RoadDave

The old saying is that badness comes in threes.  This week, Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett and (as I was writing the Farah Fawcett piece) The King of Pop, Michael Jackson died suddenly.

Like most people I will readily admit that I liked his music, as much of his later work was superb.  The Jackson Five stuff, was formulaic pre-digested musical pudding, but later works like Thriller were new, innovative and remarkable. 

It was his ‘private’ life that creeped a lot of people out.  I’m not going to bother to list it, as the list is too long and much too weird to even want to write it down.  Don’t worry, it will all be reprised for your guilty pleasures in a number of rapidly written tell-alls.  Expect one or two in the next four weeks. 

The National Enquirer and that ilk will be wall to wall for the next three weeks.  With any luck we’ll have stories that Jacko was sharing his hyperbaric chamber with Farah Fawcett in her last days, or other such madness.

Which, unfortunately, detracts from his musical accomplishments, but is still part of his legacy.  There is some considered opinion that Jacko could be repackaged after his death, much like Elvis.

Elvis, if you recall, died from a stroke while on the toilet, an overinflated caricature of himself, full of bad medicine.  Today, the only Elvis is the lean, handsome 1968 version:  The 1977 Elvis has been erased from our collective memory by Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. 

The same is starting to happen with Jacko, as the media replays the Jackson Five and Thriller videos, but it is only hours into the repackaging that will happen. 

Remember Jacko, sure, but remember all of him, not just the the tiny little happy snippets.

Cancer has claimed Farah Fawcett at age 62 unfortunately. She was a 1970’s icon, plain and simple:  An entire generation was influenced by her particular look, style and demeanour.

If you don’t believe me, troll some blogs, classmates.com or facebook and look for that peculiar hairstyle of the 70’s.  Women either had a parasol perm or a FFM feather cut.  It was required as a test of citizenship on Planet Earth.

Now, this is not to say that the 70’s were the ne plus ultra of style, far from it, but Charlie’s Angels, which launched Farah Fawcett, was very much a groundbreaking show in six ways.  FFM’s left and right one, Jaclyn Smith’s left and right one and Kate Jackson’s left and right one.  Not eyes either.  Charlie’s Angels helped coin the term “Jiggle Show”, quite possibly the first.

This isn’t to diminish the acting chops of Fawcett, Smith or Jackson, but still, you didn’t watch Charlie’s Angels for the deep philosophical challenges.  You didn’t watch for the bracing characterizations or the remarkable plot twists. You watched for the swimsuit shots, the nipple shots or the glamour shots.  And you hoped, nay prayed that something would fall out or be overexposed.  It never happened, but you hoped.

Fawcett did other work and her documentary on her cancer is almost too moving to watch without having to hit pause several times.  And her passing puts a close on the documentary.

Is her passing a end of an era?  Not really, but it is the end of an icon.  The same as the passing of Ed McMahon was the passing of a 60’s icon, the passing of Farah Fawcett is the passing of a 70’s icon.

And if you are to believe the news reports right this minute, perhaps an 80’s icon is about to pass too.

Ed McMahon passed away overnight, at the age of 86, surrendering his role as the prototype first of and at the same time, the last of, the television sidekick.

For most of his career he was paired, inseparably, with Johnny Carson, the IronMan of late night talk shows.  As an aside, Pat Weaver (that would be Sigourney Weaver’s dad) was the guy who back in the mists of time figured that America needed some kind of late-night gabfest with a host and a sidekick and a band on TV to while away the after-11 pm hours.

McMahon’s job was to have a hearty laugh and do the live commercials from time to time.  Of course, McMahon did more than that, but the job description is only a paragraph or two, if you stretch it out.  Ed McMahon was very much the master of playing straight, or feeding a line, or simply being Ed to the Tonight Show machine.

There was of course, much more.  He was a fighter pilot with the Marines in WWII, then flew as a Tactical Air Controller and artillery spotter in Korea, retiring with the rank of Colonel.  You would have never know it to look at his public persona.  He was Brigadier General in the California Air National Guard.

Which brings us to his passing, assuming they have television in the Afterlife, there will be one heck of a Tonight show, tonight.  Johnny and Ed.  The original Tonight Show band leader, Skitch Henderson is sitting in and Freddie de Cordova, the long-time director is up in the booth. 

As for the guests?  A lot of it would depend on who the bookers could get:  Judy Garland?  Groucho?  Ernie Kovacs? Jack Paar?  Frank, Dino and Sammy?  Senor Wences?  George Carlin?

Perhaps there will be a piece with Carnac the Magnificent telling Ed McMahon’s favourite joke:

Sis boom, bah. 

Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes.

Good night Ed.

You know there is a time when you should just lock the doors and drive away as fast as you can.  Today would be one of those times.

Rumour has it, North Korea has a seagoing freighter with a missile and a nuke onboard steaming towards Hawaii.  The objective, at least if you read the runes with the right kind of eyes, is to nuke Hawaii and piss off the US of A. 

Let’s see, what would the global response be?  Oh, I don’t know, probably China will turn all of North Korea into a glass lake.  China knows if they don’t, the US will.  There is that issue of South Korea being next door, radiation, millions of casualties and so on, but the essential response would be massive, violent and permanent. 

Of course, Kim Jong-Il could just be goofin’ with us, but we really don’t know for sure and he is just nuts enough to try.  We really should get him the Diamond level Hair Club for Men membership, free of charge. Perhaps then he’d eff off and leave the rest of the world alone.

In other comforting news, the Iranian elections are all upside down.  Mahmoud “Mike” Ahmadinejad has either won, straight up, or had pulled off one heck of a sleight of hand move and got caught.  Protesters who technically do not exist, at least to the Iranian media, are beeping and mooing with a fair amount of nerve in a theocratic dictatorship. 

The Iranian government has found that total control of the media doesn’t mean the story is capped, thanks to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the rest of the social media.  Supreme Religious Leader Ali Khomeini has even said “Sit down and shutthefokup”, to no avail.

The Braidwood Enquiry of the RCMP in the Taser death of Robert Dziekansky at Vancouver airport a couple of years ago, had a 500 pound manure bomb dropped on proceedings.  An email between two senior RCMP supervisors suggests that the four officers responding to the airport discussed a plan to use a Taser on Dziekansky before they even got to the airport and knew what was going on.

The email was leaked today and commissioner Thomas Braidwood just about blew a head valve.  Essentially, everyone from the RCMP said they felt threatened by Dziekansky and figured that zapping him five times would be fine.  So would two guys kneeling on his neck as they wrestled him into cuffs.  We’ll overlook the lack of pepper spray, baton, command voice, or even just a boot to the nuts.  Cut to the chase and zap the poor mook.  Ooopsie, he’s dead. 

The Braidwood Enquiry is on hold until September 22 while Commissioner Braidwood has asked the RCMP to “Get your shit square, you assholes and stop jacking me around.  Tell the friggin’ truth or I will take a Taser to your effin’ eyeballs!”  I think that quote might not be accurate, but I can’t tell from here.

At a Wendy’s in Jacksonville Florida this week, an employee got annoyed at another employee, went home, got a gun and shot his colleague dead.  At a Denver McD back on May 21st, a Denver cop felt it was taking too long to fill his order at the drive thru late one night.  He flashed the tin, then waved the piece in a way to encourage faster service.  Even the meat-related automatons at the drive thru recognized the level of hostility as inappropriate. Who says fast food is bad for you?

Next year might not be a great year for motorcar racing.  The Formula One Teams Association has invited the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile to go spoon a goose.  Essentially Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone have run the FIA like their own Dutchy of Grand Fenwick. 

The F1 teams, tired of Max and Bernie behaving like Idi Amin without the charm, are considering putting their own formula and series together.  This would mean Idi Mosley and Bernie Amin would own the pre-eminent motor racing series in the world, with no cars.  The racing might be better:  Significantly quieter, but better. 

Who knows, maybe Montreal will get its’ race back.  The sound of no cars racing around Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, in front of the advertising hoardings sold by the FIA, to finance Ecclestone’s personal Malaysian toast chef or Mosley’s escapades involving professional talent and uniforms.  It could happen.

Finally, the CBC’s Don Newman is hanging it up after 30 years on Parliament Hill.  He was a superlative journalist, of the old skool, where you knew your stuff, asked intelligent questions and didn’t take a sound bite for an answer. 

The eternal mystery however, is Newman’s upper lip.  It never moved.  Ever.  It was like the middle part of his face was carved out of bird’s eye maple, immovable and immutable.  All the federal parties respected Don Newman and at the same time, feared him as he wouldn’t always play softball with the questions.  Which is what a journalist is supposed to do.

Sometimes life intrudes and if your job has a lot of writing in it and your past-time has a lot of writing in it, there comes that point where you don’t want to write, unless the paycheque demands it.  Which sometimes happens. 

Believe it or not, writing takes a fair amount of energy, sometimes physical energy, but also mental energy and for the last few weeks, work has been taking the cycles available.  Oh well.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been outraged here and there and by way of a catch up, here we go:

GM in Chapter 11.  The Poncho brand is gone and GM looking for a buyer for Hummer and Saab, but can’t find a Russian oligarch with enough money, but not quite enough stupidity to buy the two red-headed stepchildren of GM.  Needless to say the couple of thousand dealers who got their walking papers are going to ensure that what’s left of the GM brand is tarred, feathered, keyed and pissed upon from a great height.

Chrysler.  I’m not sure I could actually care less.  Their cars were designed by a cabal of un-medicated bipolars.  They could design the Viper and engineer it with true skill and then turn around and float a turd like the PT Cruiser.  The couple of thousand dealers who took it rectally from Chrysler are also going to ensure that any product that comes out will be tarred, feathered, keyed and pissed on from a great height.

The Chalk River Isotope Fiasco.  Let’s see, AECL knew 30 years ago that the NRU had a 25 year operating life.  That was 20 years into its’ lifecycle as the producer of the majority of the medical isotopes on this planet.  For some reason AECL felt that simple concepts of time and space did not apply to their organization, so they ignored the calendar.  Now NRU is cold and will be for the foreseeable future.  Yet, the folks who run AECL still have jobs and the Minister, who might as well be in the Witless Protection Program, have nothing to say.

Shootings, Stabbings and General Mayhem in Toronto.  It seems that every second day there is a new act of violence here.  If the garbage workers go on strike during Pride Week, we’ll be up to our midsections in trash in a six days.  No, I don’t mean because of Pride Week.  I’m a bit more inclusive than that.  Trashy people can have Pride too.  I’m talking legit garbage.

Iggy and The Psychotic Cuttin’ A Deal.  The Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and the Poster Child for Haloperidol (in massive doses) met three times one day this week and decided not to have a Federal Election this summer.  Nice of them to ask us.  Unfortunately, they’re right.  If we did have an election this summer, the leaders of the various parties would have to campaign by video link, as voters might do them physical harm.

eHealth.  This pool of fermenting fecal matter is so symptomatic of the greasy sense of entitlement that certain sections of society have, that I can’t even get outraged about it.  It’s nothing more than the filthy rich looking after each other with untendered contracts, insane levels of compensation, no financial controls and a whole culture of a wink and nod with millions of tax dollars.  Do they care about actual health care?  Of course not.

The Wayne County Scarlet Airfoils were defeated by the Pittsburgh Flightless Sea Birds.  For some reason the planet continued revolving the next day.  Apparently someone didn’t shake hands with someone else afterwards.  Oh and the Blackberry guy wants a team in Hamilton so bad he’s willing to move all of Hamilton to Arizona, or something like that.  That’s the News in Sports.

I always wondered why people drink to excess.  I’m starting to realize why.

Tomorrow is another jour.  We move on.

It would seem that North Korea’s application for membership in the World Nuclear Club has been re-sent and somehow wound up here.  It hasn’t changed much since 2006.  I have no idea how these things wind up in my inbox…

Name: Kim Jong-Il  Celestial President for Life of Democratic People's Republic of Korea  Platinum Member Hair Club for Men

Address:  1 Presidential Palace, Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea.  Kim Jong-Il, Prop.

Phone:  011 850 1

email: kji@northkorea.kp

Sponsoring Country:  "We get by with a little help from our friends" and Pakistan

Reason for Application:

I let one off on weekend.  About 20 kilotons or so.  Same size as the Fat Man did for Hiroshima in 1945.  Big goddam ball of flame.  Loud sonofabitch.  Measuring new hole now.  Missiles too.

Supporting Evidence:

US all a twitter. Japan is urinating their kimonos.  Russia is quiet as mouse in empty Pyongyang silo.  China annoyed.  India is making giggling and Pakistan is holding parade of celebration for Celestial President for Life of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea next Tuesday.  Israel strangely quiet for Jews who talk with hands and dance in circles.  Frenchers and UK not happy.  Wolf Blitzer said we did.  Plus, seismic squiggles making large amplitudes. 

Demands (Rational):

Increased worldwide attention paid to Celestial President for Life of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Jong-Il. 

More episodes of "Three's Company" written by Kim Jong-Il with original Krissy. 

Old McDonalds in Presidential Square please.  Have much requirement for Fillet O Fish as example of decadent western imperialism and tartar sauce.  Starbucks welcome too.

Need DVD of Susan Boyle  Britisher Talent video plus night scope camera from Sony only not Samsung. 

Demands (Irrational)

Feed populace and place for them to be housed that is not South.  Perhaps in Mexico to obtain American citizenship after voting in elections for Obama 

Ship of oil for Celestial President for Life of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Mercedes-Benz. 

Ship of Nikees in mixed sizes but mostly 11 EEE. 

Noble portrait of Celestial President for Life of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Jong-Il on US Five dollar bill for next year. 

Box seats Yankee Stadium, Blue level near third base line. 

Tennis Lessons from Annika Sorenstram. 

Lasik surgery in Austin Texas. 

Hat of Cheese Head labeled Go Packers Go!

Signed

KJI

Having just finished up a big push at work, I can now take over from Mason Baveux and change the password to the blog account.  I take it he didn’t do anything actionable, did he?  I didn’t find any lawyer’s letters in the mail, or a severed horse head in the bed, so I suppose we can go on.

I got to spend an enjoyable couple of weeks in the Ohio state capital, working like a pit pony, but still having a bit of time to look around, examining the state of the Union, from a Canadian’s outsider point of view.  Which is always a nice way to observe things, as Canadians don’t stick out, at least visually:  This allows us to stay under the radar and watch things.

First off, Ohio is taking a beating economically.  Ohio is a manufacturing state; they make things and we all know how the auto industry is doing.  Layoffs are common, as are foreclosures.  One suburb I drove through, a reasonably middle-class one, had a For Sale sign on every tenth house.  Some were listed as foreclosure properties.  This wasn’t a new suburb, but one that had been in existence, at least by my guesstimate, for seven to ten years.  New enough, but not new-new.  Families, or their banks, had had enough and had pulled the yellow handle.

The media:  There were the usual state and local outrages (“Mayor’s Aide Sells Guatemalan Housekeeper’s Kidney to Saudi Businessman in City Office”) and hours dedicated to the swine flu.  Commercials were almost all local, the predominant advertiser being either a debt consolidation company, or a car dealer with the slogan “Everybody Rides!”, flogging their in-house financing.  Don’t ask what the interest rate might be, as you would have to look up the word usury in the dictionary.

The local newspaper was barely thick enough to mop up a spilled glass of water.  This tells me that editorial consists of two people repackaging AP feeds and doing the cop call every 24 hours.  Ads were almost all car dealers trying to move some inventory, with a smattering of nail and spa shops offering their services. In the classified ads?  More internet job scams that I could actually count.

The folks:  Being in a hotel in the suburbs means you get an odd and not necessarily accurate cross-section of the folks.  Spending some time in a local restaurant and eavesdropping on conversations told me that things were sort of OK, but everyone is sweating it.

Then again, you look around and see a trailer on the back of a year-old pickup truck with a couple of ATV’s on board.  Or shoppers at a local supermarket with full baskets, going through the check out.  Even if Central Ohio is taking a walloping, Columbus is the state capitol, a university town and also has a reasonable sized high-tech and insurance industry to buffer some of the economic wobbles. 

However, I didn’t see that many of the “My Child is an Honor Student at Meadow Lane Elementary School” bumper stickers.  Or, for that matter, too many of the WWJD signs, placards, stickers or tats.  Or at least none of the tats were where I could see them.  Note to those who do have a WWJD tattoo?  I’m fairly certain Jesus wouldn’t have ink, or fifty eight piercings either.  Give it up.

Sports:  Oh hellyeah.  I saw literally thousands of examples of fan-wear, stickers, license plate frames and all the other symptoms of sports zombies let loose in the neighbourhood.  I did catch a few minutes of a sports talk radio show and it was as puerile and moronic as any in Toronto.

Canada.  The few locals I did get to talk with knew what street Toronto was on but were at a loss as to the rest of the country.  This is hardly surprising.  I was asked if Nova Scotia was part of Canada.  I said it used to be, but Holland took it over in 1972, so its now a Dutch protectorate and uses the guilder as currency.  This bait was swallowed whole so I waited for the hook to set, then finally said no, Nova Scotia is still part of Canada:  It’s just that the rest of Canada refuses to admit it.

The other big question was health care.  My explanation is simple.  We traded higher taxes for cradle to grave health care in 1954 and it generally works well enough.  At least you don’t have to declare personal bankruptcy if you break a leg and don’t have health insurance, which is the trade-off we have.

I did get busted for ‘Ooot’, ‘Aboot’ and ‘PROcess’ instead of ‘Awt’, ‘Abawt’ and ‘PRAWcess’, but I can live with that.  It also scared a few folks that I can speak enough French to get along and rarely use ‘Eh?’, which might make me a Bad Canadian in some eyes.  I did manage to redeem myself by using Y’all properly, as a collective noun, verb, adjective, adverb, conjunction, gerund and proper name.

In summary?  The Neighbours are doing OK.  Not great and they’re a bit scared, but they seem to be hanging in.  These days, that’s about all you can hope for.

I read about them GM folks tankin the Pontiac and I got some pissed, just before I got the news that Chrysler was goin to tank the whole shebang.  Now I’s truly pissed.

Pontiac used to be a fine brand of car, back in the day when it was almost upscale from the a Chevy.  That’s how you told things about a person.  If they drove a Chevy, they were OK.  If they drove a Pontiac, they was doing well enough.  Drive an Oldsmobile and you might have been almost wealthy, while the Buick driver was someone who had’er made.  Caddy?  Pimps, doctors and funeral directors drove’em.

It was sort of the same with the Ford and Mercury cars and the Plymouth, Dodge and Chrysler.  But that was a long time ago and things were simpler back when I was a lad, back before metricalization when breaking the ton meant goin more than 100 miles an hour. 

Nowadays you break the ton on the highway just gettin to Timmies, but she’s measured in kilometers, so’s it don’t count.  Oh and Ethyl Lead was on the pumps.

I has had a bunch of cars over time.  First one I remember was a 54 Pontiac with a sun visor over top.  Body By Fisher and black as a well-diggers arse at midnight she was.  Bought it used and it’d overheat in the winter.  I sold it when the head warped like Bobby Hull’s stick. 

There was another Pontiac if I recall rightly, a 1978 Phoenix before they went all front-wheel drive toy cars.  Motor was out of a Buick originally but they slapped a Pontiac badge on it.  Had a high-windin six holer and would go like hell if you pushed her.  Wrote that one off twice, one in a crash and the other time when it rusted out and I couldn’t find enough metal for the pop rivets to keep the cops off my back.  It had a plywood passenger floor for a while. 

I think Gary used it up to the farm to haul wood for a few years, then it just up and died when he forgot to put oil in it three years in a row.

Which I think is my way of sayin, I’m sad about Pontiac going away.  Now the Pontiac is either a Holden out of Australia or some Korean piece of crap that they badge up as anything they want.  Pontiac, Chevy, Kelvinator, Viking.  GM’d label a bag of bread as a Pontiac if there was a buck in it. 

Which I think is whats wrong with GM and Chrysler.  For so long they’d sell crap and we’d buy it, so they stopped tryin. 

Sometimes a good one would slip out.  Back in the 80’s Chevy Canada had built a bunch of cars for Iran, with three on the tree, air, and all the heavy duty suspension out of the cop car division. 

Then some hostage thing happened and they couldn’t ship them to Iran.  Some of the dealers got’em really cheap. 

Problem was they were all in colors like Fawn Green and Chemo Piss Yellow.  As long as you could hold with your friends laughing at you, they were tough, plain bench seats and like friggin anvils.  You had to really work at breakin them.  Which told me they could make a good car if they wanted to, but didn’t.  

Since the disability I don’t have a car no more, as the MTO isn’t keen on my drivin, but I do get into the cars of friends and taxis and the occasional bus, so’s I still keep up.  Most I’ve been in are too small by half and have a motor what sounds like you run a frozen squirrel through a planer, if they make any noise at all.

Davey’s got some appliance from Nissan these days, but she goes well enough for a city car, which is where he does most of his drivin.   

I’d give a buck for a 72 Ford LTD Wagon about now, with that nasty old blue oval 400 what came with the trailer option.  But no fake wood kit, thanks.  Room for at least a dozen cases, all the camping gear and six buddies going away for the May 2-4 weekend.  There was room on the roof rack and the back-back fold down seat well could hold enough Palm Breeze to make Saturday go away for good. 

If you stepped on it, you could hear the secondarys open up and suck the leaves off the trees.  Take out the air filter and you’d scare the pukes on Carling Ave with a station wagon that’s smoke both rears, as the trailer package had a Locker in’er.

I guess that things have changed a lot.  Gas is pricey and the parking spaces aren’t rightly built for a station wagon no more.

Which kinda makes me sad with Pontiac going away and Chrysler goin down the tubes. 

They could’ve done right, but didn’t choose to.

Davey said I could write some more, as he’s still goin like the Battery Bunny on that course he’s writing.  You know, this is hard this bloggery stuff, as you got to think some and do some hunting out the facts.

Like this swine flu.  Everyone’s all up on their back legs that Mexican pigs are going to kill us all with a flu that’ll make your gonads drop off and your eyes turn to cinders just before you wake up at the pearly gates and say what th’ hell was that?

First off, you can’t get it from pigs, even Mexican pigs, so’s its still OK to eat the bacon, or the roasts, or the chops.  It’s called a swine flu as that’s one of the places it came from.  Apparently, she’s also a bit of bird flu and just your normal, garden variety, human flu. 

Flu, yessiree, she’s flu, but the swine part, is like calling all cars Martha’s Arse, as it’s got a big trunk what bounces open from time to time.  It’s still just a car and your car ain’t the same as my car.

Now, as for how you get the Mexican flu?  Well, I looked her up, as Davey said I had to.

When somebody sneezes on you, there’s a bunch of microscopic snots and wet spots what come flying out.  That’s where the little flu bugs live.  On the snots and wet spots. Not that kind of wet spot.  These are microscopic small wet spots what you need a microscope for to see’em.

The bugs can live outside your body for a while and that’s how they get from one person to the other.  They need a way into your body and here’s how they do it.  You know when you got one of them dry air February boogers back in there, that feels like you’ve got a half a tablespoon of pearl barley up your nose? 

Well, as soon as you go diggin, the flu bugs what you might have on your finger decide “Jeeze that’s a fine booger vault, I’ll go live there”, then they jump off while you’re up to the second knuckle.  Or, if you rub your eyes.  Or eatin a sandwich.  That’s all she takes.  One little bug and only one time, in just one place in.

Once inside, the little bugger starts multiplying like Evangelicals without condoms.  Soon you got the shits, the shakes, the pukes and the snots.  That would be the flu.  Any flu.  Swine, Bird, Fish, Sofa, 24 bottle, 40 ounce, five day, ten day, don’t matter.  The flu.

The scary damn part is all the things what live on your hands.  Now do some thinking.  How many door handles, elevator buttons, excalator hand rails, titless tellers and other things do you touch every day? 

It’s a jeezly big number and then add up all the other people what touched them just before you and just after.  Another jeezly big number, but with a capital J.  Jeezly big. 

Up the line here, it’s not as much as a problem, but in the city now, think of just the excalators in the Subway.  Everybody holds onto them and I’s willing to bet there’s some prick what’s just cleaned his cat’s litter box then gone to work and not so much as spit on his hands.  On that excalator is the bugs from his cats arse goin round and round just waitng for someone to glom onto.  Well, the same’s true for the flu bugs. 

Next time you’re out shopping or going to work on the transit, pull your head out of your arse for a moment and look around.  Folks coughing and sneezin and not so much as a hanky or kleenex in front of their pie and snot holes, spraying crap everywhere. 

All it takes is one prick with the swine flu is to sneeze one off at the Danforth station and he’s gone and thrown a zillion bugs all over the place, right next to a couple of hundred other folks on the Subway.

Davey told me something a while back.  There’s an international airport in Toronto, what gets flights from all over the world.  In twenty-four hours, maybe less, he could be in Bangkok, havin sharkfin soup, then be back in Toronto the next day, having been walking around half-way round the world, then right back to his place in Mississauga, exposed to every goddam bug you could imagine.  All it’d take is money and time and not a lot of skill, except being bored stupid long enough to take the airplanes.

Now, if I’da gone to Bangkok, it wouldn’t be for no soup.  And it wouldn’t be just for a day.  I think what he’s trying to say is that we’re awful close to everyone else these days and there’s not much we can do about it, except look out for ourselves first.

You know your mom told you to wash up after using the shitter.  There was a reason she told you that.  It was to get them invisible bugs off your skin.  Soap and water.  It ain’t complicated.  Soap and water.  Even I get it.

Second, them Nurse Nancy masks?  Ain’t worth a shit.  The flu bugs are smaller than Harper’s brain and some piece of cloth won’t stop much but the big chunks.  And the bugs can still get in through your eyes, as the tear ducts are all connected up to your sinuses and a moist like a nose hole.  The Swine Flu don’t care.  Swallow’em, breathe’em, rub’em.  Don’t matter. 

There are masks what are designed for stopping the flu bugs, but they gotta fit perfectly every time and they’re not cheap.  Like $10-$12 a go and if they’re off of place just a bit, whoops!  In comes the Swine Flu, and that’s assuming there’s none on your hands, what’s been on the excalator on the Subway with fourteen thousand of your closest friends this morning.

So’s it looks to me like about the only way you can not get any bugs is to wrap yourself in drycleaner plastic for the next forty days and live in the basement, under a tarp.

Instead of that, how bout this:

If you’re gonna sneeze or cough, cover your goddam face with a hanky, or a kleenex or cough into your arm.  Something.  Anythng.  Don’t just let’er wail all over everyone.  Ain’t polite and ain’t healthy neither.  I don’t want your snots and wet spots, thanks.

Two:  Wash your goddam hands with soap and water a lot.  They say it takes a full fifteen seconds to wash your hands right.  Just slucing off the piss drops isn’t good enough.  Soap’em up and rinse them off.  Your hands I mean.

Three:  Don’t be licking door handles, unless you know where’s the door handle’s been and who’se been touching it in the last couple of weeks.

Four:  If you’ve got the flu, stay the hell home.  If you sneeze on me, you’re going to find out what bugs I’ve got on my right hand, as I’m gonna punch you one in the mouth, ya inconsiderate arsehole.

Five:  Beer is always around 5 percent alcohol, which is plenty to kill the flu bugs, if your pour beer on your hands.  That’s a terrible waste of good beer.  Too bad you can’t kill the flu bugs by drinkin the beer, as I could get behind that kind of medicine.

Six:  I got nothing here, so’s I guess I’m done.  Thanks for reading.  Now go wash your hands.      

I’m up against some deadlines at work, so I got our esteemed pinch-hitter Mason Baveux to fill in.  I’ll be back as soon as possible.  Mason? 

Thanks now Dave.  We got some catching up to do here, so we’re goin to do it like short snappers for ten points.  Get your hand on the buzzer, as here we go!

Economy:  In the shitter.  Bad like.  There’s been all kind of stories about folks gettin laid off for nothing worse than having to take an afternoon off to get a spear out of their skull.  That ain’t right.  Turn up pregnant?  Kiss you job good bye and to hell with what the laws says.  That really ain’t right.

Pensions:  If it weren’t for the disability, I’d a been down at the Queens Park today offereing to give Dolthead McGuinty a spare hole.  Them folks at GM who paid into the pensions for 30 years damn well deserve their full pension.  They paid into it, GM agreed to match the money and the Province agreed to insure it.  What the hell are we still talking about it for? 

Dolthead gets his pension, no matter what, so’s what so different about a GM worker or a guy who spent 35 years on the line at Chrysler.  Friggin lawyers.  Do whats right Dolthead, as you ain’t Mike Harris, or is you?

The Leafs:  Don’t make me laugh, my lips are chapped.  Same with the Sens.  I’ve seen better jokes at the amputee mime festival.  The Canadiens are goin’ golfing shortly.

Harper:  He’s was douchebag during the campaign.  Still is.

RCMP Zapping people:  Seems like someone can’t get their stories straight at that Robby Dzerchansky inquiry.  They put the tazer to him five times, when all the really needed to do was put the boots to him.  I ain’t met anyone yet, no matter what language they speak, who don’t understand a nightstick across the forearm and a boot to the nuts.  It means get the hell down and shut the hell up. 

But noooo, the Mounties have to go all technical and wind up electrocuting the guy five times.  No wonder he’s dead but then the Mounties can’t get their stories straight.  Jeeze lads, look at the effin tape and at least try to be close to what you see.  If you frigged it all up, at least say so.  All I hear is four guys tap dancing around the facts so hard they’re wearing out the carpet.  Man up a bit.

Conquest Vacations going mammaries up:  I don’t know about that, but i bet someone is gettin paid twice.

Obama:  So far, so good.  He’s running 6 for 10 so far, but at least he’s talking about draggin Cheney into court with Rumsfeld and a couple of other arseholes.  ‘Cept the economy is in the ditch and the bankers are laffin’ all the way to their Swiss bank accounts.  I’d be draggin in some bankers too. 

Roll Up The Rim:  Timmy’s did their contest again.  I didn’t win so much as a free Dutchie, never mind the SUV or the lotion massage from Charlize Theron.

Mexican drug lords:  Fer shiite sakes lads, if there’s money to be made, there’s someone whats going to get a gun and steal it.  We been fightin a War on Drugs since Ronnie Regan and we haven’t so much as won a battle, let alone the war. 

Give it up.  Sell it like booze, except you need to show ID every time, then tax the snot out of it, like smokes.  If you want to go all wacky on the tabaky, go for it.  Just don’t drive the car.  Stay home and get all stupid as much as you want. 

I’m thinking we need more stupid people as our leaders, as the ones what are supposed to be really smart, sure haven’t done that good.  Maybe its time for the stupid to give’er a go

Seasons:  I smelled that Spring smell a couple of weeks ago. Smells like dog poop thawing out, so’s it must be spring here.  That and the flooding in Manitoba are usually a dead giveaway that I can get my summer hat out.  That would be the CAT hat, instead of the Wilton Cheese hat. 

Wind turbines:  A note to the guys what want to run all the electricity off them wind turbines?  Don’t put’em too close to houses until we figure out if people gettin the shakey jakes from the turbines is real or fake.  Rather than putting up one big jeezly one, maybe two or three smaller ones might do’er.

Susan Boyle:  She’s a fine figure of a woman and can sing like an angel.  Even if she goes all Hollywoody and gets her own reality show, I still like how she sings.  Until she cold-cocks her personal assistant with a cell phone, give her a break.

Bacon:  It it just me, or is bacon getting so thin you can do shadow puppets through it.  In my day, bacon actually had more than two dimensions.  Now what they’re calling bacon looks like a photo of bacon that you can eat.  I want the old kind of bacon, that you could actually pick up without it shattering like Mrs. Bernies hip replacement.

Omar Khodder:  (I don’t think I spelled his name right there, but you know the guy I mean.  The one the Americans put in Gitmo when he was fifteen)  Bring him home, as he’s Canadian and was a kid soldier.  Stick him in Millhaven if you want, but we look after our folks first.  I’m not saying he’s not guilty, or guilty, but after five years the Americans can’t even prove he was there, so somebodies bullshitting us.  Oh, thats right.  Douchebag Harper is our Prime Minister, so what the courts say don’t matter none.

Cell Phones:  It is just me, or does everyone have one growing out of their heads these days.  I swear I saw an infant in a stroller goin “goo goo” on his cellphone to him mom, not four feet away, who was on her cellphone.  If that keeps happening, the next generation is going to have one arm that’s only five inches long, just enough to hold a phone to their ear.  Maybe somebody should teach the kids how to fly kites or catch frogs.

That’s all I got. I know Dave’s been busy, so’s I might get to write more.  It’s up to him.

Light a candle and open the bubbly as today is the 40th anniversary of Request For Comment 1 for the ARPA Network.  The date was April 7th, 1969.

Essentially this means it is the Birthday of the Internet (with the capital I), this collection of components that allows you to read what I’m posting.  Underlying all this technology was the original thinking of how do we get computers to send and receive messages from each other.  To be more accurate, RFC 1 is the beginning of talking about how to get computers talking in real time.

Forty years later, broadband connectivity is common enough in many countries, that it is taken for granted, like safe water, clean food and air that can actually be inhaled without too many undue effects.  Which also explains that ‘puter on your desk and you reading the posting of some wank in Mississauga, even though Mississauga is several thousand kilometres away for some of you.

In the Olde Days, pre-NCSA Mosaic, networks like FreeNet, GEnie, Compuserve and AOHell provided the platform for rudimentary communications between regular humans.  BBS’s flourished, offering almost-real-time communications and an array of boards for every possible subject you could imagine.  There were also some boards you didn’t want to imagine. 

With those first rudimentary connections, you could talk with someone on the other side of the world, from a different culture and mindset, albeit using text, but communicating just the same.  Conceptually, we would know the Other Folks better, because we’ve sat down and had a virtual coffee with them, knowing that their fears, worries and joys are very much the same as our fears, worries and joys. 

Conceptually, we would become closer as a species, able to navigate the wisdom of the best and the brightest, posted online, for all to see.  Libraries of the collected knowledge would flourish, providing the reference works and links to other sources that would speed the development of such wonders that we wouldn’t be able to recognize ourselves in a decades’ time.

And we could swap recipes, of course, as that was always the real reason you spent a several thousand dollars to get one of the earliest Personal Computers.  You are finally going to organize those recipes, aren’t you?   

So, with this magical pipe, what have we managed to create that would make the initial commentators to RFC 1 proud of us?

Well, there’s porn.  409/Nigerian Bank scams.  Live stock market feeds.  Google as a noun and verb. (nous googleons, ils googlent)  ASCII Art.  LOLCats.  Goatse.  Ebaums soundboards.  Online poker.  Facebook.  Hulu’ing America’s Funniest Home Videos.  EagleCams.  iPods.  Smiles.  iPhone.  Crackberry.  ILoveYou viruses. More porn.  Work from home scams.  Amazon rankings.  Ebay rankings.  Alexa rankings.  Technorati rankings.  craigslist.  LLBean.  Online support groups for Everything.  TwoGirlsOneCup. Celebrity info up the rear portcullis.  Ananova.  Astrology for your pets.  Babelfish. Twitter.  Wikipedia and its tremulous grip on facts.  DrudgeReport.  Elf Bowling.  Java Choplifter.  Flash movies.  More porn.  Printed newspapers falling like leaves.  Webisodes.  Fanboy groups.  The collected wit of David Hobbs.  Massive Multiplayer Online Games/Groups/Societies/Civilizations.  Solitaire.  Avatars. Bejewelled.  And porn.

How did we do? 

With GM and Chrysler taking union bashing to new heights, it is incumbent to examine exactly why.  Especially since Air Canada is circling the drain again and will start mooing and beeping about union contracts.

First off, by way of disclosure, I have been a dues-paying union member in the past, specifically CUPE and NABET in previous careers, but I have also been a small business owner.  Yes, I am a capitalist.  Yes I believe that profit is good.  Damn good.  And yes, I have seen how unions work.  Calm down and take a few deep breaths ok?

The reason unions first came into being was because employers treated their cattle better than they treated their employees.  Only a few generations ago, being killed on the job was considered normal.  The employer would cuss and say “You shiftless buggers cost this company a half-days’ production so you could remove what was left of McGarry’s remains from the machinery.  What the hell does he need a Christian burial for now?  We’re taking the cost of repairs out of his last day’s wages.  No, his wife can’t have the day off for the funeral.  Back to work!”   

Only a generation or two ago, being shot or beaten for mentioning the word ‘union’ or ‘collective bargaining’ was common.  Many industries had company police who made sure that organizers got their heads cracked on a regular basis.  Go ask any old-time mine worker (if there’s any left alive now) about the old days.

The old joke is is “What did a union ever do for us?”  The five-day work week.  Pensions.  Health Care.  Maternity Leave.  Occupational Health and Safety Standards.  Limits on hours of work.  Standards of Employment. Employment Equity and Fairness.  Minimum Wage.  Employment Insurance. These are all things that unions fought to get and still fight for.    

An aside:  The obvious reason a business gets a union is because they have a history of treating their people like crap.  Well-treated, engaged, fairly-compensated employees rarely form unions.  It isn’t complicated:  Treat the employees with respect, even in tough times and they tend not to go union. 

Unionization adds a layer of complexity, but simplifies things at the same time.  Both sides get a set of written rules to play by in the form of a contract:  You do this, we do this and this is the way we settle problems.

To be fair and balanced, unions have also crossed the line a few times.  One situation I know about was a company called Taggart Transport.  The owner was a former driver who made it big, owned his own fleet and understood the people working for him.  The owner paid more than the union contract and treated his people well.  Consequently he has a successful medium-large size, profitable, business.   

Any time a particular union (the name you could guess) tried to organize Taggart, the Taggart drivers would shrug and say no thanks.  Why sign up for less money per hour and have to pay dues on top of it?  There was more than one occasion when bad things would happen.  The true finesse move was tying a length of rope to a concrete block and making sure it was at windshield height on the opposite side of an overpass. 

If a Taggart rig was whistling down the then-new 401 expressway, for some reason, that tethered concrete block would fall off the overpass and wind up in front of the truck.  Of course the physics involved in a 30 pound concrete block hitting the windshield of a truck doing 60 miles an hour would be quite the attention grabber.  One could call it a unique form of communications, the message being “Sign a union card, or die.”  It didn’t help the union to recruit any new members.

In Canada, unions have generally been level-headed.  The British union mindset of walking off the job for six weeks because someone moved a lunch box never really played out here.  The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) has very much been a partner with GM, Ford and Chrysler, in holding down wages and increasing productivity, as well as cutting benefits for retired workers, rolling back hours and doing everything rational and reasonable to help the auto makers stay in business. 

Reality doesn’t actually matter in the court of Pubic Relations, as the bottom falls out of GM and Chrysler.  All that matters is someone else is to blame for the crap products and unions are as handy a target as any.  At least this time the Big Three are not screaming about the Yellow Peril of Japanese imports.

Which leads us to the future of unions.  For many the simple act of having a job is a good thing these days.  Even if you are treated like a piece of dirt by an employer whose definition of being supportive is to demand more unpaid overtime and threaten to fire you if you don’t agree, you shut up and keep working.

In that kind of nasty corporate culture, the only people who get anything are the workplace consultants.  The company wakes up one day and figures that morale is low.  So they hire a consultant who gives out $1 coffee mugs with “Teamwork” emblazoned on the side and demands that the company run ‘quality circles’ to improve productivity and morale. 

The consultant pockets big fees, the employer gets to feel like he’s done something and the folks who do the work look for another job; not caring if the company lives, dies, or engages in a form or matrimony with a barnyard animal.  That kind of company will go under, the owner complaining about how disloyal his people were and how crippling labour costs can be.

I call Bullshit.  Management is where the mistakes are made.  The union folks at GM didn’t design the Pontiac Aztek, winner of the Most Hideous Car for four years running.

Nobody from the CAW decided to give Celine Dion a zillion bucks to be the spokesmeat for the Chrysler Pacifica.  Do you know anyone who actually owns a Chrysler Pacifica?  FEMA bought the last of them and uses them as temporary housing in New Orleans now that the trailers have rotted out. 

Nobody with a union card insisted that GM import the Daewoo Douchebag (a car that even Koreans laugh at) and rebadge it as the Chevy Sphincter.

Nobody in a union at Ford could have engineered the Ford Aerostar, Windstar and Freestar that badly, even as a gag, while drunk.  Listen closely and you can hear them rust away on a damp day.   

But we’re going to punish the unions just the same.  

In a couple of examples of how to exactly not improve things, two CEO’s have walked the plank.  First out was Rick Wagoner from GM. Pushed or jumped doesn’t actually matter, Wagoner is gone from GM.  Over at Air Canada, Monte Brewer, the CEO is gone, the airline wobbling around the cusp of bankruptcy.  Again.

Union bashing is going to be listed as an Olympic sport in the auto industry shortly, then in the airline business, as the numbers get jiggered, smoke and mirrors predominating.  The numbers being tossed around regarding what union folks make in the car business are so absurd as to be almost laughable, if it weren’t that people with axes to grind, actually believe them.

First off, union members at GM do not make $78 an hour.  That number is the total cost of having an employee, unionized or not.  The rule of thumb is take the maximum hourly wage and double it. 

That’s the cost of the wages, as well as support services like HR, management, payroll, water, toilets, lights, administration, interest payments and earnings, operating expenses, depreciation, withholding taxes, Employment insurance premiums, mandatory health care premiums and all the other expenses that go into having a business with more than one employee. 

The business (like GM, or Air Canada) gets to deduct all those expenses from their pre-tax income to reduce the corporate taxes, which is conveniently overlooked in the name of shareholder value. 

According to some industry spokesmeat, Toyota, a non-union automaker, have employee costs around $50 per head.  Which might even be true, if you don’t add all the the usual costs associated with having an employee.  Sure sounds like those damnable unions have hamstrung GM and Chrysler, right? 

No, it’s a paper shuffle comparing apples to wood chips, to justify GM and Chrysler demanding a $28 dollar cut in wages from those lazy union sluggards.  I’m being ironic here, don’t get angry.

The same paper game is going to be played shortly at Air Canada, as the national flag carrier is about to go into the toilet for the second time in five years.  The argument is going to be labour costs again.  Those dirtbag union members and lazy high-paid pilots are just crushing our nuts, while over at Westjet, their cost per seat mile is so much lower, as they don’t have unions. 

Funny how it will sound exactly the same as the GM vs.. Toyota cost argument, comparing apples to wood chips again. 

Which leads to the real story:  The end of unions.  Which would be a posting later in the week.

I’m busy doing some work-related work and travelling here and there.  In my stead, I gave our esteemed guest commentator Mason Baveux the login to the blog.  What’s the worst that could happen, right?

Thanks lad fer the logging rights.  I don’t see no trees here, even them virtual ones. 

OK then, Earth Hour.  The deal is we’re supposed to shut down the lights and turn off the cable from half-past 8 to half-past 9 o’clock tonight.  Supposed to show were all organic, drive a Volvo station wagon and wear them freak sandals with black socks.

First off, I looked out the window last time we did this.  Didn’t see nobody turn off the lights.  Didn’t see nobody down in the park all holdin hands around a campfire singing Koombayah or nothin. 

Didn’t even seem to matter to some arsewipe who decided to up and die, as the ambulance had to fetch him to the hospital.  Then again, maybe his missus decided to go Earth Hour and turned off his ventilator to save on the hydro. I dunno.

Now the high ideal here is a good one.  Don’t use so much hydro as you used to.  What they said is that if we use less juice, then we don’t have to burn as much coal and that means the Earth ain’t gonna warm up as fast, toastin us all to crumbs by June.  I can buy that.  I might not have gone to a bunch of fancy schools, but Jeezus Jimmy Jones the winters gone right stupid and last summer was up and down like a toilet seat.  And shes been that way for a few years now.

I’m not all convinced about the science, as half of its over me head and the rest of it, I don’t understand worth a shit, but theres some who do and it sort of smells like there’s a bit of truth in her. 

Which means I’ll do my bit, if you will.  I’m not gonna get a Volvo and start eatin Tofoo, but you know, we’re all in this shit together, so if we all take a slice, then theres less to go around.

But i got me a problem:  The curling is on now.  Womens Worlds Championships.  Damn good curling too.  Our girls are kickin arse and takin names as they should, but we’re only in it for the bronze.

Seems the Sweeds and the Chinese are the ones going for the gold.  Sweeds I can see, but the Chinese?  Holy Mary and Joseph!  When did China start curling?  Did they start breeding em in 1995 and send the two year olds to a special school after they was weaned?

I’m what the counsellor at the Center calls “conflicted”.  Meaning I want to do the right thing by the planet, but damn, there’s curling on.  So’s I’m going to go do both.  I’ll turn off the beer fridge for a hour, as its an extra fridge just for beer and she’ll keep cold enough for an hour, as Red Cap doesn’t get that warm that quick in a cooler full of ice.  I was thinking ahead you know.

I’ll turn off the lights and stop the neighbour from welding up some of his arsehole ‘art’ on a Saturday night, but dammit I’m watching the curling.

Earth Hour.  Do your part and we won’t have to eat as much shit this summer.  Now that’s a fine slogan!

The inbox is a sad place some days.  Over the last few days, it would seem that a distant relative has died, leaving significant sums of money unclaimed in the Ecomas Bank of Lome-Togo. 

Also, there would seem to be $22 million waiting for me in the Standard Chartered Bank of Ghana, the proceeds of which, I can have 30%, from the selling of rails, steel, copper and crude oil, as long as I’m willing to help.

This doesn’t include the missive from Edward Peters and Associates, encouraging me to help them transfer money that might be confiscated by the Bank as an unclaimed inheritance.  Of course, I’ll be listed as the next of kin.

Golly, a distant relative (a P.Eng no less) never before known, living in Togo, kicked it and left no inheritor.  If only I could remember…

Ah yes, Uncle Estes Smith.  A distant cousin of my grandfather, who, in the 1930’s fought with the Republicans in Spain.  He was wounded in a battle near Barcelona and was sent to El Taref province in Algeria to convalesce.  In the hospital, as the days passed and the patients recovered, boredom set in.  Gambling was rife in the wards and through the clever turn of a 9 of Spades, Estes Smith wound up owning the majority share of a bordello in Casablanca.

Upon discharge from the hospital, Estes traveled to Casablanca and ensconced himself in the proprietor’s suite at Le Chat Noir, a luxurious whorehouse catering to the very kinky whims of Captains of Industry, Diplomacy and Politics. 

Unbeknownst to Uncle Estes, agents of the German National Socialist Party had installed an elaborate and very well engineered electronic eavesdropping system in the various rooms of the house.  One Tuesday Uncle Estes confronted a youthful Aryan man fiddling with some mysterious boxes in the basement and uncovered the rig.  A .45 calibre gun was involved, to Estes benefit, as Casablanca was a troubled city in those days and Uncle Estes was nothing if not prepared for trouble.

In exchange for his life,  Johann joined Estes as a partner, with an equitable split of the work:  Johann would do all of it.  Estes would take the data not concerned with the war and Johann would have the political information. 

Johann didn’t know that Uncle Estes worked informally with the British Security Coordination office in New York City, as Uncle Estes was a one-time gin crony of William Stephenson.  Not only was economic information being transmitted surreptitiously to the Hydra receiver near Oshawa, thence to New York, but political information regarding the opening of a Second Front during the war (Operation Torch) came back to Le Chat Noir to be ‘found’ by the dim-witted Johann.

After the War, Uncle Estes moved into a life of leisure.  The war had been good for Estes, as using information from Le Chat Noir, had allowed him to almost completely corner the market on vanadium, a strategic metal for the arms industries on both sides.  There were rumours of blackmail of Vichy officials who had patronised Le Chat Noir, but that was also said about the general staff of Allies after the Torch landings.  Apparently Estes travelled to California, in the post-war years, tiring of Casablanca. 

There seems to be a gap or two in Estes’ history, the Hollywood Period, perhaps for good reason.  There were rumours that he was involved with the same woman who was a companion of Efrem Zimbalist Sr.  Some of the rumours involved a company called EG&G and Howard Hughes, but nothing was ever said to confirm or deny things.  Nevada and Havana were occasionally mentioned in the very infrequent letters.

It would seem that after his Hollywood period, Estes returned to Africa, as the “coordination of aviation” for both the Belgian Congo and Rhodesia, which might explain some of the Howard Hughes rumours.  There are stories of DC-3’s landing in areas where there were no airports and uniforms for the pilots from a warehouse in Langley Virginia.

If Uncle Estes wound up in Togo, with a fat bank account, then I wouldn’t be surprised.  If the lawyer in Togo told me that Uncle Estes died while boinking two double-jointed, bisexual, Peruvian gymnasts, that wouldn’t surprise me either.

Perhaps I should communicate with Barrister Anwuru Ben Obodo, Esq, regarding Uncle Estes’ Estate.  Uncle Estes must have died a decade or more ago.

Or, perhaps we’ll just let sleeping dogs lie. 

Godspeed Uncle Estes.  We hardly knew ye.