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People who want to live forever are narcissists

Dec 23rd, 2024
by Craig.
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I was thinking about something today.

A while ago there was a guy on the news — an American, of course — who wants to live forever, and is not just sitting around hoping. He’s independently wealthy, of course, and seems to do nothing all day other than exercise and make/drink smoothies. (A life completely worth living for!) The ironic thing to me is that, besides his abs and biceps, he looks ten to twenty years older than he apparently is, even though (according to him) his left big toe and his right ear have all the scientific markers of being only eighteen or some such crap. (Those are not actually the parts of his body that are supposedly in their teens, but if I remembered the actual parts would you care?! Would it make a difference?)

I have to admit that when I was a kid and maybe up until I was in my early twenties I did have some weird fantasy about living until I am 100, and thinking how cool it would be to live forever. But then, you know, like you and most other people on this planet, I grew up.

And what of a life of doing nothing but exercising and drinking smoothies? Is that worth doing for all of eternity?! Are you ever allowed to risk anything? Can you drive fast, skydive, bungee jump, drink alcohol, eat a steak? Hmmm.

Hey, if buddy manages to live forever, good for him. Personally, I think if I knew him I’d probably be tempted to make sure he didn’t as I’m sure he’s an insufferable bore and, as the title says, a narcissist.

As for me, I now have zero interest in living forever. Perhaps one day we’ll crack some scientific code that realises the fountain of youth, but it’s not just your body (including your brain) that ages; everything around you ages: your relationships, your patience, your business (if you own or run one), society, etc.; and, in the case of the negatives, they accumulate: your failures, your enemies, etc. I’ve come to realise that some of those things don’t age or accumulate so well, which isn’t necessarily a good thing, and which might lead to your no longer being interested in the things you like (the first list) or the things you don’t like (the second list), which would likely lead to your no longer being interested in living if they’re not there any more (the things you like) or become overbearing (the things you don’t like). And let’s not forget that if you accumulate enough enemies, that might not end well for you! Food for thought.

So if buddy is still alive in a thousand years, will he be happy? I don’t remember whether or not he’s married, but what if his partner didn’t survive? Would he just move on? Would that just be his expectation, that he’d outlive his partners and get a new one every few decades? I suppose it would be. Not that everything is defined by marriage or having some lifelong partner, but it’s not unusual, and there are other things you might want to have for your whole life. I suppose at that point my mind explodes and I remember that I failed calculus in university! I suppose I just don’t have the imagination to live forever.

Then again, maybe only narcissists are vain enough to think that anyone cares about their ramblings on their blog! Ha ha.

Do you load the embedded images in email messages you receive?

Dec 22nd, 2024
by Craig.
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In my daily emails I invariably receive HTML messages with embedded images that are remotely hosted. I’m not talking about attached images that may or may not be displayed in-line, I’m referring to images that are hosted elsewhere and are pulled in over an Internet connection.

Every email client I’ve ever used — which is only two, Eudora and Evolution (I miss Eudora!), not counting the few I have tried temporarily — has given me the option to display these automatically or not. I always choose not to display them. Why? Because invariably one or all of the images are intended to track whether or not the person at my email address has opened the message and (presumably) read, understood and agreed to it. No thanks. There’s no benefit in that to me the receiver, so why would I do that?

Example of poorly designed HTML email message displayed in Evolution.

Example of poorly designed HTML email message displayed in Evolution

Where I really notice this is in marketing messages, of course. One in particular that I receive daily (at left) lists a number of products in which I might be interested. There are six of them on the page, and it used to be that three of them displayed above the fold — i.e., where the screen ended before I am forced to scroll. I didn’t see the images due to the default settings in my email clients that do not display the images, but there were textual descriptions that were enough to make me decide whether or not to click to go to the website for more details. Sometimes I would click, but often not. The point is though that some months ago they changed the layout of the messages, and now there are none above the fold, and no visible text descriptions without scrolling. As a result, I don’t even remember the last time I clicked for more information.

And then there are messages where the header image seems to take up so much space that you have to scroll down fourteen screens to see any text! I’m not sure which is worse; that, or messages where the whole message is contained in one embedded image!

There are even companies that provide a service where you place an image bug in normal, everyday emails, usually in your email signature. These companies must be on the decline though, as I haven’t seen any in a while. When I do come across them I block their domains using my machine’s “hosts” file, so that they never achieve their purpose, even if I do load the images in the email.

To answer my own question, I almost never load the images. It’s an immediate turn-off if you can’t explain what you’re communicating about without pictures.

OMG, the entire continent of North America is a joke!

Dec 21st, 2024
by Craig.
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(OK, sorry, I had to start two blog posts with “OMG” just to show that Canada isn’t the only basket case on the continent. And I apologise for excluding Greenland, Mexico and the Caribbean from the definition, but I’m sure that in this case they won’t complain!)

USA

All I’m going to say about the USA though is that their “experiment with democracy” isn’t going so well. I’m not even referring to their electing an admirer of dictators and “strong men” who is expected to turn his back on the rule of law; I’m referring to their inability to manage to govern their country without facing a government shutdown, seemingly every few weeks but in reality it seems to be every couple of years. I mean, I understand that the legislative side of the government needs to vote money for the administrative side of the government to be able to do the jobs defined by the legislative side of government, but really? I suppose the United States does have a record of slavery — which is the only way to describe being forced to show up to work for no pay cheque (“check” to you Americans) — so what’s the big deal with bringing it back temporarily every few years? I don’t get it.

And after 248 years — almost a quarter of a millennium — why not “experiment” with the executive side of government? This notion of a president and a vice president is so old-fashioned, so the administration-elect is experimenting with a new triumvirate: I’m not sure how to characterise it, as it seems to be rather unofficial at the moment, but it looks like it goes something like this:

  • Super (unelected) president: Elon Musk
  • President: donald trump
  • Vice president: JD Vance

Or maybe it’s like this:

  • Unelected president: Musk
  • Vice president: trump
  • Tea boy: Vance

(South Africans [including Musk] and southern Americans will nod their heads sagely at my thinly veiled racist term for Vance, which is entirely appropriate for the take-over of America by the citizen of the Third World country to which I’m referring. [And yes, you can quibble with me on my definition of the “Third World” here too, but since 1994 South Africa has been clamouring at the door of the club.)

Canada

The turmoil in Canada continues as well!

  • First of all, the antiquated electoral system of this country means that I will *GUARANTEE* that next year we will be bowing and scraping to Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre. Anyone — including Justin Trudeau! — who thinks otherwise is clearly smoking something very potent. I was talking to someone today who suggested that if the Liberals get a new leader they might do a little better than if Trudeau was leading them, but in my mind that may mean three seats instead of two. The coming defeat of the Liberals will rival or perhaps even outshine John Turner’s in 1984.
  • I have no doubt that perhaps, back in the day, Trudeau may have had a vision for where he wanted to lead the country, but it’s as plain as the nose on my face that today he is only thinking of himself. If he is indeed “reflecting” on his future as has been suggested, somebody also needs to suggest he give Joe Biden a call to get a lesson on humility and thinking of his country first. Of course, that didn’t work out too well for Biden and his party, so I suspect that Biden is the last person Trudeau will call for advice. Or maybe Trudeau is hoping for a snow storm this Christmas or over the New Year, and he will take a walk in said snow storm in the same way that his daddy did in 1984.
  • I rarely agree with anything Poilievre says, but how can one disagree with his current characterisation of the Trudeau government as a “chaotic clown show”? Someone on the CBC’s “At Issue” panel (probably Andrew Coyne) described the new cabinet, shuffled yesterday, as “Fanatics, loyalists and members of the prime minister’s wedding party.” Of course, the deliverer of the “clown show” remark then made it clear that the clown show will continue when he becomes prime minister because he also suggested that if he writes a letter to Santa Claus (or the governor general) he could get his Christmas wish of becoming prime minister sooner! God help us all.
  • To me the Trudeau government has become like that old, second-hand car you used to own. It’s completely unreliable, you know that the chances of it failing to get you to work tomorrow morning are far greater than 50%, but you somehow think that you can will it to get you there! Sound familiar?!

But the main issue I want to get to that has been bothering me for months now is all of the idiots who keep uttering the name Christy Clark as a possible successor to Trudeau! What are you people smoking?! (Sorry for all the marijuana references, but we’re talking about politics after all!) Yes, she was the leader of the BC Liberal Party, but the BC Liberal Party was a liberal party in name only! I distinctly remember Raef Mair questioning Gordon Campbell on this issue during an interview on Mair’s CKNW talk-radio programme many years ago, when Campbell became the leader of the BC Liberals, or was running to be. Mair asked Campbell to define “liberalism” with reference to the name of his party, and Campbell simply couldn’t do it! Mair may have been a bit of a pedant in that moment, and perhaps the definition of liberalism has changed over the centuries — or maybe it comes down to the different definitions of “freedom” that those on the left and right sides of the political spectrum use — but the fact of the matter is that in the years since Campbell became the premier (followed by Clark) up until the party folded earlier this year, the BC Liberals were — as described in the Wikipedia article on the party that replaced it, BC United:

conservative, neoliberal, … occupying a centre-right position on the left–right political spectrum … a “free enterprise coalition” [drawing] support from members of both the federal Liberal and Conservative parties … the main centre-right opposition to the centre-left New Democratic Party …. Once affiliated with the Liberal Party of Canada, the British Columbia Liberal Party became independent in 1987.

Their name reminds me of something my Grade Seven teacher (Mr. Cuttel) told the class one day, that he found it ironic that countries in the world that were widely known as being anything but democratic seemed to like using the word in their names to cover up their lack of democracy, e.g., German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), etc. Perhaps the BC Liberal Party was using that logic!

If you don’t live in BC and just can’t quite grasp the nomenclature, I strongly recommend you read the CBC article “Why the B.C. Liberals are sometimes liberal and sometimes not“, with a video with excellent (i.e., corny) sound effects by Richard Zussman, who now reports for Global BC. It’s really not that difficult; as illustrated above, people can call their countries whatever they want, and those countries are named by political leaders who lie just as much as political leaders everywhere on the spectrum.

If Clark even runs in an expected leadership race I’ll be surprised, but if she does and wins, I’ll be handing in my licence to run this blog.

BC's Liberal Party does not equal Canada's Liberal Party.

BC’s Liberal Party does not equal Canada’s Liberal Party (CBC)

Updated, 2024-12-22: Some minor changes (mostly formatting), plus added the screenshot of the CBC video to which I link. Also, apparently this is the third post title I’ve started with “OMG” recently! All because of politicians!

The hilarity (not!) of donald trump’s childish remarks

Dec 18th, 2024
by Craig.
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One thing I have noted for years is the habit of many people on the right to make every argument personal and to resort to name calling. This is particularly illustrated by the juvenile known as donald trump, whose name I refuse to spell with initial capital letters because he doesn’t deserve even that much grammatical respect.

His latest tact of referring to the country of Canada as the “great state of Canada” — as Americans are wont to do when referring to their states grandiloquently — was mildly amusing the first time if only because we ourselves often refer to ourselves as the 51st state, but with the second and subsequent repetitions it just became moronic. Hey don, you might have got a chuckle the first time (and the second time when you placed a Swiss mountain in Canada), but we’re all yawning now.

But with respect to calling people names, your moronic reaction to the resignation of Canada’s finance minister is beyond the pale. First of all, I realise that you have absolutely zero respect for any woman other than for her purpose of having a pussy to grab, but characterising her (and even having an opinion on her domestic actions) as “totally toxic” because she did an excellent job of representing her country (not sub-national state) of Canada in trade negotiations with your country just rings of your being a well-documented poor loser. Non-Americans are often told by you and your acolytes to STFU and keep our opinions of America and American politics to ourselves, so I suggest you take your own advice.

The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau. Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. She will not be missed!!!

The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau. Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. She will not be missed!!!

Fuck you, you piece of shit. I can guarantee that this citizen of Canada is very happy that we are not governed by the likes of idiots like you.

OMG, the Canadian government is in a completely PREDICTABLE shambolic shambles!

Dec 16th, 2024
by Craig.
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Justin Trudeau.

Justin Trudeau

In 2015, Justin Trudeau blithely and mockingly informed us that it was 2015. Among other things — the most noticeable and consequential to me and to Canadians in general — he put on his pink “I’m a feminist” T-shirt and promised that the election he had just won would be the last first-part-the-post (FPTP) election.

Within about six months he had conjured up some lame excuses for why he was completely and incontrovertibly going back on the completely fake promise that he would change the electoral system. Next!

As for the world’s biggest feminist label he assumed without the consent of any actual feminist on the planet — except, perhaps and laughably, his now ex-wife — he has long exposed the truth, that he is anything but. This was clear in the way in which he cast Jody Wilson-Raybould aside like yesterday’s trash, and now, how he has done exactly the same with the last female cabinet minister of any consequence, Chrystia Freeland (see below).

But I’ve been mulling this blog post over in my mind for weeks. The crux of it is that, with reference to Trudeau’s going back on his promise to replace the FPTP electoral system, he has an electoral system in which his defeat is pretty much guaranteed. Guaranteed! The rats are abandoning ship, and those that are too stupid to jump are rearranging the deck chairs! Trudeau could (and should!) have resigned the leadership of the Liberal Party a year or months ago to allow a successor the ability to have a chance to maintain a reasonable Liberal presence in the House of Commons, instead of being left with the same two seats with which the Progressive Conservative Party were left after the 1993 election.

In her letter of resignation, Freeland referred to “costly political gimmicks”. This has to be, possibly among other things, the “GST holiday” that came into effect on 14 December. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) referred to it as a “gong show”, and it is. It has forced businesses to invest an inordinate amount of time and energy — during the busiest time of the year — in reconfiguring their point-of-sales systems to zero the tax rate on the limited number of goods on which the tax has been removed. It’s a joke! It shows a complete ignorance of the part of Trudeau and his government of how business works. It’s a sad, sad situation in which Canada finds itself.

The plans I had for this post were pushed up and significantly truncated as I thought I had more time. I find it bizarre that the Government of Canada finds itself in almost the exact same situation today as the governments of Syria, Germany, and South Korea! We’re a joke!

Here’s Chrystia Freeland’s resignation letter:

Chrystia Freeland

Chrystia Freeland. (Brian Ferraro/NPR)

Dear Prime Minister,

It has been the honour of my life to serve in government, working for Canada and Canadians. We have accomplished a lot together.

On Friday, you told me you no longer want me to serve as your Finance Minister and offered me another position in the cabinet.

Upon reflection, I have concluded that the only honest and viable path is for me to resign from the cabinet.

To be effective, a Minister must speak on behalf of the Prime Minister and with his full confidence. In making your decision, you made clear that I no longer credibly enjoy that confidence and possess the authority that comes with it.

For the past number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada.

Our country today faces a grave challenge. The incoming administration in the United States is pursuing a policy of aggressive economic nationalism, including a threat of 25 per cent tariffs.

We need to take that threat extremely seriously. That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war. That means eschewing costly political gimmicks, which we can ill afford and which make Canadians doubt that we recognize the gravity of the moment.

That means pushing back against ‘America First’ economic nationalism with a determined effort to fight for capital and investment and the jobs they bring. That means working in good faith and humility with the premiers of the provinces and territories of our great and diverse country, and building a true Team Canada response.

I know Canadians would recognize and respect such an approach. They know when we are working for them, and they equally know when we are focused on ourselves. Inevitably, our time in government will come to an end. But how we deal with the threat our country currently faces will define us for a generation, and perhaps longer. Canada will win if we are strong, smart, and united.

It is this conviction which has driven my strenuous efforts this fall to manage our spending in ways that will give us the flexibility we will need to meet the serious challenges presented by the United States.

I will always be grateful for the chance to have served in government and I will always be proud of our government’s work for Canada and Canadians.

I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues as a Liberal Member of Parliament, and I am committed to running again for my seat in Toronto in the next federal election.

With gratitude,

The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, P.C., M.P.

trump this, tariff that

Dec 12th, 2024
by Craig.
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I’m not a big fan of Ontario premier Doug Ford, and I realise I’m just one of the peanut gallery baying for blood that will cost everyone on both sides of the border, but yeah, fuck trump and his tariffs, so cut off the Americans sponging off of Canada for their electricity!

Story: “Ford threatens to cut off Ontario’s energy supply to U.S. if Trump follows through on tariffs“.

Borders work both ways; if trump is whining about drugs and illegal aliens getting into his country, it’s not Canada that is letting them in, it’s America’s own bloody Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection! Duh!

Zed versus zee

Dec 12th, 2024
by Craig.
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I have to admit that I mostly complain on this blog. It’s like the old cliché, where the news only reports on the bad things that happened that day, because everything else is unremarkable … right?

But speaking of the news, today, here in Canada, I was watching the Global National news, and the teleprompter reader (Carolyn Jarvis) actually referred to “gen-zedders” and not “gen-zee’ers”! Most Canadians are so brainwashed by American culture that they use the latter — “zee” instead of “zed” — when referring to the last letter of the alphabet. I was so shocked that I texted a friend! 🙂

It’s nice to hear that not all Canadians are brainwashed. Now that is remarkable!

IKEA Markus office chair review

Dec 7th, 2024
by Craig.
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IKEA Markus office chair.

IKEA Markus office chair

Something else I’ve been meaning to post since forever! 🙂 I’ve had several office desk chairs over the years in my home office, and some of them have been pretty crappy and nothing near how they were advertised or appeared in “marketing”. I’m not going to list them because I’ve long since forgotten them and who made them. I suppose the fact that I wasn’t prepared to spend several hundred or a thousand dollars on them might have something to do with my being unimpressed by them.

I bought at least a couple of them from Staples, although I suppose I can’t really blame Staples for the quality of products manufactured by someone else. A few years ago though I bought a Markus office chair from IKEA, and it still serves me very well to this day.

Sure, it doesn’t quite look quite as sumptuous as the types of chairs you see in Hollywood scenes of some high-powered CEO’s darkened office, but the fact is that it’s very comfortable and it lasts! Whether you work from home or you do have an oak-panelled office on the top floor of some skyscraper, this chair is an excellent investment of the few dollars that it costs, C$200 as of this moment on the IKEA Canada website.

Buy it!

Cosmopolitan should follow Tropicana

Dec 4th, 2024
by Craig.
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(True to my form, I drafted this post months ago [October 2024] but life got hectic and I never posted it!)

I see in the news that the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas was blown up a couple of days ago. (9 October.) I only give a damn about Vegas in the sense that it was the location of the absolute worst holiday I have ever been on (and I almost never use superlatives), and it wasn’t because I got drunk and married some random woman there!

It was because of a hotel that wasn’t put to the torch that week: The Cosmopolitan. If they ever blow up The Cosmopolitan, I’ll be there to watch and cheer and piss on the ruins!

Breakdown of the Rule of Law in the United States of America

Dec 3rd, 2024
by Craig.
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Tattered American flag.

Tattered American flag

What we’re seeing down in the good ol’ U.S. of A., with Joe Biden pardoning his son, is a classic example of unintended consequences and the down side of the reason that all of trump’s supporters love him: his inability to think before he opens his big yap. Many people seem to consider it somehow endearing that a politician can talk just as freely and openly as a drunkard down at the pub, but anyone with a brain knows that just about anything they say “after a few” down at the pub cannot and should not be counted on in the morning.

And yet, trump can barrack out the word “tariff” and all of his acolytes cheer as if they even know what the word means, never mind how tariffs would affect their grocery bills, making the inflation they blame on Biden (but which is worldwide) look like child’s play.

This is what I see as having happened in this case:

  • 2020: trump pardons (among other people) the convicted felon (Charles Kushner), pardon my redundancy, who is the father-in-law of his daughter, Ivanka, as well as a bunch of his other supporters who have broken the law to support him.
  • 2021: trump sets his private army of ne’er-do-wells on the US Congress in attempts to hijack the counting of votes of the Electoral College and (seemingly) have his Vice President (Mike Pence) and Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi) assassinated. They fail.
  • 2024: The United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) rules that the President of the United States (POTUS) is immune from prosecution, which means the action to try and convict trump of treason in the case of the January 6th self-coup attempt essentially comes to a grinding halt. (How an attempt at a coup can be considered an “official act” is beyond the understanding of my miniscule intellect.)
  • 2024: trump is elected President of the United States, again, to the dismay of over 50% of the population of the United States.
  • 2024: trump nominates Kash Patel — who has made far-ranging promises that echo trump’s promises of revenge and retribution, completely contrary to the ethos of the Rule of Law — for the post of Director of the FBI. Oh, and he also nominates said convicted felon, Charles Kushner, to the post of Ambassador to France.
  • 2024: Biden sees what is coming down the pike and, despite previous assurances that he would not pardon Hunter Biden, decides to do so because it has become clear to him that there’s no way Hunter will be treated according to the Rule of Law under which Joe previously promised not to pardon him. So what we have here is one President flouting the Rule of Law (even if pardons are, technically, legal) to combat the entirely predictable flouting of the Rule of Law of an incoming president.
  • 2024: Predictably, trump and his cry-baby supporters cry foul.

And, of course, as about a million other people have noted, now that a convicted felon has been allowed to run for and win the office of President of the United States, why should there be fetters on the activities and freedoms of other felons? Why incarcerate them? Why prevent them from holding certain jobs, like ambassadorships? Why prevent them from voting? And why conform to various other laws and norms and follow the Rule of Law?!

As I said to someone recently, the maxim that “crime doesn’t pay” is sure taking a hit these days, especially from the “royalty” that are running the United States!

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