Is A Fox's Tail Really That Cool?

Why do I have such a hate on for Tommy Fox? I can't explain it, but I just keep thinking the dude's a giant prick.

I don't know about you, but if I were to drive over an animal, my first thought wouldn't have been, "Ooo! A fox! Let's go back, get the carcase and cut off its tail for a souvenir!" Apparently, that was his thought process. He picked up the fox that he just crunched with his SUV, threw it in the back, kept on drivin' and the roadkill...wasn't so dead after all. It woke up, and while he tried to hold the angry animal back, he flipped his car. Now the fox was dead for sure, and he only suffered minor injuries. Somehow that doesn't seem fair.

And yes, I think it's funny that tommy Fox hit a fox.

My Letter Got In!

Under the post about the debates being after the advance polls, we said we were going to write letters to the editor. Well, mine got in! Here's what I said.

Dear Editor - I note something distressing about the timing of the televised federal election debate of Guelph candidates.

The date is next Tuesday, Oct. 7. However, all advance polling is completed by a day before this date.

This means anyone who wished to vote in advance must vote without the benefit of having watched the debate, which can be an important factor in making a decision of which local candidate deserves their 'X.'

People can say we always have a choice to vote on election day, but some people, for various reasons, do not.

I am amazed that these people's needs were not considered in preparing the date for the candidates debate.

I'm sure the advance polling dates were scheduled before the debate date was finalized.

I believe this is the first time this has happened. Please, let it be the last.

-- Carin Headrick, Guelph

Hopefully it makes some people think. I know this election was a scramble, but come on.

Where Am I?

Here's your amusingly ironic story of the day.

Disoriented man crashes into map store

waiting To Die

Here's a message for everybody who thinks health care is miles better in the states. They forget you have to pay for it, and if you can't, you could end up like Mike Herrera, dead in an emergency room after waiting 19 hours, with the staff saying "oh well, he probably would have died anyway even if we treated him." At least in the case of brian Sinclair, they apologized and seemed to be looking for ways to fix glaring errors. there was just no regard for this guy, probably because he didn't have insurance. What a statement.

From The company Who Brought You The Escape, We Now Present The Kid Leash

Wow. This is the stupidest idea I've heard in a while. It's right up there with making Alzheimer's patients wear RFID tags. Now, Ford has come up with a special key for a parent's teenager that can be programmed to limit the speed of the car. It will also limit the car stereo's volume and nag them incessantly if they don't put on a seatbelt, and can nag them about certain speeds up to the max allowed.

I know kids speed, and I know it's a problem. But having the car do the speed-control for the parents is a recipe for disaster. If you don't trust your kids enough to drive alone, then maybe they're just not ready yet. I can see kids swapping the keys for their parent's keys that don't have the limits imposed. That's all they'd have to do. Or maybe they'd drive mom's car to a friend's house and then they'd drive off in their friend's car that doesn't have those limits. Kids are smart. Once they figure out that you've put limits on, if they want to, they'll get around them.

The solution is not to let technology teach the lessons. It's to actually teach your kids what they need to know. If you can use technology to prevent them from speeding in *your* car, what happens when they get their own? They'll speed,and they'll speed like they've never sped before because they can. They now have this freedom, and goddamn it, they're going to take advantage of...ker smash.

Now, what good did basically keeping them on a leash do? It just pushed the age for speeding-related accidents to a bit older. We can theorize that when kids are a bit older, they've matured. But the only way they can mature is by learning lessons. Otherwise, they still have to learn those same lessons.

Conservative Crazies

wow, we have some serious wackjobs at work. Apparently, over the weekend, people in Toronto who had liberal signs up on their lawns had their houses sprayed, their brakes tampered with, and their phone and cable lines cut! It wasn't just a few. It's happened all over the city, and apparently, it happened in Guelph in August before the byelection.

what's wrong with people? Don't they realize that cutting someone's brake lines could get them and others killed? Are they really that hateful? The same goes for phone lines. What if someone needed to call for help in a medical emergency and couldn't?

Listen, guys, it's a free country. You vote for who you want to, they'll vote for who they want to, and whoever gets the most votes wins. And I have news for ya. Doing this sort of bullshit only makes your victims fight harder to see their party get in.

crashing Through My Brain

A little while ago, I talked about the book about Mike May. Well, I finished it. Should I say I crashed through it? No. That would be too corny. Lots of books make me think, but I think this one will keep me thinking for a while.

In case you haven't guessed, it's called Crashing Through. It's a damn good story. It's all about Mike May's life, how he went blind at the age of 3 due to a chemical explosion, but that didn't seem to stop him. His parents pushed for him to go to regular school, which was a pretty big feat, since back then, regular schools could refuse blind kids. He did everything at regular school, including run with wreckless abandon and play lots of sports. that's where "crashing through" started. Apparently he crashed into everything. Ouch! That was one place in the book where I winced a lot. the author talked about how many fingers May broke, how many bruises and scars he accumulated, how many times he got all bloody. Yeesh! that's one tough dude!

Holy crap did this guy do a lot of cool stuff. Hmm. Where do I begin? Do I begin with him helping to build a school in Ghana? How about working for the CIA? Maybe holding a speed-skiing record? What about trying to invent a whole ton of different stuff, and now running Sendero Group? Or how about building an 80-foot ham radio tower on top of his house? Eek! I love how he built one on top of his mom's house when he was 16, and when he was about half done, she said, "I'm going to have to leave for a while. I can't stand to see you up there." when she came back, it was built. And there's lots of other stuff that he did, but if I wrote it all down, who would read the book?

then by some freak occurrence, he ended up at an ophthalmologist's office, and the doctor said he might be able to make him see again. He took a lot of time to think about it, and decided to go through with it, even though the surgery had one hell of a lot of risks. The book describes his difficulties with trying to assimilate all that new data that he never had before. It wasn't an easy path, but he did as much as humanly possible. I should say he did as much as superhumanly possible, because this guy's insane.

I do have to say he has one hell of a wife. After the surgery, she wholeheartedly encouraged him to watch girls at this coffee shop, and showed him what to look out for in a woman. She also wore tighter tops so he could see her better. I don't think too many men would have a wife like that. Not only that, she supported him no matter what business venture he wanted to embark on.

This book made me very conflicted. It put me at war with myself. There was part of me that was saying, "Gees. If he can do all this stuff, why in christ don't I have a job yet?" then another part of me was saying that was not the way he intended me to take it. when the surgery was a success and he was struggling with his new vision, I discovered there was a part of me that was very satisfied when he couldn't parse all that raw data. It kept saying that my great aunt who insists I should hope and pray for a way to regenerate my optic nerve should read this book. then, maybe she'd stop telling me to go get fixed. I know she means well, but I cannot explain to her that even if they could somehow regenerate my optic nerve and convince it to convey messages, my brain just doesn't have the pathways it should have for that sort of input, and I'm better off doing things the way I do. Then, when I would detect that satisfaction, I would quickly be calling myself a hateful bitch, and I'd start hoping for him again.

Robert Kurson has a way with words. There were points when I laughed, cried, and shrieked out loud. The point where Mike asked if a very very large woman was a forklift had me laughing for quite a while. When it looked like he was going to lose his vision, after he'd just mastered the art of using it, I cried. As for the shrieks, I know I have a powerful imagination, but when they were describing sticking a needle in Mike's eye, well...I found myself squeezing my chair's arms and gritting my teeth. You could tell Kurson put a lot of work into making sure this book was painstakingly accurate. He said he worked on it for two years. It shows.

I don't think it matters if you can or can't see. This book is a good read. I wish I'd read it *before* I met the dude. Then maybe, just maybe, I would have had something intelligent to say. Then again, maybe I'd be more tongue-tied.

Stop This Song From Streaming Into My Head

Ug. I don't even know why I'm posting this, except to make fun of the dude for being such a geek, and because the damn jingle has been in my head since I heard the thing. So maybe if I write it down, it will leave me alone. that, and I haven't found anything else to post, so this'll have to do.

There is a very musical, and also very geeky man named Terry Kelly. well, I'll take back the geeky part if he did this strictly for pay. Why do I think he's geeky? He made a ringtone to sing about the Victor Reader Stream. Um, would I put that on my phone? How about no. But the damn thing's been in my head ever since I heard it.

Yuck! Sorry I wasted everyone's time with that horror.

Mr. Safety's Police Force

Here we go, let's pick on the UK again, this one caused by health and safety officers, who else?. They now want to change the wording of bravery awards given to police. the wording states that the officer receiving the award acted 'with no thought to his or her safety'. They say that this has to be changed to better emphasize health and safety. People who have received this award obviously think this is "rubbish".

Hello. If an officer is receiving an award for bravery, they obviously went above and beyond what anyone should be expected to do. Health and safety isn't usually on their minds in situations like that. Oh what am I saying? this is the country that doesn't allow cops to rescue drowning people.

Monkey See, Monkey Chomp

I probably wouldn't have written about this, except I feel this woman's pain. I know how much it hurt when Babs bit my hand. I can't imagine a monkey biting down on my hand, and then munching on it for up to a minute. Ouch ouch ouch!

By the sounds of it, the lab has some thinking to do. Why wouldn't they call an ambulance for her?

Ok, I'm going to stop now. I don't want to think about that zapping, tingling, zinging feeling caused by nerve damage anymore.

Stupidity

when I first started receiving emails about this, I wasn't even going to dignify it with a response. But when it started crawling into my local newspaper, I decided I had to say something.

Apparently there's some movie called "blindness" that's coming into theatres near us. Members of the national Federation of the Blind saw it and were mortally offended because they feel the movie portrays blind people as monsters who are unable to care for themselves and roll around in their own waste. Now they're trying to get as many folks to picket the movie as they can.

Heres' the plot summary. This is all I know about the movie. I haven't seen the thing, nor have I read the book.

Based on the 1995 novel by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago, "Blindness" imagines a mysterious epidemic that causes people to see nothing but fuzzy white light -- resulting in a collapse of the social order in an unnamed city. Julianne Moore stars as the wife of an eye doctor (Mark Ruffalo) who loses his sight; she feigns blindness to stay with her husband and eventually leads a revolt of the quarantined patients.

So really, blindness isn't the central thing they're talking about, it's any kind of breakdown of civilization. to me, that sounds like "lord of the Flies" with a blind twist instead of being trapped on an island. It's the idea that if something weird happened to a bunch of people and their environment was drastically changed, it's human nature to freak and turn into animals. Yup, that's a pretty accurate assessment, I think. Look at how people behaved during Hurricane Katrina. Look what happened when SARS broke out. Granted SARS wasn't as bad, but everybody was afraid to go to Toronto, people were walking around with masks and there was a lot of fear. I think any of us can come up with other causes of mass-hysteria. Just name your disease, halt of service, or other massive change of life, and we intelligent homosapiens don't cope well.

I think the NFB needs to go look up the word metaphor. Even I can see that the author is not trying to say that blind people are beasts. When I told Steve about this, he said they could have made the exact same movie, except called it "gimpness." In the movie, a rare plague would cause one of people's limbs to fall off, leaving them unable to walk around. Heaps of the afflicted would be found at the bottoms of stairs and doors would be shattered by folks hurling their bodies through since they were unable to walk. It would make the same point. would people actually watch that movie and believe that that's how amputees operate? No! No way! They would know that they were using the loss of a limb to make a point. It's the same here.

I know that we already deal with stupid stereotypes and that a lot of people think we can't do stuff, but I really don't think that would change if this movie wasn't played, and this movie isn't going to make them worse. Anyone with afunctioning brain knows that this is not about blindness. It's about the breakdown of society due to a sudden, huge change. And guys at the NFB, losing vision would be a huge change, just as big as if one of my legs fell off tomorrow. The difference is usually, a few people lose their vision, not a mass. A few people can adapt and society doesn't break down. But I think the NFB would have to concede that if, in the real world, an entire country went blind, there would be chaos.

IBust

Dale Gilbert, you're dumb. If you're a subcontractor for the Department of Corrections, you know that having and distributing child porn is against the law. You should know this anyway, but working for the Department of Corrections, you really have no excuse. So...do you think it's a good idea to put child porn in your ITunes shared folder and then use a wireless network at a hotel? Well, now you've found out that it isn't, because someone else found your stuff, called the police, and now you'll probably be having an extended stay somewhere else other than the Extended Stay Hotel.

Lucky For Who?

Wow. It's amazing that because a gas station accidentally set their price to 35 cents a gallon instead of $3.50, they managed to lose 1000 gallons of gas and $3000 in two hours. That's how you know gas prices are way high. I guess people told everybody about the awesome prices, and there was traffic backed up in all directions. Apparently police had to restore order. what makes this story amusing is it happened at Lucky Mart. I guess it was lucky for the customers. It certainly wasn't lucky for the store.

I thought it was funny that the owners sister was shocked that people didn't tell the owner about the error. Why should they? How would they know it was an error? For all they know, the store was having a crazy gas give-away sale as some kind of promotional deal.

One things' for sure, the unlucky owner is taking this whole thing well. I hope it does end up paying dividends for her.

CHANGE: Can You Help A Numbnut Get eliminated?

I have a question for Greg Howard. How in the name of all that's holy did you become a teacher? I mean, surely you would have shown your extraordinarily bad judgment to someone along the way before you were teaching seventh-grade social studies. Surely you would agree that it takes a special kind of person who is devoid of even the slightest fragment of a clue to stand up in front of his class, talk about Barack Obama, and then spell out what the call for change means, on the board no less! This is what you wrote. "Change. Can you help a n***** get elected?" I would write the word, but I can't stand the sight of it. And after you had scribbled that piece of prose, you still thought this was ok, and laughed about it! Add to this that your class included black kids, even though to me, that's beside the point. Just try to explain to me in what universe that would have been acceptable behaviour.

I'm glad the school board took disciplinary action, but I don't think you should have been transferred anywhere, not even to the adult education department. Let me clarify. You should have been transferred to the curb. You shouldn't be responsible for anyone in any way.

I'm Sure It Means Well, But This Blows

Hurricane Katrina Returns To New Orleans To Apologize

The DO Not Call Site Does Not Work For blind Folks

So the Canadian do not call registry is alive and well. It had a, um, rocky start, because so many people slammed it at once that, well, both website and phone crashed under the high demand. What does that tell ya, telemarketers? But that isn't the reason for this post. The reason is the registry has a few large accessibility bugs to work out. Let's explain them.

Last night, I decided to get us all signed up. We have a main phone number, I have a cell number, and we have two identicall numbers that Bell gave us when they screwed up our bill royally. If you recall, they get pretty slammed by numbnut telemarketers, so I want the damn things registered. I went to the site, which is https://www.lnnte-dncl.gc.ca and got to work. It looked pretty simple at first. I hit register, entered my main number and hit continue. I was greeted with a fucking blasted son of a bitch goddamn piece of shit graphical word verification thingy! Not only that,but they had no audio option,nor did they have an acknowledgement of what blinks could do if they ran into this. I thought ok I'll just phone the number, which is 1-866-580-3625 or DNCL. Don't call the other number llisted on news articles, unless you are deaf and using a TTY. It is 1-888-362-5889. What does that number stand for? 1-888-DNCL TTY. Ok, news reporter dudes, why not tell us that useful tidbit of information?

Anyway, back to my story. I phoned the number, and found out immediately that in order to register a number, you have to be calling from it, and the system has to be able to confirm that the number you punch in to register is in fact the number you're phoning from. I can see trouble ahead. First, I can't call out from my two identicall numbers. They are only inbound. Second, if my cellphone number isn't picked up, then it won't let me register that either, and I'll have to slog through the site. I registered the main number, which takes a dog's age to do because their "speech recognition software" won't take any voice input until it's done gabbling at you forever and ever amen. I hung up, and try to call back with my cellphone. Just as I suspected, it says "I cannot confirm the number you are calling from, so you can't register this way." Grr. Ok, off to the website.

First of all, let me say I love WebVisum. without it, I would have been left to complain, with no chance of solving the captchas and getting my own personal business taken care of. But this story isn't over. I went in, typed in my cellphone number, made WebVisum solve the captcha, put that in the box and it said "you're all registered. I got excited, and thought, "two down, two to go." There was a button that said "register another number." I clicked it, entered one of my two identicall numbers, sent the code away to WebVisum, it came back with a response, and crap crap crap! The website said that code was incorrect! After that point, try as I might, I couldn't get WebVisum to give me a code that matched.

I closed the website, and because I'm as stubborn as a bull, I came back later and tried again. I punched in my first identicall number again, got the captcha, asked WebVisum to solve it, it gave me a response, and it worked! I was all excited. I tried to do the last number, and I was foild again! From this, I can only deduce that if an IP does multiple numbers in quick succession, they make the captchas harder, and if the captchas get harder, WebVisum has a harder time cracking them.

I waited a bit longer, and tried the final number, and got it registered. Then I thought I'd verify that one of my numbers did in fact get done. I hit verify registration, slammed into another captcha, and of course, since I'd just done one, WebVisum couldn't solve it! I waited a bit, tried again, and it worked.

This is what I had to go through to complete what should have been a simple task. But I could only do this because a. I'm stubborn, b. I have WebVisum and c. I know how to use it. Most people don't have WebVisum, or know it exists, or have the tech savvy to do this. I'm not saying I'm a giant genius. I'm just saying some people just don't know about this.

So...is it 9:00 yet? It is! I'm phoning the access coordinator's number to tell them about this and see what they say. Also, a lady I know who works for the federal government is going to complain. It's good to know people.

Please wait while I call that number. beep beep beep. Oh good. I'm on hold. Whistle with me. This isn't the coordinator. This is a centre full of phone drones. Great. I can feel the trepadation. Wish me luck as I sit here listening to elevator music.

I got a heavily accented voice. I think she understands. she's advising someone of what I said, as I listen to music fit for the old Charlie Brown episodes. Please continue to hold with me...

woohoo! I filed a complaint! She understood, she filed the complaint for me, and she told me I would have a follow-up call. I asked that there not only be an audio captcha, but a way for people with significant hearing and vision loss to phone somewhere and have a human register them because people with significant hearing loss can't pick out the garbled speech in audio captchas. she tried to tell me that they would use a TTY, and I explained that if they couldn't see, they couldn't use a TTY. Miracle of miracles, she understood! I also mentioned that since this is a government program, I wanted good access for all and that it should be there from the beginning, but perhaps they weren't made aware of this problem, so that's why I was phoning.

So that's where it stands. I can even phone in and check on the progress of my complaint if I don't get a followup call in a while. I asked for a time-frame in which I could expect a response, and she said she couldn't give me one, but she figured it would be quick since this thing just got off the ground. We'll see.

so that's the story. If anyone else wants to join me in filing a complaint, please do. Call 1-866-791-6601. Let's see what we can do!

The Judge Should Be Locked Up For His Recklessness Too

Ok, Steve's Angry. Why?Here's why.

A story about fetching coffee for nuns kept a southern Ontario man out of jail yesterday for driving while suspended. Danilo Almendarez, 50, faced the usual penalty of a short stay in custody after admitting he got behind the wheel in March while serving a one-year ban for impaired driving. The defence lawyer hadn't even finished outlining his client's background before the judge let him off with a $250 fine. "I don't think the justice system will break down if every so often you bow to compassion," Justice Colin Westman said. Almendarez was volunteering at the Spanish Church of God following a drunk-driving conviction when he drove a few kilometres to get coffee for nuns.

Nonononononononono!

Let me explain how this should have worked.

First of all, since this was a case involving an impaired driving conviction, there shouldn't have been a suspension to begin with. I don't care what the law says, the law is wrong. I'll get to that in a minute. But since there was a suspension order and Almendarez violated it, in my world that's grounds for the permanent driving ban that needs to go with any impaired conviction. In the world in which our fucked beyond repair justice system resides however, that should certainly be grounds for time added to his prohibition as well as a jail stay and a large increase in his fine. I'd say 3 years in prison to make sure he's not getting coffee for any more church leaders and a $2250 fine should do the trick. But again, that's what I'd say as a judge. What usually happens in cases like this is exactly what happened here. You get credit for time served, a warning to be a good boy in the future and a good game pat on the ass before you're free to go out and kill somebody else.

Next, Justice Colin Westman should be fired, or at least reprimanded and served with some real consequences. What he did has nothing to do with bowing to compassion and everything to do with setting a horrible precedent. What he's expressing through this decision is that it's perfectly fine to violate the law as long as you do it on behalf of the clergy. I'd agree with that if the guy was trying to save somebody's life by driving that person to the hospital, but the last time I checked there was no solid medical evidence to vouch for Tim Hortons injections. That, to me, makes this judge incompetent and unfit to preside.

Now let's get to why the law is wrong. I grew up around alcoholics. I know how they think. And knowing what I know, things need to change. I've watched people get their licences taken away, and while they look at it as an inconvenience, it's a minor one that's not even their fault. It's the fault of the cops who caught them. And on the rare occasion when personal responsibility enters into things, it generally comes in the form of I should have been more careful, they'll never get me again. That doesn't mean that they're going to turn over a new leaf, it means they're going to take different roads home for a few weeks.

The system as it is now is totally flawed. I've heard stories of people going to court for their 9th DUI. How can we sit back and accept that that's just how things work? the 9 people you kill don't get a 1 year living ban, they're dead forever. There's no excuse for such a ridiculous imbalance in favour of the criminals. There's also no excuse for bowing to compassion, and there's no place in the legal system for judges who do.

Random Observations

There have been a few things happening to me lately as I walk around that I thought were interesting enough to write down. Here they are, in somewhat random order.

People have this very cute need to protect me. The other morning as I took Trixie down for her first of the morning business, I shared the elevator with a lady. When she realized I was going outside, she physically blocked my way and said, "You need a coat, it's raining heavy out there. I told her I really wasn't going far, but she said I absolutely had to have a coat. so I turned around and went back up and got my coat. When I got back down, it was barely spitting! That was goofy! Maybe the weather drastically changed, which is possible, but if it didn't, she has an interesting vision of heavy rain. The way she was insisting, I was expecting a storm of near biblical proportions!

This amuses me. People have a tendency to tell me, as I walk through the rain, that it's raining. Do they think I don't know what's hitting my head? Do I have this perplexed look on my face as if to say, "What is falling from the sky? Is it milk?"

There's this one woman in my building who I think is terrified of dogs. She doesn't speak english very well, this I know. Whenever I approach her, she says "No! No! No! No!" As I put some distance between her and me, she says "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" Once, she was inside the little vestibule to our building. I put my hand on the door, and from the other side, I hear "No! No! No!" What, lady, I'm not allowed in my own apartment building?

Here's a strange question I got today. A guy asked me why I don't have a cane as well as the dog. Uh, do you see that a lot? He was like "So how are you going to know when you hit steps." Then he opened the door, wanted to make sure I got in and disappeared before I could explain to him that it's her job to stop at steps.

so do people actually see people walking around with dogs *and* canes?

That's about it for now. Wow, that was short.

Microsoft And Harmony Go Together?

Oh my god this is hilarious. Barb sent me this song that she said someone had downloaded from Song Fight! I listened to it, and had to share it. Who knew windows sounds could create the base for such a beautiful symphony. I really love the middle part. I couldn't help but think, "What's wrong with my computer?" even though I knew all those noises were part of the song.

So, without further delay, here's Welcome To Windows by Jim of Seattle. You'll never think of your windows sounds the same way again.

Everything ZENN? I don't Think So!

Here we go again.

Now we have another vehicle on the road to worry about. It's called the ZENN, and it's hitting the streets of Quebec. What does ZENN stand for? Zero Emission, No Noise. I'm all for the ZE part. I'm not so cool with the NN part. Why did they have to start them in Quebec? That's where the drivers are the craziest! I wonder how many blinks and folks on bikes are going to get smoked by these suckers? I know they're low speed, but low speed for a moving vehicle is still high speed for a pedestrian.

Please, can we have just a wee bit of noise? Can we have something so I can avoid being road meat? I'm sure if they were low noise, it would still cut down the noise pollution. I know ZELN doesn't have the same ring to it, but it would be music to blind folks' ears!