I have a monitor again, election reflection, watching Watchmen, and one will be revealed.

Dear Gods, I am a bad, lazy, infrequent blogger. I must be getting old. My lack of text is far from a lack of something to say. Rather, if my thought is accurate that Battlestar Galactica is truly an allegory to my life, lately nothing has been more true than this:

Months o­n the run, and what do we have to show for it? Casualties. Deteriorating conditions. This crew needs a rest. It’s finally hitting them, that’s all. Our old lives are gone. The o­nly thing we have to look forward to is this.

Commander William Adama, Flight of the Phoenix

Months of working too much for too little, with no leads on new jobs. First a back injury, then a three week stint with serious damage to my Achilles tendon. Engine block on the car fried. Need to work more to make payments on the new vehicle. LCD computer monitor goes on the fritz, so Dawn and I can fight over computer time. No end to the monotony in sight. All I have to look forward to is more work just to get by.

Well, last night was another small turn in the road. We have a library of sorts in our building, more like a small alcove in which people drop off and pick up old novels and such. Sometimes, however, other things appear there. Like a Samsung computer monitor.

Needless to say, the monitor issue is a non-issue. It is a CRT, but still, until the financial situation greatly improves, which is in process with the union contract being re-negotiated, along with a potential side business venture I’m undertaking, it will more than do. So long as someone doesn’t smash it up tomorrow (which seems to be my luck these days), we should be all good. Though in all honesty, I can’t imagine causing over $3000 in damage to a cheap computer monitor.

The car, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. Two days after driving off the lot with it, I got rear-ended. See a few posts back. The good is the deductible has been waived. The bad is that I’m worried shitless that some kind of vandalism will befall the loaner the body shop gave me. I really don’t need any more car problems in, oh, about forever.

Our lives have even been graced with elections (one to come in a week, and one early next year still to come, however), which in itself is allegory to the end of Season 2.

They don’t want to hear the truth. They’re tired. Exhausted. The idea of stopping, laying down their burdens and starting a new life right now is what is resonating with the voters.

Tory Foster, Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I

Not so much in Canada. We re-elected the king of personality, Stephen Harper, in an election that spent loads of tax dollars and changed next to nothing in the House of Commons. I guess one positive came out of it was that Stephane Dion stepped down as Liberal leader. I appreciate the honesty approach. When I lived in Onterrible, Dalton McGuinty got elected on a platform of ‘no tax cuts’, giving a ‘real’ plan as opposed to hollow empty promises. That’s one thing. Telling voters well before the election is even called you plan to tax us more is just plain suicide.

Still, it’s now only a matter of time before Justin takes the reigns. Probably one leader removed from another Trudeau Prime Minister dynasty.

Luckily, things are looking up down south. Congrats to Barack Obama for doing two things. First, being the first African-American voted in as President, but more importantly, having an ELECTION THAT ONLY LASTED ONE DAY. Actually, to think of it, most elections I can think of from down south really offered a result in only one day. Except two. Both elected that Dubya character. I can’t imagine that it’s only down to ballot counters having the same mathematical and academic capacity as the current puppet President. Co-incidence?

Say what you will about economic policy. I think this election might actually be a sign that the US is joining the rest of us in the 21^ST century, being able to rise from the past, go against the grain, and select a man who not even 50 years ago, wouldn’t have even been fathomed as the leader of the free world.

Yeah, I said it. Many in the world look to America as a beacon of hope. And Tuesday, this beacon of hope may have been re-lit. Through fiscal policy, budget, deficit, debt, and the like, we can easily lose sight of the social conscience that government must wield. We live in a much smaller world, thanks to many ingenious things such as the interweb. Different cultures, different gender orientations, different faiths are increasingly at ends, must either learn to co-exist or they will end up destroying one another.

I can only hope the election of Obama will forward the cause of co-existence.

It could be worse. We could have had five successive terms of Richard Nixon. Though for that to have happened, I think we might have needed an omnipotent blue dude with a diagram of a hydrogen atom on his forehead.

I’m really looking forward to the Watchmen film. I’ve only read the graphic novel a handful of times, as I’ve (until very recently) had to borrow it from friends, never finding a copy of my own. Until now.

I just hope that trailer isn’t the only thing to tide me over until the second half of season 4. Well aside from hockey. Tonight’s score: Winnipeg Jets 0, Kevin ‘Boom Boom’ Bieksa 1.

Interdum vos ut volvo ferrus six.

Doesn’t election time bring out the best in us all?

This post, however, will NOT be dedicated to the Gong Show south of the border, nor the Gong Show we’re going through up here. Rather, in my blog surfing, I have a spark that has bypassed both my writer’s block and badly messed up ankle enough to formulate a reasonable post.

As such, Peter put up this post yesterday. With the title From the Mailbag it would seem it was some sort of forwarded email. It tickles the funny bone, especially if your political systems sits right of center. Mine does not. So as a rebuttal, I give you this Master’s course in the history of humanity:

Many thousands of years ago, Cylons (Titans) and Humanity warred in the heavens. They eventually found their way to a nuclear wasteland called Earth. The few who remained became Lords of Kobol, or Olympian Gods, and remained in the heavens. The hybrid children, the only who were naturally resistant to Earth’s radiation, became the new evolution of humanity. The male children were told one statement which became the center of all their truths and beliefs. A male phallus must be at least six inches in length, or one is not truly a man.

As a result, man became divided into two factions. Phallically superior, or Liberals, and phallically challenged, or Conservatives. Confident in their manhood, Liberals were calm, relaxed, and sought a peaceful and meaningful co-existence with their environment and their brothers and sisters. Conservatives felt the need to prove they were just as much a man as their Liberal brothers. They waged many wars, built oversized spears solely for the purpose of resting the handle on their groin and dreaming, and spread the myth that this

is six inches. This perpetrated lie finally gets the Conservatives laid, and they learn that lies, misinformation, and academic resistance can give them power.

The Liberals realize this, but instead of challenging this myth, they go on to create democracy. Plato, a great Liberal, founds the governing system of the great classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. Rome eventually overtook Greece, and the Roman empire would be more than just a church today if not for the interference of three key figures. Gaivs Ivlivs Caesar (more commonly known as Julius Caesar), Jesus of Nazereth, and Constantine I all played their part in the dissection of democracy and the path to the dark ages.

Caesar, the first documented Conservative who was looking for a cure to impotency, took the credit for one of his soldiers impregnating Cleopatra with his supposed son, Caesarion. After being named dictator for life, he needed a successor, and since his half-Egyptian son would not be old enough to take over in the face of his impending doom, he had to adopt a brilliant Liberal, Gaivs Octavivs (more commonly known as Augustus). This liberal brilliantly created a system to have an Emperor disguised from the mob of Rome, as a measure to avert civil war. However, Augustus’s adoptive heir Tiberius was a eunuch, and the Conservative line of emperors had but one Liberal.

During the reign of Augustus, a brilliant black man named Jesus was born. Another gifted and potent Liberal, was able to commercialize the notion of peace. Outraged, Jewish and Roman Conservatives conspired to murder Jesus before he could have children to continue his line. Jesus was crucified, and his wife Mary was forced to escape and live in exile. The possibility of an ancestral line has been obscured through the Conservative fictionalization of history.

Three hundred years later, Constantine I, the ultimate bandwagoner, realized the Pagan cult was being threatened by misguided Christian followers. In true Roman tradition, he merged the two cults, giving the black Christ the face of Galactica’s CAG, Apollo. The message of peace was augmented to peace, so long as you believe what I believe, otherwise you’re a sinner and going straight to hell. The dark ages, a system based on class and money and power, was to begin. Christ’s message of peace was spread at the point of a sword through crusades, witch hunts, and the lovely relationship between England and Ireland.

Fast forward to recently. Christopher Columbus popularizes the well known notion that the earth is round. Europe colonizes America, and two dominant countries emerge. Canada (mostly Liberal) and the United States (phallically challenged Conservatives). The US fights for their freedom first, kicked off by pouring all their tea into the Boston harbour. Being now permanently without drinkable tea, they water their beer down to such a level that they can drink beer while they work. This has quite the negative effect as the highly conservative American’s alcohol tolerance drops so low they can still get drunk on 4 or less of these highly de-alcoholized beverages.

Canada, however, has a bunch of drunken riots in the streets of Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City. Getting fed up as the drunken Canadians can not feel pain when they are fought, Great Britain, realizing these drunken Liberals are the greatest fighting force known to man, stay heavily allied to us while giving us our freedom. We bail the Allies out of both WWI and WWII, invent the games of hockey and basketball, invent the telephone, develop insulin injections for diabetics, developed working universal healthcare, inspire grunge music, become the face of Star Trek, and most importantly, discovered the true Holy Grail.

Now if we could only find a better Liberal leader than Stephane Dion already?

Interdum vos ut volvo ferrus six.

Carrot chasing and other diversions

Sadly though, this one lasted well over a year. A good 15 months of being just over broke. Is it any wonder I haven’t been posting my typical lot of tripe on this blahg lately? It’s been more of a struggle maintaining my sanity through the carrot chase, notwithstanding maintaining my health.

The carrot chase really involves this. I get into my petrol consuming device, and in turn for the consumption, I get transported around the local area, pick up square-ish cardboard containers, return to the start point, and unload them. That, in a nutshell, is my ratrace, that allows myself, my lovely bride to be, Tara, and Shitbrick to have sustinance. And with the sheer physicality of it all, I thought that might wear me out soon.

However, it’s the politics of it all that really takes the fucking piss. Because the politics really is degenerating into a war. Put simply, this ‘hobby’ of carrot chasing for, well, carrots (yup it really don’t pay well), simply isn’t worth living in some hybridized Orwellian nightmare. So the decision is made. I’m going to chase a new carrot.

The question is where. After a week of ski, drink, sleep, repeat with the old man, I really got in touch with how much family is important. However, it was a stark reminder of the tragedy that got my ass in gear to get out here. And why. Film. As such, no more shit jobs, things that are completely irrelevant to that point. Sadly, the industry is still slow in these parts. Meh [blows raspberry].

There is one reasonable hope. Getting my electrical trades certification. Aside from providing well paid carrot chasing, the education actually does lead itself back to lighting in the film industry. And the frightening thing… Mom suggested it. Still though, even a lateral move might be just what the doctor ordered. The current state of bollocks that is my carrot chasing life is just that… a total fucking load of bollocks.

At one point I had hope. That one day I’d be holding the stick, not chasing the carrot. But at that time, I was suffering a severe brain malfunction. I forgot the Dilbert Priciple:

…companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage they’re capable of doing.

And for that reason alone, someone skilled like me could NEVER get ahead in the standardized world of corporate America. I’m not in harms way because I’m not the one causing the harm. Meh again [raspberry again]. For someone skilled like me to run the show, I have to create the show (just as a hint as to where I’m ultimately going).

Twisted Filler Tuesday to return tomorrow.

Interdum vos ut volvo ferreus six.

P.S. Help my city grow and build it’s industry.