“With all the horseshit in this room, surely there’s a pony in here somewhere.”
In this country, there have been forests of trees and oceans of ink sacrificed on the altar of explaining the political topic of “fiscal imbalance”. In a nutshell, it refers to our provincial governments’ lifelong complaints about the difference between the amount of money that flows from their people, in the form of taxation, into the federal treasury vs the provinces’ perceived shortfall in value of the federal services those same people receive from the nation’s government in Ottawa. Some provinces simply bleat “It’s never enough!” Others bleat, “You’re spending it in the wrong places,” or “You expect us to ACCOUNT for how we spend the money you give us??!” And Québec routinely bleats all three, PLUS “Just give us all of the money we demand and trust us to spend it on the right programs.”
Well, for all the paper forests and ink oceans expended in an effort to make people understand, Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells, in a recent entry on his blog, nicely sums the whole danged thing up, accomplishing with crystal clarity in eight little sentences what generations of federal Prime Ministers must wish they could have said out loud to generations of ten times the number of provincial Premiers:
“Apparently the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador is upset about the booty the recent budget delivers to his province. Here's what nobody seems to have explained to him.
Danny Williams made Paul Martin's life a screaming blue hell for most of a year and a half. Martin turned his government, his most senior staffers and bureaucratic helpers, and the entire tortured logic of Canadian fiscal federalism into pretzels to please Williams. Paul Martin wore himself into a sobbing heap to please Danny Williams.
And his reward was one fewer seat in Newfoundland & Labrador than he had before he went to the trouble.
Why would any prime minister ever again lift a finger to appease Danny Williams?
Somebody should explain this to the premier.”
= = =
Come again????
Watching TV recently… commercial comes on. Photo-love montage of majestically lit new black Cadillac sedan rolling by. Then I caught the music behind it.
I have the distinct feeling that the Cadillac advertising agency must have begun and ended their music search with song titles, selected what they thought was a little Tin Pan Alley gem, and then paid so much for the rights to the song they ordered, that when they actually found out what song they had acquired the rights to, they all crossed their fingers and hoped to hell no one would notice.*
Well, people have noticed.
Cause, sure, the song is “Sunny Side of the Street”. But no, it isn’t the “Grab your coat and get your hat; leave your worries on the doorstep. Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street” “Sunny Side of the Street”. It’s The Pogues’ “Sunnyside of the Street”.
That’d be this one:
“SUNNYSIDE OF THE STREET
Seen the carnival at Rome
Had the women I had the booze
All I can remember now
Is little kids without no shoes
So I saw that train
And I got on it
With a heartful of hate
And a lust for vomit
Now I'm walking on the sunnyside of the street
Stepped over bodies in Bombay
Tried to make it to the U.S.A.
Ended up in Nepal
Up on the roof with nothing at all
And I knew that day
I was going to stay
Right where I am, on the sunnyside of the street
Been in a palace, been in a jail
I just don't want to be reborn a snail
Just want to spend eternity
Right where I am, on the sunnyside of the street
As my mother wept it was then I swore
To take my life as I would a whore
I know I'm better than before
I will not be reconstructed
Just wanna stay right here
On the sunnyside of the street”
* When you’ve got a minute, Google “Cadillac. The Pogues”. Lots of people noticed, and a lot of them are really ticked-off Pogues fans. I for one fully understand. I still recall the exact moment about four years ago as I stood in the grocery store reading some labels on boxes of Uncle Ben’s seasoned rice when the realization sank in that the song thumping over the Muzak speakers was the original Barry McGuire “Eve of Destruction”. (Before reading the following, to get a sense of Mr McGuire’s voice throw a half pound of gravel in your spin dryer and tumble it for three minutes. Imagine that – singing this – in your ears in the “Pasta, Rice and Side Dishes” aisle of Loblaws):
“The eastern world, it is exploding
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’
But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say?
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
Take a look around ya boy, it's bound to scare ya boy
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’
I’m sitting here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.
Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for four days in space
But when you return, it’s the same old place
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbour, but don’t forget to say grace
And… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don’t believe
We’re on the eve
Of destruction
Mm, no no, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.”
= = =
And what the hell, while we’re into a stream that includes some Canadian politics, let’s keep that old ball rolling, shall we?
I work for a department whose Minister announced, many months ago, that it would be home to a new “initiative”, the Canadian Foreign Credential Recognition Agency. Its announced purpose was to “streamline” (haw haw) the process by which foreign-trained professionals, after immigrating to Canada, would be able to find work that matched their training / certification and their experience.
Prior to putting on a public service hat, I worked for 25 years for a national health care Association and based on that experience, when I heard this government’s announcement that it will create the Canadian Foreign Credential Recognition Agency, I can confess to everyone here and now that my very first thought was, “Oh no you won’t.”
Well, in the squeaky-new federal budget, the government didn’t make a whole lot of fuss about including a line item for a “Foreign Credential Recognition Office”. Because between the lines, one could read that, by funding the “Office” the feds have kissed good-bye to the “Agency”. Essentially, they have now shucked themselves of any responsibility for “streamlining” the integration of foreign credentialed professionals beyond creating a centralized referral source that will direct them to the places they need to be in order to determine what relevant value their credentials have in Canada and, if any, where their skills and training might be most needed.
Holy cow, a broken Conservative promise? What are the odds?
But on this one, it actually is a promise best broken, because it could never be kept. In my pre-public-servant incarnation, I also watched one single Canadian health care profession as it struggled, literally for years, with the process of trying to enable a graduate of either of two Canadian schools for that profession, one in Ontario at the University of Waterloo and one in Montreal at the University of Montreal, to be immediately eligible to practice in any jurisdiction in Canada. And these are Canadian schools!
If you’re still wondering why this process is so damnably complicated and bureaucratic, well (Surprise!) this is one you can’t hang on the federal government. It’s because there are two enormous hurdles such a federal entity has to clear. First, the (BUZZWORD ALERT!) over-arching responsibility for regulating professions in Canada is provincial turf, and it is fiercely guarded as such by the provincial governments. But adding even more thickener to the soup is the fact that a great many professions (and the Canadian Information Centre for International Credentials website lists almost 200 at last count) are themselves self-regulating, usually through a separate licensing and disciplinary authority that is most often labeled the profession’s “College” (the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, for example).
So for a late-comer like a federal government to just waltz into that crowded ballroom and expect everyone on the dance floor to begin jitterbugging to its music… well the odds of even finding a partner, much less convincing the entire dance hall to endorse your song selection, began at slim and slid down the scale from there.
First you have to crack the Colleges, guys. Then you have to crack the provinces. And only then will you be able to allow foreign-trained professionals to hang out their shingles.
The problem with the feds was that they thought the shingle thing was step 1.
So now they’re back to where they should have been all along. Cataloguing what’s available and matching it to what comes through Canada’s border door in the resumés of would-be new Canadian professionals. $6 million should be able to build a really fine referral service. But to all those hopeful, foreign-trained professionals I would pass along this caution: given that the office created solely to register Canada’s long guns has now run up a bill of over a billion dollars – and climbing – don’t hold your breath.
= = =
Eyes Wide Shut
Canada’s Supreme Court ruled on March 23 that VIA Rail has to retrofit some 30 of the 149 rail cars it bought from France in order to make them wheelchair accessible.
Not long ago – in the year 2000, in fact – in one of those uniquely Canadian bursts of brilliance VIA Rail went shopping for passenger cars to upgrade its aging fleet. And lo and behold, they found this great deal – “bargain-basement” great, in fact – on 149 used rail cars built by a French firm who deliberately built them much narrower in order that they could fit into the Channel tunnel.
But a funny thing about “narrower”. It requires a small aisle. Smaller than the average North American wheelchair. The new cars had washrooms that a rider with a wheelchair disability could not get to. And although they had wheelchair safety tie-down points, not one North American wheelchair could fit into the tie-down space. So today’s Supreme Court decision means that VIA Rail is now on the hook for several million dollars. (48 “several”, to be exact, as of the date of this story’s being reported). You might have expected at the very least that someone in VIA Rail’s purchasing department might have phoned a friend in National Defence and asked, “Hi Fred... So how did that bargain buy of used British submarines work out?”
But on the other hand, if ever they get around to digging a new transatlantic rail tunnel, we’re already 119 cars ahead of the game!
= = =
Oh… and a chocolate sundae. Don’t forget the chocolate sundae.
“Mongol General: "What is best in life?"
Conan: "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."
(Ahnold, as Conan, cribbing Genghis Khan, if the Internet is to be believed.)
= = =
March: International Month of the quadruped, apparently. First, a baby polar bear named Knut (pronounced with a hard “K” – kuh-NOOT') still a roly-poly living teddy bear and still, obviously, a long way from the 1,500 or so pounds he’ll eventually hit. This level of cuteness should probably be illegal.
And now, 15 cats and 1 dog.
That’s the North American “death toll” so far in the pet food “SCANDAL OF THE CENTURY!!!” (tm, Pat.Pend.) So far (at this writing), some $40 million worth of possibly-tainted pet food has been yanked from the continent’s store shelves as the story continues to place very high in both the electronic and print media coverage.
Here’s what I think:
If you are one of the (so far) 800-plus people who have joined a class-action lawsuit “because I need to know what happened”, then my sympathies, because you are illiterate, deaf and blind, possibly even a bed-ridden paralytic, obviously – because you are completely incapable of reading a newspaper, listening to a radio or turning on a TV.
If you are a lawyer who is leading the class-action lawsuit, then you are an opportunistic, utterly shameless leech, possessed of the pools of bile required to exploit a pet owner’s real but short-term grief, yet still possessed of sufficient balls (or delusion) to go on national Canadian television news and intone, “You bet we’re serious; our clients are serious and we believe we’ll find a judge who is serious. This is just beginning.”
And if you are a pet owner – oops, make that a former pet owner – who goes on that same national Canadian television news and tearfully chokes out not only the above phrase about needing to know what happened, but also, “Because he [the late bulldog in question, in this case] was my very best friend”, then again, my sympathy, but in this case because you are just pathetic.
= = =
And finally, this lovely little illustration showing that the White House just doesn’t get it (from a Washington Post online column called “White House Briefing”):
And here's a priceless soundbite from press secretary Tony Snow's interview on ABC News yesterday morning:
Diane Sawyer: "Why not let Karl Rove go up there and show he has nothing to hide? Testify, under oath, and with a transcript? Let everyone see it?"
Tony Snow: "This is what I love, this Karl Rove obsession. Let's back off. First, the question is: Do you want Karl Rove on TV, or do you want the truth?"
Diane Sawyer: "Why can't you have both?"
= = =
Jusqu’a next time.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Well poop, here’s a long-held illusion shattered.
In the movie, “Birdman of Alcatraz”, convict and central figure Robert Stroud is given an enormously sympathetic portrayal by Burt Lancaster (not to mention the film-makers). It’s actually a wonderful movie, and as you watch what supposedly is based on a true story, you can’t help but wonder why this gentle bird-lover was kept in solitary for so many of his prison years, and refused parole time after time.
Recently, I saw the movie yet again on TCM (Turner Classic Movies), a network that follows each of its showings with a brief biographical or historical note. In this case, the note was to inform us that the real Robert Stroud was not exactly as portrayed by Mr Lancaster. Not even approximately as portrayed. In fact, we hear, one of the reasons he was repeatedly turned down for parole was because his attitude left a little something to be desired, including one memorable hearing where he is supposed to have told the parole board that he would appreciate a swift and positive decision because he still had some killing to do and was running out of time.
In some follow-up reading, I also found descriptions of how his original, relatively modest prison sentence of 12 years for manslaughter was ramped up, after a series of further crimes committed as a prisoner, into an eventual sentence of death and decades in solitary when he fatally stabbed a prison guard who had revoked Stroud’s visitors privileges because of a minor rule infraction.
His eventual prowess as a bird doctor was true, and he did author a textbook on avian diseases that he wrote while in prison, but even that, it seems, hid in part some less than altruistic behaviour. In the movie, we see him distilling alcohol in an effort to create sterile treatments for sick birds. But it seems the still was actually used to create a product entirely for his and other prisoners’ consumption. (Lancaster is shown getting blind drunk on “Leavenworth cocktails” in one scene, but it is presented as an emotional reaction to a grossly unfair bit of mistreatment.)
Although some of what is written about the real Stroud is couched in “it is generally believed” language, even the body of known fact paints him not at all as the gentle near-philosopher that Hollywood made him out to be in their 1962 movie, but rather as “a violent and unruly inmate and a threat to both the guards and other prisoners, [who was]… ordered [by the warden] to be held in segregation for the complete duration of his imprisonment”.
(More – where else? Here.)
Dangnabbit! Time to find another positive role model. Back to Wally, I guess.
= = =
This recently from a blog called The Vanity Press:
“I just discovered that I can connect to the internet wirelessly from my local pub, more easily than I can from home. This won't end well.”
On the other hand, maybe it vuden’t hoyt!
= = =
Speaking about movies, our recent family enjoyment at watching “Bride and Prejudice” led me to one of those “If you liked this, you might also like this” links at an online movie service to “I Have Found It”, another movie that offspring and I did indeed greatly enjoy. (I’m leaving out my other half not because she felt differently, but rather because she was out of town when offspring and I watched it.) Where B&P is an anglicized take on traditional Bollywood movies, IHFI is a genuine, contemporary Bollywood movie. It’s three hours long; its actors are given to breaking out in song and dance – in some cases displaying some remarkably complex choreography set in awesome settings – at seemingly random points in the movie. (For one of the song & dance sequences, the production actually shifted to the rugged grounds and parapets of a stunning old castle in the Scottish highlands – duly acknowledged with thanks in the movie’s opening credits.) And it is a lavish visual treat in screen-flooding colour.
“I Have Found It”, like “Bride and Prejudice”, has Jane Austen roots. The cover note on the packaging acknowledges “Sense and Sensibility” as its primary storyline source. It is also given to moments of high comedy – in one scene a woman is lamenting that one of her daughters has been tarred with a “bad luck” label simply because her fiancé’s body was returned home from America in a casket, with a photo of another woman in his pocket.
Later, a suitor who wants to make a successful action film before courting one of the daughters describes his plot outline. His movie will be called “Speed” and will feature a runaway train whose velocity can’t drop below a certain speed or else it will blow up and if that isn’t enough to make it nothing at all like that American “Speed” with a runaway bus, his “Speed” will feature a male lead, thus ensuring there is no danger of plagiarism. (Later, he is forced to re-tool the script to accommodate a female lead because the male lead has proven impossible to work with, but setting it on a train still means it’s a completely different movie.)
The only problem I have with watching an actual Bollywood film, where the English is subtitled below the image, is that it doesn’t take too many minutes for the sheer alien-ness of Punjabi to start to grate on my non-attuned ears. Add to this the fact that they have a puzzling tendency to dub the actors, when they are singing, with really high nasal voices. Men and women alike. Maybe the higher pitch carries more cleanly from front to back in a typical Mumbai movie house, or maybe it’s just what makes Bollywood Bollywood. But whatever mandates the sonic pitch on Bollywood movie soundtracks, I’m not yet entirely convinced that their visual lavishness is worth the aural pain.
= = =
I’m sure you, like me, have awakened more than once from a sound sleep only to find that you are still pestered by the great questions of the Universe, such as, “Just how specific and complicated can you make the business of selling submarine sandwiches before you start to look a little ridiculous?”
Our intrepid crack blog research team recently took just that question to the Toasted Subs Franchisee Association website and…
A website exclusively for toasted subs? If that means you like the bread untoasted, do you have to take your internet browser somewhere else? Are there fillings exclusive to toasted subs that are taboo once the bread has been browned? Inquiring minds demand an answer!
And here’s something really odd about this site. In paragraph 2, we read the enthusiastic endorsement, “The TSFA firmly believes in and supports the Quiznos concept, its products and most importantly, the brand. Our goal is to protect, preserve and promote the Quiznos brand and help raise Average Unit Store Volumes (AUVs).”
Then, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you meet this:
“This website is not associated with the Quiznos Corporation. If you are looking for the Quiznos corporation, please go to www.quiznos.com.” That’s the home page of the Quiznos Subs AND bread bowls company.
(I hope you’re not waiting for an explanation. I’m still not sure what’s going on here.)
= = =
Air traffic control humour.
Again with the “If it’s on the internet, it must be true!... maybe” qualifier, these are presented first because they’re funny. Whether their claimed of being “actual” conversations between air traffic controllers and pilots is true or not doesn’t lessen their humour value:
-
A military pilot called for a priority landing because his single-engine jet fighter was running "a bit peaked." Air Traffic Control told the fighter pilot that he was number two, behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down. "Ah," the fighter pilot remarked, "The dreaded seven-engine approach."
-
Tower: "Delta 351, you have traffic at 10 o'clock, 6 miles!"
Delta 351: "Give us another hint! We have digital watches!"
-
"TWA 2341, for noise abatement turn right 45 Degrees."
"Centre, we are at 35,000 feet. How much noise can we make up here?"
"Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes when it hits a 727?"
-
And this classic:
Allegedly the German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They, it is alleged, not only expect one to know one's gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206.
Speedbird 206: "Frankfurt, Speedbird 206 clear of active runway."
Ground: "Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven." The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.
Ground: "Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?"
Speedbird 206: "Stand by, Ground, I'm looking up our gate location now."
Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): "Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?"
Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, twice… but it was in 1944; it was dark,... and I didn't land."-
Several more, and related categories, here.
= = =
Two months ago, senior bureaucrats in our department were wondering why a great many of their news releases routinely fail to receive the hoped-for coverage… or all too often any coverage at all.
Well, this was the head on a transcript I read of a recent “Media Event”:
PRINCIPAL(S)/PRINCIPAUX: Lynne Yelich, Parliamentary Secretary…; Michael Fougère, President, Saskatchewan Construction Association
SUBJECT/SUJET: [Parliamentary Secretary] Yelich makes an announcement on the Government of Canada's commitment to help employers and communities recognize youth as the workforce of the future…
“to help recognize youth as the workforce of the future”
Picture yourself as the assignment editor at, say, the Regina Leader-Post and a Media Event Advisory lands on your desk telling you that a Parliamentary Secretary will be winging in to “announce” the federal government’s “commitment” to “help recognize youth as the workforce of the future”.
Now, do you:
(a) Leap to your feet, screaming “Hold page 1! Get me re-write! Parker! Get over there and get me pictures!”
(b) Bury your head in your hands, weeping, as you realize that your just-about-to-published weeklong series of special reports on “Recognizing Youth as the Workforce of the Past” has just been made meaningless by that so much more on-the-ball, forward-looking Government of Canada communications machine?
(c) Ensure that the closest this announcement gets to your “Day Assignment” basket is the slight ripple of air above the tray as the crumpled ball of paper whirls past it en route to the wastebasket on the floor beside your desk?
= = =
How much are we paying psychologists, anyway?
A study* published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that employees who work in “abusive workplaces” experience “reduced satisfaction with their work”, higher levels of job stress and more tension.
Do you think?
* Nope. Not making this up: Lim, S., Cortina, L. M. [2005] Interpersonal Mistreatment in the Workplace: The Interface and Impact of General Incivility and Sexual Harassment. Journal of
Applied Psychology. Vol 90(3), 483-496.
Funny thing though, a study published in the Journal of Applied Sadism found exactly the opposite. Go figger.
= = =
And finally, from the “Some things are their own satire” drawer:
This headline showed up in the online edition of Macleans (March 15, 2007; 21h11):
"Police arrest demonstrators after violence breaks out at anti-violence demo"
= = =
À la prochaine.
In the movie, “Birdman of Alcatraz”, convict and central figure Robert Stroud is given an enormously sympathetic portrayal by Burt Lancaster (not to mention the film-makers). It’s actually a wonderful movie, and as you watch what supposedly is based on a true story, you can’t help but wonder why this gentle bird-lover was kept in solitary for so many of his prison years, and refused parole time after time.
Recently, I saw the movie yet again on TCM (Turner Classic Movies), a network that follows each of its showings with a brief biographical or historical note. In this case, the note was to inform us that the real Robert Stroud was not exactly as portrayed by Mr Lancaster. Not even approximately as portrayed. In fact, we hear, one of the reasons he was repeatedly turned down for parole was because his attitude left a little something to be desired, including one memorable hearing where he is supposed to have told the parole board that he would appreciate a swift and positive decision because he still had some killing to do and was running out of time.
In some follow-up reading, I also found descriptions of how his original, relatively modest prison sentence of 12 years for manslaughter was ramped up, after a series of further crimes committed as a prisoner, into an eventual sentence of death and decades in solitary when he fatally stabbed a prison guard who had revoked Stroud’s visitors privileges because of a minor rule infraction.
His eventual prowess as a bird doctor was true, and he did author a textbook on avian diseases that he wrote while in prison, but even that, it seems, hid in part some less than altruistic behaviour. In the movie, we see him distilling alcohol in an effort to create sterile treatments for sick birds. But it seems the still was actually used to create a product entirely for his and other prisoners’ consumption. (Lancaster is shown getting blind drunk on “Leavenworth cocktails” in one scene, but it is presented as an emotional reaction to a grossly unfair bit of mistreatment.)
Although some of what is written about the real Stroud is couched in “it is generally believed” language, even the body of known fact paints him not at all as the gentle near-philosopher that Hollywood made him out to be in their 1962 movie, but rather as “a violent and unruly inmate and a threat to both the guards and other prisoners, [who was]… ordered [by the warden] to be held in segregation for the complete duration of his imprisonment”.
(More – where else? Here.)
Dangnabbit! Time to find another positive role model. Back to Wally, I guess.
= = =
This recently from a blog called The Vanity Press:
“I just discovered that I can connect to the internet wirelessly from my local pub, more easily than I can from home. This won't end well.”
On the other hand, maybe it vuden’t hoyt!
= = =
Speaking about movies, our recent family enjoyment at watching “Bride and Prejudice” led me to one of those “If you liked this, you might also like this” links at an online movie service to “I Have Found It”, another movie that offspring and I did indeed greatly enjoy. (I’m leaving out my other half not because she felt differently, but rather because she was out of town when offspring and I watched it.) Where B&P is an anglicized take on traditional Bollywood movies, IHFI is a genuine, contemporary Bollywood movie. It’s three hours long; its actors are given to breaking out in song and dance – in some cases displaying some remarkably complex choreography set in awesome settings – at seemingly random points in the movie. (For one of the song & dance sequences, the production actually shifted to the rugged grounds and parapets of a stunning old castle in the Scottish highlands – duly acknowledged with thanks in the movie’s opening credits.) And it is a lavish visual treat in screen-flooding colour.
“I Have Found It”, like “Bride and Prejudice”, has Jane Austen roots. The cover note on the packaging acknowledges “Sense and Sensibility” as its primary storyline source. It is also given to moments of high comedy – in one scene a woman is lamenting that one of her daughters has been tarred with a “bad luck” label simply because her fiancé’s body was returned home from America in a casket, with a photo of another woman in his pocket.
Later, a suitor who wants to make a successful action film before courting one of the daughters describes his plot outline. His movie will be called “Speed” and will feature a runaway train whose velocity can’t drop below a certain speed or else it will blow up and if that isn’t enough to make it nothing at all like that American “Speed” with a runaway bus, his “Speed” will feature a male lead, thus ensuring there is no danger of plagiarism. (Later, he is forced to re-tool the script to accommodate a female lead because the male lead has proven impossible to work with, but setting it on a train still means it’s a completely different movie.)
The only problem I have with watching an actual Bollywood film, where the English is subtitled below the image, is that it doesn’t take too many minutes for the sheer alien-ness of Punjabi to start to grate on my non-attuned ears. Add to this the fact that they have a puzzling tendency to dub the actors, when they are singing, with really high nasal voices. Men and women alike. Maybe the higher pitch carries more cleanly from front to back in a typical Mumbai movie house, or maybe it’s just what makes Bollywood Bollywood. But whatever mandates the sonic pitch on Bollywood movie soundtracks, I’m not yet entirely convinced that their visual lavishness is worth the aural pain.
= = =
I’m sure you, like me, have awakened more than once from a sound sleep only to find that you are still pestered by the great questions of the Universe, such as, “Just how specific and complicated can you make the business of selling submarine sandwiches before you start to look a little ridiculous?”
Our intrepid crack blog research team recently took just that question to the Toasted Subs Franchisee Association website and…
A website exclusively for toasted subs? If that means you like the bread untoasted, do you have to take your internet browser somewhere else? Are there fillings exclusive to toasted subs that are taboo once the bread has been browned? Inquiring minds demand an answer!
And here’s something really odd about this site. In paragraph 2, we read the enthusiastic endorsement, “The TSFA firmly believes in and supports the Quiznos concept, its products and most importantly, the brand. Our goal is to protect, preserve and promote the Quiznos brand and help raise Average Unit Store Volumes (AUVs).”
Then, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you meet this:
“This website is not associated with the Quiznos Corporation. If you are looking for the Quiznos corporation, please go to www.quiznos.com.” That’s the home page of the Quiznos Subs AND bread bowls company.
(I hope you’re not waiting for an explanation. I’m still not sure what’s going on here.)
= = =
Air traffic control humour.
Again with the “If it’s on the internet, it must be true!... maybe” qualifier, these are presented first because they’re funny. Whether their claimed of being “actual” conversations between air traffic controllers and pilots is true or not doesn’t lessen their humour value:
-
A military pilot called for a priority landing because his single-engine jet fighter was running "a bit peaked." Air Traffic Control told the fighter pilot that he was number two, behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down. "Ah," the fighter pilot remarked, "The dreaded seven-engine approach."
-
Tower: "Delta 351, you have traffic at 10 o'clock, 6 miles!"
Delta 351: "Give us another hint! We have digital watches!"
-
"TWA 2341, for noise abatement turn right 45 Degrees."
"Centre, we are at 35,000 feet. How much noise can we make up here?"
"Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes when it hits a 727?"
-
And this classic:
Allegedly the German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They, it is alleged, not only expect one to know one's gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206.
Speedbird 206: "Frankfurt, Speedbird 206 clear of active runway."
Ground: "Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven." The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.
Ground: "Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?"
Speedbird 206: "Stand by, Ground, I'm looking up our gate location now."
Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): "Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?"
Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, twice… but it was in 1944; it was dark,... and I didn't land."-
Several more, and related categories, here.
= = =
Two months ago, senior bureaucrats in our department were wondering why a great many of their news releases routinely fail to receive the hoped-for coverage… or all too often any coverage at all.
Well, this was the head on a transcript I read of a recent “Media Event”:
PRINCIPAL(S)/PRINCIPAUX: Lynne Yelich, Parliamentary Secretary…; Michael Fougère, President, Saskatchewan Construction Association
SUBJECT/SUJET: [Parliamentary Secretary] Yelich makes an announcement on the Government of Canada's commitment to help employers and communities recognize youth as the workforce of the future…
“to help recognize youth as the workforce of the future”
Picture yourself as the assignment editor at, say, the Regina Leader-Post and a Media Event Advisory lands on your desk telling you that a Parliamentary Secretary will be winging in to “announce” the federal government’s “commitment” to “help recognize youth as the workforce of the future”.
Now, do you:
(a) Leap to your feet, screaming “Hold page 1! Get me re-write! Parker! Get over there and get me pictures!”
(b) Bury your head in your hands, weeping, as you realize that your just-about-to-published weeklong series of special reports on “Recognizing Youth as the Workforce of the Past” has just been made meaningless by that so much more on-the-ball, forward-looking Government of Canada communications machine?
(c) Ensure that the closest this announcement gets to your “Day Assignment” basket is the slight ripple of air above the tray as the crumpled ball of paper whirls past it en route to the wastebasket on the floor beside your desk?
= = =
How much are we paying psychologists, anyway?
A study* published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that employees who work in “abusive workplaces” experience “reduced satisfaction with their work”, higher levels of job stress and more tension.
Do you think?
* Nope. Not making this up: Lim, S., Cortina, L. M. [2005] Interpersonal Mistreatment in the Workplace: The Interface and Impact of General Incivility and Sexual Harassment. Journal of
Applied Psychology. Vol 90(3), 483-496.
Funny thing though, a study published in the Journal of Applied Sadism found exactly the opposite. Go figger.
= = =
And finally, from the “Some things are their own satire” drawer:
This headline showed up in the online edition of Macleans (March 15, 2007; 21h11):
"Police arrest demonstrators after violence breaks out at anti-violence demo"
= = =
À la prochaine.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
“There's an empty cab by the taxi stand
driver's in the cafe washing his hands.
Big diesel idles --- the keys inside ---
c'mon Sally let's take a ride.
Flag down --- uptown --- no sweat.
For rush hour travel, it's the best bet yet.
Taxi Grab.”
-- “Taxi Grab”, as rendered by Jethro Tull
Me and taxis: oil and water…
1. My apologies if I’ve whined about this before, but it has just happened to me again and it tripped my internal expletive response (you know the one – the one where you articulate the name of our Lord and Saviour, and assign Him the middle initial – “H”).
On a recent Ottawa day, the morning temperature was – or rather felt like – a ridiculous minus 42 (a combination, of course, of the ambient temperature with the added fun factor of the wind chill thrown in). Whatever, it was not the kind of day to encourage my hiking a longer than usual distance to a bus stop, there to await a bus at a time other than my normal bus-catching time so heaven only knows how long I would have had to stand out in the wind-chilled air performing an ever more realistic impersonation of Lot’s wife about six seconds after she paused to look back over her shoulder while fleeing the recently-divinely-immolated city of Sodom.
I had been placed in those circumstances by an early-morning dental appointment. (Minus 42 and a visit to the dentist first thing in the morning… “And how was your day, dear?”) So at the end of my appointment, I decided to treat myself to a cab ride into work. (There was a further mitigating factor in that my boss had phoned me at home late the previous evening to advise me that he was sick enough that he knew he would not be into work the following day, so he asked me to fulfill his day-starting responsibilities. My grabbing a cab would minimize the deadline-pushing effects of my own late arrival at the office because of my dental appointment.)
So with all that background as to why I grabbed a cab, I grabbed a cab. And the very first thing the driver said to me after I climbed in and told him where I was going… (Oh wait, one further piece of background. When I placed the call to the Blue Line taxi company, I gave the address to the dispatcher and began to add a few words of direction since the dental office is a few yards off the main street the driver could be expected to be travelling. “I don’t need any directions!”, snapped the dispatcher. Well pardon me for my courtesy and [BEEP] you too. So with that little bit of further mood enhancer to add to minus 42 and starting one’s day in the company of one’s dentist, I climbed into the cab and told the driver where I was going.)
He turned to me and said, “So what way do you want me to go?”
Now I am told that, in London, England, acquiring a licence to drive a cab requires an unbelievably rigorous process that takes years, because (again, so I have been told) a would-be driver is required to have an intimate familiarity with a good chunk of the city. But more than simply knowing where an address is, he or she has to be capable of conveying passenger to destination by the most cost-effective means possible. So the would-be London cabbie also has to know additional things like being able to use short-cuts and one way streets to advantage, and what traffic patterns are likely to interfere with the trip at various times of day.
(Well of course it does. The always-miraculous internet offers up a website called: “Taxiknowledge.co.uk” and here is the faq for what knowledge a would-be London driver must possess. For an especial bit of amazement, scroll down to: “Do I have to answer the questions in a certain way?”. Whoever my long-forgotten “So I have been told” source was, he or she was certainly spot on! Incidentally, I am also told that, by way of contrast, acquiring a licence to drive a cab in Vancouver requires that the would-be driver correctly identify “Canada” on a blank map of North America, two times out of three. But [a] you won’t find that in a faq*, and [b] I digress.)
* Whoops. Never underestimate the reach of the internet.
But I am really beginning to think that Ottawa’s driver requirements are starting to tilt towards Vancouver’s.
“What way do you want me to go?” ???
I often wonder (“often”, because the number of times this has happened to me is now in the double digits) what the driver’s reaction would be if I issued him a set of instructions that pointed the car 180 degrees away from my destination. “Take me to suburbia, my good man – get your wheels onto the Queensway and point your hood ornament towards the rising sun. After 40 minutes or so, seek out the sideroad that leads to the Cumberland ferry and we shall then cross the river, there to align ourselves so as to re-enter the National Capital Region from its easternmost Québec netherlands. Please feel free to take a little detour through the Casino du Lac Leamy’s parking lot because several of those darling leggy cocktail waitresses will just be getting off work and at minus 42 would perhaps welcome the opportunity to share a cab ride into the Gatineau core!”
“What way do you want me to go?” ???!!!
“Let me answer you this way, sir – whose picture appears here on the publicly displayed licence that clearly identifies the individual who is both the owner / operator of this vehicle and a duly contracted livery man to the mighty Blue Line fleet? Oh look, it’s YOU! I guess that would make you… the DRIVER. And let’s see now, that would make me (by default, since barring the presence of someone in the trunk there is, at the moment, no one else here with us)… the PASSENGER. Well my goodness, but this little system sure makes defining our respective roles in this vehicle easy, doesn’t it? To recap – you driver; me passenger. So get your wheels, and your butt, in gear please, and rest assured that if you screw it up by taking me across the river to Gatineau by way of every red light in Ottawa’s downtown core, your licensor will be hearing further from me! It’s minus 42 and I’ve just had a dental appointment. Know what I’m saying?”
But I’m Canadian, so rather than reach forward and throttle him with the cable connecting his hands-free phone to the headset he was sporting, I actually thought about it for a few seconds, and suggested a route to him. Then what did he do? HE BEGAN TO ARGUE WITH ME! “Man, we gon’ hit a dead stop at this time of the morning on Bronson; and Bank’s no better.” That, by the way, promptly eliminated from consideration the only two major north-south roads into downtown Ottawa, where I wanted to go, from the south end, where I was. This baffled me as to just what other choice he might possibly have had in mind... (“You haven’t guessed ‘Use the hovercar option’ yet, sir!.”)
So we compromised. “Let’s start up Bronson,” I proposed, “and if we hit a jam-up, we can take Gladstone or Somerset over to Bay and then take Bay the rest of the way up to Wellington. OK?”
“No problem.”
Rather than create one by launching into a vigorous oral op-ed on the state of cabbing in the NCR, I simply smiled and nodded.
“What way do you want me to go?” ???!!!???!!!
“I’ll tell you what. Put me in the pattern buffer and beam me over, OK?” crossed my mind, but I was possessed of enough sober second thought not to voice it, realizing that it likely would have been lost on someone who (in Ottawa anyway) until recently probably called Damascus home.
(On the off chance that you’re in need of closure, Bronson did indeed stall us briefly – if it was for more than 90 seconds I would be surprised – around the point it engages the Queensway access ramps. But once past that brief bottleneck it was clear sailing. And despite an outside feeling as though it were minus 42, I never even had to zip up my parka. My jaw, however, still hurt four hours later.)
2. In response to my most recent call, as the taxi driver drove up to my address, he pulled over and actually stepped out of his car as I was coming down the driveway to meet him, “Excuse me sir,” he shouted to me, “may I ask what is your destination please?”
This was highly unusual. Cab drivers in the NCR are forbidden from refusing short rides and the overarching law, as I understand it, specifically bars them from asking the destination before the passenger climbs aboard.
However, being a Canadian wimp, I answered with my destination – several dozen blocks and many dollars away. “Very good sir,” he replied, and jumped back into the driver’s seat.
As soon as I reached his car and sat down in the back seat, I wanted to know what was behind the request, so it was my turn to say, “Excuse me sir. Can I ask why you wanted to know my destination?” He replied, “Well we are not supposed to ask, but I just received a call for another fare very close in this neighbourhood, and I thought if you were taking only a short ride, I could deliver you to your destination and return immediately for the second fare while still meeting the 10-15 minute pick-up time promise. When you told me how far you were going, I released that request to another driver.”
“Oh.”
That actually made sense to me. So dismissing any potentially hostile thinking, I smiled and repeated my distant destination.
Without missing a beat, he turned in the front seat, looked at me, and asked, “So… which way do you want me to go?”
= = = =
Oddities seen, or heard, or maybe just osmosed from randomly passing thought waves…
1. “There followed the most incredible piece of mime you have ever seen…”
In the wake of the March 7 crash of an airliner on a runway in Indonesia in which, despite several deaths, there were also a great many survivors, CBC-TV Newsworld reporter Nancy Wilson was interviewing by phone a Canadian aid worker who witnessed the crash. Understandably somewhat upset by what she’d seen, the aid worker nonetheless gamely described how she joined several people to help in any way they could. “We helped one couple who were too shell-shocked to say anything at all, but they told us a horrifying story of the scene aboard that airliner as people struggled to escape…”
2. Uh huh
My boss, recently clarifying for me why he wanted me to move a section of a report I had written to a differently titled section of the same report: “Labour mobility is not a Labour issue.”
Now I know that more than one Baby Duckling out there is looking at that and nodding to self, thinking, “Of course it’s not.” But I still have some climbing to do, it seems, on the vast departmental (emphasis on “mental”) learning curve.
= = =
Yet another collectivization bites the dust.
A recently-released UN report from something called “Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” calls on the Government of Canada to stop using the term “visible minorities” and “ethnocultural communities” to describe people it considers might be susceptible to racial discrimination. The UN does not, however, suggest what assemblage of English words might be called upon to describe such people. In rationalizing their recommendation, Patrick Thornberry, a member of the committee who is also a British Professor of International Law, explained it this way:
“The use of the term [visible minorities] seemed to somehow indicate that ‘whiteness’ was the standard, all others differing from that being visible.” (National Post, March 8)
Whatever that means.
But this clearly presents us with a quandary here north of the 49th where we pride ourselves on living not merely the passiveness of non-exclusion, but also on living (that’d be “walking the talk”) the activeness of inclusion. But we gotta know how to describe all those people we actively want to include, don’t we?
So then, how now does one articulate anti-discrimination policies without using some kind of language to describe those against whom we might wish to prevent such discrimination?
I know – let’s adopt the UN’s other suggestion (also quoted in that same National Post article) – that Canada (and everyone else) stop upsetting equitable treatment by “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin” (to which, if I might be so bold, I would add a further qualifier that the UN seems a little too conveniently to have overlooked – gender).
And I have a really GREAT IDEA! Let’s hire people based on something – and ONLY something – really radical: their qualifications for the position.
(That loud “Bang!” you heard was the noise of Government of Canada Human Resource policy wonks’ brains simultaneously exploding.)
My suggested alternative – “The Great Unwashed” – probably has a few problems best left unaddressed here.
À la next time.
driver's in the cafe washing his hands.
Big diesel idles --- the keys inside ---
c'mon Sally let's take a ride.
Flag down --- uptown --- no sweat.
For rush hour travel, it's the best bet yet.
Taxi Grab.”
-- “Taxi Grab”, as rendered by Jethro Tull
Me and taxis: oil and water…
1. My apologies if I’ve whined about this before, but it has just happened to me again and it tripped my internal expletive response (you know the one – the one where you articulate the name of our Lord and Saviour, and assign Him the middle initial – “H”).
On a recent Ottawa day, the morning temperature was – or rather felt like – a ridiculous minus 42 (a combination, of course, of the ambient temperature with the added fun factor of the wind chill thrown in). Whatever, it was not the kind of day to encourage my hiking a longer than usual distance to a bus stop, there to await a bus at a time other than my normal bus-catching time so heaven only knows how long I would have had to stand out in the wind-chilled air performing an ever more realistic impersonation of Lot’s wife about six seconds after she paused to look back over her shoulder while fleeing the recently-divinely-immolated city of Sodom.
I had been placed in those circumstances by an early-morning dental appointment. (Minus 42 and a visit to the dentist first thing in the morning… “And how was your day, dear?”) So at the end of my appointment, I decided to treat myself to a cab ride into work. (There was a further mitigating factor in that my boss had phoned me at home late the previous evening to advise me that he was sick enough that he knew he would not be into work the following day, so he asked me to fulfill his day-starting responsibilities. My grabbing a cab would minimize the deadline-pushing effects of my own late arrival at the office because of my dental appointment.)
So with all that background as to why I grabbed a cab, I grabbed a cab. And the very first thing the driver said to me after I climbed in and told him where I was going… (Oh wait, one further piece of background. When I placed the call to the Blue Line taxi company, I gave the address to the dispatcher and began to add a few words of direction since the dental office is a few yards off the main street the driver could be expected to be travelling. “I don’t need any directions!”, snapped the dispatcher. Well pardon me for my courtesy and [BEEP] you too. So with that little bit of further mood enhancer to add to minus 42 and starting one’s day in the company of one’s dentist, I climbed into the cab and told the driver where I was going.)
He turned to me and said, “So what way do you want me to go?”
Now I am told that, in London, England, acquiring a licence to drive a cab requires an unbelievably rigorous process that takes years, because (again, so I have been told) a would-be driver is required to have an intimate familiarity with a good chunk of the city. But more than simply knowing where an address is, he or she has to be capable of conveying passenger to destination by the most cost-effective means possible. So the would-be London cabbie also has to know additional things like being able to use short-cuts and one way streets to advantage, and what traffic patterns are likely to interfere with the trip at various times of day.
(Well of course it does. The always-miraculous internet offers up a website called: “Taxiknowledge.co.uk” and here is the faq for what knowledge a would-be London driver must possess. For an especial bit of amazement, scroll down to: “Do I have to answer the questions in a certain way?”. Whoever my long-forgotten “So I have been told” source was, he or she was certainly spot on! Incidentally, I am also told that, by way of contrast, acquiring a licence to drive a cab in Vancouver requires that the would-be driver correctly identify “Canada” on a blank map of North America, two times out of three. But [a] you won’t find that in a faq*, and [b] I digress.)
* Whoops. Never underestimate the reach of the internet.
But I am really beginning to think that Ottawa’s driver requirements are starting to tilt towards Vancouver’s.
“What way do you want me to go?” ???
I often wonder (“often”, because the number of times this has happened to me is now in the double digits) what the driver’s reaction would be if I issued him a set of instructions that pointed the car 180 degrees away from my destination. “Take me to suburbia, my good man – get your wheels onto the Queensway and point your hood ornament towards the rising sun. After 40 minutes or so, seek out the sideroad that leads to the Cumberland ferry and we shall then cross the river, there to align ourselves so as to re-enter the National Capital Region from its easternmost Québec netherlands. Please feel free to take a little detour through the Casino du Lac Leamy’s parking lot because several of those darling leggy cocktail waitresses will just be getting off work and at minus 42 would perhaps welcome the opportunity to share a cab ride into the Gatineau core!”
“What way do you want me to go?” ???!!!
“Let me answer you this way, sir – whose picture appears here on the publicly displayed licence that clearly identifies the individual who is both the owner / operator of this vehicle and a duly contracted livery man to the mighty Blue Line fleet? Oh look, it’s YOU! I guess that would make you… the DRIVER. And let’s see now, that would make me (by default, since barring the presence of someone in the trunk there is, at the moment, no one else here with us)… the PASSENGER. Well my goodness, but this little system sure makes defining our respective roles in this vehicle easy, doesn’t it? To recap – you driver; me passenger. So get your wheels, and your butt, in gear please, and rest assured that if you screw it up by taking me across the river to Gatineau by way of every red light in Ottawa’s downtown core, your licensor will be hearing further from me! It’s minus 42 and I’ve just had a dental appointment. Know what I’m saying?”
But I’m Canadian, so rather than reach forward and throttle him with the cable connecting his hands-free phone to the headset he was sporting, I actually thought about it for a few seconds, and suggested a route to him. Then what did he do? HE BEGAN TO ARGUE WITH ME! “Man, we gon’ hit a dead stop at this time of the morning on Bronson; and Bank’s no better.” That, by the way, promptly eliminated from consideration the only two major north-south roads into downtown Ottawa, where I wanted to go, from the south end, where I was. This baffled me as to just what other choice he might possibly have had in mind... (“You haven’t guessed ‘Use the hovercar option’ yet, sir!.”)
So we compromised. “Let’s start up Bronson,” I proposed, “and if we hit a jam-up, we can take Gladstone or Somerset over to Bay and then take Bay the rest of the way up to Wellington. OK?”
“No problem.”
Rather than create one by launching into a vigorous oral op-ed on the state of cabbing in the NCR, I simply smiled and nodded.
“What way do you want me to go?” ???!!!???!!!
“I’ll tell you what. Put me in the pattern buffer and beam me over, OK?” crossed my mind, but I was possessed of enough sober second thought not to voice it, realizing that it likely would have been lost on someone who (in Ottawa anyway) until recently probably called Damascus home.
(On the off chance that you’re in need of closure, Bronson did indeed stall us briefly – if it was for more than 90 seconds I would be surprised – around the point it engages the Queensway access ramps. But once past that brief bottleneck it was clear sailing. And despite an outside feeling as though it were minus 42, I never even had to zip up my parka. My jaw, however, still hurt four hours later.)
2. In response to my most recent call, as the taxi driver drove up to my address, he pulled over and actually stepped out of his car as I was coming down the driveway to meet him, “Excuse me sir,” he shouted to me, “may I ask what is your destination please?”
This was highly unusual. Cab drivers in the NCR are forbidden from refusing short rides and the overarching law, as I understand it, specifically bars them from asking the destination before the passenger climbs aboard.
However, being a Canadian wimp, I answered with my destination – several dozen blocks and many dollars away. “Very good sir,” he replied, and jumped back into the driver’s seat.
As soon as I reached his car and sat down in the back seat, I wanted to know what was behind the request, so it was my turn to say, “Excuse me sir. Can I ask why you wanted to know my destination?” He replied, “Well we are not supposed to ask, but I just received a call for another fare very close in this neighbourhood, and I thought if you were taking only a short ride, I could deliver you to your destination and return immediately for the second fare while still meeting the 10-15 minute pick-up time promise. When you told me how far you were going, I released that request to another driver.”
“Oh.”
That actually made sense to me. So dismissing any potentially hostile thinking, I smiled and repeated my distant destination.
Without missing a beat, he turned in the front seat, looked at me, and asked, “So… which way do you want me to go?”
= = = =
Oddities seen, or heard, or maybe just osmosed from randomly passing thought waves…
1. “There followed the most incredible piece of mime you have ever seen…”
In the wake of the March 7 crash of an airliner on a runway in Indonesia in which, despite several deaths, there were also a great many survivors, CBC-TV Newsworld reporter Nancy Wilson was interviewing by phone a Canadian aid worker who witnessed the crash. Understandably somewhat upset by what she’d seen, the aid worker nonetheless gamely described how she joined several people to help in any way they could. “We helped one couple who were too shell-shocked to say anything at all, but they told us a horrifying story of the scene aboard that airliner as people struggled to escape…”
2. Uh huh
My boss, recently clarifying for me why he wanted me to move a section of a report I had written to a differently titled section of the same report: “Labour mobility is not a Labour issue.”
Now I know that more than one Baby Duckling out there is looking at that and nodding to self, thinking, “Of course it’s not.” But I still have some climbing to do, it seems, on the vast departmental (emphasis on “mental”) learning curve.
= = =
Yet another collectivization bites the dust.
A recently-released UN report from something called “Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” calls on the Government of Canada to stop using the term “visible minorities” and “ethnocultural communities” to describe people it considers might be susceptible to racial discrimination. The UN does not, however, suggest what assemblage of English words might be called upon to describe such people. In rationalizing their recommendation, Patrick Thornberry, a member of the committee who is also a British Professor of International Law, explained it this way:
“The use of the term [visible minorities] seemed to somehow indicate that ‘whiteness’ was the standard, all others differing from that being visible.” (National Post, March 8)
Whatever that means.
But this clearly presents us with a quandary here north of the 49th where we pride ourselves on living not merely the passiveness of non-exclusion, but also on living (that’d be “walking the talk”) the activeness of inclusion. But we gotta know how to describe all those people we actively want to include, don’t we?
So then, how now does one articulate anti-discrimination policies without using some kind of language to describe those against whom we might wish to prevent such discrimination?
I know – let’s adopt the UN’s other suggestion (also quoted in that same National Post article) – that Canada (and everyone else) stop upsetting equitable treatment by “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin” (to which, if I might be so bold, I would add a further qualifier that the UN seems a little too conveniently to have overlooked – gender).
And I have a really GREAT IDEA! Let’s hire people based on something – and ONLY something – really radical: their qualifications for the position.
(That loud “Bang!” you heard was the noise of Government of Canada Human Resource policy wonks’ brains simultaneously exploding.)
My suggested alternative – “The Great Unwashed” – probably has a few problems best left unaddressed here.
À la next time.
Monday, March 05, 2007
From the Department of “Are You Really Sure Nobody in Marketing Saw This Coming?”:
Recently, in very short order, (i) Telus mobile phone service announced they were making pornography (which they called “adult content”) available for download via their service; (ii) Telus received a shitstorm (which they called “several”) of critical comments, including a blistering notice from Vancouver Catholic Archbishop Raymond Roussin that he was considering the cancellation of all Telus contracts in the Archdiocese; (iii) Telus announced publicly that they “took the feedback to heart” (which likely originated in one of their off-the-record meetings as, “Goodgawd, what the hell were we thinking??!!”) and effective February 21, were immediately canceling the service. But to give you an idea of why “Telus” and “effective marketing” are about as close together as Earth and Pluto, here how’s an anonymous (and no bloody wonder!) company flack rationalized their having made the decision in the first place:
“Telus initially justified the service by saying that it was only offering what is now universally available.” (from the Globe and Mail online, 21 February)
Now there’s a crackerjack business plan isn’t it?: “Find me something that absolutely everybody else is doing and let’s do it too!” Innovation? That’s for all those losers out there who are always searching for a better, more efficient, more cost-effective method of delivering their products. Telus’ motto: Chances are we’ll be seeing you later, because we will only go where you already are!
= = =
Irony watch.
For me, perhaps second only to doing cryptic crossword puzzles, seeking out (or not even looking for them, because they seem to keep falling into my lap) hilarious new samples of irony is one of my favourite pastimes.
Here’s one that, like a simple fillet of flash-grilled swordfish, needs no garnish whatsoever to be especially delicious. It comes from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) who issued a news release on February 16 with this as its first two sentences:
“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers not to use certain jars of Earth’s Best Organic 2 Apple Peach Barley Wholesome Breakfast baby food because of the risk of contamination with Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium which can cause botulism, a life-threatening illness or death. Consumers are warned not to use the product even if it does not look or smell spoiled.”
You just don’t expect “Earth’s Best Organic… Wholesome…” anything to kill you, know what I’m saying? Unless perhaps a case of it falls from a high shelf onto your skull.
= = =
As regular readers know all too well, I have no hesitation passing along notes about a book, movie or bit of music I’ve enjoyed. Well, there’s no reason it should always be a positive recommendation. So in that spirit, the following is a public service. I mean, just because we three in our house spent three hours that we’re never going to get back in front of a two-part made-for-TV movie is no reason why you should have to. Unless it’s already too late, of course.
First, this brief background. A couple months ago, offspring wrote a school essay on the subject of Jules Verne. So I thought it would be fun to rent a copy of a movie I had first seen long ago that was based on a Jules Verne novel, “Mysterious Island”.
And that movie – the 1961 edition, that is – actually still stands up very well. At the present time, movie special effects are exclusively the product of computerized animation, and some of them are superb – Peter Jackson’s entire "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, for example, is a truly astonishing production. That first “Mysterious Island”, however, was given its special effects by the incomparable Ray Harryhausen, an absolute master of the laborious single-frame animation process that requires 24 separate images to produce a single second of motion onscreen.
But “MI”’s 2005 remake is an appalling waste of the plastic required to make copies available for public rent. All I can say is that halfway through, we became aware of a heavily motorized sound that we concluded had to be Jules Verne whirling in his grave! This cheesy remake of the vastly superior original made over 40 years ago is an embarrassing waste of Patrick ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"’s Jean-Luc Picard) Stewart, who pretty well mails in his performance as Captain Nemo.
Among the early special effects is a giant rat that "runs" away with a wholly unconvincing motion that looks exactly like a windblown Macy's parade balloon. Later, there’s a sequence in which repeated views are shown of a placid tropical mountain that, apparently, character dialogue alone is supposed to convince us is an erupting volcano, because onscreen there isn’t so much of a wisp of smoke rising from it. At the very start of the movie, the main characters escape a Union Army prisoner-of-war camp during the US Civil War in a hot air balloon whose flight path defies the laws of physics. And throughout, there are several recurring appearances of a band of pirates who are possessed of (a) the best teeth I’ve ever seen in a gang of mid-19thC cutthroats; and (b) a leader who appears to have convinced the movie’s make-up department that researchers seeking the authentic pirate look need look no farther than any Steve Tyler and Aerosmith album cover that features a shot of the band. This one, for example.
At three hours, this thing is at least twice as long as it needs to be and is, not to put too fine a point on it, a viewing experience so bad that it almost, but not quite, makes the transition into the realm of movies that inspire awe on the basis of the sheer breadth and depth of their big-budget badness. In other words, skip this gobbler and grab its 40-year old parent with animation by Ray Harryhausen that still stands up as superb family entertainment!
= = =
My bug o’ the week this week is something I’ve had on the back burner for some time, but have only recently started to notice just how widespread it’s becoming: the number of places a “Tips” cup is now turning up. In recent days, I’ve seen one placed beside the cash register at a local newsstand, at just about every fast food take-out in the office complex food court where I work, and at most convenience stores in the NCR (that’d be the National Capital Region for those who don’t live and breathe acronyms to the same volume as those of us employed by the GoC [Government of Canada].)
Especially in the NCR.
I have no problem with the “Leave a Penny / Take a Penny” trays in stores that move a lot of low-priced merchandise such as newspapers, candy bars, soft drinks and the like. In fact, I suspect cashiers appreciate a customer’s occasionally snaffling a penny or two in order to satisfy a sale of $3.01, rather than have to issue $0.24 from their not-usually-too-full change drawer. And I do regularly toss my own rogue pennies into those trays at those stores where I shop most frequently.
But when did that concept become the “Tips” cup? – In this part of the country, that usually means a styrofoam cup on which someone has drawn a hopeful smiley face and (another real world example in my workplace) “Pour notre retraite” – For our retirement. And why in heaven’s name should I even be asked to consider tipping a cashier for a process that involves nothing more on his or her part than ringing up the sale and taking my money?
A tip, to me, is something I pay automatically in most restaurants when the meal service has involved all the little things not normally itemized on the bill – refilling my water glass, delivering a basket of rolls, menu advice and clarification, the timely removal of dirty plates and glasses, the equally timely delivery of each course if the dinner includes an appetizer and / or a dessert, and even for the intangibles such as the general overall pleasantness of the person or persons providing that service.
But beyond that, a tip is also something I will weigh to reflect either a good or bad variation on the standard* amount – which around here is typically reckoned at about 15 per cent. I have just as often tipped more as I have less – often “considerably” in either direction if the service was especially good or especially bad. I will also occasionally ask if the tip is specific only to the people with whom I’ve interacted, or is to go into a pool that is also shared with the kitchen staff. It might seem a bit anal, but this can have a bearing on how much I tip if, for example, the food has been excellent but the table server downright surly, or if a pleasant tableside manner was crushed by the delivery of mediocre off-temperature food.
* I've also participated in not inconsiderable debates about the concept of a “standard” tip. Who, for example, decided that 15 per cent is a normal amount to tip? Some Canadians in particular have a peculiar habit of “rewarding” lacklustre service and bad food with no more than the 15 per cent tip. (That’ll show ‘em!) But I long ago conceded the battle of the “standard” tip. For me, the tip amount figuring at the end of a restaurant meal begins at that percentage. I have no idea why.
But to tip for “service” that is in fact the simple act of fulfilling the straightforward mechanics of one’s job – pushing cash register buttons and placing what I purchase in a bag, for example? I think not. Now some might argue, “Oh, but those people are not paid very much so the ‘tip’ is to help them supplement their income.” Well, without apology, my opinion on that is that this is an issue for the underpaid staff to take up with their employer, not devolve onto their customers.
In my job, I occasionally receive word that a report I prepared was much appreciated and well received. That feedback has never come back to me with a five-dollar bill. But every two weeks I do get a printout advising me that my bi-monthly salary deposit has made its way into my bank account. You’re welcome.
And do you tip when you go to the take-out counter or the drive-by window of a fast-food place? I don’t. Again, it has to do with the service. When I phone an order in to a restaurant and go pick it up myself, I’ve performed 99 per cent of the “service” myself. Oh sure, the restaurant staff has prepared and cooked the food in the kitchen, but the actual interaction and “service” aspect has been strictly the act of transferring the order from the kitchen to the pick-up counter. And again, if the expectation is that my “tip” is essential to help bolster the income of an underpaid staff, then that place of business has a problem that has to be solved somewhere other than the exchange between me and the cashier.
= = =
A passing thought for poor Jim Balsillie, the Chairman of Research in Motion (RIM) Technologies, the corporate umbrella under which the Blackberry is produced. News o’ the day on March 5 reported that he stepped down as chairman when “a two hundred and fifty million dollar accounting error” turned up in their latest financial report.
A quarter-of-a-billion dollar “accounting error” ????? (Repeat as often as required for this to sink in, increasing the volume of each incredulous shout until either a co-worker or family member tells you to shut the heck up – depending on whether you’re at work or home.)
It really is a different world in the rarefied atmosphere of the dot-com gazillionaires.
An accounting error.
250 MILLION dollars. (!)
Why in heaven’s name is it not the president of his accounting division who is resigning?
Given that the most serious repercussion appears to be that this idiot gets to start his retirement earlier than the rest of us, I guess (a) calling him an “idiot” is way off the mark, and (b) even this old adage no longer holds:
If you owe the bank fifty thousand dollars and you can’t pay, you’re in trouble;
If you owe the bank fifty million dollars and you can’t pay, the bank is in trouble;
If you owe the bank fifty billion dollars and you can’t pay, the country is in trouble.
Instead, for the New Millennium, I give you:
If you owe the bank fifty dollars and you can’t pay, you are in BIG trouble, deadbeat!
If you owe the bank fifty thousand dollars and you can’t pay, the bank is your new landlord;
If you owe the bank fifty million dollars and you can’t pay, the bank may cut back on your monthly credit limit;
If you owe the bank fifty billion dollars and you can’t pay, the daily newspaper in which you read about your “troubles” will be delivered to you personally by a Turks and Caicos beach attendant driving a golf cart right up to your palm-shaded beachside lounge chair.
Until next time (and I don't digress!)…
Recently, in very short order, (i) Telus mobile phone service announced they were making pornography (which they called “adult content”) available for download via their service; (ii) Telus received a shitstorm (which they called “several”) of critical comments, including a blistering notice from Vancouver Catholic Archbishop Raymond Roussin that he was considering the cancellation of all Telus contracts in the Archdiocese; (iii) Telus announced publicly that they “took the feedback to heart” (which likely originated in one of their off-the-record meetings as, “Goodgawd, what the hell were we thinking??!!”) and effective February 21, were immediately canceling the service. But to give you an idea of why “Telus” and “effective marketing” are about as close together as Earth and Pluto, here how’s an anonymous (and no bloody wonder!) company flack rationalized their having made the decision in the first place:
“Telus initially justified the service by saying that it was only offering what is now universally available.” (from the Globe and Mail online, 21 February)
Now there’s a crackerjack business plan isn’t it?: “Find me something that absolutely everybody else is doing and let’s do it too!” Innovation? That’s for all those losers out there who are always searching for a better, more efficient, more cost-effective method of delivering their products. Telus’ motto: Chances are we’ll be seeing you later, because we will only go where you already are!
= = =
Irony watch.
For me, perhaps second only to doing cryptic crossword puzzles, seeking out (or not even looking for them, because they seem to keep falling into my lap) hilarious new samples of irony is one of my favourite pastimes.
Here’s one that, like a simple fillet of flash-grilled swordfish, needs no garnish whatsoever to be especially delicious. It comes from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) who issued a news release on February 16 with this as its first two sentences:
“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers not to use certain jars of Earth’s Best Organic 2 Apple Peach Barley Wholesome Breakfast baby food because of the risk of contamination with Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium which can cause botulism, a life-threatening illness or death. Consumers are warned not to use the product even if it does not look or smell spoiled.”
You just don’t expect “Earth’s Best Organic… Wholesome…” anything to kill you, know what I’m saying? Unless perhaps a case of it falls from a high shelf onto your skull.
= = =
As regular readers know all too well, I have no hesitation passing along notes about a book, movie or bit of music I’ve enjoyed. Well, there’s no reason it should always be a positive recommendation. So in that spirit, the following is a public service. I mean, just because we three in our house spent three hours that we’re never going to get back in front of a two-part made-for-TV movie is no reason why you should have to. Unless it’s already too late, of course.
First, this brief background. A couple months ago, offspring wrote a school essay on the subject of Jules Verne. So I thought it would be fun to rent a copy of a movie I had first seen long ago that was based on a Jules Verne novel, “Mysterious Island”.
And that movie – the 1961 edition, that is – actually still stands up very well. At the present time, movie special effects are exclusively the product of computerized animation, and some of them are superb – Peter Jackson’s entire "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, for example, is a truly astonishing production. That first “Mysterious Island”, however, was given its special effects by the incomparable Ray Harryhausen, an absolute master of the laborious single-frame animation process that requires 24 separate images to produce a single second of motion onscreen.
But “MI”’s 2005 remake is an appalling waste of the plastic required to make copies available for public rent. All I can say is that halfway through, we became aware of a heavily motorized sound that we concluded had to be Jules Verne whirling in his grave! This cheesy remake of the vastly superior original made over 40 years ago is an embarrassing waste of Patrick ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"’s Jean-Luc Picard) Stewart, who pretty well mails in his performance as Captain Nemo.
Among the early special effects is a giant rat that "runs" away with a wholly unconvincing motion that looks exactly like a windblown Macy's parade balloon. Later, there’s a sequence in which repeated views are shown of a placid tropical mountain that, apparently, character dialogue alone is supposed to convince us is an erupting volcano, because onscreen there isn’t so much of a wisp of smoke rising from it. At the very start of the movie, the main characters escape a Union Army prisoner-of-war camp during the US Civil War in a hot air balloon whose flight path defies the laws of physics. And throughout, there are several recurring appearances of a band of pirates who are possessed of (a) the best teeth I’ve ever seen in a gang of mid-19thC cutthroats; and (b) a leader who appears to have convinced the movie’s make-up department that researchers seeking the authentic pirate look need look no farther than any Steve Tyler and Aerosmith album cover that features a shot of the band. This one, for example.
At three hours, this thing is at least twice as long as it needs to be and is, not to put too fine a point on it, a viewing experience so bad that it almost, but not quite, makes the transition into the realm of movies that inspire awe on the basis of the sheer breadth and depth of their big-budget badness. In other words, skip this gobbler and grab its 40-year old parent with animation by Ray Harryhausen that still stands up as superb family entertainment!
= = =
My bug o’ the week this week is something I’ve had on the back burner for some time, but have only recently started to notice just how widespread it’s becoming: the number of places a “Tips” cup is now turning up. In recent days, I’ve seen one placed beside the cash register at a local newsstand, at just about every fast food take-out in the office complex food court where I work, and at most convenience stores in the NCR (that’d be the National Capital Region for those who don’t live and breathe acronyms to the same volume as those of us employed by the GoC [Government of Canada].)
Especially in the NCR.
I have no problem with the “Leave a Penny / Take a Penny” trays in stores that move a lot of low-priced merchandise such as newspapers, candy bars, soft drinks and the like. In fact, I suspect cashiers appreciate a customer’s occasionally snaffling a penny or two in order to satisfy a sale of $3.01, rather than have to issue $0.24 from their not-usually-too-full change drawer. And I do regularly toss my own rogue pennies into those trays at those stores where I shop most frequently.
But when did that concept become the “Tips” cup? – In this part of the country, that usually means a styrofoam cup on which someone has drawn a hopeful smiley face and (another real world example in my workplace) “Pour notre retraite” – For our retirement. And why in heaven’s name should I even be asked to consider tipping a cashier for a process that involves nothing more on his or her part than ringing up the sale and taking my money?
A tip, to me, is something I pay automatically in most restaurants when the meal service has involved all the little things not normally itemized on the bill – refilling my water glass, delivering a basket of rolls, menu advice and clarification, the timely removal of dirty plates and glasses, the equally timely delivery of each course if the dinner includes an appetizer and / or a dessert, and even for the intangibles such as the general overall pleasantness of the person or persons providing that service.
But beyond that, a tip is also something I will weigh to reflect either a good or bad variation on the standard* amount – which around here is typically reckoned at about 15 per cent. I have just as often tipped more as I have less – often “considerably” in either direction if the service was especially good or especially bad. I will also occasionally ask if the tip is specific only to the people with whom I’ve interacted, or is to go into a pool that is also shared with the kitchen staff. It might seem a bit anal, but this can have a bearing on how much I tip if, for example, the food has been excellent but the table server downright surly, or if a pleasant tableside manner was crushed by the delivery of mediocre off-temperature food.
* I've also participated in not inconsiderable debates about the concept of a “standard” tip. Who, for example, decided that 15 per cent is a normal amount to tip? Some Canadians in particular have a peculiar habit of “rewarding” lacklustre service and bad food with no more than the 15 per cent tip. (That’ll show ‘em!) But I long ago conceded the battle of the “standard” tip. For me, the tip amount figuring at the end of a restaurant meal begins at that percentage. I have no idea why.
But to tip for “service” that is in fact the simple act of fulfilling the straightforward mechanics of one’s job – pushing cash register buttons and placing what I purchase in a bag, for example? I think not. Now some might argue, “Oh, but those people are not paid very much so the ‘tip’ is to help them supplement their income.” Well, without apology, my opinion on that is that this is an issue for the underpaid staff to take up with their employer, not devolve onto their customers.
In my job, I occasionally receive word that a report I prepared was much appreciated and well received. That feedback has never come back to me with a five-dollar bill. But every two weeks I do get a printout advising me that my bi-monthly salary deposit has made its way into my bank account. You’re welcome.
And do you tip when you go to the take-out counter or the drive-by window of a fast-food place? I don’t. Again, it has to do with the service. When I phone an order in to a restaurant and go pick it up myself, I’ve performed 99 per cent of the “service” myself. Oh sure, the restaurant staff has prepared and cooked the food in the kitchen, but the actual interaction and “service” aspect has been strictly the act of transferring the order from the kitchen to the pick-up counter. And again, if the expectation is that my “tip” is essential to help bolster the income of an underpaid staff, then that place of business has a problem that has to be solved somewhere other than the exchange between me and the cashier.
= = =
A passing thought for poor Jim Balsillie, the Chairman of Research in Motion (RIM) Technologies, the corporate umbrella under which the Blackberry is produced. News o’ the day on March 5 reported that he stepped down as chairman when “a two hundred and fifty million dollar accounting error” turned up in their latest financial report.
A quarter-of-a-billion dollar “accounting error” ????? (Repeat as often as required for this to sink in, increasing the volume of each incredulous shout until either a co-worker or family member tells you to shut the heck up – depending on whether you’re at work or home.)
It really is a different world in the rarefied atmosphere of the dot-com gazillionaires.
An accounting error.
250 MILLION dollars. (!)
Why in heaven’s name is it not the president of his accounting division who is resigning?
Given that the most serious repercussion appears to be that this idiot gets to start his retirement earlier than the rest of us, I guess (a) calling him an “idiot” is way off the mark, and (b) even this old adage no longer holds:
If you owe the bank fifty thousand dollars and you can’t pay, you’re in trouble;
If you owe the bank fifty million dollars and you can’t pay, the bank is in trouble;
If you owe the bank fifty billion dollars and you can’t pay, the country is in trouble.
Instead, for the New Millennium, I give you:
If you owe the bank fifty dollars and you can’t pay, you are in BIG trouble, deadbeat!
If you owe the bank fifty thousand dollars and you can’t pay, the bank is your new landlord;
If you owe the bank fifty million dollars and you can’t pay, the bank may cut back on your monthly credit limit;
If you owe the bank fifty billion dollars and you can’t pay, the daily newspaper in which you read about your “troubles” will be delivered to you personally by a Turks and Caicos beach attendant driving a golf cart right up to your palm-shaded beachside lounge chair.
Until next time (and I don't digress!)…
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