes; naifs. That word was "publication."

It was the strangest thing. Accomplished professors who were published authors taught literature and creative writing classes -- one poet had more than 1,400 poems published -- and the few times a student had the nerve, the naivete, the sheer idiocy, to inquire about the process of getting one's work published, a pall fell across the seminar room as though a wet fart had been cranked against a hardwood chair. A look of embarrassed bewilderment invariably passed across the instructor's face (an expression uniform to them all), as though the student had asked for public guidance regarding masturbation or revealed a frightening red boil on the underside of his penis. A few muttered words from the instructor to the effect of, "Well, there will be time for that later," and then the writing seminar continued with a palpable air of its rarified hymen having been broken; and the culprit's gaze shunned by the eyes of everyone else.

It seemed the department was devoted to cultivating an entire generation of closet writers whose work was meant only to go from word processors into desk drawers.

More than a few times, I made such a pariah of myself. My question was dodged and ignored every time. I could never understand this, especially when a friend came home to visit from a far-flung, larger, more prestigious university, where he said there was an entire office in the English department devoted to finding publication homes for everything students wrote: when a student wrote an essay or poem or short story, they simply dropped a copy off to the folks in this office, and the folks in the office then busied themselves with submitting the work on behalf of the student until the work was published. It seemed this other, far-flung university had the strange notion that seeing its students' work in print was somehow a feather in its cap; viewed as something positive. I knew that my English department didn't have the resources to run such an office, but the complete intellectual black-out on the subject always struck me as weird and wrong.

In the mid-1990s, my university was so depleted of resources that it could no longer fund a proper "Writer-in-Residence." At one time, my university was known for having such people as Morley Callaghan, W.O. Mitchell, Peter Robinson in the English department as writers-in-residence; accomplished authors available to meet with students.

As my time in the department drew to a close, the department settled for a "resident-writing-professional," a tired local newspaper writer whose reputation for hokum and hollow nostalgia in his work was matched only by his unreliability. I made numerous appointments to meet with this person, and he stood me up every time. It appeared his only function on campus was to occupy that demoted job title and cash the university's cheques.

I once attended a lunch-time lecture he gave on the art of publishing. Finally, I thought, someone's going to speak about the dirty word. My excitement was for naught. This sad, has-been-who-has-never-been stood before a small audience of eager students and rationalized his career of bastardizing his "poetry" in WonderBra advertisements and other such worthy venues. The man was clearly ashamed of his work and his use of it, and vigorously justified himself before us. No one had uttered a challenging word about his career. No one knew anything about it. But the man's shame was like a surface boil. He needed to confess, and confess he did -- wasting a solid hour of our time... never touching upon the dirty word.

One thing those writing seminars taught me is to never mistake a drinking buddy for a friend. A few years after finishing my education, a drinking buddy opened a bookstore and even had a hand in organizing a "festival of the book" in my city. I heard about this around the time my first book was published. The timing could not have been better. A five-minute slot during the book fest, at whatever point they could squeeze me in would have been a wonderful debut for my book. And so it was like an anvil landing on my head when my drinking buddy haughtily informed me I was not invited to read at the book festival. Hurt, I still bought four tickets to the event to show support, though I didn't attend.

The next year, I was again shunned by the book festival. And the year after that.

This weekend the book festival is once again in session (under an altered name, which makes me wonder if its dogged financial troubles haven't necessitated this), and once more I am authora non-grata.

If I didn't care about not being invited, I wouldn't be making this blog post. It's a situation fraught with conflict for me, being shunned by a group I've never sought to be a member of; ignored by people whose opinions and work mean nothing to me; uninvited by people who are not invited into my life and work. So, why would I want to be a part of the book festival? Because it supposedly belongs to the city, not our little tea party literati elite. In 2006, my 5th book will be published -- a full-length novel. And if the rarified folks who run the book festival were true to their word, true to their trite mandate, I would be invited. What grates on me is that this festival, which could be such a positive event in my city, is in fact one more little soiree for our self-appointed elite to masturbate one another.

The moral of the story for me is "Never mistake a drinking buddy for a friend," and never ask anything of professors who view their students as competition.

More Science Fiction Canadian Judas-Prudence

2005-11-03T22:38:00.000-05:00

EDMONTON (CP) - A woman who admitted to concealing her pregnancy and later placing her newborn baby in a garbage bag was spared further jail time Thursday.

A Court of Queen's Bench justice sentenced 23-year-old Nicole Anderwald to 90 days for causing the baby's death by neglecting to get help after giving birth and another 40 days for disposing of the infant.

But because she had already spent 3 1/2 months in custody, Justice Terrance Clackson decided to let Anderwald go free. She will be on two years probation.

[Obligatory judicial clarvoyance] "The emotional repercussions will be a cross to bear for a long time to come," the justice added.

... At one point, the court heard, her mother gave her a note asking: "Are you making plans or are you going to dumpster the baby?"

My outrage over this insane, demoralizing story has drained me of satire, vocabulary, and the nearly the will to make this post. I received harsher treatment in school for not finishing my math homework, than this confessed baby-killer has received at the hands of Canadian Judas-Prudence.

Do not be a victim of crime in Canada. If only the citizenry could harness the clarvoyance with which our judges mete out punishments, then maybe we could steer clear of these criminals whom Canadian justices love and empathize with so much. And maybe this story will be a lesson to fetuses, everywhere, that they show better sense in answering biological birthcalls from potential murderers.

I don't even know what the fuck I mean by that. This is just so sickening...

Mr. Justice Terrance Clackson of the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta should be removed from the bench and disbarred

Gomery Report: Flaccid Tyranny in Action

2005-10-31T23:10:00.000-05:00

Talk about a lame attempt at manufacturing drama for a case that was over before it began: CBC.com reports

"Prime Minister Paul Martin and his key advisors will spend Halloween poring over an advance copy of the Gomery report trying to decide if the document will resurrect the ghosts of the sponsorship scandal.

"Justice John Gomery sent a copy of his first report to the prime minister on Monday evening, giving him 16-hours lead time before releasing it to the Canadian public.

At best -- at absolutely the most gruesome and outlandish and absurd, the Gomery Report will contain a few feather-duster-spankings for a few low-level politicians and ad execs. More likely, amid the muddle of tepid blame-laying no one will be held responsible in any meaningful way for this blighted incident.

The only reason Paul Martin & Co. will be "poring over an advance copy of the Gomery Report" is if they have organized a drinking game that requires them to have a shot of liquor every time someone else is blamed for their misdeeds. I anticipate numerous hangovers in Ottawa tomorrow, but no justice-induced cold sweats or furrowed brows.

The American comic George Carlin once pointed out that he never bashes politicians in his comedy. His reason? "This is the best we can do," he says. And the same can be said for Canada. Complain as we do about the debacle that has been the Liberal leadership over the past dozen years, this is the best Canada can do as far as governing itself. These swine we send to Ottawa are the best we have for the jobs. Where are the people of conscience? Where are the people with integrity? Doing something else -- staying the hell away from Ottawa.

So, let's can the phony theatrics regarding the Gomery Report. No one gives a shit, no one will be held accountable, no heads will roll, no drums will roll, no justice will be meted out, and nothing in Ottawa will change the slightest.

Cynicism? No. If I were a cynic I'd be running for public office. I'm just another dyspeptic voter looking for footholds in the deepening fissures of Canada's governmental citadel. We must throw these bums out, we must overhaul our system, we must take a stand against stupidity, wastefulness, and incompetence. Eradicating all three of these in one fell-swoop would cause Canada to fold entirely. We must choose our targets and be decisive and deadly with our blows.

I'm sick of watching assholes rule my country.

Ottawa to unveil revamped immigration rules to cut backlogs

2005-10-31T09:34:00.000-05:00

Canada to ease way for 700,000

But can Canada absorb this many taxi drivers? Since it's a matter of Canadian policy not to allow professionals from other countries to work in their professions in this country -- or even prove their apptitude or take equivalency examinations -- we're either set to dramatically increase our welfare rolls or see the first Taxi Driver Revolution of the 21st Century.

It is time to flood Immigration Minister Joe Volpe with email (Minister@cic.gc.ca) faxes (613-992-9791) and letters about the general insanity, inanity, and incompetency of his department's policies. (Heads-up for you Joe: I will not accept the reply "Well, the previous head of whatever department I'm currently heading made all these policies and my hands are tied." That will not fly.)

I'm not saying don't let immigrants into Canada, nor am I saying send back the people who are currently being ground into paste by our bureacratic gears. I'm saying, let the doctors coming to Canada be doctors, let the engineers be engineers, etc. Currently the law is "No Canadian experience -- no job." I believe in equivalency examinations and apptitude tests, and the general verifying of professionals' credentials before we allow them to build skyscrapers or cut into a sick patient's body. However, there is currently no such system in place, and there should be.

However

"We have to start thinking about the Immigration Department as a recruiting vehicle for Canada's demographic and labour market needs ..... we are the lungs of the country," said Mr. Volpe in an interview with Globe & Mail. "We are producing more jobs than the labour market has workers for. ..... We're desperate for immigration."

As an unemployed IT worker for the past 15 months, I must wonder aloud (and angrily) where the fuck are these jobs in the labour market? The Canadian Immigration solution is to import people and export jobs (actually, I guess, the second part of this equation would more likely be under the purview of Industry Canada). How does that work? "Outsourcing" is an unacceptable means of doing business. No, really, it is. No, seriously. You there -- greedy bastard industrialist; greedy bastard businessman -- I'm not engaging in hyperbole on this, I'm speaking honestly. "Outsourcing" is unacceptable.

I have been part of the Canadian Brain Drain into the United States since 2000. Before that, I was draining my brain working in Ireland. There are no jobs in Canada. So, I'm curious how the magicians in the Immigration Department are going to address this situation. No jobs: more people to fill these non-existent jobs.

The answer? All of Canada must move to Ottawa and breathe its drug-tainted air, drink its LSD-invigorated water, and share in the delusion of our leaders.

The Position of GG Should Go Bye-Bye

2005-10-30T09:54:00.000-05:00

Absolutely no offense is intended toward Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean. She's an attractive, amiable-seeming person who has an open invitation to visit my home to watch movies and eat pizza whenever she is free and in the area. But I think it's time Canada eradicated the position of Governor General. It's a symbol, and as George Carlin once said, "I leave symbols to the symbol-minded."

"But she's an ambassador for Canada," GG lovers might say.

Guess what, Canada already has ambassadors around the world.

While the Americans grapple with post-9/11 existence, Canadians have been through the looking glass far too long with the Liberal Party, and I think the process of re-grounding ourselves should begin with the elimination of the position of Governor General. Then it should further the process back toward reality by dismissing every last sitting senator and cancelling their pay cheques and pensions.

The days of figureheads, symbolic positions, unelected voices in policy, and general sucking at the Public Teat are over. The 20th Century was the American century, but with the dawning of George W. Bush as a World Cancer, I think it's time Canada got its shit together and stepped up to a leadership position in the world.

There are many uncountable stumbling blocks to Canada reorienting itself in the real world, chief among them: Toronto. Yes, that Liberal purgatory, better known by its scientific designation "megalopolis", must squeeze its collective head out of its ass and expand its vision beyond its pedantically-named-British-Empire-loving streets, and realize that it's still part of a country as a whole.

I don't believe coercion should ever be part of the voting process, but if Toronto goes "Liberal" in one more federal election, I say that Toronto then should shoulder Canada's entire tax burden. If they are so determined to strap on this feedbag filled with shit, then I say let them eat -- heartily.

Also, along this convalescent's road to recovery, Canada must terminate every single civil servant. Not their positions. We need out Social Safety Net, we need our public services -- but we need them to work. And right now they are not working for Canadians. We have far too many bitter, entrenched bureaucraps jockeying desks on the public payroll, creating procedural messes that are beyond the membership of MENSA untangling. Our bureaucraps are lazy, myopic, bitter, constrained...

Am I saying that more money should be flooding out to people with their hands out? No. But I know of too many instances where our Social Safety Net funds are being misspent with no hope of correction because the desk jockeys facilitating this fleecing do not have the character or wherewithal to halt the abuse.

Moreover, I believe law enforcement should play a larger role in corporate life. There should never, never, never be another Nortel-like financial disaster in this country. The people beyond the Nortel debacle should all be jailed. No feather-duster-spankings for these miscreants. It's all too easy for citizens in my tax bracket to focus on the poor, on the welfare recipient because their "income" level is within $50,000 of our own. Whereas, the corporate swine of this country have an income level that's not within $10 million of ours. So, we go after the easier target.

If it were possible for Canadians to put down their TV remote controls, golf clubs, and lawnmowers/snowblowers long enough to write a letter, phone in a complaint to our Animal Farm government, maybe we can begin moving back toward the light of reason. Begin with eradicating the position of Governor General. Then the Senate. Then the bureacraps. There is no Bastille for us to rush, and maybe that's the problem -- no centralized symbol to attack with bricks and profanity. But if there is one Canadian patriot in Ottawa and each provincial capital who could list the favorite restaurants of our leaders, I say the people should converge on these places and spoil a few meals.

In the meantime, let's finally vote the assholes out of office.

Premature Obituary for Brian Mulroney: The Most Despised Prime Minister in Canadian History

2005-10-27T12:24:00.000-05:00

Brian Mulroney
Died As He Lived:
In His Sleep

GST

O, Quebec - You Throbbing Ingrown Toenail

2005-10-26T09:33:00.000-05:00

On CBC.com today: "Quebec poet and singer-songwriter Raymond Lévesque, who was set to receive one of the country's highest artistic honours next week, announced Tuesday that he will not accept the accolade because of his separatist beliefs."

I will say it, here and now: Fuck Quebec Separatism.

Nothing illustrated the incorrigible, unapproachable, unfathomable nature of the Quebec mindset, for me, than hearing about the FLQ members -- famous for blowing up a mailbox and killing a diplomat in 1970 -- who managed to escape to Cuba after their brief terrorist campaign. It seemed they had escaped Canadian justice (such as it is). What they could not outrun, however, was their own Quebec-ness -- they soon found themselves unable to live among the Cubans. They then jetted off for France, the supposed Mother Country. And what happened? These Quebecois could not live among the French. So, they returned to Canada, endured their feather-duster-spankings administered by Canadian Judas-Prudence, and now reside among their own.

Ten years ago, when talk of "Quebec Separation" had reached yet another spike of intensity, I read an article in the Globe & Mail explaining that Quebec did not seek actual separation, it sought/seeks "Quebec Separation" -- meaning, it would require all sorts of Canadian aid, help, chairty, benefits, subsidy and other handouts in order to exist and survive: like an adult asking his parents to pay his rent, for his groceries, cable bill, entertainment expenses, car, cigarettes, pornography, high-speed Internet, video rentals, clothing, shoes, haircuts, shoelaces, all the while paying this brain-damaged adult-child a weekly stipend -- and then declaring himself independent. This is what "Quebec Separation" entails.

That Globe & Mail article cited examples from around the world in which small sections of various countries had separated only to languish like a lizards on stones because the trading partners of the countries they had abandoned did not want to cause offense by trading with these rogue pieces of geography.

It's time to talk real, workable, permanent solutions to the "Quebec Problem." Every household surrounding the Quebec border should be issued a Government of Canada chainsaw and physically cut Quebec loose. Let Quebec attempt trade with America. We'll see how fast American business adopts French as its official language. Before night falls on the day Canada cuts Quebec loose in this manner, Quebec would be invaded and conquered by either the Azores, Lichtenstein, Estonia, Fiji, or Newfoundland.

My surname is "St. Amand" -- Ottawa French, not Quebec, as my francophone grandmother always pointed out. Yes, there's a difference. I do not speak French, though I wish I did so that I could read Voltaire and Camus in their native language. I'm not anti-Quebec per se, I am merely against stupidity, against bitchy incorrigible complaining, against sneering petulant disloyalty.

Quebec is the college roommate who eats all of your food, never flushes after using the toilet, blows snot on the kitchen floor, cuts its toenails over your pillow, takes your CDs without asking and scratches them beyond use, borrows your car and leaves it with no gas, a dented fender, cigarette burns in the seats, and the keys locked inside.

I have visited Quebec twice in my lifetime and enjoyed myself immensely. It's a crime that that beautiful province is in the hands of Quebeckers. I am not against Quebec, I am against the Quebec mentality, very similar to the autoworker mentality that is all too prevalent in Windsor, Ontario -- the incessant gnashing of teeth, palms extended for handouts, the perpetual whining insistence that one is entitled to ever more, more, more, while forever feeling ripped off and pleading one's pitiful case to whoever will listen, or is simply within earshot. This mentality, this mode of existence is abhorrent to me.

So, "Quebec poet and singer-songwriter Raymond Lévesque" don't receive your Governor General's Award. I don't care.

French is the fastest dying language on earth. It won't be a great day when French finally meets its demise, though it will be glorious hearing the cavernous mute silence emanating from Quebec. Something to look forward to.

CANADA Now Hiring: Taxi Drivers Wanted; Doctors Need Not Apply

2005-10-25T12:32:00.000-05:00

I will call her"Myra" (not her real name), and she was an attractive, personable newly graduated physician from Holland who spoke flawless English. She came to Canada seeking to enjoy and contribute to our way of life. She graduated from a reputable Dutch medical school, but was quite willing to submit to whatever testing or examination by Canadian medical bodies and overseers of her credentials in order to verify that she was a top-flight physician.

Canada's Immigration department responded with unaccountable hostility from the moment she sought to practice in Canada. The upshot of the entire situation was that Myra was to sit and wait for more than a year for her case to be considered. She was not permitted to even volunteer, whether it was to simply read to elderly people or read stories to young children. Her medical expertise was more than ignored, it seemed to work against her. MP Herb Gray was either powerless or disinterested to help with the case. Ultimately, after more than a year of maddening bureaucratic red-tape this highly qualified physician -- whom I would trust to perform surgery on me, in a heartbeat; in whose care I would insist to be -- returned to the Netherlands.

A friend of mine -- Canadian born and bred -- is a police officer. A few years ago, a taxi driver who had bizarrely, intentionally jumped the curb of the street on which he was driving, ran down and killed an elderly woman and the child she pushed in a baby carriage. After this, as police responded to the situation, my friend attempted to block the way of this deranged taxi driver with his police vehicle. The taxi driver rammed him, almost killing him.

It came out in court that this deranged taxi driver came to Canada from Iraq -- came to this country after serving in the Iraqi military and murdering a superior officer (he had apparently disobeyed an order and essentially got into a "pissing match" with his superior officer, which culminated in his murdering his superior officer). It was revealed in court that this man's murderous past came out in his hearing with Canadian immigration authorities, all of whom appeared to be quite unbothered about allowing a confessed murderer into Canada. The fact that this man was Iraqi is irrelevant to me. The fact that he was a murderer is what I'm focusing on.

I am not anti-immigrant. My maternal grandfather was an immigrant from Ireland, and many of my friends are either immigrants or the children of immigrants -- all wonderful, hardworking people seeking better lives than they would have had in their home countries; all of whom came to Canada seeking to contribute. I am completely in favor of Canada being a haven for asylum seekers whose lives are in danger in their home countries. I only draw the line with people whose lives are in danger due to criminal activity on their part in their home countries.

The source of my outrage over Myra's situation and the situation involving that murderous Iraqi taxi driver centers on the cloak of incompetence and detachment from common sense and reality that envelopes Canadian policymakers.

Once more I will advance the only solution I so far have for bridging this gap between the reality of Ottawa and the rest of Canada -- every Canadian citizen must move to Ottawa; breathe their air, drink their tap water. Maybe then the lunacy of our laws and policies will finally make sense to folks like me.

Hear Your Host on Paul A. Toth's PodCast

2005-10-21T07:02:00.000-05:00

My interview on Paul A. Toth's TothWorld Podcast is now available. It can be downloaded directly from http://tothnews.libsyn.com/, just as you would download any .mp3 file -- that is, right-click and save the file to disk.

You can also access TothWorld via I-Tunes, where you should look for TothWorld: The Paul A. Toth Podcast. It's listed under audio blogs.

My Earth-Shattering Invention Inspired by Tim Horton's

2005-10-03T23:10:00.000-05:00

If you are not already aware of the groundbreaking invention by Tim Horton's -- bringing the world some new-fangled, new-Millennium drink called "steeped tea" -- then you must live under a rock. Where I live, this invention by Tim Horton's has been greeted like the invention of glass windows for our houses.

And it's inspired me to do my own experimenting.

After months of laborious effort in my dank, darkened basement I have invented a process by which water can be made to take solid form by subjecting it to frigid temperatures (exact measurements cannot be provided at this time). These "frigid solid water units", as I call them, can then be resized with the use of a hammer and chisel, converting them into "small frigid solid water units", making them not only portable, but of a size that they will fit into drinking glasses filled with liquid beverages, and thus keep these beverages cool. Introducing technology that will keep beverages cool in the hot Canadian climate will doubtless have many beneficial knock-on effects -- not the least of which extending the normal workday from eight hours to fourteen or sixteen hours.

I think my invention has many practical and commercial uses.

For the moment, I am keeping my invention under wraps. I am in the process of patenting my idea, and will soon be in talks with several corporations regarding introducing my invention into commerce.

In the meantime, know that your room-temperature liquid beverages may soon be a thing of the past thanks to the "small-St.-Amand-frigid-water-units" that will be available to the liquid-imbibing public as soon as science, laws, and commerce will allow.

The Image of "Good-For-Nothing"; Crime & Punishment & Sony PlayStation

2005-10-01T10:19:00.000-05:00

It's a story that staggers the imagination, triggers the gag reflex, and ought to fill every person of conscience with a seismic sense of outrage: the story of not-quite-six-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin who perished under the inhuman conditions provided him by his grandparents, Norman Kidman and Elva Bottineau.

Globe & Mail story on this case

CBC New story on this case

James Mills, pictured here, lived in the house where Jeffrey died. Mills contented himself playing with a Sony PlayStation while listening to Jeffrey coughing and crying through his final hours of life. Mills did absolutely nothing to help the child.

If this case was not so tragic, maddening and patently avoidable, I would suggest that some filmmaker create an Anime film of James Mills' ideas about "right" and "wrong," so surreal and otherworldly they appear to be. Clearly his co-defendants Norman Kidman and Elva Bottineau each have the moral compass of Adolf Eichmann.

Mills thought enough to point out during questioning that Jeffrey was "a 'dollars and cents' matter for his grandmother, Elva Bottineau." He went on to explain, "The kids were her only source of income. She didn't want to lose that and would do everything in her power not too."

Everything except feed the child, it seems. If what Mills says here is true -- and there is little reason to believe him -- wouldn't it have been in Elva Bottineau's financial interest (at the very bare minimum) to have kept Jeffrey alive? No, it's bad enough hearing that a child was only seen by his grandparents as a "dollars and cents" matter, but so much more fiendishly horrendous to see that poor Jeffrey was not even that.

Where in the name of God were the authorities in charge of Jeffrey Baldwin's case? I'm not up on how foster care works, but surely children are not simply left in someone's care with absolutely no follow-up visits or some minimal amount of contact with authorities. Clearly that's how it went in Jeffrey's case.

This is one of those gut-wrenching crimes and court cases that goes beyond laws being broken, and casts a pall across our humanity.

The Canadian justice system is not up for dealing with a case like this. The justice system's usual tools for meting out justice -- clarvoyance and exhaustively determining what would make lawbreakers' lives better, easier, and more fulfilled -- have no place in this case. Assessing the defendants' likelihood of reoffending has no place here. Having a justice issue an "ah shucks" statement about how sorry the defendants' are, and how they cannot turn back the clock, has no place here. Feather duster spankings have no place here.

No, the facts of the case must be meticulously logged and noted and examined, and the situation viewed from Jeffrey's point of view.

Canada's feather-duster system of Judas-Prudence is not up to this task. Great news for the fiends among us. A tragic realization for the Jeffrey Baldwins who go, at this moment, undiscovered in our country.

Seeking a Hybrid Car Sooner Rather Than Later

2005-09-24T19:30:00.000-05:00

It's going on two years since I bought my Chevy Cavalier. The car suits my needs in every way except one -- I can no longer afford to drive it. Fuel prices are heading in only one direction, though they'll sputter with corporate coyness. Well, I'm going to try something; I'm going to approach the dealership where I bought my car and see if I can turn it in for a hybrid. I have three years worth of payments left on my Cavalier, and I'm curious how my request will be received. I'm also going to write to General Motors Canada to see how my request will be recieved on the corporate level -- there's sometimes an enormous difference between dealing with a local branch of a company, and those lurking in the highest reachers of the ivory tower.

Since Canadian politicians admit their own woeful impotence and unwillingness to waive taxes on gasoline -- quoting the most fatalistic line of bullshit reasoning I've recently heard: that the gas companies will simply raise their prices as much as the tax relief amounts to, swallowing up any savings automobile owners might have enjoyed. So, as one motorist, I'm taking the situation into my own hands. Let's see what happens.

No Nail in the Coffin

2005-09-19T17:36:00.000-05:00

Advertising executive Paul Coffin -- one of the people charged and convicted in the "sponsorship scandal" -- has been sentenced to a conditional sentence of two years less a day, to be served in the community, for defrauding Canadian taxpayers of $1.5 million. How did Justice Jean-Guy Boilard of Quebec Superior Court arrive at this extraordinarily light sentence? Via clarvoyance (Justice Boilard looked into the future and ascertained that Mr. Coffin was not likely to reoffend), and by taking into consideration that Mr. Coffin is incapable of time-travel (saying "Mr. Coffin is genuinely contrite but unfortunately he cannot turn the clock back"). Is this what budding lawyers are taught in law school? Also taken into consideration was the fact that Mr. Coffin has repaid $1 million to the federal government -- enjoying a $500,000 profit for his misdeeds -- and the fact that he feels bad about having been caught.

Would it be asking too much of the Canadian justice system to have made Mr. Coffin pay back all of the money he earned fraudulently, and possibly pay a fine on top of that? The vengeful side of me would love to see this white collar criminal go to prison, but I believe non-violent criminals should be sentenced in alternative ways. However, I don't believe criminals such as Mr. Coffin should be spanked with feather dusters. There is nothing about his "sentence" that suggests punishment or justice. This sentence suggests only that the case against Mr. Coffin is closed, and he will be inconvenienced no further. We should expect much from our judicial system than this -- if only it were up to the task.

We Want Your Soul

2005-09-16T09:55:00.000-05:00

More than ten years ago I took a break from university thinking I would find a job as a copywriter in a public relations or advertising firm; get out and see what the real world of work was all about. A few months and several hundred resumes later, I found myself working midnights for a pharmacy chain, tearing up old carpeting, moving shelving units around, or cleaning out long-neglected cellars. Another month and several dozen resumes later I scored a job as a "management trainee" at a sports store in the mall. Glad as I was for the steady pay cheque, it was one of the most demoralizing events of my life. And I had yet to attend my first company meeting.

The thing that galled me most about that dead-end sports store job was how the corporation that owned it sought to insinuate itself into my very soul. To anyone who has never worked such a job, this certainly will sound overwrought, exaggerated, and ridiculous. But it's true. I suppose I should count myself lucky that corporation didn't have its own cheer. The quite possibly do by this date.

Yeah, I was hired to sell merchandize, and God help me, I did my best. Yeah, I know I was there to absorb all those company-published binders filled with selling techniques, product information, and miscellaneous motivational tracts. I read it all. What I couldn't handle was the constant unspoken pressure to never take a full lunch-hour. You see, I'm one of these weak, flawed people who needs time to himself. After a morning of straightening shelves and racks that didn't need straightening, trying to sell shit to the odd parents who straggled in, I need some time to recoup my sanity from the crushing boredom -- to use my lunch-hour to read in the food court. This was openly ridiculed, but being a writer and booklover, I was used to how anti-intellectuals viewed books as though they were stink bombs. Worse, woe to anyone worked their eight-hour shift and went home. It was "understood" -- the same way bullies make themselves understood without raising a hand -- that "motivated" workers put in the extra time. Sure, we were paid on commission, so the longer we hung around and sold shit, the more money we'd make. Again, I'm one of these wrongly-programmed, faulty human beings who is tired by the end of eight hours of sheer boredom. Being a writer, I looked forward to an evening of writing, watching movies, or reading, or seeing friends.

In the end, the beancounters at head office asserted themselves and workers such as myself found their base salary cut, and our commission raised ever-so-slightly, so that we had to work twelve hours to earn what we used to make in eight hours.

That was the end of my tenure at the sports store.

A person close to me recently took a job at "big box" store, and quit within weeks of being hired. The "big box" store -- not Wal-Mart -- has its own cheer. It also has a tangled bureaucracy that would make jaded old Russian desk jockeys misty-eyed with nostalgia and envy. The "lifers" -- and there were many -- the people stranded in this place for life, joked that when cut they bled "orange." At least they admitted to bleeding at all when cut -- more than any corporate vampire from that old sports store's head office could claim.

And like virtually every business under the sun, this big box store was run by a conflicting meld of personalities who coalesced to create a united front of people who don't know their asses from holes in the ground. Their approach to employer-employee relations seems to be an amalgamation of Mein Kampf and The Dao of Pooh; setting all employees in a cast to be viewed as recalcitrant high school kids.

Interestingly, the managers of this store selected the person close to me for some specialized training, which no one else in the store received. This was a good thing. However, after a number of scheduling SNAFUs -- that touched the hands of nearly everyone in the store's revolving door of incompetence -- the person close to me simply chose to leave. So, this person leaves with that specialized training the big box store spent all kind of money to provide, seeming to have no thought about attempting to retain this person I know.

This is how the world runs, I know it. No matter how the economy lumbers along, I'm continually amazed that it performs as well as it does given the legion of gimps, assholes, incompetents, ego-maniacs, and just-flat-out-maniacs who man its ranks. Were the world's economy be distilled down to a single rowing team in a single boat, it would be mere seconds before every rowers' paddle snapped because they would be so out of synch.

And it insenses me to no end that this retarded, wall-eyed, lurching leviathan actually puts out its hand each time I take a job and believes I'm willing to put my soul into its sweaty palm. I have not, I will not, and never will.

The True American Pass-Time: Moving the Goal Posts

2005-09-13T20:45:00.000-05:00

America the powerful. America the omnipresent, omnipotent, the omni-idiotic. America the unravelling. The United States lumber industry doesn't like the outcome of a recent court finding (in favor of Canada) with regard to the illegal tarrifs America has slapped on Canadian lumber, so they want a new process.

America is in the wrong on this issue and they can't stand it. Thing is, Canada should have known from the beginning what it was getting into when it signed the North American Free Trade Agreement: America wants out trade -- for free. Which opened the door to segments of Canada submitting to American freedom, which is: "You have the freedom... to agree with us." "You have the freedom... to do as we say." "You have the freedom... to roll over when we complain."

America the psychotic -- perpetually proclaiming itself to be the world's only Superpower (now that there is only one, maybe it's time to scrap that designation), yet undyingly portrays itself as the underdog in every face-off. You can't have it both ways, America. You're the sucky brute; the drunken businessman in the restaurant who feels he can duck out of paying his bill by loudly complaining about it.

Ain't gonna work this time.

2005 CBC Literary Awards competition

2005-09-13T11:54:00.000-05:00

The 2005 CBC Literary Awards competition is now open. Put your talent to the test and send us your unpublished short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Please note that this year's deadline is November 1st, 2005.
What are the Awards?

The CBC Literary Awards competition is the only literary competition that celebrates original, unpublished works, in Canada’s two official languages. There are three categories — short story, poetry, and creative nonfiction — and $60,000 of prize money courtesy of the Canada Council for the Arts. In addition, winning entries are published in Air Canada’s enRoute magazine and broadcast on CBC radio.
What’s new?

This year we have replaced the Travel Literature category with a new category called Creative Nonfiction. Creative nonfiction includes memoir, biography, essay (including personal essay), travel writing, and feature articles. See the Categories section for more information.

Law & Blunders - Canadian Judas-prudence

2005-09-13T08:16:00.000-05:00

One thing that troubles me beyond reconcilliation is the Canada justice system. To say that it's hopelessly flawed doesn't seem to grasp the enormity and thoroughness of its wrong-headedness.

An example from Windsor, Ontario illustrates my point down to the ground: a woman was brutal sexual assaulted in the city one or two years ago, her assailant caught and tried -- sentenced to 30 days house arrest. The victim was quoted in the newspaper as saying that every consideration had been given to the accused's rights, yet her's seemed never to enter the judicial equation. The lack of severity of the sentence was stunning. The sexual assault had been violent; not just some guy slapping a woman's ass in the concession line at the cinema.

What troubles and angers me most about Canada Judas-prudence is that it's based on clarvoyance: Is the accused likely to commit the crime in question again?

This is beyond ridiculous! Why does the law -- or, at least, those who are responsible for enforcing it -- interested in the "crime of the moment"? This is the most bizarre aspects of Canada law. No punishment is meted out for the infraction in question, our justices engage in a sorty of Minority Report-like scan of the future before handing down their sentences. And their sentences are always in sufferably light. Am I some "blood and guts" vengeance-mongers? No. But if my wife, mother, or sister had been sexually assaulted as the poor woman in my example above had been, I'd have been breathless and legless with outrage hearing the accused handed a sentence of 30 days house arrest. Who wouldn't.

And then there are the notorious cases of miscarriages of Canadian justice; stomach-turning, tear-provoking in their obvious injustice and base stupidity and incompetence. Today a former police officer apologized for his role in the 1969 wrongful jailing of David Milgaard. Thirty-six years late is better than nothing, I guess. Then there is the notorious case of Stephen Truscott, wrongly accused so many decades ago of the murder of 12-year-old Lynne Harper. Truscott was fifteen years old when he was arrested, sentenced to death, and incarcerated in an empty prison. Somehow the authorities of the day, and of that place, felt Truscott was their "man" with regard to that murder, even though a pedophilic, alcoholic military man with a history of sexual assaults happened to be in the area during the very same time. He died without ever coming under significant suspicion. The Truscott story is a singular blight on Canada's embarrassing record of Judas-prudence. Not to forget other outrages, such as Ron and Linda Sterling of Saskatchewan operated a home day care in Martensville north of Saskatoon. And the phenomenally heartbreaking, gutwrenching story of Richard Klassen and his family. I can honestly say that while watching the Fifth Estate program on the Klassen case and its extraordinary miscarriage of justice, I have never, never been so aghast and filled with outrage.

I guess the lesson with Canadian law and order is the same as when Ontario Premier Mike Harris eviscerated the Ontario healthcare system: Pray you'll never need it.

If you're interested: Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted

Update:
Group says murder convict is innocent, calls for release

"He is a pathological liar. In fairness, I don't believe he knows he's lying..."

2005-09-12T08:20:00.000-05:00

The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister.

Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney -- I hate the man. I mean, I personally, on all levels, despise this man. I came of age while he squatted in the Prime Minister's mansion. The first political outrage I ever experienced occurred when he implemented the Goods & Services Tax. It happened at a time when I was working a video store, just finishing secondary school. The position gave me access to scores of people -- citizens -- who had no trouble voicing their outrage that yet another tax had been slapped on to the Grand Dray Horse, known as the Canadian people. There were a few instances when people projected their outrage on to me, the humble clerk and purveyor of the bad news, as the GST became part of the price of renting movies. I recall deflecting the outrage, actually gaining a wry smile of agreement from these hotheads by saying that in my opinion the GST was a "legal crime."

Gosh, those naive days when I believed all it would take was to vote Mulroney out of office to get Canada back on track, and once more have responsive politicians in power. When the Referendum on Quebec occurred in the early 1990s, and Mulroney was all over the airwaves nervously pleading with Canadians that "This is not a referendum on my government," I voted in exactly the way I thought would harm and distress Mulroney most.

The first Letter to the Editor I wrote to my local newspaper was an angst-ridden missive decrying the Prime Minister's arrogance and detachment from the reality of Canadian citizens. I may as well have accused him of being sick with a disease called "Being a Canadian Prime Minister." Maybe the PM's mansion should be demolished and the land sewn with salt. Maybe an "arrogant asshole parasite" exists in the Ottawa water supply.

It was during Brian Mulroney's tenure as Canada's leader that I became so incensed by the news of his daily outrages, that I turned away. I'm embarrassed and chagrined to admit it, but I quickly found reading or watching Canadian news so intolerable, I just turned away. Since then, I've cultivated a frightening and abiding ignorance of the details of Canadian politics. I know what is happening in a general sense, but the Mulroney Government so triggered my gag reflex that I turned into exactly the sort of apathetic citizen I've grown to resent.

Mulroney supporters would rightly me accuse of scapegoating Brian Mulroney for my own human frailties and shortcomings in dealing with a situation I found fraught with affront. But that does not diminish the fact that Brian Mulroney was a disastrous prime minister. I hope that he's among the most hated prime minister's, as well.

When he skulked out of office, I was pleased. When the Progressive Conservative party was voted out of existence in the early 1990s, it finally seemed that Canadian democracy had worked.

Then we saddled ourselves with Jean Chretien, and I realized that there is a psychosis called "Being a Canadian Prime Minister." Surely, Canadian politics and its corrosive horde of corrupt practitioners is the result of some clever radical group tainting the Ottawa water supply with military strength LSD. The only answer to the problem of Canadian politics, seems to me, is for the entire country to move to Ottawa, breathe the air, drink the water, and maybe the madness that hobbles our great nation will at least finally make sense -- like watching Pink Floyd's The Wall under the influence of LSD.

But there will never be another Briam Mulroney. Crybaby extraordinaire, liar supreme, disconnected beyond the veteran disconnected. He is a crumb of a human being, and I'm pleased to see this new book about him, The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister, provides him with more than enough rope with which to hang himself.

Ontario Premier rejects use of Shariah law

2005-09-12T02:10:00.000-05:00

The premier of Ontario has finally done something that I think the majority of Ontarians believe was the right thing -- he said "No" to religious arrogance and encroachment denying those seeking "the use of a set of centuries' old religious rules called Shariah law to settle Muslim family disputes". The people who sought to make this change in Ontario law have demonstrated new heights in bad-neighborliness and social arrogance. And really, I they really ought to consider leaving this secular world and returning to the caves and sand and 11th Century societies they fled in the first place. Where Islam is the law of the land.

When my grandfather immigrated to Canada from Ireland, he came to contribute to Canadian society -- not turn his tiny corner of it into a miniature Ireland. He became a Canadian citizen -- even though pledging allegiance to the Queen caused him actual physical pain. He did not move to Canada to make other people Irish, nor did he come here to perpetually wave the Irish flag. He came to Canada to seek a new life, a better life than he might have had in 1930s and '40's Ireland.

Maybe it's a provocative thing to say, but I'll say it -- I'm tired of immigrants coming to Canada only to have them create their own little cocoon-like, isolated microcosms of the lands they fled. Particularly when they fled countries with horrific human rights records, arcane and hostile attitudes toward the treatment of women and children, or religions that require them to carry deadly weapons. I'm glad that Canada is know as a "mosaic" society rather than a "melting pot." Yes, people coming here from other cultures bring a richness that is welcome and necessary to our development. However, I draw the line when immigrants arrive in Canada seeking only to carve out a miniature version of the lands they left.

In the neighborhood in which I grew up there are now full-sized billboard signs that are completely in foreign languages. Am I advocating Quebec-styled language gestapos to skulk around my city scrutinizing and measuring such signs and issuing tickets and citations? Absolutely not. However, there's no denying that signs like these have an isolating, divisive effect on communities. It's not neighborly. That might sound like hokum to some people, but I hardly call Yuppie-condo-alienation a sophisticated alternative.

There is something utterly contradictory and provocative about religious fundamentalists coming to a secular nation like Canada looking to spread or deepen their fundamentalism. That's like me going to a vegetarian restaurant and clamoring to be served a T-bone steak -- rare. There's an inherent, off-putting arrogance at work in such a move.

To be clear, I group all fundamentalism and all fanaticism under one umbrella term: crazy. Like the comedian George Carlin, I believe that all religion is a form of mental illness. Sometimes benign, often malignant, sometimes injurious. I'd have to really comb through the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to see if it spells out a separation of Church and State, but I think for any country to function -- particularly to function in the 21st Century -- this separation is crucial.

I write this fearing no fatwa.

Further reading on the subject: OPEN LETTER TO ONTARIO PREMIER DALTON McGUINTY: Don't ghettoize women's rights

Canadians beat U.S. Army to New Orleans suburb

2005-09-11T10:09:00.000-05:00

Canadians beat U.S. Army to New Orleans suburb

08 Sep 2005 05:08:07 GMT - Source: Reuters

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept 7 (Reuters) - A Canadian search-and-rescue team reached a flooded New Orleans suburb to help save trapped residents five days before the U.S. military, a Louisiana state senator said on Wednesday.

The Canadians beat both the Army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. disaster response department, to St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans, where flood waters are still 8 feet (2.4 metres) deep in places, Sen. Walter Boasso said.

"Fabulous, fabulous guys," Boasso said. "They started rolling with us and got in boats to save people."

"We've got Canadian flags flying everywhere."

The stricken parish of 68,000 people was largely ignored by U.S. authorities who scrambled to get aid to New Orleans, a few miles (km) away. Boasso said residents of the outlying parishes had to mount their own rescue and relief efforts when Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on Aug. 29.

The U.S. government response to the disaster has been widely criticized. Politicians and editorial writers have called for the resignation of top Bush administration officials.

Boasso said U.S. authorities began airdropping relief supplies to St. Bernard last Wednesday, the same day the Canadian rescue team of about 50 members arrived from Vancouver, nearly 2,200 miles (3,540 km) away.

"They chartered a plane and flew down," he said.

Two FEMA officials reached the parish on Sunday and the U.S. Army arrived on Monday, he said.

"Why does it take them seven days to get the Army in?" Boasso asked.

He speculated that the smaller parishes suffered because the focus was on New Orleans, the famous home of jazz and Mardi Gras.

As for the Canadians, Boasso gave thanks for their quick work.

"They were so glad to be here," he said. "They're still here. They are actually going door-to-door looking in the attics" for people to rescue, he said.

Real Tyranny Meets Flaccid Tyranny

2005-09-11T08:38:00.000-05:00

"Hey, those guys in the tanks need toilet paper and cell phones! They're OK in my book!" So say the swinish corporations who bend the arms of governments to do business with the stunted, bloodthirsty jackals we know as communist China.

This week, East met West; real Tyranny of communist China met the flaccid tyranny of the Canadian Liberal party. And what a thumb-wrestling match it was!

Quote from The Globe & Mail: "Both countries [Canada and China] have expressed a mutual desire to see Canada-China trade — currently worth about $30-billion annually — double within five years." Which means doubling the number inhumane sweatshops in China and the number of jobs lost in Canada to those sweatshops. Why does this equation not have me doing a Samba-of-Joy-and-Good-Feeling?

The moment I see Canadian politicians and corporate leaders smiling and slapping each other on the back, all strength goes out of my legs. Something is not right.

And something isn't.

The world has been weirdly cow-towing to China for years, giving these genocidal communists the next Olympic Games, and lusting after those billion-+ consumers who all need cellphones and paperclips and whatall else.

Turn a buck, and turn a blind eye.

The Gross Flaw in Logic Award goes to International Trade Minister Jim Peterson at this event:

Mr. Peterson said Canada can court the Chinese market while simultaneously stepping up pressure on Beijing to bring about more civil liberties.

"We believe that the best way to impact human rights is through constructive engagement whereas in isolation, by cutting people off, you do not have the opportunity to make representations," he said.

Right, so by giving China everything it wants, we are then in a position to make demands of them. Here is one of the clearest examples I've evern seen how disconnected Canadian politicians are from their constituents, and from reality. China is clamoring to join the capitlistic, or, at least, corporate global gang-bang. You only have their attention for as long as you don't allow them in. You're only in a position to make demands -- let's call them requests because that sounds better -- while they've got their noses pressed against the window, looking in. Once you open the door, they've got their pants down, and any leverage you had to bargain with has vanished in a cloud of whore's perfume.

I can't, however, entirely fault Mr. Peterson, because perpetual corporate coitus has a way of blunting the mind.

With logicians like Mr. Peterson at the helm of this debacle, it seems the only ones who will have their noses pressed against the window awaiting admittance to the gang-bang is the Canadian people, whose jobs will soon start flying like ghosts to behind the Great Wall at the bottom of the world.

Bell Mobility is a Corrupt and Unethical Corporation Whose Business Practices are Sleazy and Possibly Illegal: Coda

2005-09-08T13:00:00.000-05:00

It appears that Bell Slo-Mo-bility has gotten its chrono-synclastic infundibulum back online with regard to my wife's cell phone account -- the account she's been trying to cancel, kill, eliminate, cauterize by every means except silver bullets -- and has finally, gracelessly, seemingly, cancelled it.

In fact, after the advanced calculus of Bell's credit/debit/rebate enigma had the final word, it appears that Bell Slo-Mo-bility owes my wife $5.03. How she is to collect this, we don't know since she is no longer a customer and will not open a new account to avail of these peanuts -- peanut shells, really -- that Auld BM has scattered on the floor at her feet.

But it does appear the sun has risen on this Succubus cell phone account. It has been sprinkled with holywater, subdued by the Cross, and returned -- immobile -- to its sarcophagus. Never, please God, to rise again.

Bell Mobility is a Corrupt and Unethical Corporation Whose Business Practices are Sleazy and Possibly Illegal: Continued

2005-09-08T12:50:00.000-05:00

The dutiful Bell Mobility customer service reps have replied to my email pleas regarding the seeming insurmountable task of cancelling my wife's cell phone account. My previous post about this frustrating, outrageous situation ruffled some feathers among the Bell Mobility ranks, and that's fine with me. However, reading the replies to my weekend messages that rolled into my Inbox a few minutes ago, it seems I've had Bell Mobility all wrong. There is no incompetence run amok there. They appear to be struggling with an overabundance of proficiency:

Message #1: "My name is Fiona and I have read your message with care. It is my pleasure to assist you in this matter. In response to your request, I have reviewed your account and would like to confirm that your account has been cancelled as of July 18th, 2005. Your final invoice will be printed on August 17th for your review."

Message #2 (arrived seconds after the first): "My name is Eri and I have read your message carefully. I am pleased to assist you in this matter. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and frustrations that this situation may have caused. Upon review of your account, I am pleased to confirm that the above mobile has been cancelled on July 17, 2005. As your account was cancelled on the 17th and your invoices are issued on the 17th, your account balance had yet to be adjusted for the cancellation. In addition, as you will be receiving credits for the June price plan, you will actually be receiving an August statement as well. Your August statement will be your final invoice and will indicate your final balance. I do apologize for any confusion that this has caused."

It's the cell phone account that won't die. Cancelled on July 17th, my wife's account rose from the dead at 12:01 a.m. July 18th to slouch through the Bell Mobility accounting system, a virtual bean-counter-succubus, communing with the other undead accounts in a shadowy, spider-web, red-tape-laden sarcophagus. It's the Bela Lugosi of cell phone accounts, the Christopher Lee, the Gary Oldman -- it's Bram Stoker crossed with Alexander Graham Bell; Poe and Edison; Vlad the Impaler meets Michael J. Sabia, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bell Canada.

The invoice we received dated July 17th is for $75.09.

This succubus hasn't fastened onto my cartoid artery, it's bleeding my household dry via our baby toe. This Venus-fly-trap cell phone account has clamped onto us like we're a sliver of balogna, and it'll feed off of us until we're white and useless as cadaver flesh.

How else do corporate executives afford their champagne colonics, chocolate-covered lobster, and paisley Roll Royces in a dying economy? Through the implementation of "mistakes"--wink, wink, nudge, nudge. You know, "unintended" happenings for which apologies can be made after the fact in those few instances when the "unintended" circumstance has been found out. In those instances when the "mistake" is not uncovered, the yachts, the alligator shoes, the sterling silver fencing sets become accessible to the supple hands of those who earn their livings off the backs of so many.

I will think of you every Bastille Day.

Bell Mobility is a Corrupt and Unethical Corporation Whose Business Practices are Sleazy and Possibly Illegal

2005-09-08T12:49:00.000-05:00

Prelude to this madness.

A quick reminder of how I already feel about our corporate titans.

And I am not alone with my grievance against Bell Mobility.

Comments from other Bell Mobility Customers

Another complaint.

Update.

CBC.ca: " Bell Mobility clients hit by billing errors"

Let me begin my saga by stating that it is my opinion that Bell Mobility is Canada's Enron.

My note to Bell Mobility outlines my grievance [August 7th Addendum. After hearing feedback from a BM customer service rep, I must admit that he/she has a point in that the conflicting rules that lead to these types of SNAFUs come from the top. The executives make the big bucks and those rotters ought to take responsibility. This is why I have revised my letter to BM accordingly]:

You head a company that I consider to be disreputable, unethical, and whose business practices I believe might possibly be illegal. What would lead me to make such an outlandish accusation? My experience with Bell Mobility. Here are the details:

Since the middle of May my wife has attempted to cancel her Bell Mobility cell phone account (#X, for cell phone # X) on three separate occasions. She has fulfilled all of her contractual obligations to Bell Mobility and wishes to close the account. However, Bell Mobility steadfastly refuses to fulfill her request. Each time she phoned a customer service rep has assured her the account has been cancelled. Yet more invoices arrive at our house demanding more fees, accruing charges for services we don’t want and have not used.

At first, I chalked this up to incompetence. However, when an invoice arrived at my home after my wife’s third phone call to your customer service, I came to believe that this may well be part of a shady, uncouth, illegitimate, possibly illegal, and certainly unethical business practice on behalf of Bell Mobility to squeeze more money from us.

You see, Bell doesn’t get to be a leviathan telecommunications company, stringing high speed Internet access, cell phone towers, and space-age technology across the second largest land mass on the planet by being incompetent. No. Bell makes satellite technology available to ordinary users, but it cannot manage to cancel a single cell phone account?

I believe it is Bell Mobility’s unstated policy NOT to cancel accounts. Furthermore, I accuse Bell Mobility of unethical business practices that include continuing to send invoices to people wishing to cancel their accounts with the hope of bullying them, wearing them down, and badgering them into keeping your service when they no longer want it. You tangle customers who wish to cancel in red tape hoping to throttle them into submission, so you can continue squeezing money from them.

And here is where it all falls to you. Having spent more than a decade of my life working front-line customer service jobs, I know firsthand that CS reps merely follow the rules set out for them by management. So, my question is, who has made the refusal to cancel accounts your policy? If it is not your policy, then who is responsible for the training of your CS reps? You are the people in a position of responsibility, and I am writing this letter to ask you to take responsibility. If it’s a failure of technology—glitchy software, uncooperative hardware—then where is your Chief Technology Officer? In my frustration over this situation, I have succumbed to berating your CS reps, but logic and experience dictates that all problems emanate from the executive level.

To say that I am dissatisfied with Bell Mobility is a gross understatement. Please note that I am so disgusted with Bell Canada as an entity and a monopoly—at least, it still conducts business like it’s the only game in town—that I pay $10/month more for my non-Sympatico high-speed Internet access because I simply refuse to give another cent to Bell. This ridiculous experience with Bell Mobility has done nothing but solidify my antipathy for your over-sized, over-complicated, bureaucracy-laden corporation.

With any luck, others who are suffering this same fate will contact me, and we might unify to launch a class-action lawsuit against Bell Mobility.

This is just the beginning. You will hear much more from me very, very soon.

Misanthropically Yours,
Matthew St. Amand

Do you have a grievance of any sort? Got a bad hotdog from the corner vendor today? That squeak in your shoe still making you the laughinstock of the office? Have you been screwed by a cell phone provider?

Unleash Here!

My note to the Better Business Bureau:

For the past two and-a-half months my wife has tried on 3 different occasions to cancel her cell phone account with Bell Mobility, and Bell Mobility steadfastly refuses to cancel it. Instead, Bell Mobility continues sending us invoices with accrusing charges, seemingly with the the hope of wearing us down to the point that we'll simply pay them.

My wife has spoken to three different Bell Mobility operators, each of whom assured her the account was cancelled. Yet a new bill shows up weeks later with new charges.

My wife and I don't have an endless supply of free time to devote to this futile battle. Bell Mobility isn't listening to us.

Can you help?

And my note to Canada's respected news digest, The Fifth Estate:

As if Canadians don't have enough to worry about these days with the economy tanking, unresponsive government, and leviathan corporations making it their unstated policy to screw over private citizens.

I'm talking about every Canadian's favorite monopolgy -- Bell Canada and it's redheaded, left-handed, bastard step child, Bell Mobility. The first two times my wife attempted to cancel her cell phone account with BM, and it mysteriously didn't "take", I could chalk-up to incompetence. The third time it didn't take, I got to thinking, "I believe it is Bell Mobilitiy's unstated policy NOT to cancel accounts. I am accusing Bell Mobility of unethical business practices that include continuing to send invoices to the homes of people wishing to cancel their accounts with the hope of bullying them, wearing them down, and badgering them into keeping your service when they no longer want it. You tangle customers who wish to cancel in red tape hoping to throttle them into submission, so you can continue squeezing money from them."

To my thinking, Bell and its miscreant spin-off, Bell Mobility, are Canada's Enron -- with a silent, yet tangible, policy of unethical, shady, illegitimate, and possibly illegal business practices. All with the hope of squeezing a few more pennies out customers who don't want to be customers any more.

If you're doing any programs about corporate wrongdoing and the lack of ethics, competence, and logic in Canada's corporate desert, please keep Bell Mobility in mind. Surely my wife and I aren't the only people going through such a saga with them.

In Today's Windsor Star - Canada's Contribution to Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort

2005-09-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

Convoy carries hope, supplies by Craig Pearson:

Thursday, September 08, 2005 -- The largest Red Cross convoy of Canadian aid passed through Windsor Wednesday on its way to Texas, bringing supplies to evacuees of flood-ravaged New Orleans.

The convoy of 19 trucks, carrying 20,000 cots and 26,500 blankets to help victims of hurricane Katrina, started in Quebec and stopped near Comber Wednesday to arrange the details of crossing the border to the southern United States -- complete with a federal government representative to help ensure easier flow through U.S. customs.

Goals of this Blog

2005-09-08T09:36:00.000-05:00

Having lived in a border city next to the United States for most of my life, it's been very easy to become embroiled in American news, issues, scandals. It being my personal opinion that George W. Bush is a globe problem, threat even, is why I often feel compelled to voice my derision for the man and everything he stands for. But Canada is my country, and I think it's fair to say that I've focused on American news in order to distract myself from fully participating in discourse regarding the problems afflicting Canada. This blog is my attempt to correct that imbalance, and to serve as means to better educate myself in what's happening in my own back yard.

I credit former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and his instituting the Good & Services Tax in the early 1990s for being the straw that broke this camel's back. Reading and watching Canadian news because such a day-ruining outrage that I decided to turn away. That's the coward's route, no doubt. Rather than let the corrupt in our country run amok, I'm jumping back into the fray.

Among others, the issues I am going to deal with in this blog are:

Immigration
Taxation
Out of touch politicians
An examination of each of the national political parties
Bureaucracy
Our governmental system and how it breeds corruption and contempt
Healthcare

Anyone stumbling across this blog is welcome to raise their own issues.

I love Canada, I think it's the greatest country in the world. We have freedom, security, an excellent standard of living. There are innumerable reasons to be proud of being Canadian (for instance, after Yann Martel won the Book Prize in 2002, I read an article that compared Canada to Ireland as a country with a relatively small population being a home to so many world-class authors), and that's also what this blog is going to be about.

Most importantly, I'm after solutions. It's one thing to complain -- something I'm completely and ashamedly well-versed at doing -- but it's another thing to offer solutions to problems, and to bend the arms of those who could implement them.

Shortages & Price Gouging in Our "Just in Time" World

2005-09-08T07:44:00.000-05:00

Letter I wrote to the editor of The Windsor Star, published September 7, 2005:

I'm fascinated how every increase in gas prices comes with its own narrative. Petrol for my car today, August 30, was $1.09/litre [$1.35/litre as of 9/7/05], and the story is "... because of Hurricane Katrina." Who can argue with a Category Five hurricane? But it made me wonder, are petrol companies shipping Wednesday's fuel on Tuesday? I thought petrol was shipped or moved or transported in large quantities -- you know, so if a tanker truck is delayed at a train crossing, whole cities won't shut down. I think of this as being as though my local grocery store stocked only enough food for a day's shopping by the public. If a highway accident caused the resupply trucks to be late, the grocery store could jack up its prices, saying with a shrug, "There was an accident." No, necessities like that are shipped in large quantity so hiccups in the supply chain don't grind civilization to a halt. And yes, I have seen the pie charts on the gas pumps showing me how gas station owners offer fuel purely as a labor of love; they're not making any money on it. But someone is. And they're circulating these ready-made stories to accompany every price hike. I liked it better when I used to get a free plastic drinking glass or steak knives with every fill-up.

All of this is beside the point, anyhow. You don't have to be a Hummer-hating, ozone-hole-tracking activist to realize that our petroleum based world is unsustainable, and teetering toward collapse in the next couple of decades. When I bought my house two years ago I made an honest-to-God effort to have it solar-powered. Not because of some deeply held philosophy -- because I wanted to save money. But in my research, I found solar-power vendors were completely disinterested in actually selling their wares. I was also surprised to find that there are absolutely no incentives for anyone to "go solar", such as tax credits or rebates or even advertisements saying such technology exists. At one point, a solar-power vendor actually told me that I would require permission from my local utility to go solar. That's like having to ask GM for permission to buy a Ford vehicle.

So, rather than our corporate scientists giving us new and improved mouthwash, toothpaste, detergent, or heartburn remedies, could someone devote even their lunch-hour to developing alternative energy sources for our vehicles and homes? I'm a willing consumer.