Full of Technological Utopian Goodness

Hello everyone, I'm back again. Less than two months despite the court order barring me from computers, political commentary or voting.
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Just a short post today. I know I say that and then ramble on for 13 pages, but I really mean it this time, just a small observation and I'll be out of your hair.
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Once my point is made, then I'll shut up, because there's no point talking about something once your point is made. So I'll say my bit, and then end this post, satisfied of a job well done.
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And after than I'll sign off. Just one little message.
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One. That's it.
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Anyhoo, I was at Canadian Tire today, where I selected a couple of packages of tin foil I was going to use to make a helmet to resist mind control. Confident in my formidable knowledge of metallurgy I approached the cashier, counting out nickels I keep in a hollowed out Pontiac muffler, when I noticed the aisle I was in was cashierless. Undaunted, I proceeded to the next aisle, which was also displaying an extremely low employee density. And similarly the third aisle was entirely bereft of customer service representatives.
So I went to the Customer Service counter. This also was notably unpopulated. A moments reconnoiter confirmed the truth: there were no cashiers of any kind. There were, however, four of those automatic teller doohickeys which the Circle of Evil have been trying to replace human cashiers with. Also, there is a person standing there whose job apparently, is not Customer Service or Sales, but rather supervising the customers to ensure they cashier for themselves.
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Hmmm.... I thought.
Now, I hate to be jumping up and down shrieking 'I told you so' or, 'I knew it, Ragnorok is upon us!' so I kept such statements to a minimum. I tried to explain to the Customer Supervisor that I did not wish to use her infernal blasphemous mechanized abominations, and -this is the part that really gets me- she began to defend the bloody machines which were replacing her! At that point I gave up trying to smack some sense into the poor deluded automaton and with regret I rang my own stuff through. Can't say I'll be returning anytime soon to aid in Canadian Tire's systematic assault on our economy however.
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It is sometimes disturbing to me how bloody right I am.
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Anyhoo, thought it was an important fact that the Socioeconomic Collapse is proceeding according to plan... for those who don't read my older rantings, the short version is that our country's jobs are primarily service industry stuff... once the cashiers have been replaced, there goes about 40% of our job market... you can now find automatic tellers in hardware, grocery and banking industries, and as they catch on this movement is only going to accelerate. And in most of these professions they have somehow brainwashed the very employees they are outmoding with this stuff to endorse the very instruments of their own financial demise! The government is saying the recession is over, but there is no way in hell- we're just in a short pause. Combine that with rediculously high credit balances, iron fisted oligopolies on oil, banking, the media (especially television) and manufacturing and the massive rise of jobs based on servising other industries, we have a looming depression which will make the Great Depression look, well, great by comparison.
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That's it.
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So help stave off this nonsense. Don't use the infernal machines when a human alternative is available. Perhaps we can delay this or even turn it around, although with the idiots we currently have running things I'd be surprised.
In the meanwhile I have to go accelerate my plans to deal with the Circle of Evil, which will require nearly 18 tonnes of itching powder in very tiny paper packages. It'll keep me busy for a while.
Have a nice day, :)
The Prognostic Lexiphage.
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P.S.: See, I kept to my point! I can do that!

The Voluminous Illustration

Salutations, fellow gentlebeings...
Thought I'd toss out some pearls of wisdom to annoy the worldwide Circle of Evil today, and several ideas came up. People often say to look at the Larger View, the Big Picture, or whatever...
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My Enourmous Pictoral Rendering idea is this: you all know my apocalyptic rantings about socioeconomic collapse; I was thinking this morning (yes, it happens) and it occured to me that many of today's problems are the result of us relying on intrusive, overlarge government. During the course of the 20th century, the focus shifted from people being more or less responsible for themselves in the first half or so to people expecting the givernment to handle virtually all of their problems, and as I may have mentioned before, most governments could not organize thier way out of a wet paper bag with a cutting torch (They'd spend a lot of time running studies to see if wet paper will burn at 5000 degrees).
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Gargantuan Sketch Part A:
Power. I have mentioned before that the governments of Canada (or anywhere in North America, for that matter) can't keep up with our increasing energy usage. It's only a matter of common sense that with our ever-increasing assortment of 'must-have' gadgets, from cellphones to air conditioning our energy needs will increase, but the weirdos in charge don't seem to build much in the way of power plants any more. They attempt to from time to time and spend hundreds of millions and decades in the process, but we don't actually get any more power. Imagine how bad the problem will be in 20 years if we continue the way we have... or when gas reaches $2 a litre... or $3. I think we can all agree that the one thing the Oil Cartels and the environmental lobby can agree on is pricier gas, with no upper limit, not to mention the complications caused by a culture of people living 40 km away from their jobs and commuting to work every day. Everyone is spending thousands a year on energy costs, and the costs are all going straight up.
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Expansive Photograph Part B:
The Service Industry: This is being impacted by two issues: first, the rising minimum wage (which of course is well-deserved, don't get me wrong) and second the increase of automation. Those little tags you see in books or DVD cases which trigger the anti-theft devices in stores are being improved and made cheaper every day. They are radio transmitters powered by electromagnetic induction, and once they can hold as little information as a bar code (not far away) for a few cents per unit, there will be no need for cashiers to scan your items. A similar device on your debit or credit card will allow the anti-theft systems in the store to automatically deduct the money from your account, and if you don't have it, notify the police of your identity and what you got away with. With rising minimum wage costs, employers are more motivated to look for alternatives, and it a few short years the entire industry could be almost employee- free. Maybe a security and maintenance staff- say, two or three people for a grocery or retail store, or maybe 20 or so for a mall that today employs several hundred. How many people do you know with jobs in the service industry? or that handle cash? or some sort of spinoff job?
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Bloated Tapestry Part C:
Health Care: Canada is the proud beneficiary of universal health care. Our system has many flaws, but works more or less for the vast majority of cases. However, a problem is arising in that the goverment funds the doctor & hospital aspects but not neccessarily the pharmaceutical aspects. For example, if you have HIV, the government will not buy your drugs for you, whether they cost $50,000 per year or not. So the doctor issue is pretty much a useless issue if you can be told what the cure is but can't afford it. Despite this issue, the government will fund sex-change operations or limitless abortions and emergency rooms are clogged with people with common colds- and the government is fear-mongering the cold sufferers in with scares of SARS and the ineffective Telehealth phone lines (which pretty much are a costly, time consuming way to tell you to go to emergency regardless of your problem). Technology, while it is great in terms of the improvements in health it can give us, also comes with a price tag, which is larger every year- not only because of inflation, but also from new procedures which are developed. Sooner or later, the price tag to keep us alive will be more than we can afford. And of course, there's always a doctor and nurse shortage which is getting worse each year, whatever McGuinty has to say (there's occasionally more doctors temporarily because a great many baby boomer doctors are practising into their 60s and 70s- but they won't live forever). In addition to that, the doctors are now being almost entirely educated by funding from the pharmaceutical companies, who of course will recommend the cures which include the most expensive products that they can (see the drug funding problem, above). Which brings me to:
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Elephantine Depiction Part D:
Education: The education system in Canada (and in other countries, my details on this are less comprehensive) is becoming increasingly controlled by political and corporate interests. Black students were forced to segregated schools in the name of hate and fear only a few generations ago, and now they're building a black segregated school in the name of tolerance and inclusiveness. Of course, our politicians have MUCH better reasons than they did 50 years ago. Teachers are expected to nearly raise our kids for us, and yet they are more restricted each year with arcane rules and regulations about how to discipline, how to talk to our kids, and which horridly outdated sciences they must teach. Meanwhile, of course, there are stories in the news every year about teachers which abuse their students and yet are quietly moved to another school or region... I personally would prefer a teacher that spanks a kid who brings a machine gun or cocaine to school to a teacher that rapes little girls. But hey, I guess that's just me. As a result of these issues, kids are becoming contributing members of society later and later- living as teenagers used to until their mid-thirties or even forties until life finally teaches them what the teachers weren't allowed to.
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To sum up:
The government has screwed up virtually everything they lay their hands to and is completely unaccountable for it. Any of the above problems were initiated by people making $100,000 a year plus. They cannot solve our problems. The government should focus on areas which only a government can handle- military, police, trade, and so forth and get out of the social engineering business. Wherever possible, we as a people should take care of ourselves. We need self-sufficiency- learn to generate some of your own power (solar panels are pretty cheap- look in Canadian Tire), learn a few of your grandmother's home remedies to take pressure off of the emergency room, employ yourself instead of working for a big, faceless corporation, and teach your kids as much as you can while they are still young (anybody remember apprenticeship? It's still a good idea). Don't commute, telecommute. And as I may have mentioned before, move out of town, thicken up your walls with reinforced concrete, and stock up on the canned food and shotgun shells. When the gas-price riots and great homeless migrations begin, you'll be nice, cozy, and more likely to be radiation-free.
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Until next time,
Keep one both eyes over your shoulder-
they never come at you straight on.
Ciao,
The Laodicean Lexiphage.

A Smattering of General BS

Hi everyone. I know it's been a long time, and you've all been wrapping rubber around your arms waiting for that Lexiphage fix, well, sorry for the wait- I spent a few months fighting the sociopolitical consumerist machine and their thuggish minons during Christmas and the following aftershocks, thanks for asking, I think I'm over it.
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On the politics side of things: McGuinty has really stepped up to the plate with his powerful leadership, taking an admirable stand against ethnic segregation when asked about the proposed 'African Centred' school. Something along the lines of ' I don't think that's a positive step in the right direction for us... It's not my job to make any decisions, though, ask your trustee... someone hand me a poll to tell me what I think'. I'm glad we don't elect leaders to make decisions. That would be wrong. Maybe even more wrong than herding black people into a segregated school. I'm not sure. Ask your trustee.
On the subject of trustees, one from the local Roman Catholic board has recently been caught putting carribean vacations and her wedding on her expense account, but when caught suddenly became overwhelmed with stress and checked into a loonybin, so her lawyer says we should be sympathetic and leave her alone. This is the decision making ability we need to trust on those complicated moral issues.
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On the home front, the smurfs are doing well, absorbing knowledge at a frightening rate. The larger smurf lately is interested in taking his dishes into the kitchen, vacuuming, and complaining, so I guess he's after my job. The smaller smurf is branching out a little on the food front, attempting yoghurt and different flavoured doughnuts (instead of the traditional chocolate glazed) recently.
A couple of weeks ago the Neighbour Lady and I decided we really couldn't stand each other as much as we thought we could and had a relatively peacable breakup with a minimum of ammunition expended. I know it's not my style to leave a woman with her mental health intact, but I guess I am in growth.
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I recently inherited a gaggle of books from a freind of mine and have been reading heavily- I have access to at least 30 novels I haven't read yet, so I'll be powering through them until probably April sometime, and therefore have an excuse to take in more caffeine. This is always a good thing.
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My writing appears to be hitting another peak, as without the Neighbour Lady phoning me every 38 seconds I now have enough time to work on proposals for agents and publishers on a more regular basis, when I can squeeze that in between outrageous levels of flirting and drinking. If I can keep the momentum up I'll have a proposal ready sometime this week, although trust a literary agent to demand all submissions in rtf format with specific headers when rtf doesn't do headers. (For those of you without typing experience, that's the little line at the top that has the page number, chapter, phone number and turn-ons of the author.)
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I have uncovered a swath of new conspiracy theories that I'm attempting to cram into drafts for my second book; Discover! magazine has an article on chemical modification of long-term memory that is just too juicy to miss, the states are programming clones for their elections, I had a firsthand account from soemone who spent time with Toronto's mole people, and I found out how to mask an infrared signature from sattelite serveillance. On the whole a productive month or two.
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Well, that's all you get for now. I need to restock my canned food and shotgun shells, and check on the investment sealed into the concrete in my basement. Until next time,
Live long and prosecute,
The Wassailing Lexiphage.

Fillins & Conspiracies

Hello everyone, at long last I have returned!
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Let's see: Last month on the Lair of the Lexiphage, Lex himself got a new computer, was waiting for a bribery check from his arch-nemesis McGuinty, and the global conspiracy for world domination was closing its ethereal fingers around our beleaguered planet right on schedule. Well, to pick up where we left off:
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My new computer seems to be functioning more-or-less the way I want it to; whilst it makes my old computer look, well, old in comparison, it still has junk Bill Gates crammed in there against all good sense and judgement. I regularly find crap that has to be removed such as trial versions of programs I don't want, links I can't get rid of to programs I don't need, and features absolutely neccessary to the usage of windows that were inexplicably left out when XP was "upgraded" to Vista. There are several obvious reasons Bill does this:
1) He doesn't like me, and wants me to know it.
2) He doesn't respect me as a consumer, and wants me to know it.
3) Having gained total control of the Operating System market despite the efforts of the courts, Bill is now systematically removing as much useful stuff as possible from Windows with each generation while increasing the computer power required, thus lowering the expectations of the consumer and thereby lowering his costs for the next insipid version he releases. Pretty soon he'll just get a cut from each computer sold despite the fact none of them will do a damn thing because of him. Then we'll have to start paying him just to take Windows off whenever we buy a computer.
4) Bill is part of the Evil Global Conspiracy, and as such is interested in bringing about the socioeconomic collapse neccessary for them to seize power. He and his cronies like McGuinty (who despite my assertions to the contrary cannot possibly be as stupid as he lets on- he is after all a vertebrate), Dubya, and evil organizations like the WTO, World Bank, the UN and the people who created the Care Bears (you just knew they were really evil in some way, didn't you?).
5) Bill doesn't have quite enough money, so until the socioeconomic collapse he has to get donations from advertising companies to buy bread, water, and the recreational drugs that give him these ideas.
6) Bill gets a kick out of stickin' it to us.
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McGuinty did send me my bribery check, $500 just as he agreed without my collusion... and as I mentioned last time it was just at an appropriate time to purchase my new machine. Since I know he is using it to spy on me, I've transplanted a lot of the junk he put in the hard drive for me to a computer at a drive thru coffee shop in Des Moines, and have my webcam hooked up with a telescope attachment in the air duct system of an apartment building in St, John's, pointed straight at the back door of a porno theatre. That should keep him busy. In the meanwhile I continuously feed my computer disinformation in the hopes that he'll send the Men in Black to annoy someone else for a change.
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My Internet will soon be unhooked temporarily, as I recently decided I don't want to pay in the Insane Ex's name any more... Rogers informed me the only way to get the account in my name without her speaking coherently with them for a few minutes is to just stop paying them 'till they shut her down. Then I can open up an entirely new account with them at my leisure. This, folks, is the TV and internet company I actually SELECTED, which tells you how high I value the competition.
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The smurfs are coming along nicely, although Gav has yet to actually learn anything at IBI- so far they just spend a couple of hours each month testing him for their evil government plans... No doubt they won't make a serious effort to deal with autism because they created it to mess with us as an experiment, similar to the syphilis experiments they did on unsuspecting minorities in the thirties.
Despite this Gav has been improving his talking on a regular basis, recently saying "Good Morning" to his sister and occassionally having short conversations with me about things that happen to him at school. Mya seems to be on a break with learning lately, and hasn't been talking much; however she is climbing down stairs more-or-less by herself and has been walking outside a lot, albeit not where I want her to.
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Well, I gotta go now- I have a new set of bear traps I have to leave around my garbage for the Hydro Thugs to find, and these decoy cameras don't set themselves up. Catcha later,
The Non-ablative Lexiphage.

Smoke Signals & Carrier pigeons

Hey lexiphans!
Sorry for the long intermission, I was unavoidably detained when my ancient computer had a massive brain hemmorhage. Still, for a second-hand job (not to be confused with a second hand job) it did better than any other machine I've had- it lasted me 3 years or so, despite being a 3 year old contraption at the time of acquisition. It was a nice computer, made of the very finest flint and bearskin, and apparently was originally owned by some guy named Hammurabi. So, I was looking at other used machines for a little while, but noticed the margin between a new and used machine has narrowed considerably. On Friday I get a spot of moolah and will use this capital to purchase a NEW machine- something I have not had since the distant days when people could ask "what's a Pentium?".
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Just a little pat on my own back here- apparently McGuinty heard my recommendation to bribe me prior to the coming election and therefore decided to send parents of young children a "please elect me again, really I'm desperate" check for $250 per child. Note that in the finest Liberal tradition I have not actually got the check as yet, but it should arrive sometime between now and the looming election Mcguinty hasn't called and therefore isn't campaigning for on the taxpayer's tab. Speaking of which, it is interesting to note that one of the few promises McGuinty did not break was the inception of a law which prevents political parties from campaigning on the public budget... this stuff he's doing now, it's not really campaigning, it's keeping the public informed. Really!
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So I'm making this post once again on the faithful library computer, which thankfully was not commissioned by our able-minded premier, and hopefully on Friday I'll make another post on my shiny new machine, which in the finest tradition of science fiction writers should rise up against my control in a year or two. I figure this based on elementary Chaos science, which says all complex systems will behave in this way (if you don't believe me, watch my ex-wife cook sometime and see what happens with her creations), and also on general paranoia, which says McGuinty is somehow responsible for the death of my old computer, and sent me the 'please-elect-me' check as a means to plant his electronic agent within the Lair of the Lexiphage. The cad! At least it's cheaper than sending over the Men in Black twice a week to sift through my garbage and whack me with cattle prods...
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For those of you who are wondering about the Smurfs, they are doing well despite being out of school for the summer now... I still have them in daycare 3 times a week to keep the brain juices flowing, and Mya is talking pretty well these days (recent sentence reported from daycare: "Go Outside"... Gav has been doing well as well although he seems really bored lately... I think he needs a challenge, so I've been going over the alphabet with them and and am building a new version of my brainwave manipulator which hopefully will teach him all about my veiws on politics with electronic ease. May as well make the teachers obsolete whilst the rest of us are getting that way, eh?
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I guess that should be it... this is an insecure location without all of my usual electronic-warfare subterfuge, and the government and hydro thugs are already closing on my position. Until next time,
Ciao,
from the Quixotic Lexiphage.