Yes, I've heard about the mail received by our New Conservative Party-affiliated Overlords. At some length.
I am displeased. Greatly.
While I have many reasons to wish that party as presently managed no small degree of discomfort, that sort of mail delivery is certain to backfire on too many innocent and not so innocent fellow citizens down the line. And we will not even get into the matter of what I suspect was the supreme discomfort of the person whose demise made the packages possible. The unkindness of inflicting that sort of an exit upon anyone is just Wrong.
I wish the responsible parties a swift arrest and prosecution, and an effective program of therapy prescribed and delivery immediately thereafter.
- Mood:
worried
Maybe someday. One more reason to keep looking at the job boards...
More on other topics later in the day.
Here's where we were at the start of the month, by comparison. Keeping an eye on things, and I hope the help keeps coming to these guys.
- Mood:
hopeful
Originally posted by
"My LJ is my online house. If someone knocks on the door they are most likely to find me at home here. I welcome visitors that aren't trying to sell me something. Some visitors I invite inside, some I don't. My choice.
My house has a fenced yard with a large and varied garden that I maintain. I enjoy gardening and like planting new flowers to see how they will grow. The gate is open so that anyone can lounge on the lawn, examine the garden, or even plant something at the edge of the beds. People visiting my garden are welcome to take pictures and introduce others to it.
My house, like my fence, has a door. Unlike the gate, this door is closed. Guests knock or are invited in. Friends have keys. Inside my house there are many rooms. On the ground floor there is a library, a fireplace lounge, a dining room, and a kitchen, all connected by open archways. Any who have entered through the door are welcome to read, cook, chat, eat, admire the art, or pet the cats.
Up the stairs there is a hallway of closed doors that those who party below may not open unless invited. These are reserved for individual keys and the locks may change, as if managed by mischievous gremlins. The cats enter and leave at will, because they are cats.
There are some that say, "All that can be seen is public", but this is not so. There are some that say, "Doors are an outrage and fences immoral", but this is not so. This is my home and I maintain it. The fences and doors keep the health of the whole. Those placed outside the house may still play in the garden. Those placed outside the fence may still look at the garden even if they are no longer able to rip up flowers or piss on the carpet.
I seek to be a good host and a good gardener. I entertain, feed, plant, weed, and bounce. The party guests change as the party does. The garden grows, welcomes the next season, and remembers the last. This is a shared endeavour and a living project."
- Mood:
Attentive
Here, in Canada, it's a normal day. And yet it's not.
Out of concern over a large number of provisions in Bill C-38, affecting everything from environmental law to free speech protection, from preserving police forensic investigation capabilities to the reach and scope of the CBC; from fairness in Unemployment Insurance rules to the health of our national archives...I plan to "black out" my home page on June 4th as a participant in the Black Out Speak Out campaign.
I'm not quite sure how I can extend that to this Livejournal yet, but I hope to find a way.
And now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.
- Mood:
Hopeful yet not naive

Dragon module van binnen. Mooi. Ruim. Modern. Blauwe LEDs. Voelt beetje als SF film decor. Komt dan ook uit Los Angeles., a photo by André Kuipers on Flickr.
Thanks to Rick Sternbach for finding this and passing word along via Facebook. Yes, it's the inside of the Dragon capsule.
- Mood:
Amazed
Ottawa Comiccon - 2012, a set on Flickr.
Follow up to this posting!
- Mood:
awake
To be honest, it's as much me as them. Neither of us are what we were when I started my subscription years ago. I can't even remember when I started, but it seems like at least a decade.
Time was, they had columnists like Naomi Klein and Spider Robinson back then. And they weren't owned by the phone company back then, either. So a certain amount of freedom from promoting corporate thought as gospel was there to be had. Hence Klein and Robinson.
No more.
Finances aside, the last straw was their Op-Ed stance on the new changes to the Unemployment Insurance rules planned via C-38. They're not as strident as columnists like Quebecor/Sun Media's Brian Lilley or the Citizen's Michael Taube. But they're marching in the same general direction. Problematic, that is.
So. We're done for the time being. I'm not ruling out resurrecting my subscription anymore than I am the idea of resuming full regular business with DC Comics. If I draw that line in the sand, and they cross it in any of several ways to my liking, that could be a different sort of problem.
We'll see. Finances permitting.
- Mood:
melancholy
Want something like this on your own home's walls?
Yes, I'm still taking commissions.
- Mood:
hopeful
Now it's off to the day job.
More after work on other stuff...
I particularly like item # 21 on that list. And I wish that I had a better handle on # 16 in my life.
- Mood:
thankful
Over at Facebook,
I'm not sure that I can make any counter-argument. I have no expertise sufficient to that challenge, assuming it needed to be made.
There's been a couple of things about the specific comics version as shown in the Marvel Universe Handbook that caught my eye, though...both cobbled together from Marvel Universe Handbook imagery and line art from the Federation of American Scientists' website(or perhaps the USN's own public-access archives?).
Assuming that the Nimitz-class CVNs are the same length as the Helicarrier design given us by Eliot Brown...
Honestly, I usually get this techno-nerdy with Star Trek's fictional spacecraft...
- Mood:
nerdy
Right.
So...Victoria Day. The third Monday of May is a federal statutory holiday to honour the memory of the monarch who signed off on promoting Canada from colony to Dominion back in 1867. Therefore, this is a long weekend. Considering the weather in Ottawa the city at the moment, perhaps we might all consider retiring to our basements, cellars, Diefenbunkers and other assorted underground hangouts to evade discomfortable levels of temperature without humidity.
Tomorrow I go back to the day-job, after three days' paid time off and a week's unpaid leave(that last subject to amendment, I hope). And I'm bracing for the next job hunt.
Heather Mallick's latest words echoing in my brain...
- Mood:
contemplative
Any theories?
- Mood:
annoyed
http://www.sfwa.org/2012/05/2011-ne
Congrats to
(Also pleased as a Whovian to see "The Doctor's Wife" win as well!)
- Mood:
ecstatic
There's a reference in that article to comments in favour of the proposed changes to our UI system by spokespeople from a group called the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Here's their Wikipedia page, FWIW.
The page alleges that its founder back in 1971 was one John Bulloch...whose own Wiki page claims him to be a current member of the Georgia State Senate, a claim apparently confirmed by that legislative body's own web service. No direct link And that's all that's present on that Wiki page, again as of 7:40 AM this morning. No direct confirmation that he ever lived in Canada on the Georgia State Senate page, mind you.
He claims Republican affiliation, representing Georgia's 11th District.
If it's indeed the same guy, I'd be interested to know more about the linkages.
I've just had my lack of research made clear to me elsewhere on the net. Definitely not the same guy.
The American guy:
http://votesmart.org/candidate/biograph
The Canadian guy:
http://www.cfib-fcei.ca/english/art
- Mood:
Annoyed at my lack of research
Why?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol
(Note: I expect this article to be moved behind a paywall eventually, so I'll need an alternative covering the same ground that doesn't sit behind such a thing.)
- Mood:
scared
Happy birthday,
pulsejenc!
- Mood:
pleased
http://www.cbc.ca/ontariotoday/2012/0
- Mood:
busy
Happy Birthday to
dduane!!!
- Mood:
happy













