Wednesday, April 1st, 2009. (Happy New Year!) ((Marion & Val’s Birfday… & a couple other friends’ birthday too. Mike something…))

+1˚c/+34˚F & drizzling @ 8:01 am.

12 hours at one job, 3 at the other yesterday… (covered ameeting about staggered school bells) & I gotta do stuff at the studio today. Schnarr-

I couldn’t pay much attention to what they were saying, but the intent felt like… Shills for the schoolboard say, “We don’t give a flyin fupp what you think, we’re smarter than you- we’ve decided what is best for you and we’re going to inflatable water slide implement it- so what if it fupps you up and makes you pay another hundred bux a week for child care (their plan only works if you, the victim, have only one child) their plan will save them money- maybe… (until the bus company catches on and raises their rates because they’ve been short changed by this stupid plan of the school board’s?)

It looks like another snow job, another fait accomplis rammed down our throats by people whose main point in life is to convince themselves that they’re smarter than anybody they serve and they should explain that to us any chance they get. if we balk, well, we’re stupid and uneducated and we’ve been misled… Schnarrrrrr-

fupppppp

—–Jim

Monday… ooops. Tuesday, March 31, 2009

+1˚C/+34˚F @ 4:07 am

Yup, monday got by us. As far as blogging goes.

I did a bunch of running around Arnprior, Checking for things I could use to try to organize the gunk I need into bookcases or something like that. I scored a couple pieces of cheap furniture that might be useful in the garage when we do something there.

Also- talked to a couple people about the showing of the movie about Walmart’s attitudes and casualties of those attitudes. I felt drained and collapsed, then did have enough energy to go to the showing, with the bouncy castle for sale camera and helped get B roll for Jeremy’s news story. Also, Jeremy wants me to send him heads ups as soon as I know about anything newsworthy in Arnprior.

Sigh.

I’m exhausted.

…..

—–Jim

Sunday, March 29, 2009.

+6˚C/+43˚F & raining @ 6:51 pm in Arnprior.

I was all psyched for a morning at the flea market. But then it was pouring rain. (schnarrrrr) but the Yurt couple were there and I ended up talking to them for an hour and a half.

This photo was taken around 5 pm. When blown up (or pre-shrunk down?) it is nicely warped by rain water running down the windshield.

Melanie is singing “We’re not in Kansas, no more-” 🙂

Work stuff was better than inflatable water slide anticipated. The cleaner had been there and the church service was waiting in the in box.

((We had ice cream {step daughter, step son and me} before I went to to work.))

Learning new stuff on the iMac -/- began a database for tracking work projects for Indigo S.C.

And it’s my moon day (moon was at this degree of aries when I was born).

—Pas de Schnarr?

—–Jim 🙂

Tuesday, St Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2009. (Cousin Rick’s Birthday)

O˚C/32˚F @ 11:11 this morning.

Got warmer later.

Somewhere, on another page in my web site I have the graphic image to the left and a caption like “One of our neighbours… yeah right-”

It was a beautiful day today. If I didn’t have so much to do in the studio I would have been out and about shooting digital stills with one or both cameras. It was that nice out.

I forgot to call my cousin Rick again- Schnarrrr-

Supervisor came down for his weekly visit. I mentioned something from a 1960s/70s teevee show, he was aufblasbarer wasserpark amazed he could remember something from that far back and he told me I had an amazing memory.

sigh.

I should ‘publish’ this and get on to something else, like flop into a coma for a couple hours so I have enough energy to get back to work and finish editing video and upload schnarr for airplay tomorrow.

beam beam beam, good meditation last night. beam beam beam.

—–Jim

Friday, March 13, 2009.

-18˚C/0˚F @ 7:30 am.

I took the boy to school, then got distracted, put a shelf into the counter top computer table in the bedroom and did a couple other things and got the boy from school and collapsed into a coma and here we are.

Cathi picked up her new glasses and looks very cute…

…Um, Dreamed a couple bears got in the house and one was hugging me, I wondered if there was some intent to harm or just an over zealous wish to hug. ( I did have a photo of Jassper on the Porch this morning that looked very black bear like.)

& this is Cathi in her new glasses.

Last night on Coast to Coast AM. somebody was talking about the toxic properties of Aspertame. Apparently, when you eat something with equal in it, or drink any one of a dozen brands of diet soft drinks, some nasty chemical reactions happen, including formaldehyde. One person called in and said she’d had wicked headaches when she tried to quit aspertame that didn’t go away and after 12 days of cold turkey, she gave up and the guest said it takes 60 days to clear your body from toxins in aspertame and that the formaldehyde never goes away. Hyper-sensitivity to food hüpfburg mit rutsche additives may stick with you for a long long time, too. (also, if you’re trying to get away from aspertame, you have a major problem because, for instance, vanillan, an artificial flavoring, has aspertame, lots of yogurt has aspertame in it.)

(eeep)

—–Jim

Tuesday, March 10, 2009. -5˚C/+23˚F @ 5:26 am.

For anybody who doesn’t know what ‘Schnarr’ is, or means-

Cathi was about to say, “Oh Shi-” when she noticed her (then eight year old) son in the room, bright eyed with expectation of hearing mom say a word he knew she wasn’t supposed to say. The ‘S’ word became ‘schnar!’

& That immediately became our favourite universal euphemism. Describing anything as ‘Schnarr’ usually meant we didn’t like it, didn’t want to do it, wished we could avoid it- thought it was comically ridiculous. (ridiculous became ‘re-dick-lee-ous’ for a while when the boy (who is hyper-lexic; reads above his level but doesn’t always understand what he’s read.) complained about something, using a word he thought he understood, but got the pronunciation wrong- or maybe just got creative with the pronunciation. He doesn’t read this blog. (I’m a dull, boring adult who almost certainly has nothing interesting to say.) If he read this he’d be furious. Or he might spend a lot of time and energy arguing that he never mispronounced anything. Is it a testosterone thing? Do all boys and men believe that if they shout loud gonfiabili enough or gesture menacingly enough- they can re-write history or brow-beat any adversary into accepting their (the shouter’s) version of whatever? =schnarr=

We had a behaviourist (they use a lot more ‘U’s in Canada than they do in the U.S.) tell us to pick our battles. Cathi often tells me I’m being mean when I try not to let him get away with bullying her.

We pushed to get help creating a support group for parents of kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Somebody created that group. We’re members, we just don’t get to most of the meetings… (Schnarr-)

Shrug- This is only brushing the surface of what real ‘Schnarr’ is or can do for you. I love the word. It really does sound re-dick-lee-ous, in a comical way. Like a lot of Yiddish words- But I think ‘Schnarr’ is more like an “Ymmp-ish” term. and that’s a whole nother story, but anyway. It’s 5:44 am I didn’t get enough sleep yesterday, I worked all night and I have a full day ahead of me- ()Schnarr!()

—–Jim (And then we realized that some people actually have ‘Schnar’ or even ‘Von Schnar’ for a name- oh no-we never meant to humiliate anybody in any way shape or form…)

+6˚C/+43˚F @4:37 pm, Saturday, March 7, 2009.

-Jassper, the puppy horse seen walking Cathi at a beach on warmer days last summer, took me for a walk down by the Madawaska River, just north of the area where this morning’s photo was taken.

We met a German Shepard-Husky mix named Kenobe (Like Obi Wan of star wars fame) and we stepped off to the side while a snow mobile pulling a snow trailer full of what looked like logs and other camp site stuff noisily zoomed past us.

Jassper was okay with the snow mobile. I’m hoping the guy didn’t go out onto the ‘lake’/Ottawa River (that’s the Ottawa River/Chats Lake behind Cathi and the dog in the summer photo). It’s getting to be the time of year when at least one snow mobile and rider goes through the ice somewhere within 25 kilometres of here.

Maybe now it’s time for me to rant about the economy.

General Motors.

Last year I was sitting in the Jeep-Dodge-Chrysler dealer’s Service Area waiting room while the mechanics and technicians gave our 2005 Jeep Liberty its periodic check up. An older guy sitting beside me related some of his adventures in auto mechanics. (He’d put a car together from spare parts of several different makes and giochi gonfiabili models and years and the Motor Vehicle people didn’t know what to put on the registration when he went to have it inspected and registered.)

He also told me he’d been a GM Mechanic for several years and had been sent to a big pep talk meeting with corporate big shots showing off a few of their latest innovations.

When they showed him (and his group) a plastic engine part he looked worried and said, “That makes no sense- the damned thing’s going to wear out too fast, they were always made of regular metal before-”

His observation angered the big shot who snarled back, “Do you like your job? Do you want to keep working? We’re paying people two million dollars a year to come up with ideas like this so the parts do wear out so the customers have to come in and get their vehicles serviced-”

The mechanic was stunned, shocked, and apparently never got over that. He shook his head as he told me.

-Seems like basic dishonesty to me, misleading marketing practices, manipulation, betrayal of the public trust.

-So now General Motors is hurting and crying for help.

-I think General Motors should be temporarily nationalized. Fire everybody in management and turn it over to the unions. Give them a deadline, tell them to try to come up with the most reliable, least expensive, most versatile vehicles they know how to build, and see what they come up with. If this fails, try something else.

-But give the people who know what they’re doing, and don’t know how to cheat and manipulate their customers, a chance.

See what they come up with.

—rantingly yours,

—–Jim

Ack-

Thursday, March 5, 2009. (Lyn’s birthday) (& Chelsea R’s birthday, too.)

-10˚C/+14˚F @ 4:59 am ((the weather network thinks it’s -18˚C/0˚F, that’s probably up at the Army base in Petawawa.))

Sigh, Wizard- the Keeshund (sp?) in the photo
to the right, died yesterday (March/4/2009) of an apparent stroke.

Pets should never die.

Cathi’s worried about how the boy will be today, she said he didn’t take it very well last night when his Dad called and told him.

I’m praying / sending out the intention to the universe… that they get an affectionate, low maintenance, not very high energy (definitely not a puppy horse) replacement, real soon.

Gack. Things like this take the wind right out of your sails. I mean how can I write a story about mean people doing evil things to each other when kids are hurting because their dog died?

Quick- think up an alternative castillo hinchable world where pets don’t die, they regenerate or something, and retain all the memories from their previous existance. There needs to be an escape clause, I mean if a kid beats his dog, the dog can regenerate, look the kid in the eye and say, “You were mean to me, I’ll go give my unconditional love to somebody else- loser-” or something like that.

shrug-

—–Jim

Wednesday, March 4, 2009 ((Marcia Logan’s Birthday)) -13˚C/+9˚F @ 5:38 am.

(((Temperatures in the warmer range are from the same Weather Network”s applet, I think at the Ottawa Airport)))

That’s still cold.

The elf house here is something that I picked up on the internet way way back when I attempted my first web site. Angelfire had pages of free images and told you how to use them. This house was on a ‘Fairies’ site maintained by a woman in California who frequented Renaissance Faires and kept Fairies etc on her site to support kids who needed emotional support. I asked her about the house gif and she said she’d forgotten where she got it from, but nobody’s come after me with a chainsaw or a lawyer screaming anything like copyright infringement, so I guess it’s safe to use it.

Which brings me to the buried issue of the day.

The CRTC has been holding hearings about taxing the internet. (The CRTC is the Canadian version of the FCC) In the U.S., I’ve heard what sounds like serious rumours that the government wants to tax downloads.

I remember tons of rumours flying around before the turn of the millenium that governments were going to try to tax email, like charge something as if it was regular mail. I remember armies of little old ladies rattling their canes and shooting worried messages to all their friends and stuff.

Now this rumour showed up in a legitimate newspaper. The CRTC has been looking into taxing the internet. They want to charge the ISPs (internet service providers). They’ve become so bogged down in confusion that they decided to hang up their gavels and take some time off for a while.

Should we be worried?

Who actually is trying to tax the internet? Are all the governments in the world trying to quietly sneak up on us while we surf, getting ready castillo hinchable to throw a net over our heads (and all the other parts of our bodies in the process?)? Are the wild wild west days of the internet numbered?

Where are the internet freedom fighters (aka the ‘hackers’) and what kind of guerilla operations are they planning to discourage anybody foolish enough to try to rein in on the internet?

Or are we asleep at our wheels (and keyboards?) unaware that men in black are creeping up on us, ready to spring and try to pound us into submission (I knew I never liked those buttons at the bottom of most internet forms that say “submit”)

Will we all be here same time, same place tomorrow?

hmmmmmmmmm-

Stay tuned, folks, lets see what tomorrow may bring.

—–Jim

(Edited at 8:12 PM) Here’s the book I mentioned in the previous post.

Not only did an Exxon Executive tell a room full of Exxon Supervisors and an honorary officer (in the form of a Chaplain, who was working for free, as a missionary, looking after the souls of men away from home, working on the
Alaskan pipeline, keeping the men out of trouble, sober and on the job, cutting down on absentee-ism, hangovers and all that) “There is no oil shortage, there never was an oil shortage, And with what we know now, there never will be an oil shortage.” {{-There’s enough oil under Gull Island (Alaska) to keep them all in hefty bonuses for as far ahead as I can see…}} He told them they were pumping enough natural gas back into the ground to light and power the whole east coast (of the USA) for free- for 3 years.

Now, this winter, I learned that the price of gasoline rises and falls, not due to supply and demand, or the cost of getting the slime up out of the ground and to the refineries and refined and carted to where-ever. The prices are set by the geeks you elected to represent you in Congress or Parliament- or in backrooms and shadowy nether worlds by those castillo hinchable who pull the strings that control those geeks you thought were representing you… Prices rise to bolster the Russian economy or fall to undermine the Soviets’ ability to put down velvet revolutions or even challenge East Berlinners who want to push down their gawd awful walls…. Prices are agreed upon by world players… The Chinese agree to help the US undermine the Russians- The Russians agree to help the US undermine the Chinese… whatever….

So today our coffee maker died. Is there anybody out there who thinks it’s worse than hideous that the whole culture goes nod nod wink wink or maybe even endorses planned obsolescence?

schnarr—

—thanks anyway,

—–Jim