A Little Piece of Cheesecake

Hi everyone! I'm back!... or front? Hmmmmm......
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So, McGuinty has a new idea. Apparently, what with the rising problem of cyber-bullying, weiner boy has decided he can stop it and has earmarked $54 million or so to fight it. (Note: this is divided into 2 funds of $23 million and $31 million. Don't ask me to remember what the difference is.) He doesn't have a plan for how to fight cyber-bullying, he doesn't have any trained people for fighting cyber-bullying, and in fact, he can't spell cyber-bullying. The whole point of cyber-bullying is to constantly taunt and belittle other students online, so that third party students can share in the joke and yet the bullies can evade detection by authorities by doing it anonymously (or with nicknames), often in accounts set up specifically for this purpose. Now... I don't approve of cyber-bullying, or for that matter, regular bullying, but seeing as how he hasn't got a clue about how to do anything about it, where did this $54 million number come from?
The answer, of course, is "Duhhhhh...." The number could be a trillion dollars, quite frankly, because other than a token sum, most of the funds are headed back into general revenue anyway.
Really- the problems with the whole idea are many- first, how to find and convict/penalize cyber bullies. Second- why put this program in the hands of principals, who are primarily motivated to go through the motions but not catch anybody, so as to keep funding levels up and the school looking nice and innocent (this was already the case with the York board's silly 'zero-tolerance' policy towards violence). Third- whatever weiner boy might think, bullying still occurs, so if they can't catch the out-in-the-open type bullies, how the hell are they supposed to catch sneaky cyber bullies? Forth, this program is unique in that it is under control of the school and yet most of the cyber-bullying actually takes place OFF OF SCHOOL PROPERTY. In other words, He's giving money to principals to find someone they can't find and don't want to, in order to control their conduct where they can't reach, so that they can solve a problem they already systemically pretend they don't have. And when they FIND the cyber-bullies... does he even have an idea for that? No- it's up to the principal's discretion. Where's the idea here? The bold new initiative? The basic thought patterns which divide the human race from, say, moss?
In a related story, I've been receiving e-mails telling me I'm gay, a dummy, stupid, short and a bad dresser from someone who calls himself "D.M."... He seems to think he's really clever sending them to me, and writes "Ha Hha" and "So hwat do yo thinc of m know?!" a lot. I wonder who it is...
Well, ta-ta for now!
See you next time, from
The Perspicacious Lexiphage

Rise of the Smurfs

Hello, good evening and welcome!
Once again we bring you a full helping of Lexiphage, which comes complete with side dish and beverage of your choice.
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This past couple of weeks has been eventful with regards to the Smurfs- Gav and Mya have been talking with unprecedented frequency and ability.
Gav has been using lots of sentences, such as "What is that?", "Is this happening?", and "I wanted this, not juice". To make sure everyone understands, Gav has also got in the habit of saying every sentence a dozen times, each time rewording it so he's sure to get his point across. Example: "Jo's gone home now, Jo's gone away, she's gone now, she's not here, she went home, Jo's gone out, She's gone to her house."
As a completely seperate triumph, Gavin and I had a Sunday breakfast together of steak and eggs, and he actually ate an entire steak! Until this point, the only meat I could get him to eat was bacon, pepperoni, or stuff I could make to look like bacon or pepperoni. Admittedly I had to cut the steak in long, thin strips, but no one would have mistaken it for bacon.
Mya is also advancing rapidly- she can sing several of the words to "twinkle, twinkle little star", and has used her first short sentences- such as "I did that". Of course, she still vastly prefers screeching and screaming to get what she wants, but that she actually seems to think me worthy of talking to is quite the leap.
Also of note on the Mya front- the school told me she had to quit the demands to be carried everywhere and walk for herself despite her fear of strange flooring, and in only a few weeks has gone from refusing to set foot outside of her classroom to repeated escape attempts. For some reason she has a consuming passion for the classroom next door, and wherever she escapes from she makes a beeline for this classroom instead of her own. This summer the stroller (Mya's security blanket) will be mothballed, and I'll have the unbridled joy of carrying everything my kids need lugged along by hand while the little miscreants take off in opposite directions.
Lastly on the Mya subject, she has actually consented to mostly come (occasionally) when I call her- she will walk part way to me as if she respects my opinion or something before starting to ignore me. This is important, as my three and a half year old autistic daughter has NEVER even ATTEMPTED to head in my direction when I've called her... she'll come for her teachers occasionally and sometimes for the Neighbour Lady, but never for me, her only full-time parental figure (She knows full well if she doesn't come, I'll go get her myself).
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The Insane Ex is once again pretending to be buddy-buddy with me... this is because it would be unreasonable for me to hold a grudge against someone who only punched me in the face five or six times and threatened to cut my throat once. She sees fit to call me nearly every day (collect, of course), question me about the welfare of the Smurfs, and remind me how every decision I make for them is wrong. Apparently she says now the Neighbour Lady should be the Smurfs' surrogate mother instead of their buddy, what with how I couldn't take care of a chia pet for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time. The fact that the smurfs are still alive after a year under my care is apparently a coincidence of some kind, and most especially she is concerned Mya will somehow contract frostbite in warm, dry weather indoors unless she wears mittens. Riiiiight.
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Lastly, the government is apparently conducting a study of some kind on autistic kids, and is willing to pay me a stipend for a session with the Smurfs. Admittedly I could use the cash, but seeing as how McGuinty and his henchmen are behind it I suspect a trap. I'll probably sign up for it, but be careful what I sign, never let the rugrats out of my sight, and have three escape routes planned to evade Men in Black. I have a stungun I made from an old cellphone, a car battery, and two coathangers that I might conceal up one sleeve just in case too.
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Well, I had better do something useful with the rest of the evening. I'm going to see if I can rig up a capacitor to the stungun to get a few extra amps out of it. Until next time,
The Panjandrumic Lexiphage.

Wrestling the Image of the Beast

Hiya folks.
Well, I finally got this thing working again. Apparently I need to turn my computer upside down and expose its soft underbelly every time I go on here now; for some reason my computer changed its mind and decided Blogspot was dangerous... I don't know how it was convinced of this but still suspect McGuinty's more intelligent handlers.
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Speaking of McGuinty, it has finally become apparent where he stashes all of that money he gets when he rips off autistic kids and retired old ladies and such. The number of people in the Ontario government who make $100,000 or more is just shy of 34,000 people. This is, of course, not including their penion plans, which on average, we pay four times what they do to create and which also average in the neighbourhood of $100,000 (I think I read $84,000, but don't quote me on that). Assuming the other three quarters of a million people whom our provincial government employs make the national average salary (this is $39,000. They make more than this but I don't have an exact figure) that adds up to about $30-$40 billion. The government is fond of saying that in order to get the best people, we have to pay these exorbitant rates. I don't know about you, but looking at the McGuinty government's record, I don't think we're getting the best people. I think perhaps if we were to randomly select a crack addict from the streets of Toronto to replace each of these 34,000 people, then we could pay them minimum wage and hardly do worse. This would amount to around $2.5 billion saved in wages alone. If we hired some crack addict lab monkeys we probably would have a decent shot too.
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The Lexiphage's idea on how to save the health care system: Maybe if we stopped remodelling hospitals every year and instead spent that money on training and hiring doctors and nurses, maybe we could cure some sick people or something. No insult to the construction profession, but I don't really trust a bricklayer to diagnose my MRI. Not that they build hospitals out of bricks any more; they have to be all made of curved glass walls framed in mother-of-pearl and moon rock, and the rare non-glass walls have to support lots of archways, bridges, indoor trees, fountains, and automated crawling cages with robotic feeding systems to house the cloned albino leopards inside, and feed them beluga caviar and fresh spring water imported from an iceburg on the north pole of Mars. I hear next year at our local hospital they're removing all of the floors and ceilings to replace them with Liquid Crystal Display televisions that play commercials for how great the hospital is getting 24 hours a day.
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Not that there's anything wrong with our health care system. They just need to get rid of all the pesky sick people and then it would work fine.
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The smurfs are doing okay lately; Mya is talking and singing a little, but last night she stayed up the ENTIRE night either hollering or banging. I was pleased with this. Really. Gavin is having short conversations with me on a regular basis, and the other day said "Want to go to Tim Horton's" fairly clearly. He's always tired though, both because of school pushing him hard and because Mya keeps him up nights.
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Well, that's all for now. I have to go as I've been hired by the government to perform a study on whether people like being beaten with a stick or not. It has a budget of $187,000 and needs to be completed by 2010 so that McGuinty can throw it in his shredder and use the remains to set his trash can on fire and light a $66,000 cigar he got imported from a guy who hand rolls them in Tibet with special gloves made from live pygmy marmosets.
Until next time,
The Misanthropic Lexiphage.