I thought I smelled chipmunk farts...

I'm sitting in the lounge area at Baywest Toyota, because every few months the car tells me it needs maintenance. 

The assistant service manager comes out carrying the air filter that allegedly cleanses the cabin air in my car. He's holding it out in front like he made some kind of exotic discovery.

"I think maybe you got squirrels or something building a nest here."

It's the damned chipmunks. Even though Doublewide dispatched half a dozen of the little bastards over the summer, there's plenty left. I often see them duck under the car, and they'll sit on top of the tires keeping an eye on the cat, me, and the bird-feeders. 

When the coast is clear they'll make a dash for the peanuts we put out for the woodpeckers and blue-jays. 

After a hearty lunch, I suppose they retire to my air cleaner for a leisurely nap.

Here's what I'm wondering. If AI is so smart, instead of the car telling me it "needs maintenance," why can't it tell me there's chipmunks living in it?

Even better would be if that artificial intelligence could get them to move somewhere else.

World welcomes USA to 20th century!

Kamala Harris is but a heart-beat away from the Oval Office! Let the gushing and swooning begin!

Women are finally reaching the ultimate glass ceiling in the dispirited states of America. Just heard an over-the-top CBC commentator gushing and swooning at the same time, which can be problematic for one's undergarments, but not unexpected; the CBC doesn't really think anything happens in the world unless it involves the US.

Just to put Kamala's achievement into perspective, here's a list of countries where women have already been head of state or head of government. Many of these countries have done so more than once, and most of them were doing it last century.

Argentina

Australia

Austria

Bangladesh

Barbados

Belgium

Bolivia

Brazil

Bulgaria

Burundi

Central African Republic

Canada

Chile

Croatia

China

Costa Rica

Denmark

Dominica

East Germany (DDR)

Ethiopia

Estonia

France

Finland

Germany

Gabon

Greece

Guyana

Guinea Bissau

Haiti

Indonesia

Ireland

Israel

India

Iceland

Jamaica

Kosovo

Lithuania

Liberia

Latvia

Malta

Mali

Malawi

Mozambique

Mongolia

Myanmar

Namibia

Norway

Nicaragua

Pakistan

Panama

Peru

Philippines

Portugal

Poland

Rwanda

Romania

Senegal

Singapore

Slovakia

South Korea

Sri Lanka

Taiwan

Thailand

Trinidad and Tobago

Turkey

Ukraine

UK

Yugoslavia

I may have missed a few, but you get the point. Most of the world got to this milestone half a century ago. It's nice to see the Exceptional Nation catching up!

Maybe in another fifty years they'll take a crack at public health care!

 

Blow off your worries with a walk in the woods

We're getting a touch of Indian Summer in November in these parts. Doesn't happen every year.

Between Trump, Biden, covid, and a collapsed economy, most everyone has plenty to worry about. So it was that I decided to get away from it all with a hike in the woods yesterday.

They've re-jigged the Bruce Trail a bit lately, and one of their official side-trails now cuts through the farm next door. I picked up the trail there and headed up towards what is variously known around here as Kemble Mountain, Kemble Rock, or, among the jaded, the Kemble Bump.

Four hours hiking through fresh air and warm temperatures and composting leaves. I had a drink from a stream cascading from higher up. At one point, a sign; "Caution: bear in Area." We're a few days into deer season but not a hunter seen or heard. Just leaves (leafs?) rustling in a middling breeze, bird-song, the scolding of squirrels. I ventured off the Bruce Trail in favour of over-grown logging roads and ATV trails, and for a few kilometres went off-piste altogether. 

Rotting stumps of oaks felled 150 years ago when the first settlers cleared the land. Old stone fence-lines that once marked cleared fields long overgrown again. Every stone of tens and hundreds of thousands in these fence-lines placed there by human hands. Much of this geography was only briefly conquered. Nature is taking the pastures back. Forests felled long ago are growing in again.

Four hours later, all the shit is still shit, and it's still there... but you've gained a whole new perspective on it.

Give it a try.

Trump loses; decorum and decency prevail

There's a reason decency and decorum are held in such high regard by America's permanent ruling class. When you're the world's leading purveyor of murder and mayhem, it's important to have a well-spoken suit as your public face on the world stage. Obama was brilliant in that regard, as were Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. 

Then there's Trump, spewing venom at allies and adversaries alike, in a most indecent and indecorous assault on the norms of diplomatic conduct. His fans considered that "telling it like it is." 

Alas, "telling it like it is" isn't something approved of by the ruling class. After many decades of strutting about the globe, assassinating an unapproved leader here and toppling an hostile regime there, always in the name of human rights and freedom, along comes loose-lips Trump talking about "securing the oil."

No, Donald! It's NOT about the oil, not ever!

It's about freedom! It's about human rights!

If you take a look at the most severe humanitarian crises in the world today, from Afghanistan to Somalia to Syria to Yemen, you'll inevitably find that America's championing of "freedom and human rights" has been an integral factor in driving these catastrophes. When your campaign to spread freedom and human rights requires you to starve children in Iran and Syria and Venezuela, well, to paraphrase Madeliene Albright, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

America's ruling class, after four cringe-worthy years, can breathe easy at last. President Harris will bring back decorum and decency.

It's not likely that the starving children of Syria or Iran or Venezuela will notice or care.

A troubling question for our masters

For the past four years a near unanimous chorus of media voices across broadcast, print, and digital platforms have relentlessly pushed an anti-Trump agenda. From the Access Hollywood gotcha tape, to two years plus of "walls closing in" and "the noose tightening" during the Mueller investigation, to the New York Times making fag-bashing fashionable again, to the plainly absurd Ukie-gate impeachment charade, to the orchestrated attempt by the social media giants to disappear the Hunter Biden laptop story, it's been wall-to-wall anti-Trump hysteria since Trump won the GOP nomination in July 2016.

The question is this; how is it possible, that after a four year saturation influencing operation by the biggest names in news media and the most powerful social media platforms, Donald Trump gets ten million MORE votes in 2020 than he got in 2016?

The gold medal for unhinged hyperbole goes to...

 I've been reading a wide variety of exhortations aimed at getting folks off the couch and out to a voting booth, although with mail-in I suppose you can pretty much stay put. Point is, this is the most important election of your lifetime. Or my lifetime... somebody's lifetime.

Or possibly since the WWII, which possibly could be even longer than a lifetime.

In fact, there are claims that this could be the most consequential election since 1864, or maybe even in the entire history of the USA!

Why is it so important?

For about half the population, it's the last chance to prevent Biden and Harris from turning these United States into the United Soviets of America.

For the other half, it's the last chance to prevent Trump and Pence from turning America into a fascist dictatorship.

So you can see why it's absolutely essential to get out there and exercise your democratic franchise, because one way or the other, this is likely to be the last election in US history! That's in addition to being the most important, and from what I've seen of turnout numbers, there's a lot of folks who don't want to miss this twofer. 

Which is good, because not only is it the most important election in history, it's (and here's the gold medal line) about the next 4000 years!

The gold goes to Bill McKibben at The Guardian.

Lady Gaga ridin' with Biden

To which the only worthwhile response is, get the fuck outta here!

This reminds me of the frantic final 48 hours on Hillary's campaign, when suddenly a bunch of A-list pop culture icons popped up for a desperate hail Mary PR extravaganza.

LeBron. Katy Perry. Madonna...

It didn't work then. It ain't gonna work now.

I've got loads of respect for Lady Gaga. She's done a hell of a lot for her "Little Monster" fan base, ie insecure teens trying to figure out their shit. She's not doing her fan base any favours with this Biden endorsement. 

Lady Gaga has lots of cred in lots of out-there communities, and for her to waste her political capital in an endorsement for a sclerotic establishment douche-bag is a disappointment for many.

Do better, kid.