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!
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Thursday, August 29, 2019
YOU MUST GET MORE STUFF!!!
For roughly the first fifty years of my stint here on Prison Planet, I was keen on getting stuff. Now I'm keener on getting rid of stuff. I'm finding that easier said than done.
Tried to get rid of a used electric kitchen oven earlier this year. Put it at the end of the driveway festooned with "free" signs on three sides. It was a perfectly functional range.
Somewhere during the second week, some dirtbag stopped to help themselves to the elements. Is there not a code of honour that demands you take the whole thing when helping yourself to free stuff?
Halfway through the third week a local artsy type picked it up to "practice painting on enamel."
Whatever. I was just happy to have it gone.
Parked the old Rockwood tent-trailer out there next. We got that because we used to do some camping, and the Farm Manager decided she no longer wanted to sleep on the ground in a tent, but would prefer to sleep in a tent that's on a trailer. We used it for two seasons and then she declared it "musty." We haven't used it since.
That must have been four or five years ago. For sure it smells musty now! And the canvas is rotten. So I put up a sign asking $800. The sign was on a 8x11 sheet of paper. No enquiries. After a couple of weeks I thought maybe they can't see the sign, so I made a new one out of a two foot by four foot piece of plywood, and dropped the price to $600.
At least now people were stopping, but they were mostly idiots. From my point of view, once I've told you the canvas is rotten and needs replaced, and you come back with "how many holes are in the canvas," you're an idiot.
Eventually some guy hauled it away for three hundred bucks. His son had a couple of little guys who loved fishing and camping. They were on a budget, and figured they could still get a few years out of this rig with a little patching and some sound tarping.
Point is, it took all summer to get rid of a stove and a camper... at that rate, it's gonna be three or four more years before I get the garage cleaned out!
Tried to get rid of a used electric kitchen oven earlier this year. Put it at the end of the driveway festooned with "free" signs on three sides. It was a perfectly functional range.
Somewhere during the second week, some dirtbag stopped to help themselves to the elements. Is there not a code of honour that demands you take the whole thing when helping yourself to free stuff?
Halfway through the third week a local artsy type picked it up to "practice painting on enamel."
Whatever. I was just happy to have it gone.
Parked the old Rockwood tent-trailer out there next. We got that because we used to do some camping, and the Farm Manager decided she no longer wanted to sleep on the ground in a tent, but would prefer to sleep in a tent that's on a trailer. We used it for two seasons and then she declared it "musty." We haven't used it since.
That must have been four or five years ago. For sure it smells musty now! And the canvas is rotten. So I put up a sign asking $800. The sign was on a 8x11 sheet of paper. No enquiries. After a couple of weeks I thought maybe they can't see the sign, so I made a new one out of a two foot by four foot piece of plywood, and dropped the price to $600.
At least now people were stopping, but they were mostly idiots. From my point of view, once I've told you the canvas is rotten and needs replaced, and you come back with "how many holes are in the canvas," you're an idiot.
Eventually some guy hauled it away for three hundred bucks. His son had a couple of little guys who loved fishing and camping. They were on a budget, and figured they could still get a few years out of this rig with a little patching and some sound tarping.
Point is, it took all summer to get rid of a stove and a camper... at that rate, it's gonna be three or four more years before I get the garage cleaned out!
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Buck-a-beer and legal weed
On the face of it, you wouldn't think Ontario Preem Doug Ford, the hardest right-wing nutter we've seen here since the days of Mean Mike Harris, and PM Fluffy would have much in common.
But they do.
Ford rode to power on a wave of booze liberalization promises. Booze available at every 7-11 twenty-four hours a day, booze in public parks, boozed-up tailgate parties in the parking lots of CFL stadiums, and most famously, "buck-a-beer."
Trudeau, on the other hand, offered a feminist foreign policy and legal weed.
While one seems the opposite of the other, what do they have in common?
Doug wants to keep you half in the bag, and Justin wants you to have a toke on top of that...
That's right; they want us to be more or less comatose.
They're hoping that way you won't notice that minimum wage 7-11 employees are now doing the work of Beer Store and LCBO workers who used to have pensions and benefits and all that fancy stuff.
They're also hoping that you won't notice that our feminist Fluffy has aligned us with neo-fascist states like Brazil and Honduras as we lean in to overthrow the government of Venezuela. And that's just an encore after delivering the marijuana economy to Bay Street on a silver platter.
So have another beer or two, and by all means, have a toke, or maybe gorf down some of those edibles...
Doug and Fluffy need you wasted so they can keep doing their shit.
But they do.
Ford rode to power on a wave of booze liberalization promises. Booze available at every 7-11 twenty-four hours a day, booze in public parks, boozed-up tailgate parties in the parking lots of CFL stadiums, and most famously, "buck-a-beer."
Trudeau, on the other hand, offered a feminist foreign policy and legal weed.
While one seems the opposite of the other, what do they have in common?
Doug wants to keep you half in the bag, and Justin wants you to have a toke on top of that...
That's right; they want us to be more or less comatose.
They're hoping that way you won't notice that minimum wage 7-11 employees are now doing the work of Beer Store and LCBO workers who used to have pensions and benefits and all that fancy stuff.
They're also hoping that you won't notice that our feminist Fluffy has aligned us with neo-fascist states like Brazil and Honduras as we lean in to overthrow the government of Venezuela. And that's just an encore after delivering the marijuana economy to Bay Street on a silver platter.
So have another beer or two, and by all means, have a toke, or maybe gorf down some of those edibles...
Doug and Fluffy need you wasted so they can keep doing their shit.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
With Boris and Donald at the helm of the Anglo-American Empire...
...can Armageddon be far away?
Seriously, it might be time for a re-read of the Book of Revelations.
After all, we are in the end times. My screen tells me that every day. Only twelve years left to curb greenhouse gas emissions, or the planet's a gonner. As in, there is no future!
That's an inspirational message for our children...
If nothing else, we should be ashamed of ourselves, but we live in the post-shame era. I mean, how else do you explain Boris and Donald?
Prince Andrew should be ashamed of himself... but I guess if he hardly even knew that man, maybe we're being a little harsh...
I've been a news junkie forever, and in my estimation the art of news reportage is in terminal decline. The fear-mongering is overwhelming. Between Xi, Putin, and climate change, we are well and truly fucked.
And even in our quieter moments, there is no escaping the ugliness. Here's a story I first heard on CBC radio in the car, on the evening news program "The World This Weekend." A couple of women get into a scrap over a parking space at a BC shopping mall. One of them uses a racist slur against the other...
Yup. Right here in Canada. In 2019. A racist slur.
We must all hang our heads in shame...
Or not! How about we all call out CBC for making such a petty bullshit story into a national news story. Some people are rude. Some people are racists. Some people are assholes. Some people don't know how to park at the mall.
How is there anything newsworthy about this story?
Seriously, it might be time for a re-read of the Book of Revelations.
After all, we are in the end times. My screen tells me that every day. Only twelve years left to curb greenhouse gas emissions, or the planet's a gonner. As in, there is no future!
That's an inspirational message for our children...
If nothing else, we should be ashamed of ourselves, but we live in the post-shame era. I mean, how else do you explain Boris and Donald?
Prince Andrew should be ashamed of himself... but I guess if he hardly even knew that man, maybe we're being a little harsh...
I've been a news junkie forever, and in my estimation the art of news reportage is in terminal decline. The fear-mongering is overwhelming. Between Xi, Putin, and climate change, we are well and truly fucked.
And even in our quieter moments, there is no escaping the ugliness. Here's a story I first heard on CBC radio in the car, on the evening news program "The World This Weekend." A couple of women get into a scrap over a parking space at a BC shopping mall. One of them uses a racist slur against the other...
Yup. Right here in Canada. In 2019. A racist slur.
We must all hang our heads in shame...
Or not! How about we all call out CBC for making such a petty bullshit story into a national news story. Some people are rude. Some people are racists. Some people are assholes. Some people don't know how to park at the mall.
How is there anything newsworthy about this story?
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Some thoughts around income inequality
It's crazy times we live in.
The latest stats show that CEO pay is close to 300 times that of shop-floor-shmuck pay.
Put another way, consider the income of someone making the US federal minimum wage of $7.25. Over their lifetime, if that worker begins full-time employment at age fifteen, they'll have to work well into their eighties before they've hit a million dollars in lifetime earnings.
CEO compensation, on the other hand, is typically a million dollars a month or more in your upper echelon of corporate entities.
I'm well acquainted with the arguments in favour of massive income inequality. That's no surprise; we all are! People who make a lot of money are smarter and work harder. That's the standard response from our billionaire-owned media. What else would they say?
There's certainly an element of truth to that. But, are they really three hundred times as smart as the shop-floor worker? Do they really work three hundred times harder?
I'm all in with the idea that a hard worker should make more than the shirker. At least twice as much...
And obviously, somebody really smart should, if they are a hard worker, make even more! Maybe even twice as much as that hard worker of average intelligence...
But nobody anywhere is three hundred times smarter than the person next to them, nor is it possible to work three hundred times harder!
The level of income disparity in the USA today is absolutely unconscionable.
Three multi-billionaires have more net worth than half the population? How is such a thing possible?
It's possible because the billionaire class has bought the political system. They bought it because they can afford it. The rest of us can't. The supreme court decision on Citizen's United cemented their purchase into the law of the land.
And here we are.
It's the plutocrats driving foreign policy. War is good for business.
It's the plutocrats driving domestic policy. We'd have to raise taxes to provide decent education, housing, and health care... and who needs that? Plutocrats already have decent education, housing, and health care.
The Exceptional Nation is operating at maximum efficiency!
Only a traitor would rock the boat...
The latest stats show that CEO pay is close to 300 times that of shop-floor-shmuck pay.
Put another way, consider the income of someone making the US federal minimum wage of $7.25. Over their lifetime, if that worker begins full-time employment at age fifteen, they'll have to work well into their eighties before they've hit a million dollars in lifetime earnings.
CEO compensation, on the other hand, is typically a million dollars a month or more in your upper echelon of corporate entities.
I'm well acquainted with the arguments in favour of massive income inequality. That's no surprise; we all are! People who make a lot of money are smarter and work harder. That's the standard response from our billionaire-owned media. What else would they say?
There's certainly an element of truth to that. But, are they really three hundred times as smart as the shop-floor worker? Do they really work three hundred times harder?
I'm all in with the idea that a hard worker should make more than the shirker. At least twice as much...
And obviously, somebody really smart should, if they are a hard worker, make even more! Maybe even twice as much as that hard worker of average intelligence...
But nobody anywhere is three hundred times smarter than the person next to them, nor is it possible to work three hundred times harder!
The level of income disparity in the USA today is absolutely unconscionable.
Three multi-billionaires have more net worth than half the population? How is such a thing possible?
It's possible because the billionaire class has bought the political system. They bought it because they can afford it. The rest of us can't. The supreme court decision on Citizen's United cemented their purchase into the law of the land.
And here we are.
It's the plutocrats driving foreign policy. War is good for business.
It's the plutocrats driving domestic policy. We'd have to raise taxes to provide decent education, housing, and health care... and who needs that? Plutocrats already have decent education, housing, and health care.
The Exceptional Nation is operating at maximum efficiency!
Only a traitor would rock the boat...
Monday, August 19, 2019
Recycling NYT's shoddy journalism cheaper than producing your own
News-hungry hicks in these parts rush to the newsstands bright and early every Sunday to get their hands on The New York Times International Weekly, which comes as a supplement with the Sunday Star. This week we were rewarded with a front-pager titled "Deception Fuels Tilt To Nativism In Sweden," which is a recycled version of this story which ran in the mother ship a week earlier.
The gist of the story is that anti-immigrant sentiments in Sweden are due not to reckless immigration policies that brought in migrants in substantially greater quantities than could be readily assimilated. Nope, it's not that... it's Putin!
That's right! Kremlin troll farms are doing their devious best to "...weaken Western countries by polarizing the debate," thereby opening the eyes of the docile Swedes to the fact that some neighbourhoods in their country have become ghettos of dark-skinned people.
I'm no expert on Sweden, but I have a hunch the Swedes would have noticed that without prodding from Kremlin trolls. What we have here is not a news story per se, but just another exercise in Russia bashing.
Writer Jo Becker quotes an expert from the "Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a non-profit that tracks extremism," to lend the story a sense of gravitas.
Here's what you should know about the Institute for Strategic Dialogue that Becker neglects to mention. Its "partners and funders" include:
The gist of the story is that anti-immigrant sentiments in Sweden are due not to reckless immigration policies that brought in migrants in substantially greater quantities than could be readily assimilated. Nope, it's not that... it's Putin!
That's right! Kremlin troll farms are doing their devious best to "...weaken Western countries by polarizing the debate," thereby opening the eyes of the docile Swedes to the fact that some neighbourhoods in their country have become ghettos of dark-skinned people.
I'm no expert on Sweden, but I have a hunch the Swedes would have noticed that without prodding from Kremlin trolls. What we have here is not a news story per se, but just another exercise in Russia bashing.
Writer Jo Becker quotes an expert from the "Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a non-profit that tracks extremism," to lend the story a sense of gravitas.
Here's what you should know about the Institute for Strategic Dialogue that Becker neglects to mention. Its "partners and funders" include:
- Brookings Institution
- Chatham House
- Microsoft
- Yale University
- British Council
- Open Societies Foundation (Soros)
- International Republican Institute
- US State Department
- UK Foreign Office
- Governments of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Australia, Canada
There's more, but you probably get the drift. The partners and funders of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue are a veritable roll-call of institutions and vassal states committed to American Exceptionalism, which we are constantly reminded has ushered in the era of peace we have seen since WWII, not to mention enforcing the "rule of law" and lifting billions out of poverty, etc.etc...
And of course, they all agree, the biggest threat to continued world peace and prosperity and the "rule of law" is... Putin!
I have no problem when our "free press" labels Sputnik a Russian propaganda outfit. They are, after all, funded by the government of Russia to put a pro-Russian spin on their reportage. However, it's disingenuous to pretend that the NYT or the Institute for Strategic Dialogue are any different. They are American propaganda outlets every bit as much as RT or Sputnik are Russian propaganda outlets.
As for the Toronto Star, they have numerous anti-Russian propagandists on their own staff, so why do they need to import it from the US?
Sunday, August 18, 2019
CBC discovers hateful black bigot
How could such a thing be possible? Diversity is our strength, after all.
Turns out the black dude in question has some intersectionality going on. Not only is he black, he's religious too! That's not the sort of "intersectionality" the "diversity is our strength" crowd appreciates!
Here's the story, straight from the CBC.
I suspect Putin's minions are behind this scandal...
Turns out the black dude in question has some intersectionality going on. Not only is he black, he's religious too! That's not the sort of "intersectionality" the "diversity is our strength" crowd appreciates!
Here's the story, straight from the CBC.
I suspect Putin's minions are behind this scandal...
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