Bigger conglomerates building crappier stuff...

That pretty much sums up the arc of progress, doesn't it?

Time was, manufacturers took pride in building durable, reliable, and quality products. In case you haven't noticed, those days are largely behind us.

Nowadays, one conglomerate with manufacturing facilities in China will push out hundreds of thousands of you-name-its, whether they be washing machines or lawn tractors, under half a dozen different brand names, all of which are fully expected to be replaced within five years or less. The idea that you should take pride in building a quality product that can last a lifetime is so ancient...

Speaking of lifetimes, the Farm Manager and I attended a birthday bash today for a family friend who was celebrating his 94th. Took along the 89 year old Bubbinator. Their paths used to cross all the time thanks to the Owen Sound Little Theatre. Earl was a patron and his late wife an occasional actor, while Bubby was for decades the beating heart of that outfit.

Also present at the party was a Syrian gentleman of my recent acquaintance. Nash is in his 80's and he's not a newcomer. I think he's been in this country longer than I have. The reason the dude fascinates me is that he's a genuine cannabis whisperer. He was keen on hearing how my crop (two plants) was faring this year.

Fifty-fifty, I said. Half my crop unexpectedly turned male when it was about three feet high. The other half is promising a very decent yield. Think "elephant sticks." If you weren't a pot aficionado fifty years ago that reference might be meaningless to you, but it's a good thing.

Nash gave me some hints on how I could improve the odds for my cuttings. He's a seriously smart guy who is in demand as a consultant for some of those Bay Street wankers who ended up owning Canada's legal weed market, thanks to PM Fluffy.

As you recall, Fluffy was elected in no small part due to his promise to legalize pot. What he neglected to mention on the campaign trail was that his legalization gambit was premised entirely on making sure the corporate sector was handed the market, instead of legitimizing the mom-and-pop growers who have kept weed science alive for the last hundred years.

That was merely one of Justin's bait-and-switch shenanigans. He got a lot of votes from folks who still harboured happy thoughts about the reign of his dear daddy. Pierre was his opposite, a Canadian nationalist who pulled no punches when it came to our relationship with the elephant next door. Pierre was all in for an independent foreign policy. Justin is all in for making sure we don't offend the Trump-Bolton-Pompeo axis of virtue.

That's why we're discussing the 19 billion dollar purchase of fighter planes and a 60 billion dollar warship building program... in a country that can't afford to ensure our Indian Reservations have drinkable water.  After all, ensuring "interoperability" with the armed forces of "our allies," meaning Uncle Sam, is going to be way more important than clean water once the Ruskies snowshoe over the North Pole to invade us.

To say nothing of the Yellow Peril...


The day began with a bit of a scare. My dear Hanna was up for a brief visit. She's been in Toronto for the last seven or eight years, collecting various university degrees that have thus far failed to improve on the income she makes from that Iranian food-truck operator. I think she's finally on a good track; starts an MSW degree at U of T next week. Hopefully that will get her out of Hoonan's food trucks once and for all.

So Hanna has her turn in the shower, and whoopsie... there's no more water!

I panicked. Last time this happened it took multiple trips to Home Hardware and a couple of YouTube videos to sort things out. Ya, I know; I'm one of those geezers who still wants to fix everything himself.

I had a party to go to, and no time for Home Hardware or YouTube. I was just pissed off that I was denied a shower.

Long story short, when someone, anyone, (I'm not mentioning any names) has a 45 minute shower, both the hot water tank and the pressure tank will run dry. By the time we got back from the birthday bash everything was functioning normally again.


What a relief!

Twelve years of university for temp contracts with no benefits?

That's how the world of post-secondary education works these days.

I was gratified to hear from my dear daughter that my future son-in-law finally found a paying job - right back at the university where he got his Doctor Phil!

Yup, he's a contract "program coordinator" who will have the benefit of re-applying for his job every six months. That's his only benefit.

At least he's got "critical thinking skills."

According to Mark Kingswell in a recent Globe op-ed, that's what they're teaching kids in university these days.

Critical thinking.

Kingswell is a tenured prof at the same university where my future son-in-law is making considerably less money than I'd make if I put on a welding helmet again.

For championing the benefits of a university education, Kingswell pulls down $166,000 + per year.

After going full-bore down that road, my PhD (Chem, U of T) son-in-law makes less than a half-way competent welder.

Time to activate those critical thinking skills dude!


Either that or catch some Breaking Bad reruns...

Spring's sprung

Me and the Farm Manager were sitting on the front porch this afternoon, enjoying the warm weather, when the first guy of the season in bicycle pants rode by.

A sure sign that spring has sprung. There's a cycling club in Owen Sound that has the road in front of Falling Downs as part of their regular 50k loop. These folks always remind me of the punchline to one of Jeff Foxworthy's jokes; "if Burt Reynolds can't get down that river a Frenchman in bicycle pants doesn't stand a chance."

Too bad I can't remember the joke that was the punchline to...

I actually did a lot of cycling in my time. Back in my U of Goo days I used to pass cars coming down the Gordon Street hill. No bicycle pants, no helmet, just a Raleigh 18 speed weaving in and out of traffic after a Sociology of Poverty class and a four hour stint at the campus pub.

Those were the days!

But these days are pretty good too.

Just yesterday I put the canoe in across the road and paddled my way down to Bass Lake. That's a small lake by local standards, but it houses a few dozen cottages and a trailer park. Shame about the trailer park. You'd be hard pressed to find a cottage on that lake for under 400 thousands, but you can rent a trailer site for a hundred bucks a month. On the same lake.

Go figure.

They don't call it a "trailer park," of course; it's a "holiday resort."

Sure it is!

That Bass Lake canoe trip only happens in the spring, when the water's high. In another month I'll be able to walk down the Indian River in rubber boots and reach Bass Lake without getting my socks wet.

Nothing much in my national newspaper of record this weekend. Marcus Gee had a nice take-down of Richard Florida. He was a hot commodity a few years back when U of T hired him. An apostle of intelligent development I suppose you could call him.

Not sure what that means. I've bumped into more than a few folks in that business in my time, and none of them were stupid.

Short-sighted? Greedy? Selfish?

Maybe... but stupid?

Nope.

So Florida is having second thoughts about the thesis that brought him fame and fortune and a tenured post at U of T. Gather up all the young creative disrupters you can and turn them loose on your town. Great things will happen!

Mostly what's happened is the young creatives can no longer afford to live in Toronto.

So it was a beautiful canoe trip. You don't really get into cottage country till you're three quarters of the way down the lake. There was still spots of snow on the ground here and there and I set out a little apprehensive; after all, the historical record of me and canoe trips would suggest there's at least a 50/50 chance of ending up in the drink.

Thank goodness I beat the odds yesterday. The water was really really cold and I couldn't find a life-jacket anywhere.

Doug Saunders had a bit of a mystifying opinion piece in the paper, all about George Soros. Here's the head-scratcher that caught my eye; "One of Europe's most important higher education institutions, Central European University..."

Huh?

CEU was founded twenty-five years ago and has less than 1500 students. We're talking about Europe here. Universities are hundreds of years old and have tens of thousands of students. By what metric might CEU be considered one of Europe's most important higher education institutions?

Come on, Doug. You destroy your own cred with that kind of hyperbole.

But I suppose it can be deemed important in the context of writing hagiography for Soros. CEU is a Soros project from end to end, and Doug's opinion piece this weekend was determined to show the old greed-bag in a good light.

Soros is certainly an interesting character study. On the one hand, he lobbies for higher taxes on billionaires like himself. On the other, he's not shy about availing himself of every tax dodge he can.

On one hand he likes to portray himself as a victim of Antisemitism.  In Israel he's widely considered one of the greatest Antisemites of the modern era.

Soros has partnered for many years with the National Endowment for Democracy, the US government funded "NGO" working non-stop to make the world safer for Soros-style financial looting. By and large it's a strategy that has worked well.

There's the odd hiccup, however. Hungarian president Oban for one has seen through the "open society" schtick, as in being "open" to world class billionaire currency speculators like Soros doesn't necessarily mean good things for the man or woman on the ground in Budapest. Hence the squabble over Soros U.

At no point does Saunders address the obvious elephant in the room; billionaires just have too much money. Whether it's the Koch boys spreading Tea Party goodness or Soros pushing his "open society" agenda, a little tweaking of the tax code would go a long way toward cutting out this foolishness.

We live in messed up times. Former Soros business partner and fellow billionaire, current POTUS Donny J did a 180 on US foreign policy the other day because he saw some "beautiful babies" die on TV.

The Tomahawks were in the air before you could ask for an independent  investigation into that alleged war crime.

It's all too much for me. I think I'll just sit tight and plan my next paddle.

Anatomy of a dismal weekend

I see where there may be some conspiracy theories brewing re: the demise of Justice Scalia. Found dead on a remote ranch in Texas? My guess is he was watching the NBA all-star boondoggle and couldn't take the excitement.

Well, as they say, when your time is up, your time is up. If that hadn't finished him off I'm guessing he would have succumbed to the Grammys tonight. Speaking of which, since when are the Grammys on Monday night? WTF is up with that?

There I was cosied up in the La-Z-Boy in front of the TV last night, waiting for the Grammys to come on...

Waiting...

...and waiting...

And waiting some more, and guess what?

No fucking Grammys!

No, the shifty fucks have moved them to Monday night, if such a thing can even be imagined...

Whatever.

So it looks like Junior is off to U of T in the fall to study the dismal science. Called up a couple of dismal scientists I know and they claim that's a reasonable enough choice. Frankly, I thought they could have done a little more on the scholarship end of things. If I gotta re-mortgage the place to put a kid through school I would have preferred he go to Wharton.

Like Donald Trump.

Flaming Pinko steps down as Dean of Canada's top business school

What with the pre-play-off lull in NHL games on the TV schedule, I found myself watching a Steve Pakin interview with Roger Martin, out-going Dean of the Rotman School of Business at U of T.

Well holy shit! I had no idea the guy was a communist!

Ya, I know; he's pretty sly about covering his tracks...

Covering his tracks under something both he and Pakin refer to as "democratic capitalism."

Ponder that for more than two seconds and you'll see what I mean.

Democratic capitalism equals socialism as sure as medical marijuana means lets get a glow on!

No doubt he will be replaced at the faculty by some dyed-in-the-wool neoliberal who will celebrate the triumph of finance capital and cleanse the Rotman ranks of commie sympathizers.