Obfuscated Thoughtlessness Inversed

VICTORIA - In the hopes of shaming Stephen Harper's continued inaction on senatorial reform, Victoria resident Morgan Stewart has announced his intention to seek a senate seat from Prince Edward Island at the first possible electoral opportunity.

"I don't really expect to enter an election any time soon. The Senate just hasn't been reformed despite Harper's promises," said Stewart. "Stephen Harper promised an elected Senate with term limits. His bill to get term limits still isn't law let alone instituting the basic democracy of elections."

"It isn't just that I'm against people from PEI having seats in the Senate, I'm against anyone having a seat in the Senate - I'm against the Senate," said Stewart. "This is why I've decided to seek election if there ever is one. The unelected unaccountable institution of patronage should have been abolished before I was born. Instead, there are senators who have been sitting in the senate since before I was born, without ever having to face an election."

Prince Edward Island, Canada's 23rd largest island and 7th most populous, but the only one that is a province unto itself, has a population of 138,632 residents and has 8 federal representatives -- 4 seats in the House of Commons and 4 more in the Senate. Vancouver Island has a population of over 700,000 people, is Canada's 11th largest island, has the second highest population behind the Island of Montreal and has no representatives in the Senate. With a population more than 5 times that of PEI, Vancouver Island gets 6 representatives in the House of Commons. If Vancouver Islanders had the same level of representation as Prince Edward Islanders based on population they would have at least 20 Members of Parliament and 20 Senators.

"Senator Pat Carney, bless her hardened old Mulroney Conservative heart, lives 'near' Vancouver Island on Saturna Island (population 359)," continued Stewart. "From Port Hardy to Saturna Island is an equivalent travel time of driving from Toronto to Quebec City if you arrive just as the ferry to Mayne Island is leaving. If you have to wait overnight for the ferry the travel time is equivalent to driving from Toronto to Charlottetown, PEI. It isn't that Pat Carney doesn't want to represent more than just Saturna it's that the territory is so vast and it has been so long since she was elected to anything that she can't possibly do it. So, Saturna Island gets their own senator with a population of 359 people, but Vancouver Island is short more than 30 of the federal representatives it deserves."

"We have some excellent Members of Parliament from Vancouver Island, but some aren't so great," said Stewart. "How can the rest of Canada expect the 6 members of parliament to do the work of 40 PEI representatives? At the very least their riding offices should be funded for the area and population they have to serve."

The latest census makes some single Vancouver Island House of Common's ridings nearly as populous as Prince Edward Island. Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca now has a population of 120,669 and neighbouring riding Nanaimo-Cowichan now has a population of 125,149. This area in BC is represented by just 2 federal Members of Parliament. PEI has an entire provincial legislature and 8 federal representatives for an area with 55% of the population.

"My candidacy in the PEI Senatorial election may have to wait a while, as Stephen Harper doesn't seem like the kind of guy who keeps his promises. Hopefully, common sense or the House of Commons will prevail and the Senate will simply be abolished instead of a creating an elected Senate," said Stewart. "However, if the time comes for Senatorial elections in PEI, I am announcing today, that I will enter the race to be the Senator from PEI from Vancouver Island."

Stewart noted with some consternation that generally Senatorial elections, if they ever come, will likely be a provincial matter held in line with provincial elections and may require six months residency in the Province before being elected. This makes today's announcement as likely to happen as any other Stephen Harper promise.

Labels: alternatives, blogosphere, canada, democracy, opinion, personal story, unfolding

Ok, so it has been a while since my last blog entry. It may be quite a while longer until the next post, as I am now employed, for at least the next couple of weeks.

Other than getting a job, my last week has been very busy installing Mac OS X. Thanks to the extremely useful tips at www.osx86project.org it was a procedure but not impossible. My Dell Dimension 2400 is now running Mac OS X. My only problem with the Broadcomm 440 on-board ethernet. It worked under 10.4.1 but doesn't under 10.4.8. Instead of messing with it excessively, I've just dropped a Realtek card into a PCI slot and that works like a charm.

For your enjoyment I have tried to keep track of some of the software, I have been installing, since I bootstrapped up a clean operating system. Much of this is open source, available for Unix (can you say AIX? cause I know you can say Solaris) also as in Linux (y'know like Ubuntu and Red Hat), but don't forget BSD is/was Unix too (like OpenBSD, my favourite FreeBSD and Mac OS X). Most of this software even runs on Windows, if you have the stomach for it, I have even been doing a little messing around on Vista in the last couple of weeks. You guessed it.. it sucks.

Feel free to add your favourite applications, that you think, I should download in the comments below.

I recommend all these fine pieces of software:

• Firefox with GoogleToolbar
• Adblock for Firefox
• OpenOffice.org Office Suite
• Fink
• aMSN, MSN Messenger or Adium.. I couldn't decide so I installed them all. In the end i will probably add Gaim too
• FlightGear open source flight simulator
• Chicken of the VNC
• Azureus bit torrent client
• GIMP graphics extraordinaire
• VLC for watching video in spite of my new love for Totem
  
• Alarm Clock Pro (I said I have a new job.. now I have to get up).
• SWF & FLV Player - what's that you say? Full Screen Leftytube, yup, watch flash full screen
• Bandwidth Usage Widget
• Google Earth
• Amarok - although it is still compiling, see more words about my love of Amarok here
  
• As usual, I am heavily reliant on web based applications GMail, Docs & Spreadsheets, Google, Blogger and Google Reader.

PS: Dontcha just love that Canada:

The Copyright Board of Canada issued a decision on private copying last Friday that set new levies for fixed recordable media, such as that found in portable MP3 players, and asserted that downloading copyrighted files from peer-to-peer networks does not break Canadian copyright law as long as the copying is done for private usage. - from DRM Watch

Labels: alternatives, anti-microsoft, anti-war, blogosphere, canada, democracy, internal, leftist content creation, link, macosx, nationalization, opinion, osx86, personal story, photoshop, tools, youtube

It wasn't guilt or astonishment I felt, as I biked home after the bar, past the Emergency Shelter.

Shame? Angst? Fear? These don't quite describe the feeling either. Just a flicker in my gut as I saw the half dozen folks within a block, in sleeping bags outside and under doorways. It isn't a lack of compassion just a numbness from seeing it every day in downtown Victoria. Two of these people were camped in separate doorways of the shelter itself.

It wasn't until after I stopped at the Canadian branded Wendy's, ate a rainbow glazed donut and after I cycled past the hockey rink at CFB Esquimalt and saw all the activity (keep reading) that my pilot light of feeling grew to an all out flame I recognized.

The feeling by then was unmistakable. It was anger. I was downright mad. I took it easy then, road slowly up the railway tracks (for those of you not from the island, don't worry, even in my semi-sober state it would be hard to get hit by a train that only runs because the Canadian constitution says it must and even then it only comes by once in each direction per day during the busy season). I'd never been up this section of the tracks. I really haven't spent that much time in my parent's home in View Royal, where I moved back to, two days after quitting my Aussie job and leaving that country for what I thought would be a short period of unemployment and eating the parental cooking. Maybe that's what people think when they move on to the street in the first place. "I won't be here long." I am very lucky I have my parents to stay with.

You see, I live in a city where the regular shelter is so full we built an Emergency Shelter 10 years ago down the block. This shelter has been so full since before it even opened, that when I worked on databases around the place, 8 years ago, one of the most important projects was on how to individually identify the homeless in a way that determined who was staying in the emergency shelter beyond the maximum 3 nights per month.

My friend who is doing a social work practicum at a day drop-in centre writes that there have been six deaths amongst the street community since he started in early-January. That's about a death a week.

I started Jack Layton's book Homelessness last weekend. I read half of it in a single night, but then I didn't pick it up again. I just haven't finished it and it is this inaction that makes me the most angry. It isn't that I haven't tried to help. I lived on the lawn of the legislature in a camp of the homeless, dubbed Camp Campbell, for nearly a month in February 2002. But, like the camp's name sake and his latest budget yesterday, I am too much talk and not enough action:

"Rather than making a long-term investment in housing for the homeless, this government’s solution is to create more shelter beds – temporary beds that do not provide the homeless with a place to call their own."

In front of me on the screen are postings for jobs working at the Cool Aid shelter. I'm not working and I haven't been for a couple of months. Its been a peaceful and healthy time in my life. I've had time for much reflection and stoking of the burning fire in my belly (and the creation of this blog). I don't know why I haven't applied yet, I've known about these postings for almost as long as I've been unemployed. It isn't like I'm collecting some kind of benefits -- just temporarily retired on credit.

That anger though, it kept growing. The burning in my belly is unbearable as I write this. The knowledge that it takes more money to house people in substandard emergency shelters than a real home. That the federal government is giving you the chance to rate your top five budget priorities:

a) Debt
b) Spending
c) Personal Tax
d) Corporate Tax
e) Other

Ok, so that wasn't the order I chose, but did it matter? I realized when I filled it out it probably didn't. What I meant by spending was more. When Flaherty reads the statistical summary of my submission he isn't going to be motivated to raise taxes and spend more. When I put Corporate tax anywhere in the list he is going to take that as a vote to cut them, despite my comments.

While the military is buying laser guided killing devices for $40 million and 80 new tanks the social deficit in this country is growing crazily. As I cycled by CFB Esquimalt up the tracks, bumpy bump, the military port was running full steam ahead. It was past three am and there were lights, dry-docked ships, workers and a helicopter. This is where our federal taxes our going and I'm pissed about it.

We need more than just emergency shelters, we need the kind of thinking that realizes that money spent killing people in Afghanistan doesn't make it safer for the people dieing on the streets of Victoria.

Labels: alternatives, bc ndp, bcmedia, leftist content creation, ndp, opinion, personal story, shilling

The NDP is being incredibly effective in the balance of power position. Movement is happening on NDP priorities without capitulation.

This all happened today:

Layton's announcement yesterday that there is a "Prosperity gap continue[ing] to grow for new Canadians" and that the NDP has a plan to help, saw headlines across the country, today. Montreal Gazette, The Star, Toronto Sun, The Globe and Mail, CTV and many more headlines headlines abounded.

It met with some incomprehensible, yet hilarious criticism from the likes of these guys. That's right weirdos, Layton wants to help immigrants use their skills ipso facto he is having an affair, has a love child and ... ... ... you guessed it: Thai food in Alberta. Everyone else seemed to like the ideas presented including these conservatives who claim it coincides nicely with the Ontario Conservatives plan.. whatever..

Then Catherine Bell, had the opportunity to introduce and speak to the importance of Bill M-262. Correspondingly, you have the opportunity to sign a petition supporting this excellent motion for electoral reform in Canada. Back in 2005 Ed Broadbent pushed a motion through that was adopted unanimously calling for electoral reform. Today's motion picks up where that motion left off. It's necessary because the other parties aren't moving on this critical priority at all.

A motion calling for a $10 minimum federal wage was also moved in the house today by the NDP:

Today one in six Canadians live in poverty and nearly 1.2 million of these are children. Many adults living in poverty work for rock-bottom wages. One quarter of poor families now have someone working full time and two million families are unable to find shelter they can afford. The federal minimum wage was abolished by the Liberal government in 1996.

And finally, as South of the border, folks come up with a surefire way to get argue for troops to come home from Iraq. North of the border superstar MP, Dawn Black, uncovers military plans that have not been approved by parliament despite what O'Connor's department says. Check out this magic exchange from Question Period:

Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster—Coquitlam, NDP) : Mr. Speaker, the government needs to come clean on this. Will the Royal Canadian Regiment be returned in February 2010? Will the PPCLI be returning in August 2009 for their third or fourth rotation? And will the Van Doos return for their third rotation in August 2010 as General Hillier's planning documents indicate? It is hard to see where civilian oversight is taking place at DND. How can the military plan rotations that Parliament has not approved?

Hon. Gordon O'Connor (Minister of National Defence, CPC) : Mr. Speaker, the government has said that we are committed to the end of February 2009. No further decision has been made. The government, when it finds it appropriate, will make the decision on what happens if and when the events occur after 2009.

Has the NDP uncovered the military reporting to someone other than the executive? Maybe it is like that time, the RCMP deported Arar to be tortured in Syria because they gave information to US Authorities but not their own political leadership. Nope, no convenient fall guy (can you spell Z-a-c-c-a-r-d-e-l-l-i) will be available this time (H-i-l-l-i-e-r), Dawn Black received these documents through a Freedom of Information request.

Here's the entire exchange:

Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster—Coquitlam, NDP) :
Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence has refused the NDP request to set a time for debate and a vote on whether or not to extend the mission in Afghanistan beyond 2009. Documents I have obtained through access to information show that the Chief of the Defence Staff is already way ahead of the government. The CDS has detailed plans going until 2011 for deployments.

Will the minister tell the members of the Canadian Forces and their families what General Hillier has planned for them?

* * *

Hon. Gordon O'Connor (Minister of National Defence, CPC) :
Mr. Speaker, I have answered this question a number of times. The member is confusing the military internal plan which is based upon the Afghanistan compact and government direction. If she reads the plan in detail, she will notice that the military acknowledge that they are committed to the end of February 2009, however, they plan beyond those dates because the Afghan compact goes until 2011.

* * *

Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster—Coquitlam, NDP) :
Mr. Speaker, the government needs to come clean on this. Will the Royal Canadian Regiment be returned in February 2010? Will the PPCLI be returning in August 2009 for their third or fourth rotation? And will the Van Doos return for their third rotation in August 2010 as General Hillier's planning documents indicate?

It is hard to see where civilian oversight is taking place at DND. How can the military plan rotations that Parliament has not approved?

* * *

Hon. Gordon O'Connor (Minister of National Defence, CPC) :
Mr. Speaker, the government has said that we are committed to the end of February 2009. No further decision has been made. The government, when it finds it appropriate, will make the decision on what happens if and when the events occur after 2009.

Labels: alternatives, blogosphere, leftist content creation, link, online campaign, opinion, personal story, spy-watch

Thanks to the 929 visitors who made this blog what it is this month. I failed to meet my 1000 unique visit dream, but each one of your unique visits means just as much to me as if I had. Your return visits not so much. Obfuscated Thoughtlessness Inversed had way more of those.. 2652 or an average of 2.85 visits per visitor.

I couldn't have done it with out you. I cherish your visits, especially from the several folks who work for the Department of National Defense, and the repeat visitors from Human Resources and Social Development Canada and even the one guy who visited once from the Government of Nova Scotia. At least the RCMP didn't visit this month, like they did last month. Then again I didn't make fun of the commissioner this month, like I did last month.

On the plus side staff at the Council of Canadians, War Amps of Canada, COPE 378, BCGEU, CBC, Sierra Club of BC, BC and Federal NDP Caucus and federal NDP staff all visited. I like being noticed by them. Also, those of you who I called idiots who then proved that you are fast learners, thanks to you too. The IE ratio dropped from nearly 50% to 38.3% and beyond that Firefox came in on the month at 39%-just slightly ahead. Yay!

On the corporate side of things, the coolest-non-ISP-.com-to-visit award goes to Agilent.com. Whereas the award for creepiest Human Resources/Evil doers inc. award goes to PSI Limited. May PSI never get asked to psych my brain out for corporate profit.. From the PSI website:

International Leadership Assessment:

Assessing the competence of existing and potential international leaders contributes to both selection and development processes. In selection, assessment helps evaluate the suitability of leaders for particular assignments. In development, it helps identify areas of potential leadership growth and feeds into personal and career development processes. It can also contribute to succession planning. The tools used in assessment include PSi’s Standard and International TAISs (a psychometric profiling inventory) and our web-based International 360° and International Leadership 360° profiles, as well as other psychometric instruments.

There isn't much difference between these two companies. .com's really aren't usually cool. After I looked up the anonymous IP of PSI's internet gateway, read their website and digested the above, I ran away shrieking like my dog after getting stung by the bee she just ate.

(Reality check: I wasn't actually shrieking and the dog usually only eats bees during the summer and then she kinda half-mumbles half cries, and that's the northern hemisphere summer some time away still, oh and the word just is somewhat of a loose time measurement. I suggest longitude and latitude for those of you who are into measurement. For regular readers, my dog, refers to the brown one you often see on this page in little photos. Alright this is getting way to random and nothing like a reality check, close bracket:).

True to my promise I will not post dates, times or actual IP addresses of these visits. Hopefully your network admins are not bored or crazy enough to pull up the logs to bust you for looking at my blog.

Ok, that's enough navel gazing. On to a new month and more near exponential growth in readership!

Labels: annotation, bc blogs, internal, personal story, tools

Alright, I have to admit it, I watch the stats page on my blog with a severe addiction. Since I set this blog up, about 70 posts ago, I have been glued to the unique visitor count provided by my awstats.

The truth of the matter is I really want to hit 1000 unique visitors by the end of this month. As I write this, 900 unique visitors (ie. IP addresses) have happened this month including bots, worms and other automated annoyances.

Crappy post eh?

Here have a look at some recent posts with interesting content:

• Project Porchlight - Or one bulb to save the world
• Steckle's my favourite
• Gary Lunn is confused - Thinks Nuclear is a solution not a problem.
• Take that student debt!
• The right to conscientiously object and brownshirted bloggers
• Yup that's me.. why I'm pro-choice!

Labels: blogosphere, leftist content creation, opinion, personal story

Some posts are long.. others are short.

Tonight, we bring you a reference to a long story in a short form: Denise Savoie doesn't just rock the Literacy; she rocks on.

Education has the potential to increase our capacity exponentially. Let's get on with it and stop acting like the debt creating Liberals and the future hating Conservatives.

I Love my Member of Parliament.

Labels: anti-war, canada, democracy, green isn't just a colour it's an imperative, opinion, personal story

This site is still up. Fuckers. I haven't held office as Chairperson for the UVic Students' Society since 2000, but these anti-choicers are still suggesting you e-mail me and tell me how wrong-headed I am.

To top it all off, you guessed it, they are the ones who are wrong.

They lost a democratic vote of the membership to establish the policy, another in 1999 to protect it and apparently it was revisited for the third time recently and the idiots lost again.

The issue was simple. They thought the student society shouldn't have any control over itself and e-mail the The University President's Council to that effect. They also thought policy set by democratic meetings of over 500 people should exempt them for no reason.

Oh how my e-mail box used to whine under the barrage of their incessant insanity.

Happy Pro-Choice Blogging Day everybody!

May the anti-choicers shrivel and die soon... if not here is some Bill Hick's to live by:

"If you're really pro-life, here's what you do. Don't block med clinics. OK? Lock arms, and block cemeteries. Let's see how fucking committed you are to this premise!
'She can't come in.'
'She was 96, she got hit by a bus, what?'
'There's options.'
'What? stuff her? What're you talking about? She's dead!'
'We're pro-life; get her out of that casket! Get her out! We're pro-life, there will be no death!'
...look, a three-month old baby in a woman's belly is not a human being, OK? It's just a congregate of cells. You're not a human being, 'till you're in my phone book." - Bill Hicks

Yay for Roe v. Wade!

Labels: alternatives, bc blogs, canada, democracy, health, leftist content creation, link, online campaign, opinion, personal story, pro-choice

Wikipedia is where it's at. And not just because of this majestic photo of the sometimes overly degraded 'skyrat.'

The photo, in focus and colour of the stunningly beautiful common Western Gull is reproduced courtesy of the GNU Free Documentation License. The photo credit goes to Daniel Shwen.

The photos below are my feeble attempts at gull watching. The bird is of the same species but you just can't tell can you. It is definitely a juvenile as the colouring represents the immaturity. A friend noticed the waves are fake and this made me chuckle. This inspired me to wonder, and for those that come after me...

Sitting alone atop the First Church
of Christ, Scientist on Pandora St.
may find the waves you sit amongst are wooden,
lonely and provide absolutely nothing to eat.
The colour washed out of your perch,
deprived of the path for which I search
Am I too old for still pecking the spot on my parent's beek?
Where is the stability and life I seek.

Why can't I come down from here... ?

Labels: faith, kitten, personal story

The idea is simple enough. Import your list of contacts from GMail / Yahoo / Hotmail / AOL into MySpace and see who is already a MySpace member.

Too bad it doesn't fucking work.

You give the man your password, wait a while and then boom, crash, down goes the system. 404 errors all over the place and links to who knows where.

Then there is the second and third try where it finally figures out that it should load your address book without sending you into the nethers of cyberspace. First few people are displayed you go to the next bunch and wait for 10 minutes while it moves like mummified molasses.

I'm all about overloading your server, but damn, I run on a free server at home, not a multi-billion dollar News Corp flagship.

Oh, and to top that off you get all these people you added to your addressbook in high school, and no new friends cause everyone you like is obsessed with Myspace as you and has found you already.

Stupid Address Book import....

BTW: The same function on Facebook works great! Now all I need is one to import my friendster "friends" into myspace, that list into hi5 and that into facebook and it will appear to those who are looking that I have friends again.

I have a real friend, she uses hyves.nl.

I don't want any friends at all on Digg.com, Technorati, Windows Live or anywhere else with a social networking component so you won't see me importing stuff there...

Ok, enough of this blogging, time to go drink with real people.. maybe they'll be my real friends and leave comments on this blog after they are good and drunk with me. Maybe I need a Second Life this one is cyber-lame.

Labels: alternatives, anti-microsoft, health, opinion, personal story, tools

It probably isn't their fault.. that they are so stupid. But it is their fault they aren't unionized with Local 40 anymore.

Kicking a dozen regular clients of the former establishment out for something the staff told us to do. Come on. What da hell?

It went down like this: It was a close friend and former co-workers last day. She had just gotten out after serving the hard part of her life sentence. 12 and a bit years. Parole was looking nice and we went out to celebrate and have a few drinks. Being slow and her getting off work at 9 pm we only made it to the bar at 11.

We arrived hungry so we had a simple request. Some food. But the kitchen was closed. At the suggestion of our server (who admittedly offered to make toast) we simply wandered over to Ali Baba's and achieved for ourselves some pizza pie. We came right back.

We happily ate our pizza pie and kept drinking, in the bar. So far so good.

Then something went terribly wrong.

Having been spurned on by our munching of the good stuff, more of our group went to get some pie. When they returned they were told that "the liquor law" prohibited us from eating it within the Bar. Further, a ridiculously moronic staff member (pictured on the left) emphatically stated that the reason the law prohibited such activities was because the bar would be liable for the food poisoning us.

We responded defiantly with a simple request. The staff person who told us this was asked to produce "the law" that said this. We stated clearly that we would follow any liquor laws that he could produce. We suggested several websites he could find the law on and offered to provide the phone numbers of lawyers we knew would be available for exactly this kind of a ridiculous inquiry.

Instead of simply saying, ok ok, just do it descretely, or saying alright I was steppin' it isn't the law but you just can't eat that in here, he threatened us by saying "if you eat that in here you will have to leave."

The threat was too good to be ignored.

We held a brief discussion and then chowed down. We all had a bite. I guess we figured that if the bar had already accepted any liability we mayaswell enjoy ourselves in the manner most likely to cause ourselves harm.

Straight over returns this fine example of a future union-busting manager. He immediately demands we leave.

We knew this was coming and had provoked it so we amicably agreed. Offering to leave immediately without paying our bill or allowing that he might want to invite us to stick around long enough for the dozen or so of us to settle up.. Long enough for us to finish eating our pizza. Idiot.

He realized he was beat, so we ate and paid. Then left and vowed never to return. As we were leaving he admitted it was just bar policy. Why he hadn't just started by saying, "Hi, I'm the power-tripping moron who doesn't want you dozen customers in the bar, please leave." Instead of making a total fool of himself and forcing a boycott. I just don't know.

The Old Bailey was the pub of choice for most of the 12 years of hell that my friend had survived at that old job (she wasn't really in jail). At one point her partner even worked at the Old Bailey. We spent literally thousands of dollars in a unionized, safe, convenient and welcoming environment. We experienced the highs and the lows... We got booted out for good reasons (like it was time to go home or being inebriated), we got invited in for better ones, like a safe warm environment where we could drink amongst friends.

We never were as angry as we were the other night.

The boycott is on and not just because the staff booted us out at a time when we carefully selected the location for maximum enjoyment.

This place exists as a deunionized, decertified, shell of its former self.

We won't be back and neither should you.

Labels: hospitality, includes photo, personal story, union

This is from an e-mail I sent to a friend yesterday... reproduced for you the reader:

Ok let's seriously talk bathrooms. And not just because I think my 6 bits worth last night maybe offended. I'm not worried about offending..

The socially accepted descriptions of gender identity and the roles that go with them are flawed.

The little cut-out people on the bathroom door are the extreme examples of the doors that you and I are forced to walk through. They clearly aren't acceptable to us and they aren't because of the implications for the rest of our lives. These gender roles are defined through a series of social controls that definitely don't fit for a few and clearly can't fit for more.

It isn't enough to redefine the little cut-outs like some restaurant owners do. The idea of only two choices or even only three choices just simply isn't enough...

People shouldn't be confined in where they urinate and they shouldn't be forced to hide themselves.

And when I say people, I mean you and me.

Thankfully the things said at a party aren't enough to define the full belief system of a person.

I hope you had fun last night and that forever the doors you walk through are the ones of your choosing and you are able to flush other people's interpretations of what those doors define when they narrowly take away your identity or those you care about.

nb: In celebration of my newly unemployed status I was charging $.75 (or 6 bits) to hear my drunken rants at a party. Clinton did it first only he charged $80 for the cheap tix. I won't be reproducing my sweater rant, so stop asking.

Labels: mea culpa, opinion, personal story

A tip of the hat for those who serve Down Under is an article about how Jim doesn't tip in Australia.

Like me, until last week, he was being a Canadian leftist in Melbourne. I hope he is enjoying himself and the not tipping. I'd still recommend a little something here and there, but don't try your usual 20% from home.

Last week I finished up 7 months working for the union that represents Hospitality workers (LHMU) and I can tell you that when Jim says "if Australia's current right-wing government has its way, their restaurants will soon look more like Canada's" it is a dramatic understatement. John Howard's attack on the industrial system is far-reaching and evil. Have a look at the award (like a collective agreement for the whole industry) that covers the Hospitality industry. This is the wage rates section, divide amounts by 38 hours to get the hourly rate (these all go up about $27 on December 1). We're not talking incredible wages. But they are living wages. Now look at the section on penalty rates and imagine losing these from your wage rates.

More about the Australian Labor[sic] movement and its enemies later.

Labels: leftist content creation, opinion, personal story, union

Kleercut.net is an action based site against turning our old growth and ancient forests into tissue.

Go here now and save the forests.

Labels: environment, green isn't just a colour it's an imperative, includes photo, leftist content creation, online campaign, personal story