I bet you could.
The media machine is hungry for content. Sure, in a few years AI is gonna be serving up way better shit than mere mortals can conjure up, but that's why we gotta strike while the iron is hot, so to speak, as it were.
I was thinking again about that lovely million dollar condo where you get the bird's eye view while doing that "thinker" thing.
You know, where you're sitting on the porcelain throne contemplating a crap and being totally in the moment and all that shit.
If you look at that picture you'll notice a couple of condo towers going up in the middle distance. That looks like a couple thousand units at least.
What's really fucked up is that those couple of thousand million dollar condos all have a clear sight-line to your window seat.
That's a fact just crying out for its own YouTube channel.
Saturday, February 17, 2018
The greatest American poet
It's not Emerson and it's not Whitman...
The greatest American poet is Chuck Berry.
As is often the case with great poets, they have their foibles...
Drugs, booze, the entire spectrum of sexual perversion, and so forth.
But they're poets, for God's sake... let's cut them some slack!
Chuck Berry is without a doubt the greatest American poet of all time.
Southern Trust and Greyhound Bus and kiss my ass, it never gets better than that.
The greatest American poet is Chuck Berry.
As is often the case with great poets, they have their foibles...
Drugs, booze, the entire spectrum of sexual perversion, and so forth.
But they're poets, for God's sake... let's cut them some slack!
Chuck Berry is without a doubt the greatest American poet of all time.
Southern Trust and Greyhound Bus and kiss my ass, it never gets better than that.
How a Mexican kid with an Italian name grabbed the American Dream
Back in the early sixties my DP folks lived on the wrong side of the tracks in Elora. My family, fresh off the boat, were still learning the lay of the land and getting a grip on the English language. My father worked in a factory and my mother worked as a cleaning lady. We were immigrants on the bottom rung.
Now and then a box would come in the post filled with second hand clothes. It would be a present from our more established relatives in New Jersey. Nice second hand clothes. We looked forward to those gift boxes. Once in awhile Onkel Erich himself would show up at the door. He and his wife Adele had the good fortune to leave the old country before the WWII. If I'm not mistaken he drove a Buick convertible with a ton of chrome.
Later on in the sixties, when our fortunes were on the rise and those gift boxes were no longer required, their daughter Brunhild would come up for summer visits with her Italian-American husband Jack DiNovi. Jack was an authentic Italian dude from Philadelphia who had an accent like what you'd hear on the Sopranos. Huge Phillies fan and all-round great guy. All us kids loved them.
Jack and Brunhild had two kids of their own. Then they adopted a little boy from Mexico. They named him Brett.
Brett DiNovi. Google that name and you'll see what that Mexican, adopted by a German and an Italian, went on to do with his life. He's employing hundreds of people, providing an essential service to society, and winning awards for being a great employer.
The American Dream doesn't get much better than that.
They're not Italians or Germans or Mexicans, of course; they are Americans. But they or their parents were all immigrants.
These are turbulent times in America, and Brunhild must often shake her head at the anti-American slant this blog sometimes appears to take.
I just hope the American Dream can survive the machinations of the parasitic political elite that has the "land of the free" so firmly in its tentacles.
Now and then a box would come in the post filled with second hand clothes. It would be a present from our more established relatives in New Jersey. Nice second hand clothes. We looked forward to those gift boxes. Once in awhile Onkel Erich himself would show up at the door. He and his wife Adele had the good fortune to leave the old country before the WWII. If I'm not mistaken he drove a Buick convertible with a ton of chrome.
Later on in the sixties, when our fortunes were on the rise and those gift boxes were no longer required, their daughter Brunhild would come up for summer visits with her Italian-American husband Jack DiNovi. Jack was an authentic Italian dude from Philadelphia who had an accent like what you'd hear on the Sopranos. Huge Phillies fan and all-round great guy. All us kids loved them.
Jack and Brunhild had two kids of their own. Then they adopted a little boy from Mexico. They named him Brett.
Brett DiNovi. Google that name and you'll see what that Mexican, adopted by a German and an Italian, went on to do with his life. He's employing hundreds of people, providing an essential service to society, and winning awards for being a great employer.
The American Dream doesn't get much better than that.
They're not Italians or Germans or Mexicans, of course; they are Americans. But they or their parents were all immigrants.
These are turbulent times in America, and Brunhild must often shake her head at the anti-American slant this blog sometimes appears to take.
I just hope the American Dream can survive the machinations of the parasitic political elite that has the "land of the free" so firmly in its tentacles.
Globe and Mail normalizing Trump
Seems to me the guardians of Canada's democracy at 351 King are letting their guard down. All through the first section, not a single headline with the name "Trump" in it. Nowhere in the Opinion section either. And not a single letter to the editor mentions Trump even in passing.
Let's hope they're over their obsession with Trumpian doggerel. It's nice to have my newspaper back.
Silly Philly demonstrated a new trick this morning on our trip to ransom the Saturday Globe from the Korean extortionist. Exiting the car via the window. I had just parked the car out at the water treatment plant to let the girls out for a romp, when she popped up outside my window. She'd let herself out. For some time she's been able to lower the back windows by standing her front paws on the arm rest, a trick the gals at the Timmies drive-thru window find really cute. Today was the first time she actually went out the window, though.
Then she did it again five minutes later, as we're driving by the marina on Bayview Street. That's not funny anymore! Luckily, there's not much traffic there in February, but after that I figured I'd best activate the child locks for the first time in many years. In another month her ass will be too big to fit out the window, but in the meantime we'll play it safe.
Another thing that's not funny any more is what screen addiction is doing to our society. The Opinion section features a lengthy discussion between psychiatrist Norman Doidge and Jim Balsille of "Crackberry" fame. Me and the Farm Manager have long been skeptical of all this supposed connectedness technology has gifted us.
We'll be sitting in a restaurant and there's entire families around us so connected that they completely ignore one another.
Mothers are pushing strollers down the street while texting.
Otherwise respectable people think nothing of giving iPads to their pre-schoolers.
Anyway, that alone is well worth the price of the paper.
Elsewhere, I found myself agreeing with both Saunders and Wente's opinion pieces. Not sure what's going on there... maybe those folks are finally coming to their senses?
Or maybe that's just another marker on the side of the Alzheimer Highway. Either way, it's boring to read stuff you agree with.
Let's hope they're over their obsession with Trumpian doggerel. It's nice to have my newspaper back.
Silly Philly demonstrated a new trick this morning on our trip to ransom the Saturday Globe from the Korean extortionist. Exiting the car via the window. I had just parked the car out at the water treatment plant to let the girls out for a romp, when she popped up outside my window. She'd let herself out. For some time she's been able to lower the back windows by standing her front paws on the arm rest, a trick the gals at the Timmies drive-thru window find really cute. Today was the first time she actually went out the window, though.
Then she did it again five minutes later, as we're driving by the marina on Bayview Street. That's not funny anymore! Luckily, there's not much traffic there in February, but after that I figured I'd best activate the child locks for the first time in many years. In another month her ass will be too big to fit out the window, but in the meantime we'll play it safe.
Another thing that's not funny any more is what screen addiction is doing to our society. The Opinion section features a lengthy discussion between psychiatrist Norman Doidge and Jim Balsille of "Crackberry" fame. Me and the Farm Manager have long been skeptical of all this supposed connectedness technology has gifted us.
We'll be sitting in a restaurant and there's entire families around us so connected that they completely ignore one another.
Mothers are pushing strollers down the street while texting.
Otherwise respectable people think nothing of giving iPads to their pre-schoolers.
Anyway, that alone is well worth the price of the paper.
Elsewhere, I found myself agreeing with both Saunders and Wente's opinion pieces. Not sure what's going on there... maybe those folks are finally coming to their senses?
Or maybe that's just another marker on the side of the Alzheimer Highway. Either way, it's boring to read stuff you agree with.
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
At the end of the day
At the end of the day I'm sitting in front of the fire with an elbow on the haunches of one of the hounds, the one sharing the sofa with me at the moment.
Today is "Valentines Day."
That's the fake holiday manufactured by the manufacturers of mass market greeting cards, chocolates, and cut flowers from Colombia and Ethiopia.
Fake or not, you gotta give it some respect.
One year I thought I'd be perfectly honest, and I didn't get the Farm Manager a thing. No flowers, no chocolates, no nothing.
I told her I didn't want to buy into the commodification of sentimentality.
She was not impressed.
I never played that hand again.
At the end of the day, Valentine's Day, I'm sitting in front of the fire. I'd picked up a heart-shaped box of craft chocolates at Mill Creek Chocolates.
It was the least I could do.
Today is "Valentines Day."
That's the fake holiday manufactured by the manufacturers of mass market greeting cards, chocolates, and cut flowers from Colombia and Ethiopia.
Fake or not, you gotta give it some respect.
One year I thought I'd be perfectly honest, and I didn't get the Farm Manager a thing. No flowers, no chocolates, no nothing.
I told her I didn't want to buy into the commodification of sentimentality.
She was not impressed.
I never played that hand again.
At the end of the day, Valentine's Day, I'm sitting in front of the fire. I'd picked up a heart-shaped box of craft chocolates at Mill Creek Chocolates.
It was the least I could do.
Monday, February 12, 2018
What I want in my million dollar condo; floor to ceiling windows in the bathroom
Check it out.
This is one of several bathrooms in this lux condo, but for sure it's the one with the best views.
Yup, you can enjoy the view while taking a crap! You must admit, it don't get much better than that!
Saturday, February 10, 2018
Meanwhile back in Waco...
Yesterday marked day 1,000 since the infamous "Waco biker massacre." That was the brawl-come-gunfight carefully orchestrated by half a dozen law enforcement agencies in May of 2015.
Bikers are a handy foil for ambitious law enforcement types. I mean, they have "gangs" and tattoos and they ride loud motorcycles and they look scary, at least some of them. And they don't have a well-funded lobby group like Black Lives Matter looking out for their interests.
In other words, they're an easy target. The cops originally corralled 171 people; anyone in the vicinity of the Waco Twin Peaks restaurant who looked like a biker, including unfortunate folks who didn't have tattoos, motorcycles, or gang affiliations, and held them all on a million dollar bond.
Each.
In the immediate aftermath the media treated us to all sorts of fanciful speculation about the biker underworld declaring war on the Waco Police Department.
Yup, Bandidos looting National Guard warehouses for rocket launchers was just one of the hysterical fake-news stories making the rounds.
And then, the story disappeared. The million dollar bonds were reduced and reduced again. The attention span of Jane and Joe Public being what it is, we lost interest. I personally haven't gone out of my way for a Waco update for at least a year.
There's only one place to go for a Waco update; The Aging Rebel. I know nothing about the guy who runs that website, but I find it rings authentic. Here's where things stand almost three years after the event;
One thousand days after Reyna and other local authorities deliberately sought out to obstruct justice in Waco, there remain 45 unresolved civil cases with at least 148 individual complainants in various state and federal courts throughout Texas. There remain 27 unresolved asset forfeiture cases. There remain 171 unresolved criminal cases. Only in Waco in McLennan County in Texas could that be seen as something like justice.
Holy Moly! That's a long time to have these serious criminal charges hanging over their heads for those 171 defendants. Wonder how many jobs have been lost, marriages and families destroyed?
The ongoing cases will keep dozens of lawyers in new Cadillac Escalades for at least the next twenty years.
Only in America!
Bikers are a handy foil for ambitious law enforcement types. I mean, they have "gangs" and tattoos and they ride loud motorcycles and they look scary, at least some of them. And they don't have a well-funded lobby group like Black Lives Matter looking out for their interests.
In other words, they're an easy target. The cops originally corralled 171 people; anyone in the vicinity of the Waco Twin Peaks restaurant who looked like a biker, including unfortunate folks who didn't have tattoos, motorcycles, or gang affiliations, and held them all on a million dollar bond.
Each.
In the immediate aftermath the media treated us to all sorts of fanciful speculation about the biker underworld declaring war on the Waco Police Department.
Yup, Bandidos looting National Guard warehouses for rocket launchers was just one of the hysterical fake-news stories making the rounds.
And then, the story disappeared. The million dollar bonds were reduced and reduced again. The attention span of Jane and Joe Public being what it is, we lost interest. I personally haven't gone out of my way for a Waco update for at least a year.
There's only one place to go for a Waco update; The Aging Rebel. I know nothing about the guy who runs that website, but I find it rings authentic. Here's where things stand almost three years after the event;
One thousand days after Reyna and other local authorities deliberately sought out to obstruct justice in Waco, there remain 45 unresolved civil cases with at least 148 individual complainants in various state and federal courts throughout Texas. There remain 27 unresolved asset forfeiture cases. There remain 171 unresolved criminal cases. Only in Waco in McLennan County in Texas could that be seen as something like justice.
Holy Moly! That's a long time to have these serious criminal charges hanging over their heads for those 171 defendants. Wonder how many jobs have been lost, marriages and families destroyed?
The ongoing cases will keep dozens of lawyers in new Cadillac Escalades for at least the next twenty years.
Only in America!
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