And I am so glad. Have Rhonda's brother staying with us over the holidays and attach his late Sunday arrival with a switch from nights to days and I am ready to fall asleep where I sit... but I need to watch the baby..... maybe the dogs will look after her. And maybe child-protection is on their way....don't worry I'm watching the baby, a far more awake mom is on her way home now.
Gonna see the whole family this week. Excited about that, hopefully drink a damn truck of wine this year. I bought two bottles and I'm sure there must be 10+ more available.
\
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Women and Clothing
Ah the fairer sex! I, like all men throughout history, will never understand women.
In particular concern to me right now is my wife's ability to buy clothes. In the 2+ years we've been together, I've seen my lovely lady change her feathers so many times and so many ways, it makes my head spin. Sometimes I'm reminded of Veronica in the Archie comics, never wearing the same thing twice and having a closet full of clothes.
It's not that I feel she literally has too many clothes, but where I'll go and buy clothes say... 2 times a year, she's got that schedule every month. More boggling is the fact that in these weeks leading up to Christmas she's coming home with new clothes. To me this would be a massive no-no... and not because of the obvious problem of "what if someone is getting you that for Christmas?" but simply because I'd rather eat a box of salt than go shopping during Christmas season without a good reason. Clothes aren't a good reason.
But perhaps I'm to blame. My wardrobe is not exactly one with a lot of variety. T-Shirts, cargo pant and socks make up 95% of my wardrobe. It's not that I don't want to expand on it sometimes. I would like a good pair of jeans or two, and some cool sweaters and button up shirts would be nice to expand into, I just never have the drive or frankly the money to go shopping willy-nilly. Besides, I COULD be spending that money on important things... like beer or male enhancement pills (go ENZYTE!). It doesn't help that despite my amateur wardrobe building skills, I've actually got a pretty picky sense of what I like to wear, so it's not like I can just send Rhonda to do my shopping for me.
So I guess we leave it at that, just another mystery between the sexes right up there with "Why do women go to the bathroom together?" and "How is it that the volume of the contents of a womans purse exceed the volume of the purse and yet the purse never looks full?" Or the ultimate mystery, "How can women suffer childbirth and be raring to have another 3 months later?" Totally weird!
In particular concern to me right now is my wife's ability to buy clothes. In the 2+ years we've been together, I've seen my lovely lady change her feathers so many times and so many ways, it makes my head spin. Sometimes I'm reminded of Veronica in the Archie comics, never wearing the same thing twice and having a closet full of clothes.
It's not that I feel she literally has too many clothes, but where I'll go and buy clothes say... 2 times a year, she's got that schedule every month. More boggling is the fact that in these weeks leading up to Christmas she's coming home with new clothes. To me this would be a massive no-no... and not because of the obvious problem of "what if someone is getting you that for Christmas?" but simply because I'd rather eat a box of salt than go shopping during Christmas season without a good reason. Clothes aren't a good reason.
But perhaps I'm to blame. My wardrobe is not exactly one with a lot of variety. T-Shirts, cargo pant and socks make up 95% of my wardrobe. It's not that I don't want to expand on it sometimes. I would like a good pair of jeans or two, and some cool sweaters and button up shirts would be nice to expand into, I just never have the drive or frankly the money to go shopping willy-nilly. Besides, I COULD be spending that money on important things... like beer or male enhancement pills (go ENZYTE!). It doesn't help that despite my amateur wardrobe building skills, I've actually got a pretty picky sense of what I like to wear, so it's not like I can just send Rhonda to do my shopping for me.
So I guess we leave it at that, just another mystery between the sexes right up there with "Why do women go to the bathroom together?" and "How is it that the volume of the contents of a womans purse exceed the volume of the purse and yet the purse never looks full?" Or the ultimate mystery, "How can women suffer childbirth and be raring to have another 3 months later?" Totally weird!
Friday, December 12, 2008
Off to Winterpeg
Gonna go visit Markus Domestikus and Hollywood.
The open mic was a total flop and I will never be able to watch the video.
We're gonna try again in the new year.
Catch y'all later
The open mic was a total flop and I will never be able to watch the video.
We're gonna try again in the new year.
Catch y'all later
Monday, December 08, 2008
Playin' an Open Mic
Hey all. I'm gonna be strummin' out some tunes with my lovely wife Rhonda backing me up on the o'l hand drum on Wednesday night (Dec 10) at the Exchange. I'm guaranteed one song, but if people like me I can play longer. So come out and like me! Doors open at 6:30, show is at 7 and I play when they put me on. I think the cover is a donation of your choice to Amnesty, but I can't be sure. For more info, please visit http://www.amnestysaskatchewan.ca/provincial/ .
This is one of hopefully about a half-dozen open mics I'm hoping to do over the next few months as a warm-up and development stage of a solo project. Trying not to jump the gun too much on the poject, but I hope to get a few decent gigs this summer, then work on a recording next winter to start pushing summer 2010.
Keep up to date on the project at my MySpace page and please support my work if you're interested, I have children to feed. I'll keep you up to speed on major developments here at Pilot's World too.
This is one of hopefully about a half-dozen open mics I'm hoping to do over the next few months as a warm-up and development stage of a solo project. Trying not to jump the gun too much on the poject, but I hope to get a few decent gigs this summer, then work on a recording next winter to start pushing summer 2010.
Keep up to date on the project at my MySpace page and please support my work if you're interested, I have children to feed. I'll keep you up to speed on major developments here at Pilot's World too.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Mark My Words
Harper is up to something.
While everyone has been expounding how dumb the Conservatives were to make the fiscal update they were going to, particularly the part about cutting election funding. Now I've been watching how Harper works over the past 3 years, and I'm positive he's up to something.
He promises something the electorate will like - cutting funding to politicians, creating an accountability committee, but doing it in such a way that it will ultimately fail, but at the hands of the opposition (load committees with Liberals or make funding cuts that will bankrupt the opposition parties), +1 for Harper, -1 for Opposition. Basically from day one, Harper has been putting forward stuff in such a way that if they succeed he gets one more notch in his agenda, but if they fail, the Opposition is squarely in the cross-hairs. He's a very clever politician, so I know the bastard is up to something, I just don't know what yet.
But on that note, Canada is in the middle of what I think could be a long-term political crisis. The presence of 4 relatively strong parties in the House is causing a world of trouble, especially since up until about a week ago all four parties wanted to run the House like they had a majority... and frankly if word of the weakness of the coalition is true, they still do. The electorate is pretty divided, we're in the 50-50 election crisis the US was in up until the most recent election. The conservatives seem to come out on top in these matches, perhaps they're just more clever, maybe they're more deceitful... either way they seem to win when its close.
All I do know is that we're facing political crisis, environmental crisis, we're at war, we've got a failing economy and the man leading our country is playing politics and our Parliament is at a standstill. I realize it's his right, I realize it's legal and I realize that Harper isn't the only one to blame, but I know he was the catalyst and I know our country needs better than the shitheads we have running our country right now.
So my solutions?
First idea would be to abolish the party system. Each member is elected independently then must decide based on the wishes of their constituents and work together in the House. This would of course mean a total overhaul of our system of government and would eliminate a head representative of the country (Prime Minister). Corruption could also spring up in such a system as you wouldn't have party oversight and accountability to keep an eye on it. So there would be some issues to be resolved.
Second - Abolition of all but two parties. Not very democratic. And has complete potential to not solve this problem at all.
Third - Shrink the size of parties and encourage an increase in issue specific parties like the Green Party, Unity Party, Rainbow Coalition or the First Peoples National Party. This could be done through legislation, funding changes and taxation changes. By doing this we could have bills being presented by experts instead of quilt pattern agendas that cover all topics in an incomplete way. Problems here of course include the fact that all non-expert parties will have difficulty understanding bills, so corruption could be bred, and members will only be able to handle the most prominent issue in their consituency.
Fourth - Overhaul of our democratic system. The world has come a long way since 1867. We could be using the advances in technology to directly vote on bills as citizens, instead of sending representatives to Ottawa and spending millions a year on wages and elections. Fill the HoC with servers and allow bills to introduced by the public, reviewed by certain "regular" users then allow the population to vote online. Bills could be introduced, have one week for discussion, one week to vote, then would be passed if a vote of over say 25% of the population supported the bill.
Now I'm positive none of these changes would come to fruition. They are certainly frought with issues, I'm no expert. In addition, the people who would need to make the changes have too much to lose. MP's make a pretty good wage and most, I would argue, like the power or the responsibility or whatever. They have too much vested interest to change things. And of course, about 40 people read this blog on any regular basis, and maybe 3 of them will have read it up to this point. 4 people are gonna have a real hell of a time overturning an entire political system.
So for now we're going to be stuck in a political quagmire. I can see this thing extending upward of 12 years, until someone makes a major misstep or people forget about the Liberal Sponsorship Scandal. So until then , here's to ineffective governance!
While everyone has been expounding how dumb the Conservatives were to make the fiscal update they were going to, particularly the part about cutting election funding. Now I've been watching how Harper works over the past 3 years, and I'm positive he's up to something.
He promises something the electorate will like - cutting funding to politicians, creating an accountability committee, but doing it in such a way that it will ultimately fail, but at the hands of the opposition (load committees with Liberals or make funding cuts that will bankrupt the opposition parties), +1 for Harper, -1 for Opposition. Basically from day one, Harper has been putting forward stuff in such a way that if they succeed he gets one more notch in his agenda, but if they fail, the Opposition is squarely in the cross-hairs. He's a very clever politician, so I know the bastard is up to something, I just don't know what yet.
But on that note, Canada is in the middle of what I think could be a long-term political crisis. The presence of 4 relatively strong parties in the House is causing a world of trouble, especially since up until about a week ago all four parties wanted to run the House like they had a majority... and frankly if word of the weakness of the coalition is true, they still do. The electorate is pretty divided, we're in the 50-50 election crisis the US was in up until the most recent election. The conservatives seem to come out on top in these matches, perhaps they're just more clever, maybe they're more deceitful... either way they seem to win when its close.
All I do know is that we're facing political crisis, environmental crisis, we're at war, we've got a failing economy and the man leading our country is playing politics and our Parliament is at a standstill. I realize it's his right, I realize it's legal and I realize that Harper isn't the only one to blame, but I know he was the catalyst and I know our country needs better than the shitheads we have running our country right now.
So my solutions?
First idea would be to abolish the party system. Each member is elected independently then must decide based on the wishes of their constituents and work together in the House. This would of course mean a total overhaul of our system of government and would eliminate a head representative of the country (Prime Minister). Corruption could also spring up in such a system as you wouldn't have party oversight and accountability to keep an eye on it. So there would be some issues to be resolved.
Second - Abolition of all but two parties. Not very democratic. And has complete potential to not solve this problem at all.
Third - Shrink the size of parties and encourage an increase in issue specific parties like the Green Party, Unity Party, Rainbow Coalition or the First Peoples National Party. This could be done through legislation, funding changes and taxation changes. By doing this we could have bills being presented by experts instead of quilt pattern agendas that cover all topics in an incomplete way. Problems here of course include the fact that all non-expert parties will have difficulty understanding bills, so corruption could be bred, and members will only be able to handle the most prominent issue in their consituency.
Fourth - Overhaul of our democratic system. The world has come a long way since 1867. We could be using the advances in technology to directly vote on bills as citizens, instead of sending representatives to Ottawa and spending millions a year on wages and elections. Fill the HoC with servers and allow bills to introduced by the public, reviewed by certain "regular" users then allow the population to vote online. Bills could be introduced, have one week for discussion, one week to vote, then would be passed if a vote of over say 25% of the population supported the bill.
Now I'm positive none of these changes would come to fruition. They are certainly frought with issues, I'm no expert. In addition, the people who would need to make the changes have too much to lose. MP's make a pretty good wage and most, I would argue, like the power or the responsibility or whatever. They have too much vested interest to change things. And of course, about 40 people read this blog on any regular basis, and maybe 3 of them will have read it up to this point. 4 people are gonna have a real hell of a time overturning an entire political system.
So for now we're going to be stuck in a political quagmire. I can see this thing extending upward of 12 years, until someone makes a major misstep or people forget about the Liberal Sponsorship Scandal. So until then , here's to ineffective governance!
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Shoppo!
Ug. Shopping. Actually I've brought Tai along with me to do my Christmas shopping and she provides endless entertainment. Rhonda is gonna love her ##@@$$$@@ for Christmas and I got her the most wonderful 03984555444433 for her birthday. Got some nice treats for my mom and dad today as well, so I now just need to get some little things for the girls and I'll be off to the races.
Tracked down a MIDI keyboard today for $50 from Doug (Linger guitarist). Looking forward to having access to a keyboard as it's gonna help me work with my fancy-pants software, Buzz. I've been using a forum on the software to learn how to use it, so I signed up just as a matter of respect for the community, but I have trouble posting anything. I'm no expert yet on the stuff, and most of the questions I have about the software are answered by a simple search. So I mostly just pop into the "Off-Topic" section of the message board and chat. Forums are very strange communities, but they're also a veritable motherlode of information.
Tai has a synchronized swimming show tonight, and SGI is putting on their kids carnival tommorrow afternoon. So it's Dad weekend for me!
Tracked down a MIDI keyboard today for $50 from Doug (Linger guitarist). Looking forward to having access to a keyboard as it's gonna help me work with my fancy-pants software, Buzz. I've been using a forum on the software to learn how to use it, so I signed up just as a matter of respect for the community, but I have trouble posting anything. I'm no expert yet on the stuff, and most of the questions I have about the software are answered by a simple search. So I mostly just pop into the "Off-Topic" section of the message board and chat. Forums are very strange communities, but they're also a veritable motherlode of information.
Tai has a synchronized swimming show tonight, and SGI is putting on their kids carnival tommorrow afternoon. So it's Dad weekend for me!
Monday, December 01, 2008
Attention!!!!
TO THOSE OF YOU WHO DOUBT MY ABILITY TO FATHER NAKED HIPPIE BABIES,
BEHOLD!!!!
Sorry Kayah, I know you'll have years of therapy for this, but it's SO DAMN CUTE!
BEHOLD!!!!
Sorry Kayah, I know you'll have years of therapy for this, but it's SO DAMN CUTE!
So looks like we're gonna have a coalition
This seems to me a pretty good deal. The pundits are spouting a lot of hostorical facts about it, but considering the fact that the last time there was a federal coalition in Canada, my great-great-grandfather was my age... well I'd say all bets are off.
One moment, my wife made me an excellent cup of coffee and I need to sit staring in the distance, holding the cup in both hands and smile with a satisfied look in my eye.
Damn good coffee.
So as I was saying. I think its a pretty good deal for democracy. "WHAT?" You say? "How can a group of people seizing power from an elected leader be democratic?" Each member of the coalition will have been elected by their ridings to represent them so by agreeing to run the House, they're more effectively serving their constituents. Also, by having 2-3 parties involved in negotiating any new laws or changes, the changes that happen will be more moderate and theoretically more acceptable to a greater portion of the nation's population. Add to this that the parties that aren't Conservatives in the house are center-left parties, and the center-left actually took more seats.... well you see where my thinking is.
I'm cheering on the coalition, it worked in Afghanistan right?
One moment, my wife made me an excellent cup of coffee and I need to sit staring in the distance, holding the cup in both hands and smile with a satisfied look in my eye.
Damn good coffee.
So as I was saying. I think its a pretty good deal for democracy. "WHAT?" You say? "How can a group of people seizing power from an elected leader be democratic?" Each member of the coalition will have been elected by their ridings to represent them so by agreeing to run the House, they're more effectively serving their constituents. Also, by having 2-3 parties involved in negotiating any new laws or changes, the changes that happen will be more moderate and theoretically more acceptable to a greater portion of the nation's population. Add to this that the parties that aren't Conservatives in the house are center-left parties, and the center-left actually took more seats.... well you see where my thinking is.
I'm cheering on the coalition, it worked in Afghanistan right?
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