Excercising My Civic Duty

I’m just back from exercising my civic right to vote.  This being a municipal election at least this time round the election placards out-numbered the for sale signs—especially with five people running for mayor.  Not living in Ward 2 I didn’t have the opportunity to place two pigs at the trough—a Stoate and a Hogg.  I can only hope that the incoming mayor is given a council less fractious than the previous one. 

 

Did some shopping after the voting machine read my ballot and discovered the perfect Christmas gift at the Bulk Barn—Chocolate lumps of Coal!  Aside from the election the day has been marked with the sound of sirens roaring up and down Trafalgar Rd.  The fact that the day is overcast and moisture laden is probably not helping.  With all this rain we should expect to see a bumper crop of cones on the conifers, shrubs laden with blossom, and green lawns next spring.  Unless the weather changes I may not need to get my humidifier going at all this year. 

 

This being a contractual holiday for uncivil servants I believe I’ll go up and fall asleep in front of the TV.   

More Microsoft Woes

You may remember that legal documents are written in such bloated circuitous terms because clerks were paid for the documents they wrote by the word, hence they used as many words as possible when they wrote their judgments; the resulting parchments were rolled and tied with red ribbons hence their works became red tape.  It would seem that Bill Gates pays his code writers by the same principle—hence using 1 MB of code to accomplish a task will not do if one can find 100 MB that will do the same job. Recently I downloaded and installed Windows Media Player 11; it does a nice job, as long as you don’t wish to do anything else with your computer while it’s running.  That’s fine if it’s a movie you’re watching; but listening to a CD or Web Radio while you’re working on a Word Document such as I’m doing at present or browsing the Web and reading E-mail—especially if you use MS Outlook--is out of the question. 

 

I made the mistake of “upgrading” (?) to Internet Explorer 7—I should know better by now!  Not since I was on a dial-up Internet Connection have I experienced web pages that opened at such glacial speeds.  Not only that but until the pages open my browser and even my computer itself are often frozen.  Not since I used Windows ME has my browser crashed as often as it has lately.  Couldn’t comment as to whether this new edition is more secure but it certainly isn’t more stable.  Again this is yet another programme exhibiting needless bloat. 

 

If these two programmes are exemplars of what is to come with Windows Vista; no wonder a computer will require 1 Gigabyte of memory just to run the Operating System.  Whatever buildings this new system is able to leap with a single bound or however bullet-proof it may be I ask you, “Is it really worth it?”

 

 

Government

The Government—I heard about the Government and I went out to find it.  I said I would look closely at it when I saw it.

Then I saw a policeman dragging a drunken man to the calaboose.  It was the Government in action.

I saw a ward alderman slip into an office one morning and talk with a judge. Later in the day the judge dismissed a case against a pickpocket who was a live ward worker for the alderman.  Again I saw this was the Government, doing things.

I saw militiamen level their rifles at a crowd of workingmen who were trying to get other workingmen to stay away from a shop where there was a strike on.  Government in action.

 

Everywhere I saw the Government is a thing made of men, that Government has blood and bones, it is many mouths whispering into many ears, sending telegrams, aiming rifles, writing orders, saying “yes” and “no”.

 

Government dies as the men who form it die and are laid away in their graves and the new Government that comes after is human, made of heartbeats of blood, ambitions, lusts, and money running through it all, money paid and money taken, and money covered up and spoken of with hushed voices.

A Government is just as secret and mysterious and sensitive as any human sinner carrying a load of germs, traditions and corpuscles handed down from fathers and mothers away back.

 

--Carl Sandburg

Where have all the flowers gone?

Not much has changed in the century since the lines above were written; somehow I don’t expect Sandburg would be overly surprised.  Government has just gotten better at shredding paper and paper trails and wiping hard drives.  We have two paper shredders in the office in which I work—I ordered them. 

 

Just got back from buying $200.00-worth of groceries.  A lot for one person but I’ve only shopped once in the last two months.  Possible when one makes one’s own bread, uses frozen juice concentrate and is satisfied with powdered coffee-white; and has a deep freeze full of frozen meals.  In my travels I’ve been amused to see that there are two pigs running for office in Oakville—a stoat and a hogg.  Snickered when I noted it was deemed obligatory to note on my container of pre-washed mixed salad greens that they contained no spinach. 

 

I should apologize for neglecting my few readers.  First I went back to work the first of October; then I caught the virus my fellow workers’ kids brought home from school and their parents were kind enough to share around the office.  Life has been hand to mouth for the last month.  Where did summer go?  We had a few flurries flying in the air around noon on Thursday, the 2^nd, but it melted on contact—nothing to match the permanent cover just north of the Niagara Escarpment or the accumulation already present in places like Calgary.  We have, however, had two vicious storms with wind-driven rain gusting to 100 Km/Hr and more rain during daylight hours than I’ve seen in over a decade.  Miserable weather to be a letter carrier. 

 

I’ve just finished reading Carl Sandburg and will move on to the simplicity of E. J. Pratt.  When I read I tend to suffer from the heavy-eyelid phenomena.  I’ve been struggling to keep up with my iTunes podcasts lest the downloads eat up all the space on my hard drive.  I’ve been languidly picking away at housecleaning—at least bachelors can always feel a sense of accomplishment when they clean those forgotten corners.  I’m still ignoring live TV programming in favour of recorded DVD’s.  At the moment my computer is playing Luke Doucet’s Broken (and other rogue states).