Date registered: January 6, 2016
Jan 01
Pa will read The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload and then hit control alt delete on a lot of things.
Ma will get her new oven working or replaced.
Thing 1 will get his license, buy a new drum kit, and then realize that said drums don’t have wheels (and won’t fit into our car).
Thing 2 will foreclose on the kitchen if Pa doesn’t pay him back (with interest) the $3000 he fronted for the last kitchen payment.
Jan 01
It’s time to build my retirement fund (and throw a lot of other stuff away).
Jan 01
And there you have it. Its been one of those “freegan” years when every “fracking” thing that could go wrong has gone wrong. Yet, in retrospect, I found that it wasn’t a complete loss.
Jan 01
The Chinese called it the Year of the Snake. The United Nations dubbed 2013 the International Year of Water Cooperation. It was the year that Doctor Who and Beatlemania turned 50. The concept of mass production turned 100 years old. 2013 also marked the 100th anniversary of:
In honour of the Chinese Year of the Snake, politicians everywhere went into viper-drive to prove that many can still go lower than a snake’s belly in their ability to embezzle, embarrass and underwhelm their constituents. Meanwhile, the UN’s high hopes for water and cooperation were dashed by an uncooperative typhoon’s destruction in the Philippines and a Calgary Stampede that was very nearly cancelled (until organizers rounded up a herd of sea horses) in a year that was awash in an ocean of other leaks and illegal wiretaps.
Regardless we have clearly come a long way in the last hundred years… or have we? Think about all of the above-mentioned centennial milestones as you scroll through what the spin doctors of my mind can weave in def(er)ence of 2013 – e.g. “like Doctor Who, no matter how many Popes die, they are always replaced by another white guy” (someone else came up with that one hence the quotation marks).
Brace yourselves, I don’t even know what lies ahead (which should scare both of us given that I am writing about what I think I remember already happened last year).
Jan 01
US Republican Party brinksmanship brinks the world to brink of yet another financial meltdown.
Unable to defeat the US Democratic Party’s Health Care legislation democratically or legally, the Republican Party decides extortion might be the answer. They shut the US government machine down and send all federal civil servants home without pay for 16 days (and nudge the world to brink of economic collapse). Everyone is now back to normal which in government-speak means nobody agreed to anything, nothing gets done and the problem will be deferred in the hope that it will take care of itself. Stay tuned for part douche of this cliff-hanger when it comes around again in February of 2014. Even if those crazy Republicans still have a leg to stand on by then, legs won’t help if they continue to shoot themselves in the foot. Regardless, they will have a health plan to staunch those wounds. Disclaimer: Although some animals might have been affected by the closure of the Washington National Zoo (the real one, not Congress), I can assure you that no congressmen lost any salary as a result of this story.
Jan 01
Just how bad are our national debt levels?
For a more in depth discussion see the BBC article, How bad are US debt levels?
Jan 01
Lawyer Beware!
The Law of Supply and Demand is the one law that 90,000 practicing Canadian Lawyers discover they cannot circumvent. Law Schools north and south of the border are curtailing enrollment and laying off professors.
Honourable mention: Christianity Rocks!
Thousand Foot Krutch, one of the best rock bands in the world today, plays a small venue, first come first serve, Christian rock concert at a local Bible church complex in Ottawa. Although Thing 1 and I are unable to make it into the main hall, I leave satisfied that I may have attended the only gathering of any kind, let alone a gathering of heavy metal rock fans, where there is no evidence of drugs, alcohol, or […are you sitting down?…] tattoos on any of the thousands of men, women or children present.
Jan 01
Prime Minister Harper drops the gloves in defense of his Ottawa Senators.
No, this is not a hockey story…or is it? In response to trash talk from the opposition and, perhaps in defense of the cronies of questionable character he appointed to the “Great Senaten” he had so often promised to eliminate, the PM counters his opponents’ ritual attempt to wedgie the sweater over his baby blues, with a ritual of his own. He prorogues parliament (a.k.a. invoking a cut and run strategy). Coincidentally (or maybe in deference to his becoming the first PM to score a hat trick in the arena of dodging controversy by proroguing Parliament) the PM takes the additional month of paid leave he has granted himself (and his Minister of “Government employees are abusing their sick leave”) to publish his book on the history of hockey. Call it hypocrisy, hockey, or coincidence but, there can be no denying that, after smearing his Liberal opponent in the last election as an arrogant, eyebrow auteur – hypocrite who was apparently, therefore, unfit to run a country, our incumbent PM may have finally outed himself as another arrogant, albeit lowbrow auteur – hypocrite.
Jan 01
Communisn’t (what it used to be)
There are at least 83 billionaires in China’s parliament. Not bad for the world’s largest communist country where approximately 800 million (of 1.35 billion) Chinese live on less than $15 a day and where the average per capita income is approximately $9,100. Meanwhile in America, the world’s largest capitalist economy with an average per capita income of roughly $49,800, there are no billionaires in Congress. (Ref: How Communist Can China Be With All Those Billionaires? )
Runner Up: Disabled America: where work is for suckers
Almost 10% of working-age Americans are on disability. One reporter located a county in Alabama (pop. 15,388) where nearly 1 in 4 working-age adults are on disability.
Jan 01
Some other promising new inventions were unveiled but this is perhaps the one that will impact most ordinary people. This shock absorber will convert your bumpy ride into electricity. If your roads are anything like mine, this just might be the precursor to perpetual motion or, at the very least, the free ride we have all been waiting for.